The Perils Of Persecution

The Perils Of Persecution

Can persecution succeed?

BY THE 1530s Antwerp was on its way to becoming the richest and busiest city in Europe. Because of its port on the Scheldt River, Antwerp was Europe’s center for international trade and finance. The whole region, known as Flanders, was under Spanish control. It became so prosperous that Charles V, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, received half of all his tax revenue from there. Charles V, himself a native of Flanders, reciprocated by giving his native land many benefits—except for religious freedom. To Charles, national strength required religious unity.

When the Reformation began in 1517, it soon reached Antwerp, Europe’s most cosmopolitan city. From Germany came Lutherans and Anabaptists, the forerunners of the Mennonites. From Switzerland and France came followers of Calvin and Zwingli. William Tyndale fled England and came to Antwerp to translate the Bible into English.

Many Augustinian monks began preaching the principles of their fellow Augustinian Martin Luther. One of them, James Porbst, a friend of Luther from Wittenberg, became prior of the convent in Antwerp and was an outspoken preacher of justification by faith. Fellow Augustinians in Dordrecht, the Hague, Utrecht, and Ghent all became vocal supporters of the Reformation. As early as 1520 some of Luther’s books were being translated into Dutch.

Immediately the emperor and the Church mounted a vigorous counteroffensive. One Dominican friar said that he would like to fasten his teeth around Luther’s throat and that he would proudly go to the Lord’s Supper with Luther’s blood dripping from his lips. A representative of the pope arrived in 1520 and with the emperor’s blessing began burning books and preaching against heresy. Erasmus, the great intellectual living in Antwerp at the time, observed that the burning of books removed them only from the bookstores, not from people’s hearts.

In 1521 Charles V, at the pope’s request, specifically forbade the publishing or reading of the writings of Luther. He also ordered the secular courts to enforce that year’s edict of the Diet of Worms of that year, which condemned Luther and his followers. Arrests began in 1522, and the first persons to be arrested were James Probst, the prior, and two close friends of Erasmus. Probst recanted but then after escaping from prison recanted his recantation.

The following year two Augustinian friars, Henry Voes and Johann Eck, were burned at the stake in Brussels—the first Protestant martyrs of Flanders. Erasmus observed that the martyrs made many Lutherans by their deaths.

In spite of the opposition and the mounting number of martyrs, interest in the gospel swelled in Antwerp. Every allusion to church corruption in speeches or plays was wildly cheered. A visitor from Italy to Antwerp was told by a leading citizen that if the revolt of the Anabaptists in Germany spread to Antwerp, twenty thousand men would rise up to join them. In 1527 the English ambassador reported that two-thirds of Antwerp’s population “kept Luther’s opinions.”

Alarmed by this spread of heresy in Antwerp, the government issued an edict on October 14, 1529, that began a reign of terror. Death was decreed not only for all heretics but also for anyone who was not a theologian who discussed any article of faith or who failed to denounce the heretics he or she knew. The Spanish Inquisition had arrived in Flanders, and the persecution continued for many years. During the sixteenth century in present-day Belgium, six hundred Protestant churches were destroyed and untold thousands were martyred.

This holocaust of Protestants was successful. Today less than one-third of a percent of Belgians are evangelical Christians.

Reflection

Christians of every age have been persecuted and martyred. Although by its very definition persecution is not pleasant, we should not be surprised when it happens to us. Our sufferings are nothing in comparison to the One who suffered for us.

Dear friends, don’t be surprised at the fiery trials you are going through, as if something strange were happening to you. Instead, be very glad—because these trials will make you partners with Christ in his suffering, and afterward you will have the wonderful joy of sharing his glory when it is displayed to all the world.

1 Peter 4:12-13