The Reformation paved the way for gender equality, opening doors for women in ministry and public life, and women rose to the occasion, throwing aside their shackles. True or false? Or did this new Protestant faith close doors? Was the era of the great ruling abbess beginning to fade?
“Did the Protestant reformers somehow promote the cause of women in church or society?” asks Mickey Mattox. “One source in this debate is the theology of Martin Luther and his own life and practice, especially in relationship with his wife Katharina von Bora. Luther has sometimes been portrayed as a champion of women’s rights in the church, but his authoritative voice has also been invoked as a final bulwark against ‘feminist’ claims.”1
I’ll never forget teaching a church history course at Fuller Theological Seminary in the early 1990s. It was a large class, mostly men but nearly a dozen women as well. I had not actually noticed a gender divergence as we were working our way through the medieval church. Both women and men seemed to be fully engaged. But suddenly, things changed the day we arrived at Martin Luther and 1517—for me as much as anyone else. I was in a celebratory mood. When the morning clock struck nine, I had the students stand and sing “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” as a few stragglers snuck in. The men’s voices filled every square inch of the room and out into the halls. If women were singing, their voices were overpowered. Lecture and discussion followed.
But as tone-deaf as I was, I still didn’t get it. I didn’t notice a certain sullenness among the women—not until the next day, not until after most of the women had time to talk among themselves. Initially, they bided their time. Then I said something about the Reformation opportunities for women. Only then did they start unloading on me, almost as though they had their own ninety-five theses written out and prepared for the moment. I was taken aback, naive as I was then. Didn’t we all march to the same drummer and make a triumphal entry into the Reformation?
One woman stood alone, opposing the other female students. She jumped in at every opportunity to tell about her own transition from the darkness of Catholicism to the light of truth. But I let neither her nor the defensive Protestant men in the class hold the floor. It was critical to let these women’s voices bring balance. And I quickly realized they had rightly toned down my triumphalism. Perhaps if I had been lecturing on Katie von Bora, these students might have reacted differently, especially if I had thrown out some of Luther’s quips on marriage: “I am an inferior lord, she the superior; I am Aaron, she is my Moses.”2
It is important to note, however, that serious degradation of women was standard among both Catholics and Protestants. “Between 1487 and 1623,” writes Gerhild Williams, “women’s place in the society of Northern Europe, in the family, and even within herself became increasingly precarious . . . Too deeply had the polemics about her physical, mental, and spiritual inferiority affected the minds of both men and women.”3
Space here does not permit a serious discussion of the Catholic versus Protestant gender debate as it relates to the sixteenth century. Suffice it to say that my own position today is much more nuanced than it was a quarter century ago in the early 1990s. Moreover, since then and since the ascension of Pope Francis, there has been a healthy, widespread warming trend between Catholics and Protestants.
But a celebration of the five-hundred-year anniversary of 1517 brings me back to the real advances for women brought about by the Reformation. The words of many of the medieval abbesses often seem stilted. Indeed, women’s voices were too often authenticated by visions from on high. I want to hear their own voices, not their claimed directives from God—though, of course, these were their own voices. Protestant Reformers—men and women—supported their religious claims with their interpretations of Scripture, and they argued among themselves. Argula von Grumbach railed against Catholics, Katherine Zell against other Reformers, with no need to trot out special revelations from God. But among monastic women, visionary experiences frequently transported them into priestly roles the church denied them, giving them, in the words of historian Carolyn Bynum, “direct authorization to act as mediators to others”4—also giving them a unique role in defining church tradition.
How, for example, is the immaculate conception of Mary (that she was born and ever remained sinless), to be believed? If the doctrine was actually confirmed by God in visions to both Birgitta of Sweden and Catherine of Siena, there can be no protest. But the Protest-ant perspective demanded scriptural support and offered ordinary individuals a greater sense of empowerment to speak their own minds on religious issues. Women joined in, talking back to religious authorities—and their husbands as well.
Until I began my research on this book, I had on the tip of my tongue the three great women Reformers, should anyone have asked. I identified them, beginning with the oldest: Argula von Grumbach, Katherine Zell, and Renée of Ferrara. They were serious religious protesters, but Katie was not one of them. I have since concluded, however, that in a very significant way, Katie contributed more to the Protestant movement than all three of them combined. Without them, the sixteenth-century Reformation would have certainly lost vitality, but the content and form would have changed little. Not so if Katie were missing. Yet these women added flavor and zest that most historians have failed to detect.
Seven years older than Katie, Argula stepped to the fore in the early 1520s with boldness and Bavarian noble blood to defend those who followed Martin Luther. As we have seen, she appeared before the Diet of Nuremberg and also wrote letters and tracts defending the Reformed faith in Germany. In doing so, her husband’s court status was in jeopardy, and she was accused of neglecting her children and risking her own life. She had clearly violated her expected role as a woman.
Katherine Schütz Zell grew up in a large prosperous family in Strasbourg, where she acquired a first-rate education. Unlike Katie, she was not forced into a religious life. In fact, with no apparent prodding, she became deeply interested in spiritual and theological matters as a young child. Then in her mid-twenties, she sensed a call to be a minister’s wife—perhaps the first such call in Christian history. In the words of Elsie Anne McKee, she “was convinced that she was called to marry Matthew Zell as an expression of her faith in God and her love for others.”5 Early Protestants, unlike Catholics, offered no opportunities for single women in full-time ministry, but as a pastor’s wife, Katherine found many opportunities for ministry in Strasbourg. After her husband’s death, she was on the defensive about her own role as a preacher in the church.
Renée of Ferrara was a princess who married the grandson of Pope Alexander VI, Ercole II d’Este—a political marriage, to be sure. That popes had children and grandchildren was a fact of life, one that Luther harped on repeatedly. She was more than ten years younger than Katie, and married at eighteen, three years after Katie had married in 1525. More than age, however, separated them. Renée was royalty, and her Protestant connections were with John Calvin, whose Reformation in Geneva did not begin until the mid-1530s, nearly two decades after Luther’s. Like Argula and Katherine, Renée was committed to Reformed teachings, and like them, she was accused of stepping out of line as a woman.
Although Katie never spoke out about gender inequality, her assumption of equality was more than equal to theirs. But as we consider her alongside them, a significant difference was their marital situations. Argula and Renée, in their commitment to the Reformation, took serious risks in their being married to opponents of reform. Indeed, both of them faced grave consequences in an era when the death penalty was often as close as a stake, a pile of kindling, and a lighted torch. Katie and Katherine, on the other hand, were married to Reformers who were supportive of their wives, though in very dissimilar ways. Katherine, whose only two children died as infants, was active working alongside her husband, writing tracts and hymns and heading various humanitarian ministries, while Katie was consumed with household and business enterprises. Neither husband, however, outwardly supported gender equality.
Of the four husbands, Martin Luther was the most vocal in his defense of male headship. And among the women, Katie took female equality most for granted and overtly acted on that principle. Indeed, these four women illustrate gender issues that have arisen, both then and now. An interesting aspect of equality among evangelicals is the two-pronged nature of the discussion. One is theory versus practice; the other is ministry versus marriage. The primary issue for Argula, Katherine, and Renée related to equality in ministry and church matters. All three of them ran up against roadblocks when they overstepped accepted boundaries. Katie, however, had no aspirations to publicly defend the faith, as did Argula and Katherine, or to vote at meetings of synod, as did Renée.
For Katie, the issue related to male headship in marriage. Unlike her sister Reformers, however, we never observe her defending equality. Martin might pontificate as much as he liked on the subject, but she had work to do and decisions to make. And pontificate he did, whether at church or at table. Like many ministers, he was quite capable of pulling rules from the Bible where none existed. Preaching from Genesis on one occasion, he concluded that the woman must submit to the man, particularly a wife to husband. The wife was to submit to her husband’s authority and to dwell wherever he chose. Only a foolish woman would seek to skirt such admonitions. A woman is not capable of decision making and is thus utterly unsuitable for leadership or for filling any level of governing positions—“unable to govern cities and territories, etc.” Although, as is true in Scripture, she may give advice to him, but only rarely.6
His first claim almost seems laughable, considering the Genesis 2 directive: “ . . . a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife.” And also his claim that women giving advice is rare—where does he get that? It happens time and again in Holy Scripture, particularly in Genesis. None of the great patriarchs had particularly submissive wives. Not Abraham. Not Isaac. Not Jacob. Indeed, when we survey women of the Hebrew Bible, they often act more like Jochebed, Miriam, Jael, Tamar, Abigail, or Gomer—hardly a harem of submissive and fawning women. And governing “cities and territories”? Didn’t Deborah govern more effectively than any other judge in Israel?
Some of Luther’s statements are not dated, and we can forgive him for being ignorant of marriage relationships before he tied the knot with Katie. And some of his positions gradually changed, particularly, as we have seen, in his assessment of Eve and her place alongside Adam. But many of his rants are so excessive and absurd that no excuses are valid. Some of Luther’s statements are plainly chauvinistic and shocking to our ears today. Even a mature woman, he claimed, is weaker in both body and spirit than man—not even a full adult, but a “half-child,” a half-woman. So the husband, like a father, ends up caring for a girl.7
What was he thinking? There is no evidence that his mother, who carried a big stick when it came to child discipline, had a weak spirit or was in any way childlike. Nor was Barbara, the wife of his artist friend, Lucas Cranach—and certainly not Katharina von Bora. Analyzing such gender slurs, one might imagine Martin Luther was unusually insecure about his own manliness.
How did Katie deal with such slurs? She appears to have simply gone her own way, and as such she stands as a compelling model for women today, whether facing discrimination in marriage or ministry. Sure, her husband touted male headship, but that stance seemed to have little to do with how he structured their marriage. And Luther? For all his celebrity and capable leadership of the German Reformation, he was a weak man, both physically and emotionally. Katie knew that better than anyone else. Her strength was in inverse proportion to his weakness.
One does wonder why Martin felt it necessary to prop himself up alongside Katie. He conceded that he was glad to give her the run of the house, but insisted he would never agree to “letting himself be ruled by her,” insisting that such marriages were “the vice of the age.”8 Yet he admits that his own household was beset with the vice of the age: “My wife can persuade me anything she pleases, for she has the government of the house in her hands alone. I willingly yield the direction of domestic affairs, but wish my rights to be respected. Women’s rule never did any good.”9
Well, one might ask, if women’s rule never did any good, why would Martin let her rule such a large household? And that is exactly what Katie did. It never would have occurred to her to try to write his sermons or tell him how to respond to a theological opponent (although she did persuade him to respond to Erasmus when he was reluctant to do so). Such was not in the realm of her interest or expertise. But regarding the household matters and all the properties and business enterprises that so significantly affected their marriage, she ruled. She was capable—anything but a childlike wife. And he, for the record, was the one with the weaker spirit. For sure.
On one occasion while Luther was conversing with Justus Jonas and another friend in his garden, Jonas lamented “that the women were becoming our masters” (perhaps with Katie in mind). The other friend, a Torgau town councilor, added “that it was indeed, alas!” Luther, drawing from his own experience agreed: “But we have to give in, otherwise we would have no peace.”10 When I read that, I couldn’t help smiling. But there is no reason to imagine that Katie was Martin’s master because she wanted to rule over him. Rather, she was decisive, efficient, and mentally stable, and in order to properly conduct household and financial affairs, she took charge. It was as simple as that—a very modern perspective on how to work out a mutually satisfying marriage.
There were any number of Luther’s colleagues and wags about town who were no fans of Katie and were not afraid to say so. These included Conrad Cordatus, Caspar Cruciger, and Johannes Agricola, who, according to Ernst Kroker, “tell us unanimously that she had a power over him like no one else.”11 In fact, Cordatus made derogatory comments about Katie in his Table Talk notes. He was especially annoyed by “her long speeches” and her “interrupting her husband in the middle of the finest conversations if the food was going to get cold.”12 On one occasion, when Luther humorously welcomed a guest, saying, “Indulge a meek host for he is obedient to the lady,” Cordatus noted with exasperation, “This is most certainly true!”13 Philip Melanchthon referred to Katie as the despoina (the Latin root for “despot”) of the house.14
Some have suggested it was Katie who spurred Martin in his attacks on others. But in fact, the opposite was true. On one occasion, she pleaded with him to work things out with Johannes Agricola, a one-time friend whom Luther now regarded an enemy because he had come to devalue the law in favor of grace. “In vain Frau Elsa and Frau Katie tried to intervene,” writes Kroker. “The urgent pleas of the one and the tears of the other were not able to change his mind.”15 Luther insisted Agricola must retract his theological position before their friendship could continue, a decision that negatively impacted Katie’s friendship with Elsa.
As to women’s equality in ministry, Luther insisted that women were not allowed to preach. When some of the radicals permitted women in the pulpit, he deemed the idea preposterous. A woman’s place was in the home, not in public affairs: “Women talk a lot, but they have no understanding, and when they attempt to speak about serious things, they speak foolishness.”16 Again, such language does not square with his attitude toward women in the public square—particularly if they were working for the Reformation cause. Argula von Grumbach was praised for her courage—she alone standing up for Reformed tenets amid much persecution. And Martin worked alongside Ursula of Münsterberg as she prepared her tract.
Katherine Schütz Zell had used self-deprecating terminology to open doors, insisting she had as much right to speak the word of God as did Balaam’s ass. And she was not speaking for herself alone. Though only “a splinter from [his] rib,” she had the support “of that blessed man Matthew Zell.”17 Katherine’s marriage to Matthew in December 1523 was shocking to the people of Strasbourg, even as it would be more than a year later when Katie married Martin. When news spread of the Luther nuptials, Katie seems to have remained silent, while Martin fired back at critics. Not so Katherine Zell. She was furious that her marriage would be seen as a scandal. With her written words, she claimed the moral high ground, insisting that clerical marriage was far superior to the common practice of a priest living with his mistress, or worse, seducing one woman after another.
Was Matthew upset with Katherine for her failure to keep house? Did he beat her for stepping out of line? There were rumors that he did, and she was livid. No, she was not neglecting her household duties—“I have never had a maid,” and “as for thrashing me, my husband and I have never had an unpleasant 15 minutes.”18 And what of Martin and Katie? Speaking of a man who lost his freedom when he married a wealthy woman, Martin said, “I am luckier, for when Katie gets saucy she gets nothing but a box on the ear.”19 This seems to have been no more than an offhand effort at humor. A house full of students, quills in hand, would have noted a boxing on the ear and scribbled it down for posterity. That Katie was saucy was clearly in the record.
Saucy women, however, knew that even if they were not boxed on the ear or thrashed, they would be severely criticized. After Argula became famous for her challenges to Catholic doctrine, one Professor Hauer attacked her mercilessly. In one single sermon on December 8, he let loose, calling her, among other things, a “female devil,” a “female desperado,” a “wretched and pathetic daughter of Eve,” an “arrogant devil,” a “fool,” a “heretical bitch,” and “shameless whore.”20 Among other claims, she had the audacity to suggest that the Virgin Mary was an ordinary woman, not, as Catholics argued, Theotokos, the Mother of God.
That Katie was not typically interested in the fine points of theology would hardly have meant she spoke foolishness, as Martin sometimes implied. Indeed, she may have regarded some of his theological nitpicking as little more than foolishness.
Luther’s most oft-quoted putdown of Katie, repeated endlessly by his biographers, relates to what he perceived as her foolishness. He liked to tell how on one occasion when he was concentrating on his writing, Katie was nearby “prattling.” And then she innocently asked, “Herr Doctor, is the Hochmeister the Margrave’s brother?” Luther turned this simple question into a joke at Katie’s expense. Margrave Albrecht of Brandenburg had among his many titles “Hochmeister” [“Supreme Master”].21 She had no doubt heard the last name with different titles, assuming two different people were involved. Oh, how stupid of her, how foolish—foolish enough for him to demean her and thus womanhood in general.
It is doubtful that Martin Luther, unlike Matthew Zell, could have ever appreciated a wife who was, in fact, theologically literate. It was one thing for Katie to challenge him on household, agricultural, and money matters, and quite another if she had taken him on in biblical exegesis and theology. But stand up to him she did, and apparently with great regularity. “I must have patience with . . . [my] Katie von Bora,” he said, which means “my whole life is nothing else but mere patience.”22 On another occasion, he remarked at table, “If I ever have to find myself a wife again, I will hew myself an obedient wife out of stone.”23
Such was the situation from the very beginning of their marriage. Indeed, she immediately took charge of the household and more. According to Nicolaus von Amsdorf, Martin did not wish to live in the rambling Black Cloister. In fact, there was much to commend in the comfortable homes of his colleagues. But Katie was convinced the cloister could become a money-making business. Why shouldn’t she collect fees from student lodging rather than a local inn? She is quoted as saying, “I have to get the doctor used to my different way so that he does it the way I want it.”24
Luther would have argued throughout his marriage that his wife did not rule the roost, as some had alleged. In fact, in defending male headship in all areas of life, Luther made his position clear.
The rule remains with the husband, and the wife is compelled to obey him by God’s command. He rules the home and the state, wages war, defends his possessions, tills the soil, builds, plants, etc. The woman on the other hand is like a nail driven into the wall. She sits at home . . . Just as the snail carries its house with it, so the wife should stay at home and look after the affairs of the household, as one who has been deprived of the ability of administering those affairs that are outside and that concern the state. She does not go beyond her most personal duties.25
Many who defend male headship quote these lines and others. But Luther’s actions always spoke louder than his words, and in his private correspondence with his wife, it is obvious their marriage was one of mutuality—one of amazing equality for sixteenth-century Germany. A letter written when he was away from home in 1540 is an example of how deferential he was to her, while at the same time chiding her for not writing to him:
Dear maiden Kethe, gracious lady of Zölsdorf (and whatever else Your Grace is called)! I submissively give you Your Grace to know that things are going well with me here. I eat like a Bohemian and drink like a German. God be thanked, Amen . . .
I have received the children’s letters . . . but from Your Grace I have received nothing. The fourth letter [this one] would you, God willing, answer for once with your own hand . . .
Martinus Luther.
Your sweetheart [from Weimar, July 1540]26
Their marriage of equality is also apparent in the frequent example of mutual decision making. In a letter written in September 1541 from Wittenberg to Katie in Zöllsdorf, he again chides her for her lack of communication when she was away—for not writing back to him and advising him on how to proceed on certain matters. In the same letter, he tells her to come home but not before making land sales and purchases on her own. There was little time to waste, due to dangerous political and military developments.27 Here he appears to be exercising his rightful male headship, but his very general orders are to sell and purchase—and to send him instructions. He is certainly not micromanaging her. And if we were to overhear them in a face-to-face discussion, she would be interacting with him as an equal. His telling her to come home is not to get her to buckle under his authority, but because he is worried sick about her well-being.
It is true that all these matters concern issues unrelated to church and theology. But before we put the clamp on her in this area of the religious arena, we have further words from the great Wittenberg professor himself. He wrote to Katie in the summer of 1540, addressing her in his usual affectionate terms: “To my dearly beloved Kate, Doctora Lutherin, and Lady of the New Pig Market . . . I want, obediently, to let Your Grace know that I am in good health here.”28 The message, however, relates to business, but by no means the usual household, farming, and financial matters. His startling assignment for her comes in connection with a letter discussing the matter of a pastoral appointment in the town of Greussen. What follows is no less than shocking. He wants her—“a wise woman and doctora”—to sit on the committee of three men in the decision-making process. He had extraordinary confidence in her, one who was not only “prudent,” but also one who would “make a better choice” than apparently anyone else he might call on.29
For all Luther’s bluster on matters of women in authority in civic life and in the church, and for all his derision and teasing, when he needed someone he could trust with sound judgment, he would break his own rules and call on Katie.
He often addressed her in letters using the masculine term for lord (dominus) rather than the feminine domina. Indeed, he loved to play with words, teasing her by calling her Kette rather than Kethe, the former meaning “chains.” He acknowledged he was being kept in chains by his beloved wife.30 Both Martin and Katie must be credited for this remarkable relationship. She because she indeed was confident, secure, and levelheaded and had proven to be a woman fully equal to Martin. And he because he was secure enough to accept her as such. Sure, he pontificated and put forth the party line of male headship and women’s obedience. But in their own relationship, she stood tall beside him, perhaps a bit too “proud” for his taste, but never cowering.
Katie von Bora, like Abigail Smith two centuries later, was ahead of her time. Both were mothers of six children and married to revolutionary leaders who are today celebrated historical figures. Abigail was the wife of John Adams, revolutionary provocateur and second president of the United States. Katie and Abigail kept the home fires burning while their larger-than-life husbands hammered out documents and traveled for high-level debates and planning sessions. Like Katie, Abigail was often blunt in expressing her views and thus disliked by those who thought she overstepped gender boundaries. Katie would have appreciated Abigail’s chutzpah. Had Katie been first lady of the American Revolution, we can imagine her voicing opinions as controversial as those of Abigail. In her oft-quoted letter of March 31, 1776, to her husband, John, who was serving at the time as Massachusetts representative to the first Continental Congress, Abigail wrote:
Remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.31
Determined to foment a rebellion. Katie and Abigail were sisters in spirit. There is a footnote to Abigail’s story that surely would have tickled Katie—Katie, who proposed to Nicolaus von Amsdorf to marry either him or Luther. Tradition in Abigail’s day (as throughout most of recorded history) required a young man to seek permission of his sweetheart’s father before proposing to her. When a young man proposed to Abigail’s granddaughter Caroline before asking permission from Caroline’s father (Abigail’s son), Abigail thought it was only proper that Caroline, not her father, make the decision. Her position on this point was without qualification: “I shall maintain the supremacy of the ladies in this matter.”32