Shocking and Necessary: The Marriage of Katharina von Bora and Martin Luther as an Act of Love and Resistance

Introduction

[1] How should a paper on the marriage of Katharina von Bora and Martin Luther begin? You might expect it to begin with the colorful and well documented escape of twelve nuns, including Katharina, on Easter Eve, April 4, 1523, from the Cistercian convent of Marienthron, near Grimma, about 100 kilometers from Wittenberg, which led to their marriage. It would also make sense to begin with the story of their engagement and wedding, which took place at the Black Cloister in Wittenberg, Luther’s home, 500 years ago. We will address both of those, but first we begin with Luther and the pivot.

[2] Through the spring of 1525 Luther maintained that he would not marry, but within the span of just a few weeks, he changed his mind. We begin by exploring Luther’s state of mind, and locating, as closely as we can, the moment in history when Luther pivoted, a moment or the span of a few days, that is 500 years old and attested to mostly by off-hand comments in letters. Yet it is there to be found.

[3] The date is May 4, 1525, about a month before the Luther/Bora wedding. Luther was traveling back to Wittenberg, whether on horseback or by wagon we do not know, and throughout the southern German-speaking lands the Peasants’ War was raging. At that crucial time the Peasants’ War had spread to the north and begun to threaten the rule of the Saxon and Thuringian princes, and Luther, who always feared for his life at some level, feared that the peasants would come for him.

[4] Luther’s feeling of danger on that day in May as the “robbing and murdering hordes” were on the move was deeply influenced by his own apocalyptic sensibilities. To him, such violence and upheaval, challenging the very orders that God had put in place, could only mean that the world was ending. If the world was ending and the devil roamed the land, Luther feared that the devil might use the peasants to kill him and stop his preaching of the gospel. As he traveled back to Wittenberg, Luther feared for his life, thought that the world was ending, believed it highly likely that the devil wanted to stop him, and amidst all of this, he also had something else on his mind, or might we say, someone; he was considering marriage to Katharina von Bora.

[5] Up until these few days, and literally a month earlier, Luther still maintained the position that while marriage was certainly God’s plan for the majority of humankind, including priests, nuns, and monks, he himself, Luther, did not intend to marry. His reason was clear: he had a price on his head. Also, he was very busy running the Reformation. But on May 4, 1525, Luther wrote a letter to his friend John Rühel, a counselor to Count Albrecht, in which, after roundly condemning the Peasants’ War and ruminating about the devil’s plans, he concluded, “If I can do it before I die, I will yet take my Katie to wife to spite the devil.” [Emphasis mine]. Therefore, Luther hurried back to Wittenberg to marry Bora before the peasants arrived to murder him, or the world ended, whichever came first.[1]

[6] After this, in fact, only one month and nine days later, Luther and Bora became engaged and were married on the same evening, June 13, 1525. The event was attended by only a few. Two weeks later Luther and Bora celebrated their public wedding with a procession, a ritual before the church door, and two feasts. Luther invited all his friends to this second wedding, and the letters of invitation that he sent are a joy to read. They are written by a man who is happy, if not yet in love.

[7] We will return to these stories in more detail and pay a good amount of attention to Katharina von Bora’s escape from the convent, her arrival and time in Wittenberg, and her choice of Martin Luther as a husband. Throughout I will frequently refer to and offer excerpts from letters written by Luther and others, because in personal letters we find hints and statements about relationships, emotions, and intentions which do not appear in treatises.

[8] We will look at the death of Elector Frederick, Luther’s patron and protector, as an additional reason for Luther’s pivot to marriage, and at the response from Catholic Europe to what was a doubly-scandalous marriage. And finally, though it is admittedly speculative, I will consider the warmth and esteem, if not love, that Luther felt for Bora at the time of their wedding. What we can say with greater assurance is that within a month or so, he was a man in love.

[9] Now let us return to Luther, on the highway towards home and marriage, to understand better both his fears and new opportunities that emerged, in order to better understand his pivot.

Luther’s State of Mind

[10] Although Luther was certainly aware of, and sympathized with, the plight of the peasants and the reasons for their uprising, he strongly opposed it. In his understanding of the two kingdoms, both kingdoms were established by God for the wellbeing of God’s creation, but only the civil authorities who were part of the outer, physical kingdom, had the right to take up the sword or command another to do it. He also believed that the authorities were to be obeyed, even to the detriment of one’s own outer, bodily wellbeing.  So, he strongly opposed this uprising, believing it was against God’s will.

[11] Further, it was being said that the peasants had taken Luther’s proclamation of freedom in Christ as justification for the uprising, a demand for freedom from lords and laws that kept them destitute and near-enslaved. While today we have great sympathy for the peasants and we might consider whether it could ever be right to use violence in the service of justice, Luther would have said no, and that this was a fundamental misunderstanding, if not egregious misuse, of the gospel of freedom in Jesus Christ.

[12] We will say, parenthetically, that indeed, when Luther wrote about freedom in Christ, he was talking about the freedom of the interior person, the citizen of the spiritual kingdom, in both faith and in life decisions over which the individual had authority. To this end he begged princes to be Christian princes, to make right and just decisions, as God had given them great responsibility to do.

[13] We see all of this in Luther’s infamous treatise, Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes, written in early May of 1525, within a week or two of the letter to Rühel, in which he called for a bloody end to the uprising, writing that the peasants have “doubly deserved death in body and soul as highwaymen and murderers … they cloak this terrible and horrible sin with the gospel … thus they become the worst blasphemers of God and slanderers of his holy name.” The sin Luther refers to is that of rising up against the authorities ordained by God, and when he says that they cover this sin with the gospel, he is referring to the use of his theology of freedom in Christ as justification of their fight for political, physical freedom.

[14] The treatise ends with these words: “If anyone thinks this is too harsh, let him remember that rebellion is intolerable and that the destruction of the world is to be expected every hour.”[2] With the rebellion and its nearness to his home, his own psychological or emotional entanglement with the uprising, in that many pointed to his perhaps greatest work, The Freedom of a Christian (1520) as justification for the uprising, and his feeling that the world surely must be ending – Luther wrote to John Rühel.

[15] The letter is mostly taken up with Luther’s condemnation of the Peasants’ War. However, the letter reveals two other things. First, that Luther’s thinking about the possibility of his own marriage had evolved. Earlier Luther had stated in no uncertain terms that although he encouraged others to do it, he had no plan to marry, but now he wrote to Rühel that he was planning to marry, and the woman he would marry was “my Katie,” Katharina von Bora.

[16] Second, the letter indicates that whereas previously, the danger Luther constantly found himself in was a hindrance to marrying, now, the imminent danger of the Peasants’ War had the opposite effect. I argue that his decision was hastened, not only by his general apocalyptic sensibility that he was living in the last days, but by the specific possibility that the devilish violence of the marauding peasants might reach Wittenberg.

[17] Here is what Luther wrote: “This matter [of the Peasants’ revolt] concerns me deeply, for the devil wishes to kill me. I see that he is angry that hitherto he has been able to accomplish nothing either by fraud or force; he thinks that if he were only free of me he could do as he liked and confound the whole world together, so I almost believe that I am the cause that the devil can do such things in the world, whereby God punishes it. Well, if I can get home I shall meet my death with God’s aid, and await my new masters, the murderers and robbers…[but] Before I would yield and say what they want, I would lose my head a hundred times, God granting me His grace. If I can do it before I die, I will yet take my Katie to wife to spite the devil, when I hear that they are after me. I hope they will not take away my joy and good spirits.”[3]

[18] Among the many reforms that Luther and the other reformers set out to accomplish was the reform of marriage. We are perhaps more familiar with the Reformers’ call to nuns, monks, and priests to marry, and less aware of their larger agenda to raise the entire state of marriage from its dismal condition of low regard and unchristian behavior.

[19] In brief, part and parcel of the reformers’ advocacy for the freedom of clergy to marry was their desire to reform marriage as an institution: to make it easier for all to marry by reforming marriage laws, and to raise the state of marriage to a position of honor and a calling for both women and men.

[20] Luther’s 1522 treatise, On the Estate of Marriage, is remarkable for its theological statements about human nature. In it Luther argues that, apart from those who either physically cannot engage in sexual intercourse or have been given the gift of celibacy (and these are rare, Luther says, “not one in a thousand”), every person should marry, for marriage is natural and more necessary than sleeping, waking, eating, drinking, and emptying the bowels and bladder. In Luther’s typical, earthy expression he wrote that to marry and have sex is a “disposition just as innate as the organs involved in it.”[4]Citing Genesis 1, verses 27 and 28, Luther wrote that it is not within a man or woman’s power to be without the other.

[21] Therefore Luther encouraged clergy and all those who had taken vows to leave them, as the vows were first, impossible to keep and therefore made a sinner of the one who had taken the vows, and second, contrary to God’s will and were therefore invalid, and to marry. Yet Luther, who recommended marriage to all except for those one in a thousand with the gift of celibacy, did not marry until the age of 42. When he did marry, the marriage appeared sudden and ill-timed to his friends and colleagues and was a scandalous outrage to his Roman Catholic opponents. His marriage became another point for anti-Reformation attacks—specifically, that the work of the Reformers was really about freeing themselves to follow their physical desires. Was anyone happy? The marriage was welcomed with delight by Luther’s father (Bora’s parents had already died), and it did indeed make him happy.

[22] Luther’s marriage to Bora, undertaken as a theological statement and act of protest, became the happy and loving marriage that is attested to in Luther’s letters, the letters of friends, and in Table Talk, for the years to come.

Political Reasons Against, Then For, Marriage

[23] Before we leave the topic of Luther’s pivot to marriage, however, and move to Katharina von Bora and the wedding itself, I want to offer two more intriguing possibilities as to why Luther waited to marry and then married when he did. They are both political, although there was in reality no separation of the politics and faith in the European 16^th century. The first is the death of Elector Frederick. Although a staunch defender of Luther, Frederick remained conservative on some matters, including the marriage of priests.[5]

[24] Frederick’s opposition to clergy marriage may well have been a reason for Luther’s delay of marriage and then the suddenness of that marriage. Luther was aware of the Elector’s failing health, counseling Spalatin on December 2, 1524, not to “desert the Elector when he is perhaps very near the grave…”[6] Frederick died on May 5, 1525, and Luther married Bora a little more than a month after the Elector’s death. “Perhaps Luther felt a freer hand to proceed with this towering but controlling figure out of the way.”[7]

[25] In addition, Luther’s decision to marry soon after the Elector’s death may also have reflected Luther’s increasing spiritual authority. This comes from relatively recent work by Natalie Krentz. According to Krentz, after Frederick’s death Luther sought to more firmly establish the connection between Protestant identity and princely rule with the support of Frederick’s brother and successor, Elector John.

[26] By Spalatin’s invitation, Luther was instrumental in planning Frederick’s carefully choreographed and very public funeral and burial in Wittenberg on May 10-11, 1525, and Luther made sure that the ritual intertwined Protestant theology and courtly authority. For example, language suggesting that prayers for the dead might influence the soul’s fate was stricken, and the casket, which remained overnight in the Castle Church, was bedecked with Frederick’s coat of arms.[8]

[27] Frederick’s protection of the reformers at Wittenberg and support of Evangelical reforms in his territory, as well as his financial support of Luther personally, were essential. If Luther had chosen to marry while Frederick lived, no one can say whether this would have caused a fundamental rift between them, but Luther may have found it the greater part of wisdom to refrain from causing the Elector undue aggravation.

[28] However, Luther’s quiet wedding a month after the funeral and the public celebration and feast two weeks after that may have reflected twin freedoms that Luther now felt—the freedom to marry, which Luther strongly proclaimed was God-given, and this as part of his emerging freedom to consolidate Reformation gains by establishing Protestant worship throughout the electoral territory of Saxony.[9]

[29] Although the pivot toward marriage did not occur until May, it does seem that by the spring of 1525 the topic was on Luther’s mind. In a humorous passage from a letter written to Spalatin on April 16, 1525, Luther joked about spending so much time with women that it’s a wonder he hasn’t become one himself, and that he already had three wives. Luther wrote,

[30] “For I had three wives at the same time, and loved them so bravely that I lost two of them, who are about to accept other wooers. The third I am only holding with the left arm, and she, too, perhaps, will soon be snatched away from me. But you are such a laggard in love that you do not venture to become the husband even of one woman. But look out, or I, who have no thought at all of marriage, may sometime get ahead of you prospective bridegrooms. It is God’s way, to bring to pass the things you do not hope for.”[10]

[31] The three women whom Luther humorously referred to as his wives were probably the sisters Ave and Margaret von Schönfeld, and Katharina von Bora. These three were the last of the women who had fled the Marienthron Convent in Nimbschen and remained unmarried.

The Story of Katharina von Bora

[32] The story of the escape of twelve nuns, hidden in a covered delivery wagon, from a convent near Grimma in 1523, and the arrival of nine of them in Wittenberg, is both vivid and genuinely heroic. How did it come to pass that 24-year-old Bora found herself fleeing through the night hidden in a wagon, endangering her life for the sake of the gospel, and then two years later married to the leader of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther?

[33] Katharina von Bora was born on January 29, 1499, to Hans von Bora and Katharina (or Anna) von Haubitz (or Haugwitz), a moderately noble family whose fortunes were at an ebb. For this reason, perhaps, and because her mother died and her father remarried, she was sent to the Cistercian cloister of Marienthron, at Nimbschen, in 1509 at the age of 10, and took her vows at the age of 16. Let us note here that Bora was “well-educated in Brehna and Marienthron, and in later life could participate in scholarly discussions in Latin in the Luther household.”[11]

[34] In 1519 on a preaching tour, Luther preached in the town of Grimma, near Nimbschen, and because of various connections Luther’s ideas flooded the convent.[12] By 1523, Katharina and eleven others wanted to leave, including Magdalena von Staupitz, the niece of John Staupitz, who was Luther’s father confessor in the Augustinian order. Letters were smuggled out of the convent to Luther, and Luther made arrangements.

[35] On Easter Eve, April 4, 1523, Leonhard Koppe, a 60-year-old town councilor and tradesman from Torgau, made a delivery to the convent of food items, and smuggled twelve nuns out, hidden in his wagon.

[36] A popular image is that Bora and the other nuns escaped the convent hidden in herring barrels. Is this the case? Many of the best loved details of the Reformation stories are the hardest to establish historically. Did Luther nail the 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg or only post his letter in the mail? I would say there is sufficient reason to think he did. Did the 12 nuns escape in herring barrels? No, probably not. Was herring involved? Possibly yes.

[37] The first mention of herring barrels, according to Ernst Kroker’s 1917 biography of Bora, was by a chronicler who lived in Torgau and wrote in the early 1600’s that Leonhard Koppe removed the girls “from the convent with particular cunning and agility, as though he were bringing out herring barrels.” It is believed that Koppe did make frequent deliveries of herring to the convent, and if not herring, then frequent deliveries, and the young women did not have barrels placed over their heads but were likely seated together in the wagon under a tarp supported by semicircular hoops, not in barrels, but like barrels.

[38] While the image of such a journey is humorous, the reality was not. Herr Koppe and the nuns risked their lives, traveling through the territory of Duke George to the safety of Torgau, which was in the territory of Luther’s protector, Duke Frederick. Freeing or kidnapping nuns was against the law and Duke George had previously executed a man for such a crime.

[39] Fortunately, Koppe and his charges arrived safely in Torgau. Three of the women returned to their families, and after observing the Easter services, on Easter Monday Koppe transported the remaining nine nuns to Wittenberg and left them in Luther’s care. Luther wrote to Spalatin on Easter Wednesday, April 10, describing the helplessness and destitution of the women, and asking for assistance.

[40] “Nine fugitive nuns,” Luther wrote, “a wretched crowd, have been brought me by honest citizens of Torgau.” Luther planned to ask their families to provide for them, and to provide for them himself if their families could not. The women were Magdalene von Staupitz, Elsa von Canitz, Ave Gross, Ave von Schönfeld and her sister Margaret, Laneta von Goltz, Margaret and Catharine Zeschau and Katharina von Bora.” Luther asked Spalatin to beg for money from his rich courtiers to help support these women.¹³

[41] The next day, April 11, 1523, Dr. Nicholas von Amsdorf also wrote to Spalatin asking again for assistance, saying, “If you want to give anything to the poor, give it to them, for they are poor, wretched, and deserted by their kinfolk. I pity the poor things; they have neither shoes nor clothes. I beg you, dear brother, to see if you cannot get something for them from the people of the court, so that they may be provided with food and clothing. Please do all you can, for in their great poverty and anxiety they are very patient. Indeed I am astonished that in such great tribulation and poverty they are so patient and happy.”¹⁴

[42] The observations offered by both Luther and Amsdorf highlight the women’s precarious position. They had been unable to bring with them in their flight from the convent even extra clothes or shoes, and having escaped, they had no means of support if their families would not take them back. These nine nuns were not the only fugitives to come to Luther’s door. In a 1523 letter, Luther complained that if he did not have to “waste so much money on runaway monks and nuns”, he would have been able to provide help to others.¹⁵

[43] In the following days Luther sought residences for the women, and husbands. Bora moved into the home of the painter Lucas Cranach and his wife Barbara, where she probably worked as a serving maid. In 1523 a young man named Jerome Baumgärtner from a well-to-do family in Nuremberg, who had previously studied at Wittenberg, visited, and a romance developed between him and Bora. Her expectation, at least, was that they would marry. However, after he returned to Nuremberg, his family no doubt wanted nothing to do with an ex-nun and Bora did not hear from him again.

[44] On 12 October 1524, Luther wrote to Baumgärtner advising, “If you want your Katie von Bora, you had best act quickly, before she is given to someone else who wants her. She has not yet conquered her love for you. I would gladly see you married to each other.”¹⁶ Baumgärtner did not respond, and the rumor traveled to Wittenberg that he had already married another.

[45] As it happened, the other suitor Luther had in mind for Bora was a certain Doctor Kasper Glatz, the pastor in Orlamünde. Bora, while perhaps not holding out for love, could not bear the possibility of a future as the wife of Pastor Glatz, who was elderly, and considered to be a miser. As pressure mounted, in September of 1524 Katharina approached Amsdorf for his intervention with Luther.

[46] In one of the more charming exchanges in Reformation history, Katharina told Amsdorf that she would prefer (if it could be and it were God’s will) to marry Doctor Martin, or to the kindly man with whom she was speaking, Amsdorf himself. Amsdorf, who never married, agreed with Bora that she was not suited for Glatz, and after his conversation with Bora he remonstrated Luther, saying, “What the devil are you intending to do, persuading the good Katy and forcing her?” Luther abandoned his efforts.¹⁷

[47] Did this exchange actually happen? We who love Luther and Bora certainly hope so. Ernst Kroker, who wrote an important biography of Katharina von Bora in 1917, reports that it did, and with more detail than I have offered here, but without references. However, the same account, more economically told, is found in a biography of Luther published in English in 1641, so we lean towards believing it did.

[48] By mid-May and early June of 1525 it was known around Wittenberg that Luther would take Bora to wife, and the response from his friends was negative. They expressed their wish that he marry someone, or anyone, else. However, Luther was not deterred.

Luther’s Engagement and Marriage

[49] Although weddings at the time might take place in or in front of a church, or in the Hochzeitshaus (wedding house), with many people participating, it was not the case for Luther and Bora. They were engaged and married on the same evening in the Augustinian monastery that was Luther’s residence, also known as the Black Cloister, in Wittenberg.

[50] The ceremony was attended by a small circle of close and presumably sympathetic friends, including Johannes Bugenhagen who performed the ceremony, Justus Jonas, Lucas and Barbara Cranach, with whom Bora lived up until the wedding, and John Apel, a Wittenburg jurist who had freed and married a nun, a deed for which he had served time in prison. For the small meal with the witnesses that evening the city council of Wittenberg provided seven tankards of Franconian wine, and which means “the city was aware of the event.”¹⁸

[51] Presumably, the order for marriage used was the one Bugenhagen had prepared for Wittenberg in 1524, one that spoke not only of the religious institution of marriage but about the cross that was imposed on the estate of marriage, “a thought with which Luther was very familiar.”¹⁹ Then, according to the local custom, the couple was led into the bedroom where they either “lay down on the marriage bed in front of witnesses,” per biographer Martin Brecht, or quite literally consummated the marriage, per Heiko Oberman.²⁰ Whatever happened, we know the witness was Justus Jonas.

[52] The very next day, June 14, Justus Jonas wrote to Spalatin with the news: “Grace and peace from God. This letter will come to you, my dear Spalatin, as the bearer of great news. Our Luther has married Katharina von Bora. I was present and was a witness of the marriage yesterday. Seeing that sight I had to give way to my feelings and could not refrain from tears. Now that it has happened and is the will of God, I wish this good and true man and beloved father in the Lord much happiness. God is wonderful in His works and ways. … There were present Lucas the painter and his wife, Dr. Apel and Bugenhagen. Philip was not there.”²¹

[53] Speculation varies as to whether the tears Jonas mentioned in his letter to Spalatin were tears brought about by the uncomfortable nature of this particular duty, apprehension about the counter-Reformation backlash, or joy on account of his good friend Luther’s happiness.

Melanchthon’s Letter

[54] Philip Melanchthon, whom Justas Jonas noted was not invited the wedding, was not happy about it. In a letter written in Greek to his friend Joachim Camerarius on June 16, 1525, three days after Luther’s wedding, Melanchthon poured out his concerns. The letter is important to those interested in the significance of Luther’s wedding, because it is a personal and immediate response from one in Luther’s inner circle. It was also used extensively by Roman Catholic writers to condemn Luther as driven by lust. Melanchthon wrote,

[55] “Greetings. Since dissimilar reports concerning the marriage of Luther will reach you, I have thought it well to give you my opinions of him. On June 13, Luther unexpectedly and without informing in advance any of his friends of what he was doing, married Bora; but in the evening, after having invited to supper none but Pomeranus and Lucas the painter, and Apel,²² observed the customary marriage rites. You might be amazed that at this unfortunate time, when good and excellent men everywhere are in distress, he not only does not sympathize with them, but, as it seems, rather waxes wanton and diminishes his reputation, just when Germany has special need of his judgment and authority.

[56] “These things have occurred, I think, somewhat in this way: The man is certainly pliable; and the nuns have used their arts against him most successfully; thus probably society with the nuns has softened or even inflamed this noble and high-spirited man. In this way he seems to have fallen into this untimely change of life. The rumor, however, that he had previously dishonored her is manifestly a lie. Now that the deed is done, we must not take it too hard, or reproach him; for I think, indeed, that he was compelled by nature to marry. The mode of life, too, while, indeed, humble, is, nevertheless, holy and more pleasing to God than celibacy.

[57] “When I see Luther in low spirits and disturbed about his change of life, I make my best efforts to console him kindly, since he has done nothing that seems to me worthy of censure or incapable of defense. Besides this, I have unmistakable evidence of his godliness, so that for me to condemn him is impossible. I would pray rather that he should be humbled than exalted and lifted up, as this is perilous not only for those in the priesthood, but also for all men. … Besides, I have hopes that this state of life may sober him down, so that he will discard the low buffoonery which we have often censured.”²³

[58] Melanchthon expressed his dismay at the timing of the event, given that all of Germany was in distress. He suspected what Luther’s Catholic critics would roundly proclaim that Luther had succumbed to the nuns’ arts (Luther himself would say this was not so) but he immediately moved to defend his friend, declaring the rumor that they had slept together before the wedding a lie. Then he looked to bright side of the situation, stating that marriage is a more honorable mode of life than celibacy, and even offered his hopes that the marriage would settle Luther down a little, causing him to discard “the low buffoonery” that the others had so often had to censure.

[59] All in all, it is a remarkable letter, capturing the difference between Luther’s impetuous bravery and Melanchthon’s greater cautiousness; the political situation of the German nation as well as the rumors and whispers surrounding the wedding; Reformation theology regarding marriage and celibacy; and the two men’s friendship, as Melanchthon rallied to Luther’s side and hoped for the best.

Response from Foes

[60] As Melanchthon and other friends had feared, the response to the wedding from Luther’s foes was virulent. The marriage of priests, which the Reformation encouraged, was shocking enough, but for Luther and Bora the scandal was two-fold. Both had both been members of holy orders and therefore were considered spiritual siblings. When they broke their vows of celibacy and married one another this was seen in Catholic Europe as “open and defiant incest.”²⁴

[61] Ridicule began immediately. The Luthers were portrayed as having given in to lust, and indeed, the accusation arose that the entire Reformation had been about emptying the convents for the sake of sexual escapade. Satirical verses and images were published. One satire featured lusty monks and wanton nuns with Luther and Bora as characters, another portrayed them as Protestant pigs. Luther received insulting letters, including one from the Vice Chancellor of the University of Leipzig calling him the “most insane and libidinous of apostates.” Another letter from Leipzig came to Bora, saying, “Woe unto you, poor misled woman…you left the cloister in lay clothes like a dancing girl…” These are only a few examples, and the polemics continued for centuries.²⁵

Public Wedding Celebration

[62] These were certainly not Luther’s stated reasons for marriage. Immediately following his wedding at the Black Cloister, Luther wrote to his family and friends and invited them to attend the public wedding celebration in two weeks’ time. In these letters, the explanations Luther offered most frequently for his wedding, were that God had caused it to happen, and that he had married to obey and please his father, to stop the mouths of his detractors, and to resist the devil.

[63] Did he marry for love, or with affection, or anything like it? He wrote to Amsdorf on June 21, 1525, to tell him of his marriage and invite him to the banquet, and added, “For I neither love my wife nor burn for her, but esteem her.”²⁶ Another interpretation is “cherish”. However, it seems likely that there was at least some happy affinity between the former Cistercian nun and the reformer of Wittenberg before they wed. They had known each other since 1523, and the fact that during this time Luther sought suitable situations for all the former nuns in his care, meant that Bora’s wellbeing had been on his mind for two years.

[64] As for Bora, surely there were other single men in Wittenberg—reformers, professors, pastors—whom she might have married. Bora was attractive enough in body and spirit to have captured the admiration of the Danish king Christian II, who made her the present of a gold ring, and the heart of the patrician Jerome Baumgärtner. And yet, Katharina von Bora named Martin Luther as her only choice for husband, or if failing that, Nicholas von Amsdorf.

[65] As events moved Luther to pivot towards marriage in the spring of 1525, he may have discovered that Katharina embodied greater virtue and attractiveness than simply being the last remaining nun in his care. Days after the wedding Luther called her “Lord Katie,” and within months, “my rib,” whom he loved.

[66] Luther referred to Bora as stubborn, and stubborn she was, as well as brave and self-determined. You might wonder why I have not focused more on Bora’s move towards Luther, or her thoughts about and experience of her wedding, and the truth is that we simply do not have her letters which might contain those things.

[67] But we know that she risked her life to escape the convent for the sake of the gospel, and that after some time in Wittenberg, decided to follow her own counsel and boldly make her wishes known about whom she wished to marry, a marriage that she must have known would set her course forever. Bora’s choice of Luther as a husband was an exercise of her own agency, and an act of resistance to the control of others over her own life. As far as we know, she declared herself for Luther well before Luther began to think of her as “my Katie.” Her declaration may well have been the beginning of Luther’s turn toward her.

Conclusion

[68] Whereas Luther preached marriage as God’s very good will for God’s people and declared clerics released from their vows, he himself initially hesitated to marry. The fear of death as a heretic held Luther back, as well as the disapproval of the Elector. However, the fear of death at the hands of marauding peasants, or as the world itself came to an end, encouraged him to act quickly.

[69] He believed that the devil, who opposed the spread of the gospel as well as stable, Christian marriages, wished to see him dead by one means or another, and so in an act of love for God, with heart-felt esteem for his future bride, in obedience to God’s will and his own Reformation message that all should marry, to please his parents, and in an act of resistance to the devil and all of his calumniators, come what may, Martin Luther and Katharina von Bora were wed.

Endnotes

[1] See also Diane Bowers, To Spite the Devil: Martin Luther and Katharina von Bora’s Wedding as Reform and Resistance. Religions 2020, 11(3), 116; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel11030116

[2] Martin Luther 1918, Luther’s Correspondence and Other Contemporary Letters. Translated and edited by Preserved Smith and Charles M. Jacobs. (Philadelphia: The Lutheran Publication Society, 2018). Vol. II, 1521–1530, p. 241.

[3] Luther 1918, let. 667, 309–10. Again, Oberman’s translation of the last sentence is more pleasing: “I will not be robbed of my heart and my happiness.” Heiko A. Oberman, Luther: Man Between God and the Devil. Translated by Eileen Walliser-Schwarzbart. (New York: Doubleday, 1989), p. 278.

[4] Martin Luther 1955, “Sermon on the Estate of Marriage,” in Luther’s Works. Edited by Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T. Lehmann. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press and St. Louis: Concordia Press, 1955-1986) Vol. 45, p. 18.

[5] Martin Brecht, Martin Luther: Shaping and Defining the Reformation, 1521–1532. Translated by James L. Schaaf. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), p. 92.

[6] Luther 1918, let. 649, p. 264.

[7] Lull and Nelson 2015, p. 243

[8] Natalie Krentz, Rituals and Power: The Early Reformation in the Electoral City of Wittenberg (1500-1533) Ritualwandel und Deutungshoheit: Die frühe Reformation in der Residenzstadt Wittenberg (1500–1533) ‘Spätmittelalter, Humanismus, Reformation’, 74. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), pp. 355–66.

[9] Ibid., pp. 327–29. Ibid., pp. 327–29.

[10] Luther 1918, let. 672, pp. 305–6.

[11] Jeanette C. Smith, “Katharina von Bora through Five Centuries: A Historiography.” The Sixteenth Century Journal 30 (1999), p. 747.

[12] Ibid., p. 746.

¹³      Luther 1918, let. 583, pp. 179–80.

¹⁴      Ibid., let. 584, p. 181.

¹⁵      Ibid., let. 586, p. 183.

¹⁶      Ibid., let. 642, p. 258.

¹⁷      Brecht 1990, p. 196. Brecht takes the account from Ernst Kroker, Luthers Werbung um Katharina von Bora: Eine Untersuchung über die Quelle einer alten Überlieferung. (Weimar: Hermann Böhlau 1917) 140–50. A biography of Luther, The Life and Death of Dr. Martin Luther, by Melchior Adam, translated and published by Thomas Hayne in 1641, gives this account.

¹⁸      Ibid., pp. 198–99.

¹⁹      Ibid., p. 198.

²⁰      Heiko A. Oberman, Luther: Man Between God and the Devil. Translated by Eileen Walliser-Schwarzbart. (New York: Doubleday 1989) p. 282.

²¹      Luther 1918, let. 689, 322). Editor Preserved Smith notes, “The first part of this letter is found in a different form, as registered by Spalatin in his Annals, ed. Mencken, ii, 645: “Our Luther has married Catharine von Bora. Yesterday I was present and saw the bride lying in the marriage chamber.” (Luther 1918, footnote 3, 322).

²²      Melanchthon is referring to Johannes Bugenhagen, Lucas Cranach, and John Apel.

²³      Luther 1918, let. 692, p. 325.

²⁴      Thomas A. Fudge, “Incest and Lust in Luther’s Marriage: Theology and Morality in Reformation Politics,” in Reformation Polemics. The Sixteenth Century Journal 34 (2003) pp. 319–45.

²⁵      Smith 1999, pp. 754-755.

²⁶      Luther 1918, let. 695, p. 329.

²⁷      Presumably, Leonhard Koppe furnished a barrel of his best beer for the celebration because when Luther wrote on June 21 to invite him, Luther made the request: “Worthy prior and father, God has suddenly and unexpectedly caught me in the bond of holy matrimony. I intend to celebrate the day with a wedding breakfast on Tuesday. That my parents and all good friends may be merry, my Lord Catharine and I kindly beg you to send us, at my cost and as quickly as possible, a barrel of the best Torgau beer. … If it is not good, to punish you I shall make you drink it all. I also beg you and your wife not to stay away, but happily to appear.” Ibid, let. 694, p. 328.

²⁸      Roland Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther. (Nashville: Abingdon, 1980), p. 226.

²⁹      Ibid. It is unfortunate that Bainton does not provide references for the description of the events on the day of the public celebration of Luther and von Bora’s wedding. He offers more detail than I have found elsewhere.

³⁰      Luther 1918, let. 690, p. 323.

³¹      Ibid., let. 694, p. 328.

³²      Ibid., let. 695, p. 329.

³³      Ibid., let. 691, pp. 323-4.