Peasant Fires: The Drummer of Niklashausen

The word heresy is derived from the ancient Greek term, haíresis, meaning choice, and was the term the medieval Church used to critique and classify Christians they believed had made an egregious religious claim. Heresy was a crime under medieval canon (Church) law because Church authority rested on enforcing doctrine. The Church did not tolerate competing claims to or interpretations of the bible and Jesus’s teachings. Church authorities charged Behem with heresy because of his anticlericalism and the social disruption he and his followers caused. Behem’s clerical critics accused him of falsifying his visionary experiences and faking miracles, charges for which the punishment was death.

The mendicant friars of late medieval Europe include the Franciscan and Dominican orders of monks. The term mendicant comes from the Latin verb mendicare, meaning “to beg.” Thus, they are known as mendicants because they traveled throughout Europe preaching while rejecting worldly luxuries and begging as an act of religious devotion. This lifestyle contrasts with the earlier monastic traditions, in which monks lived cloistered in religious houses while devoting themselves to work and prayer. Both orders gained official recognition and sanction from the Church. Other, similar groups, like the Beghards, existed outside of the official Church hierarchy and controversially took no religious vows. Mendicants embodied the Christian values of poverty and humility because their welfare relied on the charity of their fellow Christians. While Behem himself was not a mendicant, he preached poverty and austerity as a way of life.

The Middle Ages, or medieval period, spans approximately 500-1500 CE. In European history, this thousand-year period comes between the collapse of the western half of the Roman Empire and the birth of the Italian and Northern Renaissances. Historians further subdivide the Middle Ages into three time frames: the early Middle Ages (from ca. 500-1000 CE), the central Middle Ages (from ca. 1000-1300 CE), and the late Middle Ages (from ca. 1300-1500 CE). Behem and his followers lived during the late Middle Ages, a time in which Europe experienced tremendous social, economic, and religious change. During this time, the Church’s authority deteriorated, leading to the Papal Schism (1378-1417) and the Protestant Reformation (early 16th century). The Middle Ages gave way to the modern era, when the arts, sciences, philosophy, and technology became the driving cultural forces.

The practice of mysticism occurs across many world religions, including Christianity. Practitioners believe that they have personal and revelatory experiences with divinity and frequently reject worldly pursuits and luxuries. Though mysticism existed throughout the Middle Ages, the late medieval era witnessed an upsurge, with mystics becoming influential public figures, even those who sought solitude. Behem claimed to have had numerous mystical experiences in which the Virgin Mary spoke to him and encouraged him to communicate her words to his followers. Mysticism was a powerful feature of religious authority because it was impossible to disprove. Miracles proved a preacher’s or prophet’s claim to mystical wisdom; if the public accepted a miracle’s authenticity, the person claiming that miracle had divine powers. Mysticism was a tool of folk belief because mystics did not need the Church’s sanctioning.

Peasants are farmers, other agricultural workers, or wage laborers who lived in the countryside and occupied a low social and economic status. Since Europe operated on a feudal system in the Middle Ages, feudal lords owned the land and property that peasants rented and farmed. Some peasants were also serfs who were bound to the lands on which they resided and were required to fulfill certain duties to the landholder, like working his fields to produce a crop surplus and thus income for the landholder. Behem was a peasant, a serf, as were the pilgrims who came to hear him preach in Niklashausen. Behem and his followers wished to overturn medieval hierarchies of power and resented their exploitation at the hands of wealthy lords, who included members of the clergy. The term “peasant” has a negative connotation because it implies that someone lacks cultural or worldly knowledge. On the contrary, peasants of the Middle Ages possessed rich cultural traditions of music, art, and storytelling, even though the elites looked down on these cultural forms. Behem’s case exemplifies this attitude because the authors of the sources that mention him ridicule him for being a drummer.

The Christian concept of purgatory developed during the European Middle Ages, and the Roman Catholic Church recognized it as official doctrine in 1274 at the Council of Lyons. The Church holds that purgatory is a liminal state—though not a place—between physical death and rebirth in heaven. The word purgatory is related to purgation, or purification; this is because purgatory is, according to Catholicism, a state of process by which the soul is purified in preparation for reunion with its redeemer heaven. The idea of purgatory rests partly on the belief that while God may forgive someone’s sins before they die, forgiveness does not purify the soul—only penance will do so. Purgatory is therefore understood as an expression of God’s perfecting grace, allowing souls to undertake redemptive penitential suffering and move toward their ultimate destination in heaven. Although the Church officially accepted the concept in 1274, it took time for the laity to warm to the idea.

According to Catholic doctrine, a soul’s process of purgation—its purgatorial penance—can be remitted through good works while living or through others’ prayers. This remission is also called an indulgence. However, the Church abused this idea by granting indulgence in exchange for donations to the Church. Behem, and the pilgrims who came to hear his sermons, denied purgatory’s legitimacy—a heretical act that demonstrated some commoners’ resistance to this new doctrine during the late medieval period. In doing so, they also denied the legitimacy of indulgences.