by Colin Wilson
A Bohemian preacher called John Huss was less lucky. In 1415, the Church lured him to a “debate” with a promise of safe conduct, then seized him and burned him alive. It was a piece of treachery that would cost the Church very dear indeed. For now nothing could stop the spread of rebellion. And when a young German monk named Martin Luther went to Rome in 1510 and was disgusted by the commercialism of the Church, the days of the Pope’s absolute authority were numbered.
Luther burning the Papal Bull, 1520
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New York’s “Son of Sam” serial killer David Berkowitz claimed at his trial to have been driven to kill by “demon voices” in his head. After he was found guilty and sentenced, he held a press conference to say that his claims of demonic possession were untrue, being calculated to produce a lenient punishment. Yet evidence that Berkowitz was part of a Satanic cult that ordered him to kill, and indeed may have committed some of the killings attributed to him, came to light after he was caught.
In one of his anonymous letters to NYPD Berkowitz had mentioned: “John ‘Wheaties’ rapist and suffocator of young girls”. An investigative journalist named Maury Terry found out that “Wheaties” had been the nickname of one of Berkowitz’s associates, John Carr. After much work Terry traced Carr. He was dead, shot in the mouth with a shotgun. The police reached the conclusion that it was suicide despite the letters S.S.N.Y.C. being written in blood on the wall next to the body. Terry discovered that Berkowitz and Carr had both gone to Satanic meetings in Yonkers, New York, an area where eighty-five skinned dogs had been found over the year before the killings started. Berkowitz also showed knowledge of ritualistic killings that had received very little news coverage. He wrote in a letter to a preacher in California: “. . .I was a member of an occult group. Being sworn to secrecy or face death, I cannot reveal the name of this group . . . It was (and still is) blood oriented. These people will stop at nothing, including murder.”
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The Great Protest
On 31 October 1517 – All Saints Day – Martin Luther nailed a placard to the door of the Castle church in Wittenberg, criticizing the Roman Catholic Church in ninety-five paragraphs. He objected that Rome had become rich, self-indulgent and corrupt. When Pope Leo the Tenth heard about it, he remarked: “Luther is just a drunken German – he will feel different when he is sober.”
His casual dismissal proved to be a mistake. Within three years, Luther was the most famous man in Germany, and the revolution against the Church had started. If he had been an Italian or a Frenchman he would have been seized and burned. But the German princes resented collecting money for the Pope, and were glad of an excuse to stop doing it. Monks and nuns left their monasteries and married. Priests began to recite the mass in German. Reformers began smashing sacred statues in churches. And the poor and oppressed peasants began to revolt on a massive scale – the greatest scale so far in history. But at the height of his notoriety, Luther had to spend six months in hiding in the Wartburg castle – otherwise, he would certainly have gone to the stake like so many other reformers.
Muntzer the Messiah
In 1520, the year the Pope excommunicated Luther, one of Luther’s most ardent young followers was already preparing to go further than the master. His name was Thomas Muntzer, and he had spent years studying the Fathers of the Church and reading their works in Greek and Hebrew. Now, in the town of Zwickau, he came under the influence of a strange messiah named Niklas Storch. Storch was a self-taught weaver who was convinced that the end of the world was at hand. First the Turks would conquer the world, then the Antichrist would rule over it; then God’s Elect would rise up and defeat the wicked in battle. When that happened, the Last Judgement would begin.
When he met Storch, Thomas Muntzer was already growing dissatisfied with the teachings of Luther. Luther taught that man does not need the Church to forgive his sins; he only needs faith in God. Muntzer went a step further. Man can actually communicate with God and hear his voice. Once this happens, a man becomes the vessel of the holy spirit, and he actually becomes God.
Muntzer, who had been a bookish young man, now suddenly abandoned reading, and went preaching among the poor, particularly the silver miners and the weavers of Zwickau. He said such unpleasant things about the Catholics in the area, and even about Luther, that the Town Council dismissed him. His friend Storch led an uprising, which had to be suppressed by force. Many weavers were arrested. Muntzer went off to Prague – which, a century later, was still seething with anger about the execution of John Huss – and told his audiences that he was founding a new Church which would consist solely of the Elect. The Town Council lost no time in expelling him.
He became a wandering preacher for the next two years, suffering great hardship – which only deepened his sense of mission. In 1523 he was invited to become curate in the small Thuringian town of Allstedt, where he performed the Latin service in German, and became a celebrated preacher. Peasants came from miles around to hear him. But so did Duke John of Saxony, who was worried about what he heard of this revolutionary firebrand. At his request, Muntzer preached a sermon stating his belief that the Millennium was at hand, and would be preceded by great battles and appalling suffering. Duke John went away looking deeply thoughtful, and Muntzer congratulated himself on impressing him.
Perhaps he did. But when some of his followers came to Allstedt, telling him that they had been evicted from their homes by their landlords, he began to change his opinion of Duke John, and preached a sermon declaring that tyrants were about to be overthrown and the Millennium about to begin. Martin Luther heard about Muntzer’s messianic ideas, and wrote an open letter to the Princes of Saxony warning them about Muntzer. Muntzer replied with a pamphlet accusing Luther of being (with some confusion of the sexes) the Whore of Babylon, and a corrupt slave of the ruling classes.
This was hardly fair to Duke John and his elder brother Frederick the Wise, who were amongst the most tolerant princes of the time. Luther had raised tremendous political storms, most of which centred in their territories, and they were doing their best to remain open-minded. So they sent for Muntzer and asked him what the devil he thought he was up to. The hearing at which he was asked to defend himself lasted several days. In all probability, he would have been sent back to Allstedt with a warning to behave himself. But Muntzer decided not to wait for the result. He climbed over the Weimar city wall one night and made his way to the city of Mulhausen, which was in the midst of a power struggle between the poor – led by another revolutionary called Heinrich Pfeiffer – and the respectable burghers. The burghers soon ejected him. But a few months later, Pfeiffer took power from the Town Council and Muntzer hurried back.
By the time he arrived, Germany had plunged into its own Peasants’ Revolt. The poor were on the march, inspired by Luther (who hastened to disown them), and they skirmished with the troops of the local princes, and attacked monasteries and nunneries.
By May 1525, Muntzer was heading his own peasant army of about eight thousand, and was determined to lead them to the victory foretold in the scriptures. There can be no doubt that he was now convinced that he was a messiah – or at least, a reincarnation of the prophet Daniel. His chosen symbols were the sword and the rainbow.
His luck took a turn for the worse when Frederick the Wise died, and was succeeded by Duke John. The Duke finally decided that he had to take sides. He appealed to the young commander Philip of Hesse, who had just put down a rising in his own territories, to come and do the same in Thuringia.
Muntzer summoned his own forces and marched out to meet him. The two armies faced one another on 15 May 1525, Philip’s highly trained and well-equipped army looking down on the unruly mob of peasants – armed with clubs and pickaxes – from a hilltop. Philip experienced a softening of the heart. He sent a message offering not to attack if the peasants would hand over Muntzer. The peasants looked up at the army looming above them, and suddenly felt that this was not such a bad idea. But Muntzer once more
revealed his skill as a leader; he made a magnificent speech in which he promised them victory and immunity from the cannons. “I will catch their cannonballs in my sleeves!”
Anabaptists taking the Sacrament
As he spoke, a rainbow appeared in the sky. His followers needed no further convincing, and marched to confront the enemy. As they came closer, Philip of Hesse ordered his cannons to open fire. As the balls cut a swathe through their ranks, the peasants turned and scattered in panic. Philip’s cavalry cut them down as they fled. It was a total rout, and six thousand peasants were to die.
Thomas Muntzer escaped to nearby Frankenhausen, but the triumphant army soon overran the town. Soon afterwards, they took Mulhausen too. Muntzer was found hiding in a cellar in Frankenhausen, and was taken captive and tortured. On 27 May 1425, he and Heinrich Pfeiffer were beheaded. That was virtually the end of Germany’s Peasants’ Revolt.
The surviving peasants felt nothing but bitterness against Luther. But in retrospect it seems clear that Luther did the right thing. If he had supported the revolt, he would have been executed like Muntzer, and Protestantism would have died. As it was, a law was passed declaring that each German state could make up its own mind whether it wanted to be Protestant or Catholic. The majority opted for Lutheranism. Luther married a nun who had escaped from a convent, had six children, and died at the age of sixty-three, nearly thirty years after he had started the revolution with his ninety-five theses.
The Massacre of the Anabaptists
The most horrifying episode of this bloody religious war was still to come – the slaughter of the Anabaptists of Munster, under their leader John of Leyden.
Although the German princes had won the Peasants’ War, the spirit of Thomas Muntzer marched on. In these times of revolt and misery – a new outbreak of the Black Death killed thousands more in 1529 – the poor continued to believe that the Day of Judgement must be at hand. The followers of Muntzer called themselves Anabaptists (or rebaptizers – they believed that Christians have to be rebaptized in adulthood), and after Muntzer’s death, his torch was taken up by a visionary called Melchior Hoffmann, who also taught that the end of the world was at hand. Unlike Muntzer, Hoffmann was a peaceable man who advised his followers to wait quietly for the Millennium. But this did not save him. When he proclaimed that Strasbourg was the New Jerusalem in 1533, and that the Last Trumpet was about to sound, his followers held their breath, and so did the burghers of Strasbourg. But when the year passed without any sign of the end of the world, Hoffmann was seized by the Town Council of Strasbourg and hung up in a cage to die slowly.
In Munster, the capital of Westphalia, a new Anabaptist prophet called Bernard Rothmann preached against Catholicism; his future father-in-law, a rich businessman called Bernard Knipperdolling, gave him full support. The two fanatics ran through the streets calling on the populace to repent, and dozens of nuns who had deserted their nunneries joined in the hysteria, and began writhing on the ground and having visions. Munster was beginning to look like a madhouse, and as Anabaptists from a neighbouring duchy flooded in, the Prince-Bishop of Munster, Francis von Waldeck, began to feel deeply uneasy. And when disciples of a prophet called Jan Matthyson arrived and announced that Munster was the New Jerusalem, even the Protestants began to move out. One of the leading disciples was a tall, handsome, bearded man called Jan Bockelson, who, because he came from Leyden, was known as John of Leyden.
Soon the messiah Jan Matthyson arrived, accompanied by his beautiful wife, an ex-nun. He proved to be as tall and handsome as John of Leyden, and when he stood up in the market place, dressed in flowing robes and bearing two tablets under his arms, and told the populace that their city had been chosen by God to be the New Jerusalem, they applauded wildly. Soon the whole town was awash with religious ecstasy – the women playing a leading role. People had visions every day, and – in the manner of the Brethren of the Free Spirit – felt that all this direct contact with God enabled them to a little sexual licence – after all, what was the point of being involved in a great religious upheaval if you had to stay chaste?
In February 1534, the worst fears of the Catholics were realized when the Anabaptists were overwhelmingly elected to the Town Council and became, in effect, the rulers of the city. Catholic churches and homes were sacked. Catholics who refused to be converted were driven naked out of the city. The weather was freezing, and many died.
Munster was surrounded by Bishop von Waldeck’s soldiers, but the Anabaptists were not afraid. God was on their side. And at Easter, the prophet Matthyson had a vision that convinced him that he could raise the siege with a few followers. The next day he issued forth with twenty men – and was promptly cut down. The soldiers displayed his head on a pike where it could be seen from the city walls.
A nineteenth-century depiction of a group of Anabaptists
Now John of Leyden was the leader. A bankrupt tailor to whom life had not been kind, he had become the main hope of thousands of enthusiasts. The city of Munster now became a religious commonwealth in the most literal sense – that is, John of Leyden preached the common ownership of property, and made the citizens take their meals all together in great dining halls. He also had an idea that made him even more popular. Men and women were sexually free. A man could take as many wives as he wanted, and a woman who wanted to become somebody’s wife merely had to go and join his household. There was an understandable rush to get into the prophet’s bed, and John of Leyden soon found himself trying to satisfy sixteen women.
Life in the New Jerusalem was delightful; the summer of 1534 turned into one long party, in which the citizens ate their way though twelve hundred oxen and vast quantities of cheese and fish. There were endless processions and banquets. Traitors and unbelievers were executed to provide the populace with entertainment. Money was abolished, but medallions were struck showing John of Leyden’s face surrounded by the legend “The Word Made Flesh”.
Meanwhile, the Bishop was beginning to despair of ever taking the town; the enthusiastic soldiers of the prophet – 1,700 of them – repelled every attack. But as winter drew on, other princes sent reinforcements. Now the Anabaptists were in real trouble, and discovered that it had been a mistake to eat their food in such quantity as they were driven to eat cats, dogs and rats. At Easter, exactly a year after the death of Jan Matthyson, the besieging general demanded the surrender of the city. After months of starvation, hundreds had died and the rest were living skeletons. Yet still John of Leyden’s faith and oratory sustained them. God was merely testing them; victory would soon be theirs. When Bernard Knipperdolling’s mistress tried to escape from the city, he killed her with his own hands.
After more weeks of starvation, John of Leyden declared generously that any who wished to leave the city could do so. Parents with children felt this was their last chance, and about nine hundred marched out through the gates. But they were worse off than ever, for the armies refused to let them pass, and they were forced to starve to death outside the walls.
In June, four of John’s followers decided they had had enough; the whole town stank of rotting flesh. They slipped out of Munster, and told the enemy general how some of his men could enter the city unobserved. On Midsummer’s Eve, 24 June 1535, four hundred soldiers entered the city quietly after dark. When they were discovered the next morning, fierce fighting broke out; it looked as if the intruders were about to be massacred. But the bishop’s forces chose this moment to make another attack on the walls, selecting the weak spots that the traitors had pointed out. The fighting lasted all day, but the inhabitants were weak with hunger, and on 25 June, Munster fell. John of Leyden, Bernard Knipperdolling, and a leader named Krechting, were dragged before the Bishop and humiliated. Three hundred Anabaptists were promised a safe conduct if they surrendered, then were massacred. The two “queens” of John of Leyden and Knipperdolling were beheaded. (Bernard Rothmann disappeared, perhaps killed in the fighting and mutilated beyond recognition.)
The Bishop coul
d not resist engaging John of Leyden in debate, but the ex-messiah proved more than a match for him. When the Bishop said he received his authority from the Pope, John replied that he had received his from God and His prophets.
For the next six months, the three Anabaptists were dragged in chains around the neighbouring towns and publicly exhibited. In January 1536, they were horribly put to death in the main square of Munster. Chained to a stake, John of Leyden had his flesh torn off with red hot pincers; incredibly, he did not cry out. But the pain was finally too much and he begged for mercy. The Bishop smiled grimly and ordered that his tongue should be torn out. Then his heart was pierced with a red-hot dagger.
Knipperdolling had tried to beat out his brains against a wall, then to strangle himself, but the executioner was too strong for him. He and Krechting were tortured to death as slowly as John of Leyden, while the Bishop watched from a window opposite. Then the torn and burnt bodies were hung in cages from the tower of St Lambert Church, where Bernard Rothmann had originally declared the coming of the Millennium.
The death of John of Leyden served much the same purpose as the death of Simon Bar Kochba or Sabbatai Zevi; it punctured the pretensions of messiahs for a long time to come. Some Anabaptists came to England, and because many of them lived in communes, they became known as Familists. Their founder was a Munster Anabaptist named Henry Nicholas, known as H.N. (which also stood for homo novus – New Man), and his group had become known as the Family of Love. They declared that the essence of religion was simply love, and that no other law was needed. In 1575 they petitioned the British parliament for toleration, but five years later, Queen Elizabeth declared that they should be put down as a “damnable sect”.