Stop me if you’ve heard this before. A charismatic leader promises to rid the locality of crime and corruption in a matter of months and will resort to unforgiving or even brutal means to do so. He is then swept up into power by an overwhelming majority, and enjoys a cult-like following wherever he goes. While in power, he is plagued with bouts of near-insanity. Often contradicting his proclamations within mere days of utterance; he then passes them off as mistranslations or harmless off-hand remarks. Any of this sound familiar? Yes, as you may have guessed, this week I’m finally going to talk about the colorful political life of Jan van Leiden of the Munster Rebellion.
Now the story takes place in the 1500s A.D. And Jan van Leiden started out humbly enough. Before he was the political and theocratic nuisance that he ended up being, he was a simple tailor in the county of Holland. But after the great whirlwind in European christian theology known as Protestantism, Jan’s religious views started to get challenged. As with all great movements, when the protestant movement started to get more and more traction, more and more offshoots and splinter groups started to form. From differences in something as mundane as when someone should be baptized, to more radical things like ordained polygamy; groups of Christians started to deviate and move farther away from the core ideas of Protestantism. It is in one of these Protestant offshoots where our illustrious subject makes his appearance. Through the ministry of Jan Matthias, Jan van Leiden was converted to a radical offshoot of Protestantism that centered itself on the prophecy of the apocalyptic end – the literal second coming of Christ on 1534 in the German city of Munster.
Well, judging from how we’re all alive and well today, it’s a safe bet to say that 1534 came and went and no apocalypse was had. During the day of reckoning Matthias proved himself to be an incapable and insane leader by riding out to meet an army of soldiers accompanied by only a handful of loyalists. Matthias was summarily killed and dismembered by the passing army. However, by that time, Jan van Leiden had already proven himself as prominent second leader to the apocalyptic movement. It took nothing more than a contrived vision that he supposedly had to explain to his die-hard supporters that Matthias was unworthy and was struck down by God. Plus, he explained that God had actually wanted them to establish a new world for themselves, instead of the destruction of the old one. An easy mistake to make, obviously.
But this is where things get interesting. As Jan van Leiden took the reins, he enjoyed overwhelming support and acclaim, more and more converts of this radical group started to flock to the city. And maybe, just maybe, this started to get into Jan’s head. He started to make extremely radical proclamations. Building on Matthias’ early work, he outlawed property and money to make for a pseudo-communist state. He then established himself as King and started wearing royal robes and living a lavish lifestyle all from the city’s confiscated wealth. This was doubly insane because this was happening while the city was being blockaded by the Prince-Bishop of the greater area and effectively starving the citizens out. The Prince-Bishop wanted to retake the city because, among other reasons, Jan’s spreading extremism was becoming a great concern for the state. Yet still, through his sheer charisma and religious fervor, Jan then took it a number of steps further. He legalized polygamy, lowered the age of marriage, and of course instituted the classic execution without trial. You could even get executed by simply refusing to be his 16th wife! Ridiculous!
But all good cults must come to an end, and Jan’s was definitely not the exception. After Munster was starved enough for a siege, the Prince-Bishop’s men stormed the city and rounded up the three main conspirators – Jan was unsurprisingly one of them. On a cold day in January 1536, the three were brought to the marketplace in Munster, bound and starved. One by one they were tortured meticulously by having burning hot tongs tear pieces of their flesh while a doctor was making sure they were kept alive throughout the whole thing. Then after an entire day of public torture, they were killed and their bodies suspended in steel cages above the city’s cathedral. Cages, which can still be seen in Munster today.
Thus ends the story of Jan van Leiden. A cautionary tale -albeit not the first one- about how power and popular acclaim has a tendency to get to our heads and cloud our judgement. Here’s to hoping the leaders who find themselves in the same shoes as Jan, will not think themselves invincible or worse infallible as he did; lest they meet the same fate.