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It was the 1522, and Katharina von Bora was hiding in a herring barrel. Along with her were eleven other nuns in herring barrels, all in a horse-drawn cart, escaping their convent.
Since March is Women's History Month, I was asked what woman I would like to see written back into history, specifically the history of religion. For me, it's the nun hiding in the herring barrel.
It had been a long journey for Katharine to this clever escape. Katharina had been born to a noble family that had become impoverished. Her mother died, and when her father remarried Katharina was sent -- presumably by her wicked step-mother -- to a convent at age 5. By the time she was 16, she had become a nun.
By then, exciting news from outside the convent began to trickle in. Martin Luther, a Catholic monk, had been making waves, protesting many of the actions of the Catholic church. Somehow news of this filtered into the convent. Nuns dissatisfied with life there were drawn by Luther's words. Katharina smuggled word to the then-unknown-to-her Dr. Luther pleading with him to help rescue her and the other escaping nuns.
He sent a friend of his whose wagon delivered herring to the large convent. It soon became a wagon full of herring barrels full of nuns. And so Katharina's adventurous story begins.
Not much is known about the other nuns. Three went back to their homes. Nine landed on Luther's doorstep seeking husbands or positions. There was no other choice for a woman who could not or would not return home. After three years, Luther had found positions or husbands for all of them. Except Katharina.
Luther himself had been staunchly against marriage. An online biography of Luther says:
Having taken a vow of chastity and often preaching on the virtues and importance of marriage, Luther wrote in a letter to Bavarian noblewoman Argula von Grumbach, his response to her query as to whether he would ever marry;
“Nevertheless, the way I feel now, and have felt thus far, I will not marry. It is not that I do not feel my flesh or sex, since I am neither wood nor stone, but my mind is far removed from marriage, since I daily expect death and the punishment due to a heretic. Therefore I shall not limit God’s work in me, nor shall I rely on my own heart. Yet I hope God does not let me live long.”
Then along came Katharina. She turned down suitor after suitor, and refused to marry anyone but Luther. We don't know how it all managed to change for Luther, but they were wed. By this point, Luther was a famous reformer. Getting married sealed forever his departure from the role of dissident monk. He was 42, she 26.
A local nobleman gave them a ramshackle old abbey in which to make their home. In those days the household consisted of Martin, Katharina, and a growing stream of students and widows seeking shelter. Traffic in and out could mean as many as 30 living there at one time. And Katherina was at the helm.
Before long she had convinced Luther to buy neighboring farmland. She grew their food, established a herd of cattle and other farm animals, started a fishpond, opened and ran a brewery and managed every detail of this constantly flexing community. She kept all the accounts, and was the only woman allowed in to Luther's private, informal meetings with his students - later collected in volumes called "Table Talk".
In addition to their own six children, they also took in orphans and offered housing to students.
Luther, never a romantic personage, clearly fell in love with Katherina. Dr Ken Curtis of the Christian History Institute writes:
Luther wrote 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."
After a year of marriage Luther wrote another friend, "My Katie is in all things so obliging and pleasing to me that I would not exchange my poverty for the riches of Croesus." Luther, the former celibate monk, now exalted marriage, exclaiming, "There is no bond on earth so sweet, nor any separation so bitter, as that which occurs in a good marriage."
Letters from Luther to Katharina which survive, show
