Born in 1495 to a noble family in Tournai, France, Marie Dentière was well educated, entered an Augustinian convent (which was Luther’s order), and likely served as a prioress in the early 1520s. Captivated by Martin Luther’s breakthrough theology, Marie left the convent by 1525 and moved to Strasbourg to officially join the highly charged Reformation movement. In that same year, she made a second radical move when she married a former priest, Simon Robert.

Renouncing clerical celibacy and extolling the joys of marriage from Scripture became strong themes in Marie’s ministry, especially in her controversial attempts to convert nuns in Geneva. One Reformer writes that Marie and Simon Robert “were the first French married couple to accept a pastoral assignment for the Reformed Church.” The couple had five children, but Robert died in 1533. By 1535, Marie had married Antoine Froment, another Reformed pastor, and the family moved to Geneva.

Live from Geneva

Most of what we know of Dentière, which is not a great deal, is gleaned from three documents attributed to her. The first of the written works recounts the events of 1532–1536 in Geneva from the point of view of the Reformers. Dentière may have been the first Protestant writer to give an eyewitness account of that tumultuous time, and she was among the first women, if not the first, to articulate and defend Reformed theology in French.

But far more than a historian, Marie Dentière was an articulate (if inflammatory) evangelist. She loved and revered the Bible, was distressed that the Catholic Church had withheld so much of it from the people, and preached that every person, including women, should be able to read God’s precious and glorious words for themselves.

A Reformed Female Teacher?

Dentière’s most famous and controversial work was a letter to the Queen of Navarre, entitled “A Most Beneficial Letter.” The letter is a robust biblical defense of Reformed theology and an impassioned attack on the Catholic Church.

It is an energetic and engaging work that demonstrates extraordinary biblical knowledge and theological understanding. The public unrest it caused resulted in the arrest of the printer and the destruction of most of the printed copies of the work. Not only had her letter condemned Roman Catholicism, and not only was her letter written by a woman, but Dentière also defended women’s equal right to be theologians and teachers. She writes,

For what God has given you and revealed to us women, no more than men should we hide it and bury it in the earth. And even though we are not permitted to preach in public congregations and churches, we are not forbidden to write and admonish one another in all charity. (Epistle to Marguerite de Navarre, 53)

Calvin and Marie

Though Marie strongly supported and defended Reformed leaders, including John Calvin, Calvin was clearly annoyed, at least during the early years of her ministry, by her outspoken manner, theological ambitions, and open criticism of male clerical leadership.

However, by 1561, the year Marie died, tension between the two had subsided and Calvin’s respect and appreciation for Marie had manifestly grown. He even asked her to write the preface for his printed sermon on female modesty from 1 Timothy 2:8–12. Perhaps ironically, one could argue that Calvin asked her to teach about a biblical passage that expressly forbade her to do so.

One Woman on the Wall

For Marie Dentière, the astonishing news of saving grace and the powerful message of equality before God were truths that had been suppressed by the Catholic Church and needed to be shouted from the housetops by anyone who had seen them for themselves in God’s word.

There is no question she lacked what those of the time considered appropriate feminine modesty and humility, but because her passion was kindled by the pages of Scripture, her writing stirred and changed hearts not only in her own day, but in ours today, as well. In 2002, Marie Dentière became the only woman to have her name engraved on the famous Wall of Reformers in Geneva.

In the early 1530s, an English merchant named Stephen Vaughan was commissioned to find William Tyndale and inform him that King Henry VIII desired him to return from hiding on the Continent. In a letter dated June 19, 1531, Vaughan wrote about Tyndale (1494–1536) these simple words: “I find him always singing one note.”

That one note was this: Will the King of England give his official endorsement to a vernacular Bible for all his English subjects? If not, Tyndale would not come. If so, Tyndale would give himself up to the king and never write another book.

The king refused. And Tyndale never went to his homeland again. Instead, if the king and the Roman Catholic Church would not provide a printed Bible in English for the common man to read, Tyndale would, even if it cost him his life. Which it did.

Plowboys Will Know Their Bible

When Tyndale was 28 years old in 1522, he was serving as a tutor in the home of John Walsh in Gloucestershire, England, spending most of his time studying Erasmus’s Greek New Testament, which had been printed just six years before in 1516.

Increasingly, as Tyndale saw Reformation truths more clearly in the Greek New Testament, he made himself suspect in the Catholic house of John Walsh. John Foxe tells us that one day an exasperated Catholic scholar at dinner with Tyndale said, “We were better be without God’s law than the pope’s.”

In response, Tyndale spoke his famous words, “I defy the Pope and all his laws. . . . If God spare my life ere many years, I will cause a boy that driveth the plow, shall know more of the Scripture than thou dost.”

One-Note Crescendo

Four years later, Tyndale finished the English translation of the Greek New Testament in Worms, Germany, and began to smuggle it into England in bales of cloth. By October 1526, Bishop Tunstall had banned the book in London, but the print run had been at least three thousand. And the books were getting to the people. Over the next eight years, five pirated editions were printed as well.

In 1534, Tyndale published a revised New Testament, having learned Hebrew in the meantime, probably in Germany, which helped him better understand the connections between the Old and New Testaments. Biographer David Daniell calls this 1534 New Testament “the glory of his life’s work” (William Tyndale, 316). If Tyndale was “always singing one note,” this was the crescendo of the song of his life — the finished and refined New Testament in English.

For the first time ever in history, the Greek New Testament was translated into English. Before his martyrdom in 1536, Tyndale would go on to translate into clear, common English not only the New Testament but also the Pentateuch, Joshua to 2 Chronicles, and Jonah. All this material became the basis of the Great Bible issued by Miles Coverdale in England in 1539 and the basis for the Geneva Bible published in 1557 — “the Bible of the nation,” which sold over a million copies between 1560 and 1640.

Bible Translation, Gospel Truth

What drove Tyndale to sing one note all his life? It was the rock-solid conviction that all humans were in bondage to sin, blind, dead, damned, and helpless, and that God had acted in Christ to provide salvation by grace through faith. This is what lay hidden in the Latin Scriptures and the church system of penance and merit. This is why the Bible had to be translated, and ultimately this is why Tyndale was martyred. He wrote,

Faith the mother of all good works justifieth us, before we can bring forth any good work: as the husband marryeth his wife before he can have any lawful children by her. (William Tyndale, 156–57)

Man is lost, spiritually dead, condemned. God is sovereign, Christ is sufficient, faith is all. Bible translation and Bible truth were inseparable for Tyndale, and in the end it was the truth — especially the truth of justification by faith alone — that ignited Britain with Reformed fire and then brought the death sentence to this Bible translator.

In October 1536, at only 42 years of age, Tyndale’s one-note voice was silenced as he was tied to the stake, strangled by the executioner, and then consumed in the fire. But because of his vernacular English translation, the song itself swelled into a mighty British chorus of chambermaids, cobblers, and, yes, even plowboys.

From childhood, Peter Martyr Vermigli desired to teach God’s word. At age fifteen, he entered the Augustinian order in the Italian town of Fiesole, near his native Florence. After eight years of theological training, Vermigli underwent priestly ordination and received a doctorate in theology.

The years following Vermigli’s ordination opened new vocational horizons. He was elected to the office of public preacher, an illustrious position in his day. As his name grew famous in the largest Italian cities, Vermigli was promoted to the position of abbot in his order’s monastery in Spoleto, before being moved southward to the great basilica San Pietro ad Aram in Naples. It was here that his life changed forever.

Righteousness Restored

During Vermigli’s sojourn at San Pietro (1537–1540), according to his colleague and biographer, Josiah Simler, “the greater light of God’s truth” began to shine upon him. This truth, in Vermigli’s words, was that “Christ’s righteousness imputed to us by God totally restores what was lacking in this weak and mutilated righteousness of ours” (The Peter Martyr Reader, 147). It was a gospel awakening that transformed his life and ministry.

With a new vision of Christ and the gospel, Vermigli moved north in May 1541 to become prior of the prestigious monastery of San Frediano in the Republic of Lucca. While there, he initiated a series of educational and ecclesiastical reforms that have been likened to Calvin’s work in Geneva.

But after a mere fifteen months of such gospel renewal, Pope Paul III ensured its demise by reinstituting the Roman Inquisition. Recognizing discretion as the better part of valor, Vermigli renounced his vows and made the difficult decision to flee his homeland.

From Strasbourg to Oxford

It was Martin Bucer who arranged for Vermigli’s academic appointment to the College of Saint Thomas in Strasbourg. The Italian exile was expected to teach sacred letters, which he proceeded to do from the Old Testament.

While in Strasbourg, Vermigli also married a former nun from Metz named Catherine Dammartin, “a lover of true religion” especially admired for her charity. After eight years of marriage, she died in February 1553, but Peter Martyr would marry again — another Katie — in May 1559.

Following five fruitful years of teaching in Strasbourg, Vermigli received an invitation in 1547 from Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer to fortify the newly independent Church of England with Reformed theology as Regius Chair of Divinity at Oxford. Among Vermigli’s many accomplishments in this period, he lectured on Romans, produced various theological treatises, championed Protestantism at the famous Eucharistic Disputation of 1549, and assisted Cranmer in shaping a new Anglican liturgy.

Zurich Scholar

With the accession of the Catholic Queen Mary in 1553, Vermigli was forced to flee England. Returning to Strasbourg, he was immediately restored to his position at the Senior School, where, in addition to teaching and writing theological works, he gathered with Marian exiles in his home to study and pray. Eventually, he took a teaching post at the Academy of Zurich.

Despite numerous opportunities to lecture throughout Europe, including multiple invitations from Calvin to teach in Geneva and pastor the Genevan Italian congregation, Vermigli remained in Zurich. The only exception was his journey to the Colloquy of Poissy with Theodore Beza in 1561, where he debated Catholic leaders before the French Crown and witnessed to Queen Catherine de’ Medici in their native Italian.

Teacher of the Book

Vermigli died in Zurich on November 12, 1562, in the presence of his wife and friends. This Florentine humanist and Reformed scholar, who was equal in stature to Calvin and Bullinger, would be remembered for his commitment to Scripture and passion for gospel renewal. In the words of Theodore Beza, he was a “phoenix born from the ashes of Savonarola.” Even the painting of Vermigli hanging in the National Portrait Gallery in London testifies to his biblical conviction. In it, Vermigli’s penetrating eyes look to the distance beyond the gilded frame as he points to a singular book in his hand: the Bible.

If we were to place an enduring statement on Vermigli’s lips, it would perhaps be this exhortation: “Let us immerse ourselves constantly in the sacred Scriptures, let us work at reading them, and by the gift of Christ’s Spirit the things that are necessary for salvation will be for us clear, direct, and completely open” (Life, Letters, and Sermons, 281).

If you are familiar with the contemporary Mennonites, you may be surprised to learn that the group’s founder started as a Catholic priest who had never read the Bible.

A Priest Without the Bible

In 1524, at the age of 28, Menno Simons was ordained a priest of the Catholic Church in Utrecht, Germany. Although familiar with Greek and Latin and studied in Catholic doctrine, Simons had never read the Scriptures themselves. “I had not touched them during my life,” he later wrote, “for I feared if I should read them they would mislead me.”

In 1526, he began to question the truthfulness of the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation (the idea that the bread and wine transform into the actual flesh and blood of Jesus in the Eucharist). Simons thought this doubt might be the devil deluding him, so he reluctantly began to study the Bible. While he could nowhere find the doctrine of transubstantiation, he discovered the gospel of salvation by grace through faith in Christ! He began sharing his discoveries with others from the pulpit, propelling him to a place of regional prominence as an evangelical preacher.

Smoke but No Flame

Simons’s study convinced him of the Bible’s unrivaled authority, leading him to examine Catholic doctrine in Scripture’s light. He also rejected the practice of infant baptism as unbiblical and began to encourage congregants to be baptized in accordance with their confession of faith in Christ. Despite his embrace of evangelical doctrine, he remained a priest in the Catholic Church and worked for its reform. All the while, however, his fascination with biblical teaching was merely intellectual. He relished the sweet smell of his newfound fame but lacked the pure flame of true affection for Christ.

The execution of three hundred Anabaptists at Old Cloister near Bolsward in April 1535 brought him to the point of crisis:

I reflected upon my unclean, carnal life, also the hypocritical doctrine and idolatry which I still practiced daily in appearance of godliness, but without relish. My heart trembled within me. I prayed to God with sighs and tears that he would give to me, a sorrowing sinner, the gift of his grace, create within me a clean heart, and graciously through the merits of the crimson blood of Christ, forgive my unclean walk and frivolous easy life.

Overcome by his sins of pride, timidity, and love of comfort, Simons decisively renounced his “worldly reputation, name and fame.” “In my weakness,” he wrote, “I feared God; I sought out the pious and though they were few in number, I found some who were zealous and maintained the truth.”

Enemy of the State — and the Devil

After being baptized, Simons immediately threw himself into preaching the gospel, explaining the Scriptures, and traveling extensively. Simons discovered that the devil had kept him from the Bible and true conversion, and now he was determined to be Satan’s sworn enemy. His preaching quickly drew the ire of Catholic officials. Emperor Charles V even issued an edict against Simons, offering a significant reward to anyone who might deliver him into the hands of authorities.

Nevertheless, Simons exhorted his fellow Anabaptist Reformers to reject violent means for accomplishing reform, advocating pacifism and separation from worldly power. His preaching and reforms were so successful that, eventually, north German and Dutch Anabaptists would be known as Mennonites. On the twenty-fifth anniversary of his renunciation of Catholicism, Simons’s health rapidly declined, and he died the following day, January 31, 1561, at the age of 66.

Misled No Longer

As the devil misled young Menno, so our enemy would mislead us, too. He would keep us from Scripture, from fearing God, from confession of sin, and from humble faith. May we, instead, “with sighs and tears” plead for and joyfully receive the gift of grace in our promised Savior, Jesus Christ.

Although I resisted in former times Thy precious Word and Thy holy will with all my powers . . . nevertheless, Thy fatherly grace did not forsake me, a miserable sinner, but in love, received me, . . . and taught me by the Holy Spirit until of my own choice I declared war upon the world, the flesh, and the devil . . . and willingly submitted to the heavy cross of my Lord Jesus Christ that I might inherit the promised kingdom. (Simons, Meditation on the Twenty-Fifth Psalm)

“What is God like? Whom should we follow?” Many people must have been asking these questions during the turbulent times that we now celebrate as the Reformation. Reformers, counter-Reformers, humanists, and Anabaptists argued (and sometimes fought) to define our understanding of God and his gospel. Nothing could be of greater importance.

Many of the people who struggled together (or against each other) during the Protestant Reformation are still well known in the twenty-first century. But the work God did through the Reformation included a cast of hundreds, even thousands, unknown to many of us today. Among this group is Wolfgang Capito (1478–1541), a Reformer who desired more of God and preached the gospel while promoting peace. And for that reason, he was often in trouble with his reforming friends.

Humanist Beginnings

Wolfgang Capito was born in France in 1478. Wolfgang’s father, Hans, was a poor and frugal smithy. He valued education and sent his son to a Latin school and then for training as a doctor. When Hans died in 1500, his last words were a command, warning Wolfgang against rashly becoming a priest.

Rashly or not, Capito was already moving in that direction. Abandoning medicine, he studied theology. Specifically, he was trained as a Christian humanist, becoming a student and a close friend of Erasmus. As a humanist, he loved the biblical text and biblical languages, desired Christianity’s reform (particularly the morals of its leaders and priests), and yearned for peace. Soon he was ordained for service in the Catholic Church.

Capito was sent to Basel in 1515. There, in Basel Minster, he was slowly drawn out of Catholicism, and mere humanism, into the Reformation. While in Basel he became friends with Zwingli and a correspondent of Luther. During this time, Luther’s theology confused him. At first, he begged Luther to be less offensive, especially to the pope.

This counsel Luther did not heed! Even so, Capito eagerly published Luther’s works in northern Europe in 1518. Yet, still a humanist, Capito truly did not understand. He continued to engage in a dialogue with Luther, and then in 1522 he visited Wittenberg. While disturbed by the tragic sin he witnessed there, yet he also discovered the heart of the Reformation in the gospel — God found his heart.

A Call for Peace

When God shifted him from a humanist to a theological Reformer, Capito explained it this way: “I have moved to the side of the pious Papists and Lutherans who seek only the soul’s salvation and nothing temporal; and I admonish them to Christian unity, as much as God gives me grace” (Wolfgang Capito, 94). His heart was now God’s. Yet his humanist training resonated deeply with the biblical call for peace.

During his lifetime, he wrote three hymns. One of them endured in German hymnals for centuries and is titled “Give Us Peace”:

Give us that peace that we do lack,
Through misbelief, and in ill life.
Thy Word to offer Thou dost not slack,
Which we unkindly gainstrive.
With fire and sword, this healthful Word
Some persecute and oppress.
Some with the mouth confess the truth
Without sincere godliness.

Though God’s word was powerfully being preached throughout Germany, France, and beyond, yet there was persecution and oppression within the Reformation which wearied Capito and sent him to his knees in prayer — and to his pen. He continued to call Luther and Zwingli to find common ground on the theology of the Lord’s Supper, and he called for mercy to be shown to the Anabaptists.

Throughout his life as a Reformer, many interpreted his call for mercy to theological opponents to mean he agreed with those opponents. Yet, mercy is not agreement; his condemnation of violence, coercion, and even offensive language was a call to God’s people not to interfere in the work of the Holy Spirit to discipline those who oppose.

The Lord’s Servant

“What is God like? Whom should we follow?” Such questions still challenge the world today. As we seek to call many to delight in the God of Luther and Calvin, we would do well to follow Capito’s example and God’s command: “The Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 2:24–25).

We are called to gentle and peaceful engagement, even at the risk of being misunderstood.

Surrounding the base of the Luther monument in Worms, Germany, sit the four forerunners of the Protestant Reformation — Jan Hus, John Wycliffe, Peter Waldo, and Girolamo Savonarola. They could not have more different personalities, yet each inspired Luther’s reforms in his own way. Luther found Savonarola personally inspiring: as Luther traveled to the Diet of Worms in 1521 to stand trial — after burning the papal bull that excommunicated him — he carried on his person a picture of the Dominican friar.

As Luther faced the possibility of death in Worms, perhaps he compared his own life to Savonarola’s: with a prophetic voice, Savonarola had condemned the Roman church’s corruption. His conflict with the pope climaxed in his excommunication and execution by fire. Luther was likewise excommunicated for his complaints against papal abuses. And though Luther escaped his own death sentence, he found a particular resonance with Savonarola; two years after hiding away in Wartburg Castle, Luther published Savonarola’s prison meditations on Psalms 51 and 31 and praised him as “that godly man of Florence.”

The People’s Prophet

Born to a wealthy family in Ferrara, Italy, in 1452, Savonarola was a precocious young man with a penchant for learning. Intended by his parents for the medical field, he made a sudden choice at 23 years old to join the Dominican order after becoming disillusioned with the vanity of Italian culture. As a young friar, he soaked deeply in the writings of Thomas Aquinas and in Scripture, quickly demonstrating a capacious mind, which allowed him to commit most of Scripture to memory.

Savonarola arrived in Florence in 1490 already renowned for his learning, yet it was his preaching that catapulted him into the center of Florentine reform and politics. Often from the cathedral in Florence, Savonarola would preach to thousands in the vernacular with powerful imagery and simple language from the Scriptures. He announced the saving grace of Christ with biblical potency while simultaneously offering excoriating critiques of the immoral practices of political and ecclesial leaders.

His influential preaching, along with some remarkable events outside Savonarola’s control — the French king’s surprise invasion into Italy along with a devastating disease — suddenly elevated his influence in Florence. Equally important in his ascent as the city’s prophetic voice was the pervasive belief among ordinary people of an imminent, momentous upheaval related to the end times, especially as the year 1500 approached.

Excommunicated

From 1494 to 1498, Savonarola fomented dramatic political and social change. His preaching became far more prophetic. Emphasizing Christ’s return, he called Florence to live as a new Jerusalem. His moral reform bled into political reorganization as he worked to establish a “Christian republic,” much like Calvin later did in Geneva.

Towards the height of these changes, he organized the youth of Florence to model and incite for reform, precipitating several “Bonfires of Vanities” in protest against the annual Mardi Gras Carnival. These youths led citizens in destroying instruments of temptation like carnival masks, playing cards, fine dresses, makeup, mirrors, and even musical instruments. The last of these occurred in the Piazza della Signoria at the center of Florence on February 7, 1497, just months before Pope Alexander VI excommunicated Savonarola.

After his excommunication, Savonarola’s conflict with Pope Alexander VI exploded when the pope captured letters Savonarola had sent to the kings of France, England, Spain, Hungary, and the Emperor of Germany, pleading with them to call an ecclesiastical counsel to depose the pope for his abuses. Savonarola opposed not the office, but the person of Alexander VI and, in this way, differed from later Reformers’ more expansive critiques of papal authority and Catholic doctrine.

Luther’s Spark

Insofar as Savonarola affirmed the primacy of Peter, encouraged devotion to Mary, and tended towards a semi-Pelagian view of salvation, he remained doctrinally within the Roman Catholic Church. But insofar as Savonarola called for moral reform, condemned papal abuses, and elevated the authority of Scripture, he anticipated the Reformation.

Although Savonarola’s one-man reform movement in Florence did not continue long in Italy after his death, his passionate preaching and zealous reforms had exposed the church’s corruption like a brief yet bright match lit in a dark cave. Savonarola’s spark was the kind by which Luther, just two decades later, would kindle his own fire for reformation.