Raphael Patai on Proselytism To Judaism

 

Wikipedia - Raphael Patai:

Raphael Patai (Hebrew: רפאל פטאי; November 22, 1910 − July 20, 1996), born Ervin György Patai, was a Hungarian-Jewish ethnographer, historian, anthropologist, and ordained rabbinical scholar.

. . .During the late 1930s and early 1940s Patai taught at the Hebrew University and served as the secretary of the Haifa Technion. He founded the Palestine Institute of Folklore and Ethnology in 1944, serving as its director of research for four years. He also served as scientific director of a Jewish folklore studies program for the Beit Ha'Am public cultural program in Jerusalem.

Patai's work was wide-ranging but focused primarily on the cultural development of the ancient Hebrews and Israelites, on Jewish history and culture, and on the anthropology of the Middle East generally. He was the author of hundreds of scholarly articles and several dozen books, including three autobiographical volumes. 

. . .In 1976, Patai was awarded the National Jewish Book Award in the Jewish History category for The Myth of the Jewish Race.

An excerpt from, "The Myth of the Jewish Race" by Raphael Patai and Jennifer P. Wing, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1975, Pg. 51 - 54:

Proselytism, the conversion of Gentiles to Judaism and their incorporation into the Jewish community, is a phenomenon which has accompanied the Jewish people throughout its long history,' and which among its other results, has had far-reaching genetic consequences for the Jewish community.

The documentary evidence concerning proselytism, although available from biblical times down to the present, is sporadic and gives no total picture of the phenomenon in any age. It is in the nature of historical records that they either pertain to the lives and doings of important figures or else describe great group actions and events. The lives and works of simple folk have always passed unnoticed. If a bishop, count, merchant prince, officer, scholar, or author converted to Judaism, there was a chance that the event would leave its traces in some records. Even in such cases the embarrassment of the ruling church which the proselyte deserted, and the possibility of vengeful persecution of the community whose ranks he joined, often resulted in a conspiracy of silence. If the convert was one of the common people, the fateful step taken in embracing Judaism would remain unrecorded, except in those cases in which the convert subsequently suffered a martyr's death, and his name was listed in a communal martyrology along with born Jews who shared the same fate.

In every age and place, there must have been many times more converts to Judaism that those whose names have come down to us. How many times more is difficult to guess. But considering the numerical relationship between outstanding people and the common folk, and the fact that it was the common folk for whom Judaism held more attraction, it does not seem far-fetched to assume that for every known proselyte there may have been a hundred or more whose conversion left no traces in the annals.

While the historical evidence is thus tantalizingly unsatisfactory, it nevertheless appears that the early centuries of Jewish dispersion before the triumph of Christianity were especially propitious for Jewish proselytizing. After examining all the extant Greco-Roman sources, the German historian Emil Schürer came to the conclusion that "the Jewish propaganda in Hellenistic-Roman times must have been a very lively one." He emphasizes that in the Diaspora, "Israel felt itself the teacher of the world of nations,'' and that

the success of these endeavors was a very considerable one. By all the indications which we have it can be assumed that, in Hellenistic-Roman times, the number of those who joined the Jewish communities. . .participated in the Jewish synagogue service, and observed the Jewish law, sometimes completely, was very great.

Schürer finds that

almost everywhere in the Diaspora the Jewish communities were joined by a following of "'God-fearing'' pagans who adopted the Jewish (i.e., monotheistic and aniconic) manner of worshipping God, frequented the Jewish synagogues, but as to the observances of the ritual law confined themselves to certain main points, and were, consequently, not at all counted as part of the Jewish communites.

Of those Gentiles who completed their conversion by baptism and circumcision and thus became full members of the Jewish community, Schürer remarks that while we do not know how large was their number, "in the early period of the Jewish propaganda it was presumably very great, since the enormous spread of Judaism can scarcely be explained by the natural increase of the people alone."

There is general scholarly agreement that the large number of Jews found in the Roman Empire in the first century A.D. cannot be attributed to natural increase alone, but was to a great extent due to proselytism. Sociologists and historians estimate that at the time of the destruction of Judaea by Titus (A.D. 70), the actual number of Jews reached about 4.5 million, constituting 8 to 10 per cent of the total population of the Roman Empire; and the latter was shown by a census carried out in the year of Augustus' death (A.D. 14) to have been 54 million. Soon thereafter the number of the Jews declined and remained fluctuating between 1 and 2 million until the end of the eighteenth century, when it began its rapid increase. It reached 4.5 million again by 1840, and peaked at 16.5 million by 1940, just prior to the Nazi genocide.

In the High Middle Ages Jewish proselytism again intensified, and at least one historian has estimated that in Muslim lands the conversion of slaves alone doubled the number of the Jews. Since in this period many slaves were practically coerced by their Jewish masters into accepting Judaism, it is understandable that the attitude of some contemporary rabbis to proselytism was negative or skeptical. Another factor making for such a negative view was that in both the Muslim countries and Christian Europe proselytizing entailed grave dangers, not only for those directly involved in the conversion of a Gentile but also for the entire community. For this reason many leaders discouraged proselytism, except in the case of New Christians or New Muslims, that is, former Jews or people of Jewish ancestry who wished to return to Judaism. Some would-be proselytes traveled from one country to another in futile search for a rabbi willing to accept them into the Covenant of Abraham. It is remarkable, to say the least, that despite such difficulties and obstacles the number of proselytes was so great, even in countries and periods in which the Jews were despised and persecuted and where Gentiles who converted to Judaism courted death at the stake.

Those who persisted in their desire and joined the Jewish community were considered---in most ages by most rabbis---full Jews, children of "Abraham our father" and, more than that, precious jewels in the crown of Israel. We shall have repeated occasion to return to this later in this chapter. But as an introduction let us quote here two different attitudes toward proselytes. The first is that of Maimonides, writing to a scholarly proselyte, Obadiah by name, who lived in Palestine. Maimonides addresses Obadiah as "Master and teacher, the enlightened and understanding Obadiah, the righteous proselyte,'' and says in the course of his lengthy responsum:

Anyone who becomes a proselyte is a pupil of our father Abraham and all of them are members of his household . . . hence you may say the prayer ""Our God, and the God of our fathers,'' for Abraham, peace be upon him, is your father.. for since you have entered beneath the wings of the Divine Presence and attached yourself to Him, there is no difference between us and you . . . in any matter. You may certainly recite the blessings, "Who has chosen us; who has given us; who has caused us to inherit; and who has separated us,'` For the Creator has chosen you and has separated you from the nations, and has given you the Torah, since the Torah was given both to us and to the proselytes. .. . And do not belittle your lineage: if we trace ourselves back to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, you trace yourself to Him by whose word the world came into being.

Bahya ben Asher ben Halawa (d. 1340), while he cannot be compared in breadth of knowledge and vision with Maimonides, was one of the most distinguished biblical exegetes of Spain. In his book of religious and moralistic teachings, Kad HaQemah (Jar of Flour), Bahya displays a decidedly ambivalent attitude toward proselytes. On the one hand he says that the reason for the Talmudic rule that a would-be proselyte must be told about the penalties he would incur were he to disobey the commandments is to "discourage them from converting, since there is no advantage at all in proselytes'" and "their joining the Jewish community does not turn out well, nor, in most cases, is their offspring worthy. . ." But after adducing biblical examples in support of this negative view, Bahya goes on to say that the difficulties proselytes cause to Israel stem from the fact that they are more pious than the born Israelites and shed an unfavorable light on the latters' lack of complete devotion to God. This positive and, in fact, glowing, view of the proselytes' piety is illustrated by Bahya with numerous Talmudic quotations, all of which speak in praise of proselytes. Bahya concludes his discourse on proselytes with the expression of the messianic hope that ultimately all the nations of the world will convert to Judaism.

The story of proselytism as it unfolded in one country after another will be outlined beyond the Middle Ages and even into the nineteenth century. It is, however, not our intention to discuss the phenomenon of conversion to Judaism in modern times, although the process is continuing at present in those countries in which Jews live as free and equal citizens. In the United States there are now about 2,000 conversions annually; this influx of Gentile blood into the Jewish gene pool is bound to have the long-range effect of gradually obliterating whatever genetic difference still exists between Jews and Gentiles in those countries where conversion is common. For our purposes, proselytism in past periods is the important factor because its result decisively contributed to the Jewish gene pool in recent times.

How USrael Can Instigate A New Turkey-Iran, Sunni-Shia War

With the American military and European armies leaving the Middle East, most likely for good, all signs point to the instigation of a Muslim civil war by these powers between the Sunni side led by Turkey and the Shia side led by Iran. 

Israel would obviously be the biggest beneficiary of such a massive war, and they will play both sides off against each other at every opportunity.

What we saw in Iraq immediately after the American invasion in 2003 could be repeated on a regional scale. 

The battle lines are already being drawn. The pieces are being put into motion. 

Turkey's takeover of Damascus in 2024 mirrored Iran's takeover of Baghdad almost two decades earlier. They each have their Arab capital now. And they both have America and the Kurds to thank.

In the Caucasus, Azerbaijan is a natural ally of Turkey, and practically a Turkish province at this point. It is also an Israeli outlet and strategic partner, supplying it with energy, mercenaries, and a potential launch pad into northern Iran.

Its neighbour, Armenia, is the big question mark as far as where its loyalties lie. Geopolitically it's like God put it there just to mess with the Turks. 

Yerevan can go in Russia's direction, or the EU's; Sunni or Shia; it's really up for grabs. Like in Kurdistan, war and occupation of Armenia is more than likely in a Muslim civil war. Russia could also intervene and invade the country on humanitarian grounds, similar to what NATO did in Libya.

The most interesting and contested battlespace could be the Persian Gulf "countries." Iraq and Iran can easily absorb Kuwait. Ditto for Bahrain. These moves could drive Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE fully to the Turkish side. That would leave Yemen as the big prize for both sides. 

In Lebanon, all three sides - the Sunni-led Turks, the Shia-led Iranians, and Israel - will continue to carve out their zones of influence and wage war on the peoples there. Israel has the advantage in Lebanon because of its proximity and its ruthlessness. After its assassination of Nasrallah it went on the offensive and hasn't stopped a moment. They're basically carpet bombing the whole southern side of the country. 

The two nations I'm most interested in are Egypt and Pakistan. USrael is dominating both capitals right now. They are not sovereign and powerful nations. But that could change. With Egypt's geopolitical position and Pakistan's army and nukes, they could tilt the favour towards either the Sunnis or the Shia. 

Pakistan has a sizeable Shia population and Egypt has bad memories of Ottoman rule, so it's not wise to assume they will automatically join the Sunni side. I think they will see who is winning and join that side.

India and Greece would be on the periphery of this potential regional conflict, but they will still be important players. India has clearly joined the Israeli camp. Greece has come under threat from Turkey recently. It can side with both Israel and the Shia depending on the situation. But it is the most vulnerable to a Turkish attack so I could see it being fully neutral and staying out of the war completely.

Napoleon And Islam: How The Emperor of Europe Saw The East

 

Napoleon brought law and civilization wherever he conquered, transforming the society as a whole. He killed with the sword, not banknotes.

The British Empire mostly focused on the elites, and used espionage, its naval supremacy, economic blackmail, and clever stratagems to get its way with local populations.

Napoleon was stronger. But in wars of this kind the strong rarely win.

We cannot understand the world today without a firm grasp of the Napoleonic Wars. That was the last true European conflict. WWI and WWII were essentially human sacrifice rituals, not strategically significant or world historical struggles. 

If Napoleon had succeeded in dislodging the British from the East, from India, Central Asia, the Muslim world, and Iran, who knows how those regions would have developed politically. 

And if he had conquered Russia there's no doubt he would have instituted immediate reforms that would have made life easier for both the Russian peasant and the Jew. There would have been no Communist takeover in 1917. Russia would have been integrated into Europe politically and militarily by that point.

If Napoleon had reigned supreme as the sole ruler in Europe, Africa and Eurasia, bringing this entire landmass under one system, with one army, the world would not have witnessed the terrible World Wars. 

But he lost. His glorious empire was not meant to be. The British and the Rothschilds won. And the European peace and world order they created was not to last because, while they had the cunning and the funds, they lacked the strength. They were not true conquerors. 

True conquerors conquer with the sword, not with money and spycraft.

Napoleon was a true conqueror. The last of his kind. What general or military leader today has the audacity to attempt what he accomplished? No one.

II.

An excerpt from, "Europe and the Islamic World: A History" By John Tolan, Gilles Veinstein, and Henry Laurens; Translated by Jane Marie Todd, Princeton University Press, 2013, Pg. 270 - 273:

In 1797, the young general seized the republic of Venice and the Ionian Islands belonging to it. The French republic became a neighbor of the Ottoman Empire. Immediately, the great pashas of the Balkans sent letters of congratulation "to the commander in chief of the Great Nation's army." That Ottoman expression of courtesy, intended to make up for the absence of established protocol for addressing a republic, became the slogan of revolutionary France, which had entered a phase of territorial expansion. For a time, Bonaparte envisioned organizing an uprising of the Greeks in the Balkans, then began to consider a possible conquest of Egypt.

That undertaking was not the political maneuver of a regime in desperate straits wishing to rid itself of a troublesome general. Rather, it was the culmination of a century of reflection on the nature of Muslim society and on the ramifications of the geopolitical changes. The first justification was that this was an attack on England in the Indies, the supposed source of its commercial power. Once installed in Suez, the French army would be able to organize a naval expedition, whose arrival in the Indies would provoke a general uprising against British domination. If necessary, an expedition could be planned for the overland route, inciting to revolt a vast movement of people, who would surge over the Indus.

That frame of reference allows us to understand the use made of the call for liberation. Initially, the Egyptians were told that the expedition had occurred with the agreement of the Ottoman authorities, who wished to rid themselves of the rebel Mamluk regime. If the Ottomans went to war nonetheless, then the French would incite a general revolt of the Eastern peoples. That strategic view rested on general principles used in analyzing Eastern societies, but it was reinforced by cognizance of the rebel movements against the autonomous provincial powers, such as that of Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar in Acre, and of the beginnings of Wahhabi expansion in central Arabia, which was poorly understood (European travelers interpreted it as a form of armed deism characteristic of desert culture.)

The innovation specific to Bonaparte, apart from his personal synthesis of the ideas of the age, was to argue that Islam had within it a revolutionary content that could be turned against the conquerors or, on the contrary, channeled to their advantage. The French would present themselves as the enemies of the Christians, particularly the Catholics, assuaging at every turn the Islamic religious authorities. Bonaparte himself would style himself a messenger of God, in accordance with the logic of his already romantic view of the East.

Everything would be done in the name of civilization, which became the key word of expeditionary discourse. In the first place, "civilization" meant the development of the conquered domain in accordance with the rules of individual and collective happiness. Economic success would make it possible to replace the Sugar Islands, whose fate appeared increasingly precarious, and would lead to a permanent colony founded on a Franco-Arab synthesis, an expression that appeared for the first time in history in 1799. The scientific expedition accompanying the military enterprise would mark the return of the sciences and arts to their land of origin. In addition to the natural sciences, that expedition would focus on rediscovering the secrets of the ancient wisdom of Egypt and would take stock of the modern state, preliminary to any civilizing enterprise.

The British immediately took the danger to the Indian route seriously. From the Deccan to the Indus, the men of the East India Company hastened to bring the "Eastern Jacobins" in line. Diplomats urged the sultan of Constantinople to go to war, to proclaim jihad against the atheistic French. They asked him, in the name of his supposed powers as caliph, to address the Muslims of India and warn them against the false promises of the French. The sultan would thereby engage unawares in pan-Islamism. Austrians and Russians joined that second coalition, which had become the union of the revealed religions against revolutionary atheism. Against that discourse of religious propaganda, Bonaparte in turn called on the Arabs to revolt against the Ottoman yoke.

For the Eastern populations, that chaos was incomprehensible. To be sure, the ulemas of Cairo saw the French ideas as a resurgence of the ancient materialism of the zindiqs in the first centuries of Islam, but for the Egyptian masses it was primarily a foreign domination of Christian origin. In Constantinople, where Europe was better understood, the impious ideas of Voltaire and Rousseau were formally condemned, but the frame of reference for popular mobilization was the Balkan Wars against the Austrians, the Russians, and the loca Christian uprisings. Nevertheless, the three-year collaboration with the British army and navy would be a powerful vehicle for introducing modern forms of armaments.

For Egypt, those three years were a period of terrible destruction and misfortune. As during any occupation, some components of society found the means to accommodate themselves and even to collaborate with foreign domination. Some admired the new scientific methods and the art of printing, or took an interest in the administrative reorganization undertaken by the French, particularly in matters of taxation. But above all, the years 1798-1801 were the worst of a troubled time that had begun beforehand and would continue afterward.

The geopolitics of Islam emerged completely transformed by these Wars of the Second Coalition. The survival of the Ottoman Empire depended on its integration into a European balance of powers that now extended to India along the overland route. The policies of the European powers took into account every modification of local power relations. Local political leaders saw the need to adapt to this new state of affairs or to ask for European protections. Hence Bashir Shihab II, emir of the Lebanese Mountains, was allowed to keep his post as a reward for his refusal to join the French, enemies of the Christians---this despite the hostility of his traditional enemy, Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar (who, however, had been the comrade in arms of the British in the decisive battle of the siege of Acre in 1799). The Muslims' political survival therefore depended on integration at a general level into the European political system and on European political penetration at the local level. Local chroniclers took note of that new political reality by recording in their accounts the arrival of news about the major Napoleonic battles, even as they ignored the European conflicts of the eighteenth century.

An excerpt from, "Promised Lands: The British and the Ottoman Middle East" by Jonathan Parry, Princeton University Press, 2022, Pg. 22 - 23:

On May 9, 1798, the ambitious young general Napoleon Bonaparte stood before his soldiers at Toulon, France's Mediterranean naval base, and told them that they were the heirs of the Roman legions whose discipline and prowess had subdued the African power of Carthage. Ten days later, his army sailed, like the Romans, across the Mediterranean----not to Carthage but to Alexandria, the Egyptian port built, as he later reminded them, by Alexander the Great himself. Once reinforced from Corsica and Civitavecchia, this was an immense expedition: 31,000 men, seventeen warships and frigates, nearly four hundred transports, plus 167 men of letters who were to record its benefits for human civilisation. They landed at Alexandria on July 1, and had taken Cairo and the main arteries of Egypt by the end of the month.

British spies had observed the expedition assemble, but were unclear where it was headed. Was it Sicily, Syria, or, as the Russians believed, the Balkans? The British government was preoccupied with the risk of a French invasion of Ireland or Britain. Admiral Nelson had been sent into the Mediterranean to prevent this great fleet moving west and north. He failed to find it en route; he finally discovered the ships moored in Abukir Bay and destroved nearly all of them in early August. Even So, the greatest general of the age had succeeded in occupying the crucial strip of fertile land along the Nile that connected the Mediterranean to the Red Sea and to India. He had indicated that France was now fighting not just a European and Caribbean battle, but one for world domination. For the British, the French Wars had always been about colonies, trade, and wealth as much as about continental alliances, but mostly so far in the West Indies. Now, suddenly, the new British Empire in the East was at stake.

In invading Egypt and displacing the ruling regime of Mamluks, Napoleon was also invading the Ottoman Empire. Since the 1770s, the Mamluk leaders Murad and Ibrahim had consistently managed to resist Ottoman power in Egypt, as had their recent predecessors. Nonetheless, they recognised the sovereignty of the sultan, and the sultan was naturally horrified by a European invasion of his lands. The British government had to consider how far to ally with the Ottomans, as well as the Russians, in order to oppose him. Britain had not thought seriously about Ottoman territory previously. Most British policymakers assumed that a Eurocentric strategy was needed to defeat France's military expansion. Diplomacy and subsidies would persuade Austria, Prussia, and others to do most of the fighting. This continued to be the approach of the foreign secretary, Lord Grenville. For Grenville, the East was relevant only insofar as it affected the European military balance. By 1800, his approach had failed. His cabinet rival Henry Dundas had an alternative strategy, which involved seeking military help from India rather than unreliable Europeans. It also involved cultivating local Arabs and Mamluks in order to build a coalition against France on the ground. In 1801, Dundas's approach succeeded in getting the French out of Egypt. Their departure was followed by peace talks, but if the French resumed the war, it was easy to see how they might return. This was partly because British officers never trusted the Ottomans to fight effectively. The war of 1799-1801 revealed enormous tensions between the British and their supposed allies. Was it safe, or honourable, to hand Egypt back to them?

An excerpt from, "Napoleon: The Art of War & Power - Based on Napoleon's Maxims of War" Translated by Colonel D'Aguilar, Arcturus Publishing, 2018, Pg. 123:

Maxim LVI:

A good general, a well-organized system, good instructions and severe discipline, aided by effective establishments, will always make good troops, independently of the cause for which they fight.

At the same time, a love of country, a spirit of enthusiasm, a sense of national honour and fanaticism will operate upon young soldiers with advantage.

Thomas Müntzer And The German Peasants’ War

 

The largest oil painting in the world, the Peasants' War Panorama at Bad Frankenhausen, completed in 1989, showcases Thomas Müntzer.

I never heard of this German peasants revolt before today.

This is a period of history that's been a blind spot for me. We were never taught the German Peasants' War in school. The Protestant Reformation and the Thirty Years' War took precedence during this era. But this rebellion was extraordinarily brutal and had political and social consequences. These peasants were sent like sheep to the slaughter, and barely remembered.

A key character in the middle of the drama was a Protestant reformer and preacher named Thomas Müntzer. He whipped up mobs into a frenzy with his religious sermons. Theology in the wrong hands can be a dangerous tool. Combined that with insufficient learning and natural charisma and what you get is the blind leading the blind.

Also, a land without a King, where petty lords and princes, and smaller houses hold sway, can be a brutal and oppressive place. If Germany had a King at this point in its history this tragedy would have never been allowed to grow in momentum.

II.

University of Oxford -  The German Peasants’ War, 1524–1525:

The German Peasants’ War, 1524–1525 was the biggest uprising in Western Europe before the French Revolution. The rebellion extended to the Tyrol, Northern Italy and Alsace and at its peak covered most of Germany. It occurred at the height of the Reformation in successive waves,  during which, thousands of people – miners, peasants, and townsfolk risked everything and lost their lives. Yet despite its significance, I would be surprised if you had ever heard of it. 

In 2017 when Germany celebrated the quincentenary of the Reformation, the Peasants’ War remained something of an embarrassment: Luther, after all, had condemned the peasants and called on them to be slain like ‘mad dogs’. But the reason the Peasants’ War has passed out of modern consciousness lies in the divisions between East and West, which a reunited Germany is trying to overcome. Communist East Germany did not at first celebrate Luther and the Reformation but saw instead Thomas Müntzer as its hero and the Peasants’ War as the decisive world historical event. Indeed, the final and greatest artistic monument the East German state created was the Peasant War Panorama. Executed by the artist Werner Tübke, it is 14 metres high and 123 metres long, the biggest canvas oil painting in the world. In a final historical irony, it was opened in a ceremony just a few days before the fall of the Berlin wall. 

When I first saw this work, erected on the battlefield where so many died, I was overwhelmed and moved and felt I had to write the history of these people. Why were they so inspired by ideas of brotherhood, freedom and the gospel? What did these words mean to them? I wanted to know how they got to the battlefields, and how they brought together people with different dialects and backgrounds to create a fighting force.

I became fascinated by the various landscapes in which the war took place and the agricultural economy that was the backdrop to their grievances. The revolt began in autumn when the harvest was in and reached its peak in the early summer. The research involved cycling the routes the peasants took to understand the lie of the land. Only after retracing their steps did I understand why the peasants targeted the high buildings, the monasteries and castles that made lordship visible. It became abundantly clear why they felt compelled to burn them down.

Wikipedia:

Thomas Müntzer[b] (c. 1489 – 27 May 1525) was a German preacher and theologian of the early Reformation whose opposition to both Martin Luther and the Catholic Church led to his open defiance of late-feudal authority in central Germany. Müntzer was foremost amongst those reformers who took issue with Luther's compromises with feudal authority. He was a leader of the German peasant and plebeian uprising of 1525 commonly known as the German Peasants' War.

One of the principal dialectics in Müntzer's teaching is the opposition of the "Fear of Man" to the "Fear of God". Regardless of one's position in society, it was necessary for the true believer to have a fear of God and to have no fear of man. This was the thrust of his Sermon Before the Princes and it was the rallying call in his final letter to Mühlhausen in May 1525: "May the pure, upright fear of God be with you my dear brothers." In his Sermon Before the Princes he stated quite clearly: "The fear of God must be pure, unsullied by any fear of men or creaturely things. How desperately we need a fear like this! For just as it is impossible to fear two masters and be saved, so it is impossible to fear both God and created things and be saved."

. . .Interwoven with Müntzer's mystical piety, as for many of his contemporaries, was a conviction that the whole cosmos stood at a tipping point. Now God would set right all the wrongs of the world, largely by destruction, but with the active assistance of true Christians. From this would emerge a new age of mankind. In the Prague Manifesto he wrote: "O ho, how ripe the rotten apples are! O ho, how rotten the elect have become! The time of the harvest has come! That is why he himself has hired me for his harvest." In a letter to the people of Erfurt, in May 1525, he wrote:

Help us in any way you can, with men and with cannon, so that we can carry out the commands of God himself in Ezekiel 34, where he says: "I will rescue you from those who lord it over you in a tyrannous way" [and] In Chapter 39 [...] "Come, you birds of heaven and devour the flesh of the princes; and you wild beasts drink up the blood of all the bigwigs". Daniel says the same thing in chapter 7: that power should be given to the common man".

In his final confession under torture of May 1525, Müntzer stated that one of the primary aims of himself and his comrades was "omnia sunt communia" – "all things are to be held in common and distribution should be to each according to his need". This statement has often been cited as evidence of Müntzer's "early communism", but it stands quite alone in all of his writings and letters. It may have been a statement of what his captors feared rather than what Müntzer actually believed.[original research?] In the same confession, Müntzer is reported as recommending that princes should ride out with a maximum of eight horses and "gentlemen with two". Müntzer's own writings and letters clearly propose that power be taken from the feudal authorities and given to the people. For that proposal, he may be described as a revolutionary, but not proposing redistribution of wealth. Subsequent scholars have analysed Müntzer's movement as a communist movement. Friedrich Engels' analysis of Thomas Müntzer's work and the wider German Peasants' War led him and Karl Marx to conclude that the communist revolution, when it occurred, would be led not by a peasant army but by an urban proletariat.

Wikipedia:

The German Peasants' War, Great Peasants' War or Great Peasants' Revolt (German: Deutscher Bauernkrieg) was a widespread popular revolt in some German-speaking areas in Central Europe from 1524 to 1525. It was Europe's largest and most widespread popular uprising before the French Revolution in 1789. The revolt failed because of intense opposition from the aristocracy, who slaughtered up to 100,000 of the 300,000 poorly armed peasants and farmers. The survivors were fined and achieved few, if any, of their goals. Like the preceding Bundschuh movement and the Hussite Wars, the war consisted of a series of both economic and religious revolts involving peasants and farmers, sometimes supported by radical clergy like Thomas Müntzer. The fighting was at its height in the middle of 1525.

. . .Martin Luther, the dominant leader of the Reformation in Germany, initially took a middle course in the Peasants' War, by criticizing both the injustices imposed on the peasants, and the rashness of the peasants in fighting back. He also tended to support the centralization and urbanization of the economy. This position alienated the lesser nobles, but shored up his position with the burghers. Luther argued that work was the chief duty on earth; the duty of the peasants was farm labor and the duty of the ruling classes was upholding the peace. He could not support the Peasant War because it broke the peace, an evil he thought greater than the evils the peasants were rebelling against. At the peak of the insurrection in 1525, his position shifted completely to support of the rulers of the secular principalities and their Roman Catholic allies.

In Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants (May 1525), Luther encouraged the nobility to swiftly and violently eliminate the rebelling peasants, stating,"[the peasants] must be sliced, choked, stabbed, secretly and publicly, by those who can, like one must kill a rabid dog." After the conclusion of the Peasants' War, he was criticized for his writings in support of the violent actions taken by the ruling class. He responded by writing an open letter to Caspar Muller, defending his position. However, he also stated that the nobles were too severe in suppression of the insurrection, despite having called for severe violence in his previous work. Luther has often been sharply criticized for his position.

. . .On 29 April the peasant protests in Thuringia culminated in open revolt. Large sections of the town populations joined the uprising. Together they marched around the countryside and stormed the castle of the Counts of Schwarzburg. In the following days, a larger number of insurgents gathered in the fields around the town. When Müntzer arrived with 300 fighters from Mühlhausen on 11 May, several thousand more peasants of the surrounding estates camped on the fields and pastures: the final strength of the peasant and town force was estimated at 6,000. The Landgrave, Philip of Hesse and Duke George of Saxony were on Müntzer's trail and directed their Landsknecht troops toward Frankenhausen. On 15 May joint troops of Landgraf Philipp I of Hesse and George, Duke of Saxony defeated the peasants under Müntzer near Frankenhausen in the County of Schwarzburg.

The Princes' troops included close to 6,000 mercenaries, the Landsknechte. As such they were experienced, well-equipped, well-trained and of good morale. The peasants, on the other hand, had poor, if any, equipment, and many had neither experience nor training. Many of the peasants disagreed over whether to fight or negotiate. On 14 May, they warded off smaller feints of the Hesse and Brunswick troops, but failed to reap the benefits from their success. Instead the insurgents arranged a ceasefire and withdrew into a wagon fort.

The next day Philip's troops united with the Saxon army of Duke George and immediately broke the truce, starting a heavy combined infantry, cavalry and artillery attack. The peasants were caught off-guard and fled in panic to the town, followed and continuously attacked by the public forces. Most of the insurgents were slain in what turned out to be a massacre. Casualty figures are unreliable but estimates range from 3,000 to 10,000 while the Landsknecht casualties were as few as six (two of whom were only wounded). Müntzer was captured, tortured and executed at Mühlhausen on 27 May.

Video Title: Communize the Eschaton: Thomas Müntzer and the German Peasants' War. Source: Acid Horizon. Date Published: February 28, 2026. Description:

Adam is joined by Massimiliano Tomba, O.L. Silverman, and Loren Goldman to discuss the biggest series of uprisings in Europe before the French Revolution, the German Peasants' War, which had its 500th anniversary in 2025. In this discussion, we considered what it meant for everyday people to engage in insurrectionary struggle against Pope and Prince alike, the influence of the conflict on Marxist conceptions of history, the apocalyptic communism of Thomas Müntzer in his allegiance with the peasants of Thuringia, and how Martin Luther's counter-revolutionary thought laid the foundations for the concepts of freedom, authority, and rebellion which underlie modern European philosophy.

William I, Elector of Hesse

 

This guy created a monster. 

Researching this Royal House - the House of Hesse -  led me down a Wikipedia rabbit hole last night. 

European royal histories and family trees is something I can get lost in. 

We have to remember that for most of human history the characters at the center of every historical drama were royalty. The last hundred years are an aberration. 

Before the rise of secret societies, ambitious revolutionaries, and modern industrialists and oligarchs, royal houses were the principal actors that moved, shaped, and catalogued history. They had the leisure, institutional memory, and wealth to direct events and make history.

And the House of Hesse in Germany has been at the center of the action and the European drama for centuries, participating in numerous historical conflicts from the Thirty Years' War to the American Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. 

They provided mercenaries to the British Empire in the American Revolutionary War and helped launch the Rothschild dynasty in the same century, inadvertently of course.

The women affiliated with this House, who were married into the courts across Europe, from France to Russia, are also impressive from a political and social perspective. They left a big imprint on history. 

II.

Wikipedia:

William I, Elector of Hesse (German: Wilhelm I., Kurfürst von Hessen; 3 June 1743 – 27 February 1821) was the eldest surviving son of Frederick II, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel (or Hesse-Cassel) and Princess Mary of Great Britain, the daughter of George II.

. . .Upon the death of his father on 31 October 1785, he became William IX, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel. He was said to have inherited one of the largest fortunes in Europe at the time.

William looked for help in managing his estate. He hired Mayer Amschel Rothschild as "Hoffaktor" in 1769, to supervise the operation of his properties and tax-gathering. The wealth of William's estate provided a good living for Rothschild and the men had a strong relationship; he founded the Rothschild family dynasty, which became important in financing and banking in Europe. Although they had been acquainted since 1775, William IX did not formally designate Rothschild as his overseer until 1801.

The early fortunes of the Rothschild family were made through a conjunction of financial intelligence and the wealth of Prince William. During the Napoleonic Wars, William used the Frankfurt Rothschilds to hide his fortune from Napoleon. This money then saw its way through to Nathan Mayer, (N.M.) in London, where it helped fund the British movements through Portugal and Spain. The interest made from this venture was reaped by the budding banker barons, who used it to swiftly develop their fortune and prestige in Europe and Britain. It was not long before their riches outweighed those of their benefactor, William of Hesse-Kassel.

Wikipedia: 

Frederick II (German: Landgraf Friedrich II von Hessen-Kassel) (14 August 1720 – 31 October 1785) was Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel (or Hesse-Cassel) from 1760 to 1785. He ruled as an enlightened despot, and raised money by renting soldiers (called "Hessians") to Great Britain to help fight the American Revolutionary War. He combined Enlightenment ideas with Christian values, cameralist plans for central control of the economy, and a militaristic approach toward international diplomacy.

. . .During the 17th and 18th centuries, it was a fairly widespread practice for smaller principalities to rent out troops to other princes. However, this was carried on to excess in Hesse-Kassel, which maintained 7% of its population under arms throughout the eighteenth century. Frederick hired out so many troops to his nephew, King George III of Great Britain, for use in the American War of Independence, that "Hessian" has become an American term for all German soldiers deployed by the British in the War. Frederick used the revenue to finance his patronage of the arts and his opulent lifestyle. The architect Simon Louis du Ry transformed for Frederick II the town of Kassel into a modern capital.

Wikipedia:

Amalie Elisabeth of Hanau-Münzenberg (28 January 1602– 18 August 1651) was Landgravine consort and Regent of Hesse-Kassel. She married the future William V, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel in 1619 and became Landgravine upon his ascension to power in 1627. In 1637, military defeats forced her and William V into exile in East Frisia. Later that year, she became regent for their son William VI upon her husband's death. Through skillful diplomacy and military successes in the Thirty Years' War, she advanced the fortunes of Hesse-Kassel and influenced the Peace of Westphalia that brought the conflict to an end. She handed over an enlarged landgraviate to her son when she abdicated upon his majority in 1650.

. . .Amalie Elisabeth was remembered fondly among Calvinists for her efforts to preserve the Reformed faith in the Holy Roman Empire. When she visited Heidelberg in 1651, she was praised by the city’s inhabitants, who called her a second Deborah. In his 1901 book Women of the Reformed Church, James Isaac Good calls her both a “Reformed Deborah” and a “Reformed Joan of Arc." Her first biography was likely written by Christian Gottfried Körner and appeared as an appendix to the Representation of the Thirty Years War by Friedrich Schiller. 

. . .Although Amalie Elisabeth’s reign was remembered for generations, modern scholarship on the Thirty Years’ War often pays little or no attention to her or her accomplishments. The foremost English-language biography on her is The Iron Princess: Amalia Elizabeth and the Thirty Years' War, written by Dr. Tryntje Helfferich and published in 2013. In her book, Dr. Helfferich argues that Amalie Elisabeth’s role in the Thirty Years’ War has been marginalized in modern works “largely because she was a woman, for her role in the Thirty Years War rivaled that of Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar, Cardinal Mazarin, or even King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden."

Wikipedia:

Madame Elizabeth Charlotte, Duchess of Orléans (born Princess Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate, German: Elisabeth Charlotte; 27 May 1652 – 8 December 1722), also known as Liselotte von der Pfalz, was a German member of the House of Wittelsbach who married into the French royal family. She was the second wife of Monsieur Philippe I, Duke of Orléans (younger brother of Louis XIV). By Philippe, Liselotte was the mother of Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, and Élisabeth Charlotte, Duchess of Lorraine. Philippe II was France's ruler during the Regency. Liselotte gained literary and historical importance primarily through preservation of her correspondence, which is of great cultural and historical value due to her sometimes very blunt descriptions of French court life and is today one of the best-known German-language texts of the Baroque period.

Liselotte not only became the ancestress of the House of Orléans, which came to the French throne with Louis Philippe I, the so-called "Citizen King" from 1830 to 1848, but also became the ancestress of numerous European royal families, so she was also called the "Grandmother of Europe". Through her daughter she was the grandmother of Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor, the husband of Maria Theresa, and great-grandmother of Joseph II and Leopold II (both Holy Roman Emperors) and Marie Antoinette, the last Queen of France before the French Revolution.

. . .Liselotte became very close to her brother-in-law Louis XIV. He was "...enchanted by the fact that this was an extremely witty and lovely woman, that she danced well...". He was often quite amused by her open, humorous and refreshingly uncomplicated nature. They often went hunting together—a rather unusual occupation for a noble lady of the time. Her habit of going for long walks was also noticed by the French court and was initially mocked (she even went for a walk in the park at night) but the King was delighted: "The King used to say: il n’y a que Vous qui jouissés des beautés de Versailles (you are the only one who enjoys the beauties of Versailles)"

. . .Louis XIV died on 1 September 1715 after a reign of 72 years and 110 days; one of the last people he summoned to his deathbed was Liselotte, saying goodbye to her with noble compliments. 

. . .Although she had not made it a habit to interfere in politics, only one month after the Louis XIV's death, Liselotte successfully campaigned for the release of Huguenots who had been sent to the galleys for many years because of their beliefs. 184 people, including many preachers, were released; two years later she managed to release a further 30.

. . .Most of all, Liselotte was worried about the many intrigues and conspiracies against her son. She loathed the foreign minister and later prime minister, Father Guillaume Dubois (cardinal from 1721) and mistrusted the economist and chief financial controller John Law, who caused a currency devaluation and speculative bubble (the so-called Mississippi bubble):

I wanted this Law to come to Blockula with his art and system and never come to France.

— Liselotte von der Pfalz: Letter to her half-sister Raugräfin Luise from 11 July 1720.

. . .Liselotte was interested in opera and theatre and followed their development over decades, and was also able to recite long passages by heart. She was well read, as evidenced by many of her letters, and had a library of more than 3,000 volumes, including all the popular French and German novels and plays of her time (Voltaire dedicated his tragedy Oedipe to her), as well as most of the classical Greek and Latin authors (in German and French translation), Luther Bibles, maps with copperplate engravings, travelogues from all over the world as well as the tomes of natural history, medicine and mathematics. She amassed an extensive coin collection, primarily of antique gold coins (it was not her father who inherited the 12,000 copies her father had inherited in Kassel, but her mother), she owned 30 books on coin science and corresponded with Spanheim and other numismatists. She also bought three of the recently invented microscopes, with which she examined insects and other things. She spent her days at court gatherings, writing letters, reading and researching.

. . .Liselotte is said to have written an estimated 60,000 letters throughout her life, 2/3 in German and 1/3 in French, of which about 5,000 have survived, and about 850 of these are in French. With this, she surpasses the second great letter writer and contemporary witness of her epoch, Madame de Sévigné with her approximately 1,200 letters.

The letters deal with all aspects of life. They contain vivid and often satirical descriptions of court life, memories of her childhood and youth in Germany, the latest court gossip from all over Europe, reflections on literature and theatre, and thoughts about God and the world. Liselotte sought relief by writing long letters to her relatives in Germany, and the constant exchange became a cure for her inner melancholy and sadness.

Wikipedia:

Alexandra Feodorovna (Russian: Александра Фёдоровна, romanized: Aleksandra Fyodorovna; born Princess Alix of Hesse and by Rhine; 6 June 1872 – 17 July 1918) was the last empress of Russia as the consort of Nicholas II from their marriage on 26 November [O.S. 14 November] 1894 until his forced abdication on 15 March [O.S. 2 March] 1917.

Alexandra was deeply involved in the personal and political life of her husband, Tsar Nicholas II. Her reputation suffered due to her influence over Nicholas, particularly in her insistence on maintaining autocratic rule in the face of growing revolutionary pressures in Russia.[2] Her relationship with the Russian mystic Grigori Rasputin became a subject of controversy. Rasputin's alleged ability to alleviate Alexei's suffering from hemophilia increased Alexandra's reliance on him, damaging the public perception of the Romanovs and fueling rumors about Rasputin's power within the royal family. These associations with Rasputin and her opposition to political reform were seen as contributing factors to the collapse of the Romanov dynasty.

Following Nicholas II's abdication, the imperial family were placed under house arrest by the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution. On 17 July 1918, they were murdered by Bolshevik forces in Yekaterinburg, marking the violent end of over three centuries of Romanov rule. Despite her unpopularity during her reign, Alexandra was canonized as Saint Alexandra the Passion Bearer by the Russian Orthodox Church in 2000.