Abstract
Matheus Miller was a bourgeois in the strict sense of the term. He was a burgher of Augsburg, a townsman who drew his sustenance and his identity from his participation in and close association with a specific place. Yet, Matheus was a bourgeois of a different stripe. Rather than a captive rentier, living conservatively within his means and according to expectations, he shaped and changed his life in Augsburg. Through well-laid schemes, he created an ordered existence that was both rational and irrational, born of public engagements in commercial and political affairs but shaped by family ties and personal prejudices.
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Notes
Matheus did not share the opinion of modern historians that the wedding celebration was a moment of cardinal social and cultural importance. See L. Roper, ‘Going to Church and Street: Weddings in Reformation Augsburg’, Past and Present 106 (1985): 62–101;
M. Segalen, Love and Power in the Peasant Family (Oxford, 1983).
See, for example, H. Kamen, The Iron Century: Social Change in Europe, 1550–1660 (New York, 1971), p. 195.
See M. Walker, German Home Towns: Community, State, and General Estate: 1648–1871 (Ithaca, 1971), passim.
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© 2000 Thomas Max Safley
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Safley, T.M. (2000). Conclusion. In: Matheus Miller’s Memoir. Early Modern History: Society and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230287891_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230287891_6
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