Apothecaries were responsible for the sale and distribution of medicines, including simple herbs and other single-ingredient medicines as well as compounded varieties, which were specially mixed and oftentimes exceedingly complex formulas.29 For example, one sixteenth-century English recipe for “a most precious and excellent balm” called for sixty-eight herbs, twenty types of gum, six laxatives, and twenty-four different roots.30 Every city and most towns and villages had apothecaries, and Katharina likely visited one in Wittenberg for the medicines that were too complicated to make herself or for which she didn’t have the proper ingredients.
Luther suffered from an array of maladies and symptoms, including kidney stones, asthma, dizziness, shortness of breath, alternating bouts of diarrhea and constipation, and chronic ear infections, in addition to his struggles with melancholia. He considered many of these ailments the result of the devil’s work or a spiritual imbalance, and thus believed they could be cured only with God’s help through prayer and faith.31 Yet he let Katharina doctor him, and he often sent for her home remedies when he was on the road.
The treatments weren’t always successful, nor were they very appealing. “Your skill doesn’t help me, even with the dung,” Luther complained in 1537, when he was suffering from kidney stones while in Smalcald. Excrement and urine—both human and animal—were frequently used to treat common, chronic conditions during the medieval and early modern period.32 For example, an ointment made of honey and pigeon dung and applied warm to the inflamed or painful area was commonly thought to be helpful in alleviating kidney stones, while gout was treated with a poultice of rosemary, honey, and a generous sprinkling of goat droppings.33
Luther wasn’t Katharina’s only patient, nor was he the only Wittenberger who appreciated her nursing skills. She also cared for her children, as well as guests who fell ill while visiting the Luthers. At one point illness swept through the Black Cloister, leaving Katharina with forty ill guests under her care.34 When the plague hit Wittenberg and most of the residents fled, Luther and Katharina stayed and turned the Black Cloister into a hospital. “We did not flee,” Luther said about the plague in 1539. “I am your preacher and visitor of the sick, and Kate is the nurse, doctor, pharmacist, counselor, etc.”35 As to why they didn’t flee, Luther explained, “We have been blessed in this city in good days, why should we leave when suffering strikes?”36
Katharina even gave birth to her daughter Elizabeth during the plague outbreak of 1527 while Luther was out of town. She doesn’t seem to have feared the plague or other dire illnesses like many of her contemporaries did, perhaps because Katharina had a remarkably strong constitution and rarely became ill herself.
Mistress of Finances
Money was tight in the Luther household from the beginning. For a long time Luther didn’t own the Black Cloister; he simply lived there as one of the last two monks left in the house. When Katharina moved in, Elector Johann Frederick—who succeeded his brother, Frederick the Wise—allowed them both to live there tax free until his death in 1532, when he left the former monastery, along with all the rights to brew, malt, sell beer, keep cattle, and conduct all other civil matters, to Luther in his will, with one stipulation: that the elector’s successors would retain the right to buy it if Luther ever decided to sell the property.37
Despite the fact that they inherited their home and all the property that went along with it, the Luthers still struggled to pay their bills and frequently owed money to various merchants around town. The problem stemmed from the fact that, although by the time he married Katharina he was paid a respectable annual salary of 100 Gulden for his work as a professor and frequently received gifts of grain, meat, lumber, bricks, hay, and lime from the elector and the town of Wittenberg, Luther gave away or spent nearly all his earnings. What remained wasn’t nearly enough to cover the expenses of such a large household. Furthermore, Luther refused payment for his published writings, he wouldn’t accept honoraria for his lectures, and he often tried to give back gifts, including some of the gifts he and Katharina received for their wedding. When Luther couldn’t afford to hand out cash to those in need, he would often donate silver cups and tankards from his own cupboards.
Eventually, however, after he’d pawned his last silver cup to pay off a debt, Luther realized his spending and charity were out of control, even when, later in their marriage, he was earning significantly more than 100 Gulden a year. “I have a peculiar budget: I consume more than I take in,” he admitted. “Every year we need 500 gulden for the kitchen alone, but my annual pay is only 300 gulden. . . . What am I to do?”38 Luther’s solution? To hand the household finances over to Katharina. This was not altogether unusual for the time period—wives often managed the household finances during medieval and early modern times—but it’s clear that Luther trusted Katharina completely, and he outright admitted that she was a far better financial manager than he. “In domestic affairs I defer to Katie,” Luther acknowledged, “otherwise I am led by the Holy Ghost.”39
With complete control over the finances, Katharina made two important decisions: she purchased additional land in nearby Zülsdorf in order to expand her farming operations and produce more income, and she began to charge many of the Black Cloister’s visitors room and board, a decision that irritated the men who had always stayed at Luther’s house for free. Reformer and theologian Veit Dietrich called Katharina a “tightwad and a miser,” and Gregor Brück, the elector’s chancellor, accused her of being a “stingy householder.”40 As Ernst Kroker points out, even contemporary critics tend to portray Katharina as miserly, stingy, and greedy.
The more likely truth is that Katharina was simply a good businesswoman and a frugal housewife who upset the applecart and bruised some male egos when she crossed the threshold of the Black Cloister as Luther’s wife. Kroker notes, “Not a single time do we hear that she seriously opposed her husband’s lavish charity.”41 At the same time, Luther never spoke “of her alleged greed, but instead praised her thriftiness.”42 “What she has now, she got without me,” he admitted with obvious admiration in 1542.43 In his letters to her, Luther often addressed Katharina as “Lord,” “Sir,” and “Doctor,” not sarcastically, but with obvious respect, admiration, and love. Luther had the good sense to appreciate his wife’s intellect and her savvy business finesse.
Although Katharina has often been criticized by biographers for her supposed arrogance and aloofness, one wonders if she was simply too busy running what was essentially a midsize business, complete with brewery, vineyard, farm, and a forty-room hotel (in addition to raising six of her own children and four adopted children, which we’ll cover in a subsequent chapter) to spend time making small talk with the neighbor ladies.
Luther biographer Edith Simon, for instance, states that Katharina was “generally regarded as stuck up,”44 while another Luther biographer, Richard Marius, paints her as a shrew: unattractive, controlling, miserly, and disliked. “She often seems grasping and even petty in her quest for money, and we have many hints that the Wittenbergers did not like her,” he writes. “She was apparently crotchety—not an advantage in a day when husbands expected wives to be submissive or at least pretend to be so until the time of marriage.”45 Yet as historian Elsie McKee points out, “The sheer physical effort of living [in early modern Europe] consumed a great deal of energy,” something we who live in modern times can hardly begin to comprehend.46
For the twenty-one years she was married to Martin Luther, Katharina worked seventeen hours a day, from well before dawn until far past dusk. Add to that the fact that Katharina’s responsibilities went far above and beyond that of a typical sixteenth-century housewife, and the result is not someone who was merely aloof or crotchety but simply busier than most of us could ever possibly imagine. The Wittenbergers and Luther’s colleagues and peers may not have appreciated Katharina’s industriousness, but Luther clearly did. And as we will see, Luther came to rely on his Morning Star of Wittenberg in more than just domestic affa
irs.
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Two Pigtails on the Pillow
Although Luther’s quip about awaking and being startled to glimpse two pigtails on the pillow beside him was intended to be humorous, one hears the truth loud and clear in his seemingly lighthearted admission: marriage was hard, especially for two people accustomed to living unattached to anyone else for so long.
The truth is, Luther and Katharina were virtual strangers on their wedding day. The two might have had cursory contact or exchanged a passing word or two while Katharina was living with the Cranachs, but it’s doubtful Luther and Katharina ever engaged in a meaningful conversation before their nuptials. They certainly didn’t spend much, if any, time alone together, nor did they enjoy the kind of lengthy engagement that most couples do today. Within a week or two of the proposal, Luther and Katharina found themselves husband and wife, two strangers sharing a bed, a home, and a life.
Idealism Meets Reality
For Luther, the reality of marriage as it played out day to day departed significantly from his preconceived notions of it. His early writings convey a surprisingly idealistic, romantic vision of marriage and the relationship between husband and wife.
“God makes distinctions between the different kinds of love, and shows that the love of a man and woman is (or should be) the greatest and purest of all loves,” Luther wrote in 1519, six years before wedding Katharina. “Over and above all these [kinds of love] is married love, that is, a bride’s love, which glows like a fire and desires nothing but the husband. She says, ‘It is you I want, not what is yours: I want neither your silver nor your gold; I want neither. I want only you. I want you in your entirety, or not at all.’ All other kinds of love seek something other than the loved one: this kind wants only to have the beloved’s own self completely.”1 Marriage was intended to be an intimate, emotionally fruitful bond, Luther believed. Nothing was as sweet as what he called “bridal love,” the deepest, most gratifying and selfless kind of love possible between human beings.
“There are many kinds of love,” Luther declared three years later in 1522, “but none is as fiery and hot as the bridal love that a bride has for her groom; again, the love is not looking for pleasure or presents, not wealth nor golden rings, but rather looks at him alone. Even if he were to give her everything there was, she would disregard it all and say, ‘I want to have you alone.’ And if he had absolutely nothing, she still would pay no attention to that but would want him anyway. That is the proper bridal love.”2 Although Luther was comparing the love between a man and a woman to the love Christ has for his church, it’s also clear from these words and others that he had certain expectations of what ideal marital love should look and feel like. He believed the love between a married couple was passionate and selfless, truer and purer than all other kinds of love.
Fast-forward to 1525. As is often the case, the reality of marriage in day-to-day experience didn’t perfectly reflect Luther’s premarriage expectations. For starters, Luther didn’t experience the deeply intimate “bridal love” he had written about years earlier. Luther married Katharina not because he was in love with her, nor because he felt a romantic attraction toward her, nor even because he considered her an ideal mate. Rather, Luther proposed to Katharina out of compassion and a sense of Christian duty. As he later said himself, he had initially considered proposing to Eva Schonfeld, another of the escaped nuns who was younger and had a gentler, more amenable disposition than Katharina, but Schonfeld married a local pharmacist before Luther could make up his mind.3
In contrast, Luther felt obligated to marry Katharina, a sentiment clearly conveyed in his personal correspondence. “I feel neither passionate love nor burning for my spouse, but I cherish her,”4 Luther wrote to Nikolaus von Amsdorf about his new wife on June 21, 1525, just a few days after the private wedding ceremony at the Black Cloister. Biographer Heiko Oberman translates this same line to read, “I do not love my wife, but I appreciate her.”5 Richard Marius’s translation reads, “I neither love nor lust for my wife, but I esteem her.”6 Regardless of the translation, the message is clear: Luther was not in love with Katharina, nor was he especially attracted to her. He respected her, and even more importantly, he believed God led him to marry her. “God has willed it and brought about this step,” he declared to von Amsdorf.7
Katharina’s strong-willed nature didn’t align with Luther’s definition of the ideal woman, nor did it complement Luther’s own obstinate, opinionated personality. “If I were to court a girl again, I would chisel myself an obedient wife from rock,” Luther once quipped to friends and students gathered around his table.8
Although Katharina spoke respectfully to her husband—she always used the more formal “Herr Doktor,” rather than the familiar “Du,”9 when speaking to him—she also didn’t hesitate to challenge him, and it’s clear from some of his comments and hers that she stood her ground and refused to let Luther boss her around. “If I can bear the wrath of the devil, of sin, and of conscience, then I can also stand Kate von Bora’s anger,” Luther once said, implying that he may have borne the brunt of that anger once or twice himself.10
On another occasion, when Luther tried to get Katharina to read the Bible from start to finish in a year (he even promised her 50 Gulden if she succeeded), she argued, “I’ve read enough, I’ve heard enough. I know enough. Would to God I lived it.”11 One wonders, in light of her daily domestic workload, when Katharina would have found time for Bible study, which is perhaps why Luther didn’t insist on a structured reading and study plan, in spite of his belief in sola scriptura. At any rate, Katharina made her point clear: she refused to read the Bible from start to finish under a deadline, and her husband didn’t dare press the issue further.
Katharina also engaged Luther in complex theological discussions. She asked him to explain why God had demanded that Abraham kill his son Isaac;12 she questioned how David could ask to be judged according to his righteousness when he was a sinner;13 she wondered how she could be both a saint and sinner at the same time;14 and she expressed her curiosity about prayer, at one point asking Luther why it seemed like they prayed less frequently and with less fervor since leaving the Roman Catholic Church.15 In spite of her refusal to read the Bible through in a year, Luther also acknowledged that Katharina knew the Psalms “better than ever the papists had done.”16 In other words, Katharina didn’t relegate herself to the domestic realm and leave intellectual, theological talk to the men; she participated in the discussions around the table and engaged Luther privately in conversation about such topics herself. She was both spiritually inquisitive and a critical thinker, two qualities Luther admired and respected in her, and, as time went on, grew to find quite attractive.
As Reformation scholars Susan Karant-Nunn and Merry Wiesner-Hanks note, Luther’s view of women and their role in marriage and in society was compatible with the opinions of many other sixteenth-century theologians.17 That is to say, Luther was very much in line with the times when it came to his views on women—at least on paper. His statements on women and marriage in everything from his lectures and sermons on Genesis to many of his informal statements compiled in Table Talk all clearly point to his belief in separate and distinct roles for a husband and wife within marriage, with the man as the natural leader and the woman his subordinate.
“In the household the wife is a partner in the management and has a common interest in the children and the property, and yet there is a great difference between the sexes,” Luther stated in his Lectures on Genesis. “The male is like the sun in heaven, the female like the moon, the animals like the stars, over which sun and moon have dominion. It was written that this sex [female] may not be excluded from any glory of the human creature, although it is inferior to the male sex.”18 He expounded on the topic of male and female roles when he gathered with his students and friends around the table: “[Women] have been made by God to bear children, to delight men, to be merciful,” and “God created male and female—the female fo
r reproduction, the male for nourishing and defending,” Luther said in Table Talk.19
He made dozens of formal and informal statements on the proper role of women in society, in the home, and in marriage, some of them extreme. “Women are created for no other purpose than to serve men and be their helpers,” he wrote. “If women grow weary or even die while bearing children, that doesn’t harm anything. Let them bear children to death; they are created for that.”20 In his writing, Luther’s views were crystal clear: man was the head of the household and made superior by God; woman, as the inferior sex, was made to serve her husband and bear his children. Women were adjuncts to men, just as Eve had been intended for Adam.
Yet it’s clear from Luther’s personal letters to Katharina and others that his marriage was, in reality, a much more equitable one than he ever condoned in his lectures or treatises and even in the statements he made among his students and peers around the table. As Karant-Nunn and Wiesner-Hanks point out, “In the abstract, Luther envisioned each woman’s and girl’s confinement to the home, where, in pious mood, she labored efficiently and frugally. When we shift our gaze to Luther’s own experience, we see him closely bound to, and dependent upon, his Kate.” Therefore, they conclude, “We ought to assess Luther from the dual perspective of theory and practice.”21 In other words, Luther said and wrote one thing about the roles of man and woman within marriage; how he lived with Katharina in their day-to-day life as husband and wife was another thing entirely.
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