6. Totalitarian Communism in Münster
Northwestern Germany in that era was dotted by a number of small ecclesiastical states,
each run by a prince-bishop. The state was run by aristocratic clerics who elected one
of their own as bishop. Generally these bishops were secular lords who were not ordained.
By bargaining over taxes, the capital city of each of these states had usually wrested
for itself a degree of autonomy.
The clergy, which constituted the ruling elite of the state, exempted themselves from taxation
while imposing very heavy taxes on the rest of the populace.
Generally, the capital cities came to be run by their own power elite, an oligarchy of
of Guilds, which used government power to cartelize their various professions and occupations.
The largest of these ecclesiastical states in northwest Germany was the Bishopric of
Münster and its capital city of Münster, a town of some 10,000 people, was run by the
town guilds.
The Münster guilds were particularly exercised by the economic competition of the monks who
who were not forced to obey guild restrictions and regulations.
During the Peasants' War, the capital cities of several of these states, including Münster,
took the opportunity to rise in revolt, and the Bishop of Münster was forced to make
numerous concessions.
With the crushing of the rebellion, however, the bishop took back the concessions and reestablished
the old regime.
By 1532, however, the guilds, supported by the people, were able to fight back and take
over the town, soon forcing the bishop to recognize Münster officially as a Lutheran
city.
It was not destined to remain so for long, however.
From all over the northwest, hordes of Anabaptist enthusiasts flooded into Münster, seeking
the onset of the New Jerusalem.
From the Northern Netherlands came hundreds of Melchiorites, followers of the itinerant
visionary Melchior Hoffman.
Hoffman, an uneducated furriers apprentice from Swabia in southern Germany, had for years
wandered through Europe preaching the eminence of the Second Coming, which he had concluded
from his researches would occur in 1533, the 15th centenary of the death of Jesus.
Melchiorism had flourished in the northern Netherlands, and many adepts now poured into
Münster, rapidly converting the poorer classes of the town.
Meanwhile, the Anabaptist cause in Münster received a shot in the arm when the eloquent
and popular young minister, Bernt Rothman, a highly educated son of a town blacksmith,
converted to Anabaptism.
Originally a Catholic priest, Rothman had become a friend of Luther and the head of the Lutheran movement in Minster.
Converted to Anabaptism, Rothman lent his eloquent preaching to the cause of Communism as it had supposedly existed in the primitive Christian Church,
holding everything in common with no mine and thine, and giving to each according to his need.
In response to Rothman's reputation, thousands flocked to Münster, hundreds of the poor, the rootless, those hopelessly in debt, and people who, having run through the fortunes of their parents, were earning nothing by their own industry.
People in general who were attracted by the idea of plundering and robbing the clergy and the richer burghers.
The horrified burghers tried to drive out Rothman and the Anabaptist preachers, but to no avail.
In 1533, Melchior Hoffman, sure that the Second Coming would happen any day, returned to Strasbourg, where he had had great success, calling himself the Prophet Elias.
Hoffman, for all the similarities with the others, was a peaceful man who counseled nonviolence to his followers. After all, if Jesus were imminently due to return, why commit against unbelievers?
Hoffman's imprisonment, and, of course, the fact that 1533 came and went without a second coming, discredited Melchior, and so his Munster followers turned to far more violent post-millennialist prophets, who believed that they would have to establish the kingdom by fire and sword.
The new leader of the coercive Anabaptists was a Dutch baker from Harlem, one Jan Mathis.
Reviving the spirit of Thomas Münzer, Mathis sent out missionaries or apostles from Harlem
to re-baptize everyone they could, and to appoint bishops with the power to baptize.
When the new apostles reached Münster in early 1534, they were greeted, as we might expect,
Another apostle soon arrived, a young man of twenty-five who had been converted and
baptized by Mathis only a couple of months earlier.
This was Jan Bockelsen, who was soon to become known in song and story as Johann of Leiden.
Though handsome and eloquent, Bockelsen was a troubled soul, having been born the illegitimate
son of the mayor of a Dutch village by a woman serf from Westphalia.
Bockelsen began life as an apprentice tailor, married a rich widow, but then went bankrupt
when he set himself up as a self-employed merchant.
In February 1534, Bockelsen won the support of the wealthy cloth merchant Bernt Knipperdahlink,
the powerful leader of the Münster guilds, and shrewdly married Knipperdahlink's daughter.
On 8 February, son-in-law and father-in-law ran wildly through the streets together, calling
upon everyone to repent.
After much frenzy, mass writhing on the ground and the seeing of apocalyptic visions, the
Anabaptists rose up and seized the town hall, winning legal recognition for their movement.
In response to this successful uprising, many wealthy Lutherans left town, and the Anabaptists,
feeling exuberant, sent messengers to surrounding areas, summoning everyone to come to Munster.
The rest of the world, they proclaimed, would be destroyed in a month or two.
Only Munster would be saved to become the new Jerusalem.
Thousands poured in from as far away as Flanders and Freesia in the northern Netherlands.
As a result, the Anabaptists soon won a majority on the town council, and this success was
was followed three days later on 24 February by an orgy of looting of books, statues and
paintings from the churches and throughout the town. Soon, Ion Mathis himself arrived,
a tall gaunt man with a long black beard. Mathis, aided by Bockelson, quickly became
the virtual dictator of the town. The coercive Anabaptists had at last seized a city. The
The Great Communist Experiment could now begin.
The first mighty program of this rigid theocracy was, of course, to purge the New Jerusalem
of the unclean and the ungodly as a prelude to their ultimate extermination throughout
the world.
Mathis called, therefore, for the execution of all remaining Catholics and Lutherans,
But Kniper Dahlink's cooler head prevailed, since he warned Mathis that slaughtering all
other Christians than themselves might cause the rest of the world to become edgy, and
they might all come and crush the new Jerusalem in its cradle.
It was therefore decided to do the next best thing, and on 27 February the Catholics and
Lutherans were driven out of the city in the midst of a horrendous snowstorm.
In a deed-prefiguring communist Cambodia, all non-anabaptists, including old people,
invalids, babies and pregnant women, were driven into the snowstorm, and all were forced
to leave behind all their money, property, food and clothing.
The remaining Lutherans and Catholics were compulsorily re-baptized, and all refusing
this ministration were put to death.
The expulsion of all Lutherans and Catholics was enough for the bishop, who began a long
military siege of the town the next day on 28 February.
With every person drafted for siege work, John Mathis launched his totalitarian communist
social revolution.
The first step was to confiscate the property of the expelled.
All their worldly goods were placed in central depots, and the poor were encouraged to take
according to their needs, the needs to be interpreted by seven appointed deacons chosen
by Mathis.
When a blacksmith protested at these measures imposed by Dutch foreigners, Mathis arrested
the courageous Smithy.
Summoning the entire population of the town, Mathis personally stabbed, shot and killed
the Godless Blacksmith, as well as throwing into prison several eminent citizens who had
protested against his treatment.
The crowd was warned to profit by this public execution, and they obediently sang a hymn
in honor of the killing.
A key part of the Anabaptist reign of terror in Munster was now unveiled.
Unairingly, just as in the case of the Cambodian Communists four and a half centuries later,
the new ruling elite realized that the abolition of the private ownership of money would reduce
the population to total slavish dependence on the men of power.
And so Mathis, Rothman and others launched a propaganda campaign that it was unchristian
to own money privately, that all money should be held in common, which in practice meant
that all money whatsoever must be handed over to Mathis and his ruling clique. Several Anabaptists
who kept or hid their money were arrested and then terrorized into crawling to Mathis
on their knees, begging forgiveness and beseeching him to intercede with God on their behalf.
This then graciously forgave the sinners.
After two months of severe and unrelenting pressure, a combination of propaganda about
the Christianity of abolishing private money, and threats and terror against those who failed
to surrender, the private ownership of money was effectively abolished in Münster.
The government seized all the money and used it to buy or hire goods from the outside world.
Wages were doled out in kind by the only remaining employer, the theocratic Anabaptist state.
Food was confiscated from private homes and rationed according to the will of the government deacons.
Also, to accommodate the immigrants, all private homes were effectively communized,
with everyone permitted to quarter themselves anywhere.
It was now illegal to close, let alone lock, doors.
Communal dining halls were established where people ate together to readings from the Old Testament.
This compulsory communism and reign of terror was carried out in the name of community and Christian love.
All this communization was considered the first giant steps toward total egalitarian communism,
where, as Rothman put it, all things were to be in common, there was to be no private property and nobody was to do any more work but simply trust in God.
The workless part, of course, somehow never arrived.
A pamphlet sent in October 1534 to other Anabaptist communities hailed the new order of Christian love through terror.
For not only have we put all our belongings into a common pool under the care of deacons,
and live from it according to our need.
We praise God through Christ with one heart and mind, and are eager to help one another
with every kind of service.
And accordingly, everything which has served the purposes of self-seeking and private property
such as buying and selling, working for money, taking interest and practicing usury, or eating
and drinking the sweat of the poor, and indeed everything which offends against love, all
such things are abolished amongst us by the power of love and community.
With high consistency, the Anabaptists of Münster made no pretense about preserving
Communizing Intellectual Freedom While Communizing All Material Property.
For the Anabaptists boasted of their lack of education and claimed that it was the unlearned
and the unwashed who would be the elect of the world.
The Anabaptist mob took particular delight in burning all the books and manuscripts in
in the Cathedral Library, and, finally, in mid-March 1534, Mathis outlawed all books
except the Good Book, the Bible.
To symbolize a total break with the sinful past, all privately and publicly owned books
were thrown upon a great communal bonfire.
All this ensured, of course, that the only theology or interpretation of the Scriptures
Open to the Munsterites was that of Mathis and the other Anabaptist preachers.
At the end of March, however, Mathis' swollen hubris laid him low. Convinced at Easter time
that God had ordered him and a few of the faithful to lift the bishop's siege and liberate
the town, Mathis and a few others rushed out of the gates at the besieging army and were
were literally hacked to pieces.
In an age when the idea of full religious liberty was virtually unknown, one can imagine
that any Anabaptists whom the more orthodox Christians might get hold of would not earn
a very kindly reward.
The death of Mathis left Münster in the hands of young Bockelsen.
And if Mathis had chastised the people of Münster with whips, Bockelsen would chastise
Bockelsson wasted little time in mourning his mentor.
He preached to the faithful, God will give you another prophet who will be more powerful.
How could this young enthusiast top his master?
Early in May, Bockelsson caught the attention of the town by running naked through the streets
in a frenzy, falling then into a silent three-day ecstasy.
When he rose again, he announced to the entire populace a new dispensation that God had revealed
to him.
With God at his elbow, Bockelsen abolished the old functioning town offices of council
and burgomasters, and installed a new ruling council of twelve elders, with himself, of
course, as the eldest of the elders.
The elders were now given total authority over the life and death, the property and
the spirit of every inhabitant of Münster. A strict system of forced labor was imposed,
with all artisans not drafted into the military, now public employees, working for the community
for no monetary reward. This meant, of course, that the guilds were now abolished.
The totalitarianism in Munster was now complete.
Death was now the punishment for virtually every independent act, good or bad.
Capital punishment was decreed for the high crimes of murder, theft, lying, avarice and
quarreling.
Also death was decreed for every conceivable kind of insubordination, the young against
against their parents, wives against their husbands, and, of course, anyone at all against
the chosen representatives of God on earth, the totalitarian government of Münster.
Berndt Knipperdahlink was appointed High Executioner to enforce the decrees.
The only aspect of life previously left untouched was sex, and this now came under the hammer
of Bockelsen's Total Despotism. The only sexual relation permitted was marriage between two
Anabaptists. Sex in any other form, including marriage with one of the godless, was a capital
crime. But soon Bockelsen went beyond this rather old-fashioned credo and decided to
establish compulsory polygamy in Münster. Since many of the expellees had left their
Compulsory polygamy was a bit too much for many of the Münsterites, who launched a rebellion
in Protest. The rebellion, however, was quickly crushed, and most of the rebels put to death.
Execution was also the fate of any further dissenters. And so, by August 1534, polygamy
was coercively established in Münster.
As one might expect, young Bockelsen took an instant liking to the new regime, and before
For long he had a harem of fifteen wives, including Devara, the beautiful young widow
of Jan Mathis.
The rest of the male population also began to take to the new decree as ducks to water.
Many of the women did not take as kindly to the new dispensation, and so the elders passed
a law ordering compulsory marriage for every woman under, and presumably also over, a certain
in Age, which usually meant being a compulsory third or fourth wife.
Moreover, since marriage among the godless was not only invalid, but also illegal, the
wives of the expelees now became fair game and were forced to marry good Anabaptists.
Refusal to comply with the new law was punishable, of course, by death, and a number of women
Women were actually executed as a result. Those old wives who resented the new wives
coming into their household were also suppressed, and their quarreling was made a capital crime.
Many women were executed for quarreling. But the long arm of the State could reach only
just so far, and in their first internal setback, Bockelson and his men had to relent and permit
Divorce.
Indeed, the ceremony of marriage was now outlawed totally, and divorce made very easy.
As a result, Münster now fell under a regime of what amounted to compulsory free love.
And so, within the space of only a few months, a rigid puritanism had been transmuted into
a regime of compulsory promiscuity.
Meanwhile, Bockelson proved to be an excellent organizer of a besieged city. Compulsory labor, military and civilian, was strictly enforced.
The bishop's army consisted of poorly and irregularly paid mercenaries, and Bockelson was able to induce many of them to desert by offering them regular pay.
Pay for money, that is, in contrast to Bockelson's rigid internal moneyless communism. Drunken
ex-mercenaries were, however, shot immediately. When the bishop fired pamphlets into the
town offering a general amnesty in return for surrender, Bockelson made reading such
pamphlets a crime punishable by, of course, death.
At the end of August 1534, the bishop's armies were in disarray and the siege temporarily
lifted.
Jan Bockelsen seized this opportunity to carry his egalitarian communist revolution one step
further.
He had himself named King and Messiah of the Last Days.
Proclaiming himself King might have appeared tacky and perhaps even illegitimate.
And so, Bockelsen had one Duesentschur, a goldsmith from a nearby town and a self-proclaimed
prophet, do the job for him.
At the beginning of September, Duesentschur announced to one and all a new revelation.
Jan Bockelsen was to be king of the whole world, the heir of King David, to keep that
throne until God himself reclaimed his kingdom.
Unsurprisingly, Bockelsen confirmed that he himself had had the very same revelation.
Duesentschur then presented a sword of justice to Bockelsen, anointed him, and proclaimed
him king of the world.
Bockelsen, of course, was momentarily modest.
He prostrated himself and asked guidance from God.
But he made sure to get that guidance swiftly.
And it turned out, mirabile dictu, that ducenture was right.
Bockelson proclaimed to the crowd that God had now given him power over all nations of
the earth.
Anyone who might dare to resist the will of God shall without delay be put to death with
the sword.
And so, despite a few mumbled protests, Jan Bockelson was declared king of the world and
and Messiah, and the Anabaptist preachers of Münster explained to their bemused flock
that Bockelsen was indeed the Messiah as foretold in the Old Testament.
Bockelsen was rightfully ruler of the entire world, both temporal and spiritual.
It often happens with egalitarians that a whole, a special escape hatch from the drab
Uniformity of Life is created for themselves. And so it was with King Bockelson. It was,
after all, important to emphasize in every way the importance of the Messiah's advent.
And so Bockelson wore the finest robes, metals and jewelry. He appointed courtiers and gentlemen
at arms, who also appeared in splendid finery. King Bockelson's chief wife, DeVara, was proclaimed
Queen of the World, and she too was dressed in great finery and had a suite of courtiers
and followers.
This luxurious court of some two hundred people was housed in fine mansions requisitioned
for the occasion.
A throne draped with a cloth of gold was established in the public square, and King Bockelson would
hold court there, wearing a crown and carrying a scepter.
A royal bodyguard protected the entire procession. All Bockelsen's loyal aides were suitably
rewarded with high status and finery. Knipperdahlink was the chief minister and Rothman royal orator.
If communism is the perfect society, somebody must be able to enjoy its fruits, and who
do better but the messiah and his courtiers.
Though private property and money was abolished, the confiscated gold and silver was now minted
into ornamental coins for the glory of the new king.
All horses were confiscated to build up the king's armed squadron.
Also names in Minster were transformed, all the streets were renamed, Sundays and feast
Days were abolished, and all newborn children were named personally by the king in accordance
with a special pattern.
In a starving slave society such as Communist Minster, not all citizens could live in the
luxury enjoyed by the king and his court.
Indeed, the new ruling class was now imposing a rigid class oligarchy seldom seen before.
So that the king and his nobles might live in high luxury, rigorous austerity was imposed
on everyone else in Münster.
The subject population had already been robbed of their houses and much of their food.
Now all superfluous luxury among the masses was outlawed.
Clothing and bedding were severely rationed, and all surplus turned over to King Bockelsen
under pain of death.
Every house was searched thoroughly and eighty-three wagonloads of surplus clothing collected.
It is not surprising that the deluded masses of Münster began to grumble at being forced
to live in abject poverty while the king and his courtiers lived in extreme luxury on the
proceeds of their confiscated belongings.
And so Bockelson had to beam them some propaganda to explain the new system.
The explanation was this.
It was all right for Bockelson to live in pomp and luxury because he was already completely
dead to the world and the flesh.
Since he was dead to the world, in a deep sense his luxury didn't count.
In the style of every guru who has ever lived in luxury among his credulous followers, he
He explained that for him material objects had no value.
How such logic can ever fool anyone passes understanding.
More important, Bockelsen assured his subjects that he and his court were only the advance
guard of the new order.
Soon, they too would be living in the same millennial luxury.
Under their new order, the people of Münster would forge outward, armed with God's will,
and conquer the entire world, exterminating the unrighteous, after which Jesus would return
and they would all live in luxury and perfection.
Equal communism with great luxury for all would then be achieved.
Their descent meant, of course, greater terror, and King Bockelson's reign of love intensified
its intimidation and slaughter.
As soon as he proclaimed the monarchy, the prophet Duesenshur announced a new divine
revelation.
All who persisted in disagreeing with or disobeying King Bockelson would be put to death and their
very memory blotted out.
They would be extirpated forever.
Some of the main victims to be executed were women.
Women who were killed for denying their husbands their marital rights, for insulting a preacher,
or for daring to practice bigamy, polygamy, of course, being solely a male privilege.
Despite his continual preaching about marching forth to conquer the world, King Bockelson
Men was not crazy enough to attempt that feat, especially since the bishop's army was again
besieging the town. Instead, he shrewdly used much of the expropriated gold and silver to
send out apostles and pamphlets to surrounding areas of Europe, attempting to rouse the masses
for Anabaptist revolution. The propaganda had considerable effect, and serious mass
Serious risings occurred throughout Holland and northwestern Germany during January 1535.
A thousand armed Anabaptists gathered under the leadership of someone who called himself
Christ, Son of God.
And serious Anabaptist rebellions took place in West Frisia, in the town of Minden, and
even in the great city of Amsterdam, where the rebels managed to capture the town hall.
All these risings were eventually suppressed with the considerable help of betrayal to
the various authorities of the names of the rebels and of the location of their munition
dumps.
The princes of northwestern Europe by this time had had enough, and all the states of
the Holy Roman Empire agreed to supply troops to crush the monstrous and hellish regime
at Münster.
For the first time in January 1535, Münster was totally and successfully blockaded and
cut off from the outside world.
The establishment then proceeded to starve the population of Münster into submission.
Food shortages appeared immediately and the crisis was met with characteristic vigor.
All remaining food was confiscated, and all horses killed, for the benefit of feeding
the king, his royal court, and his armed guards.
At all times the king and his court ate and drank well, while famine and devastation raged
throughout the town of Münster, and the masses ate literally everything, even inedible, they
could lay their hands on.
King Bockelsen kept his rule by beaming continual propaganda and promises to the starving masses.
God would definitely save them by Easter or else he would have himself burnt in the public
square.
When Easter came and went, Bockelsen craftily explained that he had meant only spiritual
salvation.
He promised that God would change cobblestones to bread, and, of course, that did not come
The poor hapless people of Minster were now doomed totally. The bishop kept firing leaflets
Bockelsons into the town, promising a general amnesty if the people would only revolt and
depose King Bockelsons and his court and hand them over.
To guard against such a threat, Bockelsons stepped up his reign of terror still further.
In early May, he divided the town into twelve sections and placed a duke over each one with
an armed force of twenty-four men.
The Dukes were foreigners like himself.
As Dutch immigrants, they were likely to be loyal to Bockelsen.
Each duke was strictly forbidden to leave his section, and the dukes in turn prohibited
any meetings whatsoever of even a few people.
No one was allowed to leave town, and any caught plotting to leave, helping anyone else
Boeckles to leave, or criticizing the king, was instantly beheaded, usually by King Boeckleson himself.
By mid-June such deeds were occurring daily, with the body often quartered and nailed up
as a warning to the masses.
Boeckleson would undoubtedly have let the entire population starve to death rather than
surrender, but two escapees betrayed weak spots in the town's defense, and on the night
On the night of June 24, 1535, the nightmare New Jerusalem at last came to a bloody end.
The last several hundred Anabaptist fighters surrendered under an amnesty and were promptly
massacred, and Queen DeVara was beheaded.
As for ex-King Bockelsen, he was led about on a chain, and the following January, along
and with Knipperdahlink was publicly tortured to death and their bodies suspended in cages
from a church tower.
The old establishment of Münster was duly restored and the city became Catholic once
more.
The stars were once again in their courses and the events of 1534 and 1535 understandably
led to an abiding distrust of mysticism and enthusiast movements throughout Protestant Europe.
7. The Roots of Messianic Communism
Anabaptist Communism did not spring out of thin air at the advent of the Reformation.
Its roots can be traced back to an extraordinarily influential late 12th century Italian mystic, Joachim of Fior, 1145-1202.
Joachim was an abbot and hermit in Calabria, in southern Italy.
It was Joachim who launched the idea that hidden in the Bible, for those who had the wit to see, were prophecies foretelling world history.
Concentrating on the murky book of Revelation, Joachim decreed that history was destined
to move through three successive ages, each of them ruled by one of the members of the
Holy Trinity.
The first age, the age of the Old Testament, was the era of the Father, or the Law, the
age of fear and servitude.
The second age, the era of the Son, was the age of the New Testament, the era of faith
Faith and Submission.
Mystics generally think in threes, and Joachim was moved to herald the coming of the third
and final age, the age of the Holy Spirit, the era of perfect joy, love and freedom,
and the end of human history.
It would be the age of the end of property, because everyone would live in voluntary poverty,
and everyone could easily do so because there would be no work, since people would be too
be totally liberated from their physical bodies. Possessing only spiritual bodies, there would
be no need to eat food or do much else, either. The world would be, in the paraphrase of Norman
Cone, one vast monastery in which all men would be contemplative monks, wrapped continuously
in mystical ecstasy until the day of the Last Judgment.
Joachim's vision already resonates with the later Marxian dialectic of the three allegedly
inevitable stages of history, primitive communism, class society and then finally the realm of
perfect freedom, total communism and the withering away of the division of labor and the end
of human history.
As with so many chileasts, Joachim was sure of the date of the advent of the final age
and, typically, it was coming soon, in his view sometime in the first half of the next,
the thirteenth century.
The Joachite bizarreries quickly exerted enormous influence, particularly in Italy, in Germany
and in the rigorous wing of the new Franciscan order.
A new ingredient to this witch's brew was added a little later by a learned professor
of theology at the great University of Paris at the end of the 12th century. Once a great
favorite of the French royal court, Amalric's odd doctrines were condemned by the pope,
and after a forced public recantation, Amalric died shortly thereafter in 1206 or 1207. His
His doctrines were then picked up by a small secret group of erudite clerical disciples,
the Amarians, most of whom had been students in theology at Paris.
Centered at the important commercial cloth-making town of Troyes in Champagne, the Amarian
missionaries influenced many people and distributed popular works of theology in the vernacular.
Their leader was the priest William Arifax, who was either a goldsmith or an alchemist
attempting to transform base metals into gold. Subjected to espionage by the Bishop of Paris,
the 14 Amaurians were all rounded up and either imprisoned for life or burnt at the stake,
depending on whether they recanted their heresies. Most of them refused to recant.
The Amaurians, like Joachim, propounded the three ages of human history, but they added
some spice to it.
Each age apparently enjoyed its own incarnation.
For the Old Testament, it was Abraham, and perhaps some other patriarchs.
For the New Testament, the incarnation was, of course, Jesus.
And now, for the dawning age of the Holy Spirit, the incarnation would now emerge in human
and Human Beings Themselves.
As might be expected, the Amarians considered themselves the new incarnation.
In other words, they proclaimed themselves as living gods, the embodiment of the Holy
Spirit.
Not that they would always remain a divine elite among men.
On the contrary, they were destined to lead mankind to its universal incarnation.
The conjuries of groups throughout Northern Europe in the 14th century known as the Brethren
of the Free Spirit added another important ingredient to the stew.
The dialectic of reabsorption into God derived from the 3rd century Platonist philosopher
Plotinus.
Plotinus had had his own three stages, the original unity with God, the human history
and the final return or reabsorption as all human beings are submerged into the one and
history is finished.
The Brethren of the Free Spirit added a new elitist twist.
While the reabsorption of every man must await the end of history and the crude in spirit
must meanwhile meet their individual deaths, there was a glorious minority, the subtle
in spirit, who could and did become reabsorbed and therefore living gods during their lifetime.
This minority, of course, were the brethren themselves, who, by virtue of years of training,
self-torture and visions, had become perfect gods, more perfect and more godlike than even
in Christ Himself.
Once this stage of mystical union was reached furthermore, it was permanent and eternal.
These new gods often proclaimed themselves greater than God Himself.
Thus a group of female free spirits at Schweidenitz claimed to be able to dominate the Holy Trinity
such that they could ride it as in a saddle, and one of these women declared that when
When God created all things, I created all things with him.
I am more than God.
Man himself, therefore, or at least a gifted minority of men, could lift themselves up
to divine status by their own efforts, far earlier than their fellows.
Being living gods on earth brought many good things in its wake.
In the first place, it led directly to an extreme form of the antinomian heresy. If
people are gods, then it is impossible for them to sin. Whatever they do is necessarily
moral and perfect. That means that any act ordinarily considered as sin, from adultery
to murder, becomes perfectly legitimate when performed by the living gods.
Indeed, the free spirits, like other antinomians, were tempted to demonstrate and flaunt their
freedom from sin by performing all manner of sins imaginable.
But there was also a catch.
Among the free spirit cultists, only a minority of leading adepts were living gods.
For the rank-and-file cultists striving to become gods, there was one sin alone which
which they must not commit, disobedience to their master.
Each disciple was bound by an oath of absolute obedience to a particular living God.
Take for example Nicholas of Basel, a leading free-spirit guru whose cult stretched most
of the length of the Rhine.
Claiming to be the new Christ, Nicholas held that everyone's sole path to salvation is
is making an act of absolute and total submission to Nicholas himself.
In return for this total fealty, Nicholas granted his followers freedom from all sin.
As for the rest of mankind, outside the cults, they were simply unredeemed and unregenerate
beings who existed only to be used and exploited by the elect.
This attitude of total rule went hand-in-hand with the social doctrine many free-spirit
cults adopted in the 14th century, a communistic assault on the institution of private property.
In essence, however, that philosophic communism was a thinly camouflaged cover for their,
the free spirits, self-proclaimed right to commit theft at will.
The free-spirit adept, in short, regarded all property of the non-elect as rightfully
his own.
As the Bishop of Strasbourg summed it up in 1317, they believe that all things are common
whence they conclude that theft is lawful for them.
Or as the free-spirit adept from Erfurt, Johann Hartmann, put it, the truly free man is king
King and Lord of all creatures, all things belong to him, and he has the right to use
whatever pleases him.
If anyone tries to prevent him, the free man may kill him and take his goods.
As one of the favorite sayings of the Brethren of the Free Spirit put it, whatever the eye
sees and covets, let the hand grasp it.
The final ingredient for the revolutionary communist Münzermünster-Stu came with the
extreme Taborites of the early 15th century.
All Taborites constituted the radical wing of the Hussite movement, a pre-Protestant
revolutionary movement that blended struggles of religion, anti-Catholic, nationality, Czech
vs. Upper Class and Upper Clergy German, and CLASS, artisans cartellized in guilds trying
to take political power from the patricians.
The new ingredient added by the extreme wing of the Taborites was the duty to exterminate.
For the last days are coming, and the elect must go out and stamp out sin by exterminating
All Sinners, which means, at the very least, all non-Taborites.
For all sinners are enemies of Christ, and accursed be the man who withholds his sword
from shedding the blood of the enemies of Christ.
Every believer must wash his hands in that blood.
Having that mindset, the extreme Taborites were not going to stop at intellectual destruction.
In sacking churches and monasteries, the Taborites took particular delight in destroying libraries
and burning books.
For all belongings must be taken away from God's enemies and burned or otherwise destroyed.
Besides, the elect have no need for books.
When the kingdom of God on earth arrived, there would no longer be need for anyone to
teach another.
There would be no need for books or scriptures, and all worldly wisdom will perish.
And all people, too, one suspects.
Moreover, elaborating anew the theme of a return to a lost golden age, the ultra-Taberites
proposed to return to the allegedly early Czech condition of Communism, a society with
no private property.
In order to achieve this classless society, the cities in particular, those centers of
luxury and avarice, and especially the merchants and the landlords, must be exterminated.
After the elect have established their communist kingdom of God in Bohemia by revolutionary
violence, their task would be to forge and impose such communism on the rest of the world.
In addition to material property, the bodies of the faithful would have to be communized
as well.
The Taborite Ultras were nothing if not logical.
Their preachers taught, everything will be common, including wives, there will be free
sons and daughters of God and there will be no marriage as union of two, husband and wife.
The Hussite Revolution broke out in 1419, and in that same year the Taborites gathered
in the town of Eusty in northern Bohemia near the German border.
They renamed Eusty Tabor, that is, the Mount of Olives, where Jesus had foretold his second
coming, had ascended to heaven, and where he was expected to reappear.
The Taborites engaged in a communist experiment at Tabor, owning everything in common, and
dedicated to the proposition that whoever owns private property commits a mortal sin.
True to their doctrines, all women were owned in common, while if husband and wife were
ever seen together, they were beaten to death or otherwise executed.
Unfortunately, but characteristically, the Taborites were so caught up in their unlimited
right to consume from the common store that they felt themselves exempt from the need
to work.
The common store soon disappeared.
And then what?
Then, of course, the radical Taborites claimed that their need entitled them to claim the
property of the non-elect, and they proceeded to rob others at will.
As a synod of the moderate, Taborites complained, many communities never think of earning their
own living by the work of their hands, but are only willing to live on other people's
property and to undertake unjust campaigns for the sole purpose of robbing.
And the Taborite peasantry, who did not join the communes, found the radical regime reimposing
Discredited among themselves, their more moderate allies and their own peasantry, the Communist
regime of the radicals at Eusty Tabor soon collapsed.
The torch of frenetic mystical communism was soon picked up, however, by a sect known as
Bohemian Adamites.
Like the free spirits of the previous century, the Adamites held themselves to be living
gods, superior to Christ, since Christ had died, whereas they still lived. Impeccable
logic, if a bit short-sighted. Yet, in a curious contradiction, the founder of the Adamites,
the former priest Peter Canish, had already been captured and burnt by the Hussite military
by Commander John Sitzka. The Adamites dubbed the dead khanish Jesus, and then selected
as their leader a peasant whom they called Adam Moses.
For the Adamites not only were all goods strictly owned in common, but marriage was considered
a heinous sin. In short, promiscuity was compulsory, since the chaste were unworthy to enter the
of the Messianic Kingdom. Any man could choose any woman at will, and that will would have
to be obeyed. The Adamites also went around naked most of the time, imitating the original
state of Adam and Eve. On the other hand, promiscuity was at one and the same time compulsory
and restricted, because sex could only take place with the permission of the leader, Adam
from Moses.
Like the other radical Taborites, the Adamites regarded it as their sacred mission to exterminate
all the unbelievers in the world, wielding the sword until blood floods the world to
the height of a horse's bridle.
They were God's scythe, sent to cut down and eradicate the unrighteous.
The Adamites took refuge from the Tzitzka forces on an island in the river Nezarka,
from which they went forth in commando raids to try their best, despite their small number,
to fulfill their twin pledge of compulsory communism and extermination of the non-elect.
At night, they sallied forth in raids, which they called a holy war, to steal everything
True to their creed, they murdered every man, woman and child they could discover.
Finally Tzitzka sent a force of 400 trained soldiers who besieged the Adamites Island
and finally, in October 1421, overwhelmed the commune and massacred every single person.
One more hellish kingdom of God on earth had been put to the sword.
The Taborite army was crushed by the moderate Hassites at the Battle of Lipan in 1434, and
from then on Taborism declined and went underground.
But it continued to emerge here and there, not only among the Czechs but in Bavaria and
other German lands bordering Bohemia.
The stage was set for the Mincer-Minster phenomenon of the following century.