As far back as Christian antiquity the Manichaean attacks on the sacredness of marriage as those of Jovinian and Vigilantius, which sought to undermine the reverence for virginity, were refuted by the Church Fathers St. Augustine and St. Jerome.
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This was maintained at the beginning of the modern era by the Spanish Humanist Louis Vives, in his work "De institutione feminae christianae" (1523); and was brought out still more emphatically, in terms corresponding to the needs of his day, by Bishop François Fénelon in his pioneerwork Education des filles "Education of girls" (1687).