Then, suddenly, without consulting any of his friends and with a haste which surprised even his own followers, on the evening of June 13, he celebrated his wedding with Bora in his own house, with all the formalities then usual. Besides Bugenhagen and Jonas, Luther’s friends, only the painter Lucas Cranach and his wife, and the Professor of Jurisprudence, Dr. Apel, were summoned as witnesses. The consummation of the marriage seems to have been duly witnessed by Bugenhagen as Pastor of Wittenberg. The public wedding did not take place until June 27, according to the custom common in that district of dividing the actual marriage from the public ceremony. During the interval Luther invited several guests to be present, as we see from his letters, which are still extant. From June 13 he speaks of himself already as “_copulatus_,”[465] and as a “husband.”[466] On June 14 Jonas sent by special messenger to Spalatin a letter, evidently written under the stress of very mixed feelings: “Luther has taken Catherine von Bora to wife. Yesterday I was there and saw the betrothed on the bridal couch. I could not restrain my tears at the sight; I know not what strong emotion stirred my soul; now that it has taken place and is the Will of God, I wish the excellent, honest man and our beloved father in the Lord, every happiness. God is wonderful in His decrees!”[467] Luther also was at pains to represent the incident as divinely ordained, a high and holy act. At a later date he said: “God willed that I should take pity on her [Catherine].”[468] Even before taking the step, he had thought out the plan of impressing upon his union with “Katey,” the ex-nun, the character of a “reforming work.” “Because our enemies do not cease to condemn matrimony,” he writes, and “our ‘little wiseacres’ daily scoff at it,” he feels himself for that very reason attracted to it; being determined to give celebrity to the true teaching of the Gospel concerning marriage.[469] He had informed Albert, the archiepiscopal Elector, that before quitting this life he would enter the married state, which he considered as enjoined by God,[470] and somewhat earlier he had confided to a friend that, if he could manage it before he died, he meant “to take his Katey to wife in order to spite the devil.”[471] This agrees in part with what he wrote shortly after his marriage: “The Lord plunged me suddenly, while I still clung to quite other views, into matrimony.”[472] As a matter of fact it was the unpleasant rumours aroused when his intimacy with Bora became known, which hastened the step. This is what Bugenhagen, an authentic witness, says with evident displeasure: Evil tales were the cause of Dr. Martin’s becoming a married man so unexpectedly.[473] Luther himself admits this in a confidential letter to Spalatin three days after the step. He informs him of his marriage as follows: “I have shut the mouth of those who slandered me and Catherine von Bora.”[474]