ABSTRACT
The Reformation's first martyrs burned in Ant-werp in July 1523, and the following year Martin Luther wrote a ballad hailing them as martyrs and narrating their sufferings. Protestant martyrologists were of course heirs both to the martyrology of the primitive church and to the medieval hagiographic tradition. In his 1533 commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, William Tyndale avoids the numerous opportunities which his text offers him to make martyrological points - with one revealing exception. While Thomas Cromwell died more for his politics than his faith, the execution of Robert Barnes was an extremely high-profile religious martyrdom. Luther himself wrote in commemoration of Barnes, calling him a holy martyr and naming him St Robert. The combination of the silencing of the moderate evangelical press, and the undermining of the middle ground which the moderates had been trying to claim, cleared the way for a much more familiar style of reformist propaganda.
