Heinrich Böhmer remarks justly: “Luther was no organiser. Not that he was devoid of interest in or comprehension for the practical needs of life. He was neither a secluded scholar nor a stiff-necked pedant.... His practical vein, though strong enough to enable him readily to detect the weak spot in the proposals and creations of others, was, however, not equal to any independent, creative and efficient action. However bold, energetic and original as a thinker and writer, as an organiser he was clumsy, diffident and poor in ideas. In this domain he is entirely lacking in initiative, decision and, above all, in any theory he could call his own.” “His regulations for public worship are no new creation but, more often than not, merely the old, Catholic ones, reduced and arranged to meet the needs of the evangelical congregation.... Where he is original he not seldom ceases to be practical. For instance, his extraordinary proposal that the Latin service should be retained for the benefit and edification of those familiar with the language, and his regret that it was no longer possible to arrange a service in Greek or Hebrew, can scarcely be characterised as anything but a professor’s whim.”[929] * * * * * His domestic life, owing to the simplicity, frugality and industry which reigned there, presents the picture of an unpretentious family home.[930] With Catherine Bora and the children she bore him, he led--apart from the disturbances arising from his outward controversies and inward combats--a regular life conducive to his labours. His relations with his life’s partner, who was absorbed in the management of the little household, were, so it would appear, never seriously disturbed; he was as devoted to her as she was to him, striving as she did to serve him and to lighten his cares. As to her failings, viz. a certain haughtiness and masterfulness, he winked at them. In his will dated Jan. 6, 1542, he gives, as follows, his reason for leaving everything to his “beloved and faithful wife Catherine”: “I do this first because she, as a pious, faithful and honourable wife, has always held me dear and in honour and, by God’s blessing, bore me and brought up five children, who are still alive and whom may God long preserve.”[931] Incidentally he praises her complacency and says that she had served him not only like a wife but like a maid. It is true, however, he says elsewhere: “Had I to marry another, I should hew myself an obedient wife out of stone, for I despair of any woman’s obedience.”[932]