The Anabaptists [1st. English edition] 0415082382

Citation preview

THE ANABAPTISTS

'An exciting book: any subsequent work on Anabaptists will need to take this book into account.' The Mennonite Quarterly Review The Anabaptists were at the radical, Utopian edge of the Reformation, ruthlessly repressed by Catholic, Lutheran and secular authorities alike. Hans-Jurgen Goertz gives a comprehensive account of their political and religious significance, their views and their social setting within the wider context of the Reformation. Particular attention is paid to the role and experience of women and of 'ordinary' Anabaptists in addition to those of the educated elite. While the focus of the book is on Germany, extensive coverage is also given to Anabaptism in England, Switzerland, the Netherlands and elsewhere. This English edition includes a new introduction which considers the historiographical context of the book. The opening chapter has also been expanded to include a section on the emergence of Anabaptism in England. The Anabaptists has been fully revised since its publication in German, and takes account of the most recent historiography on the subject. It also includes a selection of primary sources together with a full listing of important Anabaptist works. Hans-Jiirgen Goertz is Professor of Social and Economic History at the University of Hamburg, Germany, and a leading scholar of the radical wing of the Reformation.

CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIETY IN THE MODERN WORLD General editors: Hugh McLeod and Bob Scribner

Also available: THE JEWS IN CHRISTIAN EUROPE John Edwards SOCIAL DISCIPLINE IN THE REFORMATION R. Po-Chia Hsia THE REFORMATION AND THE VISUAL ARTS The Protestant Image Question in Western and Eastern Europe Sergiusz Michalski EUROPEAN RELIGION IN THE AGE OF GREAT CITIES Hugh McLeod WOMEN AND RELIGION: IN ENGLAND 1500-1720 Patricia Crawford Forthcoming titles: CALVINISM AND SOCIETY Philip Benedict POPULAR EVANGELICALISM 1730-1870 Louis Billington THE CLERGY IN MODERN EUROPE Gregory Freeze RELIGION AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN INDUSTRIAL BRITAIN David Hempton RELIGION AND REVOLUTION 1400-1650 Michael Baylor THE BRITISH MISSIONARY MOVEMENT 1700-1950

Jeff Cox

REPRESENTING WITCHCRAFT Charles Zika WOMEN AND RELIGION IN EARLY AMERICA Marilyn J. Westerkamp CHRISTIANITY AND SEXUALITY 1450-1750 Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks THE REFORMATION OF RITUAL Susan C. Karant-Nunn

THE ANABAPTISTS

Hans-Jurgen Goertz

Translated into English by Trevor Johnson

I

London and New York

First published as Die Tiiufer. Geschichte und Deutung in 1980 by Hans-Jiirgen Goertz Second improved edition 1988 First published in English 1996 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York NY 10016 Transferred to Digital Printing 2008 © 1980,1988 C.H.Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Munich English language translation © 1996 Routledge with the support of Inter Nationes Typeset in Palatino by Routledge All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Goertz, Hans-Jiirgen. [Taufer. English] The Anabaptists/Hans-Jiirgen Goertz; translated into English by Trevor Johnson. (Christianity and society in the modern world) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Anabaptists-History. I. Title. II. Series. BX4931.2.G6313 1996 284' .3-dc20 96-12032 CIP ISBN10: 0-415-08238-2 (hbk) ISBN10: 0-415^7910-X (pbk) ISBN13:978-0^15-08238-9 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-415^7910-3 (pbk) Publisher's Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent.

They might gambol along, but they keep to the true path, steadfastly. (David Joris on the 'sheep' of Christ)

CONTENTS

Preface to the first edition Preface to the second edition Preface to the English edition List of abbreviations Introduction

ix xiii xv xvii 1

1 ANABAPTIST ALTERNATIVES

6

2 ANTICLERICALISM AND MORAL IMPROVEMENT

36

3 BAPTISM AS PUBLIC CONFESSION OF FAITH

68

4 CONGREGATION, GOVERNMENT AND THE NEW KINGDOM

85

5 SIMPLE BROTHERS AND SELF-CONFIDENT SISTERS

110

6 HERETICS, REBELS AND MARTYRS

118

7 CONCLUSION

132

APPENDIX A: A SELECTION OF SOURCES

136

APPENDIX B: CHRONOLOGY

163

APPENDIX C: IMPORTANT ANABAPTIST WORKS

180

Notes Bibliography Index

183 199 208

VII

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

The search for alternative forms of human community is not a new one. Anyone who follows the trail of Utopian thought will come across a wealth of alternative models of state and society. It is no coincidence that such currents received a new impetus, in Thomas More's Utopia, during a period of social conflict and religious discord which has had a lasting influence on European and American history. Attempts to put Utopian plans into practice soon followed; they included the South American arcadia of the Jesuits, the early socialist experiments in Europe and the settler communities in the New World. Above all, perhaps, sixteenthcentury Anabaptism merits consideration as a social alternative. Arising from protest against defects within late medieval society and the church as well as from disenchantment with the Lutheran and Zwinglian Reformation, the Anabaptists sought to develop new forms of religious communication and social organisation. The 'sheep' rose up against their 'shepherds'. Moved by the Spirit the children of God contradicted the scholars of Holy Scripture; pious folk following the path of Christ confronted the reformers who turned to council chambers and princely courts seeking official protection for their preaching of the Gospel. As one Anabaptist leader said of such reformers, they enter the fray and try to defend their Gospel with guns, pikes, halberds and swords, they wall themselves up in their fortresses, they put their trust in troops, cannon, armour and weapons. It becomes obvious what kind of Christians they are, and what their faith, about which they prattle so much, is like; their reputation is nothing but a false and hypocritical sham, and with it they deceive themselves. Here a complaint was raised against the 'world turned upside down', which itself shows that the idea of the alternative society was part of Anabaptist vocabulary. It was a concept also known to their contemporaries; a resolution of the Council of Strasbourg, for example, mentions that 'those citizens who are re-baptisers allow defiant words to be heard, about IX

PREFACE

which the other citizens have complained. Lately they have been saying that things must be done differently, something different must happen.' The age was a turbulent one and, for the Anabaptists, the stormy years of the Reformation never ended. The truth of faith and the error of evil were never far apart and everyone was implicated in the struggle. Followers of a 'daring attempt to live out of truth and confusion', as Johannes Harder has characterised them, the Anabaptists were forced into society's underground and compelled either to abandon their desire for a reformed Christianity or create their own movements and communities. Their activity represented an often subtle, but occasionally pathological, response to pressure from the ecclesiastical and secular authorities. The price was high: persecution, suffering and death. In the words of Bernd Moeller: 'the despisers of the world received the contempt of the world'. Research on Anabaptism has embraced various approaches: theology and ecclesiastical history, cultural history and social history. In the following chapters I have attempted to synthesise the results of recent research from these different approaches. First, the tremendously varied nature of the individual Anabaptist movements and communities is described and explained with reference to their particular experiences of ecclesiastical politics. The basic tenets of Anabaptist thought and the reactions of the authorities are then discussed. The concluding chapter addresses current problems and tasks for future research. Finally, an appendix, structured along similar lines to the main text, provides a number of documents outlining Anabaptist history and thought. This book tries to present a fresh overview of Anabaptism, a task necessitated by the many revisions of the traditional image of the Anabaptists which have been published in recent decades. Much of it remains general and some conclusions are only tentative. Research on Anabaptism is ongoing; it continues to test known data with a keener appreciation of methodology, to fill gaps and to pose new questions. This book therefore represents an interim report. Despite the fruitful results of research, many areas remain to be investigated, including, to list merely a few, the relationship between Anabaptism and the late Middle Ages, that between the Anabaptist movements and the Peasants' War and the social history of the Anabaptists in the Low Countries. I have tried to make this discussion as accessible as possible. For this reason references are not always to the original sources or to critical editions, but, wherever possible, to modernised versions. Only when the modernised forms were unavailable or the interpretation of particular words was important were the original works or critical editions used. To give an impression of the great variety of Anabaptist writing, a list of the works of the most important Anabaptist leaders is given in an appendix. Some sections of the book are based on lectures and papers given in Amsterdam, St Louis (at the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference) and x

PREFACE

Speyer. For their encouragement and support I would like to thank all the colleagues who readily discussed with me the problems of Anabaptist research, especially Professor James M. Stayer of Kingston, Canada, Professor Klaus Deppermann of Freiburg and Dr Heinold Fast of Emden. I would also like to thank my students in the social and economic history seminars at the University of Hamburg who have approached the radicals of the Reformation period with great insight and enthusiasm. I hope that this book will help to promote interest in Anabaptism both as a religious and a social movement. A preliminary version of Chapter 6 appeared in Dutch in Doopsgezinde Bijdragen (1978, pp. 32-49) and a shorter English version, together with critical responses from C. Lindberg, J. S. Oyer, W. Klassen, K. R. Davis, W. O. Packull and J. M. Stayer, in the Mennonite Quarterly Review (1979, pp. 175-218). An earlier, shorter version of Chapter 5 was published in Mennonitische Geschichtsblatter (1979, pp. 7-28). Hans-Jurgen Goertz

XI

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

For the second edition, the text has been checked, many passages have been revised and a section on central German Anabaptism has been included, giving an even stronger impression of the movement's variety. Nothing, however, of the substance of the original discussion and argument has been changed. I am still convinced that it makes sense to interpret Anabaptism in the light of the ecclesiastical and social context of the anticlerical battles of the early Reformation period. Anticlericalism can explain three things: first, why Anabaptism combined religious and social motivations; second, why Anabaptists exhibited a pronounced tendency to activism; and third, why they were less rigidly opposed to late medieval thought than Luther, Zwingli and Calvin. They were prepared to retain anything which had already proven useful as a weapon against the moral decay of the clergy of the old church and which could now also be turned against the half-heartedness of the 'new priests'. I would like to thank Marion Kobelt-Groch for her painstaking assistance in the revision of the first edition, Jorg-Peter Miiller for checking the citations and Klaus Deppermann, Heinold Fast and James. M. Stayer for suggesting improvements. Hans-Jiirgen Goertz

Xlll

PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION

For the English edition I have made a few changes to the text of the second German edition of 1988. First, I have expanded the opening chapter to include a section on the emergence of Anabaptism in England. Second, the treatment of the historiographical context of the book, which was in Chapter 6,1 have transferred to the Introduction, which has been specially written for the English edition. Third, I have included a completely new Chapter 5, which discusses 'simple' Anabaptists and the role of women in Anabaptism, and the original Chapter 5 has now become Chapter 6. Finally, the whole text has again been checked, occasionally revised and brought up to date with the current state of research. I am grateful to the series editors for accepting my book on Anabaptism for the 'Christianity and Society in the Modern World' series. They have ensured that my contribution, which has received such stimulation from anglophone research, is now, in its turn, available in the English language. Hans-Jurgen Goertz Hamburg

xv

ABBREVIATIONS

Archiv fiir Reformationsgeschichte Doopsgezinde Bijdmgen Walter Fellmann (ed.) Hans Denck, Schriften II, Religiose Schriften (Giitersloh, 1956). Johannes Kiihn (ed.) Deutsche Reichstagsakten unter DRA Kaiser Karl V, VII, 2 (Gottingen, 1963). Lydia Miiller (ed.) Glaubenszeugnisse oberdeutscher GZI Taufgesinnter (Leipzig, 1938). Hubmaier, Schriften Gunnar Westin and Torsten Bergsten (eds) Balthasar Hubmaier, Schriften (Giitersloh, 1962). Historische Zeitschrift HZ Heinold Fast (ed.) Der links. Fliigel der Reformation LF (Bremen, 1962). Harold Bender and C. Henry Smith (eds) The ME Mennonite Encyclopedia (Scottdale, 1956-1959). Mennonitische Geschichtsbldtter MGBI Christian Hege, Christian Neff et al. (eds) ML Mennonitisches Lexikon (Frankfurt, Weierhof, Karlsruhe, 1913-1967). Mennonite Quarterly Review MQR Marc Lienhard (ed.) The Origins and Characteristics of OChA Anabaptism/Les Debuts et les Caracteristiques de VAnabaptisme (The Hague, 1977). Rothmann, Schriften Robert Stupperich (ed.) Die Schriften Bernhard Rothmanns (Miinster, 1970). Hans-Jiirgen Goertz (ed.) Radikale Reformatoren. 21 RR biographische Skizzen von Thomas Miintzer bis Paracelsus (Munich, 1978). Guy F. Hershberger (ed.) Das Taufertum. Erbe und TEV Verpflichtung (Stuttgart, 1963).

ARG DB Denck, Schriften

xvu

ABBREVIATIONS

TQ Elsaft I and II

TQ Gesprache TQ Hessen TQ Osterreich TQ Ostschzveiz TQ Wiirttemberg TQ Zurich UT WA Z/G ZKG

Manfred Krebs and Hans Georg Rott (eds) Quellen zur Geschichte der Tdufer VII, Elsafi I, Stadt Strafiburg 1522-1532 (Giitersloh, 1959); Elsafi II, Stadt Strafiburg, 1533-1535 (Giitersloh, 1960). Martin Haas (ed.) Quellen zur Geschichte derTdufer in der Schweiz IV, Drei Tdufergesprache (Zurich, 1974). Franz, Gunther (ed.) Urkundliche Quellen zur hessischen Reformationsgeschichte IV, Wiedertauferakten, 1527-1626 (Marburg, 1951). Grete Mecenseffy (ed.) Quellen zur Geschichte der Tdufer XI, Osterreich I (Giitersloh, 1964). Heinold Fast (ed.) Quellen zur Geschichte der Tdufer in der Schweiz II, Ostschzveiz (Zurich, 1973). Gustav Bossert (ed.) Quellen zur Geschichte der Wiedertaufer I, Herzogtum Wiirttemberg (Leipzig, 1930). Leonhard von Muralt and Walter Schmid (eds) Quellen zur Geschichte der Tdufer in der Schweiz I, Zurich (Zurich, 1952). Hans-Jiirgen Goertz (ed.) Umstrittenes Tdufertum 1525-1975. Neue Forschungen (Second edition, Gottingen, 1977). D. Martin Luthers Werke, krit. Gesamtausgabe (Weimar, 1883 ff.). Zeitschrift fiir Geschichtswissenschaft Zeitschrift fiir Kirchengeschichte

xvm

INTRODUCTION

Much has been written on the origin, development and nature of Anabaptism, yet there is still no unanimous judgement - indeed quite the opposite. By some commentators, Anabaptism has been regarded as a fanatical sect and a splinter group from the mainstream churches of the Protestant Reformation, while for others it has represented a courageous self-sacrificing attempt to revive the community of the New Testament: Anabaptists as apostates on the one hand, martyrs on the other. These polarised views are explained by the confessional or denominational bias which used to dominate the history of Anabaptism. This approach has its roots in the confessional polemic of the Reformation period itself. Catholic apologists regarded Anabaptism as the inevitable, extremist consequence of the Reformation which Martin Luther had unleashed by his break with the Roman church. Lutheran and Zwinglian polemicists denied the charge and, in their turn, accused the Anabaptists of undermining their message with their claim to be completing a reform process which had become bogged down. In the eyes of the Protestant reformers, all Anabaptists were rebels or Schwarmer (fanatics) and deserved to be executed. For their part, the Anabaptists denied such accusations and condemned the reformers for betraying the recently rediscovered Gospel and persecuting those who had resolved to walk in the footsteps of the Lord. Mutual recriminations led to a war of religion coloured by apocalyptic imagery: the 'Great Affliction' had visited the people and the land and the 'Children of Light' were beginning to separate themselves from the 'Children of Darkness'. This reading of the times was widely debated and shared by many; the only question was who could claim to walk in the light and who was faced with the ignominy of lurking in the shadows. The apocalyptic fire of that debate has subsequently been extinguished, but the question of the legitimacy of both mainstream and radical Reformations has not. It has been debated chiefly, and still judgementally although with more moderation, in the field of church history, and the conclusions are still greatly disputed. 1

INTRODUCTION

Understandably, Anabaptist research from the free-church tradition continues to expose the confessional interest of the historiography of the main churches in order to define a space for its own work on the movement's origins. Equally understandably, Reformation research, which centres on the theology of the great reformers, has tended in the main to echo these denominational founders' assessments of their Anabaptist adversaries. Some years ago, Heiko A. Oberman criticised a 'precipitate intimacy with the past' which 'through ideological fraternization masks the gulf of time'. Certainly such criticism holds for any research dictated by a need to validate one's own confession, but it is especially relevant to research on the free churches, since this has not always declared its special interest or presented its assessment of the Anabaptists in accordance with the high standards of academic objectivity. Having been recognised and thereby minimised, denominational bias is, however, no longer the chief problem confronting Anabaptist research. The task today is to establish a meaningful dialogue between two different claims to knowledge, the theological and the historical. The problem arises in those works on Anabaptism which generally owe no debt to any particular denomination, or indeed to Christianity, and yet rank alongside research undertaken in the spirit of traditional church history. Here one cannot overlook the important contribution of so-called 'profane history', represented above all by the two most important historical publications on Anabaptism to appear in the 1970s, James M. Stayer's Anabaptists and the Sword (1972 andl976) and Claus-Peter Clasen's Anabaptism: A Social History (1972). Both authors distance themselves from confessional historiography. Stayer is interested in how sixteenth-century Anabaptists resolved the ethical problem of violence, regardless of whether or not their solutions were in keeping with Christian teaching. Clasen pursues the question of 'whether the political teachings of the Anabaptists during the sixteenth century, or even today, could be regarded as a useable basis for the functioning of society'. Three points are notable here. First, an examination of the Anabaptists' claims to religious truth is deliberately avoided. Second, there is a refusal to use one's own reaction to the truth-claim as a means of illuminating historical Anabaptism. Finally, this approach avoids the mistake of reducing religion in general to a simple function of social thought and activity. Religion's capacity to originate remains undisputed. The coup de grace against the confessional polemic which had been so hostile to Anabaptism was administered by Ernst Troeltsch in his famous study The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches (1912). Troeltsch proceeded from the premise that the 'Christian idea' has broadly developed along three different routes, those of the church, the sect and mysticism. In so far as it tended to fall short of its ideal, each aspect could claim relative justification. When and how each of these strands developed, early or late, fully or partially, depended on their concrete 2

INTRODUCTION

historical context. Consequently, examining the history of thought alone was not enough; ideas had to be understood in terms of their origins in historical society where each was given its 'impulse, shape, dynamic and goal'. From this standpoint, Troeltsch assigned Anabaptism to his 'sect type' and, particularly through his social-historical approach, gave it a new value. This was continued by Walther Kohler and Fritz Blanke and, above all, by a group of Mennonite researchers associated with Harold S. Bender, a former student of Kohler in Heidelberg and scholar at the Mennonite Goshen College in Indiana. Bender produced a distinguished biography of Konrad Grebel and many other contributions to Anabaptist research. By the 1960s, as a result of a large number of dissertations (in particular studies by Paul Peachey, John H. Yoder and Clarence Bauman), a picture began to emerge of an essential or 'orthodox' Anabaptism, pacifist and non-revolutionary or perhaps apolitical; a free-church, Christ-centred religion. Anything which did not conform to this model of a monogenetic Anabaptism descended from one starting point in Zurich was dismissed as a distortion. Forms of Anabaptism which had included apocalyptic, mystical or social-revolutionary elements in their theology or their practice were either reinterpreted or excluded from discussion. Since they did not belong to the mainstream their adherents were not really Anabaptists. Wherever such elements appeared in even a moderate form among the 'genuine' Anabaptists, they were ignored. The goal of this research was to construct an Anabaptist orthodoxy which could have some bearing on the theological concerns of the present. Whatever applied to the present must already have been developed in the past. The historical gulf between past and present was passed over, and the doors were opened for contemporary theological interests to exert a decisive influence on historical research. Where Troeltsch had approached Anabaptism through the sociology of religion and social history, Mennonite research gave his insights a theological gloss and interpreted them as value judgements. The Anabaptists were not only justified in having their say alongside the great Protestant reformers (Kohler, Blanke), but they were actually right where the reformers were wrong (Bender, Yoder). Anyone who knows how sharply Troeltsch distinguished between the sociological or historical method on the one hand and the dogmatic or theological approach on the other will realise immediately that subsequent Mennonite research on Anabaptism did not respect this distinction. It re-theologised a history which, in a context of polemical and confessional research, had to be seen as liberating and it idealised Anabaptism in order to validate its own religious tradition. An Anabaptism 'without stain or blemish' had emerged. It was not what Troeltsch had intended. The philosopher Ernst Bloch once wrote: 3

INTRODUCTION

One always hesitates to begin something splendidly. It's not only that you want to avoid making a fool of yourself but that ideal forms tend to wither. The first battles bring forth everything that up to then did not disturb the pure, still air. Real things cannot be like their ideal pictures in the mind, if they are to endure and survive. Bloch's 'battles' did in fact emerge in the field of Anabaptist research, above all with the work of Stayer and Clasen, soon amplified by the studies of, among others, Gottfried Seebafi, Klaus Deppermann, Werner O. Packull, Arnold Snyder and Gary Waite. These works, among which should be included Gerhard Zschabitz's earlier Marxist discussion of central German Anabaptism, all shared a concern with academic rigour, resulting in a rehistoricising of Anabaptism. As a historian, for example, one could not say that the Anabaptists had been the instruments of God, only that this is what they had believed themselves to be. Stayer's Anabaptists and the Sword had already suggested that the thesis of the monogenetic origin of Anabaptism could no longer be supported and Clasen's Social History also indicated as much. As a result the whole thrust of scholarship soon moved 'from monogenesis to polygenesis'. Anabaptism was seen to have emerged as a number of separate movements, in Switzerland, in central and south Germany, in north Germany and in the Netherlands. The question of what constituted 'real' Anabaptism could no longer be answered by historians. This first conclusion to be drawn from the research was one of far-reaching importance. A second result was the discovery that the Anabaptists' proverbial nonviolence was in fact only cultivated by some of these groups, while others wavered between militancy and pacifism or actually advocated violence in order to realise the Kingdom of God on earth. Anabaptism could no longer be depicted as possessing a consistent core theology. The same applied to other problems, such as the origins of faith- or confession-baptism, eucharistic doctrine and community of goods. Third, with the shift from a history-of-ideas approach to a socialhistorical one, and especially with an essay by Stayer on the origins of Swiss Anabaptism in reformed Congregationalism (1975), it has become clear that even Swiss Anabaptism failed to conform to the ideal type of an 'orthodox' Anabaptism. In the first place, between 1524 and 1527, the Swiss movement progressed from an ideal of an Anabaptist Volkskirche, or popular church, to one of a separatist Freikirche, or free church. Initially, then, the notion of a free church prepared to face persecution was absent and the sect-typology of Troeltsch is not very helpful in describing the movement's origins. Second, Anabaptism was closely connected with revolutionary peasant struggles in the Zurich countryside, to the extent that the Peasants' War provided the decisive political and social context for the birth of Anabaptism. It is representative of Peter Blickle's 'communal 4

INTRODUCTION

Reformation' in the broadest sense. In addition to the body of work on Switzerland, this interpretation of Anabaptism has also been discussed in relation to central and south Germany (Thuringia, Franconia and the Tyrol) in studies by Zschabitz, Seebafi, Wolfgang Lassmann and Rudolf Palme. In general, therefore, the Anabaptists can be seen to have been deeply involved in the conflicts of their age and to have endeavoured to express their reforming spirituality as concretely as possible, in the midst of these conflicts rather than above them. Anabaptist theology grew out of contemporary, and therefore chronologically circumscribed, experiences and can only be explained historically. At the same time, it was not only Anabaptism's theology but also its social forms and activities which were significant. Moreover, Anabaptism must be understood as an indicator of the religious and social problems of the period as well as a force contributing both to their exacerbation and their solution. A portrayal which follows the route of recent research on the Anabaptists cannot evade the question of their theological intentions, but above all it must engage more broadly in an exploration of who these people actually were: people with ideals, good intentions, commitment and a readiness for martyrdom, but also powerless people, temporisers, failures, cantankerous and obstinate people. Only in this way can their history, the early period of which is described here, be fully illuminated.

5

1 ANABAPTIST ALTERNATIVES An overview

During the early years of the Reformation many great efforts were made to renew Christianity. The actions of the Anabaptists were, however, especially spectacular. They tried to find alternatives both to the unreformed church of Rome and also, more importantly, to the Reformation churches, since although the latter had criticised the old church they had proved reluctant to cut the close bonds which existed between church and government, or between the Christian congregation and the civil community. However, even the Anabaptists failed to make such a radical break right at the beginning. It only came after their sweeping plans to reform society as a whole had failed and their reforming identity had been plunged into crisis. The result was the emergence of a form of community which would later be termed a 'free church'. Anabaptism retained something of a Protestant character, to such an extent indeed that Heinold Fast could aptly describe the movement as 'Reformation through provocation'. 1 At the same time, it also displayed traces of Catholic theology and piety, which have only recently received renewed attention. 2 It would, however, be more correct to describe Anabaptism as 'neither Catholic nor Protestant'. 3 The movement was an alternative to both great churches. To be precise, there was not one Anabaptist movement, but several. Their origins went back to the turmoil of the Reformation in the early 1520s, when rising discontent with the clergy of the old church often led to anticlerical agitation and the introduction of reforms. At first there was an absence of a clear course or precise objective. In the midst of this confusion we can see ideas and groups emerging from diverse social situations and traditions of piety. What united them was rebellion against the Roman clergy and protest against ecclesiastical excesses which had threatened to undermine the credibility of Christianity. They represented a common church-political front, but the arguments underpinning their protest and their visions of a better church and society were very disparate. The loose unity of the reform camp consequently soon shattered and dissolved into several reform movements, often competing against each other and serving to weaken the original impetus of the Reformation. 6

ANABAPTIST ALTERNATIVES

Out of the disintegration of the reform camp there emerged movements of people who were dissatisfied with the often indecisive and cautious progress of the Reformation and wanted more radical reform, recklessly challenging the ecclesiastical and secular authorities. Occasionally they either sprang from or sought alliances with the revolutionary forces of 1525. The common distinguishing feature of these movements was a critique of infant baptism and the practice of a baptism of faith and confession. For this reason their members were termed 'Anabaptists' {Tdufer or Wiedertaufer). Another feature which they shared was the fact that wherever they appeared they inspired social unrest and as a result were ruthlessly persecuted. They met in secret places, in woodland glades and disused barns, or on riverboats, and read the Scriptures without official guidance. Despite such precautions they were still attacked and pursued from one place to another. One, unexceptional, report testifies to the ferocity of their persecution: it so happened that on one occasion more than twenty men, widows, pregnant women and girls were thrown into horrible, dark dungeons, to spend the rest of their lives without seeing either the sun or the moon and to end their days on bread and water. They were condemned to remain like that in those dark dungeons, to die, to stink and to decay, the dead and the living together, until none of them remained. 4 The Anabaptists smacked of illegality and an underground society. However, baptism and martyrdom were not strong enough to weld them, wherever they emerged, into a united movement. Their doctrinal formulations and justifications of baptism and martyrdom diverged widely bearing the imprint of the turmoil of the early Reformation - and could not subsequently be reduced to a common denominator. Recent scholarship has painted an extremely variegated picture of the origins and early shape of Anabaptism, banishing the quest for a single 'Anabaptist model' to the area of theological and confessional wishfulfilment. Anabaptism did not develop from one root, as used to be generally accepted, but from several. These included the early Reformation in Zurich, Thomas Miintzer's Radical Reformation in central Germany, which was carried to south Germany by Hans Hut, and the charismatic and apocalyptic milieu of Strasbourg, which Melchior Hoffman, with his spiritualist and eschatological ideas, moulded into a distinctive form of Anabaptism and then introduced into lower Germany. 5 In various places Anabaptists accused each other of promoting 'seductive and seditious teachings'. Balthasar Hubmaier, the Anabaptist reformer of Waldshut and Nikolsburg, to cite just one example, summed it up in a short formula: 'the baptism which I taught and the baptism which Hut purported to teach are as far apart as heaven and earth, east and west, 7

ANABAPTIST ALTERNATIVES 6

Christ and Belial'. There is therefore much to be said for replacing a monogenetic with a polygenetic view of Anabaptism. A RELIGIOUS A N D SOCIAL-REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT The earliest form of Anabaptism grew out of the Reformation in Zurich. There, Ulrich Zwingli had collected about him a circle of keen pupils, among them priests and monks, scholars and artisans, who were dissatisfied with the old church and desired a fundamental renewal of Christianity. Together they set in motion a spiritual and political learning process, which gradually led to the official introduction of the Reformation by the town council. Among Zwingli's followers were men who would later be known as Anabaptists. It all began in the spring of 1522 with a series of actions designed to harass and provoke the clergy. Zwingli and some of his supporters went to the house of the printer Froschauer. They were invited to lunch and, although it was Lent, ate meat. In so doing they gave graphic expression to the idea of the ordinary Christian's freedom from ecclesiastical regulations. That evening, a group including the bakers Heinrich Aberli and Barthlime Pur repeated the symbolic meal at the same place and subsequently came into conflict with the brethren of the Augustinian convent. They entangled the monks in a debate about the value of ecclesiastical regulations and laws and pestered them with demands for communion in both kinds. The council was forced to take steps against this. Zwingli, however, justified the fast-breaking and stood by his followers, who had given this action a blatantly anticlerical edge. J. F. Gerhard Goeters has shown how the subsequent negotiations between the council, the suffragan bishop of Constance and the town clergy were a success for Zwingli. Although fast-breaking was forbidden, the council 'did not reject the Reformation case on principle' and gave Zwingli a free hand in ensuring that the 'exercise of Christian freedom' would no longer lead to public disturbances in the city.7 The next coup was similarly well planned. A number of fast-breakers, including the humanist Konrad Grebel, marched on the monks' church. There they heckled the sermons which publicly promoted the veneration of the saints. The trouble-makers were summoned to the council chamber and given a warning. Grebel, however, remained impenitent, protested against the warning ('if my lords do not allow the Gospel to advance they will be destroyed') and slammed the door with a loud bang. 8 Here again the result was a triumph for Zwingli's cause. Despite internal opposition the council was persuaded to issue a decree restricting the orthodox preachers to delivering sermons which conformed to the Scriptures. 9 Zwingli and his friends regarded this as an encouragement to continue 8

ANABAPTIST ALTERNATIVES

preaching against ecclesiastical abuses and to proceed with specific actions against the clergy. Over the following months, invective against priests and monks, disruptions of sermons and attacks on paintings and images all led to the creation of an anticlerical climate, which could then be politically manipulated to ensure the Reformation's continued progress. Of the later Anabaptist leaders, Simon Stumpf, Wilhelm Reublin and Konrad Grebel now became particularly prominent, all three giving vent to their hatred of the clergy. From 1522, Grebel in particular became, as Goeters puts it, a 'determined and dogged opponent of all monastic life'. 10 Further reforming impulses came from congregations in the Zurich countryside. In Hongg, Simon Stumpf, who had already attended the fastbreaking, had been fomenting doubts about tithe-payment and justifying refusal to pay tithes in the autumn of 1522. The monastery of Wettingen, which was owed part of the tithe, felt it had been cheated of its income and tried to take the matter to the bishop's court in Constance. Stumpf claimed that he was subject only to the Zurich council, as the holder of jurisdiction over Hongg. He forced the council, which had been trying for a long time to take the whole of ecclesiastical jurisdiction into its own hands, to intervene against the episcopal proceedings. The council tried to have the dispute settled in Stumpf's favour, but the monastery was not satisfied and took the case to the diet of the Eight Confederates in Baden. The Zurich Reformation now became a supra-regional problem. The diet opposed the city, but in practice was unable to block the course of the Reformation, adopted in particular by the Great Council - a course which Zurich now followed perhaps all the more consciously. The council stood firm and persuaded the bishop to withdraw from the dispute. In the meantime, Zwingli was able to use Stumpf's battle as an occasion for the convening of a public disputation, with a view to publicly enforcing the scriptural orthodoxy of the city's sermons. The disputation took place in January 1523 and was a victory for Zwingli. 11 At the same time the council had to intervene in yet another case. The congregation of Witikon felt that they were being inadequately served by the GroSmunster chapter in Zurich. On their own account, at Christmas 1522, they installed Wilhelm Reublin as their parish priest; he had already spent some time ministering there, after the failure of an attempted Reformation in Basel. The quarrel, which had been provoked by the congregation, was provisionally settled. They were able to retain their priest, but had to promise to pay for his upkeep themselves, while continuing to send tithes to Zurich. At the time of the first disputation (the quarrel over Reublin was settled some weeks later) Zwingli and his friends were still in the same boat. Zwingli was more cautious. His friends, although more radical, could still count on the reformer's support. In the meantime, Zwingli had become a spiritual authority. For his part, he must have inwardly welcomed the 9

ANABAPTIST ALTERNATIVES

radicals' actions, because they kept creating opportunities for him to achieve his reform goal by small steps with a hesitant council. The initiatives from the rural communes had not only advanced the Reformation in the town. They now also began to destroy the unity of the reform camp. The immediate cause of this development was the conflict over the tithes, which had been put to one side, but not yet settled. From Hongg the demand for the abolition of the tithe spread to Witikon, Zollikon and other villages. Wilhelm Reublin had spoken of the 'useless parsons' of the Grofimunster and stirred up resentment against the tithe. He now urged the congregations to turn en masse to the council in order to lay a protest against the tithe-demands of the Grofimunster chapter and to demand the abolition of all taxes. The basis of their petition was that, since it was being used for purposes other than those originally intended, the tithe did not accord with the Scriptures. Although the council insisted on retaining the tax, it did promise to proceed against abuses of the tithe. Zwingli now positioned himself on the side of the council and, in his sermon 'Regarding divine and human justice', defended the powers of secular government in wordly affairs. Although he did not believe that the authorities were fit to adjudicate on the interpretation of the divine word, he did think that they would probably have to solve the problems of ecclesiastical government. Konrad Grebel, who had previously had bad experiences with the council, turned against Zwingli, calling him a 'wretched prattler' and 'archscribe', and declared his solidarity with the demands of the rural communes. From his anticlerical standpoint he was concerned that ecclesiastical government too should be reformed according to the word of God. Simon Stumpf also criticised the reformer. He disregarded the council's ruling, encouraged his congregation to refuse the tithe and declared himself sceptical of the Zurich Reformation's prospects for success. The Reformation would not succeed, he claimed, unless the parsons were all beaten to death first. Passions were roused and the result was the polarisation of the Zwinglian camp. Above all, those who inclined towards a fierce anticlericalism and who had for some time already been meeting regularly for Bible-readings under the direction of the book-seller Andreas Castelberger (who also subsequently became an Anabaptist) felt that they had been abandoned by Zwingli and resolved to pursue their own, radical path. The reform camp fell apart. 12 The underlying causes of the rupture must be sought in the special situation of the rural communes. James M. Stayer has stressed that these congregations did not simply wish to reduce their ecclesiastical dues but were also striving for greater autonomy from the Zurich council. 13 In the Black Forest and on the shores of Lake Constance the peasants were in rebellion. Their demands spread to the territory ruled by Zurich and fused with the anticlerical actions there. As Goeters aptly puts it, Reublin was 'the 10

ANABAPTIST ALTERNATIVES

Bundschuh in the pulpit'. 14 Abolition of the tithe and the right to elect their own pastor were items in the peasants' programme and assisted the Zurich rural congregations in organising themselves as united communes and asserting their autonomy from the council in Zurich. This was something which the council clearly recognised and wished to prevent. Zwingli came to its aid. When Grebel and other friends in the town spoke out against Zwingli and marched with Reublin and Stumpf, they made the rebellious goals of the rural communes their own and merged their anticlerical struggle with a political battle: the radicals formed themselves into a religious and social-revolutionary movement. For this early period, especially in the area around Hallau and in the district of Griiningen, it is almost impossible to distinguish between the rebelling peasants and those who would emerge as Anabaptists after 1525.15 The radicals now waited for opportunities to demonstrate that reform of the church had to be decided by the communes and not by the council. The radicals demanded the total abolition of the mass with renewed intensity and took charge of the purification of the churches, leading to acts of iconoclasm. In an attempt to maintain order the council convened a second disputation. This debate made it clear that neither the mass nor the veneration of images were in accordance with the Scriptures. Zwingli, however, left it to the council to translate this decision into practical reforms. His radical pupils protested against this. In the disputation the community had assented to the judgement of the Holy Spirit. Why then should they have to wait upon the decisions of the council? The split, which had already been visible, now became total. Zwingli insisted on entrusting the council with the practical implementation of the Reformation, while the radicals reserved this right for the congregations. The disagreement has usually been attributed to two different ecclesiological concepts: Zwingli wanted a popular or 'peoples' church' (Volkskirche), whereas the radicals envisaged a 'free church' (Freikirche). However, on closer examination this dichotomy is incorrect. Zwingli and the radicals were alike in wanting to reform entire communes. The difference was that while Zwingli was thinking of the city of Zurich as a territorial capital and seat of the political authority of the council, the radicals had in mind the communes of the rural congregations, where no autonomous political authority had yet been established. Nevertheless, one thing had become clear: the Zurich council had taken a position against the radicals' demands. Consequently the entire community had to appear as a counterpart to the council. The quarrel focused on liberation in a concrete situation, rather than on a point of ecclesiastical law as to whether the secular government had any word at all to say in the Reformation. Wherever a political authority had already arisen or was inclined to adopt the course of radical reform, as in Waldshut under the leadership of Balthasar Hubmaier, a popular-church, magisterial Reformation was the 11

ANABAPTIST ALTERNATIVES

natural goal. This also explains why the radicals received support among the rural peasantry and sought the rebels' protection. The diffusion of their reform ideas was easily associated with the rebel objectives so that on occasion we can speak of a mass movement. 16 On the other hand, the urban radicals were quickly brushed aside by Zwingli and the council and were compelled, much earlier than their friends in the country, to resign themselves to their church-political impotence. As a result, the Grebel circle, in their famous letter to Thomas Muntzer in September 1524, gave the impression that their own self-perception was as a minority church, set apart from society, even what would be termed a free church from the perspective of later development. From the rural communities there now also emerged an impulse to reject infant baptism, a move which struck an anticlerical blow against the despotic character of the old church. This could well have represented the kindling of ideas which had first been disseminated among the populace through the writings of Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt. 17 The Grebel circle seized on these ideas and introduced them into its conflict with Zwingli. The baptism issue sparked great unrest and forced the council to arrange a disputation, which took place on 17 January 1525.18 During the course of it there was a fierce clash of opinion. The radicals were eventually cornered and, with their first rebaptisms on 21 January, they completed their institutional break with the Zurich Reformation, although without yet forming a free church. The radicals were now Anabaptists, as much in the town, where they were a small group facing persecution, as in the country, where for the time being they still constituted a militant mass movement. The council announced further disputations and proceeded to take legal steps against the Anabaptists. On 6 March 1526, it issued its first mandate imposing the death penalty for rebaptism. Ten months later Felix Mantz, erstwhile companion of Zwingli and a member of Castelberger's Bible group, was tried and drowned in the Limmat. Early Anabaptism was a dynamic religious and social-revolutionary movement, a radical liberation movement within church and society. It obviously had the power to attract a wide circle of support. It was only after their disappointing experiences with Zwingli and the Zurich council, which had increasingly forced them onto the defensive, that the radicals were compelled to break away from the official church. In the countryside they were in rebellion and wanted to bring about a renewal of Christianity throughout society as a whole. In the city they were still wavering between their original popular-church reform course on the one hand and a freechurch one on the other. The Zurich Grebel circle were convinced that there was 'more than enough wisdom and counsel in the Scriptures as to how one should teach, rule, advise and make pious all estates and all men'. However, they were not yet ready to adopt a formal free-church or 12

ANABAPTIST ALTERNATIVES

separatist position regarding temporal matters, despite already having an inkling of their future existence as a persecuted minority. 19 Perhaps the best example of their oscillating course was Konrad Grebel himself. Having been expelled from Zurich, he continued to try to reform entire communes in eastern Switzerland. Another example would be Johannes Brotli, likewise a signatory of the Grebel letter. 20 Ecclesiologically, the urban and rural Anabaptists wanted the same thing. Some were able to pursue their goals more publicly and without harassment, but others were more constrained and were compelled to adjust their ideas to different situations. Even the much vaunted pacifism of the Grebel letter was not really so different from the revolutionary conduct of Anabaptist leaders in the countryside, who, it is known, were occasionally protected against government seizures by armed peasants. 21 The rebel camp itself wavered between violent and non-violent action against ecclesiastical and secular authorities. Further experience, in particular that of the rebel peasants' defeat, was needed before the vague contours of a free church could be set down in a definite plan. No longer in the situation of defending the peasants' revolt, the Anabaptist movement quickly lost its resonance and mass support among the populace. It was forced to fall back onto a small group and, in a critical situation, to seek a new understanding of itself as a reform movement. 22 One result of this quest was the 1527 Schleitheim Confession, the Briiderliche Vereinigung. Only then was the free church born. COMMUNITY T H R O U G H SEPARATION The Schleitheim Articles contained the well-known fundamental principles of Anabaptism: baptism and faith, excommunication, refusal of oaths, rejection of military service, the community of true believers, free election of 'shepherds' and the Lord's Supper as an expression of Christian community. Today the article concerning 'separation from the world' is rather neglected, yet it was precisely this article, outlining as it did an eschatological perspective, which gave the remainder their profound meaning and their inner strength. Instead of calling for the avoidance of specific worldly things, the Anabaptists envisaged complete separation. Here was the kingdom of light, there the kingdom of darkness. Here reigned Christ, there Belial. One kingdom would end in the Last Days in 'torment and suffering', while the other kingdom was already the 'temple of God'. People living in one place had nothing in common with those inhabiting the other. 23 The Anabaptists rigorously marked themselves off. They distinguished themselves first from the official church, especially in its Reformation guise. Their reform model was now that of a separated church, grounded on the free decision of a community member in defiance of government decrees, a model to which Zwingli 13

ANABAPTIST ALTERNATIVES

had apparently originally aspired but of which he had soon lost sight. This free church, which the Anabaptists regarded as a restoration of the original Christian community, was now to take shape among their ranks by means of strict regulations, which were modelled on the so-called 'Rule of Christ' (Matthew 18,15 if), and which had already played a role in the teachings of Hubmaier and among the Zurich Anabaptist circle. However, they also differentiated themselves from the civil community, from the 'world'. Their own community became in consequence a 'counter-world', the prototype of a better society. The Anabaptists, it seems, only decided on total separation when all hope of steering the Reformation in their own direction had vanished. This became clear at the beginning of 1527, with the departure from Strasbourg of the leading Anabaptist Michael Sattler. Shortly afterwards, Sattler, former prior of the Benedictine abbey of St Peter in the Black Forest, consulted with other co-religionists in Schleitheim and drafted the Confession.24 Its articles also represented a departure from the original goal of a popular-church Anabaptist Reformation. Perhaps the reference to the 'brothers and sisters in the Lord' who had occasionally 'erred' was a reminder of the wavering course which had previously been pursued. Wilhelm Reublin, who debated at Schleitheim, would have been such a wavering Anabaptist, having turned his back on 'the true members of Christ'} The Schleitheimers' departure from the popular-church model of Anabaptist Reformation can best be interpreted in the light of the prevailing circumstances. They now rejected any attempt to associate their own religious message with the social-revolutionary actions of the peasants. After the revolts had been suppressed and while the peasant rebels and their sympathisers were being hunted down, the Anabaptists in Schleitheim, which lay in the heartland of the revolt, began to distance themslves from the rebels' revolutionary aims and goals. They wanted to make it clear that their own Reformation was neither one 'from above', supported by magisterial authority, nor a Reformation 'from below', achieved with the help of revolutionary violence. Instead they sought a third way. What has been previously overlooked is the fact that this estrangement from the rebels, implicit in the Schleitheim Confession, was really more a reinterpretation of revolutionary attitudes and demands, rather than something radically new. A few examples should serve to illustrate this. The peasants demanded the right to elect their own pastors and hoped to pay them from the income of the tithe, while the Anabaptists elected their 'shepherds' as a matter of course from their own midst and expected the community members to pay for their upkeep - that is if they were unable to look after themselves and 'should be wanting'. 26 The peasants refused to swear oaths to authorities with whom they were in dispute; the Anabaptists justified their own rejection of oaths, which clashed with the 14

ANABAPTIST ALTERNATIVES

authorities' demands for loyalty, by the New Testament. The peasants chose the form of the 'article' to formulate their revolutionary programme and unify their masses; the Anabaptists likewise expressed their programmatic unity in articles. The peasants demonstrated their militant solidarity through the forms of address and conduct of a biblical brotherhood, as in the case of the 'Christian Association and Brotherhood' of the Black Forest. Similarly, the Anabaptists referred to each other as brother and sister and founded a 'Fraternal Association' at Schleitheim. The peasants employed temporal excommunication and dissociated themselves from anyone who was not ready to come over to them: The worldly ban means this: that all who are in this Christian Association, upon their honour and highest duty, should not socialise at all with those who oppose and refuse to enter the fraternal association and to aid the Christian commonwealth, neither eating, drinking, bathing, milling, baking, ploughing or mowing with them, nor must they supply them or allow them to be supplied with food, corn, drink, wood, meat, salt and the like, nor should they buy anything from them or sell them anything, but let them stay as pruned, dead members who do not aid the Christian commonwealth and the peace of the land, but rather wish to harm it. All markets, woods, meadows, pastures and water which do not lie in their power and grasp should also be denied them. And any member of the association who overlooks this shall in future also be excluded, subjected to the same ban and, with his wife and children, sent over to our opponents and enemies . 27 The Anabaptists confined excommunication to the religious sphere, shunning anyone who was not prepared to follow the path of Jesus Christ and dissociating themselves from the 'children of darkness'. Directed internally, the ban served to keep their communities pure. All the above examples show clearly that, even though the Anabaptists came to repudiate the demands of the erstwhile peasant rebels, underneath they still preserved their solidarity with them. They also suffered the same consequences, paying the price of persecution and death. Finally, the Anabaptists distanced themselves from the 'false brethren', by which was meant those of their number who did not care for the practical implications of their faith and used the 'freedom of the Spirit and Christ' as an excuse to forget about the reform of ecclesiastical structures. A charge of this kind might have been intended for Hans Denck. The Nuremberg Anabaptist was working in Strasbourg at a time when Sattler was also there. They had different ideas of reform and Sattler was able to observe the magnetic effect on the Anabaptist groups of the mystical and spiritualist piety of Denck, who was indifferent to any restructuring of church forms. Sattler now wished to stem this influence once and for all. 15

ANABAPTIST ALTERNATIVES

'False brethren' might also have meant those who advocated the principle that 'faith and love could achieve and permit anything and nothing could harm or shame them as long as they were faithful'. 28 This was probably intended for the dissolute enthusiasts in the region of St Gallen. A complete separation from such brethren, in the main spiritualists and enthusiasts, probably represented an act of self purification. It points once again to an intention to steer a firm reform course following the meanderings of the early period. At Schleitheim the Swiss Brethren differentiated themselves outwardly and inwardly. The reform programme no longer entailed the cleansing of existing Christianity but instead involved a separation from the world. The first outlines of the programme were visible from the time that the Zurich radicals became aware of their impotence in matters of church politics. During this period they began to read the Bible with the eyes of the powerless; and a person without power reads it differently from someone with power. At first they had simply been 'the evangelical preachers' listeners and readers', but now they began to read the Holy Scriptures with other eyes: However, once we had taken the Scriptures in our own hands and scrutinised them with regard to all the issues, we were enlightened. We discovered the shepherds' very dangerous errors and also our own, especially that we fail to beg God, earnestly and with constant sighs every day, to lead us away from human abominations and the destruction of all godly life so that we may progress to true faith and divine service. 29 They therefore gradually came to the conclusion that the community of Jesus Christ was small; resolute, certainly, but also persecuted, separated and defenceless. This idea, dating from September 1524, was within the framework of their original anticlerical reform plans and was still one step away from the practical development of a free church. The final step was not taken until after 1525 in the Zurich hinterland and 1527 in Schleitheim. The birth of the free church can be explained by the connection between anticlerical aggression, church-political impotence and Scriptural reading. The free church itself was a radical alternative to the churches of Rome, Wittenberg and Zurich. PREPARING FOR THE GREAT SEPARATION A different route was taken by a group of Anabaptists who gathered together at the so-called 'Martyrs' Synod' in Augsburg at the end of August 1527. Here it was only Jakob Gross who supported the Schleitheim principles and his opinion did not prevail. The stage was instead dominated by Hans Hut and his visions of inner purification, the end of the 16

ANABAPTIST ALTERNATIVES

world and the role which the Anabaptists would eventually play in the 'great separation' between believers and unbelievers. Hans Denck was also present at Augsburg, but it is unlikely that his influence was very great. 30 New research has shown that Hans Hut advocated a distinctive brand of Anabaptism. 31 His views perpetuated the mental world of Thomas Miintzer, whom he had accompanied in the peasants' battle at Frankenhausen. Hut had experienced the peasants' defeat at first hand, but, unlike Muntzer, he had been able to flee and escape punishment. Unlike many others, he had not abandoned the struggle. He maintained his engagement on behalf of the 'poor' and, in more difficult circumstances, perpetuated Muntzer's ambitions to give the people a mystical faith and teach them to oppose all ecclesiastical authorities and instances of social oppression. Naturally this meant revising the anticipated date of the end of the world, with its judgement of the godless and its gathering up of the 'elect'. The Last Judgement was to take place at Whitsun 1528 and the elect would be limited in number to the apocalyptic figure of 144,000. In the meantime, thought Hut, Muntzer's sword should be kept in its sheath. What was construed by many as a move to Anabaptist pacifism was really only deferred revolution. The sword remained in its sheath, but only for the time being. 32 In the last days the elect would be there to avenge themselves on the godless. Again, Hut's ideas were a response to the political fall-out of the Peasants' War; in his impotence he waited for the mighty to be toppled from their thrones and for the elect to rule. Working as an itinerant book-seller, Hans Hut extended his missionary range across central and upper Germany, reaching as far as Austria and Moravia. Everywhere he attracted like-minded people, not least from among the dejected survivors of the Peasants' War, and through baptism prepared them for the imminent arrival of the Kingdom of God. 3 His baptism therefore bore quite a different character from that practised by the Swiss brethren. Hut 'sealed' the elect for the Thousand Year Kingdom with the sign of the cross on the forehead, whereas the Swiss regarded baptism as a conscious entry into a visible community already separated from the world. Consequently, in the wide regions which came under Hut's influence, we can find none of the firmly demarcated Anabaptist communities known to have existed in the areas influenced by the Schleitheim Confession. In a nutshell, the difference between them was that, while the Swiss Brethren had already visibly separated themselves from the 'children of darkness', Hut's Anabaptism, which reached a far greater area, merely prepared people for a future 'great separation'. Although his supporters were enjoined to separation from the 'world', this was understood to mean purification of the soul from all dependence on created nature. This was an internalised separation which lacked communitybuilding power. 17

ANABAPTIST ALTERNATIVES

Werner O. Packull once aptly referred to Hut's Anabaptism as a 'movement in transition', in transition from late-medieval mysticism to Protestant sectarian ideology, or spiritualism, and from a social-revolutionary movement, incapable of achieving its objectives, to one which either led to the foundation of separated communities or quickly disintegrated. 34 The transitional movement was an erratic one, at least before 1527. Internal differences must therefore have prompted the discussions in Augsburg as a counterpart to the Schleitheim meeting. At the end of 1527, Hut was apprehended and died while attempting to escape from prison. His movement disbanded around 1530, after the Last Judgement had failed to materialise, although here and there its members were able to join up with established communities. Meanwhile, Swiss Anabaptism was gradually consolidated in communities set apart from the world. Partly in reaction to and as an extension of Hut's teaching on the Spirit, sects of so-called Dreamers sprang up. These were able to survive in the region of Uttenreuth, although only for a short time. In a different direction, Hut's Anabaptism was subsumed in the works of Augustin Bader, who believed in the Second Coming of Christ in the guise of his own son. In Liegnitz in Silesia, the centre of the Schwenckf eld movement, a small group, known as the Sabbatarians, formed under the leadership of Oswald Glaidt and Andreas Fischer in 1527 or 1528. Glaidt, a former monk or priest, advocated the strict observance of all Ten Commandments, including that of keeping the Sabbath. He was supported in this by Fischer, a scholar of the University of Vienna. Both became involved in a dispute with Kaspar von Schwenckfeld and Valentin Krautwald, and their position can only be ascertained indirectly, from the rejoinders, since their own tracts have been lost. After 1529, this group gradually broke up under the growing pressure of persecution. However, Fischer, who fled to Moravia, refused to waver and continued to teach the Sabbatarian message. He died in Slovakia around 1540 and isolated followers of his were still in evidence in the middle of the century. Both tendencies, the Swiss Anabaptists as well as the supporters of Hut, were at first greatly influenced by the social unrest which had acquired revolutionary force during the Peasants' War. However, the two groups found quite different ways of coping with their disappointments. Two concepts of Anabaptist reform were developed. They had different origins and proved impossible to harmonise. The Anabaptists were aware of this at the time, but neither their common front against the reformers nor the persecutions to which they were subjected were sufficient to move them to mutual solidarity.

18

ANABAPTIST ALTERNATIVES

BETWEEN PACIFISM A N D MILITANCY Soon after the Peasants' War, Anabaptists from Hut's area of influence in Franconia infiltrated central Germany and attracted a degree of popular support. The activities of the Eisenach furrier, Hans Romer, were especially prominent. Romer had belonged to the 'Eternal Council' in Muhlhausen and had taken part in the battle of Frankenhausen. Having escaped the butchery of the princes' army, he continued preaching, in Miintzer's apocalyptic vein, in the Bildhausen band, urging the peasants to destroy godless authorities with the sword. While Hut concealed his rebellious intentions, Romer, when he reappeared in Thuringia, made no attempt to suppress his aggressive revolutionary plans. It is now impossible to establish whether he ever actually had a direct connection with Hut. Along with the peasant Volkmar Fischer, the furrier Christoph Peisker and the cobbler Christoph of Meissen, Romer rekindled the flames of the revolution in the area of the earlier rising: 'throughout the Erfurt region, on the Unstrut, on the Helme and in Mansfeld territory, brothers and sisters were zealously recruited'. 35 The Anabaptists and their sympathisers anticipated an imminent Last Judgement, claiming that 'the world would only last another eleven months and would then be completely destroyed by an earthquake'. Only those who had received 'real baptism' would 'survive such a movement of the earth'. 36 On New Year's Day 1528, they planned to seize the city of Erfurt, a bastion of the old faith. The rough outlines of their scheme can be reconstructed from the trial records. While Romer was delivering a well publicised sermon on the Frauenberg, other Anabaptists, led by the tailor Nikolaus Hofmann, would set light to some houses belonging to the clergy and create confusion in the streets with shouts of 'Fire! Fire!' Romer wanted to pin the blame for the arson on the clergy, knowing that they would immediately accuse the Anabaptists. He hoped to convince the people that the clergy would not shrink from launching false accusations in order to suppress the revival of the Gospel in the city. In the general confusion, crowds of his supporters would then charge through the wide open gates and occupy the town hall. They planned to expel the old councillors, install new ones and turn Erfurt into the 'New Jerusalem'. With a base at Erfurt, the Anabaptists then intended to reorganise the defeated peasants' revolt of 1525, capture the villages and towns of the region and take their revenge on the godless. With the preparations already well under way, however, the plan was betrayed. Several ringleaders were taken and executed: decapitated, quartered or drowned. Romer and Fischer were able to slip away, despite being pursued, then after spending some time in south Germany and Basel, they returned. Fischer became a convert to the pacifism of the Swiss Brethren. Romer 19

ANABAPTIST ALTERNATIVES

did not abandon his apocalyptic militancy, but he did adopt a more careful tone. He was finally taken prisoner in 1534 in Gottingen and, most probably, executed there as well.37 After 1526, Anabaptists also became active in western Thuringia, finding the Hessian-Thuringian border a suitable base from which to spread. At first it was Franconian Anabaptists who roamed through this area. Subsequently, those recruited by Melchior Rinck around 1528 in the region of Hersfeld dispatched envoys and missionaries on both sides of the border, attracting the Anabaptists of western Thuringia. The centre for the Anabaptists of eastern Hesse was at Sorga. Anxiously, if not with the same degree of apocalyptic fervour which characterised the Anabaptists of northern Thuringia, they awaited on a mountain the end of the world, when God would 'come to their aid'.38 A former cleric, strongly influenced by humanism, Melchior Rinck was an influential Hessian Anabaptist leader. As a chaplain, he and his parish priest, Heinrich Fuchs, had together tried to introduce the Reformation in Hersfeld. When their scheme led to anticlerical disturbances, both of them were forced to leave the town. Through the social critic and active reformer Jacob Straufi, they found new work as parish priests in the neighbourhood of Eisenach. Rinck, however, did not stay in the post for long. He soon became engaged in the struggle of the rebellious peasants and fought with Thomas Miintzer at Frankenhausen. After the battle he turned towards southern Germany, where, probably in 1526, he came under the influence of Hans Denck.39 Rinck accompanied Denck at Landau and Worms in 1527 and then continued alone through southern Germany and Franconia and back to central Germany. Returning to Hersfeld in 1528, he immediately began to use his old connections in the area to promote Anabaptist ideas, preaching repentance and conversion and baptising those who were ready to repent. Rinck soon came to the attention of landgrave Philip of Hesse, who summoned him to the castle of Friedewald and ordered him to either recant or leave the territory. Generously, however, the landgrave offered him the chance to defend himself before scholars of the University of Marburg. The disputation, for which Rinck had prepared an 'Estimation of my Faith in God through Jesus Christ' in five articles, was not a success and the Anabaptist leader was expelled from the territory. He went to Franconia, perhaps first passing through the imperial abbey of Fulda, but soon reappeared on the Hessian-Thuringian border. The elector of Saxony was a severe persecutor of Anabaptists and ordered Rinck's capture. In 1529, he was caught in Hesse and imprisoned in Haina, but, thanks to the landgrave's tolerant policy towards dissidents, he was free again two years later. Rinck was supposed to leave the territory, but he continued to operate in his missionary area and, in Vach in the autumn of 1531, fell once again 20

ANABAPTIST ALTERNATIVES

into his pursuers' hands. Toleration had its limits and this time he was sentenced to life imprisonment. As most of Rinck's writings are lost, it is difficult to give a precise description of his theology. The fact that his thought included quite distinct Lutheran, humanist, Miintzerian and Denckian elements has been responsible for the uneven verdict of scholarship. 40 It is, however, undisputed that Rinck endeavoured to support his arguments from Scripture, that he stressed readiness for repentance and that he inclined towards Christian pacifism. His attacks on the reformers were passionate: who would have ever dared to imagine that the most learned and renowned evangelists of Wittenberg and their followers would depart so far from the true Gospel and good government? For do they not so prove themselves to the whole world, with their shameful deeds, persecutions, tyrannies, betrayals and the shedding of so much innocent blood? Rinck was more moderate in his treatment of secular authority, accepting that a ruler who did not succumb to persecuting the faithful could be considered a Christian prince. This was a long way from Miintzer's revolutionary critique, yet for all that, Rinck did not share the position of the Swiss Brethren, who were scarcely in a position to count on the possibility of Christian government. James M. Stayer has described a broad spectrum of different attitudes towards authority within central German Anabaptism. After Rinck's capture, Moravian Anabaptists exerted an influence on those from Hesse and encouraged their congregations to pacifism, challenging the government's right to wage war, but not its right to exercise judicial power. However, even in Sorga, there were still plenty of Rinck's followers around, people who had previously participated in the Peasants' War and were reluctant to abandon the objectives of the rising. 42 If the reports of eyewitnesses can be believed, in the early 1530s an ecstastic circle of Anabaptists seems to have formed around an alleged miracle-worker and prophet in the south-west corner of Thuringia, an area which lay under the jurisdiction of the abbot of Fulda. About forty men and women barricaded themselves in a house and violently resisted capture. As Paul Wappler recounts, 'when they had fired off all their ammunition and thrown all their stones... they finally defended themselves with hunks of meat and cheese'. 43 In prison they astounded their jailors with their singing, dancing, visions and spiritual raptures. They confronted their judges joyously and serenely and went to their deaths as if in a trance. As a group of ecstatic anarchists, they opposed any kind of authority and objected on principle to all forms of government. The abbot of Fulda also had to contend with a group which, besides bringing fire, terror and murder to the countryside, also apparently 21

ANABAPTIST ALTERNATIVES

advocated sexual licence. Here baptism had become a gang-members' oath not to inform on each other or betray the secrets of their arson attacks. The gang, the tone of which was set by a number of veterans of the Peasants' War, evidently wanted to pursue the goals of the earlier rising and destroy the power of the princes. A similar band, formed by a large group of beggars under a 'Beggar King', was at large in northern Thuringia. The authorities had a lot of trouble suppressing this movement as well. Finally, and spectacularly, in the 1540s and 1550s a group emerged known as the Bloodfriends. This was a society which only roughly conformed to the conventional parameters of antinomianism and libertinism. It derived its beliefs from the idea that redemption from original sin through Christ's sacrificial death had brought the possibility of a new life without sin and that the gifts of the Holy Spirit required a new form of ecclesiastical community. Baptism and communion were rejected. Only the sexual union of like-minded men and women performed the function of building a community. Since, in the New Testament, the church was described as the body of Christ, the intimacy of physical intercourse was an appropriate expression of Christian community. The Bloodfriends gave their ritual sexual union, which was to be performed only once, the name of 'Christerie'. Traces of the community, which suffered severe persecution, could still be detected in the mid 1550s. Thereafter, however, Anabaptism as a whole disappeared from central Germany. It is almost impossible to distinguish the various Anabaptist groups from each other. Besides the above-mentioned gangs and the Bloodfriends, more moderate Anabaptists continued to appear throughout the 1530s and 1540s, especially in the vicinity of Miihlhausen. Paul Wappler's detailed 1913 study, not superseded by the work of Gerhard Zschabitz (Zur mitteldeutschen Wiedertauferbewegung nach dem Grofien Bauernkrieg, Berlin,1958), gives a good impression of the sporadic growth and general extinction of a richly varied Anabaptism in Thuringia and Hesse. Although it was expressed in many different ways, '