Journal: Eikon
Volume: EIKON 06:2 (Fall 2024)
Article: A Monk’s Unlikely Marriage
Author: Jonathan E. Swan

Eikon 6.2 (Fall 2024) p. 9

A Monk’s Unlikely Marriage

Jonathan E. Swan

Jonathan E. Swan is Executive Editor 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 Katharina von Bora, though an unlikely matrimony, proved consequential for both the Reformer and the Protestant Reformation.2

Eikon 6.2 (Fall 2024) p. 10

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: Katharina von Bora. Katharina 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, Katharina 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.”3 He also knew that his marriage would be used as propaganda to criticize the Reformation as a ploy for sexual gratification.4 But with Katharina yet unmarried, the idea grew on him. And soon after making his decision, they were married in June 1525.

Luther did not marry Katharina because he was infatuate...