14
A Family Affair
Katie is fulfilling Genesis 3:8 where the Lord God said to the woman, ‘in pain shall you bring forth children,’” Luther wrote to a friend on October 21, 1525—his way of announcing that Katharina was expecting their first child.1 The news spawned a revival of the malicious rumors and gossip that had plagued the couple leading up to and following their wedding. Some speculated that Katharina would give birth to the antichrist or a two-headed monster. Others suggested that the pregnancy smacked of blasphemy and sacrilege, “a double breach of monastic vows.”2 Luther and Katharina ignored the rumors, delighted that God had blessed them so quickly and easily with a pregnancy.
As marriage was essentially a sixteenth-century noblewoman’s only viable option outside the convent, bearing and rearing children was the natural expectation of such a union. In fact, marriage was so closely equated with pregnancy, motherhood, and family, standard wedding gifts of the time often included swaddling (diapers), cradles, and infant bathing tubs.3 Motherhood was by far a woman’s most important role during medieval and early modern times, and childlessness was viewed as a curse of the devil.
Augsburgian Bernhard Rem described the ideal Christian woman as “a wife who washes her children’s nappies each day, who feeds them pap, gives her husband food to eat, and nourishes her children in the sweat of her brow,” a definition that inextricably linked marriage with motherhood.4 Likewise, Luther also had plenty to say about the role of women as mothers. He praised the biblical Rachel as “an example of very beautiful and motherly affection and chastity,” noting, “the only thing she seeks is offspring from her flesh.”5 “The saintly women desire nothing else than the natural fruit of their bodies,” he said, speaking of both Rachel and Leah in his Lectures on Genesis. “For by nature woman has been created for the purpose of bearing children. Therefore she has breasts; she has arms for the purpose of nourishing, cherishing, and carrying her offspring. It was the intention of the Creator that women should bear children and that men should beget them—with the exception of those men whom God Himself has excepted.”6
Katharina fulfilled her expected wifely duty quickly. On June 7, 1526, just a few days short of their first wedding anniversary, she gave birth to their first child, a son, Johannes, whom they called Hans. The baby was named after Luther’s father, Hans, and Johannes Bugenhagen, the Wittenberg pastor who had married Luther and Katharina one year before. Luther wrote to his good friend, John Rühel, the following day: “Yesterday . . . at two o’clock, my dear Katie, by God’s great grace, gave to me a Hansen [one of the variations on his nickname] Luther.”7 Two months later Luther was still eagerly spreading the good news: “God in his great goodness has blessed me with a healthy and vigorous son, John, a little Luther,”8 he wrote to his friend, Michael Stifel.
Luther was obviously overjoyed as well as undoubtedly relieved that both his son and wife had survived the rigors of labor and delivery. Childbirth was a dangerous endeavor for both mother and child in the Middle Ages and early modern period, although maternal mortality, at between 1 and 2 percent, was lower than one might assume for the time. While major complications like eclampsia or hemorrhaging were rare, when they did occur they were almost always fatal, as were instances in which the infant was breech or otherwise not positioned correctly and had to be turned in utero.9 The widespread introduction of forceps in the eighteenth century helped with delivery challenges, but during Katharina’s time such tools were not yet available. Thankfully, none of Katharina’s six pregnancies and deliveries presented any extraordinary challenges.
Luther celebrated his son’s arrival, but as was the custom of the time, he wasn’t present during the labor or delivery. Instead, Katharina was attended by a midwife, perhaps a close friend or two, and probably at least one servant, all of whom would have assisted with the delivery. Whom she invited to attend the birth was an important decision; as historian Merry Wiesner points out, accusations of witchcraft had been known to result from the curses and anger of a neighbor excluded from the event.10 Katharina gave birth at home, in her own bedroom and in her own bed, as hospitals were not nearly as prevalent during the Middle Ages and the early modern period as they are today. Even if there had been an official hospital in Wittenberg at the time, labor and delivery was always relegated to the private realm of the home. A male physician was only called if either the mother or the infant, or both, had died or were dying, so his appearance was dreaded.11
To prepare for her delivery, Katharina’s midwife, and perhaps Katharina herself, likely referred to Eucharius Rösslin’s Rosengarten, a popular manual first printed in 1513 and considered to be the foremost guide to gynecology, obstetrics, and infant and child care across much of northern Europe.12 Although the Rosengarten was a scholarly manual and drew on classical and medieval authorities, including Hippocrates, Galen, and Albertus Magnus, Rösslin himself was a practicing physician and thus offered practical and detailed instructions for prenatal care, labor, and delivery, as well as information about the possible complications that could occur in childbirth.13 The most harrowing section of the manual, for example, included eight pages of instruction for how to remove a dead child from the womb, a situation which, because of the primitive surgical skills of the time, posed the gravest threat to the mother’s life. Rösslin also devoted a section to the reverse situation: how to deliver a baby when the mother had died in childbirth.14 If Katharina had studied the Rosengarten in preparation for the birth of her first child, parts of it would have been sobering—if not downright terrifying—to read.
When labor commenced, Katharina most likely followed the twofold regimen suggested by Rösslin. The first part aimed to speed the baby through the birth canal, and the second part was designed to lessen the mother’s pain. To hasten birth and encourage dilation, Katharina probably alternately stood and sat upright during labor and quite possibly used a special birthing chair that was popular in Germany and Italy during the time. The midwife also would have instructed Katharina in breathing exercises similar to the Lamaze exercises laboring women practice today, and she would have administered a number of medicinal remedies to ease the pain of contractions, some of which seem quite odd by modern standards. For example, a laboring woman was often given pepper or the evergreen flower hellebore to smell because it was believed that the act of sneezing hastened labor. The midwife also often lubricated the birth canal with duck fat, lily oil, or barleycorns saturated with saffron; applied a wool net soaked in a pungent oil made from evergreen leaves of rue; sprayed medicinal vapors (one of the more popular ones was made with dove dung) over the laboring mother; spread a variety of herbal poultices over the mother’s belly; and administered medicinal teas and broths comprised of potent opiates and herbs. Rösslin also suggested that the midwife encourage and console the laboring mother “by telling her that the birth is going to be a happy one, and that she is going to have a boy.”15
Once she delivered the baby, the midwife was also responsible for expelling any remaining afterbirth (popular remedies thought to hasten that process ranged from instructing the mother to hold her breath and push to warming her genital area with the “sweet vapors of burned donkey hoofs”),16 tending to any bleeding, and stitching a lacerated birth canal or perineum. Katharina’s midwife also likely bathed little Hans in warm water, along with a bit of milk or fragrant blossom sap (elder or peach) and a fresh egg (a symbol of fertility). Luther, who would have been allowed into the bedroom once Katharina had been tended to, may have slipped a silver coin into Hans’s bathwater, both as a bonus for the midwife and a symbol of his pledge to care for his child.17 Hans would have then been rubbed with nut or other oils to protect his skin, swaddled in a blanket, and placed at Katharina’s left side, over her heart.18
At this point, as was the custom of the time, Katharina’s housemaid probably went door-to-door in Wittenberg to declare the news of Hans’s birth, while Luther penned announcements, such as the ones quoted earlier. In some German towns, an aptly named “joy maid” carried a bouquet throughout town to announce the birth of a girl; if a boy had been born, the joy maid carried an additional, larger bouquet in her hand, “attesting to the age’s preference for male offspring.”19 Birthing not only a child but a son was the best news of all; Katharina had done well.
A Simple Baptism
The single most important duty of the midwife, after assisting with labor and delivery, of course, was to ensure that the infant was immediately baptized if death was thought to be imminent. Unbaptized children were considered defenseless against Satan and eternal damnation, and parents counted death of an unbaptized child among their greatest fears. Stillborn infants were sometimes rubbed vigorously by the midwife or mother until “a spark of life was perceived, or imagined, and a baptism, ‘while alive,’ quickly performed.”20
Hans Luther, however, was born in good health, and thus, as was the custom of the time, was baptized the afternoon he was born, at the parish church in the presence of his godparents, who included Bugenhagen, as well as Justus Jonas, Lucas Cranach, the wife of the mayor of Wittenberg, Electoral Vice Chancellor Christian Baier, Mansfeld Chancellor Caspar Muller, and Strasbourg professor Nikolaus Gerbel.21 Having given birth just hours before, Katharina was not present at her son’s baptism.
The baptismal ceremony was laced with symbolism and ritual. Prior to the Reformation, the sacrament of baptism was as much an exorcism as a sacrament and a blessing. The priest typically began the service by blowing under the newborn’s eyes and commanding the devil: “Flee from this child, unclean spirit, and make room for the Holy Spirit.” In addition to the water poured over his head, the child also received the mark of the cross on his forehead and chest and a pinch of consecrated salt in his mouth, accompanied by the words: “Take the salt of [divine] wisdom, and may it atone for you in eternity.” The priest dabbed a mix of his own spit and dirt in the child’s nose and ears (symbolizing Christ’s healing of the deaf-mute man in Mark 7 and the blind man in John 9) while pronouncing a double command—the first for the child, the second for the devil—“[Dear child] receive the sweetness of God. . . . Devil, flee, for the judgment of God is near.” He then anointed the child’s chest and shoulders with olive oil and placed a consecrated mixture of olive oil and balsam—called the holy chrism—on the crown of the infant’s head. The final part of the baptism service was performed by one of the godparents, who clothed the naked, baptized child in the traditional white gown, called the Westerhemd or Wester, symbolizing purity and acceptance into the body of Christ. Finally, the father, or both parents if the mother was also present, accepted a lit candle as a symbol of the light of Christ.22
In his Small Catechism, Luther greatly simplified the baptismal ceremony by stripping away much of the formality and symbolism and focusing on the water, which he considered the sole biblical element of the sacrament. Everything else—the oil, the holy chrism, the candle, the white gown, and even the exorcism and many of the prayers—he considered unnecessary human additions. Yet because many people of the time were reluctant to part from the traditions they valued, Luther continued to allow Protestant congregations to keep these human additions to the baptismal ceremony, as long as the pastors emphasized the cleansing element of the water. We can assume, though, that with his own son’s baptism, Luther stuck close to his own reforms. Hans’s was undoubtedly a very simple baptism.
It’s questionable, as well, whether Luther and Katharina participated in another popular ritual of the time. The “white bath” (or Westerbad) traditionally took place three days after birth and was the occasion on which the white baptismal gown was ceremonially removed. The infant was thus “bathed out of the Wester” and dressed in the clothes he would typically wear from then on.23 Although the event was a popular one and often attended by friends and family and celebrated with a great feast, Luther never mentioned the “white bath” in any of his letters or Table Talk discussions. It’s likely the Luthers decided to skip this ceremony with Hans and their other five children in order to emphasize the importance of the sacrament of baptism without the distraction of the other traditional rituals. Or perhaps they simply couldn’t afford to host a banquet to celebrate the arrival of each child. Although the Luthers’ financial situation was much improved with Katharina at the helm, the birth of each subsequent child meant another person to clothe, feed, and provide for in the increasingly crowded Black Cloister.
Luther and Katharina eventually had six biological children along with as many as eleven foster children living with them under the roof of the Black Cloister. Eight months after Hans’s arrival, Katharina became pregnant again. She gave birth to Elizabeth during an outbreak of the plague on December 10, 1527. Magdalene, nicknamed Lena, arrived on May 4, 1529, followed by Martin on November 9, 1531, Paul on January 28 or 29, 1533, and their last child, Margarete, named after Luther’s mother, on December 17, 1534. Elizabeth and Lena both died in childhood, Elizabeth at eight months old and Lena at age thirteen. (It was not unusual during this time period for a family to lose more than one child. Approximately one-quarter of all babies born alive during the early modern period in Europe died in infancy, and another quarter died before reaching puberty. Nearly one child in two in early modern Europe failed to live to the age of ten.)24 The Luthers’ other four children lived into adulthood.
When Luther’s sister and her husband died young, their six children—George, Cyriacus, Andreas, Fabian, Elsa, and Lena Kaufmann—came to live at the Black Cloister. Likewise, Luther’s nephews Martin Luther and Hans Polner, along with Anna Strauss and Hanna von der Saale, poor relatives of Katharina, lived with the Luthers. So many people, in addition to the students, guests, and other boarders, made for a chaotic environment, and Luther and Katharina had their hands full managing some of their more rebellious foster children.
Andreas, for example, whom Luther called Enders, was terribly lazy and spent most of his time shirking his chores and napping in the clover fields outside the Black Cloister. He also got secretly engaged when he was still a student at Wittenberg University, which, for obvious reasons, infuriated Luther.25
Hans Polner studied theology at Wittenberg University, but he had a drinking problem and was prone to impulsive anger.26 For a time he was Katharina’s biggest headache when Luther was traveling, and several of Luther’s letters mention Polner by name, along with advice for how to control his erratic behavior. Eventually Polner matured and became a schoolmaster and later an ordained minister.
Luther and Katharina’s nieces, particularly Lena Kaufmann, were a handful as well. As a young teen, Lena set her heart on marrying another of Luther’s houseguests, the young theologian Veit Dietrich, but Luther adamantly believed Lena was too young for marriage and refused to approve her engagement. She eventually married the widower Ambrosius Berndt, but when he died just four years later, Luther and Katharina took Lena back under their roof, where she took up with a twenty-year-old medical student. The two got secretly engaged, but Luther so vehemently opposed their union (he suspected the suitor was only interested in Lena’s small fortune), they didn’t dare marry until after Luther’s death.27
In some ways, it sounds much more tumultuous than it actually was. With all those children and guests under one roof, life was hectic and chaotic to be sure, but as Ernst Kroker points out, “Based on the amount of material that has come down to us, we learn more of the exceptions than the regular routine of family life in the Black Cloister.”28 In other words, those gathered around the Luthers’ table likely only recorded the extraordinary events and interactions, the ones that stood out—the arguments, the snarky comments, the sass—rather than the everyday, ordinary comings and goings and conversations of the Luther family. “If Luther had to punish or scold,” Kroker acknowledges, “they eagerly wrote that down and preserved the offense of the little sins for posterity.”29 What’s more telling, says Kroker, are the numerous occasions in which Luther praised marriage as a blessed state and parenting as both a holy and a delightful endeavor, even in the midst of its challenges.30 As we’ll see in the next chapter, the Luthers delighted in their children and truly enjoyed them, but they also believed that God had ordained them to be parents. Luther and Katharina approached child rearing as nothing short of holy work.