Luther, vol. 4 of 6

by Hartmann Grisar

“The sting of the flesh may easily be helped, so long as girls and women are to be found.”[486]

Our readers will not have forgotten the reason he gives why women have so little intellect;[487] or the reproof addressed to him by Staupitz.[488]

Luther urges early marriage in the words of an old proverb: “To rise early and to marry young will cause regret to no one.” “It will fare with you,” he says to the same addressee, “as with the nuns to whom they gave carved Jesuses. They cast about for others, who at least were living and pleased them better, and sought how best to escape from their convent.”[489]—“What greater service can one do a girl than to get her a baby? This rids her of many fancies.”[490] Here, and elsewhere too, he is anxious that people should marry, even though there should not be enough to live upon; God would not allow the couple to starve if they did their duty.[491]—“A young fellow should be simply given a wife, otherwise he has no peace. Then the troubles of matrimony will soon tame him.”[492]

On another occasion (1540) Luther expresses himself with greater caution about too early matches: “It is not good for young people to marry too soon. They are ruined in their prime, exhaust their strength and neglect their studies.” “But the young men are consumed with passion,” one of those present objected, “and the theologians work upon their conscience and tell them that ‘To marry young will cause regret to no one.’” Luther’s reply was: “The young men are unwilling to resist any temptations.... They should console themselves with the hope of future marriage. We used to be forbidden to marry in almost all the Faculties, hence the youths indulged in all kinds of excesses, knowing that, later on, they would no longer be able to do so. Thus they sunk into every kind of disorder. But now everybody is allowed to marry, even the theologian and the bishop. Hence, in their own interests, they ought to learn to wait.”[493]

At other times he was inclined to promote hasty marriages from motives of policy, and, without a thought of the dignity of the conjugal union and the respect due to woman, to use it as a means to increase the number of his followers.

This happened in the case of many of his converts from the ranks of the clergy and religious.[494]

In the case of the Bishop of Samland, George von Polenz, and his adviser, Johann Briesmann, the ex-Franciscan, who both were desirous of marrying, Luther judged that delay would be disastrous. He urged them to make haste and be publicly wedded, both having already contracted a so-called marriage in conscience; in their case there was “danger in delay,” and, as the saying goes, “If you wait a night, you wait a year”; even Paul had said we must not receive the grace of God in vain (2 Cor. vi. 1), and the bride in the Canticle complained that the bridegroom “was gone,” because she had been tardy in opening the door (v. 6). A German proverb said, “Wenn das Ferkel beut soll man den Sack herhalten.” Esau’s lost birthright, and the solemn words of Christ concerning separation from Him (John xii. 35 f.) were also made to serve his purpose. “Take it when, where and how you can, or you won’t get another chance.” A man could not be sure of his own mind on account of the snares of the devil; a marriage not yet publicly ratified remained somewhat uncertain.[495]

Before these exhortations reached them both the parties in question had, however, already taken the public step.

It was in those very days that Luther celebrated his own wedding and sent his pressing invitation to marry to the Cardinal and Elector of Mayence, telling him that, short of a miracle, or without some peculiar grace, it was a “terrible thing” for a man “to be found without a wife at the hour of death.”[496] It was then, too, that he sent to Albert of Prussia, the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, who was contemplating marriage, his congratulations on the secularisation of the lands of the Order and the founding of the Duchy, which he had even previously strongly urged him to do. In this letter he tells the Grand Master that it was “God Almighty,” “Who had graciously and mercifully helped him to such a position [that of a secular Prince].”[497] The Grand Master’s marriage and consequent breach of his vow of chastity followed in 1526. He invited Luther to the wedding and wrote to him, that God had given him “the grace to enter the Order [of marriage] instituted by Himself” after he had “laid aside the cross [the sign of the Order] and entered the secular estate.”