The Religious Reformations of the Sixteenth Century 269gun in the years after the Black Death, but in others it
served primarily to increase the domain revenues of the
crown. In Denmark, for example, 40 percent of the
arable land was under direct royal control by 1620, pri-
marily because the crown retained church lands confis-
cated during the Reformation.
The reformers also sought to change the status of
European women. Beginning with Luther and Zwingli,
they rejected the ideal of clerical celibacy and declared
that a Christian marriage was the ideal basis for a godly
life. They specifically attacked medieval writings that
either condemned women as temptresses or extolled
virginity as the highest of female callings, and drew at-
tractive and sentimental portraits of the virtuous wife. A
chief virtue of that ideal woman was her willingness to
submit to male authority, but the attachment of the re-
formers to traditional social hierarchies should not be
misinterpreted. The companionate marriage in which
wife and husband offered each other mutual support
was the Reformation ideal (see document 14.6). If
women were subordinate it was, as Calvin said, because
women “by the very order of nature are bound to obey.”
To him, other reformers, and Catholic theologians, the
traditionally ordered family was both part and symbol
of a divinely established hierarchy. To disrupt that hier-
archy risked chaos.
The Reformation endorsement of women was quali-
fied, but it increased the status of wife and mother and
placed new demands upon men, who were encouraged
to treat their wives with consideration. As early as the
1520s, some German towns permitted women to di-
vorce husbands who were guilty of gross abuse. The re-
formers also encouraged female literacy, at least in the
vernacular, because they wanted women to have access
to the Scriptures. The impact of these prescriptions on
the lives of real women may be questioned. On the neg-
ative side, the Protestant emphasis on marriage nar-
rowed a woman’s career choices to one. Catholic
Europe continued to offer productive lives to women
who chose not to marry, but Protestant women could
rarely escape the dominance of men. If they did, it was
through widowhood or divorce, and Protestant societies
offered no institutional support for the unmarried. St.
Teresa de Avila, Angelique Arnauld, Madame Acarie,DOCUMENT 14.6
A Protestant View of Marriage
The reformer of Strasbourg, Martin Bucer (1491–1551), was more
generous than most in his attitude toward women. Here, he argues that
under certain circumstances a woman may leave her adulterous or abu-
sive spouse and be free to remarry.
For the Holy Spirit says that there is neither male nor fe-
male in Christ. In all things that pertain to salvation one
should have as much regard for woman as for man. For
though she is bound to keep her place, to put herself un-
der the authority of her husband, just as the church does
in relation to Christ, yet her subjection does not cancel
the right of an honest woman, in accordance with the
laws of God, to have recourse to and demand, by legiti-
mate means, deliverance from a husband who hates her.
For the Lord has certainly not made married woman sub-
vervient to have her polluted and tormented by the extor-
tions and injuries of her husband, but rather so that she
may receive discipline from him, as if from her master and
savior, like the church from Christ. A wife is not so sub-
ject to her husband that she is bound to suffer anything he
may impose upon her. Being free, she is joined to him in
holy marriage that she may be loved, nourished, and
maintained by him, as if she were his own flesh, just as the
church is maintained by Christ.... Again, though a wife
may be something less than her husband and subject to
him, in order that they be rightly joined, the Holy Spirit
has declared, through its apostle, that man and woman are
equal before God in things pertaining to the alliance and
mutual confederation of marriage. This is the meaning of
the apostle’s saying that a wife has power over the body of
her husband, just as a husband has power over the body of
his wife (1 Corinthians 7).... Hence, if wives feel that
their association and cohabitation with their husbands is
injurious to salvation as well of one as of the other, owing
to the hardening and hatred on the part of their husbands,
let them have recourse to the civil authority, which is en-
joined by the Lord to help the afflicted.
Bucer, Martin. “De Regno Christi,” book 2, chap. 34. In Julia O’Faolain
and Lauro Martines, Not in God’s Image: Women in History from the
Greeks to the Victorians,pp. 200–201. New York: HarperCollins, 1973.