In his work The Book of the Reformation of the Order of Preachers, the Dominican friar Johannes Meyer (1422-1485) drew on letters, treatises, and other written records, as well as interviews, oral accounts, and his own personal experience, to record the blossoming of the Observant reform movement. The result is this sprawling, eclectic, yet curiously intimate account of the men -- but mostly of the women -- who devoted their lives to revitalizing the Dominican order in southern Germany. With his reliance on their accounts and archives and respect for their intellectual abilities and spiritual resolve, Meyer's treatment of medieval Dominican women provides a model from which today's historians stand to learn. The introduction contextualizes Meyer's celebratory work within a more objective historical background; it is followed by a full translation, making this remarkable history available to English-speaking readers for the first time.

Women and the Reformation gathers historical materials and personal accounts to provide a comprehensive and accessible look at the status and contributions of women as leaders in the 16th century Protestant world. Explores the new and expanded role as core participants in Christian life that women experienced during the Reformation Examines diverse individual stories from women of the times, ranging from biographical sketches of the ex-nun Katharina von Bora Luther and Queen Jeanne d’Albret, to the prophetess Ursula Jost and the learned Olimpia Fulvia Morata Brings together social history and theology to provide a groundbreaking volume on the theological effects that these women had on Christian life and spirituality Accompanied by a website at www.blackwellpublishing.com/stjerna offering student’s access to the writings by the women featured in the book

Books on the history of the Reformation are filled with the heroic struggles and sacrifices of men. But this compelling volume puts the spotlight on five strong and intellectually gifted women who, because of their absolute and unconditional commitment to the advancement of Protestant Christianity, paid the cost of their reforming convictions with martyrdom, imprisonment, and exile. Anne Boleyn (1507-1536) introduced the Reformation to England, and Katharine Parr (1514-1548) saved it. Both women were riveted by early versions of the "justification by faith" doctrine that originated with Martin Luther and came to them through France. As a result, Anne Boleyn was beheaded. Katharine Parr narrowly avoided the same fate. Sixteen-year-old Jane Grey (1537-1554) and Anne Askew (1521-1546) both dared to criticize the Mass and were pioneers of Protestant views concerning superstition and symbols. Jane Grey was executed because of her Protestantism. Anne Askew was tortured and burned at the stake. Catherine Willoughby (1520-1580) anticipated later Puritan teachings on predestination and election and on the reformation of the church. She was forced to give up everything she had and to flee with her husband and nursing baby into exile. Paul Zahl vividly tells the stories of these five mothers of the English Reformation. All of these women were powerful theologians intensely interested in the religious concerns of their day. All but Anne Boleyn left behind a considerable body of written work - some of which is found in this book's appendices. It is the theological aspect of these women's remarkable achievements that Zahl seeks to underscore. Moreover, he also considers what the stories of these women have to say about the relation of gender to theology, human motivation, and God. An important epilogue by Mary Zahl contributes a contemporary woman's view of these fascinating historical figures. Extraordinary by any standard, Anne Boleyn, Anne Askew, Katharine Parr, Jane Grey, and Catherine Willoughby remain rich subjects for reflection and emulation hundreds of years later. The personalities of these five women, who spoke their Christian convictions with presence of mind and sharp intelligence within situations of life-and-death duress, are almost totemic in our enduring search for role models.

"An updated text based on James I. Good's Famous women of the Reformed Church."

Bringing the study of early modern Christianity into dialogue with Atlantic history, this collection provides a longue durée investigation of women and religion within a transatlantic context. Taking as its starting point the work of Natalie Zemon Davis on the effects of confessional difference among women in the age of religious reformations, the volume expands the focus to broader temporal and geographic boundaries. The result is a series of essays examining the effects of religious reform and revival among women in the wider Atlantic world of Europe, the Americas, and West Africa from 1550 to 1850. Taken collectively, the essays in this volume chart the extended impact of confessional divergence on women over time and space, and uncover a web of transatlantic religious interaction that significantly enriches our understanding of the unfolding of the Atlantic World. Divided into three sections, the volume begins with an exploration of ‘Old World Reforms’ looking afresh at the impact of confessional change in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries upon the lives of European women. Part two takes this forward, tracing the adaptation of European religious forms within Africa and the Americas. The third and final section explores the multifarious faces of the revival that inspired the nineteenth century missionary movement on both sides of the Atlantic. Collectively the essays underline the extent to which the development of the Atlantic World created a space within which an unprecedented series of juxtapositions, collisions, and collusions among religious traditions and practitioners took place. These demonstrate how the religious history of Europe, the Americas, and Africa became intertwined earlier and more deeply than much scholarship suggests, and highlight the dynamic nature of transatlantic cross-fertilization and influence.

Winner, 2012 Book Award, Society for the Study of Early Modern WomenHonorable Mention, Literature, 2012 PROSE Awards, Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers In her award-winning, critically acclaimed Women’s Writing in Italy, 1400–1650, Virginia Cox chronicles the history of women writers in early modern Italy—who they were, what they wrote, where they fit in society, and how their status changed during this period. In this book, Cox examines more closely one particular moment in this history, in many ways the most remarkable for the richness and range of women’s literary output. A widespread critical notion sees Italian women’s writing as a phenomenon specific to the peculiar literary environment of the mid-sixteenth century, and most scholars assume that a reactionary movement such as the Counter-Reformation was unlikely to spur its development. Cox argues otherwise, showing that women’s writing flourished in the period following 1560, reaching beyond the customary "feminine" genres of lyric, poetry, and letters to experiment with pastoral drama, chivalric romance, tragedy, and epic. There were few widely practiced genres in this eclectic phase of Italian literature to which women did not turn their hand. Organized by genre, and including translations of all excerpts from primary texts, this comprehensive and engaging volume provides students and scholars with an invaluable resource as interest in these exceptional writers grows. In addition to familiar, secular works by authors such as Isabella Andreini, Moderata Fonte, and Lucrezia Marinella, Cox also discusses important writings that have largely escaped critical interest, including Fonte’s and Marinella’s vivid religious narratives, an unfinished Amazonian epic by Maddalena Salvetti, and the startlingly fresh autobiographical lyrics of Francesca Turina Bufalini. Juxtaposing religious and secular writings by women and tracing their relationship to the male-authored literature of the period, often surprisingly affirmative in its attitudes toward women, Cox reveals a new and provocative vision of the Italian Counter-Reformation as a period far less uniformly repressive of women than is commonly assumed.

In this pioneering work Roland Bainton surveys the contribution to the church of women of the sixteenth century in Germany and Italy. Along the way, he assesses the effect of the Reformation on the role of women in society in general. Included in this volume are Katherine von Bora, Ursula of M]nsterberg, Katherine Zell, Elisabeth of Brandenburg, Anabaptist women, Giulia Gonzaga, Isabella Bresegna, Olympia Morata, and others.