Sixteenth-century Europeans launched a struggle for order with an intensity and urgency that finds no parallels in modern European history. For the rural societies of Germany, the early sixteenth cen
For the rural societies of Germany the early sixteenth century was a time of massive upheavals. In this probing study of village life, based upon rich manuscript sources from the old County of Hohenlohe, Thomas Robisheaux seeks to understand how petty German princes, Lutheran pastors, and villagers struggled to create order out of their confusing world. The Hohenlohe region experienced all of the turmoil associated with the sixteenth century, including a peasant near-rising in 1600, the brutal effects of the wage-price scissors, chronic shortages of land, famines, impoverishment, and the destructive cycles of war. By using concepts borrowed from anthropology, Professor Robisheaux looks for the way social hierarchy and discipline countered the disruptive changes of the age. The years between 1550 and 1620 saw new sources of stability and order created in the family; through systematized customs of inheritance; through market relationships; and in the practice of state power within the
On the night of the festive holiday of Shrove Tuesday in 1672 Anna Fessler died after eating one of her neighbor's buttery cakes. Could it have been poisoned? Drawing on vivid court documents, ey
Reconstructs the world and daily life of Johannes Hooss, a 17th-century farmer in a remote Hessian village, arguing that his precarious existence built values which transcended individual life and gav
This excellent festschrift in honor of German historian H.C. Erik Midelfort reflects his lifelong interest in the margins of Early Modern society. Editors Plummer (history, Western Kentucky University
