This book examines the impact of the Protestant Reformation on both the ideal and practice of marriage in sixteenth-century Germany. Unlike previous specialized and esoteric monographs, this study synthesizes the author's extensive archival work with a broad array of scholarly research in legal, theological, and, especially, social history. His most important conclusion is the minimal impact of Protestant marriage reforms, and the striking similarity in this respect to concurrent Catholic measures, particularly in the actual formation and preservation of marriages.
This book examines the impact of the Protestant Reformation on both the ideal and practice of marriage in sixteenth-century Germany. Unlike previous s...
This book examines the impact of the Protestant Reformation on both the ideal and practice of marriage in sixteenth-century Germany. Unlike previous specialized and esoteric monographs, this study synthesizes the author's extensive archival work with a broad array of scholarly research in legal, theological, and, especially, social history. His most important conclusion is the minimal impact of Protestant marriage reforms, and the striking similarity in this respect to concurrent Catholic measures, particularly in the actual formation and preservation of marriages.
This book examines the impact of the Protestant Reformation on both the ideal and practice of marriage in sixteenth-century Germany. Unlike previous s...
The baby abandoned on the doorstep is a phenomenon that has virtually disappeared from our experience, but in the early modern world, unwanted children were a very real problem for parents, government officials, and society. The Unwanted Child skillfully recreates sixteenth-century Nuremberg to explore what befell abandoned, neglected, abused, or delinquent children in this critical period. Joel F. Harrington tackles this question by focusing on the stories of five individuals. In vivid and poignant detail, he recounts the experiences of an unmarried mother-to-be, a roaming...
The baby abandoned on the doorstep is a phenomenon that has virtually disappeared from our experience, but in the early modern world, unwanted chil...
THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF A RENAISSANCE-ERA EXECUTIONER AND HIS WORLD, BASED ON A RARE AND OVERLOOKED JOURNAL.
In a dusty German bookshop, the noted historian Joel F. Harrington stumbled upon a remarkable document: the journal of a sixteenth-century executioner. The journal gave an account of the 394 people Meister Frantz Schmidt executed, and the hundreds more he tortured, flogged, or disfigured for more than forty-five years in the city of Nuremberg. But the portrait of Schmidt that gradually emerged was not that of a monster. Could a man who practiced such cruelty also be insightful,...
THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF A RENAISSANCE-ERA EXECUTIONER AND HIS WORLD, BASED ON A RARE AND OVERLOOKED JOURNAL.
During a career lasting nearly half a century, Meister Frantz Schmidt (1554-1634) personally put to death 392 individuals and tortured, flogged, or disfigured hundreds more. The remarkable number of victims, as well as the officially sanctioned context in which they suffered at Schmidt's hands, was the story of Joel Harrington's much-discussed book The Faithful Executioner. The foundation of that celebrated work was Schmidt's own journal--notable not only for the shocking story it told but, in an age when people rarely kept diaries, for its mere existence.
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During a career lasting nearly half a century, Meister Frantz Schmidt (1554-1634) personally put to death 392 individuals and tortured, flogged, or...