[1] "Three centuries have flown by since then," he writes, "and many a thing has changed; still the peasant war is not as far removed from our present-day struggles as it would seem, and the opponents we have to encounter remain essentially the same.
[3] "Three centuries have flown by since then," he writes, "and many a thing has changed; still the peasant war is not as far removed from our present-day struggles as it would seem, and the opponents we have to encounter remain essentially the same.
[6] The Peasant War in Germany originally appeared in the fifth and sixth issues of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung-Revue, a political economic review edited by Karl Marx in Hamburg, and was later reissued in book forms.
"This book," Engels writes in the preface to the second edition, undertakes ... to prove that the political and religious theories were not the causes [of the conflict], but the result of that stage of development of agriculture, industry, land and waterways, commerce and finance, which then existed in Germany.
Now Luther turned the same weapon against the peasants, extracting from the Bible a veritable hymn to the authorities ordained by God—a feat hardly exceeded by any lackey of absolute monarchy.
There were hundreds of largely independent secular and ecclesiastical territories in the empire, most of which were ruled by a noble dynasty (though several dozen were city states).
By maintaining the remnants of the ancient law which legitimized their own rule, they not only elevated their wealth and position in the empire through the confiscation of all property and revenues, but also their dominion over their peasant subjects.
The town patricians were increasingly criticized by the growing bürger class, which consisted of well-to-do middle-class citizens who often held administrative guild positions or worked as merchants.
The bürger–master (guild master, or artisan) now owned both the workshop and its tools, which he allowed his apprentices to use, and provided the materials that his workers needed to make their products.
In exchange, they received payments whose size the bürger determined after taking into account how long their labour had taken, as well as the quality of their workmanship and the quantity of products produced.
In the early 16th century, no peasant could hunt, fish or chop wood freely, as the lords had recently taken these common lands for their own purposes.
Müntzer was to recognize that the recently diluted class structures provided the lower stratum of society with a greater claim to legitimacy in their revolt, as well as more scope for political and socio-economic gains.
As members of the more privileged classes by virtue of entrepreneurship and tradition respectively, they felt that the clergy was reaping benefits (such as tax exemption and ecclesiastical tithes) to which they were not entitled.
When the situation suited, even princes would abandon Catholicism in order to gain political and financial independence and increase their power within their territories.
The burghers saw an opportunity to gain power in the urban councils, as Luther's proposed reformed church would be highly centralized within the towns, as well as condemning the nepotistic practices by which the patricians held a firm grip on the bureaucracy.
The articles' statement of social, political and economic grievances in the increasingly popular Protestant movement unified the population in the massive uprising that broke out first in Lower Swabia in 1524, then quickly spread to other parts of Germany.
The peasant movement ultimately failed, with cities and nobles making separate peaces with the princely armies that restored the old order in a frequently still-harsher incarnation under the nominal overlordship of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, represented in German affairs by his younger brother Ferdinand.
The religious dissident Martin Luther, already condemned as a heretic by the 1521 Edict of Worms and accused at the time of fomenting the strife, rejected the demands of the rebels and upheld the right of Germany's rulers to suppress the uprisings.
Luther based his attitude on the peasant rebellion on St. Paul's doctrine of Divine Right of Kings in his epistle to the Romans 13:1–7, which says that all authorities are appointed by God, and should not be resisted.
Like the Roman Catholic Church, Luther practiced infant baptism, which the Anabaptists considered to be "neither scriptural nor primitive, nor fulfilling the chief conditions of admission into a visible brotherhood of saints, to wit, repentance, faith, spiritual illumination and free surrender of self to Christ."
Luther was cautious in not condemning the new doctrine out of hand, but advised Melanchthon to treat its supporters gently and to test their spirits, in case they should be of God.
From this arises the allegation that the Anabaptists were enemies of learning, which is contradicted by the fact that two of them, Haetzer and Denck, produced and printed the first German translation of the Hebrew prophets in 1527.
On March 6, 1522, Luther returned to Wittenberg, where he interviewed the prophets, scorned their "spirits", banished them from the city, and had their adherents ejected from Zwickau and Erfurt.
The total defeat of the rebels at Frankenhausen (May 15, 1525), followed by the execution of Müntzer and several other leaders, proved to be a merely temporary check on the Anabaptist movement.