Reformation from A Woman's Point of View: Katie Luther

I remember it well.  The smell of herring, mixed with a nervous tension; the rough wood- choking in the smell, as the barrel thumped up and down with the wagon.  This awful moment gave way to the resurrection of my life.

Oh but look at that, I have gotten ahead of myself haven’t  I.  I am Katharina von Bora, affectionately known as Katie Luther; Martin Luther’s wife.

Yes it is true, dear Martin and I had 6 children, raising 4 into adulthood: Hans studied law and became a court advisor, our son Martin a pastor, Paul a well known physician, and Margarethe married into a wealthy Prussian family.  They have done very well for themselves and honoured the family name, following in a tradition of a people who were thinkers, who loved and respected education.

The Martin Luther you know so much about, called me “my lord Katie”.  Not that I was Lord, for there is only one Lord.  I guess he just appreciated the nursing I gave him over the years, he was not a well man.  He left the managing of the household to me, and some household it was! –kids, Martin, large numbers of guests including at times 30 students and visiting scholars, despite limited funds.  Sometimes I wondered if it could all be done; somewhere there was strength, and early early mornings, late evenings; the vegetables were grown, the orchard tended, the cattle and chickens fed, the fishpond kept, the animals butchered at my hand, and I ensured the beer was brewed.  But no greater job gave me more pleasure than to free my Martin’s mind from teaching, writing and pastoring. This was my gift to Martin for what he did for me, for the church, for the hope given to the people of the time.  Ahhh, that man, “lord” what a nick-name to give one’s wife–the only lord here was God working through us;   but you can’t tell a stubborn man anything.  He wrote about the Lord being Lord, and the pope not being the lord; but when it came to pet nick-names...

Did you know I was only eighteen when Martin Luther issued his now famous 95 theses from Wittenberg?  I can just see him stomping up to the Palace Church door in his academic gowns and tacking his painstakingly thought out Latin document to the wooden door.  As a scholar he was convinced that God was speaking a different word from the Bible than that which was being taught by the church –that was him always thinking, wanting debate, discussion.  He loved the church; he loved study; he loved the combination of the two. And even better he was a teacher at heart who taught others what God was opening to him.

I wasn’t in Wittenburg on that day, Oct.31, 1517.  I was in a convent where I had lived since I was three years old.  You see my mother had died and my father did not have the means to support me, so I went to a convent school and later took vows in the cloister where my dad’s sister, my aunt, Magdelena lived.

At the cloister we caught wind of what was happening in the outside world and it was exciting so different from the daily regimented order we followed.  We heard of Luther’s biblical teachings, opening the Bible to new understandings, letting the German people hear the word in their own language.  Imagine, hearing a Gospel story and being able to tell it to a child as you put them to bed, or recite a Psalm in our mother tongue when sitting with someone in the infirmary.   Needless to say the world was changing; Christendom was transforming.  There were 11 of us nuns who were quite keen and wanted to join this Dr. Martin.  We believed the principles he taught.  We saw the falsehood of paying for the remission of sin, when through Christ sin had already been removed.  It was time to join the reformation, to leave the cloister and soak up this renewed knowledge of God, of Christ, of being part of a priesthood of all believers.
As nuns we were limited in our ability to leave the cloister.  We had no money, and our families did not either –that’s why we were in the cloister –a carefree life of hard work; so there was food, and we learned nursing skills, herbal remedies; we could all cook, brew beer, grow vegetables; we knew animal husbandry and we knew how to read and write.  It was the education that helped us in our quest.  I wrote letter after letter to the wealthy, the noblemen, the district rulers –all in an attempt to find a benefactor who would speak on our behalf, and pay the price for our freedom.  No one answered our campaign –until believe it or not Martin heard of our plight through a letter we wrote directly to him.

He wasn’t just a man of words, he arranged with a merchant friend of his to help us escape.

Merchant Leonard Koppe.  We all knew him he often delivered herring to the convent, and one evening in 1523, after delivering fish to the kitchens; he bundled us up into the empty fish barrels and loaded us on his wagon.

It was stinky; like death in the depths of those tossing barrels –dark, nervous, praying we were. When the wagons stopped, there was a quiet as if the earth stood still; then the tops were pried off the barrels; sweet sweet air filled our lungs – I can’t imagine resurrection being any more beautiful.  We stepped out of the barrels into a new life. 

The realities were that as women we needed to be connected to someone who had means to look after us. Several of the nuns returned to their families; Luther helped find homes, husbands, or positions for the rest. After two years, all the nuns had been provided for except for me.  I wasn’t trying to be hard to get along with, I was courted by Hicronymus Baumgaertner from Wittenberg University but his parents thought better of the idea, and there was no way I was marrying Pastor Glatz –I simply refused.

But then, through the persuasion of friends and his father –as I was told later, Luther proposed to me himself, and I moved into the Augustinian monastery at Wittenberg given to Luther a few years before by the Elector. Gosh I did a lot of cleaning up in the monastery and someone had to bring order to Luther's daily life. Dear Martin, bless his heart – wrote to a friend, "There is a lot to get used to in the first year of marriage. One wakes up in the morning and finds a pair of pigtails on the pillow which were not there before."   The pigtails were the least of the changes.
Like I said, we had six children of our own, then we raised four orphan children.  Our house was a flurry of activity and the nights that the students and visiting professors filled our table with theology, debate, -God-talk were life forming, life giving events.  4 am mornings were no burden when I knew that later in the day Martin would encourage me in Bible study and he suggested passages for me to memorize.  I lived for those holy moments.   And it was this household that taught our children, guided our children, in fact guided a people.  Martin always said that marriage was a school for character; that family life trained Christians in the virtues of fortitude, patience, charity and humility.
There was something about those years.  I have to think that the excitement came through the Word.  It was in our very own hands.  It was shared.  It was alive.  It became part of who we were. It was part of our dinner time conversations, our walks in the woods, and mentioned in the market place. The Bible and God were no longer owned by the church; and we made a connection between Word for the head and Word for the heart.
My dear Martin died in 1546 and I had to leave our home: due to finances in some part, but quicker due to war.  Then I left Wittenberg to avoid the plague- going to Torgau.
For six years, I lived there in the hope of the Resurrection, until I could once again be with my dear Martin.  In those days, it was the word that comforted me.  I sang the hymns Luther and I sang with the children around our living room – a mighty fortress is our God, away in a manger.  I repeated his favourite Psalm, Psalm 146.

It has been said in your time that my last words were a great testament to my powerful faith in God –I saw my final words to not be about me at all  but were said to the glory of God; for the grace imparted to the church; for the gift of living and breathing scripture;  for the gift of Christ who stands for me before God.

I pray that my final words are words that you also can say every day and when at last your days come to an end your words and faith can say: my words;

 My faith is this:     "I shall cling to Christ as a burr clings to a coat." 

Amen.