Marjorie Elizabeth Plummer's From Priest's Whore to Pastor's Wife: Clerical Marriage and the Process of Reform in the Early German Reformation is a valuable contribution to the historiography of the Protestant Reformation. Employing meticulous analysis of city council records, chronicles, letters, sermons, pamphlets, and woodcuts, the author traces the practice and adoption of clerical marriage in the German archbishoprics of Mainz and Magdeburg from the high and late medieval period (1100s–1400s) to the early sixteenth-century (1520s–1540s). Plummer's thesis is quite original: the acceptance of clerical marriage into the Protestant Church was not merely a phenomenon that officials or reformers imposed upon the clergy. Rather, the Protestant Church's official acceptance of clerical marriage evolved from pressures of the laity and priests who opposed clerical celibacy. The author's unique emphasis on the agency of common people (laity and clergy alike) reveals “how the reform movement developed from a theological debate to a social movement” (2). Her study raises important questions regarding marriage (theology, law, and practice), gender, social and religious identity, and the participation of ordinary people in the Reformation.

Plummer begins her study with an exploration of late medieval clerical concubinage, specifically, its pervasiveness despite its prohibition by church and state authorities. The high and late Middle Ages saw repeated attempts by both magistrates and church officials to clamp down on clerical concubinage, a problem discussed in synods (and other meetings) and condemned in sermons. Moreover, many priests who had sexual partners were punished by both church and state by excommunication or loss of their benefices. Nevertheless, the policing of concubinage reflected its criminal rather than religious nature. Concubines too were chastised quite rigorously by being precluded from enjoying social and legal rights and participating in religious rituals.

Why did the Protestant Church and German state finally condone, permit, and adopt clerical marriage? Plummer argues that the clergy's (and lay persons') clamor for clerical matrimony that began in the late medieval era continued into the sixteenth century as priests and laity argued that clerical celibacy was unfounded scripturally. Priests, they exhorted, should marry their partners and thus set an example to others of the purity of marriage. Clerical marriage would even help priests avoid sexual sin (fornication). It was during the early sixteenth century that more and more priests married their former concubines (or other individuals) despite the protests of secular and religious authorities, defiantly doing so in public ceremonies and thus consciously encouraging other clergy members to marry. Protestant reformers like Karlstadt and Luther, who also married, expounded in sermons and pamphlets the value of clerical matrimony. These pressures led to the enactment of marriage laws in various German cities. In these ways, ordinary people (clergy and laity alike) championed their cause that was based on convictions rather than upon a specific reform agenda.

Despite the increase in the number of clerical marriages, however, the imperial government issued legislation, such as the mandate of 1523, against clerical marriage, and left the punishment thereof to clerical officials. Nevertheless, these attempts and measures did not deter priests, monks, and nuns from marrying, and it is here too that Plummer expounds on her thesis of the agency of ordinary citizens in the movement for clerical marriage.

The final chapters explore the personal reasons for which clergy members married. Plummer concentrates on nuns, monks, and former concubines. She professes that even before the acceptance of clerical marriage, women especially had little to gain from marrying their clerical partners: “between 1521 and 1534, clerical wives transgressed local, canon, and imperial law, risked legal sanctions, and suffered economic hardship and the social dishonor of being considered ‘a priest's whore’” (212). Plummer posits that numerous women (and men) found clerical marriage appealing because they desired companionate relationships as well as participation in the reform movement. In these ways, people (women in particular) defied social norms with this form of religious activism.

The author concludes her book with a consideration of how Lutheran reformers elevated (in pamphlets and sermons) marriage and household life. By the middle of the sixteenth century, the value of marriage (clerical as well as lay) influenced reformers to regulate the personal (married) lives of priests and nuns with pastoral visitations and consistory hearings.

Plummer's work is praiseworthy for a variety of reasons. This book contributes significantly to a more thorough understanding of the dynamics of the Protestant Reformation—its successes and failures. The author vividly conveys how religious reform (here the implementation of clerical marriage) was heavily impacted, and certainly influenced, by the lay community and ordinary priests, not just state officials and leading religious reformers like Martin Luther. This book, engagingly written and fastidiously researched, will benefit both students and professional historians of early modern religious and social history.