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Peter Matheson

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6 Argula von Grumbach (c.1490–c.1564)

Peter Matheson

Lay theology was different. Even before the Reformation began, movements such as the Devotio Moderna were suggesting the need for a new style of theology: a synthesis of personal discipleship, pastoral care, and the teaching office. Humanists challenged the monopoly of theology by the universities and the religious orders, championed the via rhetorica, a literary rather than a philosophical approach, and set Scripture and the early church at the center of the scene. Both provoked “territorial” disputes by impinging on the turf of the traditional exponents of theology. The Reformation went still further in redrawing the boundaries for theology: its primary themes, its criteria, its methods, its intended audience, to some extent at least, its rationale. We are coming to see today that the study of theology has to deal not only with shifts in its content but in its discourse and its interactivity.

As the reforming movement gathered momentum, lay people had already begun to raise the cui bono question: Whom does the current pattern and “output” of theological studies benefit? Is it training the intelligent and committed pastors which civic and rural communities alike require? Is it tackling the issues which ordinary people have to resolve in their day-to-day living: work, communal bonding, family life, the great life crises of illness, marriage, and death, the joys and perplexities of parenthood, relations with their neighbors?

When such issues were adequately addressed, most lay people tended to be content to leave theological matters to the clergy, who had tradition on their side, time to write, access to libraries, a monastic or university training behind them. There is little evidence of egalitarianism. Popular as it was, the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers did not mean for most lay Protestants that Jack was as good as his master. They wanted a biblical theology based on divine revelation, not on arbitrary human norms, and so they recognized the need for specialist scholars in the biblical languages. In fact the new Protestant academies and faculties were soon to exercise a magisterium, a teaching office, not too dissimilar from that of the episcopate in the old church.

Yet civic disputations and princely plans made it clear that the new breed of theologians was answerable not only to God and Scripture but to the whole people of God. People had always thought their own thoughts about sermons and preachers.

The Reformation Theologians : An Introduction to Theology in the Early Modern Period, edited by Carter Lindberg, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2001. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bayloru/detail.action?docID=5043096. Created from bayloru on 2020-03-16 11:17:11.

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A significant minority now had vernacular copies of Scripture to check on the line taken. The exciting new medium of the pamphlet offered lay people a window into theological debate, and for an adventurous few a platform to explore issues, especially of a more contextual nature, on which they believed they were the experts.

The absolute authority of the school theologian – always more myth than reality in any case – was being replaced, or at least complemented, by a meritocratic and accountable patriarchalism. Where, however, did this leave women? On what, if any- thing, were they the experts? Where did it leave those with no access to the higher schools of learning or the higher reaches of power? The humanists and reformers may have used the literary fiction of the learned peasant, such as Karsthans, to refute the elitism of the old theology, but what would happen if women and “peasants” left the field of virtual reality and actually moved into the public square?

Argula von Grumbach is probably the most sensational example of such an inter- vention. Hitherto totally quite unknown, she was propelled into prominence in the autumn of 1523 by a most unlikely constellation of events. The University of Ingolstadt organized a show trial against a young student, Arsacius Seehofer. On pain of death, he was forced to deny his new evangelical beliefs. Perplexed by the failure of any men to speak out against this, and outraged by the spectacle of Arsacius swearing by the gospel to deny that same gospel, she issued an extraordinary challenge. She would engage in public debate about the legitimacy of such coercive action with the Ingolstadt Faculty, which included the redoubtable Dr. Eck.1 She happened to be a member of the prominent von Stauff family, which had never shunned a confrontation. She was well educated and well connected. She happened also to have links with the growing evangelical movement in Würzburg and Nuremberg, and had been in correspondence with the Wittenberg theologians.2

Nevertheless, this intervention by a woman, a mother of four, was totally unpre- cedented. It raised quite new questions about the role of theology and about the nature of leadership in a reformed church. She suggested that the debate be con- ducted in German and that Holy Scripture be the sole norm by which the debate would be judged. She envisaged a secular body as the judges: the princes of Bavaria and the “whole community.”

She had been surprised into speech. The logic of events then pushed her into ever more radical measures. Her letter, unsurprisingly, was not answered or even ac- knowledged. Repressive measures lumbered into action. In the context of the times, however, it was no longer possible to smother her submission by silence or suppres- sion. Her biblically grounded challenge began to circulate, and then, with the assistance of friends in Nuremberg, was printed with a fiery preface which hailed her intervention as the birth sign of a new age, and put her in the apostolic succession of other notable women in biblical and patristic times. She had become a “star” for the nativity of the Bavarian reform movement. Within a year another fourteen editions of the original letter were published; and seven more pamphlets flowed from her pen. It has been estimated that some 29,000 copies of her writings circu- lated in the crucial years, 1523– 4. Clearly this rapturous reception indicates that the legitimacy of her intervention was not only recognized, but seen as betokening a new style of theologizing. She was feted as the real expert in Scripture, and in much else besides. Ironically this point was made by the dramatic woodcut on three of the

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editions of her letter to the university which portrays her in her skirts, bible in hand, taking on the bemused Ingolstadt theologians, whose tomes litter the ground. As a symbolic glove indicates, a challenge about the very nature of theology had been thrown down. Judith and Holofernes lived again!3

Luther and other leaders of reform were quick to appreciate her courage and confessional importance, but did not think of her as a theologian.4 Others ranked her in the prophetic tradition of Deborah and Hannah, the women around Jesus, the daughters of Philip.5 Yet until very recent times she has been absent from the historiography of the Reformation. With the notable exception of Silke Halbach’s recent monograph, the question of her possible contribution to the overall theological achievement of the Reformation has not even been raised.

It will be important, in redressing this balance, not to go to the other extreme. Her public theological engagement through the medium of print, though not her advocacy of the Reformation, ceased in 1524. Unlike Katharina Schütz Zell, her contribution to Reformation theology was an episodic one.

It was also limited in its scope. As a lay theologian she had a good general education, and a sharp, analytical mind. She had a formidable understanding of Scripture based on her own passionate and intelligent engagement with it. She could deploy some knowledge of the Reformers’ writings, particularly evident in her under- standing of the Word of God and in her ecclesiology. It is conceivable that as a young woman in the Munich court she met Johann Staupitz. But she was unschooled in mystical or patristic theology, apart from the incidental knowledge she would have picked up from Jerome’s prefaces to the biblical books in the Koberger edition of the Bible, probably the one she possessed. She had no training in philosophy and no knowledge of the biblical languages. She was restricted to the traditional literary forms available to women: the letter and the poem. She wrote occasional pieces, responses to particular events or crises. The entire corpus of her work, quantitatively, would fit within the covers of one of Luther’s larger writings. Beset by a sea of problems after 1524, she lacked the facilities, the leisure, and the opportunity to develop her theological interests in any systematic way. She came up against a cultural brick wall. The window of opportunity for her to engage in theology had never been very open, and it soon slammed shut. Part of the reason why her writing terminated when it did may well be that she had said all she had to say. It does her no service to ignore this.

This said, her writings are remarkable. We have to rub our eyes with utter aston- ishment at her achievement in developing a rounded and consistent theology, unmistakably hers, bricks out of veritable straw. Surprised into speech, she produced a language all her own, a new hermeneutic of Scripture, a passionate vision of a new church and a just society, a new style of leadership.6 Her writings offer us a precious insight into how articulate lay people, in this case an impoverished member of the nobility, sought to read Scripture in the light of their times, and to exegete their times in the light of Scripture. She speaks as a woman. Her approach to Scripture, her theological priorities and perspectives, and her passionate ethical engagement reflect, inter alia, her experience as a daughter, as a mother of four children, as a wife, as a woman very much in charge of her own household. She reflects from a woman’s standpoint on prating preachers, boorish princes, oppressive husbands.

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Her work poses, therefore, some fascinating questions: How did she find her way about Scripture? What was its center for her? Did she see herself as having a leadership role? What was her understanding of righteousness, of sin, of the church? What was her vision of a Christian society? To what extent did she share the anticlericalism and the apocalyptic mind-set of the day? How does her writing “mirror” her courageous and in many ways impossibly difficult life?

There are some larger questions, too: How does her work complement that of the male reformers? To put it slightly differently: how does incorporating her work within the total picture change our view of their perspectives, discourse, and achievements? Together with the writings of Katharina Schütz Zell and others, does she to some extent anticipate the views of Marie de Dentière, and even of modern feminist theologians?7 What is the lasting significance of her theology?

Argula von Grumbach saw herself as a biblical theologian. Indeed, for her, there was no other kind of theology. Philosophy and canon law, Aristotle and the decretals, as she put it, were futile and hostile to the Word of God. Her writings are studded with biblical quotations. Some sections of her letters are virtual catenae of citations.

I have identified 130 quotations from the Hebrew Bible in her writings.8 She cites the Psalms 22 times, which is no surprise, given their devotional use. The prophetic books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel are prominent, but the Pentateuch hardly appears. Despite the strongly apocalyptic flavor of her work there is only one reference to Daniel, and none to Revelation. Of the 194 New Testament quotations no less than 62 come from her favorite Gospel, Matthew, with 31 from John, Luther’s Master Gospel, and 21 from Luke. Mark is little used. Not counting a few citations from Ephesians and the Pastorals, there are 42 from Paul and 7 from 1 Peter. The heart of her theology appears to beat in the Gospels and the prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible.

How did she operate, theologically? As a laywoman caught up by the recovery of Scripture, she apparently sat herself down and simply worked her way through the Testaments. “I have always wanted to find out the truth,” as she put it. She saw herself as “studying” Scripture systematically, allowing one text to interpret another, in classic Lutheran mode: “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.”9 She read in a context of prayer: “As I prayed God for more understanding, Scripture’s words came to me winging.”10

She had no commentaries to hand, but was guided by the German writings of Luther, Karlstadt, and others, having an extensive collection of their writings, ordered from a list provided by Spalatin in Wittenberg. The way in which she draws on different books of Scripture to illustrate particular points suggests that she had thoroughly interiorized the Bible.11 She had her favorite books, her canon within the canon, and commuted at ease between the prophetic and apostolic writings. Her exegesis, too, was a highly existential one. She continually related the biblical texts to the contemporary situation and her own personal position.

She does not see herself as a “scholar,”12 but her willingness to pit herself against the formidable Ingolstadt “scholars” suggests a robust confidence in her ability to “read Scripture straight,”13 to sustain a biblically based argument. This gave one, she believed, access to the mind and will of God. Christians are called to be the mouth

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for the mouth of God.14 This claim goes some way to explain her self-confidence in entering the theological arena.

Her hermeneutic of Scripture was one of affection, of affinity, of a perceived identity between the biblical witness and the situation of the lowly folk, including other women, she sees herself as representing. If she were to perish because of persecution, a hundred other women would appear in her place.15

It is impossible to overlook the elation that courses through her writings. She had been born into exceptional times. With the advent of the Reformation, “the word of God, that salvation which was to be prepared, is revealed.”16 True theology is a theology of the Word. Unlike human wisdom, with its prattle or babble, every word of God is true, as Deuteronomy 4:2 and Proverbs 30:6 tell us. It is sufficient in itself. It alone offers us access to God’s will. It is the only source of our salvation. We can neither add nor subtract anything from Scripture; as she puts it, we are forbidden to “tear it to bits.”17 She cites the Psalmist on the happiness that flows from following the discipline of the law of God in this way.18

In a transient world, the Word of God endures forever. This Lutheran theme recurs again and again.19 The Word is a fiery shield. If we stand by it we, too, will be “stood by,” unshakeable.20 Although she avoids allegory, the Word is not to be understood legalistically or literalistically. It is a fruitful, creative, life-giving force, like the rain from heaven, which, in the language of Isaiah, will never return empty.21

She seizes on this theme of life, of birth and rebirth, again and again. The whole healing and teaching mission of Jesus is summed up as the promise of life.22 Both in creation and in salvation God is revealed as the generous life-giver, in blatant contradistinction to the greedy papal institutions and canon law systems, which suck life from us.23

One of Argula’s favorite images is the fountain of life, the living waters of Jeremiah 2, the gratuitous well of Isaiah 55.24 John 1:3, characterizing God as the source of all life, is quoted in the context of God’s “Yes which excludes any No.” This genial paraphrasing of 2 Corinthians 1:17ff. expresses rather beautifully her sense of the overwhelmingly affirming and energizing nature of the Christian message. Jesus’ dialogue with the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4 epitomizes the way in which God meets our deepest “thirsts.”25 The whole of human life, from Adam and Eve’s first breath to the consummation of all things in Christ at the end of time, stands under God’s “Yes” to us. Here, as elsewhere, Matthean, Johannine, and Pauline themes are woven intricately together in her discourse. The scriptural image of light is, if anything, even more important than that of life. Her first pamphlet, which reached a remarkable 14 editions, begins with John 12:46: “I have come as light into the world.”26 She emphasizes both the inclusiveness of God’s light, which is not restricted to the clergy or the scholar, and its gratuity. Her little writing to Prince Johann is devoted to “walking in the light,” recognizing Christ as the true light. She emphasizes in this letter to a prince that it is to the humble that light comes; Scripture is God’s gift to the lowly.27 In all her writings, published and unpublished, she describes herself as demütig, humble. God’s light is for all people; yet it is hidden from “the world.”28 God has made foolish the wisdom of the world.29

The apocalyptic note is ever present in Argula’s writing, even in her reading of John: “He who holds me in contempt and rejects my word will find he has one who judges him.” Those who one would expect to see the light fail to do so, and vice

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versa.30 What appears to be “women’s chitchat” is in fact the word of God, for God has turned everything upside down.31 Those who have something to hide always shun the light – a reference to the anonymous author of the poem that besmirched her intelligence and reputation in 1524.32 Evildoers hate the light!33 Like the Pharisees, who exclude all who recognize Jesus from the synagogue, they want to excommunicate the young student Seehofer for his defense of the gospel.34

She reads the whole of Scripture as a deadly struggle between life and death, light and darkness. The struggle for life and light moves seamlessly into that for freedom from tyranny and arbitrariness.35 She underlines the conflictual dimensions of John 16.36 Threatened with death herself, she notes that Jesus had faced the same violence. If, however, you settle theology with coercion, that would make the hangman the best theologian; it will, in any case be self-defeating.37

This concern for the freedom of the gospel provoked her to enter the public square. For when the Word of God is entrusted to us, we cannot keep it to ourselves. We have to speak out from the rooftops, irrespective of risk or whom we are addressing, lest we sin against the Holy Spirit.38 No chapter in Scripture is cited so often as Matthew 10. If we are ashamed to confess Christ, he will be ashamed of us.39 Responsible stewardship of a life-giving message is yoked to eschatological urgency. We have to expect opposition. A disciple is not above his master. The hate Luther and his followers are encountering is predictable for anyone acquainted with the Bible.40 The images of fire, of the hammer which shatters rock, convey some- thing of the searing, irresistible force of the Word, which the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel knew so well. Like fire, or a shattering hammer, it sweeps aside everything in its way, and will inevitably excite rage and persecution.

Thus the same Word which is a source of life and light and freedom, of living water, to those who espouse it, becomes a rod, a murder weapon, to those who forsake it, resist it. Argula quotes Hosea: God will pounce on them, kill them, hew them down.41 The context for such words is the contumely and threats of violence and death which the evangelicals, including her, had encountered for championing, as she saw it, the cause of Scripture.

God’s Word is not addressed to individuals only. “Land, land, hear the Word of God,” she cries out with Jeremiah.42 The confessional mode flows into the prophetic one. The Word of God should rule all aspects of life.43 It is deplorable, she tells her censorious uncle, that “I have yet to meet anyone, either in the clerical or the secular realm” who set aside time to study Scripture to ascertain God’s will for church and country.44 At times, Argula’s language becomes poignant as she paints the terrible corporate consequences for a land like Bavaria, when it resists the message of the gospel. Writing in the wake of the imperial city of Regensburg’s decision to proscribe Lutheran views, she warns that it will be stricken with plague after plague, as Pharoah and ancient Egypt were.45 The souls entrusted to the magistrates have been bought “with the costly rose-red blood of the Lord Jesus,” and cannot be abandoned for prudential reasons.46 As was the case with disobedient Israel, it will be the weak and the innocent who will bear the brunt of the suffering. Children will die at their mother’s breast.47 Murder and cannibalism will break out, family feuds and parricide.48 Fathers will eat their sons; sons their fathers. Mothers will cook their own children and offer them for a meal.49 For when God’s Word is

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resisted, all morality, order, and humanity will disappear. This apocalyptic language reflects the social reality of a Germany about to slide into the terrors of the Peasants’ War and to some extent her own grim reality, as many of her family and even her own husband turned against her. “But where the word of God is concerned neither Pope, Emperor nor Princes . . . have any jurisdiction.”50 Or husband, either, she might have added.51

She lays much of the blame for the catastrophe at the feet of the clergy, bishops, monks and nuns.52 As with so many of her contemporaries, anticlericalism was a strong feature of her thought. Her language lambasting clerical robbery of the poor, hypocritical chastity, false prophecies, and immunity from punishment is typical of the time.53 The incessant emphasis on their greed may seem at first sight rather moralistic, but this laywoman has a sharp eye for the way in which truth issues and power issues are inseparable. A proper exercise of the pastoral, teaching, and preaching ministry requires moral integrity. Approvingly, she quotes Paul about those who “peddle” the truth.54 Because of their bondage to materialism those who should lead have become false prophets, falling into the pit themselves and dragging others down with them.55 Her main concern is theological: They “hypocritically market God’s word like some cheap trinket.”56 “His sole command is that we preach and bring his holy word to speech.”57

But the clergy have neglected this primary mark of the church. To defend their interests they have become tyrannical and violent. They should be servants, but have put themselves above the law, even above God, being a burden to others, not treating them as they themselves would wish to be treated.58 Argula combines the prophetic critique of Isaiah and Jeremiah with the evangelists’ polemic against the Pharisees.59

God’s wrath is against those who resist the gospel, the stupid or lazy shepherds, the preachers who do not preach. God’s Word is the cornerstone of Zion, but it will become a stone of stumbling to those who abuse power, the sharp-tongued church leaders who spit out venom like snakes.60 We need not fear them. They can destroy the body, but we need only fear God, who can destroy soul and body in hell.61

God’s vengeance will put the “foaming rage” of the persecutors in the shade.62

This is a counter-cultural theology, aware of the scandal of the Word to the power and wisdom of this world. We are not called to follow tradition or the fickle winds of convention.63 “The Lord says: ‘I am the way the truth, and the life.’ John 14. He does not say: ‘I am what is customary.’ ”64 As a woman it was particularly scandalous for her to challenge the gatekeepers of theology and morality, but she had to rise above her natural inhibitions. “I speak as Paul did.”65 “I consider that God has presented us to be like the dregs of the earth, deserving death, a spectacular mirror (Schauspiegel ) to all the world.”66 The little writing to the Regensburg Council, the source of the last quotation, is the most apocalyptic in tone of all her works. The devil roams abroad, in the form of ravening wolves who imperil the souls of believers and invite divine judgment on the whole city.67 She draws on Matthew 24, with its references to Daniel, and warns of persecution and conflict ahead and the imminence of the coming of the Lord. But the Psalms, the prophets, the Gospels, especially John, are all read apocalyptically. All her writings breathe this mingled exhilaration and awe at the overturning of normal patterns of leadership in church and state as God’s Word runs free. The very stones cry out!68 Light against darkness, truth

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against lies, life against death. The lucrative masses for the dead remind her of the sacrifices to Baal. Jeremiah’s dramatic image of the burning-pot, flaring out at midnight, much favored in contemporary art, sums up the crisis-ridden scenario that clamors for immediate redemption.69

Argula von Grumbach’s theology of the Word vividly reflects her own experience as a layperson and a woman of powerlessness, of conflict, persecution, and violence; it reflects, too, her hatred of arbitrary coercion, hole-and-corner justice, the suppression of debate, all that she calls tyranny. By God’s grace, she will not hold her peace, “though it cost me my neck a thousand times.”70 God would revenge the sufferings of his servants. Christ, the Rock, will crush all his enemies.71 Human curses and condemnations will turn into God’s blessings.72

The godly will receive all they need to sustain them, if their trust in God is resolute. John 13’s emphasis on love and gentleness as the trademark of the Christian is impressively evident: “Let us fight chivalrously against the enemies of God. . . . We must not hit out with weapons, but love our neighbour. . . .” “It is a joy to me to be reviled for the sake of the holy gospel.”73 The confidence of the Psalmist has become existential reality for her.74

For Christ says: “Those who believe in me From judgement will be fully free And pass from death to life with me.” John’s Gospel, Chapters Three and Five, Describes all this, or so I find.75

The apocalyptic and anticlerical dimensions to her thought, therefore, are only the flip side to an overwhelmingly positive theology. This is seen in her ecclesiology. Her view of the church is an inclusive one, drawing heavily on Jeremiah, Joel, the Gospels, Paul. The word “all” keeps recurring. Under God’s new covenant all are taught by God.76 Constituted by the Word, and led by the Spirit, all the people of God are called to discipleship and empowered by the Spirit to exercise their talents fully. She uses the proud term “Christian” to express this in the title of her first writing. “What Christian could keep silence in this situation?,” she exhorts her uncle, referring to the need for a prophetic voice in church and society.77 The basic commission to witness to Christ, in word and action, is given to all by baptism. There is a mutuality to this covenant. God will speak up for us only if we recognize him.78 Unless we are prepared to speak out, and to speak up for Christ, we are no Christians, even if baptized a thousand times over.79

Argula’s debt here to Luther’s doctrine of the priesthood of all believers is evident, but so is her different accent. Being a child of God, through baptism, subverts not only traditional status distinctions but those of gender as well. She relishes references to the “little sheep” who know the shepherd’s voice.80 Women, peasants, humble folk can all be called to speak out prophetically without respect of persons. “I am not under constraint to obey any one at all, for I vowed at baptism to believe in God, to confess him, and to renounce the Devil and all his illusions.”81 It was Judith whom God called upon to instruct the faltering priests and elders that God is the Lord of history.82

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This is not, of course, the language of women’s rights, but of responsibilities and obligations. To be a Christian is to resist all that opposes the Word of God.83 Her pastoral concern for the “lost sheep” of Jeremiah 50:6 led her to teach and perhaps preach, and certainly to work tirelessly throughout her life for the renewal of the church. The founding of the little Lutheran church at Zeilitzheim is attributed to her, for example. Nor is the new role of women to be confined to the ecclesiastical realm. God can put princes, too, “under the feet of women,” when they misuse their authority.84

The Spirit is no respecter of persons. The early disciples were simple folk, fishermen like John. Jesus gathered women around him. The prophets, the evangelists, and Paul all testify that “peasants or women” are not excluded.85 Initially, Argula had doubted, on the basis of 1 Timothy 2, whether she, a woman, should speak out on such theological matters. However, as she looked at Scripture – Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the Psalms, Joel, and above all Matthew 10 – it became clear to her that, as Jesus says in Luke 10:21, God hides things from the wise and reveals them to the little ones.86 In extraordinary times God acts in extraordinary ways, through Deborah, and Jael, and Judith, even through Balaam’s ass.87 In her own defense she reminds the theologians of Ingolstadt that Christ, our only teacher, “was not ashamed to preach to Mary Magdalene, and to the young woman at the well,” and that the great Early Church scholar, Jerome, devoted himself to teaching Blesilla, Paula, and Eustochium.88 “Which doctor has made a greater vow in baptism than I have?”89

The humility so important to her personal piety should not debar her, or other women, from exercising their God-given talents. Quite the contrary, it is to the humble that God speaks with special clarity.90 While the Pharisees, representing the clergy, spoil everything with their sour dough, the parable of the kingdom of heaven has a woman putting in the good yeast and leavening the whole lump.91

The church needs its scholars and preachers, but they are there to serve and to teach, to administer the sacraments, and to give pastoral care, not to dominate. “No person should be held in more respect than a good preacher, schooled in God’s Spirit and not in a literalistic way.”92 They are not priests, however, but ministers. She takes for granted the obsoleteness of the papacy, episcopacy, and monastic orders. The church is no longer to be seen institutionally, and certainly not hierarch- ically, but eschatologically. The real Temple of the Lord is people.93 The church has a prophetic role to play in society, and has to challenge magistrates and princes to critique existing structures in law, education, and family relationships, and work towards a biblical goal of moral integrity and justice.94

She insists, therefore, that this inclusive, outward-looking, prophetic church is also to be a biblical one. Its sole head is Christ, and its sole guideline is Scripture.95

Canon law, the decretals, philosophy, with their dreams and lies, their purely human conceits, are all worse than useless.96 More surprising, perhaps, is her emphasis on the Spirit.97 The Spirit is the church’s “schoolmaster.”98 Unless God’s Spirit dwells within us, we can achieve nothing. We are all poor and weak, and without the Holy Spirit we cannot even pray, or be led to the truth. It is God’s Spirit alone that tests our inward being and unites us to God. The Lord is Spirit.99 Following the Gospel of John she insists that it is the Spirit that gives life: “My words are spirit and life.”100

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Her first writing, to the University of Ingolstadt, had dealt with the question of authority in the church, her second, to the Bavarian princes, with the reform issues facing church and society. Her letters to the Ingolstadt and Regensburg councils call upon them to distance themselves from the clergy and make the spiritual welfare of their subjects their main concern. Her address to her uncle, Adam von Thering, tackles the issue of her right to speak out, and the need to defy persecution. But it is perhaps in her long poem, her last writing, that she sets out most clearly her vision for a new theology and a new church. She is conscious of speaking with David, with Jeremiah, with Paul.101 In human terms she may only be a foolish woman, but the promises that Christ will stand by his own are always before her eyes.102 Where Scripture speaks of a thousand fleeing from one, she is that one!103 As for her four children, God, who clothes the lilies, and feeds Elijah with the birds of the air, would take care of them.104

Her own religious experiences shine through such asseverations. She herself has been reborn by Christ’s word,105 tested by the Spirit, blessed as she waits on God, but also attacked and reviled, in person, in print, and from the pulpit.106 Her sense of solidarity with the prophets and the apostles, in exaltation and in distress, is a profound one, and so the question of the relationship of her theology to the Reformers is far from simple. Halbach has suggested that it is on the whole derivative from Luther’s, differing only in nuances.107 It is clear from her writings, however, that she sees Luther primarily as a quite genial translator of Scripture, as one whose books are only a guide to Scripture for others, including herself. “I was baptized in the name of Christ; it is him I confess and not Luther.”108 She had, of course, tactical reasons for understating her debt to such a notorious heretic. However, there seems no reason to doubt her emphatic and theologically based denial that she is a “Lutheran.” It is the Word of God alone, not Luther’s words, which must rule. All mortals, including Luther, are liars and sinners. Christ is the true rock on which she stands.109

My own impression is that Argula’s main debt to Luther is in her understanding of the Word of God and the church. Luther’s central concerns about justification by faith, on the other hand, do not appear to be central. One would not expect technical formulations on Christology and the Trinity in a layperson’s work, but I cannot recall a single Trinitarian formula in Argula’s work. She shows no awareness of the Lutheran polarity of law and gospel. Her understanding of Christian society may be closer to a Reformed view than to that of Luther. She had to work her own way toward an understanding of women’s role in the church, one that owed little to Luther. It is very interesting that she attempted to mediate between the Wittenberg and Reformed theologians on the vexed issue of the Eucharist at the Diet of Augsburg in 1530.110 She may have felt herself bound to neither camp.

In her grateful, but critical reception of Luther, therefore, Argula von Grumbach may stand for many other lay people. The themes most prominent in her writings: the defense of Christian freedom, the victory of light over darkness, the authority of Scripture, and the call for a just society are precisely those which struck the strongest chord in the communal reformation of the early 1520s.

I suspect that she understands righteousness and sin rather differently from Luther.111 In regard to sin it has to be remembered that she had suffered personally

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from the hysterical anxieties about women’s sexuality. Her fiercest opponents, such as the Ingolstadt Professor Hauer, branded her, and other women followers of Luther, as typical daughters of Eve; she was a “heretical bitch,” defiling the honor of the Virgin Mary.112 Unlike Luther, Argula von Grumbach never had a good word to say about Mary. She had a different ideal of womanhood from the traditional image of Mary propounded by Hauer, and was highly critical of ideals of chastity.113

The libelous poem directed against her by “Johann of Landshut” had even sug- gested she was sexually obsessed by the young student she was defending. “Are you in heat, perhaps/For this eighteen-year-old chap?”114 Women who did not know their place represented a threat not only to society but to all order and morality. Just being a woman put one’s salvation under threat.

Argula von Grumbach openly acknowledged that we are all sinners: “I can do nothing but sin.” She seems to have accepted Luther’s anthropology.115 The whole weight of her analysis of sin shifts, however, away from individual to social sin and to the need for corporate righteousness. It is the structures of church life, of monastic life, of the universities, of a wildly expensive legal system, of the social mores of the nobility, and the political priorities of the princes that are the main concern for her. She is fiercely critical of the secular rulers of Germany, quoting Isaiah 3:14 about the elders and princes grinding down the face of the poor. She also cited Hosea 8:4, “they were princes, but I do not recognize them as such,” in relation to the unimpressive conduct of the Imperial Diet at Nuremberg. The authorities “curse, kill and rage away, devoid of all knowledge and grounding in Scripture.”116 The coercive repression of the church authorities infuriates her. “The sweat of the poor is being used in the service of the devil,” she told Duke Wilhelm. The inveterate “busyness” of the male world of the rulers, which never had time for scriptural reflection, is compared with Jesus’ commendation of Mary for the one thing needful; as it is, their ignorance allows the clergy to lead them around “like monkeys on a chain.”117

She is outraged, as a woman, at the gluttony and drunkenness at the Imperial Parliament. How could sensible decisions for the good of the nation be made by such a body? Sin was the abuse of privilege and power, whether in the bedroom, the princely court, or the pulpit. The epidemic of sin which society faces comes not from female licentiousness but from the corporate male world. Women were the victims: “There is no way out, whatever a woman does. . . .”118

The graciousness with which she personally responded to the vicious attacks on her, her advocacy of reason, education, and courtesy, no doubt mirror her own understanding, on the other hand, of God’s graciousness to us. She likes, as Luther does, to talk of God’s “friendliness.” Certainly she reiterates again and again that we have to turn the other cheek. “We must not hit out with weapons, but love our neighbor, and keep peace with one another.”119 Grace becomes earthed in daily life.

Hers is as unmistakably a layperson’s and a woman’s theology as it is a biblical one. There is an ongoing dialectical relationship between her self-understanding and her reading of Scripture. As she came to see Paul’s admonitions to women in the context of the whole of Scripture she was able to see a new prophetic role for herself. And this in turn enabled her to approach Scripture in a different way. There is a costly consistency between her words, her exegesis, and her actions.

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The cognitive dissonance which followed the calamity of the Peasants’ War, and the collapse of her reforming hopes for Bavaria, led to her revising one of the weak features of her theology, its overblown apocalyptic hopes. From now on we hear no more melodramatic threats about God showering plagues upon the opponents of the Reformation. Instead she quietly sets about working at the local level, building up networks of friends, fostering evangelical worship, forging alliances between home, church, and school.120 She sought to develop new contours of lay spirituality that offered an alternative to the indolence, illiteracy, drunkenness, and brutality that had characterized the life of the lesser nobility. Her confidence in God’s provid- ence enabled her to endure personal tragedy and transcend the apparent collapse of her reforming dreams.

For centuries now her reforming activity and her theology have been ignored. Ludwig Rabus published many of her writings and honored her as a confessor of the faith in the second half of the sixteenth century.121 The Pietist Rieger hailed her zeal for the faith in the eighteenth century.122 Theodore Kolde’s articles on her work as a reformer at the beginning of the century are still of value. But not until Silke Halbach wrote her fine monograph in 1991 did Argula begin to edge her way into the male-dominated and confessionally structured historiography of the Reforma- tion in Germany. We are without a critical German edition of her writings.123 It would appear, after five centuries, that she is still having difficulty in finding a hearing.

Notes

1 Not surprisingly, one of her favorite texts was Matthew 10:19: “When they hand you over, do not worry about how you are to speak. . . ; for what you are to say will be given to you at that time.” AvG, 90, 175.

2 Much of the history of her life remains un- certain; see AvG and Silke Halbach, Argula von Grumbach als Verfasserin reformatorischer Flugschriften, Europäische Hochschulschriften Reihe XXIII Theologie, Vol. 468 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1992).

3 Editor’s note: The story of Judith’s decapita- tion of the Assyrian general Holofernes is in the apocryphal book Judith, 13:6– 9.

4 On Luther’s correspondence with and about her, and on the reception of her work gener- ally, see AvG, 21–5, 47–55.

5 Among early supporters were later radicals such as Balthasar Hubmaier and Sebastian Lotzer, but also Johann Eberlin von Günz- burg and Andreas Osiander, the Nuremberg Reformer.

6 I have attempted to characterize her language and imaginative reach in The Rhetoric of the

Reformation (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1998), 131– 8.

7 We cannot explore here the growing volume of literature on the role of women in the Reformation, but see Merry E. Wiesner, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993). See also “Marie de Dentière’s Use of Scripture in her Theology of History” in Mark S. Burrows and Paul Rorem, eds., Biblical Hermeneutics in Historical Perspect- ive (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 225– 42.

8 These are conservative figures, based on explicit references.

9 AvG, 86. 10 AvG, 179. 11 Her citations are generally from memory,

often condensing or conflating texts. Halbach, Argula von Grumbach, 196 –200.

12 AvG, 185. 13 AvG, 176, paraphrasing Joel 2:28–32: “Your

sons and daughters, servants, maids/ Will prophesy; read Scripture straight.”

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14 She cites the prophets: “The word which I say to you, proclaim to them from my mouth.” Is. 59:21; Jer. 1:9. AvG, 81.

15 AvG, 120. 16 AvG, 127. 17 AvG, 80f., 180; Dt. 12:32 is also cited. 18 Ps. 94:12; AvG, 179. 19 AvG, 40, 88, 143. 20 AvG, 132, quoting Is. 51. 21 AvG, 148; Halbach, Argula von Grumbach

(201), believes that the Word, in Lutheran manner, is explicitly identified with Christ; it does appear to be personalized – it can be “oppressed,” for example. AvG, 182. How- ever, caution is in place about reading it in explicitly Christological terms.

22 AvG, 88; Mt. 4:23f. 23 Jn. 6:40; AvG, 88. 24 AvG, 90, 148, 158. 25 AvG, 88. 26 AvG, 75. 27 AvG, 87, 126. 28 AvG, 125f, 158; Jn. 1:9–12. 29 1 Cor. 1:20; AvG, 156. 30 Jn. 1:11f.; 9:39; 12:48; AvG, 87, 143, 158. 31 AvG, 90. 32 Jn. 3:19; AvG, 174. 33 Jn. 7:7; AvG, 101. 34 Jn. 9:22; AvG, 119. 35 Peter Matheson, “Breaking the Silence:

Women, Censorship, and the Reformation,” SCJ 27/1 (1996), 97–109.

36 AvG, 84. 37 AvG, 84. 38 AvG, 76. 39 Mt. 10 is cited 17 times; the central verse

Mt. 10:32, 5 times; AvG, 75, 103, 118, 121, 127, 156.

40 AvG, 75, 81, 101; Jer. 1:9; Ez. 33:7ff.; Mt. 10:24.

41 Hos. 6:5; Hos. 13 quoted in AvG, 77f.; cf. 158, 190.

42 Jer. 22; AvG, 88. 43 AvG, 82, 101. 44 AvG, 146. 45 Dt. 10:17; Ps. 145:3. 46 AvG, 157. 47 AvG, 105 quoting 2 Chr. 36:17–21. 48 Mt. 10:21, 34, 37; AvG, 145. 49 AvG, 104. 50 AvG, 76. 51 AvG, 145, 192. The phrase “persecuting and

crucifying Christ anew” is used in her letter to Frederick the Wise of the oppression of

evangelicals by “pagan,” presumably Catholic, princes. AvG, 132.

52 Three of the daughters of her uncle, Hieronymus von Stauff, had left their nun- neries in Regensburg.

53 AvG, 105–8, 111. 54 AvG, 181f.; 2 Cor. 2:17. 55 AvG, 106, 144; Mt. 7:15. Her reading of

Mt. 15.14 is interesting, focussing on the greed of the clergy.

56 AvG, 181. 57 This is her gloss on Jesus’ commission to his

disciples: Mt. 10:5–11. AvG, 180. 58 AvG, 108, 145, quoting Mt. 20:26ff. and

Mt. 7:12, respectively. 59 Is. 8:14f; 34:3; Ps. 109:6–11; Is. 30; Ps.

140:3; Mt. 23:33. AvG, 78, 105, 107. 60 Is. 30:9f; Jer. 6:10–21; 1 Pt. 2:6–8. AvG,

121, 144, 188f. 61 Mt. 10:28ff; quoted four times; what does

make her tremble is the misuse of power by church authorities to stymie the spread of the gospel. AvG, 76.

62 AvG,194. 63 AvG, 156ff.; Eph. 4:14. 64 AvG, 157. 65 Gal. 1:10; AvG, 143. 66 AvG, 158f.; 1 Cor. 4:9. 67 AvG, 154, 156; 1 Pt. 5:8f. 68 AvG, 158, 182. 69 AvG, 134, 191. Aquilo, the north, is trans-

lated by Koberger and other late fifteenth- century German translations as “midnight;” Ps. 106:28; Jer. 1:11,13.

70 AvG, 103, quoting Mt. 10:39. 71 AvG, 132f., citing Dan. 2:35, 45 and 1 Pt.

2:6; Thomas Müntzer also used this theme of Christ as the living stone in his Sermon to the Princes. See CTM, 234.

72 Ps. 110:17f., 28; AvG, 190. 73 AvG, 158, 121, quoting the beatitude in Mt.

5:11; in her poem she cites the parallel in Lk. 6 and also 1 Pt. 4:13–14; AvG, 194.

74 Ps. 3:6; 37:25; 68:2; AvG, 78, 109, 190. 75 AvG, 193. 76 Jer. 31:33; Is. 54:12; AvG, 80, 178f. 77 AvG, 146. 78 AvG, 145. 79 AvG, 143. 80 Jn. 1:11f.; 10:4f. 81 AvG, 142. 82 Two entire pages of her poem develop this

theme from Judith 8. AvG, 183f. It is illumin- ating that at one imperial diet after another,

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most notably at the Diet of Augsburg, Argula von Grumbach took it upon herself to exhort the Protestant princes in person to remain steadfast, emphasizing that God is in con- trol; God had never slept on the job yet, a reference to Ps. 121:5. See Justas Jonas’s let- ter to Luther of August 6: WA Br 5, 536.

83 AvG, 118. 84 Is. 3:12; AvG, 133f. 85 AvG, 176 –9. 86 AvG, 79f. It is interesting that she omits the

criticisms of the “daughters of the people” when citing Ez. 13:17; AvG, 78.

87 AvG, 182 –5. 88 AvG, 88. 89 AvG, 142. 90 The rhetoric of deference which women

writers had to affect does not mean that her humility was not genuine; on the many- layered nature of the concept of humility see Ursula Hess, “Oratrix humilis. Die Frau als Briefpartnerin von Humanisten, am Beispiel der Caritas Pirckheimer” in F. Worstbrock, ed., Der Brief im Zeitalter der Renaissance (Weinheim: Verlag Chemie, 1983), 196f.

91 AvG, 122, 144; Mt. 13:33; 16:6. 92 AvG. 105f.; “Der in Gottes Geist/und nit

im Buchstaben gelehrt ist.” 93 1 Cor. 3:16; AvG, 178. 94 Note the use of the apocalyptic language of

Mt. 24 in addressing the Regensburg council. AvG, 154f.

95 AvG, 118, citing Eph. 4:15. 96 Ez. 13:19; AvG, 78,105. 97 It would be worth looking for possible

verbal echoes of Karlstadt’s writings in her work.

98 AvG, 118; an interesting variation on Galatians 3! Schoolmasters played a key role in her educational plans for her children and for society as a whole.

99 Note the remarkable long section on the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in her poem to “Johann of Landshut.” AvG, 176–8.

100 Jn. 6:63; AvG, 76. 101 She understands herself “als reformatorische

Prophetin.” Halbach, Argula von Grumbach, 217.

102 AvG, 103, 141. 103 AvG, 109, 119, 190. 104 Mt. 6:26–30 appears to be conflated with

1 Kgs. 17:6. 105 AvG, 187. 106 AvG, 118, 187, 191; Is. 30:18.

107 Halbach, Argula von Grumbach, 220. 108 AvG, 101, 102, 105, 144f., 148, 189. 109 AvG, 89. 110 She arranged a meeting between Bucer

and a reluctant Melanchthon at Augsburg in 1530. See the draft letter by Bucer in Stadtarchiv Strassburg, AA 425a, cited by Walther Köhler, Der Streit über das Abendmahl (Gütersloh, 1953), 222.

111 I have explored this issue more fully in “A Reformation for Women? Sin, Grace and Gender in the Writings of Argula von Grumbach,” Scottish Journal of Theology 49/ 1 (1996): 39–56.

112 Theodor Kolde suggests that Argula von Grumbach’s third letter to the city council of Ingolstadt was a response to this furious attack. See his “Arsacius Seehofer und Argula von Grumbach,” Beiträge zur bayerischen Kirchengeschichte 11(1905), 99f.

113 Drei christlich predig vom//Salve regina/dem Eva//ngeli vnnd heyligen//schrift ge//mess. Ingolstadt, 1523(?).

114 AvG, 167. 115 Prov. 20:9; Rom. 14:23; AvG, 142, 149. 116 AvG, 106, 146, 148. 117 AvG, 83, 108, 192; she cites Lk. 10:42. 118 AvG, 147. 119 AvG, 158. 120 Her personal papers offer abundant

information on this; some preliminary glean- ings from them are to be found in Peter Matheson, The Imaginative World of the Reformation (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 2000), 102–18; they show conclusively that Russell’s reductionist view of her as a cunning propagandist, who “deliberately overstated, feigned naivety, and manipulated,” is without foundation. See Paul Russell, Lay Theology in the Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 208.

121 Ludovicus Rabus, Historien der Märtyrern. Ander theil. Strassburg, 1572.

122 M. Georg Cunrad Rieger, Das Leben Argulae von Grumbach, gebohrner von Stauffen. Als Einer Jüngerin Jesu, Zeugin der Warheit und Freundin Lutheri, samt eingemengter Nachricht von Arsatio Seehofern. Stuttgart, 1737.

123 The original pamphlets are reproduced in the microfiche series, Flugschriften des frühen 16 Jahrhunderts, ed. Hans-Joachim Köhler, Hildegard Hebenstreit-Wilfert, and Christoph Weismann (Zug, 1978ff.).

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Bibliography

Halbach, Silke, Argula von Grumbach als Verfasserin reformatorischer Flugschriften, Europäische Hochschulschriften Reihe XXIII Theologie, Vol. 468, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1992.

Matheson, Peter, Argula von Grumbach. A Woman’s Voice in the Reformation. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1995 (Cited as AvG).

——, “A Reformation for Women? Sin, Grace and Gender in the Writings of Argula von Grumbach,” Scottish Journal of Theology 49/1 (1996), 39–56.

——, The Imaginative World of the Reformation. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 2000.

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