Patterns of Reformation

Patterns of Reformation describes Oecolampadius' drastic scholarship and teaching about the Eucharist, particularly his support of Zwingli against Luther. Karlstadt was a pioneer of a later Puritanism who was to some extent a precursor of seventeenth-century English Puritan piety. He prefigured not only the radical Reformers but in a considerable degree the Reformed as distinct from the Lutheran tradition. His eucharistic teaching was radical in the extreme. Thomas Muntzer was a rebel who grows in historical stature. "Spiritualist" as he was, he was devoted to the Scriptures and a liturgiologist worthy of comparison with Cranmer between whose principles and his own there is a large measure of agreement. Dr. Rupp called him "one of the most fascinating and tragic of God's delinquent children." Vadianus lived in St. Gall and as Burgomaster guided the Reforming movement into peaceful ways. He was a born student and historian, whose life has been preserved by the thumbnail sketches of the inspired gossip and friend, Kessler.