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Carlstadt and Miinzer are the connecting links between the two movements, chiefly the latter. Carlstadt never went so far as Miinzer, and afterwards retraced his steps. Their expulsion from Saxony extended their influence over Middle and Southern Germany.’
Condition of the Peasants.
The German peasants were the beasts of burden for society, and in no better condition than slaves. Work, work, work, without reward, was their daily lot, even Sunday hardly excepted. They were ground down by taxation, legal and illegal. The rapid increase of wealth, luxury, and pleasure, after the discovery of America, made their condition only worse. The knights and nobles screwed them more cruelly than before, that they might increase their revenues and means of indulgence.
The peasants formed, in self-protection, secret leagues among themselves: as the “ Kasebroder ” (Cheese-Brothers), in the Netherlands; and the * Bundschuh,”? in South Germany. These leagues served the same purpose as the labor unions of mechanics in our days.
Long before the Reformation revolutionary outbreaks took place in various parts of Germany, — A.D. 1476, 1492, 1498, 1502, 1513, and especially in 1514, against the lawless tyranny of Duke Ulrich of Wiirtemberg. But these rebellions were put down by brute force, and ended in disastrous failure.®
1 Ranke (II. 126): ‘‘ Dass Miinzer und Karlstadt, und zwar nicht ohne Zuthun Luthers, endlich aus Sachsen entfernt wurden, trug zur Ausbreitung und Verstadrkung dieser Bewegung ungemein bei. Sie wandten sich beide nach Oberdeutschland.”’ Ranke attributes too much influence to Carlstadt’s false doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, which he published after his expulsion.
2 So called from the tied shoe which the peasants wore as a symbol of subjection, in contrast to the buckled shoe of the upper classes.
8 On the connection of the earlier peasants’ insurrections with the movements preparatory to the Reformation, compare Ullmann’s essay on Hans Boheim of Niklashausen, in his Reformatoren vor der Reformation, vol. I. 419-446,
442 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 1580.
In England a communistic insurrection of the peasants and villeins occurred in 1881, under the lead of Wat Tyler and John Balle, in connection with a misunderstanding of Wiclif’s doctrines.
The Reformation, with its attacks upon the papal tyranny, its proclamation of the supremacy of the Bible, of Christian freedom, and the general priesthood of the laity, gave fresh impulse and* new direction to the rebellious disposition. Traveling preachers and fugitive tracts stirred up discontent. The peasants mistook spiritual liberty for carnal license. They appealed to the Bible and to Dr. Luther in support of their grievances. They looked exclusively at the democratic element in the New Testament, and turned it against the oppressive rule of the Romish hierarchy and the feudal aristocracy. They identified their cause with the restoration of pure Christianity.
Thomas Miinzer.
Thomas Miinzer, one of the Zwickau Prophets, and an eloquent demagogue, was the apostle and travelling evangelist of the social revolution, and a forerunner of modern socialism, communism, and anarchism. He presents a remarkable compound of the discordant elements of radicalism and mysticism. He was born at Stolberg in the Harz Mountain (1590) ; studied theology at Leipzig; embraced some of the doctrines of the Reformation, and preached them in the chief church at Zwickau; but carried them to excess, and was deposed.
After the failure of the revolution in Wittenberg, in which he took part, he labored as pastor at Altstidt (1528), for the realization of his wild ideas, in direct opposition to Luther, whom he hated worse than the Pope. Luther wrote against the “Satan of ΑἸ βίαι. Miinzer was removed, but continued his agitation in Mihlhausen, a free city in Thuringia, in Nurnberg, Basel, and again in Miihlhausen (1525).
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He was at enmity with the whole existing order of society, and imagined himself the divinely inspired prophet of a new dispensation, a sort of communistic millennium, in which there should be no priests, no princes, no nobles, and no private property, but complete democratic equality. He inflamed the people in fiery harangues from the pulpit, and in printed tracts to open rebellion against their spiritual and secular rulers. He signed himself “ Miinzer with the hammer,” and “with the sword of Gideon.” He advised the killing of all the ungodly. They had no right to live. Christ brought the sword, not peace upon earth. ‘ Look not,” he said, “on the sorrow of the ungodly; let not your sword grow cold from blood; strike hard upon the anvil of Nimrod [the princes]; cast his tower to the ground, because the day is yours.”
The Program of the Peasants.
At the beginning of the uprising, the Swabian peasants issued a program of their demands, a sort of political and religious creed, consisting of twelve articles.!
Professing to claim nothing inconsistent with Christianity as a religion of justice, peace, and charity, the peasants claim : 1. The right to elect their own pastors (conceded by Zwingli, but not by Luther). 2. Freedom from the small tithe (the . great tithe of grain they were willing to pay). 3. The abolition of bond-service, since all men were redeemed by the blood of Christ (but they promised to obey the elected rulers ordained by God, in every thing reasonable and Christian). 4. Freedom to hunt and fish. 5. A share in the forests for domestic fuel. 6. Restriction of compulsory service. ἴ. Payment for extra labor above what the contract requires.
1 They are given in German by Walch, Strobel, Oechsle, Gieseler, Weber. The authorship is uncertain. It is ascribed to Christoph Schappeler, a native Swiss, and preacher at Memmingen; but also to Heuglin of Lindau, Hubmeier, and Miinzer. See the note of Ranke, II. 135.