Life of Luther by Julius Koestlin

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Thus did Luther, in these stormy times, whatever might be thought of
the violence of his utterances, take up his position clearly and
resolutely from the first, and maintain it to the end;--sure of his
cause, and safe against the new attack which he saw now the devil
was making; unyielding and defiant towards his old Papal enemies and
their new calumniations. And in this frame of mind he took just now
a step, calculated to sharpen all the tongues of slander, but one in
which he saw the fulfilment of his calling. Freed from unchristian
monastic vows, he entered into the holy state of matrimony ordained
by God. We first hear him speaking decidedly on this subject in a
letter to Ruhel of May 4. After referring to the devil as the
instigator of the insurgent peasants, and of the murderous deeds
which made him anxious to prepare himself for death, he continues
with the following remarkable words: 'And if I can, in spite of him,
I will take my Kate in marriage before I die. I hope they will not
take from me my courage and my joy.'

CHAPTER VI.

LUTHER'S MARRIAGE.

Our readers will recall to mind those words of Luther at the
Wartburg, on hearing that his teaching was making the clergy marry
and monks renounce the obligation of their vows. No wife, he
declared, should be forced upon him. He remained in his convent;
looked on quietly, as one friend and fellow-labourer after the other
took advantage of their liberty; wished them happiness in the
enjoyment of it, and advised others to do the same; but never
changed his views about himself.

His enemies reproached him with living a worldly life, with drinking
beer in company with his friends, with playing the lute, and so on.
Nor was it merely his Catholic opponents who sought in such charges
material for vile slander, but also jealous ranters like Munzer gave
vent to their hatred in this manner. All the more remarkable it is
that no slanderous reports of immoral conduct were ever launched at
this time, even by his bitterest enemies, against the man who was
denouncing so openly and sternly offences of that description among
the superior, no less than the inferior, clergy. Calumnies of this
kind were reserved for the occasion of his marriage.

In truth, his life was one of the most arduous labour, anxiety, and
excitement; and as regards his bodily needs, he was satisfied with
the plainest and most sparing diet and the simplest enjoyments. The
Augustinian convent, whence he received his support, being gradually
denuded of its inmates by their abandonment of monastic life, its
revenues accordingly were stopped. Luther informed Spalatin in 1524
of the poverty to which they were reduced; not indeed, as Spalatin
well knew, that he concerned himself much about it, or wished to
make it a subject of complaint; if he had no meat or wine, he could
live well enough on bread and water. Melancthon describes how once,
before his marriage, Luther's bed had not been made for a whole
year, and was mildewed with perspiration. 'I was tired out,' says
Luther, 'and worked myself nearly to death, so that I fell into the
bed and knew nothing about it.'

When, moreover, he exchanged, as we have seen, in the autumn of
1524, the monastic cowl for the garb of a professor; and when he and
the prior Brisger were the only ones of all the former monks left in
the convent, he remained quietly where he was, and never entertained
the idea of marriage. A noble lady, Argula von Staufen, wife of the
Ritter von Grumbach, formerly in the Bavarian army, who had written
publicly for the cause of the gospel, and thereby incurred, with her
husband, the displeasure of the Duke of Bavaria, and who was now in
active correspondence with the Wittenbergers and Spalatin, expressed
to the latter her surprise that Luther did not marry. Luther
thereupon wrote to Spalatin on November 30, 1524, saying, 'I am not
surprised that folks gossip thus about me, as they gossip about many
other things. But please thank the lady in my name, and tell her
that I am in the hands of the Lord, as a creature whose heart He can
change and re-change, destroy or revive, at any hour or moment; but
as my heart has hitherto been, and is now, it will never come to
pass that I shall take a wife. Not that I am insensible to my I
flesh or sex, ... but because my mind is averse to wedlock, because
I daily expect the death and the well-merited punishment of a
heretic.'

Shortly afterwards Luther wrote to his friend Link: 'Suddenly, and
while I was occupied with far other thoughts, the Lord has plunged
me into marriage.' It was in the spring of 1525 that he had formed
this resolve, which speedily ripened to its fulfilment.

In a letter of March 12, 1525, he complained to his friend Amsdorf,
who had gone to Magdeburg, of depression of spirits and temptation,
and besought him to pay him a friendly visit to cheer him. It was,
as we see from the contents of the letter, a temptation, which
caused Luther to feel that, in the words of Scripture, it was 'not
good for man to be alone,' but that he ought to have a help-meet to
be with him. As to the choice of such a help-meet he may have
already talked with Amsdorf, and very possibly they may have spoken
of a lady of Magdeburg of the family of Alemann, who were
conspicuous there for their devotion to the evangelical cause.

But Luther's own choice turned on Catharine von Bora, a former nun.
Sprung from an ancient, though poor family of noble blood, she had
been brought up from childhood in the convent of Nimtzch near
Grimma. We find her there as early as 1509; she was born on January
29, 1499, and was consecrated as a nun at the age of sixteen. When
the evangelical doctrine became known at Nimtzch, Catharine
endeavoured with other nuns to break the bonds, which she had taken
upon herself without any real free-will or knowledge of her own. In
vain she entreated her relatives to release her. At length one
Leonhard Koppe, a burgher and councillor of Torgau, took her part.
Assisted by him and two of his friends, nine nuns escaped secretly
from the convent on Easter Eve, April 5, 1523. Luther justified
their escape in a public letter addressed to Koppe, and collected
funds for their support, until they could be further provided for.
They fled first to Wittenberg, and here Catharine stayed at the
house of the town clerk and future burgomaster, Philip Reichenbach.

She was now in her twenty-sixth year, when Luther turned his thoughts
towards her. He told afterwards his friends and Catharine herself,
with perfect frankness, that he had not been in love with her before,
for he had his suspicions, and they were not unfounded, that she was
proud. He had even thought, shortly before, of arranging a marriage
between her and a minister named Glatz, who later on, however, proved
himself unworthy of his office. Catharine, on the other hand, is said
to have gone to Amsdorf, as the trusted friend of Luther, and to have
told him frankly that she did not wish to marry Glatz, but was ready
to form an honourable alliance with himself or with Luther. If
Cranach's portrait of her is to be trusted, she was not remarkable
for beauty or any outward attraction. But she was a healthy, strong,
frank and true German woman. Luther might reasonably expect to have
in her a loyal, fresh-hearted, and staunch help-meet for his life,
whose own cares or requirements would cause him little anxiety,
while she would be just such a companion as, with his physical
ailments and mental troubles, he required. In the event of her
haughty disposition asserting itself unduly, he was the very man
to correct it with quiet firmness and affection.

What further considerations induced him to marry, appear from his
letters, in which he urged his friends to do likewise. Thus he wrote
on March 27 to Wolfgang Reissenbusch, preceptor of the convent at
Lichtenberg, saying that man was created by God for marriage. God
had so made man that he could not well do without it; whoever was
ashamed of marrying, must also be ashamed of his manhood, or must
pretend to be wiser than God. The devil had slandered the married
state by letting people who lived in immorality be held in high
honour. Luther, in thus frankly stating the natural disposition of
man to married life, spoke from his own experience. 'To remain
righteous unmarried,' he said once later on, 'is not the least of
trials, as those know well who have made the attempt.' In referring
as he did to the devil, he probably had in his mind the scandal
which threatened him if he should decide on marrying. He then goes
on to say to Reissenbusch that if he honoured the Word and work of
God, the scandal would be only a matter of a moment, to be followed
by years of honour. To Spalatin he writes on April 10: 'I find so
many reasons for urging others to marry, 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. Not only was he resolved,
however, to obey the will of his Creator, despite all condemnation
and ridicule, but he deemed it his duty to testify to the rightness
of the step by his example as well as by his words. His enemies, in
fact, were taunting him that he did not venture to practise himself
what he preached to others. A few days after, immediately before his
departure for Eisleben, he wrote again to Spalatin, recommending his
friend, who had been so utterly averse to matrimony, to take care
that he was not anticipated in the step.

Amidst all the terrors of the Peasants' War, which had now broken
out in all its violence, and in earnest contemplation of a near end
possibly threatening himself, he had formed the fixed resolve, as
his letter of May 4 to Ruhel shows, to 'take his Kate to wife, in
spite of the devil.' This is the first letter in which he mentions
her name to a friend. And to this resolve he steadily adhered during
the troublous weeks that followed, when he was called on to pay the
last honours to his Elector, to rouse men to the sanguinary contest
with the peasants, and to hear contumely and reproach heaped upon
his stirring words. Besides writing to the Cardinal Albert himself,
recommending him to marry, he sent a letter also on June 3 to his
friend Ruhel, who held office as one of his advisers, saying, 'If my
marrying might serve in any way to strengthen his Grace to do the
same, I should be very willing to set his Grace the example; for I
have a mind, before leaving this world, to enter the married state,
to which I believe God has called me.' He had thoughts of this kind,
he added, even if it should end only in a betrothal, and not an
actual marriage.

He speedily gave effect to his final resolve, in order to cut short
all the loose and idle gossip which threatened him as soon as his
intentions were known with regard to Catharine von Bora. He took
none of his friends into his confidence, but acted, as he afterwards
advised others to act. 'It is not good,' he said, 'to talk much
about such matters. A man must ask God for counsel, and pray, and
then act accordingly.'

As to how he finally came to terms with Catharine we have no account
to show. But on the evening of June 13, on the Tuesday after the
feast of the Trinity, he invited to his house his friends
Bugenhagen, the parish priest of the town, Jonas, the professor and
provost of the church of All Saints, Lucas Cranach with his wife,
and the juristic professor Apel, formerly a dean of the Cathedral at
Bamberg, who himself had married a nun, and in their presence was
married to Catharine. The marriage was solemnised in the customary
way. The pair were asked, by the priest present, Bugenhagen,
according to the custom prevailing in Germany, and which Luther
afterwards followed in his tract on Marriage, whether they would
take one another for husband and wife; their right hands were then
joined together, and thus, in the name of the Trinity, they were
'joined together in matrimony.' The ceremony was therewith
concluded, and Catharine remained thenceforth with Luther as his
wife. Some days after Luther gave a little breakfast to his friends;
and the magistracy, of whom Cranach was a member, sent him their
congratulations, together with a present of wine. A fortnight later,
on June 27, Luther celebrated his wedding in grander style, by a
nuptial feast, in order to gather his distant friends around him. He
wrote to them saying that they were to 'seal and ratify' his
marriage, and 'help to pronounce the benediction.' Above all he
rejoiced to be able to see his 'dear father and mother' at the
feast. Among the motives for his marrying he especially mentioned
that he had felt himself bound to fulfil an old duty, in accordance
with his father's wishes.

Great as was the surprise which Luther occasioned by his speedy
marriage, it was no greater than the talk and sensation that
immediately ensued.

Among even his adherents and friends--especially the 'wiseacres' of
whom he had spoken--there was much astonishment and shaking of
heads. It was considered that the great man had lowered himself, and
gossip was busy in asking what reasons could have induced him to
take the step. Melancthon, his devoted friend, lost for the moment,
as is shown by his letter of June 16 to the philologist Camerarius,
his accustomed self-possession. He admitted that married life was a
holy state, and one well-pleasing to God, and that its results might
be beneficial to Luther's nature and character; but he was of
opinion that Luther's lowering himself to this condition was a
lamentable act of weakness, and injurious to his reputation--and
that, too, at a time when Germany was more than ever in need of all
his spirit and his energy. Luther had not invited him to be present
on the 13th, from a suspicion that Melancthon would scarcely approve
of what he was doing. A few days afterwards, however, he warmly
besought Link, their common friend, to be sure and attend their
nuptial feast on the 27th. That Luther, in this respect also, had
acted as a man of strong character and determination, would soon be
evident to them all.

His enemies seized the occasion of his marriage to spread vulgar
falsehoods about him, which soon were further exaggerated, and have
been raked up shamelessly again, even in our own time, or at least
repeated in veiled and scandalous inuendoes.

[Illustration: Fig. 29.--LUTHER. (From a Portrait by Cranach in
1525.) At Wittenberg.]

As for Luther himself, he at first felt strange in the new mode of
life which he had entered at the age of forty-one, so suddenly, and
in the midst of his arduous labours, and the stirring public events
and struggles of the time. At the same time he could not but be
aware of the unfavourable reception which his step would encounter,
even with his friends at Wittenberg. Melancthon found him, during
the early days of his married life, in a restless and uncertain
mood. But he remained firm in his conviction that God had called him
to the married state. The same day that Melancthon wrote so
anxiously to Camerarius about his marriage, Luther himself wrote to
Spalatin, saying, 'I have made myself so vile and contemptible
forsooth, that all the angels, I hope, will laugh, and all the
devils weep.' In his letter of invitation to his friends for June
27, friendly humour is mingled with words of deep earnestness; nay,
even with thoughts of death, and a longing for release from this
infatuated world. Later on Luther preached, on the ground of his own
experiences, about the blessings, the joys, and the purifying
burdens of the state ordained and sanctified by God, and never
without an expression of gratitude to God for having brought him to
enter into it. Seventeen years after his marriage he bore testimony
to Catharine in his will, that she had been to him a 'pious,
faithful, and devoted wife, always loving, worthy, and beautiful.'

[Illustration: Fig. 30.--CATHARINE VON BORA, LUTHER'S WIFE. (From a
Portrait by Cranach about 1525.) At Berlin.]

Of the wedding feast of June 27 we have no further details. It was,
so far as concerns the repast, a very simple one, as compared with
the elaborate nuptial entertainments then in fashion. The university
presented Luther with a beautifully chased goblet of silver, bearing
round its base the words: 'The honourable University of the
Electoral town of Wittenberg presents this wedding gift to Doctor
Martin Luther and his wife Kethe von Bora. [Footnote: The goblet is
now in the possession of the University of Greifswald.]

[Illustration: Fig. 3l.--LUTHER'S RING FROM CATHARINE.]

Apartments in the convent, which Brisger also quitted shortly after to
become a minister, were appointed by the Elector as the dwelling-place
of Luther. Here, therefore, Catharine had to manage her household.

[Illustration: Fig. 82.--LUTHER'S DOUBLE RING.]

Protestant posterity has been anxious to retain a memorial of this
marriage in the wedding rings of the newly-married couple. These,
however, were probably not used at the marriage itself, since Luther
wished to have it solemnised so quickly and without the knowledge of
others. But a ring has been preserved, which Luther, to judge from
the inscription (D. Martino Luthero Catharina v. Boren 13 Jun.
1525), received at any rate from his Kate as a supplementary
reminiscence of the day. In recent times--about 1817--it has been
multiplied by several copies. It bears the figure of the crucified
Saviour and the instruments of His death; in perfect keeping with
the spirit of the Reformer, whose marriage, like the other acts of
his life, was concluded in the name of Christ crucified. There
exists also, in the Ducal Museum at Brunswick, a double ring,
consisting of two interfastened in the middle, of which one bears a
diamond with his initials M. L. D., and the other a ruby with the
initials of his wife, C. v. B. The inner surface of the first ring
is engraved with the words: 'WAS. GOT. ZUSAMEN. FIEGT,' (Those whom
God hath joined together), and the second, 'SOL. KEIN. MENSCH.
SCHEIDEN,' (Shall no man put asunder). This double ring was probably
given by some friend to Luther, or, as others suppose, to his wife.

PART V.

_LUTHER AND THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH, TO THE FIRST
RELIGIOUS PEACE_. 1525-1532.

CHAPTER I.

SURVEY.

The year 1525 marks in the life of Luther and the history of the
Reformation an epoch and a departure of general importance.

Luther's preaching had originally forced its way among the German
people and its various classes, with an energy and strength never
counted on by its opponents. It seemed impossible to calculate how
far the ferment would extend, and what would be its ultimate
results. It was the idea of the Elector Frederick the Wise, now
dead, that by simply letting the word of the gospel unfold itself
quietly and work its way without hindrance, the truth could not fail
eventually to penetrate all Christendom, or at least the Christian
world of Germany, and thus accomplish a peaceful victory. This hope
had guided him during his lifetime in his relations with Luther, and
no one appreciated and responded to it more loyally than Luther
himself. But now, as we have seen, those German princes who adhered
to the old Church system had begun to form a close alliance, and
were meditating means of remedying, albeit in their own fashion,
certain evils in the Church. Erasmus, still the representative of a
powerful modern movement of the intellect, had at length broken
finally with Luther, and renewed his former allegiance to the Romish
Church. From the German nobility, whose sympathy and co-operation
Luther had once so boldly and hopefully invoked in his contest with
the Papacy, it was vain, since the fatal enterprise of Sickingen,
which Luther himself had been forced to condemn, to expect any
material assistance in furtherance of the Evangelical cause. True,
there was the extensive rising of another class, the peasantry, who
likewise appealed to the gospel. But genuine disciples of the gospel
could not fail to see in this movement, with terror, how a perverse
conception of the sacred text led to errors and crimes which even
Luther wished to see suppressed in blood. And the Catholic nobles
took advantage of this rising to persecute with the greater rigour
all evangelical preaching, and to extend, without further inquiry,
their denunciation of the insurgents to those of evangelical
sympathies who held entirely aloof from the insurrection. Luther, in
his dealings with the nobles and peasants, failed to preserve that
boldness and confidence of mind and language which he had previously
displayed towards his fellow-countrymen. That his cause, indeed, was
the cause of God, he remained unshakenly convinced; but in a sadder
spirit than he had ever shown before, he left God's will to
determine what amount of visible success that cause should attain to
in the present evil world, or how far the decision should depend
upon His last great Judgment.

[Illustration: Fig. 33.--The Saxon Electors, FREDERICK THE WISE,
JOHN, and JOHN FREDERICK. (From a Picture by Cranach.) At
Nuremberg.]

[Illustration: Fig. 34.--Facsimile of FREDERICK's signature.]

Even before the Peasants' War broke out, the proceedings of the
fanatics had begun to hamper and disturb his labours in the field of
reformation, and had prepared for him much pain and tribulation. He
had to grow distrustful of so many whom he had regarded as brothers,
and of their manner of proclaiming the Word of God, Whom they
pretended to serve. He already heard of men among them, who not only
rejected infant baptism, and openly attacked his own, no less than
the Catholic doctrine of the Sacrament, but who impugned the
universal belief of Christendom in the Triune God and the Divinity
of the Saviour. Early in 1525 news reached him of such a man at
Nuremberg, John Denk, the Rector of the school there, who was
expelled on that account by the magistrates. Luther's own doctrine
of the presence of Christ's Body in the Lord's Supper, which he had
previously to defend against Carlstadt, his former colleague and
fellow-combatant, now found a far more formidable opponent in the
Zurich Reformer, Ulrich Zwingli. The latter, in a letter of November
16, 1524, to Alber, a preacher at Reutlingen, had already disputed
the Real Presence, by interpreting the words 'This _is_ my
body' to mean 'This _signifies_ my body.' In March 1525 he made
known this interpretation to the world by publishing his letter,
together with a pamphlet 'On the True and False Religion.' He was
joined at Basle by Oecolampadius, whom Luther had welcomed formerly
as a fellow-labourer, and who published his own interpretation of
the words of Christ. Butzer and Capito, the evangelical preachers at
Strasburg, inclined to the same view, which threatened to spread
rapidly over the South of Germany. The opposition now encountered by
Luther was far more dangerous for his teaching than the theories and
agitations of a Carlstadt, since whatever judgment may be formed
about its merits, it proceeded at any rate from men of far more
thoughtful minds, more solid theological acquirements, and more
honest reverence for the Word of God. Herewith then began that
division of opinion among the ranks of the Evangelical Reformers,
which served more than anything else to retard the fresh and
vigorous progress of the Reformation, and infected even Luther's
spirit with the bitterness of the controversy it entailed.

At the same time, however, Luther had now won firm ground for the
Evangelical cause upon a fixed and extensive territory. Within these
limits it was possible to construct a new Church system, upon stable
foundations and with a new constitution. John, the new Elector of
Saxony, did not enjoy, it is true, the same high consideration
throughout the Empire as his brother Frederick, Luther's great
protector, and he was also his inferior as a statesman. But with
Luther himself both he and his son John Frederick had already
maintained a friendly personal intercourse, such as his predecessor
had carefully avoided. Nor did his disposition lead him, like
Frederick, to pay any such regard to the possible preservation of
Church unity in the German Empire and Western Christendom; on the
contrary, he soon showed his readiness to undertake independently,
as sovereign of his country, the establishment of a new Evangelical
Church. Prussia had just preceded him in a reform embracing the
whole country, under the former Grand Master of the Teutonic
Knights, their present Duke. The Elector now found a further ally
for the work in the Landgrave Philip of Hesse, the most active and
politically the most important of all. As a young man of only twenty
years of age, in the beginning of 1525, he had rendered valuable
service by his energy, resolution, and warlike ability, in the
defeat of Sickingen, and again when opposed to the seditious
peasants. Already before the Peasants' War commenced, he had
acquired, mainly through Melancthon, whom he had met when
travelling, a knowledge and love of the evangelical doctrines. His
father-in-law, Duke George of Saxony, had vainly endeavoured, after
their common victory over the insurgents, to alienate him from the
cause of the hateful Luther, who he said was the author of so much
mischief. But the menaces hurled against that cause by the Catholic
States of the Empire served only to attach him more closely and
loyally to John and John Frederick, and thence resulted in the
following spring the League of Torgau, which was joined also by the
princes of Brunswick-Luneburg, Anhalt, and Mecklenburg, and the town
of Magdeburg. The co-operation of the territorial princes made it
possible to procure for the Reformation and its Church system a firm
position in the German Empire against the Emperor and the hostile
Catholic States. And, at the same time, it offered means for
establishing on the ground newly occupied by the Reformation itself,
firm and generally recognised regulations of Church polity, and
defending them from being disturbed by the proceedings of fanatics.