Once upon a time, there were some Anabaptists in Münster…
The Cages of Münster
Those cages must look so much better
from the outside,
hanging impotent from the bell tower,
just above that giant golden timepiece.
(I wonder if they meant it to be ironic.
A timepiece for some crazed actor-king and his deputies
who, one day long ago,
found themselves out of time,
but still had too much of it left.)
You know what happened to them?
It was a gristly event
of calculated justice.
They still have the tongs somewhere, I presume,
mounted on a wall with a plaque underneath
(not a timepiece)
that reads:
“Iron tongs.
Sixteenth century.
Used to dismantle a rebellion
(or, at least, a few rebels).”
But it would be in German, of course.
You see, it happened in Germany,
as these things tended to,
some five hundred years ago
when German was barely an idea
and when justice was served
with a pair of hot iron tongs, criminals caged
like the monsters they were.
Their jailers trusted those tongs.
Gruesome, yes, they said,
but necessary.
You can tell by the way he died,
clinging obstinately to feigned nobility,
that he had sown
and he had reaped.
No remorse in his eyes,
not even when the tongs turned, red-hot,
to convict him.
He got what he deserved.
Maybe the king truly felt no remorse–
his heart, when they got to it,
already charcoal-black and dead.
Maybe he saw it coming
and resolved to deny them the satisfaction of watching it burn
from flesh to ash.
So he hardened his heart,
after the fashion of Biblical kings.
Let the tongs bite,
he thought.
One way or another, they
would finish their work. Tongs were but utensils.
He was a king, his legacy an idea etched in rust
on the bars of an iron cage.
[An in-depth and highly entertaining narrative of the events at Münster can be found in The Tailor King, by Anthony Arthur. For a less wordy overview of the episode, check out this website.]
