Argula von Grumbach

Argula Staufferin von Grumbach (1492–ca. 1568).
Wie eyn christliche Fraw des Adels, in Beiern durch iren, in gotlicher Schrift, wolgegründten Sendtbrieffe, die Hohenschul zü Ingoldstat, umb das sie einen evangelischen Jüngling, zü wydersprechung des Wort Gottes betrangt haben, straffet.
[Nuremberg: Friedrich Peypus, 1523]. (BRB0114)

Argula von Grumbach, a Bavarian noblewoman, became the first female author of the Protestant Reformation when she wrote and published this pamphlet in protest of the arrest of a Lutheran student at the University of Ingolstadt in 1523. Fortified by the conviction that she could find truth in the scriptures, she wrote that “I do not intend to bury my abilities, if the Lord gives me grace.” Published in fourteen editions, this work caused widespread outrage because it was composed by a woman. Despite its effective use of biblical quotations and eloquent argumentation, it received several condescending and misogynistic responses from faculty and students at Ingolstadt. Bridwell Library’s copy of Argula’s pamphlet was bound together with twenty-four other Protestant pamphlets for Simon Gerengel (1518–1571), a Lutheran theologian in Austria.