Thomas Münzer (often spelled in French: Müntzer or Muntzer, or Munzer, or in Latin: Muncerus ), born in the 1489 (or 1490), deceased May 15th 1525, is initially an itinerant priest, resulting from a middle-class family, then one of the religious leaders of the Guerre of the peasants in Germany, at the 16th century. It is a leading revolutionist and one of the large protagonists of the Réforme.

Biography

Even if Thomas Münzer is initially faithful of Luther to which it rejoins in Leipzig in 1519 and who names it Pasteur with Zwickau, in Saxony in 1520, he does not remain about it less than once installed in its load Münzer develops personal ideas on the need for a social revolution. Very quickly, he wants to reach the mass of the illiterates.

In 1521, it is thus dissenting on three levels:

1. with respect to the civil authorities since it was excluded three times from the cities where it preached
2. with respect to the Roman authorities because it joined in 1519 in Leipzig
3. with respect to Luther because since 1521, it is different by criticizing the too large conciliance from Luther with the civil authorities. It is the proclamation of Prague which shows the rupture between the two men.

At the end of 1523, then in 1524, Münzer is caught some with Luther in its writings.

It benefits from the revolt of the peasants to spread its ideas. Indeed, country agitation being with its paroxysm in Saxony, it tries to raise the working classes against the civil authorities and ecclesiastical. He affirms that the too strong quantity of work harms the hello of the peasants because alienated by the obligation to cultivate, they cannot devote himself to the Parole. He takes part in the drafting of the Twelve articles and preaches for a re-establishment of the apostolic Église by violence if one needs it to be able to as quickly as possible prepare the reign of Christ. Indeed Münzer is a millenarist which believes that thousand years after the Résurrection of Christ, this one will return on ground to proceed to the last Jugement. It is a question of preparing this reign while calling with the Holy war. HE regards himself selected by god as prophet and is probably Anabaptiste.

In impassioned sermons and writings, he denounces his former mentor, Luther, which he readily treats of liar, showing it of collusion with the princes. He dreams of a glowing future where oppressed would replace their oppressor. Engels, Marx, Kautsky sees in him the first Communist. It is a social revolutionist in the shade of the cross.

He dies on May 15th, 1525 at the time of a battle of peasants, the Bataille of Frankenhausen, against German princes carried out by Philippe I {{er}} of Hesse.

Sources

• Encyclopedia Universalis , volume 19, Edition of 1968, republication of 1972.

• Marianne Schaub, “Thomas Müntzer: the new image of God and the problem of the end of the history”, in Châtelet, Francois, History of Philosophy III, History of the new world. , Hatchet 1972, Plural 1999.

See too

Internal bonds

• Anabaptism
• Luther
• Lutherianisme
• Millénarisme
• Revolt of the bumpkins

External bonds

• http://www.thomas-muentzer.de Thomas-Müntzer-Gesellschaft e.V

• http://www.leifer-rektor.de/muentzer.htm