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Katharina von Bora, wife of Protestant reformer Martin Luther, was no passive
onlooker, as she's portrayed in this engraving. She was instead the savvy
manager of the family farm (and brewery) and Luther's trusted advisor.

Photograph from ullstein bild via Getty Images
Please be respectful of copyright. Unauthorized use is prohibited.

 * News




HOW A RUNAWAY NUN HELPED AN OUTLAW MONK CHANGE THE WORLD

Martin Luther's marriage to Katharina von Bora scandalized their
contemporaries—and formed a partnership that shaped the course of history.


ByAndrew Curry
Published October 20, 2017
• 8 min read
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In terms of marriage prospects, Martin Luther wasn’t necessarily a natural pick.
The middle-aged theology professor was known to be loud, argumentative, and
judgmental. He was always on the road, came from a common family, and didn’t
have enough money to buy a wedding ring.

Oh, and the pope himself had compared the German theologian to a wild boar,
declared him a heretic, and ordered all of his writings burned.

But a noblewoman and former nun named Katharina von Bora saw something in the
42-year-old preacher that captivated her. When the couple married in 1525, it
was a scandal that reverberated across Europe—and the beginning of a partnership
that lasted more than two decades and shaped the course of history. (Read "How
Martin Luther Started a Religious Revolution.")

October 31 marks 500 years since Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of a
Wittenberg church, an act that secured his place in history. But historians say
his later career—and the Reformation movement he led —might have looked very
different if not for his marriage to von Bora.

4:12


History 101: The Protestant Reformation

Who was Martin Luther? What is the Reformation and why does it matter? Roughly
500 years ago, Luther is said to have nailed his 95 Theses on the door of the
Castle Church in Germany. With the help of the printing press, this 16th century
protest against corruption in t...Read MoreRead More


Luther’s bride was no ordinary woman, particularly for the 16th century. In
1504, at the age of five, von Bora—born to impoverished German nobility—was
shipped off to a convent. She spent most of her early life secluded in a
cloister in Nimbschen, not far from Leipzig, where she learned to read, write,
speak Latin, and sing. It’s possible she also learned to balance books, manage a
farm, and tend to the sick behind the cloister’s walls.

At some point, copies of Luther’s fiery pamphlets attacking celibacy and
monastic orders may have inspired Katharina and others to reject their vows and
leave the cloister. Somehow, a group of Nimbschen nuns smuggled a message to the
outside world. Luther worked with a local merchant to engineer a daring
nighttime rescue at a time when removing a nun from a cloister was an offense
punishable by death. On April 7, 1523, the women were smuggled out of Nimbschen
by a merchant delivering herring.

Once the escapees arrived in Wittenberg, they were married off to eligible
bachelors within months—all except an older nun who found work as a school
headmistress, and von Bora, who turned down several suitors and ultimately
refused to marry anyone but Luther. Reluctant at first, Luther ultimately
decided to marry. “I have made the angels laugh and the devils weep,” he wrote
of his decision.

Portrait of Katharina von Bora painted in 1529 by the Luthers' close friend
Lucas Cranach the Elder.

Photograph from DeAgostini, Getty Images
Please be respectful of copyright. Unauthorized use is prohibited.

At the time, Luther’s marriage was a scandal on many levels: He was a monk who
had broken his vows, married to a nun who had broken hers. As Luther continued
his career as a theologian and preacher, his marriage flouted centuries of
Catholic teaching about celibacy and the priesthood—and established married
clergy as a precedent for Reformation churches.



Predictably, Luther’s enemies seized on Katharina as a weak point, hoping that
by discrediting her they could undermine Luther’s credibility as a man of God.
She was called an alcoholic, money-grubbing, and a slut. Anti-Reformation
pamphleteers accused her of having children with Luther out of wedlock and
worse. Just the fact that she was a former nun was scandal enough.

“As soon as this former monk married a former nun, people took interest,” says
Gabriele Jancke, a historian at Freie University in Berlin. “The moment someone
left the cloister, they destroyed themselves, from the Catholic point of view.
It was as bad as being divorced.”

As Luther’s intellectual fame grew, some of his allies, uncomfortable with his
wife’s outsize presence, referred to her as “Doctorissa” in their letters –
intended as a mean-spirited dig at both Katharina and her husband. Others tried
to needle Luther by suggesting that some of his ideas were actually Katharina’s.

“Women at the time were supposed to be seen and not heard,” says Martin Treu, a
historian at the Luther Society in Wittenberg and author of a von Bora
biography. “Von Bora was seen as self-confident, strong-willed, and independent,
which were all negative attributes for women at the time.”

The Luthers’ 21-year marriage was an arrangement unusual for their era. While
Luther spent his time teaching, preaching, and writing, Katharina worked
tirelessly to keep the family business running. After marrying Luther, Katharina
turned a three-story former monastery building into the 16th-century equivalent
of a hotel, dormitory, and conference center.

While local students and visiting professors boarded in the rooms upstairs,
paying top rates for access to Luther’s ideas and prestige, Katharina invested
the income in a growing portfolio that eventually included a large farm,
multiple gardens, fish ponds, and fruit orchards. Letters and account books show
the Luthers owned more cows and pigs than anyone in Wittenberg, a town of
several thousand at the time. On top of all that, Katharina ran a household
brewery that produced 8,800 pints of ale each year.



Martin Luther was 50 years old when Cranach painted this portrait in 1533.

Photograph from Fine Art Images, Heritage Images, Getty Images
Please be respectful of copyright. Unauthorized use is prohibited.

Luther sometimes referred to his wife as Wittenberg’s “morning star,” up earlier
than anyone else in town to manage a staff of nearly a dozen servants, look
after their six children, and manage the equivalent of a mid-sized company. (He
also called her “Lord Katie” in some of the 21 surviving letters he wrote to
her.) Luther, meanwhile, was free to travel, teach, write, and preach. “He
wasn’t so involved in daily affairs,” says Jancke. “He was perfectly happy when
his wife took over.”

By subtracting the costs of running the household from what Katharina charged
boarders and guests, historians suggest the runaway nun brought in as much money
from her various enterprises as her husband did teaching at the local
university. “In the cloister, she was at the bottom of the hierarchy,” says
Jancke. “Marrying Luther made her the boss.”

As the Reformation movement spread across Europe, the house that Katharina ran
became its epicenter. After dinner, Luther, Katharina, and select guests
discussed theology and politics in Latin, hammering out the intellectual
framework of the Reformation. Her presence at Luther’s “table talks” was
unusual. Women were usually excluded from such discussions, and contemporaries
remarked on her presence disapprovingly. Sabine Kramer, a historian and Lutheran
minister who wrote her doctoral dissertation on von Bora, says when transcripts
of the debates were edited and published decades later, many of her
contributions were removed, or attributed to men.



Remarkably, Luther’s last will made Katharina his sole inheritor, and named her
guardian of their children. (Treu says the move was unheard of at the time, and
ultimately ruled illegal by incredulous judges after his death in 1546.) While
their marriage had sharply defined roles that would seem foreign to modern
feminists, “she was an equal partner,” says Treu.

Kramer says von Bora’s story is a reminder that the Reformation wasn’t a one-man
project.

“Luther played his role in the Reformation, but it’s important to remember that
she played hers too,” says Kramer. “There wouldn’t have been table talks if she
hadn’t provided the table.”

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