Münzer, THOMAS, one of the leaders of the Anabaptists (q.v.), was born at Stolberg, in the Harz, about 1489, studied theology, and in 1520 began to preach at Zwickau. His Christian socialism and his mystical doctrines soon brought him into collision with the Reformers and the town authorities. He thereupon made a preaching tour through Bohemia, Silesia, and Brandenburg, and settled in Thuringia (1523). Again deprived of his office, he visited Nuremberg, Basel, and other south German cities, and was finally in 1525 elected pastor of the Anabaptists of Mühlhausen, where he won the common people, notwithstanding Luther's denunciations of him, introduced his communistic ideas, and soon had the whole country in insurrection. But on 15th May 1525 he and his men were totally routed at Frankenhause by Philip of Hesse. Münzer himself was captured in flight and executed on 30th May at Mühlhausen.
See Lives by Melanchthon (1525), Strobel (1795), and Seidemann (1842); also Ranke, Zeitalter der Reformation (vol. ii.), and Jörg, Geschichte des grossen Bauernkriegs (1850).