"The following law," says W. M. Best, "is attributed to Moses
by Josephus: `Let the testimony of women not be received on
account of the levity and audacity of their sex'; a law which
looks apocryphal, but which, even if genuine, could not have
been of universal application.... The law of ancient Rome,
though admitting their testimony in general, refused it in
certain cases. The civil canon laws of mediaeval Europe seem
to have carried the exclusion much further. Mascardus says:
'Feminis plerumque omnino non creditur, et id dumtaxat, quod
sunt feminae qua ut plurimum solent esse fraudulentre
fallaces, et dolosae' [Generally speaking, no credence at all
is given to women, and for this reason, because they are
women, who are usually deceitful, untruthful, and treacherous
in the very highest degree.] And Lancelottus, in his
'Institutiones Juris Canonici,' lays it down in the most
distinct terms, that women cannot in general be witnesses,
citing the language of Virgil: 'Varium et mutabile semper
femina'.
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