Ambivalent Fatherhood: On Disobedience and Assaults Against Parental Authority in Munich in the Early Seventeenth Century

Abstract

‘Ambivalent Fatherhood: Non-Lethal Assaults and Disobedience Against Parents in the Patriarchal Context of Early Modern Munich’, by Satu Lidman, draws on the Munich magistrates’ court proceedings from around 1600 concerning non-lethal, minor assaults against fathers. Lidman explores what happened in cases of rebellion against fathers; such rebellions threatened to unsettle the paternal authority underpinning the early modern European ideology of domestic order. This chapter contrasts the ideal perceptions of the father, father figures and fatherhood within the framework of patriarchal ideology and masculinity, and particularly in situations of disobedience challenging the parent–child hierarchy.