It is easy to understand how the "Evangelist of Art," Albrecht Durer, and Charitas Pirkheimer could be, as they were, the closest of friends. But Conrad Celtes, the Heine of the Renaissance, and the stately, pious abbess of Saint Clare's would seem, at first sight, to have little in common. Nevertheless, a warm and long-continued friendship existed between these two.
The ethical note of the Renaissance was first struck in Germany. Even Conrad Celtes (the one Humanist in the Italian the Lorenzo de' Medici sense of the term that Germany has ever produced) could not quite deaden the Teutonic conscience. Celtes's writings are full of questionings that are almost startlingly modern. "Is there, really, a God?" "Will the soul live after death?" "What is the nature of the force that produces lightning?" Then, in the very next line perhaps, the poet lapses again into sensuality. "There is nothing sweeter under the sun than a pretty maid in a man's arms to banish care." "This," says Bezold, "was Celtes's heart-confession, and he lived up to it." Bezold adds: "In spite of his voluminous correspondence with them, Celtes did not appreciate good women. He really knew only alehouse wenches." In the light of Celtes's letters to Charitas Pirkheimer, it is hard to accept this harsh judgment unreservedly.
The Renaissance and the Reformation in Germany are so closely allied that it is difficult to separate one energy from the other. Mental and spiritual forces are not easily anchored to dates. For convenience, however, we may say that the German Renaissance lasted from 1450 to 1519 as a distinct movement, while the Reformation largely an outgrowth of the Renaissance fell between the years 1519 and 1560. With the beginning of the Reformation the brotherhood of humanistic scholarship was disrupted. To German women the national unrest brought heartache and soul bewilderment.
Charitas Pirkheimer was not the only woman to "forget her sex and mix in an unseemly manner in disputes about which only men are properly qualified to express an opinion." Argula von Grumbach, friend of Spalatin and wife of an officer at the Bavarian court, also brought much sorrow upon herself by writing a spirited letter, which was printed by her friends and rejoiced in by her enemies.
Seehofer, a young Lutheran master at the university of Ingolstadt, was accused of proselyting the students. He presented to his classes seventeen propositions which he had deduced from the writings of Melanchthon. The rector of the university, by imprisonment and by threats of the Inquisition, compelled the too zealous young Lutheran to recant. At this point, Argula an emotional, warmhearted, and talented woman took a hand in the affair. She wrote the rector an impertinent letter, in which she spoke of Seehofer as a "mere child of eighteen," and, with refreshing confidence in her own powers of oratory, offered to come to Ingolstadt to defend, publicly, both the young master and his theses. The university authorities ignored this offer, but the Catholic cartoonists of the time made the most of it. From every quarter of Germany Argula was assailed in mocking rhymes, to which she replied in counter rhymes. The verses on both sides are rather bad, though the plucky little baroness holds her own fairly well. For her "indiscreetness" Argula was banished from court; and her husband, "for not controlling his wife properly," was dismissed from his lucrative position at the palace.
The real strength of Protestant women, however, lay not with its excitable Argulas, but with firm, steady, sensible women like Catharine von Bora, who became Luther's wife. It seems almost unjust that a girl possessed of sufficient spirit and courage to propose to the man she loved should, for posterity, be forever submerged under the appended title, "his wife." Catharine von Bora's individuality was marked. Her wise management, as wife and mother, seems phenomenal when we remember how suddenly she was transplanted from conventual to secular life, but no healthy young tree ever better stood removal from shade to sunlight.
Catharine von Bora was descended from a noble but impoverished family. At the age of ten she was placed in the convent of Nimtsch, near Grimma. At sixteen she became a nun. In 1523, under the influence of Luther's preaching, she, with eight of her sister nuns, left the convent secretly by night and fled to Wittenberg. For her apostasy, Catharine's family cast her off. Luther found her a comfortable home and did his best to provide her with a husband. But Catharine, who, says Erasmus, was "a wonderfully pretty girl," would not accept either of the two suitors Luther recommended. Amsdorf, Luther's envoy, argued with her upon her stubbornness. Whereupon, Catharine replied, calmly, "I will not marry Glatz, but I will marry either you or Luther, if you want me." She meant that she would marry Martin Luther, for she well knew that Amsdorf's affections were already placed elsewhere. Luther, though somewhat surprised at the turn things had taken, accepted Catharine's proposal and the nuptials were duly celebrated amid the remonstrances of the Reformer's friends and the derisive howls of his enemies.
"Antichrist only can be born from this unholy union of priest and nun," was the scandalized cry of the Catholics. To which Erasmus made sarcastic reply: "Then there must have been a good many Antichrists born before now."
An indisputable testimony to Catharine's kindly nature is the affection which old John Luther and his wife felt for their son's wife. Catharine bore good, as evil fortune, with dignity. Her head was never in the least turned by the popularity of her husband. When princes visited the humble home at Wittenberg, she received them with simple, well-bred courtesy. When beggars came she welcomed them with equal cordiality. She had much to contend against. They were poor and her husband was over generous, not only in hospitality, but in constantly giving away household effects which his family could ill afford to spare. Martin Luther, too, was a man of storms. A woman less firm and tactful than his beloved "Kathie" could hardly have lived peaceably with him.
In the evil days that fell after Luther's death, his widow did not lose her courage. She struggled nobly to support herself and children. She followed the usual heart-breaking course of poor widows in trying to make a living. She sewed; she kept boarders; she turned her hand, patiently, to any honest labor that offered itself. War, flight from pestilence, and then sudden death so runs the record of the last bitter years of Catharine von Bora's active, helpful, noble life.