Woman's name added to Reformation tablet

Christian Century, Nov 20, 2002

Four new names have been chiseled onto the Wall of the Reformers, one of the world's principal monuments of the Protestant Reformation and one of the most visited sites in Geneva, a cradle of the Reformation. Marie Dentiere, a Flemish-born 16th-century lay theologian, took her place on the monument beside Luther, Calvin, Zwingli and other luminaries.

Officially unveiled at a November 3 ceremony, the quartet of names also included better-known early church reformers Peter Valdes (ca. 1140-1217), who inspired the Waldensian movement; John Wycliffe (ca. 1330-1384), who instituted the first English translation of the Bible; and John Hus (ca. 1369-1415), the preacher whose teachings spurred the Hussite movement in Bohemia.

The four names appear on the two blocks framing the monument at the foot of an old fortress wall in Geneva, a city John Calvin made into a refuge for religious asylum-seekers and a center of Reformation teaching, practice and printing in the 16th century.

For many years the reputation of Dentiere was under a cloud because of critical comments made about her by Calvin and another reformer, Guillaume Farel. She has, however, recently been rehabilitated by a new generation of theology students, said Isabelle Graessle, a theologian and the first woman moderator of the Protestant Church of Geneva's Company of Pastors and Deacons--a position established by Calvin.

"Dentiere was engaged in the heart of the Protestant Reformation," Graessle said at a press conference in late October. She was "a theologian of surprisingly modern, reasoned feminism" living in Calvin's circle, who wrote about the movement "live, as it was unfolding in Geneva." The other new additions predate the Reformation by at least 100 years but inspired the movement, said William McComish, dean of the Cathedral of St. Pierre and a member of the committee that steered the new names onto the monument. The new additions render the wall "less Geneva-centric," said McComish.

The larger-than-life-sized figures of four key Geneva Reformers--Farel, Calvin, Theodore de Beze (all French-born) and John Knox (founder of Presbyterianism in Scotland)--form the center of the monument.

Flanking them are Roger Williams, an advocate of religious freedom in the American colonies; the Huguenot leader Gaspard de Coligny; and such political figures as Oliver Cromwell, leader of the Puritan Revolution in England; Frederick William, elector of Brandenburg; and William I, prince of Orange. --ENI