About

Dr. Marjorie Elizabeth Plummer is the Susan C. Karant Nunn Professor in Reformation and Early Modern European History and an Associate Professor of History at the University of Arizona. Her research focuses on the impact of early modern religious reform movements on family and gender roles, the changing legal definitions of social norms and religious identity, and issues related to tolerance, intolerance, and coexistence in early modern Germany. She is the author of From Priest’s Whore to Pastor’s Wife: Clerical Marriage and the Process of Reform in the Early German Reformation, which won the 2013 Sixteenth Century Studies and Conference Gerald Strauss Book Prize. Currently, she is working on a book-length study examining the experiences of nuns in the German-speaking portion of the Holy Roman Empire during the long Reformation. Dr. Plummer teaches courses on the Renaissance and Reformation Europe and has taught a variety of seminar courses in early modern European and German cultural and social history, including topics such as early modern women's history, monasticism and female religious orders, popular religion in pre-modern Europe, printing and propaganda, and crime and punishment.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Religious studies
• Law
• Sociology
• Philosophy
• Gender studies
• History
• Literature
• Art

Selected publications

• Converting Nuns: Religious Diversity in Convent Congregations during the Long Seventeenth Century

  Journal of Early Modern Christianity · 2025-04-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Conversions of professed nuns certainly jeopardized the fragile agreements in convent congregations and territories forged during the sixteenth century and the formal parity agreements in the late seventeenth century. In the more rigid post-Westphalian confessional landscape, the formal and public conversion or reconversion of even a single nun, like her departure, in a multiconfessional convent became an active concern for congregations and rulers alike. This essay will explore the rhetorical, spiritual, pragmatic and community dynamics in convent conversions and reconversions and argue for the inclusion of these flexible forms in conversion studies.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Title Pages

  2023-05-15

  paratextOpen access

  Cultures of Christianity" is a platform supporting innovative research on the histories of Christianity in the early modern period.We are particularly interested in approaches inspired by cultural history which emphasise the interactions among diverse religious phenomena and their political, social, economic, intellectual, and media environments.We do not treat religion as a fixed entity.Rather, we see religious cultures as the result of dynamic processes of identity affirmation and demarcation-shaped by the practices of individuals, groups, and institutions.To understand this complexity, we will pay close attention to regional plurality, local autonomy, and heterogeneous forms of Christianity.Chronologically, we understand our "early modern period" as a long epoch.We assume that many relevant phenomena had their roots in earlier periods and that early modern configurations of Christianity continued into the modern era.We are deeply interested in these continuities and will give them special attention.Geographically, our project is grounded in the recognition that Christianity became a decisively more global religion during the early modern period.Accordingly, we are excited to support research on all world regions as well as contributions to a global history of religious interdependence.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• ANNA JACOBÄA FUGGERIN (1547–1587) AND ST. KATHARINA CONVENT IN AUGSBURG:

  Fortress Press eBooks · 2022-07-29

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Introduction

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2022-03-31

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  While working on a convent chronicle, Sister Maria Dominika (1694–1756), a fifty-eight-year-old nun in St. Katharina in Augsburg, researched in the convent archive around 1752/1753. During this research, she made a shocking discovery about the confessional composition of her convent during the sixteenth century.^1...

  PublisherDOI

• “No Better than a Brothel”

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2022-03-31

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Chapter 1 argues that reformers initially used a rhetorical dichotomy between the “false Christians” and “true Christians” that inverted the traditional spiritual hierarchy of nuns and laywomen by using “spiritual women” and “common women” (whores) in an unconventional way. This inversion produced verbal, sporadic physical, and then organized community violence against the nuns from the first rhetorical calls for the “storming” of convents in the early 1520s until the Peasants’ War. The impulse to use of force to implement reforms in convents grew as officials, visitors, rulers, and even the nuns resorted to new forms of verbal and physical violence to defend their confessional position. This chapter shows how the discussion by Luther and his followers about nuns morphed into a unique form of iconoclasm directed against convents, including violence against nuns.

  PublisherDOI

• The Fight for Keys

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2022-03-31

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Chapter 2 shows how secular convent reform policies evolved between 1525 and the mid-1540s in reaction to the violence against convents and nuns during the 1525 Peasants’ War. It explores the emerging convent reform policies after 1525 until the Schmalkaldic War (1546–47), when secular authorities sought to confiscate and close convents in non-violent ways. Changes from convent destruction to convent reform also occurred when reformers and secular rulers made concessions on monasticism in response to imperial pressure and legal changes on property law. In particular, the principle of freedom from compulsion (force) in matters of conscience, espoused by both Martin Luther and Emperor Charles V, and the legal protection of convent property in imperial law altered how secular officials approached convent reform. Most secular authorities grudgingly allowed local convents to remain open, although most refused to permit convent congregations to admit new novices.

  PublisherDOI

• Chapter 3. “Nothing More than Common Whores and Knaves”: Married Nuns and Monks in the Early German Reformation

  Berghahn Books · 2022-10-29

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Frontmatter

  Berghahn Books · 2022-09-27

  book-chapterOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• New Habits

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2022-03-31

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Chapter 4 examines how and why all nuns adapted, adopted, and rejected aspects of the new models of convents and spiritual expectations and religious piety through the late sixteenth century, focusing on three issues: habits, choir services, and spiritual authority. It also shows the negotiations and compromises made between the nuns, political authorities, and clergy about devotional life throughout the 1530s to 1550s. This process is evident in the changes in the new convent orders presented to nuns that outlined the new habits they had to wear and the language, liturgy, and texts they had to use. Some women found that temporarily conforming to authority or demurring in answering questions provided an effective strategy to retain their habits and devotional practices. Few abbesses conceded control over their convents, leading to tensions as they actively sought imperial protection and brought property cases and jurisdictional violations to the imperial court.

  PublisherDOI

• The New Evangelical NunMonastic Investiture and Petitions for Convent Positions

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2022

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Political Science

  Chapter 6 considers the transformation of convents from traditional monastic institutions into complex, pluriconfessional, religious communities when evangelical secular authorities reintroduced novices into their territories. The controversies surrounding supplications to enter the convent and the establishment of revised rituals for the investiture of nuns show how diverse groups reinterpreted religious houses to serve their individual or collective financial, religious, or territorial needs. Certainly, evangelical theologians and territorial and civic officials did not intend these new “evangelical” convents to function like traditional convents; they reconfigured these institutions by asserting territorial authority over the devotional life and governance and by appropriating property management. Resident nuns with strong confessional affiliations used such institutional and confessional resolutions to strengthen co-religious presence within convents. These competing goals of devotional uniformity within the convent motivated traditional and evangelical women to recruit and educate the next generation of nuns in the convent schools. Finally, supplications demonstrate multiple motivations for evangelical and traditional women to enter convents in evangelical territories. The negotiations between these divergent interests of the applicants, families, convent congregations, abbesses, and territorial officials created a much more diverse novitiate than anyone expected. As a result, the women, including former nuns and newly professed women, faced shifting social norms and religious practices that allowed religious pluralism, unexpected coexistence, and established claustration in practice if not by mandate.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Kenneth F. Ledford

  Case Western Reserve University

  16 shared

• Gayle Godek

  Case Western Reserve University

  16 shared

• Philip M. Soergel

  16 shared

• Ronald K. Rittgers

  16 shared

• Catherine Epstein

  Amherst College

  16 shared

• Benjamin J. Kaplan

  University College London

  9 shared

• Geoffrey Dipple

  9 shared

• Victoria Christman

  9 shared

Education

• PhD, History

  University of Virginia

  1996

• M.A., History

  University of Virginia

  1988

• BA, History, English

  University of Rochester

  1985

Awards & honors

• Sixteenth Century Studies and Conference Gerald Strauss Book…