“Whoever is ashamed of marriage, is ashamed to be human and creates the impression that one can do a better job than the way God created it. … It’s the god of this world, the Devil, therefore, who has demeaned marriage and made it into a shame.”1
Written at a time when marriage was believed to be a hindrance to ministry, that statement, among others penned by a former monk named Martin Luther, led to a significant emptying of the monasteries and convents in early 16th-century Europe. It also led to something Luther believed was not for him — marriage.
Luther’s marriage prospects began when he received a letter addressed to the “highly learned Dr. Martinus Luther at Wittenburg.” It was an impassioned cry for help from a group of nuns in a neighboring village who had been impacted by Luther’s writings. Longing to renounce their vows and escape their convent, they sought Luther’s assistance.
Knowing that he was risking the death penalty if caught, Luther agreed to help and enlisted his trusted friend, Leonhard Koppe, to implement his plan. Koppe was well known at the convent as a merchant who delivered barrels of fish to the nuns. So, on April 4, 1523, Koppe made his delivery to the convent as usual, but then left with 12 nuns hidden in his covered wagon, nine of whom ended up in Wittenberg.
Once he had helped the women escape, Luther felt responsible to make sure that the former nuns were provided for by finding them work or husbands. With all but one, Katharina von Bora, Luther succeeded.
Katharina proved to be more difficult because she was unwilling to marry someone she did not like. After rejecting Luther’s suggestion that she marry Kaspar Glatz, a wealthy professor and pastor, she set her heart on someone else: Luther. Then she proposed, not for financial stability — neither had any money — but for another kind of security. Katharina “knew no other person she could trust so completely.” 2
Someone had already encouraged Luther to marry Katharina to no avail. Marriage was not for him, “not because I am a sexless log or stone, but because daily I expect death as a heretic.”3 On June 13, 1525, however, Luther and Katharina were married.
Why did Luther change his mind? Not for love. Luther considered Katharina arrogant and too outspoken. I would not know, Luther wrote, “what devil would want her.”4 Shortly before his wedding day, however, Luther admitted that he had begun to appreciate her. But he felt “neither passionate love nor burning” for her.5
So why did Luther marry? To provide his father, Hans Luther, a male heir; to validate his teaching about marriage; and to “rile the pope, cause the angels to laugh and the devils to weep.”6
Thus began the most important marriage of the Reformation and, eventually, one of the great love stories of church history. In a religious context that promoted celibacy as a higher form of spirituality, Luther’s marriage to Katharina was the final rejection of his former life as a monk. It was also an act of worship. With his own body, Luther countered the falsely pious opposition to the physical, and specifically to the sexual. Unnatural celibacy was of the devil, Luther believed, and healthy marital sex glorified God.7
No marriage was more public and more scrutinized during the Reformation than that of Luther and Katharina. For Luther’s enemies, it granted further opportunities to criticize. Even the Dutch humanist, Erasmus of Rotterdam, joined the litany of complaints, claiming that Katharina gave birth to a child a few days after the wedding. Although forced to retract his accusation after the Luthers’ first child was born 12 months after the wedding, Erasmus promoted a popular notion of the time: that the Antichrist, in the form of a two-headed monster, would be born to a monk and a nun.8
While Luther’s marriage to Katharina was the impetus behind slander that continued for centuries, it was also the example he intended it to be. He was now a “normal family man” who “emphatically reinforced” his teaching by his example.9
Their marriage was an example in other ways as well. As Roland Bainton wrote: “The Luther who got married in order to testify to his faith actually founded a home and did more than any other person to determine the tone of German domestic relations for the next four centuries.”10 Mutual respect, selfless care, and genuine affection were among the many commendable traits in the Luthers’ marriage.
Although Luther married for less-than-romantic reasons, once married, he became a romantic. In line with tradition, husband and wife shared the same pillow during the first weeks of marriage. It was an adjustment for Luther to wake up and see two pigtails lying beside him. But it was an adjustment he learned to cherish as evidenced in a letter to his friend, George Spalatin. Unable to attend Spalatin’s wedding, Luther advised him to wrap his arms around his wife in the marriage bed, kiss her passionately, and consider her “the most beautiful little creature from God that Christ has given me.”11 Luther would do the same with Katharina on Spalatin’s wedding day.
The growing affection between Luther and Katharina became apparent in the way they referred to each other. Katharina considered Luther “my beloved husband” and “this dear and precious man.”12
Characteristic of Luther’s prolific mind, he had many nicknames for Katharina, at times humorous, at times very dear. Around the dinner table, as Luther entertained his students, she was “my rib,” a tender recognition that she was part of him and a lighthearted reminder to her and everyone else that he was “lord” in their marriage.
But Luther often addressed Katharina as “my lord.” He knew that she was far more capable of running the household than he was. So, as he put it, in those matters, he let Katharina tell him what to do; in other matters, the Holy Spirit told him what to do.
The greatest tribute Luther paid to his wife was to call the book of Galatians, which he loved more than life itself, “My Katie.” At one point, Luther realized that his devotion to Katharina was a bit excessive: “I give more credit to Katherine than to Christ, who has done so much more for me.”13
There were many reasons for Luther’s devotion to Katharina. Not only did she manage the household in a way that enabled Luther to focus on his work, but she also matched his strong personality with her own. Although neither denied the biblical headship of the husband, they were each other’s equal in many ways. They listened to each other, learned from each other, and needed each other. Marriage, for Luther, became a school for character.
Katharina ran the household in more ways than can be counted. Out of bed at 4 a.m., she often worked until 9 p.m. Their home, a former monastery known as the Black Cloister, was dilapidated, so she whitewashed the walls, and with the housekeeper, cleaned the rooms and reestablished the garden. She became “gardener, fisher, brewer, fruit grower, cattle and horse breeder, cook, beekeeper, provisioner, nurse, and vintner.”14
But Katharina did not relegate herself to domestic matters. She participated in the theological and intellectual conversations at Luther’s famous table talks with his students. According to Luther, she knew the Psalms at a depth that few could equal. And she was both spiritually inquisitive and a critical thinker, two qualities Luther admired in her and found quite attractive.15
At times, of course, husband and wife clashed. At another table talk, after answering his students’ questions with enthusiasm, Luther paused. Katharina immediately broke in: “Doctor, why don’t you stop talking and eat?” “I wish,” snapped Luther, “that women would repeat the Lord’s Prayer before opening their mouths.”16 In another moment of exasperation, Luther quipped, “If I should ever marry again, I will carve a wife out of stone who will obey me.”17
Despite Luther’s flashes of frustration, he cherished his wife and needed her. She was his closest companion, the primary caregiver for their children, the manager of their household and their finances, his nurse, his counselor, and occasionally the exact medicine Luther required.
Luther frequently suffered with depression. At one point, he was so depressed that no counsel Katharina gave him helped so she put on a black dress. When Luther noticed it, he asked, “Are you going to a funeral?” “No,” Katharina replied, “but since you act like God is dead, I wanted to join you in your mourning.” Luther got the message and got over his depression.18
Luther died in 1546, after twenty-one years of marriage. Katharina died six years later, in 1552. It is difficult today to understand how courageous and costly it was for them to wed. But their bold act of defiance gave the world a picture of something not seen before—a Protestant pastor and his family. It also taught the world that marriage between a husband and wife who love and respect each other is a good gift from God.
Mike Honeycutt serves as senior pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Rock Hill, South Carolina.
- 189. Selderhuis, Martin Luther: A Spiritual Biography (Illinois, 2017) 189.
- R.K. Markwald and M.M. Markwald, Katharina Von Bora: A Reformation Life (Saint Louis, 2002) 77.
- Ibid., 63.
- Selderhuis, Martin Luther, 193.
- DeRusha, Katharina & Martin: The Radical Marriage of a Runaway Nun and a Renegade Monk (Grand Rapids, 2017) 151; Selderhuis, Martin Luther, 195.
- Markwald, Katharina Von Bora, 63; DeRusha, Katharina & Martin, 150.
- Metaxas, Martin Luther: The Man Who Rediscovered God and Changed the World (New York, 2017) 342.
- DeRusha, Katharina & Martin, 168-9.
- Selderhuis, Martin Luther, 197.
- Bainton, R.H. Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (Nashville, 1978 edition) 306.
- Selderhuis, Martin Luther, 197.
- Markwald, Katharina Von Bora, 78; DeRusha, Katharina & Martin, 210.
- Bainton, Here I Stand, 299.
- Markwald, Katharina Von Bora, 81-2.
- DeRusha, Katharina & Martin, 196.
- Bainton, Here I Stand, 308.
- Selderhuis, Martin Luther, 223.
- Markwald, Katharina Von Bora,139-40.