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1. Introduction Like masculinity, femininity is a cultural construct manufactured in discourses and social practices.  The concept relates to a principle that emerged in the 19th century of a gender order in which the feminine was opposed to the masculine and naturalized. In this context, femininity was on the one hand designed as complementary to masculinity in a system of separate spheres (public/private, culture/nature) and associated with qualities of being passive, weak, in need of protection…

1. Gender as a key category Gender is a category of social differentiation and an instrument that helps us explore the political, legal, and social meanings of gender identity and gender orders in historical and present-day societies.  While the English terminology distinguishes between sex as a biological and gender as a social denominator, the German word Geschlecht combines both elements. Gender studies explore how ideas of gender are culturally created and corroborated and how gender is associated with power. Difference, social hierarchy, and f…

1. Concept and terminology Gender roles are social constructs, and their nature and significance varies according to historical context. While normative systems and scholarly, legal, and theological discourses of the early modern period tended to emphasize the hierarchy of the genders, and to ascribe different obligations and qualities to women and men, it was only in the final third of the 18th century that psychological characteristics derived from biological gender acquired greater significance i…

1. TerminologyDiscussion of chastity in the Middle Ages and early modern period in Christian thought were closely linked to changing notions of the contrast between flesh (Body) and spirit. This ultimately led to a semantic equation of carnal, sexual and sinful (Sin). In this context notions of sexuality were associated with fornication (Lat. fornicatio: adultery, whoring, prostitution), desire (Lat. concupiscentia) and lust (Lat. luxuria). The opposite picture lay in chastity, by which originally not only sexual abstinence, but also quite generally, reason…

1. DefinitionConvent (nunnery) is the modern term for a Catholic monastic community (Monastery) consisting of nuns belonging to a particular order. Convents developed with the expansion of Christianity beginning in the early Middle Ages; most were subordinate to a monastery for men. The terms  convent and  nunnery are interchangeable, except that  convent is sometimes used in the sense of any community under monastic vows, of either men or women. Besides the community itself,  convent can also denote the church building or the architectural complex. Susanne Knackmuß2. St…

1. European societies 1.1. General remarksThe term “marriage” denotes a lasting relationship between a man and a woman that derives its legitimacy from a religious or state ordinance. As a social institution, it is fundamental to the preservation of gender distinctions (see Gender; Gender roles) in society and of the social and symbolic order that goes along with these. The conventional, religious, and civil-rights ordinances connected with marriage (Matrimonial law) regulate and control the relation…

1. Introduction Although prostitution is often called the “oldest profession in the world,” the word “prostitution” became established in the strict sense of modern use only in the 19th century, in the context of discourses of criminal law, public health, medicine, and sexual studies. European towns (and especially larger cities) in the Middle Ages and early modern period played host to women earning their living in gambling houses and brothels, and their work was not described and assessed in ter…

The term “housewife” refers to the house or household as the central unit of social life in European countries. In early modern sources, the word is generally synonymous with house mother (Mater familias). Depending on the context, housewife denotes either the wife (marriage, when the family situation is in view) or the manager of the household (when the focus is on economic activity), with many rights and obligations in her capacity as house mother; she could be represented by a bourgeois housekeeper or a noble housema’am. From the late-18th century on, the term “housewife” ( Hausfrau…

1. Definition and basic characteristicsThe term “house mother” (taken from Latin  mater familias) was in widespread use in early modern Europe, primarily in Protestant normative texts and literature (including in marriage- and funeral sermons and in the so-called  Hausväterliteratur (“pater familias literature”). In all European countries, the role of the mater familias, complementing that of the pater familias (Pater familias), was inextricably linked with her life and work in the early modern household, which was considered centr…

1. DefinitionThe term patriarchy (literally “father rule”) means the authority of men over women and children within the family. In addition patriarchy is a theoretical concept used to explain power relationships in society. It is based on the idea that in all significant institutions men exercise power and that women are denied access to corresponding positions because of their gender [15. 295 f.]. Central features of patriarchy in the narrower sense are patrilineality, patrilocality, and a patriarchal order [10]. Studies of patriarchy assume that most societ…

1. Definition“Master of the house” is a translation of the New Testament  oikodespótes (“lord of the house,” Matthew 10.25, according to Luther), rendered as  pater familias in the Latin Vulgate. The phrase is also used as an equivalent for the ancient term  oikonomikós (Aristotle, Xenophon), or Latin  oeconomus, “householder”). The term alludes to the household as the central category of early modern European political organization. In a broader sense, it was also used to refer to the directors of hostels, hospices, and orphanages.Ursula Fuhrich-Grubert2. CharacteristicsFun…

1. “Magd” in the German landsThe German term Magd (“maid”; OHG  magat, MHG  maget, magt, Dutch  maagd, Frisian  megith) at first denoted an unmarried adult woman, but came in particular to refer to rural female servants in husbandry.The Magd, as a seasonal rural laborer, was – like the  Knecht – widespread in regions where the European marriage pattern and the nuclear family centered on a married couple were customary. Service as a maid in rural society accordingly marked a phase in the usual course of life (Curriculum vitae). Such service…

1. Concept Landjuden (“country Jews”) was the term used in the early modern German-speaking world to denote Jews living outside major urban centers. Because rural life was the predominant way of life for Jews in the Empire and the hereditary Habsburg lands from the urban expulsions of the late Middle Ages to emancipation in the early 19th century, German scholars sometimes refer to the Phase des Landjudentums (“Age of Country Jewry”). Besides the spatial and temporal dimension, there is also an inherent aspect here of equating Landjuden with non-elites as an indication of the …