Life of Luther Part 16

he says, 'what they can.... Let the Spirits rend and tear each other. A few, perhaps, may be seduced; but that happens in every war. Wherever there is a battle and fighting, some one must fall and be wounded.' He repeats here, what he had said before, that Antichrist should be destroyed 'without hands,' and that Christ contended with the Spirit of His Word. But if they really meant to strike out with the fist, then Luther would have the prince say to them, 'Keep your fists quiet, for that is our office, or else leave the country.'

In August Luther came himself to Weimar, in obedience to a wish expressed by the two princes. With the court-preacher he had come to a friendly understanding. Munzer had just left Allstedt, an official report of his dangerous proceedings having been forwarded from there to Weimar, whither he was summoned for an examination and inquiry.

On August 14 Luther wrote from this town to the magistrate of Muhlhausen, where Munzer, as he heard, had taken refuge and had already mustered a party. He warned the people of Muhlhausen to wait at least before receiving Munzer, until they had heard 'what sort of children he and his followers were.' They would not remain long in the dark about him. He was a tree, as he had shown at Zwickau and Allstedt, which bore no fruit but murder and rebellion.

From Weimar Luther travelled on to Orlamunde. On August 21 he arrived at Jena, where a preacher named Reinhard was staying with Carlstadt. Luther here preached against the 'Spirit of Allstedt,'

which destroyed images, despised the sacrament, and incited to rebellion. Carlstadt, who was present and heard the sermon, waited on him afterwards at his lodging, to defend himself against these charges. Luther insisted, notwithstanding, that Carlstadt was 'an a.s.sociate of the new prophets.' He challenged him finally to abandon his intrigues and confute him openly in writing, and the heated interview ended by Carlstadt promising to do so, and by Luther giving him a florin as a pledge and token of the bargain.

From Jena Luther went through Kahla, where also he preached, to Orlamunde. The people here had been anxious for a personal discussion with him, but in writing to him for that purpose, had addressed him in words as follows: 'You despise all those who, by G.o.d's command, destroy dumb idols, against which you trump up feeble evidence out of your own head, and not grounded on Scripture. Your venturing thus publicly to slander us, members of Christ, shows that you are no member of the real Christ.' The discussion he held with them led to no success, and he gave up any further attempt to convince them; for, as he said, they burned like a fire, as if they longed to devour him. On his departure they pursued him with savage shouts of execration.

Carlstadt, a few weeks later, was deprived of his professorship, and had to leave the country. Luther put in a word for the people of Orlamunde as 'good simple folk,' who had been seduced by a stronger will. But against Carlstadt's whole conduct and teaching he launched an elaborate attack in a pamphlet, published in two parts, at the close of 1524 and the beginning of the following year. It was ent.i.tled 'Against the Celestial Prophets, concerning Images and the Sacrament, &c.,' with the motto 'Their folly shall be manifest unto all men' (2 Timothy iii. 9). For in Carlstadt he sought to expose and combat the same spirit that dwelt in the Zwickau prophets and in Munzer, and that threatened to produce still worse results. If Carlstadt, like Moses, was right in teaching people to break down images, and in calling in for this purpose the aid of the disorderly rabble, instead of the proper authorities, then the mob had the power and right to execute in like manner all the commands of G.o.d.

And the consequence and sequel of this would be, what was soon shown by Munzer. 'It will come to this length,' says Luther, 'that they will have to put all unG.o.dly people to death; for so Moses (Deut.

vii.), when he told the people to break down the images, commanded them also to kill without mercy all those who had made them in the land of Canaan.'

The great storm, announced and prepared by the 'Spirit of Allstedt,'

broke loose even sooner than could have been expected.

Munzer had really appeared at Muhlhausen. The town-council, however, were still able to insist on his leaving the place, together with his friend Pfeifer. He then wandered about for several weeks in the south-west of Germany, exciting disturbance wherever he went. But on September 13 he returned with Pfeifer to Muhlhausen, where he preached in his wonted manner, propounded to the people in the streets his doctrines and revelations, and attracted the mob to his side, while respectable citizens and members of the magistracy left the town from fear of the mischief that was threatening. Towards the end of February he was offered a regular post as pastor, and soon after all the old magistrates were turned out and others more favourable to him elected in their place. The mult.i.tude raged against images and convents. The peasants from the neighbourhood flocked in, anxious for the general equality which was promised them. Luther wrote to a friend, 'Munzer is King and Emperor at Muhlhausen.'

Meanwhile, in Southern Germany peasant insurrections had broken out in various places since the summer of this year. In itself, there was nothing novel in this. Repeatedly during the latter part of the previous century, the poor peasantry had risen and erected their banner, the 'Shoe of the League' (_Bundschuh_), so called from the rustic shoes which the insurgents wore. Their grievances were the intolerable and ever-growing burdens, laid upon them by the lay and clerical magnates, the taxes of all kinds squeezed from them by every ingenious device, and the feudal service which they were forced to perform. The n.o.bles had, in fact, towards the close of the middle ages, usurped a much larger exercise of their ancient privileges against them, by means partly of a dexterous manipulation of the old Roman law, and partly of the ignorance of that law which prevailed among their va.s.sals. On the other side, complaints were heard at that time of the insolence shown by the wealthier peasants; of the luxury, in which they tried to rival their masters; and of the arrogance and defiant demeanour of the peasantry in general. The oppression endured by any particular cla.s.s of the civil community does not usually lead to violent disturbances and outbreaks, unless and until that cla.s.s is awakened to a higher sense of its own importance and has acquired an increase of power. The peasants found, moreover, discontented spirits like themselves among the lower orders in the towns, who were avowed enemies of the upper cla.s.ses, and who complained bitterly of the hardships and oppressions suffered by small people at the hands of the great merchants and commercial companies,--in a word, from the power of capital. Furthermore, when once the peasants rose in rebellion against their masters, the latter also, including the n.o.bility, showed an inclination here and there to favour a general revolution, if only to remedy the defects of their own position. And, in truth, throughout the German Empire at that time there was a general movement pressing for a readjustment of the relations of the various cla.s.ses to each other and to the Imperial power. Ideas of a total reconstruction of society and the State had penetrated the ma.s.s of the people, to an extent never known before.

Thus the way was paved, and incentives already supplied for a powerful popular movement, apart altogether from the question of Church Reform. And indeed this question Luther was anxious, as we have seen, to restrict to the domain of spiritual, as distinguished from secular, that is to say, political and civil action. It was impossible, however, but that the accusations of lying, tyranny, and hostility to evangelical truth, now freely levelled against the dominant priesthood and the secular lords who were persecuting the gospel, should serve to intensify to the utmost the prevailing bitterness against external oppression. With the same firmness and decision with which Luther condemned all disorderly and violent proceedings in support of the gospel, he had also long been warning its persecutors of the inevitable storm which they would bring upon themselves. Other evangelical preachers, however, as for instance, Eberlin and Strauss, mingled with their popular preaching all sorts of suggestions of social reform. At last men went about among the people, with open or disguised activity, whose principles were directly opposed to those of Luther, but who proclaimed themselves, nevertheless, enthusiasts for the gospel which he had brought again to light, or which, as they pretended, they had been the first to reveal, together with true evangelical liberty. They appealed to G.o.d's Word in support of the claims and grievances of the oppressed cla.s.ses; they grasped their weapons by virtue of the Divine law.

Hence the peculiar ardour and energy that marked the insurrection, although the enthusiasm, thus kindled, was united with the utmost barbarity and licentiousness. Never has Germany been threatened with a revolution so vast and violent, or so immeasurable in its possible results. On no single man's word did so much depend as on that of Luther, the genuine man of the people.

The movement began late in the summer of 1524 in the Black Forest and Hegau. After the beginning of the next year it continued rapidly to spread, and the different groups of insurgents who were fighting here and there, combined in a common plan of action. Like a flood the movement forced its way eastwards into Austria, westwards into Alsatia, northwards into Franconia, and even as far as Thuringia. At Rothenburg on the Tauber, Carlstadt had prepared the way for it by inciting the people to destroy the images. The demands in which the peasants were unanimous, were now drawn up in twelve articles. These still preserved a very moderate aspect. They claimed above all the right of each parish to choose its own minister. t.i.thes were only to be abolished in part. The peasants were determined to be regarded no longer as the 'property of others,' for Christ had redeemed all alike with his blood. They demanded for everyone the right to hunt and fish, because G.o.d had given to all men alike power over the animal creation. They based their demands upon the Word of G.o.d; trusting to His promises they would venture the battle. 'If we are wrong,' they said, 'let Luther set us right by the Scriptures.' G.o.d, who had freed the children of Israel from the hand of Pharaoh, would now shortly deliver His people. In these articles, and in other proclamations of the peasantry, there were none of the wild imaginations of Munzer and his prophets, nor their ideas of a kingdom and schemes of murder. They burned down, it is true, both convents and cities, and had done so from the outset. Still in some places a more peaceable understanding was arrived at with the upper cla.s.ses, although neither party placed any real confidence in the other.

When now the articles arrived at Wittenberg, and Luther heard how the insurgents appealed to him, he prepared early in April to make a public declaration, in which he arraigned their proceedings, but at the same time exhorted the princes to moderation. He was just then called away by Count Albert of Mansfeld to Eisleben, to a.s.sist, as we have seen, in the establishment of a new school in that town. He set off thither on Easter Sunday, April 16, after preaching in the morning. There he wrote his 'Exhortation to peace: On the Twelve Articles of the Peasantry in Swabia.

In this manifesto he sharply rebukes those princes and n.o.bles, bishops and priests, who cease not to rage against the gospel, and in their temporal government 'tax and fleece their subjects, for the advancement of their own pomp and pride, until the common people can endure it no longer.' If G.o.d for their punishment allowed the devil to stir up tumult against them, He and his gospel were not to blame; but he counselled them to try by gentle means to soften, if possible, G.o.d's wrath against them. As for the peasants, he had never from the first concealed from them his suspicions, that many of them only pretended to appeal to Scripture, and offered for mere appearance' sake to be further instructed therein. But he wished to speak to them affectionately, like a friend and a brother, and he admitted also that G.o.dless lords often laid intolerable burdens upon the people. But however much in their articles might be just and reasonable, the gospel, he said, had nothing to do with their demands, and by their conduct they showed that they had forgotten the law of Christ. For by the Divine law it was forbidden to extort anything from the authorities by force: the badness of the latter was no excuse for violence and rebellion. Respecting the substance of their demands, their first article, claiming to elect their own pastor, if the civil authority refused to provide one, was right enough and Christian; but in that case they must maintain him at their own expense, and on no account protect him by force against the civil power. As for the remaining articles, they had nothing whatever to do with the gospel. He tells the peasants plainly, that if they persist in their rebellion, they are worse enemies to the gospel than the Pope and Emperor, for they act against the gospel in the gospel's own name. He is bound to speak thus to them, although some among them, poisoned by fanatics, hate him and call him a hypocrite, and the devil, who was not able to kill him through the Pope, would now like to destroy and devour him. He is content if only he can save some at least of the good-hearted among them from the danger of G.o.d's indignation. In conclusion, he gives to both sides, the n.o.bles and the peasants, his 'faithful counsel and advice, that a few counts and lords should be chosen from the n.o.bility, and a few councillors from the towns, and that matters should be adjusted and composed in an amicable manner--that so the affair, if it cannot be arranged in a Christian spirit, may at least be settled according to human laws and agreements.'

Thus spoke Luther, with all his accustomed frankness, fervency, power, and bluntness, equally indifferent to the favour of the people or of their rulers. But what fruit, indeed, could be looked for from his words, uttered evidently with violent inward emotion, when popular pa.s.sion was so excited? Was it not rather to be feared that the peasants would greedily fasten on the first portion of his pamphlet, which was directed against the n.o.bles, and then shut their ears all the more closely against the second, which concerned their own misconduct? The pamphlet could hardly have been written, and much less published, before new rumours and forebodings crowded upon Luther, such as made him think its contents and language no longer applicable to the emergency, but that now it was his duty to sound aloud the call to battle against the enemies of peace and order. 'In my former tract,' he said, 'I did not venture to condemn the peasants, because they offered themselves to reason and better instruction. But before I could look about me, forth they rush, and fight and plunder and rage like mad dogs.... The worst is at Muhlhausen, where the arch-devil himself presides.'

In South Germany, on that very Easter Sunday when Luther set out for Eisleben, the scene of horror was enacted at Weinsberg, where the peasants, amid the sound of pipes and merriment, drove the unhappy Count of Helfenstein upon their spears, before the eyes of his wife and child. Luther's ignorance of this and similar atrocities, at the time when he was writing his pamphlet at Eisleben, is easily intelligible from the slow means of communication then existing.

Soon the news came, however, of bands of rioters in Thuringia, busy with the work of pillage, incendiarism, and ma.s.sacre, and of a rising of the peasantry in the immediate neighbourhood. Towards the end of April they achieved a crowning triumph by their victorious entry into Erfurt, where the preacher, Eberlin of Gunzburg, with true loyalty and courage, but all in vain, had striven, with words of exhortation and warning, to pacify the armed mult.i.tude encamped outside the town, and their sympathisers and a.s.sociates inside.

On April 26 Munzer advanced to Muhlhausen, the 'arch-devil, 'as Luther called him, but as he described himself, the 'champion of the Lord.' He came with four hundred followers, and was joined by large ma.s.ses of the peasants. His 'only fear,' as he said in his summons to the miners of Mansfeld, 'was that the foolish men would fall into the snare of a delusive peace.' He promised them a better result.

'Wherever there are only three among you who trust in G.o.d and seek nothing but His honour and glory, you need not fear a hundred thousand.... Forward now!' he cried; 'to work! to work! It is time that the villains were chased away like dogs.... To work! relent not if Esau gives you fair words. Give no heed to the wailings of the unG.o.dly; they will beg, weep, and entreat you for pity, like children. Show them no mercy, as G.o.d commanded Moses (Deut. vii.) and has declared the same to us.... To work! while the fire is hot; let not the blood cool upon your swords.... To work! while it is day. G.o.d is with you; follow Him!' Of Luther he spoke in terms of peculiar hatred and contempt. In a letter which he addressed to 'Brother Albert of Mansfeld,' with the object of converting the Count, he alluded to him in expressions of the coa.r.s.est possible abuse.

In Thuringia, in the Harz, and elsewhere, numbers of convents, and even castles, were reduced to ashes. The princes were everywhere unprepared with the necessary troops, while the insurgents in Thuringia and Saxony counted more than 30,000 men. The former, therefore, endeavoured to strengthen themselves by coalition. Duke John, at Weimar, prepared himself for the worst: his brother, the Elector Frederick, was lying seriously ill at his Castle at Lochau (now Annaburg) in the district of Torgau.

At this crisis Luther, having left Eisleben, appeared in person among the excited population. He preached at s...o...b..rg, Nordhausen, and Wallhausen. In his subsequent writings he could bear witness of himself, how he had been himself among the peasants, and how, more than once, he had imperilled life and limb. On May 3 we find him at Weimar; and a few days afterwards in the county of Mansfeld. Here he wrote to his friend, the councillor Ruhel of Mansfeld, advising him not to persuade Count Albert to be 'lenient in this affair'--that is, against the insurgents; for the civil power must a.s.sert its rights and duties, however G.o.d might rule the issue. 'Be firm,' he entreats Ruhel, 'that his Grace may go boldly on his way. Leave the matter to G.o.d, and fulfil His commands to wield the sword as long as strength endures. Our consciences are clear, even if we are doomed to be defeated.... It is but a short time, and the righteous Judge will come.'

Luther now hastened back to his Elector, having received a summons from him at Lochau. But before he could arrive there, Frederick had peacefully breathed his last, on May 5. Faithfully and discreetly, and in the honest conviction that truth would prevail, he had accorded Luther his favour and protection, whilst purposely abstaining to employ his power as ruler for infringing or invading the old-established ordinances of the Church. He allowed full liberty of action to the bishops, and carefully avoided any personal intercourse with Luther. But in the face of death, he confessed the truth of the gospel, as preached by Luther, by partaking of the communion in both kinds, and refusing the sacrament of extreme unction.

When his corpse was brought in state to Wittenberg, and buried in the Convent Church, Luther, who had to preach twice on the occasion, spoke of the universal grief and lamentation that 'our head is fallen, a peaceful man and ruler, a calm head.' And he pointed out as the 'most grievous sorrow of all,' how this loss had happened just in those difficult and wondrous times when, unless G.o.d interposed His arm, destruction threatened the whole of Germany. He exhorted his hearers to confess to G.o.d their own ingrat.i.tude for His mercy in having given them such a n.o.ble vessel of His grace. But of those who set themselves against authorities, he declared, in the words of the Apostle (Rom. xiii. 2), that 'they shall receive to themselves d.a.m.nation.' 'This text,' he said, 'will do more than all the guns and spears.'

Quite in the same spirit that dictated his letter sent to Ruhel only a few days before at Mansfeld, Luther now sent forth a public summons 'Against the murderous and plundering bands of peasants.' He began it with the words already quoted, 'Before I could look about me, forth they rush ... and rage like mad dogs.'

Thus he wrote when he saw the danger was at its highest. He even suggested the possibility 'that the peasants might get the upper hand (which G.o.d forbid!);' and that 'G.o.d perhaps willed that, in preparation for the Last Day, the devil should be allowed to destroy all order and authority, and the world turned into a howling wilderness.' But he called upon the Christian authorities, with all the more urgency and vehemence, to use the sword against the devilish villains, as G.o.d had given them command. They should leave the issue to G.o.d, acknowledge to Him that they had well deserved His judgments, and thus with a good conscience and confidence 'fight as long as they could move a muscle.' Whosoever should fall on their side would be a true martyr in G.o.d's eyes, if he had fought with such a conscience. Then, thinking of the many better people who had been forced by the bloodthirsty peasants and murderous prophets to join the devilish confederacy, he broke out by exclaiming, 'Dear lords, help them, save them, take pity upon these poor men; but as to the rest, stab, crush, strangle whom you can.'

These words of Luther were speedily fulfilled by the events. The Saxon princes, the Landgrave Philip of Hesse, the Duke of Brunswick, and the Counts of Mansfeld combined together before the ma.s.s of the peasants in Thuringia and Saxony had collected into a large army. On May 15 the forces of Munzer, numbering about 8,000 men, were defeated in the battle of Frankenhausen. Munzer himself was taken prisoner, and, crushed in mind and spirit, was executed like a criminal. A few days before, the main army of the Swabian peasants had been routed, and during the following weeks, one stronghold of the rebellion after another was reduced, and the horrors perpetrated by the peasants were repaid with fearful vengeance on their heads.

The Landgrave Philip, and John, the new Elector of Saxony, distinguished themselves by their clemency in dismissing unpunished to their homes, after the victory, a number of the insurgent peasants.

But Luther's violent denunciations now gave offence even to some of his friends. His Catholic opponents, and those even who saw no harm in burning heretics wholesale for no other reason than their faith, reproached him then, and do so even now, with horrible cruelty for this language. Luther replied to the 'complaints and questions about his pamphlet,' with a public 'Epistle on the harsh pamphlet against the peasants.' His excitement and irritation was increased by what he heard talked about his conduct. He maintained what he had said.

But he also reminded his readers, that he had never, as his calumniators accused him, spoken of acting against the conquered and humbled, but solely of smiting those actually engaged in rebellion.

He declared further, at the close of his new and forcible remarks on the use of the sword, that Christian authorities, at any rate were bound, if victorious, to 'show mercy not only to the innocent, but also to the guilty.' As for the 'furious raging and senseless tyrants, who even after the battle cannot satiate themselves with blood, and throughout their life never trouble themselves about Christ'--with these he will have nothing whatever to do. Similarly, in a small tract on Munzer, containing characteristic extracts from the writings of this 'bloodthirsty prophet,' as a warning to the people, Luther entreated the lords and civil authorities 'to be merciful to the prisoners and those who surrendered, ... so that the tables should not be turned upon the victors.' If we have now to lament, as we must, that after the rebellion was put down, nothing was done to remedy the real evils that caused it; nay, that those very evils were rather increased as a punishment for the vanquished, this reproach at least applies just as much to the Catholic lords, both spiritual and temporal, as to the Evangelical authorities or Luther.

In addition also to his alleged harshness and severity to the insurgents, Luther was accused, both then and since, by his ecclesiastical opponents, of having given rise to the rebellion by his preaching and writings. When the danger and anxiety were over, Emser had the effrontery to say of him in some popular doggrel, 'Now that he has lit the fire, he washes his hands like Pilate, and turns his cloak to the wind;' and again, 'He himself cannot deny that he exhorted you to rebellion, and called all of you dear children of G.o.d, who gave up to it your lives and property, and washed your hands in blood. Thus did he write in public, and thereto has he striven.'

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 28.--Munzer (his execution in the background.) From an old woodcut.]

In answer to this charge, Luther referred to his treatise 'On the Secular Power,' and to other of his writings. 'I know well,' he was able to say with truth, 'that no teacher before me has written so strongly about secular authority; my very enemies ought to thank me for this. Who ever made a stronger stand against the peasants, with writing and preaching, than myself?' Among the Estates of the Empire, not even the most violent enemies of evangelical doctrine could venture now to turn their victorious weapons against their a.s.sociates in arms who espoused that doctrine, with whom they had achieved the common conquest, and from whose midst had sounded the most vigorous call to battle and to victory. Luther, on the contrary, was not afraid at this moment to exhort the Archbishop, Cardinal Albert, of whose friendly disposition to himself, his friend Ruhel had recently informed him, to follow the example of his cousin, the Grand Master in Prussia, by converting his bishopric into a temporal princedom, and entering the state of matrimony, and to name, as the chief motive for so doing, the 'hateful and horrible rebellion,' wherewith G.o.d's wrath had visited the sins of the priesthood.

Thus did Luther, in these stormy times, whatever might be thought of the violence of his utterances, take up his position clearly and resolutely from the first, and maintain it to the end;--sure of his cause, and safe against the new attack which he saw now the devil was making; unyielding and defiant towards his old Papal enemies and their new calumniations. And in this frame of mind he took just now a step, calculated to sharpen all the tongues of slander, but one in which he saw the fulfilment of his calling. Freed from unchristian monastic vows, he entered into the holy state of matrimony ordained by G.o.d. We first hear him speaking decidedly on this subject in a letter to Ruhel of May 4. After referring to the devil as the instigator of the insurgent peasants, and of the murderous deeds which made him anxious to prepare himself for death, he continues with the following remarkable words: 'And if I can, in spite of him, I will take my Kate in marriage before I die. I hope they will not take from me my courage and my joy.'

CHAPTER VI.

LUTHER'S MARRIAGE.

Our readers will recall to mind those words of Luther at the Wartburg, on hearing that his teaching was making the clergy marry and monks renounce the obligation of their vows. No wife, he declared, should be forced upon him. He remained in his convent; looked on quietly, as one friend and fellow-labourer after the other took advantage of their liberty; wished them happiness in the enjoyment of it, and advised others to do the same; but never changed his views about himself.

His enemies reproached him with living a worldly life, with drinking beer in company with his friends, with playing the lute, and so on.

Nor was it merely his Catholic opponents who sought in such charges material for vile slander, but also jealous ranters like Munzer gave vent to their hatred in this manner. All the more remarkable it is that no slanderous reports of immoral conduct were ever launched at this time, even by his bitterest enemies, against the man who was denouncing so openly and sternly offences of that description among the superior, no less than the inferior, clergy. Calumnies of this kind were reserved for the occasion of his marriage.

In truth, his life was one of the most arduous labour, anxiety, and excitement; and as regards his bodily needs, he was satisfied with the plainest and most sparing diet and the simplest enjoyments. The Augustinian convent, whence he received his support, being gradually denuded of its inmates by their abandonment of monastic life, its revenues accordingly were stopped. Luther informed Spalatin in 1524 of the poverty to which they were reduced; not indeed, as Spalatin well knew, that he concerned himself much about it, or wished to make it a subject of complaint; if he had no meat or wine, he could live well enough on bread and water. Melancthon describes how once, before his marriage, Luther's bed had not been made for a whole year, and was mildewed with perspiration. 'I was tired out,' says Luther, 'and worked myself nearly to death, so that I fell into the bed and knew nothing about it.'

When, moreover, he exchanged, as we have seen, in the autumn of 1524, the monastic cowl for the garb of a professor; and when he and the prior Brisger were the only ones of all the former monks left in the convent, he remained quietly where he was, and never entertained the idea of marriage. A n.o.ble lady, Argula von Staufen, wife of the Ritter von Grumbach, formerly in the Bavarian army, who had written publicly for the cause of the gospel, and thereby incurred, with her husband, the displeasure of the Duke of Bavaria, and who was now in active correspondence with the Wittenbergers and Spalatin, expressed to the latter her surprise that Luther did not marry. Luther thereupon wrote to Spalatin on November 30, 1524, saying, 'I am not surprised that folks gossip thus about me, as they gossip about many other things. But please thank the lady in my name, and tell her that I am in the hands of the Lord, as a creature whose heart He can change and re-change, destroy or revive, at any hour or moment; but as my heart has. .h.i.therto been, and is now, it will never come to pa.s.s that I shall take a wife. Not that I am insensible to my I flesh or s.e.x, ... but because my mind is averse to wedlock, because I daily expect the death and the well-merited punishment of a heretic.'

Shortly afterwards Luther wrote to his friend Link: 'Suddenly, and while I was occupied with far other thoughts, the Lord has plunged me into marriage.' It was in the spring of 1525 that he had formed this resolve, which speedily ripened to its fulfilment.

In a letter of March 12, 1525, he complained to his friend Amsdorf, who had gone to Magdeburg, of depression of spirits and temptation, and besought him to pay him a friendly visit to cheer him. It was, as we see from the contents of the letter, a temptation, which caused Luther to feel that, in the words of Scripture, it was 'not good for man to be alone,' but that he ought to have a help-meet to be with him. As to the choice of such a help-meet he may have already talked with Amsdorf, and very possibly they may have spoken of a lady of Magdeburg of the family of Alemann, who were conspicuous there for their devotion to the evangelical cause.

But Luther's own choice turned on Catharine von Bora, a former nun.

Sprung from an ancient, though poor family of n.o.ble blood, she had been brought up from childhood in the convent of Nimtzch near Grimma. We find her there as early as 1509; she was born on January 29, 1499, and was consecrated as a nun at the age of sixteen. When the evangelical doctrine became known at Nimtzch, Catharine endeavoured with other nuns to break the bonds, which she had taken upon herself without any real free-will or knowledge of her own. In vain she entreated her relatives to release her. At length one Leonhard Koppe, a burgher and councillor of Torgau, took her part.

a.s.sisted by him and two of his friends, nine nuns escaped secretly from the convent on Easter Eve, April 5, 1523. Luther justified their escape in a public letter addressed to Koppe, and collected funds for their support, until they could be further provided for.

They fled first to Wittenberg, and here Catharine stayed at the house of the town clerk and future burgomaster, Philip Reichenbach.

She was now in her twenty-sixth year, when Luther turned his thoughts towards her. He told afterwards his friends and Catharine herself, with perfect frankness, that he had not been in love with her before, for he had his suspicions, and they were not unfounded, that she was proud. He had even thought, shortly before, of arranging a marriage between her and a minister named Glatz, who later on, however, proved himself unworthy of his office. Catharine, on the other hand, is said to have gone to Amsdorf, as the trusted friend of Luther, and to have told him frankly that she did not wish to marry Glatz, but was ready to form an honourable alliance with himself or with Luther. If Cranach's portrait of her is to be trusted, she was not remarkable for beauty or any outward attraction. But she was a healthy, strong, frank and true German woman. Luther might reasonably expect to have in her a loyal, fresh-hearted, and staunch help-meet for his life, whose own cares or requirements would cause him little anxiety, while she would be just such a companion as, with his physical ailments and mental troubles, he required. In the event of her haughty disposition a.s.serting itself unduly, he was the very man to correct it with quiet firmness and affection.

What further considerations induced him to marry, appear from his letters, in which he urged his friends to do likewise. Thus he wrote on March 27 to Wolfgang Reissenbusch, preceptor of the convent at Lichtenberg, saying that man was created by G.o.d for marriage. G.o.d had so made man that he could not well do without it; whoever was ashamed of marrying, must also be ashamed of his manhood, or must pretend to be wiser than G.o.d. The devil had slandered the married state by letting people who lived in immorality be held in high honour. Luther, in thus frankly stating the natural disposition of man to married life, spoke from his own experience. 'To remain righteous unmarried,' he said once later on, 'is not the least of trials, as those know well who have made the attempt.' In referring as he did to the devil, he probably had in his mind the scandal which threatened him if he should decide on marrying. He then goes on to say to Reissenbusch that if he honoured the Word and work of G.o.d, the scandal would be only a matter of a moment, to be followed by years of honour. To Spalatin he writes on April 10: 'I find so many reasons for urging others to marry, that I shall soon be brought to it myself, notwithstanding that enemies never cease to condemn the married state, and our little wiseacres ridicule it every day.' The 'wiseacres' he was thinking of were professors and theologians of his circle at Wittenberg. Not only was he resolved, however, to obey the will of his Creator, despite all condemnation and ridicule, but he deemed it his duty to testify to the rightness of the step by his example as well as by his words. His enemies, in fact, were taunting him that he did not venture to practise himself what he preached to others. A few days after, immediately before his departure for Eisleben, he wrote again to Spalatin, recommending his friend, who had been so utterly averse to matrimony, to take care that he was not antic.i.p.ated in the step.

Amidst all the terrors of the Peasants' War, which had now broken out in all its violence, and in earnest contemplation of a near end possibly threatening himself, he had formed the fixed resolve, as his letter of May 4 to Ruhel shows, to 'take his Kate to wife, in spite of the devil.' This is the first letter in which he mentions her name to a friend. And to this resolve he steadily adhered during the troublous weeks that followed, when he was called on to pay the last honours to his Elector, to rouse men to the sanguinary contest with the peasants, and to hear contumely and reproach heaped upon his stirring words. Besides writing to the Cardinal Albert himself, recommending him to marry, he sent a letter also on June 3 to his friend Ruhel, who held office as one of his advisers, saying, 'If my marrying might serve in any way to strengthen his Grace to do the same, I should be very willing to set his Grace the example; for I have a mind, before leaving this world, to enter the married state, to which I believe G.o.d has called me.' He had thoughts of this kind, he added, even if it should end only in a betrothal, and not an actual marriage.

He speedily gave effect to his final resolve, in order to cut short all the loose and idle gossip which threatened him as soon as his intentions were known with regard to Catharine von Bora. He took none of his friends into his confidence, but acted, as he afterwards advised others to act. 'It is not good,' he said, 'to talk much about such matters. A man must ask G.o.d for counsel, and pray, and then act accordingly.'

As to how he finally came to terms with Catharine we have no account to show. But on the evening of June 13, on the Tuesday after the feast of the Trinity, he invited to his house his friends Bugenhagen, the parish priest of the town, Jonas, the professor and provost of the church of All Saints, Lucas Cranach with his wife, and the juristic professor Apel, formerly a dean of the Cathedral at Bamberg, who himself had married a nun, and in their presence was married to Catharine. The marriage was solemnised in the customary way. The pair were asked, by the priest present, Bugenhagen, according to the custom prevailing in Germany, and which Luther afterwards followed in his tract on Marriage, whether they would take one another for husband and wife; their right hands were then joined together, and thus, in the name of the Trinity, they were 'joined together in matrimony.' The ceremony was therewith concluded, and Catharine remained thenceforth with Luther as his wife. Some days after Luther gave a little breakfast to his friends; and the magistracy, of whom Cranach was a member, sent him their congratulations, together with a present of wine. A fortnight later, on June 27, Luther celebrated his wedding in grander style, by a nuptial feast, in order to gather his distant friends around him. He wrote to them saying that they were to 'seal and ratify' his marriage, and 'help to p.r.o.nounce the benediction.' Above all he rejoiced to be able to see his 'dear father and mother' at the feast. Among the motives for his marrying he especially mentioned that he had felt himself bound to fulfil an old duty, in accordance with his father's wishes.