A Companion to Anabaptism and Spiritualism, 1521-1700

A Companion to Anabaptism and Spiritualism, 1521-1700

Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition A series of handbooks and reference works on the intellectual and religious life of Europe, 500-1700

VOLUME 6

A Companion to Anabaptism and Spiritualism, 1521-1700 Edited by

John D. Roth and James M. Stayer

LEIDEN BOSTON 2007 •

On the cover: Etching nr. 58 by Jan Luycken in: Thieleman J. van Braght, Het bloedig toneel, of Martelaers spiegel der Doops-gesinde of weereloose Christenen (Amsterdam, 1685) Brill Academic Publishers has done its best to establish rights to the use of the materials printed herein. Should any other party feel that its rights have been infringed we would be glad to take up contact with them. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A companion to Anabaptism and spiritualism, 1521-1700 / edited by James M. Stayer and John D. Roth. p. cm. — (Brill’s companions to the Christian tradition, ISSN 1871-6377 ; v. 6) Includes bibliographical references and index. Contents: Karlstadt, Müntzer, and the Reformation of the commoners, 1521-1525 / Hans-Jürgen Goertz — Swiss Anabaptism: the beginnings, 1523-1525 ; C. Arnold Snyder — Swiss-south German Anabaptism, 1516-1540 / James M. Stayer — Spiritualism: Schwenckfeld and Franck and their early modern resonances / Emmet McLaughlin — Anabaptism in Moravia and Silesia / Martin Rothkegel — The Melchiorites and Münster / Ralf Klötzer — The spiritualist Anabaptists / Geoffrey Dipple — Mennonites and Doopsgezinden in the Netherlands, 1535-1700 / Piet Visser — Marpeck and later Swiss Brethren, 1540-1700 / John D. Roth — Anabaptist religious literature and hymnody / John Rempel — Gender roles and perspectives among Anabaptist and spiritualist groups / Sigrun Haude — Anabaptist martyrdom / Brad Gregory — Anabaptists and the early modern state / Michael Driedger. ISBN-13: 978-90-04-15402-5 (alk. paper) ISBN-10: 90-04-15402-7 (alk. paper) 1. Anabaptists—History. 2. Church history—16th century. 3. Church history— 17th century. I. Stayer, James M. II. Roth, John D., 1960BX4931.3.C66 2006 284’.309—dc22 2006043093 ISSN 1871–6377 ISBN-13: 978-90-04-15402-5 ISBN-10: 90-04-15402-7 © Copyright 2007 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

CONTENTS List of Contributors .................................................................... Foreword .................................................................................... John D. Roth

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Introduction ................................................................................ James M. Stayer

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Chapter One Karlstadt, Müntzer and the Reformation of the Commoners, 1521–1525 ................................................ Hans-Jürgen Goertz

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Chapter Two Swiss Anabaptism: The Beginnings, 1523–1525 .................................................................................. C. Arnold Snyder

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Chapter Three Swiss-South German Anabaptism, 1526–1540 .................................................................................. James M. Stayer

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Chapter Four Spiritualism: Schwenckfeld and Franck and their Early Modern Resonances ................................................ 119 Emmet McLaughlin Chapter Five Anabaptism in Moravia and Silesia ................ 163 Martin Rothkegel Chapter Six The Melchiorites and Münster ........................ 217 Ralf Klötzer Chapter Seven The Spiritualist Anabaptists .......................... 257 Geoffrey Dipple Chapter Eight Mennonites and Doopsgezinden in the Netherlands, 1535–1700 ............................................................ 299 Piet Visser

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Chapter Nine Marpeck and the Later Swiss Brethren, 1540–1700 .................................................................................. 347 John D. Roth Chapter Ten Anabaptist Religious Literature and Hymnody 389 John D. Rempel Chapter Eleven Gender Roles and Perspectives Among Anabaptist and Spiritualist Groups .......................................... 425 Sigrun Haude Chapter Twelve Anabaptist Martyrdom: Imperatives, Experience, and Memorialization .............................................. 467 Brad S. Gregory Chapter Thirteen Anabaptists and the Early Modern State: A Long-Term View .................................................................... 507 Michael Driedger Index ............................................................................................ 545

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Geoffrey Dipple is an associate professor of history at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. His research interests include Reformation anticlericalism, the uses of history in the Radical Reformation, and literary and lived utopias in the Reformation era. Michael Driedger is associate professor of history and liberal studies at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario. His research is on Mennonite and Jewish republicans in the Netherlands during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Dr. Hans-Jürgen Goertz is professor emeritus at the Institut für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte der Universität Hamburg. His teaching has focused especially on the social and cultural history of early modern Europe and on the philosophy of history. His primary areas of research and publication include Thomas Müntzer, Anabaptism, the Reformation era, issues related to Mennonite history and identity, and the contemporary philosophy of history. Brad S. Gregory is Associate Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. In addition to numerous articles, he is the author of Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe (Harvard University Press, 1999) and the editor of The Forgotten Writings of the Mennonite Martyrs (Brill, 2002). He is currently writing a history of Christianity during the Reformation era. Sigrun Haude is associate professor of history at the University of Cincinnati. Her areas of research are the Radical Reformation and its impact on sixteenth-century society, women in the Radical Reformation, and the social and cultural history of the Thirty Years’ War. Dr. Ralf Klötzer is the city archivist of Steinfurt (Westfalen). Following studies in history and geography at Frankfurt/Main und Freiburg (with Klaus Deppermann), he completed a dissertation in history under Hans-Jürgen Goertz at the University of Hamburg.

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His research has focused on Anabaptist history, social history, and the Peace of Westphalia, and he has been active in promoting popular understandings of history through publications, exhibits, city tours and lectures. R. Emmet McLaughlin is Professor of Early Modern European History at Villanova University. For many years he has studied the Radical Spiritualists beginning with a biography of Caspar Schwenckfeld. Most recently, McLaughlin has proposed a new typology of Spiritualism that places the Radicals on a common spectrum with both magisterial reformers and the Catholic Church. John D. Rempel is assistant professor of theology and Anabaptist Studies and associate director of the Institute of Mennonite Studies at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart IN, USA. His doctorate comes from St. Michael’s College of the Toronto School of Theology. He has written in a scholarly and a popular vein in the fields of Reformation, liturgical, and peace studies. He is the author of The Lord’s Supper in Anabaptism (1993) and editor of the Mennonite Minister’s Manual (1998). John D. Roth is Professor of History at Goshen College, Goshen, Indiana, where he also serves as editor of The Mennonite Quarterly Review and director of The Mennonite Historical Library. He has published extensively in the area of Anabaptist-Mennonite history and theology. Martin Rothkegel (1969) is teacher at a secondary school in Hamburg. He studied Protestant theology (Th.D., Charles University of Prague, 2001) and Classical Philology (Dr.phil., University of Hamburg, 2005). His interests are related to the Radical Reformation and Humanism with a focus on Eastern Central Europe. Rothkegel’s most recent publication is a critical edition of the correspondence of the 17th century Hamburg philosopher and natural scientist, Joachim Jungius (Der Briefwechsel des Joachim Jungius, Göttingen 2005). C. Arnold Snyder, Ph.D. (1981) in History, from McMaster University, is currently professor of history at Conrad Grebel College, Waterloo, Ontario and managing editor of Pandora Press, Kitchener, ON. His primary research interests are in the area of Anabaptist

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history and thought, spirituality and peace, and themes related to church history. He is the author of Anabaptist History and Theology: An Introduction (Pandora Press, 1995), along with several other monographs, numerous articles on Anabaptist themes, and is the editor of several source collections. James Stayer received a Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1964. In 1968 he came to Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, where he taught for the rest of his career. He supervised the Ph.D.s of Werner Packull, Geoffrey Dipple and Michael Driedger. He is a postconfessional historian of Anabaptism. Piet Visser (1949) is a full professor of Anabaptist/Mennonite history at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, including the Mennonite Seminary. Since 1984 he is an editor (chair) of Doopsgezinde Bijdragen. His main research field is Dutch Anabaptism-Mennonitism from both a church and cultural historical perspective.

FOREWORD In the fall of 2003, editors from Brill Academic Publishers invited me to oversee the compilation of a series of essays for their handbook series on the topic of the “Radical Reformation.” Although the work of editing collections is generally a thankless undertaking, the invitation intrigued me. Once a topic relegated to the dustbin of history, the Radical Reformation has generated a lively and rich historiographical tradition in the course of the past century. New archival findings and vigorous methodological debates have continued to stimulate that tradition, resulting in a steady stream of essays, dissertations and monographs. The opportunity to step back and attempt to “take the pulse” of Radical Reformation scholarship—to offer what the Germans call a Zwischenbilanz—was an appealing, however daunting, challenge. That this volume has now come to completion is due, in no small part, to my good fortune in persuading James Stayer, the doyen of Anabaptist scholars, to serve as co-editor of the volume. On the surface, it may appear as if Stayer and I were unlikely collaborators in this task. My location as editor of The Mennonite Quarterly Review and as a faculty member at Goshen College, puts me clearly within the tradition of Harold S. Bender and the confessionally-oriented scholarship of his generation. Stayer, by contrast, is a “profane” historian, one of the most articulate defenders of the “polygenesis” school of Anabaptist origins, who has insisted throughout his long and productive career that the theological debates of the sixteenth century radicals must be interpreted within a much deeper political, social and economic substratum. Yet collaboration with Stayer has proven to be one of the most enjoyable aspects of this time-consuming, and occasionally tedious, project. Although we have not always agreed at every step of the way, I could not have hoped for a more congenial partner. That pleasure has been compounded even more by the opportunity of working closely with 11 other scholars, each of whom is an expert in the topic of their particular chapter. Although our production timeline was ambitious, the contributors responded with an admirable combination of discipline and patience as their essays took

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shape within the parameters of size and scope imposed by the handbook format. Most of the contributors took the time to read the other manuscripts in progress and to offer critical commentary that could be incorporated into later drafts. The conversations triggered by this project are likely to continue bearing fruit far beyond the volume itself. Each of the chapters that follow offers an interpretative overview of a central theme in Anabaptist or Spiritualist historiography, while also summarizing contemporary scholarship and pointing directions for future scholarship. The result is a lively and informative summary of the current conversation regarding the interrelated movements of Anabaptism and Spiritualism between the opening years of the Reformation and the end of the seventeenth century. A number of services rendered merit special acknowledgement. James Stayer took primary responsibility for the translation of the essays by Ralf Klötzer and Hans-Jürgen Goertz from German into English, while I translated the chapter by Martin Rothkegel. William Keeney, Keith Sprunger and James Stayer oversaw the translation from Dutch into English of the chapter by Piet Visser. Stayer and I worked side-by-side on the many details of correspondence and editing. We are grateful to Theron Schlabach for his assistance with the index. To all of the contributors, and the many other scholars who have left their mark on this volume in less obvious ways, we express our deepest gratitude. —John D. Roth, Goshen (IN) College

INTRODUCTION James M. Stayer Since the early twentieth century the currents in the German Reformation that opposed the established Protestant churches have been a major focus of research in Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States. This research was at first, until the 1960s, primarily confessional, aimed at a positive reevaluation of the dissenters, and came from scholars in religious traditions descended from or related to the nonconformists of the Reformation era. More recently, postconfessional,1 sometimes secular, scholars have studied the radicals of the German Reformation, broadening religious issues by a focus on social context, moving from an exposition of ideas to a history of practice, and seeking a greater freedom from earlier confessional commitments. This second generation of interpreters is now moving into retirement and in the last decade they have, in their turn, been criticized for undervaluing the weight and independence of religious motives behind Reformation radicalism. While these generational currents in the study of Protestant nonconformists are incontestable, the successive generations maintained irenic discourse, certainly in the past half-century. They tried to avoid ideological posturing and they tried to learn from each other. The present volume attempts to represent the point at which the religious and historical discussion has now arrived, as well as the directions in which it seems to be heading. The contributors come from more than one generation, but they are united in a commitment to do full justice to the subject, in a way that is neither intentionally confessional nor secular. The boundaries of the field of study call for definition and delimitation. We have decided to focus on Anabaptism and Spiritualism, from 1521, when evangelical opposition to the most prominent

1 “Postconfessional” historians of religion are scholars who are not, as scholars, committed to advancing the religious cause that they study. This designation applies strictly to their approach to scholarship, not to their personal beliefs. They may be, and sometimes are, practicing members of the religious group they study.

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reformer first began,2 to the end of the seventeenth century. The early Reformation has been studied extensively; the Reformation of the later sixteenth century and the seventeenth century is a less thoroughly tilled field. The Anabaptists and the more individualistic critics of the established Protestant churches, whom we call “Spiritualists”—adopting a convention that goes back to Alfred Hegler3 and Ernst Troeltsch4—often criticized each other unsparingly. Both, however, were participants in the Reformation movement who held that the major reformers and the established Protestant churches had deformed and truncated the Reformation. Moreover, several Anabaptist leaders and a number of Anabaptist groups showed a marked tendency to Spiritualist individualism. Accordingly, throughout the past century research into Anabaptism and Spiritualism has overlapped and intersected. The following chapters tell a story that is complex but historically coherent. To maintain this coherence we have concentrated on the Anabaptist and Spiritualist Reformation in Germanic lands, in which we include Switzerland, the Netherlands and the lands of the Bohemian crown (especially Moravia and Silesia); we have not followed Anabaptist and Spiritualist spillovers into ethnically Italian, Polish, French or English territories. Undoubtedly, this delimitation involves a loss, because to exclude the Anabaptist contacts, for instance, between Switzerland and Italy and between Moravia and Poland, cuts us off from the anti-Trinitarian currents which George Huntston Williams made a part of the Radical Reformation under the category of “Evangelical Rationalism.”5 Nevertheless, Italy, Poland, France and England have their own Reformation stories, which are beyond the focus of this volume. If the knowledge in our related fields were more precise, the thirteen essays in the collection would fit together like the pieces of a jig-saw puzzle. Unfortunately (or in another sense, fortunately) that is not the case. Each author has a somewhat different perspective, methodology and focus of interests within the broader subject area. 2 That is, opposition to Martin Luther which grew out of his shutting down the “Wittenberg Movement” of 1521–22. 3 Alfred Hegler, Geist und Schrift bei Sebastian Franck. Eine Studie zur Geschichte des Spiritualismus in der Reformationszeit (Freiburg 1892). 4 Ernst Troeltsch, Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen (Tübingen 1912), 2 vols. 5 George Huntston Williams and Angel M. Mergel (eds.), Spiritual and Anabaptist Writers (Philadelphia 1957), 19–35, esp. 23f.

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For one thing, some of us are primarily historians, while others focus on theology or religious studies. Among the historians some consider it proper for church history to have a theological dimension,6 while others think that the distinction between church history and profane history represents at most a topical division of labor and that, essentially, “there is one history.” The subject of historical causation is a bone of contention among us. Are ideas (including theology) driving forces of history, or only the way in which historical actors understand themselves—because they are certainly at least the latter? Do material forces drive history; or is a “material horizon” (for instance, the social conditions for the reception of theological ideas) at least necessary for a verifiable historical explanation?7 Is it possible to explain things “as they really were,” or is each age, necessarily having a different perspective on the past, obliged to construct a somewhat different historical story? When we were taught to be self-conscious about the role of the historian in shaping history, we learned the Nietzschean maxim that each of us sees the past from a perspective. However, the problem of self-labeling our perspectives is a very serious one. To apply a tag to our historical work (e.g. Marxist or Mennonite confessional historian) can interfere with making it understood. These labels or tags can be very glib, not nearly so nuanced as the work of historical scholarship that they supposedly illuminate: for example, what kind of Marxist or Mennonite confessional historian? How well does the historian understand her perspective, or the inexorable changes in her perspective as she ages? Given the undeniable prejudices that divide us, labeling our own perspectives or those of others can become a sort of reductionism that gives us license to close our minds. Although the generational groupings mentioned above—perhaps 1920–1960, 1960–2000, and since 2000—have a certain value, they can also be distorting. The 1960s were a transitional period from the kind of research connected with the name of Harold S. Bender.

6 Cf. recently and emphatically, Andrea Strübind, Eifriger als Zwingli. Die frühe Täuferbewegung in der Schweiz (Berlin 2003), 70–77. In her opinion “Die Relation der Kirchengeschichte zu den übrigen theologischen Disziplinen und nicht ihre Intregration in die allgemeine Geschichtswissenschaft gewährleistet ihre Sachgemäßigheit und Wissenschaftlichkeit (71).” 7 Cf. James M. Stayer, The German Peasants’ War and Anabaptist Community of Goods (Montreal 1991), 14–16.

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George H. William’s Radical Reformation8 marked a transition from the Bender school to the period keynoted by Umstrittenes Täufertum and “From Monogenesis to Polygenesis.”9 The appearance in 1995 of both Werner Packull’s Hutterite Beginnings and Arnold Snyder’s Anabaptist History and Theology, in different ways marked a softening of the “polygenetic” theme in Anabaptist scholarship.10 Andrea Strübind’s Eifriger als Zwingli proposed itself as a corrective both to the older Mennonite apologetic approach and the “social history” revisionism of the more recent decades, although it directed the fire of its critique primarily at the more recent generation of scholars.11 But these contrasts were not as sharp as they might appear. Confessional Mennonite historians like Walter Klaassen, William Klassen, Heinold Fast and John Oyer worked harmoniously with the postconfessional historians who emerged in the 1970s, and in many respects it was artificial to distinguish their work from that of Werner Packull or Hans-Jürgen Goertz, as was recognized on both sides. The reality in Anabaptist studies was neither that of opposing partisan fronts nor of neo-positivist irreversible progress of knowledge. The Bender-Yoder-Fast model of Swiss-South German Anabaptism ultimately proved sturdier than that of a Swiss Anabaptism starting

8 George Huntston Williams, The Radical Reformation (Philadelphia 1962). An enlarged and extensively reworked edition appeared as vol. 15 of Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies (Kirksville, MO 1992). 9 James M. Stayer, Werner O. Packull and Klaus Deppermann, “From Monogenesis to Polygenesis. The Historical Discussion of Anabaptist Origins,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 49 (1975), 83–122, and Hans-Jürgen Goertz (ed.), Umstrittenes Täufertum, 1525–1975—Neue Forschungen (Göttingen 1975) are particularly clear, early statements of the “revisionist” position in Anabaptist historiography, because they undertook to revise the “traditional” Anabaptist historiography associated with the works of Harold S. Bender, John H. Yoder, and Franklin H. Littell. Of course, “revisionist” is a relative term. The “Bender school” centered around the Mennonite Quarterly Review (1927– ) undertook to revise the traditional outlook expressed by Karl Holl, “Luther und die Schwärmer,” in his Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kirchengeschichte, vol. 1: Luther (Tübingen 1923), 420–67. Whether Holl’s provocative essay represented the traditional consensus of European scholarship on Anabaptism, however, as was thought in North America, is very disputable. 10 Werner O. Packull, Hutterite Beginnings. Communitarian Experiments during the Reformation (Baltimore and London 1995) emphasized the interlacing of Swiss and South German Anabaptism in the creation of the exile community in Moravia. C. Arnold Snyder, Anabaptist History and Theology (Kitchener, ON 1995), while not contesting “polygenesis”—the argument that Anabaptism had several sources—emphasized the subsequent interaction and interconnectedness of the several Anabaptist groups. 11 Strübind’s book, published in 2003, had been accepted as a Habilitationsschrift at Heidelberg in 2001.

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in Zurich that was sharply distinguishable from a South GermanAustrian Anabaptism elaborating the theology of Thomas Müntzer. There was value in both approaches but the more recent latter outlook did not supersede the older one. Although the model of clashing paradigms of Anabaptist scholarship is not entirely false, the theme of fruitful dialogue that does not always proceed in a straight line is more accurate and balanced. The very term “Anabaptism” may be ripe for re-examination. After the Second World War the documentary series Quellen zur Geschichte der Wiedertäufer was changed to Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer,12 signifying the abandonment of “Wiedertäufer,” the term of opprobrium used by the enemies of the Anabaptists. The Anabaptists, in distinction to their opponents, did not think of themselves as “rebaptizers,” because they did not recognize the legitimacy of infant baptism. However, the early Anabaptists did not usually refer to themselves as “Täufer,” rather as “Brethren” (“Brüder”) or as “Brüder in Christo”, as Fritz Blanke showed in his classical study of Zollikon, 1525,13 until they later adopted group names such as Swiss Brethren, Hutterites, Mennonites or Doopsgezinden. And, even before the emergence of distinct denominational-type groupings within Anabaptism, they sometimes would insist that someone who practiced believers’ baptism on adults was not a “Brother,” due to some important difference in belief or conduct. “Täufer” entered post-World War II German-language scholarship as a value-free signifier designating the groups that practiced baptism on believing adults. It did not cross into English, converting “Anabaptists” into “Baptists,” because “Baptist” was a term for an Anglo-Saxon tradition that was indebted both to continental Anabaptist and continental Reformed influences, and that has an identity entirely distinct from the Mennonites with whom it co-exists in North America and Europe. The research associated with Harold Bender continued to use the term “Anabaptist,” as in Bender’s well known essay on the “Anabaptist Vision.”14 This usage was rendered acceptable by the development of sub-classifications within Anabaptism, like George Huntston Williams’ distinction between evangelical, revolutionary and contemplative Anabaptists.15 The Bender 12

Beginning with vol. 4, Baden und Pfalz (Gütersloh 1951), ed. Manfred Krebs. Fritz Blanke, Brothers in Christ. The History of the Oldest Anabaptist Congregation, Zollikon, near Zurich, Switzerland (Scottdale, PA 1961). 14 Harold S. Bender, “The Anabaptist Vision,” Church History 13 (1944), 3–24. 15 Williams, Spiritual and Anabaptist Writers, 28–31. 13

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generation concentrated its scholarly attention on Evangelical Anabaptists. When scholars with a primarily historical orientation entered the field, they became impatient with these classifications, because they ruptured historical connections. So although in the 1970s the occasional scholar, such as the Baptist Kenneth Davis, continued to use the term “Evangelical Anabaptists,”16 the rest of us—besides me, Walter Klaassen, John Oyer, Werner Packull, and later Arnold Snyder—wrote about “Anabaptists,” using the term as an equivalent to the German “Täufer.” It had the merit of not containing a positive, confessional pre-judgment as did “Evangelical Anabaptists,” or a bias against studying groups of whom the scholars might disapprove. In Germany Karl-Heinz Kirchhoff, and later Ralf Klötzer and Ernst Laubach, dropped the conventional reference to the Münster Wiedertäuferreich (Anabaptist kingdom) and referred instead to the Täuferherrschaft (baptizers’ rule) in Münster. In this volume Martin Rothkegel mentions that in Moravia, Hussite nonconformists speaking Czech were called ‘Bohemian Brethren,” noting that it became customary to refer to Anabaptists in Moravia as “German Brethren,” in distinction to the Czech Bohemian Brethren. Most often the historical names of religious groups were first coined by their enemies—this applies both to “Christians” and “Lutherans”; but there is a point in considering groups in the terms they applied to themselves. On the other hand, the groups now called “Täufer” or “Anabaptists” did have definite historical linkages with each other. They are rightly viewed as connected within an area of study; and we should not adopt their own self-understandings and self-designations to the point of adopting a “micro-confessional” focus of the sort that Brad Gregory discovered in the early Dutch Mennonite martyrologies before the appearance of the more inclusive martyrology of Hans de Ries,17 with its “Doopsgezind ecumenism,” to adopt Piet Visser’s terminological distinction between “Mennonites” and “Doopsgezinden.” Given the greater emphasis on thought in the area of Spiritualism, it is appropriate that Emmet McLaughlin as a leader in this sphere of scholarship should return us to a more sympathetic reappraisal 16 Kenneth R. Davis, Anabaptism and Asceticism. A Study in Intellectual Origins (Scottdale, PA 1974). 17 Brad S. Gregory, Salvation at Stake. Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA 1999), 231–49.

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of George H. Williams’ typologies of Reformation Spiritualism: Revolutionary, Rational and Evangelical.18 However, drawing on ancient philosophy and biblical studies, McLaughlin was able to propose richer and more nuanced typologies.19 In his chapter in this volume he discusses four important thinkers whom he classes as Radical Platonic Spiritualists: Caspar Schwenckfeld, Valentin Weigel, Sebastian Franck and Dirck Volkertszoon Coornhert. Schwenckfeld and Weigel are, in McLaughlin’s further subdivision of Radical Spiritualism, “Sacramental Spiritualists,” while Franck and Coornhert are “Noetic Spiritualists.” So, at least for the current exploration of Spiritualism, the outstanding scholar is taking us back to a method of constructing typologies that was abandoned in Anabaptist scholarship in the 1970s. Again, the movement of radical Reformation scholarship is not a simple march in one direction. Religious studies, or perhaps philosophy and theology, at least for the moment, seem to trump history in this less explored scholarly terrain. But the historical element cannot be lost sight of when Geoffrey Dipple explores the theme of Spiritualist Anabaptists.20 McLaughlin observes that all Reformers spiritualized medieval Catholicism to some degree, hence the figures he studies are Radical Spiritualists. In the same sense Walter Klaassen has argued that very few Anabaptists were Biblicist in a sense that completely excluded spiritualization.21 If spiritualization was a pervasive tendency in Anabaptism that extends to such historically separated figures as Gabriel Ascherham, David Joris and Galenus Abrahamsz, then it was not a historically cohesive phenomenon. However, in early Anabaptism in Strasbourg Hans Denck, Ludwig Hätzer, Jakob Kautz, Johannes Bünderlin and Christian Entfelder seemed to be an identifiable group of persons who rejected Martin Luther’s linkage of Word and Spirit, and who spent a time as “fellow travelers” of the Anabaptists due to a “constructive misunderstanding,” until they concluded that the Anabaptists lacked a legitimate calling to restore the church of the apostles. Dipple’s

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Williams, Spiritual and Anabaptist Writers, 31–35. Cf. R. Emmet McLaughlin, “Reformation Spiritualism: Typology, Sources and Significance,” in Radikalität und Dissent im 16. Jahrhundert/Radicalism and Dissent in the Sixteenth Century, eds., Hans-Jürgen Goertz and James M. Stayer (Berlin 2002), 123–40. 20 Cf. Geoffrey Dipple, “ Just as in the Time of the Apostles”. Uses of History in the Radical Reformation (Kitchener, ON 2005), 205–18. 21 Walter Klaassen, “Spiritualization in the Reformation,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 37 (1963): 67–77. 19

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Spiritualist Anabaptists were somewhat better subjects for historical identification than McLaughlin’s Radical Spiritualists, but ultimately they, too, represented a tendency in religious thought that would reappear in various historical circumstances. Some of the chapters in this volume are particularly marked as ventures into hitherto lightly researched territories. This is particularly the case with Martin Rothkegel’s study of Moravia and Silesia, partially a product of the opening of the Czech archives in the years following 1990. Rothkegel provides insights into the grounding of Hubmaier’s Anabaptism in Nikolsburg in the parish clergy serving the indigenous German-speaking population that seem to show that at least in Moravia Hubmaier was a very unusual Anabaptist leader. The discovery of the Austerlitz Brethren, flourishing without community of goods after the great Moravian persecution of 1535, seems to call for a reappraisal of the place of Pilgram Marpeck among the Anabaptist groups and leaders. All scholarly advances into new terrain cast new light on the subjects we have already studied. They change the context and automatically revise our understanding. The same point can be made about the forays into study of the late sixteenth century and the seventeenth century that can be observed in the contributions of Michael Driedger, John Roth and Piet Visser. While it exaggerates to call these chapters “pioneering” (as Martin Rothkegel’s contribution surely is) they move into more lightly researched areas that present more of a challenge to scholars to make an original definition of the subject than is the case for those of us writing on the 1520s and 1530s. For Driedger the relations of Anabaptists to the state stress not the early separatist defiance of the “world” as in the Schleitheim Articles, but rather the later accommodation of “good subjects” who adapt to the confessional world with their powerful congregational discipline, and then absorb important impulses from the societies in which they are embedded. In his excursus into the eighteenth century Driedger notes that it was even possible for a Dutch Mennonite minority to become revolutionary Patriots. For Visser the process by which Mennonites become Doopsgezinden, beginning with the first Waterlander schism in Menno’s lifetime, is one in which the rigidity and scrupulosity of the early Mennonites gives way to Doopsgezinden who are almost, but not quite, full participants in the glorious culture of the seventeenthcentury Netherlands. Here the memory of Anabaptist martyrs is first invoked as a warning against the snares of the world; but later the

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expensively printed and lavishly illustrated Martyrs’ Mirror becomes a decorative ornament in the houses of wealthy Mennonites. John Roth observes that the historiography of the Swiss Brethren in the years after 1540 is less mature than those of the Dutch Anabaptists or the Hutterites. Anabaptists in Switzerland did not enjoy toleration like the Mennonites in the Dutch Republic or the Hutterites in their Golden Age. The vitality of the Swiss Brethren in a semi-persecuted life was due, it appears, to a successful response to the constant pressure exerted upon them by the established churches and by more sharply profiled Anabaptist groups such as the Hutterites and Mennonites. In part because of these external pressures, they were able to create their own cohesive identity. The Dutch Mennonite interventions into the life of the Swiss Brethren were, of course, intended to be brotherly and supportive. They aided Swiss Brethren emigration into Alsace and the Palatinate, where the greater toleration enjoyed by the new settlers had the paradoxical consequence of inspiring efforts to recreate the old Anabaptist separation from the world, with the outcome of the Amish schism of the late seventeenth century. Another case of revision of the subject by a widening of the context is that of the role of women in Anabaptist congregations and groups. This topic was woefully understudied before the change in societal norms since the 1960s began to move scholars to give it the attention it deserves. As Sigrun Haude notes, however, the collection Profiles of Anabaptist Women, edited by Arnold Snyder and Linda Hubert Hecht in 1996,22 seemingly marked an exhaustion of scholarly energies in this area. Certainly this will be a temporary situation. Haude’s chapter shows, more than most, the extent of scholarly disagreement on almost all facets of interpretation of its subject. These issues will surely stimulate further scholarship, especially since the application of gender theory to Anabaptist and Spiritualist men has hardly begun. At present we know that men dominated women in all phases of early modern Anabaptism, even among the Strasbourg Melchiorites with their prominent prophetesses. This is hardly a discovery. We are also beginning to realize that Anabaptist women were more prominent in the life of their congregations than were

22 Studies in Women and Religion/Études sur les femmes et la religion, vol. 3 (Waterloo, ON 1996), with nineteen contributors.

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Protestant women or Catholic women. This is perhaps a significant point, but we are far from a full understanding of Anabaptist women’s history, to say nothing of the role of gender in Anabaptism. Another chapter besides Rothkegel’s that has a claim to being a pioneering effort is that by Ralf Klötzer on the Anabaptist regime in Münster in 1534 and 1535.23 The most important historians of Anabaptist Münster, Carl Adolf Cornelius, Karl-Heinz Kirchhoff, Ernst Laubach and Klötzer, have tended to emphasize the local uniqueness of what occurred in that city—most mainstream Anabaptist historians have concurred by avoiding the topic. Kirchhoff did reach out to general Anabaptist historiography by insisting that the Münster Anabaptists, too, were at first peaceful in January and February 1534, until, having come to power by winning the elections to the city council, they confronted the civic responsibility of defending their city against the siege begun by the soldiers of the Bishop of Münster. Klötzer has further developed the theme of the emergence of the Anabaptist regime from a particular type of communal Reformation. His originality consists in his substitution of Heinrich Gresbeck for Hermann Kerssenbrock as the major source for his narrative of the events that transpired in Anabaptist Münster during the fifteen months of the siege. The scholars of Münster Anabaptism from Cornelius onward have recognized that the traditional history of the event based on Kerssenbrock’s chronicle was unreliable.24 Not only was Kerssenbrock a hostile source, he was absent from Münster during the siege. Klötzer’s substitution of Gresbeck for Kerssenbrock, complemented only by the writings of the Münster Anabaptist spokesman, Bernhard Rothmann, is venturesome, because Gresbeck, too, was an enemy of the Anabaptist regime and had no access to the inner counsels of its leadership; but Gresbeck’s, at least, was an eyewitness account. The Münster story, more than most, underscores the fact that much of history is an imaginative reconstruction that fills the gaps between reliable sources.25

23 I think this is more the case than with Klötzer’s earlier Die Täuferherrschaft von Münster. Stadtreformation und Welterneuerung (Münster 1992). 24 This was convincingly demonstrated more than one hundred and fifty years ago by Carl Adolf Cornelius, Berichte der Augenzeugen über das Münsterische Wiedertäuferreich (Münster 1853), xxxvii–lx. 25 James M. Stayer, “Unsichere Geschichte. Der Fall Münster (1534/35). Aktuelle Probleme der Forschung,” Mennonitische Geschichtsblätter 59 (2002): 63–78.

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Other chapters are grounded in the widely recognized scholarship of their authors, who have engaged in dialogue with an already rich historiography. In this group belong the contributions of John Rempel, Hans-Jürgen Goertz, Arnold Snyder and Brad Gregory, as well as my own chapter. Rempel’s chapter on Anabaptist religious literature and hymnody grows out of a substantial prior scholarship, to which he has contributed with his original study of the writings on the Lord’s Supper by three major Anabaptist theologians.26 Goertz has a major place in the extensive contemporary scholarship devoted to Thomas Müntzer, as well as being an important interpreter of the early Reformation and its connection with the Peasants’ War of 1525.27 In this chapter he has also done original work on the career and theology of Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt. Arnold Snyder has made important studies of early Anabaptism in the cities and territories of Zurich and St. Gall.28 In his general work on Anabaptist History and Theology he has emphasized the interconnectedness of groups of Anabaptists who were construed by others as having separate histories and theologies. In his chapter on the earliest Swiss Anabaptism, he has applied this motif of interconnectedness particularly to Conrad Grebel and Balthasar Hubmaier, whom he believes to have been, at that time, pursuing a common vision of the Reformation. Brad Gregory, building on his important recent comparative study of martyrdom among Catholics, Protestants and Anabaptists,29 makes a very valuable distinction between the experience of Anabaptist martyrs, which, apart from isolated cases, did not extend much beyond the thirty-five years after 1525, and their memorialization in the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition, which followed the actual martyrdoms almost immediately and continued into the late seventeenth century. These chapters, emerging from a more mature scholarship, do not, however, present a closed subject. Goertz’s

26 John D. Rempel, The Lord’s Supper in Anabaptism: A Study in the Theology of Balthasar Hubmaier, Pilgram Marpeck and Dirk Philips (Scottdale, PA 1993). 27 Cf. esp. Hans-Jürgen Goertz, Thomas Müntzer. Apocalyptic Mystic and Revolutionary (Edinburgh 1993), and Pfaffenhaß und groß Geschrei. Die reformatorischen Bewegungen in Deutschland, 1517–1529 (Munich 1987). 28 Cf. esp. C. Arnold Snyder, “Biblical Text and Social Context. Anabaptist Anticlericalism in Reformation Zürich,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 65 (1991), 169–91; “Communication and the People. The Case of Reformation St. Gall,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 67 (1993), 152–73. 29 Gregory, Salvation at Stake.

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manner of presenting Müntzer and Karlstadt tightly coordinates their biographies with the logical unfolding of their theologies. Certainly such a synthetic approach has great heuristic value; it reflects the author’s background as a theologian. As someone with training in history rather than theology, I question whether it does not contain the danger of the scholar imposing himself too strongly on his sources. The attentive reader will note that I am convinced by Snyder’s approach to Grebel and Hubmaier, judging from the way my chapter fits with his. There is no doubt, however, that this approach to 1525 will be controversial—it immediately confronts us with the anomaly between the Hubmaier ecclesiology that Snyder presents for his Waldshut career and the one that Rothkegel presents for his Nikolsburg career. The thirteen chapters do not fit effortlessly together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. They represent a stage in the study of Anabaptism and Spiritualism. Nor does my introduction do any justice at all to the richness of the individual chapters. They must be read and thought about, each in its own terms.

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CHAPTER ONE

KARLSTADT, MÜNTZER AND THE REFORMATION OF THE COMMONERS, 1521–1525 Hans-Jürgen Goertz Towards Understanding the Reformation The meaning of the German Reformation of the early sixteenth century did not become clear when Martin Luther posted his NinetyFive Theses of 1517, nor with his major Reformation writings, nor with the deliberations of the Diet of Worms of 1521, nor with the ensuing Wittenberg Movement of 1521–1522. Various tones reached the ears of a broad public: critical voices which noisily and vehemently attacked the clergy; complaints against the flow of treasure to Rome; objections against the propriety of the indulgence trade and the proliferation of ritualized forms of works righteousness; timid efforts to gather in small circles for Bible study and, in this way, to seek answers about the reform of Christendom; iconoclasm and sermon interruptions; biblically-grounded demands for the abolition of serfdom, for equitable access to the natural necessities of life, and for the right of ordinary people to choose their own pastors in their congregations. The courageous and the hesitant, the far-sighted and the deluded, the impetuous and the cautious, all struggled in disputations, pamphlets and many forms of direct action to arrest the decay of Christendom and to realize their diverse notions of a better life. Above everything, they sought the salvation of their souls against the horizon of the imminent end of this world. Everything— at least until 1525 and the end of the Peasants’ War—was still in flux. Dorothea Wendebourg, in a controversy about the unity and plurality of the Reformation, argues that it was only through “the judgment of the Counterreformation” that the “whole development” became recognizable as the “Reformation.”1 Only within such a

1 Dorothea Wendebourg, “Die Einheit der Reformation als historisches Problem,” in Hamm (1995), 36, 50.

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developmental framework can the conflicts, quarrels and uprisings that led to the renewal of Christendom be appropriately understood. Those whom the historical tradition usually excludes as outsiders— Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, Thomas Müntzer, Jakob Strauß, the insurrectionary peasantry, Anabaptists, Spiritualists and AntiTrinitarians—are all participants in this development. It makes little sense to label these persons and groups “outsiders of the Reformation,” since the Reformation was not yet conceived as an event that had happened in the past when these first figures emerged, but as something that was yet to occur. In this developmental process all were participants in the project of Christendom’s renewal. With this concept Wendebourg offers an alternative to Bernd Moeller’s notion of a “Lutheran,” or an “Evangelical narrowing” of the Reformation in its earliest years. “To a remarkable extent,” wrote Moeller, “[we find] a unified doctrine, unified teachings and slogans, unified rejections and demands, a partisan disposition.”2 Berndt Hamm advanced another alternative. Emphasizing the multiplicity of Reformation figures and movements, Hamm argued strenuously against the notion of “outsiders” to the Reformation. The so-called outsiders did not endanger the Reformation with their critique, but they clearly contributed to its contours.3 Just as emphatically, Hamm searches for the “common Reformation element” within the multiplicity of its expressions. That common element, he concludes, can be found in the rupture with the late medieval church’s gradualistic understanding of the world and of salvation (the hierarchical ideas of nature and grace, reason and faith, laity and clergy, etc.), a rupture that expressed itself in “the radicalism that explodes the system.”4 From this standpoint it makes no sense to distinguish between a moderate (genuine) Reformation and a “radical Reformation.” Radicalism is not a helpful typological principle for distinguishing among various impulses of renewal in the early years of the Reformation. The Reformation is in its very nature the “radical Reformation.”5 Radicalism, however, is not a unified expression of the character of the Reformation; it expresses itself differently depend2

Moeller (1984), 193. Hamm (1995), 57–127. 4 Ibid., 65, 86. 5 Hans-Jürgen Goertz, “Die Radikalität reformatorischer Bewegungen. Plädoyer für ein kulturgeschichtliches Konzept,” in Goertz (2002), 29–42. 3

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ing upon its specific social or cultural character. For example, the Reformers grounded their arguments on the sole authority of the Scriptures, but in so doing they loosed upon the world multiple possibilities for Biblical exegesis. Similarly, they based their faith exclusively on the working of the Holy Spirit, even as they discovered various ways of relating Spirit and Scripture, or the human with the divine. Unity and multiplicity are therefore mutually entangled with each other. In this way Karlstadt, Müntzer and the insurrectionary peasantry are all among the original building blocks of the Reformation. A particularly striking case in point of the Reformation’s break with late medieval gradualism is evident in the anticlericalism of the time, which reinterpreted the relationship between priest and layman. Anticlericalism prior to the Reformation stressed the need for ecclesiastical reform, since contemporaries had not given up hope for a thoroughgoing reform of the clerical hierarchy. This kind of anticlericalism critiqued the gradualistic approach from within the system. Heretical movements, of course, had abandoned hope for the clergy, but they had been eliminated from this system and were only a negligible factor at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Anticlericalism at the time of the Reformation, by contrast, sought to do away with the clerical estate altogether since it was no longer needed as a mediator between God and human beings. It regarded the layman as a genuine spiritual person (homo spiritualis) who was, by the working of the Holy Spirit, in a direct relationship with God. Anticlericalism is thus the “vital context” (Sitz im Leben) of Reformation understandings, ideas, slogans, viewpoints and impulses for action, the milieu within which Reformation ideas received their form, function and concrete meaning, and Reformation actions their direction and goals. Only secondarily did anticlericalism take on a thematic character in thought, speech and action which, in turn, strengthened or radicalized the milieu already there. Anticlericalism made the words and ideas of the Reformation concrete and gave them a social impact. To put the matter even more sharply, it was not the Reformation ideas per se that revealed the movement’s character, but rather the way in which these ideas were absorbed and applied, so as to shape public life and daily realities in the church and in the town and village communities. These ideas are fully realized only when they mobilize people and connect them with each other in collective action—that is, when

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they give birth to movements.6 Clearly, the critique of medieval gradualism contained such great energy that movements soon arose which not only used the aggressive forces of anticlericalism to dissolve the clerical estate, but also sought to reshape both the clerical and the worldly structures of authority. Explosive contrasts emerged out of this anticlerical struggle: layman vs. priest; the word of God vs. the word of man; the church of Christ vs. the church of the Anti-Christ; the gospel vs. the law; the spirit vs. the letter. These proliferating contrasts strengthened the militant potential of the movements. They increased the readiness of people in all social strata to identify themselves with the “cause” of the Reformation, to place themselves in solidarity with pro-Reformation preachers and theologians and to seek social expressions for this solidarity. If in the late middle ages the “church” was defined through the clerical hierarchy, the obvious step now was to reverse this approach and to advance the “congregation”—the community formed by the laity, the congregatio fidelium— as the true form of the church. As Peter Blickle has impressively showed again and again, the struggle of the political community for emancipation from the domination of territorial lords and urban magistrates merged in the congregation with the struggle of the laity for the emancipation of the Christian community from the domination of the clergy.7 In this way political communalism could join forces with ecclesiastical communalism and create a movement that generated forms of social organization and agitation sufficient to prevail on a broad front, if only for a short while. This movement, however, was still tentative and provisional, without a mature organization, a clear strategy or an ultimate goal. Thus, the first alternative to the late medieval church was a communal Reformation—more a movement than an institution—that assumed a multiplicity of expressions in reforming initiatives in the towns and countryside: in the Knights’ Revolt (1522); in the “revolution of the common man” (1525); and in the congregations of the Anabaptists or the conventicles of the Spiritualists.

6 Goertz (1993); Goertz, “Eine ‘bewegte’ Epoche. Zur Heterogenität reformatorischer Bewegungen,” in Vogler (1998), 23–56. 7 Blickle (1987/1992).

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Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt: The “New Layman” No Wittenberg University theologian took a stand so early and so decisively for the cause of the common man as did Andreas Bodenstein, generally known as Karlstadt. Karlstadt was driven less by his sympathy for the hard life of simple craftsmen and peasants than by the practical consequences that he derived from his theological insights. The “new layman” turned out to be the social expression of “imputed righteousness” (iustificatio impii ). This was the particular accent that Karlstadt gave to the theology of the Wittenberg Reformation. Biography Andreas Bodenstein was born in 1486 in Karlstadt on the Main in Franconia. He began his studies in Erfurt in 1499 or 1500; then from 1502 to 1505 he studied at Cologne, the citadel of scholastic theology in Germany. A strict Thomist, Karlstadt transferred in 1505 to the newly established University of Wittenberg, where he earned the master of arts degree and then taught the “via antiqua” in the faculty of arts. His themes were Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle. Becoming aware of the one-sidedness of the Thomistic theology that he was taught at Cologne, Karlstadt soon began to mediate between Aquinas and Duns Scotus in his teaching. In 1510 he became doctor of theology; then he assumed the archdeaconate in the All Saints Chapter (i.e., the Castle Church) and the professorate in theology connected with this office. Issues in canon law which he had to address from time to time led him into legal studies, so that during a stay in Rome in 1515–1516 he was able to secure a doctorate in civil and canon law at the Curia Romana in an accelerated procedure. In so doing he elevated his scholarly reputation among the Wittenberg University faculty.8 Karlstadt was influenced by humanism, studied the writings of the church fathers, particularly Augustine, and read sermons of the 8 The most complete biography, which must now be revised in many points of detail, is still the two-volume work of Barge (1905) (rprt. 1968). Cf. also Rupp (1969), 49–153. More recently Ulrich Bubenheimer has done intensive work on the biography and theology of Karlstadt. He authored a short biographical sketch in 1980 in the Festschrift der Stadt Karlstadt zum Jubiläumsjahr 1480. Meanwhile Bubenheimer has established the precise year of Karlstadt’s birth as 1486. Karlstadt was three years younger than Martin Luther and three years older than Thomas Müntzer.— Cf. Bubenheimer (1989), 131.

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German mystic Johannes Tauler, as well as the Theologia Deutsch in the 1518 edition prepared by Luther.9 Likewise he engaged the theological initiatives of Martin Luther. At first Karlstadt was skeptical of Luther’s ideas, and toyed with the notion of refuting Luther’s interpretation of Augustine. In 1517, however, he secured the writings of Augustine, studied them thoroughly and found himself suddenly forced to break definitively with scholastic theology in support of Luther. In De natura, lege et gratia, a lecture/commentary on Augustine’s De spiritu et litera (1517–1518), Karlstadt established the foundations of his personal theological orientation, in that he applied late medieval Augustinian spiritualism—especially as it was mediated through Dominican mysticism10—to solving the reform problems of his day. In long series of theses in 1518 he defended Luther against the attacks of Johann Tetzel and Johann Eck; and in 1519 he opened the celebrated disputation of the Wittenberg professors with Johann Eck in Leipzig. Although Luther eclipsed him on that occasion, the outcome of the Leipzig disputation was that Karlstadt, as well as Luther, was threatened with excommunication. After the Leipzig disputation Karlstadt concentrated increasingly on an intensive study of the Scriptures. The appearance of Luther’s programmatic Reformation writings of 1520 coincided with Karlstadt’s Treatise on the Canonical Writings, published in August and November 1520 in Latin and German versions, respectively. Already his theological emphasis was shifting from the justification of the sinner to the sanctification of the justified. Karlstadt for example, highly valued the Epistle of James, which Luther had characterized as “an epistle of straw” in his tract On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (October 1520).11 Certainly a factor in this shift, which led to a gradual estrangement between the two reformers, was Karlstadt’s increasingly intensive reception of German mysticism, a tradition that emphasized the appropriation of salvation and the practice of piety.12 The first reforms were initiated in Wittenberg while Luther was in hiding in the Wartburg subsequent to the Diet of Worms of 1521.

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On the reception of mysticism, cf. Sider (1974); Bubenheimer typescript 1987; Hasse (1993). 10 Cf. Mühlen (1972), esp. 21ff., 68ff.; Lohse (1990), 89–109. 11 Cf. Martin Brecht, “Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, Martin Luther und der Kanon der Heiligen Schrift,” in Bubenheimer (2001), 140–45. 12 Esp. Sider (1974).

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After the academic disputations burghers and students alike were pressing the Wittenberg theologians to put the new insights into practice. The first leaders to be engaged were Philip Melanchthon and Gabriel Zwilling, the preacher of the Augustinian cloister. Soon, however, Karlstadt, who had initially assumed a more cautious posture, took the lead and promoted reforms in Wittenberg without deference to the reservations of the Electoral Saxon court. He attracted great attention with a worship service at the Castle Church on Christmas day, 1521. On that occasion, he preached in a simple robe, purged all references to sacrifice from the mass, read Christ’s words of institution in German, and distributed the elements in both kinds, bread and wine. This was a consciously staged departure from the church’s most important ritual practice. The clerical monopoly of the power to perform the mass and to receive the cup was central to the notion of the church as the clerical hierarchy. The canons of the Castle Church chapter had to watch this spectacle helplessly “because it pleased the common people.”13 On New Year’s Day this communion service was repeated in the City Church. Even earlier Karlstadt and his colleagues—Melanchthon, Justus Jonas, and Nikolaus von Amsdorf—collaborated with some members of the town council on a new ecclesiastical order for Wittenberg. The object of this ordinance was not only to ensure the progress of Reformation innovations, but also to direct community life, which had been shaken by occasional disturbances, into an ordered course and to give it a more Christian form than it had had previously. In January 1522 the Augustinian Cloister was abandoned by its occupants and on January 24 the council promulgated the Praiseworthy Ordinance of the Princely Town of Wittenberg. The ordinance sought to combat poverty and begging, establish a community chest, and remove from the churches religious images, which encouraged idolatry, citing the Decalogue’s prohibition of images. Nothing should be allowed to further deface the appearance of a “Christian town.” In his widely distributed pamphlet, On the Abolition of Images; and That There Should Be No Beggars Among Christians (1522), which appeared shortly after the institution of the Praiseworthy Ordinance, Karlstadt discussed important accents of the new ordinance. For example, he

13

Müller (1911), 132.

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proposed that the images be removed from the churches under the supervision of the temporal authorities so that idolatry might be brought to an end. He was unable to prevent an iconoclastic riot by the burghers, although he himself was opposed to this sort of direct action. So as to avoid provoking the Imperial Regency Council in Nuremberg, the Electoral Saxon court saw itself forced to intervene against these reforms and to call the leaders to account—however, with limited results. Martin Luther turned out to be more successful. In leaving the Wartburg without permission, he decided to take charge of the Reformation in Wittenberg. “The cause is certainly good,” he said, “but people are in too much of a hurry.”14 In his Invocavit Sermons of March 1522 he warned against precipitate reforms and against burdening the consciences of those who were not yet inwardly convinced that the old rituals were invalid and harmful. The main thing was first to strengthen people’s faith and to tear their hearts away from the objectionable ordinances. Only then would it be possible to abolish abuses and to initiate reforms without offending people. Because the territorial government prohibited him from publishing, Karlstadt’s detailed reply—Whether One Should Proceed Slowly and Avoid Giving Offense to the Weak, in Matters that Concern God’s Will (Basel, 1524)—did not appear until after he had been expelled from Electoral Saxony. By then it was much too late to accomplish anything whatsoever in Wittenberg. In his argument Karlstadt underscored the significance of the congregation: “Every single congregation, whether it be great or small, should see to it that it does what is right and good, without tarrying for anyone.”15 What mattered, according to Karlstadt, was not consideration for the weak in faith but consideration for the consciences of the justified, which were bound to the divine commands and were offended by the discrepancy between evangelical preaching and ungodly practices. What was called for was not the love of the weak, which reinforced godless conditions, but love for the will of God, which guided everything for the best. Here argument collided with counter-argument. Luther won the day and turned the wheel of reform backwards, while Karlstadt was compelled to give up his preaching, to submit his writings to censorship, and to restrict himself to his academic activity. 14 15

Martin Luther, Werke [hereafter WA], 10: III, 7. Hertzsch (1956), 1: 80.

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Karlstadt withdrew from public life, finally discontinuing his teaching activity entirely in the spring of 1523. He experienced a deep crisis about his academic identity. He stopped participating in academic promotions, so as to give no further support for scholarly vainglory, and moved to the countryside near Wörlitz, where he began to adapt himself to the role of a simple peasant, as a “new layman” or “Brother Andreas”. Now he addressed himself with particular intensity to the writings of German mysticism and used them to work out the characteristics of the “new layman” as clearly as possible. Near the end of 1523 Karlstadt moved to Orlamünde on the Saale and, with the agreement of the territorial ruler, took on a limited term appointment in the parish church, which was incorporated in his archdeaconate in Wittenberg and was usually served by a vicar. At first he continued his peasant life, so as to earn his livelihood with manual labor. Only after some hesitation did he begin to perform religious services, undertaking to create the preconditions for a communal Reformation. When he was summoned to resume his teaching activity in Wittenberg, the congregation in Orlamünde elected him as pastor. He renounced his benefice in Wittenberg and continued with his innovations in the Saale valley,16 including the abolition of infant baptism (although he did not initiate believers’ baptism). Luther became alarmed and undertook visitations to the region. In a discussion at the inn of the Black Bear in Jena, Luther and Karlstadt were unable to reach a personal accommodation. In August Luther was also unable to accomplish anything at the Orlamünde town hall; the congregation sharply rebuffed him and stood by its new pastor. By early September 1524 Karlstadt was forced to leave Electoral Saxon territories. From Orlamünde he traveled to Strasbourg, Basel and Zurich, everywhere seeking contact with pro-Reformation elements, including the Swiss “proto-Anabaptists,” who regarded him as a theological ally. Members of this group had devoted great energy to the popular distribution of Karlstadt’s writing against Luther’s understanding of the Lord’s Supper, the Exegesis of this Saying of Christ: “This is my Body,” published in 1524 in Basel. They also helped him to secure the publication of additional writings. In these contacts they

16

Joestel (1996), esp. 80–103.

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may have become acquainted with the manuscript version of a writing on baptism that probably originated in Orlamünde: the Dialogue on the Alien Faith, the Faith of the Church, and the Baptism of Children. The Dialogue was published anonymously in 1527 in Worms, but Alejandro Zorzin suspects with good evidence that the manuscript was written by Karlstadt and had some influence on the Zurich proto-Anabaptists.17 In his Exegesis on the Lord’s Supper, Karlstadt disputed the real presence of Christ in the blood and wine, and in the manner of Augustinian spiritualism, distinguished between the sign and the thing signified. All that matters, he argued, is the inner relationship of the person to Christ—the awareness of Christ’s physical presence in the sacrament “is of no use.”18 In an argument similar to that of Ulrich Zwingli, the Strasbourg reformers and the Anabaptists, Karlstadt concluded that the Lord’s Supper ought only to be celebrated as the external sign of a salvific event occurring within the person. Karlstadt was not able to stay anywhere for an extended period. In 1525, he traveled to Rothenburg o. d. Tauber by way of Heidelberg, Schweinfurt and Kitzingen. There among like-minded individuals, he strengthened the tendencies of a communal Reformation and promoted a symbolic understanding of the Lord’s Supper. The situation in this Imperial city—where the Reformation had not yet triumphed—became turbulent as peasant unrest spread through the Tauber valley. Eventually under the influence of the reform elements who had gained the upper hand, the city aligned itself with the rebels. Karlstadt, too, expressed solidarity with the common people in the countryside. The militant peasantry, however, aware of his disposition to non-violence, rejected him. Karlstadt later wrote that his life was even threatened at times. It is possible that his Statement of Some Chief Articles of Christian Teaching (1525), which he composed to clear himself of any suspicion of rebelliousness, exaggerated a bit and made his role in the Tauber valley appear more harmless than it was. While the unrest in Rothenburg was still unfolding, Karlstadt refuted Luther’s reproaches against him in Against the Heavenly Prophets (1525). Especially in the Statement, he insisted that he never stirred

17 Cf. Zorzin (1988) and Zorzin, “Zur Wirkungsgeschichte einer Schrift aus Karlstadts Orlamünde Tätigkeit,” in Looß (1998), 143–58. Zorzin’s first article was a correction of Pater (1984) and was responded to in Pater (1994). 18 Andreas Karlstadt, Ob man mit heyliger schrifft erweysen möge/das Christus mit leib/blut vnd sele im Sacrament sy (Basel 1524), fol. Bl v.

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up rebellion: “In Rothenburg I preached often about the Lord’s Supper; but it is shameless—I say this as an honest man—to say that I preached a line, a word or even a syllable about rebellion. I can prove that with reputable witnesses.”19 Karlstadt was in a precarious situation at the peasant parliament in Schweinfurt and in the first days of June 1525 following the defeat of the peasants near Königshofen. In flight, and fearing for himself and his young family, he threw himself on Luther’s mercy. He promised to abandon any further activity on behalf of the common man and distanced himself once again from any use of force. Even earlier he had promised to publicly revise his understanding of the Lord’s Supper to conform to Luther’s teaching. In response Luther secretly provided Karlstadt with lodging in his own house and turned to the Elector to secure permission for his erstwhile colleague to return to Electoral Saxony. In the end, Karlstadt was permitted to settle in the countryside near Wittenberg, albeit under close observation. Here he tilled the soil without success, occupied himself as a small merchant, and sought to continue with his agitation for a communally oriented Reformation. In 1529, in the wake of the reignited controversy over the Lord’s Supper, Karlstadt had to leave Electoral Saxony for good. He moved to Holstein and East Friesland, everywhere encountering opposition from supporters of Luther. The following year he received a position as a deacon in the Great Minster chapter in Zurich, due to the good offices of Zwingli. Here he taught in the “Prophezei,” the training school for new preachers, until 1534 when he was able to secure the pulpit of St. Peter’s and the chair in Old Testament at Basel University, where he quickly won an academic reputation. After so many lost years, he now occupied himself by summarizing his theological convictions in an encyclopedic manner in his Commonplaces on the Holy Scriptures (Loci communes sacrae scripturae). This work, however, remained incomplete. In 1541 Karlstadt died of the plague. Throughout his tumultuous career Karlstadt was probably aware only of one turning point in his life—the rupture with scholastic theology and the papal church. The many other stages of his development were not so much ruptures as transitions, which came about through shifts in his theological accents amidst changing situations.

19

Hertzsch (1957), vol. 2, 116.

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In the end, all of these shifts were variations on the theme of the sanctification of the justified. A Communal Orientation of the Reformation Karlstadt takes his place in Reformation history above all as the spiritus rector of the Wittenberg Movement in 1521–1522. He stands in the middle of the inexorable process from reforming word to reforming deed—entirely in the spirit of a letter that Luther wrote to Melanchthon in those days: “The truth is that it would be only a matter of leaves and words [an allusion to the parable of the unfruitful fig tree] if we do not act as we teach.”20 Very quickly political exigencies, ecclesiastical institutions and social forces were mobilized with the goal of reordering ecclesiastical and social relationships in Wittenberg. James S. Preus called the Wittenberg Ordinance “a small revolution” and regarded Karlstadt’s initiatives as the first indicators of a “local orientation” which soon became typical of his understanding of the Reformation.21 It would be more precise to speak of a “communal orientation,” suggestive of the contours of the “Communal Reformation” that Peter Blickle has discovered in the early years of the Reformation.22 Indeed, in Wittenberg ecclesiastical jurisdiction, now for the most part removed from the bishop, did not rest with the town council but with the territorial ruler. Although Karlstadt headed the commission established by the Elector to investigate the disorderly conditions in Wittenberg, he ignored the legal position of the territorial government and turned instead to the town council as the deciding authority in religious affairs in Wittenberg. However, he accepted that the territorial government should maintain its ultimate political authority. Wittenberg was, after all, a “princely town,” and the authority of the ruler stood behind the reform theologians, the council and the citizenry. Communal and ecclesiastical affairs of the town were to be regulated by the community of burghers “with the consent of the magistrate” (cum consensu magistratus).23 In Karlstadt’s view this also applied to the radical or revolutionary demands that were voiced by the citizenry, often

20 21 22 23

WA Br 2, Nr. 406, 332. Preuss (1974); cf. also Bubenheimer (1973); Goertz (1987), 92–103. Blickle (1987/1992). Preuss (1974), 17, n. 21.

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in the context of tumultuous agitation. For him operating in consensus with the town council did not necessarily mean working with the agreement of the territorial lord. The local control of the church in Wittenberg was bound to collide with the ecclesiastical authority of the ruler, itself neither stable nor secure, and to cause conflict between the Reformation movement and the policy of the territorial government. Karlstadt no more engaged in active resistance to the prince than he called for resistance against the government of the town council. But he did hold fast to consensus with the council, undoubtedly because he regarded it as the government chosen by the community, rather than a government that assumed independent authority over the community. What occurred in the town must in the first place be understood within a communal context, especially the anticlerical agitation in word and deed. Priests, monks and canons should not only be intimidated, but as the clerical estate that had in the past determined the spiritual, economic and political fate of the town, they should be abolished altogether. With the clergy should go its characteristic institutions and practices: e.g., the Augustinian cloister, now dissolved; the sacrificial character of the mass, tied to the sole right of the priests to perform the sacrifice; and the cup in the Lord’s Supper, traditionally restricted to the priests. “The pope made the priests the only ones worthy to take the communion in both kinds,” wrote Karlstadt, “he made the laity unworthy to receive the cup; and he did that out of pure wantonness and malevolence.”24 Also abolished was oral confession, misused by the priests to make the laity docile. Anticlerical arguments, reversing traditional values, created a new basic conception of the layman and the church. The counter-type to the ordained priest, who served as the mediator of the layman’s salvation, was the “new layman” who has been seized by the spirit of God, is his own priest and needs no human being to mediate his salvation. The “new layman” has a direct relation to God, and he can dispense with the priests along with the saints and images in the churches. The “priesthood of all believers” eliminates the need for any clerical hierarchy in the church and it enables every member of the congregation to read and interpret the Holy Scripture. “It is God’s command to the father in each house that he teach his

24

Karlstadt, Von beiden gestalden der heylige Messze (Wittenberg 1521), fol. Div. r.

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children and servants; everyone is responsible to preach the word of God in the house or at the table each morning, in the fields and barns in the evening, whether he is at leisure or at work.”25 Along with this individual task comes a collective one. The “church” in the late middle ages was defined in terms of the clerical hierarchy. The new view understood the “church” to be present wherever the faithful are assembled to receive the word of God. Formulated more precisely in Karlstadt’s terminology: the church is the “assembly of God-fearing spirits who live in the will of God.”26 This idea expanded into the conception of the congregation, which, as Luther would argue in 1523, “has the right and power to judge all doctrines and to appoint and remove all teachers.” Karlstadt sharpened these ideas still further in his 1524 treatise, A Question: Whether Anyone can be Saved without the Intercession of Mary? “[From the Wisdom of Solomon 10] everyone may learn that when the preacher does not explain Scripture clearly and understandably, a layman may and should raise questions without hostility, but persistently; otherwise both the preacher and his hearers will be damned.”27 This principle bestows a new character on the worship service and deprives the sermon of its pretensions to authority. Volker Joestel has argued that the worship service in Orlamünde became in this way “a forum for discussion of the correct religious understanding” that directly involved individual members of the congregation.28 Thus, each member contributes to making the congregation a place that discovers Biblical knowledge; conversely, the congregation is the place where individual members comply with the command to follow Christ. Members do this not by relying on their own capacities—“not in a corner”—“but in the midst of the congregation of God.”29 This shows how important the congregation gradually became for Karlstadt. The individual experiences salvation in the congregation under the word of God. The imitation of Christ that brings salvation with it does not occur in the lonely cloister cell, as was the case in medieval mysticism, but in the assembly of the faithful, which is to say, the congregation.

25

Hertzsch (1956), vol. 1, 18. Karlstadt, in Zorzin (1988), 47. 27 Karlstadt, Ain frag ob auch/yemandt möge selig werden on die/fürbit Marie (Augsburg 1524), fol. B 2 v. 28 Joestel (1996), 87; Karlstadt, Ain frag, fol. B 3 r. 29 Hertzsch (1957), vol. 2, 66. 26

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The affinity between communalism on the political level, the allencompassing life circumstances of the common man, and the Reformation’s conception of the congregation in the early years, cannot be expressed more clearly. Anticlericalism is not the only factor leading to the emergence of communalism that Karlstadt stirred up, confirmed, or religiously transfigured. The same applies to the socio-ethical logic that he derived from the new Reformation ethos. Completely in keeping with the tradition of communally oriented guild struggles, representatives of the communal assembly shoved their way into the council chamber during the Wittenberg disorders and presented the Six Articles demanding ecclesiastical and social reforms. In the spirit of mutual assistance, the community chest was designed not only to care for beggars and the poor, but also to support craftsmen who had fallen into difficulties with favorable loans. Even the “poor but upright priests or monks,” who had abandoned the rites of the Roman church, should be cared for.30 In summary, Michael G. Baylor is correct that during the Wittenberg Movement and in his Orlamünde period Karlstadt committed his energies completely to “a program of Reformation oriented to the special needs of the common man.” Although the term “common man” lacks precise definition, Karlstadt understood him to be the burgher and peasant who manages his own affairs and who can be depended on to bring about the renewal of the church in his community, insofar as he opens himself to the will of God. In Baylor’s words, Karlstadt “saw the common man as the heart of the Christian community and sought to protect and defend him economically and socially, as well as to improve and reform him morally and spiritually.”31 From this theologically grounded sympathy for the “common man” Karlstadt’s solidarity with those who rose up against landlords and rulers in 1525 is easy to understand. After all, they sought not only to shake off serfdom, forced labor and monetary obligations, but to choose their own pastors and to create a Christian community according to “godly law”—that is to say, according to the standard of the Bible. This solidarity expressed itself especially in the short period

30

Karlstadt, Von dem priestertum vnd opffer Christi ( Jena 1523/24), fol. F 1 r. Michael Baylor, “Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt and der gemeine Mann,” in Bubenheimer (2001), 251. 31

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when Karlstadt worked beside the rebels in the vicinity of Rothenburg o. T. Earlier in the course of the Wittenberg disorders Karlstadt rejected any suggestion that he stirred up rebellion. With equal determination he and his Orlamünde congregation turned down the appeals of Thomas Müntzer and the Allstedters that they join the “covenant of God,” which was ready to defend the word of God with armed force.32 Such alliances, in Karlstadt’s opinion, placed more trust in human power than in the strength of God. In Rothenburg, however, the situation was different. Here Karlstadt was hidden for a time, and protected from an order for his expulsion by supporters of the reforming cause who had coalesced to oppose the Catholic council and to carry through the Reformation. Indeed, Karlstadt enjoyed sufficient financial support and protection that he could venture once more to publicly endorse a communal Reformation and a symbolic conception of the Lord’s Supper. After their success in the city these pro-Reformation forces allied themselves with the peasant army of the Tauber Valley and supplied the peasants with heavy weapons. Karlstadt belonged to the delegation that visited the peasant camp and handed over the weapons. However, because of his reputation for denouncing violent actions, the peasants viewed him with suspicion. William W. McNiel argues that this suspicion was really undeserved. In an unpublished dissertation, McNiel suggests that Karlstadt accepted the use of force by the rebels as the ultima ratio in the struggle against the military superiority of the rulers: “Karlstadt was not prone to violence, even in the defense of the gospel, but he was willing to excuse its perpetrators if the cause was right and the probable outcome seemed likely to further the Reformation.”33 This amounted to a provisional compromise between renunciation of force and a willingness to use force in a revolutionary situation. Only in this way could Karlstadt demonstrate his solidarity with the “common man” without contradicting his original impulse to yield to the will of God without the least whiff of self-assertion.

32 Recently esp. Siegfried Bräuer, “Der Briefwechsel zwischen Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt und Thomas Müntzer,” in Bubenheimer (2001), 187–210. 33 McNiel (1999), 253; Baylor (2005), 18.

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The Theological Point of Origin In seeking for the theological foundation of Karlstadt’s theological and social reforms, Ulrich Bubenheimer has emphasized his concept of the “imago Dei” in human beings. Whenever the image of God is distorted or damaged, people’s souls and the church or the community are imperiled, since they are not corresponding to the divine will as revealed in the Holy Scriptures. Those who make images to venerate or worship, violate the Decalogue’s prohibition of graven images and show that their souls are cleaving to the creaturely, instead of submitting to the divine will. A city with beggars in the streets, the public squares and before the churches damages the image of God and shows thereby that it is no “Christian” city in which each person takes responsibility for the other and all poverty is abolished within city walls. The same applies, claims Bubenheimer, to the understanding of the bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper: “The systematic connection to iconoclasm arises from the fact that the elements of communion are also external creatures, external images that can obscure the image of God in the soul when the heart becomes attached to them, as Karlstadt thinks is the case in the Lutheran notion of the real presence of the body and blood of Christ. Here faith attaches itself once more to outer images instead of to the inner image of God, which is restored in the believers as the image of Christ.”34 This theological motif of the image of God is evident in all phases of Karlstadt’s development: from the early discussion of faith and works, through his positions in the Wittenberg movement, to his Orlamünde period which is strongly stamped by the reception of mysticism, and, finally, to the Basel theses of 1535.35 In the Basel theses Karlstadt binds the image of God in man to justification, which he conceives not as a singular event but as a lifelong process of renewal. According to Martin Schmidt, Karlstadt’s understanding of this process has two dimensions: “The one aspect is the radicalism of justification as a new beginning with God (in his indwelling presence), as a break with the wicked past (the soiled image of God, the law without the spirit). The second aspect is the

34

Bubenheimer (1983), 79. Cf. Sigrid Looß, “Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt in der modernen Forschung,” in Looß (1998), 79. 35

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totality of justification as a thoroughgoing new formation of human life pointing to the eschatological total renewal.”36 Holy Scripture establishes how a life is to be ordered so that it corresponds to the image of God. At first glance this conception of sola scriptura appears to be a legalistic approach to Scripture; but the notion that Karlstadt lacked a “center” from which to interpret Scripture is easily exaggerated.37 Luther had a Christological center for Scriptural exegesis: “what reveals Christ”; for Karlstadt it was the “image of God” that revealed itself in Christ and is restored in the abyss of the human soul. This salvific center is the point of reference that determines what stands in its way externally or what presses from within to assume an external form. Hence Karlstadt did not regard the letter of the Bible as needing to be followed without exception; nor is every single law or directive in the Old and New Testament a necessary obligation. Only what concerns the image of God in humans is relevant; only the inner salvific center counts. From the moment of his turn to Augustine in 1517–1518 the inner word that creates faith was decisive for Karlstadt. The role of the outer word is to witness to and confirm that which occurs within. Taken by itself, without recourse to the inner word that is perceived in the abyss of the soul, the letter of Scripture kills—it is the law that accuses and leads to despair. Separated from the inner word the law exercises compulsion; it binds the person to the creaturely. Nevertheless, Jesus did not repeal the law but instead fulfilled it, insofar as the law helps people to grasp and verify the spiritually transmitted faith. “The law without grace is the letter which kills. . . . Grace makes us lovers and doers of the law.”38 From this principle Friedel Kriechbaum concludes: “It is important to note that, before and after the reception of grace, the law is what counts. Grace does not change the law; it changes people—i. e., grace does not encounter the law but the people who fail to meet the requirements of this law. Or, creative grace does not dispense with the law and its commands; rather it transforms the person who is incapable of fulfilling

36 Martin Anton Schmidt, “Karlstadt als Theologe und Prediger in Basel,” in Merklein (1980), 112; on the Basel period, cf. also Bubenheimer (1977), 251–80. 37 Hellmut Hasse, “Karlstadt als Prediger in der Stadtkirche in Wittenberg,” in Merklein (1980), 82. 38 Cited in Kriechbaum (1967), 41 (Thesen, 1517).

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the commands.”39 In this way any kind of legalistic compulsion is excluded. Justification frees the sinner for the following of the law. So it can be said that whoever follows the will of God is a free person, for only such a person is really capable of following God’s will. As Kriechbaum’s summary suggests, Karlstadt’s discussion of law and gospel, in the context of his approving, yet critical engagement with Augustine among the Wittenberg theologians, is very complex. He did indeed reject works righteousness but he did not separate faith from works, as Kriechbaum reproached him in the spirit of Luther,40 mediating them instead in the justification event. Karlstadt had two basic concerns: first, he stressed the character of salvation as a matter of grace, and second, he endeavored to describe the effect of the gift of salvation in people. Nowhere does this two-fold concern express itself more clearly than in the formula “Gelassenheit in Gelassenheit” (yieldedness in yieldedness) that he used in his mystically inspired pamphlet The Saying ‘Yield Yourself ’ and What the Word Yieldedness Means (1523). Yieldedness (Gelassenheit) is not conceived as a human work or virtue, but as a work of God in human beings— just like faith, hope and love. To avoid any trace of synergism Karlstadt uses the exaggerated phrase: “Gelassenheit in Gelassenheit.” To say it simply: faith, which trusts God’s promise of salvation in Christ, opens “a path to understanding the law, whose fulfillment is possible because Christ has freed and redeemed the faithful person from the curse of the law.”41 This may be where a chasm appears that divides Karlstadt and Luther theologically once and for all—a chasm that shows that the Reformation doctrine of justification did not have a single meaning but could be interpreted in various ways as early as 1517 or 1518. All the well-intended efforts to minimize the differences between Karlstadt and Luther—locating them not in theology but in their strategies for carrying out the Reformation, or in psychological characteristics or personal vanity— fail to recognize the importance of the tensions that emerged from the very beginning of the Wittenberg discussions about Reformation theology, and

39 40 41

Ibid., 41. Ibid., 120. Kruse (2002), 291.

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which constitute the creativity of the outbreak of the Reformation.42 The controversy between Karlstadt and Luther shows one thing very clearly: their paths did not part only after Luther’s justification doctrine was fully matured. They divided at a time when the doctrine of justification had not yet assumed clear theological contours and was still being contested. At this point the only insight shared by all discussants was the doctrine of justification’s potential to revolutionize the “gradualism” of the medieval church. In Karlstadt the radical character of the Reformation is especially visible, a radicalism which in this case found its symbol in the image of God in man—specifically in the person “who is transformed into another person.”43 And as people are transformed the conditions in which they live are also transformed. This is the theological current that led Karlstadt to “the Reformation of the common man.” Thomas Müntzer: “Exercise of Faith” and “Righteous Uprising” Like Karlstadt, Thomas Müntzer was another theologian who turned up very early in the camp of the Wittenberg Reformation, but soon propagated his own version of the “Reformation of the common man.” The “transformation of the world” is “now before the door.” That was how Thomas Müntzer perceived his time: the old was in decay and the new was about to begin.44 Müntzer did not mean this superficially. He was deeply convinced that humankind must change itself entirely, not only individuals, but all the institutions and ordinances in which they lived, “so that earthly life may transform itself into heaven.”45 In these sentences Müntzer combined a diagnosis of his time with a longing for a better world and a demand to be a full participant in contemporary life. He had an unusual awareness of the signs of his time, which he was able to interpret in concrete terms—as a transformation of the personal and collective order that

42 Cf. for instance, Bubenheimer, “Andreas Rudolff Bodenstein von Karlstadt,” in Merklein (1980), 40. 43 “in alium uirum mutatus est”—Karlstadt, De fide operibus axiomata (46 Theses, 1521), fol. B v r (Thesis 2). 44 Franz (1968) [hereafter MSB], 420: Mattheson [hereafter CWTM], 100. 45 MSB, 281; CWTM, 278.

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took on cosmic dimensions. Müntzer shaped the ideas of medieval mysticism, which he appropriated selectively, into a new form of inwardness, and he fanned the embers of medieval apocalyptic expectations into a revolutionary fire: “Don’t you feel the small spark that will soon burst into flame? You feel it and I feel it, too.”46 In metaphorical terms, he wanted to set the whole world on fire, so as to purify and renew all of Christendom. In this way he became the agent of a new age. Biography Thomas Müntzer was born around 1489 in Stolberg am Harz; he attended Latin school in Quedlinburg, then began university in 1506 in Leipzig, and continued his studies in 1512–1513 at Frankfurt an der Oder. He completed a course of studies as magister artium and baccalaurius biblicus—though the exact place can no longer be determined. In 1514 he accepted a benefice in Braunschweig and became priest of the Halberstadt diocese. While there he served as father confessor to the nuns of Frose cloister near Aschersleben, and he tutored some burghers’ sons from Braunschweig. Around 1518, Müntzer stayed in Wittenberg, where he became acquainted with mystical writings, possibly pursued humanistic studies under Rhagius Aesticampianus,47 and may have learned to know one or another of the reformers personally. He traveled to Franconia and probably attended the Leipzig disputation of 1519, where Karlstadt, Luther and Eck debated the teaching authority of the popes and councils. At Easter 1519 he preached against the Franciscans at Jüterbog; a polemic against him by Bernhard Dappen indicates that Müntzer at this time had the reputation of being a “Lutheran.” Next he became father confessor for Cistercian nuns at Beuditz near Weißenfels. While there he deepened his study of mystical texts and read the world chronicle and church history of Eusebius, along with the sketch of the beginnings of the Christian church by pseudo-Hegesippus.48 He also studied the works of Augustine and the proceedings of the Councils of Constance and Basel. Through the recommendation of Luther Müntzer was appointed as substitute priest for Johannes

46 47 48

MSB, 503; CWTM, 370. Bubenheimer (1989a), 153–70. Cf. esp. Friesen (1990), 33–52.

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Sylvius Egranus at St. Mary’s in Zwickau, from where he soon transferred to St. Catherine’s in the same town. Here, too, he energetically advocated the Reformation and got into controversies with the Franciscans, besides attacking the tepid spirituality of Egranus’ humanistic Biblical exegesis. Supported by the enthusiastic weaver Nikolaus Storch and his circle, Müntzer polarized the citizenry of Zwickau, so that the council felt obliged to dismiss him. Convinced that it was his mission to fight for the truth in the world, he left Zwickau for Bohemia in April 1521, first going to Saaz and then to Prague. In spite of a promising beginning, here, too, things turned out badly. In the end he had to flee. In his Prague Manifesto of November 1521— which Günter Vogler has appropriately described as an “open letter”49—Müntzer justified himself by attacking the clergy. Borrowing from mystical soteriology, he contrasted the clergy negatively with lay people who had been seized by the divine spirit, and he presented himself as the prophet of the apostolic church, which should be restored in the Bohemia of Jan Hus and “thereafter everywhere”50 and as the tool of God in the imminent judgment of the world, in which the elect would be separated from the damned. After way-stations in Wittenberg, Nordhausen and a short stint as father confessor at a nuns’ cloister at Glaucha near Halle, Müntzer was installed on Easter 1523 as pastor in Allstedt, an Electoral Saxon enclave in the south Harz. Allstedt was a district center with its own castle. A short time earlier he had married the ex-nun Ottile von Gersen, and he prepared himself now for a long period of service in this town. Earlier he had warned in an Open Letter, directed in 1523 to his brothers in Stolberg, that they should avoid an “unrighteous uprising.”51 He cautioned them against an uprising that stemmed from egoistic motives. In Allstedt he wrote the tracts On Counterfeit Faith and Protestation or Proposition (1524), in which he began to distance himself from Luther’s conception of faith, using arguments drawn from mystical piety, and in which he declared his intention to bring about an “improvement” in the teaching of the Wittenberg theologians.52 At the same time he published the liturgical reforms

49 50 51 52

Vogler (2003), 38–54. MSB, 504; CWTM, 371. “unfuglichen auffrur”—MSB, 22; CWTM, 61. “ein besser weßen”—MSB, 240; CWTM, 208.

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which he put into practice in Allstedt, and he founded a “covenant” for the defense of the new gospel. The stated purpose of the covenant, which included even members of the town council, was: “To stand by the gospel, to give no more rents to monks and nuns, and to help undermine them and drive them away.”53 After an act of arson by his supporters against the nearby Mallerbach pilgrimage chapel, and the unrest that his well-attended worship service occasioned in the surrounding region, Müntzer appealed to the Electoral Saxon court for protection for the refugees who streamed into the town from neighboring Catholic lordships and had a well-grounded fear that they would be turned over to their rulers. In the Sermon to the Princes, which Müntzer delivered at the Allstedt castle to Duke John and his entourage, he tried to win over the great lords for his “invincible, future Reformation”54 by appealing to King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream about the fall of the world empires (Daniel 2) and the collapse of realms which disobeyed God. This attempt failed, particularly since Luther in his Letter to the Saxon Princes about the Rebellious Spirit had aggressively warned against Müntzer. After a hearing in Weimar the Allstedt pastor saw the situation moving out of his control and he fled to Mühlhausen in the first days of August 1524. Mühlhausen was an Imperial city in which the way had been prepared for Müntzer by several pro-Reformation preachers, particularly the former Cistercian monk Heinrich Pfeiffer. Müntzer preached in the city, attacking the clergy of the Teutonic Order. He sought to convince the burghers of a Spirit-inspired faith and sounded various social Reformation tones. In an effort to give his goals organizational support, he founded the “Eternal Covenant of God,” which, in a radicalization of the previous covenant in Allstedt, took on a para-military character. After some turbulent episodes Pfeiffer and Müntzer were banished from the city and he journeyed to Nuremberg. There the book peddler Hans Hut had already secured the printing of his Exposé of False Faith (1524), and now Müntzer was able to find a printer for his Vindication and Refutation (1524), his answer to Luther’s lampoon against him. In the months around the year’s end he traveled into the territory of the peasant uprising in the Upper Rhine

53 54

Junghans (2004), 137 [hereafter Müntzer, Quellen 3]. “unuberwintliche zukünfftige reformation”—MSB, 255; CWTM, 244.

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region, where he composed articles on “how rulers should conduct themselves.”55 In this journey he met with Johannes Oecolampadius in Basel and possibly with Balthasar Hubmaier in Waldshut. In February 1525 he returned to Mühlhausen. In the intervening months, the mood in the city had changed in his favor, and he took over the pastorate at St. Mary’s. A citizens’ assembly replaced the old council with an elected “Eternal Council,” giving Mühlhausen a new constitution containing quasi-democratic and theocratic elements. The new council hesitated to follow Müntzer’s wide-reaching apocalyptic plans for conquest, but it did give him a free hand to join the movement of peasant rebellion that was spreading from the south to Thuringia, and finally to become its most prominent regional spokesman. With a small contingent from Mühlhausen he came to the assistance of the rebel band on the Eichsfeld. At Frankenhausen he was more a military chaplain and propagandist than organizer and commander of the rebels. The rebellion was promptly destroyed by the overwhelming power of the princely army. After interrogation accompanied by torture Müntzer and Pfeiffer were executed before the gates of Mühlhausen in May 1525 and their bodies were put on public display as a gesture of intimidation against further rebelliousness. Authorities complained that a path was soon trampled through the fields to where their bodies were placed—obviously, many people went to pay the two preachers a final reverence. The burgers of Mühlhausen were subjected to various punishments for their collaboration with the peasants and the town was stripped of its status as an Imperial city.56 Theological Point of Origin Nowhere did Thomas Müntzer denounce the clergy with such vehemence and rhetorical power as in the Prague Manifesto. All clerics, he argued, share guilt for the false direction that the church took after the death of the apostles and their pupils. This is the central theme of his critique. Müntzer describes himself as struggling to understand from the time of his youth “how the holy, invincible Christian faith is grounded.”57 A renewal can only grow out of the root of faith; 55

“wye man herrschen soll”—Müntzer, Quellen 3, 266; CWTM, 433. Tode (1994), 209–17. 57 “wie der heilige unüberwintliche christenglaube gegrundet weher”—MSB, 495; CWTM, 362. 56

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but until now no “pitch-smeared priest” or “falsely spiritual monk” has spoken of this to him. The clergy had failed and not led anyone in the right way to the “practice of faith.”58 There is not a single good thing that can be said about the priests. They are a “plague on the poor folk,” these “lords, who only gobble and guzzle.” Müntzer berated the “usurious, interest-extorting, testicled doctors,” along with the “whore riders and thin-shitters.” They are all “devil’s priests,” and they are all damned.59 This criticism of the clergy is not a demagogic echo of the anticlerical mood of the early Reformation: rather it dominates Müntzer’s determination to focus on contemporary problems and to bring a halt to Christendom’s decay. Seen in this light, the critique of the clergy is more than superficial polemic. It was the intellectual milieu within which Müntzer came to his basic Reformation mind set, and it was the material that oriented his actions on behalf of the Reformation. Müntzer signed the Prague Manifesto: “Thomas Müntzer, who wants to worship not a mute but a speaking God.”60 In this way he underscored the ideas which serve as the foundation for his anticlericalism and his reform program. The priests have not yet heard the voice of God. Indeed, they have done everything they can to close their ears to it, claiming that God long ago stopped the outpouring of his Spirit. This enraged Müntzer: whoever robs God of his speech becomes speechless himself; whoever shuts God’s mouth consigns the people to silence and is himself responsible for their spiritual degeneration. True shepherds are of a different sort. They quicken their flock with the living word of God and water it from the spring from which all wisdom flows. More precisely, they educate the people in such a way that they hear the word of God in their own hearts: “all of them shall have revelations.”61 The conceptions of mysticism are already audible in the Prague Manifesto. Müntzer wants to show that the rule of the priests is shattered by the experienced authority of the speaking God. As long as they persist in their silence and open no one to the voice of the divine Spirit, they invalidate their

58

MSB, 491; CWTM, 357. MSB, 498–503; CWTM, 364–70. 60 “Thomas Muntzer wil keynen stümmen, sunder eynen redenden Got anbethen”— MSB, 505; CWTM, 371. 61 “sye sollen alle offenbarunge haben”—MSB, 501; CWTM, 368. 59

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office: speechless, spiritless, godless, it all amounts to the same thing. In the anticlerical milieu of his day Müntzer thought in terms of image and counter-image, type and counter-type, in the sharp contrast of the “damned” priest and the “elect” layman. Traditional evaluations had been turned on their head. Already from the pulpit in Zwickau, Müntzer was said to have pointed to the spiritually inspired weaver Nikolaus Storch and declared that “the laymen must become our prelates and pastors.”62 Müntzer describes the piety of this Christian layman by drawing deeply on the language and substance of medieval mysticism.63 In contrast to the ceremonial externalization of religiosity and the suffering that resulted when the clergy disturbed people’s relation to God, mystical piety placed the laity in a living, existentially experienced relationship with God. In its origins mysticism was a piety of the cloister; now in a general, popularized form it was made accessible to the laity. Something similar had already occurred with the devotio moderna. Müntzer’s appropriation of the mystical tradition focused especially on describing the individual’s path to salvation and the pneumatological arguments of the Bible which he could employ in the service of his own theological program. Similar to Karlstadt, he placed himself within the tradition of late medieval Spiritualism, which was conditioned by the reception of Augustine: the deep chasm between the res (essence) and the signum (sign) could not be bridged by human efforts; the Spirit of God must penetrate this world from the abyss of the individual’s soul. Müntzer could not conceive of the restoration of the original harmony between God and fallen humanity in any other terms. Thus, for example, direct communication with God—which was the basis of the priesthood of all believers— was the work of the Holy Spirit alone. Access to God was not mediated through the Holy Scriptures but through the divine Spirit alone: Scripture was only a testimony of the working of the divine Spirit. Still, as such a witness it was particularly important to preachers and pastors. The contrast between priest and layman was visible in people’s readiness to suffer the work of the Holy Spirit and to hear the

62

Seidemann (1842), appendix 5, 110. Goertz (1967); Dismer (1974), esp. 145–54; Reinhard Schwarz, “Thomas Müntzer und die Mystik,” in Bräuer (1989), 283–301. 63

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testimony of this Spirit in the “abyss of the soul,” where the Spirit of God “gives sufficient witness to our spirit” (Rom. 8:9).64 Müntzer called this inner event the “chief element of salvation.”65 This spiritualistically conceived pneumatology dominates his whole work.66 The divine Spirit permeates the person from within and restores the original harmony between creature and Creator. This was the only way to destroy human submission to the constant demands and seductions of the creaturely world. Faith created a new spirit-filled person who obeyed only God. For Müntzer, like Karlstadt, this “new” person was central to his theology. The inner event is revolutionary: it destroys the relationship to an authority that holds people in dependence and fear before the powers of the world, and it erects a new authority that consists in the “fear of God.” Müntzer spoke of the justification of the sinner as “in its nature an entirely impossible, un-thought of, unheard of thing”—that “fleshly, earthly people should become gods through the incarnation of Christ, and thus with [Christ] be God’s pupils, taught by him, deified by him, and indeed, much more, completely transformed into him, so that earthly life changes into heavenly.”67 His understanding of justification was different from that of Luther. Whoever tries to understand Müntzer using Luther as a point of reference will not grasp what is distinctive in his thought. At first glance it may appear as if Müntzer has withdrawn into pious inwardness; and some scholars have concluded that his eventual intervention in public life signaled his abandonment of basic mystical principles and a choice for brutal aggression against the godless, typical of fanatics or murder-prophets. But closer study reveals that there is no evidence of such a disjuncture in Müntzer’s development. On this point recent scholarship has reached a broad consensus.68 The inner transformation envisioned by Müntzer includes a transformation of outer conditions; renewal of the individual leads logically to a renewal of the church, the government and society.

64

“gnuncksam gczeutnusz gybt unserm geysth”—MSB, 492; CWTM, 358. “heuptstu(e)k der seligkeit”—MSB, 23; CWTM, 62. 66 Goertz, “Zu Thomas Müntzers Geistverständnis,” in Bräuer (1989), 84–99. 67 MSB, 281; CWTM, 278. 68 The more clearly Müntzer has been declared independent of Martin Luther’s theology since the works of Karl Holl and Walter Elliger, the more easily the notion of a break in his thinking and actions could be abandoned. However, Friesen (1990) sees the matter differently. 65

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In contrast with Karlstadt, Müntzer’s apocalyptic mood extended individual renewal to universal applications. The movement of the divine Spirit in the “abyss of the soul,” he argued, corresponded with the movement of history, which was hastening to its end. It opened the gate to the “kingdom of God”—a kingdom already established in the heart of human beings, which equipped the individual with new insights into the conditions of this world.69 Müntzer incorporated apocalyptic ideas into these basic mystical concepts as early as the Prague Manifesto. The godless, who have not experienced faith, must be separated from the elect. However, the godless are not unbelievers in general—at least not in the first instance. They are primarily the clergy—especially the Roman priests but soon also the evangelical Reformers, whom Müntzer accused of pretending to have a monopoly over the interpretation of Holy Scripture—who are obsessed with power and place themselves between God and human beings. Ultimately, the godless also include unrepentant rulers. The battle against the priests and the “scribes” in the universities began the separation marking the last days, accompanied by the promise that the “kingdom of this world” would be handed over to the elect: “in secula seculorum.”70 These apocalyptic ideas underscored the seriousness of the condition of a spiritually atrophied Christendom, as well as the bitter necessity for people to open themselves to the working of the divine Spirit so that new conditions could at last be won for humanity. God alone would establish his kingdom; the human being is merely his tool in this undertaking. The transformation of the human person and the world is inexorable. This was the theme of the Sermon to the Princes, an interpretation of Daniel’s vision of the collapse of the world empires. Without human initiative the mountain—which is Christ—will release a stone, that becomes bigger and bigger on its way into the valley until it smashes the last empire into ruins. No one will escape the judgment of the last days—neither priests and prelates nor kings and princes. This stone is the spirit of Christ, now active in each of the elect, which will smash all earthly power, especially in its ecclesiasticaltemporal amalgam.71 This Spirit does not change the desolate con69 Goertz (2002a). On the apocalyptic origin of Müntzer’s theology, cf. above all: Schwarz (1977); Seebaß (1997), 165–85. 70 MSB, 505; CWTM, 371. 71 MSB, 256; CWTM, 244–45.

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dition of the world from the outside; rather it penetrates the world, starting with the transformation that the Spirit has worked in human beings. Here the blunt alternatives posed by some previous scholarship begin to dissolve. It is unnecessary to argue about whether the origins of Müntzer’s theology lie in mysticism or in apocalypticism— the two impulses are fully intertwined.72 As conceptually interesting as Emmet McLaughlin’s recent narrower definition of “apocalypticism” may be, for the purpose of discussing Müntzer Bernard McGinn’s broader definition brings into better focus the biblically-based historical orientation that has long been an important reality of Christian thought.73 At the same time, McLaughlin’s thesis that Müntzer was not apocalyptic at all is a useful caution against overemphasizing the apocalyptic accent in his theology. Müntzer’s Revolutionary Consistency Müntzer was not only a mystic and an apocalyptic, he was also a revolutionary. Through the “work of God” the fear of those who hold human beings in creaturely subjection is replaced by the fear of God. This means that all relationships that keep human beings in a state of dependence or divert them from concentrating on God must be put aside. Through this dramatic, revolutionary process of existential reorientation and self-abandonment, the person is wrenched out of the old order which had estranged him from God and placed in a new one in which the original harmony between Creator and creature is restored: the “order of God.”74 The rule of God can only come into its own when the instruments of domination wielded by godless governments, the spiritual and temporal lords, are smashed— and with them domination itself. When the Electoral Saxon court failed to respond to Müntzer’s demand that they punish the godless and protect the elect, when Catholic lords forbade their subjects to attend the worship services in Allstedt with their reformed liturgy and demanded that subjects who had taken refuge in Allstedt be handed over to them, Müntzer

72

Goertz (1993a). McLaughlin (2004), 98–131; McGinn (1979). 74 MSB, 487, 492; CWTM, 357. On the concept of “order,” cf. Goertz (1967), 39–44; Bubenheimer (1989a), 210–16; Seebaß (2002), 386–89. 73

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formulated a right of resistance against a godless temporal ruler.75 The ruling power was given to people as a rod of discipline because they had fallen from worship of God to worshipping his creatures. This power maintains its authority only because people “place the creature above God.”76 Once fear of the created order is destroyed and replaced by fear of God there is no further need for its existence. Citing the prophet Hosea, Müntzer declared: “God gave the princes and lords to the world in his anger, and intends to take them away again in his animosity.”77 Power would revert to the “common people,” who had once again placed themselves within the order of God. The radical break with the fear of the created order is also an overcoming of all temporal authority that binds people to itself, burdens them economically, abases them socially, and “skins and scrapes” the poor person.78 So the turn to the fear of God is simultaneously the construction of a world of love of neighbor and brotherliness. The revolution of religious consciousness is, in modern terms, a political and social revolution as well. Müntzer would not permit the inner and outer spheres to be torn apart.79 What was important to him was a transformation of relationships—of the person to God, to himself, and to the ecclesiastical and temporal authorities. Relationships are not objectively given but subjectively constituted. If the relationship to God is transformed, the relationship to the government, and to those who persist in their “perverse manner” and offer embittered resistance to the order of God, must also change. Hence Müntzer’s complaint that people could not speak of faith as long as the government ruled over them,80 is not to be understood in a Marxist sense, as Manfred Bensing once held,81 that economic and political relationships must first change before there could be a change in consciousness. Rather, Müntzer’s logic went in the opposite direction. He demanded that the fear of God emerging in the “abyss of the soul” should extirpate the essence

75 For Müntzer’s view of the Obrigkeit, cf. Eike Wolgast, “Die Obrigkeits- und Widerstandslehre Thomas Müntzers,” in Bräuer (1989), 195–220. 76 “die creatur Gott fürsetzt”—MSB, 284f.; CWTM, 282f. 77 MSB, 285; CWTM, 282. 78 “schinden und schaben”—MSB, 329; CWTM, 335. 79 Goertz (1967), 133–49. 80 MSB, 455; CWTM, 142. 81 Bensing (1966), 49–62, esp. 57.

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of the government, which was its capacity to generate fear and terror. Truly, the godless rulers burdened their subjects’ relation to God; but that could be changed only by the fear of God, which grasped people internally. Müntzer developed his theology within the anticlerical context of the early Reformation. Above all, by borrowing from apocalyptic traditions, his theology provided an interpretation of his age, and direction and purpose to his thinking and action. Thus, the struggle against the clergy received a cosmic dimension. When the temporal government refused to prepare the way for an “invincible future Reformation,” it, too, was subjected to biting criticism and placed alongside the clergy in the alliance of the godless, indeed, of the Antichrist. Müntzer had already hinted at this in the Sermon to the Princes, while he still hoped to win the princes to his side: “What a pretty spectacle we have before us now—all the eels and snakes copulating together in one great heap! The priests and all the evil clerics are snakes, as John, who baptized Christ, called them (Matthew 3), and the lords and rulers are the eels, symbolized by the fishes in Leviticus 11.”82 Hence resistance against princes and rulers followed from the resistance against the clergy, as soon as the authorities failed to respond to the task assigned to them. On this basis James M. Stayer remarks that, unlike Luther, Müntzer has no clear teaching about temporal authority, only an “attitude” towards it.83 Depending upon how they behaved, they were to be accepted or rejected. One thing stood unshakably firm: he would have no community with the godless. The cause of rebellion, Müntzer declared further, is not the unlimited appetites of the “common man,” or the selfish, fleshly demands of the peasants and craftsmen, but the hypocritical greed of the powerful: “the fish in the water, the birds in the air, the plants on the earth must all be theirs.”84 On this basis Müntzer warned the “common man” even before the rebellion, against stirred-up passions and unrestrained egoism, which were all too common once the Peasants’ War was underway. He spoke only of a “righteous uprising”85 which would be required to help restore the order of creation in all moderation and yieldedness. 82 83 84 85

MSB, 256; CWTM, 244–45. Stayer (1972), 76. MSB, 329; CWTM, 335. “füglicher empörung”—MSB, 335; CWTM, 341.

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Finally the question remains to be answered whether Müntzer was a part of the revolutionary uprising of the “common man” in 1525, or whether he was in the last analysis seeking goals other than an improvement of the situation of the peasants and craftsmen. Had the “common man” aspired only to a secular goal, then there would, in fact, have been a fundamental distinction between the “servant of God” and the rebels. The “common man,” however, struggled not only for an improved law and a better life, but also for a world of brotherliness inspired from the depths of the gospel. Both Müntzer and the rebels struggled against those who resisted their effort to achieve a reformation of the world in which they lived, and especially against the spiritual and temporal lords. Since the kingdom of God for Müntzer was not removed to heaven but an earthly one that was drawing near, he could approximate his reform objectives with those of the “common man.” Both aimed for a democraticcommunal or a republican-theocratic society, which could not be achieved within the scope of the old order of domination and hierarchy, but only through a revolutionary overcoming of that order. If it is reasonable to speak of a “revolution of the common man” in the manner of Peter Blickle, or of an “early bourgeois revolution,” as was the practice in the Marxist-Leninist historiography since 1960, Thomas Müntzer must be described as a revolutionary.86 Certainly his arguments were frequently different than those heard in the peasant camps. However, there were diverse conceptions also among the peasants, so that what mattered was not the detailed theological justification of revolutionary agitation, but rather the solidarity of various leaders in one and the same revolutionary movement. Aside from that, the affinity of mystical piety to the concerns of the “common man” was stronger than is often acknowledged. To the extent that Müntzer worked to overcome the fear of creatures or the fear of men, he freed the peasants from personal legal subjection to their landlords and placed them in a communitarian or brotherly relation to each other. Not dependence and hierarchy but freedom and equality should be the basis of human relations. With his goal of depriving temporal authority of the basis of its legitimacy, namely

86 Blickle (1981), 125–26; Vogler (1989), 276; Brendler (1989), 7 for reference to “Gottesstreiter” as the oldest type of revolutionary.

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fear of creatures, Müntzer exploded the law of domination and replaced it with the law of community, in which everyone serves everyone—entirely on the model of Jesus Christ, who did not come to rule but to serve. Müntzer’s theology fits together with a general tendency in villages and towns to boost the community to the status of governmental authority—although for him it was a theocratically transfigured community. That, too, in its own manner, was a “Reformation of the common man.” Also Müntzer’s theology transformed the right of property that was based on dominion. The new law hinted at in his interrogation of May 1525—“everything belongs to everybody” (omnia sunt communia)—was meant to give a concrete expression, in respect to the handling of worldly goods, to the early Christian equality before God and one another.87 Müntzer gave voice to this law; among the rebels, too, it was discussed in one form or the other, and they made a start at putting it into practice in the form of mutual aid.88 Müntzer only hinted at the outlines of a new society. His theology was really only a theology of revolutionary transformation, not a theology of post-revolutionary conditions. However, he could have agreed with the conceptions of the future which were discussed generally; indeed, he could even have supplied some of these conceptions with a clearer content and a deeper religious rationale. Moreover, his apocalyptic expectations no doubt carried many of the rebels with them, especially since the hope for the kingdom of God was not fundamentally alien to anyone at the time. It would go too far, however, to assert that the peasant participants in the battle of Frankenhausen, in which Müntzer participated as a military chaplain and propagandist, regarded that event as either an “apocalyptic” battle or a “chiliastic revolution.”89 Müntzer’s presence made the goal of revolutionary hope seem tangibly close. But he had not surrendered himself entirely to the “common man.” Indeed, he could even scold the ordinary people, criticize their selfish ambitions, and remind them of the deeper roots of his “righteous uprising”: “the

87 Günter Vogler, “Gemeinnutz und Eigennutz bei Thomas Müntzer,” in Bräuer (1989), 174–94. Cf. Laube (1990), 140, who disputes the thesis that community of goods was a logical consequence of Müntzer’s theology. 88 Stayer (1991), 45–60. 89 Rudolf Endres, in Buszello (1984), 174.

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people shall be free and God alone will rule over them.”90 To want to undo what people had done to each other over the course of history would evoke holy awe and required an intensive encounter with the Creator. The Reformation of the Common Man: The Burgher and Peasant Movements The Reformation which Karlstadt and Müntzer tried to carry through concentrated on the religious and social needs of the common man. These concepts originated with theologians, preachers and pastors who identified with the standpoint of peasants and craftsmen and tried, as far as it was theologically possible, to envision a fundamental renewal of Christendom and to find solutions that were applicable to all estates or strata of society. Both Karlstadt’s and Müntzer’s variants of a communal Reformation were new. None of the other reformers advanced a similar project so early. These were ideas drawn up on behalf of the common man, not the common man’s own ideas—a distinction worth noting. Peter Blickle in his book, Communal Reformation (German original, 1985; English trans., 1992),91 focused especially on the common man’s understanding of the Reformation, both that of the burghers in the towns and the peasants in the countryside. Hitherto the topic had been largely overshadowed by study of the judgments of the leading reformers about the religious aspirations of the rebellious peasants of 1525. In the words of Philip Melanchthon, anyone who called on the gospel to justify and carry through his own wishes for political and social change against the rulers was “of the Devil.”92 This appraisal of the rebellious peasants has been carried down through the centuries. Blickle argued that this tradition of consigning the common man to the Devil was not grounded in reality, nor was it able to determine how Scriptures should be appropriately applied. Most important, it was a barrier to study of the theology or understanding of

90 “das volck wirdt frey werden und Got will allayn der herr daruber sein”— MSB, 343; CWTM, 350. 91 Blickle (1987/1992). 92 Franz (1963), 185, 187.

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the Reformation held by the rebels themselves. This is particularly significant, because it is undisputed that the common people in the towns and countryside (with the exception of some of the lesser nobility)93 were the only stratum that formed movements aimed at giving visible shape to the renewal sought by the theologians or reformers. Processes of renewal which assume a concrete form and bring about traceable changes are not the direct outcomes of theological insights or ideas, but originate from social movements which unfold with practical consequences. To be sure, these particular movements were loosed upon the world by Reformation ideas and they were formed around Reformation preaching and theological expressions in disputations, tracts and pamphlets. But these ideas attained the sort of effectiveness which began to alter concrete conditions only through the medium of coordinated social action. From this insight—which Blickle did not spell out in this form—emerges a research methodology that seeks to define the Reformation not in terms of ideas or theology, but of the way that these insights were understood and embodied by the social movements that they unleashed. What is important is less the content of the preaching than the perception of what was heard and how it was put into practice. The study of the theology of the reformers leads deep into the world of thought of learned men of the sixteenth century and provides timeless and fundamental insights into the theology of Christian existence. But the Reformation originated not in the deep insights of its theologians but in the reception of those ideas and the way they assumed concrete reality.94 That is often something different, frequently something less, than what the reformers wanted to accomplish; but in terms of its real substance it amounts to something more. Whoever loses sight of the fundamental importance of reception, or measures the common man’s reception of the Reformation only in terms of the theology of the reformers, misunderstands Blickle and all those who interpret the Reformation in terms of the social movements that placed their stamp on its early history.95 The simple people certainly did not fully understand the complex arguments about justification that exploded the scholastic-gradualistic 93

Cf. Goertz (1987), 103–08. On the application of reception theories to the Reformation period, cf. Todt (2005). 95 In this sense recently, Strübind (2003), 79–119. 94

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system. But they probably did have a sense of the importance of these arguments and of the liberating transformation that they introduced into their world. It was certainly not the academic arguments—such as the dialectically formulated theses that Luther presented at the Heidelberg Disputation (1518)—but the slogans that circulated among the people, and found their way into sermons after Luther’s Reformation writings of 1520, that had a decisive effect in shaping reality—not always in the sense that the reformers had originally intended, but in the form in which they were received. Blickle has suggested that “pure gospel” and “congregation” were the most important of these slogans. All the others were derived from them. In the slogan “pure gospel” many people condensed their criticism of the clerical, gradualistic system along with the message that they could begin their lives anew under the word of God. The attack on works righteousness articulated in the slogan of “gospel”—here people thought above all of indulgences—pushed aside church ritual, deposed the clergy from its mediating role between God and man, and challenged listeners to imitate Christ—not in the sacral sphere or through ritual exercises—but in all the vicissitudes of everyday life. “Gospel” communicated something new to people—the promise that their life and their everyday world could be transformed in a single stroke. The corollary slogan “priesthood of all believers” further enhanced the worth of the layman. The layman now stood directly before God, no longer needing mediation. He was himself a priest; and he was entrusted to understand and interpret the Holy Scriptures even better than popes, priests and scholars had done before. In this way he was also reminded of his obligation to protect the “gospel,” to take care that the pure gospel was preached without human additions, and even to demand the right to elect his pastors and to ensure that their preaching was Scriptural. The demand to choose one’s own pastors was voiced particularly in the countryside, where pastoral care was often in a bad state. Here, in contrast to the towns, such claims were inextricably tied to the preaching of the “pure gospel.”96 The slogan “priesthood of all believers” was a basic demand of the rebellious peasants, appearing in the demand that congrega-

96

Blickle (1987), 94.

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tions select pastors in the first article of the widely disseminated Twelve Articles of March 1525. Finally the slogan “pure gospel” promoted an understanding of Holy Scriptures as a source of instruction on behavior pleasing to God, or as the “law of God” that demonstrated how God’s will manifested itself in the life of the human community.97 “Pure gospel” legitimated the economic and political demands of the common man in the Peasants’ War and superseded any other law, including customary law. The appeal to “divine law” originated in the countryside98 and soon was taken up in the towns as well.99 The ethical accent of the gospel—to hear it and to “live according to it”100—found its expression above all in the slogan “brotherly love.” Through it would be achieved “the transformation of the pure gospel into the temporal sphere.”101 This was not only the love of neighbor demanded by the gospel wherever there was human need, which, according to Martin Luther, was a test of faith without any trace of works righteousness. Rather, “brotherly love” was something different and greater; namely, the principle according to which the world would henceforth be shaped. Innumerable pamphlets, written by laymen as well as theologians, demanded “a world of brotherliness.” Beyond these pamphlets the slogan appears in numerous articles, petitions, grievances and programs of the peasants or the common man—often combined with the appeal to the “common good,” or the complaint that love has grown cold in this world.102 Franziska Conrad has subjected the theological understanding of the Alsatian peasantry to a particularly intensive study, and shown that what they absorbed was not the Reformation doctrine of justification but Reformation inspired principles of love and brotherliness—often virtually to the extent of creating a Reformation variant of works righteousness. These works were not understood, as in previous times, as a means to attain salvation in the next world. Nor were they the pious works of the Roman church. Rather, such deeds

97

Blickle (1987), 63. Blickle (1981), 93. 99 Blickle (1987), 116. 100 Franz (1963), 175. 101 Blickle (1987), 63. 102 Goertz, “Brüderlichkeit—Provokation, Maxime, Utopie. Ansätze einer fraternitären Gesellschaft in der Reformationszeit,” in Schmidt (1998), 161–78. 98

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were perceived as clear indications that “the common life and common work in the village community were the way to please God.”103 That was certainly an extreme form of the reception of the Reformation message that salvation was a gift (sola gratia). A stereotyped emphasis on love of neighbor or “brotherly love” usually indicated a proReformation disposition. But there were marked variations in the understanding of “brotherly love,” just as there were various interpretations of the doctrine of justification. Luther, for example, resisted every effort to apply Christian love to developing a program for a new social order.104 Others held that the Reformation’s failure to bring about moral improvement was the outcome of a one-sided stress on the doctrine of justification, and advocated making “fruits of faith” an integral component of justification—often in the sense of the James epistle. Ulrich Zwingli regarded the matter still differently. For him human love was indeed far beneath the unattainable love of God; nevertheless love of God was the ideal principle that preserved society from ruin and conferred its particular form on earthly community. Hence Zwingli advised the Zurich council to abolish serfdom, so that all of God’s children could “live together in a brotherly fashion.”105 Even though he rejected a direct or naïve realization of an order of divine love, as seemed to be the case in the programs of the Peasants’ War, Zwingli stood much closer to the communitarian or fraternal milieu of the common man than did Luther.106 The revolutionary character of “brotherly love” appeared with particularly clarity in the Peasants’ War. Here it became a provocation to the ruling elite, because it expressed itself not only in words but in agitation and in various organizational forms (bands, federations, unions, brotherhoods, Christian assemblies). Moreover, it turned the power relationships upside down and revolutionized the order of estates and hierarchies. If the intensified anticlericalism of the Reformation broke the pinnacle off the medieval pyramid of estates, the peasants’ movement suddenly threatened the entire society of estates. Through “brotherly love” above all, the Reformation conception of salvation became a concrete power which was able to transform individual persons, the church and temporal community. 103 104 105 106

Conrad (1985), 142, 145. Goertz, “Brüderlichkeit,” in Schmidt (1998), 166, 168. Egli (1908), 490. Blickle (1987), 155.

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Their disappointing experiences with the clergy made the laity receptive to the promise of a church without a clerical hierarchy— to a church no longer defined in terms of hierarchy (“where the priest is, there is the church”), but as a congregation in which the faithful assemble under the word of God. Since each layperson had experiences of the clergy from the cradle to the grave, the widespread and inventive forms of anticlerical agitation were particularly effective, both on an individual and a collective level. The salvation that the person received “by grace alone” (sola gratia) placed him or her in a new relationship to God and fellow human beings. This new self-understanding was seldom recorded in the spiritual diaries of individuals; but it is evident indirectly through sudden acts of agitation for the “gospel” and through the ways people transformed the customs and practices of popular culture. This is the individual aspect of anticlericalism.107 Anticlericalism expressed itself collectively by exposing multitudes of people from all estates and social strata to the proclamations and propaganda of the Reformation which precipitated into communal forms of agitation or social movements. The socially diverse effects of Reformation teaching had their roots in the milieu of anticlerical struggle, as did the intensity of pamphlet production, which as Johannes Burckhardt has noted, rose to the level of a veritable “media revolution.”108 The disappointing experiences of the common man in the countryside with landlords and rulers, in the Imperial cities where a magisterial authority separated itself from the citizenry and regarded them as its subjects, or in towns subjected to territorial rulers, made him receptive to the proclamation of a gospel that promoted brotherly love as the divinely willed form of human community. Here the will of God confirmed the intentions of the common man to pursue the path of emancipation from domination. Peter Blickle, in particular, has argued that Reformation teaching had a close affinity to peasant or burgher community and inclined the common man to identify these communities as religious communities, thereby giving

107 Cf. the numerous smaller studies of Robert W. Scribner in Scribner (1987) and Scribner (2002). 108 Burckhardt (2002), 13.

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them a sacral transfiguration.109 In this way Reformation and communal movements grew together in the early years of the Reformation, which sharpened the conflict between authoritarian and communitarian principles of government.110 The movements that pursued the goal of a renewed congregation were the initial means of promoting or enforcing concrete changes in the institutional and social spheres. A communitarian lay culture reinforced the dissolution of the ecclesiastical and secular culture of domination. Such movements originated above all between 1520 and 1525 in the towns and in the countryside. Varying widely in appearance from one place to another,111 the reform movements all had two things in common: first, the collective actor who expressed himself was the common man—the peasant, the miner, the burgher in the territorial towns, and the burgher who could not participate in the government of the Imperial cities; second, the social institution to which all renewal initiatives were connected was the commune. That was the Reformation of the common man, which Blickle called the “communal Reformation”. The objection has sometimes been raised against this conception of the early history of the Reformation that it is based primarily on source material from the south German territories in which the Peasants’ War was germinating, and that the communal Reformation did not everywhere play the dominant role that Blickle has assigned to it.112 Certainly it is true that social groups other than the “common man” were active recipients of Reformation ideas and turned them into action and behavior in their own ways: former monks and nuns, priests and theologians, humanist scholars and students, journeymen, housewives and serving girls, patricians and aristocrats, princes and court officials. All of them, stimulated by the general anticlericalism, participated in Reformation events in their own ways. Either they joined the coalescing Reformation movements, allied with them or made political decisions under the pressure of their agitation. Unquestionably, it was the movements of the common people 109

Blickle (1987), 113f. In this context special importance was attached to Luther’s writing, That a Christian Assembly or Congregation has the Right and Power to Judge Doctrine (1523).—Blickle (1987), 135–38. 111 Blickle (1987), 76–119. 112 For critique of Blickle’s concept, cf. Schilling (1987), 325–32; Ziegler (1990), 441–52; Scott (1991), 183–92; Edwards (1989); Strübind (2003), 79–119. 110

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in town and countryside that were most visible and had the greatest impact in the early days—in some regions more, in others less. And it is equally clear that the behavior and actions of other groupings generally oriented themselves to the social model of the community, as opposed to the church’s clerically conceived model of authority. The communal tendencies had penetrated too deeply into the collective life of the time for the preaching of the Reformation to have done anything other than to fall onto the fruitful soil of the political commune. Although there were, of course, variant understandings of community—from the identification of the peasant or burgher community with the church congregation to the occasional separation of Christian congregations from the political community after 1525—the center of communal understanding lay in the memory of the original Christian congregation, as described in Acts 2 and 4. The “Reformation of the common man,” which Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt and Thomas Müntzer developed and tried to carry through, emerged within this spectrum of early Reformation preaching, worship, propaganda and politics. Soon thereafter would follow the reform impulses of the Anabaptists and Spiritualists, both movements rooted in early Reformation radicalism. Bibliography Sources and Collections Egli, Emil and Georg Finsler, eds. Huldrich Zwinglis sämtliche Werke. vol. 2. Leipzig, 1908. Furcha, Edward J., ed. The Essential Carlstadt. Fifteen Tracts by Andreas Bodenstein (Carlstadt) from Karlstadt. Waterloo, ON, 1995. Franz, Günther, ed. Quellen zur Geschichte des Bauernkrieges. 2nd ed. Darmstadt, 1963. ——. Thomas Müntzer. Schriften und Briefe. Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Gütersloh, 1968. Hertzsch, Erich, ed. Karlstadts Schriften aus den Jahren 1523–25. 2 vols. Halle, 1956/57. Junghans, Helmar, ed. Thomas Müntzer Ausgabe. Kritische Gesamtausgabe. vol. 3: Quellen zu Thomas Müntzer, prepared by Wieland Held and Siegfried Hoyer. Leipzig, 2004. Kähler, Ernst. Karlstadt und Augustin. Der Kommentar des Andreas Bodenstein v. Karlstadt zu Augustins Schrift De spiritu et litera (1517–1519). Halle, 1952. Köhler, Hans-Joachim, et al., eds. Flugschriften des frühen 16. Jahrhunderts auf Microfiche, Teil I: 1501–1530. Zug/Leiden, 1979–1987. Matheson, Peter, ed. The Collected Works of Thomas Müntzer. Edinburgh, 1988. Müller, Nikolaus. Die Wittenberger Bewegung 1521 und 1522. Die Vorgänge in und um Wittenberg während Luthers Wartburgaufenthalt. 2nd ed. Leipzig, 1911.

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Barge, Hermann. Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, vol. 1: Karlstadt und die Anfänge der Reformation, vol. 2: Karlstadt als Vorkämpfer des laienchristlichen Puritanismus. Leipzig, 1905; rpt. Nieuwkoop, 1968. Baylor, Michael. “Karlstadts politische Haltung im Aufbruch der Reformation,” Mennonitische Geschichtsblatter (2005), 9–20. Bensing, Manfred. Thomas Müntzer und der Thüringer Aufstand 1525. Berlin, 1966. Blickle, Peter. The Revolution of 1525. The German Peasants’ War from a New Perspective. Baltimore and London, 1981. ——. Gemeindereformation. Die Menschen des 16. Jahrhunderts auf dem Weg zum Heil. Student ed. Munich, 1987; Communal Reformation. The Quest for Salvation in Sixteenth-Century Germany. Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1992. Bräuer, Siegfried and Helmar Junghans. Der Theologe Thomas Müntzer. Untersuchungen zu seiner Entwicklung und Lehre. Göttingen, 1989. Brendler, Gerhard. Thomas Müntzer. Geist und Faust. Berlin, 1989. Bubenheimer, Ulrich, “Scandalum et ius divinum: Theologische und rechtstheologische Probleme der ersten reformatorischen Innovationen in Wittenberg 1521/22,” Zeitschrift f. Rechtsgeschichte 90, Kan. Abt. 59 (1973), 263–342. ——. Consonantia Theologiae et Jurisprudentiae. Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt als Theologe und Jurist zwischen Scholastik und Reformation. Tübingen, 1977. ——. “Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt und die Reform von Gottesdienst und Leben,” in Martin Luther. Zeuge des Glaubens in Kirche und Gesellschaft. Dokumentation 38/83. Berlin, 1983. ——. “Gedenkblatt für Andreas Karlstadt anläßlich seines Todes 1541,” in Dasein und Vision. Bürger und Bauern um 1500. Ausstellungskatalog. Berlin, 1989. ——. Thomas Müntzer. Herkunft und Bildung. Leiden, 1989a. —— and Stefan Oehmig, eds. Querdenker der Reformation. Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt und seine frühe Wirkung. Würzburg, 2001. Burckhardt, Johannes. Das Reformationsjahrhundert. Deutsche Geschichte zwischen Medienrevolution und Institutionenbildung 1517–1617. Stuttgart, 2002. Buszello, Horst, Peter Blickle and Rudolf Endres, eds. Der deutsche Bauernkrieg. Paderborn, 1984. Conrad, Franziska. Reformation in der bäuerlichen Gesellschaft. Zur Rezeption reformatorischer Theologie im Elsaß. Stuttgart, 1984. ——. “Die ‘bauerliche’ Reformation. Die Reformationstheologie auf dem Land am Beispiel des Unterelsaß,” in Zwingli und Europa. Peter Blickle, et al., eds. Zurich, 1985. Dismer, Rolf. “Geschichte, Glaube, Revolution. Zur Schriftauslegung Thomas Müntzers,” Theol. Diss. Hamburg University, 1974. Dykema, Peter A. and Heiko A. Oberman, eds. Anticlericalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Leiden, 1993. Edwards, Mark U., Jr. “Die Gemeindereformation als Bindeglied zwischen der mittelalterlichen und neuzeitlichen Welt,” Hist. Zeitschrift 249 (1989), 95–103. Elliger, Walter. Thomas Müntzer. Leben und Werk. 3rd ed. Göttingen, 1976. Friesen, Abraham. Thomas Muentzer, A Destroyer of the Godless. The Making of a SixteenthCentury Religious Revolutionary. Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1990. Goertz Hans-Jürgen. Innere und äußere Ordnung in der Theologie Thomas Müntzers. Leiden, 1967. ——. Pfaffenhaß und groß Geschrei. Die reformatorischen Bewegungen in Deutschland 1517 bis 1529. Munich, 1987. ——. Religiöse Bewegungen in der frühen Neuzeit. Enzyklopädie deutscher Geschichte 20, Munich, 1993. ——. Thomas Müntzer, Apocalyptic Mystic and Revolutionary. Edinburgh, 1993a.

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——. “Ende der Welt und Beginn der Neuzeit. Modernes Zeitverständnis im ‘apokalyptischen saeculum’: Thomas Müntzer und Martin Luther,” Thomas-Müntzer Gesellschaft, Veröffentlichungen, Nr. 3. Mühlhausen/Thür., 2002a. —— and James M. Stayer, eds. Radikalität und Dissent im 16. Jahrhundert/Radicalism and Dissent in the Sixteenth Century. Berlin, 2002. Hamm, Berndt, Bernd Moeller and Dorothea Wendebourg. Reformationstheorien. Ein kirchenhistorischer Disput über Einheit und Vielfalt der Reformation. Göttingen, 1995. Hasse, Hans-Peter. Karlstadt und Tauler. Untersuchungen zur Kreuzestheologie. Gütersloh, 1993. Joestel, Volkmar. Ostthüringen und Karlstadt. Soziale Bewegung und Reformation im mittlerem Saaletal am Vorabend des Bauernkrieges (1522–1524). Berlin, 1996. Köhler, Hans-Joachim, ed. Flugschriften als Massenmedium der Reformationszeit. Stuttgart, 1981. Kriechbaum, Friedel. Grundzüge der Theologie Karlstadts. Eine systematische Studie zur Erhellung der Theologie Karlstadts. Hamburg-Bergstedt, 1967. Kruse, Jens-Martin. Universitätstheologie und Kirchenreform. Die Anfänge der Reformation in Wittenberg 1516–1522. Mainz, 2002. Laube, Adolf. “Thomas Müntzer und die frühbürgerliche Revolution,” in Zeitschr. f. Geschichtswissenschaft (1990), 128–41. Lohse, Bernhard. Martin Luther. Eine Einführung in sein Leben und Werk. Munich, 1981. ——. “Zum Wittenberger Augustinismus. Augustins Schrift De Spiritu et Littera in der Auslegung bei Staupitz, Luther und Karlstadt,” in Augustine, the Harvest and Theology (1300–1600). Essays dedicated to Heiko Augustinus Oberman in Honor of his Sixtieth Birthday. Kenneth Hagen, ed. Leiden, 1990, 89–109. Looß, Sigrid and Markus Matthias, eds. Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt (1466–1541). Ein Theologe der frühen Reformation. Wittenberg, 1998. McGinn, Bernard. Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages. New York, 1979. McLaughlin, Emmet. “Apocalypticism and Thomas Müntzer,” Archiv f. Reformationsgeschichte 95 (2004), 98–131. McNiel, William W. “Andreas Karlstadt and Thomas Müntzer: Relatives in Theology and Reformation,” Ph.D. Diss. Queen’s University. Kingston, ON, 1999. Merklein, Wolfgang, ed. Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, 1480–1541. Festschrift der Stadt Karlstadt zum Jubiläumsjahr 1480. Karlstadt, 1980. Moeller, Bernd. “Was wurde in der Frühzeit der Reformation in den deutschen Städten gepredigt?” Archiv f. Reformationsgeschichte 75 (1984), 176–93. Mörke, Olaf. Die Reformation. Voraussetzungen und Durchsetzung. Enzyklopädie deutscher Geschichte 74. Munich, 2005. zur Mühlen, Karl-Heinz. Nos extra nos. Luthers Theologie zwischen Mystik und Scholastik. Tübingen, 1972. Pater, Calvin A. Karlstadt as the Father of the Anabaptist Movement: the Emergence of Lay Protestantism. Toronto and London, 1984. ——. “Westerburg: The Father of Anabaptism. Author and Content of the Dyalogus of 1527,” Archiv f. Reformationsgeschichte 85 (1994), 138–62. Preus, James S. Carlstadt’s Ordinaciones and Luther’s Liberty. A Study of the Wittenberg Movement 1521–22. Boston, 1974. Rupp, Gordon. Patterns of Reformation. London, 1969. Schilling, Heinz. Die Stadt in der Frühen Neuzeit. Enzyklopädie deutscher Geschichte 24. Munich, 1993. ——. “Die deutsche Gemeindereformation. Ein oberdeutsch-zwinglianisches Ereignis vor der ‘reformatorischen Wende’ des Jahres 1525?” Zeitschr. f. hist. Forschung 14 (1987), 325–32. Schmidt, Heinrich Richard, et al., eds. Gemeinde, Reformation und Widerstand. Festschrift f. Peter Blickle. Tübingen, 1998.

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Schwarz, Reinhard. Die apokalyptische Theologie Thomas Müntzers und der Taboriten. Tübingen, 1977. Scott, Tom. Thomas Müntzer. Theology and Revolution in the German Reformation. Houndmills and London, 1989. ——. “The Common People in the German Reformation,” The Historical Journal 34 (1991), 183–92. Scribner, Robert W. Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany. London and Ronceverte, 1987. ——. Religion und Kultur in Deutschland 1400–1800. Göttingen, 2002. Seebaß, Gottfried. “Reich Gottes und Apokalyptik bei Thomas Müntzer,” in Die Reformation und ihre Außenseiter. Ges. Aufs. Und Vorträge. Gottfried Seebaß, ed. Göttingen, 1997, 165–85. ——. Müntzers Erbe. Werk, Leben und Theologie des Hans Hut. Gütersloh, 2002. Seidemann, Johann Karl. Thomas Münzer—Eine Biographie. Dresden and Leipzig, 1842. Sider, Ronald J. Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt. The Development of his Thought, 1517–1525. Leiden, 1974. Stayer, James M. The German Peasants’ War and Anabaptist Community of Goods. Montreal and Kingston, ON, 1991. ——. Anabaptists and the Sword. Lawrence, KS, 1972. Steinmetz, Max. Thomas Müntzers Weg nach Allstedt. Eine Studie zu seiner Frühentwicklung. Berlin, 1988. Strübind, Andrea. Eifriger als Zwingli. Die frühe Täuferbewegung in der Schweiz. Berlin, 2003. Tode, Sven. Stadt im Bauernkrieg 1525. Strukturanalytische Untersuchungen zur Stadt im Raum anhand der Beispiele Erfurt. Mühlhausen/Thür., 1994. Todt, Sabine. Kleruskritik, Frömmigkeit und Kommunikation in Worms im Mittelalter und in Reformationszeit. Stuttgart, 2005. Vogler, Günter. Thomas Müntzer. Berlin, 1989. —— ed. Wegscheiden der Reformation. Alternatives Denken vom 16. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert. Weimar, 1994. ——. “Anschlag oder Manifest? Überlegungen zu Thomas Müntzers Sendbrief von 1521,” in Thomas Müntzer und die Gesellschaft seiner Zeit. Günter Vogler, ed. Mühlhausen/Thür., 2003, 38–54. Ziegler, W. “Reformation als Gemeindereformation?” Archiv f. Kulturgeschichte 72 (1990), 441–52. Zorzin, Alejandro. “Karlstadts ‘Dialogus vom Tauff der Kinder’ in einem anonymen Wormser Druck aus dem Jahr 1527. Ein Beitrag zur Karlstadtbibliographie,” Archiv f. Reformationsgeschichte 79 (1988), 27–57.

CHAPTER TWO

SWISS ANABAPTISM: THE BEGINNINGS, 1523–1525 C. Arnold Snyder Anabaptism began in Switzerland in January 1525, with the group around Conrad Grebel in Zurich. It did not begin a few years earlier with Thomas Müntzer or the “Zwickau prophets” in Saxony, although some of Thomas Müntzer’s followers played an important role in the early years of Anabaptism in south and central Germany. Already in the sixteenth century the notion of a Saxon origin of Anabaptism appealed to Martin Luther, Phillip Melanchthon and Heinrich Bullinger, who each thought that identifying Anabaptist origins also laid bare the theological nature of the movement.1 Hence associating Anabaptism with the thoroughly defamed Müntzer seemed to stamp the movement with a violent, diabolical origin and character. A century later, in 1615, as the tolerated Anabaptists of the Dutch Republic set about venerating the sufferings of their forebears, Hans de Ries published the first major, comprehensive Anabaptist martyrology, Historie der Martelaren ofte waerachtighe Getuygen Jesu Christi. This collection posed the issue of who was to be considered a true Anabaptist-Mennonite martyr. Putting aside the merely sectarian issues that divided the Anabaptists of the Netherlands, de Ries and his successors determined that a true martyr was someone who (1) upheld the baptism of adult believers, and (2) upheld and practiced a peaceful, nonviolent life.2 The viewpoint of the Protestant reformers and the state churches, however, ruled the day among church historians for about 400 years— until the final decades of the nineteenth century—when historians began utilizing archival sources in a systematic way. In the early twentieth century critical historical work combined with Ernst Troeltsch’s influential typologies of religion to rehabilitate Anabaptism

1 2

Fast (1959); Oyer (1964), esp. 248. Gregory (1999), 237–41.

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as a legitimate, though “sectarian,” movement of reform.3 By 1950 an informal North American coalition of Free Church and Mennonite historians had reasserted the general approach of the Dutch martyrologies and made a respected place for Anabaptist scholarship as a specialization within Reformation studies. Mennonite historians, led by Harold S. Bender, took the lead in identifying “genuine” Anabaptists as “sober-minded and peace-loving paragons of Christian virtue.”4 The movement, they insisted, originated with Zwingli in Zurich, and in turn became the source of all true Anabaptism elsewhere in Europe. Bender’s depiction later came to be called the “monogenesis” view of Anabaptist origins. In this view, all Anabaptism worthy of the name was “born” and shaped exclusively in Zurich by Conrad Grebel, Felix Mantz and their immediate followers. Following Bender’s death in 1962 a younger generation of Mennonite scholars, typified by John S. Oyer and Walter Klaassen,5 began to modify the exclusive emphasis on Swiss origins and the total rejection of any connection with Müntzer that had been the orthodoxy of the 1950s. Then, in the 1970s and 1980s, the previous consensus unraveled still further, when “revisionist” historians, led by James Stayer and Hans-Jürgen Goertz,6 pointed to multiple Anabaptist origins (the “polygenesis”7 of Swiss, South German and Dutch streams) and a diversity of Anabaptist characteristics, depending on region and influence. The revisionists began to examine Anabaptism from a wider vantage than theological ideas, paying particular attention to social, political and economic factors. Hans-Jürgen Goertz, concerned to separate Reformation history from twentieth-century theology, emphasized anticlericalism as a primary socio-religious motive force.8 The revisionists, building on the scholarship of the Swiss historian, Martin Haas, held that Swiss Anabaptism in its earliest forms was ambivalent on questions of violence and political involvement, and became solidly sectarian and separatist only following the failure of the Peasants’ War9 at the end of 1525.

3

Troeltsch (1931). Roth (2002), 525. 5 Oyer (1964); Klaassen (1962); this mediating standpoint marked the general survey in Dyck (1967). 6 Goertz (1975). 7 Stayer, Packull, Deppermann (1975). 8 Goertz (1979); Goertz (1987). 9 Haas (1975). 4

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The past two decades have seen a moderation in the “revisionist” view of Anabaptist beginnings and the nature of the movement. James Stayer and Werner Packull have both softened the notion of a “genetic” division between Swiss and South German Anabaptist groups,10 and Arnold Snyder has argued for a larger and more independent place for theology in the Anabaptist narrative.11 But Andrea Strübind’s recent study of Swiss Anabaptist origins has proposed an even more fundamental “revision of the revisionists.” Strübind has argued that church history, in its best sense, is a theological discipline, that Swiss Anabaptist origins must be read and described primarily as a theological narrative.12 Strübind has contested the view that there was a “two phase” development of early Swiss Anabaptism: a revolutionary stage during the Peasants’ War in 1525, followed by a separatist stage after the failure of the Peasants’ War.13 In Strübind’s view Anabaptism was congregational and separatist from its beginnings in Zurich; these beginnings were linked by a “theological continuum” to the movements in Zollikon, urban and rural St. Gall, and ultimately to the Schleitheim Articles of 1527. While acknowledging the contact of early Anabaptism with the Peasants’ War, she holds that Swiss Anabaptism was implicitly separatist from its onset and remained so throughout 1525 and 1526.14 This overview demonstrates that, while the systematic use of primary and archival sources has muted some of the earlier polemical and apologetic expressions in Anabaptist studies, it has by no means led to a consensus view of the origin and character of Anabaptism. This present essay will describe the current state of the research concerning Swiss Anabaptist origins, concentrating on the pre-history of Anabaptism and the events of 1525, with the historiographical debates forming the necessary backdrop to the discussion. The story cannot be told without at the same time furnishing a reply to the contentious issues. One point of definition helps eliminate some partisan jostling at the outset: in this essay the term “Anabaptist” denotes those sixteenth-century persons who upheld the water baptism of adults as the only proper, biblical baptism. Hence we adopt one, but not both, 10 11 12 13 14

Stayer (2002); Packull (1995). Snyder (1995). Strübind (2003). Strübind (2003), 14. Ibid., 15.

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of the criteria of Hans de Ries for inclusion in his seventeenth-century Anabaptist martyrology. This definitional linkage of Anabaptism to the water baptism of adults excludes radical opponents of infant baptism who never took the further step of instituting adult baptism. Thus, the Zwickau prophets, Thomas Müntzer and Andreas Karlstadt were not Anabaptists, in spite of the reservations they expressed about infant baptism in the early 1520s. But militant Anabaptists were nevertheless Anabaptists, even though they would not have been included in the de Ries martyrology. Followers of Thomas Müntzer—such as Hans Römer, who continued the violence of the Peasants’ War—and the defenders of the Anabaptist regime in Münster in 1534–35, as well as their militant allies in Amsterdam and Friesland, were not peaceful persons. However, all of them were upholders, sometimes enforcers, of the water baptism of adults. As important as the upholding and practice of nonviolence became throughout the Anabaptist movement, once the Peasants’ War and Anabaptist rule of Münster were behind it, both the Peasants’ War and Münster are part of Anabaptist history. The Pre-History of Anabaptism: Beginnings in Zurich and Environs Anabaptism emerged from a group of priests and laymen who were at first enthusiastic supporters of the reform initiatives of Ulrich Zwingli, the most influential preacher in Zurich following his appointment in January 1519. The course of the rupture of these persons with the Zurich reformer has been a source of intermittent disagreement among scholars. It seems safe to conclude that Zwingli at first encouraged these allies and used their zeal for reform to exert pressure on the Zurich government, but that at a certain point they became an embarrassment to him in his plan to use the Zurich ruling group as his instrument for total renovation of the church in Zurich and its dependent territories.15 The study of Scripture and languages was important to Zwingli from the time of his arrival in Zurich. Initially, he began such studies with a learned circle of humanist friends. Andrea Strübind has 15 Scribner (1986), 46–47 aptly summarizes what occurred in the Zwinglian Reformation.

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suggested convincingly that he established a “sodality,” such as humanists were setting up throughout German-speaking lands at the initiative of Conrad Celtis. By the summer of 1520 such a sodality was operating in Zurich, concentrating on Greek studies; by the fall the patrician’s son, Conrad Grebel, who had become acquainted with classical studies at the University of Paris, had joined the group, which had expanded its interests to include the study of Hebrew. The Zurich sodality—which later counted the educated cathedral canon’s son, Felix Mantz, and the humanist priest Simon Stumpf, among its members—existed for the sake of an educated elite of laymen and priests who met on a basis of equality.16 For Zwingli, such studies informed his regular scriptural preaching activity; for some of the others, scriptural and linguistic studies bolstered their confidence about making independent initiatives for church reform. Interest in regular meetings for Bible studies was not limited to humanist sodalities, however, for Zwingli believed in the clarity of Scripture, whose power should be accessible to all. Soon craftsmen and peasants were also meeting in Zurich to study and discuss Scripture in vernacular translation. The best-known such circle emerged sometime in 1522, centered around the bookseller Andreas Castelberger. Among its participants were Heini Aberli (a baker), Hans Oggenfuss (a tailor), Wolf Ininger (a cabinetmaker), and Lorenz Hochrütiner (a weaver).17 When Hochrütiner was later exiled from Zurich to his native St. Gall he joined the Bible study group that had formed there around the layman Johannes Kessler. The importance of the model of grass roots biblical study cannot be overemphasized in describing the origin of the Anabaptist movement, which came to rely not simply on sola scriptura, but, more fundamentally, on the premise that the truths of Scripture were accessible to lay readers and hearers of the Word who had only rudimentary educations. In those early years of reforming enthusiasm Zwingli repeatedly expressed the view that the interpretation of Scripture was not just for a learned or clerical elite, but for all those who were spiritually ready to hear the Word—including the humble and uneducated.18 Zwingli’s support of lay Bible study throughout 1522 and 1523 indicates his identification with those of his followers who were not only 16 17 18

Strübind (2003), 131–47. Packull (1985), 38–41. Snyder (1990), esp. 266–71.

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studying Scripture amongst themselves, but also beginning to act in light of their conclusions. These persons (Aberli, Oggenfuss and Hochrütiner) were prominent participants at a ceremonial eating of sausages during Lent in March 1522 that marked the beginning of an attack on the ceremonies of the old church in the Zurich Reformation.19 In June and July of the same year Aberli, Claus Hottinger and Bartlime Pur, who had all taken part in the fastbreaking, participated in vocal interruptions of mendicant preaching in monastery churches; they were joined in this activity by Conrad Grebel.20 Certainly a cast of agitating characters is becoming familiar; and there is no evidence that Zwingli was displeased with their tactics. On the contrary, within days Zwingli himself interrupted the sermon of Franz Lambert, a Franciscan friar who was preaching in favor of the intercession of the saints in the Lady Minster.21 The following year, 1523, witnessed Zwingli’s success in winning irreversible momentum for the Reformation in Zurich; but it was also the year in which he lost the confidence of the most zealous partisans of the Reformation. In the First Zurich Disputation, held on January 29, 1523, Zwingli successfully defended himself before Zurich’s Great Council against accusations of heresy. Henceforth, the city’s sovereign authority accepted his role as the community’s leading pastor. The council instructed him to continue “to proclaim the holy Gospel.” And it further charged all preachers in the city and its dependent territories to “undertake and preach nothing but what can be proved by the holy Gospel and the pure divine Scriptures.” In the course of the disputation Zwingli had responded to a representative of the bishop of Constance—who contended that only an ecumenical council had authority in doctrinal matters—with a farreaching affirmation of lay competence in the interpretation of Scripture: “The Scriptures are so much the same everywhere, the Spirit of God flows so abundantly, walks in them so joyfully, that every diligent reader, insofar as he approaches with humble heart, will decide by means of the Scriptures, taught by the Spirit of God, until he attains the truth.”22 In the context of the event, Zwingli was defending the ecclesial authority of the Zurich government; but a 19 20 21 22

Strübind (2003), 126. Harder (1985), 166–71. Fast (1975). Harder (1985), 196–203, esp. 198, 202.

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mere six months later this same argument would be turned against governmental authority over the church. In addition to questions related to Scriptural authority, the ecclesiastical tithe became an issue in the Zurich Reformation during the first half of 1523. It was later to figure prominently in the Peasants’ War of 1525. Mennonite historians of the 1950s claimed that there were no differences between Zwingli and the future Anabaptists on the issue of the tithe.23 In 1969, however, a seminal article by J. F. Gerhard Goeters showed that the tithe was the initial point of difference between Zwingli and the Zurich government, on the one side, and the future Anabaptists on the other.24 At the same time Goeters also directed attention to Zurich’s rural dependent territories as an important breeding ground for the future schism in the Zurich Reformation. The payment of the tithe and the installation of pastors who would “preach the Gospel” became contentious issues because they brought together concern for biblical preaching with the political and judicial question of who was responsible for the selection, oversight and payment of local pastors. Ostensibly, tithes were collected from parishes for the clergy serving those parishes. Over time, however, their income had been diverted to monasteries and chapters that often assigned poorly paid lesser clergy to attend to the pastoral care of local parishioners. By the spring and summer of 1523 the Zurich Council had had to decide several cases involving tithe unrest and the election of evangelical pastors by local rural parishes. Simon Stumpf, pastor at the village of Höngg since 1520, and a member of the humanist sodality that included Zwingli, Grebel and Mantz, preached openly as early as the summer of 1522 that the tithe did not need to be paid.25 Representatives from Kloten complained of inadequate pastoral care and demanded that their tithes support a priest “who will preach the Gospel and godly Scripture.”26 Wilhelm Reublin, expelled from Basel in 1522 for reform activity, came to reside in the village of Witikon outside Zurich. In a surprisingly bold move the parishioners of Witikon decided to call him as their pastor in December 1522. This took place without the permission of 23 24 25 26

Cf. Yoder (2004), 8–9. Goeters (1969), 255–59. Ibid., 243–44, 246. Egli, Actensammlung, 129 (#359).

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the Great Minster chapter, which collected the tithe from Witikon and whose right it was to look after pastoral appointments there. The matter was referred to the Zurich city council. In March of 1523 the council decided to allow Reublin to remain as parish pastor in Witikon, as long as the tithe continued to be paid to the Great Minster chapter and Reublin was supported with special funds raised by the parish for that purpose. This decree did not settle the matter permanently. In June of 1523—clearly under Reublin’s influence— the communities of Zollikon, Riesbach, Fällanden, Hirslanden, Unterstrass and Witikon made a formal request to the Zurich council to be excused from paying the tithe. They said they were “now instructed and informed by the holy Gospel that the tithe was nothing other than alms” which should be given to the poor.27 Reublin, along with attacking the wealthy in general, had singled out the “stinking,” high-living and immoral clergy for particular criticism. The council responded immediately that the old tithe payments were to remain in place.28 The tithe issue soon made its way into the city of Zurich itself. Sometime in 1523, the Zurich Council collected testimony concerning Castelberger’s study group. According to witnesses, central to Castelberger’s teaching was the contention that any one, clerical or secular, who lived by usury, with a benefice and such like, or who gathered more earthly goods than he needed, was certainly no better than a poor person who stole in order to feed his hungry children.29 Margaret Schmid testified that she had heard how many peasant folk were coming and going to Castelberger’s house, and they reportedly said that they no longer needed to pay tithes.30 As early as 1520 Zwingli himself had written—albeit in Latin— that tithes did not have a good foundation in divine law. His point was probably to reject the old church’s use of excommunication to enforce the payment of tithes.31 Now in June 1523, with the tithe issue raised by Reublin and his followers in the villages, Zwingli published On Divine and Human Justice. Here he distinguished between divine justice, which was ultimately beyond the capacity of sinful

27 28 29 30 31

Ibid., 132–33 (#368). Stayer (1977), 84–86. Harder (1985), 205. QGTS Zurich, 387–88. Potter (1976), 162; Neuser (1977), 108–09.

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human beings, and a lesser, human justice administered by governments in order to maintain peace in human communities. In the framework of human justice “every man is obligated to pay [clerical tithes] as long as the government generally orders it.”32 This was a standpoint that would lead to the reorganization and reform of the Great Minster chapter in September 1523, a measure that would correct the corrupt misuse of the ecclesiastical tithe by the institutions of the old church, while at the same time preserving the tithe as an instrument of the Zurich government for control of a reformed church.33 Zwingli’s public and published theological apology for Zurich’s centralization of power over the implementation of church reform drove the thin edge of the wedge between him and his populist followers, and marks the beginning of a serious rift in the Zurich reforming front. The communally oriented Bible readers, both in the city and the countryside, began to express their doubts about Zurich’s leading preacher and his commitment to reform as they had come to understand it. In July 1523 Grebel, for instance, wrote to his brother-in-law Vadian in St. Gall that “the people of our world of Zurich are doing everything tyrannically and like the Turk in this matter of the tithe.”34 Wilhelm Reublin extended the scope of his agitation for reform from questioning the tithe to encouraging acts of iconoclasm. The Council punished the most prominent iconoclasts, but events eventually forced it to call a disputation to settle the matter of images and the mass.35 Harold S. Bender in his biography of Conrad Grebel saw this second Zurich Disputation of October 26–28, 1523 as the breaking point between the Protestant state churches and the Protestant voluntary churches,36 a view most later interpreters have not accepted.37 The event resulted in a mixed victory for Zwingli’s reforming efforts.38 On the one hand, the council affirmed the biblical correctness of Zwingli’s understanding concerning images and the mass; on the other hand, the council reserved the right to institute concrete reforms 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

Harder (1985), 210–19, esp. 213. Egli, Actensammlung, 167–71. Harder (1985), 220. Goeters (1969), 261. Bender (1950), 96–99. Yoder (1958). Harder (1985), 234–43.

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at a pace it deemed best. Zwingli was in clear agreement with this policy. Repeatedly throughout the disputation he voiced his concern that “uproar” be avoided, and publicly supported the council’s authority to decide matters of implementation. His position was a practical application of his theological judgment concerning divine and human justice. On the second day of the disputation, when Grebel called for the outright abolition of the “abomination” of the mass, Zwingli replied: “Milords will discern how the mass should henceforth be properly observed.” Simon Stumpf retorted: “Master Huldrych! You have no authority to place the decision in Milords’ hands, for the decision is already made: the Spirit of God decides. If therefore Milords were to discern or decide anything that is contrary to God’s decision, I will ask Christ for his Spirit and will teach and act against it.” To this Zwingli answered with the carefully qualified distinction: That is right. I shall also preach and act against it if they decide otherwise. I do not give the decision into their hands. They shall also certainly not decide about God’s Word. . . . This convocation is not being held so that they might decide that, but to ascertain and learn from the Scripture whether or not the mass is a sacrifice. Then they will counsel together as to the most appropriate way for this to be done without an uproar.39

According to Zwingli’s answer, nothing had been conceded regarding divine truth; he simply was deferring to the divinely-instituted governmental authority in the “human” matter of the pace of institutional reform. The second Zurich Disputation featured a supporting cast of reformminded leaders from nearby cities: Sebastian Hofmeister of Schaffhausen, who was chairman of the proceedings, Vadian from St. Gall, Christoph Schappeler from Memmingen, and Balthasar Hubmaier of Waldshut. Their participation and support demonstrated the wider reach of Zurich’s Reformation. As events were to show, however, their continued support for Zwingli’s approach, as opposed to the radical insistence on immediate biblical reform, could not yet be taken for granted. In all four cities a church reform heavily influenced by the model of Zurich was under way. At the same time, the rural disorder that

39

Ibid., 242.

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bothered the Zurich council in the summer of 1523 was building towards the onset of the German Peasants’ War. In the Upper Swabian Imperial city of Memmingen, Christoph Schappeler, a pastor of Swiss origin and a vocal critic of the tithe, was guiding the church towards reform. In March 1525 with the beginning of the main phase of the Peasants’ War, Memmingen was the meeting place for representatives of the three main rebel armies of Upper Swabia. Peter Blickle argues convincingly that Schappeler himself was the author of the three major publications of the Peasants’ War: The Twelve Articles, The Federal Ordinance, and To the Assembly of Common Peasantry.40 These programs combined economic and political objectives with religious aspirations such as village control of the appointment of pastors and a thoroughgoing reform of the tithe, so as to place it entirely in the control of the villagers who paid it. Schappeler originally hoped that the goals of the peasantry could be achieved peacefully through the mediation of the major Reformers. But in To the Assembly of Common Peasantry he explicitly rejected Luther’s defense of the authority of temporal government and countenanced peasant self-defense against the imminent onslaught of the mercenary armies of the princes. Forced into exile in St. Gall, Schappeler regretted that the peasant upheaval had fallen so far short of its original— and, in his eyes, Christian—aspirations.41 The small city of Schaffhausen, with its dependent rural territories, had been a full member of the Swiss Confederation only since 1501. In 1524 it seemed to be moving toward the Reformation, thanks to the support, as in the case of Zurich, of the broadly based large council. But these efforts were being impeded by the more patrician small council. Dr. Sebastian Hofmeister, the main proReformation preacher, was a native of Schaffhausen, with a theology degree from the University of Paris. He modeled his Reformation initiatives on Zwingli’s, but he was also on friendly terms with Balthasar Hubmaier and Conrad Grebel.42 In addition, Grebel was a kinsman of Hans von Waldkirch, an influential council member and later burgomaster of Schaffhausen.43 The combination of partisan

40 41 42 43

Blickle (1998). Oberman (1979), 48. Stayer (1977), 90–92. Haas (1975), 63–64.

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division in the city, unrest in its countryside, and the strong personal influence of both Zwingli and Grebel made the course of the Schaffhausen Reformation an unknown quantity in late 1523 and early 1524. The city of St. Gall was nearly as populous as Zurich (about 4000 inhabitants) but a good deal weaker politically. In the late fifteenth century the city had managed to free itself from its overlord, the abbot of St. Gall, but the intervention of the Swiss Confederation maintained the extensive rural territories of the abbot as a common Swiss protectorate. Although the abbot’s personal authority was minimal, this political arrangement preserved Catholicism in the rural territories of St. Gall, at least until peasant unrest challenged the hold of the old church and its practices. The city was a lesser, “associate member” of the Swiss Confederation. Its Reformation lacked the strong clerical leadership that Zwingli provided in Zurich. Instead, reform in St. Gall was spearheaded by a group of lay leaders who already exercised political power, foremost among them Joachim von Watt, or Vadian—humanist scholar and teacher, friend of Zwingli, husband of Conrad Grebel’s sister Martha, councilor, and soon to become burgomaster of St. Gall (1526–1532). In St. Gall Bible study began in a humanist sodality as in Zurich, but it soon spread into popular sectors. By the summer of 1524 Vadian’s friend Johannes Kessler was leading large groups of burghers in Bible reading and study in the guildhalls. These extraordinary, extra-ecclesial Bible “readings” were sanctioned by the city council.44 From the standpoint of the history of Anabaptism, the most important outside pastor at Second Disputation in Zurich was Balthasar Hubmaier. Hubmaier held a doctorate in theology from Johann Eck’s University of Ingolstadt, but he had been a supporter of evangelical reform since 1523. He was priest of the upper parish of the small city of Waldshut on the Rhine, a Habsburg hereditary territory administered from Ensisheim in Alsace, but lying geographically within the sphere of Swiss reforming currents, just thirty miles distant from Basel, Schaffhausen and Zurich. Hubmaier cultivated personal ties with Vadian, Hofmeister and Zwingli. In a visit to Zurich in May 1523, he discussed baptism with Zwingli and, according to the recollections of both men, they agreed that “children should not

44

Snyder (1993), 152–68.

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be baptized before they were of age” and could be instructed in the faith.45 In December 1523 the Austrian authorities arrived in Waldshut to denounce Hubmaier and demand that he be arrested and turned over to the bishop of Constance. Waldshut defied the Austrians and defended its preacher, a defiance symbolized—in what appeared to be a reenactment of the “sausage meal” that began Zurich’s public Reformation in 1522—by the public breaking of the New Year’s fast by both Hubmaier and Waldshut’s mayor on January 4, 1524. Hubmaier’s position as the civic reformer of Waldshut mirrored on a smaller scale that of Zwingli in Zurich. Indeed, the two reforms developed in analogous ways, although Hubmaier seems to have had more direct influence over the small council in Waldshut than did Zwingli in Zurich. Late in the spring of 1524, just when the evangelical party asserted its dominance in Waldshut, the first precursor episodes of the Peasants’ War took place in neighboring Klettgau. The villagers entered into armed negotiations with their lords and appeared in Waldshut as early as July. Both the Klettgau and Black Forest peasants threatened and felt threatened by the Austrian government. In September and October 1524, when Waldshut came under intense Austrian pressure, Hubmaier took advantage of his friendship with Hofmeister, and sought temporary refuge in neighboring Schaffhausen. In that same October some hundreds of “volunteers” recruited from the most zealous supporters of evangelical reform arrived in Waldshut from Zurich and helped the Waldshut burghers fortify the city. In the last months of 1524 this contingent was withdrawn under diplomatic pressure from the Swiss Confederation; but the rebellious peasants continued to defend Hubmaier, now returned from Schaffhausen, and the Waldshut Reformation for most of 1525.46 Until the end of 1524, Hubmaier’s reform of Waldshut could be seen as an extension and mirror image of Zwingli’s Reformation in Zurich, with Zurich providing political support to its religious ally. Nevertheless, there were indications of future difficulties between Zwingli and Hubmaier already in late 1523. Hubmaier’s strict scriptural principle (Matthew 15:13: “All that has not been planted by God should be uprooted”) stood closer to Karlstadt and the Grebel

45 46

Bergsten (1978), 80–81. Ibid., 47–207.

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group than it did to Zwingli’s flexible distinction between divine and human justice. Hubmaier’s growing conviction was that the practice of infant baptism had not been “planted by God.” Sometime in 1523 some private discussions probably took place between Zwingli and Leo Jud, on the one side, and Stumpf, Grebel and Mantz on the other. The historical record is problematic, since the account of the discussions comes only from Zwingli himself, and the key document is a biting polemic against the Anabaptists, written in late July 1527—four years after the events he was describing. By this time Zwingli needed to justify the heavy-handed policies he and the Zurich Council had adopted, which had led to widespread imprisonment and the implementation of capital punishment against the Anabaptists for the “civil crime” of religious dissent. Zwingli testified repeatedly that Stumpf and Grebel had come to him and Leo Jud, at different times, and argued for the establishment of a church that would contain only “upright, Christian people” who lived according to the Gospel and who were not soiled by “interest or other usury.” The key point, Zwingli repeated in his account, was that the radicals wished to establish a “special” or separate (schismatic) church (ein besonndere kilchenn). The radical leaders had said that it appeared there would always be those who opposed the Gospel, and so the Christian unity all desired would never come to be. Therefore, they should all follow the example of the believers in the book of Acts, and separate from the unbelievers. Zwingli continued: “They begged us to make a declaration to this effect. Those who want to follow Christ should stand on our side. They promised also that our forces would be far superior to the army of unbelievers. Next the church of the devoted itself was to appoint its own council from the devout prayerfully.”47 The defamatory intent of Zwingli’s account must remain clearly in sight. In his time the creation of a “sect” was not a value-free category of sociology of religion, as it was to Ernst Troeltsch in the early twentieth century, but a diabolical division of the people of God.48 Still, it is entirely plausible that the intent of the Zurich 47

Harder (1985), 276–79. Cf. Sebastian Franck’s description of a “heretic” as one who “develops his own following, which then becomes a special church, a sect, an alternate way, a special teaching.” [Chronica, cci(v)] In the wake of Troeltsch’s widely approved sociology of religion, it was understandable that Bender (1950), 103–06, accepted these accounts of Zwingli at face value, but the interpretation of Strübind (2003) that the first 48

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radicals was to set up a church that simultaneously would be supported by political power, but would define its own reform autonomously, without political interference, as a church of believers. Indeed, when we sift the polemics from Zwingli’s account, the ecclesial model the radicals were proposing in 1523 fits exactly with the model established later by Hubmaier in Waldshut and Nikolsburg, and with what Hofmeister appears to have had in mind for Schaffhausen before his government dismissed him. By the end of 1523, the radical Zwinglians were clearly disillusioned with their former leader. When Grebel wrote to Vadian on December 18, 1523, his judgment was scathing. After lumping Zwingli together with other “tonsured monsters,” Grebel wrote, “Whoever thinks, believes or declares that Zwingli acts according to the duty of a shepherd thinks, believes and declares wickedly.”49 The question of baptism made its way into the public forum in the late winter and early spring of 1524. By the summer of 1524 it had come to the city council’s attention that five parishioners of Witikon and Zollikon had refused to bring their new-born children for baptism. The three parishioners from Zollikon explained that they had been instructed “from the chancel” with the words of Scripture that their children were not to be baptized until they had come of age and could claim faith for themselves. The instigator was none other than Wilhelm Reublin, the former tithe-agitator, who was promptly imprisoned and questioned. The council demanded that all unbaptized children be brought for baptism immediately, on pain of a fine of one silver mark.50 At this point the radicals were in search of kindred spirits from outside Zurich who agreed with their approach to reform. In the summer and early fall of 1524 Grebel wrote two letters to Andreas Karlstadt and Castelberger wrote one.51 Karlstadt was absolutely opposed to the principle of “sparing of the weak” in the implementation of the Reformation and he was a stickler for the need of explicit scriptural justification for the practices of a truly reformed

Anabaptists were consciously motivated by a separatist ecclesiology flies in the face of the Reformation era prejudice against “a special church” or “a sect.” 49 Harder (1985), 276. 50 QGTS Zurich, 10–11. 51 Bender (1950), 108.

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church. These letters, which have not survived, would almost certainly have told us more about the ideas of the Zurich group than the Grebel circle’s letter of September 5 to the more eccentric radical, Thomas Müntzer, which has been preserved. For all its significance as the first major surviving writing of what would become the Anabaptist movement, this letter has been over-analyzed by scholars. Andrea Strübind argues persuasively that the Zurich radicals owe a heavy debt to Karlstadt for the way they read, appropriated and applied the biblical text, as well as in their conviction that lay church members formed the basic interpretive community. Moreover, these principles were nurtured in Castelberger’s Bible study group, and were a key point of division at the heart of the Zurich reform movement.52 The written record for the pre-Anabaptist radical group is sparse, which means that conclusions about early radical thought and practice must include a careful analysis of what those radicals actually did, and not be restricted to an exegesis of the particular surviving documents—both the one and the other are necessary. Nowhere does this principle apply more forcefully than to the letter of Grebel and associates to Thomas Müntzer.53 Some of the most striking passages in the letter, such as the initial review of church history and the call to be as “sheep for the slaughter,” are in fact simply repetitions of language Müntzer used in the two books to which the radicals refer, and are not original with them.54 Many of the peculiar “biblicistic” arguments in the letter concerning proper liturgical details are definitely from Grebel’s pen alone. They match his documented interventions at the disputation of October 1523 and were never implemented as “Anabaptist” or radical reforms by the succeeding movement. The strongly nonresistant phrases in the letter mirror the known views of only one of the signatories to the letter, namely Felix Mantz; two other signatories to the letter—Heini Aberli and Johannes Brötli—were not consistently nonresistant in their later actions. The letter includes a new understanding of church discipline (the ban of Matthew 18). This “rule of Christ” was to be in force with baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and it was to be applied by the church, not

52 53 54

Strübind (2003), 206–11, 219–21. Harder (1985), 284–94. Strübind (2003), 217–18, 254; Matheson (1988), 221.

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the political authorities. This was an important step in a developing Anabaptist ecclesiology, but as later events would demonstrate, it did not yet indicate the adoption of a full-blown separatist and sectarian ecclesiology. The “Letter to Müntzer” reflects discussions that were taking place within the radical group in Zurich at the time it was written, under the influence of a fresh reading of Müntzer’s tracts, but the biblical and ecclesiological themes it articulated were still in flux and had potential to be developed in more than one direction. A closer look at the letter’s expressions on nonresistance and the rejection of war is warranted, because this issue is so important in determining the political stance of the radicals in September 1524. The letter makes two distinct points concerning government, the sword and coercion. The first is that there is to be no coercion within the church for any reason. Those who will not reform following preaching should be admonished as per Matthew 18, but “such a man we say on the basis of God’s Word shall not be put to death but regarded as a heathen and a publican and left alone.”55 In this the Zurich radicals were in complete agreement with Hubmaier, who published his views in On Heretics and Those Who Burn Them at about the same time.56 The Zurich radicals and Hubmaier would both exclude state intervention and coercion in the church itself, which is to be governed only by the Word of God and God’s Spirit. The second point made in the letter is a recapitulation of a view supposedly held by Müntzer: the rejection of all warfare in defense of “the Gospel and its adherents,” and the acceptance by believers of being “sheep for the slaughter.”57 It is significant that no independent Scripture passages are cited here (such as Matthew 5:39), but rather it echoes what the group has read in Müntzer’s tracts and what a messenger has conveyed about Müntzer’s beliefs. Later, when word comes of Müntzer’s aggressive Sermon to the Princes and that Müntzer has preached that the princes “should be combated with the fist,” the writers ask him to desist from “defending war, the tablets, or other things for which you do not find a clear word. . . .”58

55 56 57 58

Harder (1985), 290. Pipkin/Yoder (1989), 58–66. Harder (1985), 290. Ibid., 293.

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At this point, the understanding expressed in the letter seems to be that the church would exist entirely independently of the state, and that believers and the church will be “defenseless” in the world— a clear anticipation of the Schleitheim Articles and standing in stark contrast to the position that would be taken by Hubmaier in Waldshut. The subsequent historical record, however, calls into question the commitment of the Zurich radicals to this nonresistant and separatist view. If Conrad Grebel personally wrote these lines—by no means a certainty—they would be his strongest statement on nonresistance on record. The more telling evidence, however, is historical, not textual: when actual baptizing communities began to be planted and formed under his leadership throughout Switzerland in 1525, Grebel’s commitment to a defenseless, separated church entirely disappears from view. The nonresistant stance expressed in the Letter to Müntzer certainly fit the views of Felix Mantz, but it emphatically did not fit the views of Heini Aberli—student in Castelberger’s school, Grebel’s old friend, enthusiastic reforming disturber, and co-signer of the Letter to Müntzer. Less than one month after signing the letter, Aberli participated in recruiting Zurich soldiers to go to Waldshut to support that city and its Reformation against the Austrian threat.59 Johannes Brötli, who also co-signed the letter—who accepted protection from the armed peasants at Hallau, also did not link nonresistance to baptism in any of the churches he founded as an Anabaptist. As is evident from historical events in 1524 and 1525, at least some of the Zurich radicals, including Conrad Grebel, appear to have been more ecclesiologically flexible than ideologically rigid when they looked beyond Zurich and attempted to lead reforms in various cities and villages throughout the region. The fall of 1524 saw the sharpening of the baptismal issue in Zurich itself, with unfruitful private discussions taking place between Zurich preachers, on the one hand, and opponents of infant baptism on the other.60 As a result of the failed talks, Felix Mantz directed a “Petition of Defense” to the Zurich city council, which focused on the biblical understanding of baptism.61 Whereas the

59 60 61

Bergsten (1978), 116–18. Bender (1950), 127–29; Yoder (2004), 22–25. Harder (1985), 311–15.

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Letter to Müntzer emphasized church discipline in connection with baptism, Mantz mentions discipline not at all, but rather emphasizes new birth and new life. Not only is infant baptism unbiblical, the baptism of adults who are ready to “die to sin” and “live a new life” emerges as the necessary, truly biblical form of baptism. By December 1524 the radicals had come to understand baptism in the essential form that it would later retain: a visible sign of inner faith and a commitment to live a new life in the community of faith, and consequently a rite to be reserved for adults. As a citizen of Zurich, Mantz asked that Zwingli submit, in writing, biblical proof that infant baptism was correct—something he was sure would be impossible to do. A kind of reply came in Zwingli’s Those who Give Cause for Uproar of December 1524, in which he argued that the New Testament neither commands nor forbids infant baptism. Since such a command is absent from the New Testament, one must turn to the Old, where the analogue to baptism is circumcision. Like circumcision, baptism is a “sign of faith,” argued Zwingli, and thus should be given to “children of Christians,” just as circumcision is administered to infant boys.62 By early 1525 the biblical arguments on both sides of the debate over infant baptism were solidifying. In a letter of January 14, 1525, by Grebel to Vadian he reported that a disputation on the subject of infant baptism had been set for January 17. Grebel mentioned a rumor that Hubmaier would be invited, but expressed his doubt “because he is against Zwingli on the matter of baptism and will write against him if he does not back away.”63 Grebel was clearly well-informed about Hubmaier’s views and intentions. The disputation was not the public, formal affair that the previous two had been, but rather a hearing of the dissident radicals before representatives of the government and the clergy; Heinrich Bullinger kept informal notes. According to Bullinger, Mantz, Grebel and Reublin argued the case against infant baptism; Zwingli responded “methodically” with arguments he later published. At the conclusion the authorities ordered the radicals to “forsake their opinion and be peaceful.”64 The two mandates against the radicals promulgated by the Zurich council ( January 18 and 21) made it clear that the city fathers were 62 63 64

Ibid., 319–20. Ibid., 331–32. Ibid., 333–35.

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not in a tolerant frame of mind. The first mandate decreed that “all children shall be baptized as soon as they are born” and that all children hitherto unbaptized are to be baptized “within the next eight days.” Those who refused to comply were to be banished. The second decree closed the “special schools” where such matters were discussed and specified that Grebel and Mantz were to be silent in the future. Furthermore, the decree banished Reublin, Brötli, Ludwig Hätzer and Andreas Castelberger (all non-citizens), and gave them eight days to leave Zurich.65 The response of the radicals to the second decree, which intended to suppress their dissent, was to initiate the earliest documented baptism of adults in the sixteenth century. This probably occurred, as Fritz Blanke conjectured, in the home of Felix Mantz’s mother, just a few blocks from the Great Minster in Zurich, in the evening of January 21, 1525, the day the decree was promulgated.66 Our knowledge of the event has been transmitted solely through the Hutterite historical writings—a mark of the close contact between Swiss Anabaptism and Moravia.67 Present and participating were Grebel and Mantz, as well as George Blaurock, a lapsed priest from Chur, who must have arrived in Zurich very recently, since he was not named in the decree among the non-citizens to be expelled. There were other persons present, but they remain unnamed. Most likely present were Wilhelm Reublin, who participated in the previous debate about baptism, and Johannes Brötli, who was baptizing in Zollikon the very next day.68 The Hutterite Chronicle describes the event: “After the prayer, George Blaurock stood up and asked Conrad Grebel in the name of God to baptize him with true Christian baptism on his faith and recognition of the truth. With this request he knelt down and Conrad baptized him. Then the others turned to George in their turn, asking him to baptize them, which he did.”69

65

Ibid., 336, 338. Blanke (1961), 20. 67 Fast (1978) corrects the argument of Meihuizen (1975), who hypothesizes a second non-Hutterite account. 68 Harder (1985), 707n14. 69 Hutterite Chronicle, 45. 66

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Anabaptism and its Initial Spread in 1525 From a biblical concordance composed by Conrad Grebel on the subjects of faith and baptism, and from the argumentation of early Swiss Anabaptists, it may be assumed that the central gospel passages justifying the first adult baptisms of January 1525 were Matthew 28:18–20 and Mark 16:15–16, the two variants of the Great Commission. For the Anabaptists, these passages from Matthew and Mark contained the fundamental command of the Lord: go forth and teach, then baptize those who repent and believe, following which, instruct them to obey my commandments. This sequence, argued the earliest Anabaptists, outlined the proper biblical order concerning baptism. It linked water baptism to the essential Reformation dictum of justification by faith: first hear the Gospel, repent, come to faith, then accept baptism as an outward sign of that faith and a pledge of obedience. Thus baptism from the start was non-sacramental in nature, a visible sign of an inner change, and also a visible commitment to henceforth live a new life. Less often noted is the recurring theme in Grebel’s concordance regarding the work of the Spirit of God in coming to faith and the subsequent baptism in water. Passages from Acts—especially Acts 2:38, Acts 9:17–19, Acts 16:17–34, and Acts 19:1–5—provide examples of the apostolic practice of baptism which emphasize not only the necessary conjunction of profession of faith and baptism, but also the role of the Holy Spirit in the process of coming to faith. Also notable is the reference to John 3:5 in Grebel’s concordance: unless you are born of water and the spirit you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven.70 Implicit in the earliest Swiss statements on baptism, then, is the “inner baptism” of the Spirit which brings faith, and results in the outer baptism of water. This was the spiritualistic response to the de-sacramentalization of baptism: the water conveyed no power, but rather testified to and confirmed a spiritual power (faith; inner baptism) received independently of the water. Hubmaier’s detailed biblical defense of adult baptism and his description of a three-fold baptism of spirit, water and blood, soon to appear in print, repeats and builds upon many of these earliest passages and interpretations. 70

QGTS Ostschweiz, 272.

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With the act of adult baptism the first baptizing communities in Switzerland and its immediate environs had decided on an independent ecclesiological path, but they had barely begun the process of discerning and putting into practice ecclesiological models that would correspond to adult baptism. It must be noted here that a) the first baptisms did not yet take place within a clear ecclesiological vision; b) the first baptisms did not yet imply a separation of the “inner” spiritual baptism from the outer baptism of water—that is, the first baptizers were not yet identifiable as either spiritualists or sectarians; and c) the first baptisms did not yet imply a separation of the “true church” from the world or society at large. Just what this early baptism meant would soon become apparent in the communities that began forming, beginning in Zollikon. The Zurich radicals quickly won adherents in neighboring villages and towns to their baptizing vision of reform. The persons who certainly or likely participated in the first adult baptisms of January 21 were all soon on the move and actively winning converts: Conrad Grebel, Felix Mantz, George Blaurock, Wilhelm Reublin and Johannes Brötli. The first community to be evangelized by the Anabaptists was Zollikon, a small village outside of Zurich and under its rule. Here the movement spread for several months in spite of mass arrests by the Zurich authorities. The baptizing movement simultaneously spread west to the territories of Basel and Bern, and east to St. Gall and Appenzell. More significant in the context of 1525 was the spread of the movement to the north of Zurich—to Schaffhausen, Hallau and Waldshut—where peasant unrest was erupting. Still the most authoritative account of Anabaptist Zollikon, a village of three hundred fifty persons situated three kilometers from the center of Zurich, is Fritz Blanke’s small book, Brothers in Christ.71 Zollikon had been a center of agitation for radical religious change. In late September of 1523, Klaus Hottinger of Zollikon and Lorenz Hochrütiner, a citizen of St. Gall who had moved to Zurich, dug up and removed a public crucifix in Stadelhofen, between Zollikon and Zurich. Both were exiled for this act of iconoclasm. Hottinger was later executed in Luzerne for his opposition to the old faith; Hochrütiner returned to St. Gall, where he soon became a prominent supporter of Anabaptism.72 The first documented adult baptism 71 72

Blanke (1961). Egli, Actensammlung, 164, 178; Bullinger, Reformationsgeschichte, I, 150–51.

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in Zollikon took place on January 22, 1525, with the baptism of Fridli Schumacher by Johannes Brötli at a public well. For eight days a fever of baptizing spread through the village, carried out mostly by Brötli and George Blaurock, with some baptisms also by Felix Mantz.73 In Zollikon baptism was seen primarily as a penitential act. Blanke has aptly described the “revival movement” atmosphere that seemed to pervade the village. Tears and wailing were common in these first baptisms, as was the undertaking to stop sinning and lead new lives. Along with adult baptism, but not always connected with it, were simple celebrations of the Lord’s Supper. Sometimes the Lord’s Supper rather than baptism functioned as the initiatory rite for reformed Christians. Apparently, participants in the Lord’s Supper were not required to have first undergone baptism.74 Zollikon testimonies explicitly link love and fraternal sharing of material goods to both baptism and the Lord’s Supper. It is significant, however, that the ban (Matthew 18), prominent in the letter to Müntzer of September 1524, is virtually absent from early Zollikon records in connection with either baptism or the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. Zollikon testimonies also say very little concerning the government and the sword. Indeed, with the exception of Felix Mantz,75 there is not a single testimony in which a Zollikon Anabaptist stated unequivocally that a repentant and baptized Christian is not to kill another human being for any reason. The essential Anabaptist position in Zollikon concerning government did not deny the sword to the government, but emphasized that the government had no place within the church.76 The emphases among the Zollikon Anabaptists are not exactly what one would expect were the “Letter to Müntzer” to be regarded as a “consensus” document setting forth an ecclesiological program. These first baptisms were acts of repentance. The biblical texts were clear: believe, repent, be baptized, and live a new life—all of which could only make sense when applied to adult persons; the Supper emphasized the communal dimensions and commitments of the “new life” of faith. There was a strong congregationalist vision coming to expression in Zollikon; however, this biblical congregationalism was 73 74 75 76

Blanke (1961), 21–22; QGTS Zurich, 41–42. QGTS Zurich, 38. Ibid., 128, 216. Ibid., 103.

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not yet clear on how committed baptized believers were to exist within a governmental structure. The territory north and northwest of Zurich, from the Klettgau to Stühlingen, bounded by Schaffhausen to the east and Waldshut to the west, had been in turmoil since the rebellion of the Stühlingen peasants in the summer of 1524. The crisis soon spread throughout the region.77 The Catholic historian Paul Herzog has asserted that the Zurich Reformation provided the tinder for this earliest beginning of the Peasants’ War;78 and it is true that in late 1523 the Zurich government, as legal “protector” of the Klettgau, had promoted reforming ideas in that district. Now, at the same time that baptismal disobedience was emerging on Zurich’s doorstep, its reforming efforts in the region just to the north were coming unraveled, as the peasants of Hallau appealed to the “Word of God” to justify their political rebellion. It was precisely to this region that the leaders of the baptizing reform now moved. On January 26, 1525, Wilhelm Reublin and Johannes Brötli left the incipient baptizing group in Zollikon and traveled directly to Hallau. Reublin and Brötli then went on to Schaffhausen, where they met with Conrad Grebel and spent an evening with Sebastian Hofmeister and Sebastian Meyer, pastors in the city.79 Grebel remained in Schaffhausen, where he would reside for two months until the end of March; Reublin and Brötli returned to Hallau, and then Reublin continued on to Waldshut, where he arrived on January 29. It is notable that just one week after the first baptisms in Zurich, the “Grebel circle” had started a baptizing group in Zollikon and was fanning out to gain support for its vision of “biblical reform” in Schaffhausen, Hallau and Waldshut. The baptizing movement was actively seeking support in those areas already favorable to Zwingli’s Reformation. The economic misery in the rural villages of the region clearly added urgency to the demands for relief from tithes and taxes. The Hallau peasants had submitted such demands to Schaffhausen already in July 1524, in which they asked to have no lord but God alone, that tithes be spent where they were collected, and that the clergy

77 78 79

Scott/Scribner (1991), 21, 81. Herzog (1965), 37. QGTS Zurich, 45.

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should live from tithes alone. These demands and more were repeated early in 1525.80 Reublin and Brötli were already sympathetic to communities controlling their own tithes and pastoral appointments, as their preaching and their actions in Witikon and Zollikon demonstrate. They brought these concerns to a sympathetic public in Hallau in late January; in addition, they brought their new understanding of church reform, which now included adult baptism, a memorial Lord’s Supper, and a commitment of the baptized to share with one another as need demanded. By April of 1525 they were accepted as pastors in Hallau and were successful in establishing their Anabaptist program until early November, when the peasant resistance collapsed.81 Exact numbers are not available, but the historical record demonstrates that they enjoyed the support of the majority of Hallauers, who accepted baptism as adults, and that their activities centered in the village church, where at least some adult baptisms are known to have taken place.82 Even as most Hallau villagers accepted baptism they also continued to participate in the Peasants’ War. Indeed, when Schaffhausen sent troops to arrest the Anabaptist preachers of Hallau in August 1525, they were prevented by the villagers who protected Reublin and Brötli “weapons in hand.”83 Although these two Anabaptist pastors were members of the Grebel circle of radicals, they clearly did not take the option of surrendering as “sheep for the slaughter” to the troops from Schaffhausen who had come to arrest them. Similar to Grebel’s own actions once baptizing had begun, Reublin and Brötli’s actions at Hallau indicate an open, flexible approach to government and the sword in 1525. The most stable, numerous and important Anabaptist community in 1525 was, without doubt, the church of Waldshut, established when Balthasar Hubmaier baptized the majority of Waldshut citizens, including the majority of the city council, in April 1525.84 Waldshut became an Anabaptist city and would remain so for seven and a half months, until it capitulated to Austrian forces on December 5, 1525. The historiography of earlier Mennonite historians such as

80 81 82 83 84

Scott/Scribner (1991), 81; Stayer (1977), 94–95. Stayer (1977), 93. QGTS Zurich, 162. Stayer (1977), 95–98. Bergsten (1978), 269.

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Harold S. Bender85 and John H. Yoder86 and later revisionists such as James Stayer,87 tended to assume that Hubmaier’s Anabaptism in Waldshut was very different from Grebel’s in Zurich. Because Hubmaier did not reject the sword of government and because he was a university-trained theologian, the argument has gone, he had a markedly different ecclesiology than the Zurich Anabaptists. In fact, Hubmaier has genuine credentials as heir to and participant in Swiss Anabaptism, namely the baptizing group that had its origins in Zurich and that spread to neighboring Swiss and south German territories in 1525. Like Grebel and his friends Hubmaier sought outside confirmation for his views in support of adult baptism; just as they turned to Karlstadt and Müntzer, Hubmaier wrote for counsel to neighboring reformers, Johannes Oecolampadius in Basel and Sebastian Hofmeister in Schaffhausen. But the primary stimulus to his thinking about the matter came from the Zurich radicals. Hubmaier was wooed for the baptizing cause by Grebel, who during his two-month stay in Schaffhausen made one documented visit to Hubmaier in Waldshut, and could easily have made more.88 Hubmaier was baptized by Reublin in 1525, and maintained contact with individual Zollikon Anabaptists who moved in and out of Waldshut. Hubmaier’s first Anabaptist writings emerged out of his dialogue with Grebel and represented a further development of ideas of the Grebel group in Zurich. The earliest Anabaptist programmatic writings—published less than six months after the first adult baptisms in Zurich—were written not by Grebel, Mantz, Blaurock or Reublin, but came from the pen of Balthasar Hubmaier and were written in Waldshut. The first of these programmatic publications was a little booklet called “A Summary of the Entire Christian Life,” published July 1, 1525.89 In it Hubmaier described the essence of being an Anabaptist believer and church member in five points which, for the first time, outline an Anabaptist ecclesiology that is much more fully formed 85

Bender (1950), 147–48. Yoder (2004), 39, 40. 87 Stayer (1972), 104–07, 141–45. As long as Stayer was focused on “the doctrine of the sword,” Hubmaier seemed a very atypical Anabaptist; but already in Stayer (1975), 39–46, a place was found for Hubmaier in the context of Anabaptist “resistance,” very much like the interpretation of this chapter. 88 Bergsten (1978), 229. 89 Pipkin/Yoder (1989), 81–89. 86

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than the earlier writings of Grebel or Mantz or the testimonies from Zollikon. Hubmaier begins by pointing to Mark 1:15 as the first step in the Anabaptist [Christian] life: “Repent and believe the Gospel.” Hubmaier was convinced that profound self-examination—marked by lamentation, despair and repentance—was the first step on the way to a truly Christian life, a sentiment that resonated with the Zollikon experience.90 The second was the step of faith—an inward surrender of the heart in which the believer is healed, consoled and empowered by the Great Physician. Hubmaier prominently highlighted the strong link of faith with fruit—a new life—which is so evident in the Zollikon testimonies emphasizing the grace and power of God’s Spirit in the process.91 Third, following an inward conviction of sin, repentance and faith, comes an outward commitment to the church by the sign of water baptism. Baptism, says Hubmaier, signifies that if the new believer “henceforth blackens or shames the faith and name of Christ with public or offensive sins, he herewith submits and surrenders to brotherly discipline according to the order of Christ, Matt. 18:15ff.”92 Hubmaier’s understanding of baptism integrated church discipline firmly into the ecclesiastical structure of the voluntary church: baptism in water signifies a mutual commitment of adult baptized believers to fraternal discipline, which is cemented in admission to the Lord’s Supper. This linkage, which Hubmaier learned in connection with the Zurich group, would remain a key mark of subsequent Anabaptist ecclesiology. At this stage of Anabaptist ecclesial development—almost two years before the appearance of the Schleitheim Articles—acceptance of adult baptism, church discipline and a memorial Supper marked a church of committed adult believers, but did not yet indicate the establishment of a minority, separated, nonresistant believers’ church. The fourth point in a truly Christian life, said Hubmaier, is dependence on the power of God, joyful proclamation and bearing good fruit in spite of persecution. Part of the good fruit that results is an evangelistic explosion.93 The fifth point is the thankful celebration of

90 91 92 93

Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid.,

84. 84–85. 85–86. 86.

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the Lord’s Supper with the brothers and sisters in the community of faith. The Supper is the time of remembering and thanksgiving, but the Supper also signifies surrendering one’s will to the will of Christ, and it celebrates the fact that Christ desires for us to share materially with one another, in our mutual need.94 In May of 1525, Zwingli had published Of Baptism, Rebaptism and Infant Baptism, written specifically to combat the growing Anabaptist movement in St. Gall.95 Two months after Zwingli’s book, and just ten days after the publication of A Summary, Hubmaier published a small masterpiece, apparently written in five days, On the Christian Baptism of Believers; the pamphlet included the previously-published Summary as an appendix.96 On the Christian Baptism of Believers was an even more explicit reply to Zwingli’s Of Baptism, countering Zwingli’s criticisms but also providing detailed scriptural argumentation in favor of adult baptism. The booklet soon was circulating far and wide, known in Basel, in the Zurich area, in Zollikon, and especially in the Grüningen district where Grebel was now active.97 Whereas the “Letter to Müntzer” and Mantz’s “Protestation” were private communications, known to historians today only because they happened to be preserved in archives, Hubmaier’s baptism book was printed, widely distributed, and had an immediate impact on the controversy about baptism. It was the first publication to present systematic biblical arguments for adult baptism and it concluded with a programmatic ecclesiology based on adult baptism. The non-polemical tone of the book, its clear organization, straight-forward language and convincing presentation of a wide range of biblical evidence made it the essential Anabaptist handbook. The fact that Hubmaier’s two publications of July 1525 have either been passed over in silence or marginalized as idiosyncratic by most historians writing on Swiss Anabaptism is undoubtedly due to the fact of Hubmaier’s support for the military action of his Waldshut parishioners, and the conclusion by many historians that Conrad Grebel and the majority of Zurich radicals were firmly nonresistant—the primary (and virtually only) evidence supporting the latter conclusion being the “Letter to Müntzer.” Hubmaier’s position in 94 95 96 97

Ibid., 88. Potter (1976), 190–92. Pipkin/Yoder (1989), 93–149. Bergsten (1978), 261–62.

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this regard has never been in doubt: he was not then, nor would he be later, nonresistant.98 But there are very good reasons to doubt Grebel’s ecclesiological commitment to nonresistance, given the uncertainty of authorship of specific parts of the “Letter to Müntzer,” and especially given the concrete fruits of his Anabaptist leadership in Zollikon, Hallau and Waldshut, as well as St. Gall, Tablat, and Grüningen. The pronounced lack of nonresistant teaching in those emerging Anabaptist churches, and the opportunistic political engagement undertaken with the help of rebellious subjects during 1525, argues against a tradition of scholarship that has rested largely on a few lines of questionable authorship in a surviving letter. Not only was there intermittent contact between Grebel and Hubmaier both before and after Hubmaier’s baptism, there were also continuing close connections between key members of the Zollikon congregation and Hubmaier in Waldshut throughout 1525.99 Certainly the question of the legitimate use of the sword was being debated here and there in early Swiss Anabaptism, but it was Felix Mantz who championed a strongly nonresistant position throughout.100 There appears to be no evidence of friction between Hubmaier on the one side and Grebel and the Zollikon Anabaptists on the other on questions of the sword. Hubmaier’s broad understanding of the role of Christians working in and with government was not an anomaly in the early Swiss Anabaptism of 1525, but rather reflected the actual practice of the first Anabaptist communities; it was the majority position. From the start, those communities had insisted that government not interfere in church matters, but had left undefined how exactly members of believers’ churches of the baptized would live out their lives as citizens of the world. Whenever possible, the first Anabaptists moved to establish baptizing communities with local political support. Local political support did secure baptizing communities for a few months, from March and April until December 1525, in Hallau and Waldshut, behind the screen of still unsuppressed peasant uprisings, but it did not win even this temporary success anywhere else. In Schaffhausen, Waldshut’s Swiss neighbor, which had granted refuge

98 99 100

Cf. Stayer (1972), 104–07. QGTS Zurich, 194. Ibid., 128, 216.

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to Hubmaier for two months in late 1524, Hubmaier was successful with his fellow pastor, Sebastian Hofmeister, whom he, Grebel and Reublin had been wooing for Anabaptism, but the outcome was a temporary setback for the Reformation in the town, which was only completed on a Zwinglian basis in 1529. In February 1525 Hofmeister wrote to Hubmaier that Zwingli was wrong in saying that infants were to be baptized, that he had not been able to bring himself to baptize his own child, and that he had “spoken the truth” about baptism to the city council.101 As the Peasants’ War gained strength in 1525 in the territories surrounding Schaffhausen and in its dependencies, such as Hallau, the city granted reforming concessions to Hofmeister and his supporters, such as allowing the removal of images from the churches. Hofmeister’s base of political support, however, remained with the peasants and the city’s semiagricultural guild of vine-tenders. In early August the Schaffhausen council abruptly called up the militia, suppressed the vine-tenders, and exiled Hofmeister. After some wandering and uncertainty, Hofmeister fled to Zurich, where he ceased his flirtation with Anabaptism, accepted Zwingli’s views on baptism, and gained a post as preacher in the city.102 After the first baptisms in Zurich and Zollikon, Conrad Grebel set out for places where he had influence among kin and persons whom he assumed to share his beliefs about religious reform, particularly Schaffhausen and St. Gall, where he spent a great part of his time from February to April 1525. St. Gall was under the political and religious sway of Grebel’s brother-in-law, Vadian, who had opted for Zwingli’s type of Reformation and told Grebel of his support for infant baptism in November 1524. But St. Gall was also a city without a powerful reforming pastor. It was experiencing a laydirected Reformation centering in government-authorized Bible study groups. In the fall of 1524 the leader of these study groups, which soon drew upwards of one thousand persons, was Wolfgang Uliman, son of a St. Gall guild master and a former monk. Lorenz Hochrütiner, banished from Zurich for iconoclasm in 1523, was the first opponent of infant baptism from summer 1524, and his ideas won their way in the lay study groups.103 Grebel himself baptized Uliman by 101 102 103

QGTS Ostschweiz, 13–14; Bergsten (1978), 200–02. Stayer (1977), 91–92; Bergsten (1978), 259–61. Harder (1985), 297–98.

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immersion in the Rhine about a month after the first baptisms in Zurich.104 By March 25 Grebel was in St. Gall, working for the baptizing movement that was already underway. He certainly did not make life easier for Vadian: Grebel was reported to have baptized an estimated three hundred people in the Sitter River on Palm Sunday, April 9, 1525.105 The chronicler of St. Gall, Johannes Kessler, estimated that the Anabaptists numbered eight hundred baptized members,106 although many of these may have been villagers from the territories of the Abbey of St. Gall or from Appenzell. In April and May of 1525, Anabaptism took on the character of a mass movement in the political space that St. Gall provided.107 The mass baptisms and mass celebrations of the Lord’s Supper in St. Gall mirror the flexible ecclesial boundaries also seen in Zollikon and in the mass baptisms in Waldshut. However, the religious freedom afforded by the transition to the Reformation in St. Gall only lasted two months. The last week of May and the first week of June saw the political tide turn decisively against Anabaptism in St. Gall. By June 6 the St. Gall council had decreed against Grebel and the Anabaptists, in favor of the infant baptism of Vadian and Zwingli: henceforth all were to stop baptizing adults and celebrating the Supper. In the extensive territories surrounding the city of St. Gall, formally ruled by the Abbot of St. Gall, but actually ruled by the Catholic majority of the member states of the Swiss Confederation, there was no moderate Reformation grafted to the authority of local government, as in Vadian’s St. Gall or Zwingli’s Zurich. The only advocates of church reform were Anabaptist radicals spreading from the city of St. Gall; and they had a great opportunity to preach their message because the Peasants’ War upheavals had undermined governmental authority in the region. In early June Melchior Degen, appointed official for St. Gall Abbey, attempted to break up a meeting led by an Anabaptist named Hans Krüsi, who was reading and baptizing in the villages of St. Georgen and Tablat, less than a kilometer from the city of St. Gall. On the day the mandate against Anabaptism was published in the city, according to Degen’s report, the “entire community” in Tablat 104 105 106 107

QGTS Ostschweiz, 604. Harder (1985), 361; QGTS Ostschweiz, 605. QGTS Ostschweiz, 610. Haas (1975), 65.

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elected Krüsi to read, baptize and celebrate the Lord’s Supper.108 Krüsi, a teacher’s assistant born in St. Georgen, appears to have joined the Anabaptist movement in St. Gall at the beginning of April 1525. In his prison testimony he said that he was won for the movement by Conrad Grebel himself, and further testified that Grebel had left a small, handwritten book with him and explained it to him. Krüsi’s activities as an Anabaptist pastor did not last long, but he testified that he had preached against images, which led to acts of iconoclasm; he performed marriages; and he promoted voluntary community of goods in which those who had were to share with those in need. He further confessed that he had baptized so many people that he did not know the number. Perhaps Krüsi’s teaching against the payment of tithes paved the way for the local peasantry to accept adult baptism.109 In any case, as in Hallau, the baptizing movement in the villages outside St. Gall turned into a mass movement that merged with the local rebellion of the common people. When Degen and his bailiffs first attempted to break up Krusi’s meeting in early June, they were driven off by the crowd surrounding Krüsi. In mid-July, however, Degen surprised Krüsi asleep in his bed in St. Georgen. A large number of Krüsi’s supporters in the neighboring villages had pledged to protect and defend him with life and limb, but the arrest in the dead of night took them by surprise. No help came at that hour, although Krüsi’s followers did set up a watch around the castle Oberberg, west of St. Gall, where he was held, ready to free Krüsi if there were an attempt to move him.110 Finally on July 20, Krüsi was successfully transported to Luzern, the militantly Catholic canton. There he was condemned to death by fire as a heretic, a sentence that was carried out July 27, 1525. The Anabaptism in Tablat and the villages around St. Gall initially took full advantage of peasant dissatisfaction and unrest, but in the end it had to go underground with the re-establishment of the old order. After Grebel left St. Gall a few days before Easter 1525, his movements fall into shadow for a time. In early June he traveled to Waldshut to confer with Hubmaier, who was at the time working on his programmatic Anabaptist writings, published a month later

108 109 110

QGTS Ostschweiz, 251–53. Ibid., 262–65; Fast (1962). QGTS Ostschweiz, 256–57.

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in July.111 On his return from Waldshut, Grebel moved to the area southeast of Zurich, where he worked in and around Grüningen from the end of June until his arrest by Zurich authorities on October 8.112 As Harold Bender notes, the formerly independent peasants in the Grüningen district were being moved under the control of the city of Zurich. In the spring of 1525 opposition to tithes and tensions between the local population and the city had already broken into open revolt. In April a peasant mob plundered the monastery of Rüti. Among the demands of the peasants was the power to choose their own pastors. But, as Bender observes, “the city council of Zurich rejected all demands of the peasants whether economic, political or ecclesiastical.”113 While Grebel was not the instigator of tithe unrest in Grüningen, and was primarily preaching adult baptism, he was ready to capitalize on local political unrest to create a space for his counter-Zwinglian reform. The historical record documents Grebel’s method of winning local support: a combination of public preaching, private reading and meetings with local pastors. On July 2 he preached to large assemblies in the villages of Hinwil and Bäretswyl.114 Sometime in late summer, Grebel was joined in Grüningen by George Blaurock and Felix Mantz, who had been active together in Chur and Appenzell in the previous months. Harold Bender concludes that the period of four months Grebel spent promoting the Anabaptist movement in Grüningen was “one of the most successful of his career as a leader of the Brethren.”115 He maintains that in Grüningen “Grebel delivered a purely religious message.”116 John Yoder nuanced Bender’s conclusion, recognizing a certain mixing of peasant unrest with Anabaptism in Grüningen, but nevertheless Yoder postulated that with the recantation of rebaptized erstwhile peasant leaders, Gyrenbader and Golpacher (also called Vontobel), the provisional political elements were purged from the movement. There had been some “political” infiltrators, but after late December 1525 only “genuine” Anabaptists were left.117 Matthias 111 112 113 114 115 116 117

Harder (1985), 411–12. Bender (1950), 148–49. Ibid., 148. Harder (1985), 412–22, 429–31. Bender (1950), 149. Ibid., 153–54. Yoder (2004), 56.

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Hui’s concentrated study of events in Grüningen came to a very different conclusion that better reflects the situation in 1525. Rather than making a firm distinction between rebellious peasants and Anabaptists in Grüningen, Hui acknowledged that some of the central leaders among the rebellious peasants, such as Gyrenbader, later also accepted adult baptism.118 Yet he concluded that “for the ‘early Reformation period’ . . . no clear barriers can be drawn between the various groups (peasant-reforming movement, Anabaptism) or their guiding principles (evangelical proclamation, lay preaching, rejection of tithes, complete community autonomy, church discipline, believers’ baptism).”119 Conclusion It seems a particular mistake to study Swiss Anabaptist beginnings and development in the first year of its existence in an “either/or” mode, characterized as either “primarily” social or “primarily” religious—as if the victory of one area of concern means the defeat of the other. The events of 1525 demonstrate that Swiss Anabaptism was intimately involved with both social and religious issues, based on its biblical understanding of church reform. From the start the proto-Anabaptists participated in a biblical weighing of what constituted a Christian church and a Christian society. Conrad Grebel and the members of his circle120 were quick to promote their vision of congregational reform, free from state interference, based on the freely-chosen baptism of adults, wherever political openings offered themselves, and they showed themselves to be politically astute in capitalizing on local grievances for the advancement of their religious cause. Only with the failure of the Peasants’ War, with the closing of political space and in the face of intense political repression, did Swiss Anabaptism begin to establish an ecclesial understanding of the baptized church as a persecuted, separated minority, developing ideas that had been voiced by a minority of baptizers from the start. A careful review of the evidence confirms and strengthens a “two phase” narrative of Swiss Anabaptist beginnings. 118

Hui (1989), 120–21. Ibid., 137. 120 This interpretation of Conrad Grebel and his associates is anticipated to a significant degree by Hans-Jürgen Goertz (1998). 119

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The present study underlines the importance of Waldshut and Balthasar Hubmaier to an understanding of early Swiss Anabaptism. The fact that Waldshut was in Austrian territory and the other spheres of activity of early Anabaptism were within the Swiss Confederation does not negate their full involvement with each other in the emerging Zwinglian and Anabaptist Reformations. The first programmatic Anabaptist ecclesial writing by Balthasar Hubmaier in July 1525 did establish the necessity of linking the ban to baptism and the Supper, and provided the first essential ecclesial outline for later Anabaptist communities. It was elaborated as an extension of fundamental ideas first promoted by Conrad Grebel and his circle in Zurich, and emerged in direct dialogue with Grebel and members of his circle. A separatist Anabaptist ecclesiology, such as would be articulated later in the Schleitheim Articles, was not yet in evidence or operating in the communities formed by Swiss Anabaptists in 1525.121 Selected Bibliography Sources Bullinger, Heinrich. Heinrich Bullinger Reformationsgeschichte, 3 vols. J. J. Hottinger and H. H. Vögeli, eds. 1838; rprt. ed. Zurich, 1984. Egli, Emil, ed. Actensammlung zur Geschichte der Zürcher Reformation in den Jahren 1519–1533. Zurich, 1879. Fast, Heinold, ed. Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer in der Schweiz, vol. 2: Ostschweiz. Zurich, 1973. [QGTS Ostschweiz] Franck, Sebastian. Chronica, Zeitbuch unnd Geschichtsbibel. Ulm 1536; photoreprint ed., Darmstadt, 1969. Harder, Leland, ed. The Sources of Swiss Anabaptism: The Grebel Letters and Related Documents. Scottdale, PA, 1985. Hutterian Brethren, eds. The Chronicle of the Hutterian Brethren, vol. 1. Rifton, NY, 1987. Matheson, Peter, ed. The Collected Works of Thomas Müntzer. Edinburgh, 1988. Muralt, Leonhard von and Walter Schmid, eds. Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer in der Schweiz, vol. 1: Zürich. Zurich 1952. [QGTS Zurich] Pipkin, Wayne and John Howard Yoder, eds. Balthasar Hubmaier. Theologian of Anabaptism. Scottdale, PA, 1989. Scott, Tom and Robert W. Scribner, trans. and eds. The German Peasants’ War: A History in Documents. Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1991.

121 Here recognition is due to Martin Haas, who first questioned the separatist character of early Swiss Anabaptism in Umstrittenes Täufertum (1975).

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Bender, Harold S. Conrad Grebel c. 1498–1526. The Founder of the Swiss Brethren, sometimes Called Anabaptists. Goshen, IN, 1950. Bergsten, Torsten. Balthasar Hubmaier. Anabaptist Theologian and Martyr. William R. Estep, ed. Valley Forge, PA, 1978. Blanke, Fritz. Brothers in Christ. J. Nordenhaug, trans. Scottdale, PA, 1961. Blickle, Peter. “Republiktheorie aus revolutionärer Erfahrung (1525),” Verborgene republikanische Traditionen. Tübingen, 1998, 195–210. Dyck, Cornelius J., ed. An Introduction to Mennonite History. Scottdale, PA, 1967. Fast, Heinold. Heinrich Bullinger und die Täufer. Weierhof, 1959. ——. “Hans Krüsis Büchlein über Glauben und Taufe,” in A Legacy of Faith, Cornelius J. Dyck, ed. Newton, KS, 1962, 213–22. ——. “Reformation durch Provokation. Predigtstörungen in den ersten Jahren der Reformation in der Schweiz,” in Umstrittenes Täufertum (1975), 79–110. ——. “Wie doopte Konrad Grebel?” Doopsgezinde Bijdragen NR 4 (1978), 22–31. Gäbler, Ulrich. Huldrych Zwingli. Eine Einführung in sein Leben und sein Werk. Munich, 1983. Goeters, J. F. Gerhard. Ludwig Hätzer. Spiritualist und Antitrinitarier. Eine Randfigur der frühen Täuferbewegung. Gütersloh, 1957. ——. “Die Vorgeschichte des Täufertums in Zürich,” in Studien zur Geschichte und Theologie der Reformation. Festschrift für Ernst Bizer, L. Abramowski and J. F. Gerhard Goeters, eds. Neukirchen, 1969, 239–81. Goertz, Hans-Jürgen. “History and Theology: A Major Problem of Anabaptist Research Today,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 53 (1979), 177–88. ——. Pfaffenhaß und groß Geschrei. Die reformatorischen Bewegungen in Deutschland 1517–1529. Munich, 1987. ——. Konrad Grebel. Kritiker des frommen Scheins, 1498–1526. Eine biographische Skizze. Bolanden and Hamburg, 1998. Gordon, Bruce. The Swiss Reformation. Manchester, 2002. Gregory, Brad S. Salvation at Stake. Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge, MA, 1999. Haas, Martin. “Der Weg der Täufer in die Absonderung. Zur Interdependenz von Theologie und sozialem Verhaltung,” in Umstrittenes Täufertum (1975), 50–78. Herzog, Paul. Die Bauernunruhen im Schaffhauser Gebiet 1524/25. Aarau, 1965. Hui, Matthias, “Von Bauernaufstand zur Täuferbewegung,” Mennonitische Geschichtsblätter 46 (1989), 113–44. Krajewski, Ekkehard. Leben und Sterben des Zürcher Täuferführers Felix Mantz. Kassel, 1958. Klaassen, Walter. “Hans Hut and Thomas Müntzer,” Baptist Quarterly 19 (1962), 209–227. Meihuizen, H. E. “De bronen voor een geschiedenis van de eerste doperse doopstoediening,” Dooopsgezinde Bijdragen NR 1 (1975), 54–61. Neuser, Wilhelm H. Die reformatorische Wende bei Zwingli. Neukirchen, 1977. Oberman, Heiko A. “The Gospel of Social Unrest,” in German Peasant War 1525, Robert W. Scribner and Gerhard Benecke, eds. London 1979, 39–51. Oyer, John S. Lutheran Reformers against Anabaptists. Luther, Melanchthon, and Menius and the Anabaptists of Central Germany. The Hague, 1964. Packull, Werner O. “The Origins of Swiss Anabaptism in the Context of the Reformation of the Common Man,” Journal of Mennonite Studies 3 (1985), 36–59. ——. Hutterite Beginnings. Communitarian Experiments during the Reformation. Baltimore, 1995. Pater, Calvin A. Karlstadt as the Father of the Anabaptist Movements. The Emergence of Lay Protestantism. Toronto, 1984.

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Potter, George R. Zwingli. Cambridge, UK, 1976. Roth, John D. “Recent Currents in the Historiography of the Radical Reformation,” Church History 71 (2002), 523–35. Scribner, Robert W. The German Reformation. Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1986. Snyder, C. Arnold. “Word and Power in Reformation Zurich,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 81 (1990), 263–85. ——. “Communication and the People: The Case of Reformation St. Gall,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 67 (1993), 152–73. ——. Anabaptist History and Theology: An Introduction. Kitchener, ON, 1995. Stayer, James M. Anabaptists and the Sword. Lawrence, KS, 1972. ——. “The Significance of Anabaptism and Anabaptist Research,” in Radikalität und Dissent im 16. Jahrhundert/Radicalism and Dissent in the Sixteenth Century, Hans-Jürgen Goertz and James M. Stayer, eds. Berlin 2002, 77–88. ——. “Die Anfänge des schweizerisches Täufertums im reformierten Kongregationalismus,” in Umstrittenes Täufertum (1975), 19–49. ——. “Reublin und Brötli: The Revolutionary Beginnings of Swiss Anabaptism,” in The Origins and Characteristics of Anabaptism, Marc Lienhard, ed. The Hague 1977, 83–102. ——. “The Radical Reformation,” in Thomas A. Brady, jr., Heiko A. Oberman and James D. Tracy, eds. Handbook of European History, 1400–1600: Late Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation. Leiden, 1995, 2: 249–82. ——, Werner O. Packull and Klaus Deppermann. “From Monogenesis to Polygenesis: The Historical Discussion of Anabaptist Origins,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 49 (1975), 83–122. Strübind, Andrea. Eifriger als Zwingli: Die frühe Täuferbewegung in der Schweiz. Berlin, 2003. Troeltsch, Ernst. The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches. 2 vols. Olive Wyon, trans. London, 1931. Umstrittenes Täufertum, 1525–1975. Neue Forschungen. Goertz, Hans-Jürgen, ed. Göttingen 1975. Walton, Robert C. Zwingli’s Theocracy. Toronto, 1967. ——. “Was there a Turning Point in the Zwinglian Reformation?” Mennonite Quarterly Review 42 (1968), 45–56. Yoder, John Howard. “The Turning Point in the Zwinglian Reformation,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 32 (1958), 128–40. ——. Anabaptism and Reformation in Switzerland. An Historical and Theological Analysis of the Dialogues between Anabaptists and Reformers. C. Arnold Snyder, ed. Kitchener, ON, 2004. Zorzin, Alejandro. “Karlstadts ‘Dialogus vom Touff der Kinder’ in einem Wormser Druck aus dem Jahr 1527,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 79 (1988), 27–56.

CHAPTER THREE

SWISS-SOUTH GERMAN ANABAPTISM, 1526–1540 James M. Stayer The years 1526 to 1540 were years in which Anabaptism in the Swiss Confederation and the southern parts of the Holy Roman Empire took shape as a non-territorial gathered church, without fixed inner denominational divisions. During the Peasants’ War its adherents had not yet abandoned all hope of becoming the dominant expression of the Reformation in places where they were particularly strong. After 1526 Anabaptism had the possibility of unfolding only as a nonconformist religious movement subjected to persecution, whether mild or fierce, from the political authorities. Up to the point of the suppression of the Peasants’ War in northeastern Switzerland and the neighboring Black Forest in the last two months of 1525, renunciation of violence was not the common belief or practice among the Anabaptists; when there were prospects of success they resisted. A few voices were raised denying that a Christian could take the life of another human being, even in self-defense. This was the stand of Felix Mantz among the first Anabaptists in Zurich1 and Jakob Groß in Waldshut;2 but they were the exceptions, not the rule. The main themes of the Anabaptist movement of 1525, as shaped conjointly by Conrad Grebel and Balthasar Hubmaier, were the rethinking of baptism and the Lord’s Supper to meet New Testament standards and the introduction of discipline according to Matthew 18. To carry out these reforms involved a rupture with the established parish clergy, which continued to be supported by the same benefices through the transition from the old faith to the Reformation.3 Above all, from the start in January 1525, the Anabaptists rejected the traditional role of the temporal government as patron

1 2 3

QGTS Zurich, 23, 93, 128, 216; Stayer (1972), 111. QGTS Zurich, 109; Stayer (1972), 107–08. Haas (1975), 60

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and protector of the true religion for all its subjects. The defensive actions by Anabaptists against usually Catholic authorities during the Peasants’ War seemed much less subversive to pro-Reformation magistracies than their rejection in principle of governmental authority over religion. However, the occasional overlap between Swiss Anabaptism and the Peasants’ War, joined with the Anabaptist stress on sharing material goods according to Acts 2,4 were contributing factors in making the early Anabaptists seem dangerous. After only very brief hesitation the victorious Zwinglian Reformation—which took on institutional form in Zurich in 1525 and St. Gall in 1527, then consolidated itself in Bern, Basel and Schaffhausen in 1528 and 1529—abandoned all scruples against persecuting its evangelical dissidents who had become Anabaptists. The religious unity of these Swiss cities was to be enforced more rigorously against evangelical “schismatics” than against the adherents of the old faith. As early as March 1526 the Zurich council threatened anyone who should practice rebaptism with death by drowning.5 As a result within a short time the leaders of the early Anabaptist movement were either dead or scattered in exile. Conrad Grebel died, so far as we know, of natural causes in the summer of 1526.6 Felix Mantz, because he returned to Zurich in defiance of his banishment, was drowned in the Limmat in January 1527, the first Anabaptist martyr in Reformed Zurich.7 Balthasar Hubmaier, who fled to Zurich after the fall of Waldshut in December 1525, was imprisoned, tortured, compelled to recant, and finally exiled.8 With the exiles the message that the genuine reformed church should be an assemblage of baptized adult believers reached Augsburg, Esslingen, Strasbourg, and ultimately Moravia. In the absence of authoritative leadership and in the process of dispersion, Anabaptism assumed a different character from one place to another.

4 5 6 7 8

QGTS Zurich, 49–50; Stayer (1991), 97. QGTS Zurich, 180–81. Harder (1985), 454–56. QGTS Zurich, 214–18, 224–28. Bergsten (1978), 300–311.

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Müntzer’s Legacy in Anabaptism: Hans Hut and Hans Römer Many persons who had stood under the influence of the Saxon radicals, Thomas Müntzer and Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, or had participated in the uprisings of the Peasants’ War, now came to regard the Anabaptists as the successors of Müntzer’s covenant of the elect or of Karlstadt’s lay-intiated Reformation. The most important of these new Anabaptists who had read the books of Müntzer and Karlstadt were Hans Denck, Hans Hut and Melchior Rinck. At the time of the Peasants’ War, Denck was probably a schoolmaster in Mühlhausen for a short period, escaping the soldiers of the princes before fleeing to Basel following Müntzer’s defeat at Frankenhausen.9 Later Denck made connections with Rinck and Hut, traveling with Rinck in the Worms area and baptizing Hut in Augsburg at Pentecost 1526.10 Each of the three was a distinct kind of Anabaptist leader. Here the main discussion will center on Hut; Denck and Rinck are treated in another chapter and further on in this chapter. Hut was a book peddler, who in 1524 had seen to the publication in Nuremberg of Müntzer’s most important pamphlet, the Manifest Exposé of False Faith.11 In 1526 and 1527 he became the most successful Anabaptist missionary in south Germany and Austria. He elaborated many themes of Müntzer’s message; but he also went beyond anything Müntzer had ever said or written, proclaiming that the world would end in 1528, three and one-half years after the Peasants’ War. Hut declared that at this apocalyptic moment the elect of God would be permitted to draw the sword of vengeance, which was to remain in its sheath until then. Thus, despite the undertone of violence in his message, he drew most of the sting out of Müntzer’s endorsement of a “righteous upheaval.” However, Hut’s most prominent followers all shared the violent anticipations connected with an imminent second coming of Christ. Their repetition under interrogation must have sounded to government officials like threats of an Anabaptist uprising, often connected with a Turkish

9 10 11

Stayer (1991), 78. Beulshausen (1981), vol. 1, 89–97; vol. 2, 51–6. CWTM, 254.

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invasion of Germany, and gave authorities more pretext for persecuting Anabaptism than had ever been provided by those Anabaptists with a Swiss connection.12 Hut’s teaching was the closest thing to a continuance of the ideas of Thomas Müntzer among the Anabaptists—just how closely Hut continued Müntzer’s theology, and how much we can learn about the one from studying the other, is a matter of complex and continuing scholarly debate.13 Müntzer’s theology of “the order of things” (ordo rerum) was reflected in Hut.14 Hut certainly believed, like Müntzer, that God revealed himself through mystical experience in the “abyss” of the believer’s soul. They both believed that there was an internally harmonious divine revelation in the Old and New Testaments, and that discrepancies between the old and new covenants were only apparent—in this respect they attributed higher authority to the Old Testament than did the Anabaptists of the Swiss type. Hut and Müntzer both believed that God revealed himself through the events of human history. Hut had a definite apocalyptic outlook, which differed at least in some details from Müntzer’s; he expected the end of the world, whereas some scholars contend that Müntzer expected a new age, but not the end of the world.15 Connected with the mystical conception of “yieldedness” (Gelassenheit), Hut proclaimed a “gospel of all creatures,” which instructed agriculturalists and craftsmen that, just as they used plants and animals to fulfill the will of man, so God used human beings to fulfill his divine purpose. By yielding themselves fully to God, suffering Christians “complete the sufferings of Christ,” and fulfill his redemptive mission. Müntzer surely had a teaching of human suffering and mortification, but scholars disagree as to whether he originated “the gospel of all creatures,” or whether it was first preached by Hut.16 In any case, the “gospel of all creatures” is a signature notion of Hut’s Anabaptism. Brought in varying forms to the Austrian lands by Hut and his preeminent disciples, Hans Schlaffer and Leonhard Schiemer, where it circulated among Anabaptists, it was a litmus test

12 13 14 15 16

Stayer (1972), 150–66. Seebaß (2002); Packull (1977), 62–117. Cf. Stayer (1995). McLaughlin (2004). Cf. Rupp (1969), 292–95, 325–31, 342–53 vs. Goertz (1967), 41 n. 2.

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of an Anabaptism originating with Hut rather than in Zurich.17 Schlaffer and Schiemer expounded the “gospel of all creatures” with special sensitivity, explaining that it was a way God revealed himself to ordinary people in their everyday lives. Christ, Schlaffer explained, quoted Scripture only on account of the “stiff-necked scribes;” he much preferred to explain his gospel through stories taken from daily life. Schiemer quoted the apostle Paul as saying that the gospel that he preached is preached in all creatures. God created all creatures in five days, for the reason that they might be of use to man when he was created on the sixth day. . . . And precisely the same means whereby all creatures become useful to man [are God’s way with man], that is, through suffering, by which man kills, cuts and prepares, and the creature submits to man and suffers for faith’s sake. And, just as the animal is of no nutritious value to man unless it dies, so no man can become blessed unless he dies for Christ’s sake.18

These Austrian disciples of Hut subtly transformed his message. Schiemer dated the final persecution before the second coming not, like Hut, from the Peasants’ War and the execution of Müntzer and Pfeiffer, but from the more or less simultaneous beginning of Anabaptist martyrdoms, when “in Switzerland at Solothurn brothers from the congregation were first killed.”19 For Müntzer and Hut the completion of the sufferings of Christ was thought of as an internal mortification; for Schiemer and Schlaffer, as Werner Packull observed, submitting to suffering was transformed from “a purely internalized cross mysticism to an Anabaptist theology of martyrdom.”20 Hut’s teaching of “yieldedness” extended Müntzer’s criticism of the sixteenth-century social and economic order. In his major preserved writing, “On the Mystery of Baptism,” he attacked the mainstream reformers’ conservative affirmation of temporal wealth and status: “Everybody says each of us should stay in his vocation. If this is so, why didn’t Peter remain a fisherman, Matthew a tax collector—and why did Christ tell the rich young man to sell what he had and give to the poor? . . . Oh, Zacheus, why did you give up

17 18 19 20

Mecenseffy (1980). Packull (1977), 109, 116. Stayer (1972), 154. Packull (1977), 112.

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your property so frivolously; according to our preachers you could have kept it and still been a good Christian!”21 An associate of Hans Schlaffer, Wolfgang Brandhuber, a tailor who organized congregations in Austria and the Tyrol, argued for the equal sharing of goods within an Anabaptist household, “whether they be lord, servant, wife or maid.” “Since we are constant in common possession of the greatest things—in Christ and the power of God,” he asked, “then why not in the smallest—in temporal goods?”22 Some erstwhile followers of Müntzer, led by Hans Römer, joined their Anabaptist apocalypticism to very concrete plans to seize power in Erfurt on New Year’s day, 1528.23 Saxon officials from the vicinity of Erfurt began to report in mid-December 1527 that Anabaptist preachers were saying that Müntzer and Pfeiffer had been unjustly put to death. Further, the itinerant preachers said that the end of the world would occur in eleven months, accompanied by locust plagues. Besides baptizing, they stressed moral improvement in a way normal enough for the movement elsewhere: drunkenness, usury and unruly behavior were to be shunned. How little they knew of the history of the Zurich Anabaptist covenant was suggested, however, in these preachers’ expressed admiration for Zwingli and Oecolampadius; the preachers did know, according to the reports, that the Count of Nikolsburg in Moravia belonged to their group.24 Once Erfurt was in their possession, they would renew the Peasants’ War. Römer, when apprehended, said that avenging Müntzer was his primary motive.25 The apocalyptic ideas of Römer and his followers sounded like Hut’s; and the timetable was very close to his, but the connection remains undocumented. The Römer case is the only instance where Anabaptists tried to continue the Peasants’ War; the overwhelming scholarly consensus that the plot was serious in its intent is no doubt correct.26 Still, it was a plot “nipped in the bud” before anything actually happened. So some skepticism is still warranted. Behind the Imperial mandate of the Diet of Speyer in

21

Stayer (1991), 115; cf. Rupp (1969), 392. Ibid., 122. 23 Stayer (1972), 190–93; Wappler (1913), 264–65, 272–73, 363–74. 24 Wappler (1913), 252, 253, 255, 257, 259, 262, 289. 25 Ibid., 363–64. 26 Besides Wappler (1913) and Stayer (1972), cf. Clasen (1972), 157–60; Williams (1992), 667. 22

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1529, which made Anabaptism a capital crime, lay real enough fears that the movement might make itself the instrument of a renewed uprising of the common man. The Schleitheim Articles—An Answer to the Disunity of Anabaptism In its beginnings Anabaptism was a gathering of diverse expressions of early Reformation radicalism. The Saxon radicals were imprinted in various ways by the mystical spiritualism of Johannes Tauler and the German Theology. The followers of Karlstadt and Müntzer had been taught a higher reverence for the Old Testament than the more orthodox Lutheran evangelicals. In Swiss Anabaptism, however, the mild spiritualism of Zwingli was joined with an Erasmian orientation to the New Testament that seemed to have been current in the humanist sodality where Zwingli studied together with his future radical opponents.27 At the time of the rupture between Zwingli and the future Anabaptists only the New Testament was available in a complete Swiss German translation in the Zurich Bible,28 although of course the educated leaders of the Anabaptists such as Grebel, Mantz and Hubmaier were not dependent on vernacular translations of the Bible. On the margins of the Swiss Anabaptist movement there were chaotic episodes, such as those at St. Gall under the charismatic-prophetic leadership of Margaret Hottinger, who in 1526 made the mystical claim to be “immersed in God.”29 To many Anabaptists it seemed, above all, necessary to give a unified direction to Anabaptism. The Brotherly Union of a Number of Children of God Concerning Seven Articles, presented by Michael Sattler in February 1527 in Schleitheim, a village northwest of Schaffhausen, was an attempt to give the Anabaptist movement a unified foundation and direction. A cover

27

Strübind (2003), 135–38. Packull (1995), 26–30. 29 Snyder-Hecht (1996), 43–53. Our knowledge of the spiritualistic expressions of St. Gall Anabaptism is dependent on Johannes Kessler, Sabbata. Arnold Snyder comments: “Kessler’s apologetic intent and hostility is clear in his Sabbata; it is a source that must be used with care. Nevertheless, he cannot on that account be discredited completely as a historical source, as John Horsch attempted to do.” 28

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letter preceding the statement noted: “A very great offense has been introduced by some false brethren among us, whereby several have turned away from the faith, thinking to practice and observe the freedom of the Spirit and of Christ.”30 It is not entirely clear who these “false brethren” were; but the reference seems to be to a Spiritualist element among the Anabaptists that we know to have been present in 1526. The seven articles agreed upon at Schleitheim outlined a series of concrete practices which identified the true church of Jesus Christ; in that sense they were anti-Spiritualist. The articles prescribe the baptism of believing adults and a Lord’s Supper observed as a memorial of Christ’s sacrifice. The congregations were to have leaders (“shepherds”) and to provide material support for those leaders. Congregational discipline was to be maintained through the ban, according to the prescriptions of Matthew 18:15–18, and to be carried out by the shepherd. These four articles stand in continuity with Hubmaier’s ecclesial writings. They mirror the practice of the Anabaptists in 1525 at Zollikon, Waldshut, Hallau and St. Gall, although congregational leadership was not firmly established in all those places. The other three articles of the Schleitheim agreement—Article 4 on separation, and Articles 6 and 7 on the sword and the oath— were more innovative and ultimately reshaped the ecclesiology of Swiss-South German Anabaptism. The article on separation set the tone for the whole statement: “Now there is nothing else in the world and all creation than good or evil, believing and unbelieving, darkness and light, the world and those who are [come] out of the world, God’s temple and idols, Christ and Belial, and none will have part with the other.” Therefore “all popish and new-popish works and idolatry, gatherings, church attendance, wine houses, guarantees and commitments of unbelief ” are abominations to be shunned.31 In the spirit of this separation from the world and its godlessness, the Anabaptists were forbidden all oaths, all use of weapons, and all participation in public offices.32 Some of this was new, certainly the 30

QGTS Ostschweiz, 28; Yoder (1973), 35. QGTS Ostschweiz, 30; Yoder (1973), 37–38. 32 The meaning of Schleitheim, article 6, on the sword (“an ordinance of God outside the perfection of Christ”), has been the object of continuous discussion. The basic issue is whether it introduces into the Seven Articles a “tension” with the consequent dualism of article 4, on separation. This was the position taken by John H. Yoder (1974) and, explicitly elaborating on Yoder, by Gerald Biesecker-Mast 31

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clear prohibition of the oath, as Edmund Pries and Andrea Strübind have noted.33 Whether the principle of ecclesiological separation and the rigorous repudiation of force were new, or whether they were logical outcomes of the prior history of the Anabaptist movement, has been debated in recent scholarship.34 There is no serious scholarly debate about the fact that many rank-and-file Anabaptists and some leaders, particularly Balthasar Hubmaier in Waldshut and Hans Krüsi in rural St. Gall, were involved in the Peasants’ War and its resistance to the authority of landlords and rulers. The question is whether these activities have any bearing on the political ethic of Anabaptism in 1525 while the Peasants’ War was underway, and whether there was a shift among Anabaptists to a doctrine of separatism and nonresistance following the victory of the established powers. The adjustment in attitude towards the tithe is an indication that such a shift did indeed take place. Wilhelm Reublin, Grebel, Hubmaier and Krüsi had all at first opposed the tithe; they wanted it abolished. Now George Blaurock, preaching in Grüningen following the end of peasant violence, declared that a true Anabaptist paid the tithe, even though receiving the tithe and living from benefices based on usury meant that the recipients were not true evangelical Christians.35 Blaurock’s position was repeated by future Anabaptist leaders. For instance, Konrad Winckler, who was active in the villages north of Zurich from 1526, said that state church pastors “mislead the common people and are sinners, and can bring forth no good fruit with their teaching, and are not able to preach the truth, because they have benefices.”36 (2000). It is opposed by Stayer (1972), 117–24, and Strübind (2003), 557–59. Cf. the discussion by Arnold Snyder in his editor’s preface to Yoder (2004), xxii–xxv. The position taken by scholars with such different presuppositions as Snyder, Stayer and Strübind is that a “less dualist”interpretation of Schleitheim, article 6, does not correctly describe the intention of Michael Sattler and the gathering for which he was the spokesman at Schleitheim in February 1527. This is not to deny that, as a living text in the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition, Schleitheim, article 6, can be interpreted in the sense suggested by Yoder and Biesecker-Mast. However, there is no convincing evidence that the Anabaptists discussed in this chapter did, in fact, interpret it that way. 33 Strübind (2003), 563–65; Pries (1992). 34 Strübind (2003) registers a dissent against the preponderant view in recent Anabaptist scholarship, arguing that early Anabaptist overlappings with the Peasants’ War had no significant effect on the movement, which was tending towards an ecclesiological separatism from the beginnings of its proto-Anabaptist phase in 1523. 35 Haas (1975), 72; QGTS Zurich, 126. 36 QGTS Zurich, 297.

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A congregational ordinance, which possibly circulated together with the Seven Articles of Schleitheim, contains regulations for another mark of early Anabaptist life, a stress on material sharing, following the pattern of the early church of Acts 2 and 4: “Of all the brothers and sisters of this congregation none shall have anything of his own, but rather, as the Christians in the time of the apostles held all in common, and especially stored up a common fund, from which aid can be given to the poor, according as each will have need, and as in the apostles’ time permit no brother to be in need.”37 Werner Packull has shown that variants of this early Swiss congregational ordinance found their way to Tyrol, and then into the Hutterite codices in Moravia.38 Swiss Anabaptism—the Path into Separation Martin Haas was the first scholar to suggest that the pattern for post-Peasants’ War Anabaptism developed in the lowlands stretching north of Zurich to the Rhine, a rough triangle bounded by Zurich to the south and Schaffhausen and Waldshut to the north, but under the political jurisdiction of Zurich.39 The chief preacher there from 1526 until his arrest and execution by drowning in 1530 was Konrad Winckler, typical of the second wave of Anabaptist leaders in Zurich territory in his lack of formal education.40 Winckler held secret meetings “in woods, fields, houses, barns and other special places.” His followers—coming from the villages of Bülach, Kimenhoff, Seeb, Dällikon, Watt, Regensdorf, Regensberg, Nerach, Windlach and Wattwil—were self-selected persons who dared to participate in an outlawed, underground religious group. Here was the prototype of the “gathered church,” covering a wide territory, but a minority everywhere. Working with Winckler were early leaders like Mantz and Blaurock, as well as prominent new leaders such as Karl Brennwald and Hans Meyer (or Pfistermeyer), soon to become Anabaptist spokesmen in Basel and Aargau—and, of course, Michael Sattler, the author of the Seven Articles. Here, in the years from

37 38 39 40

Yoder (1973), 45. Packull (1995), 33–53. Haas (1975), 78. Snyder (1990).

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1526 to 1530, the practices of future Swiss Anabaptism were pioneered. After Winckler’s execution the communities to which he ministered were steadily broken by imprisonment and torture, but not before they had sowed the seeds of a separatist Anabaptism on the Schleitheim model, particularly in the jurisdictions of Basel and Bern. Haas wrote in 1975 that the beginning of a distinctive, separatist form of Swiss Anabaptism did not go back to the Zollikon congregation of 1525, which had too brief a life-span “to permit the development of norms and doctrines of the sort we have described, although it provided important impulses. Neither did this beginning occur in Hallau or St. Gall, where Anabaptism was combined with a mass movement.”41 The realities of Anabaptist life in eastern Switzerland were marked by the relative absence of strenuous repression, so that neighborly accommodations seem to have replaced the state of constant dualist confrontation mandated in the Seven Articles of Schleitheim. With the establishment of an official evangelical church in the city of St. Gall in 1527, for example, Anabaptism moved to the rural villages around St. Gall. These villages, officially belonging to the Abbey of St. Gall under the protection of the Swiss Confederation, were outside the authority of the city, a different situation than that of the rural environs of Zurich, which were ruled by the Zurich city government. Likewise, the neighboring rural canton of Appenzell at first avoided legal action against Anabaptism. Even after 1529, when a disputation and a synod established an evangelical church on the Zurich model, local authorities responded to the nonconformists only by restricting Anabaptist meetings to ten persons or fewer; and the Anabaptists accepted this semi-tolerated situation.42 The official practice of “looking the other way” meant that the Anabaptist presence in these “milder” Swiss jurisdictions was very sparsely documented. In the end, the Schleitheim Articles had their greatest resonance in western Switzerland, not in eastern Switzerland where they originated. Within two months of their composition the Schleitheim Articles had circulated by way of Basel to Bern. In late April, Berchtold Haller, the Reformer of Bern, sent a copy to Zwingli in Zurich. In June 1527, a “brother Karlin”—identified by scholars as the Zurich

41 42

Haas (1975), 78. Yoder (2004), 85–87.

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Anabaptist Karl Brennwald—was arrested in Basel. He submitted a written statement, replied to by Oecolampadius, that endorsed all the articles of Schleitheim and showed a thorough acquaintance not only with the wording of the Brotherly Understanding but with the underlying issues as well. Brennwald affirmed all of the characteristic stands of Schleitheim on the oath, the sword and separation, with the conclusion that “one should have no association with those who do not carry out the teaching of Christ.”43 Anabaptism established a foothold in the Aargau, a territory bordering both Zurich and Bern under a complicated joint jurisdiction which made it difficult to suppress religious dissidence. From 1526 until his arrest in 1531 Hans Meyer, also called Pfistermeyer, was active in various territories of western Switzerland, especially in the Aargau, preaching to assemblages of two to three hundred persons.44 When arrested Pfistermeyer was subjected to a public disputation in Bern against the Reformed preachers. After three days Pfistermeyer was “freely defeated” on all points of contention, as it was said at the time. This is not remarkable, since bad things would certainly have happened to this very successful and elusive Anabaptist preacher had the disputation not turned out to the government’s satisfaction. More interesting is which points were most painful for Pfistermeyer to concede: they were his belief in adult baptism and his insistence that receiving income from usury, including the income from pastoral benefices, was unchristian.45 He did not give a clear testimony that rulers could not be Christians at any time in the three-day disputation, but since he began by asserting the even more distinctive Schleitheim article on not swearing oaths, it must be concluded that he was not so much averse to the more abrasive Schleitheim articles as to his own likely martyrdom. The authorities who staged the 1531 disputation with Pfistermeyer believed it to have greatly damaged the Anabaptist cause; consequently, little more than a year later a second disputation was held at Zofingen, this time in the Aargau itself.46 The Anabaptist spokesmen had to be lured by safe-conducts, since, unlike Pfistermeyer in

43 44 45 46

Dürr/Roth, vol. 2, QGTS Gespräche, QGTS Gespräche, QGTS Gespräche,

545–47. xiv. 3–65; Yoder (2004), 97–100, 179–82. 69–256; Yoder (2004), 102–06.

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1531, they were not under arrest. The Bernese clergy prepared the topics for discussion with care and with some expert coaching from Heinrich Bullinger, who sent a letter advising the Bernese on “how to deal with and negotiate with Anabaptists.” Essential steps, said Bullinger, were to establish the equal worth of both Testaments and to use the “rule of faith and love” as the hermeneutical trump card.47 The Anabaptist spokesmen also had prepared. They declined the Reformed application of “faith and love,” which had been used to such good effect the previous year against Pfistermeyer: “We recognize that we are to love God and our neighbor, but in itself a proper love is keeping God’s commandments ( John 14:15).”48 By equating love with obedience to God’s commands, the Anabaptists were able to hold their own. On the specific matter of charging interest, which Pfistermeyer had grudgingly permitted for the sake of “love,” they came with a prepared position—the borrower “should not be stubborn, should repay the money he borrowed as quickly as possible, and recognize the goodness and love that has been compassionately extended to him. That a loan should, beyond that, yield advantage and profit—for that we should like to hear reasons.” The Reformed pastors did not rise to the bait. They did not wish—in the manner of Johann Eck—to make a Christian endorsement of borrowing and lending for business purposes. Here they made the point that “Christ’s kingdom was not of this world.” The Anabaptists, on the other hand, thought that it was a religious principle that borrowing should only occur when there was real need, and that lending should always be an act of love by someone who had more than he needed. On this matter, they insisted on the connection of social action with religion.49 Although the published protocol of the Zofingen disputation says that many Anabaptists were present, the leading Anabaptist spokesmen were Hans Hotz and Martin Weninger (called Lingg or Linki), who at this time were working together in Solothurn.50 Weninger was from the Schaffhausen region. On November 18, 1525, he and Michael Sattler swore oaths to desist from Anabaptism, paid the costs of their imprisonment, and were banished from Zurich territory. Weninger became active in and around Basel, Solothurn and 47 48 49 50

Translated and published in MQR 32 (1959), 83–95. QGTS Gespräche, 75; Yoder (2004), 184. Stayer (1991), 100, 102; QGTS Gespräche, 227–29. Harder (1985), 549–50, 557.

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Bern, and after speaking for the Anabaptists at Zofingen in 1532 he worked with Hans Hotz north of Zurich.51 In the early 1530s he wrote a persuasive “Vindication” of Anabaptist separation and shunning of Reformed preaching.52 The emphasis on penitence, faith, baptism, new life and discipline that Weninger articulated at Zofingen were all fundamental Anabaptist teachings, going back to Hubmaier’s writings of mid-1525. Nevertheless, the ecclesiology of the Schleitheim Articles certainly shaped his view of the church in the sense that the specific positions and distinctive separatist marks of the Schleitheim Articles are evident in the Anabaptist position argued at Zofingen: congregations are to elect pastors who demonstrate their worthiness;53 Christians swear no oaths;54 government is ordained of God (Romans 13), but no Christians may serve in government. Christians discipline only with fraternal admonition, and not the sword; the weapons of Christians are exclusively spiritual, not physical, following the example of Jesus; rulers exercise power, but Christians suffer persecution, as did Christ, who refused to be chosen king.55 In the debated articles “who has the true church” and “the ban,” the separatist position of Schleitheim is unmistakable. There is no equivocation or vacillation on this point: if a church is separated from the world, it is the true church; if it is in the world “we cannot confess it to be the church.” The Anabaptist spokesmen got more specific: the church in Bern, they said, is not the true church because “the worldly administration (regiment) and the Christian church are mixed together.” Echoing Schleitheim again, the Anabaptists made it clear that there are two kingdoms, ruled by Christ and Satan respectively: “God and the Holy Spirit rule in believers who have submitted themselves to God’s Spirit; this is not so in the world, where rather the Devil rules.”56 And, as in the Schleitheim Articles, it is the ban that maintains the separateness and the purity of the church.57

51 52 53 54 55 56 57

QGTS Zurich, 365–66. Text in QGTS Ostschweiz, 108–13; trans. Wenger (1948). QGTS Gespräche, 81, 94. Ibid., 200–07. Ibid., 165–99. Ibid., 95, 96. Ibid., 115–65.

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The published record of the Zofingen disputation gives evidence of the Anabaptist teaching being spread by Weninger, Hotz and others from 1529 to 1532 in Basel, Solothurn and the lowlands north of Zurich. Insofar as heed was given to these Anabaptist leaders, it would appear that the separatism of the Schleitheim Articles was beginning to provide the ecclesial outlines for the Anabaptist communities in those places. The Bern Disputation of 1538, the last of the Swiss disputations of the early decades, took place because Anabaptists in the Emmental requested it and signaled a willingness to be “taught by Scripture.”58 By this time Anabaptism was firmly rooted in the Emmental, where it would survive to the present day. The debate, which lasted for seven days in March 1538, did not advance understanding between the Reformed preachers of Bern and the Anabaptists; it only led to the banishing of local Anabaptists and the hardening of positions. The Bern Disputation revealed that the Anabaptist spokesmen held to the same separatist ecclesiology as had been visible at Zofingen, expressed with less acerbity than in 1532, but with no less clarity. On the central issues defining the separatist position—concerning the election and “sending” of pastors, the oath, the sword of government and the ban—the Anabaptist speakers held to the separatist line first articulated at Schleitheim, arguing for obedience to the example and command of Christ.59 We can assume that this teaching was being communicated in the late 1530s in the communities where the primary speakers exercised their leadership: in the Zurich area, in and around Solothurn, in the Aargau and the Emmental.60 In an interesting aside, when one of the Reformed preachers tried to link Melchior Hoffman and his incarnational teaching to the Swiss Anabaptist disputants, they answered that they considered him no brother of theirs, stating that “we hold his view, as we have heard it from him and others like him, to be an error.” These Swiss Anabaptists of the late 1530s had been in conversation with the Melchiorite Anabaptists, and considered them not to be “brothers,”

58

QGTS Gespräche, 259–467; Yoder (2004), 106–10. QGTS Gespräche, 431. 60 Ibid., 265–66. The Emmental Anabaptists invited leaders from other Swiss Anabaptist regions to speak at the disputation, and so must have been in agreement with their teaching. 59

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even though, as the Reformed pastors pointed out, the Melchiorites also were “re-baptizers.”61 In practice the leadership of Swiss Anabaptism, following the loss of the first, educated leaders of the late 1520s, was weaker than that of Anabaptism elsewhere. In part this was because, outside of Switzerland, the movement was either at first suppressed or it achieved a degree of practical toleration, as in Moravia or the Dutch Republic. In Switzerland, and then in neighboring Alsace and the Palatinate, it lived on under intermittent persecution. Despite the assertion of congregational leadership in Schleitheim Article Five, the earlier pattern of Zollikon, where a large number of the congregation participated in baptizing and preaching, did not die out. Instead of pastoral monologues, as in the Reformed church, everyone who was literate read one after the other at the typical Swiss Anabaptist meeting. The minister was, in Anabaptist practice just as in Protestant theory, first among equals. He lived from voluntary donations, not the fixed income of a benefice. Martin Haas concluded that in Swiss Anabaptism “the weight of the congregation was greater than that of the minister.”62 In the extreme case of the Esslingen Anabaptists of south Germany, as will be noted, formal congregational leadership could be dispensed with altogether. Normally, however, as stated in Schleitheim Article Five, the minister pronounced the ban against straying members in the congregation; but he, too, could be banned, upon the testimony of two or three witnesses. In practice, leaders were sometimes banned. No less a figure than Martin Weninger was effectually banned after his forced recantation in 1533; he could not continue his association with the brotherhood, because the brothers no longer trusted him.63 Pilgram Marpeck found the weakening of congregational leadership and the associated abuse of the ban one the most objectionable facets of Swiss Anabaptism. As he wrote in 1541 to the congregation in Appenzell: “I find it unparalleled that in the church of Christ someone who has received the office of apostle or bishop through the power of the Holy Spirit . . . should be excommunicated from the congregations. Therefore there must be something wrong or lacking either in your congregations or your

61 62 63

QGTS Gespräche, 297. Haas (1975), 66–67. QGTS Ostschweiz, 116.

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ministers. . . . It is against the manner of Christ that the flocks punish the shepherds; the shepherd is supposed to pasture the flock.”64 The Encounter of Swiss and South German Anabaptism in the South German Imperial Cities The efforts of Michael Sattler and his successors to achieve unity in the Anabaptist movement were not immediately successful. During an interrogation in Augsburg in the fall of 1527, Hans Hut declared: “Some imagined that Christians should not bear weapons; indeed they made a regulation on the subject in Switzerland. [I] put a stop to that and showed that this was not ungodly and not forbidden.”65 Hut tried to avoid incriminating himself during his Augsburg imprisonment; so one hypothesis aiming to unravel the contradictions in his expressed beliefs is to conclude that his criticisms of the Schleitheim Articles were self-serving lies. This view is not very convincing, however, since almost all of his followers, when questioned about the Schleitheim article on government and use of weapons, either had no knowledge of it or rejected it outright.66 Marx Maier spoke of the possibility that rulers could carry out their duties in a “just and Christian” way.67 Hans Schlaffer said that it was as difficult for a ruler to be a Christian as for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, but “that which is impossible for human beings is possible for God.”68 The influential Hans Nadler said, at the time of his arrest in 1529, that his circle had discussed the strict nonresistance of the Schleitheim Articles without coming to agreement, suggesting that it was not a position to which he had committed himself when Hut baptized him. According to Nadler, nonresistance was a belief upheld by “many brothers among us” but “not an article of faith

64 Ibid., 226. Heinold Fast (1960) has made the argument that Marpeck’s censure was directed only at a very atypical Swiss Brethren congregation in Appenzell and does not apply to the Swiss Brethren in general. This position is, in my judgment, a weak one—all the weaker as we better understand Marpeck’s self-understanding as a leader commissioned by “the church in the land of Moravia,” the Austerlitz Brethren, a group conscious of their differences with the Swiss Brethren and the Hutterites. 65 Stayer (1972), 158–59; Meyer (1874), 227–28. 66 Stayer (1965). 67 Stayer (1972), 159; QGT Bayern, part 1, 210. 68 Stayer (1972), 159; Glaubenzeugnisse, vol. 1, 91.

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(Satzung); a person may carry [the sword] or lay it aside, according to whether he is strong or weak in the faith.”69 The Anabaptist congregation in Augsburg, south Germany’s most populous city, illustrates the more or less harmonious coexistence of Hut’s following with the Anabaptist brotherhood spreading from Switzerland. In 1527–1528 the Augsburg congregation was for a short time the fastest growing Anabaptist center in the Empire. Here persons whom Hut had won to the movement joined refugees from Switzerland in the leadership of the group. Hut’s own theological focus was primarily apocalyptical, focused on the “sealing” of the 144,000 elect of Revelations 7 before the imminent end of the world.70 Nevertheless, he made concessions on this central point of his proclamation in the face of opposition within the Augsburg congregation, agreeing to discuss his apocalyptic viewpoint only with persons who expressly asked him about it.71 Hut’s reservations about the Schleitheim Articles, like his apocalyptic timetable, appear to have been regarded there as little more than his personal standpoint, lacking authority for the congregation. Women were particularly important in Augsburg Anabaptism. They served as messengers, lodged non-resident Anabaptists and provided meeting places.72 When the Augsburg congregation was discovered and dispersed through mass arrests on Easter 1528, many of its members resettled in Esslingen and Strasbourg, where they were to a large extent unmolested. In Esslingen, the congregation owed its existence to collegial efforts by the Zurich founder Wilhelm Reublin and Hut’s convert Christoph Friesleben, both of whom won adherents for Anabaptism in the late 1520s, while the Imperial city was in transition from the old church to Protestantism. Here again, Hut’s converts seemed willing to set aside the apocalyptic echoes of Thomas Müntzer, and to work harmoniously with Anabaptists exiled from Switzerland.73 There was, moreover, a muting of the sharp separatist dualism of the Schleitheim Articles, in response to the essential tolerance of Esslingen officials once the Reformation was established there. Once Esslingen had become Protestant the government’s policy was to repress, rather

69 70 71 72 73

Stayer (1972), 159; QGT Bayern, part 1, 136. Klaassen (1981), 320–21; Meyer (1874), 239. Stayer (1972), 157; Glaubenzeugnisse, vol. 1, 12. Snyder-Hecht, 82–102 [article by John S. Oyer]. Oyer (2000), 193, 198–200.

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than to stamp out, its nonconformist opposition. The Esslingen Anabaptists responded, after a bit of trial and error, by dissolving their leadership into the congregational rank and file. This, of course, involved sacrificing the Schleitheim article that specified that each congregation should have a “shepherd.” In order to evade the heavier penalties imposed on leaders, the apprehended Anabaptists always assured their interrogators that their meetings had no particular leaders or preachers, that they assembled solely for the purpose of reading from the Bible.74 The disposition of apprehended Anabaptists was to recant, to worship publicly in the established Protestant churches, but to continue to meet privately with fellow Anabaptists. Instead of being shunned, in accord with Matthew 18, these “weak” members—who usually swore oaths when required, sometimes carried weapons during guard duty, and almost always attended the preaching in the state church—seem to have been accepted as a matter of course by fellow Anabaptists in Esslingen.75 Although Esslingen Anabaptists stubbornly held firm to their beliefs, they did not fit the pattern of a visibly and militantly separated congregation that one associates with adoption of the Schleitheim Articles. They asserted themselves most strongly by avoiding communion in the state churches and celebrating the Lord’s Supper together.76 Living in an Imperial city whose government was not committed to their eradication, but which demanded some minimum conformity for the sake of appearances, these Anabaptists, described in John Oyer’s memorable study, found that they could bend and not be broken. In July 1527, six months after Zurich had drowned Felix Mantz, the Strasbourg council promulgated its first decree aimed at the Anabaptists. It forbade the rejection of the Christian status of government and stigmatized the spreading of disunity within the city; but it specified no specific penalties, since these were to be applied according to the individual cases.77 Such a mandate encouraged, rather than discouraged, the coming of religious refugees, given the widespread persecution elsewhere. After 1533, when Strasbourg attempted to define acceptable doctrine and discipline under the

74 75 76 77

Ibid., 247–53. Ibid., 275–77. Ibid., 270–74. QGT Strasbourg, vol. 1, 122–23.

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leadership of Martin Bucer, the city’s tolerance was significantly narrowed; but in the preceding seven years Strasbourg was well known as a Mecca of evangelical dissent. Some of the Strasbourg pastors— particularly Wolfgang Capito, and to a degree Matthias Zell (seconded by his formidable wife, Katarina)—extended a broad welcome to heterodox “refugees for the Gospel.” A great number of the most prominent leaders of Anabaptism and Spiritualism spent a period of time in Strasbourg between 1526 and 1533. The earliest of these were Wilhelm Reublin, Hans Denck, Jacob Groß and Michael Sattler, who promoted Anabaptist beliefs and discussed and disputed with the Strasbourg reformers in the year preceding the drafting of the Schleitheim Articles. Reublin, Groß and Sattler were all missionaries of Swiss Anabaptism. Denck spent a period in late 1525 in St. Gall after fleeing south Germany at the time of the suppression of the Peasants’ War; it is possible that he was baptized there sometime before he baptized Hans Hut in May 1526.78 There definitely was a difference between Denck’s Anabaptism, with its echoes of the mysticism of Müntzer and Karlstadt, and the more moralistic and legalistic variety coming from Switzerland. Denck engaged in private and public debates with the Strasbourg preachers in late 1526, resulting in his banishment from the city just before the end of the year. The other three leaders moved on from the city and worked together in the regions north of Strasbourg, where Sattler was apprehended and subjected to a cruel execution by Habsburg authorities in Rottenburg in May 1527. Sattler’s “martyrdom”—so it was characterized by no less a Protestant eminence than Martin Bucer79—was memorialized not only by Reublin, who succeeded in escaping at the time of Sattler’s arrest, but also by the Protestant nobleman Nicholas von Graveneck.80 In the ensuing months the Strasbourg pastors made distinctions between Sattler, an upright man with regrettable errors, and Denck, a dangerous heretic. According to Capito, Sattler “did hold to some errors regarding the Word,” but nevertheless “demonstrated at all times an excellent zeal for the honor of God and the church of Christ.”81 Bucer’s charge against

78 79 80 81

Packull (1977), 40. QGT Strasbourg, vol. 1, 110. Yoder (1973), 66–85. QGT Strasbourg, vol. 1, 87.

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Denck was that, unlike Sattler, he erred in respect to soteriology: “concerning the satisfaction of Christ, on which all depends, we have found no error in this Michael Sattler as we did with Denck.”82 These comments probably tell us more about the Strasbourg pastors, who were willing to appropriate Anabaptists who fell prey to Romanist persecution as genuine evangelical martyrs, than they do about Sattler and Denck. Mystical theologians like Denck indeed prized the “inner Word” as a higher authority than the Bible, although they never thought the inner Word was incompatible with the Bible. The charge that they denigrated the historical sacrifice of Christ had been raised earlier by Luther and Melanchthon against Thomas Müntzer. This accusation was a polemical distortion of Müntzer’s theology, just as Bucer’s parallel accusation was a polemical distortion of Denck’s theology. Denck’s subsequent development, which led him to regret that he had ever practiced adult baptism, showed a latent Spiritualism in his theology;83 but we really know almost nothing about the relation between Denck and the other early Anabaptist leaders in Strasbourg except that they emerged out of different theological milieus. More informative about the dynamics of the Strasbourg Anabaptist congregation was the breakup of a meeting including Pilgram Marpeck, Wilhelm Reublin and Jacob Kautz in October 1528. In January 1528 Marpeck had left Rattenberg in the Tyrol, where he served as a mining magistrate, rather than participate in the Habsburg suppression of Anabaptism. He went first to the mining community of Krumau in Bohemia, and became associated with the Austerlitz Brethren, an Anabaptist community in Moravia. By the fall he appeared in Strasbourg as a representative of the Anabaptist “church in the land of Moravia.”84 Reublin and Kautz, leaders both previously exiled, had returned to Strasbourg despite their banishment— a capital offence in most Swiss jurisdictions at the time. Kautz, an evangelical pastor, had been baptized in 1526 in Worms, probably converted by Denck; and Reublin had been associated with the movement since the proto-Anabaptist years in Zurich. Despite some acknowledged differences, the two leaders from different streams of

82 83 84

QGT Strasbourg, vol. 1, 110. Klaassen (1981), 168–69. Zeman (1969), 235f.; Boyd (1992), 51–52.

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Anabaptism composed a joint confession, stressing a covenant of a good conscience before God through water baptism of adults. They stated that the official church of Strasbourg was clearly a false church because of “lack of fruit,” hence it was clear that its preachers lacked a valid calling.85 Marpeck, the newcomer, was not held at the time. He was soon employed by the Strasbourg government, supervising the purchase of forest land, the cutting of trees, and the construction of dams to transport the wood to the city. Despite Marpeck’s valued skills as a civil engineer, Bucer found his views of government objectionable and forced him into a religious disputation in 1531. Accused of holding the standpoint of Schleitheim Article Six, that Christians could not be rulers, Marpeck insisted on the earlier, more moderate Anabaptist position, which was perhaps that of the Austerlitz Brethren: namely, that rulers had no authority to meddle with the church. “[There is] no Christian ruler except Christ himself,” wrote Marpeck. “The title is too high for a human being, involves a belittling of Christ, although it is perhaps not intended in that way. . . . But when people in political authority are Christians or become Christians (as I heartily wish and pray) they may not use their previous physical force, power and rule in the kingdom of Christ.”86 Marpeck was exiled early in 1532; in his last years of residence in Strasbourg, as will be noted, he made an early contribution to the inter-radical controversy between Anabaptists and Spiritualists. Meanwhile, in 1529, Melchior Hoffman had arrived in Strasbourg, his itinerate ministry in the North Sea and Baltic lands terminated because of his opposition to the Lutheran teaching on the Lord’s Supper. The Strasbourg ministers welcomed him, as they had other radicals before him, then became chagrined to find that he preferred the Anabaptists to the official church. At the same time that the latent tension between the spiritualist and ecclesial poles in Anabaptism was becoming overt and divisive, Hoffman introduced yet a third expression of Anabaptism which, although it incorporated adult baptism, the ban, and a memorial Supper, nevertheless placed these ecclesiological ordinances in a visionary, apocalyptic context.87 The Anabaptist Hans Frisch, who lived in the city from 1529 to 1534,

85 86 87

QGT Strasbourg, vol. 1, 197–99. Ibid., 505–06. Deppermann (1987), 160–311.

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described the Anabaptists in Strasbourg as divided into three distinct groupings: those following the teachings of Hoffman, Kautz and Reublin respectively, with the Hoffman and Kautz groups, both of which had strong spiritualistic inclinations, “a little mixed together.”88 The phase of Anabaptist studies before the 1960s tended to regard the Anabaptist-Mennonite movement as one entity, unless the exceptions were undeniable, as in the case of the Hutterites or the Münsterites. The succeeding, “revisionist” scholarship disassembled the movement, insisting on separate group identities89—as many as twenty groups according to Claus-Peter Clasen.90 Now, a careful examination of south German Anabaptism in places such as Augsburg, Esslingen and Strasbourg shows us that a crystallization into discrete groups did not immediately follow the “polygenesis” of Anabaptism. Leaders of diverse perspectives worked harmoniously in the persecuted dissident congregations; and their immediate followers sometimes revised the theologies of the men who baptized them. South German Anabaptism was diverse but it was also a recognizable variant of Swiss Anabaptism. The sectarian, separatist principles of the Schleitheim Articles were influential in south Germany; but then they also were often rejected or modified. In Franconia and Thuringia, however, sects did appear that, although they had some sort of connection with Anabaptism, seem to have put themselves outside of the broad discourse of the early movement. One such group was the Dreamers, led by Hans Schmid of Uttenreuth, consisting of some sixty persons and discovered in 1531. Dominated by former followers of Hut who recanted their Anabaptism, these people held to spiritualistic beliefs centering on new marriages, to which they were supposedly led by direct revelations, sometimes in dreams.91 Other groups, like the one described in 1533 by Hans Krug in Wertheim, or the Thuringian following of the “beggar king” Melchior Stoer, who was executed in 1536, were murderers and arsonists. The Krug group is apparently the only one who explicitly identified themselves as “re-baptizers”

88

QGT Strasbourg, vol. 1, 288–89. Stayer/Packull/Deppermann (1975); best articulated theologically in Goertz (1980)—now in English translation in Goertz (1996). 90 Clasen (1972), 32. 91 Clasen (1972), 131–34. 89

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(Wiedertäufer); baptism, for them, was accompanied by a conspiratorial oath not to reveal the secrets and existence of the group.92 By the end of 1527 Hut had died in an Augsburg prison, likely in a botched attempt to escape,93 and Denck had died of the plague in Basel, where he had taken refuge under the protection of Oecolampadius, the leading Reformed pastor there. Melchior Rinck, who had traveled with Denck in west Germany in 1527, returned the next year to the Hersfeld region in the borderlands jointly ruled by Hesse and Electoral Saxony. He became the most prominent Anabaptist preacher in his central German homeland, and, despite repeated imprisonments, continued to win adherents for the movement. Due to Philip of Hesse’s scruples against executing religious dissenters, Rinck was sentenced in 1531 to lifelong imprisonment; he lived on for more than twenty years in a relatively mild imprisonment.94 Although he was the most peaceful of the leaders who came from Müntzer to Anabaptism in central Germany, Rinck seemingly never went beyond the early Anabaptist consensus that governments should not interfere in the church.95 We know of no writing in which he endorsed the Schleitheim article that contended that Christians could not be rulers, and rulers could not be Christians. Rinck’s followers and successors in central Germany would sometimes say that they had learned their religion from Müntzer and Pfeiffer,96 or repeat jingles of peasant resistance on their way to execution.97 On the whole, however, they were peaceful persons who responded to the persecutions of Electoral Saxony, Luther and Melanchthon in much the same nonviolent way as their Swiss Anabaptist contemporaries suffered under Zwingli and Bullinger. Moreover, followers of Rinck joined in the general Swiss-South German emigration to Moravia. Active supporters of the radicalism of Karlstadt and Müntzer, which opposed the Saxon magisterial church of Luther a few years prior to the emergence of opposition to the magisterial church of Zwingli in Zurich, found their way into Anabaptism in significant

92 93 94 95 96 97

Stayer (1972), 197–99. Packull (1977), 120–21. Beulshausen (1981), vol. 1, 44–324; Geldbach (1970). Neumann (1961). Wappler (1913), 432. Ibid., 410, 417.

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numbers. Persons like Hut, Denck and Rinck became important Anabaptist leaders. However, by the late 1520s the standpoint of the Schleitheim Articles (diluted in places like Esslingen, where persecution was less severe) had essentially prevailed against the legacy of Thomas Müntzer in Anabaptism; and by the same time Andreas Karlstadt had opted to affiliate himself with the church of Zwingli, despite whatever impulses he had contributed at an earlier time to Zwingli’s radical opponents. Hut’s followers in Anabaptism were subjected to rigorous persecution; and their apocalyptic euphoria waned after Hut’s prophecies about the year 1528 went unfulfilled. A small group of eccentrics, gathered around the Augsburg leader Augustin Bader, hung on to such apocalyptic expectations for two years longer until Bader’s execution in Stuttgart in 1530.98 Only Barbara Rebstock, Anabaptist prophetess of Esslingen, now banished to Strasbourg, maintained a small connecting link between Hut’s apocalypticism and the next wave of apocalyptic excitement among Anabaptists unleashed by Melchior Hoffman.99 The mystical spiritualism of Müntzer, which for a time flowed into Anabaptism, now crystallized out again as Spiritualists, perhaps intimidated by the Imperial mandate of 1529 against Anabaptism, began an open critique of Anabaptist beliefs and practices, starting in the early 1530s. There was certainly a broad continuum of beliefs and practices among Anabaptists in the 1520s; but these differences did not at that time lead to a splintering of the movement into antagonistic groups which laid the ban on one another. Although the Swiss-South German Anabaptist movement had no monogenesis—its origins went back both to Saxony and Switzerland—by the end of the 1520s it was a single brotherhood, although one particularly susceptible to internal quarrels. That was nowhere as clear as in the regions where it unfolded most powerfully, in the Tyrol and Moravia. Anabaptism in Tyrol and Moravia—Persecution and Emigration Michael Gaismair’s uprising in the archbishopric of Brixen in 1525 and 1526 brought one of the most spectacular episodes of the Peasants’ 98 99

Packull (1977), 130–38. Deppermann (1987), 204–05.

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War to the Tyrol. It attracted more sympathy than actual participation, so that the wish was frequently expressed that Gaismair would once again march through the Tyrol. The peasantry of Tyrol experienced the rule of the Habsburgs and their allies, the princebishops of Salzburg and Brixen, as an exploitative foreign yoke.100 King Ferdinand’s government in Innsbruck suppressed the Lutheran Reformation of the Tyrol early and thoroughly, with the consequence that the surreptitious spread of Anabaptists was, for most Tyrolese, their first encounter with the Reformation. The discontent with the Habsburgs first manifested in the Peasants’ War won a broader basis of popular support with the coming of Anabaptism in 1527. The new religion came from Graubünden into the south Tyrol in the missionary work of George Blaurock, one of the first baptizers in Zurich in 1525, who died at the stake in 1529.101 Two close coworkers of Hans Hut, Leonhard Schiemer and Hans Schlaffer, both executed in 1528, spread the movement into the Inn valley north of the Alps.102 Hence Anabaptism came to Tyrol both from Switzerland and from central Germany. Claus-Peter Clasen has found evidence for 845 executions of Anabaptists in Switzerland and the southern and central regions of the Holy Roman Empire, a relatively small number by comparison to the exaggerated estimates of the older scholarship on Anabaptism.103 Although Clasen’s figures are a minimum, they can be regarded as approximately accurate, since executions were one thing that early modern governments undertook to record—there was no suppressing the evidence of “liquidations” as in the twentieth century. Moreover, these “martyrdoms,” as the Anabaptists regarded them, are impressive evidence of the firm religious convictions of the men and women who suffered, since most of them could have saved their lives simply by recanting. The persecution was most intensive during the late 1520s, and fiercest under rulers who remained true to the Church of Rome. Eighty per cent of the executions in the regions studied in this chapter took place during the early years of Anabaptism from 1525 to 1533; and eighty-five per cent were carried out by Catholic authorities, particularly the Austrian Habsburgs, the dukes of Bavaria 100 101 102 103

Bücking (1978), 58–105; Klaassen (1978); Lassmann (1987). Packull (1995), 181–86. Packull (1977), 106–17. Clasen (1972), 370–74; Stayer (2002), 58–60.

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and the Swabian League. In 1528 and 1529 alone 352 executions of Anabaptists are recorded. 104 The Imperial mandate against Anabaptism, approved by the Diet of Speyer of 1529, represents an attempt by the Habsburgs to force the Protestant estates of the Empire to use the death penalty against Anabaptists. In general, however, this effort was unsuccessful. Although (or because) Anabaptism had separated from the Protestant established churches, most Protestant governments hesitated to carry out the death penalty against Anabaptists in accordance with traditional laws against heresy. That applied in the main to Protestant Imperial cities, particularly Strasbourg and Nuremberg, and likewise for princely states like Hesse and Württemberg. Only Catholic governments carried out the cruel execution by fire, and only they executed Anabaptists who had recanted.105 Despite the varying ferocity of the repression, the Swiss-South German Anabaptist movement came under intense pressure in the late 1520s. Most surviving Anabaptist leaders and their following sought refuge in the one place where they were still safe—down the Danube River in Moravia. That was the case with Balthasar Hubmaier, Wilhelm Reublin, Johannes Brötli, Margret Hottinger and Pilgram Marpeck, as well as for those Anabaptist émigrés from the Tyrol who took over the leadership of Moravian Anabaptism. As a result of the outcome of the Hussite Wars a century earlier, most Moravian noblemen were non-Catholic. They exercised their power in the Moravian Estates to protect their autonomy against King Ferdinand’s government in Vienna, which ruled Moravia after 1526. This relative autonomy expressed itself in the religious tolerance of the Moravian nobility that made it possible for them to welcome whomever they chose to their estates. The Moravian nobility welcomed the Anabaptists.106 Anabaptist Internal Schisms in Moravia, 1527–1533 One of the first Anabaptists to seek refuge in Moravia was the outstanding theologian of the movement, Balthasar Hubmaier. He arrived at Nikolsburg (Mikulov) in the late spring or early summer of 1526.

104 105 106

Clasen (1972), 370–74. Clasen (1972), 374–86. Hruby (1933), 7–23.

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He was probably invited by a group of humanist reformers led by Martin Göschl, a prominent pro-Reformation Catholic clergyman, who in his function as prior of the abbey of Kaunitz held patronage rights over the parishes in the town and territory of Nikolsburg. Göschl hoped to unite the splintered Moravian reform groups in a Swiss-type sacramentarian version of the Reformation. Besides convincing these humanist reformers to accept adult baptism, Hubmaier won over the temporal lord of Nikolsburg, Count Leonhart von Liechtenstein (1482–1534), and the greater part of the resident population. He intentionally sought the support and patronage of the Moravian aristocracy. Seemingly he aimed at an independent, majoritarian Anabaptist church, since with Göschl’s support he was able to win over the humanist clergy of the Nikolsburg region to a radical program including believers’ baptism, a commemorative Lord’s Supper and the ban, as well as the removal of images and altars.107 Hubmaier’s success made Nikolsburg a magnet for Anabaptist refugees from Switzerland and the Empire. Differences between the settled congregation of Nikolsburg and the impoverished refugees gave rise to the first schism within the Anabaptist movement, at least the first of which we have record. Following Hubmaier about a year later, the traveling apostle of south and central German Anabaptism, Hans Hut, appeared in Nikolsburg. Here he found a great deal that displeased him: mass baptisms with no sign of conversion; no community of goods; and the smooth cooperation of Hubmaier with persons who held ecclesiastical or temporal offices. Count Liechtenstein called for a disputation between Hubmaier and Hut, which when it occurred was focused on Hut’s expectation of the imminent end of the world and Hubmaier’s objections to Hut’s apocalyptic interpretation of Scripture. In the outcome Hut had to flee Nikolsburg, and Hubmaier declared that the gulf between the baptism he taught and that of Hut was as great as the difference between heaven and hell, orient and occident, Christ and Belial.108 Despite his eschatology, more or less inspired by Müntzer, which was alien to the older Swiss tradition in Anabaptism, Hut found more resonance among the Anabaptist refugees in Nikolsburg than did Hubmaier. The example of the first Christians’ sharing material

107 108

Rothkegel (2000). Bergsten (1978), 361–77; Packull (1977), 99–106.

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goods in Acts 2 and 4 had great authority in early Anabaptism, even when it was followed on a more or less voluntary basis by Anabaptists who lived and worked in family-centered households. For Hut and his followers community of goods was the distinguishing mark of overcoming the sin of covetousness (against which the traditional interpretation of last two of the Ten Commandments was directed) and a sign of eschatological hope. Moreover, it was linked with the mystical-spiritualist tradition of central Germany, which stressed yieldedness (Gelassenheit) and renunciation of attachment to material goods.109 The needy refugees who came to Moravia thought that the resident Anabaptists there should open their houses and share their possessions in an act of Christian love. They also called Hubmaier and Liechtenstein “sword-bearers” (Schwertler), who defended themselves with the sword, against one of the prescriptions of the Schleitheim Articles. In fact, the resistance of Count Liechtenstein against Habsburg officials who hunted down and killed Anabaptist emigrants to Moravia was one of the disputed issues which divided the Anabaptists in Nikolsburg.110 In March 1528—the same month in which Hubmaier, whom Liechenstein had been unable to protect from Habsburg charges of rebellion and heresy, was executed in Vienna111— Count Liechtenstein decreed the banishment of the schismatic Anabaptists from Nikolsburg. The banished Anabaptists resettled in nearby Austerlitz. One of their first measures stressed community of goods with all possible clarity. They chose two “servants of temporal needs,” who “then spread out a cloak in front of the people, and each one laid his possessions on it with a willing heart—without being forced—so that the needy might be supported in accordance with the teaching of the prophets and apostles. Isa. 23; Acts 2, 4 and 5.”112 Even though the Austerlitz community originally numbered only two hundred persons, it quickly outstripped the Nikolsburg congregation in size. The Austerlitz community, led by Jakob Wiedemann, won adherents such as Pilgram Marpeck and Leopold Scharnschlager who baptized with its authority in the territories of the Empire.113 There is

109 110 111 112 113

Stayer (1991), 95–122. Stayer (1972), 141–46. Bergsten (1978), 377–80. Zieglschmid, Älteste Chronik, 86–87; Chronicle, vol. 1, 80–81. QGT Baden/Pfalz, 422, 424.

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good reason to believe that Marpeck’s tracts against Hans Bünderlin and Christian Entfelder, who had abandoned Anabaptism for Spiritualism, published in Strasbourg in 1531, were statements on behalf of the Austerlitz Brethren, whom he called “the church in the land of Moravia.”114 For a time Moravia appeared to many Anabaptists as the center of their movement, the only place where they could practice true Christianity with community of goods. Many Anabaptist leaders led their flocks into the Moravian “Promised Land”—Philip Plener from the Rhineland, Gabriel Ascherham from Silesia, and, above all, the famous Anabaptist leader, Jakob Hutter from the south Tyrol. The followers of Plener, the Philippites, offer a particularly clear example of how the commitment to replicating the church of Acts 2 and 4 continued from the south German homeland to the émigré world of Moravian Anabaptism. Plener was a weaver from a small town near Strasbourg, who attracted a following in the Palatinate, the Neckar river valley and Württemberg. His group emigrated to Moravia, without doubt for greater safety from persecution, but also, it seems, to be able to practice the precepts of Acts 2 and 4 more fully than they could when living within the constraints of single family households. Expelled from Moravia in the great persecution of 1535, some of the Philippites imprisoned at Passau on their return journey developed a body of hymns that was later to become the core of the Ausbund, the Swiss Brethren hymnal.115 Community of goods turned out to be a bone of contention among the Anabaptists in Moravia. Leaders and congregations argued about which of them really followed the apostolic model of the first Christians in Jerusalem, and they reproached their competitors with falling short of the original Christian order and with being “false Ananiases,” as described in Acts 5. An aggravating factor was that none of the congregations achieved full equality between leaders and members, or between men and women. Thus, Wilhelm Reublin, the surviving founding leader of Zurich Anabaptism, led a schism in the Austerlitz community in January 1531, criticizing the leadership style and practice of Christian sharing prescribed by Jakob Wiedemann. But before the year was out Reublin himself was banned from his new com-

114 115

Packull (1995), 133–46. Ibid., 77–98.

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munity at Auspitz for holding back money in his personal possession. The same accusation became a virtual cliché, frequently repeated in future leadership struggles. In 1533 Jakob Hutter broke communion with the Philippites and the Gabrielites, the followers of Gabriel Ascherham. At the time this appeared to be a particularly schismatic action by the major leader of the Anabaptists in the Tyrol, who was now determined to dominate Moravian Anabaptism, even at the cost of splitting groups that had previously harmonious relations with each other.116 But the significance of the Hutterite schism turned on its close proximity to the fierce persecution of 1535–36, in which King Ferdinand decided to drive the Anabaptists out of Moravia once and for all. At the time the Turkish pressure on the south-eastern frontier had temporarily abated, with the result that the Austrian government was not then in dire need of financial levies from the Moravian Estates. Moreover, the contemporary events in Münster may have convinced some Moravian nobles that Anabaptism was dangerous, after all. Because of the persecution Hutter himself returned to the Tyrol, where he was arrested and in 1536 cruelly executed.117 Like the Hutterites, the old Austerlitz community with which Pilgram Marpeck was affiliated lost its major leader with the execution of Jakob Wiedemann. They abandoned community of goods at some point in the 1530s. Absorbing impulses from early Swiss Anabaptism, they worked for unification on their terms of the various Anabaptist groups. They enjoyed a following in various Moravian cities and territories, and even in Vienna.118 The disparaging remarks, preserved in the Kunstbuch, by Pilgram Marpeck and Cornelius Veh, the leading Austerlitz preacher in the 1540s, about “the two harmful and pernicious sects, the Swiss and the Hutterites,” are most reasonably interpreted as expressions of frustration at the failure of the efforts of the Austerlitz Brethren at Anabaptist unification.119 The persecutions of 1535–1536 compelled the Gabrielites and Philippites to return to their homelands in Silesia and the Rhineland.120

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Packull (1995), 214–35; Stayer (1991), 142–44. Packull (1995), 236–57. 118 The new research of Martin Rothkegel (cf. the chapter in this volume) tells us most of what we know about the Austerlitz Brethren. 119 QGTS Ostschweiz, 225–28; cf. Packull (1995), 138. 120 Packull (1995), 283–302. 117

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Once the persecution had abated, only the Hutterites succeeded in continuing and institutionalizing the practice of community of goods in Moravia. The other Anabaptist groups re-examined the authority of the practices of the Jerusalem church, as described in Acts 2 and 4, and concluded that it was perhaps God’s will that community of goods was practiced for only a short time. Now they identified themselves with the New Testament Christians after they had been expelled from Jerusalem, during a time when they possessed private property.121 The first Anabaptist congregation in Zollikon had referred to each other as “Brethren in Christ,” signifying conventicle Christians who had abandoned the parish system that was supposed to include everyone.122 In Hussite Bohemia and Moravia this was the distinction between the Utraquists, who were the established Hussite church, and the “Bohemian Brethren,” who were conventicle Hussites. Martin Rothkegel observes that, when Anabaptist refugees, who were linguistically German, arrived in Moravia, they were referred to as “German Brethren” to distinguish them from the Bohemian Brethren, who were Czech. Starting in the late 1530s the terms “Swiss Brethren,” “Austerlitz Brethren,” and “Hutterites” came into currency in Moravia with something like denominational significance.123 Often they were used in a negative sense, pointing out the shortcomings of a particular Anabaptist group in the eyes of its competitors. The line between the Hutterites, who renounced private property, and the Swiss and Austerlitz Brethren, who did not, was clear enough. In the eyes of Marpeck and Veh the Swiss were guilty of a rigid legalism—for instance in their application of the ban or the Schleitheim article on the oath; while the Swiss accused the Austerlitz Brethren of “stretching the freedom of Christ too far.”124 In this way we can account for the apparent fact that the usage “Swiss Brethren” first became current in Moravia, where are preserved for us the only account of the 1525 Zurich baptisms and a variant of the first Swiss congregational ordinance.125 Thus, the years around 1540 mark the begin-

121 122 123 124 125

Ibid., 138. Blanke (1961). Packull (1995), 287–89. QGTS Ostschweiz, 225–28. Fast (1978); Packull (1995), 33–53.

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ning of fixed groups within what had earlier been a more fluid situation among these conventiclers. Selected Bibliography Sources The Chronicle of the Hutterian Brethren. 2 vols. Rifton, NY, 1987. Dürr, Emil and Paul Roth, eds. Aktensammlung zur Geschichte der Basler Reformation in den Jahren 1519—Anfang 1534. 6 vols. Basel, 1921ff. Harder, Leland, ed. The Sources of Swiss Anabaptism: The Grebel Letters and Related Documents. Scottdale, PA, 1985. Fast, Heinold, ed. Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer in der Schweiz, vol. 2: Ostschweiz. Zurich, 1973. [QGTS Ostschweiz] Haas, Martin, ed. Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer in der Schweiz, vol. 4: Drei Täufergespräche. Winterthur, 1974. [QGTS Gespräche] Klaassen, Walter, ed. Anabaptism in Outline. Scottdale, PA 1981. Krebs, Manfred, ed. Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer, vol. 4: Baden und Pfalz. Gütersloh, 1951. [QGT Baden/Pfalz] Krebs, Manfred and Hans-Georg Rott, eds. Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer, vol. 7: Elsass, 1 (Stadt Straßburg 1522–1532). Gütersloh, 1959. [QGT Strasbourg, vol. 1] Matheson, Peter, ed. The Collected Works of Thomas Müntzer. Edinburgh, 1988. [CWTM] Schornbaum, Karl, ed. Quellen zur Geschichte der Wiedertäufer, vol. 2: Herzogtum Brandenburg (Bayern 1) Leipzig, 1934. [QGT Bayern, part 1] Müller, Lydia, ed. Glaubenzeugnisse oberdeutscher Taufgesinnter, vol. 1. Leipzig, 1938. von Muralt, Leonhard and Walter Schmid, eds. Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer in der Schweiz, vol. 1: Zürich. Zurich, 1952. [QGT Zurich] Yoder, John H., ed. The Legacy of Michael Sattler. Scottdale, PA 1973. Zieglschmid, A. J. F., ed. Die älteste Chronik der Hutterischen Brüder. Ithaca, 1943. [Zieglscmid, Älteste Chronik] Literature Armour, Rollin Stely. Anabaptist Baptism. A Representative Study. Scottdale, PA 1966. Bergsten, Torsten. Balthasar Hubmaier. Anabaptist Theologian and Martyr. William R. Estep, ed. Valley Forge, PA 1978. Beulshausen, Heinrich. Die Geschichte der osthessischen Täufergemeinden. 2 vols. Geissen, 1981. Biesecker-Mast, Gerald. “Anabaptist Separation and Arguments against the Sword in the Schleitheim Brotherly Union,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 74 (2000), 381–402. Blanke, Fritz. Brothers in Christ. Scottdale, PA 1961. Boyd, Stephen B. Pilgram Marpeck. His Life and Social Theology. Durham, NC, 1992. Bücking, Jürgen. Michael Gaismair: Reformer-Sozialrebell-Revolutionär. Seine Rolle in Tiroler “Bauernkrieg” (1525/32). Stuttgart, 1978. Clasen, Claus-Peter. Anabaptism. A Social History. Switzerland, Austria, Moravia, and South and Central Germany. Ithaca, NY 1972. ——. The Anabaptists in South and Central Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Their Names, Occupations, Places of Residence and Dates of Conversion, 1525–1618. Ann Arbor, MI, 1978. Davis, Kenneth R. Anabaptism and Asceticism. Scottdale, PA, 1974.

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Deppermann, Klaus. Melchior Hoffman. Social Unrest and Apocalyptic Visions in the Age of Reformation. Edinburgh, 1987. Fast, Heinold. “Die Sonderstellung der Täufer in St. Gallen und Appenzell,” Zwingliana 11 (1960), 223–40. ——. “Wie doopte Konrad Grebel? Overwegingen bij Meihuizens uitleg van de bronnen,” Doopsgezinde Bijdragen n. r. 4 (1978), 22–31. Friedmann, Robert. The Theology of Anabaptism. Scottdale, PA, 1973. Geldbach, Erich. “Die Lehre des hessischen Täuferführers Melchior Rinck (c. 1493– nach 1553)” Jahrbuch der hessischen kirchengeschichtlichen Vereinigung 21 (1970), 119–35. Goertz, Hans-Jürgen. Innere und äußere Ordnung in der Theologie Thomas Müntzers. Leiden, 1967. ——. Die Täufer. Geschichte und Deutung. Munich 1980. English: The Anabaptists. Trevor Johnson, trans.. London and New York, 1996. Haas, Martin. “Der Weg der Täufer in die Absonderung. Zur Interdependenz von Theologie und sozialem Verhalten,” in Umstrittenes Täufertum (1975), 50–78. Hruby, ’ Frantisek. “Die Wiedertäufer in Mähren,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 30 (1933), 1–36, 170–211; 32 (1935), 1–40. Klaassen, Walter. Living at the End of Ages. Apocalyptic Expectations in the Radical Reformation. Lanham, MD, 1992. ——. Michael Gaismair. Revolutionary and Reformer. Leiden, 1978. Klassen, William. Covenant and Community. Grand Rapids, MI, 1968. Krajewski, Ekkehart. Leben und Sterben des Zürcher Täuferführers Felix Mantz. Kassel, 1957. Lassmann, Wolfgang. “Möglichkeiten einer Modellbildung zur Verlaufstruktur des tirolischen Anabaptismus,” in Anabaptistes et dissidents au XVI e siècle. Jean-Georges Rott and Simon L. Verheus, eds. Baden-Baden and Bouxwiller 1987, 297–309. Liechty, Daniel. Andreas Fischer and the Sabbatarian Anabaptists. An Early Reformation Episode in East Central Europe. Scottdale, PA, 1988. McLaughlin, R. Emmet. “Apocalypticism and Thomas Müntzer,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 95 (2004), 98–131. Meyer, Christian. “Zur Geschichte der Wiedertäufer in Oberschwaben, I: Die Anfänge des Wiedertäuferthums in Augsburg,” Zeitschrift des historischen Vereins für Schwaben und Neuburg 1 (1874), 207–53. Mecenseffy, Grete. “The Origin of Upper Austrian Anabaptism,” in The Anabaptists and Thomas Müntzer, James M. Stayer and Werner O. Packull, eds. Dubuque, IO 1980, 152–53. Neumann, Gerhard J. “A Newly Discovered Manuscript of Melchior Rinck,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 35 (1961), 211–17. Oyer, John S. Lutheran Reformers against Anabaptists. Luther, Melanchthon and Menius and the Anabaptists of Central Germany. The Hague, 1964. ——. “The Anabaptists in Esslingen,” in “They Harry the Good People out of the Land.” Essays on the Persecution, Survival and Flourishing of Anabaptists and Mennonites. John D. Roth, ed. Goshen, IN, 2000, 191–321. Packull, Werner O. Mysticism and the Early South German-Austrian Anabaptist Movement 1525–1531. Scottdale, PA, 1977. ——. Hutterite Beginnings. Communitarian Experiments during the Reformation. Baltimore, 1995. Peachey, Paul. Die soziale Herkunft der Schweizer Täufer in der Reformationszeit, 1525–1540. Karlsruhe, 1954. Pries, Edmund. “Oath Refusal in Zurich from 1525 to 1527. The Erratic Emergence of Anabaptist Practise,” in Anabaptism Revisited. Walter Klaassen, ed. Scottdale, 1992, 85–97. Rothkegel, Hans Martin. Die Nikolsburger Reformation, 1526–1535. Von Humanismus zum Sabbatarismus. Th.D. diss. Prague, 2000.

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Rupp, Gordon. Patterns of Reformation. London, 1969. Seebaß, Gottfried. Müntzers Erbe. Werk, Leben und Theologie des Hans Hut. Gütersloh 2002. Snyder, C. Arnold. The Life and Thought of Michael Sattler. Scottdale, PA, 1984. ——. “Konrad Winckler: An Early Swiss Anabaptist Missionary, Pastor and Martyr,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 64 (1990), 352–61. ——. Anabaptist History and Theology. An Introduction. Kitchener, ON, 1995. —— and Linda A. Huebert Hecht, eds. Profiles of Anabaptist Women. Sixteenth-Century Reforming Pioneers. Waterloo, ON, 1996. Stayer, James M. “Hans Hut’s Doctrine of the Sword: An Attempted Solution,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 39 (1965), 181–91. ——. Anabaptists and the Sword. Lawrence, KS, 1972. ——. The German Peasants’ War and Anabaptist Community of Goods. Montreal, 1991. ——. “Reeling History Backwards: The Anabaptists as a Key to Understanding Thomas Müntzer More Conservatively,” Meiji University International Exchange Programs Guest Lecture Series, No. 9 (1995). ——. “Numbers in Anabaptist Research,” in Commoners and Community. Essays in Honour of Werner O. Packull. C. Arnold Snyder, ed. Kitchener, ON, 2002, 51–73. ——. Werner O. Packull, and Klaus Deppermann. “From Monogenesis to Polygenesis. The Historical Discussion of Anabaptist Origins,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 49 (1975), 83–121. Strübind, Andrea. Eifriger als Zwingli. Die frühe Täuferbewegung in der Schweiz. Berlin, 2003. Umstrittenes Täufertum, 1525–1975. Neue Forschungen. Goertz, Hans-Jürgen, ed. Göttingen, 1975. Wappler, Paul. Die Täuferbewegung in Thüringen von 1526–1584. Jena, 1913. Wenger, John C. “Martin Weninger’s Vindication of Anabaptism, 1535,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 22 (1948), 180–87. Williams, George H. The Radical Reformation. 3rd edn. Kirksville, MO, 1992. Yoder, John Howard. “‘Anabaptists and the Sword’ Revisited. Systematic Historiography and Undogmatic Nonresistants,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 85 (1974), 126–39. ——. Anabaptism and Reformation in Switzerland. An Historical and Theological Analysis of the Dialogues between Anabaptists and Reformers. C. Arnold Snyder, ed. Kitchener, ON, 2004. Zeman, Jarold K. The Anabaptists and the Czech Brethren in Moravia 1526–1628. The Hague and Paris, 1969. Zschäbitz, Gerhard. Zur mitteldeutschen Wiedertäuferbewegung nach dem großen Bauernkrieg. Berlin, 1958.

CHAPTER FOUR

SPIRITUALISM: SCHWENCKFELD AND FRANCK AND THEIR EARLY MODERN RESONANCES R. Emmet McLaughlin The Reformation as a whole “spiritualized” much of medieval Catholicism. As a result, all of the Reformers were “spiritualists” to one degree or another. The religious figures discussed in this chapter distinguish themselves only by the degree of their “spiritualism,” though the extremity of that degree could appear to the magisterial reformers as a difference in kind. Spiritualism is the tendency to suppress material mediators, be they humans or objects, between God and the individual believer. In its most extreme form, Radical Spiritualism, the Church, the sacraments, and the Bible itself were denied the ability to transmit or convey the spirit, grace or divinity, and therefore to engender or to sustain salvific faith. Radical Spiritualism arose as a reaction against the religious discord within the Reform movement and in response to the enforced religious monopoly of the new state churches. The scandal of contradictory interpretations of the Bible, the simultaneous claim to orthodoxy of adversarial churches, and the unwelcome marriage of Church and State were met by Radical Spiritualists in the sixteenth century with demands for religious freedom. The same combination of complaints and Radical Spiritualism lay at the roots of religious toleration at the end of the seventeenth century. Spiritualizing and Spiritualism The medieval Catholic Church offered itself as the necessary vehicle of God’s grace to humanity. The heart of Catholicism comprised seven sacraments. More than mere symbols or memorials, sacraments were efficacious material signs that conveyed what they symbolized. The water of baptism, for example, actually cleansed the soul of sin and the Eucharist offered the real body and blood of Christ. Although the baptized laity could administer baptism in an

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emergency—a sure sign of its absolute necessity for salvation—in most cases only the ordained clergy possessed the sacral power to dispense the sacraments. The faith necessary for the full efficacy of the sacraments was normally the product of clerical preaching or teaching. The Bible, though reverenced as the Word of God, required clerical explication to become true doctrine. The Word, faith, and grace were all mediated through the clergy and the church. While direct communication and communion with God remained a theoretical possibility, the normal necessary way to salvation lay through material objects and other human beings. The indwelling, transmission or conveyance by the material of spirit, of grace, or of God himself—in a word “sacramentality”—remains a fundamental principle of Catholic theology and practice. To a greater or lesser extent, all the Reformers denied it and attacked its manifestations wherever they found them. The Radical Spiritualists represent an important stage in a spiritualizing trajectory that began in the twelfth century and which by the later middle ages had generated a rich assortment of complements and alternatives to the sacramental hierarchical church.1 This found expression on the popular level through a growing incidence of silent prayer, meditation, and other devotions. At the same time, the religious and intellectual elites were producing mysticism, the Devotio Moderna, new heresies, a reinvigorated Neoplatonism, Erasmian humanism, and even the early Luther. Luther’s three pillars—solo Christo, sola fide, and sola scriptura—each “spiritualized” Christianity and sapped the foundations of Catholicism. Justification by faith alone dissolved the connection between the life and works of the Christian and salvation. Christ’s righteousness was no longer infused into the believing soul but was imputed to the sinner by God’s initiative. Since the righteousness acquired by faith remained an alien righteousness, believers were saved even as they remained completely sinful. And although the faithful could expect some amelioration, their thoughts and deeds remained justly condemned by God’s Law, although for Christ’s sake God was willing to accept them as if they were holy. For the Catholic Church, God’s grace was a participation in the divine essence that made of the sinner a saint worthy of divine accep-

1

McLaughlin (1990).

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tance. For the reformers, God’s grace was God’s gracious acceptance of the unworthy sinner. The saving faith of the sinful and their gracious acceptance by God were acts of the will that established a personal relationship between the actors, but did not lead to an essential communion by which humans participated in the divinity and were made more god-like. Protestantism therefore represented a dramatic desacramentalization or spiritualization of Christianity, even though the reformers retained two biblically enjoined sacraments and Luther, in this a maverick, held to a real presence in the Eucharist. In place of the Catholic sacraments, Protestants offered the Bible, the Word of God, as the instrument of God’s grace and as the source of saving faith in Jesus Christ. Although some of the faithful may have ascribed an indwelling divine power to the Bible, for the reformers it was only holy by its association with God, and only spiritual as an instrument, not a dwelling, of the Holy Spirit. It was the biblical message—the Gospel—not the text itself that was holy, and that message could be as effectively broadcast by preaching as by reading. Since the Gospel could be gleaned from the text and accepted by any reader whose will God made receptive, in principle the Protestant churches lacked a mediatory function since the Spirit-guided interpreter could extract the truth directly from Scripture. The clergy no longer formed a sacred caste but were mere office-holders who administered the sacraments and preached, duties which any baptized believer could perform. The church, clergy, sacraments, Bible and believers had been stripped of their sacrality. Only God was holy and though he intervened in the affairs of men, he did not dwell among them. Seen from a medieval Catholic perspective the loss was immeasurable and the differences between reformers and Radical Spiritualists were of no great moment. However, the reformers held firmly to the church, to a clerical function, to sacraments however understood, and to the visible, material Bible as the Word of God. They vehemently rejected the logical next step—at least from the Radical Spiritualist’s perspective—of abandoning church, sacraments and the Bible for an absolutely unmediated relationship to God. Typologies of Spiritualism In their own time, the Radical Spiritualists were not recognized as a group separate from other radicals. For Luther they were all fanatics

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(Schwärmer), enthusiasts, or “spirits.”2 The modern category of Radical Spiritualism derives from Alfred Hegler’s (1892) identification of Sebastian Franck as representative of a distinctive type of Christian experience. Ernst Troeltsch (1912) included individualistic Spiritualism alongside the sect and the church in his immensely influential categorization of Christian social forms. Rufus Jones, a Quaker (1914) described a group of “spiritual reformers” in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. And Johannes Kühn (1923) included Radical Spiritualism as one of five basic forms of Protestantism.3 Nonetheless, specifying who was or was not a Radical Spiritualist remained a problem. George Williams (1957) provided the first typology that not only established the contours of Radical Spiritualism, but also provided subcategories with more specificity.4 Williams posited a group of Revolutionary Spiritualists (Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, Thomas Müntzer, the Zwickau Prophets), another group of Rational Spiritualists (Theophrastus Paracelsus, Sebastian Franck, Valentin Weigel) and one Evangelical Spiritualist (Caspar Schwenckfeld). However, these categories were impressionistic, since he provided no definitions or characteristics to distinguish one group from another. More recently I have proposed a refinement of Williams’ categories into Biblical/Charismatic (Müntzer), Platonic/Noetic (Franck) and Platonic/Sacramental (Schwenckfeld) based upon the source and the conception of spirit (Bible vs. Plato) and the way in which those spirits manifested themselves in theology and experience.5 The present chapter concerns only the Radical Platonic Spiritualists, that is, the Noetic (Franck, Coornhert) and Sacramental (Schwenckfeld, Weigel). Müntzer and the Charismatic Spiritualists are a disparate phenomenon that has already been treated in Chapter 1. Plato’s notion of immaterial mind (nous) grounds both Noetic and Sacramental Spiritualism. Because an immaterial substance occupied no space, was situated in no place, had no mass, and was not perceptible to the senses, it simply could not interact with, be conveyed

2

For Luther, terms like “Schwärmsgeist,” “Prophet,” “Enthusiast,” “mördische Geister,” “Mordgeister,” “Mordpropheten,” or “Schwertchristen,” were most often applied to Müntzer and others like him, Mühlpfordt (1986). 3 Hegler (1892), Troeltsch (1912), Jones (1914), Kühn (1923). They referred to the phenomenon simply as Spiritualism, not Radical Spiritualism 4 “Introduction,” Williams (1957), 19–38, esp. 31–35. See also the introductions to the first and third editions of his magisterial Radical Reformation, Williams (1992). 5 McLaughlin (2002).

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by or contained within any material substance. The immaterial was incommensurable with matter since it did not exist in the same way or on the same plane of reality. Material objects by definition could not serve as media for spiritual entities. The latter communicate directly since, lacking spatial dimensionality, they were all “present” to each other. This was true even of the human nous which, because of its own unmindfulness and attraction to the physical, finds itself partially fallen from the noetic realm. Returning completely to its true “homeland” requires the human mind to turn away from its own body and the physical realm to the noetic realm. Plato associated passions, emotions and instincts with the body, so becoming more noetic meant becoming “apathetic,” that is, freed from these disturbances of the soul. Further, given Plato’s understanding of noetic beings (gods, ideas, minds) as eternal and unchangeable, becoming fully noetic meant achieving stasis, peace, and rest. These characteristics mark the Radical Spiritualism of the four men discussed here. Not every Platonically influenced thinker was content to cleave reality into two antagonistic spheres. Neoplatonists such as Iamblichus (d. ca. 330 CE) and the Christian Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (fifth-sixth centuries CE) sought to suture the wound by accepting the impossible. Arguing that the human soul had fallen completely out of the noetic sphere, they proposed that only material media could connect one immaterial entity to another that was completely encased by a material body. What seemed a barrier became a bridge. Because this made no sense at all given the accepted understanding of immateriality, Iamblichus and the Areopagite appropriated the language of “mystery” to ground the rites and ritual objects that comprised pagan and Christian worship respectively. When employed by scholastic theologians, the Areopagite became fundamental to Catholic sacramental theology. Given its mixed composition, sacramental “spirit” does not have a clear profile and hence sacramental spirituality can range quite widely. The application of “sacramental” to qualify one of the two Platonically inspired sixteenth-century Radical Spiritualisms reveals its comparatively incomplete spiritualization and its closeness to Catholic sacramental thinking. Thomas Müntzer was inspired by a second—non Platonic—spirit: a biblically modeled charismatic spirit whose characteristics were quite distinctive. In contrast to Platonic spirit, Biblical spirit was not immaterial and was often portrayed as an active physical force (ruah,

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pneumos = breath or wind) rather than a passive object of intellectual desire. Although this force reached into the innermost man, it originated outside of the human soul. Biblical spirit very often shook, “inspired,” or drove the human being to effect God’s will in the world, by violence if need be. Although the “still small voice” (1 Kings 19:12) was also a manifestation, even at its most quiet, the voice spoke and the human listened. Exaltation, joy, righteous anger, sorrow and despair were some of its many effects. Finally, since the Biblical/charismatic spirit was not immaterial there was no inherent problem with material media. The Bible has many. However, neither was the spirit bound to matter. It could blow where it willed ( John 3:8). Though the Radical Platonic Spiritualists also appropriated that passage, the Biblical/charismatic spirit that inspired Thomas Müntzer had almost nothing in common except the word itself with the spirit that enlightened Caspar Schwenckfeld, Sebastian Franck, Dirck Volckertszoon Coornhert and Valentin Weigel. Caspar Schwenckfeld (1489–1561) The life of Caspar Schwenckfeld allows us an unusually detailed and intimate insight into the making of a Spiritualist.6 Caspar Schwenckfeld von Ossig was the scion of a long-established Silesian noble family. Although his earliest education is unknown to us, he attended a number of universities without taking a degree—not unusual for those of the nobility—and then entered court life. “Courtesans” did not enjoy a good reputation in early modern Europe and the Silesian courts were particularly noted for extravagance and indulgence. Whether that played a role in Schwenckfeld’s religious conversion is unclear. However, dissatisfaction with the undisciplined behavior of his fellow Protestants was clearly part of his later radicalization. Schwenckfeld’s embrace of the Lutheran message in 1519 was the first in a series of what he called Heimsuchungen or “[divine] visitations” that punctuated his religious evolution. Although scholars, Lutherans especially, have sought to deny that Schwenckfeld ever

6 McLaughlin (1986) presents his development until 1540. Schultz (1976), first published in 1946, is hagiographical but a reliable guide to events and publications. Schultz was an editor of the Corpus Schwenckfeldianorum (1907–1961).

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truly agreed with Luther,7 Schwenckfeld’s early writings reveal a loyal, well-informed Lutheran theology.8 From his position at the court of the Duke of Liegnitz, Schwenckfeld engineered the Silesian Reformation by persuading the secular princes to throw off the Bishop of Breslau’s authority and to take the church into their own hands.9 This process was complete by 1524. However, in the 1524 Admonition that outlined the reform, Schwenckfeld expressed concern that the Reformation was not bearing the moral fruit that he had expected.10 The Eucharistic controversy between Luther, Andreas Karlstadt and Ulrich Zwingli focused his attention on the sacrament.11 He realized that many Lutherans believed reception of the Eucharist forgave their sins and guaranteed their salvation, making a visibly improved Christian life unnecessary. Analyzing the sacrament, Schwenckfeld combined John 6:54–57, which equated salvation with receiving Christ’s flesh and blood, with the test case of Judas, who partook of the bread and wine but into whom the devil ( John 13:27) and not Christ had entered. He concluded that the true Eucharist must be internal and spiritual and that the bread and wine were only symbols of that inner Supper. 12 Schwenckfeld’s Eucharistic theology reflected late medieval Eucharistic piety, in particularly “spiritual communion,” by which believers participated in Christ’s body and blood by desire without reception of the bread and wine. This approach was quite at odds with the criticisms offered by Karlstadt and Zwingli.13 They had argued that the real presence was impossible and nonsensical, since Christ had risen into heaven and would remain there until the second coming. Since human bodies could not be in two places at once, his presence in the bread and wine was physically impossible. Christ’s divinity

7

E.g. Maron (1961), 157. Hirsch (1922), 145. 9 His Letter to Bishop Salza of Breslau ( January 1, 1524) gave the Bishop the choice of joining the Reformation with an implied threat should he not.—Schwenckfeld (1907–1961), 1: 242–283. The “Admonition Concerning Abuse of Certain Important Articles of the Gospel” ( June 11, 1524), Schwenckfeld (1907–1961), 2: 26–105, provided the blueprint for the Liegnitz Reformation on June 24. 10 He blamed the Lutheran clergy for ineptly presenting Luther’s message.— Schwenckfeld (1907–1961), 2: 42–44. 11 McLaughlin (1996), 95–124. 12 This was worked out during the summer of 1525 and presented in Twelve Arguments against Impanation.—Schwenckfeld (1907–1961), 3: 98–102. 13 For the history of the Eucharistic controversy, Köhler (1924, 1953). 8

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could be everywhere, but to ascribe such ability to his human body robbed it of its true humanity. Instead of John 6:54–57, they appealed to John 6:63: “The flesh profits nothing.” Even if the real presence were true it could bring no benefit. Christ’s death on the cross, not his incarnation, determined the nature of righteousness and salvation. The combination of justification by faith alone and alien righteousness rendered participation in Christ’s body and blood superfluous. Schwenckfeld’s rejection of the real presence, by contrast, was premised upon the absolute necessity of that participation. Eucharistic participation in Christ provided the ontological underpinning for salvation. Christ’s righteousness was not imputed to the believer, but was infused into the soul as Christ’s body and blood, making possible a more Christian life, a more moral behavior, and a true love of God and of the neighbor.14 Where those characteristics were lacking, faith and salvation were unlikely. To be sure, perfection was not expected, but visible improvement—a new life—was. Schwenckfeld’s use of Scripture to analyze the Eucharist is an excellent example of his spiritualistic approach to the Bible. The battle between Luther and Zwingli centered upon Christ’s declaration “This is my body, this is my blood” (Matthew 26:26). Luther held to a literal interpretation while Zwingli famously argued that the word “is” meant “signify.” Schwenckfeld offered no exegesis of Matthew 26:26 and he never thought that the explication of the text was of primary importance.15 The logic of his argument was based not on the fine points of Greek, but upon his concern for moral improvement and the contradiction between the doctrine of the real presence, John 6:54–57, and the case of Judas. Textual exegesis did not move Schwenckfeld to question the real presence. Rather a preceding insight or inspiration made sense of both the sacrament and the text. For the interpretation of Matthew 26:26, however, Schwenckfeld turned to Valentine Crautwald (1465–1545), a tri-lingual humanist,16 whose solution came in a vision: when Christ said “This is my body,” he was actually saying, “My body is this, that is, food for the soul.” 17 Luther and his colleagues rejected this inter-

14 The rejection of a merely imputed righteousness was common to all the Radicals, Beachy (1977). 15 Schwenckfeld (1907–1961), 3: 370. 16 For Crautwald, see Shantz (1992).

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pretation and warned others against Schwenckfeld and Crautwald.18 The latter now stood outside the Lutheran movement. The denial of the real presence and the split from the Lutheran party constituted Schwenckfeld’s second Heimsuchung. On April 21, 1526 Schwenckfeld and the other Liegnitz reformers sealed their break with Wittenberg by declaring a Stillstand, or suspension, of the Eucharist.19 Fearful that the faithful committed idolatry in holding to the doctrine of the real presence, they halted celebration of the Eucharist until the people were better instructed. Catechization became the centerpiece of the Liegnitz reformation.20 The Stillstand illustrates the spiritualistic thrust of the Liegnitz theology, but also the profound seriousness with which they took the sacrament. For although external eating could not bring the benefits of Christ’s body and blood, misunderstanding the Eucharist could bring condemnation. The Stillstand was not meant to be permanent, but many, including Schwenckfeld, never took the bread and wine again.21 The shock of the break with Luther led Schwenckfeld to withdraw from developments to a great extent, while Crautwald laid the foundations for the Liegnitz doctrine. One of the difficulties in Schwenckfeld research has been determining the relative contribution of the two men to the common theology. Given the great disparity in their intellectual background and careers, isolating Crautwald’s humanistic Augustinian Neoplatonism from Schwenckfeld’s own initial late medieval spiritualizing sacramental piety makes possible a better understanding of Schwenckfeld’s Radical Spiritualism, its sources and its driving impetus.22 It is also worth noting that, alone of the four Radical Spiritualists considered here, Schwenckfeld owed little if anything to late medieval mysticism. The Reformation in Liegnitz entered a “reformed” phase during

17

See Crautwald’s October 1525 letter, see Schwenckfeld (1907–1961), 2: 173–209. WA Br 3, 653; WA 19, 459, 120; WA Br 4, 33, 42. 19 Schwenckfeld (1907–1961), 2: 332–333. For a history of the Silesian Schwenckfelders.—Weigelt (1983). 20 Crautwald wrote the first Protestant catechisms three years before Luther.— Schwenckfeld (1907–1961) XVIII, 6–10 and Cohrs (1902), 196–225. 21 The Stillstand was accepted by the public at large and the Lutheran Church had difficulties reinstating the Supper.—McLaughlin (1986), 76. 22 Shantz (1992) emphasizes the Augustinian and Erasmian character of Crautwald’s theology. 18

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1526 and 1527 that resembled the Swiss and South German cities. The Liegnitz reformers systematically purged the Church of Catholic survivals. In their Eucharistic theology, Liegnitz reformers agreed with the moderate Zwinglians in Strasbourg and elsewhere who combined a spiritual eating of Christ with a symbolic understanding of the elements.23 The reformers sought a ban on the Eucharist, but Duke Friedrich of Liegnitz refused.24 Despite the Stillstand, therefore, the Liegnitz reform was not a Radical Spiritualist experiment. The Silesian Schwenckfelders were part of the established church, embracing entire cities and territories, and led by the duly appointed clergy. Indeed, the Liegnitz concern for catechesis ran counter to the Radical Spiritualist maxim that the Spirit preceded fruitful instruction by either the Bible or other humans. If Christians had the Spirit and the inner Eucharist, they needed no catechesis to partake worthily of the external bread. If they lacked the Spirit and inner Eucharist, no amount of instruction could make them worthy. For his part, Crautwald always had a higher regard than did Schwenckfeld for the visible church, the sacraments, and the efficacy of the Bible.25 As an Erasmian, Crautwald was concerned with ethical improvement using the Bible as a manual; he displayed a strong emphasis upon education, an interior piety, and a lack of interest in the external aspects of Christianity. While Radical Spiritualism can grow from this root, it need not. Crautwald and the other Liegnitz reformers had not crossed the line. Events in 1527 and 1528 redirected the Liegnitz Reformation and set Schwenckfeld on a path to a thoroughgoing Radical Spiritualism. His acceptance in 1527 of the Radical Spiritualistic implications of his own discovery and Crautwald’s teaching occasioned his third Heimsuchung.26 As he now saw it, the Lutheran Reformation was only the first step, in which Luther employed the external word to undo the externalities of Catholicism.27 There was, however, a second spiritual Reformation—the direct work of the Spirit and of Christ, in which the outer, the material and the earthly gave way to the inner, the spiritual, and the heavenly. For Schwenckfeld, however, Luther

23 24 25 26 27

McLaughlin (1996), 125–152. Schwenckfeld (1907–1961), 2: 280, 331–2. Shantz (1992), 163–176. Schwenckfeld (1907–1961), 4: 248, 5: 100. Schwenckfeld (1907–1961), 3: 102–103, 447.

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unfortunately remained mired in the external and material, in the Bible and the visible sacraments. Schwenckfeld’s Radical Spiritualism grew organically from his earlier Eucharistic questioning, but events forced the pace of his spiritualization.28 In 1526, the King of Hungary, the overlord of Silesia, fell with most of his army at the battle of Mohacs against the Ottoman Turks. His heir was Archduke Ferdinand, the brother of Emperor Charles V and later King of the Romans and emperor. Because of the imminent Turkish threat, the Protestant lords of Silesia accepted Ferdinand, although they did so reluctantly given his fierce opposition to the Reformation. Ferdinand quickly pressured Duke Friedrich of Liegnitz to reverse the Reformation in his lands and to punish Schwenckfeld. To reduce the Duke’s political exposure, Schwenckfeld went into exile in 1529. Friedrich sought rapprochement with the Lutherans and eventually joined the Schmalkaldic League. The events in Silesia made Schwenckfeld recognize the vulnerability of the visible church, but also its dispensability. The visible church and material sacraments were not only superfluous, they were liabilities.29 Arriving at Strasbourg in 1529, Schwenckfeld found the most lively and diverse religious community anywhere in Europe. Practicing a de facto tolerance, the city had become a refuge for religious dissenters, both Anabaptists and Radical Spiritualists, from southern Germany and Switzerland. Schwenckfeld was attracted to the Anabaptists’ fervor, simplicity and ethical rigor, but their fractiousness, their uncharitable attitude toward other Christians, and their commitment to water baptism disturbed him. He criticized infant baptism but never supported rebaptism. Instead, his experience with the Anabaptists in Strasbourg led him to extend the Stillstand to baptism.30 But Schwenckfeld still preferred the Anabaptists to the no less fractious Protestants like Strasbourg’s Martin Bucer, who appealed to the secular authorities to support their claims. Schwenckfeld refused to publicly acknowledge the Strasbourg church because he believed the church of Christ had ceased to exist on earth and that the apostolic church would be re-established by divine

28 The De cursu verbi dei (May 31, 1527) presents an outline of Schwenckfeld’s Spiritualism.—Schwenckfeld (1907–1961), 2: 581–99. It is the equivalent of Sebastian Franck’s 1531 letter to Companus, Williams (1957), 147–60. 29 Schwenckfeld (1907–1961), 3: 108–111. 30 “Von der kindertauff,” Schwenckfeld (1907–1961), 3: 812–24, esp. 815–16.

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intervention either at the second coming or by some divinely commissioned reformer. He saw neither in Strasbourg. He also opposed on principle church use of state power. In remarkable letters to Leo Jud in Zurich (March 1533–March 1534) Schwenckfeld made the case for complete religious freedom.31 Schwenckfeld’s argument was predicated on the freedom, not of the believers, but of the Holy Spirit, who blew where he willed. Since faith was directly inspired and owed nothing to human efforts, religious coercion was senseless. Any church that attempted to impose faith or to force adherence was no church of Christ. He did not yet see any true churches, but in the state churches he saw the work of the devil. Because Schwenckfeld found Strasbourg increasingly inhospitable, he made Augsburg (1533), Ulm (1535–1539), and the Justingen estates (1540–47) of the von Freyberg family his bases, from which he constantly visited friends, followers and correspondents throughout Germany. In Ulm, Schwenckfeld usually stayed in the house of Bernhard Besserer, burgomaster in Ulm’s Reformation year, and a perennial power in both state and church. Schwenckfeld appealed to such men wherever he went, because they shared his distrust of the clergy but also because of his combination of deep piety and social conservatism. His explication of the parable of the rich young man, for example, concentrated not upon the unlikely salvation of the wealthy (“the eye of the needle”) but “for God all things are possible,” in order to advocate the charitable use of wealth, not its abandonment.32 Uncoupling religious radicalism from the social gospel also made him attractive to disillusioned Anabaptists. His steadfast rejection of the real presence recommended him to those who refused to abandon their Zwinglian sacramentology as cities sought acceptance by the Lutheran Schmalkaldic League. The most striking characteristic of the Schwenckfelders, however, was the prominence of women, especially widows and unmarried women, in their circles. Radical Spiritualism manumitted them from an officious male clergy and made the private home, the traditional women’s sphere, the religious center. The respect he accorded

31 32

Schwenckfeld (1907–1961), 4: 747–71, 801–11, 824–43; 5: 3–10. Schwenckfeld (1907–1961), 4: 850–82.

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women was remarkable, as was their leadership of many important Schwenckfelder conventicles. Helena Streicher and her three daughters in Ulm remained the leaders of the Ulm Schwenckfelders for decades and were the center of a Schwenckfelder network extending over much of southern Germany which would thrive well into the seventeenth century.33 Schwenckfeld’s residence in Ulm ended in 1539 when the city’s leading pastor, the irascible Martin Frecht, threatened the clergy’s mass resignation unless the authorities allowed him to publish against the interloper. Instead, the city council asked Schwenckfeld politely to leave. In the following year, Frecht also contrived, with the help of Bucer, the only quasi-official condemnation of Schwenckfeld’s theology, more specifically his Christology, by a collection of Lutheran theologians gathered in Schmalkald for other purposes. Schwenckfeld was preoccupied with the person and office of Christ, particularly the union of humanity and divinity that made possible the inner Eucharist and salvation.34 The sowing of Christ’s heavenly flesh into the old sinful man engendered faith and rebirth. Nourished by Christ’s flesh and blood, the seed grew into a new heavenly man whose participation in Christ made possible the Christian life that Schwenckfeld so missed among the followers of Luther. Beyond the theological importance of his Christology, Schwenckfeld was personally driven to glorify Christ—to acknowledge his purity, power, and uniqueness. Few if any sixteenth-century reformers were more Christocentric than Schwenckfeld. Glorifying Christ reinforced Schwenckfeld’s concern to distance Christ and his body from the external, material, earthly and sinful flesh that was the lot of humans. Because nothing about Christ could be earthly, mortal, weak, sinful, or impure, Schwenckfeld concluded that the heavenly flesh could not have come from his earthly mother, Mary.35 The Virgin birth did not suffice to guarantee Christ’s sinlessness if Christ’s humanity descended from the earthly Adam. Thus, Mary was simply a conduit though which the “heavenly flesh” had passed.36 But if Mary 33 McLaughlin (1996), 199–132; Caroline Gritschke is writing on a dissertation on the network of Schwenckfelders in the South that will provide an incredibly detailed look at them. 34 Maier (1959). 35 Schoeps (1951) on the history of the doctrine. 36 Schwenckfeld followed the Aristotelian teaching that in conception the male provided the sole seed; the female simply nourished that seed.

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gave nothing, whence had Christ’s humanity come? The answer, according to Schwenckfeld, was from God. The first person of the Trinity was father to both Christ’s divinity and his humanity. By 1538 Schwenckfeld had concluded that if God was father to both of Christ’s natures, his humanity could not be a “creature.”37 Schwenckfeld and his followers called themselves “Confessors of the Glorified Christ” and branded their opponents “creaturists.”38 Schwenckfeld was not the “compleat” Radical Spiritualist. Since he anticipated a renewed church at some uncertain time in the future, the church could not be obsolete or nonsensical. Schwenckfeld fostered a community of believers who, though never a formal church, nonetheless extended love and consolation to each of its members. Likewise, even if the Bible played no role in salvation, it retained a great value for the saved, since those possessed of the Spirit could plumb the text to deepen their Spirit-given understanding. Above all, Schwenckfeld’s Christology ran against the Spiritualist tide, since the drama of salvation centered on the body and blood of Christ however spiritualized. Schwenckfeld had simply moved the sacramental medium completely above the bar separating spirit from matter. While that seems to involve an impossibility—immaterial matter, incorporeal body—sacramentality itself was based on a contradiction, a mystery. Schwenckfeld’s “sacramental” Radical Spiritualism makes the inherent contradiction manifest. The last fifteen years of Schwenckfeld’s life saw him increasingly driven into hiding as the state churches tightened their grip. The Catholic victory in the Schmalkaldic War forced Schwenckfeld from his refuge in Justingen, but he found sanctuary in the Franciscan monastery in Esslingen (1547–1550) under the pseudonym of Eliander. After 1550, he concealed his whereabouts from all but his closest followers and remained only a brief time in any one place. Nonetheless, his writings poured from the presses—fourteen alone against Flaccius

37 Schwenckfeld (1907–1961), 6: 238, 315. Although the doctrine first appears in Schwenckfeld’s writings, Schantz argues that Crautwald should be credited because it was a logical conclusion to be drawn from Crautwald’s earlier Christological statements. 38 The two most substantial critiques of Schwenckfeld’s Christology came from Joachim Vadian and Pilgram Marpeck. See McLaughlin (1996), 199–233 and Boyd (1992). Melchior Hoffman’s heavenly flesh Christology (and hence Menno Simons’) derived from an encounter with Schwenckfeld, although the two Christologies were not identical.

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Illyricus on the external Word and sacraments. And he found readers. These publications created a second circle of followers, sometimes unknown to him personally, including some of lower social rank than his first disciples. Copies of his published works have been found from Riga to England. Schwenckfeld died in Ulm in 1561. His body may lie beneath the Streicher house. Sebastian Franck (1499–1542) Schwenckfeld and Sebastian Franck were Radical Spiritualism’s odd couple. Historians rightly associate them as Radical Spiritualists. Personally known to each other and jointly condemned, their theologies mark them as two separate species. In social status, personality, style and ultimately theology, the two men presented contrasts. Ten years Schwenckfeld’s junior, Sebastian Franck was born in 1499 in the southern German city of Donauworth.39 His family was of the artisan class, likely textile workers. Nonetheless, he attended university at Ingolstadt (1515–1517) where he studied humanist rhetoric and Greek as well as the standard scholastic curriculum. He moved to Heidelberg for theology in 1518 just in time to witness Luther’s disputation there. In 1524 he was ordained to the priesthood, but became a Lutheran preacher. His first book, a translation of the Lutheran Andreas Althamer’s Diallage against Hans Denck, published in 1528, shows Franck already in transition.40 Retaining Althamer’s refutation of Anabaptism and Radical Spiritualism, Franck’s translation subtly criticized Lutherans who used sola fide justification to excuse lax living, and it emphasized the Spirit where Althamer had stressed the written Word. Franck also wrote a tract against drunkenness and called on the Nuremberg city council to establish the ban, something the later Radical Spiritualist would not countenance.41 But Franck’s early writings also referred to the “spark of divine love” that would become the center of his theology.42 When the Nuremberg 39 For Franck’s life to 1528, see Teufel (1954). For his theology, Weigelt (1972); Ozment (1973), 137–157; Müller (1993). 40 Andreas Althamer, Diallage, hoc est conciliation locorum Scripturae qui prima facie inter se pugnare videntur (1527). 41 Franck (1531a), Biiija. 42 Franck (1531a), Diiijb.

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city council refused to employ the ban to control immorality, Franck resigned his post, turned his back on the ministry and became a printer. In the preface to the Türkenchronik of 1530, Franck condemned Moslem religious divisions, praised a “spiritual” interpretation of the Koran, and made ethics the final measure of truth.43 Lest the Christian reader miss the text’s relevance, Franck decried three new sects dividing the Christian Church: Zwinglianism, Anabaptism and Lutheranism. Finally, he announced a new spiritual church without external ceremonies, sacraments, preaching or, in a reversal, ecclesiastical ban.44 Franck would have felt confirmed had he known that Schwenckfeld was undergoing a Radical Spiritualist Heimsuchung at the same time as his own turn to Radical Spiritualism. Their paths finally crossed in 1529 when both men took up residence in Strasbourg.45 Aside from their Radical Spiritualism they had nothing in common. The weaver’s son Franck was self-made and urban, a printer and humanist intellectual; Schwenckfeld was noble and “courtly,” a lay reformer and spiritual counselor. That two such disparate personages—along with Anabaptists such as Hans Denck, Hans Bünderlin and Christian Entfelder—arrived at Radical Spiritualism in those same years suggests that a Radical Spiritualist moment in the Reformation was coalescing. Both men began with Lutheranism, were disillusioned by its moral consequences, flirted with state sponsored reform, but witnessed the shortcomings and dangers of the magisterial Reformation. Their etiology suggests their embrace of Luther’s theology had not been occasioned by the need to unburden an oppressed conscience. Rather, both men had probably seen Luther’s faith alone as opening the way for moral reform based upon the transforming effects of a faith—sola fide but not alien righteousness—undistracted by Catholicism’s superficial repentance and formulaic rites. The South German and Swiss reformers shared the same concerns, though their successful appeal to state authority forestalled a final Radical Spiritualist stage. Erasmian Catholicism provided an initial springboard—though for Schwenckfeld at second hand through Crautwald. For most Radical Spiritualists, though not for Schwenckfeld, late medieval mys-

43 44 45

Franck (1530), Giiija, Giiijb, Hiijb. Franck (1530), Kiiijb-Lia. Weigelt (1970).

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ticism, particularly the Theologia Deutsch, provided an interior refuge when their hopes for the Reformation were dashed and their fears of a new “papacy” were realized.46 If medieval Catholicism had failed to satisfy a growing desire for the divine, magisterial Protestantism had been no more successful. The Reformation fed hopes that simply could not be met by a mass church, or by any church at all. Two works mark Franck’s two years in Strasbourg: his Chronica, Zeitbuch und Geschichtsbibel (1531) and the letter to Johannes Campanus (1531). The secular history in Franck’s Chronica presented a world in which knavery, crime and injustice prevailed. Franck mocked the appropriateness of the eagle as a symbol dear to secular rulers, since it is a bird of prey, greedy, violent and serving no useful purpose,47 and he blamed the nobility’s oppression for the Peasants’ War. But he also condemned the peasants for revolting against established authority.48 His history of the Church pilloried the papacy for its corruption, and often presented heretics—including Erasmus—as the true Christians. The insult to the Imperial house and Erasmus’ outrage were sufficient to have him arrested and expelled from Strasbourg at the end of December 1530. The Chronica, however, went on to become one of the most influential histories published in the sixteenth century with sixteen German editions and seven in Dutch.49 Franck’s letter to Johannes Campanus can claim the status of a classic.50 Nowhere else was the Radical Spiritualist vision of the church presented so clearly and unsparingly.51 The church disappeared shortly after the death of the Apostles as Antichrist seized upon the external institution, sacraments and Bible to construct a visible, coercive “Church.”52 The true church—the invisible ecclesia spiritualis—continued through the ages and included not only true Christians, but pre-Christians and non-Christians. The Holy Spirit baptized pagans and Moslems and the Inner Word instructed them without the external gospel. Unlike Schwenckfeld, Franck did not

46 On the importance of the Theologia Deutsch for Reformation radicalism, see Ozment (1973). 47 Franck (1531), Cxixb. On Franck and history, see Dejung (1980). 48 Franck (1531), ccxxxviiia. 49 Franck was well published and influential in Holland.—Becker (1928). 50 Williams (1957), 147–60. The Latin original is lost, but two Dutch versions survive. 51 For Franck’s vision of the church, Weigelt (1972), 34–36. 52 Williams (1957), 149, 152–3. On Franck and the Bible, see Hegler (1892)

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look forward to a reestablished Apostolic Church, since he thought it obsolete. God had used an exterior church for those young in faith and given them the sacraments and Bible as so many toys. But the mature church was emancipated from the burden of externals.53 Scattered throughout the world, the spiritual church would only be gathered by Christ at his second coming.54 The conventicles or prayer gatherings favored by Schwenckfeld were superfluous. The Spirit sufficed. Although Franck’s letter was not published in his lifetime, attentive readers of his printed works could not miss his disinterest, even contempt, for the sacraments and the ambiguous status of the Bible. The Protestant clergy of the nascent state churches recognized Franck as a threat and opposed him wherever he went. Expelled from Strasbourg, Franck was working as a soap maker in Esslingen by the fall of 1532. Schwenckfeld joined him and together they traveled to Ulm in September 1533. Franck was granted citizenship in Ulm and permission to work as a printer, albeit with the stipulation that he not cause the city problems with the Empire. His religious views appeared with more circumspection in the Weltbuch (1534), the first comprehensive German language geography. In the same year he printed Die vier Kronbüchlein comprising a translation of Erasmus’ Praise of Folly, a paraphrase of Henry Cornelius Agrippa of Nettersheim’s Uncertainty and Vanity of all Sciences and Arts, and two of his own small works. The collection contrasted God, divine wisdom, and the Word with the world, human folly, and Scripture. Franck drew upon the Theologia Deutsch for the Paradoxa ducenta octoginta (1534) a collection of 192 (the 280 of the title notwithstanding) paradoxical statements demonstrating the folly, injustice and error reigning among humans and the seeming foolishness or impossibility of God’s wisdom. It was often reprinted. Franck thwarted efforts by Martin Frecht to have him expelled in 1535, but thereafter he published his own works elsewhere. Die Goldene Arche (1538) collected sayings from the Bible, the Church Fathers, and pagan antiquity on points of faith. A compilation of Biblical texts, Das mit sieben Siegeln verscholossene Buch (1539) gathered together insoluble biblical contradictions. The final Ulm publication, the Kriegsbuechlein, did not bear his name, no doubt because he blamed

53 54

Williams (1957), 155. Williams (1957), 150.

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the clergy for supporting the waging of war. Frecht complained to the council nonetheless and Franck was ordered expelled without explanation. Frecht included Franck in his condemnation of Schwenckfeld at Schmalkald (1540) for classing the Protestant churches with the Catholics and Anabaptists as a sect. The Lutheran theologians charged that Radical Spiritualist teachings drew people away from sermons although the Holy Spirit only worked through the preached or written word. Since the Spirit was mediated by preaching, the ministers insisted that all Christians be required to attend. Preaching and the Bible had been “sacramentalized.” Franck established himself next in Basel, where Andreas Karlstadt had found refuge as well. When Franck’s wife died shortly after arriving in Basel, he married the daughter of his Strasbourg publisher. Her dowry made him prosperous for the first time in his life. His last and most successful book, the Sprichwörterbuch (1541), was a massive collection of proverbs. He died in Basel in the fall of 1542. Although Franck left no church or followers, he exercised a remarkable influence through his publications. Much like Erasmus, who used textbooks to colporteur his criticism of the church and his proposals for a more “spiritual” Christianity, Franck freighted popular reference works like chronicles, geographies, proverbs and anthologies with spiritualizing additions, prefaces, notations and tendentious translations. He could rely on such methods because his theology was more critical than constructive. He used the Turks to criticize Christians. He collected popular sayings, biblical passages and classical proverbs to undermine the pretensions of the wise. He deployed contradictions and paradoxes that confused, deconstructed and— another contradiction—taught his views. The genres and styles he deployed were more than convenient tools. They expressed the essence of the man and his message. But the range of his publications has made it difficult to get a precise fix on him, both because he has been the object of study by diverse disciplines (literature, historiography, philosophy, geography, theology), but also because that diversity reflected his own complexity.55 The disappointed hopes and doctrinal conflicts of the early Reformation made Franck chary of any claims to certain knowledge

55 As the papers from a 1993 conference make clear.—Müller (1993). See also Wollgast (1999) and Kaczerowsky (1976).

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based on either human reason or divine revelation.56 In a word, he was a grand skeptic.57 In his youth, humanist teachers had offered him the authoritative heritage of antiquity as an alternative to the quarreling scholastic viae. But because the ancient sages also disagreed on almost every issue, Aristotle, Plato, Stoics, Epicureans, and Skeptics only added to the cacophony of scholastic claims and counterclaims.58 Like many others of his generation, Franck welcomed Luther’s call to Scripture alone as an authority that could not be gainsaid. However, the Eucharistic controversies made clear that although the Bible might be unchallengeable, its interpreters were not. The proliferation of “sects,” each claiming the key to Scripture, suggested that doctrinal purity was not the measure of a Christian and that churches were unreliable and unnecessary midwives of faith.59 The problem reached deeper than Biblical interpretation, however, since the Bible itself misled, confused and contradicted itself. God had designed the Bible not to instruct or engender faith, but to wean Christians from externals and to turn them toward the Inner Word.60 However, Franck’s relentless skepticism made him chary of ascribing a doctrinal content even to the Inner Word.61 Faith was a non-cognitive affective state that was experienced rather than understood.62 Franck’s sober via negativa ended in a mundane or at least non-ecstatic Cloud of Unknowing. Franck effectively recreated the dualistic vision of an external world of instability, disorder and error, which seduced the lower reaches of the soul comprising the vital forces and passions. Truth was to be found only in the highest, inmost recesses of the mind. But Franck placed that apex beyond the ideas themselves in a One that transcended the rational, but was its foundation. Plotinus’ “flight of the alone to the alone” captures Franck well. Franck’s skepticism distinguishes him from his fellow Radical Spiritualist Schwenckfeld, for whom the “Knowledge of Christ” 56

Joachimsen (1928/29). There is disagreement on the extent of his skepticism.—Goldhammer (1956), Peters (1961). 58 Agrippa’s Uncertainty and Vanity of all Sciences and Arts which he published in the Die vier Kronbüchlein reveals this quite well. Franck also drew on Cusanus’ docta ignorantia, Luther’s deus absconditus and the mystical via negativa. 59 Williams (1957), 157. 60 Paradoxa 6. 61 Paradoxa 200. 62 Paradoxa 348. 57

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(Erkenntnis Christi) was decisive. For Schwenckfeld, the Inner Word was Christ himself, who spoke to the heart and illumined the mind. Franck’s Inner Word was, finally, mute. Mystical spark or funklein describes it better. For Schwenckfeld the inner Glorified Christ had absorbed the Holy Spirit both in essence and function. Franck emphasized the third person of the Trinity to the exclusion of the second, but eventually collapsed the first and third.63 He also admitted to favoring Servetus’ antitrinitarian Christology.64 In a further contrast to Schwenckfeld, Franck placed the Word, spirit or spark in every human soul—Christian and non-Christian alike. Both innate and natural, the spirit constituted the very core of the human person. This meant, as with Plato, that humans had the ability to turn themselves to the light. Schwenckfeld, however, retained the traditional notion of a fallen human nature. The inner Christ was only given to some as an act of grace. Once installed in the human heart, interestingly enough, the inner Christ tended to function much as Franck’s spark. But not completely, as can be seen in the differing arguments for toleration presented by both men.65 For Schwenckfeld religious freedom was not the freedom of the Christian. It was the freedom of the Holy Spirit to blow where it willed. Humans simply could not impose faith; nor could they even play a role in its voluntary acceptance. Franck’s argument for religious toleration was at base fundamentally different. Since every human possessed in effect the Holy Spirit, he could not appeal to its freedom to pick and choose. Rather religious persecution or coercion was pointless because Christian faith could not be formalized into doctrines. Not only was it impossible to impose a doctrinal “faith,” such a faith—even if it were possible—was false by definition. Overall, it must be said that Franck’s Radical Spiritualism was the more “immaterial.” While Franck’s inner principle was the insubstantial spark, Schwenckfeld’s was still described in terms of flesh, however spiritualized. For Franck, the inner Supper or Eucharist was not central and seems to have been simply equated with faith. Franck’s imagery is stringently abstract and completely static. Plato would

63 See Paradoxa 132, 212. Franck downplayed the earthly Christ and made his sacrifice eternal, Paradoxa 132–6. On the conflation of the first and third persons, see Weigelt (1972), 24–5. 64 Williams (1957), 159. 65 Goldhammer (1956).

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have approved. Franck’s de-emphasis of some Christian topoi has lent support to those modern scholars who place Franck in a philosophical and humanistic tradition rather than a theological and religious one.66 Despite its many merits, however, this is an approach which betrays presentist concerns. Dirck Volkertszoon Coornhert 1522–1590 Dirck Volkertszoon Coornhert was an anomaly even for the Radical Spiritualists. Alone of the four Spiritualists discussed here, he did not come out of Protestantism or pass through Protestantism. Although Protestant authors undoubtedly influenced him, Coornhert never joined the Protestant movement or became a member of a Protestant church. He moved directly from Catholicism to Radical Spiritualism. Coornhert was also unusual in that he lacked a university education and only began to acquire Latin at age thirty-two in order to pursue religious questions. And though his opponents sought to dismiss him because of his lack of learning, he was better read than almost all of them and more widely published at a sophisticated level in a wide variety of disciplines and genres: engraving, poetry, drama, theology, philosophical ethics, social policy.67 His skill with language, especially in his translation of the Odyssey, made him a model for seventeenth-century writers and for modern Dutch. As with Franck, students of Coornhert have not yet produced a complete coherent profile of the man. Coornhert was born into a wealthy merchant family in Amsterdam.68 Disinherited for marrying against parental wishes, he became a steward and supervisor at the Batestein castle of the counts of Brederodes, whose extensive library contained both humanist texts and heretical works. At the age of twenty-two, he tells us, he read Luther, Calvin, Menno Simons and Sebastian Franck. Later he discovered the Theologia Deutsch, his favorite book, which he reread continually.69 Erasmus

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Wollgast (1972), Wollgast (1999), Séguenny (2000). Coornhert offered a plan to house and employ beggars and other poor or unemployed persons that was put into practice all over Holland and imitated elsewhere.—Bonger (2004), 257–61. 68 For Coornhert’s biography see Bonger (2004) and Voogt (2000). For a recent review of the literature on Coornhert, see Bonger et al. (1989), 154–170. 69 Voogt (2000), 50. 67

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was another favorite.70 Humanism, Protestantism, Radical Spiritualism and mysticism formed him. Leaving court in early 1546 he became an etcher and engraver in Haarlem, publishing prints that mocked all the religious parties—Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed and Anabaptist. Two year’s reading had made a Radical Spiritualist of him. Despite Coornhert’s obvious debt to Sebastian Franck, he resembled Caspar Schwenckfeld in ecclesiology and epistemology.71 He neither dismissed the sacraments as toys nor rejected any future church.72 He agreed with Franck and Schwenckfeld that the visible church had disappeared, but he did not speak with Franck about its ascension into heaven.73 Rather, he thought that the church continued on earth, but that it was useless and hidden under Catholic abuses and errors.74 Coornhert expected that the church and the sacraments would or could be reestablished,75 for the time being, however, the wise believer would enter into a Stillstand, a waiting watch with no great expectation that the church would appear soon.76 Certainly none of the existing churches could claim the title. The Catholic Church had forfeited its role by its corruption in doctrine and practice.77 Its ruination was total.78 However, like Schwenckfeld, he refused all other churches, since they lacked both apostolic succession and miracles to prove their divine vocation or institution.79 The only authentic church, descended from the apostles, remained the corrupted Catholic Church. As a result, Coornhert, unlike

70

Ibid., 231. Bonger and Gelderblom (1996). Coornhert knew Schwenckfeld’s works well enough to engage in dispute with Aggaeus von Albada, the leading Schwenckfelder in the North.—Voogt (2000), 35–6. However, he claimed to know Schwenckfeld’s writings less well than Franck’s.—Wercken, vol. 3, cccxlviD. 72 Although in 1558 he could cite Franck’s droll comment approvingly against Calvin to argue that they were not worth dying for.—Wercken vol. 3, xixB. On the future church, see Wercken vol. 1, 554B. Ruygh Bewerp, fol. 1D cited in Voogt (2000), 84. 73 Wercken, vol. 2, 577C. 74 Wercken, vol. 1, 484C. 75 Wercken, vol. 1, 554B. He thought externals were needed by most people, Voogt (2000), 133. 76 Wercken, vol. 3, cccxliiiiD–cccxlvA. 77 Wercken, vol. 3, 129C–130C. 78 Wercken, vol. 1, 548C. 79 Wercken, vol. 3, 15B; Wercken vol. 1, 358AB; Wercken vol. 2, 91B; Wercken vol. 3, 169A. 71

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Schwenckfeld or Franck, never formally abjured the Catholic Church.80 He simply ceased to accept its claims or to attend its worship services.81 Coornhert’s skepticism was more limited than Franck’s. Quite Socratic in acknowledging his own ignorance, Coornhert admitted that there were doctrines, for example the Trinity, that were above him, or anybody else.82 But he was also quite Platonic in claiming a way out of the Cave.83 He held doctrines for which he argued at length.84 However, he claimed no calling or mission and worked from reason not private revelation.85 His reliance on reason has led some to see him as more of a rationalist than a Christian, though that seems misleading given his use of Scripture and the religious tenor of his thought.86 Coornhert opposed the persecution of heretics, but his skepticism did not deny the existence of heresy or find all positions equally acceptable. He affirmed that heresies existed and he argued against them.87 Scripture and reason were more than sufficient to the task.88 His confidence in Scripture caused his one lapse from advocacy of religious freedom. In the Means Toward the Reduction of Sects and Factions (1582) he suggested that Catholic and Protestant clergy be required to read only the text of Scripture from the pulpit—a Stillstand on preaching—until a solution to the doctrinal quarrels was achieved.89 Coornhert opened his own print shop in 1561 with financial support from the city council of Haarlem. Already a notary, he became a secretary to the city in the following year and eventually served the mayor in a similar capacity. Caught up in the Dutch revolt, he served as Haarlem’s emissary, getting to know William of Orange,

80

Wercken, vol. 3, 157A. However, for a late medieval Catholic, he did the unthinkable; he chose to be buried in a Protestant church.—Wercken, vol. 3, cccliiiA.; Wercken, vol. 1, 444BC. 82 Wercken, vol. 3, lxxixAB. Coornhert’s favorite motto refers to acceptance of limitation, “Weet of rust” (Know or let go).—Bonger and Gelderbloom (1985). 83 Wercken, vol. 1, 479C; Wercken vol. 3, cccliiiiB. 84 There is one truth and way, Wercken vol. 1, 461B. However, he did agree with Franck in condemning those who had their own doctrine, like Luther or Schwenckfeld (but not Franck) among others.—Wercken vol. 1, 439AB. 85 Wercken, vol. 3, 27A. 86 For example, Lindeboom (1929). 87 On the existence of heresy, Wercken vol. 2, 119A, 152A. 88 While he found Scripture very useful, it did not give faith, Wercken, vol. 2, 570C. However, he placed spiritual understanding higher, Wercken vol. 3, 401C. 89 Middel tot mindringhe der secten ende partijschappen.—Wercken, vol. 3, 396D–397B. It is not clear how serious Coornhert was, but he never repeated the suggestion. 81

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with whom he developed a good relationship and under whose protection he eventually came. With the arrival of Alva, Coornhert was arrested in 1567 and interrogated at length. Escaping in 1568, Coornhert spent four years in Germany collecting money for the revolt. Upon his return in 1572 he became secretary to the Free States of Holland. Threatened with death by the Sea Beggar Lumey, whose criminal behavior Coornhert had reported to the States, Coornhert went into a penurious exile again. He was specifically excluded from the general pardon of 1574 and was only able to return after the Pacification of Ghent in 1576. The opposition of the Reformed Church prevented a resumption of his government service. Convinced that the Reformed had replaced the Catholics as the greatest threat to religious freedom, Coornhert defended the Catholics against Reformed repression. In 1582, he published the longest work defending religious freedom in the sixteenth century, the Synod on the Freedom of Conscience.90 Coornhert was committed to religious freedom because faith was a gift of the Spirit. And since the Spirit always remained free, faith could not be imposed by humans nor could its absence be reckoned against the unbeliever.91 More important, a just enforcement of laws against heresy was impossible. Only those who believed themselves in possession of the truth could identify the errant. But giving believers the right to punish those with whom they disagreed made the individual or church both prosecutor and judge—unacceptable in civil law and divine law alike.92 The state should stand aloof from religious commitments and prevent religious groups from coercing each other.93 Religious freedom benefited both church and state, since it protected churches from repression while it allowed the state to maintain the peace and order that was its real purpose. Coornhert opposed the Reformed Church’s efforts to establish a new “papacy,” insisting that the revolt against Spain had been to secure religious freedom from persecution, not to replace the Catholic Church with

90

Synodus vander Conscientien Vreyheydt (1582).—Wercken, vol. 2, 1–42. Coornhert extended religious freedom to atheists, something that few others were willing to do.—Voogt (2000), 75. Faith was a belief in the existence of God, his good will to us, and the truth of the Bible, it was not Luther’s justifying faith.— Wercken, vol. 2, 186B; Wercken, vol. 1, 186B. 92 On this see his Vierschare (1574), Wercken, vol. 1, 420v–433, Voogt (2000), 143; Wercken, vol. 2, 34A; Wercken, vol. 2, 116D. 93 Wercken, vol. 1, 470A. 91

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the “true” Protestant church. Needless to say, the Reformed clergy condemned religious freedom and maintained that the revolt had been for the Gospel. Coornhert’s criticism of the Reformed Church was not limited to toleration. His most extensive theological work, On the Predestination, Election and Rejection of God (1589), subjected the Reformed doctrines of original sin, the bondage of the will, justification by faith alone and predestination to relentless criticism as defaming God and inciting to immorality.94 Coornhert denied the traditional Augustinian understanding of original sin even more clearly than Franck.95 Coornhert did not even accept the less stringent Catholic teaching that humans were merely inclined toward sin as a result of Adam and Eve’s disobedience. For Coornhert, humans were basically good and inclined to good.96 To say anything else would be to indict God for the existence of evil. Sin was by imitation not transmission; corruption was social.97 The debased habits, customs, and teachings of society made avoiding sin difficult, but not impossible. The “sinfulness” of sins remains unclear, however, since Coornhert identified sin with ignorance but insisted that the individual always remained free and sins were always volitional.98 God’s grace never impaired the freedom of individual humans since otherwise punishment and reward would be unjust. Coornhert labeled predestination a libel against God with no basis in Scripture or reason. Overall, he condemned Calvinist teaching for its inherent unreasonableness and its unacceptable subversion of the struggle against sin.99 To the charge of Pelagianism, he blandly claimed that he had not gotten his teaching from the archheretic but from Scripture and reason. Only later did he discover the opponent of Augustine as a kindred spirit. With Pelagius, Coornhert agreed that Christ’s sacrifice had made immortal life possible for all men who led lives of virtue.100

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Zedekunst, 102, 107; Wercken, vol. 2, ccclxvD–ccclxviA. Wercken, vol. 2, dliv–dliir. 96 Wercken, vol. 1, 227C, Wercken vol. 2, 471C. 97 Wercken, vol. 3, 405D. 98 Wercken, vol. 1, 155B. The Platonic notion of ignorance as the cause of error is also combined with the idea of evil as the privation of good.—Wercken, vol. 1, 339D. 99 He argued that God simply did not want to curtail human freedom.—Wercken, vol. 3, 140V–142. 100 Wercken, vol. 1, 461 B. 95

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For it was virtue and the behavioral effects of Christianity that interested Coornhert. Love of God and neighbor were the real measure of a true Christian, not adherence to a list of doctrines. Coornhert had no use for imputed righteousness.101 The righteousness that Christ gave to believers was in fact their righteousness just as long as they used it to progress.102 Unconcerned with burdened consciences, Coornhert argued that perfection was not beyond human grasp. Since Christ had called for it, it must be possible.103 True, few would achieve the full measure of grace and virtue, but many would approach it and all believers should strive for it.104 Following a tendency to see Coornhert as a secular thinker, some earlier scholars thought they saw Stoicism here. But more recent scholarship refers to his “perfectionism” or “perfectibilism” as a Christian teaching that put him far beyond even Catholic doctrine on human abilities after the Fall.105 For example, Coornhert credited humans with a greater contribution at the beginning of salvation than most Catholic theologians would accept. Late medieval scholasticism had debated man’s role in salvation, in particular, with reference to the first step. Could humans turn to God on their own or did prevenient grace move the human will? Coornhert insisted that humans in their freedom took not merely the first step on their own, but also the second and third steps. Only at the fourth stage in a seven stage itinerary did the believer freely accept conversion or regeneration by grace.106 Humans could initiate their own salvation because at the core of their being was a spark of divinity, the Funklein of Franck and the Theologia Deutsch.107 Rebirth was the recognition of one’s divine nature.108 Conversion produced a complete reorientation that placed love of God and love of neighbor over love of self.109 As a result, the new man could no longer sin. He was still subject to slips and distractions, but he never committed volitional 101

Wercken, vol. 2, 228B. Wercken, vol. 2, 317B; vol. 3, 447B. 103 Wercken, vol. 1, 213B; Wercken, vol. 3, 440B. Zedekunst, 232–33. In this passage he also describes the converted as dispassionate and safe from temptation. 104 This was however to be distinguished from divine perfection, which he did not think we could achieve.—Wercken, vol. 1, 251B. 105 On these terms, Voogt (2000), 67 n. 8. 106 Wercken, vol. 1, 178v, 180B. 107 Wercken, vol. 2, 471C. 108 Wercken, vol. 3, 289B. 109 Wercken, vol. 3, 98CD. 102

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offenses against God.110 In stark contradiction to Catholic teaching, but closer to Protestant views, Coornhert accorded the converted certainty of forgiveness and salvation just as Coornhert’s conversion had convinced him of his own salvation.111 After the death of William of Orange in 1584, Coornhert’s freedom and access to the press increasingly eroded. Nonetheless, in the final year of his life he undertook one last campaign against Justus Lipsius’s immensely influential Politica.112 The Politica presented NeoStoic absolutism as the solution to the disorders of the century. Since Lipsius believed that any state with more than one religion could not avoid internal conflict, the prince must enforce religious uniformity. Lipsius limited that uniformity, however, to outward behavior or speech. What private individuals chose to believe was of no concern as long as it had no public expression.113 Lipsius advised the prince to enforce whatever religion was dominant or traditional and he avoided any discussion of which religion was true. This evasion disturbed Coornhert, but it was based upon a Radical Spiritualist theology not unlike Coornhert’s own.114 The clash of the two Radical Spiritualists reveals that, despite the tendency of Radical Spiritualism to support religious toleration, another outcome did sometimes result. The unimportance of all outward religion made it possible to abandon it to the secular power in the interests of peace and order. Despite persistent efforts by his detractors to dismiss Coornhert as a gadfly, the issues that he addressed were profoundly serious, the arguments he offered were prescient of later developments, and the price he paid for his outspokenness was high. His perception of the threat to religious freedom posed by the Reformed Church was well-founded. Only the complex politics of the United Provinces made possible the relative toleration that distinguished Holland in the sixteenth century. In a land in which the majority were unchurched,

110 A new form of the venial/mortal sin distinction, Ladder Iacobs of trappe der deughden.—Wercken, vol. 1, 172C–173D; Wercken, vol. 3, 321B. 111 Bonger (2004), 167. 112 An earlier Coornhert work, the Justificatie (1579), has resemblances to Lipsius’ position.—Voogt (2000), 84–87. Coornhert never repeated the approach. 113 Voogt (2000), 207–210. 114 Lipsius belonged to a Radical Spiritualist sect, the House of Love, a fact not known until the twentieth century.—Voogt (2000), 226. Coornhert knew the founder of the House of Love, Hendrik Niclaes.—Voogt (2000), 35. In Cologne and Cleves there were a number of Franckists and Schwenckfelders.—Bonger (2004), 59.

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Coornhert’s arguments probably resonated among his contemporaries.115 They certainly lay at the Dutch roots of speculation concerning religious freedom on which the Enlightenment would draw. However, interest in his stance on toleration has overshadowed his theology and ethics, both of which deserve much closer examination. Valentin Weigel (1533–1588) Valentin Weigel lived what Coornhert feared. But though Weigel decried the externality and intolerance of the Lutheran Church, he may have ended up agreeing more with Lipsius. A university-trained ordained minister who remained an active pastor until his death, Weigel’s background and situation departed substantially from the other three Radical Spiritualists. Nonetheless, he manifests most clearly the philosophical roots of Platonic Radical Spiritualism. In that sense, his is the purest example of the species. Born in Catholic Saxony in 1533, Weigel was six years old when a change of ruler also brought a change of religion. Those who refused to accept Lutheranism were punished or driven out. He was thirteen when his prince, Duke Moritz, joined the Emperor Charles V in the Smalkaldic War against his fellow Protestants in return for the lands and the electoral title of his cousin. Moritz received Wittenberg as well and commissioned Phillip Melanchthon to prepare a temporary church order, the Leipzig Interim, that retained essential Lutheran doctrines, but gave ground on inessential practices (adiaphora). The Interim provoked a split among Lutheran theologians between Phillipists and their Gnesio-Lutheran opponents that continued even after the Peace of Augsburg (1555) had made the Interim moot. The Peace, which gave legal standing to cuius regio, eius religio, was concluded when Weigel was a twenty-two year old student at the University of Leipzig.116 Completing his BA and MA, he began theological studies in 1563 at Wittenberg. In November of 1567 Weigel was ordained by the Lutheran Church and immediately received a pastorate at Zschopau in Meissen. He remained there until his death in 1588, to all appearances an unexceptional servant of the Lutheran Church and preacher of the Lutheran Gospel. 115 116

Kaplan (1995). Weigel explicitly condemned this principle.—Weigel (1700), bk. 1, 111.

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However, the incessant theological wrangling among Lutherans and the strife among churches led him to Radical Spiritualism, much as it had for Schwenckfeld, Franck and Coornhert.117 Weigel’s life was as uneventful as Coornhert’s was busy; and his theological development shows none of the major stages that we see in Franck and Schwenckfeld. Called upon only once to clear himself of suspicion in 1572,118 he remained otherwise undisturbed for twenty-two years tending his flock while he produced a remarkable body of pastoral, theological and cosmological writings. His successful dissimulation throws into relief the grim reality of Lutheran confessionalization. The grip of the state on the religious life of Saxony, and especially on the clergy, became ever tighter after the Peace of Augsburg. In 1577, in order to stop the theological infighting dividing the church, Elector August and other Lutheran rulers adopted the Formula of Concord, which became the legally enforced doctrine of the church. Weigel, like every other pastor, was required to accept and sign the Formula or face dismissal or worse. Weigel was outraged, but signed.119 Until the end of his life he remained bitter. Whatever the intentions of the state, the Formula had made an indignant enemy, whose anger, driven underground and given no vent, festered within the bosom of the church. Weigel concluded with Franck and Schwenckfeld that any church that persecuted or which enlisted the aid of the state was not, could not, be Christian. Weigel had read Franck and cited him frequently, but like Coornhert his views on the church, sacraments and Bible were much closer to Schwenckfeld’s, whom he not does cite, though he must have read him. The true Word of God was Christ who dwelt within, and without whom it was impossible to truly understand Scripture. The Bible remained an important source of consolation and direction for those with eyes to see.120 Preaching was also useful though it could not instill faith.121 Properly used, it could turn the congre-

117

As he described it in 1578.—Weigel (1996), 8: 89–91. He wrote “Ein Büchlein vom wahren seligmachenden Glaube” in his own defense.—Weigel (1966–1978), vol. 5. 119 Described as happening to the Auditor in “Dialogus de Christianismo” (1584).— Weigel (1966–1978), 4: 59–60. 120 Weigel (1996), 8: 67–8, 84–5. 121 Weigel also accepted the possibility that non-Christians could be reborn without hearing the Gospel.—Weigel (1966–1978), 3: 31–33; Weigel (1966–1978), 5: 55–6. See also Weigel (1966–1978), 4: 41. 118

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gation away from reliance on externals and inward toward Christ and true faith.122 The sacraments, too, properly understood, could direct the believer inward to the realities they only reflected. Weigel did not oppose infant baptism; he actually urged it, since he thought children possessed an innate spiritual faculty.123 He also valued the local congregation as the locus of neighborly love.124 In these ways, he found that he could accommodate his beliefs to the outward structures mandated by law. Weigel’s ecclesiology, like Franck’s and Schwenckfeld’s, was based upon his epistemology. It was pure Platonism.125 Knowledge came from the knower, not the object known. If knowledge came from the object, agreement on the proper interpretation of the Bible would result.126 But that was obviously not the case. As in Plato’s Meno, Weigel regarded knowledge as already possessed but forgotten.127 Outward things were merely reflections of ideas in the mind of God, and by our participation in God we possessed the ideas.128 For those not spiritually advanced, outward sacraments or Scripture could serve as guideposts inward, pointing away from themselves.129 Spiritually mature Christians no longer needed crutches, but externals were not dangerous to such believers, and out of charity toward weaker brethren one should not despise them. Weigel’s skepticism was thus kept in bounds. Like Schwenckfeld, but unlike Franck, he thought the truth knowable though not through externals. However, in its scope and detail, his theology was much more ambitious than Schwenckfeld’s. The absence of moral improvement condemned the orthodox teaching based on justification by faith alone, original sin, and imputed

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Weigel’s books were meant to do this too.—Weigel (1996), 8: 7, 63–4. Weigel (1700), bk. 1, 67. He did deny its necessity.—Weigel (1966–1978), 3: 24–5, 28. 124 He also speculated about an ecclesiola in ecclesia.—Weigel (1700), bk. 3, 47. 125 Weigel refers explicitly to Plato’s Cave Analogy, Weeks, (2000), 166. The title of his first major book: “Gnothi seauton:” [Know Thyself ] indicates how self-conscious Weigel was about this. Though the injunction derived from the Delphic Oracle, many attributed it to Socrates. 126 Weigel (1996), 3: 80, 8: 14. 127 Weigel (1996), 8: 8, 53. 128 Things as “shadows” or “images” of true being, i.e. God.—Wiegel (1966–1978), 3: 118, 137–8. Participation in God gives all knowledge.—Weigel (1966), 1: 43. Weigel specifically refers to Plato for the presence of all ideas in the mind.—Weeks (2000), 119. 129 Weigel (1996), 8: 5. External objects generally served only to arouse a latent knowledge within.—Weigel (1996), 8: 48; Weigel (1966–1978), 6: 32–36. 123

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alien righteousness. Though Weigel did not openly reject original sin as had Coornhert, he effectively denied it. Because God had withdrawn his spirit, the human body had fallen into corruption and mortality. Since the soul and the spirit remained unfallen, however, rebirth only concerned salvation of the body.130 Encumbered by a material body, the spark of divinity at the core of every human mind awaited its discovery. When the grace of God turned the mind toward the light, a new man was born whose new immaterial body was provided by Christ’s heavenly flesh.131 The righteousness of Christ became substantial in the believer, it was not merely imputed. Weigel complained of those who were content to let Christ pay their debts on the cross while they continued their merry way.132 Faith and salvation were gifts, but they came with requirements.133 Christ was not merely the sacrificial lamb of atonement, he was the model and incarnate substance of the Christian. Love of God and love of the neighbor were necessary products of Christian faith. Like Schwenckfeld, Weigel moved the focus from the crucifixion to the incarnation and glorification of Christ. Weigel did not share Franck’s incipient antitrinitarianism.134 Rather, he was thoroughly Christocentric. Like Schwenckfeld, he was drawn toward Christology and, in particular, the doctrine of the heavenly flesh. The impetus probably came, however, from Paracelsus. Weigel was one of the great Paracelsians and an essential link in the chain joining the master to his seventeenth-century disciples. Like Paracelsus, but unlike Schwenckfeld, Weigel speculated about a heavenly flesh for the Virgin Mary in order to guarantee the purity of the GodMan.135 While Schwenckfeld espoused the Aristotelian model of reproduction, in which only the father provided seed while the mother

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Ozment (1973), 234. However, God offers grace to all and it is the human will that decides to receive it or not.—Weigel (1966–1978), 1: 95, 97–8, Weigel (1996), 8: 58, 71. Like Coornhert, Weigel rejected predestination.—Weigel (1966–1978), 1: 26. 132 Weigel (1966–1978), 4: 10, 5: 17; Weigel (1996), 3: 10–11. 133 Weigel appropriates the three parts of the Catholic sacrament of confession, but replaces satisfaction with obedience as the third stage of forgiveness.—Weigel (1966–1978), 4: 56. 134 Christ was at the core of one’s being.—Weigel (1996), 8: 87–8. Everyone had Christ, not just Christians.—Weigel (1996), 8: 92. 135 Weigel (1700), bk. 2, 287. He differed from Melchior Hoffman for whom the sinfulness of the Virgin’s flesh required that Christ bring his pure flesh with him from heaven and pass through the Virgin, who served simply as a conduit. 131

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provided a womb and nourishment, Weigel followed Paracelsus in teaching that both sexes contributed to reproduction. Paracelsus’ early Catholic writings accorded the Virgin a central role in salvation that competed with Christ’s. Weigel did not go that far, but he was clearly intrigued by the metaphysics of Mary. He also drew on Paracelsus for the larger cosmological—and, in the hands of Weigel, metaphysical—vision that satisfied his need for foundational principles and that addressed concerns arising from Weigel’s Platonic dualism. In discussing Mary, and again in his description of the eschatological New Jerusalem, Weigel explored the metaphysics of spirit. The other Radical Spiritualists had simply included spirit as matter’s opposite in a list of binaries. By pondering the nature of spirit and, in particular, its immateriality, Weigel recreated the entire Platonic underpinnings of the spirit/matter dualism that the other Radical Spiritualists had only applied.136 Luther’s scholastically informed teaching on the ubiquity of Christ’s body and blood was probably the starting point, but Weigel may have drawn upon Proclus (410–485), the last of the great pagan Neoplatonists.137 The most important property of spirit was that it did not occupy and was not located or contained in any space.138 Because of this illocality, every spirit was “contiguous” to every other spirit.139 God as spirit and the human soul as spiritual were always directly present to each other. Material mediators were impossible since spirit did not exist in the same “dimension” as matter. Since Weigel’s spiritual realm was Plato’s immaterial, unchanging and eternal noetic sphere, the human experience of it was stasis, peace, calm, and harmony.140 Weigel’s clarity made the problems of Platonic dualism more glaring. The centrality of Genesis 1–3 to Weigel’s entire theology challenged

136 The soul is the human being, not the body. The soul only inhabits the body.— Weigel (1996), 8: 45. 137 Weigel also referred to Pseudo-Dionysius.—Weigel (1996), 89; Ozment (1973), 219. 138 Weigel (1966–1978), 1: 7, 36, 54. 139 Weigel (1966–1978), 1: 44, 93–4. 140 God as the Platonic One.—Weigel (1966–1978), 1: 91; Weigel (1966–1978), 1: 59. God is “inactive” (wircklose).—Weigel (1966–1978), 1: 63, 100. Weigel cites both Paracelsus and Hermes Trismegistus for this.—Weigel (1996), 8:69–70. Calm and ease as the goal.—Weigel (1966–1978), 1: 4–5. Drawing upon Eckhart, Weigel emphasizes the stillness necessary to receive divine illumination.—Weigel (1966–1978), 3: 81. God is rest, peace, blessedness, “Stillstand.”—Weigel (1966–1978), 1: 67.

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the denigration of material reality.141 Christ’s incarnation and the heavenly flesh, the core of Weigel’s soteriology, also ran counter to strict spirit/matter dualism. In order to blunt the contradictions, Weigel adopted Paracelsus’ triadic, as opposed to dualistic, structure for the human being and for the cosmos as a whole.142 The human had three components: the body, the spirit and the soul.143 As in the original Neoplatonic hierarchy, the spirit is not the immaterial apex, but rather the semi-material mediator between the immaterial soul/mind and the body. The human microcosm reflected a macrocosm in which the sidereal sphere of the stars and planets mediated between immaterial souls and terrestrial bodies. The human spirit was in fact “sidereal.” How all of this could be combined with Weigel’s theological treatment of spirit as immaterial in a dualistic, not triadic, schema is a difficult question. The heavenly flesh of Christ, and the heavenly body of saved humans, was not sidereal, but, like the soul it “encased,” purely immaterial and illocal.144 The heavenly body replaced both the sidereal spirit and the material body to render the human soul/heavenly body completely immaterial and fit to dwell “in” a noetic New Jerusalem that also lacks dimensionality.145 Why the immaterial soul might need an equally immaterial body is not obvious. Despite Weigel’s Paracelsian cosmology, he resolved the dualistic dilemma by dispatching matter altogether. Weigel illuminates the metaphysical underpinnings of Platonic Spiritualism and the tendency to sacramentalism. Comparing Weigel with Thomas Müntzer highlights the contrast between Platonic Spiritualism and biblically-based Charismatic Radical Spiritualism. Weigel refers to Müntzer positively, or at least not negatively, which was amazing in the Lutheran territory of Saxony where Müntzer was the devil himself.146 Weigel’s socio-ecclesial critique of Lutheran Saxony is quite Müntzerian in its condemnation of an unholy alliance between clergy and government to abuse the poor laity.147 Weigel

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Genesis 1–3 encapsulates the entire Bible.—Weigel (1966–1978) 1: 83. However, note the dualistic structure of the human.—Weigel (1966–1978) 1: 7. 143 Weigel (1996), 8: 11. 144 Weigel (1966–1978), 1: 5, 76. 145 Weigel (1966–1978), 1: 8–9, 58. The physical body is totally corrupted by sin.—Weigel (1996), 8: 72. 146 Weigel also drew language from Müntzer.—Weeks (2000), 64, 182. 147 Weigel (1700), bk. 1, 112–3, bk. 2, 334. 142

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repeated Müntzer’s interpretation of the statue of Daniel to identify the collusion of state and church with the last of the five [sic] kingdoms.148 However, unlike the prophetic Müntzer, Weigel did not call for violent change, or any change at all.149 The dividing line between Platonic and Charismatic Spiritualism could not be clearer. For Weigel the use of violence was itself unchristian.150 He also believed that establishing a “true” church would cause division and social disorder—here his social conservatism shines through—and that such a church would be an externalized church by the very fact of its establishment.151 One should avoid that temptation and turn within to find the Kingdom of God, a kingdom of peace and harmony.152 Quietism, not separatism or revolution, was the answer. As with Schwenckfeld and Franck, Weigel’s Radical Spiritualism uncoupled religious commitment and social activism. Like Franck and Schwenckfeld he also predicted that the intolerance of the established churches would lead to war and catastrophe. On the eve of the Thirty Years War Weigel’s works were repeatedly published. With its outbreak Weigel was viewed as a prophet.153 He was certainly a pacifist. Weigel echoes Müntzer in complaining that the Lutheran Church postponed the full impact of the Gospel until the next world. But the two Radical Spiritualists differ in a most revealing way. Müntzer charged that the Lutherans put off to the end-time the separating of the wheat and chaff (Matt. 13:29–30) and left that task to the angels. Müntzer demanded that the winnowing begin immediately and that the winnowers be the human elect, not angelic hosts. Weigel and the other Platonic Radical Spiritualists agreed with the Lutherans. In fact, they based much of their argument for toleration on that passage.154 But then, toleration was not Müntzer’s goal, far from it. Weigel complained about a Lutheran postponement, not of the outward purification and rebuilding of the church, but rather of the

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Weigel (1700), bk. 1, 139, 144; Weeks (2000), 150. This, however, may have been a later insertion. 149 Weigel (1966–1978), 1: 82–7. 150 Weigel (1966–1978), 4: 71, 6: 251. 151 Ozment (1973), 244–5. 152 Weigel (1966–1978), 1: 66. 153 Weeks (2000), 201. 154 Weigel (1966–1978), 6: 245, 248.

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fuller knowledge which Weigel and Schwenckfeld equated with faith, union with Christ and salvation.155 Müntzer might agree with their criticism, but from that fuller knowledge must come activism. Knowledge was a means to a truly Christian society and a militant church. For Weigel and Schwenckfeld, knowledge was the goal. A more Christian life follows as a necessary affect, but “Erkenntnis Christi” defined a Christian. Knowledge and being were equated. To truly know Christ was to become like Christ, and to become like Christ was to know Christ.156 Both knowing and becoming took place within the human, not on the external stage of history. Timeless contemplation of the truth replaced Müntzer’s conviction of the chosen time and active participation in salvation history.157 Thus the Biblical Müntzer and the Platonic Radical Spiritualists inhabited different worlds.158 But which world did Weigel actually inhabit? His wide-ranging philosophical, theological and cosmological interests make it difficult to place him. Some have tried to reclaim him for Lutheranism, though a Lutheranism closer to Luther’s that would not have passed muster under Lutheran orthodoxy.159 Others have seen him as a proto-Pietist.160 Siegfried Wollgast has located him squarely in a philosophical tradition that was critical of religion as such.161 Others have claimed his epistemology as a forerunner for Kant.162 Placing Weigel on the map of German intellectual history is made more difficult because Weigel did not fully digest or harmonize the disparate sources upon which he drew—witness his use of both dualistic and triadic models of the human being. However, his blend of theology, philosophy and “science” injected Radical Spiritualism into the larger intellectual currents of seventeenth-century Germany just as Franck’s histories, geographies, and reference works had done in the sixteenth.

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Weigel (1966–1978), 1: 83, 7: 325. Weigel (1996), 8: 101. Weigel 1966–1978), 3: 68. 157 On passive contemplation, Weigel (1996), 8: 4. 158 Weigel associated religious persecution with the Mosaic Law.—Weigel (1966–1978), 6: 252. Weigel accuses the Lutherans of postponing full knowledge until the “eternal academy.”—Weigel (1966–1978), 1: 83. For Weigel the eternal academy is now. 159 For example, Pfefferl (1993–1994). 160 Brecht (1993). 161 Wollgast (1977). 162 Längin (1932), Maier (1926). 156

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As a result, Radical Spiritualism always remained an available option for the Early Modern literate classes. Conclusion Much basic research remains to be done. Coornhert’s substantial and variegated oeuvre requires a comprehensive theological and philosophical analysis. He also needs to be integrated into the larger narrative of the Reformation and to be better known generally outside Holland. Dutch Radical Spiritualism itself deserves careful attention as well, since the Netherlands appears to have had a sizable Radical Spiritualist presence. The Corpus Schwenckfeldianorum is still relatively unexploited, especially with regard to Schwenckfeld’s last two decades. The critical edition of Weigel’s works provides a more reliable basis for examining his complex thought and distinguishing it from that of his followers. The edition will also make Weigel available to a wider scholarly audience. Even the much studied Franck is receiving a critical edition that will doubtless spur research. One issue that might be further explored is why three of our four Radical Spiritualists came out of Lutheranism (the fourth came directly out of Catholicism), although Luther himself did not conceive of the spirit in Platonic terms.163 Luther was much closer to Müntzer, who also emerged out of a Lutheran context. One might have expected Radical Spiritualism to grow from Zwinglian roots. Looking beyond the individual Radical Spiritualists, the study of Radical Spiritualism must break out of its isolation and address larger religious, social and cultural issues. They were not socially marginal nor, despite the best efforts of the reformers to distance themselves, religiously beyond the pale. That was precisely the threat they posed. The four Radical Spiritualists discussed here came from the nobility, the clergy, and the urban middle classes. Radical Spiritualism exercised a strong appeal to professionals (doctors, lawyers, ministers), the urban patriciate and middle class, nobles at court and in the countryside, and women—a social profile similar to that of the Reformation itself. How common was Radical Spiritualism among those groups? How can practicing Radical Spiritualists be identified?

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McLaughlin (2005).

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Of what order of magnitude was Radical Spiritualism as a religious phenomenon, if we compare it not with the mass of conventionally pious churchgoers but with the actively committed in each of the confessions? Aside from the Schwenckfelders, we are ill-informed about the larger body of practicing Radical Spiritualists that kept a much lower profile. Given the quietistic impetus of the doctrine and the grim opposition of the churches, that four major Radical Spiritualists arose in the space of sixty years begs explanation. What does that indicate about the religious evolution of sixteenth-century Protestantism? In what ways did the established churches respond? Did the Radical Spiritualist challenge lead to a conservative retrenchment? Did it contribute to a revival within Lutheranism? Further research on its relationship to Pietism is necessary, but also on Radical Spiritualism’s contribution to the early Enlightenment.164 Granted that Radical Spiritualism was religious in origin and character, scholars who associate it with secularism and rationalism are surely on to something important. Franck and Weigel, but also Coornhert to some degree, straddled boundaries of the later secular-religious divide. It gave them reach and impact. Did Radical Spiritualism anticipate Descartes and Kant? Was it a source for German Idealism? Weigel’s trahison de clerc, Franck’s rejection of the ministry, and Schwenckfeld’s clerical following suggests that dissatisfaction was as rife among the clergy as among the laity. Given the Protestant clergy’s role in German cultural history, Radical Spiritualism’s appeal to clerics takes on added significance. Siegfried Wollgast’s identification of Radical Spiritualism as a significant factor in the movement from medieval to modern should be taken up, broadened and deepened to take better account of its religious character. The Radical Spiritualists put their finger on problematic issues for the reformers. Part of the anger of the established clergy was the embarrassment of being taken at their word. But another part of that anger resulted from an uneasy suspicion of a pervasive but invisible Radical Spiritualism. If Weigel was only recognized after his death because of his writings, how many unpublished Weigels escaped detection altogether? How does this fit into the debate about confessionalization? All four Radical Spiritualists criticized its early stages,

164

Fix (1991).

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abortive attempts, or full realization. For those who wished to resist or escape the ecclesiastical clutches of the state, Radical Spiritualism was an obvious and prudent choice. Confessionalization, therefore, helped generate Radical Spiritualism. The religious pressure upon the middle and upper classes fed Radical Spiritualism, but Radical Spiritualism also served as an important safety valve by allowing “respectable” people to retain a measure of freedom without threatening the bases of society. The more successful confessionalization became, the greater the impulse toward Radical Spiritualism. Our four Radical Spiritualists became firm proponents of religious toleration largely because of their personal circumstances, but alternative outcomes were possible. Lipsius demonstrates that Radical Spiritualism could abandon all outward aspects of religion to the state, precisely because they served no vital religious function but could be used to maintain external order and decorum. Luther has sometimes been faulted for a supine reaction by German Protestants to Nazism; Radical Platonic Spiritualism could produce analogous passivity. On the other hand, it should be remembered that the ultimate progenitor, Plato, proposed a society in which the ruling philosophers controlled all aspects of education and culture. The belief that crime and sin were the products of error and ignorance fairly begs for a socially imposed educational regime. Franck’s skepticism forestalled it. The freedom of the Spirit/God inoculated Schwenckfeld and Coornhert, although even here lapses were possible. Weigel’s combination of a universal innate Spirit with the possibility of absolute knowledge, however, presented real dangers of an ideologically driven tyranny, especially given Radical Spiritualism’s rejection of mediating institutions that might shelter the individual from an overly powerful state. What role did Radical Spiritualism actually play in the modern struggle between individual freedom and social responsibility? “Spirit” was a fundamental concept not only for religion but for early modern science, medicine, and magic. Spirit figured largely in theories of artistic creativity and religious aesthetics. How, if at all, do these spirits correlate? What is the relationship between learned theories of spirit/mind/pneumos and popular notions of the human spirit, ghostly spirits, and God as spirit? The seventeenth century saw a crisis of spirit with the scientific revolution, the rise of materialism, the spread of skepticism, and the reappearance of explicit atheism. In what way did Radical Spiritualism pave the way or contribute to that crisis?

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At least since Troeltsch, Radical Spiritualism has been linked to “modernity.” Stated in the broadest terms, how did a sixteenth-century religious theory based on an ancient philosophy become an integral part of the modern secular experience? Bibliography Primary Sources Cohrs, Ferdinand. Die Evangelischen Katechismusversuche vor Luthers Enchiridion. Berlin, 1902. Coornhert, Dirck Volckertszoon. “About the Constraints upon Conscience Practiced in Holland. A Conversation between D.V.C. and N.V.L., 7 November 1579,” Texts Concerning the Revolt of the Netherlands. E. H. Kossmann and A. F. Mellink, eds. Cambridge, 1974, 191–96. ——. A l’Aurore des Libertés Modernes: Synode sur la Liberté de Conscience (1582). Joseph Lecler and Marius-Francois Valkhoff, eds. and trans. Paris, 1979. ——. Weet of Rust: Proza van Coornhert. H. Bonger and A. J. Gelderbloom, eds. Amsterdam, 1985. ——. Wercken, 3 vols. Amsterdam, 1630. ——. Zedekunst. dat is wellevenkunst. Bruno Becker, ed. Leiden, 1942. Franck, Sebastian. 180 Paradoxes or Wondrous Sayings. Edward J. Furcha, ed. Lewiston, 1986. ——. Chronica, Zeitbuch und Geschichtbibel von Anbegin biss inn diss gegenwertig M.D.xxxi. jar. Strassburg, 1531. ——. Cronica-Abconterfarung und entwerffund der Türckey. Augsburg, 1530. ——. Paradoxa. Siegfried Wollgast, ed. Berlin, 1966. ——. Sämtliche Schriften. Peter Klaus Knauer, ed. Berlin, 1991–. ——. Sebastian Francks lateinische Paraphrase der Deutschen Theologie und seine holländisch erhaltene Traktate. Alfred Hegler, ed. Tübingen, 1901. ——. Von den greulichen Laster der Trunkenheit. 1531a. Schwenckfeld, Caspar. Corpus Schwenckfeldianorum. 19 vols., Leipzig, 1907–1961. Weigel, Valentin. Ausgewählte Werke. Siegfried Wollgast, ed. Stuttgart, 1977. ——. Kirchen- oder Hauss-Postill. 1700. ——. Sämtliche Schriften, Will-Erich Peuckert and Winfried Zeller, eds. Stuttgart, 1966–1978. ——. Sämtliche Schriften. Will-Erich Peuckert und Winfried Zeller, eds.; new ed. by Horst Pfefferl. Stuttgart, 1996–. Secondary Sources Baring, G. “Valentin Weigel und die ‘Deutsche Theologie,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 55 (1964), 5–17. Beachy, Alvin J. The Concept of Grace in the Radical Reformation. Nieuwkoop, 1977. Becker, Bruno. “Nederlandische Vertalingen van Sebastiaan Francks Geschriften,” Nederlandsch Archief voor Kerkgeschiedenis 21 (1928), 149–160. Bonger, Henk. The Life and Work of Dirck Volkertszoon Coornhert. Gerrit Voogt, trans. and ed. Amsterdam-New York, 2004. [Leven en werk van D. V. Coornhert. Amsterdam, 1978.] —— et al., eds. Dirck Volckertszoon Coornhert: Dwars maar recht. Zutphen, 1989.

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—— and A. J. Gelderblom. “Coornhert en Sebastian Franck,” De zeventiende eeuw 12 (1996), 321–39. Bornkamm, Heinrich. “Äusserer und innerer Mensch bei Luther und den Spiritualisten,” in Imago Dei. Beiträge zur theologischen Anthropologie. Giessen, 1932, 85–109. Bosch, Gabriele. Reformatorisches Denken und frühneuzeitliches Philosophieren. Eine verlgleichende Studie zu Martin Luther und Valentin Weigel. Giessen, 1998. Brecht, Martin. ed. Geschichte der Pietismus. Vol. 1: Der Pietismus vom siebzehnten bis zum frühen achtzehnten Jahrhundert. Göttingen, 1993. Boyd, Stephen B. Pilgram Marpeck. His Life and Social Theology. Durham, 1992. Dejung, Christoph. Wahrheit und Häresie: Untersuchungen zur Geschichtsphilosophie bei Sebastian Franck. Zurich, 1980. ——. “Sebastian Franck.” Bibliotheca Dissidentium 7 (1986), 39–119. Ecke, Karl. Schwenckfeld, Luther und der Gedanke einer apostolischen Reformation. Berlin, 1911. Erb, Peter. ed., Schwenckfeld and Early Schwenkfeldianism: Papers Presented at the Colloquium on Schwenckfeld and the Schwenkfelders. Pennsburg, 1986. ——. “Valentin Crautwald,” Bibliotheca Dissidentium 6 (1985), 1–70. Fix, Andrew C. Prophecy and Reason: The Dutch Collegiants in the Early Enlightenment. Princeton, 1991. Gorceix, Bernard. La Mystique de Valentin Weigle (1533–1588) et les origins de la théosophie allemande. Paris, 1972. Goldhammer, Kurt. “Der Toleranzgedanke bei Franck und Wiegel,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 47 (1956), 180–211. Gritsch, Eric W. The Authority of the ‘Inner Word’, A Theological Study of the Major German Spiritual Reformers of the Sixteenth Century. New Haven, 1959. Grützmacher, Richard H. Wort und Geist-Eine historische und dogmatische Untersuchung zum Gnadenmittel des Wortes. Leipzig, 1902. Hayden-Roy, Patrick Marshall. The Inner Word and the Outer World: A Biography of Sebastian Franck. New York, 1994. Hegler, Alfred. Geist und Schrift bei Sebastian Franck. Eine Studie zur Geschichte des Spiritualismus in der Reformationszeit. Freiburg, 1892. Hirsch, Emanuel. “Zum Verständnis Schwenckfelds,” in Festgabe Karl Müller. Otto Scheel, ed. Tübingen, 1922, 145–70. Holl, Karl. Luther und die Schwärmer. Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kirchengeschichte. Vol. 1. Tübingen, 1923, 420–67. Joachimsen, Paul. “Zur inneren Entwicklung Sebastian Francks,” Blätter für deutsche Philosophie 2 (1928), 1–28. Jones, Rufus M. Spiritual Reformers in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. 2nd ed. Boston, 1959. Kaczerowsky, Klaus. Sebastian Franck: Bibliographie. Wiesbaden, 1976. Kaplan, Benjamin J. Calvinists and Libertines: Confession and Community in Utrecht 1578–1620. Oxford, 1995. Köhler, Walther. Zwingli und Luther: Der Streit über das Abendmahl nach seinen politischen und religiösen Beziehungen. 2 vols. Leipzig, 1924, 1953. Koyré, Alexandre. Mystiques Spirituels, Alchimistes. Schwenckfeld, Séb. Franck, Weigel, Paracelse. Paris, 1955. Kühn, Johannes. Toleranz und Offenbarung. Leipzig, 1923. Längin, Heinz. “Grundlinien der Erkenntnislehre Valentin Weigels,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 41 (1932), 435–78. Lieb, Fritz. Valentin Weigels Kommentar zur Schöpfungsgeschichte und das Schrifftum seines Schülers Benedikt Biedermann. Zurich, 1962. Lindeboom, J. Stiefkinderen van het Christendom. The Hague, 1929. Loserth, Johann. Pilgram Marpecks Antwort auf Caspar Schwenckfelds Beurteilung des Buches des Beundesbezeugung von 1542. Vienna/Leipzig, 1929. Maier, Hans. Der Mystische Spiritualismus Valentin Weigels. Gütersloh, 1926.

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Maier, Paul. Caspar Schwenckfeld on the Person and Work of Christ: A Study of Schwenckfeldian Theology at its Core. Assen, 1959. Maron, Gottfried. Individualismus und Gemeinschaft bei Caspar Schwenckfeld. Stuttgart, 1961. Maurer, Wilhelm. “Luther und die Schwärmer,” Fuldaer Hefte 6 (1952), 7–37. McLaughlin, Robert Emmet. Caspar Schwenckfeld, Reluctant Radical: His Life to 1540. New Haven, 1986. ——. The Freedom of the Spirit, Social Privilege, and Religious Dissent: Caspar Schwenckfeld and the Schwenckfelders. Baden-Baden, 1996. ——. “Luther, Spiritualism and the Spirit,” in Piety and Family in Early Modern Europe. Essays in Honour of Steven Ozment. Marc R. Forster and Benjamin J. Kaplan, eds. Aldershot/Burlington, 2005, 28–49. ——. “Reformation Spiritualism: Typology, Sources and Significance,” in Radikalität und Dissent im 16. Jahrhundert. Hans-Jürgen Goertz and James M. Stayer, eds. Berlin, 2002, 127–140. ——. “Universities, Scholasticism, and the Origins of the German Reformation.” History of Universities 9 (1990), 1–43. Mühlpfordt, Günter. “Luther und die ‘Linken’–Eine Untersuchung seiner Schwärmerterminologie.” Günter Vogler, ed. Martin Luther: Leben-Werk-Wirkung. Berlin, 1986, 325–345. Müller, Jan-Dirk. ed. Sebastian Franck (1499–1542). Wiesbaden, 1993. Ozment, Steven. Mysticism and Dissent: Religious Ideology and Social Protest in the Sixteenth Century. New Haven, 1973. Peters, Eugene. “Sebastian Franck’s Theory of Religious Knowledge,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 35 (October, 1961), 267–81. Pfefferl, Horst. “Das neue Bild Valentin Weigels-Ketzer oder Kirchenmann: Aspekte einer erforderlichen Neubestimmung seiner kirchen- und theologiegeschichtliche Position,” Jahrbuch für deutsche Kirchengeschichte 18 (1993–1994), 67–79. Pietz, Reinhold. Die Gestalt der zukünftigen Kirche. Schwenckfelds Gespräch mit Luther, Wittenberg 1525. Stuttgart, 1959. Reimann, Arnold. Sebastian Franck als Geschichtsphilosoph. Ein moderner Denker im 16. Jahrhundert. Berlin, 1921. Rupp, Gordon. “Word and Spirit in the First Years of the Reformation,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 49 (1958), 13–26. Schoep, Hans J. Vom Himmlischen Fleisch Christi. Tübingen, 1951. Schultz, Selina Gerhard. Caspar Schwenckfeld von Ossig (1489–1561). 2nd ed. Norristown PA, 1946/1977. Séguenny, André. Les Spirituels. Philosophie et religion chez les jeunes humanists allemands au seizième siècle. Baden-Baden, 2000. Shantz, Douglas H. Crautwald and Erasmus: A Study in Humanism and Radical Reform in Sixteenth Century Silesia. Baden-Baden, 1992. Sheehan, Jonathan. “Enlightenment, Religion, and the Enigma of Secularization: A Review Essay,” American Historical Review 108 (2003), 1061–1080. Teufel, Eberhard. “Die ‘Deutsche Theologie’ und Sebastian Franck im Lichte der neueren Forschung,” Theologische Rundschau 11 (1939), 304–25. —— ‘Landräumig’. Sebastian Franck. Ein Wanderer am Donau, Neckar, und Rhein. Neustadt a. d. Aisch, 1954. Troeltsch, Ernst. Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen. 2 vols. Tübingen, 1912. Voogt, Gerrit. Constraint on Trial. Dirck Volckhertsz Coornhert and Religious Freedom. Kirksville, MO, 2000. Weber, Franz Michael. Kaspar Schwenckfeld und seine Anhänger in den freybergischen Herrschaften Justingen und Oepfingen. Stuttgart, 1962. Weeks, Andrew. Valentin Weigel (1533–1588): German Religious Dissenter, Speculative Theorist, and Advocate of Tolerance. Albany, 2000.

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Weigelt, Horst. Schwenckfelders in Silesia. Peter C. Erb, trans. Pennsburg, PA, 1985. [Spiritualistische Tradition im Protestantismus. Die Geschichte des Schwenckfeldertums in Schlesien. Berlin, 1973.] ——. “Sebastian Franck und Caspar Schwenckfeld in ihren Beziehungen zueinander,” Zeitschrift für bayerischen Kirchengeschichte 39 (1970), 3–19. ——. Sebastian Franck und die lutherische Reformation. Gütersloh, 1972. Williams, George H., ed., Spiritual and Anabaptist Writers. Philadelphia, 1957. ——. Radical Reformation. 3rd ed. Kirksville MO, 1962/1992. Wollgast, Siegfried. ed., Beiträge zum 500. Geburtstag von Sebastian Franck. Berlin, 1999. ——. Der deutsche Pantheismus im 16. Jahrhundert. Sebastian Franck und seine Wirkungen auf die Entwicklung der pantheistischen Philosophie in Deutschland. Berlin, 1972. ——. “Valentin Weigel und Jakob Boehme. Vertreter einer Entwicklungslinie progressiven Denkens in Deutschland,” Protokolband. Jakob-Böhme-Symposium Görlitz, 1977, 67–86. ——. “Valentin Weigel und seine Stellung in der deutschen Philosophie- und Geistesgeschichte,” in Vergessene und Verkannte: Zur Philosophie und Geistesentwicklung in Deutschland zwischen Reformation und Frühaufklärung. Berlin, 1993, 229–253. Zeller, Winfried. Theologie und Frömmigkeit. Gesammelte Aufsätze. Bernd Jaspert, ed. Marburg, 1971.

CHAPTER FIVE

ANABAPTISM IN MORAVIA AND SILESIA Martin Rothkegel The period during which Moravia was considered as a “Promised Land” by the Anabaptists coincides approximately with the first century of Habsburg rule over the Lands of the Bohemian Crown, a heterogeneous political entity that consisted of the Kingdom of Bohemia, the Margraviate of Moravia, the Duchy of Upper and Lower Silesia along with the County of Glatz, and the Margraviates of Upper and Lower Lusatia. The spread of Anabaptism into Moravia began only a few weeks prior to the Battle of Mohács, during which Louis II Jagiello, the childless young king of Bohemia and Hungary, fell on the battlefield against the Turks on August 29, 1526. A few months later, the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand I of Habsburg succeeded to the Bohemian throne and also assumed rule over of a part of Hungary. During the tenures of Ferdinand I and his successors, Moravia was caught in a permanent tension between the centralizing, absolutist tendencies of Habsburg politics and the “critical loyalty” of the Moravian lords, who persistently defended their liberties and privileges laid down in the traditional estate constitution. This tension— heightened from the late 16th century on by the religious antagonism between the Catholic overlords and the predominantly Protestant estates—culminated in the rebellion of the confederated estates of the Bohemian Lands in 1618–1620. In 1619 the estates accepted the Protestant Elector Frederick V of the Palatinate as Bohemian king instead of Ferdinand II, the Habsburg heir to the throne. Already in the next year, however, Habsburg troops defeated the estates in the Battle at the White Mountain near Prague on November 8, 1620. Two years later, all Anabaptists had to leave Moravia.1

1 For the history of the Bohemian Lands from 1526 to 1620, cf. Winkelbauer (2003), esp. 1: 79–104, 205–214; 2: 18–28, 63–67, 166–181; Bahlcke (1994); Vorel (2005); esp. on Moravia: Válka (1995); esp. on Silesia: Petry/Menzel (2000).

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The Anabaptists profited from the tolerant religious attitudes cherished by an influential fraction among the Moravian lords. Since the 15th century, Hussites and Catholics coexisted peacefully on the basis of a series of legal agreements guaranteed by the estates. These circumstances led to the emergence of a “supra-denominational” ethos among the Moravian nobility. Since the early 16th century, many of them included within their protection members of the Unity of Brethren (or Bohemian Brethren) and other religious dissenters whose confession lacked formal legal recognition.2 Religious dissenters continued to be tolerated on aristocratic domains and in towns and cities subject to nobles even in the face of persistent attempts by Ferdinand I to suppress the Anabaptist movements in all of his territories.3 Nevertheless, during his reign Ferdinand I pushed through three waves of persecution that either suppressed or impaired the development of various Anabaptist groups represented in Moravia. The persecution of 1528 brought an end to the further dissemination of Anabaptism among the indigenous German-speaking population, especially in the larger cities. The persecution of 1535–1536 was directed against the communitarian Anabaptist immigrant communities; while the last major wave of repressive measures of 1547–1552 impacted especially the Hutterian Brethren. A number of Anabaptists were executed during these persecutions.4 Compared with the significant Anabaptist presence in Moravia, Anabaptism found very limited response in Bohemia, and that only temporarily and sporadically within the local German minority communities of Prague and in the centers of silver mining in south and north Bohemia.5 By contrast, a vigorous Anabaptist movement emerged between the late 1520s and the 1540s among the local population in parts of Silesia and in the County of Glatz.

2 Cf. Zeman (1973); Macek (2001), 385–416; Winkelbauer (2003), 2:148–156; Válka (2005), 229–260. 3 Cf. Packull (1995), 187–198; Kohler (2003), 188–192. 4 On the Anabaptist policies of Ferdinand I, cf. BL 1 (1877), 93, 268–270, 381, 385, 437, 611, 621; Kamení‘ek 3 (1905), 467–481; Hrubÿ (1935), 7–21.—Executions of Anabaptist preachers and lay people are documented for Brünn 1528: Loserth (1893), 217, QGT 5 (1951), 278, Zieglschmid (1943), 63f.; Znaim 1529: ETE 1 (1902): 425f., Zieglschmid (1943), 71f.; Brünn 1535: HE 2 (1987), 180–182, Zieglschmid (1943), 154f.; and Olmütz 1538: Dudík (1861), 9. 5 On Anabaptists in Bohemia, cf. ”imák (1907), 241–245; Wappler (1908), 183–186; HE 2 (1987), 189–194; Zieglschmid (1943), 162; Zeman (1969), 235f., 272; Loesche (1895), 77.

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The Nikolsburg Reformation Early Reformation Movements in Moravia (1520–1526) and Moravian Sacramentarianism In the period following the Leipzig Disputation of 1519, when Luther began to rehabilitate the memory of John Hus as a holy martyr, the causa Lutheri aroused great interest in the Bohemian Lands. Between 1520 and 1526 the dynamics of the Reformation reached Moravia.6 In 1520 the highest representative of the Moravian estates, the Moravian governor Arkleb ’ernohorskÿ z Boskovic (d. 1528), wrote a letter to Erasmus of Rotterdam in which he asked for a formal opinion on the teachings of the Unity of Brethren, adding that the writings of Erasmus, along with those of Luther, were enthusiastically received in Moravia. In 1522 the city council of Iglau ( Jihlava) installed Paulus Speratus, a priest from Swabia who had recently been excommunicated in Vienna for “Lutheran” teachings, as city preacher. Stanislaus Thurzó, the bishop of Olmütz (Olomouc), tried to sentence Speratus as a heretic, but the process was obstructed by governor Arkleb ’ernohorskÿ z Boskovic and by Johann von Pernstein ( Jan z Pern“tejna, 1487–1548), another leading estate politician. They brought Speratus to safety in the parsonage of the Utraquist priest and humanist Bene“ Optát and finally helped him to leave the Margraviate unharmed. In the meantime, Optát had received written statements regarding the Real Presence in the Lord’s Supper from Speratus and from Luther himself. Optát published both opinions in Czech translation, which was apparently the first Reformation pamphlet originating in Moravia. In 1524 Johannes Spittelmaier, the city preacher of Nikolsburg (Mikulov), found support from the Lords of Liechtenstein for the publication of his polemic against the monks of the Franciscan monastery in the neighboring city of Feldsberg (Valtice), calling them “archenemies of the cross of Christ.”7 On Ash Wednesday (February 14) of 1526 a group of servants of the Lords of Liechtenstein, with faces smeared in black and wearing women’s clothing, stormed the monastery and abused the monks.8

6 7 8

Cf. Zeman (1969), 59–121. Johannes Spittelmaier, Entschuldigung (Vienna 1524). Vienna, Hofkammerarchiv, Niederösterreichische Herrschaftsakten, F 5: Feldsberg.

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Despite the fragmentary state of the sources, one can draw the following conclusions based on these events: among the theological themes that shaped the reform movement in Moravia, questions related to the toleration of religious minorities (especially the Unity of Brethren) and the Real Presence were of primary importance from the beginning; the reception of Reformation ideas took hold initially among elites within the nobility, clergy and urban councilors who were influenced by Erasmian humanism; during the Speratus affair, reform-oriented circles from both Catholic and Utraquist backgrounds joined together into an informal bi-confessional coalition; from 1524 on, the city and domain of Nikolsburg emerged as an especially radical center of the reform movement. In early 1526 a prominent Catholic prelate, the auxiliary bishop Dr. Martin Göschl, joined the reform party, albeit under odd circumstances. Göschl, a learned humanist, had been consecrated as titular bishop of Nicopolis in Palestine (the biblical Emmaus) in 1509 and served as general vicar of the diocese of Olmütz from 1512 until 1517, when he became prior of the Premonstratensian nunnery at Kanitz (Dolní Kounice). Sometime in the spring of 1526, Göschl married one of the Kanitz nuns and attempted to secularize the monastery in order to appropriate its properties for himself. This, however, proved to be legally impossible. So he transferred the Kanitz domain to the administration of the Moravian estates in return for compensation in money and property. In May, bishop Thurzó dismissed his disobedient auxiliary bishop from all ecclesiastical functions and Göschl and his wife resettled in Nikolsburg within the course of the year.9 On March 14, 1526, Göschl and several Utraquist nobles called a joint meeting of the Catholic and Utraquist clergy at Austerlitz (Slavkov u Brna). Following the model of the Zürich disputations, the group discussed and agreed to seven quite radical reform articles. According to a printed report by the Nikolsburg priest Oswald Glaidt that appeared in Nikolsburg, more than 200 priests, along with numerous noblemen, attended the deliberations, which were conducted by the knight Jan Dub‘anskÿ.10 In regard to the Lord’s

9

Cf. Loserth (1897), 65–70; Králík (1948), 291f.; Zeman (1969), 181–188. Oswald Glaidt, Handlung yetz den XIIII. tag Marcy dis XXVI. jars (Nikolsburg 1526). 10

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Supper, the Austerlitz articles sharply distinguished between an inner, spiritual communion and an external, symbolic meal. In the background, one can recognize a variation of the Zwinglian eucharistic theology that had been promoted by Johann Zeising (’i≥ek), even though Glaidt did not mention Zeising by name. In 1525 Zeising— originally a monk in Breslau, now a member of the Unity of Brethren in Bohemia—initiated a dispute among Brethren clergy on the sacraments. He proposed a dualism of spirit and matter, inner and outer, essence and sign. According to Zeising, the two sacraments of baptism and Lord’s Supper are mere symbols of inner, spiritual realities: salvation is conditional on a spiritual rebirth ( John 3:3ff.) with water baptism serving as merely its external testimony. The eating and drinking of Christ’s body and blood that is necessary for salvation ( John 6:53–56) is a spiritual participation in a “heavenly bread and drink”; the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, by contrast, is merely a symbolic meal of remembrance. The Unity of Brethren in January of 1526 excommunicated Zeising, who at that time was hosted as a guest by Johann von Pernstein and Jan Dub‘anskÿ in Moravia.11 The Austerlitz colloquium might be understood as an attempt by the Moravian nobility to lay the groundwork for a “church union from the left” based on a reform agenda in an effort to stay ahead of an imminent reunion of the Utraquists and the Catholics under Roman auspices, because since 1524 King Louis II and the curia had intensified negotiations regarding the restoration of the Catholic ecclesiastical jurisdiction and the church properties in Bohemia and Moravia. Nonetheless, neither the Austerlitz colloquium nor the negotiation between king and curia led to any concrete results. Facing the new political situation after the Battle of Mohács and the election of Ferdinand I, the Moravian lords changed their religious politics from a reform offensive to a defensive strategy of “supradenominationalism.” Moreover, the Austerlitz agreements became irrelevant in the summer of 1526 when Balthasar Hubmaier won the lord of Nikolsburg, Leonhard von Liechtenstein, along with the Nikolsburg clergy, to the Anabaptist cause. Zeising joined the Hubmaier camp as well. Hubmaiers’s efforts to win over the leaders of the

11

Cf. Rothkegel (2005a), 101–121.

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reform party among the Utraquists—Arkleb z Boskovic, Johann von Pernstein and Jan Dub‘anskÿ—by contrast, were unsuccessful.12 While a considerable number of German speaking protagonists of the early evangelical movement turned Anabaptist, some of the Czech reform partisans gathered in Sacramentarian circles beside and within the Utraquist Church. Central to the piety of the Moravian Sacramentarians was the concept of the “living heavenly bread.” After the failure of the grand plan for a reform-oriented union of Catholics and Utraquists, Dub‘anskÿ concentrated on conversations with the Unity of Brethren, trying to convince them of a symbolic understanding of the Lord’s Supper. These efforts failed, too. In February of 1528, Dub‘anskÿ established his own small denomination, the Habrovanite Brethren. They operated a printing press and published a number of theological polemics, tracts, confessions and hymnals.13 Bene“ Optát (d. 1559) became the leading Sacramentarian theologian within the Utraquist Church. He composed a great number of sermons, commentaries, and tracts, and published a Czech New Testament (1533) along with various pedagogical writings.14 Hubmaier and the Nikolsburg Anabaptist Reformation of 1526–1527 Nikolsburg (Mikulov) is situated along the trade route from Brünn (Brno) to Vienna at the southern end of the Pollau Hills, a highly visible landmark not far from the Lower Austrian border. The domain of Nikolsburg, populated by German-speaking Catholics, had been a possession of the Lords of Liechtenstein since the middle of the thirteenth century. Unfortunately, local archival holdings are virtually absent for the period before 1560. In 1526, when Hubmaier arrived in the city, the city probably had a population of 2500 to 3000 inhabitants including a strong Jewish minority.15 Leonhard von Liechtenstein (1482–1534), along with his nephew Johann (1500–1552), resided in the castle above the city. The Nikolsburg parish and most of the other parishes of the domain were incorporated into the Kanitz monastery. Martin Göschl, as the prior of Kanitz, was the ecclesiastic authority over the Nikolsburg clergy, and he seems to have

12 13 14 15

Cf. Cf. Cf. Cf.

QGT 9 (1962), 328f., 348f., 364f., 434f.; Zeman (1969), 165–172. Rothkegel (2005a), 123–226. ibid. 41–100. Bahlcke (1998), 411–413.

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retained this claim even after he was officially suspended from his office in May of 1526. Balthasar Hubmaier fled from Waldshut in December, 1525. After a long flight through Zürich and Augsburg, he and his wife arrived in Nikolsburg in June or early July, 1526.16 The fact that Hubmaier would move to such a distant place may be somehow related to the fact that the Nikolsburg parson, Johannes Spittelmeier, had studied in Ingolstadt in 1514 while Hubmaier was a professor of theology there. In Nikolsburg Hubmaier finally had the opportunity to carry out a model reformation. The word of God, Hubmaier wrote to Leonhard von Liechtenstein and Martin Göschl in a flattering allegory based on Luke 24:13ff., was first resurrected by Luther in Saxony. However, now that the evening of the world was drawing near, God’s word has turned to Nikolsburg-Nicopolis-Emmaus (a reference to Göschl’s titular see). He continued by allegorizing Matt. 5:14f. and 7:24ff.: Nikolsburg is the house on the rock, built on the foundation of Holy Scripture and shining forth its light (alluding to the name Liechtenstein),17 implying that Nikolsburg had now become the lighthouse of the Reformation instead of Wittenberg, just as the city had long been a landmark for travelers. The goal of the Nikolsburg Reformation was nothing less than the “restitution of the Christian Church according to the word of God,”18 the renewal of original Christianity according to the New Testament. This initial bravado of the Nikolsburg Reformation was especially evident in the propagandistic publications issued by the printer Simprecht Sorg-Froschauer, originally from Augsburg.19 When Sorg started his activity in Nikolsburg in the spring of 1526, he was the only printer in all of Moravia. Sorg’s first publication in Nikolsburg was Oswald Glaidt’s pamphlet on the Austerlitz disputation. Then followed 16 writings of Hubmaier between July, 1526 and June, 152720 along with a programmatic manifesto of the Nikolsburg Reformation by Glaidt.21 These prints are our primary sources for the Nikolsburg Reformation of 1526–1527, supplemented by only a

16 17 18 19 20 21

Cf. Bergsten (1961), 383–481. Cf. QGT 9 (1962), 288f. Cf. ibid., 171. Cf. Benzing (1982), 347f. QGT 9 (1962), 165–457; cf. Laube (1992), 600f., 614f., 683. Laube (1992), 749–771.

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few other scattered references. The picture is far from complete, but it includes some detail: Hubmaier must have succeeded in winning Leonhard von Liechtenstein and the Nikolsburg clergy to his teachings within only a few weeks or months after his arrival. There is nothing to suggest that the reforms of public worship implemented during Hubmaier’s stay in Nikolsburg resulted from a movement “from below” initiated by local subjects. Rather a group of local clergy under Hubmaier’s leadership became the carriers of the reforms.22 Johann Fabri, the theological advisor to Ferdinand I and later bishop of Vienna, characterized Hubmaier’s co-workers at Nikolsburg as a group of puffed-up young humanist “poet theologians” who were more deeply engaged with poetry and grammar than with theology, and who took aesthetic pleasure in gathering ancient coins and depictions of pagan mythology while they destroyed Christian religious images in the local churches with blind rage.23 The scandal unleashed by the iconoclasm in Nikolsburg—without parallel in Moravia—also found an echo in a polemical poem against the Nikolsburg Anabaptists by the Catholic poet Georgius Sibutus.24 Hubmaier and Glaidt, on the other hand, defended the removal of images and altars from the churches as a necessary precondition for the restitution of Christian worship.25 With a similar sort of vehemence they attacked various post-biblical “human ordinances” like fasting regulations and the numerous saint’s days. In a series of three short tracts, Hubmaier described the agendas of baptism, the Lord’s Supper and the ban (the three notae ecclesiae), as practiced in the Nikolsburg church. At Göschl’s request, Hubmaier composed a detailed catechism for the instruction of new converts. In May, 1527 one eyewitness counted up to 72 baptisms per day during a two week stay in Nikolsburg.26 Prior to baptism the candidate was questioned on some catechetic articles and then made a baptismal vow. Baptism by water—apparently by pouring or sprinkling—followed, using the

22

Cf. Zieglschmid (1943), 50. Cf. Johann Fabri, Adversus Doctorem Balthasarum Pacimontanum, Anabaptistarum nostri saeculi primum authorem, orthodoxae fidei catholica defensio (Leipzig 1528), fol. 28v–29v, 49v–50v, 100v–101v; cf. Rothkegel (2003a).—On humanism in Moravia, cf. Hlobil/Petr% (1999). 24 Confutatio in Anabaptistas, In: Georgius Sibutus, Ad potentissimum atque invictissimum Ferdinandum (Vienna 1528). 25 Cf. QGT 9 (1962), 273, 276; Laube (1992), 759f. 26 Cf. QGT 2 (1934), 132. 23

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trinitarian baptismal formula.27 Since Hubmaier, drawing on the Latin church fathers, interpreted the term sacramentum primarily as an oath or vow, a solemn pledge of brotherly love was also part of the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. Communion was celebrated in the church with participants seated on benches at tables.28 Significantly, Hubmaier called the person officiating at baptism a “bishop,” which may be a synonym for the pastor of a local congregation; but it may also have referred especially to Martin Göschl, who was, in fact, charged with rebaptizing numerous people during his trial in Prague in April, 1528.29 It is striking that Hubmaier’s writings from Nikolsburg do not deal with the question of ordaining pastors. Apparently, recruiting clergy had not yet become an issue in Nikolsburg in 1526–1527. Although Hubmaier seemingly did not encounter resistance on the part of the local authorities during his year in Nikolsburg, internal tensions were already evident, both in matters of worship practice and in more foundational questions of theology and social ethics. Hubmaier saw to it, for example, that liturgical practices such as the ringing of bells for morning, noon and evening prayers, which had already been eliminated by the Nikolsburg clergy, were reinstated and that Sunday and the high holidays of the church year were appropriately celebrated.30 During his imprisonment in the winter of 1527–1528 Hubmaier was troubled to hear from Johann Fabri that the Nikolsburg preachers had started to administer communion in an even more radically desacralized form.31 In addition to these tendencies toward a biblicist-primitivist reductionism, the Anabaptists in Nikolsburg struggled with questions about predestination, election and freedom of the will. Hubmaier thus found it necessary to compose two treatises on the freedom of the will. Hubmaier’s position was close to that of Erasmus in the controversy with Luther of 1524.32 On June 24, 1527, less than a month before his arrest, Hubmaier published his treatise “On the Sword.” In it he defended himself

27

Cf. Windhorst (1975a), 129–146. Cf. Windhorst (1975b). 29 Cf. Kollar (1762), 85. 30 Cf. QGT 9 (1962), 476, 482f. 31 Cf. Johann Fabri, Adversus Doctorem Balthasarum Pacimontanum . . . (Leipzig 1528), 25r–v, 28v, 49r. 32 Cf. QGT 9 (1962), 379–431. 28

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against the charge of “rebellion” raised by the Habsburg government while also rejecting the separatist pacifism as upheld by the Swiss Anabaptists. The topic had probably emerged in Nikolsburg in connection with Hans Hut’s appearance on the scene in May, 1527, although Hut himself was not strictly a pacifist. In spite of Leonhard von Liechtenstein’s favor, Hubmaier was no longer safe once Ferdinand I had formally assumed rule over Moravia in the spring of 1527. Hubmaier’s activities came to an abrupt end in the first half of July, 1527 when he was arrested and turned over to the Lower Austrian government in Vienna. Unfortunately, the royal orders and mandates that might have given more information regarding the circumstances of his arrest have been lost. In his trial, Hubmaier was accused of treason related to his activities in Waldshut in 1524–1525, and of heresy. After a long incarceration, Hubmaier was burned at the stake in Vienna on March 10, 1528. Three days later his wife was drowned in the Danube river. Nikolsburg After Hubmaier and the Question of Sabbath Observance Hubmaier’s arrest and execution robbed the Nikolsburg “avant garde reformation” of its theological leader. Even before Hubmaier’s arrest, his close co-worker, Oswald Glaidt, had left Nikolsburg and joined Hans Hut for at least some period of time. Further losses soon followed. In April, 1528, Martin Göschl was ordered to Prague and arrested there. His trial, held in the presence of the king, charged him with embezzling church property, marriage to a nun, and rebaptizing. Only upon the intercession of the Moravian estates was his sentence of capital punishment reduced to life imprisonment.33 In the same month Johann Zeising was burned at the stake in Brünn. The Nikolsburg reformers found themselves quite isolated, not only in the broader Reformation camp, but even among the Anabaptists. The scant evidence of personal and theological contacts maintained by the Nikolsburg reformers points to the Liegnitz reform circle around Caspar Schwenckfeld and Valentin Krautwald, and to Strasbourg. After Hubmaier’s arrest, the printer Simprecht SorgFroschauer moved from Nikolsburg to Liegnitz, where he printed, among other texts, one of Schwenckfeld’s tracts.34 Some time before 33 34

Cf. Kollar (1762), 85; Zieglschmid (1943), 52. Cf. Benzing (1982), 294.

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February, 1529, Glaidt also visited Liegnitz.35 Christian Entfelder, preacher at Eibenschitz (Ivan‘ice) and one of the few clergymen outside of Nikolsburg to adopt Hubmaier’s teachings on baptism, moved from Moravia to Strasbourg, where he published several tracts oriented to radical Spiritualism.36 Johannes Bünderlin, who had been a chaplain to one of Leonhard von Liechtenstein’s cousins and had resided for a time in Nikolsburg, also turned in the direction of radical Spiritualism after relocating to Strasbourg.37 The developments in Nikolsburg between 1528 and 1535 can be reconstructed only in very broad strokes. Unfortunately, the most valuable single source for the early history of Moravian Anabaptism, the Hutterite Chronicle, composed in the second half of the 16th century, touches the Nikolsburg Reformation only briefly. Instead, it emphasizes the beginnings of separatist Anabaptism opposed to the Nikolsburg church, closing the narrative of the conflicts in Nikolsburg with the laconic entry: “The Nikolsburgers retained the sword, hence they were called ‘Swordbearers’ (Schwertler). Today they are called ‘Sabbatarians’ (Sabbater).”38 The latter name obviously refers to the same group against whom Martin Luther directed his polemical treatise “Against the Sabbatarians” (1538). However, Luther knew only from secondhand sources that there were Christians in Moravia who observed the Sabbath. His pamphlet does not offer any relevant information about the origin and teachings of the Sabbatarians but rather consists of anti-Jewish commonplaces.39 Nonetheless, the statement of the Hutterite Chronicle that the Sabbatarians developed out of the Nikolsburg Reformation can be confirmed by the recent discovery of a volume of texts bound in 1566, which is identified by its compiler as a collection of writings of “the Brethren who are called Sabbatarians.” The volume contains, among other texts, a 1535 Confession of Faith by five preachers of the parishes of the Nikolsburg domain along with several writings of Hubmaier. The Confession is arranged according to the Apostle’s Creed and based on Hubmaier’s theology. It was intended as an apologetic to the

35 36 37 38 39

Cf. CS 18 (1961), 41. Cf. Séguenny (1980). Cf. Gäbler (1980); Gäbler (1982). Zieglschmid (1943), 86. WA 50: 309–337.

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Moravian estates and written during the persecution of the Anabaptists in Moravia in 1535, when the king demanded an end to public Anabaptist worship on the Nikolsburg domain and threatened the preachers with arrest. Among the signatories of the confession are Johannes Spittelmaier and Andreas Fischer.40 (A second, shorter Sabbatarian confession of faith has survived as part of an unsuccessful petition by a group of Sabbatarians who wished to emigrate from Moravia to Prussia in the same year.41) The Anabaptist preacher Andreas Fischer is probably the same person as Andreas Fischer, also known as Pisciculus from Littau (Litovel) in Moravia.42 Fischer/Pisciculus enrolled as a university student in Vienna in 1498, received his master’s degree in 1505, and became a canon at the Cathedral Chapter of Olmütz in 1511. He belonged to the humanist circle around Martin Göschl and was Göschl’s indirect successor as general vicar, serving intermittently between 1519 and 1523.43 In 1523 Andreas Fischer, the canon, disappears from the Olmütz records. A document of 1543 refers to him as deceased. The activities of Andreas Fischer, the Anabaptist preacher, fall in between these two dates. Fischer began to baptize in southern Moravia in 1528. In the following year he undertook a missionary journey to the German-speaking cities in Zips, the northern border region of Upper Hungary (now Slovakia), during which he preached in the parish churches and won numerous supporters. Fischer’s mission preceded the spread of Lutheranism in Zips, but Anabaptism did not find an enduring foothold in the region.44 In a letter that Fischer wrote from a village near Nikolsburg to the city council of Neusohl (Banská Bystrica) in Upper Hungary in 1534, he defended himself against the polemics of the Neusohl city preacher. In refuting the charges made against the Anabaptists, Fischer attached a copy of the Nikolsburg church order (no longer extant), emphasizing that the Nikolsburg church enjoyed the favor of Leonhard von Liechtenstein.45 However, Lord Leonhard died in that same year.

40

Bratislava, Univerzitná kni≥nica, Sign. XXI F 19028. Berlin, Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, XX, HA Hist. StA Königsberg Ostpr., HBA A 5, Nr. 230, S. 3–10. 42 Cf. Rothkegel (2005c), contra Liechty (1988). 43 Cf. Králík (1948), 293f., 319. 44 On the Reformation in the Zips cities, see Schwarz (1995); Fata (2000), 67–86, 141–147, 197–205, 312–315. 45 ETE 3 (1906), 375–378. 41

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There are virtually no reports about the religious commitments of his successors. It seems that they continued to grant religious freedom to their subjects, who were predominantly Anabaptists, and that they did not appoint replacements when the parishes of the Nikolsburg domain fell vacant as a result of the persecution of 1535. Except for Fischer, we know almost nothing about the fate of the five Nikolsburg preachers who signed the 1535 Confession, Fischer moved to the town of Jamnitz ( Jemnice) and finally further to Upper Hungary, where he was arrested and executed in 1542.46 Glaidt also moved to Jamnitz. During a stay in Vienna he was arrested and executed in 1546. A later lord of Nikolsburg, the Lutheran nobleman Christoph Kerecsényi, reported indignantly in 1567 that his Liechtenstein predecessors had allowed the parishes to stand empty while one part of the population was attached to the Sabbatarians and other Anabaptist sects, and another part remained unbaptized and refused to join with any religious group.47 In 1575 the Catholic convert Adam von Dietrichstein took possession of Nikolsburg and had the Jesuits systematically re-catholicize the population (with the exception of the Jews and Hutterian Brethren). During the course of this campaign it became clear that numerous people were indeed unbaptized, especially in the villages.48 The phenomenon of Anabaptist Sabbath worship raises numerous questions. The teaching that Christians should worship on Saturday (as taught in the Ten Commandments) rather than on Sunday (based on the common Christian tradition) is mentioned in the court testimony of the Anabaptist preacher Johannes Balbus, who was arrested in Prague in November, 1528.49 According to another source, in 1529 a preacher appeared among the Austerlitz Anabaptists and won over a portion of the congregation to Sabbath worship, but later turned away from the Sabbatarians and became a schoolmaster.50 Whether this preacher was Oswald Glaidt or not, remains unclear.

46

Cf. ETE 2 (1904), 407, 417. Cf. Wotschke (1929), 135f. 48 Brno, Moravskÿ zemskÿ archiv, G 140/127, fols. 28–29.—For more on the recatholicization of the territory of Nikolsburg, see Schlachta (2003), 79–88. 49 Cf. Borovÿ (1868), 43f. 50 Regensburg, Stadtarchiv, Eccl. I, Nr. 58–33 (a report on Moravian Anabaptist groups written in 1555). 47

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In any case, in a recently discovered exposition of the Ten Commandments from 1530 titled “How, When and Where God’s Commandments Prescribe Capital Punishment,” Glaidt approved the use of capital punishment against violators of the Decalogue and called for the reinstitution of the Sabbath, arguing that the New Testament does not supersede the validity of the moral law contained in the Ten Commandments. In his explanation of the Sabbath commandment, Glaidt drew a parallel between I Cor. 13:13 and the three signs of baptism, the Lord’s Supper and the Sabbath: expanding on Hubmaier’s interpretation of baptism and communion as the outward signs of faith and love, he called the Sabbath a “sign of hope,” a ritual anticipation of the eternal Sabbath in God’s kingdom.51 In 1531 Glaidt seems to have initiated a debate among the Nikolsburg preachers about the reintroduction of the Sabbath, since in November of this year Leonhard von Liechtenstein requested opinions regarding the Sabbath and the relationship between the Old and New Testament from Wolfgang Capito and Caspar Schwenckfeld in Strasbourg and from Valentin Krautwald in Liegnitz. All responses rejected Glaidt’s teaching. At this point Glaidt received further support from Andreas Fischer, who issued a detailed work, titled Scepastes Decalogi (“Defender of the Decalogue”), arguing in favor of the necessity of Sabbath worship. Krautwald responded to Fischer’s (now lost) work with another sharp rebuttal.52 This evidence suffices to confirm that Sabbatarianism was an outgrowth of the Nikolsburg Reformation. It is not altogether clear whether the Anabaptist church in Nikolsburg between 1531 and 1535 actually introduced Sabbath worship as an obligatory ordinance—a practice condemned by the common Christian tradition as “judaizing”—or whether only a portion of the Nikolsburg Anabaptists adopted it. At the very least it seems reasonable that a theology as focused on the restitution of biblical practice and the elimination of “human ordinances,” as was the case with Hubmaier’s version of Anabaptism, would have been susceptible to the “Sabbath-argument.” The argument that Sunday worship instead of Sabbath observance is based exclusively on the ecclesiastical tradition was often raised as an argu-

Pre“ov, ”tátna vedecká kni≥nica, V/46 Cl-1, fols. 40v–58v. Editions of the responses of Capito, Schwenckfeld and Krautwald: QGT 7 (1959), 363–393; CS 4 (1914), 444–518; Kaiser (1996), 264–298. 51 52

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mentum ex absurdo by Catholic controversialists against Protestant appeals to sola scriptura.53 Already in 1501 the Olmütz humanist Augustinus Käsenbrot challenged the Bohemian Brethren with the argument: “I ask you who claim to follow the teachings and example of the apostles in every respect, why then you don’t also observe the Sabbath as the apostles did?”54 The Catholic theologian Johannes Cochläus developed this argument further in 1524, demonstrating in detail that Mary, the apostles and Christ himself observed the Sabbath: it was on the authority of the Church alone that Sunday took the place of the Sabbath, and whoever disavows the authority of the Church and her traditions has no excuse not to celebrate the Sabbath.55 When Johannes Fabri confronted Hubmaier with this argument during Hubmaier’s imprisonment, Hubmaier was not able to give a convincing defense of Sunday worship.56 The biblicist consequences that Glaidt, Fischer and their Sabbatarian followers drew from the argument regarding the Sabbath undoubtedly contributed to the fact that the Nikolsburg Anabaptist Reformation, once filled with so much hope, dwindled into a marginal group. Small Sabbatarian congregations continued to exist in Moravia into the second half of the 16th century. Reflecting Hubmaier’s views on social ethics, these groups upheld the death penalty, served in magisterial offices, and rejected the pacifism and moral perfectionism of separatist Anabaptism.57 Separatist Anabaptism in Moravia The Hans Hut Movement in Moravia and the First Communitarian Congregation in Austerlitz Between 1527 and the persecutions of 1535 a series of conflicts and divisions led to the emergence of several competing separatist Anabaptist groups in southern Moravia. In contrast to the Nikolsburg Anabaptists,

53

Cf. Confessio Augustana, Art. 28; Kaiser (1996), 142–146. In: Jakob Ziegler, Contra haeresim Valdensium libri quinque (Leipzig 1512), fol. C 3 verso. 55 Cf. Kaiser (1996), 137–141. 56 Cf. Johann Fabri, Adversus Doctorem Balthasarum Pacimontanum (Leipzig 1528), fols. 17v–18r; QGT 9 (1962), 482f. 57 Cf. Joachim Cureus, Gentis Silesiae annales (Wittenberg 1571), 372. 54

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these groups did not arise out of local parish churches; instead, they separated themselves programmatically from public worship.58 Among the supporters of these groups only a small number were local Germans from Moravia; the overwhelming majority were Anabaptist refugees and immigrants from surrounding lands who began to flock into southern Moravia late in 1527 and whose piety was deeply shaped by the concepts of nonresistance and community of goods. These separatist Anabaptists called themselves “Brethren” and were also named as such in the local sources, especially by authorities who tolerated the Anabaptists. In contrast to the incriminating label “Anabaptists,” the word “Brethren” had a neutral or even respectful connotation in the Bohemian Lands, particularly with reference to the Unity of Brethren. In order to distinguish them from the “Bohemian Brethren” the Anabaptists were often called the “German Brethren.” Separatist Anabaptists could apparently profit from the positive experiences that the Moravian lords already had in their toleration of the Unity of Brethren. In 1528 some Moravian lords even tried to persuade the Unity to receive a group of Anabaptists into their communion; however, the initiative failed because neither group was seriously committed to conversation and because their theological convergences were only superficial.59 In order to reconstruct the origins of these various groups we must turn to the narrative of the Hutterite Chronicle.60 Despite its bias to legitimate Hutterite claims to be the true “Church of God in Moravia,” the Chronicle is a very valuable source if corrected and supplemented by the court testimonies of Hans Hut in Augsburg (SeptemberNovember 1527) and of other Anabaptists, and several contemporary letters and tracts by Anabaptists involved in the events. The divisions began in May of 1527 when Hans Hut arrived in Nikolsburg from Augsburg.61 Hut was apparently prompted to make this long journey because of the astonishing reports circulating about Hubmaier’s unhindered activities in Nikolsburg. Hubmaier attracted throngs of people, just as he had done a decade earlier during the mass pilgrimages to the “Beautiful Madonna” of Regensburg. “Many peo-

58 59 60 61

Cf. Cf. Cf. Cf.

Packull (1995). Müller (1910), 186–193; Zeman (1969), 177–241. Zieglschmid (1943), 50–54, 85–102, 105–140. Seebaß (2002), 252–258.

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ple from Vienna and Lower Austria,” wrote one observer, “traveled to Nikolsburg in order to be rebaptized.”62 News spread quickly in Anabaptist circles in South Germany that in Nikolsburg baptism of believers was practiced in public. It even seems that the Lords of Liechtenstein and Martin Göschl undertook a trip to Augsburg in February of 1527, which aroused the curiosity of the Anabaptists there.63 Competing with the Nikolsburg preachers, Hut began to preach in private meetings and to gather a following in the city. This quickly led to a conflict between Hut and Hubmaier, who saw his reform efforts endangered by Hut’s “rebellious and conspiratorial intrigues.” The conflict culminated in a disputation between Hut and the Nikolsburg preachers, for which Hubmaier had compiled a list of offensive statements from Hut’s writings, some excerpted directly from his texts, others merely insinuated. In the summer of 1527, several of these charges, known as the “Nikolsburg Articles,” began to circulate within anti-Anabaptist circles. The disputation focused on differences between Hut and Hubmaier regarding Christology, Mariology, government and eschatology.64 The Hutterite chronicler obviously assumed that Hut, like the later Hutterian Brethren, was a pacifist and therefore emphasized the disagreement between Hut and Hubmaier on the question of war taxes,65 apparently on the specific question of equipping of an army against the Turks, as agreed upon by the Moravian estates, to which the Lords of Liechtenstein contributed their share just as the other Moravian authorities. In Hut’s apocalyptic scenario the Turks played an important role as the instruments of God’s wrath, through whom unbelievers would be punished. The elect were therefore not to resist the Turks, but rather to await the inbreaking day of salvation in mountains, woods and caves.66 According to the testimony of one of Hut’s followers, Nikolsburg was to be one of the cities where the elect were to gather for the unfolding of the eschatological events.67 After the disputation, the Liechtensteiners had Hut arrested and threatened to turn him over to the king. However, with the help of 62 63 64 65 66 67

QGT 2 (1934), 187. Cf. Roth (1900), 24. Cf. Seebaß (2002), 258–280. Cf. Zieglschmid (1943), 50. Cf. Seebaß (2002), 352. Cf. QGT 2 (1934), 212.

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some Nikolsburg sympathizers, among them Oswald Glaidt, he was able to flee the city. From Nikolsburg Hut traveled to Vienna and from there back to Augsburg via Steyr, Freistadt, Linz and Salzburg. He was finally arrested in Augsburg in the autumn of 1527. In his journey through Austria Hut was able to convert a number of reformoriented priests and schoolmasters to his teachings and to recruit them as missionaries. Numerous people received the apocalyptic baptismal sign of the Thau on their foreheads. Hut’s brief activity in Moravia and the subsequent work of his missionaries resulted in gatherings of Hut supporters in the territory of Nikolsburg and other places in Moravia. The notable spread of Hut’s subversive message in Moravia even caused Johann Fabri to give five public sermons against Hut’s doctrine at the diet of the Moravian estates in Znaim (Znojmo) in April 1528.68 At the same time one of Hut’s missionaries, the former priest Thomas Waldhauser, wrote a letter from the jail in Brünn to a circle of adherents some days before his execution, in which he expressed an acute expectation of the apocalyptic events that Hut had predicted for the time of Pentecost (May 31) of 1528.69 The assumption that these intense expectations were shared by the Hut supporters in Nikolsburg may provide a key to understanding the events of the winter of 1527–1528 and the following spring that were reported in the Hutterite Chronicle. In and around Nikolsburg local Hut supporters and Anabaptist refugees from the Austrian territories had formed conventicles under the leadership of Jacob Wiedemann from Memmingen, another of Hut’s missionaries. Responding to the dire needs of the refugees, members of the circle around Wiedemann began to offer each other material assistance following the model of Acts 2. Because of their separation from the Nikolsburg Anabaptist church and their refusal to contribute to the “Turkish tax,” Wiedemann and his supporters came into conflict with Leonhard von Liechtenstein and the Anabaptist preachers who were then led by Johannes Spittelmaier. While the bloody persecution of Anabaptists in Lower Austria drove more and more Anabaptist refugees across the Moravian border, Wiedemann’s group of some 200 people (not counting children) left the Nikolsburg domain in the spring of 1528.

68 69

Cf. Zeman (1969), 325; Dittrich (1989), 248–258; Seebaß (2002), 260f. HE 3 (1988), 503–509.

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They decided to practice full community of goods and elected two stewards to manage the temporal needs of the believers (cf. the election of deacons in Acts 6). Now constituted as a communitarian fellowship, the group camped for several nights in the open air. Following short negotiations, the Lords of Kaunitz (z Kounic) assigned several properties in the city of Austerlitz to the brethren and promised them exemption from war taxes.70 The date of the “exodus” from Nikolsburg in the spring of 1528 is probably related to the expectations of Christ’s imminent return at Pentecost, 1528. Arguing in support of this conclusion is the fact that shortly thereafter at least two other “exoduses” occurred. On May 1, 1528 the Lower Austrian government reported to Ferdinand I that some 400 Anabaptists were encamped in a forest in South Moravia and refused to work, claiming that “Christ will supply all their needs.” On the Austrian side of the border there was another such camp of about the same number.71 Pentecost 1528 passed by without Hut’s prophecies being fulfilled. Already in the course of that same year the Austerlitz Brethren began to claim a leadership role among the separatist Anabaptist groups and to develop widespread missionary activities, systematically promoting emigration to Moravia in those German and Austrian regions with strong Anabaptist movements. Putting the principles of nonresistance and of community of goods into practice, they focused on two themes that were as relevant to Anabaptist circles influenced by Hut as to early Swiss Anabaptism.72 An important merger occurred in 1529, when a group of 80 to 90 Anabaptist refugees from Austria and the Tyrol, especially from Sterzing (Vipiteno) and the mining city of Rattenberg am Inn, joined the Austerlitz congregation. In the preceding year, this group had unsuccessfully tried to establish an Anabaptist congregation in the southern Bohemian city of Bohemian Krumau (’eskÿ Krumlov), a center of silver mining which then attracted many miners from the neighboring countries. Among the Tyrolean refugees was Pilgram Marpeck, who had resigned from his office as a mining officer in Rattenberg in January, 1528.73 The

70 71 72 73

Cf. Cf. Cf. Cf.

Zieglschmid (1943), 88; Packull (1995), 55–66. Loserth (1919). Packull (1995), 33–53. Mare“ (1907); Packull (1995), 60, 62, 135–138, 215f., 275–282, 316.

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Krumau group brought to Moravia the writings of Hans Schlaffer and Leonhard Schiemer, two former priests, later followers of Hut and Anabaptist missionaries in the Tyrol, both of whom were executed early in 1528. These writings contributed significantly to the continuing influence of basic motifs of Hut’s theology within the various branches of separatist Anabaptism in Moravia.74 The economic backbone of the Austerlitz congregation were artisanal crafts, often accompanied initially by agricultural day labor. In a 1530 letter to the Austerlitz congregation and its filial congregation in neighboring Butschowtiz (Bu‘ovice), Jakob Hutter greeted the brothers “in the school, in the bathhouse, in the cotton factory and in the bakery.”75 The reference to the “bathhouse” shows that, besides crafts, medical skills were represented in the community from the beginning. The royal cities Olmütz, Brünn, Znaim and Iglau quickly recognized the competition of the Anabaptist craftsmen. In 1535 they complained at the Moravian diet that the Anabaptists undermined the traditional, privileged status of the urban guilds “the same as the Jews do,” and suggested the expulsion of both “vicious sects” from the country.76 The Rise of Competing Immigrant Congregations: The Schisms of 1531 and 1533 The task of integrating newcomers, who brought from their homelands not only differing theological emphases but also a variety of charismatic leadership personalities, soon led to tensions and splits within the Austerlitz congregation. While the separation from the Nikolsburg church in 1527–1528 had had its origin in the incompatibility of Hubmaier’s and Hut’s theologies, the divisions among the separatist Anabaptists themselves initially emerged less from substantial theological disputes than from practical problems related to their commitments to community of goods and nonresistance, and from personal rivalries among leaders. Distinctive group theologies were apparently developed only after the groups had already separated.

74 Cf. Packull (1977), 106–117; Seebaß (2002), 84; Kunstbuch (Burgerbibliothek Bern, Cod. 464), Nr. 9–12; Friedmann (1965), 135–138. 75 HE 2 (1987), 11. 76 Brno, Archiv mîsta Brna, A 1/3, Sbírka rukopis% a ú®edních knih, rkp. ‘. 7329, fol. 284v.

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The Austerlitz preachers around Jakob Wiedmann and Kilian Auerbacher claimed material privileges for themselves within the communitarian congregation while simple church members led a very frugal existence. The congregation did not formally pay any war taxes, but the lords of Kaunitz found a compromise solution by increasing other taxes on the community instead. These and other inconsistencies led to dissatisfaction within the congregation, which by now had grown to at least 600 adult members. The tensions reached a peak at the end of 1530 when Wilhelm Reublin, one of the first Swiss Anabaptists, joined the Austerlitz congregation and began to hold gatherings on his own authority and to criticize the Austerlitz preachers. Early in January, 1531, some 350 people (not including children) left the Austerlitz congregation under the leadership of Reublin, David “the Bohemian” from Schweintz77 and Jörg Zaunring and settled in the small city of Auspitz (Hustope‘e), which was a property of the Cistercian nunnery at Alt-Brünn (Staré Brno).78 Important primary sources concerning the schism and the new congregation in Auspitz are preserved among the writings confiscated from the Anabaptist Julius Lober, who was arrested on April 8, 1531 while traveling from Moravia to South Germany. These papers include an exposition by David of Schweintz of Romans 13, focusing on the problem of war taxes, and the copy of a letter from Reublin to Pilgram Marpeck in which Reublin tried to win over Marpeck, then a commissioned messenger of the original Austerlitz congregation, to the new group in Auspitz.79 The new Auspitz congregation established friendly relations with two other pacifist communitarian immigrant communities: the Philippites, a group gathered around the leadership of Philip PlenerBlauärmel also settled in Auspitz whose members came from Swabia, the Palatinate and the Rhineland; and with the Gabrielites, a group in Rossitz (Rosice) composed mostly of Silesian immigrants whose leader, Gabriel Ascherham, was a furrier from Nuremberg.80 However,

77

“Schweintz” denotes either the Silesian city of Schweidnitz, or, since David was also called “the Bohemian,” rather the small town Schweinitz/Trhové Sviny in southern Bohemia. 78 Cf. Zieglschmid (1943), 93–97; Packull (1995), 214–224. 79 Nuremberg, Bayerisches Staatsarchiv, Markgrafentum Ansbach, Ansbacher Religionsakten 39, fols. 118–220; cf. Cornelius (1860), 253–259; Packull (1995), 84f.; Seebaß (2002), 83–85. 80 Cf. Packull (1995), 77–132.

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the Auspitz congregation soon found itself in a profound crisis, so that within the space of a year all of its founders had been removed from office or even excommunicated on account of various moral shortcomings. In 1533 Jakob Hutter emerged out of the power struggle as a new energetic leader. The price for Hutter’s victory was a deep disagreement with both the Philippites and the Gabrielites, resulting from sharp personal rivalries between Hutter on one side and Plener and Ascherham on the other.81 Jakob Hutter (“hatmaker”) was a journeyman from South Tyrol whose intellectual training seems to have been limited to his reading in the Old and New Testaments. Since 1529 he had emerged as a leader among rural Anabaptist circles in the Tyrol. Following a visit to Austerlitz in 1529 he advocated the resettlement of persecuted Anabaptists from the Tyrol to Moravia, first to Austerlitz, and then after the schism of 1531 to Auspitz. During the leadership crisis at Auspitz, Hutter could count on the loyalty of the strong Tyrolean fraction among the membership of the Auspitz congregation. He claimed to have received apostolic authority from God with the mandate to restore the true Church. According to a polemical account by Gabriel Ascherham, Hutter boasted of the “Spirit of Paul,” a charismatic gift of speech. Ascherham’s claim seems plausible if one looks at Hutter’s preserved letters, which consist mostly of ecstatic torrents of biblical phrases.82 Hutter’s short activity as a leader of the Auspitz congregation was radical and polarizing. In the spring of 1535, the congregation decided to place the ruler of Auspitz, the abbess of the Alt-Brünn nunnery, under the ban and to no longer engage in any business relationships with her or to pay any of the feudal dues owed her since all of the nunnery’s income “served the worship of idols.”83 The congregation was promptly expelled from Auspitz on May 6, 1535 so that Hutter’s supporters were forced to camp near Tracht (Strachotín). If that was not enough, at the same time the Moravian authorities began to implement the expulsion of the Anabaptists from Moravia ordered by the king at a meeting of the estates in February, 1535. When the Moravian governor, Jan Kuna z Kun“tátu, ordered Hutter and his group to leave the country, Hutter responded with a letter in

81 82 83

Cf. ibid., 224–235. HE 1 (1986), 23–74; 2 (1987), 9–12; cf. Packull (1995), 198–208, 236–249. Cf. Zieglschmid (1943), 145.

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which he called the king a “cruel tyrant,” an “enemy of godly truth” and a “prince of darkness” who had no right to deny this land to God’s elect, since “the earth is the Lord’s” (Psalm 24:1).84 With this letter, probably written in expectation of God’s saving intervention, Hutter provoked the king to enforce the measures taken against the Anabaptists. At this critical point, Hutter left his flock and returned to the Tyrol. There he was arrested in December of 1535 and executed in Innsbruck in March of 1536. His followers, the “Hutterites,” formed small groups in order to hide, some in Moravia, others in Southern Bohemia and Lower Austria, until the persecution came to an end. Nevertheless, one of their leaders was arrested and burned at the stake in Brünn in 1536, others were executed in Austria.85 The Gabrielites and Philippites were banned from the country along with the Hutterites. Most of the Gabrielites returned to Silesia, with only a small number remaining in Moravia. Some of the Philippites fled to Austria, others to South Germany. A group of Philippites was captured during their flight in 1535 and brought to jail in Passau, where they composed a number of songs that were included in an Anabaptist hymnal of 1564 titled Etliche Geseng and later reprinted in 1583 in the widely circulated Swiss Brethren Ausbund. After 1535 the Philippites ceased to exist as a group in Moravia.86 By contrast, the Hutterites emerged from this period of persecution amazingly strengthened, even though they had been robbed of their first generation of leaders. Between 1536 and 1548, when a new wave of persecution would begin, the Hutterites established more than 20 communitarian settlements (Haushaben, Bruderhöfe) and refined their distinctive ordinances. According to two important sources preserved in the city archives of Regensburg, by the 1550s most of Anabaptists in Moravia were affiliated with one of the following four groups: the Sabbatarians, the Austerlitz Brethren, the Hutterian Brethren and the Swiss Brethren. The last mentioned group is quite poorly documented in sources from Moravia. The author of one, a former Hutterite, wrote: The Swiss Brethren consider baptism and the sacraments as unnecessary for salvation. . . . They are Anabaptists like the Hutterites, but they

84 85 86

Zieglschmid (1943), 149–154. Cf. Zieglschmid (1943), 154–158; Packull (1995), 249–257. Cf. ibid., 283–293, 301f.

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martin rothkegel do not hold baptism as being so important. They say that all people will be saved who call upon the name of the Lord. They support the poor in their congregations.87

The second witness, a Bavarian Protestant who at some time had had sympathetic contact with the Austerlitz Brethren, mentions some additional details regarding the Swiss Brethren: They have this name because one of their elders came from Switzerland. They have private property like the Austerlitz Brethren. I have often conversed with them and asked them what distinguishes them from the Austerlitz Brethren. They say that the Austerlitzers are drinkers and lead a proud and worldly life. ‘We separate ourselves from a person before he sins. This is the main reason why we cannot unite ourselves with them.’ The Swiss Brethren have about 300 members. They live around Olmütz and in various other places in Moravia. They worship in private homes and refuse to enter church buildings that contain idols.88

The reference to strict church discipline makes it plausible that this report is referring to the same group against whose rigid practice of the ban Pilgram Marpeck often polemicized.89 Between 1581 and 1622, a Swiss Brethren congregation possessed a chapel in Eibenschitz, where they are mentioned in local archival sources.90 Pilgram Marpeck’s Mother Church: The Austerlitz Brethren or “Brethren of the Covenant” The Austerlitz Brethren quit practicing community of goods sometime in the 1530s. According to sources from the 1540s and 1550s, they usually called themselves “Brethren of the Covenant” (Bundesgenossen), or “the fellowship of those who have entered into a covenant with God.”91 They had congregations not only in Austerlitz, but also in other Moravian cities like Eibenschitz, Jamnitz and Znaim, in the domains of Nikolsburg, the territories of the Lords of Pernstein, and apparently even in Vienna.92 They had a printed confession of faith,93 copies of which, unfortunately, have not yet been found. It seems, 87 88 89 90 91 92 93

Regensburg, Stadtarchiv, Eccl. I, Nr. 43c, 10. Regensburg, Stadtarchiv, Eccl. I, Nr. 58, 33 (written in 1555). Cf. Kunstbuch (Burgerbibliothek Bern, Cod. 464), Nr. 7–8. Cf. Zeman (1966/67), 56/32–58/34. Regensburg, Stadtarchiv, Eccl. I, Nr. 58, 33. Cf. Kunstbuch (Burgerbibliothek Bern, Cod. 464), Nr. 17. Cf. Zieglschmid (1943), 98.

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however, that the Austerlitz Brethren formulated a doctrine acceptable to a broad range of Anabaptist circles by integrating theological impulses from diverse Anabaptist and Reformation backgrounds and by engaging in a controversial conversation with Spiritualism, whose urban social milieu overlapped with that of the Austerlitz Brethren. A letter from the Austerlitz preacher Kilian Auerbacher to Martin Bucer of 1534,94 and a Latin letter of 1539 from the Austerlitzer Wolfgang Lutz of Kirchen to the Anabaptist-Spiritualist Hans Umlauft in Regensburg,95 both witness to a remarkable theological alertness. Another text that can be ascribed to the Austerlitz Brethren is the undated “Confession of Faith to the Lord of Pernstein,” whose anonymous author defends the brotherhood against charges of Christological heresy, clarifies its relationship to the government, and begs the recipient, an official of the Lords of Pernstein, to persuade his lord ”to give a more favorable decision.”96 The occasion at which this confession was composed is unknown, but it may be connected to orders to expel the Anabaptists from the Pernstein domains issued by Jaroslav von Pernstein, a son of Johann von Pernstein, in 1550 and 1551.97 Several years later, sometime between 1556 and 1559, Jaroslav’s brother Adalbert (Vojt^ch) von Pernstein sent a copy of Pilgram Marpeck’s Vermahnung to the Utraquist reformer Bene“ Optát and requested from him a theological memorandum on the teachings of “the baptist brethren who call themselves Brethren of the Covenant.” In his answer, Optát argued clearly in favor of tolerating the Anabaptists and he even recommended that parents be permitted to postpone infant baptism if they desire to do so.98 The brethren in Moravia and in the circles pastored by Pilgrim Marpeck in South Germany and Switzerland maintained close personal and theological relationships. Some letters from their correspondence have survived in the Kunstbuch.99 In 1541 Marpeck and Cornelius Veh, then the leading Austerlitzer preacher, visited the various Anabaptist groups in Moravia in the vain hope of unifying

94 95 96 97 98 99

QGT 8 (1960), 401–411. QGT 5 (1951), 62f. Hillerbrand (1959); cf. Packull (1995), 146–154. Vorel (1997), 125, 233. Cf. Rothkegel (2005b). Kunstbuch (Burgerbibliothek Bern, Cod. 464), Nr. 1, 3, 16, 17, 24, 37.

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them.100 Just how intensive contacts within the widely scattered fellowship were nurtured is evident in the example of the clockmaker Hans Felix. Following his move from Strasbourg to Austerlitz (and later from there to Znaim), Felix maintained contact with Leupold Scharnschlager—his father-in-law and Marpeck’s co-elder—in the Grisons over a period of many years.101 How intensively Marpeck’s writings were studied by the Austerlitz Brethren, even in subsequent decades, is demonstrated by a codex of Marpeck’s “Response to Caspar Schwenckfeld’s Judicium” preserved in Olmütz which includes additions by members of the brotherhood from 1579 and 1592.102 Local sources regarding the Austerlitz Brethren have been studied in the city archives of Austerlitz and Znaim. In Austerlitz no documents at all are extant from 1528–1539, but numerous entries in the property records from 1540 until the early 17th century shed light on the professions and the social status of the brethren who are referred to as “German Brethren” or, synonymously, as “Cornelites” and “Pilgramites.” The members of the group usually possessed citizenship rights, which implies that they were prepared to swear the required oath. They had their homes as private possessions, while the congregation administered a hospital with baths and owned several houses as communal property. It seems that from the late 16th century on the Austerlitz Brethren also served in local civil offices.103 Relevant sources from Znaim have survived only after 1541.104 From 1541 to 1550 a former pioneer of Austrian Anabaptism, Leonhard Freisleben of Linz, was active here as a schoolmaster. He later became the city secretary of Wiener Neustadt from 1551 to 1563. Wilhelm Reublin also lived in Znaim following his expulsion from the Auspitz congregation in 1531, until at least 1559, maintaining on-going contact with Anabaptist circles in Switzerland. It is unclear, however, what sort of relationship Freisleben and Reublin had with each other and with the small Austerlitzer congregation led by the cabinet-maker Balthasar Grasbantner that existed in Znaim between the 1540s and the 1560s. The legal conditions for the development of Anabaptist congregational life were not favorable. As a

100 101 102 103 104

Cf. Cf. Cf. Cf. Cf.

Zieglschmid (1943), 224. QGTS 2 (1973), 518–525, 528–541. Loserth (1929), 51f. Li‘man (1912), 385–388; Zeman (1966/67), 43/19–47/23. Rothkegel (2001).

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royal city, Znaim stood more directly under the control of the king than did the cities that formed part of aristocratic domains, as was the case with Austerlitz. On the basis of a mandate promulgated in 1528, both Anabaptist worship services and the presence of Anabaptist preachers were forbidden in the royal cities of Moravia. In the 1540s, however, the Znaim city council, some of whose members were positively disposed to the Anabaptists, applied that law in a way that was obviously compatible with the congregational structures practiced by the Austerlitzer type of Anabaptism: when Balthasar Grasbantner acquired citizenship in 1543, he testified to the council that he was not a preacher and did not lead worship services; but when fellow believers gathered in his house to discuss religious matters he couldn’t just send them away. He further said that he could not personally fulfill his civic duty to serve as a guard on the city wall since he “knew nothing about guns,” but he was prepared to make a financial contribution to support the city watch. Other members of the Austerlitz Brethren were granted citizenship under the same conditions. As in Austerlitz, members of the Znaim congregation also ran a bathhouse in which they offered medical services. When the bathhouse was sold in 1569, the city authorities drew up an inventory of the books that were found in the building. The list included a range of German and Latin books on medicine and philosophy. Among the few religious books listed, writings of Erasmus, Schwenckfeld and Sebastian Franck were represented,105 which is another indication that the boundaries separating the Austerlitz version of Anabaptism from Spiritualism were more fluid in practice than the anti-Spiritualist polemics of the Marpeck circle might otherwise suggest. Between 1568 and 1573 the Znaim Council, which by then had turned strictly Lutheran, demanded that the Anabaptists either affirm the Augsburg Confession or leave the city. Anabaptists in Silesia Beginnings, Expansion and Decline of the Anabaptist Movements in Silesia During the 1530s and 1540s Anabaptist movements emerged in virtually all Silesian territories, although more strongly in Lower Silesia

105

Znojmo, Státní okresní archiv, AMZ , kniha 100, fols. 88v–89v.

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and in the County of Glatz than in Upper Silesia.106 While the Anabaptists in Moravia were a religious minority within a linguistic minority, the inhabitants of Silesia were overwhelmingly Germanspeaking. Silesia had remained Catholic in the Hussite wars of the 15th century. Its political, economic and intellectual relations with the territories of the Holy Roman Empire were traditionally close, so that the flow of information from the centers of the Reformation was considerably more intense than was the case with Moravia or Bohemia. When Ferdinand I ascended to the throne in late 1526, the Reformation had already made irreversible progress in several Silesian territories: beginning in 1523, Margrave George of Brandenburg-Ansbach had initiated Lutheran magisterial reforms in his Upper Silesian territories; and by 1524, the city of Breslau in Lower Silesia had become a center of the Lutheran Reformation under the theological leadership of Johannes Hess and Ambrosius Moibanus. Another center of the Reformation movement in Lower Silesia was Liegnitz, the residential city of Duke Friedrich II of LiegnitzBrieg-Wohlau. In an early phase, from 1525 to 1529, the Liegnitz Reformation developed a particular Spiritualist theology. At the core of the reforms in Duke Friedrich’s principalities was the “Liegnitz botherhood,” a fellowship of clergymen and humanists gathered around Friedrich’s adviser, Caspar Schwenckfeld, and the Liegnitz canon and professor, Valentin Krautwald. Their theology merged impulses from the Lutheran Reformation with radically spiritualized elements of late medieval eucharistic piety and the ethical ideals of Erasmus’ biblical humanism. Because they rejected the Real Presence in communion and expressed fundamental doubts about infant baptism, the Liegnitz theologians found themselves dangerously close to Anabaptism and faced sharp rejections from Catholics as well as from Lutherans. In order to escape imminent penal measures announced by Ferdinand I, Schwenkfeld fled into exile in 1529. Since 1530 Duke Friedrich II—politically the most influential among the Silesian princes but confessionally isolated because of the Liegnitz theology—was gradually moving in the direction of Lutheranism. In 1535 and again in 1542 he issued church orders that put an end to Schwenckfeldian influence in church life in his territories.107

106 107

Cf. Rothkegel (2003b). Cf. Bahlow (1917); Weigelt (1985), 1–97; McLaughlin (1986), 1–119.

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In spite of their (at least theoretical) rejection of infant baptism and the compassion they occasionally expressed for the Anabaptists persecuted by Ferdinand I, the Liegnitzers clearly distanced themselves from the practice of rebaptism. The fundamental difference between the Liegnitz theology (or early Schwenckfeldianism) and Anabaptism consisted in the fact that Schwenkfeld and his fellows regarded contemporary Christianity as morally and spiritually unprepared for a restitution of the apostolic Church. During this period of preparation—what one might call a general prebaptismal catechumenate—the use of the outward sacraments was to be suspended. Once this catechetical preaching bore the necessary fruit, God would send apostolic men with a mandate to renew the visible ordinances of the Church.108 The Schwenkfelders accused the Anabaptists of practicing baptism and communion without such divine authorization, implying that the Anabaptists lacked the true spiritual insight, which did not require the external practice of the sacraments, and that they were therefore bound, along with the Catholics and the Lutherans, to the realm of matter.109 Nevertheless, a Lutheran antiSchwenckfeldian polemic, written by a former disciple of Schwenckfeld and Krautwald, maintained that the Liegnitz fellowship had at some point seriously discussed the introduction of rebaptism and had thereby “opened the door wide to the Anabaptists, who later stormed into this land [Silesia] in great numbers.”110 It is difficult to determine how much influence the Liegnitz Spiritualism had on the emergence of Anabaptism in Silesia. Schwenckfeld’s main debates with Anabaptism occurred during his exile; and the voluminous sources published in the Corpus Schwenckfeldianorum contain very few references to any direct interaction with Silesian Anabaptists. On the other hand, the boundary between antipedobaptist Spiritualism and Anabaptism was apparently fluid as, for example, in the case of Johannes Recke alias Gigantinus, a resident of the Silesian city of Reichenbach who started a controversy over baptism and spiritual rebirth in 1530 with the Breslau reformer Johannes Hess. Unfortunately, with the exception of just a few fragments, the extensive manuscript volume of Recke’s tracts, written

108 109 110

Cf. Shantz (1992), 59–100, 157–181. Cf. Bergsten (1957/58); Weigelt (1985), 58–67; Packull (1995), 144–146. Bahlow (1917), 151.

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both in Latin and German, was lost during World War II, so a more exact statement on Recke’s theological stands is impossible.111 Independently from questions of theological influences and interdependences, however, it appears that wherever Schwenckfeldian theologians exercised influence over local authorities, the Anabaptists were less exposed to violent persecution, if not openly tolerated. The latter was the case in the County of Glatz, whose most important parishes were administred by Schwenckfelder clergy, some of whom had lost their pastorates in the principality of Liegnitz following the changes in the religious politics of Duke Friedrich II after 1530. Schwenckfeldian influence in Glatz became even stronger between 1537 and 1548 when the County was in the possession of the tolerant Moravian magnate Johann von Pernstein. During the same years one can observe a flowering of Anabaptism in Glatz.112 The most reliable sources available regarding the chronological and geographical spread of the Anabaptist movement in Silesia are the royal decrees addressed to Silesian authorities demanding the suppression of Anabaptism. The long series of mandates began in 1528 and continued into the second half of the 16th century with especially intense waves of persecution in 1535–1536, 1540–1541 and 1548. During the first years, the king expected a strict application of capital punishment in line with the practice in the Holy Roman Empire. This proved to be impossible to enforce, however, since the Silesian territorial and local authorities carried out executions only in very few instances. After 1535, Ferdinand’s edicts called for expulsion rather than capital punishment as the standard procedure, demanding only the execution of Anabaptist leaders.113 The exact date and origin of Anabaptist beginnings in Silesia is not clear. It seems possible that Silesia was already reached by the mission enterprise initiated by Hans Hut, since Hut testified at his interrogation at Augsburg in 1527 that there were two Anabaptist leaders active in Breslau.114 Early in 1528 the Breslau reformer Johannes Hess reported to Luther on secret Anabaptist activities in the city.115 Reports of Anabaptists in the Silesian territories, how-

111 112 113 114 115

Cf. Cf. Cf. Cf. Cf.

Rothkegel (2003b), 177–179. Weigelt (1985), 97–100; Herzig (1996), 44–55; Rothkegel (2003b), 191–196. Rothkegel (2003b), 154–160, 205–209. Seebaß (2002), 281f. WA Briefwechsel 4 (1933), 371f.

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ever, begin to increase only after 1530. By 1535 the movement reached considerable strength, which apparently continued into the 1540s. Occasionally, exact numbers are noted in the sources. In April, 1535, for example, it was reported to the Breslau cathedral chapter that between 600 and 1000 Anabaptists had held a gathering near Guhrau. In April, 1536, the king learned that there were approximately 5000 Anabaptists in the principalities of Glogau and Schweidnitz.116 The sources investigated thus far, however, do not give a coherent picture of the movement’s development. It appears as if Anabaptists had gained supporters among the artisans and the lower classes in the cities as well as among the peasants in the countryside. They also had sympathizers among the lower nobility ( Junker), and at least in one instance a noble was baptized.117 Anabaptist missions were especially successful in regions where Reformation ideas were already widespread, but the official introduction of Protestantism was still being obstructed by Catholic princes or royal governors. Such was the case with the principality of Sagan during the rule of Duke George of Saxony (d. 1539), and in the royal principalities of Schweidnitz, Jauer and Glogau. While Catholics and Lutherans were engaged in a fierce, decade-long struggle for control over pulpits and altars, Spiritualists and Anabaptists successfully propagated their message in clandestine conventicles. On the other hand, in cities and territories where Lutheran reforms had been systematically introduced, the religious dissatisfaction that elsewhere prepared the ground for Anabaptist missions was apparently diminished and government measures against the Anabaptists were more successful. Lutheran authorities like the Margrave George of Brandenburg or the city of Breslau demonstrated a special zeal in implementing the royal mandates against the Anabaptists, using them as an instrument to suppress opposition against their own religious politics—an effect certainly not intended by Ferdinand I, who considered Anabaptism to be just a vicious extension of the greater evil, the heresy of Lutheranism. Since the 1530s Anabaptist missions in Silesia were at least partially conducted by emissaries based in neighboring Moravia. One

116 117

Cf. Rothkegel (2003b), 160, 183, 200f. Cf. ibid., 176, 180f., 202f.

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of the few Anabaptist missionaries active in Silesia who is more to us than merely a name was Clemens Adler. Originally a priest in Bohemia, Adler was fluent in Czech, Latin and German. After becoming Anabaptist, he was initially affiliated with Gabriel Ascherham’s group, but was excluded by Ascherham at some point, whereupon he gathered his own flock. A surviving tract by Adler, “On the Sword” (1529), offers a detailed defense of Anabaptist nonresistance based on an argument from salvation history. In 1533 he successfully worked as a missionary in Wohlau and allegedly led the peasants of two villages there to Moravia. During one of his missionary journeys, 1534 at the latest, he disrupted a worship service at the parish church in the city of Glatz, preached before the assembled crowd and was subsequently invited for preaching by several local nobles. After several arrests, releases, and escapes, Adler was finally brought to prison, sentenced and beheaded in the city of Glogau in 1536. Official reports sent to the king called Adler the “founder” of Anabaptism in Silesia, who had done great damage by leading a large number of subjects out of the country.118 During the persecution of 1535 it was impossible for Moravian communitarian groups to accept new immigrants; instead, a reverse migration began back to Silesia.119 When the Hutterites were exposed to another wave of persecution in 1547–1552, they once again saw themselves forced to dissuade Silesian Anabaptists from emigrating to Moravia,120 but subsequently resumed their intensive mission work. Besides Anabaptist missions that primarily aimed at bringing new converts to Moravia, local Anabaptist conventicles or congregations existed at different places in Silesia in the 1530s and 1540s. Future research should clarify whether these two phenomena were mutually exclusive, or overlapping. Three individual cases help to illuminate the character of local Anabaptist congregational life in Silesia. In September of 1536 the city council of Schweidnitz investigated an Anabaptist congregation in Weizenroda, a village that belonged to the city. Its leader, a preacher named David who had resided in the village since the previous winter, had baptized a number of

118 Cf. Joachim Cureus, Gentis Silesiae annales (Wittenberg 1571), 372; Packull (1995), 106–119; Rothkegel (2003b), 165, 183f., 193f. 119 Cf. Ibid., 159f. 120 Cf. HE 1 (1986), 206–211.

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inhabitants there, including servants, maids and peasants. The group gathered daily in private homes for sermons.121 The second case comes from the small city of Habelschwerdt in the County of Glatz, where Anabaptism had found a strong response among the burghers since 1533. By 1545 the majority of the city’s population was Anabaptist. Regular worship services in the parish church had been suspended and the burghers gathered for preaching in private homes. For the non-Anabaptist portion of the population a Schwenckfeldian pastor from a neighboring village preached in the church on Sunday afternoons.122 A third illustrative example was the effort to establish a congregation in a sparsely settled, densely wooded area far from any parish church, called Görlitzer Heide—then an iron ore region that belonged to the Upper Lusatian city of Görlitz. In the summer of 1539, Johannes Ender, an Anabaptist missionary from the neighboring Silesian principality of Sagan, appeared with his helpers and invited the population from a radius of some 20 kilometers to a meeting in which he preached and baptized. Before dismissing his audience, Ender announced further visits, which were prevented, however, once the Görlitz council heard of these events and held a legal investigation.123 In the second half of the 16th century Lutheran confessionalization achieved in most Silesian territories what the repressive religious politics of Ferdinand I had been unable to accomplish: to create a confessionally homogenous society, in which minority crosscurrents no longer had any place. The remnants of Silesian Anabaptism faced a choice between religious conformity or emigration to Moravia. Through the 1580s Hutterite efforts to persuade lingering groups of Silesian Anabaptists to emigrate continued to meet with some success. Soon thereafter, however, Anabaptism in the Silesian territories vanished without leaving behind a discernible legacy. Gabriel Ascherham’s Transition from Anabaptism to Spiritualism The stagnation, decline and dissolution of Silesian Anabaptism is reflected theologically in a number of texts written by Gabriel Ascherham between 1544 and 1548. Ascherham had initially been

121 122 123

Cf. Rothkegel (2003b), 180. Cf. Herzig (1996) 53f.; Rothkegel (2003b), 194f. Cf. ibid., 197–199.

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a partisan of a pacifist, communitarian form of Anabaptism at Rossitz similar to that of the proto-Hutterites at Auspitz. After the persecutions of 1535, his community was dissolved and Ascherham, along with most of his supporters, fled into hiding in Silesia. Ascherham maintained contact with his flock by sending them doctrinal tracts, some of which have survived in two original manuscript codices.124 These texts witness to a remarkable theological shift from Anabaptism toward an original form of Spiritualism born largely out of Ascherham’s disappointing experiences with the radical separatism of the Hutterian Brethren. In 1544 Ascherham wrote a tract “On the Distinction between Divine and Human Wisdom.” For Ascherham, the motif of twofold wisdom (I Cor. 1:18ff.) did not refer to the distinction between philosophy and revelation (as with the Scholastics) or to the distinction between the book-educated clergy and the divinely-instructed laity (as with the alleged anti-intellectualism of the mystics), but to three levels of Christian piety comparable to the distinction between pneumatikoi, psuchikoi and hulikoi in ancient Gnosticism. The “pneumatikoi” (referring to Ascherham and his disciples) understand the spiritual sense of Scripture, need no rituals, and even have a foretaste of God’s plan for the future. Child baptism and adult baptism are matters of indifference to them. Law and sin no longer have any power over them. Since the church to which they belong is purely spiritual, they transcend the exclusive claims of competing sects and denominations. The second stage, comparable to the psuchikoi of Gnosticism, refers to the human wisdom of the Lutherans and Catholics, which is based on the letter of Scripture, but only in its historical and literal sense. This sort of human wisdom is not altogether worthless; indeed, it has a moral value and contributes to temporal peace by teaching the people to do good and to avoid evil. Such wisdom obviously receives an intrinsic temporal reward from God. The lowest level, comparable to that of the hulikoi of the Gnostic terminology, is represented by the Hutterian Brethren. They possess neither human nor divine wisdom and do not understand Scripture in either its historical or literal sense. Their piety rests completely on material and “elemental” rituals and ordinances like water baptism or community of goods. The strict discipline of the Hutterites

124

Cf. Wiswedel (1937); Packull (1995), 99–132; Rothkegel (2002a).

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is mere legalism, their desire for martyrdom a foolish form of worksrighteousness. In contrast to the rigid anti-Nicodemism of early Anabaptism, Ascherham now advocated the principle of keeping religious convictions secret in situations of persecution, and he encouraged his supporters to maintain an outward religious conformity with their environment. Ascherham’s tract on the Lord’s Supper of 1545 seems strangely incoherent alongside these strong Spiritualist motifs. Here he emphasized the sacred character of communion against the purely symbolic understanding and radically desacralized practice among the Hutterites. The Gabrielites celebrated the eucharist with a solemnity unusual among Anabaptists.125 That communion was elevated to prominence, whereas water baptism receded into the background, might be related to the fact that Ascherham interpreted the eucharist in his “Commentary on Romans” of 1546 as an anticipatory celebration of participation in Christ’s future kingdom. It was obviously the publication of the most important confessional text of the Hutterian Brethren, Peter Riedemann’s “Account of our Religion” (1545), that prompted Ascherham to write three treatises between 1546 and 1548 that dealt extensively with the millennial kingdom of Rev. 20. Riedemann’s “Account” had presented the exalted and de facto exclusivist Hutterite ecclesiology by appealing allegorically to the building of the temple on Mount Zion. In his tracts, Ascherham derided the Hutterite claim “that they build Jerusalem in Moravia and had already arrived at Mount Zion.” Opposing their emphasis on ecclesiology, he divided salvation history into a succession of three kingdoms. The first is the spiritual kingdom of Christ among believers from all nations that began with the incarnation and passion of Christ and has continued until the present. The second kingdom will be the thousand-year earthly kingdom of the Jews in Jerusalem to which believers from the nations will travel in a great pilgrimage. After the millennium, the eternal and heavenly kingdom of the Father will follow. As a result of this chiliastic pattern, ecclesiology recedes completely into the background: in the current epoch, Christ gathers his believers not into a visible church, but only into a unity of the spirit. Although we do not know to what extent Ascherham’s new theological orientation in the 1540s actively influenced the development 125

Cf. Zieglschmid (1943), 250.

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of Silesian Anabaptism, it clearly represented a search to resolve the movement’s crisis of survival. Not all of Ascherham’s followers affirmed the shift to Spiritualist indifference regarding infant baptism, to the rejection of community of goods, and to the “popish” celebration of the Lord’s Supper. Indeed, many disappointed Gabrielites joined the Hutterites between 1545 and 1565.126 Little is known about the end of Ascherham’s life. In 1548 royal authorities throughout Bohemia and Silesia hunted him. Supposedly, he was carrying a large amount of money collected from his supporters. According to the Silesian chronicler Joachim Cureus, Ascherham fled to the border region between Poland and Silesia where he finally died.127 The Hutterian Brethren During the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century Expansion, Discipline and Economy of the “Church of God in Moravia” Those Anabaptist groups in the Bohemian Lands who had remained integrated into their urban or rural social contexts (the Nikolsburg Schwertler and Sabbatarians), or who pursued a course of de-radicalization and social reintegration (the Austerlitz Brethren and the Gabrielites), were far less exposed to governmental persecution than were the Hutterian Brethren.128 But whereas the former groups dwindled away during the second half of the century, the Hutterian Brethren became the strongest and most dynamic Anabaptist group in the region, exercising an important influence on the development of contemporary European Anabaptism through their extensive mission work. For almost a century, Hutterite missionaries were persistently being sent to Anabaptist and crypto-Anabaptist circles in the German-speaking territories and, to a lesser extent, in northern Italy in order to lead new converts to southern Moravia. More than any other contemporary Anabaptist group, the Hutterites successfully developed institutional forms that enabled them to implement the radical religious and social concepts of early Anabaptism including:

126

Cf. Zieglschmid (1943), 250–252, 419f. Cf. Joachim Cureus, Gentis Silesiae annales (Wittenberg 1571), 372f. 128 Cf. Loserth (1895); Hrubÿ (1935); Gross (1998); Chudaska (2003); Schlachta (2003). 127

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community of goods; rejection of the oath, military service and war taxes; refusal to obey clerical authorities; radical desacralization of religious practices; and a God-pleasing way of life in a strictly disciplined, theocratic community separated from the world. Despite their scandalous radicalism, the Hutterites achieved a great deal of economic success within the religious, economic and political conditions that prevailed in southern Moravia before 1620; and they even enjoyed the strong favor of a considerable portion of the Moravian nobility. A Catholic anti-Hutterite polemic of 1607 claimed that the Moravian lords esteemed the Hutterites to the degree “that they regarded their empty words as oracles, their hypocritical works as utmost piety, and venerated them like idols.”129 Ulrich von Kaunitz, one of the Hutterites’ protectors, put it more soberly in his 1613 testament, intended as counsel for his heirs: “It is difficult to get along with them, but even worse to be without them. I say this out of long experience.”130 As a consequence of this odd symbiosis, the fate of the brethren would rise and fall with that of their aristocratic protectors and the traditional estate constitution, and, indeed, it eventually did fall after the Battle of White Mountain (1620), when the non-Catholic nobility lost its property and political influence. Unfortunately, neither the rich Hutterite source materials nor the extant external sources offer clear figures regarding the numerical growth of the brotherhood. In light of their highly-developed economic and administrative structures it is virtually unthinkable that Hutterites did not maintain careful records of their membership. Such figures, however, would have been kept secret, since they might otherwise have become the basis for a head tax or other restrictions on the part of the authorities. From the development of the number of Hutterite settlements (Haushaben or Bruderhof ) we can at least conclude that the community was growing rapidly. While there were only two Haushaben before 1535, there existed 31 in 1536–1547; 36 in 1550–1564; 68 in 1568–1592; and 74 in 1593–1622—almost all of them situated on aristocratic domains along the southern edge of the Margraviate of Moravia.131 In addition, a number of outpost

129 Christoph Andreas Fischer, Vier und funfftzig erhebliche ursachen, warumb die widertauffer nicht sein im land zu leyden (Ingolstadt 1607), 90. 130 Cf. Hrubÿ (1935), 50. 131 Cf. Pánek (1989), 658; Pánek (1995), 116.

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colonies emerged in neighboring Hungarian territories on the opposite side of the March (Morava) river. In 1604 the Hutterites even attempted to establish a community in Elbing, Prussia, with the goal of converting the Mennonites in the area, but this project was abandoned already in 1606.132 Contemporary estimates of the total Hutterite population in the late 16th century vary between a rather low number of 17,000 (1589) and the likely-exaggerated figure of 70,000 asserted by a former Hutterite in 1587. Modern estimates based on the number of the Haushaben also vary widely. The latest scholarship suggests a total number of 20,000–25,000 persons at the beginning of the 17th century, which corresponds to approximately 10% of the estimated total population of southern Moravia.133 Hutterite doctrine and ordinances took on concrete forms during the tenures of elders Hans Amon (1536–1542), Peter Riedemann (1542–1552) and Leonhard Lanzenstiel (1542–1565).134 It is not clear to what degree the founder of the brotherhood, Jakob Hutter, gave distinctive theological impulses that influenced later developments. However, already with Hutter we find a strong emphasis on the theocratic authority of the leaders, or “servants” (Diener), that was to become one of the chief characteristics of the Hutterite type of Anabaptism. From 1536 on, the elections and deaths of the preachers, or “servants of the word” (Diener am Wort), are documented in the Hutterite Chronicle in a virtually uninterrupted sequence. In 1542, the year of Amon’s death, there were 9 preachers. By 1556 this number had risen to approximately 20, and it generally exceeded 30 between 1570 and 1620, reaching a maximum of about 40 between 1591 and 1595.135 The preachers elected from their midst one elder or “bishop,” who represented the entire brotherhood to governmental authorities and, together with a group of other senior “servants,” formed a kind of executive committee that oversaw spiritual, disciplinary and economic affairs. Between ca. 1565 and 1622 the large Bruderhof of Neumühl (Nové Mlÿny) served as the seat of the elders and the central administration. The latter’s head clerk was the “secretary of the elders” (“der Ältesten Brüder Schreiber,” or Brüderschreiber),

132 133 134 135

Cf. Zeman (1966/67), 92/153–96/157; Kuhn (1957), 309–320; Pajer (1999). Cf. Pánek (1989), 658; Pánek (1995), 116. Cf. Gross (1998), 28–41; Chudaska (2003), 331–357. According to Zieglschmid (1943); cf. Clasen (1972), 246f.

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an important office that required legal skills as well as a certain command of Czech and that was usually associated with the role of the church chronicler.136 Parallel to the 30–40 “servants of the word” was the rank of the “servants of temporal affairs” (Diener der Notdurft), who were in charge of the economic affairs within each of the Haushaben. Both ranks of “servants” enjoyed special material privileges regarding food, clothing and housing and formed the most important decision-making body of the community which met two or more times per year, occasionally supplemented by the masters of individual crafts.137 Despite the significant role that the first Hutterite schoolmaster, Hieronymous Käls (executed in 1536), had assumed in the beginning years, the schoolmasters of the Hutterite elementary schools played no distinctive role in the leadership structure.138 The elections of new preachers took place at the large gatherings of the “servants”—usually held around Christmas and New Year or in conjunction with communion on Easter or Pentecost. Almost all Hutterite preachers had practiced a craft within the community at least for some time prior to their pastoral service. Instead of formal training, books were assigned to the newly-elected preachers for individual studies. First generation converts chosen for pastoral service sometimes brought with them prior experience in higher education that they now could draw upon—such was the case with a few preachers who had originally been Catholic priests; more often we hear about preachers who had served previously as pastors in other Anabaptist groups. Following a trial period of two or three years, the preachers were ordained for life. If preachers offended in terms of morals or doctrine, the assembly of the “servants” investigated the matter and, in some cases, excommunicated the offender.139 Each spring the community sent out missionaries to regions where they had reason to assume potential success at winning new converts.140 Most new members came from Switzerland, South Germany, Austria, the Rhineland and Silesia, with smaller numbers coming from Franconia, Hesse and northern Italy. In one case, a group of

136 137 138 139 140

Cf. Cf. Cf. Cf. Cf.

Rauert (1999). Schlachta (2003), 245–270. Packull (1995), 258–268; Gross (1998), 32–34. Runzo (1980); Schlachta (2003), 278–288. Gross (1998), 42–56; Schlachta (2000).

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Slovaks joined a Hutterite community. North Germany and the Netherlands, by contrast, were scarcely represented among the newcomers. With the exception of Hesse and the Rhineland, the home regions of Melchiorite Anabaptism seem to have been largely outside the scope of Hutterite missions. Following the well-organized secret trip to Moravia, newcomers were given some time for deliberation. Those who decided to join the “Church of God in Moravia” turned over their possessions to the community and received standard catechetical instruction before baptism. Those professing an earlier believers baptism that was recognized by the Hutterites were admitted by the laying on of hands. The pre-baptismal instructions, preserved in a number of manuscripts, illustrate how strongly Hutterite doctrine and spirituality were rooted in traditions going back to the theology of Hans Hut and to South German Anabaptism with its distinctive Spiritualist tendency.141 According to the Hutterites, the individual is redeemed not by mere faith in the salvation accomplished by Christ’s death, but through true discipleship that leads to ethical improvement. In an ecclesiological transformation of Hut’s doctrine of justification based on suffering, Hutterites understood the individual’s surrender to the strict regulations of their community life as the justificatory process—the “refining oven of yieldedness” (Gelassenheit). The Church’s contribution to salvation and her power over the keys of the kingdom of heaven were highlighted in an almost “Catholic” manner. In effect, membership, spiritual progress and perseverance in the “Church of God in Moravia,” legitimated through the blood of her numerous martyrs, assured the individual of a firm hope for eternal salvation. Besides the Bible (including the apocryphal books of the Old Testament), the Hutterites regarded the Apostles’ Creed as an obligatory guideline of faith. Despite a clear rejection of the explicit antiTrinitarism of the Polish Brethren,142 a considerable portion of Hutterite religious texts would not meet the strict criteria of Trinitarian orthodoxy as defined by contemporary Catholic and Protestant theologies. They did, however, firmly resist the spread of Melchiorite Christological teachings and certain expressions of Spiritualist, ascetic,

141 142

Cf. Packull (1977). Cf. Gross (1998), 157–171.

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perfectionist, biblicist and egalitarian radicalism that emerged repeatedly within the community.143 Just as Hutterite religiosity contradicted the Lutheran doctrine of justification, Hutterite social ethics and the socio-economic form of the community can be characterized as a basic rejection of the Lutheran doctrine of the Two Kingdoms. Hutterite nonconformity with the “world” included every aspect of life, and its consequent expression was the establishment of an alternative micro-society even including some features of political autonomy. Since Hutterites refused to swear oaths, they excluded themselves from the possibility of gaining municipal citizenship rights. Nor did they become regular subjects of the local lords on whose domains they lived. Instead, the Hutterites entered into a contractual relation with the aristocracy, according to which they were freed from feudal labor obligations (robota). Furthermore, the legal jurisdiction over Hutterite offenders was transferred to the Hutterite elders. In return, the Brethren had to refrain from proselytizing among the local population and they contributed to the income of their protectors with precisely determined quantities of artisanal products and other types of services. The economy of the community was based largely on crafts and skilled agricultural professions like millers, keepers of wine cellars and administrators who offered their services to the aristocratic manors.144 The agricultural production of the Haushaben was limited to foodstuffs of secondary importance like meat, vegetables and wine for internal use; grain, then the basis of any regular diet, was purchased from outside the community. The high productivity, the low costs of living within the community, and the steady influx of new capital brought by converts provided the Hutterites with significant investment capital. Based on the wide diversity of crafts—well-documented through the numerous extant Hutterite craft guild ordinances145— the Haushaben developed an “urban” economic profile that posed a competitive threat to the traditional guilds in cities. As early as 1543 the Hutterites were able to carry out such complex projects as the new construction of a public bathhouse for the city of Brünn, drawing on the necessary skills of masons, carpenters, glaziers and 143 Cf. Zieglschmid (1943), 138f., 210–212, 243–246, 341, 409, 466, 478f., 495–497, 783f., 810–812, 841f. 144 Cf. Hroch/PetráÏn (1986), 983, 987f.; Schlachta (2003), 49–57. 145 Peter (1980); cf. Loserth (1895), 250–271; Harrison (1997), 37–90.

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plumbers.146 Since the “Golden Years” of the communities in the last third of the 16th century, Hutterite craftmen concentrated on the production of luxury goods targeted especially for the aristocracy—such as coaches and wagons, shoes, leather furniture, knives and tableware, and the famous fayance pottery. The production of luxury goods continued in western Upper Hungary (Slovakia) and in Transylvania even after the 1622 expulsion of the Hutterites from Moravia.147 An exemplary quantitative study, based on archival sources from a Haushaben in western Slovakia in the middle of the 17th century, shows that the productivity of Hutterite craftsmen was still extraordinarily high, even in that late period.148 Hutterite Group Literature More than 300 sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Hutterite manuscripts have been preserved in Europe and North America, ranging from small sermon booklets to folio volumes containing more than a thousand pages.149 These texts comprise by far the most extensive body of sources related to Central European Anabaptism. Although the Hutterites collected the letters and tracts of their leaders and martyrs from their very beginnings, all extant Hutterite manuscripts, bound in characteristic leather covers, were copied between the 1560s and the 1660s. During this period of approximately one hundred years a unique Hutterite book culture and group literature flourished. Despite their close contacts with the nobility, the Hutterites apparently did not enjoy sufficient protection to establish their own printing presses. Thus, most Hutterite texts were transmitted by manuscript copying. Only in a few cases did they dare to have books printed for apologetic and propagandistic purposes, like Peter Riedemann’s “Account of our Religion” (15451, 15652) and the “Sendbrief ” by Andreas Ehrenpreis (1652), or for internal usage, such as an edition of the New Testament (1570). Printed books of non-Hutterite origin—mostly early imprints of Worms and Zürich Bibles, but also a

146 Brno, Archiv mîsta Brna, A 1/3, Sign. 250, fols. 166v–167r, 168r; Sign. 250A, fol. 65r–v. 147 Cf. ’ernohorskÿ (1931); Krisztinkovich (1962); Katona (1983); Bauer (1985); Pajer (2001). 148 Cf. Horváth (1967). 149 Cf. Friedmann (1965).

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wide range of religious tracts and hymnals spanning the Anabaptist, Spiritualist and general Protestant spectrum—also found their way into the community through new converts or purchases. Since the Hutterites had the habit of rebinding newly acquired books that were judged to be appropriate for use within the “Church of God,” books of Hutterite provenance are easily identified by their characteristic leather covers.150 Hutterite authors wrote almost exclusively in Early High German.151 Generally absent from the Hutterite literary corpus are popular genres like non-religious poetry and fictional prose, which the Hutterites rejected as “lewd songs” and “deceitful stories.” In the Platonic republic of the “Church of God in Moravia,” books had the sole purpose of communicating “truth”—religious and moral— or of passing on practical technical information. According to its functional Sitz im Leben, Hutterite group literature can be divided into five general categories: (1) Apologetic and propagandistic texts: here we may mention, besides Riedemann’s “Account”,152 Peter Walpot’s short account of the central distinctive teachings of the Hutterites titled “Five Articles,”153 and the extensive compilation “A Beautiful, Pleasant Book of the Main Articles of Our Faith” by Hans Zuckenhamer (1583).154 (2) Chronicles: The Hutterite chronicles are accessible in two modern editions. The first, published by Beck (1883), is a chronologically arranged compilation from various manuscripts including a chronicle by Caspar Braitmichel (d. 1573) that extends from the creation of the world to 1542; a chronicle of Ambrosius Resch (d. 1592) whose narrative begins with 1524; and shorter texts such as catalogs of martyrs. The second edition, published by Zieglschmid (1943), is based on a single manuscript of 1581 that contains a substantially enlarged version of Braitmichel’s chronicle, compiled from a wide range of handwritten and printed sources by the secretary of the brotherhood, Hans Zapff (d. 1630) and continued by several later secretaries and elders until 1665.155 The Hutterite chronicles have

150

Cf. Rothkegel (2000). But see Stella (1969), 241–248, 252–307, for Hutterite writings in Italian. 152 Trl. Friesen (1999); cf. Chudaska (2003), 53–62, 216–255, 340–348. 153 Zieglschmid (1943), 269–316. 154 QGT 12 (1967), 49–317 (Friedmann wrongly attributed this text to Peter Walpot). 155 Cf. Szövérffy (1963); Kugler (1984); Rauert (1999). 151

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had a far-reaching surreptitious impact, since many of their entries were included in the Dutch martyology, Historie der Martelaren (1615), by the Waterlander Mennonites Hans de Ries and Jacques Outerman, and hence reprinted in the Martyrs Mirror by Thielman J. van Braght (16601, 16852). (3) Devotional texts for a lay readership: In addition to the Bible, hymnals and so-called “epistle books” served the spiritual edification of rank-and-file members. The manuscript songbooks, occasionally quite extensive, include original Hutterite compositions along with songs copied from the printed Swiss Anabaptist hymnals.156 The “epistle books” are valuable collections of letters, confessions and tracts from early Anabaptist and Hutterite leaders and martyrs, along with numerous anonymous texts.157 In the second half of the 16th century, detailed reports of the interrogations and trials of Hutterite missionaries enjoyed special popularity.158 (4) Texts for the Preachers: The sophisticated writings intended for use by Hutterite preachers, scarcely noted by modern scholarship, include exegetical, homiletic, and liturgical texts, such as formularies for baptism and communion. Especially noteworthy are Peter Riedemann’s “Paraphrases of the Gospels” (1549)—a literary genre that drew heavily on the writings of Erasmus159—and the numerous Hutterite Bible commentaries. Surprisingly, the Hutterite commentary on Revelation was partially based on writings by Melchoir Hoffman.160 A study of the numerous Hutterite sermons remains to be done. (5) Non-religous texts: The non-religious writings among the Hutterites include technical handbooks for various crafts, books on cosmology, animals and stones, and a significant number of medical and alchemical manuscripts. Most remarkable is a group of at least eleven extensive medical handbooks and treatises by Leonhard Gagasser, a Hutterite physician active between 1570 and 1587. Gagasser could obviously rely on an excellent reference library, since he quoted more than sixty German and Latin works by Paracelsus (Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim, d. 1541) and several later

156 157 158 159 160

LHB; cf. Wolkan (1903), 165–260; Lieseberg (1991); Lieseberg (1998). Müller (1938); HE 1–4. Cf. Gross (1998), 57–140. Cf. Rothkegel (2002b) Cf. Packull (1982).

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Paracelsian writers. The phenomenon of Hutterite Paracelsianism certainly merits closer study. The Postlude of Moravian Anabaptism in Slovakia (Upper Hungary) after 1622 External factors brought an end to the flourishing of Hutterite Anabaptism in Moravia. The long period of peace that the Margraviate had enjoyed since the late 15th century was first interrupted in 1605 when Turkish troops allied to the Hungarian anti-Habsburg insurgent István Bocskai attacked the Hungarian-Moravian border region, causing heavy damages to the nonresistant Hutterian Haushaben there. Nonetheless, new Hutterite converts from Württemberg and Switzerland were still emigrating to Moravia even in the years immediately before the outbreak of the Thirty Years War. In 1619 the horrors of that war reached Moravia. Twenty-nine Hutterite communities were plundered, twelve of them destroyed completely. The hope aroused by the election of the “Winter King,” Frederick of the Palatinate, was soon followed by the defeat of the anti-Habsburg confederation at the Battle of White Mountain near Prague in November of 1620. The victory of Ferdinand II quickly led to the suspension of the traditional Moravian estate constitution and the disempowerment of the nobles who had been the guarantors of Hutterian Brethren existence in Moravia. In the course of the following years, Moravia had to face the strict implementation of Catholic absolutism—a concept of a perfect Christian society in which the Anabaptist vision of a perfect Christian life had no more place whatsoever. As early as September 28, 1622—six years before the emperor would issue the “New Moravian Land Order” of 1628 which established Catholicism as the only legal Christian denomination—the royal governor, Cardinal Franz von Dietrichstein, ordered the final expulsion of the Hutterites from Moravian territory and the confiscation of their property. An unknown number escaped the expulsion order by converting to Catholicism; many others had died during the war. The remainder moved across the border into neighboring Hungary. In December of 1622 a contemporary witness reported figures ranging from 25,000 to 50,000, whereas recent research suggests that the number of refugees did not exceed 10,000.161 161

Cf. Winkelbauer (2004).

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Already during the persecution of 1546, Hutterites had established an outpost on Hungarian territory (today western Slovakia) in the market town of Sabatisch (Soboti“te), not far from the MoravianHungarian border. During subsequent decades they founded several other settlements in the region, the majority of whose population was Lutheran and spoke a dialect similar to Moravian Czech. In 1621, Hutterites established another outpost in Wintz (Alvinc/Vinflul de Jos), located in the more distant territory of Transylvania, under the tolerant rule of prince Gabriel Bethlen.162 Thus, Hutterites were not caught completely unprepared for their expulsion out of the “Promised Land.” Indeed, they even were in a position to assist their former Moravian patron, Karl von Zierotin Sr. (Karel st. ze ¥erotina), in the resettlement of Unity of Brethren clergy who were also exiled from Moravia.163 In addition to the 22 settlements already existing in Hungary by 1622, Hutterite refugees were to establish ten new Haushaben in western Slovakia, four in Burgenland, and one in Sárospatak, the residential city of the Transylvanian prince Georg I. Rákóczi.164 Between the 1630s and the 1650s the Hutterites enjoyed a modest revival. Their economic, administrative, spiritual and intellectual center moved from Neumühl to Sabatisch, where a significant portion of the Hutterite manuscripts extant today were produced. Sabatisch was also the residence of the last notable Hutterite elder, Andreas Ehrenpreis, who served from 1639 until his death in 1662. Ehrenpreis’s extensive writings reflect a backward-oriented effort to preserve traditional Hutterian ways of life, on the one hand, while simultaneously demonstrating an openness to religious impulses from outside through various contacts with other contemporary non-conformist religious groups. In the end, Ehrenpreis was unable to merge these contradictory tendencies into a sustainable synthesis.165 In 1654, for example, he ordained Daniel Zwicker, a Socinian doctor and publisher from Danzig, as a Hutterite “servant of the word” in the vain hope that Zwicker would bring about a merger between the Prussian

162

Cf. Buchinger (1982), 152–154. Olomouc, Zemskÿ archiv v Opavî, pobo‘ka Olomouc, Rodinnÿ archiv ¥erotínové-Bludov, kniha 37 (3870), fol. 48r, 49r; kniha 38 (3873), fols. 46, 94r; cf. Hrubÿ (1937). 164 Cf. Prickler (1984); Winkelbauer (2004), 71–74. 165 Cf. Harrison (1997). 163

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Socinians and the Hutterites.166 In 1658 and 1660 Ehrenpreis was in contact with the Schwenckfelder Balthasar Jäckel in Silesia, and through Jäckel with the radical pacifist and chiliast Ludwig Friedrich Gifftheil in Amsterdam.167 The number of Hutterite preachers remained steady at around 20 until 1665.168 A large number of seventeenth-century Hutterite sermons from Sabatisch and other west Slovakian Haushaben have been preserved,169 along with a portion of the Hutterite community archives.170 The Hutterite Chronicle was continued into the 18th century.171 Together, this broad range of available source material should enable more detailed future research on the development of Hutterite faith and practice in the 17th century, and its relation to contemporary religious movements, especially early Pietism. Also worthy of closer study are the factors leading to the rapid economic and demographic decline of the Hutterite community in the second half of the 17th century. Hypotheses for further research based on additional archival sources might include the following considerations: The social system developed by the Hutterites over the course of the 16th century in Moravia was based on a steady influx of converts and capital. Since the outbreak of the Thirty Years War, this influx came to an end, not only because of the war itself, but also because the pool of potential converts in traditional Hutterite mission areas was drying up. In sharp contrast to the demographic development of the North American Hutterites during the 20th century, the Hutterites in Upper Hungary were not able to replenish the losses caused by deaths and defections by new births. In 1663 the community faced a series of military attacks by the Turks. In dire need, the Hutterites were forced to turn to the Dutch Mennonites for financial assistance and gradually gave up the practice of community of goods. Additionally, the enforced re-Catholicization of Hungary during the 1670s fundamentally altered the religious climate of the environment.172 Eventually, the Hutterite artisans were

166

Cf. Bietenholz (1997), 23–28. Pennsburg, Schwenkfelder Library, VC 5–3, 792–796; cf. Weigelt (1985), 112f. 168 According to Zieglschmid (1943). 169 Cf. Friedmann (1965), 39–44. 170 Senica, ”tátny okresnÿ archív, Novodvoranská spolo‘nost’ Soboti“te; Prague, Library of the Protestant Theological Faculty of the Charles University, Collection Landsfeld-Pajer. 171 Cf. Beck (1883), 501–573. 172 Cf. Fata (2000), 269–283. 167

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no longer in a position to satisfy the changing taste and expectations of the nobility with their products. Instead, they increasingly sold their goods to urban, and finally to rural, customers—a development which is mirrored in the gradual decline of Hutterite ceramics from highly esteemed luxury goods to rural folk art. Under Empress Maria Theresia and even under her enlightened and tolerant son, Joseph II, the last Hutterites, then numbering only a few hundred people, were considered as an embarrassing anachronism. Between 1760 and 1790, they were forced to embrace Catholicism. However, in a surprising twist of history, a group of Lutherans—exiles from Carinthia to Transylvania—had joined with the Wintz Hutterites in 1756. In the following decades they absorbed the last faithful Hutterites from the Upper Hungary Haushaben. Thus began a new chapter in the history of the Hutterian Brethren, one that no longer had any direct relation to the Moravian-Upper Hungarian region.173 Bibliography Source editions Beck (1883) BL

Beck, Josef, ed. Die Geschichts-Bücher der Wiedertäufer in Oesterreich-Ungarn, 1526–1785. Vienna, 1883. Die Böhmischen Landtagsverhandlungen und Landtagsbeschlüsse vom Jahre 1526 an bis auf die Neuzeit. Vol. 1 (1526–1545). Prague, 1877. Borovÿ Borovÿ, Klement, ed. Jednání a dopisy konsisto®e katolické i utrakvistické. Vol. (1868) 1: Akta konsisto®e utrakvistické. Prague, 1868. CS Corpus Schwenckfeldianorum. Vols. 1–19. Leipzig/Pennsburg, PA, 1907–1961. Dudík Dudík, Beda, ed. Olmützer Sammelchronik. In Mährische und schlesische (1861) Chroniken. Christian d’Elvert, ed. Brno, 1861, 1: 1–61. ETE Bunyitay, V. et al., eds. Egyháztörténelmi emlékek a Magyarországi hitujitás korából. Monumenta ecclesiastica tempora innovatae in Hungaria religionis illustrantia. Vol. 1–5. Budapest, 1902–1912. Friesen Friesen, John J., trans. and ed. Peter Riedemann’s Hutterite Confession of (1999) Faith. Scottdale, PA, 1999. HE Die Hutterischen Episteln 1527–1763. Vols. 1–4. Elie, Man., 1986–1991. Kamení‘ek Kamení‘ek, Franti“ek. Zemské sn^my a sjezdy moravské. 1526–1628. Vol. 1–3. Brno, 1900–1905. Kollar Kollar, Adamus Franciscus, ed. Casparis Ursini Velii De bello Pannonico (1762) libri decem. Vindobonae, 1762. Laube Laube, Adolf, ed. Flugschriften vom Bauernkrieg zum Täuferreich (1526–1535). (1992) Vols. 1–2. Berlin, 1992.

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Bahlcke, Joachim. Regionalismus und Staatsintegration im Widerstreit. Die Länder der Böhmischen Krone im ersten Jahrhundert der Habsburgerherrschaft (1526–1619). Munich, 1994. ——, Winfried Eberhard, Miloslav Polívka, eds. Böhmen und Mähren. Handbuch der historischen Stätten; Kröners Taschenausgabe 329. Stuttgart, 1998. Bahlow, Ferdinand. Die Reformation in Liegnitz. Festschrift zur 400-jährigen Gedenkfeier der deutschen Reformation. Liegnitz, 1917. Bauer, Ingolf, Christa Zimmermann, eds. Die Hutterischen Täufer. Geschichtlicher Hintergrund und handwerkliche Leistung. Weierhof, 1985. Benzing, Josef. Die Buchdrucker des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts im deutschen Sprachgebiet. 2nd ed. Wiesbaden, 1982. Bergsten, Torsten. “Pilgram Marbeck und seine Auseinandersetzung mit Caspar Schwenckfeld,” Kyrkhistorisk Årsskrift (1957/58), 39–135.

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——. Balthasar Hubmaier. Seine Stellung zu Reformation und Täufertum 1521–1528. Kassel, 1961. Bietenholz, Peter G. Daniel Zwicker, 1612–1678: Peace, Tolerance and God the One and Only. Florence, 1997. Buchinger, Erich. “Die Geschichte der Kärntner Hutterischen Brüder in Siebenbürgen und in der Walachei (1755–1770), in Rußland und in Amerika,” Carinthia 172 (1982), 145–303. Caccamo, Domenico. Eretici italiani in Moravia, Polonia, Transilvania (1558–1611). Studi e documenti. Florence/Chicago, 1970. ’ernohorskÿ, Karel. Po‘átky habánskÿch fajansí. Die Anfänge der Habaner-Fayenceproduktion. Opava, 1931. Chudaska, Andrea. Peter Riedemann. Konfessionsbildendes Täufertum im 16. Jahrhundert. Gütersloh, 2003. Clasen, Claus-Peter. Anabaptism. A Social History, 1525–1618. Switzerland, Austria, Moravia, South and Central Germany. Ithaca/London, 1972. Cornelius, C. A. Geschichte des Münsterischen Aufruhrs in drei Büchern. Leipzig, 1860. Dittrich, Christoph. Die vortridentinische katholische Kontroverstheologie und die Täufer. Cochläus, Eck, Fabri. Berlin, 1989. Fata, Márta. Ungarn, das Reich der Stephanskrone, im Zeitalter der Reformation und Konfessionalisierung. Multiethnizität, Land und Konfession 1500 bis 1700. Münster, 2000. Friedmann, Robert. Die Schriften der Huterischen Täufergemeinschaften. Gesamtkatalog ihrer Manuskriptbücher, ihrer Schreiber und ihrer Literatur 1529–1667. Cologne, 1965. Gäbler, Ulrich. “Johannes Bünderlin von Linz (vor 1500 bis nach 1540). Eine biographische Skizze,” Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für die Geschichte des Protestantismus in Österreich 96 (1980), 355–370. ——. Johannes Bünderlin. In Bibliotheca dissidentium. Répertoire des non-conformistes religieux des seizième et dix-septième siècles. André Séguenny, ed. Vol. 3. Baden-Baden, 1982, 9–42. Gross, Leonard. The Golden Years of the Hutterites. The Witness and Thought of the Communal Moravian Anabaptists During the Walpot Era, 1565–1578. 2nd ed. Scottdale, PA, 1998. Harrison, Wes. Andreas Ehrenpreis and Hutterite Faith and Practice. Scottdale, PA, 1997. Herzig, Arno. Reformatorische Bewegungen und Konfessionalisierung. Die habsburgische Rekatholisierungspolitik in der Grafschaft Glatz. Hamburg, 1996. Hillerbrand, Hans J. “Ein Täuferbekenntnis aus dem 16. Jahrhundert,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 50 (1959), 40–50. Hlobil, Ivo and Eduard Petr%. Humanism and the Early Renaissance in Moravia. Olomouc, 1999. Horváth, Pavel. “Die handwerkliche Erzeugung auf dem Habanerhof in Soblahov in den Jahren von 1649 bis 1658,” Sborník Slovenského národného múzea 61, Etnografia 8 (1967), 135–166. Hroch, Miroslav and Josef Petrá~. “Die Länder der böhmischen Krone 1350–1650.” Europäische Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte vom ausgehenden Mittelalter bis zur Mitte des 17. Jahrhunderts. Hermann Kellenbenz, ed. Stuttgart, 1986, 968–1005. Hrubÿ, Franti“ek. Die Wiedertäufer in Mähren. Leipzig, 1935. ——. “Karel st. z ¥erotína a morav“tí novok®tînci,” ’eskÿ ‘asopis historickÿ 43 (1937), 68–72. Kaiser, Jürgen. Ruhe der Seele und Zeichen der Hoffnung. Die Deutung des Sabbats in der Reformation. Göttingen, 1996. Katona, Imre. Habán m-/uvészeti emlékek magyarországon. Budapest, 1983. Kohler, Alfred. Ferdinand I. 1503–1564. Fürst, König und Kaiser. Munich, 2003. Králík, Old®ich. “Dvî zprávy o olomouckÿch humanistech,” ’asopis Matice moravské 68 (1948), 283–327. Krisztinkovich, Béla. Habaner Fayencen. Budapest, 1962. Kugler, Hartmut. “Das ‘Dicke Buch’ der Gemeinde Gottes. Zur literarischen Selbstdarstellung der Huterischen Täufergemeinschaft,” Literatur und Laienbildung im

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Rothkegel, Martin. “The Hutterian Brethren and the Printed Book. A Contribution to Anabaptist Bibliography,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 74 (2000), 51–85. ——. “Täufer und ehemalige Täufer in Znaim. Leonhard Freisleben, Wilhelm Reublin und die ‘Schweizer’ Gemeinde des Tischlers Balthasar,” Mennonitische Geschichtsblätter 58 (2001), 37–70. ——. “Himmlische Weisheit, astrale Determination und chiliastische Hoffnung bei den schlesisch-mährischen Gabrielitern: Eine unbekannte Täuferhandschrift von 1548 in Wiener Privatbesitz,” Mennonitische Geschichtsblätter 59 (2002a), 43–62. ——. “Learned in the School of David: Peter Riedemann´s Paraphrases of the Gospels,” Commoners and Community. Essays in Honour of Werner O. Packull. Arnold Snyder, ed. Kitchener, ON, 2002b, 233–256. ——. “Bildersturm und Musenreigen: Die Nikolsburger Täuferreformation und die bildende Kunst,” Mennonitica Helvetica 24/25 (2003a), 9–28. ——. “Ausbreitung und Verfolgung der Täufer in Schlesien in den Jahren 1527–1548,” Archiv für schlesische Kirchengeschichte 61 (2003b), 149–209. ——. Mährische Sakramentierer des zweiten Viertels des 16. Jahrhunderts. Matîj Poustevník, Bene“ Optát, Johann Zeising ( Jan ’í≥ek), Jan Dub‘anskÿ z Zdenína und die Habrovaner (Lul‘er) Brüder. Bibliotheca dissidentium. Vol. 24. Baden-Baden/Bouxwiller, 2005a. ——. “Bene“ Optát, ‘On Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.’ An Utraquist Reformer’s Opinion of Pilgram Marpeck’s Vermahnung,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 79 (2005b), 359–381. ——. “Andreas Fischer. Neue Forschungen zur Biographie eines bekannten Unbekannten,” Jahrbuch für die Geschichte des Protestantismus in Österreich 121 (2005c), 325–351. Runzo, Jean. “Hutterite Communal Discipline, 1529 –1565,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 71 (1980), 160–179. von Schlachta, Astrid. “‘Searching through the Nations.’ Tasks and Problems of Sixteenth Century Hutterian Missions,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 74 (2000), 27–49. ——. Hutterische Konfession und Tradition (1578–1619). Etabliertes Leben zwischen Ordnung und Ambivalenz. Mainz, 2003. Schwarz, Karl. “Die Reformation in der Zips,” in Spi“ v kontinuite ‘asu. Zips in der Kontinuität der Zeit. Petr ”vorc, ed. Bratislava/Vienna, 1995, 48–67. Seebaß, Gottfried. Müntzers Erbe. Werk, Leben und Theologie des Hans Hut. Gütersloh, 2002. Séguenny, André. “Christian Entfelder,” in Bibliotheca dissidentium. André Séguenny, ed. Vol. 1. Baden-Baden, 1980, 37–48. Shantz, Douglas H. Crautwald and Erasmus. A Study in Humanism and Radical Reform in Sixteenth Century Silesia. Baden-Baden/Bouxwiller, 1992. Stella, Aldo. Dall’ anabattismo al socinianismo nel cinquecento veneto. Ricerche storiche. Padua, 1967. ——. Anabattismo e antitrinitarismo in Italia nel XVI secolo. Nuove ricerche. Padua, 1969. Szövérffy, Josef. “Die hutterischen Brüder und die Vergangenheit. Vorbemerkungen zur sog. ‘ältesten’ hutterischen Chronik,” Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 82 (1963), 338–362. Urban, Wac∑aw. Der Antitrinitarismus in den Böhmischen Ländern und in der Slowakei im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert. Baden-Baden, 1986. Válka, Josef. Dîjiny Moravy. Vol. 2: Morava reformace, renesance a baroka. Brno, 1995. ——. Husitství na Moravî. Nábo≥enská sná“enlivost. Jan Amos Komenskÿ. Brno, 2005. Vorel, Petr: Velké dîjiny zemí Koruny ‘eské. Vol. 7: 1526–1618. Praha/Litomy“l, 2005. Wappler, Paul. Inquisition und Ketzerprozesse in Zwickau zur Reformationszeit. Leipzig, 1908. Weigelt, Horst. The Schwenckfelders in Silesia. Peter Erb, trans. Pennsburg, PA, 1985. Windhorst, Christoph. Täuferisches Taufverständnis. Balthasar Hubmaiers Lehre zwischen traditioneller und reformatorischer Theologie. Leiden, 1975a.

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——. “Das Gedächtnis des Leidens Christi und Pflichtzeichen brüderlicher Liebe. Zum Verständnis des Abendmahls bei Balthasar Hubmaier,” in Umstrittenes Täufertum 1525–1975. Neue Forschungen. Hans-Jürgen Goertz, ed. Göttingen, 1975b, 111–137. Winkelbauer, Thomas. Österreichische Geschichte 1522–1699. Ständefreiheit und Fürstenmacht. Länder und Untertanen des Hauses Habsburg im konfessionellen Zeitalter. Vienna, 2003. ——. “Die Vertreibung der Hutterer aus Mähren 1622. Massenexodus oder Abzug der letzten Standhaften?” Mennonitische Geschichtsblätter 61 (2004), 65–96. Wiswedel, Wilhelm. “Gabriel Ascherham und die nach ihm benannte Bewegung,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 34 (1937), 1–35, 235–262. Wolkan, Rudolf. Die Lieder der Wiedertäufer. Berlin, 1903. Zeman, Jarold K. Historical Topography of Moravian Anabaptism. Goshen, IN, 1967 = Mennonite Quarterly Review, 40 (1966) 266–278; 41 (1967) 40–78, 116–160. ——. The Anabaptists and the Czech Brethren in Moravia 1526–1628. The Hague/Paris, 1969. ——. “The Rise of Religious Liberty in the Czech Reformation,” Central European History 6 (1973), 128–147.

CHAPTER SIX

THE MELCHOIRITES AND MÜNSTER Ralf Klötzer Raging Anabaptists? In the early 1530s the apocalyptic prophet, Melchior Hoffman, traveled from his base in Strasbourg, to win a considerable fraction of the supporters of church reform in East Friesland and the Netherlands to believers’ baptism, a practice outlawed throughout the Holy Roman Empire. The focus of his appeal was the message that biblical prophecy foretold the second coming of Christ for 1533 or shortly thereafter. Going beyond Hoffman’s expectations,1 the Anabaptists in Münster under the influence of Dutch Anabaptists2 set up a militant community in February 1534, which soon aspired to prepare the way for the promised lordship of the returned Savior through the kingdom of Jan van Leiden. Münster was besieged by the troops of its prince bishop but was able to hold out for sixteen months before it fell on June 25, 1535. Most of the male defenders were killed. Jan van Leiden and his fellow prisoners Bernd Knipperdollinck and Bernd Krechtinck were publicly executed in Münster on January 22, 1536. The Anabaptists in Münster departed markedly from contemporary social norms. Besides requiring adult baptism, they destroyed public documents and records as well as learned literature, abolished the money economy and introduced polygamy for men. They responded to internal resistance with executions. They defended much of what they did as God’s will, transmitted to them by the prophets Jan Matthijs and Jan van Leiden. The king Jan van Leiden set up a royal court, took sixteen wives and performed several executions personally. That such facts are well-suited to stimulate the imagination of chroniclers and the general public is amply demonstrated by

1 2

Deppermann (1987). Mellink (1953); Stayer (1986).

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the numerous recurrences of the theme of Münster Anabaptism in literature, theater, music, painting and graphic art.3 Many observers have viewed the actions of these Anabaptists with revulsion. Martin Luther said that in Münster “the devils sit upon each other like toads.”4 Hermann von Kerssenbrock described the event in the title of his 1573 chronicle as “the raging of the Anabaptists.”5 Even in the late twentieth century historians expressed their aversion for the “hideous, perverse orgies” in Münster, for the “foolish delusions” of the people and the “base lust for power” of the “ring-leaders.”6 A historiography that took a more detached attitude towards the Münster Anabaptists set in with Carl Adolf Cornelius in the nineteenth century. Among the sources published by Cornelius, Heinrich Gresbeck’s account of Anabaptist Münster is particularly important.7 In contrast to the often fanciful presentation of Kerssenbrock, who left Münster as a boy at the beginning of Anabaptist rule, this chronicle has the credibility of an eyewitness narrative. Nevertheless, despite improved accessibility to sources the flood of censorious presentations at first swelled in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The assessments of the social innovations were also problematic. Karl Kautsky classed the Anabaptists among the “forerunners of modern socialism,” and Gerhard Brendler forced the Anabaptist rule into the Marxist concept that regarded the Reformation as an “early bourgeois revolution.”8 Scholars in the free church tradition generally referred to the peaceful Mennonite part of the Dutch Melchiorite tradition as the norm, and dismissed Münster Anabaptists as an aberration.9 Only with the general turn towards social history was it possible once again to build upon Cornelius’ initiatives for a critical estimate of the Anabaptists in Münster.10 Great progress came with the studies of the social structure of Anabaptist Münster by Karl-Heinz Kirchhoff, who showed that numerous members of the leading socio-economic

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Das Königreich, Vol. 2 (2000); Schupp (2002). Die Schriften, Vol. 3 (1983), 52–53. Hermanni a Kerssenbroch (1899–1900). Fuchs (1970), 101; Stupperich (1986), 40–41; Schröer (1983), 464. Berichte (1983), 1–214. Brendler (1966), 9. Stayer (1986). Jelsma (1998); Stayer (1976); van Dülmen (1977).

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strata occupied positions of power in the Anabaptist regime.11 Thus, the thesis of mob rule, asserted by Kerssenbrock and continued by modern historians, either as disparagement or praise, was demolished. Since Kirchhoff could find no social revolutionary motives among the Anabaptists, he advanced the religious motif of expectation of Christ’s return as the hermeneutical key for explaining the Anabaptist regime.12 My contribution to the discussion builds upon the insight of Cornelius that the Anabaptist regime should be understood as a revolution, in the sense of a rapid, fundamental and extensive transformation of the socio-political structure on the basis of a specific development within an urban Reformation.13 In this view the expectation of Christ’s return was not the cause of a community-oriented radical Reformation, but rather a reinforcing factor. It continues to be a problem of research to clarify the religious motives of the Münster Anabaptists. Melchior Hoffman Melchior Hoffman’s imprisonment in Strasbourg in the early summer of 1533 marked the end of his direct influence on the Anabaptist movement. Still his ideas in a further developed form were a factor in the origins of the Anabaptist regime in Münster. A lay preacher since 1523, this furrier from Schwäbisch Hall itinerated in the Baltic region from Wolmar to Dorpat, and from Stockholm to Kiel. Even in the early years of the Reformation he considered himself a spiritually inspired proclaimer of the end time. As early as 1526, while preaching in the Baltic region, he wrote that the last judgment would take place in seven years, thus in 1533. After joining with Andreas Karlstadt to oppose the Lutheran doctrine of the Lord’s Supper in Schleswig-Holstein, Hoffman came in 1529 by way of East Friesland to Strasbourg, a magnet for nonconformists from all regions. Under the influence of a group of Strasbourg “prophets,” as well as some of the local Anabaptists, Hoffman became an Anabaptist leader, although we have no record

11 12 13

Kirchhoff (1973). Kirchhoff (1989); Laubach (1993); Voolstra (1997), 26–27. Kirchhoff (1983); Kuratsuka (1985); Klötzer (1992).

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of his receiving adult baptism. In Strasbourg he took over from Caspar Schwenckfeld the teaching of the heavenly flesh of Christ, according to which Jesus merely passed through Mary’s body without receiving any of his substance from her, following his generation by the Holy Spirit. This relatively unusual doctrine was continued among the Melchiorite groups. More important for the Melchiorites and Münster was Hoffman’s figurative Scriptural exegesis, originating in mysticism and taken over from Sebastian Franck and Hans Denck, according to which the divine plan of redemption is accessible to spiritually gifted persons through biblical and prophetic indications. According to the world picture he developed in Strasbourg— influenced by the prophetic visions of Lienhard and Ursula Jost, as well as Barbara Rebstock—he thought of himself as the returned Elijah, the apocalyptic witness of Revelations 11. Hoffman’s influence spread above all from East Friesland, where he resided once again in 1530. In the middle of May he baptized three hundred persons there in the sacristy of the great church of Emden. Although he soon returned to Strasbourg he made a trip through the Netherlands in 1532, and probably established contacts there by way of refugees who received baptism in Emden. In several writings from 1529 onward Hoffman stressed his earlier teachings about the end times, which stated that Christians must persevere in suffering until God himself intervenes. In 1531 he named Strasbourg as the New Jerusalem that would victoriously withstand a siege by the Emperor and he assigned Christians a role in the events of the end time. After the enemy had been defeated, apostolic messengers should go out from Strasbourg to teach the world. Two years later, Hoffman went a step further and proclaimed that the punishment of the godless was imminent. After this punishment a prophet and a king of peace should create a theocracy by cooperatively preparing the way for the rule of Christ. Hoffman went to prison joyfully in 1533, since he thought he would have to stay there for only a short time. He died in prison a decade later. The Melchiorites in the Netherlands One factor in the spread of Anabaptism from Emden by way of Amsterdam to Münster was the Dutch lay conventicle movement calling for church reform, which had roots in Erasmian humanism

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and also drew upon the ideas of Luther and Zwingli. At the same time most of the Netherlands had come under Habsburg rule and was governed by the Burgundian court in Brussels, which tried to suppress the Reformation. In some cases local authorities were receptive to the Reformation and gave a certain amount of freedom to the conventicles. These groups were at first led by learned men who followed the sacramental ideas of Cornelis Hoen (who died in 1524) and Ulrich Zwingli and were given the disparaging name “Sacramentarian” by the Lutherans. Although some of the members eventually became Melchiorite Anabaptists, the leading Sacramentarians and the majority of the reform conventiclers stood aside from Anabaptism after 1530.14 In Emden Hoffman selected the Dutch wooden-shoe maker Jan Volkerts to lead the Anabaptist congregation. Volkerts baptized the Frisian tailor Sikke Freerks who then won the conventicle in Leeuwarden to Hoffman’s teachings, but did not baptize. Executed on March 20, 1531, Freerks became the first Anabaptist martyr in the Netherlands. Meanwhile, Volkerts, who had been driven out of Emden, baptized fifty persons in Amsterdam. He was arrested and executed on December 5, 1531 in The Hague along with ten of his followers. Because of the persecution Hoffman ordered that the practice of baptism should cease until 1533. Little is known of his stay in the Netherlands but his writings were published in 1532 in Deventer. By returning to Strasbourg Hoffman left undetermined what would happen in his decisive year, 1533. Among the Dutch supporters of Hoffman was Cornelius Polderman, who also accompanied him to Strasbourg. Hoffman’s end-time conception had foreseen Polderman in the role of Enoch, the second witness of the Apocalypse. Eventually, however, Jan Matthijs, a baker from Haarlem who had been severely punished in 1528 for desecration of the host, overshadowed Polderman and emerged as the leader of the Dutch Anabaptists upon Hoffman’s imprisonment. In the beginning of November 1533 in Leiden, in the atmosphere of heightened expectation among Melchiorites awaiting the second coming, Jan Matthijs baptized Jan Beukels (the future king) and soon reintroduced adult baptism among the Melchiorites in Amsterdam.

14

Augustijn (1987); Zijlstra (2000), 69–71.

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He then sent Bartholomeus Boekbinder and Willem de Kuiper as Anabaptist apostles to Leeuwarden and Münster; Jan Beukels and Gerrit Boekbinder firstly traveled into neighboring cities in Holland. At some point during these months it became clear that Münster, not Strasbourg, would be the New Jerusalem, due to measures of toleration for the party that supported adult baptism there. Early in 1534, Matthijs sent Jan Beukels and Gerrit Boekbinder to Münster and he followed a few weeks later. Here, where the Anabaptists had already taken power in February, the Netherlanders sought approval to send a call to their oppressed fellow countrymen. Masses responded in Holland, especially since severe punishment was threatened against the baptized when an amnesty expired on April 2. An older scholarship endorsed by A. F. Mellink has argued that unusually severe economic circumstances in the Netherlands were a contributing factor in the trek to Münster. More recently S. Zijlstra and L. G. Jansma have shown this position to be weakly grounded.15 In any case, the mass exodus failed. Authorities intervened and enforced the return of most people who had tried to sail across the Zuider Zee in the direction of Münster. In Amsterdam harbor ships with numerous persons on board were prevented from sailing on March 21. The following day the Anabaptist apostles Bartholomeus Boekbinder, Willem de Kuiper, and two other men ran through Amsterdam with raised swords, crying out warnings about the divine judgment expected before Easter. The three leading “sword walkers” (zwaardlopers) and four other baptizers were executed on March 26 in Haarlem. Similarly, Jan Jans and Gerrit van Campen, both returned from Münster, planned in April to appear publicly in Amsterdam, counting on public support to seize power in the city; in fact, they were discovered and executed. Dutch Anabaptism had spread quickly in February and March 1534, especially in Amsterdam and Leiden. After October 1534 messengers from Münster circulated Bernhard Rothmann’s major writing, the “Restitution,” providing a theological rationale for the Anabaptist kingdom Jan van Leiden had recently introduced there. Rothmann’s book, “On Vengeance,” sent from Münster in December, led to more severe consequences, since its message called for the use of force and armed assistance for Münster

15 Zijlstra (2000), 110; Jansma (1986), 91, 94–95, 103–104 vs. Mellink (1953), 1–19.

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from the Dutch Anabaptists. On January 24, 1535, an armed assembly of forty persons met in Leiden at the home of Jan Beukels, the Anabaptist king, and waited for orders to march on Münster. They resisted efforts to arrest them, but twenty of them were apprehended. By the end of March ninety executions ensued in Leiden, Delft, Haarlem, Deventer, Maastricht, Wesel and other places where Anabaptists were becoming increasingly militant. In her hearing of January 23, Jannetgen Thijsdochter in Amsterdam related that Meynart van Emden had said that, if the Anabaptists would not soon be able to get the rule of the city peacefully, they should attack with force.16 In this increasingly threatening situation in Amsterdam some of the persecuted Anabaptists hiding in an attic decided, under the influence of a prophet, to discard not only their weapons but also their clothes: on a winter night in February they left their hiding place naked and ran through the streets shouting: “Woe to the godless!” The “naked walkers” (naaktlopers), seven men and four women, were arrested, after which some of them refused to put on clothes in prison. The men were promptly executed, two women later drowned. Despair was widespread. In ’t Zandt in Groningerland an Anabaptist assembly was broken up. The prophet, Harmen Schoenmaker, who had called for violence, died after torture in a Groningen prison. Two months later three hundred armed Anabaptists came together near Bolsward in Friesland.17 Their concern was clearly to refuse the obligatory taking of communion at Easter, which had been expressly commanded in the region. Many may have seen a march to Münster as a way out. But the assembly was discovered before the group could decide what to do. On March 28, Easter night, they seized and fortified Oldekloster, a nearby monastery. Troops of the Habsburg governor, Count Schenck van Tautenberg, took Oldekloster by storm on April 7 following a siege of one week. Many of the Anabaptists were killed in battle; others were executed, either on the spot or in Leeuwarden. The last attempt to get control of Amsterdam was ventured by the Münster emissary, Jan van Geel, sent out in December 1534 and once again in mid-March 1535. Some estimates at the time held the Amsterdam Anabaptists to number 3000 persons, including

16 17

Documenta, Vol. 5 (1985), 99–100. Hullegie (1985).

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sympathizers—ca. 20% of the whole population. Most of these were likely Anabaptist refugees in the city, since the number of Amsterdam citizens who were Anabaptist must have been considerably lower. In the night of May 11 thirty armed Anabaptists occupied the market place and cried out: “Whoever loves God, join us!”18 Their number at first doubled; but as the civic militia approached only forty Anabaptists retreated to the city hall, where they defended themselves until morning. Jan van Geel was killed, as was, on the other side, burgomaster Peter Colijn, who had previously taken a friendly stance towards the Anabaptists. On May 14 eleven of the imprisoned were submitted to a cruel execution in which the executioner cut their hearts out of their bodies. The Anabaptist majority seems to have remained quietly in hiding, but this was no protection against the most severe penalties. On July 10, 1535, the “bishop” of the Amsterdam Anabaptist congregation, Jacob van Campen, was executed. The executioner cut his tongue out, because he had taught with it, cut his hand off, because he had baptized with it, then beheaded him. Reformation in Münster Whereas authorities successfully thwarted Anabaptist radicals in the Netherlands, the Melchiorite Anabaptist movement in Münster came to power in 1534. Efforts to introduce the Protestant Reformation in Münster were initially aborted in 1525. In the year of the Peasants’ War, which spread in 1525 from the Upper Rhine as far as Thuringia and the Tyrol, but not to Westphalia, four preachers in Münster who could have prepared the way for the Reformation were removed from their posts. The unrest that had begun in the spring was directed against textile manufacture in the monasteries, and generally against the competitive advantages of tax-free religious institutions. A list of demands presented by the guilds to the city council was partially accepted by the Cathedral Chapter as the spiritual authority. When the political situation stabilized again after the subjection of the peasants, the city was forced to retract all the demands it had made to the Cathedral Chapter, and it severely punished further anticlerical actions. 18

Documenta, Vol. 5 (1985), 135.

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Most large German cities had already substantially completed the Reformation when Bernhard Rothmann, chaplain of the St. Mauritz church outside Münster, began to preach in an evangelical manner, probably in 1530. The congregation of those who walked outside the city on Sundays to hear him grew quickly. Rothmann returned from a study trip to Wittenberg and Strasbourg confirmed in his evangelical theology. When the Cathedral Chapter forbade him to preach in the summer of 1531, Rothmann ignored the prohibition with the justification that he preached the word of God. Tensions quickly mounted when Rothmann’s enemies got an Imperial order exiling him from the territory; but the merchants in Münster lodged him in their guild house in the vicinity of the main parish church, St. Lambert’s. The prince bishop, who resided outside the city in his castles, had to bring the burgomasters and council under political pressure in order to secure the exile of Rothmann. The citizens supporting Rothmann turned to the aldermen, representatives of the city’s seventeen guilds and their traditional spokesmen, to win the council to their side.19 First the citizens demanded that Rothmann—who, they claimed, preached the pure word of God—receive a preaching position. On January 23, 1532, he addressed the city clergy, listed his doctrines, and asked them to respond. Rothmann’s confession corresponded to the fundamental evangelical demands: abolition of Catholic ceremonies, above all masses for the dead, and preaching on the foundation of Scripture. At the same time, members of the congregation of St. Lambert’s worked for Rothmann’s installation as pastor of this main parish church. On February 18, the Sunday before the council election, Rothmann preached in the church yard and was chosen as pastor by acclamation. Tolerated by the newly elected council, which included five of his supporters, Rothmann was installed as pastor on February 23. Despite opposition from most of the local clergy, Rothmann had extensive support among the citizenry. On August 10, the council installed new evangelical preachers in St. Martin’s, St. Ludger’s and St. Aegidius, followed by the new preacher in the Overwater church in September. All these preachers came from outside Münster. Their proclamation—that only the Bible was authoritative in matters of faith, that redemption came only through Christ, that justification in

19

Kirchhoff (1983); Kuratsuka (1985).

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the sight of God came only through grace and faith, and that neither the clergy nor one’s own pious works could secure eternal life for the soul—was probably transforming for many people. In response, the prince-bishop Franz von Waldeck attempted to have the evangelical preachers expelled. Armed horsemen blocked the roads to Münster and confiscated a herd of 600 oxen on the main road. Early in the morning of December 26, after failing in an effort at negotiation, the city replied with force. Under the leadership of the aldermen, six hundred armed townspeople, reinforced by three hundred newly employed soldiers, carried out a successful surprise attack on the prince’s council in neighboring Telgte. Landgrave Philip of Hesse mediated a compromise, signed on February 14, 1533, in which the prince-bishop and the city of Münster agreed that Münster’s parish churches should be evangelical, but that the cathedral and the cloisters should remain Catholic. The Road to Anabaptism Although the treaty satisfied neither side, the city, secure in its partial victory, began to draw up a church ordinance. In the new council elections on March 3, 1533, the evangelical party gained a majority of the twenty-four councilmen. Soon thereafter the council approved the “purification” of the parish churches, leading to the removal of paraphernalia associated with the Catholic mass, the elimination of altars and saints’ images and the whitewashing of frescoes. Citizens who baptized babies in the cathedral, where Catholic rites were continued, rather than in the Protestant parish churches, were fined. On Easter Sunday city authorities barred the entrance to the cathedral area to prevent citizens still loyal to the old faith from participating in communion. Bernhard Rothmann composed a draft of the church ordinance, which according to a clause in the treaty was to be submitted for approval to the Marburg theologians. Neither this draft nor the responding appraisal from Marburg has been preserved. However, Rothmann’s reply to the Marburg appraisal, submitted to the Münster council in July 1533, shows that in the meantime something decisive had occurred. A new, intra-Protestant controversy had arisen in Münster over baptism. The question of whether outside influence was decisive in the emergence of baptism as a contested issue in the Münster Reformation

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remains in dispute. The sixteenth-century account of Nicolaas van Blesdijk asserts that Hendrik Rol and Hermann Staprade won Rothmann to their rejection of infant baptism and support of adult baptism,20 a view supported by the modern theological study of Martin Brecht.21 Jan van Leiden, already moving in Melchiorite circles in the Netherlands, had visited Münster for a few weeks in the summer of 1533, because he had heard “that the word of God was preached there best and most forcefully.”22 However, Rothmann’s colleagues cannot be shown to be influenced at this time by the distinctive teachings of Melchior Hoffman. Rol’s tract on the Lord’s Supper is evidence of his independent effort at working out a biblically grounded sacramental theology; in it he discussed various perspectives on the topic. There is no doubt that Rothmann discussed the issues of the new church ordinance with his fellow pastors. In a later interrogation, one of them, Johann Klopriß, said that they deliberated at length about infant baptism.23 In the end, it is impossible to know whether Rothmann or his new colleagues from the Rhineland played the greater role in the emergence of a more radical evangelical theology in Münster. Already in 1532 Rothmann no longer understood the Lord’s Supper in Luther’s manner as a means of divine grace. For him, as for the Sacramentarians in the Netherlands, it was a memorial meal in which the faithful thank their Redeemer and obligate themselves to discipleship. From his interpretation of the Lord’s Supper as a confession of discipleship, Rothmann arrived (with or without a nudge from his colleagues from outside Münster) at a rejection of infant baptism. Rothmann’s radicalization on this point was possible only through the mutual reinforcement of theological knowledge and social reality. For the past hundred years, Münster had enjoyed a communal city constitution in which the powerful United Guild and its aldermen represented the citizenry. Every aspect of city self-government presupposed the correspondence of politics with the will of the citizenry. This mind-set led to a politically competent citizenry who observed all decisions of the council with great alertness. Thus,

20 21 22 23

Blesdijk, in Stayer (1986), 271, n. 45. Brecht (1985), 66. Berichte (1983), 370. Münsterische Urkundensammlung, Vol. 1 (1826), 111.

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Rothmann’s interpretation of the Lord’s Supper as an act of confession was plausible, above all, to the guildsmen who understood a communal obligation to Christian discipleship as a logical extension of the communal guild structure in a religious context. Likewise, the congregation ranked very high in Rothmann’s thought, holding the right to choose the pastors and make decisions about doctrine. In a congregation committed to discipleship, baptism on confession of faith was a logical corollary. The burgomasters and council did not initially reject Rothmann’s criticism of infant baptism. On August 7–8, 1533 the council held a public disputation on the question which ended without a formal conclusion, although the council forbade any interpretation of the sacrament that contravened Imperial law. Great tension and conflict ensued. When Hermann Staprade refused to baptize infants in September, Rothmann and his colleagues were forbidden to preach. Through a compromise worked out by the aldermen, Rothmann was reassigned to a small church, St. Servatius; but he was still forbidden to express opinions about the sacraments. The citizenry were divided by the issue of Imperial law. Many, in keeping with early Reformation thought, argued that worldly norms must not impede the realization of the will of God. Others, however, recalling the recent conflict with Franz von Waldeck, thought that the city could not prevail without outside assistance. In the late summer of 1533 Münster was still far from a church ordinance. Precisely for that reason, shortly after the disputation on infant baptism, the council issued an ordinance on discipline, following models from Ulm and Basel that forbade criticism of infant baptism and sought to regulate community life according to the prescriptions of the gospel. Rothmann responded with a written statement regarding his teaching on the sacraments. Hendrik Rol carried the “Confession of the Two Sacraments, Baptism and Communion,”24 which Rothmann and his pastoral colleagues had published after October 22, to Amsterdam where, according to the sixteenth-century account by Blesdijk, it figured in Jan Matthijs’ assertion of leadership among the Melchiorites and his decision to resume the practice of adult baptisms.25 In Münster the statement gave Rothmann a basis for preaching about the sacra-

24 25

Die Schriften, Vol. 1 (1970), 139–95. Blesdijk, in Stayer (1986), 274, n. 55.

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ments again, for he had agreed to be silent only “until the time that the matter is clarified, and the Lord grants further defense and confession of the truth.”26 After two Sunday sermons on October 26 and November 2 Rothmann’s supporters streamed from St. Servatius into the city center and demanded his reinstallation at St. Lambert’s. This commotion by Rothmann’s following was the occasion for violent confrontations. Since the guild leadership refused to cooperate with the council, which wanted to use the disturbances as a justification to expel the preachers, the council sought the support of previous council members and other Catholic citizens. These persons, having armed themselves on November 5, pressed for immediate expulsion of Rothmann and his colleagues. The Rothmann supporters responded by taking arms in defense of the preachers. Since the Catholics were aiming at reestablishing the Catholic order, the guild leadership adopted a policy of compromise. The council and the guilds agreed that Rothmann could stay without the right to preach and that the other preachers should be expelled. In the outcome, none of the preachers seem to have been expelled—so long as they remained silent no action was taken against them. In the meantime the council tried to initiate a moderate Reformation, with the help of Dietrich Fabricius and Johannes Lening, two theologians who arrived from Marburg on November 8. They had a discussion with Rothmann and concluded that the only difference of opinion was that he regarded infant baptism as unscriptural. After Fabricius said this in public there were renewed commotions, because many people could not understand why Rothmann was still not allowed to preach. On November 30 in St. Lambert’s Fabricius unveiled the church ordinance that he had hurriedly composed; he preached there through December, celebrating the communion in the Lutheran manner. But the council’s policy lacked public support; and at the end of December Rothmann and the preachers of his party reemerged in public. What was Rothmann’s conception of Reformation at this stage? The politically experienced jurist, Johann von der Wieck, who had been hired by the Münster council to work out connections with the Protestants in the Empire and was the mainstay of the council’s opposition to Rothmann, was of the opinion that Rothmann wanted to carry out a “spiritual Anabaptism”

26

Die Schriften, Vol. 1 (1970), 46.

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through his Lord’s Supper. It seems clear that Rothmann still hoped to carry through a radical Reformation marked by adult baptism for the entire city. Moreover, it is worthy of note that, unlike all other north German Reformers, Rothmann never put himself on record as accepting the Lutheran “Confessio Augustana” of 1530. From January 5 to January 8, 1534, Bartholomeus Boekbinder and Willem de Kuiper, two Dutch baptizers sent out by Jan Matthijs, were present in Münster, whereupon Rothmann and the other preachers of his party accepted baptism and baptized their congregations. Jan van Leiden said later that at the time he came to Münster ( January 13) 1400 persons had been baptized. That would have been about 20% of the adult population. The baptized immediately faced mortal danger. Already on January 13 at the prince-bishop’s castle Bevergern, the preacher Dietrich von Moers, whom Rothmann had sent to Dülmen, was condemned to death together with several other prisoners. Shortly thereafter, the prince-bishop demanded the arrest of the persons responsible for initiating the new baptism. Why had so many people accepted baptism? Jan Matthijs in Holland was seized by the expectation that Christ would come to judge the world. In Münster, where there was no sign of an apocalyptic mood before the beginning of the baptisms, Rothmann’s teaching that no one was genuinely baptized who had only received the “child washing,” or infant baptism, seems to have been persuasive: adult baptisms were the outcome of the sacramental theology being preached in the Münster churches. Only after baptisms were first administered did apocalyptic motives begin to supplement the established sacramental theology. That a prophet sent out his messengers to baptize was interpreted as a sign that God was preparing the end of the world. Within this context, wars, plagues and inflation, along with the Reformation in the Empire, suddenly became portents of the last days. The theological conceptions that originated among Rothmann’s followers in Münster merged with demands brought there by the messengers of Jan Matthijs to inspire the congregation of the saints to follow the example of the primitive church in Jerusalem. The congregation began to separate itself from the outer world; the well-to-do put their wealth at the disposal of the poor; and a new hierarchy, in which wives were to address their husbands as “lord,” superseded the equality of Christian sisters and brothers. By the end of the month the momentum slowly shifted. On January 30 the aldermen succeeded in convincing the council that no one

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in the city should be persecuted for matters of faith: civic harmony in Münster counted for more than Imperial law and commands of the ruling prince. The agreement on tolerance seemed to change the situation for the baptized—now the declaration that Münster was the New Jerusalem could appear plausible. On February 7 a prophetess, a carpenter’s wife, began to shout in public, “Repent, the Lord will punish the world!”27 As Jan van Leiden said later, she prophesied “that the Christian brothers would soon be redeemed in Münster.” Bernd Knipperdollinck, too, called for repentance.28 On February 8 a sixteen year-old girl gave a sermon in one of the Anabaptist houses on the punishment of the sinners and the salvation of the godly.29 Fueling the tension, a rumor spread through the city on the following day that the prince-bishop was on his way to Münster with a troop of mercenaries. An armed crowd assembled in front of city hall to demand that defensive measures be taken. Knipperdollinck repeated the call for repentance. The moderate Protestant burgomasters assembled with Catholic citizens in the Overwater quarter, and sent a message asking for help to Dietrich von Merveldt, bailiff of Wolbeck. Together with some armed cathedral canons and numerous armed horsemen, the bailiff entered the city that night. Meanwhile the group gathered at the city hall had entrenched itself while an opposing group of weaponed citizens rallied around the burgomasters in the courtyard of the Overwater church. On February 10 armed peasants, mobilized by the bailiff, appeared in the city. Knipperdollinck proceeded to the Overwater church with the intention to negotiate; but he, together with a number of other hostages, was confined in the church tower. When Franz von Waldeck really did set out for the city with his entourage, the council party denied him entry. Instead, the bailiff and his armed supporters were led out of the city, the gates closed and the opposing barricades dismantled. February 10 was a turning point for the Anabaptists. In the midst of the crisis signs in the heavens appeared—three suns; a rider on a white horse with a sword in his hand; a man with blood dripping

27 28 29

Münsterische Urkundensammlung, Vol. 1 (1826), 165. Berichte (1983), 371. Hermanni a Kerssenbroch, Vol. 2 (1899), 124.

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from his hands—which they construed as warranties of the punishment of the godless and their own redemption.30 When the council renewed the toleration agreement on February 11, the prince-bishop began preparations for a siege, and the Catholic clergy, along with the Catholic and moderate evangelical citizenry, began to leave the city. In Münster the baptized, and probably many still unbaptized who wanted to defend the city, prepared themselves for war. At the same time, messengers fanned out from the city to invite the persecuted to join them in the New Jerusalem. The interrogation of Jakob of Osnabrück—the Münster emissary who was among a group of forty people imprisoned in Düsseldorf at the end of the month—provides an insight into the message of the recruiters: by Easter God will horribly punish the world; not one person out of ten will survive; peace and security will be found in Münster alone; there, in the New Jerusalem, God will preserve his people and everyone will have enough.31 The Beginning of Anabaptist Rule—The New Jerusalem After the retreat of the Catholics and moderate reformers, the outcome of the annual council election on February 23, 1534, was no surprise. Münster had been delivered into the hands of the Anabaptists. Whoever wanted to leave the city had to leave behind what the defenders needed, above all food and weapons. Those who remained were either undecided or firmly committed to the city’s defense. Meanwhile, people threatened with persecution, either because they were baptized or inclined towards Anabaptism, continued to arrive from the surrounding countryside. In mid-February, probably on February 17, Jan Matthijs and his wife arrived at the invitation of Knipperdollinck. According to Knipperdollinck’s later account, Jan Matthijs—the man who had warned about divine judgment and the creator of the new Anabaptist movement—paced about in Knipperdollinck’s house and cried out: “Murder, slay!” Jan van Leiden and Knipperdollinck were terrified; Jan murmured “Oh, dear God, the monks and priests should be warned.” Knipperdollinck hurried to

30 31

Kirchhoff (1970); “Ungedruckte Quellen” (1893). Münsterische Urkundensammlung, Vol. 1 (1826), 157.

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the city hall, and called out there: “Father, grant mercy!”32 Matthijs was an ecstatic prophet, driven by powerful emotions and with little sense of the consequences. Yet despite later embellished reports that Jan Matthijs desired the slaying of the godless,33 Knipperdollinck’s account makes it clear that his call for murder was not public, nor did it name a particular enemy. Here, as in subsequent instances, the prophet was not entirely clear in his intentions. On February 23 six council members were re-elected, while eighteen others were chosen to this office for the first time. About half of them belonged to the higher socio-economic stratum.34 The following day, the council named Gert Kibbenbrock and Bernd Knipperdollinck, two prosperous merchants with houses adjoining the city’s main market, as burgomasters. Like Knipperdollinck, who was in the council for the first time in 1534, all of the other council members had been politically active on the side of the Reformation since 1532. When they were a minority the baptized had expected to have to take the path of suffering, and had declared that they would lay down their arms and be lambs for the slaughter. Now, as they took power in the city, the Anabaptists showed themselves ready to defend it with force—a policy firmly rooted in the civic self-understanding and justified as an essential element of communal identity. Already on November 5, Rothmann’s supporters had taken arms to prevent the evangelical preachers from being exiled. On February 9 an armed crowd—some baptized, some not baptized— demanded that the city be defended. In this situation Jan van Leiden had interpreted Scripture to the effect that in the last days Christians were permitted to defend themselves. The militancy of the Anabaptists originated not with Jan Matthijs in Holland, but with the readiness of the citizens of Münster to defend themselves. Following the first meeting of the new council on February 24 an unnamed “prophet” addressed the crowd standing in front of city hall “and called out to the common people that they should be obedient to the government, not fearing pope, Emperor, princes, bishops nor any rulers of this world, and that they should expel from the city all who would not submit to baptism in the blood of Christ.”35 32 33 34 35

Berichte (1983), 408. Laubach (1986). Kirchhoff (1973), 68. “Ungedruckte Quellen” (1893), 106.

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This was probably not Jan Matthijs, as assumed by earlier historians, but Jan van Leiden, who was already known in Münster and who could speak the Westphalian dialect, since his mother came from the neighborhood of Münster. When Jan van Leiden called on people to defend the city with their lives, his chief concern was to integrate citizens not yet baptized and to create a community prepared for battle and suffering. With this initiative he claimed for himself the role of mediator between the council and the people. In preparation for the defense the church of St. Mauritz and the garden houses outside the walls were destroyed. Six “wall masters” inspected the fortifications. The two burgomasters, several council members and Jan van Leiden took charge of the watch. Outside the city, the prince-bishop set up tent encampments for the mercenaries. The council confiscated the liturgical utensils, along with all gold and silver from the cathedral and the cloister churches. Altars in the churches were destroyed, along with the library of the chapter lord and humanist, Rudolf von Langen, located in the cathedral. The citizenry, who had always been barred from the cathedral hill, now seized possession of the cathedral, the physical center of the city. In the tumultuous months that followed, the cathedral district was repeatedly at the center of the events. On February 27 armed city employees moved through the city announcing that everyone who refused baptism should leave Münster: “Get out of here, you godless. God will punish you!” The unbaptized who chose not to leave were required to register their names in the burgomasters’ houses and submit to baptism. Following an admonition to abandon their evil ways and live righteously, the preachers baptized them with three handfuls of water from a pail in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit36 and gave them a copper token with the inscription “DWWF” to wear around their necks. Gresbeck said the meaning was “The Word becomes flesh” (Das Wort wird Fleisch).37 The tokens served for admission into the gates. The quote from the Gospel of John meant that God’s word had begun to take on reality. With the introduction of baptism as the new basic order, the old structures of estates and social status

36 37

Berichte (1983), 19–20. Berichte (1983), 27–28.

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were abolished. Now there were only Christian brothers and sisters—no clergy or burgers, no nobles or serfs. According to the eyewitness Gresbeck, prophets, preachers and council now shared the political leadership. The council regarded adult baptism as a civic ritual to integrate citizens and non-citizens, as well as men and women. For the prophets it was preparation for the coming of Christ. It was some weeks before this effort to fuse the spiritual and temporal community gave rise to problems. Since January many baptized citizens of Münster had voluntarily given up their possessions and remitted debts. Now, in the beginning of March, the council formally abolished private property. “Everything that Christian brothers and sisters have belongs to the one as well as to the other,” Rothmann preached.38 When many hesitated, Jan van Leiden demanded in a public address that gold, silver and money be brought to city hall. He distinguished three groups: the good Christians who had held nothing back; the doubters, who had given up only a portion and should pray to God to be able to become good Christians; and the ones who had accepted baptism only under compulsion, had given up nothing and were still godless. The event also became an occasion to once again bind into the community those who had received baptism late. The men of military age were assembled with their weapons in the cathedral square. Amid the cries of Jan Matthijs and Jan van Leiden, that God would not tolerate anything impure in his city, the men who were baptized late, about three hundred in number, were separated from the rest. After relinquishing their weapons, they were forced to lie on the ground and to pray that God, in his mercy, would allow them to stay in the city. Finally they were led into St. Lambert’s, where they cried: “Oh Father, oh God, take pity on us and grant us mercy.” After a long period of uncertainty, Jan van Leiden announced that God had granted them mercy, that they should stay in the city and become a holy people.39 On the following day the two thousand women who had received baptism late repeated a similar ritual at St. Lambert’s. The council continued its reforms. In each parish, three deacons drew up a list of provisions and sought to care for needy residents

38 39

Berichte (1983), 32. Berichte (1983), 24–25.

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and new arrivals, presumably from the reserves of those who had left the city. Although more than two thousand had left the city in February, just as many immigrants arrived, so that by the end of March there were once more nine thousand persons in Münster. Increasingly, the prophets interpreted the formation of the new community in Münster as a preparatory step on the way to the endtime. Everything that happened was mapped unto a dynamic spectrum between the principles of the Reformation and the expectation of imminent divine judgment. Consequently, decisions oscillated dramatically between rational pragmatism on the one side and emotional enthusiasm on the other. Sometime in mid-March, Jan Matthijs demanded the destruction of the council archives along with all other documents, contracts and account ledgers. Strengthened since early March by the arrival of the Hollanders and Frisians, Matthijs embarked on this radical break with the past both out of a prophetic concern to rely upon God alone and from the Reformation concern to abolish all debts. The new regime did encounter criticism. The smith Hubert Rüscher, an elector for the council of 1533, was accused of criticizing the prophets, likely for the destruction of the archives.40 According to Gresbeck, “This citizen said, while standing watch, that the prophets and pastors would prophesy until they brought about the undoing of us all; they must be possessed by the devil.” The “prophets and pastors” pronounced judgment: Rüscher “deserved to die; he had to die because he had angered God, and it was God’s will not to tolerate anything impure in the city.” Jan van Leiden reportedly struck the man twice with a halberd, but without injuring him, perhaps intending it only as a symbolic punishment. As Rüscher was led off to prison, Jan van Leiden and Jan Matthijs cried out: “The mercy door was closed; there would be no mercy evermore; and all of them would be damned.” The men lay with their faces on the ground and wailed. Women standing in the vicinity also wailed. Rüscher was brought out once more. Jan Matthijs wanted to stand the prisoner against a wall, but the man threw himself to the ground “and wailed pitifully, begging for mercy.” Jan Matthijs took a gun, put its barrel on the back of the man lying on the ground and fired. Badly

40

Berichte (1983), 28–30.

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wounded, Rüscher was carried home. Jan van Leiden declared that he would recover, but he died after several days. The men still lay face down on the ground. The prophets separated Burgomaster Kibbenbrock along with aldermen Heinrich Redeker and Heinrich Mollenhecke from the group, and led them off to prison. The men continued to lie in the cathedral square and cry out for the mercy of God. Then the three prisoners were brought out and they, too, had to beg for mercy, until Jan van Leiden came to their rescue and proclaimed that they had received mercy from God and should change their ways. By mid-March the prophets had asserted their leadership. At the same time, however, conflicts like the one just described made it clear that questions of authority still needed to be resolved if Münster was not to collapse from its internal conflicts. On Easter day, April 5, 1534, Christ did not appear. Jan Matthijs rode out from the city on that day, along with some followers, perhaps still hoping for Christ to return. In the skirmish that followed, the prophet was run through by a spear. The Landsknechts impaled his head on a stake and shouted that the defenders of the city should come and fetch their burgomaster.41 Ernst Laubach has suggested that Jan Matthijs may have sought death in order to fulfill the prophecy in Revelation 11 that Christ would return after the death of his two witnesses: Melchior Hoffman, who was still sitting in prison in Strasbourg, and now the second witness, Jan Matthijs, who had fulfilled his commission on Easter 1534.42 Consolidation of Anabaptist Rule—God’s Will as Law Jan van Leiden had to provide an interpretation for the death of Jan Matthijs if he was to awaken new hope in the city. In a spontaneous speech already on Easter day, he sketched the possibility of postponing the expectation of Christ’s return. By perfecting the social order of the city according to the divine will Münster should be a model for the world. Christ would then appear to a world appropriately prepared for him. In this way Jan van Leiden postponed

41 42

Berichte (1983), 39–40. Laubach (1993), 187.

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the imminent expectation of the rule of Christ. He did not, however, postpone the expectation of imminent punishment which would be the Christian’s task to inflict upon the godless in the course of the last things. In this way the punishment of the godless became a social task. After Easter Jan van Leiden dissolved the elected council altogether, with its guild structure, and named twelve “Elders,” who were already in office on April 8. Men of various origins were represented in this trimmed-down council, including residents of Münster, Westphalians, Netherlanders; there were former burghers, clerics and nobles; there were former council members and newcomers. Significantly, half were residents, half new arrivals. With the changed order of government and the dissipation of expectations of the imminent end, some of the tension went out of the situation. By creating an office of Elders Jan van Leiden had institutionalized his prophetic office. In a public ceremony the prophet gave “to the first [Elder] a naked sword and ordered him to fight according to God’s command, then he gave the sword in the same way to the second, to the third, and so on until the last.”43 Without wavering in his charisma Jan van Leiden combined pragmatism with his prophetic role.44 He no longer spoke of Münster as the New Jerusalem, preferring instead to refer to the community as the people of God, as the new Israel, whose goal it was to realize a new order of salvation. The chief task of the Elders was jurisprudence based on the divine law derived from Scripture. Six Elders dispensed justice each day on all disputed issues. Knipperdollinck became “swordbearer.” With four assistants he was responsible for preserving inner security and order. He also served as prosecutor before the Elders and he carried out the sentences, thereby giving high esteem to the despised office of executioner. Overseers replaced the guilds in the various branches of production. On April 8, immediately after their appointment, the Elders established contact with the besiegers, calling on the Landsknechts to withdraw from the unjust battle against Münster. At the same time coins were minted which corresponded in size, weight and silver content to the talers and half-talers then in circulation. The coins, bearing appropriate New Testament Bible citations, did double duty as recruit-

43 44

“Die Ordnung” (1856), 248. Rammstedt (1966); Eichler (1981).

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ing propaganda: “One Lord, one faith, one baptism—in Münster;” “The Word has become flesh, and dwells among us—1534,” “Unless a person is born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.” At the same time the city began to devote itself more intentionally to defensive war. The pinnacles of two church towers were replaced with platforms designed to position cannon upon them. Military contingents under captains were quartered in community houses at the various gates. Some of the Elders were put in charge of the day and night watches. Silver tokens bearing the stamp “DWWF” (“The Word becomes flesh”), served as identification markers for persons who reentered the city after military actions or foraging for provisions. A defense ordinance directing the course of daily activities further militarized the Anabaptist community. Once again a call went out for the handing over of money, gold and silver. Simple clothing was prescribed to further integrate the social groups. Those who still refused believers’ baptism were subjected to daily compulsory instruction in the former Rosental cloister. Schools were set up, in which the children received Christian instruction, sang Psalms and learned to read and write. Münster aspired to be a model community. In mid-May the besiegers prepared for an assault on the city. In anticipation of the upcoming battle the contingents at the gates celebrated communion. Jan van Leiden rode from communion service to communion service and made speeches. The pastors reminded recipients of their obligation to discipleship until death. The assault that followed on May 25—aimed at the Mauritz and the Jüdefeld gates—failed. The attackers buried over one hundred dead, the defenders fifty. Münster responded to the language of weapons with arguments. A letter of June 5 by a Hessian official reporting on the siege mentions the first of these appeals: the “Confession of the Faith and Life of the Congregation of Christ in Münster,” authored by Rothmann.45 In this short undated treatise, which describes the Christian order of the city, Rothmann denounced the siege and storming of the city as illegal. The booklet apparently had its desired effect, in that some of the Landsknechts (perhaps as many as 200) deserted the besieging army and came into the city. In a “heathen house” assigned to

45

Die Schriften, Vol. 1 (1970), 196–208.

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them, they were instructed by the preacher Staprade in preparation for receiving baptism.46 The Landsknechts, however, turned out to be a source of disorder; some of them were brought to court charged with drunkenness and nightly carousing. Six men were executed for disturbing the public order. In June, as the besiegers dug further trenches in preparation for another assault, a Frisian woman named Hille Feicken left Münster for the prince-bishop’s camp. Her goal was to imitate the biblical example of Judith in the siege of Bethulia, who beheaded the Assyrian commander Holofernes while he slept. Knipperdollinck, from whom she received money and provisions, reported that she had said that the Lord God would show her the way.47 Jan van Leiden and the preachers allegedly tried to dissuade her from the plan, but to no avail.48 In the end, Hille was betrayed by one of the defenders who fled Münster and executed shortly thereafter. Not long after these events Jan van Leiden initiated a proposal to make marriage obligatory and to permit all men to marry several wives.49 Presumably, the innovation was intended to place single persons like Hille Feicken or the Landsknechts under the patriarchal constraints of male-dominated households. Rothmann wrote with conviction: “God wills to create something new on earth. [. . .] Just as the women commonly have been lords and have had their own way, now among us he has subjected the women to the men, so that all of them, young as well as old, have to let themselves be ruled by the men according to the word of God.”50 Nevertheless, Jan van Leiden encountered unanimous opposition. Only after the preachers were convinced that there were no biblical commands for monogamy, in contrast to biblical examples of polygamy, did they agree to proclaim the plan publicly. Thereafter marriage became, following baptism, the second fundamental institution of society. An important part of the context for this new order of marriage was the unequal numbers of men and women—about 2000 adult men compared to 5500 women. Since marriages contracted before the reception of adult baptism were declared invalid, all existing mar-

46 47 48 49 50

Berichte (1983), 252. Berichte (1983), 404. Münsterische Urkundensammlung, Vol. 1 (1826), 132. Stayer (1980); Hennig (1983). Die Schriften, Vol. 1 (1970), 269.

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riages had to be renewed. Those whose spouses lived outside the city were considered unmarried. Jan van Leiden, whose wife had remained in Leiden, married Diewer, the widow of Jan Matthijs. Elderly women had to choose a male protector, to whose household they belonged. In this way social assistance was largely privatized. Under the new marriage arrangements, sexual relations were intended only for procreation: when the women became pregnant their husbands were to have no further sexual relations with them, though they could do so with their second and further wives. The new regulations sparked tensions which, on the night of July 30, widened into a regime crisis when forty-seven conspirators, led by Heinrich Mollenhecke, one of the two former aldermen, tried to overthrow the city government. Jan van Leiden and Knipperdollinck were taken prisoner, but the city did not rally to the side of the conspirators.51 Under Hermann Tilbeck, burgomaster in 1533 and now one of the Twelve Elders, loyal Anabaptists surrounded the group, now numbering one hundred twenty, in the city hall, where they surrendered. In the following days those who participated but could prove that they were not part of the original conspiracy were released; but the forty-seven conspirators were condemned to death and either beheaded or shot over the course of four days. The remaining seventy or so had to beg their “brothers” in the military contingent for forgiveness and they were readmitted. According to Gresbeck even eleven-year-olds became wives. Because of the injuries that occurred due to premature sexual intercourse some of them had to be treated by a female doctor. She cared for fifteen girls, “and some of the girls died.”52 Klopriß later presented the rationale for permitting such young girls to marry: they thought that young girls could become pregnant even before the first menstruation.53 Women who refused to submit to marriage or otherwise opposed polygamy were imprisoned in Rosental cloister where the preachers instructed them. From September several of them were executed for disregard of the marriage regulation. Women married against their wills—those who could prove that the formal conditions for marriage (three days’ time for consideration, two witnesses)

51 52 53

Klötzer (2002), 155. Berichte (1983), 73. Münsterische Urkundensammlung, Vol. 1 (1826), 122–23.

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had not been observed—were ultimately permitted a divorce. During the short period this right was in force, one hundred women made use of it. The princes who supported Franz von Waldeck—Landgrave Philip of Hesse, Duke Johann of Jülich, Archbishop Hermann of Cologne, and Mary of Burgundy, the Habsburg regent of the Netherlands— wished to end the siege with a quick success. At the end of August— after efforts to get closer to the city by means of a massive earthen wall moved by thousands of peasants were aborted, thanks to a combination of rain and a continuing bombardment—the Landsknechts ventured a second assault. The defenders only barely succeeded in beating back this attack. After the failure of the second assault the Landsknecht army found itself dissolving, making it possible to continue the siege only with great difficulty. Not until December, at an assembly of the Westphalian Circle of Imperial estates in Koblenz, did the Empire finally promise to help the prince-bishop. In January 1535 command of the siege was conferred upon Wirich von Daun. One Single King In addition to the events described above, another inner dynamic unfolded late in the summer of 1534 that had profound consequences for the further development of the Anabaptist authority structure. In August Johann Dusentschuer, a goldsmith from nearby Warendorf, emerged as a prophet. At first he spoke to the men who had only one wife and urged them to contract further marriages. Before the anticipated assault Dusentschuer had called for Christian perfection, so as to assure God’s help. Then, shortly after the victory over the besiegers, Dusentschuer announced that Jan van Leiden should be king.54 In his later interrogation Jan van Leiden said that it had previously been revealed to him that he should be the King David promised in the prophetic writings, but he had prayed to God that this should be told to the community by someone else.55 He had previously not spoken about this. Whether or not this is true remains

54 55

Berichte (1983), 406. Münsterische Urkundensammlung, Vol. 1 (1826), 178–79; Berichte (1983), 418.

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unclear; in any event, the way had been prepared for the kingship. Jan van Leiden stood alone at the pinnacle of the political and military leadership of the city. Both king-maker and king understood Münster to be a model for the world, part of a universal kingdom. In the historiographical debate Karl-Heinz Kirchhoff and Ernst Laubach have rejected the “world domination legend,” stressing that Jan van Leiden assumed the “stool of David” in order to hand it over in a short time to Christ, the peaceful King Solomon.56 Evidence that portrayed Jan van Leiden as king of the world, they claim, was part of a defamation campaign by the prince-bishop, who needed further help for the battle against Münster. However, Jan van Leiden clearly understood himself as the only legitimate ruler on earth. Since April, the Christians in Münster had carried out divine justice on a day-to-day basis, so it was logical for them to claim that the Christian order of government should be spread from Münster before Christ could take the world into his possession. Bernd Krechtinck said later that the Münster Anabaptists were disposed “to let the princes in peace, unless they should act against God’s Word.”57 They expected that the majority of rulers would voluntarily turn to Anabaptism. But there was opposition against the Kingdom also. Many murmured against the ostentation of Jan van Leiden’s rule, which he defended saying that “he was dead to the flesh, and took no pride in it; he did what he did for the glory of God.”58 This regal appearance, crucial to the universal claims of the Anabaptists, provided continuing inspiration during the siege of Münster. In the new order, the king replaced the Twelve Elders with a royal household headed by Knipperdollinck as the viceroy, and several councilors: the former priests Bernd Krechtinck and Gerrit Boekbinder, Heinrich Redecker, alderman since 1532, and Gert Reininck, a member of the February 1534 council. A brother of Bernd Krechtinck, Heinrich Krechtinck, magistrate (Gograf ) in Schöppingen near Münster, served as chancellor, Hermann Tilbeck as court master, and Bernhard Rothmann as royal spokesman (Worthalter). Including the king, this leadership group comprised nine persons—four outsiders, four Münster

56 57 58

Kirchhoff (1989), 400; Laubach (1993), 198–200. Münsterische Urkundensammlung, Vol. 1 (1826), 193. Berichte (1983), 68.

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residents, along with Rothmann, who fit into both categories. Jan van Leiden set a personal example in the matter of multiple marriage. In the fall he had four wives, in the winter six, and by the following spring sixteen wives. In this behavior the king was driven not so much by the sensual passions that chroniclers attribute to him as by political calculation, for in the process he married into many of Münster’s families. As Gresbeck reported, none of king’s wives became pregnant by him. Diewer, the queen, bore Jan Matthijs’ posthumous child in the beginning of 1535. Ernst Laubach, in order to argue against the claim that the king aspired to world dominion, noted that Jan entitled himself “King in the new Temple.” Defenders of the older view point to the great chain of office, with an Imperial globe crowned by a cross and pierced by two swords. This insignia reappears on the royal seal and court servants wore it sewed on a sleeve. The meaning of the two swords derived from medieval concepts of authority, symbolizing the spiritual and temporal powers. King Jan was very attentive to the symbols that communicated his concept of government to the community. Two youths preceded him in his first appearance as king, the one on his right carrying the Old Testament and the one on his left carrying a sword. Then the two youths exchanged places, so that the sword-bearer was on the right side of the king with the explanation that the king had the task of punishing all unrighteousness.59 Six judges, probably the four councilors plus the viceroy and the chancellor, pronounced justice three times weekly in front of the city hall under the chairmanship of the king. But the king was also commander-in-chief, who named the new captains including, for the first time, a chief captain, which rendered the military structure more independent. A horse troop equipped with lances and firearms was created, which practiced attacks in the cathedral square under the leadership of the king. The royal splendor strengthened the pressure to succeed, since many tolerated it as a sign of imminent deliverance. Clothed in satin, the king carried a golden scepter, wore a golden crown and had gold coins hanging around his neck. He appeared on horseback with gilded spurs and saddle fittings and a sword in a golden sheath. His commanders and court servants wore splendid clothing and uniforms.

59

Münsterische Urkundensammlung, Vol. 1 (1826), 133.

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His goal, according to Gresbeck, was to leave Münster: “I have chosen my council and all the servants needed for my royal state, so that everyone will learn and know how to behave, if I should perchance move out into the world tomorrow.”60 The prophet Dusentschuer then announced a plan, obviously corresponding with the expectations of Jan van Leiden, to extend the kingship beyond Münster. Dusentschuer announced that after the trumpet of the Lord had sounded three times, everyone must leave the city. When, on October 13, Dusentschuer blew the trumpet for the third time, the men came running with their weapons, and many women appeared with children in their arms. Once again the horsemen practiced their attack; and once again the king organized his foot soldiers under their new captains. Then, however, completely contrary to the expectations of the horse and foot soldiers, Cort Kruse, the chief captain, declared a reorganization of the troops and introduced new military exercises, so that everyone would know what to do in case an attack were actually launched. The plan to leave behind an empty city was apparently not the will of God after all, but rather a test of their obedience to God. This contradiction of royal authority provoked another governmental crisis in which the king declared, following a general communion in the cathedral square, that he had not ruled rightly and had angered God. When King Jan suggested that he should lay down his crown, the initiative passed to Dusentschuer, who then ordered the preachers and their companions to leave as emissaries to Warendorf, Coesfeld, Soest and Osnabrück.61 Dusentschuer then told Jan van Leiden that God had commanded him to remain king and to dispense punishment. Most of the preachers, as well as Dusentschuer, left Münster. In his interrogation Knipperdollinck said that “it was their intention and hope” that Anabaptism should be advanced everywhere.62 Remaining behind were Rothmann, the clerical members of the council, Bernd Krechtinck and Gerrit Boekbinder, as well as Hermann Staprade, who was in charge of the “heathen house.” This strange assemblage in the cathedral square ended with the king personally beheading an imprisoned Landsknecht, likely as a gesture of a righteous, punishing king trying to win back the grace of God. 60 61 62

Berichte (1983), 85–86. Münsterische Urkundensammlung, Vol. 1 (1826), 121. Berichte (1983), 404.

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The preachers reached the places to which they had been sent, but were arrested and all but one of them—including Dusentschuer, who had initiated that venture—were soon executed. In November, Heinrich Graess, a minister who survived by offering his services as a turncoat, reappeared in Münster, claiming that he had miraculously escaped from prison. Graess presented himself as a prophet and proclaimed that Anabaptist groups from surrounding lands would rescue the city. Thereupon he left Münster, supposedly to assemble a contingent of Anabaptists in Deventer. Instead, he informed the prince-bishop what he had learned in Münster. Although Graess was a false prophet, he provided an impulse for future events. The disastrous mission of the preachers had hardly ended when messengers were sent into the Netherlands to distribute Rothmann’s “Restitution,” which set forth the theological justification of the kingdom. In December, Rothmann set forth a theological justification for open violence by the Christians against the godless in his hastily written “Report on Vengeance and the Punishment of the Babylonian Abomination.”63 As messengers delivered the tract into the Netherlands, Anabaptists in Münster prepared for the appearance of the relieving force. From movable cannons they made a wagon fortress, which could be used to bring the Anabaptist army, expected in mid-January, into the city. The Long Failure On January 2, 1535, Jan van Leiden issued a “letter of articles” for the military expedition which would soon begin. It contained regulations about how “the Christians and their supporters should behave and conduct themselves as true Israelites under the banner of righteousness.”64 Even though the articles were never implemented, the document reveals a great deal about his understanding of the kingdom. Article 1, for example, stated that “Only those governments that orient themselves by the word of God shall be preserved.” Article 2 clarified that “Legal decisions are the prerogative of the king, his regents and judges,” and Article 22 cautioned that “A government

63 64

Die Schriften, Vol. 1 (1970), 285–97. Die Schriften, Vol. 1 (1970), 444.

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which refrains from unchristian coercion may not be interfered with, even if it has not yet accepted believers’ baptism.” The clergy, on the contrary, were not to be spared. Even more intensively than in October the city prepared itself with riders and foot troops for an attack against the besiegers. This time three hundred men were to be left behind for the guarding of Münster. Three hundred women volunteered for the reinforcement of the offensive forces, of whom fifty were selected and included in the contingent. After Graess’s treason became known, messengers were sent out to warn Anabaptists in surrounding lands. But the city still waited for the Netherlanders, who were to be reinforced by hired Landsknechts. On January 19 broadsheets distributed among the besiegers invited them to work for the Anabaptists “in maintaining the truth” in exchange for four gold guldens per month plus free booty “from our enemies, the tonsured monks and priests.”65 The besiegers meanwhile had prepared for the winter by quartering three thousand Landsknechts in fortified blockhouses before the city. At a greater distance were camps for the horse troops. It was still possible for individuals from Münster to get through this ring of encampments, but provisions in the city had already become so scarce that it was necessary to slaughter young cows. The situation worsened in February when the besiegers began to connect the blockhouses by walls with moats in front of them, with the object of fully enclosing the city. By April Münster was completely cut off from the outside world. Despite the sharpness of the siege, the opposing parties remained in contact with each other. The Hessian theologian Fabricius, who a year earlier as pastor in St. Lambert’s had vainly promoted a moderate Reformation, returned to Münster in November as emissary of the Hessian landgrave. If the new marriage system and the kingdom could be rescinded, he reported, Philip of Hesse was prepared to renew his efforts at mediation. His offer was rejected. In the correspondence, which was resumed in January 1535, the “regents and community of the city of Münster,” as they called themselves, stressed that they had been attacked by an army, besieged and harmed “without statement of the causes.”66 On January 10 they wrote the land-

65 66

Die Schriften, Vol. 1 (1970), 428. Die Schriften, Vol. 1 (1970), 423.

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grave, asking him for assistance, and sending him the “Restitution.” Philip responded with a refutation that he composed personally. When, on March 25, the Münster Anabaptists wrote Philip once again, this time sending Rothmann’s book “On the Concealment of Scripture,” he delegated the refutation to his scholars. Relief from the Netherlands did not arrive. In Münster someone named Hieronymus Mullinck wrote that the city would be freed by Easter. Jan van Leiden passed this on to the community as a prophecy.67 Still, no one came. According to Gresbeck’s account the king commissioned a sermon which documents the partial abandonment of the earlier hopes. Rothmann told the people: “Dear brothers and sisters, it appears that you have relied upon the outside brothers who would come to us. You should not rely on them. God will deliver us when our time has come.” The king added that it had been revealed to him that they should not attack the enemy. “God will smite them in their hearts, so that they will run away [. . .]. Dear brothers and sisters, we have angered God by relying on our reason and our cleverness.”68 Henceforth, the king began to retreat from the call for Christian vengeance: military exercises in the cathedral square were transformed into sporting events; at Easter, the king said that he had meant the promise of deliverance in an inward, spiritual sense not as an external reality. Ever since November, when the last grain stocks had been collected, private baking and brewing had been forbidden. Bread and beer were produced and distributed centrally. On three occasions in March the three night watch groups into which the community was divided participated in a common meal of bread and beer. At the beginning of each meal the king appeared at a window of one of the houses on the cathedral square to read from the Bible about the battles of King David—how an angel with a glowing sword came from the heavens and drove the enemies away. Jan van Leiden amplified, “Dear brothers, the same thing can happen to us. The same God lives.” When famine began to set in the king proclaimed, “Anyone who still has something must share with his brother.”69 As early as April the king permitted the exhausted to leave the city.

67 68 69

Münsterische Urkundensammlung, Vol. 1 (1826), 187. Berichte (1983), 130. Berichte (1983), 175.

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Anyone wishing to surrender was registered, disarmed and led out of the city. But the Landsknechts killed these helpless people, displaying four heads on stakes as intimidation. The willingness to leave Münster quickly ebbed. On May 3 the last reorganization of the defense took place. Military contingents were organized in the cathedral square, one after the other, as Rothmann had them swear to endure suffering and death and to remain ready for battle. Shortly thereafter, because of the food shortage, the men received the possibility to dismiss their “lesser” wives. In the end these had to languish with their children outside the walls, because the besiegers would not let them pass. Only at the end of May were three hundred women interned in a distant camp; fourteen of them were executed. During these last weeks there were also further executions in Münster. Clas Nordhorn confessed under torture that he had written to the prince-bishop and offered to turn traitor. He was beheaded by the king. Another man, who tried to drive the last cows, grazing before the gates, to the besiegers, was likewise beheaded by the king. All together, about eighty persons were executed in Anabaptist Münster, including Hubert Rüscher, the first critic of the prophets, about fifteen Landsknechts who deserted from the other side, the forty-seven conspirators of the uprising of July 30, 1534, some six women for violation of the marriage regulations, and about ten persons for intended treason in the spring of 1535. Heinrich Gresbeck, who later wrote his eyewitness account of Anabaptist Münster, was spared by the Landsknechts on his flight from the city on May 23 after he and another turncoat, the Landsknecht Hans von der Langenstraten, told the besiegers how the city could be taken. Both participated in the conquest. During the night of June 25 Gresbeck swam through the outer moat at the Cross Gate, dragging a foot bridge behind him. The sentries were killed and three hundred men got into city before the Anabaptists were able to close the gate again. After extensive street fighting Jan van Leiden negotiated a truce in order to avoid further bloodshed; but the mass of the Landsknechts, who pressed in through the Jüdefeld Gate, nevertheless killed about six hundred Anabaptists. When the prince-bishop entered the city on June 29, the mercenaries were paid, but they still rebelled because of the smallness of the booty. Franz von Waldeck maintained two contingents as occupiers. A few women were executed on July 7, among them Diewer,

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the queen; but the lives of most of the women were spared. About three hundred women renounced their religious error, secured guarantors and were able to return. Citizens who fled or were exiled at the beginning of the siege also began to return. Of the five prisoners, Gerlach von Wullen, one of Jan van Leiden’s two military commanders, was freed through intercession of his aristocratic relatives. Christian Kerckerinck, who had been supervisor of the moats, was soon executed. The last three, Jan van Leiden, Bernd Knipperdollinck and Bernd Krechtinck, were executed on January 22, 1536, in front of the city hall in Münster after being condemned for introducing a forbidden religion, desecrating churches, robbing citizens, agitating against the government, establishing a kingdom, killing many people, and further offences. The executioner tore the flesh from each of their bodies with glowing tongs and stabbed them in the heart after an hour of torture. The dead bodies, each bound in standing position, were hung in iron cages from St. Lambert’s tower. Only a few of the defenders escaped. Some had positioned themselves in the wagon fortress under the leadership of Heinrich Krechtinck and were granted free passage from the city by an officer acquainted with him. They were sheltered by the Count of Oldenburg, an enemy of the prince-bishop. Among the Anabaptists in Oldenburg named in an interrogation of the Netherlander Jan van Batenburg was “the baptizer Bernardus, a great man who came out of Münster,”70 suggesting that Rothmann also probably survived. Descendants of Heinrich Krechtinck, who moved on to East Friesland where he joined the Reformed around 1545, became burgomasters in Bremen. In an effort to recover part of his war expenses Franz von Waldeck confiscated the houses of Münster Anabaptists; but their sale brought little income, since the houses in the city were generally burdened with mortgages, which lessened their worth. Franz von Waldeck reCatholicized Münster and named the council members who sat from 1536 on. Not until 1554 were the citizens able to elect their council again. In Münster Anabaptism was destroyed, but in the near and distant environs of the city it lived on. Indeed, all of the Anabaptist groups in north Germany and the Netherlands were confronted with

70

Bescheiden, Vol. 1 (1899), 256.

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the task of receiving and interpreting the inheritance of the Anabaptist kingdom of Münster, each group in its own way. Bernhard Rothmann: Theological Foundations Through a complex process—in continuity with his own theological beginnings, but also more independently than has been hitherto accepted—Bernhard Rothmann came to reject infant baptism in 1533.71 Like Melchior Hoffman he attributed the highest teaching authority to the congregation; but Melchiorite apocalyptic teachings were not present in Münster before 1534, and, since this was during the period when Hoffman had suspended adult baptisms, it is nearly impossible to identify Melchiorite influences on the issue of baptism. On the basis of his congregation-oriented view of the Lord’s Supper, the interpretation of baptism published in October 1533 in the name of Rothmann and his colleagues can be viewed as a consistent further development of Rothmann’s sacramental theology, applying the models of confession and discipleship to both sacraments. After early 1534 Rothmann’s influence on the developments in Münster was minimal. His internal role was that of a stabilizer; his external role was to be a propagandist. It took several months for Rothmann to integrate the Melchiorite conceptions of eschatology into his theology. His “Confession of the Congregation,” written in June 1534, is still substantially free from Melchiorite eschatology. It had the object of explaining the goals of Anabaptism to the Landsknechts of the besieging army. Here Rothmann devoted his greatest attention to Melchiorite Christology and to an affirmation of monogamy, then still valid in Münster, along with his teachings on baptism and the congregation. The writings “Restitution,” “On Vengeance,” “On the Concealment of Scripture,” and “On Earthly Power” (October 1534 to May 1535) form a series devoted to eschatological theology. If “Restitution” and “On the Concealment of Scripture” were directed to the Anabaptists in the Netherlands and to governments prepared for substantive discussions, “On Vengeance” aimed only at an Anabaptist readership and “On Earthly Power” (which was unfinished and unpublished) 71 Die Schriften, Vol. 1 (1970); Brecht (1985); de Bakker (1986); Goeters (1991); Klötzer (1992), 139–75.

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was aimed only at governments. These writings are expressive of various moods. The “Restitution” assumes a tone of certainty, convinced of the progress of Anabaptism. Its thematic focus was on the teachings of faith and life that were accepted in Münster, including a justification of polygamy. The central motif named in the title is an interpretation of history, which Rothmann presents as alternating between falling away from God and the reestablishment of the rule of God. This doctrine of restitution develops further the historical interpretations of Sebastian Franck, Johannes Campanus and Melchior Hoffman, and concludes with reference to King Jan, who is presented as preparing the way for the imminent lordship of Christ. Accentuating the eschatological dynamic, Rothmann dedicated “On Vengeance” to the legitimation of aggressive force. According to it, the godless must be punished before the saints can assume power. “On Vengeance” is an urgent summons to action intended to awaken a readiness for direct use of force. Actual attack required a further sign from God. But Rothmann proved that the time had come through his calculation that the restitution of the divine will in the world will begin 1533 years after the birth of Christ. This is based upon taking 33 years for the life of Christ, 100 years for the apostolic period and 1400 years for the church’s falling away from God. In the calculation of the 1400 years Rothmann cites the Old Testament account of the people of Israel in the days of Elijah receiving a punishment of three and one-half years for their first fall. In the second fall the punishment was increased twenty-fold in the Babylonian captivity, which lasted seventy years. Finally, the fall of the church from Christ and his apostles was once more a twenty-fold increase over the previous fall. Hence, the punishment of the Roman, papal captivity lasted 1400 years. In “Concealment” a meditative analysis of Scripture predominates, providing an exegetical foundation for the expectation of the Second Coming. Here Rothmann explicated a hermeneutic to unlock the understanding of the divine plan of salvation from the Bible. The Flood and the present Restitution of the divine will divide world history into three parts. The Tabernacle of Moses—with its forecourt, holy place and holy of holies—is a metaphor for world history. Entrance into the holy of holies now requires that the world first be purified in fire. The human being can come to an understanding of the divine plan of salvation by practicing obedience to God, which raises him from the stage of faith to the stage of hope.

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The quiet tone of “Concealment” reappears in “On Earthly Power,” that holds fast to the expectation of overcoming the enemy amid the unfolding of disaster. In “On Earthly Power,” Rothmann wanted to persuade the mighty that their war against the saints is useless. God permitted temporal power to exist in order to punish the wicked. It turned into an enemy of God, however, from the point in Babylon where it connected itself with a godless religion. In his discussion of the dream interpreted by the prophet Daniel—in which a stone toppled a statue that stood upon feet composed of a mixture of iron and clay—Rothmann interpreted the stone to mean the present saints, who would smash the union of Emperor and pope, of temporal power and clergy. Conclusion This chapter has attempted to show the emergence of a most unusual, and notorious, expression of Reformation radicalism arising from the unique combination of a civic Reformation following its independent course and a wave of apocalyptic excitement in the Netherlands. Both the Dutch apocalyptic prophets and the civic Reformers of Münster rejected the baptism of children in favor of the baptism of adults; hence the two religious currents merged. Traditional assumptions regarding civic defense account for the unusual introduction of militancy into Melchiorite Anabaptism, a form of Anabaptism especially receptive to spiritualistic and charismatic expressions of religion. The failure of this militant Anabaptist and spiritualist utopia eventuated in a new movement led by Menno Simons that totally rejected militancy but wrestled for centuries with the issues of biblicism and spiritualism. Questions regarding Münster’s relevance and importance for northwest German and Dutch Anabaptism remain unsettled. Was this episode so unusual and atypical that it has no significance for the rest of Anabaptism? Or was the very existence of a strong current of Anabaptism in this region based on the incredible sixteen-month Anabaptist regime in Münster? There is no totally dependable historical source for what occurred inside the besieged city for those sixteen months. This narrative attempts to shed light on the Anabaptist rule of Münster by directing the reader’s attention to the writings of Heinrich Gresbeck and Bernhard Rothmann and to the interrogations

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of imprisoned Anabaptists. The interpretation of the subject, if it is to have historical credibility, can focus nowhere else. Bibliography Source Editions Berichte der Augenzeugen über das Münsterische Wiedertäuferreich. 2d ed. Carl A. Cornelius, ed. Münster, 1983. Bescheiden betreffende de Hervorming in Overijssel. Vol. 1: Deventer (1522–1546). Johannes de Hullu, ed. Deventer, 1899. Bibliotheca Reformatoria Neerlandica—Geschriften uit den tijd der Hervorming in de Nederlanden. Samuel Cramer and Fredrik Pijper, eds. 10 vols. The Hague, 1904–10. Das Täuferreich zu Münster 1534–1535. Berichte und Dokumente. Richard van Dülmen, ed. Munich, 1974. “Die Ordnung der Widerteuffer zu Münster. Item was sich daselbs nebenzu verloffen hatt vonn der zeytt an, als die Statt belegert ist wordenn.” Caspar Geisberg, ed. Zeitschrift für vaterländische Geschichte und Alterthumskunde 17 (1856), 240–49. Die Schriften der münsterischen Täufer und ihrer Gegner. Robert Stupperich, ed. 3 vols., Münster, 1970–83. Documenta Anabaptistica Neerlandica. 5 vols. Leiden, 1975–1995. Geschichte der Wiedertäufer zu Münster in Westfalen. Aus einer lateinischen Handschrift des Hermann von Kerssenbroick übersetzt. 3d ed. Simon P. Widmann, ed. Münster, 1929. Hermanni a Kerssenbroch Anabaptistici Furoris Monasterium inclitam Westphaliae metropolim evertentis historica narratio. 2 vols. Heinrich Detmer, ed. Münster, 1899–1900. Münsterische Urkundensammlung. Vol. 1: Urkunden zur Geschichte der Münsterischen Wiedertaufer. Joseph Niesert, ed. Coesfeld, 1826. “Ungedruckte Quellen zur Geschichte der Wiedertäufer in Münster.” Heinrich Detmer, ed. Zeitschrift für vaterländische Geschichte und Alterthumskunde 51 (1893), 90–118. Literature Augustijn, Cornelis. “Anabaptisme in de Nederlanden.” Doopsgezinde Bijdragen 12/13 (1987), 13–28. Brecht, Martin. “Die Theologie Bernhard Rothmanns.” Jahrbuch für westfälische Kirchengeschichte 78 (1985), 49–82. Brendler, Gerhard. Das Täuferreich zu Münster 1534/35. Berlin, 1966. Cornelius, Carl A. Geschichte des Münsterischen Aufruhrs in drei Büchern. 2 vols. Leipzig, 1855–60. Das Königreich der Täufer. 2 vols. Barbara Rommé, ed. Münster, 2000. de Bakker, Willem J. “Bernhard Rothmann: Civic Reformer in Anabaptist Münster,” in The Dutch Dissenters. A Critical Companion to their History and Ideas. Irvin B. Horst, ed. Leiden, 1986, 105–116. Deppermann, Klaus. Melchior Hoffman. Social Unrest and Apocalyptic Visions in the Age of Reformation. Edinburgh, 1987. Eichler, Margrit. “Charismatic Prophets and Charismatic Saviors.” Mennonite Quarterly Review 55 ( Jan. 1981), 45–61. Fuchs, Walther P. “Das Zeitalter der Reformation,” in Gebhardt. Handbuch der deutschen Geschichte. Stuttgart, 1970, 2:1–117. Goeters, J. F. Gerhard. “Taufaufschub, Endzeiterwartung und Wiedertaufe. Erwägungen zur Vorgeschichte des Täuferreichs von Münster,” in Calvin. Erbe und Auftrag. Festschrift Wilhem Heinrich Neuser. Willem van ’t Spijker, ed. Kampen, 1991, 305–317.

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Grieser, D. Jonathan. “A Tale of Two Convents. Nuns and Anabaptists in Münster, 1533–1535.” Sixteenth Century Journal 26 (1995), 31–47. Haude, Sigrun. In the Shadow of “Savage Wolves”: Anabaptist Münster and the German Reformation during the 1530s. Boston, 2000. Hennig, Matthias. “Askese und Ausschweifung. Zum Verständnis der Vielweiberei im Täuferreich zu Münster 1534/35,” Mennonitische Geschichtsblätter 40 (1983), 25–45. Hullegie, Gerard. “‘Goede waeke en scarpe toversicht’. Stadhouder Schenck van Toutenburg en de Munsterse Dopers, 1534–1535,” Doopsgezinde Bijdragen 11 (1985), 87–98. Jansma, Lammert G. Melchiorieten, Munstersen en Batenburgers. Een sociologische analyse van een millennistische beweging uit de 16e eeuw. Buitenpost, 1977. ——. “The Rise of the Anabaptist Movement and Societal Changes in the Netherlands,” in The Dutch Dissenters. A Critical Companion to their History and Ideas. Irvin B. Horst, ed. Leiden, 1986, 85–104. Jelsma, Auke J. “The King and the Women: Münster, 1534–35,” in Frontiers of the Reformation. Dissidence and Orthodoxy in Sixteenth-Century Europe. Auke J. Jelsma, ed. Aldershot, 1998, 52–74. Keller, Ludwig. Geschichte der Wiedertäufer und ihres Reichs zu Münster. 2d ed. Osnabrück, 1979. Kirchhoff, Karl-Heinz. “Das Phänomen des Täuferreiches zu Münster 1534/35.” In Der Raum Westfalen. Vol. 6/1. Franz Petri, ed. Münster, 1989, 277–422. ——. “Gilde und Gemeinheit in Münster/Westf. 1525–1534. Zur legalen Durchsetzung einer oppositionellen Bewegung,” in Niederlande und Nordwestdeutschland. Festschrift Franz Petri. Cologne, 1983, 164–80. ——. “Was There a Peaceful Anabaptist Congregation in Münster in 1534?” Mennonite Quarterly Review 44 (October 1970), 357–70. ——. Die Täufer in Münster 1534/35. Untersuchungen zum Umfang und zur Sozialstruktur der Bewegung. Münster, 1973. Klötzer, Ralf. “Die Verhöre der Täuferführer von Münster vom 25. Juli 1535 auf Haus Dülmen. Zwei Versionen im Vergleich,” Mennonitische Geschichtsblätter 59 (2002), 145–72. ——. “Hoffnungen auf eine andere Wirklichkeit. Die Erwartungshorizonte in der Täuferstadt Münster 1534/35,” in Außenseiter zwischen Mittelalter und Neuzeit. Festschrift Hans-Jürgen Goertz. Norbert Fischer and Marion Kobelt-Groch, eds. Leiden, 1997, 153–69. ——. “Missachtete Vorfahren. Über die Last alter Geschichtsbilder und Ansätze neuer Wahrnehmung der Täuferherrschaft in Münster,” in Das Königreich der Täufer in Münster —Neue Perspektiven. Barbara Rommé, ed. Münster, 2003, 41–63. ——. Die Täuferherrschaft von Münster. Stadtreformation und Welterneuerung. Münster, 1992. Kuratsuka, Taira. “Gesamtgilde und Täufer. Der Radikalisierungsprozeß in der Reformation Münsters: Von der reformatorischen Bewegung zum Täuferreich in Münster 1533/34.” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 76 (1985), 231–70. Kühler, Wilhelmus Johannes, “Anabaptism in the Netherlands.” In The Anabaptists and Thomas Müntzer. Werner O. Packull and James M. Stayer, eds. Dubuque, IA, 1980, 92–103. Laubach Ernst. “Reformation und Täuferherrschaft,” in Geschichte der Stadt Münster. Franz-Josef Jakobi, ed. Münster, 1993, 1:145–216. ——. “Jan Mathys und die Austreibung der Taufunwilligen aus Münster Ende Februar 1534,” Westfälische Forschungen 36 (1986), 147–58. Mellink, Albert F. “De beginperiode van het Nederlands Anabaptisme in het licht van het laatste onderzoek,” Doopsgezinde Bijdragen 12/13 (1987), 29–39. ——. “The Mutual Relations between the Munster Anabaptists and the Netherlands.” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 50 (1959), 16–33.

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——. Amsterdam en de wederdopers in de zestiende eeuw. Nijmegen, 1978. ——. De wederdopers in de noordelijke Nederlanden 1531–1544. Groningen, 1953. Oltmer, Jochen, and Anton Schindling. “Der soziale Charakter des Täuferreichs zu Münster 1534/1535. Anmerkungen zur Forschungslage,” Historisches Jahrbuch 110 (1990), 476–91. Rammstedt, Otthein. Sekte und soziale Bewegung. Soziologische Analyse der Täufer in Münster (1534/35). Cologne, 1966. Schröer, Alois. Die Reformation in Westfalen. Der Glaubenskampf einer Landschaft. 2 vols. Münster 1979–83. Schupp, Katja. Zwischen Faszination und Abscheu: Das Täuferreich von Münster. Zur Rezeption in Geschichtswissenschaft, Literatur, Publizistik und populärer Darstellung vom Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts bis zum Dritten Reich. Münster, 2002. Stayer, James M. “Unsichere Geschichte: Der Fall Münster (1534/35). Aktuelle Probleme der Forschung,” Mennonitische Geschichtsblätter 59 (2002), 63–78. ——. “Vielweiberei als ‘innerweltliche Askese’. Neue Eheauffassungen in der Reformationszeit,” Mennonitische Geschichtsblätter 37 (1980), 24–41. ——. “Was Dr. Kuehler’s Conception of Early Dutch Anabaptism Historically Sound? The Historical Discussion of Anabaptist Münster 450 Years Later.” Mennonite Quarterly Review 60 ( July 1986), 261–88. ——. Anabaptists and the Sword. 2d ed. Lawrence, 1976. Stupperich, Robert. “Das Münsterische Täufertum, sein Wesen und seine Verwirklichung.” In Die Wiedertäufer in Münster. 5th ed. Hans Galen, ed. Münster, 1986, 37–54. van Dülmen, Richard. Reformation als Revolution. Soziale Bewegung und religiöser Radikalismus in der deutschen Reformation. Munich, 1977. Vogler, Günter. “The Anabaptist Kingdom of Münster in the Tension Between Anabaptism and Imperial Policy,” in Radical Tendencies in the Reformation: Divergent Perspectives. Hans J. Hillerbrand, ed. Kirksville, MO, 1988, 98–116. Voolstra, Sjouke. “Pinksteren in praktijk. Apocalyptische lekenprofetie in de doperse hervormingsbeweging.” Doopsgezinde Bijdragen 23 (1997), 9–29. Vos, Karel. “Revolutionary Reformation,” in Packull and Stayer (1980), 85–91. Waite, Gary K. “The Anabaptist Movement in Amsterdam and the Netherlands, 1531–1535: An Initial Investigation into its Genesis and Social Dynamics.” Sixteenth Century Journal 18 (1987), 249–65. Warnke, Martin: “Durchbrochene Geschichte? Die Bilderstürme der Wiedertäufer in Münster 1534/1535,” in Bildersturm. Die Zerstörung des Kunstwerks. Martin Warnke, ed. Munich, 1973, 65–98 and 159–67. Zijlstra, Samme. Om de ware gemeente en de oude gronden. Geschiedenis van de dopersen in de Nederlanden 1531–1675. Hilversum and Leeuwarden, 2000.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE SPIRITUALIST ANABAPTISTS Geoffrey Dipple In a 1527 letter to Johannes Oecolampadius requesting refuge in Basel Hans Denck asserted: “I disagree greatly with those, whoever they might be, who excessively bind the Kingdom of God with ceremonies and elements of this world, although I cannot deny that I had adhered to things of this kind for some time.”1 Denck’s contemporary Sebastian Franck provided more detail on the “ceremonies and elements of this world” that he was prepared to put behind him: In the year 1526 there appeared a new sect named the Anabaptists. Among them Johannes Denck, a schoolmaster at St. Sebald in Nuremberg and a man learned in the three tongues, was an elder and bishop. . . . In the end he declared infant baptism unnecessary—a free and a human command and matter of Christian freedom (but not a command of Christ). He also retracted baptism because a special calling and command was necessary for the exercise of this office. Further, he had doubts about his calling and wished he had never baptized.2

In the eyes of many historians Denck’s apparent repudiation of his past activities has won him a place of honor among the Spiritualist Anabaptists, so-called because of their rejection or qualification of some of the central features of Anabaptism in favor of a more Spiritualist reforming vision. However, the same historians do not universally agree upon a clear delineation of who was and was not a Spiritualist Anabaptist, and by what criteria they are to be included in this category. Some scholars identify this term with a group of individuals who had more or less direct ties to Denck: Ludwig Hätzer, Christian Entfelder, Johannes Bünderlin, and Jacob Kautz, although the list sometimes also includes Obbe Philips and David Joris. But

1 2

QGT VI (3), 134–35. Chronica, clviii(b)–clix.

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other scholars have cast their nets even wider, including a variety of individuals from across the Radical Reformation under this title. Part of the problem in categorizing the Spiritualistist Anabaptists stems from the fact that we are not dealing here with a carefully formulated historical designation. Rather, the term Spiritual Anabaptist combines two distinct groups in Ernst Troeltsch’s schematization of the Radical Reformation, some of whose characteristics are thought to be mutually exclusive. Troeltsch described Spiritualism and Anabaptism as two separate movements that occasionally merged, but were ultimately distinct. During times when they flowed together, individuals appeared whose thought manifested characteristics of both types. In this context, for example, Denck appears as a Spiritualist reformer who for a time had communion with the Anabaptists, and Hätzer, Bünderlin and Entfelder are identified as Denck’s disciples. Troeltsch’s interpretation cast a long shadow over subsequent treatments of the Spiritualist Anabaptists. Heinold Fast left Denck and other Spiritualist Anabaptists on the border between Spiritualism and Anabaptism, characterizing them as Spiritualists who passed through an Anabaptist phase at a time when the early Anabaptist movement was purging itself of non-Anabaptist elements. Although critical of Troeltsch’s ideal types as useful categories for understanding the Radical Reformation, James Stayer’s treatment of the Spiritualist Anabaptists fits into this tradition as well. Stayer regards Denck and those associated with him as anti-Lutheran Spiritualists who joined the early Anabaptist movement on the basis of a constructive misunderstanding, and subsequently defected from the movement as the nature of that misunderstanding was clarified in the midst of rancor and persecution.3 Other historians have applied the label Spiritualist Anabaptist even more broadly, implying that it had more substance and permanence. At various times during his career, George H. Williams spoke of contemplative or spiritualizing Anabaptists, and he included in this group not only Denck, Hätzer, Kautz, Bünderlin and Entfelder, but also Adam Pastor, Gabriel Ascherham, Hans de Ries and Camillo Renato. For Williams, the Spiritualist Anabaptists were a recurring phenomenon in the Radical Reformation. In a similar vein, Arnold Snyder treats them as a widespread and integral component of

3

Troeltsch (1931), II: 767–69; Fast (1962), xvii, xxv–xxvi; Stayer (1996), 254–59.

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Anabaptism during its first century. Behind Snyder’s treatment of the Spiritualist Anabaptists is a definition of early Anabaptism as “a ‘loose’ movement characterized by a plurality of views . . . [including] both ‘spiritualizing’ and ‘biblicist’ tendencies, . . . sometimes working together and sometimes at cross purposes.”4 The difficulty in identifying Spiritualist Anabaptists, then, involves fundamental questions about the definition of the term, its relationship to Spiritualism and Anabaptism, and possibly even its viability as a distinct typology. Focus on Denck and the reformers associated with him in southern Germany suggests that this was a reasonably cohesive, although rather ephemeral phenomenon—it might even be labeled a reforming movement. The inclusion of further individuals such as Gabriel Ascherham, Obbe Philips and David Joris as Spiritualist Anabaptists modifies the nature of the category in subtle but important ways. Elements of personal contact and even intellectual pedigree are lost, and with them much of the supposed cohesion of the original group. But here, too, we are still dealing with a phenomenon of the Reformation’s first generation that can be defined in reasonably clear terms. As groups of Anabaptists and Spiritualists encountered each other, they initially mingled their waters, to use Ernst Troeltsch’s metaphor, before separating and defining the boundaries more clearly between them. But if we cast the net any wider, all remaining cohesion threatens to be lost and the category becomes increasingly a heuristic principle rather than a term descriptive of a specific social or intellectual entity. In one of the most ambitious challenges to Troeltsch’s attempted schema of the Radical Reformation, Walter Klaassen rejected the implicit claim that the underlying assumptions of the Spiritualists were the polar opposites of the biblical literalism of the Anabaptists. As a result, he denied the existence of a distinct Spiritualist type in the Reformation and preferred to speak of degrees of spiritualization.5 By this understanding, the concept of Spiritualist Anabaptists potentially covers the full range of Anabaptists who fall between the most extreme biblicist and spiritualist ends of Klaassen’s scale. This makes the Spiritualist Anabaptists a much more common, and much more influential, occurrence.

4 Williams (1957), 29–30; Williams (1992), 1238, 1252, 1268, 1275; Snyder (1995), 134, 137, 163, 305–14, 317–24, 351. 5 Klaassen (1963).

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However, what the term gains here in significance, it loses in clarity and coherence. The First Spiritualist Anabaptists: Hans Denck and Ludwig Hätzer Contemporaries of Hans Denck referred to him, with less than flattering intent, as the “pope,” “abbot,” or “rabbi” of the Anabaptists, testifying to his prominence as well as the enigmatic nature of his thought. Subsequent scholarship has seen in him a crucial figure in the development of both Anabaptism and Reformation Spiritualism. Traditional assessments of his significance rested on assumptions that he was the leader of an evangelical reform party, variously described as Spiritualist or “moderate Anabaptist,” which rivaled that of Luther. According to this perspective, Denck’s reforming activities began in Nuremberg in a milieu dominated by the thought of Thomas Müntzer and possibly in contact with Ludwig Hätzer. After his expulsion from Nuremberg in 1525, Denck took over from Hätzer leadership of a powerful Anabaptist community in Augsburg. Subsequently the two men collaborated closely in their reforming activities, culminating in Denck’s leadership of the Martyrs’ Synod in Augsburg in 1527. The subsequent suppression of Denck’s party opened the doors to the ascendancy of the more radical Münsterite variety of Anabaptism.6 While the general outlines of this interpretation have been abandoned, assumptions that Denck was at the center of some sort of cohesive reforming party have lingered. Denck’s career as an Anabaptist is usually bracketed by two bookends: his baptism of Hans Hut on Pentecost 1526 in Augsburg and the composition of his Protestation and Confession, published posthumously in 1528 with the additional title Recantation. This title and the circumstances under which the work was published—it had been “tendentiously edited” by Oecolampadius7—have encouraged controversy about what exactly Denck was recanting. Was it his earlier Anabaptist activity, which had been only superficially and unsuccessfully grafted on to his Spiritualist theology? Or was he merely warning against the misuses to which Anabaptism had been put?8 6 7 8

Keller (1882); Jones (1914); Coutts (1927); Weis (1925); Weis (1930). Williams (1992), 286. Packull (1977), 60–61 v. Bauman (1991), 245.

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Sebastian Franck’s observations would suggest the former interpretation. Denck’s own comments, read in the context of his other writings, indicate that if he was not abandoning believers’ baptism he was expressing serious doubts about its use. Behind those doubts was a Spiritualist theology that questioned the value of ceremonies and other religious externals. That this theology remains the foundation of his thought throughout his reforming career is suggested by comparing his Protestation and Confession with his first significant theological statement,9 a confession of faith submitted to the Nuremberg city council in January 1525 after Denck had been implicated in the trial of the three “godless painters,” Bartholomew and Sebald Behaim and George Prenz, who had been accused of denying the divinity of Christ. In his Protestation and Confession Denck divides his comments into ten articles. The first of these discusses the theme traditionally treated as the cornerstone of definitions of Reformation Spiritualism: Scripture and its relationship to the Spirit. Although a committed Spiritualist on this issue, Denck is not completely dismissive of the importance of Scripture, describing it as the greatest treasure given to humankind. However, he refuses to identify it directly with the Word of God, which he characterizes as living, powerful and eternal, and which must remain free and unfettered from all elements of this world. Like God, it is spirit and not letter. And, therefore, salvation is not bound to Scripture—it is possible to be saved without hearing Scripture preached or read. In his Nuremberg Confession Denck explained further that an undue reliance on the literal text of Scripture can be destructive. This happened in the ancient church. Shortly after the deaths of the apostles there arose numerous sects and divisions, each armed with its own battery of misunderstood biblical texts. The next four articles of the Protestation and Confession deal with soteriological matters related to Denck’s assumptions about the relationship between letter and spirit: the restitution of Christ, faith, free will, and good works. Denck affirms the necessity of Christ’s atoning sacrifice for salvation, but rejects the sola fide formulation of the magisterial reformers. To rely on Christ’s atonement without turning from sin, he argues, is idolatry. Faith consists of both obedience

9

Packull (1977), 47.

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to God and confidence in His promises. Without the obedience, the confidence is false. In the Nuremberg Confession Denck had identified faith with a “something” within himself which resists the natural inclination to evil and yearns for life or salvation. This faith does not come from hearing or reading, but is inherent in our nature. In fact, it is essential not only for salvation, but also for the correct understanding of Scripture. Dismissing the controversy over freedom or bondage of the will as quibbling over words, he insists that there must be an element of human accountability in economies of salvation. With God’s help, one can overcome sin and unbelief. Denck clarified the implications of his Spiritualist theology for his understanding of religious externals in the last five articles of the Protestation and Confession which dealt with ceremonies, baptism, the Lord’s Supper, the oath, and nonconformity. His underlying assumption through all of this is that the inner disposition of the believer is more important than conformity to external forms and that ceremonies are valuable only insofar as they direct the believer’s trust away from externals and toward true spiritual worship. In the Nuremberg Confession Denck characterized baptism as nothing more than the symbol of a covenant between God and the believer by which the believer agrees to die with Christ to the old Adam. Although he described baptism as “reception into the fellowship of believers” in the Protestation and Confession, he cautions would-be baptizers to ensure that they have a divine calling for their actions or to desist from them. In this respect, he declares infant baptism a human ordinance that can be retained or rejected depending on its ability to direct the believer to inner, spiritual baptism. Believers’ baptism is more in accord with the stipulations of Scripture, but it, too, could be dropped if it draws believers away from inner baptism. The Lord’s Supper should be understood as a spiritual eating and drinking of Christ’s body and blood which fosters union with Christ. On the questions of the oath and separation from the ungodly, Denck opts for a middle ground between the Anabaptists and their opponents. He insists that oaths are not prohibited by Scripture, but cautions that one should not swear to anything that cannot in good conscience be fulfilled. And although he deplores the divisions that have appeared in Christendom as a result of the Reformation, he insists that each individual should be free to seek salvation in his or her own way. Taken together, these two works reveal a fundamental continuity in the Spiritualist essentials of Denck’s theology, although

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the Protestation and Confession shows a greater concern for specifically “Anabaptist” issues. These foundations of Denck’s thought, like those of other Reformation Spiritualists, derive from a synthesis of Renaissance humanism and medieval mysticism. Denck clearly possessed the necessary humanist credentials. Probably first exposed to the movement at the University of Ingolstadt, he was drawn to Basel most likely by the fame of its humanist community. There he worked as a proofreader, and was connected to Oecolampadius and possibly even Erasmus. On Oecolampadius’ recommendation, Denck was appointed rector of the prestigious school attached to the St. Sebald’s parish in Nuremberg, a position he held from 1523 to 1525. In Nuremberg his involvement with humanism continued, although it was now complemented by a mystical piety derived from the teachings of medieval German mysticism reinforced by the activities of Johann von Staupitz in the city on the eve of the Reformation. The mystical tradition provided several foundational building blocks for the theology of Denck and many other Spiritualist Anabaptists. Its anthropological assumption of a divine spark in humans—Denck’s “something” within himself— laid the basis for thinking about salvation in terms of a mystical union with the divine. Since, according to this worldview, only spirit could communicate with spirit, faith and salvation could not be attained through external means, hence the devaluation of Scripture and ceremonies as one turned the soul from the creaturely toward the divine. These assumptions also yielded important Christological implications which relegated the historical Jesus to a primarily pedagogical role. While the importance of medieval mysticism for Denck’s thought is widely recognized, more contentious have been questions about how that tradition was mediated to him. In particular, the extent to which Karlstadt and Müntzer influenced Denck’s thought remains controversial. The writings of the Saxon radicals were widely discussed and influential in Nuremberg, especially in the circles Denck moved in; and Denck had personal connections to Müntzer’s associates, if not to Müntzer himself.10 In the most comprehensive and thorough treatment of this subject, Werner Packull suggests that Denck’s mystically inspired anthropology, his Christology and his

10

Baring (1959).

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soteriology, as well as his views on Scripture and revelation, are all markedly similar to those of Müntzer and some of his associates.11 Recent Müntzer research has reinforced these conclusions by playing down his reputation as a revolutionary or murder prophet and highlighting the humanist and mystical components in his thought.12 Denck’s first encounter with Anabaptism appears to have come in Switzerland, although details of his activities in the Confederacy are sparse. We do know that he was imprisoned in Schwyz for his statements against infant baptism, and then, in September 1525, he surfaced in St. Gall. There he stayed with an Anabaptist, although there are no further mentions of contact with the movement. Contemporary sources also accuse him of teaching universalism at this time. It appears that Denck was not yet an Anabaptist at this point, and his encounter with Swiss Anabaptism provides the clearest example of Stayer’s description of a constructive misunderstanding between mystical Spiritualists and New Testament biblicists. In Switzerland Denck had established only tentative connections to Anabaptism; those connections became more secure during his stay in Augsburg from September 1525 to October 1526. The research of Werner Packull has laid to rest traditional assumptions that Denck was baptized by Balthasar Hubmaier in Augsburg, and thereby was converted from Müntzerite revolutionary Spiritualism to legitimate Swiss Anabaptism.13 However, Denck did baptize Hans Hut on Pentecost 1526, and likely Johannes Bünderlin around that time as well. What Denck intended with these acts is not completely clear, although his Spiritualism, and the choice of Pentecost for Hut’s baptism, suggest that he regarded it as the symbolic entrance to a Spiritualist community as he later indicated in his Protestation and Confession. Certainly, Denck’s writings from this period in his life suggest no fundamental change in his thinking about baptism or the theological underpinnings of his position on it. In fact, themes introduced in the Nuremberg Confession are elaborated in three further works: Whether God is the Cause of Evil, Concerning the Law of God, and He Who Truly Loves the Truth. Whether God is the Cause of Evil weighs in on the questions of predestination and freedom of the will raised by the exchange between 11 12 13

Packull (1977), 46–56. Bubenheimer (1989). Packull (1973).

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Luther and Erasmus.14 Here Denck challenges the possibility of any connection between divine foreknowledge and divine responsibility for evil and, further developing his mystically derived soteriology, he emphasizes the importance of human accountability in the process of salvation. In Concerning the Law of God Denck returns to this theme, focusing on the nature of Christ’s fulfillment of the law. He argues that Christ’s primary purpose was to serve as an example of that fulfillment rather than to exempt his followers from the law’s strictures. This discussion leads Denck to a consideration of the relationship between the law and ceremonies. Here he elaborates on his earlier statements about the relationship between internal disposition and external observance. His basic starting point is that the law of love stands above all other requirements; he who fulfills the law of love fulfills the requirements associated with all ceremonies. If one has love, all ceremonies are unnecessary; without love, no ceremonies can be properly observed. In terms of practical reform procedures, ceremonies can be retained or abandoned as the case may demand based on their value in encouraging or discouraging the law of love. At the beginning of Concerning the Law of God Denck explained that he was compelled to write by the unprecedented corruption of the age and the large numbers of people led astray by the religious divisions around him. This state of affairs, he argued, stemmed from the biblical literalism of the contending religious parties. This point was made clearest in He Who Truly Loves the Truth, where Denck suggested that both current and past sectarianism would not have arisen if people had only heeded the Spirit as their only tutor. In this work Denck adopted the common humanist and Spiritualist tactic of pointing out paradoxes arising from apparently conflicting statements in Scripture to highlight the insufficiency and even destructiveness of relying on a literal reading of Scriptural texts. Such a criticism of biblical literalism is a consistent theme running through Denck’s Augsburg writings. He frequently distinguishes between the Word and Scripture or between Truth and the testimony to that Truth, and he insists on the role of the Spirit in a proper understanding of Scripture. He also sharpens his criticism of the reformers, warning against turning Scripture into an idol as Schriftgelehrten do.

14

Bauman (1991), 72.

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Assumptions that Denck took over from Hätzer leadership of an Anabaptist or proto-Anabaptist community in Augsburg now appear to be untenable. It is likely that the two men did not even meet there; when Denck arrived in September Hätzer may have already departed the city.15 However, they did have mutual acquaintances in the city, prominent among whom was Jörg Regel. Regel’s additional ties to Sebastian Franck and Caspar Schwenkfeld suggest that any group Denck and Hätzer were involved with was less a strictly organized Anabaptist church than a loosely organized sacramentarian community in which the teachings of Karlstadt and Müntzer flourished.16 If Denck and Hätzer did not meet each other in Augsburg, they were certainly subsequently acquainted in Strasbourg. Drawn into a confrontation with the Lutheran clergy in Augsburg, Denck fled the city before a public disputation could be held and arrived in Strasbourg in October of 1526. He was joined there by Hätzer in the first half of December. The nature of their interactions and experiences in Strasbourg suggest that they were not collaborators or close associates beforehand. Hätzer was well received by the city’s reformers and he apparently stayed with Wolfgang Capito at the same time that Martin Cellarius and Michael Sattler were the reformer’s guests. By way of contrast, Denck was regarded by the reformers as a “sly hypocrite” and “deceiver of the people.” Likely points of contention between him and the Strasbourg clergy were his soteriology, which they saw as a new form of works righteousness, and his Christology, which they felt denigrated Christ’s role in the process of salvation. Further evidence suggests that the Strasbourg reformers became increasingly concerned by the perceived influence Denck was exercising on Hätzer when both men were resident in the city. Recent scholarship has largely seconded the observations of the Strasbourg reformers about Denck’s influence on Hätzer. Like Denck, Hätzer was trained as a humanist and was a skilled linguist. He, too, was drawn to the Reformation, particularly to its more radical manifestations, but in a Swiss rather than a Saxon context. As a result, Hätzer’s early reforming orientation has been described as dominated by a “massive biblicism.” Although he moved in radical,

15 16

Packull (1977), 92–93. Williams (1992), 255.

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proto-Anabaptist circles in Zurich, he never took the final step of accepting baptism there, and in the disputation about baptism before the Zurich Council he sided with Zwingli. The Eucharistic controversy, in which he came under the influence of Karlstadt, encouraged his increasingly Spiritualist orientation, but his final conversion to Spiritualism came under Denck’s influence, as did his deteriorating relationship with Sattler at this time.17 In December 1526 Denck faced Martin Bucer in a public disputation, after which he was expelled from Strasbourg. Traveling down the Rhine, he stopped in several communities along the way and engaged local religious leaders on a variety of theological issues. Hätzer apparently remained in Strasbourg until the end of January, although he may have maintained contact with Denck during this time.18 By the end of February both men were in Worms and working in close concert. They quickly won over two of the local clergy, Hilarius and Jacob Kautz, to their cause. By March Kautz was expressing doubts about the baptism of infants and gave up on the practice completely shortly thereafter.19 This was also a productive period in literary terms. Together Denck and Hätzer completed a German translation of the Old Testament prophetic books begun in Strasbourg, and Denck published two more of his own works: Concerning True Love and The Order of God. At the same time further reforming measures were undertaken by Kautz and Hilarius, although it is assumed that Denck and Hätzer had a hand in these as well. On June 7, 1527, the Friday before Pentecost, Kautz posted 7 Articles on the door of the Dominican church in Worms. These were intended as the basis for a disputation with the Lutheran clergy of the city to be held a week later. But the clergy declined the invitation and instead on the appointed day Kautz, Hilarius and two “unnamed brethren” explained the theses in a public sermon. The clergy responded with seven counter-theses and then the city council intervened, expelling Kautz and Hilarius from the city on July 1. The next day the clergy of Strasbourg responded to Kautz’s theses with A Faithful Warning. Around this time Denck and Hätzer, too, left the city.

17 18 19

Goeters (1957). Ibid., 96–97. Ibid., 98–99.

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There is a general consensus among scholars that Kautz’s articles reflect the fundamentals of Denck’s thought. This assessment echoes the judgement of Denck’s contemporaries: a copy of the articles preserved by a chronicler from Worms contains not only Kautz’s name, but also those of Denck, Hätzer and Melchior Rinck; and in their response to the articles, the Strasbourg clergy attributed them ultimately to Denck. There is no clear reason to challenge these conclusions. The traditional touchstone of Denck’s Spiritualism—a sharp distinction between the internal and the external, the spiritual and the carnal—pervades the articles. Article one lays the foundation for the rest, distinguishing clearly the inner, spiritual Word of God from the external, literal Word. Article two contrasts more generally the efficacy of spiritual content with the emptiness of the physical sign alone in all manner of ceremonies and activities. The next two articles draw the implications of this position for the nature of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Article three declares infant baptism to be against God and article four denies the doctrine of the real presence. The final three articles focus on questions of Christology and the nature of Christ’s atonement, and they reflect Denck’s criticism of the Reformation principle of justification by faith. The articles criticize predestinarianism by claiming that all those perverted by the actions of the first Adam can be restored by the second Adam, Christ. And they insist that Christ’s atonement requires following in his footsteps and conforming one’s own will to the divine. Martin Bucer asserted that the posting of these articles was an attempt to initiate an Anabaptist reformation in Worms similar to that carried out by Balthasar Hubmaier in Waldshut. However, on close analysis, the group around Denck looks more like a humanist sodality with common theological interests than an Anabaptist conventicle. It appears that the study of Hebrew was an important focus of this group: four of the group were Hebraists and two others had considerable linguistic skills. The translation of the prophets by Hätzer and Denck reinforces this perception, suggesting that the men were working in collaboration with the local Jewish community. Their annotations indicate a serious academic concern with the integrity of the text. Also notable in the translation is the absence of Christological readings of the prophets, and there is some speculation that this work encouraged Hätzer’s later Antitrinitarianism.20 20

Rothkegel (2000b), 52–53; Beck (2001).

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Challenging such an interpretation are charges made by the Strasbourg clergy in A Faithful Warning. These accusations make it appear that Kautz, Denck and Hätzer were assembling a gathered church much on the model of Swiss Brethren groups. Specifically, the Strasbourg clergy attributed to the Worms radicals positions on secular authority, the oath, community of goods and separation from godless society that sound very much like those of the Swiss Brethren. Hans Werner Müsing has argued that in the response to Kautz’s articles, Bucer, the likely author of the report, was in fact responding to events in both Strasbourg and Worms. Bucer directed responses dealing with matters of the Spirit to Kautz, Denck and the others in Worms, while aiming those on traditional Swiss Brethren concerns at Sattler and other radical biblicists in Strasbourg.21 Contentious parts of the accusations leveled by the Strasbourg clergy are similar in important ways to parts of Denck’s On True Love that are possibly spurious. Final segments of that work deal with ostensibly Swiss Brethren topics such as baptism, the ban, the oath and secular authority. These portions were included in the original 1527 publication in Worms, but omitted from a subsequent 1530 edition. And they seem out of place when compared with Denck’s discussions in the earlier parts of On True Love and in The Order of God. In the former he concentrates on the primacy and sufficiency of the law of love and its relationship to external ceremonies; in the latter, possibly in further reflection on matters discussed in Strasbourg, he returns to the question of the relationship between divine foreknowledge and human free will. The status of the final sections of On True Love, then, remains a hotly contested issue among scholars.22 Within the context of their other activities and statements at Worms, it seems unlikely that Kautz, Hätzer and Denck were attempting to establish a Swiss Brethren-style Anabaptist community. On the other hand, parallels between the accusations of the Strasbourg clergy and the disputed parts of On True Love raise the possibility that Denck may have been involved in activities in Worms that he later retracted in his letter to Oecolampadius. If Denck were still trying to reconcile his teachings with Anabaptism in Worms, his subsequent abandonment of that enterprise may have 21 22

178.

Müsing (1977), 118–19. Keller (1882); Packull (1977), 59 v. QGT VI(1) (Baring), 35–36; Bauman (1991),

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resulted in part from his experiences at the Martyrs’ Synod. It is unclear whether or not Denck and Hätzer traveled together from Worms to Augsburg or whether Hätzer participated in the Martyrs’ Synod. It is clear that Denck did, but there is some debate about his role in the synod and its implications for the further development of his thought. Earlier assumptions that he was a central figure, perhaps even presiding over the gathering, are now generally dismissed. Scholars now suggest that Hans Hut and his teachings took center stage and that the growing sectarianism evident among Hut’s followers likely fueled Denck’s growing disillusionment with Anabaptism.23 After the Martyrs’ Synod, Denck traveled to Basel, where he wrote his appeal to Oecolampadius and his “Recantation.” Given the sentiments expressed there, the assumption that he undertook this journey as an Anabaptist missionary commissioned by the Augsburg gathering seems unlikely. Equally questionable is the suggestion that Denck traveled with Hätzer at this time and that they visited Ulm and Nuremberg together. Denck entered Basel in October 1527 and died of the plague there in November. No less enigmatic are Hätzer’s subsequent activities. After leaving Augsburg he may have visited Nuremberg, Donauworth and Regensburg. In the last place he allegedly baptized three men and a woman, an action that stands in sharp contrast to the tone of his writings from this period, which chronicle his movement in the direction of more extreme Spiritualism. Having completed his translation of the prophets, he turned his talents to the Apocrypha, especially its wisdom literature, and he edited the Theologia Deutsch. Hätzer also wrote two more pamphlets which have not survived, though the contents have been preserved in the records of his 1529 trial in Constance. In A Booklet Concerning School Teachers Hätzer attacked the biblicism of the “scribes,” accusing them of missing the Spirit behind the letter. And in A Booklet Concerning Christ he apparently relegated the historical Christ to the status of a prophet and laid out the essentials of his growing Antitrinitarianism. This teaching was confirmed in one of the many hymns he composed during his life. In 1529 Hätzer was executed in Constance, ostensibly for adultery with the wife of Jörg Regel of Augsburg.

23

Packull (1977), 60, 118–19.

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Although they left behind no lasting organized body of followers, Denck and Hätzer did bequeath an important legacy to the Radical Reformation. Denck’s baptism of Hans Hut has traditionally been regarded as a pivotal event in the development of South German and Austrian Anabaptism. With this act, it was assumed, Hut was converted from being a disciple of Müntzer to being a follower of Denck and a peaceful Anabaptist. Subsequent research has suggested that Denck’s impact on Hut’s thought was not as significant as assumed.24 Nonetheless, claims about Denck’s significance for the development of both Anabaptism and Spiritualism are still valid. Elements of his thought, especially his teaching that divine grace was extended to all and that human beings had the freedom to accept it, were important factors in converting Melchior Hoffman from his early Lutheranism and became cornerstones of his Anabaptist beliefs.25 Similarly, Denck was likely an important catalyst for Sebastian Franck’s spiritual development. Franck’s first literary endeavor was the translation into German of Andreas Althamer’s Latin Diallage, a Lutheran refutation of Denck’s He Who Truly Loves the Truth, and this encounter with Denck’s thought likely encouraged Franck’s own migration from Lutheranism to Reformation Spiritualism. Although he retained the Lutheran foundations of Althamer’s attack on Denck, Franck’s comments in the introduction to this work suggest that he was beginning to move into the Spiritualist camp.26 More immediate, though, was the influence Denck had on the development of Swiss Anabaptism through his encounter with Michael Sattler in Strasbourg. Not only did Denck’s Spiritualism set the stage for subsequent divisions within Strasbourg’s Anabaptist community, but echoes of Sattler’s response to the challenge posed by Denck’s brand of Anabaptism may be evident in “The Schleitheim Articles.”27 Strasbourg and the Parting of Ways: Johannes Bünderlin and Christian Entfelder The uneasy synthesis of Spiritualism and Anabaptism effected by Denck and Hätzer unraveled most fully and visibly in Strasbourg at 24 25 26 27

Ibid., 62–66. Deppermann (1987), 160, 185, 190, 387. Williams (1992), 394–95. Kiwiet (1957), 250; Meihuizen (1967).

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the end of the 1520s and beginning of the 1530s. There a series of conflicts within the dissident community led to the clarification of distinct Anabaptist and Spiritualist positions. Scholars have usually regarded this as a gradual process: implicit disagreements in the relationship between Denck and Sattler in 1526 became visible differences between Kautz and the Swiss Anabaptist leader Wilhelm Reublin in 1528, which then came fully into the open in the contest which pitted Entfelder and Bünderlin against Pilgram Marpeck.28 The activities of Kautz, who returned to Strasbourg in 1528, suggest that there were not yet clear lines distinguishing biblicist from Spiritualist Anabaptists in the city. Although differences did exist between the Anabaptist followers of Sattler and those of Denck, Kautz was able to establish a working relationship with Wilhelm Reublin that included a joint poor relief fund and a common front against the city’s reformers. On October 2, 1528, Kautz was arrested along with Reublin, Fridolin Meyger and Pilgram Marpeck. In subsequent affairs Kautz’s name became closely linked to Reublin’s. After attempts to convert the two men failed, authorities banished them from Strasbourg, but not before they left some interesting and informative statements in their exchanges with the Strasbourg clergy and authorities. Reublin indicated in a joint profession of faith with Kautz that he and Kautz were not in harmony on all matters. Nonetheless, historians have emphasized the fact that the two men could work so closely together as an indication that the lines between Anabaptism and Spiritualism had yet to be clearly drawn. From what we can ascertain from these sources, Kautz stuck closely to the principles that had guided his reforming activity in Worms. He continued to make a sharp distinction between the visible and the invisible church, insisting that the invisible church had no connection to “external elements.” Yet, other aspects of Kautz’s vision suggest that he looked to the establishment of a gathered church. He insisted, for example, that those commissioned to assemble the visible church from all lands needed a divine calling distinct from any earthly calling, and he apparently felt that he and Reublin had received the divine commission to establish the true visible church. While asserting that external elements and ceremonies were not essen-

28

Stayer (1996), 263–65; Snyder (1995), 134, 305–14.

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tial to the invisible church, they allotted them a crucial role in the assembling of the visible church. Water baptism was important in marking entrance to a community whose unity was maintained through the breaking of bread and a judicious use of the ban. But behind this attempt to revive the apostolic church in a manner similar to that of the Swiss Brethren, Kautz remained loyal to the fundamentals of Denck’s thought. In the end, water baptism was nothing more than a mere external sign. Not surprisingly, the uneasy alliance between Kautz and Reublin did not last in the hothouse atmosphere of Strasbourg’s dissident community. Strasbourg’s reputation for toleration and the spiritualizing inclinations of her reformers led to a flood of religious radicals into the city which supplemented the already sizable indigenous dissident community. Among the newcomers were Johannes Bünderlin and Christian Entfelder, both of whom arrived in 1529. Both men were humanist-educated Catholic clergy drawn to the Reformation in Moravia. After his baptism by Denck, Bünderlin returned to his native Linz where he led a local reforming community until forced to leave the area. In 1528 he arrived in Nikolsburg, where he apparently witnessed the conflict between the so-called “sword bearers” (Schwertler) and “staff bearers” (Stäbler), led by Hans Spittelmeier and Jacob Wiedemann respectively. He sided with the Schwertler, but was forced to leave the region in 1528. Entfelder appears also to have had ties with Nikolsburg. He had been in contact with Hubmaier there in 1526 and then took the leadership of a radical conventicle in Eibenschitz. There he headed up a broad based reform movement that encouraged the coexistence of German Anabaptists with the local population and tolerated a variety of opinions on such contentious issues as child baptism. However, in 1528 a stricter Anabaptist group upset the equilibrium in Eibenschitz, likely under the influence of the community in nearby Austerlitz where the Wiedemann group had settled. Seemingly finding the new circumstances untenable, Entfelder, too, departed Moravia. Bünderlin and Entfelder may have known each other in Moravia, however the details of any such relationship are unclear. Like Denck and Hätzer before them, they had drastically different experiences in Strasbourg. During his short stay there of less than a year, Bünderlin was arrested twice with groups of Anabaptists and then expelled. He may have had connections with a group maintaining ties to Denck’s and Hätzer’s ministry in the city, likely through the person of Fridolin

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Meyger.29 Little further is known about his activities, but he was able to publish four writings in Strasbourg in 1529 and 1530. Three of these—A General Reckoning of the Contents of Holy Scripture, The Reason Why God Descended and Became Man in Christ, and A General Introduction to the Proper Understanding of Moses and the Prophets—lay out the essentials of his thought without an explicit attack on the biblicist Anabaptists. However, the fourth work, Explanation through Study of Biblical Writings, that Water Baptism and All Other External Ceremonies Used in the Apostolic Church Are Currently Being Reintroduced Without God’s Command or the Testimony of Scripture, challenged their activities directly. Surprisingly, we know even less about Entfelder’s activities, despite the fact that he remained in the Imperial city until 1533. We do, however, have three surviving pamphlets that Entfelder published during this period of his life: On the Manifold Divisions in the Faith (1530), On True Piety (1530), and On the Perception of God and of Our Lord (1533). Bünderlin’s Explanation and similar challenges to the Anabaptists in Entfelder’s On the Manifold Divisions did not go unanswered. In 1531 Pilgram Marpeck published two works in response to this Spiritualist challenge: A Clear Refutation answered Bünderlin’s work and A Clear and Useful Instruction refuted Entfelder.30 As a number of scholars have noted, the conflict with Marpeck focused on questions concerning the reform or reinstitution of church ordinances and ceremonies, and the significance of apostolic precedent for that activity, rather than on questions regarding the Spirit and its relationship to Scripture. In general terms, Bünderlin and Entfelder were in agreement on these matters. Both argued that justifications were lacking for the reinstitution of apostolic practices in the church. These ceremonies and ordinances, among which they included baptism and the Lord’s Supper, had rested on a divine commission given to the apostles that was valid only during their lifetimes. After the deaths of the apostles these traditions had been perverted by those who continued their use without a proper mandate. Increasingly, the church clung to the external ceremonies independent of their deeper spiritual understanding. Referring specifically to baptism, Entfelder suggested that corruption had set in already in Paul’s day, when groups of Christians had begun naming themselves after those who

29 30

Packull (1977), 157. Packull (1995), 133–34.

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had baptized them. As a result, he argued, Paul had suspended baptism for the sake of unity (1 Corinthians 1:12–17). The focus on externals had led to escalating corruptions and divisions within the church. To reinstitute ceremonies without a new divine mandate, which neither man saw as evident in their age, would only lead to further divisions and sectarianism. As a result, both men called for a suspension of all ceremonies to encourage unity. These positions echo some of Denck’s statements in his Protestation or Confession, particularly on the need for a new commission to restore the ceremonies and ordinances of the primitive church. Similarly, their teachings on the relationship between the Spirit and the letter, between the living Word of God and Scripture, seem to be elaborations on Denck’s earlier comments. Denck had described Scripture as a precious gift, but refused nonetheless to identify it with the living Word of God, suggesting instead that it was only a witness to that Word. Both Bünderlin and Entfelder take this position as a starting point and then sharpen further the distinction between Scripture and the Word. In particular, they go beyond Denck in their criticism of the literalism of their contemporaries. In the Nuremberg Confession Denck suggested that biblical literalism was linked to divisiveness and sectarianism in the early church. Bünderlin and Entfelder identify it as the source of concern with externals that has plagued the church throughout its history. Applied to contemporary circumstances, their comments reveal a growing disillusionment with developments within the Anabaptist movement. According to Entfelder, behind this mentality are the “scribes”—not only the old learned scribes, but also the new scribes who boast of their lack of learning and claim to be taught directly by God. In other important ways Bünderlin and Entfelder elaborate on the earlier criticisms of the more sectarian Anabaptists. This is especially evident in their treatments of the history of human interaction with the divine. Although he never developed a comprehensive vision of salvation history, Denck did allude to the past in some of his writings. In Whether God is the Cause of Evil he appealed to the history of Israel and its pattern of obedience and disobedience to reinforce his contrast between the constancy of divine foreknowledge and variability of human responses to the divine. This use of the history of the ancient Israelites takes an interesting turn in Concerning the Law of God when Denck interprets events of the Old Testament on a continuum tracing the gradual spiritual growth of humankind. The

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extensive external apparatus of Hebrew religion was required, he insists, because at that point in their history spiritual speech was still foreign to the Israelites. If at that time they had had true love of God, so many laws would not have been necessary. But beyond these general comments, Denck’s historical references are scattered and infrequent. By way of contrast, both Bünderlin and Entfelder develop elaborate historical schemes to explain their opposition to the reintroduction of apostolic ceremonies. Both men see a basic dialectical pattern of divine revelation and human response underlying all salvation history. History consists of a series of spiritual disclosures and their subsequent perversion through a human focus on the carnal means of revelation rather than its spiritual message. But despite the dialectical interaction, the overall pattern is one of progressive spiritualization. The earliest manifestations of the divine in nature were revealed and understood in primarily carnal terms. This set the context for the establishment of the covenant with Israel. But here, too, the carnal means of revelation overwhelmed its spiritual message: Scripture became a substitute for the experience of the divine and religious practice was reduced to formal ceremonialism. As a result when Christ came to earth he did so in an earthly body and made use of external ceremonies for the sake of “fleshly Israel.” Nonetheless, the Incarnation still served as a dividing line between the past age and a present, increasingly spiritual epoch; and insofar as the apostolic church serves as a model for Bünderlin and Entfelder, it is as the model of a pneumatic community. Despite the many similarities between their historical schemes, Bünderlin and Entfelder draw subtly different conclusions from the lessons of history, and those conclusions may help to explain their different experiences in Strasbourg. For Bünderlin the age of the external church had passed and the true church exists only in the hearts of believers. This conclusion led him to call for the complete abrogation of all ceremonies and external ordinances of the church. Entfelder, however, was less categorical in his rejection of apostolic ceremonies and practices. Although he regarded such externals as valid only for the duration of the lives of those commissioned to institute them, his response was to call for a Stillstand on the practice of such ceremonies until there was a divine mandate to reinstitute them, and he was more optimistic than Bünderlin that such a mandate was forthcoming. The Strasbourg reformers, who had ear-

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lier entertained the idea of a temporary Stillstand on the Eucharist, would likely have been more receptive to this position than to Bünderlin’s more radical rejection of all ceremonies. Scholars have traditionally treated the thought of Bünderlin and Entfelder primarily as an elaboration on Denck’s theology.31 This suggests that there was significant cohesiveness and even a progression of ideas among the South German Spiritualist Anabaptists. However, the lines of development may not have been as clear and distinct as generally assumed. Noting that Bünderlin, Entfelder and Marpeck all had ties to Moravian Anabaptist groups and that in On Manifold Divisions Entfelder explicitly addresses issues in Moravia, Packull has argued that the debate in Strasbourg must also be considered in its Moravian context. He has further suggested that Bünderlin and Entfelder may have arrived in Strasbourg with manuscripts already in hand of the writings which sparked the confrontation with Marpeck.32 Beyond the significance of Packull’s observations for the nature of the subsequent debate, they may also have important implications for our understanding of the Spiritualist Anabaptists. In particular, their connections to Hubmaier and the Nikolsburg Reformation suggest that Bünderlin and Entfelder may not have been such direct spiritual and intellectual heirs of Denck as once thought. Recent research by Martin Rothkegel has emphasized Spiritualist components in Nikolsburg Anabaptism that have hitherto not been sufficiently recognized, and behind them ties between the Reformation in Nikolsburg and Schwenckfeld’s activity in Liegnitz. The Spiritualism of Bünderlin and Entfelder, then, may have developed as much from indigenous Silesian and Moravian roots as from the Saxon tradition transmitted by Denck. Sorting out these lines of development is a promising task for future research.33 Like Denck and Hätzer before them, Kautz, Bünderlin and Entfelder all ended their lives as committed Spiritualists and largely individualist nonconformists. After his expulsion from Strasbourg, Kautz eventually settled in Moravia where he lived a Nicodemite existence as a schoolmaster while holding Spiritualist and Antitrinitarian views. Bünderlin and Entfelder gravitated toward Schwenkfeld, with whom

31 32 33

Foster (1965); Packull (1977), 164. Packull (1995), 134–35, 139. Rothkegel (2000a), 42–44, 134–35, 180, 190.

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both men likely were able to establish personal connections. Their subsequent reforming activities appear to have followed the pattern already established in Strasbourg. Bünderlin led a semi-nomadic existence, appearing here and there, criticizing the Anabaptists and attempting to mediate between Spiritualist and magisterial reforming visions. Entfelder, by contrast, seems to have been much more successful in establishing relationships with reform-minded authorities and, consequently, enjoyed a more stable existence. Also, like Denck before them, both Bünderlin and Entfelder contributed to the further development of several strains of radical reform. Bünderlin, in particular, encouraged the further development of Sebastian Franck’s distinctive brand of Reformation Spiritualism. Although Franck and Schwenckfeld were able to work together in Strasbourg and elsewhere in the early 1530s, their paths gradually diverged through the decade until they broke completely with each other by 1540. Among the issues of contention was the radicalism of Franck’s rejection of all external religious forms. A similar radicalism distinguished Bünderlin’s vision from Entfelder’s and may account for the brevity of his stay in Strasbourg. In his famous letter to John Campanus, written in the midst of the conflict involving Marpeck, Bünderlin and Entfelder, Franck recommended Bünderlin to Campanus in terms that suggested he had a close personal relationship with Bünderlin. While Franck arrived in Strasbourg with the essential outlines of his Spiritualist theology in place, crucial details of that theology were hammered out in the midst of the Strasbourg controversy.34 The conflicts in which Bünderlin and Entfelder were embroiled, both in Strasbourg and Moravia, had important consequences for the subsequent development of Anabaptism. The showdown with Marpeck not only directly influenced his assessment of ceremonies, his theology of the cross and the sophistication of his understanding of church history, but it also laid the groundwork for his later conflict with Schwenckfeld and the resulting development of his hermeneutics.35 As well, these conflicts bequeathed to Moravian Anabaptism a mixture of Spiritualist and Anabaptist characteristics that led to

34

McLaughlin (1985), 270; Dipple (1999). Packull (1977), 163; Boyd (1992), 62, 84–90; Packull (1995), 133–34; Snyder (1995), 305; Dipple (1999). 35

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the later emergence of Spiritualist-inspired criticisms from within the movement. The case of Gabriel Ascherham is a good illustration. In 1544 Gabriel wrote On the Distinction Between Divine and Human Teaching in response to the perceived poaching of his followers by Hutterite missionaries. As part of a general denunciation of papists, Lutherans and so-called Brethren, he leveled a scathing attack on Hutterite teaching and practice from a decidedly Spiritualist position. He denounced “the Brethren” especially for their legalism and excessive concern with the external and creaturely. Among the Hutterite practices he critiqued was their baptism—a new idolatry which placed more trust in the water than in the Spirit. In light of the disagreements that had arisen over correct baptismal practice, Gabriel suggested that it would be better to let go of the external rite than to fight over it. At first glance, this rejection of water baptism would appear to place Gabriel alongside Bünderlin and Entfelder in the camp of former Anabaptists who repudiated their past.36 But in his case the lines are not so clearly drawn. In a work on the Lord’s Supper which appeared in the following year, he emphasized the dignity with which this ceremony should be observed. At this point, then, his thought did not involve a complete repudiation of the external elements of religious life. We do not know whether Gabriel would have moved to a more radically Spiritualist position and rejected all external ceremonies had he lived longer. Nonetheless, his activity highlights some interesting features in the subsequent development of Anabaptism in Silesia and Moravia. Clearly, in this tradition Spiritualist themes lived on and could reemerge to challenge its more sectarian and biblicist characteristics in a manner reminiscent of the original Spiritualist Anabaptists. As well, Gabriel’s reverence for the Eucharist echoes that of Schwenckfeld and points us again to the importance of Silesian and Moravian Spiritualist traditions in the development of both Reformation Spiritualism and Anabaptism. Spiritualist Anabaptists and Melchiorite Anabaptism: Obbe Philips and David Joris Like Gabriel Ascherham, Melchior Hoffman’s thought was a synthesis of Spiritualist and Anabaptist elements. In Melchiorite 36

Williams (1992), 628; Packull (1995), 124.

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Anabaptism, too, a submerged spiritualism emerged periodically to challenge the more dominant Anabaptist tradition. These challenges have often been equated with those posed by Denck, Hätzer, Kautz, Bünderlin and Entfelder to the Anabaptism of southern Germany,37 with distinctive contours derived from Hoffman’s legacy, especially his apocalypticism and the significance of dreams and visions in his thought. Less frequently emphasized are the implications of the fact that through Hoffman as a popular charismatic reformer the Spiritualist Anabaptists in the north received a comprehensive reforming vision synthesizing Spiritualist and Anabaptist elements. As a result, the Spiritualist challenge to northern Anabaptism occurred, initially at least, on a more populist social and intellectual plane than its counterpart in the south. Hoffman was a layman, largely self-taught in theological matters, as were many of his followers. Two of the most important Spiritualist Anabaptists in the north, Obbe Philips and David Joris, fit much the same profile: Obbe was a barber-surgeon and Joris a glass painter. A strong Spiritualist thread, deriving from both native and imported sources, runs through the history of Dutch Anabaptism. Although recent scholarship has become more cautious in identifying the early Dutch Reformation in its entirety with sacramentarianism, significant numbers of early Anabaptists were recruited out of circles loosely defined as sacramentarian, including such prominent later Anabaptist leaders as Jan Matthijs and David Joris.38 The Spiritualist tendencies they inherited from the sacramentarians were reinforced by Hoffman’s legacy. Crucial elements of Hoffman’s reforming vision developed in the atmosphere of Strasbourg’s dissident community, resulting, as James Stayer describes it, in an unstable amalgam of Spiritualism and Anabaptism.39 This is evident in Hoffman’s treatment of “external” or water baptism, which he characterized as symbolic and of no sacramental value. As a result, Hoffman was able to call for a suspension of baptism in 1531 in response to persecution and in 1539 to declare infant baptism as optional, and therefore permissible. Spiritualist strains in the Melchiorite movement were further encouraged after 1535 and the disastrous attempts to externalize matters of the Spirit in Münster. 37 38 39

Williams (1992), 681; Snyder (1995), 317. Zijlstra (2000), 35–36. Stayer (1996), 267–68.

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Obbe Philips had impeccable Melchiorite credentials. He was baptized in December 1533 and ordained the next day by two apostles of Jan Matthijs: Bartholomew Boekbinder and William Cuyper. Thereafter he played a crucial role in the Melchiorite “apostolic succession.” In March 1534 he ordained his brother Dirk; subsequently he ordained David Joris in September 1534 and Menno Simons in late 1536 or early 1537. Obbe is regarded as one of the foremost Anabaptist leaders in the Netherlands between 1534 and 1539.40 But in late 1539 or early 1540 he defected from the movement. Obbe’s own account of his defection suggests that similar forces were at work there as had pushed Denck or Bünderlin and Entfelder away from Anabaptism. His description of his pre-Anabaptist sacramentarian reforming vision sounds much like the outlook of the Spiritualist Anabaptists in the south. He speaks of withdrawing with like-minded people to “worship God quietly in the manner of the fathers and patriarchs,” in order that “each one could seek God from his heart, and serve and follow Him without a preacher, teacher, or any other outward meeting.”41 Obbe further explained that his doubts about the Melchiorite movement rested primarily on two elements especially visible among the Münsterites: a willingness to employ force and a belief in visions and prophetic utterances. However, as Samme Zijlstra has noted, Obbe’s Confession was written years after the fact, in part as a form of self-justification. Its claims therefore must be taken with a grain of salt.42 Together these observations suggest that Obbe’s defection was more a response to contemporary events, particularly those occurring in Münster, than the gradual maturation of an originally Spiritualist theology. After his defection, Obbe moved to Rostock, where he practiced his earlier trade as a barber-surgeon until his death in 1568. He apparently never returned to the state church and his convictions at this time have been described as similar to Franck’s or Schwenckfeld’s.43 Statements in his Confession suggest that by the time he had written it around 1560, he had, in fact, arrived at a radical Spiritualism akin to that of Franck or Schwenckfeld, Bünderlin or Entfelder. He

40 41 42 43

Zijlstra (2000), 108. Ibid. Ibid., 152. Williams (1957), 204; Zijlstra (2000), 171.

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agrees with them that “the first church of Christ and the apostles was destroyed and ruined in early times by Antichrist.” Contemporary attempts to withdraw from the fallen church and serve God in simplicity, peace and humility were undermined by those who “presented themselves as teachers and envoys of God, professing to have been compelled in their hearts by God to baptize, preach, and teach, and establish a new church, since the ancient church had perished.” From these actions there arose no end to “false commissions, prophecies, visions, dreams, revelations and unspeakable spiritual pride.” Congregations were plagued by “great wrangling and dissensions,” and the results were disastrous: Thus it is that a reasonable, impartial Christian may truly say that it is no Christian congregation but a desolate abomination, that it can be no temple of God but a cave of murderers, full of hate, envy, jealousy, spiritual pride, pseudo-piety, hypocrisy, contempt, defamation.

Obbe regarded his own ordination as false—he had felt the laying on of hands but not the presence of the Spirit—and was ashamed that he had ordained others.44 His Confession contains clear parallels to the statements of Denck, Hätzer and Kautz, Bünderlin and Entfelder, but lacks their sophisticated theological and historical reflection. Our knowledge of Obbe’s Spiritualism is limited by the paucity of sources from his pen. The same cannot be said about David Joris and his followers. Like Obbe, David Joris had impeccable Anabaptist credentials. Although his significance in early Dutch Anabaptism was previously downplayed by scholars, he is now recognized as the chief Anabaptist leader in the Netherlands between 1536 and the middle of the 1540s.45 Even more than Obbe, he stands out among Spiritualist Anabaptists as a layman with only limited classical education. He came to Anabaptism from the loosely sacramentarian popular reforming sentiment of the early Dutch Reformation. In 1528 Joris was arrested after making an iconoclastic speech during an Ascension Day procession, suffered corporal punishment and was banished from his home of Delft for three years. During that time he came into contact with Melchiorite ideas.

44 45

Williams (1957), 206–25. Zijlstra (1983); Waite (1990).

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Joris came to his prominence as an Anabaptist leader as a result of his activities at a conference in Bocholt in August 1536. The goal of this gathering was to reunite the splintered Melchiorite movement in the wake of the Münster debacle. The primary issues on the agenda were Münsterite teachings on polygamy and the establishment of the kingdom of God on earth. Joris’ success in establishing at least temporary unity among the groups present was due, in no small part, to shifting focus to teachings they held in common: believers’ baptism, the meaning of the Lord’s Supper, Melchior Hoffman’s teaching on the incarnation, free will, and the doctrine of perfection. Joris successfully side-stepped the more contentious issues. The prestige and authority he garnered at Bocholt were further augmented with the arrest of one of his chief rivals among the Melchiorite leadership, Jan van Batenburg, in December 1537. Batenburg had predicted that either he or Joris would die shortly by hail, pestilence or the sword, and that the survivor would be God’s anointed. Batenburg’s execution in April 1538 seemed to confirm Joris’ status and brought a windfall to his movement in the form of new members from among the former followers of Batenburg. However, Joris’ successes, based largely on his charismatic claims to leadership, were not unqualified during these years. In 1538 he traveled to Strasbourg to get the seal of approval of the Melchiorite leadership there, the “Elders of Israel” in the eyes of most Melchiorites. The main issue at the Strasbourg meeting was the legitimacy of Joris’ commission. Against his claims to direct inspiration, the Strasbourg leaders demanded Scriptural confirmation of his authority. Joris’ failure to win over the leaders in Strasbourg was a significant setback to his plans for uniting the Melchiorite movement. His plans were further challenged by increased persecution at this time. In 1539 at least one hundred of his followers, including his mother, were executed. In the midst of this persecution, Joris left Delft for Antwerp, where he lived the next five years in relative comfort. These circumstances encouraged the further development of Spiritualist and Nicodemite elements in his thought, including his abandonment of adult baptism. Conflict with Menno Simons only reinforced these trends. By 1539 Menno had clearly read some of Joris’ works and commented on his ideas in rather uncomplimentary language in the first edition of his Foundation Book. Then in 1541 Menno warned his followers to have nothing to do with the Davidites. The issue came into the open in 1542 when Joris responded in a

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letter to Menno’s earlier comments. Menno answered Joris’ charges in another letter, followed by another rejoinder to Menno’s followers from Joris. Behind these exchanges was a hotly contested battle for the allegiance of the Melchiorite rank-and-file. In 1544 renewed persecution encouraged Joris to relocate again, this time to Basel. There, the support of noble followers allowed him to live out the last twelve years of his life as a gentleman under the pseudonym Johann van Brugge. In these circumstances Spiritualist and Nicodemite themes in his thought were fully realized. The new circumstances also allowed Joris the leisure to write. His literary production was prolific, including in 1551 a new edition of the Wonder Book, initially published in 1542–1543. During this time Joris mingled with Basel’s intellectual elite, including the Spiritualist Sebastian Castellio, and he remained in touch with his followers in the Netherlands through his writings and a network of emissaries, including especially his future son-in-law Nicolaas Meyndertsz van Blesdijk. In these years Blesdijk played a prominent role in continuing conflicts with Menno and the Mennonites. In 1546 in Lübeck he debated an Anabaptist deputation composed of Menno, Dirk Philips, Gilles van Aken, Adam Pastor, and Leenaert Bouwens. These discussions signaled a new round of polemics and Blesdijk answered a number of Mennonite challenges in 1546 and 1547. Ultimately the move to Basel undermined Joris’ control of the movement. The earlier basis of his success, his charismatic leadership and Spiritualism, were insufficient to hold together from a distance an entity without any clear organizational structure. The death of one of his important lieutenants, Joriaen Ketel, in 1544 and Blesdijk’s move to Basel in 1548 accelerated the process of disintegration. At the time of Joris’ death in August 1555 even his small group of followers in Basel was torn apart by factional strife that witnessed as well the defection of Blesdijk. Although groups of Davidites lasted into the seventeenth century, theirs was an isolated and limited phenomenon. Despite distinct themes and nuances derived from the legacies of Melchior Hoffman and Münster, the essentials of Joris’ thought are rooted in traditions deriving from medieval mysticism, especially from the Theologia Deutsch.46 As a result, there are important parallels

46

Stayer (1985), 354; Zijlstra (1988), 249.

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between his theology and that of the southern Spiritualist Anabaptists. Central to Joris’ theology was the concept of spiritual rebirth leading to the perfection of the believer. This process had crucial soteriological and hermeneutical consequences. Through self-mortification the believer put off the old Adam and reenacted the crucifixion in his or her soul. Thus the follower overcame creaturely self-interest and was transformed from an earthly to a spiritual creature who desired nothing other than the kingdom of God. The basic outlines of this process are already apparent in Joris’ early writings, but become more prominent and detailed in his later writings, especially those from his time in Antwerp.47 As with other Spiritualist Anabaptists, this mystically inclined soteriology had important implications for Joris’ Christology. It played down the mediatory role of the historical Christ and valued the crucifixion less as an historical event than as a model of the process of self-mortification. Joris’ soteriology also had important consequences for his perception of the nature and place of religious externals. Because salvation was a process that took place in the heart of the believer, all externals were ultimately optional. As a result it was permissible to attend the services of the state church: to the pure all things are pure. Blesdijk made this point especially clear in his response to Menno’s accusation that the outward conformity of the Davidites was nothing other than Nicodemism, and therefore an idolatry, that amounted to an avoidance of the cross of Christ. Blesdijk agreed with Menno that idolatry was a sin, but demanded clarity on the definition of that sin. Asserting that God is a spirit and therefore must be worshiped in the spirit and truth, and that the highest command is to love God above all else, he insisted that all other matters, including all externals, are secondary. To elevate ceremonies and other external matters to the status of essentials was, then, itself a form of idolatry. Similarly, he charged that the Mennonites were confusing the external marks of cross bearing with the essentials. To die for one’s beliefs was legitimate, to die for mere ceremonies was ridiculous. The Davidite understanding of religious externals is especially clear in their treatment of baptism. Joris consistently identified true baptism with the baptism of the Spirit, of which water baptism is only the external sign. Gradually in his writings the significance of water

47

Waite (1990), 97, 168–69.

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baptism diminished. By the early 1540s he was dismissing the debate over the validity of infant baptism as of little concern. He described the practice as “free and unnecessary” and argued that participation in it did no good, but also no real harm if one placed no trust in it. In the end, water baptism is merely an “image, figure, shadow and letter” of spirit baptism, and spirit baptism has superseded water baptism as Christ has superseded John. Again, the position is further clarified in Blesdijk’s conflicts with the Mennonites. At Lübeck Blesdijk and Gilles van Aken had debated for four hours about infant baptism, and the issue remained hotly contested in subsequent polemics. Blesdijk conceded that believers’ baptism was the proper form, but insisted that the real issue was one of Christian freedom to use ceremonies. He regarded infant baptism as an abuse, but not necessarily as idolatry or blasphemy as the Mennonites claimed. To make his case he appealed to the example of the Corinthian baptisms on behalf of the dead mentioned by Paul (I Corinthians 15:29). In fact, Blesdijk claimed, it is not even clear whether or not the apostles baptized infants. In a striking echo of the debates in Strasbourg, he identified external, water baptism as a concession to the spiritual immaturity of humanity in the apostolic age. In the coming restitution spiritual baptism, the true baptism of Christ, would replace the water baptism of John. Complementing Joris’ criticism of a focus on externals was an historical vision as comprehensive as those of Bünderlin or Entfelder. Like his counterparts in Strasbourg, Joris described the development of the human spirit as a process of maturation. The spiritual childhood of humanity he identified with the “shadowy Gospel” of Old Testament Law. This gave way over time to the “Gospel according to the flesh” with the Incarnation. Ultimately, humanity would encounter the “Gospel according to the Spirit” when spirit-filled men would progress beyond the need for outmoded religious forms and ceremonies. After his discussion with the Melchiorite elders in Strasbourg, Joris formulated this progression in a strictly trinitarian pattern of three epochs, each associated with a person of the trinity. Again like Bünderlin and Entfelder, he did not see this development as an uninterrupted linear progression. Instead, he identified a basic pattern of recurring falls and restitutions in human history. Preeminent among the restitutions was that occurring at the time of Christ and the apostles. But that restitution found humanity spiritually unprepared and its effects were quickly undermined by the activ-

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ities of the Antichrist. The next and final restitution, which Joris thought was imminent, would re-establish the apostolic church, but on the new foundation of the spirit-filled who had attained a state of innocence. Despite Joris’ fundamental agreement with other Spiritualist Anabaptists on many theological issues, some very distinctive elements appear in his thought. Largely responses to the teachings of Hoffman or the Münsterites, these distinctive themes are, nonetheless, integrated into his broader Spiritualist framework. Prominent among these are Joris’ sense of calling and the seemingly bizarre sexual ethic and practices of Joris and his followers. From the beginning, Joris’ authority was based primarily on charisma. Especially in his early Anabaptist writings, he identified himself as the third David who had come to complete the work of the second David, Christ, although he would fulfill this mission through the power of the second David, who was greater than he. Joris’ sense of his calling was integrally connected to his Spiritualism; it was his possession of the Spirit that conferred authority on him. The same claims also led to a denigration of the letter or printed word and to an anti-intellectualism unparalleled among other Spiritualist Anabaptists. In some of his early writings Joris went so far as to reject the value of classical languages for understanding divine truths, declaring that in his day the Holy Spirit was sowing the seeds of God’s Word in the Dutch language. Here the distance between Joris and someone like Denck could not have been greater. Gradually, however, Joris’ claims to such an exalted role diminished. In the midst of his growing Spiritualism in Antwerp, he began to reformulate the role of the third David as an enlightened teacher rather than an apocalyptic restorer of all things. As Joris’ Spiritualism matured in Basel, his denunciations of the learned became less strident and he toned down his earlier exalted prophetic role, increasingly identifying the third David with the Holy Spirit. No less distinctive were Joris’ teachings about human sexuality. He and his followers were accused by contemporaries of apparently unusual sexual practices: polygamy; public nudity, possibly connected to the public confession of sins; and practices suggestive of sexual promiscuity. As the charge of polygamy would suggest, Joris was here reacting to the legacy of Münster and, as with other elements of that legacy, his response was to spiritualize problematic elements. Recent research suggests that Joris did not encourage polygamy,

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although he adapted Bernhard Rothmann’s teachings on marriage to a monogamistic framework and apparently tolerated the practice of polygamy among some of his followers.48 The key to understanding Joris’ ambivalence about polygamy lies in his cross mysticism. Following Rothmann, he argued that sexual relations were legitimate only when partners were drawn together through spiritual desire and not fleshly lust. Only in this way could offspring be produced who were not tainted by original sin and therefore could be numbered among the elect. Behind this teaching is the assumption, rooted in the mystical concept of Gelassenheit, that one should have a wife as if one did not have her. This teaching helps to explain other Davidite sexual practices. The ability to sleep with a naked member of the opposite sex and not be plagued by libidinal urges was seen as evidence that one was reborn. And since shame about sexual matters entered the world with the fall, one of the means to recapture pre-lapsarian innocence was to defeat shame through public confession, possibly involving public nudity. Like their counterparts in the south, Obbe Philips and David Joris had little impact on subsequent history through their direct lineal descendants. Although a group of Obbe’s followers were still identifiable in Mecklenberg in 1552 and the Davidites persisted into the 1620s, they had at best an isolated and limited impact on the religious life of the age. However, Obbe and Joris were not without influence on the subsequent history of both the Anabaptist and Spiritualist traditions. Lurking behind significant changes in Mennonite thought and practice on crucial issues such as the relationship of the individual to the community, the application of the ban, and nature of the pastoral office, were the challenges posed by the defections of both Obbe and Joris.49 And recent studies are paying increasing attention especially to Joris’ legacy for subsequent Spiritualist traditions.50 Later Spiritualist Anabaptists? According to Arnold Snyder, “spiritualist” Anabaptism had been expunged from surviving Anabaptist traditions by the end of the six-

48 49 50

Ibid., 104–6. Stayer (1984), 460–61. E.g., van Veen (2002); Schantz (2004).

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teenth century.51 However, the history of disputes among the Dutch “baptist-minded” (Doopsgezinden) into the seventeenth century indicates that Spiritualist challenges to the status quo were alive and well in the movement. The mid-sixteenth century division among the Dutch Doopsgezinden between the more latitudinarian Waterlanders and the more rigorist Mennonite groups occurred ostensibly over questions about the application of the ban. However, behind this conflict were differing opinions about church organization and practice in which the Waterlanders adopted some strongly Spiritualist positions. Two early Waterlander confessions of faith, those of 1577 and 1610, highlight this fact clearly. Both of these confessions shied away from dogmatic questions, emphasized the role of the Spirit in interpreting the letter of Scripture, and described the true church as scattered through all lands. Treated in the scholarship of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as representative of Dutch Anabaptism in general, the Waterlanders have since been assigned a more modest role.52 In this context it is tempting to see them as part of a continuing Spiritualist Anabaptist wing within Dutch Anabaptism in the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Certainly, among the Waterlanders, Spiritualist and more biblicist forces continued to contend with each other. As late as 1581 at a Waterlander assembly in Amsterdam, some participants openly expressed the desire to be freed from all external ordinances such as preaching, baptism, and communion. And in 1626 the Waterlander elder Hans de Ries had to defend the position that the indwelling word was necessary to understand the external word in response to challenges from within the community. That such Spiritualist challenges were not limited only to the Waterlanders among the Anabaptists of northern Europe, is evident in the conflict which erupted in the Amsterdam United Flemish Mennonite congregation, also known as the Church bij het Lam, and eventually tore apart Doopsgezinden communities throughout the Netherlands. At the center of this controversy was Galenus Abrahamsz de Haan, a physician and from 1648 a preacher in the Amsterdam congregation. After 1650 he also became increasingly involved in the Collegiant movement, emerging quickly as one of its most dynamic

51 52

Snyder (1995), 351. Zijlstra (2000), 282–83.

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and influential leaders. The Collegiants, a by-product of the disputes between Remonstrants and Counter-Remonstrants within Dutch Calvinism in the early seventeenth century, had a strong aversion to the established, confessionalist churches of the age. And their emphasis on toleration, the freedom of the individual conscience and the moral and spiritual aspects of the Christian life exercised a strong pull on elements of the Anabaptist community.53 Abrahamsz’s connections to the Collegiants caused increasing concern among the conservative leaders of the Amsterdam congregation, and matters came to a head in 1655 when the Collegiants requested the use of the Mennonite church for their meetings. In 1657, in the midst of bitter polemical exchanges between the factions within the congregation, Abrahamsz and an ally, David Spruyt, laid out their positions in Considerations Regarding the State of the Visible Church of Christ on Earth, Briefly Proposed in 19 Articles. In the ensuing “War of the Lambs,” as observers satirically dubbed the controversy, not only were other Doopsgezinden congregations drawn into the fray, but also the Amsterdam municipal authorities, and, when Abrahamsz’s opponents accused him of being a Socinian, even the hierarchy of the Reformed church. The split in the Amsterdam congregation was formalized in 1664 when Abrahamsz’s opponents withdrew and established their own congregation in an abandoned warehouse known as de Zon. Anabaptist communities from across the Netherlands—Waterlander, Flemish, Frisian and High German— were drawn into the fray, often with members of the same congregation opting for different sides in the conflict. The new topography of the Dutch Anabaptist landscape was institutionalized in 1674 with the formation of competing Lamist and Zonist societies, creating a division that was not overcome until the beginning of the nineteenth century. The Spiritualist challenge at the root of this conflict is evident in the writings of Abrahamsz and Spruyt. Responding to claims of conservative Mennonite leaders to exclusive divine authority for their church, they drew a sharp contrast between all churches of the seventeenth century, including their own congregation, and the apostolic church. While acknowledging that the church of the apostles

53

Fix (1990); Fix (1991).

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had possessed the gifts of the Spirit, they argued that after the apostles’ deaths spiritual decay had set in. They further denied that any divine commission had been given for the restitution of the visible church on earth. As a result, the offices of contemporary churches did not have apostolic authority and their ceremonies and practices were different from those of the apostolic church. Consequently, until the true church was restored on the earth, the only option available to the faithful was to meet in informal groups as the Collegiants did, without any pretense of being the true church. However, they did not demand that ceremonies such as baptism and the Lord’s Supper be done away with, and even after the departure of his opponents from the Church bij het Lam, Abrahamsz refused to move the congregation fully into the Collegiant camp. The positions of Hans de Ries and Galenus Abrahamsz differed from those of the sixteenth-century Spiritualist Anabaptists in one very important way: they never openly advocated breaking with the Anabaptist community, and for this reason they are more easily reckoned as part of the Anabaptist mainstream. Nonetheless, some of the theological positions they adopted, especially on questions of ecclesiology, church history and the nature of ecclesiastical practices and ceremonies, suggest that differences between them and earlier Spiritualist Anabaptists were more a matter of degree than of kind. Toward a Spiritualist Anabaptist Morphology The sixteenth-century religious reformers broadly defined as Spiritualist Anabaptists shared a number of common elements. Certainly, at the heart of their message was a distrust of religious ceremonies and ecclesiastical ordinances. Although such religious “externals” could be employed in circumstances that led the faithful to deeper spiritual meanings, their widespread perversion generally had the opposite effect to the serious detriment of Christendom. As a result, most Spiritualist Anabaptists were agreed that the visible church had fallen early in its history when spiritual truths were lost and empty ceremonies and ordinances were exalted. Some explicitly placed this event in the context of a longer range vision of the gradual development of humanity to greater spiritual maturity. While their criticism of ceremonialism was directed at all religious groups around them, the Spiritualist Anabaptists were especially sharp in their cri-

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tique of the Anabaptists, reflecting the sense of betrayal they felt with the increasingly structured movement that was emerging. Behind their denigration of religious externals, the Spiritualist Anabaptists also shared an anthropology and a soteriology indebted to some of the fundamental assumptions of medieval mysticism. In many cases these fundamentals came, at least in part, from a direct encounter with the Theologia Deutsch, but they were also mediated by a variety of other channels. As a result, the Spiritualist Anabaptists emphasized the importance of a divine spark in humans and the freedom of the will in salvation. This encouraged a Christology that downplayed the importance of the historical Christ and a hermeneutic that limited the independent authority of Scripture. The historical Christ had more an exemplary than a mediatory role, and they regarded Scripture less as the Word of God than as a witness to that Word that could be correctly interpreted only with the gift of the Spirit. As a result, the Spiritual Anabaptists were universally critical of both the sola fide and sola scriptura elements of Reformation theology. To be sure, they also shared these theological fundamentals with a number of Anabaptist groups. What distinguished the Spiritualist Anabaptists from Anabaptists in this case was their willingness to call into question the value of ecclesiastical structures, practices and ceremonies. The positions of different Spiritualist Anabaptists on these issues were spread across the spectrum in a manner which confirms Walter Klaassen’s portrayal of degrees of spiritualization in the Reformation. When individuals like Hans de Ries and Galenus Abrahamsz are placed on this spectrum, the line separating Spiritualist Anabaptists from Anabaptists becomes increasingly difficult to discern. This confusion, combined with the often unintentional contributions of Spiritualist Anabaptists to the development of Anabaptist traditions, certainly justifies their inclusion in Anabaptist history. In addition, however, the Spiritualist Anabaptists also shared with the broader Spiritualist movement important theological positions, along with many of its criticisms of religious externals. The distinguishing feature of the Spiritualist Anabaptists in this case was that at some point all of them also received or dispensed believers’ baptism. However, in the end all moved to more distinctly “Spiritualist” stances. As they saw the Spiritualist impulses which they identified as the kernel of religious reform threatened by the forces of literalism and institutionalism, they challenged those forces. Ironically, in

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the process they often hastened the changes they sought to resist. As a result, the Spiritualist Anabaptists belong as well in the history of Reformation Spiritualism, the outlines of which would have been drastically different had Sebastian Franck not encountered the thought of Denck and Bünderlin. In the end, then, this dualist nature of Spiritualist Anabaptism justifies the existence of a distinct category in the typologies of the Radical Reformation. However, the nature of that category and the criteria for deciding who belongs in it remain vague. A strict definition which includes Denck, Hätzer, Kautz, Entfelder and Bünderlin among the ranks of the Spiritualist Anabaptists yields a relatively cohesive and consistent group, although its cohesion may not be as great as once thought. These men were all university trained and had direct ties to Renaissance humanism. They shared a common goal of synthesizing Spiritualism and Anabaptism, and they were joined by intellectual if not personal, ties. However, a definition of Spiritualist Anabaptism that excludes individuals such as Gabriel Ascherham, Obbe Philips, David Joris, Hans de Ries and Galenus Abrahamsz obscures the fundamental similarity of their thought to that of Denck and those associated with him. On the other hand, including them implies a redefinition of the term in a way that makes it less descriptive of a distinct historical reality and more the designation of a common response to inherent tensions between Spiritualist and Anabaptist elements in reforming traditions. All of these individuals were, in many ways, the heirs of earlier, failed attempts to synthesize Spiritualism and Anabaptism. In some cases they may have known of the activities and thought of the earlier Spiritualist Anabaptists—Sebastian Franck’s Chronica was an important source of this information and by the early 1560s at least one of Entfelder’s works, Denck’s “Retraction,” and the Worms edition of the Prophets by Denck and Hätzer were available in the Netherlands. But to speak of intellectual pedigree is difficult under these circumstances. Especially in the cases of de Ries and Abrahamsz, more “purely Spiritualist” impulses appear to have been of greater importance: the frequent translations of Franck’s works into Dutch and native Spiritualist voices such as those of the Collegiants and Dirk Volckertz Cornheert played a prominent role in encouraging Spiritualist challenges to Melchiorite Anabaptism. In the end, then, the Spiritualist Anabaptists appear less as members of a coherent religious tradition than as groups of individuals who adopted similar responses to the problem

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of reconciling Spiritualism and Anabaptism. Our definition of the Spiritualist Anabaptists thus necessarily contains the same ambiguity and enigma as the thought of those caught in the gray area between Spiritualism and Anabaptism. While those firmly in the Spiritualist camp like Caspar Schwenckfeld and Sebastian Franck, and those firmly in the biblicist Anabaptist camp like Conrad Grebel or Menno Simons stand out clearly, the many degrees of spiritualization between these ends of the spectrum represent a range of hues that are not so easily distinguishable. Bibliography Primary Sources Bünderlin, Johannes. “The Reasons Why God Descended and Became Man in Christ, Through Whom, and How, He Atoned for and Restored Man’s Fall and Man Himself Through the Messiah Whom He Sent.” Ed. and trans. by Claude R. Foster, Jr. and Wilhelm Jerosch. Mennonite Quarterly Review 42 (1968), 260–84. Denck, Hans. Selected Writings. Edward J. Furcha, ed. and trans. Pittsburgh, 1975. Fast, Heinold, ed. Der linke Flügel der Reformation. Bremen, 1962. Franck, Sebastian. Chronica, Zeitbuch unnd Geschichtsbibel. Ulm, 1536; photoreprint ed., Darmstadt, 1969. Hans Denck: Schriften. Georg Baring and Walter Fellmann, eds. Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer, VI. 3 vols. Gütersloh, 1955–1960. Joris, David. The Anabaptist Writings of David Joris. Gary Waite, ed. and trans. Scottdale, PA, 1994. Köhler, Hans-Joachim, et al., eds. Early Modern Pamphlets: Sixteenth-Century German and Latin 1501–1530. Leiden, 1980ff. Laube, Adolf et al., eds., Flugschriften vom Bauernkrieg zum Täuferreich (1526–1535). 2 vols. Berlin, 1992. Quellen zur Geschichte der [Wieder] Täufer. 16 vols. Leipzig and Gütersloh, 1930–. Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer in der Schweiz. 3 vols. Zurich, 1952–. Williams, George Huntston and Angel M. Mergal, eds. Spiritualist and Anabaptist Writers: Documents Illustrative of the Radical Reformation. Philadelphia, 1957. Secondary Literature Bainton, Roland. David Joris. Wiedertäufer und Kämpfer für Toleranz im 16. Jahrhundert. Leipzig, 1937. Baring, Georg. “Hans Denck und Thomas Müntzer in Nürnberg 1524,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 50 (1959), 145–81. Bauman, Clarence. The Spiritual Legacy of Hans Denck: Interpretation and Translation of Key Texts. Leiden, 1991. Beck, James. “The Anabaptists and the Jews: The Case of Hätzer, Denck and the Worms Prophets.” Mennonite Quarterly Review 75 (2001), 407–27. Boyd, Stephen. Pilgram Marpeck: His Life and Social Theology. Durham, NC, 1992. Bubenheimer, Ulrich. Thomas Müntzer: Herkunft und Bildung. Leiden, 1989. Clasen, Claus-Peter. “Nuernberg in the History of Anabaptism.” Mennonite Quarterly Review 37 (1965), 25–39.

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Coutts, Alfred. Hans Denck 1495–1527: Humanist and Heretic. Edinburgh, 1927. Deppermann, Klaus. Melchior Hoffman: Social Unrest and Apocalyptic Visions in the Age of Reformation. Malcolm Wren, trans. Benjamin Drewery, ed. Edinburgh, 1987. ——. “Sebastian Francks Straßburger Aufenthalt.” in Sebastian Frank (1499–1542). Jan-Dirk Müller, ed. Wiesbaden, 1993, 103–118. Dipple, Geoffrey. “Sebastian Franck in Strasbourg,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 73 (1999), 783–802. ——. “Pilgram Marpeck, the Spiritualizers and the Anabaptist View of Church History.” in Commoners and Community: Essays in Honour of Werner O. Packull. C. Arnold Snyder, ed. Kitchener, ON, 2002, 217–32. Fast, Heinold. “Hans Krüsis Büchlein über Glauben und Taufe: Ein Täuferdruck von 1525,” Zwingliana 11 (1962), 457–75. ——. “Hans Denck and Thomas Müntzer,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 45 (1971), 82–83. Fix, Andrew. “Mennonites and Collegiants in Holland 1630–1700,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 64 (1990), 160–77. ——. Prophecy and Reason: The Dutch Collegiants and the Early Enlightenment. Princeton, NJ, 1991. Foster, Claude R., Jr. “Hans Denck and Johann Buenderlin: A Comparative Study,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 49 (1965), 115–24. Gäbler, Ulrich. “Johannes Bünderlin.” in Biblioteca Dissidentium, vol. 3. André Séguenny and Jean Rott, eds. Baden-Baden, 1982, 9–42. Garside, Charles Jr. “Ludwig Haetzer’s Pamphlet Against Images: A Critical Study,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 34 (1960), 20–36. Gockel, Matthias. “A Reformer’s Dissent from Lutheranism: Reconsidering the Theology of Hans Denck (ca. 1500–1527),” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 91 (2000), 127–48. Goeters, J. F. Gerhard. Ludwig Hätzer (ca. 1500 bis 1529), Spiritualist und Antitrinitarier: Eine Randfigur der frühen Täuferbewegung. Gütersloh, 1957. Hall, Thor. “Possibilities of Erasmian Influence on Denck and Hubmaier in Their Views on the Freedom of the Will,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 35 (1961), 149–70. Horst, Irvin Buckwalter, ed. The Dutch Dissenters: A Critical Companion to Their History and Ideas. Leiden, 1986. Jones, Rufus M. Spiritual Reformers in the 16th and 17th Centuries. 1914. Rprt. Ed. Boston, 1959. Keeney, William Echard. The Development of Dutch Anabaptist Thought and Practice from 1539 –1564. Nieuwkoop, 1968. Keller, Ludwig. Ein Apostel der Wiedertäufer. Leipzig, 1882. Kiwiet, Jan J. Pilgram Marbeck: Ein Führer der Täuferbewegung im süddeutschen Raum. Kassel, 1957. ——. “The Life of Hans Denck,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 31 (1957), 227–59. ——. “The Theology of Hans Denck,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 32 (1958), 3–27. Klaassen, Walter. “Spiritualization in the Reformation,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 37 (1963), 67–77. Klassen, William. “Pilgram Marpeck’s Two Books of 1531,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 33 (1959), 18–30. Krahn, Cornelius. Dutch Anabaptism: Origin, Spread, Life and Thought. Scottdale, PA, 1981. Kreider, Robert. “Anabaptism and Humanism: An Inquiry into the Relationship of Humanism to the Evangelical Anabaptists,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 26 (1952), 123–41. Lievestro, Christaan. “Obbe Philips and the Anabaptist Vision,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 61 (1967), 99–115. Littell, Franklin H. “Spiritualizers, Anabaptists, and the Church,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 29 (1955), 34–43.

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Ludlow, Morwenna. “Why was Hans Denck Thought to be a Universalist?” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 55 (2004), 257–74. McLaughlin, R. Emmet. “Schwenckfeld and the Strasbourg Radicals,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 59 (1985), 268–78. ——. Caspar Schwenckfeld, Reluctant Radical: His Life to 1540. New Haven and London, 1986. Meihuizen, H. W. “Spiritualistic Tendencies and Movements among the Dutch Mennonites of the 16th and 17th Centuries,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 27 (1953), 259–304. ——. Galenus Abrahamsz 1622–1706. Strijder voor een onbeperkte verdraagzaamheid en verdediger van het Doperse Spiritualisme. Haarlem, 1954. ——. “Who Were the ‘False Brethren’ Mentioned in the Schleitheim Articles,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 61 (1967), 200–22. Moger, J. Travis. “Pamphlets, Preaching and Politics: The Image Controversy in Reformation Wittenberg, Zürich and Strassburg,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 75 (2001), 325–54. Muller, Frank. “Jacob Kautz” in Bibliotheca Dissidentium, Vol. 17. André Séguenny and Jean Rott, eds. Baden-Baden and Bouxwiller, 1995, 7–31. Müsing, Hans-Werner. “The Anabaptist Movement in Strasbourg from Early 1526 to July 1527,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 51 (1977), 91–126. Nelson, Stephen F. and Jean Rott, “Strasbourg: The Anabaptist City in the Sixteenth Century,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 58 (1984), 230–40. Nicoladoni, Alexander. Johannes Bünderlin von Linz und die oberösterreichischen Täufergemeinden in den Jahren 1525–1531. Berlin, 1893. Packull, Werner, O. “Denck’s Alleged Baptism by Hubmaier: Its Significance for the Origin of South German-Austrian Anabaptism,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 47 (1973), 327–38. ——. Mysticism and the Early South German-Austrian Anabaptist Movement 1525–1531. Scottdale, PA, 1977. ——. “Hans Denck: Fugitive From Dogmatism.” in Profiles of Radical Reformers. Biographical Sketches from Thomas Müntzer to Paracelsus. Hans-Jürgen Goertz, ed. Kitchener, ON, 1982, 62–71. ——. Hutterite Beginnings: Communitarian Experiments During the Reformation. Baltimore and London, 1995. Penner, Horst. “Christian Entfelder. Ein mährisher Täuferprediger und herzoglicher Rat am Hofe Albrechts von Preußen,” Mennonitische Geschichtesblätter 23 (1966), 19–23. Roehrich, Gustave Guillaume. Essay on the Life, Writings and Doctrine of the Anabaptist Hans Denck. Strasbourg, 1853. Claude R. Foster, William F. Bogart, and Mildred M. Van Sice, trans. Lanham, MD, 1983. Rothkegel, Martin. “Die Nikolsburger Reformation 1526–1535: Vom Humanismus zum Sabbatarismus.” ThD diss., Charles University Prague, 2000a. ——. “Täufer, Spiritualist, Antitrinitarier—und Nikodemit. Jakob Kautz als Schulmeister in Mähren,” Mennonitische Geschichtesblätter 57 (2000b), 51–88. ——. “Die Nikolsburger Reformation 1526–1535,” Mennonitische Geschichtesblätter 59 (2002), 181–86. Schantz, Douglas. “David Joris, Pietist Saint: The Appeal of Joris in the Writings of Christian Hoburg and Gottfried Arnold,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 78 (2004), 415–32. Séguenny, André. “Christian Entfelder” in Bibliotheca Dissidentium: Répertoire des nonconformistes religieux de sieziéme et dix-septiéme siécles. Vol. 1. André Séguenny and Jean Rott, eds. Baden-Baden, 1980, 37–48. Snyder, C. Arnold. Anabaptist History and Theology: An Introduction. Kitchener, ON, 1995.

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Stayer, James M. “Davidite vs. Mennonite,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 58 (1984), 459–76. ——. “David Joris: A Prolegomenon to further Research,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 59 (1985), 350–61. ——. “Saxon Radicalism and Swiss Anabaptism: The Return of the Repressed,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 67 (1993), 5–30. ——. “The Radical Reformation,” in Handbook of European History, 1400–1600: Late Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation. Thomas A. Brady, Heiko A. Oberman and James D. Tracy, eds. Leiden, 1996, 2: 249–82. ——. “The Passing of the Radical Moment in the Radical Reformation,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 71 (1997), 147–52. Steinmetz, David. Reformers in the Wings. Philadelphia, 1971. Troeltsch, Ernst. The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches. 2 vols. Olive Wyon, trans. London, 1931. van Veen, Mirjam G. K. “Spiritualism in the Netherlands: From David Joris to Dirck Volckertsz Coornheert,” Sixteenth Century Journal 33 (2002), 129–50. Waite, Gary K. David Joris and Dutch Anabaptism 1524–1543. Waterloo, ON, 1990. Weis, Frederick Lewis. The Life, Teachings and Works of Johannes Denck. Pawtucket, RI, 1925. ——. The Life, Teachings and Work of Ludwig Hetzer 1500–1529. Dorchester, MA, 1930. Williams, George H. The Radical Reformation. 3rd ed. Kirksville, MO, 1992. Zeman, Jarold K. The Anabaptists and the Czech Brethren in Moravia 1526–1628: A Study of Origins and Contacts. The Hague and Paris, 1969. Zijlstra, Samme. Nicolaas Meyndertsz. van Blesdijk. Een bijdrage tot de geschiedenis van het Davidjorisme. Assen, 1983. ——. “Menno Simons and David Joris,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 62 (1988), 249–56. ——. Om de Ware Gemeente en de Oude Gronden: Geschiedenis van de Dopersen in de Nederlanden 1531–1675. Hilversum and Leeuwarden, 2000.

CHAPTER EIGHT

MENNONITES AND DOOPSGEZINDEN IN THE NETHERLANDS, 1535–1700 Piet Visser Historiography Through the ages the history of the Dutch Anabaptism/Mennonitism has been described through a variety of perspectives, contexts and paradigms. The recent study of Dutch Anabaptism to 1675 by the late Samme Zijlstra takes the development of “Anabaptist identity” as its point of departure.1 This approach gives crucial importance to the definition of its terms: “Anabaptist” and “identity.” Quite rightly, Zijlstra has regarded identity as a consequence of time and circumstances, a phenomenon of accommodation; but in practice he has concentrated primarily upon Mennonite confessions and orthodox perspectives. This has the effect of obstructing an unbiased understanding of non-confessional developments that deviate from these norms. If we would follow Zijlstra’s approach strictly—to make the point with some exaggeration—our research would be completed by the end of the eighteenth century, when the last remnant of Anabaptist orthodoxy and confessionalism was swallowed up in the late Enlightenment.2 Insofar as he concerns himself primarily with the Anabaptist/Mennonite aspect of the identity issue, Zijlstra ignores the fact that in the Netherlands, and only there, the term “Doopsgezind” quickly superseded the designation of “Mennonite.” The emergence of this term—still the official name of the Dutch branch of the global Anabaptist/Mennonite movement—was not a simple shift in terminology while the content remained the same. On the contrary, in order to respect that distinction, this chapter will refer to “Mennonites” when describing those groups that sought to remain loyal to the heritage of Menno Simons, and to “Doopsgezinden”

1 2

Zijlstra (2000), 26–32. Visser (2004a), 258–59.

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when referring to the reform tradition that ensued beginning with the Waterlander division of 1557. The primary task of historians is to describe and explain mentalities, processes, developments and their outcomes without venturing normative judgments. Historians must also identify the factors that give rise to change. The situation of being a religious minority implied— especially among the Dutch following the end of persecution—that Mennonites and Doopsgezinden had to develop a common approach in their socio-economic and intellectual engagement with the “outside world,” which gradually became their “inner world.” Thus, the followers of Menno have continually seen themselves confronted with processes of appropriation: they have incorporated the outside world— albeit hesitatingly—according to their own insights about biblical and societal norms and values.3 This external dynamic was considerably complicated and promoted by an on-going internal dynamic, related to the dogmatic latitude of the Anabaptists, that resulted from the absence of a central, firmly-established doctrinal authority apart from the gospel. In the Anabaptist context doctrine was open to multiple interpretations—limited by the weight of the literal Word on the one hand, and the unlimited freedom of the unchecked Spirit on the other—with individual subjectivism as the outcome in both cases. Moreover, this dynamic was affected by the intense experience of a biblically grounded, voluntaristic fellowship, combined with congregational autonomy and the practice of mutual discipline. Subjective individualism melded with subjective comunitarianism to confront or confirm the “tradition”—that is, those certainties of faith that the believing community regarded as objective. These paradoxical impulses—for example, Anabaptist spiritualism with its invisible church versus Anabaptist biblical legalism and its “church without spot or wrinkle”—had multi-dimensional and shifting consequences, and they characterized the religious and mental transience of Dutch Anabaptism from one moment to the next.4 More emphatically than Zijlstra’s work has done, this overview of 165 years will take into account the manner in which the religious, political, socio-economic, and cultural contexts became factors of change in the Mennonite and Doopsgezind experience.5 3

Frijhoff (2002), 17–38, 275–89; cf. Driedger (2002), 115. Visser (2004b), 7–9. 5 Unless stated otherwise all factual data in this chapter are derived from Zijlstra (2000), 126–493. 4

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From Prophetic and Spiritualistic Divisions to Mennonite Unity (1535–1555) Post-Münster Frustration After the fall of Münster on June 25, 1535, rumors circulated continuously in the Netherlands about new attacks by the frustrated Anabaptists. In 1536 at Poeldijk, south of The Hague, for example, Adriaen Adriaensz proclaimed that he was King of Israel. Thirteen of his followers were killed. Yet even though local authorities were very frightened, Münster was the last convulsion of the prophetic dream for the establishment of God’s kingdom on earth. In the 1530s Emperor Charles V issued strong proclamations from Brussels, and Anabaptists were pushed to the margins of society as enemies of the church and public order, no different than sorcerers and criminals. Between 1534 and 1536 more than 200 Anabaptists died in Holland on the scaffold; in Friesland more than 50 died—their names not disclosed in the judicial acts and thus never to be honored in later martyr literature. After Münster, four significant Anabaptist groups remained in north Germany and the Netherlands. In the first place were the Münsterites, who still strove for the restoration of the New Jerusalem according to the Münster example. In Oldenburg, close by the eastern border of the Netherlands, Heinrich Krechting, the former Chancellor of Jan van Leiden, still had something of a following after his escape from Münster. Even at the end of the 1530s members of this faction reckoned that Münster could again be taken. But in 1539 Krechting emigrated to East Friesland, where he joined the Reformed church, leaving his followers without a leader. Then there were the so-called Batenburgers or Sword-spirits, led by Jan van Batenburg, who was called to be the new David to redeem Babylon. After Münster he presented himself as the Gideon who would rescue God’s Kingdom. Gradually, groups of his fanatical followers adopted terrorist practices, using every form of violence. They robbed churches, killed deserters from their cause, burned houses, and stole livestock. In early 1538 at Vilvoorde, near Brussels, Batenburg was captured and executed, but his decimated following still roamed about plundering and murdering until the mid-1540s.6

6

Jansma (1977).

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The Melchiorites avoided violence, but they remained attached to prophecies and visions. They limited themselves primarily to the German territories of Hesse, Rhineland, and Strasbourg. The fourth group, the Obbenites—named for Obbe Philips who had been commissioned by the apostles of Jan Mathijsz to be the elder at Leeuwarden—strove to preach the gospel only with spiritual weapons, with the goal of building or reconstructing congregations. Although he borrowed heavily from Hoffman’s theology, Obbe renounced apocalyptic speculations about God’s Kingdom and Hoffman’s fanciful, allegorical exegesis. Obbe became frustrated and defected from the movement about 1539–1540; in his Confessions (“Bekentenisse”) he turned against the new leader, Menno Simons, whom he had earlier ordained as elder. Earlier, in 1534, Obbe had ordained as elders his brother Dirk Philips and David Joris. David Joris After the fall of Münster the fortunes of David Joris from Delft (1501–1556) ascended rapidly. Although he would soon develop into a “divine prophet” and promoter of spiritualism, initially he and Obbe Philips were viewed as saviors of the Anabaptist movement. David played an intermediary role at a gathering of the different Anabaptist streams at Bocholt (near Münster) in August, 1536, where about twenty-five elders were present. Although the meeting had been called to bring about inter-group conciliation, those present disputed fiercely about the issues of violence and polygamy. David Joris, who sought for a consensus, found the followers of Batenburg especially antagonistic to him. When Joris was inclined to make concessions, the others were angered, and the meeting ended as a failure. After that, David Joris would go his own way; and he acquired many followers in Holland, Friesland, and East Friesland. In part, the so-called “Davidjorists” built on the restitution doctrine of Rothmann and the Melchiorite teachings on rebaptism and rebirth; above all, they supported the spiritualistic tradition of Schwenkfeld and Franck. In the apocalyptic vision of the coming thousand-year kingdom of God, David claimed for himself a messianic role as the Third David, who, through the power of the Spirit, possessed the key to the revelation of all truth. He regarded the church as an institution, its sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper as mere externalities, worthy of only subordinate significance. In a similar

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vein, he tolerated Nicodemism—the practice of outwardly pretending to accept the state church—and he permitted polygamy. The reborn person, or the new Adam, achieved a status of perfection, becoming heavenly, meek, and full of love and peacefulness. The individual striving for a spiritualistic perfection took a higher place in David’s theology than the visible Christian church; indeed, he did not seek to form actual congregations.7 David’s prophetic and charismatic leadership proved successful, but the authorities associated the Jorists with the Münsterites because of their agreement on polygamy, leading to fierce persecution after 1539. A great number of David’s followers, some of them women, were killed in Westphalia, Rotterdam, Maastricht, Delft, and Utrecht.8 As a result Joris had to flee. He found a hiding place first in Antwerp (1539–1544), after which he established himself near Basel where he lived under a false name until his death in 1556. Those left behind survived largely in the relatively tolerant territory of East Friesland. From Basel Joris continued to instruct his followers with more than 200 clandestinely printed works, including his major book, ’t Wonderboeck of 1542, as well as hundreds of letters; meanwhile his son-in-law, Nicolaas Meyndersz van Blesdijk, became his deputy in north Germany.9 Menno Simons After Krechting, Batenburg, and David Joris had disappeared from the scene and Obbe Philips had defected in 1539, Menno Simons, the former priest from Witmarsum, emerged as new leader.10 Ordained as an elder by Obbe in 1537, Menno eventually succeeded Obbe in leadership. Obbe’s brother, Dirk Philips (1504–1568), more theologically skilled than Menno, became Menno’s close associate and worked mainly as an elder in East Friesland and Poland/Prussia.11 From the start Menno sought to reorient the Anabaptists in word, deed, and organization from the violent, theocratic character of 7

Waite (1990). Hajenius (2003), 221. 9 Valkema Blouw (1991a), 163–229. 10 The best studies about Menno’s life and teachings are: Vos (1914), Bornhäuser (1973), and Voolstra (1997). For Menno’s writings cf. Horst (1962) and Valkema Blouw (1991b). 11 Keeney and Snyder (1998). 8

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Münster into a peaceful group, separated from worldly affairs. At the same time he avoided the prophetic and subjective spiritualism of David Joris, stressing a Christocentric congregational ideal, with the Gospel as the only guide. Despite fierce persecution that forced him to be constantly in flight, Menno succeeded in giving his steadily growing community a theological foundation. He created an authentic location for the Anabaptists within the Reformation spectrum. He is recognized throughout the world as the molder of a tradition. Such widespread renown is something of a miracle, because Menno Simons was actually a “slow starter,” a person who frequently vacillated before taking a stand and made clear, hard decisions only under the pressure of others. The theological insights that he gradually adopted were borrowed in part from Hoffman, Rothmann, Luther, and Erasmus. Once he had an insight clearly in focus, however, he was tenacious in defending it. Perhaps that mix of characteristics—slowness, wavering, and stubbornness—was a partial explanation of his success. After all the previous prophets, with their exaggerated sense of self-importance, Menno was a completely ordinary man of flesh and blood. Without any false claims of divinity, he based himself entirely on arguments taken from Scripture. This evoked trust among his followers, and exasperation—but not hate— among his religious opponents. He was the first Anabaptist leader to be taken seriously by his adversaries. A farmer’s son from Witmarsum, Menno (c. 1496–1561) did not begin his career until 1524 when at the age of twenty-eight he became a vicar in neighboring Pingjum. There he began to have doubts about the doctrine of transubstantiation and he began to study the Gospel. In 1532 Menno was appointed as pastor in Witmarsum where, following the beheading of Sicke Freerks at Leeuwarden in 1531, he learned about Hoffman’s teaching on adult baptism. Menno began to preach more evangelically, but also warned of the fanaticism of the Münsterites. The bloody attack against a neighboring cloister in the spring of 1535, where possibly his brother lost his life, brought Menno to a transformation. It would, however, take nearly a year before the forty-year-old Menno left the Catholic church early in 1536. He fled to East Friesland via Groningen. Sometime around 1540, after several years of study, he agreed to assume a leadership role. His first published works appeared at this time, among them the strongly autobiographical Leringhen op den 25. Psalm (Meditations on the 25th Psalm) and his most important work,

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Dat Fundament des christelyken leers (The Foundation of Christian Doctrine), which was published secretly in 1539 or 1540. From that moment—traveling from east to west and from north to south—Menno stepped into the forefront of the Dutch and North German Anabaptist movement. On the one hand he promoted the formation of congregations by appointing new regional leaders and by calling elders to baptize and preach. At the same time, he defended Anabaptism against the specter of Münster and the stain of the Jorists. Attacks came from the Church of Rome, the reformers, and the authorities who did not cease persecuting the “slaughtered lambs of Christ.” The Fundament book that contained the core of his theology also served as an apologetic writing to convince the authorities that his people were entirely peaceful and had nothing to do with “depraved sects.” Nevertheless in 1542, the Habsburg government of the Netherlands in Brussels banned his writings and placed a reward of 100 guilders on his head. Central to Menno’s doctrine was a theology of repentance, on the basis of which a person who comes to conversion can receive restoration as a new creature as God intended in creation and was modeled upon the sinlessness of his self-sacrificing son, Jesus Christ. In this context Menno embraced Hoffman’s much criticized doctrine of the incarnation, which taught that the Son of God had not taken any human, or sinful, qualities from Mary.12 Repentance, for Menno, required a lengthy and continuous process of internal suffering and mortification of the sinful state, so that one can be reborn and then sealed with the external sign of the sacrament of baptism. The renewed person witnessed to his transformed status by holy living and by doing good works according to Christ’s example. Rebirth thus proceeded according to the analogy of Christ’s redemptive suffering and resurrection: the sinful body must be laid aside, buried in Christ, and raised by faith as a new being. As opposed to Luther’s teaching, grace and faith alone are not enough. Pure faith is always visible in our works—there is no faith without works. Menno viewed scripture through a Christocentric lens. He interpreted the Old Testament typologically and tropologically, with the Gospel serving as the norm. Here Menno distanced himself both from the Münsterites and the magisterial reformers. He also kept his

12

Voolstra (1997), 59–104; Voolstra (1982), 149–60.

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distance from the spiritualistic tendencies in Anabaptism by seeking a balance between Spirit and Letter. The external witness of the written Word is to be understood and followed through the inward enlightenment of the Holy Spirit. In addition, he regarded the external sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, although symbols, as essential for the church of the reborn. The church, separated from the world, is the bride of Christ. Just as humanity had been redeemed by a bridegroom who was completely sinless, so too must his separated church be completely pure, holy, and of one mind—qualities that were sealed by the Lord’s Supper. Only later, when discipline by ban, shunning, and marital avoidance became the instruments of “the church without spot or wrinkle,” did Menno work out the details of how this purity was to be preserved. Menno understood the New Testament to be the lex christi or lex evangelicum—the law that was still incomplete in Israel was now fulfilled in Christ. The time of grace does not need to be created by human action, as Münster had attempted, but it already exists here and now. Those who are truly reborn fight only with the sword of the spirit, the Gospel. Menno acknowledged that God instituted the established authorities to punish public sins; they also serve to protect true religion and should not persecute their subjects. A government that goes against these standards may expect to meet the wrath of God. Yet Christ’s example has also taught that true believers must suffer opposition and persecution. The martyrdom of the Anabaptists was thus an essential part of Menno’s concept of the church. Formulated negatively, “all who do not have the pure gospel, faith, baptism, the Lord’s Supper, way and walk, are no members of the congregation of Christ.”13 However Christocentric or biblically grounded, herein lies the weakness of Mennonitism: without a solid, well constructed dogma, who determines—simply on the basis of the text of the New Testament, open as it was to various interpretations—exactly who may or may not be called a true member of the congregation? By the end of the 1540s, the “church without spot and wrinkle,” based on the Melchiorite doctrine of the incarnation, increasingly became a higher priority. In order to maintain the purity of the bride of Christ, disciplinary regulations like the ban, shunning, and avoidance in marriage were necessary. Yet Menno quickly faced a

13

Simons (1967), 161.

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management problem in maintaining the purity of the church. He could not avoid institutionalizing his movement or the need for regulations about discipline. So for this he convened regular meetings of elders, such as at Lübeck, Emden, and Goch. But in 1546, elder Adam Pastor denied the preexistence of the Son, for which he ultimately was banned. The following year Frans Kuiper received the ban on account of his doubts about the distinctive Mennonite doctrine of the incarnation. Menno tried to address these issues in Een claer bericht . . . van der excommunicatie (A Clear Report about Excommunication, 1549). Still, differences of opinion persisted over proper procedures for discipline and the degree of its severity; for example, must a sinner be banned immediately, or only after three warnings? At a meeting at Wismar in 1554, regulations about discipline and ethics were put into a kind of church order, the so-called Wismar Articles. The prohibition of outside marriages (buitentrouw) also was included on the agenda, along with regulations for divorce, business relations with banned members, the carrying of weapons, and the office of the minister. The growth of members spurred the need for regulation and institutionalization even more. Thanks to the missionary work of Gillis van Aken, Mennonitism grew considerably, especially in the Southern Netherlands (Belgium), where it offered an alternative to the rising strength of Calvinism.14 This rapid growth led to a younger generation of elders. Beginning in the 1550s, Mennonitism spread ever further, from Danzig to Doornik (in the north of France). It is notable that the people of Menno were found mainly in the coastal areas and along the waterways, in port cities, and in centers of commerce and industry. Institutionalization also served to protect Mennonites against competition from the “corrupt sects,” especially the following of David Joris, a group who remained active mainly in the northeastern coastal area due to the work of Blesdijk and Joriaen Ketel. In 1546 the two parties held a disputation at Lübeck, but it settled nothing. About 1540 another spiritualistic sect appeared at Emden, the strictly organized Family of Love led by the prophet Hendrick Niclaes. Although never numerous, the Familists attracted several adherents from influential circles. And in the Rhineland, at Wesel, a spiritualistic

14

Decavele (2004), 113–30.

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sect gathered around Matthias Weyer, with whom Dirk Philips would later engage in controversy.15 A third factor fostering this trend toward institutionalization came from the rising tide of Calvinism. To be sure, Menno and his people also had to deal with constant attacks from the Roman Catholic side; the new priest of Wormer, Martinus Ducanus, for example, wrote an argumentative book against Menno’s Fundament, called de Anabaptisticae haereseos confutatio (The Anabaptist Heresy Rebutted, 1549). But by the middle of the sixteenth century it was Calvinism that was expanding rapidly. And when it faced competition from Mennonites, it sought a confrontation.16 In the 1550’s the Reformed refugee congregations—originating in the Southern Netherlands, then spreading out from London and East Friesland—began to build up their tightly-organized church in the Low Countries.17 Already in 1544 Superintendent Johannes á Lasco had invited Menno to a religious dialogue with the purpose of seeking of cooperation between Mennonites and other Protestants. This offered Menno only a temporary advantage, since the David Jorists, whom á Lasco had originally thought of as a promising group for discussions, were no longer tolerated in East Friesland.18 More difficult was Menno’s confrontation with Gellius Faber, Reformed preacher at Norden, who in 1552 attacked Menno in a slanderous writing. Menno responded in his longest writing, Een Klare beantwoordinge, over een Schrifft Gellii Fabri (A Clear Response to a Writing of Gellius Faber, 1554). Here Menno defended at length his doctrines of adult baptism, the incarnation, the pure congregation, discipline, and especially the calling of preachers—a touchy point because Menno had received his ordination from a disciple of Jan Matthijs. The work also contained his autobiographical account of his break with the Roman church. The most sensational clash was Menno’s disputation in 1554 at Wismar with Marten Micron, leader of a Reformed congregation that had been expelled from Tudor England in the reign of Queen Mary. The central theme of the fierce public debate was Menno’s “heavenly flesh” doctrine of incarnation, rejected by Micron because

15 16 17 18

Hamilton (1981); Voolstra (2005), 91–104. Nissen (1988), 106–34. Pettegree (1992). Visser (2000).

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it was in conflict with Christian tradition and did not seem to do justice to the human nature of Christ. Baptism was another point of conflict, since for Micron it signified the washing away of original sin, beginning with infants. As defenders of the doctrine of predestination, Calvinists found it a further abomination that the Anabaptists attributed such an active part to free will in attaining salvation. Although the Calvinists maintained a tight congregational discipline, they disapproved of the Anabaptist practices of the ban, shunning and, above all, marital shunning. Whereas Menno and his followers viewed the church as a fellowship of saints, the Reformed regarded it as a corpus permixtum, comprised of both sinners and the redeemed. Reformed congregants who fell into sin were denied communion, but they were seldom excommunicated. The Reformed discipline served primarily to maintain external order rather than the internal purity of the congregation. In addition, Micron disagreed with Menno over the use of weapons, the swearing of oaths, and the separation of church and state. On the other hand, no basic differences existed about the tasks and duties of the government, nor about their understanding of communion. In the disputation, Menno had to acknowledge Micron as the better debater and resorted to name calling and slander. Calvin, informed by Micron about the disputation, judged Menno even less gently: “Who is stubborner than this dog, or stupider than this ass?” In this debate the Christocentric and anti-scholarly biblicism of the Mennonites collided with the much more humanistic, philologically-oriented outlook of the Reformed, who also placed much greater emphasis on theological tradition. Micron published his version of the debate, Een waerachtigh verhaal (A Truthful Account, 1556), which Menno immediately refuted with Een gantsch duytlick ende bescheyden antwordt (An Entirely Clear and Modest Answer).19 The First Mennonite Divisions (1555–1580) Menno’s Decline: The First Split This developing institutionalization of the Mennonite movement, which consisted of defining the tasks and qualifications of the elders,

19

Mikron (1981), xxxix–xl.

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teachers and preachers20 and new regulations for congregational discipline, entered a new phase in the mid-1550’s. To the outside world, it presented a view of Mennonitism differentiated both from the Spiritualists and the Reformed; internally, it warded off tendencies toward individualism by promoting a “church without spot and wrinkle.” This also proved to be the beginning of the end for the rather emancipated position of women inside Anabaptism. Until then, they had received unprecedented opportunities thanks to the highlytreasured principle of the priesthood of all believers.21 This new Mennonite consciousness also resulted in an increase of Anabaptist publications. Before this, oral and hand-written traditions were the primary communication channels. Now, thanks to printers such as Steven Mierdman in Emden, Jan Hendricksz at Franeker, and Nicolaes Biestkens at Groessen, Mennonites did not shrink from printing and distributing illegal publications prohibited by the Inquisition. Menno himself led this current with his own small printshop at Wüstenfelde in Holstein, his last residence. This press published several works of Menno, including a thorough-going revision of the Fundament (1554–55).22 The growth of Mennonite printing reflected not only support for the ideals of the persecuted movement, but also an interest in financial profit, since the growing movement presented an increasingly attractive market. A Mennonite Bible translation appeared in the mid-1500s—the Biestkens New Testament (1554) and the Biestkens Bible (1558)—the first Dutch Bibles with verse numberings. A very popular hymn book, Veelderhande Liedekens (A Variety of Songs, 1556), which at first was also used by the Reformed, promoted Mennonite spiritual songs. Next came the publication of a collection of martyr histories and songs. Het Offer des Heeren (The Sacrifice of the Lord, 1561 or 1563) was the Mennonite response to the Reformed martyrology of 1559 by the Antwerp preacher, Adriaen van Haemstede.23 All these publications illustrated Mennonite claims to biblical precision, as evidenced by the numerous Bible citations in the margins of virtually every page.24

20 21 22 23 24

Visser (2003a). Joldersma (2001). Keyser (1986). Gregory (1999), 167, 186. Visser (2003b).

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As Menno became physically weaker, he encountered steadily increasing criticism on the issue of discipline, especially from Dirk Philips and Lenaert Bouwens. The matter escalated when Lenaert banned a woman, Swaen Rutgers of Emden, because she refused marital avoidance of her banned husband. Concerned leaders from Franeker and Germany confronted Menno with the issue around 1556, so that he had to make a last journey to Friesland in order to mediate. The negotiations took place at Harlingen in 1557; but due to intimidation by Lenaert, who had Dirk on his side, Menno yielded and endorsed the position of the two “strict banners.” However, his hope of preserving unity in this way came to a disappointing end. Some of the Franekers, under the leadership of Hendrick Naeldeman and Jan Jansz Schedemaker from Waterland, refused to assent to the strict position. As a result, Dirk and Lenaert banned them. Naeldeman’s people went their own way and became known as the Waterlanders. Menno tried to defend his shift to a more conservative position in his third book on the ban, Van de excommunicatie (Concerning Excommunication, 1557), where he struck out fiercely against the High Germans. Their elders, Zylis and Lemmeke, had no sense of the issues at stake and scolded Menno for vacillating in his views. Shortly thereafter they, too, were banned. Thus, 1557 was a calamitous year for Menno. Because he had misjudged the situation, his personal authority was weakened and the outcome had led to a division. Moreover, his wife Geertruyd died the same year. Despite defending the hard-line position once more in a tract of 1560, Menno had yielded his leadership position to his fellow elders at Harlingen. He died on January 13, 1561 and was buried in an unmarked grave in his cabbage garden. The Struggle for Leadership: the Second Split The Harlingen conflict over shunning and discipline made visible still another problem—the growing appropriation of power by the elders at the expense of the congregation. Following Menno’s death, the Mennonite movement would no longer recognize a central leading figure. Certainly, Dirk Philips (1504–1568) tried to assume greater prominence and, after 1557, presented himself as the spokesman of Mennonite orthodoxy by publishing more than fifteen tracts at Groessen and Franeker. Among other topics, Dirk dealt with baptism and communion, incarnation, rebirth, ban and avoidance, the

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mission of preachers, and marriage. In 1564 most of his writings were compiled in the Enchiridion oft Hant-boecxken (Small Handbook)25 A younger generation of elders, such as Jan Willemsz and Lubbert Gerritsz from Holland, now stepped forward. Thanks to his impressive mission work, great honor also redounded to the hardliner, Lenaert Bouwens (1515–1582), a former rhetorician.26 Already in Menno’s lifetime, Lenaert traveled through towns and countryside converting people to the Mennonite cause. In the period 1551–1554, he baptized 869 persons; in 1554–1556, 693; in 1557–1561, 808; in 1563–1565, 4,499; and in 1568–1582, 3,509—a total of more than 10,000 people. Still, that did not sufficiently impress his Emden congregation. In 1565 they complained, among other matters, about Lenaert’s frequent absences. For this Dirk Philips suspended him, without banning him. Lenaert, who subsequently considered himself a “free minister,” moved to Harlingen. Sometime around 1560 the Frisian congregations at Harlingen, Franeker, Leeuwarden, and Dokkum agreed to a covenant intended to help them resolve internal conflicts more efficiently, to provide for vacancies of ministers, and to regulate the care of the poor. Elsewhere things were also better organized at the regional level. In the North, the easing of persecution allowed congregations to institutionalize even further, in forms somewhat resembling the Reformed classis model. By contrast, persecution after 1550 intensified in the south.27 Because of that, many Flemish refugees, stricter in doctrine than the Mennonites of the northern Netherlands, settled in and around Harlingen and Franeker. They emphasized martyrdom, the independence of the individual congregation in decision-making, and maintaining strict discipline. They were, however, unaware of the four-city covenant worked out among the Frisian congregations. This caused a new conflict at Franeker when in late 1565 the Fleming Jeroen Tinnegieter was named as minister; the other four-covenant churches protested. The affair played out as a disagreement between the “Frisians” and 25

Valkema Blouw (1991b), 74; Keyser (1975); Doornkaat Koolman (1964), 224–32. Several Anabaptists had ties with Chambers of Rhetoric, a typical urban phenomenon where drama and poetry were written and performed; for instance: Jan van Leiden, Hendrick Hendricksz Snijder, David Joris and Hendrick Niclaes. Cf. Waite (2000). 27 Zijlstra (2000), 287. 26

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“Flemish” and turned into a major division along ethnic lines. Neither Dirk Philips, nor Hans Busschaert from Antwerp, nor any of the other elders was able to establish peace. Arbitration, however, by the Holland elders, Jan Willemsz and Lubbert Gerritsz, achieved a temporary compromise in late 1566. But when the congregation celebrated communion at the beginning of 1567, the Flemish were required to kneel longer than the Frisians—because, they were told, of their greater guilt. The division immediately started up again. Dirk Philips requested that the quarreling parties come to Emden; after a period of fruitless deliberation, he sided with the Flemish, whom he considered to be the true church. In July 1567 both parties banned the other and refused to recognize each others’ baptism. Lenaert Bouwens choose the side of the Frisians. Some congregations remained apart from the controversy, since they considered the division to be un-scriptural, calling themselves the “still standers.” Elsewhere, some hesitating congregations chose to affiliate with the Flemish in 1569. If these names in the beginning were geographical and more or less determined by ethnicity, within a generation the great political and social changes in the Low Countries redefined the differences primarily in terms of doctrine and ethics (which was also the case for the High Germans and Waterlanders). Waterlanders: Doopsgezinden The High Germans were the smallest denomination by far. Some of them emigrated from the Rhine area to the new Dutch Republic during the last quarter of the sixteenth century. Here they formed congregations of some significance in commercial and industrial centers, such as Haarlem, Leiden, and Amsterdam. The Waterlanders—partisans of Naeldeman and Schedemaker who had been ousted in 1557 by Menno—went an entirely independent way. Comprising approximately 20% of the total Dutch Anabaptists, the Waterlanders were concentrated in the western coastal area of Friesland and the water-rich region between Amsterdam and Alkmaar. At some point, though it is not known exactly when, the Waterlanders began to call themselves “Doopsgezinden” to distinguish themselves from the Mennonites. Unlike the latter group, they did not reverence a man (i.e., Menno), but were imitators of Christ, his baptism in the Jordan, and his command to the Apostles to baptize. On many points they distanced themselves from the Mennonites, arguing

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their positions with Scripture. They thought that marital avoidance and pronouncing the ban without prior warning were both wrong, and that shunning was to be applied only in exceptional cases. After all, did not Christ accept sinners and eat with them? The Waterlanders claimed to obey God’s commands and follow Christ’s example out of fervent love, not fear of discipline. They appealed first of all to individual responsibility and professed a deep piety, which was soon blended with mysticism and spiritualism.28 In addition, they challenged the Melchiorite-Mennonite doctrine of the incarnation. In general, the Waterlanders developed a mentality of pragmatism and open-mindedness that protected them from further divisions. In 1568 the Waterlanders adopted a congregational order—inspired by the hope of avoiding the Mennonite quarrels over authority between elders and congregations—in which they charged the elders with the responsibility of safeguarding doctrine. In 1577 they were the first Anabaptist group in the Netherlands to adopt a confession of faith. In 1581 a revised congregational order permitted members to accept government offices, except for judicial functions (rendering judgments of life and death was in conflict with the principle of nonresistance). These expressions of Doopsgezind pragmatism, which were in tension with Mennonite separatism, reflected the powerful influence of Hans de Ries, a former Calvinist from Antwerp who moved to Holland. Baptized by Schedemaker about 1576, de Ries put his stamp on the Doopsgezinden for about a half century until his death in 1638. The more moderate Doopsgezind attitude toward political involvement was also a consequence of the establishment of the Dutch Republic in 1581. By long standing tradition, local governing was the duty of the richest and most distinguished residents; thus, in some places where Doopsgezinden enjoyed economic and social status—for example, De Rijp, the Zaan area, and the Frisian west coast—this responsibility of governance fell to Doopsgezinden rather than to Calvinists.29 The End of Martyrdom In the 1560s the Netherlands entered a period of civil strife that erupted in 1568 in the Dutch Revolt against the king of Spain, Philip 28 29

Visser (1988a) I, 96–99. Visser (1992), 58–62.

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II, who had succeeded his father Charles V in 1555. Philip charged his representative in Brussels—Margaret of Parma, regent of the Netherlands—with the task of protecting Catholic doctrine against the Reformation, which was represented in the Netherlands first by Anabaptism and later also by Calvinism. The struggle for independence against Habsburg centralism was above all a religious matter, driven especially by Calvinists seeking freedom of conscience. In the 1530s and 1540s a series of earlier edicts opposed Anabaptists specifically. The first opposition to Habsburg rule dated back to 1550 when Brussels promulgated the so-called “Bloody Edict,” a stricter and more merciless religious policy than anything preceding it. The “Bloody Edict” sparked extensive and vehement protests, especially in the Southern Netherlands, whence Calvinists had spread from France beginning in the 1540s. They suffered fierce persecution there, just as the Anabaptists did elsewhere. Catholic authorities forbade printing, distributing, or owning heretical books; heretical meetings were abolished; and adherents killed, their possessions to be confiscated by the state. Although the inquisition played a large role in identifying suspects, carrying out the edicts against heretics was the task of the local and regional courts of justice, who received assistance from lower-level military inquisitors. When in 1566 authorities in Brussels rejected the appeal of the nobility to soften the edicts, violent iconoclasm spread from the south to the whole of the Netherlands among the furious masses sympathetic to Calvinism. The Anabaptists stood aside. In 1567, the Count of Alva replaced Margaret as regent. Alva’s huge financial impositions, combined with an absolutist politics of repression and intimidation, lit the fuse to the powder keg. Prince William of Orange became the leader of a popular revolt that began in 1568 and lasted for the next eighty years. The seven northern provinces joined together in the struggle of the Reformed guerrillas (“geuzen”). They confiscated Catholic churches and besieged and conquered the most important cities. Anabaptists sympathized with the struggle but did not take part in the warfare. In 1579 the seven provinces firmed up their defensive alliance in the Union of Utrecht, which also affirmed the principle of freedom of conscience. In 1581 under the Stadholder William of Orange, the Republic of the Seven United Provinces declared its independence from the Habsburgs. In the meantime, the persecution of Protestants had already long ceased. The last Mennonite victim in the North was Reytse Aysesz, who

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was drowned in 1574 in Leeuwarden. By contrast Catholic persecution of heretics in the south lasted until 1598. The exact count of Anabaptist martyrs during this prolonged period of religious turmoil is not known. They constitute the larger portion of an estimated total of 2,000 victims of the Habsburg government’s executions for heresy in the northern and southern Netherlands. The worst periods of persecution in the North clustered around the years 1535, 1540, and 1550, while executions in the south intensified primarily after 1550. This variation in the application of laws against heresy reflected varying degrees of loyalty to Brussels by the provincial and urban authorities, especially since the central government did not pay any of the costs related to the court proceedings or executions. Groningen, for example, was barely supportive of the central authority, while Friesland and Holland carried out the directives of Brussels faithfully. Cities inside these areas often distinguished between their own citizens and strangers—a category that included some refugee Anabaptists. The Calvinists were also victims of persecution, particularly in the south, although there were some differences. In Antwerp between 1530 and 1577 a total of 1,188 Protestants were prosecuted, of whom only 27% were Anabaptists; however, of the 278 death sentences which followed, the ratio was reversed: 87% of those executed were Anabaptists and 13% others.30 On the basis of convictions, the records show that the Anabaptists belonged principally to the ranks of craft workers. Convicted Anabaptists were represented in the following occupations: textile production (20%); wood working (12%); leather work (11%); and metal working (10%). Smaller numbers were in trade (9%), food production (8%), and construction (8%). These figures are a strong indication of the urban character of Dutch Anabaptism. Only 3% were employed in farming.31 Further, many Anabaptists lived in the environs of large cities where the protectionist guild system had no voice, so Anabaptist workers could develop economically without hindrance. For example, after the end of persecution the Anabaptist minority in the Zaan region and on Schermer Island northwest of Amsterdam played a preponderant role in building up Europe’s first industrial region,

30 31

Goossens (2001), 15–31. Statistics in Zijlstra (2000), 253–60.

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especially in wood production, food production, ship building, fisheries, and the like.32 Thanks to their struggle against Spain the Reformed steadily gained more followers. Anabaptism and Calvinism competed with each other, although the history of the songbook Veelderhande Liedekens (1556) suggests that the Calvinists were gaining the upper hand. The 1556 collection contained mostly Anabaptist hymns and was initially used by the Reformed. But seven years later, in 1563, the Calvinists came out with their own volume, the Gheestelijcke Liedekens, that eliminated the Anabaptist influence. This book was not in use for long, because in 1568 the Reformed church determined that all congregations should use only the Genevan Psalms in the Dutch version by Petrus Datheen. The Anabaptists prefered their martyr hymns and New Testament-inspired songs over the militant lyrics of the Old Testament.33 Meanwhile in 1569, the ninth, enlarged edition of the Veelderhande Liedekens appeared, followed in 1570 by the fourth edition of Het Offer des Heeren, expanded to include additional martyr songs. Prior to 1570, five reprints of the Biestkens Bible and twelve of the Biestkens New Testament had appeared. The steady growth in size and format of songbooks and testaments was evidence of increasing Anabaptist self-confidence. Doopsgezinden, Divided Mennonites and their Golden Age (1580–1640) Liberated but not Equal As soon as the Republic was founded, with William of Orange as Stadholder and the States General established in The Hague, a struggle broke out at every level, as provinces and cities sought power and autonomy within the federation. The Calvinists, who took credit for the success of the revolution, aspired to become a state church. This did not happen, however, because the Union of Utrecht (1579) included the principle of freedom of religion. To be sure, the Reformed Church received privileged status; membership in this church was desired for holding political and governmental offices, if not absolutely required. In the initial struggle between church and state, 32 33

Visser (1992), 53–58. Hofman 1993), 248–60; Visser (1991), 120–24.

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the balance was usually in favor of public, political, and economic freedom. Nevertheless, even though the Reformed Church did not achieve majority status until the 1650s, it was clearly the guardian of Christian norms and values. Surrounded by neighboring countries with dominant state religions, the Republic was a fairly open society. In contrast to these countries, where the nobility and church dominated political life, the Netherlands developed a middle-class society where merchants and regents set the course and acted as patrons of art and culture. In this period of Dutch history, often called the “Golden Age,” Amsterdam functioned as an international center of commerce and culture, and as a place of refuge for religious dissidents. Since the Spanish had solidified their hold on the south, thousands of Netherlanders from the region, many of them Mennonites, emigrated to the Republic, primarily for economic reasons. The Republic flourished thanks to Flemish financial capital, freedom of shipping, the very profitable trade with the Baltic countries and the Mediterranean and, above all, the expanding colonial business of the United East India Company (VOC), founded in 1602. The East India Company, also financed with much Doopsgezind capital, was the product of a unique cooperation between the large harbor cities in Holland and Zeeland and free entrepreneurship.34 Catholics in the northern provinces were expelled from their churches and forced out of their positions in public life. Although masses were officially forbidden, they nevertheless frequently took place in hidden churches in barns and residences. The new government “Calvinized” the educational system by only admitting Reformed students to the newly-founded universities. Marriages, too, were to be performed only in the Reformed Church, though in the course of time (in Holland after 1604) civil marriages were introduced. Compared with the Catholics the position of the Anabaptist minority was more favorable. Mennonites and Doopsgezinden were tolerated, although they, too, had to meet in hidden churches for their worship. Despite their principled avoidance of armed resistance, they were viewed as loyal sympathizers of the revolution. Already in 1572 the Doopsgezinden collected about 1000 guilders to finance

34 Cf. Israel (1995); for the Doopsgezind/Mennonite position: Sprunger (1994), 138–40.

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the military campaigns of William of Orange. After that, the Stadholders of the House of Orange were always willing to come to their defense. Thus, for example, in 1582, Prince William protected the Mennonites—“who are called Doopsgezind”—when the Reformed city council in Middelburg, Zeeland threatened to withdraw their citizenship. Although the Anabaptists were divided, they were always unanimous in their support for the Dutch state and for the Orange Stadholders, honoring and respecting them as defenders of their faith and as God-given liberators from martyrdom. The secular authorities often defended the legal status of Anabaptists. However, the Calvinists never let an opportunity pass to convince the Anabaptists of their theological errors, and they tried to frustrate the formation of their congregations and to forbid their meetings. The “quiet in the land” were harassed by a seemingly endless number of disputations and polemical writings. One of the most sensational disputations took place in 1596 in Leeuwarden. The exchange lasted for at least three months without any tangible result, except to forbid the preaching of one Mennonite leader, Pieter van Keulen. In addition to the standard points of conflict, Calvinists always associated Mennonites with Münster and added the new issue of Anabaptist internal divisiveness as a sign of their false doctrine. These religious polemics seeped into common talk, where there was joking and satire about the “Anabaptist Babel” and the hypocrisy of Anabaptist doctrines and lifestyle.35 Not until the middle of the seventeenth century did the agitation against the Anabaptists begin to diminish, in particular because the Calvinists had to direct their arrows against other unorthodox groups and teachings (with some of which Anabaptists were closely associated). A Mennonite Babylon In 1621 the Calvinist preacher of Middelburg, Herman Faukelius, published a lengthy polemic, Babel, Dat is Verwerringhe der Weder-dooperen onder malcanderen (Babel, That is the Mutual Confusion of the Anabaptists). The image of an Anabaptist Babel was appropriate— after the Flemish/Frisian division of 1567 the process of further division, especially on the conservative side, accelerated. Although the

35

Visser (1994), 76–79.

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struggle was pursued in the name of preserving Menno’s teaching, very seldom were the schisms of a purely theological nature; the main debates concerned issues related to church discipline, often in response to the greatly increasing prosperity of the membership. At the same time, competing claims to exclusivity were also at issue: Which group could, on the foundation of the old teaching, regard itself as the only true church of Christ? These were generally the core issues of each division, although the actual occasion for the dispute often arose from some trivial event which then led to this crucial question. Resistance to compromise, along with the personal charisma of dominant leaders, were often the catalysts in such a process of escalation. Around 1581 among the “Frisian” churches Lubbert Gerritsz (?-1612) began to question marital avoidance, the prohibition of business dealings with the Flemish, outside marriage, and requiring rebaptism of Flemish who transferred to the Frisians. Elder Jan Willemsz smoothed the matter over, but when he died in 1588 the conflict reignited. This time, the “hard liners” banned Lubbert Gerritsz and his followers. The strict banners were called the “Hard” or “Old Frisians,” while the group around Lubbert Gerritsz were the “Soft” or “Young Frisians.” Gerritsz left behind a collection of spiritual letters and many spiritual songs. Elder Pieter Jansz Twisck (1565–1636), a Hard Frisian leader with considerable authority, saw himself as the guardian of Menno’s heritage. Twisck left an impressive body of writings, including a concordance, a secular and ecclesiastical history, and a Bible encyclopedia, all published in large folios. In 1617 he coauthored a confession of faith that included, among other things, the Melchiorite doctrine of incarnation, foot washing, and prohibition of outside marriage. He also published numerous devotional tracts and spiritual songs. Ten years after the Old Frisian split, they divided again, in 1598–1599, when the Harlingen elder Jan Jacobsz issued a prohibition against doing business with a banned ship owner. Moreover, he turned against the growing practice of taking cases to court. Attempts at mediation by Twisck and his people, who were more lenient, were unsuccessful. The ultra-orthodox “Jan Jacobsz Group” placed Twisck and his followers under the ban and claimed to be the only genuine Mennonites. They numbered 17 congregations in Friesland and a few in Holland. Although most would disappear by the middle of the eighteenth century, they maintained themselves on the island of Ameland until 1855.

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In 1639 the Hard Frisians drafted a church order with new regulations of behavior, including a ban on ship cannons and prohibition of tobacco and alcohol. Like other Anabaptist denominations, the Hard Frisians became more lenient in application of discipline in the course of the seventeenth century. Being involved in society and the activities of daily life brought them to a milder position. Among the Flemish the divisions were at least as tumultuous, if not more serious. Here, too, the major controversial issues were the application of the ban and shunning, rebaptism, and outside marriage. The issue of outside marriage took on new socio-economic significance—among the richer families finding marriage partners who could help in the accumulation of economic capital was often considered to be of more importance than maintaining membership in one’s particular Mennonite group. In 1586 in Franeker a major conflict took place over the purchase of a house by the minister Thomas Byntgens. He was accused of fraudulent dealings and his colleague Jacob Keest banned him. This divided the congregation into two camps. Mediation by outside ministers proved unsuccessful, after which Keest took his case against Byntgens to a Franeker court. Here, and in an appeal to a higher court, the judgment went against Byntgens and he was sentenced to a large fine. The conflict grew to a country-wide partisan debate that reached a climax in 1591 with each side banning the other. As a consequence, a division emerged between the “House Buyers,” or “Old Flemish,” and the “Contra-Housebuyers,” or “Young Flemish”. The Old Flemish, who had strict rules prescribing clothing, claimed to be the only true Mennonites with a strict discipline. In 1598 Jacob Pietersz Vermeulen, one of their authoritative elders in Haarlem, led a new division which was limited to the city. The more liberal “Young Flemish”—thanks to such leaders as Jacques Outerman and Claes Claesz of Blokzijl—represented a more irenic direction in the church. However, even among this relatively tolerant group Outerman faced charges of Socinianism in 1626 that were finally quashed only after a Reformed-instigated inquiry. The prohibition against outside marriages in these Flemish circles was suspended rather early. Nevertheless, some Flemish, especially in rural areas, were disturbed by the generous approach of Claes Claesz in his efforts at reconciliation with the Old Flemish and the Frisians. As a result, some northern Flemish churches separated in 1628 under the leadership of Jan Luyes to become the “Groningen Old Flemish.”

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They developed into the most conservative group with strict rules regarding daily life and behavior. Then, Jan Luyes caused a conflict because he wanted footwashing at the time of communion, whereas a minority only wanted it done in the home during the visitation of the elders and ministers, as had been previously practiced. The ensuing “Danzig Old Flemish” split of 1630 claimed only a few congregations in the Netherlands, although many more in Poland and Prussia. The Old Flemish Mennonites flourished principally in rural areas of Groningen, Friesland and Overijssel, with about fifty congregations, often with the character of a house or family congregation. A few congregations were also established in the cities such as Groningen, Deventer, Amsterdam, and Haarlem.36 Waterlander Challenges While the orthodox Mennonites fought among themselves to claim Menno’s heritage, the more liberal groups succeeded in finding a way toward unity. In 1591, on the basis of the confession, the “Concept of Cologne,” Lubbert Gerritsz (Young Frisian) brought about a reconciliation with the High Germans, led by Lenaert Clock. They retained the ban and shunning, applied mildly, and declared that marital avoidance was unjustified. The Waterlander group of Hans de Ries would gladly have joined them, but the Gerritsz/Clock party had significant theological, as well as practical, hesitations— and not without reason. Hans de Ries, a Reformed convert, had introduced a number of Calvinist-inspired practices, such as serving communion at a table instead of passing it around, oral instead of silent prayer, the public collection of poor funds, and the singing of Psalms. The Waterlanders also increasingly followed the Reformed model in the practice of discipline. In place of the ban they often used temporary exclusion from communion. Along with this, De Ries promoted spiritualistic teachings (he knew the writings of Schwenckfeld and Franck), and he introduced other new influences through his friendship with Dirk Volckertsz Coornhert, the Catholic spiritualist and champion of tolerance. De Ries clearly elevated the Spirit above the Letter of the scripture (“the pages of the Bible are literally eaten by the mice,” as he 36

Cf. Lowry (2001); Voolstra (2002).

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used to say). He also promoted an experiential devotion directly from the heart that testified to an inner uprightness in a way that formal externalities did not. The introduction to his very popular hymn book (Lietboeck, 1582), contained special instructions for sincere devotion. Although he acknowledged the legitimacy of other churches and denominations, and did not consider theological differences relevant as long as salvation was not in question, de Ries could nonetheless be dogmatic. For example, when the Socinians sought a rapprochement with the Waterlanders around 1600, he resolutely rejected them, because for him the doctrine of the Trinity took precedence. In 1601 when De Ries earnestly pressed the Young Frisians and High Germans to reach a mutual concord, the three denominations joined together in the “Reconciled Brotherhood.” Nevertheless, the union did not last long, because the other two continued to be troubled by the “Reformed borrowings” of the Waterlanders. Attempts at uniting with the Brownists of John Smyth—English Separatists who had fled to Amsterdam—also raised conflicts.37 In that situation De Ries and Lubbert Gerritsz drew up a confession in 1610 which explained the free will and predestination doctrines within an Anabaptist context. When Lubbertsz died in 1612, the Reconciled Brotherhood fell apart. Three years later Smyth’s Brownists united with the Waterlanders. These developments must be seen against the backdrop of the larger national situation. Just at the moment when the Spanish and Dutch declared a Twelve Year Truce (1609–1621), the Reformed Church was wracked with vehement internal disagreements about the doctrines of predestination, election, and free will that resulted in a major church-state crisis. The Remonstrants, led by the professor Jacobus Arminius, propounded the liberal position that the human will was essential for receiving salvation, while the Contra-Remonstrants (led by professor Franciscus Gomarus) asserted the opposite: God had already in creation determined who would be damned and who would be saved. The conflict took on political dimensions when the Remonstrants asked the government of The Hague to mediate. When the Remonstrants gained the support of Secretary of State Johan van Oldenbarneveldt, the Contra-Remonstrants mounted a coup d’etat and won the stadholder, Prince Maurits, to their side.

37

Coggins (1991), 69–114.

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At a national synod at Dordrecht, 1618, the decision went against the Remonstrants. Their doctrine was judged as heresy, and Calvinistic orthodoxy triumphed. Remonstrant preachers were dismissed and had to go underground or flee the country; Oldenbarneveldt was executed.38 Fears that the Calvinistic supremacy would also triumph politically, however, were not realized because Frederik Hendrik, the successor of Prince Maurits (who died in 1625), restored the previous political order. The church again adjusted to the status quo and the old principle of freedom of conscience. After 1630 the Remonstrants could return and establish their own seminary.39 The Waterlanders sympathized openly with the Remonstrants, although De Ries by 1617 had come to the realization that their rationalism and intellectualism was far removed from his own devotional spiritualism. Nevertheless, this affair was certainly part of the context for the conflict stirred up by the Amsterdam minister Nittert Obbesz, who, with the encouragement of the Remonstrants, accused De Ries and his followers of disrespect of Scripture. The ensuing quarrel about the “written and unwritten Word” led to the publication of dozens of bitter polemics between 1624 and 1627, before the issue was resolved in favor of De Ries.40 Especially for the orthodox Mennonite groups, the debate was one more indication that the Waterlanders were a wild shoot from Menno’s trunk. Mistrust between the groups was exacerbated by competing claims to the Anabaptist martyr tradition. In 1615, Hans de Ries brought out a new Historie der Martelaren (History of the Martyrs), an extensive book that went far beyond the old Het Offer des Heeren. Pieter Jansz Twisck, however, took offense at the work since the Waterlander renegades were now unjustly claiming the Mennonite martyrs of the past as their own. In response, Twisck and his followers fanned the fires of controversy by publishing their own version of the text in 1617, including an Old Frisian confession as the Mennonite hallmark—an act of intellectual piracy, in that he simply took over wholesale histories that were written from a perspective completely opposed to that of the Old Frisians. Then, in 1626, Twisck published a new, completely revised Old Frisian edition. The Waterlanders

38 39 40

Eijnatten (2005), 172–78. Po-Chia Hsia (2002). Voolstra (2005), 141–56.

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countered in 1631 with a revised version of their own, the Martelaers Spiegel der Werelose Christenen (The Martyrs Mirror of the Nonresistant Christians)—the 1631 edition that would lay the foundation of Tieleman Jansz van Braght’s Martyrs Mirror of 1660.41 The introduction to the martyr book of 1631 expressed regret that the modern, free times of material prosperity brought many divisions to Anabaptism and led the believers away from the true imitatio Christi. This was also the credo of a group of young ministers from the school of De Ries, under the leadership of Jan Philipsz Schabaelje and Pieter Pietersz, who called themselves Vredestadsburgers (Peace City Citizens). They spoke out against the decline of Anabaptist morals resulting from the pursuit of wealth and possessions that was visible everywhere; and they propagated their ideas by using simple prose dialogues and many spiritual songs. Schabaelje and Pietersz fostered an inner devotion of a practical ascetic nature, inspired by the late medieval popular mysticism of the Theologia Deutsch (German Theology), Thomas á Kempis, Meister Eckhardt and Johannes Tauler, which could also be found in the early Anabaptist spiritualism of Sigmund Salminger and Christian Entfelder, and the mystical-spiritualism of the Familists and Matthias Weyer.42 These devotional thoughts found a counterpart at the same time in the Reformed Church, where a powerful undercurrent existed within the framework of orthodox Calvinism appealing for a deeper faith and spiritual experience. This movement, known as the Nadere Reformatie (Second or Further Reformation), found its direct inspiration in English Puritanism and in the popular mysticism noted above.43 Church Unions and the Relevance of Confessions The Synod of Dordrecht (1618) firmly established orthodox doctrinal rules as an addition to the Heidelberg Catechism, thereby elevating the confessionalization of the state and public church to a more definitive phase. In 1621 the expelled Remonstrants emigrated to Antwerp, where they also adopted a confession of faith.44 This national confessionalizing trend prompted Mennonites to sharpen

41 42 43 44

Visser (1988a), I, 100–22. Visser (2002). Visser (1988a) I, 68–81, 123–33; Eijnatten (2005), 219–21. Eijnatten (2005), 172–81.

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their own confessions, although the goal of these efforts, following the examples of the “Concept of Cologne” (1591) and the Waterland confession (1610) was to promote the reunification of the divided parties on the basis of a consensus. This development was especially clear after 1625 when the state once more became the protector of religious liberty. Claes Claesz from Blokzijl, leader of the Young Flemish, became the great promoter of reconciliation. Already in a published writing of 1610 Claesz abandoned the exclusive claims of the Flemish denomination, and accepted a measure of Flemish responsibility for the schism of 1567. A first union between the Flemish and the Soft Frisians occurred at Harlingen in that same year, 1610, although in many places the move aroused opposition. Soon thereafter, Claes Claeszs successfully persuaded the High Germans to join. That local success led to a peace proposal in 1626, initiated by four Flemish elders from Amsterdam, with the goal of reuniting all the Flemish and Frisians on the basis of the Olijf-tacxken (Olive-branch) confession. The most striking part of the new confession, which appeared in print in 1629, was the absence of marital avoidance in church discipline. The binding element was a mutual recognition that both denominations represented the true church of God. The Old Frisians of Pieter Jansz Twisck rejected the proposal, because they found the Flemish too lax, and continued to consider their own Old Frisian church as the exclusive inheritor of Menno’s legacy. The separated Young Frisians and High Germans reacted positively to the union; and they, in turn, presented the so-called Jan Cents Confession (1630), which was more theologically grounded and explicit than the Olijftacxken had been. Having arrived at the insight that their agreements were greater than the differences, most accepted the proposals for union. Like the Old Frisians, the Old Flemish hesitated, fearing the loss of identity and troubled by the thought of recognizing as true baptisms the baptisms of groups they had hitherto opposed. In the north of the country, the Old Flemish let it be known that they preferred to unite with the conservative Groningen Old Flemish rather than with the High Germans and Young Frisians. Still success came in 1632, when the Old and Young Flemish groups united around the Confessie van Dordrecht (Dordrecht Confession), composed largely by Adriaen Cornelisz. In the foreword to the confession both parties granted each other forgiveness for the divisions that had begun with the dispute surrounding the house purchase. The Dordrecht

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Confession retained the particular Mennonite doctrine of incarnation, albeit in a weakened form. It emphasized the ban as the most important means of discipline, but no longer insisted on marital avoidance. Outside marriage was forbidden, while footwashing was retained but made optional. Furthermore, the confession permitted deaconesses and recommended that ministers be recruited from the deaconate—both innovations adopted from the practice of the Waterlanders. When, on April 26, 1639, the Flemish victory was achieved, at least for the greater part of the Dutch churches, some 3,000 people gathered in the Amsterdam Singel Church to celebrate the general reconciliation of the United Flemish, (Young) Frisians, and High Germans. Testifying to the jubilation accompanying this union was a new book: Kort Verhael Vande vereeniginghe tusschen de Doopsgezinde ghemeenten, die aen d’eene zijde ghenoemt worden Vlamingen, aende ander zijde de Vereenigde Vriesen ende Hoogduytschen (A Short Account of the Union between the Doopsgezind Congregations, which are Called Flemish on the One Side, and United Frisians and High Germans on the Other).45 The times were definitely changing. Mutual accusations of heresy belonged to the past. While the old parties had always rejected human dogmas in light of the sufficiency of the Gospel, confessions now emerged as the best means of encountering each other, forgiving each other, and merging with one another. The most conservative groups viewed themselves as unchanged, genuine Mennonites. These included the Hard Frisians, the Jan-Jacobs People, the Groningen and the Danzig Old Flemish (together, these groups composed about 15% of the total of approximately 65,000 Anabaptists). On the left flank the Waterlanders (about 20 to 25%) still remained under their “Doopsgezind quarantine.” The United Flemish, a majority of about 60%, continued in the conviction that they had preserved the essence of the old heritage of Menno, although the times had also taught them, after a long and deliberative process, to be more flexible with regard to doctrine and discipline. Their social and economic interaction with people of other opinions taught them to relativize their own certainty. And so they quietly tolerated each other’s private insights—a pragmatic mentality characteristic of the broad-thinking

45

My emphasis.

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Waterlanders, but also typical of the Dutch deliberative and permissive culture in general. The Flemish Union now also on occasion would refer to itself as “Doopsgezind.” Church Life and Social Change One positive result of the many schisms among the Dutch Anabaptists, unparalleled in any other Protestant denomination, was the creation of an enormous body of hymns. Divisions tended to stimulate poetic creativity, with each group composing its own hymn book. Over time, wealthy congregations began to publish their own books—for example, the hymn books of Walcheren, De Rijp, Hoorn, or Middelie. By 1800 more than 150 different hymn books had appeared, with an estimated 15,000 different songs! As they became more assimilated, an increasing number of churches adopted the singing of Psalms, in imitation of the Waterlanders. First they used the Reformed Psalms; but later various Anabaptist groups composed their own rhyming Psalms. In a similar way, the Waterlanders, influenced by scholarly opinion, began to give up the Biestkens Bible in the late 1630s and adopted the more scholarly State Protestant translation in its place. Soon thereafter, the United Flemish did the same. The last printings of the Biestkens Bible, intended for the conservatives, appeared in 1721 and 1723.46 Little is known about the daily life of the churches in the sixteenth century. The first church minutes and membership books date from the beginning of the seventeenth century. In the times of persecution committing data to paper constituted a mortal danger; but as the size of the congregations grew, so too did the need for administrative records, especially in the city congregations.47 In general, each congregation had three offices: the elder (in the beginning also called bishop); the teacher or preacher; and the deacon. The elders were the only ones authorized to baptize and celebrate communion in the different congregations. The teachers/preachers had the responsibility for preaching and congregational edification. Deacons were charged with taking care of the poor within the congregations.

46

Visser (1988b); Grijp (1994). The oldest church records were kept by Reynier Wybrantsz, minister of the Amsterdam Waterlanders. He entitled them “Memoriael” (memory book), the term used for the business diaries of merchants and shipowners. 47

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Together, elders, preachers and deacons made up the ministry, who watched over the morals of the congregation and administered discipline. Various groups had different practices in calling and ordaining leaders; the process of consultation and decision-making by the membership also varied from denomination to denomination, and from one village or city to the other. In the larger city churches the ministry was charged with the routine day-to-day leadership, while the elders guarded the purity of doctrine. In the smaller churches, especially among the conservatives, each resolution had to be brought before the “brotherhood,” which made decisions by consensus, on the principle that “silence means consent.” Gradually the office of elder disappeared among the Doopsgezinden, with the office of minister assuming the full pastoral service. The practice of an unpaid ministry continued, although the minister’s expenses were repaid; eventually, especially among the Waterlanders, congregations began to pay salaries. The growing responsibility of charity for the poor and the establishment of homes for orphans and widows led to a division of responsibilities among the deacons. Women were installed as deaconesses in order to tend to the education and employment of orphan girls; deacons assumed care of the orphan boys, who were helped with finding work by the members of the congregation. While full careers in politics, civil service and the universities were closed to Mennonites and Doopsgezinden, they were nonetheless very active in the economic sectors, earning a formidable reputation as inventors and entrepreneurs within a very short time. Several technological innovations had Anabaptist origins: for example, the efficient “flute” ship by Pieter Jansz Liorne of Hoorn (in 1595); mill- and polder-draining technology by Jan Adriaensz Leeghwater (1575–1647) from De Rijp; or the natural scientific discoveries of Cornelis Drebbel (1572–1633) of Alkmaar, who gained fame in the courts of England and Prague.48 The Anabaptist work ethic helped the Anabaptist community as a whole attain an outstanding economic position in a remarkably short time. Hard work, the delivery of quality products, and doing honest business without demanding unreasonable profits earned Anabaptists the name of “worker bees of the state.” Their frugal lifestyle and modest consumption led to some great personal fortunes.

48

Visser (1989); Wegener Sleeswijk (2003), 29–35.

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Out of the old craft sector in the textile and food industries came forth flourishing family businesses. Very prosperous linen, cloth, and silk weaving mills in the big cities of Amsterdam, Haarlem and Leiden, and later also in Twente, allowed their Anabaptist owners to enter into international trade, finance, and investments. The same was true in other parts of the country as well, such as the Zaan River region with its hundreds of windmills, or the west coast of Friesland, with Harlingen as its economic center. Here numerous Anabaptists were occupied in the salt trade and in the manufacture of rope, decorative tiles, and roofing tiles. Economic success brought social emancipation. The Waterlanders led the way but other groups also benefited by gaining a higher social standing. Prosperous Mennonites devoted a part of their profits to reinvestment; but a part also went to the church for helping the poor. Congregations often appointed wealthy brethren as deacons, who then used their resources to supply employment as well as aid. In Amsterdam, the Waterlanders were able to accumulate such a large poor fund that surplus cash was available for low interest loans to members for business investments.49 Growing Anabaptist prosperity led regularly to problems and reactions, as illustrated by the concerns raised by the Peace City Movement. Again and again, for example, church leaders admonished ship owners not to take cannons on board for protection against privateers; and sailors were subjected to discipline if they worked on armed ships. The need for armed ships was one of the main reasons why Doopsgezind merchants and ship owners were less involved in the East Indian trade (the VOC) than in the Baltic foreign trade, where the sea route via Denmark was completely safe.50 Anabaptists also became prominent in other sectors, including book printing and selling, map making, the graphic arts, and painting. Lambert Jacobsz and Govert Flinck were renowned artists; and the Uylenburg, Van Sichem and De Passe families played a prominent role in the international art trade.51 The arts created no theological problem for the Doopsgezinden—painters and engravers were considered to be craftsmen who followed specific artistic prescriptions

49 50 51

Sprunger (1994). Trompetter (1997); Sprunger (1994). Visser (1996), 132–36; Veldman (2001).

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that went back to the time of the Renaissance. Moreover, Christian teachings and content were a leading theme in Dutch art. One of the most famous founders of Dutch art, Karel van Mander (1548– 1606), was a member of the conservative Old Flemish. He wrote hundreds of spiritual songs for the church and translated Dirk Philips’ tracts into French. But “in the world” he was honored as a poet, painter, and Renaissance expert. The manual for painters that he published became famous. Another well-known personality was the poet, Joost van den Vondel (1587–1679), sometimes called the Dutch Shakespeare. Vondel served as a deacon of the Amsterdam Waterlanders, before withdrawing from the Anabaptist world around 1620; in 1641 he converted to Catholicism.52 Doopsgezind Citizenship and Ecumenism: Dissidence and Conformity (1640–1700) A Global Village for Religious Exchange In 1648, when Peace of Münster brought an end to the Eighty Years War, the Republic was moving toward the peak of its power and fame. The rich became richer, and the ordinary person, in the presence of God, did his daily duty. But this cloudless sky and radiant sunlight also knew a Rembrandt-like shadowy side; the flat and watery landscape filled with productive cows and windmills was regularly threatened by Ruysdael-like cloudy skies. France and England envied the maritime and commercial success of the Protestant merchants in this country of some two million inhabitants. In 1672 the French threat to trample Holland under foot broke out into a national crisis, and a distressed, angry crowd publicly lynched the Grand Pensionary, Johan de Witt. Once again, an Orangist prince, the young William III, who was then the Stadholder, came to the nation’s defense. William protected Protestantism against the Catholic threat when France revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685. Huguenot refugees were received with open arms in the Netherlands. His marriage to Mary Stuart in 1677 and his accession to the kingship of England in 1689 put an end to the Catholic aspirations of James II.

52

Spies (1994).

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Thanks to a relatively liberal censorship policy, every kind of book—from revolutionary pamphlets to steamy pornography—was printed in Holland and distributed, sometimes secretly, outside the county.53 In the religious area, too, Dutch publishers offered a freedom unknown elsewhere in Europe. Between 1580 and 1620, thanks to spiritualistic-minded persons and groups like the Doopsgezinden and Remonstrants, a number of works of David Joris, the Familists, Schwenckfeld, Franck, and Sebastian Castellio were reprinted and published in translation. The mystical doctrines of Jacob Boehme also found followers and propagators. Still more threatening to Calvinist and Mennonite orthodoxy was Socinianism, that gradually infiltrated from the beginning of the seventeenth century. In 1638 the Socinians were driven out of Poland and most of them settled in the Netherlands with help from the Remonstrants. Between 1668 and 1690 the whole corpus of Socinian theology appeared in a tenvolume edition, the Bibliotheca fratrum Polonorum. A good number of Doopsgezinden were captivated by the Socinian scriptural exposition that placed the human nature of Christ in the foreground. The Doopsgezind Jan Knol of Amsterdam translated the Racovian Catechism (1659) into Dutch, while in the capital city it was an open secret that the bookseller-publisher Jan Rieuwertsz sold everything that “God and Calvin had forbidden.” A Reformed theologian lamented once: “A Doopsgezind is an ignorant Socinian, a Socinian is a learned Doopsgezind.”54 Then, in 1655, the Quakers arrived, forced to leave England because of their nonconformity and dissident behavior. Their Spirit-dominated teaching, sobriety, and pacifism attracted many Doopsgezinden, especially in Amsterdam and in Friesland, where George Fox, William Ames, and William Penn visited on various occasions. Many of their writings were printed, thanks to the efforts of Doopsgezinden. Still other sorts of religious dissidents were flooding into the Republic, much to the exasperation of the Reformed orthodox preachers—persons such as Jan Amos Comenius, the prophetess Antoinette Bourignon, and Jean de Labadie, the founder of a Protestant cloistered community, along with many mystical-spiritualists and chiliasts, including Petrus Serrarius, Valentin Weigel, Johann Gichtel, Johannes

53 54

Weekhout (1998). Visser (2004a).

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Rothe, and a number of other “chrétiens sans église” (Christians without a church). For the church itself, the most dangerous new ideas were to be found in the works of René Descartes and Baruch de Spinoza, published in the Netherlands by the Doopsgezind Jan Rieuwerrtsz. Their rationalist method of biblical criticism was construed as atheistic and a clear threat to Christendom itself. One writer of the time stated that it seemed as if the Republic was as “full of sects as the summer is full of insects.”55 Faced with this heterodoxy, the Reformed Church barely had time to worry about its traditional enemies, the Doopsgezinden and the quiet Mennonites, who were, in any case, moving closer in confession and ritual to the dominant church culture. Mutual Doopsgezind/ Mennonite and Reformed involvement in business, where religion no longer played a role, led to a growing number of mixed marriages. By the middle of the seventeenth century, the Reformed regarded Socinianism as the greatest danger. Since the Reformed church had convinced the government that Polish anti-Trinitarianism was a cancer undermining the religious peace, politicians and the courts both tried to oppose its spread with strong edicts and censorship. Increasingly, theological confessions served to protect the various denominations from suspicion of errors by demonstrating the purity of a church’s doctrine. The War of the Lambs When the Remonstrants were chased out of the country in 1618, a grassroots lay movement emerged that called itself Collegiantism. The Collegiants did not consider themselves to be a formal denomination; rather, they promoted a general spiritualistic Christianity of the free word, unhindered by dogmatism, confessions, and learned scholarship. They met in small groups (colleges) without preachers, and engaged in wide-ranging discussions of Bible subjects led by lay persons. Since 1621 twice a year, Collegiant members traveled to Rijnsburg near Leiden, where they had a center to practice baptism (by immersion) and communion. After 1630, when the Remonstrants returned to the Republic, the Collegiants faded out of the picture for a time; but the group blossomed anew after the 1650s, strengthened

55

Kolakowski (1966); Israel (2001).

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by its appeal to the Doopsgezinden. Meeting generally in private homes, the group became a kind of religious debating club for the Doopsgezind and Remonstrant intelligentsia, offering a mixture of spiritualism and rationalism. Doopsgezinden who yearned for more intellectual and religious development but could not gain entrance to the theological faculties of the university, found in Collegiantism a worthy alternative.56 In their earnest piety—patterned on the apostolic congregations and emphasizing the praxis pietatis—the Collegiants were a mix of spiritualism and rationalism. Unconditional tolerance was a central theme, leading them into discussions of the most divergent subjects—from chiliasm to Cartesianism, from spiritualism to Socinianism. Because of this liberal approach, both the Reformed and the orthodox Mennonites immediately suspected the Collegiants of heresy.57 The Collegiants continued into the eighteenth century and served as important nourishing soil for the radical Enlightenment, which included a number of Doopsgezinden. Abraham Palingh and Anthonius van Dale were among the most noted enlightened Doopsgezind participants who stood up against superstition and sorcery. Other Doopsgezinden promoted the works of Spinoza and Descartes: Pieter Balling was a good friend of Spinoza and Jan Hendriksz Glazemaker translated all the works of Descartes and Spinoza. The struggle over unlimited tolerance that was about to break out among the United Flemish was a prelude to one of the central themes of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, receiving essential impulses from John Locke.58 In several Doopsgezind churches the rise of Collegiantism led to difficulties. In 1654 at Rotterdam, for example, the Collegiants of the United Flemish church were expelled and they took their refuge with the Waterlanders. Difficulties arose later around the Waterlander minister Jacob Ostens, who baptized people into membership in the universal church, but later transferred to the Remonstrants. The most significant conflict, however, arose in Amsterdam within the United Flemish Church. It led to a new national schism among

56 However, Doopsgezinden increasingly studied medicine, thus obtaining classical language skills. 57 Fix (1991). 58 Israel (2001), 258–94, 342–58, 375–405.

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Anabaptist groups that was not healed until 1811. The roots of the controversy go back to 1648, when an extremely talented medical doctor, Galenus Abrahamsz (1622–1706), was named as minister of the Flemish church. Galenus conformed to the Olijf-tacxken confession. In 1649, acting on behalf of his congregation, he declined a union sought by the Waterlanders. The sticking point was that the Waterlanders strongly argued that neither party should be committed to the confession of the other. Through his contact with the Amsterdam Collegiants, however, Galenus changed his position; by 1654 he had become the Collegiants’ most important spokesperson. His enthusiasm went so far that in a sermon in his church, “Het Lam” (the Lamb), he pleaded for the acceptance of unbaptized persons into the congregation, with the only conditions that they accept nonresistance and lead an irreproachable life, which for him was more important than purity of doctrine. Emphasizing an invisible, all-inclusive church led him to relinquish the Anabaptist claim to be the only true church and made him an advocate of unconditional tolerance. In 1655 the first objections arose in the congregation, and a stream of pamphlets soon gave detailed information, extending to the non-Anabaptist public, about this new quarrel in the largest congregation in the Netherlands (about 2,000 members). Members of “Het Lam” accused each other of Socinianism and Münsterite fanaticism; and Galenus’ opponents were called “beggars” (geuzen) and “precisionists”—unflattering names for the orthodox Reformed. The issue escalated further when Galenus wanted to focus discussion in his congregation around a statement of nineteen articles. The document disputed the claim that Doopsgezinden and Mennonites had established their church expressly by Christ’s command. He also denied that their offices and ceremonies were the same as those of the early Christian church. True religion did not consist in the written Letter, but in the power of the Spirit. Confessions, Galenus argued, were only of relative worth; the Anabaptists had never held to a precisely-defined theology to which every member must submit. The policy towards Waterlanders and Remonstrants, he pleaded, should be: Unity in essentials, freedom in nonessentials, and love in all things. The heart of the essentials was to be found in the Apostles’ Creed. Nonetheless, the external, visible church did have an essential function as an aid in the individual’s journey to salvation. In 1659 Galenus clarified his position in Nader Verklaring (Further Explanation). Nine of his fourteen ministerial colleagues took up

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positions against him, criticizing his disparaging of the confessions. Such confessions, based on Scripture, summarized in precise language those points of faith that were necessary for salvation. They also guaranteed that gross theological errors would be avoided—a point of special concern to the Calvinists and the government. Because the Amsterdam congregation could not resolve the dispute itself, a national Anabaptist consultation was organized at Leiden in 1660 by the anti-Galenist camp under the leadership of the conservative Flemish minister, Thieleman Jansz van Braght. The Galenist party derisively called it the “Mennonite Synod.” The consultation declared the three Anabaptist confessions to be binding; in addition, ministers who publicly disparaged the external, visible church were forbidden to preach, and unbaptized persons were no longer to be admitted to communion. Further, the consultation called on each minister to explicitly reject Socinianism. Galenus and his followers refused to accept these decisions, arguing that an ad hoc gathering of elders had no right to decide these issues for the Amsterdam congregation. Early in 1662 the Amsterdam city council rejected any outside interference in the matter and demanded that the Amsterdam ministers sign an agreement of toleration. Temporarily, the matter seemed to be decided in favor of Galenus. In Utrecht, however, the Leiden mediators had more success, when in 1662 they suspended four Collegiant preachers. The preachers promptly withdrew and began to hold separate preaching services. The first schism among the United Flemish had now become a fact. The calm in Amsterdam was only superficial. The matter worsened in 1662 when Galenus turned personally against his younger colleague, Samuel Apostool, who had affirmed in a morning sermon that the satisfaction doctrine was necessary for salvation. This was an issue inspired by a contemporary conflict within the Reformed church. Galenus, who preached the noon sermon at the Lamb church, attacked Apostool so mercilessly in reply that the whole city was scandalized by the language. Pamphlets rained down pro and con. The widespread description of the division as “the War of the Lambs” came from the title of one of the best known of these pamphlets: Lammerenkrijgh: Anders, Mennonisten Kercken-twist (The War of the Lambs: Or, Mennonite Church Quarrel).59 The Reformed now openly sup-

59 It was printed anonymously “Tot Waerschow,” a Dutch pun combining the meanings: “as a warning” and “at Warsaw” (a reference to Socinianism).

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ported the party of Apostool, while the Amsterdam city officials again appealed for peace. But the congregation was far from united. At the time of the next communion, Apostool’s group insisted that the Galenists sign a statement of peace affirming the eleven main articles of the confession, before they could share in the bread and wine. Galenus in turn asserted that communion must be celebrated unconditionally, undivided, and with tolerance. In response, Apostool and his followers—about three hundred members in total—left the church and rented an empty warehouse, where they held their first service on June 22, 1664. Lamists and Zonists Apostool’s followers bought a former brewery called “the Sun” and quickly added about two hundred more sympathizers. The two groups—known thereafter as the Lamists (from the church of the Lam/Lamb) and Zonists (from the church of the Zon/Sun)—quarreled over the church possessions and finances, but the Amsterdam magistrates intervened and made a judgment in favor of the Lamists. During 1664 Zonist sympathizers from around the country gathered at Leiden, where twenty-two congregations signed an Oprecht Verbondt van eenigheyt (A Sincere Covenant of Unity), composed by the Rotterdam minister, Bastiaen van Weenighem. The statement affirmed that the confessions contained the central points of faith and were binding. The Lamist-Zonist separation continued for many decades afterward. In Haarlem, for example, the magistrates in 1665 judged that no divisions were to be tolerated, but the situation eventually became so untenable that a wall was built in the church to separate the two sides. Even that measure did not guarantee peace; in 1671, five hundred Lamists separated from the approximately thirteen hundred Zonists. When the situation was more or less accepted, Galenus thought the time was ripe in Amsterdam to move into a union with the Waterlanders, which was accomplished in 1668. Elsewhere, some of the Waterlanders merged with the Lamists, some Waterlanders went their own way, and still others even joined with the Zonists. From about 1675 on, the vast majority of Dutch Doopsgezinden were divided into two principal streams: the confessional Zonists and the tolerant Lamists.60 60 In Amsterdam the Zonists had to contend with internal schisms: the breaking off of the “Small Zon” in 1671, and of the “Little Star” in 1692.

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The Amsterdam Collegiants held their meetings at the Lamist church from about 1668 until 1675, when they opened an orphanage for boys and girls, jointly operated with the Lamist church. After 1675 they held their meetings at the orphanage. In line with the Collegiant principle of tolerance, unique at the time, children from all sects and persuasions were welcomed. The children received a general Christian education and thorough vocational training. Galenus Abrahamsz was clearly one of the most authoritative Lamist leaders. However, to the disappointment of some former supporters, his church responsibilities eventually led him to tone down some of his most vocal Collegiant views. His most famous writing was the Verdédiging der Christenen, die Doopsgezinde genaamd worden (Defense of the Christians Who are Called Doopsgezinden), published in 1699. Galenus understood the need for religious education, a development that was begun in the 1650s in Utrecht. Gradually religious education, once regarded as the responsibility of the family, shifted to the congregation, who could pursue the task more effectively. The churches organized catechism lessons for the youth during the winter months. This required ever more catechism books, following the Reformed example. Galenus’ Anleyding tot de Kennis van de Christelyke Godsdienst tot onderwijs der jeugd (An Introduction to the Knowledge of the Christian Religion for the Instruction of the Youth, 1677) was very popular. Galenus’s name was also closely associated with an interest in formal theological education, ultimately leading to the establishment of the Doopsgezind Seminary in 1735, long after his death. More than the other Anabaptist groups, the assimilated Lamists realized that the old, poorly-paid office of lay preacher could not advance the quality of preaching. In 1680 Galenus received a commission to establish some private Doopsgezind training for preaching. The need for theological training increased as contact with Remonstrants intensified. Toward the end of the seventeenth century Doopsgezind students were often allowed to enroll in the Remonstrant Seminary.61 During this same period, a general decline in the number of preachers led to further expressions of institutionalization: namely, the establishment of regional societies or conferences. Already in 1640, a Waterlander conference was established in North Holland,

61

Brüsewitz (1985), 11–18.

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called the De Rijp Society. By 1700 about thirty congregations had joined. In 1674 a Zonist Society was formed, which had about forty congregations participating by 1700. In 1695 the Conference of Doopsgezind Churches in Friesland was established, with forty-seven congregations; following the Reformed pattern they were subdivided into four districts.62 In addition to overseeing ministerial appointments, the conferences also guaranteed that smaller and poorer congregations fulfilled their financial obligations to the ministers and provided for the poor. Some societies also placed supervision of doctrine on the agenda. The Zonists also recognized the advantage of scholarly knowledge, although they did not pursue it as far as the Lamists. They retained the tradition of parental religious education somewhat longer, made much use of the popular instructional book by Tieleman van Braght, Schoole der deughd. Geopent voor de kinderen der Christenen (School of Virtues, Opened for Children of Christians, 1657).63 From 1690 on, their rising star was Herman Schijn (1622–1727), a figure of national importance, especially in the first quarter of the eighteenth century.64 Another Zonist, Lambert Bidloo, a learned druggist, became one of the most zealous defenders of Zonist confessionalism. In 1701 he dissected and critiqued the Galenist principle of unlimited tolerance, down to the most minute details, in an anonymously published book Onbepaelde verdraaghzaamheyd de verwoesting der Doopsgezinden (Unlimited Toleration the Destruction of the Doopsgezinden). His younger brother, Govert Bidloo, was a medical doctor who was appointed as one of the first Mennonite professors at the University of Leiden. In 1701, Bidloo became the personal physician of King William III.65 The Old Flemish minister, Douwe Feddriks of Molqueren, became the champion critic of the Galenist trend of toleration and Sociniansympathizing. Feddriks found whole-hearted support in this effort from the Reformed. In 1698 he published a catechism, which by its title revealed that even in conservative circles the new era could not be stopped. Mixing the once separate terms, “Mennonite” and “Doopsgezind,” it was called Der Mennoniten Leere of onderwijzinge voor

62 63 64 65

Mennonite Encyclopedia, IV, 561. Wijk (2000). Mennonite Encyclopedia, IV, 454–56. Mennonite Encyclopedia, I, 338.

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de Doopsgezinde Christenheid (The Mennonite Doctrine or Teaching for Doopsgezind Christianity).66 Social and Cultural Assimilation If the first phase of Anabaptist assimilation was achieved through economic participation, a second long-anticipated phase began during Holland’s calamity year of 1672. Earlier, in 1665, when the Republic was at war with England, the government discovered deep Anabaptist resources for enriching the state treasury. In 1672 desperate Dutch rulers needed large sums of money to shore up the badly-neglected system of national defense against the threat of English, German, and French aggression. The government called upon the wealthy Doopsgezind families to grant the state a loan at low interest. In Friesland in 1672 and 1673 the Doopsgezinden responded by raising a total of 532,943 guilders for two loans. In exchange, they were assured of religious freedom, exemption (for a fee) from military duty, and the right to vote for local officials and water boards.67 Elsewhere in the Republic the Doopsgezinden also reached generously into their pockets for the war effort, and provided footwear and clothing for the soldiers. These impressive acts of wartime loyalty brought the Doopsgezinden full acceptance as citizens. Henceforth, Orange princes never failed to applaud the Doopsgezinden and Mennonites as good citizens in both domestic and foreign affairs. Wealthy Doopsgezinden were not overly particular in the charities they supported. Already in 1655, for example, they responded to an appeal of the Reformed, by contributing to a national collection for the persecuted Waldensians in Piedmont.68 But they also did not forget their own needy Mennonite brothers. The Doopsgezinden and Mennonites took regular collections for the benefit of persecuted Mennonites in foreign countries. For this purpose they founded a relief Committee for Foreign Needs. They came to the aid of the Danzigers in 1660, for example, the Polish in 1662, the Moravians in 1665, the Swiss in 1672, and those in the Palatinate in 1676. When persecution started up again in the Palatinate at the end of the century, a few Amsterdam Doopsgezinden and Mennonites

66 67 68

Mennonite Encyclopedia, II, 318. Blaupot ten Cate (1839), 176–80. Eijnatten (2005), 208–09.

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collected upwards of fifty thousand guilders in 1690 and 1694. This was just the beginning of a long history of relief efforts and diplomatic interventions on behalf of the persecuted Swiss, Prussian, and Palatinate Mennonites. In the 1690s, at the request of Dutch Anabaptist groups, the Dutch government was quick to defend the Swiss Brethren cause before the Elector of the Palatinate. Even Stadholder (and English king) William III exerted pressure on the Elector to handle the Mennonite problem justly. To make the point to the Elector he stated in his messages that Anabaptist subjects were among the country’s most industrious and loyal inhabitants. After the issue was finally resolved in the Palatinate, the Relief Committee was dissolved in 1699, not anticipating that in Switzerland new and even more complicated problems would soon appear.69 No matter how much the Anabaptists may have been accepted by the government and church because of their good works, critics, nevertheless, enjoyed mocking them for their austere preaching, their staid, distinctive dress, and their luxurious homes. Although the rich were only a small minority of the Doopsgezind population, they built many large country houses along the banks of the Vecht River near Utrecht and the Spaarne River near Haarlem. There the wealthy lived in their so-called “Mennonite Heaven,” hardly different from the dominant ruling class. The “hypocrisy of the Mennonites” in this and other instances was the subject of plays and even of an opera. These elite Doopsgezinden promoted painting and literary art to a high degree. Many accumulated expensive art and curiosity collections. Joost van den Vondel had a very talented successor in Joannes Antonides of Goes, while Joachim Oudaen of Rotterdam, a fervent Collegiant, achieved at least as much fame with his poetry and politically-charged dramas. Nearly every city counted numerous famous Doopsgezind citizens. Here one could note Jan van der Veen in Deventer, or the artistic family Van Hoogstraten in Dordrecht. Haarlem had the Van der Vinne family of painters and Abraham Casteleyn, publisher of a much respected national newspaper; and Amsterdam was proud to claim Jan van der Heyden, the painter and inventor of the fire engine. Even Doopsgezind women gained prominence in the art world. Most notable were the paper-cutting artist, Johanna Koerten, whose portraits enjoyed worldwide fame,

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Bangs (2004), 22–68.

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and Flora Batava (Agnes Block), renowned for her knowledge of exotic plants and as the patron of many poets and painters.70 In spite of their fame and wealth, these well-known personages did not deny their Anabaptist church origins, although some rich families moved over to the public (Reformed) church through outside marriage. A number of poets promoted the modernization of church singing. Joachim Oudaen was a skilled psalm rhymer, and his song book for the Lamist congregation replaced the old fashioned Psalms of Datheen. Also, the influence of the Collegiants, who developed a distinguished song culture, was notable in Anabaptist music.71 The collected works of Menno Simons, Opera Omnia Theologica, were published in 1681, probably on the initiative of the Zonists, and included a fine portrait of a scholarly and “assimilated” Menno done by Jan Luyken, a Lamist and mystic.72 This artist would make himself immortal in the worldwide Mennonite church as illustrator of a new printing of Van Braght’s Bloedigh Toneel, of Martelaers Spiegel (The Bloody Theater or Martyrs Mirror), that appeared in 1685 at Amsterdam. Apart from Luyken, however, there was not a single Doopsgezinde involved in the publication. The initiative for the 1685 edition came completely from the business interests of a consortium of Reformed publishers, who hoped to tap the profitable Doopsgezind market with a fancy, deluxe edition of the martyr stories. For most of the new owners, the tragic, distant past was a permanently closed book; so this chic leather folio, ornamented with beautiful copper clasps, served more as a coffee table book than as a source of inspiration.73 The Doopsgezind fellowship waited eagerly for the final stage of complete political, social and economic equality which, however, would not be attained before the aftermath of the French Revolution in 1796. The long path to that goal, no matter how “enlightened,” would be coupled with some pain due to a dramatic loss of mem-

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Visser (1996), 121–53. Visser (2004c), 267–72. 72 The identity of the editor, Hendrick Jansz Herrison, is still a mystery; however, the authors of the laudatory poems can all be identified as ministers and members of the Amsterdam Zonist church. 73 Visser (1999), 167–72. In 1699 Josse Bout made a small Van Braght anthology for ordinary Mennonites, entitled ‘T Merg van de Historien der Martelaren (Haarlem, Izaak vander Vinne), 8°. 71

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bership (from about 65,000 to about 35,000) and the disappearance of the last traditional Mennonite communities. By the end of the eighteenth century, the Dutch Doopsgezind fellowship, continuously adjusting its identity, seems to have become the martyr of its own success. Bibliography Bangs, Jeremy Depertuis (trans. and ed.). Letters on Toleration. Dutch Aid to Persecuted Swiss and Palatine Mennonites 1615–1699. Rockport, 2004. Blaupot den Cate, S. Geschiedenis der Doopsgezinden in Friesland. Van derzelver ontstaan tot dezen tijd, uit oorspronkelijke stukken en echte berigten opgemaakt. Leeuwarden, 1839. Bornhäuser, Christoph. Leben und Lehre Menno Simons’. Ein Kampf um das Fundament des Glaubens [etwa 1496–1561]. Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1973. Brüsewitz, J. “‘Tot de aankweek van leeraren’. De predikantsopleidingen van de Doopsgezinden, ca. 1780–1811,” Doopgezinde Bijdragen 11 (1985), 11–43. Coggins, James R. John Smyth’s Congregation. English Separatism, Mennonite Influence, and the Elect Nation. Waterloo/Scottdale, 1991. Decavele, Johan. De eerste protestanten in de Lage Landen. Geloof en heldenmoed. Leuven/Zwolle, 2004. Doornkaat Koolmann, J. ten. Dirk Philips. Vriend en medewerker van Menno Simons 1504 –1568. Haarlem, 1964. Driedger, Michael. “An Article Missing from the Mennonite Encyclopedia. The Enlightenment in the Netherlands,” in C. Arnold Snyder, ed., Commoners and Community. Essays in Honour of Werner O. Packull. Kitchener, 2002, 101–20. Eijnatten, Joris van and Fred van Lieburg. Nederlandse religiegeschiedenis. Hilversum, 2005. Fix, Andrew C. Prophecy and Reason. The Dutch Collegiants in the Early Enlightenment. Princeton, 1991. Frijhoff, Willem. Embodied Belief. Ten Essays on Religious Dutch Culture. Hilversum, 2002. Goossens, Aline. “Karel V en de onderdrukking van de wederdopers,” Doopsgezinde Bijdragen 27 (2001), 15–31. Gregory, Brad S. Salvation at Stake. Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge/ London, 1999. Grijp, Louis Peter. “A different flavour in a Psalm-minded setting. Mennonite songs from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,” in Visser (1994), 110–32. Hajenius, A. M. L. Dopers in de Domstad. Geschiedenis van de Doopsgezinde Gemeente Utrecht 1639 –1939. Hilversum, 2003. Hamilton, Alastair. The Family of Love. Cambridge, 1981. Hofman, Bert. Liedekens vol gheestich confoort. Een bijdrage tot de kennis van de zestiendeeeuwse Schriftuurlijke lyriek. Hilversum, 1993. Horst, Irvin B. A Bibliography of Menno Simons ca. 1496–1561. Dutch Reformer. With a Census of Known Copies. Nieuwkoop, 1962. Israel, Jonathan I. The Dutch Republic. Its Rise, Greatness and Fall. Oxford, 1995. ——. Radical Enlightenment. Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650–1750. Oxford, 2001. Jansma, Lammert G. Melchiorieten, Munstersen en Batenburgers. Een sociologische analyse van een millennistische beweging uit de 16th eeuw. Buitenpost, 1977. Joldersma, Hermina and Louis Grijp, trans. and eds. “Elisbeth’s Manly Courage”: Testimonials and Songs of Martyred Anabaptist Women in the Low Countries. Milwaukee, 2001.

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Keeney, Willam E. and C. Arnold Snyder, eds., Dirk Philips. Friend and Colleague of Menno Simons. Kitchener, 1998. Keyser, Marja. Dirk Philips 1504–1568. A Catalogue of His Printed Works in the University Library of Amsterdam. Amsterdam, 1975. ——. “The Fresenburg Press: An Investigation Pertaining to Menno Simons’ Printing Office in Holstein, Germany, 1554–1555,” in Irvin B. Horst,ed., The Dutch Dissenters. A critical companion to their history and ideas. Leiden, 1986, 179–86. Kolakowski, Leszek. Chrétiens sans Église. La conscience religieuse et le lien confessionel au XVII e siècle. Paris, 1966. Lowry, James W. “Pieter Jansz Twisck on Biblical Interpretation,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 75 ( July, 2001), 355–69. Mikron Marten. Een waerachtig verhaal der t’zamenspekinghen. [Documenta Anabaptistica Neerlandica, III] W. F. Dankbaar (ed.). Leiden, 1981. Nissen, Peter. De katholieke polemiek tegen de dopers. Reacties van katholieke theologen op de doperse beweging in de Nederlanden (1530–1650). Amsterdam, 1988. Pettegree, Andrew. Emden and the Dutch Revolt. Exile and Development of Reformed Protestantism. Oxford, 1992. Po-Chia Hsia, R. and Henk van Nierop, eds. Calvinism and Religious Toleration in the Dutch Golden Age. Cambridge, 2002. Simons, Menno. Dat Fundament des Christelycken Leers. H. W. Meihuizen, ed. The Hague, 1967. Spies, Marijke. “Mennonites and literature in the seventeenth century,” in Visser (1994), 83–98. Sprunger, Mary. “Waterlanders and the Dutch Golden Age. A Case Study on Mennonite Involvement in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Trade and Industry as One of the Earliest Examples of Socio-Economic Assimilation,” in Visser (1994), 133–48. Trompetter, Cor. Agriculture, Proto-Industry and Mennonite Entrepreneurship. A History of the Textile Industries in Twente 1600–1815. Amsterdam, 1997. Valkema Blouw, P. “Printers to the ‘Arch-heretic’ David Joris. Prolegomena to a Bibliography of His Works,” Quaerendo 21 (1991a), 163–229. ——. “Drukkers voor Menno Simons en Dirk Philips,” Doopsgezinde Bijdragen 17 (1991b), 31–74. Veldman, Ilja M. Crispijn de Passe and his Progeny (1564 –1670). A Century of Print Production. Rotterdam, 2001. Visser, Piet. Broeders in de Geest. De doopsgezinde bijdragen van Dierick en Jan Philipsz Schabaelje tot de Nederlandse stichtelijke literatuur in de zeventiende eeuw. Deventer, 1988a. ——. Het lied dat nooit verstomde. Vier eeuwen doopsgezinde liedboekjes. Den Iip, 1988b. ——. “De artes als zinnebeeld over doopsgezinden en hun relatie tot kunst en wetenschap,” De Zeventiende Eeuw 5 (1989), 92–102. ——. “Lithanie van een liturgisch stiefkind. Een korte geschiedenis van de psalm bij de doopsgezinden,” in J. de Bruijn, ed., Psalmzingen in de Nederlanden. Vanaf de zeventiende eeuw tot heden. Kampen, 1991, 115–48. ——. Dat Rijp is moet eens door eygen Rijpheydt vallen. Doopsgezinden en de Gouden Eeuw van De Rijp. Wormerveer, 1992. ——. et al., eds. From Martyr to Muppy (Mennonite Urban Professionals). A Historical Introduction to Cultural Assimilation Processes of a Religious Minority in the Netherlands. Amsterdam, 1994. [Visser (1994)] ——. and Mary Sprunger. Menno Simons. Places, Portraits and Progeny. Krommenie, 1996. ——. “De pilgrimage van Jan Luyken door de doopsgezinde boekenwereld,” Doopsgezinde Bijdragen 25 (1999), 167–95. ——. “ ‘A Lasco wedder uns.’ A Lasco und die Täufer und Nonkonformisten,” in Christoph Strohm, ed., Johannes á Lasco (1499–1560). Polnischer Baron, Humanist und europäischer Reformator. Tübingen, 2000, 299–313.

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——. “Schabaliana. Een bibliografische na-oogst van het werk van Dierick en Jan Philipsz Schabaelje,” Doopsgezinde Bijdragen 28 (2002), 173–210. ——. “Geschiedenis van het doperse voorgangerschap,” in Nanne E. Haspels, Een Gideonsbende. Doopsgezinde Gemeenten en hun visie op voorgangers. Amsterdam, 2003a. ——. “Het bedrieglijk onbewogen bestaan van brieven. Een editorische vergelijking tussen de geschreven en de gedrukte martelaarsteksten van Jeronimus en Lysken Segers,” Doopsgezinde Bijdragen 29 (2003b), 65–87. ——. “De haat-liefde relatie tussen doperdom en socianianisme in de doperse historiographie,” Doopsgezinde Bijdragen: (2004a), 249–64. ——. Keurige ketters. De Nederlandse doopsgezinden in de eeuw van de Verlichting. Amsterdam, 2004b. ——. “Op zoek naar collegiantische liederen met sociniaanse trekken in Stapels Lusthof der Zielen (1681),” Doopsgezinde Bijdragen 30 (2004c), 265–91. Voolstra, Sjouke. Het Woord is vlees geworden. De melchioritisch-menniste incarnatieleer. Kampen, 1982. ——. Menno Simons: His Image and Message. North Newton, 1997. ——. “Huiskopers of Dantziger Oude Vlamingen, Doopsgezinde Bijdragen 29 (2003), 111–24. ——. Beeldenstormer uit bewogenheid. Verzamelde opstellen. A. Voolstra, et al., eds. Hilversum, 2005. Vos, Karel. Menno Simons 1496–1561. Zijn leven en werken en zijne reformatorische denkbeelden. Leiden, 1914. Waite, Gary K. David Joris and Dutch Anabaptism 1524–1543. Waterloo, 1990. ——. Reformers on Stage. Popular Drama and Religious Propaganda in the Low Countries of Charles V, 1515–1556. Toronto, 2000. Weekhout, Ingrid. Boekencensuur in de Noordelijke Nederlanden. De vrijheid van drukpers in de zeventiende eeuw. The Hague, 1998. Wegener Sleeswijk, André. De Gouden Eeuw van het Fluitschip. Franeker, 2003. Wijk, Alfred van. “‘Op dat ghy namaels meught eeuwig leven . . .’ Bibliografische en catechetische analyse van een hervonden vragenboek,” in Lies Brussee, et al., eds., Balanceren op de smalle weg. Opstellen aangeboden aan Kees van Duin, Alle Hoekema en Sjouke Voolstra bij hun afscheid van het Doopsgezind Seminarium. Zoetermeer, 2002, 460–80. Zijlstra, Samme. Om de ware gemeente en de oude gronden. Geschiedenis van de dopersen in de Nederlanden 1531–1675. Hilversum/Leeuwarden, 2000.

CHAPTER NINE

MARPECK AND THE LATER SWISS BRETHREN, 1540–1700 John D. Roth In his Chronica of 1531, the German spiritualist Sebastian Franck, described the Anabaptist movement as hopelessly fragmented. “They have become divided among themselves over so many different things,” he lamented, “and now have almost as many teachings as they have leaders.”1 The same year, Heinrich Bullinger, successor to Zwingli and architect of the Reformed Church in Zurich, denounced the Anabaptists in very similar language. “[ The Anabaptists] are divided into numerous sects,” he wrote, “and each bans and denounces the other as if they were the devil.”2 Although their solutions for resolving this divisiveness differed dramatically—Franck solved the problem by rejecting external forms, while Bullinger restored unity by enlisting the coercive power of the state—their description of the Anabaptist movement as a confusing welter of competing groups was not entirely a figment of the polemicist’s imagination. The rapid growth of the Anabaptist movement during the 1520s and 1530s, combined with the persistent pressures of persecution and a congregationally-oriented ecclesiology, contributed to the somewhat blurred character of Anabaptism in the early years of the Reformation. The history of the Swiss Brethren in the second half of the sixteenth century is therefore a narrative of identity formation—a process that unfolded precisely in the contested space between the Spiritualist option proposed by Franck and the pressures to conform to a uniform public faith advocated by Bullinger. This chapter will trace the emergence of a distinctive ecclesiological identity among Swiss Brethren Anabaptists in the German-speaking regions of the Swiss Confederation, the upper Rhine and the territories of southwest Germany, and the

1 2

Franck (1536), 193b. Bullinger (1531), Book I, viii.

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survival and transmission of that identity, between 1540 and 1700. Although the term “Swiss Brethren” correctly denotes a deep continuity with the movement of radical reform originating in Zurich in the early 1520s, Swiss Brethren congregations during the period of our study were not limited geographically to the Swiss territories, and many who later identified themselves as “Swiss Brethren” were not of Swiss ethnic descent. The earliest partisans of the movement frequently referred to themselves simply as “brothers” (Brüder). Their opponents, however, tended to label all those who advocated the baptism of adults as “Anabaptists” (Wiedertäufer = rebaptizers), since the act of “re-baptizing” anyone who had been previously baptized as an infant was a crime subject to the death penalty under Imperial law. The first known appearance of the term “Swiss Brethren” (Schweitzer Brüder) occurs in a letter from Pilgram Marpeck, likely dating to 1541 or 1542, followed shortly thereafter by a reference to the Swiss Brethren in the Hutterite Chronicle.3 In subsequent years, the term appears frequently in a wide variety of settings. The intensely missionary character of the early Anabaptist movement in Zurich led to the rapid expansion of Swiss Anabaptism into the Tyrol and the south German territories, and then into the Alsace, the Palatinate and down the Rhine valley. By the end of the seventeenth century, Swiss Brethren congregations could be identified in an arc of territories extending from northwestern Switzerland, Baden, Swabia/Württemberg and Hesse, through the upper Rhine regions of the Alsace, the Palatinate, and the Kraichgau, as far north as Neuwied and Cologne. Although we know far less about the Swiss Brethren presence in Moravia, archival evidence suggests that a steady stream of German-speaking Anabaptists emigrated to the area throughout the middle decades of the sixteenth century, and a handful of congregations apparently survived there into the opening decades of the 17th century.4 In contrast to other Reformation traditions that took shape around formal doctrinal statements such as Calvin’s Institutes or the Lutheran Augsburg Confession, Swiss Brethren theology tended to focus on pragmatic ethical concerns and resisted easy summary in doctrinal formulations. As historian David Sabean has suggested more gener-

3 4

Klassen and Klaassen, 311, 577–578; Chronicle, 225. Zeman (1969), 300.

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ally about village culture in early modern Europe, the Swiss Brethren were defined less by a carefully formulated set of shared convictions than by the fact that members of the community were “engaged in the same argument, the same raisonnement, the same Rede, the same discourse, in which alternative strategies, misunderstandings, conflicting goals and values [were] threshed out.”5 To be sure, the seven articles of the “Brotherly Union” at Schleitheim (1527)—with their strong emphasis on the separation of the church from the world—suggested the basic contours of that discourse. But a cohesive Swiss Brethren identity emerged only slowly in the course of the 16th century as congregations struggled for survival within a hostile political context and for self-definition amidst on-going debates with state church theologians, fellow Anabaptists, and Spiritualist dissenters. By the middle of the sixteenth century, the Swiss Brethren had clearly distinguished themselves within the broader Anabaptist tradition from the communitarian Hutterites in their conviction that the sharing of earthly possessions should be voluntary rather than mandatory. They also broke with the Dutch Anabaptists in their moderate approach to church discipline and in their rejection of Melchior Hoffman’s “celestial flesh” Christology, which continued to characterize the Dutch movement even under the more temperate leadership of Menno Simons. Scholars may have overemphasized the boundaries distinguishing the Swiss Brethren from the somewhat more mystical or spiritualist expressions of Anabaptism in South Germany and Austria.6 Likewise, the differences separating the Swiss Brethren from the followers of Pilgram Marpeck were likely not as significant as previously assumed. Although Marpeck consciously differentiated himself from the teachings of some Swiss Brethren congregations—and several sources identify the “Pilgramites” (Bilgramites) as a group distinct from the Swiss Brethren—no congregations survived bearing Marpeck’s name, and his theological perspectives seem to have been readily absorbed into the larger Swiss Brethren tradition in the decades following his death in 1556. Scholarship on the Swiss Brethren has focused disproportionately on the first generation of the movement in Zurich and the surrounding countryside, giving far less attention to the story of subsequent

5 6

Sabean (1985), 13. Packull (1995), 39, 61; Stayer (1991), 158.

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generations after persecution eliminated most of the early leadership. Claus-Peter Clasen’s Anabaptism: A Social History, 1525–1618 (1972) provides the most comprehensive overview of the Swiss Brethren in the century after their beginnings; and Cornelius Bergman, Ernst Müller, Ernst Correll, Mark Furner and Hanspeter Jecker have all offered important insights into Swiss Brethren history within specific regions.7 Nonetheless, in contrast to the early years of the Anabaptist movement, our understanding of the Swiss Brethren from 1540 to 1700 tends to be episodic and disjointed. Although recent archival research has unearthed several significant collections of manuscript sources—including a remarkable compilation of material circulating within the Marpeck Circle—publications on the Swiss Brethren have tended to remain narrow in focus. A comprehensive history of the Swiss Brethren, parallel to those which have long characterized scholarship on the Hutterites or the Dutch Mennonites in the 17th and 18th centuries, remains to be written. Formation of a Swiss Brethren Confessional Identity Context of Hostility From the very beginnings of the movement, the teachings of the Swiss Brethren evoked strong resistance from both secular and ecclesiastical authorities. Their separatist ecclesiology—characterized by believers baptism and the practice of church discipline—threatened to dissolve the bonds of political, social and religious unity, already badly frayed by the Reformation. And their insistence that Christian faith could not be separated from the moral transformation of the new believer—signaled especially by a commitment to nonviolence, a refusal to swear fealty oaths, and the sharing of economic possessions—seemed to undermine the very foundations of European political and social order. Although the Swiss Brethren were quick to interpret the hostility against them in the language of “persecution” and “martyrdom,” civil authorities regarded policies aimed at repressing the movement as part of a broader mandate for political order and religious unity.

7

Cf. also Hege (1908), Gratz (1953).

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Late in their lives, both Heinrich Bullinger, who spent his lengthy career consolidating the Zwinglian Reformation in Zurich, and Philip Melanchthon, chief architect of Lutheran theology, summarized their hostility to the Anabaptists. In his Prozess of 1557, Melanchthon reiterated his long-standing defense of the death penalty for the Anabaptists on the grounds that they were “seditious, blasphemers and revolutionaries.”8 In 1560, Bullinger integrated all of his previous writings against the Anabaptists in a volume titled Anabaptist Origins (Der Wiedertöufferen Ursprung), in which he linked the “Anabaptist plague” with treason and sedition—tracing a straight line from their teachings to the Peasants’ War and the Anabaptist Kingdom of Münster— and called on the secular authorities to use all means, including public executions, to rid the Confederation of this heresy. Like most Protestant theologians of the day, Melanchthon and Bullinger were sensitive to the accusation that their arguments might appear to support coercion in matters of faith. This, they insisted, was not their intention. Rather, Anabaptist teachings were inherently seditious and would inevitably lead to the breakdown of civil order. In the face of this threat, magistrates had a divine obligation to preserve order, even if it required the use of capital punishment. Despite these arguments, actual government policies toward the Anabaptists ranged widely. Ferdinand I, archduke of Austria and king of Bohemia and Hungary, for example, took a keen personal interest in ridding his territories of Anabaptist dissidents. Traditions of local autonomy blunted his efforts to promote Catholic orthodoxy in his eastern holdings, but elsewhere—in lower Austria, the Tyrol, and in his scattered holdings in Alsace, the Breisgau and Württemberg—Ferdinand’s pursuit of religious dissenters resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Anabaptists. By 1556, when Ferdinand succeeded Charles V as Holy Roman Emperor, very few Anabaptists appear to have survived in his territories west of Vienna. Elsewhere in Europe, amidst the colorful array of Imperial cities, bishoprics, and territorial principalities, strategies for dealing with the Anabaptists differed widely. In general, Catholic princes were more inclined to resort to capital punishment than were Protestant rulers; and the fiercest persecution took place between 1527 and 1530, with perhaps only a few dozen executions in the German-speaking territories

8

Hege (1908), 95–96.

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during the second half of the century.9 In the face of imprisonment, torture and death, some Swiss Brethren recanted their faith. Others adopted the Spiritualist option where they could evade a martyr’s death by conforming to the outward ceremonies demanded by the state church while retreating privately to a posture of inner dissent, rooted in the freedom of the Spirit.10 Within the mainstream Swiss Brethren tradition, however, official hostility to the movement proved to be a crucial component in the formation of a distinctive identity. For those who might have been wavering in their commitment, the possibility of suffering heightened the significance of baptism as a concrete statement of allegiance and reinforced a theology of discipleship (Nachfolge) rooted in the example of Christ. Within the many accounts of Anabaptist martyrdom— preserved in oral traditions, letters, manuscripts, devotional literature and, above all, in the hymnody of the Swiss Brethren—this “theology of suffering” became a persistent motif, enduring long after the actual experience of martyrdom had become relatively rare. Although sources on the Swiss Brethren in the middle decades of the sixteenth century are frustratingly sparse, the movement seems to have reached a crossroads in the 1540s. Nearly all of the educated leaders present at the beginning were now dead, their positions assumed by lay leaders who had no formal training. Persecution had successfully driven the movement into the countryside where itinerant missionaries preached furtively along the hedgerows or in private homes. Congregations tended to be widely-scattered and isolated from each other, meeting only rarely in larger assemblies, and then in secret, often in caves or isolated forest clearings. Although the assessment of social historian Claus-Peter Clasen that “the overwhelming number of communities in South and Central Germany, Switzerland and Austria were never touched at all by Anabaptism” is likely correct, Swiss Brethren congregations continued to survive into the seventeenth century, especially in the regions around Zurich, Bern, Schaffhausen, and Strasbourg, as well as in the Jura and the upper Rhine Valley.11 A smaller number of congregations persisted in rural areas scattered throughout the Tyrol, Hesse and Württemberg, and in several isolated estates in Moravia. 9 10 11

Gregory (1999), 80, 201, 203. Oyer (1997). Clasen (1978), 37.

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The confessional identity of the Swiss Brethren in the second half of the century tended to emerge in an ad hoc manner, forged more by the exigencies of conflict and survival than by the systematic arguments of a carefully formulated theological system. Their most influential writings during the course of the sixteenth century were almost always anonymous—the products of collaborative borrowings from a variety of sources, many of them unattributed. Scholars have sometimes described this approach as a Gemeindetheologie (congregational theology), a process fully consistent with a believers church tradition in which theological convictions emerge slowly, as a result of group discernment, rather than the creative genius of a single individual. Disputations This distinctive theological approach is especially evident in the recorded protocols of a series of public debates, or disputations, that brought Swiss Brethren leaders into formal conversation with university-trained theologians. Disputations were a common means of addressing religious differences during the sixteenth century. Authorities regarded such debates as an opportunity to demonstrate publicly the heretical nature of Anabaptist ideas while also putting to rest concerns that religious dissenters were being coerced into religious submission without a fair hearing. John Howard Yoder has identified no less than 23 different occasions during the course of the sixteenth century when Swiss Brethren leaders engaged in such formal disputations.12 A systematic analysis of these transcriptions still remains to be done. Nonetheless, if one examines the protocols of the major disputations—e.g., Zofingen (1532), Bern (1538), Pfeddersheim (1557), Frankenthal (1571)—several general themes consistently emerge. First, the authorities hosting the encounters clearly defined the terms of the debate and determined the topics to be addressed. Several weeks prior to the 1532 disputation in Zofingen, for example, Heinrich Bullinger counseled Berthold Haller, the city pastor of Bern, that he should not permit the discussion with the Swiss Brethren to go forward until they had agreed that all matters of faith “should be decided and clarified with Holy Scripture of both the Old Testament

12

Yoder (2004).

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and New Testament.”13 Bullinger’s strategy of insisting that the Old and New Testaments were of equal authority became standard practice in all subsequent disputations. In a related manner, state church theologians insisted that the topics of debate remain focused on classical formulations of Christian doctrine (the nature of God, the Trinity, sin and the redemptive work of Christ, etc.), and they framed their arguments in the technical, highly-nuanced language appropriate to their university training. The Swiss Brethren, by contrast, were far more interested in practical questions of Christian ethics, and they defended their positions with a literalist approach to the New Testament that their exasperated opponents regarded as naïve and simplistic. Not surprisingly, the two sides often talked past each other. Thus, when Reformed theologians at Frankenthal pressed the Swiss Brethren minister, Hans Büchel, for his views on the salvific status of the Old Testament patriarchs, he responded, “The Lord knows best when those of old entered heaven. I am not commanded to dispute what took place one or two thousand years ago. I am commanded to do right, and this is my lifelong aim. The secrets which God reserved for Himself, I wish to entrust to God.” “We go too far in proving the Deity,” Diepold Winter argued at the same gathering. “That the created should reason [about] the Creator is too difficult for us. We are not told that any apostles delved into such deep matters.” Unimpressed by these appeals to biblical constraints, the exasperated head of the Reformed delegation responded, “Then why debate? You could have just sent the Bible and said ‘this is our understanding!’ ”14 In none of the disputations was the outcome seriously in doubt, since the protagonists from the established church served as both advocates and judges. The conclusion of the Pfeddersheim debate of 1557 was typical. After a brief recess, Johannes Brenz, spokesperson for the Lutheran theologians, pronounced the Swiss Brethren to be in error and chided them for their obstinacy. Then the elector of the Palatinate called on them to repent and return to the Christian church on pain of exile.15

13 14 15

Fast and Yoder (1959), 84. Quoted in Yoder (1962), 118. Oyer (1986).

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The disputations were intended to convince the Swiss Brethren of their errors. Yet, paradoxically, by providing a rare safe haven for leaders from far-flung congregations to gather for shared conversations, and by challenging Swiss Brethren lay theologians to think more carefully and systematically about theological questions, the disputations may have actually fostered a Swiss Brethren theological identity that was more coherent and focused than might have otherwise been the case. Thus, at the Frankenthal disputation of 1571 the Palatine Elector Frederick III offered all Anabaptist participants— including foreigners and prisoners—free board and lodging throughout the 22 day exchange. During the course of the debate, Rauff Bisch, the main spokesperson for the Swiss Brethren, frequently asked to confer with the 14 other Anabaptist participants before responding. On several topics—e.g., those related to original sin and the Christian magistracy—the Swiss Brethren stated their opening position in vague and uncertain language, only to develop a much more clear and confident argument as the conversations proceeded. Along the way, Swiss Brethren representatives emphatically distinguished themselves from the Hutterites on the question of “community of goods,” and they explicitly denied any association with the “heavenly flesh” Christology of the Dutch Mennonites. This refining of Swiss Brethren theology, prompted by the disputations, continued long after the conclusion of the debate. Sometime in the 1580s, a lengthy manuscript called “A Short, Simple Discourse” began to circulate among the Swiss Brethren that systematically reframed the 13 articles discussed at Frankenthal, responding to them with greater theological sophistication and clarity than the original Swiss Brethren responses.16 The document is, in effect, a reformulation of the Swiss Brethren position, written apart from the pressures of the debating format, which reflects a more mature and richer understanding of Swiss Brethren theology. Parallel to these formal settings of debate, Swiss Brethren leaders composed numerous apologetic writings defending themselves on various controversial topics. These writings, almost all in manuscript form, promise to reveal a wealth of information. Yet they are difficult to interpret since we know very little about their transmission history: who read them, how many copies existed, or what impact they had on their readers.

16

Snyder (1999), 682–683 and especially Snyder (2000).

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By the end of the century, the Swiss Brethren were not writing systematic theology. But their experience with the disputations had forced them to respond to a series of difficult theological questions— especially those related to the authority of the Old Testament, church discipline, the relationship between faith and works, nonresistance, and the role of the Christian magistrate—so that their understandings of these topics were clearly more nuanced than they had been a half-century earlier. In a similar way, on-going encounters with other nonconformist groups—particularly, the Spiritualists, the Hutterites and the Dutch Mennonites—further contributed to a growing sense of shared identity among the widely-scattered Swiss Brethren congregations. Pilgram Marpeck and the Swiss Brethren Encounter with the Spiritualists The protocols of the disputations at Pfeddersheim and Frankenthal reveal a style of theological discourse characteristic of the Swiss Brethren in the second half of the sixteenth century: simple in speech, Christocentric in its hermeneutic, and reluctant to engage doctrinal debates that seemed disconnected from the practical realities of Christian life. The writings of Pilgram Marpeck, an Anabaptist civil engineer and lay theologian, incorporate all of these themes. Yet Marpeck and the circle gathered around him in the middle of the sixteenth century represent a distinctive theological voice—a trajectory whose relationship to the broader Swiss Brethren mainstream continues to be a lively topic of historical debate. Marpeck’s leadership in various Anabaptist communities spanned four decades, bridging the tumultuous early years of intense persecution with the growing stability that came to characterize the Swiss Brethren by the middle of the century. In an era given to extremes, Marpeck’s was a voice of moderation. In response to the Spiritualists, for example, he energetically defended the humanity of Christ and the visible, disciplined church; yet he was also critical of the wooden biblical literalism or legalistic forms of church discipline among the Swiss Brethren that he thought obscured the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit. Like most Swiss Brethren, Marpeck was more of an apologist than a systematic theologian. But more than any other leader of the time, he integrated Anabaptist thought within the categories of classical theology.

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Surprisingly, neither Marpeck’s name nor his published writings survived in the Swiss Brethren tradition, likely because his vision of an incarnational faith—discipleship infused with grace; a disciplined church animated by love—was too dynamic to be sustainable. Nevertheless, since the discovery of several of Marpeck’s manuscripts in the late nineteenth century and the publication of his seminal writings in the late 1920s, Marpeck has enjoyed a growing reputation as an original thinker and significant leader of second-generation Anabaptism in the German-speaking territories. The further discovery of a large cache of writings by Marpeck and his circle (the so-called Kunstbuch) in the mid-1950s, and still another corpus of manuscripts in the 1990s, suggests that his influence on the Swiss Brethren tradition may have been much more pervasive than earlier historians have assumed.17 Biography and Writings Born in the mid-1490s to a wealthy family in Rattenberg on the Inn in the Tyrol, Marpeck served as councilman in the city government for several terms, then for a short time as mayor, and finally as a mining magistrate in the service of Archduke Ferdinand from 1526 to 1528. By the late 1520s the Tyrol was a hotbed of social and religious radicalism—home of the peasant revolutionary leader Michael Gaismair and a rapidly growing group of Anabaptist dissidents gathered around the mystical teachings of Leonard Schiemer and Hans Schlaffer. Marpeck was undoubtedly aware of the public executions of Schiemer and Schlaffer early in 1528. Although we do not have definitive information about the date of his baptism, by the spring of 1528 Marpeck had come to the attention of Ferdinand for his refusal to carry out an order to eliminate religious dissent among the miners of Rattenberg, and it seems clear that he left the region as a religious refugee in advance of Ferdinand’s mandate of April 1, 1528, which called for the execution of all Anabaptists who did not immediately recant. From Rattenberg, Marpeck appears to have traveled to Krumau in Bohemia, probably in the company of other refugees, and from there to the Austerlitz community that had been established in Moravia shortly before under the leadership of

17 Boyd (1992). See also Klassen (1968), Bender (1964), Klaassen (1999), and Klassen and Klaassen (1978).

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Jacob Wiedemann. Already in the late summer of 1528 Marpeck appeared in Strasbourg, likely as an elder commissioned by the Austerlitz Brethren.18 There, his talent as an engineer quickly brought him into favor with Strasbourg city officials, who placed him in charge of a complex water diversion project to transport timber from neighboring forests into the city. Soon after his arrival in Strasbourg, Marpeck found himself engaged in controversy with a group of Spiritualists who had also found refuge in the city. Early in 1530, Johannes Bünderlin and Christian Entfelder both published booklets rejecting external forms and emphasizing the internal work of the Spirit in a way that seemed to “undermine the integrity and stability of the main Anabaptist group.”19 At the same time, the prominent Spiritualist, Caspar Schwenckfeld, was gaining a following during his brief sojourn in the city (1529–1534), as was Sebastian Franck, who published his Chronica in Strasbourg just prior to his expulsion in December of 1531. In response to this perceived Spiritualist threat, Marpeck issued two tracts in 1531—A Clear and Useful Instruction and A Clear Refutation—both of which defended organized forms of church life, the practice of church discipline, and the importance of external ordinances like baptism and communion.20 Anchored in what William Klassen has called “Biblical realism,” Marpeck’s works “represent the first parting of the ways between Spiritualism and Anabaptism.”21 At the same time, Marpeck’s outspoken opposition to infant baptism brought him to the public attention of Strasbourg’s reformers and city officials. Marpeck did little to appease these concerns by publishing, probably in the fall of 1531, a powerful denunciation of political coercion in matters of faith. His Aufdeckung der Babylonischen Hurn (The Uncovering of the Whore of Babylon) was a closely argued apologetic for Anabaptist nonresistance, “perhaps the most penetrating treatment of the subject of the Christian and the sword that sixteenth-century Anabaptism produced.”22 Early in 1532, following a brief imprisonment for refusing to retract his teachings on baptism, Marpeck accepted the Council’s order to leave the city.

18 19 20 21 22

Boyd (1992), 52. Bender (1964), 245. Klassen (1959), 18–30. Klassen (1959), 30. Klaassen (1987), 261.

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The next twelve years of Marpeck’s biography are shrouded in obscurity. Letters written to the Swiss Brethren congregations in Appenzell, St. Gall and the Grisons make it clear that he spent some time in Switzerland, and he also seems to have traveled to Moravia in the early 1540s. His writings from the period reflect an abiding commitment to church unity. His major work, the Vermanung (Admonition) of 1542, was a lengthy defense of baptism (nearly two-thirds of which were excerpted from a publication by Bernhard Rothmann) that he hoped would serve as a common confession uniting the scattered congregations.23 Almost immediately, however, Caspar Schwenkfeld responded to Marpeck’s Vermanung with a long refutation. Extant only in manuscript form, Schwenkfeld’s Judicium may have been written with the intention of persuading two noblewomen, Magdalene von Pappenheim and Helene von Freyberg, to join his side. Stung by this critique, Marpeck and his colleague, Leupold Scharnslager, responded with a 206 page manuscript, Verantwortung (Defense Against Caspar Schwenckfeld ) that systematically refuted 54 of Schwenkfeld’s points. A second part to the Verantwortung, appearing two years later, treated similar points, albeit with more care and with many more Scriptural references.24 At the heart of the exchange was a debate over the nature of Christ’s incarnation. Whereas Schwenkfeld presented Jesus primarily as a glorified Savior, Marpeck repeatedly emphasized the humanity of Christ, albeit a humanity that could not be separated from Christ’s deity. Without the human Jesus, Marpeck insisted, a Christ crowned with thorns and hanging on the cross, humanity could not be saved or come before an eternal God. Sometime in 1544 Marpeck settled in Augsburg, where he resumed his work both as the leader of an Anabaptist congregation and as a respected and well-compensated city engineer. Early during his stay in Augsburg, Marpeck—again, likely with the collaboration of Scharnslager—compiled an enormous treatise on biblical hermeneutics called Testamenterläuterrung (Elaboration of the Testaments) that arranged a host of Old and New Testament scriptures around various topics. Printed as book of 880 pages in 1547, the Testamenterläuterrung developed

23

Klassen and Klaassen (1978), 159–302. Loserth (1929). Excerpts have been published in translation in Klaassen (1999), 75–144. 24

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an argument for progressive revelation, charting the relationship of the Old Testament to the New Testament in the metaphorical language of promise and fulfillment, yesterday and today, shadow and reality. The essay by Martin Rothkegel appearing in this volume offers new information about Marpeck’s on-going association with the Austerlitz Brethren, under the leadership of Cornelius Veh, prior to his death in 1556. Theological Emphases of Marpeck and His Circle Marpeck’s theology centered on the incarnation, with a particular emphasis on the humanity of Christ. In direct response to the Spiritualists (but also to the Melchiorite doctrine of the “celestial flesh”) Marpeck repeatedly stressed the embodied character of Christ as the “Word made flesh.” As God Incarnate—fully human and fully divine—Christ marked a fundamental break in human history that had consequences for every aspect of Christian faith and practice. In terms of biblical hermeneutics, the incarnation served Marpeck as the grounding for the essential unity of letter and spirit. Thus, he repeatedly challenged the Spiritualists to heed the concrete meaning of the text, while admonishing the biblical literalists to allow the Spirit and the principle of love to breathe life into the external word. Even more centrally for the development of Marpeck’s ethics, the incarnation marked a fundamental break between the Old Testament and the New Testament: in Christ, the promise of the Old Testament finds its fulfillment; the light of Christ illuminates what had previously been understood only as a shadow, revealing fully God’s will for humanity. This conviction, a central theme of the Testamenterläuterrung, became the basis for Marpeck’s insistence that regenerated Christians will follow Christ in life—most visibly in their willingness to participate in Christ’s suffering rather than take up the carnal sword to defend their lives. But Marpeck did not overlook the spiritual Christ. The world is full, he wrote, of Christians “who confess only the mortal and physical Christ, but very few believe and confess the risen Christ with their lives.” True believers participate fully in the humanity of Christ—“his words, works, deeds and ceremonies”—but they do so “no longer according to the standard of carnal, but of spiritual, understanding.”25 Elsewhere, Marpeck described 25

Klassen and Klaassen (1978), 90.

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Christ’s body in participatory language: because the Word was made flesh, our own flesh and bone is no longer tainted by that of Adam, but is renewed through our participation with Christ.26 This view of the incarnation also grounded Marpeck’s understanding of the sacraments. Like all Anabaptists, Marpeck rejected Catholic arguments for the bodily presence of Christ in the sacraments. Yet he was not willing to describe baptism and Lord’s Supper as “merely” symbols. When the outward signs of bread, wine or baptism were received with true inward faith, they “are no longer signs,” Marpeck argued, “but are one essence in Christ.”27 It is not as if the physical nature of the elements had changed, but the Spirit could not be mediated apart from the material elements. For Marpeck, the physical, material elements were essential to the Spirit’s transformative presence: in the person of Jesus—fully human and fully divine—created reality became the mediator of human participation with God. In partaking of the elements, believers participate in Christ’s “unglorified” historical body, a body that struggled and suffered, so that they might be conformed to his “most holy, deified flesh and bone.”28 In a similar way, Marpeck linked the incarnation to his theology of the church. Through the work of the Holy Spirit—seen most dramatically at Pentecost—the incarnation is sacramentally extended into the world in the form of the church. As the gathered body of believers, the church is literally the “re-membered” body of Christ— the tangible, visible witness to the resurrected Christ. Just as Christ brought about salvation in his body within history through humiliation and the cross, so too, the church is called to follow the same path. The visible church thus becomes the extension of Christ’s “unglorified” body and the regenerated lives of faithful believers become that body’s sacramental form.29 The result of Marpeck’s theology was a firm rejection of the sort of Spiritualism that focused primarily on a glorified, transfigured Christ, and a clear affirmation of a visible church that witnessed to the living Christ through the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s

26 27 28 29

Ibid., 76. Ibid., 195. Cf. Finger (2004). Cf. Blough (2004).

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Supper, the practice of church discipline, and the morally regenerated lives of its members. At the same time, Marpeck offered an important corrective to those tendencies among second-generation Swiss Brethren that vitiated the movement’s spiritual core—a mechanistic “theology of suffering,” for example, that could equate physical suffering with Christian faithfulness; an inclination to “works righteousness” that separated ethics from a living union with Christ; an absolute dualism between church and world that artificially isolated the church from its social and political context; or overly harsh disciplinary practices that had lost sight of the goal of love and restoration. Relation of the Marpeck Circle to the Swiss Brethren Historians are not in agreement regarding the legacy of Marpeck and his following for the broader history of the Swiss Brethren. Some recent scholars, in an effort to highlight the originality of Marpeck’s thought, have emphasized the discontinuity between Marpeck and Swiss Anabaptism. As evidence they cite the several letters Marpeck wrote to the Swiss Brethren at Appenzell distancing himself from the rule-based legalism and literalistic interpretations of Scripture that he had apparently witnessed there, and note references to the “Pilgramites”—probably referring to the Austerlitz Brethren in Moravia— alongside the Swiss Brethren, Hutterites and Melchiorites.30 Nevertheless, differences between Marpeck and the broader Swiss Brethren tradition were relatively small compared with his more significant theological quarrel against the Spiritualists. Marpeck’s letters critical of the Swiss Brethren at Appenzell were fraternal admonitions intended as correctives within a theological tradition that he himself largely shared. His writings against the Spiritualists, by contrast, were written in defense of the core principles of Swiss Brethren faith. On the themes of adult baptism, the visible church, nonresistance, church discipline, and the role of pastors or shepherds, Marpeck’s thought was fully consistent with the central themes of Swiss Brethren theology.31 To be sure, Marpeck is virtually silent on the oath and somewhat equivocal about the church-world dualism that was so prominent

30 31

ME 4:670; Bender (1964), 252. ME 4:445.

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in early Swiss Anabaptism. Yet Marpeck’s close associate, Leupold Scharnslager, quoted the Schleitheim Confession extensively on the question of the Christian magistracy, clearly regarding the text as authoritative.32 And Heinold Fast has cautioned against imposing a sharp divide among the South Germany Anabaptist groups. Had there been a deep separation, he notes, Marpeck would not likely have addressed the Swiss Brethren as “beloved brethren.”33 Martin Rothkegel’s recent research into Marpeck’s close association with the Austerlitz Brethren, Arnold Snyder’s study of late-sixteenth century Swiss Brethren theological writings, and on-going research into the so-called Kunstbuch—an eclectic collection of manuscripts compiled by Jörg Maler in 1561, many of which are related to Marpeck or his circle—all suggest that Marpeck’s influence on the Swiss Brethren movement is more complex than historians have earlier assumed.34 At the very least, Marpeck’s creative vision of a truly incarnational church—visible, disciplined, and prepared to suffer, while also spiritfilled and regenerated—pointed toward a profound tension that would define Swiss Brethren theology for the following century. That this ideal would prove so difficult to achieve, however, may help to account for the fact that the congregations personally loyal to Marpeck seem to have died out relatively quickly or were absorbed into the larger Swiss Brethren tradition. Swiss Brethren Relations with the Hutterites If the tensions between Marpeck and the larger Swiss Brethren fellowship were ultimately (perhaps posthumously) reconciled, the schism between the Swiss Brethren and their communitarian Anabaptist cousins in Moravia—the Hutterites—ultimately proved to be insurmountable, despite the fact that the two groups shared a great deal in common. As Werner Packull has carefully demonstrated in his study of Hutterite origins, the Hutterites and Swiss Brethren shared theological roots going back to Zurich and the Grebel circle of the 1520s. According to Packull, the first Church Discipline of the Hutterites

32 33 34

“Whether a Christian May be a Government Official,” Kunstbuch. Fast (1956). Packull (2001); Snyder (2000).

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was really a “scrambled and somewhat expanded version” of the earliest Swiss Congegrational Order, albeit “tailored to Moravian conditions.”35 In a similar vein, James Stayer has argued convincingly that the distinctive Hutterian emphasis on community of goods was a continuation of an older Swiss Anabaptist theme of radical mutual aid, not a radical departure. In Stayer’s reading, the Hutterite principle of community of goods was “the institutionalized, flourishing culmination of the commoners’ Reformation of 1525 and of Swiss and South-German Anabaptism.” Its specific applications reflected at least as much the accident of particular events and socio-political circumstances as they did substantive theological disagreement between the Hutterites and other early Anabaptist groups.36 Thus, in contrast to the theological differences separating them from the Reformed or Lutheran traditions, Swiss Brethren and Hutterites could have conceivably regarded each other as allies in a common cause against more serious threats from Protestant magistrates and ecclesial authorities. Such, however, was not the case. Since the 1540s, tensions between the two groups ran deep and seemed to grow stronger as the century progressed. In 1543, for example, Hans Klöpfer of Feuerbach reported that he left the Swiss Brethren congregation at Tasswitz to join the Hutterites because the Swiss Brethren had abandoned true Christian community [of goods], they paid war taxes, and they had a confused leadership structure which allowed elders to teach whatever they pleased and to settle sins—including those of fornication, adultery and theft—in private rather than before the assembled congregation. Klöpfer cited nearly a dozen specific examples to support his case.37 A similar list of charges appeared in 1556, when a group of Swiss Brethren in Bad Kreuznach converted to the Hutterites. In addition to the grievances enumerated by Klöpfer, this group claimed further that the Swiss Brethren “did not teach the truth regarding original sin,” and did not keep themselves separated clearly enough from other groups.38 One obvious reason for the growing tensions between the two groups was the Hutterite strategy of targeting highly-organized mis-

35 36 37 38

Packull (1995), 39, 61. Stayer (1991), 158. Chronicle (1987), 226–227. Chronicle (1987), 331–339.

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sionary efforts precisely at those regions in Switzerland, Württemberg, Hesse, and the Palatinate known to have substantial Swiss Brethren congregations. These vigorous recruiting efforts in the second half of the sixteenth century—coinciding with renewed waves of persecution and a widespread economic downturn in the German-speaking territories—led to a sharp rise in emigration to Moravia, a phenomenon noted with frequent concern by local authorities.39 By the second half of the 16th century an identity of opposition seems to have crystallized within both groups. “God keep me from [the Hutterites] and the doings of their teachers,” wrote Matthias Servaes, an itinerant Swiss Brethren minister and eventual martyr, in a letter of 1565 that was preserved in the Martyrs Mirror.40 Shortly thereafter, an epistolary exchange between the Swiss Brethren and Hutterites poignantly captured the essence of their differences. The Swiss Brethren initiated the debate by demanding “on behalf of [the] whole brotherhood, both at home and abroad,” a response to seven points of concern. The text of that document itself has been lost; but its essential content was preserved in the 376-page Hutterite rejoinder that followed.41 The so-called Gegebene Antwort, probably written by Peter Walpot, was addressed “to all brethren known as the Swiss, whether they live in Moravia or outside in other lands,” and claimed to speak on behalf of the Hutterian community “within and beyond Moravia.” The specific accusations leveled by the Swiss Brethren are worth noting because they provide, by inference, a concise summary of their own distinctive beliefs and practices. The Hutterites, charged the Swiss Brethren, had made “a god out of community of goods”— they “have pronounced people saved on this basis alone,” making of the doctrine a “tyrannical human compulsion.” Furthermore, the Hutterites eagerly accepted all the material possessions of newly-arriving converts, but sent members away destitute and empty-handed if they decided to leave. Because of this there were many “half-hearted members” among the Hutterites who were “kept by human law” and fear. Although they clearly embraced the principle of mutual

39

Gross (1980), 42–55. Martyrs Mirror, 696. 41 A transcription of the “Gegebene Antwort” can be found in Archives of the Mennonite Church (Goshen, IN), Hist. Mss. 1–447.4. 40

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aid and encouraged a voluntary approach to community of goods, the Swiss Brethren argued that they were “free in Christ without giving up temporal possessions.” The Swiss Brethren also accused the Hutterites of encouraging their members to divorce unbelieving spouses, of forcing couples to marry without their consent, and of “secretly and thievishly taking children away from their parents.” Furthermore, they insisted, contrary to Hutterite claims, that there is no evidence “either in Scripture or in our conscience” that paying war taxes is wrong. Indeed, “the government has an obligation to protect its land and people, widows and orphans from those robbers, thieves and murderers of father and mother, against whom the law of punishment was given in the first place . . . against such it is proper for the government to fight.” Here the Swiss Brethren cited Michael Sattler—implying, perhaps, that he also was regarded as an authority among the Hutterites— as having held exactly the same position. Finally, the Swiss Brethren denounced the Hutterites’ strict view of the ban (Meidung) and their refusal to recognize them as “a people of God.” In their obstinacy, they concluded, the Hutterites were “people of depraved mind who have come to nothing—resounding with grand words that have nothing behind them, always learning but unable to discern the truth.” In the course of their vigorous defense, the Hutterites provided a rich collection of intriguing details about Swiss Brethren congregational life and ethical practices. The Gegebene Antwort, for example, cites the names of specific Swiss Brethren ministers who were known to attend the state church, and noted that several ministers who had been officially silenced had resumed their preaching without any formal revoking of the ban. The Hutterites denounced the Swiss Brethren’s casual tolerance of members who hosted lavish dances at the weddings of their children or sported feathers in their caps. And they lamented the Swiss Brethren practice of hiring out their children to work in wayside inns and taverns, along with their willingness to manufacture “armor, guns and flutes,” engage in retail businesses, and learn vocational trades from non-Anabaptist masters.42 At stake in the debate were not theological issues so much as how these convictions, especially those related to the boundaries separat-

42

“Gegebene Antwort,” 223a, 253–254, 264, 266, 317, 353.

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ing the church from the world, would be applied in specific and concrete ways. Not surprisingly, the Swiss Brethren—living in widelyscattered communities in a context of general hostility where pressures to conform or compromise on “non-essentials” were constantly at hand—defined those boundaries differently than did the Hutterites, who enjoyed the benevolent protection of the Moravian nobility while residing in highly-structured communities situated in close proximity to each other. In contrast to the hierarchical clarity of the Hutterite authority, firmly established by the 1560s, Swiss Brethren congregationalism could only appear as chaotic and confused, a source of far more variety in the practice of Christian discipleship than the Hutterite model of regimented community life could countenance. Like the disputations with magisterial reformers and Marpeck’s engagements with the Spiritualists, the Swiss Brethren encounters with the Hutterites had the effect of further sharpening a distinctive theological self-understanding. As waves of Hutterite missionaries appeared each spring in their communities, Swiss Brethren congregations were increasingly forced to clarify and defend their understandings of church doctrine and order. Their bracing critique of the Hutterites in the mid-1560s testifies to a growing sense of Swiss Brethren self-identity and confidence. Relations with the Dutch Mennonites At the same time that Swiss Brethren leaders were engaging in polemical encounters with the Hutterites, similar conversations were also underway with the Dutch and North German Anabaptists. Although initially less polemical in tone, these exchanges further crystallized Swiss Brethren theological understandings, especially on themes related to Christology and church discipline. More importantly, these encounters paved the way for a long history of benevolent interventions by the Dutch Mennonites on behalf of the Swiss Brethren during periods of intense persecution in later centuries. Relations between the two Anabaptist groups dated back to the 1530s when followers of the Dutch Anabaptist apocalyptic preacher, Melchior Hoffman, encountered Swiss Brethren congregants who were also seeking refuge in Strasbourg. Hoffman, in addition to his colorful preaching about the imminence of Christ’s return, promulgated a quasi-docetic view of the incarnation that emphasized Christ’s

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heavenly nature—the so-called “celestial flesh” of Christ. Although Jesus had been born of the Virgin Mary, he passed through her, claimed Hoffman, “like water through a pipe,” without taking on any of her corporeal attributes. Jesus, in his view, was genuinely human—the word had become flesh—but he was without sin because his flesh did not derive from a human mother. Such a Christology not only preserved the divinity of Christ within the doctrine of the Trinity, but it also laid the foundation for Hoffman’s teachings on sanctification and the possibility of a pure church. In 1543 Hoffman died, virtually forgotten, in a Strasbourg prison, his apocalyptic teachings thoroughly discredited by the debacle at Münster. But many Dutch Anabaptists, including those who gathered around the leadership of Menno Simons, adopted Hoffman’s Christology. In August of 1555, North German and Dutch Mennonite leaders came to Strasbourg seeking unity with the Swiss Brethren on the question of the incarnation.43 The gathering in Strasbourg ended without resolution, though the Swiss Brethren ministers did issue a warning about the limitations of theological knowledge and insisted that adherence to the teachings of Jesus was more important than speculations regarding the mystery of Christ’s flesh. Two years later, in 1557, more than 50 Swiss Brethren leaders from Moravia, Swabia, the Breisgau, Switzerland, Württemberg, the Eiffel, Alsace and the Palatinate met again in Strasbourg to discuss questions related to original sin and to reach an understanding about the practice of “strict shunning”—in which congregations were not only to exclude excommunicated members from communion but to also avoid any social contact, including marital relations with a disciplined spouse. This latter issue had been pressed on them by Menno Simons at a gathering in Wismar earlier that same year that resulted in a strong statement by the Dutch Anabaptists in favor of “marital shunning.” The Swiss Brethren, however, challenged the strict practice advocated by the Wismar church order and commissioned two leaders to write a letter to the Dutch Mennonites calling for greater leniency in matters of church discipline and explaining why they rejected the “celestial flesh” theology of the Dutch. The attempt at reconciliation ended in failure. In 1559 Menno and the Dutch elders formally rejected the letter and issued a ban on the entire

43

Oyer (1984), 218–219.

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Swiss Brethren fellowship. A little more than a decade later, when the Swiss Brethren were asked at the Frankenthal Disputation to give an account of their understanding of the incarnation, they explicitly distanced themselves from the Dutch view of the celestial flesh of Christ.44 Despite sharp differences over Christology and the practice of church discipline, relations between the Swiss Brethren and the Dutch Mennonites were not completely severed. Already in 1575, Menno Simon’s Fundamentboek appeared in German translation, in which it circulated widely in Swiss Brethren circles. Swiss Brethren devotional literature and hymnody borrowed liberally from the Dutch tradition, albeit often without attribution. And in 1591, Dutch and North German Mennonites met with Swiss Brethren leaders once more in an attempt to establish a formal statement of unity. The agreement they reached—known as the “Concept of Cologne”—sought to anchor shared beliefs in broadly orthodox formulations that included a restrained form of the ban, compromise language on the incarnation, and a general encouragement to admonish each other in a spirit of love.45 Although there is no evidence that the document had any lasting authority in local Swiss Brethren congregations, it does seem to have solidified relations between Anabaptist groups in the North and the South, paving the way for generous expressions of fraternal aid from Dutch Mennonites in the seventeenth century when the Swiss Brethren were confronted with renewed waves of persecution.46 Swiss Brethren Congregational Life While several extant church orders, one from 1527 and another from 1540, suggest the outlines of Swiss Brethren worship practices, we know relatively little about the actual details of congregational life. In an eyewitness account from 1557, Elias Schad, a Lutheran vicar from Strasbourg, reported that some 200 Swiss Brethren—gathered from Switzerland, Breisgau, Westerich, Württemberg, Alsace and

44 45 46

Yoder (1962), 126. Gross (1990). Cf. Hege (1908), 150ff.

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Moravia—had met secretly at night in a forest clearing just outside the city.47 After a series of short sermons from the epistles, the participants knelt and began to pray—“murmuring as if a nest of hornets were swarming.” Then, following a period of general greetings, the elders invited the group to raise questions related to the sermon or, if the Spirit so led, to offer “something to edify the brethren.” Schad took advantage of the opportunity to engage in a prolonged debate with the elders on the topics of baptism and excommunication. When some people in the crowd took umbrage at Schad’s arguments, an elder “urged tranquility and appealed to the Last Judgement for those who had left the true faith and those who were in error.” The meeting finally broke up at 2:00 a.m. Schad’s report conforms reasonably well to several other eyewitness accounts of secret Swiss Brethren worship services, although two descriptions from Hesse in 1578 mention singing, baptism and the practice of the Lord’s Supper.48 Another perspective on Swiss Brethren congregational life is suggested by three printed texts which, in addition to the Bible, constituted a kind of informal canon among the scattered Swiss Brethren congregations during the 16th and 17th centuries. The books—a hymnal known as the Ausbund; a concordance of scriptural passages central to Swiss Brethren theology; and a compilation of martyr stories and devotional literature published as Golden Apples in Silver Bowls— were all texts prominently associated with the Swiss Brethren tradition that both reflected and reinforced a distinctive identity. The first known edition of the Ausbund—published under the title Etliche schöne Christliche Gesäng—appeared in 1564 as a collection of 51 hymns composed by a group of Moravian Anabaptists imprisoned at Passau between 1535 and 1540. Almost immediately, the hymnbook became identified with the Swiss Brethren. Already in 1567, the Hutterites referred to the Ausbund as an explicitly Swiss Brethren text; and four years later in the Frankenthal disputation of 1571, a spokesman for the Reformed church also clearly associated the Ausbund with Swiss Brethren theology.49 In 1583, anonymous Swiss Brethren editors revised and enlarged the volume to include a total of 130 hymns and reissued it as Ausbund, Das ist etliche schöne christenliche Lieder. 47 48 49

Schad (1984), 292–295. Sippell (1949), 22–24. “Gegebene Antwort”; Yoder (1962), 235.

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Hymns written by well-known Swiss Brethren leaders such as George Blaurock, Felix Mantz, Hans Betz and Michael Sattler comprise the heart of the Ausbund. But the editors also drew on an eclectic range of other sources. The first hymn of the 1583 edition, for example, was written by the Spiritualist Sebastian Franck. Other songs are of Dutch or North German origin, and several can be traced to the Bohemian Brethren. Despite these disparate origins, the unifying themes of the Ausbund hymns are unmistakably clear: the world is filled with wickedness and deceit; true followers of Christ should expect to endure suffering, even death, on account of their faith; and God will not forsake those who remain faithful to the end. The Swiss Brethren reprinted the hymnbook more than a dozen times in the course of the following two centuries, incorporating along the way several additional hymns and texts relevant to their on-going story of suffering and persecution. The hymns of the Ausbund, sung slowly and in unison, firmly anchored Swiss Brethren identity within the larger biblical story of salvation history and kept alive memories of suffering and martyrdom for subsequent generations, long after the actual experience of persecution had waned. In a similar fashion, the Swiss Brethren Concordance (Concondanzt vnd zeyger) also reinforced a Swiss Brethren self-understanding that was deeply rooted in the larger story of the bible.50 Organized around 66 different theological topics, the pocket-sized concordance offered readers a convenient compendium of Scriptural excerpts relevant to the particular topic along with a list of citations to additional biblical passages. The topics in the Concordance clearly reflected the distinctive theological concerns of the Swiss Brethren and likely served to prepare church members to defend themselves with biblical arguments in public debates. Topical headings such as “Man should serve God alone,” “No one can serve two masters,” or “Do not follow the crowd,” for example, offered the reader numerous Scriptural citations which underscored both the inherent wickedness of the world and the standard of holiness embodied by God’s chosen people. The entry on “Separation” (Absonderung) ran for 16 pages and included no less than 91 biblical references. The fact that the editors did not add any material beyond the biblical text itself—there is no introduction or commentary offering instruction on how to use,

50

Biblical Concordance (2001).

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read or understand the texts—reflected the Swiss Brethren confidence that the Word of God was clear, needing no formally established principles of interpretation. The Concordance remained constantly in print throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, with at least 14 Germanlanguage editions appearing between 1540 and 1710. A third text central to Swiss Brethren devotional life emerged as a compilation of various smaller treatises that had long circulated in manuscript form. By the end of the sixteenth century, the writings of several Anabaptist martyrs had gained a kind of canonical status among the Swiss Brethren. Particularly favored were Michael Sattler, Thomas Imbroich and Matthaes Cervaes, whose writings were cited authoritatively in Swiss Brethren correspondence and apologetical works. During the second half of the seventeenth century, various combinations of writings by these three men, along with accounts of several Dutch Anabaptist martyrs and collections of prayers, circulated in Swiss Brethren communities in composite volumes (Sammelbänder). In 1702, these devotional materials were compiled, along with a revised version of the 1632 Dutch Mennonite Dordrecht Confession of Faith, and reprinted as the Golden Apples in Silver Bowls (Güldene Aepffel in Silbern Schalen). Together, books like the Ausbund, the Concordance and the Golden Apples formed a corpus of Swiss Brethren devotional literature that reinforced a distinctive group identity and theological worldview. The Strasbourg Discipline (Ordnung) of 1568 Important though these texts may have been, the scattered Swiss Brethren congregations found an even more concrete basis for unity in 1568 when representatives from numerous Swiss Brethren congregations met in Strasbourg to formulate a common church order, or discipline (Ordnung). The Strasbourg Discipline of 1568 became the foundation for ecclesiological and ethical practices that would shape the Swiss Brethren—and later, the Amish—tradition for the following three centuries.51 Of the 23 articles that emerged from the conference, only one focused explicitly on theological concerns: Article 14 confirmed earlier understandings articulated in the 1557 conversation with Dutch

51

McGrath (1966), 10–16.

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Mennonites, by asserting that Jesus was “Son of God after the Spirit, and a Son of David after the flesh” and that on this issue “all disputing should be avoided and omitted” as far as possible. The remainder of the Discipline was devoted to practical matters of organization and behavior. Thus, the Discipline explicitly obligated ministers to serve neighboring congregations whenever needed (Art. 2); it outlined a procedure for ordaining ministers and bishops (Art. 7); and it instructed congregations to provide their ministers with basic economic necessities (Art. 4), to refrain from any gossip, slander or disobedience regarding their leaders (Art. 17–18), and to support the wives and children of imprisoned ministers (Art. 3). Furthermore, the Discipline laid the groundwork for basic patterns of mutual aid, calling on congregations to care for orphans “as if they were your children” (Art. 5) and to support the poor by distributing proceeds from common property (Art. 6). Swiss Brethren leaders also reached agreement on basic worship practices: the specific mode of the Lord’s Supper was to be flexible, provided that it was celebrated “in unity and with a blameless conscience” (Art. 8); forgiveness of sinners required “a kneeling within the heart” as well as physical kneeling (Art. 9); those who had “forsaken the brotherhood” should be shunned, albeit “in all temperance and humility” (Art. 10); greeting with the holy kiss should be reserved for full members of the congregation (Art. 11); marriage was permissible only with knowledge and counsel of ministers and parents (Art. 12), and then only between fellow believers (Art. 13); and members who changed congregations should be examined for evidence of true repentance, but did not need to be rebaptized (Art. 15). The final section of the Discipline addressed a series of difficult questions related to separation from the world. Among other things, leaders agreed that no church member should enter into any large financial endeavor without the prior “counsel, knowledge and consent of brotherhood and bishops” (Art. 16); members were admonished to obey local laws regarding hunting and trapping (Art. 19); tailors and seamstresses were obliged to “hold to the plain and simple style, making nothing at all for pride’s sake;” no one should shave his beard or trim his or her hair “in stylish ways” (Art. 20); money and valuables should be entrusted with “brothers and sisters, and not to the world” (Art. 21); and those who were owed money could use the law to demand repayment, but could not “let anything be seized by force” (Art. 22). Finally, members who were

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required to serve as guards in village settings could hire substitutes, or possibly even serve in that role, provided that they refused to carry a weapon “such as a spear and the like” and did not “bring harm to anyone” (Art. 23). At first glance, the Strasbourg Discipline of 1568 appears to be somewhat ad hoc in its organization and thematic focus. Yet the statement became the basis for all subsequent conversations about Swiss Brethren church life. When a group of leaders met again in Strasbourg in 1607, they began by reaffirming the 1568 Ordnung before adding three additional articles that addressed new concerns. Later meetings of Swiss Brethren ministers—in 1630, 1668, 1688, 1779, 1809, and 1837—all continued this pattern of explicitly reaffirming previous disciplines, even as they amended the Discipline to reflect changing circumstances.52 More than any confession of faith, the Strasbourg Discipline of 1568 anchored Swiss Brethren congregations within a shared ecclesiological identity, rooted in a practical, ethically-infused understanding of faith. By the end of the 16th century the Swiss Brethren had emerged as the clear heirs to the Anabaptist movement in Switzerland and most German-speaking territories of the Empire. What had started as an urban movement had become almost entirely rural, with congregations scattered in isolated hamlets around Zurich, Schaffhausen, and Bern, as well as in the Jura, Swabia, and the upper Rhine Valley. According to the quantitative research of Claus-Peter Clasen, the areas showing the greatest gain in converts to the Swiss Brethren between 1550 and 1618 were Swabia (27%), the Rhine Valley (26%), and Switzerland (19%).53 Other areas where Anabaptists had been present in earlier decades—for example, the Tyrol, Hesse, and the Catholic regions of Austria, Franconia and Thuringia—had far fewer reported cases of new Anabaptist activities. Although the group’s congregational polity, geographic dispersal, and underground existence makes it difficult to draw a sharply delineated portrait, by the end of the century a distinctive Swiss Brethren identity was assuming a recognizable form—rooted in the central motifs of the Schleitheim Confession, reinforced by polemical encounters with civil and

52 McGrath (1966) lists these later revisions and additions from subsequent conferences. 53 Clasen (1978), 8.

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ecclesiastical authorities, and refined by intramural debates with the Spiritualists, Hutterites and Dutch Mennonites—that continued to echo in the hymns, devotional literature and apologetic writings of the group in the years that followed. Strategies of Survival in the 17th Century The history of the Swiss Brethren in the seventeenth century is a story of persistence and survival. In some regions where congregations had been previously known to exist, decades could pass without any mention in the sources until an aggressive consistory or an activist city council—concerned about reports of rural religious dissent—would embark on a new campaign to enforce religious orthodoxy. Thus, in the early 1580s, after a long period of relative silence, authorities in Zurich began to report with alarm on the growing presence of Anabaptist missionaries from the Netherlands and Moravia in the region and a corresponding wave of emigration out of the region.54 In July of 1585 representatives from Zurich, Bern, Basel and Schaffhausen met to coordinate a strategy to counter this new threat, focusing especially on economic sanctions.55 There is little in the archival sources to suggest that the mandate accomplished its goal. In the decades that followed—a period marked by widespread food shortages, general price inflation and sporadic outbreaks of the plague—the Zurich city council was especially preoccupied with the stubborn persistence of the Swiss Brethren in the surrounding countryside. Describing the Anabaptists as “contrary, evil, seditious, stubborn and malicious idiots”56 whose refusal to swear oaths and participate in military service threatened the well-being of the state, the council issued repeated mandates against the Swiss Brethren that culminated in 1614 with the public execution of Hans Landis, a popular seventy-year old Swiss Brethren preacher.57 In the 1630s, as reports continued to filter back to the council of new outbreaks of Anabaptist converts in such districts as Birmensdorf,

54 55

Bergmann (1916), 41; see also Snyder (1995), 95–96. Bergmann (1916), 55; ZBZ, “Eidgenossen Abschiede vom 4. Juli 1585” (Nr.

718). 56 57

Bergmann (1916), 66. Bergmann (1916), 68ff.

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Bremgarten, Wädenswil, Horgen and Hirzel, the city council again mounted a sustained and systematic campaign to drive the Swiss Brethren out of the Zurich countryside. Their tactics—including property confiscation, a well-paid spy and posse network, lengthy imprisonments, torture, and the threat of executions—sparked a highly-publicized debate. By the middle of the century, political lobbying by the wealthy and influential Dutch Mennonites on behalf of the Swiss Brethren—including official letters of protest from the city of Amsterdam and the Dutch Estates-General to the city councils of Zurich and Bern—brought some relief.58 But in the end, the Zurich city council prevailed. By 1660 nearly all of the Swiss Brethren in the Zurich region had been forcibly relocated to the Palatinate or Alsace, where they were granted limited toleration in recognition of the economic benefits they brought as skilled farmers. In other parts of the Swiss Confederation, most notably in the Bernese Emmental, the Swiss Brethren continued to survive, despite similar efforts to eradicate them. In 1659, when it became increasingly apparent that local officials were hesitant to implement mandates against the Brethren, Bernese authorities established a centralized Täuferkommission (Anabaptist Commission), funded by the sale of confiscated property, that built special prisons, deputized a corps of “Anabaptist hunters,” and oversaw a network of spies, all with the goal of converting or expelling the Swiss Brethren from the region.59 In response to these pressures to conform, the Swiss Brethren developed a variety of survival strategies. One tactic, more successful in the long term than in its immediate consequences, was an open appeal to the principle of religious toleration. Although few theorists in the seventeenth century were prepared to argue for a secular state, the idea that no one should be coerced in matters of conscience had already been clearly articulated since the earliest days of the Reformation. In the 1530s both Pilgram Marpeck and Leonard Scharnslager wrote eloquent appeals for religious tolerance, quoting Luther and Zwingli in defense of their case. This strategy of enlisting the reformers in making the case for religious freedom became a pattern in Swiss Brethren apologetics, culminating in 1615 with a pamphlet entitled Christian Thoughts (Christliche Bedenken) that appeared

58 59

Bangs (2004). Müller (1895), 131–157.

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shortly after the execution of Hans Landis. Christian Thoughts consisted entirely of quotations from the early writings of Luther, Zwingli, Gwalther and other Protestant notables, all arguing against the use of force in religious matters.60 Although the Zurich city council quickly confiscated the extant copies of the tract, similar arguments continued to circulate. In the seventeenth century, it was the Dutch Mennonites who picked up these themes in their strenuous public opposition to Zurich and Bernese policies against the Swiss Brethren. More commonly, when the pressure became too great—as it did in Zurich in the 1640s and in Bern in the 1670s and 1690s—the Swiss Brethren survived by fleeing as refugees, moving westward into the Alsace or down the Rhine valley to the Palatinate. In both of these regions, Swiss Brethren emigrants were welcomed by territorial lords who, in the aftermath of the Thirty Years War (1618–1648), were eager for newcomers to resettle depopulated estates and to reclaim the farmland that had gone fallow. In return for their skills as farmers and artisans, the Swiss Brethren, along with other minority groups, were granted limited religious freedoms. Thus, in 1671, more than 700 Swiss Brethren from Bern flocked to the Palatinate, where they sought refuge among the small congregations already established there.61 In the decades that followed, hundreds of other Swiss Brethren followed them. In the early 1690s, perhaps as many as 400 additional refugees relocated to the Alsace region, where they joined established Swiss Brethren congregations in the villages of Markirch, Jebsheim, and Ohnenheim under the benevolent protection of the lords of Rappoltsweiler. In 1710–1711, the Dutch Mennonites financed yet another major exodus of Swiss Brethren refugees out of Bern. Although a few secretly returned to Switzerland to rejoin their families or to claim their possessions, most ended up settling in the Palatinate or, with the assistance of Dutch intermediaries, emigrated to newly-established Mennonite settlements in North America. Between these strategies of public resistance and flight, Swiss Brethren more commonly survived by adjusting to local circumstances through a variety of compromises. Some explicitly employed Nicodemite tactics: that is, they publicly repented for their association with the

60 61

Jecker (1998), 274–75. Müller (1895), 195–206; Martyrs Mirror, 1125–1127.

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Anabaptists, sometimes even swearing oaths of loyalty to the civil authorities, and then immediately returned to their old patterns of secret worship in Swiss Brethren congregations. Over time, these strategies broadened to include more flexible understandings of the boundaries that theoretically separated the Swiss Brethren church from the fallen world. For example, when authorities in Bern began to insist that unbaptized infants were to be considered “illegitimate,” and therefore ineligible to inherit property, some Swiss Brethren parents permitted their babies to be baptized in the state church on the grounds that the ceremony was spiritually meaningless and therefore harmless.62 In a similar fashion, some Swiss Brethren attended services in the state church and even consented to take communion with their Reformed neighbors, arguing that such concessions did no spiritual harm. All the while, however, they continued privately to maintain a distinct religious identity through secret worship services, lay Bible study, and the exercise of church discipline. If the Swiss Brethren in the seventeenth century were increasingly open to such concessions, the archival evidence suggests that their Reformed neighbors were frequently willing accomplices in their subterfuge. The harsh language of the mandates notwithstanding, it appears as if the Swiss Brethren were often fully integrated into local village life, regarded by their neighbors as honest, upright, hardworking people whose eccentric religious customs did not seem to imperil the welfare of the community in any practical way. Indeed, much to the anger of the authorities, local pastors often turned a blind eye to the presence of the Swiss Brethren in their parishes. Repeatedly, Bernese mandates in the seventeenth century denounced the ineffectiveness of local authorities in their efforts to capture the Anabaptists; and some mandates went so far as to impose large fines or hold village notables hostage until Swiss Brethren suspects had been delivered into the hands of the Täuferjäger. Frequent warnings against anyone who gave food or shelter to Anabaptists, or alerted them to an impending dragnet, suggest that some friends and neighbors went beyond passive acceptance to various forms of active support. These people—known to the Swiss Brethren as the Truehearted (Treuherzige) or Half-Anabaptists (Halbtäufer)—did not accept adult baptism or formally join the Swiss Brethren fellowship, but they were

62

Müller (1895), 125.

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deeply impressed by the spiritual integrity and ethical rigor of their Anabaptist neighbors and were sympathetic to their cause. On the one hand, this pattern of local support reflected the widespread frustration among villagers—acknowledged in many consistorial reports—regarding the spiritual apathy of local pastors. In 1644, for example, authorities in Aargau, reported that villagers were attracted to the Anabaptists because “they actually followed what was taught [in the Apostles’ Creed]” and refused to allow the godless to participate in communion.63 In December of 1647, Hans Stentz, a recent Anabaptist convert in Kulm, argued that “the Anabaptists prove the power of the holy Gospel through their works,” but that many of the Reformed did not. The court records noted that Stentz “has nothing against our teachings, only the conduct of our life.”64 A year later Martin Burger explained his defection from the Reformed church because of its toleration of immorality and because “there was no piety in the church. One in front, another behind was always sleeping.” When he visited the Anabaptists he discovered “a peaceful and upright people who . . . gladly gave their alms, who loved each other, who refused to swear, who were not immoral despite what [the authorities] said about them.” Burger acknowledged that he was not well versed in theology; and he thought most of the Reformed doctrine was good. But “it was bad that the teaching and living did not always agree with each other.”65 In 1670 the pastor at Lauperswyl complained that many in his village think that “the prayers of the Anabaptists are much more powerful than ours . . . therefore some of ours have them pray for their sick.” The number joining their fellowship grows every day, he reported, to the point where “in some villages they outnumber our own.” Even worse, he grumbled, when they were brought before local authorities for disciplining, “their testimonies moved some members of the village court [Chorgericht] to tears.”66 Such accounts suggest that village support for the Swiss Brethren was based at least as much in a latent anticlericalism and a sense of moral propriety as it was in any persuasive theological arguments that the Swiss Brethren might have put forward. 63 64 65 66

Müller (1895), 105. Ibid., 107. Ibid., 108–110. Ibid., 130–31.

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Other villagers were sympathetic to the Swiss Brethren for reasons more political than religious: support of religious dissent served as a convenient means of resisting the extension of state authority into the countryside. Historian Roland Hofer has argued this point explicitly in his study of Schleitheim, a village north of Zurich where Anabaptists found a refuge of safety well into the 17th century.67 Citing numerous examples where the residents of Schleitheim refused to cooperate with state officials against the Anabaptists, Hofer concluded that “within the village community . . . communal solidarity and family relations were stronger than governmental efforts to isolate individual villagers as Anabaptists through legal measures.”68 Here, and elsewhere, local solidarity with the Swiss Brethren was simply a convenient way of expressing resistance to an intrusive government. Renewal and Division—The Emergence of the Amish, 1693 For decades, the experiences of persecution and migration had had an unsettling effect on congregational life among the Swiss Brethren: families were divided and impoverished, church leadership was weakened or strained, and communication among the various settlements became sporadic and difficult. Yet, paradoxically, the last half of the seventeenth century was also a time of religious vitality and renewal within Swiss Brethren congregations. Based on evidence from governmental inquiries and reports from local Reformed ministers, Swiss Brethren congregations in Bern, Schaffhausen and Aargau were growing rapidly in the 1670s and 1680s, drawing many new converts from the state church. In May of 1670, for example, the Reformed pastor at Burgdorf reported that in some of the villages in his district more than half of the population was deeply sympathetic to the Swiss Brethren and infected with such Anabaptist principles as the separation of church and state and a rejection of Christian participation in government offices.69 In a similar report, the pastor at Lauperswil noted that “the number of these sectarians grows larger daily” and lamented the loss of nine persons from the congregation

67 68 69

Cf. Hofer (2000). Hofer (2000), 130. Müller (1895), 129–130.

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in Schangnau to the Swiss Brethren.70 Historian Isaac Zürcher’s analysis of characteristic Swiss Brethren family names substantiates this influx of new converts—at least 25 percent of these names first appear in the records during the second half of the seventeenth century.71 And religious leaders took note as well. Between 1672 and 1693, Reformed theologians in Switzerland published no less than four weighty books against the Anabaptists, each acknowledging the troublesome attrition of their membership to the Anabaptist cause.72 In the preface of a 1693 volume commissioned by the Bernese government as a practical handbook for local clergy, Georg Thormann openly conceded that many people in the countryside “have the notion that a . . . Christian and an Anabaptist are one and the same thing, and that you could not be a . . . true Christian unless you were—or became—an Anabaptist.” At virtually the same moment that Swiss Brethren congregations in the Bernese Emmental were undergoing dramatic growth, a small group of ministers, many of them recent converts who had fled persecution in Switzerland and settled in the Alsace, began to raise sharp questions about the compromises they perceived among their co-religionists in the Bernese Emmental. Their call for renewal—for a more rigorous and uncompromising maintenance of the boundaries separating church and world—eventually led to a major division within the Swiss Brethren fellowship. The conflict began late in the summer of 1693 when several Swiss Brethren congregations in the Alsace commissioned a group of ministers, led by Jakob Ammann, to make an investigative journey to the Emmental in order to clarify several questions regarding church discipline, or Ordnung.73 Initial contacts with Swiss Brethren ministers in the region did not go well, especially when Hans Reist, a senior minister in the region, dismissed Ammann’s concerns as of little importance. When mediation efforts in the fall of 1693, and again in the spring of 1694, met with no success, the discussion quickly turned polemical. 70

Müller (1895), 130. Zürcher (1988), 478–492; the quantitative analysis is reported by Oyer (2000), 92. 72 Johann Heinrich Ottius, Annales Anabaptistica (1672); Friedrich Seyler, WiedertäufferGheimnusse (Basel, 1680); Salchi in 1693; and Georg Thormann, Probier-Stein (Bern, 1693). Johann Jacob Wolleb followed with his Gespräch zwischen einem Pietisten und einem Wiedertäufer (Basel, 1722). 73 Roth (1993). 71

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As with the Hutterites, the debate that ensued focused more on issues related to church practice than doctrine. Some of the concerns, such as Ammann’s adherence to the practice of footwashing, reflected circumstances specific to the Alsatian group. In 1660, the Alsatian congregations had formally adopted the Dordrecht Confession, a Dutch Mennonite confession of faith dating from 1632, that included footwashing as an ordinance commanded by Christ. On this issue, the Reist group did not disagree with Ammann, but simply regarded the practice as a matter of local custom that had never been central to the Swiss Brethren tradition. The more divisive issues focused on Ammann’s concern that the boundaries separating Swiss Brethren congregations from the “world” had become overly compromised. Thus, Ammann called for a much stricter and more consistent application of church discipline, including shunning (Meidung) of the offender. The authority for exercising discipline, he insisted, should reside more clearly with the ministers rather than with the congregation at large. Of particular offense to Ammann and his group was the generous attitude of many Swiss Brethren ministers toward the so-called “Truehearted” (Treuherzige)—those sympathetic non-Anabaptist neighbors who offered the Swiss Brethren support in times of persecution. While one could be grateful for gestures of support, Ammann pointed out that the Treuherzige were not baptized nor had they submitted to the discipline of the congregation. Therefore, they were still part of the world and in need of salvation. To pretend that the Treuherzige were saved, Ammann claimed, made a mockery of the Anabaptist understanding of adult baptism and the integrity of the gathered church. Efforts to mediate the dispute over the following years, including a lengthy exchange of letters and several face-to-face meetings, came to naught. Although the Swiss Brethren and the Amish—as the followers of Ammann were known—continued to live in the same regions and followed very similar migration patterns to North America, the division became permanent. At the heart of the division was a tension inherent within the Swiss Brethren tradition from the very beginning of the movement: how did a voluntary church define the boundaries separating it from the “fallen” world? Ammann and his supporters clearly understood themselves to be within the tradition of a persecuted church, intent on maintaining a sharp distinction between church and world—a distinction that seemed to be imperiled by the compromises of the

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Swiss Brethren. His chief concerns—consistency in applying church discipline, denying that the Treuherzige could be saved, shunning those who had been banned from godly fellowship—were all crucial markers of a separatist ecclesiology. As these boundaries became increasingly blurred, Ammann’s group regarded their efforts as a renewal movement firmly rooted within the Anabaptist tradition. Reist and the larger Swiss Brethren fellowship, on the other hand, were also committed to a view of the church as distinct from the world, and they affirmed the exercise of church discipline. But they recognized, often implicitly and out of the painful reality of their daily experience, that the boundaries distinguishing the church from the fallen world were not always clear. A person who had been banned should not be permitted at the communion table, they argued, but social avoidance had never been part of the teachings of Christ or the apostles. Moreover, who could say with certainty whether or not, in the providence of God, the Treuherzige would be saved? For Reist and his supporters, these questions complicated the absolutist language of separation. They defended their more moderate positions by appealing to God’s redemptive love and the hidden movement of the Spirit in the hearts of believers. A further clue to the division is suggested by the regional differences between the two groups. The overwhelming majority of Ammann’s supporters—some 25 of the 27 ministers who sided with him—came from the emigrant communities in the Alsace and the Palatinate.74 Unlike the situation in Switzerland, where the Swiss Brethren faced continual pressure from authorities to conform, church members in the Alsace and the Palatinate were much freer to integrate into their economic and cultural surroundings. Since, in this new setting, the state was no longer going to define the church-world boundaries with the threat of persecution, Swiss Brethren congregations in the Alsace and the Palatinate would need to impose those boundaries more rigorously from within. Thus, the energetic focus on church discipline and shunning by Ammann and his supporters can be understood in part as their attempt to retain an older tradition of churchworld dualism within a new context of religious toleration. The debate over the salvation of the Treuherzige offers a good illustration of the point. The friendships between the Swiss Brethren and the Treuherzige

74

Roth (1993), 13.

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in the Emmental had emerged over the course of many decades within the complex web of family relationships and inter-dependencies characteristic of daily life in a rural community. By contrast, Swiss Brethren emigrants to the Alsace and the Palatinate had fewer personal or long-standing relationships with their non-Mennonite neighbors. Nor, given their context of relative toleration, were they forced to rely on the Treuherzige for practical assistance. For them, the fact that the Treuherzige had not been baptized was an abstract theological principle that led to a simple and clear conclusion: they could not be considered true Christians. By contrast, those Swiss Brethren in the Emmental, living in the shadow of persecution and often reliant on the Treuherzige in times of need, were far more cautious about using language that would so clearly offend those who were offering them Christian charity. Conclusion The division of 1693 encapsulates a tension deeply rooted in the history and identity of the Swiss Brethren between 1540 and 1700. The language of separation—articulated with uncompromising clarity in Article IV of the “Brotherly Union” of Schleitheim (1527)— offered a coherent framework for articulating distinctive theological convictions such as believers baptism, church discipline and a social ethic that raised doubts about a Christian magistracy. Moreover, a separatist theology offered a plausible explanation for the on-going experience of opposition and persecution, and it established a cosmic frame of reference for interpreting Swiss Brethren history within the biblical motifs of exodus and “the way of the cross.” But inherent in the principle of church-world separatism was a series of internal tensions that the Swiss Brethren were never fully able to resolve. Part of the on-going tension was theological in nature. The exact meaning of the “world,” to cite only one example, was rarely clear in Swiss Brethren usage. Was the “fallen” character of the world to be identified primarily in the coercive power of the sword? Was it to be understood more broadly in the inclination of human nature toward greed and selfishness? Or was it a more profound ontological reality that ultimately encompassed all of human thought and culture outside the orbit of the redeemed community? Closely related was the on-going, unresolved debate over the specific

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form that separation from the world was to take: exactly where should these boundaries be identified? Where did the authority to define these boundaries rightfully reside? And what were the appropriate actions to take in response to those who had “crossed the line”? Woven through these questions was the persistent, creative debate over the role of the Spirit in a tradition heavily oriented toward Ordnung as illustrated by the writings of Pilgram Marpeck and the Strasbourg Discipline of 1568. Marpeck’s more moderate political ethic and his caution against legalistic and literalist extremism—combined with a vigorous defense of the visible church in response to the Spiritualists—pointed toward a mediating position that provided some theological ballast to the Swiss Brethren as the group entered into the second generation. Marpeck’s antipathy to a rule-based legalism undoubtedly made it easier for the Swiss Brethren to justify certain accommodations to a strict ethic of church/world separatism. The Strasbourg Discipline, on the other hand, provided a framework of clear ethical practices that gave coherence and visibility to the disparate Swiss Brethren congregations, ensuring that Swiss Brethren theology would remain firmly tethered to concrete practices. But just as Marpeck’s creative quest for balance—between spirit and deed, freedom and legalism, church and world—was inherently unstable, the Discipline also gave rise to controversies over how these regulations should be applied. The immigration of the late seventeenth century, combined with the influx of new, zealous converts, destabilized the traditional equilibrium that congregations had found for these internal tensions. The result was the Amish division of 1693. Such a summary, of course, does not capture the entirety of the Swiss Brethren story as it unfolded between 1540 and 1700. Future research will undoubtedly uncover more details about the actual functioning of local congregational life, especially in the area of leadership, family networks and inter-congregational relationships. Much more work remains to be done on the interaction of Swiss Brethren congregants with the local population: what sorts of economic exchanges occurred between these groups? did the dissolution of village morals courts by central authorities in the seventeenth century heighten the appeal of a disciplined church? from what social and economic strata did the Swiss Brethren draw their converts? The Dutch Mennonite intervention on behalf of the Swiss Brethren—in all of its economic, political and theological dimensions—is a story that still remains

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largely to be told. New archival discoveries of Swiss Brethren theological manuscripts point toward a much more creative and complex intellectual ferment within the group than historians have previously assumed. And finally, the long and fascinating tradition of Swiss Brethren arguments on behalf of religious toleration—a topic intimately connected to the broader themes in the political and intellectual history of early modern Europe—has scarcely been touched by historians. All of these questions, and many more, suggest that the history of the Swiss Brethren in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century will remain a fertile area of scholarly inquiry for decades to come. Bibliography Primary Sources Bangs, Jeremy D. trans. and ed. Letters on Toleration: Dutch Aid to Persecuted Swiss and Palatine Mennonites, 1615–1699. Rockport, 2004. Biblical Concordance of the Swiss Brethren, 1540. C. Arnold Snyder, ed. Gilbert Fast and Galen Peters, trans. Kitchener, ON, 2001. Bullinger, Heinrich. Von dem unverschampten fräfel Zurich, 1531. Chronicle of the Hutterian Brethren. vol. 1. Rifton, NY, 1987. Fast, Heinold and John H. Yoder. “How to Deal with Anabaptists: An Unpublished Letter of Heinrich Bullinger,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 33 (April 1959), 83–95. Franck, Sebastian. Chronica, Zeitbuch vund Geschichsbibell. Ulm, 1536. Golden Apples in Silver Bowls: The Rediscovery of Redeeming Love. Elizabeth Bender and Leonard Gross, trans. Lancaster, PA, 1999. Klassen, William and Walter Klaassen, eds. The Writings of Pilgram Marpeck. Scottdale, PA, 1978. McGrath, William R. Christlicher Ordnung or Christian Discipline: Being a Collection and Translation of Anabaptist and Amish-Mennonite Church Disicplines. Aylmer, ON, 1966. Peachey, Shem and Paul Peachey. “Answer of Some Who are Called (Ana)Baptists Why They Do Not Attend the Churches: A Swiss Brethren Tract,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 45 ( January, 1971), 5–32. Roth, John D., ed. and trans. Letters of the Amish Division: A Sourcebook. Goshen, IN, 1993. Schad, M[aster] Elias. “True Account of an Anabaptist Meeting at Night in a Forest and a Debate Held There With Them,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 58 ( July, 1984), 292–295. Sippell, Theodor, ed. “The Confession of the Swiss Brethren in Hesse, 1578,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 23 ( January, 1949), 22–34. Secondary Sources Bender, Harold S. “Pilgram Marpeck, Anabaptist Theologian and Civil Engineer,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 28 ( July, 1964), 231–265. Bergmann, Cornelius. Die Täuferbewegung im Kanton Zürich bis 1660. Leipzig, 1916. Blough, Neal. “The Church as Sign or Sacrament? Trinitarian Ecclesiology, Pilgram

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Marpeck, Vatican II and John Milbank,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 78 ( January, 2004), 29–52. Boyd, Stephen B. Pilgram Marpeck: His Life and Social Theology. Durham, NC, 1992. Clasen, Claus-Peter. Anabaptism: A Social History, 1525–1618. Switzerland, Austria, Moravia, South and Central Germany. Ithaca, 1972. Correll, Ernst H. Das schweizerische Täufermennonitentum. Tübingen, 1925. Egli, Emil, ed. Actensammlung zur Geschichte der Zürcher Reformation in den Jahren 1519–1533. Zürich, 1879. Fast, Heinold. “Pilgrim Marpeck und das oberdeutsche Taüfertum. Ein neuer Handschriftenfund,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 47 (1956), 212–242. Finger, Thomas. “Pilgram Marpeck and the Christus Victor Motif,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 78 ( January, 2004), 53–77. Furner, Mark. “Lay Casuistry and the Survival of Later Anabaptists in Bern,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 75 (October, 2001), 429–469. ——. “The Repression and Survival of Anabaptism in the Emmental, 1659–1743.” Ph.D. Diss., Clare College, University of Cambridge, 1998. Gratz, Delbert. Bernese Anabaptists and their American Descendants. Scottdale, PA, 1953. Gregory, Brad S. Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge, MA, 1999. Gross, Leonard. “The First Mennonite Merger: the Concept of Cologne.” Mennonite Yearbook 1990–91. Scottdale, PA, 1990. 8–10. ——. The Golden Years of the Hutterites, 1565–1578. Scottdale, PA, 1980. Hege, Christian. Die Täufer in der Kurpfalz (Frankfurt, 1908) Hofer, Roland. “Anabaptists in Seventeenth-Century Schleitheim: Popular Resistance to the Consolidation of State Power in the Early Modern Era.” Mennonite Quarterly Review 74 ( January, 2000), 123–144. Jecker, Hanspeter. Ketzer, Rebellen, Heilige: Das Basler Täufertum von 1580–1700. Liestal, 1998. Klaassen, Walter, Werner Packull and John Rempel, trans. Later Writings by Pilgram Marpeck and his Circle. Kitchener, ON, 1999. ——. “Investigation into the Authorship and the Historical Background of the Anabaptist Tract Aufdeckung der Babylonischen Hurn,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 61 ( July, 1987), 251–261. Klassen, William. “Pilgrim Marpeck’s Two Books of 1531,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 33 ( January, 1959), 18–30. ——. Covenant and Community: The Life, Writings and Hermeneutics of Pilgram Marpeck. Grand Rapids, MI, 1968. Loserth, Johann, ed. Pilgram Marpecks Antwort auf Kaspar Schwenkfelds Beurteilung des Buches der Bundesbezeugung von 1542. Vienna, 1929. Müller, Ernst. Geschichte der Bernischen Täufer: nach den Urkunden dargestellt. Langnau, 1895. Oyer, John S. “Nicodemites among Württemberg Anabaptists,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 71 (October, 1997), 487–514. ——. “They Harry the Good People out of the Land”: Essays on the Persecution, Survival and Flourishing of Anabaptists and Mennonites. John D. Roth, ed. Goshen, IN, 2000. ——. “The Strasbourg Conferences of the Anabaptists, 1554–1607,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 58 ( July, 1984), 218–229. Packull, Werner O. Hutterite Beginnings: Communitarian Experiments during the Reformation. Baltimore, 1995. ——. “Preliminary Report on Pilgram Marpeck’s Sponsorship of Anabaptist Flugschriften,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 75 ( January, 2001), 75–88. Roth, John D. “The Limits of Confessionalization: Hans Landis and the Debate over Religious Toleration in Zürich, 1580–1620,” in Commoners and Community. C. Arnold Snyder, ed. Scottdale, PA, and Waterloo, ON, 2002, 281–300. Sabean, David. Power in the Blood. New York, 1985.

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Snyder, Arnold. “The (Not-so) ‘Simple Confession’ of the Later Swiss Brethren,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 73 (October, 1999), 677–722 and Mennonite Quarterly Review 74 ( January, 2000): 87–122. ——. “Research Note: Sources Documenting Anabaptism in Zürich, 1533–1660,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 69 ( January, 1995), 93–99. Stayer, James M. The German Peasants’ War and Anabaptist Community of Goods. Montreal and Kingston, 1991. Wappler, Paul. Die Täuferbewegung in Thüringen von 1526–1584. Jena, 1913. Yoder, Jesse. “A Critical Study of the Debate Between the Reformed and the Anabaptists Held at Frankenthal, Germany in 1571.” Ph.D. Diss. Northwestern Uni., 1962. Yoder, John Howard. Anabaptism and Reformation in Switzerland: An Historical and Theological Analysis of the Dialogues Between Anabaptists and Reformers. David Carl Stassen and C. Arnold Snyder, trans. Kitchener, ON, 2004. Zeman, J. K. The Anabaptists and the Czech Brethren in Moravia, 1526–1628. Paris, 1969. Zürcher, Isaac, “Anabaptist-Mennonite Names in Switzerland,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 62 (October, 1988), 461–495.

CHAPTER TEN

ANABAPTIST RELIGIOUS LITERATURE AND HYMNODY John D. Rempel Introduction This study will concern itself with devotional texts that have left a lasting mark on Anabaptism and its descendent movements. All of them were written by adherents of these movements. Modern scholarship has identified an ever widening diversity in the character and literature of Anabaptism, and so, even within the broad criterion of texts that have had enduring influence further selection needs to be made on the following grounds. To begin with, I sought to represent the diverse expressions of Anabaptism theologically, geographically, and chronologically. My goal was to highlight continuities, discontinuities, and commonalities. In addition, I wanted to draw attention to neglected but formative writers and writings. In the third place, I wanted to give the numerous but little known texts on worship a place within the literature of Anabaptism as a whole. Riedemann’s hymns and Clock’s prayers are illustrative of both points two and three. And finally, I thought it important to show how different authors come to terms with the unstable relationship in much of Anabaptism between inner and outer, Spirit and matter. The consequence of this approach was that a figure of the stature of Michael Sattler is represented only in Golden Apples in Silver Bowls, a compendium of the later Swiss Brethren tradition, leaving the Ausbund to represent that strand’s earlier religiosity. Similarly, Dirk Philips does not have his own entry but his mindset is represented in part by Menno Simons and Thielman van Braght. By the same token, a word needs to be said about including two figures whose ecclesiology—in different ways—is marginal to the movement as a whole, Balthasar Hubmaier and Hans Denck. As a matriculated theologian with a systematic mind, Hubmaier articulated many convictions at the heart of Swiss Anabaptism. Denck

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deserves to be included, I think, because he was able to ground discipleship in mystical union with God, holding together two claims that often came apart in the larger tradition. In the traditional portrayal of Anabaptism assumptions have often been made about the nature of its piety. We will begin with three common generalizations about spirituality in the formative period of Swiss, Hutterian, and Dutch Anabaptism. Next we will trace the development and mutation of these traits in later generations of Mennonites in the Netherlands and North Germany, Swiss Brethren in Switzerland and South Germany, and Hutterites, centered in Moravia. In conclusion, we will assess the sampling of texts to test the validity of these common generalizations. The study of Anabaptist religiosity from the second decade of the 16th century through the last decade of the 17th century is complicated by the striking transition in the movement from prophetic vanguard to separatist minority. Originally Anabaptism was a broad charismatic movement emerging from diverse theologies and spiritualities. Its leading figures covered the spectrum from peasant to theologian, with intellectual backgrounds ranging from monasticism to humanism. Many Anabaptists died young from persecution. For the most part, their writings were not systematic; they were caught up in immediate issues of controversy and shaped by an eschatological urgency. Their consuming passion was to gather a faithful church in anticipation of the coming kingdom. Dispersal by governmental persecution and itinerancy based on missionary urgency characterized the original movement. As they discovered pockets of refuge they sought a settled existence. Out of the ferment of first and second generation Anabaptism more homogeneous, somewhat regionally based successor communities coalesced. They emerged at different times and under diverse conditions.1 The prophetic originality of the founders became routinized. Their zeal, which had led to many splits, had to be channeled in ways that could nurture a persecuted minority over the long haul. Their overriding challenge was to sustain but also adapt the radicalism of Anabaptism’s eschatological impulse for ordinary time. This meta1 The most comprehensive classification is still that of Williams (1992). More recent studies of the movement as a whole are Goertz (1996) and Snyder (1995). Finger (2004) offers a theological classification and analysis of the movement. Strübind (2003) proposes a fundamental revision of the origins and character of early Swiss Anabaptism. See also the dialogue between Strübind (2004) and Stayer (2004) on her proposal and method.

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morphosis from prophetic vanguard to separatist minority is crucial to understanding the texts chosen for this study and the shifts in religious temperament that they express.2 The three generalizations I introduced earlier concerning the religious temperament of Anabaptism are as follows. First, Anabaptism was a type of “existential Christianity,” a concept Robert Friedmann took over from Soren Kierkegaard and used to describe the Anabaptist preoccupation with living a holy life.3 In Friedmann’s portrayal little time was taken for doctrinal or liturgical formulation; what mattered was spiritual rebirth and a life of surrender. Second, aligned with this characteristic was a pervasive focus on the human response to grace. Churches where doctrine and sacraments were central concerned themselves with God’s metaphysical workings. What they lacked, according to the radicals, was a transformative experience of grace as the formative reality in the life of every believer. Among the figures included in this study there are representatives of mysticism early in the movement and of spiritualism, more generally, later on. But throughout the period under scrutiny surprisingly little interest is shown in the cultivation of religious experience. The focus stays on the changed behavior of the believer, on what she does with the grace God offers her. The Schleitheim Confession of 1527 speaks of this as “walking in the resurrection.”4 A third trait was a spiritualistic impulse that harbored an ambivalence concerning the relationship between inward and outward reality. On the one hand, a core feature of Anabaptism was its emphasis on the visible church, a historical community in which God had started over again with humanity. On the other hand was the movement’s radical suspicion of the outward forms of inherited religious life—sacraments, fixed liturgies, images. The authenticity of visible church life was premised on the individual’s inner decision of faith. The accommodation of this tension happened in different ways. In the long run, Hutterian communalism tended more toward a reliance on outward forms, Mennonitism more toward a spiritualization of church and doctrine, with the Swiss Brethren in between them. 2 Out of the literature on Anabaptist spirituality, the following are especially noteworthy: Liechty (1994); George (1989); Erb (1986); and Martin (1988), 5–25. 3 Friedmann (1972), 19ff. Werner Packull argued for the origin of this characteristic in mysticism (1977) and Arnold Snyder made the same case for the Swiss Brethren.—Snyder (2002), 195–216. 4 Yoder (1973), 36. C. J. Dyck (1995), 24 notes the lack of introspection in the texts of his comprehensive anthology of religious writing.

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The sources of this spiritual disposition are diverse. We will examine them as we look at specific texts. Late medieval mysticism, sacramentarianism, and monasticism mixed in with Zwinglian and Lutheran influences are all in the background. The study will proceed chronologically. A comprehensive review, even of the spiritual literature that has had a lasting influence in the field, would exceed the bounds of this essay. What we shall attempt is an analysis of representative voices in the streams of religious life in Anabaptism and its early descendents, using devotional writings, worship texts, catechisms, hymns, pastoral epistles, and the like. In the process, we will test the generalizations made above about this type of radical church life in the 16th and 17th centuries. The Early Period (1525–1565) Balthasar Hubmaier (1480–1528) A Christian Catechism which Everyone Should Know before He Is Baptized in Water 5 was the mature work of Balthasar Hubmaier, the only Anabaptist leader with an earned doctorate in theology. In 1526 he moved to Nikolsburg, Moravia, where Anabaptism was flourishing as a “mass believers church.”6 His task was to prepare instruction for youth. It is cast in the form of a dialogue between the local ruler, Lord Leonhard von Liechtenstein and his nephew Hans. The dialogue moves quickly to the heart of the matter, Christ coming, “. . . into this world that it might not be lost because of sin.”7 Christ is presented as the one “who has paid the debt of sin and already vanquished death, devil, and hell.”8 A living faith is described as one that produces the fruits of the Spirit and the works of love. This faith is then summarized in the Apostles’ Creed. Hubmaier is clear that following baptism in the Spirit and in water

5 Pipkin and Yoder (1989), 339–365. This text, along with others of Hubmaier, was formative of Peter Riedemann’s Confession of Faith, and through it, of Hutterite thought.—Chronicle, 47–56. 6 Both in Waldshut and Nikolsburg Hubmaier worked for an established church entered through believers baptism. He departed from other concepts of an established church by providing a “conscience clause” in which people who could not confess a personal faith were exempt from church membership without penalty. 7 Pipkin and Yoder, 345. 8 Ibid., 347.

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there needs to be a baptism in blood for daily mortification of the flesh. Great weight is placed on the accompanying verbal confession of faith, which includes the pledge of mutual admonition. “Refusal to be reconciled to the brother or to desist from sin” is given as cause for excommunication.9 The second part of the dialogue moves to the Lord’s Supper. “The water concerns God, the Supper our neighbor; therein lie all the Law and the Prophets.”10 Just as Christ laid down his life for us, so we now pledge to lay down our life for our neighbor. Love is the sum of all preaching. But it is only when Christ sets a believer free that she is able to love. To put it another way, “the inbreathing of God is still in us all, although captive, and as a live spark covered with cold ashes is still alive and will steam if heavenly water is poured on it.”11 The catechism concludes with a description of eternal life as, “a joyful vision of God’s face, prepared from the foundation of the world for all believers in Christ who have performed works of mercy toward their neighbor.”12 We begin with such detailed reference to a single text because it sets forth succinctly core motifs of the spiritual life in Anabaptism that will recur throughout our study: Christ’s victory on the cross as the source of the believer’s rebirth into a life of love. This is enacted first in Spirit baptism, then water, and finally blood baptism. Believers pledge themselves to God in baptism, then to one another in mutual admonition in the Lord’s Supper for the sake of growing in mercy toward their neighbors. Hubmaier lays these motifs out liturgically in “A Form for Water Baptism” and “A Form for Christ’s Supper.”13 These services are the only extant complete liturgies in Anabaptism. It is marked by the same characteristics we see above. There is a confession of sin, then a sermon to give “a picture of the boundless goodness of Christ,” followed by an invitation to the congregation to ask questions or offer a word of revelation.14 A call to self-examination from I Corinthians 11 follows. Believers are to ask themselves if they have confidence that Christ died for them and whether gratitude for his 9 10 11 12 13 14

Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid.,

353. 355. 360. 364. 386–408. 395–396.

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boundless goodness points them to their neighbor. Later in the service, before Communion, there is “The Pledge of Love” in which each member promises individually to practice fraternal admonition with sisters and brothers, cause no offense to neighbors and love enemies.15 We have here an awesomely high view of sanctification: the believer is indeed able, by grace, to offer up his life in imitation of Jesus. Hans Denck (ca 1500–1527) One of the few mystics who found an enduring, if controversial, place in the Anabaptist pantheon is Hans Denck. His pacifism set him apart from revolutionary kindred spirits like Thomas Müntzer. For him debate about the literal meaning of doctrines and practices is a doomed undertaking because the truth is not found there. Denck’s most important writings were published in the mid 1520s, immediately before and after his premature death and then again a century and a half later.16 His signature essay, “Concerning True Love” (1527), places Anabaptist motifs within a spiritualistic framework. Its way of thinking and language are existential rather than doctrinal, grounded in Jesus’ union with God. “God is so completely united in love with him that all the work of God is the work of this Man and all the suffering of this Man is reckoned the suffering of God.”17 Those who participate in this love keep the customs of the Law as Gospel, in other words, as outward signs of, rather than structures governing, that new life. In this spirit Denck can affirm believer’s baptism and the Lord’s Supper as a meal of love. Because they are contradictions to love he refuses the oath and violence. Denck’s writing is filled with passionate conviction but seldom with rancor or condemnation. In “The Order of God” every thought is buttressed with Scripture references. The Bible remains the outward truth which the Spirit makes life giving inwardly. Anyone who wants union with God is like a woman at the end of her pregnancy: she brings forth life only

15

Ibid., 403–404. Hans Denckens Geistliches Blumengaertlein (1680). Denck’s star rose again in the late 19th century when his undogmatic faith appealed to liberal Protestants, including Mennonites, in Germany. This development is succinctly summarized in Friesen (1994), 41–77. 17 Bauman (1991), 184–185. 16

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through willing surrender.18 We can do good only through the suffering that comes with surrender; it brings us into conformity with our origin in creation. For Denck the deepest suffering of the Christian is not outward, as in Hubmaier—that is, the physical abuse she might suffer at the hands of her enemies. Rather, it is inward, when believers resist the consuming fire of God in the soul.19 It is there, more than in the external life of the church or the world, where God restores creation. Pilgram Marpeck (1495–1556) An engineer by profession, Marpeck was also a self-taught theologian. His concern lay in setting forth a vision for an urban, nonseparatist Anabaptism. His grounding in the incarnation as the interpretive key to the Gospel led Marpeck to resist the spiritualistic impulse in the whole Left Wing of the Reformation and to provide it with a theology of the sacraments.20 He realized that without a doctrine of God’s redemption of history and matter, a visible church as the ark of salvation would have no theological basis. Without the sacramental principle, which he refashioned in conformity with a believers church ecclesiology, what remained was a subjective reality, a ceaseless striving for holiness of life.21 He emphasized that Christ became incarnate, “not for the benefit of spirits and angels, but for man’s sake, who has flesh and blood and natural sensitivity (Heb. 2:14–18).”22 Marpeck drew a direct moral consequence from this claim for congregations he considered legalistic. If Christians shared the solidarity Christ had had with the human condition, it would make them patient with each other and not readily censorious. “Judgment and Decision,”23 written about 1541, is one of several of Marpeck’s pastoral epistles that breathes this spirit. His theme of 18

Ibid., 224–225. Ibid., 224–225. 20 There is a comprehensive analysis of Marpeck’s theology of the sacraments in Rempel (1993) 93–163, 214–217. 21 This comes out most straightforwardly in Marpeck’s refutation of Caspar Schwenckfeld’s spiritualism.—Klaassen (1999), esp. 99–119. 22 Klassen and Klaassen (1978), 85–86; also 76f, 92f. 23 Both of the epistles described here became part of the larger South GermanSwiss tradition when they were taken up into the Kunstbuch, Jörg Maler’s collection of Marpeck’s seventeen extant letters as well thirty-five letters by other Anabaptist authors. A manuscript of the text preserved by the Swiss Brethren in Bern has been published in a critical edition.—Fast & Rothkegel, forthcoming. 19

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love as the heart of the Gospel echoes Denck’s “Concerning True Love.” Holiness is a lifelong calling that we pursue through the patient process of fraternal admonition. The true mark of sanctification is not conformity to rules, as tended to be the case with his Swiss Brethren audience, but love, “which judges only for improvement, and covers many sins.”24 Such sympathy for the struggling believer is grounded in the humanity of Christ. “His physical life was sustained by eating and drinking and He died a natural death.”25 We are set free from the law, both as a taskmaster and a way of saving ourselves. On the basis of our fallen reason we insist that we can justify ourselves on the basis of the law. It is from this delusion of grandeur that Christ sets us free. In baptism we die to the law of sin and Christ lives in us through the law of grace.26 Judgment, according to Marpeck, must await the time of fruit bearing. In the meanwhile we pass sentence only on our own life and admonish our sisters and brothers in the hope of their further sanctification. There are kairos times when the church must judge, yet even then it is not to be with the intent of setting up prohibitions but restoring the law of love.27 We resort to prohibitions out of fear; the work of the Holy Spirit is to drive out such fear. In “Concerning the Lowliness of Christ” Marpeck expresses a different pastoral concern. Against those who say that life in the Spirit is invisible and beyond the church as an earthly body, the author grounds the life of discipleship in Christ’s “holy humanity.”28 By this seminal term he means both Christ in his incarnation and the church as its prolongation. Outward actions like preaching, miracle working, footwashing, and disciplining express Christ’s service on earth. These apostolic deeds prepare seekers for the witness of the Spirit that leads them to faith. Church and Spirit, outward and inward, are one: Christ is living on earth in his human body, the church, as much as he is living in heaven through the power of the Spirit, who copies the law of liberty Christ taught onto the hearts of believers.29 24

Klassen and Klaassen, 312. Ibid., 314. He expands on this notion on 353. 26 Ibid., 320–322. 27 Ibid., 325–328, 344–352. 28 Ibid., 435, 440. 29 Ibid., 456, 458–460. Marpeck’s letter “To Helena von Streicher” (376–389) admirably summarizes his chief arguments. 25

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One of the rare occasions in Anabaptism when women were acknowledged as theological equals of men concerned Marpeck’s extended correspondence with Magdalena Marschalk von Pappenheim and Helene von Streicher. Von Pappenheim took Marpeck’s side in his debate with Schwenckfeld and von Streicher came to Schwenckfeld’s side.30 Peter Riedemann (1506–1556) Riedemann was a Silesian cobbler who was drawn to the cause of radical reform in early adulthood. The Anabaptism he encountered in Silesia had a spiritualistic tendency.31 All his early writings are directly pastoral in nature: his single goal is to help believers live a holy life.32 His Confession of Faith was written for catechetical purposes while he was imprisoned in 1540–1542. It is a comprehensive handbook of faith, setting forth Trinitarian belief and then guiding the reader to repentance, faith, and community. The Confession and his hymns, written with lyrical simplicity, were formative of Hutterian piety. Riedemann’s treatment of the Apostles’ Creed at the beginning of the first of two parts of the Confession illustrates his pastoral impulse. The text is a seamless garment of the words of Scripture and Riedemann’s elaborations. He cannot speak about the Father without referring immediately to Jesus and the Spirit because both of them assure us that we are his children and dare to call God “Father.”33 In the same vein, the article, “We Confess that Christ Is Lord” begins not with a theological claim but with the assertion, “We know that no one can call Jesus Lord except through the Holy Spirit.”34 It is the Spirit who gathers the church and instructs it.35 Only when he has made the spiritual basis of community abundantly clear does the author go on to the ceremonies and the economic

30

Snyder and Hecht (1996), 111–123. Friesen (1999), 19–25. Friesen describes the influence of Caspar Schwenckfeld, Hans Denck, and Hans Hut on Silesian Anabaptism. 32 Martin Rothkegel points to an “esoteric spirituality” in Riedemann’s late writings but affirms the popular character of his early and more influential texts. See, “Learned in the School of David: Peter Riedemann’s Paraphrase of the Gospels,” 233, 251, et passim, in Snyder (2002). 33 Friesen (1999), 60–62. 34 Ibid., 66. 35 Ibid., 76–79. 31

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dimensions of life together. “True surrender” involves the yielding of the soul as well as the body and material possessions.36 Although they are hardly known outside the Hutterian community, Riedemann’s hymns are a major part of his corpus. Forty-six of them are preserved in the Hutterite hymnal; thirty-two of them were written in prison.37 They cover an impressive range of themes and types: versified Psalms and Biblical canticles, laments, narratives of Biblical events, and calls to faithfulness. It is striking that most of them are written in the first person plural, as expressions of corporate piety, even though many of them were written in the isolation of a prison cell. Johannine images, like “light” and “truth,” predominate. Love is a major theme; polemics arise only occasionally. Of particular note are the following. Hymn #8 concerns the Lord’s Supper. In a polemical section, Riedemann asserts that Christ gives us bread and wine, not body and blood. Whoever insists on eating flesh feeds only the stomach.38 Two long hymns, (#18 and #29) are versified passion narratives.39 The second one, loosely following the Johannine account, begins with healing stories, dwells on the “render unto Caesar” encounter (Mk. 12:17), and features the footwashing but not the bread and cup at the Last Supper. Its paraphrase of all of the incidents in Jesus’ passion is detailed but restrained, focused on the events and not the devotion of those beholding them.40 Finally, Riedemann versifies the canticles of Deborah, #38 ( Jud. 5:1–31), Hannah, #25 (I Sam. 2:1–10), and Mary, #27 (Lk. 1:46–55).41 The inclusion of Deborah, a tale of brutality, is puzzling because it is told without an explicit lesson being drawn. The latter two extol God’s intervention on behalf of the poor. How do these expressions of liturgical piety measure up against the three traits I posited to describe the Anabaptist religious temperament (concern for obedience more than doctrine, emphasis on 36

Ibid., 121–123. Hutterischen Brüder (1962). Helen Martens notes that this collection was preserved solely in manuscript form until its first printing in 1914.—Martens (2002), 46. 38 Hutterischen Brüder (1962), 458–459. 39 Hutterischen Brüder (1962), 474–479, 496–505. 40 This objective focus stands in sharp contrast with late medieval devotion and that of Pietism. One thinks particularly of the most profound of all accounts of Jesus’ suffering—J. S. Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion. There the text and the music highlight the sorrow of those who watch, especially in the ethereal “Mache dich mein Herze rein” at the time of Jesus’ burial. 41 Hutterischen Brüder (1962), 521–524, 489–491, 592–594. 37

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human response more than divine initiative, split between inner and outer reality)? As to the first trait, the literary form of the hymns is narrative and confessional rather than doctrinal. As to the second, the longing, suffering, and faith of the church is the predominant focus but the canticles and passion accounts are centered on the acts of God. The Communion hymn (#8) rejects a corporeal interpretation of the words of institution. But it talks about the church as the body of Christ rather than the individual believer’s mystical participation in Christ’s body. Menno Simons (1496–1561) A Catholic priest who joined the cause of radical reform when it was jeopardized by the debacle in Münster, Menno became the namesake of many heirs of Anabaptism because of his and his wife Gertrude’s fearless pastoral ministry to their persecuted co-religionists and his intrepid debate with theological opponents within and without the movement. Much of Menno’s writing is halfway between doctrinal instruction and spiritual guidance. He was drawn into the leadership of the movement at a time when it needed defenders against opponents from without and within. Polemic is seldom far from his mind. Menno is the paradoxical figure par excellence in Anabaptist mythology. He has been lionized by the tradition in a way that none of its other leaders have been. Only his writings have the distinction of having been published continuously since he wrote them and taken as normative in all of Anabaptism’s descendent movements. His fearless sharing of his fellow-believers’ insecurity, his pastoral heart, and his adamant defense of their cause are remembered with gratitude. Yet his celestial flesh Christology was unorthodox and his defense of the nonresistant cause was often marked by vindictiveness. Menno’s writing embodies the ambivalence in the Mennonite soul between the spiritualist and literalist impulses. It is his raw passion for the Gospel, his bold declaration of the enmity between the kingdom of Christ and that of Satan that has endeared him to subsequent generations. Only in modern times have scholars challenged his place of pre-eminence.42 42 A fascinating analysis of Menno’s place in Dutch Mennonite historiography is found in Voolstra (1997), 1–34.

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Menno was shaped by late medieval sacramentarianism and its distinction between flesh and spirit.43 Reinforcing that tendency was the influence of Melchior Hofmann’s celestial flesh Christology; in it Christ did not take on fallen human nature but brought an unfallen humanity with him.44 Accompanying this spiritualism was an equally emphatic Biblicism. The former made Menno anti-sacramental; the latter placed great weight on the outward life of the church, particularly its readiness to suffer, as a mark of faithfulness. Thus, Menno’s piety is marked both by an emphasis on spiritual rebirth as a radically inward reality and on the possibility of outward holiness of life. This duality is further expressed by his devotion to the cross of Christ and the cross of the Christian. “The Cross of the Saints” of 1554 and the “Meditation on the Twenty-fifth Psalm” of 1537 are among Menno’s few largely inspirational writings. “The Cross of the Saints” is made up of breathtaking contrasts. On the one hand, there are tenderhearted exhortations to fellow-believers to follow faithfully in the footsteps of their Master.45 One senses that the two decades of affliction Menno and his flock have known are being given voice here in lament and exhortation. But hard on its heels come rants against the oppressors. The saints suffer because they “have pressed for the true righteousness of faith.”46 They stand in an honorable lineage that begins with Eve and moves forward through the patriarchs and prophets. Saul is the type of the tyrant and David the type of the faithful believer.47 “Therefore, dear brethren, you who have sought the Lord, have feared and loved him, and therefore, must suffer and take much from this wicked and idolatrous generation, fear not those who take your earthly goods from you—Christ and heaven they cannot take.”48

43 Williams (1962), 28 et passim. “Sacramentarianism” developed out of late medieval Eucharistic piety in which the elements were adored rather than consumed. In the Reformation this devotion was separated from the consecration of the elements and was further spiritualized. See Krahn (1981), 44ff. 44 Voolstra (1982), 200–201. 45 Simons (1984), 581–622. The “Meditation on the Twenty-fifth Psalm” and the Foundation Book were first published ca 1540 and have been continuously published since then. The “Cross of the Saints” was included in Menno’s complete works since 1600 in Dutch and later in German, English, and in 2005 Russian. 46 Ibid., 586. 47 Ibid., 589f. 48 Ibid., 595.

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Martyrdom is the only crown the world bestows on believers but the kingdom belongs to them.49 The condescension of Christ, “poorer than the foxes,”50 is the believer’s model. In his ministry and his passion Jesus was scorned; his followers will endure the same fate. “Everyone who does these things [follows the commands of Christ] out of pure love must pass for a cursed Anabaptist.”51 The wicked prosper for a time but nothing can separate the righteous from the love of Christ.52 Menno’s ‘Meditation on the Twenty-fifth Psalm” takes the form of an extended, conversational prayer; it is not an argument, but the “unpretentious reflection of my heart.”53 One of the Psalm’s petitions, “let not mine enemies triumph over me” affords Menno the opportunity to decry his oppressors. But this treatise is clearly autobiographical in an individual and introspective way. Here the enemy is not only those who oppress his flock but Menno himself. Much of the piece takes the form of a lament. “My sins rise up against me, the world hates me . . ., the learned ones curse me . . ., my dearest friends forsake me . . . . Who will have mercy on me?”54 Then follows the soaring assurance of God’s enduring mercy on all who fear him. This cycle of thoughts is repeated several times. Biblical allusions abound; a cloud of witnesses, including Israel’s escape from Egypt and Babylon, and the desecration of its temple in Esdras, appear throughout the treatise. There is a comforting solidarity between Menno’s followers and God’s people through the ages who have “assumed the yoke and cross of Christ.”55 The Ausbund, 1564 No single author or editor stands behind this hymnal. Its subtitle is, “Some beautiful Christian songs, as they were composed from time to time by the Swiss Brethren and other right believing Christians in the prison of the Passau Castle.” Its early origin, the diverse provenance of its compositions, and its enduring influence on Mennonite

49 50 51 52 53 54 55

Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid.,

592–593. 596. 600. 619. 65. 71. 68.

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and Amish piety make it worth including on its own terms. The Ausbund is one of four early collections of songs issued separately as hymnals rather than as part of a larger volume of edifying literature, as was common to do. In the Reformation the voice of the people came to expression in singing. This was doubly true in Anabaptism. First of all, with the exception of Hubmaier, there was no set liturgy with fixed responses for the congregation; singing filled that role. Secondly, their gatherings were intimate in size and intensity. The extreme of this reality was settings of imprisonment. The core of the Ausbund consists of 53 songs written by prisoners in Passau.56 In 1583 eighty-seven hymns were added to the collection; eleven of them were translations from Een Lietboecxken, the first Dutch Anabaptist hymnal.57 Thus, the Ausbund preserves a surprisingly wide tradition, given the early date of its composition. Parts of the Ausbund, in turn, were taken over into other tracts and hymnals, passing on its polygenesis.58 Given the dissenters’ situation of suffering, the emphasis on praise, true teaching, and a life of love is remarkable; lament is a minor note. Song #1/81 is a confession of faith, setting forth the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation in common language.59 The theme of Song #8/87 is the double commandment of love.60 Song #13/92 is a Eucharistic hymn, narrating the Last Supper and its origin in the Passover, the significance of the bread and wine, including drinking the cup of suffering.61 The song proceeds as an unhurried narration of Jesus’ Passover celebration, going on to an interpretation of his death and Supper. Typical of this and other

56 Peters (2003), 18–30. The 1583 version has been republished many times. The double numbering identifies each hymn by its place in the original 1564 collection and subsequent ones. In Mennonite congregations of Swiss Brethren origin other hymnals began replacing the Ausbund in North America in 1803 and in Germany in 1830. European Amish congregations used it into the 20th century. It remains the only hymnal used in public worship in North and South American Amish congregations. The 13th edition in the United States, e.g., was published by Verlag der Amischen Gemeinden, Lancaster, PA in 1977. An English translation of the most commonly sung hymns appeared in 1998 as Songs of the Ausbund. 57 Mennonite Encyclopedia, 4: 22. The Lietboecxken first appeared in 1563 as the final part of a martyrology called Het Offer des Herren. 58 Peters (2003), 28–30. 59 Ibid., 47–59. In all editions after 1583, the original hymns began with #81. Ausbund, #81, 435–445. 60 Ibid., 79–86; Ausbund, 453–460. 61 Ibid., 115–124; Ausbund, 481–489.

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hymns in the collection is the insistence that grace can be received only in the obedience of faith. The following verse exemplifies this conviction that for grace to be efficacious it needs to be acted on.62 Understand! Christ the Lord Has become a mercy seat For all who, if they believe, Are born in him. They receive his mercy If they avoid all sin.

Song #20/98 is a plea in the midst of distress. It is filled with allusions to all four gospels. The little flock need not fear, the world hates Jesus’ followers just as it hated him, Jesus will confess those before the Father who have confessed him before others.63 One has the sense with hymns like this one that the power lay in their soulful, collective recitation of Scriptural promises: the faith of the community was then set before the isolated individual, who might have lost hope on her own. Turning to the three traits of Anabaptist religiosity again, how do the Ausbund hymns measure up? Concern for holy living dominates some hymns, like #9, but an equal number of them are ballads narrating God’s acts in Scripture in versified form, e.g., #10 and 25. An emphasis on human response is pervasive. This is, however, not a focus on feelings but on acts of perseverance under persecution, e.g., #14. As expected, the Communion hymn (#13) rules out a corporeal presence. Its language about the Holy Spirit feeding our souls internalizes the Eucharistic gift. But there is also an externalization in the conclusion: drinking the cup means sharing Jesus’ suffering now. The Later Period (1565–1700) Hans de Ries (1553–1638) In the sad closing years of Menno Simons’ ministry there was a split in Dutch Anabaptism between a literalistic (Frisians and Flemish) and spiritualistic (Waterlander) tendency. More than anyone else de

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Snyder (2003), 204–207. Peters (2003) 162–167.

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Ries, a man of deep conviction and irenic spirit, gave substance to Waterlander teaching and practice. He aspired—as have many since him—to combine the ethical earnestness of Anabaptism with a spiritual inwardness that went beyond preoccupation with perfect outward forms. De Ries provided the movement with an orthodox but permeable confession of faith, treatises on particular topics, sermons, prayers, and worship forms. De Ries is credited with the innovation of a prayer formulary to guide public worship and private devotion.64 Written prayers from the first quarter century of Anabaptism are preserved in the works of various leaders.65 With one exception, we have too little documentation about the form of worship in various Anabaptist groups at that time to know whether these prayers were used in public or private settings. That exception is the Low Countries where silent prayer had become the practice in Sunday worship. To stir his hearers to deeper devotion, de Ries began to pray aloud in church and to record those prayers as models for others. His collection was popular enough to be published four times between 1610 and 1650.66 The “General Christian Prayer before the Sermon” is typical: ascription of praise in Biblical imagery for God’s greatness, an acute awareness of sinfulness followed by heartfelt gratitude for God’s grace, compassion, and patience, concluded with the Lord’s Prayer.67 It was a great pastoral concern of de Ries to foster devotion to the Bible’s teachings but to avoid the hairsplitting disagreements that had led to grievous splits. To do so, de Ries emphasized that there are two senses of the Word of God. It is, first of all, the person of Christ and, in the second place, the written record. The latter, like sacraments, is an outer witness. It points beyond itself to the inward reality of Christ.68 64 Friedmann (1980), 177–181. Originally published in 1949, Friedmann’s volume remains the most comprehensive work in English on Mennonite religious literature. 65 Dyck (1995), 190–213. 66 The best known edition consists of five sermons and three prayers by a fellow minister, Jan Gerrits, to which three sermons and eleven prayers by de Ries are added.—Gerrits (1650). Earlier editions of de Ries’ prayers were printed as part of other collections of devotional writings in 1610, 1618, and 1643.—Friedmann (1980), 177–180. 67 Gerrits (1650), 66–73. 68 Dyck (1995), 79–80.

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De Ries’ “Third Sermon on the Lord’s Supper” is an exposition of I Corinthians 11:23–27.69 It reflects his Biblically oriented spiritualism but one senses that the author is out of his depth: an engagement with fundamental theological and sacramental notions, as in Hubmaier and Marpeck, is absent. What remains is a patchwork of Biblical quotations and spiritualistic notions. At several points the author disputes Catholic Eucharistic belief and practice, leaving the reader with the sense that the debates of seven decades earlier have not yet come to rest. In popularized Zwinglian fashion he argues against a “literal” and “physical” interpretation of the words of institution with the notion that, “whenever the sign and the thing signified must serve as the same thing, it contradicts the nature of all sacraments.”70 From this de Ries concludes that remembrance (there follows a meditation on the passion in the form of “stations of the cross”) and similitude (bread is broken as Christ’s body was broken) constitute the meaning of the sacrament. In the final section of the sermon de Ries warns believers not to partake unworthily because, “he who presides is Christ . . . and the food is the power of the flesh and spilled blood of Jesus.”71 Similarly realist language occurs in the service itself. It expresses a kind of mystical realism in which Christ is truly received but on a plane above the actions with bread and wine.72 Leenaerdt Clock ( fl. 1590–1625) Clock, a German minister and hymn writer, who was drawn into Dutch church life, became a restraining influence in the movement of contemporary Mennonite and Waterlander congregations toward factionalism, spiritualism and cultural assimilation. He was an ardent preacher and theological disputant but the chief accomplishment of his ministry as a unifier was the writing of worship resources. Between

69 “De darde Predicatie van’t Avondmael des Herren,” Gerrits (1650), 37–54. “The Third Sermon on the Lord’s Supper”—Rempel (1981). At the conclusion of the sermon there follows an order for Communion (54–59) that has been adapted for contemporary liturgical usage in Rempel (1998), 82–87. 70 Rempel (1981), 3. 71 Ibid., 5. 72 Dirk Philips’ writing on the Supper might well be the background for de Ries’ thought but Philips’ sacramental language is more realist.—Dyck (1992), 113–115, 131–132, et passim.

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1589 and 1625 Clock published five collections of hymns for congregational use. Most of these are no longer extant.73 The most enduring of his writings was Some Christian Prayers,74 a collection of eighteen prayers that the author intended as a model for public and private worship. Vos and Friedmann describe it as, “the very standard upon which all later Mennonite prayer literature is built.”75 No other volume of spiritual writing in the Anabaptist tradition achieved such widespread use across the Mennonite spectrum from the Netherlands to Switzerland to Russia. My own assessment of the sustained popularity of Clock’s prayers is that they offered a way of nourishing Mennonite spiritual vitality as the church moved beyond the formative era of eschatological expectancy and entered a settled existence.76 The passion of the first generations of the movement had passed. Attempts to remain true to the church’s “first love” (Rev. 2:4) by means of legalism, on the one hand, and spiritualism, on the other, had led to a disastrous factionalism. Clock’s prayers and hymns were an attempt to nourish the center while he simultaneously engaged in theological debate to safeguard the boundaries. Therein lies the reason for the longevity of Clock’s prayers: they offered spiritual orientation to Mennonite communities beyond the Netherlands who were going through a similar transition from charismatic sect to tolerated denomination in later centuries. The first half of the prayer book follows the movement of public worship, including a preaching service and various ordinances, while the second half is a guide to domestic life, including morning and evening prayers. They are characterized by an introspectiveness 73 His most famous hymn “O Gott Vater, wir loben Dich” was taken into the Ausbund and most succeeding Swiss-South German Mennonite hymnals into the present. The standard English (#32) and German (#33) texts and tunes appear in Slough (1992). A listing of Clock’s hymns may be found in Wolkan (1965), 112–118. 74 Published originally in Dutch as Forma Eenigher Christlelijker Ghebeden in 1625, then in German as Formulier ethlichen Gebaete in 1664. They received their widest dissemination as part of a larger volume of Anabaptist and early Mennonite inspirational and devotional writing, Die ernsthafte Christenpflicht, published continuously in German beginning in 1708 and in English in 1967. A new English translation appeared in 1997. Remarkably the complete set was not published in English under the author’s name until 1999.—Gross (1999), 259–288. 75 Mennonite Encyclopedia, 1: 628 76 It is instructive to note a similar turning to fixed liturgical forms in the ancient church as it moved beyond the time of martyrdom and became an established institution.—Dix (1975), 303–319, esp. 305.

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concerned with purity of heart and life in which Christ is invoked more as savior than example.77 This is noticeably the case in the prayers on baptism and Communion; they also exhibit a simple sacramental realism. In the baptismal prayer the Spirit is called on to impart gifts to the new believers. In the Eucharistic prayer the Spirit is called on to make Christ present in the midst of the ritual acts.78 Lord, grant that our hungering souls may be fed by this meal, By your grace and the gift of the Holy Spirit, With the body and blood of your beloved Son, That he may remain in us and we in him. . . .

There is no simple explanation why Clock’s prayers spread throughout the Mennonite world while those of de Ries and other contemporaries were gradually forgotten. Both were renowned in their time. Part of the reason must be that Clock was translated into German, the dominant language of European Mennonitism. But that fact raises the question, why was Clock translated? Perhaps he was more traditional than de Ries in his concern for orthodoxy and orthopraxy. The spirit of their prayers is not strikingly different but Clock’s tone is less subjective and less spiritualistic. Andreas Ehrenpreis (1589–1662) Ehrenpreis became the leading Hutterite minister (and later elder) of an era marked by the tumultuous end of the “golden era” of communalism and the catastrophe of the Thirty Years War, both of which led to the erosion of the Hutterian way of life. His burning passion was to rekindle a community of goods grounded in a community of love. That is the theme of his most famous work.79 In the midst of novel threats to the community from within and without, Ehrenpreis formulated a new stage of Hutterian orthodoxy that has shaped the movement ever since.80 The Sendbrief belongs in the realm of religious literature because of its inspirational nature. The text sweeps back and forth through

77

Gross (1999), Prayer II, 261–262. Ibid., especially Prayers V and VI, 267–270. 79 Sendbrief (1975). There is an English condensation of the text by the Hutterian Society of Brothers, Brotherly Community, the Highest Command of Love (1984). 80 Harrison (1997), vii, 5. 78

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the Biblical narrative, enlisting patriarchs, prophets, and apostles as messengers of promise to those who live in true love; such love begins with the surrender of possessions.81 The author’s most vivid way of making his case is by means of the ancient Christian notion of the many grains that are ground and baked to make one bread and the many grapes crushed to make a common wine. Grains and grapes that are not ground, that preserve what they possess for themselves, are unworthy to be part of the bread and wine.82 The theme of surrender pervades the book. Those who make an idol of possessions are so wedded to their wealth that they miss the invitation to the marriage supper God provides. The way of the cross is the way of poverty and suffering. Those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces (Matt. 11:8).83 Although their circumstances are strikingly different, there is a connection between the strivings of the austere Ehrenpreis and his more worldly Dutch contemporaries, as will be seen below. Their writings ring with the conviction that the vision has been lost and the people are in danger of perishing. Jan Philipsz Schabaelje is the sole and striking exception to that view. Pieter Pietersz (1574–1651) Pietersz was a Waterlander minister, whose pastoral challenge—like that of de Ries and Clock—was to provide assimilating Dutch congregations with religious and moral sturdiness. His most enduring work, The Way to the City of Peace, is a tale of pilgrimage.84 It is a catechism in three parts. In keeping with the Anabaptist focus on the human response to grace, it begins with ethical questions—is there a way to overcome strife, greed, and vainglory? The catechism then proceeds to doctrinal matters, focusing especially on salvation and its expression in baptism and Communion. The treatise concludes with concerns of church practice. Here the author directly addresses matters of controversy in his own part of the church. For

81

Sendbrief (1975) 20, 32ff. Sendbrief (1975), 43–46. This image is expanded upon to underscore the fundamental point of the treatise, that love and unity can happen only when both spiritual and physical possessions are yielded to the Spirit, 68, 87, 113. 83 Sendbrief (1975), 72ff. 84 Dyck (1995), 231–283. It was first published in Dutch as Wegh na Vreden-stadt in 1625, republished often through 1740 and then translated and issued in many German editions until the early 20th century. 82

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instance, he laments domineering leaders, the shunning of errant believers, and the mounting of weapons on merchant ships owned by members. “Jan” and “Pieter,” the two pilgrims, marvel in the midst of the strife of earthly existence and can hardly believe that there really is a city of peace. Entrance to it may be gained only removing the old being; inside the holy city believers are living stones formed together on an indestructible foundation.85 The conversation between the pilgrims is carried by means of one Biblical image after another. All that troubles them in the world—chasing after riches, looking only for physical well-being, worrying about security—is set right in God’s metropolis under God’s king. There people do not call their possessions their own but use them for others’ needs. The most detailed contrast between this “City of Man” and “City of God” makes clear that the author’s focus lies in challenging Mennonite inhabitants of the earthly city to more ardently pursue the values of the heavenly one. He begins with a vision for the role of “teachers,” the common term among Dutch Mennonites for “ministers.” The teachers strive for the heavenly reality. They know that their only shepherd is Christ; only in conformity to his likeness can they lead the flock. They would rather wash feet than receive honors. Their preaching does not scold; they warn and pity only out of love.86 The high view of sanctification that inspires this treatise comes to eloquent expression as its conclusion. “[I]t is possible in this life, by God’s grace, to live in peace with a good conscience . . . whether in poverty or riches . . . through diligent persistence in the school of Christ.”87 Jan Philipsz Schabaelje (ca 1585–1656) Schabaelje continued the uniquely fertile tradition of Waterlander spiritual literature but as a radical innovator. Like most of the other religious writers in Dutch Mennonitism he was a minister but unlike them he was an aesthete, a literary figure who had a favorable reputation with the Dutch reading public at large. Piet Visser says he,

85 86 87

Ibid., 237. Ibid., 248–252. Ibid., 280.

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“held mystical and spiritualistic views, denying in fact all outer rituals including audible prayer.”88 He was a member of a cultivated artistic circle, providing religious inspiration for the rising Dutch bourgeoisie. He was a prolific author of hymns as well as spiritual and artistic treatises. Schabaelje’s most famous work was the wildly popular Wandering Soul, a spiritual dialogue. The “Wandering Soul” meets the earliest heroes of the Old Testament and then encounters one Simon Cleophas.89 Cleophas is a mythic contemporary of Abraham who accompanies the Soul (i.e., the reader) through the events of many centuries up to the year 109 CE. This signature volume of 17th century Mennonite religious literature is bewilderingly distant in every way from the Anabaptist mindset. It has an ostentatious and contrived style; it tries to impress the reader with its detailed knowledge of historical events.90 One looks in vain for pacifistic sentiments. For example, the development of kingship in Israel receives only extravagant praise even though Samuel himself is sharply critical of it.91 Jesus is described as an aesthete, with shoulder length hair the color of hazelnuts. Passing reference is made to images he used, like mustard seeds and pearls, but no attention is paid to his teaching. In his passion Jesus is pitied but there is no call to follow him in his suffering.92 Visser’s study of Schabaelje’s corpus sheds light on the original popularity of the Wandering Soul. First of all, the author was a prominent, well-published poet. His vivid paraphrases of Biblical tales caught the imagination of the reading public. His dominant image of the pilgrim linked him to a core Anabaptist motif. His best seller status rose even higher when later Dutch editions (though not German or English ones I was able to check) were lavishly illustrated. Most significantly, Schabaelje was an unabashed spiritualist, softening the rigorous doctrinal contours of Reformed belief and the equally rigorous ethical contours of Mennonite practice.93 88

Visser (2001), 162. First published in 1635 as part two of the Lusthof des Gemoets (Pleasure Garden of the Mind). It appeared in eighty Dutch editions, was translated into German by Bendedict Brackbill as Die Wandelnde Seele in 1768 and from there into English as The Wandering Soul by I. Daniel Rupp in 1834, for a total of another forty editions. 90 Schabaelje (12th ed.). See the Soul’s astonished comments at God’s providence on preparing the ark, 63ff. and the detailed account of Joseph’s fate in Egypt, 110–131. 91 Schabaelje (12th ed.), 156ff. 92 Schabaelje (12th ed.), 270, 276, 286–311. 93 Visser (1993), 471–479. 89

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But do these arguments account for the enormous popularity of the Wandering Soul among later German and English readers? Schabaelje’s imaginative literary style might have been a refreshing supplement to the austere religious world of conservative Mennonites and Amish. Likewise, a spiritualistic and entertaining tract authored by a Mennonite minister might have offered believers a legitimate reprieve from a life of black and white doctrinal and ethical pronouncements. Because the Wandering Soul quickly became part of a Mennonite canon of edifying literature it could be enjoyed without putting Mennonite identity as such into question. Thieleman Jansz van Braght (1625–1664) A cloth merchant and minister from Dordrecht, van Braght stood at the opposite end of the theological spectrum from his contemporary, Schabaelje. For him the assimilation of Dutch Mennonites into the cultural and spiritual mainstream endangered their identity as a church faithful to the New Testament and the long tradition of martyrs who lived what Jesus had taught. Van Braght reclaimed and expanded accounts of early Christian and Anabaptist martyrs set forth in collections gathered by previous generations. The earliest narrative, Het Offer des Heeren (The Offering of the Lord), had appeared in 1562. In each subsequent edition until 1599 more accounts were added. In 1615 Hans de Ries contributed yet another set of narratives. In 1617 the record was expanded with still more martyr accounts and a confession of faith by Pieter Twisck, a more orthodox contemporary of de Ries. These were encompassed in a yet larger edition of 1631, called the Martyrs Mirror.94 This collection is the most significant—and most ecumenical—single volume of confessional and devotional literature in Anabaptist and Mennonite tradition. It was shaped by three of the towering leaders (de Ries, Twisck, and then van Braght, from different factions of the movement) with a wide geographic representation in content far beyond the Netherlands. Peter Burschel compares the historical and theological breadth of the Martyrs Mirror with that of the much more confessionally-bound Hutterian Geschichtsbuch, started in 1570. Burschel attributes the difference, among other things, to

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Mennonite Encyclopedia, 1: 400–401; 3: 517–519.

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the centrality of the “Constantinian fall” in the Hutterian chronicle and its complete absence in the Dutch one.95 We see from van Braght’s introduction to the vastly expanded martyrology he created (a coffee table sized book of 1157 pages!) that he was convinced that only a spirituality and an ethic grounded in the lives of the martyrs could save his church from apostasy.96 The author begins by recounting the steadfastness unto death of those who had an “unquenchable love for God.”97 His goal is for his fellow-believers, “to be conformed to our beloved slain fellow brethren.” Yet, he warns, there is more danger now than then. Money has seduced his people into self-indulgence and blinded them to the plight of the poor.98 The “Old Book,” a modest enlargement of the literary tradition described above, begins on page 413 and is the final expansion of the narrative of martyrdom in Anabaptism. But van Braght’s most stupendous act of creativity was including the “New Book” of the saints going back to the origins of Christianity, which he gathered from many sources. The narrative begins with Jesus’ crucifixion. One harrowing account follows the next, from the New Testament martyrs onward. The stories are told in excruciating and inspiring detail, such as Polycarp’s prayer upon the pyre.99 The martyrs of the early centuries are clearly seen as the faithful church, a kind of “apostolic succession of suffering” in which believers baptism is often the reason for persecution.100 The lineage of the faithful is not a narrow one, however, even if it claims adherents for the baptism of believers that would be disputed in most accounts of church history. It includes Gregory of Nazianzus, Lanfranc and his nemesis Berengar, the Waldensians (who are clearly portrayed as kindred spirits of the highest order), Taborites, and many more.101 The message for the assimilating Mennonites, 95

Burschel (2004), 132–155. Het Bloedig Toonel of Martelaerspiegel of Doopsgesinde of Weerlose Christenen (The Bloody Theater or Martyrs’ Mirror of Baptism Minded or Nonresistant Christians), 1660. It was translated into German in 1748 and into English in 1886 and has been continuously in print in both of those languages. A condensation of the most heroic Anabaptist martyr accounts was published as Jackson (1989). 97 van Braght (1950), 8. 98 Ibid., 10–12. 99 Ibid., 113. 100 Ibid., 187–192. 101 Ibid., 162, 259, 269, 282–290, 309–318, 338. 96

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who are van Braght’s inspiration to expand the record of faithfulness, is that they are not a peculiar and insignificant minority but members of a communion of saints encompassing a millennium and a half ! Thus, the call to steadfastness is not defined by an appeal to a narrow Mennonite identity but to a communion of saints claimed by the whole church. One sample of this colossal narrative must suffice to give its flavor. The dialogue between a certain Elizabeth, a Bible teacher and coworker of Menno Simons, and her interrogators is preserved. The woman is fearless. The lords ask who her friends are and she refuses to reveal them. When they solicit her views on “the sacrament” she turns to interrogate them. They torture her, but then earnestly entreat her to confess so they can stop. The final sentence reports that she was condemned to death, “drowned in a bag, and thus offered up her body to God.”102 Gerhard Roosen (1612–1711) Roosen was a successful Hamburg businessman and the defining personality of the large Mennonite congregation in the adjacent town of Altona for half a century. He was elected deacon in 1649, minister in 1660, and elder (bishop) in 1664. Robert Friedmann writes of him that, “he tried to prove to the non-Mennonite world the full harmlessness of Mennonitism; to his own brethren he tried to make their precious heritage warm and digestable. Thus, without changing any essential point, he filled Mennonitism with a different spirit.”103 Roosen is the central figure in Michael Driedger’s meticulous study of Mennonite life in Hamburg in the course of the 17th century.104 He does not contradict Friedmann’s assessment but places it within a context that sheds light on Roosen’s most enduring of many writings. As the fruit of forty years of catechetical ministry he published Christliches Gemuethsgespräch von dem geistlichen und seligmachenden Glauben (The Christian Soulful Conversation Concerning Spiritual and Saving Faith) at the end of his career in 1702.105 It attained immediate and 102

Ibid., 480–482; Williams (1992), 741–742. Friedmann (1980), 144. 104 Driedger (2002). 105 It was reprinted 22 times in German, translated into English in 1857 and reprinted 12 times with the addition of the Shorter Catechism of 1660, the Dordrecht Confession of Faith, and Christian Burkholder’s Addresses to Youth. The latest printing is Roosen (2002). 103

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lasting popularity. Driedger portrays Roosen as the standard bearer for Flemish Mennonitism, the most confessionally based of the main Dutch-North German groups from the 1570s to the end of the 17th century. Although he was not a controversialist by temperament, Roosen stood up for Mennonite teaching against challenges from the Quakers, at one extreme, and the Lutherans, at the other.106 Against the former, who seem to have been stand-ins for spiritualistic and heterodox Dutch Mennonites with whom he had disputes, Roosen asserted an orthodox Protestant Christology. This stance had the added benefit of demonstrating to the Lutheran state church that Mennonites were not heretical. Against the latter, he made the case for believer’s baptism. To his co-religionists he offered, “a conformist brand of non-resistance.”107 Added to this, the decade in which Roosen completed his ministry and published his catechism was one of great religious and civil unrest in Hamburg.108 It was intended to provide pastoral direction for Mennonites living under novel and uncertain circumstances.109 None of this is mentioned in Soulful Conversation but it sheds enormous light on its theological formulations. The first and by far longest article is on “God.” It grounds itself in the “infallible Scriptures” and the Apostles Creed.110 By means of fifty-five questions the candidate is led from God as “First Cause” to God’s “unspeakable and unfathomable love.”111 When the “ancient fathers” are mentioned, it is not Anabaptists but Israelites that are meant!112 Throughout this lengthy section the Protestant character of Mennonite belief is shown unmistakably. With Question 84, concerning entrance into the church, distinctively Mennonite aspects make their first appearance, though in a Pietistic key. A change of life must take place, attested to by “heartfelt sorrow” and the “old man” must be buried in baptism.113 Here 106

Driedger (2002), 49–74, esp. 61ff. & 70ff.; 92ff., 100ff., 174–178. Ibid., 107–128. The author fleshes out his concept with detailed reference to Roosen’s opposition to the arming of merchant vessels owned by Mennonites while fully defending the authority of government to do so (119ff). 108 Ibid., 82ff. 109 Goertz (2002) offers a politically nuanced description of this era. 110 Roosen (2002), 7–49, esp. 13. 111 Ibid., 7, 37. 112 Ibid., 25. 113 Ibid., 71, 73, 75–85. Regarding infant baptism the author asserts that he will not judge those who practice it but he cannot agree with them (81). 107

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the author defends Anabaptist principle, perhaps hoping for sympathy on the matter of an owned faith from Lutheran Pietists. The section on the “Commandment of Love,” beginning with Question 115, prudently enjoins love of neighbor and enemy without the mention of war or government.114 The civil unrest and renewed accusations against Mennonites as Münsterites current at the time probably stand behind this very modest articulation of the peace position. The Soulful Conversation gave Roosen’s congregation and the larger Mennonite church what it needed, a way of being in but not of the world. In many settings where being Mennonite required a delicate balancing act, Roosen’s combination of theological orthodoxy, believers baptism, and “a conformist brand of non-resistance” was welcome. Its inspiring language and heartfelt piety have allowed the Soulful Conversation to form baptismal candidates ranging from urban and assimilated to rural and separatist congregations for centuries. Golden Apples in Silver Bowls, 1702 In 1702, the same year as Roosen’s work was published in Hamburg, a volume combining old Swiss treatises with documents from the larger Mennonite body of writing appeared as Güldene Aepffel in silbern Schallen (Golden Apples in Silver Bowls) It was published by the Swiss Brethren, who had by now spread to various Swiss, German, and French territories.115 Leonard Gross surmises that its compiler was Jakob Guth, a revered Swiss Brethren minister from the Palatinate. He had been a moderate in the recent traumatic division among Swiss Brethren congregations.116 There is no hard evidence for this claim of authorship, so it is safer to posit an anonymous compiler or circle of compilers, as was common in that tradition. The church for which canonical texts were gathered—and in the case of the Dordrecht Confession, edited—had just been shattered by the ReistAmman schism, in which two antagonistic interpretations of faithfulness to Anabaptism had broken the church apart.117 The particulars of their circumstances were very different, but both Roosen and his South German counterpart(s) sought to adapt the

114 115 116 117

Ibid., 100–104. Gross (1999). Gross (1999), 5–7. See Roth (2002), 9–17.

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Anabaptist legacy conscientiously to novel religious and political circumstances. To achieve a common end they made fundamentally different choices. Roosen engaged in an explicit and novel theological exercise, that of taking elements of the old tree of faith and grafting them onto a new, Protestant one. By contrast, the theological work of the complier was implicit: he turned to the old tree of faith as the single trustworthy landmark on the horizon, grafting carefully chosen branches from other Mennonite trees to it. A generation after his conservative Dutch colleague, van Braght, the anonymous compiler sought to reclaim the fearless fervor and existential Biblicism of first generation Anabaptism. He was a restorationist: salvation lay in the longer Mennonite tradition, whose experience he found urgently relevant to the present crisis. There had been previous anonymous Swiss Brethren collections of tracts, one of which had last been printed in 1686. It consisted of martyr accounts (which had also found their way into the Martyrs Mirror). To it the complier of the 1702 collection added a theologically amended Dordrecht Confession (1632), Leenaerd Clock’s 1625 prayer formulary (above), and musical fragments.118 In a different way, the compiler’s act was as creative as Roosen’s. The former cast his lot with the existing fusion of Swiss Anabaptism, that had borrowed from and built upon its moderate Dutch and German co-religionists. The latter freely adapted the received tradition.119 What the South German compiler offers us is a pocket compendium of formative documents. The heart of the volume consists of treasured accounts of martyrdom. The first and most noteworthy of these concerns Michael Sattler, the mastermind of the Schleitheim Confession of 1527. His entry begins with the Epistle to the Church at Horb. In it he wrote, “And if you love your neighbor, you will not reprove or ban zealously,” a sentiment that could not have been lost on a readership battered by the recent split.120 Following Sattler’s epistle is an often reprinted summary of the court hearing which led to Sattler’s condemnation. The most incendiary accusation it records

118

Gross (1999), xi–29, 295. It is a great irony that Roosen’s Conversation was picked up as a catechism in Swiss Brethren circles within a generation of its publication. Perhaps the Brethren realized by instinct that they needed the wisdom of both theologies. 120 Gross (1999), 49. This and other of Sattler’s writings appeared in a scholarly edition, Yoder (1973). 119

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is that Sattler claimed, “If the Turk came into the land, one should not resist him, and if it were right to wage war, he would rather go to war against the Christians than against the Turks.”121 Including this piece suggests that restoring radical faith mattered more to this community than being accused of sedition. Thomas von Imbroich (ca 1533–1558) represents second generation Anabaptism in the Golden Apples. His epistles and confession of faith, written under persecution, soon achieved a lasting place of honor in the wider Anabaptist world, even as he was vilified by his opponents.122 A preface and postscript to the Confession from a reprint of 1630 underscore the remarkable esteem the tradition accorded Imbroich. The golden thread of his writing is baptism as a dying and rising with Christ, presented by means of a dialogue with an opponent.123 In addition, five epistles are addressed to Imbroich’s wife and two to his church. They are characterized by steadfastness of faith in the midst of suffering.124 The epistle of Konrad Koch breathes the same spirit.125 Those of Soetken van den Houte and Mattias Servaes are more introspective and poignant. This is particularly the case with van den Houte’s letter from prison to her children.126 Then there is an abrupt, but necessary, shift in Golden Apples. The compiler needs to tell his readers what must happen now. How does this noble tradition of suffering help us live faithfully in our time? At this point Roosen innovates, offering his own guide to faith in which the elements of Mennonite identity are put together in a novel way. By contrast, the compiler of Golden Apples rests his case with the written canon, which he invokes in the form of the Dordrecht Confession of Faith, including amendments made to it by the Swiss Brethren,127 Clock’s prayer formulary,128 plus a few fragments. Together, the author might have reasoned, these sources model the kind of theology and devotion that have kept other streams of Anabaptism 121

Gross (1999), 53. Imbroich was immortalized in Hymn #23 of the Ausbund and the Martyrs’ Mirror. Heinrich Bullinger issued an edict against his writing. It was nevertheless reprinted in German and Dutch. See Mennonite Encyclopedia, 3: 12–13. 123 Gross (1999), 66–104. 124 Ibid., 105–144. 125 Ibid., 226–239. 126 Ibid., 149–225, esp. 149–158. 127 Ibid., 241–259. 128 Ibid., 259–278. 122

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faithful and is therefore worthy of adoption by their Swiss Brethren co-religionists. Conclusions Let us turn first to the three often repeated generalizations about the religious temperament of Anabaptism that were introduced at the outset. My conclusion from this study is that they represent a stereotype not borne out by the evidence. Let us look at each of the claims in turn. Does the present sampling of sources confirm the assumption that the dominant preoccupation of the movement was moral and experiential? Certainly there is a practicality to most of the writing, a quest for the meaning of Christian identity in daily life. But Marpeck can become caught up in the lofty reaches of the Gospel, like the wonder of the incarnation. Riedemann and some of the Ausbund authors spin out more than simply didactic verse—and have eager congregations waiting for more. Pieters and Schabaelje are fanciful. And the martyrologies linger descriptively over details that are not immediately necessary to the chronology, much like a medieval “lives of the saints.” What about the sentiment that the pervasive focus of Anabaptism was on the human response to grace to the point of self-preoccupation? Here too the present evidence gives a mixed verdict. Hubmaier’s “A Form for Christ’s Supper” is undoubtedly marked by the striving for perfect obedience. This is the case as well with Ehrenpreis’s emphasis on true surrender of worldly as well as spiritual possessions. The Ausbund breathes the air of the same lofty aspiration. On the other side of that coin, Clock’s prayers bemoan the weakness of our striving. But Marpeck, Menno and de Ries are anchored in profound theologies of grace. The martyr narratives are testimonies to a power beyond their own. Finally, there is the question of spiritualism, the ambivalence concerning outward reality as a means of grace. There the evidence is more one sided. Hubmaier, Denck, and de Ries each represent a different kind of Anabaptism and a different tendency toward spiritualism. All of them have joined the march away from a sacramental universe. The other subjects in our study, except for Marpeck, tend in that direction, though this is counterbalanced by their ecclesiology.

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None of them resolves the conflict between an incarnational view of the church and a spiritualist understanding of religion. But as a subject for theological reflection and argument this tension has little place in the movement’s spiritual literature. It cannot be said to characterize it in a significant, self-conscious way.129 The 21st century onlooker might observe a spiritualistic bias but, as our texts demonstrate, it was not articulated that way by 16th and 17th century authors. It seems more fruitful to review the texts under study for trends that might lead to tenable generalizations about spiritual life in the Anabaptist tradition. Its religious literature up to 1700 embraces a wide range of types. One thinks of catechesis, represented by Hubmaier, Denck, Riedemann, Pietersz, and Roosen. Pastoral writing is represented by Marpeck, Menno, and Ehrenpreis. Then there is the amorphous field of inspirational literature, represented by Schabaelje and van Braght—in ways so different that they belong to separate universes—and by Golden Apples in Silver Bowls. Clock and de Ries create an early, and widely forgotten, literature of written prayers. And finally, there is the astonishing quantity of hymnody, unique to the first century of the movement, represented by the authors of the Ausbund and by Riedemann, as the most renowned figure in a separate Hutterite song legacy. There is a cluster of common traits to the spiritual expression represented in this literature. Intimate familiarity with the Bible pervades these texts: it is clearly “the bread of life” for the authors and the communities they are addressing. This is perhaps truest of the hymn collections, which are, more than anything else, paraphrases of the Biblical acts of God. There is little attraction to entering or probing the mystery of God. Even Denck’s treatise on divine love focuses on its manifestation in the earthly ministry of Jesus and those who follow him.130 Similarly, there is little tendency to speculate or become introspective about the glories of creation or the enigma of innocent suffering, two universal themes of spiritual writing.131 Religious prose and poetry in Anabaptism and early Mennonitism, as sampled in 129 De Ries’s attempt at a theological argument against transubstantiation in The Third Sermon on the Lord’s Supper is not substantive. 130 Roosen’s treatise on the nature of God is the noteworthy exception. 131 Menno’s Meditation on the Twenty-fifth Psalm has introspective moments.

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this study, gives little evidence of self-criticism or the ability to see oneself as others do. The authors we have studied wrote for beleaguered communities; they would no doubt have seen such traits as lack of conviction or unaffordable luxury. What we see instead is child-like obedience and confidence in the trustworthiness of God, most poignantly in the martyr accounts and Menno’s The Cross of the Saints. The final trait these texts have in common is their corporate piety. It is Christians as a community rather than as individuals in the seclusion of their hearts who come before God and seek the way to holiness. This is most emphatically present in Ehrenpreis’s teaching on surrender to the church as surrender to God. There are two areas where an expected commonality, based on classic Anabaptist themes, is not always borne out. The first has to do with discipleship modeled on the ministry and teaching of Jesus as set forth in the Gospels. Certainly these writings are Christocentric in orientation; all of them take inspiration from Jesus as their model. (Here Schabaelje’s modern focus on the “historical Jesus” is the clearest.) But in most of them life in Christ the ascended Lord through the Spirit is the heart of the Christian life; the church in Acts and the epistles is as much the norm of faith as is the Jesus portrayed in the Gospels. This pneumatological orientation is most explicitly present in Marpeck’s Judgment and Decision and Clock’s prayers. Another theme that is less characteristic of the writings in this study than one might expect is an emphasis on the kingdom. It appears as a recessive gene in the Anabaptist “DNA.” In Hubmaier’s Lord’s Supper believers are able to make a perfect pledge of love because the reign of God is about to dawn;132 in the Ausbund believers suffer with the same confidence; Pieters’ Way to the City of Peace shows signs of an inaugurated eschatology but not apocalyptic expectation. Yet for the most part, the church in these writings lives in ordinary time, seeking to follow the “disordering” call of Jesus while respecting the “ordering” authority of government. Marpeck and Roosen are perhaps the most theologically innovative concerning the challenge of living between the ages. This transition becomes explicit in Clock’s and de Ries’s prayers, with their intercession for faithfulness on the long journey. The martyr accounts in van Braght and the

132 Hubmaier’s support for the Peasants’ War fits with this reading of his Communion service. His writings on government go in the opposite direction.

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Golden Apples appeal for a restoration of singleminded devotion to the way of the kingdom but do not herald its immediate coming. Because the religious writings under review are identifiably, if diversely, Anabaptist in orientation, it is easy to overlook the different spiritualities behind them. In the case of 16th century authors this should not be surprising, as they were drawn to a new and radical movement from varying backgrounds. Simply on the basis of the texts before us we see the highly existential devotion of Denck, Menno, de Ries, and Clock. Hubmaier, Marpeck, and in a different way, Roosen, represent a doctrinal piety. Clock’s and Roosen’s writings suggest the influence of Protestant orthodoxy. Ehrenpreis and Van Braght are indebted to an ascetic religiosity typical of monasticism. The social context of the authors and their writings has been identified but not probed as far as it might have been in the course of the study. On the one hand, the relationship between a writer’s setting and his thoughts is not always obvious. Riedemann penned much of his Confession and many of his hymns under conditions of suffering in prison but that experience does not dominate his themes. At the same time, Marpeck writes as expansively as he does, in part, because he is an educated professional whose day to day life is not in danger. The hymns of the Ausbund overwhelm those who sing them because they were written by people whose lives were at stake. De Ries speaks glowingly about the inner world of faith because he is steeped in a centuries old Dutch devotional tradition. Roosen brings orthodox Protestant language into his vocabulary because that is the audience he must convince of his sincerity. There is a difference between the literary context of 16th century Anabaptist texts, on the one hand, and 17th century Hutterian, Swiss Brethren, and Mennonite ones, on the other. In the 16th century formal theological discourse, often in the form of polemic against opponents, carried much of the weight of the movement’s self-articulation. After the era of formally or self-educated theological leaders, the media of self-expression open to those without opportunity for higher education become devotional, pastoral, and catechetical writing. It is by means of them rather than formal theological treatises that Hutterian, Swiss Brethren, and Mennonite identity is carried forward. In addition, this kind of writing is addressed primarily to insiders rather than outsiders.133 133 This list does not take into account confessions of faith because they are considered elsewhere in this volume.

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For example, when van Braght comes to the conviction that the soul of his church is in danger, he does not resort to systematic historical or theological writing to make his case. He tells a story—— the most heroic one he knows. His work is not lacking in scholarly rigor—he undertakes a vast and careful process of editing—but it is not an explicit theological exercise. This raises a question for future research. What difference did it make to how Anabaptists and their descendents understood themselves and how others understood them that their religious literature became their only medium of apologetic writing? Historians in the past generation of Anabaptist studies have sought to counter ideological uses of history by emphasizing the polygenesis of the movement. Yet in tracing the path of its religious literature it becomes clear how interpenetrating and interdependent the streams of the movement are from the beginning. Hubmaier is read by the Hutterites. Denck is reprinted by the Dutch. The martyrologies and the Ausbund all include fellow believers from other, and often antagonistic, streams of the tradition. Half a century later Clock’s prayers begin spreading through the then existing Mennonite world. And Schabaelje, that upper class urban aesthete, is devoured by all of them! Bibliography Primary Sources Ausbund. Das ist: Etliche schöne Christenliche Lieder. Lancaster, 1977. Braght, Thieleman van. The Bloody Theater or Martyrs Mirror. Scottdale, PA, 1950. The Chronicle of the Hutterian Brethren, Vol. I, Rifton, NY, 1987. Denck, Hans, Hans Denckens Geistliches Blumengaertlein. Amsterdam, 1680. Dyck, C. J. et al., ed., The Writings of Dirk Philips. Scottdale, PA, 1992. Ehrenpreis, Andreas. Ein Sendbrief: Brüderliche Gemeinschaft das höchste Gebot der Liebe betreffend. Cayley, 1975. [For an English condensation of the text by the Hutterian Society of Brothers, cf. Brotherly Community the Highest Command of Love. Rifton, NY, 1984]. Fast, Heinold and Martin Rothkegel, eds., Das Kunstbuch. Gütersloh, forthcoming. Friesen, John J. Peter Riedemann’s Confession of Faith, Scottdale, PA, 1999. Gross, Leonard and Elizabeth Bender, trans. and eds. Golden Apples in Silver Bowls. Lancaster, PA, 1999. Gross, Leonard, trans. An Earnest Christian’s Prayerbook, Scottdale, PA, 1997. Klaassen, Walter et al., trans. Later Writings of Pilgram Marpeck and His Circle. Kitchener, ON, 1999. Klassen, William and Walter Klaassen, eds. The Writings of Pilgram Marpeck. Scottdale, PA, 1978. Die Lieder der Hutterischen Brüder. Cayley, 1962.

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Pipkin, H. Wayne and John H. Yoder, eds. Balthasar Hubmaier, Theologian of Anabaptism, Scottdale, PA, 1989. Roossen, Gerhard. Conversation on Saving Faith for the Young. East Earl, PA, 2002. Roth, John, ed. and trans. The Letters of the Amish Division. Goshen, IN, 2002. Schabaelje, Jan. Die Wandelnde Seele. 12th ed. Philadelphia, n.d. Simons, Menno. The Complete Writings of Menno Simons. Wenger, J. C., ed. and L. Verduin, trans. Scottdale, PA, 1984. Songs of the Ausbund. Vol. 1. Millersburg, OH, 1998. Yoder, J. H., trans. and ed. The Legacy of Michael Sattler. Scottdale, PA, 1973. Secondary Sources Bauman, Clarence. The Spiritual Legacy of Hans Denck. Leiden, 1991. Burschel, Peter. “Zur Geschichtstheologie der Täufer,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte (2004), 132–155. Dix, Gregory. The Shape of the Liturgy. London, 1975. Driedger, Michael. Obedient Heretics, Mennonite Identities in Lutheran Hamburg and Altona During the Confessional Age. Aldershot, 2002. Dyck, C. J. Spiritual Life in Anabaptism. Scottdale, PA, 1995. Erb, Peter. “Anabaptist Spirituality,” in Protestant Spiritual Traditions. Frank Senn, ed. New York, 1986. Finger, Thomas. A Contemporary Anabaptist Theology. Downers Grove, 2004. Friedmann, Robert. The Theology of Anabaptism, Scottdale, PA, 1972. ——. Mennonite Piety through the Centuries. Sugar Creek, OH, 1980. Friesen, Abraham. History and Renewal in the Anabaptist/Mennonite Tradition. North Newton, KS, 1994. George, Timothy. “The Spirituality of the Radical Reformation,” in Christian Spirituality High Middle Ages and Reformation. Jill Raitt, ed. New York, 1989. Gerrits, Jan. Vijf Stichtelijcke Predicatie. Amsterdam, 1650. Goertz, Hans-Jürgen, The Anabaptists. London, 1996. ——. “Nonconformists on the Elbe River: Pious, Wealthy and Perplexed,” Mennonite Quarterly Review (October 2002), 413–430. Harrison, Wes. Andreas Ehrenpreis and Hutterite Faith and Practice. Kitchener, ON, 1997. Jackson, Dave and Neda, eds. On Fire for Christ. Scottdale, PA, 1989. Krahn, Cornelius. Dutch Anabaptism. Scottdale, PA, 1981. Liechty, Daniel, ed. Early Anabaptist Spirituality. New York, 1994. Martens, Helen. Hutterite Songs. Kitchener, ON, 2002. Martin, Dennis. “Catholic Spirituality and Anabaptist and Mennonite Discipleship,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 62 ( January 1988), 5–25. Packull, Werner. Mysticism and the Early South German-Austrian Anabaptist Movement. Scottdale, PA, 1977. Peters, Galen, ed. and Robert Riall, trans. The Earliest Hymns of the Ausbund. Kitchener, ON, 2003. Rempel, John. The Lord’s Supper in Anabaptism. Scottdale, PA, 1993. ——. ed. Minister’s Manual. Scottdale, PA, 1998. Raitt, Jill, ed. Christian Spirituality High Middle Ages and Reformation. New York, 1989. Rothkegel, Martin. “Learned in the School of David: Peter Riedemann’s Paraphrase of the Gospels,” in Commoners and Community. C. Arnold Snyder, ed. Kitchener, ON, 2002, 233–256. Senn, Frank, ed. Protestant Spiritual Traditions. New York, 1986. Slough, Rebecca, ed. Hymnal: A Worship Book. Elgin, IL, 1992. Snyder, C. Arnold. Anabaptist History and Theology: An Introduction. Kitchener, ON, 2003. ——. “Mysticism and the Shape of Anabaptist Spirituality,” in Commoners and Community. C. Arnold Snyder, ed. Kitchener, ON, 2002, 195–215.

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—— and Linda Huebert Hecht, eds. Profiles of Anabaptist Women. Waterloo, ON, 1996. Stayer, James. “A New Paradigm in Anabaptist/Mennonite Historiography?” Mennonite Quarterly Review 78 (April 2004), 297–307. Strübind, Andrea. Eifriger als Zwingli: die frühe Täuferbewegung in der Schweiz. Berlin, 2003. ——. “James M. Stayer, ‘A New Paradigm in Anabaptist/Mennonite Historiography?’ A Response” Mennonite Quarterly Review 78 (April 2004), 308–313. Visser, Piet. “Broeders in de Geest,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 67 (October 1993), 469–480. ——. “Seventeenth Century Dutch Mennonite Prayer Books,” in Gebetsliteratur der frühen Neuzeit als Hausfrömmigkeit. F. van Ingen and C. Niekus Moore, eds. Wiesbaden, 2001. Voolstra, Sjouke. Menno Simons: His Image and Message, North Newton, KS, 1997. ——. Het word is vlees geworden. Kampen, 1982. Williams, George H. The Radical Reformation. 1st Eng. Edn., Philadelphia, 1962; 2nd Eng. Edn. Kirksville, MO, 1992. Wolkan, Rudolf. Die Lieder der Wiedertäufer. Nieuwkoop, 1965.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

GENDER ROLES AND PERSPECTIVES AMONG ANABAPTIST AND SPIRITUALIST GROUPS Sigrun Haude The Study of Gender In recent decades, the inclusion of gender analysis in historical studies has become almost a matter of course, particularly among North American scholars. Whether motivated by a conviction regarding the relevance of gender to historical understanding or by a desire to avoid accusations of giving an incomplete picture of the past, few historians can ignore the theme in their works.1 Gender history grew out of women’s history when scholars recognized that adding women to the historical picture was just the beginning of a necessary rethinking of the past. Far from being of a metahistorical and unchanging nature, gender is now conceived less as a biological fact than a social construct and therefore open to, indeed in need of, historical analysis. As Gail Bederman argued, “gender—whether manhood or womanhood—is a historical, ideological process. Through that process, individuals are positioned and position themselves as men or as women.”2 Gender history has also, in turn, stimulated growing interest in the study of manhood and masculinity.3 Many of these developments are evident in Reformation scholarship, as a survey of recent publications and conferences indicates.4 These trends, however, are only partly evident in the field of Anabaptist studies. 1 Among the many who have heightened awareness of gender in Reformation history none has been more prominent than Merry Wiesner, who has done much to inspire and guide scholarship. Among Wiesner’s leading contributions are Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (1993); Gender, Church and State in Early Modern Germany (1998); and a host of articles, particularly “Beyond Women and the Family: Towards a Gender Analysis of the Reformation” (1987). 2 Bederman (1995), 7. 3 For a succinct discussion of developments in gender history and the history of masculinity, see Ditz (2004). 4 For example, for the last three years at least, the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference has included sessions on masculinity, exploring diverse subjects of the Reformation—such as Luther or the Jesuits—from a wholly new perspective.

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For roughly two decades—from the late 1970s to the late 1990s— a series of mostly unpublished M.A. theses and journal articles appeared that investigated Anabaptist women from various research angles. These studies were built on geographically and chronologically fairly limited bases of documents. In 1996, Arnold Snyder and Linda Huebert Hecht published their Profiles of Anabaptist Women, an inspired attempt to provide basic information on Anabaptist women from the Netherlands to Switzerland and Moravia whose stories had hitherto been largely unknown. Although this intriguing collection by nineteen contributors identified a host of areas in need of further research, the book did not spark a new wave of studies. Indeed, research on Anabaptist women has declined rapidly since the late 1990s. Moreover, no fundamental analysis of gender in Anabaptism and Spiritualism in general exists, nor of manhood and masculinity in particular. Questions of gender surface in discussions of specific issues, such as punishment or martyrdom, but here, too, they are rarely thematized. Marlies Mattern’s study, Leben im Abseits. Frauen und Männer im Täufertum (1525–1550). Eine Studie zur Alltagsgeschichte, investigates the lives of men and women in Anabaptism, but she does not analyze gender from a theoretical perspective—showing how it was constructed.5 Also missing in Anabaptist scholarship is an integrated history that assesses issues of gender jointly with other issues, such as social status. Thus, there still remains much to be done in Anabaptist scholarship. Over the last three to four decades, historians of Anabaptism have revealed the heterogeneous nature of the movement. Despite more recent efforts to emphasize commonalities among the multitude of radical religious groups, diversity still remains the hallmark of the Radical Reformation and Anabaptism. It should come as no surprise, then, that issues of gender, including an understanding of male and female roles, are similarly multifaceted and often defined differently depending on the specific Anabaptist and Spiritualist groups or movements, their location, and point in time. This may be one of the reasons why comprehensive studies on women in Anabaptism and Spiritualism are so scarce. Prior to the wave of scholarship on Anabaptist women in the 1980s and 1990s, several historians addressed the issue briefly in

5

Mattern (1998).

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their general works and came to the conclusion that women experienced a greater equality in Anabaptism than in other contemporary religious movements. George Huntston Williams, for example, argued: The Anabaptist insistence on the covenantal principle of the freedom of conscience for all adult believers, and thereby the implicit extension of the priesthood of the Christophorous laity of women, made women, in at least the role of confessors, the spiritual equals of men. Nowhere else in the Reformation era were women conceived as so nearly companions in the faith, mates in missionary enterprise, and mutual exhorters in readiness for martyrdom as among those for whom believers’ baptism was theologically a gender-equalizing covenant.6

Other historians focusing on women were even more optimistic in their assessment. Sherrin Marshall Wyntjes, for example, contended that the Radical Reformation brought about equality between men and women: “The radical Reformation’s insistence on freedom of conscience for all adult believers eliminated distinctions based on sex, and the doctrine of baptism and rebaptism for all believers became an equalizing covenant.”7 In reaction to such optimistic assessments, Joyce Irwin published one of the few book-length treatments, Womanhood in Radical Protestantism 1525–1675.8 Irwin concurred with social historian Claus-Peter Clasen’s negative view of women’s position in Anabaptism, as she had found “little evidence that women’s status in sixteenth-century sects was more free and equal than in established churches.”9 To be sure, Irwin’s book looks at the Radical Reformation in general, and her assessment is based mostly on male prescriptive sources of the Radical Reformation. “The present study,” she admits, “does not presume a direct correlation between the actual status of women among sectarians and the expressed male position regarding their role. It does assume, however, that male attitudes had significant influence in determining which role options would be open to women.”10 Nevertheless, Irwin’s argument about the power of male prescriptive sources in shaping women’s roles could not assuage the subsequent rise of criticism that demanded studies based 6 Williams (1992 [1962]), 763. See also Blanke (1940), 243 and Bainton (1971), ch. 8. 7 Wyntjes (1977), 175. 8 Irwin (1979). 9 Irwin (1982), 351; Clasen (1972), 207–8. Irwin grants a possible exemption from this negative assessment for the Polish Antitrinitarians. 10 Irwin (1979), xix.

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on evidence reflecting the actual thoughts and behavior of Anabaptist women rather than on what role men had devised for them. The leading questions among historians of Anabaptist women have been what positions and functions women held and whether women experienced more equality in these heterodox groups than in other early modern religious movements. Instead of looking for answers in male attitudes toward females, the following upsurge in studies on female Anabaptists concentrated on finding expressions of women’s ideas and actions and how women dealt with the roles that they were assigned. Scholars focused particularly on women among the Hutterites, the Mennonites, the Münsterites, and Anabaptists in upper Germany and the Tyrol. Nuances in attitudes toward women’s roles vary not only according to geography but also according to the diverse nature of the sources: some studies rely exclusively on The Martyrs Mirror, a fascinating but somewhat hagiographical document focusing mostly on Dutch martyrs; others draw on inquisitorial records (Täuferakten) of a particular region for a specific interval of years, or on correspondence between Anabaptists, such as the Hutterites. These records naturally reflect regional and chronological disparities, different ways of recording reality, and different styles of leadership, along with varied opportunities for women and diverse constructs of gender. Some male Anabaptist leaders, like Michael Sattler, included women when they addressed the congregation, frequently speaking of brothers and sisters. The majority, however, talked only in the language of brotherhood.11 And importantly, even in one community multiple views existed of what constituted a man or a woman. Studies thus have to be alert to the evolving and variable nature of gender. Besides wrestling with the major question of how much equality women really had in these heterodox movements, scholars have been engaged in several debates regarding the role of women in Anabaptism and Spiritualism: their numerical share among Anabaptists, their motives for joining the movements, and their level of involvement. Inquiry into other topics—such as Anabaptist values and their understanding of marriage—has also opened new perspectives on both men and women. And finally, a look at punishment and martyrdom offers evidence that both confirms and suspends traditional gender divisions. The following will discuss the insights that have been gained in these areas. 11

See also Klassen (1986), 549.

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Women’s Roles in Anabaptism and Spiritualism Few historians nowadays wholeheartedly accept that women in Anabaptist movements enjoyed significantly greater equality. Jennifer Reed—who contends that Anabaptist women achieved “a level of relative equality with men within the movement” and that “limitations of societal roles became virtually meaningless”—represents a clear minority position vis-à-vis a host of scholars positioned somewhere between the two poles of absolute equality and traditional subservience.12 Most agree that women rarely experienced anything akin to complete equality within Anabaptism but nevertheless assert that females held important roles and had more choices here than in any other Reformation movement. Marlies Mattern argues that, even though Anabaptist women did not shake the foundations of patriarchy, they felt called to actively shape their society. And they were able to do so in a more far-reaching way than their sisters in the mainstream religious movements. Particularly during the early phase of Anabaptism, women’s roles were indeed “uncommon.”13 Marion Kobelt-Groch also believes that the dissenting movements offered women far greater opportunities than were available to them in the Catholic and Protestant churches, although she stresses that any success women might have gained lay not in large changes but in small, bold steps.14 Leona Stucky Abbott is more cautious in her evaluation of women’s roles. While she shows meticulously how Anabaptist women’s “struggle to serve the community and to encounter the word of God led them often to abandon secure and socially acceptable feminine roles,” she warns that the bilateral covenant so often upheld as a source of true Christian community was, for the women, a mixed blessing. At times it protected them and it also provided them with a place and identity in the community. But it also enforced subjection with a power not attainable in less covenantal groups. For a binding covenant tightly enforces the bad with the good and with a male leadership and a structure 12

Reed (1991), 133, 123. “Wenn (täuferische Frauen) auch nicht die patriarchalischen Strukturen in ihren Grundfesten angriffen, so fühlten sie sich doch zu einer aktiven Mitgestaltung aufgefordert. Den Spielraum, den sie dafür in Anspruch nahmen, übertraf denjenigen ihrer Geschlechtsgenossinnen in den katholischen und protestantischen Religionen. Innerhalb der Frühzeit des Täuftertums kann daher ihre Position zu Recht als außergewöhnlich betrachtet werden.”—Mattern (1998), 60. 14 Kobelt-Groch (1993), 22, 163. 13

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sigrun haude which allowed women only subservient roles, the Anabaptists were, in practice, binding oppressive roles to women in the name of God and enforcing those roles in the most far-reaching of covenants.15

For Abbott, then, Anabaptist women potentially encountered an even more domineering patriarchal system than their sisters did in mainstream religious movements. Still, there exists a broad consensus among scholars that, while not ostensibly revolutionizing patriarchal society, Anabaptist women “benefited” from opportunities in their communities that were denied to female Protestants and Catholics. That said, historians are overwhelmingly in agreement that female leadership positions were rare indeed. In the southern German and Austrian records, one finds an occasional reference to women in unusual positions—as evangelizers, baptizers, teachers, preachers, and interpreters of Scripture16—but women appear much more frequently in supporting rather than leading roles. The same pattern is noticeable among the Swiss Anabaptists. Similarly the emerging leader of the Dutch and North German Anabaptists, Menno Simons, made clear his understanding of the role of Anabaptist women and wives: “Remain within your houses and gates unless you have something of importance to regulate, such as to make purchases, to provide for temporal needs, to hear the word of the Lord, or to receive the holy sacraments, etc.”17 Nonetheless, in 1632 the Dutch Mennonites did create the office of the deaconess for women.18 The Hutterites did not allow women to preach or baptize; nor did they send out women as missionaries. Hutterite women could not even participate in the election of their leader, and only in the early phase did itinerant missionaries take their wives along on their journeys.19 Against this grim picture of women’s containment, scholars have underlined two important countervailing considerations: first, Anabaptist women provided the vital infrastructure and backbone of the movement. They secretly carried messages, penned consolatory letters, proffered their homes for meetings, nourished their brothers and sisters in hiding, proselytized whenever they had a chance, and assisted

15

Abbott (1979), 7–8, 118. UQH, 53, nr. 21; QGT, Bayern I., 17, lines 27–32; QGT, Bayern II., 144 and 154, lines 2–4; QGT Elsaß III, 179, lines 22, 34–36. 17 Quoted from “The True Christian Faith” in Irwin (1979), 63. 18 Snyder (1996), 254. 19 Schäufele (1966), 172, 298. 16

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their fellow members in myriad ways.20 The movement likely would not have survived if stalwart women had not housed, fed, and hidden Anabaptist preachers, if news and information about meetings and imminent dangers had not been conveyed by the more inconspicuous females, and if intrepid women had not volunteered their homes for secret assemblies. Despite their generally inferior position, women were essential for the maintenance, growth, and survival of the religious movements—particularly since the communities lived under persecution. Moreover, the fact that the home, not the church, became the new focal point of religious and organizational meetings moved women, as the traditional custodians of the house, further into the center. Second, some women clearly did exercise leadership positions, but generally of an informal nature. Arnold Snyder and others have emphasized the extensive informal guidance that women provided in both Swiss and South-German/Austrian Anabaptism.21 Contrary to those who have suggested that Hutterite women were circumscribed even in their informal leadership roles, Wolfgang Schäufele has argued that the lay impulse in Anabaptism led to a much more widespread missionary pursuit, in which the formal male role played only a small part. Even though Schäufele regards the female role as secondary to the missionizing of the Hutterite leadership, women benefited greatly from the community’s lay character and engaged in extensive missionary efforts. To be sure, their field of activity was more limited as it focused on the family, kin, and neighborhood.22 Women also used their journey from prison to execution to missionize by testifying to and for their faith.23 Such behavior was so well known that crowds expected it and were disappointed when authorities took precautions against women’s public witnessing. When in 1570 in Maastricht the Dutch Mennonite Ursel van Essen was to be led to her execution, she was directed not to speak on her way to the scaffold. She asked whether she could not at least “sing a little, and say something now and then?” But the lords would not

20 UQH, 304–5, nr. 125; 188, nr. 65; QGT Bayern II, 90, lines 31–33; 149, lines 38–42; 156, lines 9–10; 157–58, and the many female letters in van Braght’s Martyrs Mirror (2004). 21 Snyder (1996), 76. 22 Snyder (1996), 77; Schäufele (1966), 298, 305. 23 Umble (1987), 2.

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allow it and, wanting to take no chances, they instructed the executioner to gag her. The people, however, complained bitterly about the fact that she could not speak.24 The emphasis on the laity also had a significant effect on the participation of men in the movement. Between the leaders and itinerant missionaries and the general membership existed a layer of “half-missionaries” that provided an opportunity for men to participate actively in the dissemination of their faith. Besides these formal roles, the congregations relied more broadly on the involvement of their regular members in the missionizing effort.25 Historians have furthermore highlighted that the ability of women to hold prominent, less traditional, roles depended significantly on whether the religious movement stressed the spirit or the letter of the Bible. Some scholars, such as Leona Stucky Abbott, argue that the central role of Scripture among the Anabaptists pried open doors for women. Their faith, based solely on the Bible and not on authorities or even other Anabaptist leaders, proved revolutionary and liberating for women. What is more, Jesus Christ had chosen to give his message to the simple and lowly (with whom women could identify), not the mighty and powerful. Thus, “the authority of Scripture and the identity of faith led women to go beyond social definitions of womanhood. In part they re-defined themselves but more often they simply chose to function from identities which they considered more important.”26 Jennifer Reed’s study of Dutch Anabaptist women makes a similar point by asserting that the focus on Scripture with its teachings of spiritual equality and the priesthood of all believers “contributed to the high status of women within the movement.”27 The new weight of Scripture, together with the emphasis on the general priesthood, certainly provided opportunities for women and simple men to be more self-confident and self-reliant in their interpretation of Christian faith and life. This new thinking had been pioneered by the mainstream Protestant reformers, and such venues could theoretically also be found in their movements. However, in reaction to the social and religious upheavals of the 1520s and 1530s,

24 Van Braght (2004), 843–44. Men were gagged as well on their way to execution; see, e.g., ibid., 665. 25 Schäufele (1966), 145, 288. 26 Abbott (1979), 97–98. 27 Reed (1991), 48.

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reformers like Melanchthon curtailed their initial vision of lay empowerment, and thus the reality often looked quite different.28 The renewed tightening of interpretative freedom affected most men and all women, since men still generally understood themselves as interpreters and guardians of the true word of Christ. Women may have been spiritually men’s equal, but men overwhelmingly believed that women nevertheless were in need of men’s guidance—including in spiritual things. This was no different in Anabaptist movements, despite the fact that here the impulse toward laicization was felt more strongly. Among the Hutterites, Peter Riedemann’s Confession of Faith (1545) expressed clearly that: since woman was taken from man and not man from woman, man has lordship and woman has weakness, humility and submission. Therefore, she should be under the yoke of her husband and obedient to him. This was commanded by God, who said to her, “Your husband shall be your lord.” Therefore, a woman should look up to her husband, seek his counsel, and do nothing without it. When she fails to do this, she rejects her God-given place in the order of Creation and encroaches upon the lordship of her husband. She also turns her back on the commands of the Creator and on the promise of submission she gave her husband when they were united in marriage, which is to honor her husband as a wife should. The man, on the other hand, as one in whom something of God’s glory is seen, should have compassion on the woman as the weaker instrument. He should go before her in love and kindness and care for her not only in temporal but still more in spiritual things. He should faithfully share with her all he hath been given by God. He should go before her in honesty, courage, and all the Christian virtues, so that in him she may have a mirror of righteousness, an invitation to piety, and a guide who will lead her to God.29

Riedemann did not only subscribe to the usual female subordination under the male lord in all things secular, but he even suggested that women, unlike men, did not reflect God’s glory and that they

28 Maag (2004), 76. Maag points out that “Philip Melanchthon in his Latin oration ‘On the merit of studying theology’ (1537) noted, ‘let us attend to it that those who are to undertake the Christian ministry be honestly instructed, and that neither the uneducated nor the self-educated be received. For we see that in our own age the fanatical beliefs of the Anabaptists originated only from the uneducated and self-educated.’ ” 29 Riedemann (1999), 127–28.

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were man’s equal neither in temporal nor in spiritual things. Most other Anabaptist leaders, by contrast, along with many Protestant reformers, granted that women were at least spiritually men’s peers. While Riedemann did not indulge in the typical denigration of women on account of Eve’s grave sin, the Hutterite missionary Paul Glock was less reticent. He admonished his wife to lead a quiet life, reminding her that “through the speech of a woman we were all lost.”30 Thus, whatever independence women managed to carve out for themselves had to be done in confrontation with these male precepts that permeated the Anabaptist movements as well. With this in mind, the majority of scholars has argued that women experienced the greatest amount of equality within those groups that made the Spirit rather than the Bible their center. As the essays in this volume make clear, boundaries between diverse religious movements were fluid during the first two years of Anabaptism’s existence, and spiritualistic elements could be found not only in the South German and Austrian groups but also among the Swiss Brethren. However, with the formulation of the Schleitheim Confession in 1527, which pointed its followers firmly to the biblical foundation of the movement, spiritualist venues were largely closed to the Swiss Brethren and, significantly, their sisters. Spiritualist groups tended to provide greater opportunities for women, at least before male leaders swayed their congregations more firmly toward biblicism. Some congregations in Strasbourg, Saxony, and Franconia had several visionary women who held exceptional places.31 Among the Melchiorites in Strasbourg, for example, were at least eighteen men and eight women visionaries, the most prominent among them being Ursula Jost and Barbara Rebstock. Ursula was the wife of a Strasbourg butcher, Lienhard Jost, a visionary himself. Her prophecies, Prophetische gesicht, recorded by Melchior Hoffman, were published in 1530 several months prior to her husband’s, and they were widely distributed. Barbara Rebstock, the wife of a weaver, had come to Strasbourg from Esslingen in the early 1530s. Her visions and miracles were so remarkable that they drew Melchiorites

30

Quoted in Harrison (1992) from Die Hutterischen Episteln, 3: 208. Cf. Barrett (1992). For examples of visionaries in Saxony and Franconia, see Karant-Nunn (1982), 37–41; Hoyer (1986), 69–70; and QGT Markgrafentum Brandenburg, Bayern I, 7, lines 7–11; ibid., 289, lines 1–7. 31

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from the Netherlands to Strasbourg. Barbara was not only recognized as a spiritual leader but also as an authority on moral behavior.32 Historians have generally explained the toleration of women prophetesses by reference to Joel 2:28–29, according to which God will pour out the Spirit in the last days on both men and women.33 Anabaptists emphasizing the written word, however, were supposedly bound by Paul’s instruction that women keep silent in church (I Cor. 14:34). It is not clear why biblically-inclined communities chose the restrictive Pauline statement about women’s role rather than his more liberating insistence that in Christ there is “neither male nor female” (Gal. 3:28); or why a group of visionaries let its behavior be dictated by the “frozen” letter of the Bible. Likely, the Bible did not so much dictate communal roles and hierarchy as did preexisting notions of social relations and gender. Moreover, men did not easily relinquish their authority to women visionaries. Melchior Hoffman clearly believed that women could be vessels of the divine spirit, and he interpreted Ursula’s visions as part of a new stage in history when God made revelations known not only through the old prophets but now also through this woman.34 But while Hoffman granted Ursula the gift of visions, he did not find her capable of interpreting those revelations. Still, his position on women sounds positively mild compared to that of the Dutch spiritualist, David Joris. When in 1538 Joris tried to convince the Melchiorites to join his movement, Barbara Rebstock, Ursula’s successor among the Strasbourg prophets, intervened. Claiming to be “led by the Spirit,” she declared that such a move would be premature.35 Irritated that Barbara had foiled his plans, Joris charged that she had spoken from the Devil rather than from God. Indeed, he detected that the serpent had made considerable inroads in Strasbourg’s congregation and warned its members to beware of women.36 It is a telling indication of Barbara’s position in the community that a fellow man, Ian Pont, came to her defense and rebuked Joris for trying to quiet this prophetess.37 Joris’s clearly dissaproved

32 33 34 35 36 37

Snyder (1996), 273–79. See particularly Barrett (1992). Snyder (1996), 279. QGT Elsaß III, 163, nr. 6. “Hoet v voir die wiuen”; QGT Elsaß III, 180, line 29. Snyder (1996), 281.

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of the outspoken, assertive woman. But he was not, as several scholars have pointed out, dismissive toward noble women,38 which suggests that in some cases class did play a role in his treatment of women. Significantly, Ursula Jost’s visions were decidedly male-oriented. They speak of God and the patriarchs. The only woman mentioned was an old, misshapen crone, of whom one should beware.39 The sole female dimension in this tale is the medium herself, Ursula. And this, according to Hoffman, was the only distinction of the prophetess: “so then it is apparent that this lover of God [Ursula] . . . has a high gift of godly Spirit: visions of divine revelation, but not an understanding of their interpretation, other than what the Spirit reveals to her and teaches. And this will be offered farther to another.”40 Presumably, Hoffman saw himself as the chosen exegete of such divine visions. Women visionaries, then, were in a position to experience more freedom and equality because they could and did claim that their inspiration came directly from God and that they were answerable to no one but God. But this position was always held in check by men’s claims to hold the sole keys to the mysteries of faith.41 Still, even though men could warn against assertive women, who were they to discredit a possible vessel of God communicating a genuine revelation? The radical reform movements of the Reformation had to accept prophetesses much like the medieval Catholic church had to endure women mystics. And as the episode between David Joris and Barbara Rebstock demonstrated, women prophetesses frequently had the backing of their community. In the broader debate over women’s roles in the Anabaptist movement, many scholars have drawn on the “early-late” model introduced by the sociologist Max Weber. Weber argued that women’s initial equality rarely lasted “beyond the first stage of a religious community’s formation. . . . as routinization and regimentation of

38 Elsewhere he spoke positively of Anneken Jans of Rotterdam; QGT III Elsaß, 182, lines 17–18. 39 The Prophetische Gesicht is printed and translated in Barrett (1992), 19–68. For a short excerpt, see Snyder (1996), 283–84. 40 Printed in Barrett (1992), 65–66. 41 QGT Bayern II, 29, lines 24–26; 171, lines 21–24, 29–30; 230, lines 24–33, 35–36, 39; QGT Markgrafentum Brandenburg, Bayern I, 231, line 3.

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community relationships set in, a reaction takes place against pneumatic manifestations among women. . . .”42 Accordingly, Anabaptist historians contend that chances for more independent and weighty female roles were greatest during the early, unstructured phase of the movements, while such freedom was largely diminished during the later, more institutionalized period.43 Linda Huebert Hecht has found this to be true for female Anabaptists in the Tyrol, who had fewer chances of occupying leadership roles after 1529 than during the previous period.44 Auke Jelsma points out that women in Münster were able to preach during the city’s Anabaptist beginnings.45 Such activities, however, were curtailed once the two leaders, Jan Matthijs and Jan van Leiden, came to town; and during the ensuing establishment of polygyny every woman was placed under a male head. A variety of social and religious motivations lay behind this move, one of which was, importantly, to keep females under male control. For Hutterite women, most of whom were initially refugees from Switzerland, South Germany, and Austria and thus part of a later phase of Anabaptism, the window of opportunity to transcend their traditional roles had already passed, as “leadership within the Hutterite church and community was in exclusively male hands. . . .” Moreover, Snyder continues, this pattern “became the accepted structure in the surviving Anabaptist communities.”46 The most powerful and unassailable argument in support of the “early-late” model is that spiritualism was largely truncated in favor of biblicism in the later phase. This transition took place at different times in different movements; for example, among the Swiss Brethren it occurred almost ten years earlier than among the Dutch and North German Anabaptists. The limiting of charismatic roles had a particularly adverse effect on women, who had always experienced more freedom to move and speak in spirit-guided communities than in bible-centered congregations.47 The application of the “early-late” model, however, also has its limitations. First, the records are woefully incomplete, particularly 42

Weber (1922), 104–5. See, e.g., Mattern (1998), 60. 44 Hecht’s study (1990 and 1992) focuses on the years between 1527 and 1529. 45 Jelsma (1998), 71. 46 Snyder (1997), 321. 47 One can find similar developments in earlier heretical movements, such as Waldensianism and Catharism, see Lambert (2002). 43

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with regard to Anabaptist women. We know of isolated instances of women’s leadership in both the earlier and later years, and we know that authorities tended to overlook women more easily than men. It is difficult to draw any systematic conclusions from such meager results. Perhaps more disconcerting is this argument’s exclusive reliance on male prescripts without addressing the responses of women to their prescribed roles. How did women react to these more restricted possibilities? Did they demurely follow what had been set before them, or did they find new opportunities of contributing in meaningful ways to their community of faith? Scholars have pointed out repeatedly that formal leadership roles for women were always scarce; however, examples of their informal execution of such roles are numerous. The difference, of course, was that their informal service to the congregation did not have the same official cachet as the work of their male colleagues. Moreover, Wes Harrison and Astrid von Schlachta have uncovered evidence that Hutterite women in the seventeenth century asserted themselves to what their male brethren would call an “alarming” degree.48 When women pushed into areas that had customarily been designated for men, male leaders reacted critically because they saw the divine and the social order assailed and threatened by such behavior. Harrison suggests that women became more assertive not because they intended to challenge the traditional male-female social structure but because more chaotic times called for their experience and active participation to help stem the disintegration of their community.49 Hutterite males, however, were slow to acknowledge the need to rethink these roles. In the middle of the seventeenth century, Andreas Ehrenpreis, bishop of the Hutterite communities, firmly warned the preachers, stewards, millers, and farm managers not to give their wives any administrative, financial, or governing authority. They should continue in their obedience toward their husbands and their spinning and “should not be allowed to rule or lord it over you, not to quarrel with your people, not to create trouble; to allow the sisters to do this is unacceptable.”50 Piet Visser has also called attention to the expanding possibilities for Dutch Mennonite women in the later phase. He grants that 48 49 50

Harrison (1992), 66–67; von Schlachta (2003), 128. Harrison (1992), 65–66. Ibid., 67, quoting from the Auszug, 50–51.

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“Mennonite biblicism kept women from the more pronounced role that radical earlier and nonconformist Anabaptism had permitted them in many other fields of social and theological practices,” but he argues that if we turn our focus from the typically meek and humble married Anabaptist woman toward her unmarried sisters, the picture changes.51 He takes his cue from late medieval religious women who lived as nuns, beguines, and klopjes (holy maidens). Visser emphasizes particularly the role of some women in the creation of Mennonite religious culture, specifically with regard to hymn writing, in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.52 Two prominent examples are Soetjen Gerrits (d. 1572) and Vrou Gerrits (d. 1605). Soetjen Gerrits, although illiterate because of blindness, wrote thirtyfive hymns, and Vrou Gerrits fifty-one. The posthumous publication of their hymns, Visser stresses, was unprecedented in Dutch Mennonite hymnody: the “two remarkable women were in fact—after the period of martyrdom and its religious heroism—the very first subjects of a kind of ‘personality cult’, which the Mennonites in general were very reluctant to take up. . . . this was a manifestation of a growing Mennonite cultural self-esteem as well as a high regard for women generally.”53 Soetjen Gerrits and Vrou Gerrits illustrate how women contributed to and reshaped the Anabaptist tradition in meaningful ways—even during the later phase of the movement by embracing choices other than martyrdom. The example of the Gerrits also points to another important aspect of women’s roles that provides a continuum between the early and late phases: women wrote hymns for other women—in many cases on request—and women formed their own religious support groups, sometimes with a female leader, in which they rallied around the Anabaptist cause, taught one another the proper biblical understanding, thrashed out strategies for eluding the interrogators’ questions, and provided each other with comfort and strength during times of persecution. No male could quite play that role. In 1529 Adelheit Schwarz of Watt in Switzerland was arrested with eleven other believers, of whom five were women. During the interrogations that followed, these women frustrated the authorities by skillfully evading the questions concerning their beliefs. All these women used 51 52 53

Snyder (1996), 385. Ibid., 387–89. Ibid., 389.

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the same strategy; indeed, some answers even sounded alike.54 Their network of women, gathered inconspicuously around their distaffs or sitting innocently together in sewing circles, allowed them to spread news without arousing suspicion.55 Moving from the general question of the role of women in Anabaptist and Spiritualist movements to the more specific issues of what they actually did, nearly all scholars are agreed that the social hierarchy and distribution of roles in the various Anabaptist groups generally reflected that of contemporary society. For the most part men’s and women’s tasks and occupations were gender specific in keeping with the society from which they came. Among the Hutterites, sewing and spinning were exclusively female occupations; and women were usually assigned the duties of the care for the sick and the youth. Women could hold supervisory positions within these female occupations, but final decisions always belonged to men.56 In the seventeenth century, however, Hutterite women began to infringe on what had formerly been male terrain, prompting Andreas Ehrenpreis to warn his preachers: “Also we ourselves must not delegate to our wives administrative authority here or in other colonies, but like the other wives, they should be obedient.” Ehrenpreis further directed the stewards: “Your wives, when they are not working in their assigned duties in the spinning room or in the nursery, should not be given the keys to the colony storage rooms. . . . The keys have been entrusted to you and not your wives and children. Only you and the other officers can use them as need arises.”57 Nor were women to be allowed access to financial matters or to run the mill or the farm.58 In a similar fashion, the Hutterites believed that men, rather than women, should discipline their children, though the rationale— “because women were too likely to lose their temper and start beating on the children like herdsmen on a group of unruly cattle”—is somewhat surprising.59 While the proper chastising of children was also a concern among Dutch Anabaptists, they apparently had no

54 55 56 57 58 59

Ibid., 39. Ibid., 89, 94. Harrison (1992), 63–64. Quoted in Harrison (1992), 66, from the Auszug, 8, 16–17. Harrison (1992), 66–67. Ibid., 61–62, referring to the songs of the Moravian Anabaptists.

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division of labor along gender lines when it came to meting out such punishment. Men frequently urged their wives to “bring [my children] up in the fear of God, with good instruction and chastening, while they are still young, for with the rod their back is bowed, and they are brought into obedience to their parents.”60 Another man reasoned that “beating keeps children from fighting, using bad language and bringing home stolen goods. . . . It deters them from dancing and leaping, sitting together at the beer table, drinking to intoxication and speaking improper words, all of which lead to whoredom.”61 Contrary to the image of uncontrolled female violence or the potentially abusive Hutterite mother, Dutch Mennonite women, according to John Klassen’s research, did not advocate the use of the rod. Klassen queries whether this is an indication that women in general at the time disapproved of beating as an effective tool for educating children.62 Scholars have debated how involved women were in the verbal defense of their faith. While Clasen is rather skeptical of the capability of women to do so, others have noted the considerable amount of feisty and intelligent repartee by female Anabaptists.63 The Dutch Anabaptist Claesken, for example, pronounced during her interrogation that “it is not given me to dispute with you [the interrogator].” She then proceeded with a spirited defense of her faith, in which she quoted extensively from Scripture.64 Claesken concluded with a plea that her interrogator acknowledge his mistakes and join the Anabaptist cause. Far from being demure, Claesken clearly was ready not only to defend her faith, but also to missionize when the opportunity presented itself. Women also showed surprising resilience and assertiveness under the pressure of interrogation. A female Anabaptist from Thuringia had the courage to deny her inquisitors, well-known Lutheran theologians, their authority to teach the correct religion: “[She] says that we, the preachers, are not proper divine teachers since we have not been appointed by God but by the government.”65 In her final 60

Van Braght (2004), 798–99. Klassen (1986), 569. 62 Ibid., 570. 63 For the Hutterites, see Harrison (1992), 56–57; for the Dutch and North German Anabaptists, see Reed (1991), 106–111 and Snyder (1996), 353–54. 64 Van Braght (2004), 616. 65 Bernhofer-Pippert (1967), 74. 61

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letter to her brethren and sisters, before she was burned to ashes in 1564, the Dutch Maeyken Boosers also described an encounter with her interrogators: They all fell upon me at once, and said that no one could enter the kingdom of heaven, except he were born of water and of the Spirit. They hastily asked me whether I did not confess this too. I said: “This Scripture belongs not to children, but to the adult, who have ears to hear.” Then they arose and said: “You labor under an opinion.”66

In their previous experience, female Anabaptists rarely, if ever, had to stand up before an assembly of male authorities. Faced with this kind of unfamiliar and threatening opposition, these examples of a willingness to assert their faith, to contradict their male opponents, and to provide an intelligent reply are all the more impressive. Certainly the majority of women did not have the means to present an elaborate response to the officials’ charges, but that was no different than the majority of their male counterparts. The availability and gendered nature of education created some difference. Humanism and the Reformation had pushed for an expansion of education, but neither one had broken with the traditional pattern of preparing men and women for their respective roles in society, which resulted in a poorer scholastic training for women. Yet, Anabaptism—particularly the bible-centered kind—was likely the one group among the Reformation movements that took the educational impetus the furthest. Among the Hutterites education was universal.67 It must be underscored that they were not interested in higher education. Much like the Modern Devotion, the Anabaptist movements contained a strong element of anti-intellectualism that was directed against a sophisticated scholastic training. But their biblically oriented and lay empowered movements demanded that the members know their Bible and could defend their faith. Thus the Anabaptists had “a remarkable level of elementary education and vocational instruction.”68 Hence the frequent comment in inquisitorial records about the Anabaptists’ versatility in Scripture. When the Dutch sisters-in-law, Maria and Ursula van Beckum, were imprisoned for their faith and interrogated, the authorities were taken back not only by their steadfastness but also by the theological skill with 66 67 68

Van Braght (2004), 669. Snyder (1996), 236. Harrison (1992), 60.

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which they defended their beliefs. The fact that, upon their unsuccessful attempts to dissuade the two women from their “heresies,” the authorities sent for a theological expert underlines the intellectual caliber of these women.69 Maria and Ursula are not the only cases in which officials asked for theological reinforcement. To be sure, education in Anabaptism was gender specific as well, but everyone received a basic training in reading and, as the letters of Anabaptist women show, to some extent, writing. Moreover, the ability to read gave women—and men—greater self-confidence. Still, not everyone among the Anabaptists agreed that women needed to spend time educating themselves. Lijsken Dircks, for example, was encouraged to focus less on reading Scripture and more on her sewing. Her husband, however, supported her in her scriptural studies.70 Thus, despite changing conditions over time and space, women were deeply involved in the Anabaptist movements but these shifts affected the extent of their roles and the forms of their contributions. The Question of Numbers The percentages of men and women in Anabaptist movements could potentially tell us something about the role of gender in these groups, but the male-female distribution is not entirely clear. In his social study of Anabaptism in Switzerland, Austria, and South and Central Germany, Claus-Peter Clasen concludes that men far outnumbered women in Anabaptist groups. The ratio of men to women changed slightly between 1525 and 1618, but generally men made up more than 65% of the membership. However, Clasen also notes that the gender could not always be ascertained since sources sometimes mention only the total number of people who joined the movement.71 In some regions, the percentage of women among Anabaptists was above this average.72 Clasen’s findings are roughly consistent with those of the Martyrs Mirror that recorded about 288 women (28.6%) and 719 men (71.4%) among its mostly Dutch martyrs. Here, too, however, a significant number (661) could not be identified by gender.73 69 70 71 72 73

Snyder (1996), 353–54. Van Braght (2004), 515–16. Clasen (1972), 334. Clasen’s study rests on a total of 8,886 Anabaptists. Gismann-Fiel (1982), 108. Van Braght (2004); Klassen (1986), 549.

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Several scholars have convincingly challenged these low estimates of women among Anabaptists. Linda Huebert Hecht’s research on Anabaptist females in the early years in the Tyrol shows considerably higher numbers: there women believers made up 46% of the membership and 40% of those martyred.74 Although the Dutch scholar Samme Zijlstra can only verify that 29.6% of Dutch Anabaptists between 1531 and 1565 were women—suggesting close congruence with Clasen’s results—he is rather skeptical of the figure’s accuracy, since females made up over half of the congregations in the seventeenth century. It is reasonable to assume, Zijlstra contends, that, “in the sixteenth century as well, women made up the majority [of the congregation], but it cannot be proven.”75 In his study on criminality in early modern Cologne, Gerd Schwerhoff also finds evidence that the portion of women among the prosecuted Anabaptists was higher than that of men. Among the 57 Anabaptists arrested in 1565 were 34 women, and the numbers for Anabaptist conventicles discovered in 1570 (4 men, 10 women) and 1612 (4 men, 8 women) also show a decidedly greater share of women than men.76 Thus, several historians have made strong cases that the proportion of women among Anabaptists was much closer to their normal representation in society, namely 50% or slightly higher. An argument in their favor, and a complicating element in any attempt to determine the number of Anabaptist females, is the fact that officials often paid more attention to men than to women. Therefore, the figures available—largely reliant on arrested Anabaptists—are most likely skewed. Moreover, authorities tended to go after leaders, who rarely included women in any case.77 The issue of numbers has confounded Anabaptist scholars with regard to determining the size of Anabaptism in general.78 It seems there is no certain way of knowing the proportion of women among Anabaptists, but the trend in scholarship is moving toward a substantial increase in our estimates of women’s numerical share in the movements.

74 75 76 77 78

Hecht (1992), 65. Zijlstra (2000), 254, 265. Schwerhoff (1991), 257. Zijlstra (2000), 267. Stayer (2002), 51.

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Motives for Joining Anabaptist Movements A significant issue in the debate over Anabaptist women is the question of why women became Anabaptists. On the basis of his assumed lower proportion of women among Anabaptists, Claus Peter Clasen draws some negative conclusions as to why more women did not join the movements. “Women,” he argues, “tended to be much less doctrinal than men.”79 Clasen further contends that the Hutterite practice of largely separating children from their parents in favor of a communal rather than a familial upbringing would have been much harder to bear for a woman than a man. In support, Clasen cites a female who returned from the Hutterites to Württemberg “specifically because she experienced great heartache on account of her children.”80 In the seventeenth century, when the Hutterite communities showed signs of disintegration, this emphasis on communal over familial bonds did indeed come under attack—though not only from women. Clasen extends his assessment beyond the Hutterites and discerns a gender difference in how men and women weighed the importance of faith: “A man was willing to sacrifice everything for his faith, even his life. His salvation counted above everything. When the Hutterer Hans Schmid was worked upon to recant by referring to his wife and children, his cool answer was: ‘no one is as dear to me as my salvation’. What woman, however, would have ever said that her salvation was more important to her than her child?”81 Clasen concedes that many women did just that, but to him, the overwhelming number of men in the Anabaptist communities proves that women found it much harder to place faith before family. Such assertions are explosive in today’s gender-sensitive world. One can imagine both men protesting against their alleged want of feeling and women objecting to their lack of sincerity in matters of faith. But most significantly, Clasen’s argument from nature lacks conviction in light of the fact that at least a third, and maybe even half, of the persons in Anabaptist communities were women. Here, too, as James Stayer has suggested, other factors such as women’s inferior, and often invisible, role in the movements may provide a

79 80 81

Clasen (1965), 191. Quoted in ibid. Ibid.

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more fruitful angle from which to investigate the apparently lower female membership.82 Existing data is incomplete and reflects the biases of the record keepers, which also limits its utility for quantitative analysis. Since many inquisitors considered women incapable of mature thinking, they tended to dismiss them as inconsequential appendages to men. Despite considerable evidence to the contrary, the authorities in Hesse thought that because women were ignorant, they did not play an active role in the movement. A draft of an ordinance against Anabaptists of 1536 had only one designated category for women: “wives of Anabaptists.”83 The records show great ambiguity toward women. On one hand, they frequently mention “manns- und weibspersonen” (men and women); on the other, they wondered whether one should send women and children after men who had been exiled, assuming that women were simply innocent followers of their heretical husbands.84 Single Anabaptist women, the authorities preferred to think, hailed from areas outside their domain.85 However, authorities in some territories, such as the county Zweibrücken-Bitsch, were aware that women also joined the Anabaptists without their husbands.86 What motives might have incited women to join the Anabaptist movements? Despite her pessimistic assessment of women’s greater equality in Anabaptism, Joyce Irwin believes that even though “the vast majority of women among radical Protestant groups were dutiful wives who fully accepted female subordination, . . . it is no doubt true that the radical sects provided an outlet for women dissatisfied with their traditional role.”87 This would suggest that women joined the Anabaptists because they offered greater opportunities for women. Sherrin Marshall Wyntjes is also convinced that it was the prospect of full participation in these movements that made women choose heterodoxy.88 On the other hand, Shannon McSheffrey, in her study

82

Stayer (2002), 57. UQH, 138, nr. 47. 84 See, e.g., QGT Bayern II, 88, lines 24–25. 85 While the authorities had found many Anabaptist couples, there had also been “single women from foreign lands, Franconia, the bishopric of Fulda . . .” UQH, 70, nr. 28. 86 QGT Baden und Pfalz, 292–93. 87 Irwin (1979), 201–2. 88 “There, they could participate fully and receive their share of attention.”— Wyntjes (1977), 168. 83

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Gender and Heresy: Women and Men in Lollard Communities, 1420–1530, questions whether “heretical sects drew women more than men because such groups provided women with more opportunities for religious activity and expression than they could find in orthodoxy.”89 McSheffrey posits that, while gender is an important factor, it is by no means the only determinant of male and female choices. Social and economic status, family, age, location, and occupation all played a role in creating gender identities.90 Establishing the marital status of women who entered heterodox communities does not provide conclusive answers either. Marlies Mattern argues that women actively and independently chose to become Anabaptists91—and there is certainly evidence for such cases. A considerable number of Anabaptist women left their husbands because they refused to join the movement. In other instances, females confidently took an active role in their new communities. While some single women acted of their own accord, others joined as members of a kin group. Some married women merely followed their husbands, while others made a conscious, independent decision.92 When reading through Snyder and Hecht’s Profiles of Anabaptist Women, one finds examples for all of these women, but the spotty nature of the records makes a quantitative analysis of these various behaviors impossible. Many women, like the South German Margarethe Koch, joined the Anabaptists for religious reasons. She told the inquisitor that she had listened to the papists, the evangelicals, and Melchior Rinck; and only the last one she judged to be a true preacher.93 Koch, therefore, became an Anabaptist since Rinck alone could offer her spiritual certainty. Others, scholars have argued, were attracted by the sense of community that existed among Anabaptists—an argument that would apply in some ways to men as well. While the early Schleitheim Confession mentions both brothers and sisters, many programmatic Anabaptist texts speak of brotherhood alone, which may or may not have offended women believers. Since a criticism 89

McSheffrey (1995), 2. Ibid., 2–3. 91 “Wenn auch die Täuferinnen keine Protagonistinnen für die Gleichberechtigung der Geschlechter wurden, so bewiesen sie durch ihre aktive und unabhängige Wahl der Religion, die ja den Alltag in allen Bereichen durchdrang, ihre Eigenständigkeit und Individualität.”—Mattern (1998), 53. 92 For evidence on the spread of Anabaptism along kin and family lines, see Clasen (1965), 185–86. 93 Kobelt-Groch (1993), 9. 90

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of gendered language did not come into its own until the twentieth century, most women likely regarded the male-centered language as natural since this was what they were used to. More important than the word was the actual behavior in these communities toward women and toward each other. Quite likely men expressed in typically patriarchic language what many women and men perceived existed among the brethren and sisters: a sense of solidarity among true Christians that only grew under increased hardship. Leona Stucky Abbott goes so far as to claim that “this solidarity of identity spoke profoundly of an equality through faith which transcended the cultural expressions of sexual identity.”94 Clasen has underlined the social incentives for joining the Hutterites, both in terms of a sense of “Geselligkeit” as well as with respect to their communal sharing.95 Indeed, apart from religious incentives, the economic safety and the prospect that the brotherhood would take care of widows and orphans were compelling arguments for joining the Hutterites.96 Against the background of poverty and starvation at home, the vision of flourishing Moravian communities and the promise of economic survival may have attracted many men and women, even if the principles of the brotherhood were not to everyone’s liking. Astrid von Schlachta notes that the Hutterites’ communitarian ideal came increasingly under attack from its members. Ideally, the brotherhood was to be a commune in which the person and the family—if not gender—retreated behind a highly developed group structure and the ideal of the common good. But individualism nevertheless asserted itself and threatened the existence of the brotherhood.97 In the second half of the sixteenth century, ordinances repeatedly condemned the habit of cooking and eating in private homes and admonished members to partake in the communal meal. By 1600, Astrid von Schlachta argues, the private sphere had become more important than the community in areas such as property, economy, child raising, and the choice of a marriage partner.98 Women, then, joined the Anabaptist movements for a variety of reasons. Many sources underscore the religious aspect, i.e., the

94 95 96 97 98

Abbott (1979), 93. Clasen (1965), 182. Schäufele (1966), 172. Von Schlachta (2003), 117–18. Ibid., 120–21.

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persuasiveness of Anabaptist teachings. Yet other motives—such as economic safety or familial inducement—clearly played a role as well. However, the documents do not ultimately answer the question whether women were drawn toward heterodoxy by a promise of more equality. Gender Specific Values Many of the values that characterized a “good” or a “bad” Anabaptist were traditional and gender specific. Both Hutterite and Mennonite men consistently admonished women to be chaste, modest, humble, obedient, and silent.99 Men were to show courage and strength under duress, yet in a movement that existed under persecution, in which members had to live with the prospect of suffering imprisonment, torture, and execution, and many indeed experienced these trials, such “manly” attributes could not be confined to men. Women, too, demonstrated courage in choosing to become an Anabaptist and in facing death.100 Still, the compiler of the Martyrs Mirror betrayed a traditional mindset when he expressed surprise at a young woman’s steadfastness in martyrdom and commented that she “put off her womanly weakness” and replaced it with “manly courage.”101 Women who chose to witness for their faith indeed showed what were usually considered “manly” virtues—strength, steadfastness, an unwavering stance, courage, boldness, and bravery. The image of Anneken Jansz, who gave her child to a stranger in the crowd and suffered death rather than be a hypocrite when it came to her belief, was diametrically opposed to the stereotypical image of what a woman ought to do: she ought to let the men do the thinking and the acting, both in politics and in religion. Sisters in faith cheered each other on to face death “manfully.” Abbott declares that “weakness, feebleness, inferiority, lack of will, and all other ‘womanly’ characteristics would have to be left behind in order to fight the good fight even unto death. Their theology, stated simply, was that faith could give them ‘manly’ attributes or equality of spirit.”102

99 100 101 102

Harrison (1992), 55–56; Zijlstra (2000), 266; Snyder (1996), 226–27. See also Reed (1991), 83–84. Van Braght (2004), 740, cf. 436; Klassen (1986), 549. Abbott (1979), 101.

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Many female testimonies speak of the empowering company in which they saw themselves. It was the covenant of the true Christians, beginning with Jesus Christ and continuing throughout the ages with a long line of martyrs, that gave them strength. If one was a member of this exalted circle, what was there to fear? Abbott comments perceptively: “This belief that the sharing of Christ’s cross led them beyond the power of physical force gave them power. For sexism is always based, finally, on the force supremacy of men. To remove the fear of that supremacy demands a Christian ethic of the cross.”103 If “strength” and “courage” were not qualities reserved solely for men, the attribute of “weakness” also transgressed gender lines. While females were regarded as weak in the flesh, both men and women acknowledged a weakness of the spirit.104 The Mennonite Jelis Matthijs, for example, included himself when he counseled his wife to turn to God “as an advocate and intercessor for our daily stumblings and fallings.” Still, casting himself as the instructor of his wife and anticipating that he would not be able to guide his feeble spouse much longer, he labored to advise her on “your daily frailties and missteps before God.”105 There is an unmistakable message that if men are weak, women are still weaker. Much like other contemporary males, Anabaptist men, too, occasionally associated some negative qualities such as haughtiness, quarreling, gossiping, and backbiting with women in particular.106 Whether one really found these qualities more frequently in women than in men, or whether assertive women struck men as more outrageous since they violated the traditionally prescribed qualities of a demure, obedient, and chaste woman, is difficult to ascertain. The education of children and the advice parents passed down to them prior to their death also offers insights into Anabaptist values. Children were not to run, play, or fight in the streets. Corporal punishment was considered an appropriate and beneficial means by which to keep them on the right path. From these instructions speaks the conviction that without the enforcement of a strict moral code, children would wind up as drunkards and prostitutes.107

103 104 105 106 107

Ibid. Plenert (1975), 15. Van Braght (2004), 679. Harrison (1992), 67–68. Klassen (1986), 569.

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Typically, early modern society placed a high value on the honor of a woman, which often meant that she was to be sexually pure. The Chronicle of the Hutterian Brethren recounts several incidents of rape and a most intriguing response of the community to the victims. When two sisters had been captured by the Turks and had to endure “abuse against their will,” the Chronicle’s author rejoiced that “they came back to the church with unharmed consciences.” What is more, the raped sisters were enthusiastically welcomed back into the community: Sister Susanna, to her great distress and agony of heart had to stay even longer among the ungodly soldiers, who wreaked their lust on her. Finally God sent help, and she was released. . . . and on November 5 [1622] she returned to the church community. So, in the end all the captured sisters returned to the church. . . . With tremendous joy and thankfulness we received all those who had been released.108

Julia Roberts suggests that the Hutterites may have considered rape as akin to martyrdom and torture.109 It may also be possible that, in a movement where the spiritual counted for more than the physical state, bodily violation could not take away one’s honor. While many of these values reflected those of contemporary society, women who chose to become Anabaptist had to transcend the virtues of their traditional roles in order to endure persecution and martyrdom: meekness and retreat had to be exchanged for resolve, stamina, wit, and determination. Many women necessarily possessed these qualities, no matter what the female ideal prescribed. But the threatened position of Anabaptists raised the bar for their female followers by several degrees. Marriage Several characteristics of Anabaptist marriage practices are especially noteworthy. First, even though the Anabaptists did not hold to a uniform policy on abandoning one’s spouse and family if they did not join the Anabaptist cause, many women and men did leave their spouses for religious reasons. The early Swiss Brethren and the Hutterites advocated the separation of a believer from an unbeliever,

108 109

Quoted in Snyder (1996), 217. Ibid.

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as did the later Dutch, but the South German Brethren were more lenient in their guidelines. In 1591 both the Dutch and South Germans agreed that the unbelieving spouse of an Anabaptist only needed to be shunned by the congregation, not by his or her spouse.110 However, when Anabaptist women separated from their unbelieving husbands, many Anabaptist communities expected them to remarry quickly. The most fluid practices can, once again, be found with the Spiritualists. Relying on their visions and special revelations from God, the Uttenreuter Dreamers of Franconia, for example, freely dissolved and entered into marriages without being hampered by customary guidelines. Else Kern declared that, “after she had been with the smith [Hans Schmid, a married man] for about six weeks, it came to her one night that she should marry the smith.”111 By claiming divine guidance and the dictates of their faith, Anabaptist women could thus elude parental guidance in selecting a husband as well as the control of their previous husbands. In early modern society, such freedom of choice for women was revolutionary, but the antinomianism of the Dreamers, who considered themselves “post-Anabaptist,” was very much on the margin for all Anabaptists and Spiritualists.112 Second, historians have underlined the strong spiritual dimension of marriage in Anabaptism. For many couples their spiritual unity in Christ was of greater importance than their physical life together113— or as Harrison put it, “the covenant of belief was far superior to the covenant of marriage.”114 This powerful spiritual component of the relationship between men and women also allowed for another constellation among the sexes that was a rarity at the time, namely the male-female friendship outside of marriage.115 At the same time, however, Anabaptist ideas about marriage also show some marked similarities to contemporary concepts of this traditional institution. Much like the mainstream Protestant reformers, the Anabaptists considered marriage to be beneficial but did not believe it to be a sacrament. Besides religious affiliation, pious and moral behavior constituted key elements in validating marriage.116 110 111 112 113 114 115 116

Klassen (1986), 562–63. Here also more literature on this issue. QGT Markgrafentum Brandenburg, Bayern I, 302, lines 32–34. Clasen (1972), 130–34. Klassen (1986), 560; Umble (1987), 39. Harrison (1992), 58. Klassen (1986), 570. Bernhofer-Pippert (1967), 160.

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Some Anabaptists in Thuringia and Hesse rejected marriage altogether since it was supposedly nothing but whoredom. According to them, it constituted neither a sacrament nor a godly institution but a creation of the devil.117 Then again, the spiritualists in Thuringia and Hesse understood marriage in purely spiritual terms. Historian Elsa Bernhofer-Pippert suggests that “the exaggerated spiritualism was pushing toward the dissolution of the marital communion. Enthusiasm and personal internalization destroyed not only the tie to Scripture, to the community, and the outer order but also the one between two humans.”118 The social profile of an Anabaptist marriage was for the most part a reflection of contemporary society. Wives were to be obedient to their husbands, serve them, and be their housekeepers; and many Anabaptist women accepted these roles. When the imprisoned Dutch Anabaptist Matthias Servaes sent a comforting letter to his wife, he begged her not to be too hard on herself for not having “been much more obedient to me,” as she had accused herself in her letter to him.119 He did not contradict her but added that he himself should have been more diligent, so both of them had cause for lament. Menno Simons even believed that a good show of wifely obedience and devotion would gain the Anabaptists converts: “Be obedient to your husbands in all reasonable things so that those who do not believe may be gained by your upright, pious conversation without the word, as Peter says.”120 His reasoning suggests that he thought there was something amiss in contemporary marriage and that Anabaptists could produce better wives than other religions. Moreover, if religious arguments failed, excellent female pious subservience could serve as an incentive—for males, it would seem—to join the Anabaptist movement. Bernhard Rothmann, theologian of the Kingdom of Münster, was also much concerned about the purity of marriage, which in his eyes was directly linked to the subordinate role of women in marriage— and presumably in all other matters: the husband should assume his lordship over the wife with manly feeling, and keep his marriage pure. Too often wives are the lords, leading 117 118 119 120

Ibid., 110–111. Ibid., 111. Van Braght (2004), 699. Quoted from “The True Christian Faith” in Irwin (1979), 63.

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sigrun haude their husbands like bears, and all the world is in adultery, impurity, and whoredom. Nowadays, too many women seem to wear the trousers. The husband is the head of the wife, and as the husband is obedient to Christ, so also should the wife be obedient to her husband, without murmuring and contradiction.121

Clearly, part of a man’s identity was to be the lord of the house and to keep his wife in her place “with manly feeling.” Much like Menno Simons, Rothmann seemed to have found contemporary society wanting in proper gender hierarchy. Indeed, his complaint about women’s tendency to dominate suggests that a fair number of Münster’s women did not follow easily or willingly the guidelines set out for them. How men were to impose such obedience if it was not forthcoming is not entirely clear. The Swiss Brethren were opposed to the use of corporal punishment on wives, though the South German Anabaptist Jörg Maler thought that the rules of pacifism did not apply when it came to wives and children.122 In Rothmann’s Münster, where women could be beheaded if they resisted the polygynous practice of the community, wife beating was likely not a matter of ethical concern. Like their early modern European counterparts, Anabaptist men saw themselves as providers and protectors of their wives and families. However, since most Anabaptists were pacifists, the role of the protector was not always easy to fill.123 Moreover, many husbands wound up in jail or faced execution, which took away their ability to provide for their families. Men often suffered under the prospect of having to leave their wives and children behind without guidance. Consequently, some tried to influence their wives beyond the grave by urging them to “live in quietness (you know what I mean)” and “to be mindful of my writing” after the husband’s death: “do not let it remain with you as a dead letter or a fable, but make frequent use of it as a prescription tending to your health . . . if you love me and the eternal salvation of your soul, fulfill my request, according 121 From Rothmann’s Restitution in Lindberg (2000), 141. See also the original in Stupperich (1970), 268–69. Here one finds an extensive section on marriage (258–62) and on the roles of husbands (262–68) and wives (268–69), culminating in the conclusion: “also hebben ock de frouwen nicht tho regeren, dan myt stillicheit gehorsam tho syn (therefore the wives ought not to govern but to be silently obedient).” (269) 122 Klassen (1968), 90. 123 See also Klassen (1986), 559.

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to your feeble ability. . . .”124 These writings suggest that, even before a husband’s death, Anabaptist men exerted a considerable amount of spousal guidance, which was expressed as concern for one’s wife’s salvation. While the example above attests to the husband’s wish to control his wife’s life after his death, anxiety for one’s spouse could also take a less controlling form. The Mennonite Hendrick Verstralen asked of his wife: “Do not take this amiss from me; true, it is my advice, but therefore no command; but I seek it for the greater assurance of your salvation . . . do what you will, only that it be done in the Lord.”125 In this marriage, the loving partnership stood in the foreground as Verstralen called his wife “my helper in distress” and “my faithful friend on earth. The Lord be praised, that gave you to me; you, my lamb, who have always comforted me in my tribulations.”126 Marriage between two firm believers often provided soothing comfort for people living under the threat of persecution and facing imprisonment and death. In the face of the gallows, the gender hierarchy was least pronounced and male instruction took a back seat as husbands and wives, brothers and sisters in faith, comforted each other and supported one another with religious fervor. Punishment The punishment of Anabaptist women changed over time. In the beginning, their treatment showed a clear gender bias that reflected the authorities’ perception of women as incapable of independent action.127 Almost all the male defenders of Anabaptist Münster were killed with the city’s fall in June 1535, but almost all the women, the great majority of defenders, were spared.128 Unable to make an informed and sound judgment, women were presumably lured into

124 Van Braght (2004), 679. Klassen (1986), 562, also lists a number of cases in which the husbands tried to exercise their control over their wives even after their death. 125 Van Braght (2004), 880. 126 Ibid. 127 See also Gregory (1999), 95; Snyder (1996), 147–48. 128 Klötzer (1992), 137.

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heresy by their husbands, a male member of their family, or a charismatic leader that passed through their region. Thus, their ignorance preserved their innocence, and therefore punishment was meant to deter them from falling prey to such doctrinal error again. Even though their supposed naiveté did not protect women from being tortured so that they might reveal the names of other Anabaptists, their eventual punishment varied widely among authorities, ranging from a stern warning, to imprisonment, expulsion and even execution. Pregnant women did not necessarily evade punishment, but implementation was typically postponed until after the child’s delivery.129 Besides gender, class also had an impact on the nature of the punishment or it could open possibilities to elude punishment altogether—a factor that applied to both men and women. Well-connected Anabaptists were sometimes able to learn about upcoming searches and flee the area by the time the authorities came around.130 Quite a few women took advantage of the image of female ignorance to evade or reduce their punishment.131 Some may indeed have been lured into Anabaptism without ever intending to leave the orthodox faith; others, however, clearly made an informed decision on their beliefs, but still had the wits to dupe the investigating officials by feigning ignorance. In elaborate defenses, women pleaded weakness of mind and pointed to the magistrates’ responsibility toward them so that the authorities might mitigate their judgment. After having been expelled from Regensburg, Brigitta Baumeister, who had joined the Anabaptists without her husband, sent a plea to the magistrate to be readmitted into the city. She claimed to have been “a young, ignorant and inexperienced woman who unfortunately had been led astray by several false teachings and had been induced to be rebaptized.” Brigitta challenged the council of Regensburg to imagine what might become of her if “I, a simpleminded woman, cast out of my homeland so that I cannot look for any comfort there, and entirely abandoned, have to fear to come to even greater harm because of poverty and the stupidity of the female gender.”132 This skillfully crafted petition conjures up anything but a simpleminded woman. More likely, women like Brigitta used gender stereotypes to their own benefit. 129 130 131 132

Snyder (1996), 158. Ibid., 90. See my more extensive discussion in Haude (1998), 321–24. QGT Bayern II, 113, lines 28–30; 114, lines 13–16 (26 June 1540?).

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Other women made no effort to hide their intelligence and autonomous choice, but authorities were still slow to catch on despite extensive evidence that women were not inherently ignorant. When Hesse’s councilors inquired why Margret Gompel did not attend Sunday church, she responded that the minister’s sermons had led to no improvement in the community, and so she simply stayed at home and read the Bible for herself.133 Agnes Linck of Biel in Switzerland, a self-appointed lay leader who, according to her recorded statement, acknowledged no earthly authority but let herself be guided by God alone, suffered only expulsion in 1528.134 Officials, however, became increasingly aware of the wide spectrum of women’s involvement. Punishment differed according to the importance women had in the Anabaptist movement.135 In Flanders ordinary female members escaped heavy penalties, while those with greater responsibilities earned the death sentence.136 When authorities in Württemberg realized during the 1570s that much of Anabaptists’ upsurge in their region had been due to women’s proselytizing, the ordinance against Anabaptists explicitly addressed the question of how to deal with the movement’s women. Apparently, most of the husbands were not Anabaptists, which made short shrift of the seduction argument. The ordinance favored chaining women to their houses over exiling them, since that would be hard on their families. But, shackled in their homes, they could still prepare food and take care of children.137 One circumstance in particular finally convinced the governing officials that it was time to take a closer look at the role of women: the fact that they kept reappearing before their court. When Dorothea Maler, from Hall by Innsbruck, had been captured for the second time because of her Anabaptist beliefs, she encountered a much sterner attitude from the government. After her first arrest she had recanted and had been set free. Recantation was a frequent practice among Anabaptists since, unlike martyrdom, it allowed believers to reclaim their freedom and continue their work for the Anabaptist community. Subsequent recantations, however, were much less credible. And, indeed, Dorothea’s heavy involvement in Anabaptist activities

133 134 135 136 137

UQH, 74, no. 30 (28 Oct. 1533). Snyder (1996), 32–33. Ibid., 158. Verheyden (1961), 96. Snyder (1996), 65.

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since her release convinced the authorities that she was not as innocent as they had previously assumed: “it could be surmised and was altogether thinkable that she was not that simple-minded.”138 These relapsi eventually educated the authorities on the role of women in the Anabaptist movements. Accordingly, females who had come before the magistrates two and three times faced much harsher punishments than first-time offenders. They now suffered execution much like the male believers. For the Tyrol, Linda Huebert Hecht found that the number of female executions doubled between 1528 and 1529 and reached their peak between 1530 and 1534.139 The capital punishment reserved for women was typically drowning, which seemed more benign, while the honorable kind of execution for men was to be burned. Drowning, one young man argued, was beneath his dignity, as cats and dogs were also drowned.140 However, the records furnish many cases where women were burned as well, which points to the important role they must have played in the movement. In punishment, then, women initially could count on a more lenient treatment than could men, but over time their consistent involvement and their reappearance before courts made them as vulnerable to the death penalty as their male counterparts. Martyrdom Many men and women did eventually die as witnesses to their faith. Scholars have emphasized that martyrdom was the one area where men and women were fully equal in the sense that women could choose either to recant or to die for their beliefs. Torture and the ensuing path toward the pyre or river demanded as much perseverance and strength of women as it did of men. Our sources for how martyrs endured their last days come chiefly from the martyrologies, which raises questions since such collections often “stage” martyrdom according to the convictions of the compiler and the values and needs of contemporary society.141 Nikki Shepardson, in her

138

Ibid., 190. Ibid., 191. 140 Klassen (1986), 553. Van Braght (2004), 539–40. 141 On this point see Shepardson (2004), 155–74, and more generally Gregory (1999), 171–73. 139

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study of “Gender and the Rhetoric of Martyrdom in Jean Crespin’s Histoire des vrays tesmoins,” points out that, during “the sixteenth century, martyrdom itself was not defined as a gendered act.”142 However, the different ways in which the French martyrologist Jean Crespin in 1570 constructed male and female accounts reflects the biases of the day: “Thus while gender is not an issue in terms of identifying martyrs, the representation and interpretation of their acts to an audience most certainly is.”143 Female martyrs here appear almost as a “separate gender.” Like other women, they are simple and weak, but unlike them, they have been singled out and empowered by God. Therefore, their martyrdom is not so much their accomplishment as God’s. “There is a continual reinforcement of the idea that women might have needed more help as they are inherently weaker than men.”144 One finds no such suggestion in the male accounts of martyrdom. Since, in these accounts, women martyrs are depicted as abnormal—as almost another sex—they do not threaten patriarchic society nor do they entice other women to follow their lead since female martyrdom ultimately receives its weight from God.145 Anabaptist martyrologies often shared the general argument that, if even weak women had the strength to give their blood for the true faith, then God must bless this movement especially. But Auke Jelsma has highlighted several distinctive differences between mainstream and Mennonite martyrologies with respect to women. Compared to Catholic and Protestant martyrologies, women held an unparalleled place in Mennonite accounts of suffering. In the former, women martyrs made up a mere 5 to 10% of the accounts and “were suited only for suffering.” With the Mennonites, however, the proportion of female witness accounts lies at 20 to 30%.146 Moreover, Mennonite women were not only silent, subservient sufferers, but were allowed to speak and testify for their faith. In this context, Jelsma also points to the premium Anabaptists placed on literacy, which increased women’s confidence in expressing their faith. In comparing the Mennonite martyrologies to the books of Rabus, Crespin, and van Haemstede, Jelsma comes to the conclusion that they differ in the

142 143 144 145 146

Shepardson (2004), 156. Ibid., 156. Ibid., 163–65. Ibid. Jelsma (1998), 85.

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place they assign to women.147 What is more, he argues that the Mennonite sources offer a much more accurate indicator of women’s extensive role in martyrdom than do the mainstream martyrologies that generally pay little attention to ordinary women: Thanks to the Anabaptist martyrologies we know better how intensive the contribution of women, especially in the lower strata of the society, must have been. It is improbable that only Mennonite men and women wrote each other letters from prison, but these were of no interest to the other martyrologies and, therefore, were not collected, unless in the case of women of noble birth. Women who were too quick-witted were unprofitable for the image that authors such as Rabus, Crespin, von Haemstede and Foxe sought to create.148

Historians have also revealed differences for Anabaptist men and women once they chose martyrdom. Sometimes women were denied the right to witness publicly to their faith. Public executions frequently stimulated anxiety among authorities since they could provide the gateway for uprisings, but Leona Stucky Abbott contends “that woman’s testimony was more threatening than man’s.” Consequently, females were executed in secret more often than their brethren.149 In chronicling heretics in Ghent around 1560, who were all executed outside the public’s eye, Brad Gregory surmises that “magistrates feared a negative popular reaction to the public execution of heretics in Ghent at this time.”150 Significantly, however, all five executed Anabaptists were women. For a woman to become a martyr took greater effort than for a man because she also had to overcome the social expectations prescribed for her gender.151 Female martyrs had to defend their faith in a public world of magistrates and judges that was usually reserved for men alone. This demanded courage, but it also afforded women the unusual—and no doubt sometimes frightening—opportunity to confront men in powerful positions.152

147 148 149 150 151 152

Ibid., 86. Ibid., 90. Abbott (1979), 55. Snyder (1996), 372. Abbott (1979), 119. Ibid., 105.

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Conclusion During the 1980s and 1990s, Anabaptist scholarship made great strides in research devoted to women. With an enthusiastic plunge into the sources, scholars have gained valuable insights into the role of women while also delineating more clearly the limits of our knowledge. Anabaptist women, it has become clear, were generally revolutionaries with a small “r,” not banner-waving freedom fighters.153 This should be a disappointment only to those who are unaware of the place from which they started. Carving out the spaces that they did was no small accomplishment in sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury society. And yet, there is much more research to be done. Anabaptist and Spiritualist movements offer a great opportunity to explore questions of gender, womanhood, and manhood because they reconfigured and redefined many of the traditional elements and roles of men and women. The study of masculinity and manhood is particularly fruitful here because the radical movements broke with some essential practices, rituals, and behaviors that closely delineated masculine identity. For example, in a society where manliness was intricately linked to strength and the willingness to defend home and community, how did pacifist Anabaptist men—unwilling to carry a sword or serve in the army—redefine their manhood? What did the prospect of losing one’s home and/or life do to the idea that men ought to provide for their families? What, then, constituted manhood? How did the practice of leaving one’s spouse affect people’s sense of manhood, womanhood, pride, and honor? In a different vein, what did it mean when Jan van Leiden and his cohort at Münster established polygyny? This act has been viewed from a number of angles: as sexual licentiousness; as a means to reach the fabled number of 144,000 elect more quickly; as a way to provide for the many single women; or as a not so subtle tactic to strengthen patriarchy and the influence of men, since now every woman was under a male head. Does the introduction of polygyny possibly imply a certain “crisis of masculinity”? Then again, how did Anabaptists and Spiritualists resolve the conflict between the demands of their religion and those of their traditional

153 Hille Feicken, Münster’s famed heroine, was an exceptional case among Anabaptist women. See Kobelt-Groch (1993), 64–146.

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social roles? What did accusations of criminality, dishonesty, and sexual licentiousness do to their image of an honorable man or woman? An analysis of masculinity among the Radicals also has to take into account that many of the early Anabaptists were former monks and priests. Moreover, did the extended, if not equal, role of women change how Anabaptist and Spiritualist women and men defined their identity? What effect did the different construction of masculinity have on that of femininity and vice versa? The field is rich indeed. One might wonder what insights into the more comprehensive construction of gender and its impact on Anabaptism and Spiritualism will be gained in the next two decades. Bibliography Primary Sources Lindberg, Carter, ed. The European Reformations Sourcebook. Malden, MA, 2000. Peter Riedemann’s Hutterite Confession of Faith. Translated and edited by John J. Friesen. Waterloo, Ontario, 1999. Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer [hereafter QGT ], vol. 4, Baden und Pfalz. Manfred Krebs, ed. Gütersloh, 1951. Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer [hereafter QGT ], vol. 5, Bayern, II. Abteilung. Karl Schornbaum, ed. Gütersloh, 1951. Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer [hereafter QGT ], vol. 15, Elsaß III, Stadt Straßburg 1536–1542. Marc Lienhard, Stephen F. Nelson, and Hans Georg Rott, eds. Gütersloh, 1986. Quellen zur Geschichte der Wiedertäufer [hereafter QGT ], vol. 2, Markgrafentum Brandenburg, Bayern I. Abteilung. Karl Schornbaum, ed. Leipzig 1934. Stupperich, Robert (ed.). Die Schriften Bernhard Rothmanns. Münster, 1970. Urkundliche Quellen zur Hessischen Reformationsgeschichte [hereafter UQH ], vol. 4, Wiedertäuferakten 1527–1626. Günther Franz, ed. Marburg, 1951. Van Braght, Thieleman J. The Bloody Theater or Martyrs Mirror. Scottdale, PA, 2004. Secondary Sources Abbott, Leona Stucky. “Anabaptist Women of the Sixteenth Century.” M.A. Thesis, Eden Theological Seminary. St. Louis, MO, 1979. Bainton, Roland H. Women of the Reformation. Vol. 1: In Germany and Italy. Minneapolis, 1971. Barrett, Lois Yvonne. “Women in the Anabaptist Movement,” in Study Guide on Women. Herta Funk, ed. Newton, KS, 1975, 32–38. ——. “Wreath of Glory: Ursula’s Prophetic Visions in the Context of Reformation and Revolt in Southwestern Germany, 1524–1530.” Ph.D. Diss., The Union Institute, Cincinnati, OH, 1992. Bederman, Gail. Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880–1917. Chicago, 1995. Bernhofer-Pippert, Elsa. Täuferische Denkweisen und Lebensformen im Spiegel Oberdeutscher Täuferverhöre. Münster, 1967.

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Blanke, Fritz. “Beobachtungen zum ältesten Täuferbekenntnis,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 37 (1940), 246ff. Blaisdell, Charmarie Jenkins. “The Matrix of Reform: Women in the Lutheran and Calvinist Movements,” in Triumph over Silence. Women in Protestant History, Richard L. Greaves, ed. Westport, CN, 1985, 13–44. Chudaska, Andrea. Peter Riedemann: Konfessionsbildendes Täufertum im 16. Jahrhundert. Gütersloh, 2003. Clasen, Claus-Peter. Anabaptism: A Social History, 1525–1618. Ithaca, 1972. ——. Die Wiedertäufer im Herzogtum Württemberg und in benachbarten Herrschaften. Ausbreitung, Geisteswelt und Soziologie. Stuttgart, 1965. Ditz, Toby L. “The New Men’s History and the Peculiar Absence of Gendered Power: Some Remedies from Early American Gender History,” Gender & History 16 (2004), 1–35. Douglas, Jane Dempsey. “Women and the Continental Reformation,” in Religion and Sexism. Images of Woman in the Jewish and Christian Traditions. Rosemary Radford Ruether, ed. New York, 1974, 292–318. Friedmann, Robert. “Die Briefe der österreichischen Täufer,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 26 (1929), 30–80. Gismann-Fiel, Hildegund. Das Täufertum im Vorarlberg. Dornbirn, 1982. Gregory, Brad S. Salvation at Stake. Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge, MA, 1999. Harrison, Wes. “The Role of Women in Anabaptist Thought and Practice: The Hutterite Experience of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” Sixteenth Century Journal 23 (1992), 46–69. Haude, Sigrun. “Anabaptist Women—Radical Women?” Infinite Boundaries. Order, Disorder, and Reorder in Early Modern German Culture, Max Reinhart, ed. Kirksville, MO, 1998, 313–27 Hecht, Linda Huebert. “An Extraordinary Lay Leader: The Life and Work of Helene of Freyberg, Sixteenth Century Noblewoman and Anabaptist from the Tirol.” Mennonite Quarterly Review 66 (1992), 312–41. ——. “Faith and Action: The Role of Women in the Anabaptist Movement of the Tyrol, 1527–1529,” M.A. Thesis, University of Waterloo, 1990. ——. “Women and religious change: The significance of Anabaptist women in the Tirol, 1527–29,” Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 21/1 (1992), 57–66. Hoyer, Siegfried. “Die Zwickauer Storchianer—Vorläufer der Täufer?” Sächsische Heimatblätter, suppl. 13 (1986), 60–78. Irwin, Joyce L. “Society and the Sexes,” in Reformation Europe: A Guide to Research, Steven Ozment, ed. St. Louis, MO, 1982, 343–59. ——. Womanhood in Radical Protestantism 1525–1675. New York, 1979. Jelsma, Auke. Frontiers of the Reformation. Dissidence and Orthodoxy in Sixteenth-Century Europe. Aldershot, 1998. ——. “De positie van de vrouw in de Radicale Reformatie.” Doopsgezinde Bijdragen 15 (1989), 25–36. Karant-Nunn, Susan. “Continuity and Change: Some Effects of the Reformation on the Women of Zwickau,” Sixteenth Century Journal 13 (1982), 17–42. Klassen, John. “Women and the Family Among Dutch Anabaptist Martyrs,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 60 (October 1986), 548–71. Klassen, William. Covenant and Community. The Life, Writings and Hermeneutics of Pilgram Marpeck. Grand Rapids, MI, 1968. Klötzer, Ralf. Die Täuferherrschaft in Münster. Stadtreformation und Welterneuerung. Münster, 1992. Kobelt-Groch, Marion. Aufsässige Töchter Gottes. Frauen im Bauernkrieg und in den Täuferbewegungen. Frankfurt/New York, 1993.

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——. “Why did Petronella Leave her Husband?” Mennonite Quarterly Review 62 (1988), 26–41. Lambert, Malcom. Medieval Heresy. Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation. Oxford UK, 2002. Maag, Karin. “Called to Be a Pastor: Issues of Vocation in the Early Modern Period,” Sixteenth Century Journal 35 (2004), 65–78. Mattern, Marlies. Leben im Abseits. Frauen und Männer im Täufertum (1525–1550). Eine Studie zur Alltagsgeschichte. Frankfurt, 1998. McSheffrey, Shannon. Gender and Heresy. Women and Men in Lollard Communities, 1420–1530. Philadelphia, 1995. Packull, Werner. “Anna Jansz of Rotterdam, a Historical Investigation of an Early Anabaptist Heroine,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 78 (1987), 147–73. Plenert, Wayne. “The Martyr’s Mirror and Anabaptist Women,” Mennonite Life (1975), 13–18. Reed, Jennifer H. “Dutch Anabaptist Female Martyrs and their Response to the Reformation.” MA Thesis, University of Florida, 1991. Schäufele, Wolfgang. Das missionarische Bewußtsein und Wirken der Täufer. Dargestellt nach oberdeutschen Quellen. Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1966. Schlachta, Astrid von. Hutterische Konfession und Tradition (1578–1619). Etabliertes Leben zwischen Ordnung und Ambivalenz. Mainz, 2003. Schwerhoff, Gerd. Köln im Kreuzverhör. Kriminalität, Herrschaft und Gesellschaft in einer frühneuzeitlichen Stadt. Bonn, 1991. Shepardson, Nikki. “Gender and the Rhetoric of Martyrdom in Jean Crespin’s Histoire des vrays tesmoins,” Sixteenth Century Journal 35 (2004), 155–74. Snyder, C. Arnold. Anabaptist History and Theology: Revised Student Edition. Kitchener, ON, 1997. Snyder, C. Arnold and Linda A. Huebert Hecht, eds. Profiles of Anabaptist Women. Sixteenth-Century Reforming Pioneers. Waterloo, ON, 1996. Sprunger, Keith L. “God’s Powerful Army of the Weak: Anabaptist Women of the Radical Reformation,” in Triumph over Silence, 45–74. Stayer, James M. “Numbers in Anabaptist Research,” in Commoners and Community. Essays in Honour of Werner O. Packull, C. Arnold Snyder, ed, Kitchener, ON, 2002, 51–73. Thomas, Keith. “Women and the Civil War Sects,” in Crisis in Europe 1560–1660. Essays from Past and Present, Trevor Aston, ed. London, 1975 [1965], 317–40. Thomsen, Marilyn Fagal. “Four Views of the Nature and Role of Women in Sixteenth-Century Protestantism—Lutheranism, Calvinism, Anabaptism, and English Puritanism.” M.A. Thesis, Loma Linda University, 1976. Umble, Jenifer Hiett. “Women and Choice: An Examination of the Martyr’s Mirror.” M.A. Thesis, Southern Methodist University, 1987. ——. “Women and Choice: An Examination of the Martyr’s Mirror,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 64 (1990), 135–145. Verheyden, A. L. E. Anabaptism in Flanders, 1530–1650. A Century of Struggle. Scottdale, PA, 1961. Weber, Max. The Sociology of Religion. Boston, 1922. Wiesner, Merry E. “Beyond Women and the Family: Towards a Gender Analysis of the Reformation,” Sixteenth Century Journal 18 (1987), 311–21. ——. Gender, Church and State in Early Modern Germany. Women and Men in History. New York, 1998. ——. Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge, MA, 1993. ——. “Women’s Response to the Reformation,” in The German People and the Reformation, R. Po-chia Hsia, ed. Ithaca and London, 1988, 148–71. Williams, George Hunston. The Radical Reformation. 3rd ed. Kirksville, MO, 1992.

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Wyntjes, Sherrin Marshall. “Women and Religious Choices in the Sixteenth Century Netherlands,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 75 (1984), 276–89. ——. “Women in the Reformation Era,” in Becoming Visible. Women in European History, Renate Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz, eds. Boston, 1977, 165–91. Zijlstra, Samme. Om de ware gemeente en de oude gronden. Geschiedenis von de dopersen in de Nederlanden 1531–1675. Hilversum and Leeuwarden, 2000.

CHAPTER TWELVE

ANABAPTIST MARTYRDOM: IMPERATIVES, EXPERIENCE, AND MEMORIALIZATION Brad S. Gregory Early Anabaptism has long been inseparable from martyrdom, and Anabaptist martyrdom has long been inseparable from the Martyrs Mirror. No other work has played so large a role in shaping modern awareness of Anabaptist martyrs from the Reformation era. In 1660, Thieleman Jansz van Braght, a learned minister from the Dordrecht congregation of Flemish Mennonites, published his Bloody Theater of the Baptism-Minded and Defenseless Christians. A massive folio organized in two parts, the martyrology presents a century-by-century chronicle of Christians claimed to have upheld believers’ baptism and who were killed for their convictions. It begins with Jesus and the apostles and runs through the fifteenth century, culminating in a vast compilation of stories about and sources written by sixteenthcentury Anabaptist martyrs. In 1685, after van Braght’s death, an enlarged, even more lavish edition—this time with Martyrs Mirror in the title—was published in Amsterdam, adorned with 104 dramatic copperplate engravings by Jan Luyken. New World translations of the Martyrs Mirror subsequently paralleled transatlantic Mennonite migrations. The first German translation of van Braght’s work appeared in 1748–49 and the initial English version in 1837, both in Pennsylvania. Joseph Sohm’s English translation of the original Dutch edition, first published in 1886, had been reprinted sixteen times by 1990, and sold more than 47,000 copies between 1938 and 1999.1 In North America, the centrality of the Martyrs Mirror and the iconic status of Luyken’s engravings were reinforced in the 1990s by the widely traveled “Mirror of the Martyrs” exhibit, organized by John Oyer and Robert Kreider.2 Van Braght’s martyrology has also been the principal

1

Juhnke (1999), 551; Mennonite Encyclopedia 3: 528. Oyer and Kreider (1990). The exhibit is on permanent display in the Kauffman Museum, North Newton, Kansas. 2

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source for learned analyses of Anabaptist martyrdom in recent decades, especially among North American scholars.3 In many respects, the Martyrs Mirror deserves its place of prominence. Without question, the experience of persecution, suffering, and martyrdom deeply marked the formative decades of Anabaptism. Van Braght’s is the most comprehensive Anabaptist martyrological source, and at over 1300 folio pages in the Dutch edition of 1685, the only martyrology in the Anabaptist tradition that bears comparison in historical scope with the massive Protestant martyrologies of the sixteenth century, the best known being John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments. Yet Foxe was a contemporary of the English Protestant martyrs of Mary Tudor’s reign, whose writings he helped to collect and whose stories he published. Van Braght compiled his work generations after the worst sufferings of German-speaking Anabaptists in central Europe in the late 1520s and early 1530s, and nearly a century after the most intense persecution of Dutch Mennonites from the 1550s into the early 1570s. Neither he nor Jan Luyken ever witnessed an execution for religion; both lived comfortably amid the urban culture of the Dutch Golden Age. This was part of van Braght’s ironic conundrum: his principal problem was not Mennonite persecution but prosperity. He labored as minister and martyrologist in circumstances dramatically different from those in which Anabaptist martyrs had lived and died. The Martyrs Mirror stands at the end, not the origin, of the martyrological tradition that was woven from various strands of Anabaptism in the Reformation era. Hence this discussion concludes rather than begins with van Braght’s work. Anabaptist martyrdom in the Reformation era is a complex subject with many facets. It embraces men and women from divergent Anabaptist groups, including the Swiss Brethren, South German and Austrian Anabaptists, Hutterites, Philipites, Davidites, and Mennonites; different chronologies of persecution subject to many local variables in the towns and territories of central Europe and the Low Countries; deeply held attitudes about persecution and suffering embedded within a traditional Christian world-view, both biblical and inherited from late medieval Christianity; different media through which memory of the martyrs was preserved, including oral stories, manuscripts,

3

E.g., Kreider (1984); Dyck (1985); Klassen (1986); and Umble (1990).

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songs, and publications; decisions by martyrologists about whom to include in their memorializations and how to portray them; and ways in which the martyrs and their stories shaped Anabaptist sensibilities during and after periods of active persecution. The subject’s complexity and profusion of relevant sources precludes anything approaching a comprehensive treatment here. For purposes of analysis and exposition, several of these aspects can be grouped under the related categories of imperatives, experience, and memorialization. Biblical directives within a religious and juridical context provided the parameters for martyrdom; men and women who refused to recant their convictions in this context were executed, and were recognized by fellow believers as martyrs; and their writings and experiences were memorialized in stories, songs, and print by sympathetic Anabaptists. Imperatives Seen in the most general terms, Anabaptist martyrdom was the product of two things: dedicated, devout men and women whose discipleship entailed the following of Christ even through persecution and death, and a cooperation between Protestant or (more commonly) Catholic religious and political authorities willing to enact capital laws for heresy and sedition against Anabaptists, especially in the wake of the Peasants’ War of 1524–1525, and a decade later following the Kingdom of Münster. Anabaptists’ willingness to die met authorities’ willingness to kill; the result was Anabaptist martyrdom. From its origins in the 1520s, Anabaptism, like the early evangelical movement in central Europe in general, was marked by an intense biblicism, with a much stronger emphasis on the New Testament than on the Old. The lack of explicit biblical sanction for the centuries-long practice of infant baptism was probably the most consequential recognition of Anabaptists’ reading of scripture, with its profound ecclesiological and political implications. But the Word of God was also the foundation for attitudes that sustained Anabaptist martyrs through persecution and death. The Bible offers many examples of righteous men and women who remained faithful to God and his commandments even at the cost of their lives. Referring to their witness in the Old Testament, the letter to the Hebrews recalled that “they were stoned to death, they were sawn in two, they were killed by the sword; they went about in skins of

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sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented” (Heb. 11:37).4 In addition to the sufferings of the prophets, Cain slew his brother Abel (Gen. 4), Zechariah was stoned to death (2 Chr. 24:20–22), and both Eleazar and the seven brothers among the Maccabees were tortured and executed for their refusal to eat pork in violation of Mosaic Law (2 Macc. 6, 7). In a singular category, of course, was the passion and crucifixion of Jesus, the redemptive death of God’s only son that opened salvation to those who, in response to God’s grace, answered the call to become his followers. Such were Christ’s genuine disciples, which is how sixteenth-century Anabaptists understood themselves. Before his own brutal death, Jesus clarified the demands of discipleship, the response it would evoke, and how God would reward it. “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:10). “Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it” (Luke 9:23–24). “If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you. . . . Remember the word that I said to you, ‘Servants are not greater than their master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you” ( John 15:18–20). “In the world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world!” ( John 16:33) It is impossible to exaggerate the power of such words for committed Anabaptists. The cumulative effect of hundreds of such passages made clear that discipleship implied rejection by the world and suffering in the master’s footsteps, but also that steadfastness was rewarded by eternal life. Properly understood, hardship and even death suffered for the truth were to be embraced and gave cause for rejoicing. The same message was reinforced in many other New Testament passages. When the apostles were flogged for preaching about Jesus, “they rejoiced that they were considered worthy to suffer dishonor for the sake of that name” (Acts 5:40–41), and Paul and Barnabas encouraged early disciples by telling them, “It is through many persecutions that we must enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). Paul told Timothy that “all who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Tim. 3:12), and Peter told Christians to “rejoice insofar as you are sharing Christ’s sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed” (1 Pet. 4:13). Considering their immersion in scripture and the concrete

4 All biblical quotations not translated from early modern sources are from the NRSV.

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circumstances in which the Swiss Brethren, the South German and Austrian Anabaptists, the Hutterites, and the Mennonites forged communities of faith, they could hardly have missed the obvious relevance of hundreds of such biblical passages. Most Anabaptist leaders lived under death’s shadow and many would be killed for their faith. They certainly saw the direct applicability of such scriptural passages. Even before the first adult baptisms in Zurich in January 1525, Conrad Grebel expressed views derived from such texts in a letter to Thomas Müntzer. He said that “Genuine, believing Christians are sheep among the wolves, sheep for the slaughter; they must be baptized in anxiety and distress, sadness, persecution, suffering, and death, tried in the fire, and must obtain the fatherland of eternal rest not by strangling their bodily enemies but rather their spiritual enemies.”5 Michael Sattler, imprisoned in Binsdorf, wrote to fellow Anabaptist prisoners at Horb just before his execution and shortly after leading the conference responsible for the Schleitheim Articles in February 1527. The former Benedictine monk told them that the “sure-footed and living way of Christ” meant walking through “the cross, distress, imprisonment, self-renunciation, and finally through death.” He quoted Hebrews 12:5–6: “Do not become weary when you are punished by the Lord, for the ones whom God loves, he chastises.”6 Like Grebel and Felix Mantz, Balthasar Hubmaier, the most theologically educated and widely published early Anabaptist leader, had spent time as Zwingli’s ally. Notwithstanding his defense of magistrates’ right and duty to exercise coercive power, between 1525 and 1527 Hubmaier repeatedly exhorted persecuted Anabaptists to steadfastness based on scripture.7 Different evidence for the way that the Swiss Brethren read—and likely taught and learned—passages pertaining to persecution comes from a biblical concordance assembled sometime between 1529 and 1540. It was published in at least fourteen German editions and one Dutch edition between c. 1540 and 1710, six of the German editions by c. 1570.8 The concordance is arranged topically: over sixty headings combine direct quotations from the Zurich German Bible, 5

QGTS, Zürich (1952), 1: 17. Clement (1908), 2: 318, 319. 7 For a few examples, see Hubmaier, QGT (1962), 9: 112–113, 115, 122, 202, 219–220, 223, 325. 8 Snyder (2001), vii. The lone Dutch edition was published c. 1558–1560 by Jan Hendricks van Schoonrewoerd in Franeker.—Joe Springer, “Bibliographical Introduction and Census of Known Editions,” in Snyder (2001), xxxix. 6

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with additional references to relevant biblical books and chapters for each topic. All are presented without any commentary. After several topics on the beginning of the Christian life, starting with “Fear of the Lord,” there follow four headings directly relevant to the biblical basis for Anabaptist martyrdom: “Persecution,” “Bearing Witness,” “Be Not Afraid,” and “Patience.” These sections include many more, often lengthier, scriptural passages than the few noted above.9 Such a concordance proves that early members of the Swiss Brethren clustered related biblical passages, including those relevant to persecution and martyrdom, when they read and taught scripture. It also suggests a practical tool whereby leaders might have helped illiterate Anabaptists to memorize and internalize the biblical passages they so impressively recalled in prison, whether before their interrogators or in their letters.10 Notwithstanding the indebtedness of South German and Austrian Anabaptist leaders to Müntzer’s apocalypticism, recent research has shown how much they shared with their Swiss Brethren contemporaries.11 Among such commonalities were exhortations to patient suffering. Hans Hut, a traveling book peddler and preacher and the most important early South German Anabaptist leader, saw baptism as the sign of a self-conscious willingness to suffer according to God’s will as part of the “gospel of all creatures.” Beginning from his idiosyncratic, cornerstone interpretation of Mark 16:15, Hut wrote that “no one can come to blessedness other than through the suffering and grief which God works in him (Acts 14[:22], 2 Tim 3[:12], Judges 8), just as all of Scripture, and every creature also, show nothing but the suffering Christ in all his members.”12 Hans Schlaffer, a former priest strongly influenced by Hut, wrote from prison that “all Scriptures speak of nothing but of the suffering of the elect, from Abel to the apostles; that is why the lamb has been killed ever since the beginning of the world.”13 The same sense of standing in a blessed tradition peopled by persecuted prophets and apostles is evident in the correspondence of Jacob Hutter, a hatmaker who emerged 9

Snyder (2001), 17–28. Snyder (2001), xiv–xv. 11 Snyder (1995), 115–127; Packull (1995), 33–53. 12 QGT (1938), 3: 17. Both Acts 14:22 and 2 Tim 3:12 were among the passages excerpted and included in the Swiss Brethren biblical concordance under the heading “Persecution.”—Snyder (2001), 21. 13 QGT (1938), 3: 88. 10

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from the milieu of South German and Austrian Anabaptism in the late 1520s. Extended passages in Hutter’s seven surviving letters to fellow believers, which bridged the distance between the South Tyrol and the precarious Anabaptist communities he had established in Moravia, read like an applied biblical concordance pertaining to persecution. Hutter wrote sometime in 1534, for example, that “Christ says about his own, only that they will be crucified, persecuted, chastised, reviled, killed, and murdered, robbed, driven out, captured, and tortured [cf. John 16:33, Matt. 10:17–22]. Thus holy Paul says, ‘Through much suffering and tribulation must we enter the Kingdom of God [Acts 14:22],’ and again he says, ‘if we are fellow sufferers, we shall also be fellow heirs; if we endure with Christ, we shall also rule or reign with him [Rom. 8:17].’” Afflicted Hutterites were to see that their ordeals, like those of their biblical predecessors, were signs by which “you shall clearly note and recognize that you are made holy and very dear and pleasing to God.”14 In the Low Countries after Münster, Mennonite leaders drew on scripture in the same manner. Menno Simons wrote the best known exhortatory Anabaptist treatise of the sixteenth century, his Comforting Admonition on the Suffering, Cross, and Persecution of the Saints for the Sake of God’s Word and His Testimony (1554/5). He marshaled dozens of scriptural passages and biblical examples of those persecuted for their fidelity to God, concluding by reminding readers what was at stake: “I admonish you and desire that with all seriousness you reflect well upon what is promised in the world to come for all battlers and conquerors in Christ, namely that unending, eternal kingdom, the crown of honor, and the life that will endure forever.”15 Menno’s Comforting Admonition, however, was simply the most extensive treatment of themes related to persecution and suffering he had expressed in print since his Meditation on the Twenty-fifth Psalm in 1537.16 Another Comforting Admonition, by Wouter van Stoelwijck, articulated similar views and was written before his execution in 1541 but not published until 1558.17 And Dirk

14

Fischer (1956), 23. For the dating of Hutter’s letters, see Packull (1995), 242–249. Menno [1554/5], sig. Q3. 16 For a few relevant passages, see Menno (1681), fols. 163–165; Menno (1967), 13, 23, 30, 40–41, 56, 156, 166–167. 17 [van Stoelwijck] (1558). According to Verheyden, van Stoelwijck was arrested on February 11, 1538, and executed in 1541; archival evidence of his execution seems not to have survived.—Verheyden (1950), 49, 62. According to van Braght, he was executed at Vilvoorde on March 24, 1541.—van Braght (1685), 2: 51. 15

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Philips, Menno’s trusted colleague, explained in multiple works first published in the late 1550s and early 1560s that persecution was the unavoidable result of conflict between the people of God and the people of the devil beginning with Cain’s murder of Abel. Like the biblical prophets and apostles, afflicted Mennonites would be comforted and rewarded with eternal life.18 Those who employed biblical passages to encourage persecuted fellow believers comprise a virtual roll-call of Anabaptist leaders in the sixteenth century, whether among the Swiss Brethren, the South German and Austrian Anabaptists, the Hutterites, or the Mennonites. In his Word, God had spoken—clearly, extensively, and directly— about how Christians were to respond to persecution for his truth. Threats and the reality of suffering, up through death, were to be met with patience and self-conscious awareness of Christ’s own passion in hopeful anticipation of eternal life promised by God. Martyrdom— understood as the Johannine “baptism by blood” (cf. 1 John 5:7)— was the final test and limiting experience of Nachfolge, itself an imitatio Christi in an Anabaptist idiom. To follow Christ included a willingness to follow him in affliction, persecution, and death, among his latterday disciples no less than among his first followers. Besides Anabaptist leaders’ invocation of relevant biblical passages, such texts and their practical imperatives were common in literally hundreds of vernacular songs that constitute one of the most characteristic Anabaptist genres of religious expression. As is well known, the first published Anabaptist hymnal in German was Some Beautiful Christian Songs (1564), a collection of fifty-three hymns written between 1535 and 1537 by Philipite Anabaptists in the castle prison of Passau.19 All but two of these songs were included in the first extant edition of the Ausbund (1583), the Swiss Brethren hymnal still used today by some Old Order Amish congregations. Many songs in the 1564 hymnal used scripture directly in exhortations to steadfastness. One hymn devoted to perseverance and attributed to Hans Gärber, for example, paraphrased John 10:7, 14:6, and 16:2 within one of its seven-line verses:

18 For just a few examples, see P[hilips], in BRN (1914), 10: 224, 245, 382–383, 404–405, 420, 421, 423, 424, 457. 19 For the circumstances in which the songs were originally written and sung by the Passau prisoners, see Riall (2003), 14–28; Packull (1995), 89–98; Wolkan (1903), 27–43.

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As Christ says to us, “I am the way and the door. As they slaughtered me, so expect for yourselves this will also happen to you. Whoever kills you will think that he has done God a service.”20

In one stanza of another song in the same collection, Hans Betz, the most prolific among the Passau prisoner songwriters, took his cue from Matthew 5:10: Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness. The truth teaches us that theirs is eternal joy. They endure, therefore, cross, agony, and pain, and live in God’s mercy. They shall be blessed.21

Hundreds of other hymns circulated in manuscript among the Hutterites, or were published in the prolific tradition of Mennonite hymnody, which paraphrased relevant biblical passages in rhyming songs whose words were set to music taken from familiar tunes.22 Many songs that were “profitable to be sung at times when the congregation is burdened with the cross and suffering” were called “songs of the cross” (cruyschliederen) by the important Waterlander leader, Hans de Ries, in his songbook (1582).23 Anabaptists were not simply hearing from their leaders what Christ had said and what God expected when they faced persecution. By singing together the same biblical admonitions, they were internalizing and reinforcing them. While scripture was clearly the primary foundation for their attitudes conducive to martyrdom, Anabaptists also inherited closely related values—also derived ultimately from scripture—from late medieval Christian culture. Until recently, scholars largely believed hyperbolic, early Anabaptist rhetoric about their rejection of everything 20

Riall (2003), 412, stanza 22. Riall (2003), 288, stanza 10. 22 For the Hutterite songs themselves, see Lieder (1914). On Dutch Mennonite hymnology, see van der Zijpp (1957); Hofman (1993). 23 [Hans de Ries], “Vorreden,” Lietboeck . . . (Rotterdam: Dierick Mullem, 1582), repr. in Wackernagel (1867; reprint, 1965), 38–39, 66–71, quotation on 67. For de Ries as this collection’s editor and author of its preface, see ME 1: 331. 21

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in an utterly corrupt, late medieval Church based on a direct, simple recovery of God’s Word in the vernacular. But just as Werner Packull has shown that late medieval mysticism influenced early South German and Austrian Anabaptists, and Arnold Snyder has suggested that the Swiss Brethren’s biblical hermeneutic was closer to medieval monastic lectio divina than to a hyper-protestantization of sola scriptura, so it seems apparent that attitudes about patience and suffering in late medieval piety were relevant to Anabaptist martyrdom.24 The imitation of Christ in the manner encouraged by the devotio moderna, the affective identification of individual Christians with Christ’s suffering, the related emphasis on the virtue of patience and its application in one’s ordinary life, and the concern with the “art of dying well” (ars moriendi ), were pervasive aspects of the religious culture in which Felix Mantz and Conrad Grebel fell out with Huldrych Zwingli, and in which Balthasar Hubmaier, Hans Hut, Jacob Hutter, and Menno Simons came of age.25 Indeed, two generations later, when Jan Wouters van Cuyck was tortured in Dordrecht in 1572, he described himself, beaten, bloodied, and blindfolded, “as an Ecce Homo”—a reference to the widespread late medieval (and early modern Catholic) depiction of the scourged Christ prior to his crucifixion, a staple image in Catholic devotion to Christ’s passion.26 All these aspects of late medieval piety were reinforced, not rejected, when Anabaptists turned to scripture and responded in their distinctive ways to Christ’s call to discipleship. Lutheran, Reformed Protestant, and Roman Catholic contemporaries demonstrated that Anabaptists had neither a monopoly on scriptural interpretation, nor on the Bible’s many passages about persecution and suffering. John Calvin wrote multiple anti-Nicodemite treatises for afflicted Protestants in his native France, and William Allen exhorted persecuted Catholics in Elizabethan England, both using the same biblical examples and texts as did Anabaptists.27 Yet the Anabaptist context for martyrdom was distinctive because of their greater vulnerability. Anabaptists rejected the principled cooperation

24

Packull (1977); Snyder (2001), xvi. For these and other themes that influenced the revival of Christian martyrdom in the sixteenth century, see Gregory (1999), 50–62; Gregory (2000). 26 Wouters van Cuyck and Jans (1579), sig. [A6v]. 27 On magisterial Protestant and Catholic martyrological traditions in the period, including exhortations to steadfastness, see Gregory (1999). 25

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between ecclesiastical and political authorities, the Constantinian model that prevailed throughout the Latin Middle Ages and persisted in various forms among Lutherans and Reformed Protestants as well as Roman Catholics in early modern confessional state-building. With the sole (and less than secure) exception of Moravia, where some nobles sheltered Hutterites in their resistance to imperial control, genuine refuges for Anabaptists were few throughout most of the sixteenth century. Whether in Zwinglian Zurich, German Lutheran territories, or the Catholic domains of the Holy Roman Empire, including the Low Countries, Anabaptists often faced severe laws and judicial measures that lent particular immediacy to biblical directives to them as persecuted followers of Christ. Anabaptists were subject to anti-heresy laws for the crime of rebaptism from 1525, but actual judicial proceedings against them by Catholic and magisterial Protestant authorities varied considerably depending on place and time. Whether in newly evangelical cities and territories, or in those that remained Catholic, it was largely secular ecclesiastical authorities who controlled heresy proceedings in the sixteenth century and so were directly responsible for Anabaptists’ deaths.28 It is no coincidence that authorities prosecuted Anabaptists so intensely during the later 1520s in central Europe, and from 1535 through 1539 in the Low Countries. Past historiography often regarded the early Swiss Brethren as uniformly pacifist and so the polar opposite of the revolutionary peasants of 1524–25; the Kingdom of Münster was a bizarre aberration that shared nothing of substance with Mennonites in the Low Countries. Hence it was easy to depict authorities as cruelly bent on the indiscriminate slaughter of peaceful Anabaptists alongside of insurrectionist rebels. Now that research has demonstrated that Anabaptists and future Anabaptists participated in the Peasants’ War, and shown that both Mennonites and Münsterites shared a common root in Melchiorite Anabaptism, scholarly assessments of authorities in an era of fragile stability have become less facile.29 Robert Riall has put it well with respect to the apprehension of the Passau Philipites in 1535: “With the events at Münster, 28

On the direct responsibility for heresy executions by secular rather than ecclesiastical authorities, see Monter (1996); for the southern Low Countries in particular, see Goossens (1997), 1: chaps. 2–3; Goossens (1998), 2: chap. 2, esp. 85–93. 29 The study that undercut any mutual exclusivity between pacifist Anabaptists and violent peasants is Stayer (1991).

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Turkish armies pressing in the Balkans, and the bloody memory of the Peasants’ War, vagrant bands crossing international borders looked potentially serious. Successive waves of exiles out of Moravia looked exactly like the successive waves of supporters that had come out of Amsterdam to Münster less than two years before.”30 Just as their immersion in God’s Word amid persecution renders intelligible Anabaptists’ willingness to die, so the Kingdom of Münster and the involvement of some Anabaptists and future Anabaptists in the Peasants’ War renders intelligible the particular intensity with which Anabaptists were prosecuted in the years immediately following each of these episodes, and authorities’ extreme sensitivity to religious radicalism in subsequent decades. Experience For about a half century after the mid-1520s, the large majority of Anabaptists lived under some threat of persecution and in communities of belief pervaded by biblical imperatives to perseverance. This context for Anabaptist martyrdom established the basic circumstances for the experience of actual Anabaptist martyrs. Because many sixteenth-century archival sources are no longer extant, we do not know exactly how many Anabaptists were judicially executed, and likely never will. The figure is probably between two and three thousand, about one thousand from central Europe (Switzerland, south and central Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and Moravia) and somewhat more than this from the Low Countries, with a smaller number of executions having occurred elsewhere.31 The majority were men, although the proportion of female Anabaptist martyrs—between twenty and thirty percent—is higher than the proportion of female martyrs in the sixteenth century among either magisterial Protestants or Roman Catholics.32 The experience of martyrdom will here be used broadly to encompass Anabaptist experience between apprehension and actual execution. It typically included imprisonment, interrogations in the (sometimes successful) attempt to secure recantations, sometimes torture, often 30

Riall (2003), 20. For the Low Countries, see Monter (1996), 49, 63; Duke (1990); for central Europe, see Clasen (1973). 32 Joldersma and Grijp (2001), 15. 31

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communication with fellow believers via correspondence, and the anticipation of death.33 The particular experience of individual martyrs could and did vary significantly within this basic pattern, one dictated not by Anabaptists but by the authorities responsible for their deaths. Before imprisonment or interrogation, suspected Anabaptists were arrested. Apprehension was the first stage of a process that could lead to execution, depending on the decisions and actions of both Anabaptists and authorities. Laws usually specified that by virtue of their loyalty oath, citizens were obliged to inform governmental officials about anyone suspected of criminal activity. This included suspected heretics, among them Anabaptists. Such was the admonition in the joint decree of the cities of Zurich, Bern, and St. Gallen against the Anabaptists, for example, issued in late summer 1527.34 Actual arrests in Austria during the harsh suppression of Anabaptists under Ferdinand of Habsburg were originally the duty of local authorities; but by March 1528, their performance judged inadequate, Ferdinand shifted responsibility to roving imperial agents. Paid informants worked with them and local Catholic clergy, the latter charged with keeping lists of those who shirked their ecclesiastical duties. Ferdinand offered major bounties for the capture of Anabaptist leaders, and agents raided suspected Anabaptist meeting places, a practice that sometimes netted arrests.35 This vigilance led to apprehension of the Philipites responsible for the hymns later published in Some Beautiful Christian Songs; they had been forced out of Moravia in August and September 1535, as news of the Kingdom of Münster sent shock waves across Europe.36 Decades later, when Mennonites rather than Münsterites preoccupied authorities in the Low Countries, the energetic inquisitor Pieter Titelmans traversed Flanders on horseback year round, regardless of the weather, accompanied by his assistants. Relying as did Ferdinand’s agents on paid informants and spies, Titelmans knew that suspected heretics followed his movements, so he made most of his arrests at night, sometimes under the additional cover of thunderstorms.37

33 34 35 36 37

For the organization of this section I am indebted to Covington (2003). QGTS, Ostschweiz (1973), 2: 5. Packull (1995), 192–193. Riall (2003), 19. On the reaction to Münster in Germany, see Haude (2000). Decavele (1975), 1: 23–25, 26.

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Hans van Overdam, who was burned at the stake in Ghent on July 9, 1551, described how he and fellow believers were betrayed and apprehended. In a prison letter, he told how one who “seemed to be the most devout brother” acted as “a Judas,” and tipped off armed men under the authority of the bailiff of Ghent about a Mennonite rendezvous in the woods on a Sunday morning. Having waited for but not met their co-believers, Hans sang softly as he and his companion, Jannijn, walked along, hoping to draw the attention of their fellows, were they in fact within earshot. “Then I heard a rustling in the woods,” he wrote, a sound that he thought was the others. “Then we stood still and looked to see who was going to come out, when there emerged three men with weapons and sticks. Then I said, ‘Well, boys, have you been looking for a hare and not captured it?’ Then their faces became deathly pale and they stepped up to us and grabbed me by the arm, saying ‘We’ve captured you.’ So they seized us and said, ‘We’ve captured an even greater number.’” Hans and Jannijn saw a wagon full of their Mennonite companions, guarded by three judges and their attendants. All were hauled off to prison, Hans and Jannijn spending three days in a castle dungeon before their incarceration in Ghent.38 Between capture and execution, most martyrs’ experience was dominated by prison, often in appalling conditions. Typically there was little light or fresh air; chains often restricted their movement, and diet was meager at best. In March 1526, for example, the Zurich city council specified that imprisoned Anabaptists were to be given only bread to eat, water to drink, and straw for bedding.39 However trying the conditions, most martyrs spent only a few weeks or months in prison, because in the sixteenth century incarceration was rarely used as a form of punishment per se. Prisons served rather as temporary holding quarters for those awaiting interrogation, trial, and punishment. Highly unusual is the case of Fritz Erbe. After his arrest in western Thuringia in 1532 and because Philip of Hesse was opposed to the execution of non-seditious Anabaptists, Erbe spent the final sixteen years of his life imprisoned in Eisenach for refusing to recant his views.40 Much more commonly, Anabaptists were 38 Hans van Overdam, in Het Offer des Heeren [1570; hereafter OH ], in BRN (1904), 2: 102–104. On Hans van Overdam, see also Verheyden (1945), 15. 39 QGTS, Zürich (1952), 1: 178. 40 Erbe’s story is told in Oyer (1964), 68–70.

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confined for some weeks or months; they were questioned about their beliefs and activities, and attempts were made to secure their formal recantations. The answers given by interrogated Anabaptists enabled authorities to determine whether they were guilty of legally specified religious crimes, while they enabled Anabaptists to witness to their understanding of Christian truth. Surviving legal records and martyrs’ prison writings provide different yet fundamentally corroborative types of evidence about the convictions for which Anabaptists were executed, and indirectly, about their experience of interrogation. The severity with which laws were applied could and did vary— Anabaptists had it worse in Austria during the late 1520s, just after the Peasants’ War, for example, than did Mennonites during the 1550s in Flanders, when only a small percentage of those pursued for heresy by Titelmans were executed. Nonetheless, authorities by and large sought to persuade Anabaptists to recant their beliefs and so (in most cases, if they were not leaders or repeat offenders) to save themselves.41 Paradoxically, those ultimately responsible for the deaths of religious dissidents usually wanted them to live. But this depended on abjuration—by those who knew Christ’s words, “whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven” (Matt. 10:33). Authorities often tried multiple times to persuade Anabaptists to renounce their beliefs. Between late July and late November 1560, for example, various combinations of inquisitors, representatives from the male religious orders in Ghent, civic magistrates, and members of the secular clergy tried no fewer than twelve times with Soetken van den Houte and her three female companions.42 First, however, interrogators had to learn whether in fact their suspects were Anabaptists, and so they asked questions about their views of infant baptism, the sacraments, the swearing of oaths, political authority, and other issues that set Anabaptists apart. Numerous Anabaptists, especially Dutch Mennonites, recounted their experiences with interrogators in letters and confessions of faith written from prison. They wrote of defending their views based on scripture and holding their own in face-to-face disputes, even though interrogators rejected their exegesis and many of their doctrines. 41

For his career as a whole, some 8–12 percent of the heresy cases handled by Titelmans ended in execution.—van de Wiele (1982), 59–61. 42 Cannaert (1835), 248–267; de Rycker (1878), 3–18; Verheyden (1945), 26–27.

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Martyrs’ facility with scripture again suggests the importance of topical biblical concordances for Anabaptist instruction and religious formation. Their use would help to account for Anabaptists’ skillful recollection and invocation of clusters of relevant biblical passages. Claesken Gaeledochter described the back-and-forth exchange between herself and an inquisitor in Friesland in 1559. A brief excerpt hints at her skill in using scripture pertaining to infant baptism and original sin: Inquisitor: Why have you not let your children be baptized? Claesken: I can’t see from the scriptures that they should be. Inquisitor: Yet David says [Ps. 51:5], “In sin was I born, in sin did my mother conceive me.” Therefore because children are born in original sin, they must be baptized if they are to be saved. Claesken: If a person may be saved by an external sign, Christ died in vain. Inquisitor: It is written in John 3[:5], “one must be born again in water and Spirit,” therefore children must also be baptized. Claesken: Christ says that not to children but to those with understanding, hence I devoted myself to rebirth; we know that the children are in the Lord’s hands. The Lord says [Matt. 19:14]: “Let the children come to me, to such belong the kingdom of heaven.” Inquisitor: The members of Stephanas’s household were baptized [1 Cor. 16:15], among whom were probably some children. Claesken: We don’t rely on what might have been—we have an assured certainty.43

Not only did Claesken invoke biblical verses to support her arguments; she also rejected the inquisitor’s countervailing interpretations. Multiple additional sessions failed to sway Claesken. The same was true of the other Anabaptists then under arrest, who refused to renounce their views, despite the threat of death. As far as their beliefs were concerned, such Anabaptists openly confessed what their interrogators sought—even if “confession” had entirely different connotations for each party involved. Barring abjuration, Anabaptists’ own words provided the evidence that convicted them, rendering unnecessary for this purpose the judicial torture that was common in late medieval and early modern Europe. Yet authorities wanted to know more: the names of family members, friends, and fellow believers, that they might also pursue them. Anabaptists were understandably unwilling to provide this information, not wanting 43

Claesken Gaeledochter, in OH, in BRN (1904), 2: 326.

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to endanger others. So authorities often resorted to torture, which was thus part of many martyrs’ prison experience. Maeyken Boosers, for example, executed in Doornik in September 1564, replied that she “did not know” and “could not say” who had baptized her or whether other Anabaptists were in the city. So she was led to the rack, bound, tormented, and asked again to name names, but “I said that I couldn’t do that, so they unbound me without anyone having been named, for which God be praised, but they knew Pier’s and Jorge’s names from the outset, therefore I had to name them also, but I didn’t know their family names.”44 Jan Wouters van Cuyck was tortured at least three times and provided a detailed, harrowing account. Again, names were sought—of his wife, other family members, those who had baptized and married him—but he told those who threatened him “that I had resolved in my heart to name no one, as I had to be responsible for myself and did not want to be a traitor.”45 Threatened by the bailiff and his assistants, he remained silent, and so was stripped to the waist, bound hand and foot, blindfolded, hoisted up by his hands, and beaten with rods. He remained noncompliant, so the process was repeated. Told to expect worse in two days unless he talked, his torturers had to dress and undress his bloodied body. On the following Wednesday he again refused to cooperate, so his hands were tied behind his back; he was raised up and struck on his original wounds. Bearing ordinary hardships in life was manageable, he wrote, “but when with Job one is afflicted in the body, when the body is broken so that blood flows, and this is repeated four days later, that cuts to the core.”46 Still unable to secure any names, the bailiff tortured him yet again, forcing him first to listen to the torture of a female fellow Anabaptist, Ariaenken Jans. Yet he did not yield. Others were less successful in resisting torture or persisting in their faith. For obvious reasons, martyrological accounts intended to inspire do not trumpet the fact, but legal documents make clear that many Anabaptists recanted their beliefs under pressure. Unless they returned

44 [ Jan Gheertsen], Een Testament ghemaecket by Jan Gheertsen . . . ([Steenwijk: Herman ‘t Zangers], 1566), fol. 12v. This work was printed as a sort of supplement to the 1566 edition of OH, with independent foliation. For the passage in OH, see BRN (1904), 2: 412. 45 Wouters van Cuyck and Jans (1579), sigs. A2v–A3. 46 Ibid., sig. B2v.

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to their convictions and were executed, they did not become Anabaptist martyrs; but their actions were the product of prison, interrogation, and (the threat of ) torture no less than those of Anabaptists who persevered. Numerous early female Anabaptists in Austria abjured their views, for example, including the noblewoman Elisabeth von Wolkenstein of Uttenheim, who was interrogated four times beginning in February 1534 before agreeing in May to abjure and rejoin the Catholic Church.47 Likewise, Endres Keller, from a prominent Rothenberg family, recanted in November 1536 after spending several months in prison and enduring torture.48 Sometimes, major leaders renounced their beliefs: in the Low Countries, for example, fifteen percent of the Anabaptists interrogated in Antwerp between 1550 and 1566 abjured their views, among whom was Gillis van Aken, an elder who had baptized hundreds of people in the Low Countries and northern Germany, including many who themselves were executed.49 Some recanters returned to Anabaptism, while others (as far as we know) did not. Many prison letters make clear that imprisoned Anabaptists loved and missed their family members, which must have influenced the decisions of many who abjured. Rather than court judicial encounters, Anabaptists in many regions sought accommodation with governing authorities in the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. John Oyer has referred to some in Württemberg as “Anabaptist Nicodemites,” willing to abide by authorities’ behavioral demands, including attendance at Lutheran church services, in order to avoid trouble.50 Abjurations among all the major Anabaptist groups show that despite the insistence on believers’ baptism and deliberate discipleship, those apprehended did not always persist. Authorities often got their way. Imprisoned Anabaptists who became martyrs persevered due to their faith. They exercised it through prayer and the singing of songs. When literate, they expressed it through the activity of writing. They believed the many biblical passages about the blessedness of those persecuted for righteousness’ sake and the reward for those who

47

Hecht (1996), 156–163; Schmelzer (1996), 164–177. QGT, Bayern (1951), 5/2: 218–222. 49 On the percentage of Anabaptists who recanted in Antwerp, see Marnef (1996), 80; on Gillis van Aken and his recantation, see Antwerp Stadsarchief, Vierschaar, V147, fol. 74; ME, 2: 518–519. 50 Oyer (1997); see also Driedger (2002). 48

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suffer for following Christ. They acted on the imperatives to martyrdom articulated by Anabaptist leaders, reinforced by hundreds of rhyming “songs of the cross,” and clustered in topical concordances of the Bible. Such a conclusion is all but unavoidable when one reads the many prison letters, songs, and confessions of faith written by Anabaptist martyrs, male as well as female.51 The experience of female and male martyrs differed in certain ways that reflect general differences between men and women in sixteenth-century society—an unrepentant pregnant woman would not be executed until after her baby was delivered, for example. Women sometimes expressed a distinctive modesty about their bodies when they felt particularly vulnerable, as in situations of torture. But judging from their surviving prison writings, there were no substantive differences in religious convictions or sensibilities between male and female martyrs.52 Repeatedly and pointedly, both men and women recalled and rehearsed scriptural verses directly relevant to their prison ordeal and the prospect of death. The Bible offered a storehouse of persecuted predecessors with whom both male and female martyrs identified directly. What had happened to the Israelites and Christ’s earliest disciples was now happening again to the Lord’s latter-day disciples, who had restored genuine Christianity after having sealed with baptism their transformation by the Holy Spirit. Adriaen Cornelis, executed in Leiden in 1551, poured forth biblical examples of “how the gracious Father was with all devout children of God, and how he preserved and upheld them with his mighty hand,” including Abraham, Jacob, Ezekiel, Daniel, Rahab, Susanna, Peter, the apostles, and Joseph. “Thus will God change your sadness into joy, just as he himself says [ John 16:20].”53 Ariaenken Jans told her husband that she and others were bearing everything with patience “according to the example of Job, the prophets, the apostles, and

51 A recent article by Piet Visser demonstrates both that those responsible for collecting and editing Dutch Mennonite martyrs’ prison letters that appeared in OH often made more precise or complete some of the biblical paraphrases and quotations in the copies of the martyrs’ letters from which they worked, and that the marked biblicism of the martyrs’ letters originated with the martyrs themselves, not with copyists or editors. See Visser (2003a), 82–86. 52 For differences in the experience of male and female martyrs, see Joldersma and Grijp (2001), 16–17; for similarities in their experience and prison writings, see Gregory (1997b). 53 Adriaen Cornelis, in OH, in BRN (1904), 2: 196.

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the end of our Lord and other martyrs after them; now we go forth firmly in order to complete our struggle through the Lord’s help with trusting hearts, unto death, for we know and believe that the crown of eternal life is prepared for us.”54 Joos Verkindert, killed in Antwerp in 1570, exhorted his wife to patience, for the Lord “always preserves his own, as we may read in many passages in holy scripture.” “He preserved Noah from the flood, brought Abraham through faith into an alien land, . . . delivered Lot from Sodom, transformed Joseph’s great sadness into great joy in Egypt, and made Moses into a great leader who brought Israel out of Egypt; he delivered Daniel from the lion’s den, the three youths from the fiery furnace.”55 Whether in biblical times or in the sixteenth century, persecution of the godly by the wicked was part of the primal dialectic of salvation history, a struggle between good and evil, darkness and light. This view, expressed by Menno Simons, Dirk Philips, and other leaders, and implied in the martyrs’ direct identification with biblical predecessors, would eventually find its most elaborate expression in van Braght’s Martyrs Mirror. Besides identification with historical precursors, support was offered by like-minded contemporaries—family members, fellow believers, and friends—with whom imprisoned Anabaptists often maintained contact via correspondence. Word from the outside came like a flood of grace: “I was so delighted when I received the letter you sent to me,” Verkindert wrote to his wife, “which I also read with tears, through which you conveyed such great, heartfelt compassion for me.”56 Others prayed for and remembered the martyrs. Soetken van den Houte was grateful to her brother and sister for two letters, “and I thank you very deeply for all the friendship that you have ever shown me and continue to show me.”57 Strong social relationships, however, implied the anxiety of anticipated separation through death. Martyrs’ words of tender love for family members can be almost overwhelmingly poignant. Jacob de Roore, for example, wrote to his wife about her imminent widowhood and their children: “Therefore I bid you, my dear wife, beloved in God, to be patient, and do always the best with my children, for they must now for the

54 55 56 57

Wouters van Cuyck and Jans (1579), sig. [K6r–v]. Joos Verkindert to his wife, July 11, 1570, in Gregory (2002), 230. Verkindert to his wife, July 13, 1570, in Gregory (2002), 232. Soetken van den Houte to her sister, in van den Houte [1582], sig. [B7v].

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Lord’s sake be left behind by their father, who loves them with his whole heart. Farewell, my dear children, farewell C., my eldest daughter, dearer to me than gold or silver or precious treasure, but the Lord must be the dearest, and for his sake one must leave everything.”58 Christiaen Rijcen, too, executed in 1588 in Hondschoote, encouraged his wife and was solicitous for their children: “do the best with the children, I bid you, for they and you are so often in my thoughts that I often think of you with sadness.”59 After apprehension, imprisonment, interrogations, torture, prayer, writing, reading, reflecting, singing, and the anticipation of death, martyrdom itself presupposed execution. The prison experience of recalcitrant Anabaptists who were not exiled generally culminated in death, most commonly by burning, beheading, or drowning, and occasionally, for women in the Low Countries, by being buried alive.60 Traditionally, public executions were carefully orchestrated spectacles enacted before large crowds, meant to deter others and reinforce widely shared beliefs and norms. Their gruesomeness was inversely proportional to the restricted communications, surveillance, and power of the authorities who carried them out. But depending on local circumstances, the sixteenth century’s breakdown of shared religion sometimes meant a breakdown in the intended function of executions. Some bystanders might express sympathy rather than scorn for an Anabaptist regarded not as a criminal, but as a victim, a hero—a martyr. Anabaptists’ dying behavior might inspire rather than deter, as happened to Claes de Praet: the comportment of four Anabaptists executed in Lier in 1551 moved him “to investigate for what faith these people died there so willingly,” as a result of which he “searched the scriptures,” converted, and was himself executed for his new faith in 1556.61 Because public executions could backfire in this way, Holland’s judicial court recommended secret executions as early as 1527, a practice frequently followed in later decades in cities such as The Hague, Utrecht, Antwerp, Ghent, and Middelburg.62

58 Jacob de Roore to his wife, May 22–23, 1569, in Gregory (2002), 77–78, quotation on 78. 59 Christiaen Rijcen to his wife, February 22, 1588, in Gregory (2002), 344. 60 For the southern Low Countries specifically, see Goosens (1998), 2: 52–53. 61 Claes de Praet, in OH, in BRN (1904), 2: 245–246; see also Verheyden (1961), 40–41, 41 n. 24. 62 Duke (1990), 76–77. For a similar dynamic in Austria under Ferdinand in the late 1520s and early 1530s, see Packull (1995), 193.

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Soetken van den Houte and two of her three female companions, for example, were beheaded inside Ghent’s castle of the counts of Flanders on November 20, 1560.63 Whatever the reaction of onlookers and whatever their prison experience, considerable evidence suggests that many Anabaptist martyrs met death with joy. Modern scholars might be tempted to dismiss Anabaptist accounts of joyful steadfastness as predictably self-serving hagiography, were it not for recurrent, corroborative remarks by hostile Catholics and Protestants. A Catholic chronicler in the Bavarian town of Kaufbeuren, for example, reported that five Anabaptists executed in May 1528 were “completely joyful,” one of whom praised God and kissed the executioner.64 In 1532, several years into the suppression of Austrian Anabaptists under Ferdinand, one of Martin Luther’s companions asked him about “how constantly and joyfully they had died.”65 The Dominican Johannes Fabri von Heilbronn described Anabaptists’ dying behavior in 1550: “They dance and jump in the fire, view the glistening sword with fearless hearts, speak and preach to the people with smiles on their faces; they sing Psalms and other songs until their souls have departed, they die with joy, as if they were in happy company, they remain strong, assured, and steadfast to the point of death.”66 And in his lengthy refutation of Anabaptism published in 1565, the Walloon Calvinist minister Guy de Brès wrote that one of the principal means by which Anabaptists seduced people was through “their constancy in suffering and in dying.”67 Such descriptions are less surprising when understood together with the prison experience of Anabaptists and faith’s role in grounding their hope of heavenly reward. After interrogations, the pain of torture, and the sorrow of social separation, they anticipated eternal joy and so were themselves joyful in dying. Memorialization In hundreds of cases, martyrs’ names, experiences, words, and dying actions did not die with them. They were preserved through oral 63 64 65 66 67

Verheyden (1945), 26–27. QGT, Bayern (1951), 5/2: 137/18–26. Luther (1883–), Tischreden, 2: 102/9–10, no. 1444. Fabri von Heilbronn (1550), sig. E3v. de Brès (1565), sig. [a6].

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accounts, narrative songs, manuscripts, the printed word, and presented to fellow Hutterites, Swiss Brethren, or Mennonites as a patrimony of triumph over persecution. Remembrance of those killed for their faith reinforced the reality of persecution and served to root martyrdom deeply in the religious mentality of surviving Anabaptists. Events and prison experiences were evanescent; but stories, songs, and letters kept alive the memory of the martyrs. In all likelihood, orally transmitted stories and reports played a fundamental role in Anabaptist awareness of their martyrs. Yet oral communication’s transience renders it impervious to direct historical investigation. Closely related to oral stories, however, are the many narrative songs about martyrs, a central means by which their memory was preserved. Just as “songs of the cross” exhorted Anabaptists to perseverance, narrative songs told stories about the steadfast. Like consolatory songs, martyr songs almost always lacked musical notation and were set to familiar tunes, known as contrafacta. Their rhyming, lilting verses must have facilitated memorization and made the songs, in some settings, more an oral than a written genre. When a new martyr song used as contrafactum the tune of an existing martyr song— as happened no fewer than twelve times with a song about Jörgen Wagner, “Whoever Wants to Follow Christ Now”—we have strong evidence that the tune had been memorized and the song’s content was widely known.68 The songs helped to fix in the minds of hearers and singers the martyrs’ memorable words and actions, whether during their prison experience or executions. A song of fourteen five-line stanzas about Gillis de Gusseme and Lysbette Piersins, for example, identified them and the setting of their execution—Ghent, on the afternoon of July 21, 1551—in its first two stanzas.69 Subsequent stanzas described their comportment and words as they were led to the stake, comparing them to Christ and recounting their mutual encouragement: Gillis said, “O dear, good sister That you might be patient in your suffering, Comfort yourself devoutly in the Lord.” “I do, my brother,” said Lysbette, “From him will I never be separated.”

68

Lieseberg (1991), 275, 277–278, 284–286, 288, 293, 296–297, 306. Song 8 in Een Lietboecxken, tracterende van den Offer des Heeren, in BRN (1904), 2: 535–536. 69

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Just before death, Gillis echoed Christ’s dying words, “Oh, heavenly Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” The song’s final stanza drove home the moral, which linked this martyr song with the renewed imperative to steadfastness and trust in God: O people, do not fear the Emperor’s law Which stands against the truth But take God’s judgment to heart He will help you out of every evil And deliver you from all pains.70

Other songs dwelled on the process of interrogation, incorporating into rhyming stanzas the responses of Anabaptists questioned about baptism, the Eucharist, the swearing of oaths, and other disputed issues. The core of the martyrs’ witness—for what and how they had died—was captured in a musical form accessible even to the illiterate. In addition to oral transmission via narrative songs, various sorts of manuscripts memorialized the martyrs, from succinct lists of their names to individual prison letters to the lengthy chronicles and song collections of the Hutterites. In the summer of 1527, for example, Wilhelm Reublin sent copies of his handwritten account of the recent deaths of Anabaptists to congregations in Zollikon, Basel, Appenzell, and Grüningen.71 When Julius Lober, a tailor and former priest, was arrested in the duchy of Ansbach en route to Moravia in 1531, he had with him a list of more than four hundred Anabaptists killed in fifty-two different towns and territories.72 Similarly, when he was apprehended in 1533, Paul Rumer had a small codex of several transcribed prison letters.73 The hundreds of published Dutch Mennonite prison writings originated as manuscripts. The only surviving holograph known is a farewell letter from Maeyken Wens to her son, Adriaen, written the day before she was burned in Antwerp on October 6, 1573.74 A manuscript codex (c. 1560) of sixteen letters by Jeronimus Segers and Lijsken Aerts proves that copies of Dutch

70

Ibid., 537, stanzas 10, 12, 14. QGTS, Zürich (1952), 1: 250. 72 QGT, Bayern (1951), 5/2, 278–279; Clasen (1972), 370, 486 n. 15; Packull (1995), 84–85. 73 Packull (1995), 208–212. 74 For a photographic reproduction and transcription of this letter, see Joldersma and Grijp (2001), 186–188. 71

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martyrs’ letters were made and circulated.75 In his farewell instruction to his three children, Henrick Alewijns told them to “make three copies of this little book, one for each of you.”76 The Hutterites preserved their writings almost entirely through manuscripts. About three hundred codices are known, which consist of different kinds and combinations of sources.77 Already a century ago, Rudolf Wolkan had identified more than twenty codices consisting entirely of Hutterite songs copied between the late sixteenth and early eighteenth centuries, some with as few as a dozen and others with over one hundred songs.78 Hutterites preserved and copied more than a hundred prison letters of their martyrs, including some from among early South German and Austrian Anabaptist martyrs who often became members of their earliest communities.79 Extensive copying of manuscripts by the Hutterites, institutionalized in their Schreibstuben, ensured that their martyrological heritage was maintained as an integral part of their religious life. Yet it also restricted that heritage as an almost exclusively Hutterite patrimony. In this sense, an informational separatism marked the Hutterites, parallel to their distinctive, communitarian socio-religious separatism—except when others sought them out, as did certain Mennonites seeking martyrological sources in the 1590s.80 Wider dissemination of the memory of Anabaptist martyrs depended on the era’s new technology, namely printing. With the exception of Balthasar Hubmaier’s treatises, Anabaptists published few pamphlets in the early Reformation’s explosion of print in central Europe. Deterrents included widespread illiteracy among their members, severe repression after the Peasants’ War (including the execution of radical printer Hans Hergot in 1527), and the

75 Visser (2003b), 195–201. The first letter by Joriaen Simons in OH (in BRN, [1904], 2: 126–134) does not appear in this manuscript, which proves that there were multiple copies of the letters by Jeronimus and his wife, as the compilers of the martyrology must have had access to at least one copy that did include this particular letter.—Visser (2003b), 216. 76 Alewijnsz (1578), sig. [B8]. 77 ME 2: 232. 78 Wolkan (1903), 165–169. Lieder (1914) was based largely on three codices, each containing between 80 and 165 hymns, and excluding more than 100 hymns from Wolkan’s codices, making a total of at least 450 Hutterite hymns from the period.— Duerksen (1956), 35–37. 79 Packull (1995), 209; ME 2: 233. 80 Visser (1991), 25.

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decisive turn away from civic Anabaptism (with the catastrophic exception of Münster) beginning in the later 1520s. In contrast to the numerous Flugschriften celebrating early evangelical martyrs, only two executed Anabaptists from the 1520s seem to have been publicized in print—and one of them, Jörgen Wagner, had an ambiguous relationship to Anabaptism in Bavaria.81 The other, Michael Sattler, was a central figure among the Swiss Brethren.82 Apart from a few songs printed as broadsheets in the late 1520s, their frequently reprinted topical biblical concordance, their collection of hymns (the Ausbund ), and of course the Bible itself, the Swiss Brethren seem to have relied on print only marginally more than did the Hutterites.83 By comparison, Dutch Mennonites published hymn collections and martyrs’ writings in abundance. Conditions in the Low Countries were more propitious, especially with the relative toleration in the northern provinces from the late 1570s, when most pamphlets about individual martyrs began to appear. Between 1565 and 1595 at least thirty different editions of sixteen different works by or about nineteen different martyrs were published, twenty-two of them between 1577 and 1588.84 Some of these publications were combined and bound in the late sixteenth century as do-it-yourself martyrologies, of which at least four exemplars survive.85 Such bound collections were by then almost certainly imitating the Mennonites’ own published martyrology, which demonstrated demand: The Sacrifice unto the Lord was a tiny, sedecimo volume printed anonymously in 1562 by Jan Hendricks van Schoonrewoerd, an immigrant to Franeker from Utrecht.86 The following year saw a supplementary Songbook with twenty-five narrative martyr songs, which include some 131 martyrs, only nine of whom overlap with the twenty-three martyrs from the 81 On early publications about Wagner, see Laube, et al. (1992), 2: 1526–1527; Lieseberg (1991), 70–72. On his relationship to Anabaptism, see Rössler (1962), 42, 54 n. 3; on early evangelical pamphlets celebrating martyrs, see Gregory (1999), 141–153. 82 Laube (1992), 2: 1557–1558; Lieseberg (1991), 69–70; Snyder (1989), 336–337, 336 n. 42. 83 For reference to the Ausbund during the Frankenthal disputation between Swiss Brethren and Reformed Protestants, see Wolkan (1903), 56. 84 For a complete list of these publications, see Gregory (1996), 2: 740, n. 197. 85 Three are preserved in the Amsterdam University Library, one in the Leiden University Library; a fifth was held in Hamburg but was destroyed in World War II.—Gregory (1993). 86 On Hendricks as the printer, see Blouw (1989), 57; on a first edition from 1561 of which no extant copies are known, see Visser (2003a), 71 n. 15.

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martyrology’s prose entries. One of these twenty-three is the Christian protomartyr Stephen, from the Acts of the Apostles; another is Michael Sattler. The remaining twenty-one are all Dutch Anabaptists executed between 1539 and 1561, eighteen after 1549. Except for Sattler and Anneken Jans, who was very likely a follower of David Joris despite the understandable lack of any such indications in the martyrology, all the remaining martyrs were Mennonites.87 The pattern in the Songbook is similar: it includes a song about Christ, two about martyrs from the 1540s, and twenty-two songs about Dutch Mennonite martyrs from 1550–1561. By and large, then, The Sacrifice unto the Lord, including its Songbook, is a collection of writings by and songs about Dutch Mennonite martyrs from the 1550s, a decade when the number of executions of Mennonites rose noticeably.88 Ten subsequent editions of the martyrology in combination with the Songbook, the last of which appeared in 1599, added only modestly to the original number of martyrs, the time span during which they were executed, and their particular Anabaptist affiliations.89 Beginning with the 1570 edition (also published by Hendricks), twenty-nine songs were added to the respective prose entries in the martyrology. These songs added no new material about the martyrs, but rather presented in a different genre whatever in their writings was “thought to be the most important or the most instructive,” which was “taken and selected from the preceding sources.”90 The rendering of martyrs’ prison prose into rhyming songs again suggests how integral the latter were in the transmission of the memory of the martyrs. Careful scrutiny of the printed martyrs’ writings from The Sacrifice unto the Lord and other martyrological publications, in combination with the aforementioned manuscript codex of prison letters by Jeronimus Segers and Lijsken Aerts, gives us our best understanding to date of the process by which martyrs’ writings made their way from prison to printshop. Taking advantage of sympathetic or

87 On Anneken Jans and her connections to Joris, see Packull (1987). Packull convincingly links Jans to Joris, even if one accepts James Lowry’s claim that she might have repudiated Joris at the very end of her life.—Lowry (1992). 88 In Ghent, no Anabaptists were executed in the 1540s, but 38 in the 1550s; in Bruges, none in the 1540s but 8 in the 1550s; in Kortrijk none in the 1540s but 6 or 7 in the 1550s. Verheyden (1945), 5–26; Verheyden (1944), 33–48; Verheyden (1950), 31–34. 89 See Cramer’s table in BRN (1904), 2: 17. 90 OH, in BRN (1904), 2: 55.

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bribed jailers, or perhaps of authorities who thought correspondence between martyrs and others might facilitate recantations, imprisoned martyrs sent letters to family members and fellow believers, who shared them with others. That the Segers-Aerts manuscript of sixteen prison letters—six of which do not appear in The Sacrifice unto the Lord—was not the copy on which the printed martyrology was based, suggests a broader Mennonite culture of copying and sharing manuscripts. While the martyrs themselves saturated their prison letters with biblical quotations, paraphrases, and allusions in anticipation of death, fellow believers—not only the final editors of The Sacrifice unto the Lord and other publications, but also those who collected or copied their letters as they circulated—added the ubiquitous marginal biblical citations, matching what the martyrs had written with scripture, often themselves supplying missing words or more precise biblical phrases in the texts.91 Most of the letters in the SegersAerts manuscript lack any marginal biblical citations, whereas the printed version of the same letters in The Sacrifice unto the Lord have as many as 110.92 This practice of supplying the biblical citations explains the redundant presence of book-and-chapter references in the body of some of the martyrs’ writings, coupled with more precise, marginal references to the same biblical chapter and verse. Visser suggests the helpful image of a biblical quiz game: as fellow Mennonites read the letters, they sought to identify books, chapters, and verses to which martyrs were referring in the variously remembered quotations and paraphrases written in prison, with still more citations perhaps added by reader-annotators to whom the copies were passed along.93 Besides adding biblical references and polishing scriptural quotations and phrases, readers clarified other words and phrases, and in the case of Jeronimus Segers’s pastoral letter to the “brothers and sisters,” made significant additions and alterations.94 At some point, either multiple handwritten copies with marginalia were collated or a single version was readied for publication, and was printed. This made the letters—the handiwork of the individual martyr embroidered by any number of readers, annotators, and editors—available to more fellow believers. 91 92 93 94

Visser Visser Visser Visser

(2003a), (2003a), (2003a), (2003a),

78–86; see also Gregory (2002), xxxi–xxxiii. 80. 81–82. 73–76; OH, in BRN (1904), 2: 134–144.

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It seems clear that fellow Mennonites were the chief intended audience for the Sacrifice unto the Lord and other Mennonite martyrological publications. The first third of the preface to the martyrology is based closely on the preface to Menno Simons’s Comforting Admonition, offering an account of men and women who had persevered through persecution in just the way urged by Menno.95 The martyrology offered almost no interpretative commentary of the sort legion in John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments. Nor, in contrast to Foxe’s work and the other major Protestant martytrologies, did it offer a counterCatholic historical account of the Christian past in the form of martyrology. Instead, the point was simply to demonstrate how closely the martyrs had adhered to God’s Word, a goal reinforced by profuse biblical citations added as marginalia by fellow Mennonites. What had happened between the martyrdom of Stephen and that of Michael Sattler almost fifteen hundred years later remained entirely unstated, although it may be safely assumed that whoever compiled the martyrology thought that things had gone terribly wrong in the intervening centuries. Despite recognized affinities and the ostensible clarity of the Bible, leaders of different Anabaptist groups frequently disagreed with and even condemned one another based on different readings of scripture and disputes about the proper exercise of authority and discipline in their respective communities. Across the divergent Christian traditions that coalesced in the Reformation era, recognition as a martyr depended not simply on death for one’s religious convictions, but death for the right convictions. In principle, magisterial Protestants and Roman Catholics executed for their religious beliefs were excluded from recognition as martyrs by Anabaptists, as were Anabaptists by Protestants and Catholics.96 Yet how was the recognition of Anabaptist martyrs to proceed when, in James Stayer’s words, “Mennonites, Hutterites and Swiss Brethren each regarded themselves as the one true congregation of the Lord, separated from a world lost in deadly

95

See Gregory (1997). In only a very few cases with ambiguities about the convictions of those executed and the communities to which they belonged, did non-Anabaptists end up in Anabaptist martyrological sources. For example, the sacramentarian Wendelmoet Claes, executed in the Hague in 1527, was added to OH beginning in the 1570 edition. For a study of how the early evangelical Leonhard Keyser (d. 1527), ended up in Hutterite sources and seventeenth-century Mennonite martyrologies beginning in 1615, see Visser (1991). 96

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error—a world that included the other kinds of nonresistant Anabaptists”?97 In the Low Countries, by the time that The Sacrifice unto the Lord was reprinted in 1566 and 1567, a bitter schism between Frisian and Flemish Mennonites had compounded a rift between Waterlanders and Mennonites from the previous decade. The exclusion of published writings by several Flemish and Waterlander martyrs from subsequent editions of The Sacrifice unto the Lord (e.g. Jacob de Roore, Thijs Joriaens, Joos Verkindert, Laurens Andries, Herman Timmerman, Christian Rijcen) implies that the martyrology was appropriated by the Frisians.98 Insofar as Frisians regarded Waterlanders and Flemish Mennonites (as well as the Swiss Brethren and the Hutterites) as false brethren, they regarded those killed for their faith from these groups as false martyrs, unworthy of inclusion in the martyrology they had appropriated. Further fissiparity followed when the Flemish broke into the Old and Young Flemish in 1586–87, the Frisians into the Hard and Soft Frisians in 1589.99 Were this the end of the story, Anabaptist martyrology would have remained a fragmented combination of heterogeneous sources from divergent groups. That its core took a different turn, one that culminated in van Braght’s Martyrs Mirror, is due above all to Hans de Ries, the most important Waterlander leader of the early seventeenth century. On issues pertaining to discipline and doctrine, Waterlanders were at the opposite end of the spectrum from the Hard Frisians. In de Ries’s view, differences among the various Anabaptist groups failed to justify their divisions. De Ries was only too aware of the animosities among Anabaptists, not only in the Low Countries but also in German-speaking regions. Just as he sought to unite as many Anabaptist communities as possible through conciliatory meetings and shared confessions of faith, so he saw in martyrology, along with his Flemish collaborator Jacques Outerman, an opportunity for Anabaptist reconciliation. If martyrs were excluded for the same reasons that Anabaptist groups were divided, then widening the criteria for martyrdom might help to heal breaches in the brotherhood. Well aware that “the baptism-minded have always had various gatherings, and there is not one but various churches,” de Ries asserted 97

Stayer (1976), 328. Gregory (1999), 233–235. 99 On the schisms among the Dutch Mennonites in the later sixteenth century, see Zijlstra (2000), 270–315, which supersedes Kühler (1932), 395–435. 98

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that “the reasons” for the divisions “lie not in matters of doctrine that are condemned in scripture.”100 In redrawing the inherently contentious line between essentials and inessentials of faith, de Ries’s criterion for recognition as a martyr included all those executed nonviolent Christians who had been “baptized according to Christ’s ordinance”—a phrase he used seventeen times in the preface to his History of the Martyrs or the True Witnesses of Jesus Christ (Haarlem, 1615).101 Against the earlier Frisian appropriation of The Sacrifice unto the Lord, de Ries effected not only a huge expansion but also a countervailing internationalization and inclusivity of Anabaptist martyrology, including in his History all varieties of Mennonites along with members of the Swiss Brethren and Hutterites. As early as the 1590s, de Ries’s colleagues had journeyed to Vienna seeking sources about Hutterite martyrs, bringing back with them a handwritten “Geschicht Buech der marterer Christij” that de Ries used in compiling his History.102 In adding selected letters from published prison writings of Mennonite martyrs previously excluded from later editions of The Sacrifice unto the Lord, de Ries seems partly to have sought to avoid issues divisive among Dutch Mennonites.103 In terms of chronological coverage, de Ries added many Germanspeaking martyrs from the mid-1520s through the 1540s. Michael Sattler had been the only such martyr in The Sacrifice unto the Lord. De Ries also revealingly transformed the martyr songs from all the traditions into prose, a sign that they no longer served their previous role for this later generation of newly secure, better educated Mennonites. The Waterlanders and the Flemish Mennonites, like their Dutch Reformed Protestant contemporaries and partly due to de Ries’s influence, were now singing Psalms in Dutch instead of the contextually outdated “songs of the cross” of which de Ries himself had written in 1582.104 Finally, in the preface to his History de Ries referred to medieval and sixteenth-century authors to argue that some Christians had been persecuted for opposing infant baptism in the Middle Ages, thus beginning to address the historical silence of The Sacrifice unto the Lord. The result was not only a much larger and

100 101 102 103 104

[de Ries, et al.] (1615), sig. (**1r–v). [de Ries, et al.] (1615), sigs. *ii-[**iv]. Visser (1991), 22, 25. Gregory (2002), xxxvi–xxxix. ME 4: 227; see also van der Zijpp (1957), 12–13.

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more expensive book, but also an extensive and inclusive mold for an Anabaptist (and not simply Mennonite) martyrology. In the short term, control of Anabaptist martyrology in the Low Countries was contested. The doctrinally and disciplinarily strictest Mennonites, the Hard Frisians, could hardly approve entirely of what de Ries had done, yet could hardly fail to be impressed by the much expanded compilation of Anabaptist witnesses in his History. So their leader, Peter Jans Twisck, along with his colleague Syvaert Pieters, published their own edition of the martyrology at Hoorn in 1617. They claimed that all the martyrs had held convictions in accord with the detailed, thirty-three-article, Hard Frisian confession of faith that comprised part of their prefatory material.105 This was patently untrue, but the Waterlanders, averse to reinforcing disputes they wanted to resolve, did not respond. A few years later, however, the Hard Frisians learned that in several passages in the martyrology of 1615, the texts of some of the martyrs’ writings had been shorn of the particularly divisive issue of the nature of Christ’s incarnation, changes that the Hard Frisians had unknowingly reproduced in 1617. In 1626, Twisck and his colleagues angrily accused the Waterlanders of willfully bowdlerizing the texts for their own purposes.106 Hans Alenson, a lay preacher, answered the charges of deliberate textual falsification for the Waterlanders. But more importantly, he demonstrated that not all the Anabaptist martyrs in the expanded, inclusive martyrology could have held the Hard Frisian views articulated in their confession of faith, even turning Menno himself against the Hard Frisians.107 Alenson’s conclusive rebuttal was followed in 1631–32 by a still larger martyrology published under de Ries’s direction, the first one entitled the Martyrs Mirror. Besides increasing further the number of martyrs, de Ries expanded the related historical vision with a lengthy new introduction on “the conformity of the ancient, apostolic church with the church of these martyrs, as well as the lasting persecution of the suffering of the martyrs, from the time of

105 [Syvaert Pieters], in [Twisck et al.] (1617), sig. [*1v]; the confession of faith occupies over fifty pages, sigs. *2–**3. For Pieters as the probable author of the confession of faith and prefatory material, see Penner (1971), 256–261; Hans Alenson, Tegen-Bericht Op de voor-reden vant groote Martelaer Boeck der Doops-Ghesinde Ghedruckt tot Hoorn 1626 . . . . (Haarlem: Jan Pieters Does, 1630), repr. in BRN (1910), 7: 155–156. 106 [Pieters], in [Twisck et al.] (1626), sigs. A2v–A3. 107 Alenson, in BRN (1910), 7: 231–234, 242.

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Christ to the beginning of the Martyrs Mirror.”108 This essentially describes what van Braght would seek to show in part one of his Bloody Theater. By converting the martyr songs into prose, including martyrs from all the non-Münsterite groups, adding selected Mennonite sources excluded from The Sacrifice unto the Lord, and linking Reformationera Anabaptism historically to persecuted early and medieval Christians, de Ries defined the principal contours and character of van Braght’s work. Like de Ries three and four decades before him, van Braght sought to use martyrology to address problems among Dutch Mennonites. In the late 1650s, his concern was not the reunification of divided groups, but rather warding off dangerous doctrinal and socio-economic threats to Mennonite identity. In 1657, under the influence of the rationalist sect known as the Collegiants, the Mennonite physician and preacher Galenus Abrahams of Amsterdam had criticized the emphasis by Flemish leaders such as van Braght on confessions of faith. He denied that any latter-day Christian church could claim to be the successor of the apostolic church.109 This conflict would eventually coalesce in the Mennonite division between Lamists and Zonists in the 1660s and 1670s. For van Braght in the late 1650s, the Galenist challenge prompted a defense of the claim that the Doopsgezinden as van Braght understood them were indeed “the true church of God,” continuous with the apostolic church in doctrine and practice and sealed ever since with the blood of the martyrs. Accordingly, in his lengthy introduction to the Bloody Theater, written in the summer of 1659 and published the following year, van Braght’s thrust is ecclesiological. He organized the introduction around a contrast between “the true church of God, and its origin, development, and immovable stability through all eras,” and “the ungodly and untrue church, being the opposite of the church of God, and its origin, development, and succession through all eras.”110 The true church was anchored in the doctrines embodied in the Apostles’ Creed and in three recent confessions of faith that had played partially successful reconciliatory roles among various Mennonite groups,

108

[de Ries et al.] (1631), 21–33, quotation on 21. Driedger (2002), 53–54; for Galenus’s relationship with the Collegiants and their influence on him, see also Fix (1991), 93–104. 110 van Braght (1660), sigs. a3–i2v, quotations on a2, f 2; van Braght (1685), 1: sigs. B2–[D6], quotations on B2, [C6]. 109

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all of which van Braght printed in his introduction: the Olijftacxken (1626), the Jan Cents Confession (1630), and the Dordrecht Confession (1632).111 This strategy of combining confessions of faith with martyrology recalls the approach of the Hard Frisians, Twisck and Pieters, in their martyrologies of 1617 and 1626. But van Braght followed the Waterlander de Ries in emphasizing adult baptism (and implicitly non-violence, in his repudiation of the Münsterites) as the central criterion for the inclusion of his martyrs. This emphasis determined the structure of his massive work. Adapting the century-by-century narrative of the Lutheran Magdeburg Centuries and Baronius’s Ecclesiastical Annals, van Braght alternated for each century an exposition about adult baptism with accounts of martyrs said to have been killed for upholding it. Marking the threats to “the only saving Christian faith” and “the true, separated Christian life that springs from it,” van Braght agonized about the extent to which Mennonite ardor had been anesthetized by affluence in the Dutch Golden Age.112 In this he stood shoulder to shoulder with de Ries; in fact, van Braght reprinted verbatim and virtually in its entirety de Ries’s lengthy preface from the 1631 Martyrs Mirror as the preface to the second part of the Bloody Theater, identifying the author only as “a sure lover of the holy and blessed martyrs.”113 Here de Ries had taken up a theme not mentioned in his History of the Martyrs from 1615, challenging his readers in 1631 to examine “how weakly you hear and consider the word of God, because your thoughts are entangled in earthly vanities,” and to see “how busy and eager you are throughout in gaining money and property, and in devoting yourself to pleasure. It is true, you have thrown out the wooden, dumb images, but examine once whether the idol of riches and avarice is not erected in your heart.” In contrast to the love of riches evident among too many Mennonites, de Ries pointed to “the writings of the martyrs, how their life was, how their suffering, how their constancy. . . . Examine your ways, and compare them with theirs, and see whether the world’s love has not blinded your eyes, and led them away from

111

van Braght (1660), sigs. [b4]–f2; van Braght (1685), 1: sigs. B4v–[C6]. van Braght (1660), sig. [(*)4v]; van Braght (1685), 1: sig. [A3]. 113 van Braght (1660), bk. 2: sigs. [(*)4v]–[(***4v)], quotation on [(*)4v]; van Braght (1685), 2: sigs. A3–A6. Cf. [de Ries et al.] (1631), 3–20. 112

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God.”114 In short, de Ries told readers to examine their spiritual reflections in the martyrs mirror. Again, van Braght repeated this verbatim in 1660, and with good reason: Mennonites were active participants in the mercantile success that drove the Dutch Golden Age. Amsterdam’s wealthy Waterlanders lived in style, including some with mansions on the Herengracht itself; Mennonite immigrants to Hamburg and Altona in northern Germany built fortunes through the textile and whaling industries.115 This was a far cry from the persecuted “little flock” under Menno and Dirk Philips. Writing nearly three decades deeper in the dangerous decadence posed by Dutch prosperity, van Braght went further than de Ries. Not only had the zeal of the martyrs waned, but Mennonites living amid luxury, toleration, and security were actually more threatened than their persecuted predecessors had been: “it is certainly more dangerous now than in the time of our fathers who suffered death for the witness of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Whereas before “Satan came through his servants openly, even at mid-day, like a roaring lion,” seeking chiefly to destroy the body, now he came “as in the night, or at dusk,” “as an angel of light” (2 Cor. 11:14–15), seeking to steal faith and to seduce through “desire of the flesh, desire of the eye, and pride of life.” Those who claimed to worship, glorify, and praise God showed “that the world is a dear friend to them” through “that wholly furious and unlimited commerce which stretches far beyond the sea into other parts of the world,” via “many large, expensive, and ornate houses,” by “the wearing of foreign clothes from other regions, whether of exotic fabrics, uncommon colors, or of rare fashions,” and in “great dinners, extravagant banquets, weddings, and celebrations.”116 As they savored the world under glittering appearances and self-indulgent pleasures, Mennonites were losing their souls. Van Braght urged as antidotes watchfulness, genuine faith, virtuous life, and perseverance—precisely the qualities exemplified by “the holy martyrs, who not only gave up in death for the Lord’s sake their fleshly desires, but also their entire bodies and lives.”117 Extreme spiritual dangers demanded extreme examples

114

[de Ries et al.] (1631), 17–18, 19; cf. van Braght (1685), 2: sigs. [a5v], [a6]. For the Waterlanders, see Sprunger (1994); for Mennonites in Hamburg and Altona, see Driedger (2002), 22–26. 116 van Braght (1660), sigs. [(*4v)]–(**)1v; van Braght (1685), 1: sigs. A3r–v. 117 van Braght (1660), sig. (**)2; van Braght (1685), 1: sig. A3v. 115

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of fidelity. And so van Braght exhorted complacent brothers and sisters to read his work through, “and reread it with the same attention and emotion as we had in the writing and rewriting of it; thus we firmly trust that it will not be unfruitful for you. But before all things, fix your eyes on the martyrs themselves, note their immovable faith, and follow their example.”118 After van Braght’s death in 1664, his work was reprinted in 1685. The culmination of the Dutch Mennonite-cum-Anabaptist martyrological tradition was a monument of the printer’s art: a luxurious, two-volume folio that displayed the polyglot erudition of its author, used over a dozen multi-sized typefaces, and included over one hundred original engravings by the noted artist Jan Luyken. It was materially sumptuous—and symptomatic of the affluence and assimilation it sought to oppose. Religious toleration in the Dutch Republic had ended the persecution endured under Charles V and Philip II a century before, but it also fostered the economic prosperity that in van Braght’s view was eroding Mennonite faith and life. His was a dramatically different world than that of the Swiss Brethren, the South German and Austrian Anabaptists, the Hutterites, and the early Mennonites whose martyrs peopled the pages of his magisterial collection. Indeed, in important respects van Braght’s world seems closer to that of European and North American Mennonites today than to the world of the Anabaptist martyrs of the sixteenth century. Bibliography Alewijnsz, Henrick. Een vaderlijck Adieu, Testament ende sorchvuldighe onderwijsinge wt der H. Schrift . . . ([Amsterdam]: Nicolaes [II] Biestkens, 1578). Bibliotheca Reformatoria Neerlandica [BRN ], vol. 2. Samuel Cramer, ed. The Hague, 1904. BRN, vol. 7. Samuel Cramer ed. The Hague, 1910. ——. vol. 10. Frederik Pijper ed. The Hague, 1914. Blouw, Paul Valkema. “Een onbekende doperse drukkerij in Friesland,” Doopsgezinde Bijdragen, n.s., 15 (1989), 37–63. Cannaert, J. B. Bydragen tot de kennis van het oude strafrecht in Vlaenderen. Ghent, 1835. Clasen, Claus-Peter. “Executions of Anabaptists, 1525–1618: A Research Report,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 47 (April 1973), 115–152. ——. Anabaptism: A Social History. Ithaca, NY, 1972. Covington, Sarah. The Trail of Martyrdom: Persecution and Resistance in Sixteenth-Century England. Notre Dame, IN, 2003.

118

van Braght (1660), sig. [(*4)]; van Braght (1685), 1: sigs. A2v–A3.

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de Brès, Guy. La racine, source et fondement des Anabaptistes ou rebaptisez de nostre temps. [Rouen]: Abel Clemence, 1565. [de Ries, Hans, et al.]. Historie der Martelaren ofte waerachtighe Getuygen Jesu Christi die d’Evangelische waerheyt in veelderley tormenten betuygt ende met haer bloet bevesticht hebben sint het Jaer 1524 tot desen tyt toe. . . . Haarlem: Jacob Pauwels Hauwert for Daniel Keyser, 1615. ——. Martelaers Spiegel der Werelose Christenen t’zedert A[nno] 1524 . . . Haarlem: Hans Passchiers van Wesbusch, 1631[–1632]. de Rycker, Louis Antoine. “Een process vor ketterij, te Gent, 1560–1561,” Jaarboek van het Willems-fonds. Ghent, 1878, 1–39. Decavele, Johan. De dageraad van de Reformatie in Vlaanderen, 1520–1565, 2 vols. Brussels, 1975. Die Lieder der Hutterischen Brüder. Scottdale, PA, 1914. Driedger, Michael D. Obedient Heretics: Mennonite Identities in Lutheran Hamburg and Altona during the Confessional Age. Aldershot, U.K., 2002. Duerksen, Rosella Reimer. “Anabaptist Hymnody of the Sixteenth Century,” Doctor of Sacred Music diss., Union Theological Seminary, NY, 1956. Duke, Alastair. “Building Heaven in Hell’s Despite: The Early History of the Reformation in the Towns of the Low Countries,” in Reformation and Revolt in the Low Countries. London, 1990, 71–100. Dyck, Cornelius J. “The Suffering Church in Anabaptism,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 59 ( January 1985), 5–23. Fabri, Johannes von Heilbronn. Von dem Ayd Schwören: Auch van der Widertauffer Marter, vnd wo her entspring, das sie also frölich vnnd getröst die peyn des tods leyden . . . [Ingolstadt?], 1550. Fischer, Hans. Jacob Hutter: Leben, Froemmigkeit, Briefe. Newton, KS, 1956. Fix, Andrew C. Prophecy and Reason: The Dutch Collegiants in the Early Enlightenment. Princeton, 1991. Clement, Otto, ed. Flugschriften aus den ersten Jahren der Reformation. vol. 2. Leipzig, 1908. Goosens, Aline. Les inquisitions modernes dans les Pays-Bas meridionaux, 1520–1633. 2 vols. Brussels, 1997–98. Gregory, Brad S. “Particuliere martelaarsbundels uit de late zestiende eeuw,” Doopsgezinde Bijdragen, n.s., 19 (1993), 81–106. ——. “The Anathema of Compromise: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe,” 3 vols. (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1996). ——. “Prescribing and Describing Martyrdom: Menno’s Troestelijke Vermaninge and Het Offer Des Heeren,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 71 (October 1997), 603–613. ——. “Weisen die Todesvorbereitungen von Täufermärtyrern geschlechtsspezifische Merkmale auf ?” Mennonitische Geschichtsblätter 54 (1997), 52–60. ——. Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge, MA, and London, 1999. ——. “Late Medieval Religiosity and the Renaissance of Christian Martyrdom in the Reformation Era,” in Continuity and Change: The Harvest of Late-Medieval and Reformation History. Essays Presented to Heiko A. Oberman on his 70th Birthday, Robert J. Bast and Andrew C. Gow, eds. Leiden, 2000, 379–399. ——. ed. The Forgotten Writings of the Mennonite Martyrs, vol. 8 in Documenta Anabaptistica Neerlandica. Leiden, 2002. Haude, Sigrun. In the Shadow of “Savage Wolves”: Anabaptist Münster and the German Reformation during the 1530s. Boston, 2000. Hecht, Linda A. Huebert. “Anabaptist Women in the Tirol Who Recanted,” in Profiles of Anabaptist Women: Sixteenth-Century Reforming Pioneers. C. Arnold Snyder and Linda Hubert Hecht, eds. Waterloo, ON, 1996. Hofman, Bert. Liedekens vol gheestich confoort: Een bijdrage tot de kennis van de zestiendeeeuwse Schriftuurlijke lyriek. Hilversum, 1993.

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Hubmaier, Balthasar. Schriften. Gunnar Westin and Torsten Bergsten, eds. Vol. 9 in QGT. Gütersloh, 1962. Joldersma, Hermina, and Louis Grijp, ed. and trans. Elisabeth’s Manly Courage: Testimonials and Songs of Martyred Anabaptist Women in the Low Countries. Milwaukee, WI, 2001. Juhnke, James C. “Shaping Religious Community through Martyr Memories,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 73 ( July 1999), 546–556. Klassen, John. “Women and the Family among Dutch Anabaptist Martyrs,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 60 (October 1986), 548–571. Kreider, Alan F. “‘The Servant is Not Greater Than His Master’: The Anabaptists and the Suffering Church,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 58 ( January 1984), 5–29. Kühler, W. J. Geschiedenis der nederlandsche doopsgezinden in de zestiende eeuw. Haarlem, 1932. Laube, Adolf et al., ed. Flugschriften vom Bauernkrieg zum Täuferreich (1526–1535), 2 vols. Berlin, 1992. Lieseberg, Ursula. Studien zum Märtyrerlied der Täufer im 16. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt am Main, 1991. Lowry, James. “Stierf Anna van Rotterdam als volgeling van David Joris?” Doopsgezinde Bijdragen, n.s., 18 (1992), 113–118. Marnef, Guido. Antwerp in the Age of Reformation: Underground Protestantism in a Commercial Metropolis, 1550 –1577. Baltimore, 1996. Martin Luther, D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Weimar, 1883–. Menno Simons, Dat Fundament des Christelycken leers (n.p., 1539[–1540]), repr. and ed. H. W. Meihuizen. The Hague, 1967. ——. Eyne Troestelijke Vermaninge van dat Lijden, Cruyze, vnde Vervolginge der Heyligen, vmme dat woort Godes, vnde zijne getuichenisse. [Fresenburg, 1554/5]. ——. Opera omnia theologica, of Alle de godtgeleerde wercken van Menno Symons . . . Amsterdam: Joannes van Veen, 1681. Monter, William. “Heresy Executions in Reformation Europe, 1520–1565,” in Tolerance and Intolerance in the European Reformation, Ole Peter Grell and Bob Scribner, eds. Cambridge, 1996, 48–64. Oyer, John S. “Nicodemites among Württemberg Anabaptists,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 71 ( July 1997), 487–514. ——. Lutheran Reformers against Anabaptists: Luther, Melanchthon and Menius and the Anabaptists of Central Germany. The Hague, 1964. Oyer, John S., and Robert S. Kreider. Mirror of the Martyrs. Intercourse, PA, 1990. Packull, Werner O. “Anna Jansz of Rotterdam, A Historical Investigation of an Early Anabaptist Heroine,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 78 (1987), 147–173. ——. Hutterite Beginnings: Communitarian Experiments during the Reformation. Baltimore and London, 1995. ——. Mysticism and the Early South German-Austrian Anabaptist Movement, 1525–1531. Scottdale, PA, 1977. Penner, Archie. “Pieter Jansz. Twisck—Second Generation Anabaptist/Mennonite Churchman, Writer and Polemicist” (Ph.D. diss., University of Iowa, 1971). QGT, vol. 3, Glaubenszeugnisse oberdeutscher Taufgesinnter I. Lydia Müller, ed. Leipzig, 1938. ——. vol. 5, Bayern, pt. 2. Karl Schornbaum, ed. Gütersloh, 1951. QGTS. vol. 2, Ostschweiz. Heinold Fast, ed. Zurich, 1973. ——. vol. 1, Zürich. Leonhard von Muralt and Walter Schmid, eds. Zurich, 1952. Riall, Robert A. trans. The Earliest Hymns of the Ausbund: Some Beautiful Christian Songs Composed and Sung in the Prison at Passau, Published in 1564. Galen A. Peters, ed. Kitchener, ON, 2003. Rössler, Hans. “Wiedertaufer in und aus München 1527–1528,” Oberbayerisches Archiv 85 (1962), 42–58.

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Schmelzer, Matthias. “Elisabeth von Wolkenstein of Uttenheim,” in Profiles of Anabaptist Women: Sixteenth-Century Reforming Pioneers. C. Arnold Snyder and Linda A. Huebert Hecht, eds. Waterloo, ON, 1996, 164–177. Snyder, C. Arnold, ed. Biblical Concordance of the Swiss Brethren, 1540. Gilbert Fast and Galen A. Peters, trans. Kitchener, ON, 2001. ——. “The Influence of the Schleitheim Articles on the Anabaptist Movement: An Historical Evaluation,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 63 (October 1989), 323–344. ——. Anabaptist History and Theology: An Introduction. Kitchener, ON, 1995. Sprunger, Mary. “Waterlanders and the Dutch Golden Age: A Case Study on Mennonite Involvement in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Trade and Industry as One of the Earliest Examples of Socio-economic Assimilation,” in From Martyr to Muppy (Mennonite Urban Professionals): A Historical Introduction to Cultural Assimilation Processes of a Religious Minority in the Netherlands: The Mennonites Alastair Hamilton, Sjouke Voolstra, and Piet Visser, eds. Amsterdam, 1994, 133–148. Stayer, James M. Anabaptists and the Sword, 2nd ed. Lawrence, KS, 1976. ——. The German Peasants’ War and Anabaptist Community of Goods. Montreal and Kingston, 1991. [Twisck, Peter Jans, et al.]. Historie der waerachtighe getuygen Jesu Christi. . . . Hoorn: Zacharias Cornelis, 1617. ——. Historie van de Vrome Getuygen Iesu Christi. . . . Hoorn: Isaac Willems for Zacharias Cornelis, 1626. Umble, Jenifer Hiett. “Women and Choice: An Examination of the Martyrs Mirror,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 64 (April 1990), 135–145. van Braght, Thieleman Jans. Het Bloedigh Tooneel der Doops-gesinde, en Weereloose Christenen . . . Dordrecht: Jacob Braat, 1660. ——. Het Bloedig Tooneel, of Martelaers Spiegel der Doops-gesinde of Weereloose Christenen . . . 2 vols. Amsterdam: J. vander Deyster et al., 1685. van de Wiele, Johan. “De inquisitierechtbank van Pieter Titelmans in de zestiende eeuw in Vlaanderen,” Bijdragen ende mededelingen betreffende de geschiedenis der Nederlanden 97 (1982), 19–63. van den Houte, Soetken. Een Testament gemaeckt by Soetken van den Houte, het welcke sy binnen Gendt in Vlaenderen metten Doodt beuesticht heft. . . . [Rees: Dirck Wylicx van Santen, c. 1582]. van der Zijpp, N. “The Hymnology of the Mennonites in the Netherlands,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 31 ( January 1957), 11–15. [van Stoelwijck, Wouter]. Een Trostelijcke vermaninghe ende seer schoon onderwysinghe van het lyden ende Heerlicheyt der Christenen. [Groessen: Nicolas Biestkens van Diest], 1558. Verheyden, A. L. E. Anabaptism in Flanders, 1530–1650: A Century of Struggle. Scottdale, PA, 1961. ——. Het Gentsche martyrologium (1530–1595). Bruges, 1945. ——. Het Brugsche martyrologium. Brussels, 1944. ——. Le martyrologe courtraisien et le martyrologe bruxellois. Vilvorde, 1950. Visser, Piet. “Het bedrieglijk onbewogen bestaan van brieven: Een editorische vergelijking tussen de geschreven en de gedrukte martelaarsteksten van Jeronimus en Lysken Segers,” Doopsgezinde Bijdragen, n.s., 29 (2003), 65–87. ——. “Het doperse mirakel van het onverbrande bloempje: Terug naar de bron van een onbekend lied over martelaar Leonhard Keyser (overl. 1527),” Doopsgezinde Bijdragen, n.s., 17 (1991), 9–30. ——. “Zes onbekende martelaarsbrieven van Jeronimus Segers (†1551),” Doopsgezinde Bijdragen, n.s., 29 (2003), 195–249. Wackernagel, Philipp, ed., Lieder der niederländischer Reformierten aus der Zeit der Verfolgung im 16. Jahrhundert (1867); rprt. Nieuwkoop, 1965. Wolkan, Rudolf. Die Lieder der Wiedertäufer: Ein Beitrag zur deutschen und niederländischen Litteratur- und Kirchengeschichte. Berlin, 1903.

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Wouters van Cuyck, Jan and Adriaenken Jans, Sommige belijdinghen schriftlijcke Sentbrieuen, ende Testamenten geschreuen door Jan Wouterszoon van Cuyck, gheuanghen liggende tot Dordrecht. . . . [Leeuwarden: Peter Hendricksz van Campen], 1579. Zijlstra, S. Om de ware gemeente en de oude gronden: Geschiedenis van de dopersen in de Nederlanden 1531–1675. Hilversum and Leeuwarden, 2000.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

ANABAPTISTS AND THE EARLY MODERN STATE: A LONG-TERM VIEW Michael Driedger In the 1780s the Dutch Mennonite community was divided politically. Some leaders stressed what they believed were biblical values of Christian nonresistance and obedience to the state, while others joined an armed revolt against the Calvinist-dominated Orange family oligarchy. The revolt failed to unseat the regime, and rebel leaders, including several Mennonite preachers, fled the Dutch Republic. Awareness of this brief but dramatic episode is not widespread in Mennonite historiography, especially English-language historiography. It is worth highlighting, however, because it emphasizes that Anabaptist political life was complex, disputed and dynamic. The general narrative of the dynamic relations between Anabaptists and the early modern state is fairly straightforward, at least at first glance. While mutual antagonism was typical of the early sixteenth century, later generations of territorial rulers were more accepting of religious diversity and Anabaptists were more accepting of established secular authority. However, as the example of late eighteenthcentury Dutch Mennonite revolutionaries makes clear, the process was by no means linear. There were of course regional variations. Despite the conflicts of the 1780s, the early modern trend toward the political integration of Anabaptists was strongest in the Netherlands. In Swiss territories, by contrast, persecution into the early eighteenth century encouraged the Anabaptists’ distrust of territorial authorities. This essay charts the transformation of relations between Anabaptists and rulers until the beginning of the nineteenth century. Throughout, “state” is used as a term of convenience to refer to territorial government in all its varied early modern forms: kingdoms and republics; principalities and duchies; fiefdoms and other small districts; cities and towns. The focus is on German- and Dutch-speaking territories of the Empire, the Swiss cantons, and the United Provinces.

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In 1972 Claus-Peter Clasen and James M. Stayer published two works that have become classics in the study of early Anabaptism. Both Clasen’s Anabaptism: A Social History and Stayer’s Anabaptists and the Sword were formative contributions in a scholarly trend that emphasized the diverse and loosely connected character of the earliest Anabaptists. As a mark of the influence of these two books, most historians now acknowledge the wide variety of early sixteenth-century Anabaptist political attitudes, ranging from violent rejection of secular government, to passive resistance, and in some cases to a qualified acceptance. Although their accounts of Anabaptist diversity were broadly similar, Clasen and Stayer did not agree about the significance of their subjects. In 1972 Clasen had argued that, despite their advocacy of an early form of democratic organization, “The Anabaptists had no discernible impact on the political, economic, or social institutions of their age.”1 From Clasen’s point of view, the history of early Anabaptism was little more than a dramatic footnote to Reformation history. In effect, Clasen was rejecting earlier historiography that claimed Anabaptism as a key force in shaping early modern life. One such work was George H. Williams’ The Radical Reformation (1962). Williams held that Anabaptism was one expression of a reforming tradition distinct from the Counter Reformation and Protestant Magisterial Reformation, but just as influential as these movements.2 What characterized Williams’ Radical Reformation was a unique set of ideas. In the political realm these ideas included the separation of church and state, a principle that gained strength with the development of the modern era. In Profiles of Radical Reformers (1978) and subsequent works,3 HansJürgen Goertz has proposed a definition of radicalism emphasizing not ideas but rather the active rejection of the social, political and ecclesiastical status quo. In Goertz’s view, the early Reformation began when reformers banded together in short-lived, dynamic, unstable movements to remake church and society. By accepting this

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Clasen (1972), 428. Williams (1992). Goertz (1982); Goertz (1987); and Goertz (2002).

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view in his later work,4 Stayer took a middle position between Williams and Clasen. As a major example of early reforming movements that emerged in opposition to established institutions, Anabaptism was at the heart of the early Reformation, not a mere footnote to it. But as a set of oppositional, anticlerical movements, formed provisionally in particular circumstances, its initial impact was short-lived. Emphasis on the provisional character of reforming movements draws attention to important questions: What happened when early reforming movements lost their original radical drive? What happened to Anabaptism after the early Reformation? And what impact did this have on relations with secular, territorial governments? Reforming movements tend to either disappear when they fail or take on institutional form when they succeed. Within a few years of their emergence, early reforming movements in the sixteenth century began to become domesticated under the guidance of one-time radicals like Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli. Because Anabaptists faced stubborn resistance from sixteenth-century rulers, many of whom tended to think of them as rebels and heretics, they had a more difficult time establishing lasting institutions than did Lutherans or Zwinglians. Nonetheless, Anabaptism too underwent a process of domestication or de-radicalization.5 These changes, beginning by the middle of the sixteenth century, have now been charted in an increasing number of studies. The historiographical context for this scholarship is frequently organized around the interpretive concept “confessionalization.” Confessionalization itself has been the subject of lively debates since the 1980s. The term combines two theoretical strands of earlier scholarship: confession-building (Konfessionsbildung) and social discipline (Sozialdisziplinierung). Church historian Ernst Walter Zeeden was the most prominent proponent of confession-building, establishing a line of research concentrating on the parallel ways in which the three major post-Reformation confessions entrenched competing collective identities using confessions of faith and other normative documents, ritual, and church discipline.6 Gerhard Oestreich developed the concept of social discipline to draw attention to the ways

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Stayer (1993) and (1995). Stayer (1997). Zeeden (1965).

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in which rulers shaped populations of obedient subjects and citizens through education and coercion.7 Since the late 1970s Wolfgang Reinhard and Heinz Schilling have argued that post-Reformation churches acted as agents promoting state-building and modernization until the era of absolutism and the Enlightenment, and therefore confessionalization should be understood as an early form of social discipline.8 Until the latter half of the 1990s Anabaptists had a marginal role in this scholarship. Although the work of Reinhard and Schilling can be seen to be in the tradition of Max Weber and Ernst Troeltsch (particularly the emphasis on the role of religion in forcing the emergence of modernity), these historians of confessionalization have paid little if any attention to the role of the “sects,” one of the key subjects for Weber and Troeltsch. Instead, confessionalization research has focused on competition between Catholics, Calvinists and Lutherans, and each group’s cooperation with rulers. If Anabaptists were ever discussed in earlier scholarship on confessionalization it was to dismiss them either as victims of state-church cooperation, or to argue, as Schilling has, that “Although similar tendencies appeared among the sects, especially the Anabaptists, these lacked any positive connection to state-building and, hence, any larger social consequences.”9 These kinds of objections have lost much of their strength in recent years. Scholars have long recognized that confessionalization, if it is a useful description of early modern life, required not only the directing actions of rulers but also the cooperation of subjects. In other words, historians need to think about rank-and-file residents of any given jurisdiction, including Anabaptists, not only as victims but also as protagonists in Europe’s political history. The full implications of this kind of insight have emerged slowly. A relatively new trend is that scholars since the later 1990s have begun to debate the value of state-directed social discipline as a standard of analysis.10 Even Reinhard has expressed doubts about the conventional definition of confessionalization. In a historiographical survey from 1997 he wrote:

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Oestreich (1982); Schulze (1987). Hsia (1989); Schmidt (1992); Schilling (1995); Reinhard (1997); Ehrenpreis and Lotz-Heumann (2002). 9 Schilling (1995), 643. 10 Schmidt (1997). 8

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“. . . the view of a unified process directed alone by rulers seems to have

lost more and more ground. . . . Perhaps Michel Foucault was correct when he ascribed the disciplining of early modern society not to a central authority but rather to decentralized processes at work at a variety of points in society. . . .”11 Recognizing that a religious community’s socio-historical significance within the paradigm of confessionalization need not depend on official alliances between it and the state, historians have begun to think anew about Anabaptism and confessionalization. One strand of research highlights the ways in which reactions against nonconformists like the Anabaptists were of central importance in shaping the collective self-understanding of other confessional groups.12 Another strand emphasizes the ways in which the resistance of some post-Reformation Anabaptists point to the limits of social discipline and centralizing initiatives undertaken by early modern territorial governments and churches.13 Yet another highlights the developing and increasingly positive normative orientation toward the state that was typical of many Anabaptist groups after the middle of the sixteenth century. Much of the inspiration for this third strand has come from the work of Hans-Jürgen Goertz, who has proposed a decentralized view of politics of the sort mentioned by Reinhard in 1997. In the mid 1990s Goertz published two essays about a uniquely Anabaptist brand of social discipline—unique because Anabaptists strove to create disciplined communities of believers who promoted social order, and therefore the interests of the state, without state agents making active interventions or giving active direction. According to Goertz, preemptive obedience typified Anabaptist politics after the end of the sixteenth century.14 Since the release of those essays, scholars have published a wide collection of essays and monographs that provide a fuller

11 Reinhard (1997), 55: “So scheint unter anderem auch in der Geschichte der “Sozialdisziplinierung” die Vorstellung eines einheitlichen und allein von der Obrigkeit betriebenen Prozesses mehr und mehr verloren zu gehen . . . . Möglicherweise hatte Michel Foucault recht, als er die Disziplinierung der frühneuzeitlichen Gesellschaft keiner Zentralinstanz mehr zuschrieb, sondern dezentralen Vorgängen an verschiedenen Punkten der Gesellschaft, die keineswegs nur mehr durch Normen und den Einsatz von Macht zu deren Beachtung gesteuert werden, sondern durch neuartige kognitive Prozesse, die Lernfähigkeit einschließen.” 12 Grieser (1997); Jecker (1998), 608–12; Haude (2000); Kaufmann (2003); and Rothkegel (2003). 13 Hofer (2000); and Roth (2002). 14 Goertz (1994); and Goertz (1995).

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picture of “confessionalized” Anabaptism of the post-Reformation era.15 While contributors to the discussion hold a variety of views about key issues like the heuristic value of social discipline, one major conclusion of this scholarship is clear: the trend among later early modern Anabaptists was away from the aggressive, oppositional politics of their early Reformation forebears toward a politics of integration and conformity. Radicalism and Repression in the Early Reformation In the earliest phases of reform, major leaders like Luther, Müntzer, and Karlstadt all agreed in their rejection of both papal authority and the traditional view of the sacraments. Compromise was not an option for them. However, by 1521 or 1522 the ostensible unity of the evangelical front against the papacy showed serious strains. Public order became a key issue, especially after the suppression of the Wittenberg Movement and, more significantly, the Peasants’ War. After the first few years of his career as a reformer, Martin Luther worked to contain the radical implications of his early activism and ideas. While he and other mainstream reformers like Ulrich Zwingli rejected papal tradition and the Roman hierarchy, in the end they rejected neither parish organization and the baptism of children that went with it, nor all ecclesiastical hierarchies. They also distanced themselves from the more impatient strategies of their erstwhile reforming allies. The first baptisms of adults in 1525 in southern German-speaking regions took place against the backdrop of the Peasants’ War and growing conflicts in the evangelical camp. The political and religious climates were highly charged. Protestant and Catholic polemicists were keen to highlight—and frequently to exaggerate—a connection between the Peasants’ War and Anabaptism. Some men who accepted baptism as adults, however, were indeed Peasants’ War veterans.16 One such veteran was Hans Römer, a former follower of Thomas Müntzer, who continued to dream of a worldly victory over the godless. He and other Anabaptists planned unsuccessfully to take

15 Packull (1999a); Zijlstra (2000); Driedger (2002b); Chudaska (2003); Koop (2003); Schlachta (2003). 16 Stayer (1991).

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over the city of Erfurt by cunning and force of arms at the beginning of 1528.17 Less than a decade later, Erfurt again seems to have been the object of renewed but unsuccessful aggression, this time from a band of Anabaptists led by a “beggar king.” The main objective of the band was to set villages and towns on fire. Several members of the gang were executed in 1536 after about four years of activity.18 Despite examples like these, a significant number of Anabaptists, perhaps even the majority, were shocked at the way that plans to establish a biblically grounded society had descended into violence in 1525, and few saw themselves as God’s instruments to punish the wicked. One reaction to violence and governmental repression was a widespread, albeit not universal, belief among Anabaptists in the imminent establishment of God’s kingdom on earth.19 Hans Hut, Thomas Müntzer’s disciple and an Anabaptist convert, was a prime advocate of this view that socio-political relations would be transformed by divine intervention to the advantage of a godly community purified by suffering.20 Michael Sattler also shared a conviction that the End Time was very near. Unlike Hut, however, Sattler placed less emphasis on divine retribution against the ungodly and instead maintained that Christians should separate themselves from the world of sin in anticipation of Christ’s return. In the sixth article of the Schleitheim Articles of 1527, Sattler articulated the now-famous view that “The sword is ordained by God outside the perfection of Christ.”21 The early Swiss Brethren, who initially adopted this view, argued that Christians should refuse to swear oaths, use force, or hold political office, and they rejected all but the most basic of associations with secular society and the territorial church. Not all Anabaptists shared an apocalyptic orientation toward political and religious issues. While a preacher at Waldshut, Balthasar Hubmaier had accepted believers’ baptism in 1525, at the same time that he was campaigning on behalf of commoners in the Peasants’ War. When the revolt failed, he eventually sought refuge in Nikolsburg, where the local lord, Leonhard von Liechtenstein, offered sanctuary to Anabaptists for a few years. There Hubmaier wrote On the Sword

17 18 19 20 21

Clasen (1972), 157–60. Wappler (1913), 156–7. Klaassen (1992). Packull (1977); and Seebaß (2002). Baylor (1991), 177.

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in 1527, amid a controversy with Hans Hut and the Swiss Brethren. Although he agreed with Sattler that temporal authority had been ordained by God to punish the evil and protect the good, he took a position consciously at odds with the Schleitheim Articles: Thus, even if there were no passages of Scripture which called for us to submit to authority, our own consciences would tell us that we should help the authorities protect, defend, punish, and enforce. And that we should provide them with services, labor dues, watch duty, and taxes. This is so that we are able to live in temporal peace with one another, for having temporal peace is not contrary to Christian life.22

Hubmaier argued that Christians ultimately owed final allegiance to God, but in all things that were not directly contrary to the Bible they were to be obedient to secular authorities. Ultimately, he argued, Christians could be magistrates; those who were not had a duty to obey or, in extreme circumstances, to resist through legal means only. Rebellion was therefore forbidden, and Hubmaier expressed regret over the events of the Peasants’ War. By 1528 Hubmaier, Hut, and Sattler were all dead, the victims of official campaigns of repression. Anabaptism in all its forms, even Hubmaier’s politically moderate brand, was too threatening to the status quo, especially in Catholic-controlled regions. The attitudes of major theologians contributed significantly to the tensions between Anabaptists and secular authorities. Catholic theologians tended to consider all reformers as heretics; Anabaptists, as the most radical and anticlerical of reform advocates, attracted special attention.23 For their part, Lutheran and Reformed apologists were concerned that Catholics were classifying them among the heretics, and to defend themselves they tended to lash out against Anabaptists. Protestant theologians of the early sixteenth century rarely denied in any fundamental way the validity of heresy as a concept. Instead, they tried to deflect attention from themselves to those they thought were the more appropriate targets. Thus, Luther and Melanchthon in Saxony, and Bugenhagen in northern Germany, as well as Zwingli and Bullinger in Zurich, each contributed influential polemics against Anabaptists.24 These clergymen shared with their

22 23 24

Baylor (1991), 208. Dittrich (1991). Fast (1959); Oyer (1964); Grieser (1995); Seebaß (1997); and Leu (2004).

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Catholic contemporaries central attitudes toward public order, religious solidarity, and the practice of baptism. They saw themselves as guardians of public morality, and, although Reformation controversies threatened the unity of the corpus christianum, they continued to cling to a medieval vision of an undivided Christian Europe. Although Protestant reformers felt compelled to remove many traces of medieval religious practice, including five of the traditional sacraments, most were not willing to tamper with child baptism. In the eyes of Catholics and almost all Protestants, the decision to baptize adults undermined the claim to universal inclusiveness that was the foundation of both ecclesiastical and secular order. Rather than accepting the Anabaptist position that the baptism of confessing adults was the most biblically authentic form of baptism, mainstream theologians of the early sixteenth century saw it as a heretical form of rebaptism which violated Ephesians 4:5 (“one Lord, one faith, one baptism”). The voluntarism of adult baptism seemed to make participation in the Christian polity a choice rather than a responsibility. Therefore, clerical defenders of child baptism regularly campaigned against Anabaptism. The fear of disunity and anarchy that clergymen encouraged was further fueled by the events of the Peasants’ War. Within this climate authorities in the Empire began publishing anti-Anabaptist mandates soon after the first baptisms of adults. In these laws, rulers sometimes categorized Anabaptists as secular criminals and sometimes as religious heretics. The Mennonite Encyclopedia summarizes a long list of anti-Anabaptist mandates from German territories.25 These laws threatened a range of punishments for rebaptism which included expulsion, forced baptism of children, imprisonment and confiscation of property, torture, branding, and execution by a wide variety of gruesome methods. Of the 168 mandates recorded from the sixteenth century, a clear majority (92) date from the eleven years between the first baptisms in southern German-speaking territories in 1525 and the suppression of the Anabaptist-controlled city of Münster in 1535. The years 1528 and 1529 were the high point, when 18 and 24 mandates respectively were published. These data are of course not complete, because they do not take into account similar measures in places like the Netherlands, France, Poland, and

25

Hege and Zijpp (1957).

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the Italian territories, where opponents of child baptism and supporters of adult baptism were also sometimes targets of governments. Many of these mandates were released by local and regional authorities and therefore had an impact limited to particular jurisdictions. By far the most influential, and for Anabaptists most dangerous, of mandates were those the Emperor released in 1528 and 1529. A brief account of the rhetoric in these two influential Imperial mandates provides a clear sense of the fear and anger with which the Emperor and his agents thought about and acted against Anabaptists. The first mandate dates from January 4, 1528. In it the Emperor proclaimed the death penalty for rebaptism (Wiedertaufe), which he defined as an unscriptural, anti-Christian, evil, willful act of rebellion against rulers which could lead only to bloodshed. “Since rebaptism serves neither faith nor love, but rather the seduction of souls and the overthrow of order,”26 the Emperor commanded his vassals to use education, threats and punishment to stop the problem’s spread. At the Diet of Speyer just over a year later, on April 23, 1529, the Emperor released a longer mandate, that both Protestant and Catholic delegates supported.27 In it he reconfirmed the death penalty for rebaptism as well as for anti-pedobaptism. Except for a greater sense of frustration, the tone of the document remained much the same. Despite previous governmental measures, the Emperor had the impression that the forbidden “sect” was winning the upper-hand in its battle against peace and unity in the Empire. Therefore, rather than tolerate stubborn rebaptizers, he demanded that authorities destroy them with fire, sword, or any other means appropriate. He also required authorities to employ the law, education and preaching to discourage others from joining. However, if guilty individuals recanted and submitted willingly to punishment and instruction, then they were “to be pardoned according to their understanding, status, age and all other circumstances.”28

26 Deutsche Reichstagsakten (1935), 177: “Da nun die Wiedertaufe weder dem Glauben noch der Liebe dient, sondern zur Verführung der Seelen und Umsturz der Ordnung. . . .” 27 A transcript of the original text is in Deutsche Reichstagsakten (1935), 1325–7. A partial translation is available in Williams (1992), 359–60. 28 The latter was careful to emphasize that the death penalty was the “ultimate punishment.”—Deutsche Reichstagsakten (1935), 1326: “dieselbigen mögen von irer oberkeit nach gelegenheit ires verstands, wesens, jugent und allerlei umbstende begnadet werden.”

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Of note in the mandate of 1529 is the idea that these sectarians were part of an ancient party. Although the document does not include explicit references to early Christian conflicts, Imperial officials were certainly aware of legal precedents for their repressive measures against Anabaptists. The ancient legal codes of the Emperors Theodosius and Justinian both included decrees against rebaptism.29 Throughout the middle ages, but especially after the eleventh century, secular and ecclesiastical authorities again became concerned that outbreaks of religious dissent were new manifestations of ancient heretical errors. The Inquisition and other medieval ecclesiastical institutions were charged with combating them, and punishment sometimes included death in cases of obstinacy.30 Reformation-era mandates and polemics against rebaptism drew strength and authority from these ancient and medieval precedents for repression. Despite the influence of the Imperial mandates, it is important to remember that they did not become the undisputed and universally accepted response to Anabaptists. When representatives from the southern German cities of Biberach, Constance, Isny, Lindau, Memmingen and Ulm met in Memmingen in March 1531, they rejected the use of force to combat the spread of Anabaptism. The relevant section of the Memmingen Resolutions reads: On account of the Anabaptists we wish very sincerely that they be treated as tolerantly as possible, so that our [Protestant] gospel be not blamed or impugned on their account. For we have hitherto seen very clearly that the much too severe and tyrannical treatment exercised toward them in some places contributes much more toward spreading them than toward checking their error, because many of them . . . but also many of ours were moved to regard their cause as good and just.31

The representatives at Memmingen advocated “Christian love” as a response to religious error. Nothing could have been further from positions taken in the Imperial decrees. Although the representatives at Memmingen did not refer to the Emperor directly, they were reacting against him, the most prominent advocate demanding brutality in response to Anabaptist nonconformists. We cannot account for the differences dividing the Catholic Emperor from the Protestant representatives at Memmingen simply on the 29 30 31

Williams (1992), 360f. Moore (1977); Stock (1983), 88–240; and Moore (1987). Quoted in Williams (1992), 300.

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basis of confessional affiliation. Responses to Anabaptists varied over time and from jurisdiction to jurisdiction in the Empire. According to Claus-Peter Clasen’s data, the great majority (80%) of executions for Anabaptism before the Thirty Years War took place in the years from 1527 to 1533 (41% in the years 1528 and 1529), and again the great majority of these were carried out in lands controlled directly by the Catholic Habsburgs.32 Persecution was less severe in jurisdictions controlled by Protestant princes or cities like those who sent representatives to Memmingen in 1531; but even in Protestant regions there were variations. According to Gottfried Seebaß, the Electors of Saxony were among the harshest of Protestant princes, while rulers in other regions, such as those where Johannes Brenz was an influential advisor or in Hesse under the leadership of Landgrave Philip, were less likely to resort to the death penalty.33 In some jurisdictions, early Anabaptists even found sanctuary under the protection or benevolent disinterest, temporary though it might have been, of local lords or city councilors. These included towns and cities such as Nikolsburg and Strasbourg, as well as some noblecontrolled territories. Certainly one of the most famous and tragic of early Anabaptist sanctuaries was the city of Münster. Over the course of 1533 and 1534, the shifting political tide in Münster drew the attention of followers of Melchior Hoffman, the chief Anabaptist activist in northern German and Dutch regions in the early 1530s. Hoffman’s political views were shaped by his apocalyptic beliefs. He understood that Christ’s return in judgment was near, and he expected that the role of Christians in the meantime was to wait patiently and rely on protection from the Imperial cities in the coming battle with the forces of evil. With his imprisonment in Strasbourg in 1533 and the victory of an Anabaptist faction in Münster in early 1534, the development of northern Anabaptism took a new turn. A group of more militant leaders encouraged coreligionists from the Netherlands and the Westphalian countryside to flock to the city they now considered a New Jerusalem, a refuge for the godly in the Last Days. There they tried to establish a godly regime in preparation for Christ’s imminent return.

32 33

Clasen (1972), ch. 11, especially 370–74, and 437. Seebaß (1997).

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The obstacles to success were extreme, for no sooner had the city converted to Anabaptism than the city’s Catholic overlord laid siege to Münster, soon with the assistance of neighboring rulers, both Catholic and Protestant. The political opposition to Anabaptist rule was not surprising in a period when most rulers still had fresh memories of the Peasants’ War, and when the rebaptism of adults was a capital crime in the Empire. The pressures of wielding political authority while faced with violent opposition from a coalition of powerful overlords resulted in internal dissension in Anabaptist ranks. As the months passed, the radicals themselves became more and more prone to violence. Anabaptist rulers in Münster felt compelled to use the death penalty occasionally to enforce order inside the city’s walls. By late 1534 the city’s preacher, Bernhard Rothmann, was providing religious justification for the larger-scale use of force for the city’s defense and the furtherance of God’s will. In Concerning Vengeance, written in December 1534, he declared that [God] will come, that is true. But the vengeance must first be carried out by God’s servants who will properly repay the unrighteous godless as God has commanded them. . . . For very soon we, who are covenanted with the Lord, must be his instruments to attack the godless on the day which the Lord has prepared.34

As tensions rose in the city in the months preceding the June 1535 victory of anti-Münster forces, Dutch Anabaptist allies of the Münsterites also became more militant. Some, like the twelve Anabaptists who ran naked through the streets of Amsterdam in February 1535, expressed their apocalyptic fears and hopes in unconventional but ultimately peaceful ways. More militant were the doomed attacks on Oldeklooster and Amsterdam’s city hall.35 Relations between Anabaptists and governments in the first years of the Reformation fit a recurring pattern suggested by the concept of “deviance amplification.”36 Like radicalism, deviance amplification highlights interactions between dissenters and authorities. Anabaptists of the early sixteenth century may have been deviants in many regards, but in most cases they were not anti-governmental revolutionaries by their very natures. Quite often it was the harsh rhetoric 34

Quoted from Klaassen (1981a), 335. Mellink (1978); and Stayer (1978). 36 Wallis (1977), 205–11, 214–24. On the role of state violence in provoking nonconformists, see Underwood (2000). 35

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and even violent responses of authorities that played a crucial role in the escalation of conflict. Some Anabaptists chose to resist repression with violence, or by other oppositional means. The result was a spiral of mutual rejection. Amid the escalation of the 1520s and 1530s authorities could find the view confirmed that all Anabaptists were dangerous sectarians. In part, government reactions produced the results they were intended to combat: the intensification of Anabaptist opposition. From Mutual Rejection to Mutual Accommodation after 1535 The spiral of mutual rejection lost its momentum by the middle of the century. Of course persecution against Anabaptists remained a factor in some regions during the rest of the early modern period, and polemical rhetoric against Anabaptists did not disappear. However, if we can describe early Anabaptist-state relations using the concept of deviance amplification, we can also describe these relations after the late 1530s as characterized by a gradual process of deviance deamplification. The new and more enduring trend was for rulers and Anabaptists to soften and sometimes even abandon language and actions that served to de-legitimate former enemies. There were numerous reasons for this new development. On the Anabaptists’ side, many first generation leaders died at the hands of the authorities, and with them went some of the radical resolve of the first years of reforming movements. A radical orientation toward established society required stubbornness and bravery that was more typical of new converts than of believers born into a faith. After the middle of the sixteenth century more and more of those men and women who professed Anabaptist beliefs had been raised by Anabaptist parents, and by the beginning of the seventeenth century most Anabaptists came from an Anabaptist milieu. For these men and women, the maintenance of in-group networks or even more mundane, everyday concerns took precedence over other considerations. Furthermore, in the face of the frequent polemical attacks from early modern Protestant and Catholic clergymen, Anabaptist leaders almost always responded with apologetic claims that true believers had nothing at all in common with the revolutionaries of the Peasants’ War or the regime at Münster. When Anabaptists were persecuted after the middle of the sixteenth century, a few chose martyrdom, some

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converted, many became refugees, and others went underground. Yet until the late eighteenth century, almost none chose rebellion. Socio-political activism seemed less relevant to later generations. It is no coincidence that apocalyptic beliefs, and with them the urgency of behavior, lost their centrality for the great majority of Anabaptists after the 1530s. On the side of the authorities, the legal situation changed little after the 1530s. Anti-Anabaptist mandates remained in effect, new ones were released occasionally, and even the Imperial mandate of 1529 was renewed several times. Moreover, Anabaptists were granted no special rights in either the 1555 Peace of Augsburg or the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, though these documents did entrench the schism between Protestants and Catholics. Still, even though Anabaptists did not have legal standing in most European jurisdictions, more and more rulers were searching for new ways to deal with the reality of confessional pluralism. To be sure, in some territories renewed programs of enforced confessional conformity resulted in inhospitable conditions for Anabaptists. But elsewhere a more common consequence of pluralism was a diminished willingness to impose harsh sanctions in the name of God. As rulers became more familiar with the increasingly de-radicalized Anabaptist groups, they tended to relax their enforcement of the law, and in some cases even sought actively to offer Anabaptists sanctuary. By the seventeenth century persecution against Anabaptists outside of Moravia and the Swiss territories was sporadic at best; by the eighteenth century it was a rarity. A major result of these shifts in cultural attitudes was the integration of Anabaptists over several generations into the mainstream of European society, especially in northern Europe’s urban centers. Limiting this integration, on the other hand, was the constitutional structure of the old European order, which almost always restricted full political rights to those men who conformed to a territory’s approved faith. This kind of regulation excluded Anabaptists from the most influential public offices. However, many adapted to these constraints, and in some regions even thrived under these early modern conditions of limited toleration. In these circumstances, Anabaptist politics took on a more subtle, less dramatic character. Though tensions remained, gone were the days of open conflict with the state. The main problem facing Anabaptists in their relations with governments after the middle of

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the sixteenth century was how to maintain a balance between lives as religious outsiders and political subjects. The emerging patterns of peaceful coexistence varied from region to region. For the sake of convenience, I will focus on three regions, giving most attention to northern Germany and the Netherlands, where the trend toward mutual accommodation was particularly strong. Swiss Brethren and Marpeckites in Southern German-speaking Territories While Catholic territories had seen the most executions of Anabaptists in the sixteenth century, it was Swiss Protestant jurisdictions like Zurich and Bern where authorities were most persistent in their repressive measures. Anabaptists in the early Reformation had been active in Switzerland’s urban centers, but by the middle of the sixteenth century governmental police actions had effectively eliminated their activity in the cities. However, even into the early eighteenth century Reformed rulers, especially in Bern, continued to feel threatened by the confessional disunity posed by the Anabaptist presence in rural Switzerland, especially in the face of military threats from neighboring France.37 The persecution in Bern came in waves with the years 1668–1671, 1693–1695, and 1709–1711 marking the highpoints of governmental repression. Anabaptists developed many ways of coping with the difficult circumstances in southern German-speaking territories. Mark Furner has outlined several survival strategies used by Bern’s rural Anabaptists. Anabaptists who did not flee to sanctuaries such as Moravia often found greater freedom in isolated farmsteads or in villages, away from the centers of urban and territorial bureaucracy. Whenever possible they avoided territorial authorities, but if they were confronted they were generally willing to compromise on matters they considered non-essential, and if pushed they tried to dodge incriminating questions. When forced, some even swore oaths that they considered illegitimate.38 Tactics like these helped blur the lines between Anabaptists and non-Anabaptists in the countryside. While some believers refused to make compromises in matters of faith and insisted on professing their faith publicly, others were willing to 37 38

Oyer (2000), 100–3. Furner (2001).

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practice Nicodemism—that is, outward conformity to the rites of the dominant culture while remaining loyal to their Anabaptist convictions in their hearts. Although tensions between supporters of the two approaches led to the Amish division in the 1690s, Nicodemism was an effective way of balancing faith with the practical demands of survival in a hostile setting.39 In some localities Anabaptists blended easily into village networks.40 Family networks in villages across Switzerland and southern Germany frequently included not only Anabaptists but also local officials who would normally have been responsible for taking measures against them.41 Another factor which weakened the effectiveness of antiAnabaptist edicts was the actions of southern German noblemen. Claus-Peter Clasen has counted at least 38 nobles who employed or sheltered Anabaptists before the Thirty Years War.42 Protecting Anabaptists was one way for local officials to resist the pressures of political centralization.43 The role of Anabaptists in fostering tensions between local and territorial authorities may have helped to slow political integration in southern German and Swiss territories, but there were signs of change. By the end of the sixteenth century some representatives of the Swiss Brethren began to reconsider the uncompromising separatist principles articulated in the Schleitheim Articles of 1527. In the 1570s, for example, a Swiss Brethren commentator on the protocol of the Frankenthal disuptation between Reformed and Anabaptist representatives stated the following position: “When a magistrate possesses the virtues that should belong to a reborn Christian . . ., we believe that a magistrate can certainly be a Christian and that a Christian may be a magistrate.”44 Arnold Snyder believes that statements like this were influenced by the more open, tolerant spiritualism of Marpeck’s circle which softened the legalism of the earliest Swiss Brethren.45 Whatever its origins this statement is evidence of the trend of Anabaptist rapprochement with secular government.

39 40 41 42 43 44 45

Oyer (1997). Clasen (1972), 417–8; and Friedeburg (2002). Clasen (1972), 414. Ibid., 416–7. Hofer (2000). Quoted from Snyder, (2000), 106. Snyder (1992); Snyder (1999a); and Snyder (1999b and 2000).

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By the early eighteenth century Swiss and Rhineland German Anabaptists were building affirmations of obedience to secular authorities into their identity-defining, confessional literature. In the Prayerbook for Earnest Christians (Ernsthafte Christenpflicht), a popular devotional resource first published in 1708, the authors beseeched God: “Protect especially all devout authorities throughout the whole wide earth. In particular, be merciful to all those under whom you have [put] your people.”46 The Prayerbook contained numerous prayers with this sentiment. In another selection about the authorities, the authors wrote: “Moreover, give them wisdom and understanding to govern their countries, peoples, and cities so we may lead a quiet and godly life under their rule, O Lord!”47 While the authors of the eighteenthcentury Prayerbook stressed obedience to God, they did not, in contrast with the Schleitheim Articles, make a clear and uncompromising distinction between secular rulers and the kingdom of God. At least by the early eighteenth century, Swiss Anabaptists in the Prayerbook defined themselves politically as obedient subjects of rulers who deserved their prayers as God’s devout servants. Hutterites in Moravia and Hungary This trend toward greater political conformity was also clearly evident in Moravia after 1535. Despite occasional episodes of persecution and internal discord, Anabaptist refugees in Moravia were able to establish a social life organized according to the Hutterites’ unique brand of Christian communitarianism. By the early 1540s Peter Riedemann had established the normative framework for a disciplined Hutterite community that, although true to its separatist and spiritualist Anabaptist roots, had distanced itself from outwardly directed radical intentions.48 Following the model of the Schleitheim Articles, it became a maxim among Hutterites after Riedemann that “no Christian can be a ruler, and no ruler a Christian.”49 Nonetheless, the Hutterites developed a close, symbiotic relationship with Moravia’s largely autonomous nobility. Members of the Boskowitz, Kaunitz, Leipa, Liechtenstein, Waldstein, and Zerotin families, for example,

46 47 48 49

Prayerbook (1997), 44. Ibid., 25. Packull (1999a); and Chudaska (2003). Quoted from Stayer (1991), 152.

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allowed Hutterite collectives to thrive under their protection,50 motivated, at least in part, by their tolerant convictions. When speaking of the Hutterites in 1581, Friedrich von Zerotin told a foreign nobleman that “Faith is certainly a gift of God, and no one can give it to or take it from another.”51 But both sides also stood to gain economically. Noble families employed Hutterite workers in a variety of roles, and the Hutterites built a way of life around these opportunities, balancing their ideal of separation from a sinful world with the reality of cooperation and partial integration.52 The symbiotic relationship between Hutterites and noble patrons continued in Hungary after the early seventeenth century re-Catholicization of Moravia and the subsequent expulsion from the region of Hutterites and other Protestants. Thus, in 1640 Hutterites helped operate supply wagons to help in the defense against Turkish armies.53 Examples like this support Andrea Chudaska’s use of the concept “conforming nonconformity” to describe the Hutterites after the early Reformation.54 Dutch and Northern German Anabaptists Long-term patterns of mutual accommodation between Anabaptists and secular authorities were strongest in the Netherlands and northern Germany. In these regions Anabaptists established themselves not only in the countryside but also in urban centers. There, over the course of several decades, significant numbers of them became members of a growing early modern commercial bourgeoisie.55 In the aftermath of the violent suppression of the Melchiorites at Münster, Anabaptists in northern continental Europe splintered into a series of factions.56 Of least enduring significance were the extremists, such as the followers of Jan van Batenburg, who occasionally launched terrorist raids on targets they associated with corrupt authorities.57

50

Winkelbauer (2004), 66. Quoted from Winkelbauer (2004), 65: “Der Glaub ist gewiß ein Gab Gottes, und keiner kann keinem den Glauben geben noch nemen.” 52 Schlachta (2003). 53 Rothkegel (1998), 122. 54 Chudaska (2003), 342, 362–3, 365–6. For the origin of the concept, see Goertz (1995). 55 Schilling (1994a); and Schilling (1994b). 56 Deppermann (1987), ch. 10. 57 Jansma (1977). 51

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Another post-Münster Melchiorite response was to negotiate a reunification with the state-sponsored church. This was the route taken by a group of Melchiorites led by Peter Tasch in the German territory of Hesse in the late 1530s.58 The spiritualist Anabaptism of David Joris represented a third option. In the immediate aftermath of the defeat of the Anabaptists at Münster, Joris was probably the Anabaptist leader with the greatest following among Melchiorites. Instead of expecting the imminent advent of God’s kingdom in this world, Joris and his followers believed in the inner transformation of Christians and the Christian community. Spiritualist convictions were so strong among the Jorists that they, like the Melchiorites in Hesse, abandoned the practice of adult baptism. But rather than formally rejoining the mainstream church like the Mechiorites in Hesse, Joris and his followers opted for outward, Nicodemite conformity to mainstream rites, while still remaining inwardly true to their Melchiorite faith. By the end of the 1530s Joris had begun to withdraw from active leadership of the Melchiorite remnant.59 Over the long term the most successful branch of northern European Anabaptists were those who took a fourth path, striving to establish congregations of publicly confessing, ethically strict, peaceful, politically obedient believers who repudiated the legacy of Münster. After about 1540 Menno Simons was the most successful leader among these Anabaptists in the territories stretching from the Low Countries through East Friesland, Holstein, and Prussia. His followers generally called themselves Doopsgezinde (baptism-minded), and they soon became known popularly as Mennonites.60 As elsewhere in early modern Europe, public profession of Anabaptist convictions was a dangerous and radical act in the middle of the sixteenth century in northern continental Europe. Because of their goal to live in separate, disciplined communities, followers of Menno Simons’ brand of Melchiorite Anabaptism were relatively easy targets of state violence. Habsburg agents published edicts against dissenters. Those unlucky enough to fall into the hands of authorities were often given the opportunity to recant. In the sixteenth century refusal regularly resulted in public execution.

58 59 60

Packull (1992). Waite (1990). Dyck (1993).

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Protestants and Catholics alike frequently memorialized the deaths of their martyrs, and the Mennonites were no exception.61 Early Anabaptist martyrologies provide insight into their attitudes on a range of subjects. Adriaen Cornelisz, an Anabaptist imprisoned and executed in Leiden in 1552, illustrates Anabaptist understandings of the state in the middle of the sixteenth century. The account of Cornelisz’ interrogation—first printed in Sacrifice unto the Lord (Het Offer des Heeren) (1562), and then again in Thieleman van Braght’s Martyrs Mirror (1660)—includes a dialogue with a bailiff. In his attempt to convince Cornelisz to change his dangerous views and save his life, the bailiff appealed to Romans 13:1. Adriaen responded by agreeing that secular authority is ordained by God, and its role, following 1 Peter 2:14, is to protect the good and punish the wicked. “But it seems to me,” he added, “that the order is inverted, that they [rulers] are for the punishment of the good, and the protection of the evil.”62 The consequence for obedient believers, Adriaen claimed, was to recognize the authority of the state, but to always obey God before rulers. In this regard, the Mennonite position in the middle of the sixteenth century was comparable to those of the Swiss Brethren, Marpeckites and Hutterites of the same period. Changing Attitudes Toward Government Mennonite attitudes toward the state in the Netherlands and northern Germany developed further in settings that did not include persecution and suffering. By the end of the sixteenth century changes in the legal and political framework significantly affected Anabaptist relations with the state in northern Europe. The Spanish Habsburgs, overlords of the Netherlands, were staunch defenders of the Papacy and opponents of heresy. Even before the rise of Dutch resistance to the Habsburgs around the middle of the sixteenth century, Anabaptists had begun to flee persecution by Catholic authorities in the southern Low Countries. After the collapse of the Anabaptist regime at Münster, places of refuge included England, East Friesland, Jülich, Holstein, and the Vistula River delta. Most exiles, however, migrated into the provinces of the northern Netherlands, already the home of many coreligionists. In addition to helping absorb their Flemish brothers 61 62

Gregory (1999); and Gregory (2002). Braght (2004), 533; and Cramer (1904), 210–11.

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and sisters, Mennonite congregations in the north helped finance the Protestant war effort after mid-century. The war that followed resulted in the separation of the Netherlands into the Habsburg controlled south and the largely Protestant United Provinces in the north. In the southern Low Countries persecution, although still a factor, diminished in intensity. The last execution of an Anabaptist in Catholic territories was carried out in 1597.63 In the north, Mennonites received enough legal protection to coexist peacefully with their nominally Reformed rulers. Nonetheless, the old conviction that public order required confessional uniformity— and that Anabaptists threatened that order—did not disappear altogether as a factor in the Dutch polity. Although Reformed Protestantism was neither the faith of the majority nor the state religion of the Dutch Republic, Reformed clergymen saw themselves as guardians of Dutch confessional uniformity. In the Belgic Confession of the later sixteenth century, which was reissued at the Synod of Dort in 1618–19, article 36 on civil government stated that the Reformed detest the error of the Anabaptists and other seditious people, and in general all those who desire to reject the higher powers and magistrates and would subvert justice, introduce community of goods, and confound that decency and good order which God has established among men.64

Mennonites regularly had to negotiate with local officials to secure their collective rights to freedom of worship. For example, the Martyrs Mirror records a decree from 1601 in which Groningen’s Reformed officials ordered “that the exercise of all other religions than the Reformed is herewith again strictly prohibited.”65 Magistrates in Deventer passed a similar edict against Mennonites and Catholics in 1620.66 These qualifications, however, should not distract our attention from the main development: namely that the United Provinces’ ruling Orange family did not regard the Mennonite refusal to swear oaths, bear arms or baptize children as a threat to public order. From the 1580s through the rest of the early modern period, the Dutch Republic was the largest, safest, most stable territory for early modern Anabaptists

63 64 65 66

Woltjer and Mout (1995), 408. “The Belgic Confession” (1988), 172. Braght (2004), 1102. Braght (2004), 1107. Also see Hege and Zijpp (1957), 452.

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in Europe, and Dutch congregations thrived religiously and economically. The Dutch Golden Age was also a golden age for the Mennonites. By the beginning of the seventeenth century, Mennonites also found increasing places of sanctuary beyond the United Provinces.67 These were usually in smaller territories at the margins of the Holy Roman Empire that were controlled by local lords who sought to gain an economic advantage by attracting productive communities of religious nonconformists with offers of religious and guild freedoms. Bartholomäus von Ahlefeldt’s Fresenburg in Holstein was an early example of such a territory. In the last decade of his life Menno Simons himself enjoyed the protection of Ahlefeldt. On the estate located between Hamburg and Lübeck, Menno and his followers established homes and operated a printing press, a privilege they received in exchange for a yearly household tax.68 The Anabaptist settlement at Fresenburg was destroyed in the Thirty Years War, but other similar territories in northern Germany where Anabaptists found protection included Altona, Wandsbek, Glückstadt, Friedrichstadt, Krefeld and Neuwied, as well as regions further to the east such as the Vistula River delta. The most common legal basis for toleration in districts like these were privileges, agreements made between an individual ruler and the Mennonites (or other groups) which had to be renewed each time a new ruler came to power. One such privilege was granted to Mennonites in Altona near Hamburg by the Danish king Christian IV in 1641.69 In it Christian pledged to protect “all adherents, artisans and merchants of the socalled Mennonites (Ministen).”70 He also confirmed their freedom from guild obligations as well as their freedom to worship according to their own traditions. This act reiterated the freedoms granted earlier by members of the Schauenburg family in 1601, 1622 and 1635, and Christian IV’s successors throughout the early modern period continued to reconfirm the privileges granted by their predecessors. The privileges, however, were not abstract, enduring, modern rights.

67 For examples primarily from the sixteenth century, see Waite (1992); Knottnerus (1994); and Woelk (1996). 68 Goverts (1925). 69 Roosen (1886), 37–8. 70 Quoted from Roosen (1886), 37–8: “die sämtliche angehörige und Mittverwandte Kauff- und Handwerksleute der genandten Ministen zu Altenah.”

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In exchange for protection Christian expected local Mennonites to pledge their loyalty to him personally. Furthermore, they were not to seek converts in the local Lutheran population, and they were to lead quiet, obedient, law abiding lives. Calvinists, Catholics and Jews also enjoyed similar privileges in Lutheran Altona. Although no member of these officially tolerated minority groups could hold political office in Altona, they could conduct their religious rites and earn a living without fear of persecution. These arrangements with the Danish crown had implications for Mennonites in Hamburg, the Hanseatic port located only a few short kilometers from Altona. Although Hamburg was an officially Lutheran city and its Lutheran clerical elite was intolerant of religious minorities, the city’s merchant-dominated Senate passed two temporary privileges (Fremdenkontrakte) in 1605 and 1639 with Dutch immigrant families—not religious communities as was the case in Altona. Nonetheless, most of these immigrants were Calvinists and Mennonites. Competition with Altona was almost certainly a key reason for the granting of the charters. Although Hamburg’s Senate did not renew the charters after the middle of the seventeenth century, Mennonites and other non-Lutherans continued to live and work in the city. Most of the time they worshipped in private homes or took the short trip to churches in Altona. By the end of the century non-Lutheran Christians were able to earn citizenship in Hamburg, but it was a limited citizenship, for they did not enjoy full rights to political participation. Hamburg’s officials chose to grant limited rights to Mennonites as individual newcomers rather than as a confessional community.71 While exceptions like Altona and Hamburg were more common after the early seventeenth century than they had been in the sixteenth century, it remained difficult for Anabaptists to establish themselves in most territories of the Holy Roman Empire. From about the Thirty Years War to the fall of the Empire in the early nineteenth century, Anabaptism remained a crime which could in theory (but not in practice) lead to the death penalty. Occasionally, emperors did pressure local authorities to enforce anti-Anabaptist Imperial edicts. In those cases where local rulers resisted such demands, they usually did so not by denying the validity of laws against Anabaptists

71

Driedger (2002b).

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(Wiedertäufer) but rather by denying that Mennonites belonged to the legal category of Wiedertäufer. Instead, they argued that Mennonites were productive, obedient subjects. The Mennonite Confessional Tradition and Attitudes Toward the State Another major factor affecting relations with secular rulers was the growing predominance among Mennonites of collective rather than individual confessions of faith.72 The practice of adult baptism generally required that believers make a public statement of their faith before they were accepted by their peers as congregational members. In the first decades after the spread of Anabaptism in northern Europe, the great majority of such statements were formulated by individuals, and one of the best records we have of early Anabaptist beliefs are the accounts of their interrogations before government officials. Over the last half of the sixteenth century, however, collective confessional statements increasingly became the norm in Dutch and northern German Anabaptist circles. These documents codified collective standards of theology, congregational governance and ethics. There were several reasons for the rising importance of collective confessions of faith. Over the course of the sixteenth century, key early Anabaptist characteristics—their aversion to coercion in matters of faith and their insistence on the active involvement of all believers in religious life—became an impediment to establishing stable communities of believers. The egalitarian nature of Anabaptist leadership frequently encouraged groups to splinter; believers regularly regarded small doctrinal or ethical disagreements as impediments to alliances within or between congregations that were supposed to be “without spot or wrinkle” (Ephesians 4:5). As a result, by the end of the sixteenth century, the Doopsgezinde community of northern Europe was a patchwork of many religious sub-cultures. Despite regional or ethnic designations like “Waterlander,” “High German,” “Flemish,” and “Frisian,” that described the largest groupings, the real divisions among the separate factions were along ecclesiastical lines. Each group had a distinctive position on theology, ethics and governance. Differences between the factions began to take on an entrenched character as children were raised to accept preferred sets of norms. By the end of the sixteenth century, these children rather 72

Visser (1974–1975).

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than new converts were the main source of new generations of Anabaptists. Rather than coping with intense persecution, these new generations had to come to terms with less aggressive but still significant intolerance in a world where legal boundaries divided members of Europe’s various religious groups. In these circumstances, Mennonite leaders frequently used the norms laid out in confessions of faith to regulate the life of congregational members in an effort to overcome the rifts separating Anabaptist factions by identifying shared principles. The intended result—never achieved in absolute terms—was the formation of a united, routinized, disciplined brotherhood that lived according to common biblical principles. Well-behaved congregants and well governed congregations were important not only to ensure peace and unity among coreligionists but also to maintain the newly-gained favor and protection of secular authorities, who were regularly counseled by hostile clergymen to take a harder line with nonconformists. Both the refusal to resist evil with the force of arms and the insistence that all Christians be obedient to the state figured prominently in collective Mennonite confessions of faith after the middle of the sixteenth century.73 These confessions of faith generally opened with a statement about theological issues like the triune nature of God and the Creation, and then outlined principles of ethics and congregational governance, before ending with beliefs about the Final Judgment. The principles of nonresistance and the refusal to swear solemn oaths had the potential to put Anabaptists in conflict with rulers in the sixteenth century, for they threatened the traditional interdependence of Christian and civil spheres. However, nonresistance did not have to imply a negative orientation toward rulers, and the emphasis placed on obedience to the state served to temper any hint of sedition that an unfriendly early modern reader might otherwise have found in the documents. The Dordrecht Confession of 1632 is representative of seventeenthcentury Mennonite attitudes toward the state. It was also influential among many Anabaptists throughout northern German-speaking territories as well as some Swiss Brethren communities in Alsace and the Palatinate. Three articles—“Of the Office of the Secular Authority,” “Of Revenge,” and “Of the Swearing of Oaths”—addressed relations

73

On confessions of faith, see Koop (2003).

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with governments. In these the authors wrote that secular government was ordained by God for the protection of the good and punishment of evildoers. Christians were obliged to submit to this authority by paying all taxes and fulfilling all duties that were not contrary to God’s commands—a qualification also found in other Protestant confessions of faith such as the Belgic Confession. They were also to pray for the prosperity of their country and their rulers, and to make every effort to live lives beyond legal reproach. Furthermore, believers were forbidden from using violence, even in cases of self-protection, and they were to avoid swearing oaths in favor of simple affirmations of the truth. Of course, the exact wording of confessional statements varied from text to text. The corresponding but shorter articles in the Jan Cents Confession of 1630 emphasized most of the same themes but added that “we do not find that Paul mentions it [secular authority] among the offices of the church, nor that Christ taught His disciples such a thing, or called them to it. . . . [H]ence we are afraid to fill such offices in our Christian calling.”74 The Dordrecht Confession contains no such strong statement. While a great number of Mennonite groups relied on confessions of faith to define their collective identities in the seventeenth century, not all put the same emphasis on their normative character. The Lamists are the chief example of Doopsgezinden who declined to be bound by confessions of faith. Nonetheless, virtually all groups accepted Romans 13 as the Scriptural foundation of their politics. And, since this biblical passage was also the basis of many other contemporary Protestant confessional statements on temporal authority, Mennonite attitudes had much in common with contemporary Reformed and Lutheran political norms. Documents like confessions of faith set the theological framework within which Mennonites lived their daily lives. The relationship between belief and practice was not straightforward, however, for daily life did not always conform to normative statements. For example, the practice of oath swearing among Mennonites in the Netherlands and northern Germany was much more complex than the confessional assertions would suggest. In some jurisdictions rulers did accept simple affirmations in place of a solemn oath, but in others Mennonites used a hybrid form of testimony, such as a simple affirmation combined

74

Quoted from Braght (2004), 36–7.

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with a solemn gesture. There is also evidence that some Mennonites, even leaders who in other circumstances were advocates for simple affirmation, did swear solemn oaths in the seventeenth century.75 Congregants who were called to civic militia duty regularly paid for a non-Mennonite to represent them, and those who had recourse to violence were regularly punished with the ban. However, injunctions against the use of force and revenge were complicated by merchant activity, which was so important in Dutch Mennonite life. Merchants regularly traveled in convoys that included armed ships, and there is evidence that Mennonite merchants occasionally armed their own merchant ships or, in some cases, even traded in weapons, despite protests from coreligionists.76 Although Mennonites held divergent views of office holding, the subject was not quite as contentious as the use of force. Friedrichstadt, a northern German town newly created in the early seventeenth century to attract productive foreigners, included a substantial Mennonite population. Some considered the acceptance of civic offices to be a violation of confessional principles, while other Mennonites served as mayors.77 This range of attitudes toward participation in government was typical for Mennonites in those regions where they were allowed to hold minor public offices. While there were numerous regional and contextual complexities, normative statements served as a standard reference that Mennonites used to regulate their collective lives. Especially in times of crisis and conflict, these statements were useful for shaping identity both among coreligionists and in their relations with rulers and opponents. By the seventeenth century in the Netherlands and some other regions of northern German-speaking territories the normative interests of Mennonite leaders had converged in many regards with those of the territorial rulers. Seldom did either view the other as fundamentally evil. To the contrary, Mennonites considered governmental authority to derive from God, while rulers accepted that Mennonites were hard-working, peace-loving Christians who had no relationship whatever with the violent Anabaptist groups of the early Reformation. Mennonites also recognized the provisional nature of their religious freedoms in territories where they were tolerated. In a “Prayer for

75 Dyserinck (1883); Doornkaat Koolman (1893); Vos (1909); Driedger (2002b), ch. 6. 76 Sprunger (1994), 138–140; Westera (1994); Driedger (2002b), ch. 5. 77 Sutter (1979).

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the Secular Power,” included at the end of the Martyrs Mirror (1660), the author wrote: Guide us so into Thy ways, that we may not in any wise be a stumblingblock or offense for them [the authorities]; so that the liberty which they grant us in the practice of our religion, which we owe to Thee, may not be taken from us because of an improper walk on our part.78

After almost a century of official government toleration in the Dutch Republic, most Mennonites had banished the suggestion that rulers could only be an instrument of evil. Indeed, almost all early modern Mennonite leaders agreed that the only way to preserve their unique religious way of life was to be especially good citizens and subjects. By the middle of the seventeenth century in the Netherlands, as well as in most northern German territories, religious nonconformity and political conformity seemed inseparable. Radical Dutch Mennonitism in the Age of Revolution Seventeenth-century Anabaptists tended to be satisfied with their inherited distance from the political mainstream, and in some quarters this tendency continued well into the eighteenth century and beyond. For example, when forced to choose between loyalty to the Anabaptist tradition of nonresistance or complying with the military service ordered by the state, many Mennonites in eighteenth-century Prussia chose to emigrate to Russia. However, a new and important strand of enlightened, highly educated, socially open-minded and cosmopolitan Mennonitism was developing in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This had significant political consequences.79 During the middle of the eighteenth century the Dutch Enlightenment became increasingly politicized. At the same time, the slow decline of the cultural and economic achievements of the Dutch Golden Age was balanced by an increase in political radicalism, fuelled in part by the newly emerging popular press, which Mennonites had a hand in spreading. Dissatisfaction with the ruling oligarchy began to grow, and ideas about freedom, citizenship, democracy and national self-determination that were hotly debated in the context of the American Revolution only added to a rising sense of political frustration. 78 79

Braght (2004), 1135. Much of this section is based on Driedger (2002a).

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When the Netherlands suffered humiliation and financial pressures as a result of the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War (1780–1784), circumstances were right for a revolt. Lasting from about 1780 until 1787, the largely unsuccessful Patriot Movement was led in part by Mennonites. The Mennonites who became Patriots in the 1780s did so because they no longer felt that their interests or the interests of their communities were adequately represented by the increasingly oligarchic Orangist stadholderate and its Reformed functionaries. Many of the leading Mennonite supporters of the anti-Orangist cause were also students at the Amsterdam Mennonite Seminary—in other words, they were preachers. These included Andries Scheltes Cuperus, Wybo Fijnje, Jacob Hendrik Floh, François Adriaan van der Kemp, Nicolaas Klopper, Jacob Kuiper, Cornelis Loosjes, Petrus Loosjes, and Abraham Staal. Most Mennonite Patriots—although not all Mennonites—abandoned the principle of nonresistance, one of the cornerstones of the confessional and politically obedient form of Anabaptism. With the abandonment of nonresistance came an end to the traditional restrictions on public office holding. One of the key revolutionary organizations in the era of the Patriot Movement was the Free Corps, groups of citizens’ militias formed in the 1780s to resist the authority of the Dutch stadholder. Perhaps the most prominent Mennonite Free Corps participant was the Leiden preacher François Adriaan van der Kemp, an outspoken supporter of the American Revolution and a friend of the future American president John Adams. Van der Kemp became a leading publicist for the revolt. Although some Mennonites felt uncomfortable with his position, van der Kemp was certainly not an aberration in his day. Mindful that it did not become the private army of the Calvinist elite, the Patriots’ political program required the participation of all sectors of Dutch society in the militia. One of the Patriots’ key constitutional documents was the “Leidse Ontwerp” (the Leiden Draft) of 1785. Article XV insisted on “the admission of all citizens to the Free Corps irrespective of denomination.”80 Two publicists closely identified with the Draft, either as authors or as key supporters, were the Mennonites Wybo Fijnje and Pieter Vreede.81 80

Quoted from Schama (1977), 95. For the claim that Fijnje and Vreede were authors of the Draft, see Schama (1977), 95; and Prak (1991), 89. For newer evidence of French authorship, see Popkin (1995). 81

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While a significant number of prominent Mennonite leaders were active in the Patriot Movement, it would be misleading to suggest that all Dutch Mennonites held republican attitudes in the 1780s. Three political orientations were typical. First, defenders of the old order did still exist. One of the most prominent was the Hoorn preacher Cornelis Ris (1717–1790). Ris was the author of the De Geloofsleere Der Waare Mennoniten of Doopsgezinden (The Confession of Faith of the True Mennonites) (1766), in which he campaigned in favor of maintaining traditional principles like obedience to the state, nonresistance, and the refusal to hold public office. Second, a growing group of Mennonites sought new forms of enlightened Christian social activism that were nonetheless free of radical political goals. While Ris was no supporter of the Enlightenment, other traditionalists like the preacher Jan Nieuwenhuizen accepted many of its principles. In 1784, in the midst of the conflicts between republicans and Orangists, he founded the Maatschappij tot Nut van ‘t Algemeen (Society for Public Welfare). The purpose of the “Nut,” as the highly successful, inter-confessional society was popularly known, was to improve the lot of the underprivileged, and therefore Dutch society as a whole, through education. It was consciously apolitical. Finally, there were the republicans, the new radicals whose activist politics were a sharp break from the political conformity that had marked Mennonite-state relations for many generations. The Napoleonic invasion of 1795 gave the previously unsuccessful radical democrats an opportunity to achieve the reforms for which they had earlier campaigned. They formed a new republic. In 1796 the government of the Batavian Republic brought an end to privileges based on religious affiliation, thereby giving Mennonites the same individual rights as members of all other confessional groups. Mennonites were among the legislators who voted this change into law. In other words, while the spheres of church and state were now officially separate, the boundaries between Mennonites and the state were less clear, for Mennonites were some of the highest representatives of the Dutch state and were not exempt from its demands. The new republic, like the French republic before it, was unstable. A series of governmental changes followed, including a short-lived, radical democratic coup in 1798 with the Mennonites Wybo Fijnje and Pieter Vreede among the leaders. The Batavian Republic ended in 1806 when Napoleon put the Netherlands under the rule of his brother, Louis Napoleon, as King

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of Holland. In an angry response, the young republican idealist, Maria Aletta Hulshoff (1781–1846), the daughter of a prominent Mennonite preacher, made plans to assassinate the French monarch. When she came to the attention of authorities she was imprisoned.82 Most Dutch republicans, disillusioned by the events of the 1810s, expressed their views on the foreign regime in less dramatic ways. French influence ended finally with Napoleon’s decline. With Dutch sovereignty renewed, Mennonite men were able to enjoy a voice in Dutch politics, more or less on the same basis as other male citizens. This was a major departure from the pattern of politics in the early modern period—and Mennonite activists, both men and women, had contributed a great deal to the weakening of that old system. Conclusion Simply the existence of Anabaptists had a political dimension in the early modern era. Because they and other nonconformists continued to survive from generation to generation in many European territories, rulers were forced to confront uncomfortable issues raised by confessional diversity. Beyond this, however, by the criteria of an older definition of politics as the actions of rulers in central offices, Anabaptists prior to the late eighteenth century were largely irrelevant. But if we understand politics to include those decisions and actions which contributed to or undermined public order, Anabaptist leaders as well as rank-and-file believers played important political roles in their societies. Seen from a long-term perspective, the total of these relatively small, local, and seemingly insignificant actions takes shape as part of broader historical trends: the radicalism of early sixteenth-century reforming movements; the political conformity typical of institutionalizing religious groups throughout most of the early modern period; and late eighteenth-century revolutionary idealism.83

82

Wiersma (2003). I would like to thank James Urry for sharing a draft copy of his new book, Mennonites, Politics and Peoplehood: Europe–Russia–Canada, 1525–1980. 83

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Bibliography Primary Sources Baylor, Michael, ed. The Radical Reformation. Cambridge and New York, 1991. “Belgic Confession,” in The Encyclopedia of American Religions: Religious Creeds. J. Gordon Melton, ed. Detroit, 1988, 163–72. Braght, Thieleman Jansz van. The Bloody Theater or Martyrs Mirror of the Defenseless Christians. Joseph F. Sohm, trans. 2nd ed. Scottdale, PA, 2004. Cramer, Samuel, ed. Het Offer des Heeren: de oudste verzameling doopsgezinde martelaarsbrieven en offerliederen. The Hague, 1904. Deutsche Reichstagsakten unter Kaiser Karl V. Vol. 7. Johannes Kühn, ed. Stuttgart, 1935. Klaassen, Walter, ed. Anabaptism in Outline: Selected Primary Sources. Scottdale, PA, 1981a. Leu, Urs B. “A Memorandum of Bullinger and the Clergy Regarding the Punishment of the Anabaptists (May 1535),” Mennonite Quarterly Review 78 (2004), 109–32. Prayer Book for Earnest Christians: Die ernsthafte Christenpflicht. Leonard Gross, trans. and ed. Scottdale, PA, 1997. Secondary Sources Bender, Harold S. “Church and State in Mennonite History,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 13 (1939), 83–103. ——. “The Anabaptists and Religious Liberty in the Sixteenth Century,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 44 (1953), 32–51. Brady, Thomas A., Jr. “’You hate us priests’: Anticlericalism, Communalism and the Control of Women at Strasbourg in the Age of the Reformation.” In Anticlericalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Peter A. Dykema and Heiko A. Oberman, eds. Leiden and New York, 1994, 167–208. Chudaska, Andrea. Peter Riedemann. Konfessionsbildendes Täufertum im 16. Jahrhundert. Gütersloh, 2003. Clasen, Claus-Peter. Anabaptism: A Social History, 1525–1618. Switzerland, Austria, Moravia, South and Central Germany. Ithaca and London, 1972. Deppermann, Klaus. Melchior Hoffman: Social Unrest and Apocalyptic Visions in the Age of Reformation. Malcolm Wren, trans. Benjamin Drewery, ed. Edinburgh, 1987. Derksen, John D. From Radicals to Survivors: Strasbourg’s Religious Nonconformists over Two Generations, 1525–1570. ‘t Goy-Houten, 2002. Dittrich, Christoph. Die vortridentinische katholische Kontroverstheologie und die Täufer: Cochläus, Eck, Fabri. Frankfurt and New York, 1991. Doornkaat Koolman, [ Jan] ten. Die Verpflichtung der Mennoniten an Eidesstatt. Berlin, 1893. Driedger, Michael. “Kanonen, Schießpulver und Wehrlosigkeit: Cord, Geeritt und B. C. Roosen in Holstein und Hamburg 1532–1905,” Mennonitische Geschichtsblätter 52 (1995), 101–21. ——. “ ‘The Enlightenment’: An Article Missing from the Mennonite Encyclopedia.” In Commoners and Community. C. Arnold Snyder, ed. Scottdale, PA, and Waterloo, ON, 2002a, 101–20. ——. Obedient Heretics: Mennonite Identities in Lutheran Hamburg and Altona during the Confessional Age. Aldershot, 2002b. Duke, Alastair. Reformation and Revolt in the Low Countries. London, 1990. Dyck, C. J. An Introduction to Mennonite History: A Popular History of the Anabaptists and the Mennonites. 3rd ed. Scottdale, PA, 1993. Dyserinck, J. De vrijstelling van den eed voor de Doopsgezinden. Haarlem, 1883. Ehrenpreis, Stefan and Ute Lotz-Heumann. Reformation und konfessionelles Zeitalter. Darmstadt, 2002.

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INDEX Aargau, 92, 94, 97, 374, 375 Abbott, Leona Stucky, 429, 430, 432, 448–450, 460 Abel, 470, 472, 474 Aberli, Heini, 49, 50, 60 Abraham, 411, 485, 486 Abrahamsz de Haan, Galenus, xix, 289–293, 335–337, 499 Defense of the Christians Who are Called Doopsgezinde (1699), 338 Further Explanation (1659), 335 Introduction to the Knowledge of the Christian Religion for the Instruction of the Youth, (1677), 338 see also Collegiants Adams, John, 536 Adler, Clemens, 194 On the Sword (1529), 194 Adriaensz, Adriaen, 301 Aerts, Lijsken, 490, 493, 494 Aesticampianus, Rhagius, 21 Agrippa, Henry Cornelius (of Nettersheim) Uncertainty and Vanity of all Sciences and Arts (1530), 136 Ahlefeldt, Bartholomaeus von, 529 Aken, Gillis van, 284, 286, 307, 484 Albada, Aggaeus von, 141 Alcohol, 186, 321 Alenson, Hans, 498 Alewijns, Henrick, 491 Alkmaar, 313 Allen, William, 476 Allstedt, 16, 22, 23, 29 Alsace, 37, 56, 98, 348, 351, 368, 372, 376–378, 532 Alt-Brünn, 183, 184 Althamer, Andreas, 133 Diallage (1528), 133, 271 Altona, 413, 501, 528–530 Alva, Count of, 315 Alvinc/Vinflul de Jos see Wintz Ameland, 320 America, 372, 377 American Revolution, 535, 536 Ames, William, 332 Amish, 375, 377, 380–384, 402, 411, 474 Amish Division (1690s), xxi, 415, 523

Ammann, Jakob, 376, 381–384 Amon, Hans, 200 Amsterdam, 48, 220–223, 228, 289, 313, 316, 318, 322, 323, 326, 330, 332, 334, 341, 342, 467, 478, 499, 501, 519 Anabaptism Historiography of, xvii–xix, xxi–xxii, 45–47, 51, 58, 60, 69, 70, 72, 73, 78, 91, 105, 192–194, 204, 259, 299 Political aspects of, 46, 91, 94, 96, 177, 179, 187–189, 314, 355, 356–358, 375, 380, 477, 479, 481, 507–510, 513, 515–517, 519, 520, 532 Scripture, 469, 470, 472, 482, 485, 494, 495 Social aspects of, 46, 130, 188, 193, 195, 299, 301, 307, 309, 310, 312, 314, 365 Suffering, 421, 470, 471, 482–484, 488 vis-à-vis Spiritualism, 90, 104, 105, 107, 187, 189, 191, 192, 259, 280, 293, 294, 358, 526 vis-à-vis Peasants’ War, 78, 83–85, 106, 351, 512 Women, 397, 425–429, 432, 434, 436, 443, 448, 450, 454, 455, 460–462, 485, 487 martyrdom, 431, 441, 443, 449, 450, 454, 458–460 Membership, 444, 445 Punishment, 456, 457 reasons for joining, 446–449, 456, 457 Recantation, 458 Roles, 427, 429–432, 435–438 Sexuality, 451 see also Austerlitz Brethren; Dutch Anabaptism; Dutch Mennonites; Hutterites; Martyrs and martyrdoms; Melchiorites; Spiritualist Anabaptism; Swiss Brethren Andries, Laurens, 496 Ansbach, 490 Anthropology, 17, 123, 139, 145, 150–152, 154, 263, 271, 292

546

index

Antichrist, 31, 135, 282, 286, 287 Anticlericalism, 3, 4, 15, 24–26, 38–46, 52, 91, 165, 199, 224, 235, 247, 374 see also Clergy antinomianism, 452 Anti-Semitism, 173, 176, 182 Anti-Trinitarianism, xiv, 2, 202, 268, 270 see also Socinianism see also Trinity and Trinitarianism Antonides, Joannes, 341 Antwerp, 283, 285, 287, 303, 310, 313, 314, 325, 486, 487, 490 Apocalypticism, 33, 34, 85, 86, 104, 107, 179–181, 220, 221, 230, 232, 235–238, 243, 251, 253, 280, 287, 302, 513, 518 see also Eschatology Apocrypha, 202, 270 Apostles Creed, 173, 202, 335, 374, 392, 397, 414, 499 Apostolic Church, 275, 498, 499 Apostool, Samuel, 336, 337 Appenzell, 66, 75, 93, 98, 359, 362, 490 Aquinas, 5 Areopagite, 123 Aristotle, 5, 138 Armininanism, 323 see also Arminius, Jacobus; Remonstrants; Predestination Arminius, Jacobus, 323 see also Arminianism; Free Will; Predestination Ascherham, Gabriel, xix, 112, 113, 183, 184, 194–198, 258, 259, 279, 293 On the Distinction between Divine and Human Wisdom (1544), 196, 279 see also Gabrielites Aschersleben, 21 Assimilation, 405, 406, 500–502, 509, 512, 520, 521, 523, 524 Auerbacher, Kilian, 183, 187 Augsburg Confession, 189, 348 see also Lutheranism Augsburg, 84, 85, 99, 100, 105, 106, 130, 169, 178, 180, 260, 266, 359 see also Martyrs Synod August (Elector), 148 Augustine, 5, 6, 18, 19, 21, 26, 144 Ausbund (1583), 112, 185, 389, 401–403, 418–422, 474, 492

Auspitz, 183, 184 Austerlitz Brethren, xx, 99, 103, 104, 181, 185, 186, 188, 198, 358, 360, 362, 363 Austerlitz, 111–114, 166, 167, 175, 181, 184, 188, 189, 273, 357 Austria, 79, 85, 86, 113, 163, 172, 179, 181, 185, 201, 271, 349, 351, 352, 429, 433, 436, 442, 478, 479, 481, 484, 488 Avoidance see Shunning Aysesz, Reytse, 315, 316 Babylon, 253, 401 Bad Kreuznach, 364 Baden, 348 Bader, Augustin, 107 Balbus, Johannes, 175 Balling, Pieter, 334 Childrearing practices, 486, 487, 490, 491 Baltic region, 104, 219 Baltic Sea, 330 Ban, 60, 67, 79, 90, 97, 98, 99, 107, 110, 112–114, 133, 134, 170, 184, 186, 188, 269, 288, 289, 307, 311, 313, 314, 320–322, 363, 366, 393, 394, 378, 416 Dordrecht Confession (1632) on, 327 Schleitheim Articles on, 96 see also Shunning Banishment, 102, 111, 112 Banská Bystrica see Neusohl Baptism, Believers, xvii, 10, 47, 48, 62, 63, 65, 68, 78, 83, 96, 170, 191, 194, 217, 228, 230, 292, 313, 320, 348, 373, 391, 393, 394, 396, 417, 407, 456, 500, 515–517 Abrahamsz, Galenus on, 335, 336 Collegiants on, 291, 333 Denck on, 103, 257, 262, 264, 270 Dutch Anabaptists on, 98, 222, 227, 228, 233–235, 239, 247, 253, 283, 321 Entfelder on, 274, 275 Gabrielites on, 196, 197, 279 Gilles van Aken on, 286 Glaidt on, 176 Göschl on, 172 Hoffman on, 217, 221, 302, 280 Hubmaier on, 71, 72, 170 Hutterites on, 110, 179, 191, 196, 202, 206 Joris on, 285, 286

index Karlstadt on, 10 Kautz on, 267, 268, 273 Marpeck on, 358, 359, 361, 362 Matthijs on, 228 Menno on, 305, 306, 308 Münsterites, 217, 226–228, 230 Old Flemish on, 326 Philips (Dirk) on, 311 Rothmann on, 229, 230, 251, 359 Schwenckfeld on, 129, 191 Swiss Brethren, 59, 60, 63–67, 69, 74–77, 185, 186, 261, 350, 352, 377, 379 van Blesdijk on, 286 Zwingli on, 63, 72 see also Baptism, Infant Baptism, Infant, xvii, 48, 56, 57, 59, 63, 64, 74, 149, 187, 190, 191, 198, 227, 264, 230, 273, 373, 482, 497, 516 see also Baptism, Believers Baptists, xviii Bäretswyl, 77 Barnabas, 469 Basel theses of 1535 see Karlstadt, Basel theses Basel, 24, 51, 56, 66, 70, 84, 85, 92–95, 97, 106, 137, 228, 263, 270, 284, 303, 257, 490 Council of, 21 see also University of Basel Batava, Flora, 342 Batavian Republic, 537 Batenburg, 283 Batenburg, Jan van, 250, 283, 301, 303, 525 Batenburgers, 301 vis-à-vis David Joris, 302 Battle at the White Mountain, 163, 199, 207 Battle of Mohács, 163, 167 Baumeister, Brigitta, 455 Bavaria, 108, 488, 492 Baylor, Michael G., 15 Beckum, Maria van, 441, 442 Beckum, Ursel van, 441, 442 Bederman, Gail, 424 Beggar king, 513 Behaim, Bartholomew, 261 Behaim, Sebald, 261 Belgic Confession, 528, 533 Belgium, 307 Believers church see Ecclesiology Bender, Harold S., xi, xv–xvii, 46, 53, 58, 70, 77

547

Benefices, 91, 94, 98 Bensing, Manfred, 30 Berengar, 412 Bergman, Cornelius, 350 Bern, 66, 84, 93, 94, 96, 97, 352, 372, 375, 376, 479, 522 Disputation at (1538), 97, 353 Bernhofer-Pippert, Elsa, 452 Besserer, Bernhard, 130 Bethlen, Gabriel, 208 Betz, Hans, 475 Beukels, Jan see Jan van Leiden Bevergern, 230 Biberach, 517 Bible study, 49, 53 56, 60, 74, 101, 136, 180, 333, 373 Bible, 3, 119, 120, 202, 203, 206, 225, 253, 265, 289, 294, 310, 419 Hermeneutics, 121, 124, 132, 135–138, 148, 149, 154, 259, 266, 270, 309, 322, 323, 333, 358–360, 362, 380 New Testament, 176, 354, 360 Old Testament, 275, 276, 353, 354, 356, 360 see also Sola scriptura; Scripture; Zurich Bible Bibliotheca fratrum Polonorum, 332 Bidloo, Govert, 339 Bidloo, Lambert, 339 Unlimited Toleration the Destruction of the Doopsgezinden (1701), 339 Biel, 456 Biesecker-Mast, Gerald, 90, 91 Biestkens, Nicolaes, 310 Biestkens Bible (1558), 310, 317, 328 Bilgramites see Pilgramites; Marpeck, Pilgram Binsdorf, 470 Bisch, Rauff, 355 Blanke, Fritz, xvii, 64,66, 67 Brothers in Christ (1955), 66 Blaurock, George, 64, 66, 67, 70, 77, 91, 92, 108 in the Tyrol, 108 Blesdijk, Nicolaas Meyndersz van, 227, 228, 284–286, 303, 307 defection from Davidites, 284 vis-à-vis David Joris, 284–286 Blickle, Peter, 4, 12, 32, 34–36, 39, 40, 55 Communal Reformation (1992), 34, 35 Block, Agnes, 342 Blokzijl, 321, 326

548

index

Bocholt conference (1536), 283, 302 Bocskai, István, 207 Boehme, Jacob, 332 Boekbinder, Bartholomeus, 222, 230 Boekbinder, Gerrit, 222, 243, 245 Bohemia, 22, 103, 114, 163, 167, 190, 198, 351, 357, 478 Bohemian Brethren, xviii, 114, 164, 177 see also Unity of Brethren Bolsward, 223 Boosers, Maeyken, 441, 483 Boskowitz, 524 Bourignon, Antoinette, 332 Bouwens, Leenaert, 284, 311–313 Braght, Thieleman Jansz van, 206, 325, 336, 339, 342, 389, 419–422, 467, 468, 486, 496, 499–502, 527 Martyrs Mirror (1660, 1685), 206, 325, 342, 411–413, 416, 427, 442, 448, 467, 468, 486, 496, 498–501 School of Virtues, Opened for Children of Christians (1657), 339 Braitmichel, Caspar, 205 Brandhuber, Wolfgang, 88 Braunschweig, 21 Brederodes, counts of, 140 Breisgau, 351, 368 Bremen, 250 Brendler, Gerhard, 218 Brennwald, Karl, 92–94 Brenz, Johannes, 354, 518 Brès, Guy de, 488 Breslau, 167, 190–193 Brethren of the Covenant (Bundesgenossen) see Austerlitz Brethren Brixen, archbishopric of, 107, 108 Brno see Brünn Brotherly Union see Schleitheim Articles Brötli, Johannes, 60, 66–69, 109 Brownists, 323 Bruderhof, 185, 199 Brüderschreiber, 200 Brugge, Johann van (David Joris pseudonym), 284 Brünn, 168, 180, 182, 185, 203 Brussels, 221, 301, 305, 315, 316 Bubenheimer, Ulrich, 17 Bucer, Martin, 102–104, 129, 131, 187, 267–269 see also Strasbourg clergy Büchel, Hans, 354

Bucovice see Butschowtiz Bugenhagen, Johannes, 514 Bülach (village), 92 Bullinger, Heinrich, 45, 63, 95, 106, 347, 351, 353, 354, 514 Der Wiedertäuffern Ursprung (1560), 351 Bünderlin, Johannes, xix, 112, 134, 173, 257, 258, 264, 273, 274, 276–278, 280–282, 286, 293, 358 Explanation through Study of Biblical Writings . . . (1530), 274 General Introduction to the Proper Understanding of Moses and the Prophets, A (1529), 274 General Reckoning of the Contents of Holy Scripture, A (1529/30), 274 Reason Why God Descended and Became Man in Christ, The(1529), 274 Burckhardt, Johannes, 39 Burgdorf, 375 Burger, Martin, 374 Burgundy, 208, 221, 242 Burschel, Peter, 411 Busschaert, Hans, 313 Butschowtiz, 182 Byntgens, Thomas, 321 ’ernohorskÿ z Boskovic, Arkleb, 165, 168 ’eskÿ Krumlov see Krumau (Bohemian), 181 ’i≥ek see Zeising Cain, 469, 474 Calvin, John, 140, 309, 476 Institutes (1536 ff.), 348 Calvinism, 144, 307, 308, 314, 315, 317–319, 325, 332, 336, 489, 507, 510, 530, 536 see also Huguenots; Reformed Church Campanus, Johannes, 135, 252, 278 Campen, Gerrit van, 222, 224 Capital punishment see Death penalty; Martyrs and martyrdom Capito, Wolfgang, 102, 176, 266 Carinthia, 210 Cartesianism, 334 Castelberger, Andreas, 49, 52, 59, 60, 64 Casteleyn, Abraham, 341 Castellio, Sebastian, 284, 332 Catechisms, 202, 338, 397, 414, 419 Catholics and Catholicism, 56, 90, 119, 120, 128, 137, 140–146, 155,

index 163–168, 170, 175, 177, 190, 193, 196, 199, 207, 209, 210, 225, 229, 232, 250, 273, 308, 315, 318, 322, 331, 429, 430, 436, 459, 469, 476, 477–479, 484, 488, 495, 510, 512, 514–522, 525, 527, 528, 530 see also Persecution, by Catholics; Popes and papacy Cellarius, Martin, 266 Celtis, Conrad, 49 Cents, Jan, 326 Ceremonies, 50, 57, 225, 352 Anabaptist writers on, 134, 257, 261–263, 265, 269, 272, 274–279, 285, 286, 289, 291, 292, 302, 306, 335, 347, 358, 373 see also Worship Charismatic Spiritualism, 153 Charles V (Emperor), 129, 147, 301, 315, 351, 502, 516 Chiliasm see Millenarianism Christendom, 1, 2, 34 Christian IV (of Denmark), 529, 530 Christliche Bedenken (1615), 376 Christology, 131, 132, 139, 150, 152, 179, 187, 202, 251, 261, 263, 265, 266, 270, 285, 292, 305, 309, 320, 332, 349, 356, 368 Heavenly Flesh, 132, 220, 308, 309, 327, 349, 355, 360, 368, 399, 400 of Marpeck, 359–361 of Melchior Hoffman, 202, 251, 349, 367, 368 of Menno Simons, 304, 308, 309, 368 see also Incarnation Chronicle see Hutterite Chronicle Chudaska, Andrea, 525 Church bij het Lam see Lamb congregation Church Discipline, 60, 63, 71, 78, 83, 96, 186 see also Ban Church of God in Moravia, 202, 205 see also Hutterites Church Polity, 1, 4, 9, 13, 15, 36, 37, 41, 51, 52, 55, 69, 77, 171, 228, 300, 311, 312, 329, 336, 338, 367, 377 see also Conferences; Congregationalism Church-state separation, 41, 51, 59, 62, 67, 78, 83, 84, 104, 119, 130, 134, 143, 146, 148, 152, 153, 157, 203, 290, 309, 317, 318, 336, 337, 347, 375

549

Church, Visible Church, xxiv, 4, 7, 13, 14, 36, 40, 50, 83, 134, 136, 194, 195, 391 Anabaptist views on, 39, 47, 61, 66, 67, 71, 78, 90, 96, 352, 359 Congregation as hermeneutical community, 14, 41, 60 see also Priesthood of all believers; Believers church; Shunning; Conventicles; Separatism; Primitive church Church Order see Schleitheim Articles; Strasbourg Discipline; Wismar Articles Claesken, 440 Claesz, Claes, 321, 326 Clasen, Claus-Peter, 105, 108, 350, 352, 426, 440, 442–444, 447, 508, 509, 518, 523 Anabaptism: A Social History, 1525–1618 (1972), 350, 508 Class, 4, 34, 35, 130, 133–135, 155, 157, 166, 182, 183, 188, 193, 195, 201, 203, 207, 218, 219, 233–235, 238, 316, 321, 325, 329, 330, 341 see also Guilds Clergy, 1, 4, 13, 21, 26, 50, 68, 69, 83, 91, 120, 121 see also Leadership (church) Clock, Leenaerdt, 322, 389, 405–408, 416–422 Some Christian Prayers, 406 Clothing, 321 Cochläus, Johannes, 177 Coercion see Nonresistance Coesfeld, 245 Colijn, Peter, 224 Collegiants, 289–291, 293, 333, 334–337, 341, 342, 499 vis-à-vis Doopsgezinden, 290, 334–337, 342 see also Abrahamsz, Galenus de Hann Cologne, 242, 348, 443 Colonies, Hutterite, 185, 199–201, 203, 204, 207–210 Comenius, Jan Amos, 332 Committee for Foreign Needs, 340, 341, 367, 372, 380, 381 Common man, 4, 5, 15, 20, 31, 37, 38, 41, 89 Reformation of see “Reformation of the Common Man,” Communal Reformation, xxii, 1–4, 9, 10, 12, 16, 32, 34, 39–41, 53

550

index

Communion see Lord’s Supper Communitarian groups see Community of goods Communitarianism, 196, 300 Community of Goods, xx, 110–114, 178, 180–183, 188, 196, 198–210, 218, 235, 269, 332, 349, 364, 365, 407 Hutterite, 110–114, 178, 181, 186, 188, 194, 196, 198–210, 364, 365 Münster Anabaptism, 235 Swiss Brethren, 349, 355, 365, 366 Concept of Cologne (1591), 326 Conference of Doopsgezind Churches in Friesland, 339 Conferences, formation of, 338, 339 Confessie van Dordrecht see Dordrecht Confession (1632) Confessio Augustana (Lutheran, 1530), 230 Confession of Faith to the Lord of Pernstein, 187 Confession, of Sin, 393 Confessionalism and confessions of faith Hard Frisians, 498 Jan Cents (1630), 500, 533 Lutheran, 148, 156, 157 vis-à-vis Collegiants, 290 Waterlander confession of faith, 314, 320, 323, 325–327, 333, 335, 337, 339 see also Nikolsburg Confessionalism xx, 299, 335, 336, 348, 350, 353, 359 Confessionalization, 477, 509–511 Confessions of Faith, 486, 531 Belgic Confession, 533 Source of Conflict, 531 Source of Unity, 532 Conforming nonconformity, 525 Congregationalism, 41, 51, 78, 134, 300, 312, 314, 347, 367 Conrad, Franziska, 37 Constance, 270, 517 Bishop of, 50, 57 Contrafacta, 489 Contra-Housebuyers see Young Flemish Conventicles, 136, 180, 193, 194, 220, 221, 333, 352 see also Bible study; Ecclesiology Coornhert, Dirck Volkertszoon, xix, 124, 142–145, 147, 148, 150, 155–157, 293

Means Toward the Reduction of Sects and Factions (1582), 142 On the Predestination, Election and Rejection of God (1589), 144 Synod on the Freedom of Conscience (1582), 143 Biography, 140, 141, 143, 146, 147, 322 Cornelis Drebbel, 329 Cornelis, Adriaen, 326, 485, 527 Cornelites, 188 Cornelius, Carl Adolf, xxii, 218, 219 Cornelius, Veh, 114 corpus christianum, 515 Correll, Ernst, 350 Cosmology, 151, 152, 154 Council of Basel, 21 Council of Constance, 21 Crautwald, Valentine, 126–128, 134 Creation, 86 Crespin, Jean, 458, 459 Histoire des vrays tesmoins (1570), 459 Cuius regio, eius religio, 147 Cuperus, Andries Scheltes, 536 Cureus, Joachim, 198 Cuyck, Jan Wouters van, 476, 483 Cuyper, William, 281 Czech language, 201, 208 Czechoslovakia, xviii Dale, Anthonius van, 334 Dällikon (village), 92 Dances, 366 Daniel, 253, 485, 486 Danzig, 208, 307, 340 Old Flemish, 322, 327 Dappen, Bernhard, 21 Datheen, Petrus, 317 Daun, Wirich von, 242 David of Schweintz, 183 David, 400 Davidites, 284, 285, 287, 288, 302, 303, 305, 307, 308, 467, 526 see also Joris, David Davis, Kenneth, xviii De Rijp, 314, 328, 329 De Rijp Society, 339 Deaconesses, 327, 329, 429 Death penalty, 58, 76, 89, 103, 176, 177, 192, 217, 240, 241, 245, 246, 249, 250, 301, 357 Defended, 177, 351 Decalogue, 17 Degen, Melchior, 75, 76

index Delft, 223, 283, 303 Denck, Hans, 85, 102, 103, 106, 107, 133, 134, 220, 257–273, 275–277, 280, 282, 287, 293, 389, 394–396, 418, 419, 421, 422 Concerning the Law of God (1526), 264, 265, 267, 275, 394, 396 He Who Truly Loves the Truth (1526), 264, 265, 271 On True Love (1527), 269 The Order of God (1527), 267, 269, 394 Protestation and Confession (1528), 260, 261, 269, 275 Theologia Deutsch, editor of, 270 Whether God is the Cause of Evil (1526), 264, 265, 275 Historiography of, 260, 263, 266, 268, 270, 271, 277 Recantation, 261–264, 270, 275, 293 Translation (with Hätzer) of Old Testament prophets, 267, 268, 270, 293 Denmark, 330 Denominationalism, 83, 114 Deppermann, Klaus, xvi Descartes, René, 156, 333 Deventer, 223, 246, 322, 341, 528 Devotio moderna, 26, 120, 441, 476 Dialogue on the Alien Faith, the Faith of the Church, and the Baptism of Children (1527), 10 Diener am Wort, 200, 201 see also Leadership (church) Diener der Notdurft, 201 see also Leadership (church) Diet of Speyer see Speyer, Diet of Diet of Worms of 1521, 1, 6 Dietrichstein, Adam von, 175 Dietrichstein, Franz von (Cardinal), 207 Diewer (queen at Münster), 241, 244, 249 Dipple, Geoffrey, xix, xx Dircks, Lijsken, 443 Discipline see Ban Discipleship, 65, 97, 133, 202, 228, 268, 300, 309, 322, 325, 337, 363, 378, 380, 390, 393, 394, 420, 442, 469, 474, 476 Dutch Mennonite, 285, 305–312, 314, 320–322, 326, 329 Hutterites on, 196, 197, 199, 201, 202, 363, 364, 366, 367 Münster Anabaptism, 251, 239

551

Marpeck on, 357, 358, 360, 362, 363 Nicolaas Meyndertsz van Blesdijk on, 285 Swiss Brethren on, 58, 349, 350, 352, 356, 357, 362, 364, 366–368, 373, 376, 377, 379, 380 see also Holy Living; Ban Disputations, 1, 102, 104, 110, 166, 167, 179, 267, 284, 302, 307, 308, 319, 349, 353–356, 367 Zofingen, 95 Bern (1538), 97 Zurich (Oct., 1523), 53, 54 Zurich ( Jan. 29, 1523), 50 Aargau (1532), 94, 95 Divorce, 307, 366 Dokkum, 312 Dolní Kounice see Kanitz Dominicans, 6 Donauworth, 133, 270 Doopsgezinden see Dutch Anabaptism; Dutch Mennonites; Lamb congregation Doornik, 307, 483 Dordrecht Confession (1632), 326, 327, 372, 377, 415–417, 500, 532, 533 Dordrecht, 341, 411, 466, 476 Dutch Reformed synod at (1618–1619), 324, 325, 528 Dorpat, 219 Dreamers (Anabaptist sect), 105 Driedger, Michael, xx, 413, 414 Drunkenness, 186 Dualism see Two Kingdoms doctrine Dub‘anskÿ, Jan, 166–168 Ducanus, Martinus, 308 The Anabaptist Heresy Rebutted (1549), 308 Dülmen, 230 Dusentschuer, Johann, 242, 245 Dutch Anabaptism, 280, 290, 300, 305, 317, 319, 328, 349, 368 Cultural aspects, 300, 329, 330, 331, 334, 340–343 Economic aspects, 300, 316–318, 325, 329, 330, 340, 341 Historiography on, 289, 299, 300 Political aspects, 300, 314, 317, 318, 329, 334, 340 Schisms in 319–325 Social aspects, 300, 313, 316, 318, 328, 327–333, 340–343 see also Dutch Mennonites; Lamb congregation Dutch Enlightenment, 535

552

index

Dutch Mennonites, xviii, xx, xxi, 206, 209, 218, 289, 299, 300, 313, 314, 318, 319, 327, 328, 332–340, 342, 343, 350, 356, 372, 390, 391, 399, 405–416, 419–422, 427, 429, 430, 437, 438, 440, 448, 449, 452, 454, 458, 466–481, 489–502, 526–538 Seminary, 338 Theology, 355, 356, 405–408, 411, 412, 416, 451, 454, 473, 527 Assimilation, 525, 528, 535, 536 Free Corps, 536 Literature, 402, 406, 475, 492, 493, 495–498 Patriot Movement, 536 Relations to the State, 420, 507, 526, 527, 533, 537, 538 see also Dutch Anabaptism; Lamb congregation Dutch Republic, 98, 314, 317, 318, 324, 331, 332, 502, 507, 528, 535 Dutch Revolt, 142–144, 314 East Friesland, 217, 219, 220, 250, 301–304, 308, 526, 527 East India Company, 318, 330 Ecclesiastical Annals, 500 Ecclesiology, 58, 59, 78, 84, 98, 135, 180, 194–197, 199, 202, 228, 251, 269, 289, 291, 292, 300, 347, 350, 353, 389, 499 of Schleitheim Articles, 90, 91, 93, 96 of Bernhard Rothmann, 228, 251 of Coornhert, 141, 142, 144 of David Joris, 302, 303 of Galenus Abrahamsz, 335 of Hubmaier, 169, 170 of Jacob Kautz, 272, 273 of Jakob Ammann, 378 of Jakob Hutter, 184, 200 of Johannes Bünderlin, 276 of Marpeck, 358, 361–363, 380 of Melchoir Hoffman, 368 of Menno, 304–310 of Müntzer, 154 of Obbe Philips, 282 of Schwenckfeld, 129, 132, 191 of Sebastian Franck, 134–138 of Valentin Weigel, 148, 149, 153, 154 see also Congregationalism; Conventicles; Separatism Eck, Johann, 6, 21, 56, 95 Eckhardt, Meister see Meister Eckhardt Ecumenism, 135, 136, 167, 196

Edict of Nantes, 331 Egranus, Johannes Sylvius, 21, 22 Egypt, 401, 486 Ehrenpreis, Andreas, 204, 208, 209, 407, 408, 418–421, 437, 439 Sendbrief (1652), 204, 407 Eibenschitz, 173, 273, 186 Eichsfeld, 24 Eiffel, 368 Eighty Years War, 331 Eisenach, 480 Elbing, 200 Eleazar, 469 Electors of Saxony, 7, 8, 9, 11, 22, 23, 29, 106, 518 Eliander see Schwenckfeld, Caspar von Emden, 220, 221, 307, 310, 311, 313 Emden, Meynart van, 223 Emigration, 535 Emmental, 97, 376, 379 Ender, Johannes, 195 Endogamy see Marriage–exogamy England, xiv, 133, 308, 325, 329, 332, 340, 476, 527 Enlightenment, 147, 156, 334 Ensisheim, 56 Entfelder, Christian, xix, 112, 134, 173, 257, 258, 273, 274, 276–282, 286, 293, 358 On the Manifold Divisions in the Faith (1530), 274, 277 On the Perception of God and of Our Lord (1533), 274 On True Piety (1530), 274 Epicureans, 138 Epistemology, 141, 149, 154 Erasmus of Rotterdam, 89, 120, 134–137, 140, 141, 165, 166, 189, 190, 206, 220, 263, 265, 302, 304 Erbe, Fritz, 480 Erfurt, 88, 513 Eschatology, 85, 197, 286, 390, 406 Hut, 179 Hutterite, 196, 197, 206 Münsterite, 217, 219, 220, 233, 237, 251–253 Müntzer, 22, 29, 86, 153 Schwenckfeld, 129, 130 Weigel, 153 see also Apocalypticism; Millenarianism; Restitution; Second Coming of Christ Esdras, 401 Essen, Ursel van, 430

index Esslingen, 84, 100, 101, 105, 433 Ethics, 147, 171, 177, 287, 288, 360, 380 Swiss Brethren on, 348, 354, 356, 372, 374, 376–378 see also Holy living Ethnicity, 376 Etliche Geseng, 185 Eucharist see Lord’s Supper Evangelical Anabaptists, xviii Eve, 400 Excommunication see Ban Exogamy see Marriage-exogamy Ezekiel, 485 Faber, Gellius, 308 Fabri, Johann, bishop of Vienna, 170, 171, 177, 180 Fabri (von Heilbronn), Johannes, 489 Fabricius, Dietrich, 229, 247 Fällanden, 52 Familists, 307, 325, 332 Family of Love see Familists Fasting, 170 Faukelius, Herman Babel, That is the Mutual Confusion of the Anabaptists (1621), 319 Feddriks, Douwe The Mennonite Doctrine or Teaching for Doopsgezind Christianity (1698), 339, 340 Feicken, Hille, 240, 461 Feldsberg, 165 Felix, Hans, 188 Ferdinand I (Archduke of Austria) 4, 16, 108, 109, 113, 129, 163, 164, 170, 172, 181, 190, 193, 195, 351, 207, 357, 416, 417, 479, 488, 532, 533 Feuerbach, 364 Fijnje, Wybo, 536, 537 Fischer, Andreas, 174–176 Scepastes Decalogi, 176 Flanders, 290, 312, 456, 479, 481, 488 see also Flemish Mennonites Flemish Mennonites, 312, 321, 322, 326, 327, 403, 414, 466, 496, 497, 499, 527, 531 vs. Frisians, 313, 319, 320, 326 Flemish Union, 328 Flinck, Govert, 330 Floh, Jacob Hendrik, 536 Foot washing, 320, 322, 327, 377, 409 Dordrecht Confession (1632) on, 327

553

Reist group vs. Jakob Ammann on, 377 Formula of Concord, 148 Foucault, Michel, 511 Fourth Anglo-Dutch War, 536 Fox, George, 332 Foxe, John, 459, 467, 495 Acts and Monuments (1563), 467, 495 France, xiv, 307, 315, 340, 342, 476, 515, 522, 538 Franciscans, 21, 22 Franck, Sebastian, xix, 124,133–142, 144, 145, 148, 149, 153, 155–157, 189, 220, 252, 257, 261, 266, 271, 278, 281, 293, 294, 302, 322, 332, 347, 358 Chronica, Zeitbuch und Geschichtsbibel (1531), 135, 293, 347, 358 Das mit sieben Siegeln verscholossene Buch (1539), 136 Diallage, translation of, 271 Die Goldene Arche (1538), 136 Kriegsbuechlein (1539), 136, 137 Paradoxa ducenta octoginta (1534), 136 Sprichwörterbuch (1541), 137 Türkenchronik (1530), 134 Die vier Kronbüchlein (1534), 136 Weltbuch (1534), 136 vis-à-vis Bernhard Rothmann, 252 vis-à-vis Caspar Schwenckfeld, 278 vis-à-vis Coornhert, 141, 142 vis-à-vis Davidites, 302 vis-à-vis Hans de Ries, 322 vis-à-vis Hans Denck, 261, 271, 293 vis-à-vis Johannes Bünderlin, 293 vis-à-vis Martin Frecht, 136, 137 vis-à-vis Obbe Philips, 281 vis-à-vis Schwenckfeld, 133–136, 138, 139 vis-à-vis Thomas Müntzer, 124 vis-à-vis Valentin Weigel, 148 Franconia, 105, 201, 433, 451 Franeker, 310–312, 321, 492 Frankenhausen, 33 Frankenthal Disputation at (1571), 353, 354, 355, 356, 523 Frankfurt an der Oder, 21 Frecht, Martin, 131, 136, 137 Frederick V of the Palatinate (“Winter King” of Bohemia), 163, 207 Frederick III (Palatine Elector), 355 Free will see Predestination Freerks, Sicke, 221, 304

554

index

Freisleben, Leonhard, 188 Freistadt, 180 Fresenburg, 529 Freyberg family, 130 Helene von, 359 Friedmann, Robert, 391, 406, 413 Friedrich II (Duke of Liegnitz), 128, 129, 190, 192 Friedrichstadt, 529, 534 Friesland, 48, 223, 236, 290, 301, 302, 311, 313, 314, 316, 320, 322, 330, 332, 339, 340, 482 Friesleben, Christoph, 100 Frisch, Hans, 104 Frisian Mennonites, 320, 403, 496, 497, 531 vs. Flemish, 313, 319, 320, 326, 496 Furner, Mark, 350, 522 Gabrielites, 112, 113, 183–185, 194–198 Gaeledochter, Claesken, 482 Gagasser, Leonhard, 206, 207 Gaismair, Michael, 107, 108, 357 Galenists, 339, 499 see also Abrahamsz de Haan, Galenus Garber, Hans, 474 Geel, Jan van, 223, 224 Gegebene Antwort, 365, 366 Gelassenheit, 19, 72, 86, 87, 111, 202, 288, 398, 408 Gender, xxi, xxii, 217, 425–427 George of Brandenburg-Ansbach (Margrave), 190, 193 George of Saxony (Duke), 193 German Brethren, 178 German language, 205 German Theology, the, 89 Germany see Holy Roman Empire Gerrits, Soetjen, 438 Gerrits, Vrou, 438 Gerritsz, Lubbert, 312, 313, 320, 322, 323 Geschicht Büch der marterer Christij, 497 Geschichtsbuch, 411 Gheestelijcke Liedekens (1563), 317 Ghent, 459, 480, 481, 487–489 Gichtel, Johann, 332 Gifftheil, Ludwig Friedrich, 209 Glaidt, Oswald, 166, 167, 169, 170, 172, 173, 175, 176, 180 “How, When and Where God’s Commandments Prescribe Capital Punishment” (1530), 176

Glatz, 163, 164, 192, 194, 195 Glazemaker, Jan Hendriksz, 334 Glock, Paul, 433 Glogau, 193, 194 Glückstadt, 529 Gnesio-Lutheranism, 147 Gnosticism, 196 Goch, 307 Goertz, Hans-Jürgen, xii, xvi, xxii, 46, 78, 511 ed., Profiles of Radical Reformers (1978), 508 Umstrittenes Täufertum, 1525–1975 (1975), xvi Goes, 341 Goeters, J. F. Gerhard, 51 Golden Apples in Silver Bowls (1702), 389, 415, 417, 419, 421 Golpacher (alias Vontobel), 77 Gomarus, Franciscus, 323 Gompel, Margret, 456 Görlitz, 195 Göschl, Martin, 110, 166, 168, 169, 171, 172, 174, 179 Goshen College, xi, xii Gospel of all Creatures, 86, 87, 472 Grace, 18, 19, 38, 120, 121, 139, 145, 150, 227, 271, 305, 306, 357, 391, 396, 418 Graess, Heinrich, 246, 247 Grasbantner, Balthasar, 188, 189 Graubünden, 108 Graveneck, Nicholas von, 102 Grebel circle, 68–73, 78, 79, 363, 364 Grebel, Conrad, xxiii, xxiv, 45, 46, 49, 51, 54–60, 62, 65, 68, 74, 76, 77, 84, 294, 470, 476 letter to Müntzer (1524), 60–63, 67, 72, 73 on baptism, 63–66, 75, 83 on church discipline, 61, 83 on Lord’s Supper, 83 on nonresistance, 61, 62, 77, 83 on tithe, 53, 77, 91 vis-à-vis Hubmaier, 62, 70, 73, 76 vis-à-vis Zwingli, 58 see also Swiss Brethren Gregory of Nazianzus, 412 Gregory, Brad S., xviii, xxii, 459 Gresbeck, Heinrich, xxii, 218, 235, 236, 241, 244, 245, 248, 249, 253 Grisons, 188, 359 Groessen, 310, 311

index Groningen Old Flemish, 321, 322, 326, 327 Groningen, 304, 316, 322, 528 Groningerland, 223 Groß, Jacob, 83, 102 Gross, Leonard, 415 Grüningen, 73, 77, 91, 490 Guhrau, 193 Guilds, 225, 228 Gusseme, Gillis de, 489, 490 Guth, Jakob, 415 Gwalther, 372 Gyrenbader, 77, 78 Haan, Galenus Abrahamsz de see Abrahamsz de Haan, Galenus Haarlem, 141, 142, 221, 223, 313, 321, 322, 330, 337, 341 Haas, Martin, 46, 93, 98 Habelschwerdt, 195 Habrovanite Brethren, 168 Habsburgs, 102, 108, 109, 111, 163, 172, 207, 221, 223, 242, 305, 315, 316, 480, 518, 526–528 Haemstede, Adriaen van, 310, 458, 459 Hague, 221, 301, 317, 323, 487 Halberstadt, 21 Halbtäufer see Half-Anabaptists Half-Anabaptists, 373–375, 377–379 Hall by Innsbruck, 456 Hallau, 62, 66, 73, 76, 90, 93 Haller, Berchtold, 93, 353 Hamburg, 413, 414, 415, 501, 528–530 Hamm, Berndt, 2 Hard Frisians see Old Frisians Harlingen, 311, 312, 326, 330 Harrison, Wes, 437, 451 Hätzer, Ludwig, xix, 64, 257, 258, 260, 266–271,273, 280, 282, 293 Booklet Concerning Christ, A, 270 Booklet Concerning School Teachers, A, 270 Translation (with Denck) of Old Testament prophets, 267, 268, 270, 293 vis-à-vis Hans Denck, 258, 260, 266–270 Haude, Sigrun, xxi Haushaben see Colonies, Hutterite Heavenly flesh see Christology-Heavenly Flesh Hecht, Linda Huebert, xxi, 425, 436, 443, 446, 457

555

Hegler, Alfred, xiv, 122 Heidelberg Catechism, 325 Heidelberg Disputation (1518), 36 Heidelberg, 133 Heimsuchung, 134 Hendrick, 311 Hendricks van Schoonrewoerd, Jan, 492, 493 Hendricksz, Jan, 310 Hendrik, Frederik, 324 Hergot, Hans, 491 Hermann of Cologne (Archbishop), 242 Hersfeld, 106 Herzog, Paul, 68 Hess, Johannes, 190–192 Hesse, 106, 109, 242, 348, 365, 445, 452, 456, 518, 526 Hutterite missionaries in, 201, 202 Melchiorites in, 302 Swiss Brethren survival in, 352 Het Offer des Heeren see Sacrifice of the Lord Heyden, Jan van der, 341 High Germans (Mennonite faction), 311, 313, 322, 323, 326, 327, 531 Hilarius, 267 Hinwil, 77 Hirslanden, 52 Hochrütiner, Lorenz, 49, 50, 66, 74 Hoen, Cornelis, 221 Hofer, Roland, 375 Hoffman, Melchior, 97, 98, 105, 150, 202, 206, 217–221, 237, 271, 280, 349, 368, 518 Attitudes toward women, 435, 400, 433–435, 518 Theology, 104, 107, 202, 219, 220, 251, 271, 279, 280, 302, 349, 360, 367, 368 vis-à-vis Bernhard Rothmann, 227, 251, 252 vis-à-vis David Joris, 282, 284, 287 vis-à-vis Menno, 304– 306 vis-à-vis Münster Anabaptists, 237, 251 vis-à-vis Obbe Philips, 281, 302 vis-à-vis Schwenckfeld, 132, 220 vis-à-vis Swiss Brethren, 349, 367 see also Melchiorites Hofmeister, Sebastian, 54–59, 68, 70, 74 Hohenheim, Theophrastus Bombast von see Paracelsus Holl, Karl, 27

556

index

Holland, 146, 236, 302, 314, 316, 318, 320, 487 see also Dutch Republic; Dutch Revolt Holstein, 310, 526, 527, 529 Holy Living, 133, 134, 144, 145, 149, 150, 199, 201, 270, 287, 305, 325, 335, 362, 364, 394, 396, 400, 403, 404, 409, 474 Swiss Brethren on, 186, 350, 364, 374 see also Discipleship; Imitation of Christ Holy Roman Empire, 143, 190, 192, 201, 202, 217, 220, 340, 347–349, 352, 477, 507, 515, 516, 518, 519, 529, 530 Holy Spirit, 23, 26, 50, 54, 65, 71, 98, 128, 130, 132, 133, 135–139, 143, 220, 287, 300, 306, 335, 356, 361, 378, 380, 403, 485 vis-à-vis Scripture, 261, 265, 270, 274, 292, 300, 322, 323, 360 Hondschoote, 487 Höngg (village), 51 Hoogstraten, van, family, 341 Hoorn, 328, 329, 498, 537 Horb, 470 Hottinger, Claus, 50, 66 Hottinger, Margaret, 89, 109 Hotz, Hans, 95–97 House Buyers see Old Flemish Houte, Soetken van den, 417, 481, 486, 488 Hubmaier, Balthasar, xx, xxiii, xxiv, 24, 54–59, 63, 69, 72, 76, 79, 83, 84, 91, 96, 109–111, 167–173, 176–179, 264, 268, 273, 277, 389, 395, 402, 405, 419–422, 470, 476, 491, 513, 514 A Christian Catechism (1527), 392 A Form for Christ’s Supper (1527), 393, 418 A Form for Water Baptism (1527), 393 On the Sword, 171, 172, 513 On Heretics and Those Who Burn Them (1524), 61 On the Christian Baptism of Believers (1525), 72 A Summary of the Entire Christian Life (1525), 70, 71 Biography, 56, 70, 71, 109 –111, 168–172 on baptism, 65, 71, 83 on nonresistance, 62, 72, 83, 111 vis-à-vis Grebel, 57, 58, 70, 73, 76 vis-à-vis Schleitheim Articles, 90

Huguenots, 331 Hui, Matthias, 78 Hulshoff, Maria Aletta, 538 Humanism, 5, 49, 51, 56, 89, 110, 120, 126, 127, 141, 165, 170, 174, 177, 220, 221, 234, 264, 266, 268, 273, 309, 390 vis-à-vis Hans Denck, 263, 265, 266 vis-à-vis Sebastian Franck, 133, 134, 138, 140 see also Erasmus of Rotterdam Hungary, 163, 204, 207–209 351, 525 Hus, John, 22, 165 Hussites, xviii, 114 Toleration in Moravia, 164 Wars, 190 Hustope‘e see Auspitz Hut, Hans, 23, 85–87, 99, 100, 102, 105–108, 110, 111, 172, 178–180, 192, 270, 271, 472, 476, 513, 514 Apocalypticism of, 85, 86, 100, 107, 110, 180, 181 at Nikolsburg, 172, 178, 179, 202 Baptized by Hans Denck, 85, 260, 264, 271 Biography, 85, 110, 111, 180 see also Gospel of all creatures Hutter, Jakob, 112, 113, 182, 184, 185, 472, 473, 476 Hutterian Brethren see Hutterites Hutterite Chronicle, 64, 173, 200, 205, 209, 348, 450 as historical source, 178, 180 Hutterites, xxi, 99, 105, 113, 114, 164, 175, 185, 195, 196, 202, 208, 363, 365, 377, 390, 391, 397, 398, 407, 411, 419, 421, 422, 427, 429, 430, 432, 433, 436, 437, 439, 440, 441, 444, 447, 448, 450, 467, 470– 477, 489–492, 495–497, 502, 524, 525, 527 Community of goods, 92, 114, 185, 196, 197 Hymnody, 206, 398, 421, 489, 475, 497 Women, 429, 432, 433, 436, 437, 439–441, 444, 447, 448, 450 Theology, 196, 197, 365, 407, 408, 472, 473, 525 Historiography of, 199–201, 204, 207, 209, 350 Persecution of, 184, 185, 194, 210, 491, 497 vis-à-vis Gabriel Ascherham, 196, 197, 279

index vis-à-vis Gabrielites, 198 vis-à-vis Hans Hut, 178 vis-à-vis Marpeck, 362 vis-à-vis Melchior Hoffman, 206 vis-à-vis other Anabaptists, 201 vis-à-vis Swiss Brethren, 349, 355, 356, 363 Hymnody, xxiii, 112, 185, 419, 421, 489, 475, 497 Collegiant, 342 Dutch Anabaptist, 310, 317, 320, 322, 323, 325, 328, 331 Dutch Mennonite, 342 Hutterite, 206, 398, 421 Swiss Anabaptist, 185, 206, 270, 352 see also Ausbund

557

Iamblichus (d. ca. 330), 123 Iconoclasm, 53, 74, 76, 110, 170, 186, 234, 315 Iglau, 165, 182 Illiteracy, 491 Illyricus, Flaccius, 132, 133 Imago Dei, 17, 18 Imbroich, Thomas von, 417 Imitation of Christ, 14, 36, 305, 325, 352, 476 see also Discipleship; Holy living Incarnation, 283, 286, 307, 311, 314, 395, 396, 401, 402, 420, 498 Pieter Jansz Twisck confession, 320 Dordrecht Confession (1632), 327 Marpeck on, 361, 363 Menno, 305, 306, 308, 309 Individualism, 300, 310, 314 Indulgences, 1 Infant baptism see Baptism, infant Ingolstadt, 56, 169 Ingolstadt, University of, 133, 263 Ininger, Wolf, 49 Inner Word, 18, 103, 135, 138, 139, 148 Innsbruck, 108, 185 Inquisition, 310, 315, 517 Interest, charging see Usury Irwin, Joyce, 445 Isny, 517 Israel, 486 Italian territories, 516 Italy, xiv, 198, 201 Ivan‘ice see Eibenschitz

Jacobsz, Jan, 320 Jacobsz, Lambert, 330 James II (King of England), 331 Jamnitz, 175, 186 Jan Cents Confession (1630), 326, 500, 533 Jan van Leiden, 217, 221–223, 227, 230, 231, 237, 238, 241–252, 436, 461 Jan-Jacobs People, 327 Jannijn, 480 Jans, Ariaenken, 483, 485 Jans, Jan, 222 Jansma, L. G., 222 Jansz, Anneken, 449, 493 Jauer, 193 Jebsheim, 372 Jecker, Hanspeter, 350 Jelsma, Auke, 437, 459 Jemnice see Jamnitz Jesuits, 175 Jews, 175, 176, 268 Jihlava see Iglau Job, 483, 485 Joestel, Volker, 14 Johann of Jülich (Duke), 242 Jonas, Justus, 7 Jones, Rufus, 122 Joriaens, Thijs, 496 Joris, David, xix, 257, 259, 280–288, 293, 302–304, 332, 435, 436, 493, 526 ‘t Wonderboeck (1542), 284, 303 see also Davidites Joristssee Davidites Joseph II (of Austria), 210 Joseph, 485, 486 Jost, Lienhard, 220, 434 Jost, Ursula, 220, 434, 435, 436 Prophetische gesicht, 434 influence on Hoffman, 220 Jud, Leo, 58, 130 Jülich, 242, 527 Jura, 352 Justification, 20, 27, 35, 37, 38, 65, 126, 144, 145, 149, 202, 203, 225, 226 see also Soteriology Justingen, 130, 132 Justinian, 517 Jüterbog, 21

Jäckel, Balthasar, 209 Jacob, 485

Käls, Hieronymous, 201 Kanitz, 166

558

index

Kant, Immanuel, 154, 156 Karlstadt, Andreas Bodenstein von, xxiii, xxiv, 3, 5–13, 21, 27, 28, 48, 59, 70, 85, 102, 106, 107, 122, 125, 126, 137, 219, 266, 267, 512 Commonplaces on the Holy Scriptures (Loci communes sacrae scripturae) (1540), 11 Dialogue on the Alien Faith, the Faith of the Church, and the Baptism of Children (1527), 10 Exegesis of this Saying of Christ: “This is my Body” (1524), 9 On the Abolition of Images and That There Should Be No Beggars Among Christians (1522), 7 A Question: Whether Anyone can be Saved without the Intercession of Mary (1524), 14 Statement of Some Chief Articles of Christian Teaching (1525), 10, 11 The Saying ‘Yield Yourself’ and What the Word Yieldedness Means (1523), 19 Treatise on the Canonical Writings (1520), 6 Whether One Should Proceed Slowly and Avoid Giving Offense to the Weak, (1524), 8 Basel theses (1535), 17 Theology, 6, 9–11, 16–19 and Luther, 9, 11, 12, 14, 19– 21 and the “common man,” 5, 11, 15, 16, 20, 34 Käsenbrot, Augustinus, 177 Kaufbeuren, 488 Kaunitz, 166, 181, 524 Kaunitz, abbey of, 110, 168 Kaunitz, lords of, 183 Kaunitz, Ulrich von, 199 Kautz, Jacob, xix, 103–105, 257, 267–269, 272, 273, 277, 280, 282, 293 Articles (at Worms, 1527), 267–269 Keeney, William, xii Keest, Jacob, 321 Keller, Endres, 484 Kemp, Francois Adriaan van der, 536 Kerckerinck, Christian, 250 Kerecs,nyi, Christoph, 175 Kern, Else, 452 Kerssenbrock, Hermann von, xxii, 218, 219 Kessler, Johannes, 49, 56, 75, 89 Ketel, Joriaen, 284, 307

Keulen, Pieter van, 319 Kibbenbrock, Gert, 233, 237 Kiel, 219 Kierkegaard, Soren, 391 Kimenhoff (village), 92 Kirchen, 187 Kirchhoff, Karl-Heinz, xviii, xxii, 218, 219, 243 Klaassen, Walter, xvi, xvii, xix, 46 on Spiritualism, 259, 292 Klassen, John, 441 Klassen, William, xvi, 358 Klettgau, 68 Klöpfer, Hans, 364 Klopper, Nicolaas, 536 Klopris, Johann, 227, 241 Kloten, 51 Klötzer, Ralf, xii, xvii, xxii Knights’ Revolt of 1522, 4 Knipperdollinck, Bernd, 217, 231–233, 238, 240, 241, 250 Knol, Jan, 332 Kobelt-Groch, Marion, 429 Koblenz, 242 Koch, Konrad, 417 Koch, Margarethe, 447 Koerten, Johanna, 341 Kraichgau, 348 Krautwald, Valentin, 172, 176, 190, 191 Krechtinck, Bernd, 217, 243, 245, 250 Krechtinck, Heinrich, 243, 250, 301, 303 Krefeld, 529 Kreider, Robert, 466 Kriechbaum, Friedel, 18, 19 Krug, Hans, 105 Krumau (Bohemian), 181 Krumau, 103, 357 Kruse, Cort, 245 Krüsi, Hans, 76, 91 Kühn, Johannes, 122 Kuiper, Frans, 307 Kuiper, Jacob, 536 Kuiper, Willem de, 222, 230 Kulm, 374 Kun“tátu, Jan Kuna z, 184, 185 Kunstbuch, 113, 187, 357, 363 Labadie, Jean de, 332 Laity, 3–5, 9, 13, 22, 26, 27, 36, 39, 49, 50, 56, 60, 74, 85, 96–98, 101, 119, 152, 156, 196, 228, 251, 280, 310, 311, 333, 352, 355, 356

index Lamb congregation (in Amsterdam), 289–291, 335–340, 335 see also Lamists Lambert, Franz, 50 Lamists, 290, 337, 338, 342, 499, 533 Landis, Hans, 372 Lanfranc, 412 Langen, Rudolf von, 234 Langenstraten, Hans von der, 249 Lanzenstiel, Leonhard, 200 Lasco, Johannes á, 308 Laubach, Ernst, xviii, xxii, 243, 244 Lauperswyl, 374, 375 Law see Legalism Lay Christians see Laity Leadership (church), 31, 90, 92, 98, 101, 182–184, 200, 307 Marpeck role, 356, 359, 362, 363 Moral failings, 184 Hutterite, 185, 200, 201, 206 Münster Anabaptism, 228, 230, 234, 237, 238, 242–244 Mennonite concepts, 288, 307, 309–312 Dutch and North German Anabaptism, 221, 287, 303, 305, 307, 308, 311, 312, 314, 320, 327, 333, 338 Swiss Brethren, 90, 98, 350, 352, 380, 375 Leeghwater, Jan Adriaensz, 329 Leeuwarden, 221–223, 302, 304, 312, 316, 319 Legalism, 4, 18, 19, 36, 101, 102, 114, 197, 279, 286, 306, 335, 362, 380, 406 see also Works and works righteousness Leiden, 222, 223, 313, 330, 333, 336, 337, 485, 527, 536 Leiden, Jan van see Jan van Leiden Leiden, University of see University of Leiden Leidse Ontwerp, 536 Leipa, 524 Leipzig Disputation of (1519), 21, 165 Leipzig Interim, 147 Leipzig, 6, 21 see also University of Leipzig Lemmeke (vis-à-vis Menno) 311 Lening, Johannes, 229 Liechtenstein, Leonhard von, 110, 111, 167, 168, 169, 170, 172–176, 179, 180, 392, 513 Liechtenstein, 165, 168, 175, 524

559

Liechtenstein, Hans von, 168, 392 Liegnitz botherhood, 190 Liegnitz Reformation, 127, 128, 172, 190 Liegnitz, 127, 176, 190, 192, 277 Liegnitz, Duke of, 125 Lier, 487 Linck, Agnes, 457 Lindau, 517 Lingg see Weninger, Martin Linguistic studies, 49 Linki see Weninger, Martin Linz, 180, 188, 273 Liorne, Pieter Jansz, 329 Lipsius, Justus, 146, 147, 157 Politica, 146 Litovel see Littau, 174 Littau, 174 Little Star faction, 337 Lober, Julius, 183, 490 Locke, John, 334 London, 308 Loosjes, Cornelis, 536 Loosjes, Petrus, 536 Lord’s Prayer, 404 Lord’s Supper, xxiii, 9, 13, 16, 17, 67, 71, 119, 121, 122, 125, 168, 176, 190, 191, 206, 223, 227, 239, 304, 309, 311, 322, 333, 336, 337, 358, 373, 374, 378, 393, 394, 398, 399, 403, 405, 407, 418, 420 Swiss Brethren, 60, 67, 69, 72, 75, 76, 79, 83, 90, 101, 167, 170, 262, 267, 361, 362 in Moravian Reformation, 110, 128, 166, 167, 176, 171, 197, 198, 279 Dutch Anabaptists and Mennonites, 104, 219, 227, 228, 251, 283, 291, 306 Real presence in, 121, 125–127, 165, 166 Schwenckfeld on, 125–127, 130, 131, 279 Sebastian Franck on, 138, 139 see also Stillstand (at Liegnitz) Lot, 486 Louis II, Jagellon (King of Hungary), 163, 167 Louis Napoleon, 537 Love (and brotherliness), 37–39, 265, 269, 285 Lübeck, 284, 307, 529 Lusatia, 163 Luther, Martin, xiv, xix, 1, 8, 18, 21, 36–38, 45, 55, 103, 106, 120–122,

560

index

133, 140, 165, 173, 192, 488, 509, 512, 514 Against the Heavenly Prophets (1525), 10 Against the Sabbatarians (1538), 173 Invocavit Sermons (1522), 8 Letter to the Saxon Princes about the Rebellious Spirit (1524), 23 On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520), 6 That a Christian Assembly or Congregation Has the Right and Power to Judge Doctrine (1523), 40 vis-à-vis Erasmus, 265 vis-à-vis Hans Denck, 260 vis-à-vis Hubmaier, 169 vis-à-vis Karlstadt, 6, 9, 11, 12, 14, 19–21, 125 vis-à-vis Menno, 304, 305 vis-à-vis Münsterites, 218 vis-à-vis Müntzer, 21–23, 27, 31, 122, 155 vis-à-vis Nikolsburg reformers, 173 vis-à-vis reform in Holland, 221 vis-à-vis Schwenckfeld, 125–129 vis-à-vis tolerance, 371, 372 vis-à-vis Valentine Crautwald, 127 vis-à-vis Zwingli, 38, 125, 126 see also Wittenberg Movement, 1 Lutheranism, 104, 131, 134, 137, 141, 147, 148, 152–156, 165, 174, 189–191, 193, 196, 203, 208, 210, 219, 221, 227, 229, 258, 266, 271, 348, 351, 364, 392, 414, 415, 441, 476, 477, 484, 500, 509, 510, 514, 530, 533 see also Augsburg Confession; Schmalkaldic League Lutz, Wolfgang, 187 Luyken, Jan, 321, 342, 466, 467, 502 Luzern, 76 Maastricht, 223, 303 Maatschappij tot Nut van ‘t Algemeen, 537 Maccabees, 469 Maestricht, 431 Magdeburg Centuries, 500 magisterial reformers, 305 Maier, Marx, 99 Maler, Dorothea, 457 Maler, Jörg, 363, 454 Mallerbach, 23 Mander, Karel van, 331

Mantz, Felix, 49, 51, 58, 60, 63–67, 70, 72, 73, 77, 83, 92, 101, 470, 476 “Petition of Defense”, 62 “Protestation”, 72 see also Swiss Brethren Marburg, 226, 229 Margaret of Parma, 315 Maria Theresia (Empress), 210 Markirch, 372 Marpeck Circle, 350, 356, 357, 360–363, 527 writings of, 363 see also Marpeck, Pilgram; Scharnslager, Leopold; Pilgramites Marpeck, Pilgram, 98, 99, 104, 109, 111, 113, 114, 181, 183, 186–188, 272, 274, 277, 278, 348, 356–363, 367, 371, 380, 395–397, 405, 418–421, 523 Admonition (1542), 359 A Clear and Useful Instruction (1531), 274, 358 Clear Refutation, A (1531), 274, 358 Concerning the Lowliness of Christ (1547), 396 Judgment and Decision, (ca. 1541), 359, 395, 420 Response to Caspar Schwenckfeld’s Judicium (1544, 1558), 188 Elaboration of the Testaments (written with Leopold Scharnslager—1547), 359, 360 Uncovering of the Whore of Babylon, The (1531?), 358 Biography, 103, 104, 356–359 Theology, 98, 99, 104, 186, 274, 278, 356–363, 371, 395 Historiography on, 356, 357, 362 vis-à-vis Leonard Scharnshlager, 359, 363 vis-à-vis Schwenckfeld, 188, 278, 359 vis-à-vis Spiritualism, 112, 189, 358, 360, 361, 380 vis-à-vis Swiss Brethren, 349, 362, 363 Writings of, 112, 274, 356–359, 363, 380 Marriage, 76, 105, 288, 307, 312, 318, 366, 447 Exogamy issue, 307, 320, 321, 327, 333 Münster Anabaptism, 240–242, 247, 249, 251

index Shunning in, 306, 309, 311, 314, 320, 322, 326 see also Polygamy Martelaers Spiegel der Werelose Christene (1631), 325 Martyrologies, xviii, 46, 310, 352, 418, 493, 498 Protestant, 495 Reformed, 310 Hans de Ries, 48 see also Martyrs Mirror; Braght, Thielman Jansz van Martyrs and martyrdom, xxiii, 45, 108, 176, 351, 352, 401, 411, 416, 442, 458–460, 466–468, 474, 476, 478–480, 484–488, 494, 496, 499–501 Hymnody, 489, 490, 497 Theology, 87, 197, 306, 324, 412 among Netherlands’ Calvinists, 315 in the Netherlands, 221–223, 230, 236, 237, 241, 283, 301, 303–305, 312, 315, 316, 324, 325, 365 in Switzerland and South Germany, 58, 84, 87, 92–94, 102, 108, 180, 182, 350, 357, 372 in Moravia, 111, 113, 172, 175, 185, 192, 194, 201, 202, 205, 206 Gender, 450, 478 Numbers of, 108, 109, 316 see also Death penalty, 89 see also Martyrs Mirror Martyrs’ Mirror of the Nonresistant Christians, The (1631), 325 Martyrs Mirror(1660, 1685), xxi, 206, 365, 466, 467, 501, 502, 527, 528, 535 History, 466 Women, 449 background and predecessors, 310, 317, 324, 325 Publication of, 342 see also Braght, Thielman Jansz van Martyrs’ Synod (1527), 260, 270 Marxism, xv, 30, 32 vis-à-vis Münsterites, 218 Mary (mother of Christ), 131, 177, 179, 220, 368, 398 Mary of Burgundy, 242 Mary Tudor (Mary I of England), 308, 467 Mary Stuart (Mary II of England), 331 Masculinity, 425 Mass see Ceremonies; Worship

561

Mattern, Marlies, 426, 429, 447 Leben im Abseits. Frauen und Männer im Täufertum (1525–1550) (1998), 426 Matthijs, Jan (of Haarlem), 217, 221, 222, 228, 230–234, 235–237, 280, 281, 302, 308, 437 Matthijs, Jelis, 450 Maurits (Prince), 323, 324 McGinn, Bernard, 29 McLaughlin, Emmet, xviii–xx, 29 McNiel, William W., 16 McSheffrey, Shannon, 446, 447 Mecklenberg, 288 Medicine, 206 Meister Eckhardt, 325 Melanchthon, Philip, 7, 12, 34, 45, 103, 106, 147, 351, 433, 514 Melchiorites, xxi, 202, 224, 228, 253, 283, 284, 286, 293, 302, 362, 434, 435, 477, 525, 526 see also Hoffman, Melchior Mellink, Albert F., 222 Memmingen, 54, 55, 180, 517, 518 Resolutions, 1531, 517 Menno, Simons see Simons, Menno Mennonite Encyclopedia, 515 Mennonites see Lamb congregation; Waterlanders; Dutch Mennonites; Simons, Menno Merveldt, Dietrich von, 231 Meyer, Fridolin, 273, 274 Meyer, Hans (or Pfistermeyer), 92, 94 Meyer, Sebastian, 68 Meyger, Fridolin, 272 Micron, Marten, 308, 309 A Truthful Account (1556), 309 Middelburg, 319, 487 Middelie, 328 Mierdman, Steven, 310 Migrations, 352, 365, 372, 375–378, 380 Swiss Brethren aided by Dutch Mennonites, 372, 380, 381 Mikulov see Nikolsburg Military conscription, 340 Millenarianism, 197, 209, 302, 332, 334 see also Eschatology Ministers and ministerial offices, 328, 329, 335, 362, 364, 377 see also Leadership-Church Mirror of the Martyrs exhibit, 466 Missionary efforts, 352, 364, 365, 367, 478

562

index

Moeller, Bernd, 2 Moers, Dietrich von, 230 Mohács, Battle of, 129 Moibanus, Ambrosius, 190 Mollenhecke, Heinrich, 237, 241 Molqueren, 339 Monasticism, 392, 421 Monogenesis thesis on Anabaptist origins, xvi, 46 Moravia, xiv, xvii, xx, 64, 84, 88, 98, 103, 106, 107, 109, 110, 114, 172, 174, 184, 190, 193, 194, 198, 199, 204, 207, 273, 278, 279, 340, 348, 352, 357, 359, 362, 364, 365, 368, 390, 392, 426, 448, 473, 477–479, 490, 521, 522, 524, 525 see also New Moravian Land Order (1627) Moravian Sacramentarians, 168 Moritz (Duke of Saxony), 147 Mühlhausen, 23, 24, 85 Müller, Ernst, 350 Mullinck, Hieronymus, 248 Münster, Anabaptism in, xxii, 48, 105, 113, 217, 218, 220, 222, 223, 233, 234, 238, 239, 245, 249, 246, 250, 251, 253, 254, 260, 264, 280, 283, 284, 301, 302, 319, 335, 368, 399, 415, 428, 437, 453–455, 461, 468, 473, 477–479, 492, 499, 500, 515, 518–520, 525–527 As cultural theme, 217, 218 Historiography of, xxii, 218, 219, 222, 243, 253, 254 Political aspects, 233, 242–247, 251–253, 301 Marriage, 240, 461 Women, 437, 454, 455 vis-à-vis Menno, 253, 303–306 Müntzer, Thomas, xxiii, 2, 3, 16, 20–24, 28–32, 45, 46, 61, 70, 85, 87, 88, 100, 102, 103, 106, 107, 154, 264, 266, 394, 470, 472, 512, 513 Exposition of False Faith (1524), 23, 85 Prague Manifesto (1521), 22 On Counterfeit Faith (1524), 22 Open Letter (1523), 22 Protestation or Proposition (1524), 22 Sermon to the Princes (1524), 23, 28, 31 Vindication and Refutation (1524), 23 and the Peasants’ War, 20, 24–26, 28–34, 85

Theology, xvii, 21–29, 31–34, 48, 60, 85–87, 122–124, 154, 264, 470, 472 vis-à-vis Hans Denck, 260, 263, 264 vis-à-vis Hans Hut, 85, 271 vis-à-vis Luther, 21–23, 27, 31, 122, 155 vis-à-vis Valentin Weigel, 124, 152, 153 Müsing, Hans Werner, 269 Mutual Admonition see Ban Mutual aid and sharing, xxi, 15, 17, 33, 52, 67, 69, 72, 76, 88, 92, 95, 130, 186, 188, 189, 209, 230, 235, 236, 272, 312, 322, 329, 330, 338–341, 350 Dutch aid to Swiss Brethren, 364, 367, 372, 374, 380, 381 see also Community of goods Myer, Hans, 94, 95 Mysticism, 6, 9, 89, 141, 196, 220, 288, 314, 325, 332, 342, 349, 357, 391, 392, 394, 476 medieval, 14, 89, 127, 134, 135, 263, 292 of Hans Denck, 102, 103, 220 of Hans Hut, 86 Naaktlopers, 223 Nachfolge see Holy Living Nadere Reformatie, 325 Nadler, Hans, 99 Naeldeman, Hendrick, 313 Naked demonstrators, 223 Napoleon I, 537 Nerach (village), 92 Netherlands, xx, 155, 202, 217, 220, 227, 238, 242, 246–248, 289, 299, 293, 301, 322, 331, 332, 406, 411, 426, 435, 478, 507, 515, 518, 522, 525, 527, 528, 533–536 vis-à-vis Münster Anabaptism vis-à-vis term Doopsgezind see also Dutch Republic, 98 Neumühl, 200, 208 Neusohl, 174 Neuwied, 348, 529 New birth, 63, 65, 71, 96, 131, 167, 191, 239, 285, 302, 303, 305, 306, 311, 350 see also Holy Living; Soteriology New Jerusalem, 152, 220, 222, 231, 232, 238, 301

index New Moravian Land Order (1627), 207 Nicodemism, 197, 277, 283–285, 303, 372, 373, 476, 484, 523, 526 Nieuwenhuizen, Jan, 537 Nikolsburg, xxiv, 59, 110, 165, 166, 169, 173, 177, 178, 186, 187, 189, 195, 198, 206, 273, 277, 392, 513, 518 Nikolsburg Articles, 173, 174, 179 Nikolsburg Reformation, 172–174, 177, 179, 277 Noah, 486 Noetic Spiritualism, xix, 122 Nonconformity see Separatism Nonjuring see Oath Nonresistance, 45, 48, 61, 83, 85, 90, 91, 94, 96, 97, 99, 100, 106, 111, 130, 171–173, 181–183, 233, 238, 244, 302, 379, 414, 415, 500, 532, 535 Dutch Mennonites, xxii, 247, 302, 314, 534 Hutterite, 178, 181, 194, 199 Swiss Brethren on, 46, 60–62, 67, 69, 70, 72, 83, 101, 320, 350, 356, 358, 362 see also Violence Nordhausen, 22 Nordhorn, Clas, 249 Notae ecclesiae, 170 Nové Mlÿny see Neumühl, 200 Nuremberg, 8, 23, 85, 109, 133, 183, 260, 261, 263, 270 Oath, 10, 90, 91, 94–97, 106, 114, 188, 199, 203, 262, 269, 309, 350, 373, 374, 522, 532–534 Obbenites see Philips, Obbe Obbesz, Nittert, 324 Oberberg, 76 Oecolampadius, Johannes, 24, 70, 88, 94, 106, 257 vis-à-vis Hans Denck, 260, 263, 269 Oestreich, Gerhard, 509 Oggenfuss, Hans, 49, 50 Ohnenheim, 372 Old Flemish, 321, 322, 326, 331, 496 Old Frisians, 320, 321, 324, 326, 327, 496, 498, 500 Oldeklooster, 223, 519 Oldenbarneveldt, Johan van, 323, 324 Oldenburg, 250, 301

563

Oldenburg, Count of, 250 Olive-branch confession (1626), 326, 335, 500 Olmütz, 165, 174, 177, 182, 186, 188 Optát, Bene“, 165, 168, 187 Orange family, 319, 331, 340, 507, 528, 536, 537 Ordinances, 274, 275, 291 Ordo rerum, 86 Original sin, 144, 145, 149, 150, 288, 309, 355, 364 Orlamünde, 9, 10, 14–17 Orphans, 329, 338, 366 Osnabrück, 245 Osnabrück, Jakob of, 232 Ostens, Jacob, 334 Oudaen, Joachim, 341 Outerman, Jacques, 321, 496 Overdam, Hans van, 480 Overijssel, 322 Oyer, John S., xvi, xvii, 46, 101, 466, 484 Pacification of Ghent, 143 Pacifism see Nonresistance; Violence Packull, Werner, xviii, 47, 87, 277, 363, 476. Hutterite Beginnings: Communitarian Experiments During the Reformation (1995), xvi on Anabaptist mutual aid and sharing, 92 on Hans Denck, 263, 264 Palatinate, 183, 340, 348, 354, 365, 415, 532 Persecution in, 98 Swiss Brethren in, 368, 372, 376, 378 Palatinate, Elector of, 341 Palingh, Abraham, 334 Pappenheim, Magdalena Marschalk von, 359, 397 Paracelsus, 122, 150, 151, 152, 206, 207 Pass van, family, 330 Passau, 401, 402, 474, 475, 477 Pastor, Adam, 258, 284, 307 Pastors see Leadership (church) patriarchy, 429, 430, 448, 459, 461 Patriot Movement, 536, 537 Paul, 435, 469, 473 Peace of Augsburg, 147, 148, 521 Peace of Münster, 331 Peasant unrest, 10, 51, 52, 57, 62, 66, 68, 73, 76–78, 106, 357, 468, 477, 478, 481, 491, 512–515, 519, 520

564

index

Peasants’ War, xxiii, 2, 3, 11, 15, 16, 24, 34–38, 40, 46, 47, 51, 55, 57, 68, 69, 74, 85, 91, 102, 107, 108, 135, 224 vis-à-vis Anabaptism, 75, 78, 83–85, 88, 351 see also Peasant unrest Pedobaptism see Baptism, infant Pelagianism, 144 Pelagius, 144 Penn, William, 332 Pennsylvania, 466 Pentecost, 361 Perfectionism, 145, 146, 153, 177, 203, 235–238, 242, 282, 283, 285, 300, 303, 306, 309, 310, 368 Pern“tejna, Janz see Pernstein, Johann von Pernstein, Adalbert von, 187 Pernstein, Jaroslav von, 187 Pernstein, Johann von, 165, 167, 168, 187, 192 Pernstein, Lords of, 186, 187 Persecution, 78, 84, 86, 93, 96, 98, 102, 106, 114, 139, 142, 143, 148, 165, 175, 232, 258, 282, 306, 347, 351, 352, 365, 467, 474, 476–481, 483, 487, 488, 516–518, 520 by Catholics, 108, 109, 113, 305, 316 by Protestants, 106, 109, 147, 305 in Netherlands, 219, 220, 222, 224, 232, 237, 280, 305, 310, 312, 315, 316, 328 in Austria, 172 in Moravia (1535), xx, 163, 164, 172, 175, 185, 191, 194, 196–198, 208 in Switzerland and south Germany, xxi, 58, 66, 84, 97, 100, 106, 109, 171, 172, 179, 180, 184, 232, 340, 341, 350, 367, 372, 375, 376 see also Banishment; Death penalty; Repression Peter, 453, 469, 485 Pfeddersheim Disputation (1557), 353, 354, 356 Pfeiffer, Heinrich, 23, 24, 87, 88, 106 Pfistermeyer, Hans see Meyer, Hans Philip II (King of Spain), 314, 315, 502 Philip of Hesse (Landgrave), 106, 226, 242, 247, 248, 480, 518 Philippites, 112, 113, 183–185, 467, 474, 477, 479

Philips, Dirk, 281, 302, 308, 311–313, 331, 474 Small Handbook, 312 vis-à-vis Nicolaas Meyndertsz van Blesdijk, 284, 389, 474, 486, 501 Philips, Obbe, 257, 259, 280–282, 288, 293, 302, 303 Confession (ca. 1560), 281, 282, 302 Phillipists, 147 Piedmont, 340 Piersins, Lysbette, 489 Pieters, Syvaert, 498, 500 Pietersz, Pieter, 325, 408, 409, 418–420 The Way to the City of Peace (1625), 408, 409, 420 Pietism, 154, 156, 209, 314, 334, 414, 415 Pilgramites, 188, 349, 362 see also Marpeck Circle; Marpeck, Pilgram Pingjum, 304 Pisciculus see Fischer, Andreas Plato and Platonism, 122, 123, 138–140, 142, 153, 155, 205 of Valentin Weigel, 147, 149, 152, 153 vis-à-vis Radical Spiritualists, 120, 122–124, 127, 142, 147, 149, 151–154, 157 Plener, Philip, 112, 183, 184 see also Philippites Plotinus, 138 Poeldijk, 301 Poland, xiv, 198, 303, 322, 332, 340, 515 Polderman, Cornelius, 221 Polish Brethren, 202 Politics, 4, 12, 13, 24, 94, 130, 146, 163, 189, 207, 227, 229, 269, 300, 306, 349, 366, 375, 416, 450, 469, 478, 482, 507–538 Dutch Mennonites, 319, 341, 342, 518, 525–531, 533–538 Swiss Brethren, 90, 179, 269, 350, 355–358, 363, 375, 380, 513–515, 522–524, 532 Hutterites, 199, 203, 364, 367, 524–525 see also Reformation-Political aspects Polycarp, 412 Polygamy, 217, 240, 287, 302 Davidites, 287, 288, 303 Münster Anabaptism, 240–242, 244, 249, 251, 252, 283

index Polygenesis thesis on Anabaptist origins, xvi, 46, 105, 107, 402, 422 Polygyny, 437, 454, 461 Pont, Ian, 435 Popes and papacy, 135, 143, 198, 252 Denounced in Schleitheim Articles, 90 Praet, Claes de, 487 Pragmatism, 314, 327, 328, 348, 354, 356 Prague, 163, 164, 171, 172, 175, 207, 329 Prayer, 136, 404, 406, 419 Prayerbook for Earnest Christians (1708), 524 Predestination, 144, 150, 171, 268, 283, 309, 323 Prenz, George, 261 Preus, James S., 12 Pries, Edmund, 91 Priesthood of all believers, 13, 36 Primitive church, 2, 4, 14, 191, 274–276, 282, 287, 290, 291, 335 Printing, 491, 492 Prison Letters, 417 Proclus, 151 Prophetesses, 436 Protestantism, 141, 146, 205, 351, 467, 476 Prussia, 174, 200, 208, 303, 322, 526, 535 Psalms, 317, 322, 328, 342 Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite see Areopagite Pur, Bartlime, 50 Puritanism, 325 Quakers, 332, 414 Quedlinburg, 21 Quellen zur Geschichte der Wiedertäufer, xvii Quietism, 153, 156 Rabus, Ludwig, 459, 460 Racovian Catechism (1659), 332 Radical Platonic Spiritualists, xix Radical Reformation, 2, 68, 69, 74, 75, 78, 83, 85, 230, 234, 258, 271, 426, 427 Economic aspects, 69, 72, 76, 87, 186, 198–210, 217, 222 Historiography of, xi, xiv, xv, xix, 2, 293 Political aspects, 61, 67–69, 73–78, 84, 90, 93, 104–106, 192, 197, 198, 203, 233, 306

565

Social aspects, xiii, 74, 78, 87, 89, 186, 203, 207, 209, 218, 219, 230, 233, 427 see also Münster, Anabaptism; Müntzer, Thomas; Radical Spiritualism Radical Spiritualism, xx, 119–122, 129, 133, 137, 141, 146, 147, 153–158, 173, 278–282 Historiography of, 119, 120, 122, 154–156, 173 Political aspects, 84, 130, 143, 157 Schwenckfeld moving toward, 128, 129, 132 Social aspects, 133, 134, 155, 157 vis-à-vis Platonism, 120, 122–124, 127, 142, 147, 149, 151–154, 157 see also Schwenckfeld, Caspar Radicalism, 509, 513, 521 Rahab, 485 Rák¢czi, Georg I., 208 Rappoltsweiler, 372 Rationalism, 156, 333, 334 Rattenberg am Inn, 103, 181 Marpeck in, 357 Rebstock, Barbara, 107, 220, 434–436 Recantation, 77, 98, 101, 105, 108, 109, 250, 301, 352, 357, 358, 458, 483, 484, 494, 516 Recke, Johannes (alias Gigantinus), 191, 192 Reconciled Brotherhood, 323 Redecker, Heinrich, 237, 243 Reed, Jennifer, 429, 432 Reformation of the Common Man, 20, 32–35, 39, 40 see also Common man; Communal Reformation; Reformation Reformation, xiii, xiv, 5, 35, 41, 49–51, 53, 54, 77, 84, 108, 121, 135, 156, 190, 224, 226, 265, 280, 282, 351, 395, 402, 425, 427, 429, 436, 442, 467, 468, 491, 495, 499, 508–512, 515, 517, 519, 522, 534 Economic aspects, 15, 32, 37, 55, 77, 95, 224 Historiography, xiii, 35, 36, 40 Political aspects, 27, 37, 39–41, 48, 55, 59, 68, 77, 83, 146, 154, 163, 167, 171, 172, 193, 195, 224–227, 229 Social aspects, 4, 15, 20, 23, 27, 30, 34, 37–41, 155, 166, 433, 442, 446, 452 see also Radical Reformation

566

index

Reformed Church, 143, 144, 146, 310, 312, 318, 321–325, 334, 336, 338, 339, 347, 376, 410, 478, 479, 499, 514, 522, 523, 528, 533, 536 see also Calvinism Regel, Jörg, 266, 270 Regensberg (village), 92 Regensburg, 270, 456 Reichenbach, 191 Reign of Christ, 95, 104, 197, 220, 237–239, 246, 247, 252 Reign of God, 153, 252, 257, 283, 285, 301, 302 Reinhard, Wolfgang, 510, 511 Reininck, Gert, 243 Reist, Hans, 376 Reist-Amman schism, 415 Remonstrants, 323–325, 332–335, 328 Rempel, John, xxiii Renaissance, 331 Renato, Camillo, 258 Repentance, 71, 88, 96, 134, 305, 414 Repression Netherlands, 217, 221, 223–226, 301, 305, 308, 315, 318, 319, 333 Switzerland and German territories, 193, 260, 267, 272, 273, 354, 364 Moravia, 174, 184–190, 192, 204, 207, 208, 210, 351, 364 Resch, Ambrosius, 205 Restitution, 252, 286, 287, 291, 302 see also Eschatology; Rothman, Bernhard’s Restitution Reublin, Wilhelm, 51–53, 59, 64, 66, 68–70, 74, 91, 100–105, 109, 112, 113, 183, 188, 272, 273, 490 vis-à-vis Pilgram Marpeck, 183 vis-à-vis Jakob Wiedemann, 112, 113 Revelation, 87, 105, 138, 142, 196, 276, 302, 360 see also Inner Word Rhineland, 113, 183, 201, 202, 227, 267, 302, 307, 347, 348, 352 Riall, Robert, 477 Riedemann, Peter, 197, 200, 204–206, 389, 397, 398, 418, 419, 421, 433, 434, 524 Account of our Religion (1545), 197, 204, 205, 397, 421, 433 Paraphrases of the Gospels (1549), 206 Ries, Hans de, and Jacques Outerman Historie der Martelaren (1615), 206, 324, 497, 500

Ries, Hans de, xviii, 45, 48, 206, 258, 289, 291–293, 314, 322–325, 403–405, 407, 408, 411, 418–421, 475, 496–501 History of the Martyrs (1615), 206, 324, 497, 500 Lietboeck (1582), 323 Martyrs Mirror (1631), 411, 498, 500 “Third Sermon on the Lord” (1650), 405 Theology of, 291, 322–324 Riesbach, 52 Rieuwertsz, Jan, 332, 333 Riga, 133 Rijcen, Christian, 487, 496 Rijnsburg, 333 Rinck, Melchior, 85, 106, 107, 268, 447 Ris Cornelis, 537 The Confession of Faith of the True Mennonites (1766), 537 Ritual see Ceremonies; Worship Roberts, Julia, 451 Rol, Hendrik, 227, 228 Römer, Hans, 48, 88, 512 Roore, Jacob de, 486, 496 Roosen, Gerhard, 413–417, 419, 421 Soulful Conversation (1702), 413–415 Rosice see Rossitz Rossitz, 183, 196 Rostock, 281 Roth, John, xx, xxi Rothe, Johannes, 332, 333 Rothenburg o. T., 16, 484 Rothkegel, Martin, xii, xvii, xx, xxii, xxiv, 114, 225–230, 245, 277, 360, 363, 453, 454, 519 Rothman, Bernhard, 222, 225–230, 229, 233, 235, 239, 243, 246, 248–253, 302, 304 Concerning Vengeance (1534), 222, 246, 251, 252, 519 Confession of the Faith and Life of the Congregation of Christ in Münster (1534), 239, 251 Confession of the Two Sacraments, Baptism and Communion(1533), 228 On Earthly Power (1535), 251, 253 On the Concealment of Scripture (1535), 248, 251, 252 Restitution (1535), 222, 246, 248, 251, 252 Theology, 227–230, 233, 235, 249, 251–253, 288, 302, 359, 453, 454

index Rottenburg, 102 Rotterdam, 303, 334, 341 Rumer, Paul, 490 Rüscher, Hubert, 236, 237, 249 Russia, 406, 535 Rutgers, Swaen, 311 Rüti, monastery of, 77 Sabatisch, 208, 209 Sabbatarianism, 173–175, 177, 185, 198 Sabean, David, 348, 349 Sacramental Spiritualism, xix, 122 Sacraments and sacramentalism, 110, 119, 120, 121, 123, 125, 127, 221, 280, 392, 395, 400, 404, 405, 418 The Netherlands, 228, 229, 251, 280, 282 Theology of, 65, 121, 130, 132–137, 141, 148, 149, 230, 167, 191, 221, 227, 280–282, 306 Switzerland and Germany, 130, 171, 185, 221, 361 Moravia, 168, 171, 199 see also Lord’s Supper Sacrifice of the Lord, The (1562 ff.), 310, 317, 324, 411, 492–497, 499, 527 Sagan, 193, 195 Salminger, Sigmund, 325 Salvation history, 275, 276, 487 Salvation, as gift (sola gratia), 38, 39 Salzburg, 108, 180 Santification see Holiness of Life, 12 Sárospatak, 208 Sattler, Michael, 92, 95, 98, 99, 102, 103, 266, 267, 269, 271, 272, 366, 389, 416, 417, 428, 470, 492, 493, 495, 497, 513, 514 “Brotherly Union of a Number of Children of God Concerning Seven Articles” (1527), 89, 90 Epistle to the Church at Horb (1527), 416 Saxony, 45, 85, 89, 147, 148, 152, 266, 277, 434, 514 see also Electors of Saxony Schabaelje, Jan Philipsz, 325, 408–411, 418–420, 422 Wandering Soul (1635), 410, 411 Schaffhausen, 54–57, 59, 66, 68–70, 73, 74, 84, 92, 95, 352, 375 Schangnau, 376 Schappeler, Christoph, 54, 55 To the Assembly of Common Peasantry (1525), 55

567

Scharnschlager, Leopold, 111, 188, 363, 371 see also Marpeck, Pilgram Schauenburg family, 529 Schäufele, Wolfgang, 431 Schedemaker, Jan Jansz, 311, 313, 314 Schiemer, Leonard, 86, 87, 108, 182, 357 Schijn, Herman, 339 Schilling, Heinz, 510 Schism, 265, 271, 272, 275, 289, 291, 319, 320, 325, 334, 335, 347 Dutch Anabaptism, 284, 289, 300, 311–314, 319–328, 334, 336, 337 Schlachta, Astrid von, 438, 448 Schlaffer, Hans, 86–88, 99, 108, 182, 357, 472 Schleitheim, 380 Schleitheim Articles (1527), xx, 47, 62, 79, 89, 90–102, 107, 111, 271, 349, 363, 374, 384, 391, 416, 434, 447, 470, 513, 514, 523, 524 Schleitheim Confession see Schleitheim Articles Schleswig-Holstein, 219 Schmalkald, 131, 137 Schmalkaldic League, 129, 130 Schmalkaldic War, 132, 147 Schmid, Hans, 105, 445, 452 Schmid, Margaret, 52 Schmidt, Martin, 17 Schoenmaker, Harmen, 223 Scholasticism, 138, 145, 151 Schöppingen, 243 Schumacher, Fridli, 67 Schwäbisch Hall, 219 Schwarz, Adelheit, 439 Schweidnitz, 193, 194 Schweintz, 183 Schwenckfeld, Caspar von, 122–139, 141, 142, 148–157, 172, 176, 188–191, 220, 266, 277, 278, 281, 294, 302, 322, 332, 359, 397 Admonition Concerning Abuse of Certain Important Articles of the Gospel (1524), 125 Judicium (1542), 359 at Augsburg and elsewhere, 130 at Esslingen, 132 at Justingen, 130, 132 at Strasbourg, 129, 130, 134, 358 at Ulm, 130, 131, 133 at Liegnitz, 277 Heimsuchung, 124, 127

568

index

historiography on, 127, 155 Theology of, xix, 125–132, 139, 191, 279 Schwenckfelders, 131, 156, 209 Schwerhoff, Gerd, 444 Schwertler, 173, 198, 273 Schwyz, 264 Scotus, Duns, 5 Scripture, 13, 14, 18, 26, 36, 48, 54, 87, 89, 119, 126, 133, 142, 144, 196, 220, 238, 248, 261–264, 276, 289, 292, 300, 304, 305, 324, 353, 394, 414, 432, 435 vis-à-vis Holy Spirit, 261, 270, 274, 292, 300, 360 Authority of, 18, 36, 37, 49–51, 59, 63, 68, 78, 86, 103, 119, 121, 354 see also Bible; Bible study Scripture References Gen. 4, 470 Judges 5: 1–31, 398 Judges 8, 472 I Sam. 2:1–10, 398 II Chr. 24:20–22, 470 Ps. 51:5, 482 Joel 2:28–29, 435 II Macc. 6, 7, 470 Matt. 5:10, 470, 475 Matt. 10:17–22, 473 Matt. 10:33, 481 Matt. 11: 8, 408 Matt. 18, 83, 101 Matt. 19:14, 482 Mark 16:15, 472 Luke 1:46–55, 398 Luke 9:23–24, 470 John 3[:5], 482 John 10, 7, 474 John 14, 6, 474 John 15:18–20, 470 John 16, 2, 474 John 16:20, 485 John 16:33, 470, 473 Acts 5: 40–41, 470 Acts 14:22, 470, 472, 473 Rom. 8:17, 473 Rom. 13, 533 Rom. 13:1, 527 I Cor. 11, 393 I Cor. 11:23–27, 405 I Cor. 14:34, 435 I Cor. 16:15, 482 II Cor. 11: 14–15, 501 II Cor. 24:20–22, 470

Gal. 3:28, 435 Eph. 4:5, 515, 531 II Tim. 3:12, 470, 472 Heb. 2: 14–18, 395 Heb. 11:37, 470 Heb. 12:5–6, 471 I Peter 2:14, 527 I Peter 4:13, 470 I John 5:7, 474 Rev. 2:4, 406 Sea Beggar Lumey, 143 Second Coming of Christ, 85, 125, 130, 136, 217, 219, 252, 367 see also Apocalypticism; Eschatology Sectarianism see Separatism, 61 Sects, 510, 516 Seeb (village), 92 Seebaß, Gottfried, 518 Segers, Jeronimus, 490, 493, 494 Separation of church and state see Church-state separation Separatism, xxi, 46, 58, 61, 66, 71, 78, 79, 91, 93, 94, 96, 114, 153, 177, 178, 180–182, 230, 235, 269, 270, 281, 300, 301, 306, 314, 326, 378, 379, 491, 508, 525 Hutterite, 199, 364, 366, 367 Swiss Brethren, 58, 62, 79, 90–91, 96, 97, 101, 105, 172, 186, 349, 350, 362, 364, 366, 367, 373, 377, 379, 380 Sermons, 206, 209, 393 Serrarius, Petrus, 332 Servaes, Matthias, 365, 417, 453 Servetus, 139 Seven United Provinces, 315 Sexual practices, 288 see also Ethics; Holy Living; Marriage; Polygamy Shepardson, Nikki, 458 Short Account of the Union Between...(1639), 327 Short, Simple Discourse (1580s), 355 Shunning, 60, 306, 311, 314, 318, 321, 322 Jakob Ammann on, 377, 378 Menno on, 306, 307 Swiss Brethren on, 368 see also Ban Sibutus, Georgius, 170 Sichem, van, family, 330 Sigmund, 325 Silesia, xiv, xx, 113, 125, 128, 129, 163, 164, 185, 198, 201, 209, 279, 397

index Simon Cleophas, 410 Simons, Menno, xx, 132, 140, 253, 281, 294, 299, 304, 305, 307–311, 327, 342 Comforting Admonition on the Suffering, Cross (1554/55), 473, 495 A Clear Report about Excommunication (1549), 307 A Clear Response to a Writing of Gellius Faber (1554), 308 Complete Works (1681), 342 Concerning Excommunication (1557), 311 The Cross of the Saints (1558), 400, 420 An Entirely Clear and Modest Answer (1556), 309 Foundation Book (1539/40), 283, 310 Meditation on the Twenty-Fifth Psalm (1539), 401, 473 Attitudes toward women, 430, 453, 454 Theology, 132, 253, 284, 303, 349, 368, 389, 399, 400, 403, 413, 418, 419, 421, 430, 453, 454, 473, 474, 476, 486, 498, 501, 526, 529 vis-à-vis David Joris, 283, 284 vis-à-vis Davidites, 307 vis-à-vis Gellius Faber, 308 vis-à-vis Luther, 305 vis-à-vis Marten Micron, 308, 309 vis-à-vis Martinus Ducanus, 308 vis-à-vis Münster Anabaptism, 253 vis-à-vis Nicolaas Meyndertsz van Blesdijk, 284–286 vis-à-vis Obbe Philips, 302, 303 Simons, Peter, 304 Sincere Covenant of Unity (1664), 337 Singel Church, 327 Six Articles (at Wittenberg), 15 Slavkov u Brna see Austerlitz Slovakia, 174, 204, 208 Slovaks, 201, 202 Small Zon faction, 337 Smith, John, 323 Snyder, Arnold, xviii, xxii, 47, 363, 426, 431, 437, 447, 476, 523 Anabaptist History and Theology (1995), xvi, xxii Profiles of Anabaptist Women (1996), xxi on Spiritualist Anabaptism, 258, 259, 288 Soboti“te see Sabatisch Social Discipline, 509–512, 532

569

Socinianism, 208, 209, 290, 321, 323, 332–336, 339 Sodom, 486 Soest, 245 Soft Frisians, 496 Sohm, Joseph, 466 Sola fide, 120, 133, 134, 144, 149, 261, 292, 305 Sola gratia see Soteriology Sola scriptura 3, 18, 49, 120, 121, 138, 177, 292 Solothurn, 87, 95, 97 Some Beautiful Christian Songs (1564), 474, 479 Sorg-Froschauer, Simprecht, 169, 172 Soteriology, 2, 12, 14, 20, 37, 38, 103, 120, 167, 202, 292, 309, 354, 395, 408, 416, 470 of Bernhard Rothmann, 252 of Caspar Schwenckfeld, 125 of Clemens Adler, 194 of Coornhert, 144–146 of David Joris, 285 of Gabriel Ascherham, 197 of Galenus Abrahamsz, 335, 336 of Hans Denck, 261–266 of Jan van Leiden, 238 of Johann Zeising, 167 of Karlstadt, 126 of Marpeck, 359, 361 of Samuel Apostool, 336 of Schwenckfeld, 131, 132, 154 of Swiss Brethren, 185, 186 of Valentin Weigel, 149, 150, 152, 154 of Zwingli, 126 see also Justification Spaarne River, 341 Spain, 143, 318, 527 Speratus, Paulus, 165, 166 Speyer, Diet of (1529), 88, 89, 109, 516 Spinoza, Baruch de, 333, 334 Spirit see Holy Spirit, 3 Spiritual communion see Lord’s Supper Spiritualism, xiii, xvii, xix, 26, 89, 102, 103, 107, 119, 190, 268, 279, 280, 283, 284, 287–290, 302, 314, 322, 391, 410, 418 “Dreamers,” 105 Familists, 307 Women, 434, 435, 452, 461 vis-à-vis Anabaptism, xix, 90, 104, 105, 107, 187, 259, 293, 294, 358

570

index

vis-à-vis Collegiants, 333, 334 vis-à-vis Hutterites, 111, 202, 205 vis-à-vis Marpeck, 358, 360, 361, 380 vis-à-vis Menno and his group, 253, 304–308, 310 vis-à-vis Swiss Brethren, 347, 349, 352, 356–360 see also Radical Spiritualism; Spiritualist Anabaptism Spiritualist Anabaptism, xiv, xix, xx, 104, 112, 129, 263, 279, 285, 287, 289, 291, 292 Definition and categories of, 257–261, 293, 294 Historiography of, 257–259, 277, 288, 289, 293, 294 Ideas and outlook, 291–294 Spittelmaier, Johannes, 165, 169, 174, 180, 273 Sprunger, Keith, xii Spruyt, David, 290, 291 Considerations Regarding the State of the Visible Church of Christ...(1657), 290 St. Gall, xxiii, 47, 53–56, 66, 72–76, 89–91, 93, 102, 264, 359, 479 St. Georgen, 75, 76 Staal, Abraham, 536 Stäbler, 273 Stadelhofen, 66 Staprade, Hermann, 227, 228, 240 Star, Brno see Alt-Brünn Staupitz, Johann von, 263 Stayer, James M., xi, xii, xxiii, 31, 47, 70, 258, 264, 280, 364, 445, 495, 508, 509 Anabaptists and the Sword (1972), 508 Stayer, James M., Werner O. Packull and Klaus Deppermann, “From Monogenesis to Polygenesis. The Historical Discussion of Anabaptist Origins” (1975), xvi Stentz, Hans, 374 Stephanas, 482 Stephen, 493, 495 Sterzing, 181 Steyr, 180 Stillstand (at Liegnitz), 127, 128 Stillstand (Eucharist at Strasbourg), 129, 141, 142, 277 Stockholm, 219 Stoelwijck, Wouter van, 473 Stoer, Melchior (“beggar king”), 105

Stoicism and NeoStoicism, 138, 146 Stolberg am Harz, 21 Storch, Nikolaus, 22, 26 Strachotín see Tracht Strasbourg clergy, 103, 267, 269, 272 Faithful Warning, A (1527), 267– 269 see also Bucer, Martin Strasbourg Discipline, 380 Strasbourg, xxi, 84, 100, 103, 105, 109, 172, 173, 176, 188, 217, 219–221, 225, 269, 273, 277, 278, 283, 286, 368, 434, 435, 518 As refuge for radicals, 101, 102, 129, 273, 367 Hans Denck in, 266, 267, 269, 271 Melchiorites in, 237, 302, 368 Swiss Brethren in, 352, 367 Streicher, Helene von, 131, 397 Strübind, Andrea, xvi, 47, 48, 58, 60, 91 Eifriger als Zwingli (2003), xvi on Swiss Brethren vis-à-vis Karlstadt, 60 Stuart, Mary see Mary II (Queen of England) Stühlingen, 68 Stumpf, Simon, 49, 51, 54, 58 Stuttgart, 107 Suffering, 45, 86, 87, 202, 220, 305, 306, 352, 362, 394, 395, 419, 420 Mark of the church, 400 Hans Hut on, 86, 87 Marpeck on, 360–363 Münster Anabaptism on, 233, 234, 249 see also Persecution Sun congregation, 337–340 see also Zonists Swabia, 183, 348, 368 Swabia, Upper Peasants’ War in, 55 Swabian League, 109 Swiss Anabaptism. see Swiss Brethren Swiss Brethren, xxi, 58, 59, 62– 64, 66, 78, 86, 89, 98, 102, 106, 113, 114, 181, 183, 185, 186, 264, 269, 271, 348–356, 363, 365, 368, 372, 378, 389–392, 396, 401, 415–418, 421, 434, 437, 451, 454, 467, 470, 472, 474, 476, 477, 489, 491, 492, 495–497, 502, 513, 514, 522–524, 527, 532 Church discipline, 61, 350, 356, 357 Disputations, 353–356

index Doopsgezind, aid from, 340, 341 Ethics, 186, 350, 354, 356, 365, 380 Hermeneutics, 354, 356, 476 Historiography on, 347–350, 353, 355, 356, 373, 375, 376, 380, 381 and Thomas Müntzer, 61 Hymnody, 474, 475 Marriage, 451, 453 Relations to the State, 513, 522, 524 Scripture, 353, 472 Social aspects, 348, 373, 375, 378, 380 Survival Strategies, 522 Theology of, 58–60, 62–64, 89, 172, 186, 348, 350, 352, 353, 355, 356, 362, 363, 367, 373–375, 379–381, 401, 416, 452, 472, 477, 523 Women, 439, 447, 454 vis-à-vis Dutch Mennonites, xxi, 349 vis-à-vis Hutterites, 349, 355, 356 vis-à-vis Marpeck, 362, 363 vis-à-vis Melchoir Hoffman, 349, 367 vis-à-vis Old Testament, 353, 354, 356 vis-à-vis Pilgram Marpeck, 349 vis-à-vis Spiritualism, 349, 352, 356–360 Swiss territories, 45, 56, 57, 75, 79, 83, 93, 98, 201, 207, 264, 266, 347, 348, 351, 352, 359, 365, 406, 426, 437, 443, 457, 478, 507, 521, 522 Sword see Nonresistance; Violence Sword-spirits see Batenburg, Jan van; Batenburgers Tabernacle of Moses, 252 Tablat, 73, 75, 76 Taborites, 412 Tasch, Peter, 526 Tasswitz, 364 Täuferakten, 428 Täuferjäger, 373 Tauler, Johannes, 6, 89, 325 Tautenberg, Schenck van (Count), 223 Taxes, 68, 69 see also War taxes Telgte, 226 Ten Commandments, 17, 175, 176 Tetzel, Johann, 6 Teutonic Order, 23 Theodosius, 517 Theologia Deutsch, 6, 135, 136, 140, 145, 270, 284, 292, 325 Thijsdochter, Jannetgen, 223

571

Thirty Years War, 153, 207, 209, 372, 407, 518, 529, 530 Thomas á Kempis, 325 Thormann, Georg, 376 Thuringia, 24, 105, 224, 441, 453, 480 Thurz¢, Stanislaus, 165, 166 Tilbeck, Hermann, 241, 243 Timmerman, Herman, 496 Tinnegieter, Jeroen, 312 Titelmans, Pieter, 479, 481 Tithe, 51–53, 55, 68, 69, 76–78, 91 see also Benefices; Peasant unrest Tobacco, use of, 321 Toleration, 93, 98, 130, 139, 142–147, 153, 157, 187, 189, 191, 192, 208, 210, 221, 222, 230, 231, 273, 290, 315, 317, 318, 322, 327, 334, 335, 337–340, 371, 374, 378, 381, 502, 518, 521, 528 in Strasbourg, 129, 273 in Switzerland, Alsace and the Palatinate, 372–375 in the Netherlands, xxi, 45, 147, 303, 314–317, 324, 326, 329, 332, 334, 340, 342 in Nikolsburg, 174, 175 in Moravia, 109, 164, 174, 175, 178 Tracht, 184 Transubstantiation see Lord’s Supper Transylvania, 204, 208 Treuherzige see Half-Anabaptists Trinity and Trinitarianism xx, 132, 139, 142, 150, 171, 202, 277, 286, 323, 354, 368, 397, 402 Troeltsch, Ernst, xiv, 45, 46, 58, 122, 158, 258, 259, 510 Truehearted see Half-Anabaptists Turkish threat, 85, 86, 113, 129, 137, 163, 179, 180, 207, 209, 417, 451, 478, 525 Twente, 330 Twisck, Pieter Jansz, 320, 324, 326, 411, 499, 501 Two Kingdoms doctrine, 93, 96, 100, 203, 362, 363 see also Church-State separation; Separatism Tyrol, 92, 103, 107, 181,184, 224, 348, 351, 352, 357, 428, 437, 444, 458, 473 Ulm, 130, 131, 228, 270, 517 Umlauft, Hans, 187

572

index

Union of Utrecht, 315 United Flemish, 327, 328, 334 see also Flemish Union United Frisians, 327 Unity of Brethren, 164–168, 178, 208 see also Bohemian Brethren Universalism, 264 University of Basel, 11 University of Ingolstadt, 56, 133 University of Leiden, 339 University of Leipzig, 21, 147 University of Paris, 49, 55 University of Wittenberg, 5 Upper Hungary, 174, 175 Usury, 58, 88, 91, 94, 95 Utopianism, 239, 243 Utraquism, 114, 165–168, 187 Utrecht, 303, 336, 338, 341, 487, 492 Utrecht, Union of, 315, 317 Uttenheim, 484 Uttenreuter Dreamers, 452 Uttenreuth, 105 Uylenburg family, 330 Vadian ( Joachim von Watt), 53, 54, 56, 59, 63, 74, 75 Valtice see Feldsberg van Leiden, Jan see Jan van Leiden Variety of Songs, A (1556), 310 Vecht River, 341 Veelderhande Liedekens, 310 Veen, Jan Van der, 341 Veh, Cornelius, 113, 187, 360 Verkindert, Joos, 486, 496 Vermeulen, Jacob Pietersz, 321 Verstralen, Hendrick, 455 Vienna, 109, 111, 113, 168, 170, 172, 175, 179, 186, 351, 497 Vilvoorde, 301 Vinne, Van der, family, 341 Violence, 224, 226, 229, 233, 234, 239, 241, 242, 244, 245, 247–250, 264, 315 at Münster, 217, 226, 231–233, 246, 248, 301 see also Nonresistance Vipiteno see Sterzing Virgin birth see Mary (mother of Christ) Visser, Piet, xii, xvii, xx, 409, 410, 438, 439, 494 Vistula, 527, 529 Vogler, Günter, 22

Volkerts, Jan, 221 von Amsdorf, Nikolaus, 7 Vondel, Joost van den, 331, 341 Vos, Karel, 406 Vredestadsburgers, 325 Vreede, Pieter, 536, 537 Wagner, Jörgen, 489, 492 Walcheren, 328 Waldeck, Franz von, 226, 228, 242, 249, 250 Waldensians, 340, 412 Waldhauser, Thomas, 180 Waldkirch, Hans von, 55 Waldshut, 24, 54, 56, 57, 59, 62, 66, 68–70, 73, 75, 76, 79, 83, 84, 90–92, 169, 172, 268, 513 Waldstein, 524 Walpot, Peter Five Articles, 205 see also Gegebene Antwort Wandsbek, 529 War and warfare see Nonresistance War of the Lambs, The (pamphlet), 336 War taxes, 179–181, 183, 199, 340, 364, 366 Warendorf, 245 Waterland, 311 Waterlanders, xx, 289, 322–328, 330, 334, 335, 337, 403–405, 408–410, 475, 496–498, 500, 501, 531 in schism of Doopgezinden (1664), 290, 311 Watt (village), 92, 439 Wattwil (village), 92 Weber, Max, 436, 510 Weenighem, Bastiaen van, 337 Weigel, Valentin, xix, 122, 124, 147–157, 332 Weimar, 23 Weizenroda, 194 Weibenfels, 21 Wendebourg, Dorothea, 1 Weninger, Martin (called Lingg or Linki), 95–97 Wens, Maeyken, 490 Wertheim, 105 Wesel, 223, 307 Westphalia, 224, 238, 303, 518 Westphalia, Peace of, 1648, 521 Westphalian Circle of Imperial Estates, 242 Weyer, Matthias, 307, 308, 325

index Widows, 329 Wieck, Johann van der, 229 Wiedemann, Jacob, 111–113, 180, 181, 183, 273, 358 Wiedertäufer see Anabaptism Wiener Neustadt, 188 Wiesner, Merry, 425 Willemsz, Jan, 312, 313, 320 William III (King of England), 331, 339, 341 William of Orange, 142, 143, 146, 315, 317, 319 Williams, George H., xiv, xvii, xix, 122, 258, 427, 509 The Radical Reformation (1962, 1992), xvi, 508 Winckler, Konrad, 92, 93 Windlach (village), 92 Winter, Diepold, 354 Wintz, 208 Wismar Articles, 307 Wismar, 307 Witikon (village), 51, 52, 59 Wittenberg Movement, 12, 15, 512 Wittenberg, 5–8, 11–13, 16, 19, 21, 22, 127, 147, 225 Praiseworthy Ordinance of the Princely Town of Wittenberg (1522), 7, 12 Wohlau, 194 Wolfgang, Uliman, 74, 75 Wolkan, Rudolf, 491 Wolkenstein, Elisabeth von, 484 Wollgast, Siegfried, 154, 156 Wolmar, 219 Women, xxii, 100, 112, 130, 131, 303, 310, 341, 342, 425, 436 Deaconesses, 327 Münster Anabaptism, 230, 231, 240–242, 247, 249, 250 Prophetesses, xxi, 332, 359 see also Anabaptist Women; Gender; Hutterite Women; Swiss Brethren Women Works and works righteousness, 1, 17, 19, 36–38, 120, 226, 266, 305, 356, 362 see also Legalism Worms, 85, 267–270 Worms, Diet of (1521), 1 Worship, 50, 54, 98, 171, 176, 186, 194–196, 206, 263, 268, 270, 273, 373 Wullen, Gerlach von, 250

573

Württemberg, 109, 207, 348, 351, 352, 365, 368, 445, 457, 484 Wüstenfelde, 310 Wybrantsz, Reynier, 328 Wyntjes, Sherrin Marshall, 427, 446 Yieldedness see Gelassenheit Yoder, John H., xvi, 70, 77, 353 on Schleitheim Articles, 90–91 Young Flemish, 321, 326, 496 Young Frisians, 320, 322, 323, 326, 327 Zaan area, 314, 316, 330 ‘t Zandt, 223 Zapff, Hans, 205 Zaunring, Jörg, 183 Zechariah, 469 Zeeden, Ernst Walter, 509 Zeeland, 318, 319 Zeising, Johann, 167, 172 Zell, Katarina, 102 Zell, Matthias, 102 Zercher, Isaac, 376 Zerotin, 524 Zerotin, Friedrich von, 525 Zerotina, Karel st. ze see Zierotin, Karl von Sr. Zieglschmid, 205 Zierotin, Karl von Sr., 208 Zijlstra, Samme, 222, 281, 299, 444 Zips, 174 Znaim, 182, 186, 188 Zofingen, 94–97, 353 Zollikon, xvii, 47, 52, 59, 64, 66, 67, 70, 71, 73–75, 90, 93, 98, 114, 490 Zonists, 290, 339, 342, 337, 499 Zorzin, Alejandro, 10 Zschopau (in Meissen), 147 Zuckenhamer, Hans A Beautiful, Pleasant Book of the Main Articles of Our Faith (1583), 205 Zurich Bible, 89, 204, 471 Zurich, 38, 45–51, 56, 59, 62, 68, 74, 83, 84, 87, 88, 91–97, 101, 130, 169, 348, 349, 352, 363, 375, 470, 479, 480, 514, 522 City Council, 50, 52, 53, 55, 58, 63, 64, 74, 77, 84, 267, 372 Zwaardlopers, 222 Zweibrücken-Bitsch, 446 Zwickau prophets, 45, 48, 122 Zwickau, 22, 26

574

index

Zwicker, Daniel, 208 Zwilling, Gabriel, 7 Zwingli, Ulrich, 10, 11, 38, 46, 48–52, 56–58, 63, 68, 74, 75, 77, 79, 88, 89, 93, 106, 125, 126, 155, 221, 267, 347, 351. 371, 372, 470, 476, 509, 512, 514

Of Baptism, Rebaptism and Infant Baptism (1525), 72 On Divine and Human Justice (1523), 53 Those who Give Cause for Uproar (1524), 63 Zwinglianism, 134 Zylis (vis-à-vis Menno), 311