Of course, this sort of affliction (in a mild degree) is always with us. Read the daily papers and you will see how in some remote hamlet of Ohio or Iowa or Florida a woman has butchered her husband with a meat cleaver because “she was told to do so” by the voice of an angel; or how an otherwise reasonable father has just killed his wife and eight children in anticipation of the sounding of the Seven Trumpets. Such cases, however, are rare exceptions. They can be easily handled by the local police and they really do not have great influence upon the life or the safety of the Republic.
But what had happened in the year 1534 in the good town of Münster was something very different. There the New Zion, upon strictly Anabaptist principles, had actually been proclaimed.
And people all over northern Europe shuddered when they thought of that terrible winter and spring.
The villain in the case was a good-looking young tailor by the name of Jan Beukelszoon. History knows him as John of Leiden, for Jan was a native of that industrious little city and had spent his childhood along the banks of the sluggish old Rhine. Like all other apprentices of that day, he had traveled extensively and had wandered far and wide to learn the secrets of his trade.
He could read and write just enough to produce an occasional play, but he had no real education. Neither was he possessed of that humility of spirit which we so often find in people who are conscious of their social disadvantages and their lack of knowledge. But he was a very good-looking young man, endowed with unlimited cheek and as vain as a peacock.
After a long absence in England and Germany, he went back to his native land and set up in the cloak and suit business. At the same time he went in for religion and that was the beginning of his extraordinary career. For he became a disciple of Thomas Münzer.
This man Münzer, a baker by profession, was a famous character. He was one of the three Anabaptist prophets who, in the year 1521, had suddenly made their appearance in Wittenberg that they might show Luther how to find the true road to salvation. Although they had acted with the best of intentions, their efforts had not been appreciated and they had been chased out of the Protestant stronghold with the request that never again they show their unwelcome selves within the jurisdiction of the Dukes of Saxony.
Came the year 1534 and the Anabaptists had suffered so many defeats that they decided to risk everything on one big, bold stroke.
That they selected the town of Münster in Westphalia as the spot for their final experiment surprised no one. Franz von Waldeck, the prince-bishop of that city, was a drunken bounder who for years had lived openly with a score of women and who ever since his sixteenth year had offended all decent people by the outrageous bad taste of his private conduct. When the town went Protestant, he compromised. But being known far and wide for a liar and a cheat, his treaty of peace did not give his Protestant subjects that feeling of personal security without which life is indeed a very uncomfortable experience. In consequence whereof the inhabitants of Münster remained in a state of high agitation until the next elections. These brought a surprise. The city government fell into the hands of the Anabaptists. The chairman became one Bernard Knipperdollinck, a cloth merchant by day and a prophet after dark.