The Great Cloud of Witnesses · Gallery
The Reformers
The men who put the Bible back into the people's hands and the church back under it. 16 witnesses hang on this wall, era by era down the line.
What Was Happening
The morning stars of the 1300s, John Wycliffe born around 1330 and Jan Hus burned in 1415, through the close of the Reformation century, about 1600.
By 1500, the Bible in most of Europe was chained to a lectern in Latin, a language almost no layperson could read. The indulgence trade, originally tied to penance, had drifted into something close to a sale of forgiveness. On October 31, 1517, an Augustinian monk named Martin Luther posted ninety-five arguments against that trade at Wittenberg, and the debate he expected among scholars became, once the printing press carried it, a movement he could not control.
The word reformer describes exactly what these men said they were doing. They did not claim to found a new church. They said they were reforming: putting the existing church back under the authority of Scripture and the practice of its earliest centuries. The movement split into several streams almost immediately, Lutheran, Reformed, Anabaptist, and Anglican, each reading that same instruction differently.
The cost
William Tyndale was strangled and burned near Brussels in 1536 for translating the Bible into English without the church's permission. Jan Hus was burned at Constance in 1415 despite a promise of safe conduct to attend the council that tried him.
Thomas Cranmer was burned in 1556 and, at the stake, thrust into the flames first the hand that had signed his own recantation. Anabaptists were drowned and burned by Catholics and Protestants alike for insisting that baptism follow a believer's own choice rather than come at infancy.
16 witnesses on this wall
The Reformation1500–160016 on this stretch
Argued that Scripture belonged to the people in their own tongue, and set in motion the English Bible that carries his name, made by his Oxford circle a century and a half before Tyndale. They burned his bones, and the river carried the ashes to the sea.
Preached Christ as head of the church in Prague's own language, and sang at the stake in 1415.
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Sent ninety-five theses against indulgences to his archbishop, and later, before the emperor, would not take back a word of what he had written.
Finished what Tyndale could not and printed the first complete English Bible from a press, and four years later put the Great Bible in every parish church.
Put the church's prayers into plain English, then took back his own recantation and burned for it.
Translated the New Testament from the Greek so a plough-boy could read it, and paid for it at a stake in 1536.
Left a safe parish to shepherd hunted believers, and taught them to follow Christ without ever picking up a sword.
Wrote down what the Reformation believed, in order, so an ordinary pastor could find it and preach it.
Wrote the Institutes at twenty-six and spent the rest of his life teaching one city the whole counsel of God.
Came off a French galley ship and preached until Scotland had a reformed church and a school in every parish.
Collected the last words of England's burned believers so that nobody would be allowed to forget them.
Threw out the reading schedule and preached straight through Matthew, verse by verse, until Zurich changed.
Preached to kings about greedy landlords in words a farmer could follow, and went to the fire cheering the man beside him.
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Walked out of a convent, married Luther, and built the household that every Protestant parsonage after her copied.
Studied his way to a new understanding of the Lord's Supper, convinced the archbishop, and paid for it at the stake.
Printed the Greek New Testament that Luther and Tyndale both translated from.
Portraits: Wikimedia Commons and resident public-domain plates: full attribution and license on every witness page.