Posts by Simonetta Carr

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Kata Bethlen – A Faith Preserved

Simonetta Carr
Jul 16, 2019
Kata Bethlen – A Faith Preserved Kata Bethlen (1700-1752) started her autobiography with her most painful memory: her forced marriage, at age 17, to her Roman Catholic half-brother. Her family – one of the wealthiest and most influential in Transylvania – had firmly adhered, for generations, to the...

Alcuin of York – More Than a Scholar

Simonetta Carr
Jul 9, 2019
Alcuin of York – More Than a Scholar In 781, a Saxon monk named Alcuin had an encounter that changed his life and became the catalyst of the dynamic but short-lived Carolingian Renaissance. The man he met was the Frankish King Charles (later known as Charlemagne). As many others him, Charles was...

Hrotsvit of Gandersheim and Her Christian Plays

Simonetta Carr
Jun 25, 2019
Hrotsvit of Gandersheim and Her Christian Plays Anyone who is familiar with the works of the Roman playwright Terence (185-159 BC) knows that they are an interesting depiction of the realities of his day. They are comedies, and generally end with a marriage or reconciliation. They could easily find...

John Bradford and the Comfort of God’s Sovereign Choice

Simonetta Carr
Jun 19, 2019
John Bradford and the Comfort of God’s Sovereign Choice From Treasurer to Preacher A native of Manchester, John Bradford (c. 1510-1555) started his career as vice-treasurer of the English army in France. An accusation of fraud (which he strongly contested) became the catalyst for a departure from a...

Dorothy Leigh and Her Advice to Her Sons

Simonetta Carr
Jun 11, 2019
Dorothy Leigh and Her Advice to Her Sons One of the best-selling 17 th -century manuals on parenting was written by a woman, Dorothy Leigh. What may seem perfectly normal to us was unusual in an age when women’s writings were rarely taken seriously. Books on marriage, parenting, and even midwifery...

The Shocking Case of the Hungarian Galley Slaves – A 17th-century Tale of Religious Persecution

Simonetta Carr
Jun 4, 2019
The Shocking Case of the Hungarian Galley Slaves – A 17 th -century Tale of Religious Persecution One of the worst examples of religious persecution in European history happened in the decade between 1671 and 1681, when the Hungarian Roman Catholic authorities determined to eradicate Protestantism...

John Bunyan and the Women Who Shaped His Life

Simonetta Carr
May 30, 2019
John Bunyan and the Women Who Shaped His Life If it’s true that behind every great man there is a great woman, John Bunyan had a good company of great women behind him. Mother We don’t know hardly anything about Bunyan’s mother, Margaret Bentley. Like her husband Thomas and their children, she was...

Johannes Kepler and the Joy of Science

Simonetta Carr
May 21, 2019
Johannes Kepler and the Joy of Science The German astronomer Johannes Kepler is counted among the greatest scientists in history. He is best known for his three laws of planetary motion, which shaped our modern understanding of the solar system. His achievements expanded beyond astronomy to cover...

Monica of Tagaste – A Persistent Mother

Simonetta Carr
May 14, 2019
Monica of Tagaste – A Persistent Mother Augustine was a difficult teenager, the kind that keeps parents up at night. The restlessness he would later describe in his Confessions was already evident at a young age, especially to his mother Monica. But she never gave up. She upheld him constantly in...

Pierre Du Moulin – a Patriarch of the French Reformation

Simonetta Carr
May 7, 2019
Pierre Du Moulin – a Patriarch of the French Reformation Little known today, Pierre du Moulin was one of the main protagonists of the French Reformation and one of the main defenders of the gospel against semi-Pelagian reinterpretations. He was born in 1568 in the Château de Buhy in north-east...

Mary Rowlandson - Seizing God in the Wilderness

Simonetta Carr
Apr 29, 2019
Mary Rowlandson - Seizing God in the Wilderness Mary Rowlandson’s account of her experience as prisoner of war became an immediate best-seller. In fact, it was the first best-seller in America, and the first of what became a popular genre: accounts of captivity among Native American tribes. Her...

Edward Dering and His Stunning Lenten Sermon

Simonetta Carr
Apr 15, 2019
Edward Dering and His Stunning Lenten Sermon Whatever Queen Elizabeth I might have expected by inviting Edward Dering to preach a Lenten sermon in her presence, it was certainly not an outspoken rebuke. Edward Dering was a young, promising preacher, with an outstanding reputation as a Greek scholar...

Marcella of Rome – The Woman Who Tamed Jerome’s Temper

Simonetta Carr
Apr 9, 2019
Marcella of Rome – The Woman Who Tamed Jerome’s Temper Marcella became a widow after only seven months of marriage. Being a young and pretty noblewoman, she had no shortage of suitors. Even a consul, Neratius Cerealis (in office from 328 to 358 AD) asked insistently for her hand. He was much older...

Juan Pérez de Pineda and other Spanish Reformers

Simonetta Carr
Apr 2, 2019
Juan Pérez de Pineda and other Spanish Reformers In Spain, Martin Luther’s message met the immediate and fierce opposition of both the Roman Catholic Church and the Spanish rulers, Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella of Castile. To repress it, they had already a powerful tool at hand: the Tribunal...

Gregory of Nyssa and His Compassion for the Poor

Simonetta Carr
Mar 26, 2019
Gregory of Nyssa and His Compassion for the Poor I have written about Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nazianzus, two of the famous three men from Cappadocia (in today’s Turkey) who stood for the divinity, unity, and distinction of the three Persons of the Trinity. I have also written about Macrina...

Elisabeth of the Palatinate and Her Influence on Descartes

Simonetta Carr
Mar 19, 2019
Elisabeth of the Palatinate and Her Influence on Descartes Princess Elisabeth of the Palatinate (also known as Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia) is remembered as the woman who challenged the French philosopher René Descartes to re-examine his assertions on the separation of mind and body. While she...

Matyás Dévay Bíró – The “Hungarian Luther”

Simonetta Carr
Mar 12, 2019
Matyás Dévay Bíró – The “Hungarian Luther” An image of the Hungarian Reformer Matyás Dévay Biró shines through a stained window of Wittenberg’s Schlosskirche (Castle Church). He’s in good company, surrounded as he is by other Protestants of his day, such as Peter Martyr Vermigli, Michael Agricola,...

Anne Cooke Bacon – Patron of Puritan Preachers

Simonetta Carr
Feb 26, 2019
Anne Cooke Bacon – Patron of Puritan Preachers Anne Cooke Bacon made her mark on the Church of England in 1563, when she translated John Jewel’s Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae, which became a statement of faith for the Church of England under Elizabeth I. Immediately, her work was praised for its...

Anne Bradstreet and Her Songs of Daily Providence

Simonetta Carr
Feb 19, 2019
Anne Bradstreet and Her Songs of Daily Providence Late in her life, Anne Bradstreet wrote a letter to her children, retelling her story for their “spiritual advantage” and for “the glory of God.” [1] She started with her childhood in England, where her parents, Thomas and Dorothy Dudley, gave her...

Hugh Miller and the Mystery of his Death

Simonetta Carr
Feb 15, 2019
On December 30, 1856, thousands of people followed Hugh Miller’s coffin to the Grange cemetery in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was dearly loved and respected, particularly for his thought-provoking writings on a wide variety of subjects. As an editor of Miller’s memoirs aptly said, “In choosing him,...

Brilliana Harley – Wife, Mother, and Fighter

Simonetta Carr
Jan 29, 2019
In March 1643, Lady Brilliana Harley received a formal demand to surrender her castle to the royalists. Her husband, Sir Robert Harley, was in London. He had been there since the start of the civil war, leaving her to administer Brampton Bryan Castle and all their goods. Their elder sons, Edward...

Sarah Miller and Her Secret Turmoil

Simonetta Carr
Jan 21, 2019
When Samuel Miller married Sarah Sergeant, he didn’t know the extent of her pain. Emotional anguish and religious skepticism were not a proper topic of discussion. At least, that’s what her mother had taught her. She had told her doubting was normal, and “especially that [Sarah] should avoid making...

Edmund Grindal and His Letter to the Queen

Simonetta Carr
Jan 7, 2019
Edmund Grindal and His Letter to the Queen In 1576, Archbishop Edmund Grindal joined the company of Puritans who offended Queen Elizabeth I. His most provocative statement was a reminder of her mortality. He was suspended from his duties for the rest of his life. The unwelcomed reminder came at the...

Charlotte Arbaleste Duplessis-Mornay – Faithful Chronicler, Devoted Wife, Loving Mother

Simonetta Carr
Jan 1, 2019
Charlotte Arbaleste’s life changed drastically when a young man came to town. Native of Paris, she had found refuge in Sedan, in the French Ardennes, after the disastrous St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre. She had been a widow for five years and had no intention of remarrying. To many noblewomen,...

Ralph Erskine and His Songs of the Bridegroom

Simonetta Carr
Dec 25, 2018
Ralph Erskine (1685-1752) was born ten years after his mother Margaret was pronounced dead. The pronouncement had been mistaken, but she would have indeed been dead if a greedy sexton had not laid his eyes on her precious ring. Under cover of night, the sexton disinterred her body. Finding the ring...

Antoine Court – Organizer of the Church of the Desert

Simonetta Carr
Dec 18, 2018
The death of Louis XIV in 1715 revitalized the hopes of the scattered Huguenots (French Protestants). After all, Louis XIV had been responsible for the revocation of the Edict of Nantes – the 1598 law that allowed for the toleration of Huguenots in Roman Catholic France. The revocation – issued in...

Erdmann Neumeister and His Pious Orthodoxy

Simonetta Carr
Dec 11, 2018
Erdmann Neumeister (1671-1756) hated Pietism but his music was full of vigorous piety and lively devotion. The difference was in the premises. He (as Luther had done before him) sang about a triune God who works in history and draws us to him through the objective, external Word and sacraments...

Gasparo Contarini and the End of a Dream

Simonetta Carr
Dec 4, 2018
“I thank God,” Cardinal Gasparo Contarini wrote as he prepared to travel to Germany, “… for the colloquium , and for the good beginning that has already been made, and I hope in God that irrelevant considerations will not intrude themselves, and that, as I have many times said to his Holiness,...

Urbanus Rhegius – Preparing Reformed Pastors

Simonetta Carr
Nov 27, 2018
Urban Rhegius (1489-1541) held up the papal bull that threatened Martin Luther with excommunication. As cathedral preacher in Augsburg, he had the duty to read it from the pulpit. It was one of his first official tasks since he had taken office a few months earlier. He had obtained the important...

Argula Von Grumbach – When the Stones Cry Out

Simonetta Carr
Nov 20, 2018
The news of the trial of young Arsacius Seehofer circulated quickly through Ingolstadt, Germany. He was a student at the town’s university, accused of following evangelical beliefs. The year was 1523, two years after the Diet of Worms. Martin Luther, still outlawed, had just published a German...

George Wishart – A Willing Martyr

Simonetta Carr
Nov 13, 2018
The name George Wishart is generally associated with John Knox, one of his most devout followers, who remembered him fondly in his History of the Reformation . By the time Knox heard Wishart exhorting in Leith, Scotland, on 13 December 1545, the preacher had already gained a fame as one of the most...

Elisabeth of Brandenburg – Staunch Reformer, Heartbroken Mother

Simonetta Carr
Nov 6, 2018
Just before Easter 1527, Elisabeth of Brandenburg, who had become Duchess of Braunschweig-Calenberg by marriage, received some shocking news. Her mother Elisabeth of Denmark, Electress of Brandenburg, had stunned her court by taking communion after the Protestant rite: both bread and wine, without...

Vincenzo Paravicino and the Valtellina Massacre

Simonetta Carr
Oct 30, 2018
Vincenzo Paravicino was one of the many Italians who lived in today’s Swiss Canton of Grisons. He was born in 1595 in Traona, in a scenic valley on the Italian side of the Alps, known as Valtellina. After completing his basic studies at Zurich’s Collegium Carolinum, he moved to the University of...

Wibrandis Rosenblatt – A Quiet Matriarch

Simonetta Carr
Oct 23, 2018
Wibrandis Rosenblatt – A Quiet Matriarch Wibrandis Rosenblatt (1504-1564) is often nicknamed “the Bride of the Reformation,” because she became successively the wife of four men, three of whom were famous Reformers. Her memory is often limited to this oddity, and her voice to a couple of letters...

Jan Hus – Not Just a Wycliffite

Simonetta Carr
Oct 16, 2018
Jan Hus is often considered a disciple of the English John Wycliffe and imitator of his views. In reality, much of his thought developed independently, along similar lines. Born in Husinec, southern Bohemia (approximately in the same area as today’s Czech’s republic), Hus studied at the prestigious...

Anne of Bohemia and her Multilingual Scriptures

Simonetta Carr
Oct 9, 2018
On December 18, 1381, 15-year old Anne crossed the British Channel with her large entourage. It was a wretched time for travel, but she was on her last stretch of her 700-miles journey from Prague. It was the season for storms, but thankfully the winds rose only after her crossing, destroying her...

Thomas Bradwardine and the Pelagians

Simonetta Carr
Oct 2, 2018
Anyone who felt perplexed – even outraged – the first time they read Romans 9 may identify with Thomas Bradwardine, a 14 th -century Archbishop of Canterbury. His age was, like ours, entrenched in Pelagianism, exalting man’s free will and ability to come to God on his own terms. That’s the...

Conrad Cordatus and Solus Christus

Simonetta Carr
Sep 25, 2018
On 24 July, 1536, Conrad Cordatus heard a lecture that troubled him deeply. While commenting on the Gospel of John, the Lutheran preacher Caspar Cruciger said, “Christ alone is the meritorious cause; meanwhile, it is true, in a way, that man must be active in a manner; we must be contrite, and must...

Prudentius of Spain – A Classical Christian Poet

Simonetta Carr
Sep 18, 2018
Around 392 AD, 57-year old Aurelius Prudentius Clemens, native of Spain, decided to examine his life. The years had flown by, and he found himself suddenly old. He was, in reality, old according the standards of his time, and his white hair (“the snow on my head” [1] ) stood as witness of the many...

Gottschalk of Orbais – Bold Witness and Sweet Poet

Simonetta Carr
Sep 12, 2018
Few Medieval Christians would profess to be in disagreement with Augustine of Hippo and his writings about grace. Yet, many praised him and contradicted him at the same time. Copyists were in part to blame. Given the high price of hand-copied books, many chose to produce collections of quotations...

Claudius of Turin – an Iconoclast Bishop

Simonetta Carr
Sep 6, 2018
“I found all the churches filled, in defiance of the precept of Truth, with those sluttish abominations - images. Since everyone was worshiping them, I undertook singlehanded to destroy them.” These were not the words of a Protestant Reformer. Their author was a ninth-century bishop, Claudius of...

Ratramnus of Corbie and His Book on the Lord’s Supper

Simonetta Carr
Aug 28, 2018
Little is known about Ratramnus. He was a Benedictine monk at Corbie Abbey, in Picardy, France, who had gained an excellent reputation as scholar and writer. Besides his work on the Lord’s Supper ( On the Body and Blood of the Lord ), he wrote several books, including a popular treatise in four...

Maximus the Confessor and The Two Wills of Christ

Simonetta Carr
Aug 25, 2018
At the beginning of the seventh century, the decision of the Council of Chalcedon that Jesus had two natures, human and divine, indivisible but distinct, was still not universally accepted. Even if the Council had specified that the expression “two natures” doesn’t mean that Jesus is “parted or...

Pierre Durand – Huguenot Martyr

Simonetta Carr
Aug 15, 2018
Pierre Durand was born in a turbulent France. In 1685, only 15 years before his birth, France’s king Louis XIV (“Le Roi Soleil”), revoked the 1598 Edict of Nantes, which had been allowing Protestants freedom of worship. Louis’s persecution against Huguenots (French Protestants) had been gradual –...

Philip Melanchthon and His Friendship with Luther

Simonetta Carr
Aug 7, 2018
Philip Melanchthon was a brilliant scholar (one of the greatest Greek interpreters of his day), an insightful theologian, and Martin Luther’s right-hand man. Today, his memory is often limited to his mention in some of Luther’s most famous quotations. He was, for example, the indecisive companion...

Anne Locke – An Influential Woman of the English Reformation

Simonetta Carr
Jul 24, 2018
John Knox considered Anne Locke one of his dearest friends and valued her advice and support. He confided in her at some the most difficult times of his life, even in the midst of military battles. In spite the scarcity of information about her life, Anne’s influence was obvious not only in Knox’s...

Basil of Caesarea and His Leprosarium

Simonetta Carr
Jul 11, 2018
Basil of Caesarea is mostly known for his theological clarity at a time when important Christian doctrines on the Trinity and the nature of Christ were being debated and refined. A few know him for his charitable works on behalf of the poor and ill. In a day when charities abound, it’s difficult to...

Bathsua Makin and the Education of Women

Simonetta Carr
Jun 21, 2018
As the news challenge us to think biblically about the place of women in today’s world, it might be useful to remember there was a time when women were discouraged from reading, studying, and thinking independently. In fact, the Roman Catholic Church’s opposition to the translation of Scriptures in...

Jonathan Edwards as Father

Simonetta Carr
Jun 17, 2018
Many see Jonathan Edwards as a terrifying preacher. Some consider him one of the greatest American theologians. A few know a couple of endearing details of his life, such as his loving relationship with his wife Sarah. Very few know him as a father. A Large Family Born on October 5, 1703, in East...

Persecution in Turkey – From Polycarp to Fikret Böcek

Simonetta Carr
Jun 14, 2018
If it’s true, as the ancient Tertullian said, that “the blood of martyrs is the seed of the church,” much seed has been sown on Turkish soil, from the 2 nd -century martyrdom of Polycarp to the massacre of Christian Armenians in 1915 (where 1.5 million Armenians lost their lives). And these are...