In its conception, music and art provide arguments to understand each other and claim utopia, an essential mission since the engine of history is the class struggle, but also the dream of worlds capable of materializing our desires.
Given this, it is not surprising that in his long career as a researcher, Bloch devoted attention to characters who could be described as visionaries, but who brought generous water to the mills of emancipation. In
Thomas Müntzer, theologian of the revolutiona work from 1921, analyzes the life and doctrines of the ideologue and prominent protagonist of the peasant revolts in Germany at the beginning of the 15th century.
This early work by Bloch has the virtue of placing before us in its full historical dimension a man who, starting from the liberating potential he attributed to the sacred scriptures, was able to see beyond feudal servitude. His is a lesson in commitment to the dispossessed and confrontation with all powers, including that of the reformed Church of Martin Luther.
faith in the revolution
Thomas Müntzer was born around 1489 in Stolberg, a small town in the Harz mountains in Germany, to a wealthy family, and was ordained a priest around 1513. In the following years, when the Reformation began to take shape in the country, he gained life as a preacher and private tutor, tasks in which he already manifests his heterodoxy.
When at the end of 1917 Martin Luther published his ninety-five theses against the abuse of indulgences, Müntzer joined the criticism. In 1521 he is forced to leave prosperous Zwickau after disputes with other theologians, and proudly signs his last paycheck thus: “Thomas Müntzer, who pro veritate militat in mundo.” Later he lives and preaches in Prague and various German cities. Those who knew him describe him as short in stature, with dark hair and complexion, and a fiery gaze, with a broad, bony face. He was brave, with something of a braggart, and did not covet riches.
In 1523, Thomas takes up residence in Allstedt (Saxony), where he marries Ottilie von Gersen, an exclaustrated nun with whom he has a son and who will be his most efficient and enthusiastic collaborator. In this small town he completes his liturgical reform, translating the texts of the mass into German and introducing sung parts in this language in the services, in all of which he is a pioneer. His greatest joy is the broad popular support for these projects, which draw thousands of parishioners on Sundays, even from nearby cities. He also sets up a printing press, which serves as a powerful means of propaganda. In his homilies and writings, Müntzer argues that men can find the way to God and be saved without the need for intermediaries, thus calling into question the privileges of the Roman Curia. He also lambastes social ills and gathers around him, in a “Secret League”, those who share his vision.
During this time in Allstedt, the estrangement with Luther is accentuated, since his revolt against the ecclesial power is extended by Müntzer to all those who provoke the misery of the people with their abuses. Against the social conservatism of the former Augustinian friar, our exalted shepherd of souls calls for a revolt that will bring about the millennium of Christ and strives to add to it the sectors he considers propitious: farmers, miners, city workers and even small bourgeois. To this end, he sends emissaries to the nearby regions to seek support for a “great German uprising” with a clearly communist program: “Omnia sunt communia, and each one should receive according to his needs and according to the circumstances.”
The clashes with the local aristocracy originated by these preachings and activities made that in August 1524 he was forced to flee from Allstedt.
Established in Mühlhausen (Thuringia), Müntzer publishes a booklet with abundant citations in support of his ideas, especially from the Old Testament and the Apocalypse, the most fertile biblical territories in messianic ardor. In the fight that he believes is essential to free human beings from his chains, Müntzer does not disdain the use of violence against those who hinder the birth of the new world. Expelled again, he resides in Nuremberg and then travels through the Black Forest and surrounding areas inciting insurrection. Back in Mühlhausen already in 1925, he founds an armed militia to defend the Kingdom of God and chooses for it a white flag with a rainbow and inscribed: “The Word of God will last forever.”. At the end of April, all of Thuringia burns.
The decisive battle took place in Frankenhausen on May 15, and ended with the total defeat of the mutinous bands, lacking strategy and effective leadership and deceived by unscrupulous opponents who violated an agreed truce. Muntzer was captured. It is said that in his last speech, already on the gallows, he admonished the princes and exhorted them “to read with application the Holy Scriptures, to know the horrible end that God reserves for tyrants”. He was beheaded in front of the gates of Mühlhausen on May 27, his body impaled and his head put on a stake. It is estimated that around one hundred thousand participants in the uprising were massacred.
That same year of 1525, Martin Luther published his booklet Against the peasant robbers and murderersin which he harshly condemned the revolt and stressed that the duty of a Christian is to suffer injustice and never resort to violence.
A mystic committed to history
After remembering his life, in the final chapters of Thomas Müntzer, theologian of the revolutionBloch undertakes an analysis of the theoretical aspects of the preaching of his biography.
God is for Müntzer an inner experience and a continuous presence in the world, which bears fruit in our noblest feelings. He defends that if we eliminate the obstacles that make it inaudible, miseries and attachments, we will be able to hear the divine voice within us, since faith works the miracle of propitiating the union of the soul with God. These conceptions are fully in the wake of the German mysticism of Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler or the anonymous Germanic Theology.
However, another essential feature of Müntzer’s thought is that faith finds its meaning only when it manifests itself in works that energize our entire being and are the mark of the just. This vision leads to a millenarian yearning and the mission to found the kingdom of God on earth, ideas foreign to the previous German mystics.
Müntzer’s is, according to this, a rare example of a spirituality that does not flee from the world, but rather crystallizes in action to change it. He fought with weapons in hand to build his utopia, but at the same time his concept of God and his relationship with man is integrated into the tradition of Christian mysticism that goes from Joachim of Fiore and the Cathars to the pacifist humanism of Lev Tolstóy, with intermediate contributions throughout Europe.
Thomas Müntzer’s career reveals a commitment to social revolution and the overcoming of feudalism, but at no time does he cease to be a theologian committed body and soul to the reform of the Church. For him, only faith has to transform our mortal flesh into the essence of Christ, and thus “Earthly life will become confused with heaven.”
With this he shows us once again that, although the truth is one, the ways of expressing it are infinitely varied.
Author blog: http://www.jesusaller.com/. In it you can download his latest collection of poems: the dead books.
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