ABSTRACT
Studying gender relations through sources of legal history tends to emphasize negative outcomes, as the research is largely based on court cases and laws regulating unwanted behaviour. This does not indicate that many men would not have loved and respected their wives as partners and companions (e.g. Schnabel-Schu¨le, 1997, pp. 194195). If it came to trials, however, this meant a grave turning point for the lives of the convicted and victims of violence. The legal processes related to marital and sexual violence as well as adultery clearly reveal the major downsides of patriarchal values, the fragility of female honour and the undeniable gender-specific inequality of early modern culture. Indisputably, the contemporary social and judicial environment made violence and harassment against women quite easy, and there is no reason to expect that this would not have occurred even to a greater extent than the sources seem to suggest.
