Our memory of what happened during the 16th-century Reformation was somewhat selective. As heirs to reformed Protestantism, we remember the Reformation primarily as a recovery from the gospel and the biblical form of worship, but we must also remember it as an important renewal of the biblical understanding of marriage.
Based on the monastic piety of the end of antiquity — found in authors such as Agostinho and Jerome — the medieval church regarded the unique life of the monastery or convent of the nuns as a place of development of a spirituality far superior to that found in the houses of the bride and groom. It was argued that the bachelor lived as angels and, therefore, had already experienced in some way the life of the world to come. However, with the growing corruption of the church in the late Middle Ages, the reality was that many clerics were single, but not chaste.
- Although Martin Luther was not the first of the reformers to marry and start a family.
- His marriage to Katharina von Bora on June 13.
- 1525 became.
- In many ways.
- The paradigmatic ideal of the Protestant family.
- Initially.
- Their marriage was not out of love.
- Katharina had escaped from a convent in Nimbsch.
- Near Grimma.
- With several other nuns and eventually sought refuge in Wittenberg.
- For a time.
- Luther acted as a kind of marriage intermediary.
- Seeking to find husbands for nuns.
- He was left alone and Luther married him.
- He said.
- To please his father.
- Who had always wanted grandchildren.
- And also.
- As Luther claimed unprecedentedly.
- To despise the Pope.
These are not the best reasons to get married, but over time, their marriage “has become an association of true depth and moving devotion,” to quote Andrew Pettegree in his recent study of Martin Luther. This happy success? The marriage of Martinho and Katharina and the six children of their union became, in Pettegree’s words, “a powerful archetype of the new Protestant family. “Luther’s love for his sons led him to see correctly that the gift of sons and daughters was in the Y “people who do not like children,” he once said in his energetic style, “are” stupid and foolish, not worthy of being called men and women, because they despise the blessings of God, creator and author of marriage. “
When John Calvin got married, he told his friend and colleague William Farel in the late 1530s that he was not concerned about physical beauty. What I wanted was a chaste, wise, economical, patient person capable of “taking care of my health. “”.
Unlike Luther, who was quite public about the details of his married life, did Calvin rarely mention his marriage to Idelette de Bure during his eight-and-a-half years of marriage?She died in March 1549, after suffering health problems for many years. However, from time to time, an observation shows how close they were to each other, for example, Calvin was with his wife in Strasbourg in the spring of 1541, a plague spread throughout the city and Calvin decided to stay in Strasbourg. , but he sent his wife for his own safety. She wrote to Farel that “day and night, my wife was constantly in my thoughts, needing advice now that she is separated from her husband. “
They had a son, James, who died shortly after his birth in 1542. “The Lord,” Calvin wrote to a close friend, Pierre Viret, “certainly caused a grave and bitter wound in the death of our little boy. But he himself is a father and knows better what is good for his children?
At the time of his wife’s death, Calvin said in a letter to Farel, “My pain is not really common, I am devoid of the best friend of my life, of someone who, if ordered, would have voluntarily shared not only my poverty. But also my death. In your life, has she been a faithful helper to my ministry?It is a remarkable passage that reveals the depth of the change brought about by the Protestant Reformation. Marriage now looked as God wanted in Genesis 2: the union of close allies, working for a common cause, that is, the expansion of the kingdom of God.
By: Michael Haykin. © Ligonier Ministries. Website: ligonier. org. Translated with permission. Source: The ideal of marriage reform.
Original: Reformers and marriage. © Faithful Ministry. Website: MinisterioFiel. com. br. All rights reserved. Translation: Camila Rebeca Teixeira. Review: André Alosio Oliveira da Silva.