Sex, honour and morality : about By examining different forms of deviance, this article asks how the religious reforms brought about by the Council of Trent affected issues of discipline and morality for women and men. After the defeat of radical Protestantism the city was returned to Catholicism and eventually a stringent programme of reform was enforced. The article shows how the Tridentine reforms influenced perceptions of gender and discusses how the women, and in particular servant girls, experienced these changes.
However, as far as women were concerned, the church fathers at the Council of Trent mainly focused on two kinds : those about to enter into marriage and those who had taken holy orders and bound themselves to their heavenly bridegroom, Jesus Christ. Both institutions, marriage and the convent, were pillars of Catholicism and equally in need of reform. Consequently, the church fathers set out to design reforms that would bring conformity of ritual and purity of practice, and all of this under the strict supervision of the ecclesiastical authorities.
They were at once insiders and outsiders of a community, often socially marginalised yet by far not a minority, traditionally stigmatised as women of low morale and little honour, while simultaneously privy to many intimate secrets in the households they served. Although the years spent in service were not part of the normal lifecycle of every early modern woman, most lower class girls between the ages of 15 and 29 went into service for a time to save up enough money for a dowry 1.
The final aim was, of course, to find a suitable marriage partner and to use the dowry to settle down into married life. This mobility set them apart from other early modern women who would not usually have been granted the same amount of freedom.
However, their mobility also separated them geographically from the bonds and protection of their family and friends. When a girl was offered employment in a household, the master of the house was required to extend his protection and supervision to the new member of the household. Many did, but early modern sources regularly report servant girls being sexually harassed or even raped by men of the community, other members of the household or even the head of household himself.
