Ancient Paths | A Monk’s Unlikely Marriage

Editor’s Note: The following article appears in the Spring 2024 issue of Eikon.

That an Augustinian monk and a nun would be credited with establishing the ideal of the Protestant family is truly one of the most remarkable surprises of all church history.^[1] The marriage of the notorious German reformer Martin Luther to the runaway nun Katherine von Bora, though an unlikely matrimony, proved consequential for both the Reformer and the Protestant Reformation.

Having disappointed his father Hans by forsaking the study of law at the University of Erfurt, Martin Luther joined the Augustinian Order and devoted himself to life in the cloister. His decision to become a monk, of course, also required a life of celibacy. But his life as a monk did not endure — nor did his celibacy.

After Luther’s excommunication from the church in October 1520 and his famous stand at the Diet of Worms in April 1521, the Protestant Reformation was well on its way, and with it a reformation of marriage. During this time Luther’s increasingly popular teachings resulted in the evangelical conversion of a few nuns at a convent in Nimbschen, whose escape Luther himself helped arrange in the Spring of 1523. While a capital offense, Luther employed a merchant for the task, who gave the escapees cover in the back of his delivery wagon. Luther not only assisted in their flight, but took it upon himself to help them find husbands.

Luther capably paired each of the nuns to a husband, save one: Katherine von Bora. Katherine had set her heart on a young man whose family ultimately did not approve of the love match (something about a renegade nun), so the marriage was off. Brokenhearted, Katherine flatly refused to marry Kaspar Glatz, who was put forward as a subsequent marriage candidate. Instead, she suggested that she would marry either Nicholas von Amsdorf or Luther. But despite arranging marriages for others, Luther himself had no plans to marry. This decision was in part due to his age (he was forty-two at the time) and because “he expected daily the death of a heretic.”^[2] He also knew that his marriage would be used as propaganda to criticize the Reformation as a ploy for sexual gratification.^[3] But with Katherine yet unmarried, the idea grew on him. And soon after making his decision, they were married in June 1525.

Luther did not marry Katherine because he was infatuated with her. He said as much.^[4] Even so, he clearly had a genuine love for her, and she for him. But rather than pursuing marriage as a quest for self-fulfillment, Luther stated rather unique motivations for pursuing marriage. As Roland Bainton summarized, Luther’s motivations included his desire “to please his father, to spite the pope and the Devil, and to seal his witness before martyrdom.”^[5] Although their marriage did not begin as a romance, Martin and Katherine’s marriage grew into a beautiful companionship of deep mutual love and appreciation. Luther once expressed his deep gratitude for Katherine when he wrote, “I would not exchange Katie for France or for Venice.”^[6] Their marriage, while unlikely, proved to be an inspiring example to generations beyond their lifetime.^[7]

We should hope that men and women in America would learn from the Luthers’ example. In our feelings-driven, self-expressive age where marriage is often viewed as merely an avenue towards self-fulfillment, Luther’s commitment to marry Katherine in spite of his initial lack of romantic desire (or fill in the blank with your preferred cliché: “connection,” “chemistry,” “attraction,” “butterflies,” etc.), demonstrates that satisfying marriages depend on something deeper than one’s fluctuating feelings or the pursuit of personal happiness. Namely, they rely on one’s covenant commitment to love their spouse. As it turns out, husbands and wives have to continually make the decision to love their spouse in order to become and to stay happily married.

In this way, Luther’s marriage corrects what Brad Wilcox calls the “soulmate myth,” which he explains is “the idea that marriage is primarily about feeling an intensely emotional or romantic connection with ‘the one’ that makes you happy and fulfilled.”^[8] The colorful and committed marriage of the defected monk and the deconverted nun instead proves “the paradox of marital happiness,” which is that “husbands and wives who don’t seek to be ‘in love’ but instead recognize that ‘love is a decision’ to care for their spouse, their kids, and their family are more likely to find themselves happily married.”^[9]

We would also do well to encourage men and women — unless called to singleness — to pursue marriage as a testimony of their faith as Luther did. Just as Luther’s marriage scandalized the religious orthodoxies of his day, an ordinary life of marriage and procreation scandalizes the orthodoxies of the sexual revolution today. In an anti-marriage, anti-family, and anti-child age, Christians display their faith by getting married, having kids, and raising them in the Lord.  We should encourage men and women to follow the example of Martin and Katherine Luther, who in a spectacularly unexpected way, walked the ancient paths of God’s glorious design and got married.

[1] Roland Bainton wrote that, “The Luther who got married in order to testify to his faith actually founded a home and did more than any other person to determine the tone of German domestic relations for the next four centuries.” FOOTNOTE, 298. Likewise, Andrew Pettegree claims that “Luther’s home life, lived in a very public way, provided the new church with a powerful archetype of the new Protestant family.” 259

[2] Bainton, 287.

[3] Petigree, 225–226

[4] Bainton, 288; Pettigree, 255.

[5] Bainton, 288.

[6] Bainton, 288.

[7] Pedegree’s statement about Protestant homes having Cranach’s painting of Martin and Katherine.

[8] Brad Wilcox, Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization (New York, NY: Broadside Book), 80.

[9] Wilcox, Get Married, 93.