Q by Luther Blissett (most recommended books txt) 📖

M�nster, 13th January 1534

The Latin name, Monasterium, would make you think of a place of peace and remoteness from the world.

M�nster, on the contrary, asks to be shod with fire.

Nine gates to pass through. Above each gate three cannon: thick walls, narrow passageways.

Four low, massive towers protrude towards the cardinal points, turning the city into an outpost.

The whole thing surrounded by walls that can be walked by three men side by side.

The water in the moat is the deviated course of the river Aa, which bisects the city.

It’s a double moat, black water before the first piece of wall and black water behind it, crossed by little bridges leading to the second, lower piece, with its stocky towers.

Impregnable.

*

‘Brothers and sisters, the wayfarers that we were waiting for have come. Enoch and Elijah have crossed the world and arrived in M�nster to tell us that the time is nigh, that the days of the rich are numbered, and the power of the bishop will be abolished for ever. Today we know for certain that what awaits us is freedom and justice. Justice for us, brothers and sisters, justice for anyone who is held in servitude, forced to work for a starvation wage, anyone who has faith and sees the house of the lord sullied with images, and children being washed with holy water like dogs under a fountain.

‘Yesterday I asked a five-year-old boy who Jesus was. Do you know what he replied? A statue. That’s what he said: a statue. In his little mind, Christ is nothing but the idol before which his parents force him to say his prayers before going to bed! For the papists, that is faith! First learn to venerate and to obey, then understand and believe! What kind of faith can that be, and what pointless torment for children! But they want to baptise them, yes, brethren, because they fear that without baptism the Holy Spirit won’t descend upon them. In that way the act of faith becomes secondary: consciences are washed with holy water before sins can be committed. And so their baptism covers the most unutterable acts of vileness: taking money from the work of their neighbours, the accumulation of possessions, ownership of the lands that you cultivate, the looms that you put into operation. The old believers don’t want to allow anyone to choose what life to lead, they want you to work for them, and be contented with the faith that the doctors hand down to you. Theirs is a faith of condemnation, it is the faith passed off on us by the Antichrist! But we, brothers, we want Redemption! We want freedom and justice for all! We want freely to read the word of the Lord, and freely to choose who will speak to us from the pulpit and who will represent us on the Council! Who decided the destinies of the city before we kicked him out? The bishop. And who decides now? The rich, the important burghers, illustrious admirers of Luther only because his doctrine allows them to resist the bishop! And you, brothers and sisters, you who make this city live, you can’t object to their decisions. You can only obey, as that same Luther bawls from his princely lair. The old believers come and tell us that good Christians can’t be preoccupied with the things of the world, that they must cultivate their faith in private, suffer abuses in silence, because we are all sinners condemned to atone for our wrong-doings.

‘But here are the messengers of hope, here are people who will announce the end of the old heaven and the old earth, so that we can lay claim to others. These two men have heard our cries of indignation, and have come to bear witness, like Enoch and Elijah, to tell us we are not alone, that the time has come. The powerful of the earth will be toppled, their thrones will fall, by the hand of the Lord. Christ comes not to bring peace, but a sword. The gates will be open to those who dare. If they think they can crush us with a blow of the sword, then we shall parry that blow with the sword to return it one hundredfold.’

Bernhard Rothmann. Before me I have courage, rage, balls, the vast force of a faith that I haven’t encountered for a long time. Magister, if you were here now, if things had turned out differently, perhaps you would have a sense that all wasn’t lost, that something, creeping beneath the ashes and emerging from them, survived to fertilise a new earth. One hundred, two hundred? I’ve forgotten how to count crowds, you had taught me, I’ve forgotten. I’ve forgotten the strength, Magister, and you can no longer teach me anything. I’m someone else, maybe a son of a bitch, disillusioned and furious, and yet for the first time, after so many years, in the right place. It was here, here and nowhere else, that we had to reach this truth: no faith without conflict. That’s how it’s always been, and even if none of my faith means anything any more, something’s coming back today, something fiery that I had lost on that plain in May. It’s the knowledge you gave me: we will never free our spirits without freeing our bodies. And if we can’t do that, we won’t know what to do with them: there are times when misery and the gallows are not all that different from one another. And then it’s still worth the breaking the yoke and accepting what destiny will hand us in the end. We’ll go on fighting. Again. Or we will die trying.

Now it’s Jan of Leyden’s turn, ready, resolute, and he’s got an audience. His gaze glides about in the void above their heads, don’t miss it, Jan, this is your moment: an actor’s pose, excessive and ridiculous as ever, he vomits forth absurd words that gradually acquire meaning in the mind, and find a particular sequence, hit home. It might be his movements, his gestures, his eyes, gaping wide one moment, bewitching the next, it might be his beauty, his youth, what do I know. I know that it works.

‘Jan walks these streets, without a destination, like a drifting shipwrecked man, and searches for a sign, a clue to tell him whether this is the place where he will find what he’s looking for - .’ His voice suddenly rises. ‘Stupid fucker, son of a Leyden whore The sign isn’t anywhere around you, it isn’t in the walls, in the bricks, in the limestone, in the cobbles, no, that isn’t where you’ll find what you’re looking for. The sign is the search itself, the sign is you hobbling out of the mud of the roads. It’s you. We who are questing: we who are the now, the past and that which is yet to come. The old are stationary, they’ve already been. Old believers, dead already. The bricks of the Cathedral say nothing. But your eyes say that God is here, God is here now, His Spirit is among us, in this youthfulness, in these arms, these muscles, legs, breasts, eyes. Something immense is in view on the threshold of life, dirty, cursed, inane fucking life that you thought was a silent fart in the divine plan. And it isn’t! God will make a soldier of you. Listen to him: He is calling you to work. Listen to him, listen inside yourselves. There it is, you can hear him calling the roll for the last battle. Jan, listen, you cursed worm!’ His eyes suddenly narrow, two blue slits, they fly close over the people’s heads, they float, then they rise again, in a hiss: ‘Yes, you, idiotcharlatanwhoremonger, because that’s what we’re talking about, what do you think? Do you think you’re fighting for a scrap of paper daubed with your civic freedoms? To hell with it! God is talking to you about something else: not about M�nster, - no, not about these houses, these stones, these streets, not about everything as it is now. But of what it will become. Of you and me in the City, brethren! God doesn’t ask to fight for a treaty, not for an equitable peace: but to fight for the New Jerusalem. A new heaven and earth! A world, our new world beyond the Ocean!’ Panic and, once again, astonishment on people’s faces. ‘This is the promise that bans the charlatans, the indecisive, the inept, the voiceless dregs from the call. Let them make their way right now to the cemetery of the old faith. We will erect the pyramid of fire, we will found the New Jerusalem. Alone, you ask? No, Jan, son of a whore! Now you’re thinking that these dirty, callused hands that have never been able to build anything other than castles of shit will never manage to mix the celestial mortar. You’re wrong, moron. The promise is clear: I’ll send you a prophet who will lead you into battle and gather all your strength to spew it in the face of my enemies. Hark! Make way for the prophet who has sent two of his emissaries today, Jan of Leyden and Gert from the Well, to light the spark. When the prophet arrives, we will no longer be alone and M�nster will be a great fire, a gigantic huge great pyramid of fire standing out against the sky, splitting the clouds and building the ladder to the kingdom. I know it, the name already chills the blood of the powerful, the rich and the godless, they run and hide beneath their brocade covers as soon as they hear it echoing among the ranks of the wretched,