Teaching Gender in Social Work - MailChimp

twentieth century. Bride buying was a sort of contractual marriage. The contract
was not entered into by the groom and the bride themselves, but by the representatives
of their families or clans. A fairly high price for the bride was paid by
the groom’s family to the bride’s family. 17 As regards dependent gentry, brides
and grooms for their children were selected by the lord who, apart from that,
often enjoyed the right to the first night. 18
Data about marriages entered into on the basis of economic or other benefits
can be found as late as the early twentieth century. They were often arranged
between a young girl and an elderly man, who was frequently a well-off widower
with many children. There is also data about suicides committed by girls as a result
of forced marriages. Thus, Eva Barbara, daughter of Andrej Galski, ate a couple
of poisonous spiders and died, after Schnitzenpaum from Ig Castle had taken her
away, despite her protests, and had locked her up behind the castle walls. 19
Persecutions and Mass Deaths Caused to Women by the Catholic Church
The time of Counter-Reformation was very dangerous for women in Slovenia.
The Reformation was strongly supported by women with high expectations,
which followed their disappointment with the immoral and greedy Catholic
Church’s craving for power. 20 Thus, entire women’s monasteries joined Lutheranism.
Apart from the new Church’s modesty and its promotion of education
for all, women were attracted to the Reformed Church by the opportunities
that it created for their activities. The Counter-Reformation movement, which
emerged in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, was therefore aimed,
to a considerable extent, at persecuting women. At that time, many noble
families were exiled, including all those that refused to give up the ideas of the
Reformation. Many women persevered in their support for the new religion,
thereby causing problems for Reformation Commissions. That is why Bishop
Tomaž Hren issued “even stricter decrees against women than against men. He
had them sent off to towers (prisons), locking them up for longer periods than
men, and only gave them water and bread to eat”. 21
17
Vilfan, 1961: 250–254.
18
The right of the first night was granted to the medieval lords and it meant that they could first have sex with the
bride.
19
Minka Govekar. Slovenska žena. (Slovene Woman) (Ljubljana: Splošno Žensko društvo, 1926).
20
Ibid., 21.
21
Ibid., 34.
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