How the Church Understands and Upholds the Rights of Women, Third Article [pp. 366-380]

the Ri,razts of Poiiecn.33
pay to her husband the most dutiful
respect, love, and obedience, and bore
hlis infidelities with invincible meekness and patience." Let us stop to
note this last sentence, which no doubt
by many of our chafing sisters of this
age may be misunderstood. This
meekiess was not a want of spirit; it
was the effect of "the subordination
of our inferior nature to reason, and of
our reason to God," as one of the
miost lucid and most sympathetic of
American exponents of Catholic truth
once expressed to thie writer the
whole duty of man upon earth. It
was no passiveness, no supineness, but
the heroic endurance of the martyr,
who is more concerned at anothler's
sin than his own wrong, and who
does not consider that reprisal and resentment are efficient means to win
the sinner back. When a woman
stoops to retaliation, she forgets the
dignity of her sex, and, if she forget
it, who can she expect will remember
it?
We may also be allowed to say one
word about the numerous foundations
constantly mentioned in the lives of
these great Christian women of past
ages. It is perhaps the general belief that nothing but monasteries were
endowed in early times. We have
sufficiently shown how fallacious such
belief would be. Institutions of every
kind, in which Catholic ingenuity was
multiplied till it embraced every need
and provided for every contingency,
were sown all over the Christian
world. The East was not forgotten,
and, indeed, even the great orders of
the Templars and the Hospitallers
were originally nothing but organized
bodies for the defence and shelter of
the pilgrims who flocked to the holy
places. Such charities as tended to
diminish the temptations to crime
were foremost among the many
originated during the middle ages.
We have only to refer to history to
prove this. Even had these foundations been confined to monasteries,
we must remember that the conventual abodes of old united in themselves nearly all the characteristics of
other institutions, and in the less
favored districts virtually supplied
their place. Besides being the only
secure and recognized homes of l~arning, the solitary centres of educa4ion,
they were also the refuge of the ho'meless or benighted wanderer; the
asylum of the oppressed poor, of
threatened innocence, and of unjustly
accused men; the hospital of the
sick, the sure dispensary of medicines
to the surrounding peasantry, and the
unfailing granary of the poor during
troublous times or years of famine.
There was hardly one want, physical
or spiritual, that could not find ready
relief at the monasteries of both
monks and nuns, so that in founding
such retreats it is no exaggeration to
say that orphanage,. asylum, reformatory, hospital, and school were conmprised within their walls.
WAVe must return to the great queen
whose munificence has led us into
this digression, and resume, as was our
purpose from the beginning, the rigid
relation of mere historical facts to
whichl we more willingly entrust the
cause than to the most eloquent
apologies.
When Elizabeth's son, Alphonsus,
revolted against his father and actually took up arms, she made the
most prudent efforts to mediate between thlem, for which the Pope,
John XXII., greatly praised her in a
letter he wrote to her on the subject;
but, certain enemies of hers having
poisoned her husband's mind against
her, he banished her to the town of
Alanquer. She refused all commiunication with the rebels, and at last was
recalled by her penitent husband.
Butler says: " She reconciled her hu.sband and son wvhen their armies were
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