harist with their bare hands, and in various churches
they were forbidden to approach the altar during Mass.[77] In the
gospels Jesus forbids the woman to touch Him, after the resurrection,
although Thomas was allowed to feel His wounds. "The Church of the
Middle Ages did not hesitate to provide itself with eunuchs in order to
supply cathedral choirs with the soprano tones inhering by nature in
women alone."[78] The 'Churching' of women still in vogue has its origin
in the same superstition that childbirth endows woman with a
supernatural influence which must be removed in the interests of others.
This ceremony was formerly called "The Order of the Purification of
Women," and was read at the church door before the woman entered the
building. Its connection with the ideas indicated above is obvious. The
Tahitian practice of excluding women from intercourse with others for
two or three weeks after childbirth, with similar practices amongst
uncivilised peoples all over the world, led with various modifications
up to the current practice of churching. They show that in the opinion
of primitive peoples "a woman at and after childbirth is pervaded by a
certain dangerous influence which can infect anything and anybody she
touches; so that in the interests of the community it becomes necessary
to seclude her from society for a while, until the virulence of the
infection has passed away, when, after submitting to certain rites of
purification, she is again free to mingle with her fellows."[79] The
gradual change of this ceremony, from a getting rid of a dangerous
supernatural infection to returning thanks for a natural danger passed,
is on all fours with what takes place in other directions in relation to
religious ideas and practices.

The important part played by this conception of woman's nature may be
traced in the fierce invective directed against her in the early
Christian writings. Of course, by that time society had reached a stage
when the primitive form of this belief had been outgrown, but ideas and
attitudes of mind persist long after their originating conditions have
disappeared. In this particular case we have the primitive idea
expressed in a form suitable to altered circumstances, and the primitive
feeling seeking new warranty in ethical or social considerations. But in
the main the old notion is there. Woman is a creature threatening
danger to man's spiritual welfare.[80] In this connection we may note
an observ