Wednesday, November 10, 2021

Auke Jelsma on Polygamy among the Anabaptists of Münster

  

Polygamy

 

The Anabaptists of Münster evoked the strongest aversion by their introduction of polygamy in the summer of 1534. Undoubtedly abuses occurred then. After a few days the leaders felt obliged to adjust the situation. Women that had been forced to marry against their will had their freedom reinstated. Later, after his arrest, Jan of Leiden himself admitted in a conversation with two ministers that the introduction, although not sinful, was untimely and therefore incorrect. In the meantime he had become aware that one cannot stray too far from the general moral code without being punished.

 

Therefore, however, understandable it is that this ethics of marriage gave offence (and piqued curiosity), the judgement on this issue should be given more nuance than is usually the case. More factors play a role than, as Klemens Löffler states, only the giving in to sensual lusts by Jan of Leiden. In this matter, too, the report of Berssenbroch in particular needs to be regarded critically. He related that one night a deserted solider caught Jan of Leiden in the act of adultery in Knipperdolling’s house. In order to avoid exposure, polygamy was quickly introduced. This, of course, is too simplistic a representation of the facts. Jan of Leiden was man enough to deal with a situation like this in another way, for example, by executing the solider in question. There is more to be said.

 

First, one needs to realize that from the very start the besiegers spread the wildest rumours about the moral life of the Anabaptists. Some of them were probably motivated by fear. They had left wives and children in the city, expecting that the Anabaptist rule would last only a few days, several weeks at most. It was unthinkable that a relatively small group of people with no military experience could defend a city like Münster against well-trained soldiers for a longer period. Therefore, months before the introduction of polygamy, the Anabaptists had to defend themselves against rumours which reveal more about the fear of the inhabits who had fled and about the imagination of the besiegers than about the moral life within the town itself. In pamphlets the Anabaptists called on their critics to come and investigate the alleged adultery themselves. ‘Our life has been arranged before God in such a way that no one among us who is guilty of shameful conduct is left unpunished’ (Löffler, Die Wiedertäufer zu Münster, p. 87. In another pamphlet is stated explicitly that the accusations about the moral conduct within Münster stem from the refugees. ‘This kind of lie has been made up impudently by the refugees:’ Ibid., p. 99). ‘We do not share our wives with one another,’ Rothmann wrote in a confession of faith which also stems from the first phase of the siege, ‘Neither do we abrogate the rules concerning blood ties’ (Stupperich, Die Schriften Bernhard Rothmanns, p. 205).

 

IT is even possible that the accusation that the Anabaptists would have appropriated women with the infamous words ‘My spirit desires your flesh’, was already uttered before polygamy was introduced. IT cannot be ascertained with certainty when this association was first made. The origin of the words, however, is known. They are to be found in late medieval monastic literature, for example in Thomas a Kempis’s volume of tracts De Imitatione Christi, ‘Anima mea corpus tuum concupiscit’, but here it refers to the soul’s desire to receive the body of Christ during the Eucharistic celebration (Thomas a Kempis, De Imitatione Christi, ed. J. M. Horstius [Tournai, 1828], vol. IV, 3, 1, p. 191). Anabaptist radicals did not shrink from unmannerly ridicule of Catholic practices. Even during the final stage of the siege Jan of Leiden could organize a mocking mass, at which a jester who in earlier times had served as prebendary, was dressed in Catholic vestments. Rat’s heads, bats and bones were sacrificed. All other masses you ever attended were no more valuable than this one, Rothmann told the people afterwards (The story has been transmitted to us by Gresbeck; see Cornelius, Berichte der Augenzeugen, pp. 150 ff.). So it is quite conceivable that the Münsterites mockingly applied the pious words of people like Thomas a Kempis to relations other than those that can exist between the believing soul and Christ. Their mockery now turned against them, but this does not necessarily mean that their moral decline was really this great.

 

Polygamy is likely to have been introduced to prevent worse. The situation was very complicated. As was mentioned, rich citizens had left their wives, expecting a speedy return. The number of nuns that had chosen the new covenant was considerable. Kerssenbroch writes with clear disdain about the eagerness with which they had left the convents. From elsewhere cam men such as Jan of Leiden who had left their families at home. The men formed a minority. Their number has been estimated as 2,000. There were about three times as many women (The numbers given in the confessions of Anabaptists vary a great deal, but always the number of women appears to be considerably higher than the number of men. Gresbeck gives the following estimates: 2000 men, 8000 to 9000 women, 1000to 1200 children, in Cornelius Berichte der Augenzeugen, p. 107. See Ramstedt, Sekte und soziale Bewegung, p. 103). (Auke Jelsma, Frontiers of the Reformation: Dissidence and Orthodoxy in Sixteenth-Century Europe [Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 1998], 66-68)