Note 334 — Chapter III · UNIVERSAL USE OF THE JUDICIAL COMBAT.

Beaumanoir, ch. xxxix. §§ 30, 31, 66.—Assises de Jerusalem, cap. 169. A somewhat similar principle is in force in the modern jurisprudence of China. Women, persons over eighty or under ten years of age, and cripples who have lost an eye or a limb are entitled to buy themselves off from punishment, except in a few cases of aggravated crime. They are, therefore, not allowed to appear as accusers, because they are enabled by this privilege to escape the penalties of false witness.—Staunton, Penal Code of China, Sects. 20-22, and 339. In the ancient Brahmanic law also there is a long enumeration of persons who are not receivable as witnesses, including women, children, and men over eighty years of age. In this, however, the exclusion of women would appear to be because they were presumably under tutelage.—Institutes of Vishnu, VIII. 2.

The exclusion of women as witnesses during the mediæval period was also one of the numerous disabilities by which the Church expressed its contempt for the sex which had tempted Adam to his fall. As early as the fourth century Hilary the Deacon, in a tract which long passed current under the name of St. Augustin, says: “Nec docere enim potest, nec testis esse, neque fidem dicere, neque judicare” (Hilari Diac. Quæstt. ex Vet. Testamento, c. xlv.—Migne, T. XXX. p. 2244). And this was carried through Ivo of Chartres (Decreti, P. VIII. c. 85) into the body of the canon law (Gratiani Decr. Caus. XXXIII. Q. v. cap. 17).