Know your place

Interaction, whether between employee and master or between employees, involved a socializing process that showed the individual what was considered the correct way to behave. Some of it was intentional and aimed at influencing behaviours through formal or informal rules. In Erik Schroderus’ 1617 handbook Hwszdräng, which included the Swedish translation of the French theologian Gilbert Cousin’s widely circulated Oiketes siue de officio famulorum, service was portrayed as sacred. ‘Your calling is better founded in the word of God than is the estate and order of all monks’, the text declared with reference to Luther. ¹ It was a virtue to accept one’s calling as a servant, for ‘if Fortune makes you a donkey, you should remain a donkey and meekly honour your estate’. ² Service was also characterized as an opportunity to be more civilized and gain knowledge, mirroring a patriarchal discourse where household socialization and education was considered a benefit, as long as it did not result in presumption—or deviation from the instructions provided. ‘A servant is troublesome to me, who is wiser than a servant’, Hwszdräng concluded, marking the limits of such an education. ³ The confessionalized, hierarchical discourse of this early-seventeenth-century publication thus engaged with the relations between service and knowledge, particularly highlighting the commanding role a good master was thought to play for his servants.