ABSTRACT
In 1570, Frankfurt pastor Matthias Ritter wrote a satirical pamphlet confronting the continued debate about whether Lutheran wives were whores. Despite evangelical clergy declaring their marriages as necessary for their salvation, marriage by its very nature did not involve a single actor or an individual choice in isolation. Married clergy found themselves crossing social, political, and personal boundaries that were still shifting and in doing so they created new questions and problems for many individuals and institutions struggling to come to decisions or establish norms. While the debate about clerical celibacy and clerical marriage did not end at the death of Albrecht of Mainz in 1545. Luther in 1546, the secular confessional decisions in a variety of localities ended further widespread Lutheran effort to engage in debate on the topic. Many pastors confronted very real challenges to their spiritual authority in many communities as a result of their marriages and their attempts to gain acceptance of their households.
