Wives, Mothers, and Witches: The Learned Discourse about Women in Early Modern Europe

Abstract

Wives, Mothers, and Witches: The Learned Discourse about Women in Early Modern Europe David HerUhy. Women, Family, and Society in Medieval Europe: Historical Essays, 1978-1991, ed. A. Molho. Providence: Berghahn Books, 1995. 410 pp. ISBN 1-57181-023-4 (cl); ISBN 1-57181-024-2 (pb). Margaret R. Sommerville. Sex and Subjection: Attitudes toward Women in Early-Modern Society. London: Arnold, 1995. 287 pp. ISBN 0-34064573 -3 (cl). GerhUd Scholz WilUams. Defining Dominion: Discourses of Magic and Witchcraft in Early Modern France and Germany. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995. 234 pp. ISBN 0^72-10619-8 (cl). Deborah WiUis. Malevolent Nurture: Witch-Hunting and Maternal Power in Early Modern England. Ithaca: CorneU University Press, 1995. 264 pp. ISBN 0-8014-3004-6 (cl); ISBN 0-8014-8194-5 (pb). Beate Popkin During the late medieval and early modern period, the ideal of manhood in Europe changed profoundly. The models of the warrior and the monk, each pursuing his passions in an all-male environment, gave way to the ideal of the Hausvater, as he came to be called in German, the paternal household manager. Men were to focus their attention on the welfare of the nuclear family and live their lives in close proximity to women. The stability of domestic arrangements was to be built on conjugal loyalty that included faithfulness in sexual relations. As political and social theory identified the household based on the nuclear family as a significant institution for the creation of public order, the intellectual and moral abilities of women came to be passionately discussed. The shift in men's aspirations to the household signaled a crisis of male identity which manifested itself in a profound need to define woman's place in relation to man and to assure her subjection to him. The misogyny inherent in this discourse has been noted by many scholars; the books under review here explore the broader inteUectual and cultural context of men's thoughts about women and aUow us to see the implications of gender in the transformations of the period. Women, Family, and Society in Medieval Europe coUects eighteen papers about Italian history which David Herlihy wrote—or in a few cases substantially rewrote—in the last 12 years of his life. They are divided into © 1997 Journal of Women's History, Vol. 9 No. 3 (Autumn) 194 Journal of Women's History Autumn three parts, following the book's title, and cover a wide area of interests— from medieval discussions of women's physiology to the politics of mercantile famUies. This range of topics exemplifies the fertility of the author's mind. While not every essay is based on quantitative analysis, the strength of the volume as a whole lies in illustrating the many questions a historian may approach through quantitative sources. In chapter six, for example, Herlihy reviews different concepts behind the word "family" and shows that the term first took its meaning of a refuge from a hostile world in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The chapter "Families and Religious Ideologies in Medieval Europe" best develops a theme that recurs in some of the other essays, namely, the emergence of males as famUy men. Toward the end of the Middle Ages, the holy family—almost totally missing from earUer discourses—became a prominent theme both in writing and iconography. Jesus's parent, Joseph, who had not aroused the interests of artists in previous centuries, began to be portrayed as a "conscientious, wise, and loving father," a model for real fathers in the troubled world (173). San Bernardino's writings advocate the benefits of marriage for men (chapter nine). Spelling out the rules for men's conduct in relation to their family, these writings are an early example of a burgeoning European Uterature, extending to the eighteenth century, which fervently advised men on the proper management of household relationships. Margaret R. Sommerville in Sex and Subjection describes the views held about women between 1500 and 1700. Her sources are the writings of well-known theologians, philosophers, and lawyers, as weU as their lesser known counterparts. She includes only texts that were meant to inform and instruct their readers rather than to entertain...