Das Täuferreich von Münster: Ursprünge und Merkmale eines religiösen Aufbruchs by Hubertus Lutterbach (review)

With Ludwig Keller’s Geschichte der Wiedertäufer und ihres Reiches zu Münster (Münster, 1880) a relatively positive interpretation of the notorious “revolution of the saints” in Münster appeared for the first time. But Keller’s credibility as a historian was gradually destroyed after the publication of his Die Reformation und die älteren Reformparteien (Leipzig, 1885), in which he sought, among other things, to trace Anabaptism back to the primitive Church by way of the medieval heretical groups. Modern scholarship on the Münster revolution can therefore be said to have begun with Robert Stupperich’s Die Schriften Bernhard Rothmanns (Münster, 1970) and Karl-Heinz Kirchhoff’s Die Täufer in Münster 1534/35 (Münster, 1973). The latter, a work of social history—as is the present work—began the process of transformation over again. The present study by Hubertus Lutterbach is a work of synthesis, bringing together what has been accomplished since Kirchhoff’s work appeared while adding many insights.

After a short introductory chapter, Lutterbach takes us, in the second chapter, into the “Catholic” Münster around the beginning of the sixteenth century, emphasizing its sacral-religious character and the many ecclesiastical, monastic foundations and semi-monastic organizations like the Brethren of the Common Life and the Beguines. Lutterbach’s observation that whole convents later became Anabaptist might have led him to explore more fully the relationship between Anabaptism and monasticism. As Johannes Brenz and Sebastian Franck both observed on occasion, the Catholic Church, in persecuting the Anabaptists, was in fact persecuting its own ideal form of Christianity in monasticism. Reformers generally called Anabaptists “new monks.” At the same time, the very visible and early presence of the Brethren of the Common Life in the city might also have something to do with the later spread of Anabaptism in the city. On the other hand, many of the Catholic religious left with the Anabaptist takeover of the city.

The third chapter addresses the rise of Protestantism in the city under Rothmann and the gradual desacralization of the city. Rothmann’s 1531–32 study tour to Wittenberg and Strasbourg, which led to the introduction of Protestantism, was financed by city merchants. Indeed, the interplay among the Catholic powers, the city council, and the guilds in Rothmann’s later appointment and reform activity at the St. Lambert Church is a fascinating example of how a city could be, and was, transformed from Catholic to Protestant. Lutterbach refers to incidents that seem to indicate that the Nuremberg Edict of March 6, 1523, played a powerful role—although the author does not realize it—in the Protestant Reformation in this city as well.

Lutterbach begins to address the transition from Lutheranism to Anabaptism in this third chapter. It is interesting to note that in this transition period, the Catholic bishop was beginning to initiate the siege of the city. This transition to Anabaptism was assisted by the city’s policy of religious toleration that had been inaugurated when the Lutherans came to power. The role of Melchior Hoffmann in the transition, although mentioned, does not deal adequately with the latter’s eschatological views and their source in Martin Luther’s own intense end-time expectation (which, as Martin Greschat has pointed out, culminated in the great Peasant War) and their role in the Münster takeover by Jan of Leiden and Jan Mathijs. Virtually all radicals who addressed the matter, as well as Luther’s closest followers later on, pointed to the reformer as the prophet of the end times who had publicly identified the pope as antichrist as early as his 1520 Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation. It is in the context of this pervasive expectation that St. Augustine’s misinterpretation of the Parable of the Tares takes on revolutionary significance. He argued that...