Grave of Katharina von Bora Luther

From Wikipedia:

Her father sent five-year-old von Bora to a Benedictine convent in Brehna in 1504 to be educated, according to a letter Laurentius Zoch sent to Martin Luther in 1531.^[10] At the age of nine, she was moved to Nimbschen Abbey, Cistercian community named Marienthron (‘Mary’s Throne’) near Grimma, where her maternal aunt was a nun.^[11] Von Bora’s presence is in the financial accounts of 1509/10.^[12]

After years of being a nun, von Bora became interested in the growing reform movement and grew dissatisfied with cloistered life. Conspiring with several other sisters, she contacted Luther and begged for his assistance.^[13] On 4 April 1523, Holy Saturday, Luther sent Leonhard Köppe, a merchant and councillor of Torgau who regularly delivered herring to the convent. The nuns escaped by hiding in his covered wagon among the fish barrels, and fled to Wittenberg.^[14]

Luther asked the families of the nuns to admit them into their houses, but they declined, possibly because this would have made them accomplices to a crime under canon law.^[15]

Within two years, Luther was able to arrange marriages or find employment for all of the escaped nuns except von Bora. She was first housed with the family of Philipp Reichenbach, the municipal clerk of Wittenberg, then with Lucas Cranach the Elder and his wife, Barbara. Von Bora had a number of suitors, including Hieronymus Baumgartner from Nuremberg, and a pastor, Kaspar Glatz from Orlamünde, but none of the proposals resulted in marriage. She told Luther’s friend and fellow reformer, Nicolaus von Amsdorf, that she would be willing to marry only Luther or von Amsdorf.^[16]