Invisible Activists of the Reformation

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Invisible Activists of the Reformation"

Podcast Information:

• Title: Not Just the Tudors
• Host: Professor Suzannah Lipscomb
• Guest: Mary Wiesner Hanks, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History and Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
• Release Date: November 11, 2024

---

1. Introduction to the Episode

In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb delves into the often-overlooked roles women played during the Reformation. Joined by historian Mary Wiesner Hanks, the discussion shifts the narrative from the predominantly male figures to the "invisible activists" who significantly influenced religious transformations in Europe and beyond.

2. Central Role of Women in the Reformation

Mary Wiesner Hanks emphasizes that the Reformation was shaped by both Protestant and Catholic movements, highlighting the pivotal contributions of women. She states, “the book starts with Isabel of Castile and includes women from various backgrounds, showing that these religious transformations were a collective effort” (04:13).

3. The Case of Isabel of Castile

Isabel of Castile is presented as a foundational figure whose policies set the tone for religious uniformity. Hanks explains, “Isabel expelled Jews in 1492, establishing a precedent for religious conformity that influenced subsequent monarchs” (08:13). This action not only impacted non-Christians in Spain but also paved the way for later religious policies across Europe.

4. Dynastic Roles and Marriage in the Reformation

The discussion highlights the strategic marriages of female monarchs and their role in shaping religious life. Hanks notes, “Isabel and Ferdinand managed to marry their children into every major ruling house, facilitating dynastic marriages that were crucial for political and religious alliances” (10:13). This section underscores how women were essential in maintaining and expanding religious influence through familial ties.

5. Women’s Authority and Biblical Interpretation

A significant portion of the conversation revolves around women's engagement with religious authority. Hanks discusses how early Protestant reformers like Martin Luther redefined marital roles, emphasizing that “Even young women and girls were seen as potential voices in religious discourse during times of crisis” (14:21). This shift allowed women to partake in theological debates, challenging traditional gender roles within the church.

6. Martyrdom and Women's Voices

Hanks explores the martyrdom of women during the Reformation, suggesting that “about a fifth of those martyred were women, and some left behind letters and hymns that provide insight into their thoughts and experiences” (30:49). These personal accounts, though limited, offer a glimpse into the resilience and conviction of women who faced persecution for their beliefs.

7. Missionary Work and Migration

The episode also covers the role of women in missionary work and migration. Hanks shares the story of Rebecca Pratton, an enslaved woman who became a Moravian missionary, illustrating how women actively participated in spreading religious beliefs across continents. She remarks, “Women like Rebecca navigated complex identities and roles, becoming integral to the global spread of the Reformation” (35:54).

8. Impact on Modern Understanding of the Reformation

By placing women at the center of the Reformation narrative, Hanks argues that our understanding becomes more nuanced and global. She states, “The Reformation wasn’t just a European, male-driven movement; it involved diverse women who influenced its direction and legacy” (38:55). This comprehensive view challenges the traditional, narrow perspective and highlights the enduring impact of these women on contemporary religious and social structures.

9. Conclusion and Recommendation

Professor Lipscomb concludes the discussion by recommending Mary Wiesner Hanks' book, Women and the Reformation: A Global History, as a vital resource for understanding the multifaceted roles women played during this transformative period. She encourages listeners to explore further episodes, such as “How Catherine Parr Championed the Reformation” and “Women's Work in 17th Century London,” to gain deeper insights into the contributions of women in historical contexts.

---

Notable Quotes:

• Mary Wiesner Hanks on the dual impact of the Reformation on women: “It's how these religious movements shape the lives of women and how women shape them” (04:13).

• On Isabel of Castile’s influence: “She set a policy of religious uniformity that later monarchs adopted, impacting religious life across Europe” (08:13).

• Discussing the creation of the pastor’s wife role: “They created the respectable role of pastor’s wife, convincing communities to view it as a legitimate and essential position” (14:21).

• On martyrdom sources: “We have trial testimonies, hymns, and letters that, albeit filtered, provide glimpses into the minds of these women” (18:28).

• Reflecting on Susanna Wesley’s influence: “Susanna Wesley wasn’t just John and Charles Wesley’s mother; she was instrumental in shaping Methodism through her Bible studies and leadership” (26:57).

• On the global impact of women in the Reformation: “These women weren’t just European figures; their actions influenced colonialism and religious practices worldwide” (38:55).

---

Recommendation: For those interested in a deeper exploration of women's roles in the Reformation, Mary Wiesner Hanks' Women and the Reformation: A Global History is highly recommended. Additionally, listeners are encouraged to check out related episodes on Not Just the Tudors, available on History Hit and other podcast platforms.

Transcript

[Professor Susanna Lipscomb]

Thanks for listening to Not Just the Tudors. To get all History Hit podcasts ad free early access and bonus episodes, head over to historyhit.com subscribe and you can sign up on Apple Podcasts with just one click.

[DJ Dramos]

Stay Farming DJ Dramos from Life as a Gringo. No Making smarter financial moves today secures your financial freedom for a successful tomorrow. Tackle these situations in stride. And yeah, of course be annoyed when an unplanned expense comes up, but not let it be something that slows me down, right as I did with repairing my credit. You know, hiring somebody to do credit repair for me. That was a gift that I gave myself that allowed me to then, you know, get my first apartment like a good neighbor. State Farm is there. State Farm. Proud sponsor of my Cultura Podcast network.

[Noom Representative]

When it comes to weight loss, no two people are the same. That's why NOOM builds personalized plans based on your unique psychology and biology. Take Britney. After years of unsustainable diets, Noom helped her lose 20 pounds and keep it off.

[Mary Wiesner Hanks]

I was definitely in a yo yo.

[Listener/Participant]

Cycle for years of just losing weight, gaining weight and it was exhausting.

[Noom Representative]

And Stephanie, she's a former D1 athlete who knew she couldn't out train her diet and she lost 38 pounds.

[Listener/Participant]

My relationship to food before Noom was never consistent.

[Noom Representative]

And Evan, he can't stand salads, but he still lost 50 pounds with Noom.

[Listener/Participant]

I never really was a salad guy. That's just not who I am. Even through the pickiness, Noom taught me that building better habits builds a healthier lifestyle. I'm not doing this to get to a number. I'm doing this to feel better.

[Noom Representative]

Get your personalized plan [e-mail] Real Noom users compensated to provide their story in 4 weeks. The typical Noom user can expect to lose 1 to 2 pounds per week. Individual results may vary.

[Professor Susanna Lipscomb]

Hello, I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb and welcome to Not Just the Tudors from History hit the podcast in which explore everything from Anne Boleyn to the Aztecs, from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to samurais relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft. Not in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. Martin Luther, John Calvin, Udrich Zingley, Philip Melanchthon, Pope Paul iii, Pius V, Reginald Paul, you name it. The name that springs first to mind in the Reformations, both Protestant and Catholic. It tends to be male because that's the way this history has been told. But women were central to these extraordinary transformations in religious life in Europe and around the globe. As monarchs and mothers, migrants and martyrs, mystics and missionaries, we find women actors, people like Isabella Castile, Katrina Vorbora, Teresa of Avila, Susanna Wesley, and those whose names you might not know, but whose influence and actions were deeply important. My guest today has uncovered the stories of 261 named individuals and many others besides, and asks what would happen if we put these women in the middle of the story instead of at the edges? My guest is Mary Wiesner Hanks, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History and Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. She is the author and editor of 30 books, including Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe, Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World, and the Marvellous Hairy Girls. And her latest book, Women and the Reformation's A Global History, writes women back into the heart of the Reformation story, where they belong. I'm Professor Suzanne Lipscomb, and you are listening to Not Just the Tudors. Professor Wiesner Hanks, thank you so much for coming onto the podcast.

[Listener/Participant]

Oh, happy to.

[Professor Susanna Lipscomb]

So I wanted to ask at the beginning, having read your book, whether your primary question was how women shaped the Reformations or was it how they were shaped by them or both?

[Listener/Participant]

It's really both. And I would say that those are two. And I've actually said this before when people said, well, like, what's the scholarship on women of the Reformations like? Were women in religious change? Like, is this really those two tracks? It's how do these religious movements of religious changes shape the lives of women? And then how do women shape them? And so I've written a lot on kind of the first question, Christian sexuality, for example. And it was really, I really was more interested in, because this is a book for general readers. It's a trade book. It's not an academic book, has some footnotes because I couldn't avoid. I really feel I have to footnote women's voices, which are there in the middle of it. But what struck me is when all the sort of the Year of Luther hoopla, the 500th anniversary of Luther's 95 theses in 2017, was there was nothing new about women that came out. There were a couple of really bad books that only talked about Protestant women and that were sort of virulently anti Catholic, that could have been written in the 19th century. And there's been 30 or almost 40 years now of this really great research done by specialists, but it hasn't sort of made it into popular history at all. You Know, except the tutors, of course. And they made it in. In different kinds of ways. But what I wanted to do was I wanted to take all of this, the wonderful research that people, you know, that hundreds of scholars and scores of people had done, lots of, which is just very interesting to ordinary people. They just knew about it and get it out to them. And also to put Protestants and Catholics in the same book, there has been a tendency in. You know, there was in the old way that the Reformation scholarship used to be done was you did Protestants, you did Catholics, and you never talked about both of them. That's gone now. I mean, what's really Reformation scholarship has emphasized over the last decade, couple decades, is sort of what Protestants and Catholics shared as well as what is different. And one of the things they shared is that women are really active in both the Protestant Reformation and then later movements of Protestantism, because the book goes into the 18th century and Catholicism, and they just should be in the same book. So I said, okay, I'm gonna write a book about women and religious change, and I don't wanna have Protestants in one chapter and Catholics in another chapter. And actually there's Jews and Muslims in the book too, and I wanna have them in another chapter. What I wanna do is sort of see what about their experiences were similar and then also within that, what's different about the Protestant Reformation? Anyway, so get back to your question about, like, is it more how were women shaped by the Reformations or how they shape them? This book is more the latter. And that's why I start. I had originally started with Kathrine van Bora. You know, Luther's wife is kind of the what turned into the mother's chapter. And I thought, well, okay, I'll start with somebody that maybe a few people will have heard of. But as I gave the original, you know, like, I gave the first drafts to friends of mine who are not academics to read it. And they said, well, we can't quite figure out, like, what are all these rulers doing? And they were sort of a subsection in the mother's chapter originally. Why? What do they do? And I realized that for most people, they really don't have a grasp of how powerful a rulers were in terms of religious life. So I said, well, then I'll just start with them. I'll start with the female rulers. So the first woman in the book is Isabel of Castile, and there's a whole chapter on monarchs, including the Tudors, because it really. Those are the women that have the most power over religious life. I mean, those are the men that do too. Henry VIII or whoever, any male monarch. But it was important, I think, for people who are non specialist readers who live today where we at least until recently believed in chapter and church and state. And I speak from the United States, you know, I think they really, people really need to have a sense about how much the government in which you lived and the ruler in which you lived determined what religious life was in your area. So it ended up actually working well, they suggested, my friends say, they need their own chapter because people need to understand that, because we didn't get that, so that she ends up being the first woman in the book Isabel of Castile.

[Professor Susanna Lipscomb]

So let's talk a bit about Isabel, because she makes an extraordinary difference to the nature of Christianity in Spain and to the nature of the lives of those who are not Christians in Spain. And perhaps we won't be able to do all 261, but I think there are a number of individuals we want to talk about and Isabel feels like an important one to start with.

[Listener/Participant]

Yeah, and I think that it's people. I say, well, it's a book about the Reformations. And I want to keep saying it's plural. It's both Protestants and Catholics and it's law, lots of different kinds of Protestants. And I say right away, that's why it has this. It's plural. It's a much more complicated situation. And because I also go later than most people would be used to thinking about the Reformations. But anyway, people would say, well, you know, a book on the Reformations should start in 1517 or with Luther's childhood or something. First of all should start with Luther or it should start in the early 16th century. What are you doing starting with Isabel Castile? But here I'm drawing on Nicholas Tripshows, really important book about religious refugees in the early modern world. And he said, you know, what the Reformation creates is mass refugees for religious reasons for the first time. And there's lots of them. And the first one to do that is Isabel, who expels Jews. And then later, after she said, then Muslims from Spain. So they're ordered to convert or leave, which is what many people are ordered to do later on as well. And so the book starts with her because she sets this kind of religious policy of my realm should be religiously uniform, which in her case meant it should be Christian. There isn't a definite difference between Protestants and Catholic. He said, yeah, and Jews should be expelled. And that's in 1492, you know. And then later that year she sends some guy off to go to the west and to look around for things, you know, four months later. So that's where it starts. And that also then she sets a policy of kind of religious uniformity that later on other female monarchs and male monarchs adopt as well. So I think it's a different way to think about. And it's Nick's idea that kind of an alternative history to start there and then see, which really ends up being a way to tell a lot of the story. One of my chapters is on migrants, because there are people who are forced out of various territories or choose to move from one place to another for religious reasons throughout this whole period. Once there are Protestants, Protestants and Catholics and wrong kind of Protestants and dissident Protestants and radicals and other sorts of folks. So starting with her also then made the chapter on migrants one that was really fit better, I think, with the whole bigger story.

[Professor Susanna Lipscomb]

I understand why monarchs was originally part of mothers, because the other thing that really comes out in that first chapter is a sense of the ruling mother, daughter dynasties who played a role in the Reformation. Could you tell us about one or two?

[Listener/Participant]

Yeah. How about not the tutors? Which was really.

[Professor Susanna Lipscomb]

How about not the tutors?

[Listener/Participant]

How about not the tutors? I mean, Isabella is an example, but then we end up back in the tutors, of course, in that. I think there's really two kinds of dynastic issues here. One is the issue that smart monarchs. I mean, the most important thing for a monarch is to have a successor. I mean, preferably male. But if you could get. If you don't have a man, you could have. You could have one. You have to get married and you have to have a legitimate child. That's number one for monarchs across all time, from ancient times to now. And once you've done that, then that's it. That's your main task. And so Isabel and Ferdinand are. And Habsburgs in general and are really kind of marriage brokers extraordinaire. I mean, she manages to marry her children into every other important ruling house. Portugal, France, Spain, I mean, England. So she does that side of things, and Ferdinand helps her that too. You know that side of things really well. And sets a pattern for the Habsburgs to make these kind of dynastic marriages that are really important and that will continue as a really important role for female monarchs to have through the Reformation. Anne of Denmark, I mean, all of these important queens, some of whom are not queens regnant, they're wives of kings, but they're still important in the story. So there's one kind of thing. The other thing is, as in France, there are intellectual dynasties of sort of mother daughter dynasties, if you want to think of that, that are mother daughter relationships of a series of French women who are either queen mothers or in France or in the kind of smaller territories that were sort of part of France, it's not unified at this point, who get interested in the Protestant Reformation and Jeanne d'albret, the Queen of Navarre, her mother, Marguerite Dunbar. So there are intellectual dynasties of noble women and some of whom are monarchs and some of whom are simply high nobility that marry into monarchical houses. And this is true with both Protestants and Catholics. It's there in the French royal house, it's there in the Spanish royal house. And there's just been really exciting things, research going on now about Habsburg women. And of course the Spanish royal house also is related to, and then ultimately the same as the Holy Roman emperorship. So it's German noble houses. And then there's later ON in the 17th century, there's sort of dynasties of women in the territories of the Holy Roman Empire. And I think that these are all these kind of relationships that women learn from their mothers how to rule, women learn from their mothers how to have authority over religion, which they do. And they decide that they're. They're going to act in a specific kind of way in terms of determining religious life in their territory, including, you know, I think the two. What was interesting to me and actually, I mean, I've been doing this stuff 40 years and I've never really thought about the fact that the two first decrees of toleration, official decrees of religious toleration in Europe, both come from female monarchs. Isabel of Hungary, the Queen of Hungary, and Jean d'albret, the ruler of Navarre. So I think that's really interesting. I'm not trying to say, oh, women are more tolerant than men because they certainly. Because women burn hair tanks all the time. But it's just very interesting to me that that just happened to be the case, that they saw advantages in a level of religious toleration or not persecuting people for religious reasons, which I think is quite interesting.

[Professor Susanna Lipscomb]

Yes, I mean, and I suppose Catherine Medici was hoping for that as well. It was unacceptable to the people there. I mean, one of the interesting things when we're thinking about mothers and daughters is of course that they exist full stop. We've got you mentioned 2025 is going to be the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther's marriage to Katrina. Von Bordere, I love the note that monks and nuns who married were often accused of incest as spiritual siblings. But can you go back and explain to us why marriage is at the heart of the Protestant Reformation? Well, yes, small question.

[Listener/Participant]

How many hours do we have to talk about this? Yeah, I mean, it's their Protestant Saint Luther, and sort of first generation Protestants reject the notion of vows of celibacy. Some Protestants, in fact, rejected celibacy as an idea. They said, absolutely, everybody should marry. Every pastor should marry. Luther said, well, you know, there might be a few people who have a special gift of celibacy, but people shouldn't make vows of this because the human sexual drive is so powerful that what we're asking people to do by making vows of celibacy is we're asking them to do something they simply can't do. That's not. It's against the way that God created them. So this becomes part of it. And it's also part of Luther's more general critique of certain aspects of Catholicism that he saw had no biblical basis. So it's a combination of it's not in the Bible and it's hopeless, and we should just do away with vows of celibacy. He does then sort of say, and in fact, some women write to him and say, well, you know, is there a way that one can have a holy life or a good life in a convent? And he said, well, if you think of it as community and you don't have a vow, in other words, that if you can leave tomorrow if you want to, if you're there of your own free will, maybe there's a possibility of that. But in general, he doesn't. And what happens is that in general, Protestant clergy marry, including Luther, who's not the first to get married. People had been saying, well, you should put your money where your mouth is. You should get married. Other people, other religious leaders in Wittenberg and others of his associates had gotten married. And finally he decides then in 2025 that he should get married. Catalina Van Bora, who, with a group of other nuns had escaped from her convent. She had been a nun. They had escaped from the convent. She was in Wittenberg and was sort of looking around for a husband. I mean, she decided she wanted to marry, too, but she set her sights high. She had an engagement with somebody else that fell through. And then she said, well, she sort of agreed that she would marry Luther, marry Martin Luther. He was 20 years older than she was. You know, he'd been a monk his whole life or his whole adult life. He really didn't have much notion about marital life. He certainly didn't have any idea of running a household, nothing. He never had to do that at all. He had no idea about managing money. She did all that. But I think that what she and others of this first generation of pastors, wives do, and there's great scholarship on this, is they create something that's brand new, which is the respectable role of pastor's wife, not a priest's whore, you know, and it's. So that's a new thing that women do. And I mean, now we kind of look at pastor's wife. I mean, if you got me, what is that kind of poo, pooing it or seeing it as a kind of very deferential and demure and things like that. But they're creating a new role and they have to convince the communities that they live in that this is a respectable role because those communities also have to pay support them, which is another thing people don't want to. People had originally tithed to their church when it was counseling and they. Which meant they just had to support the priest and now they got to support his family too. So there's money. More money has to come in. But they do. They really, I think, are successful very quickly within a generation of creating this new role of a clergyman's wife. That was, that was quite, quite something new. And it was kind of funny to me. You know, the postscript of this kind of looks at where are these women? How do we understand them today? You know, it was kind of interesting to me that in the debates about marriage equality and gay marriage in the United States, people who were sort of come out of a Christian tradition in that, you know, citing Martin Luther on this, which is very. He wouldn't probably have agreed with that, but in his day, I mean, what happened? I mean, he was a monk bearing a nun. I mean, that is as weird as unacceptable marriages in some people's eyes, you know, as gay marriage was in the 21st century. So it really, you know, kind of changed the attitude toward marriage that way. And I think there too, getting back to what did women do? Your first question, they created that role. There's advice that comes to them from guys, of course, but it's really them who creates this role.

[Don Wildman]

In case you haven't heard, in the US It's a presidential election year. We're going to hear a lot of this is America. No, no, you're all wrong. This is America. But on American history hit. We're leaving that to the rest of them. Join me, Don Wildman, twice a week where we look to the past to understand the United States of today. With the help of some amazing guests, let us introduce you to the founding Fathers, guide you through the west wing of the White House, and shelter you on the battlefields of years gone by. To find out just how we got here. Here, American history. Hit a podcast from history.

[Listener/Participant]

Hit Decisions, decisions. Wait a minute. Are you still looking for cars on Carvana? Yeah. Decisions, decisions. When I use Carvana, I found the exact car I was looking for in minutes. Bought it on the spot, electric or full diesel? Decision. Come on, you've been at it for weeks.

[Mary Wiesner Hanks]

Just buy it already.

[Listener/Participant]

You're right.

[DJ Dramos]

Crossover it is Decisions decided.

[Listener/Participant]

Whether you know exactly what you want or like to take your time, buy your car the convenient way with Carvana.

[Mary Wiesner Hanks]

Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. With the price of just about everything going up during inflation, we thought we'd bring our prices down. So to help us, we brought in a reverse auctioneer, which is apparently a.

[DJ Dramos]

Thing Mint Mobile unlimited premium wireless.

[Listener/Participant]

30. 30. Bid to get 30. Get 20. 20. Better get 20. 20. Anybody get 15? 15. 15. 15. Just 15 bucks a month.

[Don Wildman]

Sold.

[Mary Wiesner Hanks]

Give it a [e-mail] Switch $45 upfront.

[Listener/Participant]

Payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three month plan only.

[Noom Representative]

Taxes and fees, extra speed slower above 40 gigabytes.

[Mary Wiesner Hanks]

You detail ready to pop the question. The [e-mail] have got sparkle down to a science with beautiful lab grown diamonds worthy of your most brilliant moments. Their lab grown diamonds are independently graded and guaranteed identical to natural diamonds and they're ready to ship to your door. Go to blue nile.com and use promo code LISTEN to get $50 off your purchase of $500 or more. That's codelistenluenile.com for $50 off bluenile.com code LISTEN.

[Professor Susanna Lipscomb]

I'd like to think about women and their engagement with ideas about authority in the church because you raise a point that I found fascinating and I'll be asking for further reading, which is that the words in 1 Timothy which tell a woman not to teach or have authority over a man come from a letter that today most biblical scholars do not consider to have been authored by Paul. Now, that wasn't known in the 16th century. It wasn't known by me until I read your book. But there are early Protestant reformers like Marie Dantier and Joanna Eleonora von Maulo, later Peterson, who are engaging in a discourse over precisely these sorts of questions. What kind of things were they saying?

[Listener/Participant]

Well, they were saying, first of all that times were it was such an emergency that even women needed to speak out, that the situation was kind of in the early years of the Reformation, that this. And this is katrinaetzel and others like this, that this was a time of such crisis that God might call even on women to speak the truth. And they use other biblical verses because, of course, the Bible is huge and you can find support for anything in it. So they say, well, what Paul was talking about in that. And they understood this is by Paul. What Paul was talking about was for those specific women, not women in general. Or he was talking about times when there wasn't a crisis, but now there was this particular crisis. And so they use biblical stories like Balaam's Ass, that talked about, you know, Old Testament story and other situations. And they also then go back to sort of heroic women from the Bible, both Old and the New Testament, and say, well, look at Deborah, or look at these other, you know, other women who carried out heroic deeds and were modeling ourselves on them so that they did this. Sometimes a few of them, depending on their own situation, said, well, he was really talking about married women, and I'm not a married woman, and so I can speak. But most of the people who are doing these things are in fact married women. And they just say it's such a time of emergency, spiritual emergency, that even me, little old me. And they, of course, have this way of speaking of a kind of modesty topos and deferential topos, but even little old me, God can reach little old me, and I can speak despite these words of Timothy. And then the words get answered to them, and then they get in trouble for this. And they say this. And I think this also is there with kind of mystics and visionaries and prophets and the kind of women who come out of that tradition, which is that, yes, there is this. These words about women not speaking in. In public or not speaking in church, but there's this alternate source of authority that I have that come. Comes directly from God. And some of them are also very kind of legalistic. And they say, well, they're talking about preaching. I'm not preaching, I'm teaching. And that's different than preaching, you know, which is why many Protestant churches, certainly the one that I grew up in, had a pulpit and they had a lectern. And where did women speak from the lectern? Not from the pulpit? No.

[Professor Susanna Lipscomb]

That's very funny. I mean, this is also something that we find to an extent in Catholicism in the examples you give, because we've got several places, Ireland and France, for example, where fidelity to Catholicism is being led by lay women, isn't it?

[Listener/Participant]

Yeah. You mean today or then or both?

[Professor Susanna Lipscomb]

Oh, I mean, then, yeah.

[Listener/Participant]

I mean, today is also true. You know, it also is true. Yeah. And I think, again, this is something that has come out of recent scholarship that I want to kind of communicate to people in this. Within Catholicism, there are fantastic things that nuns are doing, and there's just wonderful scholarship about nuns. And I, you know, I'm. Nuns are all over the place, both physically all over the place and all over the place in my book. But then there's also, you know, other kinds of religious communities that women organize them, you know, that are not cloistered communities and that are engaged in different kinds of social service and teaching and such. And they travel all over the world to do this to Canada, the Philippines, to Macau and such. But then also lay women organize confraternities, religious confraternities devoted lay Catholic women, devoted to certain aspects, usually of devotion, that have particular resonance with them. That could be something having to do with the life of the Virgin Mary, or it could be devotion to the Sacred Heart, or it could be devotion to certain other kinds of things. And these are women's organizations that provide community and spiritual sustenance to people and are really. They become kind of the backbone of Catholicism. People who sort of study what goes on with the church in the French Revolution say it's, you know, that during the French Revolution, it's oftentimes these lay organizations, particularly lay organizations of women, that emerges kind of the strongest voices in support of Catholicism, which, of course, makes Catholicism seem worse to some people. Oh, it's a feminine thing. And all these women are. It's just nothing but priest and women, priests and women. Well, to some degree, yes. But that ends up being a strength. And I think, too, I tried to get there. What did the. These. We don't have women's organizations in general, in whatever century you are, tend to leave many fewer records than men's organizations do. Women don't think it important to write down what they're doing. So we have many fewer records of women's confraternities than we have men's confraternities. And partly also because many of the men's confraternities are related to ruling families and military orders and such like that. And they just wrote. Men just wrote down what they did more. So we don't try to kind of get at the spiritual life and the spiritual communities were of lay women is something that's harder. But Barbara Diefendorf and other people have really explored these well. And I think, again, to bring out that aspect of things, which I hope for readers that they say, okay, well, I'm not a nun or I'm not gonna. I'm not a mystic. What are the. What was an ordinary lay woman's life, religious life and religious ideas like in this period? And that's what I try to do as well, as much as you can. Yes.

[Professor Susanna Lipscomb]

And one of the ways in which women are influential who aren't teaching or preaching is through their example as mothers. I was especially struck by the example you give of Susanna Wesley. We all know the Wesleys, but Susanna Wesley, you know, putting her back in the story seemed important. Maybe you could recap that for people who might want to pick up the book.

[Listener/Participant]

Yeah. And I hope some Methodist will. I go, oh, what do you know? And I should also give a shout out. There's a wonderful. It's in the book. And there's a wonderful, brand new, with a chainsaw, a wonderful new statue of Susanna Wesley in one of the suburbs of London, carved in a churchyard out of a tall cypress drum that I find really very charming. It's a charming modern statue. And I should say that many of the women that I write about in the book, most of them have very few statues in their honor. I kind of got interested in that as I was writing this. Like, how do we understand and remember them today? And that's a new one. So it's a great statue and has. It's just a wonderful statue. Susanna Wesley was John and Charles Wesley's mother, which is how she's known, you know, the mother of Methodism. Well, she was way more than that in that she was her father, or her husband was a curate and was kind of a. I don't know. I don't like him very well. Luckily for her, I mean, she began to hold Bible sessions, Bible reading and Bible study sessions, first with her own children, of which she had 12, and then. Or some number like that might not be 12, but a lot. And then with her household, including the servants, and then her husband was gone to some kind of. He was a priest in the Church of England, and he had to go off to some synod or some meeting and was gone. And she began to open up these Bible studies that she was holding to more and more people on the Sunday afternoons. And many people came, like in the hundreds and the man who her husband had kind of left in charge of the church while he was gone got very angry because way more people came to her after Sunday afternoon sessions and came to hear Sunday morning things. And he wrote to her husband and said, well, you should stop her from doing this. She shouldn't be doing this. La la la. Yeah, he was just jealous, clearly. And her husband writes to her and says, oh, you should stop doing this. I don't want, you know, like stop doing this. And she writes this absolutely wonderful letter. She writes this letter to him and says, well, if you order me to stop doing this, I will because I am your wife and you are my husband and I will obey what you do because a wife obeys her husband. But if all you're doing is asking me, I won't. So it's this really great way of kind of handling the situation. And her husband comes back and says, I won't order you to do this, I won't order you to quit. So that she keeps on doing these things, doing, having these Bible studies. And again we think of it, it's a Bible study. I mean, how like non threatening can you get? But she's not preaching, she's just teaching from the Bible on Sunday afternoon, not in the church sanctuary. At these Bible studies were Charles and John. Charles was quite young, but John was of a young teen. And they're clearly very influenced by what she did. So she's not just the mother of Methodism because she is their mom, but she's the mother of Methodism in the sort of sense about that. An ordinary person, which is part of Methodism, an ordinary person can interpret the Bible on their own. The Bible itself is essential. Should kind of go back to this. And I think that. So she's a very, she's a fascinating person in that and kind of pushing the limits of being a deferential wife, but also saying no, you know, unless you order me to do this, I'm going to keep, I'm going to keep doing that. And so I find her again just to be a fascinating person. And John Wesley to his credit, talks a great deal about his mother as an important influence on him.

[Professor Susanna Lipscomb]

I suppose the extreme version of the courage that she showed in that letter is what we see demonstrated in those who became martyrs during this period. And you suggest that maybe a fifth of those who are martyred at this time are women. And in some instances it is possible to get at their thoughts and feelings. What sort of sources survive to give us that insight?

[Listener/Participant]

Well, most of the Sources are, you know, martyrologies and, you know, which are not directly from them. But there are many more women in the martyr, you know, in the kind of the standard martyrologies, the ones of people. John Fox's book Martyrs, the Martyrs mirror the large Dutch martyrology with thousands and thousands of people in it. So their stories are in those, but from women. Sometimes we have the records of the questioning that they undergo as part of being made a martyr. And particularly in the Anabaptist tradition, there are letters and there are hymns that are written about and in a few cases by the women, letters that we know that are from their hand. So we do have some original sources that provide us with women's voices, again, especially with Dutch Anabaptists. And these have been, over the last couple of decades, they've been kind of gotten out of the archives. They've been translated, they've been analyzed. So we know a lot about them. They're accessible to people in translation. You don't have to go back into Dutch archives. You can get them in a printed book, you know, of relatively inexpensive things. If you want to read them directly, we can see them. And that's, you know, I think music is a very interesting part of this because it was a very important part of the Protestant Reformation for radicals and for others as for the kind of Lutheran wing of the Reformation as well. So there are women hymn writers, some of whom aren't martyrs. And then there are these songs that martyrs sang. Music was really important to them. There are a couple of cases where, at least as the women tell it, they were discovered to be Anabaptists because they're singing Anabaptist hymns in a public place, and someone says, oh, she's singing this thing, that she must be an Anabaptist, a radical, and should therefore be arrested. So we have the questioning of them after they're arrested, their trial testimony, what they're saying there. It's filtered, of course, and you have to think about that. But some inkling of their words are there. And we do have direct letters from them, and we have these hymns about them and by them. So I think that there we could get some kind of remains of that. Some of them are, you know, Ann Askew, probably the martyr, in terms of your English listener, probably is the most famous martyr. She was executed at the very end of Henry VIII's reign. There is something there is understood to some degree as her Ch testimony. It's kind of iffy in terms of its origins, but it's usually read as kind of her voice that was smuggled out of England and to the continent and then printed shortly after she was executed. But there's trial testimony, you know, as with other kinds of trials in these various martyrdoms. And we have that.

[Don Wildman]

So.

[Listener/Participant]

And this is also true for inquisition trials that are in which converges to converted Jews and Muslims get swept up. And we have, we have that trial testimony as well so that we can read about women there using trial testimony. You have to use it carefully, but at least there's something there.

[Don Wildman]

In case you haven't heard, in the US It's a presidential election year. We're going to hear a lot of this is America. No, no, you're all wrong. This is America. But on American History hit. We're leaving that to the rest of them. Join me, Don Wildman, twice a week where we look to the past to understand the United States of today. With the help of some amazing guests, let us introduce you to the Founding Fathers, guide you through the west wing of the White House, and shelter you on the battlefields of years gone by. To find out just how we got here, American history hit a podcast from history hit.

[DJ Dramos]

Deep in the ocean, an orca pod is on the hunt. These aren't your average orcas. These guys are organized marketing team.

[Listener/Participant]

Did you get those social media posts scheduled for the seal migration?

[DJ Dramos]

Aye aye, Captain. We even have an automated notification for all pod managers when they go live. They use Monday.com to keep their teamwork sharp, their communication clear and their goals in sight. Monday.com or whatever you run, even orcas go to Monday.com to dive deeper.

[Professor Susanna Lipscomb]

There's one other category of women I'd like to ask you about in the time we've got, which is you uncover many wrenching examples of people for whom migration was involuntary, but you also include some who chose it, who went to act as missionaries or travelled with a view to converting others. Whose story would you like to tell us?

[Listener/Participant]

You know, I think I should. There's wonderful stories. And the book ends. This is why I wanted to go into the 18th century, because the book ends with Moravians. So the book starts with Isabel Castile and it ends with Moravians. And almost last person in the book is a woman named Rebecca Pratton, who was an enslaved woman from the Caribbean who gets converts to being a Moravian, is freed, then ends up marrying a Moravian missionary. A white Moravian missionary from Europe comes back to Europe, her husband dies and she marries again to an African man and then travels to Africa. So she kind of inadvertently acts as a missionary, does act as a missionary kind of in the Moravians. And the Moravians are a group in which there are a fair number of women missionaries who either worked alone or worked alongside their husbands. But also in that they're also, I think, probably, you know, so Rebecca Proton is certainly someone who traveled the world and became part of kind of the global Reformation, but so do nuns. And I really have to say that there's been such fabulous scholarship over the last 30 years about nuns who just. We used to sort of think of it as all those poor pathetic people who are stuck behind convent walls and can't get out. Oh, you know, they're very, very kind of demeaning view of them. Yeah, maybe. But they also are not poor, pathetic people stuck behind comment walls. They travel all the prison. And Sarah Owens has just has discovered a whole group of nuns, wonderful nuns, who leave Spain. Some of them were actually quite elderly when they do, they're in their 60s, they leave Spain, cross the Atlantic, cross over Mexico, which they have to do by mule, back, at which point they come to where the version of Guadalupe shrine is and talk to indigenous Christian women who are taking care of the shrine of the version of Guadalupe. So they're really early on, early 17th century, what you have are European nuns talking to indigenous women about how they understand the version of Guadalupe who becomes like the most important religious shrine there is. Well, then that's not far enough. So then they go across the Pacific, end up in the Philippines, and that's not far enough. So a group of them go to Macau and set up a convent there. They get chucked out of Macau because they're Spanish and the Portuguese don't like them, get shipwrecked on the way home, end up in Vietnam where they get taken into the royal household. So to me, this is like the tempest bit real, you know, and to think about what it would be like for a woman who may have grown up in a convent and be sent to a convent when she was four or five in Spain to suddenly end up, you know, like end up at a beach in Vietnam, shipwrecked. That's her life. Because she has understood what she's going to do is set up condos in these places. This is, again, this is getting back to your very first question. This is, yes, of course, these women are encouraged to do by the missionary movements of the Catholic Reformation, but they just go do it. And so I think that that's the kind of story that I think is really a great story.

[Professor Susanna Lipscomb]

Absolutely. So to sum up then, how in Summary, does putting women back at the center of the Reformations shift our whole sense of this period or how should it.

[Listener/Participant]

Well, I mean, the Reformation, as you said, is sort of in your intuitive. This. The Reformation has been understood to be, first of all, when people say that, what they're really talking about is Protestants in the kind of general view of things, not about Catholic, and they're really sort of talking about Martin Luther. That's what there's, you know, he just is the person that jumps to mind. He's the one that has Playmobil dolls and bobbleheads and such like that. So it's a very male. It's a very European. It's really understood to be kind of a Protestant movement. So it's a very narrow, the kind of traditional view of this is a very narrow view. And what I think that putting women and putting women from all over the world and putting Catholic women in the middle of it says is that it's not, it's not as narrow as that. It didn't end in the middle of the 16th century, and its reverberations are around us as we speak today. Wasn't simply something that was happening in Europe. It shapes the way that colonialism develops from the 16th century onto today. And it's something in which, again partly because of the fact of, as we talked earlier about the centrality of marriage in the Reformation, you know, that if you put women in it and you put women from around the world and you put Catholics as well as Protestant women in it, what you see is that these religious transformations are not something that are just sort of cooked up by the mind of a guy that's sitting in a monastery in Wittenberg. They're something that. In which lots of people are really creating new kinds of ways of thinking, including women. Unsurprising. And sometimes including even children. I mean, one of the things that struck me, and I end up talking a little bit about in the introduction, is how this is really women and girls as we would understand them now, how young, not only monarchs, who of course get thrust to being the queen when they're age 4 or whatever, but how really young some of these martyrs are. 13, 14 years old, girls leave, some migrants, girls are forced out, or they choose to go and they move and they're moving with their families, or they're just taking their younger children on their own so that there are, there are lots of sort of teenagers and even younger than that, mystical movements, many of them, both Protestant and Catholic mystical movements, the Moravians kind of get started when a group of children begin to see visions. Lots of the people in the Mystics chapter began to see visions when they're girls. So I think that's another thing that really it's women and girls who in some cases inspire people around them to do what they do well.

[Professor Susanna Lipscomb]

Thank you for this wonderful introduction and those who want to know more must pick up a copy of Women and the A Global History, which has so many more brilliant stories and quotes from the women themselves, often in ways that are deeply moving. So I highly recommend it to my listeners. Mary Wiesner Hanks, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It's been a pleasure.

[Listener/Participant]

Yeah, it's been just great fun. Thanks for that.

[Professor Susanna Lipscomb]

Thank you for listening to this episode of Not Just the Tudors from History Hit. And also thank you to my researcher Alice Smith and my producer Rob Weinberg. If you enjoyed this episode, you'll probably enjoy one we made called How Catherine Parr Championed the Reformation, as well as another titled the End of the Monasteries, which was very eye opening. And one of our most popular episodes, women's work in 17th century London, is also well worth revisiting. The links are in the show notes for this episode. We're always eager to hear from you, including receiving your brilliant ideas for subjects we can cover. So do drop us a [e-mail] or on X, formerly Twitter otjusttutors. Remember, you can also listen to all of these podcasts on YouTube and watch hundreds of documentaries when you [e-mail] subscribe it is well worth it. And as a special gift, you can also get 50% off your first three months when you use the Code Tudors at checkout. That's historyhit.com subscribe with the code Tudors and if you'd be so good as to follow Not Just the Tudors. Wherever you get your podcasts, you'll get each new episode as soon as it's released.

[Mary Wiesner Hanks]

Do you ever wonder where your favorite foods come from? Like, what's the history behind bacon wrapped hot dogs?

[Listener/Participant]

Hi, I'm Eva Longoria. Hi, I'm Maite Gomez Rejon.

[Mary Wiesner Hanks]

Our podcast Hungry for History is back.

[Listener/Participant]

And this season we're taking an even.

[Mary Wiesner Hanks]

Bigger bite out of the most delicious food and its history, seeing that the most popular cocktail is the margarita, followed.

[Listener/Participant]

By the mojito from Cuba and the pina colada from Puerto Rico.

[Mary Wiesner Hanks]

Listen to Hungry for history on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.