MARTIN LUTHER’S MARRIAGE.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 3340, 15 December 1883, Page 2

MARTIN LUTHER’S MARRIAGE.

(“ Contemporary Review.”) In priesthood and monkery he ceased to believe. If the orders themselves were unreal, the vows to respect the rules of those orders might fairly bo hold to bo nugatory. Luther not only held that the clergy as a rule might be

married, but the poor men and women who were turned adrift on the breaking up of the religious houses, he had freely advisee to marry without fear or scruple. But still around a vow a certain imagined sanctity persisted in adhering, and when he was reccommended to set an example to others who were hesitating, he considered, and his friend, Melancthon, considered, that, in his positiou with so many indignant ejes turned upon him, he ought not to give occasion to the enemy. Once, indeed, impatiently, he said that marry he would, to spite the devil. But he had scarcely a home to offer to any woman, and no leisure and no certainty of companionship. He was for some years after the Edict of Worms in constant expectation of being executed as a heretic. He still lived in the Augustinian convent at Wittenberg ; but the monks had gone, and there were no revenues. He had no income of his own; one suit of clothes served him for two years ; the Elector at the end of them gave him a piece of cloth for another. The publishers made fortunes out of his writings, but he never received a florin for them. So ill-attended he was that tor a whole year his bed was never made, and was mildewed withfperspiration. “I was tired out with each day’s work,” he said, “and lay down and knew no more.” But things were getting into order again in the Electorate. The parishes were provided with pastors, and the pastors with modest wages. Luther was Professor at the University, and the Elector allowed him a salary of 200 golden a year. Presents came from other quarters, and he began to think that it was not well for him to be alone. In Wittenberg there was a certain Catherine von Bora, 16 years younger than he, who had been a nan in a distant convent. Her family were noble, but poor; they had provided for their daughter by placing her in the cloister when she was a child of 9 ; at 16 she had taken the vows; but sbe detested the life into which she had been forced, and when the movement began she bad applied to her friends to take her out of it. The friends would do_ nothing ; but in April, 1523, she and nine others were released by the people. As they were starving, Luther collected money to provide for them, and Catherine von Bora, being then 24 years old, came to Wittenberg to reside with the Burgomaster, Philip Reichenbach. Luther did not at first like her; she was not beautiful, and he thought that she was proud of her birth and blood; but she was a simple, sensible, shrewd, active woman ; she, in the sense in which Luther was, might consider herself dedicated to God, and a fit wife for a religious reformer. Luther’s own father was most anxious that he should marry, and in a short time they came to understand each other. So on June 13, 1525, a month after Miinzer had been stamped out at Frankenhausen, a little party was collected in the Wittenburg Cloister— Bugenhagen, the town pastor, Prof. Jones, Lucas Cranach, the painter, with his wife, and Prof. Apel, of Bamberg, who bad himself married a nan, and in this presence Martin Luther and Catherine von Bora became man and wife.