Books by Peter Matheson

At a time when women were expected to stick to their household duties, according to Peter Matheson, Argula von Grumbach burst through every barrier. Matheson offers here a biography of the Reformation's first woman writer. Argula von Grumbach's first pamphlet in 1523 was reprinted all over Germany. Thousands of copies of her eight pamphlets appeared. Through her writing, von Grumbach defied her Bavarian princes (and her husband), denounced censorship, argued for an educated church and society, and developed her own understanding of faith and Scripture. She even intervened in the Imperial Diets at Nuremberg and Augsburg.Drawing for the first time on her correspondence, the author shows how von Grumbach paid dearly for her outspokenness but remained undaunted. Though some saw her as a she-devil and others as a harbinger of a new age, Matheson shows von Grumbach as a woman engaged in the life of the villages where she lived, as one motivated by the dreams she had for her children.In a time of sweeping change and risking everything for the light and truth she was given, Argula von Grumbach showed what the vision and determination of one person could achieve.

At a time when women were expected to stick to their household duties, according to Peter Matheson, Argula von Grumbach burst through every barrier. Matheson offers here a biography of the Reformation's first woman writer. Argula von Grumbach's first pamphlet in 1523 was reprinted all over Germany. Thousands of copies of her eight pamphlets appeared. Through her writing, von Grumbach defied her Bavarian princes (and her husband), denounced censorship, argued for an educated church and society, and developed her own understanding of faith and Scripture. She even intervened in the Imperial Diets at Nuremberg and Augsburg.Drawing for the first time on her correspondence, the author shows how von Grumbach paid dearly for her outspokenness but remained undaunted. Though some saw her as a she-devil and others as a harbinger of a new age, Matheson shows von Grumbach as a woman engaged in the life of the villages where she lived, as one motivated by the dreams she had for her children.In a time of sweeping change and risking everything for the light and truth she was given, Argula von Grumbach showed what the vision and determination of one person could achieve.

The aim of this book is to demonstrate that the sixteenth-century "ecumenical movement," and in particular, the colloquy between Catholics and Protestants at Regensburg in 1541, was by no means an idle "dream of an understanding," doomed from the start. Contarini's campaign for reconciliation mirrors the richness and elusiveness of pre-Tridentine Catholicism. It was the clash of cultures and politics as much as purely theological considerations that led to the failure of the Regensburg colloquy. Contarini was not without sympathy for Lutheran theology until faced by the full implications of a Protestant church and a Protestant culture. He then retreated, first to a confessional Catholicism, then to an intolerant Curialism.