A crucial part of the Anabaptist reign of terror was their decision, again prefiguring that of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, to abolish all private ownership of money. With no money to purchase any good, the population became slavishly dependent on handouts or rations from the power elite. Accordingly, Matthys, Rothmann, and the rest launched a propaganda campaign that it was un-Christian to own money privately; and that all money should be held “in common,” which in practice meant that all money whatsoever must be handed over to Matthys and his ruling clique…
After two months of unremitting propaganda, combined with threats and terror against those who disobeyed, the private ownership of money was effectively abolished in Münster. The government seized all the money and used it to buy goods or hire workers from the outside world. Wages were doled out in kind by the only employer: the theocratic Anabaptist State.
Food was confiscated from private homes, and rationed according to the will of government deacons. Also, to accommodate the host of immigrants, all private homes were effectively communized, with everyone permitted to quarter themselves everywhere; it was now illegal to close, let alone lock, one’s doors. Compulsory communal dining halls were established, where people ate together to the readings from the Old Testament.
The compulsory communism and reign of terror was carried out in the name of community and Christian “love.” This communization was considered the first giant step toward egalitarian communism, where, as Rothmann put it, “all things were to be in common, there was to be no private property and nobody was to do any more work, but simply trust in God.” Somehow, the workless part never seemed to arrive.
[…]
Totalitarianism in Münster was now complete. Death was now the punishment for virtually every independent act. Capital punishment was decreed for the high crimes of murder, theft, lying, avarice, and quarrelling. Death was also decreed for every conceivable kind of insubordination: the young against the parents, wives against their husbands, and, of course, anyone at all against the chosen representative of God on earth, the government of Münster. Bernt Knipperdollinck was appointed high executioner to enforce the decrees.
The only aspect of life previously left untouched was sex, and this deficiency was now made up. The only sexual relation now permitted by the Bockelson regime was marriage between two Anabaptists. Sex in any other form, including marriage with one of the “godless,” was a capital crime.
But soon Bockelson went beyond this rather old-fashioned credo, and decided to enforce compulsory polygamy in Münster. Since many of the expellees had left their wives and daughters behind, Münster now had three times as many marriageable women as men, so that polygamy had become technically feasible. Bockelson convinced the other, rather startled preachers by citing polygamy among the patriarchs of Israel, reinforcing this method of persuasion by threatening any dissenters with death.
Compulsory polygamy was a bit much for many of the Münsterites, who launched a rebellion in protest. The rebellion, however, was quickly crushed and most of the rebels put to death […]
The rest of the male population also began to take enthusiastically to the new decree. Many of the women reacted differently, however, and so the Elders passed a law ordering compulsory marriage for every woman under (and presumably also over) a certain age, which usually meant becoming a compulsory third or fourth wife.
Since marriage among the godless was not only invalid but also illegal, the wives of the expellees became fair game, and they were forced to “marry” good Anabaptists. Refusal of the women to comply with the new law was punishable, of course, with death, and a number of women were actually executed as a result.
Murray N. Rothbard, “Karl Marx as Religious Eschatologist”, Mises Institute, 2009-10-09.
November 3, 2019
QotD: The theocratic Anabaptist State of Münster
October 31, 2019
The Legend of Vlad the Impaler
Royal Armouries
Published 31 Oct 2017Hear the story of the infamous tyrant Vlad Tepes, notorious for the grisly way in which he killed his enemies.
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October 26, 2019
History Summarized: Byzantine Beginnings
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 25 Oct 2019It’s Rome! It’s Greece! It’s… The Byzantine Empire! Check out how late Imperial Rome transformed in the centuries from Constantine to Justinian, as it evolved into a new and unique iteration of Roman civilization. Watch as Byzantine craftsmen revolutionize artwork by throwing a megaton of gold onto every last mosaic in the Mediterranean, and radically reimagine architecture by asking “But what if *dome*?”
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October 18, 2019
Colonel Daniel Stepaniuk’s one-man campaign to wipe out (some) religious observance in the Militia
Christie Blatchford on the oddly partial actions of the officer in charge of more than a dozen Ontario militia regiments as far as religion is concerned:
The Lorne Scots (Peel, Dufferin and Halton Regiment) on parade in Brampton, Ontario on 24 September, 2016.
Photo by Nicholas Russon.
An army brigade commander has told the 14 Ontario reserve regiments under his charge that they must cancel any “church parade” they have planned.
Despite a lack of complaints about the parades, which see soldiers march to their regimental church, Col. Daniel Stepaniuk urged his commanding officers to stop participating in “any event where the primary purpose is liturgical, spiritual or religious … even if the service is non-denominational.”
A custom in the Canadian Army since the time of Confederation, the parades aren’t as common as they once were, though many units still have at least one a year, often tied to Remembrance Day ceremonies.
[…]
First of all, there is the glaring contradiction with Stepaniuk’s harsh stand on church parades and a parade that happened in Toronto last April.
A group of soldiers — I counted between 15 and 20 — were issued weapons, allowed to march in their military uniforms and were escorted by an armoured vehicle in the annual Khalsa parade for Canada’s Sikh community. It is considered a holy day.
The soldiers were from the Lorne Scots, one of Stepaniuk’s reserve units based in Brampton. The CO of the unit said at the time that he signed off on the weapons only after his commander (that would presumably be Stepaniuk, or perhaps the brigadier-general above him) approved the soldiers’ participation.
So weapons worn at a Khalsa Day parade good, though against the rules (The Canadian Armed Forces Manual of Drill and Ceremonial), according to army spokeswoman Karla Gimby.
But soldiers going anywhere near a church, bad, and against rules five years old that no one cared to enforce until now.
But most of all, in such small incremental strikes, does Canadian history and tradition lose strength.
October 16, 2019
QotD: Childhood fears of nuclear armageddon
It was 1968. On the night before the last day of camp, a counselor named Charlie Brown interrupted our sunset meeting by the shores of White Bear Lake to tell us the news: Russia had launched their missiles and they would destroy America before the night was out. It was time to get right with God.
Silence; crickets; small sobs. I’m sure no one thought much about Jesus right then. We thought about Mom and Dad and Spot and our room, where we really, really wanted to be right now, with the familiar smell of the goldfish bowl, and —
Charlie Brown guided us through some prayers. We all said Amen, and I’m sure for some it was the least heartfelt Amen we’d ever said. Then Charlie Brown said he had made up the story. Russia hadn’t launched the missiles. But what if they had? Were we right with Jesus?
Back at the barracks we were quiet and unnerved. No one wanted to go to sleep. No one wanted to talk, either. Finally John Larson, the bunkhouse bully, broke the silence. He was the mean kid. He was the one who tormented me at home, and had bothered me at camp. Nelson Muntz without the charm. John Larson expressed his simple wish to stab Charlie Brown in the stomach.
A dozen little Lutheran campers nodded in the dark: ya sure, you betcha.
James Lileks, The Bleat, 2003-09-11.
October 5, 2019
Losing our religion
Arthur Chrenkoff found another report on the inverse relationship between development and religious belief:
A few weeks ago I wrote a longish blog post arguing that for many people in the developed world environmentalism has become a religion, filling up the gap in spirituality left by the decline of Christianity. I don’t claim any originality or new insight in this observation; it has been noted many times before, including by my friend, former artilleryman and now man of God, Rev Donald Sensing, and it has made an appearance quite a few times subsequent to my piece, a propos Greta Thunberg’s performance at the United Nations and the reaction it inspired around the (developed) world.
Today, I chanced upon another interesting analysis by Pew Research Center, about religious belief and commitment around the world. Results are not surprising but are nevertheless interesting, including this world map:
Unfortunately, Pew does not provide additional data on those for whom religion might be “important” or “somewhat important” so as to paint a slightly fuller picture of religious sentiment, but the results illustrated above are probably quite indicative. The developed world is well and truly secular now, with the United States and Greece being the only outliers (and by a long mile), while most of the developing world (with the notable exception of China after seven decades of communism) remains extremely religious. Thus, Pew notes that “if current trends continue, countries with high levels of religious affiliation will grow fastest. The same is true for levels of religious commitment: The fastest population growth appears to be occurring in countries where many people say religion is very important in their lives.”
As the main topic of this Pew study is the age gap in religious faith around the world, it should be noted that the younger generations in the developed world are even less religious than their elders, often significantly less, putting the already low rates across the West in an even starker perspective (by contrast, throughout most of the developing world, there is little, if any, gap in religious commitment between the young and the old).
October 3, 2019
The Puritans, then and now
Severian thinks on churchiness and churchianity in our times:
The most striking fact about the Middle Ages from a modern perspective is their love of lists, categories, forms. This is partly practical — Church art all looks the same because it has to communicate a consistent message to the aforesaid illiterate peasantry — but lots of it isn’t. They were simply obsessed with forms, with outward order, to the point that even the few true individuals were hard to tell apart — William of Ockham and Thomas Aquinas were as different as two thinkers could possibly be, but unless you’re a subject matter expert, their writings look identical.
“The Crucible” by Len Radin is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
“Individuality,” on the other hand, comes from inward experience. What, if anything, did the medieval peasant believe when he went to Mass? Impossible to say, but one of the reasons that’s so is because the form of his “piety” was so all-encompassing. Some years back, a Jew wrote a funny book about trying to live his life by the letter of the Mosaic law. One could do the same thing with medieval Catholicism. Take a gander at the liturgical year — hardly a day goes by without a feast, a commemoration, a celebration. Do all of that, and you’ll hardly have time for anything else. They were so focused on the outward show, at least in part, because there was so much showing to do.
When the Reformation shitcanned all that, piety turned inward. There are zillions of sources for what the Reformed believed (or, at least, said they believed), because the Reformation was a middle-class pursuit and the middle classes were literate … and, crucially, had the free time to be literate. I’m guessing here, but since people are people and always have been, I’m pretty sure that your medieval peasant loved the show of his religion, because it gave him a little much-needed time off from his hourly grind of back-breaking, ragged-edge-of-survival physical labor.
Your middle-class incipient Calvinist, on the other hand, was bored to tears with stuff like “creeping to the cross” — all those billable hours lost (surely no one is surprised that Calvin, Knox, et al were all lawyers or merchants). In their vanity, they insisted it wasn’t enough to seem pious; you actually had to be pious, which meant putting the time you would’ve spent doing public penance into contemplating the state of your soul. Check out The New England Mind — once you fight through prose, you’ll see that the vaunted Puritan piety was little more than Special Snowflakism with a New Testament twist. They’re “individuals,” all right, but only because they’re as obsessed as Tumblrinas with their very own pwecious widdle selves.
The point of this isn’t just to bash Puritans, fun as that is (and as richly as they deserve it). The point is that, as Current Year America is a thoroughly Puritan nation, we have to realize just how historically contingent Puritanism really is in order to beat them.
Puritans desperately wanted to be individuals in a world that couldn’t support very many individuals. You need a lot of free time to be a Puritan, and in the 16th century free time was almost inconceivably expensive. Whatever else it was, Puritanism was gross conspicuous consumption — Puritans announced to the world that they alone had the free time to indulge in expensive educations, books, Bible study, and the endless hours worrying about whether or not it’s Biblically justified to paint the altar. In a world where most everyone still knows someone who knows someone who starved to death, that’s one hell of a statement.
The Crimean War – History Matters
History Matters
Published on 7 Apr 2019Twitter: https://twitter.com/Tenminhistory
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4973164This episode covers the Crimean War (1853-1856) between the Russian Empire and the Ottomans, the British, the French and the Sardinians. It began largely out of Russo-Ottoman rivalry and because French Emperor Napoleon III had been appointed the protector of Christians within the Ottoman Empire, at the expense of the Russian Emperor Nicholas I. The war really kicked off in 1854 with the British and French invasion of Crimea and largely ended with the capture of Sevastopol in 1855, after which the Russians sued for peace.
September 29, 2019
History Summarized: Mexico
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 27 Sep 2019Go to https://NordVPN.com/overlysarcastic and use code OVERLYSARCASTIC to get 70% off a 3-year plan and an extra month for free. Protect yourself online today!
This video is quite serendipitous in timing — by complete coincidence, this is going live on September 27, the day of Mexico’s true political independence under the First Mexican Empire. This is the 11 year sequel to the more traditional Mexican Independence celebrations of September 16th, which marks Miguel Hidalgo’s proclamation of the “Cry of Dolores” and the start of the Mexican War of Independence. No joke, I only realized this when I was partway through researching the video. I do so much ancient history I’m not used to events having dates we can track to the day.
ANYWAY enjoy this look at Mexican History, here broken into three main acts, the Aztec Empire, the Colony of New Spain, and the Independent nation of Mexico.
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September 22, 2019
The Inca Empire – A God Taken Hostage – Extra History – #5
Extra Credits
Published on 21 Sep 2019Join us on Patreon! http://bit.ly/EHPatreon
Atahualpa vs. Francisco Pizarro. The Incas had never seen horses before, and it wasn’t long before the Spanish had captured Atahualpa as a hostage for gold and silver. But Atahualpa had a plan. He found a way to use this situation to his own political advantage — and Pizarro eventually destroyed himself through his greed and violent carelessness that appalled the Spanish government, eventually allowing the Incas to thrive again.
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September 7, 2019
“A Lifetime of War” – Thirty Years War – Sabaton History 031 [Official]
Sabaton History
Published on 5 Sep 2019The Sabaton song “A Lifetime of War” is about the Thirty Years War, which influenced many lives of Northern European soldiers, mercenaries, farmers and city-dwellers.
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Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Markus Linke and Indy Neidell
Directed by: Astrid Deinhard and Wieke Kapteijns
Produced by: Pär Sundström, Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Executive Producers: Pär Sundström, Joakim Broden, Tomas Sunmo, Indy Neidell, Astrid Deinhard, and Spartacus Olsson
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Sound Editing by: Iryna Dulka and Marek KaminskiEastory YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEly…
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Music by Sabaton.Sources:
– Folger Shakespeare Library
– Map of Hanseatic League: H.F. Helmolt, History of the World, Volume VII, Dodd Mead 1902
– Fondo Antiguo de la Biblioteca de la Universidad de SevillaAn OnLion Entertainment GmbH and Raging Beaver Publishing AB co-Production.
© Raging Beaver Publishing AB, 2019 – all rights reserved.
August 26, 2019
The Inca Empire – Out of Thin Air – Extra History – #1
Extra Credits
Published on 24 Aug 2019Join us on Patreon! http://bit.ly/EHPatreon
There’s a lot that we don’t know for sure about the Inca Empire, because we have conflicting accounts among Spanish colonizers, as well as the fact that Inca history itself is told non-linearly. But we do know that they used Andean accomplishments, from architecture to knotted quipu, to create a city that ruled the largest indigenous empire in the Americas, starting with Manco Capac and the successive Sapa Inca rulers.
August 19, 2019
Joan of Arc – Lies – Extra History
Extra Credits
Published on 17 Aug 2019Writer Rob Rath talks about all the cool stories and facts we didn’t get to cover in our recent series on the hated and beloved Joan of Arc.
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From the comments:
Extra Credits
2 days agoRecommended reading:
– Joan of Arc: A History, by Helen Castor
– Joan of Arc by Herself and Her Witnesses, by Régine Pernoud
– Orléans, 1429: France Turns the Tide, by David Nicolle
4:01 – really cool side characters that didn’t make the final video script (but did show up in Game of Thrones??)
8:12 – multiple versions of Joan’s meeting with Charles
10:48 – all the other famous people we didn’t mention, including Gilles de Rais
13:11 – Joan really did have excellent tactical acumen, which we had to gloss over in her later battles
19:55 – what’s next on Extra History
21:17 – Six Degrees of Walpole
August 5, 2019
Joan of Arc – Heroine or Heretic? – Extra History – #5
Extra Credits
Published on 3 Aug 2019Join us on Patreon! http://bit.ly/EHPatreon
Joan had been sold out to the English. Bishop Pierre Cauchon was determined to prove the inaccuracy of her visions and her motivations so that Charles could have no claim to the throne. But Joan held on till the bitter end.
QotD: Depictions of Heaven
Orwell’s press card portrait, 1943
Attempts at describing a definitely other-worldly happiness have been no more successful. Heaven is as great a flop as Utopia though Hell occupies a respectable place in literature, and has often been described most minutely and convincingly.
It is a commonplace that the Christian Heaven, as usually portrayed, would attract nobody. Almost all Christian writers dealing with Heaven either say frankly that it is indescribable or conjure up a vague picture of gold, precious stones, and the endless singing of hymns. This has, it is true, inspired some of the best poems in the world:
Thy walls are of chalcedony,
Thy bulwarks diamonds square,
Thy gates are of right orient pearl
Exceeding rich and rare!But what it could not do was to describe a condition in which the ordinary human being actively wanted to be. Many a revivalist minister, many a Jesuit priest (see, for instance, the terrific sermon in James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist) has frightened his congregation almost out of their skins with his word-pictures of Hell. But as soon as it comes to Heaven, there is a prompt falling-back on words like ‘ecstasy’ and ‘bliss’, with little attempt to say what they consist in. Perhaps the most vital bit of writing on this subject is the famous passage in which Tertullian explains that one of the chief joys of Heaven is watching the tortures of the damned.
The pagan versions of Paradise are little better, if at all. One has the feeling it is always twilight in the Elysian fields. Olympus, where the gods lived, with their nectar and ambrosia, and their nymphs and Hebes, the ‘immortal tarts’ as D.H. Lawrence called them, might be a bit more homelike than the Christian Heaven, but you would not want to spend a long time there. As for the Muslim Paradise, with its 77 houris per man, all presumably clamouring for attention at the same moment, it is just a nightmare. Nor are the spiritualists, though constantly assuring us that ‘all is bright and beautiful’, able to describe any next-world activity which a thinking person would find endurable, let alone attractive.
George Orwell (writing as “John Freeman”), “Can Socialists Be Happy?”, Tribune, 1943-12-20.
