The extravagance of Luther’s utterances in his fight against clerical celibacy might perhaps be regarded as due to the secluded life he had led at Wittenberg during the years he was a monk, which prevented him from knowing the true state of things. Experience gained by more extensive travel and intercourse with others might indeed have corrected his views. But, as a matter of fact, he was not altogether untravelled; besides visiting Rome and Southern Germany he had been to Heidelberg, Worms and Cologne. His stay at the latter city is particularly noteworthy, for there he was in the heart of the very region of which Wimpfeling had given so favourable an account. Can he, during the long journey on foot and in his conversations with his brother monks there, not have convinced himself, that the clergy residing in that city were by no means sunk in immorality and viciousness? His visit to Cologne coincided in all probability with the general Chapter which Staupitz had summoned there at the commencement of May, 1512. Luther only recalls incidentally having seen there the bodies of the Three Kings; having swallowed all the legends told him concerning them; and having drunk such wine as he had never drunk before.[564]
Two Concluding Pictures towards the History of Woman.
We may, in conclusion, give two pictures which cast a new and lurid light on what has gone before.
Luther’s standpoint, and, no less, the confusion which had arisen in married life and the humiliations to which many women were exposed, come out clearly in the story of his relations with the preacher Jodocus Kern and his spouse. Kern, an apostate monk, had wedded at Nuremberg Ursula Tagler, an ex-nun from the convent of Engelthal. On Dec. 24, 1524, Luther joyously commended him as “a monk, metamorphosed into a married man,” to the care of Spalatin.[565] When Kern went to Saxony in search of a post the girl refused to accompany him until he had found employment. During his absence she began to regret the step she had taken, and the letters she received from her former Prioress determined her to return no more to her husband. The persuasion of her Lutheran relatives indeed induced her to go to Allstedt after Kern had been appointed successor to Thomas Münzer in that town, but there her horror only grew for the sacrilegious union she had contracted. Coercion was quite fruitless. The minister, at the advice of her own relatives, treated her very roughly, forced her to eat meat on Good Friday and refused to listen when she urged him to return to the Catholic Church. Having made an attempt to escape to Mansfeld, her case was brought before the secular Courts; she was examined by the commissioner of Allstedt on January 11, 1526, when she declared, that it was against her conscience to look upon Kern as her husband, that her soul was dearer to her than her body and that she would rather die than continue to endure any longer the bonds of sin. This the commissioner reported to the Elector Johann, and the latter, on Jan. 17, forwarded her statement to Luther, together with Kern’s account, for the purpose of hearing from one so “learned in Scripture” “how the matter ought to be treated and disposed of in accordance with God’s Holy Writ.”[566]
Luther took a week to reply: The Allstedt woman was suffering such “temptations from the devil and men, that it would verily be a wonder if she could resist them.” The only means of keeping her true to the Evangel and to her duty would be to send her to her people at Nuremberg. Should, even there, “the devil refuse to yield to God’s good exhortation” then she would have to “be allowed to go,” and “be reckoned as dead,” and then the pastor might marry another. Out of the scandal that the wanton spirit had given through her God might yet work some good. “The Evangel neither will nor can be exempt from scandals.”[567]
The unhappy nun was, as a matter of fact, forcibly brought to Nuremberg and placed amongst Lutheran surroundings instead of being conveyed to her convent at Engelthal, as the laws of the Empire demanded. From thence she never returned to Allstedt. Kern, during the proceedings, had declared that he did not want her against her conscience, and was ready to submit to the Word of God and to comply exactly with whatever this imposed. In accordance therewith he soon found a fresh bride. During the Visitations, in 1533, he was charged with bigamy and was reprimanded for being a “drinker and gambler,” although his industry and talents were at the same time recognised. Nothing is known of his later doings.[568]
Two open letters addressed to Luther by Catholics in 1528 form a companion picture to the above. They portray the view taken by many faithful Catholics of Luther’s own marriage.
In that year two Professors at the Leipzig University, Johann Hasenberg and Joachim von der Heyden, published printed circulars addressed to Luther and Catherine von Bora, admonishing them—now that ten years had elapsed since Luther first attacked the Church—on their breaking of their vows, their desecration of the Sacrament of Matrimony and their falling away from the Catholic faith.[569] It is probable that Duke George of Saxony had something to do with this joint attack.[570] It is also likely that hopes of sterner measures on the part of the Imperial authorities also helped to induce the writers to put pen to paper.[571] In any case it was their plan, vigorously and before all the world, to attack the author of the schism in his most vulnerable spot, where it would not be easy for him to defend himself publicly. Master Hasenberg, a Bohemian, was one of George’s favourites, who had made him three years previously Dean of the Faculty of Arts. He addressed his open letter to “Martinus Luderus,” the “destroyer of the public peace and piety.” Von der Heyden, known in Latin as Myricianus or Phrisomynensis (a Frisian by birth), was likewise a Master, and Papal and academic Notary at Leipzig. Of the two he was the younger. His letter was addressed to “Khete von Bhore, Luther’s pretended wife,” and served as preface to a printed translation he had made of the work: “De lapsu virginis consecratæ,” then attributed to St. Ambrose.[572] Both epistles, according to one of the answers, must have been despatched by special messenger and delivered at Luther’s house. They drew forth printed replies, some of which can be traced to Luther himself, while Euricius Cordus ridiculed the writers in a screed full of biting epigram.
The Leipzig letters, the first of which was also published in German, made a great sensation in German circles and constituted an urgent exhortation to thousands of apostates estranged from the Church by Luther’s new doctrine on Christian freedom and on the nullity of vows.