Family and Religion in Two Noble Families: French Catholic and English Puritan

Abstract

This paper is a case study of two seventeenth-century noble families—the French Catholic Chantal-Rabutin-Sévigné and the English Puritan Verneys—in which the effect of doctrinal differences on marriage and family life is observed. Marriage doctrines of the Catholic church and the Calvinist church are summarized. Each family is then studied in terms of its major functions, the relationship between husbands and wives, the relationships between parents and children, attitudes towards education, and the religious observances of the fam ily. Although the functions of both families were similar, the relationship be tween the Protestant husbands and wives seems to have been more reciprocal in contrast to the more patriarchal relationship within the Catholic family. In terms of parent-child relations, a higher degree of independence seems to have been present in the Protestant family. In both cases, religion was an important factor in creating family identity.