Thomas Muntzer

Thomas Muntzer was a German preacher and theologian of the early Reformation who lived from about 1489 to 1525, whose opposition to both Martin Luther and the Catholic Church led him into open defiance of late feudal authority in central Germany; he was foremost among the reformers who took issue with Luther's compromises with feudal authority. In 1514 he became a Catholic priest in Brunswick, where he began questioning the teachings and practices of the Catholic Church, and he then became a follower and acquaintance of Martin Luther, who recommended him for a post in Zwickau; his beliefs grew increasingly spiritual and apocalyptic, and by his arrival at Allstedt in 1523 he had completely broken with Luther. Amid the peasant uprisings of 1525 Muntzer organized an armed militia in Muhlhausen, was captured after the Battle of Frankenhausen, tortured and executed. He is now regarded as a significant personality of the early German Reformation and the history of European revolutionaries, and modern studies stress the need to understand his revolutionary actions as a consequence of his theology, since Muntzer believed the end of the world was imminent and that it was the task of true believers to aid God in ushering in a new era of history.