John of Leiden (Dutch: Jan van Leiden, Jan Beukelsz or Jan Beukelszoon; aka John Bockold or John Bockelson) (1509? – January 22, 1536), was an Anabaptist leader from the Dutch city of Leiden. He was the illegitimate son of a Dutch mayor, and a tailor's apprentice by trade.
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Raised in poverty, young John became a charismatic leader who was widely revered by his followers. According to his own testimony, he went to the German city of Münster, arriving in 1533, because he had heard there were inspired preachers there. He sent for Jan Matthys, who had baptized him, to come. After his arrival Matthys – recognized as a prophet – became the principal leader in the city. Following a failed military attempt on Easter Sunday 1534, in which Matthys died, John of Leiden became King of Münster until its fall in June 1535.
The army of Münster was defeated in 1535 by the prince bishop Franz von Waldeck, and John of Leiden was captured. He was found in the cellar of a house, from where he was taken to a dungeon in Dülmen, then brought back to Münster. On January 22, 1536, along with Bernhard Krechting and Bernhard Knipperdolling, he was tortured and then executed. Each of the three was attached to a pole by an iron spiked collar and his body ripped with red-hot tongs for the space of an hour. After Knipperdolling saw the process of torturing John of Leiden, he attempted to kill himself with the collar, using it to choke himself. After that the executioner tied him to the stake to make it impossible for him to kill himself. After the burning, their tongues were pulled out with tongs before each was killed with a burning dagger thrust through the heart. The bodies were placed in three cages and hung from the steeple of St. Lambert's Church and the remains left to rot. About fifty years later the bones were removed, but the cages have remained into the 21st century.
The conventional view is that John of Leiden set up in Münster a polygamous theocracy, best known for a law John passed stating that any unmarried woman must accept the first or any requests for a husband, with the result that men competed to acquire the most wives. Some sources report that John himself took sixteen wives aside from his "Queen" Divara van Haarlem, and that he publicly beheaded one of his wives, Elisabeth Wandscherer, after she rebelled against his authority. Karl Kautsky however, in his Communism in Central Europe at the Time of the Reformation, notes that this picture of Anabaptist Münster is based almost entirely on accounts written by the Anabaptists' enemies, who sought to justify their bloody reconquest of the city. Kautsky's reading of the sources emphasizes the Anabaptists' emphasis on social equality, political democracy, and communal living during the time of John's nominal rule.
John's name still lives on in the Netherlands in the saying zich met een Jan(tje) van Leiden van iets afmaken (literally: To pull a John of Leiden), which means not putting too much effort (or any effort) into something.
The opera Le prophète (1849) by Giacomo Meyerbeer features John as its hero. It involves the capture of Münster (Acts III and IV), John's coronation as God's elect at the cathedral (Act IV), and its finale is set in John's palace in Münster.
John also features in Luther Blissett's novel, Q.
John is a central character in Jonathon Rainbow's Speak to Her Kindly, a novel of historical fiction set during the events of the Munster Rebellion.
John Leiden features in Thomas Nashe's The Unfortunate Traveller (1594), whose hero, Jack Wilton, satirically describes the siege of Münster and Leiden's death.
John (as Jan Bockelson) is one of the main protagonists in the play Die Wiedertäufer by Friedrich Dürrenmatt
John of Leiden appears in the novel "L'Œuvre au noir" or "The Abyss" by Marguerite Yourcenar, from 1968, in which Yourcenar blends fictitious and real characters, describing the whole Münster Rebellion and its downfall. The passage occupies a short chapter.