Sex, Marriage, and Family Life in John Calvin's Geneva: Courtship, Engagement, and Marriage (Religion, Marriage and Family Series)

You wouldn't expect it from his dour reputation, but John Calvin transformed the Western concept of sex, marriage, and family life. This fascinating, even sensational volume comprehensively treats the new theology and law that Calvin and his fellow reformers established in sixteenth-century Geneva.

Calvin made marriage and divorce, children's welfare, and sexual sin matters of both church and state, and many of the reforms that he and others initiated — new rights and duties for wives in the bedroom, fault-based divorce on grounds of adultery and desertion, protection for impoverished widows, and more — have made their way into civil and common law traditions on both sides of the Atlantic.

Bringing to light and life hundreds of newly discovered cases and theological texts, Witte and Kingdon trace the subtle historical patterns of sex, marriage, and family life that have continued to shape new generations.