Merry Wiesner-Hanks is a formidable expert on early modern women’s and gender history in Europe and beyond, and her publications have become must-read studies in History courses concerned with the subjects. She steered historians to view gender as an essential analytical category and revealed women’s striking realities – their limitations but also their often-unrecognized possibilities. In Women and the Reformations. A Global History, Wiesner-Hanks pursues a more audacious course: to demonstrate that women were not only important but in fact central to the transformations of religious life in Europe and beyond. Rather than relegating women to the periphery of historical action, Wiesner-Hanks places them at the heart of the story. Her timeline extends from the mid-fifteenth to the late eighteenth centuries, with concluding remarks taking us to today. The 216 individuals discussed include Protestants and Catholics within and outside Europe. Notably, hers is not a triumphant history of women but one that is attentive to the mixed legacy they left behind.
Divided into six chapters (Monarchs, Mothers, Migrants, Martyrs, Mystics, and Missionaries) that are bracketed by a preface and epilogue, the book is written in a jargon-free style, which is a trademark of Wiesner-Hanks’ works. Her study is aimed at college-level students, whom she engages as participants in a discourse. Each chapter is built similarly: a general historical contextualization of the subject is followed by a specific discussion of attitudes, positions, and realities pertaining to women in the category (e.g., monarchs). At the core of each chapter are vivid examples of women illuminating these realities. Frequently, Wiesner-Hanks lets these women speak for themselves by including extensive quotations of their work. By offering multiple layers and perspectives of the subject, the author situates women and their stories in their various contexts.
In the chapter on “Monarchs,” Wiesner-Hanks shows women – either at the royal level or just below – as crucial decision-makers and important leaders. On the issue of religious toleration, for example, Isabella Jagiellon (1519–1559), queen of Hungary and regent for her son, John Sigismund, was the first European ruler to pass a law granting religious toleration. Women in prominent positions also played key roles in networks and the multiple centers, through which the Reformations developed: “women in ruling families who shaped religion could be found everywhere” (40).
In “Mothers,” the author engages with the centrality of marriage in the Protestant Reformation and with the leaders (“mothers”) of religious communities. She points out that reformers’ wives were central to turning clerical marriage into a model for everyone to follow. Her discussion includes prominent “church mothers” from Argula von Grumbach and Marie Dentière to Katharina Zell, who used the more open atmosphere of the early Reformation to make their views known. Convent mothers, too, spoke out and frequently became more committed opponents to Protestantism than their male brothers. These religious women also found new ways to continue their religious and communal existence, such as sharing the convent space with Protestant women.
The section on “Migrants” offers snapshots of what such a restless, traveling life was like. The author presents a broad spectrum of reactions to this experience as well as women’s actions in the face of it. Wiesner-Hanks notes that “women rulers as a group were neither more nor less tolerant of religious difference than men rulers” (156). The chapter offers a stark picture of the challenges and repressions those women faced who took divergent rather than compliant action. To Wiesner-Hanks, the fact that women were banished or obliterated for their views demonstrates that they were taken seriously by their male contemporaries – indeed, more so than today. While migration was wrenching, it also provided opportunities for women. For example, the persecution of Jews and Muslims moved religious practices into the home, where women gradually changed practices.
Martyrdom, the other reaction to religious oppression, is the topic of chapter 4, which also encompasses witches. Their inclusion in this section is no doubt due to the overall structure of the book (and the chapter titles’ alliteration!), but it does not work entirely. As the author herself points out, typically witches were victims rather than martyrs (162). As religious nonconformist women stood firm, there was agreement among observers, commentators, and the women themselves that, in their martyrdom, they showed a “masculine” strength as they faced male authorities and eventually death.
Women mystics (chapter 5) had always been suspicious, and this did not change during the early modern age of heightened mysticism. Wiesner-Hanks discusses prominent and lesser-known mystics from Europe and the New World and contends that their statements were often in line with their religious denominations. Because they were women, however, their messages tended to be perceived as a threat.
Crucial to the spread of Christianity, women “Missionaries” (chapter 6) helped shape what Christianity looked like. “They were not passive recipients of what male missionaries taught, but actively created new religious meanings for Christian symbols, practices, and rituals.” (298).
Wiesner-Hanks not only highlights women ahead of their time – and of our views of them – but also draws attention to those who fell in line with male precepts. Nor does she gloss over the fact that the women often replicated the ideas and realities of conquest and power differences. More importantly, however, Wiesner-Hanks makes a compelling argument that women in all their variety belong at the center of the Reformation and the worldwide spread of Christianity. In their many roles – whether harsh or tolerant ruler, self-assured church or convent mother, staunch member of religious orders, resourceful migrant, committed martyr, perceiving mystic, or dedicated missionary – they shaped religious ideas and practices and the realities within which these could exist. Even though their treatment is at times hard to swallow, Wiesner-Hanks does not paint them as victims but as women who were intent on turning challenges into opportunities.
