When Fathers Ruled: Family Life in Reformation Europe

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Author: Steven Ozment

ISBN-10: 0674951212

ISBN-13: 9780674951211

Category: Protestant Church History

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Here is a lively study of marriage and the family during the Reformation, primarily in Gemany and Switzerland, that dispels the commonly held notion of fathers as tyrannical and families as loveless.Did husbands and wives love one another in Reformation Europe? Did the home and family life matter to most people? In this wide-ranging work, Steven Ozment has gathered the answers of contemporaries to these questions. His subject is the patriarchal family in Germany and Switzerland, primarily among Protestants. But unlike modern scholars from Philippe Arics to Lawrence Stone, Ozment finds the fathers of early modern Europe sympathetic and even admirable. They were not domineering or loveless men, nor were their homes the training ground for passive citizenry in an age of political absolutism. From prenatal care to graveside grief, they expressed deep love for their wives and children. Rather than a place where women and children were bullied by male chauvinists, the Protestant home was the center of a domestic reform movement against Renaissance antifeminism and was an attempt to resolve the crises of family life. Demanding proper marriages for all women, Martin Luther and his followers suppressed convents and cloisters as the chief institutions of womankind's sexual repression, cultural deprivation, and male clerical domination. Consent, companionship, and mutual respect became the watchwords of marriage. And because they did, genuine divorce and remarriage became possible among Christians for the first time.This graceful book restores humanity to the Reformation family and to family history. Journal of Modern History As an account of literate culture's attitudes to marriage and parenthood, it is gripping and challenging.

PART 1: IN DEFENSE OF MARRIAGE1. Celibacy and Marriage 2. The Liberation of Women from Cloisters3. Disciplining MarriagePART 2: HUSBANDS AND WIVES4. The Duties of Spouses5. The Wives of Hermann von Weinsberg6. Divorce and RemarriagePART 3: THE BEARING OF CHILDREN7. The Bearing of Children8. The World of the Expectant Mother9. The Care of the Newborn10. The Trials of Infancy 11. A Child's Sense of MortalityPART 4: THE REARING OF CHILDREN12. The Measure of a Child13. Discipline, Duty, and Love14. The Weinsberg Men as Fathers15. Sin and Mortality16. The Faith of Our FathersAbbreviationsWorks Frequently CitedNotesIndex