ABSTRACT
Beginning in the early 1520s, most Protestant reformers made the provocative step of entering into marriage, thus breaking their vows of clerical celibacy and making manifest their breach with the Catholic Church. Many reformers, such as Martin Bucer and Martin Luther, married ex-nuns, and the majority married women of their own social status. This chapter presents a letter, written by Boniface Wolfhart, a Protestant minister in Augsburg, to Wolfgang Capito, a Protestant reformer in Strasbourg, on 25 April 1538 demonstrates how one reformer reacted when confronted by a woman from his past and the offspring of their alleged act of fornication. The letter shows how reformers, despite their best efforts to enter into sanctioned marriages and raise legitimate children, could still be subject to the ghosts of their past and how they strove hard to cover up any scandal that might “sow strife” and “scandalize the church.”.
