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 Münzer 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.