Note 633 — Chapter II

Jan Bockelson, commonly called Jan van Leyden, was the illegitimate son of a village magistrate, and was born near Leyden in 1510. After a brief time of education at a village school he was apprenticed to a tailor, and in his leisure hours diligently educated himself. He travelled more widely than artisans usually did during their year of wandering—visiting England as well as most parts of Flanders. On his return home he married the widow of a shipmaster, and started business as a merchant. He was a prominent member of the literary “gilds” of his town, and had a local fame as a poet and an actor. His conversion through Jan Matthys changed his whole life; there is not the slightest reason to suppose that he was not an earnest and honest adherent of the Anabaptist doctrines as taught by Matthys. He is described as strikingly handsome, with a fine sonorous voice. He had remarkable powers of organisation. His whole brief life reveals him to be a very remarkable man. He was barely twenty-five when he was tortured to death by the Bishop of Münster after the capture of the town.