Argula von Grumbach would have been a remarkable woman in any age, but her brilliance shines especially brightly in her setting—Germany in the sixteenth century. She became the first published Protestant woman writer, and participated publicly in the theological and political debates of her time.

Argula was born in 1492 into a noble family in the Bavarian countryside. When she was ten, her father presented her with an illustrated copy of the German Bible—a lavish gift which seems to have made an impression on the young Argula. Her education continued when she was a lady-in-waiting at the court, in a time when renaissance and reform were stirring the air in Munich and Germany.

Her parents died when she was 17; she married at 18 and moved to another country town, where she managed the household, finances, and land; bore, raised, and oversaw the education of four children; and pursued her interests in theology.

Argula took on a more public role when, in September of 1523, she learned that the theologians at the nearby University of Ingolstadt had forced a young Lutheran tutor to recant his beliefs in public. He was saved from burning at the stake, but was to be exiled and imprisoned. Argula wrote a letter to these clerics, accusing them of “foolish violence against the word of God,” and notes that “nowhere in the Bible do I find that Christ, or his apostles, or his prophets put people in prison, burnt or murdered them, or sent them into exile.” She defends the writings of “Martin and Melancthon,” which she has read, and decries the University’s failed attempts to hide the truth of these reformers and of Scripture.

Despite her being a lay person and a woman, she says she is compelled to speak by her divine duty as a Christian to confess God’s name (she quotes Matthew 10) and to be unashamed of Christ (Luke 9). Her knowledge of Scripture and artful use of it was striking to her readers of the time, and is striking now. Her letter is a variegated composition with textures from across the Bible, picking up Gospels, Psalms, and prophets to form the skeleton and teeth of her impassioned arguments.

She closes by saying, “What I have written to you is no woman’s chit-chat, but the word of God; and (I write) as a member of the Christian Church, against which the gates of Hell cannot prevail.” Her letter was immediately printed as a pamphlet, which was then reprinted in fourteen editions over two months. More pamphlets, letters, and poems followed, and consequences followed too. However, she did not seem ever to regret that she—like her beloved forebears Judith, Esther, and Jael—had been called by God into decisive action.