ABSTRACT
The Dutch refugees had indeed infused the Emden church with greater aspirations toward church discipline. The desire for tight church discipline of the congregation might have been one of the major enticements into Emden's relatively large and disciplined Anabaptist community. Gerhard Oestreich developed his idea of 'social disciplining' in an attempt to understand monarchical absolutism in Europe and the ways in which obedient and orderly subjects were created by European élites. Oestreich's 'social disciplining' process progressed through a gradual development from its first clear manifestations in the police ordinances of the early modern cities to the eighteenth century, when it was fully in operation. The category Res Mixtae includes issues that were considered by contemporaries to be neither purely political/social nor purely ecclesiastical, including marriage and the family, school and education, and poor relief and health/sickness matters. The poor-wardens became the poor relief employees in Emden who worked most closely in enforcing social discipline.
