A Brief History of Misogyny: The World's Oldest Prejudice (41 page)

75
.   There is some evidence that Pythagoras and the schools that he set up permitted women entrants.

76
.   Quoted by Pinker, in Pinker, op. cit.

77
.   Quoted in
Body and Society: Men, women, and sexual renunciation in early Christianity,
by Peter Brown, Columbia University Press, 1988.

78
.   Tacitus,
The Annals.
The accusation was investigated by her husband and she was acquitted.

79
.   A male relative of the emperor Domitian (
AD
81–96) was a Christian who had worked alongside St Paul when the apostle came to Rome. According to legend, the beautiful church of San Clemente in Rome stands on the site of his family’s villa.

80
.   The argument and evidence cited here is based on
The Rise of Christianity: A sociologist reconsiders history,
by Rodney Stark, Princeton University Press, 1996.

81
.   Women first took doses of various poisons to cause a miscarriage. If that failed, surgery followed, involving the use of blades, spikes, and hooks, to slice up and wrench out the foetus bit by bit. More often than not women were compelled to have abortions by lovers and husbands. The emperor Domitian’s niece died following an abortion he forced her to have after impregnating her.

82
.   Stark, op.cit.

83
.   Guttentag and Secord, op. cit.

84
.   Stark, op. cit. He cites arguments that the infamous reference to women keeping quiet in church in Paul’s Epistle to the Corinthians (14:34–6) is not Paul speaking but quoting a claim from an opponent that he is trying to refute.

85
.   ‘Is Paul the Father of Misogyny and Anti-Semitism?’ by Pamela Eisenbaum,
Cross Currents,
Winter 2000–2001. She argues forcefully that St Paul is neither.

86
.   This description taken from the apocryphal Acts of St Paul, is quoted by Johnson, op. cit.

87
.   Brown, op. cit.

88
.   Ibid.

89
.   De Ieuinion 5.1, Corpus Christianorum 2:1261.

90
.   ‘On Female Dress’, from
The Writings of Tertullian, Volume I,
translated by the Rev. S. Thelwall, Edinburgh, 1869.

91
.   2 Corinthians, 6:16.

92
.   Ibid.

93
.   Quoted by Brown, op. cit.

94
.   Tertullian, op. cit.

95
.   This compares with fifteen in the first 130 years of imperial rule.

96
.   They were constructed during the reign of Aurelian (
AD
270–275). It is still a prominent feature of Rome to this day.

97
.   The emperor Valerian, defeated by Shapur I in
AD
260.

98
.   The first lasted from
AD
165–180, and the second struck in
AD
251.

99
.   Stark, op. cit.

100
.   In a particularly painful illustration of the dangers of literalism, Origen interpreted literally Matthew’s words ‘There be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake.’ (19:12)

101
.   The Gospel of St Thomas quoted in Brown, op. cit.

102
.   Quoted in
A History of their Own, Volume I,
by Bonnie S. Anderson and Judith P. Zinsser, Oxford, 2000.

103
.   Brown, op. cit.

104
.   Ibid.

105
.   Ibid.

106
.   From a talk given by Fr Paul Surlis, 2002.

107
.   Brown, op. cit.

108
.   When Roman officials wanted to bring prosecutions for the attack on the Jews, Ambrose the Bishop of Milan and the man who was to inspire St Augustine, intervened to protect the anti-Semitic thugs on the grounds that they were good Christians

109
.   The doctrines of Mani were deeply dualistic, and held that all matter was inherently evil. His followers therefore regarded reproduction as a perpetuation of evil, so forbade it, and rejected the idea that God could have possibly allowed his Son to enter the material universe. Instead, they taught that Jesus was a phantasm. Mani was executed by the Persians in
AD
276.

110
.   
Confessions,
translated by Henry Chadwick, Oxford University Press, 1991. All further citations come from this text.

111
.   
The City of God,
translated by Gerald G. Walsh, S. J., Demetrius B. Zema, S. J., Grace Monahan, O. S. U., Daniel J. Honan, Image Books, 1958. Further citations come from this text.

112
.   Russell, op. cit.

113
.   Walsh et al., op. cit.

114
.   In their compilation of inscriptions, letters and texts,
Women’s Life in Greece and Rome,
the editors Lefkowitz and Fant include two, Hipparchia and Appolonia, from the third and second centuries
AD
respectively.

115
.   From Socrates Scholasticus’
Ecclesiastical History.

116
.   Damascius’
Life of Isidore,
translated by Jeremiah Reedy, Phanes Press, 1993.

117
.   From the Chronicle of John, Bishop of Nikiu.

118
.   Ibid.

119
.   Socrates Scholasticus, op. cit.

120
.   
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
by Edward Gibbon, Penguin Classics, 2000.

121
.   There is some debate as to whether or not Moses might be there in body. Other Old Testament prophets Enoch and Elijah are also thought to have taken the direct route to Heaven, by-passing the long wait for the Resurrection.

122
.   Quoted in
Alone of All her Sex: The myth and the cult of the Virgin Mary,
by Marina Warner, Vintage Books, 1983.

123
.   
The Medieval World: Europe 1100–1350,
by Friedrich Heer, Welcome Rain, 1998.

124
.   Anderson and Zinsser, op. cit.

125
.   Quoted in
The Perfect Heresy: The revolutionary life and death of the medieval Cathars,
by Stephen O’Shea, Walker and Company, 2000.

126
.   Anderson and Zinsser, op. cit.

127
.   Heer, op. cit.

128
.   Ibid.

129
.   Ibid.

130
.   Warner, op. cit.

131
.   Attacks on the opulence of the Church and its growing distance from the faithful had formed the basis of other heretical movements, such as that inspired by Peter Waldo who preached a return to the poverty of Jesus.

132
.   O’Shea, op. cit.

133
.   Warner, op. cit.

134
.   Ibid.

135
.   
The Canterbury Tales,
by Geoffrey Chaucer, rendered into modern English by Nevill Coghill, Penguin Books, 1951.

136
.   Ibid.

137
.   Quoted in
Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love,
by Howard Bloch, University of Chicago Press, 1991.

138
.   In third-century Rome, execution by burning was prescribed for a witch who had caused the death of someone through magic. In the sixth century, Queen Fredegond of the Franks burned several women as witches after accusations were brought against them that they had caused the death of two of her young sons. The accused were tortured into confessing before being burned. The use of torture and the fact that it was a woman who accused other women of killing her children would become characteristic of the later witch-burning craze.

139
.   When in 1080 women were accused of being witches and blamed for causing storms and crop failures and put to death, Pope Gregory VIII complained to the Danish king forbidding such treatment. However, popular superstition persisted, often with cruel consequences. A mob burned three women to death in Bavaria in 1090. Ninety years later, a woman suspected of witchcraft was disembowelled on the orders of the local burghers and forced to walk through the streets of Ghent carrying her own intestines.

140
.   
The Waning of the Middle Ages,
by J. Huizinga, Peregrine Books, 1965.

141
.   
Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, sex and the crisis of belief,
by Walter Stephens, University of Chicago Press, 2002.

142
.   Later, there would be considerable learned speculation as to how and when this extraction occurred, and whether or not semen from ‘nocturnal pollutions’ or wet dreams could be used.

143
.   Stephens, op. cit.

144
.   Quoted by Stephens, ibid.

145
.   Even at the height of the witch-hunts, Ireland was largely unaffected. As has been noted before, Irish Celtic traditions lack many of the misogynistic elements common in Classical, Jewish and Christian worldviews.

146
.   
Europe’s Inner Demons,
by Norman Cohn, University of Chicago Press, 2000.

147
.   Ibid. From the 1600s onwards, demonic possession became more common, frequently affecting large numbers of women at once. The most famous cases are the nuns of Loudun and the women of Salem. As with this Bohemian priest, possession often took the form of a revulsion towards attending religious ceremonies.

148
.   
Malleus Maleficarum,
by Henricus Institoris, translated with an introduction, bibliography and notes by the Rev. Montague Summers, John Rodker, 1928. This quotation is from Summers’ introduction. All quotations from
Malleus
that follow are from Summers’ translation, unless otherwise indicated.

149
.   Accusations that witches steal penises still occur in Africa. In November 2001, the BBC reported that mobs in Cotonuo, Benin, attacked and killed five people, four of whom were burned to death, after men had reported that their penises had disappeared. It is believed that a man’s penis can be made to disappear by a handshake or an incantation.

150
.   Stephens, op. cit.

151
.   Ibid.

152
.   
Materials Towards a History of Witchcraft,
Volume Two, by Henry Lea, arranged and edited by Arthur Howland, Thomas Yoseloff, 1957.

153
.   O’Shea, op. cit.

154
.   Summers, op. cit.

155
.   
The Encyclopaedia of Witchcraft and Demonology,
by Rossell Hope Robbins, Crown, 1959.

156
.   Lea, op. cit.

157
.   Jean Bodin, quoted in Lea, ibid.

158
.   Stephens, op. cit.

159
.   Cohn, op. cit.

160
.   
The European Witch Craze of the 17
^th
Century,
Hugh Trevor-Roper, Penguin Books, 1966.

161
.   Lea, op. cit.

162
.   Sleep deprivation became the torture of choice during Stalin’s
purges of the Bolshevik Party in the 1930s. In the show trials, leading party intellectuals confessed, like the witches three centuries earlier, to creeping about the countryside poisoning wells and killing cattle. The British in Northern Ireland used it in a modified form against suspected IRA activists in 1971.

163
.   
The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in colonial New England,
by Carol Karlsen, Vintage Books, 1989.

164
.   
Democracy in America,
by Alexis de Tocqueville, Everyman’s Library, 1994.

165
.   When she was canonized in 1920 it was because of her virtuous life, not her successful military career, according to the historians Bonnie Anderson and Judith Zinsser, op. cit.

166
.   Ibid.

167
.   In the
Oxford English Dictionary,
‘misogyny’ first appears in a glossary in 1656 and is defined as hatred or contempt of women. ‘Misogynist’ had appeared in 1630 in a pamphlet entitled ‘Swetman Arraigned’. Swetman was the author of a notorious tract attacking women (see below): ‘Swetman’s name will be more terrible in women’s eares/than euer yet Misogynists hath beene.’