Note 88 — Book the Second (continued 5)

Observe the chivalrous gentleness of the Borgian Era in regard to women, compared with the bald mercilessness of modern parochial and civil Registers. In these deeds of legitimation, the woman is never named, and not always the man. The weaker party is never punished by eternal gibbeting, by eternal record of her shame by name. She is always permitted to hide under the veil of coniugata, or soluta, “a married woman” or “a spinster.” Still, the Twentieth Century is humane to the wolf’s brother and the hyæna’s cousin; and nourishes a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals: and perhaps that balances the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’ humanity and chivalry to sex.