Women and the Reformations: A Global History

by Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks

A compelling, authoritative history of how women shaped the Reformations and transformed religious life across the globe
 
The Reformations, both Protestant and Catholic, have long been told as stories of men. But women were central to the transformations that took place in Europe and beyond. What was life like for them in this turbulent period? How did their actions and ideas shape Christianity and influence societies around the world?
 
In this rich and definitive study, renowned scholar Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks explores the history of women and the Reformations in full for the first time. Wiesner-Hanks travels the globe, examining well-known figures like Teresa of Avila, Elizabeth I, and Anne Hutchinson, as well as women whose stories are only now emerging. Along the way, we meet converts in Japan, Spanish nuns in the Philippines, and saints in Ethiopia and America. Wiesner-Hanks explores women’s experiences as monarchs, mothers, migrants, martyrs, mystics, and missionaries, revealing that the story of the Reformations is no longer simply European—and that women played a vital role.

Genres: Religion, Nonfiction

368 pages, Hardcover

Published October 29, 2024

About the author

Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison) taught first at Augustana College in Illinois, and since 1985 at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she is currently UWM Distinguished Professor in the department of history. She is the coeditor of the Sixteenth Century Journal and the author or editor of more than twenty books, most recently The Marvelous Hairy Girls: The Gonzales Sisters and Their Worlds and Gender in History. She is the former Chief Reader for Advanced Placement World History.

Reviews

[Graham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just finished:

"Women and the Reformations: A Global History"

By: Merry Wiesner-Hanks

New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2024.

A clear read with great prose. The author documents the stories of women who took part in the Protestant Reformation as well as The Catholic Reformation. Weisner-Hankd has taught and studied the Reformation for 40 years and it shows. She provided explanations to things that were new to me (and I have done a fair amount of reading on the topic). She also discussed Jewish and Muslim women.

A few facts that I thought were interesting:

Henry VIII was the only monarch to execute a woman and then have her head placed above London Bridge (Elizabeth Barton spoke out against Henry's first divorce)

Catholics saw Protestant men as effeminate.

Elizabeth Hooten, a Quaker, was so upset that her cattle got confiscated in New England that she returned to England to complain personally to Charles II, following him around until he gave her a grant for land anywhere in New England to remind the colonists that he was in charge. The irony is no one would sell to her in New England.

Wesiner-Hanks sees the witch hunts and the inquisition as two different things. I agree with her assessment.

I'd highly recommend this book.

[SarahO · Rating 4 out of 5]

More like 4.5 stars. It's hard to cover so much global history.

[Flynn Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good survey of the importance of women in both the Protestant and Catholic Reformations as well as the global Western expansion of Christianity in the eighteenth century. Wiesner-Hanks does stress “present day” relevance to a fault at times, but such does not detract from the value of being exposed to these often extraordinary figures and the proper recognition of their accomplishments when it usually was withheld in their own lifetimes.

[Rachel Wiltshire · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book with broad perspectives and encouraging to hear more women’s reformation stories from a social historical point of view. 4 stars as not always most accurate or detailed and chapters can meander.