Women Theologians of the Reformation

The cloistered life became a refuge for many women during the Middle Ages. In a society where women were denied of many rights, a convent became a place where they could develop their talents. Many of these women who joined a convent received an education there that otherwise would be impossible to have at the time. Some of them had the opportunity to become teachers and/or spiritual directors for other cloistered women. Along with being a place where they can devote their lives to God in the world, convents were a place of peace and protection for many women. Some were running away from husbands who were physically abusing them or from arranged marriages. Convents were a place where they could cultivate their potential as human beings and give back to society.

Convents and religious houses became targets for the reformers who were looking for followers. During this time these women had to face a challenge: they either had to leave the convent and join the reformers or remain in the convents. The most famous of the women who decided to leave the convent is Katherine von Bora, who left the convent and became the reformer, Martin Luther’s, wife. A prominent woman who decided to remain in the convent was Charitas Pirkheimer, abbess of the St. Clara convent in Nuremberg. In her writings she described how young women were being violently taken out of the convents by their parents. Both of these women and the courses they took were followed by many others. In this time of confusion Scripture became an important instrument at the moment of making the decision of leaving or staying in the convent. We have in their writings a rich use of Scripture quotations to justify their decision. Scripture served to argue both in favor of and against the reformers.

We will see how these women used Scripture to justify their positions in favor of and against the reformation, followed by the decision of leaving or remaining in the convent. In these letters we will see their theological interpretations of what the reformation means and how it affects their relationship with the church. We will see also, in those women who joined the reformation, how the movement and their leaders shaped their way of thinking.

Why study the writings of women who were part of a convent or religious house? As we read before, these women had the opportunity to receive an education that most laywomen did not have. “The institutions in which nuns lived were accustomed to women writing, so were less likely to discard their writings than were lay families or the people to whom women wrote letters.”[1] Some of these women were also part of noble families, meaning that their words were taken seriously. Another reason is that the amount of women who joined convents was of considerable size in many countries in Europe. We will begin by reading a letter written by Katherine Rem, a woman who decided to stay in the convent, to her brother Bernhardt. In this letter she affirms a strong conviction to her call as a nun and her rejection of the reformers’ teachings.

Katherine Rem belonged to the Convent of Augsburg when she wrote this letter to her brother Bernhardt Rem in September 11, 1523. This letter is in response to a letter that her brother had sent to her before. Bernhardt published these letters and apparently made some money out of it. She opens the letter by saying, “You have wished us the correct understanding of Jesus Christ… We hope we have the correct understanding of God.”[2] With this opening statement we have a sense of the tension between the Catholic Church and the reformers. We see in Bernhardt the idea that the reformer’s had: The reformers are the ones with the right interpretation of Scripture and the right understanding of Jesus Christ. But Katherine Rem’s response is representative of the Catholic’s Church side: The Catholic Church is the one with the right interpretation of Scripture and the right understanding of Jesus Christ. Both the Catholic Church and the reformers were claiming the right understanding of Scripture, so they are in the middle of a battle: The Catholic Church was trying to keep their followers and the reformers were trying to gain new followers.

Katherine was being pressured by her brother to leave the convent and join the reformation movement. She responded to her brother that she was not leaving the convent and wrote to him, “We regard you as one of the false prophets that Jesus warned us against in the Holy Gospels when he said ‘Guard yourselves against prophets who come in the form of a sheep and are ravening wolves.’”[3] This is a paraphrase from Matthew 7:15 where it says “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.” In Katherine’s interpretation of this passage, Jesus’ words are warning her against the reformers’ teachings (in this case represented by her brother) who are using wrong interpretations of Scripture to lead people astray from the Catholic Church. She will not listen to the reformers and their ideas because Jesus already talked against them in Scripture.

Katherine rebuked her brother by saying that he is the one who has to take care of his soul and become a good Christian. She understands that the attitude that he has towards them is not a good testimony of what a good Christian is, so she says to him, “You will pull a splinter out of our eye, while you yourself have a large log in yours.” This is a paraphrase from Luke 6:41 where it says “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eyes and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” Katherine understands that her brother has come to her to teach her how to be something that she is not, a good Christian. For her it is impossible to have him clean her eyes when he is not able to see because of the log in his eyes. What we are seeing between Katherine and Bernhardt is a battle of who is right and who is wrong.

Katherine takes some time in her letter to address a personal issue between them. She is clever enough to use the opportunity to teach him about the Christian life. According to Katherine, in a letter that Bernhardt has sent before he said that he prefers that they (Katherine and his daughter) were in a brothel than in the convent. She responds to this matter, saying, “Whoever hears this from you cannot think very well of you. There we certainly see the brotherly love that you have for us.”[4] She refers to the brotherly love that has been preached by Jesus, Peter and Paul (Matt. 22:39-41, Mk. 12:27-29, Rom. 12:10, 1 Thess. 4:9, 2 Peter 1:7) and that by his actions he is not following what God says in Scripture. Instead of showing anger or responding with harsh words she says, “God forgive you for everything. That is our angry message,[that] the bitter suffering of Jesus Christ press in your heart.”[5] We can see in Katherine a sound message of love for God and love for neighbor all over the letter. But she also addresses other issues of the reformation in her letter.

We have read from the reformers like Luther, Erasmus, and Tyndale words against the practice in the Catholic Church of finding God’s forgiveness by doing works. For example, we read in Luther that we must see the difference between “doing the works of the law and fulfilling the law.”[6] To do the works of the law is to do it by our own strength, but to fulfill it is to have it written in our hearts. This is important since it is a rupture with the Middle Age’s interpretation of finding salvation through deeds. For Luther it is “through faith that a man becomes free from sin and comes to take pleasure in God’s commandments, thereby he gives God the honor due to him, and pays him what he owes him.”[7] For Luther, it is not through Ave Maria’s or memorized prayer or any other actions taken by humans that they can be saved, but only by grace. Erasmus is in the same line of thinking as Luther. He says that Paul is “excluding the merits and works of the Law and declaring the grace of the gospel…”[8] It is neither through ceremonies nor human wisdom but through Christ that we are saved from sins. William Tyndale writes that to be a Christian it is necessary to have a “steadfast faith and trust in almighty God, to obtain all the mercy that he had promised us, through the merits of Christ’s blood only, without all respects to our own works.”[9] Just like Luther and Erasmus, Tyndale declares that salvation comes from faith in Christ alone and not in our works. He emphasizes following the commandments so we can do the “will of God every day better and better.”[10] For Tyndale these commandments were given for our own benefit and not because God has any need for them.[11] All that God requires is that we give all our love and put our trust in the Godhead and to love our neighbors. It is important to note Tyndale’s interpretation of repentance. During the Middle Ages, people were required to do penance and go to confession with a priest in order to be forgiven. Now Tyndale is arguing that this is “man’s invention,” so we can go directly to God to ask for forgiveness. Then, satisfaction for our sins must be made with our neighbors and not to God.[12]

These same accusations of trusting in works to find God’s favor were made by Bernhardt to Katherine in a prior letter. She says of the reformers’ words that they are good words, but they say them to lead others astray from God. She also responds that “You should not think that we are so foolish that we place our hope in the convent and in our own works. Rather we place our hope in God.”[13] These words of Katherine are a strong argument against the reformers’ teaching that the nuns, monks, priests and the lay members of the Catholic Church have put their trust in their works and not in God. We have in Katherine a woman who knows where her faith and trust is. For Katherine, it is God who has saved her, and what she is doing in the convent is not a way to gain that salvation, but a way of serving the One who has been so gracious with her.

At the end of the letter Katherine stresses once again the tension that we talked about before between the reformers and the Catholic Church. She says, “If you want to straighten us out, then we don’t want your [message] at all.”[14] Here once again she sees the reformers as people who come with a wrong message and want to teach the Catholics without looking at the log in their own eyes. She refuses to accept Bernhardt’s message, but not without giving to him a sound explanation of her beliefs and Biblical interpretations of what she understands the reformers are teaching.

The other letter that we will examine is one written by Lady Ursula, Countess of Munsterberg, Duchess of Glatz.[15] As we can see by the titles, Ursula was part of the nobility. This letter is addressed to people who were nobles as well, some of them members of her family and other friends. In this letter she proposes to give her reasons for leaving the convent of Freiberg. We will see how she uses Scripture as the foundation for her decision to leave the convent and follow the reformers’ teachings. But we will also note the reformers’ theological influence in her writing.

Lady Ursula opens the letter using the same greeting that St. Paul uses in his letters to the Churches: “Grace and peace in Christ our Savior.” She writes the letter because she felt that she needed to explain why she left the convent. She said to them that, “Your graces assume that this happened because of thoughtless impertinence.”[16] She wants to make sure that they understand that she knows what she is doing. Ursula stresses the fact that no one helped her write the letter. She says that “I have written this work with my own hand, out of my own heart, and without any help, advice or contribution of any other person on earth…”[17] We will see how this statement is not only because she wants them to know that this is her own decision, but that now she knows that she is capable of interpreting Scripture with the help of God alone. This is an essential teaching of the reformers, and we will see their influence in her writing all throughout the letter.

Contrary to Katherine’s interpretation of Scripture, Lady Ursula understands that following the reformers’ teachings is following God’s voice. She calls those who remain in the Catholic Church the blind who lead the blind, a paraphrase of Matthew 15:14. For Katherine the reformers were ravenous wolves trying to confuse the Church, but for Ursula those who are following the reformers are the ones who have recognized the voice of God. The reference she uses is John 10:27 where Jesus says that “My sheep hear my voice. I know them and they follow me.” Because Ursula understands that she can hear God’s voice by herself, she understands that she can interpret Scripture without anyone’s help, including the glosses in the Bible. She says that “we defend ourselves with God and his Word alone.”[18] We can see Luther’s understanding of Sola Scriptura and his criticism of outside help for interpreting Scripture, like the glosses. We read from Luther that Bibles were “badly obscured by glosses and all kinds of idle talk, though in itself is a bright light, almost sufficient to illuminate the entire holy Scriptures.”[19] This is important because by the Middle Ages glosses were the authoritative interpretations of Scripture, but now they are put into question. Ursula, like the reformers, is questioning them, too.

After the introduction of her letter, Ursula proceeds to give seven reasons for why she left the convent. Each one of these reasons is grounded in her interpretation of Scripture. The first reason Ursula gives is what she found in Mark 16:15: “Proclaim the Gospel to all Creatures. Who believes and is baptized will be saved.”[20] The other verse she uses for her first reason is John 3:16: “God so loved the world that he gave his only son…” She understands that even after being baptized believers have to fight with sin because we are still living in the flesh. By staying in the convent and doing rites, we will not cast out the sinful nature from us. Ursula thinks that the convent is not a place where we can fight that sinful nature more securely. She goes back to the beginning of the letter and stresses that “faith alone is our salvation and unbelief our damnation.”[21] The vows that they take in the convent and all the works, instead of getting us closer to God, lead us into uncertainty and eternal damnation. For that uncertainty and damnation she felt the need to leave the convent. By joining the convent, Ursula felt as though she, and other women, had made “a new covenant with his and our renounced enemy, locking ourselves out of the community of the children of God and out of the brotherhood of Christ and his members, in order that we have a new and particular brotherhood.”[22] She understands that this brotherhood is something made by people without the Word of God, and this brotherhood is against God’s Word. This new covenant she interprets as leaving “the chaste marriage of Christ with the knavery of an adulterer… we have allowed ourselves to be glorified as brides of Christ and let ourselves be glorified as brides of Christ and let ourselves even be lifted up over other Christians who we have regarded as unworthy of it.”[23] She now interprets her call as being in the world and fighting against the sin in it and not by hiding in the false security of the convent.

When a woman joins the convent she has to make a vow of poverty. Ursula thinks that this is not in accordance with what Jesus Christ has said in Matthew 5:3 that “Blessed are the poor in spirit (NRSV).” For her, making the vows is not “poverty of the Spirit, but only an external appearance, which also hinders one from showing one’s fellow human beings love and charity according to divine law.”[24] We see that Ursula understands that by being locked in a convent women were denying themselves an opportunity to show the love that God has commanded them. This is against God’s will in her understanding and a reason to leave the convent. But also the vows of chastity are against what God has commanded. She even says that there is no such a commandment by God. She quotes Matthew 19:12 in this matter where Jesus is talking about eunuchs. Jesus at the end of that verse says that “Whoever can receive it, let him receive it.” She thinks that the Jesus is saying that not everyone is called to be chaste but only to those who are being granted with it. For Ursula with these vows you are being part of a lie that is followed by “rules, statutes, constitutions, and new traditions that come to them, are for the most part opposed to God’s word and faith.”[25] Ursula interprets all of these things as a way of bypassing God’s laws. Therefore, they are lies created by the Catholic Church and we should not follow them.

The second reason that Ursula gives for abandoning the convent is that now she “recognizes from Holy Scripture that faith is the only work [necessary for] our salvation; similarly, unbelief is the only reason for our damnation.”[26] It is the Holy Scripture that teaches her that there should be a public confession of faith and a self denial. She quotes Matthew 10:32-33: “Who confess me before men, that person I will confess before my Father in heaven.” Also Luke 9:26: “Whoever is ashamed of me and of my works, the Son of Man will be ashamed of when he comes to his glory.” Ursula explains that we should only worship and confess to Jesus and not to Mary the Mother of Christ. She criticizes the belief that Mary has divine qualities that make her equal or greater than Jesus. She is not saying that now we have to speak ill of Mary, but that we should give honor and glory to the only one who is worthy of it, God.

Ursula’s third reason for leaving the convent is that Jesus says in Matthew 22:37: “You should love God your Lord with your whole heart, with your whole soul, and with all your strength.” The law of God is a spiritual one that involves the whole of the person, not only the outward works. She interprets the passage by saying that “external works without the heart will not matter before God, but it is violating the law when there is no free willing spirit…”[27] She understands that living in the convent is a false piety. By doing works we are not going to be saved, and we are not fulfilling the Word of God unless we have put our whole humanity in it.

The fourth reason for Ursula leaving is that she reads in Matthew 4:4: “A person will not live by bread alone but from every word that goes forth from God’s mouth.” Our strength comes from God alone. God is the only one who can satisfy the hunger in our souls. But she also criticizes the practice of self-starvation in convents. She ask, “Who would say that a body that is fed only once in a whole week could be saved by its own natural power, especially if it were laden with difficult burdens and heavy work?”[28] Those who live in the convent are thinking that they can be saved by their own works but do not have the strength to do it because they are not eating as often as needed. Just as the body cannot live without food, the soul cannot live without its food, which is the Word of God. The soul will not live especially if it is “burdened with so many uncertain things which are poisonous and deadly for it…”[29]

The fifth reason is that “all our works which are forced and without God’s command originate in a reluctant heart, and, because of this we later experience a bad conscience.” Ursula thinks that by doing works that are not commanded by God and having a bad conscience she is not worthy of partaking in the Lord’s Supper. She reads in 1 Cor. 11:27: “Whoever eats unworthily of this bread or drinks of the cup of the Lord, that one will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.” She is afraid of punishment or judgment from God by taking the Lord’s Supper unworthily. Since, for her, doing works does not help us find grace, going to the Table after trying to win our own salvation will only bring judgment upon us.

In John 13:34 Christ says: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” Also in Matthew 22:37-40 we read: “You should love God your Lord with the whole heart, with the whole soul, with the whole mind.” Ursula thinks that by remaining in the convent she is transgressing what the Lord has commanded. This is her sixth reason for leaving the convent. Luke 12:52-53 says: “In one house there will be five divided…” She interprets this passage by saying that if in a house of five there will be division, it will be of greater division in a house where seven or seventy women are living together. She understands that peace cannot be found in the convents. This will make her unworthy of the Lord’s Supper.

The seventh and last reason for leaving the convent is that she understands that all over Scripture we are commanded to reach out to those who are in need. If she remained in the convent she would not be fulfilling that call from God, thus she will be in disobedience. She reads that in John 13:15 Jesus Christ says: “I have given you an example so that you do the same as I have done for you.” So, if a woman joins a convent it will be impossible for her to reach out those in need. She asks, “Is it not advisable to leave such a place?”[30] Ursula speaks of her desire to help others, to visit homes, care, do charity, be a companion for those who are dying and give them strength with the word of God.[31] She condemns the fact that people went to the convents seeking for these kinds of help and it was denied to them. The nuns were not allowed to give such help to them. But some people were also afraid of coming to the convents because they thought they would be judged by the nuns for the kind of lives that they were living and by not being as good of Christians as the nuns were. By not doing good to these people in need she understood that she would fall in God’s judgment. She read in Matthew 25:45: “Truly I say to you, what you have not done for the least of these, you have not done for me.” She says that now that she has this knowledge there is no excuse for her. Leaving the convent equals for her escaping God’s judgment for not doing what she understands God is calling her to do: reach out to those in need.

We have seen a strong influence of reformed thinking in Lady Ursula in this letter. She has been clear that she has the capacity to interpret Scripture alone, without the help of others, including the glosses. Martin Luther’s theology that we are saved by grace and not by works is the main influence in her decision to leave the convent. But her Biblical interpretations seemed to be influenced also by Zwingli’s understanding on how to interpret Scripture.

We read in Zwingli that believers have the authority to interpret Scripture by themselves. He says that “you may discover for yourselves many other proofs…”[32] But he also makes clear that “he who comes to the Scriptures with his own opinion and interpretation and wrests the Scripture into conformity with it, do you think that he has anything? No.”[33] In other words, we have the authority to read and interpret Scripture, but we cannot come with our own opinions and apply according to our own convenience. Whoever does that will become blind to Scripture by their own wickedness. When we read Scripture, the Spirit of God will overtake us. The interpretation will come from the Spirit. We will be enlightened in a way that we will understand Scripture. Zwingli is trusting that there will be no differences among believers if each one of them has the opportunity to read Scripture on their own, for the Spirit of the Lord will guide each one of them to the same interpretation. But we have seen in these two letters how women with the same passion to serve God have had different understandings of Scripture.

But Zwingli wrote a few pointers on how to come to a good understanding of Scripture: First, we must pray that the old nature will be killed in us; second, after the old man is killed God will in filled us; third, we have to ask God to give us strength; fourth, the Word of God does not overlook anyone; fifth, the Word will humble anyone; sixth, the Word of God helps the poor; seventh, the Word of God never seeks its own advantage; eighth, it seeks that God may be revealed; ninth, you will be renewed by the Word; tenth, you will find assurance of the grace of God and eternal salvation; eleventh, it will crush you and glorify God; twelfth, the fear of God will give you joy and not sorrow.[34]

We have seen how both of these women have used Scripture to justify their decisions. For example, Katherine Rem used Scripture to call the reformers “ravenous wolves” who want to lead astray the members of the Catholic Church. But at the same time we have seen Lady Ursula refer to the reformers as those who are leading to the right understanding of God and they are the sheep who can hear the voice of God because they can identify it. We can feel the tension of the times in these two letters written by women who loved God and wanted to know God personally. We have on the one side Katherine Rem saying that she hopes that she has the right understanding of God, and on the other side we have Lady Ursula giving her reasons for leaving the convent under the premises that she has the right understanding of God.

The experiences of women were not different from those of men. They had to make the same choices as men during this time of confusion. Their writings are valuable for us today so we can have a better picture of the Reformation era. Their writings are testimony of deep theological reflection and maturity. Not knowing women’s role in the Reformation is having an incomplete picture of history. To have a broader understanding of the Reformation we must take seriously what women wrote and what women did as part of it.

Notes

[1] Wiesner-Hanks, Merry Ed., Convents Confront the Reformation: Catholic and Protestant Nuns in Germany,( Milwaukee : Marquette University Press, c1996), 12.

[2] Ibid., 29.

[3] Ibid., 29.

[4] Ibid., 29-31.

[5] Ibid., 31.

[6] Luther, Martin, Preface to Romans in Luther’s Works. Vol. 35, (Philadelphia, 1960), 367.

[7] Ibid., 371.

[8] Erasmus, Annotations on Romans, ed. R. D. Sider. In Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 56. (Toronto: Univ of Toronto, 1994), 6.

[9] Tyndale, William, Tyndale’s New Testament, ed. D. Daniell. (New Haven: Yale, 1995), Preface to New Testament, 5.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid., 7.

[12] Ibid., 10.

[13] Wiesner-Hanks, 29.

[14] Ibid., 31.

[15] Ibid., 41.

[16] Ibid., 41.

[17] Ibid., 41.

[18] Ibid., 43.

[19] Luther., 366.

[20] Wiesner-Hanks., We are reading the quotations from Scripture as translated by this edition of the text.

[21] Ibid., 45.

[22] Ibid., 45.

[23] Ibid., 47.

[24] Ibid., 49.

[25] Ibid., 49.

[26] Ibid., 51.

[27] Ibid., 53.

[28] Ibid., 53.

[29] Ibid., 55.

[30] Ibid., 57.

[31] Ibid., 59.

[32] Zwingly, Ulrich, The Clarity & Certainty or Power of the Word of God” in Zwingli and Bullinger, ed. G.W. Bromiley. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1953), 68-95.

[33] Ibid.

[34] Ibid.

Bibliography

Erasmus, Annotations on Romans, ed. R.D. Sider. In Collected Works of Erasmus, vol 56.

Toronto: Univ. of Toronto, 1994.

Martin Luther, Preface to Romans. In Luther’s Works. Vol. 35, Philadelphia, 1960, 367.

Merry Wiesner-Hanks, Ed., Convents Confront the Reformation: Catholic and Protestant

Nuns in Germany. Milwakee: Marquette University Press, c1996.

Ulrich Zwingli, “The Clarity & Certainty or Power of the Word of God” in Zwingli and

Bullinger, ed. G.W. Bromley. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1953.

William Tyndale, Tyndale’s New Testament, ed. D. Daniell. New Haven: Yale, 1995,

Preface to New Testament.