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He was only a Dutch tailor's apprentice, but from 1534 to 1535, Jan van Leyden led a radical sect of persecuted Anabaptists to repeated triumphs over the combined powers of church and state. Revered by his followers as the new David, the charismatic young leader pronounced the northern German city of Muenster a new Zion and crowned himself king. He expropriated all private property, took sixteen wives (supposedly emulating the biblical patriarchs), and in a deadly reign of terror, executed all who opposed him. As the long siege of Muenster resulted in starvation, thousands fled Jan's deadly kingdom while others waited behind the double walls and moats for the apocalyptic final attack by the Prince-Bishop's hired armies, supported by all the rulers of Europe.
With the sudden rise to power of a compelling personality and the resulting violent threat to ordered society, Jan van Leyden's distant story strangely echoes the many tragedies of the twentieth century. More than just a fascinating human drama from the past, The Tailor-King also offers insight into our own troubled times.
- Sales Rank: #117640 in eBooks
- Published on: 2011-04-01
- Released on: 2011-04-01
- Format: Kindle eBook
From Publishers Weekly
Carnage abounds in this shocking account of the 16th-century Anabaptist revolt of M?nster, during which some 9000 residents barricaded themselves in the north German town for more than a year, proclaiming a militant, anti-Catholic theocracy. Led by the 24-year-old Jan van Leyden, a charismatic tailor's apprentice from Holland, the revolt quickly jettisoned its promise of a community united by voluntary faith, becoming instead a textbook study in extremism. The Anabaptist message, contends Arthur, was predicated on the appeal of the irrationalAsignally, a zealous belief that the Second Coming would unfold in 1534 in M?nster, where the loyal Anabaptists would wage the ultimate battle between good and evil. A master propagandist, the young, self-anointed King Jan swiftly ordered all books save the Bible consigned to a bonfire and even declared a new order of marriage: mandatory polygamy. Amply serviced by his 16-wife harem, Jan then loosed what Arthur (Bushmasters, etc.) alternately describes as a reign of terror and a carnival of madness upon the town, in which pikestaffs whirled and halberds raged against unrepentant adherents of the Roman Catholic Church. Both Catholics and Protestants opposed the Anabaptists, and the sect's contempt for temporal authority of any kind made it the object of persecution by Germany's powerful princes. Students of millenarian movements will enjoy notable parallels to today's apocalyptic sects like the Branch Davidians. Vividly written and credibly researched, this book is entertaining history with implicit contemporary relevance. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Every revolution has a radical fringe, and the Reformation was no exception. The Anabaptists, who took over and created their own kingdom in the northern German city of M?enster, frightened even Martin Luther. Arthur (English, California State Univ., Northridge) has written an excellent account of the Anabaptist kingdom, which has not received much attention recently. His is one of the more readable academic histories in recent memory. Arthur deftly uses primary sources to craft a story that reads like a good thriller. His analysis in the final chapter is a masterly comparison of the events in M?nster to what happened to the Branch Davidians in Waco, TX. Any doubts about the importance of the bloody events of more than 400 years ago are erased by the parallels that Arthur draws. How could Waco, Oklahoma City, and Kosovo have happened? It all has happened before, with ghastly results. Highly recommended for public libraries and undergraduate collections.ARandall L. Schroeder, Wartburg Coll., Waverly, IA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
The sixteenth-century Anabaptist uprising in the northern German city of Munster, under the leadership of tailor's apprentice Jan van Leyden, is a fascinating story that has spawned many popular accounts in German. Its elements include the heroism, intrigue, greed, sex, and violence of a late-twentieth-century blockbuster novel, and Arthur's timing in presenting his account neatly coincides with the current bull market for apocalypticism, aka millenarianism. For the most part, Arthur draws on historical records and fictional accounts to recount the transformation of a protodemocratic uprising into a theocratic nightmare distorted on all sides by flawed and often unscrupulous leaders and followers whose hope regularly led them into gullibility. Arthur's attempts to draw explicit parallels with recent events and the Freudian framework within which he draws them are detractions, but they are restricted almost entirely to the final chapter. Although Arthur imparts little about Anabaptism, he provides a riveting story and pointers to other sources for reflection on the still important interplay of religious faith and theological and political authority. Steven Schroeder
Most helpful customer reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
Living history at its engrossing best
By A Customer
The Tailor King is a masterful account of what happened both inside and outside the ancient walls of sixteenth-century Munster when Protestant religious fervor transformed otherwise intelligent and rational men into irrational creatures capable of unbelievable brutality. Readers beware - the graphic descriptions and concrete imagery bring the sixteenth-century fully alive. The characters in this book could easily populate a wide-screen, action-filled film. The author's meticulous research and gift for storytelling combine to create a rare pairing of erudition and page-turning readability. Like the narrator who seizes the wedding guest in Coleridge's "The Ancient Mariner," the author seizes the reader's attention and does not let go. His calm journalistic voice only heightens the "you are there" quality of the book. And his occasional strokes of subtle dry wit surprise and delight. This is living history at its engrossing best. The carefully annotated illustrations, culled from archives and museums in Germany, highlight events in the story and are a unique bonus. A well told story from first page to last!
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
Dan Carlin brought me here
By Amazon Customer
This was a solid book that proved to be the main source text for his Hardcore History episode. Amazing that the Jones' and Koresh's of today have actually always been.
12 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
Yet Another New Zion: Religious Madmen in Westphalia
By Leslie Reissner
While the threat posed to modern society by religious fundamentalism has been underscored by the events of September 11, "The Tailor-King" reminds us that suicidal craziness is not limited to some extreme readers of the Koran. This book is about the Anabaptist Kingdom that appeared in the prosperous North German city of Muenster in 1534-35, with disastrous results for everyone involved. A century later, from 1618-48, the Thirty Years' War would be the ultimate expression of European Christian religious and political madness and it is ironic that the treaty that ended it, the Peace of Westphalia, was signed in the City Hall in Muenster, ushering in an era of peace and prosperity on the continent.
Muenster is a solid, bourgeois kind of place and in the 16th Century it seemed equally so. An important trading centre, it showed its considerable wealth in its merchants'mansions and warehouses, its churches and impressive cathedral. The beginning of the Reformation saw the city split into Catholic and Lutheran interests, but it continued to function until a group of Anabaptists, regarded as heretics for their insistence on adult baptism, gradually seized control of the town. Eventually they drove out the majority of other believers and the ranks of Muenster swelled with Anabaptists from other areas, particularly Holland. A charismatic leader, a former baker named Jan Matthias, was one of these. He had been called to Muenster by Jan van Leyden, another Dutch Anabaptist, and a group led by a wealthy local merchant. Together they declared war on the local Prince-Bishop and were rewarded with a siege of their fortified town. Deemed heretics by pretty well everyone, Catholic and Lutheran, the Anabaptists were determined to hold out, seize the countryside and establish a New Kingdom of Zion.
Anthony Arthur describes the Company of Christ as starting off as a well-disciplined, effective organization and he gives us some background on the Anabaptist movement, which was divided into pacificists (Mennonites and similar groups) and the militants. As the siege wears on, the Company of Christ takes some strange directions. From a city council, it moves to a Council of Elders and then to essentially a religious dictatorship.. Property is to be held only in common, criticism is rewarded with summary death. All the church towers are destroyed. Jan Matthias challenges the Bishop's army to single combat, with foreseeable results, and Jan van Leyden takes over. He now makes polygamy obligatory and arranges to crown himself King. The people starve, when their leaders are not personally murdering them, and those who try to leave are killed by the Bishop's soldiers outside. The whole thing comes crashing down when the Anabaptists are betrayed and the city taken. Jan van Leyden and the other most senior leaders are tortured to death and their corpses put on display in cages that are still to be seen on St. Lambert's Church in Muenster. Interestingly, the cages are original, but the church itself is not.
This book is only 244 pages, but although Mr. Arthur has looked at many sources it is clear that he has had to make an effort to flesh the book out. There are some diversions into Freud and theories that the Company of Christ was a sort of proto-Nazi organization and a long digression into the biblical story of Judith and Holofernes. I doubt that the Anabaptists were particularly Nazi-like, but exhibited many of the characteristics of a totalitarian system, more similar to Chinese Communism in its most irrational phases. And irrational it truly was-reading this book, one cannot reconcile the good burghers of Northern Germany, with their dull but solid reputation, with this lot of passionate crazies. It is a fascinating story even though one senses the whole time that it can only end one way. Of particular note is the enthusiasm with which people are put to death, often in very imaginative and quite unpleasant ways, and by both sides. The Anabaptists, as they roll onwards into madness and calamity, are treated by the author with more sympathy than the Establishment figures opposing them. Receiving particular scorn is the Prince-Bishop, Franz von Waldeck, who is portrayed as incompetent, venal and luckless.
It may seem strange to us today that adult baptism, with its element of free will, could be the subject of such rage between Christians but one need only look at the fine points argued by religious fanatics today with deadly passion to understand that the more things change, the less they do.
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