I created this poster in 2025 to summarize the ridiculousness of polemical portrayals of Jan van Leiden over the centuries.
Poster of portrayals of Jan van Leiden, a vilified Anabaptist leader.
The text in the middle of the poster reads:
In many popular stories and scholarly studies of the Reformation,
Jan van Leiden is cast as a monstrous arch-villain:
A small-time tailor with acting ambitions from a Dutch town who rises to prominence among fanatics who baptize adults, just like John the Baptist did. In this sect of Anabaptists (rebaptizers), Jan declares himself king, establishes his kingdom in a provincial German city, and begins a reign of terror with arbitrary executions and sexual excesses. Once captured in June 1535 by regional authorities after a long siege, he is tortured and executed in January 1536, just before his 26th birthday. His corpse is hung from a local church tower in an iron cage as a warning to potential heretics and rebels. His cage is flanked on the right and left by two more caged victims, staged for public display as a mock Calvary.
This story is compelling: Jan / John the monster is punished! Authors and publishers love this story. It has sold very well over many centuries.
But this story is not thoughtful history. It is cartoonish, anti-Anabaptist propaganda.
Sources for the images included in the poster are coming.
In the meantime, you can find out more about many of the images and portrayals of Jan van Leiden in the following essays:
- Ralf Klötzer, “Missachtete Vorfahren: Über die Last alter Geschichtsbilder und Ansätze neuer Wahrnehmungen der Täuferherrschaft in Münster,” in Das Königreich der Täufer in Münster — Neue Perspektiven, edited by Barbara Rommé (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2003).
- Michael Driedger, “Münster, Monster, Modernity: Tracing and Challenging the Meme of Anabaptist Madness” in Mennonites and the Challenge of Modernity over Five Centuries, edited by Mark Jantzen, Mary Sprunger, and John Thiesen (North Newton, KS: Bethel College Press, 2016).
- Michael Driedger, “Against ‘the Radical Reformation’: On the Continuity between Early Modern Heresy-Making and Modern Historiography” in Radicalism and Dissent in the World of Protestant Reform, edited by Bridget Heal and Anorthe Kremers (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017).
- Jan Matthias Hoffrogge, Der „Wiedertäufermythos“. Münsters umstrittener Erinnerungsort (Münster: Aschendorff, 2018).
- Michael Driedger, “The Ongoing Demonization of Münster’s Anabaptists since the 1530s.”
- Pre-print version available at https://www.academia.edu/109534661/The_Ongoing_Demonization_of_M%C3%BCnster_s_Anabaptists_since_the_1530s_2023_
- Published German version available as “Geschichtserzählungen über die Täufer in Münster” at https://taeuferbewegung2025.de/wp-content/uploads/gewagt-Hoffnung-leben-Themenjahr-24.pdf