19. 1460-1600- Women and the Reformation
The Reformation was a time of great change in Europe for both men and women. While men were at the forefront of change, many women also held positions of power and were influential in the changes taking place during this period. While some women were well-respected, respect was difficult to earn and maintain, and women were often persecuted for speaking out.
How to cite this source?
Remedial Herstory Project Editors. "19. 1450-1600 - WOMEN AND THE REFORMATION" The Remedial Herstory Project. November 1, 2025. www.remedialherstory.com.
Around the same time that the discovery of the New World had ignited imperial aspirations and visions of a revolutionary new future for many European leaders, a similar desire for change was brewing at home. In 1517, the Protestant Reformation began in Europe, attempting to reform what they saw as the corrupt Roman Catholic Church, which maintained some authority over most European powers at the time. The spark was officially lit when Martin Luther - a German monk and Professor of Theology at the University of Wittenberg - posted his 95 Theses (complaints against the church) on the door of a church in Germany. This was echoed shortly thereafter by John Calvin, founder of the Calvinist Movement. Like Luther, Calvin believed the Catholic Church had strayed from the true will of God, although their interpretations of the path forward differed.
The result was a new branch of Christianity called Protestantism, a name used to describe many religious groups that separated in “protest” from Rome. The movement resulted in wars between Protestant and Catholic powers, persecution of converts, and major shifts in political power.
Women were deeply affected by this movement. They were reformers and the wives of reformers, writers, protectors of the persecuted, and even queens active in religious politics. The Reformation was arguably the most significant shift for women’s status because it finally opened doors, however reluctantly, to more widespread education for women.
Painting titled, “Luther burns the Papal bull in the square of Wittenberg year 1520”
Join the Club
Join our email list and help us make herstory!
Joan of 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.
Joan of Arc entering Orleans
Joan of Arc’s capture
Joan of Arc’s execution
Female Reformers
Joan of Arc’s end certainly illustrated that women’s role in the faith was questioned by the patriarchal systems within the church. Yet, women were needed to realize the aims of the Reformation. The Protestant churches struggled to balance their need for female support with their inherent distrust of women being too involved in church life. Women were thus encouraged, but with caution. Male reformers like Luther directed their energy to the theology and politics of the Reformation while female reformers worked to establish a ‘Protestant culture’ throughout Europe. This included Bible instruction in homes and charity work.
During the Reformation, many women left convents after reading the works of Luther and Calvin, and they preached that living a monastic life was not necessary for salvation, but that a person could achieve so through faith and devotion alone. Yet, leaving the security of convent life was spiritually and economically risky. These women sought refuge with reformers across the continent.
Ursula of Münsterberg was one of them. The granddaughter of a king of Bohemia, she left the convent in 1528 after spending much of her life there, and also provided Luther’s writings to other nuns to encourage them to do the same. Upon leaving, she stayed with Luther himself for a period of time and because so much attention was paid to her flight, she published an “apology” for leaving, detailing how she believed life in the convent was not in line with the Scriptures, which prompted her need to leave. Her story was well documented and gives us a glimpse into the lives of women who left the convent and those who stayed.
More records survive about the royal and noblewomen of the Reformation. These were women who used their unique positions of power to support the Reformation, often in isolation. Their lives paint a detailed picture of the persecution women faced when they defied male authority. Despite the limitations placed on them by their gender, the role of the pastor’s wife, in particular, became a position of prestige in Protestant communities.
Copy of Ursula of Münsterberg’s written explanation for why she fled the convent
Education
One major shift for women in the Reformation related to education. Martin Luther himself was no champion of women’s rights. He echoed all the misogyny that church leaders had said before him. He wrote, women “are chiefly created to bear children and be the pleasure, joy, and solace of their husbands.” Noting women’s broad hips, he said, “they should remain at home, sit still, keep house, and bear and bring up children.”
However, Luther’s philosophy was based on the revolutionary idea that the salvation of every human soul relied on their ability to personally read the Bible. He, thus, believed in the full education of boys and girls to achieve that end. Luther wrote, “Were there neither soul, heaven, nor hell, it would still be necessary to have schools here below. The world has need of educated men and women, to the end that they may govern the country properly, and that the women may properly bring up their children, care for their domestics, and direct the affairs of their households.”
Luther certainly locked women in the domestic sphere, but he was adamant that their education was necessary to fulfill God’s will, and for establishing a new social order for trade, commerce, and urbanization. The trajectory of this change would plateau at times, but at least for the West, women’s access to literacy was here to stay.
Amicable (adj.), (of relations between people) having a spirit of friendliness.
Contentious (adj.), causing or likely to cause an argument; 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.), relating to people ordained for religious duties (clergy).
Theological (adj.), relating to the study of the nature of God and religious belief.
Parsonage (n.), a church house provided for a member of the clergy.
Copy of Zell’s “Apologia”
Argula von Grumbach
Argula von Grumbach was a noblewoman and avid reader of Protestant literature. In 1523, when a man at the university in Bavaria where she lived was arrested and facing execution for promoting his Protestant views, Grumbach wrote to the university, defending him and the teachings of Luther. She wrote, “I send you not a woman’s ranting, but the Word of God. I write as a member of the Church of Christ against which the gates of hell shall not prevail, as they will against the Church of Rome. God give us grace that we may all be blessed. Amen.”
Grumbach received no formal reply to her letters. Was this because she was a reformer? Or because she was a woman? Perhaps the contemporary inscription at the bottom of one of her letters in Munich answers these questions, reading, “Born a Lutheran whore and gate of hell. 13 December, 1523.” A local professor at the university subsequently preached against “daughters of Eve” like Grumbach before insulting her directly calling her a “female desperado”, “arrogant devil”, “heretical bitch”, and “shameless whore.”
Undeterred, when her opponents wrote an insulting poem about her, Grumbach responded in kind with 240 lines of rhyming couplets which directly referred to her right to speak on religious affairs despite her gender. She wrote, “He tells me to mind my knitting. To obey my man indeed is fitting, but if he drives me from God’s word [...] Home and child we must forsake, when God’s honor is at stake.”
Grumbach continued to plead the Protestant case, both in the public domain and through her writing, for the next seven years. An estimated 29,000 copies of her pamphlets were in circulation in 1524, meaning she was, “the most famous female Lutheran and bestselling pamphleteer.” In later life, living in her inherited estates in Bohemia, she continued her reform efforts, inviting converts to her home and bothering the authorities.
Pamphlet depicting Grumbach
A copy of one of Grumbach’s pamphlets
Marie Dentière
Marie Dentière also used her education and position to write. As was common for girls of moderate wealth, Marie entered the convent when she was around 13 years old. At the age of 26, Dentière was elected abbess of her Augustinian nunnery but soon after fled for her safety when she converted to Protestantism in 1524.
As the Reformation swept Europe, Dentière fled to Strasbourg, and later Geneva, when the victory of Protestant armies declared it a Protestant city. It was then that Dentière began her writing career and advocacy for women. She wrote,
If God has given graces to some good women, revealing to them something holy and good through His Holy Scripture, should they, for the sake of the defamers of the truth, refrain from writing down, speaking, or declaring it to each other? Ah! It would be too impudent to hide the talent which God has given to us, we who ought to have the grace to persevere to the end. Amen!
In Geneva, 1,500 copies were printed under a pseudonym, but pastors in Geneva seized the remaining copies and arrested the publisher. The publisher was given a fine, and he and Dentière’s husband had to appear before the council and argue that the books were not heretical. The books were never released, and the council quickly passed legislation banning the publication of books which they had not approved. Dentière’s husband remarked that this reaction was only because the council had been so, “wounded, piqued and dishonored by a woman.”
The suppression of Dentière’s writing generated conversation among Reformers. In 1539, the Council of Bern asked Béat Comte whether they should allow the work to be translated. After reading the book, Comte replied, saying that, while he could find nothing in it contrary to Scripture, because it was written by a woman, it should be suppressed. Dentière’s voice was silenced, not by Catholic authorities, but by her fellow Reformers.
Among her many controversial - yet fitting - questions, Dentière posed the following in a letter to her close friend, Queen Marguerite of Navarre: “Do we have two Gospels, one for men and the other for women?”
Dentiere’s stone on the Reformation Wall in Geneva, being the only woman recognized
Pseudonym (n.), a fictitious name, especially one used by an author.
Heretical (adj.), believing in or practicing religious opinion contrary to orthodox religious (especially Christian) doctrine.
Queens of 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
Portrait of Marguerite of Navarre
Consummate (v.), make (a marriage or relationship) complete by having sexual intercourse.
Convene (v.), come or bring together for a meeting or activity; assemble.
Huguenots (n.), French Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who followed the teachings of theologian John Calvin.
Portrait of Jeanne of Navarre
Manifesto (n.), a public declaration of policy and aims, especially one issued before an election by a political party or candidate.
Seminary (n.), a college that trains students to be priests, rabbis, or ministers.
Painting depicting Catherine de Medici seeing murdered Protestants in the aftermath of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre
The Queens of 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.
The wives of Henry VIII
Painting titled, “The Arrest of Anne Boleyn”
Portrait of Mary I
Alienate (v.), cause (someone) to feel isolated or estranged.
Adulteress (n.), a woman who voluntarily engages in sexual intercourse with a married person.
Incest (n.), the crime of having sexual intercourse with a parent, child, sibling, or grandchild.
Pariah (n.), an outcast.
Extol (v.), praise enthusiastically.
Armada (n.), a fleet of warships.
Painting of the Battle of Gravelines, with Elizabeth I in attendance
Witches
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.
A 1613 English pamphlet depicting a suspected witch being interrogated through dunking in a river
Heterarchy (n.), a system of organization where elements are not ranked or can be ranked in multiple ways.
Painting titled, “Assembly of Witches”
Copy of Malleus Maleficarum
Copy of Malleus Maleficarum
Conclusion
The Protestant Reformation took different shapes in different parts of Europe. In France, it resulted in the persecution of the Huguenots; in Germany, wars; in England, political drama. Everywhere women were integral to the story.The result was not only the rise of Protestantism, but the Catholic Counter-Reformation, and both largely acknowledged the importance of educating the masses–including women. Women’s access to education, the Bible, and the roles they played in the movement set the stage for the modern era.
However, as Protestantism became more established on the continent, the need for female support diminished and tighter restrictions were placed on women’s activities. When it came to women in the ministry and church life, the male reformers found themselves caught between what they thought theologically and what they wanted practically. For male reformers, like their Catholic counterparts, it was theologically unsound and even heretical to have women actively involved in the church. What these men thought about women was in contrast to their need for female support. This confusion was never adequately resolved. Protestant churches established by the Reformation were left with a culture of female involvement coexisting with a theology of female exclusion.
How much would access to education improve women’s status? How would future women intellectuals be received? And how long would the status sought by reformers take to be realized?
