Sex, Marriage, and Family in John Calvin's Geneva, Vol 1: Courtship, Engagement, and Marriage: Volume 1: Courtship, Engagement, and Marriage (Religion, Marriage, and Family) - Softcover

Witte, John R.; Kingdon, Robert M.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802848036 ISBN 13: 9780802848031

Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2005

Synopsis

John Calvin transformed the Western theology and law of sex, marriage, and family life. Building on a generation of Protestant reforms, Calvin constructed a comprehensive new theology and law that made marital formation and dissolution, childrenbs nurture and welfare, family cohesion and support, and sexual sin and crime essential concerns for both church and state. Working with other jurists and theologians, Calvin drew the Consistory and Council of Geneva into a creative new alliance to govern domestic and sexual subjects. Together, these authorities outlawed monasticism and mandatory clerical celibacy, and encouraged marriage for all fit adults. They set clear guidelines for courtship and engagement and mandated parental consent, peer witness, church consecration, and state registration for valid marriage. They radically reconfigured weddings and wedding feasts and reformed marital property and inheritance, marital consent and impediments. They created new rights and duties for wives within the bedroom and for children within the household. They streamlined the grounds and procedures for annulment and introduced fault-based divorce for both husbands and wives on grounds of adultery and desertion. They encouraged the remarriage of divorcees and widow(er)s. They punished rape, fornication, prostitution, sodomy, and other sexual felonies with startling new severity and put firm new restrictions on dancing, sumptuousness, ribaldry, and obscenity. They put new stock in catechesis and education, created new schools, curricula, and teaching aids, and provided new sanctuary to illegitimate, abandoned, and abused children. They created new protections for abused wives and impoverishedwidows. Many of these reforms of sixteenth-century Geneva were echoed and elaborated in numerous Calvinist communities, ultimately on both sides of the Atlantic, and a good number of these reforms found their way into our modern civil law and common law traditions. This volume and its sequels analyzes and documents this transformation of sex, marriage and family life in Geneva using many newly-discovered theological and legal materials.

About this title

Review:

"Renaissance Quarterly"
"There is so much good to be said about this book: the teamwork that such a project entailed, the thoroughness and clarity of the text, the indices contained in each volume rather than being reserved for the end. Scholars will appreciate the transcriptions of primary source documents in this book, many from original manuscript sources, painstaking to read from the handwritten original."
"Catholic Historical Review"
"The documents from Calvin's Geneva that are reproduced here are very well chosen, eloquently translated, and deftly analyzed . . . should be of great interest to anyone interested in the history of marriage and the reformation."
"Journal of Ecclesiastical History"
"A fascinating and extremely useful volume. Its thirteen chapters are a mix of comprehensive, yet succinct, introduction and commentary combined with excellent primary documents."
R. H. Helmholz
University of Chicago Law School
"A splendid accomplishment. John Witte and Robert Kingdon move gracefully from theological tracts and legal treatises to court records and correspondence, stopping to take note of revealing incidents from John Calvin's own life. The result sheds new light on the history of married life."
Steven Ozment
Harvard University, author of"A Mighty Fortress"
"Give a new generation a monograph on Calvinist views of sex, marriage, and family and you may catch their minds for a day. But give them a multivolume edition of the same subjects in superb translations and you start up new schools of scholarship. With this first volume on courtship, engagement, and marriage John Witte and Robert Kingdon are teaching a new generation how to fish in Geneva."
Elsie McKee
Princeton Theological Seminary
"Witte and Kingdon provide a wonderful range of diverse primary source documents that will make fascinating reading for students and scholars alike."
"Choice"
"Highly recommended. The primary sources in this volume show the importance of matters of the heart to Geneva's theologians and civil authorities during the 16th century.""

From the Back Cover:

You would not expect this from his dour reputation, but John Calvin transformed the Western understanding of sex, marriage, and family life. In this fascinating, even sensational, volume John Witte and Robert Kingdon treat comprehensively the new theology and law of domestic life that Calvin and his fellow reformers established in sixteenth-century Geneva. Bringing to light and life hundreds of newly discovered cases and theological texts, Witte and Kingdon trace the subtle historical forms and norms of sex, marriage, and family life that still shape us today.

About this edition

• Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0802848036
• ISBN 13: 9780802848031
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 545