our Lucas/ and told him to send a hundred copies to the pre- ceptor,' for I am just now setting out, with Philip and Master Agricola, for Eisleben, whither we have been summoned by Count Albert' to establish a Christian school, since you are so lukewarm and neglect our own. I am beginning to hope and to make some efforts that Philip may begin a similar school at Nuremberg. The Magdeburgers have called Caspar Creutziger/ the Dantzigers Master Arnold." Thus we are scattering, and our school is running down. What will become of me I do not know ; but this I do know, that in this matter you are not at all to blame. Satan alone is at the bottom of it. You write about my marrying. You ought not to wonder that I, who am such a famous lover, do not take a wife; it is more wonderful that I, who write so often about matrimony, and thus have so much to do with women,* have not long since become a woiflan, to say nothing of marrying one. But if you wish me to set you an example, you already have one, and a great one. For I had three wives at the same time,* and loved them so bravely that I lost two of them, who are about to accept other wooers. The third I am only holding with the left arm, and she, too, perhaps, will soon be snatched away from me. But you are such a laggard in love that you do not venture to become the husband even of one woman. But look out, or I, who have no thought at all of manage, may some-
^ Cranach.
' Wolfgang Reisfienbtiaeli. The "copiet" are of I^otlier't letter to Reissenbusch. Supra no. 667. •Of Mansfeld.
- Caspar Cruciger (1S04-X54B) was a native of Leipsic. He came to Wittenberg
in 1 521, where he was a pupil of Melanchthon's. Called to be the head of the city school at Magdeburg, in iS^St be remained there till 1528, when he returned to Wittenberg as preacher at the Castle Church and professor at the university, in which positions he remained till his death. In these years he became one of the inner circle of Luther's intimate friends. He assisted in the completion of the Bible translation and was one of the editors of the first (Wittenberg) edition of Luther's collected works.
■ Of this Arnold we know nothing further except that he was driven out of Dantzig in 1526.
- Sic misceor femdnis; Luther uses fnuKtri miseeri of sexual intercourse in a
letter of November 6, 1523 (Enders, iv, 255), but it is most improbable that it has the same sense here. Cf. Boehmer, Luther in the Light of Recent Research (trans, by Huth), 19 16, pp. ai6f.
- The "three wives'* to whom Luther here jestingly alludes were probably the
two sisters, Ave and Margaret von Schonfeld, and Catharine von Bora. All of them had been under Luther's csre at Wittenberg. Vide supra no. 5839 cf. Smith, 171.
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