John of Leyden bites the dust

1536 Anabaptist leader and social revolutionary, John of Leyden (John Bockhold), ‘The Prophet’, was executed. He had preached a coming apocalypse, and advocated polygamy and free love.

John of Leyden was a tailor boy who became the leader of the Anabaptists of the German town of Munster on the executions of Muncer and Storck. His predecessors had tried to establish a theocracy. He had a magnificent coronation, and coins were struck for his reign; he was represented as a monarch and prophet in one.

He sent out twelve apostles to announce his reign through all Low Germany. He also married twelve wives at one time, decapitating one of them in the presence of the others when she was rude to him. Leyden defended his theocracy against the bishop of Munster for a year, but was betrayed by his own people and executed on this day in 1536.