Zzelda, I am afraid I have to disagree.
You see, Roman said such things about women CENTURIES before Christianity come around. And I mean, many centuries. 7 or so.
The story I retold about Cornelia is based in the late Roman Republic, and broadcasted values that were EVEN MORE ancient.
We have documents in which is it clearly stated that the women's prestige in ancient Italy was strongly tied with her ability not only to *have* children but to *educate* children which are even more ancient.
This is the Great Difference between Roman Culture and Greek Culture.
In most Greek Culture (even Sparta one) women had children, of course, but the EDUCATION of the sons were on the men (often, on the City-State). In Roman Culture, the education on sons rested A LOT on the mother.And this is a key fact.
Let me explain why: in two words,
to educate someone in something you must know that thing yourself first.So if women must educate their sons, if their VALUE lies exactly in the fact that it is the women that grow them up to be Citizens (capital required), then they must know those things as well.
But knowing things, being educated, make you more likely not only to want to educate your sons to be Citizens, but to want to be a Citizen yourself. And women COULDN'T be true citizens.
Hence the need to glorify the status of Motherhood beyond the biological function of shitting the loaf. Cultures that do not require women to be educated do not glorify motherhood so much. Greek cultures, again, didn't.
Motherhood was a golden cage.The anecdotal story of Rome is riddled with stories about strong Mothers who stopped their men (husbands or sons) when they were being idiot, reminding them of the Civic Duties. Even the wife of ROMOLO HIMSELF stopped him doing war! And we must not forget Coriolano mother.
I can't speak about the role of women in Judaism. All I know is that the idea of Motherhood=Best Things a Woman Can Do is completely Roman, and predate Christianity by many centuries.
Also, I am afraid to say that the idea that Christianity "trapped" women is untrue as well.In fact, the early Christianity liberated a lot of women, at least if we try to see it in their point of view.
Let me explain it: Christianity invented something that did not existed before.
It invented all-female monastery.Now, to US the idea of living in a monastery is the opposite of freedom, but this is a major difference in the frame of mind of us VS people who lived almost two millenia ago.
Lets try to see thing as THEY would have seen them.To be a respectable woman back then meant having to get married at age 14, more or less, and having sprog after sprog.
The only "excape route" was prostitution. So your choice was being a whore or a mother. But only the role of Mother was respectable. Only mothers were worthy.
Christianity invented a third choice, a second way in which a Woman could be Respectable but not a mother. And she could have a culture, and live aside from the men. She could be free from men.
Also, when the Roman Empire broke down, Monasteries became place in which Culture was preserved. The daughter of Pipino (the King before Carlomagno... Charles the Great? Karl the Great? I don't know how he is called in English) was given a monastery by the King and she made it a center of Arts.
For both men and women in the Middle Age and late roman empire (which isn't the period of great darkness that the self-proclaimed "Illuminst" would love us to believe) living in a Monastery meant not having to break your back in the fields. It meant eating well twince or thrince a day. It meant getting an education.
It was an awful lot.
Of course, in later time things changed dramatically, but if we see the time between the first centuries before Christ and the 800, more or less, this was the frame in which we must contextualize. It is also true that men tried times and times again to put female monasteries under the thumb of various (male) clergy, with alternate success. Women fought all the time for the right of their own monasteries.
Now, for us, it seems incredibly stupid. How can that be considered freedom? But all the ancient Word (at least, Western Ancient Word) had no concept of absolute Freedom. You had freedom to do something, not Freedom. You were free to do, free from, free to, but never Free. You always had somebody highter than you to whom you had to give respect and somebody lower than you to whom you receive respect. There was no such thing as a peer-to-peer relationship. It WASN'T IN THEIR MIND.
In the word of Peter Dickenson:
"We are looking into our [..] past, which is like looking at a group of people far off across a flat, hot plain. The rising air wavers and changes. Light bends as if it were passing through invisible lenses. The people seem to dwindle, stretch, vanish, stand clear for a moment, and distort again. We are looking through lenses of time,, right at the edge of imagination's eyesight."
We are looking at the past. In that past, no woman would have thought herself as "same of man". No woman would have asked for that. As no man would have thought himself as "same of woman".
We should always, always remember that we are looking throught a lens, when we look at the Past.
FROM NOW ON, IT IS AN OT. SORRY, FEEL FREE TO SKIP.
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A word about "Falling Empire turns to Extremism in Religion".This does seem to be true. I know no hard data nor scientific evidence, but it is indeed the case. It happened during the Falling of the Western Roman Empire, and it happened at the Fall of Ottoman Empire, but I disagree about the whole "come from the Government part". In the Ancient time, government was nothing like what we have now.
To think that the Roman Emperor Costantine, or any other, and I include Augustus in the number, could have had such a capillary control on the Empire as to ensure such policies is extremely improbable (I don't say impossible as a matter of principle, but I would otherwise).
It just wasn't possible counting the technology of the time. Same with the Ottoman Empire. Heck, part of the Ottoman Empire that wasn't Ottoman Empire anymore turned to extremism back then!
Same with the Early Church. When the only thing you had to pass information was a very fast horse and a lot of bandits between point A and point B, not to mention invading hordes and assorted perils the possibility that you could keep such a thight reign is dubious at best.
I think that is more of a psychological or sociological thing than a political one. People see what their secular strenght weakening, so they turn to God. And they turn to God an awful lot!This in turn make the Religious Leader more vocal, because they have got more power. In a democracy, it means that the Religious Leader have a change to become Government. Otherwise, it means that the Government have to deal with increasing annoying and powerful Religious Leader(s). This bring on changes in a way to please the Religious Leader(s).
This is my observation, I have no paper or such about it, mind you
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And this bring on the third point:
the Allegiances Between Church and Government.
Which didn't exist before Protestantism.Hold on a moment!
What I mean is that, up to 1500, Church and Empire butted head considerably. There were occasional moment in which both wanted the same things (Charles the Great and Costantine, to name two), but it was a rocky relationship at the best time.
The Empire (because for all the Medieval Time the myth of the Empire remained strong inside the mind of people, and they tried and tried to recreate it) needed the confirmation of the Church, as the only power who could confirm it. And the Church was also the only power who stopped the various little or big warlords from completely tear each other to shreds*. But it wasn't an allegiance and it sure as Hell wasn't a plaesant relationship of tea and biscuit. Of course, in the State of Rome, the Church was the Government. Both only there.
(About Charles the Great, there is an interesting bit lost to history. A legend if you will. It stated that the Merovingios, the Kings of France before the Carolingios, thought themselves the descendant of Jesus. No, it wasn't Dan Brown who invented the idea that Jesus had kids with Mary of Magdala. It was hard for the Carolingios to counterattack such a belief, and they did so by, yes, temporal allegiances with the Roman Church which said that Jesus had no children. So the Merovingios couldn't be Jesus heirs. It might or not be true, mind you. Bot the fact that Jesus and the Magdalena had fun and the fact that the Merovingios were their heirs. But it is interesting to know)Dante's work, the Divina Commedia, illustrate this beautifully. In all Italy, in the 1200s, people killed each other on whevever there was a primate of the Empire over the Church or the Church over the Empire (secular vs religious autority, in two words). The two fractions were called
guelfi and
ghibellini. Dante had to go on exile from Florence after his faction lost.
In the middle of the Middle Age, the primate of the Church wasn't AT ALL a smooth point.It was the time of Frederick the Great, and you can see why it bothered him.
Now, we all can see the problem: the Church was in the way of the creation of what we know now as the National State. In short, the Church saw itself an one entity which gave power to one Empire. Period. Other "Princes" (NOT kings) could only exists as vassals to the Emperor. One Emperor because One God, you see? So it had to be done, for them.
Which went well when the aforementioned Princes weren't very king-y and had not a very clear idea of "State".
But when things got more settled, there were less barbarian hordes and even the threath of Islam wasn't so much a threath anymore** very powerful people started to get annoyed at the metaphorical chains that the Church had on them.
Enter Martin Luther, the War of Religion and, in the end cuius regius eius religious.
Protestantism gave Government a way to get away from Rome. A way to make their own Religion. Now, people followed Protestantism for a lot of very good reasons (everybody knows how nasty the Roman Church was), and I am sure some Very Powerful Persons were honestly converted. I am equally sure than a lot of them thought that the possibility of not having all those annoying orders from Rome was definitively a bonus. Like -maybe?- Charles the Great allied himself with Rome to overthrown the Merovingios-Heirs-Of-Christ, so a lot of Princes allied themselves with Protestantism to owethrown Rome.
History repeats itself. It is also called "History bites you in the ankles".
Not all of them were equally successful, mind you. France never managed to have their own religion (even if some Kings did try). Other were.
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Now, of course we can say that ALL the documents EVERYWHERE are false. Including the one that were in the hands of the Muslim, or the Czar of Russia, or the Bizantine Empire (all place where the Church and the Western Governments couldn't put their hand on).
I suppose we could.
And I am NOT denying something is being hidden by the Church and/or by some Government(s). I suspect it is true, but I also believe what the source tell me. And frankly, as many Jews have pointed out: anybody who believes in a Jew Cospirancy doesn't know how much Jews argue with each other. Same with the Catholic Church. Still, a lot of documents, passed in the hands of various reputable scientists and historians, tell us things.
But buying in those Cospirancy Theories is, well, absurd. History is more complicated than that. Not to mention that I can't understand how Government could be so good at keeping silent people, considering their abysmal score in a lot of other things.
Or, as a Jewish friend of mine said:
"I am a Orthodox Jew. And I am still waiting the Great Sages to tell me what I should do"
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If somebody is interesting about my source, I can put a full bibliography here becuase, well, it would be too much, but I suggest:
Any book on John Keegan if interested in the control of warfare by the Church during the early middle time.
Eva Cantarella (already mentioned) about the role of women in Rome.
LeGoff for anything at all about medieval time. There is a book about him in specific about the freedom of choosing the monastery life for women, but I don't know its title in english. Also very interesting his books about the clash of Pope and Emperor.
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*The Church in Medieval Time set the standard about when and how you could make war. Think it is nothing? Think AGAIN. Every system who can destroy itself, an a lot of system can, have to find a way to stop it or either end up as Easter Island. The Church said you couldn't make war on sunday or on holy days. It said some weapon were forbidden. It said you shouldn't kill women and children. Now, people did all those things (some more than other) but it was technically forbidden and if caught could be punished. The baron who followed William in the invasion of England in 1066 had to feast for an year to purge from this sin, did you know that?
And tradition says a Pope stopped Attila from getting too near Rome. That was a role of the Early Church people often forget about.
When all Hell break lose is when those chains get broken, either because it went against "other" (IE crusades) or because the Order itself went broke (IE the War of Religion). Same happened during IIWW. The ideas of "Pacta sunt Servanda" and that a leader could do what the heck he wanted to its people ("Who remember the Armenians?") had held from 1600s -after the war of religions themselves- to Hitler. Then he broke them. Even if i blame Clausewitz more.
War between a system of war-control and another are the worst. Because there is, well, no control. I wrote my bachelor thesys on the Control of War in Ancient and Moder Time. I strongly suggest the works of Keegan (I think John Keegan, but I can find the reference is anybody is interested) if you want to read more.
** Crociates were many things. Among the things they were, it was a way to unite all the warring princes of Europe against something "else" and a way for the Pope to show his power. At a certain point, it became obvious that people weren't very interesting in crociates anymore because 1. It was clear it was a lost cause, 2. Pilgrims were welcome in Jerusalem anyway, 3. They had other things to do at home and 4. Islam was merringly butchering iself up, so it wasn't a threat anymore.
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“I was talking about children that have not been properly house-trained. Left to their own impulses and indulged by doting or careless parents almost all children are yahoos. Loud, selfish, cruel, unaffectionate, jealous, perpetually striving for attention, empty-headed, for ever prating or if words fail them simply bawling, their voices grown huge from daily practice: the very worst company in the world. But what I dislike even more than the natural child is the affected child, the hulking oaf of seven or eight that skips heavily about with her hands dangling in front of her -- a little squirrel or bunny-rabbit -- and prattling away in a baby's voice.â€
― Patrick O'Brian, The Truelove
lib'-er-ty: the freedom given to you to make the wrong decision, based on the reasoned belief that you will normally make the right one.