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# 2022-05-25 - A World Without Women by David F. Noble | |
# Chapter 1, Mothers, Daughters, Sisters, Wives | |
Ely Cathedral, north of Cambridge, England is a former abbey dating | |
from the seventh century. The front row of pews today bear | |
embroidered cushions which silently recount the illustrious and long | |
list of this monastic center. Each cushion bears the name of an | |
abbot, beginning with the founding of the abbey. One is immediately | |
struck by a starling fact: the earliest abbots were all abbesses, | |
starting with the foundress of the abbey Ethelreda. The next cushion | |
bears the name of Ethelreda's daughter Weburga. Then there is a huge | |
pillar, tacitly symbolizing a historic interruption in gender | |
relations (although tradition has it that there were several | |
additional abbesses after Werburga). Chronologically, the pillar | |
coincides roughly with the period of Viking invasions in the ninth | |
century, during which time, in 870, the abbey was destroyed. On the | |
far side of the pillar, the embroidered cushions continue, but now | |
they bear the names exclusively of abbots. ... Here at Ely, then, we | |
have a clue about the origin of a world without women, which was | |
apparently much more recent than the alleged ancient Greek | |
antecedents of Western science culture. | |
Proponents of the concept of patriarchy emphasize continuity in | |
history rather than change, to demonstrate the persistent power of | |
men over women. Certainly female subordination is a recurring fact | |
of human history, and the presence of women in these centers of | |
learning reflected neither a reversal of such gender domination nor | |
an end to it. But it is important to remember that, within this | |
overarching patriarchal pattern of gender relations, there have been | |
significant variations of experience, variations that have shaped | |
particular cultures and lives. | |
It was only in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, in the wake of | |
Gregorian reforms, that clerical marriage was decisively discouraged | |
in the West. | |
Whatever their paraclerical role, however, the presence within the | |
clerical world of the wives of clergy is indisputable, and this | |
presence would persist, along with clerical marriage, for a | |
millennium. | |
# Chapter 2, Revivals | |
Although there was considerable variation in their physical structure | |
and society and religious practice, double monasteries were | |
distinguished by the close association of men and women. The men and | |
women lived in adjoining or neighboring houses; they sometimes but | |
not always shared a common church and a common cemetery, followed the | |
same rule, participated together in common services, and obeyed the | |
same leaders--male or female. | |
[Double monasteries] also reflected the sustained belief in the | |
androgynous ideal, which surfaced again and again in the wake of | |
monastic revivals. In her study of double monasteries, Mary Bateson | |
noted that "double monasteries arose in many countries and at many | |
times as the natural sequel to an outburst of religious enthusiasm." | |
If double monasteries foundered in the East, they flourished in the | |
West. "In the West there was no systematic opposition of church and | |
state as there was in the East." Compared with the Eastern Empire, | |
which was within easy reach of the imperial and ecclesiastical | |
authorities in Constantinople, the West was a frontier, a "wild" West | |
beyond the reach of the centers of imperial power. The absence of an | |
all-powerful Western secular authority, moreover, was coupled with | |
the relative weakness of the Latin Church. This relative absence of | |
church and state authority, and the disarray engendered by the great | |
barbarian migrations, encouraged in the West an institutional | |
independence and diversity unknown in the East, and provided a | |
fertile ground for "moral experiments." | |
Barbarian society, so called, also fostered a relative independence | |
for the propertied clerical and warrior classes from centralized | |
authority, an independence rooted in the landowning family. ... | |
changes in Germanic law guaranteed women greater rights to inherit, | |
own, and administer property. Visigoths and Burgundian laws were | |
especially liberal in this regard... but Frankish, Alemannian, and | |
Bavarian laws also gave wives and widows enlarged property rights. | |
If the Irish of the early-medieval period were known for their | |
independence, their ascetic rigor, and their evangelical earnestness, | |
they were known above all for their great learning. In this period, | |
Ireland "was a veritable land of scholars... Her monasteries were | |
world renowned as institutes of learning" and for centuries drew a | |
stream of students from England and the continent. Here alone in the | |
Christian West, scholarship had continued uninterrupted from the | |
fourth century, and Irish scholars were unrivaled in their command of | |
Greek and their knowledge of classical and early church literature. | |
Irish double monasteries carried forth this learned tradition, for | |
women as well as men. | |
According to Eckenstein, Bede's accounts of English monasteries | |
indicate "how naturally he felt it to be that the role of a | |
settlement should pass from mother to daughter," and that it was the | |
Anglo-Saxon custom for double monasteries to be headed by an abbess. | |
The distinguished double monasteries of the seventh and eighth | |
centuries fell into decline and all but disappeared in the following | |
centuries, in the wake of Viking invasions and a succession of | |
monastic reform movements. Although no longer a part of the monastic | |
mainstream, double monasteries reappeared briefly during the | |
religious revival of the twelfth century. | |
Chapter 3, Saints: The Ascent of Clerical Asceticism | |
A world without women did not simply emerge, it was constructed. ... | |
it was brought about through the rise of clerical asceticism within | |
the church. As we have seen, the early Christianity no doubt | |
reflected ancient traditions and ideas, it also held out an | |
eschatological promise of gender equality and spiritual companionship | |
which was seized upon by many Christians in their pursuit of new | |
social relations. This ambiguous potential of the early church is | |
well reflected in the contradictory statements of Saint Paul. On the | |
one hand, in the interest of attracting a broad following, he | |
announces the transcendence of social divisions, including those | |
between the sexes; on the other hand, in the interest of unity and | |
order, he admonishes church members to adhere to the norms of | |
established authority, including the strict subordination of women to | |
men. This mixed message was exploited by different people for | |
different, and indeed contradictory, purposes during the | |
early-Christian centuries. Beginning in the second century, however, | |
with the emergence of clerical asceticism, we can identify certain | |
incipient institutional and ideological developments which would not | |
only reinforce the second side of this contradiction at the expense | |
of the first, but would ultimately overcome the contradiction | |
altogether in a world without women. | |
... to demarcate the boundaries between "us and them," the church | |
fathers singled out for attack various features of the sects' | |
allegedly misguided teaching and practice, such as the leadership | |
roles of Gnostic women. Over against the blasphemies and | |
permissiveness of sects, no orthodox Catholic women should teach, | |
preach, baptize, exorcise, offer the Eucharist, or prophesy. Thus | |
the mainstream church's limitation of women's roles can be understood | |
in part as an aspect of its quest for self-definition--that is, for | |
an identity that clearly distinguishes it from rival movements. | |
And if sexual temptation posed a threat to androgynous asceticism, | |
the greatest danger to clerical asceticism was more narrowly defined: | |
the presence of women. Whereas the androgynous ideal had fostered a | |
chaste mingling of men and women, the clerical ideal instead drove | |
men into frightened flight from women. The inherited patriarchal | |
assumptions of the household-based clergy had subordinated women; the | |
new ideals of the ascetic clergy eliminated them [the women]. | |
The monastic ideal reflected and reinforced the chief characters of | |
the ascetic orthodox clergy; sexual renunciation, a disciplined bond | |
of brotherhood, and, on both counts, distrust of women--in short, the | |
characteristics of a military culture. Anthropologists have amply | |
documented the ascetic, misogynist, and male homosocial orientations | |
of warrior societies, marked as much by their distance from women as | |
by their bonds between men. | |
The imperial conversion [Constantine] resulted in what Philippe | |
Cantamine has called a "sacralization of war"; by the beginning of | |
the fifth century, an imperial edict excluded non-Christians from the | |
Roman army. The reverse side of this process was the militarization | |
of the church. The pacifism of Tertullian and Origen gave way to a | |
new Christian defense of war against heretics and barbarians... | |
# Chapter 4, Fathers: Patristic Anxiety of Papal Agenda | |
In the Pelagian controversy, and especially in his dispute with the | |
married Pelagian Julian of Eclanum, Augustine was forced to formulate | |
a full exposition of his new theology of grace. | |
Augustine's theology both signaled the end of the traditional | |
household church of married clergy and denied the eschatological | |
promise of early-Christian asceticism. By unequivocally exalting | |
virginity over marriage, Augustine paved the way for the enforcement | |
of clerical celibacy. | |
[Henry] Lea also suggests that, with the great enlargement of church | |
property under imperial auspices, some churchmen lobbied for clerical | |
celibacy as a way of eliminating clerical family inheritance and thus | |
securing the "inalienability" of ecclesiastical possessions; | |
certainly such a motive was acknowledged in later centuries. | |
# Chapter 5, Brothers: The Militarization of Monasticism | |
The reduction in number of wives and the exclusion of concubines from | |
control over property are reflected in the decline of female | |
ownership and alienation of property in the second half of the ninth | |
century, even though Frankish inheritance laws remained unchanged. | |
From the beginning of the Carolingian dynasty, the church and state | |
were bound together in mutual dependence and obligation. | |
Just as the church sought by means of clerical celibacy to prevent | |
the alienation of its property, through clerical marriage and | |
inheritance, into the hands of the clergy, so the kings sought to | |
prevent the loss of church property, through clerical marriage and | |
inheritance, into the hands of the nobility. [royal versus noble | |
interests] | |
If religious practice was now a form of warfare, the church altar and | |
the monastery were battlefields, and thus, as Martin of Tours had | |
argued, no place for women. The militarization of the church, in | |
short, was also a masculinization. | |
The isolation of women from the mainstream of Carolingian clerical | |
and monastic life had as its inevitable corollary their exclusion | |
from the Carolingian world of learning and education. Indeed, | |
Charlemagne's instructions on the promotion of scholarship expressly | |
indicated that such work would be done only by men. | |
The restriction that convents would educate only girls undoubtedly | |
served to justify the exclusion of nuns from the mainstream of | |
education and intellectual life... In short, the mainstream had | |
become, to borrow Mary O'Brien's felicitous phrase, the "malestream." | |
Whatever the motives of her accusers, however, Gerberta was in fact | |
executed as a witch. According to Wemple, "this is the first known | |
instance in the Latin West of witchcraft being used as a legal ground | |
for the execution of a woman." | |
# Chapter 6, Priests: The Monasticization of the Church | |
The clerical reforms of the Carolingian dynasty were largely eroded | |
by the close of the ninth century. The spirit that had inspired | |
those reforms, however, Benedictine monasticism, remained alive. | |
Indeed, the self-sustaining monasteries, though shorn of royal | |
patronage and protection and forever embattled in this time of | |
troubles, survived as oases of Carolingian continuity under | |
aristocratic auspices. | |
Knights were men. Like the Carolingian reform upon which it was | |
grounded, the Cluniac reform was masculine to the core and all but | |
ignored women. Cluny thus contributed significantly to the decline | |
of female monasticism that was to mark the tenth-century monastic | |
reform movement. | |
The monasticization of the church commenced in earnest, however, with | |
the coronation of King Henry II's cousin, Bishop Bruno of Toul, as | |
Pope Leo IX in 1049. "A keen supporter of the Cluniac monastic | |
reform, [Leo] at once began to reform the church"; immediately after | |
his ascension, at the Easter Synod of 1049, "celibacy was enforced on | |
all the clergy..." | |
Thus the initiator of the papal reform movement, Leo IX, had himself | |
been a warrior-bishop and continued to lead military campaigns as | |
pope. It was actually Gregory who first came up with the idea of a | |
holy military crusade. "Twenty years before the First Crusade," | |
Southern points out, "Pope Gregory VII had suggested a way in which | |
the knighthood could be rescued from the radical defects attaching to | |
its human and sinful origin, by dedication to the service of Saint | |
Peter." ... the First Crusade against Islam was proclaimed by | |
Gregory's immediate successor, the ardent reformer--and Cluniac | |
monk--Pope Urban II. | |
The revival of learning in the cathedral schools of Europe, which | |
spawned the medieval university, was itself an instrument of the | |
reform movement. Indeed, it was no accident that the new | |
universities emerged at the very moment when the clergy was finally | |
forced to become celibate, when the ecclesiastical world without | |
women had at last been secured. Thus was created the most powerful | |
and enduring men's club in history. | |
# Chapter 7, Bachelors: The Scholastic Cloister | |
By the end of the twelfth century, the papal-supported clerical | |
ascetic reform movement against simony, clerical marriage, and the | |
heretical vestiges of androgynous asceticism had all but swept away | |
the material and ideological supports of future female participation | |
in the mainstream world of learning. As never before, educated women | |
were on the outside looking in. From the thirteenth century onward, | |
"there was no suitable outlet for their great abilities and no | |
satisfaction for their spiritual and intellectual yearnings." | |
In 1078, Gregory VII adapted earlier Carolingian education reforms to | |
papal purposes, ordering that "all bishops were to have the arts of | |
letters taught in their churches..." The remarkable growth and fame | |
of the episcopal schools in the eleventh and twelfth centuries marked | |
the beginning of a new educational era, with the shift of the chief | |
locus of medieval learning from male monastic schools ... to the | |
cathedral schools... | |
In the twelfth century the First and Second Lateran Councils of 1123 | |
and 1139 ... forbade ordination of married men, thereby creating once | |
and for all a clerical world without women. "This ecclesiastical | |
character of the pre-university education should be remembered," | |
Rashdall insisted, "as the first of the conditions which | |
determined... the form of the intellectual movement out of which the | |
universities grew and the shape of the university system itself." | |
Thus the monastic ideals that had engulfed the church and its | |
cathedral schools had come to characterize as well the new European | |
culture of learning. | |
As was the case with the Cluniac monasteries, this military aspect of | |
the university served the psychological needs of the noble-born | |
students to ritualize and thereby sublimate their knightly spirit--in | |
intellectual rather than liturgical warfare. | |
Only now [in the thirteenth century], with the European rediscovery, | |
via the Arabs, of the entire corpus of Aristotle, did the misogyny of | |
this essentially monastic culture gain the classical, naturalistic, | |
seemingly scientific legitimacy that would perpetuate it for | |
centuries to come. [Aristotle asserted that women were inferior to | |
men.] | |
"Since i was born a girl...," she [Christine de Pisan] wrote in 1400, | |
"I could not inherit that which others take from the precious spring | |
[of knowledge], more by custom than by right. If justice were king, | |
neither female nor male would lose, but mostly, I am certain, custom | |
reigns, rather than justice, and for that reason, in every way I have | |
been unable by lack of learning, to gather any of this most precious | |
treasure, concerning which custom I am displeased, since if things | |
were otherwise I presume I should be rich, full to the brim of | |
treasure taken at the fountain... [regarding the slander and blame | |
of women:] Although you have seen such things in writing, you have | |
not seen them with your eyes [and hence ought not believe] that which | |
thou feelest not, nor see not, nor know other than by a plurality of | |
strange opinions. The books that so sayeth [slandering women], women | |
made them not." | |
# Chapter 8, Revelation in Nature | |
However some historians might retrospectively characterize western | |
science as a secular enterprise, it was always in essence a religious | |
calling, more a continuation of than a departure from Christian | |
tradition. To their own minds, the early devotees of science were | |
not precursors of a secular future but heirs to the Christian past, | |
which which they were obsessed. | |
"One of the most dramatic changes brought about by the Protestant | |
Reformation," Wisner observed, "was the replacement of celibate | |
priests by married pastors with wives and families." | |
In 1539, Henry VII mandated the publication and wide availability of | |
the vernacular Bible, thereby fostering religious development | |
throughout the realm, including among women of the middle and lower | |
classes. Apparently the effort of this reform quickly extended "far | |
beyond the King's intentions," and four years later an Act of | |
Parliament formally restricted access to the Scriptures along class | |
and gender lines. Aristocratic men and women were still allowed to | |
read the Bible in private, but only men were permitted to read from | |
it aloud to the assembled household. Men of the merchant class | |
remained free to read the Scriptures in private, but their wives and | |
daughters could no longer share that privilege. Among the lower | |
ranks of society, both men and women alike were denied the right to | |
read the Bible. Such restrictive legislation was difficult to | |
enforce, however, especially at a time of mounting religious | |
enthusiasm. The principle obstacle to first-hand knowledge of the | |
Bible remained not law but literacy. | |
# Chapter 9, The Scientific Restoration | |
Women, meanwhile, in the wake of the Catholic Counter-Reformation and | |
the consolidation of the Protestant churches, were increasingly being | |
identified with heresy, as witches and enthusiasts (even while women | |
woman were gaining momentary entry into the cultural mainstream.) | |
Thus, as so often in the near and distant Christian past, the ready | |
identification of diverse social and intellectual movements with | |
women offered the orthodox a sure and time-honored sign of heresy. | |
The sixteenth and seventeenth century connection between witchcraft | |
and heresy, which fueled the period's unprecedented witch-craze, drew | |
its inspiration from the earlier association between women and heresy. | |
According to the church concept of witchcraft, witches were women. | |
This feminization of witchcraft was but the reverse side of the | |
demonization of women by the clerical world without women. It is | |
striking to note in this regard, that the only place in Europe in | |
which a masculine word was used for "witchcraft" was Iceland, the one | |
country where clerical celibacy had never been accepted, even among | |
the higher clergy. | |
A trans-European exercise in exorcism, the witch-hunt also offered | |
authorities convenient means of expropriating land, property, and | |
knowledge from vulnerable widows, healers, and midwives. | |
Throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Germany and Italy | |
witnessed thousands of executions of women. In some German cities, | |
executions averaged two a day; 900 women were killed in a single year | |
in Würzberg, and over 1,000 around Como. In the late sixteenth | |
century, this wave of gender-bound genocide swept through France. In | |
Trier, two villages were left with only one woman each; in Toulouse, | |
the old Cathar stronghold, 400 women were murdered in one day. ... | |
the judicial records reveal two essential facts about the accused | |
witches [in England]: they were poor, and they were usually women. | |
In the person of the witch, the female practitioner of popular magic, | |
like the female religious enthusiast, became identified with heresy, | |
and now, as heretics, the witch and the enthusiast became practically | |
indistinguishable. | |
Indeed, as Ashworth has suggested, the Jesuits were perhaps really | |
"the first true scientific society." If so, the order established a | |
clear cultural pattern for such scientific organizations, only | |
already well reflected in all clerical academic institutions... | |
For Mersenne, the mechanistic philosophy, which purged nature of its | |
own spirits and hence any imminent meaning, made possible the | |
orthodox reappropriation of nature. Nature would become a divinely | |
ordered domain, fixed in its behavior by externally imposed natural | |
laws to be discovered only by the proper authorities. The idea held | |
similar appeal for Mersenne's friend and former Jesuit schoolmate | |
Descartes. The supreme antianimist, Descartes armed the | |
reconceptualization of the universe as a grand divine mechanism | |
whereby all spirits would be effectively driven from nature to the | |
safe confines of the mind. | |
As an exclusively male retreat, the Royal Society represented the | |
continuation of the clerical ascetic culture, now reinforced by what | |
might be called a scientific asceticism. .. it was the layman Isaac | |
Newton who epitomized both the mechanistic philosophy and the ascetic | |
scientist, the twin orthodoxies of the renewed world without women. | |
In essence, the triumph of mechanism as Mersenne had hoped, signaled | |
the reclericalization of natural philosophy. Now, in the wake of a | |
religious and philosophical revival which had identified God with | |
nature and had thereby afforded people a more immediate connection | |
with God through nature itself, without clerical intervention, the | |
re-establishment of orthodoxy required a new form of mediation | |
between mankind and nature. Linked closely to religious | |
institutions, the emergent scientific establishment constituted in | |
effect a new layer of ecclesiastical (but increasingly lay) "clergy," | |
interposed between mankind and nature, and thus between mankind and | |
God. | |
# Chapter 10, Women in a World Without Women | |
In its religious aspect, then, early-nineteenth-century America was | |
remarkably reminiscent of earlier periods of Christian revival, going | |
back to the dawn of Christianity itself. | |
Like the earlier episodes of religious ferment, this revival too | |
spawned a movement for popular education. | |
"Few people viewed science and religion as enemies before the Civil | |
War," Ann Brande has recently pointed out. | |
This other force [that pried open the world without women] was | |
capitalist enterprise, increasingly dependent upon a reliable work | |
force and a ready supply of useful knowledge which could be put to | |
productive and pecuniary advantage. [The new self-consciously | |
"revolutionary" masters of industry" pressured the established | |
institutions to create schools of industrial science, founded new | |
technical institutions devoted to such purpose, and supported popular | |
"democratic" efforts to develop public institutions for training in | |
the useful arts--all the while railing vehemently against the | |
backwardness of the established clerical and "monastic" institutions. | |
In their quest for a disciplined and able work force, moreover, they | |
welcomed the enrollment of women, viewing them either as just so much | |
more potential labor, or, better, as cheaper labor... Finally, they | |
made common cause with the pioneers of women's education, lending | |
material support to their efforts and securing in turn their | |
considerable energies, religious and otherwise, for the battle | |
against the "backward" institutions. It was this unlikely alliance | |
that eventually rendered women's access to higher education and | |
science an enduring reality. | |
The new obstacles confronted by women in science were not unique to | |
science but, rather, reflected a more general academic and | |
professional backlash against the advances of women. | |
In 1873, the Harvard physicist Edward H. Clarke had published his | |
popular book Sex in Education, which asserted that women's health, | |
and especially their reproductive capacity, suffered as a consequence | |
of the mental strains required by higher learning. | |
Ideologically and culturally, this new "main thrust of science" was | |
all too familiar. As professional scientists legitimized themselves | |
as society's sole authorities in the understanding of life, nature, | |
and the cosmos (and a now largely unspoken God), they assumed the | |
"clerical" mantle of secular society. Displacing the now diminished | |
clergy at center stage, they nevertheless carried forward their | |
predecessors' proclivities for a world without women. | |
# Epilogue | |
The word "scientist" first appeared in a review of a scientific book | |
written by a woman. William Whewell, master of Trinity College, | |
coined the new word in 1834 in his glowing, albeit anonymous, review | |
of Mary Somerville's On The Connection of the Physical Sciences. | |
Somerville tried to establish some underlying unifying principles and | |
hence a common identity for practitioners in the various fields of | |
natural philosophy. Whewell proposed the term "scientist" in the | |
same spirit, to fulfill what he believed to be a pressing need; he | |
noted that the members of the recently established British | |
Association For the Advancement of Science had felt themselves | |
handicapped "by the want of any name by which we can designate the | |
students of knowledge of the material world collectively... There was | |
no general term by which these gentlemen could describe themselves | |
with reference to their pursuits." As Whewell assumed, and | |
Somerville understood all too well, this new collective identity, | |
like the word invented to name it, had a decidedly masculine aspect. | |
"Science was not yet professionalized," her [Somerville's] biographer | |
Elizabeth Patterson pointed out. "At that date no formal course of | |
training had yet been designed, and scientific men--safe from | |
economic or professional threat from women--were cordially welcoming | |
to serious students be they male or female." | |
... Somerville was awarded a civil-list pension; her book was made a | |
standard text for advanced students at Cambridge University...; and a | |
bust of her was commissioned and put on prominent display by the | |
Royal Society (still the only bust of a woman ever owned by the | |
society). | |
But, like so many women before and after her, Somerville understood | |
all too well the gendered boundaries of science. Her book was used | |
as a required text in a university in which she could not teach nor | |
have her daughter study. Her bronze likeness was placed in the Royal | |
Society's Great Hall, from which she herself was barred. Mary | |
Somerville was a staunch advocate of women's rights, especially, of | |
higher education for women. | |
To what extend might the overriding scientific obsession with | |
infallible universal knowledge and artificial instrumentality reflect | |
a long-standing clerical effort to subdue the feminine in society and | |
nature, in order to effect man's recovery from the fall--"as if he | |
had never sinned"? | |
Such a bold quest was depicted, as yet without equal, by Mary Shelley | |
in her sci-fi novel Frankenstein; she aptly rooted its passion and | |
excitement in male loneliness, desperation, and horror. | |
author: Noble, David F. | |
detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/David_F._Noble | |
LOC: Q130 .N63 | |
tags: book,gender,history,non-fiction | |
title: A World Without Women | |
# Tags | |
book | |
gender | |
history | |
non-fiction |