Carolingian period. But, of course, so the argument ran, the orthodox Christian society fad in every respect betrayed its origins and accepted the norms of the world; it was thus the society not of Christ, but of Antichrist, and to overthrow it would be the prelude to the parousia. As Latin Christianity began to crack up under the growing weight of the enemies it harbored, the possibility of these alternative societies establishing themselves, if only briefly, became far stronger. There were egalitarian outbreaks in Germany in the 1470s, and again in 1502, 1513 and 1517. While Luther was conducting his theological debate with Rome, and while various brands of Protestantism were establishing themselves as official Christian religions, mirroring social needs as Catholicism had done since the fourth century, efforts to overthrow society completely, and replace it by a new social-Christian dispensation, were vigorously pursued by religious fringe-men. These men and their movements tell us a great deal about Christianity and its distortions. Their inspiration was often early Christian; sometimes pre-Christian. They spoke with the authentic voice of the Montanists or the Donatists, whom orthodox Christianity and the Roman Empire had joined forces to persecute; indeed, they echoed the moral rigorism of the Essenes, likewise victims of a combination of official priests and the established secular order. They were an indisputable part of the Christian tradition, shaped by one of the matrices which Christ had implanted in human minds in the first century. But they lacked the balance of the whole Christian vision. Outraged by the wickedness of official Christian society, anxious to replace it, they' ended simply by trying to smash it, even caricature it. They embraced violence, denied culture, devalued human life and adopted purely arbitrary and volatile - systems of morality. One such case was Thomas Munizer, born in Thuringia (an area where illicit flagellation was rife) around 1488, a well educated priest who read Greek and Hebrew. His beliefs were a combination of Hussite radicalism, Free Spirit libertinism, and orthodox eschatology. To him, Lutheranism was simply a betrayal of the attempt to reform the Church, just another compromise with godless Mammon. In July 1524 he preached before John, Duke of Saxony, and other German nobles perhaps the most remarkable sermon of the whole Reformation era, to a text from the Book of Daniel, the keystone of the millenarian arch. ‘Deliver us from evil’ he interpreted as ‘deliver us from the anti-Christian government of the godless’. Society, he told his princely congregation, was being pulverized between Church and State in the hateful earthly kingdom of feudal-papal Christendom. But the royal priesthood of the common man would smash it - and the princes should join the covenanted people in overthrowing Antichrist. Here we have the crowned icons of the Dark Ages, the anointed priest kings, replaced by the sovereign people. While Gregory VII, Innocent Ill or Boniface VIII had seen the contest for world power as between pope and emperor, or pope and king, there was now a new candidate for the post of Vicar of Christ - the proletariat. The bid for power was made as arrogantly as Gregory VII'S had been; and accompanied by a heedless acceptance of violence as necessary and divinely commanded. Muntzer had the mark of the Zealot who had brought Jerusalem down in ruins. Indeed, he signed his letters with the Sword of Gideon and the phrase 'Thomas Muntzerthe Hammer’. He was a biblical warrior-priest. 'Let not the sword of the saint get cold' was his motto; and his heraldic sign was a red cross and a naked sword - an early example of the use of an inflammatory political emblem. Luther was the mere propagandist of the ruling classes, ‘the spiritless, soft-living flesh in Wittenberg’, Dr Liar, the Dragon, the Archeathen. The rich were robbers; property was theft; ‘the people will become free and God alone means to be Lord over them’. Muntzer saw the class-war being won only by a tremendous and bloody convulsion, a sort of premonitory apocalypse before the true one when, as Joachim had prophesied, human institutions would wither away and the parousia would mark the beginning of eternal and perfect government. Violence was thus necessary to his eschatology. It is a case, once again, of abuse of the text ‘compel them to come in’ - the text graven on every inquisitor's heart. Exactly like Augustine, Muntzer used the parable of the wheat and the tares to justify destruction and persecution: ‘The living God is sharpening his scythe in me, he said ominously, ‘so that later 88