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details and about the issues involved in leaving a convent or monastery. This became a big issue for
discussion: Leaving a convent or monastery meant leaving a certain household and also leaving this
specific type of household. This was discussed in terms of breaking the vows of poverty, chastity, and
obedience and what this implied in relation to God, to other human beings and to oneself. Bora’s
behavior was seen as evidence of her religion being bad or good in an exemplary way – for Catholics
like the monk Michael Kuen (1709‐1765; pseud.: Eusebius Engelhard) she was a sort of anti‐saint,
brought under attack because this opened a path for attacking her husband as well, and in
consequence his theology and the whole Protestant group. For Protestants like the married professor
of theology Christian Wilhelm Franz Walch (1726‐1784) she was to be defended against such attacks
because Luther’s theology and the honor of the whole Lutheran group were endangered. Her
marriage and her household functions were seen as evidence that Bora had been living according to
the right – Lutheran – theology, in Lutheran eyes; or, in Catholic perspective, they were evidence of
her having left religion and church and all relevant religious norms completely behind. The discourse
was between theologians of opposing confessional groups, and it concerned religious questions of
church and theology. In this frame, the honor of individual persons and of the group they belonged
to was one of the most important topics; another main topic were the practices giving evidence of
religious belief and belonging. Only in consequence and as a subcategory, social structures were
relevant as well. History was decisive for defining the relevant religious tradition that was to be
upheld and defended by the authorities.
In the 19 th and 20 th centuries, confessional polemics was still practiced from both sides. Even texts
following modern standards of history as a scientific endeavor, insisting on their independent study
of the sources, still pursued polemical agendas openly. More important, Protestant versions of
Katharina von Bora were still patterned as a counter‐life to Catholic attacks: The Catholic Bora first
and foremost was a nun, and even after she had left the convent, she could never be anything else.
In a story centering on this decisive break of vows and of lifelong commitment – no matter if factoriented
or more or less invented –, she could only be undisciplined, disobedient, driven by a desire
for power and by her bodily impulses for food, alcohol and sexuality, bringing an illegitimate child
into the marriage. In short, she was an agent and she was made visible as such, but this was a bad
sign especially in a religious perspective. So the Protestant (Lutheran) Bora had to be the wife,
mother, and housewife, obedient, quiet, humble, not at all bodily and sexual. Her life as a nun in
convent had to be reduced to a minimum, she had no ideas or concepts of her own, she was not
shown as a literate person and as participating in the table talks taking place in her own and Luther’s
household. In both versions, Bora was no agent at all, with her agency made invisible; or her agency
served as an especially negative character trait. Both views reveal a shared religious perspective of
the importance of obedience towards religious authority in general and of women towards men in
particular. In spite of contrasting evaluations of the person, a gendered value system emerges that
constitutes a common ground between Catholic and Lutheran clerics. Factual statements were of
high importance and therefore contested vehemently in these discourses. But in themselves they
don’t account for the narratives given in these discourses. The rules for constructing those narratives
were made outside the realm of factual past: verifiable historical truth was part of an actual
argument.
Furthermore, in the 19 th century Bora’s and Luther’s household becomes more and more similar
to 19 th ‐century notions and ideologies of an intimate core family, understood as constituting a
separate private sphere. This can be observed with book‐length biographical studies like those by
Wilhelm Beste (1817‐1889), Albrecht Thoma (1844‐1915), and Ernst Kroker (1859‐1927) – intended
as scholarly, source‐based, and factual – or Hermann Nietschmann (1840‐1929) – intended as
popular distribution of scholarly factual knowledge. But the same is true where a short biographical
sketch was inserted as part of a larger text, for example in normative literature on the household of
the pastor, including his wife and children – texts by e. g. Herman Semmig (1820‐1897), by Hermann
Josephson (1864‐1949) and Bertha Josephson‐Mercator (1861‐1906), and by Hermann Werdermann