CHAPTER XVII
The Social Revolution
1522–36

I. THE MOUNTING REVOLT: 1522–24

THE famished knights had waited impatiently for a chance to rise against princes, prelates, and financiers. In 1522 Charles V was far away in Spain; Sickingen’s troops were fretfully idle; rich Church lands lay open to easy seizure. Hutten was calling for action. Luther had invited the German people to sweep their oppressors from the earth.

On August 13 a number of knights signed at Landau a pledge of united action. Sickingen besieged Trier, and shot letters into it inviting the people to join him in overthrowing the ruling archbishop; they remained quiet. The archbishop gathered troops, played general, and beat back five assaults. Sickingen raised the siege and retired to his castle at Landstuhl. The archbishop, with help from neighboring princes, stormed the castle; Sickingen was mortally wounded in its defense; on May 6, 1523, he surrendered; on May 7 he died. The knights submitted to the princes, disbanded their private armies, and clung with desperate severity to the peasant feudal dues that were their main support.

Foreseeing this debacle, Luther had dissociated himself, none too soon (December 19, 1522), from the revolt. Otherwise his star continued to ascend. “The cause of Luther,” wrote Archduke Ferdinand to his brother the Emperor (1522), “is so deeply rooted in the whole Empire that not one person in a thousand is free from it.” ¹ Monks and priests were flocking to the new altar of matrimony. At Nuremberg the Lorenzkirche and the Sebalduskirche resounded with “God’s Word”—the Reformers’ phrase for a faith based solely on the Bible. “Evangelical” preachers moved freely through northern Germany, capturing old pulpits and setting up new ones; and they denounced not only popes and bishops as “servants of Lucifer,” but secular lords as “iniquitous oppressors.” ² However, secular lords were themselves converts: Philip of Hesse, Casimir of Brandenburg, Ulrich of Württemberg, Ernest of Lüneberg, John of Saxony. Even the Emperor’s sister Isabella was a Lutheran.

Charles’s old teacher had now become Pope Adrian VI (1521). To a Diet at Nuremberg (1522) he sent a demand for Luther’s arrest, and a candid confession of ecclesiastical faults:

The assembly agreed to ask Elector Frederick to check Luther, but it asked why Luther should be condemned for pointing out clerical abuses now so authoritatively confirmed. Finding the Pope’s confession insufficiently detailed, it sent him its own list of one hundred gravamina of Germany against the Church, and proposed that these grievances should be considered and remedied by a national council to be held in Germany under the presidency of the Emperor.

The same Diet, dominated by the nobility, gave a sympathetic hearing to charges that monopolists were enriching themselves at the expense of the people. A committee wrote to the major cities of Germany asking their advice as to whether the monopolies were harmful, and should they be regulated or destroyed. Ulm replied that they were an evil, and that business firms should be limited to a father, his son, and his son-in-law. Augsburg home of the Fuggers, submitted a classic defense of “big business,” laissez faire, and widows and orphans:

The Diet legislated that companies should not be capitalized above 50,000 guilders; that profits must be distributed every two years, and public accounting made; that money should not be loaned at usurious rates; that no merchant should buy more than a stated maximum of any commodity in any quarter-year; and that prices should be fixed by law. The merchants appealed to Charles V; he supported them for reasons that have been stated; and as many city magistrates shared in the profits of the monopolies, the edicts of Nuremberg soon became a dead letter.

To a later session of the Diet (January 1524) a new pope, Clement VII, sent Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggio with fresh demands for the arrest of Luther. Crowds jeered the nuncio in Augsburg; he had to enter Nuremberg secretly to avoid hostile demonstrations; and he had the humiliation of seeing 3,000 persons, including the Emperor’s sister, receive the Eucharist in both kinds from a Lutheran pastor. He warned the Diet that the religious revolt, if not soon suppressed, would soon undermine civil authority and order; but the Diet replied that any attempt to put down Lutheranism by force would result in “riot, disobedience, slaughter... and a general ruin.” ⁵ While the deliberations proceeded the social revolution began.

II. THE PEASANTS’ WAR: 1524–26

The religious revolt offered the tillers of the fields a captivating ideology in which to phrase their demands for a larger share in Germany’s growing prosperity. The hardships that had already spurred a dozen rural outbreaks still agitated the peasant mind, and indeed with feverish intensity now that Luther had defied the Church, berated the princes, broken the dams of discipline and awe, made every man a priest, and proclaimed the freedom of the Christian man. In the Germany of that age Church and state were so closely meshed—clergymen played so large a role in social order and civil administration—that the collapse of ecclesiastical prestige and power removed a main barrier to revolution. The Waldensians, Beghards, Brethren of the Common Life, had continued an old tradition of basing radical proposals upon Biblical texts. The circulation of the New Testament in print was a blow to political as well as to religious orthodoxy. It exposed the compromises that the secular clergy had made with the nature of man and the ways of the world; it revealed the communism of the Apostles, the sympathy of Christ for the poor and oppressed; in these respects the New Testament was for the radicals of this age a veritable Communist Manifesto. Peasant and proletarian alike found in it a divine warrant for dreaming of a utopia where private property would be abolished, and the poor would inherit the earth.

In 1521 a pamphlet circulated in Germany under the title of “Karsthans”—i.e., Pitchfork John. This “Man with the Hoe” and a pen pledged peasant protection to Luther; and a continuation published in the same year advocated a rural insurrection against the Catholic clergy.⁶ Another pamphlet of 1521, by Johannes Eberlin, demanded universal male suffrage, the subordination of every ruler and official to popularly elected councils, the abolition of all capitalist organizations, a return to medieval price-fixing for bread and wine, and the education of all children in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, astronomy, and medicine.⁷ In 1522 a pamphlet entitled “The Needs of the German Nation” (Teutscher Nation Notturft), and falsely ascribed to the dead Emperor Frederick III, called for the removal of “all tolls, duties, passports, and fines,” the abolition of Roman and canon law, the limitation of business organizations to a capital of 10,000 guilders, the exclusion of the clergy from civil government, the confiscation of monastic wealth, and the distribution of the proceeds among the poor.⁸ Otto Brunfels proclaimed (1524) that the payment of tithes to the clergy was contrary to the New Testament. Preachers mingled Protestant evangelism with utopian aspirations. One revealed that heaven was open to peasants but closed to nobles and clergymen; another counseled the peasants to give no more money to priests or monks; Münzer, Carlstadt, and Hubmaier advised their hearers that “farmers, miners, and cornthreshers understand the Gospel better, and can teach it better, than a whole village... of abbots and priests... or doctors of divinity”; Carlstadt added, “and better than Luther.” ⁹ Almanacs and astrologers, as if giving a cue to action, predicted an uprising for 1524. A Catholic humanist, Johannes Cochlaeus, warned Luther (1523) that “the populace in the towns, and the peasants in the provinces, will inevitably rise in rebellion.... . They are poisoned by the innumerable abusive pamphlets and speeches that are printed and declaimed among them against both papal and secular authority.” ¹⁰ Luther, the preachers, and the pamphleteers were not the cause of the revolt; the causes were the just grievances of the peasantry. But it could be argued that the gospel of Luther and his more radical followers “poured oil on the flames,” ¹¹ and turned the resentment of the oppressed into utopian delusions, uncalculated violence, and passionate revenge.

Thomas Münzer’s career caught all the excitement of the time. Appointed preacher at Allstedt (1522), he demanded the extermination of the “godless”—i.e., the orthodox or the conservative—by the sword; “the godless have no right to live except in so far as they are permitted to do so by the elect.” ¹² He proposed to the princes that they should lead the people in a communistic revolt against the clergy and the capitalists. When the princes did not rise to the opportunity, he called upon the people to overthrow the princes too, and “to establish a refined society such as was contemplated by Plato, . . and Apuleius of The Golden Ass.” ¹³ “All things are in common,” he wrote, “and should be distributed as occasion requires, according to the several necessities of all. Any prince, count, or baron who, after being earnestly reminded of this truth, shall be unwilling to accept it, is to be beheaded or hanged.” ¹⁴ Elector Frederick tolerated this gospel humorously, but his brother Duke John and his cousin Duke George joined with Luther in having Münzer expelled from his pastorate (1524). The irate apostle wandered from town to town, announcing the deliverance of “Israel,” and the imminent Kingdom of Heaven on earth.¹⁵

He found a congenial political climate in the free city of Mühlhausen in Thuringia, where the textile industry had gathered a numerous proletariat. Heinrich Pfeiffer, an ex-monk, had already begun there, with the support of the lower middle class, a movement to capture the municipal council from the patrician oligarchy. Münzer preached his radical program to the workingmen of the town and to the neighboring peasantry. On March 17, 1525, the armed followers of Pfeiffer and Münzer deposed the patricians and set up an “Eternal Council” to rule Mühlhausen. According to Melanchthon the victorious radicals drove out the monks, and appropriated all the property of the Church;¹⁶ however, no theologian in this age could be trusted to report impartially the activities or views of his opponents. No communist commonwealth was established; Pfeiffer proved abler in practice than Münzer, and tamed the revolt to the needs of the middle class. Anticipating attack by Imperial troops, Münzer organized workers and peasants into an army, and had heavy artillery cast for it in the monastery of the Barefoot Friars. “Forward!” was his call to his men; “forward while the fire is hot! Let your swords be ever warm with blood!” ¹⁷

About the same time peasant uprisings were convulsing South Germany. Perhaps a ruinous hailstorm (1524), which destroyed all hopes for a harvest in Stühlingen, served as the trigger of revolt. This district, near Schaffhausen, was not too far from Switzerland to feel the example of the sturdy peasants who had there freed themselves from all but the formalities of feudal power. On August 24, 1524, Hans Müller, acting on a suggestion from Münzer, gathered about him some Stühlingen peasants, and bound them into an “Evangelical Brotherhood” pledged to emancipate farmers throughout Germany. Soon they were joined by the discontented tenants of the abbot of Reichenau, the bishop of Constance, the counts of Werdenburg, Montfort, Lupfen, and Sulz. By the end of 1524 there were some 30,000 peasants in arms in South Germany refusing to pay state taxes, church tithes, or feudal dues, and sworn to emancipation or death. At Memmingen their delegates, under the guidance or influence of Zwinglian Protestants from Zurich, formulated (March 1525) the “Twelve Articles” that set half of Germany on fire.

There are many anti-Christians who have lately taken occasion of the assembly of the peasants to cast scorn upon the Gospel, saying, Is this the fruit of the new evangel? Is no one to be obedient, but all are to rebel... to overthrow, or perhaps to slay, the spiritual and temporal lords? To all these godless and wicked critics the following articles make answer, in order, first, to remove this reproach from the Word of God, and second, to justify in a Christian way the disobedience, nay the rebellion, of the peasants.

First, It is our humble petition and request, as also the will and intention of all of us, that in the future we should have authority and power so that a whole community should choose and appoint a pastor, and also have the right to depose him. ...

Second, Since the tithe is appointed in the Old Testament and fulfilled in the New, we will .... pay the just tithe of grain, but in a proper way.... . We will that for the future this be gathered and received by our church provost, whom the community appoints; that out of it there shall be given to the pastor... a modest, sufficient maintenance for him and his... that the remainder shall be distributed to the poor and needy who are in the same village.... . The small tithe we will not give at all, for God created cattle for the free use of men.....

Third, It has been the custom hitherto for men to hold us as their own property, and this is pitiable, seeing that Christ has redeemed and bought us all with the precious shedding of His blood, the lowly as well as the great .... Therefore it agrees with Scripture that we be free, and will be so.... . To our chosen and appointed rulers (appointed for us by God) we are willingly obedient in all proper a d Christian matters, and have no doubt that, as true and real Christians, they will gladly release us from serfdom, or show us in the Gospel that we are serfs....

Sixth, We have a heavy grievance because of the services which are increased from day to day....

Eighth, We are greatly aggrieved, as many of us have holdings that will not support the rents we pay, and the peasants suffer loss and ruin. Let the lords have honorable men inspect said holdings, and fix fair rent... for every laborer is worthy of his hire.....

Tenth, We are aggrieved because some have appropriated to themselves meadows out of the common fields, which once belonged to the community.....

Eleventh, We would have the death dues entirely abolished. We will not suffer it, nor allow widows and orphans to be so shamefully robbed....

Twelfth, If one or more of the articles here set forth .... can be shown to us by the Word of God to be improper, we will recede from it if this is explained to us with arguments from Scripture.¹⁸

The peasant leaders, encouraged by Luther’s semi-revolutionary pronouncements, sent him a copy of the Articles, and asked for his support. He replied with a pamphlet printed in April 1525: Ermahung zum Frieden (Admonition to Peace). He applauded the peasants’ offer to submit to correction by Scripture. He noted the charges, now rising, that his speeches and writings had stirred revolt; he denied his responsibility, and referred to his inculcation of civil obedience. But he did not withdraw his criticism of the master class:

He counseled the princes and lords to recognize the justice of many of the Articles, and urged a policy of kindly consideration. To the peasants he addressed a frank admission of their wrongs, but pleaded with them to refrain from violence and revenge; a resort to violence, he predicted, would leave the peasants worse off than before. He foresaw that a violent revolt would bring discredit upon the movement for religious reform, and that he would be blamed for everything. He objected to the appropriation of tithes by each congregation. The authorities should be obeyed, and had a right to tax the people to pay the expenses of government. The “freedom of the Christian man” was to be understood as a spiritual liberty, consistent with serfdom, even with slavery.

His final advice, had it been followed, would have spared Germany much bloodshed and devastation:

The peasant leaders, however, felt that it was now too late to retrace their steps; in any conciliation they would sooner or later be punished. They mourned Luther as a traitor, and went on with the revolt. Some of them took quite literally the dream of equality: the nobles were to dismantle their castles, and live like peasants and burghers; they were no longer to ride on horseback, for that raised them above their fellow men. Pastors were to be informed that they were henceforth servants, not masters, of their congregations, and would be expelled if they did not adhere strictly and only to the Scriptures.²² Corresponding demands came from the workmen of the towns. They denounced the monopoly of city offices by the rich, the embezzlement of public funds by corrupt officials, the perpetually rising prices while wages stood almost still. “It would be better for the salvation of the soul,” said one radical, “if the lord prelates were not so rich and luxurious, and if their possessions were divided among the poor.” ²³ Wendel Hipler and Friedrich Weigant proposed that all Church property should be confiscated to secular needs; that all transport tolls and tariff duties should be removed; that there should be throughout the Empire one coinage and one system of weights and measures.²⁴

The movement had a colorful assortment of leaders: the innkeepers George Metzler and Metern Feuerbacher, the jolly roisterer Jäcklein Rohrbach, some ex-soldiers and priests, and two knights from Sickingen’s defeated band—Florian Geyer and Götz von Berlichingen “of the Iron Hand”; Hauptmann and Goethe would later choose these two as heroes for vivid plays. Each leader was sovereign over his own group, and rarely concerted his action with the others. Nevertheless, in the spring of 1525, the revolt flared up in a dozen scattered localities about the same time. At Heilbronn, Rothenburg, and Würzburg a commune of labor representatives captured the municipal administration. At Frankfurt-am-Main the victorious commune announced that it would thereafter be council, burgomaster, pope, and emperor all in one. At Rothenburg the priests were driven from the cathedral, religious images were demolished, a chapel was smashed to the ground (March 27, 1525), and clerical wine cellars were emptied with triumphant gaiety.²⁵ Towns subject to feudal lords renounced their fealty; episcopal towns called for an end to clerical privileges, and agitated for the secularization of ecclesiastical property. Nearly the whole duchy of Franconia joined the revolt. Many lords and bishops, unprepared to resist, swore to accept the reforms demanded of them; so the bishops of Speyer and Bamberg, and the abbots of Kempten and Herzfeld. Count William of Henneberg freed his serfs. Counts George and Albrecht of Hohenlohe were summoned before peasant leaders and were initiated into the new order: “Brother George and brother Albrecht, come hither and swear to the peasants to be as brothers to them, for you are now no longer lords but peasants .” ²⁶ Most of the towns received the rural rebels with a hearty welcome. Many of the lower clergy, hostile to the hierarchy, supported the revolt.

The first serious encounter took place at Leipheim on the Danube near Ulm (April 4, 1525). Under an energetic priest, Jakob Wehe, 3,000 peasants captured the town, drank all discoverable wine, pillaged the church, smashed the organ, made themselves leggings from sacerdotal vestments, and paid mock homage to one of their number seated on the altar and robed as a priest.²⁷ An army of mercenaries hired by the Swabian League and led by an able general, Georg von Truchsess, laid siege to Leipheim, and frightened the undisciplined peasants into surrender. Wehe and four other leaders were beheaded, the rest were spared, but the League’s troops burned many peasant cottages.

On Good Friday, April 15, 1525, three rebel contingents under Metzler, Geyer, and Rohrbach laid siege to the town of Weinsberg (near Heilbronn), whose ruling Count Ludwig von Helfenstein was especially hated for his severities. A delegation of peasants approached the walls and asked for a parley; the Count and his knights made a sudden sortie and massacred the delegation. On Easter Sunday the attackers, helped by some citizens of the town, broke through the walls, and cut down the forty men-at-arms who cared to resist. The Count, his wife (a daughter of the late Emperor Maximilian), and sixteen knights were taken prisoner. Rohrbach, without consulting Metzler or Geyer, ordered the seventeen men to run the gantlet between rows of peasants armed with pikes. The Count offered all his fortune in ransom; it was refused as a temporizing expedient. The Countess, prostrate and delirious, begged for her husband’s life; Rohrbach bade two men hold her up so that she could witness the orgy of revenge. As the Count walked to his death amid a volley of daggers and pikes, the peasants recalled to him his own brutalities. “You thrust my brother into a dungeon,” one cried, “because he did not bare his head as you passed by.” “You harnessed us like oxen to the yoke,” shouted others; “you caused the hands of my father to be cut off because he killed a hare on his own field.... Your horses, dogs, and huntsmen have trodden down my crops.... You have wrung the last penny out of us.” During the next half-hour the sixteen knights were similarly laid to rest. The Countess was allowed to retire to a convent.²⁸

In nearly every section of Germany peasant bands were running riot. Monasteries were sacked, or were compelled to pay high ransoms. “Nowhere,” says a letter of April 7, 1525, “do the insurgents make a secret of,.. their intention to kill all clerics who will not break with the Church, to destroy all cloisters and episcopal palaces, and to root the Catholic religion utterly out of the land.” ²⁹ This is probably an exaggeration, but we may note that in Bavaria, Austria, and Tirol, where Protestantism had apparently been suppressed, the rebels captured many towns, and compelled Archduke Ferdinand to agree that all preaching should henceforth be according to Scripture—a characteristic Protestant demand. At Mainz Archbishop Albrecht fled before the storm, but his deputy saved the see by signing the Twelve Articles and paying a ransom of 15,000 guilders. On April 11 the townsfolk of Bamberg renounced the bishop’s feudal sovereignty, pillaged and burned his castle, and plundered the houses of the orthodox. In Alsace the revolt spread so rapidly that by April’s end every Catholic or rich landlord in the province was in terror of his life. On April 28 an army of 20,000 peasants attacked Zabern, seat of the bishop of Strasbourg, and despoiled his monastery; on May 13 they took the town, forced every fourth man to join them, renounced all payment of tithes, and demanded that thereafter all officials except the emperor should be elected by popular suffrage, and be subject to recall.³⁰ At Brixen in Tirol a former episcopal secretary, Michael Gasmaier, organized a revolt that attacked all orthodox clergymen, sacked the local monastery (May 12), and remained rampant and unsubdued for a year. In all the valleys of the Inn and Etsch rivers, says an unsympathetic chronicler of the time, “there was such a concourse, cry, and tumult that hardly might a good man walk in the streets. Robbing and plundering... became so common that even pious men were tempted thereto.” ³¹ At Freiburgim-Breisgau the peasants looted castles and monasteries, and forced the city to join the “Evangelical Brotherhood” (May 24). In that same month a peasant band drove the bishop of Würzburg out of his palace, and feasted on his stores. In June the powerful and warlike Archbishop Matthias Lang was chased from his palace in Salzburg into his castle fortress overlooking the city. In Neustadt in the Palatinate Elector Ludwig, surrounded by 8,000 armed peasants, invited their leaders to dinner, and cheerfully complied with their demands. “There,” said a contemporary, “one saw villeins and their lord sit together, eat and drink together. He had, as it seemed, one heart to them, and they to him.” ³²

Amid this torrent of events Luther issued from the press of Wittenberg, toward the middle of May 1525, a pamphlet “Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants.” Its vehemence startled prince and peasant, I prelate and humanist, alike. Shocked by the excesses of the infuriated rebels, ¹ dreading a possible overturn of all law and government in Germany, and stung by charges that his own teachings had loosed the flood, he now ranged himself unreservedly on the side of the imperiled lords,

He rejected the supposed Scriptural warrant for communism:

To Catholic rulers he offered his forgiveness if they smote the rebels without trial. To Protestant rulers he recommended prayer, contrition, and negotiation; but if the peasants remain obdurate,

It was Luther’s misfortune that this outburst reached its readers just about the time that the forces of the propertied classes were beginning to subdue the revolt; and the Reformer received undue credit for the terrorism of the suppression. It is unlikely that the endangered masters were influenced by the pamphlet; it was in their temper to handle the insurgents with a severity that would serve as a deterrent in unforgettable memory. For a time they had bemused the simple peasants with parleys and promises, and had thereby persuaded many of the bands to disperse; meanwhile the masters organized and armed their levies.

At the height of the turmoil Elector Frederick died (May 5, 1525), himself calm and at peace, admitting that he and other princes had wronged the peasant, refusing to join in extreme measures of retaliation, and leaving to his successor, Duke John, urgent counsels of moderation. But the new Elector felt that his brother’s policy had been unwisely lenient. He joined his forces with those of Duke Henry of Brunswick and Philip Landgrave of Hesse, and together they moved against Münzer’s encampment outside Mühlhausen. The opposed armies were matched only in number—each some 8,000 strong; but the ducal troops were mostly trained soldiers, while the peasants, despite Münzer’s home-made artillery, were indifferently armed, poorly disciplined, and disordered with natural fright Münzer relied on his eloquence to restore morale, and led the peasants in ayer and hymns. The first barrage of the princely cannon slaughtered hundreds, and the terrified rebels fled into the town of Frankenhausen (May 15, 1525). The victors followed, and massacred 5,000. Three hundred prisoners were condemned to death; their women pleaded mercy for them; it was granted, on condition that the women should beat out the brains of two priests who had encouraged the revolt; it was so done, while the triumphant dukes looked on.³⁴ Münzer hid, was captured, was tortured into confessing the error of his ways, and was beheaded before the headquarters of the princes. Pfeiffer and his 1,200 soldiers defended Mühlhausen; they were overcome; Pfeiffer and other leaders were put to death, but the citizens were spared on paying a total ransom of 40,000 guilders ($1,000,000?).

Meanwhile Truchsess took the town of Böblingen by negotiation, and from within its walls turned his guns upon a rebel camp outside (May 12). Those of the peasants who survived this cannonade were cut down by his cavalry; this ended the revolt in Württemberg. Turning next to Weinsberg, Truchsess burned it to the ground, and slowly roasted Jäcklein Rohrbach, who had directed the “Massacre of Weinsberg.” Truchsess marched on to rout peasant forces at Königshofen and Ingolstadt, recaptured Würzburg, and beheaded eighty-one chosen rebels as a memento for the rest (June 5). Florian Geyer escaped from Würzburg into obscurity, and remained a cherished legend. Götz von Berlichingen surrendered in apt time, lived to fight for Charles V against the Turks, and died in his own bed and castle at eightytwo (1562). Rothenberg was taken on June 20, Memmingen soon afterward. The revolt in Alsace was crushed by the slaughter of from 2,000 to 6,000 men at Lipstein and Zabern (May 17–18). By May 27 some 20,000 peasants had been killed in Alsace alone, in many cases after surrender; the air of the towns was fetid with the stench of the dead.³⁵ Markgraf Casimir had some of his surrendering peasants beheaded, some hanged; in milder cases he chopped off hands or gouged out eyes.³⁶ Saner princes finally intervened to reduce the barbarism of the retaliation, and at the end of August the Diet of Augsburg issued a rescript urging moderation in punishments and fines. “If all the rebels are killed,” one philosophic noble asked, “where shall we get peasants to provide for us?”³⁷

In Austria the revolt continued for a year. In January 1526, Michael Gasmaier proclaimed throughout Tirol the most radical of the revolutionary programs. All “godless” (i.e., non-Protestants) who persecuted the true Word of God, or who oppressed the common man, were to be put to death. All pictures and shrines were to be removed from the churches, and no Masses were to be said. Town walls, towers, and fortresses were to be demolished; there should now be only villages, and all men were to be equal. Officials and judges were to be chosen by universal adult male suffrage. Feudal rents and dues were to end at once; tithes were to be collected, but were to be given to the Reformed Church and the poor. Monasteries were to be converted into hospitals or schools. Mines were to be nationalized. Prices were to be fixed by the government.³⁸ For a time Gasmaier, with clever strategy, defeated the troops sent against him, but he was finally outwitted, and fled to Italy. The Archduke Ferdinand set a price on his head, and two Spanish cutthroats earned the sum by assassinating him in his room in Padua (1528).

The losses of German life and property in the Peasants’ Revolt were to be exceeded only in the Thirty Years’ War. Of peasants alone some 130,000 died in battle or in expiation. There were 10,000 executions under the jurisdiction of the Swabian League; Truchsess’ executioner boasted that he had killed 1,200 condemned men with his own practiced hand. The peasants themselves had destroyed hundreds of castles and monasteries. Hundreds of villages and towns had been depopulated or ruined, or impoverished by huge indemnities. Over 50,000 homeless peasants roamed the highways or hid in the woods. Widows and orphans were legion, but charity was heartless or penniless. The rebels had in many instances burned the charters that recorded their feudal dues; new charters were now drawn up, renewing the obligations, sometimes more leniently, sometimes more rigorously, than before. Concessions were made to the peasants in Austria, Baden, and Hesse; elsewhere serfdom was strengthened, and would continue, east of the Elbe, till the nineteenth century. Democratic beginnings were aborted. Intellectual developments were stunted; censorship of publications increased, under Catholic and Protestant authorities alike. Humanism wilted in the fire; the Renaissance joy in life and literature and love gave way to theology, pietism, and meditations on death.

The Reformation itself almost perished in the Peasants’ War. Despite Luther’s disclaimers and denunciations, the rebellion had flaunted Protestant colors and ideas: economic aspirations were dressed in phrases that Luther had sanctified; communism was to be merely a return to the Gospel. Charles V interpreted the uprising as “a Lutheran movement.”³⁹ Conservatives classed the expropriation of ecclesiastical property by Protestants as revolutionary actions on a par with the sacking of monasteries by peasants. In the south the frightened princes and lords renewed their fealty to the Roman Church. In several places, as at Bamberg and Würzburg, men even of the propertied class were executed for having accepted Lutheranism.⁴⁰ The peasants themselves turned against the Reformation as a lure and a betrayal; some called Luther Dr. Lügner—” Dr. Liar”—and “toady of the princes.”⁴¹ For years after the revolt he was so unpopular that he seldom dared leave Wittenberg, even to attend his father’s deathbed (1530). “All is forgotten that God has done for the world through me,” he wrote (June 15, 1525); “now lords, priests, and peasants are all against me, and threaten my death.” ⁴²

It was not in his character to yield ground or apologize. On May 30, 1525, he wrote to Nicholas Amsdorf: “My opinion is that it is better that all peasants be killed than that the princes and magistrates perish, because the rustics took the sword without divine authority.”⁴³ In July 1525, he published An Open Letter Concerning the Hard Book against the Peasants. His critics, he said, deserved no answer; their criticisms showed them to be rebels at heart, like the peasants, and no more deserving of mercy; “the rulers ought to seize these people by the cap and make them hold their tongues.” ⁴⁴

Mercy, Luther argued, is the duty of Christians in their private capacity; as officers of the state, however, they must normally follow justice rather than mercy, for since Adam and Eve’s sin man has been so wicked that government, laws, and penalties are needed to control him. We owe more consideration to the community endangered by crime than to criminals endangering the community.

Luther’s extreme statements about the Peasants’ War shock us today because social order has been so well established that we presume on its continuance, and can treat with lenience those few who would violently disturb it. But Luther faced the harsh reality of peasant bands transforming their just grievances into indiscriminate pillage, and threatening the complete overturn of law, government, production, and distribution in Germany. Events justified his premonition that the religious revolution for which he had risked his life would be gravely imperiled by the conservative reaction that was bound to follow an unsuccessful revolt. He may have felt some personal debt to the princes and nobles who had protected him in Wittenberg and Worms and the Wartburg, and he might well wonder who would save him against Charles V and Clement VII if princely power ceased to shield the Reformation. The one freedom that seemed to him worth fighting for was the freedom to worship God, to seek salvation according to one’s conscience. What difference did it make whether, in this brief Vorspiel to eternal life, one was a prince or a slave? We should accept our state here without complaint, bound in body and duty, but free in soul and the grace of God.

And yet the peasants had a case against him. He had not only predicted social revolution, he had said he would not be displeased by it, he would greet it with a smile, even if men washed their hands in episcopal blood. He too had made a revolution, had endangered social order, had flouted authority not less divine than the state’s. He had made no protest against the secular appropriation of ecclesiastical property. How otherwise than by force could peasants better their lot when ballots were forbidden them, and their oppressors daily wielded force? The peasants felt that the new religion had sanctified their cause, had aroused them to hope and action, and had deserted them in the hour of decision. Some of them, in angry despair, became cynical atheists.⁴⁶ Many of them, or their children, shepherded by Jesuits, returned to the Catholic fold. Some of them followed the radicals whom Luther had condemned, and heard in the New Testament a summons to communism.

III. THE ANABAPTISTS TRY COMMUNISM: 1534–36

Only by observing with what devout enthusiasm some of our contemporaries adopt economic heresies can we understand the fervor with which pious rebellious minorities followed, even to the stake, one or another turn of the religious revolution in the sixteenth century.

The most radical of the new sects took the name of Anabaptists (Wiedertäufer, Again-Baptizers) from its insistence that baptism, if given in infancy, should be repeated in maturity, and that still better it should be deferred, as by John the Baptist, till the mature recipient could knowingly and voluntarily make his profession of the Christian faith. There were sects within this sect. Those who followed Hans Denck and Ludwig Hätzer denied the divinity of Christ: He was only the most godly of men, Who had redeemed us not by His agony on the cross but by the example of His life.⁴⁷ Denck exalted the individual conscience above the Church, the state, and the Bible itself. Most Anabaptists adopted a Puritan severity of morals and simplicity of manners and dress. Developing with rash logic Luther’s idea of Christian liberty, they condemned all government by force, and all resistance to it by force. They rejected military service on the ground that it is invariably sinful to take human life. Like the early Christians, they refused to swear oaths, not excepting oaths of allegiance to prince or emperor. Their usual salutation was “The peace of the Lord be with you”—an echo of the Jewish and Moslem greeting, and a forerunner of the Quaker mode. While Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and Knox agreed with the popes on the absurdity of religious toleration, the Anabaptists preached and practiced it; one of them, Balthasar Hübmaier, wrote the first clear defense of it (1524).⁴⁸ They shunned public office and all resort to litigation. They were Tolstoyan anarchists three centuries before Tolstoy, and a century after Peter Chelcicky, from whom they may have derived their creed. Consciously or unwittingly inheriting the doctrine of the Bohemian Taborites or the Moravian Brethren, some Anabaptists proclaimed a community of goods;⁴⁹ a few, if we may credit hostile chroniclers, proposed a community of wives.⁵⁰ In general, however, the sect rejected any compulsory sharing of goods, advocated voluntary mutual aid, and held that in the Kingdom of Heaven communism would be automatic and universal.⁵¹ All the Anabaptist groups were inspired by the Apocalypse and the confident expectation of Christ’s early return to the earth; many believers professed to know the day and hour of His coming. Then all the ungodly—in this case all but Anabaptists—would be swept away by the sword of the Lord, and the elect would live in glory in a terrestrial paradise without laws or marriage, and abounding in all good things.⁵² So hopeful men steeled themselves against toil and monogamy.

The Anabaptists appeared first in Switzerland. Perhaps a pacifistic Christianity had seeped in from the Waldenses of southern France and the Beghards of the Netherlands. Here and there, as in Basel, a few intellectuals sponsored the idea of a communistic society. Communistic passages in More’s Utopia may have stirred the scholars who gathered around Erasmus there. Three members of that circle became Anabaptist leaders: Conrad Grebel and Felix Manz of Zurich, and Balthasar Hübmaier of Waldshut—just across the border in Austria. In 1524 Münzer visited Waldshut, Carlstadt came to Zurich, and an Anabaptist sect formed in Zurich under the name of “Spirituals” or “Brethren.” It preached adult baptism and the coming of Christ, rejected Church and state, and proposed an end to interest charges, taxes, military service, tithes, and oaths.

At this time Ulrich Zwingli was winning the Great Council of Zurich to his Protestant views, which included the control of religion by the secular authorities. He pleaded with the “Brethren” to relax their antipathy to the state, and to practice infant baptism; they refused. The Council summoned them to a public disputation (January 17, 1525); failing to convert them, it decreed that the parents of unbaptized children must leave the town. The Anabaptists denounced the Council, called Zwingli an old dragon, and paraded the streets crying, “Woe to Zurich!”⁵³ Their leaders were arrested and banished, which enabled them to spread their doctrines. Saint-Gall and Appenzell took up the movement; Bern and Basel were stirred by it; Hübmaier won nearly all Waldshut to his views. In Appenzell 1,200 men and women, accepting literally the words of Christ—“Take no thought what ye shall eat”—sat down and waited for God to come and feed them.⁵⁴

The apparent success of the Peasants’ War in the spring of 1525 promoted these conversions, but its failure encouraged the propertied classes in the Swiss cities to repressive measures. The Council of Zurich arrested Manz (July), then Grebel, then Hübmaier, and ordered that all obstinate Anabaptists “should be laid in the tower,” kept on bread and water, and “left to die and rot.”⁵⁵ Grebel did; Manz was drowned; Hübmaier recanted, was freed, recanted his recantation, and undertook to convert Augsburg and Moravia; Hätzer was beheaded at Constance for Anabaptism and adultery. Protestant and Catholic cantons showed equal energy in subduing the sect, and by 1530 nothing remained of it in Switzerland except some secret and negligible bands.

Meanwhile the movement had spread like a rumor through South Germany. A zeal for evangelistic propaganda caught the converts, and turned them into ardent missionaries for the new creed. In Augsburg Denck and Hübmaier made rapid headway among the textile workers and the lower middle class. In Tirol many miners, contrasting their poverty with the wealth of the Fuggers and Hochstetters who owned the mines, took up Anabaptism when the Peasants’ Revolt collapsed. In Strasbourg the struggle between Catholics and Protestants allowed the sect to multiply unnoticed for a time. But a pamphlet of 1528 warned the authorities that “he who teaches that all things are” to be “in common has naught else in mind than to excite the poor against the rich, the subjects against the rulers ordained by God.”⁵⁶ In that year Charles V issued a mandate making rebaptism a capital crime. The Diet of Speyer (1529) ratified the Emperor’s edict, and ordered that Anabaptists everywhere were to be killed like wild beasts as soon as taken, without judge or trial. An Anabaptist chronicler, perhaps exaggerating, reported the result in the mood of early Christian hagiographers:

By 1530, says the contemporary Sebastian Franck, 2,000 Anabaptists had been put to death. In one Alsatian city, Ensisheim, 600 were executed. In Salzburg those who recanted were allowed to have their heads cut off before being placed upon the pyre; the unrepentant were roasted to death over a slow fire (1528),⁵⁸ Anabaptists composed touching hymns to commemorate these martyrdoms; and most of the hymn writers became martyrs in their turn.

Despite these killings the sect increased, and moved into northern Germany. In Prussia and Württemberg some nobles welcomed the Anabaptists as peaceful and industrious farmers. In Saxony, says an early Lutheran historian, the valley of the Werra was filled with them, and in Erfurt they claimed to have sent forth 300 missionaries to convert the dying world. In Lübeck, Jürgen Wullenwever, who was accused of Anabaptism, briefly captured control of the city (1533–34). In Moravia, Hübmaier made progress with his moderate doctrine, which explained communism not as “common property,” but as holding that “one should feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, and clothe the naked, for in truth we are not masters of our possessions, but stewards or dispensers only.”⁵⁹ Hans Hut, fired by the teachings of Münzer, won the Anabaptists of Moravia away from Hübmaier by preaching a full community of goods. Hübmaier retired to Vienna, where he was burned at the stake, and his wife was thrown bound into the Danube (1528).

Hut and his followers established a communist center at Austerlitz, where, as if foreseeing Napoleon, they renounced all military service, and denounced every kind of war. Confining themselves to tillage and petty industry, these Anabaptists maintained their communism for almost a century. The nobles who owned the land protected them as enriching the estates by their conscientious toil. Farming was communal among them; materials for agriculture and handicraft were bought and allotted by communal officers; part of the proceeds was paid to the landlord as rent, the rest was distributed according to need. The social unit was not the family but the Haushabe, or household, containing some 400 to 2,000 persons, with a common kitchen, a common laundry, a school, a hospital, and a brewery. Children, after weaning, were brought up in common, but monogamy remained. In the Thirty Years’ War, by an Imperial edict of 1622, this communistic society was suppressed; its members accepted Catholicism or were banished. Some of the exiles went to Russia, some to Hungary. We shall hear of them again.

In the Netherlands Melchior Hofmann, a Swabian tanner, preached the Anabaptist gospel with exciting success. At Leyden his pupil Jan Matthys rose to the conclusion that the advent of the New Jerusalem could no longer be patiently awaited, but must be achieved at once, and, if necessary, by force. He sent out through Holland twelve apostles to announce the glad tidings. The ablest of them was a young tailor, Jan Beuckelszoon, known to history as John of Leyden, and to Meyerbeer’s opera as Le Prophète. Without formal education, he had a keen mind, a vivid imagination, a handsome presence, a ready tongue, a resolute will. He wrote and staged plays, and composed poetry. Coming upon the writings of Thomas Münzer, he felt that all other forms of Christianity than that which had gained and lost Mühlhausen were halfhearted and insincere. He heard Jan Matthys and was won to Anabaptism (1533). He was then twenty-four. In that year he accepted a fatal invitation to come and preach in Münster, the rich and populous capital of Westphalia.

Named from the monastery around which it had grown, Münster was feudally subject to its bishop and cathedral chapter. Nevertheless the growth of industry and commerce had generated a degree of democracy. The assembled citizens, representing seventeen guilds, annually chose ten electors who chose the city council. But the well-to-do minority provided most of the political ability, and naturally dominated the council. In 1525, enthusiastic over the peasants’ uprisings, the lower classes presented thirty-six “demands” to the council. A few of these were granted, the rest were humored with procrastination. A Lutheran preacher, Bernard Rottman, made himself the mouthpiece of discontent, and asked Jan Matthys to send some Dutch Anabaptists to his aid. John of Leyden came (January 13, 1534), and soon Jan Matthys himself. Fearing insurrection, the “party of order” arranged to have Bishop Franz von Waldeck enter the town with his 2,000 troops. The populace, led by Matthys, Rottman, and John of Leyden, fought them in the streets, drove them out, and took martial control of Münster (February 10, 1534). New elections were held; the Anabaptists won the council; two of their number, Knipperdollingk and Kippenbroick, were chosen burgomasters; the exciting experiment began.

Münster found itself at once in a state of war, besieged by the Bishop and his reinforced army, and fearful that soon all the powers of order and custom in Germany would unite against it. To protect itself against internal opposition, the new council decreed that all non-Anabaptists must accept rebaptism or leave the city. It was a cruel measure, for it meant that old men, women carrying infants, and barefoot children had to ride or trudge from the town at the height of a German winter. During the siege both sides executed without mercy any persons found working for the enemy. Under the stress of war the council was superseded by a popular assembly and an executive Committee of Public Safety, in both of which the religious leaders were supreme. Matthys died fighting in an abortive sortie (April 5, 1534), and thereafter John of Leyden ruled the city as its king.

The “communism” that was now set up was a war economy, as perhaps all strict communism must be; for men are by nature unequal, and can be induced to share their goods and fortunes only by a vital and common danger; internal liberty varies with external security, and communism breaks under the tensions of peace. In peril of their lives if they fell short of unity, inspired by religious faith and inescapable eloquence, the besieged accepted a “socialist theocracy”⁶⁰ in the desperate hope that they were realizing the New Jerusalem visioned in the Apocalypse. The members of the Committee of Public Safety were called “the elders of the twelve tribes of Israel,” and John of Leyden became “King of Israel.” Perhaps to give, in the minds of the simple, some helpful dignity to his precarious office, John, along with his aides, clothed himself in the splendid garments left behind by wealthy exiles. Enemies further accused the radical chiefs of eating abundantly while the besieged population neared starvation; the evidence is inconclusive, and leaders always feel an urgent obligation to keep well. Most of the confiscated luxuries were distributed among the people; “the poorest among us,” wrote one of them, “now go about sumptuously attired”;⁶¹ they hungered in magnificence.

Otherwise the communism of Münster was limited and tentative. The rulers, according to a hostile witness, decreed that “all possessions should be in common,” ⁶² but in truth private property continued in practically everything except jewels, precious metals, and the booty of war. Meals were taken in common, but only by those engaged in defense of the town. At these meals a chapter was read from the Bible, and sacred songs were sung. Three “deacons” were appointed to supply the necessities of the poor; and to secure materials for these charities the remaining well-to-do were persuaded or compelled to yield up their superfluity. Land available for cultivation within the city was assigned to each household according to its size. One edict confirmed the traditional dominion of the husband over the wife.⁶³

Public morals were regulated by strict laws. Dances, games, and religious plays were encouraged, under supervision, but drunkenness and gambling were severely punished, prostitution was banned, fornication and adultery were made capital crimes. An excess of women, caused by the flight of many men, moved the leaders to decree, on the basis of Biblical precedents, that unattached women should become “companions of wives”—in effect, concubines.⁶⁴ The newly attached women seem to have accepted the situation as preferable to solitary barrenness. Some conservatives in the city protested, organized a revolt, and imprisoned the King; but their soldiers, soon besotted with wine, were slaughtered by the resurgent Anabaptist soldiery; and in this victory of the New Jerusalem the women played a virile role. John, released and re-enthroned, took several wives and (say the hostile chroniclers) governed with violence and tyranny.⁶⁵ He must have had some genial qualities, for thousands gladly bore his rule, and offered their lives in his service. When he called for volunteers to follow him in a sortie against the Bishop’s camp, more women enlisted than he thought it wise to use. When he asked for “apostles” to venture forth and seek aid from other Anabaptist groups, twelve men tried to get through the enemy’s lines, were all caught, and all killed. One fervent woman, inspired by the story of Judith, sallied out to assassinate the Bishop; she was intercepted and put to death.

Though many Anabaptists in Germany and Holland repudiated the resort of their Münster brethren to force, many more applauded the revolution. Cologne, Trier, Amsterdam, and Leyden murmured with Anabaptist prayers for its success. From Amsterdam fifty vessels sailed (March 22 and 25, 1535) to carry reinforcements to the beleaguered city, but all were dispersed by the Dutch authorities. On March 28, echoing the Münster uprising, an Anabaptist band captured and fortified a monastery in West Friesland; it was overcome with a loss of 800 lives.

Confronted with this spreading revolt, the conservative forces of the Empire, Protestant as well as Catholic, mobilized to suppress Anabaptism everywhere. Luther, who in 1528 had counseled lenience with the new heretics, advised in 1530 “the use of the sword” against them as “not only blasphemous but highly seditious”;⁶⁶ and Melanchthon concurred. City after city sent money or men to the Bishop; a diet at Worms (April 4, 1535) ordered a tax on all Germany to finance the siege. The Bishop was now able to surround the town and effectively shut off all its supplies.

Facing famine and deteriorating morale. King John announced that all who wished might leave the city. Many women and children, and some men, seized the opportunity. The men were imprisoned or killed by the Bishop’s soldiers, who spared the women for divers services. One of the émigrés saved his life by offering to show the besiegers an undefended part of the walls. Under his guidance a force of Landsknechts scaled them and opened a gate (June 24); soon several thousand troops poured into the town. Starvation had so far done its work that only 800 of the besieged could still bear arms. They barricaded themselves in the market place; then they surrendered on a promise of a safe-conduct to leave Münster; when they had yielded up their arms they were massacred en masse. Houses were searched, and 400 hidden survivors were slain. John of Leyden and two of his aides were bound to stakes; every part of their bodies was clawed with red-hot pincers, until “nearly all who were standing in the market place were sickened by the stench”; their tongues were pulled from their mouths; at last daggers were driven into their hearts.⁶⁷

The Bishop regained his city and augmented his former power; henceforth all actions of the civil authorities were to be subject to episcopal veto. Catholicism was triumphantly restored. Throughout the Empire the Anabaptists, fearing for their lives, repudiated every member guilty of using force. Nevertheless many of these pacifist heretics were executed. Melanchthon and Luther advised Philip of Hesse to put to death all adherents of the sect.⁶⁸ The conservative leaders felt that so serious a threat to the established economic and political order should be punished with an unforgettable severity.

The Anabaptists accepted the lesson, postponed communism to the millennium, and resigned themselves to the practice of such of their principles—of sober, simple, pious, peaceful living—as did not offend the state. Menno Simons, a Catholic priest converted to Anabaptism (1531), gave to his Dutch and German followers such skillful guidance that the “Mennonites” survived all tribulations, and formed successful agricultural communities in Holland, Russia, and America. There is no clear filiation between the Continental Anabaptists and the English Quakers and the American Baptists; but the Quaker rejection of war and oaths, and the Baptist insistence on adult baptism probably stem from the same traditions of creed and conduct that in Switzerland, Germany, and Holland took Anabaptist forms.⁶⁹ One quality nearly all these groups had in common—their willingness to bear peaceably with faiths other than their own. The theology that supported them through hardship, poverty, and martyrdom hardly accords with our transient philosophy; but they, too, in their sincerity, devotion, and friendliness, enriched our heritage, and redeemed our tarnished humanity.*