Defiled Trades and Social Outcasts: Honor and Ritual Pollution in Early Modern GermanyThis book presents a social and cultural history of 'dishonourable people' (unehrliche Leute), an outcast group in early modern Germany. Executioners, skinners, grave-diggers, shepherds, barber-surgeons, millers, linen-weavers, sow-gelders, latrine-cleaners, and bailiffs were among the 'dishonourable' by virtue of their trades. This dishonour was either hereditary, often through several generations, or it arose from ritual pollution whereby honourable citizens could become dishonourable by coming into casual contact with members of the outcast group. The dishonourable milieu of the city of Augsburg from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries is reconstructed to show the extent to which dishonour determined the life-chances and self-identity of dishonourable people. The book then investigates how honourable estates interacted with dishonourable people, and how the pollution anxieties of early modern Germans structured social and political relations within honourable society. |
Contents
1 | |
PART I The meaning of dishonor in early modern society | 21 |
PART II The dishonorable milieu | 67 |
punishment and healing | 119 |
PART IV Artisanal honor and urban politics | 187 |
dishonor and the society of orders | 253 |
261 | |
281 | |
Other editions - View all
Defiled Trades and Social Outcasts: Honor and Ritual Pollution in Early ... Kathy Stuart Limited preview - 1999 |
Defiled Trades and Social Outcasts: Honor and Ritual Pollution in Early ... Kathy Stuart No preview available - 1999 |
Common terms and phrases
Andreas Anhauser apprentice Augsburg authorities bailiffs barber-surgeons bathmasters beadle boundary of honor Catholic citizens city council city government confessional daughter decree defiled trades Deibler dishonor conflicts dishonor pollution Donauwörth early modern German early modern period economic eighteenth century excluded execution executioner medicine executioner or skinner executioner's executioners and skinners Frankfurt a.M. free imperial city Gaisser gallows Geschichte goldsmiths grave-diggers groups guild gulden Handwerk Hartmann healing Henker honorable artisans honorable guilds Ibid infamy insult Jahrhundert Johann Georg journeymen journeymen's organizations Kaufbeuren legitimation Leichnam linen-weavers magistrates marriage married Marx Philipp masters medical doctors medical practice Memmingen Munich night-king palatine count patients patrician petition political prostitutes Protestant punishment Reichsstadtakten ritual Roeck Scharfrichter Schmidt seventeenth century shepherds sixteenth century social disciplining society SStBA Stadt in Krieg StadtAA status Steuerbücher stonemasons Strafamt Swabian territorial tioners Tobias Frank torture Trenkler urban Urgichtensammlung weavers Weber women