Reformation 500: Marriage or Peasants’ Rebellion
The Year of Our Lord 1525 was a monumental and pivotal year for the Lutheran Reformation. We have already seen how Luther was engaging the non-Lutheran reformers on the Lord’s Supper, as he would continue to do for the following three years especially. We will hear more about the Peasants’ Revolt, a violent rebellion against the power and authority being exercised, often unjustly, by the nobility and rulers in civil government. On May 5, 1525, Luther’s great protector and price, Frederick the Wise, died and was succeeded by his brother John the Steadfast (1525-1532). During the war against the Peasants, on June 13, Luther got married. Toward the end of 1525, Luther wrote his greatest academic work, Bondage of the Will, his response in a public and written debate to the great humanist, Erasmus of Rotterdam. Luther had also been working at length to revise the Latin Mass into a truly German Divine Service, which was introduced to Wittenberg at Christmas. We’ll take up two of these events in this article: the death of Frederick and the marriage of Martin and Katy.
It is probable that Luther and the Elector Duke Frederick never met, despite their deep influence on each other and their communication through Spalatin, the Elector’s secretary. Frederick had protected his famous professor through all the early years of the Reformation. He forestalled the attacks and demands of the papacy and its army of theologians and judges. He obtained the opportunity for Luther to make his great confession before Emperor Charles V at the Imperial Diet at Worms in 1521. He had Luther “kidnapped” and taken to the Wartburg Castle in secret for protection after Luther was proclaimed a heretic and outlaw. When Luther returned to Wittenberg in March 1522, he continued to permit Luther’s teaching and reforms.
Frederick died May 5 after a lengthy illness. Before he died, he received the Lord’s Supper in both kinds for the first time, a sure evidence that he had embraced Luther’s Reformation doctrine. On May 10, when the body arrived in Wittenberg for funeral and burial, Luther preached on the resurrection from 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, “For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep” (verse 14). He also warned that Frederick’s death was a warning from God that the times were evil and that Christian’s — addressing especially the students at the University — should avoid the so-called “prophets” who were deceiving and misleading the people and bringing the danger of violence upon them. On May 15 thousands of rebelling peasants, under the leadership of one false “prophet” Thomas Müntzer, were slain in Thuringia by the army of the civil rulers.
Frederick was succeeded in office by his brother John the Steadfast, who became the new Saxon Prince and one of the seven Electors of the Empire. John worked personally and extensively with Luther in those critical years of 1525-1532. Under John’s rule, Luther and the Reformers made valuable changes to Wittenberg University, the structure and visitation of the congregations in Electoral Saxony, and the worship and daily life of the church. The Christian piety and faithfulness of Luther’s three Saxon lords (Frederick, John, and John Frederick) demonstrate the positive role that civil government can and should fulfill on behalf of the Church.
Katherine von Bora (born January 29, 1499) was brought to Wittenberg from the Benedictine cloister in Nimbschen in March 1523. She was the daughter of a minor nobleman. When her mother died, she was taken to the cloister to be educated, and took vows as a nun at the age of 16. When the 24-year-old Katherine arrived in Wittenberg, Luther immediately sought to find her a husband, and he almost succeeded in the following year. She was also willing to marry Luther’s good friend and fellow pastor, Nicholas von Amsdorf, but he remained a bachelor all his life. At age 26, when she married Luther, she was well past the normal age for a woman to get married.
Meanwhile, Luther’s friends also encouraged him to get married. He had long resisted the idea, not because he was opposed to marriage, but because he believed that his life would soon be shorted by a martyr’s death. In March 1525 he encouraged another pastor to marry, citing Genesis 2:18 and writing, “Put any reservations out of your mind, and go forward happily. Your body demands it and needs it. God wills it and compels it” (Brecht II.196). To another he wrote that no normal man should “wriggle out of being without a wife.”
In his travels in mid-April, 1525, Luther especially went to Mansfeld to visit his parents, who also urged him to marry and raise a family. Luther would later describe his marriage as an act of obedience to his parents. He began to make known that he intended to marry Katy. His marriage would be a confession of God’s Word and will. By his marriage he would spite the pope and the devil and give glory to God.
Having made up his mind, and in order to put an end to potential rumors, Luther moved quickly. He became legally engaged (or betrothed) on June 13, and contrary to custom, was immediately married that same day. He postponed the customary wedding feast till June 27, presumably to give time to invite and bring in the guests for the festive celebration. In his invitation to Leonard Koppe, the merchant who had arranged for Katy’s escape from the cloister in herring barrels, he wrote “that I have been entangled in the pigtails of my girl” (Brecht II.199f). When his friend Spalatin married later that year, he wrote and commended him to the dearest hugs and kisses on the marriage bed with this gratitude, “Lo, this being, the best little creation of God, has been given me by Christ, to whom be glory and honor!” (Brecht, II.200). Luther’s life was changed for the better, as he enjoyed a companion at table and awoke with a pair of pigtails on the pillow beside him.
Martin and Katherine brought no house, land, or possessions to their marriage. In fact, Martin was receiving no fixed salary when they married, though the new Elector remedied this problem with a modest salary later that year. The former Augustinian monastery (the Black Cloister) was given over to the Luthers as their parsonage, and it became some combination of guest hostel (or bed and breakfast), diner and pub for guests, dormitory for students, and hospital for the sick and elderly. It was not unusual for Katy to feed up to 25 people at mealtime. Katy and Martin housed and cared for some of the sick who were afflicted in the 1527 plague. After 1529 the Luthers also housed and raised the six children of his two sisters. Katy’s Aunt Magdalena was also a member of the household. God supplied the Luthers with both a vocation of service to others and the means to carry it out.
And though they both married late in life — Luther at 41 and Katy at 26 — God gave them six children. Hans, the oldest, was born a year after their wedding. Elizabeth, the second-born, died in infancy (December 1527 to August 1528). Magdalena, the third-born (1529), died in youth. Martin (1531), Paul (1533), and Margaret (1534) followed. Katy suffered a miscarriage early 1540. Luther was 51 and Katy 35 when their last child was born. The example Luther gave in his work with his earthly ruler and in his marriage and domestic life reinforced and made applicable in a practical way the doctrine he was teaching in his preaching, lectures, and writing. He showed how Christians can appeal to civil government to govern in a way that acknowledges the true God and enables the Church to carry out God’s Word. In his home he demonstrated the great blessings of marriage and set the pattern for the Lutheran parsonage and the Christian household.