Luther, having lost popular support after urging suppression of the Knights' Revolt and the Peasants' War, finds personal solace in his marriage to a former Cistercian nun, Katherina von Bora, daughter to a family of Saxon landed gentry.

According to common belief, she was born on January 29, 1499 in Lippendorf; however, there is no evidence of this date from contemporary documents.

Due to the various lineages within the family and the uncertainty about Katharina's birth name, there were and are diverging theories about her place of birth.

Lately, however, a different view upon this matter has been proposed: that she was born in Hirschfeld and that her parents are supposed to have been a Hans von Bora zu Hirschfeld and his wife Anna von Haugwitz.

Neither can be historically proven.

It is also possible that Katharina was the daughter of a Jan von Bora auf Lippendorf and his wife Margarete, whose family name has not been established.

Both were only specifically mentioned in the year 1505.

It is certain that her father sent the five-year-old Katharina to the Benedictine cloister in Brehna in 1504 for education.

This is documented in a letter from Laurentius Zoch to Martin Luther, written on October 30, 1531.

This letter is the only evidence for Katharina von Bora's time spent within the monastery.

At the age of nine she moved to the Cistercian monastery of Marienthron (Mary's Throne) in Nimbschen, near Grimma, where her maternal aunt was already a member of the community.

Katharina is well documented at this monastery in a provision list of 1509/10.

After several years of religious life, Katharina became interested in the growing reform movement and grew dissatisfied with her life in the monastery.

Conspiring with several other nuns to flee in secrecy, she contacted Luther and begged for his assistance.

On Easter Eve, 4 April 1523, Luther had sent Leonhard Köppe, a city councilman of Torgau and merchant who regularly delivered herring to the monastery.

The nuns successfully escaped by hiding in Köppe's covered wagon among the fish barrels, and fled to Wittenberg.

A local student wrote to a friend: 'A wagon load of vestal virgins has just come to town, all more eager for marriage than for life.

God grant them husbands lest worse befall."

Luther at first asked the parents and relations of the refugee nuns to admit them again into their houses, but they declined to receive them, possibly as this was participating in a crime under canon law.

Within two years, Luther has been able to arrange homes, marriages, or employment for all of the escaped nuns—except for Katharina.

She first was housed with the family of Philipp Reichenbach, the city clerk of Wittenberg, and later went to the home of Lucas Cranach the Elder and his wife, Barbara.

Katharina has a number of suitors, including Wittenberg University alumnus Jerome (Hieronymus) Baumgärtner (1498–1565) of Nuremberg and a pastor, Kaspar Glatz of Orlamünde, but none of the proposed matches have resulted in marriage.

Finally, she tells Luther’s friend and fellow reformer, Nikolaus von Amsdorf, that she will be willing to marry only Luther or himself.

Luther eventually marries Katharina on June 13, 1525, before witnesses including Justus Jonas, Johannes Bugenhagen, and Barbara and Lucas Cranach the Elder.

There is a wedding breakfast the next morning with a small company, but two weeks later, on June 27, they hold a more formal public ceremony that is presided over by Bugenhagen.

Katharina is twenty-six years old, Luther forty-one.

The couple takes up residence in the "Black Cloister" (Augusteum), the former dormitory and educational institution for Augustinian friars studying in Wittenberg, given as a wedding gift by the reform-minded John Frederick, Elector of Saxony, who is the son and nephew of Luther's protectors, John, Elector of Saxony and Frederick III, Elector of Saxony.