But two things have always been valued in Germany. In the first place it was a pre-eminent peculiarity of the Germans that they honoured the dignity of the female sex. Their women were the prophetesses of the heathen time, and, according to the laws of the people, whosoever killed a maiden or widow had to atone for it by the severest punishment. In times of strife and war, women enjoyed protection of person and property. Whilst Totila, Prince of the Goths, destroyed the men in Italy, the honour and life of the women were preserved, and the misbehaviour of a Goth to a Neapolitan woman was punished with death. It moreover appears from the Sachsenspiegel, that the same laws prevailed in the North even during the time of the cruel Hussite wars. Of all the misdeeds of the Spanish soldiers who accompanied Charles V. into Germany in the sixteenth century, their ill-treatment of women excited the greatest indignation. The infamous conduct of some Passau soldiers of the Archduke Leopold towards the women of Alsace, even in 1611, was particularly repugnant to the people, and was commented on in their news-sheets. It was not till the Thirty years' war that the coarseness became universal, and women were looked upon as the booty of licentious men. This respect for women and chaste family life was considered by the Romans the highest quality of the Germans. Even Christianity, which spread from the Roman to the German countries, could not place women and marriage on a higher footing; on the contrary, its ascetic tendencies served to lower them. The full enjoyment of the pleasures of the world were no longer allowed to man; passionate devotion to a beloved husband was easily mistaken for a wrong to heaven and the holy Redeemer. On the other hand men fixed their eyes on the heavenly Virgin, whose especial favour they might win by despising the women of earth. At the time of the Saxon Emperors this tendency of the mind reached its highest point. In those days education was confined to the cloister; there the daughters of the nobility were educated; there men weary of sin retired; and there also, enthusiasm sought for the highest enjoyment of love, which seemed unattainable in marriage without danger to the salvation of the soul. Secret sensuality mixed even with the worship of the highest objects of faith.