Luther and Marriage
by Major JoAnn Shade
In the second verse of “The Farmer in the
Dell,” children heartily sing, “The farmer takes a wife.” Such
was the case for Martin Luther, monk, reformer, and yes, also
farmer. As a member of a religious order as well as a
long-time theology chair at the University of Wittenberg,
Luther and his fellow religious were expected to remain
unmarried. After he was excommunicated, he did not hold his
fellow reformers to their previous vows of celibacy, but he
had no plans of his own to marry. Only six months before he
“took his wife,” he had written to a friend, “I shall never
take a wife, as I feel at present. Not that I am insensible to
my flesh or sex (for I am neither wood nor stone), but my mind
is averse to wedlock because I daily expect the death of a
heretic.”
Yet eight years after he presented his
ninety-five theses to his bishop, thus firing the first volley
of the Protestant Reformation, the forty-six-year-old Martin
Luther took one of the women he had helped liberate from the
monastery of Marienthron as his bride. Katharina von Bora had
lived within the convent walls since the age of five, and was
one of twelve nuns smuggled out of the cloister in herring
barrels. Assuming responsibility for their well-being, Luther
had found husbands for the other women, but Katharina had been
more difficult to settle. In fact, she had vowed to marry only
Luther or his fellow reformer, Nikolaus von Amsdorf.
Like most marriages, the motives of Martin
and Katharina were many, and some remain unknown, but Luther
himself noted that “his marriage would please his father, rile
the pope, cause the angels to laugh, and the devils to weep.”
By all reports, if not love at first sight, their union was a
fruitful and satisfying one.
In the five centuries since Luther and his
contemporaries began to marry, both marriage and the role of
the clergy have changed. However, Dr. and Mrs. Luther clearly
paved the way for Christians to enter into the vocations of
ministry and marriage. In 1520, he wrote, “Priests should be
free to marry and not to as they choose, because God has not
bound them and no one else ought to bind them.” Thus, as
Trevor O’Reggio suggests, “Luther saw no contradiction between
the divine calling of God and marriage . . . thus overturning
a well-established tradition within the Catholic church.”
Were Martin and Katy Luther alive today,
they’d agree with Henri Nouwen: “The basis of marriage is not
mutual affection or feelings, or emotions and passions that we
associated with love, but a vocation, a being elected to build
together a house for God, in this world.” Today’s married
clergy are thankful that, in his “irascible and earthly
style,” Luther brought reform through “the power of his pen
and the courage of his life” (O’Reggio), so the sacred calling
to build that holy house is open to all.
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