Abstract
Recent scholarship has questioned the nature of familial relationships in the early modern era. Lawrence Stone characterizes family life as patriarchal and far from affectionate, while Edward Shorter labelled this period "The Bad Old Days". This dissertation is a case-study of the German city of Nordlingen from the late sixteenth through early eighteenth centuries. The sermons and devotional literature of the Nordlingen ministers in this era provide an impression of familial relationships which challenges widely-held theories of the "coolness" of emotions within premodern families. Most useful in this study were one minister's 1645-1646 weekly series of 75 sermons on marriage and the family and the local funeral sermons whose biographical content reveal much about Lutheran perceptions of the Christian family. To be sure, one may not automatically accept the precepts and lives depicted in these sermons as the practiced pattern of life within this community, but should regard them as idealized models offered for imitation. Nonetheless, several aspects of these teachings are striking. First, although Nordlingen remained a patriarchal society, the ministers encouraged heartfelt love and respect among family members, as well as interest in and selfless efforts for the physical, emotional, and vocational welfare of children. Second, in their sermons and writings the Nordlingen divines displayed an amazing familiarity with the works of the leading Lutheran theologians of their day; that pastors in a city far from the centers of Lutheran thought could have such familiarity with these works suggests a "community of thought" within Lutheran Germany created by the widespread dissemination of Lutheran sermons, treatises, and devotional literature. Third, scholars today tend to downplay or ignore completely the role of religion in the formation of social attitudes yet here is an example of a spiritual community which perceived its task to be the instillment of positive familial values. Seventeenth-century Nordlingen was indeed pre-modern and patriarchal. But the values extolled from its pulpits and in its devotional literature suggests that many qualities held to be hallmarks of the "modern family" were already familiar concepts to the people of this town in this period.