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Thomas Müntzer and John Knox: Radical and Magisterial Reformers?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2017

PETER MATHESON
PETER MATHESON*
Affiliation:
10 Gredon Court, 38 Drivers Road, Maori Hill, Dunedin 9010, New Zealand; e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

A distinction is often made between magisterial and radical reformers in the early modern period, Luther and Thomas Müntzer being frequently taken as representatives of two quite different reformations, especially in regard to the understanding of Scripture and of the political realm. It can, however, be argued that the Reformation as a whole was radical, and that it is misleading to characterise one aspect of it as mainstream, another peripheral. The comparison between Müntzer and the Scottish reformer, John Knox, appears to support the contention that the chasm between the two camps is not unbridgeable.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 68 , Issue 3 , July 2017 , pp. 529 - 545
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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References

1 Goertz, H.-J., ‘Radikale an der Peripherie oder im Zentrum der Reformation? Fünf Thesen zum reformatorischen Ausbruch im 16. Jahrhundert’, in Kühne, Hartmut, Goertz, Hans-Jürgen, Müller, Thomas T. and Vogler, Günter (eds), Thomas Müntzer – Zeitgenossen – Nachwelt. Siegfried Bräuer zum 80. Geburtstag, Mühlhausen 2010, 23–38 Google Scholar; Gregory, Brad, ‘The Radicals’, in Marshall, Peter (ed.), The Oxford illustrated history of the Reformation, Oxford 2015, 115–51Google Scholar at p.117, and The unintended Reformation: how a religious Reformation secularised society, Cambridge, Ma–London 2012, 147–52Google Scholar.

2 Goertz, H.-J., Thomas Müntzer: Revolutionär am Ende der Zeiten, Munich 2015 Google Scholar; Bräuer, Siegfried and Vogler, Günter, Thomas Müntzer: Neu Ordnung machen in der Welt: eine Biographie, Gütersloh 2016 Google Scholar; Dawson, Jane, John Knox, New Haven–London 2015 Google Scholar.

3 John Knox's history of Scotland, ed. Dickinson, W. C., Edinburgh 1949 Google Scholar, i. 148; Dawson, Knox, 154.

4 Müntzer's sermons attracted streams of visitors, ‘fremde volck’, from surrounding villages, often under Catholic rulers, who sought to stem the flow. Although often all that is known of Knox is his trumpet blast against female rulers it is interesting that both were particularly successful in winning over women supporters. Hans Zeiss, the Saxon Elector's official in Allstedt, reported that women and young girls armed themselves with pitchforks and the like, having been fired up by Müntzer's sermons to protect the Gospel: TMA, III: Quellen zu Thomas Müntzer, ed. Held, Wieland and Hoyer, Siegfried, Leipzig 2004, 148 Google Scholar, 154. A substantial proportion of Knox's ‘familiar epistles’ was addressed to his ‘sisters in Christ’: The works of John Knox, ed. Laing, David, Edinburgh 1846–64Google Scholar, i. 192; iv. 217–53.

5 Cf. Bräuer, Siegfried, ‘Thomas Müntzers Selbstverständnis als Schriftssteller’, in Hoyer, Siegfried (ed.), Reformation-Revolution, Leipzig 1980, 224–32Google Scholar. Both Müntzer and Knox frequently described themselves as ‘a servant of God’ and, like Jeremiah, as ‘One of Goddes prophets’: Works of Knox, iv. 472.

6 Works of Knox, i. 192. Knox admits (vi. 105) that ‘I am judged amongis ourselves too extream’: Dawson, Knox, 188.

7 Both drew on the tradition of regarding martyrdom as the seedbed of true Christianity.

8 ‘nicht anderst dann hencker und büttel seien’: MSB, 285.

9 Matheson, Peter, ‘Review essay: recent German research on Thomas Müntzer’, Mennonite Quarterly Review lxxxvi/1 (2012), 97–109 Google Scholar.

10 Dammaschke, Marion and Vogler, Günter (eds), Thomas Müntzer Bibliographie (1519–2012), Baden-Baden–Bouxwiller 2013 Google Scholar.

11 But cf. the scholarly publications of the Thomas Müntzer-Gesellschaft, i–xx, Mühlhausen 2000–. For ongoing political interest see Macht, Freiheit, Reformation: Thomas Müntzers Utopie vom Land der Freien und Gleichen (Conference of the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, Kornmarktkirche, Mühlhausen, 13 May 2012); there is an English website, www.andydrummond.net/muentzer.

12 See the concise bibliographical survey in Dawson, Knox, 349–55.

13 See, most recently, the reference to his ‘noisy off-stage zealotry’: Marshall, Peter, ‘Britain's Reformations’, in Marshall, Peter (ed.), The Oxford illustrated history of the Reformation, Oxford 2015, 211 Google Scholar.

14 John Knox's history, i. 117.

15 TMA iii. 148, 151, 153, 155, 157, 162–3.

16 2 Kings xxiii. 3; MSB, 258; TMA, II: Thomas Müntzer Briefwechsel, ed. Bräuer, Siegfried and Kobuch, Manfred, Leipzig 2010, 318 Google Scholar.

17 Bräuer, Siegfried, ‘Thomas Müntzer und der Allstedter Bund’, in Rott, Jean-Georges and Verheus, Simon L. (eds), Täufertum und radikale Reformation im 16. Jahrhundert, Baden-Baden–Bouxwiller 1987, 85–101 Google Scholar at p. 99.

18 ‘zu bitten vor mich mit gantzen hertzen … auf das die geheym göttliches bundes eröffnet werden’: MSB, 166; Scott, Tom, Thomas Müntzer, theology and revolution in the German Reformation, London 1989 Google Scholar, 85f. Jane Dawson suggests that Knox in 1556 ‘probably used the language of covenant and league as he presided at the Lord's Table’: Knox, 115. Knox certainly understood the Lord's Supper as the ‘declaration of our covenant, that be Chryst Jesus we be nurissit, mentenit, and continewit in league with God our Father’: Works of John Knox, iii. 125.

19 TMA iii. 216.

20 ‘Considering that Sainct Paule calleth the congregacion the bodie of Christ, whereof every one of us is a member, teaching us thereby that no member is of sufficiency to susteyne and feade its selfe without the helpe and support of another’: Works of John Knox, iv. 137–8.

21 CW, 102, 160.

22 For a detailed examination of the development of the covenant concept in Reformation Scotland see Dawson, Jane, ‘Bonding, religious allegiance and covenanting, 1557–1638’, in Goodare, J. and Boardman, S. (eds), Kings, lords and men in Scotland and Britain, 1300–1625: essays in honour of Jenny Wormald, Edinburgh 2014, 155–72Google Scholar.

23 Works of John Knox, iv. 138.

24 Ibid. iv. 527.

25 As Dawson notes, no hint of disapproval of the anarchic behaviour of 1559 is evident in the source material from that time: Knox, 180–1.

26 Idem, ‘Bonding’, 161–2.

27 See Wolgast, Eike, ‘Die Obrigkeits- und Widerstandslehre Thomas Müntzers’, in Bräuer, S. and Junghans, H. (eds), Der Theologe Thomas Müntzer, Berlin 1989, 195–213 Google Scholar.

28 TMA ii. 447.

29 Scott, Müntzer, 158. Caution is in place, as Scott has pointed out to me in personal communication, in assuming that Müntzer had difficulties in principle about accepting nobles into the covenant.

30 Cf. Todd, Margo, who offers an upbeat appraisal: The culture of Protestantism in early modern Scotland, New Haven 2002 Google Scholar.

31 Müntzer adds a crumbling fifth monarchy, a composite of evil clerics and tyrannous rulers: CW, 244–5. Not dissimilarly Knox saw the Roman Church as arising out of the ruins of the Roman Empire: John Knox's history, i. 84.

32 As late as 25 July 1524 Müntzer still hoped that the ‘pious officials’ would covenant together with the common folk: ‘eyn beschydner bund … in solcher gestalt, das sich der gemeine man mit frummen amptleuthen vorbinde’: TMA ii. 320.

33 MSB, 335.

34 Works of John Knox, iv. 442.

35 Ibid. iv. 534–5.

36 Goertz, Müntzer, 280, 284.

37 Gribben, Crawford, ‘John Knox, Reformation history and national self-fashioning’, Reformation and Renaissance Review viii (2006), 48–66 Google Scholar at p. 60.

38 CW, 314, 316.

39 CW, 316, 376; MSB, 256.

40 CW, 312.

41 CW, 137.

42 Works of John Knox, iv. 127.

43 Müntzer offers only sixty-four quotations from the historical books in his writings, hardly more than from the book of Proverbs; Knox's pages abound with them. Müntzer signed his letters not only as ‘servus Dei’, but as ‘nuntius Dei’, as a ‘son of shaking to the impious’, as a ‘disturber of the unbelievers’: CW, 51, 67.

44 Müntzer talked frequently about the need for transparency, for removing the deceitful cover, the hinterlistigen deckel; preaching should be straight and to the point, ‘unvorwickelt und unvorblümet’: MSB, 208, 212; cf. Matheson, Peter, ‘Thomas Müntzer: towards a populist rhetoric’, in Meyer, Holt and Uffelmann, Dirk (eds), Religion und Rhetorik, Stuttgart 2007, 272–85Google Scholar, and Farrow, Kenneth D., John Knox: Reformation rhetoric and the traditions of Scots prose, Oxford–Bern 2004 Google Scholar.

45 MSB, 278, 226.

46 Kenneth Farrow describes it as ‘the first truly great work of prose written by a Scot’: ‘The literary value of John Knox's Historie of the Reformation ’, Studies in Scottish Literature xxv (1991), 456–69Google Scholar at p. 456.

47 His Latin prose tends to be less self-indulgent than his sprawling German syntax.

48 TMA ii. 247.

49 As Dawson points out, his ‘merry quips’ about their finery soon collapsed into a reflection that Death would be unmoved by their beauty: Knox, 237; cf. John Knox's history, ii. 84.

50 Knox could retain the outward civilities, as in his letter to ‘the excellent Ladie Maire Dowagier, Regent of Scotland’, though the substance of the letter could hardly have been more confrontational. Having deplored the persecution of the evangelicals by the bishops, ‘those murtherers, proude pestilent prelates’, he warned her: ‘And herin oght you, Madam be circumspect and careful, if that ye have any hope of the life to come’: Works of Knox, iv. 431, 436–7.

51 The Vindication and refutation was dedicated ‘To his Eminence, the first-born prince and almighty lord, Jesus Christ, the kindly king of kings, the valiant leader of all believers, to my most gracious lord and true protector’: CW, 327. Müntzer did not always spurn courtly rhetoric; his letter of 4 October 1523 to the Elector of Saxony was addressed to ‘dem durchlauchtigisten hochgebornen fursten vnd herrn Frideriche’, but this flowery evocation of the most eminent, highborn prince is pared down in his letter of 3 August 1524 to his ‘honourable father and lord’: ‘Dem thetigen vater vnd herren Friderichen’. During the Peasants' War the counts of Mansfeld are addressed curtly as ‘brothers in need of conversion’ (‘Bruder… zu bekerung’): TMA ii. 199–201, 331, 464–8.

52 Gribben, ‘John Knox’, 62.

53 Luther's language, of course, could also be unbelievably crude: Matheson, Peter, The rhetoric of the reformation, Edinburgh 1998, 157–214 Google Scholar.

54 The theme of christliche Meisterschaft, the authentic exercise of spiritual and political authority, is a dominant theme of his Manifest exposé of false faith: CW, 260–323 at p. 262.

55 CW, 278.

56 Cf. his reflections on the temptations of Christ: Works of John Knox, iv. 95–114.

57 Dawson, Knox, 26–7.

58 Works of John Knox, iv. 397, 487, 493, 497.

59 Cf. Rowland, Christopher, ‘Thomas Müntzer (c. 1489–1525)’, Expository Times cxxvi/ix (2015), 417–24Google Scholar.

60 Acts xxi.18–33; John Knox's history, i. 120.

61 Works of John Knox, iv. 136.

62 ‘the harmony and weill-tuned song of the Holie Sprite speiking in oure fatheris frome the begynnyng’: ibid. iv. 138–9.

63 Ibid. iv. 238.