When Martin Luther was a young boy in the late 1490s a macabre rumor circulated around Saxony. It was reported that a grotesque beast was living along the Tiber River near Rome. The monster had the head of an ass, a woman’s breast and stomach, and fish scales on its legs, chest, and arms. It had one foot of a griffin and one of an ox, and instead of hands it had elephants’ feet. A fierce dragon’s head protruded from its back, next to the face of an ugly old man. Few doubted that stories of the mysterious creature’s existence were true, but no one knew what to make of them. In June of 1522 a sickly whale stranded itself on the North Sea beach of Holland, frightening the superstitious citizenry. Six months later a deformed calf was born in Freiberg, Saxony. Alarmed by the appearance of the monsters, and concerned that the beasts might be omens of divine wrath or an imminent Judgment Day, worried Germans asked Luther to explain the events. Luther and his colleague Phillip Melanchthon quickly published a pamphlet describing the “Horrible Figures,” complete with woodcuts by Lucas Cranach.
Luther did not believe that the appearance of the monsters signaled the end of the world. Rather, he likened them to the evil corruptions of the Catholic Church. In his view, each part of the river creature (or “Papal Ass,” as he called it), held meaning. The head was the pope himself; the female body represented the body of the papacy, or cardinals, bishops, monks, and clerics; the elephant’s foot-hand signified the oppressive power of the Church; the ox foot represented the servants of the Church, or priests and orthodox theologians; the scales represented the secular rulers who defended the pope. Even the hideous backside of the monster was significant: the dragon represented papal bulls and other decrees of papal infallibility, and the old man signified the end of the papacy. In Cranach’s woodcut the beast stands in front of a castle tower, the papal keys displayed on the flag.
The humanoid calf figure, Luther wrote, represented monasticism. Unsteadily standing on its hind legs, the calf signified idol worship from Old Testament days. Its coat, a hideous growth around the back of its neck, resembled a monk’s cowl, and the indentation on its head replicated the monk’s tonsure. The holes in the coat symbolized disunity among the various monastic orders. The monster’s appearance, Luther thought, did not mean that God was angry with the world. Rather, it signified that monks and nuns should leave the shackles of monastic life, repent and become true Christians, meaning Protestants.1
Luther had certainly left monastic life far behind him. He no longer dressed as a monk, preferring the secular garb of breeches, banded shirts, vest, overcoat, and boots or, when preaching or lecturing, cape, vestments, and cap. He let his hair grow over the tonsure. He believed that the sheltered life of monks and nuns was often incompatible with Holy Scripture. Living a life of dedicated service did not bring one closer to salvation, for God’s grace had already provided that gift to believers. The Bible gave a man or a woman everything that was needed to form a relationship with God, Luther thought, and the demanding regulations of monasticism were unnecessary. He knew that sometimes younger people were placed in monasteries or nunneries solely because their families could not provide for them. Vows extracted through fear, force, or financial necessities were not consistent with God’s plan or scriptural instruction. Luther’s own terrified promise to St. Anne, made long ago in the midst of a thunderstorm—“Help me St. Anne, I will become a monk”—no longer bound him, and in fact never had.
Further, Luther believed, the harsh lifestyle of the cloister might very well interfere with other, more Godly, pursuits, namely marriage and procreation. For fifteen hundred years of the Christian era, celibacy, and not matrimony, had been wrongly exalted as a higher, holier state of spirituality. Sexuality was too often condemned by association with the evils of original sin and too seldom celebrated as a blessing of family life.2 But Luther was convinced that it was simply not natural to suppress healthy sexual desire, which was, after all, a gift from God. The Scriptures said that it was not good for man to live alone; Adam needed a helpmate, and was given Eve. “The longing of a man for a woman is God’s creation,” Luther said. “The act of which attracts sex to sex is a divine ordinance.”3 He had written at length on these subjects in his pamphlet On Monastic Vows, and his personal experience as a young man had convinced him that far too often monastic life only led to a selfish, prideful existence and a misplaced belief in good works. Inspired by Luther’s “Freedom of the Christian” concepts, by the mid–1520s hundreds of monks and nuns from all across Europe had repudiated their vows and, violating canon law, left the monasteries and convents. Sometimes, monks and nuns married each other.
Luther encouraged the exodus from the cloister and tried to ease the return of former monks and nuns back into German society. He preached that wealthy parishioners should donate to special funds earmarked for assistance for those who had given up their monastic vows. He found families to host them. He encouraged merchants to give them jobs and help them learn trades. “The runaway monks and nuns steal many hours from me,” he complained good-naturedly.4 Never overly concerned with his own finances, Luther often gave financial assistance to those who left. Sometimes he gave virtually all he had, and on at least one occasion he could not pay the malt debt (no doubt a most painful sacrifice for Luther: malt was a necessary ingredient for brewing beer). Sometimes Luther’s assistance paid off in unusual ways. One nun, Florentina von Oberweimar, fled her convent near Eisleben and made her way to Wittenberg. Luther encouraged her to write an account of her escape and, with his assistance, A Story of How God Rescued an Honorable Nun was published to minor acclaim. Another fugitive from the convent managed to escape in particularly dramatic fashion and then, improbably, became Luther’s wife.
Katherine von Bora was born on January 29, 1499, in Lippendorf, Saxony, a village about twenty miles south of Leipzig. Her father was Hans, her mother Anne. They were “impoverished nobility”; that is, the family held a title and a few small parcels of land but very little else. Katherine had three brothers: Hans, Jr.; Clemens; and a third, whose name is unknown and who likely died when an infant. She also had a sister, Maria.
Anne died shortly after giving birth in 1505. Hans quickly remarried, and Katherine, just five years old, was sent to a Benedictine convent school in Brehna, about thirty-five miles to the north. Four years later she was transferred to a Cistercian cloister called Marienthron (Mary’s Throne) at Nimbschen near Grimma, where she joined an aunt, her father’s sister Magdalena von Bora. Because Katherine had no dowry, she began preparations to become a nun. She was bright, stubborn, and practical. She was devoted to learning and did well in her lessons, which included theology and literature and a bit of Latin. At the age of sixteen Katherine took her vows and became a nun, and settled into a life of devotion, charity, and prayer.
She also grew accustomed to hard work. The Cistercians were noted for their dedication to physical labor, and all nuns regularly toiled in the grain fields of the several estates the convent owned. Katherine gained a practical knowledge of the business of farming. She also helped out in the beer brewery the convent maintained, and found time to organize the nunnery’s business books. Two years after she took her vows, when she was nearing the age of eighteen years, the Augustinian monk Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church, just fifty miles away. Over the next several years some of Nimbschen’s monks joined in Luther’s movement, and Katherine and many of the other nuns began to embrace his doctrines of reform, as well. By 1523 Katherine was ready to leave the convent.
But the Cistercian monastery at Nimbschen fell under the jurisdiction of Duke George the Bearded, prince of Saxony, who retained his strict Catholic ideology and threatened defectors with execution. (This was no idle threat: George had a Protestant from Mittweida named Heinrich Keiner decapitated for helping a nun escape from her convent.)5 A Protestant businessman named Leonard Coppe, of nearby Torgau, was sympathetic to the plight of the nuns, and agreed to assist twelve nuns, including Katherine, escape the cloister. On the night before Easter Sunday, April 4, 1523, three nuns were transported secretly to private homes in Saxony. The other nine, Katherine among them, were loaded into wagons that had been used to transport herring, and were taken to Wittenberg. Their arrival was big news. One university student wrote, “A wagon load of vestal virgins has just come to town, all more eager for marriage than for life. God grant them husbands lest worse befall.”6 On April 10 Luther wrote a letter to Spalatin, who was still working for Frederick the Wise:
Grace and peace. Nine fugitive nuns, a wretched [because of what they had endured] crowd, have been brought to me by honest citizens of Torgau. I mean Leonard Coppe and his nephew Wolf Tomitzsch; there is therefore no cause for suspicion. I pity them much, but most of all the others who are dying everywhere in such numbers in their cursed and impure celibacy. This sex so very, very weak, joined by nature or rather by God to the other, perishes when cruelly separated. O tyrants! O cruel parents and kinsmen in Germany! O Pope and bishops, who can curse you enough? Who can sufficiently execrate the blind fury which has taught and enforced such things? But this is not the place to do it.
You ask what I shall do with them? First I shall inform their relatives and ask them to support the girls; if they will not I shall have the girls otherwise provided for. Some of the families have already the girls otherwise provided for. Some of the families have already promised me to take them; for some I shall get husbands if I can. Their names are: Magdalene von Staupitz, Elsa von Canitz, Ave Gross, Ave von Schönfeld and her sister Margaret, Laneta von Goltz, Margaret and Catharine Zesehau and Katherine von Bora. Here are they, who serve Christ, in need of true pity. They have escaped from the cloister in miserable condition. I pray you also to do the work of charity and beg some money for me from your rich courtiers, by which I can support the girls a week or two until their kinsmen or others provide for them. For my Capernaans have no wealth but that of the Word, so that I myself could not find the loan of ten gulden for a poor citizen the other day. The poor, who would willingly give, have nothing; the rich either refuse or give so reluctantly that they lose the credit of the gift of God and take up my time begging from them. Nothing is too much for the world and its way. Of my annual salary I have only ten or fifteen gulden left, besides which not a penny has been given me by my brothers or by the city. But I ask them for nothing, to emulate the boast of Paul, despoiling other churches to serve my Corinthians free. Farewell and pray for me. Martin Luther.7
Luther’s efforts to assist the women were successful. Three of the nine were quickly married, and three others were returned to their families. That left three whose futures were still in doubt: the sisters Margaret and Ave von Schönfeld, and Katherine von Bora. All were either unwilling or unable to return to their families. It was rumored that Luther was romantically interested in Ave, but the feeling, if it existed, was not returned. Within a few months the sisters found mates, and that left only Katherine alone.
For about a year Katherine roomed at the home of the Reichenbach family on Bürgermeister Street, and worked as a maid. Master Reichenbach was a pharmacist, a scribe, and a jurist. Later he served as Mayor of Wittenberg. He was also friends with Lucas Cranach the Elder, and Katherine became friends with the artist’s wife, Barbara, who worked with Luther to find Katherine a spouse. Katherine was courted briefly by a patrician named Jerome Baumgärtner, who was studying at the university. But when he returned to his home in Nuremberg the romance fizzled; his family objected to a possible union between their son and a runaway nun. Luther tried to salvage the match. “If you want to hold onto Kate von Bora,” he wrote to Baumgärtner, “get busy before she’s taken by someone else who is at hand. She has not yet conquered her love for you. I would rejoice for this marriage on both sides.”8 But Luther got no response to his plea.
Luther recommended that Katherine consider for a husband Nicholas Amsdorf, the theology professor who had supported Luther at Leipzig and Worms. She was receptive to the idea, but Amsdorf had no desire to marry, and politely declined. Next Luther suggested Dr. Kaspar Glatz, the aged rector of the university, and now Katherine objected. She then let it be known that she would consider marriage to the great reformer himself, Martin Luther.
While he was a strong proponent of marriage, Luther had never seriously considered it for himself. He thought he would remain single since, as an outlaw from the Church, his death at the hands of his enemies might come at any moment. Still, he did not deny his own sexuality and thoughts of love. “It is not that I do not feel my flesh and my sex,” he wrote, “I am neither wood nor stone; but I have no thoughts of marrying, because I am preparing myself for the punishment inflicted on heretics.”9 He often made jokes about his bachelorhood. “I find so many reasons for urging others to marry,” he said, “that I shall soon be brought to it myself, notwithstanding that enemies never cease to condemn the married state, and our little wiseacres ridicule it every day.” The ‘wiseacres’ he was thinking of were professors and theologians of his circle at Wittenberg, some of whom supported the idea, and others who worried that marriage might distract him from his leadership duties of the reform movement. “Watch out that I, who have not thought of marriage at all, do not someday overtake you too-eager suitors,” he told them, “just as God usually does those things which are least expected.”10
Luther went home to Mansfeld as part of another speaking tour, and there met with his parents. His father Hans, while impressed with his son’s accomplishments (unsurprisingly, both Hans and his wife Margarethe had become Protestants), still hoped that Martin would pass on the family name. He encouraged his son to marry Katherine. Luther protested mildly. He wasn’t sure that he loved her, he said. She had a very strong personality and her pride, he thought, bordered on arrogance. But he could not deny that he had affection for her. He went home to Wittenberg, but told few friends what he was thinking. ‘It is not good to talk much about such matters,”’ he said. “A man must ask God for counsel, and pray, and then act accordingly.’11 But there was no denying his affection for her. By the spring of 1525 Luther was referring to Katherine as his future bride and wrote, “If I am able to spite the devil, I will marry my Kate before I die.”12
On June 13, 1525, Luther was betrothed to “his Kate” at the Wittenberg Friary.13 It was a Tuesday, the traditional day for ceremonies in medieval Europe. Johann Bugenhagen, pastor of St. Mary’s Church and who would later introduce Protestant reforms to Denmark, presided over the ceremony. Witnesses included Lucas and Barbara Cranach, and Justus Jonas, provost of the All Saints Chapter House. Also on hand was the lawyer Johann Apel. Apel had an interesting career. He was ordained a priest in 1523 and appointed as cathedral canon at Würzburg. He then studied law and assumed both pastoral and legal duties for Conrad, Bishop of Würzburg and Duke of Francken. At least three other priests kept concubines there, but Apel secretly married a nun from the St. Marr cloister. When she became pregnant, scandal ensued, and Apel was put on trial for violating canon law. Convicted of “participating in Luther’s damned teachings,” Apel was defrocked and excommunicated, and briefly jailed in the city’s castle tower. When Protestant civic leaders protested, Apel was released from custody and evicted from town. He was welcomed at Wittenberg and joined the law faculty, and quickly became one of Luther’s closest friends.
The couple joined right hands and exchanged promises of faithfulness. Then, in full view of all the witnesses and in accordance with medieval tradition, the betrothed couple lay down on the nuptial bed, a symbolic fulfillment of consummation. They were now married in the eyes of God. Plans were then made for the actual marriage. Luther insisted it take place as quickly as possible, to minimize any dangers and to put an end to unwarranted gossip. (One rumor was that Luther had abandoned the reform movement in favor of self-indulgence. Another said that his bride was pregnant; the child, sneered Catholic apologists, would surely be the Antichrist.)
Exactly two weeks later on June 27, 1525, Luther, the forty-two year old former monk, married twenty-six year old Kate, a former nun. After a spirited procession through the streets of town, Bugenhagen solemnized the wedding, which took place at the Castle Church. The event was cause for great celebration in Wittenberg. Luther wrote the guest invitations himself, and he planned the Festmahl, or great feast, that followed the ceremony. He made certain that his parents attended. He wrote to Marshal Dolzig of the Saxon High Court: “It is without doubt an adventurous occasion to which I invite you as I am to become a bridegroom. How strange that idea is to me! I still can hardly believe it, but the compunction is so strong that I must believe that I am to serve and honor it.”14 The city council provided seven tankards of Franconian wine. Luther asked some of his guests to bring fresh venison for the feast, and Torgau and Einbeck beer. “If the beer is not good,” he warned his friends, “you will be obligated to drain the keg yourself.”15 The invited guests included many of Luther’s friends and associates who had supported him through the years: Lucas Cranach the Elder, Phillip Melanchthon, Jerome Schurf, Justus Jonas, George Spalatin, Nicholas Amsdorf, Wenzel Link, and Gabriel Zwilling. Even Andreas Karlstadt showed up, although his radical reforms and mystical leanings had estranged him from Luther.
Martin and Kate Luther, oil paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1529 (courtesy Morgan Pierpont Library, New York).
After the feast, gifts were presented. The university gave the couple a silver goblet bearing the inscription at the base: “The honorable University of the Electoral town of Wittenberg presents this wedding gift to Doctor Martin Luther and his wife Käthe von Bora.” The city council gave 100 gulden. Many people donated gold coins, and someone gave Luther a medal decorated with his likeness, as though he were a king or emperor. The new Saxon elector, John the Steadfast, donated the monastery building, and the old Black Cloister, once the home of dedicated monks sworn to vows of poverty, steadfastness, and chastity, became the Luther home.
Because the wedding had been arranged so hastily, no rings were exchanged. But eventually the couple had custom rings designed by Lucas Cranach the Elder. Luther gave Kate a golden ring set with a ruby and decorated with symbols of the Christ’s Passion: the crucified savior, a spear, and crown of thorns. Engraved on the inside of the ring are the names of the couple and the date of the wedding, “der 13 Juni 1525.” Luther wore a unique double ring, mounted with a diamond and a ruby, and the initials of the couple (Luther’s initials were followed by the letter “D,” to mark his academic title). On the inside of the ring were engraved the words of St. Matthew: “What God has joined together, let no man put asunder.”
And so this unlikely pair began married life. Kate immediately changed almost everything in Luther’s world. He watched in amazement as Kate arose every day at four a.m. and went about her duties. She put all of her organizing skills to work, transforming the old monastery into a comfortable home, scrubbing and cleaning each room by hand, preparing the extra rooms as an inn for students and visitors. She established gardens, an orchard, and a vineyard. She had a pond built and stocked it with pike, bass, and trout. She fenced off acres for horses, pigs, chickens, and cattle, dug a well, and upgraded the brewery. She kept bees and grew flowers. Luther wrote how wonderful it was that his once empty bed was now graced with pigtails. “My Kate is in all things so obliging and pleasing to me that I would not exchange my poverty for the riches of Croesus,” said.16 Within a few months Kate was pregnant with her first child. Shortly after the wedding Luther wrote to a friend: “Suddenly, and while I was occupied with far other thoughts, the Lord has plunged me into marriage.” He found great and unexpected joy in what had happened. “With my wedding,” he said, “I have made the angels laugh and the devils weep.”17