The latter with his younger colleague welded the Anabaptist communities in Holland and the adjacent German territories into a well-organized federation.

They were more homogeneous in theory than those of Southern and Eastern Germany, being practically all united on the basis of the Hoffmann-Matthys propaganda.
The episcopal town of Muenster, in Westphalia, like other places in the third decade of the sixteenth century, became strongly affected by the Reformation.

But that the ferment of the time was by no means wholly the outcome of religious zeal, as subsequent historians have persisted in representing it, was recognized by the contemporary heads of the official Reformation.

Thus, writing to Luther under date August 29, 1530, his satellite, Melanchthon, has the candour to admit that the Imperial cities "care not for religion, for their endeavour is only toward domination and freedom." As the principal town of Westphalia at this time may be reckoned the chief city of the bishopric of Muenster, this important ecclesiastical principality was held "immediately of the empire." It had as its neighbours Ost-Friesland, Oldenburg, the bishopric of Osnabrueck, the county of Marck, and the duchies of Berg and Cleves.

Its territory was half the size of the present province of Westphalia, and was divided into the upper and lower diocese, which were separated by the territory of Fecklenburg.