On August 1st, Muenzer was compelled to appear before the princes in the castle of Weimar, to defend himself against the accusation of incendiary machinations.There were highly compromising facts quoted against him;his secret union had been traced; his hand was discovered in the Organisation of the pitmen and the peasants.He was being threatened with banishment.
Upon returning to AItstedt, he learned Duke Georg of Saxony demanded his extradition.Union letters in his handwriting bad been intercepted, wherein he called Georg's subjects to armed resistance against the enemies of the Gospel.The council would have extradited him had he not left the city.
In the meantime, the rising agitation among the peasants and the plebeians had enormously lightened Muenzer's task of propaganda.In the person of the Anabaptists he found invaluable agents.This sect, having no definite dogmas, held together by common opposition against all ruling classes and by the common symbol of second baptism, ascetic in their mode of living, untiring, fanatic and intrepid in propaganda, had grouped itself more closely around Muenzer.Made homeless by constant persecutions, its members wandered over the length and breadth of Germany, announcing everywhere the new gospel wherein Muenzer had made clear to them their own demands and wishes.Numberless Anabaptists were put on the rack, burned or otherwise executed.But the courage and endurance of these emissaries were unshaken, and the success of their activities amidst the rapidly rising agitation of the people was enormous.That was one of the reasons why, on his flight from Thuringia, Muenzer found the ground prepared wherever he turned.
In Nuernberg, a peasant revolt had been nipped in the bud a month previous.Here Muenzer conducted his propaganda under cover.Soon there appeared persons who defended his most audacious theological doctrines of the non-obligatory power of the Bible and the meaninglessness of sacraments, declaring Christ to have been a mere man, and the power of lay authorities to be ungodly."We see there Satan stalking, the spirit of Altstedt!" Luther exclaimed.In Nuernberg, Muenzer printed his reply to Luther.He accused him of flattering the princes and supporting the reactionary party by his moderate position."The people will free themselves in spite of everything,"he wrote, "and then the fate of Dr.Luther will be that of a captive fox."The city council ordered the paper confiscated, and Muenzer was compelled to leave the city.From there he went through Suabia to Alsace, then to Switzerland, and then back to the Upper Black Forest where the insurrection had started several months before, precipitated largely by the Anabaptist emissaries.There is no doubt that this propaganda trip of Muenzer's added much to the organisation of the people's party, to a clear formulation of its demands and to the final general outbreak of the insurrection in April, 1525.It was through this trip that the dual nature of Muenzer's activities became more and more pronounced -- on the one hand, his propaganda among the people whom he approached in the only language then comprehensible to the masses, that of religious prophecy; on the other hand, his contact with the initiated, to whom he could disclose his ultimate aims.Even previous to this journey he had grouped around himself in Thuringia a circle of the most determined persons, not only from among the people, but also from among the lower clergy, a circle whom he bad put at the head of the secret Organisation.Now he became the centre of the entire revolutionary movement of southwest Germany, organising connections between Saxony and Thuringia through Franconia and Suabia up to Alsace and the Swiss frontier and counting among his disciples and the heads of the Organisation such men as Hubmaier of Waldshut, Conrad Grebel of Zurich, Franz Rabmann of Griessen, Schappelar of Memmingen, Jakob Wehe of Leipheim, and Dr.Mantel in Stuttgart, the most revolutionary of priests.He kept himself mostly in Griessen on the Schaffhausen frontier, undertaking journeys through the Hegau, Klettgau, etc.The bloody persecutions undertaken by the alarmed princes and masters everywhere against this new plebeian heresy, aided not a little in fanning the rebellious spirit and closing the ranks of the Organisation.In this way, Muenzer passed five months in upper Germany.When the outbreak of the general movement was at hand, he returned to Thuringia, where he wished to lead the movement personally.There we will find him later.
We shall see how truly the character and the behaviour of the two party heads reflected the position of their respective parties.Luther's indecision, his fear of the movement, assumed serious proportions; his cowardly servility towards the princes corresponded closely to the hesitating, vacillating policy of the middle-classes.The revolutionary energy and decisiveness of Muenzer, on the other hand, was seen in the most advanced faction of the plebeians and peasants.The difference was that while Luther confined himself to an expression of the ideas and wishes of a majority of his class and thereby acquired among it a very cheap popularity, Muenzer, on the contrary, went far beyond the immediate ideas and demands of the plebeians and peasants, organising out of the then existing revolutionary elements a party, which, as far as it stood on the level of his ideas and shared his energy, still represented only a small minority of the insurgent masses.
[ To part 3 ]
