Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  This description does not do justice to the mediæval Catholic teaching on matrimony, its duties and privileges. This teaching never demanded the suppression of sensual attraction or love. It fully recognised that this had been implanted in human nature by God’s wise and beneficent hand as a stimulus to preserve and multiply the human race, according to His command: “Be fruitful and multiply.” But the Church urged all to see that this impulse was kept pure and worthy by attention to its higher purpose, viz. to the object appointed from above. Instead of becoming its slave the Christian was to ennoble it by allowing the motives of faith to play their part in conjugal intercourse. The Church’s teaching would indeed have been “repulsive” had it demanded the general repression of the sexual instinct and not merely the taming of that unruliness which is the result of original sin, and is really unworthy of man. Had she imposed the obligation to wage an impossible struggle against it as a thing essentially sinful, then her teaching might indeed have been described as “repulsive.”

  Still it is sufficiently tragic, that, in spite of the gratification of the sensual impulse of nature playing the principal part in his new and supposedly more exalted view of conjugal intercourse, Luther should, on account of the concupiscence involved, characterise the “actus matrimonialis” as a mortal sin. In “De votis monasticis,” his work written at the Wartburg, he says: “According to Ps. 1. 7, it is a sin differing in nothing from adultery and fornication so far as the sensual passion and hateful lust are concerned; God, however, does not impute it to the married, though simply because of His compassion, since it is impossible for us to avoid it, although our duty would really be to do without it.” We are already familiar with his curious and impossible theory of imputation, according to which God is able to close His eyes to a sin, which nevertheless is really there.

  That there is actual sin in the act Luther also insists elsewhere, at the same time pleading, however, that the sin is not imputed by God, who, as it were, deliberately winks at it: “In spite of all the good I say of married life, I will not grant so much to nature as to admit that there is no sin in it; what I say is that we have here flesh and blood, depraved in Adam, conceived and born in sin (Ps. 1. 7), and that no conjugal due is ever rendered without sin.” — The blessing which God bestowed on marriage, he says elsewhere, fallen human nature was “not able to accomplish without sin”; “without sin no married persons could do their duty.”

  Hence the following inference would seem justified: Matrimony is really a state of sin. Such was the opinion, not of the Church before Luther’s day, but of her assailant, whose opponents soon pointed out to him how unfounded was his supposition. The ancient Church, by the voice of her theologians, declared the “actus matrimonialis,” when performed in the right way and to a right end, to be no sin; they admitted the inevitable satisfaction of concupiscence, but allowed it so long as its gratification was not all that was sought. According to Luther — whom the author above referred to has quite rightly understood — it is different: Sin is undoubtedly committed, but we may, nay, are bound, to commit it.

  With the above, all Luther’s statements on the inevitable strength of the impulse of nature agree. Though the union of husband and wife is a rule of the natural law applying to the majority rather than to the individual, Luther practically makes it binding upon all. In this connection he seems to be unable to view the moral relation of the sexes in any other light than as existing for the gratification of mutual lust, since without marriage they must inevitably fall into every sort of carnal sin. “It is a necessary and natural thing, that every man should have a wife,” he says in the lengthy passage already quoted, where he concludes, “it is more necessary than eating and drinking, sleeping and waking, or passing the natural motions of the body.” Elsewhere, in a characteristic comparison, he says: “Were a man compelled to close his bowels and bladder — surely an utter impossibility — what would become of him?” According to him, “man must be fruitful, and multiply, and breed,” “like all other animals, since God has created him thereto, so that, of necessity, a man must seek a wife, and a woman a husband, unless God works a miracle.”

  Many were they who, during the controversies which accompanied the schism, listened to such teaching and believed it and were ready to forgo the miracle in order to follow the impulse of nature; were ready to indulge their weakness did their state of life prohibit marriage, or to dissolve the marriage already contracted when it did not turn out to their taste, or when they fancied they could advance one of the numerous reasons proclaimed by Luther for its annulment. The evil effects of such morality in the 16th century (see below, ff. and xxiv. 1 and 2), witnessed to on all sides by Lutherans as well as Catholics, prove conclusively that the originator of the new matrimonial theories was the last man qualified to reproach the ancient Church with a want of appreciation for marriage or for woman.

  Nor must we look merely at the results. The man’s very character, his mode of thought and his speech, suffice to banish him from the society of the olden, earnest moralists. Albeit unwillingly, we must add here some further statements to those already adduced.

  “If a man feels his manhood,” Luther says, “let him take a wife and not tempt God. ‘Puella propterea habet pudenda,’ to provide him a remedy that he may escape pollution and adultery.”

  “The sting of the flesh may easily be helped, so long as girls and women are to be found.”

  Our readers will not have forgotten the reason he gives why women have so little intellect; or the reproof addressed to him by Staupitz.

  Luther urges early marriage in the words of an old proverb: “To rise early and to marry young will cause regret to no one.” “It will fare with you,” he says to the same addressee, “as with the nuns to whom they gave carved Jesuses. They cast about for others, who at least were living and pleased them better, and sought how best to escape from their convent.”— “What greater service can one do a girl than to get her a baby? This rids her of many fancies.” Here, and elsewhere too, he is anxious that people should marry, even though there should not be enough to live upon; God would not allow the couple to starve if they did their duty.— “A young fellow should be simply given a wife, otherwise he has no peace. Then the troubles of matrimony will soon tame him.”

  On another occasion (1540) Luther expresses himself with greater caution about too early matches: “It is not good for young people to marry too soon. They are ruined in their prime, exhaust their strength and neglect their studies.” “But the young men are consumed with passion,” one of those present objected, “and the theologians work upon their conscience and tell them that ‘To marry young will cause regret to no one.’” Luther’s reply was: “The young men are unwilling to resist any temptations.... They should console themselves with the hope of future marriage. We used to be forbidden to marry in almost all the Faculties, hence the youths indulged in all kinds of excesses, knowing that, later on, they would no longer be able to do so. Thus they sunk into every kind of disorder. But now everybody is allowed to marry, even the theologian and the bishop. Hence, in their own interests, they ought to learn to wait.”

  At other times he was inclined to promote hasty marriages from motives of policy, and, without a thought of the dignity of the conjugal union and the respect due to woman, to use it as a means to increase the number of his followers.

  This happened in the case of many of his converts from the ranks of the clergy and religious.

  In the case of the Bishop of Samland, George von Polenz, and his adviser, Johann Briesmann, the ex-Franciscan, who both were desirous of marrying, Luther judged that delay would be disastrous. He urged them to make haste and be publicly wedded, both having already contracted a so-called marriage in conscience; in their case there was “danger in delay,” and, as the saying goes, “If you wait a night, you wait a year”; even Paul had said we must not receive the grace of God in vain (2 Cor. vi. 1), and the bride in the Canticle complained that the bridegroom “was gone,�
�� because she had been tardy in opening the door (v. 6). A German proverb said, “Wenn das Ferkel beut soll man den Sack herhalten.” Esau’s lost birthright, and the solemn words of Christ concerning separation from Him (John xii. 35 f.) were also made to serve his purpose. “Take it when, where and how you can, or you won’t get another chance.” A man could not be sure of his own mind on account of the snares of the devil; a marriage not yet publicly ratified remained somewhat uncertain.

  Before these exhortations reached them both the parties in question had, however, already taken the public step.

  It was in those very days that Luther celebrated his own wedding and sent his pressing invitation to marry to the Cardinal and Elector of Mayence, telling him that, short of a miracle, or without some peculiar grace, it was a “terrible thing” for a man “to be found without a wife at the hour of death.” It was then, too, that he sent to Albert of Prussia, the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, who was contemplating marriage, his congratulations on the secularisation of the lands of the Order and the founding of the Duchy, which he had even previously strongly urged him to do. In this letter he tells the Grand Master that it was “God Almighty,” “Who had graciously and mercifully helped him to such a position [that of a secular Prince].” The Grand Master’s marriage and consequent breach of his vow of chastity followed in 1526. He invited Luther to the wedding and wrote to him, that God had given him “the grace to enter the Order [of marriage] instituted by Himself” after he had “laid aside the cross [the sign of the Order] and entered the secular estate.”

  It cannot be denied, that in all these marriages which Luther promoted, or at least favoured, what he had his eye on was the advantage of the new Church system. Of any raising of the moral position of women, of any deepening of the significance of marriage, there is here no trace; these marriages served quite another purpose. The circumstances attending them were, moreover, frequently far from dignified. “The Bishop of Samland,” so Philip von Creutz, a Knight of the Teutonic Order, relates, “gave up his bishopric to the Duke [Albert] in the presence of the whole assembly.... He caused his mitre to be broken up and, out of its precious stones and jewels, he had ornaments made for his wife.”

  Practical Consequences of the New View of Woman: Matrimonial Impediments, Divorce.

  The readiness shown by Luther to annul valid marriages, and the wayward manner in which he disposed of the impediments fixed by the Church, were not calculated to enhance respect either for marriage or for woman.

  As regards the impediments to marriage we shall here merely refer to the practical and not uncommon case where a person wished to marry a niece. Whereas Canon Law, at one with Roman Law, regarded this relationship as constituting an impediment, which might, however, be dispensed from by the Pope, Luther at first saw fit to declare it no impediment at all; he even issued memoranda to this effect, one of which was printed in 1526 and circulated widely. “If the Pope was able to dispense,” he said later on concerning this, “why can’t I too?” In favour of the lawfulness of such marriages he appealed to the example of Abraham, and in reply to objections declared: “If they blame the work and example of the holy Patriarch Abraham, then let them be scandalised.” At a later date, nevertheless, he changed his mind and held such marriages to be unlawful. His previous statements he explained by saying that once he had indeed given a different decision, not in order to lead others into excesses but in order “to assist consciences at the hour of death against the Pope”; he had merely given advice in Confession to troubled consciences, and had not laid down any law; to make laws was not within his province, either in the State or in the Church. His former memoranda were not to be alleged now; a certain man of the name of Borner, who, on the strength of them, had married his niece, had acted very ill and done injustice to his (Luther’s) decision. The Pope alone, so Luther says, was to blame for his previous advice — because many, owing to his laws, were reduced to despair and had come to Luther for help. “It is true that in Confession and in order to pacify consciences I have advised differently, but I made a mistake in allowing such counsels to be made public. Now, however, it is done. This is a matter for Confession only.”

  When speaking in this way, in 1544, he probably had in mind his so-called advice in Confession to Philip of Hesse. He was still acting on the principle, that advice given in Confession might afterwards be publicly repudiated as quite wrong; he failed somehow to see that the case of marriage of uncle and niece was of its very nature something public.

  The multitude of divorces caused him great anxiety. Even the preachers of the new faith were setting a bad example by putting away their spouses and contracting fresh marriages. Melander, for instance, who blessed Philip’s second marriage, after deserting “two wives in succession without even seeking legal aid, married a third.” At Gotha, as Luther himself relates, a woman deserted her husband and her three children, and sent him a message to tell him he might take another wife. When, however, he had done so the woman again asserted her claims. “Our lawyers,” Luther complains, “at once took her part, but the Elector decided she should quit the country. My own decision would have been to have her done to death by drowning.”

  In a still existing letter of 1525, Luther permitted Michael Kramer, preacher at Domitsch, near Torgau, to contract a third marriage, two previous ones having turned out unfortunate. Kramer, as a Catholic priest, had first married a servant maid and, for this, had been sent to jail by Duke George his sovereign. When the maid proved unfaithful and married another, Luther, to whom Kramer had attached himself, declared her to be really “deceased” and told the preacher he might use his “Christian freedom.” Kramer thereupon married a girl from Domitsch, where he had been in the meantime appointed Lutheran pastor. This new wife likewise ran away from him three weeks later. He now addressed himself to the local board of magistrates, who, conjointly with him, wrote to Luther, pointing out how the poor man “could not do without a wife.” Luther thereupon sent a memorandum, addressed to the “magistrates and the preacher of Domitsch,” in which he allowed a divorce from the second wife and gave permission for a third marriage, which, apparently, was more of a success. During the Visitations in 1528 this preacher, who had since been transferred to Lucka, got into trouble on account of his three marriages, but saved his skin by appealing to Luther’s letter.

  The reader already knows that, according to Luther, a woman who has no children by her husband, may, with the latter’s consent, quietly dissolve the marriage and cohabit with another, for instance, with her brother-in-law; this, however, was to be secret, because the children were to be regarded as her first husband’s. Should he refuse his consent, says Luther, “rather than suffer her to burn or have recourse to adultery, I would advise her to marry another and flee to some place where she is unknown. What other advice can be given to one who is in constant danger from carnal lusts?” Duke George of Saxony, referring to a similar passage in Luther’s work “On Conjugal Life” (1522), said in a letter to Luther which was immediately printed: “When was it ever heard of that wives should be taken from their husbands and given to other men, as we now find it stated in your Evangel? Has adultery ever been more common than since you wrote: If a woman has no children by her husband, then let her go to another and bear children whom her husband must provide for as though he were the father? This is the fruit of the precious Evangel which you dragged forth out of the gutter. You were quite right when you said you found it in the gutter; what we want to know is, why you didn’t leave it there.”

  What Luther had said concerning the refusal to render the conjugal due: “If the wife refuse, then let the maid come,” attracted more attention than he probably anticipated, both among his own adherents and among his foes. It is true, as already pointed out, that the context does not justify illicit relations outside marriage (see vol. iii., f.), but the words as they stand, to say nothing of the unlikelihood of any real marriage with the maid, and, finally, the significance which may have clung to a
coarse saying of the populace possibly alluded to by Luther, all favoured those who chose to make the tempting phrase a pretext for such extra-matrimonial relations.

  When the sermon on marriage in which the passage occurs was published, Duke George’s representative at the Diet of Nuremberg in 1522 sent his master at Dresden a copy of the booklet, “which the devilish monk,” so he writes, “has unblushingly published, though it has cost him the loss of many followers about here; it would not go well with us poor husbands, should our naughty wives read it. I shall certainly not give my wife one.” Duke George replied with a grim jest which doubtless went the rounds at Nuremberg among those whom the booklet had offended: “As to what you write,” George says, “viz. that you won’t let your wife read the little book on marriage, me thinks you are acting unwisely; in our opinion it contains something which might serve even a jealous husband like you very well; for it says, that if your wife refuses to do your will you have only to turn to the maid. Hence keep a look out for pretty maids. These and similar utterances you may very well hold over your wife.”

  In 1542 Wicel, in his Postils, speaking of the preachers, says: “The words of St. Paul, ‘Art thou loosed from a wife, seek not a wife,’ 1 Cor. vii. 27, have a very unevangelical sound on the lips of these Evangelists. How then must it be? Quick, take a wife or a husband; whether you be young or old, make haste; should one die, don’t delay to take another. Celebrate the wedding, if it turns out ill, then let the maid come! Divorce this one and take in marriage that one, whether the first be living or dead! For chambering and wantonness shall not be neglected,”— “Since the coming of Christ,” says the same writer elsewhere, “there have never been so many divorces as under Luther’s rule.”