With many of the eastern women it was a matter of the highest consequence that they have children, as failing to do so it was strictly within the legal rights of the husband at once to put away his wife by a summary divorce, or at any rate to take a concubine into his home in order that he might not go childless; the woman who proved hopelessly barren became an object of contempt or commiseration to all about her, and her life a scene of prolonged shame and misery. And so, in certain parts of the world, arose sex worship, the idea being that by the worship of the organs of generation the misfortune of barrenness might be avoided. The priests were not slow to avail themselves of a ready means of adding to their reputation and influence and increasing their revenues, and women, who for some cause or another had hitherto been without offspring, were encouraged to visit the temples and make their proper offerings, and go through the prescribed ceremonies for curing their sterility. As willing as the women were for all this, were the men, and though sometimes the defect lay in themselves physically, it is said that the arrangements at the temples were such as almost invariably succeeded in making the wives mothers.
"If abundance of offspring was promised as a blessing," says Dr. Inman, "it is clear to the physiologist that the pledge implies abundance of vigour in the man as well as in the woman. With a husband incompetent, no wife could be fruitful. The condition, therefore, of the necessary organs was intimately associated with the divine blessing or curse, and the impotent man then would as naturally go to the priest to be cured of his infirmity as we of to-day go to the physician. We have evidence that masses have been said, saints invoked, and offerings presented, for curing the debility we refer to, in a church in Christianised Italy during the last hundred years, and in France so late as the sixteenth century,--evident relics of more ancient times."
"Whenever a votary applied to the oracle for help to enable him to perform his duties as a prospective father, or to remove that frigidity which he had been taught to believe was a proof of Divine displeasure, or an evidence of his being bewitched by a malignant demon, it is natural to believe that the priest would act partly as a man of sense, though chiefly as a minister of God. He would go through, or enjoin attendance on certain religious ceremonies--would sell a charmed image, or use some holy oil, invented and blessed by a god or saint, as was done at Isernia--or he would do something else."