lived with his plain, pious, faithful, and benevolent wife, till her death in 1557. He was seen at
times rocking the cradle while reading a book.^607
Calvin was likewise free from the obligation of vows, but the severest and most abstemious
among the Reformers. He married Idelette de Buren, the widow of an Anabaptist minister of Holland,
whom he had converted to the Paedobaptist faith; he lived with her for nearly nine years, had three
children who died in infancy, and remained a widower after her death. The only kind of female
beauty which impressed him was, as he said, gentleness, purity, modesty, patience, and devotion
to the wants of her husband; and these qualities he esteemed in his wife.^608
Zwingli unfortunately broke his vow at Einsiedeln, while still a priest, and in receipt of a
pension from the Pope. He afterwards married a worthy patrician widow with three children, Anna
Reinhard von Knonau, who bore him two sons and two daughters, and lived to lament his tragic
death on the field of battle, finding, like him, her only comfort in the Lord Jesus and the word of
God.^609
Ludwig Cellarius (Keller), Oecolampadius (the Reformer of Basel), Wolfgang Capito (the
Reformer of Strassburg), and his more distinguished friend Martin Bucer (a widower who was
always ready for union) were successively married to Wilibrandis Rosenblatt, the daughter of a
Knight and colonel aid-de-camp of the Emperor Maximilian I. She accompanied Bucer to Cambridge
in England, and after his death returned to Basel, the survivor of four husbands! She died Nov. 1,
1564.^610 She must have had a remarkable attraction for Reformers. Oecolampadius thought her
almost too young for his age of forty-five, but found her a "good Christian "and "free from youthful
frivolity." She bore him three children,—Eusebius, Alitheia, and Irene.^611 It was on the occasion
of his marriage that Erasmus wrote to a friend (March 21, 1528): "Oecolampadius has lately married.
His bride is not a bad-looking girl" [she was a widow]. "I suppose he wants to mortify his flesh.
Some speak of the Lutheran cause as a tragedy, but to me it appears rather as a comedy, for it always
ends in a wedding."^612
Archbishop Cranmer appears in an unfavorable light. His first wife, "Black Joan," died in
childbed before his ordination. Early in 1532, before he was raised to the primacy of Canterbury
by Henry VIII. (August, 1532), he married a niece of the Lutheran preacher Osiander of Nürnberg,
and concealed the fact, the disclosure of which would have prevented his elevation. The papal bulls
of confirmation were dated February and March, 1533, and his consecration took place March 30,
- The next year he privately summoned his wife to England; but sent her away in 1539, when
he found it necessary to execute the bloody articles of Henry VIII., which included the prohibition
(^607) C. Schmidt, Philipp Melanchthon, pp. 47 sqq., 617, 710 sqq.
(^608) Stähelin, Johannes Calvin, vol. I. 272 sqq.
(^609) R. Christoffel, Huldreich Zwingli, pp. 336-339, 413. The slanderous exaggerations of Janssen have been refuted by Ebrard, Usteri,
and Schweizer.
(^610) Hagenbach (Oekolampad, p. 108, note) gives this date, and refers to the Reformations-Almanach, 1821.
(^611) Herzog, Leben Joh. Oekolampadius, vol. II. 70 sqq.; Hagenbach, Joh. Oekolampad und Oswald Myconius, p. 107. Hagenbach says
that the names of his children were the pillars of his home: godliness, truth, and peace.
(^612) In a letter to Adrianus Arivulus: "Nuper Oecolampadius duxit uxorem, puellam non inelegantem. Vult opinor affligere carnem.
Quidam appellant Lutheranam tragaediam, mihi videtur esse comaedia. Semper enim in nuptias exeunt tumultus." He afterwards apologized
to Oecolampadius, and disclaimed any intention to satirize him. See his letter to Oecolampadius in Drummond’s Erasmus, II. 319.
Archbishop Spalding (l.c. I. 176) thus repeats the joke: "The gospel light seems to have first beamed upon Oecolampadius from the eye
of a beautiful young lady, whom, in violation of his solemn vows plighted to Heaven, he espoused, probably, as Erasmus wittily remarked,
to mortify himself." He says nothing of the apology of Erasmus to his friend and associate.