“The most perfect school of Christ…since the days of the apostles.”¹ Many have heard these words concerning Reformation-era Geneva, penned by John Knox to his friend Anne Vaughan Locke.

Anne Locke (1530–c.1590) was a woman who would come to Geneva, Switzerland, to escape Queen Mary’s persecutions raging throughout her homeland of England. Locke was a wealthy woman born into a family that served Henry VIII. Her first husband was a merchant and a man of financial means. Locke was educated and godly, and, as a woman in the days of reforming the British church, her gender would not keep her from being a major contributor. John Knox, saying that “she was pious and learned,”² recognized her contributions to reform. She was a patron of the work of reformation; she was a poet, a Christian thinker, and a laborer in the kingdom through translation and publication.

As Locke made her way to Geneva to escape persecution, she did not leave her pen idle. Locke busied herself with translating the works of John Calvin from French into English. Outside of the English translation of Calvin’s Institutes, her contribution to the English Reformation may have been greater than any others’ coming from the continent. Making Calvin accessible in English fueled the fire of reformation on the island.

Besides translating the works of Calvin, Locke busied herself with poetry and writing. She wrote the sonnet “A Meditation of a Penitent Sinner,” which was a sonnet sequence,³ as well as a metrical translation of and meditation upon Psalm 51. This poem and meditation was published alongside Calvin’s 1560 edition of Sermons on Isaiah 53.

In the surviving letters between Knox and Locke, it is clear that Knox respected her as a thinker, as an equal, and as a friend. One historian notes, “The epistolatory exchange between Locke and Knox reveals the presence of a strong woman, whom Knox often consulted, whom he persistently invited to Geneva, and whom he often considered an equal.”⁴ Locke was an equal because it was understood that men and women both have value as image-bearers, through union with Christ, and that God calls each of us to various vocations.

Among the English-speaking Protestants in Geneva, Locke was a respected contributor to the cause. Locke’s position in the community was “clearly gendered in some respects,”⁵ although she “enjoyed a prominent, active, and indeed, relatively unrestricted role within the…community.”⁶ Locke understood and lived out her role in reformation, even as a non-office bearer. Locke would write, “Every one in his calling is bound…to the furtherance of the holy building, but because great things by reason of my sex I may not do and that which I may do; and that which I may, I ought to do, I have according to my duty brought my poor basket of stones to the…walls of that Jerusalem whereof by grace we are all citizens.”⁷

In the 13 letters that remain between Knox and Locke, Knox expressed pastoral warmth and tenderness toward his friend. He refused to pastor her with a heavy hand or by giving burdens that she was unwilling to bear. She was treated with tenderness and as a “dear sister.” This tenderness would find its way in Knox fearing for his friend as she went back to England amid persecution. He said:

Dear sister, if I should express the thirst and languor which I have had for your presence, I should appear to pass measure…my heart quakes for the sorrows to come; and some times I sobbed, fearing what should become of you.…Yet I weep and rejoice in remembrance of you.⁸

Locke would prove to be a valuable confidant and equal to well-known reformers in many ways. Locke labored within the bounds of her vocation as a woman of God. She was not usurping authority; she was merely presenting her small basket of rocks—valuable rocks—for the building of Zion’s walls. We all need to learn this lesson of mutual honor and respect alongside vigorous labor as each man and woman in the church presents his or her baskets of rocks used for the building of the kingdom of God.

Nathan Eshelman | Los Angeles RPC