Argula von Grumbach (1492–1554/7): A Woman before Her Time

By Peter Matheson

At a time when women were expected to stick to their household duties, according to Peter Matheson, Argula von Grumbach burst through every barrier.

Matheson offers here a biography of the Reformation's first woman writer. Argula von Grumbach's first pamphlet in 1523 was reprinted all over Germany. Thousands of copies of her eight pamphlets appeared. Through her writing, von Grumbach defied her Bavarian princes (and her husband), denounced censorship, argued for an educated church and society, and developed her own understanding of faith and Scripture. She even intervened in the Imperial Diets at Nuremberg and Augsburg.

Drawing for the first time on her correspondence, the author shows how von Grumbach paid dearly for her outspokenness but remained undaunted. Though some saw her as a she-devil and others as a harbinger of a new age, Matheson shows von Grumbach as a woman engaged in the life of the villages where she lived, as one motivated by the dreams she had for her children.

In a time of sweeping change and risking everything for the light and truth she was given, Argula von Grumbach showed what the vision and determination of one person could achieve.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: Nov 14, 2013
• ISBN: 9781630870898

Peter Matheson

Pater Matheson is a theologian who has lectured in theology in the UK, New Zealand, Australia and the USA. From 1965 and 1982 he was Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in Ecclesiastical History at New College, Faculty of Divinity, Edinburgh University.

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Preface

I talk the talk of the dead

Words laden with distant life.

Distant love, distant desire, distant pain

And yet so near at hand, so much mine own.

—Ulla Hahn, So offen die Welt: Gedichte

¹

Fortune can sometimes smile on you. Some years back I was trawling though a microfiche, pursuing a pamphlet by Luther’s radical colleague Andreas Karlstadt, when I stumbled on a most unusual poem, urgent with outrage:

I cannot and I will not cease

To speak at home and on the street.

The author was a woman I had not come across before, though I had been teaching and researching the Reformation for some thirty years. This forthright writer, with the strange name of Argula von Grumbach, was at the forefront of religious controversy when the waves of reformist excitement swept through Bavaria in the early 1520s. As I began to read her various writings I was caught—hook, line, and sinker. She showed what one determined person could do against all the odds. She hurdled over the barriers that for centuries had inhibited women from intervening in the affairs of church, university, and state. Her initiatives exploited what proved to be a brief window of opportunity, but her example permanently opened up horizons of hope for the future. The significance of her contribution to church and society has gradually become evident.

Another piece of good fortune happened in Munich, that ancient, elegant capital of Bavaria. It was the very last day of my study leave. The catalogue of the State Library mentioned a collection of documents that looked vaguely interesting. I had the Rare Books division bring it up for me and—lo and behold—I was soon holding in my hands previously untapped manuscript versions of her first two writings.

One last piece of good fortune should be mentioned. Countless precious books and documents in Germany were lost in the course of the Second World War; you would ask for a book or a manuscript and be told, with a sad shrug of the shoulders: "Kriegsschaden (war damage). One such loss was a copy of a little book of prayers by Martin Luther, published in 1522; it bore a handwritten dedication by the Reformer to the noble woman, Hargula von Stauffen tzu Grumbach. Its existence had been well known before the war, but it was presumed to have perished. I trekked from one library to another in Berlin, hoping against hope to find it, and eventually turned up an unusual reference in an old card catalogue: Luth 2900 KD." A helpful librarian suggested I try the art collection in the State Library in Berlin. I handed in the request form, though without much hope, but there in the morning, waiting for me on the reserve shelves, was a small octavo volume. I was soon holding in my own (gloved) hands the book that five hundred years ago would have been a treasured possession of Argula von Grumbach. These are the moments that light up a historian’s life!

My hope is that the present biography will convey to the reader something of the quite tactile sense of closeness I felt at that moment to an extraordinary woman, a member of the Bavarian high nobility, mother of four, a genuinely humble believer, who found herself challenging her local university, the theologians and leaders of the church, the Bavarian dukes, her male relatives, and even her own husband. In the process she became an inspiration to many, while utterly appalling others.

Argula von Grumbach was, of course, a child of her time, of the chivalrous values of her family, and of the fierce waves of religious conflict and social upheaval. Hers was a simpler, harsher world than ours, innocent of anesthetics and antibiotics. Yet somehow she slips the temporal leash. She was of her time, but like the reformers of every age, she drew on the venerable traditions of the past, as well. At home with the Hebrew prophets and with the apostles, she melded these dangerous memories with a visionary confidence in a better future for church and society. Her pleas for tolerance and dialogue anticipate much of what we take for granted today. Five hundred years separate us from her, yet she remains our contemporary.

There is unusually abundant documentation for her life, though its asymmetrical nature poses problems for the biographer. Much of the evidence of her inner motivations and spirituality is clustered in her early years, while that for her day-to-day life and relationships tends to come later. This Bavarian aristocrat at times may puzzle, alienate, and even intimidate us. Yet her imaginative reach, her integrity and courage, continue to fascinate, while her defiance of gender and cultural constraints takes one’s breath away.

1. "Ich spreche die Sprache der Toten

Wörte beladen mit fernem Leben

ferne Liebe ferne Lust fernes Leid

und doch mir so nah und so eigen."

—Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt München, 2004.

acknowledgments

A biography is about one person, but is never the work of a single author. An army of librarians and archivists, from Otago University in New Zealand to the British Museum in London, and across the length and breadth of Germany—but above all in the Bavarian State Library and the Bavarian State Archives in Munich—has made it possible. Particular thanks are due to Dr. Hörner of the Bavarian State Archives. Professor Franz Fuchs of Würzburg and Dr. Uwe Tresp of Berlin have been most helpful. I owe a particular debt to the local historians in Dietfurt and Zeilitzheim, Herr Franz Kerschensteiner and Herr Hilmar Spiegel, and to the Heimatpflegerin (honorary local historian) for Beratzhausen, Frau Elisabeth Spitzenberger, who has spared me many blushes and unearthed a wealth of new material. She is the virtual coauthor of sections of this book. Professors Denis Janz and Elsie McKee kindly read a draft for me, and I am greatly indebted to Dr. Brett Knowles for his meticulous copyediting. Finally, I am grateful to my publishers, Cascade Books, for their encouragement, and to my partner, Heinke Sommer-Matheson, for her interest and forbearance over so many years.

The documents in the Grumbach correspondence in the Bavarian State Archives are only partly enumerated; unnumbered letters are referred to by their date. I have generally referred to Argula von Stauff, or Argula von Grumbach, for the sake of brevity, as Argula. Except where otherwise mentioned, translations from the German are mine.

Abbreviations

ADB Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie

AHKBAW Abhandlungen der historischen Classe der Königlich Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften

AHVUFA Archiv des Historischen Vereins von Unterfranken und Aschaffenburg

AKG Archiv für Kirchengeschichte Böhmen-Mähren-Schlesien

AMRhKG Archiv für Mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte

ARG Archive for Reformation History

AugUB Universitätsbibliothek Augsburg

BABKG Beiträge zur altbayerischen Kirchengeschichte

BayHStA Bayerisches Haupstaatsarchiv München

BBKG Beiträge zur Bayerischen Kirchengeschichte

BDLG Blätter für Deutsche Landesgeschichte

BHSPF Bulletin de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Française

BL British Library

BZGBR Beiträge zur Geschichte des Bistums Regensburg

CH Church History

EKB Einzelarbeiten aus der Kirchengeschichte Bayerns

EMWJ Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal

GTA JR Göttinger Theologische Arbeiten JR

JTS Journal of Theological Studies

Köhler Köhler, Flugschriften des frühen 16. Jahrhunderts

LuthQ Lutheran Quarterly

LW Luther Works

MüSB Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München

MüUB Universitätsbibliothek München

NDB Neue Deutsche Biographie

NFur Neue Furche

ONB Österreichische Nationalbibliothek

QEBDG Quellen und Erörterungen zur bayerischen und deutschen Geschichte

QFRG Quellen und Forschungen zur Reformationsgeschichte

RKG Reichskammergericht

RTA Reichstagsakten

SCJ Sixteenth Century Journal

SJT Scottish Journal of Theology

SPKB Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz Berlin

StAAm Staatsarchiv Amberg

StAW Staatsarchiv Würzburg

SVRG Schriften des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte

VGFG Verein der Gesellschaft für Fränkische Geschichte

VHVO Verhandlungen des Historischen Vereins für Oberpfalz und Regensburg

VIEG Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Europäische Geschichte Mainz

WA, WAB D. Martin Luthers Werke. Weimarer Edition. 1883ff. Briefwechsel. 1933ff.

ZBLG Zeitschrift für Bayerische Landesgeschichte

ZHF Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung

one

Childhood, Youth, and marriage

I’ve taken the risk;

And await now the consequences.

—Ulrich von Hutten, Ein neu Lied

¹

The fifteenth-century Furtmeyr Bible is a revelation. Its stunning colors—blue and green, orange, purple and gold—are as sharp today as on the day they were painted five hundred years ago. In its pages we come face-to-face with the archetypal figures and scenarios of the Hebrew Bible as seen by late medieval people: Adam and Eve, Noah and his ark, the dramatic crossing of the Red Sea, Moses—hair seemingly aflame—striding down from Mount Sinai, Judith casually chopping off the head of Holofernes, Daniel in the fiery furnace, Samson wielding his donkey jawbone.

This manuscript Bible, with its magnificent red and black Gothic script, was commissioned by Argula von Grumbach’s grandparents, Hans and Margaret von Stauff, in 1468 and completed in 1472. The margins, burgeoning with fantastic flowers and birds, betoken a delight in nature. A multitude of alluring depictions accompanies the Song of Songs. We see the young bride and bridegroom sitting regally side by side: she magnificent in a flowing blue gown, he resplendent in golden armor, each sporting a fine head of auburn hair.

The biblical illustrations are framed by unmistakably Bavarian fields, hills, rivers, and castles; yet the latter glow surreally against a golden background. Thus the earthy and divine, the natural and the supernatural, demons and angels, and very ordinary humans, rub shoulders with one another, and so swing us effortlessly into the exuberant world of late medieval piety.² It is no surprise to learn that Hans von Stauff III, who commissioned this Bible, went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem in his youth, setting out in the spring of 1449 with the Augsburg patrician Jörg Mülich, traveling via Venice, Corfu, and Crete, and returning in the depths of winter after being knighted at the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.

Argula von Grumbach too lived in this biblical world, or, rather, it lived in her. But the stage on which she walked was also that of the high nobility, of the highly influential von Stauff family, with its vaulting sense of honor and family pride. Illustrations portray her brother, Bernhardin von Stauff, glorying in the world of the tournament, pounding down at his opponent, and lance at the ready. This reminds us forcefully of the other side of Argula’s story: the robust self-assurance of the high nobility, the great traditions of her family, stretching back to the thirteenth century. To the end of her life she signed her letters, Argula, free-born, née von Stauff. Her father, Bernhardin, was a noted champion in jousting, and was himself responsible for summoning tournaments to Regensburg and Mainz.³ Thousands flocked to these events, as they do today to great sporting occasions. Such tournaments were at their peak at the close of the fifteenth century. With their splendor and showmanship they represented the self-understanding of the high nobility. This was an exotic world of virtual battle, of sanitized feuding, with pennants flying and fair ladies distributing their favors to the contender of their choice. There was a considerable variety of events, from staged battles to the jousting in single combat. It was hugely expensive to stage and participate in the occasion, and of course participation was highly exclusive. The losers forfeited their expensive armor to the winners. And while these tournaments were extravagant spectacles and ostentatious displays of naked courage, they were also deadly serious in intent: emphatic statements about status and power, iconic manifestations of a feudal society in which nothing was more important than chivalry and the honor of one’s name and heredity.

This, then, was the wondrously rich religious and cultural world into which Argula von Stauff was born. Her mother, Katharine von Thering (or Törring), the daughter of George von Thering, belonged to another prominent noble family in Bavaria. The Thering family was not without its black sheep. Argula’s cousin Johann von Thering IV was sentenced in Munich to a penitential pilgrimage to Rome for murdering a servant, a pointer both to the violence bubbling just under the surface of society, and to the double standards of justice for rich and poor.⁴ Katharine von Thering and Bernhardin von Stauff married in June 1486.

Argula’s father, Bernhardin, seems to have been on good terms with his wife’s family, especially with her brother Veit, though there were the usual tussles about inheritance when old Christopher von Thering died. In 1498 the Prince Bishop of Salzburg appears to have been called in to act as mediator.⁵

Katharine herself must have had robust health, bringing one vigorous child after another into the world: Bernhardin, Argula herself, Secundilla, Zormarina, Gramaflanz, Feirafis, and Marcellus. Though none of the children were given the name, Parsifal, an old name in the family, recalls the epic account of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Parsifal, or Perceval, was one such knight. Argula herself is named after the beautiful if arrogant seductress, Argeluse. Secundilla, Gramaflanz, and Feirafis also figure in the story of Parsifal.

The prominence of the von Stauff family was symbolized by the great fortress of the Ehrenfels (the rock of honor), on the Laber River, not far from Regensburg. This had been their seat since 1335. Even today, as you climb up and up through the woods to its imposing ruins, you sense how its five towers and chapel must have dominated the fertile countryside around it. Close by the Ehrenfels was the market town of Beratzhausen, where the family possessed a festes Haus (a stone-built residence). In the mid-fifteenth century Hans von Stauff III’s marriage, ca. 1453, to Margareta Schenk von Geyern had linked the von Stauffs with that other important family, and from 1465 he and his successors were Reichsfreiherrn (free imperial lords), entitled, like the counts and the free imperial cities, to a seat in the imperial assemblies, or diets, and answerable only to the emperor. They were independent, in other words, of the Wittelsbach dukes of Bavaria, and sovereign within their own sphere. They held sway over some seventeen hundred subjects in their quite scattered lands.⁶ This autonomous status was continually being contested, however. Duke Albrecht IV of Bavaria (1465–1508) with his ambitious centralizing policies, never recognized any restriction on his sovereign powers in Bavaria, and Bernhardin Junior, Argula’s brother, had to defend his independence vigorously against the Palatinate Counts of Neuburg.⁷

The wider family of the von Stauffs had long been one of the leading families in Bavaria, with seats at Köfering and Sünching as well as Ehrenfels, while their residence in Regensburg, the Staufferhof, a little realm independent of the city council, is to be of considerable importance later in our story. Relations between the different branches of the family appear to have been good. We know, for example, that Katharine, Argula’s mother, stayed a whole summer in Köfering, about fifty kilometers from Beratzhausen.

In the frequent feuds or disputes between members of the nobility, the von Stauffs often acted as Teidinger (mediators). Their services were engaged by kings and bishops on numerous occasions. They had at some point held virtually every important office of state in Bavaria, as councilors, diplomats, administrators, and judges. As the Viztum (representative) of the dukes in Landshut and Lower Bavaria, Dietrich III, Hans III, and Argula’s father, Bernhardin, had all exercised a commanding role, with oversight over the other ducal administrators.

By the middle decades of the fifteenth century the prosperity of the von Stauffs enabled them to lend money to bishops, dukes, and kings, and to act as guarantors of loans made to others, while their prestigious seal was much in demand to cement and witness contracts and agreements. They took a keen interest in religious matters, supporting financially various monasteries and churches, the German Order, and a religious fraternity in the Laaber, and they developed particularly close links to the diocese of Eichstätt, where Conrad and Hermann von Stauff were canons of the cathedral.⁸ Hans von Stauff secured an indulgence for the St. Wenceslas Chapel in the castle at Köfering.⁹ They were known as patrons of art and literature, developed close links with the relatively new university at Ingolstadt, which was founded in 1472, and set up a school at Beratzhausen. A list of the manuscripts in Hans von Stauff’s possession suggests a keen interest in classical and German history, and also in religious matters, including prophetic predictions, and information about indulgences and pilgrimages.¹⁰ Bernhardin, Argula’s father, continued to foster this interest in history and religion. He himself studied in Ingolstadt. Edward Sittich dedicated his almanac for the year 1498 to Bernhardin von Stauff, his gracious lord and good Christian.¹¹

Yet the fragility of this high standing in Bavarian society was cruelly demonstrated by the sack of the Ehrenfels in 1492, at about the time when Argula was born. Her father, Bernhardin, together with her uncle Jerome, were leading figures in the abortive Löwler (Lions’) rebellion in which many members of the Bavarian nobility were involved. Around their necks hung necklaces with golden lions! There was a long tradition of Bavarian nobles covenanting together, first of all against the Hussites in 1428. Then Hans von Stauff, Bernhardin’s father, was involved in the short-lived Böcklerbund of 1466, for mutual self-defense against any princes or cities that threatened their liberties. Then in 1489 some forty-six members of the nobility formed an alliance against Duke Albrecht IV of Bavaria. They had the support of two of the duke’s brothers, Christopher and Wolfgang, and of the emperor, Frederick III, who was enraged at Albrecht IV’s attempt to incorporate the free imperial city of Regensburg within his territories. The emperor commissioned Bernhardin with the execution of the ban against the city. In the eyes of the Lions, the duke was the real rebel against the constitution of the empire, and they were simply defending their ancient liberties. A primary concern of these revolts was the imposition of new taxes by Munich.

However, the rather undisciplined rebellion of the Lions was quickly put down. As a result, the Ehrenfels was besieged and taken, its defenses demolished, and much of the market town of Beratzhausen devastated. Katharina von Thering fled with her children to Neumarkt. Köfering suffered much the same fate. As ever, the local population suffered most, including the poor women.¹² The Furtmeyr Bible was whisked off to Munich as part of the spoils of war, and Bernhardin von Stauff and his brother were taken captive. It was a catastrophe for the family, one from which it never fully recovered. As Argula remarked in a letter to her relative, Adam von Thering, in 1524: You know that my father was ruined under the princes of Bavaria, and his children became beggars.¹³

Argula grew up, then, in a family with the proudest of traditions but also in one that had been humiliated militarily, while its resources were drained by the legal battles that ensued. Henceforth the family was burdened with crippling debt. The financial losses for the von Stauff family as a result of the rebellion were massive, amounting in their estimation to some forty thousand florins. The damage to the Ehrenfels was not total, and the family continued to live there, but the calamitous defeat proved an unmistakable sign that the old feudal order of society was crumbling, and that a new era of state building was emerging. Argula’s father, Bernhardin, and his brother Jerome, did eventually manage to patch up their relationship with the duke. Their support for Albrecht during the Landshut Succession war was rewarded with the gift of Schönberg Castle, and Bernhardin acted as the duke’s administrator in Ingolstadt, and as his Viztum (representative) in Landshut, while his brother, Jerome, rose to prominence at the Munich court during the minority of Duke William, as Hofmeister (lord chamberlain) and Landmarschall (president of the territorial assembly). Jerome emerged too as a leading figure of the Bavarian nobility, and as a sign of ducal favor Falkenstein Castle was presented to him, but he also made many enemies.

It will be seen then, that Argula von Stauff was born into a troubled, exciting, rapidly changing society, about nine years after the birth of Martin Luther. Far beyond her ken, the new world of the Americas was being opened up to Europe, and European art and literature began to show an awareness of cultures very different from their own.¹⁴ Argula spent her childhood in the beautiful Bavarian countryside. The Laber valley, just to the west of the imperial city of Regensburg, was magical in the spring, the fields, hedgerows, and hills sparkling with fresh life, the sun chasing the showers, colors vivid after the rain, green shoots everywhere, nature stretching and yawning, ready for a new year, ready for anything. Apple-blossom time. Throughout her life, with the exception of her adolescent years in Munich, Argula was to be closely wedded to the countryside. Her family drew much of their income from its grain, its animals, and its vines, and much of their enjoyment from the hunt. Hers was a rural world of horses, dogs, sheep, geese, and hens. It was her natural environment. She was later to ride confidently through the land, side saddle of course. At the head of the valley was the comfortable sprawl of houses of the market town of Beratzhausen with its marketplace, the steepled church of St. Peter and Paul, and of course the family home of the von Stauffs.

We know little about Argula’s childhood. Even the date of her birth, usually given as 1492, is undocumented. Her name, a variant on Argeluse, and those of her siblings, such as Gramaflanz, suggest that she would have been brought up on the heroic stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. The chivalrous narratives from Parsifal seem to have been beloved of the family. They were not named after saints but after the heroic figures of chivalry.

Argula’s mother no doubt read to her stories from the chapbooks like that of the cheeky trickster Till Eulenspiegel, or of Fortunatus, whose purse never ran out.¹⁵ Countless popular songs and jingles circulated in the vernacular, and later she herself was to try her hand at poetry. Hers was a cultured family with close links to the university at Ingolstadt, where her father and brother, Marcellus, and her own sons were to study. She herself was taught reading, writing, and arithmetic, though no Latin, and must have been taught well, to judge by her later prowess. Her elder brother, Bernhardin, writes with a bold, confident hand and was to patronize outstanding scholars such as Paracelsus.

The second of a large family, Argula would not have lacked for companions to play the usual children’s games, to pet the dogs, and hang around the horses in the stable. Her immediate environment was the little market town, with its smithy and bakehouse, watching the women chatting at their doors as they spun their wool. Like all noble families, the von Stauffs would have joined in the feasts and festivals that marked the passage of the year: Candlemas in February, with its solemn procession round the fields to ensure the fertility of the crops; Mardi Gras, just before Lent, with its traditional costumes and processions; midsummer bonfires on John the Baptist Day; and of course the major celebrations at Easter and Christmas. On occasion her mother travelled to Köfering for a change of scene, and she would have gone along too, getting to know her relatives. Visits to the family’s house in Regensburg, that great imperial city on the Danube, would have opened the young child’s eyes to a history stretching right back to Roman times, to the soaring wonders of its Gothic cathedral, to the pulse of a great trading city.

The collection of prayers in her household papers, very similar to another collection stemming from Nuremberg,¹⁶ mirrors the traditional, warm piety in which she was brought up.¹⁷ To echo Hamburger’s comments on the Nuremberg collection, the prayers reflect lay concerns, an emphasis on a piety of works, sacramental devotion, confession, and the cultivation of the memory of the dead, especially of deceased family members. As a child Argula would have felt protected by her own guardian angel, and would have said her prayers to Our Lady and the Saints:

Rejoice, Mary, for you have tasted the sharpest joy, world without end. Ave Maria heavenly queen, help us to praise you and your dear son, Jesus Christ, eternally and gaze on you in all eternity. Amen.

Eternal, honourable and blessed spirit, my faithful angel, whom almighty God gave me as a protector, I call upon you and beg you with all humility in the name of your lord and mine to consider the distress of my body and soul . . . Cleanse me from all worldly pleasure and joy and grant me a pure and chaste desire and at all times a true and just humility . . .

 . . . Holy lord, Saint Erasmus, I beg you to preserve me in every place from all suffering (and) from false counsel from all those who hate me and endanger my honour and give me now nourishment for my body so I may come to you with the hosts of angels in God’s name. Amen.¹⁸

It was in accordance with the family tradition, too, that her father presented his ten-year-old daughter with a printed copy of the German Bible. Long before the Reformation, vernacular Bibles were available in Germany—to the few, that is, who could afford them. It seems likely that this one was the beautifully produced Koberger Bible, published in Nuremberg in 1483 by Anton Koberger. The two large folio volumes were lavishly illustrated with 109 woodcuts, which included Eve’s gentle extraction from Adam’s rib, Judith’s dramatic decapitation of Holofernes, the archangel Michael slaying the dragon, and a decidedly elegant whore of Babylon from the book of Revelation. The biblical books were introduced by prologues from the fourth-century church father Jerome, who numbered noble