Five Important Women of the Reformation You Should Know About – Roman Roads

This blog post on “Roman Roads” (dated Oct.15. 2015) was linked from another website and after checking it out, I thought it was worth pointing our readers to it.

It is not often enough that we remember and recognize the women God raised up and used at the time of the great Reformation of the 16th century. This post will help us to think more of God’s work through women during this church-reforming and world-changing event.

Below is Valerie Foucachon’s personal favorite, and I think mine too, of the five she highlighted. To read about the others (quite a unique collection of women!), follow the link at the bottom of this post.

Olympia Morata (1526-1555)—The Scholar

Olympia Morata, I must confess, is my personal favorite of all these women. Her life was tragically short, but a brilliant testimony to her faith and her incredible breadth and depth of learning. Her father was an Italian scholar, and brought her up so that by the age of 12, she was called as a companion and tutor to the young Anna d’Este of Ferrara, the future wife of the (infamous) François, Duc de Guise. During her time at the court of Ferrara, she was invited to lecture to the court in Greek and Latin! After leaving court to care for her declining father, she fell out of favor with the Duke. It seems that it was during this time that these convictions, previously held more intellectually along with her broad philosophical and literary interests, now awakened in her a true and living faith in Jesus Christ, and marked a turning point in her life. It was also during this time that Andreas Grunthler, a Reformed German doctor, classically-trained and a lover of literature, sought her hand in marriage. Olympia fell passionately in love with him, and they married around 1550. Life was not easy, as they travelled back to Germany where her husband hoped to find a position in a university. They met with persecution, were even imprisoned, and barely escaped with their lives before finally finding peace in Heidelberg. Her health suffered as a result, and when the Elector Palatine offered her the incredible position of lecturing at a university, she seems to have turned it down. She died shortly thereafter, followed by her husband and her little brother. Olympia’s faith seems to have only grown stronger throughout her life and its trials. During her life, she wrote dialogues, Latin and Greek letters (including love letters in Latin to her husband!), a popular Greek psalter, and more. Theodore de Beze, himself one of the Reformation’s greatest classicists and theologians, even wrote a eulogy for her. Her short but faithful life was well-summed up in her own words when she wrote, “There is no part of the world so distant that we would not be glad to live in it, if we could but serve God there with full liberty of conscience.” (The Life of Olympia Morata, 128.)

Source: Five Important Women of the Reformation You Should Know About – Roman Roads Media