We are not now dependent for our knowledge of the Anabaptist movement on the writings of embittered opponents, or upon such tainted sources as confessions of martyrs wrung from them under torture. The diligence of archæologists has exhumed a long list of writings of the leaders in the rising. They give us trustworthy accounts of the opinions and teachings of almost every sect classed under the common name. We know what they thought about all the more important matters which were in controversy during the sixteenth century—what they taught about Free Will, Original Sin, Justification, the Trinity, the Person of Christ, and so on. We have clear glimpses of the kind of lives they led—a genuinely pious, self-denying, Christian walk and conversation. Their teaching was often at variance with the Romanist and the Lutheran doctrinal confessions; but they never varied from the moral life which all Christians are called upon to live. Their writings seldom refer to marriage; but when they do it is always to bear witness to the universal and deeply rooted Christian sentiment that marriage is a sacred and unbreakable union of one man with one woman. Nay more, one document has descended to us which bears testimony to the teaching of the Anabaptists within the beleaguered city only a few weeks before the proclamation of polygamy. It is entitled Bekentones des globens und lebens der gemein Criste zu Monster,[630] and was meant to be an answer to calumnies circulated by their enemies. It contains a paragraph on Marriage which is a clear and distinct assertion that the only Christian marriage is the unbreakable union of one man with one woman.[631]
It is true that the Anabaptist thought of “separation,” when carried out in its most extreme way and to its utmost logical consequences, struck a blow at the sanctity of the marriage tie. All taught that the “believer,” i.e. he or she who had been rebaptized, ought to keep themselves separate from the “world,” i.e. those who had not submitted to rebaptism; and in the more extreme sects it was alleged that this meant that spouses ought not to cohabit with “unbelieving” partners. This was held and practised among the Melchiorites, and was stated in its extremest form in the Twenty-one Rules sent to Münster by Jan Matthys by the hand of Bockelson. They contained two prescriptions—one for the unmarried, which exhorted them only to marry in the Lord; another for the married, which implies that marriage contracted between husband and wife before rebaptism ought to be repeated. This meant that marriages contracted by persons yet “in the world” were not valid, and, of course, destroyed the sanctity of all marriages outside the circle of the brethren. But when a Melchiorite at Strassburg, Klaus Frey, whose wife was not an Anabaptist, carried out the principle to its logical consequences and married an Anabaptist woman, his “unbelieving” wife being alive, he was promptly excommunicated.
When the information to be gathered from the various sources is combined, what took place in Münster seems to have been as follows. Sometime in July (1534), John Bockelson summoned the preachers, Rothmann at their head, and the twelve elders to meet him in the Rathaus. There he propounded to them his proposal to inaugurate polygamy, and argued the matter with them for eight successive days. We are told that Rothmann and the preachers opposed the scheme in a determined manner. The arguments used by the prophet—arguments of the flimsiest nature—have also been recorded. He dwelt on the necessity of accepting certain biblical expressions in their most literal sense, and in giving them their widest application. He insisted especially on the command of God, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth; he brought forward the example of the patriarchs and other examples of polygamy from the Old Testament; he went the length of saying that when St. Paul insisted that bishops must be husbands of one wife, the phrase implied that all who were not bishops were free to take more than one; he dwelt on the special conditions existing among the population within the town,—the number of male refugees, either unmarried or who had left their wives behind them in the places from which they had fled; the disproportionate number of women (more than three women for every man),—and the difficulties thereby created to prevent them from obeying the command of God to be fruitful and increase; and he urged that in their present condition the command of God could only be obeyed by means of polygamy.
In the end he brought preachers and elders round to his opinion; and in spite of opportunities given them for revolt, they remained steadfast to it. They preached upon its advantages for three days to the people in the Cathedral square; and it was Rothmann who proclaimed the decree commanding polygamy to the people. How were the preachers persuaded to forego their opposition? What one of the threadbare arguments used by the prophet convinced them? Had he proclaimed polygamy as a divine command received by him as a prophet, we might imagine the preachers and people, such was the exalted state of their minds, receiving it with reverence; but the prophet did not announce that he had received any such message. He relied solely upon his arguments. They did not convince all the people. The proclamation of polygamy awoke violent protests upon the part of the native townsmen, who, headed by a “master-smith” named Möllenbecke, felt that they would rather hand over the city to the Bishop’s forces than live in a polygamist society, and the revolt was almost successful; but the preachers stood firm in their support of the prophet and of his polygamy; and it was the women who were mainly instrumental in causing the revolt to be a failure.
If we are to judge by the use made of it in Rothmann’s Restitution,[632] which defends the introduction of the new marriage laws, the preachers seem to have been most impressed by the argument which dwelt on the condition of the city—the large proportion of men whose wives were in the towns they had abandoned to take refuge in Münster, and the great multitude of women. It is just possible that it was this economic argument that affected both them and the prophet himself. This is the view taken by such writers as Kautsky, Belfort Bax, and Heath. The explanation is confirmed by the fact that the decree was more than a proclamation of polygamy. It provided that all marriageable men must take wives, and that all women must be under the care of a husband. The laws against sexual irregularity were as strong during the reign of polygamy as before its introduction. But there is this to be said against it, that the town of Münster, notwithstanding its abnormal conditions, was singularly pure in life, and that polygamy, so far from improving the moral condition, made it distinctly worse.
Detmer, whose opinions are always worthy of respect, believes than Jan of Leyden had fallen violently in love with the young, beautiful, and intellectual Divara, the widow of Jan Matthys, and that, as he could not marry her apart from polygamy, he persuaded his preachers and elders to consent to his proposals. His wonderful magnetic influence overbore their better judgment.
What is evident is that the decree of polygamy was suddenly conceived and forced upon the people. If Jan of Leyden[633] took no share in its proclamation, he set the people an example of obedience. He promptly married Divara as soon as it was lawful to do so. He used the ordinance to strengthen his position. His other wives—he had sixteen in all—were the daughters or near relations of the leaders in Münster. There is evidence to show that his own character deteriorated rapidly under the new conditions of life.
The siege of Münster went on during all these months. The Bishop’s soldiers attempted several assaults, and were always beaten back. They seem latterly to have relied on the power of hunger. The sufferings of the citizens during the later weeks were terrible. At length Heinrich Gresbeck, deserting to the besiegers’ camp, offered to betray the city to its enemies. He showed them, by plans and models in clay, how to get through the defences, and himself prepared the way for the Bishop’s soldiers to enter. The Anabaptists gathered for one last desperate defence in the market-place, under the leadership of Bernardin Knipperdolling and Bernard Krechting, with Rothmann by their side. When the band was reduced to three hundred men, they capitulated on promise of safe-conduct to leave the town. It is needless to say that the bargain was not kept. Rothmann was believed to have perished in the market-place. The city was given over to pillage, and the streets were soon strewn with dead bodies. Then a court was established to try the Anabaptist prisoners. The first woman to suffer was the fair young Divara. She steadfastly refused to abjure, and met her fate in her own queenly way. No man who had been in any way prominent during the siege was allowed to escape death. Jan Bockelson, Bernardin Knipperdolling, and Bernard Krechting were reserved to suffer the most terrible tortures that the diabolical ingenuity of mediæval executioners could devise. It was long believed that Rothmann had escaped, and that he had got away to Rostock or to Lübeck; more than one person was arrested on the suspicion of being the famous preacher of Münster—“a short, dark man, with straight brown hair,” was his description in the Lübeck handbills.
The horrible fate of Münster did not destroy the indomitable Anabaptists. Menno Simons (b. 1496 or 1505 at Witmarsum, a village near Franecker), “a man of integrity, mild, accommodating, patient of injuries, and so ardent in his piety as to exemplify in his own life the precepts he gave to others,” spent twenty-five laborious years in visiting the scattered Anabaptist communities and uniting them in a simple brotherly association. He purged their minds of the apocalyptic fancies taught by many of their later leaders under the influence of persecution, inculcated the old ideas of non-resistance, of the evils of State control over the Church, of the need of personal conversion, and of adult baptism as its sign and seal. From his labours have come all the modern Baptist Churches.