A 03 - Ministers Wife Protestant Reformation
THE MINISTER’S WIFE IN THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION
It is not until the Protestant Reformation that the minister’s wife is seen with clarity. Even then she has been described as a * shadowy igure as she first emerges among the dust of old controversies and the smoke of battles long ago.” 3 As will be seen, the smoke of.these battles was to surround her for decades to follow. Nonetheless, her appearance on the scene was refreshing, for it imparted a certain dignity to the pastor’s residence, a residence long enshrouded by illicit relationships with mistresses and illegitimate children. Latotorette asserts that a married A HISTOBJCAL LOOK AT MINISTER’S WIFE 21 clergy brought a distinct change in family life in the Western world gave new dignity and honor to woman’s role as a wife. 4 credits Martin Luther with founding the Protestant parsonage, though somewhat unwittingly, for it had not been in his plans. Marriage of the clergy was a natural consequence of Luther’s position; however, upon first learning that some nuns and had left the cloisters to many, he is said to have exclaimed: ** Good heavens!
They won’t give me a wife.” 5 But when a nun, having evangelical convictions, sought his counsel, Luther took it upon himself to arrange her escape, along with eleven of her sister nuns. Arrangements’ for the escape were made with an elderly fish merchant who regularly delivered herring to the convent. In the spring of 1523 twelve nuns were concealed in fish barrels and taken out in the wagon, a daring act on the part of both die fish merchant and Luther, since such was a capital offense. Luther then became something of an employment and marriage broker, arranging for either work or marriage for the escapees.
More than a year later three nuns were yet on hand and still unmarried. By this time friends were joking about his marrying one, but he held firmly to his estate of bachelorhood. Finally only Kathy Von Bora remained, who one day half jokingly proposed marriage to Luther. Still he was uninterested, until he mentioned the incident to his father, who took it quite seriously and immediately urged him, to marry her. Thus? when he was forty-two and she in her late twenties, Luther married Kathy Von Bora, whom he frequently referred to as his “ rib.” 6 Later, commenting upon adjustments to be made in marriage, he said: “There is a lot to get used to the first year of marriage. One wakes up in the morning and finds a pair of pig 22 OF MINISTER’S WIFE OB, the which were not there before.” 7 Marriage is honorable, Luther thought, not only for the but for the clergyman as well. “ The principle of marriage/* he asserted, “ runs through all creation, and die flowers, as well as animals, are male and female.” 8 The doctrine of celibacv was branded by him as an invention j * of Satan. He felt it was incumbent upon men to protest in deed as well as word against the teaching. 9 There is, therefore y a real sense in which his marriage was undertaken not only for personal reasons but also in vindication of his reformed convictions. The picture of this Irst Protestant minister’s wife is that of a woman deeply devoted to her husband. She usually addressed him as “ Doctor.” 10 The Luther home was a veritable din of activity. Guests who came to talk with her renowned husband were an ever-present commodity, and he was always the center of attention. Her role at these times seems to have been something of a hostess (servants did much of the housework) who stood on the outer fringes of the circle, though this picture is probably not out of keeping with the practice of the day. There is no indication that she resented being overshadowed by her famous husband; she expected it. 11
Bainton concludes his volume on Luther by paying this tribute to him, The influence of the man on his people was deepest in the home. In fact, the home was the only sphere of life which the Reformation profoundly affected. Economics went the way of capitalism and politics the way of absolutism, but the home took on that quality of affection and godly patriarchalism which Luther had set as the pattern of his own household. 12 Though a child of the Reformation, the minister’s wife was to experience many years of hardship and persecu A HISTORICAL LOOK AT MIXXSlER’s WIFE 23 tion before she finally received her citizenship papers as a full-fledged, honorable member of society. Andre Maurois says that Mrs. Thomas Cranmer, wife of the first Archbishop of Canterbury, subsequent to the break with Rome, was forced to live in such retirement that she had to travel in a box with ventilating holes in the lid. 18
Resistance to the minister’s wife was stubborn, and legislative halls rang with enactments to prevent her existence. The English, in 1539, enacted the Act of Six Articles in an effort to deter the spread of reformed doctrines and to enforce celibacy of the clergy. Included among the rather severe penalties for doctrinal deviations provided by the Act was burning at the stake. Imprisonment, loss of property, or hanging were provided for those who dared break the vows of celibacy to take a wife. Yet, many of the more persistent clergymen did marry, though it appears that violations of the Act were not punished with tie ruthlessness later to be experienced under Queen Mary.
Under Edward VI, marriage of the clergy was recognized in the Act of Convocation in 1549. This recognition, however, was short-lived. Mary, a Catholic and daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine, had hardly ascended the throne before the Act was repealed, followed by fiery persecution. Mary’s short reign of five years witnessed so many beheadings and burnings that she earned for herself the title ** Bloody Mary.” Among her more famous victims was Archbishop Thomas Cramner, who was burned at the stake.
During the reign of Elizabeth I, ecclesiastical law recognized a married clergy. However, the status of the minister’s wife was never secure, since state recognition of a married clergy was not forthcoming. When James I (who commissioned the Authorized, or “ King James" Version 24 THE BOLE OF THE MINISTERS “WIFE of the the throne in 1603, the Puritans presented him the millenary petition, so named because it was supposedly signed by a thousand persons. Among its was state recognition of the minister’s wife. As at the beginning of this chapter, with the signing of this document in 1604, the matter of a married clergy became a settled issue in England, Margaret Watt, who has done one of the most scholarly historical studies on the minister’s wife, states that the various records, annals, clerical biographies, and autobiographies present a rather uniform picture of the minister’s wife subsequent to the first stormy one hundred years of her existence. At least in England, it is the story of quiet lives lived in high standards of conduct and principles, differing chiely in worldly circumstances and opportunity. For -the most part it. is the story of the eminent, of the successful, clergyman, for the ordinary clergyman neither wrote nor was written about. 14