One courageous woman who lived during the Reformation and wrote many pamphlets and other religious poems was Argula von Grumbach.

Reformation leader, Martin Luther published his first treatises in 1520 and his friend, Philip Melancthon laid out Luther’s teachings in a book. By 1522, Luther had finished his translation into German of the New Testament. Argula von Grumbach read all these writings, and by that same year she had become a follower of Luther and had begun a correspondence with Luther and other Reformed leaders. She would later meet Luther face to face in 1530.

The authorities in Bavaria had forbidden anyone to read Lutheran ideas at the time, and in particular the city of Ingolstadt enforced that mandate. In 1523, Arsacius Seehofer, a young teacher and former student at the University of Ingolstadt, was arrested for Protestant views and forced to recant. The incident would have occurred quietly, but Argula, outraged over it, wrote what was to become her most successful writing, a letter to the faculty of the university objecting to Seehofer’s arrest and exile. In her letter she asked the authorities to examine the Scriptures and not just follow Roman traditions. It also said she had decided to speak out even though she was a woman because no one else would. An excerpt from her letter as follows:

“To the honorable, worthy, highborn, erudite, noble, stalwart Rector and all the Faculty of the University of Ingolstadt: When I heard what you had done to Arsacius Seehofer under terror of imprisonment and the stake, my heart trembled and my bones quaked. What have Luther and Melanchthon taught save the Word of God? You have condemned them. You have not refuted them. Where do you read in the Bible that Christ, the apostles, and the prophets imprisoned, banished, burned, or murdered anyone? You tell us that we must obey the magistrates. Correct. But neither the pope, nor  the Kaiser, not the princes have any authority over the Word of God. You need not think you can pull God, the prophets and the apostles out of heaven with papal decretals drawn from Aristotle, who was not a Christian at all. . . .

You seek to destroy all of Luther’s works. In that case you will have to destroy the New Testament, which he has translated. In the German writings of Luther and Melanchthon I have found nothing heretical. . Even if Luther should recant, what he has said would still be the Word of God. I would be willing to come and dispute with you in German. . . . You have the key of knowledge and you close the kingdom of heaven. But you are defeating yourselves. The news of what has been done to this lad of 18 has reached us and other cities in so short a time that soon it will be known to all the world. The Lord will forgive Arsacius, as he forgave Peter, who denied his master, though not threatened by prison and fire. Great good will yet come from this young man. 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. . .”          —Argula von Grumbach, 1523

In the entire long letter she cited over 80 Scriptures with which she made logical comparisons to the behavior of the university theologians to argue her case that they were wrong.

Her letter, which was turned into a booklet, provoked a huge reaction, greatly angering the theologians and became nearly an overnight sensation. It went through fourteen editions in two months, and became a bestseller. Argula wrote more letters and copies of the first one to other significant figures like Duke Wilhelm to also argue her case.

Theologians wanted her punished, and her husband lost his position at Dietfurt over the controversy. Argula was also called by many offensive epithets by her critics, especially through the sermons of Professor Hauer who called her things like “shameless whore” and a “female desperado.” Well, I guess if you can’t win an argument honestly, you can resort to name-calling! Things really haven’t changed much.

Argula wrote poems in response to the slander of her character, such as one she wrote against a poem apparently written by someone from Ingoldstadt which attacked her and accused her of being a neglectful wife and mother. This poem was the last of her published works but she continued correspondence with Luther and other Reformers.

Argula was highly controversial and shunned by her family but she also had admirers for her writings. She was praised by a Lutheran preacher Balthasar Hubmaier in nearby Regensburg, who wrote that she “knows more of the divine Word than all of the red hats (canon lawyers and cardinals) ever saw or could conceive of” and compared her to other heroic women in the Bible.

Even though her challenges to the university were largely ignored and her efforts to promote her Protestant beliefs unsuccessful, Argula was undeterred, and continued writing pamphlets. She did things like traveling alone to Nuremberg which was unheard of for women, to encourage German princes to accept Reformation principles.

She has finally been recognized for her contributions to the Reformation and today there is a mural on the wall of the University of Ingolstadt where she debated with the professors about her reformed views.

It takes a lot of courage to pass up fame and the approbation of someone as important as the Pope, but that is what Angela Merici did. Pope Clement VII had offered her a great honor and a wonderful opportunity to take charge of a religious order of nursing sisters. But Angela knew that God had not called her to nursing. God had called her to serve Him by helping the girls in her country who were denied an education because of their poverty. She wanted the nuns to teach these girls, but the Pope wouldn’t let them. They were not allowed to leave their cloisters. So, she decided to do something about it herself.

During the time of the Reformation only wealthy women and nuns were well educated. We have already told the story of another very well educated nun who lived during this period in history, Katherine von Bora Luther, who left the cloister to eventually marry a famous preacher and have a family. Angela Merici left the cloister also, but to give her life serving Christ by teaching poor girls who would not otherwise have received an education.

Angela was born in 1470. Her parents died when she was very young. She and her sister went to live with her uncle in a neighboring town. After her sister died she became a Franciscan tertiary at age 15. She lived a life of much devotion and prayer.

When she was twenty, her uncle died and she returned to Desenzano, her hometown. She was appalled at how many young, poor, untaught girls there were. She had a burning desire to give them an education. She wanted them to at least learn the basics of Christianity. Since there were no teaching orders of nuns in those days, she decided to try something new. She went out into the streets and along with friends and other Franciscan tertiaries, gathered up the girls they saw. These women had little money and no power, but they were bound together by their devotion to the girls and their love of Christ.

Angela converted her home into a school where she instructed the girls daily in the basic truths of Christianity.  She and the other women who joined her met daily for prayer and soon the school was a great success. She started other schools as well in many other cities. Many people were impressed, including the Pope.

In 1524, she went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. She became blind after an illness while on the island of Crete. She continued her pilgrimage anyway. On the way home, she recovered her sight. She believed that God was reminding her not to shut her eyes to the needs of the poor that she saw around her. She must also not shut her eyes to God’s call for her life. So when the Pope invited her to stay in Rome, she turned him down. She was not interested in fame or publicity.

She went to Brescia, where she laid a foundation for a new group, the Company of St. Ursula, later called the Ursulines. These women would carry on the work of teaching underprivileged girls. This group did not become a formal religious order in her lifetime. That would happen many years later. But it was the first group of religious women in service to work outside the home. Angela was considered a radical in her day. Today, we don’t think anything of women working outside of the home. Thanks to women like Angela, who wanted to help others no matter what the cost, unmarried women eventually were acceptable as teachers outside of the home.

In 1535, Angela put together The Company of St. Ursula in a small house near the Church of St. Afra, in Brescia. She would lead the fellowship until her death in 1540 at about seventy years old.

We remember her as a pioneer in leading women to serve Christ by serving others. She was successful because she kept her focus on helping others. She also had the courage to follow through, no matter what the temptations or obstacles.

“House and riches are the inheritance of fathers: but a prudent wife is from the Lord.” (Proverbs 19:14)

Men who are blessed with godly wives know that they are more valuable than gold or silver. The famous general, Robert E. Lee, knew that his wife Mary was such a woman.

Though Mary had been born with a “silver spoon”, she put God and His Word first in her life. When she would lose all of the advantages that she had been born with, she would trust in God and His righteousness and truth and follow Him bravely.

It seems a shame that the life of the one who was the inspiration to one of the greatest generals who ever lived should be so neglected. This is in part due to the fact that Mary Custis Lee lived during a time in the South when it was not considered proper for women to have their names in the papers. Fortunately, we have many fine stories about her from the letters of her friends. Her daughter, Agnes kept a vivid diary. We can also glean much from the correspondence between her and her famous husband, General Robert E. Lee.

Mary Anna Randolph Custis was born on October 1, 1808, the only surviving child of George Washington Parks Custis, grandson of Martha Washington and the adopted son of General Washington, and Mary Lee Fitzhugh Custis. As a young girl, she grew up at Arlington, former home of her renowned ancestors, George and Martha Washington.

Robert Edward Lee proposed to Mary in the summer of 1830, and they were married at Arlington House June 30, 1831. They had seven children. The Lees had a warm and loving family life, both committed to following the Lord.

Mary was a godly woman. She had been blessed with a godly mother who taught her all of the womanly arts, and also the disciplines of the Spirit.

She was a gracious hostess and enjoyed having frequent visitors at Arlington. She inherited artistic ability from her father and painted delicate landscapes. She also loved gardening.

Mary was a modest woman and followed the custom of the times for Southern women by spending most of her time in domestic pursuits. She was extremely intelligent and well educated; she knew both Greek and Latin. She frequently discussed politics with both her father and husband.

Both Robert and Mary Lee had the humility that comes from the graciousness of God. Mary never allowed her wealthy background to interfere with her duty. Her husband also put duty first. Even when he was away soldiering, he would often inquire in his letters as to how the family was doing in their spiritual lives. Mary took care to always have family prayers twice daily and saw that the children read and honored the Word of God.

Like many Christian Southerners, Mary Lee taught Arlington slave women to sew, read, and write. She wanted to be sure that they could read the Scriptures on their own. She also taught Sunday School for the blacks. She was as careful about the spiritual well-being of her servants as that of her own family, and would often write about the progress they made in their lessons to Robert while he was away. Many slaves obtained eternal life under the care and tutelage of their masters. While we deplore slavery, we will make no effort to explain it’s presence, North and South, in this story. Mary Lee was faithful to the task that she inherited. She saw herself as a servant to the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Lee’s released their slaves early during the war. Many of these former slaves were loyal to the Lees and indeed many remained friends for life. They loved Mary, and felt like family. They would be a big help to Mary when the Union soldiers overran Arlington, and they were distressed when the Union soldiers went about stealing or destroying as many things as they could. The Union soldiers did not even respect the fact that Arlington was of national interest, having been the home of their beloved first president. But Arlington was the home of the former slaves and they loved it too. They rescued as many of the precious artifacts as they could, and helped Mary to move on to the home of a friend.

During her adult life, Mary developed severe rheumatoid arthritis and became  increasingly debilitated as she grew older. Mary and her family often visited many spas and springs that were reputed to improve health until the War started. In letters to her husband, she tried to downplay her illness, but it worsened as the years passed. She was eventually confined to a wheelchair. In spite of all of the pain that she was in, she still managed to support the Confederate war effort by knitting hundreds of pairs of socks. In one three month knitting spree, she and her circle sent over two hundred pairs of socks for distribution to the Stonewall Brigade.

It broke her heart to leave her lifelong home of Arlington, but she had no choice. The Union soldiers wrecked the property, cutting down many beautiful trees. Years later, when she visited Arlington shortly before her death, she would say that she hardly recognized her old home. But, she did not let this loss keep her from quietly submitting to God’s providence.

Mary and her daughters moved between several plantations of family and friends before settling in Richmond where they spent most of the War. She continued to be an example of courage to all of the other wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters who had been sacrificing their men to the war effort. The Southerners all loved General Lee and looked to Mary Lee for leadership and guidance. Their daughter Mildred put it very well, “Yes, my Mother was a hero, as veritable a one as my Father.”

After the war ended, Mary accompanied Robert to Lexington, Virginia where he became the president of Washington College, which would later be renamed Washington and Lee University. While there, Mary would be the gracious hostess to countless young people who would visit. Though she had been raised as the heiress to Arlington, and missed it very much, she never expressed regret. She lived modestly at her new home at the college and joined her husband in his efforts to rebuild the shattered South.

Mary Anna Randolph Custis Lee died on November 5, 1873 at the age of 66. She is buried next to her husband on the Washington & Lee campus in Lexington, Virginia.
A notice in the Southern Collegian paid her a tribute, which sums up the heroic life of this courageous woman.

“Tempting as the theme is, we forbear to offer any eulogy on the character of this woman, so venerated and loved by the entire community in which she resided, related to our University — we may say linked to its history and its destiny – by so many strong and tender ties, and around whom there was gathered for years past a degree of public interest and affectionate solicitude that has never attached to any other woman in the history of our country. It is enough to say that in intelligence and in refinement of taste, in kindness of heart and attractiveness of manner, in cheerfulness under the heaviest reverses of fortune and the agonies of bodily pain, in sympathy and in benefactions towards the impoverished and suffering people of her country, in her manifold and ceaseless self-denials and labors on behalf of religion and the church of her fathers and of her choice, in all this she was an ornament to her sex, was worthy of her illustrious husband.”

Courageous in the face of the enemy, in the face of the loss of almost everything she held dear, including her heritage at Arlington, in the face of the defeat of her beloved South, in the face of debilitating illness, and eventually in the face of the loss of her dear husband, Mary willingly submitted to the Sovereignty of God. She is truly a woman worth emulating.

In part 2 of our series on Katherine von Bora, we learned that she and 11 other nuns escaped from the cloister with the help of a city councilor named Leonard Koppe. When they got to the town where they were going, they had to marry quickly or try to work on their own. Luther helped them all to find respectable jobs or husbands, all except Katherine. She befriended a man whom she wished to marry, but his family would not accept an ex-nun. She was heartbroken. Luther tried to match her with someone else; she refused that man.

Luther didn’t seem to be in a big hurry to marry. He was 42 when he started to consider Katherine as a bride. Finally, in 1525 he decided to please his parents and irritate the pope and the devils by “getting married with the last ex-nun available in town.” Some people rejoiced in the marriage; others were scandalized. This was not just because it was Luther, but because clergy were only just beginning to get married. 
It took some getting used to for people in the early 16^th century.
They were married on June 13, 1525. There was only a small group attending the ceremony. Two weeks later they had a larger feast with many more guests.

Katherine modeled the wife of a pastor exceedingly well. She mothered six children of her own, and cared for six or seven nieces and nephews, and four orphans, along with many others who came under her roof.

Her home was a Pastor’s and professor’s home, and she set the standard for reformer’s wives. The parsonage was a place where the evangelical faith would be fostered. Her convent training enabled her to help Luther run a boarding school for theology students, a hostel for visitors, theological conversations centered around her husband, occasionally turning her house into a hospital, receiving refugees, providing meals and beds for all, and finding money to cover all the costs. She also made tasty beer.

Though we know that Luther appreciated all that she did, affectionately calling her “doctor, preacher, and lord,” Katherine did not exercise authority as a theologian or preacher outside of their home. Luther did not encourage it.

Katherine was able to use her gifts of intelligence and organization by managing the “Black Cloister,” an abandoned monastery that she turned into a seminary. Here she “ruled” a “congregation” that filled all 40 rooms and she hosted the meals daily for the residents and hosted banquets for as many as 120 people. This was a popular gathering place, and would become the model for the parsonages in the future which would become places for people to come together to discuss theology, entertainment, and spiritual growth.

She managed to finance all of this by raising vegetables and fruit. She raised animals, fished, baked bread, and brewed beer. She increased their wealth by buying land. As an aristocrat, she understand the value of land and talked Luther into buying two farms and two orchards.

She still had to live by the rules of the times. She showed respect to her husband, by addressing him formally, subjecting herself to his authority, practical, legal, and spiritual. Luther considered her an equal partner “in Christ” but not as an equal partner in his preaching ministry.

However, she participated in “table talks.” She knew enough Latin and Scripture to join in, much to the annoyance of some at the table who thought her behavior inappropriate for a women. Apparently though, Luther made no effort to stop her. Martin called her “My Lord Katie”.

When he died suddenly in 1546, she was extremely sorrowful. She also found herself surrounded with many difficulties. There were no church widow’s pensions then, and she had to make do, supporting their children on what Luther had left her. She faced her situation squarely on as she had always done in life. Many other difficulties arrived; she soon found herself a refugee as armies turned her farm into a battlefield. There were also recurrences of the plague. As she was trying to escape from plague-ridden Wittenberg, she fell from a wagon. She died as a result of injuries from this accident in December of 1552.

Katherine contributed much to her husband’s ministry.  She certainly helped with his understanding of marriage, love, gender roles, and family life. By doing this, she contributed much to the spread of the Gospel. She modeled the ideal Christian woman.  By being a Proverbs 31 woman, her husband’s ministry was expanded further. Because she could manage everything on the home front, including the Black Cloister, Luther was able to be away on long journeys, preaching and teaching, knowing that he could come home to a restful, well-ordered, spiritually invigorating home.

Katherine loved Christ. She lived her life to the fullest. She showed us how to live the Christian life in our marriages, families, and communities. It takes a lot of courage to face the daily mundane tasks of cooking, cleaning, and mending. As we contemplate on the life of Katherine von Bora Luther, I hope it will give us renewed strength to find joy in whatever calling God has given us.