On October 31, 1517, the twenty-one-year-old Katharina Schutz went about the rhythms of her Strasbourg life unaware that more than three hundred miles away a monk named Martin Luther was about to forever alter her life’s trajectory. That morning, Luther posted his 95 theses or convictions to the door of the Wittenberg Chapel hoping to provoke a friendly discussion that would guide the Catholic Church back to its “true treasure…the most holy gospel of the glory and grace of God.”
From Luther to Katharina
Two years earlier in 1515 while meditating on Romans 1:17, Luther had encountered and embraced the gospel. Luther later said of that moment: “There I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous lives by a gift of God, namely by faith. And this is the meaning: the righteousness of God is revealed by the gospel, namely, the passive righteousness with which the merciful God justifies us by faith.” Longing to reintroduce the Catholic Church to the gospel of grace which had liberated his soul, Luther posted his 95 Theses, believing the Catholic Church would welcome his push for gospel reform.
Unfortunately, the opposite happened. Pope Leo X and the Catholic Church condemned Luther as a heretic, ordered that his books be burned and that he should be executed. Though the threats against Luther’s life forced the monk now turned reformer into hiding for a time, the spread of his teachings proved unstoppable.
By March 1521, Luther’s teachings reached the city Strasbourg and Katharina. That month the city’s new and increasingly popular pastor of its cathedral, Matthew Zell, began to promote Luther’s theology of salvation through faith alone in Christ alone by grace alone. Katharina would later note, ‘He [Zell]…learned from him [Luther] how to teach rightly, and as soon as he [Zell] knew it, he preached and taught the truth of God eminently and happily.” Convinced that neither the prayers of the saints nor people’s good works were sufficient for salvation, Matthew began to encourage his congregants to appeal to Christ because he “has the power to save us from sins, death, and hell and to give us eternal life.” Matthew declared, “We firmly put our faith and trust in Him.” Katharina Schutz, who had developed a strong interest in spiritual matters as a young girl was intrigued by Matthew’s sermons and Luther’s writings.
Katharina had been born in 1497 to devout parents who had edged their way into Strasbourg’s nobility through her father’s election to the city government. Katharina shared her parents’ passion for the Catholic Church. To quote Katharina, “Since I was ten years old I have been a church mother…I have loved all the clergy…and have conversations with them – not about dances, worldly pleasures, riches or carnival but the kingdom of God.” When she entered her teenage years, Zell took a vow of chastity and celibacy becoming a kind of stay-at-home nun. Like Luther before her, Katharina faithfully attended mass, studied theology, and did all that she could to earn God’s favor. Despite her efforts, Katharina lamented that she and her friends “could never find any peace in all our many works, practices, and sacraments of that [Roman] church.” In other words, she longed for something more…for something that could free her soul from the guilt of sin and damnation. She longed for the gospel – the very message of Luther, Zell, and the Protestant Reformation.
This longing for and eventual devotion to God’s Word makes Katharina Schutz (who would soon become more widely known as Katharina Schutz Zell) a worthy object of modern Christian study and reflection. Katharina’s legacy reveals that the theology of the Reformation redeems sinful women, guides them to fulfilling marriages, and sustains them through great suffering.
A Reformation Woman
As Katharina sat under Matthew’s teaching, conversed with him about theology, and read the writings of Luther, God opened Katharina’s “understanding to comprehend the Holy Scriptures.” She described her conversion as follows: “He awakened and sent out by tongue and writings the dear…Martin Luther, who described the Lord Jesus Christ for me and others in such a lovely way that I thought I had been drawn out of the depths of…grim bitter hell into the sweet and lovely kingdom of heaven.” She now understood and believed that salvation was found in the Scriptures alone through faith alone in Christ alone by grace alone. To quote Katharina, “I…confess with…all believers the forgiveness of our sins only through the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ the spotless lamb, who was with the Father from eternity and was killed in the flesh for us. Likewise, I confess the only righteousness that counts before God: our inheritance of enteral life through the resurrection of our Lord Jesus from the dead.” As evidenced by her confession, Katharina had found eternal life through her study of Reformation theology. She remained forever thankful for the gospel that came to her through “Luther, my dear husband [Matthew Zell], and many other dear men.”
The Godly Wife
With her eternal destiny secured, Katharina turned her attention to the implications of her new beliefs on her daily life. Shortly after her conversion on December 3, 1523, Katharina “greatly amazed” “many people” when she repudiated her monastic vows and married her pastor and close friend, Matthew Zell, securing her final name: Katharina Schutz Zell.
Katharina later explained that the driving force behind her and Matthew’s decision was not primarily romantic. She described herself as lacking “overwhelming beauty, or riches, or other virtue that might move one to seek me in marriage. Rather, they married to advance the gospel. To quote the pastor Martin Bucer who married Matthew and Katharina, “Marriage…has many advantages in enabling the minister not only to live a more disciplined and blameless life, but also to be more free of temporal cares…to serve the Lord more faithfully, zealously, and without hinderance.”
Marriage also promised to increase Katharina’s spiritual effectiveness. The reformers believed a women best advanced the kingdom of God through her domestic duties. Luther proclaimed that no comparison could be made between the spiritual effectiveness of the “married woman who lives in faith…and a cloistered nun who lives in unbelief”(Luther 1522, 13). Katharina concurred with this conviction and wrote that women who “ faithfully (in the faith) keep house, obey, cook, wash dishes, wipe up and tend children…and…turn toward God with the voice of song…please God much better than any priest, monk, or nun.”
The reformation theology that compelled Katharina towards marriage also provided her and Matthew with the necessary framework for a loving and fulfilling marriage. Katharina embraced the teaching of Genesis 1 and 2 which revealed that God had designed the wife to be in Luther’s words the “helpmeet of the husband.” Katharina wrote, “I have been his [Mathew’s] helper according to my means in his house and in his office and service.” In other words, Katharina found joy and purpose because she devoted the twenty-four years of her marriage to the management of Matthew’s home and to the enrichment his pastoral ministry.
Katharina managed their home with remarkable efficiency. When the neighboring city of Kentzingen forced a 150 reformed-minded men in exile in 1524, Katharina and Matthew welcomed eighty of them into their home and fed them for four weeks. Maintaining “a free table for all refugees…the poor and good friends in the faith” Matthew and Katharina would go on to host Martin Bucer, John Calvin, the Anabaptists Sir Casper Schwenckfeld, and countless others. The couple that become famous for their hospitality also cared for Katharina’s father, siblings, and extended family throughout their marriage.”
Katharina also exported her hospitality to those that could not visit her, caring for the inmates of the Strasbourg jail, tending to countless plague victims, and visiting many widows. She offered the following reflection on her social involvement, “My devout husband…often allowed there to be something lacking in his own physical and household needs and gladly sent me as a gift to the community.”
Even after Matthew died, she continued to care for her fellow Christians, hosting a sickly nephew in her home even as her own health declined. When Bucer sent Katharina two coins to help her manage her household, Katharina gave one of the coins to two pastors and their exiled families and returned the other coin to Bucer so that he could be “generous another time.” She delighted in being the hands and feet of Christ both inside and outside her home.
The only aspect of Katharina’s Christian life that outpaced her care for Matthew’s household was her love for Matthew’s ministry. As she noted at Matthew’s funeral, Matthew “was from the beginning to his death…teaching…that the eternal word of God become flesh, and…took away the curse of our father Adam…[and]…I was with him from the beginning.” Because Matthew “actively furthered” and helped Katharina grow her faith, she was able to help him think through and respond to the theological challenges that engulfed the city of Strasbourg. Katharina said of Matthew, “He granted and allowed me space and will to read, hear, pray, study, and be active in all good things, early and late, day and night. Indeed, he took great joy in that – even when it meant less attention to or neglect in looking after his physical needs.” Katharina and Matthew spent their marriage, listening to sermons, reading theological tracts, and corresponding with theologians such as Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin (Zell and McKee 2006h, 193, 2006a, 227).”
At times, she took her theological correspondence public. She printed a pamphlet seeking to encourage the women of Kentzingen, edited a hymn book for mothers, published expositions on the Lord’s prayer and Psalm 51, and distributed multiple pamphlets in defense of her marriage and Matthew’s theology and character. She proved such a prolific writer and apologist for the reformed faith that her opponents nicknamed her “doctor Kathrina.”
Though many of Katharina’s writings encouraged the reformers and enabled historians to discover of her story, they also created a tension between her understanding and practice of biblical submission. When Katharina printed her first essay in defense of Matthew, she went against Matthew’s wishes. Katharina admitted that if Matthew “were to learn of it [the publication of her book] he would not allow me to do such a thing.” On another occasion, Katharina’s strong opposition to the practice of naming godparents at a child’s baptism so upset her church that Bucer labeled Katharina “a trifle imperious” and told Matthew to restrain his wife.” Later in life, Katharina would preach three funeral sermons: one for her husband and two on behalf of deceased anabaptist friends. These actions seemingly undermined her claim that a woman “must appropriately be submissive to the man’s office according to the teaching of Saint Paul.” Though Katharina generally submitted to her husband and her pastors and saw her theological work falling under their authority, she still believed that she had biblical warrant to speak in the defense of the truth if no one else would. She opined, “I would be unwilling to be left in error and lies…why should I not also in turn correct the error and lies that my neighbor believes(Zell and McKee 2006c, 66)?” Because of this conviction, Katharina at times exercised spiritual authority beyond her station as a wife and Christian sister.
Despite this foible, Matthew unquestionably loved Katharina and she him. Katharina said of her husband, “I have never had a…time at all when we have not been one. Nor has there been any time when he has done me hurt, great or small with words or deed.” And when Katharina failed to “rightly” serve or help Matthew, she reported that he “gladly forgave me everything before I asked.” As she noted more succinctly elsewhere, “He loved me much and held me in great honor.” Together, Matthew and Katharina modeled the glories of a marriage built upon the gospel of the Reformation.
The Biblical Encourager
On January 8, 1548, Katharina’s dear husband – “the highest and best treasure that I have on earth” – died in her arms. She lamented, “what great pain of heart…God…has exacted of me…I will mourn it to my grave.”
Though the death of Katharina’s husband proved to be her greatest sorrow, Katharina had experienced great suffering throughout her marriage. She had endured the “great pain” of burying both of her children at a young age, of having her character and theology slandered, and of walking with numerous friends through persecution, sickness, and death. In all these situations, she found the strength to endure and overcome through the gospel that she first encountered in Luther’s writings and Matthew’s preaching.
Katharina did not fear persecution and sickness because she knew that suffering was a means of grace, that God loved her, and that one day she and all true followers of Jesus would be resurrected. She told the women of Kentzington “that such things [as persecution] are…signs of His fatherly love…God wants to discipline us and tear us away from the desires of this world so that we may learn to desire him only.” Reflecting upon a time of great suffering in her life, Katharina proclaimed, “ I thank my God that in these and other crosses He teaches me many things…to acknowledge my sins, to confess and pray for them.” Moreover, she understood the slanderous attacks on her life to be an opportunity to seek the salvation and redemption of her attackers. She concluded the defense of her marriage to Matthew we these words, “I seek nothing other than we may be saved together with each other…O Lord do not leave them to persists and perish in their blindness, and do not reckon their lies to them as sin.”
She also encouraged the hurting to trust God’s character because she knew that Jesus who saved sinners would not “lay on you more to bear than is good and necessary for you.” She understood her heavenly father who freely loved all of his people to be the source of his people’s comfort and help. She wrote of him, “You care for us and save us from temporal and eternal evil.” She also believed that her savior who gave good gifts would never forsake his children As she told a friend struggling with leprosy, “Pray with confidence and faith as a child calls on his father…He cannot and will not turn his countenance away from you.” She expressed a similar sentiment at Matthew’s funeral proclaiming, “O God and Father, You will forgive me all…and You will comfort me for I have no doubt of your grace.”
Lastly, she could endure great sorrow because she believed in the hope of the resurrection. She reminded the women of Kentzington, “When your husbands are killed, do you not know that Christ said, ‘I am the resurrection and the life, whoever believe in me though he is already dead, yet he will live [Jn 11:25].” She revisited this theme as she grieved Matthew’s death. At his funeral, she proclaimed, “With my husband and all believers, I hope to obtain that costly resurrection of Jesus, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ…that hour will come when the dead who are in the grace will hear the voice of the lamb of God and go forth.” Katharina’s reformed theology provided her with the courage and hope needed to survive the darkest of days.
An Unfortunate End
After Matthew’s death, Katharina continued to suffer in part because the Catholic Church reestablished a foothold in Strasbourg but mostly because two of Matthew’s friends dragged her into a theological debate that would tarnish her legacy of faithfulness.
In the early 1550s, Sir Casper Schwenckfeld who had first come to Strasbourg in 1528 as an Anabaptist refugee, began asserting that Matthew was Anabaptist, a member of a protestant sect that advocated for believer’s baptism, political pacifism, and a spiritual view of the sacraments. Admittedly, Matthew and Katharina did hold to a form of mere Christianity or mere-Reformation that allowed them to welcome reformers of all persuasions including Anabaptists into their home as long as they confessed “the Lord Christ as the true Son of God and only savior of all people.” But neither Matthew nor Katharina held to the Anabaptist faith. The couple was most closely aligned with Zwingli and Calvin’s theology.
Unfortunately, Matthew’s pastoral successor, a former intern and house guest named Ludwig Rabus, believed the rumors. He began to reframe Katharina’s life and ministry as being ones that has cause the church “such trouble.” Though Katharina pushed back against Ludwig’s mischaracterization of her life and asserted that her final allegiance was not to any “devout minister” because “I do not want to be theirs…but with them I want to be Christ’s,” she failed to regain her reputation. She would die on the isolated fringes of the Strasbourg church community that she had served with such zeal (Zell and McKee 2006h, 494). At the end of her life, she lamented at the end of her: “I am…little valued by our clergy…I am left without any love and comfort in my crosses.
As her reputation and health gave way, Katharina continued to cling to her savior. She told a friend in the years leading up to her death, “I see coming soon the time of my release from this life. I rejoice and welcome it and know that to die here will be my gain… I have walked before God in fear of Him despising of the world for fifty years so that I could say with Saint Ambrose, “I have lived so that I am not ashamed to continue to live among the faithful, but I also am not afraid to die, for I am certain that in Christ I will live again and that in Him I have a gracious God forever.” She saw her Lord and Savior face-to-face Jesus and was reunited with her dear husband on September 5, 1562.
Final Thoughts
Because of Ludwig’s attacks, Katharina’s legacy mostly vanished from the historical record. She only resurfaced on the church history timeline at the end of the twentieth century because the historian Elsie McKee translated her works into English and wrote the first English biography of this Reformation-era saint. In so doing, McKee unearthed a woman of exemplary theological character and conviction. To quote McKee, “The Bible suppli[ed] both the authority and logic of most of her thinking.” Katharina demonstrated that gospel was powerful enough to redeem, direct, and sustain the life of every woman who eyes to see and ears to hear.
May those churches that owe their existence to the Protestant Reformation that Katharina loved continue to celebrate her faith, marriage, and courage. May her place on the Reformation timeline never be forgotten.