The statement made by some Catholics that he did can be traced back to a misunderstanding of the simple word “dead.” This word he wrote against several passages of a memorandum of Spalatin’s on matrimonial questions submitted by the Elector in 1528, for instance, against one which ran: “Further, brother and sister may not marry, neither may a man take his brother’s or sister’s daughter or granddaughter. And similarly it is forbidden to marry one’s father’s, grandfather’s, mother’s or grandmother’s sister.”[951] The word “dead” here appended does not mean that the prohibition has ceased to hold, but is equivalent to “delete,” and implies that the passage should be omitted in print. Luther considered it unnecessary or undesirable that the impediments in question should be mentioned in this “Instruction”; he prefers that preachers should as a general rule simply insist on compliance with the Laws of the Empire. The accompanying letter of the Elector, in which he requests Luther to read through the memorandum, anticipates such a recommendation to omit. In it the writer asks whether “it would perhaps be better to leave this out and to advise the pastors and preachers of this fact in the Visitation,”[952] since, in any case, the “Imperial Code,” in which everything was contained in detail, was to be taken as the groundwork. Against many clauses of the Instruction Luther places the word “_placet_”; a “_non placet_” occurs nowhere; on the other hand, we find frequently “_omittatur_, dead, all this dead” (i.e. “delete”); he also says: “_hoc manebit, hactenus manebit textus_” (equivalent to “stet”). If “dead” had meant the same as “this impediment no longer holds,” then Luther would here have removed the impediment even between father and daughter, mother and son, seeing that he writes “dead” also against the preceding clause, which runs: “Firstly, the marriage of persons related in the ascending and descending line is prohibited throughout and _in infinitum_.” _Did Luther Recommend People to Pray for Many Wives and Few Children?_ This charge, too, belongs to the old armoury of well-worn weapons beloved of controversialists. The answer to the question may possibly afford material of some interest to the historian and man of letters.