In the Middle Ages the conditions of life in Western Europe were pretty uniform. There was hardly any education in the sense of book-learning, except among religious communities. Locomotion was difficult and dangerous, so that there was but scanty intercourse between the inhabitants of different parts of the same country. Fighting was the chief business of men, and manual work, skilled and unskilled, occupied women of all ranks. In an age when war was so frequent, the civil duties of life were left to women, who fulfilled obligations that in more peaceful times fell to the lot of men. They not only had entire charge of the household, but shared largely in the operations of the field and the farm; they were the spinners, the weavers, the brewsters, and the bakers. They frequently controlled the management of estates, and occasionally held public offices of trust and importance. There were no laws to prevent women from filling such positions, and the fittest came to the front unhampered by conventionality or arbitrary restrictions. But although women appear to have had a wider field of activity than they afterwards enjoyed, when social life became more complex, there was a counteracting influence which told against the development and free exercise of their energies. This was the influence of the Church. It was the policy of the Church to keep women in a subordinate position. As long as they remained thoroughly convinced of their natural inferiority, and of the duty of subservience, they could be reckoned upon as valuable aids to the building up of the ecclesiastical power. The immense force of the religious and devotional spirit in woman was at the absolute disposal of her spiritual directors. At a time when there was no science, no art, and, for the majority, no literature, the power of the Church was incomparably greater than anything we can conceive of now. The Church did not find it difficult to persuade women to accept the limits marked out for them. There was no public sentiment to set off against the power of the priest. Society was ruled by physical force; the law was weak, and the Church was women’s shelter from the rudeness of an age when those who should have protected the defenceless were themselves the greatest offenders.