Wednesday, December 10, 2025

It is the 10th of December 2025. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

Christian’s tell the same kinds of stories that all people tell- stories of great men and women and stories of underdogs. From the humorous to the macabre, stories about amazing feats and last-minute heroics… ok, but there is a genre which seems to have an outsized influence on Christian writing… and this will be no surprise to listeners of this show: stories of martyrs. Martyrs are specifically any “witnesses” to the faith, but these witnesses give their lives, often in spectacular (or spectacularly macabre) ways, to the cause.

And today we remember the Dutch Augustinian whose own life and death deserve a note, and how his life and death would become immortalized with a famous response.

The man was called Hendrik, or Henry van Zutphen- the “van” gives you a clue that he was a dutchman- from Zutphen in the Netherlands- in the Eastern portion of the modern country- he was born around 1488 and was destined for church work, it seems- as he was off to an Augustinian monastery in the Netherlands by the early 1500s before being sent to another Augustinian monastery in 1508- the Augustinian monastery in Wittenberg- where a young Augustinian monk, Martin Luther, had just started teaching.

Hendrik received his BA and Master's at Wittenberg in 1511, years before the Thesis affair, and served in Cologne and Düsseldorf as a priest before returning, in 1520, to Wittenberg- obviously not put off, but attracted to the Reformation teachings. In 1522, he was sent to Antwerp, where he would continue to teach the Reformation doctrines until his arrest later in that year.

The story of his escape is somewhat legendary- the prison, according to some reports, saw hundreds of people, many women, many with swords (according to a report), broke the young Reforming monk out, and he fled back to Wittenberg, except that he stopped on the way in Bremen, where he was invited to preach and found an audience. From Bremen, he took a call to Meldorf (these are both places in modern Northern Germany between the Netherlands and Saxony). There, he found some who wanted to hear Reformation doctrines, but others who were not so keen. He preached his first sermon on December 4th, 1524- the second Sunday of Advent. Whatever he preached so upset the local authorities that, according to one source (and we’re getting close to hagiography… so we hold some of it lightly) the local authorities egged on a crowd on the following Saturday, today, the 10th of December in 1524- a very inebriated crowd reportedly stormed Hendrik’s house, dragged him out of bed, tied him to a horse and tortured him up until they burned his body (whether he was dead or not by then is an open question).

This so upset one Dutchman- a reformer called Jacob Prost- that he wrote to Luther- a fellow one-time Augustinian- to give him the story and news. Prost would write that Hendrik “perished in a manner suggesting that he was not beloved by God”. This was the Medieval mindset- the way in which you died gave a clue to the living as to where you ended up. A bad death could signal damnation- and if he was preaching Evangelical doctrines….?

Luther would respond to this news with one of his most underrated writings- a pastoral response to the death of a fellow preacher that has come to us as “the Burning of Brother Henry”. This text comes to us in three parts: a letter of consolation, an exposition of Psalm 9, and a story of Hendrik’s death. Luther points out that his death was not a sign of his damnation, but rather that faithful preaching will bring about conflict. And rather than looking to church authorities or other supernatural signs of divine favor or otherwise, we are to examine the doctrine of preachers- do they preach Christ alone? Luther certainly tells the gory details in his account, but the key is to test the doctrine above all else.

Hendrik would be one of the earliest martyrs- along with two other Dutchmen- Jan van Essen and Hendrik Voss- whose stories became foundational for the Reformation and its eventual collection of Martyrs (seen most famously in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs).

Today we remember “Brother Henry” Hendrik van Zutphen, born in 1488, who met his demise on account of his evangelical preaching on this day in 1524.

The Last word for today comes from the daily lectionary and from Jesus’ preaching against the Pharisees in Matthew 12:

33 “Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit. 34 You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of. 35 A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him. 36 But I tell you that everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken. 37 For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.”

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 10th of December 2025, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who knows that a group of Vipers is also called a “nest" or a “generation”- he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who digs a conspiracy of lemurs, a troubling of goldfish, and a bloat of hippopotami- I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.