Katharina Zell (1497–1562)

Katharina Zell, née Schütz, was born and lived all her life in Strasbourg, today in France, then a Free Imperial City of the Holy Roman Empire. In childhood, she learned to read and write in German, and kept educating herself throughout life, eventually learning some Latin. As the Reformation spread throughout Europe, she was introduced to the new religious ideas by Matthias Zell, a pastor 20 years her senior. In 1523, she married Zell and had two children who died in infancy. She conducted Bible study classes for women, some of which were attended by men, did social work, and called herself a "church mother ("Kirchenmutter"). In 1524, she published her first work, The Suffering Christian Wives of Kentzingen, in which she comforted women whose husbands had to flee to Strasbourg to escape religious persecution. During the suppression of the German Peasants’ War of that time, she organized aid in Strasbourg for 3,000 refugees over a period of six months. An Open Letter to All the Citizens of Strasbourg, written in about 1557, scolded the religious leaders of the city for their intolerance toward Christians of other traditions such as Anabaptists.
One of her most influential and widely known texts was a hymnbook called Some Christian and Comforting Songs of Praise about Jesus Christ Our Savior (1534-35).

She also wrote some lengthy polemical exchanges with male theologians. When her husband died in 1548, she conducted his funeral, a highly unusual act for a woman of her day.