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In the course of our daily reporting, we often uncover unusual projects, places, or connections that don't make the final cut. Instead of keeping it to ourselves, we're pleased to share our weekly Architrivia.
On January 22, 1536, the leaders of the Münster Rebellion of 1534 were brought into the Market Square in chains, where they were tortured and killed before a large crowd, their bodies placed in gibbetting cages and hung upon the clock tower of St. Lambert's Cathedral — the fate of the traitorous rebels left in plain sight as a public reminder of their sins. A common practice throughout Europe and elsewhere from the Middle Ages right up to the 18th century (or as late as the 1920s as recorded in Afghanistan), gibbeting, or the placement of prisoner's bodies in metal cages for all to see, was once a well-known punishment, one of a long list of horrific sentences that could be dealt to those on the wrong side of the law.
Having taken the city by force in 1534, the leaders of the Münster Rebellion were Anabaptists, and thus enemies of the Catholic Church. Upon seizure of the city, the rebels exiled the local Bishop and declared the city to be under Anabaptist rule. By 1535, after a year of besiegement on behalf of the exiled Bishop Franz von Waldeck, the city fell, thus bringing an end to the Rebellion. Promptly tried and executed on orders from the Bishop, the leaders were gibbeted, most fittingly, from atop the plundered St. Lambert's Cathedral, and their bodies left to decompose into skeletons as was the custom of the day.
Today a popular destination for tourists, the macabre relic serves as a reminder of the often brutal history of law and punishment during this time. For while the bodies may be long gone, the memory of their fate lingers to this day, which, after all, was precisely the point.
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