In this essay I will demonstrate how Marriage was reformed thought out the Reformation period. Particularly we will look at the matrimony during the 16th century in Western Europe. I will observe it’s customs and culture of how marriage has been done; its traditions and practices. I will focus on marriage as a religious matter, and walk through how it has been reformed to a more civic way of practicing marriage. I will look at Martin Luther’s family as an example of a reformed family. We will see how this family introduced a modern way of living, at the same time it was still deeply rooted in traditional way preserving matrimony and expressing marriage. Then, we will see how the marriage changed nowadays and how it developed to what we know now. Let us start.
During the Late Middle Ages the towns as in the country the entire families live and work together under one roof. A hierarchical social unit: father, mather, and the unmarried servants. Each member of the household has his or hers fixed positions and duties. This order is reinforced by the reformation, the woman’s role - redefined. Luther upgraded marriage to a God given status. All women should be married and as quickly and early as possible. Journeyman servants, farmhands maid servants were unmarried as were nuns, monks and priests. Luther rejected them all. Everyone should live in the same state of matrimony as willed by God. For Luther marriage is the first order of God and nevertheless a worldly thing. Man and woman are destined to produce and raise offspring therefore marriage stands under God’s special blessing. Sexuality, on the other hand, outside of marriage is unlawful. In the Late Middle Ages, prostetution is still tolerated by the civic authorities but now in the course of the Reformation it is criminal. During the reformation, one can see how the brothels are closed down, one after the other. The upgraded appreciation of matrimony results in sexuality being only permissible within marriage. Criticized too were the double standards of many priests monks and nuns who despite celibacy and vows of chastity do not live abstinently. That was an open secret - the priests had housekeepers with whom they lived, but just couldn’t marry, nor could their children inherit. So an added argument was to put an end to these undignified relationships and allow priests to marry like everyone else. Very soon the first priests are married. This is a break with a tradition of celibacy going back almost a thousand years and a huge provocation.
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In the Middle Ages celibacy was considered more holy than married life. This belief leads 25% of the people to celibacy. In the late 15th century and early 16th century approximately one fourth people had taken a vow of celibacy. 25% of the population was seeing marriage as socially and religiously as something to be avoided. The Middle Ages had places the marriage not as something evil, however, it was on the lower scale then celibacy. Celibacy was a holier way of life. When Luther was reforming the church, he didn’t leave out the marriage life as well. Luther was convinced that people practice celibacy just to earn their way into heaven. It was a matter of his basic understanding of our way of salvation, moreover, it was also part of his doctrine on creation - God has created us in the family and created the family to nurture a human life and bring us up in the fear and admonition of the Lord. He writes: “The ultimate purpose [of marriage] is to obey God, to find aid and counsel against sin; to call upon God; to seek, love, and educate children for the glory of God; to live with one’s wife in the fear of God and to bear the cross; but if there are no children, nevertheless to live with one’s wife in contentment; and to avoid all lewdness with others” (Luther, The Estate of Marriage, 1522). By the time you get to the Middle Ages there clearly is established hierarchy of what it means to be religious - to follow this monastic pattern, to follow these vows of celibacy, obedience and poverty. In particular, let us look at how people interpreted Jesus’ Sermon on the mountain. Its dialog with a rich man was used to justify two different tiers of Christianity, two types of religious life. When Jesus met the rich man, the rich man asked: “What must I do to enter eternal life?” And Jesus answered: “You know the Ten Commandments, follow those”. Man replied: “I’ve done all of these since my youth”. Jesus responded: “If you would be perfect, sell all you have, give it to the poor, and follow me”. The Middle Age church took this dialog between Jesus and the rich man and interpreted it as talking about two different types of religious life. On one hand, you have people who are living their life in the world trying to be obedient to the Ten Commandments, and through this type of life would eventually end to enter the kingdom of God. On the other hand, you have people who would be perfect and they had an advanced spiritual status. They followed Jesus' more strict councils and Commandments.
Luther ends up turning this two-tiered Christianity upside down. Instead of the monks or priests being the spiritual class, where laypeople being a secular class. Luther recognized that baptism in the Scriptures described all people as priests. He writes: “The priest is not made. He must be born a priest; must inherit his office. I refer to the new birth-the birth of water and the Spirit. Thus all Christians must became priests, children of God and co-heirs with Christ the Most High Priest”(The Man Who Rediscovered God, 64) This is what truly made you religious and spiritual. And the role of a bishop or a clerk or a monk was really an issue of human invention; an issue of order and not spiritual status. Luther had realized that spiritual class: the priests, the monk, the bishops were no better in God’s eyes then the non spiritual class. This way was open to view all sorts of vocations as ways to serve God and neighbor and to please God and neighbor. One of those vacations was the vocation of family and marriage. Luther writes: “All our work in the field, in the garden, in the city, in the home, in struggle, in government-to what does it all amount before God except child's play, by means of which God is pleased to give his gifts in the field, at home, and everywhere? These are the masks of our Lord God, behind which he wants to be hidden and to do all things’(Luther on Vocation, Gustaf Wingren, 116). The calling of family life in a sense replaced the monastic and priestly callings for Luther at the very core for God’s plan in the society. In the Large Catechism Luther says essentially if nothing works in the family nothing else in the society will work either. The concern was to give pastors a marriage rite that would fit with local customs while maintaining the inherent dignity and holiness of marriage as God’s institution and the heart of civil society. Marriage, as it is given for the companionship of man and woman, for the enjoyment of God’s gift of sexuality, and for procreation, should be upheld in reverence and with proper decorum. “Because up to now people have made such a big display at the consecration of monks and nuns (even though their estate and existence is an ungodly, human invention without any basis in the Bible), how much more should we honor this godly estate of marriage and bless it, pray for it, and adorn it in an even more glorious manner… it has God’s Word on its side and is not a human invention or institution” (Marriage Booklet, 1529).
Father and mother on the family were seeing as both having callings from God. These were vocations, they were just as holy as calling to be a priest, or a monk, or a pop, or a bishop. As baptized children of God they all can stand on account of Christ. They have roles as parents: father and mother. And they become in effect kind of a pastor: the priest and priestess as it were in the home for family purposes. Luther writes: “More religious than a monastic life, is the married life. Married life is the epitome of religious life” (The Estate of Marriage, 1522).
As the institution of marriage develops in the Middle Ages, it becomes one of the seven sacraments of the Church. Martin Luther views marriage from a different perspective. For him marriage is not actually a churchly act. It’s rooted in the creation, in the broader life of humanity. In a sense it is there before even a church. Marriage is instituted in Genesis 1, therefore marriage is something that’s rooted in Creation, not in Redemption. Trevor O. Reggio in his work Luther on Marriage and Family explains that Luther saw marriage as something outside of the church. “Pagan marriages according to Luther are still valid because they carried out God’s intention in the first article on the Creation -- human beings would be fruitful and multiply: “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth...He also gives me clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, wife and children, land, animals, and all I have.. This was seen as the bedrock of all social structures”’(Luther on Marriage and Family, 119). Luther writes in his article The Estate of Marriage: “Be fruitful and multiply is more than a command. It is a divine ordinance of work which is not our prerogative to hinder or ignore... It is not a matter of free choice decision, but a natural and necessary thing” (The Estate of Marriage, 1522, pp17-22). By putting marriage into a civil and social sphere, it was regulated not by churchly canon law, but rather by the state, by social and civil norms. So much would this be the case that Luther would see marriage something that happens outside the church, in the civic sphere, and then perhaps would go into the church and receive a blessing and celebrate that marriage. Thus, Luther interprets marriage as an institution rooted in natural law. Luther’s commentaries on Genesis, he reflected how in the Garden of Eden after the praise of God, marriage and procreation would have been the greatest work of human beings. (Commentaries to the Genesis,69).
Martin Luther is centuries ahead of his time in his writing on the role of father: “I confess to Thee that I am not worthy to rock this little babe or wash its diapers or to be entrusted with the care of the child and its mother. How is it that I without merit have to come without a distinction of being certain that I am serving Thy creature and Thy more precious will? Oh, how gladly I will do so” (Luther, The Estate of Marriage, 1522). In many ways the way that a Christian is going to be most closely conformed to the image of Christ is through washing diapers and caring for kids, and just dealing with all kinds of things that are uncontrollable in the family life. I think one of the biggest differences between monastic life of the experience, and family life - is the monastic life is still in a sense in control of what’s happening because there is a daily regimen and you know what’s coming. Of course, it is a human community where unexpected things happening, but nonetheless, it’s the regimen, the routine that is essential to spirituality. In the family life although you are not in control of how life is going to look like. Therefore, in that way Luther is borrowing this language of the monastery and applying into the marriage life. This shows an important transition in spirituality. Luther recognizes that there’s a new sphere in marriage. He reformed the traditional way of marriage and family to a new form of it.
There were numbers of people who wrote about marriage as an important and holy union in God. For example, St. Augustin defended marriage in On the Good of Marriage. He argued for the supremacy of celibacy in On Holy Virginity. We may disagree with Augustine’s view of the superiority of virginity; however, his defence of marriage sets out a theological basis for the inherent goodness of marriage. In fact, his theology of marriage provided the basic framework for the traditional Western view of marriage. Augustine writes: “ Wherefore, even as there is not unequal desert of patience in Peter, who suffered, and in John, who suffered not; so there is not unequal desert of continence in John who made no trial of marriage, and in Abraham, who begot sons. For both the celibate of the one, and the marriage estate of the other, did service as soldiers to Christ, as times were allotted; but John had continence in work also, but Abraham in habit alone.” (On the Good of Marriage, 35). However, Luther especially emphasizes family as a primarily sphere of spiritual development. I think that’s something extremely important for today’s marriage life.
Let us now look into how marriage is perceived nowadays in comparison to roman Empire and what role did Luther’s family played during the Reformation. Marriages and families nowadays are facing increasing pressure, due to the stress of modern life. Divorce rates among Christians are comparable to those among secular couples. Christian homes are being broken and disrupted at an alarming rate. Marriage rates in America and Western World are at historic lows. People are getting married later, or simply not marrying or engaging in other alternative living arrangements. Today's society in this aspect is comparable to the last days of the Roman Empire shortly before its collapse. Ancient Rome suffered from the same problems as we do today -- in the first 500 years of the Roman Empire, not a single divorce was registered, however, by 234 AD Romans’ divorce was as common as marriage. Later, Roman aristocracy discovered romantic love and began to neglect the traditional values of marriage; divorces and infidelities began, and as a result, childbearing decreased. Religious and political thinker of the twentieth century. Ivan Ilyin wrote: “History has shown ... the great ruins and disappearances of nations arise from spiritual and moral crises, which are expressed, first of all, in the decomposition of the family” (fgf). How familiar does this sound? Nowadays we can clearly see the tendency of divorces, decreasing numbers of offsprings, and unwillingness to commit or trust another person.
Luther’s pedagogy considers the preservation of marriage as one of the ways of self-preservation and development of the state. According to Luther the family is a natural school of love, self-sacrifice, and an altruistic way of thinking - to prevent the thread of life from breaking, the young generation should be instilled, and the old should rethink traditional values. The well-known testament of the educator Ivan Ilyin is in tune with the teachings of the Reformer: 'Take care of the family, the family is the support of the people and the state.' Martin Luther proved the value of marriage by getting married to a runaway nun, Katharina von Bora which caused a strong influence on German culture and the entire protestant world. Marrying during the Peasant War, Luther wanted to restore the honor of marriage as the order of the Lord. Considering that he could die every minute among the raging rebellious peasants, he did not want to leave this world, without confirming with his own example, his belief that the forced celibacy of monks and nuns was condemned and was an interference with God's gift. Luther and Katharina’s marriage wasn’t celebrated in a romantic setting, but with peasant efficiency, became a model of Christian family life.
Preservation of marriage is a school of life, enshrined in the experience of generations. Luther found real happiness in marriage. By personal example, he testified his faith in marriage, more than anyone else, defining the nature of family relations for the next four centuries. According to National Geographic: When the couple married in 1525, it was a scandal that reverberated across Europe—and the beginning of a partnership that lasted more than two decades and shaped the course of history. In fact, the family was the only sphere that the Reformation has touched so deeply. The family way of life accepted the fullness of love and piety in the patriarchal atmosphere, which Luther approved in his family as a model. At the time, Luther’s marriage was a scandal on many levels: He was a monk who had broken his vows, married to a nun who had broken hers. As Luther continued his career as a theologian and preacher, his marriage flouted centuries of Catholic teaching about celibacy and the priesthood—and established married clergy as a precedent for Reformation churches. “As soon as this former monk married a former nun, people took interest,” says Gabriele Jancke, a historian at Freie University in Berlin. “The moment someone left the cloister, they destroyed themselves, from the Catholic point of view. It was as bad as being divorced.” It is understandable that this family unit forever changed the world’s perspective on marriage.
However, not only by getting married did Martin and Katie Luther stip up the society. Their marriage in itself was a novelty to a settle patriarchal society. Martin Treu in his book Katherine von Bora, Luther’s wife talking about Katie’s strong character writes: “There’s no reason to doubt this account, and thus there, in her desire to acquire land, a very special character trait of Katherine is manifested, which not only set her apart from her husband, but also enable her to prevail over him”(Katherine von Bora, Luther’s wife, 54). One of Luther’s famous quotes says: “In household chores, I give way to Katie. In everything else, the Holy Spirit leads me. ” We can see how deeply Luther valued and loved his wife. Katherina was seen as self-confident, strong-willed, and independent, which were all negative attributes for women at the time. While their marriage had sharply defined roles that would seem foreign to modern feminists, “she was an equal partner,” says Treu.For Luther von Bora wasn’t just one of the sinful, numb,
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