It’s no surprise that Luther was also very involved in his children’s spiritual growth. In fact, his Small Catechism, which was published in 1529 and is still used in Lutheran youth education and confirmation classes today, was compiled as a result of the religious instruction he led in his own home. “When I get up in the morning, I pray with the children the Ten Commandments, the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and then some psalm,” he said in a sermon in 1530.33 He was the first to admit, “Here one forever remains a learner. Though I am a great doctor, I haven’t yet progressed beyond the instruction of children.”34 Thus, Luther learned alongside his children, acknowledging that he still prayed the same prayers Hans and Lena did.35
Teaching his children to commit prayers, hymns, and psalms to memory was important to Luther because he believed ambiguity inevitably led to doubt.36 “The delicate and untouched minds [of children],” he wrote to Nikolaus von Amsdorf in 1534, “must be shaped by simple, necessary, and undoubted doctrines which they can accept as certain truths. Before a beginner can learn anything, he must believe.”37 Repetition of prayers and Scripture, he believed, cemented one’s faith. On Sundays he also led devotions with his family and visitors staying at the Black Cloister, which were later recorded, compiled, and published in 1544 as Luther’s House Postil.38 Later, when the children were older, they each read a few verses aloud from the Bible before every meal.
Luther understood parenting as nothing less than a holy calling. “The greatest good in married life, that which makes all suffering and labor worthwhile, is that God grants offspring and commands that they be brought up to worship and serve Him,” he wrote in 1522, before he was married or had children of his own. “In all the world this is the noblest and most precious work, because to God there can be nothing dearer than the salvation of souls.”39 Luther believed the parent should be apostle, bishop, and priest to the child, and he considered there no greater or nobler authority on earth than that of parents over their children.40 Yet the comments and stories sprinkled throughout Table Talk, the tender letters Luther penned to his wife, and the portraits depicting Luther and his family also reveal something obvious yet not often mentioned: Luther and Katharina had fun with their kids and enjoyed spending time with them. They delighted in their children’s antics and their innocent comments and expressions. Love and joy were obviously abundant in the Luther household. Luther and Katharina deeply loved each of their children, and as we will see in the next chapter, there was no greater testament of that love than the depth of their grief.
16
In the Valley of the Shadow of Death
On the morning of September 20, 1542, Katharina awoke from a lovely dream. Later, when she told Melanchthon she had dreamt that two handsome young men had arrived at their home to take her daughter Magdalena to a wedding, he was deeply disturbed, but he didn’t dare tell Katharina what he believed the dream meant. He feared the two handsome young men were angels who had descended to whisk the gravely ill Lena away to be united with Jesus in the kingdom of heaven.
The Spirit Is Willing, but the Flesh Is Weak
As he sat by his dying thirteen-year-old daughter, Luther vacillated, one moment surrendering to God’s will, the next moment begging for his mercy. “I love her very much,” he prayed. “But if it is thy will to take her, dear God, I shall be glad to know that she is with thee.”1 Later, weeping inconsolably at Magdalena’s bedside, he admitted, “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. I love her very much. I’m angry with myself that I am unable to rejoice from my heart and be thankful to God.”2 He acknowledged that he tried to sing a little and offer thanks to God, though the effort felt forced.
Luther and Katharina considered Magdalena a gift from God following the loss of their firstborn daughter. Magdalena was born less than a year after Elizabeth’s death, and the Luthers struggled to comprehend why and how God could now take this precious daughter from them too. “I’d like to keep my dear daughter because I love her very much, if only our Lord God would let me,” Luther lamented. “However, his will be done! Truly nothing better can happen to her, nothing better.”3
Luther repeated this consolation again and again, reminding and perhaps trying to convince both Katharina and himself that their daughter’s suffering and their grief was brief compared to the incomprehensible joy and peace of eternal life. When Katharina was overcome with weeping, Luther reminded her that their daughter was going to heaven: “Think where she’s going. She’ll get along all right. Flesh is flesh, spirit is spirit.”4 Yet it’s clear from his grief-laced words that in the face of such devastating loss, Luther struggled to trust his own faith. “Dear Magdalene, my little daughter,” he said, as he kneeled at her bedside, “You would be glad to stay here with me, your father. Are you also glad to go to your Father in heaven?”5 At Magdalena’s innocent, trusting answer—“Yes, dear Father, as God wills”—Luther was forced to turn away in anguish, unable to look his daughter in the eyes.6
Luther’s only hope was that the arrival of her favorite brother, Hans, would rally her and in some way raise her from the depths of sickness. But it was no use. Despite the fact that Hans kept a constant vigil by his sister’s bed from the moment he arrived home from boarding school, four days later, on September 20, 1542—the same day Katharina awoke from her startling dream—Magdalena died as Luther held her in his arms. At the moment of her death, he wept bitterly, beseeching God aloud to save her. Wittenberg student Caspar Heydenreich, who described the deathbed scene in his Table Talk notes, observed that although Katharina was in the room when her daughter died, her grief prevented her from keeping vigil at Lena’s bedside.7 Katharina was simply too overcome to gather herself together. She couldn’t bear to witness the passing of her beloved daughter.
Magdalena Luther was barely a teenager. Katharina and Luther, who had already lost their eight-month-old daughter Elizabeth fourteen years before, were nearly destroyed by grief.
The Honorable Funeral
Prior to the Reformation, the rituals surrounding death—from the ministration of last rites and the petitioning of the saints to the requiem Mass and the purchase of indulgences—played a big part in what the Church saw as its role in the ushering of souls into salvation. As historian Diarmaid MacCulloch observes, the medieval church claimed “to be able to offer living humanity an active part in directing the fate of the dead.”8 Luther’s affirmation of justification by faith alone, however, absolutely denied the involvement of anything or anyone—common man, priest, saint, or otherwise—in the salvation of a soul. Reformers believed that the spiritual relationship between two people was severed at the moment of death. Prayers for the dead, a central part of the Christian notion of salvation since the second century, were made obsolete by the Lutheran doctrine of salvation by faith alone. The “middle place” of purgatory was abolished, and the notion that the living could intercede on a soul’s behalf, either to God himself or to the saints, was denounced. Salvation was determined by God and God alone and was dependent not on intercessory prayers or the number of indulgences purchased by loved ones, but simply on an individual’s faith. “Everyone must fight his own battle with death by himself, alone,” Luther preached in Wittenberg in 1522.9
This is why the deathbed statement of faith became so critical to early Protestants. Without the presence of a priest to minister last rites and declare the soul absolved of sin, and without the aid of the living to pray a wayward soul to salvation, it was up to the dying person to repent and acknowledge belief in God once and for all. Thus Luther’s pointed question to his dying daughter—“Are you glad to go to your Father in heaven?”—and her concise answer, “Yes, as God wills it.” Both Luther and Magdalena were following standard Reformation deathbed protocol. Knowing and believing that his young daughter’s salvation was based on her faith while she lived, his question offered her the opportunity to state her convictions while she still had the chance. Though obviously distraught by this exchange, Luther and Katharina would have been
comforted and relieved by Magdalena’s declaration of faith. It was seen as a bad omen if a dying person experienced a particularly anxious or painful death or slipped into unconsciousness before making a final declaration of faith.
Early reformers stripped the funeral ritual down to its simplest form in order to deemphasize human involvement in a soul’s journey to salvation. Burials were often held without clergy present and with little ceremony and were sometimes even conducted after dark, although nocturnal burials were usually reserved for those who died in disgrace, such as by suicide.10 Likewise the tradition of the wake, or night watch, in which loved ones kept vigil next to the body of the deceased, was also abolished. The wake was traditionally a time for intercessory prayers for the dead; reformers’ attempts to eradicate the wake sought to separate the bodies of the dead from the living.11 By 1528 Saxony had done away with nocturnal burials, but several cities in Germany continued to relocate cemeteries outside the city walls to symbolize the distinct separation between the living and the dead.12
As the Reformation progressed, however, the funeral ritual began to be utilized as a way to remind the living of their own mortality. “For it is meet and right that we should conduct these funerals with proper decorum in order to honour and praise that joyous article of our faith, namely, the resurrection of the dead, and in order to defy Death, that terrible foe who so shamefully and in so many horrible ways goes on to devour us,” wrote Luther.13 The funeral procession, the tolling of the church and city bells, the hymns, and the burial in the communal cemetery were all elements of what was called “the honorable funeral” and were orchestrated with a dual purpose: to honor the dead and to remind the living of their mortality in order that they adequately prepare for their own deaths. “All [this] is done to spite the stinking and shameful death and to praise and confess the resurrection of the dead, in order to console those weak in faith and the sorrowful,” Luther wrote.14
“I Sent a Saint to Heaven”
As they prepared for their daughter’s funeral, Luther and Katharina struggled to accept that their precious daughter was indeed gone. Luther in particular had difficulty reconciling his immeasurable suffering with Lena’s state of rest. He was especially disturbed to discover that his daughter’s coffin was too small to accommodate her body. “The little bed is too small for her,” he cried out, as he and Katharina prepared Magdalena’s corpse for burial.15 “The flesh doesn’t take kindly to this,” he observed. “The separation [caused by death] troubles me above measure. It’s strange to know that she is surely at peace and that she is well off there, very well off, and yet to grieve so much!”16 We don’t get many details about Magdalena’s funeral, but those that were shared, like the ill-fitting coffin, take one’s breath away.
We can hardly imagine the parents’ grief as they gazed at Lena’s face. As he lowered his daughter’s body into the coffin, Luther said, “You dear little Lena! How well it has turned out for you!”17 Gazing at her young face one last time, he added, “Ah, dear child, to think that you must be raised up and will shine like the stars, yes, like the sun!”18
Funerals typically took place quickly, often on the same day as a person’s death, or at most, the day following. The community was called together for the ritual of the honorable burial by the ringing of the church bell. Then, along with the pastor, the local schoolmaster and school choir led the procession of mourners in the singing of hymns as they walked to the cemetery. The use of coffins was rare even in the sixteenth century; typically the body of the deceased was laid directly on a bier and covered with a black or white shroud.19 But we know from Luther’s comments that Magdalena’s body was likely wrapped in a shroud and laid in a coffin. The casket may have had a window carved into the lid which could be opened and shut as the mourners wished while they paid their respects. Katharina most likely wore a covering of white linen over her face as she walked to the cemetery, Luther a covering of black linen. As they walked with the other mourners behind the coffin in the funeral procession, they would have been guided by a servant, a family member, or a friend. At the cemetery, the bereaved may have laid rosemary, bay leaves, or other evergreens on the coffin to symbolize the soul’s immortality.20
Detailed city ordinances cited specific funeral rituals, depending on the social class of the deceased. For example, bells were not typically rung for the death of a commoner; the body was simply accompanied by “the nearest neighbours to the grave.”21 When a member of the Burgher, or middle class, died, the family was instructed to summon the schoolmaster and the school choir, but a pastor was not present and the bells were not rung. When someone of “the distinguished people” died, the body was buried with a full procession, including the pastor, the schoolmaster and school choir, and the family and townspeople, and the “great bells” (i.e., the city bells, as opposed to the church bells) were tolled.22 It was the number of bell tolls, or lack thereof, which signified the social status of the deceased. Given Luther’s status, Magdalena’s funeral was likely more elaborate and may have included bell tolls, a formal procession, and a ceremony, including a sermon, either at the church or at the cemetery preceding the burial.
Luther seemed to rally a bit at the funeral as he focused his attention on consoling the other mourners, reminding them that he had sent a living saint to heaven and acknowledging that his daughter was now safe from bodily suffering.23 He also couldn’t resist making a statement against the Catholic practice of the intercessory Mass. As the mourners sang the verse from Psalm 79, “Lord, remember not against us former iniquities,” Luther interrupted, “O Lord, Lord, Lord, not only former iniquities but also present ones. . . . For fifteen years I read mass and conducted the abominations of the mass.”24 Luther acknowledged that he, too, had done his part in the recitation of intercessory Masses, a ritual he now considered an “abomination.”
As was typical of the time, the mourners returned to the Black Cloister for a meal following the funeral. Again, Luther maintained his stoic reserve, stating matter-of-factly, “My daughter is now fitted out in body and soul. We know that it should and must be so, for we are altogether certain about eternal life.”25 Yet it’s clear from his subsequent comments about Magdalena’s death that Luther was merely putting on a brave face for the benefit of his fellow mourners. He may have yearned to believe the statements of faith he uttered so confidently at his daughter’s funeral, but the truth was, his words were part of the funeral rhetoric of the time, words he felt obligated to utter but couldn’t quite embrace himself. Luther didn’t handle the loss well. The sting of Magdalena’s death seared for months and even years after, and for a time threatened to undermine Luther’s personal faith.
Grief in Their Hearts
In the wake of her daughter’s death, Katharina found herself uneasy at the thought of her oldest son, Hans, returning to boarding school in Torgau, thirty-one miles away. When Hans departed, she urged him to return home immediately if he began to feel unwell. Perhaps Katharina was nervous that yet another child would be taken from her before his time. Perhaps she was simply reluctant to part with her firstborn so soon after such a devastating loss. At any rate, just three months later, Hans found himself consumed with homesickness and grief while away at school and wrote to his mother requesting to come home. Luther, however, intervened.
“I readily believe that my son turned soft through the words of his mother, in addition to mourning over his sister’s death,” Luther wrote to Hans’s teacher, Marcus Crodel. “Order him, therefore, to curb that womanish feeling, to get accustomed to enduring evil, and to not indulge in that childlike weakness. For this is the reason that he has been sent away, namely, that he learn something and become hardened.”26 Luther followed up with a tough-love letter to Hans himself the next day. “You see to it that you overcome those tears like a man, so that you do not cause your Mother additional pain and worry, for she worries easily and becomes anxious,” Luther wrote. “Mother was unable to write, and also thought it unnecessary. She says al
l that she said to you (that you should return if by chance you feel poorly), was meant to refer to an illness. . . . In addition she wishes you to put aside this mourning so that you may study in a happy and peaceful frame of mind.”27
Despite their severity, Luther undoubtedly intended his words to help his son, as a means of jolting him out of the grief in which he was mired. Luther was also clearly worried about Katharina, whom he implied was suffering from anxiety; thus his “shape up and get yourself together” directive to Hans was issued as a means to protect his grief-stricken wife from further suffering. We also know that a hardened response to death was both appropriate social etiquette for the time and considered a sign of a person’s faith. In the sixteenth century, “outward insensitivity to death, whether that of a child or an adult, was considered a moral and religious obligation, behavior every Christian should strive to achieve,” German history and Reformation scholar Steven Ozment observes.28 Yet in his strongly voiced words to his son, we can also infer the depth of Luther’s own sorrow and his struggle to wrestle with his own overwhelming grief and splintering faith. It’s almost as if, in speaking so harshly to his son, Luther was in fact speaking to himself.
Katharina and Martin Luther Page 20
