Karlstadt was much more radical than Luther, and his reforms began to attract many more radicals to Wittenburg, including the Zwickau Prophets.
The arrived in Wittenburg in December 1521 and were led by Nicholas Storch. They had been originated in Zwickau by the radical and revolutionary Thomas Muntzer, who demanded a replacement of all the authorities.
Luther and Mutzer were very much at odds, and would become even more so during the Peasant's war. But in 1521-2, the Zwickau Prophets, Karlstadt and Zwilling began to incite the people to bouts of iconoclasm (smashing and destroying pictures, images and icons in churches).
Luther, though he was against the veneration of images, was a pacifist, and it was this that eventually encouraged him to leave his self-induced exile and returned to Wittenburg in March 1522.
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