| can cut down the red poppies and the blue cornflowers.’ When either the Augustinian or the millenarian takes over, the patient, reasonable man, the reformist, the Pelagian-minded liberal, learns to tremble. Muntzer detonated a peasants’ revolt, as had so many millenarians in the past; but he was executed before he could found his post-apocalyptic society. A decade later, in 1534, millenarians seized the German town of Munster, which they held until the following summer. This was by no means the first time Christian fanatics had seized a city in the West; there are many examples, especially in northern France and Flanders, from the twelfth century onwards. But Munster is the first case in which we have a proper documentation, and thus know what it was like to live under a medieval egalitarian terror. The episode began on 25 February 1534, when the religious radicals captured the municipal council and their leader, John Mathijs, announced a Christian popular dictatorship. The' godless' were identified: one, a critical blacksmith, was killed by Mathijs on the spot, the rest expelled - 'Get out, you Godless ones, and never come back.’ At the same time a number of radical refugees were admitted, to form a police-force and bodyguard for the leadership. The entire population was then re-baptized, the city fortified, all food, money, gold and valuables impounded and communized, and housing reallocated on a basis of need. Mathijs was killed in a sortie, and his replacement, John Beukels, the actor-son of an unmarried female serf, reconstructed the regime on a more formal basis. He ran naked through the town, lapsed into prayer, and then announced a new constitution: himself as messianic king, or ‘John of Leyden’, assisted by twelve elders or judges, as a committee of public safety. There was to be a new moral code. All books, except the Bible, were to be burnt. A long list of offences, including blasphemy, swearing, adultery, backbiting, complaining, and any form of disobedience, were to be punished by instant execution. There was to be control of labour, and compulsory polygamy. The regime was violently antiwomen. A man sexually dependent on one wife, thought Beukels, was led about ‘like a bear on a rope; women ‘have everywhere been getting the upper hand’ and it was high time they submitted to men. Hence any women who resisted polygamy were to be executed; and unmarried women had to accept the first man to ask them. Beukels instituted competitions to see who could collect himself the most wives. His histrionic talents, and the fact that Munster contained a large number of skilled craftsmen, enabled him to conduct his court as ‘king of righteousness’ and ‘ruler of the New Zion’ with considerable style. He had clerical vestments remade into royal robes, and designed for himself a golden apple, or orb; a new gold coinage was issued, stamped ‘The word has become flesh and dwells amongst us.' His harem of wives, all under twenty, and his courtiers, were all beautifully dressed; and the ‘king’ staged dramatic performances and universal banquets, at one of which he distributed communion and then personally carried out an execution, being inspired to do it. This gaudy terror was particularly hard on women, forty-nine of whom were killed for infringing the polygamy decree alone; and it was maintained by dividing the city into twelve sections, each controlled by a ‘duke’ and twenty-four guards, who carried out daily executions and quartering. The ‘king’ hoped, by dispatching apostolic missionaries armed with propaganda printed on his press, to raise a confederacy of Christian-communist towns. But after a few brief successes, the scheme was crushed; Munster itself was betrayed and retaken by the bishop, and Beukels was led about like a performing animal until January 1536, when he was publicly tortured to death with red-hot tongs. The atrocities perpetrated by both millenarians and orthodox Christians on this occasion were roughly equal, each side being anxious to ‘compel them to come in’. During the later stages of the Munster commune, the Christian element became minimal, indeed virtually disappeared; but then it was not prominent on the other side of the barricades either. Attempts to realize perfect Christian societies in this world, whether conducted by popes or revolutionaries, have tended to degenerate into red terrors, or white ones. Pontifical theocracies and dictatorships of the proletariat both employ compulsive procedures involving suspension of the rule of law, torture, judicial murder, the suppression of truth and the exaltation of falsehood. Thus the ‘alternative society’ often developed similar, and distressing, features to the one it 89