ne of the canonized saints of Rome,
St. Augustine, declared that bigamy might be permitted if a wife was
sterile? Was not concubinage still recognized by law in the sixteenth
century in Ireland? Did not King Diarmid have two legitimate wives and
two concubines? And he was a Catholic. What have Catholics to say in
rejoinder to Sir Henry Maine's assertion that the Canon Law of their
Church brought about numerous sexual inequalities? Or to Joseph
MacCabe's statement that not until 1060 was there any authoritative
mandate of the Church against polygamy, and that even after this
prohibition there were numerous instances of concubinage and polygamic
marriages in Christian communities? Or to Hallam in his _Middle Ages_,
where he reports concubinage in Europe? Or to Lea, who proves that this
evil was not confined to the laity? (See Gallighan, _Women under
Polygamy_, pp. 43. 292. 295. 303. 330. 339.)

All that has so far been said about Luther's views on the subject of
polygamy could be most powerfully reinforced by a review of Luther's
teaching on matrimony as a divine institution, which Luther consistently
throughout his writings regards as monogamous. But this is too well
known to require restatement, and is really outside of the scope of this
review, which must content itself with submitting the direct argument in
rebuttal of the Catholic charge of Luther's advocacy of polygamy. This
polygamous Luther, too, is a vision that is rendered possible only
through spectacles of hopeless bias.

27. Luther Announces His Death.

Mark Twain awoke one morning to find himself reported dead. He did not
accept the invitation suggested in the report, but wired to his friends:
"Reports of my death grossly exaggerated." Luther was placed in a
similar predicament by Catholics who were deeply interested in the
question how long he was to continue to live. One day, in the early part
of March, 1545, he was handed a printed letter in Italian which
contained the news of his demise under curious circumstances. He thought
that he ought not to withhold this interesting information from the
world: he had a German translation made of the document, which he
published with his remarks as follows:

"Copy of a Letter of the Ambassador of the Most Christian King regarding
a Horrible Sign which Occurred in the Shameful Death of Martin Luther.

"A horrible and unheard-of miracle which the blessed God has wrought in
the shameful death of Martin Luther, w