German Culture Past and Present

by Ernest Belfort Bax

Meanwhile the new Anabaptism spread and fermented along the Rhine, and especially in Holland. In the latter country its chief exponent was a master baker at Harleem, by name Jan Matthys, who seems to have been a born leader of men. While preaching essentially the same doctrines as Hoffmann, with Matthys a Holy War, in a literal sense, was placed in the forefront of his teaching. With him there was to be no delay. It was the duty of all the Brethren to show their zeal by at once seizing the sword of sharpness and mowing down the godless therewith. In this sense Matthys completed the transformation begun by Hoffmann. Melchior had indeed rejected the non-resistance doctrine in its absolute form, but he does not appear in his teaching to have uniformly emphasized the point, and certainly did not urge the destruction of the godless as an immediate duty to be fulfilled without delay. With him was always the suggestion, expressed or implied, of waiting for the signal from heaven, the coming of the Lord, before proceeding to action. With Matthys there was no need for waiting, even for a day; the time was not merely at hand, it had already come. His influence among the Brethren was immense. If Melchior Hoffmann had been Elijah, Jan Matthys was Elisha, who should bring his work to a conclusion.

Among Matthys' most intimate followers was Jan Bockelson, from Leyden. Bockelson was a handsome and striking figure. He was the illegitimate son of one Bockel, a merchant and Bürgermeister of Saevenhagen, by a peasant woman from the neighbourhood of Münster, who was in his service. After Jan's birth Bockel married the woman and bought her her freedom from the villein status that was hers by heredity. Jan was taught the tailoring handicraft at Leyden, but seems to have received little schooling. His natural abilities, however, were considerable, and he eagerly devoured the religious and propagandist literature of the time. Amongst other writings the pamphlets of Thomas Münzer especially fascinated him. He travelled a good deal, visiting Mechlin and working at his trade for four years in London. Returning home, he threw himself into the Anabaptist agitation, and, scarcely twenty-five years old, he was won over to the doctrines of Jan Matthys. 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 Münster, 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 Münster, this important ecclesiastical principality was held "immediately of the empire." It had as its neighbours Ost-Friesland, Oldenburg, the bishopric of Osnabrück, 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. The bishop was a prince of the empire and one of the most important magnates of North-western Germany, but in ecclesiastical matters he was under the Archbishop of Köln. The diocese had been founded by Charles the Great.

Owing to a succession of events, beginning in 1529, which for those interested we may mention may be found discussed in full detail in The Rise and Fall of the Anabaptists (124-71), by the present writer, the extreme wing of the Reformation party had early gained the upper hand in the city, and subsequently became fused with the native Anabaptists, who were soon reinforced by their co-religionists from the country round, as well as from the not far distant Holland; for it should be said that the Dutch followers of Hoffmann and Matthys had been energetic in carrying their faith into the towns of Westphalia as elsewhere. Without entering in detail into the events leading up to it, it is sufficient for our purpose to state that by a perfectly lawful election, held on February 23, 1534, the Government of Münster was reconstituted and the Anabaptists obtained supreme political power. Hearing of the way things were going in Münster, Matthys and his followers had already taken up their abode in the city a little time before. The cathedral and other churches were stormed and sacked during the following days, while all official documents and charters dealing with the feudal relations of the town were given to the flames during the ensuing month. Both the moderate Protestant (Lutheran) and the Catholic burghers who had remained were indignant at the acts of destruction committed, and openly expressed their opposition. The result was their expulsion from the city; the condition of being allowed to remain became now the consent to rebaptism and the formal adoption of Anabaptist principles.

Münster now took the place Strassburg had previously held as the rallying point of the Anabaptist faithful, whence a crusade against the Powers of the world was to issue forth. The Government of Münster, though it officially consisted of the two Bürgermeisters and the new Council, to a man all zealous Anabaptists, left the real power and initiative in all measures in the hands of Jan Matthys and of his disciple, Jan Bockelson, of Leyden. The reign of the saints was now fairly begun. Various attempts at an organized communism were made, but these appear to have been only partially successful. One day Jan Matthys with twenty companions, in an access of fanatical devotion, made a sortie from the town towards the bishop's camp. Needless to say, the party were all killed. The great leader dead, Jan Bockelson became naturally the chief of the city and head of the movement.

Bockelson proved in every way a capable successor to Matthys. A new Constitution was now given by Bockelson and the Dutchmen, acting as his prophets and preachers. It was embodied in thirty-nine articles, and one of its chief features was the transference of power to twelve elders, the number being suggested by the twelve tribes of Israel. The idea of reliving the life of the "chosen people," as depicted in the Old Testament, showed itself in various ways, amongst others by the notorious edict establishing polygamy. This measure, however, as Karl Kautsky has shown, there is good reason for thinking was probably induced by the economic necessity of the time, and especially by the enormous excess of the female over the male population of the city. Otherwise the Münsterites, like the Anabaptists generally, gave evidence of favouring asceticism in sexual matters.

Considerations of space prevent us from going into further detail of the inner life of Münster under the Anabaptist regime during the siege at the hands of its overlord, the prince-bishop. This will be found given at length in the work already mentioned. As time went on famine began to attack the city.

It is sufficient for our purpose to state that on the night of June 24, 1535, the city was betrayed and that in a few hours the free-lances of the bishop were streaming in through all the gates. The street fighting was desperate; the Anabaptists showed a desperate courage, even women joining in the struggle, hurling missiles from the windows upon their foes beneath. By midday on the 25th the city of Münster, the New Zion, passed over once more into the power of its feudal lord, Franz von Waldeck, and the reign of the saints had come to an end. The vengeance of the conquerors was terrible; all alike, irrespective of age or sex, were involved in an indiscriminate butchery. The three leaders, Bockelson, Krechting, and Knipperdollinck, after being carried round captives as an exhibition through the surrounding country, were, some months afterwards, on January 22, 1536, executed, after being most horribly tortured. Their bodies were subsequently suspended in three cages from the top of the tower of the Lamberti church. The three cages were left undisturbed until a few years ago, when the old tower, having become structurally unsafe, was pulled down and replaced, with questionable taste, by an ordinary modern steeple, on which, however, the original cages may still be seen. A papal legate, sent on a mission to Münster shortly after the events in question, relates that as he and his retinue neared the latter town "more and more gibbets and wheels did we see on the highways and in the villages, where the false prophets and Anabaptists had suffered for their sins."

The Münster incident was the culmination of the Anabaptist movement. After the catastrophe the militant section rapidly declined. It did not die out, however, until towards the end of the century. The last we hear of it was in 1574, when a formidable insurrection took place again in Westphalia, under the leadership of one Wilhelmson, the son of one of the escaped Anabaptist preachers of Münster. The movement lasted for five years. It was finally suppressed and Wilhelmson burned alive at Cleves on March 5, 1580. Meanwhile, soon after the fall of Münster, the party split asunder, a moderate section forming, which shortly after came under the leadership of Menno Simon. This section, which soon became the majority of the party, under the name of Mennonites, settled down into a mere religious sect. In fact, towards the end of the sixteenth century the Anabaptist communities on the continent of Europe, from Moravia on the one hand to the extreme North-west of Germany on the other, showed a tendency to develop into law-abiding and prosperous religious organizations, in many cases being officially recognized by the authorities.

The Anabaptist revolt of the fourth decade of the sixteenth century, though it may be regarded partly as a continuation or recrudescence, showed some differences from the peasant revolt of some years previously. The peasant rebellion, which reached its zenith in 1525, was predominantly an agrarian movement, notwithstanding that it had had its echo among the poorer classes of the towns. The Anabaptist movement proper, which culminated in the Münster "reign of the saints" in 1534-5, was predominantly a townsman's movement, notwithstanding that it had a considerable support from among the peasantry. The Anabaptists' leaders were not, as in the case of the Peasants' War, in the main drawn from the class of the "man that wields the hoe" (to paraphrase the phraseology of the time); they were tailors, smiths, bakers, shoemakers, or carpenters. They belonged, in short, to the class of the organized handicraftsmen and journeymen who worked within city walls. A prominent figure in both movements was, however, the ex-priest or teacher. The ideal, or, if you will, the Utopian, element in the movement of Melchior Hoffmann, Jan Matthys, and Jan Bockelson—the element which expressed the social discontent of the time in the guise of its prevalent theological conceptions—now occupied the first place, while in the earlier movement it was merely sporadic.