The Reformation: Really Reforming Women's Roles?

“So often women’s theological questions and women’s history are marginalised as irrelevant to ‘serious’ theology” - Jane Dempsey Douglass

“The woman’s place is in the home” - John Calvin

“The wife should stay at home and look after the affairs of the household as one who has been deprived of the ability of administering those affairs that are outside and concern the state” 

- Martin Luther

The Reformation in Europe spanned from 1517 until c. 1600 and saw the founding of protestantism in a very Catholic Europe. Considering religion impacted every facet of life, it is obvious that this would also have affected women. And as two of the key leaders of the movement were John Calvin and Martin Luther (please read their charming statements above) it is clear to see - and so I shall explore - men seemed to have a lot of opinions on where women should be and what they should be doing during the Reformation.

The Reformation was a walking contradiction for women , the ideas of wifely obedience despite supposed spiritual equality was definitely something only a man could come up with… Especially when you consider that the Reformation saw an influx of writing about women (of course by men); their morality, rationality - or lack thereof - and whether it was possible for us to be saved by the church. However, the Reformation had major impacts on women’s lives beyond religious ideals; convents were closed with the nuns booted out and forced to marry - taking away one of the only of lives free from male ownership allowed to women - divorce suddenly became a possibility, public brothels were closed and public welfare was centralised.

Even I will admit that that doesn’t all sound bad, however do we know if women agreed with me? No. And why is that? Because the writing of women wasn’t considered important enough to be retained. Take Martin Luther for example, the open letters he wrote women still exist as do the letters to his own wife, yet any responses he received from either his wife or other women have been lost to history as they weren’t deemed worth saving. However, from the scant information there is written about women’s responses we know that they were not passive acceptors - some accepted Protestantism with zeal abandoning their husbands in pursuit of their own religious enlightenment - whilst others refused to abandon their convents. Arguably they were martyred on both sides of the religious divide. Moreover, the records are even more limited as women often only appeared in public records if they were widowed or not yet married due to the whole husband ownership business that came with marriage. 

The Reformation saw further exclusion of women from discussion of both religion and class. Considering the closing of the nunneries, it was known that there would no longer be gatherings of only women for prayer, thus the church was dubbed a “brotherhood” in Germany (which is arguably both not very imaginative and incredibly exclusionary). This is doubly stupid when you remember that from the 14th Century onwards women massively outnumbered men in the majority of German cities, so arguably a sisterhood would maker more sense from numbers alone. However it also makes you wonder if women felt this stark exclusion? If they felt that the religious freedom that was once held in the nunneries had been stripped from them? Whether they felt a reneging on the promise of spiritual equality (considering monasteries remained open until 1648 in mainland Europe)? But considering we have lost much of women’s writing we simply do not know. 

Even the terminology for those who supported the reformation was equally divisive. Low-class men who supported the Reformation were referred to as 'gemeiner Mann' (common men) a phrase often used with positive connotations yet the term for women of the same persuasion, 'germeine Frau', was only ever used negatively (and unsurprisingly also meant prostitute). This presents women as separated from the civic communities in which they lived, another move that excluded them from daily life - this idea is even more prevalent when you consider the separation of women’s history and ‘proper history’ of politics, theology, philosophy and economics…

Scholarship on this subject has a very clear split between what is considered ‘real history’ and whatever women were doing. Regular history is usually ordered in relation to geography or period whereas ‘women and family history’ is all lumped together. And when you think about the category of women also including the family, you have to consider further the minimising effect this has on the role that women are allotted in society - excluding them from public issues like class, politics and religion when all of these so desperately impact them. The 16th Century also saw an increased interest (from men as per) in women’s sexuality whilst they brainstormed the best ways to control unmarried women so they couldn’t go around spreading their immorality to the good menfolk. Considering gender was greatly impacting the “human experience” during the Reformation, the lack of scholarship on the topic is rather shocking, and even when there is something to read on the topic it is subjugated away from the real topic of the Reformation and societal change; it is instead just ‘women's history’. 

Yet, on a less depressing note - the promise of spiritual equality wasn’t actually all bad. In fact women often used religion as an outlet; especially artwork that depicted biblical women. This theologically toned artwork became more widely appreciated, especially in the home and by women, as it provided role models that existed beyond the confinement of domesticity. Two key artists of this period were Artemisia Gentileschi and Elisabetta Sirani. Gentileschi’s work tended to feature women in positions of power - and often violence (which is a nice change) - becoming symbolic in the proto-feminist anti-catholic movement, for example her depiction of Judith slaying Holofernes. Whereas Sirani depicted women of strength, intelligence and divinity; the depiction of these protestant female saints inspired the reclamation of religious and social lives of women. 

Thus given the changes the Reformation provided women, my main complaint is less with these changes but more the lack of knowledge we have about the average woman’s thoughts about them. This is not due to the Reformation really, but more just your garden variety sexism in which the experiences of women are considered insignificant when recording a historical period. The problems such as the exclusion of women from issues of class and politics were not confined only to Protestantism but were prevalent too in Catholicism - as seen by the responses of Gentileschi and Sirani. So the real issue remains less religion itself but the misogyny that underlied society - and still does.

References

Calvin, J. 'A Sermon of M. John Calvin upon the Epistle of Saint Pual to Titus'

Jackson, E. 2022. Gentileschi, Sirani, and the Feminine Spirit of the Protestant Reformation. Art and Object

Luther, M. 'Lectures on Genesis' 3.11

Wiesner, M. E. 1987. Beyond Women  and the Family: Towards a Gender Analysis of the Reformation. Sixteenth Century Journal. 18(3): 311-321