S. Kovbasiuk, PhD in History
Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Kyiv, Ukraine
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17721/1728-2640.2017.133.2.05
IDEAL WOMAN IN THE REFORMATION TEXTS AND IMAGES: BETWEEN CONSTRUCTS AND PRACTICES
In this paper, we explore how an ideal of woman was shaped in the Reformation epoch. We also focused on how humanists and reformers in their practices addressed to this ideal. We analysed as texts – treatises and pamphlets by Erasmus of Rotterdam, Juan Luis Vives, Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon, so images, paintings and engravings, from the Reformation era.
The Reformation ideal of woman was highly traditional, even if compared with a Humanist one. An ideal woman is a spouse and a mother, completely involved with household matters, always obedient to her husband, sober and humble. Such an ideal constructed in the narratives was transmitted to visuality. Real everyday practices were often far from this idyllic pattern The marriage of Luther to Katharina von Bora, depicted as an exemplary one both in narratives and visuality, in reality was much more complicated and ambiguous. Katharina, though she was indeed very good in household, exercised power at home and profited from freedom of speech, knew Latin and even argued in theological matters with her husband. The actors themselves were not always aware of this rupture between ideal and reality, as everyday practices often combine rational and irrational views.
Key words: gender, the Reformation, narrative, visualilty, the Humanism.
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