Protestantism
Legacy
From the later sixteenth to the early nineteenth centuries, these Catholic and Protestant models lay at the heart of Western marriage and family life, lore, and law. The medieval Catholic model, confirmed and elaborated by the Council of Trent in 1563, flourished in southern Europe, Spain, Portugal, and France, and their many colonies in Latin and Central America, in the U.S. south and southwest, in Quebec and the Canadian Maritimes, and, eventually, in parts of East and West Africa. A Protestant social model rooted in the Lutheran two-kingdoms theory dominated portions of Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Scandinavia together with their North American and, later, African colonies. A Protestant social model rooted in Calvinist covenant theology came to strong expression in Geneva, and in portions of Huguenot France, the Pietist Netherlands, Presbyterian Scotland, Puritan New England, and South Africa. A Protestant social model that treated marriage as a little commonwealth at the core of broader ecclesiastical and political commonwealths prevailed in Anglican England and its many colonies in North America and eventually in Africa and the Indian subcontinent as well.
See also: ANABAPTISTS (AMISH, MENNONITE); CATHOLICISM; EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANITY; FAMILY, HISTORY OF; FAMILY LAW; FAMILY MINISTRY; INTERFAITH MARRIAGE; RELIGION
Bibliography
Brundage, J. A. (1987). Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Carlson, E. J. (1994). Marriage and the English Reformation. Oxford: Blackwell.
Harrington, J. F. (1995). Reordering Marriage and Society in Reformation Germany. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Johnson, J. T. (1970). A Society Ordained by God: English Puritan Marriage Doctrine in the First Half of the Seventeenth Century. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press.
Kingdon, R. M. (1995). Adultery and Divorce in Calvin's Geneva. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Ozment, S. E. (1983). When Fathers Ruled: Family Life in Reformation Europe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Ozment, S. E. (2001). Ancestors: The Loving Family in Old Europe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Stone, L. (1979). The Family, Sex, and Marriage in England, 1500–1800. New York: Harper and Row.
Witte, J., Jr. (1997). From Sacrament to Contract: Religion, Marriage, and Law in the Western Tradition. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press.
Witte, J., Jr. (2002). Law and Protestantism: The Legal Teachings of the Lutheran Reformation. New York: Cambridge University Press.
JOHN WITTE JR.
Additional topics
Marriage and Family EncyclopediaMarriage: Cultural AspectsProtestantism - Medieval Catholic Background, Reformation Response, Lutheranism, Calvinism, Anglicanism, Legacy