ABSTRACT
Much of the current scholarship on sexuality and cross-cultural encounters has concentrated on questions of identity and difference, and such questions were also of great concern in early modern Christianity. The centrality of sex to the preservation of boundaries is something that nearly all human societies have recognized. In all early modern societies, marriage was a matter of concern for families and communities as well as religious and secular authorities, for marriage was closely linked with familial and individual honor. The gap between learned ideal and lived reality was especially evident in issues surrounding marriage. Marriage was not the only sexual matter with a demonstrable gap between theory and practice. Protestants set up a uniform ideal of sexual life, with marriage and possible parenthood as essential for both sexes, while Catholicism and Orthodoxy endorsed a range of options.
