Reformation.
This explanation, nevertheless, appears so convincing to our author that he does not insist further upon another reason which he hints at, viz. that Catherine von Bora “was unkindly disposed to Melanchthon,” and that he much feared she would alienate his friend’s heart from him. The same writer mildly remarks concerning the falsification of the letter committed by Camerarius: “it was not with the intention of falsifying, that he made various alterations, but in order to prevent disedification.” Camerarius has, however, unfortunately aggravated one passage in the letter, for where Melanchthon speaks for the first time of man’s natural inclination for marriage, Camerarius adds the word αὐτόν, thus referring directly to Luther what the writer intended for men in general: “I believe he was forced by nature to marry,” which, following immediately upon the passage referring to his frivolous intercourse with the nuns and the calumnies about Bora, gives a still more unfavourable impression of Luther. This at any rate may serve to exculpate the Catholic controversialists, who erroneously referred this passage, and the other one which resembles it, directly to Luther, whereas he is comprised in it only indirectly.
According to what we have seen, the circumstance of Luther’s sudden marriage occurring just at the time of the panic of the Peasant War, made an especially deep impression on Melanchthon, who was ever inclined to circumspection and prudence.
In point of fact, a more unsuitable time, and one in more glaring contrast with nuptial festivities, it would have been impossible for Luther to select. The flames of the conflagration raging throughout Germany and even in the vicinity of Wittenberg, and the battlefields strewn with the dead, slain by the rebels or the supporters of the Knights and Princes, formed a terrible background to the Wittenberg wedding.
The precipitancy of his action was the more remarkable because at that time Luther himself was living in a state of keen anxiety concerning the outcome of the great social and religious upheaval.
Seeing that he was looked upon, by both lord and peasant, as the prime instigator of the trouble, he had grave cause to fear for his own safety. About five weeks later, writing from Seeburg, near Mansfeld, after a preaching tour through the rebels’ country, he says: “I, who am also affected by it, for the devil is intent upon my death, know that he is angered because so far he has been unable either by cunning or by force to harm me and is determined to be rid of me even should he be forced to do his worst and set the whole world in an uproar; so that I really believe, and it appears to me, that it is on my account that he does such things in the world in order that God may plague the world. If I reach home safe and sound, I shall, with God’s help, prepare myself for death.”[482]
Whereas he had written not long before, that he was not thinking of marrying because he awaited death, i.e. the death-penalty for heresy,[483] according to his statements after his marriage it was the thought of death which had led him to contract the union; God’s work was unmistakable, God was shaming his adversaries. He repeatedly makes statements to this effect, which we shall gather together with some of his other assertions to form a picture of his mental state then.
In one of the letters of invitation to the public wedding he writes: “The lords, priests and peasants are all against me and threaten me with death; well, as they are so mad and foolish I shall take care to be found at my end in the state [matrimony] ordained by God.”[484] He is forced, however, to brace himself up in order not to lose heart and be vexed at the falling away of the people from him; “to resign favour, honour and followers”[485] caused him grief of heart and an inward struggle.
His conviction that the end of the world was approaching, also did its part in exciting him; “the destruction of the world may be expected any hour,” he writes.[486]
Hence he is determined, as he declares, to marry “in order to defy the devil,”[487] i.e. he defies all his afflictions and anxieties, all the accusations of others as well as of his own conscience, and surrenders himself to the feeling, which, since the Wartburg days, ever stirred the depths of his soul on such occasions and made him hope to recover all the ground lost by means of force and violence. Peace and contentment of soul were not, however, the immediate result, for Melanchthon writes, that, after his marriage, Luther had been “sad and troubled.”[488]
Luther will, however, have it that it was God Who had shown him the road he had taken.
“God is pleased to work wonders in order to mock me and the world and to make fools of us.”[489] “That it is God’s work even the ‘wise ones’ among us are forced to acknowledge, though they are greatly vexed. The picture their fancy paints of me and the girl makes them lose their wits so that they think and speak godlessly. But the Lord liveth and is greater in us than he [the devil] that is in the world (1 John iv. 4).”[490] “God willed it and carried it out” (“Sic Deus voluit et fecit”).[491] “On account of this work of God I have, it is true, to suffer much abuse and many calumnies.”[492] “Thus, so far as I am able, I have [by my marriage] thrown away the last remnant of my former popish life; I am determined to make them [my foes] still madder and more foolish; this is the stirrup-cup and my last good-bye.”[493]
“Were the world not scandalised at us, I should be scandalised at the world, for I should be afraid lest what we undertake is not of God; but as the world is scandalised and withstands me, I am edified and comfort myself in God; do you likewise.”[494]
“The cause of the Evangel has been greatly wronged by Münzer and the peasants,” he declares, therefore he wished to strengthen it by his marriage, in spite of the Papists who were shouting in triumph (“ne videar cessisse”), “and I shall do more still which will grieve them and bring them to the recognition of the Word.”[495]
If, to the motives for his marriage which he enumerates above, we add a further reason, also alleged by him, viz. that he wished to show himself obedient to his father, who desired the marriage, we arrive at the stately number of seven reasons. They may be arranged as follows: 1. Because it was necessary to shut the mouth of those who spoke evil of him on account of his relations with Bora. 2. Because he was obliged to take pity on the forsaken nun. 3. Because his father wished it. 4. Because the Catholics represented matrimony as contrary to the Gospel. 5. Because even his friends laughed at his plan of marrying. 6. Because the peasants and the priests threatened him with death and he must therefore defy the terrors raised by the devil. 7. Because God’s will was plainly apparent in the circumstances. Melanchthon’s reason, viz. that man is impelled to marriage by nature, Luther does not himself bring forward.
We must not lose sight of the circumstance that the marriage took place barely five weeks after the death of the Saxon Elector Frederick the Wise. His successor was more openly favourable towards the ecclesiastical innovations. Frederick would have nothing to do with the marriage of the clergy, particularly with nuns, although he did not permit any steps to be taken against those who had married. He wrote to his Councillors at Torgau on October 4, 1523, that to undertake any alteration or innovation would be difficult, more particularly in these days when he had to anticipate trouble “for our country and people” from the opponents of Lutheranism; “he did not think that a clergyman ought to earn his stipend by idleness and the taking of wives, and by works which he himself condemned.”[496] In May, 1524, we see from one of Luther’s letters to Spalatin that difficulties had been raised at the Court concerning the remuneration of the married clergy by the Government. In this letter he recommends Johann Apel, formerly Canon of Würzburg, who had married a nun, for a post at the University of Wittenberg, and gives special advice in case his marriage should prove an obstacle (“quod si uxorcula obstet,” etc.). He here condemns the faint-hearted action of the Elector, and remarks, that he will not thereby escape the animosity of his foes, seeing that he notoriously “favours heretics and provides for them.”[497]
Luther did not lose his habit of jesting with his friends, though his witticisms are neither proper nor edifying: “I am bound in the meshes of my mistress’s tresses,” he writes to one,[498] and to another, that it all seemed “very strange” to him and he could hardly realise he had “become a married man, but the evidence was so strong that he was in honour bound to believe it”; and to a third, since God had taken him captive unawares in the bonds of holy matrimony, he