SYMHC Classics: 3 Reformation Women Classic

This 2017 episode covers Katharina von Bora, Marguerite d’Angoulême and Jeanne d’Albret, who all left their mark on the Reformation, but all in different ways. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday. Jean Dalbray, Queen of Navarre, was born on
November sixteenth, fifteen twenty eight, so four hundred ninety six
years ago today. She is one of three women we
talk about in Today's Saturday Classic, which is on three
women of the Protestant Reformation. This episode originally came out

(00:23):
on November one, twenty seventeen. Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You
Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and
welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy D. Wilson and I'm

(00:43):
Holly Frye. As you may know, this podcast is initially
being published on November first, twenty seventeen, so that's the
day after the five hundredth anniversary of Martin Luther famously
posting his ninety five THECS, which is more formally known
as Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences at

(01:04):
the door of Wittenberg Castle Church. So there's some historical
debate over the details of this. Martin Luther probably didn't
defiantly nail them up there as a lot of people imagine,
and it might not have even happened at all, although
these cecees were basically points he planned to discuss at
a public disputation, so it would have been customary for

(01:25):
him to post them there ahead of time. Regardless of
all that detail, though, October thirty first, fifteen seventeen has
come to be marked as the beginning of the Protestant Reformation,
which was the religious and social and political schism that
ultimately led to centuries of war and upheaval and religious
persecution and the Catholic counter Reformation and the rise of

(01:48):
seemingly countless Protestant denominations of Christianity. So obviously that was
a big moment in history. Consequently, we've gotten a lot
of requests for a Reformation episode, including from Sarah Maney
Boris and Josh, and a recent note from Rachel was
what finally sparked today's show. Rachel sent us a quick
email suggesting that we focus on some of the women

(02:10):
involved in the Reformation. I was originally planning to focus
on just one, but I kept stumbling onto other tidbits
from other women's stories, so I've decided to make this
episode into one that focuses on three. Alrighty, We're gonna
start with Katerina von Bora, also known as Catherine. She

(02:31):
was the former nun who in June of fifteen twenty
five married former monk Martin Luther when she was twenty
five and he was forty one. Von Borrow was born
around fourteen ninety nine, although there aren't clear records of
exactly when or where. In fifteen oh four her family
sent her to the Benedictine cloister at Breda to be educated.

(02:52):
Then in fifteen oh eight she moved to a Cistercian
monastery at Nemshen, where her aunt also lived, and that
is where she eventually became a nun. Von Bora didn't
really like her life as a nun, though, but being
educated in a convent meant that she knew how to read,
and she and some of the other women living there
managed to get access to the writings of Martin Luther

(03:14):
as well as other reformers. This material was almost certainly
banned behind monastic walls, so bringing it in and keeping
it relatively secret would have taken some gumption. In fifteen
twenty three, Von Bora and several other women in her
monastery contacted Martin Luther to ask him for help in escaping.

(03:34):
This was both dangerous and illegal. It was against Roman
Catholic law for a person who abandon their religious vows,
and people who were caught could be imprisoned. Helping someone
escape was also illegal, as was harboring or sheltering someone
who had, but Luther agreed to help. On April fourth,
fifteen twenty three, which was Easter Eve, a merchant smuggled

(03:57):
Katerina and eleven other women out of the convent in
a cart normally used to deliver herring. According to some sources,
she got out while hiding in a fish barrel. It's
actually more likely that they were under the coverings used
to cover the fish barrels, but I like the the
barrel was not a delightful smelling ride. Probably not. Katerina

(04:21):
and nine of the other women were taken to Vittenberg,
where they met Martin Luther, and he started trying to
reunite them with their families. When their families weren't willing
to take them back, Luther started trying to find husbands
for them, and he got some kind of situation in
place for everybody except von Bora pretty quickly. She fell
in love with one of Luther's students, but his family

(04:43):
refused to allow their marriage. For a year, After that
relationship fell through, Von Bora refused every option that was
presented to her. She steadfastly maintained that she would only
marry someone worthy of her and of her choosing. She's
not going to cut it for some random single person
to be her husband. She finally said she would either

(05:06):
marry Lutheran reformer Nicholas von Amsdorf or Luther himself. Those
are her only options that she was willing to agree
to you, and Luther ultimately agreed to do so. A
lot of Luther's Reformation peers did not like this at all.
His collaborator Philip Melanchthon was particularly scathing, writing quote, in

(05:28):
these unhappy times in which good people are suffering so much,
this man lacks compassion and rather, as it seems, revels
and compromises his good reputation, precisely at a time when
Germany stands in particular need of his spirit and authority.
The good people suffering so much that he's referring to
here is largely the Peasants Revolt, which was an incredibly

(05:50):
bloody uprising against depression by landlords and members of the
nobility that was going on in Germany at this time.
Aside from this hole, it's not the time for this argument.
Reformers were worried that Luther's decision to get married was
going to add fuel to claims that the Catholic Church
had made to try to undermine his work, namely that

(06:11):
he was only doing that work to try to get
out of his vows of celibacy. This was compounded by
the fact that only a year after renouncing his vows,
he was marrying someone who had abandoned her vows as well. Now,
eventually it would become fairly common for former monks and
former nuns to marry one another, especially when convins and

(06:33):
monasteries closed down later in the Reformation, but at the
time that Martin Luther himself did this, what they were
doing was absolutely scandalous. So Luther's response to all of
this criticism was that he had done it to please
his father, who had never approved of his decision to
become a monk, as well as to spite the Devil
and the Pope. Getting married also meant that Luther could

(06:55):
stop feeling like a hypocrite for encouraging Protestant clergy to
marry while not doing so himself. The two of them
finally wed on June thirteenth, fifteen twenty five, more than
two years after von Bora escaped from the monastery. Although
they definitely did not get married for love, I mean,
Luther's comments make that pretty clear, they ultimately wound up

(07:17):
having what was, by all accounts a really supportive and
loving and affectionate relationship. They had six children, and all
but one of them survived infancy. Eventually, one of von
Bora's relatives and six of Luther's sister's children came to
live with them as well. That is a full house.
It is they had room for so many because their

(07:39):
home was the Black Cloister, which was one of the
Luther family holdings in a former Augustinian monastery. This von
Bora converted into a home as well as a thriving business.
She made the old monastic cells into student housing, and
she attracted scholars to live there by playing up the
association with Martin Luther. She managed the property's farm and

(08:01):
its brewery, and when she needed to, she secured donations
to improve the building in the grounds, making it into
what was essentially a sixteenth century conference center. Unsurprisingly, she
also got a lot of criticism, basically for being really bossy.
That's criticism often leveled at women taking charge of matters

(08:23):
in a way that needs to be done. So. Martin
Luther died in fifteen forty six, and Katerina was heartbroken.
He had advised her to sell the Black Cloister if
he died, but she really didn't want to do it.
Even so, without his income and influence, she and the
rest of the family really fell on financial hard times.
This was followed by wars and bad harvests and an

(08:45):
outbreak of plague. Fleeing the plague, Katerina went to Torgau,
where she died three months after having been seriously injured
in a cart accident. She died on December twentieth, fifteen
fifty two, at the age of about fifty three. In
her marriage to Martin Luther, Katerina von Bora became the
prime example of the idea of a clergyman's wife. In

(09:09):
twenty seventeen, it is highly annoying for a woman's own
accomplishments to be framed in terms of her husband, But
in the sixteenth century, a marriage like theirs was really
new territory for Christian women. As emerging Protestant denominations encouraged
members of the clergy to marry Martin Luther, and Katerina
von Bora became the most notable example of what such

(09:30):
a marriage could be like. In their marriage, this was
largely about her being his helpmate while also successfully running
a home and a business, and that left him free
to really focus on his religious work. But these marriages
played out in other ways as well. Some wives of
the clergy essentially became partners in their husband's ministry, influencing

(09:51):
how scripture was interpreted and taught. Others became prominent members
of their communities, educating children and seeing to the health
and welfare and spiritu wellness of their congregations. This was
also part of an overall change in the kinds of
lives that were considered acceptable for Christian women to lead.
Prior to the Reformation, there were basically two acceptable roles

(10:13):
for a Christian woman, homemaker and none, and one of
those options effectively disappeared for a lot of women during
the Reformation, as families converted away from Catholicism and convents
were closed down, displacing the women who had lived there.
Of course, men were also displaced with the closure of monasteries,
but they generally had far more options open to them

(10:35):
for what to do with their lives afterward. Yeah, a
man who was displaced from a monastery generally had an
education a lot of times are really good education. He
often had connections with his community, like he could go
on to do other things. And often a woman who
was displaced from a convent could get married or go
back home with her parents, and that was That's pretty

(10:56):
much all that was available. Now, being a clergyman's wife
was not a one to one replacement for being a nun.
Women joined convents both voluntarily and involuntarily for a whole
range of reasons, and one of those was the very
practical fact that for a lot of women, a convent
offered more freedom and autonomy than a marriage could, so
being married not the same thing. At the same time,

(11:20):
though the role of the clergy wife did allow some
women into positions of prominence and influence that they didn't
really have access to before, we should also note this
wasn't the same as actually being in the clergy, and
today there are still plenty of denominations that don't ordain women. Next,
we're going to move on to talking about a couple

(11:40):
of women occupying one of the few other roles considered
to be suitable for women in the sixteenth century, which
was being royalty. We're gonna talk about that after we
first paused for a little sponsor break. Before we get

(12:01):
onto our next subject, we need to take just a
second sablay a little bit more groundwork about the Reformation
in general, because her involvement began before October thirty first,
fifteen seventeen. So even though Martin Luther and his ninety
five Theces are generally considered to be the beginning of
the Reformation, that didn't come out of thin air. People

(12:21):
had been criticizing and trying to reform the church for centuries,
and in a lot of ways, Martin's Theces recapped and
outlined points that he and other people had already been making.
This was sort of like the Twitter thread that encapsulates
a lot of existing conversations and then goes viral. Often
these criticisms played out within the church itself. As one example,

(12:44):
when Saint Francis of Assisi established the Franciscan Order in
twelve oh nine, it was with the approval of Pope
Innocent the Third, but today he seen in part as
a reformer, and later followers did their own work to
reform the Franciscan order itself as well as the Greeter Church.
So the Protestant Reformation similarly started as a reform effort

(13:06):
within the Roman Catholic Church, not as an attempt to
start a new church. When Martin Luther wrote his ninety
five Theses, he wasn't intending to break away from the church,
but to address what he saw as problems that the
church should address. But in fifteen twenty one, the church
excommunicated him, and so what had started out as an
internal reform movement developed into a schism. This also wasn't

(13:31):
the first schism in history. Another previous schism within the
church included the East West Schism of fifteen oh four,
which is what split the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic
Churches apart from one another. So when Marguerite d'angoulem was
born on April eleventh, fourteen ninety two, Martin Luther was

(13:51):
still twenty five years away from posting his ninety five Theses,
but criticisms of the Roman Catholic Church, many of which
were incorporated into the Theses, were well underway. Marguerite was
the daughter of Charles de Valois Orleans and Louise of Savoy,
and she had a younger brother, Francois, who was born

(14:11):
on September twelfth, fourteen ninety four. Although it seemed pretty
likely that the French monarchs King Louis the twelfth and
Queen Anne would have an heir of their own, Francois
was in a line of succession for the throne, so
he received the sort of education that would prepare him
for the possibility of becoming the king. Then Louise made
sure that Marguerite got the same education as well. In

(14:33):
fifteen oh nine, Marguerite married Charles, the Duke of Valencon,
and took an active role in trying to improve the
lives of the people of Allenson. She raised money for
hospitals and almshouses, and prompted her brother to establish an
orphanage in Paris. She insisted that poor women be given
shelter and food during the last days of their pregnancies

(14:54):
and after the birth, to try to combat ongoing problems
of infanticide and child abandoned. She also remedied the Alan
Sons Castle's lack of a library, and she began inviting
scholars and poets to stay with them to enrich the
spiritual and emotional atmosphere at court. Her husband did not
have a reputation for being a particularly a scholarly man,

(15:18):
so when Louis the twelfth died without an heir in
fifteen fifteen, Marguerite's brother did become Francis, the first King
of France. She took this same sensibility that she had
put into place in alan son to his court as
one of his advisers. Their mother was influential in the
court as well, and both of these women were really
intelligent and educated and politically aware. They were well read,

(15:41):
and they were informed about all the ongoing efforts to
reform the church, some of which were considered to be heretical.
So with Marguerite and Louise both among King Francis's advisers,
the French court became one that welcomed scholars and other
figures who were advocating for religious reform. Marguerite herself never
left the Roman Catholic Church, but she and those around

(16:03):
her actively questioned and criticized church teachings and practices. Guests
at the court included Francois Rabell, a humanist and former
priest whose satirical work lampooned religious hypocrisy. Marguerite read and
translated the work of Martin Luther and stridently advocated for
the Bible to be translated into French and available to

(16:24):
the French population. She was a patron to such artists
and scholars as Leonardo da Vinci, John Calvin, and uh
Desidrius Erasmus. She sometimes is known as the mother of
the French Renaissance. She became a student of guillanme Brischelnet,
the Bishop of mux whose followers, who were known as
the Circle of Meu, were at the heart of Reformation

(16:47):
thinking in France at the time. Through the Circle of Mew,
Marguerite funded the printing and distribution of a range of
Reformation texts in France. She also sought out and obtained
translations of the text to be brought to her in
France so that she could stay up to date about
what was going on. Under Marguerite's influence, King Francois the

(17:08):
First's court also provided protection and shelter to a number
of reformers whose work was considered heretical and blasphemous. Marguerite
herself might have faced the same fate had she not
been sister to the king, even in spite of her advocacy,
though several of the reformers and scholars Marguerite associated with
were eventually executed for heresy. As all of this was

(17:32):
going on, on February twenty fourth, fifteen twenty five, the
forces of Francis or Francois the First of France fought
those of Habsburg Emperor Charles the Fifth at the Battle
of Pavia, which was part of the Italian Wars. This
is a whole series of conflicts in which a number
of nations, primarily France and Spain, tried to take control

(17:53):
of Italy. This battle was a decisive victory for Charles
the Fifth, and Francis wound up being taken prisoner. Marguerite's husband, Charles,
sort of took the fall for this whole thing. He
died not long after. Marguerite was actively involved in the
negotiations for the release of her brother, including personally meeting
with Charles the Fifth. She returned to France only when

(18:16):
her brother began to suspect that Charles was dragging out
the negotiations on purpose. In the hopes of taking her
captive as well. Her brother was only able to return
home after signing the Treaty of Madrid in fifteen twenty six,
which surrendered all French claims to Italian territory. Later on
that year, Marguerite got married again, this time to Already

(18:38):
the second Valbray, the King of Navarre, on November sixteenth,
fifteen twenty eight. They had a daughter, Jeanne, who will
talk more about in a bit. After remarrying and having
a daughter, Marguerite became a lot less involved in her
brother's court politics, focusing more on her own writing and
her own personal religious studies. She did continue to shelter
Protestant refugees in Navarre, though, in addition to her translations

(19:02):
of others work, Marguerite was also a writer herself. Her
only work published during her lifetime was Marguerite de la
Marguerite des Princess, which was published in fifteen forty seven.
She died two years later on December twenty first. Her
most notable work, Heptameron, was published posthumously by Claude Gruge

(19:23):
in fifteen fifty nine at the request of Marguerite's daughter.
Written in the style of Baccaccio's De Cameron, it satirizes,
among other things, religious hypocrisy. She wrote volumes of work
beyond these two works, though much of it existed really
just as her own personal manuscripts until the nineteenth century,
and a lot of it was explicitly religious and infused

(19:46):
with Reformation ideas. There really also were not very many
women who had published work during their lifetimes at this
point in history in Europe. Aside from her writing, Marguerite's
support for the Reformation really helped it to survive in
France in the early to mid sixteenth century. As we noted, earlier,
punishments for spreading material that was deemed to be blasphemous

(20:09):
or heretical were really severe, and they included execution. So
without having such consistent and vocal support from the French court,
as well as the active sheltering of Reformation leaders, the
Reformation really might not have established much of a foothold
in France. Marguerite also actively mediated between the Roman Catholic
Church and France Protestants, really advocating for tolerance between the

(20:33):
two of them. She never publicly converted or left the
Roman Catholic Church, likely because to her her religious beliefs
were private, even as they were mirrored in her own writings,
but she so publicly supported reformers and sheltered people accused
of heresy that she's both credited for nurturing Protestantism in

(20:53):
France and criticized for weakening the Catholic Church there. Unfortunately,
that atmosphere of time tolerance that Marguerite had tried to
nurture did not last long beyond her death in fifteen
forty nine, which is something we're going to talk about
after another quick sponsor break. Last up in our trio

(21:20):
of Reformation women is Marguerite Dangolam's daughter, jean Delbray. She
was born on November sixteenth, fifteen twenty eight, in Saint Germain, Aalais,
and as was the case with her mother, her upbringing
wasn't exactly typical for the time, even for a princess.
She was tutored by humanist scholars, with Nicholas de Berboon

(21:42):
overseeing her education. Her mother had the same sort of
influence on Jeanne's education as she had had on her
brother's court in France in fifteen forty when she was eleven.
Jeanne's uncle, King Francis of France or Francois, as you've
heard us say, arranged for her to be married to William,
Duke of Cleves. As we've mentioned before on the show,

(22:04):
royal marriages to children were typically seen as political affairs,
and they were not consummated until the couple reached child
bearing age, often not living together until that time. Regardless,
Jehenne's parents were not in favor of this match. Her
father had been trying to negotiate her marriage to Philip
of Spain. Either way, regardless of which of these two

(22:25):
men she was going to marry, she was being used
as a pawn for someone else's political ends, and she
was defiantly opposed to marrying William, like just really not
okay with it. She wrote out a whole document detailing
that the marriage was taking place against her will and
had it witnessed. It began, I, Jehanne de Navarre, continuing

(22:50):
my protests already made in which I persist, say the Claire,
and protest again by these presents, that the marriage proposed
between me and the Duke of Cleves is against my will,
that I have never consented to it, and I never
will anything that I may say or do after this,
because of which it could be said that I may

(23:11):
have given my consent, will have been because of force
against my will, out of fear of the King, of
my father, the king, and of my mother, the Queen,
who had me threatened and beaten by the beev decan
my governess. That also went on from there some more.
She didn't really hold back I like it. She also

(23:31):
told King Francis to his face that she would rather
enter a convent than go forward with this marriage. He
had a reigned, and she yelled so loudly that she
would rather throw herself down a well if people heard
it in the next room. Jeanne protested so vehemently on
her wedding day that she had to be forcibly carried
to the altar. Afterward. The king insisted that the couple

(23:54):
observe some kind of symbolic formality in lieu of consummating
the marriage, since she was a child, So Jehne and
the Duke were taken to a nuptial chamber, where he
put one foot on the bed while she was sitting
on it. Jehne's defiance did not stop once the wedding
was over. She continued to object to the unwonted marriage
for five full years. Her mother made a series of

(24:17):
excuses why she couldn't leave for Cleaves to join her husband,
until the Duke finally just agreed to end the marriage
in fifteen forty three. Pope Paul the third honored a
request for it to be annulled in fifteen forty five,
and all of this, of course, led to a huge
rift between Marguerite and her brother, who had ordered the
marriage in the first place. Yeah, one of the reasons

(24:39):
that she was not so involved in his court after
getting married and having a child was that she literally
moved away. But also this happened Jehn's level of really
stubborn defiance and all this was startling to people, not
just because it was not at all the behavior that
was expected of a girl, especially a princess who was
raised to like have certain princessly behaviors, but also because

(25:04):
her health was really frail for pretty much her whole life.
She sort of mustered up a level of strength that
people did not think was in her in all of this.
Three years later, Jeanne married again, this time to Antoine
de Bourbon, and this was another match arranged for her
for political reasons, this time by King Henri the Second

(25:24):
of France, who had become king after the death of
his father Francois the First or Francis the First. Antoine
was next in line for the French throne after Henri
the Second's own sons. While Jeanne agreed to this match,
this time, her parents refused, putting off their departure so
long that they were eventually informed that the wedding would

(25:44):
take place whether they were there or not. Jeanne and
Antoine married on October twentieth, fifteen forty eight. The two
of them had a son, on Riedo Navarre in fifteen
fifty three, and then in fifteen fifty five Jeanne's father
and so she and her husband became the Queen and
King of Navarre. They later had a daughter, Catherine, in

(26:05):
fifteen fifty nine. The same stubborn defiance that had been
such a hallmark of Jehenne's forced childhood marriage revealed itself
once again in the matter of religion during her time
as Queen of Navarre. In this she actually butted heads
with her mother. She didn't like the fact that her
mother never really took a strong stance one way or

(26:26):
the other. Nevertheless, it was only after her mother's death
that jean officially announced her conversion to Calvinism in fifteen sixty,
and the Kingdom of Navarre became increasingly explicitly Protestant. Under
her and her husband's rule. Was ranged from having the
New Testament printed in the Basque language, which was spoken locally,

(26:47):
to forcibly closing monasteries and outlying Catholic religious rituals, to
eventually establishing Calvinism as the official religion of Navarre. Apart
from Navarre's Catholics, who found themselves persecuted, this presented a
greater problem in the larger scope of Europe. Navarre was

(27:07):
a tiny nation with much larger Catholic neighbors, and although
Jeanne's parents had tried to keep its territory independent from France,
it was really considered to just be a semi autonomous state.
As France put increasing pressure on Navarre to conform to Catholicism,
Jeanne and Antoine also found themselves caught between two other

(27:29):
powerful families. Catherine de Medici of France was at least
at the time, relatively sympathetic to the French Huguenot cause.
While the Roman Catholic House of Geese was not. Ultimately
Antoine relented to this pressure and took up the Catholic side,
while Jeanne steadfastly supported the French Huguenot. This erupted in

(27:50):
the French Wars of Religion beginning in fifteen sixty two.
That was a series of bloody conflicts and massacres that
went on literally for decades, which was as much as
civil war as it was a religious one. For Jeanne's
part in the earlier years of the French Wars of Religion,
she reinforced Navarre's defenses, She confiscated Catholic property, she established

(28:11):
a Calvinist community in Baern, and she stayed out of
the actual fighting for the most part, even as she
was branded as a heretic and threatened with excommunication and
threatened with trial under the Inquisition, and even when her
son Ari was taken captive at the age of four,
she refused to convert fighting for the Catholic side. Antoine

(28:33):
le siege to Rouen in September of fifteen sixty two.
Although the Catholic side ultimately seized Druen from the Huguenot
and Twine was fatally wounded in the process. He died
on November seventeenth, fifteen sixty two, and June was denied
entry into France to be with him before he died.
After her husband's death, Jehenne was the sole monarch of Navarre,

(28:56):
and she refused other offers of marriage, especially since of
them came along with the requirement that she convert back
to Catholicism. Although Jeanne had been actively supporting the Huguenot
cause throughout the French Wars of Religion, it wasn't until
the Third that Navarre really became involved from a military perspective.

(29:16):
Before that point, she had acted more as a diplomat,
trying to negotiate between Catholic and Protestant forces and balancing
a slew of international factors in the process. But with
the Third War of Religion, it was clear that Navarre
was going to be at the mercy of France and
Spain if it did not take a military stance, soh
John rallied the troops. She left her council in charge

(29:38):
of Navarre and moved to the Huguenot port of LaRochelle
for about three years. There, she took on the role
of Minister of Propaganda and Foreign Affairs. Just as the
name sounds, she wrote letters and pamphlets and other literature
in support of the Huguenot cause and against religious oppression
of Protestants. This included her fifteen sixty eight Ample Declaration,

(30:00):
which was her defense of her move to La Rochelle.
The French wars of religion came to an uneasy piece
with the Piece of Saint Germains Anlais in fifteen seventy,
which made specific allowances for Protestant worship. Members of the
high nobility were allowed to practice Calvinism in their own homes,
and La Rochelle, Montalban, Cognac and La Charite were designated

(30:24):
as Huguenot strongholds. This treaty didn't really please anyone. Staunch
Catholics didn't want Calvinism to be practiced at all, and
most Calvinists still could not worship freely since it was
only the top of the nobility that had gotten that freedom.
The piece also did not last for long. After about

(30:45):
two years of things being pretty touch and go, the
Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre began on August twenty fourth, fifteen
seventy two. And thousands of French Protestants were killed at
the hands of Catholics. Jeune had died of tuberque just
a couple of months before the massacre, on June ninth,
fifteen seventy two. She was forty four. At the time,

(31:07):
she was negotiating the marriage of her son to Marguerite
de Valois, daughter of Catherine de Medici and Anri the
second of France. Jeanne hoped that a marriage between the
royal families of Navarre in France would lead to a
longer lasting piece and that it would give her Protestant
son a greater influence, and in a way it did
exactly the opposite. It was actually that very wedding that

(31:30):
attracted so many high rank a Huguenot to Paris, where
the massacre began. So there are a lot of podcasts
about the Medici family, including this particular marriage, as well
as a couple that get into the Saint Bartholomews Day
massacre in more detail in our archive, and we will
link to them both in the show notes. The reason
that I wanted to talk about these particular women as

(31:53):
as the episode expanded to be about three women instead
of just won one of them is that each of
them had something just so particularly compelling to me and
their stories. There was the fish barrel, and there was
the hiding of people who were at risk of being
executed for heresy, this vehement opposition to being married off

(32:17):
to somebody as a child, Like each of them had
a moment that made me go, I really want to
talk about this in the show. And the other is
that all three of them were really influential people in
the Protestant Reformation, but in three really distinct ways. Like
you had a woman who was basically making room for
Martin Luther to do all of this religious work that

(32:39):
he was doing, and he is I think probably the
most He and John Callen are like the most notable
people in the Reformation, I think at least I think
those are the names that people are most likely to recognize.
And then Marguerite was really negotiating and trying to keep
the peace and trying to also make room for there

(33:03):
to be a Protestant movement in France. And then we
have John who was the person who took took up
arms in the very violent struggle that this blossomed into
that went on for so long. Thanks so much for
joining us on this Saturday. If you'd like to send

(33:23):
us a note, our email addresses History Podcast at iHeartRadio
dot com, and you can subscribe to the show on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.