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This chapter sets out the importance of clerical marriage for a study of married life. Two vignettes introduce the lives of married clergy in Parma (northern Italy) and Paris. Lay and clergy chose marriage as a union within which sexual relations were sanctioned, albeit only for the creation of offspring. Given the vocal opposition of a substantial number of clergy against chaste marriages we must conclude that for these clergy and their wives the sexual aspect of marriage was a compelling one and to be preferred to chaste marriage or celibacy. The married clergy were not afraid to physically defend their right to continue their marriages as sexual unions. A strong incentive may have had its roots in the emotional attachment and love a married priest’s couple may have felt for each other.

Luther's attack on the Church's law that the clergy must be unmarried, following that of Erasmus, caused priests to disregard the law, not by following the old habit of living with women, but by making them wives through a sacrament of the church. His own marriage to the former nun Catherine von Bora was of crucial significance as both partners had broken vows of celibacy. Luther sang the praises of marriage as the noblest condition in creation, and the movement in favour of clerical marriage became unstoppable. Protestants assumed that marriage made a pastor's vocation more effective in protecting him from scandal and allowing him to go where he wished among the people, and priests who remained unmarried were suspected of clinging to the relics of popery.

The introduction to the book contains a brief survey on the modern scholarship of the institution of medieval marriage and an overview of the modern historiographical debate on medieval marriage since George Duby (1919–96). There is a section on the medieval sources used for this book, especially narrative sources such as chronicles, saints’ lives, and miracle stories, as well as documentary sources such as decretal texts, episcopal letters, and charters. The introduction also contains a brief survey of four themes that run throughout the book as well as a note on the chronological and geographical scope of the book.

This chapter explores a series of eight dialogues on purgatory, predestination, the cult of the saints, and clerical celibacy by the Frenchman John Véron (1561–2). Véron sugars his repudiation of Catholic doctrine by means of a lively cast of four interlocutors and satirical jibes. Yet Ciceronian civility and a clear division of labour ensures that religious decorum is always preserved. These decorous popularizing techniques are not his own, however. Véron's The Huntynge of Purgatorye to death is an unacknowledged translation‐cum‐adaptation of Pierre Viret's Disputations chrestiennes (Geneva, 1552). Comparing Véron's Huntynge and Viret's Disputations for the first time, this chapter discusses Véron's ‘Englishing’ of Viret, and its significance for the circulation of Viret's ideas in England. The second part of the chapter analyses the Protestant characters' rhetorical strategies of refutation and the extent of their success.

Chapter 4 focuses on the households of Geneva’s pastors, looking for clues as to the nature of the ministers’ marriages and family relationships, and describing the material and financial compensation the pastors received to enable them to carry out their daily work. It will be shown that the pastoral vocation did not allow for a contemplative or isolated existence, but required intensive engagement with the concerns of household and society. The demands of family life; sick children; deceased spouses; parsonages in disrepair; critical neighbours; parsimonious wages—these were some of the real emotional and physical challenges that Geneva’s ministers faced as they performed their duties day to day.

The conclusion centres on the four main thematic threads that run through the book. There was a marked move away from parental arrangements and frequent parental coercion to unions resulting from a couple’s consent and their own choice. Women especially at elite level probably were persuasive enough to make their fathers, brothers, and sons see the advantages in allowing the young to express their opinion and if necessary block their parents’ plans. The couple’s consent as a validating principle for marriage gives the clergy a supporting and enabling role rather than a creative one which should be attributed to the laity. Married clergy (and their wives) stressed the good of marriage for those who provided pastoral care. The lived experience of married life suggests that compatibility, a measure of sexual attraction, affection, and love better ensured a lasting relationship than an arbitrary property transaction arranged by parents between two families.