“Remedies to tame the beast”: the rules of good living and the orientations for the badly married to live in peace in a devotion manual from the 18th century

Abstract

In this article, we hold attention to the orientations that should be followed by catholic believers to guarantee a good marriage and which are found in the devotion manual “Mestre da Virtude”, written by portuguese priest João Franco, in 1745. In defining what was a “bad marriage” and in proposing the “remedies” that should be employed for the resolution of marriage problems, Dominican João Franco doesn’t only highlight the views on family and the gender relations in effect in the 18th century, but also the importance the Church bestowed to the sanctity of marriage and its endeavor to keep setting the rules of “good living in a society that, in the midst of the first signs of the crisis of the Old Regime, experienced intense transformation.