When Fathers Ruled: Family Life in Reformation Europe

Ozment approaches the "hot topic" of family history from the viewpoint, not of the fashionable statisticians, but ofthe more traditional historian ofideas and high culture: "cross-roads," in the author's own words, "of values and structures" (p.vii.).The chief theme in this candidly polemical work challenges the modern tradi- tion, derived from Philipe Aries, David Hunt, Lawrence Stone and others, that Protestantism brought greater authoritarianism and repression to family rela- tions.Ozment seeks first to demonstrate how the advent of Protestantism marked a sharp break with medieval canonical ideas on such issues as the value ofcelibacy and the function of marriage.Using a wide variety of non-quantitative sources (con- temporary didactic literature, court cases and, most effectively, contemporary woodcuts and verse) Ozment portrays Protestants as more concerned with the security of the family in both its internal operation and its social context, more understanding and flexible on the possibility of marital breakdown, and more respectful of its members' sex-roles than their Catholic predecessors and