i68 TABOO AND GENETICS 



adopted the costume of a monk, — " Being a 

 woman by nature in order that I might gain 

 everlasting Hfe." The same account tells of 

 another holy woman who passed as a eunuch, 

 because she had been warned that it was easier 

 for the devil to tempt a woman. In another 

 collection of lives of saints is the story (37) 

 of a holy woman who never allowed herself to 

 see the face of a man, even that of her own 

 brother, lest through her he might go in among 

 women. Another holy virgin shut herself up 

 in a tomb because she did not wish to cause the 

 spiritual downfall of a young man who loved 

 her. 



This long period of religious hatred of and 

 contempt for woman included the Crusades, the 

 Age of Chivalry (38), and lasted well into the 

 Renaissance. (39.) Students of the first thou- 

 sand years of the Christian era like Donaldson 

 (22), McCabe (40), and Benecke argue that the 

 social and intellectual position of women was 

 probably lower than at any time since the 

 creation of the world. It was while the position 

 of woman as wife and mother was thus descend- 

 ing into the slough which has been termed the 

 Dark Age of Woman that the Apotheosis of 

 the Blessed Virgin was accomplished. The 

 attitude toward human love, generation, the 

 relation of the earthly mother to the human 

 child because of Eve's sin, all made the Immacu- 



