We must not lose sight of the circumstance that the marriage took place barely five weeks after the death of the Saxon Elector Frederick the Wise. His successor was more openly favourable towards the ecclesiastical innovations. Frederick would have nothing to do with the marriage of the clergy, particularly with nuns, although he did not permit any steps to be taken against those who had married. He wrote to his Councillors at Torgau on October 4, 1523, that to undertake any alteration or innovation would be difficult, more particularly in these days when he had to anticipate trouble “for our country and people” from the opponents of Lutheranism; “he did not think that a clergyman ought to earn his stipend by idleness and the taking of wives, and by works which he himself condemned.”[496] In May, 1524, we see from one of Luther’s letters to Spalatin that difficulties had been raised at the Court concerning the remuneration of the married clergy by the Government. In this letter he recommends Johann Apel, formerly Canon of Würzburg, who had married a nun, for a post at the University of Wittenberg, and gives special advice in case his marriage should prove an obstacle (“_quod si uxorcula obstet_,” etc.). He here condemns the faint-hearted action of the Elector, and remarks, that he will not thereby escape the animosity of his foes, seeing that he notoriously “favours heretics and provides for them.”[497] Luther did not lose his habit of jesting with his friends, though his witticisms are neither proper nor edifying: “I am bound in the meshes of my mistress’s tresses,” he writes to one,[498] and to another, that it all seemed “very strange” to him and he could hardly realise he had “become a married man, but the evidence was so strong that he was in honour bound to believe it”; and to a third, since God had taken him captive unawares in the bonds of holy matrimony, he would be obliged to confirm this with a “collation” [dinner-party], therefore he and Mrs. Catherine begged him to send a cask of the best Torgau beer for a good drink; should “it turn out not to be good, the sender would have to drink it all himself as a penalty.”[499] He speaks later in the same jocose fashion of his “Katey” as the “Kette” [chain] to which he is tied, and rather indelicately plays on his wife’s maiden name: “I lie on the bier [’Bore’ = mod. Germ. ‘Bahre’], i.e. I am dead to the world. My Catena [Kette, or chain] rattles her greetings to you and your Catena.” This to Wenceslaus Link, the former Vicar of the Augustinians, who was already married.[500] Such jokes were likely to be best appreciated in the circle of apostate priests and monks. But many earnest men of Luther’s own party, who like Melanchthon and Schurf, feared evil consequences from the marriage, were little disposed for such trifling.