'HRISTIAN MARRIAGE AND iMORALlTY 51 



long train of moral and political consequences, was 

 nipped in the bud. 



If we turn to Eussia, we find women still treated 

 like slaves or cattle among the masses of the popula- 

 tion. In novels and dramas of contemporary life 

 in Eussia the wife is represented as being in complete 

 subjection to her husband, while among both sexes 

 the loosest ideas of morality prevail.^ Eussia, 

 although ranking as a civilised country, brings us 

 i^ato touch, in fact, with the customs and instincts 

 of savagery, due to the long existence of serfdom. 

 Until the reign of Peter the Great, Eussian women 

 enjoyed no social or domestic authority whatever, 

 and wives could be killed by their husbands with 

 impunity.^ Ireland, on the other hand, presents the 

 example of a country where the purity doctrines of 

 the Church have had the fullest sway. That Irish 



^ See the popular dramas of Tolstoi and Ostrowsky. 



2 Levesque's Histoire de Jiussie. Rulhiere in his Histoire de 

 r Anarchic de Pologne relates that in the reign of Catherine the 

 Court amused itself by celebrating "les noces d'un bouffon avec 

 une chevre." The morality of that Court is also reflected in an 

 anecdote told by the same authority of a giand-duke, one of 

 Catherine's husbands : " II avait pris I'envoye du Roi de Prusse 

 dans une singuliere faveur. II voulait que cet envoye avant son 

 depart e<it toutes les jeunes femmes de la cour. II I'enfermait avec 

 elles et se mettait, I'epde nue, en faction k la porte." 



