As part of the reaction against the Roman Church, some of the people began to break up convents. Luther supported this with a pamphlet giving the story

When no husband could be found for the twelfth nun, Luther married her himself.

of a girl named Florentina, who had been taken into a convent at the age of six. At eleven she was forced to take the veil. When at age fourteen she told her abbess that she felt no calling for a nun's life, the abbess told the girl that she was a nun for life and must make the best of it. Florentina tried to make her situation known to Martin Luther and later to her relatives, but each time she was caught and punished with severe penances. Eventually she was condemned to lifelong imprisonment in a cell. Later she escaped, and Luther published her story saying that he could tell many others like it.

To leave the cloistered life at that time was a capital offense. In 1522 twelve nuns were smuggled out of a convent in empty beer barrels. They were taken to Wittenberg, and Luther found husbands for eleven of them. When no husband could be found for the twelfth nun, Luther married her himself. The bride's name was Catherine von Bora. At the end of the wedding ceremony, they were declared “to be joined together in the name of the Triune God.” [43] Luther called her Katie and sometimes Kette, the German word for “chain.” At the time of their wedding he was 42 years old and she was 26, but Luther always said that she was the wife for him.