The Lutheress

Katharina von Bora by Lucas Cranach the Elder

Katharina von Bora, sometimes called The Lutheress, from the age of five years old until she was twenty three was educated and lived in a nunnery, first as a child and then as a nun. This cloistered life did not suit Katharina. In the year 1523 she sent a letter to Martin Luther explaining her dire situation. She and a couple of her sister nuns wanted only to free themselves from the bondage of Catholicism. It was a tricky moment for Martin Luther. The politics weren't good, there was little prospect of freeing Nuns from Nunneries ever being a winning argument and in the name of the Good Lord what would happen to the nuns once they were beyond the Nunnery Walls. Soon enough Martin Luther came to one of those why not conclusions, he contacted a respectable citizen who delivered Herring to Mary's Thrown, the Nunnery where Katharina was living, and lo Katharina and her sisters were soon hiding in a covered wagon containing empty Herring Barrels being smuggled out of their cloistered world into the enticing world of the Protestant Reformation. Today of course everyone knows the story of how a forty one year old Martin Luther met his twenty six year old wife, and go ahead call me fragile if you wish to, but I'd like to think that when Immanuel Kant was doing his Sunday School and worrying about the spelling of his first name, most of the other children in his class had a healthier interest in the generous Lutheran understanding that we are all sinners, some more lovable than others, there is no currying favor, whether the Lord likes us enough to grant us grace is entirely up to him or her, or something gynandrous such as an Orchid or a Dutchman's pipe.