ABSTRACT
Throughout the earlier periods of Roman history women were held in protective bondage. Yet the Roman matron was always highly honoured, and not only was a large measure of legal freedom granted to women in imperial days, but they enjoyed a degree of social liberty which, often, they shamelessly abused. The dark and bloody times which accompanied the overthrow of Roman rule gave Teutonic laws a wider scope, and renewed the ancient servitude and complete dependence of woman. The echoes of Roman and Teutonic traditions may still, in those tenebrous times, have reverberated in the valleys of Provence. Roman culture lingered longest in the South of France; that land enjoyed relative peace, and thither an extensive Mediterranean commerce brought opulence. The minstrels began to vie with each other, each adding some novel and fascinating note to an old romance or inventing some fresh, wondrous story.
