Katarina Von Bora

Katarina Von Bora was a daughter of a nobleman who had lost his land and gone poor in 1499.  The family left her in a convent at age 5 and refused to take her back.  Kate used work to overcome her disappointment and when the opportunity arose she escaped.  (Convents were often women’s prisons in the Middle Ages where deposed ruler’s wives were forced to live bearing no rival heirs.) Secretly she had read Martin Luther and found herself a soul-mate spiritually. With help from some Lutheran former monks, she and a dozen others managed a daring escape from her convent. Many of the girls found their families again or married. Except Kate. At Wittenburg, Luther was trying to arrange a marriage of her to another professor. “No!” she retorted, “But I’d marry you!” And so they did and became a rare couple in that era.  They were very much in love. “Katie, my rib,” Luther called her.  She was everything he wasn’t—household & money manager, hostess, farmer, livestock raiser and mom. Plus she brewed the best bier to be found.  Luther was forever bound to live in Wittenburg, because he was a wanted man in much of Germany.  No problem.  Katie remodeled the old monastery making it a guesthouse for dignitaries from all over Europe who had come to see Luther. Upstairs the men would retreat with their beers.(If you brew it, they will come.)  She would join them for the lively discussion, the only woman to ever do so. She often had much to offer and one of the men once grumbled to Luther, couldn’t he shut his wife down?  He refused.  She had a rich experience in the inner life and a relationship with God.  They had six children.  When their teenage daughter died, Martin went into severe depression and Kate helped him out of it. 

Katarina bought land and hired farm hands to support their “B&B”, sometimes gone for a week to tend it 50 miles away. This is familiar stuff for Oklahomans.  In USA, the women’s suffrage movement took place in the plains states from WY to OK, culminating in the 19^th Amendment, 100 years ago, 1918. 10% of the ranchers have always been women, by widowhood or choice.  “Well, if she’s head of the Chamber, why can’t we let her vote?”  When they asked Will Rogers about this he had this quip, “Some say they don’t trust women with the vote.  Seems a little late to not be trusting them. We’ve been eating their cooking for thousands of years.” But Katarina von Bora would probably have thought more highly of the lyrics Amy Grant sang, “I may not be every mother’s dream for her little girl…/But that’s all right, as long as I can have one wish I pray/ When people look inside my life, I want to hear them say/ She’s got her Father’s eyes…/Eyes that find the good in things/when good is not around/ Eyes that find the source of help/ When help just can’t be found/ Eyes full of compassion/ Seeing every pain/Knowing what you’re going through/And feeling it the same/ She’s got her Father’s eyes.”