“Women in most places were denied all ecclesiastical offices, and commanded to be silent in the churches, and so it continued for several centuries even till the ancient faith began to bud forth again (after that great night of apostacy) among the Waldenses, who justified women’s preaching.” The Church was careful to impress women with a sense of their inferiority. It has even been denied that Christianity--or rather its exponents--did anything to elevate women to a higher social status. “Das Christenthum brachte der Frau keine Erlösung aus ihrer Erniedrigung. Im Gegentheil! War sie in der heidnischen Welt nur die Sklavin, die Waare, das Hausthier gewesen, so wurde sie jetzt noch ausserdem zum ‘Gefäss der Hölle’ erklärt.”[31] This remark is borne out by Tertullian’s apostrophe-- “Woman! thou oughtest always to walk in mourning and rags, thine eyes filled with tears of repentance, to make men forget that thou hast been the destruction of the race. Woman, thou art the gate of hell.” A curious contradiction appears in theological teaching. It is difficult to reconcile the conception of womanhood which found its expression in Mariolatry with that which was given voice to by the Fathers, which proclaimed woman unfit to receive the Eucharist in her naked hands, which forbade her to approach the altar,[32] which taught that she was a temptation in man’s way to try him, which regarded the married state as a condition of sin, and even among the laity exalted virginity and celibacy as a species of sainthood. In a treatise on chastity attributed to Sixtus III., married people are said to risk, though not entirely to forfeit, eternal happiness. St. Martin of Tours considered marriage pardonable, but virginity glorious. St. Jerome spoke of marriage as at best a vice: “All that we can do is to excuse and purify it.” Tertullian was much stronger: “Celibacy,” he wrote, “must be chosen, though the human race perish in consequence.” The higher conception of womanhood was an ideal only, a theme for poets, a dream of saints; the lower conception was the guide for common life, the basis of everyday teaching. It was this lower conception which, in different ways, determined women’s position in society. Gradually the precepts of the canon law found their way into common law, and the subordination enforced upon women in matters spiritual was extended to matters temporal. The supremacy which canon law obtained is easily accounted for when we compare the disciplined character of all ecclesiastical as compared with lay government, the training of the priest with that of the noble, the ignorance pervading all classes, and the rude character of the legislation administered in feudal society.