19. 1460-1600- Women and the Reformation
La Reforma fue una época de grandes cambios en Europa, tanto para hombres como para mujeres. Si bien los hombres lideraron el cambio, muchas mujeres también ocuparon puestos de poder e influyeron en los cambios que se produjeron durante este período. Si bien algunas mujeres gozaban de gran respeto, era difícil ganarse y mantenerlo, y a menudo se las perseguía por alzar la voz.
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Editores del Proyecto Remedial Herstory. "19. 1450-1600 - MUJERES Y LA REFORMA". Proyecto Remedial Herstory. 1 de noviembre de 2025. www.remedialherstory.com.
Casi al mismo tiempo que el descubrimiento del Nuevo Mundo había despertado las aspiraciones imperialistas y las visiones de un nuevo futuro revolucionario para muchos líderes europeos, un deseo similar de cambio se gestaba en casa. En 1517, comenzó la Reforma Protestante en Europa, intentando reformar lo que consideraban la corrupta Iglesia Católica Romana, que mantenía cierta autoridad sobre la mayoría de las potencias europeas de la época. La chispa se encendió oficialmente cuando Martín Lutero, monje alemán y profesor de Teología en la Universidad de Wittenberg, publicó sus 95 Tesis (quejas contra la Iglesia) en la puerta de una iglesia en Alemania. Esto fue repetido poco después por Juan Calvino, fundador del Movimiento Calvinista. Al igual que Lutero, Calvino creía que la Iglesia Católica se había desviado de la verdadera voluntad de Dios, aunque sus interpretaciones del camino a seguir diferían.
El resultado fue una nueva rama del cristianismo llamada protestantismo, nombre utilizado para describir a muchos grupos religiosos que se separaron en protesta contra Roma. El movimiento desencadenó guerras entre las potencias protestante y católica, persecución de conversos y grandes cambios en el poder político.
Las mujeres se vieron profundamente afectadas por este movimiento. Fueron reformadoras y esposas de reformadores, escritoras, protectoras de los perseguidos e incluso reinas activas en la política religiosa. La Reforma fue posiblemente el cambio más significativo para la condición de la mujer, ya que finalmente abrió las puertas, aunque a regañadientes, a una educación más amplia para las mujeres.
Cuadro titulado “Lutero quema la bula papal en la plaza de Wittenberg, año 1520”
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Juana de Arco
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.
Juana de Arco entrando en Orleans
La captura de Juana de Arco
La ejecución de Juana de Arco
Reformistas femeninas
El fin de Juana de Arco ilustró sin duda que el papel de la mujer en la fe era cuestionado por los sistemas patriarcales dentro de la iglesia. Sin embargo, las mujeres eran necesarias para alcanzar los objetivos de la Reforma. Las iglesias protestantes luchaban por equilibrar su necesidad de apoyo femenino con su inherente desconfianza hacia la excesiva participación de las mujeres en la vida eclesiástica. Por lo tanto, se animaba a las mujeres, pero con cautela. Los reformadores masculinos, como Lutero, dirigieron sus esfuerzos a la teología y la política de la Reforma, mientras que las reformadoras se esforzaron por establecer una «cultura protestante» en toda Europa. Esto incluía la instrucción bíblica en los hogares y las obras de caridad.
Durante la Reforma, muchas mujeres abandonaron los conventos tras leer las obras de Lutero y Calvino, y predicaban que la vida monástica no era necesaria para la salvación, sino que se podía alcanzar únicamente mediante la fe y la devoción. Sin embargo, abandonar la seguridad de la vida conventual era espiritual y económicamente arriesgado. Estas mujeres buscaron refugio en reformadores de todo el continente.
Úrsula de Münsterberg fue una de ellas. Nieta de un rey de Bohemia, abandonó el convento en 1528 tras pasar gran parte de su vida allí y, además, compartió los escritos de Lutero con otras monjas para animarlas a hacer lo mismo. Tras su partida, permaneció un tiempo con el propio Lutero y, dada la gran atención que recibió su huida, publicó una "disculpa" por su partida, en la que detallaba cómo creía que la vida en el convento no se ajustaba a las Escrituras, lo que la motivó a partir. Su historia está bien documentada y nos ofrece una visión de la vida de las mujeres que abandonaron el convento y de las que se quedaron.
Se conservan más registros sobre las mujeres de la realeza y la nobleza de la Reforma. Estas mujeres utilizaron sus singulares posiciones de poder para apoyar la Reforma, a menudo de forma aislada. Sus vidas ofrecen un panorama detallado de la persecución que sufrieron las mujeres al desafiar la autoridad masculina. A pesar de las limitaciones que les imponía su género, el rol de esposa de pastor, en particular, se convirtió en una posición de prestigio en las comunidades protestantes.
Copia de la explicación escrita de Úrsula de Münsterberg sobre por qué huyó del convento.
Educación
Un cambio importante para las mujeres en la Reforma se relacionó con la educación. El propio Martín Lutero no defendía los derechos de las mujeres. Se hizo eco de toda la misoginia que los líderes de la iglesia habían expresado antes que él. Escribió: «Las mujeres fueron creadas principalmente para tener hijos y ser el placer, la alegría y el consuelo de sus esposos». Al destacar las caderas anchas de las mujeres, dijo: «Deben quedarse en casa, estar tranquilas, cuidar la casa y tener y criar hijos».
Sin embargo, la filosofía de Lutero se basaba en la idea revolucionaria de que la salvación de cada alma humana dependía de su capacidad para leer personalmente la Biblia. Por lo tanto, creía en la educación integral de niños y niñas para lograr ese fin. Lutero escribió: «Si no existiera el alma, el cielo ni el infierno, aún sería necesario tener escuelas aquí abajo. El mundo necesita hombres y mujeres educados para que puedan gobernar el país adecuadamente, y para que las mujeres puedan criar adecuadamente a sus hijos, cuidar de sus criados y dirigir los asuntos de sus hogares».
Lutero, sin duda, confinó a las mujeres en la esfera doméstica, pero se mantuvo firme en que su educación era necesaria para cumplir la voluntad de Dios y para establecer un nuevo orden social para el comercio y la urbanización. La trayectoria de este cambio se estancaría en ocasiones, pero al menos en Occidente, el acceso de las mujeres a la alfabetización había llegado para quedarse.
Amistoso (adj.), (de las relaciones entre personas) que tiene un espíritu de amistad.
Contencioso (adj.), que causa o es probable que cause una discusión; controversial.
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.”
Clerical (adj.), relativo a las personas ordenadas para deberes religiosos (clero).
Teológico (adj.) , relacionado con el estudio de la naturaleza de Dios y la creencia religiosa.
Casa parroquial (n.) , casa parroquial destinada a un miembro del clero.
Copia de la “Apología” de Zell
Argula de Grumbach
Argula von Grumbach era una noble y una ávida lectora de literatura protestante. En 1523, cuando un hombre de la universidad bávara donde ella vivía fue arrestado y se enfrentaba a la pena de muerte por promover sus ideas protestantes, Grumbach escribió a la universidad defendiéndolo a él y a las enseñanzas de Lutero. Escribió: «No les envío los delirios de una mujer, sino la Palabra de Dios. Les escribo como miembro de la Iglesia de Cristo, contra la cual las puertas del infierno no prevalecerán, como sí lo harán contra la Iglesia de Roma. Que Dios nos conceda la gracia para que todos seamos bendecidos. Amén».
Grumbach no recibió respuesta formal a sus cartas. ¿Se debía a su condición de reformadora? ¿O a su condición de mujer? Quizás la inscripción contemporánea al pie de una de sus cartas en Múnich responda a estas preguntas: «Nacida prostituta luterana y puerta del infierno. 13 de diciembre de 1523». Un profesor local de la universidad predicó posteriormente contra las «hijas de Eva» como Grumbach antes de insultarla directamente, llamándola «mujer desesperada», «diablo arrogante», «zorra hereje» y «prostituta desvergonzada».
Sin inmutarse, cuando sus oponentes escribieron un poema insultante sobre ella, Grumbach respondió con 240 versos pareados que se referían directamente a su derecho a hablar sobre asuntos religiosos a pesar de su género. Escribió: «Me dice que me cuide de tejer. Obedecer a mi hombre es, sin duda, lo apropiado, pero si me aleja de la palabra de Dios [...] Debemos abandonar el hogar y los hijos cuando el honor de Dios está en juego».
Grumbach continuó defendiendo la causa protestante, tanto públicamente como por escrito, durante los siguientes siete años. Se estima que en 1524 circulaban 29.000 ejemplares de sus panfletos, lo que la convirtió en «la panfletista luterana más famosa y la más vendida». Posteriormente, viviendo en las propiedades que heredó en Bohemia, continuó sus esfuerzos reformistas, invitando a los conversos a su casa y molestando a las autoridades.
Panfleto que representa a Grumbach
Una copia de uno de los panfletos de Grumbach
María Dentière
Marie Dentière también aprovechó su educación y posición para escribir. Como era común entre las jóvenes de recursos moderados, Marie ingresó al convento alrededor de los 13 años. A los 26 años, Dentière fue elegida abadesa de su convento agustino, pero poco después huyó para proteger su seguridad al convertirse al protestantismo en 1524.
Mientras la Reforma se extendía por Europa, Dentière huyó a Estrasburgo y, posteriormente, a Ginebra, cuando la victoria de los ejércitos protestantes la declaró ciudad protestante. Fue entonces cuando Dentière comenzó su carrera como escritora y defensora de los derechos de las mujeres. Escribió:
Si Dios ha concedido gracias a algunas buenas mujeres, revelándoles algo santo y bueno a través de su Sagrada Escritura, ¿deberían ellas, por causa de los difamadores de la verdad, abstenerse de escribirlo, hablarlo o declararlo unas a otras? ¡Ah! Sería demasiado impúdico ocultar el talento que Dios nos ha dado, a quienes debemos tener la gracia de perseverar hasta el fin. ¡Amén!
En Ginebra, se imprimieron 1500 ejemplares bajo seudónimo , pero los pastores ginebrinos confiscaron los ejemplares restantes y arrestaron al editor. Este recibió una multa, y él y el esposo de Dentière tuvieron que comparecer ante el consejo y argumentar que los libros no eran heréticos . Los libros nunca se publicaron, y el consejo rápidamente aprobó una ley que prohibía la publicación de libros que no habían aprobado. El esposo de Dentière comentó que esta reacción se debió únicamente a que el consejo se había sentido así: «herido, ofendido y deshonrado por una mujer».
La supresión de los escritos de Dentière generó debate entre los reformadores. En 1539, el Concilio de Berna preguntó a Beato Comte si debían permitir la traducción de la obra. Tras leer el libro, Comte respondió que, si bien no encontraba nada contrario a las Escrituras, al haber sido escrito por una mujer, debía suprimirse. La voz de Dentière fue silenciada, no por las autoridades católicas, sino por sus compañeros reformadores.
Entre sus muchas preguntas controvertidas, pero oportunas, Dentière planteó la siguiente en una carta a su amiga íntima, la reina Margarita de Navarra: “¿Tenemos dos Evangelios, uno para los hombres y otro para las mujeres?”
La piedra de Dentière en el Muro de la Reforma en Ginebra, siendo la única mujer reconocida
Seudónimo (n.), nombre ficticio, especialmente el utilizado por un autor.
Herético (adj.) , que cree o practica una opinión religiosa contraria a la doctrina religiosa ortodoxa (especialmente cristiana).
Reinas de Navarra
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
Retrato de Margarita de Navarra
Consumar (v.), hacer (un matrimonio o una relación) completo mediante la relación sexual.
Convocar (v.) , venir o reunir para una reunión o actividad; juntarse.
Hugonotes (n.), protestantes franceses de los siglos XVI y XVII que siguieron las enseñanzas del teólogo Juan Calvino.
Retrato de Juana de Navarra
Manifiesto (n.) , declaración pública de políticas y objetivos, especialmente aquella emitida antes de una elección por un partido político o candidato.
Seminario (n.) , universidad que forma a estudiantes para ser sacerdotes, rabinos o ministros.
Cuadro que representa a Catalina de Médici viendo a protestantes asesinados tras la Masacre del día de San Bartolomé.
Las reinas de Inglaterra
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.
Las esposas de Enrique VIII
Cuadro titulado “El arresto de Ana Bolena”
Retrato de María I
Alienar (v.) , hacer que (alguien) se sienta aislado o distanciado.
Adúltera (n.) , mujer que voluntariamente mantiene relaciones sexuales con una persona casada.
Incesto (n.), el delito de tener relaciones sexuales con un padre, un hijo, un hermano o un nieto.
Paria (n.) , un paria.
Ensalzar (v.) , alabar con entusiasmo.
Armada (n.) , flota de buques de guerra.
Pintura de la batalla de Gravelinas, con la presencia de Isabel I
Brujas
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.
Un panfleto inglés de 1613 que representa a una presunta bruja siendo interrogada sumergiéndola en un río.
Heterarquía (n.) , un sistema de organización donde los elementos no están clasificados o pueden clasificarse de múltiples maneras.
Cuadro titulado “Asamblea de Brujas”
Copia del Malleus Maleficarum
Copia del Malleus Maleficarum
Conclusión
La Reforma Protestante adoptó distintas formas en distintas partes de Europa. En Francia, resultó en la persecución de los hugonotes; en Alemania, en guerras; en Inglaterra, en drama político. En todas partes, las mujeres fueron parte integral de la historia. El resultado no solo fue el auge del protestantismo, sino también la Contrarreforma católica, y ambas reconocieron ampliamente la importancia de educar a las masas, incluidas las mujeres. El acceso de las mujeres a la educación, a la Biblia y el papel que desempeñaron en el movimiento sentaron las bases para la era moderna.
Sin embargo, a medida que el protestantismo se consolidaba en el continente, la necesidad de apoyo femenino disminuyó y se impusieron restricciones más estrictas a las actividades de las mujeres. En lo que respecta a la participación de las mujeres en el ministerio y la vida eclesiástica, los reformadores masculinos se vieron atrapados entre sus ideas teológicas y sus aspiraciones prácticas. Para los reformadores masculinos, al igual que para sus homólogos católicos, era teológicamente erróneo e incluso herético que las mujeres participaran activamente en la iglesia. Lo que estos hombres pensaban sobre las mujeres contrastaba con su necesidad de apoyo femenino. Esta confusión nunca se resolvió adecuadamente. Las iglesias protestantes establecidas por la Reforma se quedaron con una cultura de participación femenina que coexistía con una teología de exclusión femenina.
¿Cuánto mejoraría el acceso a la educación la condición de la mujer? ¿Cómo serían recibidas las futuras intelectuales? ¿Y cuánto tardarían en alcanzar el estatus que buscan los reformistas?
