Morals and moral regulation in Protestant France

Journal of Interdisciplinary History

Volumn 31, Issue 1, 2000, Pages 1-20

  Mentzer, Raymond A ^a  

^a MONTANA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 1642381871     PISSN: 00221953     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/002219500551460     Document Type: Article

References (76)

1. Philip Benedict, The Huguenot Population of France, 1600-1685: The Demographic Fate and Customs of a Religious Minority (Philadelphia, 1991), 51, 55.
2. Patricia Crawford, "Attitudes to Menstruation in Seventeenth-Century England," Past & Present, 91 (May 1981), 49-51.
3. Tarn-et-Garonne, I 1, Registre des délibérations du consistoire de l'Église Réformée de Montauban, fols. 21-21v, 22, 22v-23v, 27v, 34, 34v, 37, Archives Départementales (hereinafter AD).
4. Tarn-et-Garonne, I 1, fols. 256v, 257v, 274v, 276, AD. For the shortcomings commonly attributed to women, see Mentzer, "Disciplina nervus ecclesiae: The Calvinist Reform of Morals at Nimes," Sixteenth Century Journal, XVIII (1987), 89-115.
5. Gaillac is c. fifty kilometers east of Montauban and more than sixty-five kilometers along the meandering Tarn river. Tarn-et-Garonne, I 1, fols. 80v, 81v, AD.
6. Montauban, 5 FF 2, Registre des sentences prononcées en matière criminelle par les consuls de Montauban (1534-1606), fol. 34v, Archives Municipales (hereinafter AM)- I am grateful to Philip Conner of the University of St. Andrews for bringing this document to my attention.
7. Heinz Schilling (trans. Stephen G. Burnett), "Confessionalization in the Empire: Religious and Societal Change in Germany between 1555 and 1620," in idem, Religion, Political Culture and the Emergence of Early Modern Society (Leiden, 1992), 236;
8. idem (ed.), Die reformierte Konfessionalisierung in Deutschland. Das Problem der "Zweiten Reformation" (Gütersloh, 1986);
9. Paul Münch, "Reformation of Life: Calvinism and Popular Culture in Germany around 1600: The Paradigm of Nassau-Dillenberg," in Leonardus Laeyendecker, Lammert G. Jansma, and Cornelius H. A. Verhaar (eds.), Experiences and Explanations: Historical and Sociological Explanations an Religion in Everyday Life (Ljouwert, 1990), 37-57.
10. Gerhard Oestreich (trans. David McLintock), Neostoicism and the Early Modern State (New York, 1982);
11. Geoffrey Parker, "The 'Kirk By Law Established' and the Origins of 'The Taming of Scotland': St. Andrews, 1559-1600," in Mentzer (ed.), Sin and the Calvinists: Morals Control and the Consistory in the Reformed Tradition (Kirksville, 1994), 159-197.
12. Schilling, "Confessionalization in the Empire," 205-246, esp. 207-210.
13. See the critical discussions in Joel F. Harrington and Helmut Walser Smith, "Confessionalization, Community and State Building in Germany, 1555-1870," Journal of Modern History, LXIX (1997), 77-101;
14. R. Po-Chia Hsia, Social Discipline in the Reformation: Central Europe, 1550-1750 (New York, 1989);
15. Heinrich Richard Schmidt, "Sozialdisziplinierung? Ein Plädoyer für das Ende des Etatismus in der Konfessionalisierungforschung," Historische Zeitschrift, CCLXV (1997), 639-682.
16. Schmidt, Dorf und Religion: reformierte Sittenzucht in Bemer Landgemeinden der Frühen Neuzeit (New York, 1995), 351-376;
17. Marc Forster, The Counter-Reformation in the Villages: Religion and Reform in the Bishopric of Speyer, 1560-1720 (Ithaca, 1992).
18. Robert M. Kingdon, Adultery and Divorce in Calvin's Geneva (Cambridge, Mass., 1995), 4, 99.
19. Schilling, "Reformierte Kirchenzucht als Sozialdisziplinierung? Die Tätigkeit des Emder Presbyteriums in den Jahren 1557-1562," in Wolfgang Ehbrecht and idem (eds.), Niederlande und Nordwestdeutschland, Studien zur Regional- und Stadtgeschichle Nordwestkontinentaleuropas im Mittelalter und in der Neuzeit (Cologne, 1983), 261-327.
20. Parker, "The 'Kirk By Law Established'," 159-197;
21. Michael F. Graham, The Uses of Reform: "Godly Discipline" and Popular Behavior in Scotland and Beyond, 1560-1610 (Leiden, 1996);
22. Herman Roodenburg, Onder Censuur. De kerkelijke tucht in de gereformeerde gemeente van Amsterdam, 1573-1700 (Hilversum, 1990);
23. Schmidt, Dorf und Religion, 61-67.
24. Several of Schilling's many statistical studies are available in English. See Schilling, "Calvinism and the Making of the Modern Mind," 41-68;
25. Schilling, idem, "Reform and Supervision of Family Life in Germany and the Netherlands," in Mentzer, Sin and the Calvinists, 15-61.
26. Janine Garrisson-Estèbe, Protestants du Midi, 1559-1598 (Toulouse, 1980);
27. Janine Estèbe and Bernard Vogler, "La genèse d'une société protestante: étude comparée de quelques registres consistoriaux languedociens et palatins vers 1600," Annales, XXXI (1976), 362-388;
28. Philippe Chareyre, Le consistoire de Nîmes, 1561-1685 (Montpellier, 1987), 4 v.
29. Didier Poton, De l'Édit à sa Révocation: Saint Jean de Gardonnenque 1593-1686 (Montpellier, 1988), 2 v.
30. The situation involving Gauside and Delhoste does not exhibit the same degree of gender inequality concerning punishment for fornication that marked eighteenth-century New England as described by Cornelia Hughes Dayton, "Taking the Trade: Abortion and Gender Relations in an Eighteenth-Century New England Village," William and Mary Quarterly, XLVIII (1991), 19-49.
31. Tarn-et-Garonne, I 1, fols. 221v, 227v, 231, 232, 236v-237, AD. For a similar case at Ganges in 1598, see François Martin, "Ganges, action de son consistoire et vie de son église aux 16e et 17e siècle," Revue de théologie et d'action évangéliques, II (1942), 138.
32. Estèbe and Vogler, "La genèse d'une société," 378;
33. Mentzer, "Calvinist Reform of Morals," 100-102.
34. Hérault, E Dépôt, Ganges GG 24, Registre du consistoire de l'Église Réformée de Ganges, fol. 98v, AD; Maurice Oudot de Dainville, "Le consistoire de Ganges àla fin du XVIe siècle," Revue d'histoire de l'Eglise de France, XVIII (1932), 477.
35. For similar cases of child abandonment and infanticide in England and elsewhere, see Robert W. Malcolmson, "Infanticide in the Eighteenth Century," in James S. Cockburn (ed.), Crime in England, 1550-1800 (Princeton, 1977), 187-209;
36. Keith Wrightson, "Infanticide in European History," Criminal Justice History, III (1982), 1-20.
37. Angus McLaren, Reproductive Rituals: The Perception of Fertility in England from the Sixteenth Century to the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1984), 89-111;
38. Angus McLaren, idem, "'Barrenness Against Nature': Recourse to Abortion in Pre-Industrial England," Journal of Sex Research, XVII (1981), 227;
39. Linda A. Pollock, "Embarking on a Rough Passage: The Experience of Pregnancy in Early-Modem Society," in Valerie Fildes (ed.), Women as Mothers in Pre-Indnstrial England (New York, 1990), 54-58;
40. John M. Riddle, Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), 7-10.
41. Yves-B. Brissaud, "L'infanticide à la fin du Moyen Age, ses motivations psychologiques et sa répression," Revue historique de droit français et étranger, L (1972), 229-256;
42. Merry E. Wiesner, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1993), 51-52; Ms 6563, Registre du consistoire de l'Église Réformée de Pont-de-Camarès, fols. 58-58v, Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal.
43. Medieval moralists invariably held women responsible for "offenses aimed at limiting births, including contraception, abortion and infanticide" (Silvana Vecchio, "The Good Wife," in Christine Klapisch-Zuber [ed.], A History of Women. II. Silence of the Middle Ages [Cambridge, Mass., 1992], 122).
44. To guard against too hasty a conclusion about what punishment Gausid'e might have faced, note the eighteenth-century example of two French women who "were acquitted of attempted abortion because they had used emmenagogues in good faith" (Etienne van de Walle, "Flowers and Fruits: Two Thousand Years of Menstrual Regulation," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XXVIII [1997], 197).
45. Jean-Noël Pelen, La Vallée Longue en Céranne: vie, traditions et proverbes du temps passé (Florac, 1975), 147;
46. Riddle, Contraception and Abortion, 16-24, 45, 51, 123;
47. Sylvie Laurent, Naître au Moyen Age. De la conception à la naissance: la grossesse et l'accouchement (XIIe-XVe siècle) (Paris, 1989), 147-150;
48. van de Walle, "Flowers and Fruits," 183-203;
49. Joan Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages: Medicine, Science, and Culture (Cambridge, 1993), 173-174, 250.
50. Pollock, "Rough Passage," 43-45;
51. Riddle, "Contraception and Early Abortion in the Middle Ages," in Vern L. Bullough and James A. Brundage (eds.), Handbook of Medieval Sexuality (New York, 1996), 261-277;
52. van de Walle, "Flowers and Fruits," 189.
53. Wiesner, Women and Gender, 64. Other commentators argued that abortion (and even contraception) was murder.
54. See, for example, McLaren, Reproductive Rituals, 110;
55. John T. Noonan, "An Almost Absolute Value in History," in idem (ed.), The Morality of Abortion: Legal and Historical Perspectives (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), 1-59;
56. Riddle, Contraception and Abortion, 110-114.
57. Tarn, I 8, Registre du consistoire de Saint-Amans, le 15 novembre 1599, AD.
58. Estèbe and Vogler, "La genèse d'une société protestante," 363, 381-382;
59. Garrisson-Estèbe, Protestants du Midi, 296-300;
60. Mentzer, "Calvinist Reform of Morals," 103-104.
61. By way of comparison, Schilling's massive statistical sampling of Calvinist ecclesiastical discipline at Emden from the mid-sixteenth through the late eighteenth century turned up only three cases of homosexuality and one case of abortion (Schilling, "Calvinism and the Making of the Modern Mind: Ecclesiastical Discipline of Public and Private Sin from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries," in idem, Civic Calvinism in Northwestern Germany and The Netherlands, Sixteenth to Nineteenth Centuries [Kirksville, 1991], 41-68).
62. For examples of infanticide prosecution in late medieval France, see Laurent, Naître au Moyen Age, 155-164.
63. In a study of the Essex Sessions and Assize records for the Elizabethan period, Frederick G. Emmison, Elizabethan Life: Disorder (Chelmsford, 1970), 156-157, concludes that infanticide was "woefully common" and that the great majority of the accused were unmarried women.
64. For English cases of men accused of intercourse with their own daughters - as well as instances of mother-son, brother-sister, and uncle-niece liaisons (in addition to a variety of other sexual relationships forbidden by ties of consanguinity and affinity) - see Emmison, Elizabethan Life: Morals and the Church Courts (Chelmsford, 1973), 36-44. Ms 222/1, Registre des délibérations du consistoire de l'Église Réformée de Castelmoron, fols. 54v, 55V-56, 60, 62, 63V-64, 65, Bibliothèque de la Société de l'Histoire du Protestantisme Français.
65. Tarn-et-Garonne, I 1, fols, 113v-114, AD. Cf. the New Testament, 1 Pet. 3: 7, "giving honor unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel."
66. That the activities of the consistory at Montauban seem to demonstrate less patriarchy than other institutions of that era does not mean that the pastors and elders who oversaw the efforts to reform the community were free of gender bias. However, considering how consular justice and the Montauban consistory handled the same sexual offenders during the 1590s, the consistory's treatment of men and women seems to have been more balanced. Schmidt, Dorf und Religion, even suggests an alliance between women and the Chorgericht, an institution equivalent to the consistory in the Bernese countryside. The Chorgericht often took the side of women in the attempt, for example, to end marital strife.
67. Tarn-et-Garonne, I 1, fols, 137v, 141, I41v, 142v-143, 163, 178, 178v, 188, 312, 314, 328, 329-329v, 332v, AD. Montauban, 5 FF 2, fols. 30v-39v, AM.
68. The Genevan laws of 1566 established, for instance, a graduated system of punishment: for simple fornication (several days imprisonment), adultery between a married and unmarried person (banishment generally, but for married women death), and adultery between two married people (death) (Kingdon, Adultery and Divorce, 116-117).
69. Montauban, 5 FF 2, fols. 31, 34, 36v, 39, 39v, AM.
70. Tarn-et-Garonne, I 1, fols. 137v, 141, 141v, 142v-143, 163, 178, 178v, 188, AD.
71. Tarn-et-Garonne, I 1, fols. 163, 328, AD.
72. Sandra Cavallo and Simona Cerutti, "Female Honor and the Social Control of Reproduction in Piedmont between 1600 and 1800," in Edward Muir and Guido Ruggiero (eds.), Sex and Gender in Historical Perspective (Baltimore, 1990), 79-80; Tarn-et-Garonne, I 1, fols. 230-230v, AD.
73. Natalie Z. Davis, Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century France (Stanford, 1987), provides a helpful discussion of how people molded and shaped their testimony.
74. The Reformation's reinforcement of patriarchy is the subject of Lyndal Roper, The Holy Household: Women and Morals in Reformation Augsburg (Oxford, 1989).
75. Chareyre, "'The Great Difficulties One Must Bear to Follow Jesus Christ': Morality at Sixteenth-Century Nîmes," in Mentzer (ed.), Sin and the Calvinists, 66, 76.
76. Garrisson-Estèbe, Protestants du Midi, 201-224.