Church's historical response to domestic violence

[BibleBullet]

Hi all,

I could use some cheering up. For reasons I won’t get into, I kinda got triggered concerning my troubled childhood where my father was very abusive to me and my mother. And it got me thinking. I come from a Christian family, and my father still to this day professes Christianity. Miraculously, I am still a Christian, despite how he treated us both. But it gets me thinking about how my childhood church looked the other way or believed my father’s slander. They pretty much told my mom to go submit to a beating.

But what is the Church’s historical response for wives and children in this situation? Or, even for poor, gentle husbands who end up with sociopaths for wives?

I’m particularly interested in early church fathers, the medieval church, and, yes, I’ll take the Counter Reformation for 200, Alex. Did they do anything to protect spouses and children caught in abusive situations? Maybe under, say, Roman law they couldn’t legally escape, but did anyone help them, other than with the typical advice that is so rampant in evangelicalism today (go back and submit to abuse)? If the abuser professed Christianity, did they ever consider excommunicating him/her?

Unfortunately, there can be a lot of misinformation on the internet, and plenty of feminazis and other detractors from Christianity will always find something negative while refusing to see anything positive. I understand not every church father will be perfect. Even Chrysostom, as great as his homilies on marriage are, still has an attitude of “Yes, your husband shouldn’t beat you, but you’re stuck with him anyway.” I’m hoping there’s some bright, unnoticed gems out there that demonstrate that God has moved through the church to give true relief to the oppressed.

It would not only cheer me up significantly, but would also give me apologetics ammunition, since there seems to be so much negative stuff out there that will just drag a Christian down.

Any good books/resources I could read on the subject?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Peter_Plato]

Hi all,

I could use some cheering up. For reasons I won’t get into, I kinda got triggered concerning my troubled childhood where my father was very abusive to me and my mother. And it got me thinking. I come from a Christian family, and my father still to this day professes Christianity. Miraculously, I am still a Christian, despite how he treated us both. But it gets me thinking about how my childhood church looked the other way or believed my father’s slander. They pretty much told my mom to go submit to a beating.

But what is the Church’s historical response for wives and children in this situation? Or, even for poor, gentle husbands who end up with sociopaths for wives?

I’m particularly interested in early church fathers, the medieval church, and, yes, I’ll take the Counter Reformation for 200, Alex. Did they do anything to protect spouses and children caught in abusive situations? Maybe under, say, Roman law they couldn’t legally escape, but did anyone help them, other than with the typical advice that is so rampant in evangelicalism today (go back and submit to abuse)? If the abuser professed Christianity, did they ever consider excommunicating him/her?

Unfortunately, there can be a lot of misinformation on the internet, and plenty of feminazis and other detractors from Christianity will always find something negative while refusing to see anything positive. I understand not every church father will be perfect. Even Chrysostom, as great as his homilies on marriage are, still has an attitude of “Yes, your husband shouldn’t beat you, but you’re stuck with him anyway.” I’m hoping there’s some bright, unnoticed gems out there that demonstrate that God has moved through the church to give true relief to the oppressed.

It would not only cheer me up significantly, but would also give me apologetics ammunition, since there seems to be so much negative stuff out there that will just drag a Christian down.

Any good books/resources I could read on the subject?

Thanks in advance!

It seems pretty clear that “you’re stuck with him” did not mean, for the Church fathers, that you were stuck being in the same household enduring his abuse everyday. It did mean you were not free to marry again because of the nature the sacramental vow that was, presumably, freely entered into.

A couple of quotes from St. Jerome that might make this clearer…

Do not tell me about the violence of the ravisher, about the persuasiveness of a mother, about the authority of a father, about the influence of relatives, about the intrigues and insolence of servants, or about household [financial] losses. So long as a husband lives, be he adulterer, be he sodomite, be he addicted to every kind of vice, if she left him on account of his crimes, he is her husband still and she may not take another [Letters 55:3 (c. A.D. 393)]. *

[Notice Jerome does not condemn the womon leaving her husband, but acknowledges that the move away is legitimate, even though re-marriage would not be. Similarly, on the other side, when a man “dismisses” an unfaithful wife – which Jerome has no problems with – he insists the husband is not free to take another wife.]

Wherever there is fornication and a suspicion of fornication, a wife is freely dismissed. Because it is always possible that someone may calumniate the innocent and, for the sake of a second joining in marriage, act in criminal fashion against the first, it is commanded that when the first wife is dismissed, a second may not be taken while the first lives. [Commentaries on Matthew 3:19:9 (A.D. 398)].

 

[BibleBullet]

Thanks, Peter.

I suppose Roman law made it difficult to always be able to legally leave, but I’m glad to see Jerome wasn’t against it. By leave/divorce, I don’t necessarily mean remarriage. Just being able to get to safety and hopefully also if the abuser is professing Christianity, the priest/bishop confronting the abuser and admonishing them to repent.

Sadly, Chrysostom, in his homily on 1 Cor. 7, does imply that women who have abusive husbands should endure the abuse and that they will receive a heavenly reward in exchange. But again, I do also realize that Roman law wasn’t always conducive to getting to safety, especially if a wife had no recourse to get her dowry to support herself.

I was just hoping that there were more concrete examples of churchmen directly protecting abuse victims.

Yeah, I know it must be weird for someone with “evangelical” in their listed religion to be asking this question in a Catholic forum. But it’s all our shared history, whether or not some of my evangelical brethren want to admit to it. Besides, I always find Catholics tend to read history books/patristic writers more often. Ask this in certain evangelical circles and they’ll stare blankly at you and act like the church was born with Martin Luther’s 95 Theses.

Anyway, thanks again for the reply.