SYMHC Classics: 3 Reformation Women Classic

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Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. Jean Dalbray, Queen of Navarre, was born on November sixteenth, fifteen twenty eight, so four hundred ninety six years ago today. She is one of three women we talk about in Today's Saturday Classic, which is on three women of the Protestant Reformation. This episode originally came out on November one, twenty seventeen. Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy D. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. As you may know, this podcast is initially being published on November first, twenty seventeen, so that's the day after the five hundredth anniversary of Martin Luther famously posting his ninety five THECS, which is more formally known as Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences at the door of Wittenberg Castle Church. So there's some historical debate over the details of this. Martin Luther probably didn't defiantly nail them up there as a lot of people imagine, and it might not have even happened at all, although these cecees were basically points he planned to discuss at a public disputation, so it would have been customary for him to post them there ahead of time. Regardless of all that detail, though, October thirty first, fifteen seventeen has come to be marked as the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, which was the religious and social and political schism that ultimately led to centuries of war and upheaval and religious persecution and the Catholic counter Reformation and the rise of seemingly countless Protestant denominations of Christianity. So obviously that was a big moment in history. Consequently, we've gotten a lot of requests for a Reformation episode, including from Sarah Maney Boris and Josh, and a recent note from Rachel was what finally sparked today's show. Rachel sent us a quick email suggesting that we focus on some of the women involved in the Reformation. I was originally planning to focus on just one, but I kept stumbling onto other tidbits from other women's stories, so I've decided to make this episode into one that focuses on three. Alrighty, We're gonna start with Katerina von Bora, also known as Catherine. She was the former nun who in June of fifteen twenty five married former monk Martin Luther when she was twenty five and he was forty one. Von Borrow was born around fourteen ninety nine, although there aren't clear records of exactly when or where. In fifteen oh four her family sent her to the Benedictine cloister at Breda to be educated. Then in fifteen oh eight she moved to a Cistercian monastery at Nemshen, where her aunt also lived, and that is where she eventually became a nun. Von Bora didn't really like her life as a nun, though, but being educated in a convent meant that she knew how to read, and she and some of the other women living there managed to get access to the writings of Martin Luther as well as other reformers. This material was almost certainly banned behind monastic walls, so bringing it in and keeping it relatively secret would have taken some gumption. In fifteen twenty three, Von Bora and several other women in her monastery contacted Martin Luther to ask him for help in escaping. This was both dangerous and illegal. It was against Roman Catholic law for a person who abandon their religious vows, and people who were caught could be imprisoned. Helping someone escape was also illegal, as was harboring or sheltering someone who had, but Luther agreed to help. On April fourth, fifteen twenty three, which was Easter Eve, a merchant smuggled Katerina and eleven other women out of the convent in a cart normally used to deliver herring. According to some sources, she got out while hiding in a fish barrel. It's actually more likely that they were under the coverings used to cover the fish barrels, but I like the the barrel was not a delightful smelling ride. Probably not. Katerina and nine of the other women were taken to Vittenberg, where they met Martin Luther, and he started trying to reunite them with their families. When their families weren't willing to take them back, Luther started trying to find husbands for them, and he got some kind of situation in place for everybody except von Bora pretty quickly. She fell in love with one of Luther's students, but his family refused to allow their marriage. For a year, After that relationship fell through, Von Bora refused every option that was presented to her. She steadfastly maintained that she would only marry someone worthy of her and of her choosing. She's not going to cut it for some random single person to be her husband. She finally said she would either marry Lutheran reformer Nicholas von Amsdorf or Luther himself. Those are her only options that she was willing to agree to you, and Luther ultimately agreed to do so. A lot of Luther's Reformation peers did not like this at all. His collaborator Philip Melanchthon was particularly scathing, writing quote, in these unhappy times in which good people are suffering so much, this man lacks compassion and rather, as it seems, revels and compromises his good reputation, precisely at a time when Germany stands in particular need of his spirit and authority. The good people suffering so much that he's referring to here is largely the Peasants Revolt, which was an incredibly bloody uprising against depression by landlords and members of the nobility that was going on in Germany at this time. Aside from this hole, it's not the time for this argument. Reformers were worried that Luther's decision to get married was going to add fuel to claims that the Catholic Church had made to try to undermine his work, namely that he was only doing that work to try to get out of his vows of celibacy. This was compounded by the fact that only a year after renouncing his vows, he was marrying someone who had abandoned her vows as well. Now, eventually it would become fairly common for former monks and former nuns to marry one another, especially when convins and monasteries closed down later in the Reformation, but at the time that Martin Luther himself did this, what they were doing was absolutely scandalous. So Luther's response to all of this criticism was that he had done it to please his father, who had never approved of his decision to become a monk, as well as to spite the Devil and the Pope. Getting married also meant that Luther could stop feeling like a hypocrite for encouraging Protestant clergy to marry while not doing so himself. The two of them finally wed on June thirteenth, fifteen twenty five, more than two years after von Bora escaped from the monastery. Although they definitely did not get married for love, I mean, Luther's comments make that pretty clear, they ultimately wound up having what was, by all accounts a really supportive and loving and affectionate relationship. They had six children, and all but one of them survived infancy. Eventually, one of von Bora's relatives and six of Luther's sister's children came to live with them as well. That is a full house. It is they had room for so many because their home was the Black Cloister, which was one of the Luther family holdings in a former Augustinian monastery. This von Bora converted into a home as well as a thriving business. She made the old monastic cells into student housing, and she attracted scholars to live there by playing up the association with Martin Luther. She managed the property's farm and its brewery, and when she needed to, she secured donations to improve the building in the grounds, making it into what was essentially a sixteenth century conference center. Unsurprisingly, she also got a lot of criticism, basically for being really bossy. That's criticism often leveled at women taking charge of matters in a way that needs to be done. So. Martin Luther died in fifteen forty six, and Katerina was heartbroken. He had advised her to sell the Black Cloister if he died, but she really didn't want to do it. Even so, without his income and influence, she and the rest of the family really fell on financial hard times. This was followed by wars and bad harvests and an outbreak of plague. Fleeing the plague, Katerina went to Torgau, where she died three months after having been seriously injured in a cart accident. She died on December twentieth, fifteen fifty two, at the age of about fifty three. In her marriage to Martin Luther, Katerina von Bora became the prime example of the idea of a clergyman's wife. In twenty seventeen, it is highly annoying for a woman's own accomplishments to be framed in terms of her husband, But in the sixteenth century, a marriage like theirs was really new territory for Christian women. As emerging Protestant denominations encouraged members of the clergy to marry Martin Luther, and Katerina von Bora became the most notable example of what such a marriage could be like. In their marriage, this was largely about her being his helpmate while also successfully running a home and a business, and that left him free to really focus on his religious work. But these marriages played out in other ways as well. Some wives of the clergy essentially became partners in their husband's ministry, influencing how scripture was interpreted and taught. Others became prominent members of their communities, educating children and seeing to the health and welfare and spiritu wellness of their congregations. This was also part of an overall change in the kinds of lives that were considered acceptable for Christian women to lead. Prior to the Reformation, there were basically two acceptable roles for a Christian woman, homemaker and none, and one of those options effectively disappeared for a lot of women during the Reformation, as families converted away from Catholicism and convents were closed down, displacing the women who had lived there. Of course, men were also displaced with the closure of monasteries, but they generally had far more options open to them for what to do with their lives afterward. Yeah, a man who was displaced from a monastery generally had an education a lot of times are really good education. He often had connections with his community, like he could go on to do other things. And often a woman who was displaced from a convent could get married or go back home with her parents, and that was That's pretty much all that was available. Now, being a clergyman's wife was not a one to one replacement for being a nun. Women joined convents both voluntarily and involuntarily for a whole range of reasons, and one of those was the very practical fact that for a lot of women, a convent offered more freedom and autonomy than a marriage could, so being married not the same thing. At the same time, though the role of the clergy wife did allow some women into positions of prominence and influence that they didn't really have access to before, we should also note this wasn't the same as actually being in the clergy, and today there are still plenty of denominations that don't ordain women. Next, we're going to move on to talking about a couple of women occupying one of the few other roles considered to be suitable for women in the sixteenth century, which was being royalty. We're gonna talk about that after we first paused for a little sponsor break. Before we get onto our next subject, we need to take just a second sablay a little bit more groundwork about the Reformation in general, because her involvement began before October thirty first, fifteen seventeen. So even though Martin Luther and his ninety five Theces are generally considered to be the beginning of the Reformation, that didn't come out of thin air. People had been criticizing and trying to reform the church for centuries, and in a lot of ways, Martin's Theces recapped and outlined points that he and other people had already been making. This was sort of like the Twitter thread that encapsulates a lot of existing conversations and then goes viral. Often these criticisms played out within the church itself. As one example, when Saint Francis of Assisi established the Franciscan Order in twelve oh nine, it was with the approval of Pope Innocent the Third, but today he seen in part as a reformer, and later followers did their own work to reform the Franciscan order itself as well as the Greeter Church. So the Protestant Reformation similarly started as a reform effort within the Roman Catholic Church, not as an attempt to start a new church. When Martin Luther wrote his ninety five Theses, he wasn't intending to break away from the church, but to address what he saw as problems that the church should address. But in fifteen twenty one, the church excommunicated him, and so what had started out as an internal reform movement developed into a schism. This also wasn't the first schism in history. Another previous schism within the church included the East West Schism of fifteen oh four, which is what split the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches apart from one another. So when Marguerite d'angoulem was born on April eleventh, fourteen ninety two, Martin Luther was still twenty five years away from posting his ninety five Theses, but criticisms of the Roman Catholic Church, many of which were incorporated into the Theses, were well underway. Marguerite was the daughter of Charles de Valois Orleans and Louise of Savoy, and she had a younger brother, Francois, who was born on September twelfth, fourteen ninety four. Although it seemed pretty likely that the French monarchs King Louis the twelfth and Queen Anne would have an heir of their own, Francois was in a line of succession for the throne, so he received the sort of education that would prepare him for the possibility of becoming the king. Then Louise made sure that Marguerite got the same education as well. In fifteen oh nine, Marguerite married Charles, the Duke of Valencon, and took an active role in trying to improve the lives of the people of Allenson. She raised money for hospitals and almshouses, and prompted her brother to establish an orphanage in Paris. She insisted that poor women be given shelter and food during the last days of their pregnancies and after the birth, to try to combat ongoing problems of infanticide and child abandoned. She also remedied the Alan Sons Castle's lack of a library, and she began inviting scholars and poets to stay with them to enrich the spiritual and emotional atmosphere at court. Her husband did not have a reputation for being a particularly a scholarly man, so when Louis the twelfth died without an heir in fifteen fifteen, Marguerite's brother did become Francis, the first King of France. She took this same sensibility that she had put into place in alan son to his court as one of his advisers. Their mother was influential in the court as well, and both of these women were really intelligent and educated and politically aware. They were well read, and they were informed about all the ongoing efforts to reform the church, some of which were considered to be heretical. So with Marguerite and Louise both among King Francis's advisers, the French court became one that welcomed scholars and other figures who were advocating for religious reform. Marguerite herself never left the Roman Catholic Church, but she and those around her actively questioned and criticized church teachings and practices. Guests at the court included Francois Rabell, a humanist and former priest whose satirical work lampooned religious hypocrisy. Marguerite read and translated the work of Martin Luther and stridently advocated for the Bible to be translated into French and available to the French population. She was a patron to such artists and scholars as Leonardo da Vinci, John Calvin, and uh Desidrius Erasmus. She sometimes is known as the mother of the French Renaissance. She became a student of guillanme Brischelnet, the Bishop of mux whose followers, who were known as the Circle of Meu, were at the heart of Reformation thinking in France at the time. Through the Circle of Mew, Marguerite funded the printing and distribution of a range of Reformation texts in France. She also sought out and obtained translations of the text to be brought to her in France so that she could stay up to date about what was going on. Under Marguerite's influence, King Francois the First's court also provided protection and shelter to a number of reformers whose work was considered heretical and blasphemous. Marguerite herself might have faced the same fate had she not been sister to the king, even in spite of her advocacy, though several of the reformers and scholars Marguerite associated with were eventually executed for heresy. As all of this was going on, on February twenty fourth, fifteen twenty five, the forces of Francis or Francois the First of France fought those of Habsburg Emperor Charles the Fifth at the Battle of Pavia, which was part of the Italian Wars. This is a whole series of conflicts in which a number of nations, primarily France and Spain, tried to take control of Italy. This battle was a decisive victory for Charles the Fifth, and Francis wound up being taken prisoner. Marguerite's husband, Charles, sort of took the fall for this whole thing. He died not long after. Marguerite was actively involved in the negotiations for the release of her brother, including personally meeting with Charles the Fifth. She returned to France only when her brother began to suspect that Charles was dragging out the negotiations on purpose. In the hopes of taking her captive as well. Her brother was only able to return home after signing the Treaty of Madrid in fifteen twenty six, which surrendered all French claims to Italian territory. Later on that year, Marguerite got married again, this time to Already the second Valbray, the King of Navarre, on November sixteenth, fifteen twenty eight. They had a daughter, Jeanne, who will talk more about in a bit. After remarrying and having a daughter, Marguerite became a lot less involved in her brother's court politics, focusing more on her own writing and her own personal religious studies. She did continue to shelter Protestant refugees in Navarre, though, in addition to her translations of others work, Marguerite was also a writer herself. Her only work published during her lifetime was Marguerite de la Marguerite des Princess, which was published in fifteen forty seven. She died two years later on December twenty first. Her most notable work, Heptameron, was published posthumously by Claude Gruge in fifteen fifty nine at the request of Marguerite's daughter. Written in the style of Baccaccio's De Cameron, it satirizes, among other things, religious hypocrisy. She wrote volumes of work beyond these two works, though much of it existed really just as her own personal manuscripts until the nineteenth century, and a lot of it was explicitly religious and infused with Reformation ideas. There really also were not very many women who had published work during their lifetimes at this point in history in Europe. Aside from her writing, Marguerite's support for the Reformation really helped it to survive in France in the early to mid sixteenth century. As we noted, earlier, punishments for spreading material that was deemed to be blasphemous or heretical were really severe, and they included execution. So without having such consistent and vocal support from the French court, as well as the active sheltering of Reformation leaders, the Reformation really might not have established much of a foothold in France. Marguerite also actively mediated between the Roman Catholic Church and France Protestants, really advocating for tolerance between the two of them. She never publicly converted or left the Roman Catholic Church, likely because to her her religious beliefs were private, even as they were mirrored in her own writings, but she so publicly supported reformers and sheltered people accused of heresy that she's both credited for nurturing Protestantism in France and criticized for weakening the Catholic Church there. Unfortunately, that atmosphere of time tolerance that Marguerite had tried to nurture did not last long beyond her death in fifteen forty nine, which is something we're going to talk about after another quick sponsor break. Last up in our trio of Reformation women is Marguerite Dangolam's daughter, jean Delbray. She was born on November sixteenth, fifteen twenty eight, in Saint Germain, Aalais, and as was the case with her mother, her upbringing wasn't exactly typical for the time, even for a princess. She was tutored by humanist scholars, with Nicholas de Berboon overseeing her education. Her mother had the same sort of influence on Jeanne's education as she had had on her brother's court in France in fifteen forty when she was eleven. Jeanne's uncle, King Francis of France or Francois, as you've heard us say, arranged for her to be married to William, Duke of Cleves. As we've mentioned before on the show, royal marriages to children were typically seen as political affairs, and they were not consummated until the couple reached child bearing age, often not living together until that time. Regardless, Jehenne's parents were not in favor of this match. Her father had been trying to negotiate her marriage to Philip of Spain. Either way, regardless of which of these two men she was going to marry, she was being used as a pawn for someone else's political ends, and she was defiantly opposed to marrying William, like just really not okay with it. She wrote out a whole document detailing that the marriage was taking place against her will and had it witnessed. It began, I, Jehanne de Navarre, continuing my protests already made in which I persist, say the Claire, and protest again by these presents, that the marriage proposed between me and the Duke of Cleves is against my will, that I have never consented to it, and I never will anything that I may say or do after this, because of which it could be said that I may have given my consent, will have been because of force against my will, out of fear of the King, of my father, the king, and of my mother, the Queen, who had me threatened and beaten by the beev decan my governess. That also went on from there some more. She didn't really hold back I like it. She also told King Francis to his face that she would rather enter a convent than go forward with this marriage. He had a reigned, and she yelled so loudly that she would rather throw herself down a well if people heard it in the next room. Jeanne protested so vehemently on her wedding day that she had to be forcibly carried to the altar. Afterward. The king insisted that the couple observe some kind of symbolic formality in lieu of consummating the marriage, since she was a child, So Jehne and the Duke were taken to a nuptial chamber, where he put one foot on the bed while she was sitting on it. Jehne's defiance did not stop once the wedding was over. She continued to object to the unwonted marriage for five full years. Her mother made a series of excuses why she couldn't leave for Cleaves to join her husband, until the Duke finally just agreed to end the marriage in fifteen forty three. Pope Paul the third honored a request for it to be annulled in fifteen forty five, and all of this, of course, led to a huge rift between Marguerite and her brother, who had ordered the marriage in the first place. Yeah, one of the reasons that she was not so involved in his court after getting married and having a child was that she literally moved away. But also this happened Jehn's level of really stubborn defiance and all this was startling to people, not just because it was not at all the behavior that was expected of a girl, especially a princess who was raised to like have certain princessly behaviors, but also because her health was really frail for pretty much her whole life. She sort of mustered up a level of strength that people did not think was in her in all of this. Three years later, Jeanne married again, this time to Antoine de Bourbon, and this was another match arranged for her for political reasons, this time by King Henri the Second of France, who had become king after the death of his father Francois the First or Francis the First. Antoine was next in line for the French throne after Henri the Second's own sons. While Jeanne agreed to this match, this time, her parents refused, putting off their departure so long that they were eventually informed that the wedding would take place whether they were there or not. Jeanne and Antoine married on October twentieth, fifteen forty eight. The two of them had a son, on Riedo Navarre in fifteen fifty three, and then in fifteen fifty five Jeanne's father and so she and her husband became the Queen and King of Navarre. They later had a daughter, Catherine, in fifteen fifty nine. The same stubborn defiance that had been such a hallmark of Jehenne's forced childhood marriage revealed itself once again in the matter of religion during her time as Queen of Navarre. In this she actually butted heads with her mother. She didn't like the fact that her mother never really took a strong stance one way or the other. Nevertheless, it was only after her mother's death that jean officially announced her conversion to Calvinism in fifteen sixty, and the Kingdom of Navarre became increasingly explicitly Protestant. Under her and her husband's rule. Was ranged from having the New Testament printed in the Basque language, which was spoken locally, to forcibly closing monasteries and outlying Catholic religious rituals, to eventually establishing Calvinism as the official religion of Navarre. Apart from Navarre's Catholics, who found themselves persecuted, this presented a greater problem in the larger scope of Europe. Navarre was a tiny nation with much larger Catholic neighbors, and although Jeanne's parents had tried to keep its territory independent from France, it was really considered to just be a semi autonomous state. As France put increasing pressure on Navarre to conform to Catholicism, Jeanne and Antoine also found themselves caught between two other powerful families. Catherine de Medici of France was at least at the time, relatively sympathetic to the French Huguenot cause. While the Roman Catholic House of Geese was not. Ultimately Antoine relented to this pressure and took up the Catholic side, while Jeanne steadfastly supported the French Huguenot. This erupted in the French Wars of Religion beginning in fifteen sixty two. That was a series of bloody conflicts and massacres that went on literally for decades, which was as much as civil war as it was a religious one. For Jeanne's part in the earlier years of the French Wars of Religion, she reinforced Navarre's defenses, She confiscated Catholic property, she established a Calvinist community in Baern, and she stayed out of the actual fighting for the most part, even as she was branded as a heretic and threatened with excommunication and threatened with trial under the Inquisition, and even when her son Ari was taken captive at the age of four, she refused to convert fighting for the Catholic side. Antoine le siege to Rouen in September of fifteen sixty two. Although the Catholic side ultimately seized Druen from the Huguenot and Twine was fatally wounded in the process. He died on November seventeenth, fifteen sixty two, and June was denied entry into France to be with him before he died. After her husband's death, Jehenne was the sole monarch of Navarre, and she refused other offers of marriage, especially since of them came along with the requirement that she convert back to Catholicism. Although Jeanne had been actively supporting the Huguenot cause throughout the French Wars of Religion, it wasn't until the Third that Navarre really became involved from a military perspective. Before that point, she had acted more as a diplomat, trying to negotiate between Catholic and Protestant forces and balancing a slew of international factors in the process. But with the Third War of Religion, it was clear that Navarre was going to be at the mercy of France and Spain if it did not take a military stance, soh John rallied the troops. She left her council in charge of Navarre and moved to the Huguenot port of LaRochelle for about three years. There, she took on the role of Minister of Propaganda and Foreign Affairs. Just as the name sounds, she wrote letters and pamphlets and other literature in support of the Huguenot cause and against religious oppression of Protestants. This included her fifteen sixty eight Ample Declaration, which was her defense of her move to La Rochelle. The French wars of religion came to an uneasy piece with the Piece of Saint Germains Anlais in fifteen seventy, which made specific allowances for Protestant worship. Members of the high nobility were allowed to practice Calvinism in their own homes, and La Rochelle, Montalban, Cognac and La Charite were designated as Huguenot strongholds. This treaty didn't really please anyone. Staunch Catholics didn't want Calvinism to be practiced at all, and most Calvinists still could not worship freely since it was only the top of the nobility that had gotten that freedom. The piece also did not last for long. After about two years of things being pretty touch and go, the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre began on August twenty fourth, fifteen seventy two. And thousands of French Protestants were killed at the hands of Catholics. Jeune had died of tuberque just a couple of months before the massacre, on June ninth, fifteen seventy two. She was forty four. At the time, she was negotiating the marriage of her son to Marguerite de Valois, daughter of Catherine de Medici and Anri the second of France. Jeanne hoped that a marriage between the royal families of Navarre in France would lead to a longer lasting piece and that it would give her Protestant son a greater influence, and in a way it did exactly the opposite. It was actually that very wedding that attracted so many high rank a Huguenot to Paris, where the massacre began. So there are a lot of podcasts about the Medici family, including this particular marriage, as well as a couple that get into the Saint Bartholomews Day massacre in more detail in our archive, and we will link to them both in the show notes. The reason that I wanted to talk about these particular women as as the episode expanded to be about three women instead of just won one of them is that each of them had something just so particularly compelling to me and their stories. There was the fish barrel, and there was the hiding of people who were at risk of being executed for heresy, this vehement opposition to being married off to somebody as a child, Like each of them had a moment that made me go, I really want to talk about this in the show. And the other is that all three of them were really influential people in the Protestant Reformation, but in three really distinct ways. Like you had a woman who was basically making room for Martin Luther to do all of this religious work that he was doing, and he is I think probably the most He and John Callen are like the most notable people in the Reformation, I think at least I think those are the names that people are most likely to recognize. And then Marguerite was really negotiating and trying to keep the peace and trying to also make room for there to be a Protestant movement in France. And then we have John who was the person who took took up arms in the very violent struggle that this blossomed into that went on for so long. Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. If you'd like to send us a note, our email addresses History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com, and you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.