When Fathers Ruled

Family Life in Reformation Europe

ISBN 9780674951211

Publication date: 10/15/1985

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.

Praise

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
When Fathers Ruled is the work of one of America’s foremost historians of Reformation theology… [Ozment shows] a willingness to take controversial stands on major historiographical issues, [and] a prose style rich in striking formulations and vivid anecdotes.

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

—Journal of Modern History
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
When Fathers Ruled is nothing less than a superbly written encomium to the early modern family… Using a variety of fresh sources, Ozment offers his readers conclusions that are controversial and provocative. Most significantly, his work should promote a reevaluation of the early modern family in its social context and in the context of Protestant virtues and vices.

—The Sixteenth Century Journal
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

Author

Steven Ozment is McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History at Harvard University. He is the author of Flesh and Spirit and The Bürgermeister’s Daughter.