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personality.
A comparison of the two masses of womankind, however, serves to draw out the similarities and dissimilarities of the factors bearing on the shaping of all women drawn into the inferno.
Specifically, women of the east and of the west suffered equally in the sense that both were regarded almost universally as inferior to men. This was the view of the law, of religion, of society, of custom, of literature, and, insofar as they adopted the tenets of their own culture, of many women themselves.
Of the two groups, Islamic women have usually been considered to have had the most constricted way of life, and hence, enter less actively into the story of the Crusades than do their Frankish sisters.
Thus, according to Hourani, Moslem society at the time of the Crusades consisted (in the towns) of a social life based on the superior power and rights of men.
The practices of urban Islamic society in fact contradicted the theoretical equality of men and women set out in the Koran in the phrase: Whoever does right, whether male or female, and is a believer, all such will enter the Garden.1.
At the time of the Crusades, in Moslem cities the shari'a, or system of law and ideal morality, both prescribed and severely limited the rights of women.
They had to have a male guardian, and a marriage was a civil contract between the male guardian and the bridegroom. The guardian could give his ward in marriage at his will before puberty. Her consent was needed after puberty, but if she had not previously married, silence could be consent. She was to be given a dowry (mahr) by the bridegroom, and this was her property, as well as whatever else she already owned or had inherited.
The wife was to obey her husband, but had the right to suitable clothes, lodging and maintenance and to sexual intercourse with her husband. Contraception was legally accepted, but a husband could not practice it without his wife's consent.
A wife could divorce her husband for good reasons (impotence, madness, denial of her rights) by recourse to a court of law (qadi) or by mutual consent.
A husband, however, could repudiate his wife without any reason, and by repeating a few prescribed words in front of witnesses.
A women could hope to rely then on the support of her male relations. If repudiated, she could return with her property to her family home. The children were in her custody, and the duty of raising them.2
The Koran and subsequently the shari'a placed other limitations on the rights of women. Men, for example, could have up to four wives and as many concubines as they pleased: parallel rights were not accorded to women. Women could inherit no more than one third of their husband's property, and daughters half the share of a son. In law courts, a woman's testimony carried only half the weight of a man's.3
A woman's place was therefore very much limited within Arabic society. A fourteenth century jurist was of the opinion that women should only leave her house on three occasions - when her bridegroom took her to his house, on the deaths of her parents, and when she went to her own grave.4
It is Professor Hourani's judgment, therefore, that Arabic women played only a minor part in the economic life of the city, unless they were from the poorer classes. The wealthier a woman was, the more she was confined beneath the veil and in a secluded part of the house called the harim. Only some women were visible, either as domestic servants, as assistants to their husbands in trade and craft, as well as entertainers, dancers and singers.5
Frankish women endured similar limitations in many areas, but in other ways were much freer to be active in their world. And it is obvious in the few remaining documents about medieval European women that many of them were not content with their role as second class citizens. Many women enjoyed a lively, not to say violent and dangerously thrilling, existence.
Eileen Power says that the position of medieval (European) women was one thing in theory, another in law, and yet another in everyday life. The true position of women was a blend of all three.6
In law, ideas about women were formulated by two narrowly based groups: the clergy and the nobility. One of these groups consisted largely of celibates, the other of a caste which saw women as an ornamental asset subordinated to the needs of land possession. In other words, the two groups least likely to have a clear understanding of the nature of the mass of womankind.7
The conjunction of the views of these two all determining groups meant that Woman was seen as subject to Man, and their legal view of her did not take note of her as a complete individual.
These legal views developed in part from the Christian values stemming from St Paul, from the Roman idea of tutelage, from the Teutonic concept of authority in the family, and from the Arab idea of chivalry.
G.G.Coulton in reviewing women's lives shows that throughout the heartland of Europe, woman was legally inferior to her husband, to the extent that he had varying rights to chastise her.
A degree of the council of Toledo (AD 400), for example, says that the husband is bound to chastise his wife moderately.
The Dominican Nicolas Byard wrote that a man may chastise his wife and beat her for her correction, for she is of his household, and therefore the lord may chastise his own, as it is written in Gratian's Decretum.8
Women's legal rights varied only slightly under this umbrella from country to country and area to area: the writings of Church fathers on the subject are depressingly uniform in their condemnation of woman and their sentencing of her to a life of domination by menfolk.
In England, for example, where the concept of a common law was not universally established until late in the twelfth century, manorial or other local jurisdiction still had special clauses to deal with women, usually disadvantageously. And the common law, while guaranteeing a more consistent and coherent system of legal rights, openly discriminated against women.
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