Windows on life--women after the Reformation.

As the title of this essay indicates, the Reformation meant a significant turning point for women's lives. In those territories where the Reformation won acceptance, monastic life and the celibacy of priests were abolished, marriage of the clergy was introduced, and the propagation of marriage was generally increased. All these were drastic and publicly visible changes--but what stood behind these changes? We cannot simply look at the events in isolation from their context and without asking the question of why they happened and in what spirit. One instance of a controversial judgment on the historical events may illustrate the problem: Did the Reformation cause a loss of freedom for women because monastic life came to be prohibited? Or was this a move in the interest of the liberation of women from oppression? We see that in today's debates categories such as liberation and oppression are applied to life in a convent and to married life. Can such a conceptual framework be justified?

In order to answer this question as a church historian, I will first let history speak for itself. I start with an outline of the conflict about the alternative of monastic life or marriage. Second, I address the use of the language of liberation in this context. In a third section, I explore what other options there might have been for women during and after the Reformation. Finally, I offer some thoughts on the relevance of this historical subject for today.

A case of coercion

Nuremberg, 1525. On 3 February, Ursula Tetzel, a widow, turned up at the gate of the Convent of St. Clare and asked for permission to talk to her daughter Margarete, whom she had shut up in the convent at the age of 15, in 1516. In the meantime the mother had come to the conviction that she had not dealt with her daughter in a genuinely Christian way, that on the contrary she had exposed her to great peril for her conscience. She now demanded that Margarete leave the convent at least for a certain period in order to have an opportunity to listen to Protestant sermons in churches in the city. The abbess refused the demand, and Margarete told her mother through a small opening in the chapel wall that she wanted to stay in the convent.

The abbess, no less a figure than Caritas Pirckheimer (1467-1532), a learned woman and well connected with many of the great humanists of the early sixteenth century (and of course a sister of the famous humanist Willibald Pirckheimer, 1470-1530), declared that she would obey a ruling of the Nuremberg City Council but that there would be no chance for Margarete to return once she had left the convent. Eventually Ursula Tetzel and the parents of two other nuns secured support from the civic authorities and got their daughters out of the convent--against their own will and not without the use of physical force. (1) Even at the time people condemned that unpleasant scene. No favorable light falls from here on the Reformers' concerns! But let us see what the position of the parties involved really was.

Why leave a convent? The mother who was impressed by the new teaching of the Reformation may have fallen into qualms of conscience after reading Luther's treatise on monastic vows of 1521 or his apology for nuns who had escaped from a convent in 1523. (2) For Luther it followed directly from the concept of justification through faith that such vows could not be in accordance with faith, and he also denied that sexual asceticism was in accordance with the Word of God. Furthermore, it would be humanly impossible to keep a vow of celibacy throughout life.

Another source of inspiration for Tetzel may have been an autobiographical account by Florentina von Oberweimar that was published with a preface by Luther in 1524. This work is no theological treatise but a plain account of how Florentina was forced to enter a convent, her "Babylonische Gefenknis" (Babylonian captivity), how she had found that the monastic life was com-batting her "nature" rather than advancing her salvation, and how the abbess had tried to break her resistance through all sorts of humiliations and disciplinary actions. Luther in his preface emphasizes "what a devilish thing the system of nuns and monks is, in which driving people to God is being attempted with sheer force and coercion, with sticks and with stocks. And this despite the fact that God repeatedly affirms in Scriptures that he wants no forced service and that no one should be such (i.e. a celibate religious) except of his own free will and out of love. My God, will we not learn our lesson? Do we not have a mind and ears? I repea t: God wants no forced service. I say it for a third time, yes, I say it a hundred times: God wants no forced service." (3)

Looking beyond the situation in 1525, we may also refer to a pamphlet (with an epilogue by Luther) of 1528 in which Ursula von Munsterberg gives her reasons for leaving her convent. The former nun appeals to baptism and argues that whereas in baptism an "indissoluble bond of marital union" with Christ is established through faith, in a monastic vow this bond is broken through "our fabricated works in which we put our trust." (4) Instead of regarding precisely a nun as a bride of Christ in the spiritual sense of medieval theology, it is now the ordinary Christian life that is seen as an unsurpassed "marriage" with Christ in which liberation from sins can be found.

Why stay in a convent? As a representative of monastic devotion, the abbess Caritas Pirckheimer insisted that she did not put any pressure at all on any members of the convent in order to make them stay. Whoever wanted to leave was allowed to do so. However, she saw it as her obligation to defend those who wanted to stay. Whether or not monastic life was acceptable to God was for God alone to decide, not for humans. The nuns, Caritas went on, felt called by God to a monastic life without believing that their salvation altogether depended on this. Also, Christ had called for an imitation of the way of the cross, and their life in the convent reflected just that in that they subjected their body to the dominance of the spirit. For that reason they were concerned that they could not be saved outside the convent and wanted to remain faithful to their state into which they had been called by God. Finally, she rejected any suspicion that the nuns wanted to stay "von guttes leben wegen," for having a good life. (5)

We don't hear anything from Margarete Tetzel herself in our sources. There are, however, a few pamphlets in which nuns publicly defended their decision not to leave a convent although their families urged them to do so. Thus, a nun at Marienstein tells her brother in 1524 that monastic life was no offense against God's will. It was grounded in Paul's teaching, who states in 1 Cor 7:34 that "the unmarried woman and the virgin are anxious about the affairs of the Lord." The author does not reply to the charge that living as a nun means to evade the "pangs in childbearing" of which Gen 3:16 speaks. To live in a convent means for her to forsake the world because in the world it is difficult to avoid unchastity. (6) The Reformation is here seen as leading toward a wrong, carnal use of Christian freedom.

The political authorities. The Council of the City of Nuremberg, which took the side of Ursula Tetzel in the conflict, was supported by the expert opinion of the theologian Andreas Osiander (1498-1552). He stated that the mother had brought her daughter into peril and now had an obligation to free her from that peril. Worship in the convent was no true worship but just Popish rites. The rule of the order of St. Clare was in opposition to the Word of God, which clearly demanded that one should honor one's father and mother. (7) In consequence, the Council made the Decalogue the standard for its decision and assumed an authority to enforce obedience to it. Although this view conflicted sharply with the traditional understanding of the monastic vow, it duly reflected the prevalence of Scripture over the Canonical Law according to Luther's writings. Margarete Tetzel eventually got married in 1530 and had four children, thus leading a life that was regarded as pleasing to God in the Reformation. (8)

Luther. As the conflict in Nuremberg demonstrates, the reformers did not advocate freedom of conscience in a sense of an individual's subjective persuasion, including a right to err, but they only regarded a conscience that was liberated by the Word of God as a higher authority. It can fairly be said that Luther's writings on marriage, notably his The Estate of Marriage of 1522, had a major impact on the general debate. (9) In arguing against sexual asceticism, Luther refers to the will of God the creator: God has endowed the human beings with an irresistible sexual drive in order to preserve humankind. Neither does God demand sexual continence, nor are human beings able to achieve it. The way of life that truly conforms to the order of creation, therefore, is marriage, because in marriage sexual desire is not suppressed but confirmed, while at the same time the requirement of chastity is met. Luther characterizes this aspect of marriage in a sermon of 1519 as follows: "By binding themselves to each other, an d surrendering themselves to each other, the way is barred to the body of anyone else, and they content themselves in the marriage bed with their one companion. In this way God sees to it that the flesh is subdued so as not to rage wherever and however it pleases."10 Since marriage has its foundation in the divine command of Gen 1:28, "be fruitful and multiply," it is not a specifically Christian but simply a worldly way of life, it is part of the order of creation rather than the economy of salvation. (11)

Such views are echoed in Katharina Zell's Apology for her marriage with a Protestant minister in Strasbourg. She sees marriage and fornication in clear opposition and emphasizes that no one is free from sexual desire. It seems that people understood Luther's thought that even sins committed in thought only are sins, and that consequently those who are not married must lead a sinful life. This suggested the conclusion that human beings are under an obligation to get married. The only exception is that some may have been granted the special gift of chastity, and Katharina Zell refers to Matthew 19:12 in order to link this idea with the proclamation of the gospel rather than with monastic seclusion. However, as women are not allowed to preach (according to 1 Timothy 2 and 1 Corinthians 14), it would make even less sense for a woman to claim the gift of chastity. A woman can therefore only live in accordance with the Word of God and God's promise of grace if she gets married. (12)

When he had written his treatise on monastic vows, Luther had only demanded that marriage should be open to everyone. The issue turned on freedom, not coercion, because it was clear that a marriage needs to be based on mutual affection between two partners. At the same time the emphasis on human nature and on the human incapacity to lead a life in chastity could, however, result in shifting the weight toward the claim that marriage ought to be "the common road of a Christian life." It is this narrow and nomistic concept that seems to have become most popular with some theologically not so sophisticated pamphleteers. (13)

On freedom

"Freedom" is of course one of the key terms in the Reformation era. Yet what was meant was the freedom of the Christian, not the personal freedom of a man or a woman. (14) The reformers were concerned with the priestly and the royal freedom granted in Christian faith: priestly freedom gives us the right to enter into a relationship with God as God's children and to speak to God, and royal freedom results from this as a fundamental attitude of freedom toward the world. We are only bound by love to obey the rules of the world (as long as they are not opposed to God's will). The status of a monk or a nun is seen by Luther as lacking any kind of freedom. It is conditioned by a vow that contradicts faith and establishes a status that is not supported by the Word of God and is against human nature. For Luther there can be no freedom apart from faith.

Marriage, conversely, could obviously not be called a state of freedom. Women suffer pain in childbirth, and men are under an obligation to provide for their wives and children (for which reference was made to Gen 3:16-19). Speaking of the yoke of marriage was a familiar topos in humanistic writings, and Luther tries to overcome this attitude when, in his treatise The Estate of Marriage, he recommends marriage as a vision for life, which (provided that it is lived in faith) means comfort insofar as it pleases God and delight insofar as it establishes a communion of man and woman.

What about freedom and life as a nun? A convent was not about external personal freedom. The purpose of the required vow of obedience to an abbess as a representative of divine authority was precisely to break the human self-will. Thus again the freedom that was the goal of monastic life was a spiritual freedom: liberation from sensual desires, a liberating of the spirit through ascetic exercise. As Caritas Pirckheimer put it, the nuns strove to be "free with regard to the spirit, not the body." (15)

Thus we see two concepts of freedom behind the alternative of marriage or life in a convent, yet both concepts were of course intended to express obedience to the will of God--freedom from sensuality through asceticism versus freedom from agonies of conscience through the discovery that one's irrepressible natural condition was in accordance with the will of the creator. The experience of freedom in marriage had a spiritual dimension insofar as the conscience was concerned, but at the same time it was external insofar as it allowed one to accept one's sexuality. From the perspective of the monastic tradition, such external freedom was regarded as being in opposition to a truly Christian life, and the "toil and trouble" of a nun's life was emphasized. This was countered by pointing to the "toil and trouble" of a wife and mother who day after day "washes nappies, spoon-feeds pap to her baby, cooks for the master of the house- hold, in short raises her children by the sweat of her face," thereby proving herself to be a sincere Christian who gives "witness to her faith through service for her neighbor." (16) In a polemical turn, Katharina Zell states that "in marriage you suffer much sorrow, which those who live in celibacy want to avoid." (17) However, which distress did truly reflect an imitation of the way of the cross? Common sense, not least under the influence of humanistic thought, generally decried the life of nuns as pointless and idle.

As the aspect of individual ethics lost ground, more emphasis was put on the aspect of social ethics. Caritas Pirckheimer defended life in a convent as a communitarian way of life resembling the ideal of the first Christian communities. (18) I shall not pursue further aspects of the debate here. As a curiosity, let me just mention a marginal pamphlet in which we encounter a strangely nomistic understanding of Gen 3:16: Nuns are accused of refusing the obedience they owe as women to God and to male persons when they lock themselves in in a convent instead of having children and subordinating themselves to their husbands. (19)

As we survey these controversies, is it fair to conclude that the new image of a married woman was "hardly a liberating one"? (20) Such a statement seems arrogant to me, because it implies that we are in a position to define what "freedom" would have meant for people who lived far in the past. The aspect of personal freedom and self-determination so important to us today was not what lay at the heart of the debate about life in a convent or in marriage. We need to be absolutely clear about this. Freedom meant a freedom to be experienced in one's conscience, freedom from sin, life in accordance with God's will. Self-determination or self-realization did not become a Christian value until the late eighteenth century. If we wanted to apply these terms to the age of the Reformation at all, we could at best recognize this spark of compatibility between the divine will and human fulfillment in a union in love of a man and a woman. (21) This was a great thing! However, it meant that one had to overcome the tradition al theological concept according to which a life that would please God always required self-denial, and it was therefore not spelled out very often.

No preaching

In what other ways did the Reformation affect women's lives? When convents were abolished, could theologically minded women become preachers of the gospel rather than getting married? It is true that the reformers fought against the concept of a special status of the clergy and advocated the idea of a universal priesthood of all Christian believers. However, this was only the background for a new concept of an office in the church, and the fundamental equality of men and women was undermined by the Pauline prohibition for women to lead a congregation (1 Tim 2:12; 1 Cor 14:34). Whereas Luther in principle acknowledges the spiritual authorization of women to perform an office in the church, he restricts it to situations when "no men are around," thereby leaving unresolved the conflict between the Pauline prohibition and the promise of Joel 2:28. (22) Nevertheless, while women remained excluded from office, the priesthood of all believers took them beyond a total dependence on a male priestly and sacramental med iation of any approach to God and their adoption as children of God.

What is more, the concept of priesthood even implied an imperative: Do take a responsibility for your faith! Don't hide yourself behind external, ecclesiastical authorities! In consequence, the reformers called for literacy and a basic education for girls. Women such as KatharinaZell, Argula von Grumbach, and Ursula Weyd justified their attempts to publish theological writings by appealing to the Christian obligation to confess one's faith and did not altogether meet with opposition. But as time went on and the message of the reformers developed into a doctrine that was to be protected by official ecclesiastical theology as pura doctrina, the exclusion of women became even stricter. What about charity work? As far as this was concerned, the reformers did not accept it as an excuse for not marrying, because, as they saw it, such work could just as well be done by married women, notably the wives of Protestant ministers. The life of unmarried women in a community would have too closely resembled a convent. (23) Fresh impulses such as those of Pietism and then of the Enlightenment and many other factors such as the social work of Christian associations in the nineteenth century or the impact of the gradual admission of women to university eventually led to a situation as we know it today when women are no longer excluded from the Protestant ministry.

Feminist critics

In recent years the evaluation of the Reformation with regard to the situation of women has been in considerable flux. A predominantly positive view of its impact on the emancipation of women has given way to a negative judgment from a feminist perspective. The main reason for this is a changed view of marriage. When Luther and the reformers generally advocated marriage as strongly as they did, it corresponded to a new perception of human beings. The biblical idea "and they become one flesh" was something like a guiding principle. True humanity for them was realized in a union of man and woman, in solidarity and partnership between the sexes. Take the marriage portrait of Luther and Katharina von Bora as apiece of evidence for this: Each of the two is painted in a medallion, but facing each other. (24) The emphasis is not on personal autonomy, on being-for-oneself, but on being tied together, on reliance on each other, on a mutual being-for-the-other. In 1537 Luther remarked on a portrait of his wife, "I thin k I'll have a husband added to that painting, send it to Mantua (i.e., to the council called to meet in Mantua), and inquire whether they prefer marriage [to celibacy]." (25) A pictorial representation alone was enough to demonstrate to a council that man and woman belonged together!

Historically it was not seen as a problem when the male partner more often than not dominated the union of marriage. Things are different today, although in many cases the concern is less with overcoming this imbalance and establishing true partnership than with the validity of the ideal itself. It has been replaced by a concept of personal autonomy. The idea of marriage no longer satisfies the striving for personal independence. Marriage as a mutual engagement with the other, and with the other sex, almost seems to have become an unattainable thought. Occasionally this is pushed so far that medieval monastic life as a form of communal life of independent individuals of the same sex can be regarded as a serious alternative to marriage (although in fact monasteries and convents today don't enjoy much popularity). What this tells us as church historians is how remote the era of the Reformation has become for us--its understanding of human life, of human sexuality, of human self-realization. However, just as his tory does not simply offer models for identification, it is not simply a target of criticism, either. The best we can do is to ask the question, or rather to confront the question: Is what we are doing now any better?

(1.) See the account in Andreas Osiander, Gesamtausgabe, ed. Gerhard Muller (Gutersloh: Mohn, 1975ff.), vol. 1, 464-70.

(2.) The Judgment of Martin Luther on Monastic Vows, LW 44:251-400, and the dedicatory letter in LW 48:329-36 (=WA 8:573-669); Ursache und Antwort, da[beta] Jungfrauen Kloster gottlich verlassen mogen (A treatise showing that women are divinely permitted to leave a convent), WA 11:394-400.

(3.) A Story of how God rescued an honorable Nun, accompanied by a Letter of Martin Luther to the Counts of Mansfeld, LW 43:85-96 (=WA 15:86-94), 86-87 (=87).

(4.) Christliche Ursach des verlassen Klosters zu Freiberg (Christian reasons for leaving the convent at Freiberg), the epilogue in WA 26:628-33, the full text in Luther's Works, ed. Johann Georg Walch, 2nd ed. (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1880ff.), 19:1694-1723, 1700. The passage referred to includes an allusion to Hos 2:20.

(5.) Die "Denkwurdigkeiten" der Caritas Pirckheimer aus den Jahren 1524-1528, ed. Josef Pfanner (Landshut: Solanus-Druck, 1962), 11, 21-24.

(6.) Ayn Sendbrieff/vonn ainer Andaechtigen Frumen klosterfrawen von Marienstayn/ an yren bruoder Endris vonn wegen der Lutherischen ler. [Augsburg] 1524, 1; quoted from Flugschriften des Fruhen 16. Jahrhunderts auf Microfiche, ed. Hans-Joachim Kohler (Zug: Inter Documentation Co., 1979ff.), fiche 843 no. 2115.

(7.) As in Osiander (n. 1).

(8.) In contrast, a disastrous story of a nun who left her Convent and got married is discussed in Hans-Christoph Rublack,... hat die Nonne den Pfarrer gekusst? Aus dem Alltag der Refonnationszeit (Gutersloh: Mohn, 1991), 108-18.

(9.) LW 45:17--49 (=WA 10/2:275-304).

(10.) A Sermon on the Estate of Marriage, LW 44:7--14 (=WA 2:166--71), 11 (= 169).

(11.) See Luther's The Babylonian Captivity of the Church of 1520, LW 36:11-126, esp. 92-96 (=WA 6:497-573, esp. 550-53).

(12.) Entschuldigung Katharina Schutzinn fur M. Matthes Zellen jren Eegemahel (1524) in Elsie A. McKee, Katharina Schutz Zell (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 1999), vol. 2:21-47, esp. 35-36.

(13.) See for example Bernhard Rem, Ain Sendtbrieff an ettlich Closterfrawen zu sant katherina und zu sant niclas in Augspurg, Augsburg 1523, P. A iij v; as in note 6 above, fiche 225, no. 632. Life in a monastery or nunnery should be "regarded with suspicion by everyone because it diverges from the common road of a Christian life and tries to find a special path towards heaven."

(14.) See Luther's treatise The Freedom of a Christian, LW 31:333-77 (=WA 7:20-38,49-73).

(15.) See Pfanner (n. 5), 12.

(16.) Bernhard Rem, as in note 13. See also Bemd Moeller, "Die Brautwerbung Martin Bucers fur Wolfgang Capito. Zur Sozialgeschichte des evangelischen Pfarrerstandes," in idem, Die Reformation und das Mittelalter (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1991), 151-60, esp. 152.

(17.) McKee (n. 12), 37.

(18.) See Pfanner (n. 5), 24.

(19.) See Robert Stupperich, "Die Frau in der Publizistik der Reformation," in Archiv fur Kulturgeschichte 35, 1955, 204-33, esp. 208-9.

(20.) Catharina J. M. Halkes, Gott hat nicht nur starke Sohne. Grundzuge einer feministischen Theologie (Gutersloh: Mohn, 1985), 109.

(21.) See Bernd Moeller, "Wenzel Lincks Hochzeit. Uber Sexualitat, Keuschheit und Ehe in der fruhen Reformation," in Zeitschrift fur Theologie und Kirche 97, 2000, 317-42.

(22.) See The Misuse of the Mass of 1521, LW 36:127-230 (= WA 8:482-563, the Latin version 411-76).

(23.) Susan C. Karant-Nunn, "Continuity and change: Some Effects of the Reformation on the Women of Zwickau," in The Sixteenth Century Journal 12, 1982, 17-42, esp. 22f.

(24.) Werner Schade, "Cranachs Bildnisse der Frau Katharina," in Katharina von Bora, ed. Martin Treu (Wittenberg: Stiftung Luthergedenkstatten, 1999), 52-58.

(25.) Talk, LW 54:222 (= WA TR 3:378-79), No. 3528.