Katharina and Martin Luther

by Michelle DeRusha

  Obstacles to Freedom

  The decision to abandon the monastic life was not a simple one, especially for women, who had far less opportunity outside the cloister walls than men and shockingly few rights in sixteenth-century Europe in general. As was noted earlier, single women were rarely granted city citizenship, which was based on one’s ability to work, own property, and support the military. Citizenship fees increased as many towns experienced economic decline in the sixteenth century, making it even less likely for women, who were typically poorer than men, to afford citizenship.29 In Nuremberg, for example, women made up 13 percent of the new citizens in the 1460s. That percentage dropped to 4.6 percent in the 1500s and to less than 1 percent by the 1550s.30 Laws forbade unmarried women to move into cities, required widows to reside with one of their male children, and increasingly required unmarried women to be appointed a guardian to manage their financial and legal affairs. Once a nun left the convent, the city council either assigned her a guardian or transferred economic control to her new husband. Even if the nun left the convent with money, those funds were turned over to her guardian, new husband, or family members. A former nun would not have been allowed to sign her own name as a financially independent person.31

  “The standard opinion was that women had to be taken care of by some male authority, whether a father, a husband, a son or the church,” explains Protestant Reformation historian Amy Leonard. “If none of these were available, the council [in Strasbourg] decided in the late fifteenth century, a guardian must be assigned to handle all of a woman’s public business. In particular, she could not carry out any financial transactions herself, but rather had to defer to her male custodian.”32 This was a significant issue for Katharina, who, having been virtually abandoned by her family, did not have a male relative or guardian she could turn to for support.

  In short, virtually the only way a nun could become a citizen (and thus have any social, financial, or legal power) was to marry, which meant, of course, that she was no longer a nun. “A priest could be both a citizen AND a priest, but a nun could not be a citizen and a nun.”33 The legal status of a woman depended on whether she was unmarried, married, or widowed, whereas adult males were generally treated as a single legal category.34 As she considered the possibility of fleeing the convent, Katharina undoubtedly played out these scenarios in her head. Her father had abdicated his responsibility for her the day he transferred her to Marienthron. Aside from her confessor, she hadn’t spoken to a man in years, so marriage prospects were slim to none. And she didn’t know anyone who could serve as her male guardian. Katharina’s options were limited, at best.

  Employment was yet another area fraught with difficulty for women during this time. While it was recognized and accepted by society that some women had to work for wages (for example, women of the middle or lower classes), this work was often viewed as a temporary measure until the women could attain, or return to, a married state.35 The kinds of paid employment available to women were also highly regulated by city and state laws, which often detailed exactly which professions were considered acceptable for women. For example, a sixteenth-century Nuremberg ordinance listed female tailors, shopkeepers, money changers, innkeepers, wine handlers, and market women as appropriate positions for middle-class women.36 Still, even a married woman who pursued these acceptable employment opportunities couldn’t sign a business contract without the agreement of her husband (although married women often gained the right to conduct business on a regular basis by appealing to the appropriate governing body).37

  Of course, mulling over possible employment options would have been an exercise in futility for Katharina. As a noblewoman, she would not have been allowed to consider even temporary paid employment as, say, a shopkeeper or innkeeper. Women of noble birth like Katharina didn’t work for pay, even if they didn’t have a cent to their names.

  Marriage was increasingly the best means of survival for most women, as unmarried women during the late Middle Ages and early modern period were treated with outright hostility and suspicion. Women in general were viewed as intellectually and emotionally inferior to men, and unmarried women in particular were seen as a menacing threat. “Sweeping generalities about women’s nature were made not only by moralists and preachers, but also humanists and writers of popular satire,” observes Wiesner. “Many of these expressed or reinforced the notion that women suffered from uncontrollable sexuality and lacked the ability to reason.”38 Because it was believed that a woman’s libido increased with age, older unmarried women were considered particularly threatening. Seen as potential seductresses who were willing to go to any lengths to satisfy their sexual desires, they were frequently accused as witches (the devil was believed to promise sexual satisfaction) and almost always viewed with suspicion.39

  Women were seen as threatening in part because relatively little was known about their physiology and sexuality; what was unknown was considered mysterious and therefore frightening. For example, according to popular beliefs of the time, a menstruating woman could rust iron, sour wine, spoil meat, and dull a knife with her touch, a glance, or even her mere presence.40 On the other hand, menopause, and even the cessation of menstruation during pregnancy, was considered dangerous for women because it was thought to leave impure blood within a woman’s body, which could harden into a tumor, or compel excess blood to run into her brain, which would lead to overheating.41

  Not only was the health of postmenopausal women considered at risk, the women themselves, particularly those who were unmarried, were considered dangerous to others. Often depicted as witches with an insatiable sex drive that drove them to seek demon lovers, postmenopausal women were thought to emit invisible vapors from their mouths which could cause a nursing mother’s milk to dry up and children and animals to become ill.42 Luther himself believed the common folklore about witches, and once recounted a story about his mother, who blamed a female neighbor for cursing her young son and causing his death. Luther remembers his mother wailing, “That wicked witch, our neighbor, has murdered my poor child.”43

  The foundation for understanding female sexuality and human sexuality in general was always male sexuality. For example, female reproductive organs were often thought of simply as the male genitals pushed inside the body—the sixteenth-century anatomist Vesalius depicted the uterus as an inverted penis—and several female anatomical parts didn’t even have their own unique names. Since they were thought to be congruent with a corresponding male organ, they were simply called by that same name.44

  The fact that female reproductive organs were contained inside the body was considered a sign of female inferiority, a result of a woman’s colder, damper nature, which hadn’t generated the heat necessary to push the organs out.45 Sex manuals from the early modern period depicted female sexuality negatively, and this negative view was supported by contemporary religion, which saw sexuality as base and corrupt, originating from Adam and Eve’s fall rather than as part of God’s original plan for creation. Women were seen as more sexual than men because they were associated with Eve, who was the first to succumb to the serpent’s temptations and eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

  As open as he was about human sexuality, Luther subscribed to popular beliefs about female sexuality and its dangerous lure. “For girls, too, are aware of this evil [lust] and if they spend time in the company of young men, they turn the hearts of these young men in various directions to entice them to love, especially if the youths are outstanding because of their good looks and strength of body,” he wrote in his Lectures on Genesis. “There it is often more difficult for the latter to withstand such enticement than to resist their own lusts.”46 It was one thing for men to wrestle with their own lust, Luther suggested, but to be confronted with the enticement of female sexuality was a worse and far more threatening situation. In short, a woman, simply by being in a man’s company, was to blame for his lust.

  The Church even regarded sex within marriage as
a sin and considered the best possible marriage an unconsummated one. (This belief led to the popular medieval idea that Jesus was birthed out of Mary’s ear, so as not to defile himself with passage through the birth canal like a common man.47) Initially Luther’s thoughts about sexual intercourse within marriage for reproduction purposes only aligned with those of the Church. However, he began to shift his perspective in 1519 with his Sermon on the Estate of Marriage, in which he concluded that God allows desire within marriage—even desire not intended for the purpose of procreation—as long as “one seriously tries to moderate that desire and does not make a manure-heap and a sow-bath out of it.”48 By the time he published his 1520 treatise To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, he was firm in his convictions, stating that the pope should “not have the power to prohibit [sex], just as he does not have the power to prohibit eating, drinking, natural secretion or becoming fat.”49

  This understanding and perception of female sexuality and society’s view of women in general meant that as an unmarried woman approaching middle age, Katharina von Bora would have been considered a threat to the accepted social structure of the time. As a convent escapee and a former nun, she also would have been viewed by conservative Church authorities and others as an overly sexual woman, someone who had likely fled her cloistered existence and abandoned her vows of chastity in order to satisfy irrepressible sexual desires. She might have even been suspected a witch, an accusation that, as we’ll see in the next chapter, would have posed a grave threat to her life.

  Katharina knew she would face serious obstacles in her bid for freedom. Despite the fact that she had lived a sheltered existence behind cloister walls for nearly her entire life, she was well aware of the challenges she would face as an unmarried woman outside the convent. As a member of the landed gentry, she knew paid employment would not be an option. Yet with no dowry, she also understood that finding a suitable husband would be challenging, if not impossible. Katharina knew that her family would not provide for her, yet she also realized that as a single woman, she would be viewed with suspicion and perhaps even ostracized by society.

  Still, something drove her to take the risk. One can imagine how Luther’s words would have impacted Katharina, whose life up to this point had been entirely determined by others. As a woman forced into the convent against her will, Katharina would have been rocked to the core by Luther’s treatises against monasticism. “They lose this life and the next,” he wrote, “they are forced into hell on earth and hell in the other world. . . . You bring them to this point for the sake of your accursed property.”50 From the day of her birth, events and circumstances over which she’d had no say and no control had determined her life’s path. Born female to noble but poor parents, she had endured the early death of her mother and the loss of all familial connections when she was placed in the convent school far from home. From there she’d been forced into the nunnery and required to take the vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience; after that, marriage and motherhood were out of the question.

  In Luther’s impassioned words, Katharina saw herself. Her identity—her past, present, and future—was defined by the vows she’d proclaimed at the altar at age sixteen. These vows were the foundation upon which Katharina’s entire life and self-identity revolved, and now one man, a renegade monk, had questioned their validity. In doing so Martin Luther undoubtedly prompted Katharina to question not only her identity and calling as a nun but also perhaps her life and faith as a whole.

  Until now, Katharina hadn’t had any options; her life had been laid out, determined for her by others. Luther’s powerful words cracked open a door, allowing the possibility of another path—a path Katharina might discover and travel herself.

  8

  Escape

  Each of the dozen or so nuns waited alone in her cell, nervous, perhaps even terrified as she sat poised on the edge of her bed in the dark. Escaping from a convent was a punishable offense, and it was a particularly egregious crime in Duke George’s Saxony, the territory where Marienthron was located. Though the women had weighed the pros and cons of their decision carefully, the tension and anticipation must have held them rigid with fear as they waited, knowing one tiny mistake could destroy their carefully orchestrated plan.

  Initially the nuns had taken a conservative approach in their bid for freedom. Most of them had penned letters to their families, requesting to be released from Marienthron and allowed to return home. Encouraged by Luther’s writings, they declared that they were done with the cloistered life, which they now believed to be unnecessary for, and perhaps even a hindrance to, their salvation.

  As was expected, the women’s families were unwilling to offer any assistance or support. After all, they’d already paid a one-time fee to have their daughters placed in the convent for life; it didn’t make financial sense to encourage their release, especially when their dowries had likely been used to support other family members.1 Many were also afraid of Duke George. A person caught facilitating the abduction of a cloistered nun faced stiff fines and exclusion from court appointments, which were highly sought positions.2 Nuns were very occasionally allowed to leave the convent, but the official release process was complicated and required a papal dispensation, which was expensive and typically available to only the highest nobility.3 There is no evidence that Katharina attempted to contact her family. She likely knew her father’s answer without even asking.

  Ignored by their families, the discontented nuns made a bold move: they turned to Martin Luther himself. Leonhard Koppe, the Torgau merchant who delivered herring and other goods to the convent, carried their letter from Nimbschen to Wittenberg. Moved by their plea, Luther vowed to aid their escape. “For God is not pleased with any worship, unless it comes freely from the heart,” he wrote, “and consequently no vow is valid unless it has been made willingly and with love.”4

  It’s not known how the escape plan was formulated and communicated to the nuns. In an environment in which silence was rigorously enforced, we can only imagine how stealthily the women collaborated on the details of such a complicated plan. Perhaps notes were passed from nun to nun and kept hidden in the folds of their habits. Maybe they snatched quick bits of conversation while weeding the garden or washing dishes. Perhaps they had a clandestine meeting place, shielded by the trees on the outskirts of the convent grounds. Historians surmise that an older nun by the name of Magdalene von Staupitz, a teacher in the convent (and the sister of Luther’s former mentor, Johann von Staupitz), served as the lead contact.5 Because she often received school supplies from Koppe, she would have known him personally and had regular contact with him. But we don’t know how she conveyed the plan to the other nuns or how they worked out the intricate details Koppe couldn’t orchestrate. All we know is they succeeded; the plan went off without a hitch.

  On the evening of April 4, 1523, the cloistered nuns at Marienthron celebrated Easter eve much like they did every year. They gathered in the church for the Easter vigil service, a time of quiet reflection, meditation, prayer, and Holy Communion, and then made their way outside to the courtyard, where they participated in the consecration of the Easter fire. The Paschal candle, representing the light of Christ, was lit and the flame was passed from woman to woman.

  The nuns chose to flee on Easter eve for a reason: it was the one night of the year in which their worship practice diverged from the regular routine. Instead of performing Compline and retiring early as they normally did, the nuns stayed up much later for the lighting of the Paschal fire. Katharina and her peers hoped the abbess and the other nuns would be too distracted by the disruption in their routine to notice any late-night stirring or noise once everyone had retired to bed.

  The ritual lighting and passing of the Paschal candle was performed the same way it always was, but for a handful of the nuns gathered in the courtyard that night, an undercurrent of tension and anticipation sparked just below the surface. As the candlelight flickered, bathing the women’s fa
ces in a warm glow, the Easter fire they passed from hand to hand symbolized a personal resurrection of sorts—hope for a new beginning and a new life.

  Late that night, while the rest of the convent slept soundly after the evening’s festivities, a single sharp sound like the crack of a whip pierced the air. It was the signal the nuns had been waiting for all night. Dressed in their white habits and black veils, they fled their cells with just the clothes on their backs and ran silently down the dark halls and outside to where the wagon waited. Details about their escape are so scant, we don’t even know for sure how many nuns fled with Katharina that night. In a letter to a friend four days following their escape, Luther mentioned that nine nuns left the Nimbschen cloister.6 In their biography of Katharina von Bora, the Markwalds cite twelve nuns, nine of whom are mentioned by name.7 Luther biographer Edith Simon lists eleven nuns by name, noting that two were placed immediately with their families.8

  The nuns and Koppe evidently kept the details of the escape to themselves and refused to boast about their feat, even after they’d made it to safety. Years later, rumors about the nuns’ infamous escape continued to circulate. Long after the convent had fallen into disrepair, some suggested the small window covered in wild grapevines and still visible in the rubble was the window from which Katharina escaped. Others claimed that a silk slipper which was displayed for years at an inn on the convent grounds belonged to Katharina, who had lost it as she fled (modern historians dismiss this story; as a Cistercian nun, Katharina wouldn’t have been wearing such a fancy silk slipper).9 Some speculated the nuns climbed over the garden wall, others insisted they chiseled a hole through the stone, and still others assumed the guard colluded with the nuns and simply unlocked the gate for them to leave. As Katharina von Bora’s biographer Ernst Kroker notes, each of these stories is purely speculative.10 The truth is, there were many ways for the fugitives to escape, and no one knows for sure how the nuns reached the wagon that waited outside the convent walls. That part of Katharina’s story is and will probably always remain a mystery.