Strategies. Early-modern Europeans feared disorder, and every aspect of their society aimed at preventing, or at least curtailing, it. With this overriding objective, Europeans persecuted lepers and heretics with great fervor; permitted, after the successful consolidation of the Reformation, the practice of only one religion in any given area; burned women who violated social expectations by being witches; imprisoned pioneering intellectuals, such as Galileo; and maintained a rigid social hierarchy, a "society of orders," in which everyone—prince, bishop, priest, noble, merchant, scholar, artisan, and peasant—knew one's place and one's responsibilities. European culture, as expressed in the mundane practices and more complex rituals of its daily life, was, in essence, simply the manner by which this "society of orders" defined, regulated, and reproduced itself over generations in an often futile attempt to safeguard society from disorder.

Social Hierarchies. The topics discussed in this chapter all...