ter all, for
neither the serfs, the robber barons, nor the isolated free cities
which stood like islands in the rising flood, gave any assurance.
Luther was entirely right in the essential point, but the same
obstinate, unyielding manner which previously had made his struggle
against the hierarchy so popular, turned now against the people
themselves. A cry of amazement and horror shot through the masses. He
was a traitor! He who for eight years had been the favorite and hero
of the people suddenly became most unpopular. His safety and his life
were again threatened; even five years later it was dangerous for him,
on account of the peasants, to travel to Mansfeld to visit his sick
father. The indignation of the people also worked against his
doctrine. The itinerant preachers and the new apostles treated him as
a lost, corrupted man.

[Illustration: _Permission F. Bruckmann, A.-G., Munich_
COURT BALL AT RHEINSBERG Adolph von Menzel]

He was outlawed, banned, and cursed by the populace. Many well-meaning
men, too, had not approved of his attack on celibacy and monastic
life. The country gentry threatened to seize the outlaw on the
highways because he had destroyed the nunneries into which, as into
foundling asylums, the legitimate daughters of the poverty-stricken
gentry used to be cast in earliest childhood. The Roman party was
triumphant; the new heresy had lost what so far had made it powerful.
Luther's life and his doctrine seemed alike near their end.

Then Luther determined to marry. For two years Catherine von Bora had
lived in the house of Reichenbach, the city clerk, afterward mayor of
Wittenberg. A healthy, good looking girl, she was, like many others,
the abandoned daughter of a family of the country gentry of Meissen.
Twice Luther had tried to find her a husband, as in fatherly care he
had done for several of her companions. Finally Catherine declared
that she would marry no one but Luther himself, or his friend Amsdorf.
Luther was surprised, but he reached a decision quickly. Accompanied
by Lucas Kranach, he asked for her hand and married her on the spot.
Then he invited his friends to the wedding feast, asked at Court for
the venison which the Prince was accustomed to present to his
professors when they married, and received the table wine as a present
from the city of Wittenberg. How things stood in Luther's soul at that
time we should be glad to know. His whole being was under the highest
tension. T