Myths and Reality about Heinrich Bullinger's Wife Anna

Abstract

An attempt to reconstruct Anna Adlischwyler Bullinger’s 16th century biography, leaning heavily on contextual history, while taking Heinrich Bullinger’s correspondence, Diarium, Eheschriften, and Anna’s only handwritten letter into consideration. Identifying and including the elements of myth and hagiography that fill Anna’s biographies from other centuries, although little can be traced to original sources, enables a lively narrative about Anna Bullinger’s life with a window into the lives of women in Reformation Zurich and a view of how historians perceived them.