A Singular Woman

Katharina stands alone as a woman in Christian history. She is a woman for all seasons. More than that, her life embodies all that is human—struggles and sorrows and joys that belong to every culture and all generations: her second-guessing difficult decisions, her hectic schedule, sleepless nights, family illness and mental health issues, deaths of children. These are not gender-related troubles. Nor is her lost love and loneliness before marriage or her marital clashes related to money or personality differences. These are human problems. That is not to say however, that many troubling matters for her were related to gender and culture. She carried women’s burdens that no man can fully comprehend—burdens that we shall encounter as we glimpse her life from childhood to old age. But most striking is her singularity—her thoroughly unconventional life. She is not easily lost in the crowd of history even considering the paucity of original sources. She cannot be straight-jacketed into the role of a proper Reformation wife—a wife acceptable neither for the sixteenth century nor for today. 

That she was an assertive and decisive manager of household and business affairs has been well documented and today we praise her for that. Less, however, has been sorted out regarding her religious role—or lack thereof—as I write in this book. Her significance can hardly be exaggerated. Indeed, she was the most indispensable figure of the German Reformation save for Martin Luther himself. Take her and their twenty-year marriage out of the picture, and his leadership would have suffered severely. Had it not been for the stability she brought to his life, he may have gone off the rails emotionally and mentally by the mid 1520s. His emphasis on, and modeling of, marriage and family as an essential aspect of his reform would have been lost. Only Katharina von Bora—no other woman—could have accomplished what she did with this most unstable man. Without her, the Black Cloister would have gone to ruin—the result of which would have been no “Table Talk,” and that is only the barest beginning of what would have been lost if she were taken out of the equation.