Thomas Müntzer (c. 1489-1525)

When I first became interested in the radical political strand in Christian theology, I recalled the words of the Articles of Religion of the Church of England, in which the community of goods had always fascinated me (Article 38: ‘The Riches and Goods of Christians are not common …. As some Anabaptists do falsely boast’). That led me to seek out two people, first of all Alan Kreider, then of the London Mennonite Centre, and Gordon Rupp, who in the mid-1980’s was living in retirement near to the college in Cambridge where I worked. The reason for meeting Gordon was that I had a book on my shelves, Patterns of Reformation, in which there was a long and fascinating chapter about Thomas Müntzer. I read the chapter and was captivated by the extraordinary breadth of Müntzer’s theology and the links with his wider context, and had several meetings with Gordon Rupp, borrowed some books and immersed myself in the writings and life story of this colorful activist and insightful theologian. I recall one of the first comments that Gordon made was to a draw a parallel between Münzter and the tragic situation in the aftermath of the end of the Miners’ Strike in 1984-5.

Thomas Müntzer is one of the better-known figures of the so-called ‘radical reformation’, a gifted preacher, and liturgist, even if he is now better known for his later revolutionary activity and the part that he played in the Peasants Revolt of 1525, which led to defeat at Frankenhausen, and Müntzer’s interrogation, torture and death. His relationship with Luther was complex. They held so much in common, not least their indebtedness to the rich tradition of late medieval mystical theology of Tauler. But he later fell out spectacularly with Luther, which led to their becoming the bitterest of enemies. Müntzer came to regard Luther as a compromiser and preacher of a superficial understanding of the life of faith, clinging onto intellectual power rather than allowing for the experiential element of all people to work out what that faith involved. References like ‘the godless flesh in Wittenberg’, ‘Brother Soft-Life’, ‘Dr Liar’ and ‘Father Pussyfoot’ are samples of the ways in which he wrote of Luther. It is easy with the wisdom of hindsight to see the soreness of the rejection by the one-time mentor, as Müntzer sought to explore a way of following Christ which he thought did justice to the contraries of mercy and rigour, which was endemic in Law and Gospel. What was crucial for Müntzer, and what links him not only to earlier mystical trends but also to later similar emphases in radical Protestantism, was his emphasis on the movement of the Spirit within the soul to which a true understanding of Scripture bore witness and which was the basis of the divine life in the believer. This understanding cannot be gained from reading books, but only by experience, and is often to be found in the ‘humble folk’, and indeed ‘outside Christendom’, one of the things that attracted my attention when I first read Gordon Rupp’s account (Rupp 1969: 328). Müntzer’s words anticipate words of William Blake at the end of his poem, ‘The Divine Image’ from Songs of Innocence and of Experience: ‘And all must love the human form, In heathen, turk or jew. Where Mercy, Love & Pity dwell, There God is dwelling too’. This is, in Müntzer’s words ‘the order of God implanted in all creatures’, more important than ‘mere Scripture’. What is required of preachers is not just the words of the Bible but what they have heard directly from the mouth of God.

Müntzer was born in Stolberg. He seems to have had an academic education. His early career gives no indication of the fiery radicalism to come, though his contact with various nunneries may partly explain the profound influence of the German mystical tradition, particularly the writings of Johannes Tauler. His first contact with Zwickau, the centre of his initial outburst of radical activity, came in April 1520 when he was appointed to a supply preachership. Müntzer’s anti-clerical sermons contributed to the growing unrest in the city, and he became associated with the revolutionary and radical elements in the city, among whom were the so-called ‘Zwickau Prophets’, who were preaching that the last days were at hand and that a holy war against the godless was due to start.

After Zwickau, he began an itinerant life, which was to characterise the rest of his life, more or less, until his death in 1525. He linked up with Lutheran sympathisers in Prague and issued his Prague Manifesto, whose basic theme is the need for inner knowledge of God and the close identification of the true believer with God himself, knowledge of which is self-authenticating and does not depend on book faith nor intellectual assent to credal statements. There is emphasis on the need for the period of trial which leads to true faith, and a sharp attack on preachers and teachers in the church for their unwillingness to teach ‘the true order of God, which he has set in all his creatures’. The problem, in Müntzer’s eyes, is the lack of any experience on the part of preachers of the words ‘heard from the mouth of God’. God’s writing is on the human heart, as he puts it in the Prague Manifesto: ‘St. Paul writes to the Corinthians …. that the hearts of men are the paper and parchment on which God‘s finger inscribes his irrevocable Will and Eternal Wisdom, but not with ink; and this writing any man can read, providing his mind has been opened to it … and God has done this for his elect from the very beginning, so that the testimony is not uncertain, but an invisible one from the holy spirit …’ (Matheson 1988: 358). The importance of this immediate apprehension of the divine will is crucial. Müntzer points out that if God’s word were written only in books, it would be ephemeral rather than eternal. As evidence for this, and for the continuing centrality of prophetic immediacy, Müntzer adduces the prophetic conviction that they were mouthpieces of God, a method of God’s communication which is still active: ‘that is why all the prophets speak in this way - “Thus saith the Lord”, they do not say, “Thus said the Lord”, as if it were past history; they speak in the present tense’ (Matheson 1988: 359-60).

After Prague, he was eventually appointed preacher in Allstedt close to the mining areas of Mansfeld. His time in Allstedt was marked by a mixture of radical preaching and liturgical experiments, which attracted large numbers of people. Allstedt’s relative remoteness from centres of authority meant that local officials preferred to take no action rather than risk an uprising, which they did not have the resources to contain. Müntzer’s reputation attracted the hostile interest of local dignitaries, the upshot of which was that they resolved to hear Müntzer preach in Allstedt. This evoked from Müntzer the famous sermon before the princes in July 1524, in which he seeks to persuade the princes that they should take up the sword on behalf of the Elect and wipe the godless from the face of the earth (Matheson 1988: 226-52).

Whether Müntzer at this point had any realistic conviction that the princes could be won over to his side is not clear. But the tone of some of his letters to the higher authorities indicates that he was prepared to engage in diplomacy in order to enable a political environment to be created in which to carry on his revolution. But events were to close the door on any accommodation. Müntzer asserted that the authority of the princes over the common people was at an end, and in ‘The explicit unmasking of the false belief of the faithless world’, Müntzer rejected a role for the princes and considered them merely a prop for the status quo: ‘the great do all in their power to keep the common people from perceiving the truth’. Müntzer’s period in Allstedt came to an end when he escaped on 7 August 1524 and ended up in Muehlhausen, where there was already a political struggle against the establishment. After further wanderings, Müntzer returned to Mühlhausen in March 1525. It was then that the full effects of the Peasants War began to affect Thuringia. There had for some time been various regional grievances, but underlying it all was a common burden of oppression and discontent in a world of rapid social and ideological change. The peasants ransacked religious houses and terrorised local gentry. There was little concerted action by the landlords. A large contingent of peasants assembled at Frankenhausen. A rainbow appeared in the sky, taken as a divine sign that the God of the New Covenant would give them victory. But it was not to be, and the peasants were routed. Müntzer escaped but was later captured and, under torture, admitted his aspirations to abolish private property. He was finally beheaded outside Mühlhausen on 27 May having recanted of his theological ‘errors’.

It is Müntzer’s political radicalism, which has marked him down as a forerunner of political theology. The fact of the matter is that very little is known about Müntzer’s hopes for the new age when it came. Indeed, we have only fragmentary glimpses of his hope that people should have all things in common. What predominates is, as Matheson puts it, that ‘Müntzer offered one of the most interesting experiments in popular mysticism, in a profound personal piety for every believer’ (Matheson 1988: 134). That can detract from the political, but the effect was the other side of the coin from this: democratic spirituality translating itself into the totality of life, into social justice as well as the inner life. So, the revolutionary protest should not lead us to ignore the grievances of the peasants but also the extraordinary emphasis on personal piety for all and the sense that Müntzer had (not unusual among his contemporaries) that the present critical moment demanded action.

In Müntzer’s thought, the divine is there to be found in all persons and can be apprehended by those who are sensitive to ‘the working of the Divine Order bubbling from his heart’ (Matheson 1988:203). Müntzer challenged the idea that only those who know the Scriptures intimately and academically could understand the ways of Christ. All nations under heaven, given the right perception of the word within, could find God without the Scriptures. Müntzer views all the Elect as having the Spirit already in their hearts: ‘even if a man were born a Turk he might have the beginning of the same faith’ (Letter to Frederick the Wise, Matheson 1988: 111). This universalism is a feature of Müntzer’s thought. God speaks directly to all and many from the heathen lands will precede the so-called Christians into the Kingdom. Müntzer did not despise the Scriptures. What he inveighed against was book religion. That emphasis led him to the contrast between Word and Spirit and to emphasise the latter at the expense of the former. What is of most importance is response to the promptings of the Spirit. This, ordinary people will be able to understand without having to show deference to the mediation of the scholars or the clerics. Some of the hostile comments hurled at Müntzer betray this confidence in the inspiration of the Spirit. (Rupp 1969: 257-8).

‘A Manifest Exposé of False Faith’ is, as Matheson puts it, ‘the harmony of Müntzer’s prophetic spirit-filled understanding with that of the Gospel witness of Luke’. It takes issue with an understanding of what the testimony to the spirit of Jesus really means. He alleges that the scholars want to bring it within the walls of the university, thereby reserving for themselves the right to judge on matters of faith. The point is that faith is not easily accessed just by knowing the Bible; it is a struggle as exemplified, in Müntzer’s view, by the experience of both Zechariah and Mary in Luke 1-2. Just as with Mary, whose initial response to the angel was to ask how can these things be, that ‘faith once first kindled confronts us with things so impossible’. What is required is the stormy movement and heartfelt anxiety. The Bible gives testimony not faith. Indeed, ‘if someone had never sight or sound of the Bible at any time in his life he could still hold the one true Christian faith because of the true teaching of the spirit, just like all those who composed the holy Scripture without any books at all’. The problem is that ordinary people have come to imagine that the priests must know about faith on account of the books that they have read. Surely, writes Müntzer, there must be more to relating to God than what we have ‘stolen from a book’? Indeed, what is needed is the long discipline of identification with the crucified Christ, the knowledge of God in the Son expounded by the Spirit: ‘All we need to do is to be conformed to Christ’s life and passion through the overshadowing of the holy spirit [like Mary], so bitterly resisted and so coarsely mocked by this fleshly world’. Thereby is ‘smashed to pieces the stolen counterfeit faith’, by going through the agony of heart which follows. What one needs to learn is the fear of God from the abyss of the heart, for what prevents the pure fear of God is the human hunger for human favour.

The emphasis on immediate knowledge of God is a key to Müntzer’s theology. The goal was becoming those taught and made godlike directly. In this type of religion there is no need for academic qualifications to know the true meaning of Scripture: ‘Even if you had devoured all the books of the Bible, you must still suffer the sharp edge of the ploughshare, for you will never have faith unless God gives it to you, and instructs you in it. If that is to happen, then at first, my dear biblical scholar, the book will be closed to you too’ (Matheson 1988: 199) With such an understanding of God, Müntzer was sympathetic towards dreams and visions as an important means of knowing the ways of God. He made a study of those passages in the New Testament, which speak of visions being vouchsafed to the first Christians. In several places he compares himself with Daniel, (for example, in the Sermon before the Princes) John the Baptist and Elijah.

So, the ‘cost of discipleship’ was crucial for Müntzer. He opposes the idea that the path of discipleship could be anything other than a stony one and castigates Luther for making faith seem an easy option. The whole process of becoming a disciple involved a period of trial and identification with the sufferings of Christ. It is only through the period of spiritual turmoil that true faith can come.

Such inner turmoil of one who faces opposition and uncertainty, however strong the inner conviction may be of the rectitude of his cause, places the experience of Thomas Müntzer alongside more well-known saints in Christian history. It is the same kind of inner conflict that led Paul to speak of the close identity between the apostolic task and the sufferings of the Messiah. Paul learnt that the mark of Christ’s spirit was to bear the same kind of reproach as the messiah. Unadulterated triumphalism in the midst of an order where there was all too little evidence of the triumph of the God of justice was to be repudiated. Bearing witness to the new order in the midst of the old involved martyrdom, a costly witness: ‘carrying round in one’s body the death of Jesus’, as Paul puts it in 2 Cor 4:10. It is evident from Müntzer’s writings that he felt deeply the inner turmoil from being part of the social upheaval. That turmoil was part and parcel of his own inner life. His writing enables us to catch a glimpse of the pain involved in the confident maintenance of the revolutionary task.

It is easy to forget that Müntzer’s career was not totally characterised by revolutionary activity. His liturgical experiments and the theological directness of his word hymns promote community building and the immediacy of the relationship of the believer with Christ. The liturgical experiments in Allstedt show an ability to articulate a pattern of reform, which is innovative without being totally iconoclastic. His letters to the leading authorities often reflect a certain deference, evidence of a more diplomatic tone, which contrasts markedly with some of his uninhibited invective found elsewhere, which suggests a readiness to explore the possibility of seeking to persuade the princes to be part of the pursuit of his programme of religious reformation. That said, it is not easy to see that there was any coherent political strategy on Müntzer’s part. He was deserted by various groups at crucial moments, and his fiery anti-clericalism jeopardised the possibility of Allstedt becoming an alternative centre of Reformation.

In some ways, a good example of his attempt to persuade the rulers to be part of this reform is his interpretation of magistracy as the execution of justice in conformity with the will of God and the will of the people. In his famous ‘Sermon to the Princes’, we find a rhetorical piece, which seeks to urge the rulers to take their responsibility and act as Müntzer believes Paul wants of them in Romans 13 and be agents of divine justice. It was Müntzer’s opportunity to speak directly to a supporter of Luther and one who had himself come under more radical influences (Rupp 1969: 200-1).

Müntzer takes as his text for his sermon a passage from Daniel 2, which was the cornerstone of millennial hopes, not least among 7^th century writers in England in the Civil War period. In it the Jewish seer both tells and interprets a dream of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, which the wise men of the court were not able to interpret. The dream is of a statue made of various substances which is hit by a stone made without human hands and shattered, after which the stone becomes a great mountain, which filled the whole earth (Dan 2:35). Christ is the stone made without human hands, insignificant in human eyes and trampled underfoot by humanity. The interpretation offered by Daniel is the destruction of four world empires, which will be replaced by the kingdom of God that will never be destroyed (Dan 2:44).

Müntzer proceeds to interpret the various parts of the vision of the statue. Christ the Stone, which is about to shatter the final empire, a fact that is appreciated better by ‘the poor laity and the peasants’. In the face of this destruction, the princes are exhorted to side with Christ the Stone, whose empire will replace the kingdoms of the present rulers. What is needed now is for the princes to recognise the incompetence of the clerics, just as Nebuchadnezzar rejected the wise men of his court. Indeed, for his interpretation of the dream, Nebuchadnezzar gave Daniel great power and acknowledged that Daniel’s God was ‘God of gods and Lord of kings, and a revealer of mysteries’ (Dan 2:47), an indication of the appropriate response of the rulers whom Müntzer is addressing. He points out to them: ‘A new Daniel must arise and interpret for you your vision and he … must go in front of the army. He must reconcile the anger of the princes and the enraged people. Christ the Stone is about to shatter the schemes of the Lutheran clergy’ (Matheson 1988: 246). In a daring exegesis of Romans 13. He points out that Paul’s reference to rulers ‘not bearing the sword in vain’, for they ‘are the servants of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer’, should be interpreted as an obligation to root out the wicked, who are opposed to the ways of the imminent ‘Fifth Monarchy’ of Christ to which Müntzer, the ‘New Daniel’ is pointing them.

Müntzer rejects the argument that judgement must remain in God’s hands and reminds them of their obligation to wield the sword as executors of the divine wrath. It is not a matter of passively waiting upon God to destroy the works of the Antichrist, for it is human agents acting with divine permission who will effect the divine purposes. If the rulers refuse to do so, the sword will be taken away from those who confess him with words and deny him with their deeds.

This, then, is the basis for a critique of the Church in forsaking the way of Christ and the apostles, and the view that ‘God no longer reveals his divine mysteries to his beloved friends by means of valid visions or his audible Word’. Müntzer insists that opponents of visions are in fact opponents of the Holy Spirit, poured out in the Last Days. That Spirit is revealing to the elect ‘a decisive, inevitable, imminent reformation with great anguish’. While he admits that there have been false prophets and deceivers, Müntzer rebukes the ‘learned divines who are the soothsayers, who publicly repudiate the revelation of God and thus attack the Holy Spirit’, and suppose that what is contrary to their understanding must be of the Devil – he has Luther in his sights.

To gain the self-disclosure of God meant abandoning all consolation of the flesh and attending to ‘the field of the Word of God which remains full of thistles and thorns and of big bushes, all of which must be got out of the way for this work of God’. In such circumstances, God vouchsafes visions and dreams to beloved friends. The vision comes first and then it is to be tested in the light of Scripture. Knowledge of the Scripture, therefore, is inadequate without the enlightenment, which comes from the Spirit. Scripture is a witness to the faith of the writers, and it is the appropriation of that inner illumination which prompted the writing, which is at the heart of true discipleship.

After his death a concerted attempt was made to blot out all traces of ‘the Devil of Allstedt’, as Luther called him. His liturgical provision was banned from Allstedt (though the material continued to be used and to inspire others), and his memory vilified. But, as with similar figures espousing such ideas, they are not easily expurgated. Many of Müntzer’s immediate companions may have fled dejected, with their beliefs in tatters. But the persistence of the convictions is indicated by events in the city of Münster barely ten years after Müntzer’s death, and in the continuation of Müntzer’s ideas, albeit in an attenuated form, in some Anabaptist circles. Within a decade, a more virulent version of the revolutionary millenarian spirit manifested itself in Münster, the New Jerusalem where an Anabaptist millennium was set up inspired by the apocalyptic ideas of Melchior Hoffmann (Deppermann 1987). The events in Münster with the prospect of an alternative society attracted Anabaptist sympathisers from a wide area. The experiment ended in an orgy of antinomianism and a bloody suppression of a chaotic and enthusiastic messianism: a paradigm of reformation which was abhorred and so ‘Anabaptist’ and ‘Antinomian’ became terms which inspired fear. Even a writer like John Milton could refer disparagingly to the ‘sort of men who follow Anabaptism, Familism, Antinomianism, and other fanatic dreams’ (Divorce, 14). Shortly before his death, Müntzer had received a letter from one of the ‘Swiss Brethren’, Conrad Grebel, addressing him as ‘the truthful and proclaimer of the gospel’. Müntzer’s reputation as a theologian and liturgical reformer had attracted attention, therefore. The letter indicates the community of interest which existed between Müntzer’s ideas and emerging Anabaptism. After the catastrophe of the siege of Münster in 1534-5, one of the founding fathers of modern Anabaptism, Menno Simons, offered a ministry of consolidation which enabled the refugees of the persecution of the Anabaptists to maintain their identity and their understanding of the radical implications of the Reformation.

In a similar way to other sixteenth-century writers, Müntzer gave primacy to experience of Christ, of which experience the scriptures offered secondary confirmation. It is a tradition of interpretation which had a marked influence on later ideas. One of the most remarkable of Müntzer’s contemporaries was Hans Denck (1500-1527), who died tragically of plague in 1527. Denck was what would come to be called an Anabaptist, as he had undergone rebaptism as a sign of his own commitment to Christ and his move to a new a way of life, in which violence was abhorred and attentiveness to the law of God written on the heart became the norm for Christian living. His theological position had much in common with that of Müntzer. For example, in his so-called ‘Recantation’ (published after his death) he wrote:

Holy Scripture I hold above all human treasure but not as high as the Word of God that is living, powerful and eternal – unattached and free of all elements of this world, For since it is God himself, it is Spirit and not letter, written without pen or paper so that it can never be eradicated… Therefore, salvation is not bound to Scripture however useful and good it might be in furthering it (Recantation 1, translation from Clarence Bauman, The Spiritual Legacy of Hans Denck: Interpretation and Translation of Key Texts. Leiden: Brill 1991: 251).

This statement puts very succinctly what Denck, echoing Müntzer before him, saw as the appropriate place of Scripture as a witness, which may be important, but is not primary, in the life of discipleship. God’s presence is in all people, and it is this testimony that takes precedence over the Church or the Scripture, though the latter can bear witness to him. Scripture’s authority is dependent upon the confirmation of the experience from within. Scripture is not the possession of the experts nor is it the kind of text that is transparent of its own interpretation. The Spirit’s role in interpretation is particularly important. Denck read Scripture and found in it a confirmation of the Christ at work in him. He believes that God was in all creatures, for all people had their origin from God. The importance of Scripture lies in witnessing to the Word which became flesh, Jesus Christ, who comes again and again encouraging and challenging. It is the inner experience of God present in all people, even though they may not recognise it, which is fundamental.

I have been attracted to the writings of Thomas Müntzer ever since that encounter with Gordon Rupp thirty years ago. What is so striking is that Müntzer grasped something of the centrality of the notion of being conformed to the crucified Christ and the struggle that was involved in bringing that to fruition. It may be modern sensibilities that make one recoil at his abusive language about Luther and others, but, after all, the gospels are not exactly lacking in pretty strong denunciation by Jesus of his opponents! But what comes across in Müntzer’s later writings is the mismatch between his central aim of being identified with Christ and the ways in which his actual behaviour seemed at times to be at odds with the story of the person with whom he sought to identify, who told Peter to put the sword in its place and to have denied legions of angels to come to his rescue in some kind of eschatological battle (Matthew 26:52-3). Müntzer seemed to grasp something absolutely central about the life of faith, which then got eclipsed by a narcissistic spasm, which proved to be so catastrophic for himself and others. Jacob Taubes, who writes so insightfully about Münzter, could have been writing about him when he writes of the revolutionary power of apocalypticism and its explosive mixture of creative and destructive powers, which are not just a speculative matter but a spur to action. Any imbalance risks chaos, and if revolution becomes an end in itself, it leads to the abyss (J. Taubes, Occidental Eschatology. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007: 10-11).

Students of Müntzer in the UK are indebted to Peter Matheson for his English translation of Müntzer’s collected writings, The Collected Works of Thomas Müntzer (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1988), which is based on the critical edition by G. Franz (1968). Matheson’s Imaginative World of the Reformation (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000) not only evokes the theological ethos in the early decades of the sixteenth century, but also enables a reader to understand the distinctive contribution made by Müntzer to the history of theology. The wider intellectual context is surveyed in G. H. Williams The Radical Reformation. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1962. A brief history of Müntzer’s life can be found in E. W. Gritsch, Thomas Müntzer: A Tragedy of Errors. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989. Another useful collection of texts, which include writings by Müntzer along with Karlstadt, Denck, Hutt, Sattler and Hubmaier, is M. G. Baylor (ed.) The Radical Reformation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Gordon Rupp’s chapter is to be found in Patterns of Reformation. London: Epworth, 1969, 157-353. The relations of Münzter’s theology to wider trends are explored by Andrew Bradstock in Faith in the Revolution: The Political Theologies of Müntzer and Winstanley (London: SPCK 1997), A. Bradstock and C. Rowland, Radical Christian Writings: A Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002) and Christopher Rowland Radical Christianity: A Reading of Recovery (Cambridge: Polity Press 1988.) The contribution of Melchior Hoffmann’s theology to the Münster eschatological commonwealth is considered in K. Deppermann, Melchior Hoffman. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1987.

The theological similarities with Denck are important (see C. Baumann, The Spiritual legacy of Hans Denck: Interpretation and Translation of key texts. Leiden, Brill 1991). Denck’s work, along with works like the Theologia Germanica (The Book of the Perfect Life, trans. D. Blamires, Oxford: International Sacred Literature Trust, 2003), which had made such an impact on Luther and Müntzer, were translated into English in the seventeenth century (Nigel Smith, Perfection Proclaimed: Language and Literature in English Radical Religion 1640-1660. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989) and arguably influenced similar thinking, whether directly or indirectly, on Civil War writers like Gerrard Winstanley, Ralph Cudworth and many others, including William Blake (Rowland, Blake and the Bible. London: Yale University Press, 2010, 157-180). It is a way of thinking which has a long tradition in British theological writing down the centuries ever since. Readers may also enjoy, as I did, the evocation of the world of radical politics and religion in Müntzer’s day in the novel Q by ‘L. Blissett’ (London: Heinemann, 2003).