Heresiarch Flash

In May 1534 John of Leyden, a Dutch heretic also known as Jan Bockelson, was proclaimed king of the German town of Munster, the New Jerusalem - was, thus, proclaimed king of the whole world... earlier in the year, a group of radical Anabaptists... seized control of Münster ... quickly drove out the Lutheran majority... and established a theocracy.

All property was expropriated. Money was abolished... in a great bonfire all books save the Bible were destroyed... all things were to be in common... in every instance the new commandments were enforced with the threat of execution...

The local bishop organised an army of mercenaries and laid seige to Münster... John of Leyden ran through the town naked, then was silent for three days...God had revealed a new order...death was to be the only sanction against any sin: murder, avarice, quarreling, the insubordination of children, the naysaying of wives. Polygamy was mandated, spectacles were staged: great dinners, followed by beheadings. Black masses were held in the cathedral... John of Leyden feasted and dressed in gold and silk... he was permitted luxury and indulgence...

In January 1535 the bishop... blockaded the town... by April every last animal, the last rat and mouse, had been eaten; then the grass, then moss, then shoes and whitewash, and finally human bodies... [the people] begging for death, howling... crawled on their hands and knees scrabbling for roots; they ate dirt...

In June 1535, the city was betrayed and taken... John of Leyden "was for some time led about on a chain and exhibited like a performing bear" [before he] was publicly tortured to death with red-hot irons... after the execution [his body] was suspended from a church tower in the middle of the town, in cages which are still to be seen there today....