ABSTRACT
When at last he decided to marry, it was something of an accident that his choice fell upon Catharine von Bora. She had been born, on January 29, 1499, at Lippendorf, a hamlet some twenty miles south of Leipsic. The name Bora (cognate in form and meaning with our word^r) is, like that of Staupitz and other aristocratic families of the region, of Wendish or Slavonic origin, but the family, deriving its name from the village of Bora, was Teutonic. Catharine's father, Hans von Bora, held modest estates, a portion of which, the farm of Zulsdorf, later passed by purchase to his famous son-in-law. The mother,
Catharine von Haugwitz, died shortly after the birth of her little girl, and Hans, marrying again, sent his five-year-old daughter to the convent school of the Benedictine nuns near Brehna. About four years later he transferred her to a Cistercian cloister at Nimbschen near Grimma, intending that in due time she should become a nun. Nimbschen was a wealthy foundation in which the education of the girls and their taking of the veil were gratuitous; it was therefore largely patronized by gentlemen like Bora of more influence than means. At the time of her entrance, one of her relatives was abbess, and another, Auntie Lena, as she afterwards came to be known at Wittenberg, was a sister.
