Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1521-1530.djvu/183

 but most of all the others who are dying everywhere in such numbers in their cursed and impure celibacy. This sex, so very, very weak, joined by nature or rather by God to the other, perishes when cruelly separated. O tyrants! O cruel parents and kinsmen in Germany 1 O Pope and bishops, who can curse you enough? Who can sufficiently execrate the blind fury which has taught and enforced such things? But this is not the place to do it.

You ask what I shall do with them? First I shall inform their relatives and ask them to support the girls; if they will not I shall have the girls otherwise provided for. Some of the families have already promised me to take them; for some I shall get husbands if I can. Their names are : Magda- lene von Staupitz,* Elsa von Canitz,* Ave Gross,* Ave von Schonfeld ^ and her sister Margaret, Laneta von Goltz,* Mar- garet and Catharine Zeschau ' and Catharine von Bora.* Here are th^, who serve Christ, in need of true pity. Th^ have escaped from the cloister in miserable condition. I pray you also to do the work of charity and beg some money for me from your rich courtiers, by which I can support the girls a week or two until their kinsmen or others provide for them. For my Capernaans have no wealth but that of the Word, so

^The younger sister of John Staupitz. She had been in the convent since X501. In 1529 she was placed at the head of a girls* school in Grimma, married a cer- tain Tiburcius Gender in i537» and died 1548. Amsdorf wished Spalatin to many her (c/. infra, no. 584).

near Wurzen. After her flight to Wittenberg she went to a place called the Oak, between Leipsic and Grimma. Luther invited her to come to Wittenberg again to teach in 1527. Ten years later she also settled at Grimma. Kroker» 45f.
 * Elsa Ton Canitx may hare come from the family of that name at Thallwits,

married John Marx of Schweinits. Kroker, ibid,
 * Ave Gross was the daughter of a knightly house settled near Grimma. She

Delitzsch. They lived in Cranach's house at Wittenberg. Luther was much at- tracted to Ave, who, however, married Basil Axt, who had studied medicine at Wittenberg, and was at this time head of Cranach's drug-atore. Later he became physician to Albert of Prussia. Ave died in 1540. Margaret married the Bnina- wick nobleman von GarssenbutteL Kroker, ibid,
 * Ave and Margaret von Schonfeld were daughters of George von Schdnfeld of

■Laneta von Goltz, at this time about thirty, returned to a sister at Coldlts. On August S4, xsaj, she married the pastor there, who was killed by a shepherd only a few wedcs later. In 1527 she was married again to Henry Kind of Ldanig.

cloister since 1505, returned to their relatives at or near Grimma. Nothing ia known of their future life.
 * Veronica (not Catharine) and Margaret von Zeschau, who had been in the

T Catharine von Bora (1499-1552) of Zulsdorf, near Leipsic, was sent to the cloister at the age of five, and took the veil in 1515. She married Luther June 13, X525. See Smith, i68ff and pauim, literature, 456.

�� �