Remembering Katharina Zell

 And Jesus said, "Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet's hometown…”

 On September 5 our church calendar commemorates the life of Katharina Zell, an important player in the Protestant Reformation. Through her teaching, writing and direct action she would challenge the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church and the conventions of late medieval European society. She is a very interesting woman well worth knowing more about.

Katharina had the good fortune to be born to a fairly well-off family in Strasbourg in 1498, the eve of the Reformation in Europe. As a result of her family’s privilege, she would have access to a very thorough education, learning to read and write in her native German as well as in the Latin used within the church. Bear in mind, such educations were the exception rather than the rule for people generally in late medieval Europe and the fact that a woman would have such access was indeed a rarity. Katharina would become a life-long learner and this would prove to be the foundation of her long life of challenging the conventions of the status quo within church and society.

 

Challenging the Dominant Paradigm of Her Day

A major turning point in her life came in 1518 when Martin Zell took charge of the cathedral in Strasbourg. Zell was an advocate of the new teachings of a fellow German challenging the Vatican named Martin Luther. Katharina quickly became convinced that these revolutionary new teachings were the future of the church. She thereafter began writing a number of pamphlets advancing the arguments of what would come to be known as the Reformation.

One of the church’s teachings that Katharina came to reject was the notion that priests must be celibate. While the Catholic hierarchy had long sought to justify this policy by arguing that celibate clergy were free to assume their duties as pastors with no other conflicting interests to meet, the imposition of celibacy on clergy had arisen out of some very practical considerations. Clergy families were a liability for the church when clergymen died. It raised all kinds of questions about the property on which they lived.

Moreover, the sons of clergy often sought to follow their father’s footsteps into ministry claiming the right to a legacy regardless of whether they were particularly capable of such work. Imposed celibacy avoided problems of dealing with clergy survivors, claims on church properties and the determination of who would be ordained. Single clergy were reliant on the church for their living and thus prone to obedience and easy to discipline when they strayed.

Katharina found none of those considerations compelling. She came to be convinced that clergy who were called to marriage should do so. For Katharina, marrying Pastor Zell was an expression of her faith in God and her love for others. She became one of the first women to marry formerly celibate clergy, even preceding Martin Luther himself to the altar. Clearly this was an act of civil disobedience and Katharina would endure no small amount of criticism for such an audacious act.

But this would not be the only source of criticism for her life as a Reformer. As a woman of this time period, Katharina faced challenges not endured by male pamphleteers. The very notion of a woman speaking on issues of theology, issues that historically were the domain of an all-male clergy, roused much opposition from the church hierarchy and the general public as well.

In facing criticism Katharina would remind her critics that she never forgot her responsibility as a wife and that she was her husband’s partner. She was prone to tell people, “This is why my pious husband only called me his curate, although I never stood on the pulpit – something I did not have to do in my line of duties.”

Clearly Katharina’s experiences do not reflect those of the majority of women during the Reformation. Women of this time period were expected to conform to certain roles and rules which were institutionally and socially enforced on them. Katharina is an example of a woman who broke through these barriers to offer her beliefs to the public letting them stand or fall on their own merit.  

 

The Debt We Owe the Katharinas of Our World

Fortunately, we have come a long way from such thinking. Today women clergy are common in this tradition which prides itself on being both catholic and reformed and we are decidedly the better for it. Even as it is hard to imagine the kind of pressure Katharina and women like her endured, today in a church which takes seriously the gifts that women bring to us, we are called to recognize that we are decidedly in her debt.

 As Episcopalians we are the beneficiaries of an ongoing process of thoughtful liturgical revision which has created an ever-growing calendar of feast days and commemorations that include many figures outside our immediate tradition. Today’s commemoration is a good example. Katharina Zell was born Roman Catholic and became a Lutheran by the end of her life. But she appears on our calendar. We are fortunate to have liturgical reformers who find ever new ways to make us aware of the image of G-d as it appears all around us all the time. The Anglican value of incarnation is alive and well in this very robust calendar we observe and we are grateful for it.

 

Finally, as followers of Jesus we are also the beneficiaries of the witness of courageous men and women who have confronted the institutional practices of their time even as such endeavors often brought great resistance and came at a great cost to the challenger. Jesus knew such resistance. He observes in Luke’s Gospel tonight "Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet's hometown…”  

It is the tendency of any religious institution to confuse its socially constructed conventions – including its common social prejudices – with revealed religion. When folks like Katharina Zell and Jesus of Nazareth come along, they are rarely welcomed as heroes. If anything, they are seen as traitors who endanger the common good.

This day, let us give thanks for courageous women and men who labor to reveal the image of the Holy One who is all around us all the time, often in ways we have not previously considered and sometimes do not want to see. Let us give thanks for those who have remained true to their callings to serve the world in the face of dismissal, rejection and even personal danger. For while Jesus is right that prophets are rarely welcomed in their hometowns, it is often precisely that hometown – including our own - that most needs to hear what our prophets have to say to us.

 

 

Let us pray: Almighty God, whose servant Katharina Zell toiled for the reform of your church both in word and in deed: Fill us with the wisdom to speak out in defense of your truth, with love for you and for our neighbor, that we may serve you and welcome all your people with a mother’s heart; through Christ our Lord. Amen.   

A sermon preached at St. Richard's Episcopal Church, Winter Park, FL September 5, 2021 

Feast Day of Katharina Zell lectionary

Satucket Biography of Katharina Zell

 

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  Harry Scott Coverston

  Orlando, Florida

 frharry@cfl.rr.com

  hcoverston.orlando@gmail.com

 If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding. Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.

 Those who believe religion and politics aren't connected don't understand either. – Mahatma Gandhi

 For what does G-d require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d?  - Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures

 Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. - Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Wisdom of the Jewish Sages (1993)

  © Harry Coverston, 2021

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