The Foolish Confounding the Wise: The Defense of Female Prophecy during and after the Council of Basel

This essay explores a meaningful countertrend to the prevailing hostility toward prophetic women in the fifteenth century. In particular, within the Holy Roman Empire, some supporters of the Council of Basel (1431-49) spoke out in support of prophetic and visionary women. They averred not only that women could prophesy but that they were more likely than men to receive visions during the troubled times in which they lived. This essay investigates the way that disillusionment with clerical authority during and after the Council of Basel led to the clerical defense of female visionaries. As a result of this disillusionment, advocates for Birgitta of Sweden and other female visionaries justified women’s gifts by referring to them as outsiders and associating them with conciliarism and radical reform. Such advocacy appears in the writings of several clerical reformers: Heymericus of Campo (1395-1460), Jacobus of Jüterbog/Paradiso (ca. 1381- 1465), Vincent of Aggsbach (ca. 1389-1464), the anonymous writer of a treatise on Antichrist (1454), and the anonymous writer of Sentimentum super Infestationem Turcorum (1459). This essay interrogates the arguments employed to justify female spiritual gifts and the context in which these justifications were made. These arguments would continue to frame opportunities for women to exert spiritual authority not only in the fifteenth century but also in the confessional battles of the following centuries.