Katharina and Martin Luther

by Michelle DeRusha

  The bell rang sharply, cutting through the predawn stillness and rousing the nuns from sleep. Katharina did not linger under the warm blankets. She rose, dressed quickly in her white robe, and scurried in silence down the chilly hallway toward the convent church. She had only been at Marienthron a few weeks, but already she was accustomed to the daily routine, which rarely varied.

  The first bell of the day tolled at 2:00 a.m. to awaken the nuns for Matins (from the Old French word matin, meaning “morning”), or Night Vigils, as they were sometimes called—the first phase of the seven-part Daily Office the nuns performed. As a postulant, or candidate for the nunnery, Katharina most likely did not have her own cell but slept in a dormitory with the other young candidates. She rose with the other postulants and nuns, donned the white robe indicative of the Cistercian Order (other cloistered nuns wore black robes, but the Cistercians wore a coarse habit of undyed sheep’s wool, keeping in line with their emphasis on simplicity and austerity), and proceeded in silence to church, where she took her place in the choir section.1 There she recited the prayers, psalms, and Scripture readings and sang the hymns specified for the Matins hour.

  Lauds (from the Latin imperative laudate, meaning “praise ye!”) followed Matins at daybreak. There were five additional hours performed throughout the day: Prime (6:00 or 7:00 a.m.), Terce (9:00 a.m.), Sext (noon), Nones (3:00 p.m.), and Vespers (4:00 or 5:00 p.m.), with Compline closing the day before the nuns retired to bed at 7:00 or 8:00 p.m. Each of the hours followed the set of prayers, Scripture, and hymns prescribed by the Divine Office for that particular hour on that particular day. All work ceased at the sound of the bell; the nuns were required to stop whatever they were doing and attend services in the church.2

  In the early Middle Ages, a day in the convent (and the monastery) was measured by the movement of the sun, which meant that a nun’s day was much shorter in the winter, since the sun rose later, than in the summer. During the summer, for instance, Lauds would have been celebrated at 5:00 or 6:00 a.m., rather than 7:00 or 8:00 a.m., and Compline would have closed out the day around 9:00 p.m., rather than 7:00 or 8:00 p.m. during the winter. However, by the late thirteenth century, the invention of the mechanical clock had standardized timekeeping in the convent. By the time Katharina entered Marienthron in 1509, the day was no longer measured in twelve parts, as it had been previously according to canonical law, but in twenty-four equal hours.3 The convent at Marienthron likely owned a mechanical clock, which tolled at the appropriate hours to rouse the nuns or call them to prayers. Earlier in the Middle Ages, the Cistercians, who were “sterner and more strict with themselves,” forced themselves to stay awake between Matins and Lauds and either read in the cloister or spent time praying privately, but by the time Katharina entered the convent, some of the earlier rules had been relaxed, and the nuns were typically permitted to return to bed and sleep until daybreak.4

  As one might imagine, getting adequate sleep was a challenge, especially for the new postulants, who were unaccustomed to such a rigorous schedule. “Sleep, like food, was regarded as a physical need and self-deprivation was a mark of holiness, showing one’s mastery over the senses,” says medieval monastic historian Julie Kerr.5 Cistercian abbot Bernard of Clairvaux deemed sleep a waste of time for himself—he was known to spend the entire night in vigil—but he also considered it potentially dangerous, “as the sleeper who was dead to the world might also be dead to God.”6 Likewise, the thirteenth-century Scottish monk Adam of Lennox slept only a few minutes at a time, either sitting upright or lying prostrate before an altar dedicated to Mary. It’s said the “straw over which his sheets were placed remained in the same position” during all twenty years he was a member of the monastery, implying that he slept so little he didn’t even rumple his bedsheets.7 Most monks and nuns weren’t expected to achieve this level of control, but they were advised to sleep lightly so they could be easily awakened for Matins and Lauds.

  Some abbots and abbesses were more lenient than others. Richard Fox, sixteenth-century bishop of Winchester, England, for instance, “clearly appreciated the difficulty of rising during the night and advised the nuns in his diocese that those who were up first should rouse the others by making a soft and somber stirring with their mouths or feet, but might knock upon the bedstead of any who were sluggards.”8 We don’t know for sure how strict or lenient Katharina’s abbess was when it came to sleep, but we do know that according to the Daily Office, at the very least, Katharina awakened in the middle of the night for prayer and began her day before dawn, a habit that would stick and one that would later prompt Luther to nickname her affectionately, “Kathe von Bora, the Morning Star of Wittenberg.”9

  A Quiet Life

  Between thirty-five and thirty-nine nuns lived together at Marienthron during Katharina’s years there, which was considered an average-size convent for the time. Yet despite the number of nuns and the close living quarters, daily life within the convent’s walls was conducted almost entirely in silence. The nuns were not allowed to speak in the choir—the section in the church where they sat for worship, which was separated by a wooden or iron screen from the public space—nor was talking allowed in the dining hall during meals or in the dormitory. Katharina and her peers likely relied on a form of sign language to communicate with each other. The only time verbal communication was allowed was when a nun read from Scripture during mealtime and when the nuns recited prayers and psalms and sang hymns during the Office.

  One can imagine how difficult it was for Katharina to pursue connection and friendship within such tight communication restrictions and how lonely and isolated she must have felt, especially coming from the comparatively convivial atmosphere of the cloister school in Brehna. Yet we also know she wasn’t entirely alone in Nimbschen. Margarete von Haubitz, a distant relative of Katharina’s mother (according to the Markwalds), served as the recently elected abbess at Nimbschen when Katharina arrived in 1509.10 Her paternal aunt, Magdalena von Bora (who would later live with the Luthers in Wittenberg), was also already a nun there.11 We also know that Katharina did, over time, forge a close friendship with at least one other nun. Eva Schonfeld arrived at the convent shortly after Katharina and escaped with her in 1523.12 The two were friends for many years, even after they left the convent.

  Meals at the convent, like everything else, were simple. While the Rule of St. Benedict suggested that only one meal be consumed per day during the winter (summer, because the days were longer, allowed for a light supper as well), the rules were relaxed in the late Middle Ages, allowing the nuns at Marienthron three meals a day. Breakfast consisted of a slice of bread and either a cup of water, wine, or beer (wine and beer were commonly consumed at all three meals during the Middle Ages and early Renaissance). Lunch was the heartiest meal, featuring either fresh fish from the cloister pond or salted herring, along with vegetables, raisins, almonds, or figs. Supper was often soup, bread, and a cup of water, wine, or beer.13 Meat was not typically part of a Cistercian nun’s diet, unless she was ill, in which case she was allowed a bit of meat for nourishment and fortification and to aid in the healing process.14 On special occasions, such as feasts and anniversaries, the nuns might enjoy what were called pittances—treats that often included eggs, fine white bread in place of the grainy black bread, and spiced wine rather than ale.15

  There was a reason for such basic fare. “The restrictions imposed on the monastic diet, like those imposed on other aspects of their life, were a way to master the senses and suppress physical desires such as greed, lust and torpor,” explains Kerr. “This would ensure that the mind stayed focused on lofty matters and was not a servant to bodily wants.”16 As Bernard of Clairvaux said, “The body, but not the soul, is fattened by frying pans.”17 Twelfth-century Benedictine monk William of St. Thierry put it bluntly but succinctly: “Black bread and plain water, mere greens and vegetables are assuredly no very delectable fare. What does give great pleasure is when, for the love of Christ and the desire of inte
rior delight, a well-disciplined stomach is able to satisfy itself with such fare and be thankful.”18 It was important that the nuns stay focused and alert during the repetitive, hypnotizing chants, prayers, and hymns of the Daily Office. A spare but healthy diet helped the nuns stay awake. As Bernard of Clairvaux warned in the 1100s, “Anyone who attended Vigils before having fully digested his food would yield a groan rather than a tone.”19

  However, the reasons for dietary restrictions and other practices—like wearing rough, floor-length wool habits and keeping their hair shorn under their veils—went deeper than their effect on singing or even prayer. Chastity, one of the three vows taken by the nuns upon installation (the other two were obedience and poverty), was a huge concern for both cloistered men and women. Abstaining from particular foods, especially meat, was believed to be an effective means for suppressing the libido and keeping carnal desires in check, which, as we’ll see in later chapters, was a major point of discussion during the early Reformation.

  The White Nun

  During her first six years at Nimbschen, Katharina practiced the religious rituals of the convent; continued her education in German, Latin, mathematics, and canon (church) law; and prepared for consecration. She attended classes with a group of girls enrolled in the small convent school at Nimbschen. The nuns referred to Katharina and the other candidates as “the adolescent virgins,” to distinguish them from the nonmonastic school girls.20 In addition to attending the daily eight Offices, higher expectations and stricter rules were placed on the candidates. There was no wiggle room for the girls who expected to become nuns.

  Katharina became a novitiate in 1514 and was officially consecrated on October 8, 1515, at the age of sixteen. She took the vows of obedience, chastity, and poverty, and donned the floor-length white habit, over which was placed a black scapular attached to a wimple (a garment worn around the head and chin) and veil that covered her neck and cropped hair. Only her face and hands were visible. A cincture made of rope or fabric was tied around her waist over the habit and scapular. Like her sisters, she would be called a white nun of the Cistercian Order, a title she expected to hold for the rest of her life. Although her consecration was an important ceremony and a monumental event in Katharina’s life, her father and stepmother were likely not present. Like most of the milestones in her life up to this point, Katharina marked the occasion alone.

  By the time Katharina was officially consecrated as a nun, she was well adjusted and accustomed to daily life in the convent. In addition to performing the Daily Office, she likely had specific tasks assigned to her by the abbess. While the nuns never stepped foot off the premises, there was still plenty of work to do behind the convent’s walls. For example, nuns during the Middle Ages often translated religious texts, illuminated manuscripts with elaborate artwork, or did embroidery or other handiwork. Even if Katharina didn’t participate in this kind of work, she most certainly had a number of daily chores assigned to her by the abbess, including housecleaning, food preparation, or gardening.

  Prioress of the Cistercian abbey of Saint Mary of Rieunette near Carcassonne (France). While this image depicts a contemporary Cistercian nun, the habit, scapular, and wimple are similar to what Katharina von Bora would have worn. [Zelfgemaakte fot in de abdij van Rieunette nabij Carcassonne in Frankrijk; Willy Leenders, 2006.]

  “Convent life provided women with the opportunity to hold many different positions of responsibility,” says German Reformation historian Charlotte Woodford. For instance, the fifteenth-century Dominican reformer Johannes Meyer listed twenty-five offices for nuns, in addition to the abbess, including “the sacristan, infirmaress (nurse), chantress (singing mistress), portress (door-keeper), teachers for the pupils and novices and librarian. Other nuns were responsible for supervising the lay sisters while they prepared the meals, made clothes, or carried out their other daily tasks. . . . One of the most important offices for a professed nun after the abbess was that of cellaress. She was the convent bursar, responsible for the economy. . . . She presided over the convent’s income from its farms and estates, both in kind—grain, livestock, and wine—and money, be it from trade, taxes or elsewhere.”21 As a recently consecrated nun, Katharina probably wouldn’t have held any of these supervisory positions, but she undoubtedly did the work required in most, if not all, of these particular areas.

  Katharina must have taken her vows seriously, because in the fourteen years she lived at Marienthron, not one complaint or reprimand was registered against her in the Urkundenbuch, the official record of the cloister.22 In fact, twenty years later, on Pentecost in 1540, we know by Katharina’s own testimony (some of only a handful of her own words that have been preserved) that she prayed “feverishly, diligently, and frequently” while in the convent, a fervent zeal she seemed nostalgic for all those years later.23 What we don’t know anything about is Katharina’s inner state of mind during her years at Marienthron. Did she suffer from doubts and depression like Luther did during his monastic years? Did she resent the fact that she was forced into a life she might not have chosen for herself, had she been given any say in the matter? Did she struggle with feelings of abandonment or loneliness? Did she succumb to feelings of despair and hopelessness in the face of such utter powerlessness? Or was she content and relatively satisfied, comforted by the daily rituals and grateful for sustenance, shelter, and community? We can’t know for sure.

  We do, however, know of one critical fact in Katharina’s personal history, perhaps the most important fact. We know that when she was twenty-four years old she escaped from the convent. She fled. She was not released from Marienthron by her parents; she was not dismissed against her will; she was not cajoled out of the cloister. Rather, Katharina escaped from Marienthron in the middle of the night under cover of darkness, by means of an elaborately orchestrated plan. Katharina von Bora abandoned the only existence she’d ever known and risked everything to step into life outside the convent walls. That fact alone speaks volumes about her desires for the future.

  3

  A Family Rift

  At the same time Katharina von Bora was living her childhood and early adult years as a cloistered nun, one hundred miles away in Erfurt, Germany, her future husband was living a markedly similar life as a monk.

  Like Katharina, Martin Luther never expected to enter monastic life. In fact, his father, Hans Luder,1 had lofty expectations that his firstborn would pursue a career in law, and for the first twenty-two years of Luther’s life, the plan unfolded accordingly. Luther spent four years at Erfurt University, first studying liberal arts and then law. He took his academic work seriously, completing his bachelor’s degree in one year (ranking thirtieth out of fifty-seven students) and two years later his master’s degree (improving his rank to second out of seventeen students).2 His father was proud of his son’s accomplishments and immediately began to address Luther with the pronoun ihr, the more formal and respectful “you,” instead of the familiar du, to demonstrate that he considered Luther a professional.3 Hans also presented Luther with an extravagant gift: a complete edition of the Corpus juris,4 a not-so-subtle hint at his expectation that Luther would continue on to earn a law degree at the university. That was the plan, and Luther seemed willing to go along with it, until the fateful evening of July 2, 1505, changed everything.

  That night, twenty-two-year-old Luther was caught in a violent thunderstorm as he traveled on foot back to Erfurt from the village of Stotternheim. Fearing for his life as lightning flashed and deafening thunder rolled across the countryside, Luther cried out to St. Anne, patron saint of miners5 and mother of the Virgin Mary, promising that if she protected him, he would become a monk. “Suddenly surrounded by the terror and agony of death, I felt constrained to make my vow,” he later wrote in the introduction to his treatise On Monastic Vows.6 Luther kept his promise, in spite of his father’s protestations and in spite of the fact that he himself questioned whether he should spend the rest of his life as a monk.

  G
reat Expectations

  Hans was furious. As Luther himself put it, his father had paid “bitter sweat and toil” to put him through the university in order to launch a respectable career in law, not to spend the rest of his life chanting psalms and praying in a dank cell.7 Hans undoubtedly worked hard to fund his son’s education; however, the picture Luther liked to paint of his family as destitute farmers wasn’t entirely accurate. Although in his later years Luther emphasized that he was born of peasant stock—for instance, he mentioned more than once that his mother gathered firewood and carried the sticks home on her back—the truth was, the Luders were not peasants or farmers, nor were they exceedingly poor.8

  Hans was the son of a farmer, but he was not a farmer himself. According to German tradition, the youngest son, not the oldest, inherited the land, so when Hans came of age he was expected to pursue his own profession. Soon after their marriage, Hans and his wife, Margarethe, settled in the county of Mansfeld, an area rich in mineral resources, particularly copper. The Luders first lived in Eisleben, where Luther was born, and then later moved to the town of Mansfeld. There Hans worked his way up in the local mining industry from pickman in a copper foundry to business partner in a series of small shafts. He also had a leaseholder’s interest in three smelting works. Together these business ventures, while not hugely lucrative, allowed him to purchase a house for his large family (Luther was one of eight children) and fund his oldest son’s university education.9

  Some scholars speculate that Luther invoked the image of agrarian peasant beginnings in order to present himself as a person who had overcome great hardship on his path toward achievement and success.10 Biographer Richard Marius adds that Luther was not unique in rewriting his past: “A whiff of hardship hangs over the family history as Luther told it—though like many successful men recounting their autobiography to adoring disciples, he may have exaggerated his youthful rigors.”11 Biographer Peter Manns, however, is more overtly critical of Luther, implying that the Reformer may have intentionally reworked the details of his personal history in order to deemphasize a middle-class upbringing: