Argula von Grumbach (1492–1554/7)

A Woman before Her Time

Matheson

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781630870898
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

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.

one

Childhood, Youth, and marriage

I’ve taken the risk;

And await now the consequences.

—Ulrich von Hutten, Ein neu Lied1

The fifteenth-century Furtmeyr Bible is a revelation. Its stunning colors—blue and green, orange, purple and gold—are as sharp today as on the day they were painted five hundred years ago. In its pages we come face-to-face with the archetypal figures and scenarios of the Hebrew Bible as seen by late medieval people: Adam and Eve, Noah and his ark, the dramatic crossing of the Red Sea, Moses—hair seemingly aflame—striding down from Mount Sinai, Judith casually chopping off the head of Holofernes, Daniel in the fiery furnace, Samson wielding his donkey jawbone.

This manuscript Bible, with its magnificent red and black Gothic script, was commissioned by Argula von Grumbach’s grandparents, Hans and Margaret von Stauff, in 1468 and completed in 1472. The margins, burgeoning with fantastic flowers and birds, betoken a delight in nature. A multitude of alluring depictions accompanies the Song of Songs. We see the young bride and bridegroom sitting regally side by side: she magnificent in a flowing blue gown, he resplendent in golden armor, each sporting a fine head of auburn hair.

The biblical illustrations are framed by unmistakably Bavarian fields, hills, rivers, and castles; yet the latter glow surreally against a golden background. Thus the earthy and divine, the natural and the supernatural, demons and angels, and very ordinary humans, rub shoulders with one another, and so swing us effortlessly into the exuberant world of late medieval piety.2 It is no surprise to learn that Hans von Stauff III, who commissioned this Bible, went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem in his youth, setting out in the spring of 1449 with the Augsburg patrician Jörg Mülich, traveling via Venice, Corfu, and Crete, and returning in the depths of winter after being knighted at the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.

Argula von Grumbach too lived in this biblical world, or, rather, it lived in her. But the stage on which she walked was also that of the high nobility, of the highly influential von Stauff family, with its vaulting sense of honor and family pride. Illustrations portray her brother, Bernhardin von Stauff, glorying in the world of the tournament, pounding down at his opponent, and lance at the ready. This reminds us forcefully of the other side of Argula’s story: the robust self-assurance of the high nobility, the great traditions of her family, stretching back to the thirteenth century. To the end of her life she signed her letters, “Argula, free-born, née von Stauff.” Her father, Bernhardin, was a noted champion in jousting, and was himself responsible for summoning tournaments to Regensburg and Mainz.3 Thousands flocked to these events, as they do today to great sporting occasions. Such tournaments were at their peak at the close of the fifteenth century. With their splendor and showmanship they represented the self-understanding of the high nobility. This was an exotic world of virtual battle, of sanitized feuding, with pennants flying and fair ladies distributing their favors to the contender of their choice. There was a considerable variety of events, from staged battles to the jousting in single combat. It was hugely expensive to stage and participate in the occasion, and of course participation was highly exclusive. The losers forfeited their expensive armor to the winners. And while these tournaments were extravagant spectacles and ostentatious displays of naked courage, they were also deadly serious in intent: emphatic statements about status and power, iconic manifestations of a feudal society in which nothing was more important than chivalry and the honor of one’s name and heredity.

This, then, was the wondrously rich religious and cultural world into which Argula von Stauff was born. Her mother, Katharine von Thering (or Törring), the daughter of George von Thering, belonged to another prominent noble family in Bavaria. The Thering family was not without its black sheep. Argula’s cousin Johann von Thering IV was sentenced in Munich to a penitential pilgrimage to Rome for murdering a servant, a pointer both to the violence bubbling just under the surface of society, and to the double standards of justice for rich and poor.4 Katharine von Thering and Bernhardin von Stauff married in June 1486.

Argula’s father, Bernhardin, seems to have been on good terms with his wife’s family, especially with her brother Veit, though there were the usual tussles about inheritance when old Christopher von Thering died. In 1498 the Prince Bishop of Salzburg appears to have been called in to act as mediator.5

Katharine herself must have had robust health, bringing one vigorous child after another into the world: Bernhardin, Argula herself, Secundilla, Zormarina, Gramaflanz, Feirafis, and Marcellus. Though none of the children were given the name, Parsifal, an old name in the family, recalls the epic account of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Parsifal, or Perceval, was one such knight. Argula herself is named after the beautiful if arrogant seductress, Argeluse. Secundilla, Gramaflanz, and Feirafis also figure in the story of Parsifal.

The prominence of the von Stauff family was symbolized by the great fortress of the Ehrenfels (the “rock of honor”), on the Laber River, not far from Regensburg. This had been their seat since 1335. Even today, as you climb up and up through the woods to its imposing ruins, you sense how its five towers and chapel must have dominated the fertile countryside around it. Close by the Ehrenfels was the market town of Beratzhausen, where the family possessed a festes Haus (a stone-built residence). In the mid-fifteenth century Hans von Stauff III’s marriage, ca. 1453, to Margareta Schenk von Geyern had linked the von Stauffs with that other important family, and from 1465 he and his successors were Reichsfreiherrn (free imperial lords), entitled, like the counts and the free imperial cities, to a seat in the imperial assemblies, or diets, and answerable only to the emperor. They were independent, in other words, of the Wittelsbach dukes of Bavaria, and sovereign within their own sphere. They held sway over some seventeen hundred subjects in their quite scattered lands.6 This autonomous status was continually being contested, however. Duke Albrecht IV of Bavaria (1465–1508) with his ambitious centralizing policies, never recognized any restriction on his sovereign powers in Bavaria, and Bernhardin Junior, Argula’s brother, had to defend his independence vigorously against the Palatinate Counts of Neuburg.7

The wider family of the von Stauffs had long been one of the leading families in Bavaria, with seats at Köfering and Sünching as well as Ehrenfels, while their residence in Regensburg, the Staufferhof, a little realm independent of the city council, is to be of considerable importance later in our story. Relations between the different branches of the family appear to have been good. We know, for example, that Katharine, Argula’s mother, stayed a whole summer in Köfering, about fifty kilometers from Beratzhausen.

In the frequent feuds or disputes between members of the nobility, the von Stauffs often acted as Teidinger (mediators). Their services were engaged by kings and bishops on numerous occasions. They had at some point held virtually every important office of state in Bavaria, as councilors, diplomats, administrators, and judges. As the Viztum (representative) of the dukes in Landshut and Lower Bavaria, Dietrich III, Hans III, and Argula’s father, Bernhardin, had all exercised a commanding role, with oversight over the other ducal administrators.

By the middle decades of the fifteenth century the prosperity of the von Stauffs enabled them to lend money to bishops, dukes, and kings, and to act as guarantors of loans made to others, while their prestigious seal was much in demand to cement and witness contracts and agreements. They took a keen interest in religious matters, supporting financially various monasteries and churches, the German Order, and a religious fraternity in the Laaber, and they developed particularly close links to the diocese of Eichstätt, where Conrad and Hermann von Stauff were canons of the cathedral.8 Hans von Stauff secured an indulgence for the St. Wenceslas Chapel in the castle at Köfering.9 They were known as patrons of art and literature, developed close links with the relatively new university at Ingolstadt, which was founded in 1472, and se...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Chapter 1: Childhood, Youth, and Marriage
• Chapter 2: Home and Family
• Chapter 3: Light and Darkness
• Chapter 4: Compelled to Speak
• Chapter 5: Year of Crisis
• Chapter 6: The Backwash
• Chapter 7: Devastation
• Chapter 8: Between Hope and Despair
• Chapter 9: Uphill All the Way
• Chapter 10: The Last Years
• Chapter 11: Conclusion
• Bibliography