Sex, Marriage, and Family Life in John Calvin's Geneva: Courtship, Engagement, and Marriage

by John Witte Jr., Robert M. Kingdon

John Calvin transformed the Western theology and law of sex, marriage, and family life. Building on a generation of Protestant reforms, Calvin constructed a comprehensive new theology and law that made marital formation and dissolution, childrenbs nurture and welfare, family cohesion and support, and sexual sin and crime essential concerns for both church and state. Working with other jurists and theologians, Calvin drew the Consistory and Council of Geneva into a creative new alliance to govern domestic and sexual subjects. Together, these authorities outlawed monasticism and mandatory clerical celibacy, and encouraged marriage for all fit adults. They set clear guidelines for courtship and engagement and mandated parental consent, peer witness, church consecration, and state registration for valid marriage. They radically reconfigured weddings and wedding feasts and reformed marital property and inheritance, marital consent and impediments. They created new rights and duties for wives within the bedroom and for children within the household. They streamlined the grounds and procedures for annulment and introduced fault-based divorce for both husbands and wives on grounds of adultery and desertion. They encouraged the remarriage of divorcees and widow(er)s. They punished rape, fornication, prostitution, sodomy, and other sexual felonies with startling new severity and put firm new restrictions on dancing, sumptuousness, ribaldry, and obscenity. They put new stock in catechesis and education, created new schools, curricula, and teaching aids, and provided new sanctuary to illegitimate, abandoned, and abused children. They created new protections for abused wives and impoverishedwidows. Many of these reforms of sixteenth-century Geneva were echoed and elaborated in numerous Calvinist communities, ultimately on both sides of the Atlantic, and a good number of these reforms found their way into our modern civil law and common law traditions. This volume and its sequels analyzes and documents this transformation of sex, marriage and family life in Geneva using many newly-discovered theological and legal materials.

Genres: History, Christian Living, Sexuality, Marriage, Relationships, Christianity

545 pages, Paperback

First published October 15, 2005

About the author

John Witte Jr. (b.1959) is the Jonas Robitscher Professor of Law and Ethics, Alonzo L. McDonald Distinguished Professor, and Director of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University (Atlanta, GA).

Professor Witte specializes in legal history, religious liberty, and marriage law.

Reviews

[Peter Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

What pops in your mind when you think of John Calvin? Austere, dour reformer? Man who had Servetus killed? A man who taught that evil, black doctrine of predestination? Or do you think of a man who protected women and children and sought to reform marriage? This latter picture is one painted by this book. I think most people will find me weird for loving this book so much. But I did. It is not a thrilling read. But as a pastor I am always looking for different perspectives on pastoral care. This book is a great picture of pastoral theology and care in action during a specific time period. This book is supposed to be the first of three volumes on Sex, Marriage, and Family in John Calvin's Geneva. I sincerely hope they get the other two written.

The value of this book is found in the specific cases that are presented to give the reader insight into how the reformation of marriage worked itself out in real life in Geneva. During John Calvin's time in Geneva there were two main courts which governed the lives of the citizens of Geneva. There was the main civil court called the Small Council. Then there was the church court called the Consistory, which is what this book focuses on. The Consistory was a group of around twenty-four men with twelve being the pastors of the city and twelve being elected men who came from various governing agencies in Geneva. The Consistory met every Thursday and kept pretty detailed case records. Thus we have actual records of how the pastors in Geneva tried to handle very complex cases, such as adultery, fornication, brothels, rape, polygamy, false promises of marriage, lying about financial data, overbearing parents, etc. The authors make extensive use of these records. They also mine Calvin's letters, commentaries, sermons, consilia, polemical writings, as well as Beza's (Calvin's successor) writings for data pertaining to the issues of courtship, engagement, and marriage. All in all this gives us a pretty good picture of how these particular subjects were approached by one of the most important men in church history in one of the most important cities in the Reformation.

The first chapters were also very helpful because they set the reformation of marriage laws in its Medieval and Roman Catholic context.

[Josiah Leinbach · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thorough, and also quite surprising at many points. For instance, men who illicitly seduced, molested, or raped women were rarely executed for their crimes. Rather, they were imprisoned on rations of bread and water for a few weeks, beaten, publicly shamed, barred from communion for a given period, banned from marriage in Geneva or anywhere he might flee to, and then released condition that they gave the woman's family regular payments of a determined amount. If a child was conceived as a result of his behavior, he would support the mother and child (regardless her marital status) until his death, and even afterwards a portion of his estate would be given to her. The logic was that, especially in cases of conception, executing the man only put the woman in a worse position, with no support and decreased marital prospects. If no child was conceived, the monetary payments at least allowed the woman's family to leverage more financial assets in her dowry to attract suitors.

The book is filled with this kind of analysis. Highly recommend for anyone interested in the subject. A little (though not substantial) background knowledge of the period will aid the reader.

[Damian Mai · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is super academic yet fascinating at the same time. It was surprising getting to learn about Calvin's dating life as well as how he struggled to govern the many marital laws in Geneva! The book caused me to think deeply about the nature of engagement and marriage, its relation to covenant, sacraments, and government. Highly recommended.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

Provides an excellent historical perspective on the application of biblical and theological views of marriage to life in 16th century Geneva.