36 pages • 1 hour read
Richard M. WunderliPeasant Fires: The Drummer of Niklashausen
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1992A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Enchanted Time
Peasants in late medieval Europe could access a world of “fantasy justice” and upset the usual social order via what Wunderli calls an “enchanted world.” During these “enchanted” periods in the liturgical calendar, peasants could rid themselves of elite domination and exercise spiritual and material power through rituals. Behem and his pilgrims, however, extended this “enchanted time” outside of the acceptable festivals and feast days to assert their political and religious rights, thereby disrupting social norms.
Behem’s extension of “enchanted time” was threatening to the Church elite. Festivals like Carnival were “part of official culture […]” (21), whereas Behem’s ministry never gained official sanction from the Church. Indeed, the Church disputed his claims of legitimate visionary experience and stated that a mysterious mendicant friar orchestrated Behem’s revolt. For Behem and his followers, enchanted time was a tool of empowerment. During Carnival, peasants satirized the Church and elites through bawdy and critical rituals that functioned as a controlled outlet for their resentment. When their bitterness spilled over into regular time, it became dangerous and uncontrollable. Religious elites understood the importance of maintaining the liturgical calendar and the flow of everyday time to control the peasantry’s activities. The festivals functioned as steam valves, which allowed the people to vent their frustration in lesser amounts, thereby avoiding a massive eruption of anger and revolt. Allowing the people to exist in enchanted time indefinitely would remove the elite’s ability to control them, and it would prove that ordinary people could access the miraculous realm.
Behem’s mystical visions of the Virgin Mary also represent enchanted time because they dissolve the line between the supernatural and natural world, just as the festivals and feast days did. This time allowed commoners to “cross over the boundary or passageway […] into a timeless state, to emerge later renewed” (24). Behem’s resulting pilgrimage served a similar purpose, offering healing and hope to the peasants drawn to the Virgin’s shrine at Niklashausen and to Behem’s sermons. This enchanted time, Behem said, would conclude with the dawning of a new age in which peasants and elites shared property and worked alongside one another with the privileged no longer dominating peasant lives or exploiting their labor. The peasantry consequently would triumph and pass through this enchanted period into a “renewed” and liberated state.
Mysticism and the Supernatural
The late Middle Ages in Europe witnessed an upsurge in Christian mysticism. Behem is one of many late medieval mystics who was a layperson rather than a member of an organized religious order or the clergy. This popular mysticism contributed to lay movements like the pilgrimage to the Virgin’s shrine at Niklashausen. Mysticism was not a new phenomenon, but increasingly mystics existed outside of the Church’s direct control; frequently they were women, and they were often lay folk.
The rise of lay movements outside of Church authorities’ control alarmed Church leaders and led to some of those movements, like the mendicant orders, gaining official sanction while others, like the Waldensians, faced persecution as heretics. Behem and his pilgrims garnered the Church’s ire because not only did Behem fail to gain official licensure to preach in Niklashausen, but his teachings contradicted orthodoxy (official doctrine) and encouraged social unrest and violence. He further suggested that a day was soon coming in which elites would live and work just as peasants did and all people would share land and resources in common. These views, too, he justified with his mysticism.
The cult of the Virgin grew increasingly popular in the late Middle Ages when Catholics associated her with shepherds. Behem was a herder, and thus it seemed logical that he claimed the Virgin spoke to him. The characterization of Jesus as a shepherd of his people also strengthened Behem’s image as a mystic. His mystical experiences not only reflected religious trends of the late Middle Ages but likewise spoke to social issues. Indeed, Behem functioned as a spokesperson for the mass of peasants that flocked to the Virgin’s shrine at Niklashausen to hear him preach. He acted as a prophet, conveying the words of God given to him through the Virgin’s mystical visitations. His call to social revolution clearly gave voice to myriad frustrations among commoners who resented the dues and taxes they owed to elites who profited off their labor while peasants barely got by. To suppress Behem’s movement and his teachings, Church figures worked to delegitimize his mystical abilities by arguing that, for instance, a corrupt friar manipulated him or that he faked his miracles. The Church believed in divine visions, but those who challenged the Church’s power had to be discredited. Behem’s example illustrates mysticism’s powerful influence in the late Middle Ages.
Peasant Rebellion and Social Unrest
Behem’s pilgrimage did not occur in a vacuum but was shaped by historical and social forces that coalesced over a century before his visions. When the Black Death (or Plague) arrived in Europe during the winter of 1347-1348, it struck a population that had already experienced disaster earlier that century: Northern Europe had succumbed to the Great Famine in the early 1300s, when crops had failed due to shorter growing seasons brought on by climate change in the form of the Little Ice Age. By the time these two disasters had run their course, Europe’s population had plummeted. The Black Death especially devastated urban centers in Europe, but rural areas were not completely spared. As a result of this demographic change, peasant conditions improved in some parts of late medieval Europe since more land was available and peasants could demand lower rents and higher wages from their overlords. Elites, however, struck back by freezing rents and wages. Elite reactions to peasants’ newfound power resulted in peasant revolts, such as Wat Tyler’s Rebellion in England (1381). In the late 1400s, similar peasant uprisings occurred in southern Germany, where Niklashausen was located.
By the mid-1400s, population growth once more began to strain available resources. Wunderli points out that while peasant conditions were not as poor as they were prior to the Black Death, commoners were unaware of these historical changes. They realized that their living conditions had deteriorated since the days of their parents and grandparents, and their anger rose as their overlords imposed new obligations to revert to the old order. In this context, which was ripe for peasant revolt, Behem experienced his visions of the Virgin and used them to mobilize the people.
Previous experiences with peasant uprisings in Europe shaped elites’ reactions to Behem’s movement of divine social justice—and their fears were founded because peasant uprisings had the potential to cause lasting economic harm and social upheaval. Paradoxically, their fears stoked the “peasant fires” of resentment, hastening the events they sought to avoid. When Würzburg’s bishop finally arrested and imprisoned Behem, his followers reacted angrily by marching on his castle. Although the bishop’s men were able to disperse the crowd and arrest agitators, thereby ending the upheaval, they did not know whether the affair was indeed over for days following the events in Würzburg. They reacted by further clamping down on peasant movements and eventually resorted to demolishing Niklashausen’s church, which had become a symbol of rebellion.
