medans, the Moors, who had occupied a large part of the Iberian Peninsula. These struggles ended in 1492 with the Fall of Granada and the surrender of the famous fortress Alhambra. While in the treaty of peace certain stipulated privileges had been granted to the conquered, one of which provided for free exercise of their religion, this liberty of worship was treacherously withdrawn in 1499 and the Moors either killed, expelled, or made Christians by forcible baptism. Those who survived by intermingling with the Spaniards produced a new race, the Andalusians, famous for their graceful women. The Spaniards adopted many of the Moorish manners and institutions, among them certain restrictions in the intercourse of the two sexes. Writers of the 15th Century state, that in these times the Spanish women used to sit in Oriental fashion, with legs crossed, on carpets and cushions, spending their time with embroideries and gossip, or telling the beads of the rosary. The husbands seldom sought their company, and even preferred to take their meals alone. Married ladies were not allowed to receive male visitors, and if their husbands brought friends along, they hardly dared to lift their eyes. The only breaks in this monotonous life were occasional calls by women friends, who were received with the greatest possible display of dress and jewelry. This unnatural segregation of the sexes still prevails in Spain to some extent and is chiefly due to the jealousy of men. Well aware of their own unfaithfulness and great inclination for love-adventures, they have no confidence in their wives either, but always watch them with suspicion.
We find similar conditions in many other parts of Southern Europe. But as restrictions are always apt to breed intrigues we hear everywhere of plots and love-affairs, such as Boccaccio has related in his "Decamerone." The stories of this famous book, which was written between 1344 and 1350, without question are based on actual events, frequently among the fashionable ladies and gentlemen of the age.
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Far higher than in Southern Europe was the status of women in those countries occupied by nations of Germanic stock.
At the time of Tacitus the Germans had no settlements, but lived in isolated dwellings on the river banks or clearings in the majestic forests. With the migration of the nations, however, caused by the enormous pressure of vast Mongolian hordes upon the tribes of Eastern and Central Europe, the Germans were compelled to abandon this mode of life. For security's sake they gathered together in villages and cities.
These they surrounded with heavy walls and towers, and
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