Freaks of Fanaticism, and Other Strange EventsBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Religion
Freaks of Fanaticism, and Other Strange Events
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
History; Mysticism; Patarines
On the 7th the mob pillaged the church of the Servites, and defaced
it. Next day the Franciscans, who had made the wafers for the Holy
Sacrament for the churches in the diocese, were forbidden to make
them any more. On the 9th Knipperdolling, heading a party of the
reformed, broke into the cathedral during the celebration of the
Holy Eucharist, rushed up to the altar, and drove away the priest,
exclaiming, "Greedy fop, haven't you eaten enough good Gods yet?"
Two days later the magistrates ordered the chapter to surrender
into their hands their title deeds and sacred vessels. On the 14th,
Belkot, head of the city tribunal of Münster, entered the church of
S. Ledger, and carried off all its chalices, patens, and ciboriums,
whilst others who accompanied him destroyed the altars, paintings,
and statuary, and profaned the church in the most disgusting manner.
The unhappy Catholics, unable to resist, uttered loud lamentations,
and did not refrain from calling the perpetrators of the outrage
"robbers and sacrilegious," for which they were summoned before
the magistrates, and threatened with imprisonment unless they
apologised.[107]
[107] Kerssenbroeck 417.
As the news of the conversion of the city of Münster to the Gospel
spread, strangers came to it from all parts, to hear and to learn,
as they gave out, pure Evangelical truth.
Amongst these adventurers was a man destined to play a terribly
prominent part in the great drama that was about to be enacted at
Münster. This was John Bockelson, a tailor, a native of Leyden, in
Holland. He had quitted his country and his wife secretly to hear
Rottmann. He entered Münster on the 25th July, and lodged with a
citizen named Hermann Ramers. Having been instructed in the Gospel
according to Luther, he went to preach in Osnabrück, but from thence
he was driven. He then returned to his own home. There he became an
Anabaptist, under the instruction of John Matthisson, who sent him
with Gerrit Buchbinder as apostles of the sect to Westphalia in the
month of November, 1533.
The time had now arrived when the Lutheran party, which had so
tyrannically treated the Catholics in the city of Münster, was
itself to be despotically put down and trampled upon by a sect which
sprang from its own womb.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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