Church Mother: The Writings of a Protestant Reformer in Sixteenth-Century Germany (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Church Mother: The Writings of a Protestant Reformer in Sixteenth-Century Germany Sybil M. Jack Zell, Katharina Schütz, Church Mother: The Writings of a Protestant Reformer in Sixteenth-Century Germany, ed. and Trans. Elsie McKee (The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe), Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2006; paperback; pp. xxix, 267; RRP US$22.00; ISBN 0226979679. The series, the 'Other Voice', starts from the premise that women's voices first emerged in the fourteenth century against a background of a male voice that had alone created the culture of Europe from the days of the Greeks onwards. This thesis is presented in the series editors' introduction that appears in all the volumes. It may surprise those who have studied such notable figures as Hildegard of Bingen but the understanding is evidently accepted by Elsie McKee who here provides a useful collection of documents to illustrate the life of Katharina Schütz Zell whose biography she published in 1999. McKee presents Zell as one of the most appealing women of sixteenth-century Europe and marks her as quite unusual in having been an equal partner in her marriage and a lay reformer who wrote and published texts on many aspects of religious life, challenging 'both male theologians and cultural conventions' (p. 1). Again, the last three decades of scholarship have certainly nuanced the traditional ideas of non-aristocratic women as meek, subservient and silent in public and the long tradition of women's charitable work might also be acknowledged, but Zell was a forceful and interesting representative of strong-minded religious women. In an earlier age she would probably have become a formidable abbess. In her autobiography, written in her widowhood as part of a religious controversy, Zell provides a description of her marriage that sheds important light on her understanding of the role of the woman in the union and on the generosity of a religious person towards their spouse. The insights that her writing provide are [End Page 228] valuable even where they may not precisely match the claims that McKee makes for them. These texts are McKee's translation of the original German that she published in volume two of her biography (1999). She provides a brief introductory setting for each text, such as her first public text the 'letter to the suffering women of the community of Kentzingen'. Here she speaks of Zell's 'personal appropriation of scripture', an interpretation that may exaggerate what appears to be a standard use of biblical texts. McKee's reconstruction of the way in which Zell was written out of mainstream accounts of the Reformation is interesting as is her brief account of the changing emphasis amongst the pastors of the various protestant churches as they moved from first to second generation and the bitter infighting that developed as interpretations of scripture and ideas of the proper structure of the visible church on earth diverged. The availability of the texts in translation will be an important resource for scholars of the period. McKee has certainly restored Zell to the place in history that she deserves. Sybil M. Jack Sydney Copyright © 2007 the author