Martin Luther

Luther Marries

In April 1523 Luther helped twelve nuns escape from a convent in a nearby town. It was rather an extraordinary stunt and included having the ladies smuggled out by hiding in herring barrels. Every effort was made to find a suitable home for each of the women, and this was done for eleven out of the twelve. Katharina von Bora, however, had neither family connections nor a likely prospect in town. Over the next year a she considered two or three possibilities, but none worked out. She made it plain that she wanted to marry Martin Luther himself.

For his part, Luther at first resisted because he'd been excommunicated from the Church. This has always struck me and I consider it evidence that despite the reformer's vitriolic condemnation of the papacy, despite having clearly broken with the Catholic Church by 1524, and despite having been declared an enemy of the Empire as well, Luther still took his excommunication seriously enough to consider it an impediment to marriage. Or, at least, that he recognized that in society at large it would be a negative. Eventually, however, he was persuaded and evidently came to look forward to the event.

Luther and Katharina were married on 13 June 1525. They had a long and happy marriage and Luther many times praised his wife's virtues. They seem to have formed a good partnership, with each spouse taking on certain duties. "Katy," as he affectionately called her, ran the Luther household and was an active participant in the famous "table talk" discussions that took place among friends and visitors after an evening meal at the Luther home. They had six children, two of whom died in childhood.

Not only Luther's act of marriage, but also the way his household ran, was a model to many other reformers. As for the Catholic Church, it was one more lurid example of how badly astray people could go when they left the guiding hand of Mother Church. After all, smuggling nuns out of a convent and then marrying them? Scandalous!