A noughtye and a false lyeng boke': William Barlow and the Lutheran Factions

When Thomas Stokesley, Bishop of London, ‘commaunded Barlowes dyaloges to be preached of the curates through out all hys dyocese,’ he was recommending one of the most interesting English accounts of the Reformation in Germany: William Barlow's A dyaloge descrybyng the orygynall ground of these Lutheran faccyons and many of theyr abusys (1531). The interlocutor William, recently returned from the Continent, names to his friend Nicholas the leading reformers he has met and outlines Luther's controversies with Henry VIII, Carlstadt, and Zwingli. He discusses the quarrel between the Lutheran and Zwinglian factions over the eucharist and their subsequent meeting at Marburg (1529). His account of the ‘third faccyon,’ the Anabaptists, constitutes an early source for England's knowledge of Anabaptist beliefs and many of their startling practices.