Four days after his marriage to Katharina, Martin Luther sent word to Leonard Koppe that he had been “woven into the braids of his concubine.”1 Although Luther was apparently making jest, it was a strange statement in light of the fact that his enemies had been saying the very same thing—spreading rumors prior to the marriage that Luther was taking a nun to bed. To another friend Luther wrote, “Suddenly and while I was occupied with far other thoughts, the Lord has plunged me into marriage.”2 In both comments, he sees himself as passive, being acted on by others: woven into and plunged into. As he is telling the story, Katie and the Lord are responsible. No doubt, Luther was still somewhat insecure about his own marriage.
“Shotgun weddings becoming relics of another time” was a leading headline in USA Today (April 26, 2014). But when I was a young adult in the 1960s, such a quickly planned marriage was indeed a scandal—a scandal featuring a pregnant bride and an irate father, though probably not threatening the young man with an actual shotgun if he refused to marry his daughter.
Such a disgrace, however, would have paled in comparison to that seriously scandalous marriage in the summer of 1525. Indeed, starting a marriage amid a public uproar is not an ideal way to begin. Yet that is exactly how it was for Katie. Her husband was used to being in the thick of things, and a shocking marriage was only one of many slurs hurled against him since 1517. This situation, however, was different. He knew full well there would be serious censure even among his friends. “If I had not married quickly and secretly, and taken few into my confidence,” he later wrote, “everyone would have done what he could to hinder me; for all my best friends cried: ‘Not this one, but another.’ ”3 That knowledge alone would have been enough to upset Katie, not to mention a public smear campaign that in hindsight was the sex scandal of the century (unless we are to include all the shame, corruption, and executions associated with the marriages of King Henry VIII).
It is difficult to comprehend the religious and social Zeitgeist of sixteenth-century Germany. We celebrate the five-hundred-year anniversary of 1517 and do our best to see the landscape as it was back then. But even the most gifted historians fall far short. Today the marriage of a monk and nun, both having left monasticism two or more years earlier, would hardly create a stir. What we would find most shocking about Martin and Katie’s marriage would be the circumstances surrounding the consummation. Any secrecy prior to the marriage did not extend to the marriage bed itself. Indeed, what the bride and groom would normally want to be a very private occasion was anything but. Justus Jonas, Martin Luther’s close friend, described the scene the following day: “I was present yesterday and saw the couple on their marriage bed. As I watched this spectacle I could not hold back my tears.”4 And what about Katie? How did she feel about this invasion of privacy? Had she been some sort of sixteenth-century floozy, it might have been different. I have long wondered whether Katie herself could hold back the tears during this “spectacle.” It would be enough to make any bride weep.
Many have insisted that such was the practice of the day, not only for royal marriages, but in any instances when it was important to have proof that a marriage had been consummated. Patrick O’Hare (writing in 1916), one of Luther’s harshest critics, however, blamed Luther, not custom, for “the vulgarity to lift the covers of the nuptial bed and disclose its sacred secrets to the gaze of others.”5 Such claims more than three centuries after the fact lose their sting. But at the time, the humiliating accusations were no doubt very hurtful.
Luther had expected to be censured, especially in his marriage to a nun. After all, he had been the howling critic only a few years earlier. “Good Heavens!” he wailed in a letter to George Spalatin, “will our Wittenbergers give wives even to the monks?” adding, “They won’t force one on me.”6 Now, with what appeared to be undue eagerness to take a wife, he symbolized to some the depths of immorality that had been predicted. His marriage, they said, proved his reform was underwritten by the devil.
But why did he keep his marriage a secret from even his closest associates? His enemies had a swift response: he had already taken her to bed; she was already pregnant. Would the antichrist be born of such a union? And weren’t they saying this nun would probably give birth to a pig or a toad? Rumors were flying. And not just about the two of them. What about his parents?
Where would such questions and claims come from? From uneducated backwoods peasants brimming with superstitious stories? Perhaps. But Johannes Cochlaeus, a university-educated Latin scholar, was the author of the influential and scurrilous Commentary . . . on the Acts and Writings of Martin Luther. Here he asserted that Luther’s utter impiety resulted from his parentage—his father guilty of murder, his mother of selling herself for sex. Added to that, his father was actually not Hans, but a demonic spirit, an incubus.7
King Henry VIII, supreme head of the Church of England, also joined the chorus of criticism. Henry, of all people. He had not yet had his first and fourth marriages annulled, nor his second and fifth wives executed. His reputation was still intact when he contrasted the holy lives of the church fathers with the dissolute life of Luther. Then in 1527, he sponsored a stage play mocking the marriage of the monk and nun—a monastic brother and convent sister committing incest.8
Thomas More, who would be appointed Henry’s lord chancellor in 1529 (only to be executed at the king’s bidding in 1532) pointed a similarly sharp quill at the Reformer, as Catholic hatred of Luther was most creatively exemplified in More’s writings, who, according to Helen L. Parish, “took evident delight in the polemical capital afforded by his opponent’s personal life.” He accused the Reformer of foul and fleshly sexual intercourse—even incest, because as a brother monk he had taken a sister nun to bed.9
Once Luther had made up his mind to marry, however, there was no reason why he should delay. Katie was the only escaped nun remaining, and she had let it be known that Martin would be a suitable husband for her. He had certainly realized by this time that she would be a competent and faithful wife. It was a marriage of partnership and convenience for both of them. Katie entered marriage, as did Martin, without heart-pounding passion. She believed he would make an acceptable husband, though theirs was hardly a flaming romance such as that with the man who had broken her heart.10 For Luther’s part, he later wrote, “I never loved Katie then for I suspected her of being proud (as she is), but God willed me to take pity on the poor abandoned girl.”11
That Luther would be denounced by Catholic critics was to be expected, but he seemed to be surprised that many of his fellow Reformers were also upset and shell-shocked. In self-defense, he wrote:
The report is true that I suddenly married Katherine to silence the mouths which are accustomed to bicker at me. I hope to live a short while yet, to gratify my father, who asked me to marry and leave him descendants. Moreover, I would confirm what I have taught by my example, for many are still afraid even in the present great light of the gospel. God has willed and caused my act, for I neither love my wife nor burn for her, but esteem her highly.12
God has willed and caused my act. Though Martin and Katie’s was no shotgun marriage, the timetable had all the earmarks of such. Indeed, he followed his own advice “that the marriage be proclaimed publicly in the church and physically consummated as soon as possible.”13 His concern was to beat the censors: “For it is very dangerous to put off the marriage too long since Satan loves to erect obstacles and cause trouble through evil tongues, slanders, and the friends of both parties.” The last phrase is interesting, the implication being that Katie, as well as Martin, may have had friends who objected to the union. It is well known that there were those on his side who, as he said, “would certainly have prevented it.”14
So without wasting time, Martin walked over to the Cranach home, as he was often accustomed to doing. This time, however, he implemented the most important decision of his life. In effect, he was accepting the marriage proposal Katie had already made through Nicolaus von Amsdorf. He and Katie had a serious discussion, and the matter was settled. There is no evidence they had ever had a truly personal talk before this. As open as Luther was about private matters in his letters to friends, these moments are never described. We certainly hope he did not so much as hint to her that he was “showing mercy to the abandoned girl.” However, we would be letting our imaginations get away from us if we pictured him taking her in his arms and passionately whispering her name. And how did she respond to the marriage proposal? Well, okay, if that’s what you want? It was not an instantaneous proposal made in a haymow, but sex would come soon enough.
The marriage ceremony was what would have been considered irregular by sixteenth-century standards—and by Luther’s own standard. It was a Tuesday evening, June 13, 1525, the setting the Augustinian Black Cloister (now Luther’s home). There had been no prior announcement of the banns; rather, the engagement was made legal and was immediately followed by the marriage ceremony. Without further ado, the newlyweds went to their bed, accompanied by witnesses. Justus Jonas served as scribe, ready to share the news that he had seen his best friend having sex with his bride. The whole ordeal—from engagement to crawling out of bed—was probably wrapped up in less than a half hour. And hopefully, for the sake of Katie and the witnesses, the bed wasn’t the same one described by Luther: “Before I was married the bed was not made for a whole year and became foul with sweat.”15
Why, we wonder, did Luther add this addendum to his marriage ceremony? It is doubtful, as some have suggested, that this was an ancient German custom and a necessary requisite. More likely, Luther wanted the proof of consummation to be heralded abroad. He had said, perhaps offhandedly, less than two weeks earlier that he thought it might be God’s will that he marry—even if it were only a Joseph marriage.16 Catholic belief, of course, was that the marriage of the betrothed Mary and Joseph had never been consummated. Might Luther, after suggesting otherwise, have wanted it to be known that his was not a “Joseph marriage”?
Perhaps Martin remembered hearing a story told by Saint Gregory of Tours, a sixth-century bishop, whose ideal of marriage was one of celibacy. He related how the groom was with his bride in the bed chamber when she began weeping. When he asked what was wrong, she responded, “I had determined to preserve my poor body for Christ, untouched by intercourse with man . . . At the moment when . . . I should have put on the stole of purity, this wedding-gown brings me shame instead of honour.” Though shocked by the news, the husband yielded to her desire: “If you are determined to abstain from intercourse with me, then I will agree to what you want to do.” Then Gregory’s punch line: “Hand in hand they went to sleep,” thus living out the bishop’s model for marriage. “And for many years after this they lay each night in one bed, but they remained chaste in a way which we can only admire.”17
Luther made it crystal clear that wasn’t the kind of marriage he was entering, and he had proof positive. His close friend and colleague Philip Melanchthon, however, was impressed with neither the marriage to Katie nor the proof of consummation. Luther knew as much and invited him neither to the private engagement and marriage nor to the public celebration. Suspecting Luther had married only for lust, Melanchthon lamented that “at this unfortunate time, when good and excellent men everywhere are in distress, he not only should be incapable of sympathizing with them, but should seem entirely careless concerning the evils everywhere abounding, and of diminishing his reputation just when Germany has especial need of his sound judgment and good name.”18
The explosion of invective must have convinced Melanchthon he had been right. Luther’s powerful opponent Duke George railed that the monk and nun were making a feast out of illicit sex.19 And Luther’s example was being repeated in all the monasteries in the land. The rumor mills were in overdrive. It was said that when they heard the wedding bells, “the lecherous monks and nuns put up plenty of ladders against the monastery walls and ran off together in masses.”20
The wedding bells signaling the public ceremony rang at 10:00 a.m. on June 27. Martin and Katie walked to the church with family and friends, many having traveled from out of town. Accompanied by pipers and well-wishers, it was a grand celebration. When the short service was over the couple and their guests returned for dinner at the Black Cloister. Friends at Martin’s request had brought beer and wild game. Festive dancing at the town hall followed, and then a banquet in the evening. It was a long day, and the couple was no doubt relieved when the last guests were gone.
On the guest list were Martin’s family and friends, including his elderly mother and father, Margarethe and Hans Luther. To John von Dolzig, Luther had written:
The strange cry, no doubt, has reached your ears, with regard to my having been married. And although this is rather a curious piece of news to me, and I can scarcely credit it myself, the testimony of the witnesses, nevertheless, is so overpowering, that I must out of becoming respect for them, give credit to it, and accordingly intend, on next Tuesday, with my father and mother and other friends, to seal and to confirm it by a collation. I therefore respectfully pray you, if it be not inconvenient, kindly to provide me with some wild game, and to be present yourself, and, augmenting our joy, help to impress the seal, and the like.21
If Katie thought that the criticism and derision would now fade away, she was wrong. It continued not just in whispers but also in public outcries. In many people’s eyes, she would always be the runaway nun who had forsaken her vows. Indeed, soon after they were married, a Wittenberg councilman’s wife, Klara Eberhard, was summoned to court because “she spoke idle words, insulted, and told off Luther and Katie at a wedding.” She was fined, but the damage had already been done.22
A widely circulated pamphlet summed up Katie’s sins: “Woe to you, poor fallen woman” and your “damnable, shameful life.” You arrived in Wittenberg dressed like a “chorus girl,” living in sin with Luther, “forsaking Christ,” and breaking your vows. “And by your example, have reduced many godly young women . . . to a pitiable state.”23
Such personal polemics in print must have caused Katie to cringe, and it is doubtful she ever got used to it. An even greater adjustment would have been learning to live with her loutish husband. He admitted to not loving her in the early stages of their marriage, and it is not hard to imagine that his coarse language was often cutting. Sure, she was strong and confident, but there is no reason to believe she wasn’t sensitive to less-than-loving words and ill-mannered body language.
Did she ever wonder if her marriage would even last? It was not to be assumed that nuns who tied the knot soon after leaving the convent automatically enjoyed fulfilling marriages. Many nuns who fled their cloistered lives remained single; some married and then separated from or were abandoned by their husbands. When several dozen cloistered nuns of St. Katharina faced harassment under Ulrich Zwingli’s reform in Zurich, only three renounced their vows and one was quickly married, but some time later, she escaped from her husband and was taken in by a convent in Kreuzlingen.24
Another matter that may have troubled Katie was that of sexual intercourse. What did she know and when did she know it? the investigative historian asks. She might have received some pointers from Barbara Brengbier, wife of Lucas Cranach, in whose house she had lived, except for the fact that there was so little time between the surprise marriage proposal and wedding. We should not assume, however, that nuns were entirely in the dark about such matters. In fact, it is possible that she had read the words of another German nun who had written her Liber subtilatum nearly four centuries earlier. Indeed, one of Hildegard’s strangest writings relates to women, sex, and how babies are conceived:
When a woman is making love with a man, a sense of heat in her brain, which brings with it sensual delight, communicates the taste of that delight during the act and summons forth the emission of the man’s seed. And when the seed has fallen into its place, that vehement heat descending from her brain draws the seed to itself and holds it, and soon the woman’s sexual organs contract, and all the parts that are ready to open up during the time of menstruation now close, in the same way as a strong man can hold something enclosed in his fist.25
Whatever sex education Katie might have received at the convent, it no doubt paled in comparison to the work of housekeeping and gardening. The fields and woodlands owned by the Marienthron cloister included a number of properties that had been deeded to the convent. Two of the outlying farms were suitable for extensive sheepherding requiring dozens of farmhands. Such agricultural operations provided meat and grain for the nuns. Small-scale farming and gardening within the walls gave the community a sense of self-sufficiency.
Although Katie, as was true for the other nuns, would not have been assigned work in the field, she would have had many opportunities to observe the extensive farm operations, including animal husbandry, planting and harvesting, and the expectations of hired hands—schooling her for her own future endeavors.26 She would have developed skills in time management and housekeeping chores. Dirty clothes and pots and dishware were simply not left lying around. Floors were swept clean, and gardens carefully tended. Martin knew well that a wife snatched from the convent had a head start on ordinary town or country girls. The highly regimented life of the convent was in many ways superb training for young women. And although it was no life of ease, it certainly did not carry with it the long days of drudgery a girl in poor circumstances would have endured at home. For them, there would have been no books, no Latin instruction, no group singing, no time to set aside for the luxury of prayer and meditation.27
On the surface, Katie’s lifestyle suffered with marriage. She may have worked long days in the Cranach household, but the home was very comfortable and the meals no doubt tasty and nourishing. How different things were in her new home. The Augustinian monastery was in disrepair, and what furnishings remained were worn and virtually worthless. When they left, the monks had divvied up furnishings and hauled them away. One particular item had apparently not tempted them: “The straw in Luther’s bed had not been aired . . . for a year, so that it was rotting from the moisture of his sweat.”28 From the luxurious Cranach mansion to this! But Katie surely must have known what she was getting into, and now she was the one in charge. She reportedly commented, “I must train the Doctor differently, so that he does what I want.”29 She was accused of being demanding, and apparently one of the first of her demands was to order new linen and a mattress from a supplier out of town.30
What she probably had not realized before they were married was how entirely inept her new husband was in financial matters. Within months, his resources were so low that they could barely make ends meet. And in the midst of such poverty, he co-signed loans for friends and ended up owing (due to their defaulting) a significant amount of money. He pawned some of their wedding presents, but even then, the debt was only half paid. Part of the problem was that in his transformation from monk to preacher, his remuneration for pulpit ministry remained the same—nothing at all. Finally in 1528, perhaps at Katie’s urging, he preached a sermon characterizing himself “as a beggar and threatened to abandon the pulpit.”31
So dismal were the Luther finances that Martin at one point decided he would moonlight as a woodworker. He ordered a quality lathe from Nuremberg, despite the fact that they desperately needed every extra gulden for household expenses. When the device was delivered to his workshop some time later, he realized that it required skills he did not possess. Indeed, Luther as a craftsman would never become part of Reformation lore.32
Finances wasn’t the only concern of the Luthers in the mid-1520s. The Reformation itself had seen many setbacks. “Gone were the apparently limitless horizons of the first years, the endless astonishing triumphs in adversity,” writes Andrew Pettegree. “The years of adversity of the mid-1520s had changed all that: the limitations of Luther’s movement . . . had been cruelly exposed. Luther’s enemies in the old church were now irreconcilable and had been joined by an increasing number whose hopes of sharing the new evangelical freedoms had been cruelly dashed.”33
But it was during these difficult years of theological setbacks and financial difficulties that their family life began to settle down, with its own set of setbacks. Indeed, before they had celebrated their fourth anniversary, Katie had given birth three times and had grievously mourned the death of her second infant, Elizabeth, at eight months. The year was 1528, the same year a scurrilous tract was widely circulated and she also received a personal letter from a well-known Catholic cleric. “The words [were] written August 10, 1528 by Joachim von der Heyden to Catherine Bora, to the effect that she had betaken herself to Wittenberg like a dancing girl and had lived with Luther in open and flagrant immorality before taking him as her husband.”34 The writer went on to report that “the Bora woman,” who had apparently learned of “his wiving” other women “is described as bitterly lip braiding him for his faithlessness and dragging him away with her.”35 Amid her poverty and sorrow, Katie could not get away from the vicious, wagging tongues in Wittenberg and far beyond.
And the negative press continued long after her death and by individuals who should have known better than to dismiss her as though her role in the marriage was negligible.
Søren Kierkegaard, for one, had suggested Katharina was of no real account—that “Luther might just as well have married a plank.”36 That Luther was not in love with her at the time of his marriage is common knowledge, and that he married, in part, to demonstrate his support of clerical marriage is certainly true. But to make such a reference regarding Katie is absurd. A nineteenth-century philosopher, Kierkegaard has been accused by some of being a misogynist. Whether true or not, he seriously misjudged the monumental influence Katie had on Martin.
It is tempting to imagine what the Luther marriage might have been like if Martin had attempted to put his doctrine of male headship into practice. Might it have played out in Shakespearian terms? As the story goes, the married Katherina is very different from the sassy single woman she had once been. Then she was an independent, assertive, feisty woman of noble birth who turned into a submissive, compliant bride, though only after her calculating and conniving husband employed his psychological schemes to tame her. If the great Reformer ever imagined his wife to be a shrew, he was surely conscious of his inability to tame her, as Shakespeare’s pen tamed his Katherina in The Taming of the Shrew.
In actual practice, Luther’s view of marriage was one of mutuality. He never appears to have even attempted to tame his wife, though he certainly recognized personality and psychological differences. He liked to poke fun at the trials of marriage, and he imagined it all began with Adam and Eve, who bickered for some nine hundred years over whose fault it was to eat the fruit.37 For Adam and Eve, there was apparent equality in squabbling. So also with Martin and Katie.
Wives historically (and today) have been deemed of lesser value than husbands. We might imagine that the path toward equality has steadily moved forward. But it could be argued that women enjoyed more equality in sixteenth-century Reformation Germany than they did among their religious successors, whether Puritans or Victorians. Unlike many Victorian women, who were identified only as Mrs. So-and-So (exasperating the historian), Katharina von Bora and sixteenth-century women generally were known by their own names. Many were known for having an attitude. Their bossiness or contrariness was often regarded more amusing or annoying than sinful (as with Puritans) or indecent (as with Victorians). Generalizations, true. But the path forward for women’s equality was not one paved with steady progress.
There is no doubt that Katie has been given short shrift alongside Martin, though not necessarily so much during their twenty-year marriage. Indeed, she was respected and regarded by many, for good or ill, as the go-to individual for important business and household matters. Widowhood, however, seriously diminished her status. And in the generations since, she has very often been overlooked. Yet her marriage to Luther profoundly changed the slant of Reformed belief and practice. How would Luther be remembered today had he remained a single man, had he not taken that monumental decision to marry Katharina von Bora? And one wonders if any other woman could have served as such a competent partner in both his marriage and ministry.
Today, in an era of good feelings among Catholics and Protestants, we like to emphasize what we have in common. But Roman Catholicism is and was wrong regarding married clergy. The implication that true holiness requires celibacy has led to serious sexual abuse within the priesthood. Sure, Protestants have had their own sex scandals, but it has not been fostered by a false requirement for celibate clergy.
The marriage of Martin and Katie turned out to be anything but a scandal, as their enemies claimed it was. Indeed, more than any other act, save posting of the ninety-five theses, their marriage defined the Reformation. Katie’s role cannot be overstated. Truly theirs is the premier marriage of the Reformation. “This is perhaps most visibly evident,” writes Elizabeth Plummer, “in the multiple double portraits of Martin Luther and Katharina von Bora produced between 1525 and 1529, showing the pair as a typical married couple of [their] social status.”38
A typical sixteenth-century married couple? Hardly. And Katharina, a typical Protestant wife? Not at all. She was too confident and independent. She went about her life simply assuming she was the equal of her husband, and any man for that matter. Word on the street was that she was bossy, domineering, given to henpecking her husband. She wore the trousers, they said, and made the final family decisions. They might have even called her a daughter of Eve or a Jezebel. For sure, they did not describe her as a sweet, subdued, submissive lady—the docile and weak wife of the great Reformer. And here I challenge Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s oft-quoted line: “Well-behaved women seldom make history.”39
Had Katie, as we shall later see, been “well-behaved,” she would indeed have made history and would have been more frequently referenced by her husband’s colleagues and others who knew her. If she were an ideal Christian wife of the great Reformer, biographers would not be struggling to find sources. As we have discovered, however, she was virtually written out of history by her contemporaries.