In the whole network of Lutheran clergymen I have been unpicking this year, three separate lineages lead back to clergymen who were contemporaries of Martin Luther. Peter Siegel studied with Luther, the other two may or may not have met him. In the case of Johannes Andreae senior we know that his son, Johannes junior, studied at Wittenberg in the 1550s (after Luther died) and worked as Melanchthon's assistant. Obviously this could have been facilitated if his dad already had a connection to Wittenberg.
Church historians have recorded the employment histories of these clergymen, which enabled me to write their CVs, but the women of the time only appear on the record if they marry another priest. This is unfortunate, because the novelty of clergymen having wives and children, setting the image of a "model family" was arguably a major factor in the spread of the Reformation and the emergence of a new educated middle class. The culture of the Pfarrhaus family was in many cases handed down in matrilinear succession, i.e. vicars' daughters became vicars' wives - but where do the matrilines start? In this context, a comment under this blog post drew my attention to the nuns who escaped from convents after hearing of Luther's Reformation.
In the most famous case, 12 nuns left the convent of Nimbschen (Marienthron) in 1523. Only three were accepted back by their families, the other nine took refuge at Wittenberg under Luther's protection. He ended up finding husbands for all of them except for Katharina von Bora, who then suggested marriage to him.
Ruins of the convent of Nimbschen.
Source: Wikipedia: Von Dguendel - Eigenes Werk, CC BY 3.0
As we know virtually nothing of the wives of our protestant priests in the time of the Reformation, there is the intriguing possibility that there might be an escapee nun among them too. So I tried to find the names of the nine nuns of the first group (other breakouts followed later), but haven't found all of them yet. Here's my list in case anybody knows more than I do:
Katharina von Bora first lodged with the family of Lucas Cranach and then married Martin Luther. Her aunt Magdalena von Bora later also left the convent to join the Luther household. Katharina and Luther had three daughters and three sons. Two of the daughters died young. Descendants of the surviving children are listed eg in GedBas.
Ave von Schönfeld married the physician Basilius Axt. They had three sons and a daughter. The daughter married the Lithuanian writer and Reformator Stanislovas Rapolionis. In a letter, Luther later admits that if he had been inclined to pick a wife for himself out of the nine refugees he would have chosen Ave.
Margaretha von Schönfeld (Ave's sister)
Magdalena von Staupitz married Tiburtius Geuder and settled at Grimma, where she became the teacher of the town's first elementary school for girls. The couple didn't have any children.
So that's four out of nine.
While I'm rounding up women of the Reformation, other women mentioned in Katharina's biography (by Lisbeth Haase) include:
Katharina Schütz, wife of Matthäus Zell, priest at Strasbourg. The couple visited the Luthers at Wittenberg in the 1530s.
Argula von Grumbach (nee von Stauff) championed the Reformation at the expense of her wealth and status, met Martin Luther at Coburg in 1530, from where he followed the developments at the Reichstag of the Augsburg.
Elisabeth Cruciger (nee von Meseritz) escaped from a convent in Pomerania to follow a priest Johannes Bugenhagen who moved from there to Wittenberg. Married one of his disciples, had a son and a daughter. Famous as a poet and hymnwriter.
The book by Sonja Domröse: Frauen der Reformationszeit, Gelehrt, mutig und glaubensfest. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-525-55012-0 (which I haven't got) includes biographies of:
Elisabeth von Braunschweig-Calenberg-Göttingen, Ursula Weyda, Wibrandis Rosenblatt, Olympia Fulvia Morata, Ursula von Münsterberg (another runaway nun, from a Freiberg convent) as well as the above-named Katharina Zell, Elisabeth Cruciger, Argula von Grumbach,
There is also a list of women of the Reformation in the German edition of Wikipedia.
My famlily history index pages: people -- surnames -- places -- migration events
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