Katharina and Martin Luther

by Michelle DeRusha

  Away from Sacrament, into the Church

  One of Luther’s first reforms was to “desacramentize” marriage—that is, he declared marriage should not be a sacrament. (Luther originally defined the sacraments as those rituals commanded by Christ: baptism, holy communion, and confession. Later he narrowed his definition by declaring only those experiences in which Christ himself participated to be sacramental, thus eliminating confession and keeping only baptism and holy communion as sacraments.) Interestingly, although reforms desacramentized marriage, they also gave the new Protestant church a greater role in the marriage ceremony itself. Luther and his peers emphasized the couple’s presence in a church and the minister’s benediction as critical parts of the marriage ceremony. Prospective couples were first required to meet with their pastor before announcing their marriage intentions. Then, if no impediment surfaced after the public announcement of the engagement—called the banns—at the couple’s parish, the two were allowed to marry.

  The kirchgang—literally “church going”—became a prominent part of the marriage ceremony.10 Initially this ritual took place outside the front door of the church, and many late medieval churches were even adorned with elaborately decorated entrances specifically for this purpose.11 As the Protestant Reformation progressed, the ceremony moved inside the church, and couples were expected to recite their vows before the altar in the presence of the pastor and their family and friends. Often two wedding ceremonies took place; private ceremonies at home were still popular, but it was the church wedding that validated the marriage.12

  Family and friends chaperoned the bride and groom around the clock in the weeks between the official engagement and the kirchgang. If premarital sexual relations were known to have occurred between the engaged couple prior to the ceremony, there was often a shaming element to the wedding ceremony. In the second half of the sixteenth century, a known nonvirginal bride wore a veil or a straw wreath, instead of a wreath of flowers, and her groom wore a straw crown to the church ceremony.13 They were also only permitted a single table of guests and were not allowed to dance or demonstrate any physical affection at the post-wedding celebration.14 In the most severe instances, the groom might be forced to spend two weeks sequestered in a tower and the bride two weeks in the stockade, depending on the magnitude of the scandal.15

  Luther also insisted that marriages of minors that took place without parental approval were considered “invalid in the eyes of God and all legal tradition.”16 “Who would approve my action if after I had reared my daughter with so much expense and effort, care and danger, zeal and toil, and had risked my whole life with body and goods for so many years, she should receive no better care than if she were a cow of mine that had strayed into the forest where any wolf might devour it?” Luther wrote in 1530 in On Marriage Matters. “Every reasonable person must concede, I say, that this is violence and injustice which could be easily avoided if one prohibited secret engagements.”17 Luther’s emphatic statements on the necessity of parental consent make one point very clear: for him, marriage was not only an issue of filial duty, but of familial property and power as well.18

  Luther’s reforms were effective. Couples who were required to meet with a priest, publicly announce their engagement in advance, receive their parents’ blessing, avoid engaging in premarital sex, and be married in the presence of family and friends in an official church ceremony were much more likely to take their vows seriously and keep them. Within ten years of Luther’s reforms, the number of contested marriages was dramatically reduced.

  Be Fruitful and Multiply

  Luther’s second major contention with marriage was related to what he considered the spiritual dangers of celibacy. Time and time again he argued that because human beings are innately lustful as a result of Adam and Eve’s fall, forced celibacy could only lead to eventual sexual sin (except in the rarest of cases in which God had actually blessed a person with the gift of celibacy).

  Luther attacked clerical vows of celibacy on two grounds, both biblical. First, he argued, God ordained marriage when he created Eve out of Adam’s rib and brought her to him to assuage his loneliness. This, Luther concluded, constituted the first wedding (although it was not enough to qualify marriage as a sacrament). “For it was not by accident that Almighty God instituted the estate of matrimony only for man and above all animals,” he wrote in his 1519 Sermon on the Estate of Marriage. “To the other animals God says quite simply, ‘Be fruitful and multiply.’ But in the case of Adam, God creates for him a unique, special kind of wife out of his own flesh. He brings her to him, he gives her to him, and Adam agrees to accept her. Therefore, that is what marriage is.”19 In Luther’s view, God intentionally differentiated between the general command he gave animals to be fruitful and multiply, and his act of creating a specific partner for Adam with whom Adam could share his life.

  Second, in order to ensure the continuation of the human race, God gave Adam and Eve, and their progeny down through the ages, a desire that found no other release than through sexual intimacy. “For this word which God speaks, ‘Be fruitful and multiply,’ is more than a command, namely, a divine ordinance which it is not our prerogative to hinder or ignore,” wrote Luther in 1522. “Rather, it is just as necessary as the fact that I am a man, and more necessary than sleeping and waking, eating and drinking, and emptying the bowels and bladder. It is a nature and disposition just as innate as the organs involved in it. And wherever men try to resist this, it remains irresistible nonetheless and goes its way through fornication, adultery, and secret sins, for this is a matter of nature and not of choice.”20

  Sex was absolutely necessary and unavoidable, Luther argued—a fact of nature and a gift given to human beings by God himself. He found scriptural support for this view in Genesis 2:18, and because this passage was so critical to his theology, he made multiple attempts to translate it into the clearest, most comprehensible German possible. He ultimately settled on this translation: “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make an help meet for him.”21 In 1525 he wrote, “This is the Word of God, by virtue of which the passionate, natural inclination toward woman is created and maintained. It may not be prevented by vow and law. For it is God’s work and Word.”22

  Sexuality as Divinely Ordained

  Celibacy had long been esteemed by the Roman Catholic Church as the highest, most pure state. The next best option for those who couldn’t achieve a celibate state was marriage, but the Church maintained that sexual intercourse even within marriage was permissible only for the purpose of procreation. Sex for the purpose of pleasure was a sin, though only a minor one if procreation had not been intentionally prevented.23

  According to fourth-century theologian Augustine, marriage was not equally sanctified by God like complete sexual abstinence was. Although Augustine considered marriage a satisfactory cure for lust, he couldn’t quite bring himself to view sex within marriage as entirely sinless and suggested that it could be atoned for by almsgiving and other good works.24 Theologians Jerome and Ambrose took Augustine’s views even further, exalting “the celibate state over the necessary, worldly compromise of marriage.”25 “Any man who loves his wife excessively is an adulterer,” warned Jerome. “Marriages fill the earth; virginity [fills] heaven.”26 Married men and women occupied the second tier, far below the holier, more pure status of celibates. “Let married women take their pride in coming next after virgins,” wrote Jerome.27

  Luther was raised on this theology. “When I was a boy, the wicked and impure practice of celibacy had made marriage so disreputable that I believed I could not even think about the life of married people without sinning,” he wrote in his Lectures on Genesis. “Everybody was fully persuaded that anyone who intended to lead a holy life acceptable to God could not get married but had to live as a celibate and take the vow of celibacy.”28 But as he dug into Scripture, he grew more and more appalled by this theology. “Whoever is ashamed of marriage is also ashamed of being and being
called human and tries to improve on what God has made,” he claimed.29 For Luther, human sexuality was divinely ordained. God created the body to function in specific ways, Luther argued, and to interrupt or prohibit that process was wrong.

  “What made Luther’s theology so vivid and intelligible was not the outer rhetoric, but the connection of the Word of God with corporeality,” says biographer Heiko Oberman.30 Nature will persevere, in spite of man’s efforts to intervene, Luther argued. “Nature does not cease to do its work when there is involuntary chastity. The flesh goes on creating seed just as God created it to do,” Luther wrote with his characteristic candor in 1522. “To put it bluntly for the sake of those who suffer miserably: if it does not flow into flesh it will flow into the shirt.”31

  Without an outlet, natural human sexual urges become lust, Luther insisted, which is dangerous for the body. Luther agreed with the common medical theories at the time, which purported that restraining the natural sexual drive caused the body to become poisoned and thus “unhealthy, enervated, sweaty, and foul-smelling. . . . Unless there is terrific hunger or immense labor or the supreme grace,” Luther wrote, “the body cannot take it; it necessarily becomes unhealthy and sickly.”32 This is why barren women are sick and weak, Luther reasoned, while those who are fruitful are “healthier, cleaner, and happier.”33

  Furthermore, he argued, lust was dangerous for the spirit and the soul. As historian David M. Whitford notes, when Luther used the word lust, he connected it with the German word Anfechtung, which connoted “more than temptation: it is a powerful, even existential force that can overwhelm a person. It is satanic in origin and destructive to the soul.”34 In fact, Luther considered lust so dangerous, he proposed some shockingly radical solutions to address it. For instance, he advocated divorce in cases of impotence, adultery, desertion, absolute incompatibility, or the refusal of a spouse to engage in sex. Reconciliation was always preferable, but if it wasn’t possible, Luther insisted the innocent party should be granted a divorce with the right to remarry.35

  In extreme instances he even advocated bigamy, as in the infamous case of Philip of Hesse. Philip was married to Christina, the daughter of Duke George of Saxony, but he didn’t care for her. He didn’t like her breath, the look of her face, the smell of her body, or anything else about her (except for the fact that she bore him several children).36 Luther suggested to the womanizing Philip that instead of engaging in multiple adulterous relationships, he should marry his seventeen-year-old girlfriend Margarethe and be content with two wives. Luther reasoned that because bigamy was notorious in the Old Testament and not outright prohibited in the New Testament, it was therefore acceptable in rare cases, although he advised Philip to keep his second marriage a secret. When the scandal broke, people were shocked to discover that Luther had condoned the second marriage, but he maintained his radical view, insisting that in rare and extreme cases, necessity demanded an unorthodox solution.

  No Intention of Marrying

  Luther’s views were crystal clear. Marriage should not be seen as less sacred than celibacy, and married couples should not be considered less holy or less spiritually pure than monks, nuns, priests, and other celibate clerics. Furthermore, marriage and sexual relations within marriage were not only imperative against the sin of lust, but also divinely ordained, a gift from God to be honored and esteemed.

  Yet for all his verbosity on the subject of marriage, Luther was obviously reluctant to take the plunge into matrimony himself. While in exile in Wartburg Castle, when he learned that several former monks and nuns were marrying, he reportedly exclaimed, “Will our Wittenbergs give wives even to monks? They wouldn’t give one to me.”37 Later, in a letter written to Spalatin in November 1524, he claimed, “According to my present frame of mind I have no intention of marrying, not that I am insensible to the emotions of the flesh, being neither wood nor stone, but because I have no desire to, and daily expect to die a heretic’s death.”38 It wasn’t that he didn’t experience physical desire—“emotions of the flesh”—he assured his friend, but more that he was simply not interested in marrying. Plus, he reasoned, marriage for a wanted man in danger of being burned at the stake for heresy was far too risky; the woman who married him would likely end up a widow.

  Five months later Luther penned another letter to Spalatin, convincing his friend to marry, while at the same time still attempting to explain why he himself hadn’t married. “I do not want you to wonder that a famous lover like me does not marry,” he wrote, tongue-in-cheek. “It is rather strange that I, who so often write about matrimony and get mixed up with women, have not yet turned into a woman, to say nothing of not having married one.”39 In that same letter Luther joked about having “three wives simultaneously, and loved them so much I have lost two that are taking other husbands; the third I can hardly keep with my left arm, and she, too, will probably be snatched away from me.”40 Historians surmise that Luther was referring to three nuns who had caught his attention, the third of which was Katharina, but his joking tone leads one to question whether he had ever seriously considered marrying any of them at all.

  Luther was not amused when he heard about Katharina’s refusal to marry Kaspar Glatz. In fact, her pickiness downright infuriated him, especially in light of her limited opportunities. He accused Katharina of being influenced by her aristocratic pride and snobbery.41 Von Amsdorf, on the other hand, sided with Katharina: “What the devil are you doing, trying to coax and force the good Kate to marry that old cheapskate whom she neither desires nor considers with all her heart as husband?” he challenged his friend.42 Luther responded with exasperation: “What devil would want to have her, then? If she does not like him, she may have to wait a good while for another one!”43

  Clearly Luther did not seriously consider himself a viable candidate for Katharina’s hand, regardless of the fact that von Amsdorf had undoubtedly told him about her bold marriage proposition. In fact, it’s likely Luther had not seriously considered marrying at all up to this point, in spite of the marriage reforms he had so passionately endorsed, as well as his vocal opinions about clerical celibacy and his treatises on the purpose and benefits of marriage in general. Luther, it seems, was in favor of marriage generally, but much less enchanted with the prospect of marrying himself.

  10

  Tying the Knot

  Luther wasn’t exaggerating when he claimed that at any moment he could be hunted down, captured, and burned at the stake. Branded a heretic and known across the land as a dissenter, execution was a very real threat and had been the unfortunate fate of many reformers before him.

  Yet one wonders if this was truly the reason behind Luther’s reluctance to marry. Perhaps, after forty-two years as a bachelor, he was simply accustomed to and comfortable with living alone. Maybe he considered how marriage might compromise his authority or even distract him from his primary work. Luther was used to being on his own and answering only to himself, and while sixteenth-century marriages certainly were not equitable by modern-day standards, at the very least, as a married man, Luther would have to consider another’s opinions, thoughts, and will in addition to his own. Part of him might also have secretly seen himself—or at least wanted to see himself—as one of those unique men who could transcend the carnal, a man in whom God had bestowed the rare gift of true chastity. Or perhaps Katharina von Bora herself was the real stumbling stone. After all, Luther had already tried to marry her off to two other men, first to Hieronymus Baumgartner, who had jilted her, and most recently to Kaspar Glatz, whom Katharina had emphatically refused. Clearly his preference was for Katharina to marry someone else.

  It Pleased God

  A number of factors ultimately impacted Luther’s decision to marry Katharina, the first of which was his desire to please his father. Luther had carried his father’s disappointment with him for years. Offering Hans a grandchild was a way to make amends. During a visit to Mansfeld in the spring of 1525, Luther confided his thoughts about marriage to his f
ather, and Hans urged his son to marry so that he could eventually provide him with a grandchild.1

  A second factor was Luther’s regret over the Peasants’ War, for which he felt at least partially responsible. Sparked by Luther’s reforms, more than 100,000 of the 300,000 peasant insurgents involved in the revolt were killed during the spring and summer of 1525, right around the time Luther was considering marriage.2 In a letter to John Rühel, a councilor to Count Albrecht of Mansfeld, on May 4, 1525, Luther declared that he would marry Katharina when he returned home to “spite the devil,” whom he blamed for provoking the peasants to revolt.3 Later Luther claimed his marriage would “please his father, rile the pope, cause the angels to laugh and the devils to weep.”4

  Politics were a factor in his decision as well. In a June 1525 letter Luther encouraged the archbishop, Albrecht von Mainz, to marry and later declared, “If my marrying will strengthen him, I am ready. I believe in marriage.”5 Luther knew his reforms would take hold much more quickly if church officials like von Mainz married. He was willing to serve as an example to others in order that they might be encouraged to follow in his radical footsteps.

  “[I did this] to silence the evil mouths which are so used to complaining about me. For I still hope to live for a little while,” Luther wrote in a letter to von Amsdorf, inviting him to the wedding banquet. “In addition, I also did not want to reject this unique [opportunity to obey] my father’s wish for progeny, which he so often expressed.”6 At the same time, he added, he wanted to make a statement, to practice what he preached and to serve as an example to others who might feel intimidated or afraid to take such a bold step, despite the fact that God willed it.7 In the same letter Luther admitted that he was neither romantically nor physically attracted to Katharina, though he cared about her. “For I feel neither passionate love nor burning for my spouse,” he confessed, “but I cherish her.”8 His reasoning sounds rational and his explanation makes sense, yet at the same time one senses a deeper reason behind his decision to marry Katharina—a reason Luther himself may not have realized until much later.