Medieval Europe swarmed with sects. The “spirituals” mentioned in the text, received by the king Frederic in Sicily after they were banished from Umbra were also called “The Libertines” or Adherents to the Free Spirit, or “Amorites” saw in the physical love the symbol of a spiritual liberation. Rejecting the Church and its sacraments they considered themselves to be free from sin and allowed sex with anybody and anyhow. To the brotherhood of the Free Spirit belonged the great painter Hieronymus Bosch.
A very good overview of medieval sects is made in the already mentioned book of A. Etkind “The Whip”. Etkind notices that the sect of the “adamites” that fled in 1418 from Southern France participated in Jan Hus movement. In all probability the “adamites” were the extreme radicals of the orgiastic sects. For the “adamites” private property was abolished together with all debts and taxes. The adamites practiced promiscuity, the sect was also fond of hymn chanting and ritual dances in naked form. Having occupied the entrenched island the adamites carried out night attacks on neighboring villages: blood, they believed, should flood the Earth up to the withers of a horse. “The adamites considered the Messiah already embodied in themselves, which caused the worry of more moderate Hussites. The Hussites stayed monogamous”, – writes Etkind, and continues: “In 1421 Zizka’s armies destroyed the refuge of the adamites and a year later the counterrevolution had won in Prague itself”. Zizka, it should be clarified, was the military commander of Hus’ followers. That is, moderate Hussites destroyed the radical adamites and were left face to face with the medieval burger-princely Europe that crushed them. I wanted to refine my knowledge about the Hussites, having noticed in the catalog of the Lefortovo’s library the book “Hussite wars” I ordered it. Alas, the book turned out to be removed from the list. KGB prisoners probably wore it out by reading. There were always well-read people here – the elite. Here, it is said, Blukher and Tukhachevsky were shot.
It is precisely the Hussites escaping the havoc, which had spread the variants of their teachings all over Europe and prepared the reformation. In 1517, a century later, Martin Luther nailed his 94 clauses to the doors of a provincial German church- a protest against the Catholic Church. Well, naturally, he was far from Dolcino’s accusations. However still from school times I remember that among other things Martin Luther protested against the selling of indulgencies. Martin Luther criticized the Catholic Church from the wrong side and not for what Dolcino flagellated it. Luther appealed for severity. And 17 years later it was the Munzer commune. On it we should linger more in detail.
In Germany, in the land of Northern Rhein-Westphalia, on the Dortmund-Ems canal is located the very old German city of Munzer. Actually its medieval buildings, including the Cathedral and the XV century city tower were pitilessly bombed by the Yankees during the Second World war. They were obviously restored but it’s not the same thing anymore – cement versions like in the old times, novodel [newly built] like the XXC in Moscow. Here, in Munzer the Westphalia treaty was signed in 1648. There is a university founded in 1773. In Munzer is produced cement, products from iron, wire, there are beer factories and schnapps is distilled. But it is not all this “popular economy” and not even the Munzer treaty that made Munzer famous, but the mysterious and strange social experiment that occurred there in the XVI century – the Munzer commune. The Munzer commune was in actual fact the first victorious communist society in history.
The sect of Anabaptists that had captured the city introduced common property and also husbands and wives. Herr Kautski, when he composed his history of socialism did not include there the Munzer commune, apparently from a bourgeois feeling of shame for this medieval sexual revolution.
The Munzer commune has been poorly studied. Its principal parameters are the following. The Anabaptist sect rejected the automatic baptism in infancy, referring to the Holy Scriptures. The sect insisted on the baptism of conscious believers who came to Christ consciously only. The principal Anabaptist leaders were the German Thomas Munzer and the Dutchman John of Leyden. Munzer, actually, was not entirely an Anabaptist, he rejected baptism altogether. One of the companions of the Great Reformer Luther, Munzer, the priest-intellectual joined Luther only in 1519. Munzer soon evolved towards radicalism in politics and the social structure of society. In soviet textbooks Thomas Munzer is presented as one of the founders of communism, its prophet. The beginning of such an understanding was laid by Frederick Engels. Strangely I remember the portrait of Munzer in a school textbook: a quadrangular little scholar cap, a mantle. So, Munzer developed a model of God’s kingdom on Earth. By force of arms the chosen ones had to clean the way for the New Coming. One of the principal conditions of Munzer’s teaching was his idea about Christ who is born anew in each worthy individual soul. For this one had to pass through suffering, similar to Christ’s, he, who had given birth to Christ in his soul becomes God and cannot be judged by human moral. In 1524 Munzer raised a peasant war in Thuringia. He founded a communist theocracy in the city of Mullhausen, however Luther called his army “a band of thugs” and soon Munzer was defeated, captured, under tortures admitted his heresy and was beheaded in 1525, only 36 years old.
His even younger friend and associate – the Dutchman John of Leyden – a former actor – went even farther. Soon after Munzer’s execution John of Leyden declared that Christ will soon return to Earth in order to finally found a kingdom of equality and love. John’s followers were now solidly called Anabaptists. In 1534, during the mutiny of the Anabaptists in the city of Munzer John of Leyden succeeded in seizing power. The city was renamed New Jerusalem. Also were renamed streets and days of the week. The population started to call each other “brothers” and “sisters”. John was proclaimed Messiah and king of the New Jerusalem, named John of Leyden.
The armed theocracy carried out a complete communism. Property belonged to everybody. The circulation of money was abolished, the doors of houses had to be open day and night. In public dining rooms people ate for free under the loud reading of the Old Testament. The other books were burned in front of the cathedral. Dissimulating property and food was declared a crime. Property was socialized however not in a single day. At first was socialized the property of ‘emigrants” – those who had fled the city, then those who were rebaptized later than the others and finally of all the rest. Thousands were rebaptised.
After a short period of asceticism, polygamy was established in Munzer on the model of the biblical patriarchs. The women of Munzer did not have the right to digress from their new duties. Some of the most stubborn were executed. John of Leyden had a queen and also 15 wives. Finally the polygamy had also transformed itself into promiscuity – i.e. each brother and sister had the right for copulation.
Meantime the city was besieged but for some time it successfully supported the siege. The Anabaptists sent out their agitators “apostles” in neighboring cities hoping that the Anabaptist revolution will break out everywhere. Indeed some uprisings broke out but were suppressed. In 1535 the city was taken over. The revolutionary Munzer’s theocracy was crushed. John of Leyden and other revolution leaders were captured, tortured and executed. John of Leyden at the moment of his execution was only 26 years old! The Anabaptist State existed for a year and a half, longer than the Paris commune.