The significant changes in early modern German marriage practices included many unions that violated some taboo. That taboo could be theological and involve the marriage of monks and nuns, or refer to social misalliances as when commoners and princes (or princesses) wed. Equally transgressive were unions that crossed religious boundaries, such as marriages between Catholics and Protestants, those that violated ethnic or racial barriers, and those that broke kin-related rules. Taking as a point of departure Martin Luther’s redefinition of marriage, the contributors to this volume spin out the multiple ways that the Reformers’ attempts to simplify and clarify marriage affected education, philosophy, literature, high politics, diplomacy, and law. Ranging from the Reformation, through the ages of confessionalization, to the Enlightenment, Mixed Matches addresses the historical complexity of the socio-cultural institution of marriage.
Table of Content
Introduction: Transgressive Unions
David M. Luebke
Chapter 1. ‘It is not forbidden that a man may have more than one wife’: Luther’s Pastoral Advice on Bigamy and Marriage
David Whitford
Chapter 2. Celibacy—Marriage—Un-Marriage: The Controversy over Celibacy and the Marriage of Priests in the Early Reformation
Wolfang Breul
Chapter 3. ‘Nothing More than Common Whores and Knaves’: Married Nums and Monks in the Early German Reformation
Marjorie Elizabeth Plummer
Chapter 4. Transgressive Unions and Concepts of Honor in Early Modern Defamation Lawsuits
Ralf-Peter Fuchs
Chapter 5. Negotiating Rank in Early Modern Marital Mismatches
Michael Sikora
Chapter 6. Between Conscience and Coercion: Confessionally Mixed Marriages Between Church, State, and Family
Dagmar Freist
Chapter 7. The Rhetoric of Difference: The Marriage Negotiations Between Queen Christina of Sweden and Elector Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg
Daniel Riches
Chapter 8. Mixed Matches and Inter-Confessional Dialogue: The Hannoverian Succession and the Protestant Dynasties of Europe in the Early Eighteenth Century
Alexander Schunka
Chapter 9. Trans-Ethnic Unions in Early Modern German Travel Literature
Antje Flüchter
Chapter 10. The Meaning of Love: Emotion and Kinship in Early Modern Incest Discourses
Claudia Jarzebowski
Chapter 11. Aufklärung, Literature, and Fatherly Love: An Eighteenth-Century Case of Incest
Mary Lindemann
Afterword: Shifting Boundaries and Boundary Shifters: Transgressive Unions and the History of Marriage in Early Modern Germany
Joel F. Harrington
Bibliography
Contributors
Index
About the author
Mary Lindemann is Professor and Chair of the Department of History at the University of Miami. She is the author of five books, most recently The Merchant Republics: Amsterdam, Antwerp, and Hamburg (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Earlier publications include; Patriots and Paupers: Hamburg, 1712-1830 (Oxford University Press, 1990); Health and Healing in Eighteenth-Century Germany (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe (2nd edition, 2010); Liaisons dangereuses: Sex, Law, and Diplomacy in the Age of Frederick the Great (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006).
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