Note 473 — Chapter XXII · (continued 2)

Leipzig, 1865, p. 159. Friedberg adduces passages from H. L. v. Strampff, “Uber die Ehe; aus Luthers Schriften zusammengetragen,” Berlin, 1857. Falk, “Die Ehe am Ausgang des MA.,” p. 73. Th. Kolde says, in his “M. Luther,” 2, p. 488, that the reformers, and Luther in particular, “lacked a true insight into the real, moral nature of marriage.” “At that time at any rate [1522 f.] it was always the sensual side of marriage to which nature impels, which influenced him. That marriage is essentially the closest communion between two individuals, and thus, by its very nature, excludes more than two, never became clear to him or to the other reformers.” Kolde, however, seeks to trace this want of perception to the “mediæval views concerning marriage.” Cp. Denifle, 1¹, p. 285. Otto Scheel, the translator of Luther’s work on Monastic Vows (“Werke Luthers, Auswahl, usw., Ergänzungsbd.,” 1, p. 199 ff.), speaks of Luther’s view of marriage as “below that of the Gospel” (p. 198).