In Our Time - The Siege of Munster

Episode Date: November 5, 2009

Melvyn Bragg and guests Diarmaid MacCulloch, Lucy Wooding and Charlotte Methuen discuss the Siege of Munster in 1534-35.In the early 16th century, the Protestant Reformation revolutionised Christian belief. But one radical group of believers stood out. The Anabaptists rejected infant baptism and formal clergy, and believed that all goods should be held in common. They were also convinced that the Second Coming was imminent.In 1534, in the north-western German city of Munster, a group of Anabaptists attempted to establish the 'New Jerusalem', ready for the Last Days before the coming Apocalypse. But the city was besieged by its ousted Prince-Bishop, and under the reign of its self-appointed King, a 25-year-old Dutchman called Jan van Leyden, it descended into tyranny. Books were burned, dissenters were executed and women were forced to marry. As starvation spread, King Jan lived in luxury with his 16 wives. The horrors of Munster have resonated through the European memory ever since. Diarmaid MacCulloch is Professor of the History of the Church at the University of Oxford; Charlotte Methuen is University Research Lecturer in Ecclesiastical History at the University of Oxford and Lecturer in Church History and Liturgy at Ripon College Cuddesdon; Lucy Wooding is Lecturer in Early Modern History at King's College, London.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio four. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello, in the early 16th century, the Protestant Reformation revolutionised Christian belief. One radical group of believers were the Anabaptists,

who rejected infant baptism and formal clergy and believed that all good should be held in common. They were also convinced, as were others, that the second coming was imminent. In 1534, in the German city of Munster, a group of Anabaptists is tempted to establish a new Jerusalem, ready for the last days before the apocalypse. But the city was besieged and descended into tyranny. Books were burned and women were forced to marry.

As starvation spread, the city's ruler lived in insane luxury. The horrors of the Anabaptists of Munster have resonated through the European memory ever since. We need to discuss the siege of Munster, and its impact are Dermann McCulloch, Professor of the History of the Church at the University of Oxford, Charlotte Methuen, University of Research Lecturer in Ecclesiastical History

at the University of Oxford, and lecturer in church history and liturgy at Rippon College, Cudson, and Lucy Wooding lecturer in early modern history at King's College London. Dermann McCulloch, the Anabaptists emerge out of the earliest of the Protestant Reformation. Can you begin by setting out how far Martin Luther

and the early reformers wanted to go in reforming Christian? before we come to the Anabaptists. Well, what they wanted to do was to make Christianity truly biblical again and go back to the Bible's message, look at the New Testament, and try and line up the church to make it look like the New Testament. So that's Martin Luther, and that's the early reformers.

And all the Anabaptists were doing were taking that idea seriously, trying to take the Bible seriously. And the one Anabaptist is a term of abuse. It means re-baptiser, because what they did was to make people baptize themselves again or be baptized again as adults having been baptized as infants by the old church. And the reason they did that was a biblical one. They looked at the New Testament and they said,

you can't find infant baptism in the New Testament. Therefore, if we're going to be serious about the Bible, we've got to make baptism for believers, for adults. But there are lots of other things that they discovered in the Bible because it is a very remote alien book and the church had domesticated it in various ways. even Martin Luther was horrified by the sheer logic of what they were doing. What did they come out of the Anabaptist?

Did they think they were, that Luther, putting it closely and mildly, would be pleased with what they were doing? They were taking his ideas and, as they were running with them. Did they think they were challenging his ideas? There's an intellectual ferment going on, with the great intellectual capital of the day, and that capital is religion. And can you place them more firmly, Anabaptist Luther, as it were, crudely, started it, Then they come along, they take him seriously.

Well, Luther and reformers like him thought that they were going to overturn the world in all sorts of different ways. And they also had a very powerful vision of themselves as prophets. And profits of what? The end of the world. That's there in Luther's thought. And it's not surprising that people took them seriously. You could say that the first Anabaptists

are simply developing that idea. It's not just about re-baptizing people. It's actually announcing that the world is going to come to an end soon. and there are lots of reasons why you should think that in the early 16th century. The Turks are pressing in on Christendom. They appear to be about to destroy it. Surely that's part of God's plan. So it's sort of taking the logic of what Luther and other great reformers thought

and just applying it and being very excited by it. And the trouble was that Luther by now was beginning to see that things were a little more complicated than that. What other end of the world facts were around at that time, Dermann? Turks are pressing in, they're coming towards Vienna, and there's no reason they should be stopped. Nobody else has stopped them.

And what else? Particular plagues, famines? Well, the usual run on plagues and famines. You don't always have plagues and famines to make you think the end of the world is coming. But there are big events as well, and you need to go a long way from Germany to Spain and look back to 1492,

when the last Islamic bastion fell Granada. That's a great moment for Christendom. It looks as if that's part of God's purpose. And look what happened then. The Jews were expelled from Spain. And that made the Jews think that the world was coming to an end. So really everyone is expecting the end of the world in the early 16th century for all sorts of different reasons.

But this is a society which really feels that it's in crisis. And if there is a crisis of all society, then that must be God's purpose. and this is not just a series of political accidents. Charlotte Matthew, were the Anabaptist simply misinterpreting the Reformation Mainzhram ideas? Or can you tell us how they worked out where they got to why they got? And why infant baptism, why the sort of abolition of, the rejection of infant baptism was such an issue?

Going back to something that Dermott said, they're taking Luther's ideas and they're taking Swingley's ideas, Swingley in Zurich, Luther in Wittenberg, both Swingley and Luther had said that sacraments only work if you believe. And so the logical conclusion for that, for the people who were going to become the Anabaptist, was that therefore if sacraments only work, if they only have whatever effect they have,

and Luther and Svindley would disagree on that if you believe, then you can't say that a child believes. And so you have to argue in that case that you can't baptize until children are adults or you can't baptize people until they're adults until they can actually show that they believe and so what you've got is quite a careful reading

I think of Lutherans doing these ideas but moving them further into the logical consequence as they saw it which would be that without faith the sacraments wouldn't work I think the reason that baptism

becomes such an issue is precisely because plagues infant mortality was enormous. And so for children, for parents of children who had been taught for generations that if their children weren't baptized, they couldn't go to, they wouldn't be saved. To

say that you couldn't baptize children was actually saying something really terrible about the face of their children if they died unbaptized. And it becomes such an issue that in the empire, adult baptism is actually made illegal. So there's

an edict in 1529, which rejects the teachings of the Anabaptists and which makes it a punishable crime to baptise adults rather than baptising children. So it's a religious reason. If people aren't baptized, they won't be able to go to the Kingdom of Heaven. Yeah.

But is there not a political reason as well that once they're baptised as infants, they're inside, they're part of the system, they can't escape to put it, rather crudely. Yes, if you see, certainly for Twingley, baptism became part of saying you are part of the church. and say you're part of Christendom. And the Anabaptists have a very different understanding of what the church is.

They think the church is just for the elect, whereas Swingley and Luther and Calvin later, will say that the church, the external church, the visible church is for everybody. And so that people do need to be drawn into it and drawn into living, therefore, brought in under the civic law, the law of living a good life, living a life according to the laws of the land.

So Anabaptist through their, understanding of baptism also have a different understanding of church and then also a totally different understanding of the way that church and state relate to one another so that you start to see an idea of church emerging

in which it is just the elect it's those who are simply those who are called those who are demonstrating by their lives that they are part of the church who are a part of it and that can be quite separate from the state although in ministry wasn't as we'll come to see just to get it in context we have a

Catholic Church, which is still very, very dominating. We have the breakaway Reformation Church, which is just growing, and a breakaway of that is the Anabaptist, so that a small bit of a small bit. That's right. But nevertheless, given the firmness of their ideology, like many firm ideologies, they gather up other things, so they become not the ideology, but the excuse and the trigger

for a great deal that's going on. That's true, but I think it's quite important to say that are Lutheran churches that are emerging, emerging and our reformed church that are emerging are whole pieces of geography so we've got the Catholic Church the sort of the wider stretch of Christendom but then within that you've got

geographical areas which are Lutheran and then within that you've got breakaway groups or within both of those you've got kind of breakaway groups which are the Anabaptists which are kind of gathering people to them and becoming little groups which are oppressed really right from the beginning

because they pose a threat to the Christendom nature of Lutheranism as well as to the Christendom nature of Catholicism. So these separatist groups become a problem to both Catholics and Lutherans right from the beginning. Lucy Wooding, can we go back to the second coming of Christ in the beginning of the 16th century, the broader sense that David mentioned at the beginning the last days and so on.

But was there a sense in which you had to prepare for the coming of crisis? Is that rather different from the approaching apocalypse? Not for the Anabaptists. I think it's one and the same. And, I mean, if you think of the fuss that we made when the year 2000 dawned, if you translate that kind of anticipation

and anxiety back to the year 1500 and its aftermath, in an age where people are providentially minded, where anything that happens, a thunderstorm, just a bad cold, can be a sign that God is not happy with you. They're very, very hyper-aware that portents and omens and so on are all around them. So I think that for the Anabaptists,

I suppose the real thing I think, what we're looking at here is that you have to see the difference between the Reformation that Luther had in mind and the way that his Reformation message is interpreted by the Anabaptist. I mean, Luther was a radical, no doubt, but he's a theologian, he's a theological radical. Now, a lot of the people we're looking at in this story today are very ordinary people. I mean, Hoffman is a travelling fur trader, some of the characters we're going to come across. One's a baker, one's an apprentice tailor. They don't have the kind of.

intellectual framework to fit their reading of scripture into. They are taking it, and as Dermot says, they're taking it at face value, they're tremendously excited, they take it very, very literally. And so they expect it in a much more immediate fashion than perhaps some of the more educated reformers are expecting it. Just to underline what Charlotte was saying about the geographical nature of it, we're talking largely about Northern Europe, North Germany in terms of the Lutheran, not Northern Europe,

of saying, particularly Germany in the Lutheran and the Anabaptists, and picking up on the Luther for a moment, because they do break away from Luther. After the peasants revealed in the middle of the 1520s, Luther turned out, as far as the peasants were concerned, to be a conservative, to be someone who disowned them. He was very contemptuous of what they stood for and what their views were. And so did that dismay the Anabaptist, that as it were, not so much great leader,

but their inspiration had turned his back on what seemed to be radical views. Well, you would expect it to. And, you know, the 100,000 people who died in the Peasants' War, you know, you'd expect that to have a discouraging effect. I mean, persecution, disaster, violence, you know, from a modern point of view, you'd rather expect people to be daunted by that. For the Anabaptist, it was entirely the opposite. Because, again, if you look into the Bible, the true prophets of God,

the early church, the early apostles, they're all persecuted. So for the Anabaptists, the more people persecuted them, the harsher, the treatment that was meted out of them, the more they were convinced that they were the chosen people and that they were pursuing the right part. So if anything, the defeat, I think, of the Peasance War, actually, you know, strengthens their resolve. It roared through Europe, the Reformation didn't it, extraordinarily,

an extraordinary short time. And the Anabaptist, too, this small, let's call them a sect for the moment, How was it spread? Well... We're overturning a massive institutionalised religion with a way of looking into people's lives, controlling

people's lives, giving them jobs, and yet these people are overturning it in quick order. So how did Anabaptism spread? Well, they're overturning it, but they're overturning it piecemeal. I mean, we talk about the Anabaptists, and actually there are a very disparate

selection of different communities, different groups. I mean, we tend to break it down into three particular geographical areas, the ones in Switzerland, the ones in the sort of central southern German regions, and the ones in North Germany and the Netherlands, which will be mostly concerned with today. But even within those groupings, you know, there's different people following different profits, different leaders and so on.

Well, give us an example through Melchor Hoffman. Well, Melchor Hoffman travels a lot, travels on business. And he's a lay preacher. And like most of these people, he begins as a Lutheran. He's very inspired by the Lutheran message. And then he takes it further. He becomes more and more radical. But traveling around, preaching in marketplaces,

spreading the words, just as the apostles had done in the early church, you know, this whips up excitement, particularly in cities. And I think we've got to emphasize the importance of cities here. Because in a city you will have, you know, greater concentration, of population, obviously, but also of literacy, printing presses, you know, more means of disseminating this kind of message. And again, to take you back to the biblical parallel, if you think of how Christianity was spread in the first place, if you think of the letters

of St. Paul, he's writing to different cities, to Corinth, to Thessalonica, you know, to little groups of beleaguered Christians in different city communities. And so, you know, the Anabaptists, again, think of themselves in that model. Because there is one the biggest city of all in Christian terms is Jerusalem. And the heart of this is Jerusalem. Melchior Hoffman, this furrier who travels, gets the idea in his head that

it's not Minster actually to start with. It's a different city entirely Strasbourg. One of the biggest cities in Europe, one of the great anthropos, places that cultures meet, people meet, trade is done. And also a very tolerant city. Hoffman was just so impressed by that. He thought this must be

the new Jerusalem. Strasbourg was likely to become the centre of the early Reformation, a new Rome, perhaps, a new Geneva, new Wittenberg. And so Hoffman preached Strasbourg in the very early 1530s, and unfortunately the city authorities weren't that impressed by being cast as the new Jerusalem, so they chucked him in jail. Can we begin to focus on Munster now, Damon McCulloch? In the 1530s, what was Munster like and how did the Anabaptists take it over? Well, it had been a Prince bishopric. That is a city of the empire

actually run by its bishop as a secular ruler. And the Prince Bishop had been thrown out. And so now a Lutheran sort of reformation was happening. It's very typical of cities of the empire that this should happen. And then one particular leader of that Lutheran reformation. I think we need to go back a little bit further. I think it's really, the problems with Munster really start and feel. 1525 as the Peasants Revolt comes through, when one of the guilds goes out against one of the local monasteries and attacks it, because they see them as competition.

And they set up, they set up 34 articles which they demand the city of munts, the prince bishop should sign. They throw the chapter out of the city. And that's all happens in 1525. So there are already tensions in Munster in the late 1520s. And what we've got, I think, is a set of tensions between the guilds in particular, the higher clerics, so the higher priests around the bishop, who actually is an ordained bishop. The bishop up until 1532 is not ever ordained bishop,

and the lower clergy and the citizens. So there are quite a lot of different factions in Munster, which are trying to get the upper hand. and that's very typical, as Dermott says, for a pre-Reformation city. I just want to see... Sorry, after you. Well, what we start to see is the Lutheran faction starting to gain the upper hand in 1532, 1533.

Yeah. Can you just give us a bit more about Munster itself down? A lot of our listeners won't know what Munster stood for in North Germany in 15, in the 1530s. How rich, how big, how powerful, so on. Well, big, powerful, right up in the northwest of Germany, and therefore very near the Netherlands, what we would now call the Netherlands or Holland, whatever. And that means that there are a lot of people who have been involved in this world of travelling preachers

in the Netherlands who are actually a long way away from Melchior Hoffman Strasbourg. And so it's very natural for them to look at this great wealthy city with its great cathedral, its walls, and think, well, actually, this is likely to be the New Jerusalem. And it's one Dutchman who actually had that idea. not Srasbourg, as Melchior had said,

but Munster, the local big city. And his name was Jan Mattson. And what did he do? Why do we go on from there? Can we briskly go through? Yeah, I mean, I think it's important to see we've got a particular Lutheran preacher who starts out of Lutheran emerging in Munster,

Bant-Waltman, or Bairndt Varnardt Valdman, who emerges, initially as a Lutheran with Sviglian, with Swinglingan interests, affinities. So he agrees with Luther except on the matters of the sacraments. He becomes the city preacher in 1532. Lutheran, the city council appoint Lutheran preachers to all the city churches. And then the city council say, against the bishop, we want to have Lutheran liturgy. And Ben, Rortman says, well, I don't want to give you Lutheran liturgy by now.

He doesn't approve of interm baptism anymore. He wants to give them an an anabaptist liturgy. And that causes enormous tensions within the city, but it also provides the moment for Jan Matisse, who is looking, as Dermot says, looking for places to preach to, really, to start to send out emissaries. And he sends emissaries into Munster in early 1534, and baptises Ben Waldorf.

So in short order, Munster has been a prince-bishop, Roman Catholic, rich city with a great cathedral. then because of politics of the council and the politics of religion has become Lutheran and the politicians are pressing this on the clergy who run the place and winning all the time and then the next stage very, very quickly, is the Anabaptists see this as a place to seize and they seize it.

All within two years. Yes, although it's interesting to note that the big changes that happen in Munster happen because, well, partly because of a change in the city council, And the city council is elected. So you get a mostly Lutheran council elected of February 33. And then a year later you get another lot of elections. And by that stage, it's an entirely radical city council that's elected.

So it's not as if we're looking at a coup here. There's quite a lot of popular support for what is happening. But I think the radicalizing influence comes in from the Netherlands. And two Yan's here. Mattis and Jan Van Leiden, both of them followers of Hoffman in the first instance. And Jan van Leiden is sort of sent on a exploratory mission. I don't quite get to him yet. We don't want to get to him.

Can we start with Jan Matais, a Dutch preacher, Dermot. He's already been mentioned by Charlotte. They concentrate. Anabaptists are now beginning in that part to concentrate their forces on monster. And Matthias goes in as a place to take over. although the ground has been prepared. So can you tell us a bit about him? It seems to proceed, why I'm picking up figures, seems to proceed by charismatic figures this, doesn't it?

Absolutely. These are people whose charisma is more evident than their theological scholarship or whatever. He's a traveller, he's a tradesman, and the sort of person who can just attract people around him with an arresting simple message, come to the New Jerusalem. And so all sorts of people who have been disappointed, as we've said by Luther, appointed by the mainstream Protestants

are drawn by this man who seems to be saying, yes, I can show you the way forward. The last days are going to happen. Come here and we will make them happen. And what you're doing, of course, is empowering ordinary people in a world where they don't feel they have any power.

And people have been driven into an state of excitement by the fact they've seen the powers of this world being thrown down. The Pope's power going, the Prince Bishop's power going, those Lutheran counsellors being pushed aside by more radical figures. And in that situation, any leader with charisma can step in, and that's what Young did.

Just a second, Lucy, can you just, do we have any record of what he said, Dermann? Do you give us an outline, but do we have any more particular? He's standing a, let us say, in the marketplace. What's he saying? I think Charlotte should tell us that. Charlotte, can you tell us, sir? Thank you very much. I'm not sure I can, actually, partly because I don't think it's Matty's who is doing the standing in the marketplace.

initially. I think what Matisse manages to do is to get Mortman converted, Ben Mortman, who is this very charismatic and very theoretically trained preacher. And we do have sermons by him. And it's fairly clear that his message moves, as I said, he was initially Lutheran, but he then starts to see that we need to be, or he starts to proclaim, as you said, the coming of the New Jerusalem, the coming of, the coming of a community in which all people will be equal.

And so one of the things that happens very early in 1534 is that they declare that all things belong to all people. They have what the Germans call the Guter Gemenschaft, common goods, and they burn the city archives so that all records of ownership, of land ownership, for instance, disappear. So what we're getting from Wartman and then with him, from Matisse's emissaries is a sense that the divisions of society

and we have to think of this as a very, very hierarchical society. We have a clerical hierarchy. We have a secular or a temporal hierarchy and that those divisions are being wiped away and that all people are going to be equal. Lucy are you going to come in? I just wanted to make that same point really that we're looking at a kind of social radicalism here.

I mean, Luthor, when he dresses down, likes to dress in courtly garb. He becomes very much part of the establishment. these people are much more down to earth. Jan Matais has book burnings, everything but the Bible must go. All we need is the Word of God. And of course, the whole idea of having goods in common, not a very appealing idea if you're one of the rich,

but a highly appealing idea if you're one of the poor. And, yeah, this really helps get his message across us. Is it possible to disentangle the religious ideological from the social practical I mean, is it a case of religion triggering or being used by people who want change for different other than religious reasons? I don't think that they would have understood that question in the way you put it. Religion is the way that they express all the most important things in their lives. It's not some hobby.

It's how they see the world. And those who are at the bottom of the pile are now being given. a message that Jesus Christ does not want a pile. He wants people all in the same place because they're all children of God. And that's why we get back to Luther. Luther had written in 1520 a text called the

freedom of a Christian. And these people take that freedom very, very seriously indeed. And so there's, but they take it seriously in a way that Luther didn't anticipate them taking it. That is, they take it seriously not just as throwing down the difference between spiritual and temple,

but throwing down the differences of temple hierarchy as well. Well, let's turn to the siege now. In 1534 in February, the ousted Prince Bishop of Montser, Francis von Wulbeck, he laid siege to the city and he laid siege to the city for 18 months. So that is the rest of our story.

But also Lutherans alongside him, that's the extraordinary thing, that the Reformation was now so panic-stricken about the Reformation that Protestants were helping a Catholic Prince Bishop try and win back this city. Briefly, at that time,

was Munster thought to be a test case? If we can get Munster, we can stop the rot. Oh yes, very much so. Because there's nothing quite like what was happening in Munster anywhere else in Europe at the time, that these obvious radicals were seizing a reformation and discrediting it, of course, in the eyes of the rulers of Europe. That was terrifying for Luther and his friends

that their Reformation had been hijacked by subversives. And we had John Matisse inside the... city. He predicted that the second coming would happen at Easter in 1534. It didn't. So what did you do? It didn't. Well, the good thing about prophecies is there's quite a few prophecies in the Old Testament which actually don't come true.

So, you know, there's some inspired preaching. So we've got to concentrate, Anno Mouton, at the moment. What did John, what did he do? He I know what it does, but I'm not used to say. He had another revelation, and the revelation was that he would go out to face the bishop's forces, just him and 12 chosen apostles beside him.

Was this a deliberate number? It would have been, isn't it? Yeah, I think people think in these very symbolic terms. And that I think he saw himself as David going out to encounter Goliath. And I think, or he said that this would unleash a kind of apocalyptic confrontation and that, you know, the last days would start to unfold from this. And, I mean, it's actually quite a pathetic scene in many ways. By the standards of the time he's quite old, he's in his fifties,

on a lone horse riding out. And he must have had, in his heart, the conviction that, you know, this is what God wanted him to do. With the 12 behind him? He must have been terrified. I don't know. Perhaps they too were carried forward by their godly zeal. And they were hacked to pieces.

and Munster had lost its profit. So, you know, consternation then followed. Well, what, besides consternation, what specifically followed, do you know, well, someone else emerged. If you lost a profit, you've got to have another one in this situation. And another charismatic young man in this case, young Bocchison, stepped in to be the new king. And here was a man who was a man who was,

certainly an idealist, but with a very strong idea of what this new community should be like. And that image of David, which you've already heard about, David and Goliath, well, Jan stepped into this role. He came from Leiden, hence in history he's known as

John of Leiden, and that name struck terror into Europe for the next century or so. And he took over Matisse's wife, Davina, who came from Harlem, and Jan van Leiden then becomes the person who sees Munster

through the next 14 months, 15 months of the remaining siege. On one level, he was 25, he was born in the same year as Calvin, 1509. He, on one level, was clearly a very good organiser. They held the siege for until the following June, which is quite extraordinary, given the weight of the powers that were outside the city.

He was also a tyrant. There's no question about that. and one of the things that he did, Matisse having introduced the sharing of goods, by now in Munster there were three many times as many women as men in the city, and partly in order to keep the women under control, Jan van Lydden introduces share polygamy and a forcible marriage for the women who are,

some of whom have been left behind by their husbands to look after the property in Munster, some of whom are, Anna Baptist, sympathises themselves, who have come to join to be a part of the New Jerusalem. And Jan van Leiden introduces polygamy. He sets himself up in Matisse's house with a great palace next door for his own 16 wives, all of whom except one were under 20, interestingly.

He keeps a very, very strong, strict discipline within the city. He stops torture happening, but he's quite capable of summarily executing anybody who stands against his leadership and the situation in the city really starts to deteriorate the siege starts to bite and things get very difficult indeed. Yeah, but he's not just a tyrant,

he's a very charismatic tyrant and he has an extraordinary sense of theatre. He's supposed to have dabbled in kind of theatricals before this particular stage in his career in Munster. And, I mean, obviously, Obviously, the two eyewitness accounts we have of what happened in Munster are both quite biased, because obviously they were trying to distance themselves from what, and condemn what happened. But according to one account, he appeared stark naked in the marketplace one day.

And nakedness, of course, is a sign of purity, you know, going back to Adam and Eve before the fall. So, you know, this was, but it's going to get anyone's attention by any means. And he then went into a coma or a trance for three days during which time he could, speak, so he claimed, and then emerged from that to say, well, you know, we're going to have a new system, they get rid of the council, they bring in 12 elders and so on and so forth, but he had a wonderful way of kind of, or a chilling way, if you like, of trying to sort of get people ready for the latest revelation and then unleash it upon them. He also issued a gold coinage, which he distributed all through Europe, and you can still

see these coins with his head on, proclaiming that message of the last days. So this really is a statement that this is a king for all Europe, for all Christend, for all the world. Can we just dwell a little without being too wieristic about it on the horrors? It's known for the horrors. Now the horrors happened after the seizure of war, but what was particularly

horrific about what he was doing inside that city, don't it? Well, I think it's the insane lack of proportion that the city is starving and yet the court of young at the heart of it, those wives, are not starving. There's an enormous luxury at the centre of it.

they gather together a court to honour God, because this is God's representative on earth, but around them people are just dying of hunger and thirst. People are being executed if they stand up, if they express their despair. It's a nightmare world. It reminds one of Campochea in the 1970s. And they say that they took the wash the whitewash off the walls of the churches and sold it to people as milk.

I mean, it's the level of starvation amongst the people. people themselves was just horrendous. The word proto-fascist has been used, can you give us any indications of why that would be a relevant term? Well, obviously, there are some parallels. The charisma,

whipping up the crowd hysteria, the brutality, and certainly sort of 20th century interpretations of what happened in Munster very much drew that parallel. There's a famous, novel of 1937, Bockelson, which draws a very direct parallel between Jan van Leiden and Hitler, both outsiders dropouts in many ways, illegitimate, coming into Germany, you know, with this sort of

evil dream, this evil ambition. And when the powers around Hitler discovered that that comparison had been made, they got rid of the author. The author was taken to Dachau in 1944 and murdered. but I think it's too easy a comparison really because you need to put it into 16th century context and it's not exactly totalitarian you know it's it's something

too religious for that and I mean people like Jan Matais were capable of extraordinary brutality but were then capable of that sort of extraordinary act of self-sacrifice when he rides out and has himself butchered so there's something a little different going on, I think. I'd say it's Maoism rather than fascism. There's not racism there's an idealism,

there's an absolute conviction that you can change society completely and to the end justify the means in that. Given the energy that was going on inside the city, they did last out for 18 months against an encircling army, quite a powerful army. How did they manage to do with that, Dermann? Well, partly, I suppose one has to say by fear, but partly because they are very well organized, they have a charismatic leader, they have the resources of a very wealthy city, it takes quite a while to get through those resources, very well defended city, and they added to the defences. So it's a combination of the fact you can't get out, and so there's a desperation. You've got to defend the city unless you surrender. And of course they knew what would happen when they surrendered. It would be death in very, very, very. unpleasant ways. And so they did

surrender and what happened? They didn't exactly surrender. They were betrayed. I mean, this is the interesting thing, but they did manage to keep this defence up for this extraordinary length of time. And partly, of course, the bishops' troops are a rather motley bunch. I mean, some of them are actually...

But anyway, let's move on. The city fell, yeah. The city fell because it was betrayed and the bishops men were let in and there was horrible carnage. thousands of people we're not sure of the exact number but certainly thousands of people probably died

and the ringleaders were kept back for a more symbolic end for a very unpleasant execution in January of 1536 where they were effectively tortured to death because that point had to be made it is really chilling going to Minster because you can still see the ions which were

heated to red hot with which their flesh was torn and pinched and still see the cages in which their bodies were then hung on the Lambertus Church in Munster as you walk up the main shopping street in Munster there are the three cages in which the bodies were hung on the church tower.

So what impact did that have on Anabaptism? Well it gave it an image for the rest of the century of crazed barbarity which was actually completely different from the nature of most Anabaptists. There was a certain terrorist aftermath in the Netherlands

There was an organisation called the Battenburgers who did go on, attacking clergy and so on. But largely, Anabaptists were appalled by what some of their number had done. A priest from Friesland called Meno Simmons gathered the shocked remnants and committed them to pacifism. So the future of Anabaptism

and all the radical strands of religion around it was a commission for pacifism for the future, which is still there. They're passionately committed against violence. and that's a result of this particular trauma. What did the conquest, let's say that, of Munster, what effect did that have on the Protestant Reformation, on Calvin, for instance, on the Protestant Reformation?

Made it terrified of that sort of disorder, and Calvin in particular absolutely terrified. So you find, for instance, in the preface to Calvin's Institutes, which is going to be published in 1536, so just 18 months later, a year later, you find him saying quite, explicitly in his preference to preface dedicated to the King of France.

We're not the kind of Protestants who are anarchists. We're not the kind of Protestants who are going to bring this order. We are Protestants who respect the order of government. And so I think it really strengthens the Magisterial, the Prince of the Reformation that is supporting temporal order. What other effects spread through Europe from this terrible event? Well, I think it's a gift to propagandists and whether you are a Catholic critical of all Protestants,

you know, you can use it to good effect, as indeed one of the first histories of it did, or whether you're deeply worried by the divisions within Protestantism, you know, you can use it as a warning, this is where things will go. And I think you can use it also as a tool of what we would call, I suppose, social repression. And it's interesting that there's a lot of women involved in Munster,

and a lot of women who speak out. and that is seen as subversive, dangerous. And so I guess it helps people to reinforce the more patriarchal message, which is also within Protestantism. And so Anabaptists, if they still have that burning zeal, internalize it and move away and separate themselves off. But the violence and the pacifism look like the contradictory. And in actual fact, I think they're the same thing.

Anabaptists want to be apart from society. society, they reject the status quo and they just find a different way of doing it. Was there a sigh of relief, as it were, over Europe, Dammit, when Munster fell, that cancer had been removed and the savagery of the slaughter inside and the torture and so on was a good cleansing. Was that the feeling? There certainly was that feeling. Rulers all over Europe now could see that Protestants were okay. This sort of radicalism had been opposed by Protestants as much as it had been

by Catholics, and that's very significant. And you get a sense within Munster itself of wanting now to preserve the new now we had a Catholicised status quo. So but the person who, the man, the Stutthalter, the man who's in charge of the city, when

some of the women from Munster who had been exiled after the fall of the siege starts to come back the following August he gets very nervous and they immediately take measures to make sure that these women are not going to restart something up again. As the women

as you mentioned Lucy and we didn't mention enough in the programme did play a strong part that didn't they had a place in the ana-paptism scheme of things yeah they did and it's part of the ana-baptism appeal they appeal to sort of basic pleasures food and sex you know for hidden in so many ways by the Catholic Church, allowed by the Anapaptists.

And it's interesting that at the end, there's about 3,000 women rounded up, and the bishop says, well, if you recant, you can go free. And of course, many do, but many don't. Many choose death. They're true to the cause right to the end. Well, thank you all very much, a bit of a shaker. Thank you all very much, indeed. Thank you, Charlotte Matthewan, Lucy Wooding, and Dermott McCulloch,

Next week we'll be talking about the discovery of radiation through Michael Faraday, James Laughan Maxwell, Rutherford and Neil Spaw. And thank you very much for listening. If you've enjoyed this BBC Radio 4 podcast, why not try BBC Radio 3's Arts and Ideas podcast, which includes the highlights of this year's free-thinking festival. To find out more, visit BBC.co.com.uk forward slash podcasts.