PRIMARY SOURCE: A Pair of Pigtails

Proverbs 18:22: “Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing.”

Sixteen-year-old Katherine stood before witnesses and promised God a life of virginity. Six years later, she wondered if her vow had been a mistake. Martin Luther’s writings, spreading like wildfire, flamed up in the heart of this young German nun, prompting her to question the direction of her life. So, she and others from her convent wrote the reformer at Wittenberg, asking for advice. He suggested they abandon their vows, escape the nunnery, and find husbands or engage in some noble endeavor. Though execution sometimes resulted from such escape attempts, the women accepted the risk and hatched a plot.

Luther’s friend Leonard Kopp sometimes delivered barrels of smoked herring to the convent in Nimschen. He made a delivery the night before Easter 1523. When Kopp drove the wagon away from the village, Katherine and eight other nuns were tucked away under the canopy. By Tuesday, the wagonful of women rolled into Wittenberg.

Though an attractive woman, Katherine was still unattached two years later, despite Luther’s efforts to find her a husband. Denmark’s king flirted with her, even gave her a ring, but nothing came of it. Another young noble sought her hand but changed his mind when his parents objected. Undaunted, the reformer kept playing matchmaker. The former nun finally responded by expressing interest in Luther himself.

Sixteen years her senior, Luther also had taken vows of celibacy. But part of the Catholic tradition he had shaken off was the ministerial requirement to remain single. His teaching prompted other priests to marry, and some had suggested he back up his words by taking a wife himself. He was uninterested in marriage, he told one correspondent, “not because I am a sexless log or stone, but because I expect daily the death of a heretic.”

Yet, there he was, encouraging others to take the step of matrimony he himself was unwilling to take. A Christian lady admitting interest in him only increased the pressure.

The former monk and former nun married June 13, 1525. Reflecting on his early days of marriage, he described waking to “a pair of pigtails lying beside him.” Though romance hadn’t prompted their union, it quickly blossomed. He playfully called her “Lord Katie,” and she dubbed him “Herr Doktor.” In a letter to a friend, he wrote: “I and my rib send greetings to you and your rib.” The couple rejoiced over six children. They wept over the graves of two.

Katherine offered great encouragement to Luther who, prone to melancholy, sometimes fell into spiritual quagmires. Once, when he had locked himself in a room for three days, she took off the door to lift him from his slough of despond. She planted, reaped, cooked, brewed, doctored, and hosted anyone Martin brought home. She also sparred with him theologically, once asking, “How could David say, ‘Judge me according to my righteousness,’ when he didn’t have any?”

After her husband’s death, Katherine lived only four years, dying December 20, 1550. Her final words were: “I will stick to Christ as a burr to a top coat.”

About the Columnist: Paul V. Harrison has pastored Madison FWB Church in Madison, Alabama since 2015. Previously, he pastored Cross Timbers FWB church in Nashville, Tennessee, for 22 years. He was an adjunct professor at Welch College for 17 years, teaching church history and Greek. Paul is the creator of Classic Sermon Index, a subscription-based online index of over 66,000 sermons, with clients including Harvard, Baylor, and Vanderbilt, among others: classicsermonindex.com.