Women in Black Too: The Untold Story of Women and the Reformation

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Research Professor of Christianity and Culture
Lancaster Bible College and Graduate School
Lancaster, Pennsylvania

The home, cities, economic life, and government would virtually disappear. Men can't do without women. Even if it were possible for men to beget and bear children, they still couldn't do without women.

-Martin Luther

Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, John Calvin, Conrad Grebel, Menno Simons, Thomas Cranmer, John Bunyan, Jeremiah Burroughs-all of them have at least one thing in common. They're all men. When the story of the Reformation gets told, it's typically their story. There is another story to be told, however-the inspiring story of the courage and fortitude of the women of the Reformation. Their too often untold story needs to be heard.

The women of the Reformation fit into two categories: Reformers' wives who made quite an impact themselves and women who made substantive contributions on their own. Among the first category, none is more well-known than Katherina von Bora, the former nun who married Martin Luther. In the latter category we find mostly nobility and even royalty-some risking great wealth and family honor for their commitment to the Reformation cause. All of them played significant roles.

The official dogma of the Roman Catholic Church disallowed a married clergy. Monks and the ranks of the clergy were married to the church; nuns were married to Christ. Breaking the vow of celibacy whether theoretically or officially would mean that one would have to give up a position in the church. Unofficially and practically, of course, there were secret marriages and mistresses and affairs. Thomas Cranmer, for instance, had a wife long before he and Henry VIII brought about the British Reformation. When Ulrich Zwingli became priest of the Great Minster at Zurich he was replacing a "celibate" priest who somehow managed to father a number of children.

The Reformers, with Luther and Calvin leading the way, championed the institution of marriage and the family. They saw no biblical warrant for celibacy of the priesthood-Peter, after all, had a mother-in-law. Conversely, they saw marriage elevated and celebrated everywhere in the pages of Scripture. Once they got married, however, they faced a challenge that the church as a whole hadn't faced in over a millennium: What does a minister's family look like? Just as they broke new ground on so many areas of theology, they also needed to pioneer the Christian home. Fortunately, they were not alone. They had formidable wives to help them figure it out.

Married to the Reformation

While Katherina von Bora might be the most famous of the Reformation wives, she didn't quite compare with Wibrandis Rosenblatt, at least not when it came to the number of husbands. She was Wibrandis (Rosenblau) Keller-Oecolampadius-Capito-Bucer. Yes, she had four husbands, and all of them were significant Reformers, causing one writer to dub her "the Bride of the Reformation," or as she is known in German, the Reformationfrau.2 Wibrandis and her widowed mother lived in Basel, where she met her first husband, Ludwig Keller. He died after just two short years of marriage, leaving Wibrandis widowed at the age of twenty-two and the mother of a small child, also named Wibrandis. She soon after married Johannes Oecolampadius (1482-1531)-his last name means "house lamp"-a leader in the Swiss Reformation. Having been a Roman Catholic priest, Oecolampadius gave up being a bachelor at the age of forty-five. After four years of marriage and having a son named Eusebius, after the famed historian of the early church, Wibrandis was again left a widow when Oecolampadius died on November 23, 153l. "Pray the Lord to give us a long and happy marriage," Oecolampadius had written to William Farel, his friend in Geneva. It wasn't to be.3

At about the same time that Oecolampadius died, his friend and fellow Reformer at Strasbourg, Wolfgang Capito (1478-1541), lost his wife. Martin Bucer, a friend and a frequent visitor in Oecolampadius's home, served as matchmaker for the widow and the widower. The next year Wibrandis packed her home and took her two children off to Strasbourg. Tragedy would soon strike, however, as the plague ravaged Strasbourg, taking the lives of Eusebius Oecolampadius, the two children of Wibrandis and Wolfgang Capito, and the life of Capito himself. The plague also claimed the life of Elisabeth Bucer, the wife of Martin. For a third time, Wibrandis was widowed.

In 1542 Wibrandis entered her fourth marriage to, of course, Martin Bucer (1491-1551). In 1548 the Reformation in Switzerland took a turn for the worse, causing the hard-line Reformers to look for freer environs. Bucer headed for Cambridge, England, where, under the reign of Edward VI, he had a great influence in preaching and teaching. The climate, food, and culture, however, never quite agreed with Bucer. He died in 1551. This was actually the longest marriage that Wibrandis had, even though it only lasted nine years. After Bucer's death, Wibrandis returned with the family to Strasbourg before returning to her first home of Basel.

There were no children in the marriage to Bucer, but there were children from Bucer's first and children from her previous marriages. She lived until 1564, when the plague again swept through Basel. Wibrandis (Rosenblatt) Keller-Oecolampadius-Capito-Bucer was truly married to the Reformation and was a matriarch of the Swiss Reformation. Wibrandis's marriages were punctuated by tragedy, yet she persevered. Children died in infancy. Her husbands faced uphill struggles as they fought for the Reformation. Finances were stretched thin. She cared for her widowed mother. Her home was more like a hostel, full of travelers and children and relatives. Bucer once said of her, "I can only hope to be as kind to my new wife as she to me." She could write in German and Latin, and according to her second husband, Oecolampadius, she knew her theology. But she was always in the shadows, her contribution never applauded, her role not to be center stage. Could Keller, Oecolampadius, Capito, and Bucer have done what they did without her?

John Calvin drew the same strength from his brief and tragedy-filled marriage to Idelette de Bure. They had one child, a son who died in infancy. After nine years of marriage, Idelette was brought low by illness. She never enjoyed good health throughout the course of their marriage. She died in 1549. Calvin was devastated. Writing to his friend and fellow Reformer Pierre Viret, he declared his grief, "I have been bereaved of the best companion of my life." To Farel he stated, "I do what I can to keep myself from being overwhelmed by grief." He recalled their last few moments together. "She was unable to speak, and her mind seemed to be troubled. I, having spoken a few words about the love of Christ, the hope of eternal life, concerning our married life, and her departure, engaged in prayer. In full possession of her mind, she both heard the prayer and attended to it."4 Calvin could never find a companion of equal stature to Idelette, remaining a widower until his death in 1564. And then there's Martin Luther's Katherina von Bora, or "Katie, my rib," as he called her. Luther thought himself to be a confirmed bachelor until Katie came along. Luther's literary output was incredible. He preached and taught and consulted and administered tirelessly. But he couldn't manage a household for anything. Those of more noble standing showered him with gifts of money and property. Most of it slipped through Luther's hands as quickly as it came into them. Luther just didn't seem to have room for thinking about such things.

Katie managed it all expertly. Luther was traveling when he fell ill and died. Just weeks after his death, Katie wrote to a sisterin-law, "Yes, my sorrow is so deep that no words can express my heartbreak.... I can neither eat nor drink, not even sleep.... God knows that when I think of having lost him, I can neither talk nor write in all my suffering and crying." She would sign her letters "solitary widow." The following years were not easy for her. She had her children to attend to, and after her famous husband's death, many simply forgot about the Luther family. As was said in her eulogy, "She experienced much ingratitude by many people of whom she should expect help and support for the sake of her husband's public merits in the service to the church." Her self-description near the end has her "clinging to Christ like a burr to a dress." She died in 1552.5

The Courage of Queens

One of the shortest reigns of any monarch

perhaps of all time lasted only nine days. In some

sense her reign was a front; she being a puppet with

the strings controlled by her handlers, not the least

of which was her father. Yet Lady Jane Grey (1537-

1554), England's famed "Nine Day Queen," had

a mind all her own. Jane Grey, as portrayed in a

major motion picture, is seen in historical memory

as precocious, if not irascible, depicted as a teenager

bent on finding herself and asserting herself,

right up to the end when she dies heroically. The

movie errs most, however, in paying too slim attention

to the theological and religious dimension of

Jane Grey. Her handlers knew they were getting

a Protestant, but they didn't know they were getting

a Protestant theologian. Jane, barely in her

teen years, corresponded regularly with Heinrich

Bullinger, Zwingli's successor in Switzerland. One

time she asked him about the best course of study

for learning Hebrew.

When Edward VI died, at a young age but

not entirely unexpectedly, the court went into a

tailspin. Mary, soon to be Bloody Mary, was the

rightful heir, being the daughter of Henry VIII and

Catherine of Aragon. She was Catholic to the core,

and her ascent to the throne threatened to unravel

the entire Reformation in Britain. Those committed

to seeing the Reformation through entered into

a backroom political blitz, resulting in the plan to

put Jane Grey on the throne.

They plied her status as the great-niece of

Henry VIII to qualify her for the throne ( Jane

Grey's mother was daughter to Henry VII's sister-

remember this for the quiz). Everyone, however,

could see straight through the transparent

plot to undermine England's long-held belief in

the divine right of kings, which means in short,

don't mess with the bloodline in the accession of

the throne. Even though Mary was Catholic, not

putting her on the throne would have been tantamount

to reversing the course of the planets. In

other words, Jane Grey enjoyed only a small circle

of support because even many friends of the Reformation

could not go against the divine right of the

monarchy. Mary's forces easily routed the meager

army defending Jane Grey. Those who put her on

the throne and Jane Grey herself all ended up in

the Tower of London. They were the first to fall in

Mary's reign of terror and revenge, revenge both

on the Protestant "heretics" for deposing Roman

Catholicism and on those who co-conspired in the

"annulment" of Henry VIII's marriage to Mary's

mother, Catherine of Aragon. Those long decades

Mary spent in exile in France provided ample

opportunity for her to nurse both her Catholicism

and her plans of vengeance.

After Mary had Jane Grey arrested in 1553,

however, she attempted to show her mercy, pitying

10 JBMW | Spring 2011

her as a pawn in the sordid plot, as she herself had

been as a child. If Jane Grey would but take the

Roman Mass, Mary would give Jane her life. Jane

was sixteen years of age at this time, which meant

that she had quite a bit of life to consider living.

But the price proved too high. Jane Grey refused,

adamant in her Protestant beliefs to the last. So

adamant was she in her beliefs that she chastised

her family's chaplain for conveniently converting

to Catholicism when Mary came to power. "Wilt

thou refuse the true God, and worship the invention

of man, the golden calf, the whore of Babylon,

the Romish religion, the abominable idol, the most

wicked mass?" she wrote. Jane Grey took theology

seriously.6

After her arrest, Lady Jane was quizzed by

Mary's archbishop, Feckenham, in the chapel at

the Tower of London before an audience of Mary's

supporters, which is to say before a Roman Catholic

audience. Jane Grey withstood Feckenham's

challenges of her rejection of the Roman view of

the Lord's Supper, outfoxed him in arguing for the

Reformation principle of Sola Scriptura (Scripture

Alone), and got the upper hand on the issue of justification

and our standing before God.

In the exchange over justification, Feckenham

tried to trip her up by accusing her of rejecting good

works, so clearly required of the Christian. "It is necessary

unto salvation to do good works also; it is not

sufficient only to believe," he told her. She returned,

"I deny that, and I affirm that faith only saves; but

it is meet for a Christian to do good works, in token

that he follows the steps of his Master, Christ, yet

may we not say that we profit to our salvation; for

when we have done all, we are unprofitable servants,

and faith only in Christ's blood saves us."7 Luther

could scarcely have put the doctrine of justification

by faith better. On February 12, 1554, two days after

her interview with Feckenham, Lady Jane Grey, the

nine-day queen, was martyred for her beliefs. Her

last words upon the scaffold were, "I here die a true

Christian woman and I trust to be saved by the

blood of Christ, and by none other means."8

At least Jane Grey has survived in memory.

Jeanne D'Albret (1528-1572), Queen of Navarre,

has essentially not, which is surely to our loss.

Jeanne became ruler of Navarre, a small but crucial

state interposed between Spain and France, after

her father Henry died in 1555. By 1560 she publicly

declared her allegiance to Protestantism and Calvinism.

The territories under her control likewise

became Protestant. She received a congratulatory

letter from Calvin himself. "I cannot adequately

express my joy," he wrote, and this from one who

found a way to express himself on just about everything.

9 Not everyone received the news with equal

fervor. The pope excommunicated her. The rulers in

Spain thought that was justified because she took

her lands by force. France, however, rather curiously

supported her, not moving against her as the pope

wished. That was surprising, of course, because of

France's deeply embedded Catholicism.

Jeanne of Navarre's reign occasioned the display

of her prowess at theology. She came by it

honestly, learning from the example of her mother,

Marguerite de Navarre, a frequent correspondent of

Calvin and a significant force in the Reformation

in France. Marguerite, though officially remaining

Catholic to the end, embraced both the Reformers

and Reformation principles. Sympathetic to

Luther and to the Swiss Reformers, she read their

Latin and German works, even translating some

of Luther's writings into French. She wrote marvelously

about devotion to God. She, at her own

risk, defended persecuted Protestants in France.

Roland Bainton wrote of Marguerite that "she had

so harrowed the soil of Navarre that it became the

most fruitful field of the Huguenot movement to

be spearheaded by her daughter, Jeanne d'Albret."10

During the reign of Queen Jeanne, the lands of

Navarre and Beam became a further stronghold for

the Huguenots, and they indeed prospered. Queen

Jeanne, however, foresaw the need to provide for

the future of Protestants in France. She went to the

King of France's court to arrange a marriage for her

son that would secure his ascension to the throne in

France. She also had a plan to secure a permanent

region in France that would be a safe haven for

Protestants. The marriage was granted, but not the

permanent Protestant region. She died of tuberculosis

in 1572, just two months prior to her son's

wedding. The wedding actually proved disastrous

JBMW | Spring 2011 11

for France's Protestant future, which all but came

crashing down in August 1572.

Many of the Huguenot leaders gathered in

Paris for the wedding, held on August 18. Catherine

de Medici, the Queen of France who at first tolerated

the Huguenots and the wedding, seized the

opportunity to purge France of its Protestant stain.

And with Queen Jeanne dead, nothing stood in

Catherine's way. On August 23, St. Bartholomew's

Day, the slaughter began. In Paris alone over two

thousand were martyred. By the time it ran its

course, the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, as it

came to be known, claimed over twenty thousand

Huguenots throughout France.11 It takes its place

in history as one of the bloodiest episodes in the

tumultuous history of the Reformation.

Jeanne's son, Henry, kept his life by taking the

Roman Mass. He would eventually become the

King of France, being dubbed Henry IV. As king,

he embraced Catholicism in order to bring peace.

"Paris is worth a Mass," he famously quipped. Had

his mother lived to hear that, she would have been

devastated.

Jeanne d'Albret of Navarre's dreams for a

Protestant France would not be realized. France

would officially be Roman Catholic, the surviving

Huguenots forced underground. Without the

assistance of the mother and daughter Marguerite

and Jeanne of Navarre, however, the Huguenots

would have been in even more dire straits. Jeanne

had once written that there is no greater obligation

for a monarch "whom [God] has saved from sin

and death by his grace and goodness alone" than "to

procure the complete establishment and advancement

of [Christ's] kingdom."12

The Piety of Poets

Though she wasn't born on American soil,

Anne Bradstreet takes her place as America's first

poet. She was born in 1612 in England. By 1619

her father, Thomas Dudley, served as steward for

the Earl of Lincoln, granting his daughter access to

the world of learning contained in the earl's library,

and she likely shared in the tutelage received by the

earl's children. She learned theology through the

Geneva Bible and reading Puritan works, then fresh

off the printers press. While at the Earl of Lincoln's

estate, she met Simon Bradstreet, who had been

the earl's charge since he was orphaned at the age

of fourteen. They married in 1628, he at the age

of twenty-five and she having just turned sixteen.

As Charles I and his infamous archbishop Laud

turned up the heat on the Puritans, the Bradstreets

and Dudleys set off for the safe haven of the New

World in 1630. They arrived at the harbor of Salem,

Massachusetts, after two long months at sea.

Both Anne's father and husband would take

the role of governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

She would, like every other colonial woman,

carve out a life in the so often referred to "howling

wilderness" of early New England. Unlike other

colonial women, and men for that matter, she would

also write poetry. John Woodbridge, Anne Bradstreet's

brother-in-law, took her poetry back across

the sea to old England, resulting in the 1650 publication

of The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America.

Bradstreet did not know of Woodbridge's plans,

and no one was as shocked as she to see the book.

Her work is poetic theology, evincing the

influence of both poets and Puritan theologians.

She gave perhaps the finest expression of the Puritan

emphasis of the "pilgrim" life of the Christian,

rivaled only by Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. This

theme reverberates throughout her work, reaching

a crescendo in her poem, "As Weary Pilgrim, Now

at Rest." In the middle of the poem she sighs:A Pilgrim I, on earth, perplext,

with sinners with cares and sorrows vext

By age and paines brought to decay

And my clay house mouldring away

Oh how I long to be at rest

and soar on high among the blest.13In a lengthy letter to her children recalling

her own life's pilgrimage, she writes of times "in

sicknesse, weaknes, paines," of times when she and

her children suffered. Of these times, she further

declares, "I have found them the Times when the

Lord hath manifested the most Love to me."14 She

could further testify of God:

12 JBMW | Spring 2011My hungry Soul he filled with Good,

He in his Bottle putt my tears,

My smarting wounds washt in his blood,

And banisht thence my Doubts and feares.15Bradstreet once wrote of scoffers of her poetry

who thought a knitting needle fit her hands better

than a quill. The German poet Anna Owena Hoyers

(1584-1655) faced a similar challenge. She also

presents her detractors poetically:Who say: it is not right

That a woman should write.Hoyers has been described as a "profoundly

Christian" Renaissance poet, which is to say that

she did not share in the narrow humanism of other

Renaissance figures. God and Christ figure prominently

in her poetry.16 Marguerite of Navarre,

mentioned above, also wrote poetry. Her tribute

to Luther is seen in her poem on the Reformation

doctrine of justification by faith alone. She writes,To you I testify

That God does justify

Through Christ, the man who sins.

But if he does not believe

And by faith receive

He shall have no peace,

From worry no cease,

God will then relieve,

If faith will but believe

Through Christ, the gentle Lord.17When Anna Hoyers rhetorically posed the

question, "Who say: it is not right/That a woman

should write," she was making a significant point.

When Anne Bradstreet took up a quill, she was

doing the church a service, for which we should be

grateful. In persecution and in poetry, the women

of the Reformation can and should be seen and

heard.

Conclusion

Reformation scholars are divided on the issue

of what the Reformation in fact accomplished for

women. Steven Ozment has led the way for the

view that the elevation of women and marriage

and families is nearly the singular achievement of

the Reformation's impact on culture. Others, such

as Lyndal Roper, argue that the Reformation did

little by way of the female gender. If judged by

certain standards, the Reformation may in fact be

seen as making little headway for women. At least

in Roman Catholicism women had the capacity

to serve the church officially in the convent. The

Protestant Reformers, who restricted ordination to

men, had very little to offer in a similar vein. Further,

the Reformers believed in male headship in

the home, and some, like John Knox, had serious

problems with women in positions of civic leadership-

though, in fairness to Knox, he objected

more to Mary and Elizabeth's religious views than

he did to their gender.18

Yet Ozment should not be so readily dismissed

in his estimation. The Reformation indeed

brought a new dignity to women and to marriage.

He argues compellingly that the patriarchal households

provided a refuge for women at a time and

place in history when women had little if any rights.

It was, after all, Calvin's Geneva that enacted laws

against wife abuse and enacted more equitable laws

of inheritance for widows and daughters. Ozment

is persuasive when he tells us it's an injustice to

the Reformers to underplay their achievements for

women.

The Reformation is not only about the

achievements for women, however. It also chronicles

the achievements of women. Lady Jane Grey,

Marguerite and Jeanne of Navarre, Anne Bradstreet,

and others have a legacy all their own, each

making significant contributions to the Reformation

and the founding of Protestantism. Yet their

stories have too often gone untold. The church of

today can only benefit by telling and retelling them

again.

Endnotes 1This essay originally appeared in Stephen J. Nichols, The Reformation:

How a Monk and a Mallet Changed the World (Wheaton:Crossway, 2007), 115-28. Edited and reprinted with permission of

Stephen J. Nichols and Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good

News Publishers, Wheaton, IL 60187, www.crossway.org.

2Edwin Woodruff Tait, "Bride of the Reformation," Christian History,

October 2004.

3Cited in Roland Bainton, Women of the Reformation in Germany

JBMW | Spring 2011 13and Italy (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1971), 82. Wibrandis and

Oecolampadius had three children-Eusebius, who died at the age

of thirteen, Alatheia, and Irene.

4The letters to Viret and Farel may be found in Calvin's Selected

Works, Vol. 5: Letters Part 2, 1545-1558 (ed. Jules Bonnet andDavid Constable; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1983), 216-19.

5Citations in Rudolf K. Markwald and Marilynn Morris Markwald,Katharina Von Bora: A Reformation Life (St. Louis: Concordia,

2002), 176, 192-93.

6Cited in Voices of the English Reformation, A Sourcebook (ed.

John N. King; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2004),

320.

7Cited in Paul F. M. Zahl, Five Women of the English Reformation

(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 109-13.

8Cited in Voices of the English Reformation, 324.

9Calvin's Selected Works: Letters, Vol. 7, 162.

10Roland Bainton, Women of the Reformation in France and England

(Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1973), 38.

11The estimates by contemporaries and historians vary, some placing

it as low as five thousand, others as high as thirty thousand.

12Cited in Nancy Lyman Roelker, Queen of Navarre: Jeanne

d'Albert, 1528-1572 (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1968), 340.

13Heidi L. Nichols, Anne Bradstreet: A Guided Tour of the Life and

Thought of a Puritan Poet (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2006), 196.14Ibid., 186.

15Ibid., 189.

16Cited in Women Writers of the Reformation, 311.

17Bainton, Women of the Reformation in France and England, 21.

18See Steve Ozment, When Fathers Rules: Family Life in Reformation

Europe (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1983); and Lyndal

Roper, The Holy Household: Women and Morals in Reformation

Augsburg (Oxford: Oxford University, 1989).

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