Sedition and snail shells: faith and justice in the German peasants’ war

Sedition and snail shells: faith and justice in the German peasants’ war
a sermon by Kenneth Padley

Sunday 11 May 2205, Choral Evensong

In the summer of 1524, the Countess of Lupfen ran out of snail shells. This was a disaster: her maids needed snail shells as a sewing accessory to assist the spooling of thread. Firm action was needed, so the countess ordered the 1200 serfs who lived on her husband’s estates to drop everything and gather shells until enough had been collected to meet the maids’ requirements. The peasants baulked at this request, pointing out that it was busiest time of the agricultural year and that nobody could be spared. The lady, however, was not to be denied: had not her husband recently instructed some of his vassals to collect wine from Alsace and bring it to their castle in southern Germany – at the peasants’ own expense as part of their feudal dues? She too had her needs and those snail shells simply had to be collected.[1]

The story has an apocryphal ring to it, a tale embellished in the telling. It sounds a bit like Marie Antoinette commanding the poor of Paris to eat cake. Nonetheless, as with the queen’s brioche, the power of rumour had a similar effect in galvanising popular outrage. The serfs of south-west Germany banded together to campaign for an end to feudalism. Discontent spread like wildfire through the peasants’ fields. The biggest popular uprising before the French Revolution had begun.

That German Peasants’ War reached an inevitable and traumatic conclusion 500 years ago this coming week when the aristocracy reasserted their authority through two decisive battles at Böblingen and Frankenhausen. Poorly-armed farmers were cut down and massacred. Their leaders were rounded up and executed as a warning to any who aspired to follow after them. Across the course of the revolt, it is estimated that between 100,000 and 300,000 of the lower social orders lost their lives.

As with all past conflicts, the Peasants War has become the plaything of historians. The causes of the revolt and the motivations of its leaders have been analysed in minute detail and interpreted in different ways. Whatever the veracity of the story about the snail shells, there were undoubted economic grievances among the poorer classes. These were made worse by failed harvests and price inflation. The peasants laid out their grievances in Twelve Articles, a list of demands for a fairer share of the wealth of the land. The articles requested things like lower rents, an end to forced labour, and the right to harvest timber from common land. These economic demands led later Marxists, most notably Friedrich Engels, to portray the Peasants War as a failed precursor to the social revolutions of the nineteenth century.

What the Marxists overlooked was the all-pervading influence of God in the sixteenth century world. Not only were economic causes in play, but there were religious factors too. Thus, many of the Twelve Articles of Memmingen were grounded in one or more biblical passages or Christian principles. For example, the demand for the right to hunt was justified by the creation story because, quote, ‘when God our Lord created man, he gave him power over all beasts, the birds in the air and the fish in the water’. More notable still was the third article against feudalism which stated that ‘until now it has been practice that we have been treated like serfs, which is deplorable, since Christ redeemed all of us with his precious blood, both the shepherd and the nobleman, with no exceptions. Accordingly, we hereby declare that we are free and want to remain free’.

This justification of the peasants’ demands on religious grounds followed hot on the heels of the Protestant Reformation. Only a few years earlier, Martin Luther had published his own shopping list of religious requests in the form of Ninety-Five theses. These challenged the received understanding of the European Church with a claim that people were put right with God through faith and not good deeds. However, Luther was no social revolutionary. He hitched the wagon of his religious campaign to the horses of the German nobility. Given this, Luther defended their suppression of the serfs in a vitriolic pamphlet entitled Against the murdering thieving hordes of the peasants.

Despite Luther’s social conservatism, other German religious leaders supported the peasants and indeed drew on Luther’s theology to do this. Thomas Muntzer and the Zwickau Prophets may sound like a band gracing the Dean’s contemporary music collection alongside his beloved Beatles. However, they were a group of radical preachers in Reformation Germany. Thomas Muntzer catalysed the peasants’ campaign, arguing that Luther’s teaching about spiritual freedom and the priesthood of all believers had real-world consequences. Indeed, it was Muntzer who led the peasants to their disastrous defeat at Frankenhausen five hundred years ago this coming Thursday. For his pains, he was gruesomely beheaded by the victorious nobles two weeks later.

In common with many spiritual radicals, Thomas Muntzer set great store by individual experience. He thought that the words of the Bible were only valid when verified by the Holy Spirit speaking directly to a believer’s heart. Mainstream reformers rejected such thinking, fearing it would unpick the fabric of society. Against this, Muntzer excoriated Martin Luther as ‘Brother Fatted Pig’ for not taking his own Protestant thought to what he saw as its logical conclusion.

It would be foolish to take sides on such historical events and personalities. However, I suggest that this week’s major anniversary invites us to revisit our thinking about a couple of knotty ethical issues.

• Firstly, what is the balance between the personal and the corporate in our faith? God calls every Christian individually to salvation in Jesus. That is the fire of the Protestant message. Alongside this, God calls every Christian to a shared identity within his universal Church, both heavenly fellowship with all the saints and membership of the flawed institutions which seek to give expression to our Catholicity here on earth. Christ sets each and every one of us free and yet together we are captivated by the crucified. How do you hold these truths in tension within your faith?
• Secondly, the German Peasants’ War invites us to reflect on the relationship between faith and politics, in particular the age-old conundrum of the extent to which spiritual freedom demands earthly articulation. Each and every Christian is called fervently to pursue a just society, while simultaneously proclaiming that God’s best is yet to come. How do you hold these truths in tension within your faith?

So as you and I continue to celebrate the Easter rising, I encourage you to reflect also on the quincentenary of the peasants’ insurrection in Germany. As we heard in tonight’s reading from St Luke, Jesus opened the minds of the disciples to understand the scriptures and told them that they were witnesses of what they found there (24.45,48). Thomas Muntzer claimed an equivalent experience and a corresponding mission. In what ways is the risen Jesus doing the same to you – and to us?

[1] Drummond, Andrew, The Dreadful History and Judgement of God on Thomas Muntzer (London: Verso, 2024), 207-08.