Situated at the intersection of social and cultural history, the study draws upon late-medieval and early-modern sources from the city of Basel, Switzerland in order to provide a nuanced view of concepts of fatherhood on the eve of the Reformation. It focuses on how people invoked ideas about fatherhood in the pursuit of various goals ? not only the ideological agendas of scholarly elites, but also the more pragmatic problems of closing a business deal, claiming an inheritance, or choosing sides in a fistfight.