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Another Woman of the Reformation: Katharina Zell
A sixteenth-century German, Katharina Schütz Zell (1497/8–1562) was one of the first Protestant women to marry a clergyman. Katharina lived all of her life in what was formerly Alsace, known today as Strasbourg, France, close to the border of Germany. A Reformer, she published a collection of congregational hymns, cared for the sick and imprisoned, and reached out to refugees displaced by religious warfare. Matthew Zell, one of the priests in her community who researched the ideas Martin Luther was speaking about in 1521, began preaching about "grace alone." Katharina found solace in the message that God’s salvation is purely a gift through the grace of Christ. They married, which…