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The relationship between the magisterial reformation of the Lutherans, the Calvinists and the Anglicans, on the one hand, and that of the radicals, on the other, has come under review of late. H.-J. Goertz, a leading authority on Müntzer, has pointed to the radicality of the Reformation as a whole, and questioned the traditional distinction between its centre and its periphery. Brad Gregory, from a Catholic perspective, has also suggested that our understanding of the relationship needs revision; the radicals, he suggests, were central and the magisterial reformation, having cemented its relationship to the political authorities, was the 'outlier'.1
Luther and Thomas Müntzer have often been seen as the classical representatives of the chasm between the magisterial reformers and the radicals. It may be illuminating, then, to compare Thomas Müntzer, who has both benefited and suffered from his propinquity to Luther, with a very different magisterial reformer, the abrasive and angular figure of John Knox, who manifests many of the features that we tend to regard as 'radical'. New biographies of both reformers have just appeared, so the time for a comparison may be propitious.2Both men figured as cult figures in the past, and both tend to be viewed by most contemporary historians with a mixture of distaste and post-modern condescension.
The differences between them are, at first blush, clamant. Knox died in bed, Müntzer on the executioner's block. Knox was co-architect of a reformed Scottish Church, Müntzer a 'reformer without a Church'. Due to his relative longevity Knox had ample time and space to enshrine his views in writing, unlike the Thuringian reformer, who never stayed more than eighteen months in one place, flitting in his short career between some fifty different towns.
Yet both saw themselves as 'watchmen to the House of Israel' (Ezekiel xxxiii), both sounded mighty blasts on the apocalyptic trumpet, wrestled with the themes of poverty and privilege, and sought to shepherd the elect into new covenantal structures. Both regarded preaching, printing and liturgical innovation as the way to 'erect the face of a public church reformed'. Dawson notes how Knox, with others, fashioned a 'family of texts' in Geneva for this purpose. Müntzer's liturgies, writings and hymns can be seen in a similar light.3Both...