Protestantism also revived the communal aspects of penance (the stool of repentance became familiar) and the so-called ‘theatre of forgiveness’, which sounds to us today like a great intrusion but had much to do with the discipline of capitalism that Weber made so much of. Protestantism kept illegitimacy rates low, and Thomas Cranmer’s new wedding service was the first to affirm that marriage could be enjoyable ‘for the mutual society, help, and comfort that the one ought to have of the other’.79 The Reformed churches paid fresh attention to the idea of women’s equality before God and
...more
