Rev. Angus Stewart
Martin Luther truly declared, “The life of married people, if they are in the faith, deserves to be rated higher than those who are famous for miracles.”1 He confessed with gratitude that his heavenly Father gave this wonderful gift to him personally, speaking of “the exceedingly happy marriage that has been bestowed upon me by the grace of God.”2
This article commemorates the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the glorious Protestant Reformation by examining one aspect of it that is both highly significant and deeply touching. It considers the marriage between the greatest German Reformer and the most charismatic figure in the Reformation, the one whom God used to begin this great movement of Christ’s Spirit of truth, and Katherine von Bora, a very capable ex-nun with a formidable work rate and a strong personality, a true “help meet” or helper comparable to him (Gen. 2:20), who would not be cowed by her husband’s larger-than-life persona.
This essay begins by tracing the (separate) lives of Martin and Katherine (or Catherine or Kathie or Katie) before their marriage, including analyzing their disparate origins and backgrounds; explaining how she came to hear about him and how he, by God’s illumination, came to see that the sinful vows of monks and nuns should be broken; following the planning of Katie’s great escape from her convent and its execution; and summarizing her first two years as a free and single lady in Wittenberg. Next, we will turn to the very brief courtship of Martin and Katie, their highly unusual wedding, their blessed married and family life, Martin’s death, and Katie’s penurious widowhood and decease. In conclusion, we shall consider the significance of the union between these two remarkable children of God.
Martin’s and Katie’s Different Backgrounds
Martin and Katherine Luther were very happily married for over twenty years in sixteenth-century, eastern Germany, yet they were quite different in their backgrounds. Martin was born in Eisleben on 10 November, 1483; Katie was born in Lippendorf on 29 January, 1499. Thus there were over fifteen years between them.
Martin’s and Katie’s families were not of the same social status. Martin was of hearty peasant stock but his father, Hans, was a copper smelter master in Mansfeld, so his family, economically and socially, was on its way up.3 Katie’s family was of the minor landed gentry. Hence, her maiden name was von Bora, with “von” indicating nobility. However, economically and socially, Katie’s family was on the way down.
Their own recent economic developments led both of their fathers to plot their children’s education and future. Hans Luther wanted his eldest son to get on in this world as a lawyer, so Martin was sent to schools in Mansfeld, Magdeburg and Eisenach. Then he was enrolled at the University of Erfurt. After completing the foundation course, he entered the law faculty. Katie’s father, also called Hans, wanted his daughter to become a nun, in part to save him money, for then he would not have to pay a dowry. When five years old, Katie was sent to the Benedictine cloister in Brehna to be educated.4 When she was ten, Katie was moved to the Cistercian monastery in Nimbschen.
But one earthly father’s will was soon contradicted. It was not Katie who stepped out of her father’s plan. As an obedient daughter, she took her vows as a nun in 1515. It was Martin. His disobedience to his father’s designs was occasioned by an extraordinary event near Stotterheim. He was almost struck by lightning! In sheer terror, Martin cried out, “Help me, St. Anne! I will become a monk.”5 Young Luther kept his vow. Fifteen days later, he entered a monastery. Later that year (1505), he made another promissory oath: his monastic vows of poverty, celibacy and obedience. Martin’s father was furious, raging that his son had disobeyed him and wasted all the money that he had lavished upon his education. Hans Luther was also deeply grieved that he was not going to have grandchildren through Martin and that his son was going to be poor!
The different circumstances leading to their monastic vows explain the different monasteries that Martin and Katie joined. Young Luther joined the Augustinian monastery in Erfurt, because it was well-known for both its strictness and its scholarship. Martin was determined that he would become a monk with all his might! Katie joined the Cistercian nunnery in Nimbschen because it was the place for the daughters of noblemen—a posher nunnery, if you will.
In their time at school and in their monasteries, Martin and Katie received a good education and useful training that was to serve them well in their lives apart and in their life together. Martin learned (among other things) Latin, the biblical languages of Hebrew and Greek, philosophy and theology. He also personally experienced the truth that man cannot earn righteousness before God and peace of heart by his own works or will. Katie learned to read and write, as well as some Latin. She acquired skills in cookery and needlecraft, and with herbs and medicine. All of these things would be very helpful in her future marriage, with her children and in her busy family home.6
In their early years, Martin and Katie never met and had not heard of each other. The towns or cities connected with the young Luther were all in the western part of east Germany: Eisleben (where he was born); Mansfeld, Magdeburg and Eisenach (where he grew up and received his early education); and Erfurt (where he joined the university and later the Augustinian monastery). The places connected with Katie’s childhood were all to the east: Lippendorf (where she was born in 1499), Brehna (where she joined the Benedictine cloister in 1504) and Nimbschen (to which she moved in 1509). It would be in Wittenberg to the north-east, where Martin Luther would move in 1511 to teach theology at its relatively new university, and where the two would meet, marry and spend two fruitful decades together.
How Katie Came to Hear About Martin
Before Katie actually met Martin, she had heard of him through several factors. First, there was a connection between their friends, the Staupitzes. Johann von Staupitz was Martin Luther’s superior, the vicar-general of his monastery. It was Johann who pointed Luther, when troubled with his sins, to forgiveness in the cross of Christ. Staupitz was the one who encouraged Luther to study and teach Scripture and theology. Johann’s sister, Magdalena von Staupitz, was a nun with Katie in Nimbschen.7 Magdalena heard of Martin and his views from her brother, Johann, and she disseminated Luther’s doctrines to her fellow nuns.8
Second, Martin preached on at least two occasions in Grimma, which was just six miles north of Katie’s Nimbschen convent. In 1516 (when Katie was seventeen) and 1519 (when she was twenty), the Augustinian monk proclaimed God’s Word with authority in German (not Latin!).9 Surely, news of this would have penetrated the walls of the Katie’s nunnery.
Third, Katherine von Bora, like practically everyone else in Germany, would have heard of Martin Luther in connection with the “big events” of his life. In 1517, Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the Castle Church door in Wittenberg, challenging the sale of indulgences and thereby attacking the papal pocket. Word of this spread like wildfire, with the Ninety-Five Theses swiftly being translated into many languages. Two years later came the Reformer’s famous debate with John Eck in Leipzig (1519), dealing with papal authority, purgatory and indulgences. Katie had spent all her life so far in the region around Leipzig. In 1520, Luther was excommunicated by Pope Leo X as a heretic. The German Reformer publicly burnt the papal bull of excommunication on the night of 10 December, outside the Elster gate, on the east of Wittenberg. This surely reached the ears of the nuns of Nimbschen. The next year witnessed the earnest monk’s celebrated confession before the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, and a vast company of civil and ecclesiastical dignitaries at the Diet of Worms (1521). Katie would have heard of Luther’s bold stand summarized in those immortal words: “Unless I am convinced by Scripture and plain reason, for my conscience is captive to the Word of God, I cannot and I will not recant for it is neither right nor safe for a Christian to go against his conscience. Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen.”
Fourth, Katie would have known of, and probably even read, some of Martin’s many books. After all, Luther was the most prolific and most read author of his day. Three of his greatest works were published in 1520: Address to the German Nobility (calling upon the nobles to forward the Reformation and advocating the priesthood of all believers), The Babylonian Captivity of the Church (an attack on Rome’s sacramental system) and The Freedom of a Christian Man (advocating true biblical liberty). Moreover, Luther’s German New Testament was printed in September, 1522.
So already, before they ever met, Katie was able to build up a picture of the man, Martin Luther, through the Staupitz connection, reports of his preaching in the area, news of his courageous acts criticizing key elements of Rome’s doctrine and practice, and his books. He was not a heretic, as some claimed. He was a godly monk, a powerful preacher, a forceful writer and a capable theologian. He was also an heroic man of action: nailing his Ninety-Five Theses to the church door, debating Eck in Leipzig, burning the papal bull and confessing his faith in Worms.
From Luther and the various forces that he set in motion, Katie learned the biblical and Reformation gospel that we are righteous before God by Christ alone (not Mary or the saints or the church), through faith alone (not our own works or will), by grace alone (not our merit), according to Scripture alone (not false church tradition or papal doctrine) and all to the glory of God alone (not the sinner or the ecclesiastical hierarchy).
So what was Katie to do? Should she leave the convent? This presented many practical problems. Her family would not like it and society would be outraged. What if she were caught escaping? Furthermore, this was the only life she could remember. After all, she was sent to the cloister when only five years old! Moreover, she had no money for a new life outside the nunnery.
There were also religious and legal issues. It was against the law for anyone to leave a monastery. Katie, like all nuns, had taken vows of obedience (to her monastic superiors), poverty (she must not possess earthly goods) and chastity (courtship and marriage were forbidden her). Leaving the convent and living in ordinary society would likely mean smashing all three vows. These were massive moral and theological issues for a nun in the sixteenth century. Having believed the gospel of Christ, should she forsake the convent? And if so, how and when?
Martin in the Wartburg Castle
Now we need to return to Martin Luther. Especially after the Diet of Worms in 1521, his life was in grave danger. So he went into hiding for some months in the Wartburg, a castle near Eisenach, the town where he had spent three or four of his teenage years (1497/1498-1501) and where some of his relatives lived.10 To disguise himself, he grew a beard and went by the name Junker George.
The Wartburg Castle has an significant place in German architecture and history. The totalitarian Adolf Hitler called it “the most German of German castles.” It was in the Wartburg, in 1817, that German students adopted a flag of black, red and gold (the colours of the current German flag) for the united Germany that they desired.11 The Wartburg is significant not only for German architecture, German history, German unification and the German flag, but especially for Martin Luther and his work in producing a German Bible (and thus developing the German language).
During the ten months in 1521-1522 that he spent in the Wartburg, Luther translated the Greek New Testament into German and wrote fourteen Reformation works. Yet he complained that he was often listless and lazy! One of these treatises, On Monastic Vows (1521) is of special significance for our present subject. Luther grounds his teaching upon two great gospel truths: justification by faith alone and the priesthood of all believers. He argued that there are no elite groups of Christians, for monks and nuns do not have a higher standard of holiness, and priests are not special mediators with God. Vows of chastity, poverty and obedience are not biblical. Instead, they arise out of and strengthen the damnable doctrine that man merits and earns with the Almighty. Believing, baptized Christians have evangelical freedom to serve God according to His Word. Luther points out that very few people have the will power to remain celibate throughout their lives and that “it is better to marry than to burn” in lust (I Cor. 7:9). The first commandment is the most basic: The vow to have God alone as our God, so that we believe and follow Him, supersedes legalistic, monastic vows.12
Katie’s Great Escape
These and like arguments persuaded Katie, Magdalena von Staupitz and ten other nuns at Nimbschen. These twelve ladies were also emboldened by the fact that some monks had recently left the nearby monastery in Grimma. They decided that each of them would write to her parents or guardians to ask if they could return home. Some responded harshly and some responded kindly, but all said, “No!”13
So Magdalena von Staupitz wrote to Luther on behalf of the dozen nuns. The Reformer agreed that he would help them to escape. He lined up Leonhard Koppe (or Kopp), a sixty-year-old Torgau merchant, to rescue them. Koppe had made deliveries of supplies to the convent, so he knew the layout of the monastery and the roads. He slipped a secret message to the nuns, explaining his plan.
The great escape from Nimbschen convent took place on 4 April, the night before Easter Sunday, 1523.14 Koppe and two friends drove to the convent in a covered wagon carrying barrels of herring. The twelve nuns clambered out of a window and the three men helped them over the boundary wall. The dozen women climbed into a wagon which lumbered off through the dark countryside.
It was a dangerous undertaking. The penalty for abducting nuns was death and their journey took them through the Roman Catholic territory of hostile Ducal Saxony, belonging to Luther’s inveterate enemy, Duke George. But they were not caught. All twelve nuns escaped, smelly but safe!15 Eventually, Herr Koppe’s covered wagon, with its precious cargo, rolled up at his house in Torgau.
What happened the twelve (ex) nuns? Three of them went swiftly back to their families. The remaining nine came trundling into Wittenberg in Koppe’s wagon as a special delivery for Dr. Martin Luther! Soon six of them were married off or settled with homes or in employment, leaving just three. Then two of the remaining three got married, leaving just one. You can guess which one remained: Katherine von Bora!
Katie’s First Two Years in Wittenberg
So what about Katie in Wittenberg? That day on which she arrived (7 April, 1523), when she was twenty-four and he was thirty-nine, was the first time that she and Martin met. There was no love at first sight for either of them.
Luther wrote a short, oft reprinted work about the great escape of the nuns: Why Nuns May, in All Godliness, Leave the Convents: Ground and Reply (1523). This was the very first time in Reformation history that we read of a group of runaway nuns and it caused a sensation! Evil reports would doubtless circulate from his Roman Catholic adversaries, especially if the incident were hushed up, so Luther made of necessity a virtue. He publicized the escape to encourage other nuns to follow their example and break free of their monastic shackles.
The Reformer explained that the natural calling of (most) women is to marry and have children. Since the parents and relatives of these nuns had failed to act, the brave Leonhard Koppe had rescued them. Some may say that Koppe was a robber but, if so, he was a “blessed robber”!16 In this work, Luther even mentioned by name the nine ex-nuns who arrived in Wittenberg. Along with Magdalena von Staupitz and the names of seven others was Katherine von Bora—the German Reformer’s first written reference to her.
For her first two years in Wittenberg, Katie was housed with two families. First she stayed with Philip Reichenbach, a distinguished lawyer and the Wittenberg town clerk, and his wife, who were childless. Then she lived in the home of the famous painter, Lucas Cranach the Elder, and his wife.
During this time, Katie was not without marriage proposals and had at least two suitors. First, there was a young patrician, Jerome Baumgartner, who was a Wittenberg student. He wanted to marry her and she wanted to marry him, but his wealthy parents put the kibosh on it, deeming the poor girl unsuitable. Next, there was Dr. Kasper Glatz (or Glacius), a pastor. He wanted to marry her but Katie had “neither desire nor love” for him.17 Then Katie told Nicholas von Amsdorf, Luther’s fellow Reformer, that she would be open to a proposal from either him or Martin!
But Martin had no intention of marrying Katie.18 Several difficulties applied to his marrying any woman. He thought that he was too old at forty-one. He expected that he would be martyred. This was around the hottest period in the German Peasants’ Revolt (1524-1526) and Luther knew that his enemies would say that he only formed his doctrines and attacked the pope in order to get a wife. Besides, he was not especially attracted to Katie. Some thought—and Luther did too!—that she was haughty and bossy.
However, as the Reformer thought about it, he realized that he needed a wife, that his marrying would be practising what he had preached to others and that he would be setting a good example to those who had been Roman monks or priests. Philip Schaff summarizes Luther’s thinking: “By taking to himself a wife, he wished to please his father, to tease the Pope, and to vex the Devil.”19 The ex-Augustinian monk reckoned that his marrying would make the angels laugh and the demons weep. Eric Metaxas expresses the revolutionary nature of this action in language akin to that of Luther himself: “To someone for whom spiritual warfare was quite real, the act of marrying a nun was as though he had delivered a whirling roundhouse kick to the devil’s own snout.”20 So he decided to marry Katherine von Bora. “Unanimously [his] friends reacted negatively: ‘not that one, someone else!’”21
The Wedding of Martin and Katie
Both in Luther’s day and ours, there is usually a lengthy gap between the day of one’s engagement, and the wedding day and reception. But there were highly unusual circumstances in the case of the German Reformer, as well as criticisms and rumours that he wanted to forestall.22 “Why is he getting married? Why is he getting married now, in the midst of the Peasants’ Revolt? Why is he getting married to this woman?”
So Dr. Luther and Katie von Bora got engaged and married all on one day. The wedding took place in the Augustinian monastery, where Martin lived. Only a small group of five were present with the happy couple, including Pastor Johannes Bugenhagen who officiated.23 The date was 13 June, 1525. It was a Tuesday, the usual day for weddings at that time.24 Since there was no time between Luther’s engagement and his wedding day, there was no opportunity to discuss the merits or demerits of his approaching marriage with Katie. Luther simply presented the world with a fait accompli: “We are married; now deal with it!”25
Having united their engagement and wedding on the one day, Martin and Katie Luther separated their wedding from the wedding procession to the church and the reception. On 27 June, over two weeks after their wedding, at 10 o’clock in the morning, the couple processed to the town church for a blessing. The bells rang out and the crowds were gay. Later, there was a banquet at the Augustinian monastery. Amongst many others, Leonhard Koppe, the merchant who had rescued Katie from Nimbschen convent two years before, was invited.26 Both of Martin Luther’s parents were also there. Martin’s message to them was, in effect: “I was wrong to have become a monk. Now I have married. God willing, we will have children and you will have grandchildren!”
Not everyone was well pleased. Philip Melanchthon, Luther’s fellow Reformer, thought that, with the Peasants’ Revolt going on, the timing was inappropriate. He was annoyed that Luther did not take him into his confidence regarding the wedding and that he was not invited to it. Yet he got over it.27
The papal party, consisting of both Roman apologists and people, discoursed in a hyper-pious manner concerning the sanctity of monastic vows. They claimed that Katherine was a prostitute, and that she and Martin had been fornicating together. The papists recalled the old notion that the Antichrist would be the spawn of a monk and a nun. “Perhaps Martin and Katie would beget him?” they mused.28
King Henry VIII had crossed swords earlier with Luther. The English monarch wrote his Defence of the Seven Sacraments (1521) against the German Reformer, for which Pope Leo X declared him Fidei Defensor (Defender of the Faith). In Luther’s response, he declared that Henry was king by the “disgrace of God.” So, upon hearing of Martin’s marriage to Katie, Henry wrote a vituperative letter, calling the Reformer a “mangy dog” and a “Hell-wolf.” These were two of Henry’s milder expressions!29
Erasmus of Rotterdam, the learned humanist, was currently in the midst of a battle with Luther over the will of fallen man. The Dutchman repeated the slanderous charges against Luther and Katie, though he later apologized. In the first few months of their marriage, Luther would write probably his greatest work The Bondage of the Will (December, 1525), against Erasmus and the heresy of free will. Katie strongly encouraged Martin to defend the truth against the humanist—a blessed ministry of encouragement in a worthy cause that, all by itself, endears every Reformed Christian to Mrs. Luther!30
The Married Life of Martin and Katie
Living with Katie in a renovated part of the Augustinian monastery was a radical change for Dr. Luther. She sorted out his bed, which was stained with mildew and fouled with sweat. He had not made it for a year!31 Martin refers to their “pillow weeks,” when the two of them slept on one pillow.32 He states that, after forty-one years of singleness, waking up to see “pigtails” next to him took a bit of getting used to.
God gave to Dr. and Mrs. Luther six children in this order: boy, girl; girl, boy; boy, girl. Five years after the birth of their sixth child, a seventh was on the way but Katie had a miscarriage (1539).
Regarding the three boys, Hans, who was named after both of his grandfathers, studied law and became a court adviser; Martin, who was named after his father, studied theology but never became a pastor (he died aged only 33); and Paul, who was named after his father’s favourite apostle, studied medicine and became a famous physician or doctor.33
Sadly, Elizabeth, the Luthers’ first girl, died after just eight months. Magdalene (or Lena) was born exactly one year after Elizabeth’s death (4 or 5 May) and her parents saw her as a divine replacement.34 By all accounts, Magdalene was a lovely, godly girl but she died in her father’s arms aged just thirteen. Both her parents were devastated and it took them a long time to recover. Margarete (or Margaretha) was the last child born to Martin and Katie.35
Luther’s commitment to Christian education and Christian day schools is evident even in his early works and this only increased over time. The Reformer declared,
But where the Holy Scripture does not rule I certainly advise no one to send his child. Everyone not unceasingly occupied with the Word of God must become corrupt; therefore we must see what people in the higher schools are and grow up to be … I greatly fear that schools for higher learning are wide gates to hell if they do not diligently teach the Holy Scriptures and impress them on the young folk.36
Katie had a massive portfolio in their life together. She was a real Proverbs 31 woman. She ran, in effect, a boardinghouse. Besides her own six children, she cared for up to six or seven orphans.37 She also took in paying students, to supplement the Luthers’ limited income, as well as other guests. Their home in the Augustinian monastery typically numbered up to thirty or so people.
The vegetables Martin grew in his garden included peas, beans, lettuce, cabbage, radishes, strawberries, cucumbers and melons. But Mrs. Luther managed the farm: Zulsdorf (or Zöllsdorf). Her fruit trees produced apples, pears, peaches, grapes, nuts and figs. Trout, carp, pike and perch were in her fish pond. For livestock, Katie had pigs, ducks, hens and cows, which she bred, sold and butchered.38 All were needed to feed their children, borders and guests.
Katie even ran a brewery. For this, she had a licence from the Elector of Saxony. Her beer was of good quality, and was highly praised by her husband and others.
Of course, Katie could not do all of this work directly and personally. The Luthers had menservants (including Wolfgang Sieberger, the gardener and Luther’s personal servant) and maidservants, but they needed instruction and oversight.
Katie was Martin’s treasurer, for he was no good with money and was a soft touch for ne’er-do-wells.39 She served as a nurse for her husband, who was often sick, especially in 1527, and many others.40 Katie was also the Reformer’s masseuse.41
Martin had many pet names for his wife, including “the morning star of Wittenberg” (she got up at 4 a.m.), “the Lady of Zulsdorf,” “the Lady of the pig market,” “Lady Luther,” “my Lord Katie,” “my Empress” and “my rib.”42 Martin Luther loved her dearly and praised her highly. “My Katie is an all things so obliging and pleasing to me that I would not exchange my poverty for the riches of Croesus,” he wrote in a letter of 11 August, 1526. He reckoned her of greater worth than Venice or France. The Reformer referred to Galatians, that great antithetical book on justification by faith alone, as “his Katie,” as a sign of his deep affection for both the epistle and the woman. He also “liked to tease his Katie.”43 Katie was even included in Luther’s famous table talk. Luther’s friends, theologians, students and visiting dignitaries would be present to discuss the Scriptures, philosophy, the church and the big issues of the day. Normally, this was an all-male preserve but an exception was made for Lady Luther.
Their home life together was rich and blessed. Besides their family devotions, in 1535 Martin promised Katie fifty gulden if she would read through the Bible from cover to cover, which she did.44 No one knows, though, where the money came from! As well as Scripture, prayer and hard work, the Luther home was filled with singing. The German Reformer reckoned that music was the second greatest gift of God, only behind theology. He loved several-part harmonies.45
Dolina MacCuish notes that “Luther had a bowling alley built at the back of the monastery and often led the game himself.”46 His family also made time for picnics:
Out through the Elster Gate [on the east of Wittenberg] and less than a quarter of a mile from the town was a well which Luther had discovered and renewed in 1520. There in 1526 he built a little summer house and often he and Katie relaxed there with their friends. While the children played together … the grown-ups chatted and laughed, the women perhaps sewing or knitting as they joined in the general conversation or exchanged recipes and news.47
Martin’s Death and Katie’s Widowhood
Together, Martin and Katie shared their lives and experienced the Reformation struggles for over two decades. When the great man died in Eisleben, which was also the place of his birth, aged sixty-two, on 18 February, 1546, Katie was not there. Of his family, only his two youngest sons, Martin and Paul, were present.48 Katie knew that her husband was in bad health and had begged him not to go to Eisleben to try to reconcile the counts of Mansfeld. Many letters had passed to and fro between them during this trip but Katie was never to see her Martin alive again. A scrap of paper containing Martin Luther’s last remaining words was found in his pocket on his deathbed. At the very end comes this poignant line: “We are beggars: this is true.”
The Reformer’s coffin was carried in procession from Eisleben, where he was born and died, to Wittenberg, the chief seat of his labours. Masses of people lined the streets as the body of the great theologian, preacher, pastor, author and controversialist passed by. They came to honour the monk who shook the world! The funeral cortege processed from the Elster gate on the east, near where Luther burned the papal bull a quarter of a century before, to the Castle Church on the west on 22 February, 1546. The route took them past the Augustinian monastery, Philip Melanchthon’s house, the university, the town church, the Cranach house, etc. Katie was, of course, the chief mourner. He was buried in the Castle Church, underneath the pulpit. Pastor Bugenhagen preached on I Thessalonians 4:13-14. Melanchthon gave the funeral oration or eulogy.
Understandably, Katie was distraught. In a letter written a few weeks after her husband’s death, she lamented,
For who would not be sad and afflicted at the loss of such a precious man as my dear lord was? He did great things not just for a city or a single land, but for the whole world. Therefore I am truly so deeply grieved that I cannot tell a single person of the great pain that is in my heart. And I do not understand how I can cope with this. I cannot eat or drink, nor can I sleep. And if I had had a principality or an empire and lost it, it would not have been as painful as it is now that the dear Lord God has taken from me this precious and beloved man, and not from me alone, but from the whole world.49
In 1547, one year after the Reformer’s burial, war broke out between the Roman Catholic forces and the Lutheran princes. Wittenberg fell to the emperor’s army but Katie had already fled. Charles V stood in the Castle Church in front of Luther’s grave. He was the very one before whom the Reformer stood at the Diet of Worms over a quarter of a century before. One of the emperor’s men urged him to desecrate Luther’s burial site but Charles firmly refused.
Luther’s last will and testament is significant. According to Saxon inheritance law, his goods would have gone almost entirely to his remaining children but the Reformer determined that, apart from the books he owned, all of the little he possessed would go to Katie.50 He gave three reasons for this: first, she had faithfully loved him and their children; second, she would be enabled to pay any remaining debts he had; third, he did not want her to be dependent on their children. Despite Luther’s will, his widow was poor for the rest of her life.
J. H. Alexander gives three reasons that explain how Luther’s widow came to be destitute: “Katherine’s beloved little farm lay directly in the path of the war, heavy war taxes impoverished her and many others, and the whole disastrous upheaval diverted the attention of her benefactors, sincere as their promises had been.”51 The Lutheran King of Denmark was amongst those who later sent Luther’s widow financial support. One of Katie’s friends drew an important lesson regarding the comfort of memorized Scripture, even decades after it was first committed to memory: “I often think of that man of God, Dr. Martin Luther, how he made his wife commit to memory Psalm 31 when she was young, vigorous, and cheerful and could not then know how this psalm would afterwards be so sweet and consolatory to her in her sorrows.”52
Five years after her first flight, widow Luther again had to make a hasty departure from Wittenberg—not this time because of war but due to the black plague in the town. As the wagon jolted, she fell out into an icy ditch. The shock and chill brought on a fever. Katie lodged on the first floor of a house in Torgau, not far from the home of Leonhard Koppe, the merchant who had rescued her from Nimbschen convent.53 Katie never regained her strength but grew weaker and weaker. She developed pneumonia and died on 20 December, 1552, Luther’s widow of almost seven years. During her three months in Torgau, she spoke often of her beloved husband. On her deathbed, she confessed, “I will cleave to Christ as the burr to the cloth.” Katie was buried in the nearby Torgau church.54
The Significance of the Union of Martin and Katie
Martin Luther had an extremely prominent role in the sixteenth-century recovery of the gospel and thus the Reformation of theology, preaching, the church, ethics, education and the home. He affected the reformation of marriage more than any other man through his powerful writings and sermons, his larger-than-life personality, and his godly example with Katie and their children.55 He exposed and cleared away the false view of marriage as one of Rome’s seven sacraments, though he did not positively develop the doctrine of marriage by, for example, relating it closely to God’s unbreakable covenant of grace, as did Herman Hoeksema and the Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC) over four hundred years later.56
Luther brought the truth of marriage, as he did with just about everything, into a vital relationship with the gospel of free justification, including the non-imputation of sin (Ps. 32:1-2; Rom. 4:6-8):
God thus deals graciously with marriage. Although marriage is naturally impure [since the fall], it is in fact not impure for those who are Christians and live in faith. Rather, their marriage bed is now called pure [cf. Heb. 13:4], not because it is inherently pure in and of itself or as a result of our nature, but because God covers its impurity with his grace and does not impute the natural sin and impurity which the devil has planted within us. Go, then, and purify this station in life with God’s work and proclaim that it is now a divine and holy station. God does not do this by removing passion or married love or by forbidding the marital act, even though we cannot do it without sinning … Rather, it is purified because God in his grace proclaims it to be pure and does not impute the sin that is now part of our nature.57
Luther also changed the ideal. Holy people do not have to be celibate, as nuns or monks or priests. In the Reformation doctrine of sanctification and the Christian life, there are not two tiers of morality, with Christian perfection only possible to the celibate clergy with their supposedly greater “merit.” Monastic world-flight and asceticism were banished. Luther proclaimed by word and life that Christians have a high and glorious calling in marriage and in the home; as husbands and wives; as fathers, mothers and children, living out of faith in Jesus Christ and in thankful obedience to the Scriptures, and so serving the glory of God.58
Philip Schaff writes of the Reformers and especially Martin Luther that “it was their mission to introduce by example as well as by precept, a new type of Christian morality, to restore and re-create clerical family life, and to secure the purity, peace and happiness of innumerable homes.”59 Roland Bainton observes that the former Augustinian monk “did more than any other person to determine the tone of German domestic relations for the next four centuries.”60 Owen Chadwick explains,
The Luther that survived in the memory of Germany was not Luther the friar but Luther the father of a family. During the Peasants’ War he married an ex-nun, Catherine von Bora, and lived with her in the empty house of the Austin Friars … Catherine, plain in features and unadorned in dress, was an excellent and busy housewife … The characteristic memory of Luther is of a man presenting at his own table, with his colleagues and friends around, arguing with him, listening to his divinity, his politics, and his humour.61
The great school for godly character, and the place where Christ and His church are especially to be served, is not the monastery but the Christian home, through marriage and with one’s family.62 Christendom would be reformed not through the keeping of monastic vows but through the keeping of wedding vows and baptismal vows.
Just look at the destruction caused by Rome’s doctrine of the “celibacy” of priests and monks. Its “forbidding to marry” is a “doctrine of devils” (I Tim. 4:1-3), as Luther repeatedly pointed out.63 It often leads to fornication and even, as we are seeing especially in our day, to paedophilia and sodomy, for the vast majority of paedophile priests molest boys and not girls.64 These gross sins against the seventh commandment by its clergy have been covered up for decades and centuries by Rome through pressurizing the victims into silence and moving the criminals off to other places. This is a gross perversion of church discipline and another unmistakable manifestation that it is a false church (Belgic Confession 29).
It has been rightly stated that “Perhaps the clearest, and surely the most momentous, of historic love affairs was that of Friar Martin and Sister Catherine … The act, symbolizing and crowning the whole revolt from Rome, created an immense sensation throughout Europe.”65 By living and teaching the truth of Scripture, including his influential expositions of Psalms 127 and 128, Luther set forth the glory of the Christian home and the pastor’s home. Thereby, as he put it, he was blessed as no bishop had been for a thousand years because he had the love of a “fruitful vine” of a wife and “children like olive plants about [his] table” (Ps. 128:3).
