This text brings together eleven important pieces by Merry Wiesner, several of them previously unpublished, on three major areas in the study of women and gender in early modern Germany: religion, law and work. The final chapter, specially written for this volume addresses three fundamental questions: "Did women have a Reformation?"; "What effects did the development of capitalism have on women?"; and "Do the concepts 'Renaissance' and 'Early Modern' apply to women's experience?" The book concludes with an extensive bibliographical essay exploring both English and German scholarship.

This text brings together eleven important pieces by Merry Wiesner, several of them previously unpublished, on three major areas in the study of women and gender in early modern Germany: religion, law and work. The final chapter, specially written for this volume addresses three fundamental questions: "Did women have a Reformation?"; "What effects did the development of capitalism have on women?"; and "Do the concepts 'Renaissance' and 'Early Modern' apply to women's experience?" The book concludes with an extensive bibliographical essay exploring both English and German scholarship.

In premodern Germany, both the emerging centralized government and the powerful Catholic Church redefined gender roles for their own ends. Ulrike Strasser's interdisciplinary study of Catholic state-building examines this history from the vantage point of the virginal female body. Focusing on Bavaria, Germany's first absolutist state, Strasser recounts how state authorities forced chastity upon lower-class women to demarcate legitimate forms of sexuality and maintain class hierarchies. At the same time, they cloistered groups of upper-class women to harness the spiritual authority associated with holy virgins to the political authority of the state. The state finally recruited upper-class virgins as teachers who could school girls in the gender-specific morals and type of citizenship favored by authorities. Challenging Weberian concepts that link modernization to Protestantism, Strasser's study illustrates the modernizing power of Catholicism through an examination of virginity's central role in politics, culture, and society. Weaving together the stories of marriage and convent, of lay as well as religious women, State of Virginity makes important contributions to the historical study of sexuality and the growing feminist literature on the state. It will be of particular interest to students and scholars of political and religious history, women's studies, and social history.

This work presents a clear account of a practical approach to key areas of family law, covering: divorce; financial and property arrangements following divorce; tax and social security law relevant to marriage breakdown; protection from domestic violence; rights of occupation in the matrimonial home; court's powers relating to children and the Children Act 1989; and financial provision in the Family Proceedings Court.

All of these treatises offer important insight into such matters as the extent of the king's power in the fourteenth century and earlier, the relationship between church and state, and the particular duties of the ruler toward various of his subjects."--BOOK JACKET.

This is a major new textbook, designed for students in all disciplines seeking an introduction to the very latest research on all aspects of women's lives in Europe from 1500 to 1750, and on the development of the notions of masculinity and femininity. The coverage is geographically broad, ranging from Spain to Scandinavia, and from Russia to Ireland, and the topics investigated include the female life-cycle, literacy, women's economic role, sexuality, artistic creations, female piety - and witchcraft - and the relationship between gender and power. To aid students each chapter contains extensive notes on further reading (but few footnotes), and the approach throughout is designed to render the subject in as accessible and stimulating manner as possible. Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe is suitable for usage on numerous courses in women's history, early modern European history, and comparative history.

The first study of how women from different backgrounds encountered the Counter-Reformation in early sixteenth-century Münster.

The Protestant and Catholic Reformations thrust the nature of conversion into the center of debate and politicking over religion as authorities and subjects imbued religious confession with novel meanings during the early modern era. The volume offers insights into the historicity of the very concept of “conversion.” One widely accepted modern notion of the phenomenon simply expresses denominational change. Yet this concept had no bearing at the outset of the Reformation. Instead, a variety of processes, such as the consolidation of territories along confessional lines, attempts to ensure civic concord, and diplomatic quarrels helped to usher in new ideas about the nature of religious boundaries and, therefore, conversion. However conceptualized, religious change— conversion—had deep social and political implications for early modern German states and societies.

A study of the discourse of gender in 16th-century German popular literature.Writers of sixteenth-century German popular literature took great interest in describing, debating, commenting on, and prescribing gender roles, and discourses of gender can be traced in texts of all kinds from this period. This book focuses on popular works by Georg Wickram, Jakob Frey, Martin Montanus, and Johann Fischart, all of whom published novels, joke books, plays and/or moral treatises on marriage and family life in Strasbourg in the sixteenth century. Their works express not only their own ideas on women's roles as wives and mothers, but also societal values at a time of religious, political, and cultural change. The view of gender issues provided by these writers is nota simple one, as they ascribed widely varying characteristics to "woman" and her relationship to "man." The book thus analyzes the social and cultural construction of the concept of "woman" as indicated not only by the narrators'comments, but also by the relationships and roles of men and women characters in the narratives. Overall, the focus is on the disparities that persisted in the sixteenth-century discourse of gender, confusing all attempts to arrive at definitive gender roles. In the end, the study argues for something that can best be described as a "flowing continuity" or a "continuous flow" in the discourses that form the sixteenth-century concepts of "woman" and "man." Elisabeth Wåghäll-Nivre is associate professor of German at Växjö University, Sweden.ationships and roles of men and women characters in the narratives. Overall, the focus is on the disparities that persisted in the sixteenth-century discourse of gender, confusing all attempts to arrive at definitive gender roles. In the end, the study argues for something that can best be described as a "flowing continuity" or a "continuous flow" in the discourses that form the sixteenth-century concepts of "woman" and "man." Elisabeth Wåghäll-Nivre is associate professor of German at Växjö University, Sweden.ationships and roles of men and women characters in the narratives. Overall, the focus is on the disparities that persisted in the sixteenth-century discourse of gender, confusing all attempts to arrive at definitive gender roles. In the end, the study argues for something that can best be described as a "flowing continuity" or a "continuous flow" in the discourses that form the sixteenth-century concepts of "woman" and "man." Elisabeth Wåghäll-Nivre is associate professor of German at Växjö University, Sweden.ationships and roles of men and women characters in the narratives. Overall, the focus is on the disparities that persisted in the sixteenth-century discourse of gender, confusing all attempts to arrive at definitive gender roles. In the end, the study argues for something that can best be described as a "flowing continuity" or a "continuous flow" in the discourses that form the sixteenth-century concepts of "woman" and "man." Elisabeth Wåghäll-Nivre is associate professor of German at Växjö University, Sweden.niversity, Sweden.

This volume of twelve interdisciplinary essays addresses the multifaceted nature of female religious identity in early modern Europe. By dismantling the boundaries between the academic disciplines of history, art history, musicology and literary studies it offers new cross-cultural readings essential to a more comprehensive understanding of the complexity of female spirituality in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Utilising a wide range of archival material, encompassing art, architecture, writings and music commissioned or produced by nuns, the volume's main emphasis is on the limitations and potentials created by the boundaries of the convent. Each chapter explores how the personal and national circumstances in which the women lived affected the formation of their spirituality and the assertion of their social and political authority. Consisting of four sections each dealing with different parts of Europe and discussing issues of spiritual and social identity such as 'Femininity and Sanctity', 'Convent Theatre and Music-Making', 'Spiritual Directorship' and 'Community and Conflict', this compelling collection offers a significant addition to a thriving new field of study.