 | GenghisTheHun (179)
03/12/2007 |  I must re-iterate the excellent review posted by Irishgit. I recommend The Tailor King: The Rise and Fall of the Anabaptist Kingdom of Munster, by Anthony Arthur. I read it about four years ago and it is excellent.
Münster is in North Germany in what is now North-Rhine Westphalia. Münster was under the rule of a Catholic bishop who ironically had Lutheran sympathies. Jan Bockelson or Beukelszoon (John of Leiden as the listing states) was a tailor who led a revolt against the Bishopric of Münster and took over the city for about three years.
He established a "New Jerusalem" that later led to excess and licentiousness as is often the case when "prophets" pick over the cafeteria of "truths" that one can find in the Bible.
The Bishop, Franz von Waldeck, led a seige that eventually stormed the city. The Bishopric of Münster borrowed a large sum of money that took a century to pay off so that the war could be conducted.
John of Leiden and some others were executed and displayed in iron cages hanging from the cathedral in Münster. The bodies were taken out after several years, but the cages still hang from the Cathedral of Münster, 470 years later.
Münster reverted to a Catholic Prince/Bishopric until Napoleon's time.
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 | irishgit (155)
03/12/2007 | Kind of a sixteenth century version of David Koresh.
He led a successful revolt against religious authorities in Munster, Westphalia, and quickly set about persecuting Catholics and Lutherans, proclaiming the city a new Jerusalem. Very persuasive and especially attractive to women, he told his followers that God had chosen him to be the new Messiah, and established a theocracy directed by his word alone.
He decreed that men could now take multiple wives and that women must, under penalty of death, submit to whichever men chose them. He chose 16 wives and used a pegboard system to keep track of whom he was sleeping with each night.
When Munster was retaken, he was tortured to death and his body displayed in a cage for over fifty years.
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