Medieval apologists defended marriage’s permanence by calling wives colleagues.

Evidence

Marti said that marriage could not be ended for a light reason; a wife was a colleague, not a servant, socia, not serva. To send her away for illness would be contrary to compassion; if infirmity were a reason it would dissolve all marriages in old age; under such rules, women were deflowered and made pregnant and then sent away, and were thus dishonoured by all men; and so Islam was a Law of prostitution. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 810

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The Church’s marriage-degrading clergy drove the medieval attack on women.; Feudal knighthood’s ethos actively scorned women and their counsel — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 207