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 Münzer.
Thomas Münzer, 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 Altstädt (1523), 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 Altstädt." Münzer was removed, but
continued his agitation in Mühlhausen, a free city in Thuringia, in Nürnberg, Basel, and again in
Mühlhausen (1525).
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 "Münzer 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.^560
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).
- 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. 7. Payment for extra labor above what the contract requires. 8. Reduction of rents. 9.
Cessation of arbitrary punishments. 10. Restoration of the pastures and fields which have been
taken from the communes. 11. Abolition of the right of heriot, by which widows and orphans are
deprived of their inheritance. 12. All these demands shall be tested by Scripture; and if not found
to agree with it, they are to be withdrawn.
These demands are moderate and reasonable, especially freedom from feudal oppression,
and the primitive right to elect a pastor. Most of them have since been satisfied. Had they been
(^560) 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, Habmeier, and Münzer. See the note of Ranke,
II. 135.