Olympia’s war-torn world seems far removed from us, but it is always worth remembering that long-ago sisters in the faith risked displacement and death for the teachings we take for granted. 

Olympia Morata was born in 1526 or 1527 to a university instructor in the Italian city of Ferrara. She was blessed with a father who took the time to personally educate his children and also employed language tutors for the young girl. With her natural intellectual abilities, Olympia thrived; she was fluent in Latin and Greek and had authored pieces on classical poetry and rhetoric by the time she was a teenager. She also worked as a companion to a young Italian duchess, spending happy years discussing books together.

Although Olympia’s father was associated with the short-lived Italian Reformation, Olympia did not always love God’s Word. Dismissal from her court position prompted her to rethink her priorities. She later reflected, “Even as I was exalted to the skies by everyone’s praise, I realized that I lacked all learning and that I was ignorant.” As a young adult, she began applying herself to the Scriptures and to Reformed theology. Her newfound rootedness in Christ sustained her through the devastating loss of her father. Not long after, she married a German reformer named Andrew Grunthler who was studying at the university. Life was becoming dangerous for Italian Protestants by this time, so together the couple traveled over the Alps and settled in Germany, where Olympia became familiar with more of Luther’s writings and circulated them to friends back in Italy. While her husband worked as a village doctor, Olympia spent her time educating her little brother, who had accompanied them, and even corresponded with theologians like Philip Melanchthon. She also composed poems in Greek, including some translations of the Psalms which drew praise from literary circles across Europe.

The family’s life was not free of sorrows, however. For one, it seems that Olympia and her husband were unable to have children. All we know of this was what she wrote, slightly cryptically, to a friend: “The children [poems] I bore on the very day and hour I received your letter, I am sending to you…I have borne no other children, and so far have no expectation of bearing any.”

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