Jonas Liliequist    SAB15-1039:1
Honor thy father and thy mother- ambivalent emotions and conflicts between parent and child generations in early modern Sweden and Finland

Scientific activity
The main activity has been to compile and analyze the collected sources and to start writing on a book manuscript (see synopsis below). A complete manuscript in Swedish will appear at the turn of this year. Besides, parts of the analysis will be further discussed in two articles in English concerning status competition and challenges and the cultural history of reverence and shame, respectively.

Synopsis book manuscript
1. Introduction, previous research, statement of problem and aim
The study is introduced by a legal case from the 17th century followed by a short background to the influence of the Ten Commandments in Early Modern Swedish Society and the following criminalization of verbal and physical abuse of parents. Next, an overview of previous research is provided as a point of departure for the formulation of the problem and aim of the investigation. In contrast to the focus in previous studies on the frequencies of trials and their fluctuations over time and space as a possible indicator of different socio-economic conditions and changes in the maintenance of elderly parents, this study takes its starting point in the detailed descriptions of the conflicts and the relations of authority within the household. In the foreground stands, not only the abusive meanings of words and actions fuelling the conflicts but the emotions expressed in both the conflicts and in connection with the penalty as well. Against this background, the aim of the current study can be formulated as a study of conflicts between generations in the household and their legal sanctions and penalties with focus on relations of authority, abusive meanings and emotions.
2. The fourth commandment in medieval and Lutheran tradition
The chapter takes its point of departure in a comparison between medieval and Lutheran comments on the fourth commandment in devotional manuals, printed sermons, catechisms and the Lutheran house-table texts. The primary definition of children and parents as generation categories is clarified and the metaphorical extension of parental authority as the very foundation of society is demonstrated. Next follows a discussion of the mutual duties of children and parents described in the house-table texts, catechisms and devotional manuals. The duties are compared and related to notions about age and temperament. Children’s duty to love, revere and obey is put against the parental duty not to provoke their children into anger but to love, castigate and teach them a Christian and honourable living and guide them into marriage.
3. Law and justice – main sources, limitations in time and space, methodological considerations
The chapter starts with a presentation of crime description, jurisdiction, obligations to denounce and report, and the penalties prescribed in 17th century ordinances and the national law code of 1734, respectively. Next follows a presentation of the judicial records that constitute the central source material. The obligation to refer all trials concerning verbal and physical abuse of parents to a higher instance has made it possible to use the resolutions of the Royal Superior Courts both for tracking the trials in lower courts and to get a representative picture of the amount of all charges brought before the courts during certain periods of time. The area of investigation comprise the whole Swedish kingdom including the Finnish part during the periods 1660-1700 and 1745-1754 respectively. The periods have been selected with regard to certain legal changes in the law code of 1734. From a legal historical perspective, the first period still represents the phase of criminalization whereas the law of 1734 mirrors an established judicial and penal practice in force up to the 19th century. Thereafter follows methodological considerations on how the court records could best be analysed with regard to the overall aim of the study. Straightforward micro- and socio-historical analytical perspectives are rejected in favour of a culture-historical and historical anthropological approach in which statistical patterns of conflict relations and forms constitute the foundation for close readings and qualitative analysis of certain selected key cases. The summaries of each case in the resolutions of the superior courts provide an important starting point.
4. Conflict relations – quantifications and statistical patterns
The chapter begins with a definition of authority, the central analytical concept of the study. A distinction is made between formal and personal authority. Formal authority is accordingly used synonymously with statutory power, distributed authority and legal right. Next follows a mapping of all possible relations of formal authority within the household. A typical household of landed farmers in most parts of Sweden and Finland included a husband and wife running the farm and their minor children, one or two servants and often paternal or maternal grandparents as well. The husband held the highest and overall authority both in his capacity as landowner/tenant and in relation to servants, wife, children and retired grandparents as master and head of the household. In relation to the authorities, masters represented their households in matters of taxpaying as well as in military conscriptions and catechetical household examinations. In political-religious terms, the master was a housefather with authority to govern the household members by analogy with the king’s government of his subjects. In practice, however, partly overlapping and sometimes even conflicting authority relations limited the master’s power.
In relation to their own minor children and servants, both husband and wife had the same right to demand respect and obedience in their roles as father and mother, master and mistress. As wife, however, the mistress was at the same time obliged to show deference to her husband as her head and guardian limiting her authority within the household to a deputy position. In relation to the servants, children still living at home occupied a special position as the presumptive heirs of the farm. Servants were in their turn most often young unmarried sons and daughters to other masters. Father and mother, master and mistress had the same right to castigate their children and servants if necessary, whereas the master as husband had at least up to 1734, the explicit legal right to chastise his wife. Furthermore, both husband and wife, master and mistress were obliged to show respect and reverence to the elderly retired generation as their fathers and mothers, natural, step or in-law. Depending on the stage in the family cycle, a household could include a married son or daughter who aspired to take over the running of the farm. Parental right could in this way stand in conflict with both the right of the master and mistress to run the farm, the husband’s authority in marriage and grown up children’s aspirations for becoming masters and mistresses on their own. A hypothesis is formulated according to which the formally regulated authority- and power relations in fact contributed to the arise of conflicts rather than to the maintenance of a good household order.
Thereafter follows statistical compilations of conflict relations with regard to generation, affinity and gender. The four relations mentioned in the law constitute base categories; children-parents, stepchildren–stepparents, children in law-parents in law, stepchildren in law-stepparents in law. Each base category is further divided into sub categories with regard to the perpetrator’s and the victim’s gender and whether the charge concerns physical violence or verbal abuse, or both. A first pattern shows the most common personal conflict relations and to what extent this has changed between the periods of investigation. Conflicts with stepparents were in general most common, followed by parents in law, natural parents and stepparents in law in mentioned order. With regard to gender, conflicts between stepsons and stepfathers dominated. There are few cases of serious violence in the source material.
5. Parental right, master’s right and husband right
Focus in this chapter is on how and in which situations parental authority came in conflict with the formal authority of the master and mistress to decide in the household, and/or the master’s authority to decide in his marriage. Conflicts could arise in different ways with regard to if the conflict concerned old retired parents/parents in law still lodged in the household or in a separate house, or if it concerned grown up children/children in law who were part of, or lived and worked outside the household. Formal authority could, depending on the situation be either questioned or challenged. How the limits for the children’s duty to revere and obey versus the parental right to chastise and reprove were understood in practice is the central interest of this chapter.
6. Abusive meanings of words and actions
The chapter contains a more thorough analysis of how conflicts were expressed in words, actions and emotions and in which ways they were perceived as abusive by the parties against the background of different aspirations on authority and personal relations. Most often, both parties felt themselves deeply wronged even though it was only the children’s words and actions that were punished.  Special attention is paid to differences in abusive meanings of words and actions in conflicts between natural parents, parents in law and stepparents respectively and with egard to gender.
7. Denunciation, penalty and appeals for pardon
Different aspects of societal intervention are treated here, from denunciation and questioning to verdict and penalty together with the parties’ own accounts of guilt, responsibility and appeals for pardon. The forms of penalties and the emotions of shame, deterrence, repentance and reconciliation these were meant to evoke, are treated thoroughly. A distinction is made between stigmatizing and reintegrative shame.
8. Concluding discussion
A summary and discussion of results as the basis for a general interpretation of authority conflicts within the household. In focus stands the question if and to what extent the formally regulated authority- and power relations constituted a fertile soil for ambivalent emotions and frustration and what the different abusive forms and meanings can tell about the emotional tensions within the early modern household. Norm conflicts of catch-22 character are in focus for the discussion.
A complete manuscript will appear at the end of this year, 2018.