1536
The execution of an Anabaptist king.
Jan of Leiden (1509-36) was a tailor’s apprentice from the Dutch city of Leiden. In 1535 he joined the millennial Anabaptists who had taken over Münster in Westphalia. When the leader of these radicals was killed in a quixotic battle Jan replaced him as King. He ruled the besieged city with an iron fist, decreeing community of goods and polygamy. It is said that he took 21 wives and executed one prospective bride with his own sword for the crime of not wishing to marry him. When the forces of the Catholic bishop finally broke into the city, Jan was captured and on this day in 1536 taken into the public square where he was tortured to death along with two of his aides. Their bodies were placed in iron cages on hoisted to the top of a church tower where they remained for decades as a warning to would-be rebels against the established order. The cages became a sort of symbol of the city and remain to be seen to this day.