Ministry in Allstedt

Abstract

The market town of Allstedt, situated thirty miles to the south-west of Halle in northern Thuringia, was a territorial enclave of the Saxon electors, surrounded by ducal Saxon lands and the sovereign counties of Mansfeld and Querfurt, the latter belonging to the secular territory of archbishops of Magdeburg. As part of the Thuringian possessions of the ernestine branch of the Saxon house of Wettin, the district of Allstedt was ruled by the elector’s brother, duke John, who resided in Weimar, and was administered from Allstedt castle by his local tax-official, Hans Zeiß. The success of Müntzer’s ministry in Allstedt from April 1523 to his ultimate dismissal in August 1524, the longest sojourn in his short and storm-tossed life, turned upon the town’s peculiar political situation. The benign tolerance which elector Frederick extended to the Wittenberg reformers, and duke John’s genuine religious concern, initially ensured that Müntzer, too, was safe from immediate interference in the ernestine enclave. In the long run, however, that success bred its own failure, for the rapid and enthusiastic response to Müntzer’s preaching from countrydwellers in the neighbouring territories provoked alarm among their rulers, who were without exception staunch Catholics and who had set their face resolutely against any manifestation of heretical beliefs.