Concubine

“ I have not even yearned to satisfy my own will and pleasure, but thine, as thou well knowest. The name of wife may be the holier and more approved, but the name of friend—nay, mistress or concubine, if thou wilt suffer it—has always been the sweeter to me. ”

“ If a man takes a priestess and that priestess gives a female slave to her husband, and she has children; if that man sets his face to take a concubine, they shall not favor that man. He may not take a concubine.
§ 145. If a man takes a priestess and she does not present him with children and he sets his face to take a concubine, that man may take a concubine and bring her into his house. That concubine shall not rank with the wife. ”

“ I will ask you the following question, Can a man who before his baptism has kept a concubine, and after her death has received baptism and has taken a wife, become a clergyman or not? You will answer me that he can, because his first partner was a concubine and not a wife. What the apostle condemns then, it would seem, is not mere sexual intercourse but marriage contracts and conjugal rights. Many persons, we see, because of narrow circumstances refuse to take upon them the burthen of matrimony. ”

“ If one of the faithful hath a concubine, if she be a bond-servant, let him leave off that way, and marry in a legal manner: if she be a free woman, let him marry her in a lawful manner; if he does not, let him be rejected. ”

“ A concubine may be sold at any moment, and the position is thus precarious and varied: it has one saving clause, which I have already explained—the woman who bears a son to her master is free, and at his death his property will be divided between the sons of concubines equally with the sons of his wife and wives. ”

“ If you take me as your real and true wife I’ll serve you [99] with all my heart, but if you are determined to take me as a concubine I shall die now by this sword. For that reason I hold it. My life rests on one word from your Excellency. Speak it, please, before I decide.”
The Governor, though a man who observed no ceremony and never brooked a question, when he saw how beautiful and how determined this maiden was, fell a victim to her at once, and said, “If you so decide, then, of course, I’ll make you my real wife.” ”

“ For, by the old Roman law, this was the difference between a wife and a concubine: that the husband before marriage promised that he designed to promote the woman he was married to, to the honour of materfamilias, or mistress of the family.—Dr. Nicholls.
The first right accruing to the wife by marriage, is honour; and, therefore, the man says, “with my body I thee worship;” that is, “with my body I thee honour:” for so the word signifies in this place; and so Mr. Selden, and before him Martin Bucer, who lived at the time when our liturgy was compiled, have translated it. ”

“ I have a maiden daughter, and this man hath a concubine, I will bring them out to you, and you may humble them, and satisfy your lust: only, I beseech you, commit not this crime against nature on the man. ”

“ Our excellent forefathers, whose morals seem so8 greatly to have outshone our own, were all born in civil matrimony and brought up in homes where not infrequently the concubine lived by the same hearth as the wife, and where the latter was liable to be repudiated for reasons as trivial as those for which she might herself obtain divorce. ”

“ There is but one proper wife in the family, but there is no law against a man’s having secondary wives or concubines; and such connections are common enough wherever the means of a family are sufficient for their support. The concubine occupies in the family an inferior position to the wife, and her children, if she has any, belong by law to the wife. ”

“ She appears rarely with him in public, is expected always to wait upon him and save him steps, and must bear all things from him with smiling face and agreeable manners, even to the receiving with open arms into the household some other woman, whom she knows to bear the relation of concubine to her own husband. ”

“ A concubine, in the strict sense of the civilians, was a woman of servile or plebeian extraction, the sole and faithful companion of a Roman citizen, who continued in a state of celibacy. Her modest station below the honours of a wife, above the infamy of a prostitute, was acknowledged and approved by the laws: from the age of Augustus to the tenth century, the use of this secondary marriage prevailed both in the West and East, and the humble virtues of a concubine were often preferred to the pomp and insolence of a noble matron. ”

“ In my opinion, it is for the interest of woman, of children, and of morals, that concubinage should be regulated by legislation. Every child should bear the name of the concubinary father, who should provide for his subsistence and for the expenses of his education; 104 "the forsaken concubine should also have a right to an indemnity, unless she has been the first to enter into another concubinage."—Id. ”

“ The legitimate wife is to the handmaid as a lord is to his vassal. Concubinage being a legitimate institution, the son of a handmaid is no bastard, nor is he in any way the child of shame; and yet, as a general rule, the son of the bondwoman is not heir with the son of the free, for the son of the wife inherits before the son of a concubine, even where the latter be the elder; and it frequently happens that a noble, having children by his concubines but none by his wife, selects a younger brother of his own, or even adopts the son of some relative, to succeed him in the family honours. ”

“ Nearly every man of rank or station had at least one concubine as well as a wife, and in the absence of an heir born of the latter the former perpetually intrigued to have her son declared heir in preference to the next of kin or to the son by adoption. ”

“ Still, it was by no means unusual in olden times for princes and nobles to have a number of concubines, who were either slaves or female captives, besides their own lawful wives, who were sprung of noble family. In fact, the idea of conjugal fidelity held good only for the female portion of the population, while the men were absolutely free to act as they pleased. Undoubtedly there were cases in which husband and wife were so well suited together that the men resisted all temptations to infidelity ”

“ Was that such a calamity? Why, in yonder house I have placed concubines for your enjoyment so beautiful they put flowers to shame. They belong to you. They are a hundred times more beautiful than your wife. ”

“ If a man of the upper class has one or more concubines, he must keep a separate establishment for each of them. It would be unheard of for a gentleman to introduce a concubine into the home where his genuine wife lives. Among the common class, however, the wife and the concubine may occupy the same house. Human nature is the same the world over, and it is needless to say that oftentimes the result is most distressing. ”

“ The idea of ‘concubine,’ in spite of Tacitus’ highly-coloured picture of the OTeut. family life, is not foreign to OTeut. antiquity; but the important fact is, and this is confirmed by his general statements, that concubines were chosen from the prisoners, or rather the slaves; in antiquity the slaves were regarded as chattels ”

“ This term, in western authors, commonly signifies, a woman, who, without being married to a man, yet lives with him as his wife; but, in the sacred writers, the word concubine is understood in another sense ”

“ Ethics of pair marriage. Pair marriage has excluded every other form of sex relation. To modern people it is hard to understand how different forms of sex relation could exist side by side and all be right. The explanation is in the mores. A concubine may be a woman who has a defined and legally guaranteed relation to one man, if the mores have so determined. Her circumstances have not opened to her the first rank, that of a wife, but she has another which is recognized in the society as honorable. The same may be said of a slave woman, or of a morganatic wife. ”

“ And arguing from popular feeling in our great cities we reach the conclusion that in ancient Israel where concubinage prevailed there was a wide and keen feeling as to the rights of concubines and the necessity of upholding them. Many women must have been in this relation, below those [351] who could count themselves legally married, and all the more that the concubine occupied a place inferior to that of the lawful wife would popular opinion take up her cause and demand the punishment of those who did her wrong. ”

“ Those who do not distinguish genera, use the two terms promiscuously, as if they had one meaning, and thence one signification: but as they are two genera, and the term keeping a mistress is suitable to the former, because a kept mistress is a courtezan, and the term concubinage to the latter, because a concubine is a substituted partner of the bed, therefore for the sake of distinction, ante-nuptial stipulation with a woman is signified by keeping a mistress, and post-nuptial by concubinage. ”

“ They must serve her and do her bidding, and can only escape from this in the rare instance when one rises in the man’s eyes to higher favour than the wife.
The children of a concubine do not as a rule rank with the children of a wife, but they are neither despised nor shamed. ”

“ The honorable Moonlight will not be the first divorced wife who has been again received in the home of the parents-in-law. You forget that until recently there was even a custom among many families where the wife failed in her duty to supply children to her husband, for an honorable concubine to be chosen in her place duly to serve her lord. ”

“ While Japanese women are not so pitiably degraded as in India or China, we read in their book of “Instruction for Woman,” “Woman is the creature of man.” “A woman’s husband is her God.” Concubinage, “divorce if the wife is not obedient to her husband’s parents” or is unkind to a concubine, and the selling of young daughters for prostitution, tell the story. ”

“ The reader will understand that every nun has a confessor; and here I may as well add, for the truth must be told at once, that every confessor has a concubine, and there are very few of them who have not several. Let any American mother imagine her young daughter among these semi-reverend crones, called nuns, and she will have no difficulty in seeing the possibility of her immediate ruin. When your daughter comes among those women, they pretend to be the happiest set of beings upon earth. ”

“ The great medieval canon lawyer Lyndwood illustrates the difficulty of distinguishing, even as late as the middle of the 15th century, between concubinage and a clandestine, though legal, marriage. He falls back on the definition of an earlier canonist that if the woman eats out of the same dish with the man, and if he takes her to church, she may be presumed to be his wife; if, however, he sends her to draw water and dresses her in vile clothing, she is probably a concubine (Provinciale, ed. Oxon. 1679, p. 10, s.v. concubinarios) . ”

“ When she dies the first wife takes her place as head of the family. A concubine may be the favourite of the husband. He may give her fine apartments to live in, many servants to wait on her, and every luxury he can afford; but there his power ends. The first wife is head of the household, is legally mother of all the children born to any or all of the concubines her husband possesses. The children all call her mother, and the inferior wives recognize her as their mistress. She and her daughters, and daughters-in-law, attend social functions, receive friends, extend hospitality ”

“ The legal concubines, the lesser wives, are subordinate to the especially legitimate wife, and are forbidden to assume the dress reserved for her. [482] The chief wife is the mistress of the house; she is not only the mother of her own children, but also the putative mother of the children of the lesser wives. ”

“ Of these concubines three are called wives, the fourth a concubine, the fifth and sixth are slaves, the seventh and eighth are big and little maids.
Sometimes a woman takes a husband to her home 倒住苗 tao chu miao. ”

“ Those who are joined to husbands by their fathers’ will are free from blame, if the women whom their husbands had were not in wedlock.
Question VI. Concerning those who leave the women by whom they have children and take wives.
Reply. Seeing that the wife is different from the concubine, to turn a bondwoman from one’s couch and take a wife whose free birth is assured, is not bigamy but an honourable proceeding. ”

“ The only distinction between the lawful wife and the concubine is, that the 230former has a dowry, while the slaves have none. A wife who has a portion settled on her is mistress of her husband’s house, and all the other women have to obey her orders. The husband, however, may choose which of them shall spend the night with him. He makes known his wishes to the wife, and she sends to him the slave he has selected. Hardly a pleasant task, one would fancy, for a wife, whatever the feelings of the other might be! ”

“ The wife must not only obey her husband, but is also much under the rule of her mother-in-law. A man sometimes brings his concubine into the house, and often her children as well, and these his wife is [pg 109] obliged to adopt. If husband and wife disagree, the go-between is usually consulted, and occasionally succeeds in arranging matters. ”

“ If a concubine lives in the home of the man, she is registered as a domestic, and her children should be registered as hers, although I am told that they are very often illegally registered as his. If she lives in her own home, the concubine still retains the name and registry of her own parents. ”