Katie Luther, First Lady of the Reformation
The Unconventional Life of Katharina von Bora
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- USD 6.99
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- USD 6.99
Descripción editorial
Katharina von Bora. Defiant and determined, refusing to be intimidated. . . In many ways, it was this astonishing woman (not even her husband, Martin Luther, could stop her) who set the tone of the Reformation movement.
In this compelling historical account of a woman who was an indispensable figure of the German Reformation—who was by turns vilified, satirized, idolized, and fictionalized by contemporaries and commentators—you can make her acquaintance and discover how Katharina's voice and personality still echoes among modern women, wives, and mothers who have struggled to be heard while carving out a career of their own.
Author and teacher Ruth Tucker beckons you to visit Katie Luther in her sixteenth-century village life:
What was it like to be married to the man behind the religious upheaval?How did she deal with the celebrations and heartaches, housing, diet, fashion, childbirth, and child-rearing of daily life in Wittenberg?What role did she play in pushing gender boundaries and shaping the young egalitarianism of the movement?
Though very little is known today about Katharina. Though her primary vocation was not even related to ministry, she was by any measure the First Lady of the Reformation, and she still has much to say to Western women and men of today.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
On the 500-year anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, Tucker (From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya) brings readers this biography of Katharina von Bora (or "Katie" Luther), whose life while not as well documented as her husband's was just as unpredictable as his. Katie was sent to a convent at the age of five, escaped when she was 24, was jilted in love, and then eventually chose her own husband, but not out of passion the former nun needed somewhere to go, and Luther needed to silence his critics and show support for clerical marriage. Despite this, it appears that the match proved mutually beneficial as well as convenient. Tucker uses letters by Luther and his contemporaries along with research about life in 16th-century Wittenberg to create a picture of Katie as a strong-minded woman who defied convention, ran a business, raised children, and served as wife to a husband creating scandal with his writings and teachings against the Catholic Church. The portrait that emerges is mostly speculative, and Tucker peppers the book with qualifying statements. Readers interested in the marriage of Luther and Katie and willing to use their imaginations will find much here.
