“WHAT shall thy praise resound ? bright child of song!
The classic lyre of Greece, which, swept by thee,
Woke deep Eolian echoes, slumbering long ?
Or thy own land’s soft lute, whose harmony
Breathed, all unconscious, from thy hand and heart
Not these ! For thou didst chuse that better part …”¹

Olympia, bright and esteemed lady of Ferrara – child protégé of divine favor, lover of languages and deepest learning, champion of Greek and Latin, teacher and companion of princesses, erudite woman of divine strength and gentle femininity, loving daughter, sister, wife, and faithful friend of budding believers and loyal protestants, devotee of Christ and elect of God’s grace – I was to capture your heart. But how?

How would I garner those rays of divine light that would help you to pit the truth that is in Christ against papal error? How could I seize a love so divinely intense that it would beg to dissolve superstitions; or a love of learning so deep that it would plunge you into the ever-liberating depths of God’s sacred scriptures and the works of convicted and enlightened hearts?

How could I embrace a life so replete with God’s perfect purposes that it would rob even your premature death of its fiery sting? How could I clasp the magnanimous beauty of providence at work in your halcyon days, to grow in you those seeds of grace that would help you to rise above all that is polished, distinguished, and highly esteemed? Or how could I capture that unconquerable grace that would ignite you to love God’s truth so fully, that all the pains and pleasures of this mortal life would melt into the imperishable treasures of trusting and learning Christ?

Olympia, may the pieces of your life and heart presented here help to awaken us from our comfortable slumber. I fear that our hearts, free of papal tyranny and free to partake of the riches of God’s Word, have grown smaller and colder in these our ‘happier’ days, in which our pursuit of leisure drowns the love of learning, where mounts of pleasures trump the quest for truth and holiness, and where our self-serving love and ego-exalting good deeds fill the many pages of our plasma screens and books.

May your story warn us that our cherished merriment, envied flatteries, and costly pleasures are fleeting, that they were never meant to last. Show us how quickly life can change from prosperity to peril and famine and war, and that our only hope is found in Christ alone and in the spreading of His gospel. May the bright galaxy of your virtue and talents teach us where our real hope lies; that it lies within the riches of His storehouse, endlessly replete with His wisdom, truth, and love – our ultimate peace.

Olympia, young lady of highest learning, let the many pages of your life speak of a wisdom not attainable by effort, but by the grace of God. Let the beauty of your female erudition rouse us to see that our safety lies not in what we know but in Whom we trust with all that we claim to have learned. Bid us to see that all of our accomplishments and talents are gifts of God’s own providence to be forever cherished and nourished in light of His eternal will and glory.

In the year of divine advantage, 1526, Ferrara welcomed you into its era of prosperity and splendor, of art and literature and deepest learning, and into that brief dawning that would stir the sleeping from their parish graves. It was into the ducal court of Ferrara, your home and seat of learning, that many enlightened converts found refuge under the protection of your kind duchess Renee, whose religious sympathy, cemented by great reformers such as John Calvin, helped to shape your heart as well.

Your mother Lucretia was a model of dignity and virtue who, by God’s perfect design, exhibited that strength of mind and principle that would later console her as she would learn of your departure, first from Ferrara in 1550, and then from life itself in 1555. Your father, Fulvio Pellegrino Morato, a distinguished professor at the ducal court of Este, and one of the first and finest supporters of the reformed tenet, was utterly devoted to foster your genius and love for God’s truth.

Olympia, your venerated brilliance was further illumined by your growing pious disposition and most engaging modesty. But little did you know, as you basked in the lauds of some of the most learned elite, that all their flatteries would one day turn to cold suspicions and their ultimate rejection because you were found increasingly fond of the very truth that threatened to undo their royal favors. Little did you know that your headstrong bent against papal authority and toward the divine, which you once rejected, would rescue you from that idolatrous Italy that would have been pleased to hang you with its flaunting honors.

God was steadily at work in that great literary and poetic atmosphere in which you matured into a most skilled and gifted writer. Little evidence was there in the midst of your erudite circles, that death and decay were already at work beneath the broad and sunny streets on which your delicate beauty roamed. Of all the things you knew, you could not have known that the holy scriptures, through which God poured that blessed truth that you could not resist, would clad you in an even lovelier garment — that blessed grace that outlasts the stench and decay of death itself.

Little did you know that the command of your pen would prove most useful in those anxious days where persecution, war, death, separation, and famine grew the strongest faith in you — a faith from which would flow the ink of your dearest persuasions to win the hearts and minds of misled men and women everywhere for the truth that is in Christ alone. How grateful you were for God’s provision of a husband whose love for learning was as deep and wide as yours, and for the grace that afforded you the means to pursue your private studies and gifts of writing and teaching for His glory.

You knew that the help and love of others, and the provisions and periods of peaceful rest were divine gifts of God to lend you that strength and empathy that would later help you to produce some of your most edifying works of endurance, hope, and suffering. Your princely confidence grew more and more selfless as your love and sympathy for others began to grow heavenward from your own tears and pains.

Your greatest wish for others was not what it once was, in the felicitous court of Ferrara, that they should gratify their desires and enjoy the pleasures of this world–their best life now. No! Your greatest wish for all, which your pen did prove again and again, was that they should also become partakers of that same eternal reward that was promised, in spite of fiercest persecutions, to all who put their trust in Christ, bend their hearts toward His grace, and employ all their minds to the diligent study of His Word.

How thankful was your heart, when it learned that it could outgrow even the grandest of palaces and dreams; when in your beloved’s Schweinfurt your finest works went up in flames along with all the hopes of that dear town. How diligent were your prayers for God’s grace to spare your dear husband from surest death. How pure was your praise of those strangers, those kindred in Christ, who would love you as a sister across the many war-ridden miles with their help to preserve and to publish those of your letters that God was pleased to spare and to use for His glory.

Olympia, long have you been loosed form the bands of this hard mortal life, and great is the rest and reward you’ve gained in Christ! These words, though spoken as if you could hear, can’t really reach your ears, now abounding in praises and glory alone for that great Grace and Love that forever was pleased to save you. But if you could, you’d quickly exhort us not to look to you but to the Hand of God alone, with which your legacy was written and without which it would only be a most sad and hollow fairy tale.

About the Author: Petra is a word enthusiast and writer-wannabe behind This Good Steward. English, her second language, has become a favorite excuse with which to express her many thoughts and opinions. Petra is married with two grown sons and two beautiful grandchildren. She and her husband live and love the small-town life near the foothills of NC, where they share the unfailing provisions of God, His love shed abroad in their hearts, His redeeming truth and forgiveness in Christ, a passion for the Doctrines of Grace, the simple pleasures of smiling, hiking, and music, and the more luxurious delights of eating out and kayaking.

Our friends at the Bible Truth Chat Room continue their corresponding series on women.  Their topic today is the Institution of Marriage. 

The next post in this series is Lady Jane Grey by Becky Pliego

Source:

¹ Olympia Morata: Her Times, Life and Writings, Arranged from Contemporary and Other Authorities (1834 Book)

Other Resources

Online:

Women in the Reformation by Emma Louise Parry

The Bulwark by Scottish Reformation Society

Olympia Morata by Jules Bonet

Olympia Morata: Her Life and Times by Robert Turnbull

Olympia Fulvia Morata /Olimpia (1526-1555)

Olympia Morata: Champion of the Reformation

Morata, Olympia (1526-1555)

In Print:

http://www.prpbooks.com/Weight-of-a-Flame-The-Passion-of-Olympia-Morata-2160.html&session=728f6ce4d347d88c1e85cb606cab4756

Morata, Olympia, 1526-1555; Parker, Holt N., transl., The Complete Writings of an Italian Heretic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003)

The only one unlike her mother, Marguerite, Queen of Navarre and her cousin and Renee of France (Ferrara) who came out publically and claimed openly the Protestant faith as her own. Her mother Queen Marguerite of Navarre was called the Nursing Mother of the Reformation. She was a Princess, a future queen; given a fine education, and was born uncommonly favoured.

However her status also came with a price that left her uncommonly fettered. At age 12 at the demands of her Uncle, King of France (of whom the opening epistle of Calvin’s institutes was addressed to) she was betrothed against her will to the Duke of Cleeves as a political pawn, because her uncle saw it as a hope for a French and German alliance. She made a written protest against this which even at that age showed her free spirit, and courage like that of a caged bird longing to be set free. Along with David as she sighed her silent tears when separated from her parents in the months leading up to her betrothal she must have wished for the wings of a dove so that she could fly away and be at rest.

For my father and my mother have forsaken me, But the LORD will take me up. Psalm 27:10

Her written protest read:

I Jehanne de Navarre, continuing my protests already made, in which I persist, say and 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 that I never will. Anything that I may say or do after this because of which it could be said that I had given my consent, will have been because of force, against my will, out of fear of the King [Francis I], of my father the King, and of my mother the Queen, who had me threatened and beaten by… my governess…. [who said] that I would be the cause of the ruin and destruction of my mother and father and of their house. …I do not know to whom to appeal except to God, when I see that my mother and father have abandoned me. …I have told them that I would never love the Duke of Cleves and I do not want to have anything to do with him.

After the marriage she was not to live with her husband as his wife till she was 15 years old and she went back to live with her parents. Her mother at this point took over her education and brought in the best of Reformed teachers to bring her up in the Reformed faith. Both William Farrel and John Calvin were visitors at the royal home. However, 18 months after her marriage, the Duke of Cleeves made an unholy alliance with Charles V, the Emperor of the [un]holy roman empire, and he renounced his alliance with France, turned his back on the Protestant faith and sought to get Catholicism restored. The Duke’s sister however, Sabella stood up against Charles V and defied him, and defended the city against him while her brother seemed to make very little resistance. She, another woman, made her stand.

Queen Marguerite and her brother the King of France were outraged at this turn of events and wanted Jeanne’s marriage annulled. The Duke of Cleeves also no longer desired Jeanne as a wife. The marriage had never been consummated and they used her earlier protest which she had written in staunch defiance as an appeal to the pope as legitimate reason for annulment, so Jeanne was set free. The next three years, were probably what would be the most free of the rest of her life. She had many suitors including the King of Portugal and the infamous Duke of Guise. However she made her own choice in matrimony in that of the person of Antoine de Bourbon who was ten years her senior. Jeanne loved him, and for a while they were happily married. He was a courageous and somewhat remarkable soldier and very dashing in appearance.

Jeanne’s mother, Margueritte worn out by the battle of the day, of defending the cause of true religion died only a year after Jeanne was married. Their first child was born around two years after their marriage, a son, but he died at around one year old due to the neglect of his nurses. The second born child died also. Eventually she gave birth to Henry, who would later become Henry IV of France. Two years after Henry was born, Jeanne’s father died and she became Queen of Navarre at around 27 years old.

Two months after her father died, inspired by her cousin Renee of Ferrara (of France) she made a public profession of the Reformed faith. The Jezebel of the day, Catherine De Medici was plotting to destroy Jeanne and hatched a plot to separate Jeanne from her husband; her aim was to try to lure him back to the Roman Catholicism and take away all of their estate and lands in Navarre.

Jeanne knew what was happening and raised an army to protect the Kingdom of Navarre. The more she was threatened and persecuted for her adhering to the Reformed faith, the bolder she was in defending it and speaking out in favour of it and her God. Her husband however, though strong and courageous on the battlefield proved weak in this battle and soon went over to the side of the Guises and went back to Roman Catholicism renouncing the Reformed faith. He went to Paris, demanding that his wife join him. She didn’t want to leave her Kingdom which had become a safe haven for the Huguenot’s but she submitted to her husbands wishes. He then demanded that she go to mass with him. Catherine De Medici also put pressure on her to do so. Her response to their demands was: “Had I my kingdom in one hand, and my son in the other I would throw them both into the depths of the sea rather than go to mass.” For this act of defiance, Antoine took their son away from her and gave him a Roman Catholic upbringing, yet the boy remained loyal to his mother.

Antoine became a notorious infidel and was unfaithful again and again to his wife. Her kingdoms were sought from all sides. Spain wanted them, as did Rome, yet she stood firm holding onto her Lord and His cause and never faltered. On the death of her husband she sought to advance the Reformed faith in her Kingdom of Navarre. Theordore Beza at her request sent a dozen ministers to preach the gospel in Navarre. One of these preachers said of her: “The Queen of Navarre has banished all idolatry from her dominion and set an example of virtue with incredible courage.”

When the Spanish Ambassador told her they would not tolerate Calvinism so near to the borders of Spain, Jeanne replied: “Although I am just a little Princess, God has given me the government of this country so I may rule it according to the Gospel and teach it God’s laws. I rely on God who is more powerful than the King of Spain.”

Jeanne played a dangerous yet clever game by pitting all the powers that be that sought her destruction, Philip of Spain, Catherine De Medici and the pope, against each other by her actions.  A kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. (Matthew 12:25) Both her life and kingdom were held in the balance by her enemies, yet she trusted in God.

She continued to advance the cause of Christ in her kingdom and when she heard of the plot for a massacre of the Huguenots she gathered mountain troops in Navarre, so the St. Bartholomew’s massacre by the strength and fortitude of this “little Princess” was thwarted for about eight years. She declared: “The cause of God is dearer to me than my son.”

When forced to flee to La Rochelle she encouraged and rallied the troops; one young soldier who was protesting against having his arm amputated, she stood by his side speaking comforting words to him and held his hand why the surgeons amputated the other one. At the death of one of the great generals when the morale of the army was very low and she herself was also grieving over the death of General and dear friend, she re-dedicated herself, her lands, her wealth her son and her life to God and the Huguenot cause. She went out to the troops in an attempt to stir them up and encourage morale and said: “Children of God and of France-make proof of your valour soldiers, I offer you everything I have; my dominion, my treasure, my life, my child and all that’s dear to me; I swear to defend to my last the Holy cause that now unites us.”

She had the New Testament translated into the language of her people. She personally bore the financial cost of also having the Geneva Catechism translated and distributed among her subjects. In a peace treaty she helped form that lasted for two years she set about restoring her ravished kingdom. Even today she is spoken of as the good Queen who caused Navarre to prosper.

When Catherine De Medici and her army ordered her to lay down her arms, Jeanne replied: “We have come to the determination to die, all of us rather than abandon our God and our Reformed religion which we cannot maintain unless allowed to worship publically any more than a human body can live without food or drink.” This defiant stand caused again peace to reign again for a while, though it was a very tentative peace.

Catherine De Medici wanted Jeanne’s son Henry to marry her daughter, Marguerite. Jeanne knew that to refuse this flat-out could be the ruin of the Huguenot’s. She visited Paris to negotiate about the wedding and was horrified at the wickedness and debauchery rampant in the royal court. She wrote her son saying they wanted him there to separate him from God and from herself and that no one could live there in that atmosphere of wickedness and remain unscathed or get out alive spiritually speaking. However, she agreed to the marriage as long as Henry took his bride after the wedding and they lived in retirement from the royal court of the De Medici’s.

Jeanne arrived in Paris for the wedding of her son, and immediately started to become severely ill. It has since been proven that she was poisoned; another victim of the evil De Medici’s. One of the last things she said was “the many afflictions I have bore from my youth, I desire to retire and leave to be with God.” It is said she died with the sweetest, most beautiful smile on her lips. Two months after her death, the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre finally happened that she had managed to hold off almost single-handedly for eight years. Once she was gone, the power to stop it was gone. She gave her all for the cause of Christ. Health, wealth life, kingdom, ALL. She was the Deborah of the Huguenot’s who lived out that God’s grace was sufficient, who offered herself as a living sacrifice. She gave it all, and loved her God with all her heart, soul, and mind, and just like Deborah she could have also said:`So may all your enemies perish, O LORD! But your friends be like the sun as he rises in his might.’ [Judges 5:31]

The legacy of Jeanne d’Albret is that she is a figure in which we can see she lived out to trust God in all circumstances and conditions. To not value worldly things above the glory of God or heavenly things. To be willing to pick up our cross and follow Him even if we lose everything by so doing.

Her favourite Psalm was Psalm 31 and ironically it almost is a mirror of her life. Written by a persecuted, harassed, oppressed, godly King David. And lived out again, by “just a little princess” Jeane d’Albret, Queen of Navarre, of whom the world was not worthy. A Queen who was born uncommonly favoured; had a life uncommonly fettered, and remained uncommonly faithful.

Praise God for the wonderful cloud of witnesses we have to encourage and strengthen us in our own faith.

The next post in this series is Katherina Schutz Zell by Christina Langella

About the Author:  Deejay O’Flaherty lives in the United Kingdom with her darling cat, Meanie.  She blogs at A Puritan at Heart where she daily posts inspirational Christian quotes by the Puritans.

Between the years 1492 and 1563 when Argula von Grumbach and Elizabeth of Braunschweig were living, the world was in the middle of great changes.  It was 1492 when Columbus sailed and discovered the new world.  The printing press was  later developed  by Guttenberg and Martin Luther had made the powerful call for reformation.  Onto this stage of  history, God placed two very different women in roles that impacted their family and countrymen for the glory of God.

ARGULA VON GRUMBACH
Argula von Grumbach was born to a baronial Catholic family in Bavaria near Regensburg in 1492.  Her family was very pious, and even though the family was warned by their Franciscan advisors against giving Argula a Bible (because it would “only confuse her”), her parents presented her with a Koberger Bible at age ten.  She studied it avidly as it had been written in German.  In her later life, Argula became a walking German Bible with much of it committed to memory.

By age seventeen, she had lost her parents to the plague and was taken under the wing of Duke William who promised to be like a father to her.  When she reached the age of 24, she married Friederich von Grumbach, a nobleman by birth, who had also lost his money during the many wars.  However, the Duke gave him a position in the royal court.

In 1522, many of the writings of early reformers Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon had been published in German and Argula absorbed it all becoming a follower of Luther’s teachings.  However many of the authorities were trying to squelch the ideas which Luther professed.  It was at this time that a controversy arose at the University of Ingolstadt when a young student/teacher named Arsacius Seehofer had put forward the ideas of Luther and Melanchthon.  The university and civil authorities warned this young man and then arrested him twice.  Following this, they threatened him with death if he did not recant.  The young man recanted under great duress, and no one came to his aid until Argula heard of the matter.

Argula wrote a letter to the university scholars and civil authorities on September 20, 1523.  She objected to the action of the faculty, and plainly laid out her case.  This letter became published as a pamphlet, and in less than two months it had been printed fourteen times.  She also wrote letters to the Duke of Saxony, Luther’s protector, and to a representative of the Emperor whom she had met  at an imperial Parliament meeting.  These letters also came into print and were widely read.

Up until this time, her aristocratic status had protected her but the authorities were becoming worried over the growth of this protestant movement.  The Duke dismissed her husband from his position and turned Argula over to him to discipline as seemed fit.  Even violence against her would not be punished.  However, her husband, a Catholic, did little but scold her.  In addition, a poem, supposedly written by a student at the university, was written about her calling her uneducated among other things.  Argula took this, too, in stride and fired back with a poem of her own.

Because Argula had dared to challenge the establishment, she was called many things:  “a female devil”, “a female desperado” and a “wretched and pathetic daughter of Eve”.  Nevertheless, she remained faithful to the call of Christ in her life and did her best to be a good mother and wife.    She stood in the gap to help a young student/teacher when no one else had come to his rescue.

While Argula’s husband never embraced the faith, he allowed the four children to be raised as protestants.  He died in 1530 the same year that Argula had an opportunity to meet Martin Luther in person.  She later remarried, but her second husband died within two years.  He left her a great estate and she used the money to help others in the faith.

What encouragement we should derive from her story.  As writers and bloggers, we may not realize how many lives we touch just by the written word presented to God’s great glory.  Argula should be remembered as someone who knew that the pen was indeed mightier than the sword.  However, she was not alone in using her talents for the Lord.

ELIZABETH OF BRAUNSCHWEIG
Elizabeth of Braunschweig was powerful as a political influence in the Reformation.  She was born in 1510 in Bavaria and married by the age of 15 to  man 40 years her senior, Eric of Braunschweig-Calenberg.  Together they had four children – three daughters and a son.  For ten years, there was no difference in religious beliefs between husband and wife.  However, in 1538, her mother Elizabeth of Brandenberg (also a famous woman of the Reformation), brought to her a young man who had come to believe in the evangelical faith.  At the request of this fellow, she called for a Lutheran Pastor named Corvinus to come and tell her more about this understanding of Scripture.  Elizabeth was so moved that she embraced the faith.

Her husband, Duke Eric, did not try to interfere.  He was content to remain a Catholic and had no trouble with her embrace of these new ideas so long as she did not try to convert him.  Interestingly enough, Duke Eric had been present when Luther gave his defense at Worms, and he was deeply moved.  Nevertheless, he was not interested in changing his religion.  What he did not realize was that this faith which Elizabeth had embraced would cause her to spread it far and wide throughout the kingdom.  This would create problems for him as he could not remain neutral in this struggle between Catholicism and Protestantism.  These ideas were inextricably linked with the political powers and struggle between the various German states.

Elizabeth had been given two towns for her widow’s dower which were to be her security.  She wished to keep these even as she spread the ideas of Luther.  She also wanted to keep the kingdom intact for the sake of her son Eric.  Her kingdom would be threatened by a nephew of her husband, Heinz “the Wolf” who oversaw another state in Germany.  This threat came to pass after her husband died.

At the time of her husband’s passing, her son Eric was 12 and could not take the throne until he reached the age of seventeen.  During these five years, Elizabeth reigned over the kingdom.  She also spent a good deal of time catechizing her children and especially her son Eric by bringing Pastor Corvinus into her household.

While she reigned over her state, she married Duke Poppo of Henneberg who was also a Reformed believer.  She saw to it that two of her daughters married men who believed the truths of the Reformation as well.  However, when it came to her son, Eric, things were different.

He took over the rule of the land upon his eighteenth year, and after attending a special meeting for all the Electors in Regensburg, he rejected his reformed beliefs and embraced Catholicism once more.  Elizabeth was heartbroken.  She feared the influence of others at this meeting, and she was correct.  Other reformed family members called Eric a Judas.  However, he was determined to return the Catholic faith to the kingdom and he even threatened his wife if she did not recant.  She refused and he cast her off.  In addition, Pastor Corvinus was put in prison for his faith.

Elizabeth wrote a letter rebuking her son for his position and imploring him to release the prisoners he had taken for their faith.  However, he responded that while he loved her, she must obey the Holy Roman Emperor or he would have to take action.  There were a number of battles fought during this time which culminated in a battle in which Eric lost to Heinz “the Wolf” his cousin.  In the agreed upon peace, Elizabeth was sent into exile with her daughter Katherine.  She remained there for three years in utter poverty.  During this time, she wrote hymns and found comfort in her Lord.

Several nobles came to her rescue and restored her to Munden where she lived with Katherine.  Once again though, her son Eric would betray her as he had Katherine married off to a Catholic nobleman.  He even misled her as to the time of the wedding so she would not be present to interfere.  Once more, she was devastated and for a time, lost her mind.  Her husband Duke Poppo took care of her tenderly, and when she had revived, she wrote a book to comfort widows.  In it, she wrote:  “No one without the experience knows the anguish which children can cause and yet be loved.”

Her son Eric never returned to the faith, but went on to serve the Emperor.  However, Elizabeth had triumphed in her cause.  Eventually all of Braunschweig embraced  the Reformation faith as a result of faithful pastors and the fervor of Elizabeth of Braunschweig.  One person can make a big difference.  Perhaps the greatest lesson we can learn from her life is that our children are not our own.  She did her best to raise them to know the truth.  A friend of mine reminded me one time that “God has no grandchildren, only children.”  We cannot make our children believe.  We can only lead them to the truth.  The rest is in God’s hands.

Both of these women offer to us examples of courage in the face of great opposition.  Each of them was gifted, and used their abilities to serve the Lord in faithfulness all of their lives.  May we be found faithful as we fulfill our call from the Lord no matter where He has planted us!  Soli Deo Gloria!

Today we will be giving away 1 copy of Roland Bainton’s “Women of the Reformation: From Spain to Scandinavia”. Please leave a comment to let us know you are interested. International entries are welcome for this contest.

Also, to correspond with our series, our friends at The Bible Truth Chat Room will post, all this week, companion meditations on the subject of women. Today’s topic is “The Ministry of Motherhood.”

The next post in this series is Jeanne d’Albret by Deejay O’Flaherty

About the Author: Barbara Thayer has written devotions for 16 years on the internet to serve as a means of encouraging others including a group of her friends who are polio survivors as she is. She has written for her denominational magazine, “The Associate Reformed Presbyterian” and her church newsletter. She and her husband of 40 years have raised four children which she home schooled for 21 years. She presently is working along side her husband in his optometric practice and enjoying their five grandsons with two more blessings on the way. She blogs at www.aviewfromserenityacres.blogspot.com

Sources:

“The Women of the Reformation in Germany and Italy” by Roland Bainton

http://home.infionline.net/~ddisse/grumbach.html