Brad S. Gregory - Augustana College

English monasteries and friaries, Henry VIII would demonstrate how thoroughly a ruler
could learn this lesson without even having to accept Lutheran or Reformed Protestant
doctrines about grace, faith, salvation, or worship. 48 Assertions of royal authority over
the church were enough, provided they were backed by enough force. By the time Henry
was demonstrating that his will was up to the task, a frightening, polygamist and
communitarian “New Jerusalem” in Münster led by the prophet-king Jan van Leiden had
removed any lingering doubts among secular authorities in Europe about the dangers of
religious radicalism and dissent. 49 Lest rulers‟ negligence permit another Peasants‟ War
or Kingdom of Münster, rebellion inspired by religion had to be suppressed in accord
with the divinely given duty, as Paul put it, to “execute wrath on the wrongdoer” (Rom
13:5). Thus was forged the confessionalizing alliance between those Protestants who
supported and worked with secular political authorities, and those who did not—in short,
the difference between magisterial and radical Protestants. Throughout the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, only a carefully controlled and domesticated Reformation would
be permitted to exert a widespread influence.
As a result, Lutheranism and Reformed Protestantism became the great
exceptions of the Reformation—precisely the opposite of how they usually have been and
fifth Birthday, ed. E. I. Kouri and Tom Scott (London: Macmillan, 1987), pp. 158-187; and Walter Ziegler,
“Reformation und Klosterauflösung,” in Reformbemühungen, ed. Elm, pp. 585-614; on Strasbourg in
particular, see Thomas A. Brady, Jr., Protestant Politics: Jacob Sturm (1489-1553) and the German
Reformation (Atlantic Highlands, N. J.: Humanities Press, 1995), pp. 170-174.
48 The classic study of the Henrician suppression of the monasteries is David Knowles, The Religious
Orders in England, vol. 3, The Tudor Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959), pp. 268-417;
see also Joyce Youings, The Dissolution of the Monasteries (London: Allen and Unwin, 1971); Ethan H.
Shagan, Popular Politics and the English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003),
pp. 162-196; Richard Rex, Henry VIII and the English Reformation, 2nd ed. (Houndmills, U. K.: Palgrave,
2006), pp. 45-55; and most recently, Geoffrey Moorhouse, The Last Divine Office: Henry VIII and the
Dissolution of the Monasteries (New York: BlueBridge, 2009).
49 For a recent overview, see Ralf Klötzer, “The Melchiorites and Münster,” in Companion to Anabaptism
and Spiritualism, ed. Roth and Stayer, pp. 217-256; on the immediate reactions to Münster by both
Catholics and magisterial Protestants, see Sigrun Haude, In the Shadow of “Savage Wolves”: Anabaptist
Münster and the German Reformation during the 1530s (Boston, Mass.: Humanities Press, 2000).
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