460 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 1530.
vited to the feast of the 27th of June, but not to the ceremony of the 13th), in a Greek letter to his friend Camerarius (June 16), expressed the fear that Luther, though he might be ultimately benefited by his marriage, had committed a lamentable act of levity and weakness, and injured his influence at a time when Germany most needed it.!
Luther himself felt at first strange and restless in his new relation, but soon recovered. He wrote to Spalatin, June 16, “T have made myself so vile and contemptible forsooth that all the angels, I hope, will laugh, and all the devils weep.” ? A year after he wrote to Stiefel (Aug. 11, 1526): “ Catharina, my dear 776, salutes you, and thanks you for your letter. She is, thanks to God, gentle, obedient, compliant in all things, beyond my hopes. I would not exchange my poverty for the wealth of Croesus.” ? He often preached on the trials and duties of married life truthfully and effectively, from practical experience, and with pious gratitude for that holy state which God ordained in paradise, and which Christ honored by his first miracle. He calls matrimony a gift of God, wedlock the sweetest, chastest life, above all celibacy, or else a veritable hell.
§ 78. Luther's Home Life.
Luther and Katie were well suited to each other. They lived happily together for twenty-one years, and shared the usual burdens and joys. Their domestic life is very characteristic, full of good nature, innocent humor, cordial affec-
habet mundus? At ego sperabam fore, ut Lutherum uxor redderet magis cicurem. Verum ille preter omnem expectationem emisit librum in me summa quidem cura elaboratum, sed adeo virulentum, ut hactenus in neminem scripserit hostilius.’’
1 The letter was published in the original Greek by W. Meyer, in the reports of the Miinchen Academy of Sciences, Nov. 4, 1876, pp. 601-604. The text is changed in the Corp. Reform., I. '753. Mel. calls Luther a very reckless man (ἀνὴρ ὡς μάλιστα εὑχερῆς), but hopes that he will become more solemn (σεμνότερος).
2 De Wette, III. 3. 8 Tbid., 111. 125.
§ 78. LUTHER’S HOME-LIFE. 46]
tion, rugged simplicity, and thoroughly German. It falls below the refinement of a modern Christian home, and some of his utterances on the relation between the two sexes are coarse; but we must remember the rudeness of the age, and his peasant origin. No stain rests upon his home life, in which he was as gentle as a lamb and as a child among children.
“Next to God’s Word,” he said from his personal experience, “ there is no more precious treasure than holy matrimony. God’s highest gift on earth is a pious, cheerful, God-fearing, home-keeping wife, with whom you may live peacefully, to whom you may intrust your goods and body and life.”
He loved his wife dearly, and playfully called her in his. letters “ my heartily beloved, gracious housewife, bound hand and foot in loving service, Catharine, Lady Luther, Lady Doctor, Lady of Zulsdorf,! Lady of the Pigmarket,? and whatever else she may be.” She was a good German Haus- Frau, caring for the wants of her husband and children; she contributed to his personal comfort in sickness and health, and enabled him to exercise his hospitality. She had a strong will, and knew how to take her own part. He sometimes speaks of her as his “ Lord Katie,” and of himself as her “ willing servant.” “ Katie,” he said to her, “you have a pious husband who loves you; you are an empress.” Once in 1535 he promised her fifty guilders if she would read the Bible through; whereupon, as he told a friend, it became ‘a very serious matter with her.” She could not understand why God commanded Abraham to do such a cruel thing as to kill his own child; but Luther pointed her to God’s sacrifice of his only Son, and to the resurrection from the dead. To Katie and to Melanchthon he wrote his last letters (five to her, three to Melanchthon) from Eisleben shortly before his death, informing her of his journey, his diet and condition, complaining of fifty Jews under the protection of the
1 From his little farm, 2: Saumdrkterin. They lived near the pigmarket.