This is Communio Sanctorum, the history of the Christian Church, season two.

This episode is titled 500 Years Part 5. Can't we all just get along?

As we come to the 500-year anniversary of Reformation Day, when Martin Luther tacked his revolutionary list of exceptions to current church

practice and belief, to the council church door in the German town of Wittenberg, were faced

with the realization that the Reformation

embraced many more people than the popular telling of history enumerates, many more.

Who do we think of when we think of the Reformation?

Martin Luther and John Calvin are the first two that most would name.

Then with a bit more searching of the gray matter, maybe Philip Melanchthon and Ulrich Zwingli.

There are, of course, dozens more notables who played important roles in the drama that was the Reformation.

One of them is the focus of this episode, a man and name that ought to be as prominent in our knowledge of this period as Zwingli or Melanchthon.

His name is Martin Busser, the reformer of Strasbourg.

Before we get into his story, a little background on the situation in Germany is a good idea.

As moderns, we're used to thinking of

history in terms of nation states. Even as we think back to ancient times, we tend to cast the

dominant empires as just, well, very old versions of nation states. That, despite the fact that

the modern nation state of Western civilization

is a relatively recent invention. We need to exercise caution as we review the history of

Renaissance Europe and the period of the Reformation because it was this period of time that

helped set the political climate for the eventual emergence of the modern world

with its nearly ubiquitous carving up of the globe into nations with clearly defined borders.

Voltaire once said, quote,

...