Luther, Vol. 4 of 6

Volume Four of Grisar's monumental biography tackles one of the most uncomfortable episodes in Luther's career: his controversial counsel on marriage and bigamy to two of Europe's most powerful princes. When Henry VIII found himself trapped between his desire for a male heir and his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, Luther proposed something shocking: not divorce, but polygamy. Grisar, a Catholic scholar writing in 1913, examines this scandalous advice with rigorous objectivity, tracing how the Reformer navigated between his theological principles and the political pressures exerted by the English king and the German Landgrave Philip of Hesse. The narrative reveals a Luther caught between doctrinal purity and pragmatic accommodation, forced to reconcile his teaching on marriage with the demands of princes whose temporal power made them dangerous enemies. This is history at its most human: not the legend, but the messy, contradictory reality of how religious revolution collided with political ambition.