[9] Her father sent then five-year-old von Bora to a Benedictine convent in Brehna in 1504 to be educated, according to a letter Laurentius Zoch sent to Martin Luther in 1531.

[10] At the age of nine, she was moved to Nimbschen Abbey, Cistercian community named Marienthron ('Mary's Throne') near Grimma, where her maternal aunt was a nun.

[12] After years of being a nun, von Bora became interested in the growing reform movement and grew dissatisfied with cloistered life.

[13] On 4 April 1523, Holy Saturday, Luther sent Leonhard Köppe, a merchant and councillor of Torgau who regularly delivered herring to the convent.

[14] Luther asked the family of the nuns to admit them into their houses, but they declined, possibly because this would have made them accomplices to a crime under canon law.

She was first housed with the family of Philipp Reichenbach, the municipal clerk of Wittenberg, then with Lucas Cranach the Elder and his wife, Barbara.

Von Bora had a number of suitors, including Hieronymus Baumgartner from Nuremberg, and a pastor, Kaspar Glatz from Orlamünde, but none of the proposals resulted in marriage.

Luther eventually decided that his marriage would 'please his father, rile the pope, cause the angels to laugh, and the devils to weep'.

[16] 26-year-old Von Bora and 41-year-old Luther married on 13 June 1525, before witnesses including Justus Jonas, Johannes Bugenhagen, and Barbara and Lucas Cranach.

She might have even influenced his decisions to a degree; Luther said that his wife 'convince[d] [him] of whatever' she pleased', and explicitly afforded her 'complete control' over the household, as long as 'his rights' were 'preserved', since '[f]emale government has never done any good'.

[21] Anecdotal evidence suggests that Katharina Luther played a wife's role as taught by her husband's movement: she depended on him financially (although she also increased their estate's profits), and respected him as a 'higher vessel', always calling him 'Herr Doktor'.

[26] Almost immediately after, Katharina had to leave the Black Cloister, now called Lutherhaus, by herself, at the outbreak of the Schmalkaldic War, fleeing to Magdeburg.