Daily Life During The Reformation (23 page)

Travelers without transportation often found it useful to
make inquiries in a town to find out if anyone with a horse-drawn wagon was
going their way, in which case they might find a ride for a fee. Travel by
horse was, of course, safer than walking, but even then, it was dangerous to
travel alone. On the open road, behind every clump of trees was a potential
ambush where thieves could lie in wait for the unwary.

Travel could be monotonous and uncomfortable, bouncing
around in a wagon over rutted paths through a flat landscape for hours on end.
There were few people out in the country, away from the towns. The land was
often marshy. One would pass a farm now and again and spot a farmer with his
oxen plowing or a shepherd with his flock. Cows were not plentiful in open
country, as fields were difficult to fence off, and most animals were kept in
wooden enclosures behind the house.

CRIME AND RETRIBUTION

The telltale signs of approaching a large city were obvious
from both the smell on the wind and the bodies of hanged men or women left to
twist slowly on the gibbets—a warning that crime was severely punished.

Many towns had laws regulating activities after dark. In
some places it was mandatory to carry a lantern on the streets at night, and to
be caught without one was a punishable offense. Walking around with a torch or
any other open flame was against the law due to the ever-present hazard of
fire.

The punishments for crimes such as stealing could be severe
and included whipping, mutilation, dismembering, the loss of an ear (or part of
one), the loss of the nose, and branding on the face, so they could be
recognized elsewhere since most thieves were then banished from the city. Under
such conditions, there was little choice but to attach themselves to the army
of vagabonds and highwaymen who roamed the countryside seeking victims. They
usually ended up on the gallows.

When a thief or murderer was about to be hanged outside the
city walls, people gathered to see the spectacle. Entire families, including
young children, came out to watch. The criminals did not fall through a trap
door and die quickly of a broken neck; they were often pulled up from the
ground by a pair of horses, their hands tied behind their backs, legs jerking
and kicking, searching for something solid. Meantime, they strangled to death.
People also gathered around when someone was to be beheaded, flogged, or their
bones broken on the wheel. A priest would stand by holding a cross and looking
on as a person’s joints slowly parted on the rack. There were many kinds of
tools for inflicting pain during interrogation of a prisoner designed to make
him confess to a crime, guilty or not. One such device was an iron shaft with
folded down metal leaves. When it was inserted into the anus, a screw was
turned that caused the leaves to expand outward from the shaft.

A suspect could not be condemned until he or she confessed.
To place a person in the stocks and apply a burning torch to the feet was one
way to extract a confession; to tie one down and pour water into their mouths
through a funnel until they felt they were drowning also worked, along with
weights tied to the limbs and added until the joints gave way was also used.
Rope, soaked in water and tied tightly to the arms and legs and left to dry,
shrank inexorably into the skin and muscle and gave the victim time to think
about his confession as the pain became unbearable. Crowds particularly enjoyed
seeing a heretic burned alive.

Punishments varied from beatings to being locked in a cage
suspended above the street for days, encased in the stocks to be tormented by
passersby, to having a sharp, two-ended fork (one end embedded under the chin
and the other in the chest) held in place by a leather strap around the neck so
the head could not be lowered or turned. Such punishments were designed
primarily for humiliation of the victim.

Excused from torture were doctors, knights, officers,
children under the age of fourteen, the old and feeble, and pregnant women.
Such procedures and regulations differed from district to district. However, no
one was exonerated for certain crimes such as treason, witchcraft, or holding
hostages.

For a crime as small as stealing a chicken, the culprit
might spend a few days in the stocks. For witchcraft, punishment was death by
burning. Aged women, bent-over from a lifetime of leaning over the fire and
carrying heavy buckets of water, someone who had outlived their family and
friends and perhaps seemed somewhat senile, were often targets of suspected
witchcraft.

Other forms of punishment used for convicted criminals
included mutilation and dismembering, and fingers, ears, and noses were often
chopped off for minor offenses (one of which was blasphemy against God). People
witnessed these atrocious punitive measures from childhood and did not lose any
sleep over them.

EFFECTS OF THE REFORMATION

The long, intense struggle in the Northern provinces for
independence from both the Catholic Church and from Spain resulted in a number
of Protestant sects in Holland. In the south, Belgium, nearly all inhabitants
remained Catholic. While Lutheranism made little headway, Calvinists poured
into Holland by the thousands from areas where they were persecuted such as
Alsace and France. The degree of toleration in the Netherlands was more
acceptable than elsewhere. Catholics could live and work there but were
prohibited from religious activities. In 1577, William of Orange granted
Anabaptists the right to worship for the first time.

10 - THE FAMILY

MARRIAGE

In
northern Europe, family units were centered around a married couple and their
children; in the south, the household would often include a husband and wife,
their married children and grandchildren as well as surviving grandparents.

A wife was expected to be a companion to her husband but
always his obedient subordinate. A husband’s right to beat his wife with
impunity generally had community approval. For Catholics, marriage was a
sacrament and could not be undone except under the most special circumstances
such as if it were not consummated or if incest was involved. As a result,
Catholic marriages were sometimes loveless (especially those arranged by
parents) and supplemented by adulterous behavior. In Italy and Spain, outside
the orbit of the Reformation, divorce was practically unknown.

In a time of constant wars, famines, and plagues, the loss
of a spouse was quite common, and new marriages were quickly sought and
undertaken. Orphaned children passed from relative to relative or into a
monastery.

Reformers
and Marriage

One of the institutions that came under close scrutiny by
Protestant reformers was that of the patriarchal nuclear family as the
liberator of men, women, and children from religious and sexual enslavement.

Early on, Martin Luther wrote about marriage asserting that
it was an institution in crisis. From the point of view of the reformer, unlike
that of the Catholic Church, chastity was unnatural and contrary to God’s will,
although sexual acts should take place only after marriage. For the Catholic
Church, sex was permitted inside marriage but only for procreation and for no
other reason.

Rejecting this view, Luther and other early reformers noted
that all forms of life are represented by males and females the way God had
designed it, and marriage was its natural outcome. Young women in nunneries
were deprived of their natural womanhood, abused by male clergy, and culturally
isolated. Luther prevailed upon families to liberate their daughters and take
them home to find suitable husbands. Through his encouragement, Protestant
towns closed down convents and cloisters.

FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS

Following the teachings of St. Paul regarding the authority
of the father, Protestants of Reformation Europe decreed that wives, children,
and servants had to obey the master of the house just as Christians obeyed God.

Within the German burgher families, however, the wife held
a position of authority deserving equal respect and sharing responsibility. Frequently,
she took an active part in the running of her husband’s business affairs.

In Geneva, marriages between young women and much older men
were opposed, although some felt that an older woman might not be sufficiently
subservient to a younger man. Those who brought a large dowry to marriage could
also make their husbands feel inadequate. Geneva, where wife beaters were
speedily brought before the courts, was known as “the Woman’s Paradise”.

The Husband’s Role

Thus, the duties of the father were first to control his
wife, second to bring up his children, and third to govern his servants who
should not lack bread, work, and scolding. The master’s “relationship with the
servants was not based on justice, but on patronage, as if they were children.”

The husband’s duty was to protect his family, provide for
everyone in the household, and to be a model of self-discipline as well as a
wise, moderate, God-fearing person who worked hard. Most important, as master
ruling the family and servants, he could not be challenged. He was to be
faithful to his wife, and when the Protestant governments put restrictions on
houses of prostitution, it was to maintain sexual fidelity within the family.

A Wife’s Duties

In his
Boke of Husbandry
(London, 1525), John
Fitzherbert makes a list of a wife’s duties:

‘when thou art up and ready, then first sweep thy house,
dress up thy dish-board and set all things in good order within thy house; milk
thy kine, feed thy calves, sile (strain) up thy milk, take up thy children and
array them, and provide for thy husband’s breakfast, dinner, supper, and for
thy children and servants, and take thy part with them. And to ordain corn and
malt to the mill, to bake and brew withal when need is. . . . Thou must make
butter and cheese when thou may; serve thy swine, both morning and evening, and
give thy pullen (fowl) meat in the morning, and when time of the year cometh,
thou must take heed how thy hen, ducks and geese do lay, and to gather up their
eggs; and when they wax broody to set them thereas no beasts, swine or other
vermin hurt them. . . . And in the beginning of March, or a little before, is
time for a wife to make her garden. . . . And also in March is time to sow flax
and hemp . . . and thereof may they make sheets, board-clothes (table cloths),
towels, shirts, smocks, and such other necessaries; and therefore let thy
distaff be always ready for a pastime, that thou be not idle. . . .’

According to the Protestant ethic, a husband should never
strike his wife but should treat her honorably. For her part, she should be
virtuous, pious, and mature enough to run the household efficiently.
Protestantism, however, did not give educated women the same advantages as they
had experienced under Catholicism, and engaging in activities outside the home
became more difficult. The wife’s responsibility was foremost to be faithful
and stand by her husband, be friendly, modest, not given to excess, and give
the household her first priority. Her role was ordained by God, and through her
efforts she exercised her faith and endorsed her salvation. Women who found
their roles demeaning were told that submission was required of them to atone
for Eve’s sins. According to Markham, a contemporary writer, although the woman
was theoretically subservient, in fact, she was an “active and indispensable
partner in the domestic economy.”

Up to this time, for families under severe economic stress
and near starvation, sending their children off to monastic life had been one
way of reducing household expenditures and giving the child a chance for a
future. The alternative for girls from poor families, who did not find a
husband, was too often prostitution.

Reformists were determined that children would no longer be
forced into a life of involuntary celibacy (some girls and boys went
voluntarily) but that they should remain at home unless they married.
Protestants, set against the celibate life, deemed the cloister inhumane and
antisocial.

VILLAGE, HAMLET, AND FARM

Nearly every aspect of running a household in the countryside
depended on the peasant wife’s vigilance. She tended the home, the children,
and the livestock, made the clothes, washed them in the stream, gathered wild
fruit and berries, cultivated a vegetable garden, and collected firewood.

She had her share of remedies using medicinal herbs, fruit
and vegetables, and sometimes the entrails of animals when a member of the
family had a headache, toothache, worms, bleeding, or other ills. Hemorrhoids,
for instance, were treated by taking

‘the sole of an old shoe worn by a man much used to travel;
cut it into pieces, and burn it, yet neither to gray or white ashes, but to a
friable and tender coal. Reduce it into an impalpable powder. Take then
unsalted hog lard, and work it to an ointment, and anoint the afflicted part
often therewith.’