fter many centuries and by slow degrees that its sanctity
was recognized, and its rights respected. While, under the Roman law,
both men and women had been able to get a divorce with the same ease,
the feudal idea, which gave all power into the hands of the men, made
divorce an easy thing for the men alone, but this was hardly an
improvement, as the marriage relation still lacked stability.

It must not be supposed that all the mediaeval ideas respecting marriage
and divorce and the condition of women in general, which have just been
explained, had to do with any except those who belonged in some way to
the privileged classes, for such was not the case. At that time, the
great mass of the people in Europe--men and women--were ignorant to the
last degree, possessing little if any sense of delicacy or refinement,
and were utterly uncouth. For the most part, they lived in miserable
hovels, were clothed in a most meagre and scanty way, and were little
better than those beasts of burden which are compelled to do their
master's bidding. Among these people, rights depended quite largely upon
physical strength, and women were generally misused. To the lord of the
manor it was a matter of little importance whether or not the serfs upon
his domain were married in due form or not; marriage as a sacrament had
little to do with these hewers of wood and drawers of water, and they
were allowed to follow their own impulses quite generally, so far as
their relations with each other were concerned. The loose moral
practices of the time among the more enlightened could be but a bad
example for the benighted people of the soil; consequently, throughout
all classes of society there was a degree of corruption and immorality
which is hardly conceivable to-day.

So far as education was concerned, there were but a few who could enjoy
its blessings, and these were, for the most part, men. Women, in their
inferior and unimportant position, rarely desired an education, and more
rarely received one. Of course, there were conspicuous exceptions to
this rule; here and there, a woman working under unusually favorable
circumstances was really able to become a learned person. Such cases
were extremely rare, however, for the true position of woman in society
was far from being understood. Schools for women were unknown; indeed,
there were few schools of any kind, and it was only in the monasteries
that men were supposed to know how to read and write. Eve