For nearly the first century of its existence, the International Monument to the Reformation in Geneva did not include any women's names among the Protestant Reformation personalities it honored.But in 2002, the name Marie Dentiere was engraved on a stone marker, a notable though late acknowledgment that women played an important role in the church's 16th-century return to biblical roots.
The Reformation "transformed the position of women," said Diana Severance, a Houston Baptist University scholar and author of "Feminine Threads: Women in the Tapestry of Christian History."
"Under the medieval system, mystics and celibates were [considered] the highest order of saints" and "the most godly people," Severance, director of HBU's Dunham Bible Museum, told Baptist Press. "But under the Reformation, a wife, a mother or just a single person could live their life for the Lord without having to be ...