6. “Neither Wood Nor Stone”: A Reformation Husband
By the grace of God,” Martin Luther wrote in his commentary on Genesis 2:22, “everyone declares that it is something good and holy to live with one’s wife in harmony and peace.” Luther, with all his flaws and bombast, modeled how to live with a wife in such harmony and peace. Indeed, he made a concerted effort to do just that, all the while often driving Katie to distraction. “God put fingers on our hands,” he once remarked, “for the money to slide through them so God can give us more.” Then again, he commented to a friend, “I have patched this pair of pants four times myself. I will patch them again before I have new ones made.” He was both careless with money and frugal at the same time. As to the patching, Katie was furious because the material was cut from their son’s trousers. In many respects, Luther seemed to be clueless as a husband. Yet if we compare him to other husbands of his day, we know Katie could have done much worse.
Had I been a sixteenth-century nun transported in a wagon to Wittenberg, would I have set my sights on marrying Martin Luther? I have actually contemplated that question. Some might consider him a real catch—the greatest religious thinker since Saint Paul, Saint Augustine, and Saint Thomas Aquinas. He was a man who more than any other sought to walk amid great opposition in the footsteps of Paul. But husband material? I doubt it. Nor would I have set my sights on marrying Paul himself had I been one of his admirers in the first century. Such a prospect would never have occurred to me, had I not become familiar with the writings of the renowned Henrietta Mears—the founder of Gospel Light Publishing and a highly esteemed Bible teacher and mentor to hundreds of young men, including Billy Graham and Bill Bright. When one of her “boys” kidded her about not being married, she quipped that she had never found anyone who could hold a candle to the apostle Paul.
Like Luther, Paul had issues, at least if we are to take seriously his confession in Romans: “I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do . . . For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing . . . What a wretched man I am!” (7:14–15, 19, 24). What his sins were we are left to wonder. In Luther’s case, he sinned boldly, as he at one point directed another to do: “Be a sinner and sin boldly but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly.” Even Paul would have been shocked, particularly if he had taken at face value the words of the devout Catholic Sir Thomas More. James Reston Jr. offers this colorful summary:
In a tract of more than three hundred pages called Responsio ad Lutherum, published in 1523, [More] called Luther “a pig, a dolt, and a liar,” an “ape,” “drunkard,” “a pestilential buffoon,” and “lousy little friar.” Luther’s writings, wrote the judicious Sir Thomas, came from snippets he gleaned in brothels, barber shops, taverns, and privies. In his notebooks the monk wrote down anything he heard when a coachman spoke “ribaldly,” or a servant “insolently,” or “a whore wantonly,” or a pimp “indecently,” or a bath-keeper “filthily,” or a shitter “obscenely.” And then, as if he had not got his point across sufficiently, More lost his literary and lawyerly composure entirely when he wrote, “For as long as your reverend paternity is determined to tell these shameless lies, others are permitted on behalf of his English majesty, to throw back into your paternity’s shitty mouth, truly the shit-pool of all shit, all the muck and shit which your damnable rottenness has vomited up.”
More’s contempt and Luther’s crude behavior aside, the Reformer truly was in many respects a great man. But it does not follow that great men necessarily make great husbands. The Luthers, however, seem to have had one of those singular marriages we speak of as having been made in heaven.
Truly, he did have his good points as a husband, particularly for one who had not yet emerged from medieval boorishness (and we give him some slack on that account). He quickly recognized Katie’s capabilities and sometimes expressed virtual adoration for her. This is perhaps most clearly seen in his profound regard for Paul’s letter to the Galatians, referring to it as “my Katherine von Bora.” Again he confessed, “I give more credit to Katherine than to Christ, who has done so much more for me.”
Likewise, Luther promoted romance. More than that, he sponsored and marketed it. In the early 1520s, when confined in Wartburg Castle, Luther wrote to one of his supporters, Nicolas Gerbel:
Kiss and rekiss your wife . . . Let her love and be loved. You are fortunate in having overcome, by an honorable marriage, that celibacy in which one is a prey to devouring fires and to unclean ideas. That unhappy state of a single person, male or female, reveals to me each hour of the day so many horrors, that nothing sounds in my ear as bad as the name of monk or nun or priest. A married life is a paradise, even where all else is wanting.
There was no biblical precedent for “that celibacy,” but there was for kissing and rekissing one’s wife. Doesn’t the Bible tell us that Isaac fondled Rebekah? (Genesis 26:8), Luther once asked. In fact, Luther sounded downright risqué: “We are permitted to laugh and have fun with and embrace our wives, whether they are naked or clothed,” and if you are depressed and “can find help for yourself by thinking of a girl, do so.”
That Luther would be so transformed from a monk into an affectionate husband is nothing short of amazing. Everything he learned from his earliest childhood in the Catholic faith had focused on sexual gratification as a sin. “When I was a boy,” he wrote, “the wicked and impure practice of celibacy had made marriage so disreputable that I believed that I could not even think about the life of married people without sinning. Everybody was fully persuaded that anyone who intended to lead a holy life acceptable to God could not get married.”
But too much passion, he knew, was not always a good thing: “I have observed many married couples coming together in such great passion that they were ready to devour each other for love, but after a half year the one ran away from the other.” Some couples lasted longer—ones “who have become hostile to each other after they had five or six children and were bound to each other not merely by marriage but also by the fruits of their union. Yet they left each other.” Marriage was little different then than it is today. But for the Luthers, marriage was a source of deep and abiding love, until death did them part.
One reason Martin can be viewed as a model husband to Katie is that he served her. We read time and again of his bowing to her desires, and he held in high regard a humble way of life. In fact, an important aspect of Luther’s theological underpinnings was his emphasis on the sacred in everyday life. William Lazareth notes that whether working in the fields or over a hot oven, these were the ordinary and humble duties that served as a backdrop in the life of Jesus. Luther’s daily life illustrates his theology: “Luther’s faith was simple enough to trust that after a conscientious day’s labor, a Christian father could come home and eat his sausage, drink his beer, play his flute, sing with his children, and make love to his wife—all to the glory of God!”
Here Luther is represented as a typical German husband and father who comes home to supper after a day’s work. But Luther also frequently represented a typical German hausfrau. Any mother today could wish that her husband had such a modern perspective on fatherhood as Luther did—and not simply to relieve an overworked wife, but because it was embedded in his very theology:
Now observe that when that clever harlot, our natural reason, . . . takes a look at married life, she turns up her nose and says, “Alas, must I rock the baby, wash its diapers, make its bed, smell its stench, stay up nights with it, take care of it when it cries, heal its rashes and sores, and on top of that care for my wife, provide for her . . . What, should I make such a prisoner of myself? O you poor, wretched fellow . . .
What then does Christian Faith say to this? . . . It says, O God . . . I confess to thee that I am not worthy to rock the little babe or wash its diapers, or to be entrusted with the care of the child and its mother . . . O how gladly will I do so, though the duties should be even more insignificant and despised.
These words are astounding for the sixteenth century, and from a former monk. Marriage was a partnership pure and simple—God’s will. No Christian man should ever imagine that the wife alone is responsible for the “insignificant and despised” duties of changing diapers and staying up nights. Pretending to speak for a dutiful Catholic, Luther declaimed sarcastically, “Fie, fie upon such wretchedness and bitterness! It is better to remain free and lead a peaceful, carefree life; I will become a priest or a nun and compel my children to do likewise.” Yes, children. The line is dripping with sarcasm.
Luther not only shared with Katie household tasks and child care, but he also went out of his way to offer little gestures of thoughtfulness, she in return doing the same for him. On one occasion, when she had expressed her hankering for oranges, he ordered them from Nuremberg, knowing they were unavailable in Wittenberg. And why not? “Why should he not be glad to do her bidding, for was she not dearer to him than the King of France or Venice?”
Even before he laid eyes on Katie, however, Luther honored family values. It was difficult to disobey his earthly father to follow what he perceived to be the call of his heavenly Father—a call to become a monk. But while frantically pursuing this vocation, he did not diminish family values. In his late twenties, when he visited Rome, his parents were on his mind. Later he claimed he spent hours saying Masses for his parents, almost wishing them dead so he could have saved them from purgatory. He would have been particularly blessed, as it was widely believed, if he had read a Saturday Mass at St. John’s. The lines, however, were too long. So, as he later recalled, “I ate a smoked herring instead.”
One might be tempted to think Luther penned this somewhat tongue-in-cheek reflection to emphasize what a completely devoted monk he was. By the time he had written it, he had certainly developed a low view of the moral cesspool he found at Rome, and all its hourly rituals and relics too many to count. His last line—“so I ate smoked herring”—is almost a dead giveaway. If he had really thought he could make his mother blessed, he would have waited, no matter how long the line.
Truly, Luther did love his parents and could be said to have revered his father. But his mother was duly acknowledged, even though he did not so easily forget how harsh her discipline was when he was a child. His final letter to his mother during her last illness is touching, and the reference to Katie and the children speaks for itself. After giving his mother a lengthy blessing, asking God to grant her strong faith, he adds, “All my children and my Katy pray for you. Some cry, some eat and say, grandmother is very sick.”
In June 1530, when Martin was away, Katie received a letter from her husband’s traveling companion. It brought the sad news that Martin’s father had died. After Martin received the news, his friend reported that “he said to me, ‘My father is dead.’ And then he took his Psalter and went to his room and wept so much that for two days he couldn’t work.”
Luther’s big heart was certainly not limited to his love of family. He was generous with friends and strangers alike and was particularly concerned for those on the lower rungs of society. This is evident in his translation work and catechism. Unlike medieval scholars who wrote for other scholars, Luther focused extensively on the unschooled, as is manifest in his Small Catechism. When traveling and visiting local parishes, he was astonished by biblical and doctrinal ignorance. “What manifold misery I beheld! The common people, especially in the villages, have no knowledge whatever of Christian doctrine, and, alas! many pastors are altogether incapable and incompetent to teach.”
His concern also extended to the physical needs of the poor. When a lawyer friend helped procure justice for a poor woman, Luther wrote to thank him, assuring him that he would one day receive a rich reward for not only responding favorably to his appeal but also for sending him a cask of his own brewed beer. Such a fine gift, Luther adds, may have been more appropriately given to the poor. Undeserving as he is, however, he will have no problem finding a good use for it.
Luther’s kindness was also seen in his letters that often included pastoral counsel. To friends and acquaintances he wrote in a very personal style, confessing his own struggles and offering words of compassion and consolation. On one occasion, having been in contact with a former nun, Elizabeth von Canitz, whom he hoped would organize a school for girls, he wrote, “I hear too that the evil one is assailing you with melancholy. O my dear woman, do not let him terrify you, for whoever suffers from the devil here will not suffer from him yonder. It is a good sign.”
He was not ashamed to admit that sometimes the counselor was the one most in need of counseling, and that very fact reveals much about Luther as husband. On one occasion, with students at the table, he confessed, “I, Doctor Luther, have been in such high temptations and Anfechtungen that they consumed my whole body so that I could hardly breathe, and no one could console me.” Was he the only one, he wondered, who experienced such sadness?
Katie was a competent village healer, and not surprisingly her most difficult patient was her husband. In addition to his black moods and cavernous bouts of doubt (Anfechtungen), he was throughout most of their married life weakened by one malady after another—maladies exacerbated by overeating and circulatory issues. Depression and spiritual despair, however, were not new to the married Luther. How much Katie knew of his past problems is unknown, but while he was at the Wartburg Castle (when Katie was still at the Marienthron convent), he suffered spiritually, psychologically, and physically. To Melanchthon he had written:
I see myself insensible, hardened, sunk in idleness, alas! seldom in prayer, and not venting one groan over God’s Church. My unsubdued flesh burns me with devouring fire. In short, I . . . am devoured by the flesh, by luxury, indolence, idleness, somnolence. Is it that God has turned away from me, because you no longer pray for me? You must take my place; you, richer in God’s gifts, and more acceptable in his sight. Here, a week has passed away since I put pen to paper, since I have prayed or studied, either vexed by fleshly cares, or by other temptations.
At the Wartburg Castle and throughout his life, Luther’s depressive moods were exacerbated by his strong belief in a very real personal devil. That he may have thrown an ink pot at the devil doesn’t begin to capture his struggle with a subversive and seditious underworld of spirit darkness. He almost seemed to revel in repeating accounts that could be summed up in “Acts of the Devil.” This ever-present evil personage once consumed more than half a wagon load of a poor peasant’s hay, and for apparently no good reason, he soured milk and butter.
Some of these “Acts” were drawn from his memories from childhood. In one instance, a pregnant woman had given birth to a dormouse because the family had captured one of these nocturnal rodents and tied a bell around its neck to scare off others of its kind. When the bell-ringing rodent suddenly appeared and scared the woman, her unborn baby was magically transformed into the very critter she wanted to be rid of. Such claims were assumed to be true and often added to the very real fears of pregnant women.
One wonders if the very pragmatic, down-to-earth Katie rolled her eyes at such stories. We do learn, however, that her husband called on her on occasion to help eradicate the devil. “Try as hard as you can to despise these thoughts sent by Satan,” he wrote in 1530 to Jerome Weller, living nearby in Wittenberg. “By all means flee solitude, for he lies in wait most for those alone. This devil is conquered by despising and mocking him, not by resisting and arguing.” His next words are somewhat bewildering: “Therefore, Jerome, joke and play games with my wife and others, in which way you will drive out your diabolic thoughts and take courage.”
What does this say about the overwhelmed Katie with household tasks and little ones underfoot? It sounds as though she would be prepared at a moment’s notice to laugh and play games with a seriously depressed neighbor (who had once boarded with her). But Martin had other pointers as well: “drink more, or joke and talk nonsense, or do some other merry things. Sometimes we must drink more, sport, recreate ourselves, aye, and even sin a little to spite the devil.” He was truly convinced that a stein of Wittenberg beer would do wonders and so also could contemplation on pretty girls or singing some hearty (and most likely ribald) bar tunes. As a last resort, do listen to a preacher known for humor and wit.
Dormouse babies and sour milk notwithstanding, Luther was capable of having a more rational train of mind. Unlike Philip Melanchthon, he took no stock in astrology. Though easily swayed by superstitions and preposterous claims that were rumored about, Luther conceded that he had often been taken for a fool and was not proud of that fact.
There is an oft-told story about Katie and her ability to calm her husband during dark moods. My favorite version is found in an 1884 edition of The Sabbath School Magazine, edited by William Keddie:
Luther at one time was sorely vexed by the wickedness of the world, and by the dangers that beset the Church. One morning, he saw his wife dressed in mourning. Surprised, he asked her who had died. “Do you not know?” she replied. “God in heaven is dead.” “How can you talk such nonsense, Katie?” Luther replied; “How can God die? He is immortal, and will live through all eternity.” “Is that really true?” she asked.—“Of course,” he said, still not perceiving what she was aiming at; “how can you doubt it? As surely as there is a God in heaven, so sure it is that He can never die.” “And yet,” she said, “though you do not doubt that, you are hopeless and discouraged.” His wife’s little stratagem had the desired effect of restoring his confidence and trust in God.
Although this magazine was “designed for the use of teachers, adult scholars, and parents,” children no doubt heard the same story about Katie, one passed down into the twenty-first century. And it’s the same story my sister-in-law immediately remembered on hearing I was writing this book: “Oh, have you heard the story about Katie dressed in mourning?”
Luther’s physical ailments, as well as his depression, were serious, and their recurrences scared the daylights out of Katie. In the late autumn of 1528, he was seriously handicapped by a disorder known today as Ménière’s disease, an inner-ear ailment that manifests itself in vertigo and tinnitus (dizziness and ringing in the ears). He also had problems with ulcers, indigestion, constipation, and other maladies, especially as a younger man. The last ten years of his life, he suffered from kidney stones, gout, arthritis, hemorrhoids, and heart problems, and if that weren’t enough to lay him low, he was beset with catarrh, an inflammation of the nose and throat. Katie sought to treat him with whatever remedies she learned might help, and she worried.
In addition to caring for his physical and emotional needs, Katie provided a very stable home. Her good humor and hospitality did wonders for him, as did children and routine family life. They enjoyed the ordinary amusements of youth: card games, chess, outdoor ball games, dancing, and playacting. He approved of activities that involved interaction between boys and girls, ones that would prepare them for adult life. Dating, however was severely restricted. A partner, he strongly believed, must be approved by the parents—no secretive courtship and marriage. Reading was another activity he heartily supported. Stories like Aesop’s fables were entertaining, as well as morally uplifting.
Another aspect of family life involved pets, especially their beloved dog Tölpel, often mentioned in Luther’s Table Talk. As an object lesson, Martin once contrasted his dog’s gulping down table scraps with his own apathy in prayer. The story is also told of how a child once asked whether her dog would go to heaven. He reached down and commented as he petted the dog, “Be quiet, bundchen, and at the resurrection you, too, shall have a golden tail.”
As a father, Luther admitted his own motherliness at times, and in the following letter, we see this fatherly feminine side of him. While away from home for some months at Coburg, he wrote to young Hans. He was not admonishing him to behave as he sometimes had done. Rather, he communicated with the six-year-old boy through a delightful story:
Grace and peace in Christ, my dear little son. I hear with great pleasure that you are learning your lessons so well, and praying so diligently. Continue to do so, my son, and cease not. When I come home I will bring you a nice present from the fair. I know a beautiful garden, where there are a great many children in fine little coats, and they go under the trees and gather beautiful apples and pears, cherries and plums; they sing and run about and are as happy as they can be. Sometimes they ride on nice little ponies, with golden bridles and silver saddles. I asked the man whose garden it is: “What little children are these?” And he told me, “They are little children who love to pray and learn and are good.” When I said, “My dear sir, I have a little boy at home; his name is little Hans Luther; would you let him come into the garden, too, to eat some of these nice apples and pears, and ride on these fine little ponies, and play with these children?” The man said, “If he loves to say his prayers and learn his lessons, and is a good boy, he may come.”
Family was central to Luther’s reforms. Other reformers had come and gone, but none so emphasized the matter of marriage and family. Indeed, no previous reformer had raised the issue of family as the focal point of creation and Scripture. He stood as the giant of family values.
Clearly Katie stands alongside him in this regard—adding flesh and blood to theology. Without her, Martin’s teaching on marriage and family would have been little more than a skeleton. And no other woman could have so profoundly molded his mind and his daily habits. This is a critical point. His words mimicked medieval tradition. The husband reigns over wife and family. But for Katie and Martin, mutuality sparkled in every aspect of daily life. Of course, he occasionally reminded his friends and her that he was the head, maybe even the man of the house. Sure. She had no problem with that—as long as he didn’t interfere with her agenda.
When we seek to sum up Martin Luther as husband and family man, his actions speak louder than his words. His words are those of male headship and female submission. From his letters and the remarks of others, Luther was remarkably dependent on Katie. He confided in her and trusted her judgment like that of no one else. He was very frequently, in the minds of many of his friends, too submissive to her. Addressing her as Herr Käthe, he “wittingly exchanged the masculine role for the feminine.”
Luther had a more open attitude toward sex than did his Catholic counterparts. But that did not mean that anything goes. He did have certain standards, though it is not that he followed such rules in his own marriage: “They should not disrobe for sex, they should not try to arouse one another unduly, they should not turn the marriage bed into ‘a manure heap and a sow bath’ by resorting to unusual techniques and positions.”
Elsewhere in his advice column, he was more easygoing about intimate activities between husband and wife. When attacks of despair seized him, he sometimes “embraced his wife naked in bed,” writes Richard Marius, “and these depressions sent from the devil fled away.” He was convinced that his ability to prevail over Satan was greatly aided by being in bed with Katie.
Apart from his wedding night when Justus Jonas and perhaps others witnessed Martin and Katie consummate their marriage, Martin was typically tight-lipped about his sex life with his wife. He did, however, write a very private letter to her when he was ill, less than two weeks before he died. The matter was his impotence, and he suggested she confide in Philip Melanchthon, who could advise her, having apparently discussed this very private matter with his close friend before. Reading between the lines of Luther’s letters, it can be inferred that sexual intimacies were an important aspect of their marriage until nearly the end.
Martin and Katie are an interesting study in opposites, but one of the most unusual differences relates to friendships. Compared to her husband, Katie had very few friends. Biographers have sought to argue otherwise, though the case is weak. But there is no doubt that her husband had very close friends, and not the male buddies of today who get together only to watch football, play golf, or shoot some hoops. He had intimate friends with whom he corresponded and held in close confidence.
He also had drinking pals, though apparently he never caroused about town with them. Indeed, it was at the Black Cloister where he found Katie’s beer the best-brewed in town. He liked to impress fellow drinkers that he could hold his beer. He liked to fill his stein of beer for the glory of God, toasting the Lord’s Prayer if it were full up, the Apostles’ Creed if he did not fill it so full—and if prudence prevailed, he filled it only to the Ten Commandments marker. He apparently could get all the way to the Lord’s Prayer without falling down.
So how do we sum up Martin Luther? To those at table one evening, he offered a short autobiographical summary that indicates the twists and turns of his life—a life that not even astrologers could have predicted. He chose to emphasize his humble background, describing his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather all as peasants. He told of how his father wanted him to become a lawyer. But much to his father’s chagrin, he became a monk, “and then [he] got into the pope’s hair and married an apostate nun. Who could have read that in the stars?”
As a husband and father, Luther put his Reformation teaching into practice. His focus on the family in his home and in his biblical theology has stood the test of time. But there was no Martin Luther Jr. who stood out among his sons or descendants—no son to ignite another Reformation. No namesake to carry on—that is, not until another boy was renamed Martin Luther Jr. In 1934, when Baptist preacher Michael King was visiting Europe, he was profoundly stirred by the story of Martin Luther—indeed, so stirred that he changed his name from Michael to Martin Luther and at the same time changed his son’s name to Martin Luther King Jr.
This five-year-old boy would one day become a preacher himself and bring about another reformation that, like the first, continues to reverberate through religious and civil life. His philosophy mirrors Luther’s own: “There are some things so dear, some things so precious, some things so eternally true, that they are worth dying for. And I submit to you that if a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.”