Caritas Pirckheimer was born into a family that valued humanist scholarship and monastic life. She pursued both in exemplary fashion, employing her learning to cultivate devotion. When the Lutheran reformers of Nuremberg began to attack monastic life and attempted to force the nuns to leave their convents, she vigorously defended her way of life. Her efforts enabled her convent and others in the Nuremberg territory to survive, at least temporarily. Whereas other women facing similar circumstances during the Reformation quietly capitulated or went into hiding, Pirckheimer argued with the authorities. The status and the skills that she had developed through her engagement with humanist scholarship made this unusual response to the Reformation possible.

Barbara Pirckheimer was born in the Bavarian city of Eichstätt on 21 March 1467. She was the first child of Johann Pirckheimer, a jurist and diplomat from a patrician family of Nuremberg, and Barbara L...