Woman of the Reformation
Marie Dentière, the fourth of thirteen children, is born in 1494 in Tournai in northern Flanders to a family of the minor nobility. She becomes the prioress of the Convent of the Augustinians of Saint Nicolas des Près a few kilometers from Tournai.
In 1524, won over by Reformation thought, she leaves the convent and we lose track of her. She probably takes refuge in Paris with Queen Margherita of Navarre, sister of Francis 1, King of France. She will maintain close ties with the queen, who protects the Protestants in France and elsewhere, for her whole life.
We find her again in Strasbourg, where she marries the pastor Simon Robert in 1526. In 1535 she is in Geneva. After being a widow for three years, she marries the pastor Antoine Froment, 19 years younger than herself, originally from the Dauphiné, compatriot and friend of Farel. She has two daughters from her first marriage and one from the second.
Although she is the first woman historian and theologian of Reformation Geneva, she is repaid for her dedication and her passion with enforced silence (all of her writings are published anonymously) and a distorted reputation as a woman of bad character, domineering and arrogant.
Reports on Geneva
In 1536 her first work is published in Geneva: La guerre de dèslivrance de la ville de Genèsve, in which she describes what happened before her eyes in the intense days when Geneva went over to the Reform movement: the riots in the streets, the theological debates, the relations between the Duke of Savoy and the people of Geneva, the departure of the Roman clergy, the war, and finally the liberation. The book, which is published anonymously, is attributed by everyone to her husband.
Defense of Women
in 1538 the upper middle class of Geneva, who could hardly tolerate Calvinist severity, manage to have Calvin and Farel expelled from the city. Calvin will be called back three years later and will never again leave Geneva. On that occasion Marie writes and publishes Epistre trés utile, in which she recounts and explains the conflicts that led to the expulsion of the reformers. Once again the publication is anonymous, The authorities don’t like her defense of Calvin’s positions. The book is confiscated and the publisher is imprisoned.
The second chapter of the book is entitled Defense of Women and is an impassioned claim to the equality of women in pastoral work and in the work of preaching in the church.
“… And although we are not permitted to preach in public assemblies and churches, yet we are not forbidden to write… Do we perhaps have two Gospels? One for men and the other for women?...”[1]
For a time Marie and her husband run a boarding school for girls in their home, taking care that they have the same opportunities for study as their male peers. For these girls she publishes a short Hebrew grammar, written by her second-born daughter, an expert in the study of that language.
Marie and Calvin
The relationship of the Froments with the reformers of Geneva is not always easy. But the tensions with Calvin don’t prevent a collaboration: in 1561 Marie publishes a sermon of Calvin’s on women’s clothing with an extensive preface of her own, in which she severely judges those – women or men – who dress in a way that is too showy and who wear make-up. For the first time she signs the publication with the initials of her name. Marie dies the same year.
Extract from Waldensian Cultural Centre Foundations’s brochure
www. fondazionevaldese.org
[1] From Defense of Women