Magdalena and Balthasar : An Intimate Portrait of Life in 16th Century Europe Revealed in the Letters of a Nuremberg Husband and Wife

by Steven E. Ozment (Translator)

Gathers letters written between a Nuremberg merchant and his wife

Genres: History, Nonfiction, European History, Medieval

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

A specialist in early modern and modern Germany, the European family, and the Protestant Reformation., Steven Ozment was the McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History emeritus at Harvard University.

Reviews

[Vaishali · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting facts, but if you love European medieval history... not enough! Since the letters are verbose and formal, Ozmet may have considered compiling just excerpts, super-padding them with history, maps, engravings, receipts, and tax records. Instead, we have a few full letters, background history, and Ozmet's continuous evaluations of the couple's personalities.

Let's hope we see a future book from this respected Harvard historian, elucidating obsolete terms from this era. For example: manna cabrina, a mixture of juices from several medicinal plants. I couldn't find this on the web anywhere, but am really curious about it.

Neat facts about Nuremberg, circa 1590:
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* Convicted thieves were hung if they were not citizens, and beheaded if they were.

* Urine/refuse couldn't be thrown out of the house until after 10pm, punishable by fined imprisonment.

* Arsonists were burned at the stake.

* Legal minimum marriage age without parental consent: men@25 and women@22

* Legal minimum marriage age with consent: men@14 , women@12. (These were rare)

* "Frauen Gate...in a canal by the fish stream, a mighty gushing fountain of pure brass of many waterfalls and spouts has been constructed... for the King of Denmark."

* The Frankfurt Fair was a grand medieval trade market where Balthazar hawked goods.

* Crackling - deep fried animal skin - was a common snack food that traveled well

* Merchant routes were so dangerous that Balthazar and his colleagues term them Murder Road. Sometimes towns were closed off, as villagers were weary of carriers of plague.

* Famines strike year-round, lining the merchant routes with "faces of pitiable wretched common folk."

* A popular biyearly report about fairs was called the Jacobus Francus

* Magdalena purchased flax, quinces, Venetian gold thread, ivory-handled knives, lebkuchen (German honeycakes), and Dutch cheese.

* Unlucky middle class houses near ponds could have walls infested with snails.

* In 1594, the Archbishop of Mainz passed by Nuremberg ... with 600 horsemen.

* A fruit dealer and specialty weaver were executed for sodomy

* Fires inside city walls were common.

* Magdalena and Balthazar's child contracted 300 worms, allayed by drinking beer.

* 1/3 of all children in Nuremberg died before 12. Magdalena/Balthazar's kid was one of them.

* Medical treatments for adults included blood-letting, and hot mineral springs. "It was not unusual for families & friends to take blood-letting holidays: going in groups to the bath surgeon."

* "The Nuremberg physician's instruction of 1572 recommended a regular cycle of spring and autumnal bleeding as optimal for good health." Magdalena blood-let every 2 weeks (!)

* The cure for fatigue was laxatives, then drinking 2.3 liters of the bath waters for many days.

* Italy experienced great famine. "One estimates that a year from now 1/3 ... of Italy may be dead. Even if a third doesn't die, many must starve to death."

* Nuremberg's clergy banned dancing.

* Popular interest in magic/witchcraft increased so much that the city of Wessenberg asked Nuremberg's clergy what to do. Franconia officially persecuted witches. Nuremberg scoffed at the trend in a private journal declaring witchery a delusion afflicting the simple-minded, ignorant, sad, poor, and ill.

* Troops fighting the Turks at one point practiced outside city walls ... sometimes on migrating geese.

* Nuremberg was charitable to the local poor, who received free food, medicine, and physician care.

* "Poor artisans borrowed upto 100 gulden in interest-free loans to keep their businesses going... Probably 10% received regular care, while another 20% lived so marginal an existence that they too quickly became dependent on the city."


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[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely loved this book. This is a book of letters between a husband and wife and gives you a good picture of their lives and the times they lived in. Balthasar often traveled away to go to a "spa" for bloodletting. Many of his letters told how he believed in the medicinal value of bloodletting to keeping one healthly. I was so fascinated with the bloodletting that I decided that I too would give bloodletting a try. However, my "spa" is the Red Cross. My friends laugh, but this book is the real reason I started to donate and each time I think of Balthasar.

[Gosia Maria · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fantastic insight into the daily lives of a Lutheran merchant couple from Nuremberg in the 16th century. Ozment did a good job setting the backdrop to the letters, explaining their families, their faith, their beliefs about health and sickness and death, and the way their business worked in a sensitive, positive and insightful way. I loved how he showed by their letters how their relationship breaks the stereotypes that many believe about Christians in Early Modern Europe being backwards, purely patriarchal, and superstitious.

Docking one star because I have one minor quibble with the book - I would have preferred to be able to read all their letters in order. This book doesn't contain all the letters, and as the chapters deal with themes rather than chronological events, the quotes from letters jumped around a bit. I would have enjoyed it completely, if the analyses, exploration and backgrounds (with quotes!) would have been first, and then the second half of the book to be simply all of their existing letters in order.

[Rouchswalwe · Rating 4 out of 5]

This must have been a labor of love. The letters were interesting for me to read, and I feel like I've travelled in the Tardis, peeking in on a long-ago time. Love truly is eternal.

[Cliff Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

The late Steven Ozment contributed much to the world of scholarship, and this little, highly readable book is perhaps his greatest gift. That is, because it is more than a work of scholarship, it is his laying out before our eyes a collection of letters by real people, a couple living in Germany in the 16th century -- a time, in his words, of a world "between absolutes, still believing in the power of God while discovering the power of man."

Their human emotions, their joys and sorrows, are those of a family, and this, Ozment says, makes a lie of the modern hypothesis that the family of yore was a coldly patriarchal construct, a institution that was more business than cozy home as we know it.

[Klissia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Simple and fascinating lifes!

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Letters from a Nuremberg couple from the 16th century with commentary to explain historical context. Interesting.

[Bobbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

a short but fascinating account, based on letters of a wife in Nurnberg and her husband, a merchant who traveled in Germany and Italy in the late 1500's. Ozment says " If there is a mistake worse than believing that the present and the past are the same, it is thinking they are completely different...the past is not a different world."

[S. · Rating 4 out of 5]

think i'm giving a sympathetic 4/5 not for any amazing, mind-blowing capacity of this work, but just because it's so rare; a nuremburg husband and wife of middle/merchant class exchange letters, and so we gain understanding of the 16th century. not something most people really know about.