Katharina von Bora: peculiarities of the protestant marriage at the early 16th century

In the article the author explores some peculiarities of the protestant marriage, its foundations developed by the reform movement at the early 16th century. Marriage occupied a special place in the Luther’s doctrine due to the critique of the Catholic ideal of celibacy and asceticism. The author tries to show the new type of marriage through the prism of the biography of Katharina Luther (maiden name von Bora), an unusual representative of her epoch. Another significant question is how gender roles described in works by Luther, applied to his own family. The research is based on various sources of information: the evidences of the contemporaries, collected in the “Table Talk”, on the private cor-respondence of Luther and his wife with their companions. The author explains a role of a woman as wife and as mother and em-phasizes her opportunities and rights in the new Reformed socie-ty. Therefore, the article evaluates how the marriage alliance be-tween the leader of the Reformation and his wife, which became a role model of marital relationship, influenced the future devel-opment of the institute of family.