Freaks of Fanaticism, and Other Strange Events

by S. Baring-Gould

The town council now sent deputies to the Protestant princes, Dukes Ernest and Francis of Lüneburg, the Landgrave Philip of Hesse, and Count Philip of Waldeck, brother of the prince-bishop, to promise the adhesion of the city to the Smalkald union, and to request their assistance against their bishop. The situation was singular. The city sought assistance of the Protestant union against their prince, desiring to overthrow his power, under the plea that he was a Catholic bishop. And the bishop, at heart a Lutheran, and utterly indifferent to his religious position and responsibilities, was determined to coerce his subjects into obedience, that he might retain his rank and revenue as prince, intending, when the city returned to its obedience, to shake off his episcopal office, to Lutheranize his subjects, and remain their sovereign prince, and possibly transform the ecclesiastical into a hereditary principality, the appanage of a family of which he would be the founder. He had already provided himself with a concubine, Anna Pölmann, by whom he had children.

Whilst the senate was engaged in treating with the Protestant princes, negotiations continued with the bishop, at the diets convoked successively at Dulmen and Wollbeck, but they were as fruitless as before. The deputies separated on the 9th December, agreeing to meet again on the 21st of the same month.

At this time there arrived in Münster a formal refutation of the theses of Rottmann, by John of Deventer, provincial of the Franciscans at Cologne.[81] The magistrates had repeatedly complained that "the refusal of the Catholics to reply to Bernard Rottmann was the sole cause of all the evil." At the same time they had forbidden the Catholic clergy to preach or to make use of the press in Münster. This answer came like a surprise upon them. It was carried by the foes of the clergy to the magistrates. The news of the appearance of this counterblast created the wildest excitement. "The citizens, assembled in great crowds, ran about the streets to hear what was being said. Some announced that the victory would remain with Rottmann, others declared that he would never recover the blow."

The provosts of the guilds hastily drew up a petition to the senate to expel the clergy from the town, and to confiscate their goods; but the magistrates refused to comply with this requisition, which would have at once stirred up civil war.[82]

Rottmann mounted the pulpit on St. Andrew's day, and declared that on the following Sunday he would refute the arguments of John of Deventer. Accordingly, on the day appointed, he preached to an immense crowd, taking for his text the words of St. Paul (Rom. xiii. 12), "The night is far spent, the day is at hand." The sermon was not an answer to the arguments of John of Deventer, but a furious attack upon the Pope and Catholicism. Knipperdolling also informed the people that he would rather have his children killed and cooked and served up for dinner than surrender his evangelical principles and return to the errors of the past.[83]

On the 21st December, 1532, Francis of Waldeck assembled the diet of the principality, and asked its advice as to the advisability of proclaiming war against Münster, should the city persist in its obstinacy.[84] The clergy and nobles replied that, according to immemorial custom, the prince must engage in war at his own cost, and that they were too heavily burdened with taxes for the Turkish war to enable them to undertake fresh charges. Francis of Waldeck reminded them that he was obliged to pay a pension of 2000 florins to his predecessor, Frederick von Wied, and he affirmed that he also was not in a condition to have recourse to arms.

Whilst the prince, his barons and canons were deliberating, Rottmann had assumed the ecclesiastical dictatorship in the cathedral city, and had ordered, on his sole authority, the suppression of the observance of fast-days.

The spirit of opposition and protestation that had been evoked already manifested itself in strange excesses. "Some of the Evangelicals refused to have the bread put into their mouths at Communion," says Kerssenbroeck, "but insisted on helping themselves from the table, or they stained themselves in taking long draughts at the large chalices. It is even said that some placed the bread in large soup tureens, and poured the wine upon it, and took it out with spoons and forks, so that they might communicate in both kinds at one and the same moment."[85]