In the later Middle Ages, there was a significant constellation of women mystics and visionaries in the region now known as Germany. Some of the more famous women include Hildegard of Bingen (d. 1179), Elisabeth of Schönau (d. 1165), Mechthild of Magdeburg (d. 1282), Mectild of Hackeborn (d. 1298), and Gertrude the Great (d. 1302). While each of these women addressed particular situations and audiences, they were all German women who experienced divine visions and claimed to speak on behalf of God. In his book The Laity in the Middle Ages, André Vauchez emphasizes how the religious life became more accessible to late-medieval women (and to lay women in particular) in the wake of the Great Schism, which loosened hierarchical authority and created a context in which female visionaries found space to lift their voices in calls for reform. Hence, one sees a preponderance of female visionaries at this time and the flourishing of lay women groups, such as the Beguines.Footnote 1 Vauchez also identifies these female visionaries as prophets.Footnote 2 Rosalynn Voaden in God's Words, Women's Voices clarifies even further that it was precisely through these visions and the gift of prophecy that women could claim authorization to speak publicly in a world in which the female sex was expected to be silent in the public sphere.Footnote 3 Voaden points to the fact that significant contemporary male leaders—such as Thomas Aquinas and Bernard of Clairvaux—affirmed a clear connection between prophecy and visions. In his Summa Theologica, Aquinas identified “prophets” more properly as “those who see in imaginative visions,” and he explicitly affirmed that a woman could be a prophet.Footnote 4 Even as women were allowed in principle the vocation of the prophet, scholars rightly note the discourse of “exceptionalism” that surrounded these late-medieval women, as well as a system of discernment to verify that these women truly spoke the words of God.Footnote 5
More broadly, however, late-medieval Christians inherited and passed on two general definitions of prophecy: one that defined prophecy as foretelling, in which visions often played a central role, and the other that defined prophecy as interpretation of scripture.Footnote 6 In the explications of the first kind of prophecy, church fathers often emphasized the role of supernatural knowledge that could be obtained either through intellectual vision or imaginative vision (and argued amongst themselves as to which form was superior).Footnote 7 John Chrysostom and Ambrosiaster were some of the earliest proponents of the view of prophecy as interpretation of scripture.Footnote 8 This dual view of prophecy may be clearly seen in a statement by Rhabanus Maurus (d. 856), a German Benedictine who served as the Archbishop of Mainz. He wrote, “We understand prophecy in a two-fold manner, not only as predicting the future but also as revealing the Scriptures.”Footnote 9 Indeed, several scholars of early modern studies have noted the ways in which a number of the early sixteenth-century male protestant reformers adopted and implemented this definition of prophecy as interpretation of scripture for specific protestant needs. Reformers such as Ulrich Zwingli, Martin Luther, Martin Bucer, Heinrich Bullinger, and John Calvin emphasized the prophet as the interpreter of scripture, so that one sees the formation of the Prophezie in Zurich and analogous institutions in Wittenberg, Strasbourg, and Geneva.Footnote 10 Indeed, in many ways early protestant reformers sought to employ this view of the prophet to adjudicate right interpretation of scripture in a world in which protestants had now claimed scripture as the prime, if not the sole, authority for Christian life. Moreover, Zwingli, Luther and Calvin specifically rejected the view of prophecy as visionary specifically contra the Anabaptists; namely, they tied prophecy very closely to scripture and its interpretation in order to reject Anabaptists' claims to “new revelation” through the Holy Spirit apart from scripture.Footnote 11
In the early 1520s, male protestant reformers—Zwingli and Luther in particular—not only espoused the view of the prophet as the faithful interpreter of scripture, they also proclaimed a robust theology of the priesthood of all believers, in which Zwingli and Luther powerfully proclaimed the call for every Christian to read and interpret scripture. Historical data exhibits the intense lay response to such exhortations. Bernd Moeller demonstrates in an essay on the early protestant movement in German towns that it was in the regions directly influenced by Luther and Zwingli that one sees high concentrations of lay response. Not only did reform cluster around cities, writes Moeller, but one can also discern a geographical convergence in the cities of Wittenberg, Nuremberg, and Strasbourg, with particular emphasis on the latter.Footnote 12 Paul Russell's book, Lay Theology in the Reformation, also traces the surge of lay publications in southwest Germany in the 1520s to Luther and Zwingli's teachings concerning the priesthood of all believers, alongside a prior medieval use of prophecy for calls for reform.Footnote 13 In these lay publications, one finds anticlerical themes; one also finds a notable emphasis on the summons to laypersons to read scripture. For example, Miriam Usher Chrisman has provided an in-depth depiction of laypersons' response to the Protestant Reformation in Strasbourg. Chrisman notes the confidence Strasbourg laity demonstrated to speak on matters of doctrine, and their use of Scripture to do so.Footnote 14 Most of her work centers on the response of male artisans, but in one article she focuses on women and the reformation in Strasbourg, in which she argues that German women found themselves in a more masculine-dominated urban world than women in France or Italy might have experienced. Hence, after providing accounts of the activities of Katharina Schütz Zell, Anabaptist women, and women who stayed in the convent, she contends that there was no identifiable shared response of women to protestant reform in Strasbourg.Footnote 15 This particular essay, however, reads at times more as an essay on the view and role of marriage in Strasbourg rather than women per se. In her treatment of prophecy, in particular, Chrisman focuses on the response of the Anabaptist women in Strasbourg, several of whom claimed a visionary, ecstatic gift of prophecy, and Chrisman concludes that “prophecy was a fringe activity” even among these radical women.Footnote 16
This essay contends, on the contrary, that prophecy potentially holds a broader significance for protestant women in the early years of protestant reform, beyond some of the more radical elements that tended to embrace prophecy primarily in its visionary form. This essay proposes that it is fruitful to view several early women reformers in and around these German lands as embracing and seeking to inhabit the concept of the prophet as interpreter of scripture. In her recent introduction to Forms of Engagement, Elizabeth Scott-Baumann argues for the practice of exploring women's writings as “acts of reading, of re-creation, challenge, and appropriation.”Footnote 17 By this, she exhorts scholars to attend more carefully to viewing women as “immersed in their literary culture and transforming it.”Footnote 18 This project proposes to do just this by seeking to integrate the experience and writing of three early modern women with the early teachings of sixteenth-century protestant male leaders, particularly around the view of the prophet as an interpreter of scripture. The essay aims to demonstrate the ways in which three women—Argula von Grumbach (1492–c.1564), Katharina Schütz Zell (1498–1562), and Marie Dentière (1495–1561)—appropriated the view of the prophet as interpreter of scripture and to suggest some of the distinctive contributions they proffered. It will argue that prophecy was not only a significant lens by which Argula von Grumbach, Katharina Schütz Zell, and Marie Dentière conceived of themselves and their ministries, they also employed Old Testament prophecy with four common objectives that parallel contemporary male uses of prophecy: to present themselves as speaking God's Word and not their own, to locate their ministries within a larger biblical prophetic tradition, to interpret contemporary situations in the light of biblical prophecy, and to distinguish between true and false prophets.
I. Women's Applications of Male Reformers' Teachings: The Priesthood of All Believers
Argula von Grumbach, Katharina Schütz Zell, and Marie Dentière grounded their call and obligation to speak out publicly in the theology of the priesthood of all believers—a theology that the leading male contemporary reformers in their regions propounded. Argula von Grumbach explicitly claimed that she had read all of Luther's German works at the time of her writings.Footnote 19 Katharina Schütz Zell spent her life and ministry in the town of Strasbourg whose reform was led by Martin Bucer, and she was married to another of the city's key reformers, Matthew Zell.Footnote 20 Marie Dentière left the convent in the early 1520s and arrived in Strasbourg soon thereafter and remained there until 1528 and likely knew and met Katharina and Matthew Zell.Footnote 21 From 1528 to 1533, she and her first husband settled in an area outside of Geneva in support of Guillame Farel's reform in the region. After the death of her first husband, Marie married Antoine Froment, with whom she settled in Geneva in 1535. Her Very Useful Epistle was published in 1539.
Several scholars have already noted the central importance of the contemporary male reformers' teachings concerning the priesthood of all believers for Argula von Grumbach, Katharina Schütz Zell, and Marie Dentière and their defense of their public ministries.Footnote 22 Silke Halbach, in particular, examines Argula von Grumbach's employment of Luther's teachings, especially those found in his 1520 letter to the Christian nobility in Germany. Peter Matheson notes the importance of Luther for Argula, but disagrees with Halbach's emphasis on Argula's indebtedness to Luther.Footnote 23 Nonetheless, they agree that Luther's concept of the priesthood of all believers was a launching point for Argula's public ministry—a view that Paul Russell and Kirsi Stjerna also hold.Footnote 24
Argula von Grumbach consistently established her call to speak publicly upon her identity as a baptized Christian and upon what scripture teaches as the duties of baptized Christians. Invoking Matt 10:32–33, Argula argued that she was compelled as a Christian by virtue of her baptism to bear witness to Christ and defend the truth of God's Word.Footnote 25 Furthermore, she contended that all Christians have the aid of the Holy Spirit to interpret scripture and should test the truth of any teaching by its right adherence to scripture.Footnote 26 Indeed, these very same exhortations may be found in Luther's early teachings, especially in his 1520 letter to the German nobility and 1522 On the Misuse of the Mass. Luther argued stoutly in his letter to the Christian nobility in Germany for the concept of the priesthood of all believers precisely on the basis of scripture's teachings about baptism and membership in the Body of Christ.Footnote 27 Furthermore, he maintained that all Christians, as part of the priesthood of all believers, were called to interpret scripture and employ scripture to rebuke wrong teachings.Footnote 28 Likewise, in On the Misuse of the Mass, Luther insisted that the office of preaching God's Word is common to all Christians.Footnote 29 Hence, one finds in Luther's early writings strong statements about the duty of every Christian to interpret scripture and reprove unbiblical teachings.
Scholars of Katharina Schütz Zell and Marie Dentière also generally note the importance of the concept of the priesthood of all believers to defend and buttress their public ministries. Yet, few have explored in any detail the conceptual parallels between Katharina's writings and those of her husband Matthew Zell or Martin Bucer. Likewise, few have noted the parallels between Marie's writings and those of her husband Antoine Froment or Guillame Farel. For example, Elsie McKee's landmark work on the life and thought of Katharina Schütz Zell superbly depicts Katharina's teachings concerning lay vocations, the obligation of all Christians to speak out against falsehood, and the appropriate possibilities of lay preaching and teaching; yet, except for a few general references, McKee discusses these concepts independent of contemporary male reformers' teachings or, for that matter, other contemporary women writers.Footnote 30
In fact, Katharina Schütz Zell employed several of the same biblical texts quoted by Argula von Grumbach. For example, in her very first public letter, she echoed Argula's favorite text in Matt 10:32–33 to remind the women of Kentzingen that whoever confesses Christ, Christ will confess, and whoever denies him, he will also deny.Footnote 31 Katharina exhorted the women of Kentzingen to speak the words of scripture to their husbands to bring them comfort, and she reminded her peers that she always tested the truth by the measure of scripture.Footnote 32 Central to Katharina's argument was her strong emphasis upon love of neighbor as that which compels a Christian to speak out publicly and not remain silent in the face of wrong teaching.Footnote 33 Furthermore, Katharina emphasized the way in which God uses laypersons to reestablish the authority of Scripture and rebuke corrupt leadership.Footnote 34
These emphases upon the duty to speak the truth and rebuke falsehood out of love of neighbor and upon God's ability to use laypersons to reestablish the truths of Scripture were central to the teachings of the key male leaders in Strasbourg—Matthew Zell and Martin Bucer. Love of neighbor was a central theme of Bucer's early treatise Das Ym Selbs (1523).Footnote 35 Bucer's clear assertion of the priesthood of all believers connected it to the duty of Christian love: “No distinction is valid, that one person should be called spiritual and another secular among believers . . . all Christians are one and neither birth nor individual characteristics nor even the distinction between sexes matters . . . Whoever has a strong faith that is active in love is the spiritual person.”Footnote 36 Bucer also affirmed that all believers had access to the Holy Spirit and the call to test all teachings according to their right adherence to scripture, as seen in his 1523 treatise Summary seiner Predig: “Do not let yourselves be turned aside, as if you were not permitted to have the Holy Spirit and thus could not read anything in the Holy Gospels and other divine writings, nor test and judge the preaching and teaching carried out for you . . . If you believe in Christ, you are his, you have his Spirit, you are spiritual, you have all things to judge and to test.”Footnote 37 Additionally, Matthew Zell emphasized God's employment of laypersons to rebuke corrupt leadership and enable the proper preaching of God's Word. He wrote in his 1523 German treatise Christeliche Verantwortung: “What is a right and true calling but that the Spirit of God—that is, a just zeal concerning the dishonor of God and the leading astray of his people—drives one so that he takes God's Word in his mouth and to God's honor fights against his enemies? . . . It could be understood from this that everyone should be allowed to preach . . . although, strangely, we do not like it when a layperson arises to preach, which is never prohibited, much rather permitted.”Footnote 38 Hence, Katharina's emphases upon love of neighbor and God's employment of laypersons to test the scriptural veracity of the teachings of corrupt leadership were concepts she appropriated and applied to her own context and set of concerns.
There is likewise a seeming lack in the scholarly studies of Marie Dentière of analyzing her teachings in the light of her contemporary male reformers.Footnote 39 Marie redeployed not only central teachings of Guillame Farel, but she also echoed several of the ideas of Argula and Katharina before her. Marie, like Katharina (and Bucer and Zell), explained that in keeping with the practice of love of neighbor she could not keep silent and allow her neighbor to be seduced by false teachings.Footnote 40 Marie also appealed to the common baptism of all Christians, so that the call to read and interpret scripture belonged equally to cleric and lay, men and women, educated and uneducated.Footnote 41 The ministry of every Christian, whether lay or ordained, was to “follow the way of God's Word” and to resist false teachings “powerfully with the Word of God.”Footnote 42 Indeed, pivotal to the teachings of Guillame Farel was the centrality of God's Word, the access all Christians had to scripture, and the duty of Christians to judge the veracity of teachings based upon their adherence to scripture. For example, he wrote in his 1529 Summary and Brief Declaration that all Christians must “prove by the holy scriptures of God and to examine diligently all decrees, all remarks and instruction in order to know what spirit brings them forth, either the Spirit of God or that of the flesh”; this included even testing what their pastors taught.Footnote 43 Farel also insisted that all Christians had access to the Holy Spirit to guide them to hold only to the “pure Word of God,” to receive a right understanding of scripture, and to preach the gospel faithfully.Footnote 44
In sum, the male reformers who led the protestant reform in the cities in which these women resided clearly affirmed the priesthood of all believers, the access of every Christian to the Holy Spirit, and the call of all Christians to read scripture, to judge others' teachings according to scripture, and to defend God's truth on the basis of scripture. Hence, each of these women appealed to their identities as baptized Christians and the theology of the priesthood of all believers to ground their call and obligation to speak out publicly. To show that these women appropriated the ideas of the surrounding male reformers is not to diminish their contributions, but, rather, to demonstrate their skills in deploying these teachings for their own uses. Moreover, not only did these women redeploy existing teachings concerning the priesthood of all believers and the call of every Christian to interpret scripture and rebuke wrong teachings, these women also skillfully applied to themselves the view of the prophet as a faithful interpreter of scripture that was also evident in these male reformers' writings.
II. Male Reformers' Teachings on Prophecy & Scripture
The chief male protestant reformers in the regions in which these women resided emphasized a definition of prophecy as the gift of interpreting and applying scripture. They also identified their own ministries with the work of the Old Testament prophets, especially echoing the prophets' proclamations against idolatry and false worship. Hence, these male protestant reformers regularly applied Old Testament prophecy to interpret the events of their day and utilized the distinction between true and false prophets to defend their leadership and readings of scripture over and against those of Roman Catholics or Anabaptists. For example, in his Open Letter to the Christian Nobility and The Misuse of the Mass, Martin Luther identified the prophet as the true interpreter of scripture. He insisted in his Open Letter that this gift of interpreting scripture belonged to all believers (and not just the pope): “St. Paul says in I Corinthians 14, ‘If something better is revealed to anyone, though he is already sitting and listening to another in God's Word, then the one who is speaking shall hold his peace and give place’ . . . Who would help Christendom when the pope erred if we did not have somebody we could trust more than him, somebody who had the Scriptures on his side? Therefore, their claim that only the pope may interpret Scripture is an outrageous fancied fable.”Footnote 45 Luther also appealed to I Corinthians 14 in The Misuse of the Mass to argue that the duties of preaching and interpreting God's Word were common to all Christians.Footnote 46 Hence, in his writings of the early 1520s, Luther explicated the gift of prophecy (as it appears in I Corinthians 14) in a manner that established a clear tie between the gift of prophecy and the call of every Christian to interpret scripture and employ scripture to judge true teachings from false.Footnote 47
This tie between prophecy and the interpretation of scripture can be discerned in the writings of Bucer, Zell and Farel, as well. Martin Bucer identified prophecy as it appeared in I Corinthians 14 as the gift of “preaching the Word of God and interpreting.”Footnote 48 Similar to Luther, Bucer argued that God gave all Christians the ability to judge right doctrine through the process set forth in I Corinthians 14 of two or three believers standing up to interpret Scripture and discern God's will.Footnote 49 Indeed, Matthew Zell identified those who proclaim and interpret God's Word as prophets and explicitly carved out a space for lay prophets by arguing that all Christians must rebuke wrongdoing and not remain silent.Footnote 50 A similar stance may be seen in the writings of Guillame Farel. A true pastor, wrote Farel in his Summaire et briefve declaration (1529), proclaims only the pure Word of God. Hence, he clarified, “Scripture clearly testifies that whatever is not clearly proven by Scripture should not be received. God has not brought about anything on earth that [God] has not prophesied by his servants the prophets.”Footnote 51 Implied in this statement is a deep tie between the content of scripture and the content of prophecy. Perhaps even more clearly in this same treatise, when depicting the cooperation between the various gifts of the members of the church, Farel specifically highlighted the gift of prophecy: “He who speaks prophecy, exhorts or admonishes, does it for the edification of others. He who interprets, puts Scripture in the common language; he does this for others and not for himself.”Footnote 52
These male protestant reformers also identified their own ministries with the vocation of the Old Testament prophets and applied Old Testament prophecy to interpret the events of their day. Martin Luther, for example, likened the neglect of God's Word and the idolatrous practices rampant in his day with Jeremiah's context.Footnote 53 In his Open Letter and in The Misuse of the Mass, he likened the current Roman leadership to the unfaithful Israelites.Footnote 54 At other points, Luther equated the Roman priests with the Baalites, the worshipers of Molech, and the false priesthood at Bethel.Footnote 55 Additionally, Luther paralleled Hezekiah and Isaiah's aim to reestablish true worship with the events in Wittenberg.Footnote 56 In similar fashion, Matthew Zell appealed to the example of Elijah to argue that lay prophets had no need of the authorization from self-appointed leaders, for, argued Zell, did Elijah wait for permission from Ahab?Footnote 57 Indeed, Zell appealed more broadly to the manner in which God had always called prophets as a pattern evident in his own time: when the conventional institutions for upholding God's Word failed, God sent prophets.Footnote 58 Likewise, Guillame Farel echoed the language and concerns of Old Testament prophets—particularly those of Jeremiah and Isaiah—in his Summaire et breifve declaration. He applied Isaiah (e.g., Isa. 58) to depict the nature of true fasting and echoed Jeremiah's image of true worship as that which is written on the hearts of believers (Jer. 31:33–34).Footnote 59 Farel employed the prophet Joel's trumpet to issue a call to true worship and the true proclamation of the gospel.Footnote 60 In educating parents how to instruct their children in true worship, Farel counseled parents to use the Old Testament stories against idolatry (especially those of the prophets) to guide their children in right understandings of worship.Footnote 61
Finally, male protestant leaders such as Luther, Zell, Bucer, and Farel distinguished between true and false prophets—a distinction known best through testing correct adherence to scripture. Matthew Zell in his treatise Christeliche Vertanwortung argued that the authority of a minister was gauged by his correct observance of God's Word, just as a true prophet was identified by the adherence of his message to scripture.Footnote 62 Likewise, Martin Bucer stated that true prophets are distinguished from false by judging everything according to scripture.Footnote 63 Not surprisingly, Martin Luther employed a sharp contrast between true and false prophets in order to portray the Roman leadership as false and protestant leaders as rightly proclaiming the truth of scripture. Thus, in his Open Letter to the Nobility and The Misuse of the Mass, Luther identified Roman leaders as false prophets, false teachers and false shepherds and proclaimed that scripture had already warned that there would be those such as these who attempt to lead the people astray. Luther identified having right adherence to scripture and having a true “calling” as that which set apart true prophets from false.Footnote 64 Similarly, Guillame Farel instructed that false prophets could be identified by the fruits that they bear and their lack of adherence to scripture.Footnote 65 Indeed, he dedicated a whole section of his Summaire et briefve declaration to the distinction between the false and the true pastor.Footnote 66 Hence, from even this brief survey, one can discern the central role that Old Testament prophecy played in the early teachings of leading male protestant reformers: they identified their ministries with the Old Testament prophets, they read contemporary events in the light of Old Testament prophecy, and they utilized the distinction of false versus true prophets to empower and authorize their reform efforts.
III. Argula, Katharina and Marie's Uses of Old Testament Prophecy
There are striking parallels between Argula von Grumbach, Katharina Schütz Zell and Marie Dentière's uses of Old Testament prophecy and those of these male protestant reformers. These women not only applied the teachings concerning the priesthood of all believers to buttress their public ministries, they also availed themselves of the male reformers' conception of prophecy as the interpretation and application of scripture. Prophecy thus emerges as a central lens by which to understand the self-conceptions and ministries of these three women. Yet, the foremost studies of the lives and works of Argula von Grumbach, Katharina Schütz Zell and Marie Dentière do not employ prophecy as a spotlight by which to shed light upon their self-conceptions and ministries. Despite the fact that the secondary literature emphasizes Argula, Katharina and Marie's claims to the call to interpret scripture, these claims are connected primarily—if not solely—to the idea of the priesthood of believers. Thus, the crucial connections contemporary male protestants were making between prophecy and the interpretation of scripture are overlooked. And when prophecy is addressed, it is understood often primarily as apocalyptic, visionary, and/or foretelling. For example, in Paul Russell's study of lay pamphleteers, he spends a chapter on female pamphleteers that includes Argula von Grumbach, Ursula Weyda, and Katharina Schütz Zell, where his attention to prophecy emphasizes an apocalyptic understanding: “Convictions that the world was nearing its end are implicit in women's calling to speak out, to teach, preach and prophesy.”Footnote 67 More crucially, Russell fails to integrate the male protestant emphasis on identifying the prophet as an interpreter of Scripture with the women pamphleteers' central emphases upon the role of scripture in society and their boldness to interpret scripture publicly.Footnote 68
The foremost studies of Argula von Grumbach written by Peter Matheson and Silke Halbach also do not sufficiently attend to the prophetic aspects of Argula's writings and self-conception. Matheson provides general statements of the role of prophecy for Argula, but mostly concerning her apocalyptic context.Footnote 69 Silke Halbach briefly notes Argula's prophetic self-understanding, but Halbach fails to connect this to the larger protestant view of prophecy as interpretation of scripture.Footnote 70
The chief biographer of Katharina Schütz Zell, Elsie McKee, specifically argues against viewing Katharina as a prophet, insisting upon the central titles of “church mother” and the office of widow for Katharina's conceptions of her ministry.Footnote 71 Though McKee notes Katharina's frequent identification with Anna the New Testament prophetess, McKee depicts Anna as a “preacher” and an elderly widow, rather than as a prophet. Indeed, McKee argues that Katharina added the teaching from I Timothy 5:5 concerning the office of widows to her understanding of Anna, which in effect down-played Anna as a prophetess and, instead, presented her as a model for the preaching ministry of widows.Footnote 72 McKee writes, “It is important to remember that ‘mainline’ Protestants understood the prophets primarily as specially gifted preachers or proclaimers of the Gospel and not foretellers.” Immediately following McKee concludes, “Thus it is not helpful to give [Katharina] the title of ‘prophetess.’”Footnote 73 But this precisely misses the very point McKee herself makes that protestants understand the prophet as a gifted preacher of the gospel (i.e., scripture) and, instead, dismisses prophecy based upon its apocalyptic, predictive character. If, as many scholars have argued,Footnote 74 protestants were operating with the conception of “prophet” as an interpreter of scripture and Katharina highlighted her own gifts as an interpreter of scripture, then is there not a connection to be made between these? There is no disagreement that the identifications McKee highlights as central to Katharina's self-conception (i.e., “church mother” and office of widow) are important; however, the protestant emphasis on the “prophet” as interpreter of scripture was equally vital to her self-understanding and thereby opens the door to prophetic aspects of Katharina's ministry.
Finally, Mary McKinley's introduction to Marie Dentière's life and work also lacks any attention to a possible role of prophecy. Throughout her introduction, McKinley quotes key passages from Marie Dentière's primary source that make explicit references to prophecy and prophets; yet, in each instance McKinley does not attend to the prophetic aspects of her work.Footnote 75 Thomas Head mentions Marie's claim to prophetic authority, but characterizes prophecy as primarily charismatic.Footnote 76 Jane Dempsey Douglass focuses her examination upon Marie's use of scripture, but with no attention to the role of biblical prophecy.Footnote 77 More specifically, there is no recognition of a larger understanding among protestant male reformers of the prophet as the faithful interpreter of Scripture and the ways in which these women might have been appropriating this concept.
The crucial importance of prophecy in the works of Argula von Grumbach, Katharina Schütz Zell, and Marie Dentière is immediately evident from their extensive applications of Old Testament prophecy. Prophetic biblical texts, figures, and images were crucial to the portraits of their ministries. Indeed, Argula, Katharina and Marie employed biblical prophecy with strikingly similar objectives to those demonstrated by the male protestant leaders in their respective contexts. First, these women each aligned themselves with the call of the biblical prophet to speak only the words of God and not their own so that they authorized their words as given by God through scripture. Secondly, biblical prophetic texts provided the language these women employed to depict their vocations—thereby enabling Argula, Katharina, and Marie to locate their ministries within a larger biblical pattern of rebuke, comfort, and the call to obey God's Word. Furthermore, these women applied Old Testament prophecies to read contemporary events. Finally, Argula, Katharina and Marie deployed prophetic texts and language against their opponents in order to identify these opponents as false prophets and ultimately situate themselves among those who truthfully proclaim God's Word.
Argula von Grumbach, Katharina Schütz Zell, and Marie Dentière insisted that—much like the Old Testament prophet—they spoke the Word of God and not their own words. For example, Argula asserted in her letter to the University of Ingolstadt that she spoke the very words of God when she applied scripture directly to the situation at hand. She cautioned that no one should add anything to the Word of God, clinching her point with Isaiah and Jeremiah's calls to prophesy: “The word which I say to you, proclaim to them from my mouth.”Footnote 78 In her letter to the University of Ingolstadt, she concluded, “What I have written to you is no woman's chit-chat, but the Word of God.”Footnote 79 Likewise, in her letter to Duke Wilhelm she wrote, “With God's grace I can be accountable for what I have written, for it is not my word but God's.”Footnote 80 Her 1524 poem echoed this same sentiment, writing, “How earnestly God each one forbids / To tear his sacred Word to bits. / Add nothing on, nor take away.” By arguing that she proclaimed the Word of God alone, she could then identify her words with God's Word: “In Isaiah thirty it is written / Woe to you, who fail to note / The counsel of the mouth of God.”Footnote 81
Similar to Argula, Katharina insisted that the words she spoke were not her own but given to her by God. She wrote in her letter to the women of Kentzingen, “Therefore, dear Christian women, consider these words, which are not mine but are from the Spirit of God.”Footnote 82 That these words follow a long string of quotations from scripture was also a key facet of her claim. Katharina understood her work as a continual practice of interpretation and application of scripture so that she ultimately proclaimed a message given to her by God in scripture.Footnote 83 She appealed to the figure of Mary Magdalene, arguing that she, too, was charged by God to speak.Footnote 84 Hence, Katharina expressed in her letter to Schwenckfeld, “Then God opened my understanding to comprehend the Holy Scriptures . . . So I have not chosen by own ideas, but I have let the will of God be more pleasing to me than my own.”Footnote 85 Furthermore, she described how she had “exercised herself in the Holy Scriptures” for over forty-eight years and been taught by others, so that she now might make “the wine new,” thereby invoking her authority to apply scripture anew for her day.Footnote 86
Marie Dentière employed the language of biblical prophecy as a key technique of presenting her message as given of God, as well. Direct quotes from scripture and scriptural allusions saturated the main body of her epistle—so many citations and allusions that it would occupy far too much space to recount them all. Though citations from the Gospels were the most numerous, her language and tone derived from the Old Testament prophets. Indeed, rather than explicitly arguing that she spoke God's words, Marie simply proceeded to speak exactly like an Old Testament prophet:
For his enemies must be ground under his feet [see Ps 8:6], Footnote 87 so that the Ethiopians and kings of the earth adore him [see Is 49:7], and his enemies will prostrate themselves [see Ps 72:9] before his face and will lick the earth [see Mic 7:17].Footnote 88 [W]e did not wish to obey his voice, but we scorned [see Ps 52:3] and condemned his holy commandment, and even worse, we loved the lie more than the truth [see Rom 1:25].Footnote 89
Marie's assertion that “we did not wish to obey his voice” echoed the language and events of Jeremiah 42 and 43. In Jeremiah 42:6, the people promised that they would “obey the voice of the Lord,” but when Jeremiah proclaimed the word God had given him, the people responded (Jer 43:2), “You are telling a lie. The Lord God did not send you to say [this].” In this manner, Marie interpreted the events of her own day as paralleling Old Testament prophecies. Likewise, she wrote, “Surely what Isaiah the prophet said has come to be. They have turned back on their path, each one to his own avarice.”Footnote 90 In sum, these three early-modern women employed biblical prophecy to authorize the performance and content of their public proclamations.
Secondly, Argula von Grumbach, Katharina Schütz Zell, and Marie Dentière employed Old Testament prophetic language and texts to situate their ministries within a biblical pattern. For example, Argula used Old Testament prophecy to locate herself in the biblical pattern of rebuke and the call to repentance. In her letter to the University of Ingolstadt, she cited passages from Hosea, Isaiah and Ezekiel to pronounce woes upon her opponents.Footnote 91 After a series of reprimands, she closed the letter with a classic call to repentance, citing a line from Joel 2: “Turn again, return to the Lord, for he is kind and merciful.”Footnote 92 Furthermore, in her letter to Duke Wilhelm, she reminded him—as witnessed in the Old Testament prophets—that those who abide by God's Word prosper, while those who scorn God's Word shall be punished.Footnote 93 She quoted passages from Isaiah and Jeremiah to warn the Council of Ingolstadt to hear and follow God's Word.Footnote 94 She closed her 1524 letter to the people of Regensburg with a call to repentance, “Come here, all who are thirsty; come to the water, you who have nothing, and buy without silver or gold or money” (Is 55:1).Footnote 95
Explicitly invoking the Old Testament prophetic pattern of rebuke and comfort, Katharina Schütz Zell also envisioned the work of comfort and rebuke as the central activities of the office of the priesthood of believers and her own ministerial office in particular.Footnote 96 For example, when comforting the women of Kentzingen, she employed several texts from Isaiah to encourage them to believe God's promise to be with them.Footnote 97 But equally, she applied prophetic texts to rebuke wrong teaching and errant leadership. Thus, she cast her defense of her husband and their marriage in prophetic hues, with woes and warnings against false teachers and exhortations to stand fast in the face of persecution:
What have the prophets said? Read David, the great prophet in the psalm he says, “The heathen have gnashed their teeth, and the people have contemplated worthless things. The kings of the earth stood with each other and the princes gathered together against their God and his Anointed.” Have our enemies not gathered together against God and his Word now? That Word in which Christ is proclaimed. Isaiah says the same thing in chapter 57: “How the righteous is here destroyed and no one remembers him! But peace will come to him.” And all the prophets tell how the righteous will be destroyed and the godless will have the upper hand until the judgment of God is held.Footnote 98
Indeed recognizing that she had boldly aligned herself with the words of the prophets in this 1524 defense, Katharina attempted to soften this impression when she wrote, “So may you also receive me in good part. I do not seek to be heard as if I were Elizabeth or John the Baptist or Nathan the prophet who pointed out his sin to David or as any of the prophets, but only as the donkey whom the false prophet Balaam heard.”Footnote 99
Katharina not only found in the exhortations of biblical prophets a parallel with a lay ministry of rebuke and comfort, but prophetic texts also strongly shaped her descriptions of Matthew Zell's ministry. In her sermon at her husband's grave, Katharina compared Matthew Zell's ministry to the work of Malachi: “His purpose was the same: to confess his faith to the people to the last . . . to comfort his people, and to warn them against false teaching and godless acts of all the abomination that might soon be promoted and set up again, as he had always warned against and greatly opposed the pope and all those who wanted to follow him.”Footnote 100 The actions of confessing the truth, comforting, and warning against false teachers were all duties belonging to the biblical prophet. Moreover, at the moment of his death, Katharina cried out to God that Matthew might be received among the number of God's prophets and apostles.Footnote 101 Katharina likened her husband to the prophet John the Baptist: “With great zeal, like a forerunner of Christ, [Zell] opposed and cast out of the way everything that set itself up against the Lord and Christ.”Footnote 102 Furthermore, Katharina perceived the fulfillment of biblical prophetic texts in Zell and his ministry (such as the prophecies of Ps 116:10, Ps 69:9, Is 57:1, Ps 69:20, Lam 3:1, Is 58:8, Is 53:9, Zech 13:7, and Ps 69:6).Footnote 103 Indeed, Katharina understood herself as a full partner with her husband in this ministry that she described in prophetic terms.Footnote 104 Lastly, Katharina identified her own call and ministry with the biblical prophets Jeremiah, David and Anna.Footnote 105
Marie Dentière similarly located her ministry and her language within a biblical prophetic pattern of rebuke, call to repentance and hope of restoration. At the start of the epistle proper, Marie moved from a rebuke of those who have been seduced by false teachings to a reminder that God is ready and willing to forgive. She concluded with an exhortation to put off false worship and embrace the true worship of God.Footnote 106 She repeated this pattern of rebuke, repentance and restoration with warnings against idolatry and false Eucharistic practices, and she called leaders and laypersons alike to a change of path.Footnote 107 Marie sealed her argument with a delineation of scripturally correct Eucharistic practices in an effort to restore her listeners back to true worship, much like Farel employed these same prophets to exhort the people to true worship.Footnote 108 In these various ways, Argula, Katharina and Marie each utilized Old Testament prophetic patterns of rebuke, repentance, comfort, and restoration to depict their own ministries.
Each of these three early-modern women also interpreted the circumstances of their day through the lens of Old Testament prophecy. In her letter of protest to the University of Ingolstadt, Argula connected the situation of Arsacius Seehofer's arrest to the prophecy Jeremiah received immediately after his prophetic call. By doing so, Argula portended judgment against the university and likened her call to Jeremiah's prophetic call.Footnote 109 She wrote, “I cry out with the prophet Jeremiah, ‘Earth, earth, earth! Hear the Word of the Lord!”Footnote 110 Since no man had come forward to speak against this injustice and because she understood herself as living in a time of corrupt male leadership, Argula envisioned her own calling—specifically as a woman—as a fulfillment of Is 3:12-13's prophecy: “My people, children are their oppressors, and women shall rule over them. O my people, your leaders mislead you and confuse the course of your paths. The Lord rises up to argue his case; he stands to judge the peoples.” Hence, Argula contended in her letter to the Council of Ingolstadt that even if she had not written, “a hundred women would emerge to write against them.”Footnote 111
Katharina Schütz Zell also frequently depicted parallels between events of her time and the prophecies of the Old Testament. She read biblical prophetic texts analogically; just as these texts were fulfilled in the experience of the church of the past, so also they continued to be true in the church's experience in every age. Hence, she proclaimed to the women of Kentzingen that Isaiah 54 described them perfectly, in which God promised to be their Husband, to not forsake them, and to restore their fortunes in due time. Indeed, wrote Katharina, they could embrace the promises set forth there as their own.Footnote 112 Furthermore, as already discussed, Katharina saw in her husband's life and ministry the fulfillment of several biblical prophetic texts.Footnote 113 In her devotional writings, as well, she appealed to the ongoing fulfillment of scripture—the prophecies in particular—in the experience of the faithful of every era and exhorted them to embrace God's providential care.Footnote 114
Likewise, Marie Dentière paralleled the circumstances of the biblical prophets with the situation in Geneva. She began her epistle with the reminder of Christ's prediction that the church would be persecuted for his name's sake and that false teachers would come.Footnote 115 She warned her readers concerning the biblical pattern that few were faithful, while the majority followed false prophets.Footnote 116 Furthermore, Marie saw the fulfillment of John's Apocalypse, as well as Micah, in the support contemporary political leaders gave to Roman Catholicism: “[T]he kings, princes, and lords who committed fornication with that great Roman lecheress full of abomination and filth were the minions and satellites to carry out the evil sentence, in order that she be adored and served like God, seating herself in the temple of God as if she were God. Just as the prophet Micah said, it happened.”Footnote 117 Finally, Marie Dentière paralleled the situation in Geneva with biblical Israel who blindly asked for a king:
Like idolaters, they asked for a king and they got one, to their great confusion and extreme servitude. They did not recognize the great blessing that God had given them in the good prophet Samuel; rejecting him, they rejected God and not the prophet. We likewise, being ungrateful, did not recognize the great grace that our God has given us by revealing to us his immutable Word, his holy Gospel.Footnote 118
In this way, Marie not only likened the situation of Geneva with the conditions the biblical prophets faced with wayward Israel, she also employed these biblical examples to highlight a contrast between true and false prophets.
IV. Identify False Prophets & Present Herself as a True Prophet
Lastly, Argula von Grumbach, Katharina Schütz Zell, and Marie Dentière deployed biblical prophetic texts to identify their opponents as false prophets and ultimately distinguish themselves as a true spokeswoman of God's Word. Argula often alluded to the false teachers—false shepherds and prophets—in her citations of Jeremiah 1 (the boiling pot) and Isaiah 3 (the rule of women).Footnote 119 She applied Ezekiel 33:32 against these false teachers: “The warning of the Lord was like a cheerful ditty against them until the punishment came, for they did not know that a prophet was among them.”Footnote 120 Argula thus used prophetic texts to describe the situation of her day and her own role within them. Furthermore, she warned Duke Wilhelm, “Beware of the false prophets,” and exhorted the Council of Ingolstadt through the words of Jeremiah, “Do not listen to the words of the preachers or the prophets who deceive you and tell you fantasies which spring from your own hearts, not from the mouth of God.”Footnote 121 Similarly, in her letter to her relative Adam von Thering, Argula applied Jeremiah's prophecies against false shepherds to Roman Catholic leaders broadly and teachers in Ingolstadt specifically, echoing once again Christ's warning to beware of false prophets.Footnote 122 In sum, Argula not only employed biblical prophetic texts to read the events of her time, she also modeled her own writing after their prophetic style. Like the Old Testament prophets, she insisted that she spoke God's words and not her own; she issued rebukes and calls for repentance; she distinguished between true and false prophets. In these ways, she cumulatively established the truth of her own call as a true prophet of God.
Katharina Schütz Zell similarly warned against false teachers and prophets. Her explanation of why she must write her 1524 defense of clerical marriage included an extensive account of true and false messengers. She contended that evil messengers had invaded the land, and the Lord reacted by sending authorized messengers to warn the people and lead them to the truth through the right interpretation of scripture.Footnote 123 She addressed specific false teachers in her day, such as Johannes Cochlaeus, Congrad Treger and Thomas Murner, and denounced them with the words of Christ: “Protect yourself from false prophets who enter here in sheep's clothing but inwardly are rapacious wolves” (Matt 7:15). Paramount to her attack was the contention that these false prophets taught views contrary to the teachings of scripture.Footnote 124 Katharina roundly defended clerical marriage based upon her interpretation and application of scripture. In this way, she not only accomplished her objective, but also presented herself as a true prophet of God. Furthermore, in her 1558 commentary on Psalm 51, she reminded her readers that the righteous did not drive God's prophets away, but instead listened to God's Word.Footnote 125 Indeed, aware that Luther and leaders in Strasbourg insisted upon a proper calling (as a way to attack the Anabaptists and Spiritualists), Katharina sought clearly to set forth her proper calling and proclamation of scripture, which was not any “new revelation” given by the Holy Spirit.Footnote 126 Katharina presented herself as one who was called, often likening her call to that of Jeremiah, the Psalmist, Anna, and Mary Magdalene.Footnote 127 In effect, Katharina portrayed herself as one rightly called to a ministry that centered upon the interpretation and application of scripture in contrast to the false prophets of her day.
In the midst of her exhortations to true worship, Marie Dentière also named her opponents as false prophets and ultimately presented herself as a true prophet of God. She commenced with a warning about these false prophets, specifically identifying the Roman Catholic teachings of clerical celibacy, abstinence from meat, and Eucharistic real presence as false. She reminded her hearers that God had sent many warnings about such false prophets.Footnote 128 Marie specifically identified not only the pope and Roman Catholic leaders as false prophets, but also the Anabaptists.Footnote 129 After spending the last half of her letter recounting the erroneous teachings and practices of these false prophets, she painted a portrait of the true prophet:
They must resist them with holy doctrine and condemn them powerfully with the Word of God, just as the holy apostle did, and not by swords, banishments, exiles, fire and insults. In imitation of that apostle, all preachers and ministers must follow the way of God's Word, caring for nothing else but that God be glorified and honored throughout the land and that their neighbor be won to our Lord. But Judas must be with Christ, donkeys must pass under the hearth, lazy bellies reign among the people so that the prophets can be recognized among the false prophets, truth distinguished from the lie, light from darkness.Footnote 130
Hence, according to Marie's depiction, the true prophet resisted and condemned false teachings by promoting true worship through faithful adherence to scripture for the protection of the people and the honor of God. This was, in fact, precisely the primary purposes of her epistle. After insisting upon the call of women to interpret scripture in defense of the truth, she proceeded to apply scripture to the circumstances of her time to rebuke false teachings, call to repentance, and exhort her audience to embrace the true worship of God.
V. Conclusion
Prophetic texts, figures, and portraits were central to Argula, Katharina, and Marie's descriptions of their ministries and self-conceptions. Furthermore, all three of these sixteenth-century women employed prophecy with very similar objectives. Prophetic texts and images enabled them to authorize their words as those given of God in and through scripture, rather than their own. Prophetic texts provided the language they employed to depict their ministries, and prophetic figures modeled the very duties to which each of these women were called—namely, to rebuke, to call to repentance, to comfort, and to interpret and apply scripture for their contemporary circumstances. Moreover, prophetic language equipped each of these women to identify her opponents as false prophets. Significantly, for all three of these women the contemporary practice of prophecy entailed interpreting and applying scripture for the church of her time. Indeed, the chief male protestant leaders in the regions in which these women resided emphasized these very same teachings and practices. Male leaders, such as Luther, Bucer, Zell and Farel, asserted a view of prophecy as the gift of interpreting and applying scripture. These same male leaders employed prophetic figures to depict their own ministries and applied Old Testament prophecy to interpret the events of their day. Furthermore, they also drew a distinction between true and false prophets in order to authorize their message and reject the messages of others. In sum, Argula von Grumbach, Katharina Schütz Zell, and Marie Dentière embraced and redeployed certain applications of prophecy already circulating in the teachings of contemporary male reformers.
At least two more issues should be addressed in the conclusion of this essay. First, did these women simply appropriate the views and practices of contemporary male reformers or did they add anything distinctive? Secondly, did these male protestant theologians actually intend to include women in their calls for “all” to interpret scripture? Several scholars have already explored aspects of this latter question in significant depth, so it suffices to review some of the findings here. In brief, reformers such as Luther, Bucer, Farel, and Calvin argued that women may interpret scripture, but should do so within the private sphere of their homes and under the instruction of their husbands. Any public ministry available to women was a matter of an exception to this general rule and was a consequence of a lack or failure on the part of male leadership.Footnote 131
For example, in the case of Argula, Matheson notes that certain protestant male thinkers, such as Osiander and Luther, supported Argula's protest against the University of Ingolstadt. Not surprisingly, the responses of the leadership in Ingolstadt to Argula's protest were overwhelmingly negative, including threats to do her bodily harm and the dismissal of her husband from his ducal post.Footnote 132 Though Luther favorably noted Argula's faith, courage and piety in several letters written in 1524, Matheson points out that Luther did not mention Argula at all in his own letter against the leading Ingolstadt theologians.Footnote 133 It appears that Luther and other protestant male leaders appreciated Argula's message, but viewed her public protest as only warranted by exceptional circumstances. Indeed, earlier in his 1522 The Misuse of the Mass, Luther wrote, “Paul instructs women to pray and prophesy with covered heads. Therefore order, discipline, and respect demand that women keep silent when men speak; but if no man were to preach, then it would be necessary for the women to preach.”Footnote 134 Similarly, in his 1523 Concerning the Ministry, Luther clarified that though the priesthood of all believers sets forth that all might preach, interpret scripture and judge doctrine, “It is one thing to exercise a right publicly and another to use it in a time of emergency. Publicly one may not exercise a right without consent of the whole body or of the church. In time of emergency each may use it as he deems best.”Footnote 135 In his later 1532 Infiltrating and Clandestine Preachers, Luther specified this even further when he wrote specifically concerning women's public speaking: “But in the congregations or churches where there is a ministry, women are to be silent and not preach.”Footnote 136 In sum, in times of emergency and when there is a failure on the part of men, women may speak publicly, but this was considered to be an exception to proper practices.Footnote 137
As for Katharina Schütz Zell and Marie Dentière, it appears that their husbands' overt support was a significant factor in their public ministries. Elsie McKee notes how Matthew Zell often called his wife his “assistant minister,” and on his deathbed he encouraged her to continue with her ministry despite the opposition he knew she would face.Footnote 138 The reactions to Katharina from other male leaders in Strasbourg reveal significant ambiguity. Wolfgang Capito wrote to a friend in Wittenberg prior to Katharina's arrival there: “If the planned trip comes off, you will clearly hear personally that our women are not all silent. But she is good and devout.”Footnote 139 Martin Bucer often responded to Katharina both with admiration for her piety and frustration concerning the influence she had on her husband.Footnote 140 Civil authorities censored Katharina's 1524 written defense of her marriage, but many of her devotional writings were fairly well received, while her polemical writings much less so.Footnote 141 Such evidence indicates an appreciation for Katharina's piety, but a strong uneasiness when she claimed certain forms of public authority.
Much less is known about Marie Dentière, but one can discern very similar patterns. The Geneva Council sought to confiscate all copies of her Very Useful Epistle and censored its publication. Her husband Antoine Froment defended her letter and pled with the Geneva Council to release the confiscated copies.Footnote 142 One sees similar reactions of male reformers to Marie as toward Katharina. Farel, for example, wrote several times to Calvin criticizing Marie's influence on her husband, and it appears Calvin shared Farel's generally negative estimation.Footnote 143
Argula, Katharina and Marie, of course, were well aware of these and other obstacles to their practices of public ministry. Indeed, we see evidence of this in their writings from the obvious need to defend their right to speak publicly to promoting certain definitions of “prophecy” over others. Indeed, there existed other current definitions of prophecy circulating that specifically sought to restrain women's participation. These women each expressly rejected the attempt to define prophecy separately for women as the passive activity of hearing God's Word, as distinct from the active act of interpreting purportedly reserved for men.Footnote 144 Johannes of Lanzhut raised precisely this matter when he wrote against Argula, “It's not a woman's place to strut / With the words of God, or lecture men / But to listen like the Magdalene.”Footnote 145 To this, Argula directly replied in her poem, “To hear His word is the very best choice. / Come, speak to me, my Lord and God, / My only desire is to hear your word.”Footnote 146 As Argula proceeded, she made a double-edged argument: first, that she was called to hear God's word (not man's), and second, that such “hearing” then did not include listening to falsehood.Footnote 147 Hence, the bulk of her poem argued that women should hear God in God's Word, and they were not exempt from God's gifts, God's Spirit, and specifically the call to read and interpret scripture.Footnote 148 Marie Dentière directly attacked this same prohibition against women publicly interpreting scripture when she condemned the teaching that “it is too bold for women to write to one another about matters of Scripture.”Footnote 149 Addressing the applications of the biblical texts of I Corinthians 14:34 and I Timothy 2:11–12 to argue for women's silence, she exclaimed, “I cannot be silent.”Footnote 150 Katharina Schütz Zell, as well, quite explicitly confronted these teachings that women should simply hear, rather than interpret, scripture:
I have exercised myself in the Holy Scriptures and godly matters for more than forty-eight years now and never abandoned the grace of God; I have heard the old teachers and let them be my counselors and made the wine new since I was ten years old. I never got bogged down hearing, learning, and following until the day of the death of my dear and good husband. I could now teach others and with the elderly Anna prophesy about Christ to those who are waiting for redemption and praise the Lord. But considering that I must appropriately be submissive under the man's office, according to the teaching of Saint Paul, I myself seek to hear others and to be exhorted as far as they speak the truth! But where that is not so, then I would tell you and not keep silent, but speak, point out, and answer your wrong preaching and insulting words about the innocent.Footnote 151
Katharina acknowledged the necessities of being taught by others. Like Marie and Argula, however, she contended that such a passive stance ended in the face of falsehood and injustice. She insisted that her years of learning and knowledge in scripture endowed her with the authority to teach others and prophesy.Footnote 152 Indeed in this insistence, these women were simply applying for themselves prior teachings of the leading male reformers in their regions that no one should remain silent in the face of falsehood. In sum, these early protestant women embraced and inhabited the definition of prophecy as the interpretation of scripture, even as they rejected certain other definitions in circulation.
Lastly, these women did not simply appropriate the practices of contemporary male reformers, but also recreated and challenged extant practices concerning the prophet as interpreter of scripture.Footnote 153 Some of these indications have already been named. For example, as argued above, Argula, Katharina, and Marie each rejected the narrow application of prophecy to women as only “hearing,” which continued to deny female agency and emphasize her passivity. Furthermore, one can discern a more pronounced emphasis in presenting herself as speaking God's word (and not her own). For the men, this was primarily a matter of justifying the content of their teaching as true. For the women, however, prophecy continued to serve (as it had for many centuries prior) as not only the authorization of the content of the message but also the authorization of the person and her vocation to public ministry. This meant, in very practical terms, that these women spent more time on these matters in their proclamations (than did the men).
Furthermore, evidence suggests that these women sought to press against the label of “exceptionalism” assigned to women who successfully speak publicly in order to mitigate any view that such activities were available to just any woman. On the one hand, these three women knew how to “play by the rules” and make statements that helped them to appear that they were operating within proper constraints, such as speaking out only if a man has failed to do so (Argula), acknowledging her need to be taught by others (Katharina), or presenting herself as only teaching women (Marie).Footnote 154 Yet, these women saw very clearly the incredible potential in the early protestant teachings of the priesthood of all believers, in which the legitimacy of women's public contributions might no longer depend on supernatural, visionary capacities.Footnote 155 One place that this appears consistently in their writings is their common appeal to the ministry and witness of biblical women. Many of the prophetic features already outlined, such as courage to rebuke wrong, the charge to speak a word given by God, and the call to give public witness to the truth, were highlighted in Argula, Katharina and Marie's appeals to these women in scripture. For example, Argula and Katharina invoked the example of Judith's courage to rebuke the rulers of her day.Footnote 156 Katharina asked for the same grace God gave Esther to protect God's people in her own efforts to protect Christians in Strasbourg from falsehood.Footnote 157 Moreover, Katharina and Marie likened their own call to preach God's word to Christ's command to Mary Magdalene to proclaim his resurrection.Footnote 158 Argula, Katharina, and Marie also appealed to female biblical prophets, such as Deborah, Elizabeth the mother of John the Baptist, and Anna.Footnote 159 Finally, for Marie, the Samaritan woman modeled the call to be a public witness of God's truth in order to exhort the people to purity of worship.Footnote 160
Another distinctive contribution may be found in the shared tropes these three women employed to describe their prophetic ministries. Two are most evident: the contrast between wisdom and folly and the parable of the talent. In her initial protest of Seehofer's arrest, Argula provided an extended contrast between God's wisdom and the wisdom of the world—citing verses such as “You have hidden these things from the wise and revealed them to little ones” (Lk 10:21); “Your faith shall not be in human wisdom” (I Cor 2:5); and “all the wisdom of the world is folly to God” (I Cor 3:19).Footnote 161 She acknowledged that her male relative would view her actions as those of a foolish woman: “Perhaps you thought it unbecoming of me as a foolish woman, which is, of course, exactly how I see myself. However, the wisdom needed to confess God does not derive from human reason, but is to be seen as a gift of God.” For, Argula continued, “the wisdom of the world cannot comprehend God's Spirit.”Footnote 162 Similarly, Katharina began her defense of marriage with a singular, significant biblical quotation: “What is weak before the world, that God has chosen so that he might put to shame what is strong” (I Cor 1:27).Footnote 163 In her letter to Schwenckfeld, she reminded him and the rest of Strasbourg that God often used “those whom we count as the least.”Footnote 164 Similarly, Marie warned in her defense of true worship that the “wisdom of men” led to idolatry.Footnote 165
Finally, these women each applied the parable of the talent to her prophetic ministry. Specifically, they identified the pound/talent with the gift of interpreting scripture. Argula von Grumbach wrote of the joy of interpreting God's Word, “Ah, but what a joy it is when the Spirit of God teaches us and gives us understanding, flitting from one text to the next—God be praised—so that I came to see the true, genuine light shining out. I don't intend to bury my talent, if the Lord gives me grace.”Footnote 166 Katharina referred to the parable of the talent several times in her letter to Caspar Schwenckfeld. Indeed, she opened the letter with a reference to the parable as a way to express her humility and good regard for Schwenckfeld by wishing that more talents be added to his ten, while she might gain three for the one she undeniably has been given.Footnote 167 In doing so, she accentuated the fact that God had indeed given her a gift that she must practice—a gift that she later identified as the call to interpret scripture.Footnote 168 Marie Dentière utilized this parable of the talent, as well, to defend women's public voice and, specifically, the call for women to interpret Scripture. She explained the main purpose of her epistle to Marguerite of Navarre as the following: “For what God has given you and revealed to us women, no more than men should we hide it and bury it in the earth . . . For until now, Scripture has been so hidden from them. No one dared to say a word about it, and it seemed that women should not read or hear anything in the Holy Scriptures. That is the main reason, my Lady, that has moved me to write to you, hoping in God that henceforth women will not be so scorned as in the past.”Footnote 169 Marie concluded her letter with the assertion that God had given grace to good women and revealed scripture to them. Hence, it would be utter foolishness for them to hide this talent given by God.Footnote 170 In sum, while women appropriated many aspects of the male protestant teachings of the priesthood of all believers and the view of prophecy as interpretation of scripture, they also used such teachings to challenge the practices of their day, added their own distinctive images and understandings, and sought to inhabit their full potential.
