Martin Luther married a former nun
On this day · 13 June 1525
When the rebel monk wed an escaped nun, he turned his own household into a manifesto for the Reformation.
On 13 June 1525, the reformer Martin Luther married Katharina von Bora, a former nun who had fled her convent near Grimma and taken refuge in Wittenberg. The match scandalised contemporaries: a runaway monk wedding a runaway nun seemed, to Catholic critics, the height of impropriety.
Yet that was partly the point. By marrying, Luther put his theology into practice. He rejected the idea that celibacy made clergy holier, arguing instead that marriage was an honourable calling open to all. The couple’s union helped normalize clerical marriage across Protestant Europe.
From this point on, the marital status of clergy became a dividing line between the Catholic and Protestant churches.
The wedding itself was modest, witnessed by close friends including the painter Lucas Cranach, who marked the occasion with a pair of small portraits dated 1525. Katharina went on to run the Luthers’ large Wittenberg household with formidable skill, becoming a model for the Protestant pastor’s wife for generations to follow.
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