The Tailor King: The Rise and Fall of the Anabaptist Kingdom of Muenster

Carnage abounds in this shocking account of the 16th-century Anabaptist revolt of M nster, during which some 9000 residents barricaded themselves in the north German town for more than a year, proclaiming a militant, anti-Catholic theocracy. Led by the 24-year-old Jan van Leyden, a charismatic tailor's apprentice from Holland, the revolt quickly jettisoned its promise of a community united by voluntary faith, becoming instead a textbook study in extremism. The Anabaptist message, contends Arthur, was predicated on the appeal of the irrational--signally, a zealous belief that the Second Coming would unfold in 1534 in M nster, where the loyal Anabaptists would wage the ultimate battle between good and evil. A master propagandist, the young, self-anointed King Jan swiftly ordered all books save the Bible consigned to a bonfire and even declared a new order of marriage: mandatory polygamy. Amply serviced by his 16-wife harem, Jan then loosed what Arthur (Bushmasters, etc.) alternately describes as a reign of terror and a carnival of madness upon the town, in which pikestaffs whirled and halberds raged against unrepentant adherents of the Roman Catholic Church. Both Catholics and Protestants opposed the Anabaptists, and the sect's contempt for temporal authority of any kind made it the object of persecution by Germany's powerful princes. Students of millenarian movements will enjoy notable parallels to today's apocalyptic sects like the Branch Davidians. Vividly written and credibly researched, this book is entertaining history with implicit contemporary relevance. (Sept.)