Luther declared, in a circular letter concerning this occurrence, that as Christ, the risen One, had, like a triumphant robber, snatched his prey from the Prince of this world, so also Leonard Koppe might be termed “a blessed robber.” All who were on God’s side would praise the rape of the nuns as a “great act of piety, so that you may rest assured that God has ordained it and that it is not your work or your conception.”[349]
The twelve nuns were, as Amsdorf writes to Spalatin on April 4, “pretty, and all of noble birth, and among them I have not found one who is fifty years old.... I am sorry for the girls; they have neither shoes nor dresses.” Amsdorf praises the patience and cheerfulness of the “honourable maidens,” and recommends them through Spalatin to the charity of the Court. One, namely the sister of Staupitz, who was no longer so youthful, he at once offers in marriage to Spalatin, though he admits he has others who are prettier. “If you wish for a younger one, you shall have your choice of the prettiest.”[350]
Soon after this three other nuns were carried off by their relatives from Nimbschen. Not long after, sixteen forsook the Mansfeld convent of Widerstett, five of whom were received by Count Albert of Mansfeld. Luther reported this latter event with great joy to the Court Chaplain, Spalatin, and at the same time informed him that the apostate Franciscan, François Lambert of Avignon, had become engaged to a servant girl at Wittenberg. His intention, and Amsdorf’s too, was to coax Spalatin into matrimony and the violation of his priestly obligation of celibacy. “It is a strange spectacle,” he writes; “what more can befall to astonish us, unless you yourself at length follow our example, and to our surprise appear in the guise of a bridegroom? God brings such wonders to pass, that I, who thought I knew something of His ways, must set to work again from the very beginning. But His Holy Will be done, Amen.”[351]
Luther at that time was not in a happy frame of mind. He knew what was likely to be his experience with the escaped monks and nuns. The trouble and waste of time, as well as the serious interruption to his work, which, as he complains, was occasioned by the religious who had left their convents, appeared to him relatively insignificant.[352] The large sums of money which, as he remarks, he had to “throw away on runaway monks and nuns,” he might also have overlooked, as he was not avaricious.[353] Yet the disorders introduced by the arrival of so many people bent on matrimony were distasteful to him. In a letter to Spalatin, July 11, 1523, this complaint escapes him: “I am growing to hate the sight of these renegade monks who collect here in such numbers; what annoys me most is that they wish to marry at once, though they are of no use for anything. I am seeking a means to put an end to it.”[354] The good name of his undertaking seemed to him to be at stake. On the occasion of the marriage of a Court preacher to a very old but wealthy woman, a match which was much talked about, he complains bitterly that the step was a disgrace to the Evangel; the miserly bridegroom was “betraying himself and us.”[355]