So at this point a tangle of thoughts and moral questions was caused from without in Luther’s soul, the threads of which were destined to involve his whole later life.  Whatever heartfelt joy and worldly happiness was granted him from this time on depended on the answer which he found to this question.  It was the happiness of his home-life which made it possible for him to endure the later years.  Only in it did the flower of his abundant affection develop.  So Fate graciously sent the lonely man the message which was to unite him anew and more firmly than ever with his people; and the way in which Luther dealt with this question is again characteristic.  His pious disposition and the conservative strain in his nature revolted against the hasty and superficial manner in which Carlstadt reasoned.

It may be assumed that much in his own feelings, at that particular time, made him suspicious that the Devil might be using this dubious question to tempt the children of God, and yet at this very moment, in his confinement, he had special sympathy for the poor monks behind monastery walls.  He searched the Scriptures.  He had soon disposed of the marriage of priests, but there was nothing in the Bible about monks.  “The Scripture is silent; man is uncertain.”  And then he was struck by the ridiculous idea that even his nearest friends might marry.  He writes to the cautious Spalatin, “Good Lord!  Our Wittenbergers want to give wives to the monks too.  Well, they are not going to hang one on my neck;” and he gives the ironical warning, “Look out that you do not marry too.”  But the problem still occupied him incessantly.  Life is lived rapidly in such great times.  Gradually, through Melanchthon’s reasoning, and, we may assume, after fervent prayer, he found certainty.  What settled the matter, unknown to himself, must have been the recognition that the opening of the monasteries had become reasonable and necessary for a more moral foundation of civil life.  For almost three months he had struggled over the question.  On the first of November, 1521, he wrote the letter to his father already cited.

The effect of his words upon the people was incalculable.  Everywhere there was a stir in the cloisters.  From the doors of almost all the monasteries and convents monks and nuns stole out—­at first singly and in secret flight; then whole convents broke up.  When Luther with greater cares weighing upon him returned the next spring to Wittenberg, the runaway monks and nuns gave him much to do.  Secret letters were sent to him from all quarters, often from excited nuns who, the children of stern parents, had been put into convents, and now, without money and without protection, sought aid from the great reformer.  It was not unnatural that they should throng to Wittenberg.  Once nine nuns came in a carriage from the aristocratic establishment at Nimpfschen—­among them a Staupitz, two Zeschaus, and Catherine von Bora.  At another time sixteen nuns were to be provided for,