Freaks of Fanaticism, and Other Strange Events

On the 21st December, 1532, Francis of Waldeck assembled the diet of the principality, and asked its advice as to the advisability of proclaiming war against Münster, should the city persist in its obstinacy.84 The clergy and nobles replied that, according to immemorial custom, the prince must engage in war at his own cost, and that they were too heavily burdened with taxes for the Turkish war to enable them to undertake fresh charges. Francis of Waldeck reminded them that he was obliged to pay a pension of 2000 florins to his predecessor, Frederick von Wied, and he affirmed that he also was not in a condition to have recourse to arms.

Whilst the prince, his barons and canons were deliberating, Rottmann had assumed the ecclesiastical dictatorship in the cathedral city, and had ordered, on his sole authority, the suppression of the observance of fast-days.

The spirit of opposition and protestation that had been evoked already manifested itself in strange excesses. "Some of the Evangelicals refused to have the bread put into their mouths at Communion," says Kerssenbroeck, "but insisted on helping themselves from the table, or they stained themselves in taking long draughts at the large chalices. It is even said that some placed the bread in large soup tureens, and poured the wine upon it, and took it out with spoons and forks, so that they might communicate in both kinds at one and the same moment."85

The Reformer of Münster began to entertain and to express doubts as to the validity of the baptism of infants, which he considered had not the warrant of Holy Scripture. Melancthon wrote urgently to him, imploring him not to create dissensions in the Evangelical Church by disturbing the arrangement many wise men had agreed upon. "We have enemies enough," added Melancthon; "they will be rejoiced to see us tearing each other and destroying one another… I speak with good intention, and I take the liberty of giving my advice, because I am devoted to you and to the Church."86

Luther wrote as well, not to Rottmann, but to the magistrates of Münster, praising their love of the Gospel, and urging them to beware of being drawn away by the damnable errors of the Sacramentarians, Zwinglians, aliorumque schwermerorum.87 The senators received this apostolic epistle with the utmost respect and reverence imaginable; they communicated it to Rottmann and his colleagues, and ordered them to obey it. But the senate had long lost its authority; and this injunction was disregarded.88 "Disorder and infidelity made progress; the idle, rogues, spendthrifts, thieves, and ruined persons swelled the crowd of Evangelists."89

However, it was not enough to have introduced the new religion, to satisfy the Evangelicals the Catholics must be completely deprived of the exercise of their religion. In spite of every hindrance, mass had been celebrated every Sunday in the cathedral. All the parish churches had been deprived of their priests, but the minster remained in the hands of the Catholics. As Christmas approached, many men and women prepared by fasting, alms, and confession, to make their communion at the cathedral on the festival of the Nativity.

The magistrates, hearing of their design, forbade them communicating, offering, as an excuse, that it would cause scandal to the partisans of the Reform. They also published a decree forbidding baptisms to be performed elsewhere than in the parish churches; so as to force the faithful to bring their children to the ministrations of men whom they regarded with aversion as heretics and apostates.90

No envoys from the capital attended the reunion of the chambers at Wollbeck on the 20th December. But Münster sent a letter expressing a hope that the difference between the city and the prince might be terminated by mediation.

This letter gave the diet a chance of escaping from its very difficult position of enforcing the rule of the prince without money to pay the soldiers. The diet undertook to lay the suggestion before the prince-bishop, and to transmit his reply to the envoys of Münster.

Francis of Waldeck then quitted his diocese of Minden, and betook himself to Telgte,91 a little town about four miles from Münster, where he was to receive the oath of allegiance and homage of his subjects in the principality. The estates assembled at Wollbeck, and all the leading nobles and clergy of the diocese hastened to Telgte and assembled around their sovereign on the same day. A letter was at once addressed to the senate of Münster by the assembled estates, urging it to send deputies to Telgte, the following morning, at eight o'clock, to labour together with them at the re-establishment of peace.

The deputies did not appear; the senate addressed to the diet, instead, a letter of excuses. The estates at once replied that in the interest of peace, they regretted the obstinacy with which the senate had refused to send deputies to Telgte; but that this had not prevented them from supplicating the bishop to yield to their wishes; and that they were glad to announce that he was ready to submit the mutual differences to the arbitration of two princes of the Empire, one to be named by himself, the other by the city of Münster. And until the arbitration took place, the prince-bishop would provisionally suspend all measures of severity, on condition that the ancient usages should be restored in the churches, the preachers should cease to innovate, and that the imprisoned vassals of the bishop should be released.

This missive was sent into the town on the 25th; the magistrates represented to the bearer "that it would be scandalous to occupy themselves with temporal affairs on Christmas-day," and on this pretext they persuaded him to remain till the morrow in Münster. Then orders were given for the gates of the town to be closed, and egress to be forbidden to every one.

Having taken these precautions, the magistrates assembled the provosts of the guilds, and held with them a conference, which terminated shortly before nine o'clock the same evening; after which the subaltern officers of the senate were sent round to rap at every door, and order the citizens to assemble at midnight, before the town-hall. A nocturnal expedition had been resolved upon; but the movement in the town had excited the alarm of the Catholics, who, thinking that a general massacre of those who adhered to the old religion was in contemplation, hid themselves in drains and cellars and chimneys.

Arms were brought out of the arsenal, cannons were mounted, waggons were laden with powder, shot, beams, planks and ladders. At the appointed hour, the crowd, armed in various fashions, assembled before the Rath-haus.92 The magistrates and provosts then selected six hundred trusty Evangelicals, and united them to a band of three hundred mercenaries and a small troop of horse. The rest were dispersed upon the ramparts and were recommended to keep watch; then it was announced to the party in marching order that they were to hasten stealthily to Telgte and capture the prince-bishop, his councillors, the barons, and all the members of the estates then assembled in that little town.

However, the diet, surprised at not seeing their messenger return, conceived a slight suspicion. Whether he feared that his person was in danger so near Münster is not known, but fortunately for himself, the prince, that same evening, left Telgte for his castle of Iburg. The members of the diet, after long waiting, sent some men along the road to the capital to ascertain whether their messenger was within sight. These men returned, saying that the gates of Münster were closed and that no one was to be seen stirring.

The fact was singular, not to say suspicious, and a troop of horse was ordered to make a reconnaissance in the direction of Münster. It was already late at night, so, having given the order, the members of the diet retired to their beds. The horse soldiers beat the country, found all quiet, withdrew some planks from a bridge over the Werse, between Telgte and Münster, to intercept the passage, and then returned to their quarters, for the night was bitterly cold. On surmounting a hill, crowned by a gibbet, they, however, turned once more and looked over the plain towards the city. A profound silence reigned; but a number of what they believed to be will-o'-the-wisps flitted here and there over the dark ground. As, according to popular superstition in Westphalia, these little lights are to be seen in great abundance at Yuletide, the horsemen paid no attention to them, but continued their return. These lights, mistaken for marsh fires, were in fact the burning matches of the arquebuses carried by those engaged in the sortie. On their return to Telgte, the horse soldiers retired to their quarters, and in half-an-hour all the inhabitants of the town were fast asleep.

Meanwhile, the men of Münster advanced, replaced the bridge over the Werse, traversed the plain, and reached Telgte at two o'clock in the morning. They at once occupied all the streets, according to a plan concerted beforehand, then invaded the houses, and captured the members of the diet, clergy, nobles and commons. Three only of the cathedral chapter escaped in their night shirts with bare feet across the frozen river Ems. The Münsterians, having laid their hands on all the money, jewels, seals, and gold chains they could find, retreated as rapidly as they had advanced, carrying off with them their captives and the booty, but disappointed in not having secured the person of the prince. They entered the cathedral city in triumph on the morning of the 26th December, highly elated at their success, and nothing doubting that with such hostages in their hands, they would be able to dictate their own terms to the sovereign.

But the expedition of Telgte had made a great sensation in the empire. Francis of Waldeck addressed himself to all the members of the Germanic body, and appealed especially to his metropolitan, the Elector of Cologne, for assistance, and also to the Dukes of Cleves and Gueldres. The elector wrote at once to Münster in terms the most pressing, because some of his own councillors were among the prisoners. He received an evasive answer. The Protestant princes of the Smalkald league even addressed letters to the senate, blaming energetically their high-handed proceeding. Philip Melancthon also wrote a letter of mingled remonstrance and entreaty.93 The only result of their appeals was the restoration to the prisoners of their money and the jewels taken from them.

John von Wyck, syndic of Bremen, was despatched by the senate of Münster to the Landgrave Philip of Hesse, to ask him to undertake the office of mediator between them and their prince. The Landgrave readily accepted the invitation, and Francis of Waldeck was equally ready to admit his mediation, as he was himself, as has been already stated, a Lutheran at heart. The people of Münster, finding that the bishop was eager for a pacific settlement, insisted on the payment of the value of the oxen he had confiscated, as a preliminary, before the subject of differences was entered upon. The prince-bishop consented, paid 450 florins, and allowed the Landgrave of Hesse to draw up sixteen articles of treaty, which met with the approval of both the senate and himself.

The terms of the agreement were as follows:94—

I. The prince-bishop was to offer no violence to the inhabitants of Münster in anything touching religion. "The people of Münster shall keep the pure Word of God," said the article; "it shall be preached to them, without any human additions by their preachers, in the six parish churches. These same preachers shall minister the sacraments and order their services and ceremonies as they please. The citizens shall submit in religious matters to the judgment of the magistrates alone, till the questions at issue are decided by a General Council."

II. The Catholics were to exercise their religion freely in the cathedral and in the capitular churches not included in the preceding article, until Divine Providence should order otherwise. The Lutheran ministers were forbidden to attack the Catholics, their dogmas and rights, unless the Word of God imperiously required it; – a clause opening a door to any amount of abuse. As the speciality of Protestantism of every sort consists in negation, it would be impossible for an Evangelical pastor to hold his position without denouncing what he disbelieved.

Article III. interdicted mutual recriminations. Article IV., in strange contradiction with Article I., declared that the town of Münster should obey the prince-bishop as legitimate sovereign in matters spiritual and temporal. The bishop in the Vth Article promised to respect the privileges of the subject.

The VIth Article forbade any one making an arbitrary use of the Word of God to justify refusal of obedience to the magistrates. Article VII. reserved to the clergy their revenues, with the exception of the six parish churches, of which the revenues were to be employed for the maintenance of the Evangelical pastors. By the VIIIth Article the senate promised not to interfere with the collation to benefices not in their hands by right. The IXth Article allowed the citizens to deprive their pastors in the Lutheran churches, without the intervention of the bishop. The rest of the Articles secured a general amnesty, permission to the refugees to return, and to the imprisoned members of the diet to obtain their freedom.

This treaty was fair enough in its general provisions. If, as was the case, a large number of the citizens were disposed to adopt Lutheranism, no power on earth had any right to constrain them, and they might justly claim the free exercise of their religion. But there were suspicious clauses inserted in the 1st and 2nd Articles which pointed to the renewal of animosity and the re-opening of the whole question.

This treaty was signed on the 14th February, 1533, by Philip of Hesse, as mediator, Francis, Count of Waldeck, Prince and Bishop of Münster, the members of chapter, the representatives of the nobles of the principality, and the burgomasters and senators of Münster, together with those of the towns of Coesfeld and Warendorf, in their own name and in behalf of the other towns of the diocese. The captive estates were liberated on the 18th February. How the magistrates and town kept the other requirements of the treaty we shall soon see.

The senate having been constituted supreme authority in spiritual things by the Lutheran party, now undertook the organisation of the Evangelical Church in the city; and a few days after the treaty had been signed, it published an "Evangelical Constitution," consisting of ten articles, for the government of the new Church.95

The 8th article had a threatening aspect. "The ministers of the Divine Word shall use their utmost endeavours to gain souls to the true faith, and to direct them in the ways of perfection. As for those who shall refuse to accept the pure doctrine, and those who shall blaspheme and be guilty of public crimes, the senate will employ against them all the rigour of the laws, and the sword of justice."

Rottmann was appointed by the magistrates Superintendent of the Lutheran Church in Münster, a function bearing a certain resemblance to that of a bishop.96 Then, thinking that a bishop should be the husband of one wife at least, Rottmann married the widow of Johann Vigers, late syndic of Münster. "She was a person of bad character," says Kerssenbroeck, "whom Rottmann had inspired during her husband's life with Evangelical principles and an adulterous love."97 It is asserted, with what truth it is impossible at this distance of time to decide, that Vigers was drowned in his bath at Ems, in a fit, and that his wife allowed him to perish without attempting to save him. Anyhow, no sooner was he dead, than she returned full speed to Münster and married her lover.98

The reformer and his adherents had been given their own way, and the senate hoped they would rest satisfied, and that tranquillity would be re-established in the city. But their hopes were doomed to disappointment. Certain people, if given an inch, insist on taking an ell; of these people Rottmann was one. Excited by him, the Evangelicals of the town complained that the magistrates had treated the Papists with too great leniency, that the clergy had not been expelled and their goods confiscated according to the original programme. It was decided tumultuously that the elections must be anticipated; and on the 3rd March, the people deposed the magistrates and elected in their room the leaders of the extreme reforming party.99 Knipperdolling was of their number; only four of the former magistrates were allowed to retain office, and these were men whom they could trust. Hermann Tilbeck and Kaspar Judenfeld were named burgomasters; Heinrich Modersohn and Heinrich Redekker were chosen provosts or tribunes of the people.100

Next to the senate came the turn of the parishes. On the 17th March, under the direction of Rottmann, the people proceeded to appoint the ministers to the churches in the town. Their choice was not happy; it fell on those most unqualified to exercise a salutary influence, and restrain the excitement of a mob already become nearly ungovernable.101

The new senate endeavoured to strengthen the Evangelical cause by uniting the other towns of the diocese in a common bond of resistance. They invited these towns to send their deputies to meet those of the capital at a little inn between Münster and Coesfeld, on the 20th March. The assembly took place; but so far from the other cities agreeing to support Münster, their deputies read those of the capital a severe lecture, and refused to throw off their old religion and their allegiance to the bishop.102

On the 24th March, 1533, the burgomaster Tilbeck, accompanied by the citizen Kerbink, went to Ueberwasser, summoned the abbess before him, and ordered her to maintain at the expense of the abbey the preachers lately appointed to the church in connection with the convent. She was forced to submit.103

On the 27th of the same month one of the preachers invaded the church of St. Ledger, still in the hands of the Catholics, at the head of his congregation, broke open the tabernacle, drew out the Host, broke it, and blowing the fragments into the air, screamed to the assembled multitude, "Look at your good God flying away."

The same day the treaty was violated towards the Franciscans. Some of the senators ordered them to quit their convent, their habit, and their order, unless they desired still more rigorous treatment, "because the magistrates were resolved to make the Church flourish again in her ancient purity, and because they wanted to convert the convent into a school."104

The superior replied that he and his brethren followed strictly the rule of their founder, and that this house belonged to them by right of succession, and that they were no charge to the town. He said that if a building was needed for an Evangelical school, he was ready to surrender to the magistrates a portion of the convent buildings; all he asked in return was that he and his brethren should be allowed to live in tranquillity. This proposal saved the Franciscans for a time. The Evangelical school was established in their convent, "but at the end of a month it had fallen into complete disorder, whereas the old Papist school had not lost one of its pupils, and was as flourishing as ever."105

Whilst the senators menaced the monasteries, Knipperdolling and his friend Gerhardt Kibbenbroeck pillaged the church of S. Lambert. Scarcely a day now passed without some fresh act of violence done to the Catholics, or Vandalism perpetrated on the churches.

On the 5th April the prior and monks of Bispinkhoff were forbidden by the magistrates to hear confessions in their own church. The same day the Lutherans broke the altar and images in the church of Ueberwasser, and scraped the paintings off the walls.

On Palm Sunday, April 6th,106 at Ueberwasser, some of the nuns, urged by the preachers in their church, cast off their vows, and joining the people, chanted the 7th verse of the 124th Psalm according to Luther's translation —

"Der Strich ist entzwei,Und wir sind frei."

"The snare is broken, and we are delivered;" and then they received Communion with the pastors.

On the 7th the mob pillaged the church of the Servites, and defaced it. Next day the Franciscans, who had made the wafers for the Holy Sacrament for the churches in the diocese, were forbidden to make them any more. On the 9th Knipperdolling, heading a party of the reformed, broke into the cathedral during the celebration of the Holy Eucharist, rushed up to the altar, and drove away the priest, exclaiming, "Greedy fop, haven't you eaten enough good Gods yet?" Two days later the magistrates ordered the chapter to surrender into their hands their title deeds and sacred vessels. On the 14th, Belkot, head of the city tribunal of Münster, entered the church of S. Ledger, and carried off all its chalices, patens, and ciboriums, whilst others who accompanied him destroyed the altars, paintings, and statuary, and profaned the church in the most disgusting manner. The unhappy Catholics, unable to resist, uttered loud lamentations, and did not refrain from calling the perpetrators of the outrage "robbers and sacrilegious," for which they were summoned before the magistrates, and threatened with imprisonment unless they apologised.107

As the news of the conversion of the city of Münster to the Gospel spread, strangers came to it from all parts, to hear and to learn, as they gave out, pure Evangelical truth.

Amongst these adventurers was a man destined to play a terribly prominent part in the great drama that was about to be enacted at Münster. This was John Bockelson, a tailor, a native of Leyden, in Holland. He had quitted his country and his wife secretly to hear Rottmann. He entered Münster on the 25th July, and lodged with a citizen named Hermann Ramers. Having been instructed in the Gospel according to Luther, he went to preach in Osnabrück, but from thence he was driven. He then returned to his own home. There he became an Anabaptist, under the instruction of John Matthisson, who sent him with Gerrit Buchbinder as apostles of the sect to Westphalia in the month of November, 1533.

The time had now arrived when the Lutheran party, which had so tyrannically treated the Catholics in the city of Münster, was itself to be despotically put down and trampled upon by a sect which sprang from its own womb.

Rottmann had for some while been wavering in his adhesion to Lutheranism.108 He doubted first, and then disbelieved in the Real Presence, which Luther insisted upon. He thought that the reformation of the Wittenberg doctor was not sufficiently thoroughgoing in the matter of ceremonial; then he doubted the scriptural authority for the baptism of infants. Two preachers, Heinrich Rott and Herman Strapedius, fell in with his views. The former had been a monk at Haarlem, but had become a Lutheran preacher. He regarded the baptism of infants as one of those things which are indifferent to salvation. Strapedius was more decided; he preached against infant baptism as an abomination in the sight of God. He was named by the people preacher at S. Lambert's, the head church of the city, in spite of the opposition of the authorities.109

The Lutheran senate of Münster, which a few months previously had been elected enthusiastically by the people, now felt that before these fiery preachers, drifting into Anabaptism, their power was in as precarious a position as was that of those whom they had supplanted. Alarmed at the rapid extension of the new forms of disbelief, they twice forbade Rottmann to preach against the baptism of infants and the Real Presence, and ordered him to conform in his teaching to authorised Lutheran doctrine. He treated their orders with contempt. Then they summoned him before them: he appeared, but on leaving the Rath-haus, preached in the square to the people with redoubled violence.

The senate, at their wits' end, ordered a public discussion between Rottmann and the orthodox Lutherans, represented by Hermann Busch. The discussion took place before the city Rath, and the senate decided that Busch had gained the day, and they therefore forbade all innovation in the administration of baptism and the Lord's Supper.

Rottmann and his colleague disregarded the monition, and continued their sermons against the rags of Popery which still disfigured the Lutheran Church. Several of the ministers in the town, whether from conviction or from interest, finding that their congregations drained away to the churches where the stronger-spiced doctrine was preached, joined the movement. It was simply a carrying of negation beyond the pillars of Hercules planted by Luther. Luther had denied of the sum total of Catholic dogmas, say ten, and had retained ten. The Anabaptist denied two more, and retained only eight. On the 10th August a tumultuous scene took place in the church of S. Giles.110 A Dutch preacher began declaiming against baptism of children. Johann Windemoller, ex-senator, a vehement opponent of Anabaptist disintegration of Lutheran doctrine, who was in the congregation, rushed up the pulpit stairs, and pulled the preacher down, exclaiming, "Scoundrel! how dare you take upon you the office of preacher – you who, a few years ago, were thrust into the iron-collar, and branded on the cheek for your crimes? Do you think I do not know your antecedents? You talk of virtue, you gibbet-bird? You who are guilty of so many crimes and impieties? Go along with you, take your doctrine and your brand elsewhere."