Research Catalog

Title

When fathers ruled : family life in Reformation Europe / Steven Ozment.

Author

Ozment, Steven E.

Publication

Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1983.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

viii, 238 pages : illustrations; 24 cm

Summary

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 Ariès 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.

Series Statement

Studies in cultural history

Uniform Title

Studies in cultural history.

Subject

• Čubrilović Familie : 19. Jh.-
• Europa
• Geschichte 1500
• Marriage > Europe > History
• Families > Europe > History
• Husbands > Europe > History
• Fathers > Europe > History
• Children > Europe > History
• Reformation > Europe
• Marriage > history
• Fathers > history
• 11.55 Protestantism
• 15.70 history of Europe
• Children
• Families
• Fathers
• Husbands
• Marriage
• Reformation
• Reformatie
• Gezin
• Familjer > historia > Europa > 1500-talet
• Europe
• Europe > Social life and customs > 16th century

Genre/Form

History

Note

• Includes index.

Bibliography (note)

• Bibliography: p. [181]-182.

Contents

In defense of marriage. Celibacy and marriage ; The liberation of women from cloisters ; Disciplining marriage -- Husbands and wives. The duties of spouses ; The wives of Hermann von Weinsberg ; Divorce and remarriage -- The bearing of children. The world of the expectant mother ; The care of the newborn ; The trials of infancy ; A child's sense of mortality -- The rearing of children. The measure of a child ; Discipline, duty, and love ; The Weinsberg men as fathers ; Sin and mortality ; The faith of our fathers.

ISBN

• 0674951204
• 9780674951204
• 0674951212
• 9780674951211

LCCN

83006098

OCLC

• ocm09393231
• 9393231
• SCSB-87803

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library