complete liberty by denouncing their vows as opposed to the freedom of
the Gospel and consequently sinful. Many of the monks and nuns
abandoned their cloisters and fled to Wittenberg to seek the pleasures
denied them hitherto, and to put in practice Luther's teaching on the
necessity of marriage. Though he encouraged bishops and priests to
marry, and though he forwarded his warmest congratulations to
Carlstadt on his betrothal to a fifteen year old maiden (1522), Luther
himself hesitated long before taking his final plunge; but at last,
against the advice of his best friends, he took as his wife Catherine
Bora, one of the escaped nuns who had sought refuge in Wittenberg. His
marriage (1525) was a source of amusement to his opponents as it was
of dismay to his supporters. Melanchthon complained bitterly of the
step his master had taken, but he consoled himself with the thought
that the marriage might out an end to his former frivolity, and might
allay the suspicions that his conduct had aroused.[23] To the princes,
the free cities, and the landless knights he appealed by holding out
hopes that they might be enriched by a division of the ecclesiastical
estates and of the goods of the monasteries and churches. With the
overthrow of the Pope and of the bishops the princes were led to
expect that they might themselves become spiritual dictators in their
own dominions. To the friends of the Humanist movement and the great
body of the professors and students he represented himself as the
champion of learning and intellectual freedom, anxious to defend them
against the obscurantism of the Scholastics and the interference of
the Roman congregations.

A large number of the leading Humanists, believing that Luther had
undertaken only a campaign against universally recognised abuses, were
inclined at first to sympathise with his movement. The friendly
attitude they adopted, and the influence employed by Erasmus and