From
her ancestress Eve woman was believed to inherit the natural propensity
to lure man to his undoing. Thus the old belief in the uncleanness of
woman was renewed in the minds of men with even greater intensity than
ever before, and in addition to a dangerous adventure, even within the
sanction of wedlock the sex act became a deed of shame. The following
quotations from the church fathers will illustrate this view:
Jerome said, "Marriage is always a vice; all we can do is to excuse and
cleanse it. ... In Paradise Eve was a virgin. Virginity is natural
while wedlock only follows guilt."[35]
Tertullian addressed women in these words: "Do you not know that you are
each an Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age.
... You are the devil's gateway. ... You destroy God's image,
Man."[35: Bk.1.]
Thus woman became degraded beyond all previous thought in the teaching
of the early church. The child was looked upon as the result of an act
of sin, and came into the world tainted through its mother with sin. At
best marriage was a vice. All the church could do was to cleanse it as
much as possible by sacred rites, an attempt which harked back to the
origin of marriage as the ceremonial breaking of taboo. Peter Lombard's
Sentences affirmed marriage a sacrament. This was reaffirmed at Florence
in 1439.
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