November 1, 2017 • 36 mins
Katharina von Bora, Marguerite d’Angoulême and Jeanne d’Albret all left their mark on the Reformation, but all in different ways. Each of them has a unique part in the battle over religious affiliation in 16th-century Europe.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to steph you missed in History Class from house
stuff Works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy D. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. As you
may know, this podcast is initially being published on November one,
(00:23):
so that's the day after the five anniversary of Martin
Luther famously posting his ninety five Secs, which is more
formally known as Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences,
at the door of Vittenburgh Castle Church. So there's some
historical debate over the tales of this. Martin Luther probably
(00:43):
didn't defiantly nail them up there, as a lot of
people imagine, and it might not have even happened at all,
although the secs were basically points he planned to discuss
at a public disputation, so it would have been customary
for him to post them there ahead of time. Regardless
of all that detail, though, October thirty one, fifteen seventeen,
(01:04):
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 seemingly countless Protestant denominations of Christianity, so obviously
(01:25):
that was a big moment in history. Consequently, we've gotten
a lot of requests for a Reformation episode, including from Sarah, Many, 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 involved
in the Reformation. I was originally planning to focus on
(01:47):
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 was
the former nun who in June of five married former
(02:08):
Monk Martin Luther when she was twenty five and he
was forty one. Von Bora was born around four nine,
although there aren't clear records of exactly when or where.
In fifteen o four her family sent her to the
Benedictine cloister at Breda to be educated. Then in fifteen
o eight she moved to a Cistercian monastery at Nemphon,
(02:29):
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, as well
as other reformers. This material was almost certainly banned behind
(02:51):
monastic walls, so bringing it in and keeping it relatively
secret would have taken some dumption. In fifteen twenty three,
von Ura and several other women in her monastery contacted
Martin Luther to ask him for help in escaping. This
was both dangerous and illegal. It was against Roman Catholic
law for a person to abandon their religious vows, and
(03:13):
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, three, which
was Easter Eve, a merchant smuggled Katerina and eleven other
women out of the convent in a cart normally used
(03:35):
to deliver herring. According to some sources she got out
while hiding in a fish barrel. Actually more likely that
they were under the coverings used to cover the fish barrels,
but the on the barrel was not a delightful smelling ride.
Probably not. Katerina and nine of the other women were
(03:55):
taken to Wittenburgh, 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 refused to allow their marriage for a year.
(04:19):
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 marry Lutheran reformer Nicholas von Amsdorff or Luther himself.
(04:43):
Those were her only options that she was willing to
agree to, and Luther ultimately agreed to do so. A
lot of Luther's Reformation piers did not like this at all.
His collaborator Philip melanche Thon was particularly scathing, writing, in
these unhappy times in which good people are suffering so much,
(05:05):
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 peasant's Revolt, which was an incredibly
bloody uprising against depression by landlords and members of the
(05:26):
nobility that was going on in Germany at this time.
Aside from this whole, 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
he was only doing that work to try to get
out of his vows of celibacy. This was compounded by
(05:49):
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 convents and
monasteries closed down later in the Reformation. But at the
time that Martin Luther himself did this, what they were
(06:11):
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
stop feeling like a hypocrite for encouraging Protestant clergy to
marry while not doing so himself. The two of them
(06:35):
finally wed on June thirteenth, fifty five, more than two
years after Vambora 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 having what was,
by all accounts, a really supportive and loving and affectionate relationship.
(06:55):
They had six children, and all but one of them
survived infancy. Eventually, of Vambora's relatives and six of Luther's
sisters children came to live with them as well. That
is a full house. It is they had room for
so many because their home was the Black Cloister, which
was one of the Luther family holdings in a former
(07:16):
Augustinian monastery. This Vambora 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 properties, farm and its brewery, and when she needed to,
she secured donations to improve the building in the grounds,
(07:39):
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 in a way that needs to be done so.
Martin Luther died in fifty six, sink Katarina was heartbroken.
(08:02):
He had advised her to sell the Black Cloister if
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 in an
outbreak of plague. Fleeing the plague, Katerina went to Torgau,
(08:23):
where she died three months after having been seriously injured
in a cart accident. She died on December fIF 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 it is
highly annoying for a woman's own accomplishments to be framed
(08:45):
in terms of her husband, But in the sixteenth century,
a marriage like there's was really new territory for Christian women,
as emerging Protestant denominations encouraged members of the clergy to
marry Martin Luther, and Katerina von Bora be came the
most notable example of what such a marriage could be like.
In their marriage, this was largely about her being his
(09:07):
helpmate while also successfully running a home and a business,
and that left him free to really focus on his
religious lurk. But these marriages played out in other ways
as well. Some wives of the clergy essentially became partners
and their husband's ministry, influencing how scripture was interpreted and taught.
Others became prominent members of their communities, educating children, and
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seeing to the health and welfare and spiritual 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 for a Christian woman, homemaker and none,
and one of those options effectively disappeared for a lot
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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 for what to do with their
lives afterward. Yeah, a man who was displaced from a
(10:12):
monastery generally had an education, uh a lot of times
a 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 pretty much all that was available now. Being
a clergyman's wife was not a one to one replacement
(10:33):
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, though the role of the clergy
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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 they are still plenty of
denominations that don't ordain women. Uh. Next, we're gonna move
on to talking about a couple of women occupying one
of the few other roles considered to be suitable for
(11:17):
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 onto our next subject,
we need to take just a second table a little
bit more groundwork about the Reformation in general, because her
(11:37):
involvement began before October fifteen seventeen. So even though Martin,
Luther and Hiss are generally considered to be the beginning
of the Reformation that didn't come out of thin air.
People had been criticizing and trying to reform the Church
for centuries, and in a lot of ways, Martin's seces
recapped and outlined points that he and other people had
(12:00):
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, when St. Francis of ASSISI established the
Franciscan Order in twelve oh nine, it was with the
approval of Pope Innocent the Third, but today he's seen
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in part as a reformer, and later followers did their
own work to reform the Franciscan Order itself as well
as the Greater Church. So the Protestant Reformation similarly started
as a reform effort 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
(12:43):
break away from the Church, but to address what he
saw as problems that the church should address. But in
f one the church excommunicated him, and so what had
started out as an internal reform movement, developed into a schism.
It's also was the first schism in history. Another previous
schism within the Church included the East West Schism of
(13:08):
fifteen o four, which is what split the Eastern Orthodox
and Roman Catholic Churches apart from one another. So when
Marguerite Dangouleme was born on April eleventh, fo Martin Luther
was still twenty five years away from posting his ninety
five Theses, but criticisms of the Roman Catholic Church, many
of which were incorporated into those theses, were well underway.
(13:31):
Marguerite was the daughter of Charles de Vaudois Orleans and
Louise of Savoy, and she had a younger brother, Francois,
who was born on September twelfth, fourtour. Although it seemed
pretty likely that the French monarchs King Louis the twelfth
and Queen Anne would have an air of their own,
Francois is in the line of succession for the throne,
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so he received the sort of education that would prepare
him for the possibility of becoming the king. Then Louise
made sure that Marguerite the same education as well. In
fifteen o nine, Marguerite married Charles, the Duke of Allenson,
and took an active role in trying to improve the
lives of the people of allen Soon. She raised money
for hospitals and almshouses, and prompted her brother to establish
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an orphanage in Paris. She insisted that poor women be
given shelter and food during the last days of their
pregnancies and after the birth, to try to combat ongoing
problems of infanticide and child abandonment. She also remedied the
allen Soon's castle's lack of a library, and she began
inviting scholars and poets to stay with them to enrich
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the spiritual and emotional atmosphere at court. Her husband did
not have a reputation for being a particularly a scholarly man,
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 allan Soon to his court. One
(15:00):
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, 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,
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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
her actively questioned and criticized church teachings and practices. Guests
at the court included Francois Rabelais, a humanist and former
(15:41):
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
the French population. She was a patron to such artists
and scholars as Leonardo da Vinci, John cow Alvin, and
Desiderius Erasmus. She sometimes is known as the mother of
(16:05):
the French Renaissance. So she became a student of Guillaume
Brichal name, the Bishop of mu whose followers, who were
known as the Circle of Mu were at the heart
of Reformation thinking in France at the time. Through the
Circle of Mu, Marguerite funded the printing and distribution of
a range of Reformation texts in France. She also sought
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out and obtained translations of these texts to be brought
to her in France so that she could stay up
to date about what's going on. Under Marguerite's influence, King
Frandsois the First 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
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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 going on, on February, the forces of Francis
or Francois the First of France fought those of Habsburg
(17:10):
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 of Italy. This
battle was a decisive victory for Charles the Fifth, and
Francis wound up being taken prisoner. Marguerite's husband, Charles sort
(17:31):
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 her
brother began to suspect that Charles was dragging out the
negotiations on purpose in the hopes of taking her captive
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as well. Her brother was only able to return home
after signing the Treaty of Madrid in fifty six, which
surrendered all French claims to Italian territory. Later on that year,
Marguerite got married again, this time to al Read the
second Balbre, the King of Navarre, on November sixteenth. They
had a daughter, Jeanne, who will talk more about in
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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 of others work, Marguerite was
also a writer herself. Her only work published during her
(18:37):
lifetime was Marguerite de la Marguerite de Princess, which was
published in fifty seven. She died two years later on
December one. Her most notable work, Heptameron, was published posthumously
by Claude Gruge in fifteen fifty nine at the request
of Marguerite's daughter. Written in the style of Boccaccio's De Cameron, satirizes,
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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
with Reformation ideas. They're really also were not very many
women who had published work during their lifetimes at this
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point in history in Europe. Aside from her writing, Marguerite's
support for the Reformation really helped it to survive in
France and the early to mid sixteenth century. As we noted,
earlier punishments for spreading material that was deemed to be
blasphemous or or heretical were really severe, and they included execution.
So without having such consistent and vocal support from the
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French court, as well as the act of 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 French Protestants, real advocating for
tolerance between the two of them. She never publicly converted
or left the Roman Catholic Church, likely because to her
(20:09):
her religious beliefs were private, even as they were mirrored
in her own writings. But she's so publicly supported reformers
and sheltered people accused of heresy that she's both credited
for nurturing Protestantism in France and criticized for weakening the
Catholic Church there. Unfortunately, that atmosphere of tolerance that Marguerite
(20:30):
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. Laughed up
in our trio of Reformation women is Marguerite dango Lem's daughter,
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Jeanne Delbray. She was born on November six in San
germinal a, and as was the case with her mother,
her up wasn't exactly typical for the time, even for
a princess. She was tutored by humanist scholars, with Nicholas
Diburble overseeing her education. Her mother had the same sort
(21:11):
of influence on Jenne's education as she had had on
her brother's court in France. In fifteen forty, when she
was eleven, Jenne's uncle, King Francis of France or Francois
as you heard to say, arranged for her to be
married to William, Duke of Cleves. As we've mentioned before
on the show, royal marriages to children were typically seen
(21:33):
as political affairs, and they were not consummated until the
couple reached childbearing age, often not living together until that time. Regardless,
Jenne'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
men she was going to marry, she was being used
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as a pawn for someone else's political ends, and she
was de fiantly 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 John de Navarre,
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continuing my protests already made, in which I persist, say, declare,
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
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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 bf Decaan
my governess. That also went on from there some more.
She didn't really hold back. I like it. She also
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told King Frances to his face that she would rather
enter a convent then go forward with this marriage he had.
He reigned, and she yelled so loudly that she would
rather throw herself down a well that people heard it
in the next room. Jean protested so vehemently on her
wedding day that she had to be forcibly carried to
the altar. Afterward, the King insisted that the couple observed
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some kind of symbolic formality and lieu of consummating the
marriage since she was a child. So Jeanne and the
Duke were taken to a nuptial chamber where he put
one foot on the bed while she was sitting on it.
Jeanne's defiance did not stop once the wedding was over.
She continued to object to the unwanted marriage for five
full years. Her mother made a series of excuses why
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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 that
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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 Jean'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 he was raised too
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like have certain princess lee behaviors, but also because 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
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for political reasons, this time by King Are the Second
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 Read
the Second's own sons. While jean agreed to this match
this time, her parents refused, putting off their departure so
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long that they were eventually informed that the wedding would
take place whether they were there or not. Jeanne and
Antoine married on October two. Of them had a son,
on read A Navar in fifteen fifty three UH, and
then in fifteen fifty five, Jean's father died, and so
she and her husband became the Queen and King of Navar.
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They later had a daughter, Catherine, in fifteen fifty nine.
The same stubborn defiance that had been such a hallmark
of Jeanne'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
(25:51):
a strong stance one way or the other. Nevertheless, it
was only after her mother's death that jean officially announced
her conversion to calvin as them in fifteen sixty, and
the Kingdom of Navarre became increasingly explicitly Protestant under her
and her husband's rule. This ranged from having the New
Testament printed in the Basque language, which was spoken locally
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too 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
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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 Navar to conform to Catholicism,
Jeune and Antoine also found themselves caught between two other
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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 Huguenome dis erupted in
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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 a
civil war as it was a religious one. For Jane's part,
in the earlier years of the French Wars of Religion,
she reinforced Navars defenses, She confiscated Catholic property, she established
(27:38):
a Calvinist community in Bairn, 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 taking captive at the age of four,
she refused to convert. Fighting for the Catholic side, Antoine
(27:59):
lace Age to Ruin in September of fifteen sixty two,
Although the Catholic side ultimately seized drew In from the Huguenome,
Antoine was fatally wounded in the process. He died on
November seventeenth, fifteen sixty two, and Jenne was denied entry
into France to be with him before he died. After
her husband's death, John was the sole monarch of Navarre,
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and she refused other offers of marriage, especially since the
number 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. Before that point, she had acted more
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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 stay.
Ants oh Jean rallied the troops. She left her counsel
in charge of Navarre and moved to the Huguenot port
(29:06):
of La Rochelle. 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 and support of the Huguenot cause and
against religious oppression of Protestants. This included her fifteen sixty
eight Ample Declaration, which was her defense of her move
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to La Rochelle. The French wars of religion came to
an uneasy piece with the Piece of Saint germain Le
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, Montalbant, Cognac and
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La Charite were designated as Huguenot strongholds. 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
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for long. After about two years of things being pretty
touch and go, the St. Bartholomeus Day Massacre began on
August fifteen, seventy two, and thousands of French Protestants were
killed at the hands of Catholics. Jeanne had died of
tuberculosis just a couple of months before the massacre, on
June nine, seventy two. She was forty four. At the time,
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she was negotiating the marriage of her son to Marguerite
de Vaudois, daughter of Catherine de Medici and are 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
(30:56):
attracted so many high ranking 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 St. Bartholomew's 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 as
(31:20):
the the episode expanded to be about three women instead
of just one 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 siding of people who were um who were at
risk of being executed for harresy, this vehement opposition to
(31:42):
being married off 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
(32:02):
making room for Martin Luther to do all of this
religious work that he was doing, and he is I
think probably the most He and and John Callin are
like the most notable people in the Reformation. I think,
uh at least I think there's are the names that
people are most likely to recognize UM. And then Marguerite
was really negotiating and trying to keep the peace and
(32:25):
trying to also make room for there to be a
Protestant movement in France. And then we have John who
was the person who took on took up arms in
the very violent struggle that this blossomed into, that went
on for so long. Do you have a little bit
of listener ma a on the top this one off? Sure?
Do you? This is from Jennifer, and Jennifer writes about
(32:47):
our Green Children of lill Pit episode. But before I
get to this email, I do want to say that
in our podcast about Esther Cox and the Great am
Perst Mystery, I totally said the word before I meant
to say the word after, and neither of us noticed
it at the time or even a little know we
listened to the podcast before we let everybody else hear it.
(33:09):
And since it was related in relation to when Esther's
mother died, I said her mother died before she was born,
and that makes no sense. Her mother died a few
weeks after she was born. Just to clear that up.
I mean, there is a whole haunting thing. Maybe we
could put on it, but I think it's one of
those things where our brains both auto corrected it without
(33:33):
Sometimes that happens, like we know the story, so we
go yep, yep, yep. That sounds weird, even though it
obviously is weird. We obviously it's so obvious from listening
to the episode that neither of us registered it in
any way at the time, and then we neither of
us registered it when doing QA on the episode. So
yet Esther Cox's mother did not die before she was born.
(33:55):
That was me miss speaking. So now onto the Green
Children of Wolpit. Uh. Jennifer's note says was listening to
The Green Children of Littlepit episode today and was intrigued.
I hadn't heard the story before to fight, despite having
lived in Suffolk for three years back in the nineties.
Towards the end of the episode, you mentioned a theory
by a man named Paul Harris back in It was
(34:17):
an interesting and somewhat viable theory, which you debunked for
logical reasons, including that the journey to Thetford Forest is
the wrong direction from Fornhum, that you would not be
able to heal hear the bells of Barry st Edmund's
if you're all the way up in Thetford These things
are absolutely true. For three years I lived on the
western edge of Thepford Forest in the village of Brandon.
(34:38):
It is quite a trek to bury from Thetford Forest
and then down to Woolpit, and there's no way you
could hear the bells from Barry, no matter how far
south in Theftford Forest you travel. But most importantly, Thetford
Forest did not exist in the twelfth century. It is
a man made forest planted after World War One. There
is no way Flemish children could escape a battle in
(34:59):
Formham by running into a forest that did not exist.
My guess is that at the time the area where
Thetford Forest now lies was much like the rest of
East Anglia, fairly flat with a moderate number of trees.
So we can add that to the reasons why this
theory is probably not plausible. Thoroughly enjoyed the podcast and
enjoyed hearing a story from the part of the world
that I love. While the tale is probably just spokelore,
(35:22):
I love the idea that it could have really happened.
I'll no doubt keep trying to figure out a plausible
explanation in my imagination for some time. Jennifer. Thank you
so much, Jennifer. In the various debunkings I found of
that article, the forest wasn't there wasn't one of them,
so I am very glad to learn that also the
forest wasn't there. If you would like to write to
(35:43):
us about this ort any other podcast, where a history
podcast at how stuff works dot com. We're also on
Facebook at Facebook dot com, slash miss in History on
Twitter at miss in History, our tumbler and our interest
in our instagram. All that stuff is also Missed in History.
If you come to our website, which is missed in
History dot com, you'll find the show notes for all
the episodes that Holly and I have ever done together.
(36:04):
We're going to have those links to prior episodes that
we talked about in the show notes for today's show.
You'll also find searchable archive every episode we have ever done,
so come and visit us that Missed in History dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
(36:25):
how staff works dot com.
Welcome to steph you missed in History Class from house
stuff Works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy D. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. As you
may know, this podcast is initially being published on November one,
(00:23):
so that's the day after the five anniversary of Martin
Luther famously posting his ninety five Secs, which is more
formally known as Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences,
at the door of Vittenburgh Castle Church. So there's some
historical debate over the tales of this. Martin Luther probably
(00:43):
didn't defiantly nail them up there, as a lot of
people imagine, and it might not have even happened at all,
although the secs were basically points he planned to discuss
at a public disputation, so it would have been customary
for him to post them there ahead of time. Regardless
of all that detail, though, October thirty one, fifteen seventeen,
(01:04):
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 seemingly countless Protestant denominations of Christianity, so obviously
(01:25):
that was a big moment in history. Consequently, we've gotten
a lot of requests for a Reformation episode, including from Sarah, Many, 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 involved
in the Reformation. I was originally planning to focus on
(01:47):
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 was
the former nun who in June of five married former
(02:08):
Monk Martin Luther when she was twenty five and he
was forty one. Von Bora was born around four nine,
although there aren't clear records of exactly when or where.
In fifteen o four her family sent her to the
Benedictine cloister at Breda to be educated. Then in fifteen
o eight she moved to a Cistercian monastery at Nemphon,
(02:29):
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, as well
as other reformers. This material was almost certainly banned behind
(02:51):
monastic walls, so bringing it in and keeping it relatively
secret would have taken some dumption. In fifteen twenty three,
von Ura and several other women in her monastery contacted
Martin Luther to ask him for help in escaping. This
was both dangerous and illegal. It was against Roman Catholic
law for a person to abandon their religious vows, and
(03:13):
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, three, which
was Easter Eve, a merchant smuggled Katerina and eleven other
women out of the convent in a cart normally used
(03:35):
to deliver herring. According to some sources she got out
while hiding in a fish barrel. Actually more likely that
they were under the coverings used to cover the fish barrels,
but the on the barrel was not a delightful smelling ride.
Probably not. Katerina and nine of the other women were
(03:55):
taken to Wittenburgh, 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 refused to allow their marriage for a year.
(04:19):
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 marry Lutheran reformer Nicholas von Amsdorff or Luther himself.
(04:43):
Those were her only options that she was willing to
agree to, and Luther ultimately agreed to do so. A
lot of Luther's Reformation piers did not like this at all.
His collaborator Philip melanche Thon was particularly scathing, writing, in
these unhappy times in which good people are suffering so much,
(05:05):
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 peasant's Revolt, which was an incredibly
bloody uprising against depression by landlords and members of the
(05:26):
nobility that was going on in Germany at this time.
Aside from this whole, 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
he was only doing that work to try to get
out of his vows of celibacy. This was compounded by
(05:49):
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 convents and
monasteries closed down later in the Reformation. But at the
time that Martin Luther himself did this, what they were
(06:11):
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
stop feeling like a hypocrite for encouraging Protestant clergy to
marry while not doing so himself. The two of them
(06:35):
finally wed on June thirteenth, fifty five, more than two
years after Vambora 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 having what was,
by all accounts, a really supportive and loving and affectionate relationship.
(06:55):
They had six children, and all but one of them
survived infancy. Eventually, of Vambora's relatives and six of Luther's
sisters children came to live with them as well. That
is a full house. It is they had room for
so many because their home was the Black Cloister, which
was one of the Luther family holdings in a former
(07:16):
Augustinian monastery. This Vambora 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 properties, farm and its brewery, and when she needed to,
she secured donations to improve the building in the grounds,
(07:39):
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 in a way that needs to be done so.
Martin Luther died in fifty six, sink Katarina was heartbroken.
(08:02):
He had advised her to sell the Black Cloister if
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 in an
outbreak of plague. Fleeing the plague, Katerina went to Torgau,
(08:23):
where she died three months after having been seriously injured
in a cart accident. She died on December fIF 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 it is
highly annoying for a woman's own accomplishments to be framed
(08:45):
in terms of her husband, But in the sixteenth century,
a marriage like there's was really new territory for Christian women,
as emerging Protestant denominations encouraged members of the clergy to
marry Martin Luther, and Katerina von Bora be came the
most notable example of what such a marriage could be like.
In their marriage, this was largely about her being his
(09:07):
helpmate while also successfully running a home and a business,
and that left him free to really focus on his
religious lurk. But these marriages played out in other ways
as well. Some wives of the clergy essentially became partners
and their husband's ministry, influencing how scripture was interpreted and taught.
Others became prominent members of their communities, educating children, and
(09:30):
seeing to the health and welfare and spiritual 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 for a Christian woman, homemaker and none,
and one of those options effectively disappeared for a lot
(09:51):
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 for what to do with their
lives afterward. Yeah, a man who was displaced from a
(10:12):
monastery generally had an education, uh a lot of times
a 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 pretty much all that was available now. Being
a clergyman's wife was not a one to one replacement
(10:33):
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, though the role of the clergy
(10:55):
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 they are still plenty of
denominations that don't ordain women. Uh. Next, we're gonna move
on to talking about a couple of women occupying one
of the few other roles considered to be suitable for
(11:17):
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 onto our next subject,
we need to take just a second table a little
bit more groundwork about the Reformation in general, because her
(11:37):
involvement began before October fifteen seventeen. So even though Martin,
Luther and Hiss are generally considered to be the beginning
of the Reformation that didn't come out of thin air.
People had been criticizing and trying to reform the Church
for centuries, and in a lot of ways, Martin's seces
recapped and outlined points that he and other people had
(12:00):
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, when St. Francis of ASSISI established the
Franciscan Order in twelve oh nine, it was with the
approval of Pope Innocent the Third, but today he's seen
(12:23):
in part as a reformer, and later followers did their
own work to reform the Franciscan Order itself as well
as the Greater Church. So the Protestant Reformation similarly started
as a reform effort 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
(12:43):
break away from the Church, but to address what he
saw as problems that the church should address. But in
f one the church excommunicated him, and so what had
started out as an internal reform movement, developed into a schism.
It's also was the first schism in history. Another previous
schism within the Church included the East West Schism of
(13:08):
fifteen o four, which is what split the Eastern Orthodox
and Roman Catholic Churches apart from one another. So when
Marguerite Dangouleme was born on April eleventh, fo Martin Luther
was still twenty five years away from posting his ninety
five Theses, but criticisms of the Roman Catholic Church, many
of which were incorporated into those theses, were well underway.
(13:31):
Marguerite was the daughter of Charles de Vaudois Orleans and
Louise of Savoy, and she had a younger brother, Francois,
who was born on September twelfth, fourtour. Although it seemed
pretty likely that the French monarchs King Louis the twelfth
and Queen Anne would have an air of their own,
Francois is in the line of succession for the throne,
(13:52):
so he received the sort of education that would prepare
him for the possibility of becoming the king. Then Louise
made sure that Marguerite the same education as well. In
fifteen o nine, Marguerite married Charles, the Duke of Allenson,
and took an active role in trying to improve the
lives of the people of allen Soon. She raised money
for hospitals and almshouses, and prompted her brother to establish
(14:15):
an orphanage in Paris. She insisted that poor women be
given shelter and food during the last days of their
pregnancies and after the birth, to try to combat ongoing
problems of infanticide and child abandonment. She also remedied the
allen Soon's castle's lack of a library, and she began
inviting scholars and poets to stay with them to enrich
(14:37):
the spiritual and emotional atmosphere at court. Her husband did
not have a reputation for being a particularly a scholarly man,
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 allan Soon to his court. One
(15:00):
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, 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,
(15:20):
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
her actively questioned and criticized church teachings and practices. Guests
at the court included Francois Rabelais, a humanist and former
(15:41):
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
the French population. She was a patron to such artists
and scholars as Leonardo da Vinci, John cow Alvin, and
Desiderius Erasmus. She sometimes is known as the mother of
(16:05):
the French Renaissance. So she became a student of Guillaume
Brichal name, the Bishop of mu whose followers, who were
known as the Circle of Mu were at the heart
of Reformation thinking in France at the time. Through the
Circle of Mu, Marguerite funded the printing and distribution of
a range of Reformation texts in France. She also sought
(16:27):
out and obtained translations of these texts to be brought
to her in France so that she could stay up
to date about what's going on. Under Marguerite's influence, King
Frandsois the First 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
(16:48):
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 going on, on February, the forces of Francis
or Francois the First of France fought those of Habsburg
(17:10):
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 of Italy. This
battle was a decisive victory for Charles the Fifth, and
Francis wound up being taken prisoner. Marguerite's husband, Charles sort
(17:31):
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 her
brother began to suspect that Charles was dragging out the
negotiations on purpose in the hopes of taking her captive
(17:51):
as well. Her brother was only able to return home
after signing the Treaty of Madrid in fifty six, which
surrendered all French claims to Italian territory. Later on that year,
Marguerite got married again, this time to al Read the
second Balbre, the King of Navarre, on November sixteenth. They
had a daughter, Jeanne, who will talk more about in
(18:14):
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 of others work, Marguerite was
also a writer herself. Her only work published during her
(18:37):
lifetime was Marguerite de la Marguerite de Princess, which was
published in fifty seven. She died two years later on
December one. Her most notable work, Heptameron, was published posthumously
by Claude Gruge in fifteen fifty nine at the request
of Marguerite's daughter. Written in the style of Boccaccio's De Cameron, satirizes,
(19:00):
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
with Reformation ideas. They're really also were not very many
women who had published work during their lifetimes at this
(19:23):
point in history in Europe. Aside from her writing, Marguerite's
support for the Reformation really helped it to survive in
France and the early to mid sixteenth century. As we noted,
earlier punishments for spreading material that was deemed to be
blasphemous or or heretical were really severe, and they included execution.
So without having such consistent and vocal support from the
(19:46):
French court, as well as the act of 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 French Protestants, real advocating for
tolerance between the two of them. She never publicly converted
or left the Roman Catholic Church, likely because to her
(20:09):
her religious beliefs were private, even as they were mirrored
in her own writings. But she's so publicly supported reformers
and sheltered people accused of heresy that she's both credited
for nurturing Protestantism in France and criticized for weakening the
Catholic Church there. Unfortunately, that atmosphere of tolerance that Marguerite
(20:30):
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. Laughed up
in our trio of Reformation women is Marguerite dango Lem's daughter,
(20:51):
Jeanne Delbray. She was born on November six in San
germinal a, and as was the case with her mother,
her up wasn't exactly typical for the time, even for
a princess. She was tutored by humanist scholars, with Nicholas
Diburble overseeing her education. Her mother had the same sort
(21:11):
of influence on Jenne's education as she had had on
her brother's court in France. In fifteen forty, when she
was eleven, Jenne's uncle, King Francis of France or Francois
as you heard to say, arranged for her to be
married to William, Duke of Cleves. As we've mentioned before
on the show, royal marriages to children were typically seen
(21:33):
as political affairs, and they were not consummated until the
couple reached childbearing age, often not living together until that time. Regardless,
Jenne'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
men she was going to marry, she was being used
(21:54):
as a pawn for someone else's political ends, and she
was de fiantly 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 John de Navarre,
(22:16):
continuing my protests already made, in which I persist, say, declare,
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
(22:37):
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 bf Decaan
my governess. That also went on from there some more.
She didn't really hold back. I like it. She also
(22:57):
told King Frances to his face that she would rather
enter a convent then go forward with this marriage he had.
He reigned, and she yelled so loudly that she would
rather throw herself down a well that people heard it
in the next room. Jean protested so vehemently on her
wedding day that she had to be forcibly carried to
the altar. Afterward, the King insisted that the couple observed
(23:21):
some kind of symbolic formality and lieu of consummating the
marriage since she was a child. So Jeanne and the
Duke were taken to a nuptial chamber where he put
one foot on the bed while she was sitting on it.
Jeanne's defiance did not stop once the wedding was over.
She continued to object to the unwanted marriage for five
full years. Her mother made a series of excuses why
(23:44):
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 that
(24:05):
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 Jean'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 he was raised too
(24:26):
like have certain princess lee behaviors, but also because 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
(24:47):
for political reasons, this time by King Are the Second
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 Read
the Second's own sons. While jean agreed to this match
this time, her parents refused, putting off their departure so
(25:08):
long that they were eventually informed that the wedding would
take place whether they were there or not. Jeanne and
Antoine married on October two. Of them had a son,
on read A Navar in fifteen fifty three UH, and
then in fifteen fifty five, Jean's father died, and so
she and her husband became the Queen and King of Navar.
(25:30):
They later had a daughter, Catherine, in fifteen fifty nine.
The same stubborn defiance that had been such a hallmark
of Jeanne'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
(25:51):
a strong stance one way or the other. Nevertheless, it
was only after her mother's death that jean officially announced
her conversion to calvin as them in fifteen sixty, and
the Kingdom of Navarre became increasingly explicitly Protestant under her
and her husband's rule. This ranged from having the New
Testament printed in the Basque language, which was spoken locally
(26:13):
too 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
(26:33):
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 Navar to conform to Catholicism,
Jeune and Antoine also found themselves caught between two other
(26:55):
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 Huguenome dis erupted in
(27:17):
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 a
civil war as it was a religious one. For Jane's part,
in the earlier years of the French Wars of Religion,
she reinforced Navars defenses, She confiscated Catholic property, she established
(27:38):
a Calvinist community in Bairn, 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 taking captive at the age of four,
she refused to convert. Fighting for the Catholic side, Antoine
(27:59):
lace Age to Ruin in September of fifteen sixty two,
Although the Catholic side ultimately seized drew In from the Huguenome,
Antoine was fatally wounded in the process. He died on
November seventeenth, fifteen sixty two, and Jenne was denied entry
into France to be with him before he died. After
her husband's death, John was the sole monarch of Navarre,
(28:22):
and she refused other offers of marriage, especially since the
number 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. Before that point, she had acted more
(28:44):
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 stay.
Ants oh Jean rallied the troops. She left her counsel
in charge of Navarre and moved to the Huguenot port
(29:06):
of La Rochelle. 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 and support of the Huguenot cause and
against religious oppression of Protestants. This included her fifteen sixty
eight Ample Declaration, which was her defense of her move
(29:28):
to La Rochelle. The French wars of religion came to
an uneasy piece with the Piece of Saint germain Le
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, Montalbant, Cognac and
(29:48):
La Charite were designated as Huguenot strongholds. 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
(30:09):
for long. After about two years of things being pretty
touch and go, the St. Bartholomeus Day Massacre began on
August fifteen, seventy two, and thousands of French Protestants were
killed at the hands of Catholics. Jeanne had died of
tuberculosis just a couple of months before the massacre, on
June nine, seventy two. She was forty four. At the time,
(30:33):
she was negotiating the marriage of her son to Marguerite
de Vaudois, daughter of Catherine de Medici and are 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
(30:56):
attracted so many high ranking 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 St. Bartholomew's 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 as
(31:20):
the the episode expanded to be about three women instead
of just one 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 siding of people who were um who were at
risk of being executed for harresy, this vehement opposition to
(31:42):
being married off 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
(32:02):
making room for Martin Luther to do all of this
religious work that he was doing, and he is I
think probably the most He and and John Callin are
like the most notable people in the Reformation. I think,
uh at least I think there's are the names that
people are most likely to recognize UM. And then Marguerite
was really negotiating and trying to keep the peace and
(32:25):
trying to also make room for there to be a
Protestant movement in France. And then we have John who
was the person who took on took up arms in
the very violent struggle that this blossomed into, that went
on for so long. Do you have a little bit
of listener ma a on the top this one off? Sure?
Do you? This is from Jennifer, and Jennifer writes about
(32:47):
our Green Children of lill Pit episode. But before I
get to this email, I do want to say that
in our podcast about Esther Cox and the Great am
Perst Mystery, I totally said the word before I meant
to say the word after, and neither of us noticed
it at the time or even a little know we
listened to the podcast before we let everybody else hear it.
(33:09):
And since it was related in relation to when Esther's
mother died, I said her mother died before she was born,
and that makes no sense. Her mother died a few
weeks after she was born. Just to clear that up.
I mean, there is a whole haunting thing. Maybe we
could put on it, but I think it's one of
those things where our brains both auto corrected it without
(33:33):
Sometimes that happens, like we know the story, so we
go yep, yep, yep. That sounds weird, even though it
obviously is weird. We obviously it's so obvious from listening
to the episode that neither of us registered it in
any way at the time, and then we neither of
us registered it when doing QA on the episode. So
yet Esther Cox's mother did not die before she was born.
(33:55):
That was me miss speaking. So now onto the Green
Children of Wolpit. Uh. Jennifer's note says was listening to
The Green Children of Littlepit episode today and was intrigued.
I hadn't heard the story before to fight, despite having
lived in Suffolk for three years back in the nineties.
Towards the end of the episode, you mentioned a theory
by a man named Paul Harris back in It was
(34:17):
an interesting and somewhat viable theory, which you debunked for
logical reasons, including that the journey to Thetford Forest is
the wrong direction from Fornhum, that you would not be
able to heal hear the bells of Barry st Edmund's
if you're all the way up in Thetford These things
are absolutely true. For three years I lived on the
western edge of Thepford Forest in the village of Brandon.
(34:38):
It is quite a trek to bury from Thetford Forest
and then down to Woolpit, and there's no way you
could hear the bells from Barry, no matter how far
south in Theftford Forest you travel. But most importantly, Thetford
Forest did not exist in the twelfth century. It is
a man made forest planted after World War One. There
is no way Flemish children could escape a battle in
(34:59):
Formham by running into a forest that did not exist.
My guess is that at the time the area where
Thetford Forest now lies was much like the rest of
East Anglia, fairly flat with a moderate number of trees.
So we can add that to the reasons why this
theory is probably not plausible. Thoroughly enjoyed the podcast and
enjoyed hearing a story from the part of the world
that I love. While the tale is probably just spokelore,
(35:22):
I love the idea that it could have really happened.
I'll no doubt keep trying to figure out a plausible
explanation in my imagination for some time. Jennifer. Thank you
so much, Jennifer. In the various debunkings I found of
that article, the forest wasn't there wasn't one of them,
so I am very glad to learn that also the
forest wasn't there. If you would like to write to
(35:43):
us about this ort any other podcast, where a history
podcast at how stuff works dot com. We're also on
Facebook at Facebook dot com, slash miss in History on
Twitter at miss in History, our tumbler and our interest
in our instagram. All that stuff is also Missed in History.
If you come to our website, which is missed in
History dot com, you'll find the show notes for all
the episodes that Holly and I have ever done together.
(36:04):
We're going to have those links to prior episodes that
we talked about in the show notes for today's show.
You'll also find searchable archive every episode we have ever done,
so come and visit us that Missed in History dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
(36:25):
how staff works dot com.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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