Friars rapidly became the Western Church’s specialists in preaching, so they needed to be intellectually alert and well informed. Soon they established friaries in university towns to get the best intellectual training they could, and Martin Luther the Austin Friar was only the latest among their academic stars. As a result, many of them followed Luther into that great rebellion of the intellect, the Reformation. Far more friars than monks turned into campaigning Protestant leaders: one might consider the Reformation as a revolution of friars faced with a pastoral crisis.
