Honor Your Fathers: Catechisms and the Emergence of a Patriarchal Ideology in Germany, 1400-1600

This text offers a fresh perspective on the patriarchal ideology of reform in early modern Germany by revealing its roots in a pan-European catechetical programme which had endured a cyclical process of growth and decline since the 12th century, with each new phase sparked by crises in Church and society. Based on sermons, reform ordinances, devotional treatises and especially catechisms, this book explores the programmes developed by reformers and codified in works of religious indoctrination designed to fashion godly fathers (real and metaphorical) in home, church, and body politic. The chief product of this programme, the author argues, was an ethos of social discipline which permeated the institutions of each major confession, with government gradually empowered to penetrate more deeply into the lives of its subjects.