Вплив православної церкви на формування гендерних ролей у сім’ях українців другої половини XVI – XVII ст.

Abstract

The role of the Orthodox church in the formation of gender roles in the families of believers of early Modern times, which is an insufficiently studied problem, has been examined in this research. The sources of the study are “Teaching Gospels”, “Emeralds”, “Sinaxar” and other orthodox literature, as well as the materials of act books of Kremenets, Lutsk, Poltava and Vyzhva citis, documents from compendiums. The purpose of this article is to study influence of the Orthodox church on building everyday family traditions and gender roles and to learn how church prescripts were implemented into the real everyday life of Ukrainians of that time. During conduction of this study the narrative method was used to describe gender roles in families proposed by the church, comparative method was used to find out the difference between the orthodox ideal and everyday family life as well as legal provisions of that time. It has been ascertained that the Orthodox church denied people’s views on the marriage as a free partnership, oppressed women in their rights. However, the church prescripts were not always implemented in the real life. Even though, women often physically, morally, financially suffered from men, it was not a norm of the everyday life. The fact that women took legal actions is an evidence that they were not powerless or helpless. The fact that the Orthodox church did not prohibit divorce, approved remarriages had significant influence on building everyday family life. Another positive aspect was that the Church agitated for careful attitude towards widows and orphans.