Nicholas Storch

Nikolaus Storch (born pre-1500, died after 1536) was a weaver and radical lay-preacher in the Saxon town of Zwickau. He and his followers, known as the Zwickau Prophets played a brief role during the early German Reformation years in south-east Saxony, and there is a view that he was a forerunner of the Anabaptists. In the years 1520-1521, he worked closely with the radical theologian Thomas Müntzer.

Very little is known about the life of Storch. There are no data about his place or date of birth, but he is assumed to be a native of Zwickau itself. His activities both in and away from Zwickau are not well-documented. He left no letters or other writings. He was a weaver by trade, but it is not known whether he was an apprentice or a master-weaver. Zwickau, at that time a town of around 7000 inhabitants, was a prosperous town with a significant cloth trade, with the burgeoning silver-mining operations in the surrounding Erzgebirge mountains. The influx of wealth from the mines meant that several local master-weavers had the capacity to break smaller competitors. This introduced volatile social and economic relationships into the town. The weavers’ religious organisation in Zwickau – the Fronleichnams-bruderschaft or ‘Brotherhood of Corpus Christi’ – had an altar at the church of St Katharine in the town. Prior to 1520, a splinter group broke away from this guild under Storch’s leadership, a sect whose members believed that the source of true Christian belief came through visions and dreams. Storch was remarkably well-read in the Bible, having been taught by Balthasar Teufel, one-time schoolmaster of Zwickau. Storch had made several trips to Bohemia in the line of business, and there had come under the influence of the Taborites of Zatec (Saatz). In Zwickau he conducted ‘corner sermons’ in the houses of other weavers. The town chronicler Peter Schumann thought of Storch as ‘someone with a profound knowledge of Scripture and expert in the things of the Spirit’

When the radical reformer Thomas Müntzer was appointed to preach at St Katharine’s Church, in October 1520, after a short period at the neighbouring St Mary’s, he and Storch began to work together. Müntzer was greatly interested in Storch’s doctrines, although he viewed Storch as a like-minded individual, rather than a follower or someone to follow. During the winter of 1520-21, tensions in the town ran high between Catholics and reformers, plebeians and richer citizens, sects and town-council. A number of disturbances took place in the town, usually involving the lower classes and frequently resulting in acts of violence against the Catholic monks.

...
Wikipedia