When Fathers Ruled: Family Life in Reformation Europe

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.

As an account of literate culture's attitudes to marriage and parenthood, it is gripping and challenging. Journal of Modern History

Every few years scholarly books on the Reformation are written in this country that challenge established theories, present fresh insights, and stimulate our research. In a sense they are milestones in the field of Reformation studies. I think that Steven Ozment's well-researched book will also be recognized as such a work. Ozment's skillful use of hitherto-neglected material and his vivid picture of marriage and family in Protestant Germany will give a new direction to sixteenth-century social history. American Historical Review

Our common understanding of the early modern family, and particularly its relationship to the Reformation, will have to take cognizance of Ozment's work. Journal of Social History

This is a splendid book on a 'hot' topic...an original if controversial argument... Skillfully argued and artfully documented... Fascinating fresh evidence. Robert Kingdon, University of Wisconsin

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.

Steven Ozmentis McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History at <>Harvard University. He is the author of Flesh and Spiritand The Bürgermeisters Daughter.

PART 1: IN DEFENSE OF MARRIAGE

1. Celibacy and Marriage

2. The Liberation of Women from Cloisters

3. Disciplining Marriage

PART 2: HUSBANDS AND WIVES

4. The Duties of Spouses

5. The Wives of Hermann von Weinsberg

6. Divorce and Remarriage

PART 3: THE BEARING OF CHILDREN

7. The Bearing of Children

8. The World of the Expectant Mother

9. The Care of the Newborn

10. The Trials of Infancy

11. A Child's Sense of Mortality

PART 4: THE REARING OF CHILDREN

12. The Measure of a Child

13. Discipline, Duty, and Love

14. The Weinsberg Men as Fathers

15. Sin and Mortality

16. The Faith of Our Fathers

Abbreviations

Works Frequently Cited

Notes

Index