The Antwerp Martyrs and Luther’s First Song

Abstract

On July 1, 1523, Hendrik Vos and Johann van den Esschen, two friars from nearby Antwerp, were burned at the stake on the Grand Plaza in Brussels for holding “heretical Lutheran” beliefs. Their deaths were the first executions of the Reformation. Like Martin Luther, the men were members of the Congregation of German Reformed Augustinians, a small reform group within the broader Augustinian Order. The deaths moved Luther to compose his first song, a ballad entitled A New Song Here Shall Be Begun. This article explores the Congregation’s history in the Low Countries, the background to the executions, and Luther’s connections to this episode. It argues that when understood in this broader context, Luther did not see these deaths as merely the predictable outcome of the Reformation clash of ideas, or simply as an opportunity for anti-Church propaganda (as some have argued), but as confirmation that God Himself was at work in the early Reformation.