Social Disciplining in Early Modern Europe

The following two charts give a general and focused look at the pattern of moral legislation in early modern Europe. The first of these charts describes the sheer volume of legislation regulating clothing and consumption ("sumptuary laws"), broken down by country, beginning in the twelfth century and extending through the eighteenth. As this chart clearly shows, the period of when regulating the passions was most intense lay between 1400 and 1700, albeit with considerable regional variations. Italian cities, for example, were more energetic in the fifteenth century, whereas north of the Alps the seventeenth century proved to be the intensive period of sumptuary regulation.

Source: Alan Hunt, Governance of the Consuming Passions: A History of Sumptuary Law (New York: St. Martins, 1996).

The second chart describes the content and intensity of prosecution for sexual and marital deliquency by the Calvinist consistory in the North Sea harbor-town of Emden between 1559 and 1825. Each set of data points includes the sum of prosecutions in each category for a five year sample period, for example, between 1645 and 1649 (inclusive). The data show, first, a sharp increase in prosecutorial activity during the seventeenth century, especially the latter half. This increase is traceable in almost every category of prosecution.  Just as important, second, is the sharp drop-off in this activity during the eighteenth century: by the end of the century, prosecutions have all but ceased; those few which remain are limited to cases of divorce and abandonment.

Source: Heinz Schilling, Civic Calvinism in northwestern Germany and the Netherlands: Sixteenth to Nineteenth Centuries (Kirksville: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1991).