Classic paganism and Christianity differed on many points, but they were completely at one on this.

The Roman system was on a patriarchal basis and continued to be so theoretically even when in practise it came to allow great independence to the wife.

Christianity, although it allowed complete spiritual freedom to the individual, introduced no fundamentally new theory of the family, and, indeed, re-inforced the old theory by regarding the family as a little church of which the husband was the head.

Just as Christ is the head of the Church, St.Paul repeatedly asserted, so the husband is the head of the wife; therefore, as it was constantly argued during the Middle Ages, a man is bound to rule his wife.

St.Augustine, the most influential of Christian Fathers, even said that a wife should be proud to consider herself as the servant of her husband, his _ancilla_, a word that had in it the suggestion of slave.