Category Archives: Reformation

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July 30, 2014

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John Calvin, Reformation

Execution and Banishment: The Key to a Small Prison Population

It in interesting to note that Geneva’s prison

Did not house any long-term prisoners. Imprisonment for long periods of time was simply not a punishment used in sixteenth-century Geneva. Even people sentenced to life in prison as the result of criminal trial were usually released within a few months, often paroled to the custody of relatives. Most prison sentences lasted only a few days (Witte and Kingdon, p. 69).

There were several reasons for this, but two of the major ones were:
Geneva executed for a lot more crimes than we do. Witte and Kingdon note that

Criminal punishments would involve…to a degree we would find appalling, capital punishment by a town executioner hired by the city for the purpose. There were a number of rather gruesome ways in which capital punishment was administered. Traitors might be beheaded, thieves hanged, notorious adulteresses drowned, heretics or witches burned. Every city of the period maintained an execution ground, usually with several rotting corpses of executed criminals on display, to let visitors know that this community maintained law and order. 

It is important to note that the Consistory, which I discussed in an earlier blog post, did not have the power of the sword. They could only recommend the civil court look into something and the civil court would decide the appropriate punishment. The Consistory could neither decide someone should be executed nor carry it out, although there was interaction between the civil courts and the pastors of Geneva. 
Also Geneva banished serious offenders from the city. Throughout the book Witte and Kingdon note that often those who would not receive instruction or committed serious sins or crimes were to get out of the city or be whipped and some cases executed. One example they cite is a man and wife who ran a brothel. They were given seven days to get out of Geneva. If they ever came back they would be whipped and then driven out again. 
The prison population was small and the terms short because serious crimes were dealt with by execution or banishment. 
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April 10, 2014

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Reformation, Women

The Death of the Cloister

Steven Ozment on how the Reformers went about destroying the idea that a nun was superior to a housewife.

In challenging the celibate ideal, the Protestant critics were particularly concerned to expose the repressive nature of the nunnery, to free nuns from the cloisters, and allow them to rejoin society.

Unlike many modern takes on nunneries, the Reformers viewed them as detrimental to what women were called to do by God and by nature: be wives and mothers.

Also going to the convent did not help women escape male rule. Ozment describes how the monks would often descend upon the nunneries and require the women to do their laundry, cook them food, etc. He noted that most nunneries were run by monks on some level.

Not only did the nunnery offer no safe escape from male rule, it imposed sexual self-denial an created guilt among the unsuccessful, burdens no honorable wife was forced to bear.

One nun, “recalled having watched with horror as sisters in the cloister died uncertain of God’s mercy and in fear of his judgment, having failed to find consolation in their vows and religious works.”

No propaganda proved more effective in exposing the cloister than the testimony of former nuns, whom the reformers encouraged to write and publish accounts of their lives under vows.

By the end of the Reformation age, “both experience and belief had set Protestants unalterably against the celibate life. To them it contradicted both the Bible and human nature, and created more personal and social problems than it solved; as an alternative vocation to homemaking, the cloister was deemed inhumane and antisocial.”

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April 3, 2014

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Children, Parenting, Reformation

A Most Fearsome Specter

More from Steven Ozment:

It is a great, self-serving myth of the modern world that the children in former times were raised as near slaves by domineering, loveless fathers who owed them nothing, the home a training ground for the docile subjects of absolute rulers. To the contrary, from prenatal care to their indoctrination in schools, there is every evidence that 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. Parenthood was a conditional trust, not an absolute right, and the home was a model of benevolent and just rule for the “state” to emulate.

In the sixteenth century children were raised and educated above all to be social beings; in this sense they had more duties toward their parents and society than they had rights independent of them. This did not mean that the family lacked an internal identity or that loving relationships failed to develop between spouses, between parents and children, and among siblings. Privacy and social extension were not perceived contradictory. The great fear was not that children would be abused by adult authority but that children might grow up to place their own individual rights above society’s common good. To the people of Reformation Europe no specter was more fearsome than a society in which the desires of individuals eclipsed their sense of social duty. The prevention of just that possibility became the common duty of every Christian parent, teacher, and magistrate. 

How striking this last paragraph is when compared to modern rhetoric about rights.  Almost every child in this country is raised to think about themselves, their needs, their wants, and their desires. The fundamental question they ask is, “What can you do for me?” They come not to serve or do their duty to family, state, and community. Rather they come to be served. Service to their fellow man is the least of their concerns. Their own rights their greatest concern. In that way children of today are raised to have a fundamentally different orientation that children of the previous generations. The blame for our children turning out this way is to be found in Ozment’s last sentence. Parents, teachers, and magistrates fail to teach selfless duty and fail to model it.

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March 17, 2014

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Book Review, Reformation

Book Review: When Fathers Ruled

When Fathers Ruled: Family Life in Reformation Europe (Studies in Cultural History)When Fathers Ruled: Family Life in Reformation Europe by Steven E. Ozment
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A brief, but insightful introduction to the family during the Reformation. The book is focused on places like Zurich and Basel. What I found helpful is that he did not focus on Geneva. I know a lot about Geneva, but little about the Reformation in other areas. The reader is taken into the minds of early 16th century Christians by way of primary firsthand accounts. This is the book’s strength and its weakness. We get a worm’s view of how men and women viewed marriage and children. But there is no real bird’s eye view. It is the difference between a memoir of a man at war and a story about the war. This was more a memoir. Ozment does a good job undoing many false ideas about husbands, wives, marriage, and children that moderns place on the Reformation age. It was also filled with helpful facts and data. The chapter about bearing children was very fascinating, as Ozment looked into a medical book from the age for information on the problems associated with pregnancy and birth. Some of it was gut-wrenching, such as all the ways to removed a dead baby from the mother’s womb. I want to read more on this particular topic, but Ozment did a good job of clearing away some of my false conceptions.

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March 15, 2014

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Marriage, Reformation

Why Should You Marry Her?

Steven Ozment commenting on the difference between choosing a marriage partner in the Reformation and choosing one today. All punctuation is his, except the brackets.

Here we find a distinctive feature of early modern marriage [Reformation] that distinguishes it from modern practice [20th Century]. Physical attraction and emotional love were not viewed as essential conditions for marriage, although few doubted that they played a role; the love that drew husband and wife together was a mutual willingness to make sacrifices for one another, hence, a duty that developed within marriage. Such love emerged most readily between spouses who at the outset found one another worthy of respect and trust. Not “Do I desire and want this person?” but “Do I find this person honorable and companionable?” –that was the central question for a successful marriage.  For how could one make sacrifices for or become affectionately attached to a person one did not first respect and trust? Unlike the modern romantic approach to marriage, in which one “loves” another in spite of irreconcilable personal, religious, and/or social differences, the marriage counselors of Reformation Europe urged people to seek mates they believed they could learn to love because they first respected their persons and shared common values. 

It is interesting how opposite this is to today’s practice. We believe emotional love and physical attraction can overcome anything in marriage. Thus people think they can cross all sorts of boundaries, religious, economic, and social in marriage and everything will be fine. We see this all the time in the movies, where the rich guy falls in love with poor girl, etc. The reformers would not have refused to marry people from different strata, but they would have advised against it. We do not live in the exact same context as the reformers, but there is some wisdom in how they encouraged people to marry who came from similar economic, religious, and social backgrounds. But I must add there are times that the background should be ignored. John Calvin, a die hard paedobaptist, married a former Anabaptist. Luther married a nun. Wisdom is required.