We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 December 2008
Long before Melanchthon and Erasmus drew their parallels, paternal and political authority had enjoyed a long and successful association in Greco-Roman thought. The apparent resurgence of this patriarchal metaphor in sixteenth-century European literature and polemic, however, has led some historians to suggest a more socially significant transformation in the actual legal or moral authority of one or both of these father figures. Beginning with the pioneering work of Phillippe Ariès many historians of the family, particularly Lawrence Stone, have identified the sixteenth century as a time of greater paternal authority within the household and the beginning of the modern nuclear family throughout most of Europe. Others, expanding on references by Aries and Stone to a new state paternalism, have focused on the political half of the patriarchal analogy, especially the almost ubiquitous association among sixteenth-century German authors of the Hausvater (head of the household) with the Landesvater (political ruler). For most of these scholars, paternalistic language was a natural and even necessary component of the ambitious absolutist state-building of early modern Europe.
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1990 American Historical conference in New York, NY. For subsequent comments and suggestions, I am grateful to James Epstein, Paul Freedman, Alison Hirsch, Elisabeth Israels Perry, David Ransel, Bonnie Roe, Philip Soergel, Thomas Tentler, Margo Todd, and Kristin Zapalac.
1. Cathechismus (Nuremberg, 1543);Google Scholartranslated in Strauss, Gerald, Luther's House of Learning: Indoctrination of the Young in the German Reformation (Baltimore & London, 1978), 239.Google Scholar Cf. similar references by Luther in “Ein Sermon von dem Sakrament der Taufe” (1519); D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Weimar, 1883ff.) (hereafter WA), 2:734.Google Scholar
2. Bron, Lester K., ed. and trans., The Education of a Christian Prince (1516) (New York, 1936), 170.Google Scholar
3. See, for example, Schochet, Gordon J., The Authoritarian Family and Political Attitudes in Seventeenth-Century England: Patriarchalism in Political Thought (New Brunswick, 1988), esp. 18–36 on earlier versions of this tradition in the works of Plato, Aristotle, and several medieval political theorists.Google Scholar See also Tellenbach, Hubertus, ed., Das Vaterbild im Abendland, 2 vols. (Stuttgart, 1978).Google Scholar
4. See especially Ariès's, Phillippe pioneering Centuries of Childhood, trans. Baldick, Robert (New York, 1965);Google Scholar as well as the controversial Stone, Lawrence, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500–1800 (New York, 1977);Google Scholar and Shorter, Edward, The Making of the Modern Family (New York, 1975).Google Scholar For an introduction to the ever-growing body of scholarly literature on this topic—only recently moving away form refutations or refinements of Stone's schema—see the historiographical overview in Diefendorf, Barbara B., “Family Culture, Renaissance Culture,” Renaissance Quarterly 40, no. 4 (Winter 1987): 661–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5. See especially Muchembled, Robert, Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France, 1400–1750 (Baton Rouge, 1985), 201ff., 227–30.Google Scholar
6. Wiesner, Merry, Working Women in Renaissance Germany (New Brunswick, NJ, 1986);Google ScholarRoper, Lyndal, The Holy Household: Women and Morals in Reformation Augsburg (Oxford, 1989).Google Scholar Scholarship on sixteenth-century women, religious reform, and the patriarchal family has recently grown at a phenomenal rate. In addition to the two works already mentioned, see Wiltenberg, Joy, “Disorderly Women and Female Power in the Popular Literature of Early Modern England and Germany” (Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1984);Google Scholar and the recent historiographical overview of Wiesner, Merry on women and the Reformation, “Women's Response to the Reformation,” in Po-Chia Hsia, R., ed., The German People and the Reformation (Ithaca, 1988), 148–71.Google Scholar
7. Roper, Holy Household, 68–69, 115 ff.; Wiesner, Working Women, 6ff., 190ff.
8. Robisheaux, Thomas W., Rural Society and the Search for Order in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge, 1989), 164ff.CrossRefGoogle ScholarZapalac, Kristin E. S., “In His Image and Likeness”: Political Iconography and Religious Change in Regensburg, 1500–1600 (Ithaca, 1990), 135–66.Google Scholar
9. Musculus, Andreas, Wider den Eheteuffel (Frankfurt, 1556), Stambaugh, Ria, ed., Teufelbücher in Auswahl (Berlin, 1970–1980), 4:120, 123–24.Google Scholar
10. Spiegel der Hauszucht (Nuremberg, 1565). Aiii v, cited in Strauss, Luther's House of Learning, 241.Google Scholar
11. Muchembled, Popular Culture; and see below note 80.
12. For a historiographical overview of scholarship on marriage and the Reformation, see Harrington, J. F., “‘An Estate Pleasing to God and Man’: Secular and Religious Reform of Marriage in the Palatinate, 1555–1619,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1989), 4–16.Google Scholar The two pioneering works on German and Swiss legal reforms of marriage are Köhler, Walther, Zürcher Ehegericht und Genfer Konsistorium, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1932–1942);Google Scholar and Wendel, Francois, Le mariage à Strasbourg à l'époque de la réforme: 1520–1692 (Strasbourg, 1928);Google Scholar studies in English, especially Ozment, Steven, When Fathers Ruled: Family Life in Reformation Europe (Cambridge, MA, & London, 1983);Google ScholarSafley, Thomas Max, Let No Man Put Asunder: The Control of Marriage in the German Southwest: A Comparative Study, 1550–1600 (Kirksville, MO, 1984);Google Scholar and Roper, Holy Household.
13. See Harrington, ‘An Estate,” chap. 2.
14. Though some modern scholars have accepted such polemical estimates at face value (cf. esp. Ozment, When Fathers Ruled, 1ff., 25–31, 49), evidence for such illicit but valid unions is notoriously difficult to come by, particularly before the sixteenth century.
15. More, Thomas, Utopia, trans. & ed. Ogned, H. V. S. (Arlington Heights, IL, 1949), 58–59;Google ScholarTelle, Emile, Erasme de Rotterdam el le septième sacrament (Geneva, Rotterdam, 1954), 350, 359;Google ScholarBrenz, Johannes, Wie in Ehesachen (Wittenberg, 1531), B 4a;Google Scholar Ozment, When Fathers Ruled, 28–29.
16. Screech, M. A., The Rabelaisian Marriage (London, 1958), 50–51;Google Scholar and cf. Jeande Coras, Des Mariages clandestinement et irreverement contractés (1557).
17. On the twelfth-century formation of the canonical principles of de presenti and de futuro vows, see Esmein, Adhémar, Le mariage en droit canonique, 2 vols., 2nd ed. (Paris, 1929), esp. 1:80ff.;Google Scholar and most recently, Brundage, James, Law, Sex and Christian Society in Europe (Chicago & London, 1987), esp. 229–324.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
18. D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Weimar, 1883ff.) (hereafter WA), vol. 30/3 Von Ehesachen, 211–12.Google Scholar See also Harrington, “An Estate,” esp. 34–48.
19. The most common ecclesiastical punishment threatened was excommunication. Cf. consistency from thirteenth-century synodal decrees of Trier and Cologne to fifteenth- and sixteenth-century decrees of Speyer's episcopal synods. Lindner, Klaus M., “Courtship and the Courts: Marriage and Law in Southern Germany, 1350–1550” (Th.D. thesis, Harvard, 1988), 48ff.;Google ScholarCollectio processum synodalium et constitutiones ecclesiasticarum Diocesis Spirensis ab anno 1247 usque ad annum 1720 (Bruchsal, 1786), 1:9–10, 17–18, 26, 55, 71, 115, 2:5, 15–16, 152, 217, and 385–91. See Harrington, “An Estate,” chap. 3 on secular punishments.Google Scholar
20. Cf., for example, fifteenth-century humanist idealizations of the paterfamilias in Herlihy, David, Medieval Households (Cambridge, MA, 1985), 115–17;Google Scholar and Yost, John, “Changing Attitudes towards Married Life in Civic and Christian Humanism,” Occasional Papers of the American Society for Reformation Research 1 (1977): 151–66.Google Scholar
21. Schubert, Adam, “Der Sieman/Das ist wider den Hausteuffell (Weissenfels, 1564),” in Stambaugh, Teufelbücher, 2:244–45.Google Scholar
22. Köhler, Zürcher Ehegericht, 2:381.
23. For some of the vast scholarship on the Hausväterliteratur, see especially Hofman, Julius, Die “Hausväterliteratur” und die “Predigten über den christlichen Hausstand,” Lehre vom Hause und Bildung für das häusliche Leben im 16., 17., und 18. Jahrhundert (Weinheim, 1959);Google Scholar and the more recent Brunner, Otto, “Das ‘Ganze Haus’ und die alteuropäische Ökonomik,” in Brunner, O., ed., Neue Wege der Sozialgeschichte (Göttingen, 1968), 33–61.Google Scholar Of the Hausväterliteratur in Miller, Thomas F., “Mirror for Marriage: Lutheran Views of Marriage and the Family, 1520–1600” (Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1981);Google ScholarDugan, Eileen, “Images of Marriage and Family Life in Nördlingen: Moral Preaching and Devotional Literature, 1589–1712” (Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University, 1989);Google Scholar and especially Ozment, When Fathers Ruled, chaps. 2 & 4.
24. See especially Adam Schubert, Wider den Hausteuffell, in Stambaugh, , Teufelbücher, 11:271–307Google Scholar and Musculus, , Wider den EheteufelGoogle Scholar, also in Stambaugh, 4:94–96, on their exegetic praise of marriage and the family. The most popular Pauline and New Testament citations in this respect included 1 Cor. 11, 1 Tim. 5, 1 Titus 2, 1 Pet. 3, and all of Ephesians. See, for example, Daul, Florian, Tanzteufel: Das ist/wider den leichtfertigen/unverschempten Welt tanz—und sonderlich wider die Gotts sucht und ehvergessene Nachttenze (Frankfurt, 1567)Google Scholar, in Stambaugh, , Teufelbücher, 11:97.Google Scholar
25. Schubert, Hausteuffell, in Stambaugh, , Teufelbücher, 11:244–45, repeats the traditional justification.Google Scholar
26. Wifely subservience as a punishment for Eve's sin was a frequently cited scriptural justification among proponents of strong patriarchal authority. See, for instance, Zwey Schöne Newe Liede—wie man ain Braut ansingen soll (Straubing, n.d. (ca. 1580s)Google Scholar cited in Wiltenberg, “Disorderly Women,” 124; and Schubert, Hausteuffell, in Stambaugh, , Teufelbücher, 11:241–43.Google Scholar On the new emphasis of sixteenth-century Protestants on the fourth commandment (fifth, by Calvinist reckoning), see Bossy, John, Christianity in the West (Oxford, 1985), 116ff.Google Scholar
27. Glitell, Caspar, Auff das Evangelion Johannis am anderen Capitel gepredigt zu Eysleben Im 1524 (Zwickau, 1524), 4r, 7v. The scriptural source is Eph. 5:22–24.Google Scholar
28. Wiltenberg, “Disorderly Women,” 22; Strauss, Luther's House of Learning, 117ff.; and Ozment, When Fathers Ruled, 8ff. The latter's characterization of the family as “the cradle of citizenship” seems particularly apt in view of the description of marriage in Luther's Grosser Katechismus (1529), as the mother of all earthly laws and the model for all earthly politics (WA 30/5, 152).
29. Cf. Luther, “Em Sermon von der Taufe” (1519), WA 2:734; and Calvin, , “Commentaries on Genesis 2:18, 1 Timothy 5:16ff.,” in Baum, G. et al. , eds., Ionnis Calvini Opera quae supersunt omnia (Brunswick and Berlin, 1863ff.).Google Scholar
30. Hoppenrod, Andreas, Wider den Hurenteuffel (Eisleben, 1565)Google Scholar, in Stambaugh, , Teufelbücher, 11:184–86;Google Scholar Schubert, Hausteuffell, in Stambaugh 2:285, 296–98.
31. Hoppenrod, Hurenteuffel, in Stambaugh, Teufelbücher, 11:186.
32. Musculus, Wider den Eheteuffel, in Stambaugh, Teufelbücher, 4:126.
33. “Von Ehesachen,” WA 30/3:208–9; translated in Robisheaux, , Rural Society, 99.Google Scholar
34. 1563 EGO; EKO, 300. The abbreviations used here and in the following notes are
The equating of children with property (and even livestock) was a frequent one (see also 1563 EGO; EKO 294) that apparently has escaped the notice of those historians who argue without qualification that “from prenatal care to their indoctrination in the schools, there is every evidence that sixteenth-century Protestant children were considered special and were loved by their parents and teachers, their nurture the highest of human vocations, their proper moral and vocational training humankind's best hope” (Ozment, When Fathers Ruled, 177).
35. Electoral ordinances repeatedly characterized such unions as “göttlichen, natürlichen und bürgerlichen rechten, der erbar- und billickhait zuwider und entgegen.” 1556 Von den Ehesachen, EKO 221ff.; 1563 EGO, EKO 294ff.
36. 1556 Von den Ehesachen; EKO 222; Cf. also 1562 EO, EKO 281ff.; 1563 EGO, EKO 294ff. For the most complete overviews of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Protestant marriage law, see Dieterich, Hartweg, Das protestantische Eherecht in Deutschland his zur Mitte des 17. Jahrhunderts (Munich, 1970), esp. 56ff. and 95ff.Google Scholar on clandestine marriage; and Schwab, Dieter, Grundlagen und Gestalt der staatlichen Ehegesetzgebung in der Neuzeit (Bielefeld, 1967).Google Scholar
37. 1562 EO; EKO 280–81.
38. See Harrington, “An Estate,” esp. chaps. 2 and 3.
39. For a highly detailed account of the Tridentine debates on clandestine marriage, see Lettman, R., Die Diskussion über klandestine Ehen und die Einführung einer zur Gültigkeit verpflichtenden Eheschliessungsform auf dem Konzil von Trent (Münsterische Beiträge zur Theologie, 31) (Münster, 1967).Google Scholar See also Jedni, H. Hubert, Crisis and Closure of the Council of Trent, trans. Graf, Dom Ernst (London, 1957), esp. 142ff.Google Scholar, and the text of the Tametsi decree itself in Schroeder, H. J., The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent (Rockford, IL, 1978), 183–85.Google Scholar
40. Bishop Eberhard of Speyer's introduction of Trent's Tametsi on 3 July 1582 was his first reform act after coronation earlier that year. It was reissued by his successor, von Sötern, Christoph on 15 July 1614. Cf. similarities of 1582 ordinance (GLA 67/426, 32r–39r; Collectio, 385) with predecessor ordinances of Wissembourg (1577) and Joehlingen and Wäschbach (1580) (GLA 10945, 423ff.)Google Scholar; Landsmann, O., Wissembourg. Un siècle de son histoire; 1480–1590 (Rixheim, 1903), 170.Google Scholar
41. Cf. municipal codes of Worms (1498) and Freiburg (1520), and territorial codes of Solms (1571) and Bavaria (1553), in Beyerle, Franz, ed., Quellen zur Neueren Privatrechtsgeschichte Deutschlands (Weimar, 1936ff.) vol. 1, part 1: 7, 215, 302; vol. 1, part 2: 220; vol. 2, part 1: 236–37.Google Scholar
42. 12 January 1598; StAS IB/8-II, 193v.
43. 8 May 1595; StAS IB/8-II, 11v.
44. At least 23 youths (28.8 percent) attempted to outmaneuver such parental objections with suits of their own, only to meet with the same disappointing result. Robisheaux, Rural Society, 108–9. Cf. similar results in marriage court of Reutlingen for roughly the same period, where 97 percent of all cases (95 total) involved disputed vows, 79 percent of which were declared non-binding. Allen, Richard, “Crime and Punishment in Sixteenth-Century Reutlingen,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1980), 249–50.Google Scholar
45. Flandrin, Jean-Louis, Les amours paysannes: Amour et sexualité dans les campagnes de l'ancienne France (XVIe–XIXe siècle) (Paris, 1975), 55.Google Scholar
46. 1556 Von den Ehesachen; EKO 222. Cf. many similar municipal and territorial ordinances cited in Dieterich, Das protestantische Eherecht, 200–201.
47. 1563 EGO; EKO 294. Cf. an earlier version of the same in 1556 Von den Ehesachen; EKO 221.
48. 1563 EGO; EKO 290.
49. For Catholics, see Tametsi, chapter 9 (Schroeder, Decrees of the Council of Trent, 189), and 1582 marriage ordinance of the Bishopric of Speyer, where pastors were similarly instructed not to witness forced marriages (Collectio, 389). Cf. the Palatinate's 1556 Von den Ehesachen; EKO 222. Electoral ordinances, however, left determination of parental “Zwang” up to the discretion of the Eherichter, based on both circumstances and canon law. 1563 EGO; EKO, 198.
50. 1563 EGO; EKO 281; 297–98. Cf. predecessor 1556 Von den Ehesachen (EKO 223); and 1562 EO (EKO 281); and below, note 53.
51. Dieterich, Das protestantische Eherecht, 121–26, 154–55, 200ff. In the Electorate, see 1563 EO (EKO, 280–81) and 1563 EGO (295ff.); cf. examples of Zürich and Ulm (Köhler, Zürcher Ehegericht, 1:93–103; 1:49–50), Nuremberg (Harvey, Judith Walters, “The Impact of the Reformation on Nürnberg Marriage Laws, 1520–35” [Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University, 1972], 48–60)Google Scholar, and Strassbourg (Wendel, Le mariage, 94ff.; Köhler, Zürcher Ehegericht, 2:435ff.)
52. Augsburg (Roper, Holy Household, 160) and Hohenlohe (Robisheaux, Rural Society, 108) are the only two examples I have found of annulled consummated vows. Some authorities even made marriage mandatory in such cases; cf. consistorial ordinances of Geneva (1541) and Brandenburg (1527); Friedberg, Emil, Das Recht der Eheschliessung in seiner geschichtlichen Entwicklung (Leipzig, 1865; reprint: Aalen, 1965), 221–22.Google Scholar
53. 24 April 1612; LAS 4/1631.
54. Vogler, Bernard, Vie religieuse en pays rhènan dans la seconde moitié du XVIème siècle (Lille, 1974), 2:978.Google Scholar Not only was the youth abused by his wife, but also by his father, who continued to beat him even after the forced marriage. The Bacharach consistory appears to have been particularly sensitive to cases of domestic violence, censoring thirteen parents in thirty years for verbal and physical cruelty to their children. Vogler, 2:956ff.; and Harrington, “An Estate,” 299ff.
55. 1563 EGO; EKO 311. Cf. similar instructions in territorial codes of Baden (1495) and Prussia (1577); Beyerle, Quellen, vol. 1, part 1: 148, 377.
56. 1562 EO; EKO 280.
57. Roper describes the transformation in Augsburg as a “gradual shift in the center of political gravity” from the guilds to the council. Roper, Holy Household, 69, 73ff.; also Zapalac, “In His Image and Likeness,” 135–66, esp. 142ff.
58. Sabean, David, Power in the Blood: Popular Culture and Village Discourse in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge, 1984), 137–38.Google Scholar
59. 1465 and 1487 ordinances of the Palatine city required, like many other muncipalities, that strangers wishing to marry into the community bring certificates establishing legitimate origins to the town council before exchanging vows (Lehmann, Johann-Georg, Urkundliche Geschichte der ehemaligen freien Reichstadt und jetzigen Bundesfrstung Landau in der Pfaltz [Landau, 1851], 103).Google Scholar
60. Wiesner, Working Women, 78.
61. Gillis, John, For Better or for Worse: British Marriages, 1600 to the Present (New York & Oxford, 1985), 86ff.Google Scholar
62. Roper, Holy Household, 138. A 17 March 1589 decree of the Speyer town council similarly required its own approval of all marriages within the city, although enforcement is unknown. StAS IB/6 131r, 448r.
63. Roper, Holy Household, 139.
64. 1563 EGO, EKO 303–5, and see also 318. Canon law, on the other hand, recognized all such verba de presenti between unequals as binding except in cases of error. On continuing prohibition of marriages between free and unfree persons, see. Coing, , Europäisches Privatrecht, vol. 1, Älteres Gemeines Recht (1500–1800) (Munich, 1985), 198ff.Google Scholar
65. 1553 Landesordnung of Bavaria (Beyerle, Quellen, 3:283–85) and contemporary customary from the Prince-Bishop's village of Gleisweiler in Weizsäcker, Wilhelm, Pfalzische Weistumer (Speyer, 1957–1968), 664–65.Google Scholar
66. 1563 EGO; EKO 294.
67. On increasing ecclesiastical regulation of marriage among sixteenth-century Protestants and Catholics, see Harrington, “An Estate,” chap. 4, esp. 227–37.
68. See Martin, Victor, Le gallicanisme et la réforme Catholique: Essai historique sur l'introduction des décrets du Concile de Trente (1563–1615) (Paris, 1919), esp. 166ff.Google Scholar
69. With the Edict of Nantes (1598), the royal authority of the marrying priest was extended to Protestant ministers as well. Later edicts of 1606, 1629, 1639, and 1697 served as further reinforcements of an already undisputed royal role in all aspects of marital control, especially civil litigation. Traer, J., Marriage Laws and the Family in Eighteenth-Century France (Ithaca, 1980), 32–35;Google Scholar Esmein, Le mariage, 1:33–34.
70. 1519 customary from Mannweiler (Grimm, Jacob, ed., Weisthümer, 2nd ed. [reprint: Berlin, 1957], 5:667)Google Scholar. The fee was split between the Elector and the local commune. Cf. similar fines in Eikel (Westphalia) of 2 fl. (1 1/2 fl. for middelmessige and 1 fl. for allerarmste), and 5 fl. or fleurschetz in Herxheim am Berg, both early-sixteenth century. Grimm, Weisthümer, 3:64; 5:606.
71. Cf. earlier (mid-fifteenth-century) customary of Kyburg in Zürich as well as the more common later examples of Nalbacher Thal in the Saarland (1532) and Dammerkirch in Alsace (1578). Grimm, Weisthümer, 2:27, 4:29, 338.
72. GLA 61/10951, 3–4 (14 May 1598); 388–89 (April 1602).
73. Sabean, David Warren, Property, Production and Family in Neckarhausen, 1700–1870 (Cambridge, 1990), 26.Google Scholar
74. The earliest I have found is a 1440 Ulm statute (Köhler, Zürcher Ehegericht, 2:3). See also 1498 Worms Reformatio, requiring city's notary or at least five witnesses (vol. 5; Beyerle, Quellen, vol. 1, part 1: 212ff.) and 1523 customary from St. Gallen (Grimm, Weisthümer, 6:370).
75. Beyerle, Quellen, vol. 1, part 1: 275–76.
76. Ibid., 123–24, 209, 283.
77. Ibid., 6–7, 125, 232; Hess, Rolf-Dieter, Familien- und Erbrecht im württembergischen Landrecht von 1555 (Stuttgart, 1968), 52, 91ff.Google Scholar
78. See civil codes of Solms (1571) and Saxony (1572); Beyerle, Quellen, vol. 1, part 2: 210, 283.
79. StAS IA/10, 43v (1535). Cf. customaries of Altselten, Marbach, Bernag, Balgach, and Wildenhaus in St. Gallen (1475 & ca. 1500); Buenzen im Aargau (1568): and Mü;lhausen in the Palatinate, all limiting the Morgengabe to 10 lb. Pfennig. Grimm 5:74, 203, 205; and Arnold, Hermann, “Das eheliche Güterrecht von Mülhausen im Elsass am Ausgange des Mittelalters,” in Beyerle, Konrad, ed., Deutschrechtliche Beiträge; Forschungen und Quellen des Deutschen Rechts (Heidelberg, 1908), 21–25.Google Scholar
80. Both Sabean, Property, Production and Family, 92ff., 187, and Rebel, Hermann, Peasant Classes. The Bureaucratization of Property and Family Relations under Early Habsburg Absolutism, 1511–1636 (Princeton, 1983) discuss state creation of a peasant aristocracy of “good householders,” but Rebel takes the social impact considerably further: “This notion [that relations to the house became more important to one's kin]…tears asunder the positivist perceptions of the relations between role and kin relations at least as far as the society in question here is concerned. Relationships that appear to be personal—based on sentiment, shared beliefs, and the affectionate interplay of family members—were in fact something different altogether” (178). Unfortunately, Rebel's description of the centralized “invader” state of Upper Austria (see especially 159ff.) does not only appear inapplicable to other German territories, but (despite thorough analysis of 867 household inventories) his characterization of the key resulting familial/economic relationship—namely between the pensioning stem elder (Ausz¨gler) and dispossessed children—depends on one contemporary example (172).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
81. Cf. civil codes of Nuremberg (1479), Bavaria (1518), and Saxony (1572). Beyerle, Quellen, vol. 1, part 1: 8–9, vol. 1, part 2: 49–50; 283ff.; Ogris, Werner, “Gütergemeinschaft,” in Erler, A. and Kaufmann, E., eds., Handwörterbuch zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte (Berlin, 1964) (hereafter HRG), 1:1871ff.Google Scholar, and “Errungenschaftsgemeinschaft,” HRG 1:1004–6.Google Scholar
82. Huebner, Rudolf, A History of Germanic Private Law, trans. Philbrick, Francis S. (London, 1918), 625–27.Google Scholar Only the 1555 territorial code of Württemberg rejected the husband's Vormundschaft outright, yet even it resisted granting the wife full rights over her marital property and by the revision of the code twelve years later had reverted to the previous, traditional practice (Hess, Familien- und Erbrecht, 87–88).
83. Cf. Landrecht 2.10 and synonymous reference to “Zugelt oder Heüratgut, dotem vel donationem” but lack of any clear distinction between husband's and wife's property as well as an obvious preference for limited communal goods (Errungenschaftsgemeinschaft), leading Hcss to conclude “Die Grundstruktur des Familienrechts blieb aber deutschrechtlich“ (Familien- und Erbrecht, 91–94, 201).
84. Cf. differing conclusions of Fichtner, Paula Sutter, Protestantism and Primogeniture in Early Modern Germany (New Haven, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Robisheaux, Rural Society, 81–82, 122ff., on religious and dynastic factors in this process.
85. Sabean argues that the entire debate on partible versus impartible inheritance practices is actually a false one and that most areas were typified by very complicated and interconnected systems between these two artificial poles. See Property, Production, and Family, 13ff., 186–87.
86. Sabean, Property, Production, and Family, 15; and Robisheaux, Rural Society, 81–83, 123–38 on unsuccessful attempts by dukes of Hohenlohe to enforce strict impartibility in a region where versions of it had already become customary by the fifteenth century. See also Weitzel, H., “Primogenitur,” HRG 3:1955–56.Google Scholar
87. Sixteenth-century jurists disagreed on the validity of statutory regulation of marriage contracts for subjects living outside of their territory, but all agreed that such contracts could make stipulations counter to local custom (Coing, Europäisches Privatrecht, 151ff.). The strategic flexibility permitted by such contracts is the subject of my nearly-completed study of about 150 contracts from the Prince-Bishopric of Speyer and Palatine-Electorate during 1540–1620.
88. Both the 1529 Strassbourg marriage ordinance (Wendel, Le mariage, 170) and later 1563 EGO of the Palatine-Electorate (EKO 323–324) stipulate traditional pre-Reformation division of marital goods. Cf. also Safley, “Civic Morality and Domestic Economy,” 180–81, in Hsia, The German People, on similar developments in Basel and Lindau.
89. Landesarchiv Koblenz 555/125/2, 259. Cf. similar 1558 case cited in Vogler, , Vie religieuse 2:1108, of a young Protestant suitor anxious about his own clergy, who sought out a Catholic priest to marry him and his fiancée.Google Scholar
90. Landesarchiv Koblenz 555/83/3, 621.
91. The 1614 reissuance of the Prince-Bishop of Speyer's marriage ordinance had particularly harsh words for those young couples who left the territory to contract “heimliche verporgene Ehehafften,” without their lord's permission or release from serfdom (15 July 1614; Sammlung, 36).
92. Interpretations of the precise meaning and significance of “patriarchy” continue to vary greatly among scholars. Even if we accept the intentionally broad definition of Lerner, Gerda—“the manifestation and institutionalization of male dominance over women in the family and the extension of male dominance over women in society in general” in The Creation of Patriarchy (Oxford, 1986), 239Google Scholar—the exact origins of such social and political domination remain highly debatable. See also the brief summary in Tierney, Helen, ed., Women's Studies Encyclopedia (New York, 1991), 265–67.Google Scholar
93. Even one of the staunchest defenders of the “innovativeness” of Protestant marital reforms concedes that “sufficiently bold children could have their way almost as easily under Protestant regimes as under Catholic, despite the new marital legislation” (Ozment, When Fathers Ruled, 43). Unfortunately, I am not aware of any statistical evidence from consistorial or bailiff records that would convincingly support either position.
94. For theories of “Oligarchisierung,” see especially Naujoks, Eberhard, Obrigkeitsgedanke, Zunftverfassung und Reformation: Studien zur Verfassungsgeschichte von Ulm, Esslingen und Schwäbish Gmünd (Stuttgart, 1958);Google ScholarBornkamm, Heinrich, “Die Frage der Obrigkeit im Reformationszeitalter,” in idem., Das Jahrhundert der Reformation. Gestalten und Kräfte, 2nd ed. (Göttingen, 1961), 291–315.Google Scholar
95. Both Zapalac and Schochet see the origins of this new paternalism in secular and religious spheres as chiefly a product of Protestant theological teachings, in Schochet's case, the absolutist response to the “inadvertent impetus” given to constitutionalists by Protestant teachings on nature and the need for conventions. Zapolac, “In His Image and Likeness,” 150–51; Schochet, The Authoritarian Family, xv–xviii, 55ff. For a discussion of both kinds of religious impact on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century discourse, see Skinner, Quentin, Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. 2 (Cambridge, 1978), especially 81–108, and 189–238.Google Scholar
96. Roper argues that “gender relations…far from being tangentially affected by the Reformation, were at the crux of the Reformation itself” (Holy Household, 5), yet locates the source of the patriarchal reaction in economic rather than religious dynamics.
97. Robisheaux, Rural Society, 258.
98. See esp. Mervyn James's study of political language in his proposed transformation of medieval English “lineage” society into a modern “civil” society in Family, Lineage, & Society (Oxford, 1974)Google Scholar and more recently, Society, Politics, and Culture: Studies in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1986), especially 270–307CrossRefGoogle Scholar: “The concept of order and the Northern Rising, 1569.” On the conceptualization of political authority in early-modem Germany, see the extensive bibliography on Herrschaft in Robisheaux, Rural Society, 274ff.
99. “The father was, from this point of view, an agent essential to the centralization and the ongoing stability of society to the extent that millions of agents had a clear and unswerving perception of the political system” (Muchembled, Popular Culture, 201ff.).
100. Strauss, Luther's House of Learning, 118. Cf. similar conclusions of Roper, Holy Household, 162ff.; and Robisheaux, Rural Society, 122ff.
