Peasant Fires: The Drummer of Niklashausen

“The Virgin often spoke to Hans and instructed him as he preached. His voice in reality was her voice from heaven.”

The pilgrims who came to hear Behem preach at Niklashausen believed that he received the word of God from the Virgin Mary, the saint closest to God because she gave birth to Jesus Christ. She is thus an intermediary between God and humanity, using Behem as her mouthpiece to deliver God’s message.

“I have used the story of Hans Behem, the Drummer of Niklashausen, to expose some of the greatest historical forces, both material and mental, that shaped much of Germany on the eve of the Reformation.”

Behem’s story illustrates larger social and intellectual forces at work in late medieval Germany. Wunderli uses this microhistory to highlight peasant unrest over economic conditions and anticlerical sentiment. This tension predates the dawning of the Protestant Reformation, which began less than fifty years after the Catholic Church executed Behem as a heretic.

“At certain periods during the year or at certain places, people could come especially close to that sacred other-realm. These were the feast days, or holy days, that were dedicated to specific saints or to Christ.”

Medieval life revolved around the Church’s liturgical calendar, which includes a variety of holy days venerating particular saints. These feast days allowed people of all classes to draw closer to the divine while living in the world, and they were one of many forms of ritual that deeply embedded a sense of the sacred in everyday life.