Marie Dentière - a little known Woman of the Reformation

Marie Dentière was born in 1495 into a relatively affluent Flemish family in Tournai. She entered the Augustinian abbey of Saint-Nicolas-des-Prés in Tournai at a young age in 1508, eventually becoming abbess in 1521. Since Martin Luther had been an Augustinian monk, his early teachings were much discussed in Augustinian houses, and sometime in the early 1520s, Marie adopted the views of the religious reformers and left her nunnery. This was an ecclesiastical and perhaps a civil crime, and Marie fled to Strasbourg, a city that was a refuge for Protestants from both Germany and France. While in Strasbourg, in 1528, she married Simon Robert, a young priest, who was a well-known Hebrew scholar. Soon they followed William Farel to the Swiss Valais, an area outside of Geneva, to preach the Reformation, where she shared her husband’s ministry. Simon Robert died in 1533. Marie, who by then had two children, married the 24-year-old Antoine Froment, who had come to Geneva the year before as a follower of the leading French Protestant, William Farel. The Froments lived in Geneva, where Antoine first taught and then became a merchant, but always combined these activities with preaching. Marie would have at least one more child and would work with Antoine in his shop. The couple opened a small boarding school for girls in their home in order to give them a thorough education, including studies of Greek and Hebrew.
Since the early 1520s the city of Geneva had been battling with its ruler, the Duke of Savoy. With the influx of French Protestants into the city, the political conflict became a religious one as well; Farel and his followers gained considerable influence. In 1533 the Catholic bishop, loyal to Savoy, was banished; two years later, all Catholic clergy were given the alternatives of either converting to Protestantism or leaving the city. It was this that first brought Marie Dentiere to public attention.
By the beginning of 1536, the Genevans were debating what their new form of government would be. In early spring an anonymous pamphlet appeared, La guerre et deliverance de la ville de Genesve, fideement faicte et composee par un Marchant demourant en icelle (The war and deliverance of the city of Geneva, faithfully prepared and written down by a merchant living in that city). The pamphlet called for Genevans to adopt the Reformation. Its author has been generally accepted to be the wife of the merchant Antoine Froment. The pamphlet's goal was achieved: in May Geneva became a Protestant republic. Soon after, John Calvin visited the city, and Farel asked him to stay and help institute a proper Reform. Farel and Calvin worked together to establish new church practices, but their ideas were found too severe by the more moderate Protestants, and in 1538 the two men were expelled from the city.
Marguerite of Navarre, sister of the French King Francis I, who was sympathetic to Reformers and who may have acted as godmother to one of Marie's children, inquired about the banishment of Farel and Calvin. Perhaps as a result, an open letter was published in 1539, Epistre tres utile, faicte ey composee par une femme chrestienne de Tornay, envoyee a la Royne de Navarre…, (A very useful epistle, made and composed by a Christian woman of Tournai, sent to the Queen of Navarre). The "Christian woman of Tournai" was known by all to be Marie Dentière. With references to Scripture, she proved the outstanding qualities of women and consequently demanded the active participation of women in church life and work, including preaching. Since Marie Dentière knew her Bible nearly by heart, her text included many quotations from scripture. To Dentière, women and men were equally qualified and entitled to the interpretation of Scripture and practice of religion. She responded to the traditional argument that only the learned could interpret Scripture: “To excuse themselves, they will say, ....’Scripture has several meanings, and it can be understood in several ways. It is not up to women to know it, nor to people who are not learned, who do not have degrees and the rank of doctor; but they should just believe simply without questioning anything.’ They just want us to give pleasure, as is our custom, to do our work, spin on the distaff, live as women before us did, like our neighbors.... They just want us to... live as women before us did." She then continued: “I ask, did not Jesus die as much for the poor ignorant people and the idiots as for my sirs the shave, tonsured, and mitred? Did he preach and spread my Gospel so much only for my dear sirs the wise and important doctors? Isn't it for all of us? Do we have two Gospels, one for men and another for women? One for the wise and another for the fools?”
In the last lines of her work, Marie exhorts, "It is necessary for us to ask the Lord of the harvest to send good workmen, and, after they have come, I hope that they will persevere in their work until the end…God by his grace will give us the heart and the intelligence for it... Amen!" She seemed to realize that God’s workmen do not have to be men only.
However, her encouragement of women's involvement in writing and theology angered Genevan authorities. Upon publication, almost all copies of the Epistle were confiscated, and the publisher was arrested. Only approximately 400 copies of the letter survived and entered circulation. The publication and subsequent suppression of Dentière's work was the beginning of censorship in reformed Geneva. The Genevan council prevented the publication of any other woman author in the city for the rest of the 16th century.
By 1541 new leaders had been elected in Geneva, and Calvin returned to establish his vision of the Reform. Correspondence between Calvin and Farel shows an increasing irritation with Antoine Froment, whom they saw as being too much under the influence of his wife. In 1546 Calvin spoke specifically of Marie: he wrote to Farel that he had scolded her for speaking in public "in the taverns, at almost all the street corners," and that in her reply to Calvin, "she complained about our tyranny, that it was no longer permitted for just anyone to chatter on about anything at all." Calvin assured Farel, "I treated this woman as I should have".
In a letter Dentière wrote: “If God has given grace to some good women, revealing to them by his Holy Scriptures something holy and good, should they hesitate to write, speak, and declare it to one another because of the defamers of truth? Ah, it would be too bold to try to stop them, and it would be too foolish for us to hide the talent that God has given us, God who will give us the grace to persevere until the end.”
Marie Dentière died in 1561 in Geneva.
Each year in Geneva the Reformation is celebrated in front of the Wall of the Reformers in a short ceremony. It is an occasion to join in a brief act of worship and to sing Luther's great battle-hymn of the Reformation, but it is above all a recalling of history. In July 2001, Reverend Dr Isabelle Graesslé, Minister in the Protestant Church of Geneva, Switzerland, and moderator of the Company of Pastors and Deacons of Geneva, became the first woman moderator to speak at this ceremony. She wanted to pay tribute to Marie Dentière, one of the most remarkable figures from the past, but now little-known. The tribute made such an impact that it was decided to add her name, along with those of three others "forgotten" in the history of the Reformation, to the Geneva monument. The ceremony in November 2002 was thus the occasion to unveil the inscription of the names of four precursors of the Reformation: Peter Valdes, John Wycliff, John Hus - and Marie Dentière.
This was a sign of appreciation shown for this woman who paid such a high price for her involvement at the very centre of the Protestant Reformation: the price of imposed silence and a damaged reputation. Dagmar Dorn, Inter-European Division Women’s Ministries Director, presented a short life sketch of a little known woman of the reformation, Marie Dentière, at the Women in Leadership Conference in Schladming, Austria, in November 2019
Photo: WMEUD