Women and the Reformations: A Global History

“Wiesner-Hanks’ approach to her subjects is empathetic rather than celebratory; she seeks to understand these women in their own terms. . . . [This book] provides a timely reminder of the importance of taking women seriously.”—Katherine Harvey, Engelsberg Ideas

“[A] meticulously researched and compelling examination that broadens our understanding of the Reformation by placing women as active agents rather than peripheral figures.”—Luciano Anastasi, Medieval History

Included in Engelsberg Ideas’ “Books of the Year 2024”

“The book is lucid and elegantly written. It will be essential reading for students and those interested in but not experts in Reformation history. But even those with deep knowledge will find much food for thought here, especially in the kinds of connections Wiesner-Hanks draws among the confessions and the book’s long chronological sweep. Everyone who studies, teaches, researches, and writes about the Reformation should read this gem of a book.”―Virginia Reinburg, Sixteenth Century Journal

“With this book, Wiesner-Hanks has sought to place women at the center of the history of the Reformations and to bring lesser-known women into the broader narrative. Particularly valuable is the inclusion of women from Asia and Africa.”―Jill Fehleison, American Historical Review

2025 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title

“At last, a history of the Reformation and Counter Reformation from the women’s point of view! This wonderful and gripping book is packed with amazing stories – from the Quaker Mary Fisher who went from England to Istanbul determined to convert the Sultan, to the Calvinist Ann Marguerite Pete du Noyer who cross-dressed and assured the Catholic who interrogated her that ‘I am as much a Catholic as I am a boy’, to the exiled Abbess Mary Knatchbull in Ghent who wrote coded letters for Charles I – and escaped suspicion as a mere woman. Wiesner-Hanks has done more than anyone to recreate the lives of women in the religious turmoil of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and this encyclopaedic, astonishing book is the fruit of a lifetime’s research. An utterly unforgettable and transformative book.”—Lyndal Roper, author of Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet

“Not a history of ‘women in the Reformation’: this is a whole history of the Reformation with women at its centre, the people who have been written out of the story for so long put back where they belong. You’ll meet hundreds of remarkable women, but your whole sense of the era will also shift on its axis.”—Alec Ryrie, author of Protestants

“Vivid portraits, complex dynamics, and a compelling narrative that takes us a wide range encompassing Monarchs, Migrants and Mystics. Wiesner-Hanks portrays women as critical agents reframing religious ideas, communities, and institutions at their core – with conviction, controversy, and global impact.”—Nicholas Terpstra, author of Religious Refugees in the Early Modern World
 

“This is a tour de force by the leading historian of premodern women, global history, and the Reformations. Wiesner-Hanks offers a brilliant analysis of women’s dynamic participation in a truly global religious phenomenon in a major work that opens up many new avenues for future investigation.”—Susan Broomhall, author of The Identities of Catherine de’ Medici

“This imaginative and artful historical overview places hundreds of distinctive women where they belong in the global religious upheavals of the early modern era—at the center. I can’t think of another book that so skillfully balances the dramas of individual lives of truly diverse backgrounds with larger questions of gender, spirituality, and social change.  Merry Wiesner-Hanks is the ideal guide in this journey of discovery.”—Joel F. Harrington, author of The Faithful Executioner