19. 1460-1600- Women and the Reformation
Die Reformation war in Europa eine Zeit großer Umbrüche für Männer und Frauen. Während die Männer die treibende Kraft hinter diesen Veränderungen waren, bekleideten auch viele Frauen Machtpositionen und prägten die Entwicklungen dieser Zeit maßgeblich. Obwohl einige Frauen hohes Ansehen genossen, war es schwierig, sich Respekt zu erarbeiten und diesen zu bewahren, und Frauen wurden oft verfolgt, wenn sie ihre Meinung äußerten.
Wie zitiert man diese Quelle?
Herausgeber des Remedial Herstory Project. „19. 1450–1600 – FRAUEN UND DIE REFORMATION“. Das Remedial Herstory Project. 1. November 2025. www.remedialherstory.com.
Etwa zur gleichen Zeit, als die Entdeckung der Neuen Welt bei vielen europäischen Führern imperiale Bestrebungen und Visionen einer revolutionären Zukunft entfachte, brodelte im eigenen Land ein ähnlicher Wunsch nach Veränderung. 1517 begann in Europa die Reformation, die die als korrupt empfundene römisch-katholische Kirche reformieren wollte, welche damals über die meisten europäischen Mächte Einfluss ausübte. Der Funke wurde offiziell entzündet, als Martin Luther – ein deutscher Mönch und Theologieprofessor an der Universität Wittenberg – seine 95 Thesen (Anklagen gegen die Kirche) an die Tür einer Kirche in Deutschland nagelte. Kurz darauf schloss sich Johannes Calvin, der Begründer der Calvinistischen Bewegung, dieser Ansicht an. Wie Luther glaubte auch Calvin, dass die katholische Kirche vom wahren Willen Gottes abgewichen war, obwohl sich ihre Auffassungen über den weiteren Weg unterschieden.
Das Ergebnis war ein neuer Zweig des Christentums, der Protestantismus genannt wurde – eine Bezeichnung für viele religiöse Gruppen, die sich aus Protest von Rom abspalteten. Die Bewegung führte zu Kriegen zwischen protestantischen und katholischen Mächten, zur Verfolgung von Konvertiten und zu bedeutenden politischen Machtverschiebungen.
Frauen waren von dieser Bewegung tiefgreifend betroffen. Sie waren Reformatorinnen und die Ehefrauen von Reformatoren, Schriftstellerinnen, Beschützerinnen der Verfolgten und sogar Königinnen, die sich in der Religionspolitik engagierten. Die Reformation war wohl der bedeutendste Wendepunkt für den Status der Frau, denn sie öffnete – wenn auch widerwillig – endlich die Türen zu einer breiteren Bildung für Frauen.
Gemälde mit dem Titel „Luther verbrennt die päpstliche Bulle auf dem Platz von Wittenberg im Jahr 1520“
Tritt dem Club bei
Melden Sie sich für unseren E-Mail-Verteiler an und helfen Sie uns, Frauengeschichte zu schreiben!
Jeanne d’Arc
The Reformation would greatly shape the way that women were viewed in terms of their religious roles, their right to education, and more. Yet, a century before, a woman’s connection to God had already spectacularly taken center stage. In 1429, a French country girl of no notable background led the French armies toward the end of the Hundred Years War, a conflict surrounding the succession of the French throne.
Amid this war, living in a small village near the borders of the French and English held territories of French countryside, Joan of Arc (d’Arc) experienced visions where she believed that a number of saints were calling on her to wage war on behalf of the French Prince Charles VII to see him crowned. In 1428, the sixteen-year-old attempted to join the French garrison, but was turned away. Yet, as she shared her visions with her countrymen and gained a following, the next year she was permitted to meet Charles whose religious advisors put her through a series of tests to determine if she was lying.
When it was determined that she was not, she was sent to help with the strategy, and ultimately, the successful attack of English forces besieging Orleans. Despite being wounded in battle, she remained in the action throughout the assault of numerous English forts, and helped uproot the English forces, earning her the nickname of the “Maid of Orleans.” In June, she again faced English forces at Patay, and routed them again. The next month, the Maid of Orleans was present with her banner at Charles’ coronation, the culmination of her religious quest.
Despite the major victory of Charles’ coronation, the war effort faltered from there. After a failed attempt on Paris, Joan followed Charles through a number of French cities, increasingly becoming a political target of his other advisors. When the enemy had begun to lay siege on Compiegne the following Spring, Joan’s forces attempted to relieve the city, but there she was outflanked by the English and Burgundian forces. Holding with the rear guard as her army made their retreat, she was knocked from her horse and in heavy knight’s armor, could not remount. She was forced to surrender to the English, along with a handful of faithfuls who stayed with her, including her brother. Immediately, Charles abandoned Joan to her fate as his advisors steered him toward peace efforts with the Duke of Burgundy.
In captivity, she was repeatedly moved further and further into enemy territory due to her numerous attempts to escape, which included jumping from a tower into a moat. Securing her was critical, as she was so much more than a normal prisoner of war; she was a burgeoning French and Christian icon. Therefore, it was critical to English and French clergy that she was placed on trial for heresy. She was to be tried by the clergy of Paris; the very people who saw a woman proclaiming that she - a peasant with no noble ties or education - had spoken directly to the saints, as a threat to their power. If Charles’ chosen “maid” could be proven to have been lying, his claiming of the throne would be easy to discredit and the people’s reliance on the clergy for their salvation would be secured.
The trial by church leaders began in January 1431, for the charges “that she claimed for her pronouncements the authority of divine revelation; prophesied the future; endorsed her letters with the names of Jesus and Mary, thereby identifying herself with the novel and suspect cult of the Name of Jesus; professed to be assured of salvation; and wore men’s clothing.” She underwent four months of interrogation, during which time her story never changed, and she continuously refused to divulge any of her discussions with Charles; even when threatened with torture. Yet the trial had been a farce, looking only for a full confession or an execution. Condemned as a heretic, she was turned over to civil authorities for execution which took place on May 30th, when Joan was burned at the stake at just nineteen-years-old.
She maintained her innocence throughout, even convincing many of the witnesses of her execution. Twenty years later, Charles reclaimed possession of Paris near the end of the war, and demanded an investigation of the trial which annulled her sentence, though two decades too late to save her life. In 1920, five centuries after her death, she was canonized by the Pope as a saint.
Jeanne d’Arc zieht in Orléans ein
Gefangennahme von Jeanne d’Arc
Hinrichtung von Jeanne d’Arc
Reformerinnen
Das Ende von Jeanne d’Arc verdeutlichte, dass die Rolle der Frau im Glauben von den patriarchalischen Strukturen innerhalb der Kirche infrage gestellt wurde. Dennoch waren Frauen notwendig, um die Ziele der Reformation zu verwirklichen. Die protestantischen Kirchen rangen darum, ihr Bedürfnis nach weiblicher Unterstützung mit ihrem tiefsitzenden Misstrauen gegenüber einer zu starken Beteiligung von Frauen am Gemeindeleben in Einklang zu bringen. Frauen wurden daher zwar ermutigt, aber mit Vorsicht behandelt. Männliche Reformatoren wie Luther konzentrierten sich auf die Theologie und Politik der Reformation, während Reformatorinnen daran arbeiteten, eine „protestantische Kultur“ in ganz Europa zu etablieren. Dazu gehörten Bibelunterricht in den Familien und karitative Arbeit.
Während der Reformation verließen viele Frauen nach der Lektüre der Schriften Luthers und Calvins die Klöster. Sie predigten, dass ein klösterliches Leben nicht notwendig für das Heil sei, sondern dass man es allein durch Glauben und Hingabe erlangen könne. Doch die Geborgenheit des Klosterlebens zu verlassen, barg sowohl spirituelle als auch wirtschaftliche Risiken. Diese Frauen suchten Zuflucht bei Reformatoren auf dem ganzen Kontinent.
Ursula von Münsterberg war eine von ihnen. Die Enkelin eines böhmischen Königs verließ 1528 das Kloster, nachdem sie dort einen Großteil ihres Lebens verbracht hatte. Sie gab Luthers Schriften an andere Nonnen weiter, um sie zu ermutigen, es ihr gleichzutun. Nach ihrem Austritt lebte sie eine Zeit lang bei Luther selbst. Da ihre Flucht viel Aufsehen erregte, veröffentlichte sie eine Art Entschuldigung, in der sie darlegte, warum sie das Klosterleben als nicht biblisch empfand und warum sie es verlassen musste. Ihre Geschichte ist gut dokumentiert und gibt uns einen Einblick in das Leben von Frauen, die das Kloster verließen, und solchen, die dort blieben.
Über die adligen Frauen der Reformationszeit sind mehr Aufzeichnungen erhalten. Diese Frauen nutzten ihre besondere Machtstellung, um die Reformation zu unterstützen, oft in Isolation. Ihre Lebensgeschichten zeichnen ein detailliertes Bild der Verfolgung, der Frauen ausgesetzt waren, wenn sie sich der männlichen Autorität widersetzten. Trotz der ihnen aufgrund ihres Geschlechts auferlegten Beschränkungen erlangte insbesondere die Rolle der Pfarrersfrau in protestantischen Gemeinden hohes Ansehen.
Abschrift der schriftlichen Erklärung Ursula von Münsterberg, warum sie aus dem Kloster geflohen ist
Ausbildung
Eine der wichtigsten Veränderungen für Frauen während der Reformation betraf die Bildung. Martin Luther selbst war kein Verfechter der Frauenrechte. Er wiederholte die frauenfeindlichen Ansichten seiner Vorgänger. Er schrieb, Frauen seien „vor allem dazu geschaffen, Kinder zu gebären und ihren Ehemännern Freude, Vergnügen und Trost zu sein“. Mit Blick auf die breiten Hüften der Frauen sagte er: „Sie sollten zu Hause bleiben, still sitzen, den Haushalt führen und Kinder gebären und erziehen.“
Luthers Philosophie basierte jedoch auf der revolutionären Idee, dass das Heil jeder menschlichen Seele von der Fähigkeit abhing, die Bibel selbst zu lesen. Daher glaubte er an die umfassende Bildung von Jungen und Mädchen, um dieses Ziel zu erreichen. Luther schrieb: „Gäbe es weder Seele noch Himmel noch Hölle, wären Schulen hier auf Erden dennoch notwendig. Die Welt braucht gebildete Männer und Frauen, damit sie das Land richtig regieren und die Frauen ihre Kinder richtig erziehen, für ihre Familien sorgen und die Angelegenheiten ihrer Haushalte leiten können.“
Luther beschränkte die Rolle der Frau zwar auf den häuslichen Bereich, war aber fest davon überzeugt, dass ihre Bildung notwendig sei, um Gottes Willen zu erfüllen und eine neue Gesellschaftsordnung für Handel, Gewerbe und Stadtentwicklung zu etablieren. Dieser Wandel stagnierte zwar zeitweise, doch zumindest im Westen war der Zugang der Frauen zu Bildung dauerhaft gesichert.
Amicable (Adj.), (von Beziehungen zwischen Menschen) von einem Geist der Freundlichkeit geprägt.
Streitbar (Adj.), einen Streit verursachend oder wahrscheinlich verursachend; kontrovers.
Katharina Schütz Zell
Many women were involved in the Reformation through their marriages and relationships with men in the movement, but Katharina Schutz Zell’s education allowed her to take up her own pen and record a theological justification of her actions when faced with criticism.
In 1523, Katharina married Matthias Zell, another prominent reformer who had been excommunicated from the Catholic Church because of this marriage. A year later, Katharina published her first work, Apologia; a defense of clerical marriage, in general, and hers, in particular. Zell understood the political undercurrents of the time, and she knew her biblical texts and her calling as a clerical wife. For a wife to publish a theological defense of the marriage was a risky move. Had the marriage failed or been shrouded in scandal, this would have provided perfect evidence of the ‘evil’ clerical marriage created. Still, she wrote,
[The Catholic clergy] also reject the marriage of priests, although it is taught in Holy Scripture, in both the Old and New Testaments, not in obscure but in clear, plain language, so that even children and fools could read and understand it, as I have shown. I proved this in a longer writing to the Bishop of Strasbourg, in which I contrast marriage and whoredom with one another on the basis of Holy Scripture. I would to God that the bishop would get so angry with me that everyone would read my explanation.
Her work demonstrated that a woman could use her gifts, combine them with theological and biblical knowledge, and create a place for her in the movement. Despite being 20 years Katharina’s senior, people saw Matthias as simultaneously being under Katharina’s direction and held back by her. Her marriage of equals - a partnership - was, instead, presented as a woman controlling her husband to the detriment of the church.
Beyond writing, she provided practical aid as well. Strasbourg, Germany, was a ‘free city’ that provided refuge to supporters of Luther who fled from surrounding villages and towns. Whenever refugees arrived, Zell filled the parsonage with beds and fed the people every day for three weeks. She petitioned the local council to intervene, recruiting others to care for refugees, and writing letters of encouragement to wives left behind when their husbands were forced to flee.
Still, Luther became a friend of Zell’s. In the correspondence between them, one would expect to find Luther administering pastoral care and advice to Zell in accordance with his teaching on gender roles. Instead, we see advice being exchanged between the two equally. Luther wrote to Zell, not her husband, and asked her to “entreat both your lord and other friends, that (if it please God) peace and union may be preserved.”
Zell continued her charity work after her husband’s death in 1548, until the city council insisted she leave her home and allow her husband’s successor to move in. Zell’s social position was more restricted, in turn, so she changed her focus and created a hymn book.
Like most female Reformers, Zell was criticized by her male colleagues; not so much because of what she did, but because she was a woman. In her lifetime, Zell witnessed and was victim of a shift in the new Protestant churches and saw herself being pushed out of the sect she helped to establish. She wrote, “In my younger days, I was so dear to the fine old learned men and the architects of the church of Christ.”
Klerikal (Adj.), bezogen auf Personen, die für religiöse Aufgaben ordiniert sind (Klerus).
Theologisch (Adj.) , die Lehre vom Wesen Gottes und dem religiösen Glauben betreffend.
Pfarrhaus (Subst.) , ein Kirchenhaus, das einem Mitglied des Klerus zur Verfügung gestellt wird.
Kopie von Zells „Apologie“
Argula von Grumbach
Argula von Grumbach war eine Adlige und begeisterte Leserin protestantischer Literatur. Als 1523 ein Mann an der Universität in Bayern, wo sie lebte, wegen seiner protestantischen Ansichten verhaftet und hingerichtet werden sollte, schrieb Grumbach an die Universität, um ihn und die Lehren Luthers zu verteidigen. Sie schrieb: „Ich sende euch nicht die Tiraden einer Frau, sondern das Wort Gottes. Ich schreibe als Mitglied der Kirche Christi, über die die Pforten der Hölle nicht triumphieren werden, wie sie es über die Kirche von Rom tun werden. Gott gebe uns Gnade, damit wir alle gesegnet seien. Amen.“
Grumbach erhielt keine offizielle Antwort auf ihre Briefe. Lag es daran, dass sie Reformatorin war? Oder daran, dass sie eine Frau war? Vielleicht gibt die zeitgenössische Inschrift am Ende eines ihrer Briefe in München Aufschluss: „Geboren als lutherische Hure und Tor zur Hölle. 13. Dezember 1523.“ Ein ortsansässiger Professor der Universität predigte daraufhin gegen „Töchter Evas“ wie Grumbach und beleidigte sie anschließend direkt, indem er sie als „weibliche Verbrecherin“, „arrogante Teufelin“, „ketzerische Schlampe“ und „schamlose Hure“ bezeichnete.
Unbeirrt von einem beleidigenden Gedicht ihrer Gegner antwortete Grumbach mit 240 Zeilen in Reimpaaren, die sich direkt auf ihr Recht bezogen, trotz ihres Geschlechts über religiöse Angelegenheiten zu sprechen. Sie schrieb: „Er sagt mir, ich solle mich um mein Strickzeug kümmern. Meinem Mann zu gehorchen ist gewiss angebracht, aber wenn er mich von Gottes Wort abbringt […] müssen wir Heim und Kind verlassen, wenn Gottes Ehre auf dem Spiel steht.“
Grumbach setzte sich in den folgenden sieben Jahren sowohl öffentlich als auch schriftlich für die protestantische Sache ein. Schätzungsweise 29.000 Exemplare ihrer Flugschriften waren 1524 im Umlauf, was sie zur „bekanntesten Lutheranerin und meistverkauften Flugschriftenautorin“ machte. Später, auf ihren geerbten Gütern in Böhmen, setzte sie ihre Reformbemühungen fort, lud Konvertiten in ihr Haus ein und bedrängte die Behörden.
Broschüre mit Abbildung von Grumbach
Eine Kopie einer von Grumbachs Broschüren
Marie Dentière
Marie Dentière nutzte ihre Bildung und ihre Stellung auch zum Schreiben. Wie für Mädchen aus Familien mit mittlerem Vermögen üblich, trat Marie mit etwa 13 Jahren ins Kloster ein. Im Alter von 26 Jahren wurde Dentière zur Äbtissin ihres Augustinerinnenklosters gewählt, floh jedoch kurz darauf, als sie 1524 zum Protestantismus konvertierte, um ihre Sicherheit zu gewährleisten.
Als die Reformation Europa erfasste, floh Dentière nach Straßburg und später nach Genf, nachdem der Sieg der protestantischen Heere die Stadt zur protestantischen Hochburg erklärt hatte. Dort begann Dentière ihre schriftstellerische Laufbahn und ihren Einsatz für die Rechte der Frauen. Sie schrieb:
Wenn Gott einigen frommen Frauen Gnaden geschenkt und ihnen durch die Heilige Schrift etwas Heiliges und Gutes offenbart hat, sollten sie dann aus Rücksicht auf die Verleumder der Wahrheit davon absehen, es aufzuschreiben, zu verkünden oder einander mitzuteilen? Ach! Es wäre anmaßend, das Talent zu verbergen, das Gott uns gegeben hat, uns, die wir die Gnade haben sollten, bis zum Ende durchzuhalten. Amen!
In Genf wurden 1500 Exemplare unter einem Pseudonym gedruckt, doch Genfer Pfarrer beschlagnahmten die restlichen Exemplare und verhafteten den Verleger. Dieser wurde mit einer Geldstrafe belegt und musste zusammen mit Dentières Ehemann vor dem Rat erscheinen und argumentieren, dass die Bücher nicht ketzerisch seien. Die Bücher wurden nie veröffentlicht, und der Rat erließ umgehend ein Gesetz, das die Veröffentlichung von Büchern verbot, die er nicht gebilligt hatte. Dentières Ehemann bemerkte, diese Reaktion sei allein darauf zurückzuführen, dass der Rat „von einer Frau verletzt, gekränkt und entehrt“ worden sei.
Die Unterdrückung von Dentières Schriften löste unter den Reformatoren Diskussionen aus. 1539 fragte das Konzil von Bern Béat Comte, ob die Übersetzung des Werkes zugelassen werden solle. Nach der Lektüre antwortete Comte, dass er zwar nichts darin finden könne, was der Heiligen Schrift widerspreche, es aber aufgrund der Autorin, einer Frau, unterdrückt werden müsse. Dentières Stimme wurde nicht von den katholischen Autoritäten, sondern von ihren Glaubensgenossen zum Schweigen gebracht.
Unter ihren vielen kontroversen – aber dennoch passenden – Fragen stellte Dentière in einem Brief an ihre enge Freundin, Königin Margarete von Navarra: „Gibt es zwei Evangelien, eines für Männer und eines für Frauen?“
Dentières Gedenkstein an der Reformationsmauer in Genf, da sie die einzige anerkannte Frau war
Pseudonym (Subst.), ein fiktiver Name, insbesondere ein von einem Autor verwendeter Name.
ketzerisch (Adj.) , eine religiöse Meinung vertretend oder praktizierend, die der orthodoxen religiösen (insbesondere christlichen) Lehre widerspricht.
Königinnen von Navarre
In France, the Protestant Reformation looked more like a civil conflict, and women in the nobility were at the center of it. Marguerite was a member of the royalty in France and came to Protestantism gradually. Her brother, Francis, was the King of France who had a deep affection for his sister, which was the only thing protecting her as Marguerite wrote and published extensively.
By 1525, most of Marguerite’s friends were in exile or hiding as the situation in France intensified. It was then, two years after the death of her first husband, that Marguerite married Henri d’Albert, King of Navarre, with whom she had one daughter, Jeanne d’Albert.
The religious and political situation in France remained tense, exploding on October 17th, 1534, when a group of zealous reformers took to the streets of Paris, putting up anti-Catholic posters in what was called “The Affair of the Placards.” The signs openly questioned the king’s authority and Francis was forced into action. The ringleaders were arrested and burnt in the Place Maubert, while others fled. Risking sibling rivalry, Marguerite opened her home to Protestant refugees. With all of these religious fugitives living in Navarre, Marguerite encouraged religious growth within her domain. Seeing herself as a spiritual mother to her people, Marguerite set about writing manuals on doctrine and worship, the likes never seen in the church before.
Her actions were not celebrated by all in the Reformation. Calvin, despite benefitting from Marguerite’s dedication to the Reformation, remained critical of her behavior. He continued to argue that she was too generous to the wrong people and not generous enough to the right ones. Calvin summarized her usefulness to the Reformation by stating that, “we cannot place on her too great an alliance.”
When Marguerite and her husband died (in 1549 and 1555, respectively), their daughter Jeanne ascended to their political post. Jeanne was no stranger to defying the patriarchy, having successfully annulled an undesirable marriage at age 12 by kicking and screaming her way up the aisle - thoroughly documenting her lack of consent to the match - and refusing to consummate the marriage. She remarried at age 19, presumably for love.
One of her first actions was to convene the Protestant ministers from the Calvinist sect when she publicly converted in 1560. She became the most powerful female Protestant in Europe as the leader of the French Huguenots and an enemy of the Pope and the rest of her French (and very Catholic) family. Tension mounted between Jeanne and her Catholic husband when she failed to stop the invasion of her husband’s land by a Protestant army of 400 men. Seeing this as a purposeful failure, he put out an order for her arrest with the plan of sending her to a convent. Yet, her husband died in November 1562, as part of the French Wars of Religion, leaving her as sole regent of Navarre until her son Henry came of age.
With Navarre stuck between Catholic Spain and Catholic France, things were not easy for Jeanne. The Pope threatened to excommunicate and confiscate her lands, and she replied by stating that she did not recognize his authority. Meanwhile, Philip of Spain made plans to either forcefully marry her into a Catholic family or kidnap her and allow France and Spain to jointly invade her lands. None of the threats made against her materialized, but, as a young widow and mother with no close alliances, the emotional strain was undoubtedly awful. In her memoirs, Jeanne remembered how she expected daily to be assassinated.
In 1568, the Spanish Dutch War began, and this time, retreat was not an option for Jeanne. She and her son, Henry, moved to the Huguenot-controlled city of La Rochelle, where they could be better protected. They established a Protestant headquarters, and Jeanne sent manifestos to anyone she thought would help. She also oversaw the safety of refugees arriving in La Rochelle, setting up a seminary there for them. She assumed control of the city’s fortifications, even going to the battles to assess the damage and rally the forces. Later, she sold her jewelry to finance the continued fighting.
All the while, Jeanne continued to negotiate for peace. In August 1572, when the Catholic forces ran out of money, the Peace of Saint-Germain-en-Laye was achieved, ending the French Wars of Religion. Yet, in order to maintain that peace, it was arranged that Henry would be married to the French princess, Marguerite; sister to King Charles IX, and daughter of Catherine de Medici. In 1562, Catherine de Medici, Queen regent of France, imposed an edict to try and keep the peace between the Protestant and Catholic factions at court. Given the decade of wars that followed, the attempt at peace had been unsuccessful, and Jeanne did not hide her distaste for the Catholic French court or Medici herself, but still reluctantly agreed to the marriage.
Jeanne passed away two months before the wedding, in 1572, at the age of 43. The Pope’s envoy to the French court described her passing as, “an event happy beyond my highest hopes…her death, a great work of God’s own hand, has put an end to this wicked woman, who daily perpetrated the greatest possible evil.”
While Jeanne consent for the marriage was reluctant, many people did not consent to this marriage at all, including the Pope and King Phillip of Spain. The wedding, thus, inspired violence in the form of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre the night of 23–24 August 1572. Just about a week after the wedding, and night after the assassination attempt on a Huguenot military leader, King Charles IX ordered the killing of Huguenot leaders, many of whom were still in Paris from the wedding and anticipating continued negotiations. Over several weeks, Catholics targeted Huguenots and killed anywhere between five and thirty thousand. While these killings are attributed to the orders of Charles, many believe they were orchestrated by Medici.
Despite Jeanne’s efforts to secure a Protestant future through her son, Henry quickly converted to Catholicism to solidify his political situation. His sister, Catherine of Bourbon, however, ruled on their mother’s lands for 30 years, continuing to provide a relatively safe haven for Protestants.
Location of Navarre within Spain
Porträt der Margarete von Navarra
Vollenden (v.), eine Ehe oder Beziehung durch Geschlechtsverkehr vervollständigen.
Einberufen (v.) , zusammenkommen oder versammeln zu einer Zusammenkunft oder Aktivität; sich versammeln.
Hugenotten (n.), französische Protestanten des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts, die den Lehren des Theologen Johannes Calvin folgten.
Porträt der Johanna von Navarra
Manifest (Subst.) , eine öffentliche Erklärung der Politik und Ziele, insbesondere eine solche, die vor einer Wahl von einer politischen Partei oder einem Kandidaten herausgegeben wird.
Seminar (Subst.) , eine Hochschule, die Studenten zu Priestern, Rabbinern oder Geistlichen ausbildet.
Gemälde, das Katharina von Medici beim Anblick ermordeter Protestanten nach der Bartholomäusnacht zeigt
Die Königinnen von England
The Reformation in England presented quite differently than on the continent. The Catholic King Henry VIII had long been married to Catholic Catherine of Aragon, daughter of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand. They had many pregnancies, but only one daughter, Mary, survived. Mary, too, was noted for her deep devotion to the Catholic faith.
However, known for his many affairs at court, Henry VIII fell in love with Anne Boleyn, one of his wife's ladies. His passion is evident in letters to her – 17 of which survive - in which he wrote, "If you [...] give yourself up, heart, body and soul to me [...] I will take you for my only mistress, rejecting from thought and affection all others save yourself, to serve only you." But she boldly said no. She responded, "Your wife I cannot be, both in respect of mine own unworthiness, and also because you have a queen already. Your mistress I will not be."
Their liaison dragged on, and eventually after over 20 years of marriage, Henry asked the Pope to annul his marriage on the grounds that Catherine had been previously married to his older brother. While his brother died just six months after they married, Henry claimed to have new knowledge that their marriage had been consummated, which invalidated his own subsequent marriage to Catherine. She insisted to her dying day that the marriage to his brother was never consummated and the Pope rejected Henry’s request.
In response, Henry broke from Rome. Believed to have been influenced greatly by Anne, he declared himself the head of the new Church of England; divorced his wife and sent her into isolation. He delegitimized his daughter and heir, and even banned Mary from seeing her mother. He soon thereafter married his lover, Anne Boleyn.
Although Anne had been raised Catholic, she advocated for reform. She read banned anti-clerical books and supported reformists. Anne's reformist leanings alienated the people of England, and the Spanish were furious at the insult to their princess. An ambassador insulted Anne by calling her "more Lutheran than Luther himself." The public hated Anne not just because they viewed her as an adulteress, but because they considered her a heretic.
Despite their earlier love affair, their marriage was a deeply unhappy one. Desperate to secure a male heir, Henry was increasingly frustrated when Anne gave birth to a daughter, Elizabeth, in 1533. When her future pregnancies resulted in miscarriages, he began an affair with Jane Seymour. Anne was furious and Henry quickly accused her of adultery and incest with her brother, and both were beheaded in May 1536. Later, Jane died in childbirth to his only legitimate son. He married again, only for the union to end in divorce. His next marriage ended in another beheading. When he finally died in 1547, leaving his sixth wife alive and well, his weak son ascended to the throne, only to die as a teen.
Mary, Henry’s daughter from his first marriage, seized the throne, returning the Catholics to power in what has inaccurately been called a reign of terror earning her the derogatory nickname, Bloody Mary. When Mary died in 1558, likely of ovarian cancer, her half sister Elizabeth claimed the throne as Elizabeth I. Elizabeth killed more Catholics than her sister did Protestants, but Elizabeth ruled longer and got to write her history in a more positive light. While her mother had once been a pariah, when Elizabeth became queen, English Bishop John Alymer would extol her mother Anne for her Protestant views and credited her with "banishing the beast of Rome with all his beggarly baggage."
Elizabeth’s throne was never secure, with Catholics on the continent constantly looking to usurp the Protestant queen. Her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, tried to assassinate her with support from Catholics in France, but it was Catholic Spain that held the real hatred for Elizabeth, as it was her mother who had replaced their princess, Catherine.
The religious conflict came to a head in the late 1580s, when King Philip II of Spain planned the conquest of England. The Pope, Sixtus V, gave his blessing, hoping to secure England as a Catholic kingdom again. At the time, the Spanish had the largest armada of ships in Europe and had already sailed them across the Atlantic, yet still, an even greater Spanish invasion fleet was built and sailed for England in the summer of 1588. Viewed as a lopsided conflict, where Europe’s greatest navy was to take on one of its (presumed) weakest, this was deemed as a religious undertaking, where God would decide if Catholic Spain or Protestant England would be crushed. Ahead of their first engagement, Elizabeth defied society's gender roles by parading in front of her men in armor, promising them great reward if they were victorious, and proclaiming, “I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too.”
As the Spanish entered the English Channel in early August, they were met by early, and surprise, defeats. The smaller English forces sacrificed some of their own ships by lighting them on fire and sending them afloat into the Spanish fleet. In the confusion, the Spanish were forced to cut their anchor lines to try to get out of the burning ships’ paths and subsequently sailed right into the range of English guns. Unwilling to turn directly back around and face the English forces in the Channel, the damaged armada was forced to sail around the British Isles to the open seas where it appeared to the faithful that God himself intervened, as a storm sank the majority of the remaining fleet, unable to anchor themselves away from the rocky coastline.
Elizabeth’s defeat of the Spanish Armada was the beginning of the decline of the Spanish Empire and a pivotal victory for Protestantism. This victory for the woman who claimed to have “the heart of a man” was also seen as divine proof of her position as queen.
Die Ehefrauen Heinrichs VIII.
Gemälde mit dem Titel „Die Verhaftung von Anne Boleyn“
Porträt von Maria I.
entfremden (v.) , jemanden so fühlen lassen, als sei er isoliert oder entfremdet.
Ehebrecherin (Subst.) , eine Frau, die freiwillig Geschlechtsverkehr mit einer verheirateten Person hat.
Inzest (Subst.), das Verbrechen des Geschlechtsverkehrs mit einem Elternteil, Kind, Geschwister oder Enkelkind.
Paria (Subst.) , ein Ausgestoßener.
Extol (v.) , enthusiastisch loben.
Armada (Subst.) , eine Flotte von Kriegsschiffen.
Gemälde der Schlacht von Gravelines, in Anwesenheit von Elisabeth I.
Hexen
While women helped to shape religious shifts during this period, they were also victims of it. Religious persecution most specifically targeted women when it came to the perceived threat of witchcraft. People in many societies worldwide, through many eras, have attributed misfortunes like disease, poor harvests, bad weather, or just bad luck, to malicious magic. People of many societies have also, likewise, turned to spells, charms, amulets, and the like, to try to secure advantages for themselves, to tell the future, or to try to ward off harm.
Occasionally, a person in the community might actually get blamed for misfortune, as a “witch” or the local culture’s equivalent. This is common. What is not common is the mass witch hunt; large-scale, sustained efforts to persecute people on charges of malicious magic. In Europe, however, such hunts became a recurring feature of life between about 1400 and 1700 CE. Somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 people were killed across Europe over these three centuries, and about 80-85% of them were women.
In previous centuries, medieval Christian authorities held that magic was a trick of the Devil, but that the Devil could not control physical reality, because that was God’s role. Magic was therefore a temptation and a delusion but not a mortal threat. Churchmen would preach against it and require penances for it, but they would not execute people for it. In fact, in the 8th century, when he conquered the pagan Saxons, Charlemagne decreed the death penalty for anyone who burned a woman on an accusation of witchcraft, because he saw that as a pagan thing to do; Christians were supposed to know better.
Around 1300 CE, this began to change. Christian authorities in both church and state strove for a more purified, holy society, but the failures of this ideal led to increased paranoia in some. Pessimism, bred by increased famine and plague and destructive wars among kings, added to the anxiety. Maybe God was letting the Devil have more of a role in the world than they thought!
Various rumors and fears that had originally been separate, such as anti-Semitic legends and the outrageous accusations against the Knights Templar, wove together into a new myth, the “Witches’ Sabbath.” According to this myth, “witches” traveled by night to gather at a kind of feast presided over by the Devil. They cursed Christ and swore loyalty to Satan, committed various blasphemies and sexual offenses, killed babies to eat or to boil down into ointments and potions, and promised to wreak as much havoc as they could in Christian society, spreading disease, destroying crops, and so on. Witches were thus imagined to form a kind of dangerous anti-Christian cult or conspiracy.
Witches could be either male or female (gendering the word “witch” feminine and contrasting it to other words like “warlock” or “sorcerer” is a modern usage, not used at the time). As the trials arose, however, women were far more likely to be accused and executed, usually by burning but sometimes by other means. In England, for instance, execution was usually by hanging.
Scholars have debated exactly why this was the case. Some have interpreted the trials as “femicide,” an overt misogynistic project to destroy women. However, this interpretation is unlikely; many accusers were, themselves, women, some witch trials actually targeted more men than women (such as in Normandy and Russia), and while some of the demonology treatises that theorized witchcraft singled out women as especially sinister, others did not. It's also hard to say why this particular era would have initiated a "femicide" when past centuries had been no less misogynistic. Anecdotes from the time suggest stereotypes of witches as marginal, difficult, or assertive women, but actual trial records don't provide solid support that these stereotypes were really driving accusations.
One text that did single out women was the Malleus Maleficarum, or “Hammer of Witches,” published in 1486. In it, drawing on the ancient philosopher Aristotle’s ideas and giving them a Christian slant, Germany’s Heinrich Kramer argued that because women were “softer” than men, they were more susceptible to spiritual influences. If those influences were holy, then women could become greater saints than men. But if those influences were demonic, they became horrible witches, worse than any man. However, the theology faculty at the University of Cologne condemned Kramer’s book and later witchcraft treatises rarely repeated the claim.
An alternative explanation to the “femicide” hypothesis would be that in the patriarchal structures of European society, women were less likely to have the social weight, political influence, education, or material resources, to be able to defend themselves. As a result, they were more likely to find themselves accused, and having been accused, less likely to escape the death penalty.
The distribution of witchcraft trials was not uniform across Europe through this period, but varied in time and place. Interestingly, they actually slowed down between 1520 and 1570, the decades of the Protestant Reformation. This is probably because, in the midst of struggles between Protestants and Catholics, social conflict was more likely to result in people accusing each other of belonging to the other religion, rather than of being witches.
Once the Reformation settled into a permanent establishment, witch trials picked up again (among both Catholics and Protestants), and were at their peak between 1570 and 1630, before gradually fading out by the early 1700s. People in these later generations still believed in witchcraft, and feared it, but as modern states formed more centralized legal systems, with stricter standards of evidence and more opportunity for oversight and appeals, judges were less likely to accept accusations that a particular defendant in front of them actually was a witch.
Geographically, about half of all victims of witch hunts were in Germany alone in a rash of witch trials between 1560 and 1630. Other countries had far less. England, for instance, had far fewer trials, especially in proportion to its population, than Scotland. In fact, across this entire period, England only had one true “witch hunt,” with perhaps 300 persons accused, as opposed to scattered trials of individuals. That one witch hunt was during England’s Civil War in the 1640s, when central authority had broken down. A man named Matthew Hopkins claimed that Parliament had appointed him “Witch Finder General” - it hadn’t - and he traveled around the country spreading accusations before being shut down. Again, it’s probably because kingdoms with strong central governments tended to limit the spread of accusations, as legal procedures were more strictly enforced. Places like Germany and Scotland lacked such strong central courts, so local authorities were on their own to deal with accusations, which could thus spin out of control.
Eine englische Broschüre aus dem Jahr 1613, die die Vernehmung einer mutmaßlichen Hexe durch Untertauchen in einem Fluss schildert.
Heterarchie (Subst.) , ein Organisationssystem, in dem die Elemente nicht geordnet sind oder auf verschiedene Arten geordnet werden können.
Gemälde mit dem Titel „Versammlung der Hexen“
Kopie des Malleus Maleficarum
Kopie des Malleus Maleficarum
Abschluss
Die Reformation nahm in den verschiedenen Teilen Europas unterschiedliche Formen an. In Frankreich führte sie zur Verfolgung der Hugenotten, in Deutschland zu Kriegen und in England zu politischen Intrigen. Überall spielten Frauen eine zentrale Rolle. Die Folge war nicht nur der Aufstieg des Protestantismus, sondern auch die katholische Gegenreformation. Beide erkannten weitgehend die Bedeutung der Bildung der breiten Bevölkerung – einschließlich der Frauen. Der Zugang der Frauen zu Bildung und zur Bibel sowie ihre Rolle in der Bewegung legten den Grundstein für die Moderne.
Mit der zunehmenden Etablierung des Protestantismus auf dem Kontinent sank der Bedarf an weiblicher Unterstützung, und die Aktivitäten von Frauen wurden stärker eingeschränkt. Was Frauen im kirchlichen Dienst und im Gemeindeleben betraf, gerieten die männlichen Reformatoren in einen Konflikt zwischen ihren theologischen Überzeugungen und ihren praktischen Wünschen. Für sie, wie auch für ihre katholischen Zeitgenossen, galt die aktive Beteiligung von Frauen in der Kirche als theologisch unhaltbar und sogar als ketzerisch. Ihre Ansichten über Frauen standen im Widerspruch zu ihrem Bedürfnis nach weiblicher Unterstützung. Dieser Widerspruch wurde nie zufriedenstellend aufgelöst. Die von der Reformation gegründeten protestantischen Kirchen wiesen eine Kultur der weiblichen Beteiligung auf, die mit einer Theologie des Frauenausschlusses koexistierte.
Inwieweit würde der Zugang zu Bildung den Status von Frauen verbessern? Wie würden künftige Intellektuelle aufgenommen werden? Und wie lange würde es dauern, bis der von den Reformern angestrebte Status erreicht wäre?
