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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 September 2010
This article explores the ministry of service and love of neighbour exercised by Katharina Schutz Zell, wife of the Strasbourg Reformer Matthias Zell, focusing on Schutz Zell's theological justification for her ministry and her attempts to help those around her to understand their suffering in terms of the Gospel. Following Luther, Schutz Zell saw love of neighbour as an important means of spreading the Gospel, and thus as private activity, but as public ministry. Her work exemplifies, and may have served as a model for, the role of (female) deacon as defined by the Reformed tradition.
1 Katharina Schütz Zell, ‘Den Psalmen Miserere (Meditations on Psalms and Lord's Prayer)’, in Elsie Ann McKee, Katharina Schütz Zell, II: The writings: a critical edition, Leiden 1999, 312; English translation in ‘The Miserere Psalm meditated, prayed, and paraphrased … by Katharina Zell’, in Katharina Schütz Zell, Church mother: the writings of a Protestant Reformer in sixteenth-century Germany, ed. and trans. Elsie McKee, Chicago–London 2006, 132. Schütz Zell's writings will be cited giving the title and page number from Writings, followed where it exists by a reference to McKee's English translation (Church mother) in brackets. My English translation of the German does not, however, always accord exactly with that given in Church mother.
2 ‘Den Psalmen Miserere’, Writings, 310 (Church mother, 129).
3 For the life of Katharina Schütz Zell see Elsie Anne McKee, Katharina Schütz Zell, I: The life and work of a sixteenth-century Reformer, Leiden 1999, and ‘Volume editor's introduction’, Church mother, 1–33. Jung, Compare also Martin, ‘Katharina Zell geb. Schütz (1497/98–1562): eine “Laientheologin” der Reformationszeit?’, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte cvii (1996), 145–78Google Scholar, and Kaufmann, Thomas, ‘Pfarrfrau und Publizistin: das reformatorische “Amt” der Katharina Zell’, Zeitschrift für historische Forschung xxiii (1996), 169–218Google Scholar. See also Ruth Albrecht, ‘Wer war Katharina Zell?’, and Anne Conrad, ‘Ein männisch Abrahamisch Gemuet: Katharina Zell im Kontext der Strassburger Reformationsgeschichte’, in Heide Wunder and Gisela Engel (eds), Geschlechterperspektiven: Forschungen zur Frühen Neuzeit, Königstein–Taunus 1998, 135–44, 120–34; Gabriele Jancke, ‘Prophetin – Pfarrfrau – Publizistin: die Strassburger ‘Kirchenmutter’ Katharina Zell', in Frauen mischen sich ein, Wittenberg 1995, 55–81, and ‘Die Kirche als Haushalt und die Leitungsrolle der Kirchenmutter’, in Wunder and Engel, Geschlechterperspektiven, 145–55; and Gerald Hobbs, ‘Le Cri d'une pierre: la prédication de Katharina Schütz-Zell dans son contexte religieux’, in Matthieu Arnold (ed.), Autour du 500e anniversaire de Catherine Schütz-Zell (1498–1562): paroles féminines, discours sur les femmes dans le protestantisme (XVIe–XVIIe siècles), Paris 1999, 107–25.
A complete bibliography of Schütz Zell's writings has been compiled by Marc Lienhard: ‘Catherine Zell née Schütz’, in André Séguenny (ed.), Bibliotheca dissidentium: répertoire des non-conformatistes religieux des seizième et dix-septième siècles, Baden-Baden 1980, 97–125. Her writings are collected and edited in McKee, Katharina Schütz Zell, ii, with the exception of two letters published in Otto Winckelmann, Das Fürsorgewesen der Stadt Strassburg, Leipzig 1922 (facsimile reprint in one volume New York–London 1971), ii. 72–7.
4 See Writings, 55–7. The hymns appeared between 1534 and 1536 in a series of four pamphlets.
5 The more usual English translation ‘peasants' war’ tends to disguise the fact that many of those involved in the Bauernkrieg were independent farmers.
6 For an account of the conflict see McKee, Katharina Schütz Zell, i. 151–5. Katharina Schütz Zell's letter provides a fascinating account of the early Reformation in Strasbourg.
7 Ibid. i. 222–4.
8 The German term Amt has connotations both of exercising a particular ministry and of holding a specific office.
9 For the Schütz family see ibid. i. 4–7.
10 It is not clear whether this craft was intended to enable her to earn money or was simply one of the traditions of her family: ibid. i. 12–3.
11 Carolin Zeiher argues, however, that Katharina Schütz Zell's ‘Ein brieff an die gantze Burgerschafft der Statt Strassburg’ is structured as a classical legal speech, and that Katharina must have benefited from some training in rhetoric, or at least from having studied Sturm's manual of rhetoric, and that she made good use of her knowledge of preaching: ‘Vom christlichen Umgang miteinander: Rhetorik und Polemik in Katharina Zells Schrift “Ein Brieff an die gantze Burgerschafft der Statt Strassburg”’, in Britt-Marie Schuster und Ute Schwarz (eds), Kommunikationspraxis und ihre Reflexion in frühneuhochdeutscher und neuhochdeutscher Zeit: Festschrift für Monika Rossing-Hager zum 65. Geburtstag, Hildesheim 1998, 135–56; cf. Andrea Christmann, ‘Autorinnen der Frühen Neuzeit: Katharina Schütz-Zell und Caritas Pirckheimer’, unpubl. diss. Mannheim 2004, 105–10, who offers an analysis of the rhetorical structures of Schütz Zell's writings.
12 Katharina Schütz Zell, ‘Ein Brieff an die gantze Bürgerschafft der Statt Strasburg’ (the Rabus correspondence), Writings, 221 (this section of the letter is not included in the English translation). For her education see McKee, Katharina Schütz Zell, i. 7–12. There is an interesting parallel here to Peter Martyr Vermigli's argument that Paul's lack of rhetorical polish in his commentary to the Romans reflects his passion for the truth of Christ: Charlotte Methuen, ‘Oxford: reading Scripture in the university’, in Torrance Kirby, Emidio Campi and Frank James iii (eds), A companion to Peter Martyr Vermigli, Leiden 2009, 86–7.
13 McKee, Katharina Schütz Zell, i. 13.
14 ‘Ein Brieff’, Writings, 170 (Church mother, 226); cf. McKee, Katharina Schütz Zell, i. 13–14.
15 McKee, Katharina Schütz Zell, i. 15–16, 27.
16 Ibid. i. 14–15.
17 ‘Ein Brieff’, Writings, 170–1 (Church mother, 226), note 17. Here and elsewhere, the word translated ‘distress’ is the German term ‘Anfechtung’ famously used by Luther in describing his own path to the reformation breakthrough.
18 Katharina Schütz Zell, ‘Letter to Caspar Schwenkfeld, 19 October 1553’ (treatise-letter, 1553), Writings, 145 (Church mother, 207).
19 Matthias Zell, ‘Christeliche verantwortung’, cited according to McKee, Katharina Schütz Zell, i. 34 n. 15. On the Reformation in Strasbourg see, amongst many others. Laura Jane Abray, The people's Reformation: magistrates, clergy, and commons in Strassburg, 1500–1598, Oxford 1985; Thomas A. Brady, Jr. Ruling class, regime and Reformation at Strasbourg, Leiden 1978; James Kittelson, Toward an established Church: Strasbourg from 1500 to the dawn of the seventeenth century, Mainz 2000; and William S. Stafford, Domesticating the clergy: the inception of the Reformation in Strasbourg, 1522–1524, Missoula, Mo 1976.
20 ‘Ein Brieff’, Writings, 171 (Church mother, 226–7).
21 Cf. McKee, Katharina Schütz Zell, ii. 171 n. 21.
22 François Wendel, Le Mariage à Strasbourg à l'époque de la réforme, Strasbourg 1928, 23–6; cf. Chrisman, Miriam U., ‘Women and the Reformation in Strasbourg, 1490–1530’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte lxiii (1972), 143–68Google Scholar at p. 147.
23 Chrisman, ‘Women and the Reformation’, 147.
24 Martin Greschat, Martin Bucer: ein Reformator und seine Zeit, 1491–1551, Munich 1990, 52–3. For Elisabeth's life see Doris Ebert, Elisabeth Silbereisen, Bürgertochter – Klosterfrau – Ehefrau des Reformators Martin Bucer: Familie und Lebensstationen, Kraichgau 2000.
25 Greschat, Martin Bucer, 54–8.
26 Ibid. 52–3, 67–8; cf. Chrisman, ‘Women and the Reformation’, 148–9.
27 McKee, Katharina Schütz Zell, i. 47–8; cf. Chrisman, ‘Women and the Reformation’, 150–1.
28 It is clear that although priests were required to be celibate, many communities accepted such relationships and the children who were born within them. Erasmus is one of the most famous sons of such a relationship.
29 Katharina Schütz Zell, ‘Entschuldigung Katharina Schützinn/für M. matthias Zellen/jren Eegemahel’ (An apologia for Matthias Zell), Writings, 23–5 (Church mother, 64–5). For the contradiction of these rumours see Writings, 41–3 (Church mother, 78–9).
30 Ibid. Writings, 39–40 (Church mother, 77).
31 ‘Ein Brieff’, Writings, 231.
32 Ibid. 232.
33 For the flood of refugees into Strasbourg see Miriam Usher Chrisman, ‘Urban poor in the sixteenth century: the case of Strasbourg’, in Miriam Usher Chrisman and Otto Gründler (eds), Social groups and religious ideas in the sixteenth century, Kalamazoo 1978, 59–67 at pp. 59–60.
34 ‘Ein Brieff’, Writings, 233. For her hospitality to refugees from Kentzingen see text to n. 56 below.
35 ‘Ein Brieff’, Writings, 169 (Church mother, 225).
36 McKee, Katharina Schütz Zell, ii. 169 n. 9.
37 For the reform of Strasbourg's poor law see Winckelmann, Fürsorgewesen, i. 75–87. Even before the Reformation, Geiler von Kaysersberg had encouraged the city to begin reforming its provision for the poor and sick, and as a consequence the city council took over the burden of responsibility from the Church (ibid. i. 72–5); cf. Chrisman, ‘Urban poor’, 60–1, and Carter Lindberg, Beyond charity: Reformation initiatives for the poor, Minneapolis 1993, 137–9.
38 ‘Ein Brieff’, Writings, 233–4.
39 See McKee, Katharina Schütz Zell, i. 67–8; ii. 234 n. 238; cf. Winckelmann, Fürsorgewesen, i. 99–104, and, for extracts from the registers and correspondence, ii. 242–5.
40 McKee, Katharina Schütz Zell, ii. 234 n. 238.
41 Ibid. i. 188–93; Winckelmann, Fürsorgewesen, i. 173–6. For Schütz Zell's letters and her suggestions for improvements see Winckelmann, Fürsorgewesen, ii. 72–7.
42 Katharina Schütz Zell, ‘Klag red und ermahnung Catherina Zellin zum volk bey dem Grab m: Mattheus Zellen’ (Lament and exhortation at the burial of Matthias Zell), Writings, 73–4 (Church mother, 106). ‘Hülffer’, here translated ‘assistant’, may also mean ‘helper’, but in this context is surely intended to have the connotation of an assistant minister.
43 ‘Ein Brieff’, Writings, 231–2.
44 Christmann, ‘Autorinnen der Frühen Neuzeit’, 29.
45 ‘Letter to Schwenkfeld’, Writings, 127 (Church mother, 191).
46 ‘Ein Brieff’, Writings, 169 (Church mother, 224).
47 Ibid.
48 Ibid.
49 Ibid. 220.
50 See, for instance, McKee, Katharina Schütz Zell, i. 105.
51 John Calvin, Institutes of Christian religion, iv.3.9. For a more detailed discussion see Charlotte Methuen ‘Juniam – nomen viri est: early-modern readings of Paul's greetings to the Roman Church’, in Christine Joynes and Christopher Rowland (eds), From the margins, II: Women of the New Testament and their afterlives, Sheffield 2009, 294–300.
52 Peter Martyr Vermigli, In epistolam S. Pauli Apostoli ad Romanos … commentarii doctissimi, Basle 1558, 640; cf. the contemporary English translation: Most learned and fruitfull commentaries of D. Peter Martir Vermilius Florentine, professor of diuinitie in the schole of Tigure, vpon the Epistle of S. Paul to the Romanes, 2nd edn, London 1564 (RSTC 24670), fo. 453v. Calvin associates the role of Phoebe, ministra at Cenchrae, with that of the widows in 1 Timothy v: Commentarius in epistolam Pauli ad Romanos, ed. T. H. L. Parker, Leiden 1981, 322, as discussed in Methuen, ‘Juniam – nomen viri est’.
53 Vermigli, In epistolam S. Pauli Apostoli ad Romanos (1558), 640.
54 Luther, Martin, ‘Ein Sermon von dem hochwürdigen Sakrament des heiligen wahren Leichnams Christi und von den Brüderschaften’, WA ii. 745Google Scholar, 754.
55 Luther, Martin ‘Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen’, WA vii. 36Google Scholar. For Luther's understanding of love of neighbour and its relationship to diaconal ministry see Gerta Scharffenorth, Den Glauben ins Leben ziehen …: Studien zu Luthers Theologie, Munich 1982, esp. pp. 111–16; cf. Peter Gierra, ‘Luthers reformatorische Erkenntnis als Anstoss zum Aufbau der Armenfürsorge’, in Peter Gierra (ed.), Impulse zur Diakonie in der Lutherstadt Wittenberg, Berlin 1983, 5–15.
56 See McKee, Katharina Schütz Zell, i. 56–8; ii. 1–2.
57 ‘Ein Brieff’, Writings, 233.
58 McKee, Katharina Schütz Zell, ii. 2.
59 Katharina Schütz Zell, ‘Den leydenen Christglaubigen weyberen der gmein zoe Kentzingen’ (Letter to the women of Kentzingen), Writings, 4 (Church mother, 50).
60 Ibid. Writings, 6 (Church mother, 51).
61 Ibid.
62 Ibid.
63 Ibid. Writings, 7 (Church mother, 52).
64 Ibid. Writings, 4 (Church mother, 50).
65 Ibid. Writings, 11 (Church mother, 54–5).
66 Ibid. Writings, 12 (Church mother, 56).
67 Katharina Schütz Zell, ‘Christliche und trostliche Lobgesaeng’ (An edition of the Bohemian brethren hymnbook), Writings, 59 (Church mother, 93).
68 Ibid. Writings, 60 (Church mother, 93–4).
69 Ibid. Writings, 62 (Church mother, 95).
70 Ibid. Writings, 61 (Church mother, 95).
71 Ibid. Writings, 63 (Church mother, 95–6).
72 Erasmus, Preface to the New Testament, in Desiderii Erasmi Operum omnium, Hildesheim 1967 (facsimile reproduction of Meisenheim 1703), vi. *3v.
73 Luther, Martin, ‘Vom ehelichen Leben’, WA x/2, 295–6Google Scholar. Luther also asserts that God would not be displeased if men cared for their children in this way (pp. 296–7).
74 Idem, ‘Das Magnificat Vorteutschet und aussgelegt’, WA vii. 554–5.
75 Martin Bucer offers similar sentiments to those of Schütz Zell in his own preface to Strasbourg's Protestant hymnbook published in 1541: people should sing Psalms and ‘gotselige Lieder [blessed songs]’ rather than ‘uppige teufelische verderbliche gesang [terrible, devilish, ruinous singing]’: ‘Vorrede zum Strassburger Gesangbuch’, BDS vii. 579–80.
76 Schütz Zell, ‘Den Psalmen Miserere’, Writings, 343–4 (Church mother, 153). The imagery used here is closely related to images of Jesus as mother familiar from medieval mysticism, and particularly in the writings of Margarete Ebner and Heinrich Seuse, both whom were well known in the Strasbourg area during the fourteenth century. See Caroline Walker Bynum, Jesus as mother: studies in the spirituality in the high Middle Ages, Berkeley 1982.
77 Schütz Zell, ‘Den Psalmen Miserere’, Writings, 346 (Church mother, 155). Here Schütz Zell repeats words that she had written to the women of Kentzingen.
78 Ibid. Writings, 354 (Church mother, 162).
79 Ibid. Writings, 355 (Church mother, 164).
80 Ibid. Writings, 357 (Church mother, 166). For Katharina Schütz Zell, partaking in the community of suffering was an important measure of the true follower of Christ. She was unhappy about excluding those who had suffered, such as the Anabaptists. See ‘Ein Brieff’, Writings, 209.
81 ‘Den Psalmen Miserere’, Writings, 358 (Church mother, 166–7).
82 Ibid. Writings, 361 (Church mother, 168).
83 Ibid. Writings, 362–3 (Church mother, 171–2).
84 Ibid. Writings, 312 (Church mother, 132).
85 ‘Ein Brieff’, Writings, 254–5; cf. 210–13; compare Luther, Martin, ‘Ein sermon von dem hochwürdigen Sakrament des heiligen wahren Leichnams Christi und von den Brüdershaften’, WA ii, esp. pp. 743–5Google Scholar. Katharina Schütz Zell refers in particular to the welcome and toleration offered by the city of Strasbourg to strangers or foreigners, regardless of their beliefs, and despite the fact that these beliefs might have been condemned by the others. These had included Anabaptists, Schwenkfeldians and other Spiritualists. She remembers such tolerance as a particular characteristic of her husband's preaching: ‘he did not, with deathly hate, turn any upright person who honoured, loved or taught Christ into an enemy; he did not reproach such a person and seek to bring him into the hands of the magistracy and hangman, as you do’: ‘Letter to Schwenkfeld’, Writings, 136 (Church mother, 198). See also Abray, People's Reformation, 174. For an opposing interpretation, questioning the tolerance of Strasbourg's early Reformation see Kittelson, Established Church.
86 ‘Letter to Schwenkfeld’, Writings, 146 (Church mother, 208).
87 Ibid.
88 Ole Peter Grell and Andrew Cunningham, ‘The Reformation and changes in welfare provision in early modern Northern Europe’, in Ole Peter Grell and Andrew Cunningham (eds), Health care and poor relief in Protestant Europe, 1500–1700, London 1997, 1–42 at p. 17; cf. Ole Peter Grell, ‘The Protestant imperative of Christian care and neighbourly love’, ibid. 43–65, and Robert Stupperich, ‘Bruderdienst und Nächstenhilfe in der deutschen Reformation’, in Herbert Krimm (ed.), Das diakonische Amt der Kirche, 2nd edn, Stuttgart 1965, 167–96.
89 René Bornert, La Réforme protestante du culte à Strasbourg au XVIe siècle (1523–1598): approche sociologique et interprétation théologique, Leiden 1981, 37.
90 See, for instance, Abray, People's Reformation, 179–81.
91 Bucer, Martin, ‘Von der wahrer Seelsorge’, BDS vii. 114Google Scholar.
92 For Katharina Schütz Zell's defence of her authority to speak see Hobbs, ‘Le Cri d'une pierre’.
93 ‘Letter to Schwenkfeld’, Writings, 127 (Church mother, 191).
94 Ursula von Münsterberg, who had fled from her convent after reading Luther's On the freedom of a Christian, wrote a treatise in defence of her decision, in which she raised similar questions about how she, as a woman, might preach the Gospel of Christ: ‘Christlich vrsach des verlassenen Klosters zů Freyberg’, ed. and trans. Merry Wiesner-Hanks in Convents confront the Reformation: Catholic and Protestant nuns in Germany, Milwaukee 1996, 40–63. Argula von Grumbach wrote in defence of the Reformation in Ingolstadt: Peter Matheson, Argula von Grumbach: a woman's voice in the Reformation, Edinburgh 1995. The abbess Caritas Pirckheimer demonstrates considerable theological expertise in her protests against the introduction of the Reformation in Nuremberg: A journal of the Reformation years, 1524–1528, ed. and trans. Paul A. MacKenzie, Woodbridge 2006; cf. Barker, Paula S. Datsko, ‘Caritas Pirckheimer: a female humanist confronts the Reformation’, Sixteenth Century Journal xxvi (1995), 259–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
95 For instance, Bucer's wife Elisabeth bore him thirteen children in twenty years. She clearly cannot have had much time for any thing but the care of her children, but that did not mean that she had no time to think. After her death, Bucer married Wibrandis Rosenblatt, who had previously been married three times: first to the humanist, Ludwig Cellarius and thereafter to the reformers Johannes Oecolampadius and Wolfgang Capito. Writing to Ambrosius Blarer after his second marriage, Bucer mentions that he misses Elizabeth's critical interventions, which had always been of help to him. As Christmann observes, Elizabeth might not have had time for writing, but she had clearly contributed to Bucer's thinking about and planning of the Reformation: ‘Autorinnen der Frühen Neuzeit’, 33.
96 For the metaphor of the city as an expanded, public household see Jancke, ‘Kirche als Haushalt’.