In the midst of the drunken revelry that were his marriage festivities, the already thoroughly intoxicated Reformator was taken aside by no one less than the world-renowned artist LUCAS CRANACH THE ELDER who was one of Luther`s closest counsellors. The well-connected artist/patrician had just arrived from the battlefield of Frankenhausen where a coalition army of German princes had dealt the revolting peasants a final fatal blow, and the spiritual leader of the revolt, Thomas Muentzer - Luther`s companion and fellow traveller of many years - had been taken prisoner by the victorious nobles, tortured and executed. Far from being content with having wreaked their vengeance on the radical theologian, the allied princes urged Luther`s protector, Prince-Elector John, Duke of Saxony, to turn over Luther and "his entire God-damned sect". While the Prince-Elector steadfastly declined to extradite the Reformator to what would have been the latter`s certain death, the dead Muentzer turned out to be no less of a problem to Luther than the living one had been. Unlike Luther, Thomas Muentzer had been a theologian of liberation, and his violent and untimely death made him, in the eyes of many, a hero and a martyr.