The Tailor-King

by Anthony Arthur

  Growing impatient, Corvinus says that all agree, Catholic or Protestant, that the law of the land in this matter must be obeyed: one man, one wife. “You will have to answer for your violation of this law before God.”

  “I am consoled by the certainty,” Jan says, “that we cannot be damned for doing what the fathers were permitted to do. I prefer to be with them and not you.”

  “Well, we prefer to be obedient to the state,” Corvinus replies, concluding the interview.

  It was not Jan who interested the Archbishop of Cologne. He was simply a criminal, and Bernard Krechting was no more than a thug. It was Bernard Knipperdolling, erstwhile leading citizen and merchant, who represented the truly serious threat to established order, for if such a man could turn so viciously against the state and the Church, all could be lost. The Archbishop sent von Waldeck an order to have Knipperdolling rigorously questioned again in order to get some answers to his written questions, such as: “How many men and women have you personally executed? Was it true that children were eaten by the starving masses while the king and his court feasted in their palace? Had the grain supplies for the people been poisoned to reduce the number of the starving? Was is not the case that your motivation for rebellion against the Bishop was derived entirely from the desire for revenge? Will you reveal the names of your confederates in Amsterdam, Wesel, Maastricht, Aachen, and Essen, in Hamm, Soest and Lippe—and, of course, in our own city of Cologne? You must answer these questions,” the Archbishop wrote; “you know full well what kinds of instruments we have to force you to answer.”

  To all of these questions, even under torture, Knipperdolling stubbornly refused any answer, other than to deny that his motives for opposing the Bishop had been revenge. King Jan, upon receiving similar demands, had overwhelmed his questioners with the story of his life—of his mother’s seduction and his illegitimate birth, his school years in Leyden, his youthful wanderings in England, Flanders, and Lübeck, his wife’s complaints about his extravagance, his management of the Inn of the Two Herrings, and so on. But Jan was merely throwing up rhetorical dust, never answering direct questions about how he happened to go to Münster, other than to say he had heard there were inspiring preachers there, and frustrating by evasion and prolixity the Archbishop’s attempts to uncover a wider conspiracy. He repeated his offer, on the other hand, to proclaim to all who would listen throughout the empire that he had been wrong and that they should avoid his example; all that he asked in exchange was his life.

  But there was never any doubt that Jan and the others would be executed. Hundreds of their followers who were guilty of nothing save loyalty to him had already died, only Henry Krechting, granted free passage out of the city after he relinquished command of the wagon fort, and Gerlach von Wullen escaping. Young von Wullen was a special case, a member of the nobility who was spared because it was thought too demeaning to that class to place him on public display. His father-in-law, Christian Kerckering, was less fortunate. Kerckering was also the father-in-law of the Bishop’s illegitimate son, Christoph, but his status as a noble and as a relative through marriage to the Bishop could not save him. He was guilty twice over of treason, having not only advised and supported King Jan but also having betrayed his class. On June 28, as the wagons bearing Jan and his court rolled out of Münster, the one in which Christian Kerckering rode turned from the highway into a “green and pleasant” place in the woods, as Kerssenbrück puts it. There he was beheaded and buried—a discreet and merciful death, as it was regarded, granted not out of compassion but because the Bishop’s pride of place could not tolerate the embarrassment of a noble kinsman’s public execution.

  For the execution of the ringleaders of the revolution, however, more formal procedures were necessary. Both religious and secular authority had been grievously endangered; the punishment of those responsible could not be lightly undertaken. An indication of the gravity of the situation is provided by the recommendation of Luther’s friend Melanchthon. Gentle and conciliatory by nature, immensely wise, learned, and humane, Melanchthon was originally sympathetic to some of the Anabaptist arguments and far less virulent in his opposition to them than was his master, Luther. Yet he now had no hesitation in calling for the extermination of the Anabaptists. Like Bernard Rothmann, for whom he had several years earlier foreseen either great good or great evil, Melanchthon went to the Bible to justify his recommendations. “The kings in the Old Testament, not only the Jewish kings but also the converted heathen kings, judged and killed the false prophets and unbelievers. Such examples show the proper office of princes. As Paul says, the law that blasphemers are to be punished is a good law. The government rules men not just for their bodily welfare but for the honor of God, for they are God’s ministers.” It is not for the preachers, however, to enforce these laws; “they should not use physical power under the excuse of their office. It is plain that the worldly government is bound to drive away blasphemy, false doctrine, and heresies, and to punish those who hold to these things. This sect of Anabaptists is from the devil,” and it was the duty of the authorities to punish the Anabaptists with death.

  Philip Melanchthon, kindly humanist, knew exactly what kind of punishment he was recommending. Two years earlier, Emperor Charles V had approved the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina, the new criminal code, which contains two hundred and nineteen articles describing the exact procedures to be followed in punishing those guilty of capital crimes. Many of these tortures would soon become notorious through the Spanish Inquisition as preliminaries to death, designed to wring acknowledgments of wrongdoing from the guilty and thus to let them save their souls. The method of execution selected for the ringleaders in Münster was perhaps less terrible than the drawing and quartering commonly practiced in England under Henry VIII, but it was grim enough. Heavy iron tongs were to be heated until they were red-hot. The condemned were then to be led to a public place and their bodies ripped apart with the tongs. At a designated moment a dagger would be thrust into their hearts.

  On January 19, 1536, the three prisoners, Jan, Knipperdolling, and Krechting, were brought back to Münster and subjected to yet another judicial hearing, described by Antonius Corvinus later in a letter to a friend. “They judged the king first, as the greatest criminal, whom no lie could save, as was known throughout Germany. He answered that he had fought not against God but against man’s authority. He admitted that he had violated the laws of the state and the king, and he was condemned” to die on the morning of January 22. Knipperdolling and Krechting, who refused to speak, were similarly sentenced.

  On the night of January 21, each of the three was offered the comfort of a priest to stay with him. Knipperdolling and Krechting, according to Kerssenbrück, rejected the offer with contempt. They maintained that they had committed no sins; all that they had done was for the glory of God; they were secure in their faith in Jesus Christ. They needed no priest, for their God was with them. Jan van Leyden accepted the presence of the Bishop’s priest, Johann von Siburg, who “stayed with him the entire night and found Jan greatly changed. He greatly regretted his godlessness, his murders, his looting, his lack of discipline, and his shameful deeds. He admitted that he deserved the bitterest possible death ten times over, and he renounced all his errors … Jan was thus comforted and consoled the whole night long by the priest.”

  The crowd began to gather in the Market Square after dawn on January 22, and by the time the prisoners were led forward at eight o’clock the people of Münster and the surrounding areas had filled the square where so much had happened. To one side stood Bernard Knipperdolling’s grand three-story house, where he had first entertained Jan and given him his daughter to wed. A block in the other direction was the City Hall where Henry Mollenheck’s abortive counter-revolution had collapsed in a shambles. And opposite was St. Lambert’s Church, where Bernard Rothmann had first preached against the rule of the Bishop and where three iron cages, each large enough to contain a man’s body, now waited on the stone step
s with open doors.

  Two companies of soldiers stood at stiff attention; no longer needed to maintain order among the cowed remnants of Munster’s population, their colorful presence lent the occasion an air of dignified ceremony. Above them, in an open second-story window, sat Franz von Waldeck, Bishop of Münster, swathed in heavy ermine capes against the damp mid-winter cold.

  The large scaffold depicted in numerous later illustrations was in fact simply three wagons placed side by side and covered by planks. On the middle wagon a large single post had been erected to which iron collars and chains were attached. The prisoners were led from a house off the square to the base of the scaffold and stripped to the waist. As Jan mounted the scaffold, he fell to his knees and with folded hands said, “Father, in thine hands I place my soul.”

  The three men were secured to the post with the iron collars, which were imbedded with spikes that dug into their necks and prevented any movement, though each could hear the others’ sufferings. Jan was the first to be approached by the two executioners, one from Paderborn and the other a native of Münster. The first gripped Jan’s left side with the glowing tongs; the second did the same on the right side. The executioners were versed in their art and aware that the law required the victim to be kept alive and conscious for a full hour of excruciating pain. Alternately applying the four different sets of tongs to Jan’s body and reviving him when he fainted, they finally ended the matter with a dagger thrust into his heart.

  Some observers said that Jan took the first two bites in silence, after which he cried out in pain. Antonius Corvinus, who probably knew Jan as well as any man because of their extended conversations, wrote about what he witnessed to a friend. He had been greatly moved and frightened by “the courage with which [Jan] proved himself, giving only once a cry against the pain”; he could only explain it by recalling that “it is certain that Satan is able to lend strength and courage to those he catches in his web.”

  Bernard Knipperdolling, hearing Jan’s suffering, let himself slump against the spiked collar in an effort to kill himself. He was pulled to his feet and revived to suffer as Jan had. “I don’t know if he said anything,” Corvinus wrote. “Those who were closer than I was said very definitely that Knipperdolling cried, ‘God have mercy on my sins.’ Bernard Krechting died the same way, twice crying out, ‘Oh Father, Oh Father.’”

  “There were many here who said that this was a pleasant thing to watch,” Corvinus concluded. “But to me and to others what happened here was not at all pleasant. It is true that they were properly and according to custom dealt with—which man with a consciousness of his own guilt could deny it?—but we still must remember that God will punish us similarly for our sins.”

  13

  THE LEGACY OF THE TAILOR-KING

  As Savages commemorate their great Hunts with Dancing, so History is the Dance of our Hunt for Christ, and how we have far’d.

  —Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon

  THERE WERE LAWS and procedures for plundering defeated cities. In the case of Münster, the Bishop was entitled to take all of the buildings and property that had belonged to the Anabaptists. Everything of any value—weapons, furniture, rugs, curtains, paintings, books, foodstuffs and utensils, implements and tools—was sold at auction, and the proceeds divided equally between the Bishop and the soldiers. He also discovered a treasure hoard consisting of six barrels of gold and a trunk of silver weighing four hundred and fifty pounds.

  He still had huge expenses to pay, but the Bishop did his best to reduce them. He noted that the army had captured the city by subterfuge, and thus had not been required to expend much energy, money, or manpower in the final assault. Though the commanders might have reasonably expected a bonus for a job well and expeditiously done, the Bishop lopped ten per cent off of their final wages. The common soldiers received little for their efforts when their share of the loot, which did not include the gold or silver, was split up and distributed, no more than sixteen or eighteen guilders each.

  In addition to being shortchanged, if not actually swindled, of their fair share of the loot, some of the soldiers had not been paid for two months, and by mid-July they were threatening to plunder Münster again for whatever little was left. The Bishop was forced to come up with another 26,000 Emden guilders to pay them off and get them out of the city; that challenging assignment he handed over to the able Wilhelm Steding, bypassing Ulrich von Dhaun because the count had complained too much about von Waldeck’s high-handed manner. By the end of July the Bishop was able to tell the council at Worms, which had been pressing him for a speedy resolution to the embarrassing affair, that he was making arrangements to pay his debts.

  Bishop Franz’s financial obligations to the princes who had supported him were enormous—the Archbishopric in Cologne was still collecting installments on its loans as late as 1617. At the same time, he was roundly condemned for having dithered too long in crushing the revolt, supposedly because he was a secret Lutheran in his sympathies; and he has come down in history as cruel, corrupt, and incompetent. A recent, more even-handed summary is that of Karl-Heinz Kirchhoff: In an age when religious strife was the ruling condition of political life, the rebellion in Münster forced the Bishop to request help from Hesse, Cleves, and Burgundy because the burden was too great for him to bear alone. The problem was that all of these powers were competitive with each other. One must appreciate the complications entailed by the military, religious, and political elements of these arrangements in order to see why the Bishop’s course of action during the long siege of Münster seemed so unsteady. He was, in the beginning, without support and without the means to force the city to surrender. He managed to engage the support of the opposing princes partly through their mutual fears that if they did not help him, others would, to their disadvantage. There was also a real fear that Burgundy, already the strongest of the principates, might in fact conquer Münster and dominate the region. Bishop Franz’s dramatic entry into the conquered city, then, and his even more compelling witnessing of the final punishment of the men responsible for his troubles, amounted to a most ambiguous triumph—he had won the battle but virtually lost control of his own destiny.

  Matters did not improve thereafter for the Bishop. Münster, though nominally still within his power, became the northern center of the Counter-Reformation, with considerable attention from Rome. Bishop Franz, never a devout stalwart of the Church, tried to persuade the other Catholic princes to desert to the Protestants. When they indignantly refused to follow his lead, he joined the Protestant Schmalkaldic League (several smaller cities forming a lesser version of the better-known Hanseatic League), became embroiled in regional conflicts that he lost, and had to pay a fine of one hundred thousand guilders to his enemies in lieu of seeing Münster again destroyed. He died in 1553, perhaps not, as one account has it, “of grief,” but certainly in frustration.

  Of the Bishop’s associates and underlings, Wilhelm Steding may have fared the best, receiving as a prize a splendid house that had belonged to a businessman. The bailiff Eberhard von Morrien got some property on Agidii Street. The house of Clara Brand, Knipperdolling’s mother-in-law, went to a knight. The merchant’s own house on Market Square was claimed by Bishop Franz, and remained standing until it was destroyed by Allied bombs during World War II.

  All told, about four hundred and thirty houses that had belonged to Anabaptists were given to the Bishop’s supporters or sold at auction prices, including that belonging to Henry Gresbeck’s mother, her son’s services notwithstanding. Gresbeck himself finally received some money for the house upon the death of his mother in 1542, when he was living in nearby Osnabrück; otherwise his only reward from the Bishop was being allowed to live. His friend Hansel Eck, properly known as Johann Nagel, received fifteen guilders and a small house. He married Anna Kolthave; her former husband, the goldsmith Cord Cruse, had been the keeper of the city treasury for the Company of Christ and had died in the melee after the final battle. Sadly, the litt
le adventurer’s luck finally ran out in 1537, when he tried to cheat a goldsmith out of the money he owed him for fashioning a necklace and lost his head as a consequence.

  Henry Graes, the Latin scholar who talked to angels, lived out his days comfortably in Borkum, a few miles from Münster, as a schoolteacher. Some of his former brothers were not yet willing to give up the fight, and throughout northern Germany and the Netherlands for the next several years splinter groups of Jan’s survivors and others harassed the authorities. One of the most potentially dangerous of these survivors was Henry Krechting, King Jan’s former chancellor, who made his way safely after the defense of the wagon fort in the Cathedral Square to the north, where he and other radical Anabaptists were placed under the protection of the Bishop’s old rival, Count Oldenburg. Krechting started a new movement that was taken over by David Joris, a more conservative leader. Oldenburg finally, in 1538, gave in to pressure to evict the Anabaptists, but continued to protect Krechting, who settled down and raised his two young sons, Herman and Henry. The boys, who had witnessed the events, turned out well: Herman became a successful businessman in Bremen, and his brother, after a career as the city’s mayor, wrote a history of the Anabaptist kingdom that may still be read today in the city’s historical archives. Their father’s body lies in the graveyard of the old church near Bremen, under a crumbling stone that says “On June 28, 1580, the honorable Henry Krechting peacefully left this world.”

  Only Bernard Rothmann remained, as he does today, unaccounted for. The last image of him during the battle for Münster, white-robed, sword in hand, pierced in the side by a spear, is appropriately apocalyptic. When his body was not found, it began to be rumored that he had, like Krechting, escaped. He was sighted in Rostock, Lübeck, and Wismar … he was under the protection of a Frisian prince … he was behind the continuing Anabaptist raids in distant provinces of Germany. The Bishop, for his part, thought his great enemy had escaped. In 1537 a warrant circulating for Rothmann’s arrest described him as a sturdy, square-shouldered man with clear eyes and straight dark hair, who often wore a Spanish cap. A physician from Arnhem who answered to this description was taken into custody; he sued for false arrest and received a settlement for his trouble.