Professors Down the Aisle: Academic Marriage Patterns in the Seventeenth Century Dutch Republic

Abstract

Misogamist discourse prevailed among western European early modern scholars. This article examines whether misogamist discourse translated into behaviour in the Dutch Republic. We identify marriage trends of professors employed by the universities of Leiden and Utrecht in the seventeenth century, using quantitative and qualitative approaches. We analysed a prosopographical dataset of professors and their wives, explored here through several case studies. Against views of exceptionality, seclusion and celibacy in scholarly culture, based on self-fashioning and a handful of memorable examples, we argue that scholars overall replicated and intensified the European Marriage Pattern, and marriage strategies of the Dutch civic elite.