Sunday, November 1, 2020

Dentière - Reformation Messenger to the Nuns

 I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins... Jeremiah 17:10

 "There is one woman’s name on the famous Reformation Wall in Geneva. She is Marie Dentiere, and she has become a somewhat
controversial figure in the story of the reformation.
 
Marie Dentière was born in Tournai (in modern Belgium) into a relatively well-off family of the lesser nobility. She entered the Augustinian nunnery of Saint-Nicolas-dés-Prés in Tournai at a young age in 1508, eventually becoming abbess in 1521.

Martin Luther's preaching against monasticism led her to flee to Strasbourg in 1524 to escape persecution — not only for abandoning her position as a nun, but for converting to the Reformation.

While in Strasbourg, in 1528, she married Simon Robert, a young priest. Soon they left for an area outside of Geneva to preach the Reformation, and had five children together. Robert died 5 years later in 1533, and the now widowed Dentière married Antoine Froment, who was at work in Geneva with Farel.

 --Marie went and encouraged nuns to join the Reformation 
--and find husbands
--started a girls’ school with her husband, 
--wrote a history of Geneva’s “deliverance” from the Catholics, 
--and even corresponded with Marguerite de Navarre. 
 
Dentière appears only fleetingly in records, usually identified through her husband. For instance in September 1546, Calvin, writing to Farel described a confrontation with “Froment’s wife”—a “funny story” of Dentière preaching on the street corners and in taverns. When challenged by Calvin, she criticized him and his
associates, accused them of being like the scribes in Luke 20:46, “who want to walk about in long robes,” and complained of their tyranny in suppressing open speech. 

Dentiere's Very Useful Epistle (1539) is the first explicit statement of reformed theology by a woman to appear in French. Addressed to Queen Marguerite of Navarre, sister of the French king Francis I, the Epistle asks the queen to help those persecuted for their religious beliefs. 
 
In the Epistle, she also defends John Calvin against his enemies and attacks the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. Her Preface (1561) to one of Calvin's sermons criticizes immodesty and extravagance in clothing and warns the faithful to be vigilant."
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