2.6 16th-Century Society and Politics

Europeans believed society was a hierarchy set by God. Nobles, clergy and wealthy townspeople were at the top, and peasants, about 80 percent of the population, were at the bottom. Birth mattered more than talent, but things were shifting. Merchants, bankers and lawyers grew richer, and some bought land or titles. In England the gentry, landowners below the nobility, gained influence.

Economic pressure from the price revolution and enclosure (see 1.10) pushed many peasants into poverty and sparked revolts, such as the German Peasants' War of 1524–1525.

In the household economy, everyone in the family worked to support it. On farms, men usually plowed and women ran the house, garden and dairy, while children helped from a young age. In towns, a craftsman's wife often managed the shop and the apprentices.

Protestant reformers praised marriage and the father-led household as the center of Christian life. They closed convents, which removed one path for women outside marriage. Some Protestant areas allowed divorce in rare cases. Catholic reformers also stressed marriage, but kept celibate religious life as the highest calling.

The Querelle des femmes, or debate about women, was a long argument among writers about women's nature and abilities. It goes back to Christine de Pizan's Book of the City of Ladies (1405), which defended women against attacks by male authors. Humanists argued over whether girls should study the classics, and a few women, such as Marie de Gournay in her 1622 essay on the equality of men and women, insisted women's minds equaled men's. Some radical Protestant groups let women preach, which most reformers condemned. Most writers still assumed women should be under male authority.

Leisure followed the church calendar and the farming year, and it was shared by the whole community: saints' days, harvest feasts and blood sports like cockfighting and bear-baiting. Villages and towns also policed themselves. Carnival was a festival before Lent with feasting, masks and mockery of authority, a brief time when the world was turned upside down. A charivari was a noisy public shaming, with banging pots and mocking songs, aimed at people who broke community norms, like a henpecked husband or an old widower marrying a young bride. Authorities used shame too: offenders were put in the stocks, publicly whipped or branded.

Reformers, both Protestant and Catholic, tried to control this rowdy culture. Cities passed laws against drunkenness, gambling, swearing and prostitution, and church courts like Geneva's consistory punished moral offenses. Cities also reorganized poor relief, separating the deserving poor, such as the sick and elderly, from able-bodied beggars, who were pushed to work.

Between about 1580 and 1650, witch trials peaked in Europe. Historians estimate that roughly 40,000 to 60,000 people were executed, and about three-quarters or more were women, often older, poor or widowed. Trials were most intense in the Holy Roman Empire, Switzerland and Scotland, where local courts had wide power.

Historians link the hunts to several causes: religious conflict and fear of the devil, social tensions in villages, crop failures during the Little Ice Age, legal changes that allowed torture, and beliefs that women were spiritually weaker. Trials declined after 1650 as courts demanded better proof and educated elites grew skeptical.