MÜNZER, THOMAS

Revolutionary sixteenth-century Anabaptist leader who fatefully influenced the Catholic and Protestant attitude toward the Anabaptist movement; b. Stolberg, Germany, before 1490 (1468?); d. Mühlhausen, Germany, May 27, 1525. After studying at universities in Leipzig and Frankfurt an der Oder, he was ordained and served for a time as convent chaplain. At the Leipzig Disputation in 1519 he met Luther, who recommended that Münzer serve a church in Zwickau (1520). In this socially unstable environment Münzer came under the influence of Nicolaus Storch and his Zwickau prophets, which led him to accept direct communication with God, rejecting Luther's reliance on the written word. Expelled from Zwickau (1521), he wandered about Central Europe until he was invited in 1523 to serve a church in Allsted in Electoral Saxony. Münzer proved to be a successful and eloquent preacher. He produced the first complete German liturgy, which anticipated Luther and influenced liturgical development. Involved in agitation against local authorities, Münzer organized a secret confederation consisting of peasants and miners from neighboring Mansfeld. In a command performance sermon preached on July 13, 1524, he vainly attempted to win John of Saxony, brother of Frederick the Wise, to his plan to establish a theocratic state. Opposed by Luther and forbidden to preach, Münzer fled to Mühlhausen, where he aided Heinrich Pfeiffer in making the city a center of the peasant revolt. He soon joined a roving, undisciplined, and poorly equipped army of peasants whom he encouraged with his apocalyptic preaching. Captured and tortured after their rout at Frankenhausen (1525), he recanted his political and religious views before execution. Replacing Luther's justification by faith with justification by suffering and Luther's distinction between the two kingdoms with theocratic milennial hopes, Münzer obtained religious certainty through dreams and visions. When these proved to be delusions he collapsed. Erroneously considered the typical Anabaptist by the Protestant reformers and the typical chaotic consequence of the Reformation by Catholics, Münzer became a symbol, distorting both Protestant and Catholic interpretations of the Reformation. His later popularity among Marxists as an early communist is based upon a misinterpretation of the records.

Bibliography: Werke, ed. g. franz (Gütersloh). g. w. forell, "Thomas Münzer, Symbol and Reality," Dialog 2 (1963): 12–33. c. hinrichs, Luther und Müntzer (Berlin 1952). m. m. smirin, Die Volksreformation des Thomas Münzer und der Grosse Bauernkrieg, tr. h. nichtweiss (2d ed. Berlin 1956). g. h. williams, ed., Spiritual and Anabaptist Writers (Philadelphia 1957). g. franz, Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 6 v. (Tübingen 1957–63) 4:1183–1184. e. iserloh, Lexicon für Theologie und Kirche, 10 v. (Freiburg 1957–65) 7:689–690.

[g. w. forell]