Did Sixteenth-century Lutheran Women Have a Reformation?

Abstract

This article explores Martin Luther’s conservative perspectives on gender roles, his relationship with his spouse, Katharina von Bora, and the impact of his teaching on women living in territories that embraced Lutheranism. Effects of the Reformation included the closing of women’s convents, which served as major venues for female education and religious roles. Some nuns such as Nuremburg abbess Caritas Pirckheimer (1467–1532) resisted the closure of their convents; others such as Florentina of Upper Weimar (fl. 1524) felt conscience-bound to depart from the monastic life, finding Luther’s words of counsel liberating. Despite Luther’s translation of scripture into the vernacular, and his call for girls to attend school for an hour each day to gain literacy, Lutheran leaders generally did not encourage women’s independent interpretation of scripture. Lutheran women of the sixteenth century published fewer writings than their Reformed and Anglican counterparts; yet the handful of Lutheran women’s writings that survive, particularly the pamphlets of Bavarian noblewoman Argula von Grumbach (1492–ca. 1568), can serve to inspire modern readers to continue the unfinished work of reforming the church in the area of gender equality.