If there had been newspapers in 1525, Luther’s wedding might have been announced to the public in this way. However, newspapers weren’t to appear until much later, and the lack of publicity gave gossips and slanderers choice opportunity to vilify the former monk and nun. The malicious stories were partly offset by a public ceremony, complete with a special service in the town church, a wedding dinner in the cloister, and a dance at the town hall on June 27. The wedding was a direct result of Luther’s reform teachings. He disliked the monastic system because men and women sought merit before God through restraints and vows rather than depending upon grace. Celibacy, he had written earlier, is not founded on Scripture but marriage is. These teachings found their way into many cloisters and convents, among them the one at Nimbschen where Katherine von Bora, at the age of sixteen, had been received into the Cistercian Order. She and eleven other nuns sought Luther’s assistance in effecting a plan of escape. Although he had no idea of what it would involve for him personally, he arranged for them to be smuggled out of the convent in empty fish barrels on the day before Easter in 1523. The plan succeeded and some of the nuns came to Wittenberg where they found homes, husbands, or new positions. Two years later Kathie was the only one not permanently cared for despite Luther’s several attempts at matchmaking. Then the spunky miss hinted rather boldly that the Reformer himself would be an acceptable husband and he resolved to take the course which he had urged on so many others. It was strange for one accustomed to solitude. “Formerly at the table I was alone,” he wrote, “now I am with someone. When I awaken I see a pair of pigtails on the pillow which were not there before.” The Cloister Becomes a Home Marriage probably extended Luther’s life for a number of years. Previously he and his dog enjoyed an irregular sort of existence in the Black Cloister. Dishes were covered with dust, the bed hadn’t been made in over a year, his clothes were in disorder. Sometimes Luther forgot his meals altogether and at other times stuffed himself. The vigor with which his industrious wife established order can be imagined by his reference to her as “my lord Kathie.” She was an efficient housekeeper and thrifty manager of what little they possessed at the outset. Neither had any money. Luther refused pay for his writing, although the publishers grew rich, nor did he receive any tax revenues from the cloister since he had laid aside his cowl. Things improved when the elector gave Luther the cloister for a home, and adjacent to it a vegetable garden with a small brew house where Kathie prepared the family beverage. His small salary as professor was augmented somewhat when they took in boarding students attending the university.