Between A Rock and A Hard Place: Marriage Implications for Women in the Reformation

History 311 Katherine Smith April 11, 2011 Between A Rock and A Hard Place: Marriage Implications for Women in the Reformation At first glance, the changing trends concerning marriage during the Reformation appear to embody a fundamental shift toward a partnership model of more equal religious status between men and women. Martin Luther, for example, argues in The Estate of Marriage that marriage was not spiritually inferior to celibacy; rather, it was an admirable pursuit that was pleasing to God by its own merit. As participants in the marital bond, then, Protestant women would seemingly be elevated in importance relative to their Catholic counterparts. However, primary source evidence indicates that these effects were not so clearly defined. As scholar Susan Karant-Nunn argues, the reformers’ “positive estimation of marriage on one hand” conflicted with their “ongoing mistrust of women on the other.” This opposing set of attitudes manifested itself in a variety of ways that ultimately yielded only moderate advances for women through the legitimization of marriage. Through an ongoing condemnation of female sexuality, a deliberately hierarchical structure between husband and wife, and an express lack of faith in wives’ contributions to matrimony, the reformers ultimately reinforced the view that women were spiritually inferior to men. Although the reformers emphasized the various goods of marriage in its own right, they nevertheless maintained the Catholic idea that marriage was also a necessary vehicle of