Death of Brother Henry

[GHansen]

Some of the earliest and most devoted followers of Luther outside of Germany were his fellow-Augustinians in the Netherlands. This country was at the time under the regency of Margaret of Savoy, an aunt of Emperor Charles V, who considered it her duty to suppress all tendencies toward the Reformation. The result was that the first martyrs of the Reformation came from the ranks of the Augustinians in the Netherlands. On July 1, 1523, Henry Vos and John van den Essohen were burned at the stake in Brussels. Others escaped a similar fate by recanting their evangelical views or by flight.

Henry of Zütphen, the central figure in this treatise, had been arrested in Antwerp in 1522. But he was almost immediately freed again by supporters of the Reformation, who hid him for a while and later helped him to escape from the Netherlands. It appears that Henry intended to go to Luther in Wittenberg, where he had earlier been a student. But while passing through Bremen he was persuaded to stay and to preach regularly at St. Ansgar’s chapel.

His fame as a preacher spread and in the fall of 1524 he was asked by Nicolas Boye, the pastor at Meldorf in Dithmarschen, to conduct a preaching mission in this section of western Holstein. Leaving Bremen, against the advice of his friends, he arrived safely in Meldorf and preached his first sermon on December 4, 1524. But as a result of a great deal of agitation by the prior of the local Dominicans, and with the cooperation of other church leaders and some of the civil authorities, certain peasants of the neighborhood were persuaded to kidnap Henry. After they had accomplished this they drank themselves into a frenzy and lynched him on December 10, 1524.

Luther, M. (1999). Luther’s works, vol. 32: Career of the Reformer II. (J. J. Pelikan, H. C. Oswald, & H. T. Lehmann, Eds.) (Vol. 32, p. 263). Philadelphia: Fortress Press.