She Dared to Speak
Heidi Olson Campbell January/February 2026An extraordinary sixteenth-century advocate for religious tolerance.
“We were not obliged to be of the same mind or faith, but we were obliged to show each one love, service, and compassion. That is what our teacher Christ taught.”—Katharina Schütz Zell.
Katharina Schütz Zell was many unexpected things for a sixteenth-century woman (a controversialist and a preacher), but she was not a hypocrite. She lived her life by the words she wrote. On December 3, 1523, Schütz took a step that irrevocably changed the course of her life, threw her in the religious controversies that divided Europe, and shocked the city of Strasbourg—she married the city’s popular university-trained priest, Matthew Zell. Their marriage was a public signal to the city that Zell and Schütz had embraced Martin Luther’s theology and rejected the Catholic practice of clerical celibacy.
Schütz was an extraordinary woman for her time. She publicly took a stand for her faith, and when others were not granted the liberty to follow their beliefs, she defended and encouraged them in print, thereby making herself a target for persecution. Unlike most of her contemporaries, when those of her religious faith gained power and could persecute others, she continued to argue for toleration of minorities even when it ruined friendships and endangered her reputation.
A Risky Union
Marrying a priest in 1523 was dangerous. It was only six years after Luther posted his 95 theses in Wittenberg. And it was not at all certain that Lutheran theology or those who embraced its tenets would survive. There was the strong possibility that if Luther’s reformed theology did not have and retain strong political protectors, adherents to the new theology could be imprisoned or burned as heretics. In Paris, in the same year as their marriage, Lutheran Jean Vallière was burned at the stake for heresy, and two former friars turned Protestants were also executed in Brussels. Wives of priests risked becoming widows or being abandoned. If the clergy member recanted his Protestant beliefs, he would be expected to renounce his wife and declare their children illegitimate.
Even if Protestantism prevailed in the region, there was the question of whether the community would recognize the marriage. Communities could regard and treat the pastor’s wife as a concubine rather than a legitimate wife. Other relatives who were due an inheritance on occasion attempted to block the wives of clergy access to their inheritances because they argued that the women were not properly married. Pastors’ kids sometimes experienced challenges in formulating their own marriages as respectable members of the community sometimes regarded pastors’ children as illegitimate and, therefore, inappropriate marriage partners for their own children. Marrying a former Catholic clergy member could have a long-term negative impact on the life of the wife and any resulting children.
Zell was not the first clergy to marry, but as far as Schütz knew, she was the “first respectable” woman in Strasbourg to marry a clergy member. Most of the women marrying clergy or former clergy had had long-standing relationships with the priests as their concubines or were former nuns. As nuns were already considered married to Christ, in the minds of many of their contemporaries they were committing bigamy. Schütz, however, was neither.
Formative Years
Schütz came from a privileged background. Her parents were successful artisans and well-established Strasbourg citizens who were part of the middling class, not aristocrats but far from poor. They ensured that Katharina and her siblings received a good vernacular education, which enabled her to write prolifically in German. As a child Schütz felt called to pursue a life devoted to God. Instead of becoming one of Strasbourg’s cloistered nuns, she planned to spend her life as a lay celibate devoted to good works and piety in her family’s household, similar to a beguine, a lay religious order never officially sanctioned by the pope. A celibate religious woman, living at home outside the church-approved religious orders, required family support for her choice. To prepare her to support herself financially, she had been trained in a craft and along with a group of other women devoted herself to acts of charity as well as faithfully attending sermons and masses.
near the Jewish street in Strasbourg.
By the time of Schütz’s marriage to Zell in her mid-20s, her piety and determination to remain unmarried were well known in the community. After reading Luther’s works and listening to Zell’s sermons, Schütz accepted Luther’s teachings as biblical and chose a different way to serve God as a pastor’s wife. Although she was concerned with and well versed in theology, her central focus in her writings was love for neighbor and treating others with charity, not on debating theology.
Faithfulness in Suffering
Schütz knew the risk she had taken through her marriage, and the year after their marriage the reality of persecution arrived perilously close to Strasbourg. In 1524 the small city of Kenzingen, today a little more than a one-hour drive from Strasbourg, at the time a couple of days’ walk, was invaded. The conversion of the city’s pastor and many of the citizens to Protestantism had not gone unchallenged. Although Kenzingen was only nominally under Hapsburg control, Ferdinand, archduke of Austria, was determined to ensure that Protestant ideas did not spread in his territory. The pastor, Jakob Otter, was ordered to leave the city by the city council, but returned within a few days in hopes that the council would allow him to remain.
The next month Otter again started to leave Kenzingen, but 150 women of Kenzingen prevented his departure, insisting that he preach a sermon. A few weeks later, under the threat that imperial troops would occupy Kenzingen unless Otter was banished, Otter left the city permanently. He was accompanied by 150 men who sought to ensure that he found a refuge, which he did in Strasbourg. Despite Otter’s departure, heavily armed but poorly provisioned troops from the Catholic stronghold of Freiburg arrived and took housing and food forcibly from an unwilling populace. The occupation was expensive for the townspeople and carried with it the ever-present possibility of violence. For possessing a German Bible and introducing the Eucharist in both kinds, the city clerk was beheaded in front of his wife and children. Other people were imprisoned, and townspeople, especially the wives and children of the men who traveled with Otter, were afraid.
Schütz was aware of the suffering of the Protestants in Kenzingen as she and her husband had cared for some of the refugees, including Otter, in their home. Her first printed work, published in July 1524, was an open letter to the women of Kenzingen. Schütz’s biographer, Elsie McKee, describes the letter as “most like a tapestry of biblical quotations” but carefully “woven into a pattern to form the substance of her argument.” Her letter encouraged the women to remain steadfast through persecution.
By integrating biblical passages into her letter, Schütz tied the women’s suffering to that of the Christians of the past who also had been persecuted in Roman hands. She urged the women of Kenzingen as “loyal believing women, also do this: take on you the manly, Abraham-like courage while you too are in distress and while you are abused with all kinds of insult and suffering” for Christ too had suffered. She assured them that God would be with them and through their suffering “God may be glorified in you above all others who are called.” Suffering was a natural part of salvation, according to Schütz, and an ever-present possibility for those who chose to follow Christ.
A Woman’s Voice
Rather than flee from potential suffering and public scrutiny, Schütz faced it. Malicious gossip had arisen about her marriage to Zell, and only weeks after the incident in Kenzingen, Schütz addressed the controversy directly in a letter to the bishop of Strasbourg defending their marriage, which she published as a pamphlet that was repressed by the Strasbourg city council.
Schütz had not minced words in her pamphlet, calling prominent Catholic theologian Conrad Treger a rapacious wolf and controversialist Johnannes Cochlaeus a wooden spoon banging against an empty pot. Her gender, at a time when women were adjured to be obedient, chaste, and silent, undoubtedly played a role in the repression of her pamphlet. As Protestant Reformers sought to establish its theology and governance as respectable, it emphasized patriarchal assumptions about the place of women under male governance. Women, who wanted a voice in the rapidly changing milieu, had to carefully create rhetorical space.
“Apologia for Master Matthew Zell,” Schütz’s defense of clerical marriage, set forth the necessity for Christians to speak out despite potential risks to the individual. She argued that it was the duty of all “who love the godly truth” to correct lies with the truth, especially if it involved one’s neighbor. God had commanded to “love your neighbor as yourself.” This command had pricked her conscience, and she could not “be silent about these very great devilish lies that have been said and published about me.” She did not object to being criticized herself, as all Christians should expect persecution, but she had to speak out for her neighbor—her husband. Risking persecution by following one’s conscience was worth it if it was in the service of God and obeying His command to love one’s neighbor.
Radical Hospitality
Throughout her long career as a pastor’s wife and then a pastor’s widow, Schütz lived out her belief. Admittedly, location played a role; Strasbourg was unique. As an imperial free city, the city was under the Holy Roman emperor, but the city council had a great deal of autonomy in its civic decisions. The council had to ensure that they did not provoke the Catholic emperor while shaping Strasbourg into a Protestant city. Partially because of the careful gymnastics needed to balance these two conflicting goals, Catholic convents endured the Reformation in Protestant Strasbourg. Up until Zell’s death, Strasbourg was one of the few cities that usually tolerated religious dissidents. If they proved disruptive to the community, they generally were banished or imprisoned rather than executed.
At a time when debates over theology and persecution led to irreparable fissures between people, a confessional divide, Schütz sought to demonstrate neighborly love even to those with whom she disagreed if they were truly seeking to follow God. Catholics, although marginalized, continued to rub shoulders with Protestants in Strasbourg. And they did the same at Schütz’s dinner table, although Schütz primarily invited a Catholic priest home in order to debate theology.
Over the years Schütz knew almost all of the major Reformers despite their theological differences. As Schütz later described it, “all who believe and confess the Lord Christ as the true Son of God and only Savior of all people: they should have part and fellowship at [Zell’s] table and in his lodging; he would also have part with them in Christ and in heaven—whoever they might be. . . . So I have received many people with his will. . . . I have spoken and written for them, whether they were followers of our dear Dr. Luther, or Zwingli, or Schwenckfeld, and the poor [Ana]Baptist brothers; rich and poor, wise and not, . . . they all could come to us.” Guests at her home included John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli, Johannes Oecolampadius, Konrad Pellikan, and Martin Bucer. After Bucer’s wife, Margaretha, died, Schütz helped to match Bucer up with the widow Wibrandis Rosenblatt. She visited Luther and Philip Melanchthon with her husband. When Luther and Zwingli split at the Marburg Colloquy over the Eucharist, Schütz chastised Luther for failing to love his fellow Christians.
Just about everyone persecuted the Anabaptists. The Catholics executed them as heretics; so did the Protestants, starting in Zurich under Zwingli. Although she disagreed theologically with the Anabaptists, she opposed their persecution, appreciated their fidelity to their faith, and ministered to them. After the Münster Rebellion, most Protestants wanted even less to do with Anabaptists, yet Schütz still visited Anabaptist mystic Melchior Hoffman during his 10 years of imprisonment. She sorrowed when religious dissident Michael Servetus was executed in Calvinist Geneva. At times she received pushback for her kindness to the marginalized. She was called a heretic by Ludwig Rabus, a Lutheran preacher whom she had cared for as a foster mother. Once again she turned to print to defend herself. Although the city council told her to stop printing her defense, some seemed to be in sympathy with her, and the reprimand was almost perfunctory. The consistent love and care she had shown her community was reciprocated.
Throughout her life Schütz encouraged unity among Protestants “as long as they held to the essential teachings of Christ as the sole savior and scripture as the sole authority.” But in sharp contrast with Luther, who became increasingly anti-Semitic in his later years, and the city of Strasbourg, which had once massacred Jews, Schütz believed that nonbelievers, like Jews, should not be persecuted. They were to be persuaded, not coerced, into Protestant theology. For Schütz, love for God and for one’s neighbor was paramount.
A Final Witness
In 1562, weak from the illness that took her life, in one of her last public acts Schütz was carried to the burial site of Elizabeth Scher Hecklin, a Schwenckfelder (a group that held some beliefs in common with Anabaptists and was persecuted) from a high-ranking Strasbourg family, to preach her funeral sermon. The local pastor had refused to bury Hecklin without denouncing her religious beliefs. That same year, Schütz preached at the graveside of another Schwenckfelder, Felicitas von Selmenitz, wife of a city lawyer. Her defense of others almost led to her being called a heretic at her own funeral. When Schütz died, only the intervention of Conrad Hubert, Bucer’s former assistant, who preached her funeral sermon, ensured a proper burial surrounded by 200 family and friends who had experienced in her long ministry.
As Schütz’s life demonstrated, the persecuted do not need to become the persecutor when they gain power. Even in time when religious tolerance was lacking and religious liberty an elusive dream, a woman who saw, truly saw, her neighbors as fellow children of God could take a stand and care for the marginalized, the outcast, even if it resulted in being persecuted. And much of her community reciprocated showing their support and love for her in their final act of service to a beloved pastor’s wife—attending her funeral. Unfortunately, religious war and persecution, rather than Christian love, would typify the next century.
Article Author: Heidi Olson Campbell
Heidi Olson Campbell, Ph.D., is a historian, researcher, and author whose focus area is the impact of religion and politics on perceptions of gender roles in early modern Europe.