Question

What role did the women play in the counter reformation?

Answer 1

Historians of the Reformation have traditionally dealt with issues of gender in one of three ways. Most have simply ignored them, assuming that women shared their fathers' and husbands' experience and that gender made no difference. A second group has focused on the few women for which there are numerous sources, generally queens or noblewomen who supported or suppressed the Protestant Reformation. Their studies make comparisons with male rulers possible but are limited to a very small group of extraordinary people. The third type of study examines male opinions about gender roles. Law codes, sermons, church and school ordinances, tracts, and other prescriptive sources give many clues to male opinions about the proper roles for men and women. The "debate about women," whether women were moral or immoral, good or bad, rational or emotional, and sinful or saved, was a hot topic for humanists, theologians, and satirists during the early modern period. Both Protestant and Catholic reformers entered into this debate, adding their opinions about the nature of women. Male attitudes formed the legal and intellectual structures within which men and women operated, but they are only part of the story. To assess the impact of gender adequately as a significant variable in the Reformation period, women' s actions and opinions must be analyzed along with those of men.

It can be very difficult to find sources on women during the Reformation. Fewer women than men in early modern German society were liter ate, so fewer recorded their thoughts, ideas, and reactions. The few who did write rarely published their works, as publishing required money, connections, and a sense that what one was writing merited publication. Women's unpublished works, such as letters and diaries, were rarely saved, for they were not regarded as valuable. (Many of Luther's letters to women, for instance, are still extant, but only a few of their letters to him are. None of his wife's numerous letters to him survive, though most of his to her do.) The few that have survived were generally written by upper-class women or women married to reformers, and so they are atypical.

Answer 2

can you please simplify? :)

Answer 3

Maaaaaabye.

Answer 4

Most have simply ignored them, assuming that women shared their fathers' and husbands' experience and that gender made no difference.

Answer 5

ohhhhh.... thank you