Authorities Set In Motion Plans Against Drummer of Niklashausen, late June 1476

After the Feast of Corpus Christi in 1476, the hordes of pilgrims continued to flood through Wurzburg. The city (probably in late June) took the measures of ensuring water and food for those passing through and without, for the meantime. Better to leave the gates open and let them leave and be on their way in time. Pilgrims also were allowed to cross the bridge on the Main River without having to pay the regular toll. Again, better to let them be on their way rather than 'stuck' in the city, for too long. Especially if things got out of hand or especially, if there were problems of violence.
The previous year and even the current one saw a number of anti-semitic pogroms all over Germany and arising from Italy. Some Christian boys were found dead and the age-old story that accused Jews of doing it for misunderstood reasons had caused violent uprisings and sometimes these were encouraged by Christian authorities like Bishop Rudolph in Wurzburg. Wunderli points out,

"Bishop Rudolph was easily caught up in the anti-Semitic hysteria and [he] ordered the expulsion of all Jews from the diocese of Wurzburg. But he never carried out his own order. When the hysteria died down, Jews were still in the diocese and little had changed." [pp 84-5]

It would make sense, Wunderli argues, if the Drummer of Niklashausen would include Jews, from their associations with money, merchants and holders of goods 'not held in common', as prime targets for such a populist outrage. But this was not the case. There is no such record, Wunderli says, of any part of the uprising as directed in any way against the Jews of the region. A silence of the record, he further argues, that places more of the onus against Jews into the lap of the christian authorities rather than the peasants and pilgrims of Niklashausen. As he says, the evidence suggests,

" ... that the many debts of peasants in the countryside were not to Jews, but to landlords in the form of sharecropping as credit. Perhaps only the elite used Jewish moneylenders for credit.... For the peasant-pilgrims, the enemy was the elite of Christian society, not Jewish moneylenders, who also were victims of Christian authorities." [p 85]

Later, June 18 in fact, the scribe for the town council reported that one Burckart Metzler "had heard alarming murmuring among the pilgrims that they would kill all the priests. If the report was correct, then ... [this] was turning into the authorities' worst nightmare." [pp 85-6]

The next day this witness was called and the authorities convened in the cathedral chapterhouse. After ensuring there was enough food, buckets for water, lest there be food riots or fire in the city, and munitions available to keep order, the witness was questioned closely. He had been trying to get women to offer contributions to buy candles to offer to the Virgin at Niklashausen. Another witness said that women came to  him to purchase candles from his wife who was a candlemaker. These women also bought a banner, he said, with the image of a pair of crossed keys. [pp 86-7]

Next, the great Midsummer festival that culminates in the Birthday of John the Baptist was celebrated. Bonfires were common all over Germany, as were processions of peasants in the fields with torches. Many places would set a great wheel on fire and roll it down a hill. In Wurzburg the authorities gathered in the bishop's castle and made a traditional show of fending off the summer dragons. Flexible sticks hung from the windows of the castle when waved around with fire at their tips could look like a dragon breathing fire from the city below.

In the final days of June, Wunderli tells us the town councils of Wurzburg and Mainz gathered to come up with a strategy in ending this pilgrimage and dealing with its leader. They wanted to jail, interrogate and condemn him and they had to do it legally. But all they could get were secondhand accounts. They needed quality witnesses whose testimony could be used in court. More pilgrims were headed to Niklashausen to hear a great sermon he was to make on July 2. So as the authorities wanted to have him excommunicated so too, anybody hearing, feeding, aiding or believing him in any way would also be excommunicated. No one was to preach without a license from the bishops. Portable altars were also banned. [p88]
They also instructed some notaries to go to hear him, in secret and write down any self-damning thing he might say. There were also questions about a Dominican friar who may have been there and a local Beghard hermit in the area. [p. 89] They also expressly forbade anyone singing any of the songs like:

"Oh God in Heaven, on you we call, Kyrie Eleison. Help us seize our priests and kill them all, Kyrie Eleison." [p. 90]

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all quotes from  Peasant Fires: The Drummer of Niklashausen by Richard Wunderli, Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1992.