Prosecution
of Moral Legislation in Emden, 1558-1825
The
following charts suggest the substance and changing emphases of moral
prosecution
in one jurisdiction, subject to the Reformed consistory (or Coetus)
seated
in Emden, the main port town in East Frisia on the north German
coast. Its records were studied by the historian Heinz Schilling; his
method
was to calculate the total number of cases prosecuted under a series of
headings during five-year sample periods distributed evenly between the
mid-sixteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The resulting data show
that
the period of most intensive moral prosecution did not arrive until the
late seventeenth century--well over a century after the first
introduction
of Protestantism to that part of the Empire. It also describes a shift
in emphasis, away from prosecution and adultury--the main
preoccupations
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries--and toward the prosecution
of premarital sex, the consistory's main activity during the eighteenth
century. This would correspond with a shift in emphasis away from the
enforcement
of moral order on already married couples and toward regulating the
sexuality
of their children.
The prosecution
of marital and familial delinquencies exhibited a similar general
trend,
with the period of greatest prosecutorial intensity situated in the
late
seventeenth century. Here, though, the drop-off from the late
seventeenth
to the eighteenth century is considerably more abrupt. And there is a
shift
in attentions, too: as the overall number of cases diminished, the
percentage
involving marital strife expanded to embrace nearly all of the
consistory's
activity. There are other noteworthy shifts as well. Prosecution of
disobedience
toward elders was unheard-of in sixteenth century prosecutions, but in
the last decade of the seventeenth was second in frequency only to
marital
strife.
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