Another peculiar feature of the Germanic law was the appeal to God to decide a moot point by various ordeals.  For example, by the laws of the Angles and Werini, if a woman was accused of murdering her husband, she would ask a male relative to assert her innocence by a solemn oath[357] or, if necessary, by fighting for her as her champion in the lists.  God was supposed to give the victory to the champion who defended an innocent party.  If she could find no champion, she was permitted to walk barefoot over nine red-hot ploughshares[358]; and if she was innocent, God would not, of course, allow her to suffer any injury in the act.

[Sidenote:  Women in slavery.]

Perhaps a word on the status of women in slavery among the Germanic nations will not be out of place.  The new nations looked upon a slave as a chattel, much as the Romans did.  If a wrong was done a slave woman, her master received a recompense from the aggressor, but she did not, for to hold property was denied her.  But we may well believe that the great value which the Church put on chastity and conjugal fidelity rendered the slave woman less exposed to the brutal passions of her lord than had been the case under the Empire.  Thus, by a law of King Liutprand, a master who committed adultery with the wife of a slave was compelled to free both[359]; and the Visigot[360] inflicted fifty lashes and a fine of twenty solidi upon the man who used violence to another man’s slave woman.

On comparing the position of women under Roman law and under the Germanic nations, as we have observed them thus far, we should note first of all that under the latter women benefited chiefly by the insistence of the Church on the value of chastity in both sexes.  That in those days the passions of men were difficult to restrain in practice does not invalidate the real service done the world by the ideal that was insisted upon,[361] an ideal which was certainly not held in pagan antiquity except by a few great minds.  Although the social position of woman was thus improved, the character of the age and the sentiments of the Bible which I have already quoted made her status far inferior to her condition under Roman law so far as her legal rights were concerned.  In a period[362] when the assertion of one’s rights constantly demanded fighting, the woman was forced to rely on the male to champion her; the Church, in accordance with the dicta of the Apostles, encouraged and indeed commanded her to confine herself to the duties of the household, to leave legal matters to men, and to be guided by their advice; and thus she was prevented from asserting herself out of regard for the strong public opinion on the subject, which was quite alien to the sentiments of the old Roman law.  Henceforward also we are to have law based on old customs and theology,[363] not on practical convenience or scientific reasoning.

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