Love and marriage in the flame of sinfulness

A contribution to the history of “morality” in Slovenia between the 16th and 18th centuries

Abstract

The author attempts to define the roots and the development of “civic morality” in Slovenia during the 16th and 18th centuries. The article is focused on the pedagogical (code of conduct, education) and theological (preaches, catechesis) commandments and the general pastoral guidelines with which the secular and church authorities aimed to discipline the bodies and minds of the believers/subjects during the process of totalitarianization of society. The author examines the turning points in the formal treatment of sexuality from a period of late medieval tolerance until the era of accentuated sinfulness characteristic of the time of Protestant reformation in the middle of the 16th century. The next century saw the establishment of a new Catholic catechesis based on the Council of Trent and marked by the colourfulness of the Baroque. In the first third of the 18th century, however, the first recognizable features of Catholic rigorism occurred. These were characteristic of the subalpine Hapsburg provinces in the last third of the century and helped shape the morality of the 19th century, together with its most recognizable consequence – the civic double standards that excluded sexuality and emotion from public discourse.