Katie Luther, First Lady of the Reformation

Book excerpt: 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.