Preface

The Resurrections of Thomas M

untzer

Alberto Toscono

My seed did not fall on stony ground. N

ow it is grow

ing. N

ow it w

ill bear fruit. You w

ill overcome.

-Thom

as Mi.intzer, in B

erta Lask's play, Thom

as lliflilltzcy. Dram

atisches Gem

alde des D

el/tsclzell Bauemkric.f<es Fon 1525

In the eyes ofthe Germ

an working-classes, M

iintzer was and

is the most brilliant em

bodiment of heretical com

munism

. -

Karl

COlnl11lmisln in Central Europe in the Tim

e of the Re!imnatioll

'Anno dom

ini 1525, at the beginning of the year, there was a

great, unprecedented upheaval of the Com

mon M

an through-out the G

erman lands' -

thus wrote a contem

porary of what

has come to be know

n as the Germ

an Peasants' War. M

ore than three hundred years later, in 'O

n the Jewish Q

uestion', K

arl Marx referred to the events of 1524-6 as 'the m

ost radical fact of G

erman history'. Fusing together theological extrem

ism

with the conflicts that stem

med from

profound economic trans-

formations and the exactions of the G

erman princes, the Peas-

ants' War w

as not only the most notable revolt 'from

below' in

Europe prior to the French R

evolution (with around 100,000

viii

pcasants killed in its suppression), it also became a

/0(1/.1 dassi(lfs t()J-

those who w

ished to meditate on the bonds betw

een reli-giom

activism and social upheaval, and to explore the volatile

combination of theological innovation and political strategy.

I)espite the presence of other eloquent leaders agitators

within the w

idespread movem

cnt of revolt (Michael G

aismair

in Tyrol, for instance), it is T

homas M

untzer who is often sin-

gled out as the emblem

atic figure in the Peasallts' War; as Ernst

Bloch w

ould have it, he was 'the theologian of the revolution'.

The reception of M

iintzer has been divided, to say the least. In intellectual portraits and narratives alm

ost invariably skewed

by the political passions or aversions of their authors, this self-dcscribed 'servant of G

od against the godless' has featured either as a dangerous fm

atic, or as a heroic revolutionary precursor. T

he idea of the Sdlludrmcr, or (until', as the utm

ost threat to the orderly reproduction of society, the one w

ho collapses the C

ity of God into the C

ity of Man in an apocalyptic um

fbgra-tion -

an idea that has since exercised a powerful hold on W

est-ern political thought -

can indeed be traced back to the early responses to M

iintzer by the Wittenberg ref()[]llerS, and in par-

ticular by his erstwhile interlocutors L

uther and Melanchthon.

After their break around 152.3, brought on by M

iintzer's increas-ingly overt political agitation and his related repudiation of key tenets of L

uther's Protestamism

-above all the 'Pauline' justiti-

cation of obedience to earthly authorities -L

uther, adamant to

demarcate his ow

n project of reformation from

Miintzer's sub-

versive preaching and to quell an anti-authoritarian and icono-clastic surge that could be laid at his door, lam

basted 'the Satan of A

llstedt' as 6natical, seditious and demagogical. In the 1524

Letterto tlte Pri1lcesofSaxolly COllecmill)!.theSeditiotis

Spirit, Luther

castigated Muntzer's doctrine of the prim

acy of spirit over the letter, and w

hat he (correctly) perceived as its revolutionary im

plications: that it would lead the com

mon people 'to over-

throw civil authority and m

ake themselves lords of the w

orld',

PREFACE ix

thereby besmirching a faith w

hich t()ught against papal authority II) order to purify itselfjrolll authority, not so as to overturn it. T

he 'villainous and blood-thirsty prophet', Miintzer, aim

ed at im

posing f:1ith by the sword, and draw

ing trom the scriptures a

principle of violence. Luther insisted that the G

ospels could not be used to justify this m

utinous meddling in w

orldly things. A

nd yet the ban on political revolt (the greatest evil and im

pediment to salvation), joined w

ith the \cgitimation of the

authorities that ruled over the (lllen world, m

eant that Luther,

fIr from

condem

ning violence as such, extolled it w

hen it

referred to the suppression of the blse prophet and his plebelan follow

ers. In May 1525, in a screed w

ritten prior to, but pub-lished in the w

ake of, the peasant armies' bloody rout at Frank-

- tlte Robbi/l)!. alld l'v1/1rderi/lj!, HM

dcs o( Peasants -

Luther applied the full pow

er of hls pen to singing the praises of the princes' sw

ords. In a text that could serve as the template

for the many justifications of untram

melled, 6natical violence

against '[matics' in the centuries that f()llow

ed, he wrote:

Let whoever can stab, sm

ite, slay. [fyou die in doing it, good for you! A

1110re blessed death em

never be yours, f()r you die w

hile obeying the diville word and com

mandm

ent in R

omans 1:1, am

] in loving service of your neighbour, whom

you are rescuing fi-om

the bonds ofhell ofthe devil. ... If

myone thinks this is too harsh, let him

remelllber that rebel-

lion is intolerable and that the destruction of the world is to

be expected every hour.

Though none of M

iintzer's many detractors throughout the

ages ever reached the pitch ofLuther's vituperations, the them

e of M

iintzer as fanatic is endemic. Philipp M

eLm

chthon, who

had befriended Miintzer in the latter's early passage through

Wittenberg, w

ould later go on -in the anonym

ously pllbhshed H

istory (?{ TI101I/(1.' i\hi1ltzey, the author (?( the revolt, very

x PREFACE

profitable readillg -to justify the bloody repression m

eted out against the 'rabble' and its

devil-possessed £lIse prophet.

In his com

mentary to A

ristotle's Politics (1529), he would then

enshrine the notion of the fanatic in political theory, condemn-

ing as 'fanatical people' those whom

, like Miintzer and his com

-rades, choose to condem

n private property on the basis of the G

ospels and thus lay waste to the principles o

f'civil society'. M

iintzer's fanatical fame rests in part on his penchant for rhe-

torical assaults of arresting violence (which shouldn't blind us

to the full range ofhis writing, from

pastoral letters to scriptural exegesis, dream

interpretations to liturgy). In his letter to his arch-nem

esis, Count Ernst von M

ansfeld, Miintzer w

rites: 'Just tell us, you m

iserable sack of worm

s, who m

ade you a prince over the people w

hom G

od redeemed w

ith his dear blood?' He

warns the com

mon people that the priests 'w

ill shit on you with

a new logic, tw

isting the word ofG

od'. His violent exhortations

range from the allegorical -

'The living G

od is sharpening his scythe in m

e, so that later 1 can cut down the red poppies and

the blue cornflowers' -

to the frenzied, as in his letter to the people of A

llstedt:

At them

, at them, w

hile the fire is hot! Do not let your sw

ord get cold, do not let your arm

s go lame! Strike -

cling, clang! -on the anvils ofN

imrod. T

hrow their tow

ers to the ground! As long as rthe godless] live, it is not possible for you to be em

ptied of human fear. Y

ou cannot be told about God as

long as they rule over you. At them

, at them, w

hile you have daylight! G

od leads you -follow

, follow!

His enem

ies -Luther, the 'godless', the priests and princes -

were the object of a rich panoply ofinsults: 'abandoned repro-

bates', 'thin-shitters', 'platelickers', 'clownish, testicled doctors',

'toadspawn', 'w

hore-riders'. As though his confirm

ed statements

did not suffice, Melanchthon's H

istory even puts the following

PREFACE xi

declamation in his m

outh, as ifto seal the accusation offanatical desecration and false prophecy: 'I shit on G

od ifhe does not do m

y bidding.' In the image and the reality of M

iintzer, scatology and eschatology are never too far apart.

The im

age of Miintzer as the fanatic, transm

itted in plays and chronicles, as w

ell as in his portraits -w

hich, as Goertz's

fine biography shows, w

ere based not on observation but on a kind of physiognom

y of heresy -still exerted its £1scination

well into the tw

entieth century. Thus G

. R. Elton, in his Ref-

ormation Europe 1517-1559, mem

orably introduces Miintzer as

a 'youngish man full of violent hatred for all things other than

they should have been, university trained, an idealist ofthe kind fam

iliar in all revolutions', dubs him 'the dem

onic genius of the early R

eformation' and concludes, in term

s wholly con-

gruent with the tradition initiated by L

uther and Melanchthon,

that he was 'not so m

uch a constructive revolutionary as an unrestrained fanatic, and in his preaching of violence a danger-ous lunatic'. B

ut the most influential depiction of M

iintzer as a fanatic is to be found in N

orman C

ohn's classic The Pursuit of the M

illennium, a text that, like so m

any others on Miintzer,

posits a short circuit between the distant past of the Peasants'

War and the political exigencies of the present (in C

ohn's case taking the form

of Cold W

ar anti-comm

unism). For C

ohn, 'M

iintzer was a propheta obsessed by eschatological phantasies

which he attem

pted to translate into reality by exploiting social discontent.' H

is narrative of the theologian of the revolution, albeit driven by the need to condem

n political fanaticism, often

attains a quasi-cinematic effect, as w

hen he writes: 'O

bsessed as alw

ays by the impending destruction of the ungodly, he had a

red crucifix and a naked sword carried in front of him

when, at

the head ofan armed band, he patrolled the streets ofthe tO

WIl.'

Cohn's ultim

ate thesis, for which M

iintzer plays a pivotal and em

blematic role, rem

ains very influential to this very day. He

argues, in a nutshell, that the 'totalitarianisms' (C

omm

unism and

xii PREFACE

Fascism) w

ere the bearers of archaic 'phantasies' belonging to the 'popular apocalyptic lore ofE

urope'. T

his verdict represents the conscious reversal ofa comm

unist and M

arxist tradition that adopted Mlintzer as a heroic herald of

egalitarian, revolutionary politics, precariously poised between a

decaying mediaeval w

orld rife with urges for pre-capitalist com

-m

unism and the class struggle w

ithin and against a rising capi-talist society. T

his tradition, which view

s Mlintzer as the fiery

precursor of contemporary revolutions, has generally dow

n-played the apocalyptic and m

ystical thrust ofMlintzer's serm

ons and texts, as w

ell as his theological and scriptural originality. It focuses instead on his capacity to crystallize the discontent of the peasants and the 'com

mon m

an', which eventually led to

organizing their revolt. It is significant in this respect to note that the 'resurrections' of T

homas M

lintzer (to adopt a notion recently proposed by A

lain Badiou) have frequently coincided

with upsurges of revolutionary struggle. T

hus the first proper biography of M

lintzer, by Strobel, was w

ritten in the wake of

the French Revolution, w

hile Zim

merm

an, the author of the influential G

eneral History of the Peasants' Revolt, w

as a Young

Hegelian w

ho sought to read Mlintzer through the radical dem

-ocratic struggles ofG

ermany in the 1840s. Engels, in his sem

inal text, The Peasant W

ar in Germ

ally (1850), turned to Mlintzer in

order to think through the defeat of the 1848 revolutions and to 'resurrect' a fitting, if anachronistic, revolutionary em

blem.

Mlintzer also returned w

ith the defeated Germ

an revolution of 1917-23, in Ernst B

loch's Thomas A1iintzer: Theologian of the

Revolutioll, and in more popular m

odes, such as Berta Lask's

agitprop play, staged in 1925 in Eisleben for 'Red M

lintzer D

ay'. Not to forget the resurgent interest in this com

munist

precursor among the Situationists around 1968, or his rediscov-

ery by Luther B

lissett and Wu M

ing in a political short circuit w

ith Zapatismo and the alter-globalization m

ovement. A

ll of these m

oments saw

the revitalization of a comm

unist princi-

PREFACE xiii

pIe which w

as famously extorted from

Mlintzer under torture,

shortly before his execution:

'All property should be held in com

mon' (O

mnia sullt wrnrnu-

nia) and should be distributed to each according to his needs, as the occasion required. A

ny prince, count, or lord who did

not want to do this, after first being w

arned about it, should be beheaded or hanged.

The m

atrix for the recovery of Mlintzer as a revolutionary icon

-an icon ofegalitarian iconoclasm

, ofthe battle against what he

called 'dead wooden things' -

was and rem

ains Engels's power-

ful text. Indeed, the importance of the figure of M

lintzer for Engels exceeds the sim

ple evaluation of the Peasants' War, pro-

foundly colouring the Marxist understanding ofrevolutions and

revolts which find their sym

bolism and legitim

ation in religious or theological conceptions of the w

orld. Three basic elem

ents underlie Engels's critical history: the idea ofM

lintzer as the rep-resentative of a class and of its political direction; the under-standing of M

lintzer's apocalyptic theology as an intractable lim

itation ofa political project ahead ofits time; the attention to

Mlintzer as a savvy revolutionary agitator and strategist. Engels

presents a tripartite schema in w

hich three 'camps' confront one

another: 'the conservative Catholic cam

p' of the defenders of the status quo (im

perial authorities, some princes, nobility, etc.),

'the camp ofbll/;gher-like m

oderate Llitheran reforms' (lesser nobil-

ity, burghers, some lay princes) and the 'revolutionary party' of

plebeians and peasants, of which M

lintzer is the most eloquent

spokesperson. Importantly, it is the plebeians, am

ong which one

would count the M

ansfeld miners and poorer tow

nspeople who

Mlintzer strove to organize, and not the peasants, w

ho represent the crucial class for Engels, 'the only class that stood outside the existing official society'. M

lintzer's restless organizational activ-ity -

his sermons, letters, cO

IlStant peregrinations, flights and

xiv PREFACE

agitation, as well as his later arm

ed endeavours -w

ould then be aim

ed at fomenting the unity of this 'class', building alli-

ances among its disparate m

embers and w

ith the peasantry in the broader 'party' ofrevolution. Political organizations, such as the 'League of the E

lect' in Allstedt, or the 'E

ternal Council' and

revolutionary comm

une in Muhlhausen, w

ould be aimed at this

purpose. (The greatest contribution of K

arl Kautsky's treatm

ent of M

untzer in his 1897 Com

munism

in Central Europe lies pre-cisely in follow

ing the red thread of this organizational activity.) W

here it comes to the theological dim

ension of Muntzer's

thought, Engels presents Muntzer's religious language variously

as a 'screen', a 'flag' or a 'mask' for his underlying revolutionary

class politics. Though this them

e is familiar enough, the reasons

adduced for it are worth reflecting on. M

iintzer's camp, the

'plebeians', were both the 'sym

ptoms' of a decaying feudalism

and the 'fIrSt precursors of m

odern bourgeois society'. Along

with their spiritual and political leader, they w

ere compelled by

this situation of transition into a theological, or even apocalyp-tic, acceleration, w

ith the ideological effects that this entailed. Engels's explanation is w

orth quoting at length. The [let that

they were both sym

ptoms and precursors

explains why the plebeian O

pposItion even then could not confine itself to fighting only feudalism

and the privileged burghers; w

hy, in fantasy at least, it reached beyond the then scarcely daw

ning modern bourgeois society, w

hy, an absolutely propertyless group, it questioned the institutions, view

s and conceptions C0I111110n to all societies based on class antagonism

s. In this respect, the chiliastic dream-visions of

early Christianity offered a very convenient starting-point.

On the other hand, this sally beyond both the present and

even the future could be nothing but violent and fantastic, and of necessity fell back into the narrow

limits set by the

contemporary situation.

PREFACE xv

What's m

ore, the cunning of capitalist history meant that the

'anticipation of comm

unism by fantasy becam

e in reality an anticipation of 1110dern bourgeois conditions', as 'vague C

hris-tian equality' turned into 'equality before the law

', and so on. T

his verdict of the necessary failure of this humanist and m

il-lenarian revolution w

as partly seconded by Guy D

ebord, in his refutation of C

ohn's argument in The Society ifthe Spectacle:

Millenarianism

-revolutionary class struggle speaking the lan-

guage of religion for the last time -

[...] is already a modern

revolutionary teIJdency that as yet lacks the COllsciOllSness that it is only historical. T

he millenarians had to lose because they

could not recognize the revolution as their own operation.

Prior to the more recent re-evaluations of M

untzer by the likes of G

oertz and the Italian scholar Tom

maso La R

occa, it w

as perhaps only Ernst Bloch -

in his] 921 Thomas M

iintzer: Theologian C!f the Revolution -

who tried to do justice to the

interweaving of apocalyptic theology, m

ystical spirituality and revolutionary politics in M

untzer. Bloch does not see the the-

ological impetus of the 'revolution of the com

mon m

an' of 1525 as the m

ere index of socio-economic im

maturity. O

n the contrary, he view

s it as one of those situations that bears w

itness to the fact that 'the superstructure is often in advance of an

... econom

y that will only later attain its m

aturity'. In other w

ords, unlike his great critic on this point, Georg

Lukacs, Bloch w

ants to stress the anticipatory character of M

untzer's anachronism, w

ithout imm

ediately relegating it to the scrapheap of necessary failures. W

hat's more, rather than a

screen or a mask, M

untzer's theology -w

ith its emphasis on

the primacy of the spirit and necessity of sutTering, its injunc-

tion that the believer make him

self empty and detach him

self from

the world, but also its strong em

phasis on the coming

deifIcation of man in the m

illennium -

is for Bloch a potent

xvi PREFACE

driving force for his political agitation. Rather than accept-

ing the disjunction between (prem

ature) political content and (sterile) religious form

, Bloch finds in M

iintzer the paradoxical union of theology and revolution, w

ithout the one serving as an instrum

ent for the other. Joining the 'absolute natural right' of a m

illenarian Christianity (theocracy qua equality) to

a very strategic grasp of social forces and political forms (the

alliance with the m

iners and the formation of the League of

the Elect), Bloch's M

iintzer combines 'the m

ost efficacious at the real le!lel and the Inost e[fiwciolls at the surreal level and puts them

both at the sum

mit of the sam

e revolution'. Thus, w

here the im

minent A

pocalypse was for L

uther an element in the justi-

fication of worldly authorities, for M

iintzer -as dem

onstrated by his gripping and hallucinatory interpretation of the B

ook of D

aniel in the Sermon to the Princes -

it is more reason to acceler-

ate and intensify the struggle for a comm

unity ofequals, where

the fear of God w

ould not be impeded by the fear for the

authorities, where it w

ould be possible for the poor (and even the 'heathens': M

iintzer makes som

e interesting remarks about

the superfluity of scripture and confession for true belief) to em

brace a Christian life w

ithout the depredatIons of the 'god-less' (a 'sociological' category, as La R

occa has usefully pointed out, w

hich includes the clergy and authorities that stand in the w

ay of a religion of the comm

on man).

More recently, H

ans-Jiirgen Goertz has pointed out how

for M

iintzer -contrary to the doctrine of the tw

o cities and the L

utheran separation of church and state -

the transformation

of the inner or spiritual order of man, a m

ystical theme draw

n from

his reading of Tauler and others, is inseparable from

the transform

ation ofthe outer order. For Miintzer, w

rites Goertz,

the issue 'really was one of a transform

ation of relationships, nam

ely those binding individuals to God, to them

selves and to the church and tem

poral authorities to God and people'. T

hus, the 'revolution in consciousness is a political and social revo-

PREFACE xvii

lution'. And this revolution, w

hich is inseparable in its very gram

mar from

the thematic of apocalypse, of 'a m

omentous,

invincible, future reformation' (Sermol1 to the Princes), is driven

throughout by a rejection of the very idea that any worldly

authority, especially ones embroiled in the exploitation of the

comm

on people, should ever inspire fear or be imm

une from

insurrection, if its rule is unjust and exploitative. As M

iintzer retorts to 'the unspiritual soft-living Flesh at W

ittenberg' (i.e., Luther) in H

(([hly PYlJ!Joked

were he to be judged by

someone w

ho neither 'loved insurrection' nor was 'averse to

a justified uprising', it would be evident that it is not a m

ere desire to trigger a revolt that has spurred his agitation am

ong the m

iners and their ilk, but the belief that 'the power of the

sword as w

ell as the key to realise sins is in the hands of the w

hole cOlllm

unity'. Ina passage of H

ighly Pro!loked

that exemplifies the scriptural vitriol and political energy of his

writing, this critique o

f the Lutheran justitication of authority

is combined w

ith an attack on the kind of economic oppres-

sion that the princes' 'sword' (and L

uther's theology) makes

possible:

Behold, the basic source of usury, theft, and robbery is our

lords and princes, who take all creatures for their private

property. The tlsh in the w

ater, the birds in the air, the ani-m

als of the earth lI1ust all be their property, Isaiah 5[:8]. And

then they let God's cO

lllmandm

ent go forth among the poor

and they say, 'God has com

manded, "T

hou shalt not steal".' B

ut this comm

andment does not apply to them

since they oppress all m

en -the poor peasant, the artisan, and all w

ho live are flayed and sheared, M

icah 3[:2f.1. But, as soon as

anyone steals the smallest thing, he m

ust hang. And to this

Doctor Liar says, 'A

men.' T

he lords themselves are respon-

sible for making the poor people their enem

y. They do not

want to rem

ove the cause ofinsurrection, so how, in the long

xviii PREFACE

run. can things improve? I say this openly, so L

uther asserts I m

ust be rebellious. So be it!

This call to undo the iniquitous pact betw

een the 'sword' of

sovereignty and the flaying and fleecing of the creatures and the poor w

as resurrected in 1789,1848,1919,1968, and many

other, less familiar dates. 'R

ed Muntzer days' m

ay still1ie ahead. W

hether they will be breathtaking anticipations or doom

ed anachronism

s remains to be seen.

Introduction

Spectres of Muntzer at Sunrise /

Greeting the 21 st C

entury

Wu M

ing

. .. A few

months before the sUl11m

it we started to w

rite epic texts such as From the iVlultitudes of Europe ... (and m

any m

ore). you know, it w

as like an edict and it went: 'W

e are the peasants of the Jacquerie ... W

e ;lre the thirty-tlJur thousand m

en that answered the call of H

ans the Piper. .. We are the

serfs, miners, fugitives, and desertl:'fs that joined Pugachev's

Cossacks to overthrow

the autocracy of Russia ... ' T

hen we

pulled media stunts in order to create expectations fiJr G

enoa. A

n example: on a quiet springtim

e night, we put placards

around the necks of the most visible statues in B

ologna (guys like G

aribaldi and other nineteenth-century national heroes), w

ith messages encouraging all citizens to go to G

enoa [... 1 W

e wanted to persuade as m

any people as possible to go to G

enoa, and we ended up convincing as m

any people as possible to fall into a full-scale police am

bush. Dem

onstra-tors \vere assaulted, beaten to a bloody pulp. arrested, eV

l'!l tortured. W

e didn't expect such mayhem

. Nobody did.

regret we w

ere so na'ive and caught off.guard, although I think that w

as a crucial mom

ent for the latest generation of activists. In a w

ay, it was im

portant to be there. That I