I was reading something about the marriage in medieval times when the Catholic Church sometimes attacked marriage from the woman’s point of view. In a treatise, titled “Holy Maidenhood,” the Church tried to convince young women to become nuns. The picture that the Church paints of marriage is, shall we say, gloomy (the language has been modernized from medieval English):
Quote:Now you are married, and you have fallen from a very high position to a very low one: down into the filth of physical life, into living like an animal, into being enslaved to a man, and into the sufferings of the world.
When he [husband] is away, you must wait for his return in sorrow, worry, and fear. While he is at home, your large house feels too small; even the sight of him terrifies you. His disgusting jokes and his crude behavior fill you with horror. He scolds and insults you the way a lustful man treats a prostitute; he beats and abuses you like a purchased servant and inherited slave.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
