The Radical Reformation, 3rd ed. 9780271091341

Citation preview

The Radical Reformation

Habent sua fata libelli

Volume XV of Sixteenth Century Essays & Studies Charles G. Nauert, Jr., General Editor

Composed by Paula Presley, NMSU, Kirksville, Missouri Cover Design by Teresa Wheeler, NMSU Designer Printed by Edwards Brothers, Ann Arbor, Michigan Text is set in Bembo II 10/12

Volume XV Sixteenth Century Essays & Studies

Copyright© 1992 by Truman State University Press (previously Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, Inc.), Kirksville, Missouri USA. All rights reserved. This book has been brought to publication with the generous support of Truman State University (previously Northeast Missouri State University). First edition ©1962,Westminster Press, Philadelphia. Second edition, titled La Reforma Radical, ©1983, Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico. Permission is gratefully acknowledged by Westminster Press to reprint the Introduction to the first edition and to Fondo de Cultura Económica to reprint the Introducción to the Spanish edition. Cover image: Permission for use of the Siege of Münster by Erhard Schoen granted by Abaris Books. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Williams, George Huntston, 1914–2000 The radical Reformation / by George Huntston Williams. – 3rd ed., rev. and expanded. p. cm. – (Sixteenth century essays & studies ; v. 15). Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-94354-983-5 (alk. paper; Pbk) — ISBN 978-1-61248-041-1 (ebook) 1. Reformation. 2. Anabaptists. 1. Title. II Series. BR307 W5 270.6-dc20 92-6071 CIP No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any format by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Janice Louise Erdman

who in prayer as on the wings of an eagle soars

22 September 1992

Contents

Illustrations Abbreviations Preface Introduction to First Edition Introduction to Second Edition Introduction to Third Edition

xviii xix xxi xxvii xxxvi 1

1. Reformed Catholicity: An Evangelical Interlude 1. The European Setting from an Hispanic Perspective 2. Religious Currents in Spain as of the Beginning of the Reign of Charles I (V)

23 24 28

a. Charles I of Castile and Aragon, 28 b. The Legacy of the “Reyes Católicos,” Grandparents of Charles, 33 c. Marranos and Alumbrados: The Spanish Inquisition, 35

3. Erasmus of Rotterdam, Oxford, Cambridge, Basel, Freiburg: Patron of Evangelicals in Spain and Radicals Everywhere, Though by Him Disowned

41

a. Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536), 42 b. Erasmianism in Spain, 46

4. The Brothers Valdés 5. Michael Servetus to 1530 6. Stirrings of Reform and Dissent in Italy before Valdesianism

47 52 59

a. The Abortive Fifth Lateran Council, 1512–1517, 59 b. Apocalypticism, Evangelism, and the New Religious Orders, 60 c. Italian Philosophical Speculation on Immortality and the Doctrine of the Trinity, 63

2. Mysticism and Sacramentism along the Rhine to 1530 1. The Sacramental Action, as Popularly Understood 2. Medieval Germanic Mysticism: A Component in Some Forms of Anabaptism and Spiritualism

73 74 77

a. Deutero-Taulerian Mysticism in the Reformation Era, 79 b. Theologia Deutsch and the Deutero-Taulerian Corpus as a Late Medieval Synthesis of Earlier Forms of Mysticism, 81 c. Some Mystical Motifs Later Cropping Up in the Radical Reformation, 82

3. Losses in the Sense of Divine Mediacy in the Seven Sacraments

85



contents  vii

4. Netherlandish Sacramentarians and Conventicular Sacramentists 5. Cornelius Hoen and Hinne Rode: Netherlandish Sacramentists to 1530

103

3. Lutheran Spiritualists: Carlstadt and Müntzer 1. Carlstadt and the First “Protestant” Communion 2. Thomas Müntzer and the Zwickau Prophets

109 110 120

4. The Great Peasants’ War, 1524–1525 1. Medieval Peasant Aspirations to 1517/20

137 138

95

a. In the Swiss Confederation, 140 b. In Southwest Germany, 141

2. The Coalescence of the Peasants’ Reform Movement (Gemeindereformation) with Aspirations Engendered by Luther and Zwingli (1517/20–1524/25) 3. The Great Peasants’ War, 1524–1525: Hubmaier, Carlstadt, Sattler, Müntzer, Rinck, and Hut

144 148

a. The Uprising in Stülingen and Waldshut: The Role of Balthasar Hubmaier and the First Appearance of Michael Sattler, 148 b. The Franconian Theater of the War: Carlstadt at Rothenberg, 155 c. Thuringia and Müntzer, 161 d. Three Minor Participants in the ThuringianFranconian Phase of the War, 165 e. The Tyrol 1525/26: Michael Gaismair, 168

4. Conclusion 5. The Eucharistic Controversy Divides the Reformation, 1523–1526 1. Hinne Rode in Basel and Zurich with Oecolampadius and Zwingli 2. The Eucharistic Controversy in Zurich: The Second Disputation, October 1523: An Embryonic Anabaptist Conventicle, 1523–1524

171 175 176

179

a. The Second Zurich Disputation, October 1523, 181 b. Four Radicals at the Disputation: Haetzer, Stumpf, Mantz, and Grebel, 181 c. The Disputation Continued, 185 d. Conventicular Sacramentists in Zurich, 1524, 188

3. The Eucharistic Controversy between the Swiss Sacramentarians and the Lutherans

193

viii  the radical reformation 4. Psychopannychism in Wittenberg and Zurich 5. Caspar Schwenckfeld of Silesia and the Suspension of the Supper in 1526

196 199

a. Schwenckfeld and the Reformation in Lower Silesia until 1526, 201 b. Schwenckfeld and Aspects of the Silesian Reformation until 1529, 209

6. Rise of the Swiss Brethren as the First Anabaptists of the Era 1. Zurich and Zollikon: The First Anabaptist Fellowship 2. Anabaptism in St. Gall, the Canton of Appenzell, and Rheintal

212 214 221

a. The Zwingli-Hubmaier Debate, May–November 1525, Setting the Terms of the Baptismal Controversy, 224 b. Reublin Baptizes Hubmaier in Waldshut, 229

3. The Anabaptist Missionaries and Hubmaier Face the Magistrates in Zurich 4. The Spread of Anabaptism in Basel and Bern

233 243

7. South German and Austrian Anabaptism, 1525–1527 1. John Denck’s Banishment from Nuremberg 2. Louis Haetzer and John Denck in Augsburg 3. John Denck in Strassburg and Worms 4. John Hut 5. Austrian Anabaptism 6. The Martyrs’ Synod in Augsburg, August 1527

247 248 255 260 263 269 282

8. The Schleitheim Confession of 1527: Swiss and South German Developments to 1531 1. “The Brotherly Union of a Number of Children of God Concerning Seven Articles,” Schleitheim, 24 February 1527 2. The Trial and Martyrdom of Michael Sattler 3. Anabaptism Elsewhere in South Germany, East of the Rhine, from 1527 to 1531 4. Swiss Developments between Zwingli’s Refutation of the Schleitheim Confession in 1527 and Henry Bullinger’s Attack in 1531 a. Zwingli’s Elenchus, 303 b. Basel: Three Radical Physicians: Paracelsus, Servetus, and Brunfels, 305 c. Bern, 309 d. Bullinger’s Von dem unverschamten frävel, 1531, 310

288 289 294 297

303



contents  ix

9. Radical Christianity in the Kingdom of Bohemia and the Margraviate of Moravia, 1526–1529 1. Utraquists and the Two Parties of the Unity of the Czech Brethren to 1526

314 317

a. The Hussite Legacy, 317 b. The Schism of the Minor Party and the Major Party of the Unity of the Czech Brethren on the Eve of the Protestant Reformation, 322

2. Anabaptist Refugee Colonies in Moravia

333

a. Hubmaier, Anabaptist Patriarch of Nicolsburg (Mikulov), 334 b. The Ministry “of the Two Swords” in Chiliastic Context: The Nicolsburg Disputation, May 1527: Hut vs. Hubmaier, 339 c. The Martyrdom of Hubmaier, 348 d. The First Anabaptist Communitarians: Austerlitz (Slavkov), 1528, 351

10. Speyer and Strassburg, 1529: Magisterial and Radical Reformations in a Representative Urban Republic Part I 1. The Diet of Speyer, 1529: The Magisterial vs. the Radical Reformation, 1522–1529 2. Strassburg, 1522–1529: Urban Republic under the Impact of Reform

355

358 363

a. An Emerging Christocracy, 363 b. An Excursus on the Triplex Munus Christi, 372 c. Sectarian Refugees in Strassburg, 1524–1529, 377

Part II 3. Strassburg, 1529–1533

381

a. John Bünderlin and Johannes Baptista Italus, 1529, 381 b. Caspar Schwenckfeld, 1529, 383 c. Melchior Hofmann, 1529, 387 d. Sebastian Franck, 1529, 394 e. Christian Entfelder, 1529, 398 f. Michael Servetus, 1531, 401 g. John Campanus, 1532, 404 h. Pilgram Marpeck among Sectarians in the City of Refuge, 1529/31–33, 405

4. The Synod of Strassburg and Its Consequences, 1533–1535 a. Preparations for the Territorial Synod, 412 b. The Territorial Synod, June 1533, 417 c. The Consequences of the Synod, 1533–1535, 422

410

x  the radical reformation 11. Unusual Doctrines and Institutions of the Radical Reformation 1. Baptismal Theologies in the Radical Reformation

431 432

a. Hubmaier and the Baptismal Theology of the Swiss Anabaptists, 440 b. The Baptismal Theology of Three Degrees or Intensities: Denck, Hut, Hofmann, 442 c. The Nuptial Baptismal Theology of John Campanus, 446 d. The Nuptial Apocalyptic Baptismal Theology of Melchior Hofmann, 447 e. Baptism at Age Thirty: Michael Servetus, 450 f. Baptism Saves Those Incapable of Articulate Faith: Paracelsus, 457

2. Alterations in the Doctrine of the Trinity

459

a. The Initial Indifference of the Magisterial Reformers to the Nicaenum, 459 b. Trinitarian, Antitrinitarian, Anti-Nicene, 461 c. Selected Radical Triadologies, 465 (1) Christian Entfelder, 465 (2) Michael Servetus, 467 (3) John Campanus, 468 (4) Claude of Savoy, 469 (5) Caspar Schwenckfeld, 472

3. Intercessores, Mediatrix, Unus Mediator: New and Old Emphases in Christology

477

a. Abandonment of the Belief in the Intercession of Saints and in Mary as Mediatrix, 479 b. The Emerging Conceptualization of Christ as Sole Mediator in the Triplex Munus Christi, 483 c. Controversy over Christ the Mediator, Whether in His Human Nature or in Both Natures: Königsberg, 1551, 487 d. Alterations in Understanding the (Two) Nature(s) of Christ, 488 (1) Clement Ziegler and Melchior Hofmann, 493 (2) Caspar Schwenckfeld, 496 (3) Michael Servetus, 500 (4) The Lord’s Supper in the Theology of Ziegler and Servetus, 501 e. Adorantism and Nonadorantism of Christ, 504

4. Eschatology in the Radical Reformation: The Lex Sedentium

505

a. Ancient Eschatology and Apocalyptic Recovered, 509 b. The Prophet as Spiritual Teacher and Forthteller: The Lex Sedentium among Magisterial and Radical Reformers, 518 c. The Eschatology of the Charismatic Prophet, Melchior Hofmann, 521

12. The Spread of Melchiorite Anabaptism in The Netherlands and North Germany to 1534 1. The Netherlandish Sacramentists, 1524–1530 2. Libertines or Spiritualizers

524 528 535



contents  xi

3. The Melchiorites (Hofmannites) and Obbenites in East Frisia and The Netherlands 4. Evangelical Catholic Reform, Popular Piety, and Melchiorite Anabaptism in the Rhineland around Cologne 13. Münster, 1531–1535 1. Pastor Bernard Rothmann and Mayor Bernard Knipperdolling and the Beginnings of the Reformation in Münster, July 1531 2. The Arrival of the Melchiorite-Johannite Emissaries in Münster 3. Rothmann’s Restitution and On Vengeance (1534) 4. Restitution and Revenge by the Ungodly 5. David Joris and the Batenburgers at Bocholt, 1536 14. The Regrouping of Forces after the Münster Debacle: Mennonitism 1. Menno Simons: His Early Career and Conversion 2. “The Foundation,” 1540: Christology and the Ban 3. The Spread of Anabaptism in the Southern Netherlands (Belgium) 4. Lollardy and English Anabaptists to 1540

539 547 553 556 561 574 580 582 589 589 596 600 603

a. Lollardy, 603 b. Netherlandish Anabaptists in England, 605

15. Sacramentists and Anabaptists in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to 1548 1. The Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania: General Orientation 2. Religious Changes in Lands of the Commonwealth, Mostly Peripheral to Cultural “Polonia”

609 609 613

a. Royal and Ducal Prussia, 613 b. The Radical Onset to What Would Become the Lutheran Reformation in a Large Part of Livonia, 619

3. Silesian Spiritualism and Anabaptism, 1527–1548: Andrew Fischer, Sabbatarian Anabaptists in Silesia, Moravia, Slovakia

623

a. Schwenckfeldians and Anabaptists in Silesia, 1527–1548, 624 b. Gabriel Ascherham: Spiritualist Anabaptist, 628

4. Anabaptists Settling in Great and Little Poland from Silesia, Moravia, and Hapsburg Hungary (Slovakia) 16. The Hutterites, 1529–1540 1. Anabaptists in Moravia from 1529 to the Death of Jacob Hutter in 1536

630 637

638

xii  the radical reformation 2. From the Death of Hutter in 1536 to the “Account” of Peter Riedemann in 1540 3. Theology and Institutions of Hutterite Communism 17. Anabaptism in Middle Germany, 1527–1538 1. Philip of Hesse and Melchior Rinck: The Legacy of John Hut in Middle Germany from the End of the Peasants’ War to the Fall of Münster 2. Peter Tasch and George Schnabel: The Melchiorite Legacy in Central Germany after 1535 3. Schnabel before Bucer and Eisermann: The Marburg Anabaptist Disputation of 1538

646 650 659

660 668 673

18. Definitive Encounter between Evangelical Anabaptism and Evangelical Spiritualism 681 1. Marpeck in the Decade before the Great Debate, 1532–1542 682 2. Schwenckfeld, 1534–1541 687 a. Schwenckfeld in Strassburg, 1533, 687 b. Ten Months from Strassburg, Visiting Friends en route to Augsburg, 1534, 690 c. Schwenckfeld, 1534–1541, 692

3. Sebastian Franck, 1531, to His Death in 1542 4. Marpeck and Schwenckfeld, 1542 5. The Basic Points at Issue 19. Spiritualism and Rigorism among the Netherlanders and Lower Germans, 1540/43–1568 1. Netherlandish Spiritualism: Henry Niclaes and the Familists; The Dissimulation of David Joris 2. Netherlandish Anabaptism Becomes Rigoristic with the Ban and Shunning

694 703 716 723 724 731

a. Menno: From His Exile from The Netherlands in 1543 to the Wismar Resolutions of 1554, 732 b. Dirk Philips, 738 c. Adam Pastor: Unitarian Anabaptist, 739 d. Leonard Bouwens and the Withdrawal of the Waterlanders, 742

3. From the Death of Menno in 1561 to the Death of Dirk Philips in 1568: The Influence of Sebastian Franck a. “Het Offer des Heeren,” 1562, 748 b. The Spiritualist Crisis of 1564–1567, 749 c. The Enchiridion of 1564, 750

747



contents  xiii

20. Marriage, Family Life, and Divorce in the Radical Reformation 1. Some Marital Motifs among Some of the Radicals 2. Medieval, Renaissance, Magisterial Protestant Changes in Marriage

755 758 765

a. The Medieval Canonical Legacy, 765 b. Renaissance Challenge to the Superiority of the Ascetic Ideal, 767 c. Magisterial Marriage, 769

3. Covenantal Marriage

776

a. Separation and Divorce among Germanic Anabaptists, 778 b. Varieties of Marriage and Biblical Literalism, 781 c. Marriage and Divorce in Some Other Sectors of the Radical Reform, 784

4. The Reappropriation by Luther of Tertullian’s Traducianism: A Major Shift in the Conceptualization of Parenthood and Family in the Sixteenth Century 21. Waldensians, 1510–1532; Italian Anabaptists, 1525–1533; Italian Evangelicals, 1530–1542 1. Heretical Groupings in the Italy of the Philologically Challenged Donation of Constantine: Evangelical Rationalism 2. The Italian Waldensians from 1510 to the General Council of Cianforan in 1532 3. Anabaptists in South Tyrol and the Venetian Republic, 1525–1533 4. John Valdés in the Kingdom of Naples, 1534–1541 5. Bernardine Ochino of Siena, Capuchin Evangelist of Italy: Radicals among the Refugees 6. The Viterbo “Spirituali” and the Beneficio di Cristo

788 799 802 805 816 819 829 832

22. The Radical Reformation in Italy and the Rhaetian Republic (Graubünden) 835 1. Radicalism in Rhaetia to 1552: Camillo Renato 837 2. The Italian Anabaptist Movement Outside Rhaetia, 1533–1551 849 a. The Special Religio-Political Status of Venetia among the Italian States: Its Eschatological Idealization by William Postel, 851 b. Radicalized Valdesianism: Busale, Laureto, and Tizzano, 860 c. Giacometto Stringaro and Il Tiziano, 864 d. The Anabaptist Synod in Venice, 1550, and the Defection of Peter Manelfi in 1551, 871

3. Continued Schism and Heresy in Rhaetia, 1552–1561 4. Laelius Socinus and Francis Stancaro to 1550 5. Italian Anabaptists, 1551–1565: Relations with the Hutterites

874 876 885

xiv  the radical reformation 6. Italian Libertinism and Nicodemism 23. Calvin and the Radical Reformation 1. Calvin’s Personal Contacts with Psychopannychists 2. Evangelicals in France, 1516–1561: Nicodemites and Libertines 3. Swiss Anabaptism from the Death of Zwingli to Calvin’s Major Attack, 1531–1544

892 897 899 904 912

a. Calvin Confronts Anabaptists in Geneva, 912 b. Peter Caroli of Lausanne Charges Calvin with Arianism, 914 c. Calvin Confronts Anabaptists in Strassburg, among Them His Future Wife, 915 d. Bernese Anabaptism, 1531–1541, 918 e. Calvin Deals with International Anabaptism from His Secured City Canton, 922

4. Calvin and Servetus 924 5. Calvin, Bullinger, and Beza Face Challenges on the Trinity and Christ the Mediator from Italians, Poles, and Transylvanians 934 24. Radical Italian Evangelicals in Swiss Exile 1. The Relationship of Anabaptism and Antitrinitarianism 2. Italian Evangelical Rationalists in the Diaspora

943 945 949

a. Matthew Gribaldi, 950 b. Coelius Secundus Curio, 953 c. “Alphonsus Lyncurius Tarraconensis”: An Apology for Servetus, 956 d. Sebastian Castellio, 959 e. Bernardine Ochino, 962 f. Laelius Socinus (Lelio Sozzini), 965

3. The Second Generation of Italian Radicals in Switzerland: The Formative Milieu of Faustus Socinus

973

a. Zurich and Basel after the Expulsion of Ochino, 1562, 973 b. George Biandrata and John Valentine Gentile, 974

4. Faustus Socinus to 1579, from Siena to Basel

978

25. The Slavic Reformation in Poland and Lithuania, 1548–65 991 Part I: Devolution of the Dogma of the Trinity in Reformed Synodal Debate, 1550–1565 1. The Reformed Synods of the Commonwealth, 1550–1565 a. The Reformed Synod in Poland, 1550–1556, 998 b. Stancaro Involved in the Osiandrian Controversy in Königsberg, 1551, 999 c. The Czech Brethren in Great Poland and the Reformed in Little Poland, 1001

997



contents  xv

d. Francis Lismanino, the Potential Leader of the Commonwealth Reformed, Goes Abroad, 1553, 1002 e. The Poles and Their Swiss Advisors’ Fleeting Vision of a Reformed Commonwealth, 1003 f. The Polish Interim, May 1555, 1004 g. The Swiss Looking from the Alps Out upon the Polish and the Ruthenian Plains and Marshes, 1006 h. Peter Gonesius, a Polish Servetian, Sounds a New Theological Concern amid Hopes for a National Reform Council, 1009 i. The Poles Count on the Swiss Divines as Their Spokesmen at a National Debate on Reform, 1010

2. The Reformation in the Commonwealth “Under” Łaski, 1556–1560

1013

a. Peter Paul Vergerio Seeks to Convert Sigismund II to the Augsburg Confession, 1013 b. Traits of the Reformer John Łaski (1499–1560), 1014 c. Łaski Appeals in Vain to Sigismund in Vilna, 1557, 1016 d. Issues of Polity and Theology: A Synopsis of the Drama Ahead: Four Incipient Reformed Synods, 1017 e. Churchly Organization and Synodal Issues, June 1557 to the Death of Łaski, January 1560, 1019 f. Dr. George Biandrata, Midwife of the Minor Church, 1023

3. The Increasingly Radical Thrust in the Commonwealth between the Deaths of Łaski and Calvin, 1560–1564

1036

Part II: From Antipedobaptism to Believers’ Immersion, 1556–1565 4. Anti-Nicene Antipedobaptism in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Poland, 1548–1565

1050 1063

26. The Hutterites in Moravia, 1542–1578 1. The Coepiscopate of Lanzenstiel and Riedemann, 1542– 1556/65 2. Divisiveness among, and Ecumenical Overtures to, the Moravian Anabaptists 3. Good Years Under the Patriarch Peter Walpot, 1565–1578

1066 1073

27. The Antipedobaptist, Anti-Nicene Minor Churches, 1565–1574 1. Early Strains and Stresses in the Minor Church 2. Adjustments in Anti-Nicene Baptismal Theology, 1565–1569 3. The Founding of Raków, 1569

1079 1080 1082 1092

1063

xvi  the radical reformation 28. The Rise of Unitarianism in the Magyar Reformed Synod in Transylvania 1. The Acceleration of Radical Trends in the Transylvanian Reformation to 1557 2. Unitarianism becomes Explicit 3. Antipedobaptist (Nonadorant) Unitarianism in Transylvania from the Death of John Sigismund to the Death of Dávid, 1571–1579 29. Sectarianism and Spiritualism in Poland, 1572–1582 Part I: The Pre-Socinian Polish Brethren, 1572–1580 1. The Controversy over the Sword, 1572–1575 2. The Pax Dissidentium, 1573 3. The Catechism of George Schomann, 1574 4. The Controversy over the Adoration of Christ: Budny’s Radical Theology 5. The Interpretation and Toleration of Non-Christian Religions 6. Italian Emigrés in Switzerland and the East 7. The Development of the Polish Brethren from 1575 to the Advent of Faustus Socinus in 1579 Part II: The Polish Brethren under the Intellectual Pressure of Faustus Socinus, 1580–1585 8. Faustus Socinus, 1579–1585/1604 9. The Beginning of Organized Socinianism: The Third Baptismal Controversy in the Minor Church 30. Developments in The Netherlands, 1566–1578, and in England 1. The Flight of the Flemings and the Flemish-Frisian Schism 2. The Rise of the Calvinists and the Achievement of Toleration for the Mennonites, 1561/66–1578

1099 1103 1108

1119 1135 1136 1139 1141 1147 1150 1153 1157

1162 1169 1177 1178 1183

a. The Emden Disputation, 1578, 1185 b. Dirk Coornhert and Civil Liberty of Conscience (1522–1590), 1186 c. The Waterlanders, 1568–1581, 1188 d. The Mennonites Achieve Toleration: End of an Epoch, 1577, 1190

3. Antitrinitarians, Anabaptists, and Familists in England, 1547–1579 a. The Strangers’ Church at Austin Friars, London, 1550–1553: John Łaski, 1194

1191



contents  xvii

b. Nonconformists under Edward and Mary, 1547–1558, 1195 c. Nonconformists under Elizabeth, 1201 d. Brownism and Barrowism, 1588–1607, 1207 e. English Familism Evolves, 1209

31. German and Swiss Anabaptism, Spiritualism, and Evangelical Rationalism, 1542–1578 1. German and Swiss Anabaptism, 1542–1575

1213 1213

a. The Schwenckfeld-Marpeck Debate, Phase II, 1542–1556, 1213 b. From the Death of Marpeck to the Translation of Menno into High German, 1556–1575, 1218

2. University-Based German Unitarianism, 1555–1579 3. German Spiritualism and Proto-Pietism, 1542–1578

1229 1236

32. Law and Gospel: Implicit Separatist Ecumenicity 1. Word and Spirit: The Bible and the Radical Reformation

1241 1242

a. Translations and the Canon, 1242 b. Word and Spirit, 1247 c. Anabaptist Hermeneutical Principles, 1255

2. Implicit or Explicit Ecumenicity

1261

a. Pagans, Jews, and Muslims in the Perspective of the Radical Reformation, 1264 b. The Belief that Christ Died for the Salvation of All Humankind, 1269 c. The Doctrine of Christ’s Redemptive Descent into Hades, 1271 d. The Doctrine of Election to Salvation, 1273 e. The Missionary Impulse of the Radical Reformation, 1276 f. The Authority of Christ as Priest, Prophet, and King, 1278

3. Magisterial and Lay Reformations 33. The Radical Reformation: A Comprehensive Perspective on the Shaping of Classical Protestantism Bibliography Index of Source Documents Index of Creeds, Confessions, Catechisms, Canons, and Articles of Faith, Conscience, and Petition Index of Colloquies, Councils, Debates, and Synods Index of Scripture References Subject Index

1280 1289 1313 1383 1401 1407 1414 1420

Illustrations

George Huntston Williams Michael Servetus Albrecht Dürer’s Peasants’ War Memorial Conrad Grebel Balthasar Hubmaier Emperor Charles V and Pope Clement VII Bernard Knipperdolling Assembly of the Common Peasantry Sigismund I Philip, Landgrave of Hesse Collapse of the Church David Joris Caspar Schwenckfeld Menno Simons Dirk Philips Albrecht Dürer’s Young Couple Clement VII Faustus Socinus John Calvin “Horrendous Pictures” The Dovecote of the Hutterites Sigismund II of Poland Henry III of France and Poland Wife of John Beukels ( John of Leiden) John Hut Hutterite Family Martyrdom of the van Beckum

22 56 174 246 287 354 552 588 636 658 679 680 721 722 754 768 851 877 925 990 1062 1134 1176 1212 1287 1288 1312

Permission to reproduce the woodcuts on pages 552, 588, 658, 679, 1134, 1212, and 1287 was graciously granted by Abaris Books, Inc., Pleasantville, New York. The woodcuts on pages 174, 287, 680, 721, 754, 1062, 1288, and the half-tone on page 246 were graciously provided by the Mennonite Historical Library of Goshen, Indiana. The woodcuts on pages 354 and 990 were provided by the author.

Abbreviations

ADB Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliographie AKC Archiv für Kulturegeschichte Allen Opus epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami ANF Ante-Nicene Fathers ARG Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte ASR Akta synodów róznowierczych, ed. M. Sipayllo AV Archivio di Stato di Venezia BA Bibliotheca Antitrinitariorum BAnt Same as BA BD Bibliotheca Dissidentium BFP Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum BHR Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance BNB Biographie Nationale de Belgique BRN Bibliotheca Reformatoria Neerlandica BSSV Bollettino della Società die Studi Valdesi Bibliotheca Unitariorum, Budapest BU CH Church History Corpus Reformatorum CR Corpus Schwenckfeldianorum CS CWMS Complete Works of Menno Simons DAN Documenta Anabaptistica Neerlandica DBI Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Rome, 1960– DThC Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique Harvard Theological Review HTR Italian Reformation Studies in Honor of Laelius Socinus IRS JEH Journal of Ecclesiastical History Journal of the History of Ideas JHI The Library of Christian Classics LCC Mennonite Encyclopedia ME MGB Mennonitische Geschichtsblätter Mennonitisches Lexikon ML MQR Mennonite Quarterly Review NAKG Nederlandsch Archief vor Kerkgeschiedenis OC Calvin, Opera omnia ORP Odrodzenie i Reformacja w Polsce PG Patrologia Graeca xix

xx  the radical reformation PL Patrologia Latina QFRG Quellen und Forschungen zur Reformationsgeschichte QGT Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer RAE Reformistas Antíguos Españoles RHE Revue d’Histoire ecclésiastique, Louvain RHPR Revue d’Histoire et de Philosophie Religieuses The Radical Reformation, 1st ed. (1962) RR1 Reformacja w Polsce RwP Spiritual and Anabaptist Writers SAW The Sixteenth Century Journal SCJ SMRT Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought Täuferakten TA VB Die Vadianische Briefsammlung Weimar Ausgabe, Luther’s Works WA ZHVSN Zeitschrift des Historischen Vereins für Schwaben und Neuburg Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte ZKG ZSKG Zeitschrift für Schweizerische Kirchengeschichte Zwingli, Sämtliche Werke ZW

Preface

T here is no aspect

of European sixteenth-century research that is so alive with newly discovered and edited source materials and monographic revisions as the Radical Reformation. Indeed, the newly edited sources have something of the significance for the interpretation of the whole of modern Church history that the discoveries of Upper Egypt (1945) and the Dead Sea Caves (1947) had for the study of Scripture and early Church history. Prominent and revelatory among these newly edited sources are the extensive court records of the hearings of Anabaptists from Venice to Vilwoorde, condemned to capital punishment for the Theodosian/Justinianic crime of r ebaptism, the bulk of t hese records now embodied in the long series, still in progress, of Anabaptist Acts (Täuferakten), of w hich the first volume was for Württemberg (1930). The general reader in Reformation history is entitled to a comprehensive updated account of the picture shaping up in the minds of specialists. Even the specialists themselves may be helped at this point in their archival and monographic burrowing by coming out for a moment to blink at the scene as a whole from Spain to the Ukraine. The proffered landscape may, at first glance, seem like a close-up of the crowded mounds of a p rairie-dog town, but this will not be because we are surveying the life and work of a diminutive race of reformers and their followers. For good or ill, the radicals were to shape the contours of t he world that was to come after them far more than they or their Catholic and Protestant opponents ever realized. Indeed, an understanding of their testimonies and vagaries is important to our grasp of the emergent morphology of classical or magisterial Protestantism in its three thrusts: Lutheran, Reformed, and Elizabethan. The present narrative of the Radical Reformation in coverage and conceptualization goes far beyond the text of 1962, which had in the meantime been massively updated for translation and publication in Spanish in 1983. I am most grateful to Prof. Robert V. Schnucker of Northeast Missouri State University in Kirksville for proposing in the name of the editorial board of The Sixteenth Century Journal that my Radical Reforma-

xxi

xxii  the radical reformation tion (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1962) be revised for a second English edition to serve as a c omprehensive narrative and updated bibliographical guide to the ongoing research in the field. He himself generously facilitated the task by w ord-processing the updated version prepared for publication as La Reforma Radical (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1983). And I thank him for the tremendous amount of editorial work to place the now third printed version in the context of the immensely expanded field of research, of the proliferating critically edited sources, and of the reconceptualization of the theologically and socially radical movements from the vantage point of social history, quantitative historiography, and other methodologies. My prefatory task is thus limited to thanking him for his collegial encouragement and his editorial and scholarly zeal and vision in helping me to rework the text in the light of a ll the new research, and my own, too, as I was preparing two other related volumes;1* and also to acknowledging his decisive role and generous assistance in the strenuous task of l imbering up a corpus of scholarship, almost thirty years old, now painstakingly refurbished to move swiftly and adroitly in the ever more congested traffic of surveys, biographies, monographs, and source collections concerning the left wing of the Reformation.2** I wish in the second place to thank Prof. Antonio Alatorre of the College of Mexico for the faithfulness and precision of his rendering my earlier text into Spanish, conscientiously including within it the last addenda and corrigenda sent to him after the basic revision. This Spanish edition substantially expanded especially the Italian and the Iberian coverage of the narrative. Accordingly in the second English edition I w ish to carry over for due acknowledgment at least some of t he names of t hose who during that earlier revision assisted me, notably: Mrs. Alicia Hammer of F ondo de Cultura Económica; the Rev. John T. Buehrens, now cominister of All Souls Church in New York City; Dr. Randall K. Burkett, now associate director of the DuBois Institute, Harvard University; and Prof. José C. Nieto of Juniata College, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, who helped me with the revision of more sections in the Iberian chapter than got specified in the antecedent Preface. In the interval between the Mexican and the second American editions, I wish to acknowledge with gratitude the encouragement occasioned by the dedication of four books to me (or in part), all related to the new version and adduced in the course of my exposition: one on Lelio Sozzini by Prof. Antonio Rotondò of F lorence (1986); one on four reformers, including 1 *The Polish Brethren, 1601–1685 (1980) and Stanislas Lubieniecki’s History of the Polish Reformation [1685] and Nine Related Documents (1991). 2 **The commonly used “left wing of the Refor mation” goes back in American usage to John T. McNeill and Roland H. Bainton, each of whom first used it in print at about the same time, 1940 and 1941, respectively.



preface  xxiii

Menno Simons by D ean Timothy George of Bi rmingham (1987); one on voluntary associations by P rof. James Luther Adams of C ambridge (1986), to whom, with my parents, the 1962 edition of The Radical Reformation was dedicated; and one on Unitarianism by the above-mentioned Rev. John T. Buehrens and the Rev. Dr. F. Forrester Church, both of New York (1989). In the second English version I h ave had in succession the devoted service of t wo major helpers in my Widener Library Study: the Rev. Dr. Rodney L. Petersen, an ordained Presbyterian minister with three degrees from Harvard and its Divinity School and a Ph.D. in Church history from Princeton Theological Seminary, worked full-time on his word processor (which he subsequently loaned to me for the completion of the work) from March through May 1990. He is now Director of the interseminary Boston Theological Institute. Mr. Bruce Krag, with a B.D. from Harvard Divinity School, an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, active in the University Lutheran Church, Cambridge, worked part-time from May 1990 into June 1991. After he left my services, Dr. Petersen assisted in several encouraging and substantive ways. He is currently revising his dissertation for publication by Oxford Press in 1992. Mr. Krag word processed with some printer’s commands most of the drafts of all thirty-three chapters as revised by me on the basis of the printed galleys of the updated English version used for the Spanish translation. He was closely attentive, among other considerations, to monitoring for their synoptic integrity the innumerable biographical accounts serialized through separated sections of the narrative and to sustaining bibliographical consistency in reference to them over successive chapters. He also assumed special responsibility for supervising several college work study helpers presently to be acknowledged. A number of c olleagues, recognizing that updating The Radical Reformation would give it ongoing value as a comprehensive reference work, very generously responded to my request that they peruse selected chapters in their areas of expertise. I mention in this connection my Harvard colleague Prof. Mark U. Edwards, Jr., who oriented me to the new literature and the new problematic issues relating to the Peasants’ War; my colleague in Romance languages, Prof. Francisco Márques Villanueva, who pointed out hitherto unnoted aspects of Spanish religious and social history; Prof. John S. Oyer of Goshen College, who, besides encouragement, placed several of the revised chapters in the hands of willing colleagues; Prof. Calvin Pater of Knox College, University of Toronto, who put at my disposal his till then unpublished study of Mary Mediatrix; and Prof. Werner O. Packull of Conrad Grebel College, whose works are at the base of major revisions in several chapters. Among those who graciously perused whole chapters of galleys, although I remain responsible for the basic contours and any mistakes or idiosyncratic emphases, were Prof. Stephen Boyd of Wake Forest University, an authority on Pilgram Marpeck, who read Chapters 10, 18,

xxiv  the radical reformation and 31, and reflected insightfully on the typology and nomenclature; Prof. Cornelius Dyck of Associated Mennonite Seminaries in Elkhart, Indiana, who read Chapters 19 and 30; Prof. Walter Klassen of V ernon, British Columbia, who read Chapters 12 and 14; Dr. Darek Jarmola of A ndrew College, Cuthbert, Georgia, who read Chapters 15, 27, and 29; Prof. James M. Stayer of Queen’s University, who read Chapters 3, 4, and 9 and whose overall challenge to some of my typological characterizations has helped me to nuance the generalizations in other parts of the exposition as well. All of these scholars respected the general shaping of m y 1983 exposition and in varying degrees of bibliographical and stylistic specificity made substantive contributions to the text and the updated bibliography. Mr. James Julich, reference librarian at the main library of the University of Iowa, gave invaluable and efficient help by providing a database of work done in the realm of sixteenth-century radicalities since the Spanish edition of my work. I am greatly indebted to the resourceful attention to the whole production, to the absorption of corrigenda and the preparation of the indices by Paula Presley. The final printouts of the present revised second English edition were carefully studied and perceptively scrutinized by Mr. Marius L. Cybulski of Poland. With an M.A. from Lublin, an M.T.S. from Holy Cross School of Theology, and Th.M. from Harvard Divinity School, he is a candidate for the Ph.D. at Harvard University in Slavic, Byzantine, and Religious Studies, took a reading course with me in preparation for his upcoming departmental examinations in one of these fields. I am most grateful to him for his comments on the volume as a whole in relation to its many interrelated sections and its dense annotation. I wish also to acknowledge the help of various kinds from Mrs. Susan and Dr. James Jackson of Brookline; from Mrs. Vera and Prof. James Shaw of Memorial Church, Harvard University; from Dr. Margaret Studier of the staff of the Harvard Divinity School, who has kept me to the main task over many years; from my supportive Belmont neighbor, Mrs. Margaret Nelson; from my friend of C ambridge, Florence, and Nantucket, Louisa Pfeiffer; and from the person to whom I have dedicated the now definitive edition of The Radical Reformation, an Evangelical radical herself, candidate for the ministerial degree leading to the Presbyterian foreign missions at the Andover Newton Theological Seminary, and without whom I c ould not have made the most difficult transition in my life. Other helpers near and far are mentioned in alphabetical order according to their domicile: Argentina: Prof. José Miguez Bonino; Australia: Dr. John Neal and Dr. Ian D. Kingston Siggins; Canada: Dr. Peter Brock, Dr. Peter Erb, Prof. William Klassen, Dr. John Kleiner, Prof. Danièle Letocha, Prof. J. K. Zeman; Czechoslovakia: Dr. Amedeo Molnár (†); France: Dr. Georges Herzog, Prof. Marc Lienhard, Dr. Jean Rott, Dr. André Séguenny; Germany: Dr. Heinold Fast, Dr. Werner Erdt, Dr. Erich Geldbach, Dr. Klaus Lindner, Prof.



preface  xxv

Bernhardt Lohse, Prof. Robert Stupperich, Prof. Paul Wrzecionko; Hungary: Prof. Tibor Klaniczayt; Italy: Dr. Augusto Armand-Hugon, Dr. Bruno Nardi, Prof. Aldo Stella; Mexico: Dr. Marc Antonio Loera; Netherlands: Dr. Bruno Beck, Dr. D. F. Dankbaar, Dr. Henri L. de Mink, Prof. Heiko Oberman, Dr. Petrus Oosterbaan; The Philippines: Ms. Geraldine Acuña; Poland: Prof. Oskar Bartel, Prof. Jerzy Kloczowski, Dr. Krzysztof Kowalski, Prof. Zbigniew Ogonowski, Dr. Tadeusz Przypkowski (†), Prof. Lech Szczucki, Prof. Janusz Tazbir, Prof. Stanislaw Tworek, Prof. Waclaw Urban, Prof. Waclaw Uruszczak; Rumania: Prof. János Erdö; Spain: Dr. Joaquin Maria Alonso; United Kingdom: Dr. and Mrs. William Baker, Dr. David F. Wright; United States: Prof. Claus-Peter Clasen, Dr. Nancy Conradt, Ms. Lisa Donner, Prof. William R. Estep, Prof. J. Leo Garrett, Prof. John Godbey, Dr. Maria and Dr. Walter Grossman(t), Mrs. Sara Hazel (†); Prof. Hans J. Hillerbrand, Prof. Irvin B. Horst, Prof. Carter Lindberg, Rev. Dr. Thomas McKibbens, Jr., Miss Adrienne Mundy-Shepard, Prof. John B. Payne, Mr. James R. Palmitessa, Ms. Betty Smith, Mr. Joseph Stasa, Mr. Philip Stoltzfus, Prof. David Steinmetz, Dr. John Tedeschi, Prof. J. Alton Templin, Dean Robert Walton, Mr. David Wecker, Mr. Benjamin D. Weiss, Mr. Jay Yang, Prof. John H. Yoder. The book is so constructed that it should be possible to read it not only chapter by chapter but, by means of frequent cross references, also topically. The numerous references in parentheses to chapters and sections thereof are, however, primarily to remind or reassure the attentive reader of t he whole narrative that such and such has indeed been dealt with previously or to assure the same reader that still more on the topic lies ahead. Considerable importance has been attached to the numerous specific scriptural texts to which the radicals appealed, and a Scripture Index supplements the main index. In general, the Christian names of the Reformation era and antecedent centuries have been Anglicized except for Spanish given names in Chapter 1 a nd those of a n umber of m ajor Renaissance figures of Italy, whose commonly used Italian first names contribute to the sonorities of h istoriography. However, elsewhere in the volume, with the very profusion of figures of so many linguistic communities, I have for the most part encouraged the reader to fix upon the foreign surname while providing the standardized English form of the Christian name. The titles of all sixteenth-century writings are rendered in English if they have been anywhere translated into English or have acquired standardized English designations; in Latin if that was the language of t he original or if the Polish or Hungarian or Eastern European work has acquired a s tandardized Latin title; otherwise, these foreign titles appear in modernized Scandinavian languages, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, German, Dutch, Spanish, French, Rumanian, or Italian spelling, while archaic orthography for such titles is preserved only in some notes.

xxvi  the radical reformation A final word on capitalization. Typographical variations in such words as “anabaptist,” “sacramentist,” “unitarian,” etc., are intentional, which will be apparent as the account unfolds. Conceptualizations in Christian theology, like the Atonement, are sometimes capitalized; and a n umber of important political and religious personages, like the (Holy Roman) Emperor, Pope, and Sultan, are regularly capitalized. As for place names, having in mind a pan-European perspective with the cartography of the sixteenth century, I have preferred to use standardized English forms, e.g. Naples, Cologne, Warsaw, Vilna, even in bibliographical reference to places of p ublication. In these latter references, however, when the town has changed hands in the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, I have tended to respect the nomenclature of the time, e.g. Strassburg, 1871/Strasbourg, 1919, Breslau, 1918/Wroclaw, 1945. If the reader still detects occasional preference for the German spelling, it is to be explained as a consequence of the general sound of the city streets and the pulpits as of the period of the Reformation when German was the lingua franca of a vast Empire and of many parts of the eastern realms, and the principal language of administration in scores of cities of the east under Magdeburg or Lübeck urban law, as far east as Tartu (Dorpat) on the Baltic and Bras¸ ov (Kronstadt) toward the Black Sea. In standardized usage (until air travel) places beyond the Channel commonly bore the stamp of France, e.g. Cologne for Köln, while in turn German usage influenced English names for towns further to the east, Elbing for Elbag, for example, while in the sixteenth century names in Cyrillic are commonly rendered in their Polish form, for example, Lwów for Ukrainian Lviv (Russian: Lvov; German/Yiddish: Lemberg). In some instances in reference to areas not coincident with the present political boundaries of G ermany, Poland, etc. but at the time of p oliticalcultural Germanic, Polish, Hungarian or Italian speech or hegemony, I occasionally resort to the Latinized terms, Germania, Polonia, Hungaria, and Italia. To be sure, this last term has a special meaning for Poles in the present-day trans-Atlantic diaspora, but we need this term also for the eastern palatinates of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth where Polish was the language of culture and hence of P rotestant synods. Similarly, we need a g eneric term to cover not only the Empire but also the German-speaking cantons of the Swiss Confederation and the network of German urban colonies to the east of the Empire; another term for the sizeable commune of Italian-speaking reformers and refugees in Rhaetia (Graubünden) and in the diaspora, often gathered in congregations and synods of t heir own; and finally a t erm to cover all or more than one of t he three political entities of t he Apostolic Kingdom of H ungary, tripartitioned in the period of o ur narrative into Hapsburg Hungary (in effect, Slovakia), Ottoman Hungary with Budapest, and Transylvania with its mixed population of Magyars (Anglicized form



preface  xxvii

of what Hungarians call themselves), Szeklers (both of t hese Hungarianspeaking), Saxons, and Walachians. Lithuania, Latin in form, in the ensuing narrative always refers to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, at the beginning of our century stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea, and never refers to the principality of Samogitia, the territory of the ethnically Lithuanian peasantry and townspeople, whose nobility as princes and magnates held sway over the Grand Duchy, and whose highest prince was the Grand Duke, the Polish King of t he Jagiellonian (Lithuanian) dynasty since 1386 or in the sixteenth century his son as presumptively crown prince. George Huntston Williams Hollis Professor of Divinity emeritus Widener Library Study K Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts 1 January 1992 Four hundred and thirty years after the death of C aspar Schwenckfeld, Menno Simons, and Laelius Socinus. The last called on John Laski ( John à Lasco) in Cracow just a y ear before the burial of t he Polish Reformer in the main church of P in´czów, 29 January 1560, symbolic of t he many bonds between South and North, West and East in the mobility of the sixteenth century, and the relations between the Magisterial and the Radical Reformations.

Introduction to First Edition

n the decade between the end of the sanguinary Great Iamous Peasants’ War in Germany in 1525 and the collapse of the polygBiblical commonwealth of misguided peasants, artisans, and burghers in Münster in 1535, the gravest danger to an orderly and comprehensive reformation of Christendom was Anabaptism, which because of a profound disappointment with Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, their clerical associates, and their magisterial supporters, withdrew into separatist conventicles. Anabaptists were regarded as seditious and heretical. The revival of the ancient Code of Justinian made this explicit. It was midway in the decade, at Speyer in April 1529, in the same diet at which (April 19) six princes and the delegations of fourteen Upper German towns first took the name “Protestant” as stout adherents of Luther’s reforms, that an imperial law (April 22) was published against the Anabaptists, in which both Catholics and “Protestants” concurred. The following day a mandate of Charles V gave specific instructions to the higher officials of the Empire as to how to deal with the baleful combination of sedition, schism, and heresy combated long ago in the ancient imperial laws against the Donatists and other separatists and willful puritans. For a brief season, however, the Anabaptists were in otherwise respectable company, for the diet included in its censure also the sacramentarians, that is, the followers of Zwingli, because the Swiss seemed to be doing, in their interpretation and observance of the second of the two principal sacraments of the church—the Eucharist—what the Anabaptists were doing with the first—Baptism. By October of the same year, however, the Lutherans and the sacramentarians from Switzerland, along with representatives of the mediating position on the sacrament of the altar—notably, Martin Bucer of Strassburg—had met under the patronage of Landgrave Philip of Hesse at Marburg to compose the differences between the two reform movements issuing respectively from Wittenberg and Zurich. Although the two

xxviii



introduction to first edition  xxix

factions continued to disagree even violently on article 15 concerning the Lord’s Supper, the over-all effect of the epoch-making colloquy was to extend the meaning of “Protestant” to include the Swiss and other pedobaptist sacramentarians. The Lutherans and the Zwinglians agreed at least, over against the Anabaptists, in interpreting the one sacrament, Baptism, as roughly equivalent to circumcision under the Old Covenant. They were alike disturbed by, and prepared to take stern measures against, the threat of the Anabaptists and the Spiritualists to the integrity and the durability of an orderly reformation with the sanction and support of the town councils, the princes, and the kings of Christendom. We may speak, therefore, of the Lutheran and Zwinglian movement and its analogues across the Channel and elsewhere as the Magisterial Reformation or, when one has in mind more its doctrine than its manner of establishment, as classical Protestantism. It would be a m istake, of course, to assume that the theology of the Magisterial Reformation was incapable of propagation without the assistance of magistrates: witness the extraordinary conquests of the Huguenots in Catholic France, the Helvetians in Catholic Poland, and the Calvinists in the rise of the Dutch Republic; nevertheless, Reformed Christians, wherever they were compelled to organize in a h ostile environment, presupposed or proposed a truly Christian state, and always carried the seed of a complete Christian commonwealth within the temporary and protective husks of their clandestine conventicles. They did not, on principle, eschew fighting for the word of God, given a favorable conjuncture of events. Over against magisterial Protestantism, and its provisionally “sectarian” outposts in Catholic lands, stood the Anabaptists, who, with their determination to clear away the old abuses root and branch and at the same time to dispense with earthly magistrates and prelates, were only the first major threat of what proved to be a three-pronged movement constituting the Radical Reformation, the further definition and delineation of which constitutes the burden of this book. This Radical Reformation was a l oosely interrelated congeries of reformations and restitutions which, besides the Anabaptists of various types, included Spiritualists and spiritualizers of varying tendencies, and the Evangelical Rationalists, largely Italian in origin. In contrast to the Protestants, the exponents

xxx  the radical reformation

of the Radical Reformation believed on principle in the separation of their own churches from the national or territorial state, although, in three or four instances (i.e., Müntzerites, Münsterites), they were misled into thinking that the regenerate magistrates from their own midst would prove more godly than Protestants or Catholics. With these exceptions, followers of the Radical Reformation in all three sectors denounced war and renounced all other forms of coercion except the ban, and sought to spread their version of the Christian life by missions, martyrdom, and philanthropy. No less confident than the fighting Calvinists that they were the chosen remnant of the Lord, having “through their covenant with God in a good conscience” worked out their own salvation in fear and trembling, these followers put their trust in the Lord of the quick and the dead, who would soon come and judge between the saints and the sinners. In insisting on believers’ baptism, or on the possession of the gifts of the Spirit, or on the experience of regeneration, and in being often quite indifferent to the general political and social order, the various exponents of the Radical Reformation not only opposed the Magisterial Reformation tactically and on principle but also clearly differentiated themselves from sixteenth-century Protestants, that is, the Lutherans and the Reformed (the Zwinglians and the Calvinists), on what constituted both the experience and the conception of salvation, and on what constituted the true church and proper Christian deportment. They saw in Luther’s doctrine of salvation by faith alone a new indulgence system more grievous than that which he had attacked in ninety-five theses on the eve of the Reformation Era. They usually declined to use the theologically complementary term “sanctification,” preferring, instead, to stress regeneration, or the new being in Christ, or the drive of the Spirit, or the quickening of the moral conscience, or, in veiled language, deification. In any event, the exponents and martyrs of the Radical Reformation, whether Anabaptists, Spiritualists, or Rationalists, were alike in their dissatisfaction with the Lutheran-Zwinglian-Calvinist forensic formulation of justification and with any doctrine of original sin and predestination that seemed to them to undercut the significance of their personal religious experience and their continuous exercise of those personal and corporate disciplines by which they strove to imitate in their midst what they construed from the New Testament texts to have been the life of the original apostolic community.



introduction to first edition  xxxi

From the Enchiridion of the Christian Soldier of Erasmus in 1504 and the Sacramentist Epistola Christiana of Cornelius Hoen, through Benedetto of Mantova’s anthological Benefit of Christ’s Death, to the De Jesu Christo servatore of Socinus in 1578, the whole tapestry of the Radical Reformation was interwoven with a loosely twined bundle of threads that were giving a new configuration to the doctrine of salvation. In this explicit or more often merely implicit reconstruction or replacement of the Anselmian doctrine of the atonement, there was a characteristic stress on the divine compassion and an elaboration of a devout and detailed doctrine of the imitatio Christi or the discipleship of the reborn Christian, a corresponding alteration in the doctrine of the incarnation (variously formulated in terms of the celestial flesh of Christ), and frequently also an alteration in the traditional formulations of the relationship of the Father and the Son. The variations in incarnational theology cut across the whole Radical Reformation. The various stages in the explicit opposition to the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity were largely limited to the Evangelical Rationalists. In their intense eschatological convictions, some of the Spiritualists, many Anabaptists, and almost all of the Evangelical Rationalists adhered to the doctrine of the sleep or the death of the soul prior to the resurrection (psychopannychism). The range and types of spirituality in the Radical Reformation suggest successively the rigor of the medieval monastery, the prim devotion of the Catholic Evangelicals, and the passion of the orders of the counter-reformed church far more than the hearty affirmation of life in all its vocational fullness that was characteristic of Lutheranism. Since there was, in fact, some continuity of Catholic Evangelism in Evangelical Rationalism, the brief interlude of Catholic Evangelism that burgeoned and then withered between 1500 and 1542 in the Romance lands has been included in the following account. Some of its early exponents joined the Protestants, others the Radical Reformation, while still others, after the introduction of the Roman Inquisition in 1542, turned their energies into the Counter Reform. Constitutionally, the Radical Reformation was, of course, equally distant from classical (magisterial) Protestantism and Tridentine Catholicism. The reformers among the Old Believers and the Magisterial Reformers alike worked with the idea of reformatio; the Anabaptists, the Spiritualists, and the Rationalists labored under the more radical slogan of restitutio.

xxxii  the radical reformation

To be sure, the Protestants in their reformatio differed widely in the extent of their break from the medieval church. To be specific, the progress of Lutheranism through a patchwork of territories and jurisdictions that seldom coincided even roughly with the medieval diocesan and provincial boundaries encouraged its leaders, in so many other respects conservative (where the Bible did not expressly speak against a t raditional doctrinal formulation or institution), to minimize the significance of bishops and archbishops, so many of whom were, of course, temporal princes and thus integrally a part of the imperial constitution as prince-bishops and even imperial electors. With the expedient of the prince as Notbischof, Luther and his associates separated the whole question of polity from the core of essential Christian doctrine, although they were willing to utilize the office and traditions of episcopacy in organizing Lutheranism nationally, as in Sweden. In contrast to Lutheranism, the Reformed churches (which began their career in breaking from episcopal authority with the sanction of the town councils) stressed polity as co-ordinate with doctrine; and, although basing the constitution of the Reformed Church (especially in Calvinism) on the polity of the New Testament, they unconsciously absorbed a good deal of the usage and political theory of the Swiss Confederation of city republics and reworked ecclesiologically the civic institutions of local councils and diets. Over against Lutheranism and the Reformed Church, Cranmerian Anglicanism preserved episcopacy on principle, but primarily as a constitutional necessity in the magisterial reformation of a national kingdom, with its lords temporal and lords spiritual in the upper house of its Parliament, interpreted as at once the national diet and the national synod. Only belatedly did Anglicanism turn to the task of providing the threefold ministry of deacons, priests, and bishops with an adequate theology of orders. Though the Magisterial Reformation was far from unified in its conception of the sacraments in general and the place of polity in particular, it was one in the general conviction that behind the national, territorial, and the cantonal church organizations there existed the one holy Catholic Church, made up of the predestined saints (Calvin) or the assembly of the true believers (Luther).



introduction to first edition  xxxiii

In contrast to the three major expressions of the Magisterial Reformation, the proponents of the Radical Reformation, for the most part, rejected the doctrine of absolute predestination and the doctrine of an invisible church, and took seriously the ordering of their churches, conventicles, or fellowships of regenerate saints on the principle of voluntary association. The proponents of the Radical Reformation, espousing the faithful restoration of the apostolic church as it existed in the age of the martyrs before it was prudentially supported by Constantine, differed among themselves, however, on the procedure for restoring or reassembling such a church. They also differed on the question of the constitutional significance for Christians of the role of the judges and the kings in the Scriptures of the Old Covenant. Of the three radical groups, the Anabaptists were most confident in being able to reproduce the structure of apostolic Christianity from the New Testament, supplemented by texts they regarded as comparably primitive, or authoritative, for instance, the descriptions of the early churches preserved by Eusebius of Caesarea, a spurious epistle of Clement of Rome, and the works of early fathers. The Anabaptists differed among themselves as to the degree to which the pattern and institutions of the people of the Old Covenant and their Scriptures were appropriable. The Anabaptists of Münster, for example, with their eschatological intensity, easily combined the readings of Daniel in the Old Testament and Revelation in the New Testament and thereby justified their reintroduction of the Old Testament constitution of warrior saints. The Spiritualists likewise differed among themselves in their use of the Bible as a pattern for the church. Thomas Müntzer, with his zeal for prophetic reform of the whole of society, like the Anabaptist Münsterites, used the Old Testament in his blueprints for the reformation of church and commonwealth. The contemplative Spiritualist Caspar Schwenckfeld, despairing of any valid restitutio without some clearer guidance from God than had been apparently given thus far, preferred, amidst the violent claims and counterclaims of Protestants, Catholics, and Anabaptists, to follow a “middle way” and to suspend the sacrament of the altar and interiorize it as an inward eucharist and communion until such a t ime as God himself would intervene and usher in the church of the Spirit. Other Spiritualists, such as

xxxiv  the radical reformation

the Libertines and isolated Rationalists, suspended the use of all the sacraments (forerunners in this respect of the Quakers). The Evangelical Rationalists from Camillo Renato to Faustus Socinus tended to be individualistic in their Christianity and were, like the Evangelical Spiritualists, distressed by the divisiveness and acrimony attendant upon the organization of religion; and some might have preferred the half-enunciated ideal of Erasmus, namely, a “Third Church,” neither Protestant nor Catholic, devout but not doctrinaire. In Poland, Lithuania, and Transylvania, the Evangelical Rationalist ferment permeated the local reformed churches to create three well-integrated and inwardly disciplined ecclesiastical bodies, one of them destined to survive intact to the present day as the Unitarian Church in Rumania. The doctrine of the inwardly disciplined but externally free “apostolic” church has therefore been rightly recognized as one of the common marks of the whole of the Radical Reformation. A consideration of ecclesiology and polity must, of course, include specific reference to the theory and practice of the ministry and ordination thereto. The fact that the proponents of the Radical Reformation were frequently laymen has obscured the no less interesting fact that the movement was in part reordinationist as well as in its main sector ana-baptist. Among the Magisterial Reformers there were several who, like Zwingli, having already been ordained under the ancien régime, declined on principle to be reordained on becoming Protestant. In contrast, within the Radical Reformation there are several instances of former priests who felt the need for a r ecommissioning and who finally repudiated their Catholic ordination (e.g., Menno Simons). In other instances, leaders to the end were obsessed with the question of a valid apostolic vocation, that is, the problem of being authentically sent to proclaim, to baptize, and to organize in the latter days of the world (e.g., Obbe Philips). In some cases the Radical Reformation leaders seemed to connect the continuity of missionary authority with the baptismal succession, at times with the direct outpouring of the Spirit. Thus, though many “lay” leaders within the Radical Reformation, such as Conrad Grebel, Schwenckfeld, and Socinus, were, so far as we know, never formally ordained, to overstress this would obscure the fact that the credentials of leadership in the Radical Reformation were at the beginning more often moral or charis-



introduction to first edition  xxxv

matic than regular. The strongly re-ordinationist thrust within the Radical Reformation would, needless to say, become explicit only in the relatively few instances when a cleric of the old order became a leader in the new. Unordained monks and friars were, however, much more common among the recruits of the Radical Reformation than were ordained priests and prelates. Thus, a basic conflict over the conception of the nature of the church and polity between the Radical Reformation and the Magisterial Reformation came to be articulated in the debate between the two sides, not in terms of ordination, which was generally neglected, but rather in terms of formal, university theological education on the one side and apostolic, or prophetic or inspired, vocation on the other. Akin to the prominence of the layman in the Radical Reformation and the functional extension of the priesthood of all believers in the direction of personal witness to Christ in missions and martyrdom, rather than in the diversification of the conception of vocation (as with Luther and Calvin), was the corresponding elevation of women to a s tatus of almost complete equality with men in the central task of the fellowship of the reborn. Correlative with the enhanced role of women was the reconception of the medieval sacrament of marriage in the covenantal context of the Radical Reformation. So much, then, by way of introduction for some of the traits common to the Radical Reformation. Modern, and particularly American, Protestants, seeking to grasp the Radical Reformation as a whole, must try to see it as one of the two fronts against which classical Protestantism was seeking to establish its position, the other being Catholicism, which was renewing its strength and extending its global bounds. With what they considered the papal Antichrist to their right, Luther and Melanchthon, Zwingli then Bullinger, Calvin and Cranmer, readily thought of their common foe to the left as a three-headed Cerberus and called the monster abusingly, without their wonted theological precision, almost interchangeably Libertinism, Anabaptism, Fanaticism. Today we are in a position to see much more clearly than they did the differences within the Radical Reformation. Indeed, historians within the denominational traditions surviving intact from the age of their martyrs, namely, the Mennonites, the Hutterites, the Schwenckfelders, and the (Transylvanian) Unitarians, and others in traditions indi-

xxxvi  the radical reformation

rectly dependent upon it—namely, the Quakers and the Baptists—have gone so far in the direction of distinguishing in the sixteenth century the Anabaptists and the Spiritualists and the Evangelical Rationalists that there is once again a great need to see the whole of the Radical Reformation synoptically, the better to understand both the general morphology of Christian radicalism and the classical formulation of Protestantism. As a v ariegated episode in the general history of Christianity, the Radical Reformation may be said to extend from 1516, the year of Erasmus’ edition of the Greek New Testament, to a cluster of events around 1578 and 1579, namely, the death of the leader of the Hutterites in their golden age (Peter Walpot); the death of the leader of the Transylvanian Unitarians (Francis Dávid); the arrival of Faustus Socinus in Poland and his conversion of Racovian, antitrinitarian Anabaptism in the direction of Socinianism; the official toleration of Mennonitism by William of Orange; and the Emden disputation between the Mennonites and the Reformed. By roughly this time, the Radical Reformation had eliminated its most obvious excesses, had softened its asperities, and had, moreover, come to differentiate and redefine quite clearly its own disparate impulses, settling down and consolidating inwardly in diverse and largely isolated sects and fellowships. Slowly gathering strength, bearers of their ideas and institutions or groups analogous to them were to become once again involved in general history, notably in the restructuring of English Christendom in the age of the Civil Wars and the Commonwealth. Again in our own times, when, in a new context at once secular and ecumenical, the European state churches are being disestablished, the large churchlike American denominations are being reorganized, and the younger churches of Asia and Africa are being challenged by renascent ethnic religions and the international religion of the proletariat, when, in short, the mission of the churches everywhere is being reconceived in a b asically hostile or alienated environment, Christians of many denominations are finding themselves constitutionally and in certain other ways closer to the descendants of the despised sectaries of the Reformation Era than to the classical defenders of a reformed corpus christianum.

Introduction to Second Edition

E l protestantismo

clásico, o sea la Reforma Protestante Magisterial, según ha quedado brevemente definida en el Prefacio al lado de la Reforma Católica y de la Reforma Radical, y tomando particularmente en consideración los revolucionarios cambios teológicos y hermenéuticos llevados a cabo por Martín Lutero, constituye, en mi opinión, una ruptura más radical con la iglesia de la Edad Media que la representada por la Reforma Radical; y al hablar de la iglesia medieval me refiero a un corpus christianum en el que hubo lugar para un considerable número de teologías toleradas, de órdenes monásticas y de grupos religiosos que habían roto parcialmente ( los fraticelli, los seguidores de la Devotio Moderna, los utraquistas) o por completo (los valdenses; los lolardos, los hermanos checos) con la iglesia organizada bajo la autoridad del papa. Sin embargo, esa Reforma que yo llamo radical merece plenamente su designación por otras rezones que poco a poco se irán viendo. Mientras tanto, a fin de poder seguir las complejidades de su historia a lo largo de unos cincuenta años (de 1516 a 1566), con varias ojeadas retrospectivas al siglo XV, y con varias prolongaciones hasta el último cuarto del XVI, para redondear el estudio de ciertas vidas o d e ciertos movimientos regionales—desde Sevilla hasta Smolensk, desde Siracusa hasta Estocolmo—, el lector deberá tener muy en cuenta el hecho de que la literatura especializada, según se refleja en el entrecruzamiento de los hilos del libro, se divide en dos grupos, de acuerdo con la postura que se tome en cuanto a una cuestión fundamental: la de si la Reforma Radical constituye primariamente la protestantización aguda y c oherente del cristianismo en el siglo XVI, o s i representa la supervivencia, el robustecimiento y la expansión extraordinaria de modalidades cristianas esencialmente medievales de piedad y de formas de gobierno, de espiritualidad popular y de impulsos de reforma conventual y sectaria, batido todo ello, entre remolinos y salpicaduras, por la gran marejada religiosa y social de la época. La Reforma Radical fue de hecho, en grados variables, una confluencia de lo nuevo y de lo viejo. Es evidente que muchos de sus rasgos característicos—su afirmación de que la Iglesia fue fundada el día de Pentecostés (y no con Abel, o con Abraham); su negativa a ver en la Biblia, por inmensa que fuera su autoridad, una alianza en dos entregas; la poca importancia que concedía a las consecuencias de la caída de Adán, y por lo tanto al pecado original; su resistencia a equiparar el bautismo de los infantes con la circuncisión; su afirmación del libre xxxvii

xxxviii  the radical reformation albedrío en cooperación con la gracia, de lo cual se desprendía la justificación por la fe y un anhelo de santificación expresado en obras de justicia de nuevo cuño (entre ellas el testimonio de una conciencia libre en el martirio); su conservación de un lugar para el misticismo (popularizado); su activa proclamación misionera de la fe así renovada-hacen de la Reforma Radical un movimiento emparentado con el catolicismo medieval, y también, hasta cierto punto, con el evangelismo católico que sólo en los últimos tiempos ha estado saliendo de la Edad Media. Es evidente que la profusión de tipos ascéticos medievales— el monje, el canónigo regular, el fraile, el ermitaño, el caballero limosneromarcial que hacía voto de castidad— evolucionó hasta producir nuevos tipos, afines a ellos: el hombre que no veía incompatibilidad entre vida cenobítica y vida de matrimonio, el que se entregaba a la búsqueda evangélico-escatológica del reino de Cristo sobre la tierra, el Grübler individualista, el miembro seglar o pastoral de un sínodo, una comunidad, un conventículo, o como se llamara la secta, sujeto al código común, y exigente, de esa secta. Sin embargo, la Reforma Radical fue también protestante si se toman en cuenta otros rasgos: su repudio del papado y de la sucesión apostólica de los obispos; su rechazo de la pretensión de que sólo al papa y a los obispos, a título individual, o colectivamente en los concilios, les competía la enseñanza de la verdadera doctrina; su desconocimiento de toda tradición capaz de constituir una autoridad equiparable a la de la Escritura; su afirmación de que los pastores podían ser personas casadas (al mismo tiempo que, como los católicos, seguía considerando el matrimonio como una ordenanza cristiana destinada a todos los fieles); su reducción de los principales sacramentos, llamados ordenanzas, a sólo dos (si bien, por lo común, se acercaba al punto de vista católico en lo relativo al bautismo de los creyentes, mientras que muy a menudo coincidía más bien con los reformados en cuanto a l a Cena del Señor); su exaltación de los principios de la libertad del hombre cristiano y del sacerdocio de todos los creyentes, proclamados por Lutero en 1520, hasta el punto de creer—inconscientemente al principia—que era ella la que estaba llevando a cabo de manera coherente, en cuanto a la conducta y las normas de gobierno, unas ideas que, desde supunto de vista, habían estado proclamando Lutero, Zwinglio y sus respectivos socios y sucesores. Pero una vez concedido que la Reforma Radical fue a la vez neomedieval, restauracionista y sin embargo escatológica—a la vez católica y protestante—, nos sale al paso una segunda cuestión, en torno a la cual se divide la generalidad de los investigadores, a saber: la de si fue una sola oleada de reforma la que se lanzó con su triple impulso contra los acantilados y los promontorios de la época; es decir, si hubo una Reforma Radical. La exposición del presente libro, y su título mismo, dicen a las claras cuál es mi postura. También la ola del protestantismo clásico, al estrellarse contra las playas pedregosas del nacionalismo y de las prerrogativas territoriales, se quebró en tres formas principales: el luteranismo territorial y n acional (escandinavo), la cristian-



introduction to second edition  xxxix

dad reformada, no enteramente homogénea desde Escocia hasta Lutuania y Hungría, y la iglesia establecida de Inglaterra que, dominada e impulsada por diversas facciones, acabó por ser teológicamente episcopaliana (y esto sólo de manera espasmódica) en el último cuarto del siglo, y católica pero sin sujeción al papa en el siglo siguiente, si bien, durante el período que yo estudio, nunca pudo desconocer la influencia de Lutero, de Felipe Melanchthon, de Martín Bucer y e specialmente de Juan Calvino, no obstante que la reina Isabel no fue excomulgada por el papa hasta el año 1570. Pero ni el hecho de que el protestantismo magisterial haya estado también dividido en tres tipos principales, como tampoco el hecho de que la Reforma Radical, aun teniendo en común varios rasgos con el catolicismo evangélico y más tarde incluso con el catolicismo tridentino, lo mismo que con el protestantismo clásico, haya sido, sin embargo, objeto de proscripción por parte de los católicos tanto como por parte de los protestantes, hasta el punto de que esto produjo gran número de martirios, bastan por sí solos para justificar el adjetivo “radical” en un sentido teológico, o el sustantivo “Reforma” en singular. Nos es preciso, en consecuencia, avanzar más allá, a manera de Introducción, para legitimar el título del presente libro, a pesar de la notoria diversidad de personalidades, de principios y de programas que en las páginas siguientes van a desfilar ante nuestra atónita mirada con todas sus proclamas, tan discordantes en apariencia. Será muy útil que el lector esté consciente del hecho de que en todo desfile, en toda demostración que emprende una marcha, ocultos profundamente en el corazón de quienes se hacen partícipes de una determinada causa común, pero pasajera, subyacen motivaciones que, una vez amortiguado el entusiasmo de la cama­radería, resultan ser sumamente variados, y, además, que un manifestante determinado en el desfile de la historia puede pasar por diversas etapas de convicción personal. Así, pues, antes de que el lector se meta en los detalles de una exposición compleja, y en los análisis intercalados aquí y allá, y en las semblanzas biográficas que a menudo tendrán que ir necesariamente fragmentadas, convendrá que tome en cuenta que las investigaciones sobre la gente “común y c orriente” (o sea la gran mayoría) y sobre las personalidades excéntricas de la Reforma Radical se han caracterizado notablemente por el escrutinio tipológico desde el punto de vista de la sociología de la religión (Ernst Troeltsch) y, en épocas más recientes, de la psicología de la religión. Más aún: ni siquiera los investigadores que personalmente siguen profesando alguno de los credos de la tradición que sobre vive de la Reforma Radical (mennonitas, hutteritas, schwenckfeldianos, unitarios, así como los de otras denominaciones modernas simpatizantes con ellos, en especial los baptistas y l os cuáqueros) han estado inmunes a esa tendencia, explicable por un deseo subliminal de percibir retrospectivamente tipos ideales como sanción para las posiciones que, aunque recibidas y transmitidas ciertamente en esas varias tradiciones, no se consolidaron sino poco a poco a través del tiempo. Los investigadores neutrales en cuanto a lo

xl  the radical reformation religioso, y los historiadores marxistas que trabajan sobre los mismos materiales, han aportado también sus propios presupuestos, y han quedado también atrapados en la visión esquemática convencional. Sólo en la literatura más reciente se ha comenzado a v er a l os radicales como individuos dentro de movimientos que conocieron cierto número de fases, permutaciones, diferenciaciones e interpenetraciones, si bien también los investigadores contemporáneos, a semejanza de sus predecesores, son incapaces de abandonar del todo la nomenclatura taxonómica. Aunque la Reforma Radical fue en última instancia separatista, sería naturalmente una equivocación dar por sentado que la teología de la Reforma Magisterial hubiera sido incapaz de propagación sin la ayuda de los magistrados: ahí están, para demostrar lo contrario, las extraordinarias conquistas de los hugonotes en la Francia católica, allí están los “helvéticos” en el área católica (ortodoxa) de Polonia-Lituania, y los calvinistas en el nacimiento de la nación holandesa. A pesar de ello, los cristianos reformados (y en menor medida los luteranos), forzados a organizarse en un medio hostil, presuponían o proponían un estado verdaderamente cristiano, o cuando menos un estado que les diera apoyo, y llevaban siempre la semilla de una comunidad cristiana completa dentro de las cascarillas temporales y protectoras de sus conventículos, clandestinos por lo común. En principio, y sobre todo cuando existía una favorable coyuntura de acontecimientos, no rehuyeron el combate por la palabra de Dios. En lucha contra el protestantismo magisterial y contra sus avanzadas provisiunalmente “sectarias” en territorios católicos, se extendió la Reforma Radical, determinada a erradicar los abusos, lo cual le impuso la necesidad de prescindir de los magistrados no regenerados, así como de los prelados principescos. Esta Reforma Radical fue un amontonamiento, muy laxamente integrado, de reformas y restituciones doctrinales e institucionales suscritas por anabaptistas de varios tipos, por espiritualistas y espiritualizantes de diversas tendencias (desde el marcial Tomás Müntzer, pasando por el Grübler individualista Sebastián Franck, hasta el quietista y pietista Gaspar Schwenckfeld), así como por los racionalistas evangélicos, para quienes la única base esencial era el Nuevo Testamento (desde Juan de Valdés, pasando por Lelio Socino, hasta Pedro Gonesius). En contraste con los protestantes, los radicales de las tres tendencies dentro de la Reforma Radical afirmaron, en principio, la necesidad de establecer una separación entre sus iglesias y e l estado nacional o t erritorial, si bien hubo en esto algunas excepciones: entre los müntzeritas, por ejemplo, Conrado Grebel procuró, a manera de transición, la creación de un ayuntamiento regenerado en Zurich, y otro tanto hizo Baltasar Hubmaier en Waldshut, y después en Nicolsburg; lo mismo cabe decir de los münsteritas, de la mayor parte de los unitarios transilvanos y d e una tenaz sección de los hermanos polaco-lituanos, seguidores de Simón Budny y pertenecientes en su mayoría



introduction to second edition  xli

a la clase de los caballeros. Con esas excepciones, y a m enudo sólo durante una breve fase, los partidarios de la Reforma Radical en los tres sectores estuvieron en contra de la guerra y renunciaron a otras formas de coerción, salvo la excomunión, y procuraron difundir su versión de la vida cristiana mediante las misiones, el martirio y la filantropía. No menos seguros que los combativos calvinistos de ser ellos el “resto elegido” del Señor, puesto que “mediante su pacto con Dios, hecho en buena conciencia”, habían logrado así su propia salvación en el temor y el temblor, estos reformistas radicales ponían su confianza en el Señor de los vivos y los muertos, que no tardaría en venir para juzgar entre los santos y los pecadores, o simplemente para recompensar a los justos, los únicos destinados a resucitar (Fausto Socino). Al insistir en el bautismo de los creyentes, o en la posesión de los dones del Espíritu, o e n la experiencia de la regeneración, y a l mostrarse muy a menudo totalmente indiferentes en cuanto al orden político y social general, los diversos voceros de la Reforma Radical no sólo se opusieron tácticamente y en principio a la Reforma Magisterial, sino que también se diferenciaron claramente de los protestantes del siglo XVI en cuanto a lo que constituía la experiencia y el concepto de la salvación, y a l o que constituía la verdadera iglesia y el comportamiento cristiano adecuado. En la doctrina luterana de la salvación por la sola fe veían una nueva sistema de indulgencias, más funesto que el que Lutero había atacado. Solían abstenerse de emplear el término teológicamente complementario de “santificación”, y preferían, en cambio, insistir en otros conceptos: la regeneración, el nuevo ser en Cristo, la energía del Espíritu, el reavivamiento de la conciencia moral o, en un lenguaje velado, la deificación. En todo caso, los exponentes y mártires de la Reforma Radical, lo mismo los anabaptistas que los espiritualistas y los racionalistas evangélicos, se parecían mucho por su inconformidad con las formulaciones luterano-zwingliano-calvinistas acerca de la expiación, de la justificación separada de las obras, del pecado original y de la predestinación. Desde su punto de vista, esas formulaciones rebajaban por completo la importancia de su experiencia religiosa personal y el ejercicio continuo de aquellas disciplinas personales y comunitarias mediante las cuales se afanaban en imitar, dentro de su grupo, algo que, a partir de sus interpretaciones de ciertos textos del Nuevo Testamento, sentían que había sido la comunidad apostólica original, o sea la continuidad del discipulado o incluso la imitación de Cristo y la fervorosa adhesión a sus claros preceptos. Desde el Enquiridion del soldado cristiano de Desiderio Erasmo (1504) y la sacramentaria Epistola christiana de Cornelio Hoen, pasando por el semivaldesiano Beneficio de la muerte de Cristo de Benedicto Mantuano, hasta el De Jesu Christo salvatore de Socino (1578), el gran tapiz de la Reforma Radical estuvo entretejido con una mal torcida madeja de hilos que iban dando una nueva configuración a l a doctrina de la salvación. En esta reconstrucción o r eubicación de la doctrina anselmiana de la redención, hecha en forma explícita a

xlii  the radical reformation veces, pero por lo general puramente implícita, hubo una característica insistencia en la misericordia divina y la elaboración de una devota y detallada doctrina de la imitatio Christi (el discipulado del cristiano renacido), una alteración correspondiente en la doctrina de la encarnación -formulada a veces con la idea de la carne celestial de Cristo (Miguel Servet, Gaspar Schwenckfeld, Menno Simons), a veces con la aseveración de su humanidad totalmente obediente, exaltada por Dios Padre hasta hacer de él el Rey del universo, no menos que de la verdadera Iglesia (Fausto Socino)- y muchas veces también una alteración en las formulaciones tradicionales de la relación del Padre con el Hijo, que podía consistir en varias cosas: desde sostener simplemente la triadología consubstancial inarticulada del Credo de los Apóstoles, hasta proclamar un unitarismo “nonadorante” y “ judaizante” (Francisco Dávid). En los tres sectores hubo, aquí y a llá por lo menos, un unitarismo explícito o i mplícito. Llevados por sus intensas convicciones escatológicas, algunos de los espiritualistas, muchos anabaptistas y casi todos los racionalistas evangélicos se adhirieron a la doctrina del sueño o la muerte del alma en el período anterior a la resurrección (psicopaniquismo o mortalismo). El ámbito y l os tipos de espiritualidad en la Reforma Radical -incluyendo aquí el misticismo popular y e l ascetismo en grupo- hacen pensar sucesivamente en el rigor del monasterio medieval, la remilgada devoción de los evangélicos católicos y la pasión de las órdenes de la iglesia contrarreformada, más que en la franca afirmación de la vida en toda su plentitud vocacional, que fue característica del luteranismo. Como hubo, de hecho, cierta continuidad entre el evangelismo católico y el racionalismo evangélico y el anabaptismo (v. gr. Erasmo), el breve interludio de evangelismo católico que brotó y luego se marchitó entre 1500 y 1542 en los territorios románicos y en el norte tendrá que ocupar un sitio en las páginas del presente libro. Algunos de sus primeros exponentes se pasaron a los protestantes, otros a la Reforma Radical, y o tros más, después de instalada la Inquisición romana en 1542, virtieron sus energías en la Contrarreforma. Constitucionalmente, la Reforma Radical estuvo, por supuesto, equidistante del protestantismo magisterial (clásico) y del catolicismo tridentino. Los reformadores surgidos en el seno de la vieja iglesia estaban inspirados en su acción por la idea de reformatio exactamente igual que los reformadores magisteriales; los anabaptistas, los espiritualistas y los racionalistas actuaron bajo un lema más radical: la restitutio o el millennium. Desde luego, aunque todos los protestantes hablaran de reformatio, hubo enormes diferencias entre ellos en cuanto al alcance de su ruptura con la iglesia medieval, y lo mismo cabe decir de los radicales y de su idea de restitutio (o restauratio). Los exponentes de la Reforma Radical, al abrazar el principio de la restauración fiel de la iglesia apostólica tal como existió en tiempos de los mártires (antes de recibir el apoyo que por razones de prudencia le dio Cons-



introduction to second edition  xliii

tantino), mostraron sin embargo entre sí ciertas discrepancias en cuanto al procedimiento que había que seguir para restaurar o convocar semejante Iglesia. También mostraron diferencias en sus ideas sobre la significación constitucional que el papel de los jueces y reyes del Viejo Testamento podía tener para los cristianos. De los tres grupos radicales, fueron los anabaptistas quienes más seguros estuvieron de poder reproducir la estructura de la cristiandad apostólica a partir del Nuevo Testamento, suplementado con textos que ellos consideraban comparables en antigüedad, o dotados simplemente de autoridad; por ejemplo, la descripción de las iglesias primitivas transmitida por Eusebio de Cesarea, una epístola (apócrifa) de San Clemente Romano y las obras de los padres antiguos. En el seno del anabaptismo hubo muchas discrepancias en cuanto al grado en que eran apropiables el esquema y l as instituciones del pueblo de la Vieja Alianza y sus Escrituras. Los anabaptistas de Münster, por ejemplo, animados de un ferviente espíritu escatológico, combinaron tranquilamente las lecturas de Daniel y del Apocalipsis, y así, con base en el Viejo Testamento, justificaron la reintroducción del tesoro común de los santos guerreros, y hasta de la poligamia en algunos casos. De manera parecida, los espiritualistas, aparte de estar divididos en grupos muy mal relacionados entre sí, sostuvieron opiniones muy divergentes en cuanto a la utilización de la Biblia como modelo para la iglesia. Müntzer, afanado en la reforma profética de la sociedad por obra de los santos elegidos, se servía del Viejo Testamento en sus manifiestos, mientras que Andrés Bodenstein van Carlstadt, literalista bíblico, encontró en el Viejo Testamento, informado por el Nuevo, y p articularmente por los evangelios, la base para una rápida aunque no violenta reforma igualitaria de la sociedad, y para la creación de iglesias libres o voluntarias, con derecho de nombrar cada una su pastor; y él, que iba a ser el primero en introducir la misa protestante (Wittenberg, Navidad de 1521), pudo coincidir con Schwenckfeld hasta el punto de celebrar ocasionalmente la eucaristía solo, en comunión con Dios, tal como pudo coincidir con los anabaptistas en su oposición al pedobautismo sin fe, hasta el punto de ser considerado un proto-anabaptista. Schwenckfeld, espiritualista o espiritualizante contemplativo, desesperando de una restitutio que fuera válida sin alguna guía más clara que la que hasta entonces había sido otorgada, prefirió—en medio de las violentas afirmaciones y c ontra—afirmaciones de protestantes, católicos y anabaptistas en torno a la Cena del Señor—seguir una “vía media” y, suspendiendo la celebración de la eucaristía, interiorizarla como comunión puramente espiritual, en espera del tiempo en que Dios mismo interviniera e instaurara la iglesia del Espíritu. Otros espiritualistas, como los libertinos y los nicodemitas en territorios católicos, se abstenían interiormente del uso de los sacramentos católicos, aunque ocasionalmente se conformaran a ellos por razones de prudencia, y al mismo tiempo eran interiormente protestantes o con mayor frecuencia radicales, como la valdesiana Julia Gonzaga, o como Fausto

xliv  the radical reformation Socino cuando se encontraba en la corte de Florencia. Pero el mismo Socino, cuando se vio libre para expresar sus opiniones en Polonia, sostuvo, con base en tres pasajes de la epístola a los Efesios, la extraordinaria tesis de que Jesús experimentó una ascensión anterior a la Ascensión, y que entonces fue instruido por el Padre acerca de tres puntos: qué cosas del Viejo Testamento debían seguir siendo válidas, cuáles tenían que ser modificadas y, sobre todo, qué principios distintivamente evangélicos eran esenciales para la salvación. Al mismo tiempo, Socino reprobó autoritariamente la práctica de la inmersión, que existía entre los hermanos polacos; y, así como Schwenckfeld suspendió la eucaristía, así él declaró que el bautismo en cualquiera de sus formas era innecesario, excepto posiblemente para los conversos del judaísmo y del islamismo. (Los hermanos polacos perseveraron por lo común en la práctica de la inmersión, y no pocas veces en el anabaptismo, hasta su disolución como iglesia en el exilio, después de 1660.) Los racionalistas evangélicos, desde Valdés, hasta Socino, a semejanza de los espiritualistas evangélicos, se mostraron muy afligidos por la acrimonia y el espíritu de división que surgían en cada intento de organizar la religión; algunos de ellos hubieran preferido el ideal semi-enunciado del católico evangélico Erasmo, a saber, una “tercera iglesia,” ni protestante ni católica, devota, pero no doctrinaria. En Polonia, Lituania y Transilvania, el fermento racionalista evangélico penetró de tal manera en las iglesias reformadas locales, que gracias a él se crearon tres organismos eclesiásticos internamente disciplinados, uno de ellos destinado a sobrevivir hasta el día de hoy: la Iglesia Unitaria de Rumania y Hungría. Así, pues, la doctrina de la iglesia “apostólica,” internamente disciplinada pero externamente libre, ha sido reconocida, y con toda razón, como una de las marcas comunes del conjunto de la Reforma Radical. En una consideración de problemas eclesiológicos y d e gobierno debe haber, naturalmente, una mención explícita de la teoría y práctica del ministerio y de la ordenación de los ministros. El hecho de que con mucha frecuencia los exponentes de la Reforma Radical fueron laicos ha oscurecido el hecho, no menos interesante, de que el movimiento fue en parte re-ordenacionista, tal como en su sector más importante fue ana-baptista. Entre los reformadores magisteriales se dieron varios casos de clérigos que, habiendo sido ordenados bajo el ancien régime, se negaron en principio a s er reordenados al hacerse protestantes. En cambio, dentro de la Reforma Radical hubo varios casos de antiguos sacerdotes que sintieron la necesidad de ser “re-comisionados”, y que acabaron por repudiar su ordenación católica (por ejemplo, Menno Simons). Se conocen también ejemplos de hombres obsesionados por el problema de la vocación apostólica válida, o sea, el de si habían sido auténticamente enviados a proclamar, a bautizar y a organizar en los postreros días del mundo (por ejemplo, Obbe Philips). En algunos casos, los portavoces de la Reforma Radical parecen haber vinculado la continuidad



introduction to second edition  xlv

de la autoridad misionera con la sucesión bautismal, cuando no, a veces, con la efusión directa del Espíritu. Muchos exponentes “seglares” de la Reforma Radical, como Valdés y G rebel, como Schwenckfeld y S ocino, nunca fueron ordenados. A decir verdad, las credenciales de mando, en las filas de la Reforma Radical, no solían ser regulares en los comienzos, sino más bien de orden moral, o académico, o carismático. El empuje vigorosamente reordenacionista dentro de la Reforma Radical sólo se hacía explícito—casi no hace falta decirlo—en los casos en que un clérigo del viejo orden llegaba a ser dirigente en el nuevo. Sin embargo, entre los reclutas de la Reforma Radical eran mucho más comunes los monjes y frailes sin órdenes sacerdotales que los sacerdotes ordenados y los prelados. De esa manera, el conflicto básico que llegó a a rticularse entre la Reforma Radical y l a Reforma Magisterial, en cuanto al concepto de la naturaleza de la iglesia y de las normas de gobierno, no giró, en ninguno de los dos bandos, en torno al problema de las órdenes sacerdotales, que por lo general no se tomaba muy en cuenta, sino más bien en torno a la oposición entre la educación teológica de tipo universitario, por un lado, y la vocación apostólica, o profética, o inspirada, por el otro. Relacionada con la prominencia de los seglares en la Reforma Radical y con la extensión funcional del sacerdocio de todos los creyentes en el sentido del testimonio personal de Cristo en misiones y m artirios, no en cuanto diversificación del concepto de vocación (como sucedía en el caso de Lutero y de Calvino), estuvo la correspondiente elevación de las mujeres a una posición de igualdad casi completa con los hombres en la tarea central de la comunidad de los renacidos. El enaltecimiento del papel de las mujeres, a su vez, provocó una revisión del concepto medieval del sacramento del matrimonio en el contexto pactual de la Reforma Radical. Los cristianos modernos, y todas las demás personas que procuren captar el fenómeno de la Reforma Radical como un todo, tienen que tratar de verla como uno de los dos frentes contra los cuales se esforzó el protestantismo clásico en establecer su posición; el otro frente fue el catolicismo, que estaba renovando su fuerza y expandiendo sus vínculos globales. El enemigo que Lutero y M elanchthon, y Zwinglio, y l uego Enrique Bullinger, Calvino y Tomás Cranmer tenían a su derecha era el papa, a quien identificaban con el Anticristo; en cuanto al enemigo común que tenían a la izquierda , no tardaron en considerarlo como un Cérbero de tres cabezas, y, olvidando su acostumbrada precisión teológica, le pusieron a este monstruo nombres insultantes y casi intercambiables: libertinismo, anabaptismo, fanatismo. En nuestros tiempos estamos en posición de ver con claridad mucho mayor que ellos las diferencias existentes en el seno de la Reforma Radical. En verdad, los historiadores todos—los que escriben dentro de tradiciones denominacionales supervivientes de la época de sus mártires, los que escriben dentro de tradiciones que dependen indirectamente de esa época, los que pertenecen a otras confesiones y los estrictamente neutrales—han llegado tan

xlvi  the radical reformation lejos en la tarea de diferenciar el papel de anabaptistas, espiritualistas y racionalistas evangélicos en el cuadro del siglo XVI, que lo que hace falta es más bien acentuar la gran necesidad de ver sinópticamente la Reforma Radical, a fin de entender mejor no sólo la morfología general del radicalismo cristiano, sino también la formulación clásica del protestantismo. Puede decirse que la Reforma Radical, ese abigarrado episodio de la historia general del cristianismo, se extiende desde 1516, año en que Erasmo publicó su edición del texto griego del Nuevo Testamento, hasta 1566 o bien, en uno que otro caso, hasta un racimo de acontecimientos situados hacia 1578 y 1579, a saber: la muerte del caudillo de los hutteritas en sus años dorados (Pedro Walpot); la muerte del caudillo de los unitarios transilvanos (David); la llegada de Fausto Socino a Polonia y su identificación con la Iglesia Reformada Menor, movimiento inmersionista, unitario, en gran parte pacifista, que luego, bajo su tutela, avanzó en dirección del socinianismo; la tolerancia oficial del mennonitismo por parte de Guillermo de Orange; y la disputa de Em len entre los mennonitas y los reformados. Aproximadamente hacia esos años, la Reforma Radical había eliminado sus excesos más obvios; había suavizado sus asperezas y, lo que es más, había llegado a diferenciar y a redefinir con bastante claridad sus muy variados impulsos, asentándose y consolidándose internamente en sectas y comunidades diversas y por lo común aisladas. Tras un período de lento acopio de fuerzas, los portadores de sus ideas y cierto número de instituciones y de grupos afines a ellos iban a tener de nuevo un papel importante en la historia general, sobre todo en la restructuración del cristianismo británico en la época de las Guerras Civiles y de la Com­monwealth. Y una vez más en estos tiempos nuestros en que, dentro de un nuevo contexto, a la vez secular y académico, las iglesias estatales europeas se están separando del Estado, en que las grandes denominaciones eclesiásticas del Canadá y de los Estados Unidos se hallan en proceso de reorganización, en que las iglesias protestantes y c atólicas de la América latina viven una etapa de fermentación, en que las iglesias de Asia y África, más jóvenes, están recibiendo el desafío de las renacientes religiones étnicas y de la “religión” internacional del proletariado; en estos tiempos, finalmente, en que la misión de las iglesias en todas partes se está reconcibiendo dentro de un ambiente básicamente hostil o enajenado, los cristianos de muchas denominaciones se están viendo a sí mismos, constitucionalmente o de otras maneras diversas, más cercanos a quienes descienden de los sectarios de la Era de la Reforma, tan despreciados en un tiempo, que a los defensores clásicos de unos corpora christiana reformados, religio-territoriales, intolerantes en su gran mayoría, que acabaron por sustituirse, sobre un suelo confesionalmente ensangrentado, a la antigua cristiandad internacional, la del papa y l os concilios, cristiandad no mucho menos diversificada, y en algunos períodos ciertamente más tolerante.

xlviii  the radical reformation



map  xlix

Introduction to Third Edition

T he Radical Reformation

may be seen conceptually as having taken place within the social interstices between the classical/territorial Magisterial Reformation and the Counter-Reform of t he Council of Trent, with the Rome-loyal devotion and enterprise of the new Jesuit Order and its conventual allies among the quite new and also the older reformed orders that were committed on a g rand scale to recover Christendom for the Holy See. The Radical Reformation shares with the Magisterial Reformation what was distinctive to the sixteenth century in the yearning for the sense of the divine immediacy in the recovery of Scripture as decisive and in its sense of urgency for reform or renewal both within society at large, from commune to nation, and above all within the ecclesiastical realm of congregation, cathedral, council, and university—itself a distinctive institution shaped by Christendom. In this Reformation mood the “magisterials” first and more drastically the “radicals” cut back the medieval growths by at first moderate and then by drastic pruning in consequence of the tripartite proclamation of Martin Luther: salvation on the basis of sola scriptura, through sola fides on the part of the believer, by virtue of sola gratia in the inscrutable mystery of the eternal intradeical decrees of predestination to election of the saints before the foundation of the world (and the reprobation of the praesciti). There is a consensus among Christian and other scholars that the Latin term reformatio had already by the opening of the sixteenth century acquired in German usage the combined sense of renewal and reform in both church and society. With Luther, the reform in the church became swiftly, inexorably also the reformation of dogma in the light of fresh philological access to Scripture and new hermeneutical principles in the dismantling of much in the tripartite non-literal interpretation of Scripture going back to Origen and Jerome, in the scholastic formulation of d ogma, in medieval sacramental piety, and in the concurrent recalling of worshipers from the side chapels of the saints to the central actions of Word and Sacrament at pulpit and high altar, and the reinterpretation of vocation as calling not only of the clergy and the religious but also of all those engaged in the full diver-

1

2  the radical reformation sity of human toil, beginning perhaps with the duties of marriage and the conjugal estate.1 The whole age thus takes its name from this central upheaval and rearrangement of Christian values as the era of the Reformation, including the reformation of d octrine. Luther himself, using the verbal form, looking back, reflected on what had happened through him: “I have, praise be to God, reformed more with my Evangel than perhaps they [the Papists] have done with their five councils!” 2 Central to this dogmatic re-formation by Luther was the elimination of the intercessory role of the saints, including that of Maria Mediatrix, in his Reformation stress on “the one … Mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ” (1 Tim. 2:5), Christus pro nobis. Luther’s upheaval is never in German or English (or in the languages under the impact of German culture) called the Reform but rather always the Reformation (e.g., Dutch Reformatie), whereas in lands of R omance speech that same age is by established convention called the age of Réforme, Reforma, Riforma. (Riformazione in Italian and similar constructions are neologisms that only reflect awareness of the theological distinctiveness in German of Reformation.) It was the preeminence of French Geneva and its widely imitated urban and cantonal reformation that makes of its presbyterial/synodal Église Réformée the ultimate referent for the adjectival usage of Reformed/Reformiert and hence the generic term for all that part of the classical Protestant Reformation deriving from that of Switzerland (though, to be sure, in earlier English usage “Reformed” could also embrace without distinction the Lutheran and even the English Church of t he sixteenth century). It is important to remark in advance that in lands to the east of the Empire and therefore very much under German influence, “die Reformation” was early indigenized in their languages (e.g., Polish Reformacja), while the Latin and vernacular terms (reformowany) for the specifically Reformed in Polonia and Hungaria were soon stabilized as referring exclusively and distinctively to the Swiss or Helvetic version of Protestantism and eventually that, too, of the Rhenish Palatinate and then the Netherlandish model of Reformation in contrast to the Augsburgian version with its grounding in the Confession of Augsburg (1530). (Augsburgian is the prevailing term for Lutherans in the Polish-

1  For a recent forceful statement of this point, see Heiko A. Oberman, “The Reformation as a Theological Revolution” in Zwingli und Europa: Referate und Protokoll des Inter nationalen Kongresses aus Anlass des 500. Geburtstages von Huldrych Zwingli vom 26. bis 30. Marz 1984, ed. Peter Blickle et al. (Zurich:Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1985). 2  “Ich habe, gott lob, mehr reformiert mit meinem e vangelio, denn die [die Päpstlichen] vielleicht mit fünf conciljs hetten gethan” from Grimm, Wörterbuch 8 (Leipzig, 1893); Luthers Werke, 6.121.



introduction to third edition  3

Lithuanian Commonwealth and in the several parts of t he tripartitioned Apostolic Kingdom of Hungary). The third, the Radical Reformation took place especially in these Eastern Central European lands largely within the synodal framework of the Reformed churches, although, of course, into these lands streamed other kinds of religious refugees, including Anabaptists and Evangelical Rationalists, from many other nations. Of the three subdivisions of this third thrust we speak more fully below. For the reform within Catholicism—conventual, devotional, conciliar, episcopal, and papal—the conventional term in several languages, generally accepted by both Protestants and Catholics, is Counter-Reformation (Gegenreformation), first introduced by L eopold von Ranke, universalizing from the perspective of the Holy Roman Empire. 3 The very first use of this term was by the German Lutheran jurist Johann Stephan Pütter in 1776 in the plural for the piecemeal recoveries by Catholicism, locality by locality, of once Protestant territories. The term Counter-Reformation has thus the value of locating in the sixteenth century and characterizing much of the motivation and spirit of the Catholic Church as reaction to the Protestant Revolt from Rome and the recovery by various means of vast parts of Central and East Central Europe (Transylvania, for example, having earlier become virtually Protestant for a century and a half ). But the term Reformation for Catholicism may here be only a tolerable mischaracterization by assimilation, for it basically presupposes that what happened was not only a reaction to Luther’s doctrinal and institutional Reformation but also a distinctive renewal from within (Evangelical Catholicism, Expectantentum), and thus unwittingly implies a substantive reformation of doctrine, which was, in fact, programmatically resisted by the Council of Trent. The word Contre-Réforme, a preferred usage, reflecting not only the vast scholarship promoted by t he work of R anke but also by o thers on the pre-Lutheran Catholic Reform, first entered the French language quite late (1914) 4 in combination with the very word in all Romance languages for die Reformation, namely, la Réforme, hence in English: Counter-Reform. Nevertheless, to vindicate for the Catholic Church both the integrity and distinctiveness of its own prehistory of reform and its dogmatic conservatism (including the elevation of the Vulgate as authoritative over the Bible in the original tongues) and yet also to claim or even reclaim for itself some of what Luther himself achieved, the two terms “Catholic Reform/-Reformation” have admittedly for the most part emerged to replace or supplement the primarily polemical “Counter-Reformation” or the theologically more precise Counter-Reform. But in the ensuing narrative it will always be 3 4

 Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation, 6 vols. (1839-47).  Paul Robert, La Langue Francaise, 9 vols. (Paris, 1985), 2:89.

4  the radical reformation called the Counter-Reform, which in being organizationally transnational and also theologically protective of the freedom of the will unto salvation (synergism, works, sanctification), abuts on the left flank the Radical Reformation, which in all sectors likewise resisted the stark predestinarianism of the classical Reformers. Moreover, similar to the Radical Reformation, the Counter-Reform in council assembled and in friars dispatched reactivated the Great Commission (Matt. 28:19-30) to spread the Gospel by a ll means within and beyond the confines of old Christendom. Only the friars and the radicals in the sixteenth century preached outside the precincts of parish, convent, and cathedral and baptized tremorous adults by t he thousands into the new faith or into the old faith renewed. In placing the Radical Reformation as an entity in its own right in the sixteenth century alongside the Counter-Reform and the Magisterial Reformation there is merit in the proposal of Henry Outram Evennett, The Spirit of the Counter-Reformation (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968), that the term “Catholic Confessionalism,” alongside the more specific Lutheran, Reformed, and Anglican Confessionalism, might be helpful especially from 1530 (Confession of Au gsburg) but notably from 1555 (the Peace of Augsburg) into the seventeenth century, for the radicals, too, began forming confessions, articles, and catechisms, already beginning in 1527. While recent Catholic scholarship, itself accepting now by p reference the term “Counter-Reformation” and yet vindicating the idea of internal renewal as a forerunner and intertwined motif within it, has not in general countenanced any clear distinction between “Reform” and “Reformation,” and hence Counter-Reformation, as I i ndicated, will always refer to that development in the sixteenth century in full rootage and in its plenitude as the “Counter-Reform,” capitalizing on the richness of English that can sympathetically vibrate with the sense of t he differentiated words in German and the Romance languages and thereby also suggest the placement of the Tridentine Counter-Reform in line with other great movements of the Church, and underscore for this epoch, under the impact of Luther and the general Revolt from Rome, the striving in the Counter-Reform to recover the universal papal ministry and to strengthen the universal character of the Church and its organs of central and, imminently, global oversight and delegated administration (the Hispanic Padronado), and to the extent possible to gird the Church to achieve, regain, and reconceive its mission to, and above, the nations over against the swiftly emerging ascendancy in European history of royal absolutism, the Counter-Magisterial-Reform, in the



introduction to third edition  5

great succession of reforms from the Gregorian Reform, through the Conciliar Reform, to the Aggiornamento of Vatican II.5 The Radical Reformation (3rd edition; 2nd English edition) as I h ave conceived it and now revisit it as a whole in the quincentenary year of the discovery of t he New World, shares traits with both the classical Protestant/Magisterial Reformation and the Counter-Reform. To be sure, following pre-vailing usage in Romance language, my work of 1962 in Spanish translation became still “La Reforma Radical.” The scholarly translator, Dr. Antonio Alatorre, professor at the prestigious Colegio de México, who had long before endured, as he might have put it, a f ull Catholic seminary training, felt no need to reconsider the possibility of using in his language the recessive alternative, Reformacion, in rendering in Spanish the title of my account and conceptualization of persons, movements, and events with which he indeed professed some affinity as being indeed more than a reform, in fact, even at times a revolutionary or at least a fiercely separatist repudiation of what was still deemed as an oppressive order of Christendom, whether Protestant or Catholic with its practical interlocking of church and state. 5  To repeat, of the two nouns for the r eformatory events in Catholic histor y, concurrent with the Radical Reformation, “Counter-Reform” is in my view theologically preferable because in international scholarship “Reformation” vibrates for many with that G erman resonance of a threefold reform, including that of dogma, in the distinctively German evolution in the sixteenth century of the originally monastic reformatio. The term “Catholic R eformation” is all the less apposite since in the papal Chur ch received dogma was not consider ed subject to r eformation, only reformulation and clarification in the drawing of further dogmatic inferences from Scripture and pruning back episcopal pluralism and introducing diocesan and conventual seminaries, primarily envisaged changes long advocated—not least frequently the series of other great movements of renewal and reform in the history of Latin Christendom. To be sure, in the volume honoring Kurt Dietrich Schmidt (1896-1964), Die katholische Reform und die Gegenrefor mation (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1957), ed. Manfred Jacobs, the very title reflected an effort to recognize both antecedent internal renewal and external reaction to Wittenberg, Geneva, and Canterbury. The Catholic movement of renewal, beginning in Spain in the religio-cultural outreach in the universal mission in the age of its New World discoveries and its European hegemony, is in the German called, indeed, Catholic Reform. But, the initiator of this conceptualization, Wilhelm Maurer, had earlier entitled his pioneering wor k Die Geschichte der Katholischen Reformation (Nördlingen, 1880) as though dogma and discipline w ere both inv olved. Hubert Jedin in his compr ehensive essay in celebration of the four th centenary of the opening of the Council of Trent, Katholische Reformation und die Gegenreformation (Lucern: Stocker, 1946), also made no distinction in German between Reform (used, however, only occasionally of the general thrust of the age) and Reformation, using the latter term as epoch-specific but not as inherently dogma-related as for some scholarly P rotestants. Although J edin made clear that while both “reactionary” and “progressive,” the essentials of the medieval Church were safeguarded and yet purified, and that though vast terrains were definitively lost to territorial Protestantism, despite massive local Gegenreformationen (in the plural, the first and topographic sense of the word), the Church, centralized in Rome under the Papacy, was now girded and strengthened to face supranationally the increasing state absolutism, for “ A Catholic Reform preceded and went parallel with the Counter-Reformation,” while “the Council of Trent stands at the midpoint betw een both movements and served both: it is the most important Church historical event in the transitional age (Zwischenzeitalter) of “Reform” that reaches from the fifteenth century to the middle of the seventeenth.” The ideas of Jedin, of Schmidt, and of Mauer seem most succinctly and aptly rendered in English as Counter-Reform.

6  the radical reformation And it was the same Professor Alatorre who urged me to insert a new section in the book on the full sense of t he word “Magisterial,” which he liked. But he then also surprised me with his choice for the dust jacket of the Mexican volume: a detail of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, which in my view is an episode that, while it sets forth vividly a c ruel aspect of the Counter-Reform mentality, nevertheless features as its victims the noble and high bourgeois Huguenots of France who had been by Dowager Queen Catherine de’ Medici invited as guests at the royal nuptials in Notre Dame in a gesture on both sides of mutual acceptance of Catholics and Calvinists that was intended as irenic. The slain Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, overwhelmed in a r oyal guest chamber, is scarcely a r epresentative figure in the Radical Reformation; nor is the Henry of Valois who stands by in the scene, unperturbed, the future King-elect of Poland (1574) and of France as Henry III, an appropriate symbol of the best in the Counter-Reform. The dust jacket, vividly portraying the atrocities of the age of Confessionalism, obscures inadvertently the distinctions fundamental in the ensuing narrative among those Reforms-Reformations: Protestant, Catholic, and Radical. If there is, then, some support in German as well as full support in French usage for Catholic “Reform” and hence in English for “Counter-Reform,” as distinguished from Catholic “Reformation,” it can also be useful to speak with even more specificity of this Counter-Reform, over against the Magisterial Reformation, meaning thereby to emphasize the internal reform and reenergization of the papal Church in the emergent context of the religiopolitical counterforce, the Magisterial Reformation. Magisterial here has both the generic reference to kings, princes, and town councils and also the specific reference to its theological leadership by university and preparatory school masters who took seriously the trilingual classical tradition as the key to gaining access to the scriptural sources of the faith as also to the tradition of t heir interpretation from within the Church. These master-pastors preached the gospel in the received parochial and conventual edifices and by reappropriation of the endowments of the old order, but now greatly enfreshened by a higher education: on principle, a learned and also a conjugal clergy with a new ideal of family life in manse and master’s household, but a clerical leadership that in principle no longer claimed to be continuous with the medieval sacerdotium, since on principle Magisterial and Radical Reformers alike disavowed any sacrificatory role at the Supper of t he Lord, the only High Priest and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the world. The leadership of the Magisterial and the Radical Reformations were hence no longer sacerdotal but ministerial in the sense of doctoral and pastoral and could thus, amidst the priesthood of a ll believers, respectively claim only doctoral or charismatic authority over the sacerdotes of the older order with their sacramental replication of the Sacrifice of Calvary by v irtue of t heir indelible ordination in apostolic succession from Christ.



introduction to third edition  7

In the light of the distinguishable meanings of “reform” and “reformation,” the tripartite Radical Reformation might itself better have, to be sure, been called either the Separatist Reform or the Radical Restitution, for all groupings within it ended up in the quest for the Restoration of Christianity as practiced and believed in the centuries before the Constantinian establishment. They could therefore indeed, as in the Spanish version of my work, have been called also The Radical Reform, for in some respects the Radicals retained several of t he late medieval impulses like the Devotio Moderna and mysticism common to the Counter-Reform and were disposed to employ much more of t he apocryphal and even the extra-canonical legacy from Christian antiquity than the Magisterial Reformers. My main resistance to this compelling reconsideration of n omenclature is that in the process described in the ensuing narrative the Radicals, like the Magisterial Reformers, were on principle prepared to espouse the reformation of d octrine as well as the reform of ecclesial institutions, the family, and society at large. So intent was their desire also for the thorough reformation of doctrine in the light of Scripture, shorn of all patristic and scholastic gloss, that, like many historians for the Catholicism of t he same age, I a m drawn to appropriate the era-specific term Reformation for them even as I remain reserved about the propriety of t he use of t he term Radical Reformation for any epoch before or after the century of Luther, unless it be within the context of “The Reforming of t he Reformation” in Stuart England, so much is the term Radical Reformation (of doctrine and institution) a constellation unique to the religio-historical zodiac under the signs of C olumbus, Luther, Calvin, Suleiman II the Magnificent, and Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible. On the thirtieth anniversary of The Radical Reformation (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1962), it is appropriate therefore for the reviser of a work that widely influenced the conceptualization of, and further research in, “the Left Wing of t he Reformation” ( John T. McNeill and Roland Bainton) and indeed of the whole age of the Reformation and the CounterReform in general, to go even further in comment on his now enlarged coverage of that socio-ecclesial, scriptural, and religio-political radicality, involving even the high dogmas of received Christianity, and to share with a new generation of r eaders what is new and what is old about this now much revised volume. Although all thirty-three chapters of t he original survive, the sections and the subsections have been in many cases substantially reworked, rearranged, and much altered in the light of the enormous monographic research and source collection edited in the past thirty years, some of it under the stimulus of m y initial synthesizing and comprehensive coverage that expressly went beyond the Anabaptists and even then included more regional variants of even these protesters of conscience than was generally recognized at that time within the research of the GermanDutch cultural sphere and its transatlantic counterparts.

8  the radical reformation It may therefore be interesting to general readers as well as to the specialists to learn that as a young Church historian, I originally conceived of this work as my first scholarly trench to be cut into the massive accumulation of sixteenth-century research and source collection in order to gain for my part a s trong grip on the sources and the specialized literatures, and thereby to assimilate a fresh perspective on the whole age of Luther, Calvin, and Loyola, in order to prepare for handling in the larger framework of a g eneral Church history an insightful fresh reinterpretation of that crucial age as a whole that in the end divided Catholics from Protestants and, through the doctrinal and disciplinary consolidation of Catholicism in the protracted councils of Trent, would even further divide Latin Christendom as now regrouped under a s elf-reforming Papacy (reeling from the Reformation) from the Byzantine and other ancient Orthodox jurisdictions now almost completely under the Ottoman Empire (since 1453) or under the Russian Empire (the latter with its former grand duke now Tsar, 1547, and its former metropolitan of Moscow now a patriarch, 1589) or under the successor states of the Apostolic Kingdom of Hungary or under the Catholic kingship of the vast Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth that stretched from the Empire far beyond Kiev. It is true that the Radical Reformation never penetrated Orthodox terrain much beyond Palatinate Lithuania (not ethnic Lithuanian Samogitia), Ruthenia, Volhynia, and Moldavia. My Radical Reformation of 1962 (RR1) was thus originally undertaken as a preliminary monograph, the better to prepare myself as a t heologically convinced generalist in Church history (giving survey courses and corresponding seminars in the Harvard History Department and the Harvard Divinity School in a four-semester cycle) to write a fresh interconfessionally authentic text of the whole history of Christianity (alas, never completed). The larger series of volumes projected in 1959 was entitled “The History of the New Testament People: An Ecumenical Church History.” This was worked out with Eugene Exman at a m ajor New York publishing house, parallel to which was to be written by Jaroslav Pelikan of Yale University the equally comprehensive study of The Christian Tradition in its four main aspects, to appear, as it would come to pass, in much expanded form in five volumes with the subtitle: A History of the Development of Doctrine (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971-89), the eminently scholarly but ingeniously readable American counterpart of Harnack’s Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte (3 vols., 1886-89; English: History of Dogma, 7 vols., 1894-99). With my large vision of a t ruly universal Church history in time and global space, I h ad chosen to make my very first bibliographic dig and expository presentation in a marginalized aspect of the great century of the classical or Magisterial Reformers of Latin Christendom. I so characterized



introduction to third edition  9

them in reference to the fact that they were supported in their territorial reforms by their princes or free-city magistrates and to the additional fact that they regarded themselves, university-trained, often recruits from the older orders, as philologically qualified masters or doctors of that degree of expertise that legitimated their authority alongside that of both the magisterium of the Catholic bishops and their periti and also of the charismatic popular preachers who, moved by the Scriptures as turned into the vernaculars by these same university divines, proclaimed the biblical faith afresh. This faith seemed to the radicals, in sound adhesion to the high proclamations of the great Reformers themselves, to be a warranty not only of the Christian liberty and the religious discernment on the part of p rinces, magistrates, and university professors but also of lesser townspeople and peasants, indeed of the very kind of p eople, peasants and fishermen, lesser priests, petty officers, local administrators, centurions, and the many adherent and courageous women recorded in the translated Gospels and Epistles as the principal auditors and addressees of the Lord and his Apostles. All these more consequent or radical followers of t he Gospel as it was being transmuted for them by the suddenly proliferating printed broadsides, tracts, sermons, and Bible translations of the great Reformers themselves and amplified and sharpened up by preachers of their own social milieu, not excluding among these, however, quite a f ew university-trained scholars themselves (like John Denck and Andreas Bodenstein of Karlstadt), who sympathized with the commoners, and even some displaced lesser lords, and landowners, and mystical, even apostolic physicians (like Leonard of Liechtenstein, Sophia Oles´nicka, Caspar Schwenckfeld, or Paracelsus) who had long been yearning for a renewal of the faith in head and members and were particularly drawn to any fresh rationale for the devout and spiritual life on the basis of the word of God. Although the congeries of d isparate, ethical, societary, and theological radicals of v arious impulses and aspirations were surely no more homogeneous in their theology, sacramental usage, and conceptualization of the new currents, agitating them all alike, than the Magisterial Reformers, Elizabethan, Augsburgian, and Reformed, still they may be grouped together as an entity, as the Radical Reformation, insofar as in the end, if not at once, they or their successors in their congregations, sects, conventicles, fellowships, communes, and synodal churches for a number of reasons became detached from the primary Magisterial Reformation motif of territorial reform of all the institutions in a g iven civil jurisdiction, whether city-state or national kingdom, and would come to appreciate and then defend their separation from the state and the state-supported ecclesiastical institutions—parish churches, cathedrals, schools, and the patronage of m agistrates of v arious titles and authority, from landlord to Emperor—and commonly uphold the principle of confessional toleration and in some cases interfaith irenicism and

10  the radical reformation theological colloquy under the guidance of the same Holy Spirit that inspired the original Scripture. From the first appearance of The Radical Reformation in 1962 there was some feeling, especially among European reviewers, that the massive and comprehensive monograph, with its elaboration of the Troeltschian socio-ecclesial typology of church, sect, and mystic type, was a belated projection on the historiography of the Reformation era of the pattern of separatism taken as selfevident in a citizen scholar of a Republic fostered by that Enlightenment age coalition of Deists and individualistic sectarians who had drafted or endorsed the United States Constitution and its Bill of Rights, the first amendment of which assured the separation of Church and State and inhibited the Congress of the Federal government and, after the Civil War, similarly the state legislatures in conformity thereto, from “making any law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” In chapter 32 n. 67, I extensively survey the scholarly literature, supportive or critical of my conceptualization of a tripartite Radical Reformation. In the Spanish version, La Reforma Radical (RR 2 ) much amplified (Mexico City & M adrid: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1983), I a lready took cognizance of this critique and that also of my elaborate typology for Anabaptists, Spiritualists, and Evangelical Rationalists, as the three main thrusts in the Radical Reformation, and acknowledged that in several instances the proto-radicals had indeed a conception of reform in head and members that could have eventuated in a new territorial corpus christianorum, that is, a civic body of programmatically reformed persons, as distinguished from the widely superseded corpus christianum and its corrupted medieval institutions, including the international celibate clergy under the Bishop of Rome and the innumerable orders under almost always external vicars general and mothers superior. There were indeed admittedly the makings here and there of a proto-Erastian non-separating territorial congregationalism and a r egenerate magistracy for, say, a g iven canton ( James Stayer). For, like the classical Protestants of the three thrusts, the radicals broke with clerical celibacy and the authority of universal higher sacerdotal instances like the Pope and the ecumenical council. But they came to find insufficiently apostolic almost every emergent reformed territory—whether town, canton, or princedom. Radical perfectionists, often unwitting bearers of the medieval ascetic ideal under “Protestant” sanction, they in the end spurned almost every territory magisterially reclaimed for Christ in all its civic institutions, freed of the concubinate clergy, friars, and nuns of the old order even as these superseded celibates for Christ might be drawn into a highly disciplined evangelical community modeled on an idealized biblically covenantal community, all subject to new scriptural disciplines of self-confessing believers but without any break with their ancestral parishes, without repudiation of t heir infant



introduction to third edition  11

baptisms therein, and without any overall rupture from their sponsoring godparents and the ambient civic religion of sanctified guilds and public pageantry on the feast day of the local patron saint. I recognize in the present revision the innumerable permutations of the corpus christianum in the sixteenth century and the survival of comparable impulses even among the radicals to proceed with territorial reform of village or town (Gemeindereformation), as with the patrician pietist Conrad Grebel in his first phase in Zurich; as with Thomas Müntzer in his compelling eschatological address to the Saxon nobles; as with Balthasar Hubmaier at Waldshut and then in his virtual establishment of a Baptist commonweal in Nicolsburg (Milukov) in Moravia under the patron lords of L iechtenstein converted by believers’ baptism; as also with some of the followers of biblicist Lithuanian Unitarian non-pacifist Baptist Simon Budny under the patronage of Palatine John Kiszka of Brest, owner of hundreds of villages. I have even from time to time introduced into the narrative several instances of parish or commune or city-state reform among the social or theological radicals (like Slavkov, Pin´czów, Raków, Kolozsvár) and have even interposed, for further contrast, four instances of the most distinctively Christianized form of e stablished polity in detailing at intervals the liturgical kingship embodied in the papal coronation of Charles V at Bologna in 1530 (as experienced by M ichael Servetus); in the sacring of John of L eiden as Davidic king of Anabaptist Münster in 1534; in the self-deprecating coronation in Westminster Abbey of Edward VI by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer in 1547; and finally in the solemn liturgical unction of the first Diet-elected king of t he Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Henry of Valois in 1573, when Protestant and Catholic peers, temporal and episcopal, jointly operating under the Confederation of Warsaw, guaranteed confessional toleration that mutatis mutandis would become integral to the Polish constitution until the final tripartition of this huge state in 1795. But these last four episodes have been selected only to enhance in contrast the socio-religiously radical thrust of most of the radical reformers and their martyrdom-ready followers, women conspicuous among them, as they sought to restore or restitute the ideal community in Christ and the Holy Spirit of not conforming wholly to the world (Rom. 12:1-2), a scriptural legacy that they thought of as pinched off when Constantine formulated Christian dogma at the Council of Nicaea and allegedly made a territorial Donation to Pope Sylvester. Even though there were refugee Lutherans, and especially Calvinists, and Anglicans living as sojourners far away from their native parishes and were thus linguistically in part also provisionally separatists, only the groups subsumed under the Radical Reformation in general sought on principle to organize their church life independent of t he ministry of public order (the magistracy) even though they were in varying degrees sensible of civic responsibilities outside the realm of religion, morality, and conscience, and

12  the radical reformation even though some of them benefited from patrons, both convert and merely benignant, the examples among them most closely approaching proto-Erastianism being that of the Unitarian parishes in the multiconfessional establishment of the Diet of Transylvania. The readers of the intertwined lives and deeds of the disparate radicals, overheard in their colloquies or judicial hearings before the representatives of the Magisterial Reformation or the Counter-Reform, may feel that under my guidance they are setting forth on a trek among the little people of the great age of Reformation and Counter-Reform in Latin Christendom from Spain to the Ukraine, on the wrong foot by stepping in the very first chapter into the Iberian Peninsula, for the most part ruled by t heir “Catholic Majesties,” Ferdinand and Isabella (papal title bestowed, 1494), who made of Christopher Columbus just five centuries ago the Admiral of the Ocean Sea and their Viceroy of t he New World. But our epic of t he little people in a vast surge of hope, speculation, high mission, and extraordinary intermingling of peoples across the face of Europe, under the ongoing impact of t he religiously most radical act of t he age to date, Luther’s burning of the canon law, not inappropriately begins in that part of Europe, where, after the initial conquest by the Muslims of the peninsula (in 711), the prolific scholars among the victors, came to live in a Golden Age for all three of the world religions issuing from the loins of Abraham and from the wombs of Sarah or Hagar, a realm where interfaith dialogue of courtesy, mutual respect, and profound interpenetration reached its highest point in all of E urope, and yet where, alas, in 1492 even converted and baptized Jews (Marranos) and converted Moors (Moriscos) suddenly felt under enormous pressure to leave the two world maritime states of the peninsula, even though they in many cases felt devoutly attached to the religion that their forebears had, to be sure, under varying degrees of c oercion, come to accept and which now, in their various places of r efuge, from Naples to Thessalonica, they were learning was under an enormous flood tide of further reform often to their liking, from Wittenberg and Strassburg, from Zurich and Geneva, from Oxford and Cambridge, from Vilna, Pin´czów, and Kolozsvár. The whole of the sixteenth century, on the Reformation side, as distinguished from the Renaissance, must therefore come to be seen as the period (in contrast to its “acute Hellenization” in patristic antiquity—Adolf von Harnack) of “the acute Hebraicization of Christianity” under the impact of the humanists and the reformers’ parole ad fontes, fully as much as it was on the Renaissance side a return to the rhetoric, art, historiography, and the philology of classical antiquity, Greek and Latin. Readers must therefore be prepared to look first in the ensuing narrative to certain religious currents and countercurrents in the two states of Hispanic Christendom, so recently reconquered from Islam (its last holdout in Granada),



introduction to third edition  13

between which maritime empires Pope Alexander VI divided the New World (1493), especially to the Marranos. Descendants of such distinguished religious and scholarly patrimony, among those who remained, some would become eminences in the rise of high mysticism in Spain (St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross); those outside the peninsula, contributors to the radicalization of Protestant theology, notably as Valdesianism in Italy and in the outright Judaizing of certain conventicles and synods of the Anabaptists of Reformed antecedents in Venice, Heidelberg, Vilna, Nowogródek, and Kolozsvár. Moreover, in several colloquies under the Unitarian and Calvinist princes of Transylvania, a puppet state of the Ottoman Empire, quite serious interfaith dialogues and colloquies would unfold, reminiscent of those of Spain in the interfaith Golden Age, under Catholic as well as Protestant gentry and magnates in the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth also under an elected Catholic king. At the same time, in the opening chapter on the Iberian peninsula, while it does not directly bring readers in contact with social or ecclesiological or theological radicals in the regnant sense of the book as a whole, Erasmus of Europe is here introduced, for his influence in the rise of Hispanic Evangelical Catholicism was notable; and the quasi-mystical Evangelical Rationalism of the Marrano brothers Valdés is also introduced, that of John Valdés destined to have abiding influence in Naples and to the north, directly under his own name and indirectly through such figures as Bernadine Ochino, the former Capuchin vicar general and exhortative preacher from Sicily to Venetia, influenced by John Valdés. And Spain is, moreover, the native land of M ichael Servetus back of w hose esoteric effort to reformulate the Trinity was his desire to make the most distinctive dogma of C hristianity more plausible to Sephardic Jews and to Moors, a novel formulation to be first printed in Alsace in 1531 and more definitively in the context of a m assive proposal for ecclesial Restitutio in Lyons, 1553, which by its summary condemnation by Calvin would turn out to be the occasion throughout Protestant Christendom, beginning in Geneva, for the classical or Magisterial Protestant theologians more fully to reclaim the ancient conciliar and patristic formularies of Nicaea, Constantinople, and Chalcedon after an initial period of relative indifference to them in the prevailing mood of a direct return to Scripture alone for the recovery of the apostolic faith, polity, and piety. Calvin’s Institutes, after all, when first dedicated to Francis I i n 1536, purported to be a commentary on the wholly sufficient Apostolicum with no reference to the philosophical terminology of the Nicaenum, which had later to be rehabilitated in the Protestant defenses of the one Catholic Apostolic faith against the Evangelical Rationalists, among others. And not without further interest, Spain was the scene of a very widespread revolt of the communes, headed to be sure more by legists and burghers than by artisans and peasants, against the encroachment of royal absolutism, but in

14  the radical reformation any case Spain’s early analogue to the Peasants’ War in the Empire, bulking large in the ensuing narrative. Readers are also taken in the same opening chapter to Italy, primarily to fix upon the point that it was not until the V Lateran Council (1517) that the Church authoritatively defined the human soul as naturally immortal, a decretal of immense significance at so late a date in Christian dogmatic history, all the more significant for our narrative in that many of the radicals, even Luther himself in an early phase, would restore to prominence the prevailing view of Scripture, shared with the Pharisees (and later with Muslims), namely, the sleep of souls pending the eschatological resurrection of the flesh and only then its reanimation for the Last Judgment at the Advent of t he Messiah, a t enet about the afterlife common to almost all sectors of the Radical Reformation, the Anabaptists, the Spiritualists, and the Evangelical Rationalists. Of these three groupings, bulking large in the ensuing narrative, the Anabaptists are most easily characterized. As rebaptizers of their adherents and postponers to the age of accountability of baptism for their own offspring, they were fully conscious that they had to explain themselves to magisterial Christians, from whom they broke on this issue, as to how they considered themselves nevertheless adherent to the mandate of S cripture summarized in Eph. 4:5 as to one Lord, one faith, and one baptism; and they were, moreover, painfully conscious that they exposed themselves to the same death penalty for rebaptism once imposed on the ancient Donatists by the Theodosian and the Justinianic codes, which were in force in all territory under the Holy Roman Empire as well as in many territories beyond. As for linguistic groups of Anabaptists, we are able to weave these into the narrative, covering intensively and comprehensively the period from 1525 to 1575, but with occasional sorties backward and forward (back into the fifteenth century and less frequently forward into the last quarter of the sixteenth century in order to round out a theme or to identify a nodal point in one grouping or to close off the career of a m ajor figure under purview). We note that Anabaptists used in their congregations and synods some dozen vernaculars besides Latin: German in several dialects, Dutch-Flemish, English, French, Italian, Slovenian, Croatian, Czech, Polish, Ukrainian, Hungarian, and possibly Lithuanian. The Czech “Baptists” antedated the others in that the Unity of the Czech Brethren, already in the late fifteenth century, while observing the pedobaptism of their own progeny, insisted, like the Waldensians before them, on believers’ baptism (i.e., rebaptism) for recruits from outside; in the case of the Czech Brethren, converts from among the Utraquists and the Catholics. The older scholarly view that the practice of believers’ baptism spread in concentric circles from its first vividly recorded enactment in Zurich in January 1525



introduction to third edition  15

has given way to a polycentric view of the rise of believers’ baptism with variations in the practice ranging from aspersion to immersion. As for the types of Anabaptists, while my own nomenclature of Evangelical (pacifistic), Revolutionary, and Spiritualist Anabaptist still retains some validity, and occasionally survives in the ensuing narrative, it is clear that any given individual believer might go through more than one phase. The third subset designates those like John Denck, a seminal figure in the movement, who nevertheless in the end spiritualized baptism as an inward transaction, indebted though the whole movement remained to his earlier understanding of believers’ baptism as “the outward covenant of the good conscience” in public testimony to the lordship of Christ in the face of the regenerate congregation and as the constitutive public action of f aith and accountability, while also the immersionist Anabaptist Gabriel Ascheram, who in the end also went through a spiritualizing phase like Denck, as also John Bünderlin, must at the close of their leadership careers be counted as Spiritualist Anabaptists. Almost as important in typological nomenclature might be such emphases in Anabaptism suggested by the adjectives communitarian, mystical, millennialist, Sabbatarian, synodal, immersionist, egalitarian, separatist from the magistracy, separatist from the congregationally banned, conventionally Trinitarian (in terms primarily of the Apostolicum), Christo-centric Unitarian (like such Germanic Anabaptists as Adam Pastor and Louis Haetzer), spiritualizing-conformist (David Joris), and proponents of the celestial flesh of Christ (Melchior Hofmann, Menno Simons). For all the variants suggested by these terms and others and for all the divisions and reunions and convergences among them in the course of the sixteenth century, all the Anabaptists can be seen as an entity, even with the inclusion of the belligerent, polygamous, and territorial Münsterite Anabaptists who defended their bibliocracy from the combined assault of Protestant and Catholic forces. The bonds of eschatology, the common memory of failed attempts at the peasant efforts to right social wrongs, first by evangelical protest, from Alsace to Ducal Prussia and Transylvania, and confidence in the soundness of the biblical insights of the common man tethered in the covenant of the Holy Spirit in Scripture, make of Anabaptism a nearly pan-European phenomenon of the age of Reformation from the Channel and North Sea ports of England through the Netherlands and Denmark to the German towns of the Baltic to Tallin, and at the lower tier, from Savoy and Venetia through Slovenia to Transylvania and Volhynia. As for the second grouping of radicals, the Spiritualists, it is possible that my original typology of 1962 may not hold up as wholly satisfactory, even though, indeed, there are many common bonds among them. Spirit in the term as originally used referred to the Holy Spirit, variously at work in often quite different manifestations of Spiritualism. The term came into

16  the radical reformation usage in the sense of t he ensuing narrative in the fundamental work of Alfred Hegler, Geist und Schrift bei Sebastian Franck: Eine Studie zur Geschichte des Spiritualismus in der Reformationszeit (1892). The sometime Lutheran pastor, chronicler, and geographer remains the archetypical Spiritualist in the present work, for he, once sympathetic with the Anabaptists and describing their considerable variety and idiosyncracy, remained for his part a quasimystical seeker, a proponent of toleration without his ever becoming deeply involved in the quest. So much dependent indeed was he on the DeuteroTaulerian mysticism, popularized initially by L uther in his first publication, Theologie Deutsch (1516), that in the typology of Ernst Troeltsch, Social Teachings of the Christian Churches (1912; English, 1931), Franck became, on the basis of Hegler’s monograph, the paradigm of t he mystic-type in the socio-ethicist’s tripartite scheme of the church-type, the sect-type, and the mystic-type. Spiritualism with its Germanic origin and Geist as alike mind and spirit and Holy Spirit behind the German word sometimes inhibits its extension to embrace persons and movements within the Radical Reformation beyond the Germanic sphere. It can, however, readily embrace Caspar Schwenckfeld as an Evangelical Spiritualist, because he, too, an associate of Franck and himself influenced by the fainter forms of Germanic mysticism, seems quite plausibly included, the more so as among all the radicals he was also outstanding in his mastery of the Greek and Latin Fathers in their doctrine of apotheosis and in his interest in upholding, however idiosyncratically, the dogmas of Nicaea and Chalcedon. But if it is to be a fundamental term in our taxonomy of the currents within the Radical Reformation, one must identify Spiritualism with mysticism, whether of G ermanic or Romance provenance, as well as with a sense of the ongoing action of the Holy Spirit (Heiliger Geist). For the mystic revolutionary, with a compelling apocalyptic, Thomas Müntzer, drawn to the sword of social righteousness and the implementation of social justice, was in the larger sense also a Spiritualist, indeed a Revolutionary Spiritualist. He was driven by the prophetic Spirit of Scripture; and he was clearly called forth from the same late medieval eschatological-mystical milieu as Carlstadt, Denck, John Hut, or Melchior Hofmann. Müntzer was closer to them than to those whose spirituality we have identified as that of a third clustering of r adicals embraced in my term Evangelical Rationalists (first used by me, 1957). These, too, could not but have had an understanding of the Holy Spirit, fundamental to their stress on the Gospels and the Epistles, but it was not experienced by them in a mystical modality. For them it was reason, perhaps reflecting the Logos as the mind of God, that was central in their piety, which was Evangelical because it generally stressed the New Testament over the Old and the moral teachings of Jesus, especially in his Sermon on



introduction to third edition  17

the Mount. It was morally perfectionist, like Pietism, but without much of the mystical resonance in that later movement. It took delight in the divine immediacy experienced in understanding the scriptural text with philological expertise and even religious wonder before the original and the carefully translated text. If it were not that Erasmus remained Catholic, he, too, could be regarded as himself a kind of Evangelical Rationalist, with his emphasis on the evangelical precepts and counsels that still supported tolerance and benignity about the revered texts that still resisted philological clarification or seemed ambiguous. The Spanish Marrano John de Valdés was as much a Catholic Evangelical, a moderate Spiritualist, as he was a forerunner of Evangelical Rationalism. In the ensuing narrative the Evangelical Rationalists are often of Italian provenance, for whom the new ambiguities of t he classical Reformation, like simul justus et peccator, and the patristic-scholastic formulations in non-scriptural language, like the Nicene and the Chalcedonian formularies, seemed religiously and ethically obscure or even obscurantist. Yet the Evangelical Rationalists all shared with the Anabaptists and the Spiritualists an intense eschatological expectation based upon the New Testament texts, although in the end, their most notable exponent, Faustus Socinus, would be content with a doctrine of the resurrection and reanimation of the scripturally righteous only, opting for sheer oblivion as the benign punishment of the wicked and the scriptural unbelievers. In two notable instances in the ensuing account two different thrusts of the Radical Reformation will be transmuted into historically perduring denominational forms of Evangelical Rationalism. The originally Calvinist synodal Antitrinitarianism and then immersionist Anabaptism of the Polish Brethren evolved under the impact of F austus Socinus into the Evangelical Rationalism of t he Racovian Catechism of 1604, eventually to go by the name of S ocinianism, perhaps incorrectly regarded as a f orerunner of Deism, while the antipedobaptist scriptural Unitarianism of Transylvania would become quasi-Erastian in its bearing toward the diet and the multiconfessional establishment; and the immersionist, Lithuanian biblical Unitarianism, non-adorant of Christ, would similarly undergo a substantiation by philological rationalism as a k ind of s upernatural rationalism (Conrad Wright for a New England analogue) that antedates Lutheran Orthodoxy by almost a century, but different from it in having disavowed all ancient credal formulations. In the instance of the Transylvanian Unitarians even the Apostles’ Creed would be set aside. But Socinians, Budnyites, and Transylvanian Unitarians would still all alike adhere to Scripture as the sole source of revelation and salvific truth (both Lelius and Faustus Socinus) without any resort to natural theology (until in the seventeenth century, when the pioneer Socinian, grandson of Faustus Socinus, Andrew Wiszowaty, would write his Religio rationalis, 1685). Yet unlike the later proponents of Reformed

18  the radical reformation and Lutheran rational Orthodoxy (much influenced by Socinian methodology) or supernatural rationalism as rigid confessional Orthodoxy, the three denominational Evangelical Rationalist synods of East Central Europe would remain committed to the principle of mutual confessional and personal toleration and irenicism in the quest for truth in religious colloquy and in public policy, and would become intrepid defenders of belief-ful ecumenical exchanges in the public domain, in some Transylvanian instances including Muslims and Jews. In contrast to much of Evangelical Rationalism in its sixteenth-century manifestation, much of Anabaptism and all Spiritualism had mystical components and both had some place for natural theology, apart from Scripture, especially in the concepts of Christ’s descent into hell to save the worthy of all traditions prior to his first Advent, in the quasi-mystical teaching about the Gospel of all creatures, and in the conviction that Christ had died on Calvary for the salvation of A ztec no less than Austrian infants and had wiped from them in his act of utter obedience to the Creator the consequences of the original sin of Adam and Eve. In the second chapter of t he ensuing narrative, which moves to the Netherlands of Erasmus’s youth, the existence there of separatist Sacramentists, forerunners of the Anabaptists there, occasions reflections on the way the whole medieval system of the seven sacraments of Latin Christendom and the related sacramentalia had undergone alteration in the most advanced culture of Christendom, the Burgundian Low Lands; and, readers are asked to consider the degree to which the whole sacramental system of the late medieval corpus christianum was in a state of widespread transformation and transmutation, when with Rhenish mysticism and ultra-reverent eucharistic spiritualism, some groups of S acramentists, Caspar Schwenckfeld no less than Wessel Gansfort, relocated the primary act of piety in either the devout observance of the Eucharist in its scriptural simplicity without manducation, only in contemplation, or by withholding oneself from it as the mystical metaphor of that inward eating of the celestial Body of Christ in a once-for-all mystical transport that made of such Spiritualists as Schwenckfeld or his Jagiellonian mentor, Valentine Crautwald, proponents of a eucharistic mysticism without the Lord’s Supper, anticipatory of the antisacramentalism of the much later Quakers. With the third chapter, which deals with the Sacramentarian Carlstadt and the Revolutionary Spiritualist Müntzer, the first to conduct a simple Protestant Lord’s Supper in German, and the second to compose a German Mass and with new hymns, readers will feel that they are indeed at last on a well-established trail through the historiography of the Radical Reformation, that vast and variegated upsurge of popular piety and social hope for evangelical changes in the relation of the classes that united the common people of Europe and the many intellectuals sympathetic with their plight in one



introduction to third edition  19

tremor of eschatological expectancy for renewal and change and that made of them a congeries of peoples in covenant, whose historiography rivals in poignancy, courage, resourcefulness, and audacity that of classical Protestantism, lifted as was the latter by the inflow of Renaissance humanism, and that of the no less courageous Counter-Reform, embattled between these two unforeseen onslaughts on the papal unity of Christendom. If we were to point in anticipation to several of the most sublime pinnacles raised up in the sixteenth-century upheaval by the Radicals, among the monumentally familiar escarpments of the great Reformers and the intrepid Counter-Reformers, we would surely note the stress of the Radicals on humaneness, including widespread revulsion from war (shared with Erasmus), from capital punishment, and from all harsh penalties for civil infractions; their living of evangelical life in scriptural communes and in freely elected covenantal marriage of spiritually equal partners (however persistent the survival of patriarchal practices); the prominence given to the scriptural and Scotist and Nominalist principle of the covenant ( foedus) of God’s potestas ordinaria in polity, marriage, exegesis, and the emergence of new sequences in each personal ordo salutis; the elaboration alongside Erasmus and the Magisterial Reformers (Martin Bucer, Andreas Osiander, John Laski, and John Calvin) of the quasi-scriptural triplex munus Christi, of the authority of Christ in his threefold anointed office of Prophet (Teacher), Priest, and King (derived from Eusebius of Caesarea, enhanced by Innocent III), becoming decisive in Sebastian Franck, then Faustus Socinus and the Polish Brethren, and inf luential among the Unitarians of Transylvania; the new sense among the Radicals of the unity of the human race, all descendants of Adam and Eve, in the New World as in the Old, all bearers of the same image of the Creator and potentially religious, spiritual, and moral; the unity of Europe from Spain to Livonia, from Scotland to Moldavia, and the urgency of making clear the Gospel to all peoples of all walks of life in the implementation of the Great Commission (Matt. 28: 19-20) beyond and within Christendom, in this concern much like the counter-Reform orders; the conviction among them that in the lex sedentium (Sitzerrecht), the devout laity in congregation or synod, by invoking the Holy Spirit who once inspired the Scripture, could help pastor and layman alike, sitting alongside each other and hearkening to the other (1 Cor. 14:23 ff.), resolve the ambiguities and the hard places before them in the vernacular Bible (the freedom of prophecy of the later Puritans); the synthesis of scriptural and late medieval piety, devotion, mysticism, spirituality, and eschatology, finding not infrequently expression in several variants of the celestial or glorified f lesh of Christ; and finally the emergence of new conjectures or theories as to the atoning work of Christ through the paternal acceptilatio (John de Valdés, Faustus Socinus), the gospel of all creatures and to all creatures, and the universal import of God’s design for

20  the radical reformation the salvation of the race in the action on Calvary; the discipleship of Christ and the purity of his Church safeguarded by the ban; and the cultivation of the presence of mind to speak truth to power even from the scaffold and the intrepitude to have in readiness on one’s lips before magistrates (1 Pet. 3:16) the words of eternal life to convince their judges as much as to defend themselves. As important as is the history of the Radical Reformation for its contemporary denominational survivors, notably for the Mennonites of various conferences of international scope and great scholarly industry, and to the Hutterites, both groupings direct descendants of the Continental Anabaptists from Flanders to the Ukraine, and for the Schwenkfelder Church in Pennsylvania with its stately corpus of nineteen volumes of Schwenckfeldiana, and for the Unitarians still living in their ancient seats in Romania and Hungary, and indirectly also for Baptists, Pietists, even Quakers, and for several kinds of modern Evangelicals, the Radical Reformation of the sixteenth century also goes very far to explain the final theological and institutional contours of the great churches of the Magisterial Reformation itself, including the Puritans and the Remonstrants of r espectively the English and the Dutch seventeenth century, all of whom might otherwise not have developed, for example, so elaborate a c ongeries of c onfessions, rivaling the ancient conciliar creeds in the specificity of their anathemas. Yet most of the modern heirs of classical Protestants and their collateral descendants (for example, Methodists and Disciples of Christ) have adopted or been notably influenced by several theological and ecclesio-political positions of the erstwhile radicals; and in fresh terms, like the social gospel and liberation theology, they have come to reaffirm the social programs of the peasant bands of 1525 and on a large scale to uphold the liberty of conscience in the realm of religion and hence also the civil status of the conscientious objector to war; and more belatedly to espouse the theoretical equality of spouses entering upon the marriage covenant. And the new CounterReform in Latin America and elsewhere with its base communities and its proclamation of God’s preferential option for the poor finds resonance and precedent in the sixteenth-century radicals, so many of whom as martyrs placed themselves under the Kingship of Christ rather than submit against their scripturally informed conscience to the mandate of Emperor, prince, landowner, and pluralist prelate. Evoking the words selected in the original tripartite dedication of my book (1962), I repeat here that my father’s “prophetic sermons opened for me the vision of that world where thrones are crumbled and where kings are dust” and I intimate in conclusion that some of the martyrs chronicled in the ensuing volume may be gradually rehabilitated for having lived out their testimony, dying for certain otherwise neglected texts of Scripture and Tradition, and that some may even find their places, if not in



introduction to third edition  21

the calendar of the saints, then surely in the register of the prophets and seers, many of whom though stoned and burned and otherwise tortured for conscience’s sake will be eventually integrated within the ampler, ecumenical chronicles of the People of God in Covenant. For they strove, women prominently with their menfolk, to live according to the counsels of Christ in the larger context of the precepts and the mandates of Moses as they, for their age and circumstances, understood “the faith once and for all delivered to the saints” ( Jude 1:3).

22  the radical reformation

George Huntston Williams May 1971

Chapter 1

Reformed Catholicity: An Evangelical Interlude

T he shadow of the tragic figure of Charles,

fifth in succession to the co-founder with Pope Leo III of the medieval Roman Empire, falls across the whole of Christendom as it was breaking asunder in the process of Protestant reformation, Catholic renewal, and the religious separatism of the Radical Reformers. Born in Ghent in 1500, elected Emperor in 1519, crowned by P ope Clement VII Medici at Bologna in 1530, Charles abdicated in 1556, and lay dying in bourgeois retirement, not under ascetic discipline, at the monastery in Estremadura in 1558, at the end broken in spirit, as was the Christendom over which he had tried to preside with medieval dignity and devotion.1 He had been beset as Emperor by t hose religio-political, cultural, and scholastic forces that, variously interpreted, eroded medieval Christian universalism. From the one side he was pressed by t he Sultan, threatening the Holy Empire from the East, yet in league with the Rex christianissimus of France; from another side by t he Pope, under various styles and policies acting more as an ambitious Italian prince than as the resolute incumbent of the Apostolic See, yet to be awakened to the proper role of the Church as mater et magistra to the nations, and eventually spiritual responsibility for the New World. From still another side he was beset by a university professor religiously rallying the latent nationalism of Germany. It could have been of little comfort to the abdicating Emperor that his great antagonist, the central theological spokesman of the Reformation, had a decade earlier likewise ended his days in sorrow on the eve of t he shattering religious civil war within the no longer sacred Roman Empire 1  For Charles V’s imperial ideology see Ramón Menéndez Pidal, Idea imperial de Carlos V (Madrid: Colección Austral, 1940). Menéndez Pidal, from the Spanish point of view, criticizes the interpretations of Karl Brandt (1933) and Peter Rassow (1932).

23

24  the radical reformation

chapter 1.1

of the German Nation that was to be confessionally divided to the end. 2 For the most part, the action of the ensuing chapters falls within the two middle quarters of the sixteenth century, that is, within the reigns and the realms of Emperor Charles V (1519–58), his younger brother Ferdinand I (1558–64), and his nephew Maximilian II (1564–76). While as occasion requires, we shall retrieve developments regionally and topically before 1525 and carry a few themes beyond 1575 to round out the narrative and biographical coverage, the intended focus will be on the middle fifty years of the century of religious convulsion and prominently in the realms of the Hapsburgs, not only in the Empire but also in the other lands governed by them under lesser titles. To present a p an-European conspectus of t he radical theological and social thrusts of the era of Reformation by beginning the account in Spain and with a reference to the pious Emperor whose tutor was the dour theologian destined to be the last (till 1978) non-Italian Pope (Hadrian of Utrecht), whose magnificent imperial coronation in Bologna was to be the last at the hands of a P ope, and whose ardent religious advisers were frequently incapable of m aking distinctions between Lutherans and Sacramentarians, to say nothing of A nabaptists and Spiritualists, calls for an introductory explanation.

1. The European Setting From an Hispanic Perspective At the other end of Latin Christendom from Spain and its rising Hapsburg dynasty reigned the Jagiellonians: the Lithuanian-Polish dynasty which would expire in Poland in 1572. At the opening of t he century of t he Reformation and the Counter-Reform, a J agiellonian dynast bore the crown in each of t he three kingdoms to the east of, or within, the Holy Roman Empire, ruling from their capitals respectively in Prague, Cracow, and Budapest. The crowns of these realms had been elevated to, or acknowledged as of, royal dignity by P ope or Emperor: St. Stephen’s Crown of Hungary by the Pope in a.d. 1000, that of Cracow by the Emperor in 1025, and the Crown of St. Wenceslas of Bohemia by the Emperor in 1157. At the opening of the century of Reformation the crown in Cracow symbolized sovereignty over Europe’s vastest state: the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth that stretched far over the internal Byzantine-rite boundary well beyond Vilna and Kiev. The king of B ohemia—the only prince of royal dignity within the Empire—was ex officio (since 1114) the ranking 2  The Imperium Romanum as Sacrum dates from 1157, when in polemical parallelism with Sancta Ecclesia the leg ists of Frederick II could appeal to 2 Thess. 2:7 “… he who restrains it [Antichrist]” for sanction. Sacrum Imperium was a regular usage only from 1254, and the coronation of the German King, elected by the dukes and bishops, after 1356 by virtue of the Golden Bull of Charles IV, by seven temporal and spir itual Electors ex of f iciis, and his full dignity as Emperor-elect was theoretically consummated at the papal cor onation in imitation of Leo III crowned with Charlemagne at Chartres in 800.

chapter 1.1

reformed catholocity  25

temporal Elector among the Seven to elect the German king, the Emperorelect. In 1519 the king of Bohemia, Louis II Jagiello, was so young that his uncle, Sigismund I the Old of Cracow, had to advise him in his preparations to proceed to Frankfurt for the election of Charles of Hapsburg as German King. At the time of the imperial election the Crown of St. Stephen was worn by the same Louis II Jagiello, sovereign of the polyglot and multi-religious (and soon to become multi-confessional) Apostolic Kingdom of Hungary. This realm was so styled for two reasons: first, because its first king had received the crown from the Apostolic See and, secondly, because its first bearer had himself been canonized by a subsequent Pope, and this Magyar nation was entrusted with a special mission to protect Latin Christendom on its Orthodox and Muslim frontiers. Louis II Jagiello would be slain at the battle of Mohács in 1526. A score of years thereafter his Hungarian realm would be tripartitioned for a century and three quarters. Of its three parts, (1) (Hapsburg) Hungary was to be but a vestige of its former glory and confined to the northern rim of the former realm, Upper Hungary, (2) Central Hungary was to be directly administered by the Ottoman Empire under the Sultan, and (3) the old military march or palatinate of Transylvania was to become an Ottoman client state and in due course also a l argely Protestant principality. The principality of Transylvania, of adroit diplomatic and military power, its palatine dietine by then become a multi-ethnic diet, would bring forth from among its few surviving Catholic families the most renowned of the elected Polish kings of the century of Reformation, Stephen Batory (Báthory), who would contest the election with a Hapsburg contender for the crown of Cracow, and who would turn out to be the last Catholic prince of E urope to commit his realm to the decrees of the Council of Trent (adopted by the Polish Diet, 1577). By the close of the two middle quarters of the century, the Hapsburg dynasts would be, except for the elected kings of P oland-Lithuania, the primary temporal bearers of the Counter-Reform: the nephew of Charles V, Maximilian II, elected Emperor in 1576, the nominally elected king in both Bohemia and (Upper) Hungary (with his coronation and capital in Slovakia), as well as the hereditary Archduke of Austria. John of Austria, the natural son of Charles I (V), would be briefly ruling in The Netherlands (1576–78) in his style of d uke of B urgundy. Charles’ own son and heir, Philip II, alongside his brief role in England’s own Counter-Reform with his Queen, Mary (Tudor, 1553–58), would be ruling the whole of the Hispanic peninsula (1556–90/98), endowed by the Pope with the Patronado (effectual episcopal oversight) for the New World. The Radical Reformation seen from this Hispanic and Hapsburg perspective as radical in relation to the higher powers ordained by God (Rom. 13:1), largely indifferent or even hostile to these larger political entities

26  the radical reformation

chapter 1.1

ruled over by Hapsburg and Jagiellonian sovereigns, and to the sovereigns and governing institutions of t he other principal European political entities: Scotland, England, the three Scandinavian kingdoms, the Swiss Confederation and the allied Rhaetian Republic, the Venetian Republic, the Papacy as a t emporal power in Italy, the kingdom of N aples up to the frontier of t he Papal States, the kingdom of S icily, and that of S ardinia, all three under the crown of Aragon, to mention only the larger political entities. The radicals were indeed often indifferent also to governmental jurisdiction and governance much closer to individual believers, who in so many cases in the area of r adicality, were severed voluntarily or by force from their ancestral parish, whereas the magisterial (classical Protestant) reformers and their princely and urban supporters, as well as the clergy and the laity among the Old Believers of various ranks, not only presupposed traditional sacral-temporal (church-state) theories but also proposed new theologies of the ordained powers. An emergency was recognized in all societies reverberating from what had become a new religious center of Latin Christendom which as a continent was writhing under the theological impact of f our enormous religious challenges: (1) the discovery of t he New World, almost of a n ew Adam, of two or three ancient calendared civilizations, 3 (2) the resurgence of Islam under the aegis of Su ltan Suleiman I t he Magnificent (1520–66) in Istanbul,4 (3) the feeling widespread in many classes of s ociety, of t he depletion of the spiritual energy of the received forms and formularies of religion and the oppressiveness, if not ossification, of many of the inherited institutions, and (4) the radical revolution of t he Austin friar of W ittenberg in Electoral Saxony, Martin Luther (d. 1546), the German professor of Scripture with his both disturbing and liberating postulate of t he new lower criticism: namely, that the literal (or historical) sense of the Scripture (in the original languages) is the true religious and ethical intention (as over against the several non-literal senses: allegorical, tropological, anagogical, and typological; Ch. 32:1), of God’s unique revelation for all humanity in the veritas Hebraica properly reclaimed.5

3  Lewis Hanke, All Mankind Is One: A Study of the Disputation between Bar tolomé de Las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlv eda in 1550 on the Intellectual and Religious Capacity of the American Indians (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1974); Heiko A. Oberman, “In Search of the Roots of Antisemitism: The Renaissance Recovery of the Veritas Hebraica,” Alan and Elizabeth Doft Lecture, Center for Jewish Studies, Harvard University, 1990. 4  I adduce amongst a vast literature only my own, “Erasmus and the Reformers on nonChristian Religions [notably Islam] and Salus extra Ecclesiam,” Action and Conviction in Earl y Modern Europe, ed. Theodore K. Rabb and Jerold E. Siegel (Princeton: University Press, 1969), 219–70. 5  Samuel Preus, From Shadow to Promise: The Old Testament in the Her meneutic of the Middle Ages and the Young Luther (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969).

chapter 1.1

reformed catholocity  27

In approaching from the unwonted vantage point of S pain and thus Italy the catalytic force originating in Germany that changed the whole character of Latin Christendom in the course of the sixteenth century, with repercussions in Eastern Orthodoxy, we are helped to see how it reinforced or redirected or staunched certain late medieval and Renaissance impulses: humanism, the lay spirit (anticlericalism), sacramentarianism, mysticism, apocalypticism, and how, under its mighty impact in Germanic lands and everywhere in Europe, Lutheranism as the generic initial term for revolt or renewal, depending on the viewer’s perspective, brought about the mutation of still other Christian motifs in the consequent variations of still further radicalized theology and the proliferation of a congeries of interrelated churches, sects, and seekers for whom Luther for his own part had his own generic term of derision, Schwärmer (fanatics), and who constitute in their partial interrelatedness and interdependence a radical reformation different from the territorial, magisterial reformation and the congeries of Catholic counter-reforms that would eventually be held together under the Papacy and consolidated by the Council of Trent (1545–63). We have begun in a r egion of C hristendom intensely intolerant and Catholic as a consequence of the Reconquest (1217 until 1492) in order to highlight the pan-European character of t he Radical Reformation even though, apart from an Evangelical (Erasmian) Catholic interlude, the biblical spiritualism of a few conventicular Alumbrados often from among Marranos, and a few figures of E uropean renown or notoriety as Isabel de la Cruz, Juan de Valdés, and Michael Servetus, there is little to record in Spain of any distinctive features that elsewhere constitute the Radical Reformation in the interstices between generic Protestant (Lutheran, Reformed, and Anglican) and Catholic Christendom. I have thus chosen to gain narrative access to sixteenth-century religious mutations from the perspective of Spain in its Golden Age in a geographically comprehensive and conceptually more religio-ethical than socio-political account of t he Radical Reformation—that heterogeneous upthrust in Europe of religious and social dissidents and their newly formed communities of biblical faith of sixteenth-century history with the breakthrough of Martin Luther. I have elected to approach this inchoate religious separatism from the main body of the territorial corpus christianum (whether Catholic or Protestant) as something of an historical entity, unique to the sixteenth century, by seeing some of its onsets and analogues from the perspective of Spain where Luther’s import was cushioned by preoccupation with quite different “national” aspirations from those on which Luther himself was buoyed within the Empire of the German nation. In what was looked back upon by Jews as their Golden Age in Spain (1085–1235), the forces of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam had once been in sufficient cultural equilibrium to foster the translation of t he Greek

28  the radical reformation

chapter 1.1 / 1.2.a

philosophical heritage through the Arabic or the Hebrew into Latin in the great age of interfaith toleration and thus to lay the foundation of the scholastic, cultural, and even scientific achievement for all Christendom of the thirteenth century and beyond. The printed Hebrew Bible used by Martin Luther for his German translation of the Pentateuch (1523) was that of Gershom Soncino (Brescia, 1495), one of m any episodes that together belong to the final surge of classical and religious source translations that began in Spain. This common intellectual legacy of Latin Christendom fostered in the sixteenth-century scholarly religious recovery among Christians—alike Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, and Radical—of the Hebrew and Greek text of t he Bible. Fresh vernacular versions from the original were contributed by Catholics in Alcalá, by a Unitarian in Nieśwžiez˙ in Lithuania, by the Orthodox (in their case, a c omprehensive Old S lavonic Bible) in Ostrih in Volhynia, by Catholics in Cracow, and by Calvinists in Varszoly in Hapsburg Hungary, besides the more familiar versions in the new lands of Protestantism. Examples of a r adical upthrust in Iberia, far from the epicenter of the Radical Reformation, will prove to be mostly scattered, fragmentary, inchoate episodes. Nevertheless, in their own right, such examples are also symptomatic of the widespread sense in Christendom of the depletion or even perversion of the received institutions and formularies of the common faith and of the quickening everywhere of new vitalities, at least analogous to the theological radicality and conventicular separatism closer to the Reformation upheaval. There are indeed a few notable Spanish figures who in any case belong prominently to any account of the theological radicality of the age. The Jewish conversos, meanwhile, who in their precautionary mood reached Italian shores along with the exiled Jews of 1492, seem to have nurtured, within a g eneration in Italy, a h igh percentage of t he converts (native and emigré) to Reformed and then to a more radical theology and ecclesiology (Ch. 22.2).6 2. Religious Currents In Spain as of The Beginning of the

Reign of Charles I (V)

a. Charles I of Castile and Aragon On 18 September 1517 (a bit more than a m onth before Luther was to post his Reformation theses), the arrival of Charles and his Flemish court from Flanders in Spain on the wild Atlantic coast of Asturias sent the local inhabitants scurrying into the hills with their arms until scouts identified 6  The pioneering exploration of Louis Israel Newman, Jewish Influence on Christian Reform Movement (New York: Columbia University Press, 1925; reprinted New York: AMS Press, 1966) calls for a monograph on the Reformation era.

chapter 1.2.a

reformed catholocity  29

the ships as those not of an enemy but of their presumptive king.7 As a result of t he death a y ear earlier of C harles’ maternal grandfather, Ferdinand of Aragon and, ever since the death of his wife, Isabelle queen of Castile, regent of Castile, the throne of Aragon had become vacant and the throne of Castile, whose long widowed queen Juana, Charles’ mother, was incapacitated by m adness, had been left without a c ompetent ruler. Thus Charles’ proclamation as king had been secured in his absence by the crafty and resourceful Primate Cardinal Francisco Ximénes over the many and varied objections of Castilian and Aragonese nobles of the still precariously united monarchy of Spain. Against both Castilian reluctance to proclaim Charles while Juana was still queen and Aragonese sentiment in favor of Charles’ native Aragonese brother Ferdinand, each a manifestation of Spanish preference for a native court, this rather sickly seventeenyear old Fleming, whose Hapsburg jaw was so enormous that it hindered his speech, found himself struggling across the rain-swept mountains of northern Spain en route to the Castilian Cortes at Valladolid to negotiate his formal recognition as king of that realm. Educated in Flanders, Charles was under the complete control of his tutor in government, William de Croy, lord of Chièvres, and other Flemish courtiers who were intent upon using their influence to secure for themselves and their countrymen the most lucrative ecclesiastical and civil posts in Castile, the enormously wealthy archbishopric of Toledo going to Chièvres’ absentee teenage nephew, and special trading rights. Angered by the Flemish plundering of Castilian wealth and the foreign intrusion on native government, the procuradores (deputies: clerical, nobiliary, and burgher) to the Castilian Cortes were hesitant to grant the crown.8 After the usual court and parliamentary maneuvers Charles was acknowledged as king, although technically he was to rule jointly with his mother, and was granted a servicio—the de facto mark of recognition—of 600,000 ducats for three years. Charles next traveled westward to claim the crown of A ragon at its Cortes convening at Saragossa. Arriving on 9 M ay 1518, Charles had to endure negotiations lasting until the end of the year, when court bribes and promises ultimately moved the reluctant procuradores, many of w hom had thrown their support behind the future Archduke of Austria (Ferdinand), to recognize Charles as king of Aragon and grant him a servicio. 7  José A. Maravall, Las Communidades de Castilla; una pr imera revolución moderna (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1963); R. Trevor Davies, The Golden Centur y of Spain (London, 1937, reprinted New York: Harper, 1965); J. H. Elliott, Imperial Spain, 1469–1716 (New York: St. Martins, 1964); John Lynch, Spain Under the Hapsburgs, Empire and Absolutism, 1516–1598, 2d ed. (New York: New York University Press, 1961); and Henr y Kamen, Spain 1469–1716: A Society of Conflict (New York/London: Longman, 1983). 8  The Castilian Cortes at this time consisted of procuradores from eighteen cities. All three estates originally were represented in the Cortes but by the latter half of the fifteenth century only the towns regularly sent procuradores.

30  the radical reformation

chapter 1.2.a

On his way to the Catalan Cortes at Barcelona Charles learned of the death of his paternal grandfather, the Emperor Maximilian. With Chièvres negotiating his election as Emperor, an enterprise which required payments of one million gold florins to the even electors and promises of Castilian crown lands to the bankers who raised half of this immense sum, Charles remained in Barcelona for a y ear negotiating with the obstinate Cortes before news came, ten days after the fact, that Charles had been elected Holy Roman Emperor on 28 June 1519. News of t he election spread throughout Spain as Charles quickly retraced his steps westward toward the Atlantic coast in order to set sail for Germany. Angry that their king had accepted a foreign crown and was now to depart and leave the administration of the country to his foreign advisers, the cities represented by their procuradores (mostly lawyers) of the Castilian Cortes, led by Toledo, began to organize resistance to Charles. By then Charles had reached Vallodolid en route back to the coast where sentiment towards him was so hostile that he was forced to flee, not without fighting, through rain and mud. The Castilian Cortes was summoned at Santiago, shortly to be moved to La Coruña, the port city of Charles’ departure, for the purpose of granting him belatedly a subsidy for this trip to Germany. By now, opposition to Charles was so widespread that the usual bribes could only muster a p lurality in the Hapsburg’s favor (and some of t hose who voted for the grant were later attacked by angry mobs). Prudently foregoing the actual collection of the servicio, Charles left Spain on 20 May 1520 as the cities of Castile erupted into open revolt against the crown. Initially the city-led movement had the tacit support of m uch of t he nobility, including the grandees (the higher nobility). Demanding relief from the arrogance and oppression of t he Flemish courtiers and other threats to traditional local privileges, the Comuneros, as the revolutionaries were called because they were of t he middling classes of t he cities fighting for their communal rights, sought to reassert local political authority over the cities of Castile. Such Spanish demands for constitutional checks against the monarchy prefigure some of the demands that were to be made half a decade later in the Empire by the peasants and the lower classes of the towns against the increasingly powerful lords using the revived Roman law against the customary law (Ch. 4). With the widespread support of the peasants and the day-laboring peons, both formerly serfs who had been freed in 1480 and accounted for 95 percent of C astile’s population, the revolt became more radical as it progressed. The higher and lower nobility, faced with the prospect of a larger class revolution, prudently withdrew their support for a constitutional monarchy and joined the royalist side. Concurrent with, and preceding the uprising of, the Comuneros in Castile, 1520–1522, was the revolution of t he brotherhoods or the guilds (Germanías) in the formerly independent kingdom of Valencia, 1519–1522.

chapter 1.2.a

reformed catholocity  31

Charles, who was prudently absent during the uprising in Castile, returned to Spain on 16 July 1522, where, with the revolt fully suppressed, he still felt the need to be accompanied by four thousand soldiers for safety. In Valencia, which had come under the new Crown of Spain, revolution of t he brotherhoods was socially and religiously complex, involving the forced baptism of the Moorish serfs. While Charles was still in Barcelona, negotiating for the county of Catalonia, the nobles of t he kingdom of Valencia informed him of a revolution in process back home. In December 1519 an epidemic had broken out in Valencia on the Mediterranean. Nobiliary and noble families had left the city, while about the same time a rumor was spreading that Moors from Algeria were preparing to land to retake it. The artisans remaining in the city, organized in guilds (gremiós de artisanos), banded together, first in the capital, then throughout the realm, in a league of guilds or brotherhoods (hermandades: Valencian: Germanías), allegedly with the earlier concurrence of Ferdinand the Catholic, to defend the Valencian coasts in case of surprise attack. From the pulpit of the cathedral in Valencia a F ranciscan friar, Luis Castellví, proclaimed that all the calamities were due to the sins of nobiliary persons whom he did not hesitate to name. The listeners broke out of t he cathedral in rage and committed acts of violence, turning eventually on the local Moors, who were serfs (siervos) or slaves (esclavos) on the lands of the nobles, this as a protest for preparing for the rumored invasion from Algeria. A junta of t hirteen artisan leaders (the Terce) took over the governance of the capital, headed by the carder Juan Lorenzo. In their rage against the propertied classes they demanded the conversion of t he Moorish serfs, whose liberation, it was calculated, would increase the costs of labor for the hated nobles. Bands of revolters spread out into the countryside and, with the help of their priests dipping palm branches into the irrigation ditches, sprayed the Moorish serfs in involuntary baptism. When the nobles everywhere refused to treat the resultant Moriscos as Christian laborers, the new converts in turn resisted. The resultant social revolution of mixed motivation resisted even the viceroy sent from Barcelona. Though the revolution was stamped out in September 1522, it had already spread to Majorca, where it stormed through the island until 1524. In that year in Valencia, the vice regal theological commission handed down the decision that the Moriscos had been validly baptized, ex opere operato, and that thus should be regarded as new Christians by the ecclesiastical authorities and yet, in the circumstances, held to their former feudal bondage.9 9

 Modesto Lafuente, Historia de España 4; Joan Fuster, Rebeldes y heterodo xos (Barcelona: Ariel, 1972); and Ricardo Cárcel, “La Inquisición y los mor iscos valencianos: anatomía de una represión,” Actas de las Jornadas de arabe e islámica (Madrid: Instituto Hispano-Arabe de Cultura, 1981), 401–18. I was drawn to this literature by the work of Francisco Márquez Villanueva on

32  the radical reformation

chapter 1.2.a

As for his religion, Charles, for his part, with his Flemish tutelage, was favorable toward a kind of Catholic piety that had more in common with the discipline of t he Devotio Moderna of h is natal Netherlands and even with the theological fervor in Germany than with humanistic and papal urbanity. To this distinctive transitional mode of Catholic piety modern scholarship has finally assigned a name, Catholic Evangelism, gathering up therein a number of related movements on the slopes of the German crater.10 Charles, in so far as he understood Evangelism as irreproachably orthodox, heeded and supported its reasonable exponents. He was a cautious but magnanimous ruler caught in an age of extraordinary expansion and crises. His quintessentially Spanish high regard for honor as personal worth would presently obligate him to keep his word and respect Martin Luther’s safe-conduct to and from the Diet of Worms, where the Reformer would stand before the young Emperor 16 April 1521 and refuse to recant, and where on 25 May Luther would be placed under the edict of the imperial ban, henceforth to be treated as a dangerous heretic, his writings to be burned. As king in Spain, Charles allowed his subjects better treatment than formerly and both Illuminism and an Iberian form of Catholic Evangelism developed. Catholic Evangelism, a w idespread outcropping of an undogmatic, ethically serious combination of medieval piety and humanistic culture, in several regions quickened by Luther’s proclamation of salvation by faith alone (solafideism), but disturbed by its seeming antinomianism and programmatic neglect of the traditional means and patterns of personal sanctification, momentarily held high the hope of reforming a s till Catholic Christendom—“both its members and at long last even its papal head”— and thus regaining the allegiance of the disaffected parts. Its foremost exponent was Charles’ Netherlandish subject Desiderius Erasmus. Called also therefore Erasmianism, the Catholic Evangelical movement manifested itself in several regional variants, specifically: (1) in The Netherlands as “national-reformed biblical humanism”; (2) in Catholic Germany as

the archbishop of Valencia, who, later in the century, would, in inner torment, thoroughly carry out the policy of driving the Moriscos from Valencia, even though baptized and in many cases claiming to be truly converted, “El Nunc Dimittis del Patriarca [Juan de] Ribera [1532–1611],” still to be published. 10  The best account, though limited to its Italian manifestations,with, however, a survey of the evolution of the ter m since its fir st use by Imbart de la Tour, is that of Ev a-Maria Jung, “On the Natur e of Ev angelism in Sixteenth Centur y Italy,” Journal of the Histor y of Ideas 14 (1953): 511–27. See also Philip McNair , Peter Martyr in Italy (Oxford: Clarendon, 1967), ch. 1.

chapter 1.2.a / 1.2.b

reformed catholocity  33

“expectancy”;11 (3) in Poland on the Utraquist model as national Catholicism (which combined Erasmianism with a Christian nationalism analogous to that of any Slavic Orthodoxy); (4) in England as Platonic biblical humanism; (5) in France as Evangelism; (6) in Italy as Valdésianism; and (7) in Spain variously referred to as Illuminism, Evangelism, Erasmianism, and Valdésianism ( Juan de Valdés).12 Catholic Evangelism would disappear rapidly after the establishment of the Roman Inquisition in 1542 (to be partly replaced in some Catholic lands as Nicodemism, Ch. 22.5). The energies of Catholic Evangelism would pass thereafter in different ways: to magisterial (classical) Protestantism (William Farel, Gellius Faber, and Peter Martyr Vermigli), into the Counter-Reform (George Witzel, George Cassander, and Reginald Pole), and into the Radical Reformation (Andrew Dudith, Andrew Frycz Modrzewski, and Bernardine Ochino), and even though only a few such figures feature in the ensuing pages, we may be reminded that during any Evangelical interlude, however long it lasted in any locality, a number of our characters went through this phase from the old to the new. Erasmus himself, its embodiment, persevered to the end (1536), and though eventually declining the offer of a cardinal’s hat, remained within the Church of his birth, annoyed to the last that so many reformers, magisterial and radical, would claim his patronage. Before pursuing Spanish Erasmianism, we look back to the politicocultural achievement of Charles’ grandparents through his insane mother, Queen Juana. b. The Legacy of the “Reyes Católicos,” Grandparents of Charles Ferdinand II of Aragon (idealized by Niccolò Machiavelli in Il Principe) had, on the eve of the Reformation, secured through marriage with Isabelle the personal union of A ragon and Castile-Leon,13 had driven out the Moors and Jews in 1492, had absorbed the kingdom of Navarre (for two centuries 11

 The term “Expektantentum” was first used by Ludwig von Pastor, Die Reunionsbestrebungen während der Regierung Karls V (Freiburg, 1879), 115. See fur ther, Hubert Jedin in Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, 2d ed. (Freiburg: Herder, 1959), 3:1253, 1318. 12  Marcel Bataillon, Erasmo y España (1st French ed. 1937; 1st Spanish ed., 1950, and 2d Spanish ed., Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1966) covers all these mo vements under “Erasmianism.” For a study of the Alumbrados and Valdésianism as mo vements independent of Erasmus, see José C. Nieto, Juan de Valdés and the Or igins of the Spanish and Italian Reformation (Geneva: Droz, 1970; Sp. ed., Mexico City, Fondo de cultura Económica, 1979). For the problem of Lutheranism and Erasmianism in Spain, see also Nieto, “Luther’s Ghost and Erasmus’ Masks in Spain,” BHR 39 (1977): 34–49, and John E. Longhurst, Luther’s Ghost in Spain (Lawrence, Kan.: Coronado Press, 1979). 13  For the Catholic Monar chs and their r eligious and political policies, see Tarsicio de Azcona, chap. 6, “Unidad religiosa e Inquisición,”’ in Isabel la Católica: Estudio crítico de su vida y reinado (Madrid: Editorial Católica, 1964), and also José García Oro, Cisneros y la reforma del clero español en tiempo de los Rey es Católicos (Madrid: Consejo superior de investigaciónes cientificas Instituto “Jerónumo Zurita,” 1971).

34  the radical reformation

chapter 1.2.b

under French control) in 1512, had established an enviable authority over the by now national episcopate and the monastic orders, and by means of the Inquisition (1478) control over even the inner life of his subjects. His unparalleled power over the almost territorial-national Church supplied the pattern of m agisterial supervision and inquisition to lesser princes, including Protestants yet to be, and constituted also a threat to the papacy itself, which had originally sanctioned it. The practice of royal absolutism in the Church, which could be condoned on what had once seemed to the Pope the marches of Christendom, would be swiftly fraught with hazard when the peninsula, politically unified, save for the still independent kingdom of Portugal, would presently emerge as the major power of Christendom. On the death of Ferdinand in 1516, the pattern of this absolute monarchy fell to his grandson as Charles I of united Spain. Primate Cardinal Francisco Ximénes, who had variously demonstrated his learning, his political shrewdness as regent of Castile, his soldierly virtue, and his zeal for reform (for example, his opposition to Leo X’s great indulgence for the new St. Peter’s Basilica, and his swift implementation of the meager reforming and educational canons of the Fifth Lateran Council of 1517 [Ch. 1.6.a] even before its adjournment), on two occasions unsuccessfully sought to persuade Erasmus to make an extended visit to Spain. But Erasmianism, reinforced by certain impulses from local humanism and Illuminism, spread in Spain without Erasmus’s personal visit, Erasmians coming in large numbers as Charles entered Spain from Flanders in that very year, 1517. At the older Universities of Salamanca and Valladolid, and especially at Alcalá, the new foundation (1508) of Primate Cardinal Ximénes—biblical, classical, and grammatical studies—had been flourishing well before the impact of Erasmus of Rotterdam. Six professors of philology taught at Alcalá, where, according to Erasmus himself, the most signal accomplishments of European scholarship were being made, foremost among them the Complutensian ( = A lcalan) Polyglot Bible, the Greek New Testament in 1514, and the Hebrew text in 1517. Ximénes, the instigator, died just eight days after Luther posted his theses. In part to understand the devout cruelty with which the sectarian heterodoxy, as will be seen in succeeding chapters, was to be suppressed in both Catholic and Protestant lands it is apposite to rehearse here the emergent pattern of the Spanish Inquisition, which will not have been far from the mind of Charles when as Emperor at the Diet of Speyer in 1529 he will revive the provision in the Code of Justinian for the capital punishment of rebaptizers, the Anabaptists (Ch. 10.1).

chapter 1.2.c

reformed catholocity  35

c. Marranos and Alumbrados: The Spanish Inquisition Back in 1391 a long series of popular outbursts against the royally protected and often conspicuously wealthy or learned Jews had reached a climax in a widespread massacre in the three Iberian kingdoms (Castile, Aragon, Navarre). From that date on, conversion under duress was common. The official name for the (forced) converts, conversos, was “new Christians,” cristianos nuevos, without a pejorative sense. They were often reviled, however, as Marranos, a disparaging term (of uncertain origin, which term has passed out of u sage in contemporary Spanish but survives in English).14 In the present work, the terms Marranos and Moriscos simply betoken the religious origin of two Iberian groupings and imply the possibility of several degrees of conversion or resistance, for in important instances authentic converts to Christianity in its Catholic form or their offspring would be, in the sixteenth century, drawn authentically to Protestant forms. Conversos became an important ingredient in the Catholic population striving for religious homogeneity with increasing consciousness of limpieza de sangre (purity of the blood lines) of t he castizos (Old ethnic Catholics). Not a few prelates and noblemen could trace their ancestry to such converts, including notorious inquisitors. But of course many of the forced converts preserved their old religions under prudential disguises from generation to generation. In 1478 Ferdinand, not yet king of A ragon (1479–1516), and Isabelle, queen in Castile (1474–1504), requested papal permission to restore the medieval inquisition in a royal form. The demand was prompted by four considerations: (1) the determination of the Catholic Sovereigns to secure religious uniformity; (2) the failure of t he policy of f orced conversions of Jews and Moors; (3) the undisguised alarm that these forced converts, among whom there were the Alumbrados (the Illuminated), would contaminate the faith of the castizos (of old Christian stock); and (4) the temptation to tyrannize over, and confiscate the property of, selected enemies of the new centralizing royal authority among the nobility, and the secular and the regular clergy.

14

 In contemporary Spanish the word without capitalization is used in rough speech for a filthy or slovenly or gluttonous person. In the Spanish translation of my book, Professor Antonio Alatorre uses in this section, except for its title, only cristianos nuevos. The most plausible explanation for Marranos is that the name resulted from the coalescence of a late Arabic word for stranger (barrān) and the medieval Hispanization of the Latin word for wild boar (verres). In popular etymology Marranos was indeed associated with pork and as something ethnic Catholics imag ined the converted Jews and Muslims having to eat to show the authenticity of their conversion. Although converts from Islam were also called Marranos, their more specific popular designation was formerly Moriscos. In Jewish writings in English Marranos are commonly thought of as having been insincere or opportunistic or even, in dangerous times, as crypto-Judaic (cf. the Nicodemites in Pr otestant nomenclature, Ch. 23.2). The latter is the view of Leon Poliakov, “From Mohammad to the Marranos,” The History of Anti-Semitism, tr. from the French, 4 vols. (New York: Vanguard, 1965–85.)

36  the radical reformation

chapter 1.2.c

Besides both sincere and prudential converts, there survived into the reign of t he joint Catholic Sovereigns many Jews who had not made even outward obeisance. Ferdinand and Isabelle alleged as their reason for requesting a royal inquisition the threat of a Jewish uprising on Good Friday, 1478. Their Inquisition was modeled both upon the system of the royal secret service and upon the medieval papal inquisition. The council of the Inquisition became the fifth of the five great councils by which the joint sovereigns ruled. At first there was a separate inquisitor-general for Aragon and for Castile. A peculiarity of the Spanish Inquisition was thus the royal control exercised over it to bring about religio-political uniformity, the ruling passion of the peninsula, which had once been tripartite in religion and culture. The papacy had long granted to, or indulged the Spanish rulers in, the possession of powers and privileges in respect to the hierarchy and the religious orders which it vigorously contested when claimed by t he Holy Roman Emperor and certain other European rulers. In 1482, Pope Sixtus IV even agreed to place with the ruler the right to nominate bishops, which created animosity between the bishops and the crown and would lead to episcopal support for the Comuneros, and he acquiesced formally in the already venerable practice15 of t he royal placet, the royal approbation of a ny papal bull before its promulgation. Episcopal courts were thereupon limited by t he threat of recursus, that is, the grant of recourse or appeal to a royal court. The king gained control of the three Spanish military orders by becoming ex officio their grand master. The medieval papal Inquisition of C athars had found its Dominical charter in the Compelle intrare of the unpopular banquet (Luke 14:23) long before construed by Augustine as a parable of the Church making use of the coercive arm of the Empire. The Spanish Inquisition of suspect Marranos and others took special satisfaction in interpreting literally the Dominical injunction of J ohn 15:6: “If a m an abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.” But public burning was meted out only to a small percentage of the numerous suspects of the Inquisition.16 Before the application of t orture, the suspect was first the subject of delation or rumor, then arrested, often in the dead of night, a notary making at the time an inventory of h is possessions. The place of d etention was often noisome, terrifyingly constrictive, and subterranean. A long time could elapse before the appearance at the trial. The object of the Inquisition 15

 Alphonse XI, 1348.  Juan Antonio Llorente (1756–1823), who wrote his famous Histoire Critique de l’Inquisition d’Espagne (Paris, 1817) in exile in France ga ve circulation possibly to exaggerated figures. For the Jews, see Henry Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition (New York: New American Library, 1965). 16

chapter 1.2.c

reformed catholocity  37

proper was to secure an avowal of heresy. To be sure, the suspect was graciously permitted to name mortal enemies among the possible informants, and their evidence was thereupon discounted. He was also permitted to choose a c ounselor from a p anel, although this person usually confined his defense to urging the suspect to make a clean confession of guilt. Torture was applied only in cases of i nconsistent admissions or the refusal to name associates. The Inquisition was hardest upon lapsed heretics who had previously, after submitting to the prescribed penalties, sworn “with vehemence” that they would become loyal to the Church, and upon heresiarchs, even though they might make a full confession. These more serious offenders were “relaxed” to the secular arm with a formal prayer for mercy. The burning of the recalcitrants marked the climax of this cruel objectification of corporate faith, the auto de fe (actus fidei; Portuguese: auto da fe). In 1485, the surviving Jewish community was fatefully imperiled when certain enraged Marranos, some of them connected by marriage with noble families in Aragon, unwittingly gave impetus and further motivation to the detested institution by compassing the murder of the inquisitor of Aragon as he knelt near the high altar in the cathedral of S aragossa. The indiscriminate wrath of the old ethnic Christians (castizos) was vented upon Jews and Marranos alike. Moreover, scarcely a noble family of Aragon survived the vindictiveness of t he bestial masses without seeing at least one of i ts members disgraced at an auto de fe. Persecution reached a new peak after the conquest of G ranada, when the policy of f orced conformity became a national passion. On 30 March 1492 an edict was issued that gave the Jews four months to make a c hoice between conversion or banishment, a particularly somber prospect, for even submission to the rite of baptism was no guarantee that a converso would be much more secure in his rights than before. Two wealthy Jews had offered Ferdinand 300,000 ducats in the hope of a verting the edict, and the king had been disposed to compromise. Suddenly the inquisitor Thomas Torquemada (1420–98), himself a descendant of a converso, appeared with his crucifix and cajoled the two sovereigns: “Behold the Crucified whom the wicked Judas sold for thirty pieces of silver! If you approve the deed, sell him for a greater sum!” About 160,000 Jews trudged out of the land, most of them to North Africa, Italy (Ch. 21), and the Levant. There was a comparable edict of forced conversion or banishment in Portugal in 1497. Many Portuguese Jews found their way to The Netherlands. Notable among the surviving but suspected Marranos were the Illuminists (Alumbrados). It is not possible that the majority of t hese conversos secretly adhered to Judaism. But it is quite conceivable that among the scholarly Marranos, liberated by choice or by force from the minute prescriptions of the Mosaic law, many might easily have been inclined to bypass also the new Christian legalism and ceremonial in order to come into direct contact

38  the radical reformation

chapter 1.2.c

with the God of I saiah. Illuminism, which in some forms was the foe of Spanish orthodoxy throughout the sixteenth century, was not the monopoly of the conversos, but it was among them that it found some of its most important proponents. An earlier form of Illuminism might have been influenced by Wycliffite17 ideas about predestination and reprobation, possibly brought to Castile in the suite of C atherine of G aunt, queen of Henry III (d. 1406). In any case, either Pauline Augustinian predestinarianism or Muslim predeterminism is known to have attracted certain doctrinal poets among the conversos at court. The Illuminists of the sixteenth century, centered in New Castile and Guadalajara, appear to be genetically unrelated to the earlier ones.18 They go back, however, to at least 1509 or 1510. In their obscure beginnings their movement was made up of F ranciscans, laymen, and some women who met in private homes for the reading and interpretation of Scripture in the vernacular and for prayer as a means of personal devotion and religious experience. The amorphous group gradually became conscious of itself as a distinctive movement but with three divergent currents: (1) the Alumbrados dexados, headed by Isabel de la Cruz and her convert Pedro Ruiz de Alcaraz; (2) the Alumbrados recogidos, headed by t he eloquent Franciscan Francisco de Osuna (d. 1540), formulator of sixteenth-century orthodox Spanish mysticism; and (3) the Alumbrados visionarios or apocalyptics, notably the Franciscan trio, Olmillos, Ocaña, Santander, who advocated a radical ecclesiastical reform. The recogidos sought a substantive union with God through asceticism and the three mystical ways (negative, illuminative, and unitive) while 17  Charles Frederic Fraker, Jr., Studies on the Cancionero de Baena (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1966), cf. Hispanic Review 33 (1965): 97–117. Fraker supplies no documentary evidence of Wycliffite ideas. 18  The pioneer study of Illuminism was that of Bataillon (1937), Erasmo y España (2d ed. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1966), 166–90. In Spanish the word Alumbrados competes with Iluminados, the man of the Enlightenment.The first use of the term Alumbrados in the sense of a con venticular Spiritualist or quietist w as in a letter of a Franciscan fr iar of 1494 to Car dinal Ximénes. Beginning on p. 191 he str esses the impor tance of Erasmus’ Enchiridion in Spanish. See Angela Selka, “Algunos datos los pr imeros alumbrados: El edicto de 1525 y su relación con el process de Alcaraz,” Bulletin Hispanique 54 (1952): 125–52. Nieto, Juan de Valdés, 56–97, presents the most extensi ve and systematic study of the thr ee groups of Alumbrados, pointing up their differences. He holds, in contrast to the following author, that the Alumbrados dejados used some mystical terms for want of an adequately developed vernacular vocabulary for sober scriptural fideism of the Evangelist Spiritualist type. Antonio Márquez, with his stress on the continuity of medieval mystic motifs, provides an overall view in Los Alumbrados: Orígenes y filosofía 1525–1559 (Madrid: Taurus, 1972). Melquiades Andres provides the first exhaustive study of one g roup in Los Recogidos: Nueva visión del la mística española (1500–1700) (Madrid Fondación Universitaria Española, 1976). Nieto returns to Isabel and Pedro in “The Heretical Alumbrados Dexados,” Revue de Littérature comparée, 52 (1975) 293–313, and “L’héresie des Alumbrados,” Revue d’Histoire et de Philosophie Religieuses, 66 (1986): 403–18.

chapter 1.2.c

reformed catholocity  39

the dejados rejected human preparation for grace. An extreme visionario, Brother Melchior, predicted an impending reformation of t he political and religious order and the establishment of the New Jerusalem. And the aforementioned trio of Franciscan visionarios predicted in 1524 the sack of Rome (1527), hoping for the overthrow of the reigning Pope “as a pig” (Clement VII).19 Orthodox in doctrine, they were not persecuted by the Inquisition. Of the three thrusts of I lluminism, the dejados alone were regularly charged by t he Inquisition with heresy. Their group was characterized by its attachment to scriptural interpretation based on personal inspiration, by r ejection of w orks as a m eans of s alvation, by b elief in one’s utter dependence on God’s gracious will: thus the designation dejados, i.e., abandoned or surrendered to the love of God (cf. the Rhenish mystical term: to be gelassen, found elsewhere in the Radical Reformation), by one’s incapacity to fulfill the scriptural commandments because of the bondage of the will (cf. Luther), and by a non-mystical practice of prayer and communion with God. The opposite of dejados would be, according to Isabel, atados, that is, Christians attached to sacraments, priestly prescriptions, and ecclesiastical regulations instead of abiding “in the unity of the love of God and neighbor.” Although the movement has elements of both subjective sectarianism and Lutheranism, the Inquisition never charged the dejados with being “Lutheran” in their heresy, because it was (and was perceived to be) indigenously Spanish. 20 Isabel de la Cruz converted Pedro Ruiz de Alcaraz c. 1511–12, and may be regarded as the foundress of t his short-lived grouping of C astilian Evangelical Spiritualists of Sephardic Jewish antecedents. She attached herself to the Third Order of St. Francis. She made her living by teaching embroidery. What is known of her life as the originator of the conventicle and her beliefs is derived principally from the Confesiones, her answers taken down verbatim by the inquisitor.21 Thanks to the survival in her home of the domestic Jewish piety in a family of d evout conversos, she evidently knew by heart many passages of the Old and the New Testament. Her group came to attach importance to the spiritual liberty accorded readers of the holy word by the Holy Spirit (Matt. 10:20; 1 C or. 2:10–16). Although her vocabulary may have owed 19  On the context of Melchior, see Nieto, “The Franciscan Alumbrados and the PropheticApocalyptic Tradition,” The Sixteenth Century Journal, 8 (1977): 3–16. 20  Cf. Bataillon, Erasmo y España; Selka “Algunos datos los primeros alumbrados”; Nieto, Juan de Valdés and “L’héresie des alumbrados,”; Márquez, Los Alumbrados; and Andres Los Recogidos. 21  Published by J. E. Longhurst, Cuadernos de Histor ia de España 25/26 (Buenos Aires: Universidad de Buenos Aires, Instituto de Historia de la Cultura Española,Medieval y Moderna, 1957) 279–303, summarized by him in his Luther’s Ghost in Spain, 91–102; Nieto, Juan de Valdés, 112–15.

40  the radical reformation

chapter 1.2.c

something to medieval mysticism and even Cabalism, she seems to have been notably confident that so long as she and her fellow believers lived in Christ the Lord (1 John 3:6) they could not sin. She interpreted their buffeting by those hostile to their contemplative life and to their peculiar ways of heeding the Scripture and hence often their suffering for their convictions in their non-mystical “unity in the love of God and neighbor,” by citing Jesus’ own words in Matt. 16:24, “Whosoever would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” For she read his words as a command to live—not by the ascetic regulations of the Church of old but by his discipline directly taken from Scripture. She held, moreover, that good works were the result of her faith and not done in hope of reward or in fear of hell. It was with this evangelical message that Isabel converted Pedro, urging him to desist from his ascetic regimen of n octurnal prayer, which might well disturb his wife, and to live a s criptural life by d ay. He was already “lay preacher,” first for a noble family in their palace in Guadalajara, and then in that of a marquis in Toledo. He was apprehended in the church of Santa Clara in Toledo in April 1524. The edicto against the group was issued in September 1525.22 Two letters survived from him, throwing light on the social milieu of these conventicular Spiritualists of Bible piety. Of importance for the theory of the atonement and the theology of justification among the Illuminists, especially the recogidos and the dejados as in Valdésianism (Chs. 1.4 and 21.4–5), is the prominence of t he term “benefits of God/Christ.” It is just possible that the memory of the annual day of a tonement (Yom Kippur) of t he Jewish forebears of t he Marrano Illuminists could have played into their tendency to confuse the oncefor-all historic Atonement (redemption) on Calvary with justification and recurring sanctification: these two theologically identified moments being respectively appropriation of the work of Christ and the impulsive implementation thereof in the Christian’s personal life. The Alumbrados recogidos employed “benefits” in an Augustinian generalized but orthodox sense, as formulated for example by Francis of Osuna in his Tercer abecedario, but the dejados used the term in a special sense, regarded as heretical by the Inquisition, as is known from the defense presented by Alcaraz to exculpate himself. To the charge that he considered it to be a “defect” (defecto) to meditate on the passion of Christ rather than on his victory, he replied: [H]is holy Passion is the means of our redemption and to think about them is the most healing means (saludable medio) in order to lift up our heart to his most holy divinity. And if I said that, 22

 The edict is published by Márquez, Los Alumbrados 229–38.

chapter 1.2.c / 1.3

reformed catholocity  41

I did not think about the Passion but on the benefits (y si yo dixe que no pensase en la pasion sino en los beneficios).23 Alcaraz was here exercising his break with the Franciscan piety based on the meditation on, and the interiorization of, the Passion to stress the benefits of Christ in justification and sanctification. Despite our present clarity as to three groupings of A lumbrados, the inquisitors were often hard put to distinguish between the heterodox Spiritualists or mystics of t he studied Word and the Catholic mystics in the medieval unitive tradition, the pride of S pain’s Golden Age.24 Cardinal Ximénes himself was favorably disposed toward the milder manifestation of Illuminism, unlike his successors of the Counter-Reform. The main reason for the condemnation by the Inquisition of the broad party of dejados in all walks of l ife seems to have been that Illuminists gathered in devotional conventicles, distinguishing themselves from the sacramental community of the obediently faithfu1.25 Illuminism reasserted itself in the Spanish version of Erasmianism.

3. Erasmus of Rotterdam, Oxford, Cambridge, Basel, Freiburg: Patron of Evangelicals in Spain and of Radicals Everywhere, Though by Him Disowned The introduction of Erasmus “of Christendom” 26 in a chapter devoted to Spain and Italy when the very next chapter is devoted to a movement in his native Netherlands will appear to be misplaced geographically and

23  For Ximénes’ attitude, see Bataillon, Erasmo y España, 70; Nieto, Juan de Valdés, 52–56; for the problem of conventicular separation, ibid., respectively: 190–225, 106–12. 24  Besides the Franciscans Francesco of Osuna, aforementioned Bernardino of Laredo (d. 1565), and Alfonso of Madrid (d. 1545), there were the Dominican Luís of Granada (d. 1582), the Carmelite Teresa of Avila (d. 1582), and John of the Cross (d. 1591), and the new spirituality of Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556) and his followers. 25  Proceso contra Pedro Ruíz de Alcaraz, Madrid, Archivo Histórico Nacional, Inquisición de Toledo, Legajo 106, n. 5, fo1. 201–2. Francisco de Osuna, Tercer abecedario espiritual (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianes, 1972), ed. Melquiades Martin. 26  This genial designation derives from Roland H. Bainton, Erasmus of Christendom (New York: Scribner, 1969). Other important biographers and interpreters, whose works will be adduced at various points in the present volume, are the following: Preserved Smith, Erasmus (New York, 1926) called the g reat humanist a “Rationalist” perhaps v alidly but by rather eccentrically giving prominence to Erasm us’ interpretation of Matt. 16:18 as making all Christians, like Peter, “priests” and “kings,” i.e., spiritual sovereigns in r eligion and ethics. Augustin Renaudet in Erasme, sa pensée et son action 1518–21 (Paris, 1926) found in Erasmus a forerunner of Catholic Modernism, whose “Spiritualism” owed more to Cicero than Paul and whose ethics derived more from classical antiquity than from the gospels, 13–14. Three important biographies in the context of the age ar e those of J ohan Huizinga, Erasmus and the Age of Reformation, tr. F. Hopman, with a selection from the letters of Erasmus, tr. Barbara Flower

42  the radical reformation

chapter 1.3.a

otherwise, except for the consideration that none of the towering figures of t he era can in this monographic account be dealt with in their own right except as they represent the larger theological context and bear upon the narrative of the Radical Reformation; and Erasmus was, more than he would himself acknowledge, the source and sanction for much in Anabaptism, Spiritualism, and Evangelical Rationalism. a. Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) The humanist of Rotterdam, who in 1516 entered the service of Charles as royal counselor at the Burgundian court in Brussels, and for this purpose was relieved by the Pope in 1517 of his responsibilities as Augustinian canon, went through the Lutheran revolt from the same apostolic prince, to be regarded on all sides as the arbiter of Christian humanism. In the very year that Erasmus accepted his post as Burgundian counselor, he published his epoch-making Greek New Testament (Basel, 1516) with a classical Latin translation. 27 Henceforth, the northern humanist was to do for the ancient Christian sources what his more classically oriented colleagues among the Italian humanists had been doing for the discovery, preservation, and publication of Greek and Roman literature. The works of Jerome were completed in nine volumes by 1518, of Cyprian in 1519, of Hilary of Poitiers in 1523, of Epiphanius in 1524, of Irenaeus in 1526, of Augustine in 1526, of A mbrose in 1527, and of C hrysostom in 1530. Erasmus was to die supervising the printing of the works of Origen in the same town, Basel, where in the same year, 1536, Calvin (so at variance with both Erasmus and Origen on the questions of free will and predestination) would be bringing out his Institutes of the Christian Religion. A notable feature of E rasmus’ critical edition of t he New Testament was the elimination from the traditional text of 1 J ohn 5:7 of i ts initial

(New York: Harper, 1957); of Margaret Mann Phillips, Erasmus and the Northern Renaissance, rev. ed. (Totawa, N.J.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1981); and of Louis Bouyer, Autour d’Erasme: Etudes sur le c hristianisme des humanistes catholique (Paris: Éditions de Cerf ,1959; English, London: Chapman, 1959). Jacques Etienne in Spiritualisme érasmien (Louvain: Publications universitaires de Louv ain, 1956) defines the stance of Erasm us as that of “theoretical” ethical evangelical “Spiritualism” or “Spiritualization” with “an interiorization” of piety and Christian liberty, pp. 14, 57, 61. John B. Payne, Erasmus: His Theology of the Sacr aments (Richmond,Va.: John Knox Press, 1970), whose study suggests dimensions going far beyond the title, characterizes Erasmianism as a “kind of Spiritualism” and also puritanism. 27  Erasmus was helped forward by the critical comparison of the Greek and Vulgate New Testament of Lorenzo Valla (c. 1406–1457) who li ved under the pr otection of Alphonse I, King of Naples. Erasmus happened on a manuscript of Valla’s Collatio Novi Testamenti (1444), which he prepared for publication with a dedication in praise of Valla for reading the New Testament as if in no way different from emending and annotating a classical author. Valla also attacked the temporal power of the Papacy in proving spurious the Donation of Constantine (1440), and he recognized that the mystical corpus long attributed to Paul’s convert at Athens, Dionysius (Acts 17:34), should be ascribed to a Pseudo-Areopagite (c. 500.).

chapter 1.3.a

reformed catholocity  43

Trinitarian phrase, “There are three that bear record in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one.” Not discovering it included in his Greek manuscripts or cited by the early Fathers of the Church, Erasmus expunged the verse current in the Vulgate translation. Moreover, in commenting on the Gospel of John, Erasmus observed that the term “God” in the New Testament, without further specificity should be construed to apply to God the Father whom he elsewhere referred to in Ciceronian style as Deus Optimus Maximus. Because of Erasmus, 1 John 5:7 was to be omitted from the older Anabaptist vernacular versions of the Bible28 and the Unitarian Bible of Simon Budny while the Erasmian-Calvinist John Łaski (à Lasco) and then the Polish Brethren after him would characteristically refer to the Father-Creator as Deus Optimus Maximus (Ch. 25.2). Erasmus, trained in the school of t he Devotio Moderna, was not philosophically inclined, but belonged, generally speaking, to the scholastic Moderni (nominalists). Becoming specific on the dogma of Nicaea and the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), he declared, “According to dialectical logic [in the context of nominalism], it is possible to say there are three Gods, but to announce this to the untutored would give great offense.”29 Erasmus further weakened the received doctrine of the Trinity, which he professed to uphold on the authority of the Church, by giving prominence to the Apostles’ Creed as possibly a sufficient safeguard of the triune faith since it might well, he thought, have been composed precisely in the generation of the First Council of Nicaea, as he said in his preface to Hilary of Poitiers and in reference to a letter of Hilary to the Arian Emperor Constantius; and Erasmus himself articulated the faith on the model of the Apostles’ Creed in Inquisitio de fide, thereby providing John Łaski and the Polish Unitarians with their rationale for adhering solely to Scripture and its ancient credal summary (Ch. 25). In his Latin version of t he New Testament, Erasmus eschewed, in the Prologue to John’s Gospel, the Vulgate Verbum for the Greek Logos, and, under the guise of i mproved classical elegance, substituted for it the philosophically denuded and theologically neutral Sermo. All the while, he insisted that he was disposed to leave theological subtlety on the doctrine of the Trinity to one side, remarking again in his preface to Hilary, later to be employed by Servetus and the Polish Brethren: Is it not possible to have fellowship with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, without being able to explain philosophically the 28

 It was enclosed in parentheses in the Mennonite Biestkens Bible of 1560.  Erasmus, De libero arbitr io, Opera Omnia (Leiden, 1706), 9:1217c; 5:500d; cited b y Roland H. Bainton, “Michael Servetus and the Trinitarian Speculation of the Middle Ages,” in Autour de Michel Servet et de Sebastien Castellion, ed. Bruno Becker (Haarlem: Willink, 1953), 44–45. 29

44  the radical reformation

chapter 1.3.a

distinction between them and between the Generation of the Son and the Procession of the Holy Spirit? If I believe the tradition that there are three of o ne natura[!], what is the use of l abored disputation? If I do not believe, I shall not be persuaded by a ny human reasons. … You will not be damned if you do not know whether the Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son has one or two beginnings, but you will not escape damnation if you do not cultivate the fruits of the Spirit, which are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, long-suffering, mercy, faith, modesty, continence, and chastity. … The sum of o ur religion is peace and unanimity, but these can scarcely stand unless we define as little as possible, and in many things leave each one free to follow his own judgment, because there is great obscurity on these matters. 30 Not only in his stress upon the New Testament and ancient Christian sources, in his casualness about Nicene-IV Lateran Triadology, 31 in his esteem for the Apostles’ Creed as adequate, but also in other doctrines and attitudes Erasmus would presently be appealed to not only by several Catholic Evangelicals but also by all three main sectors of the Radical Reformation. In his Commentary on Psalm 2 (1522) he gave impetus to the formulation of the triplex munus Christi, the threefold office of Christ as Prophet, King, and Priest (to be taken up by Calvin in the 1543 edition of the Institutes), a formulary to become formative for the Erasmian Pole John Łaski in his reform in East Frisia, in the Strangers’ Church in London, and after 1556 in Poland. 32

30  Erasmus, Epistolae, ed. P. S. Allen, 5:173–92, no. 1334, 176ff.; quoted by Roland Bainton, Hunted Heretic: The Life and Death of Mic hael Servetus, 1511–1553 (Boston: Beacon Pr ess, 1960). It is note worthy that Erasm us uses natura, the r eceived term for the plenar y divine and plenary human nature in the one P erson of Chr ist by the definition of the Council of Chalcedon, 451, instead of the scholastically proper essentia or the patristic Latin substantia. 31  The reference here is to the patristic definition against Arius at the Council of Nicaea in 325 and the scholastic clarification of the same doctrine in 1215 at the Fourth Lateran Council in connection with controversy between Joachim of Flora and Peter Lombard. See more fully, Ch. 25.1. 32  Erasmus gave prominence to Christ as propheta, rex, sacerdos in 1522, Commentarius in Psalmum Secundum; Opera omnia,V, 206BC, 224E–225C; Opera omnia, 5 vols. to date (Amsterdam/ New York: North-Holland/Oxford for L’Union Académique Internationale et del’Académie Royale Néerlandaise des Sciences et des Sciences Humaines,1969–), vol. 5, pt. 2 (1985): 110–13, 143–46. Erasmus does not yet use the term triplex munus, but he approaches the sense of threefoldness by spelling the adverbal trifariam with a ph: “In [Jesum] Christum vero et triphariam competit veneti vocabulum,” p. 110, l. 462. For its applicability solely to the human nature of Christ, rather than as in later de velopments (Łaski, Calvin) to the P erson of Chr ist in respect to his work, see ibid, p. 112, ll. 512f.: “Christus enim humanae natur ae vocabulum est. Non enim unctus dicitur nis quatenus homo.”

chapter 1.3.a

reformed catholocity  45

Erasmus was also influential in his theory of o pposition to monastic vows; in his reconception of m arriage (Ch. 20); in his minimalization of the consequences of the Fall of Adam as only the privation of the original grace and the inclination to sin in unconscious imitation of Adam, 33 a view expressed in Paraclesis (1516) and Ratio verae theologiae (1519), a sinful disposition which can be partly overcome by the study of the New Testament and of “ good literature”; 34 in his consequent insistence on the practical freedom of t he will; in his startling proposal, presupposing pedobaptism, that youths during Lent be required to attend upon a s eries of c atechetical sermons based upon the gospels, the apostolic letters, and the Apostles’ Creed, and after acknowledging their sins, to reaffirm in the face of t he congregation the baptismal vows said for them by their sponsors in infancy, thus making of baptism, catechetical instruction, youthful penance for personal sins, and confirmation, a protracted sacramental complex—notably in an appendix to the Paraphrasis in evangelium Matthaei (1522), 35 making of the matured Christian “a priest and king”; in his understanding of eucharistic communion as a spiritual presence of Christ, mingling with all food and drink (Ch. 2.1); and in his qualified pacifism. In his Querela Pacis, published the year after his Greek New Testament, Erasmus combined evangelical, classical, and prudential arguments for the restraint of war and the limitation of even the so-called “ just” war. 36 He appealed to the Stoic idea of the harmony of t he spheres, to the example of the irrational beasts that are never predatory on their own kind, and to the Stoic-patristic ideal of the unity of all people, among whom reason and

Because of the later pr ominence of the chr istological motif in both J ohn Calvin and some of the radicals, its patristic beginnings may here be noted. The triplex munus Christi can be found inchoately in Eusebius of Caesarea as a systematization of the roles of the Messiah. In the Old Testament the king is the anointed one, Christus, and several priests are also anointed, and there is one instance of a prophet being anointed, Elisha by Elijah (I Kings 19:16), taken as a type of Jesus Christ as prophet. Although the medieval conflict between rex and sacerdos tended to marginalize the formulary involving three offices, it was adduced, e.g. by Innocent III, given renewed prominence by Erasmus and then by the former Dominican, Martin Bucer (Ch. 10.2.b), who is thought to have communicated it to John Calvin (Ch. 23.5). 33  To the extent to which the Augustinian emphasis on original sin rested on Rom. 5:12– 21, Erasmus rendered the key verse Rom. 5:13 ∆ey∆ w[ in his Novum instrumentum (Basel, 1516): (in whom) all sinned, to read ∆eyw Pavnteı (because all men sinned), thus resolving the theologically pregnant passage with philological plainness. 34  Payne, Erasmus: Theology of Sacraments, 42. 35  Ibid., Ch. 10. In the preface to the opera of Cyprian, Erasmus dealt with rebaptism, only to oppose it on the ground of tradition and church authority. Nevertheless, he was charged with approaching rebaptism, and Noel Beda in Paris and the Spanish monks so charged him.Thus in De amabili Eccleisiae concordia (1533) he would expressly criticize the Anabaptists. 36  See the analysis of Roland Bainton, “The Querela Pacis of Erasmus,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte (henceforth ARG) 17 (1951): 32–48.

46  the radical reformation

chapter 1.3.a / 1.3.b

equity should prevail; and he vividly pointed up the futility and the inhumanity of actual warfare, as in his Dulce bellum inexpertis of 1525. His conviction about man’s capacity to use his own resources and specifically his free will to work out his own salvation was expounded in his first explicit attack on the predestinarianism of the Reformation in 1524, Diatribe de libero arbitrio, to which Luther replied in his celebrated delineation of the bondage of the will in the realm of salvation (1525). So deeply was Erasmus disappointed in the turn which Luther’s reform was taking that he sadly declared: “I shall bear therefore with this [the medieval] Church until I shall see a better one.”37 Erasmus nevertheless hoped he would be able in his program of returning to the sources so to freshen this Church that, while she would retain an allegiance to the bishop of Rome, she would also be brought close to the ancient apostolic pattern and would then indeed constitute a “better one,” different alike from that under the corrupt papacy of his own day and the belligerent and predestinarian Reformation church of t he invisible elect, with which conception Erasmus could not make common cause. Though not taken directly from Erasmus, the ideal of a “ Third Church,” with its slightly eschatological overtone, might be taken as indeed the slogan, or at least as the program of Catholic Evangelism. b. Erasmianism in Spain Erasmus’ works were not available in Spain before 1516, when there appeared a S panish translation of h is sermon, Sermón del Niño Jesús. His Institutio principis christiani (1516) was taken note of in Spain in 1518. 38 In 1520 the Spanish translation of h is Querela Pacis appeared. Spanish interest in his works rapidly increased when he was learnedly attacked by one of the Polyglot translators, Diego López Zúñiga, for certain features of his New Testament. Erasmus’ edition differed from the Spanish in stressing the preeminence of the original Greek text, whereas in Alcalá the Greek text was printed facing the Latin of the authorized Vulgate. In spite of numerous attempts by h is opponents to prove him a Lutheran, Erasmus sustained his reputation in Spain, especially when Charles returned with a suite of Flemish humanists in 1522, and it was further enhanced when the De libero arbitrio (1524) revealed the point at which humanism, with its return to the sources, and reformation sola fides parted company. In Spain

37

 Erasmus, Hyperaspites diatribae, l.i; Opera omnia 10 (Leyden, 1706), col. 1258: “Fero igitur hanc Ecclesiam donec videro meliorem, et eadem me fer re cogitur, donec ipse fiam melior. Nec infeliciter na vigat, qui inter duo di versa mala medium cur cum tenet.” Cf. Augustin Renaudet, Érasme et l’Italie , Travaux d’Humanisme et Renaissance 15 (Gene va: Droz, 1954), Book 4, entitled “Le problème de la 3e Eglise,” 200ff. 38  Bataillon, Erasmo y España, 84.

chapter 1.3.b / 1.4

reformed catholocity  47

as elsewhere it was soon recognized that the Erasmian philosophia Christi was quite different from Lutheran justification by faith alone. Thus differentiated, the Erasmian third party, in Spain as elsewhere in Romance lands, did not easily come apart in the tension between Rome and Wittenberg. The single most influential work in Spanish of Erasmus was his Enchiridion of 1503 translated by the Erasmian Alfonso Fernández de Madrid, archdeacon of A lcor. It appeared in 1526 in a Castilian prose, agreeable and familiar, glossing over some of Erasmus’ daring formulations. It proved to be dangerous, nevertheless, because while acceptable in Spanish guise to most Catholics, it could be also exploited by t he incipiently heterodox. In some cases indigenous Illuminism and cosmopolitan Evangelism found in Spain the same patron, as, for example, the Marquis of Villena, Don Diego López Pacheco, to whom the recogido Osuna dedicated his Tercer abecedario espiritual (1527) and to whom also John de Valdés would dedicate his first extant work, Diálogo de doctrina cristiana (1529), communicating the Illuminism of Pedro Ruiz de Alcaraz, who had served as lay preacher in Pacheco’s Toledo palace, under an Erasmian veneer. Erasmus, like the Illuminists, interpreted the death of C hrist as a g lorious, not a sorrowful, event, and spurned the practice of meditating on the sufferings of the crucified Lord. In his annotations of the New Testament, Erasmus says: Jesus wanted his death to be glorious and not sad; he did not want us to weep over it, but to adore it, because he voluntarily faced it for the salvation of t he whole world. … If Christ had wished us to grieve at his death after the vulgar fashion, why, when he was carrying his cross, did he reprove the daughters of Jerusalem [for weeping, Lk. 23:28]? 39 These words were censured by the Sorbonne as impious, and the Spanish Inquisition condemned a similar tendency among the Illuminists.40 4. The Brothers Valdés The hope of Catholic Europe to save itself from shipwreck on the rocks of nationalism, religious particularism, and the radical reconception of f aith and merit in Martin Luther, was expressed in the Iberian peninsula by several outstanding humanists. Significantly, it was Spain, well beyond the confines and the medieval conceptualization of the Holy Roman Empire,

39  Ibid., 216 passim; Antonio Paz y Mélia, “El embajador polaco Juan Dantisco en la corte de Carlos V,” Boletín de la [Real] Academia de la Historia, 11–12 (1924–25), an article based on Dantyszek’s reports in Acta Tomiciana, 12 vols. (Posen, 1885–1906). 40  Commentary on Luke 23, cited in Bataillon, Erasmo y España, 84, 188.

48  the radical reformation

chapter 1.4

that became after 1519 the bastion of t he attempt to defend the theory and the usages of t he Empire as a u niversal society symbolically embracing all Christendom. Alfonso de Valdés, enthusiastic admirer of Erasmus, expressed it in popular language in a lively style full of idealism and irony. Alfonso41 was the older of the two brothers, John, the younger.42 They were born in the province of C uenca in new Castile. Alfonso was born about 1490, John, about 1509 or 1510. Alfonso was primarily involved in administrative and political life and belongs in our narrative by close association, although motivated by religion, while John, the center of our interest as religious, was also active in political and literary life. Sons of a distinguished converso family,43 they reflected throughout their equally brief careers the domestic piety and learning, of w hich “habit,” perhaps in adaptation of earlier Jewish practice, John (in his first published writing) preserved a vivid reminiscence: Each morning, as soon as he [the father, Fernando, hereditary regidor, of Cuenca] got up, he used to hold a reunion of his sons and daughters and members of the household, and there he instructed them about almost all points considered [in the Diálogo]. And after that, he would ask in more or less the same fashion what you [the idealized archbishop of G renada] have questioned me [Eusebio = John]. Because he [father] said that in the same way a bishop must instruct the members of t he diocese in Christian doctrine [at confirmation], and the curate the members of his congregation, in much the same way it is his duty to instruct the

41  For Alfonso’s life and writings, see José F. Montesimo, ed. Valdés, Diálogo de la cosas curridas en Roma (Madrid, 1928); idem, Diálogo de Mercurio y de Caron (Madrid, 1929). 42  For John’s life and writings, see Nieto, Juan de Valdés and José Nieto, ed., Juan de Valdés’ Two Catechisms: The Dialogue on Chr istian Doctrine and the Chr istian Instruction for Children , tr. Carol D. Jones (Lawrence, Kan.: Coronado Press, 1981), introduction, “Early Years”; Antonio Márquez, “Juan de Valdés, teólogo de los Alumbrados,” La Ciudad de Dios 185 (1971) 214–19; and A. Gordon Kinder, “Juan de Valdés” in Bibliotheca Dissidentium (henceforth BD) an intermittent series, varyingly of reports of sermons in Strassburg, monographs, and biobibliographical presentations of title pages and synopses of contents,in this case volume 9 (Baden-Baden/ Bouxvilles: Koerner, 1988), 111–95. What follows on the tw o brothers is based pr imarily on Nieto’s two works. See also the earlier Edmondo Cione , Juan de Valdés, la sua vita e il suo pensiero (Naples, 1963) and the earlier Domingo de Santa Teresa, Juan de Valdés 1498(?)–1541: Su pensamiento religioso y las corrientes espirituales de su tiempo (Rome: Apud Aedes Universitatis Gregorianae, 1957). 43  Both parents of the br others Valdés were of converso descent, their suspect mater nal uncle having perished at an auto de fé. For the role of “The Caste of Conversos,” see Stephen Gilman, The Spain of Fer nando de Ro yas: The Intellectual and Social Landscape (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), ch. 3, and also Albert A. Sicroff, Les controverses des Statuts de “puritée de sang” en Espagne (Paris: Didier, 1960), in which tw o works it is clear that the Marranos were as much concerned with avoiding exogamy as the Old Chr istians. For the burned priest, Fernando de la Bar rera, see the Proceso (Archivo Diocesano de Cuenca) as reported by Nieto, Two Catechisms, introduction, n. 4.

chapter 1.4

reformed catholocity  49

members of his household … for the edification of his [own] soul and of the members of his household.44 The two sons had also profited from an education under the Italian humanist Peter Martyr d’Anghiera (1457–1526). In 1520 Alfonso, as a member of Charles’ court, was present at the coronation of Charles as German King and Emperor-elect at Aachen and returned to Spain full of enthusiasm for the ruler of Two Worlds. Alfonso recognized in Lutheranism a threat not so much to the Church as to the Empire. From 1522 on, his role at court became increasingly important, especially when in February 1526 he was engaged as latinista official, secretary to the Emperor, an honor hitherto accorded an Italian. In this capacity he would publish his two famous dialogues, Diálogo de las cosas ocurridas en Roma and Diálogo de Mercurio y Carón, both probably between late 1529 and early 1530. They were Erasmian in substance but with a Spanish courtly éclat. In the first dialogue, between an archdeacon and a certain Lanctancio, Alfonso justified the sack of Rome by the troops of Charles V in 1527. His ideal prince was good, happy, and a reformer of the Church. The closing words of the dialogue are put in the mouth of the archdeacon: What do you think his Majesty will decide to do now in a matter of such a great importance? Take my word for it, he needs the best advice because if he reforms the Church now, when everyone knows how necessary it is, he will not only do a great service to God but he will also achieve more fame and glory in this world than any other prince before him. To the end of t ime, people will say that Jesus Christ founded the Church and the Emperor Charles V restored it.45 In the Diálogo de Mercurio y Carón, Valdés searched with irony and piety for authentic forms of t he Christian life. Who is the real Christian person? Valdés finds such a person not among the theologians or ecclesiastical authorities but in the simplicity of an anonymous soul who retells her story while waiting to be taken across the river by Charon. The language of this soul sounds very much like that of the Alumbrado dejado Alcaraz: In my youth I u ndertook not only to learn Christian doctrine but also to experience it. … In this way the Holy Scriptures became so clear to me and I devoted myself so wholly to them that in a s hort time many theologians who had wasted their

44  Angel M. Mergal. Spiritual and Anabaptist Writers (henceforth SAW), ed. Angel M. Mergal and George H. Williams (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1957), 302. 45  Montesimo, Valdés, Diálogo, 154–55.

50  the radical reformation

chapter 1.4

time in learning useless subtleties were confounded before me. … I did not care whether I was being called an idiot. …46 It is this striking testimony of the unknown true Christian soul which links the religious thought of Alfonso with his more radical brother John. Alfonso’s Erasmianism is a clear case where the Alumbrados’ concerns and his own sympathy for them altered, to a certain degree, his Erasmian vision of the ideal Christian: experience rather than learning. The name of J ohn is first documented in the records of t he Inquisition of Toledo relating to the trial of the Alumbrado Alcaraz. This source reveals that John was a member by 1523 of the household of the Marqués de Villena in Escalona (Toledo), Diego López Pachico. There, at an early age, still a boy (muchacho), John met the head of the dejados Alumbrados, Alcaraz, who influenced the course of John’s religious thought.47 It could well have been in the library of the patron that John began to read Erasmus, the Bible, Luther, and other Reformers from abroad. It is not certain where John was between the time he left Escalona in 1525 and the time when he arrived in Alcalá to attend the university. It is most likely that after a religious crisis in Escalona he returned home in Cuenca. He was probably with the royal court when it visited Granada in December 1526 to attend the installation of t he archbishop-elect, an encounter with whom is reflected in his oldest extant dialogue. He matriculated in Alcalá in 1526, no doubt perfecting his humanist Latin and acquiring Greek and Hebrew. After completing his second year and probably no older than nineteen, John published his Diálogo de doctrina cristiana (Alcalá, January 1529), actually a catechetical meditation in dialogue form, his only religious work of which the original Spanish text survives.48 The Diálogo, while Illuminist-Erasmian, seems to reflect in verbal parallels the author’s reading of L uther, Philip Melanchthon, and John Oecolampadius,49 to whom it is anonymously dedicated. Among the traditional theses of a c atechism, an idealized archbishop of Granada discusses with two interlocutors (one of them the monk Eusebio, who is really Valdés) the seven petitions of t he Lord’s Prayer. The archbishop begins by acknowledging the legitimacy of certain Illuminist practices, namely, praying without audible words (mental prayer), books, or beads, so long as this 46

 Ibid., 208f.  The fact that at the tr ial of Alcaraz (1525) John could be regarded as a boy, encourages the writer to favor the later range in the conjectures as to his date of birth. 48  It was virtually unknown before the unique copy was brought to light in Lisbon in 1925; a portion of it is translated by Mergal, SAW, 320ff. The text used here is that edited by B. Foster Stockwell (Buenos Aires/Mexico City: Editorial La Aurora, 1946), based on the f acsimile edition of Bataillon, Erasmo y España, with notes (Lisbon, 1925). The complete English version is that of Nieto, Two Dialogues. 49  Presumably in the library of the Marqués de Villena. 47

chapter 1.4

reformed catholocity  51

is a matter of spontaneous preference rather than a conventicular requirement. In commenting on the first petition, “Hallowed be thy name,” Valdés enunciates a basic principle of C atholic Evangelism: “God’s name is sanctified, when we sanctify ourselves.” He does not interpret the petition for daily bread eucharistically, regarding it rather as “the heavenly bread” of grace, “from which eat only those to whom God has forgiven their sins.” In a passage which anticipates his distinctive doctrine of the atonement (to be elaborated by Bernardine Ochino and then Faustus Socinus), a passage which incidentally throws light on the ethos and religious temper of h is day, Valdés writes: And something else should be kept in mind here: we are not worthy to have our sins forgiven just because we forgive our debtors, those who offend us, but because God wanted to forgive us through his infinite goodness and mercy; under these conditions we are forgiven. So, it is necessary to forgive our neighbors in order that God may forgive us, but let us not think that God forgives us because we forgive, because this will amount to attributing to ourselves what should be attributed only to God. I k now some people that, even though thinking of themselves as very holy and wise, when they feel some enmity against somebody, not wishing to forgive them, they do not pray this part of the Pater Noster, but skip it. 50 Concerning the persistence of evil and temptation even among those who regularly pray, Valdés expressly refers to Erasmus’ recovery of t he meaning that makes the most sense of t he seventh petition: “Erasmus, in his translation of the New Testament, says: ‘Deliver us from the evil one,’ that is, from the devil.” The section on prayer is followed with a Compendium on Holy Scripture, in which the author sets out Salvation History, perhaps his unique contribution to theology.51 After concluding with an exchange over the crying abuses of the Church to be reformed, Valdés appends his translation of the Sermon on the Mount from the Greek. With its praise of Erasmus and its use of his Inquisitio de fide, the Diálogo has been perceived as “a moderate Erasmian catechism,” yet with “an irreversible movement away from Erasmus.”52 Actually, it is very close to the thought of t he Alumbrado Alcaraz tinctured with awareness of t he Wittenberg reform.

50

 Mergal, SAW, 326. For another quotation from the same Diálogo, see above at n. 45.  This is the obser vation of Nieto , “Enorno al pr oblema de los Alumbrados,” Revista Española de Teología 35 (1975): 77–93. 52  Bataillon, Erasmo y España, 345–61. 51

52  the radical reformation

chapter 1.4 / 1.5

Valdés’ Diálogo was presently the occasion of a s uit against him, but, because of the influence of his family and the favor of the Erasmian party, he was not directly condemned. His detractors thereupon started a second process against him, and he left, arriving in Italy in 1531 (Ch. 21.4). The Diálogo was condemned in his absence.53 Published several months before Luther’s Large and Small Catechisms (April 1529), it stands at the head of the immense amount of c atechetic literature about to be produced by a ll confessions. The brothers Valdés were not alone among educated young Spaniards who pinned their hopes for a rejuvenated Europe on the young Emperor Charles, himself moved by a s ense of C atholic destiny. After the Sack of Rome in 1527 with mostly a G erman soldiery, Charles resolved to make another attempt to rally the papacy to its ecumenical duties and to reclaim for Rome the proper papal ministry by accepting papal confirmation of his imperial dignity at a coronation in Bologna in 1530. On this festive occasion, there was present besides Alfonso Valdés another thoughtful young Spaniard in the imperial suite, Michael Servetus, destined to be the virtual arch-heretic of the age of Reformation. 5. Michael Servetus to 1530 Born in Tudela in Navarre, the youthful noble Michael Servetus54 at the age of f ourteen had come under the patronage of J ohn of Q uintana (d. 1534), a Franciscan, a doctor of the Sorbonne, and a member of the Cortes of Aragon. Quintana was a man of irenic spirit, prepared to make attempts to reconcile the Lutherans to the Roman Church. He enabled Servetus to attend the school at Saragossa and then to spend the years 1528–29 studying law at the University of Toulouse. There, Servetus brought up in contact with Moriscos and Marranos, was taunted with charges of heterodoxy in the militantly orthodox university. He thereupon devoted much of his time to biblical studies in an effort to reinforce his own orthodoxy in respect to Christology and the doctrine of the Trinity, theologically the chief points of controversy between Christendom and the two Semitic religions which, until 1492, had been so prominent in the peninsula. This research led him to the unexpected discovery that the doctrine of the Trinity was nowhere clearly enunciated in 53  John E. Longhurst, Erasmus and the Spanish Inquisition: The Case of Juan de Valdés (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1950), 47ff. 54  Besides the bio graphy by Bainton, Hunted Heretic (see n. 17 above), see J osé Barón Fernández, Miguel Servet: Su vida y su obra (Madrid, España Calyso, 1970), and Fernando Martinez, Miguel Servet (Madrid, Hernando, 1976). For an appr oach to Ser vetus from the point of view of the humanistic philology of Lorenzo Valla, (Ch. 1.4.), see Claudio Manzoni, Umanesimo ed Eresia: Michele Serveto (Naples, 1974), 77. Jerome Friedman, Michael Servetus: A Case Study of Total Heresy (Geneva: Droz, 1978), on the other hand, stresses the crucial importance of rabbinical exegesis on Servetus’ thought.

chapter 1.5

reformed catholocity  53

the Bible. It is also very likely that even at this early date he was at work on the problem of great concern to many earnest Spanish Catholics as to why the sacramental water of baptism so often had no potency with the Marranos, a problem which he would eventually solve in advocating complete immersion at Jesus’ baptismal age of thirty (Ch. 11.1). When Quintana was appointed chaplain to the Emperor in 1529, Servetus accompanied him and the Emperor to the imperial coronation at Bologna and to the Diet of Au gsburg as an aide. 55 Servetus therefore stands out in our narrative of the Radical Reformation as its only figure who was so situated as actually to have been a witness to the last emplacement of the diadem of Empire on the elected King of the Germans by the Successor of Peter. Even by the standards of the sixteenth century, the festivities celebrating the Emperor’s progress through Italy and the double coronation in February 1530 were extraordinarily lavish. This was to be the first meeting of the Emperor-elect and the Pope since the Sack of R ome by i mperial troops in 1527. Putting their prior and continuing differences aside, both leaders made the most of an opportunity to project an image of Christian unity and to display their belief in the sacred and universal character of both papal authority and imperial power.56 Bologna was chosen by Charles as the venue, rather than Rome, as it lay close to the southern reaches of the Empire, while the ceremonies were to be enacted as though they were taking place in Rome. Bologna’s cathedral of San Petronio, the church of San Domenico, and the squares in between provided the civic theatre of universal festivity that might otherwise have unfolded in Rome between St. Peter’s and St. John’s Lateran. One of the triumphal arches constructed for the Pope’s entry into Bologna (in October 1529) held a depiction (probably a painting in grisaille) of the prophet Samuel at Hebron anointing King David (when he was thirty; cf. 2 Sam. 5:1–4). It reminded all who saw it of the divinely ordained bonds which tied religious and temporal authority.57 Charles, in turn, was greeted by statues of g reat Christian kings and emperors who had dedicated their 55

 Martinez, Miguel Servet, 35.  There are a n umber of accounts descr ibing the cor onation. Most impor tant, still, is Gaetano Giordani, Della venuta e dimora in Bologna del sommo pontefice Clemente VII per la coronazione di Carlo V. Imperatore celebrate l’anno MDXXX, Cronaca con note , documenti ed inici sioni (Bologna, 1842). Also see Cronaca del soggior no di Carlo V in Italia (del 26 Luglio 1529 al 25 Aprile 1530), ed. Giacinto Romano (Milan, 1892) and Mar ino Sanuto, I Diarii di Mar ino Sanuto, ed. Rinaldo Fulin et al., 58 vols. (Venice, 1879–1913). Sanuto’s account is in v ol. 52, cols. 142–45, 180–99, 435–47, 604–19, 624–79; and the ordo in coronando imper atore is pr inted in full, cols. 564–679. There are important discussions of the festi vities in Bonner Mitchell, The Majesty of the State: Triumphal Progresses of Foreign Sov ereigns in Renaissance Ital y, Biblioteca dell’Archivum Romanicum, ser. 1, vol. 203 (Florence: Olschki, 1986), and Roy Strong, Art and Power: Renaissance Festivals 1450–1650 (London: Boydell, 1984). 57  Giordani, Venuta e dimora, 7. 56

54  the radical reformation

chapter 1.5

might to the Church. Emperors Constantine, Charlemagne, and Sigismund (1410–37), emperor at the time of t he councils of C onstance then Basel, famed for his Reformatio Sigismundi,58 and the consecrand’s own grandfather, King Ferdinand the Catholic, all silently encouraged the Emperor-elect to support the Pope and to defend the one true apostolic faith. Complementing this display, Charles’ own entourage represented the international sweep of H apsburg rule. The banners of b oth the Empire and Burgundy led the procession and Charles’ retinue included officials from Germany, Flanders, and Italy as well as Spain.59 Although in popular tradition the Emperor was to wear an Imperial three-crown tiara composed of t hree metals: silver for Aachen, iron for Pavia, and gold for Rome, there were in fact only two crowns and two coronations in San Petronio, 22 and 24 February 1530. On 22 February, the Pope placed on Charles’ head the iron crown of Lombardy, which among other distinctions contained within it a m iter, like that of a b ishop, going back to the ordo regalis of t he Lombards who understood their ruler as priest-king.60 Two days later, at the coronation Mass in the cathedral, on precisely his thirtieth birthday, Charles in a kind of epiphany of both David and Christ, the last Christian head of the disintegrating corpus christianum so to be sanctioned by a Pope, girded with the sword taken up from the tomb of St. Peter by Clement, was anointed on the right arm and shoulder (not on the head as in other royal unctions). He then received the golden imperial diadem, while the Count Palatine, the only German prince present at the liturgical investment, carried the Reichsapfel. Kneeling at the Mass, the Emperor received the chalice.61 Even in the midst of t his great celebration of C hristian unity, those present recognized that Christendom was anything but secure and undivided. 58  The vision of thoroughgoing reform in Church and Empire was written in German in the name of Emper or Sigismund by the pr iest Frederick Winterlings of Rottwell, chancellor of Duke William of Bavaria who was the protector of the Council of Basel (1431–49). It was widely read and may well have influenced the idea among some radicals of an Endzeitskonzil, looking forward, as it did, to an eschatalogical “Frederick II” as priest-king, of whom Sigismund was the forerunner. On this eschatalogically important late medieval document, see Lothar Graf zu Dohna, Reformatio Sigismundi, Beiträge zum Verständnis einer Refor msschrift des fünfz ehnten Jahrhunderts (Göttingen:Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1960). 59  Giordani, Venuta e dimora, 15–16, and Mitchell, Majesty, 39. 60  Ordo in coronando imper atore appendix on cr own, in Romano and San uto, I diarii, vol. 52, col. 679. 61  Descriptions in Italian, including excer pts of the ordo in Latin, are preserved in letter s of one Mathias Dandolo, 22 February and 25 February (1530), Sanuto, vol. 52, item 408, cols. 603–610, and item 425, cols. 628–638.The reference to the chalice in column 609 confirms that the Emperor received communion in both kinds, a Byzantine imperial prerogative. In the ordo in coronando imperatore, the Emperor, removing his crown and kneeling, received one of the two Hosts consecrated for the P ope and himself, and then drank the vinum purificationis (col. 669). The writer happens to mention the entr y into the cathedral of the Mar qués de di Villena, the patron of Alcaraz and Juan de Valdés, col. 604.

chapter 1.5

reformed catholocity  55

In an oration delivered to Pope and Emperor together, Romulus Amaseus described a Church riven by dissent and threatened from without. In his oration, De Pace, Amaseus warned them of the horrible inroads of the Ottoman Turks.62 With Charles, however, came salvation and Amaseus exhorted, begged, and in the end predicted that the Emperor would consolidate a true universal Christian commonwealth (Respublica) if he would continue to heed the authority and dignity of the Supreme Pontiff.63 As if acting out this hoped-for unity of ecclesiastical and temporal power, immediately after the coronation on 24 February Pope and Emperor processed from the cathedral to the church of San Domenico, riding together on horseback under the Emperor’s baldachino. Crowned with tiara and diadem respectively, the two acted out a presumed unity and presented an image of the hope for a return to the complementarity of interests of church and state which had prevailed when Leo III had similarly crowned Charlemagne, on Christmas Day, 800.64 Servetus, whose legal studies had originally, as with Alfonso de Valdés, inclined him to favor the Emperor as at once the symbol and the executor of the will of a united Christendom, was suddenly dismayed to see Charles humble himself before Pope Clement, who with his triple crown was borne on the sedia gestatoria by f our cardinals on foot. Seated beneath a g olden canopy on a golden chair, he had received Charles to kiss his hand. Servetus recalls the scene with an outraged sense of its blasphemy: Now let us see other abominations in order that to all it might be apparent how admirable is this Beast and God of the Beast, which turned Daniel and John [of the Apocalypse] in astonishment. Wonderful is this Beast, which in herself with that double sword [Gelasius I, Duo quippe sunt], would recapitulate all this abomination of [ pagan] kings and priests, and which would have, such as they once had, their cringing flatterers and pseudoprophets. As Christ, King and Priest, has his ministers, so his Vicar, King and Priest, has his sacrificing priests (sacrificulos). As concerning Christ it is said [Luke 4:11] “On their [angels’] hands they will bear thee up, lest thou strike thy foot against a stone,” so the Pope for this reason has himself carried by others. He does not touch the ground with his feet, lest his holiness be polluted—to be carried on the shoulders of men and thus to make himself to be adored on earth as God, which no one so impious has dared to be from the foundations of the world. With these very eyes we have seen him borne in as 62

 Romulus Amaseus, “Oratio de Pace Bononiae habita coram Clementis VII Pontif. Max. et Caroli V,” in Giordani, Venuta e dimora, 46. 63   Ibid., 50. 64  Mitchell, Majesty, 144–45.

56  the radical reformation

chapter 1.5

God, which no one so impious has dared to be from the foundations of the world. With these very eyes we have seen him borne in pomp on the necks of princes making with his hand the sign of the cross and adored in the open streets by a ll the people on bended knee; so that those who were able to kiss his feet65 or slippers counted themselves more fortunate than the rest, and declared that they had obtained many indulgences, and that on his account the infernal pains would be remitted for many years. O vilest of all beasts, most brazen of harlots!”66

Michael Servetus

65  Servetus had probably been close enough in the cathedral of San Petronio to see Charles kiss the feet of Clement VII, a provision in the ordo, Liber Pontificalis, in Romano and Sanuto, I diarii, vol. 52, col. 667. 66  Servetus, Christianismi restitutio (Vienne, 1553; reprinted 1966), 462; noted by, and partly quoted from, Bainton, Hunted Heretic, 18–20.

chapter 1.5

reformed catholocity  57

It is quite possible that when Servetus would later propose believers’ baptism and consecration to the devout life at age thirty, the traditional age of Christ when he was baptized by John, there flashed back in his mind the scene in San Petronio when Charles, laved and anointed, stood crowned and mitred 67 before the cathedral throng in Bologna, mindful, too, that David was anointed king of Israel at thirty. And Servetus could have been musing, in his foreboding of impending martyrdom in Geneva (1553), that every baptized Christian, as sovereign witness, is imperator in regno suo. Within four months of t he coronation, Charles would be confronting at the Diet of Augsburg in the heart of Christendom that determined opposition of princes and divines who, in their support of Luther, had but recently taken the name Protestant (1529) and who would be preaching their Confessio Augustana drafted by Philip Melanchthon, the most Catholic of any Protestant confession.68 Within the decade, from his election to his coronation, Charles had seen, without realizing it, that the globe of Latin Christendom itself had become irrevocably severed into two hemispheres. Disappointed in the Emperor, Alfonso de Valdés passed from the scene, dying of t he plague in 1532, while John Valdés and Servetus turned to a spiritual reform. Servetus, following the Spiritual Franciscans, predicted that the papacy would have to be destroyed as a precondition of t he restoration of Christianity. Servetus, a representative embodiment of diverse and turmoiled tendencies, would soon become indeed the veritable effigy, for Catholic and Protestant alike, of all that seemed most execrable in the Radical Reformation: in his almost arrogant defense of t he autonomy of reason or of conscience on the basis of h is mastery of t he Old Testament in Hebrew; in his martyr readiness to espouse anabaptism, an eccentrically modified Trinitarianism, pacifism, and psychopannychism (soul sleep; Ch. 67  In here, having glimpsed at closer range than might otherwise seem appr opriate the imperial liturgy in the context of the Mass in San Petronio, 1530, the reader has been encouraged in a book on the bib lically motivated Radical Refor mation, with its disparate thr usts toward separation of reforming conventicles from the mag istracy and the civil compact, to tarry with so notable a sacramental spectacle: the sacring of a king, one of the medieval sacramentalia that often indeed did r estrain raw or absolute political po wer through sacerdotal authority and place the sanctification of rulership in the sacred context of prophetic biblical analogy. It has seemed proper, in any case, to recognize at this juncture the often quite scriptural and surely sacramental motif often hidden behind the plain and functional generic term magistracy that throughout the ensuing book covers the powers that be, the temporal power, the Obrigkeit, whether imper ial, royal, nobiliary, ecclesio-temporal, cantonal or conciliar (in reference to town councils, not to synods). Hence despite the quoted expr ession of outrage by Servetus (directed at the chief cleric, not at the king, except for Charles’ compliance), the liturgical kingship has here been set forth in its majesty and religious force at the very highest moment in the sixteenth centur y, namely when the Emperor removed his diadem and knelt to receive at the hands of the Vicarius Christi the communion of the common and uni versal King of kings. 68  Within the Augsburg confession, Arians and “Samosatenes, new and old,” are condemned, the latter ter m later used of Ser vetus himself, but in 1530 r eferring to Louis Haetzer , John Denck, and others. For Servetus’ first work on Triadology, see Ch. 10.3.f.

58  the radical reformation

chapter 1.5

1.5); and in his apocalyptical sense of the urgency of engaging in a massive but irenic mission to the Jews and Muslims, combined with his prophetic (biblical) susceptibility to the ethical implications of G od’s providence in the recurrent success of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent against a vulnerable Christendom. Servetus it was who would first use Trinitarian (in his letters to Calvin) in the post-medieval sense to apply as a neologism to the adherents, Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant, of the received dogmas of the Fathers and the councils over against those radicals like himself, who are generally embraced under the later sixteenth century term antitrinitarian (Ch. 23.4) common to several sectors of the Radical Reformation. The synodal Unitarian church in what was once an Ottoman client state, Transylvania, today with its bishop in Cluj, Rumania (Ch. 28), can in part be traced back to the works of Servetus. This Spanish lawyer-physician, who, sometimes in lonely pseudonymity, sometimes in brash assaults, will spin his captivating theological webs in the interstices of Catholic Evangelism, sectarianism, natural philosophy, and the occult, is to have the sorrowful distinction of b eing burned in effigy by t he inquisition in Catholic Lyons and in the flesh in Reformed Geneva. Indeed, the intellectual and ethical tensions and conflicting compassions within this quixotically theological knight-errant were far closer empathetically to the deepest strains and fissures within Christendom as a whole than either its Catholic defenders or its Protestant reformers realized. Servetus felt the full impact of R enaissance humanism and natural philosophy in the West and of politically renascent Islam in the East.69 In the microcosm of this proud and spiritually tormented heretic, the deepest conflicts of t he Reformation Era were perhaps more faithfully mirrored than in Erasmus, Luther, or Charles. To fancy Servetus for a moment as the shadowy obverse of Charles no less than as the eventual open antagonist of John Calvin can be a way of understanding the Radical Reformation as part of a pan-European movement, as a sweeping thrust of the Reformation Era rather than as a succession of marginal and local episodes, and may alert one hereafter to identify the Iberian strain in certain doctrinal and religio-political developments and episodes in the Radical Reformation as far distant as Brussels in 1517, Torda in 1569, and Raków in 1579. Servetus left Quintana and the imperial court convened at Bologna, finally reaching Basel, where he lived for ten months with its reformer, John Oecolampadius. We shall overtake him there in Ch. 8.4.b and John de Valdés in Naples in Ch. 21.4.

69  See Stephen A. Fischer-Galati, Ottoman Imperialism and German Protestantism: 1521–1555 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959; New York: Octagon Books, 1972).

chapter 1.5 / 1.6.a

reformed catholocity  59

Before we leave the Iberian peninsula, in the only chapter (and sections of the book) dealing with its scanty representation of “radical reform” movements, we should perhaps make mention of the Evangelical currents in Seville and Valladolid, which would suffer most under the son and successor in Spain of Charles V, namely, Philip II of Spain (1556–98) and as Philip I of Portugal (1580–98). These movements had a considerable following, led by Juan Gil (Dr. Egidio) and Constantino Ponce de la Fuente (c. 1502–60), chaplain in the court of C harles and later canon of S eville, and, in Valladolid, by Agustín Cazalla (c. 1510–59), also chaplain to Charles. Spanish Protestant refugees would join in due course the classical or magisterial Protestant churches. Others, such as Casiodoro de Reina (c. 1520–94), the translator of the first Spanish Protestant Bible (Basel, 1569), Juan Pérez de Pineda (149?–1567), the editor of J ohn Valdés’ Commentaries on Romans and I C orinthians, Antonio del Corro (1527–91), Francisco de Encinas (c. 1520–52), the unidentified Reginaldus Gonsalvius Montanu (Reinaldo or Raimondo Gonzáles de Montes), author of t he first Protestant martyrology, Arts of the Spanish Inquisition,70 and many others witness to the creative vitality of those fleeing persecution.71 We now take note of t he spiritual condition of Italy in its own right and picking up selected threads in the homeland of the Renaissance prior to the imperial coronation in Bologna and to the spread of Evangelism in Italy under Valdés’ name and tutelage. 6. Stirrings of Reform and Dissent in Italy before Valdesianism a. The Abortive Fifth Lateran Council, 1512–17 Numerous late medieval councils had shown the impossibility of reforming the Church through its papal head. On the eve of t he Reformation Era, the attempt was made to reform at least its members. The council was originally convened by Julius II (1503–13), who, as a m ajor Italian prince, was more disposed to expand the Papal States from the back of his war horse, in the military tradition of t he pagan Julius, than to reform the apostolic see in the spirit of the first Pope Julius. An initial act of the council was to move against the schismatic Council of P isa (1511–13)

70

 Sanctae Inquisitionis artes aliquot detectae (Heidelberg, 1567).  Bataillon, Erasmo y España, 520–40; Paul J. Hauben, Three Spanish Heretics and the Reformation (Geneva: Droz, 1967), A. Gordon Kinder, Casiodoro de Reina: Spanish Reformer (London: Tamesis, 1975), José Ramón Guer rero, Catecismo españoles: La obra del Dr. C.P. de la Fuente (Madrid: Instituto Superior de Pastoral, 1969), William B. Jones, “C.P. de la Fuente: The Problem of Protestant Influence in Sixteenth-Century Spain” (Ph.D. dissertation,Vanderbilt University, 1965, which shows that Constantino was more Valdésian than Erasmian.) 71

60  the radical reformation

chapter 1.6.a / 1.6.b

under French domination, and to abrogate the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges (1438) and its asservation of Gallican principle.72 In 1513, however, the new Pope Leo X (1513–21) reached an understanding with Louis XII and persuaded him to drop his support of c onciliarism through the instrumentality of the Council of Pisa in return for papal concessions, including the reinstatements of t he cardinals degraded for supporting France at Pisa. In December 1514 the bull containing the new concordat was read in council. In 1516 the Concordat of Bologna was signed by L ouis’ successor, Francis I ( 1515–47). It took rights granted in the Pragmatic Sanction to the cathedral and monastic chapters to make nominations for most French bishoprics and archbishoprics, abbacies, and priories and gave those rights to King Francis I. This meant that Gallicanism was confirmed, but it was regal and not episcopal; and the control of the hierarchy was definitely placed in the hands of the monarch, exactly as was the case in Spain by t he accordance to Ferdinand and Isabelle of t he joint title Reyes Católicos and the special concession in 1478 by the bull of Sixtus IV, recognizing their tribunal of the Inquisition above the episcopal courts and hence under royal control. Many had wistfully hoped for a thoroughgoing reform under Leo X, who was only thirty-seven at his elevation. Two Venetians of the Order of Camaldoli73 had presented him with a long report, which was as radical a reform program as any of the conciliar era. But neither the Lateran Council nor Leo was yet ready for so great a change. The reforming bull of 5 May 1514, Supernae dispositionis arbitrio, improved only slightly the situation in regard to the twin problems of revenue and episcopal pluralism. All the well-meant statements concerning a reformatio capitis had failed because of the lack of seriousness and decisiveness on the part of the two Popes. b. Apocalypticism, Evangelism, and the New Religious Orders After the council, the proto-Evangelical effort of a reformatio membrorum was resumed with special attention to conscientious prelates and parish priests. The older religious orders in Italy were likewise caught up in the reforming mood. By contagion, the ladies of several great princely houses rose to preeminence for a season in their sponsorship of piety and reform throughout Italy. This reforming spirit which survived the inconsequential Fifth Lateran was presently to be reinforced, among the theologically alert and 72

 The Pragmatic Sanction represented the tr iumph of episcopal Gallicanism, while the council of Basel was still in session, disallowing papal nomination to French benefices. By the Concordat of Bologna in 1516, Leo X acceded to r oyal Gallicanism. The French king was permitted to nominate bishops, Francis I achieving for France, without ecclesiastical rupture, what Henry VIII in royal Anglicanism would achieve only by a break from Rome. 73  Thomas Giustiniani and Vincent Quirini.

chapter 1.6.b

reformed catholocity  61

the devout, in the Italian response to the German theological revolt. It is to be observed at the outset that Catholic Evangelism in Italy, 1517–42, which would presently go primarily under the name of its principal abettor and spokesman as Valdésianism, was more closely related to Lutheranism than the analogous movement in Spain, Illuminism, which clearly antedated Luther. Besides Italian Evangelism, and the indigenous cloistral-parochialdiocesan reformation which had preceded it and then accompanied it, there was a third allied impulse in the opening quarter of the sixteenth century in Italy, namely, apocalyptic Spiritualism in the line of J oachim of F lora (Fiore) (d. 1202) and Girolamo Savonarola (d. 1498). In further interrelating these impulses it is pertinent to observe that Giles (Egidio) of Viterbo, the general of the Augustinian Order and a precursor of Evangelism, had, in an apocalyptic sermon at the Fifth Lateran Council, coined also the classic formula of t he Catholic idea of reformation: “quod homines per sacra immutari fas est, non sacra per homines,” 74 and that he had declared at the very outset of t he sermon which inaugurated the council that the impending “renovation” and imminent “return to the sources” of the faith to be effected by the council seemed to him the very fulfillment of h is twenty years of p rophetic preaching. Not only did the council dash his hopes, it also expressly condemned the itinerant preachers of apocalyptic Spiritualism,75 of whom Giles was himself but a more refined representative! The devout and apocalyptic had henceforth in Italy to find other means for furthering their ideas. Apocalyptic Spiritualism was the counterpart in Italy of the eccentric Illuminist apocalypticism of B rother Melchior in Spain (Ch. 1.2.c). The lay evangelists John Baptista Italus and Francesco Meleto may be taken as representative of the swarm of inspired itinerants who prophesied the imminence of a b etter age, in their case to include the sudden conversion of Jews, Muslims, and distant pagans to the way of C hrist.76 A youthful visit to the East and a widespread prophecy that the year 1517 would mark the beginning of a m ajor conversion of t he Jews sustained them both in their apocalyptic ecumenicity. Itinerant preachers, filled with Joachimite yearnings for the age of t he Spirit, they reanimated the dying echoes of Savonarola’s pleas for civic righteousness, and occasionally spoke forth with classical allusions of the return of the age of gold. Condemned in general by 74  Jean Hardouin, Acta conciliorum vol. 9 (Paris, 1714), col. 1576. See John W. O’Malley, Giles of Viterbo on Church Reform (Leiden: Brill, 1968). 75  Leo’s generalized opposition to apocalyptic preaching was approved by the council with only one bishop going on record in favor of preaching as the Spirit dictates. Ibid., col. 1801 for the sole negative vote, and col. 1808 for Leo’s specific statement on this head. 76  Meleto appealed in his uni versalism to Ps. 19:6 (18:7): “And there is nothing hid fr om its [Christ’s] heart.” On Meleto and the mo vement which he typified, see Delio Cantimor i, Eretici Italiani del Cinquecento (Florence, 1939), ch. ii. It is possible that Meleto and Baptista are identical.

62  the radical reformation

chapter 1.6.b

the Lateran Council, Meleto himself was also condemned by name at the synod of Florence in 1517.77 Johannes Baptista will tell his whole story of visions, arrests, and prophecies to the Reformers of Strassburg and summon both Luther and the Emperor’s brother to penance (Ch. 10.3.a) in 1530. Parallel to apocalyptic Spiritualism flowed the more placid stream of eleemosynary and contemplative Evangelism. It was just a year before the violent Dominican prophet Savonarola—scourging the papacy with the French rod of G od’s anger and the staff of h is own apocalyptic indignation—was burned in Florence that there emerged in the neighboring republic of G enoa an entirely different kind of r eform. It was in 1497 that the layman Ettore Vernazza established in Genoa the first of a rapidly spreading network of sodalities (compagnie) of Divine Love. Their original goal was charitable and devotional.78 The most famous compagnia was the Oratorio in Rome, established at the latest in 1517, as the Council in St. John’s Lateran came to its last session. It was made up of some sixty devout men of s everal walks of l ife.79 A c haracteristic of t he Oratorio and the other compagnie influenced by it was the stress on the editing of the patristic sources in disdainful preference to the “puddles of the neo-barbarians” (the Scholastics). This aristocratic sodality was animated by a rich spiritual discipline, by zeal for universal reform, and by a determination to fight heresy and schism with the sword of the spirit alone. When the swords of the imperial sackers of the Eternal City broke up their circle in 1527, the group in their dispersion kept in touch and invigorated with their zeal many local efforts of a kindred spirit. Concerning the new Italian orders and reformed congregations of older orders, by far the most important development for our narrative is the ferment among the Franciscans and the rise of t he Capuchin Order. The late medieval struggle between the Conventual and the radical Observantine Franciscans had been consummated in 1517. But Pope Leo’s definitive separation of t he two did not satisfy the more ardent Franciscans in their resolution to return to the simplicities of Francis. It is notable that the Capuchins, as before them the Observantines, Spirituals, Celestines, and Clarenites, arose in the same region of Italy, the March of A ncona. About 1525, Matteo Serafini of B ascio (1495–1552),

77

 Cantimori, Eretici Italiani, 10.  The statutes of the Oratory of Divine Love of Geneva (1497) are given in translation by Elizabeth G. Gleason, Reform Thought in Sixteenth Century Italy (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, for the American Academy of Religion, 1981), ch. 1. 79  The Venetian Gasparo Contarini (d. 1542), the most impassioned and ir enic spokesman of Evangelism, and others long thought to have been among the members, were not. See now, Antonio Cistellini, Figure della riforma pretridentina (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1948). Gleason gives a translation of these letters of Contarini to Paolo Giusternian and Pietro Querini (1511–1523), Italy, ch. 2. 78

chapter 1.6.b / 1.6.c

reformed catholocity  63

desired not only to observe the Rule of F rancis to the letter but also to return to the original garb of the saint. Coarse, brown, and provided with a pointed cowl (cappuccio), it gave the reforming group their name of Capuchins. Two brothers, Luigi and Raffaele, of F ossombrone, joined Matteo Serafini as the first Capuchins. The patronage of Evangelical Caterina Cibo, of Camerino, secured for them permission from her uncle, Clement VII, in 1526, to live as hermits and wear their new garb. They were devoted to poverty and to the ministry to the poor and the sick. In their reaction to both scholasticism and humanism, the Capuchins permitted none of t heir number to own any more than three books. In 1528, in Religionis zelus, the Pope gave them permission to wear beards and to admit secular clerics and laymen to their fellowship. They had to make an annual report to the provincial chapter of the Conventual Franciscans; and the provincial general was entitled to visit them once a year. The provincial general of the Observantines, Giovanni of Fano, sought to prevent this secession, the very existence of which made the strict Observantines of the rule appear to be a second best; but he was unable to do so and eventually joined the Capuchins himself. Victoria Colonna, another Evangelical, in her turn used her influence with Pope Paul III to protect the Capuchins from the aggression of the Observantines! From the start the Capuchins were troubled by dissension. Matthew of Bascio resigned after only two months as general, to be succeeded by Luigi of F ossombrone. He was replaced by B ernardo of A sti, who was succeeded by B ernardine Ochino, a p owerful evangelical preacher of whom Charles V once said: “That man is enough to make the stones weep.” We shall deal with him in Ch. 21.5 as a major spokesman of Evangelical Rationalism. c. Italian Philosophical Speculation on Immortality and the Doctrine of the Trinity The only doctrinal question dealt with by the abortive Fifth Lateran Council related to the problem of the natural immortality of the soul. The reemergence of t his problem, raised at this time in humanist circles and in the medical and philosophical faculties of the universities, was but an aspect of the general rationalism of the Italian Renaissance, which found expression, for example, in political theory and historiography (Niccolò Machiavelli and Francesco Guicciardini) and which also cropped out in another sector: doc­t rine, namely, in the incipient Antitrinitarianism of certain philological, philosophical, and literary circles. We shall take further note of t his early Italian Antitrinitarianism after first recognizing the problem of the natural immortality of the soul as the presumption of the whole system of Christian thought and practice.

64  the radical reformation

chapter 1.6.c

Involved in the fresh discussion of man, the soul, natural immortality, and resurrection (a religious tenet common to medieval Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) were not only the ancients, Plato and Aristotle, notably the De anima of the latter, but also the ancient commentators: particularly the commentator on Aristotle in Athens of t he early third century a.d., Alexander of A phrodisias; the non-Christian medieval commentators: notably the Jewish Neoplatonist Avicebron (d. 1058) and the Muslim Aristotelians Avicenna (d. 1037), Algazali (d. 1111), and Averroes of Cordova (d. 1198); and the Christian commentators on Aristotle: notably the Latin Averroists, who expounded the double-truth theory, and Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274), the most persuasive of the anti-Averroist commentators on both Aristotle’s De anima and on Averroes, who upheld the common view (but more Greek than Hebraic) that the (personal) soul is immortal and that it is the cumulative moral choices of an inherently free will (despite the Fall) that determine one’s status in the afterlife. Northern Italy had been for some time prior to the Lateran Council the center of the discussion and debate over five divergent views in respect to survival after death, namely: (1) natural immortality, (2) contingent immortality, (3) the unconsciousness of the soul after death (psychosomnolence), (4) the death of the soul with the body (thnetopsychism), and (5) the absorption of the rational into the universal Intellect. The first position presupposed, in Plato, the pre-existence of t he soul before embodiment. The second, once defended by Thomas Aquinas and in various ways by all scholastics, was the standard Christian view: the soul having been created ad hoc at some state in fetal development, and therefore not preexistent, as with Plato, is immortal from its individual creation. The third and fourth positions, although soul sleep and soul death/mortalism are distinguishable, commonly go by the name of psychopannychism.80 The fifth position is that of Averroes and the Christian Averroists. Christians could thus hold theoretically any of the five positions on the basis of Scripture, the Church Fathers, and the Scholastics so long as they coupled their philosophical view with their credal faith in the revealed resurrection of the body and its reanimation at the Last Judgment. Proponents of the first four positions usually presupposed the resurrection, on faith. Proponents of the fifth position, that of the Latin Averroists, exponents of the two-truth theory, might actually hold to the resurrection or merely for the sake of conformity to Church authority assert their acceptance of t he resurrection, and this could be true of the more rationalist proponents of the fourth position. Soul sleep (in the New Testament almost certainly a euphemism 80

 The term means etymologically “the wakeful watch of the soul” but Calvin used it as a general designation for all views not consonant with his idea of the soul after death as capab le of motion, feeling, vigor, and perception. John Calvin Psychopannychia, ed. Walther Zimmerli (Leipzig, 1932), 35. See Ch. 23.1.

chapter 1.6.c

reformed catholocity  65

for death, but now a d istinguishable position) and unequivocal mortalism, based on Aristotle’s De anima and his heterodox Muslim, Jewish, and Latin interpreters, bulk large in the three sectors of t he Radical Reformation. Evangelicals, by way of S criptures and the ante-Nicene Fathers, could come to their radical position without going the philosophical route of the university of Padua. Psychopannychism (literally soul watchfulness), called in the English seventeenth-century Christian mortalism and in the Anglo-American nineteeth century, conditionalism, i.e. life after death conditional on the coming Resurrection, was the position of New Testament and of several Apostolic and Ante-Nicene Fathers from Clement of Rome through Irenaeus of Lyons.81 We do well therefore to fill out the Italian background at this point. It was at the Council of Florence in 1439 that the Latin Church declared canonical, and thereupon temporarily imposed upon the Greek Church, a belief that had long been current in the West, namely, the belief in purgatory and the presupposition that the souls of the dead are conscious and are therefore capable of pain or joy even prior to the resurrection of their bodies. After the Council of Florence, fresh efforts were made to substantiate the Catholic tenet. Some of the new interest was humanistic and classical, some of it philosophical, specifically Averroist, Thomist, and Platonic. A new impetus was given to speculation at the Academy in Florence by the Byzantine philosopher Gemistos Plethon, who brought in his own version of Platonism and indirectly stimulated others, such as Marsiglio Ficino (d. 1499), with his use of ancient philosophy as a purifying and reforming force in the welter of late medieval religious life. In the Platonic view, the mind that knows Truth must itself be an Idea, and as such immortal. But in the Venetian university of Padua, where Aristotle was first taught in Greek in 1497, as also in the Universities of Ferrara and Bologna, the demonstrability of man’s immortality was philosophically challenged, however firmly it might be held as an article of revealed truth. The Dominican Tommaso de Vio (later Cardinal Gaetano), teaching at Padua, acknowledged in 1509 that Aristotle taught the mortality of even the rational soul (Aquinas to the contrary). The basis of Paduan doubt was in general the prevalence of the Averroistic interpretation of Aristotle, which found no place for individual souls, but only for an eternal rational soul, in which each individual transiently participates. The only immortality within the Averroistic context was the impersonal absorption of the individual in the universal Intellect. 81  Leroy Edwin-Froom in his four-volume The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, a scholarly documentation of the Se venth Day Adventist tradition (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald, 1966). He uses for natural immortality “innatism,” and in vivid charts and diagrams sets forth “The Concepts of Life and Death among Early Church Writers,” 1:258–59, and a historic diagram, with the V Lateran Council, 2, 6–7.

66  the radical reformation

chapter 1.6.c

Of all the Aristotelians, it was Pietro Pomponazzi82 of Mantua (1462– 1524), professor successively at the Universities of P adua, Ferrara, and Bologna, who gave most clearly a new turn to the discussion in his famous On the Immortality of the Soul (1516), followed by his still more explicit Apologia (1517). Confronted by the choice between the impersonal immortality and the eternal collective Intellect of the Averroistic Aristotelians and the personal immortality promised by the Thomistic Aristotelians by their importing the doctrine of a special creation of each rational soul, Pomponazzi sought to safeguard the ethical dignity and the epistemological individuality of man in his natural mortality. Going back by way of the commentator Alexander of A phrodisias to the Greek Aristotle, Pomponazzi maintained that it was clearly possible to demonstrate by natural reason not only the mortality of t he soul but also its individuality and dignity despite its transience. Each human being enjoys a u nique place between animals and angels by virtue of his or her capacity for reflective knowledge and for ethical decisions in terms of u niversal concepts. In so far as the soul, operating through the whole body, is a mean between the mortal and the immortal, it may be said to participate in a temporary “immortality.” Pomponazzi maintained that his philosophical views, mere deductions of human reason, were transcended by the divine revelation of a resurrection to come and needed to cause no ecclesiastical offense. The received ecclesiastical view (now being challenged by Pomponazzi and his contemporaries with even more finality than by t he Averroists) could not, of c ourse, be content with an eventual resurrection from the dead. The magisterium insisted that each created soul, as the substantial form of t he body, is capable of e xisting sentiently prior to the resurrection. This importation of natural theology into Catholic dogma was, in point of fact, much closer to Platonic philosophy than to the Bible. But the natural immortality of the soul had become so integral a part of the massive penitential and liturgical structure of Catholic moral theology that the philosophical threat to it moved Leo X, in the first year of his pontificate, to condemn in 1513, at the eighth session of t he Fifth Lateran Council, the philosophical proofs and disproofs of i mmortality in the universities (in universitatibus studiorum generalium) and academic circles. Appealing to

82  Bruno Nardi, Studi su Pietro Pomponazzi (Florence: Monnier, 1965). Aristotelians were divided in this period between the followings, respectively, of the two principal commentators on Aristotle—the Alexandrines and the Averroists. On Immorality is edited in translation in Ernst Cassirer, et al., The Renaissance Philosophy of Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), V. Our problem is discussed in a larger context, drawing on Pico della Mirandola (d. 1494), who learned Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic, studied the Kabbalah, and wrote Oration on the Dignity of Man (Bologna, 1496), in Don Cameron Allen, Doubt’s Boundless Sea (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Pr ess, 1964), and Philip Merlan, Monopsychism, Mysticism, Metaconsciousness: Problems of the Soul in Neoar istotelian and Neoplatonic Traditions, 2d ed. (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1969).

chapter 1.6.c

reformed catholocity  67

passages in Matthew and John and to the Clementine Constitution against the Franciscan Pietro Olivi at the Council of Vienne (1311), Leo in council asserted that the soul is naturally immortal and, as the substantial form of the body, is susceptible both to the pains of hell and purgatory and the bliss of paradise. The famous Apostolici regiminis reads in part: In these our days … t he sower of t ares, the ancient enemy of the human race, has dared to sow and foster in the field of the Lord certain very pernicious errors, always rejected by t he faithful, especially as to the nature of t he reasonable soul (anima rationalis), that it is mortal, or one and the same in all men; and some, rashly philosophizing, declare this to be true, at least according to philosophy. Desiring to employ remedies appropriate to such a plague, We, with the approbation of t he sacred council, condemn and reprobate all those who assert that the intellectual soul (anima intellectiva) is mortal, or one and the same in all men, and those who call these things in questions, seeing that the soul is not only truly, and of itself, and essentially the form of the human body … but likewise is immortal, and according to the number of bodies into which it is infused, singularly multipliable, multiplied, and to be multiplied. This manifestly appears from the gospel [Matt. 10:28], seeing that our Lord says, “They cannot kill the soul,” and elsewhere [ John 12:25], “He who hateth his soul in this world,” etc., and also because he promises eternal rewards and eternal torments to those who are to be judged according to their merit in this life. …83 After the Fifth Lateran Council, a number of Catholic theologians and others on the margins continued the theme. Yet with only Averroes’ Commentary on Aristotle’s De anima, Italian and other Averroists, dissatisfied with Aquinas’ valiant effort to wrest a memoryless individual immortality from Aristotle’s De anima and related works, as also in his two Summae, could only preserve individual immortality and resurrection either by feigned or sincere acceptance of the double-truth theory. It should be noted that besides Averroes’ Commentary on Aristotle’s De anima, the Latin Averroists and the anti-Averroists came to have also his Destructio destructionum philosophiae Algazelis (partial translation 1328) which,

83  The text is printed in Mansi, Concilia, 32, cols. 842–43. See the presentation by F.Vernet in D.Th.C., 8:2, cols. 268ff., and the discussion ofA. Denifle (Catholic) vs. C. Stange (Protestant), contending that the purpose here of papal theology was not to prove by philosophical reasoning that the soul is immor tal but rather to asser t it as a do gma of the f aith, in Scholastik 8 (1933): 359–79. See more fully Siro Offelli, “II pensiero dimestrabilità razionale dell’immor talità dell’ anima umana,” Studia Patavina 1 (1954): 7–40.

68  the radical reformation

chapter 1.6.c

however, left out precisely “De physicis,” the part that dealt with immortality and resurrection. Without “De physicis” included in the second, these two works could serve as the principal sources of Italian Renaissance Averroism and the belief in an impersonal immortality. But Averroes himself had in fact accepted the traditional Muslim doctrine of t he General Resurrection unfeignedly. In any case, it is of perhaps strategic importance that his work, expressly avowing the General Resurrection and thus individual immortality, Tahafut al-Tahafut (Destructio destructionum) against Algazali, was first published in its complete form (decisive for our problematic) from the Hebrew translation of t he original Arabic in Venice in 1527. It was dedicated “to the [bishop] elect of M antua.” This was none other than the second son of Duke Francesco of M antua, Modena, and Reggio, and Duchess Isabella (d’Este of Ferrara): Ercole Gonzaga (1505–63), who had been named administrator of the see of Mantua in 1520, when only fifteen, and the following year a cardinal (like ten others in the course of Gonzaga family history).84 For three years the very youthful cardinal studied at the University of Bologna. (Much later he would preside at the sessions of the Council of Trent.) It would appear that the translator, Calo Calonymus Hebreus, may have dedicated the translation while the two men were associated in Bologna and that the book of Averroes was not published until well after the reform-minded Gonzaga had been named cardinal (1521). Calo says in the dedication that he had worked long on the translation and he draws attention to the fact that the “De physicis,” missing in the earlier Latin translation of 1328, had been preserved in the Hebrew version which he was using for the new Latin translation and that precisely this section was of “ great moment among Jews.” Later Cardinal Gonzaga would be involved in correspondence with John Valdés on nontheological matters,85 it is true, but that would not exclude the possibility that the Jewish translator of Averroes in Bologna, the Spanish Marrano of Cuenca, Rome, and Naples, and the Cardinal of Mantua had something in common which the Cardinal had in fact discussed intensely as a student at Bologna: immortality and the resurrection in the context of Averroism. “De physicis” translated by Calo Calonymus from the complete work of Averroes is divided into four discussions. The last three of these deal with the soul, immortality, and bodily resurrection. The inclusion of “De 84  Calo Calonymus’ translation is entitled Subtillissimus liber Averois qui dicitur Destructio destructionum philosophi …, tr. from the Hebrew (Venice: J.B.Pederzani, 1527). Hebrew Union College Library, Cincinnati, Ohio, holds the unique copy in the United States and Canada.The Latin text has been reported as edited by Beatrice H. Zedler (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1961); tr. from the or iginal Arabic, the complete text appear s with English translation as Tahafut al-tahafut (The Incoherence of Incoherence) , 2 vols., by Simon Van den Bergh (London: Luzac, 1978). 85  The correspondence between Gonzaga and Valdés was edited b y José F. Montesimos (Madrid, 1931).

chapter 1.6.c

reformed catholocity  69

physicis” in the Venetian edition of Destructio in 1527 must have aroused especial interest among Christian Averroists, acquainted only with the earlier translation.86 In the 1527 Latin version by Calo Calonymus, Averroes, so long associated on the basis of his Commentary on Aristotle’s De anima with the view of an impersonal immortality of the generic intellect in all human beings, could now suddenly be read in defense of individual immortality of the rational soul and of a r esurrection in spiritual bodies (as simulacra).87 We do not know what abiding influence the Venetian translation of 1527 into Latin may have had; but since Averroes himself here avows his faith in individual resurrection, it may have given Christian Averroists in the Evangelical Rationalist tradition a starting point for their own eschatology based upon their closer reading of the New Testament. We do know that Valdés (Ch 21.4) in his The Hundred and Ten Divine Considerations (written in Spanish, but first published in Italian), although here and elsewhere he gave voice to a belief in the General Resurrection, daringly suggests a limited Resurrection of the righteous in Christ alone, e.g. in Consideration LXXIII: “The fifth thing which I consider is that only those who are incorporated into Christ are certain of their resurrection.” 88 The acceptance of the philosophical disproof of immortality combined with a vindication of life after death on the strength of revelation will be the mark of a h itherto largely unnoticed circle of Italian Evangelicals and more specifically Italian Valdésians. Within the philosophical framework of the two Paduan conceptions of t he soul’s natural mortality (Averroist absorption in the collective Intellect and Pomponazzi’s virtuous mortality), they will seek, perhaps on the strength of Averroes’ recovered “De physicis” of 1527, to rehabilitate the New Testament postulate (cf. 1 Thess. 4:13) of the death (thnetopsychism) or the unconscious sleep of the soul (psychosomnolence) in a lively expectation of the imminent resurrection of the virtuous, or, in other cases, the resurrection of both the virtuous and the wicked (the latter merely to hear the Final Judgment of Christ and thereupon to disappear). In either version, the Catholic system, with its purgatory, Masses for the dead, and penitential discipline, will be undermined. 86  That earlier translation,without the large section“De physicis,” and Averroes’ Commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima had been dealt with by Agostino Nifo (c. 1473 – ?1538) in two editions of De Immortalitate Animae (Venice, 1518 and 1524), against Pomponazzi.Yet Nifo, too, conceded that the indestructible part of the soul at death merges with the Eternal Unity. 87  In the translation fr om the Arabic by Van den Bergh, The Incoherence of Incoherence , 1:362. 88  Nieto, Juan de Valdés, 298–99, 301 nn. 33–34, and 336, stresses in Valdés his concer n for the “resurrection of the just” as members of Christ (see Ch. 21.3). I have placed the foregoing material in a larger context in “Socinianism and Deism: From Eschatological Elitism to Universal Immortality,” Historical Reflections 2 (1975): 265–89, esp. 277–89. The reader is alerted to a number of misleading typographical errors.

70  the radical reformation

chapter 1.6.c

Psychopannychism may be considered the Italian counterpart of Germanic solafideism and Swiss predestinarianism in contributing to the dismantlement of the medieval structures of sacramental grace and thus as weakening, at the very outset of t he Reformation era, the grip of t he papacy on the souls of men. It is for this reason that we have given attention to psychopannychism near the outset of o ur narrative of t he Radical Reformation, because the discussion of the problem of immortality and the relationship of the soul to the body in the Fifth Lateran Council was symptomatic of t he same kind of unrest in the Romance lands that broke out in Germany in connection with the indulgence system. Early representatives of psychopannychism and the apocalyptic eschatology of limited resurrection connected with it were Camillo Renato (Ch 22.1), Michael Servetus, and Faustus Socinus (Chs. 24.4; 29.7). For the most part, Catholics and Protestants in the Reformation era held to the immortality of the soul. But Martin Luther (for a portion of his reforming career and even then ambiguously), some of t he Spiritualists (including the Libertines), many Anabaptists, and later the Socinians constitute an important exception in adhering to some variant of psychopannychism. We shall have several occasions to refer to this recurrent feature of the Radical Reformation, the eschatologically undergirded doctrine of the sleep or the temporary death of the soul pending the resurrection. Not only psychopannychism but also Antitrinitarianism was to find its fullest ecclesial expression in Polish Socinianism and Hungarian Unitarianism. The leaders of these two parallel and closely interrelated movements, which we shall take up in Ch. 25 and elsewhere, were Italians or palpably dependent upon Italians. Although Servetus is commonly appealed to as the fountainhead of Antitrinitarianism, it is well at this point in our narrative to take note of early indigenous Italian critics known to have directly influenced the later theological radicals. Lorenzo Valla (d. 1457), the exemplar of Italian philological rationalism, who exposed as a f orgery the Donation of C onstantine, also raised difficulties in respect to the formulation of t he doctrine of t he Trinity, especially in reference to Boethius’ De elegantiis linguae Latinae (1441).89 Matthew Gribaldi would later cite the pertinent passage.90 Of perhaps even greater influence was the Arianizing tendency of the Florentine Academy under Savonarola’s contemporary, the priest and Platonist, Marsiglio Ficino (d. 1499), who in working on the Demiurge of the Timaeus was reminded of the close parallel with the Logos in the Prologue to 89

 De elegantiis …, 6:33; (Lyon, 1540), 420–22; (Basel, 1540), 215.  In Theses de filio Dei et Trinitate, ed. Delio Cantimor i in Per la Storia degli Eretici Italiani del Secolo XVI in Europa (Rome, 1937), 57ff.; cf. Cantimori, Eretici, 239. Cantimori attributed the Theses to Laelius Socin us. But Uw e Plath has attr ibuted the Theses to Gr ibaldi, “Noch einmal ‘Lyncurius’: Einige Gedank en zu Gr ibaldi, Curione, Calvin und Ser vet,” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance (henceforth BHR) 31 (1967): 606–9. 90

chapter 1.6.c

reformed catholocity  71

John’s Gospel and suggested a “Platonic” subordinationism. It was Cardinal Caspar Contarini who first pointed out the Arianizing tendency of the Platonic Academy, made up of “sectatores complures homines doctos.”91 In reacting humanistically to the stylistic poverty of t he Vulgate, Ficino, like Erasmus, made bold to translate Verbum as sermo, thereby sloughing off the philosophically freighted conception of C hrist as the Eternal Word (Logos, Verbum), as the Mind and Instrument of G od, and substituting the idea of Christ as merely the voice of God. Although Ficino, basing his thought allegedly on Paul, wrote of a pproaching the preached sermo with the same reverence as the eucharistic corpus, he had started a train of thought that would equate the Word with the prophetic vox of the Old Testament, and even with rational meditatio and literary scripta, and which would inevitably render philosophically difficult the received formulation of the Logos-Son as consubstantial with the Father. The usage of Ficino reappears in Erasmus (already noted in Ch. 1.3.a) and later in Sebastian Castellio, and in both Laelius and Faustus Socinus. Where the Church Fathers had hypostasized the Logos as an eternal Person of the Godhead, the Evangelical Rationalists in Poland, Transylvania, and elsewhere, will presently declare themselves unwilling to hypostasize the voice of God eternally and will instead insist upon Christ as wholly human but authoritative in his resonating echo of all the prophetic voices that had gone before and as the definitive allocution of God to all generations after him. Moving about the lower reaches of t he Empire, as we have, before circling Wittenburg, we have observed several rivulets of thought in Spain and Italy destined to join the churning vortex of the Radical Reformation, which was centered in Germany. In Italy, we have taken special note of several currents of psychopannychism rejected by the V Lateran Council; in Italy, of a n incipient Antitrinitarianism represented by V alla, as well as by F icino, Erasmus, and Servetus, which issued from the new critical philological approach to the texts initiated by Valla of Naples, then Rome; of a disposition in John Valdés of Cuento, then Naples, to change the stress in the traditional formulation of the doctrine of the Atonement; of a partly fused rationalistic (philological), apocalyptic, and “Joachimite” Spiritualism, of w hich Camillo Renato, Laelius, and then Faustus Socinus will prove to be the most daring representatives; and of a devout pacific, irenic, and tolerant mood in Catholic Evangelism wherever it appears—in both Spain and Italy. It may be observed, as we leave for the next chapter on a l ate medieval sacramentalism in the native Netherlands of E rasmus (whence came 91

 G. Contarini, Opera (Paris, 1571), p. 550; noted and inter preted in a larger context b y Delio Cantimori, “Anabattismo e Neoplatonismo nel XVI Secolo in Italia,” Reale Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Rendiconti della Classe di Scienz e morali, storiche e filologiche, Serie 6, 11 (1936).

72  the radical reformation

chapter 1.6.c

to Rome the unique “foreigner” of a brief pontificate, Adrian Dedel, tutor of Charles in Brussels) that in the court of Charles in Spain, Erasmus was cited as early as 1516 by the first secretary of state, Pedro de Quintana, while King Charles himself, in his own way, citing the testaments of his antecedents, Reyes Católicos, Ferdinand and Isabelle, affirmed as Emperor-elect in 1520 and reaffirmed in fresh terms at Bologna in 1530, that united Catholic Spain would be “the fortress, defense, wall, refuge, and final security” of all his other realms and lands in the service of a religious policy of reconciliation among Christian princes, including those caught up in the expectations aroused by Luther and Erasmus, pledging himself to promote church reform based on the ideals of Erasmus. Harking back to our first section on the pan-European political setting of the Radical Reformation, we note now in conclusion and in anticipation that in the vast and conglomerate Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth— much earlier constitutionally modeled in part on the Empire to which Charles V succeeded—the Poles would adopt the national mission of serving in their Catholic turn as “the antemurale (outer wall) of Christendom,” in their context: against the “East”—Muscovite Orthodoxy with the Tsar (1547), Muslim Tatardom still threatening incursions, and the menacing Ottoman Sultanate. Within this polyglot and multi-ritual realm of the Jagiellonians as well as in bi-ritual Bohemia and in polyglot and quadri-ritual Transylvania, Protestants would become aware that the veritas Hebraica conveyed in the biblical texts, interpreted variantly by Karaite, Orthodox and Cabalist Jews, and the governing principle of religio-communal toleration of Muslims would be pondered with some startling theological and liturgical consequences on the eastern marches of reforming Latin Christendom. Quite new irenic interconfessional dialogues and even interfaith colloquia would be taking place along the Byzantine-rite and the Ottoman frontiers within a h alf century after the decrees of expulsion of steadfast Jews and Muslims from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497 and, along with them, of m any Marranos who, along with Jews, settled in Italy, Thessalonica, the Levant, and after 1571 in Amsterdam.

Chapter 2

Mysticism and Sacramentism along the Rhine to 1530

T he radical reformation in the German empire

of Charles V— that thrust of religio-social discontent and aspiration, differentiating itself finally into Anabaptism, Spiritualism, and Evangelical Rationalism— will go even further than the classical, magisterial, territorial Reformation of princes and town councils in the assault upon the received sacramental and other ecclesiastical institutions of Christian life and thought. The radicality of some of t he Germanic separatists will go beyond that of M artin Luther himself, the first to lay the axe to the seven-branched tree of medieval sacramental theology, whose own paradigmatic moments of salvation, the lightning vow and the Turmerlebnis, were indeed interconnected with the sacramental system respectively with orders and penance. The separatists, in any case, with their own liberating experiences will differ from both Luther and John Calvin, even on the two ordinances, Baptism and the Eucharist, that they with all Protestants will agree were alone directly mandated by Christ. The medieval growth from the Tree of C alvary drew its still potent salvific energies from the universal Christian conviction that Jesus Christ as the Second Adam had undone the work of the first Adam at the Fall. But in that matted growth the residual energies were variously circulating. In a fresh account of the Radical Reformation, it serves well the attempt at a pan-European conspectus of radical thrusts to review here the medieval antecedents of t he two unambiguously scornful terms used by Luther for his radical foes, (1) Schwärmer/Schwärmgeister (commonly rendered: fanatics or enthusiasts): for the radicals appealing to the Holy Spirit beyond the letter and within the devout reader and hearer or to the Holy Spirit as an experienced gift, the mystical, enlightening, and leading power of G od, and (2) the Sacramentarii: for all those devotees whom he lumped together 73

74  the radical reformation

chapter 2.1

to the left of himself on the theology of the Eucharist, namely, the Spiritualists as different from each other as would be Thomas Müntzer (Ch. 3.2), Caspar Schwenckfeld (Ch. 5.5), and the Zwinglians, the last committed to a territorial or magisterial reform no less than he, but who would not follow Luther on what would later become understood as his doctrine of consubstantiation, Christ’s eucharistic presence through selective ubiquity. Luther used the disparaging categorization of sacramentarian also for Anabaptists of several thrusts, who, analogous to the Zwinglians on the Eucharist, denied also the ex opere operato character of the baptism of their infancy and who were thus, in Luther’s received medieval terminology, sacramentarii with respect both to Baptism and the Eucharist. For Luther Schwärmer and Sacramentarians distorted his proclaimed message of s criptural reformatio and hence these threatened in his eyes to undermine the Church catholic. Insofar as by Schwärmer Luther meant transmitters of a pocalypticism and German mysticism, we shall take note of h ow he himself initially held in high esteem one manifestation of mysticism, Theologia Deutsch, and recount schematically the distinctiveness of German mysticism (sec. 3). It will be useful, however, to get first an overall picture of t he sacramental action (sec. 1) and picture of the losses in parts of Christendom of the sense of divine mediacy in the seven sacraments (sec. 2). 1. The Sacramental Action, as Popularly Understood It was a popular late medieval view that Christ took away the punishment for the original sin of humankind on Calvary, the benefit thereof being in each generation mediated in pedobaptismal regeneration. This view was in part based on a sermon ascribed to Albertus Magnus (or on the same text embodied as a chapter in a treatise De venerabili sacramento altaris ascribed to Thomas Aquinas). The view would be restated by Urbanus Rhegius (later reformer of Augsburg and Lüneburg; d. 1541), then by Philip Melanchthon in the Confessio Augustana of 1530 (II, iii, de missa), and then by the drafters in the Church of E ngland of t he Thirty-Nine Articles. This would cumulatively give currency among even Protestants to this largely popular late medieval misconception of n ormative Catholic eucharistic theology. According to this distorted and widespread view, Christ removed the guilt of A dam by t he sacrifice on Calvary and provided that his Church through its priests be authorized to atone for post-baptismal sins by t he repetitive sacerdotal sacrifice of h is body on the altar.1 Luther himself, as late as 1545, would give testimony to his recollection of this as once also his impression:

1  See the discussion of Pseudo-Thomas and Pseudo-Albert on which this view was based, Francis Clark, S.J., The Eucharistic Sacrifice and the Reformation (London/Westminster: 1960), ch. 21.

chapter 2.1

mysticism & sacramentism  75

Under the Papacy … I thought that the death of Christ pertained only to original sin or to the past sins of my infancy, but that it did not pertain to me at all.2 Popular and learned conceptions of original sin and post-baptismal sins had formed themselves against the general sense of the afterlife with the prospect of hell and purgatory and possibly paradise, intermingled with equally strong anxiety about the General Resurrection and the Last Judgment of Christus Iudex. Ulrich Zwingli (d. 1531), reformer of Zurich, would presently join the forces that were to move the Anabaptists and other separatists to their position far to the left of the classical Reformation in general in minimizing the consequences of original sin for infants. Zwingli, in his interpretation of original sin, embodied in a letter to Urbanus Rhegius, 3 presently set forth the view (Ch. 5.2) that Christ wrought indeed a f undamental change in the status of h umankind, reducing original sin to merely an inclination to sin (morbus, Erbbresten) operative in those who come to the knowledge of good and evil. Accordingly, Zwingli will even speculate on the possibility that Christ might have indeed accomplished the salvation of the elect everywhere in the world apart from individual appropriation of that work in (pedo)-baptism or by o ther means. Although he will draw back from this conjecture, the Anabaptists will act upon it. In any case, Zwingli’s word for the residual impulse (Erbbresten) would remain commonly used among the Swiss Brethren and the Hutterites for what had been earlier conceived as Erbsünde (original sin). But it was not only the Zwinglian surmise and the popular eucharistic theology that would make many Anabaptists, Spiritualists, and Evangelical Rationalists confident that the federal head of a ll humankind had exculpated even nonChristians on Calvary. There was also the impulse stemming from popularized German mysticism, notably the Theologia Deutsch and other mystical works that spoke both of a h istoric atoning action and of an experiential atonement or experienced incarnation of C hrist (Vermenschlichung) in justification, sanctification, and the believer’s redemptive imitation of the obedience of the Second Adam. Experiential blessedness (Seligkeit) was, for example, for the anonymous mystical author of Theologia Deutsch the consummation of a d ouble action of C hrist: the atoning action on Calvary for all humankind and the repetition thereof not so much at Mass as in each soul in mystical elevation with the final evacuation of t he self and therewith the entry of t he divine. As for the first action, this anonymous mystical theologian writes: 2  3

Commentary on Genesis; WA, 44.819, lines 17f.  De peccato originali declaratio 1526; Sämtliche Werke, 5 (Leipzig, 1934), 359–96.

76  the radical reformation

chapter 2.1

Wherefore God took human nature or manhood upon himself and was made man, and man was made God (vergottet). Thus was the amendment [for the first man’s sin] brought to pass.4 For the anonymous mystic, the merit of Christ’s work on Calvary was thus presumably mediated in infancy by baptism. Then in the years of his or her maturity, accumulated sin, and aspiration, the viator finally purged the self of “presumption, and his I and Me and Mine,” so that God could enter into the actual self. Although the divine entry is something that the mystic cannot achieve by h im or herself but only wait for passively (in Gelassenheit), still this second at-one-ment is individually and experientially effected: Now if God took to himself all men that are in the world, or ever were, and were made man in them all, and they were made God in him, and this were not accomplished in me, my fall and my going astray would never be amended except it were accomplished in me also. And in this renewal and amendment, I can, may, and shall do nothing of myself, but simply let it come to pass, in such fashion that God alone may do and perform all things in me, and I m ay suffer in Him and all His workings and His divine will.5 Thus for the anonymous mystic, in this “second” at-one-ment or Vermenschlichung, justification was conjoined with sanctification; and, although the initiative was with God, the transaction was experienced and made evident in the believer’s willing one thing, God’s will. In this same chapter of the Theologia Deutsch it is observed that God’s amending of “my fall and my going astray” is hindered by the believer’s clutching himself. The viator must therefore have leisure from self (Gelassenheit). This state may be most readily induced in possessionlessness or the community of goods. And in chapter 51, the anonymous mystic unknowingly lays part of the firm foundation of a l ater Anabaptist community of goods, when he writes: Were there not this self-will, this will of the creature’s own, there were likewise no property, nothing owned.6

4  Theologia Deutsch, iii; Bernhart-Winkworth-Trask, 117. For the full citation, see nn. 9, 12 below. 5  Theologia Deutsch, iii; Bernhart-Winkworth-Trask, 118. This idea has been similarly pr esented earlier in this same chapter : “So also must my fall be amended. I am powerless to do it without God, and God cannot and will not do it without me . Therefore, if it shall be accom plished, in me too God must be made man (vermenscht).” See nn. 9, 12 below. 6  Bernhart-Winkwirth-Trask, 214. See nn. 9, 12 below.

chapter 2.1 / 2.2

mysticism & sacramentism  77

One basic assumption of the Anabaptist/Spiritualist assault on, or withdrawal from, the world will be that the radically reformed conventicle can restore not only the community of t he saints of t he primitive Church of Jerusalem (Acts 2:44; 4:32), but also in a precarious and provisional way the communion in saintly things as in Paradise before the Fall. Anabaptists will be more readily prepared to think of the Anabaptist fellowship as partaking of the nature of prelapsarian Paradise by reason of t he fact that they will regard the work of the Second Adam as having effected for all humankind the removal of the guilt of the first Adam, and hence assume that their children and the infants even of pagans overseas are “like the little ones” who came unto Jesus and were regarded by him as emblems of the Kingdom. The compend of Germanic mysticism, Theologia Deutsch, now several times adduced, was initially given preeminence and endorsement by none other than Luther himself. 2. Medieval Germanic Mysticism: A Component in Some

Forms of Anabaptism and Spiritualism7

The very first published work by Luther was not something of his own but rather a small version of the anonymous mystical work Theologia Deutsch, printed by h im under the title Eyn geystlich edles Buchleynn (Wittenberg, 4 December 1516) with a foreword.8 When Luther came upon a longer version from a l ibrary in Prussia, he printed it with still more enthusiasm and gave it approximately the title by which it is now known, Eyn deutsch Theologia, das ist Eyn edles Buchleyn … : Wie Adam ynn uns sterben und Christus ersteen sall (Wittenberg, 1518).9 Both versions were printed also in Leipzig and the second version again in Wittenberg. The sixth imprint

7  See George H.Williams, “Sanctification in the Testimony of Several So-Called Schwärmer,” Kirche, Mystik, Heiligung und das Natürlic he bei Luther , Vorträge des Dr itten Internationalen Kongresses [in Helsinki] für Lutherfor schung, ed. Ivar Asheim (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1967; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1967), pp. 290–312; enlarged and altered as “German Mysticism in the Polarization of Ethical Behavior in Luther and the Anabaptists,” MQR 42:1 (1968): 5–24. 8  All versions and impr ints from Luther to the pr esent (90 alto gether in man y languages including Japanese) are listed with bibliographical notations in Georg Baring, Bibliographie der Ausgaben der “Theologia Deutsch” (1516–1961): Ein Beitrag zur Lutherbibliographie (Baden-Baden, 1963), no. 1. 9  Baring, Bibliographie, no. 3. Besides these two versions of the text, the shorter and the longer, both published by Luther, there is still another v ersion, a fifteenth-century manuscript, slightly different from that of Luther’s longer version. This was edited by Franz Pfeiffer (Stuttgart, 1851), Baring, Bibliographie, no. 131. This old German text by Hermann Mandel (Leipzig, 1908) and the modern German text of Joseph Bernhart (Leipzig, 1920; Munich, 1946) are also commonly cited. The English version is that of Susannah Winkworth, completely revised to accord with that of Bernhart, with notes b y Willard R. Trask (New York, 1949). Trask repeats Bernhart’s error that would make of this Luther’s first, rather than as it is Luther’s second and fuller version.

78  the radical reformation

chapter 2.2

appeared in Augsburg in September 1518 for the first time with what is now the simpler standard title, Theologia Teütsch.10 The residues of medieval mysticism in the various amalgams and alloys of sixteenth-century religiosity have been freshly assayed. All such efforts must begin with the fact that for the first editor of t he printed Theologia Deutsch, Germanic mysticism seems in the end to have served only as the spiritual scaffolding on which he stood while remodeling half of Western Christendom in terms of h is revolutionary perception of j ustification by faith alone. Whatever scholars have done with the role of m ysticism in shaping Luther’s definitive postulate of solafideism, they acknowledge that at most it appears in its evangelical variation as an inverted theme detectable only to ears trained to find continuity between the plainchant and the chorale. If the assessment of the mystical pattern or impulse in Luther’s reform is difficult in spite of L uther’s own initially enthusiastic espousal of t he Theologia Deutsch in 1516, the same may be said for different reasons of other reformation movements besides Lutheranism.11

10

 Ibid., no. 6. After that ther e were further editions in Leipzig (1519), Strassburg (16 September 1519; 1 August 1520), Augsburg (26 September 1520), Wittenberg (28 September 1520), Leipzig (1520), in Dutch in Antwerp (13 Mar ch 1521), Basel (1531; 1523 [?]), Wittenberg (1525), in Dutch in Dor trecht (?1525), Augsburg (5 September 1526), and Nuremberg (1526). 11  The reserve of scholar ship until recently as to the contin uing influence of medieval mysticism among Spiritualists and Anabaptists has been due to a reluctance on the part of the scholarly heirs of Luther to ackno wledge the presence of the m ystical motifs in the y oung Luther, since he later renounced mysticism as related to sanctification and meritorian mysticism, and especially to a r eluctance on the par t of the scholarly heir s of Menno to think of their Anabaptist forebears as sustained by, or implicated in, any kind of spirituality that would seem to compromise their Protestant credentials. They came for a while to presume an evangelical biblicism and fideism in the formative and normative generation. As a consequence, until recently the monographical literature on Anabaptist and Spiritualist mysticism was spare and sparse. One may mention Horst Quiring, “Luther und die Mystik [with a section on the Schwärmer],” Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie 3 (1936): 150–74, 179–240. A new approach from the left wing was represented by Bruno Becker, “De Theologia Deutsch in de Nederlands der 16e eeuw,” NAKG 21 (1928): 161–90, and Jan Kiwiet, “Die Theologia Deutsch und ihre Bebeutung während der Zeit der Reformation,” Mennonitische Geschichtsblätter G (henceforth MGB) 25 (1958): 29–35. Steven Ozment identified the synteresis of will and essence in Homo Spiritualis: A Comparative Study of the Anthropology of Johannes Tauler, Jean Gerson and Martin Luther (1509–16) in the Context of their Theological Thought (Leiden: Brill, 1969); and in Mysticism and Dissent: Religious Ideolog y and Social Protest in the Sixteenth Centur y (New Haven/London: Yale, 1973) he traced the history of seven editors of Theologia Deutsch (see n. 17). Heiko Oberman and C. E. Trinkhaus, eds., gathered essays in Pursuit of Holiness (Leiden: Brill, 1973). Kenneth Davis examined the monastic motifs in Anabaptism and Ascetiscism, A Study in Intellectual Origins (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1974). Werner O. Packull, drawing on insights from Gottfried Seebass on Hans Hut, explored Mysticism and the Early South GermanAustrian Anabaptist Movement, 1525–1531, Studies in Anabaptist and Mennonite History, no. 19 (Scottdale, Pa./Kitchner, Ont.: Herald Press, 1977).

chapter 2.2.a

mysticism & sacramentism  79

a. Deutero-Taulerian Mysticism in the Reformation Era In illustrating the continuous mystical current in the Empire of t he German Nation, we may confine the review to Germanic mysticism represented by that of John Tauler (d. 1361) of Strassburg and the DeuteroTaulerian corpus of which the Theologia Deutsch was a part. This body of mystical works in the vernacular represented the fusion of two European currents, the one seeking to overcome creatureliness in the conformation of the will to the divine will and law and the other in the fusion with the divine being: the one the mysticism of the will and the other the mysticism of the essence. There are eighty-four authenticated sermons of J ohn Tauler.12 The editio princeps is that of L eipzig, 1498. The collection was reprinted in Augsburg in 1508. In 1516 Luther made marginalia, mostly in Latin, in his copy of t he Augsburg edition.13 Besides the authentic sermons there were several closely related works which the sixteenth-century reformers thought of as coming from Tauler or his most intimate circle. The first of the Deutero-Taulerian writings was The History and Life of the Reverend Doctor John Tauler, a second, commonly attributed to Rulman Merswin, Der Gottesfreund des Oberlands, which scholars now generally agree idealizes the divine friendship, and a third work, the Nachfolgung des armen Lebens Jesu Christi, ascribed to Tauler, which goes in English under the title The Book of the Poor in Spirit.14 Theologia Deutsch, which drew Luther to this tradition, was the fourth and major Deutero-Taulerian work. It refers to Tauler in the third person. Many sixteenth-century reformers nevertheless thought of i t as a summary of Tauler’s mystical theology and hence of the whole German mystical tradition. It was Luther, as first editor, who not only gave it the name by which it is still known, but who also gave general endorsement

12

 The principal collection of English translations is that of Susannah Winkworth, The History and Life of the Rev erend Doctor John Tauler with Twenty-Five of His Ser mons (London, n.d.) 13  The marginalia are published in the Weimar edition, 9.95ff. (there would be a Basel edition, 1521, 1522) as w ell as a fuller edition in 1543 with a Latin translation, Cologne, 1548. The first critical edition of the Sermons is that of F erdinand Vetter, Deutsche Texte des Mittelalters, 11 (1910). The French translation by A. I. Corin, 3 vols. (Paris, 1927–), arranges and numbers the ser mons according to the liturg ical calendar. This system of n umbering is now commonly followed, as for example, in the modern German edition of Georg Hofmann, Johannes Tauler, Predigten, vollständige Ausgabe (Freiburg: Herder, 1961). 14  The Works of Merswin were edited by P. Strauch, Schriften aus der Gottesfreund-Literatur, Altdeutsche Textbibliothek 22, 23, 26 (1927–29). C. Rieder argued against his pr edecessor Heinrich Suso that Nicholas v on Löwen, Merswin’s secretary, and not Mer swin was the inventor of the fictitious Friend of God, Gottesfreund von Oberland (Innsbruck, 1905). C.F. Kelley, The Book of the Poor in Spir it by a Fr iend of God (Four teenth Century) A Guide to Rhineland Mysticism (New York: Harper, 1954).

80  the radical reformation

chapter 2.2.a

of the approach, subsequently to be indirectly undercut by his own subsequent conceptualization of his (Pauline) solafideist theme.15 After a score of imprints there will appear in Worms in 1528 the first “Anabaptist version,” Theologia Teütsch, stylistically touched up by the Antitrinitarian Anabaptist Louis Haetzer and with an appendix, probably composed by t he Anabaptist mystic John Denck, entitled Etliche Hauptreden, which in effect replaces Luther’s foreword.16 It will not be necessary to detail subsequent editions, some with Luther’s second foreword, others with Denck’s Hauptreden.17 The thirty-one editions of various versions of the Theologia Teütsch in numerous places in the four decades from 1516 to 1556 are an indication of the extraordinary interest which Luther’s discovery of the mystical manual and his prefatory endorsement aroused in an ever-widening circle of readers. Clearly, the Theologia Deutsch and the related corpus was a major conduit through which medieval German mysticism passed into the sixteenth-century religious currents. Breaking from our bibliographical sketch indicative of the interest in Taulerian mysticism in Germany in the first half of the Reformation century, we now look back at the medieval mystical tradition that thus enters into the formative thought of many radical reformers, while in successive chapters we shall ascertain other connections between the increasingly biblicized and therefore somewhat muted or intensely apocalypticized 15  Commonly rendered in English as Theologia Germanica, the manual might just as w ell keep the original name given it by Luther, since its significance in part lies in the fact that it was a summary of German mystical theology in the German language and to give it a Latin title in English is to dull the point. 16  Ibid., no. 20. 17  Mention might be made of the Lo w German edition in Rostock (1538). A work of the same title but of his own composition was put out by the evangelical Spiritualist Caspar Schwenckfeld in 1541.The contemplative Spiritualist Sebastian Franck left a 550-page manuscript paraphrase before his death in 1543,“Theologia vulgo Germanica dicta latinitate donata per Sebastianum Francum Wordensem.” The MS, in the Mennonite Library in Amsterdam, is described and excerpted by Alfred Hegler, Sebastian Francks lateinische Paraphrase der Deutschen Theologie und seine holländisch erhaltenetn Trakate (Tübingen, 1901). The evangelical Rationalist Sebastian Castellio under a pseudon ym published a Latin v ersion, Theologia Germanica, in Antwerp in 1556 and several times thereafter. It is the thesis of an authority on the scholastic milieu of late medie val mysticism, Steven E. Ozment, Mysticism and Dissent, that Ger manic mysticism helped break down for very devout intellectuals the sacramental and larger ecclesial provisions of God in his potestas ordinaria and made it possib le for them in the v ehicle provided by their successive editions and prefaces to navigate the open sea of piety independent of the new harbors provided by the magisterial Protestant establishments. He analyzes under the general abstraction of Dissent some se ven German mystical intellectuals who edited the Theologia Deutsch: John Denck, John Hut, Sebastian Franck, Louis Haetzer, Sebastian Castellio, and Valentin Weigel. Ozment does not mak e some of these , who w ere Anabaptist leaders, with a strong sense of the r edeemed community, much different from the Spir itualist loners, like Franck and Weigel. It was Alfred Hegler who made of Sebastian Franck the Seeker and Brooder, the very model of his “Spiritualist,” one of the three ecclesial types in Ernst Troeltsch, alongside “church type” and “sect type.”

chapter 2.2.a / 2.2.b

mysticism & sacramentism  81

popularized mysticism of t he incoming sixteenth century and sectarian conduct under the impact of L uther’s eventually critical assessment of what Luther himself considered the mystical vagaries of the Schwärmer. b. Theologie Deutsch and the Deutero-Taulerian Corpus as a Late Medieval Synthesis of Earlier Forms of Mysticism Theologie Deutsch and the related Deutero-Taulerian corpus represent a fusion on the eve of t he Reformation of t wo major strands of mysticism in Europe (outside the Iberian peninsula and outside Orthodox cultures with their own distinctive histories of s pirituality). One strand is commonly identified as Latin or Romance mysticism: devotional, affective, penitential, and Christocentric, developed by C istercians or Franciscans and represented initially by Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1153) and then by Bonaventura (d. 1274), on their various spiritual ladders and itineraries of the mind with the goal of volitional conformity to the will of G od and with God understood as the Good (the Righteous) in the projected realization of perfect holiness (“Be ye perfect even as the Heavenly Father is perfect,” Matt. 5:48). Such was the mysticism that could best flourish within the context of u niversity nominalism. The other strand was the original Rhenish mysticism: intellectual, essentialist, transformational, and theocentric (Triadic), represented by the Dominican Meister Eckhart (d. 1327). Eckhart shaped the German language to convey his mystical thought to Dominican nuns for whom he was chaplain and preacher in Cologne, with the mystical mind seeking the intellectual contemplation of G od (visio Dei) even to the brink of the Abyss of Being. God was understood as the Truth.18 This ontological (essential) mysticism was most common within the context of university realism. The seat of the human facility of divine transport was the consciousness/conscience: reason and will. Among the distinctive medieval terms for conscience and the faculty of the rational soul to prepare itself for mystical elevation was synteresis (quite commonly: synderesis), obscurely derived from the Greek. It is, in the first instance, the innate knowledge of the primary principles of moral behavior, and hence the human faculty for apprehending the holy, the divine, the ultimate. The term is so common in mystical literature that it may be helpfully connected with an influential place in Jerome’s Commentary on Ezekiel. In interpreting the four-faced cherubim in the vision of the prophet (Ezek. 1:10), Jerome saw the face of the man as the rational soul, the face of the lion as the passions, the face of the ox as the appetites, and the face of the eagle as the synteresis, as the scintilla animae. It was postulated that the functioning of the synteresis had not been lost or even impaired as a consequence 18  Heiko Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Biel and Late Medieval Nominalism (Cambridge: Harvard University. Press), 323–61; Packull, Mysticism, Ch. 1.

82  the radical reformation

chapter 2.2.b / 2.2.c

of the Fall. This conscience (good or sound sense), being thus postulated in some scholastic systems, like reason itself, as not tainted by the disobedience of Adam and Eve, will not survive in Luther’s mature thinking except as an accusing conscience, but synteresis, however called, will become in various ways among the radicals the anthropological basis for dissent as well as for sanctificatory endeavor.19 Through the enterprise and zeal of G erman Franciscans there was a cross-pollination of t he flowering of t he mysticism of t he will and that of the intellect as writings of t he Latin masters were translated into the vernacular. The two mystical disciplines of w ill and reason and visions of t he mystically transcendent could find a n ew footing in the identification and clarification of the role of conscience/consciousness as the synteresis voluntatis et rationis, that is, as the devout act of t he enlightened conscience of b oth disciplined willing of one thing and the meditation upon the ultimate truth. The apex of the mind, the receptor of the soul/mind/will, could thus prepare for and receive grace as blessedness. The spark (scintilla) or ground of the soul (Fünklein, Seelengrund, Abgrund der Seele) could be thought of as the spiritual and moral organ or faculty of man, created in the image of God (this image preeminently beheld in Jesus Christ), for the perception precisely of the transhistorical Verbum Dei incarnatum in oneself. In contrast Luther would decisively locate salvation in faith propter Christum in reference to the once-for-all transaction of the historic Christus incarnatus and his salvific act pro nobis. In the late medieval nominalist context, God in his absolute power (potestas absoluta) deigns, through his ordinary power (potestas ordinata or ordinaria), to deal with his creation by his ordered or covenantal contractual power to respect his own covenants and pacts and vows and the sacramental system as ordained by him through Christ. The nominalist (voluntarist) mystic came, however, close to assuming within himself the potestas hominis absoluta in willing a covenantal but also essential unio mystica in the mutual initiative/ readiness of the receptive mystic and of the divine Partner. c. Some Mystical Motifs Later Cropping up in the Radical Reformation The very subtitle given to Theologia Deutsch by Luther would rule the use of it and other mystical materials by Anabaptists or Spiritualists: “And how Adam should die and Christ be resurrected in us.” By first universalizing Christ’s work for all humankind to the extent of exculpating all everywhere in the world who are immature or imbecile from the guilt of the f irst Adam; by interpreting the residual sinful impulses in all who will have come to the knowledge of good and evil in Zwingli’s terms: Erbbresten 19

 Krister Stendahl, “The Apostle Paul and the Intr ospective Conscience of the West,” Harvard Theological Review 56 (1963): 199–215, shows the development in the Latin mind from the New Testament to Augustine as decisive for respectively the hor tatory and the accusing conscience.

chapter 2.2.c

mysticism & sacramentism  83

or morbus; and then by holding up as the ideal the imitation of the Second Adam in obedience and faith, the Anabaptists will have brought close together under the conjunctively high auspices of b oth Luther and his Theologia Deutsch, (1) the paradisaic restorationist motif linked to a theologia crucis; (2) an indwelling atonement, an experiential justification, and resurrectionist sanctification; and (3) a communitarian ethic grounded in mystical Gelassenheit, a mystical-devotional imitatio Christi, and a readiness unique to the Anabaptists to regard the gathered congregation of even the ideal commonwealth (Gemeinde) of the reborn as an eschatalogical earnest in the wilderness of this world of the paradise to be restored. The medieval mystical factor will be traced in several other traits through several sectors of Radical Reformation. Most Anabaptists, while commonly with Catholics retaining a l iteral hell and purgatory (in contrast to most of t he classical Protestant Reformers), will also understand the descensus ad inferos of the Apostles’ Creed in the company of t he German mystics as a metaphor of Christ’s utter anguish on the cross and hence also as a paradigm of the depths of the saving experience of faith. 20 Along this line, many Anabaptists will also interpret baptism in a threefold sense which owed much to mystical experience and formulation, including an inner baptism of the Holy Spirit or circumcision of the heart, and in many cases they will make use not only of the mystical language of Gelassenheit and mortification but also of nuptial union. 21 Further, in their doctrine of the celestial flesh of C hrist (Melchior Hofmann, Menno Simons), of t he eternal sacrifice of t he Word ( John Denck), of t he ubiquity of t he Holy Spirit or the inner Christ-Word (Clement Ziegler, John Hut, John Schlaffer), of the elect Friends of God in all climes and times ( John Bünderlin, John Hut, Jacob Kautz), Anabaptists, in differing ways, will have drawn upon mystical views. Along with some Evangelical Rationalists, they will not only postulate the possibility of salvation outside their conventicles and even beyond Christendom 22 (Ch. 32.2), but also, finally, in their colligating justification and sanctification in their basic view of experiential regeneration and confessional baptism, and in their imitation of Christ from his baptism in water at the Jordan to his baptism in blood (cf. Luke 12:50) at Calvary, many of the Anabaptists and many Spiritualizers will be drawing upon many mystically processed scriptural texts which even Luther in his earlier phase countenances in somewhat the same sense.

20  Cf. Erich Vogelsang, “Weltbild und Kreuzestheologie in den Höllenfahrtsstreitigkeiten der Reformationszeit,” ARG 37 (1940): 90–132. 21  Rollin S. Armour treats the par tly mystical threefold baptism in Anabaptist Baptism: A Representative Study (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald, 1966), esp. 58–87, 102–12, 127–29. 22  See, marginally, George H. Williams, “Sectarian Ecumenicity: Reflections on a Little Noticed Aspect of the Radical Reformation,” [Baptist] Review and Expositor, 64:1 (1967): 141–60.

84  the radical reformation

chapter 2.2.c

The Anabaptists will therefore be critical of Luther’s prevailing stress on justification by f aith alone to the neglect of v isible, palpable, experiential sanctification, and they will popularize mystical views in support of their concern for the perfected life. Some of t hem will be indirectly influenced by mysticism through Thomas Müntzer and through Andreas Bodenstein von Carlstadt, author of a tract, Von der Gelassenheit. Others will be directly influenced by German mysticism, including John Denck (also John Bünderlin, Melchior Hofmann, Bernard Rothmann, Pilgram Marpeck, John Schlaffer, Leonard Schiemer, Ulrich Stadler, Peter Riedemann, and Peter Walpot). The mystical terms like rebirth, divine friendship, suffering imitation of Christ, spiritual Trübsal, nuptials, and Gelassenheit will abound in their tracts, letters, sermons, and testimonies. With these and other terms they will persevere in always seeking to supplement Luther’s doctrine of j ustification (Rechtfertigung) which they, as biblical sectarians, think they understand, and then will coin the terms Gerechtmachung and Fromm-machung to indicate that justification also brings about a reordering of the believer’s life. Anabaptists will withdraw from the world and the established reformed churches in order to facilitate this sanctification. Luther, in contrast, through his doctrine of vocation and his solafideist dictum simul justus et peccator, will sanction a full-blooded life in the world without confusing church and society. There can be no doubt about the fact that the competing concepts of s alvation (Seligkeit) —the Lutheran vocation from God with its sanction in predestined justification and the Anabaptist imitation of Christ with its goal of suffering sanctification—will lead to different kinds of Christian behavior and very different styles of the Christian life in the German sixteenth century. The colligation of (1) a mystical distinction of two atonements, of (2) a surmise about Christ’s work as attenuating the grip of original sin, reflective of (3) a popular Catholic notion about the Mass, will, for Anabaptists and many other radicals, relocate in confessional baptism what, as Catholics, they had once thought of a s transacted in penance and in the Mass. But since believers’ baptism is a o nce-for-all and not a r epeatable sacrament (Eph. 4.5), they will be constrained to be much more perfectionist in their quest for lay holiness than Catholics or the magisterial Protestants, drawing scriptural and supposedly Pauline sanction from Hebrews that allows for no serious lapse after baptism (Heb. 6:4; 10:26). Thus for the Anabaptists and many other dissenters the mutually reinforcing character of the Lord’s Supper will become prominent, leading also in several instances, most fully among Hutterites (Ch. 9.2.d; 16.3) and Münsterites (Ch. 13), to the communion of goods and mutual aid, and—for the wayward—a vigilant use of the ban (and penitential readmission to communion) as the means of maintaining a relatively high moral standard apart from the world.

chapter 2.2.c / 2.3

mysticism & sacramentism  85

We now undertake (sec. 3) an overview of t he dislocations in sacramental theology as a whole as that system passes, much altered, into the sixteenth century, and anticipate its permutation in the Radical Reformation particularly in the Empire, and (sec. 4) follow Netherlandish Sacramentarians through the late Middle Ages, and then (sec. 5) into the sixteenth century when Sacramentist conventicles in their region would become receptive to the Anabaptist gospel of a d istinctive thinker, Melchior Hofmann, whose first rebaptism, i.e. valid in the sense of being adult believers’ baptism, in the region would take place in Emden in 1530 (Ch. 12.3). 3. Losses in the Sense of Divine Mediacy in the Seven

Sacraments

Having noted how Luther gave impetus in 1516 to the popularization of Germanic mysticism, and observed how the communal, voluntary, and essential mysticism, for many devout souls also relativized the ambient sacramental system, we pause now to examine the survival of medieval religiosity pilloried by Luther as Sacramentarianism that would quicken into new forms and permutations under the impact of h is own theologically radical rupture with the sacramental, mystical, devotional, scholastic, ethical, and even aesthetic style of the receding age in which the seven sacraments had been the religious bond of Christian society. Although Luther’s consternation concerned the sacrament of the altar and although his medieval Latin term sacramentarius refers primarily indeed to anybody aberrant from the high view of the Eucharist as defined by the IV Lateran Council (1215), we opportunely place the sixteenth-century sacramentarius in the context of changing views of all the sacraments. The seven sacraments were first distinguished by Peter Lombard (d. 1160) 23 from the more numerous sacramentalia (like liturgical royal unction or the consecration of a church). By 1450, we have a powerful visual representation of all seven sacraments in The Netherlands. In Antwerp the school of R oger van der Weyden executed a n oteworthy triptych, “The Seven Sacraments.” It visually expounds the sacramental life deriving from the crucifixion. The triptych pictures the central sacrament, the Eucharist, with the sacrifice on the cross in the crossing of the church, blood and water flowing from the side of Christ as the source of a ll the sacraments. The angel above the cross provides the liturgical color of green, for this is the Tree of Life. In the northern aisle of t he pictured church interior are the three sacraments for all Christians: Baptism (liturgical color: white), Confirmation (yellow), Penance (red), and then in the southern aisle of this church interior the three differentiating sacraments: Matrimony (blue), Orders (violet), and Extreme Unction (dark purple). 23

 Sentences, Bk. 4, distinction 1, number 2.

86  the radical reformation

chapter 2.3

In Catholic reaction to what will suddenly happen to the seven sacraments here under preview in their passage through the magisterial and the radical reforms of t he sixteenth century, it may be here anticipated that, while they will be safeguarded and reconfirmed by the Council of Trent, all seven will for the first time be specifically ascribed to the express institution of Christ himself (session 7, 1547, canon 1). The council fathers will eschew, however, citing the exact Dominical sanctions for some of them, e.g., matrimony, confirmation, and extreme unction. We begin with Baptism and the Eucharist, the two that are to be acknowledged by t he various reformers as scripturally and Dominically enjoined (and therefore still binding, though there are exceptions, for example, some Spiritualists and some Evangelical Rationalists as also with the Quakers a century hence) and therefore also to be called divine “ordinances” among the radical reformers. Everywhere in the sixteenth century it is the sacrament of the altar 24 that is first contested in its received liturgical form and in its scholastic explanation. But as baptism, rebaptism, and even the abandonment of baptism, constitute so pervasive a theme in almost all chapters ahead (the discussion of i ts scholastic background in Ch. 11.1), we turn immediately to the medieval antecedents of L uther’s eucharistic sacramentarii. Although a g eneric term in name, it is actually almost sacrament-specific in usage in reference to the Eucharist. There were several reasons why some conscientious people before Luther, as common-sense sacramentarians, denied the real presence on the altar, while other “high” sacramentarians abstained out of reverence or fear. In other words, the discipline of fencing off communion, always preceded by the administration of the sacrament of penance, was at once a factor, for some, in exalting the sense of the divine presence in the Eucharist, and, for others, in repelling them from the altar. From the time of P aul the conscientious communicant stood under the frightening judgment of t he apostle himself, 1 C or. 11:27 and 32: “… For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself. … ” That reluctance to commune had been widespread in Christendom is evidenced by the very council, the IV Lateran, that for the first time used “transubstantiate” canonically of t he Eucharist, and it also enjoined on all the lay faithful at least once a year to confess in penance before the priest all their sins and to commune at Easter (chap. 21). On this occasion the shriven and communicating laity were thus brought, momentarily, roughly to the same level of purity as the 24  The term “sacrament of the altar” is commonly used in the ensuing account as an occasional alternative to Eucharist or the Lord’s Supper. In Lutheran usage the phrase is commonly capitalized as it betokens the same sacramental transaction, and preserves for Lutherans the sense of the r eal presence on the altar in conscious contrast to the comm union table in the Reformed traditions.

chapter 2.3

mysticism & sacramentism  87

sacerdotes.25 Likewise at the moment of communion, even in one kind (the paten), the laity were brought morally (in the sight of God) very near the level, too, of monks and religious (male and female) who, for their part, whether or not ordained, daily participated in the divine office in their hilltop monastery or in their town convent. In either case, the regulars were even more bound to the moral life by their monastic or conventual vows than were the secular clergy. We speak here, of course, of the ideal. The celibate ideal itself, however, whether or not upheld, and the withholding of the cup from the laity were experienced on either side of the communion rail as a separation into two classes of Christians, even regardless of their moral state. Luther himself, the sacramentally most conservative of the reformers, in pillorying as “sacramentarians” his reforming opponents, near and far, would be using a term of medieval opprobrium for any schoolman or other person deviating from canonical authority as to the presence of Christ on the altar, as to the reserved Host, and in the monstrance in the annual Corpus Christi Day procession (general by the fourteenth century, on the first Thursday after Trinity Sunday). In Luther’s or in the medieval sense, the Utraquists of Bohemia (Ch. 9.1) and adjacent lands were not “sacramentarians”; for their protest had been preeminently against the separation of the clergy and the laity in the communion as betokened by the exclusive use of the chalice for the sacerdotes. From their clamor for the chalice for lay communicants they acquired their designation as Calixtines. Their priests, however, would continue to practice clerical celibacy, and indeed the new sectarian grouping formed out of the Hussite legacy, the Czech (Moravian) Brethren, would also continue to uphold the celibacy of their own clergy. In the interest of a still purer church they would indeed insist on rebaptizing converts from both the Roman and the Utraquist interfacing territorial churches in Bohemia. The insistence on rebaptism of converts by the Czech Brethren (but with the retention of p edobaptism for their own progeny) as analogous and perhaps regionally exemplary for Germanic Anabaptists, will come up in Ch. 9.1.b. In turning now to Penance, one recalls that it had been “the second baptism,” “the second plank of s alvation” after baptism (Tertullian), and of a public character and sometimes of lifelong penitence. Private penance had come to replace this ancient and early medieval public penance. This consisted of three parts: confession of sins to the priest, the priest’s absolution, and the priest’s poena (punishment) for the penitent sinner to make satisfaction for the gravity of the sins, to supplement Christ’s overall atoning satisfaction (poena) to God the Father for the sins of the world. In his Ninety-Five 25  The officiants, in the three grades of bishop, priest, and deacon sacramentally effectual ex opere operato in their ministry to others, added the confiteor to expunge their own personal sins.

88  the radical reformation

chapter 2.3

Theses on the eve of All Saints in 1517—the first hammering of the Reformation—Luther argued against professional pardoners who sold indulgences (which were bargain remissions, by papal authority) for temporal penalty in Purgatory due to forgiven sin on the basis of the treasury of merits of the saints. The relics of s everal of t hose saints constituted the renowned treasure of t he castle church of Luther’s protector, the Elector of Saxony. Although Luther himself will continue to attach semi-sacramental power to a simplified penance, he will have deprived the once tripartite act of any distinctively priestly authority to absolve and he will restrict the supply of saintly merit to that of Christ himself as the only High Priest and Mediator, his plenary merit rendered directly accessible to the sinner through predestined faith, itself a gift of God (Eph. 2:8). For many of the radicals the place of penance in the ecology of t he sacramental life will be taken, as noted above, by penitential public believers’ baptism, at once a confession of sins and a testimony of faith. Almost all groups within the Radical Reformation will also develop the lesser ban (exclusion from the Lord’s Supper) and the greater ban (exclusion from the ecclesial fellowship) as a distinctive modality of radical congregational discipline. Matrimony in the van der Weyden triptych in Antwerp of c. 1450 is represented with the priest covering the hands of the nuptial partners with his stole. In the attendant scroll, the scriptural sanction is Ex. 4:24–26, recording how the foreign (Midianite) wife of Moses, Zipporah, circumcises their son with a Stone (Christ), touching the feet of Moses with the foreskin to save their marriage as within the covenant.26 However, this derivation of the sacrament of Matrimony from the blood of the typological Christ (the Stone) and the bonding of the Church of the Circumcision with the Church of the Nations was not representative. Indeed officiation of m arriage by a p riest was not necessary, for the scholastic interpretation of marriage identified the bride and groom as the officiants, the priest as witness only, and the res as being their intention, unlike that of all the other sacraments. Matrimony, though ceasing to be a Protestant sacrament, will be given a new status in all of t he churches of t he Reformation era (Ch. 20) as a result of the programmatic spurning of celibacy in reaction to the former sharp differentiation of the laity from the secular and the regular clergy, all these living apart from civic and rural society. In the Counter-Reform the ascetic ideal would be, to be sure, renewed and notably diversified in new orders for the polemical age. At the same time, not to be overlooked, the same millennial motif of self-denial, with its grounding in the ascetic strata of both the New and the Old Testament, would also continue to shape the various forms of P rotestantism in inner-worldly asceticism and in other manifestations, but then particularly in several groupings in radicalized 26

 This is labeled 24a in the MS, but there is no accompanying footnote material.

chapter 2.3

mysticism & sacramentism  89

Protestantism. One may identify as permutations of t he ascetic motif the conjugal coenobitism of all evangelicals, the freshly conceived evangelical family, of w hich Martin and Catherine in their abbatial manse in Wittenberg would serve as one paradigm. The new sexual and marital ethics would be variously manifest: in the reconception of marriage as a covenant, in the municipal closing of brothels, and in the Anabaptist communitarianism of the Hutterites in Moravia, where husbands and wives with their children would be separated circumspectly not only in the services of worship as with the Czech Brethren, the Polish Brethren, and the Transylvanian Unitarians but also, in the case of the Hutterites, at tables and, as far as possible, in their daily work (Ch. 9.2; 16). The sacrament of Orders would be the most shaken not so much by the almost obligatory marriage of the clergy as by the Reformation upheaval concurrent with the rise of the lay spirit 27 and with the programmatic theological and scriptural disavowal of a ny fundamental distinction between clergy and laity in the proclamation of the priesthood of all believers (Luther) as a consequence of the affirmation of the once-for-all character of t he sacrifice of C hrist as alone sacerdos for humanity. Hence would come the theological renunciation of a ny sacerdotal, i.e., priestly, in the sense of sacrificatory, function of the ministrant at the altar/table, and the displacement of t he pastor as sacramental officiant by t he pastor as preacher of the sermonic word, even as there would come a concurrent reranking of t he organs of sense and the displacement of t he mouth and eye by the ear as the primary receptor of divine grace (the preached word: salus ex auditu, Rom. 10:17). The reconception of the ministry in both the territorial and the gathered churches in the new theological context would be all the more controversial for the reason that even the canon law of t he late medieval Latin Church out of which these impulses sprang was not entirely resolved as to whether, among the minor and the major (holy) orders (the latter being those of subdeacon, deacon, presbyter, and bishop) of the sacerdotal society, there was, as between bishop and presbyter, any distinction of g rade, apart from the scope of jurisdiction. The tradition as to the equality of presbyter and episcopus of St. Jerome, more or less confirmed by the canons of IV Lateran, was of

27  G. de Lagarde, La Naissance de l’esprit laïque au déclin du moyen âge, 3d ed., 5 vols. (Louvain/Paris, 1956/63). The lay spirit would become an almost identifying featur e of Evangelical Rationalism, wherein jurisconsults, physicians, and eng ineers, always influential, would, even on assuming virtual leadership of a body of believers, not even consider ordination, like Laelius and Faustus Socinus, Gentile, Gribaldi, Biandrata, and many others. Although the Polish Brethren and the Transylvanian Unitarians would indeed maintain nearly intact the fourfold ministry of Geneva in the context of presbytery and synod, the Anabaptists, seldom led by ordained clerics of the Old Order, would in all cases imitate ancient polities as ascer tainable in the Bible in their way, different from Calvin’s, of a differentiated, partly corporate, and for a long time charismatic ministry.

90  the radical reformation

chapter 2.3

common acceptance in the sixteenth century although resisted in several sectors (as, for example, in Spain).28 In England, where the episcopal bench of the Upper House of Parliament would go over to the Reformation as a unit, constitutional/ecclesial episcopacy would indeed survive intact, as also in Lutheran Sweden, but in both instances with the lapse, during their most Protestant phases, of any pretension to apostolic succession. Yet out of the reordering, it would be eventually possible to fashion a high Anglican doctrine of the threefold ministry of deacon, priest, and bishop. This sacerdotal threefoldness, however, would hold on elsewhere only as a marginalized, residual concept in most of Latin Christendom at the close of the era of the Reformation. Episcopacy as a distinct order would be everywhere challenged. Indeed, from the time of Innocent III and his IV Lateran Council the evolving papacy had weakened the sense and the canonicity of t he ancient and medieval episcopacy as a distinct order or grade, apart from its jurisdictional competence conferred by the Pope. The Pope as supreme bishop had monopolized the essence of episcopacy and over the centuries would seek to make good his right to appoint or confirm the bishop or primate in every see. 29 In territories like Germany, with its patchwork of often small temporal jurisdictions overlapping often vast episcopal or abbatial jurisdictions, and where the temporal and ecclesial functions were sometimes combined (as in prince– bishoprics) thus blurring the identity of the bishop as in any way a diocesan pastor, it was not remarkable that Lutherans, for example, in any case adhering to the major tradition in medieval canon law, would find no difficulty in thinking of the episcopus as no more than a presbyter, except for the wealth of his benefice and the scope of his jurisdiction. Hence, in the end, Lutherans would understand the reforming prince himself in case of necessity (Not) the repository of the overseeing and appointive, that is, distinctively episcopal powers. The prince as Notbischof, acting in place of t he papally approved episcopus, might properly deputize and dispatch church visitors in the discharge of his Reformation-sanctioned ecclesiastical oversight. Although Luther evolves a Two-Kingdom doctrine, interpreting the invisible Church of Christ and the territorial establishment, the effect of his reform will be a much closer theological and scripturally sanctioned bond between Throne and Altar. In any case, the variously reformed 28  The vacillation as to what were the seven orders (minor and major) is r eflected in two traditions about how Christ sanctioned at one moment and another each of the se ven, but with two different enumerations of the seven, depending on whether episcopus was understood to be of a higher gradus than presbyter. On this, see Roger Edward Reynolds, “The Ordinals of Christ” (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1969) embodied and much expanded in a series of published articles by the author. 29  For France the concordat of Bologna of 1516 conceded temporarily the right of the king to nominate to sees and abbeys. For Poland there would be an effort on the part of Sigismund II Augustus to enjoy the same privilege.

chapter 2.3

mysticism & sacramentism  91

territorial or national churches of t he sixteenth century from Scotland to Sweden, from canton Chiavenna in the Rhaetian Republic to Ducal Prussia within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, will be implementing a d ifferent threefold ministry from that of t he earlier Middle Ages and that of (a later) High Anglicanism, that, namely of (1) deacon, (2) teacher/preacher/pastor, and—in administration beyond the single parish or the local church—(3) the antistes (chief pastor) of t he city or the superintendent of the territory or the royally appointed bishop, indeed, but as a c onstitutional peer of t he realm (England, Scandinavia) rather than as a successor to apostles. The magisterial reformers with their much greater reliance on the powers that be and intermeshed in the familiar order of things and with their greater access to, or schooling in, the university, will look especially to the role of the priests and prophets of the Old Testament who like themselves advised rulers and magistrates and called the whole people to repentance and righteousness, being themselves most commonly alumni of universities or still active as magistri, or at least closely connected with the new schools in old convents and often calling themselves indeed doctores (Ch.11.3.b). The Anabaptists of the Empire would develop a threefold ministry of another dynamic and nomenclature: deacon, elder, and emissary, while the chief elder (German: Vorsteher) will exercise corporately through the eldership, an authority well beyond the local congregation. Indeed Gemeinde (congregation) will in several languages come to be the name for a whole congeries of l ocal congregations, while radical churches growing from within the Reformed synods in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Transylvania will be presbyterial in polity. None of the reforming ministrants, establishmentarian or separatist, in the sixteenth century would be thinking of himself as a priest carrying into eternity the indelible character of his ordination, as would be the case of the sacerdotes (priests and bishops) of the Old Order and of the Counter–Reform. An important practical difference between the emerging ministries of the magisterial reforms of Protestantism as distinguished from those of the radical restorationists would soon come to be that the radicals would by conviction or coercion usually have to do without access to the financial and other supportive emoluments of the old standing order, like tithes, clerical exemptions, endowments, bequests, and parsonages. 30 At the same time, as “free-church” ministers of t he left wing, some would often insist on the apostolic model of self-support by their own trade (cf. John 10:12, Acts 18:3, 1 Cor. 4:13) among extremists among the Polish Brethren no less than earlier among the Germanic Anabaptists. Few ministrants among the radicals

30  The Unitarian Reformed in Transylvania (Ch. 28) would prove to be almost the only exception to this generalization.

92  the radical reformation

chapter 2.3

(except the Münsterites, Ch. 13) would recognize themselves—unlike the pastors of reformed towns and larger territories—as having overall pastoral or diaconal responsibility for any given city quarter or any region of t he countryside as their (geographical) parish or territorial bishopric, although many of t he radical reformers at the inception of t he various movements would feel called to an apostolic and kerygmatic ministry of itinerant mission and confrontational conversion. While in all three main Christian groupings of the age, Catholic, magisterial Protestant, and sectarian Protestant, all ministrants will have sought credentials and models of reform and repatterning of congregational functions in the Bible (Ch. 4.2), the radicals more existentially than the territorial reformers will take the patterns of the New Testament to heart. 31 Some of the Anabaptist bishops will indeed write their encyclical letters, often closely modeled on those of Paul and Deutero-Paul, living indeed on the New Covenant models of not infrequently imprisoned or martyred evangelists and ministrants in the vastness of the Roman Empire. In these new ecclesial formations under new ministries disconnected from ordination by c onsecrated bishops in apostolic succession, the conception of t he Church itself will change. The credal article on the communio sanctorum will be reinstitutionalized by the use of chantry and other endowments for poor relief, orphanages, and schools, while in some radical reformations the same concept will be transformed into the community of saintly goods, or the congregation of sanctified persons. In the working out of the magisterial Reformation stress on predestination of the saints and their perseverance, the new preachers and their faithful auditors will become ever more aware of the invisible Church to which some of them eternally have belonged (as they are convinced) from the foundation of the world. All such saints have, as it were, their own and indelible character (character indelibilis), namely, the assurance of p erseverance of t he elect, with an extension, of the former character of the priesthood to all the (invisible) elect as a c onsequence of G od’s power “which is greater than all” ( John 10:24). By their predestinarian conviction the classical reformers will be emboldened to make often drastic changes in their received, visible Church. With its accumulated properties and ancient fabric, it brings temporal comfort alike to the eternally predestined saints (so: Luther and Calvin) who are intermittently sinful (Calvin) or at one and the same time sinful and 31

 For how variegated in the light of moder n patristic scholarship were the functions of the orders (including those of doctores, deaconesses, and consecrated wido ws) and of the laity in the pre-Constantinian Church which the radicals commonly sought to recover, see my chapters entitled, “The Ministry of the Ante-Nicene Church,” and “The Ministry in the Patristic Period,” in The Ministry in Histor ical Perspective, ed. H. R. Niebuhr and D. D. Williams (New York: Harper, 1956), 27–59, 60–81; and “The Role of the Laity in theAncient Church, a.d. 30–313,” The Layman in Chr istian History, ed. Stephen Neill and Hans Rudi Weber (London: SCM Press, 1963), ch. 1.

chapter 2.3

mysticism & sacramentism  93

justified (Luther) and also to the eternally reprobate who might indeed lead lives outwardly, for the most part, indistinguishable from the predestined elect in the same parish. In reaction to this mingling in classical Protestant ecclesiology of the Augustinian visible and invisible Church, of the provisionally bonded elect and the reprobate in the same parish, or to as much of the high Augustinian doctrine of predestination as the separatists grasp and then reject, they, as proponents generally of f reedom of the will, will hold to Phil. 2:12 in sanction of working out freely one’s “salvation in fear and trembling” and recombine the idea of t he invisible and visible Church of s aints. In their intensification of apocalyptic expectation, these gathered congregations of self-determined expectant saints in Christ will vehemently separate from the world, its pomps and compromises, although not safeguarded from falling into oppressive polities apart. 32 While their congregations take on in their worship some of the traits of the awaited Kingdom, the radicals generally will eschew for themselves the term ecclesia and its vernacular equivalents, e.g., Kirche, Kerk, Chiesa, Kos´ciół reserved for the major churches locally united with the state, and use instead Gemeinde, gemeente, communità, zbór, and so forth. The radicals, for the most part, will come to understand themselves as pasturing flocks of Christ, under both his crook and his cross, in an arduous discipleship not of this world. We turn now to Extreme Unction. The churches and sects of the Reformation will not recognize any clear Dominical injunction for the sacrament of the anointing of t he sick. Once debated as to whether it was indelible or delible (and therefore repeatable: Peter Lombard here finally prevailing), the sacrament of u nction had been sanctioned by M att. 9:35, more specifically by M ark 6:13 and James 5:14–16. But it had, by t he opening of the century of t he Reformation (and indeed in the first schema of t he provision for it at Trent, 1547), become closely identified for most people with imminent death. It is altogether remarkable for so personal and existential a sacrament, involving the solemn anointment of seven parts of the body, that almost nothing of it (even perhaps disguised) survives among the ministrants or even the illiterate laity of the churches of the Reformation. Overtly, it will survive transitionally only in an order for the visitation of the sick in I Edwardian Prayer Book (1549). In some ways the prominence of general confession of sin and mutual forgiveness near the opening of Lutheran and Reformed services of worship (the pastoral asservation of absolution in Lutheran churches) and the presumed acknowledgment or experience of salvation in a dying and rising 32

 Many of the radicals will r ead Paul as the sanction for a Chr istian people’s polity in polemical parallelism with the ancient and the moder n Imperium. On this recovery of a politically radical Paul, see most recently Dieter Georgi, Paul and Theocracy (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1990).

94  the radical reformation

chapter 2.3

through faith alone in Christ will be construed as dispensing with the need for a farewell unction or even a simpler gesture or formulary as in any case altogether too sacerdotal and as smacking too much of w orks righteousness. To be sure, the scripturally sanctioned anointing of t he sick for healing may well be revived unnoticed in the records of the radical reformations whose exponents would, however, more likely think of some form of b aptism of b lood or fire as their extinguishing mark. 33 It is noteworthy, in any case, that the sacrament of extreme unction which had been turned into a r ite of final passage, amid anxiety and bereavement, vanishes without much of a trace or appropriate replacement among adherents to radical forms of biblical Christianity as they end their lives or are attended at the end. 34 Confirmation was generally the sacrament of p uberty, when the child owned the baptism of infancy and was confirmed by the visiting bishop in articulate faith. Confirmation, as indeed also the monastic vow, would live on among various radicals as a component impulse (of remembered action) in the many forms of believers’ baptism. In the magisterial reform confirmation will eventually come back either with that name itself—but not as a specifically Christ-ordained ordinance—or more often as the nodal pause in the life-cycle, to be filled with the new catechetical instruction of progeny and the creation for them of catechisms and confessions of f aith alongside the ancient creeds, as the sixteenth century would move from reform to confessionalization in the second half. In the new territorial churches, movement would be from (1) baptism of one’s progeny in infancy in the face of the congregation (no longer in homes) with the nurturing promise of t he godparents (promissio aliena) to (2) new arrangements for the grown child’s appropriation of t he baptismal promise (often in the state-church response to Anabaptist clamors), through (3) the liturgical affirmation of a particular confession of faith alongside assent to the common ancient creeds, to (4) a pledge, by implication, to support the church espousing that particular confession and to submit to its 33

 I am unaware of any scholarly treatment of how various radicals in the first generation, by definition familiar with extreme unction for their parents, grandparents, or other loved ones and neighbors, may have differed from other “Protestants” on the final passage except what one may infer from the fact that many of them had come to accept the sleep or death of the soul with the body, psychopannychism (Ch. 5.4). The last words at the stake or other place of execution of so many of the radical martyrs may, once assembled for this purpose, clarify what forms they may have developed of final solace (cf. the Cathar consolamentum), the challenge of which in southern France and northern Italy had been a factor in turning unction into extreme or final unction. 34  It is of inter est, of cour se, that the Dominical example and indeed injunction of foot washing (John 13:5ff.) in apostolic, patristic, monastic, papal, and royal observance (in the last two instances on Maunday Thursday) does reappear as an ordinance among some radical groups, as also in sectar ian renewals in later centur ies, and then expr essly as one of se ven Dominical ordinances (Dirk Philips, Ch. 19.3.c).

chapter 2.3 / 2.4

mysticism & sacramentism  95

discipline, and (5) a pledge through the civic oath, to defend the state or territorial community professing that particular confession. 35 In the case of many of the radical groups the old place of confirmation in the cycle of r eligious life would in contrast to the civic oath be taken by public confession and profession of faith—in the case of many by adult believers’ baptism, itself as public witness—and by t he pledge to prepare progeny for the strenuousness of t he envisaged Christian life. Confirmation will have been replaced—especially in the mind of John Hut, with his marking of t he forehead at baptism (Ch. 7.4). In most sectors of r eformation radicality the scripturally sanctioned refusal to swear the civil oath (cf. Matt. 5:33–37) to defend the state would be compensated for by a confessional recognition of the state as ordained of God for the restraint of others (Rom. 13:1–7), an aspect of the Radical Reformation to be gathered together in final retrospect (Ch. 32.3). 4. Netherlandish Sacramentarians and Conventicular

Sacramentists

We have noted that the elements of the sacrament of the altar in wondrous transformation within the elaborately ornate apse of t he church or in the processing monstrance in the streets of the medieval town could sometimes instill reverent fear, so that many a conscientious Christian might be moved to commune only spiritually in various forms of “high” sacramentarianism that then in the sixteenth century would find new and old christological explanations (Ch. 11.3). Others were instilled with defiance so that, in sporadic episodes during the Middle Ages, they reviled the sacrament as a fraudulent means of sacerdotal control over the lives of the laity and over their afterlife. There were, in any case, before Luther, sacramentarii who abstained from the sacrament of the altar out of fear and others out of revulsion. Intermediate between these extremes were the majority, the ordinary devout, who faithfully accepted the discipline and teaching of the Church without any strong conviction about, or experience of, the real presence on the altar in whatever the scholastic formulation. An articulate tradition of opposition to the doctrine of transubstantiation and the whole theology of, and devotional practices relating to, the sacrament of the altar was, in The Netherlands, as elsewhere, called by the horrified ecclesiastical and magisterial authorities, somewhat misleadingly, “sacramentarianism,” and its proponents “Sacramentists.” Although technically a sacramentarius was one who held theologically that any of the sacraments was merely a s ign involving no alteration either in the sacramental res (for example, the eucharistic bread) or in the recipient (for example, the baptizand 35  This is the title of a massive and comprehensive periodizing interpretation of a century and a half , c. 1520–c. 1670, Die riformierte Konfessionalisierung in Deutsc hland—Das Problem der “Zweiten Reformation,” ed. Heinz Schilling (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1986), esp. 387–437.

96  the radical reformation

chapter 2.4

or ordinand), the designation sacramentarius had long come to mean primarily an opponent of t he objective presence of t he eucharistic Christ. When sacramentarians withdrew from the parish churches in conventicles apart, we may call them Sacramentists in their sodalities, fellowships, or proto-sects, forerunners in The Netherlands of the Anabaptists. To be sure, in Dutch the comparable terms sacramentariërs and sacramentisten were, in fact, used interchangeably. Henceforth, however, we draw a useful distinction in English between the equivalents of these terms, using the latter, “Sacramentists,” to designate the Netherlandish conventiculars who held this doctrine and, in addition, certain other formative views, while we shall reserve the term “sacramentarians” (sixteenth-century English: sacramentaries) as the generic term in reference to the holders of v iews on the sacrament of t he altar not orthodox (from either the Roman or the Lutheran point of view) and hence for those in and out of The Netherlands who held to a commemorative or even purely spiritual view of the observance of the Last Supper. Since it was Zwingli who would become, in the end, the outstanding spokesman for this commemorative view, the conventicular Sacramentists in The Netherlands were, in time, themselves often to be called Zwinglians. To compound the confusion of nomenclature, they were often, after 1517, called “Lutherans” by the Netherlandish Catholic authorities. But, of course, on precisely their attitude toward the sacrament of t he altar the Netherlandish Sacramentists were a w orld apart from the consubstantiationist of Wittenberg. As we endeavor to stabilize the appellations, mindful that the magisterial (cantonal) reforms in Switzerland would be largely sacramentarian (up to the adoption of the First Helvetic Confession, 1536, which, worked out in Basel by O swald Myconius and Bullinger) would go beyond Zwingli’s commemoration to the recognition of the holy (Wahrzeichen), instituted by t he Lord to make possible the celebration of the true fellowship in the body and blood of Christ.” 36 The Netherlandish Sacramentarians, too, regarded the bread and wine as true tokens (Wahrzeichen) of the Lord, commemorative but also (over time) as eschatological tokens. The Sacramentists came to prefer for themselves the designation “Evangelicals” (evangelischen), analogous to, though probably not dependent on, still Catholic Evangelism in the Romance lands. They have been, in any case, by modern scholarship, grouped with the biblical humanists and

36  F. Karl Muller, ed., Die Bekenntnisschriften der reformierten Kirche (Leipzig: 1903, reprinted Zurich: Theologische Buchhandlung, 1987), 107.

chapter 2.4

mysticism & sacramentism  97

called also the Netherlandish “national-Reformed.”37 The Sacramentists of the Reformation era were not always organized in conventicles, but they were aware of each other and mutually reinforced each other in time of persecution and in the hour of execution. Dissent from Catholicism in The Netherlands, moving from a l ate medieval Sacramentarianism to a l oosely associative Sacramentism until about 1530, gave way to Sacramentist Anabaptism, to about 1568, to be marginalized by the ascendancy of Calvinism thereafter. The endemic Sacramentism of The Netherlands may indeed go far to explain why the Dutch were unable to accept the Reformation in its Lutheran form and eventually cast their lot with Calvinism. As already hinted, Sacramentism in The Netherlands, rather than always an outgrowth of skepticism, was in part the unwitting consequence of an earlier and excessive devotion to the sacrament of t he altar, which induced a belief in the existence of, and participation in, the sacrament quite apart from a physical consumption of the Host. Medieval theologians called this “spiritual communion.” It was especially important in time of plague, famine, or isolation, but valid also in normal circumstances for the pious layman in his devotional exercises apart from the priestly ministrations. Along with this devout spiritualization of the sacrament, there was, as we saw, a prophetic-iconoclastic, even crude and libertarian, Sacramentarianism which could be intermingled with the manifestations of contemplative Sacramentism in the later stages of the evolution of the two trends. Since the earnest sacramentarians could appeal to the Old Testament for sanction in their violence against alleged idolatry, it is never clear whether the scanty documentation from the inquisitorial chambers is describing an episode or movement nurtured by Augustinian-Johannine symbolism and biblical humanism or prompted by t he vagaries of a c harismatically led, anti-clerical iconoclasm. Sacramentarianism/Sacramentism also probably found different expressions in different classes. For the rougher impulse in Netherlandish Sacramentarianism, we may hark back to the notorious heresiarch Tanchelm (d. 1115 or 1124), who exhorted his vast and devoted following not to partake of the sacrament of the priests, which he called a pollution, and not to heed the priests and bishops nor to pay them tithes. He laid claim to being himself divine, through having the Spirit, and encouraged his followers, through a simulated marriage with an image of t he Virgin, to suppose that their spokesman for a free (libertine) apostolic church sustained a s pecial relationship to the 37  Laurentius Knappert, De opkomst v an het Protestantisme (The Hague, 1908), building on the work of J. G. de Hoop Scheffer , Geschiedenis der Kerkher vorming in Nederland v an haar opstaan tot 1531 (Amsterdam, 1873); J. Lindeboom, De confessionelle ontwikkeling der reformatie in de Nederlanden (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1956), 34ff.; and J. Trapman, “Le rôle des ‘Sacramentaires’ des origines de la réforme jusqu’en 1530 aux Pays-Bas,” NAKG 68 (1983).

98  the radical reformation

chapter 2.4

Queen of Heaven. The fact that he crudely denounced the sacrament of the altar, that in the same area several priests and laymen in a more earnest spirit could renounce the official views of both the sacrament of the altar and pedobaptism, and that Tanchelm could rally such multitudes of followers prepared to defend him with drawn swords at Ivoy (Ardennes) in 1112, suggests a recurrent impulse in The Netherlands and adjacent regions. 38 It must suffice to say that the whole bishopric of Utrecht (covering most of the present-day Holland) might have defected had it not been for the tireless zeal of N orbert of X anten, and that the first Sacramentist martyr in the Reformation era, one Wendelmoet Claesdochter (Ch. 12.1) in the folk tradition of Tanchelm was as vituperative as she was brave. A movement, probably not continuous with that of T anchelm, but especially widespread in The Netherlands and up the Rhine, was that of the Brethren and Sisters of the Free Spirit, finding their sanction in 2 Cor. 3:17: “Where the spirit of t he Lord is, there is liberty.” They were not, however, primarily scriptural but rather mystical or ecstatical, representing the fringes of orthodox mysticism in their “naughting of t he soul,” their deification, their antinomian freedom from the ordinances of the Church, and freedom even from concern with virtues and sins in the conviction— after a period of mystical discipline, united with God—that God worked wholly in them, hence the charges of pantheism and licentiousness from the inquisitors. The Beguine clergesse Marguerite Porete, the probable authoress of the widely circulated Mirror of Simple Souls, 39 condemned in Paris in 1310, may be taken as a figure intermediate between orthodox mysticism and the quietism of the Free Spirits.40 The role of the religious sodalities in the transmission of Sacramentism and particularly of the chambers of rhetoric (rederijkerskamers) needs further 38  Corpus documentorum inquisitionis Neerlandicae , ed. Paul Frédéricq (Ghent/The Hague, 1889) 1:15–18. Sacramentism is placed in a larger context b y Gordon Leff, Heresy in the Later Middle Ages: The Relation of Heterodoxy to Dissent c. 1250–c. 1450, 2 vols. (Manchester/ New York: The University Press/Barnes & Noble, 1967), 1:35, et passim. Leonard Verduin, The Reformers and Their Stepchildren (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964), ch. 4, has gather ed a few notices about medie val sacramentarianism; see also mor e fully, Cornelius Krahn, Dutch Anabaptism: Origin, Spread, Life, and Thought (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1968; reprt. Scottdale, Pa.: Herald, 1981), ch. 3: “The Evangelical Sacramentarian Reformation.” 39  Translated from French manuscripts by M.N., ed. Clare Kirchberger (London: Oates, 1927). 40  Eleanor McLaughlin, basing her w ork more on the statements of or thodox mystics than on the accusations of the inquisitor s, has made the mo vement to appear m uch more religious than lasci vious, “The Heresy of the Fr ee Spirit and Late Medie val Mysticism,” Medievalia et Humanistica, new series 4 (1973): 37–54. As this tendency crops up frequently in The Netherlands and adjacent regions in the sixteenth century (see Ch. 12.2. and 19.1), it is quite possible that some genetic rather than merely analogous connections can be established. For the literature, see Romana Guarnieri, “II movimento del libero spirito,” Archivio Italiano per la Storia della Pietà 4 (1965) who was more inclined than McLaughlin to descr y genetic continuities into the sixteenth century.

chapter 2.4

mysticism & sacramentism  99

investigation.41 These were the rhetorical societies organized by t he burghers for the festive celebrations of local saints and major events of the liturgical year, including the annual procession of Corpus Christi. With a priest attached, with morality plays written, and with literary pieces delivered, the chambers were centers of f ellowship which brought together contestants from all over the Burgundian realm in the annual juwelen. Without advancing an explanation, we may simply note that many Sacramentists and, later, Anabaptists were in some stage of their careers rederijkers. The rise of Sacramentism in The Netherlands and the socially widespread disposition there to displace the central action of medieval worship and then Luther’s disparagement of it as “sacramentarianism” are surely as important in an account of the Radical Reformation as the later emergence of antipedobaptism. The fact that Sacramentism deprived one sacrament of its sacrificatory character ex opere operato and that Anabaptism in contrast would give enhanced prominence to another does not obscure the spiritualizing trait common to both processes. Moreover in the alteration of the role of the two sacraments as believers’ baptism42 and a commemorative communion, the two ordinances would presently be brought close together in much the same eschatological joy and expectancy as in the pre-Constantinian Church, when the bishop presided over an elaborate baptismal exorcism and ablution of converts that led directly to the paschal communion. With the ecclesiological shift in the role of t he two sacraments in the Radical Reformation, a change would take place (as intimated in sec. 1) also in the inherited views concerning the theology of justification, sanctification, the atonement, and then ecclesiology. The devout form of Dutch Sacramentism may be best represented by Wessel Gansfort (c. 1420–89), whose De sacramento eucharistiae43 is the first major link in the chain of development, or recrudescence, of symbolist eucharistic theology with a r ecognized ongoing influence in the era of Reformation. Trained at Deventer in the school of t he Brethren of t he Common Life and the Devotio Moderna, Gansfort was a b osom friend of T homas à Kempis. Wessel Gansfort taught at their school in Zwolle (1432–49), 41  See a preliminary sketch of Leonard Verduin, “The Chambers of Rhetoric and Anabaptist Origins in the Low Countries,” MQR 34 (1960): 192–96; for representative pieces, Leendert Meeuwis van Dis, Reformatorishe Rederijkerspelen uit de eerst helft van de zestiende eeuw (Haarlem, 1937). 42  Among English-speaking Baptists the genitive apostrophe can appear both before and after the s but with difference in meaning. To write of believer’s baptism is to attach importance to the subjecti ve believer’s decision and action, while to wr ite it believers’ baptism is to emphasize the given, objective character of the church’s ordinance and by implication, the apostolic, Dominically mandated mode of, and age for, that baptism. 43  There is an English translation of De sacramento eucharistiae in Edward W. Miller and Jared W. Scudder, Wessel Gansfort: Life and Writings (New York/London, 1917), 2:1–70.

100  the radical reformation

chapter 2.4

studied further at the university in Cologne; and in his quest for the veritas Hebraica behind the Vulgate, he studied Hebrew there as well as Greek, moving from philosophy to theology. After a brief sojourn in Heidelberg he went to Paris, c. 1458, studying and then teaching. He took the side of the nominalists against the realists, more, evidently, on ecclesiastical than philosophical ground, seeking to uphold scriptural authority over papal, conciliar, and canonical authority. Specifically in his opposition to indulgences he would, near the end of his life in Groningen, write: I believe in the Holy Spirit who applies and preserves the rule of faith speaking through Apostles and prophets. I believe with the Holy Church, I b elieve according to the teachings of t he Church, but I do not believe in the Church, because believing is an act of worship, a sacrifice of theological virtue which ought to be offered to God alone.44 After a sojourn among Italian humanists, he returned to Paris for five more years of teaching. Back in The Netherlands, under Bishop David of Utrecht, he continued as a lay theologian to participate in a fellowship of like-minded gentle humanists, and to study and write ascetic tracts, among them the Farrago, Mare magnum, Scala meditationis, and the Exemplum scalae meditatoriae. Some of his writings (not fully published until 1618) would come to the favorable attention of Luther. There had been a millennial displacement of Baptism by the Eucharist as the sacramental locus of p ersonal salvation in the appropriation of t he work of C hrist between patristic antiquity and the close of t he Middle Ages.45 Spiritualizing Wessel pondered the atoning work of C hrist even before the Incarnation. We lift up for special notice his thought on the atonement in relation to the sacraments in order to suggest how the conduit of the benefits of Christ might flow either by way of the Eucharist (above, sec. 1) or by way of mystical union transcending the sacraments established by God’s potestas ordinaria (sec. 2). It was while in his early twenties that Gansfort had gone to Cologne. There he had learned about the sacramental theology of Rupert of Deutz (d. c. 1129) and especially his doctrine of i mpanation (Christ’s becoming bread) on the altar. Rupert’s doctrine that Christ would have become incarnate even if Adam had not fallen recurs in Gansfort, who indeed copied it out from Rupert: 44

 From a letter to J acob Hoeck, dean of Naaldwijk, 19 September 1489, selected b y Heiko A. Oberman as a representative specimen of his thought (in documents translated b y Paul L. Nyhus), Forerunners of the Reformation: The Shape of Late Medieval Thought Illustrated by Key Documents (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1966), 105. 45  I was attentive to this shift in m y Anselm: Communion and Atonement (St. Louis: Concordia, 1960).

chapter 2.4

mysticism & sacramentism  101

We receive [in the Eucharist] the true divinity and humanity of Christ, who sitteth and reigneth in heaven, just as we may obtain the true spark of fire almost daily from the sun by the use of a small magnifying glass. And elsewhere: Unto him who has no faith except in the visible form of the bread and the wine, no benefit comes from the sacrifice; just as an ass, pricking up his unreasoning ears at the sound of a lyre, does indeed hear the sound but not the melody of the song.46 So much, directly from Rupert. Gansfort’s doctrine of the Atonement in terms of t he cosmic struggle between the Lamb and the Dragon47 was undoubtedly also influenced by R upert’s De victoria Verbi Dei,48 wherein Rupert, holding that the Eucharist is no less necessary than Baptism for redemption, declared that Christ descended into Hades for three days and three nights in order that the departed saints might receive his body, in miro modo in illa specie, qua pependit in cruce.49 Whereas in the ancient Church,50 Christians considered themselves redeemed uniquely through Baptism, Gansfort in the medieval development makes the sacrament of the altar central and the dominant sacramental means of appropriating the grace of the redemptive action of Christ: It is not by corruptible gold and silver, but by the precious blood of the Lamb, that we have been ransomed … from the hand of Satan, from destruction, from all the evil effect of our guilt and punishment. But how are we ransomed by his blood except by partaking of his blood and flesh through faith and piety born of f aith? But how does such piety do its duty except through the degrees of increasing affection, until Christ shall have been found in us? 51

46  Miller and Scudder , Gansfort, 1:55–56, 2:320, and in general on Ruper t and on the supralapsarian decree of incarnation, see Georges Florovsky, “Cur Deus Homo: The Motive of the Incarnation,” Essays in Honor of A.S. Alivezatos (Athens, 1958), 70–79. 47  De causis, mysteriis et effectibus Dominicae incarnationis et passionis, translated in Miller and Scudder, Gansfort, 2:109–47. Gansfort actually speaks of the Incar nation as the fulfillment or completion of Christ. 48  Jacques Paul Migne, ed., Patrologia Latina 22 vols. (henceforth PL), 169, col. 1472c. 49  We shall encounter this idea in the form of a eucharistic descensus in Caspar Schwenckfeld and Servetus. 50  Cf. Per Lundberg, La typologie baptismale dans l’ancienne Eglise (Leipzig/Uppsala: Lorenz Lundquist, 1972). 51  De sacramento eucharistiae, in Miller and Scudder , Gansfort, 37–38. A major study of the whole of his theology is that of Maarten van Rhijn, Wessel Gansfort (The Hague, 1917).

102  the radical reformation

chapter 2.4

Thus there is a second inward and superior sacral action, the reception by the inner man, one’s faithful commemoratio of the fact that Christ dies for the believer personally, experientially52 as one eats the flesh and blood of Christ spiritually. This inward rumination involves one’s intellect, will, and mind in recalling the life, precepts, and examples of Christ. Thus the more efficacious reception of the body and blood of Christ comes with the commemoration of him in the sense of meditation on him even away from the altar: His memorial consists in the remembrance of h im. The remembrance of h is marvelous works provides food for them that fear him, because he that gives them food causes them to remember his marvelous works.53 Further, one who believes in Christ’s rule eats his flesh. Stressing in combination John 3:36: “He who believes in the Son has eternal life,” and John 6:54: “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life,” and, now holding that it is in the second alone, in the inward eucharist, that the layman receives both the flesh and the blood, Gansfort is prepared to write quite naturally of a Eucharist before the incarnation, not in type but in truth: “Hence, before the incarnation, the angels did eat his flesh, even as did the fathers in the wilderness through the spirit of the Son.”54 Even for Christians since the incarnation the spiritual sacrament is not dependent upon the physical bread at all: “Those who are able to believe (credere) on him are able to eat (edere) his flesh.” He goes on: Now it is openly acknowledged that holy hermits had that life, though they hid in caves so many years. Therefore, Paul [of Thebes, d. c. 340], the first hermit, did eat of t he flesh of t he Son of M an even during the time when he did not see a single human being, not to speak of a p riest celebrating the sacrament. But he did eat of it because he believed; and because he believed he frequently remembered; because he remembered he carefully considered; because he considered he ruminated; because he ruminated he tasted that it was sweet; because he tasted that it was sweet he desired; because he desired he hungered and thirsted; because he hungered and thirsted he knew that it was sweeter than honey and the honeycomb,

52  De sacramento eucharistiae, in Miller and Scudder , Gansfort, 39 analyzed b y van Rhijn, Gansfort, 213ff. The distinctions modify and y et preserve Augustine’s distinction between the bread of the Lord and the bread which is the Lord. 53  De sacramento eucharistiae, in Miller and Scudder, Gansfort, 59. 54  Ibid., 51.

chapter 2.4 / 2.5

mysticism & sacramentism  103

he panted for it, he esteemed, he loved it, he pined with love, he was wounded by love for it.55 Indeed, the flesh of Christ can be received by anyone, at any time, in any place, and hence can be said to be superior to the bread of t he altar, which is confined to a particular place and time. Gansfort makes his point memorably, though without theological precision, when he recounts the story of a p riest caught in an Alpine snowstorm and nourished through the winter by l icking a s tone after first observing, in his fatigue, several snakes doing the same. After his rescue in April, repeated searches for the nutritive stone were in vain. The story obscurely implies that the concentrated remembrance of Christ, the Stone which the builders rejected, who himself in the wilderness refused the temptation to turn a stone into bread (Luke 4:3), suffices for both physical and spiritual nourishment.56 With all Gansfort’s stress upon the superiority of commemoratio over physical manducatio, in a life of increasing Christlikeness in philanthropia and fraternal love,57 it was not much of a step to dispense with the priest and the parish Eucharist altogether. This was the way of the Sacramentists, who stressed the commemorative Supper among themselves in fellowship and turned decisively from the sacrificatory Mass and the doctrine of transubstantiation.58 Having rehearsed some of the ways in which Germanic/Rhenish mysticism tended to undercut the value of the sacraments in general, and then how Sacramentism was endemic to the Low Countries, we carry now the account of Netherlandish Sacramentism (with a spiritualizing thrust) into the Reformation century itself. 5. Cornelius Hoen and Hinne Rode: Netherlandish

Sacramentists to 1530

On the eve of t he Reformation era the eucharistic views of G ansfort, as well as overt, that is, conventicular Dutch Sacramentism, which he himself would have disowned, must have widely permeated the Low Countries. As early as the year 1510, a Dominican friar, one Wouter in Utrecht, made sharp criticism of the traditional practices,59 though he temporarily recanted

55  Ibid., 31. Jerome, Vita Pauli, Migne, PL, 23. cols. 17–28. Anthony (?251–356) came to be looked back upon as the first and paradigmatic hermit as described in the Vita by Athanasius. 56  How the snakes could be included in the sa ving ordinance is not g iven in the stor y, except vaguely as symbols of the tempter in the or iginal sin, itself (themselves) restored in the Second Adam. Ibid., 39–40. 57  Ibid., 22, 32. 58  These ideas bear some affinity to the Imitatio Christi (3.13.1–2), which does not, however, transfer the idea of the flesh of Christ to the r ealm of per sonal meditation, as with Wessel. 59  Frédéricq, Corpus, 1:497.

104  the radical reformation

chapter 2.5

(however, see at nn. 64, 66). Beginning in the year 1514, a Frisian priest, Gellius Faber, began to preach discreetly in a Sacramentist spirit, but would not leave the Old C hurch until the same year (1536) in which Menno Simons (Ch. 14.1) would be making his break but going much farther.60 The most notable exponent of the moderate position was, of course, Erasmus of Rotterdam, whose deep familiarity with Augustinian symbolism and the primitive usages and pristine interpretations of the Supper as recorded in the Greek text of t he New Testament prompted him to go farther than Gansfort in minimizing the importance of the real presence of scholastic theory and in affirming the identity of credere and edere. He contrasted the pietas perfecta of commemoration and the pietas imperfecta of the liturgical re-presentation of the body and the sacrifice. Erasmus, to be sure, like Gansfort, aff irmed the corporea praesentia Christi of the liturgical repraesentatio, but for him its saving eff icacy was determined by the degree to which it could bring about the psychological process in the believer of commemorating the objective transaction of the historic cross. Erasmus tended thus to free the faithful from the physical consumption at the Mass and to allow simply for a s piritual communion. For him, the emphasis was no longer on the corporea praesentia Christi as such, but on the mystical and ethical appropriation of the saving Word of God. Erasmus stressed, in fact, the uselessness of the solely physical presence of Christ: Judas was close enough to him actually to kiss him. Erasmus was primarily interested in the cognitive and ethical appreciation of C hrist, which alone was redemptive, although this inner appropriation might well be fostered by t he corporea praesentia Christi at the Mass.61 Erasmus wrote in his paraphrase of John 6:64 what Jesus presumably intended conscientious priests, humanists, and all people in the range of the humanist’s limpid Latin to understand by the 60  In 1536, Faber would join the sacramentarian, “Zwinglian” wing of what would become the Magisterial Reformation of the Nor thern Provinces of the Lo w Countries and in the end would present himself as one of Menno’s principal antagonists (Ch. 19.2). De Hoop Scheffer, Geschiedenis der Kerkher vorming in Nederland, 59–61, is responsible for fixing the date 1514. Though challenged by K. Vos on the g round that Faber’s name does not appear among the priests listed for the ar chbishopric of Utrecht, 1505–18, J. Reitsma and J . Lindeboom in Geschiedenis van de Her vorming der Nederlanden (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1949), 28, place Faber’s evangelical preaching as early as 1510. 61  Gottfried Krodel, “Die Abendmahlslehre des Erasm us von Rotterdam und seine Stellung am Änf ang des Abendmahlsstreites der Refor matoren,” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Erlangen, 1955), esp. 89–90, 91, 96–98. John B. Payne, Erasmus: His Theology of the Sacraments (Richmond:Va.: John Knox Press, 1970), ch. 8, comes to grips with Krodel’s thesis, accepting the above in general, but stressing that the acknowledgment of the magisterium of the Church on the part of Erasmus had for him not only extrinsic but also intrinsic experiential significance, so that he could in 1526 write: “I have not changed the opinion which I held as a young man except that now by various arguments I could waver to both sides, unless the authority of the Church confirmed me,” p. 154. For one thrust with respect to the statement in the next paragraph, see Irvin B. Horst, Erasmus, the Anabaptists and the Problem of Christianity (Haarlem: Ijeenk Willink, 1967).

chapter 2.5

mysticism & sacramentism  105

Aramaic words preserved in Greek: “My f lesh and blood I [ Jesus] call my teaching and if this be taken up into your marrow, you will be one with me. As a mystical symbol of this union I have left you my f lesh and blood, of which none can partake save in the spirit.”62 One might expect in a chapter on The Netherlands much more than the foregoing on the great humanist prince of Rotterdam and Basel who was so influential in all three major thrusts of the Radical Reformation as a spiritualizing moralist indisposed to becoming involved in ancient conciliar and scholastic formulations of dogma and sacrament, content with Scripture and the Apostles’ Creed. However, we saw fit to group near the outset of our narrative (Ch. 1.3.a) many of his other distinctive contributions to Anabaptism, Evangelical Rationalism, and Spiritualism. Besides the still nominally Catholic stance of Erasmus, a v iew more radical and outspoken in relation to the Catholic sacrament of the altar, and in the tradition of the sacramentarian iconoclasts, is also documented on the threshold of the Reformation era. In 1517, a certain Torreken van der Perre was lashed and otherwise disciplined at Oudenaarde for blaspheming the Blessed Sacrament. In 1518, at Brussels, one Lauken van Moeseke was racked for twelve days, had his tongue bored, and was thereupon decapitated for the same offense. And in 1519 at Antwerp, a housewife, Kathelyne, suffered the somewhat less severe punishment of a pilgrimage to Rome for the same blasphemy. Other centers of Flemish Sacramentism were Ghent and Bruges.63 The commingling of t he two sacramentarian streams, represented latterly by Torreken and Erasmus, constitutes the background of t he Loist, the Libertine, in due course the Melchiorite, and the “national-Reformed” ferment in The Netherlands, centering in dissatisfaction with the official sacramental theology. We shall also see the extent to which the eucharistic theologies (and Christologies) of Clement Ziegler and Melchior Hofmann (Ch. 11.3.c), of Carlstadt (Ch. 3.1), and Caspar Schwenckfeld (Ch. 5.5) draw respectively upon the same two or related currents of l ate medieval and bibliohumanistic thought, the one expressing itself in iconoclastic fury against the adoration of t he Host as idolatry, the other finding intense redemptive satisfaction in devout abstraction before the reserved Host. In 1517 the already mentioned Sacramentist Wouter again spoke out discarded his friar’s garb, and traveled through Holland, preaching “the

62  Erasmi opera omnia, ed. Jean Leclerc, 10 vols. (Leiden, 1703–1706, reprint Hildesheim, 1972), 7:551 B-D; as cited and translated b y Roland Bainton, “The Paraphrases of Erasmus,” ARG 57 (1966): 73. Of interest, Zwingli will pr esently interpret the unique r ecord of Jesus himself as baptizing (John 3:22), also as teaching (Ch. 11.1). 63  Frédéricq, Corpus, 1:514–15, 517–18. There are other instances on either side of the date 1517, preserved in the more recently edited Belgian martyrologies and local histories edited by A. L. E.Verheyden.

106  the radical reformation

chapter 2.5

truth of t he gospel.” This “Lutheran monk”64 fled to Strassburg around 1521, and may have shared his convictions with the gardener-preacher Clement Ziegler, a major figure in the rise of Strassburg sectarianism (Ch. 10.2.b). In any event, Wouter awakened an evangelical spirit in many of his Netherlandish adherents, among whom were Prior Henry of Bommel, Cornelius Hoen, John Sartorius, John de Bakker, and William Gnapheus, and largely opened the way for the still more decisively conventicular Sacramentism of the Anabaptists.65 At Delft, where Wouter lived 1520–28,66 a regular congregation of evangelical Sacramentists was organized, persisting well into the century. In this time Prior Henry of B ommel of t he Utrecht convent of t he Sisters and Brothers of t he Common Life wrote Oeconomica Christiana in rem Christianam instituens, 1520 or 1521, a work of pre-Protestant biblical humanist piety, which extensively repudiated the monastic life in contrast to that of the simple believer in faith and good works, held to an ambiguous view of baptism as a sign only, while yet upholding pedobaptism “for fear that a child may become ill,” and a pacifism, both personal (based on the Sermon on the Mount and 1 J ohn 1:3), and societary in import.67It was published in Dutch translation as The Sum of Divine Scripture or a German (Duytsche) Theology in Leiden and in an unidentified second town, in 1523.68 (See further Ch. 12.1).

64

 Martinus Schoockius, Liber de bonis vulgo ecclesiasticis dictis (Groningen, 1651), 752.  On John Sartorius, see J. Trapman, “Ioannes Sartorius (c. 1500–1557), Gymnasiarch te Amsterdam en Noordwijk, als Erasmiaan en Spiritualist,” NAKG 70 (1990): 30–51. Trapman argues that Sartorius was more of a Spiritualist than an Erasmian, an example of the rare link between the thought of Sebastian Franck and the Sacramentalists. On John de Bakker, see J. Alton Templin, “Jan de Bakker: An Early Martyr for the Pr inciple of Religious Freedom in The Netherlands,” The Iliff Review, 31 no. 2 (1974): 17–29. De Bakker was the first martyr of the Reformation in the northern Netherlands, burned at the stake 15 September 1525 in The Hague for his Sacramentist, biblical humanist, anti-hierarchical views. 66  D. P. Oosterbaan, Zeven eeuwen geschiedenis van het Oude en Nieuwe Gasthuis te Delft (Delft, 1955), chapter on preaching. 67  Prior Henry, the probable author, says this in Ch. 29 of the Dutch v ersion and 28 in the Latin version, which is entitled “Concerning Knights and Making Wars, whether man may engage in wars without sin: Information from the Gospels.” 68  A French translation also appear ed in 1523 (banned by the Sorbonne), an English translation, perhaps by Simon Fish, in 1529 (banned by the Archbishop of Canterbury), and several Italian translations after 1530. On 23 March 1524 Charles V issued an edict against the printers, the oldest Netherlandish Refor mation book so to ha ve been dealt with. The Latin and Dutch versions were edited by J. J. van Toorenenbergen, Het Oudst Nederlandisch-Verboden Boek (Amsterdam, 1882); J. Trapman deals with the tw o versions in his doctoral thesis, De Summa der Godliker Scr ifturen (Leiden: New Rhine Publishers, 1978), and, without knowing of this work at the time , J. Alton Templin illuminated the w ork in “Oeconomica Christiana: Biblical Humanism in The Netherlands, 1523,” MQR 56 (1982): 242–55. Templin shows that the two documents contain the basic elements of a“theology of Sacramentism,” anti-Catholic but not yet solafideist, representing biblical humanism. He summarizes its theology in conclusion in its eight distinctive traits. 65

chapter 2.5

mysticism & sacramentism  107

Among the Sacramentists, Cornelius Hoen, lawyer at the court of Holland at The Hague, may have heard Wouter’s preaching in Delft as early as 1510.69 Emerging as an important mediator and formulator of the radical or commemorative eucharistic theology, he credited Wouter with giving him “the sense of truth” around 1517, after he had read Gansfort, Erasmus, and Luther. A major link in the chain of development in sacramentist-sacramentarian thought was Hoen’s coming into contact with Gansfort’s library. One Jacob Hoeck, canon and deacon at Naaldwijk and pastor in Wassenaar, a close friend and correspondent of Gansfort,70 bequeathed his own library to a Martin Dorp, his nephew. Dorp, who had been professor of theology at Louvain since 1514, chose Hoen, a friend from student days (at the Hieronymus School of U trecht), to examine the library for him. In it, Hoen found some of G ansfort’s manuscripts, among them the already discussed De sacramento eucharistiae. Hoen was fascinated by it and immediately shared the ideas with Dorp and his friends. Thereupon he proceeded to form his own more radical view of the Lord’s Supper. It was decided that Gansfort’s writings should be brought to the attention of Luther. For the undertaking, Hoen wrote Epistola Christiana admodum,71 setting forth his view of the Lord’s Supper as symbolic, with the word est meaning “signifies” in the crucial eucharistic phrase of Matt. 26:26 and the canon of the Mass: “Hoc est corpus meum.” Hoen, concentrating on Gansfort’s commemoratio and the superior “inward sacrament,” rejected in his own argumentation the dogma of transubstantiation and proposed that the Supper is a m eal that signifies the promise of C hrist to be with his followers. The meal was likened to a wedding ceremony (as with Gansfort) in which the bridegroom, Christ, gives his ring, the bread, as a pledge to his collective bride, the Church, the one ever to belong to the other. Rejecting all other lovers, Christ and the covenanted member cling only to each other. The ring image derives from the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:20–23), who received successively from his rejoicing father a k iss, a robe, a r ing, new shoes, and a meal. Tertullian, in De pudicia, had long ago allegorized the robe as the garment of joy (the Holy Spirit), the ring as baptism, and the fatted calf as the 69  Oosterbaan, however, doubts that Wouter could have been in Delft that early. He is documented in Utrecht at that date . Heresy was preached in Delft not befor e 1520. See the letter of the Delft rector Frederik Hondebeke (Canirivus) to Caspar Hedio in Mainz, 1522. A. Schultetus, Annalium. … (Heidelberg, 1618), 136. 70  Albert Hardenberg, the biographer of Wessel Gansfort, records the events which brought Hoen into the histor y of the Sacramentists. The bulk of the Vita is translated in Miller and Scudder, Gansfort, 2:317–44. 71  Edited by A. Eekhof, De Avondmaalsbrief van Cornelius Hoen (The Hague, 1917), and more recently in CR 91: 505ff.; translated in Ober man, Forerunners, 268–73. See reservations about the authenticity of the Epistola, Ch. 3, n. 2.

108  the radical reformation

chapter 2.5

Eucharist. Though Hoen, the Dutch lawyer, unlike Tertullian, connected the ring with the bread of communion, he may well have been influenced at this point by the lawyer-theologian of ancient North Africa. Hoen goes on to say that the believer, to paraphrase, who trusts in the death of Christ as redemptive truly eats his flesh and drinks his blood. Indeed, Jesus himself says ( John 6) that he is the bread of life and whoever believes in him abides in him, that is, that the one who believes in him has the true bread, Christ himself. The Scripture nowhere speaks of a ny miracle of transubstantiation, he goes on, the apostles do not say that Jesus gave them his literal blood and flesh. Even if he had done so himself, this does not give the priests power to do the same. Rather, Christ is seen and worshiped only in faith. Indeed, he sent the Paraclete for the very reason that he could not be corporally among his followers. The bread “signifies” his body. One can no more say that Christ is literally bread than that he is substantially a v ine or a door. These are Johannine metaphors, not literal realities. Thus, there must be a d istinction between the bread which is eaten and the Christ who is received by faith. Hoen argues that Christ has already given himself for humankind on the cross. On Calvary his body was offered up for the world. In anticipation of this action, he had instituted the Supper as a prospective memorial meal. The commemorative elements are Christ only in the sense that the ring is the bridegroom—the covenantal dedication and the divine love are present with the signs thereof. Though Hoen still speaks of Christ’s “offering” himself, he means this not in the sense of a sacrifice for sin but in the same sense that the betrothed pair “offer” themselves to each other in marriage. Having rejected the penitential theology of t he medieval Church, Hoen finds no propriety in a continuing (mock) sacrifice on the altar. Instead, the repetitively sacrificial, expiatory Mass becomes a c ommemorative Supper, almost, as it were, a nuptial feast at which the pledge of faith and love is proclaimed. Nor is the Atonement any longer the politico-military or penal transaction of a r ansom, but the covenantal transaction of a betrothal. Hoen very much wishes to share his discovery with Luther himself and get his judgment, but because of Hoen’s advanced age, Hinne Rode, rector of the school of the Brethren of the Common Life in Utrecht, is chosen to make the journey instead. Early in 1521, Rode carries with him the works of Gansfort which had come from Hoeck’s library, others of Gansfort’s writings acquired from the Saint Agnes Cloister of Zwolle, and the covering Epistola of Hoen. Rode arrives in Wittenberg in late winter and leaves the works there in order that Luther might examine them and perhaps have them published. Returning to Utrecht, Rode is soon dismissed from his office “propter Lutherum.” We shall next meet him in Switzerland (Ch. 5.1).72 72  Otto Clemen, “Hinne Rode in Wittenberg, Basel, Zurich und die frühesten Ausgaben Wesselscher Schriften,” ZKG 18 (1897): 346–72, has succeeded in estab lishing a chronology for the events. Clemen observes that “propter Lutherum” in this case probably means “because of his contact with Luther.”

Chapter 3

Lutheran Spiritualists: Carlstadt and Müntzer

W hen Hinne Rode arrived in Wittenberg,

he found Luther about to depart for his momentous appearance at Worms before Charles at his first imperial diet.1 The great episodes in the startling emergence of Luther, around whom titanic forces of destruction and renewal were surging, were vividly etched in the memories of all: the Ninety-Five Theses of 31 October 1517 on the indulgence system; the Leipzig disputation with John Eck, 27 June to 16 July 1519; the three great Reformation tracts, The Address to the German Nobility, On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, and The Freedom of the Christian Man, of Au gust, October, and November 1520; and Luther’s festive burning, on the morning of 10 December 1520, of the papal bull threatening him with excommunication, along with a copy of the canon law. In the excitement of these days, Rode must have felt himself privileged to receive any attention at all from Luther as to the merit of the works of Wessel Gansfort. Luther may have been initially attracted to Hoen’s interpretation of G ansfort’s eucharistic theology in the Epistola.2 On 2 A pril, Luther, with a s afe-conduct and accompanied by N icholas Amsdorf and others, set out for Worms to stand against the Emperor. 1  Otto Clemen, Hinne Rode, 357; A. Eekhof, De avondmaalsbrief van Cornelis Hoen, 14; M. van Rhijn, Gansfort, 259; and Hermann Barge, Andreas Bodenstein von Carlstadt (Leipzig, 1905), 2:150 n., all agree that Luther was still in Wittenberg when Rode arrived. 2  In a letter to the Strassb urgers in 1524, Luther would acknowledge that for the preceding five years he had been tormented by the problem of Christ’s presence on the altar and referred to two letter-writers who had once seemed mor e persuasive than Carlstadt. Conrad Bergendoff conjectures that Luther might well have been referring to Hoen (and Franz Kolb von Wertheim); see Luther’s Works, American Edition, 50:68 n. 2.Though Luther may thus have been provisionally a “sacramentarian,” by 1525 he had fully recovered himself. Zwingli ordered Hoen’s Epistola to be printed in 1525 and praises the author“apud quem omne iudicium sacrae scripturae fuit.” Zwingli was aware of Luther’s familiarity with it, writing in a letter: “die epistel Honii …, von ders du wol weist” (Eekhof, Avondmaalsbrief van Cornelis Hoen, xiv).

109

110  the radical reformation

chapter 3.1

With a p apal bull of e xcommunication over him, Dicet Romanum pontificem of 3 J anuary 1521, reinforced at Worms by t he imperial ban signed by Charles on 26 May, Luther was whisked off by his protector Frederick to live as Junker Jörg at the Wartburg, 4 May 1521 to 6 March 1522. While Luther was occupying himself in seclusion for ten months with the translation of Erasmus’ Greek text of the New Testament into German, the reform in Wittenberg was mainly in the hands of A ndreas Bodenstein of Karlstadt in Franconia. 1. Carlstadt and the First “Protestant” Communion Carlstadt must have taken an interest in the Gansfort material and Hoen’s letter, and may have been instrumental in having a selection of Gansfort’s manuscripts, including De sacramento eucharistiae, published as a Farrago in the first months of 1522. 3 Andrew Bodenstein of Karlstadt (1480-1541), a student at the cathedral school of Würzburg and of t he universities at Erfurt and Cologne, came as a thoroughgoing Thomist to the University of Wittenberg (professor, 1505-22/24).4 Within two years, he had been elected dean of the faculty of arts, out of recognition for his first publication, De intentionibus (Leipzig, 1507), wherein he laboriously defended the reality of u niversals in logic against the nominalist Moderni. By 1510 he had become a doctor of theol-

3  The full title is Farrago rerum theologicarum uber rima. Complete bibliographical detail is in van Rhijn, Gansfort, 61. John Walter Kleiner has indirectly proved at length (1–35) that Carlstadt accepted the argument of Wessel Gansfort, “Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt’s Eschatology, as Illustrated by Two Major Writings of 1523 [Feg fëur] and 1525 [Erlütterung disser reed Iob vii, Basel]” (Th.M. thesis, Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge, 1966). Cf. Calvin Pater, Karlstadt as Father of the Baptist Movement: The Emergence of La y Protestantism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press), 1983, 39 n. 95 (original Ph.D. dissertation subtitled “Intellectual Founder of Anabaptism,” Harvard University, 1977). 4  Basic for Carlstadt studies, besides the Barge, Andreas Bodenstein (n.l), and with E. Freys, his collaborative Verzeichniss der gedruckten Schriften (1905; reprinted, Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1965), are those of Ronald J. Sider, Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt (Leiden: Brill, 1974) with an admirable presentation of the state of scholarship and the expression of a scholarly intention to rescue the reformatory achievement of Carlstadt from the acrimonious deposits of colleg ial and subsequent confessional conflict; and Sider, Karlstadt’s Battle with Luther: Documents in a Liberal-Radical Debate (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978); Ulrich Bubenheimer, “Andreas Rudolff Bodenstein v on Karlstadt: Sein Leben, seine Herkunft, und seine inner e Entwicklung,” Andreas Bodenstein v on Karlstadt, 1480–1541, Festschrift der Stadt Karlstadt (Karlstadt: Michel-Druck, 1980) 5–58; Pater, Karlstadt as the Father of the Baptist Movement; it is Pater’s thesis that Carlstadt was the fountainhead of viable Evangelical Anabaptism because “[b]efore anyone else, Karlstadt developed a recognizably Baptist theology” and because he dir ectly molded the cir cle around Conrad Grebel who influenced, besides their own Swiss Brethren, the Hutterites and also shaped some of the thought of Melchior Hofmann who was in effect forerunner of the Mennonites. Through the impact of the Mennonites during their sojourn in the Netherlands, Carlstadt can also be said to have helped shape the theology and practices of the Baptists of the Anglo-Saxon world, the pr incipal survivors of Anabaptism from the sixteenth centur y. He writes biographically of Carlstadt only in an introductory sketch, abreast of the most recent research, and then geneaically-systematically of his doctrine in four chapters: Scripture, Predestination, Church, and Baptism.

chapter 3.1

carlstadt & müntzer  111

ogy. Already a c anon of t he castle church of A ll Saints (Allerheiligenstift), he was now advanced to the second highest position therein, archdeacon, among some sixty-four clerics. Elector Frederick the Wise was enlarging the ancient foundation of h is Saxon house, both out of h is interest in the renowned relics in All Saints and from concern for the economic enhancement of h is newly founded university (1502), of which the Observantine Augustinian prior general, John Staupitz, had been the founding dean. Carlstadt was intermittently dean of the faculty of theology (1512–23) and served as doctoral promotor of Luther in 1512.5 In late summer 1515, Carlstadt went to Rome to complete his legal studies at the City University (Sapienza) under the patronage of the eminent Sebastino de Fredericis. Within less than a year abroad, Carlstadt picked up a doctorate in canon and civil law and an honorary viscountcy with papal benefice—thus returning as a s criptural theologian, legist, and canonist loyal to the papacy.6 There was indeed some bitterness and jealousy in the theological faculty for his having failed to secure a substitute in his absence. Nevertheless, he was elected their dean. The brief period in his life between 1516 and 1519, between his purchase at the Leipzig fair of Au gustine’s opera and his joint debate with Luther against John Eck over the import of Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses, was momentous for the swift changes in his thought and affiliation and then for the nearly as swift reorientation when Carlstadt would emerge, bitterly at odds with Luther, as spokesman of another version of Reformation: at once scriptural, mystical, laic, and (in contrast to Müntzer) pacifistic. As it all happened, during a controversy in the theological faculty in the autumn of 1 516, Luther declared that the scholastics misunderstood both Scripture and Augustine; when the new Thomist canonist-legist protested, Luther advised Carlstadt to consult Augustine directly. It was this prodding that led him to purchase an edition of Au gustine, 13 January 1517, and swiftly thereafter the whole scholastic structure seemed to tumble before his inward eye. Carlstadt nailed One Hundred Fifty-One Theses to the castle church door, 26 April 1517, quoting extensively but critically from Augustine, on whose De Spiritu et litera he wrote a commentary, Pro divinae gratiae defensione (De Spiritu), in defense of t he sufficiency of g race alone for salvation, the preface dating from 1517. Therein he was the first

5  Sider holds, against the earlier presumption, that Carlstadt turned back the insignia of theological deanship in order to function fully as promoter, “Karlstadt and Luther’s Doctorate,” Journal of Theological Studies 72, no. 5 (1971): 168–69. 6  As Pater remarks, drawing upon Bubenheimer (nn.5f.),“Karlstadt can be distinguished from Luther on the basis of his papal rather than conciliar bias,” Karlstadt, 48.

112  the radical reformation

chapter 3.1

reformer to challenge the veneration of saints (see further Ch. 11.3.a).7 In his adoption of an Augustinian theology, particularly in relation to penance and predestination, the influence on Carlstadt has been variously assessed: the collegial influence of Luther himself, the direct influence of t he purchased opera, and the literary influence of a m entor, John Staupitz.8 Carlstadt will, by 1524, in seven works to be published far from his residence (in Augsburg, Cologne, Jena, and Basel),9 come to the conclusion that far from predestining even the elect and the reprobate, God, in his responsive mercy, graciously enables the sin-stricken believer to choose salvation.10 We appropriately tarry with Carlstadt and Luther while still colleagues to note how the scholarly convert to Augustinian predestination and his overpowering colleague in divinity became, by f orce of c ircumstances, theologically and temperamentally incompatible allies against John Eck, a professor in Ingolstadt. Carlstadt in the end would come in some sense to agree again with Eck, but by then, to be sure, outside the scholastic edifice and its overarching papal authority, namely, on the basis of e xperienced grace and the scrutiny of Scripture alone as God’s written word. As late as May 1518 Pope Leo had sent a m issive to Carlstadt and his colleague at the Castle Church, authorizing them to adjudicate a legal case involving the cathedral chapter of Brandenburg. As dean, Carlstadt helped reform his faculty and the whole university. He had already broken with conciliarism even before Luther, in 1518; but he would take a year longer than Luther to break with papal authority (1520).11 In his capacity as dean, he defended Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses of 1517 and thus became involved,

7  Wittenberg, 1519, ed., by Ernest Kähler, Karlstadt und Augustin: Der Kommentar von Karlstadt zu Augustins Schrift, De Spiritu et Litera (Halle: Niemeyer, 1952), discussed as De Spiritu by Pater, Karlstadt, 4, 26f. 8  The specific work of Staupitz seems to have been Libellus de executione aeternae praedestinonis. Sider, Karlstadt, 18 n. 6. David C. Steinmetz speaks of “a late medieval Augustinian sentiment in theolo gy,” “Misericordia Dei”: The Theology of Johannes v on Staupitz in its Late Medieval Setting, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought, 4 (Leiden: Brill, 1968). Sider, Karlstadt’s Battle with Luther , 44, going beyond the evidence of Ernest Kähler in his edition of an Augustine commentary by Karlstadt (above, n. 4) holds that “the vast number of quotations from Augustine suggest that the ne w Augustine theology of Carlstadt rested solely on the corpus of Augustine,” 44. 9  Fegfëur (Augsburg, 1523); Priesterthum Oena, 1523); Willen gottes (Köln, 1523); Engelen (Strassburg, 1524); Gelaub (Basel, 1524); Testament (Augsburg, 1524); Teuffelischen fahls (Jena, 1524). 10  Pater, “Predestination: The Final Solution,” Karlstadt, 39–46. 11  See Ulrich Bubenheimer, Consonantia Theologiae et Iurisprudentiae: Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt als Theologe und Jur ist zwischen Scholastik Reformation (Tübingen: Mohr, 1977), 1–200, where Carlstadt’s relation to the Curia is treated.

chapter 3.1

carlstadt & müntzer  113

along with Luther and with Eck;12 and, when the Wittenberg party set out in July 1519 for the Leipzig disputation, Carlstadt, encircled by h is reference books, occupied the first of two open wagons, while the rector, Luther, and Melanchthon followed, all surrounded by n early two hundred armed students and other supporters.13 Carlstadt’s wagon broke down as they were reaching their destination and the debater and his carefully assembled conciliar and theological tomes were dashed into the mud. This was all the more inauspicious for the reason that Carlstadt in the early spring had widely circulated a woodcut prepared by Lucas Cranach, with two wagons, one with a cross being drawn toward heaven and the other representing scholasticism on its way to hell.14 Carlstadt at Leipzig already had a milder view of predestination than Luther, at most, single predestination (i.e. to election; not expressly to reprobation). Luther (on the bases of Rom. 8:28–30 and Eph. 1:3–14, as systematically harmonized by Augustine) held to double predestination (i.e. to the election of the few, for whom Christ died by the eternal decrees of the Godhead, and to the reprobation of the mass of humanity, regardless in either case of t he personal merit of p ersons in either category). Although Luther was indisposed to scrutinize or preach on the mysterious purposes of God, Carlstadt would come to reject even so-called single predestination because it implied God’s negative intention toward the praesciti or reprobati. Carlstadt would then substitute the antinomy of grace destroying nature on the basis of the free choice enabled by G od. Hence the oft-observed narrowness of ground taken by both Carlstadt and Eck (with his Chrysopassus predestinationis, 1514), since both antagonists at Leipzig were really closer to each other than either to Luther. With the bungled beginning and the differences among them, neither of the two Wittenberg spokesmen was entirely successful. In the meantime Carlstadt’s first major contribution to the Reformation was to come from his preoccupation with hermeneutics. As a result of his long-term study of Hebrew, he was prepared to declare that the Apocrypha are non-binding, De canonicis scripturis libellus (Wittenberg, 1518–20), in this following the lead of St. Jerome of the Vulgate, in giving secondary place to the Aramaic and Greek portions of t he Bible that in the Greek Septuagint and hence in the ancient conciliar debates on the Trinity and Christology had plenary status.

12  Carlstadt on his o wn exchanged vie ws with Eck on poenitentia, Heiko Oberman, “Wittenbergs Zweifrontenkrieg gegen Pr ierias und Eck,” ZKG 80 (1969): 531–58—all in the context of the counter offensive being mounted in Rome b y Silvestri Mazzolini, O.P., called Prierias from the Latin for his town of birth, against the presumptuous conclusions of Luther on papal power and of Eck’s Dialogues (June, 1518). 13  The record of the Leipzig Debate is edited b y Otto Seitz, Der authentische Text der Leipziger Disputation (1519; Berlin, 1903). Sider pr esents the dispute and issues, Karlstadt, 70–81. 14  Barge, Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, 1:146.

114  the radical reformation

chapter 3.1

Back of this momentous action in Wittenberg was Carlstadt’s mounting biblicism with his preference within the New Testament for the Gospels over the Pauline corpus15 as well as his desire to foster the practice of the priesthood of all believers. During Luther’s absence incognito at the Wartburg (May 1520–March 1521), Carlstadt turned boldly and forcefully to the more social and corporate aspects of reform. Carlstadt’s radicalism was intensified by h is provisional restoration to prominence in the turbulent affairs of the swift-paced, reform-minded town. Though dean of the faculty of theology, he had been displaced by L uther in the eyes of t he world and was now glad for the opportunity to be for a season the chief spokesman in Wittenberg for the reform. Carlstadt encouraged Bible-reading in the home by t he mother as well as by t he father. By early 1521 Carlstadt had come to approve lay communion in the home. He would presently consider baptism as the rite of incorporation into Christ in contrast to Luther who would hold that the eucharist discharges this role. As early as the summer semester of 1520, Carlstadt had avowed before a large audience his concern with Luther’s neglect of the moral aspects of reform: “I am grieved by t he bold deprecation of J ames,” by L uther and elsewhere: “Beware that you do not take a p apern and loveless faith for the greatest work.” Although his earlier steps in breaking from the papal Church were by way of attack on indulgences and the idea of purgatory, his departure from traditional scholastic eucharistic theology had been first signaled when on 19 July 1521, he promoted one Christian Hoffmann to baccalaureus biblicus, one of whose theses was the demand for communion in both kinds. About this time,16 Carlstadt composed his Von beiden Gestalten der Heiligen Messe. Herein, as heir of the medieval tradition of spiritual communion, he did not hesitate to say: I well know that thou canst for a lifetime remain without the sacrament and that it is required of none that the sacrament be taken once or frequently, so long as one stands and trusts firmly in the promises of Christ.17 In May and June 1521 Carlstadt served in Denmark, in place of t he sequestered Luther, advising King Christian II and stimulating the enact-

15

 Carlstadt, attaching enhanced importance to the Old Testament and the Law, especially the Ten Commandments, and the prophetic insistence on social justice, followed the rabbis in mak ing also a tripartite distinction within the New Testament, namely, as preeminent: the Gospels (in contrast to Luther), the Pauline corpus, and the “Writings.” He published in German a translation of his De canonicis scr ipturis, the first and perhaps only compr ehensive vernacular treatment of canonicity in the age, Welche Bucher Biblisch seint (Wittenberg, 1520). 16  Barge, Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, 2:147. 17  Quoted by Barge, ibid.

chapter 3.1

carlstadt & müntzer  115

ment of legislation curbing the power of bishops, exempting only married clergy from taxation, reforming the monasteries, and disallowing appeals to Rome.18 By October 20 a commission made up of Carlstadt, Melanchthon, and others sought to moderate the demands of t he Augustinian friars stirred up by Gabriel Zwilling (Ch. 3.2), who had moved much more swiftly in the Spiritualist direction, urging them to be content to have occasional Masses at their convent with communion in both kinds for the laity. At the castle church of All Saints, originally endowed to assure votive Masses for deceased members of the Saxon ruling house, the new radicalism was also represented by i ts new provost, Justus Jonas, also professor of c anon law at the university. By 4 November 1521, the sacrament was offered to the people in both kinds in the town or parish church, and on 3 December a mob of students entered the parish church, drove out the priest, and carried off the missals. In the midst of t he turmoil the elector demanded an opinion from the university, which turned in a m inority Catholic and a majority evangelical report. The latter, drawn up by Carlstadt, Melanchthon, and others, was content, however, to reject private Masses; and even on this point, Carlstadt, who was still more conservative than most of his evangelical colleagues, was disposed to find value for the celebrant, at least in the saying of private Mass. Because of the conflicting reports, the elector decreed a return to the status quo ante. Against the elector’s command, a s urprise to all, Carlstadt announced on Sunday 22 December that he would distribute the sacrament at All Saints under both kinds on New Year’s Day. Carlstadt was apparently prompted to act boldly against the injunction of t he elector under popular pressure coincident with a shift in his own convictions. The burghers had, on 17 December, submitted a sixarticle petition demanding, among other things, elimination of obligatory Masses for the priest, elimination of nuptial and votive Masses for the laity, and regular extension of the chalice to the laity. On 24 December there was commotion in both the parish and the castle churches, and it was to forestall further outbreaks that Carlstadt thereupon advanced to Christmas Day his previously announced public communion service in both kinds. In this context Carlstadt published his reflections on Matt. 1:12, Das Reich Gottes leidet Gewalt (1521), denouncing the 18  Not incidentally for Carlstadt’s later career, it can here be noted that Christian II (1513–23) had a claim to the thrones of both Norway and Sweden by the provision of the Union of Kalmar (1397). But in Sweden the claim was resisted by Sten Sture who had been put under the papal ban in concert with the archbishops of Uppsala and Trondheim. In Sweden in 1520, while trying to impose his rule, Christian had been responsible for the Stockholm Bloodbath, in which six hundred nobles were slain. Meanwhile in Copenhagen, Christian was deposed by his nobles and bishops; and the Lutheran Reformation was not even completed under his elected successor, Frederick I (1523–33), who, friendly to the Refor mation, tolerated evangelical preachers in his native Holstein and in 1527 with the diet of Odense tolerated Lutherans while awaiting a general council. (On another radical and ally of Carlstadt, see on Melchior Hofmann in Denmark, Ch. 10.3.c.)

116  the radical reformation

chapter 3.1

use of force in the defense of the church, the proper nature of which is to endure suffering. On Christmas Day, 1521, under considerable pressure from the citizenry, Carlstadt celebrated in public the first Protestant communion. After a moving sermon, he read, without vestments, most of the Latin canon of the Mass,19 but left out all reference to it as a sacrifice and omitted the elevation of the Host; and the laity were communicated under both species. He repeated the Protestant Communion on New Year’s Day, again on the first Sunday of 1522, and then on Epiphany. In the same eventful month of January, Carlstadt put into practice his thesis against celibacy by marrying a noble maiden of sixteen, the first on the Wittenberg faculty to marry. He recognized that his reasons for opposing monastic and celibate vows voided all vows and hence the swearing of oaths. He sought to relate changes in the liturgy to social reform and opposed the compulsory greater and lesser tithes. He prevailed upon the town council in a reforming Ordinance of the Town of Wittenberg, published on 24 January, to abolish prostitution and begging, to provide sustenance and schooling for the poor and unemployed, and to remove images from the church. Within the Ordinance the provision for the common chest grew out of Carlstadt’s concern with the Deuteronomic ideas of social justice and renewal and release in every Sabbath year, and specifically the divine injunction in Deut. 15:4: “There will be no indigent person nor beggar among you.”20 On the removal of graven images, forbidden by t he Decalogue, he wrote Von Abtuung der Bilder, with the evident anguish of some lingering attachment. Carlstadt for his part fully repudiated the intercession of t he saints, even of t he Virgin Mary. Unfortunately for the success of his deliberate and dignified liturgical simplification, the Wittenberg Augustinians, led by Zwilling, had moved to direct action, removing and destroying the images in their cloister chapel in the second week in January. Although Carlstadt was not in direct contact with the rioters, he was blamed for their vandalism, since his book, preceding the Ordinance by two days, had supplied the Old Testament arguments for the destruction of what was now construed as idolatry. Although the town stood by its Ordinance, Carlstadt, in order to secure the elector’s approval, was urged to give up his preaching. By the time Luther returned

19  So ibid., 2:175 n. 78. The first communion in Wittenberg under both species, still otherwise Roman, had taken place on 29 September 1521, when unordained Philip Melanchthon officiating in everyday dress distributed the elements to his students. Supplementa Melanchtoniana, 6:1 (Leipzig, 1926), 161. 20  Carlstadt’s Ordinance of the Common Chest, indebted in part to ideas expressed also by Luther, is printed by Donald F. Durnbaugh, Every Need Supplied: Mutual Aid and Christian Community in the Free Churches, 1525–1675 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1974), 215–18; see Carter Lindberg, “Karlstadt’s Dialogue on the Lord’s Supper [1524],” MQR 53 (1979): 35–77, esp. n. 17a.

chapter 3.1

carlstadt & müntzer  117

to Wittenberg on 6 March, Carlstadt was being swept swiftly into the side eddies of the Magisterial Reformation. For the moment he was limited to the giving of instruction at the university. Luther, throwing his impounded energies into his famous series of Invocavit sermons from 9 to 16 March (Schonung der Schwachen, on the theme “evangelical freedom is not a n ew law”), making Carlstadt the object of derision, brought about the restoration of the Latin Mass with elevation of the Host and Communion in one kind. Only the sacrificial phrasings were eliminated, and also private Mass.21 In the summer of 1523, Carlstadt left Wittenberg for Orlamünde and its parish church, which he held as a prebendary of All Saints, but to which he now had been himself congregationally called and therein installed as pastor. He insisted the call be divinely confirmed by the casting of lots (cf. Acts 1:26). He turned to the task of expounding and promoting his Spiritualist theology of regeneration and of the priesthood of all believers. Holding that baptism should henceforth be only administered upon repentance and amendment of l ife as signs of d ying and rising with Christ, Carlstadt no longer baptized infants. Carlstadt had the organ removed from the parish church, and substituted psalm-singing in the vernacular by the congregation. He allowed up to three members of t he congregation to prophesy during the service with the sanction of 1 Cor. 11:4f.; 14:1f. Embodying his ideal of the priesthood of all believers, Carlstadt took to farming, continuing to lead his Haüflein Gottes as “Brother Andrew.” During his time in Orlamünde (1523–24), Carlstadt published his mystical tracts, in which he qualified Luther’s sola fides, emphasizing sanctification in the process of salvation. Carlstadt drew upon Theologia Deutsch (Ch. 2.2.b).22 Since Carlstadt feared that Luther’s emphasis on faith might lead to a neglect of ethics, he combined faith and love as inseparable, and subsumed them under the crucial virtue of Gelassenheit, i.e. a total surrender to the will of G od after the ego has been destroyed. This leads to union with God (not ontologically, but through God’s will being imparted to the believer), and a l ife of g ood works which God’s grace can produce. Man cannot produce good works. By replacing sola fides with the triad of faith, love, and Gelassenheit, Carlstadt wished to avoid both the merit system of Catholicism and what he feared might become a new indulgence system of

21  In his Formula Missae et Comm unionis of December 1523, Luther w ould reinstitute Communion in both kinds, but restore the liturgy in Latin. 22  Carlstadt had annotated the sermons attributed at the time solely to John Tauler. He published other works demonstrating the persistence in him of mystical motifs, notably Missiue vonn der gelassenheyt (Wittenberg, 1520), Was gesagt ist: Sich gelassen (Augsburg, 1523), and Von dem Sabbat und gebottenen feyertagen (Jena, 1525), the last excer pted in Fast, Der Linke Flügel, 244–69. For Carlstadt’s dependence on Theologia Deutsch, see Pater, Karlstadt, 47–73, and Ronald J. Sider, “Karlstadt’s Orlamünde Theology . . . of Regeneration,” MQR 45 (1971): 191–218.

118  the radical reformation

chapter 3.1

faith unexpressed in self-sacrificial deeds. This stress on personal and social sanctification, coupled with a s ymbolic interpretation of t he sacraments, would lead to further estrangement between Luther and Carlstadt. Up to this parting of the ways, despite jealousy and irritation on both sides, the two professorial colleagues had been in virtual agreement on the eucharistic theology which was now dividing them in respect to expedients. Both Reformers had been brought to the point where, in their emphasis upon grace and faith and in the consequent introduction of s ubjectivity into the matter of eucharistic reception, they had come close to depriving the sacrament of both its objectivity and, more seriously, its uniqueness in the redemptive experience of t he Christian. According to both of t hem, Christ had given assurance of the forgiveness of sins in many other words and actions which a p reacher might echo and expound from the pulpit without the need of h is turning to the emblems on the altar. Luther no less than Carlstadt had, early in his stress on salvation by faith alone, come to the conclusion that the true believer might dispense with the external sacrament, which served mainly as the occasion for the regular exercise of faith. Yet both Reformers up until their split in 1523 maintained somewhat inconsistently a doctrine of the real presence of Christ in the sacrament of the altar. The conception of the eucharistic sacrament in which the claims were being concurrently made that, on the one side, Christ himself was really, locally, objectively present for the communicant, and, on the other, that his ill-defined presence depended in some measure upon the faith of the communicant, was an unstable theological compound which would necessarily, in the new revolutionary situation, either resolve itself into its components, as with Carlstadt, or, as with Luther, weight itself down by means of revised scholastic materialization. Though Luther had been for a s eason, in his provisional Spiritualism and accentuated fideism, indifferent as to whether Communion should be taken under one or two species, he would soon be resorting to the doctrine of the ubiquity of Christ to explain his matured views. Over against them Carlstadt at this time distinguished between the two elements and interpreted the wine as a r eminder of t he covenant of forgiveness and the bread as a reminder of the promise of the resurrection of the flesh. Jesus at the Last Supper in his verbal gesture “Hoc est” pointed, according to Carlstadt, to his own body rather than to the bread. (This interpretation is one of the identifying marks of the Carlstadtian strand in the tangled skein of the eucharistic controversy from 1522 to 1529.) Luther himself, flushed by h is encounter with Carlstadt, published in 1523 his defense of t he adoration of t he Blessed Sacrament, Vom Anbeten des Sakraments, undergirding his growing conviction in the real presence as an essential part of Christian doctrine. By the end of the year, Carlstadt

chapter 3.1

carlstadt & müntzer  119

was out with his Vom Priestertum und Opfer Christi, in which he altogether denied the real presence. Luther preached at Jena. There on 22 August 1524, Luther and Carlstadt met at the Inn of the Black Bear and became locked in controversy. Luther tossed a gold coin to Carlstadt as a pledge of his willingness to have Carlstadt fight out the eucharistic issues boldly and prove his point if possible: “The more bravely you attack me, the more you will please me!” 23 It is possible that at the same meal Carlstadt pressed upon Luther the eucharistic theology contained in Hoen’s Epistola, 24 but whether he did or not, it is clear that the sacramentarian view of Hoen and Zwingli, based upon a tropological interpretation of est, is substantially different from Carlstadt’s now maturing Spiritualist conviction. As an ardent exponent of the priesthood of all believers, Carlstadt, as a “new layman,” had put aside his priestly vestments and his university insignia, and replaced academic theology with contemplation (“spiritual tribulation is a sacrament”), 25 proceeding to implement, in his responsive parish of O rlamünde, his conception of b oth Baptism and the Eucharist. He declined to baptize infants and may even for a while have suspended the Supper. 26 He also organized the town to help the poor. Although his stress on Old Testament righteousness brought him near to the Spiritualist egalitarianism of Thomas Müntzer (Ch. 3.2.), he with his parish in Orlamünde had turned down, in July 1524, the invitation to join with Allstedt in a program of that socialization of the gospel which would presently be merged in part with the peasants’ uprising. Even so, Carlstadt’s theories alarmed Luther, who contrived his banishment from Electoral Saxony in September 1524; and leaving Orlamünde, Carlstadt entrusted eight of his most radical sacramentarian tracts to his brother-in-law, Gerard Westerburg, who left for Zurich to gain the financial backing of Conrad Grebel and his friends for the publication of the tracts in Basel. Meantime Carlstadt went to Heidelberg, Strassburg, and Zurich, whence he left for the theater of the Peasants’ War in Rothenburg, where we shall meet him next

23  Acta Jenensia, an anonymous account of the confrontation sympathetic to Carlstadt; cited also in WA 15:339–40; translated by Sider as “what Dr. Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt talked over with Dr. Martin Luther at J ena, and how they have decided to wr ite against each other ,” Karlstadt’s Battle with Luther, 38–48. 24  Hardenburg in his Vita of Gansfor t, drawing purportedly upon reminiscences from the mouths of Melanchthon and the burgomaster of Constance, Thomas Blaurer, says that Hinne Rode was himself at the meal at which the gold guilder was tossed.This, of course, is a conf1ation of the visit of Rode to Wittenberg and of Luther to J ena. On this and other g rounds, Clemen, “Hinne Rode,” and Barge , Andreas Bodenstein v on Karlstadt, 2:150 n. 8, dismiss it as entir ely unworthy of credence. See Carter Lindberg, “Karlstadt’s Dialog,” 35–37. 25  This was a thesis already put forward in 1520. 26  Wes sich Karlstadt mit Luther beredt zu Jena , Acta Jenensia, 1524, WA 15:325; and Ein Brief an die Christen zu Strassburg, 1524, 15:393 and n. 1.

120  the radical reformation

chapter 3.1 / 3.2

(Ch. 4.3.b). We turn now from the sacramentarian leveler of Orlamünde to the belligerent prophet at Allstedt.

2. Thomas Müntzer and the Zwickau Prophets By the magisterial reformers, Thomas Müntzer was considered the personification of the social and religious unrest to which the new evangelical ideas could lead without the support and constraint of reform-minded princes. A contemporary biography, sometimes ascribed to Melanchthon, 27 summed up and thereafter perpetuated the conservative view that Thomas Müntzer was a fierce fanatic, possessed of a demoniac spirit which finally hurled him into the leadership of the rebellious peasants of Middle Germany. According to this view he was the proponent of the superiority of the Spirit over Scripture, the fomenter of the Anabaptist heresy, the originator of the

27

 Reprinted by Ludwig Fischer , Die lutherischen Pamphlete gegen Thomas Müntzer (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1976), 27–42. The most complete and critical edition of the works of Müntzer is Schriften und Br iefe, ed. Günther Franz and P aul Kirn (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1968). The Collected Works of Thomas Müntzer, ed. and trans. Peter Matheson (Edinb urgh: Clark, 1988) gives an English r endering of all b ut the liturg ical writings. Gordon Rupp, Patterns of Reformation (London: Epworth, 1969) examines the theolo gy of Müntzer in r elation to Carlstadt and others. Three important studies of Müntzer were published between the publication of the first and second editions of this w ork: Reinhold Schwartz, Die apokalyptische Theologie Thomas Müntzers und die Taboriten (Tübingen: Mohr, 1977); Abraham Friesen and Hans Jürgen-Goetz, eds., Thomas Müntzer: Wege der Forsc hung (Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1978); and Werner O. Packull and James M. Stayer, The Anabaptists and Thomas Müntzer (Dubuque/Toronto: Kendall Hunt Pub lishing Co., 1980). More recent biographies and studies ar e those of Manfred Bensing, Thomas Müntzer, 3d ed. (Leipzig: VEB Bibliographisches Institut, 1983); Walter Elliger, Thomas Müntzer: Leben und Werk, 3d ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Rupr echt, 1976); Eike Wolgast, Müntzer: Ein Verstörer der Unglaübigen (Göttingen/Zurich: Muster-Schmidt, 1981). In recognition of the quincentenar y of his bir th (by general consent fixed at 1489 although arguments can be made for a range of dates betw een 1470 and 1495) Thomas Müntzer was honored by seven major biographies, all of which are magisterially reviewed by James A. Stayer, “Thomas Müntzer in 1989: A Review Article,” Sixteenth Century Journal 21 (1990): 655–70; they are, Gerhard Brendler, Thomas Müntzer: Geist und Faust (Berlin: VEB Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1989); Ulrich Bubenheimer, Thomas Müntzer: Herkunft und Bildung, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought (henceforth SMRT) 46 (Leiden/ New York: Brill, 1989); Abraham Friesen, Thomas Müntzer, a Destroyer of the Godless: the Making of a Sixteenth-Century Religious Revolutionary (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); Hans-Jürgen Goertz, Thomas Müntzer: Mystiker, Apokalyptiker, Revolutionär (Munich: Beck, 1989); Erich W. Gritsch, Thomas Müntzer, A Tragedy of Errors (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1989) with a very helpful chronology, and which is not a r evision of his Reformer without a Church: The Life and Thought of Thomas Müntzer (1488?–1525) (Philadelpia: Fortress, 1967); Tom Scott, Thomas Müntzer: Theology and Rev olution in the Ger man Revolution (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989); and Günter Vogler, Thomas Müntzer (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1989). (Matheson’s Collected Works, Bubenheimer’s Thomas Müntzer: Herkunft und Bildung , Gritsch’s Thomas Müntzer, A Tragedy of Errors, and one further work are perceptively reviewed by Carter Lindberg, “Müntzeriana,” Lutheran Quarterly Review 4 (1990): 195–214, including one mor e major treatment of the collected theolo gical essays edited b y Siegfried Bräer and Helmar Junghaus, Der Theologe Thomas Müntzer: Untersuchungen zu seiner Entwic klung und Lehre (East Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1989).

chapter 3.2

carlstadt & müntzer  121

religious communism that led to the Münsterite experiment (Ch. 13), the fierce pretender to the prophetic powers of an Elijah, proclaiming the end of the rule of false prophet-priests, whether Roman or Lutheran, and with the powers of a new Daniel interpreting visions to princes. He considered himself “the destroyer of unbelievers.” Modern scholarship has been able to remove successive layers of historical retouching of the original image of Thomas Müntzer and has been able to identify him as the principal spokesman of Revolutionary Spiritualism. Instructed and compelled by the Holy Spirit, he successively sought in Zwickau, Bohemia, Allstedt, and Mühlhausen to bring on the Kingdom of God by strenuous social reform, endeavoring to recruit successively the artisans, the Taborites, the princes, and people against the regimen of priests. 28 Although willing emotionally to convert the princes to the elect peoples’ reform, he seems to have been allied with the antifeudal burghers throwing off feudal remnants. Born in Stolberg in the Harz Mountains in December, probably 1488 or 1489, he began university studies in Leipzig in 1506 and appeared at the University of Frankfurt on the Oder in 1512. Wide-ranging in his studies of the Bible, the church fathers, the Rhenish mystics—Müntzer became a master of arts, was ordained, and became a prebend in St. Michael’s in Braunschweig in 1514–17, and became confessor in the nunnery in Frohse (near Aschersleben) dedicated to St. Cyriac. With evident liturgical and musi28  A succinct and vi vid popular bio graphy of Müntzer , abreast of the scholar ship, is that of Hans-Jürgen Goertz, “Thomas Müntzer: Revolutionary in a Mystical Spirit,” Profiles of Radical Refor mers: Biographical Sketches from Thomas Müntzer to P aracelsus, ed. Goertz, in English by Walter Klassen (tr. from the German, Munich, 1978; Scottdale, Pennsylvania/ Kitchener, Ontario: Herald Press, 1982). In his brief and perceptive account of scholarly efforts to find a comprehensive term for “the left wing of the Reformation” (Bainton, Fast), Goertz brings together many reasons why the terminology and typology in my The Radical Reformation (1962) is dispensab le “sytematizing paraphernalia,” while showing that “radical Reformation” as “a heuristic model” is useful, when “radical” is always used in the appropriate context—socio-political, theological, cultural. I ag ree with man y of his str ictures. He holds also that it is pr emature or perhaps e ven historiographically intrusive to br ing these various kinds of movements and persons of radicality in differ ent contexts into a common narrative. His own perspectives on these figures is suggested by his moving quotations from Ernest Bloch as a kind of motto for his collection of twelve biographies of “radical reformers”: “Despite their suffering, their fear and trembling, in all these souls there glows the spark from beyond, and it ignites the tarrying kingdom.” Although Goertz’s understanding of all these most pr egnant figures is that w e are indebted to their courageous nonconfor mity for the shaping of moder n society, perhaps in large part by way of another generation of iconoclastic radicals in se venteenth-century England and Scotland, my own conviction as a Chur ch historian is that in their e ventually full self-subsistent ecclesial trans-national for ms, they would come, in the sixteenth century itself, but more particularly since the eighteenth centur y, to ser ve as models and reminders of the disciplined and expectant Church subsistent separate from any “temporal establishment,” except exemption from taxation and that, yet, somewhat like the profusion of scholarly moti vated orders within Catholicism, by induction cur rents, circulate fresh energies in the estab lished churches and recall the pre-Constantian valor of the belie vers in Christ as Saviour, Lord, and True Judge during the first three centuries common to all Christendom.

122  the radical reformation

chapter 3.2

cal training, Münzter produced for his nunnery the Officium Sancti Cyriaci, his first liturgical work, and the only example of n otable devotion to a saint to be recorded in our narrative. Münzter was early a devotee of spiritual suffering, and he will later observe pointedly that “A disciple is not above his master” (Matt. 10:24), which he will interpret in the context of John 15:20: “A servant is no greater than his master. If they persecute me, they will also persecute you.” Müntzer had already in Frohse signalized his theology of m artyrdom. 29 A letter of this Frohse period from a “fiery lover of purity” is passionately addressed to him as “Castigator of Unrighteousness.”30 Another letter to him from 1508, asking his opinion of the indulgences sold in Braunschweig, suggest Müntzer’s involvement in this issue is coeval with Luther’s and confirms the scholarly concerns that Müntzer’s critique of t he standing order had root, independent of Luther. After attending Wittenberg University in the winter of 1517–18, where he was impressed by t he lectures on St. Jerome by t he humanist John Rhegius Aesticampanius, and probably witnessing the Leipzig disputation, he became father confessor in a Bernardine convent in Beuditz (near Weissensfels), 31 where he made use of h is relative leisure to read extensively. Mystic and humanist, he had been won over to the ideal of learned celibacy, of the wandering scholar, acquainted with the hardships of the road as of hosteleries, a Leidenspädogogik akin to his cross-mysticism, Leidenstheologie. 32 A deep spiritual turmoil which may have involved radical doubt as to the existence of God and the validity of Christ’s message plunged him into fresh reading. The decline of the Church as result of misdirection from its learned leadership, which was described in the fragment from Hegesippus (preserved by Eusebius of Caesarea in his Ecclesiastical History), made a l asting impression on him, fixing for him his basic conception of the Church as a voluntarist pneumatic community of explicit believers. He got from Tertullian the vision and practice of a rigoristic church and from Cyprian the principle that the bishop does nothing about the lapsed “without the consent of the people.” Also influenced by his careful study at this time of the acts of the Councils of Constance and Basel 33 and the Pseudo-Joachimite commentary on Jeremiah, under the influence of the latter, he came to think of himself as a chosen instrument of God. A Catholic polemic against him and a friend in 1519 called 29

 Bubenheimer, Müntzer, 94–96; Matheson, Collected Works, 9 n.3.  Matheson, Collected Works, 6f. 31  Near Weissenfels. New source material for Müntzer’ s life thr ough 1519 comes fr om Bubenheimer, Thomas Müntzer. 32  Cf. Ernst Kantorowicz, Die Wiederkehr gelehrter Anachorese in Mittelalter (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1937). 33  Annemarie Lohmann, Zur geistigen Entwic klung Thomas Müntzers (Leipzig/Berlin, 1931), 9. 30

chapter 3.2

carlstadt & müntzer  123

them “Lutherans,” the first recorded such designation of a f ollower of Luther, ironic in the light of the opening rift between them. 34 Yet, it was on the recommendation of Luther that Müntzer was called in May 1520 temporarily to replace an Erasmian pastor, John Egranus, in St. Mary’s in the prosperous and cultured town of Zwickau, 35 where he became an eloquent interpreter of t he Reformation movement in a socially radical way. A book list among his remains is one indication of the intense study that went into his sermon preparation. And when he was reassigned, on the return of Egranus (October 1) to St. Catherine’s, the parish of the humbler journeymen weavers and miners, he became even more radical. Already he had won acclaim for his denunciation of t he opulent local Franciscans. Among Müntzer’s parishioners at St. Catherine’s were three radical laymen whose activities in Wittenberg gave Luther a very bad impression of Müntzer, the so-called Zwickau prophets. The f irst of the radical triumvirate in Zwickau 36 was the weaver Nicholas Storch, after whom the Zwickau prophets (Luther’s designation) were also called Storchites. With him were associated Thomas Drechsel and Marcus Thomas Stübner who had studied at Wittenberg, the only one of t he three who had university education. On 16 December 1521, they were expected to appear before the town magistrates and divines to answer to the charges of holding erroneous views of baptism and marriage. They were reported to oppose infant baptism and may have come, on this issue, under the inf luence of t he Unity of t he (Czech) Brethren (Ch. 9.1). 37 They betook themselves to Wittenberg. With Stübner as their more learned spokesman, they sought out Melanchthon (in the absence of Luther) just two days after Carlstadt’s Protestant communion service. Melanchthon was impressed by t heir biblical knowledge and at f irst

34

 Observed by Goerrz, in Profiles, 31.  According to Otto Brandt, Thomas Müntzer: Seine Leben und Seine Schriften (Jena, 1933), 5, it was three times as populous as pre-World War II Dresden; cf.Vogler, Thomas Müntzer, 72–74. 36  The role of the Zwickau Prophets has been exaggerated in conventional accounts designed to legitimate Luther’s swift reaction. Neither should Carlstadt be depicted as “the leader of the Wittenberg movement,” as he has been by Barge. For recent balanced accounts, see Sider, Karlstadt’s Battle with Luther, 148–73; James S. Preus, Carlstadt’s “Ordinaciones” and Luther’s “Liberty,” Harvard Theological Studies 25 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974); and Mark U. Edwards, Jr., Luther and the False Brethren (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975), ch. 1. 37  Paul Wappler quotes a source that says Storch imported his schism from Bohemia, Thomas Müntzer und der “Zwickau Propheten” (Zwickau, 1908; rev. ed., Gütersloh: Mohn, 1966), 23 n. 230. Václav Husa, Tomás Müntzer a Cechy (Prague, 1957) suggests that the Anabaptism converts among the Unity of the Brethren may have given rise to the issue of pedobaptism by Storch, and Müntzer too, in his visit to Prague; but Husa is cautious, while J. K. Zeman, Anabaptists and the Cz ech Brethren in Moravia (The Hague: Mouton, 1969), 104 n. 148, on whom the above depends; 104 n. 148, notes how elsewhere Storch in 1522 showed indifference to rebaptism (ibid, 240 n. 269), and concludes that there was not much of a connection. 35

124  the radical reformation

chapter 3.2

receptive to some of their ideas. On the basis of Mark 16:16, “He who believes and is baptized will be saved,” the men from Zwickau argued against infant baptism and found the Wittenbergers caught off guard. Then, Melanchthon and Amsdorf (the latter having got an account of the meeting), wrote to the elector concerning the visit and the disturbing situation in prosperous Zwickau. They counseled the elector not to suppress the movement by f orce, however, lest there be rebellion and lest the Spirit of God be improperly restrained, while in the meantime the university theologians were seeking diligently to discern the spirits. Later, Melanchthon joined in Luther’s more severe judgment of the Schwärmer. In the meantime Stübner had won Dr. Martin Cellarius and Dr. Gerard Westerburg (Ch. 12. 4) to their cause. 38 Dr. Gerard Westerburg, destined to become an Anabaptist leader in Cologne, was the son of a patrician family who had studied at the Universities of C ologne, 1514–15, and Bologna, 1515–17, acquiring the doctorate in both civil and canon law. A t rip to Rome had introduced him to the evil conditions of t he papacy. On his return to Germany he had entertained Nicholas Storch in his home, and then accompanied him to Wittenberg, where he met Luther and Cellarius in 1522. Through Storch he had become acquainted with the emerging opposition to infant baptism. Soon he was attracted to Carlstadt in Wittenberg, whose teachings on purgatory and the Lord’s Supper he adopted. He even moved with his friend, Martin Reinhart, to Jena in the neighborhood of Orlamünde in 1523 or 1524 to be nearer to him and there married Carlstadt’s sister. He began his literary career as an enthusiastic advocate of the views of Carlstadt and popularized Carlstadt’s Sermon on the Soul in his own Vom Fegefeuer ( Jena, 1523), earning for himself the sobriquet, Dr. Purgatory (Ch. 5.4). We shall encounter Westerburg again several times. Martin Cellarius (Borrhaus), the other convert to Zwickau enthusiasm, of a s ubstantial burgher family in Stuttgart, had likewise been university educated, at Tübingen, where he had become a f riend of h is fellow stu-

38  Of the later acti vities of the thr ee original prophets, little is kno wn. Storch and Stübner had separate conversations with Luther on inf ant baptism, which induced him to wr ite on the subject and defend the vie w that through the work of the Holy Spir it a kind of f aith is infused in the inf ant, and that the Chr istian life is in an y event a contin uous dying and r ising with Christ. Storch was for a shor t time in Strassb urg in 1524. The most extensive, still useful, work on the Zwickau prophets is Paul Wappler, Thomas Müntzer in Zwickau und Zwickauer Propheten (Zwickau, 1908), which clearly shows the difference between the baptismal theology of the men of Zwickau and of the Swiss Br ethren of Zur ich. Wappler’s work, however, must be used with great caution because of its uncr itical dependence on polemical sour ces from the late sixteenth century. A reduced, more reliable picture of the subject comes fr om East Ger man historians; cf. Max Steinmetz, Der Müntzerbild von Martin Luther bis Fr iedrich Engels (Berlin: VEB Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1971), 60–71; Siegfried Hoyer, “Die Zwickauer Storchianer-Verlaüfer der Taüfer,” Jahrbuch für Regionalgeschichte (Berlin: Akademie Verlag) 13 (1986): 60–78.

chapter 3.2

carlstadt & müntzer  125

dent, Melanchthon, and at Ingolstadt, where he learned Hebrew from John Reuchlin and defended several theses in a disputation with the redoubtable John Eck. Going to Wittenberg, lodging with Melanchthon, he became at first an ardent follower of Luther, and then came under the influence of Klaus Storch and Marcus Stübner of t he Müntzer circle. He was during his Wittenberg years (1521–22) and drawn to the Zwickau egalitarianism, antipedobaptism, and was sensible to the urgency of establishing a v isible evangelical community of saints. Hoping that Luther would agree, Cellarius had an interview arranged by Melanchthon but he was so disenchanted by Luther’s disparagement of the Zwickau ideal that he became hysterical and was asked to leave Wittenberg. 39 We shall next meet him in Strassburg (Ch. 10.3) where he will, as an eventual Antitrinitarian (with God the Father, Christ a celestial man), publish his De Dei operibus and end up as professor of Old Testament at Basel. We return to the most renowned of t he Zwickau radicals. To what extent Thomas Müntzer developed a r adical Spiritualist theology during his sojourn in Zwickau can be learned primarily from his irenic Propositiones probri viri domini Egrani, ascribed to Erasmian Egranus as though directed against himself.40 From this we learn that Müntzer, while in Zwickau, evidently continued to hold with Luther on the centrality of the sacrament of the altar (not a memorialist, like Carlstadt) and on the bondage of the will. Nevertheless, it is clear that Müntzer had really broken with Luther’s theology on two essential points, antipedobaptism and Spiritualist hermeneutics. Specifically, he was claimed by t he Storchites, in the hearing before the town council, for his denial of the efficacy of the faith of the godparents in the baptism of a child; and in opposition to Egranus he had worked out a Spiritualist hermeneutics, according to which both the Old a nd the New Testaments are to be interpreted in the Spirit. This Spiritualism was accompanied by an intensification of the Lutheran sense of the difference between law and grace which will presently reappear metamorphosed as Müntzer’s “bitter” and “sweet” Christ, although these distinctive terms were not yet employed. From Luther’s faith alone in the historic work of Christ on the cross as the central redemptive principle, Müntzer had already moved on to the personal cross mysteriously assigned to each of the elect as preliminary tutelage before the visitation of the Holy Spirit. Because of the virulence of his quarrel with Egranus and the threat to public order posed by the radical weavers who supported him, Müntzer was obliged by the town council to leave on the night after his own hearing, 39  Irena Backus, “Martin Borrhaus,” Bibliotheca Dissidentium 2 (Baden-Baden: Koerner, 1981) 12. 40  Lohmann, Zur geistigen Entwic klung 3:14, notes that Wappler in Thomas Müntzer in Zwickau tends to ascr ibe to the Zwickau per iod some of the mor e radical traits of the later Müntzer.

126  the radical reformation

chapter 3.2

15 April 1521. He sped to Saaz (Zatec),41 the German-speaking WaldensianTaborite center, and then to Prague; and there, received as a Lutheran(!), he preached on Sunday, 23 June, in Latin in Corpus Christi and that afternoon in German in Bethlehem Chapel. Welcomed by t he radical party among the Utraquists (Ch. 9.1), he was housed with the masters of t he Caroline University. After four months it became clear that he was really much more radical than even the left wing of the Utraquists. He moved to the house of Lord Buriân Sobek of Kornice (Ch. 9.1), who had translated several of Luther’s works into Czech. Speaking through interpreters, Müntzer gave utterance to his more inflammatory convictions among Hussite radicals. Building upon the local Taborite expectations (Ch. 9.1), he expressed his confidence in the imminent gathering of God’s people. He may have been consciously following the precedent of Luther when on All Saints Day, 1 November 1527, he posted a manifesto in handwritten German to perhaps some centrally located church in Prague.42 His Prague Manifesto appeared in several versions: a shorter German version of 1 November 1521,43 and a longer German version of 25 November upon which, in turn, the Czech and Latin versions were based. The second German and the Czech versions were directed to the common people, and were gross and violent in language and tone. The poverty of the people was held up as occasion for repeated denunciation of their oppressors, both the learned and the priests. In the Latin version, along with many other modifications, Müntzer confined his rebuke to the priests. It is clear, therefore, from a comparison of the German and Latin texts that what Müntzer really had in mind was the spiritual impoverishment of a ll classes because of t he treason of t he clerics, the scholars, and the priests. It is they who had obscured or completely distorted the gospel. He cited Hegesippus as witness to the prostituting of the early church by the clerical monopolization. Restoration he foresaw in the common people, the long-suffering custodians of the truth they could not theologically articulate. They should be given the power to elect their pastors, who in turn will deliberate in councils or synods responsible to the Christian laity. And the gospel, which the new pastors will proclaim with a new intensity, is that which Thomas Müntzer already adumbrated in the last days of his sojourn in Zwickau. 41

 On Zatec, see Ch. 21.1.  Gritsch notes the parallel, Müntzer, Tragedy, 37. 43  Franz, Müntzer Schriften, 491–511; Matheson, Collected Works, 352–79. For an introduction and translation, see Michael Baylor, “Thomas Müntzer’s ‘Prague Manifesto,’” MQR 63 (1989): 30–57, who suggests that Müntzer’ s thought w as largely independent of both Luther and Storch. The basic work on Müntzer’s seven months in Prague is Václav Husa, Müntzer a Cechy; Amedeo Molnár, “Thomas Müntzer und Böhmen,” Communio Viatorum 1 (1958): 242–45. The several texts of the Manifesto are analyzed in their tendency by Elliger, Thomas Müntzer, 118ff.; and Fr iedrich de Boor, “Zur Textgeschichte des Prager Manifests,” Thomas Müntzer Prager Manifests, ed. Max Steinmetz (Leipzig: Zentral Antiquariat, 1975), 13. 42

chapter 3.2

carlstadt & müntzer  127

In the Prague Manifesto, Müntzer speaks of the bestowal of the sevenfold gift of the Spirit (Isa.11:1–5) as the goal of redemption.44 Among the gifts is the reception of direct instruction from the Holy Spirit in the form of vision, dream, ecstatic utterance, or inspired exegesis. Only the elect are vouchsafed this visitation, but before it comes, they must be awakened. This is the compelling task of the preacher. And Müntzer himself is no longer magister, but nuntius Christi. Before the elect are ready for the Spiritual visitation, however, they must undergo the harrowing of fear. Fear is the beginning of godliness. The work of Christ on the cross consisted in his having given the elect the example of a personal cross.45 Although the cross is considered a d ivinely selected means of t utelage, the thought is nevertheless not far below the surface in Müntzer, and destined to become ever more prominent in his own life and teaching, that self-imposed discipline serves as a preparation for the predetermined “cross.” Characteristic of the Prague Manifesto is the apocalyptic view that the end of the age was at hand and that a n ew apostolic church must gather the elect and separate them from worldly people.46 When his preaching failed to win acceptance for his Reformation program, Müntzer withdrew from Bohemia in December 1521. After wandering about somewhat obscurely, quarrelling with Luther’s friend Lorenz Sussin Nordhausen, and holding the post of chaplain of a convent in Glaucha outside Halle for a few months,47 Müntzer was accepted by the town council of A llstedt to become, on a t rial basis, the pastor of t he local St. John’s church. Here in a small Saxon town close to the border of the County of Mansfeld, Müntzer became provisionally the exponent of a magisterial reformation. Winning to his side John Zeyss, the electoral castellan, and hoping to win over even the elector’s brother and nephew, Duke John and John Frederick, Müntzer carried out a t wofold program. Radical though he was, even openly, he tried to maintain as good relations as possible with Wittenberg and the elector, disavowing Storch in a letter to Luther.

44  T hese gifts are listed by Frederick Lewis Weiss, The Life, Teachings, and Works of Johannes Denck (Strasbourg, 1924), in connection with baptism, and see also below, Ch. 4 at n. 26. 45  Heinrich Bornkamm calls this the “Theologie der Anfechtung,” Mystik, Spiritualismus und die Anfänge des Pietismus im Luther tum (Giessen, 1926), 6. For a study of the influence of Theologia Deutsch on Müntzer see Ozment, Mysticism and Dissent, ch. 3 46  Schwarz, Die apokalyptische Theologie Müntzers und die Taboriten. 47  Vögler, Thomas Müntzer, 110–24; Scott, Thomas Müntzer, 39–44; Goertz, Thomas Müntzer, 79–87.

128  the radical reformation

chapter 3.2

Müntzer was uncommonly resourceful in his Germanizing of t he liturgy, in Das deutsche Kirchenamt (1523) and Deutsche evangelische Messe (1524). The liturgical year was divided into four great seasons. To encourage popular participation, he contrived to have the major portion of the service sung, retaining the chants in German translation, and composing several hymns himself. He insisted on the whole of a p salm being sung instead of the opening words only, and the selections from the Scriptures were whole chapters. The Ten Commandments were carved in tablets and placed prominently in the church. Little of Müntzer’s social radicalism came out in his liturgical work, except for such alterations as “Deliver us from the anti-Christian government of the godless” in place of the collect “Deliver us from the yoke of evil,”48 and his insistence that the words of eucharistic consecration be said by the whole congregation as a royal-priestly people. When criticized for allowing also merely nominal Christians thus to consecrate the elements at the Mass, he replied that Christ comes into the midst of the congregation only in answer to the petitions of t he elect among them. In Allstedt he practiced infant baptism, but dispensed with godparents as inefficacious, spurned the equation of pedobaptism and circumcision in Peter Lombard, considered the postponement of baptism until children should be of sufficient age to understand the action, and proposed that the solemnity be held only twice a year as in the ancient Church.49 In Allstedt he took to wife a f ormer nun thus overcoming his ascetic reserve about clerical marriage, in contrast to Carlstadt, who was eagerly the first cleric of Wittenberg to marry. Liturgiologist and by now family man, he was also all the while less openly engaged in working through his much more radical conception of reform and renewal. To this end he had organized a secret band who were destined to emerge as the executors of “the eternal covenant of God.” He sent a threatening letter to the count of Mansfeld for refusing to allow his subjects to attend the new services in Allstedt. He was supposed to have been obliged to apologize for this action, but this is not true.50 His radical spirit soon found expression in the assault of h is covenanters on the neighboring Mallerbach chapel, 24 March 1524, destroying its miraculous image of the Virgin. The chapel belonged to the convent of Naundorf, to which the people of Allstedt had to pay feudal dues, all the more obnoxious for the reason that Müntzer and his followers were being execrated by 48  Franz, Müntzer Schriften, 25–215; Oskar Mehl, Thomas Müntzers Deutsche Messe (Grimmen in Pommern, 1937), 4; Siegfried Braüer, “Thomas Müntzers Liedschaften: Die theolo gischen Intentionen der Hymnenüber tragungen in Allstedter Gottesdienst v on 1523/24 und in Abendmahlslied Müntzers,” Thomas Müntzer, ed. Abraham Friesen and Hans Jürgen Goer tz (1978), 227–95; Brendler, Thomas Müntzer, 81–106. 49  “On Baptism,” after 15 August 1524, Matheson, Collected Works, 395. 50  Cf. Franz, Müntzer Schriften, 393–97.

chapter 3.2

carlstadt & müntzer  129

the nuns as heretics. Confident in the support of the humbler members of society thus recruited 51 for the cause, and not yet despairing of the endorsement of a n eventually fully instructed magistracy—the town councilors and the castellan John Zeyss might be considered prospective converts— Thomas Müntzer elaborated his more radical views in a series of important works which he was able to publish during his Allstedt pastorate. Von dem gedichteten Glauben (On Counterfeit Faith) was composed before 2 December 1523. It contains fourteen points and a covering letter to castellan Zeyss in which, as we have noted, Müntzer acknowledges his indebtedness to Joachim of F iore (Flora).52 In point 11 he gives his memorable wording to a distinction we have already met: One should not climb in[to the church] by the window, nor have any other basis for faith than the whole of and not merely the half of Christ. He who does not wish to accept the bitter Christ will eat himself sick of honey. First the elect must know spiritual misery and the abyss of despair, abandoning all pleasure in the world. He or she must have suffered the hell of unbelief. Thereupon follows the second stage of salvation, the bestowal of the personal cross, the gracious rod. And finally, with the bestowal of the Holy Spirit, the elect comes into possession (point 14) of the key of David, whereby he can unlock the book of seven seals, the Bible, and discern the spirits. Herein Müntzer turns covertly upon Luther and the latter’s insistence upon the outer and audible Word, as against the inner Word, and excoriates the learned in religion (“scribes”) in general, who have at best only “historic faith.” Müntzer turns openly on Luther in his Protestation or Proposition (Protestation oder Erbietung … von dem rechten Christenglauben und der Taufe) in twenty-two articles.53 In the first seven, Müntzer gives full expression to his conception of b aptism. He distinguishes between the inner and the outer baptism. The latter was surely not administered to children according to the New Testament, but neither was it administered to such saintly adults as Mary and the apostles. Therefore outer baptism is unnecessary for inclusion in the Church of the faithful. Inner baptism is. Inner baptism is interpreted on the basis of t he first six chapters of John, which contain a s eries of r eferences to water. Water is interpreted

51

 Vögler, Thomas Müntzer, 155–60.  Published 1524; Franz, Müntzer Schriften, 217–24; Matheson, Collected Works, 210–25. “Ihr sollt auch wissen, dass sie [die Wittenberger] diese Lehre dem Abt Joachim zuschreiben und heissen sie ein ewiges Evangelion in grossem Spott. Bei mir ist das Zeugnis Abbotis Joachim gross. Ich hab ihn [PseudoJoachim] allein über Jeremiam gelesen. Aber meine Lehre ist hoch droben.” 53  Franz, Müntzer Schriften, 225–40; Matheson, Collected Works, 183–209. 52

130  the radical reformation

chapter 3.2

as the movement of the Spirit, and movement is the convulsion (Erschütterung) of the soul occasioned by the particular cross assigned by God to be borne. Müntzer interrelates John the Baptist’s harsh preaching prior to the baptismal action of cleansing and renewal, Jesus’ miracle of turning water into wine (interpreted as the blood of suffering), Jesus’ parable of the living water at the Samaritan well which has God as its source, and Jesus’ action with the water of t he pool of Siloam moved by t he angel (the symbol of the healing power of t he individually borne cross).54 Baptism is seen by Müntzer on the basis of t hese four texts to be the symbol of t he whole discipline of the God-bestowed cross which leads to the revelatory descent of the Holy Spirit. This conception of t he baptismal action involving the whole redemptive process from the first movement of religious despair to possible martyrdom will be woven into the martyr theology of all evangelical Anabaptists, notably by way of Müntzer’s follower, John Hut.55 Another expression of Müntzer’s martyr theology is an important letter written early in the Allstedt period to his followers in his birthplace, Stolberg.56 Herein he warns them against premature or meaningless tumult. The reformed church of the future is to be made up of the divine elect. But these elect must first undergo, not only with patience, but also with yearning, the trials that God will place before them. The “lazy elect” are as good as lost. The “grace of Anfechtung” (tribulation) 57 is bestowed only upon those who have demonstrated themselves worthy thereof by the discipline of self-imposed restraints. The most extraordinary public utterance of Müntzer during his sojourn in Allstedt, indeed possibly the most remarkable sermon of t he whole Reformation era, was that delivered on 13 July 1524 at the castle, in the presence of Duke John (brother of Elector Frederick) and the duke’s son

54

 With reference to John 7:37–38, Müntzer, Protestation, says: “The streams of living water are the movements of our spir it in that of God.” The allegorical interpretation of water as Holy Spir it was widely used in medieval theology. 55  One must study from this angle Ethelber t Stauffer’s “Anabaptist Theology of Martrydom,” MQR 19 (1945): 179. Lohmann, after noting that in contrast to the evangelical Anabaptists, Müntzer made little use of external baptism, goes on: “Dennoch ist est möglich, dass Müntzer durch die Umdeutung des Kreuzes in den Taufgedanken bei der weiteren Verbreitung seiner Schriften die besondere Betonung der Taufe bei jenen verursacht had, die dann ihrerseits für diese innere Taufe des Kreuzes ein äusseres Symbol suchten, das ihnen die Wiedertäufe bot.” Lohmann, 49. She refers to George Haug in Müller, Glaubenszeugnisse QGT, 3:7, and Emil Egli, Die Züricher Wiedertäufer zur Reformationszeit (Zurich, 1878), 19, but may be forcing a connection that the Holl-Böhmer school r equired, i.e., that Müntzer is the or iginator of all Anabaptism. 56  July, 1523; Franz, Müntzer, Schriften, 21–24; Matheson, Collected Works, 61–64; commented on by Michael Baylor, “Thomas Müntzer’s First Publication,” Sixteenth Century Journal 17 (1986): 451–58. 57  Luther, in contrast, considered Anfechtung (in the mystical tradition: spiritual tribulation) a sin, at least not a “necessary preparatory work of the soul.”“For whom the Lord loves he chastises” (Heb. 17.6; cf. Rev. 3.19). See Gritsch, Reformer without a Church.

chapter 3.2

carlstadt & müntzer  131

John Frederick, as well as selected town and electoral officials.58 That so distinguished a company of princely magistrates listened without immediate protest to so inflammatory an appeal to Christian revolution requires an explanation that will place one back in the parlous and perplexing first years of the Reformation era. Ducal father and son were divided on the proper role of the Christian magistrate. The son sided with Luther and the conservative interpretation of the reform. But the father, perplexed and thoughtful brother to the elector, stood under the influence of t he radical court preacher of t he ducal residence in Weimar, Wolfgang Stein, who was in turn under the influence of Carlstadt, already identified with radical changes in Orlamünde, and of Jacob Strauss in Eisenbach. Basel-born Strauss, who had first brought the Reformation to the miners and burghers of t he Tyrol (Schwaz and then Hall on the Inn, 1521–22), had published two influential sermons, Von der innerlichen und äusserlichen Taufe and Wider die simonische Taufe, both in 1523. Herein he had come out for a simplified water baptism in German.59 Strauss also directed to John Frederick his Articles, maintaining that servants, not lords, should be installed in any Christian church (christliche Versammlung) and that the divine institution of the “servant” (diener) for the care of souls is to be elected by such an assembly. In these stipulations Strauss was making more specific what Luther himself had said in the same year about the role of the Gemeinde (Ch. 4.2).60 All these radical preachers were loyal to their prince, but held fiercely to the view that with the overturn of papal authority Mosaic law should obtain in evangelical lands. Up to this point, Müntzer was not markedly different from the other radical preachers who, Duke John thought, might well be right in their interpretation. Earnest about getting to the heart of the problem, curious about how things were going in Allstedt under Müntzer, and perhaps with the additional motivation of ascertaining whether he should ducally confirm the ministerial choice of t he town council, John consented to hear Müntzer in the ducal castle in Allstedt. Müntzer had more than a week to prepare for the momentous occasion. In his Sermon 58  It has been long supposed that the sermon was given before the two Ernestine dukes, John and Frederick the Wise, but it is certain that the elector was not present. See Carl Hinrichs, Luther und Müntz er: Ihre Auseinandersetzung über Obr igkeit und Widerstandsrecht, Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte 29 (Berlin, 1952), 5 n. 1. Also present were the electoral chancellor Dr. Gregory Brück (Pontanus), Dr. Hans von Grefendorf, the castellan John Zeyss, and the bailiff and council of Allstedt, ibid., 39. 59  Hermann Barge, “Die gedruckten Schriften des evangelischen Predigers Jakob Strauss,” ARG 32 (1935): 100ff., 248ff. In the second sermon mentioned, he wrote: “In unser versammlung tauffen wir in for m und gestalt wie Chr istus gelert und geboten hat.” On Strauss, see Barge, Schriften des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte, 162 (Leipzig, 1937). 60  Das nit her ren aber diener e yner yedenn Christlichen versamlung zugestelt werdenn beschlussreden und haupt ar tikel, reproduced in f acsimile by Joachim Rogge, Der Beitrag des Predigers Jakob Strauss zur frühen Reformationsgeschichte, Theologische Arbeiten 6 (Berlin, 1957).

132  the radical reformation

chapter 3.2

before the Princes,61 13 July 1524, he clearly enunciated his view of faith in contrast to that of L uther. He outlined his conception of h istory and of reform, and promulgated his doctrine of a godly magistracy. Appealing again, as in his Prague Manifesto, to Hegesippus’ interpretation of the decline of the primitive Church, Müntzer went on to reinterpret the Danielic theology of history. The multimetallic statue of the royal dream had throughout the Middle Ages been generally understood as in Jerome’s adaptation. Accordingly, the fourth kingdom was construed as the Roman Empire, perpetuated in ever new permutations from Augustus, through Charlemagne, to the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. But Müntzer cunningly found in the iron-and-clay feet of the statue (which for Daniel had been but the extension of what he considered the fourth, the iron kingdom of A lexander the Great) the symbol of a fifth earthly kingdom, namely, feudal-papal Christendom, in which society was pulverized between church and state, in oppressive collusion. The Stone which in the royal dream broke these feet was, of c ourse, Christ (Christ’s people, the saints). Müntzer noted that this Stone increased in size, and it was his conviction that the royal priesthood of the common man was now in a position to break the last of the kingdoms of this world, the imperial-papal monarchy. But the present subaltern magistrates within the Roman Empire might well, as individuals, be among the elect and belong to this holy folk. It was therefore the basic thrust of Müntzer’s sermon before the princes to awaken in them the awareness of their possibly predestined role and to induce them to join the covenanted people and to become indeed their spokesmen and their executives in punishing the godless reprobates under Antichrist. Müntzer reinterpreted the politically conservative text of Romans 13 into a revolutionary passage in a way that must have seemed all the more cogent to Duke John for the reason that Luther had recurrently used it in support of magisterial authority.62 In effect, Müntzer reversed the sequence of Rom. 13:1–4, construing 13:1–2 as the sequel of 13:3–4, and thus making the Ernestine princes, by hortatory anticipation, the executors of God’s wrath against the godless and the protectors of the revolutionary saints. At the same time, Müntzer warned that if the princes should fail to identify themselves with the covenantal people, the sword would pass from them to

61  See the critical edition by Carl Hinrichs, Thomas Müntzer: Politische Schriften mit Kommentar, Hallische Monographien 17 (Halle: Niemeyer, 1950); Franz, Müntzer Schriften, 241–63; Matheson Collected Works, 225–52; earlier in English b y George H. Williams in SAW, 47–70. In moder n German, Heinold Fast, Der Linke Flügel der Reformation: Glaubenszeugnisse der Täufer, Spiritualisten, Schwärmer und Antitrinitarier (Bremen: Schemann, 1962), 271–96. For a copy of Luther’s reply to Müntzer’s Sermon see Siegfr ied Bräuer, “Die Vorgeschichte von Luthers ‘Ein Brief und die Fürsten zu Sachsen,’” Luther-Jahrbuch 67 (1980), 40–70. 62  Hinrichs has been especially discerning in showing the revolutionary permutation of Romans 13 in the hermeneutics of Müntzer.

chapter 3.2

carlstadt & müntzer  133

the people.63 Müntzer had no contract theory of government. Divine sovereignty resided in the godly people. The princes had the choice of joining the godly in their eschatological program or suffering the consequences of righteous rebellion. In the interrogation following his defeat in the Peasants’ War, Müntzer would indicate that the princely representatives of the godly may enjoy certain minor privileges out of respect: princes, for example, may ride with eight horses, counts with four, lesser noblemen with two.64 Here one may detect clearly the influence of Johann Eberlin of Günzburg (c. 1460–1533). This former Franciscan apocalyptic Lutheran made some such concession in the eleventh of h is pamphlets entitled Bundesgenossen. Eberlin projected an equitable Wolfaria wherein each would be compensated according to his true contribution to the good of the whole.65 According to Müntzer, only if the princes heeded God’s will as interpreted by the new Daniel and replaced the Wittenberg scribe with a prophet who, besides knowing the Word, was also possessed of the Spirit, could they ever become worthy instruments of God! It was the daring of Müntzer to think that Allstedt might become the focal point of radical reform, replacing Wittenberg. Müntzer was sustained in his expectation by his Spiritualist hermeneutics. He took the outpouring of the Spirit in himself and others as confirmation of the prophecy of Joel 2:27–32 and 3:1–4, and the imminent formation of a c ovenant of m iners, peasants, townsmen, and magistrates as the realization of the eschatological dream of equality of possessions. This was understood as the God-ordained imitation of the primitive church with the equalization of the saints in the common possession both of the gifts of the Spirit and the goods of life. In this confidence, he could brazenly call Luther “Brother Mastschwein” (Hog), “Sanftleben” (soft living Flesh), “Leisetritt” (Pussyfoot), “Kolkrabe” (Carrion Crow), “Meister Lügner” (Dr. Liar), all of w hich appellations were

63  Müntzer had already given expression to this revolutionary but plausible reinterpretation of Romans 13 in tw o letters, one to the elector , intended also for sympathetic Duk e John, 4 October 1523, see Franz, Müntzer Schriften, 545; Matheson, Collected Works, 434; and one to the council and congregation of Allstedt, c. 7 June 1524. 64  Franz, Müntzer Schriften, 545; Matheson, Collected Works, 434. 65  The whole of ag rarian Wolfaria is r uled by nobles and peasants, all of them elected. Monasteries and convents are to be emptied by degrees, recalcitrant Franciscans slaughtered. Old Testament punishments are meted out to adulterers and other sinners; public drunkards are to be drowned. Eberlin interpreted medieval apocalyptic as well as Luther’s reformatory ideas, including the hoped-for return of the sleeping Barbarossa. The Bundschuh XII Articles reappear to the extent of six in Wolfaria’s laws. In Wolfaria the priests are like laymen in dress and status, and the five “sacraments” are: baptism, eucharist, absolution, prayer, preaching of the Word. Eberlin also opposes men going beardless. Flugschriften der Reformationszeit 11 (1896); O. Langgirth, “Eberlin von Günzburg,” ARG 31 (1934): 228–38; see fur ther William R. Hitchcock, “Eberlin von Günzburg,” The Background of the Knights’ Revolt 1522–1523 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1958), ch. 4; and the article by Susan Groag Bell, “Johan Eberlin von Günzburg’s Wolfaria: The First Protestant Utopia,” CH 36 (1967): 122–39.

134  the radical reformation

chapter 3.2

more than eschatological billingsgate. With these descriptions he purposed to descry in Luther a sign of the end of the age. Of Duke John’s reaction to the castle sermon we shall speak presently. On 24 July, Müntzer preached another sermon based on 2 Kings 22, appealing to the Josian reform and the royal renewal of the covenant as the pattern for the Ernestine princes.66 But in his heart, Müntzer had undoubtedly abandoned something of h is hope that the princes would in the end espouse the covenantal reform. Luther, addressing his princes 18 July, had already called Müntzer “the Satan of Allstedt.”67 For Spiritualist Müntzer, besides the Scriptures as an historically correct precipitate of r evelation, there is direct revelation and the indications of nature and history. During the last two weeks of July, Müntzer completed his draft of what was later to be printed by John Hut as A Manifest Exposé of False Faith (Ausgedrückte Entblössung des falschen Glaubens). It runs in part parallel with Testimony of Luke 1.68 These constitute Müntzer’s most vigorous and systematic defense of Spirit-possessed faith as opposed to the merely historic faith of the Wittenbergers, which he proceeds to expose as false. The accounts deal with Christian exercise of both spiritual authority, christliche Meisterschaft, which must be learned from Christ who rules from the cross. The hope for the conversion of the princes has receded. Müntzer holds with the Magnificat that they will be replaced by the humble and those of low degree. Müntzer shows how each in his or her turn among the great believers of the Bible at first opposed as impossible the promise of God: Abraham, Elizabeth, Mary. The Bible is not the source of faith, but its confirmation. Each soul must be crushed with doubt and suffering, and then emptied, before the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit conceives faith within the soul and thereby exposes the fatuousness of t he imagined belief of t he scribal Christian (Luther). Since this inner suffering can go on in the soul of everyone, Müntzer includes alike the nominal Christian, Turk, and pagan within the scope of God’s intention of salvation. For they are free in the order of things (ordo rerum, originally a rhetorical concept) to seek from where they are “the Christian Nazareth” in their own souls. He instances the centurion, who knew Christ afar off (Matt. 8:5).

66  This sermon has been lost. Müntzer refers to it in his letter to John Zeyss of 25 July 1524; Franz, Müntzer Schriften, 421; Matheson, Collected Works, 100. For a modern interpretation holding that Müntzer consistently opposed r ebellion by subjects against their r ulers to the very end of his Allstedt pastorate, cf. Adolf Laube, “Thomas Müntzer und die frühbürgerliche Revolution,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 38 (1990): 128–41. 67  WA 3:307. 68  Matheson prints the two interrelated tracts on opposite pages, Collected Works, 253–323.

chapter 3.2

carlstadt & müntzer  135

His doctrine, then, of Spirit-confirmed election had a programmatically ecumenical character.69 And although personal suffering was construed as the necessary prelude to salvation, Müntzer did not condone the iniquities of t he social order as tolerable or e ven desirable because conducive to spirituality! With the other Reformers, he left the concept of disciplinary poverty to the Middle Ages and demanded community of possession to meet at once human material necessities and deliverance from preoccupation with the things of the world: “In the face of usury, taxes, and rents no one can have faith.” 70 As Duke John ref lected on the radical character of M üntzer’s reform, he summoned him for a h earing at the ducal residence in Weimar for 1 Au gust. Duke John was by n ow alerted to the danger of r evolution by L uther’s vitriolic Brief an die Fürsten zu Sachsen dem aufrührischen Geist.71 Zeyss and two members of t he town council accompanied Müntzer to the hearing in Weimar. There Müntzer acknowledged the existence of h is secret band, which was thereupon ordered dissolved, but he denied that he had ever spoken out publicly against the Ernestine princes. Müntzer promised the authorities that he would refrain from incendiary activity and that he would not leave Allstedt on any revolutionary mission. His printer was banished. There was some discussion about the holding of a f ormal disputation with Jacob Strauss and the Weimar preacher Wolfgang Stein, who would mediate between Müntzer and Carlstadt of Orlamünde on the revolutionary left and Luther on the right, but the proposal broke down from its inherent weakness. Luther with his argumentation from the written Word and Müntzer with his argumentation out of t he compulsion of

69

 See further, Ch. 32.2 below.  F ranz, Müntzer Schriften, 241–319, esp. 303; Matheson, Collected Works, 253–323, esp. 304. The tract was printed in October 1524, after Müntzer had estab lished himself as an a vowed revolutionary in Mühlhausen. But a draft ther eof, adapted for the censor and still phrased in such a w ay as to admit the pr inces (in or der to assur e a legal transformation), was printed in Weimar. This is called by Hinrichs the Gezeugnis, and Müntzer himself r efers to it as his “Auslegung des Evangelion Lucae” in his let ter to Elector Fr ederick, 3 August 1524 (Franz, Müntzer Schriften, 241–319, esp. 303; Matheson, Collected Works, 253–323, esp. 304). Here, Müntzer also r efers to a cer tain “Unterricht” he had sent to the prince by Zeyss. Müntzer scholarship has regretted the loss of this document. It is the contribution of Hinrichs to have shown that the latter is none other than Müntzer’s letter to Zeyss of 25 July (Franz, Müntzer Schriften, 421–23; Matheson, Collected Works, 100–3). The significance of Hinr ichs’ work is to make clear that Müntzer was, as late as the letter of 3August, still hoping that the Ernestine princes might espouse covenantal reform, indeed as late as the night of his escape fro m Allstedt, 7/8 August 1524, and that even the enflamed, revolutionary Entblössung could be, during this cr itical transition, interpreted by Müntzer as a summons to a legal revolution with the prince on the side of the covenant, as was Josiah (2 Kings 22:3–24:24). 71  Fischer, Lutherische Pamphlete, 1–12. 70

136  the radical reformation

chapter 3.2

the Spirit could never have debated from the same platform. Both sides instinc­t ively shunned the proposed encounter.72 In his absence from Allstedt, Müntzer’s ally Simon Haferitz had preached on 31 July, appealing to the congregation for further enlistment in the covenant. On his return from Weimar, the burning question for Müntzer was whether he could any longer hope to lead a “ legal” reform and, specifically, in view of the constraints imposed by the Weimar authorities, whether he could mount the pulpit on 7 August and not disappoint the expectations of his fervid followers. It was a trial of power. Feeling unequal to the test and fearing further circumscription of his activities, he broke his Weimar promise and left Allstedt on the night of 7/8 August 1524 to escape the authority of Electoral Saxony. Besides the pacifistic sacramentarian Carlstadt and the belligerent priestly prophet of A llstedt, there was a third major spokesman of quite a different kind of S piritualism who likewise broke with Luther on social, ethical, and sacramental grounds. This was the evangelical Spiritualist and aristocratic Lutheran Reformer of S ilesia, Caspar Schwenckfeld. But his role in the Radical Reformation can be best recounted in connection with the Swiss-Saxon Eucharistic Controversy (Ch. 5.3). We first turn, however, to the Great Peasants’ War and the involvement of Carlstadt and Müntzer in it.

72  Hinrichs, Luther und Müntzer, 90, 97; a further proposal was made after Müntzer’s flight to Mühlhausen, ibid., 139, 142.

Chapter 4

The Great Peasants’ War 1524–1525

M odern Church historians

in the Lutheran and Reformed traditions, as a consequence of t heir concern for civil, social, and ecclesiastical order and obedience—a legacy from Luther and his resolute stand against the revolutionary appropriation by the peasant insurgents of his good news concerning Christian freedom—long burdened evangelical Anabaptism with the charge of having arisen out of a combination of heresy and sedition, while historians standing in the Anabaptist tradition itself, because of their confirmed pacifism and aversion to both Marxism and secularism, have been primarily concerned to dissociate, so far as possible, the peasant unrest from the (purified) Anabaptist witness. Both groups of C hristian historians for a while largely left it to Marxist and social historians without confessional predisposition or inclination, to vindicate the evangelical ideals of the rebellious peasants. Scholarly consensus now prevails that, as with all rootage, there were diverse soils. Historians within the orbit of liberation theology have not yet explored the sixteenth century under their theological parole, the preferential option for the poor.1 To work out a w ell-proportioned account of w hat was, in fact, the sixteenth-century interrelationship between the seditious peasant camps and secretive Anabaptist conventicles is still not easy for anyone dissatisfied with the older historiographical agendas. Clear is the fact that insofar as Anabaptism is understood as the espousal of believers’ baptism among Germans caught up in the Reformation yearnings, its first notable manifestation was in canton Zurich. Rebaptism began shortly after the outbreak of peasant unrest turned into the Great Peasants’ War in January 1525. The first recorded evangelical rebaptisms date from 1

 The decision to publish La Reforma Radical in Mexico City in 1983 w as possibly a venture resonating with the new concerns of the Medellín Conference of Latin American Bishops (CELAM) in 1968.

137

138  the radical reformation

chapter 4.1

late January 1525 (Ch. 6.1), although there were of course, sacramentarians and Spiritualists such as Müntzer and Carlstadt who, actively or passively involved in the uprising, were also concurrently opposed to the baptism of infants on the mere promise of g odparents to oversee their Christian nurture. But if none of the participants in the communal movement of the peasants and artisans during the war were anabaptists, it is significant that they anticipated Anabaptism in three notable respects. The peasants, marginalized artisans, petty burghers, and restless knights who banded together against the spiritual lords, both episcopal and abbatial, and against the violation of ancient local rights by the territorial princes (1) commonly called themselves covenanters (Bundesgenossen), (2) universally demanded the elimination of t ithes to absentee clerics, and (3) in wide sectors demanded the parochial or congregational election of t heir pastors. Of the Anabaptists whose military or evangelistic careers in the peasant uprising are adequately documented, there were enough to call forth an extensive scholarly literature presenting a genetic or comprehensive account of the relationship between the Peasants’ War and Anabaptism. Anabaptism would be in part the reaction to the failure of the evangelical socio-constitutional movement of the peasants. Balthasar Hubmaier, soon to become the first university-trained theological spokesman of adult, or believers’, baptism, who in the war espoused the cause of the peasants around Waldshut and later organized the refugee Anabaptists in Nicolsburg (Mikulov) in Moravia, was atypical in having to the end argued for the legitimacy of the sword in the hand of a C hristian magistrate, be it of h is Anabaptist patron in Moravia or of h is Catholic executioner in Vienna. Difficult though it is, by concentrating on the evangelical impulses in the peasants’ uprising and their antecedents, we may rough in the background against which several noteworthy Spiritualists and some five or six eventual Anabaptists may pass in review in the course of the Peasants’ War in 1524-1525/6.

1. Medieval Peasant Aspirations to 1517/20 In the perspective of t he centuries, we can distinguish four phases of central European peasant revolt: (1) the medieval phase of sporadic outbursts, 1291–1517; (2) the coalescence of t he Peasants’ Reform Movement (Gemeindereformation) with aspirations engendered by L uther and Zwingli (1517/20–1524/25); (3) the Great Peasants’ War, 1524–25/26, universalized and religiously undergirded by an appeal to evangelical freedom, with outcroppings at about the same time in Silesia (under the Bohemian crown),

chapter 4.1

the great peasants’ war  139

ducal Prussia, and Hungary; 2 and (4) a d ecade later, the Münsterite uprising and synchronous revolts in Amsterdam and elsewhere and, in Moravia, the concurrent sublimation of the refugee peasants’ yearning for evangelical social justice and Eigengemeinden in the Hutterite communes, 1533–1535. The present chapter is limited to the first three phases. Since the end of the Black Death (1369), there had been ferment and the turmoil of social readjustment among the German and Swiss peasants

2  In reaction to the school that linked genetically the Anabaptists with Müntzer (cf. n. 32), scholarship, under the dr iving vision of Canadian and American Mennonites, endeavored to locate the foyer of Anabaptists among the pacifistic Swiss Brethren. Further revisionist scholarship (e.g. Seebass) has in some cases indirectly rehabilitated the old emphasis.For an understanding of the issues in the ongoing historiographical revision, see Hans J. Hillerbrand, “The German Reformation and the Peasants’ War,” in The Social History of the Reformation, ed. L. P. Buck and J. W. Zophy (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1972), 106–36; and Rainer Wohlfeil, ed. Reformation oder frühbürgerliche Revolution? (Munich: Nymphenburger Verlanghandlung, 1972). The most useful work on the war is Günther Franz, Der deutsche Bauernkrieg (Darmstadt, 1933; 2d ed., Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1975) and the festschr ift in his honor edited by Peter Blickle, Bauer, Reich, and Refor mation (Stuttgart: Ullmer, 1982). Recent scholarship was stimulated both b y the li vely dialogue between historians of the Ger man Democratic Republic and the F ederal Republic of Ger many and b y the celebration of the 450th anniversary of the Peasants’ War in 1975. The now classic Marxist interpretation was laid out in Adolf Laube, Max Steinmetz, and Günther Vögler, eds., Illustrierte Geschichte der deutschen frühbürgerlichen Revolution (Berlin/Cologne: Verlag das Eur opaische Buch/Pahl-Rugenstein, 1974). On the alr eady published reports of major confer ences held in commemoration of the Peasants’ War in 1974–75, see Ber nd Moeller, ed., Studien zum Bauer nkrieg (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1975); and Peter Blickle, ed., Revolte und Revolution in Europa, Historische Zeitschrift 4 (Munich, 1974); idem, Gemeindereformation: die Menschen des 16. Jahrhunderts auf dem Weg zum Heil (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1985). Special commemorative issues were published by several scholarly journals; see Heiko A. Oberman, special ed., Deutscher Bauernkrieg 1525, ZKG 86 no. 2 (1974): 147–316; Hans Ulrich-Wehler, ed., Der deutsche Bauernkrieg 1524–6 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Rupr echt, 1975); Janos Bak, ed., “The German Peasant War of 1525,” a special issue of The Journal of Peasant Studies 3, no. 1 (1975–76): 1–144; Max Steinmetz, ed., Der deutsche Bauernkrieg und Thomas Müntzer (Leipzig: Karl Marx Universität, 1976); Gerhard Brendler and Adolf Laube, eds., Der deutsche Bauernkrieg (Berlin, 1977); Bob Scr ibner and Gerhard Benecke, eds., The German Peasant War of 1525: New Perspectives (London: Allen & Unwin, 1979). Although there were no Anabaptists until after the end of the P easants’ War, this is per haps the place to mention r ecent sociological and economic studies of the Anabaptists: Ernst H. Correll, Das schweizerische Täufertum: Ein soziologisher Bericht (Tübingen, 1925); Paul Peachy, Die soziale Herkunft der Schweizer Täufer in der Reformationszeit (Karlsruhe: Schneider, 1954; Eng. tr., Herald Press); and Peter J. Klassen, The Economics of Anabaptism 1525–1560 (The Hague: Mouton, 1964); Hans-Dieter Plümper, Die Gütergemeinschaft bei den Täufern des 16. Jahrhunderts (Göttingen: Kümmerle, 1972); Claus-Peter Clasen, Anabaptism: A Social Histor y, 1525–1618 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Press, 1972); Richard van Dülmen, Reformation als Rev olution Soziale Bewegung und religiöer Radikalismus in der deutschen Reformation (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch, 1977); Claus-Peter Clasen, “The Anabaptists in South and Central Ger many, Switzerland and Austria: Their Names, Occupations, Places of Residence and Dates of Conversion: 1515–1618,” MQR (1988); and James M. Stayer, “Anabaptists and Future Anabaptists in the Peasants’ War,” MQR 62 (1988): 98–110. Of 3,617 Anabaptists tracked down by Clasen, 32 to 37 had careers as peasant rebels, while Stayer, benefiting from further sources, identified 61 Anabaptists (only 17 overlapping with Clasen’s list) with careers in the war.

140  the radical reformation

chapter 4.1 / 4.1.a

and bondmen (serfs) comparable to that of t he French and Flemish Jacquerie, the English Lollards, and the Bohemian Hussite Taborites. The spread of peasant unrest and uprisings, and their variation from region to region, can best be understood in the light of the regional differences in the structure of the rural economy and the socio-legal institutions within the loose patchwork of quasi-sovereign principalities presided over by the Holy Roman Emperor. These were a legacy from the different local developments in feudal times. In general, the unrest occurred in areas where the peasants had been prosperous and relatively free, but where a multitude of petty civil and ecclesiastical lords were attempting to extend and formalize their own jurisdiction at the expense of the peasants. a. In the Swiss Confederation The struggle of the Germanic peasants to preserve the old laws (altes Recht/ altes Herkommen) began in Switzerland. There the bailiffs and administrative officials of t he Hapsburgs had earlier tried to increase the exactions made on the peasants and to turn the difference to their own profit. Thus the original Confederation of t hree forest cantons through the Eternal Covenant (der Ewige Bund, 1291) was directed against this administrative exploitation, and not directly at the Hapsburg dynasts, although the uprising of the Alpine yeomanry soon developed into a struggle for Swiss independence from Austria and later Savoy. As “turning Swiss” was to become a mood and a movement, affecting the peasants and marginalized townsmen of the whole southwest quadrant of the Empire in the Reformation century, 3 the evolution of t he Swiss Confederation with civil oath and confederational covenant as a r esolute political entity separating itself from the Empire may be briefly sketched. The Eternal Covenant was renewed in 1315 after the successful battle at Margarten against Duke Leopold of Austria. In the course of the century the Confederation was enlarged by t he accession of L ucerne, Reichstadt Zürich, Glaurus, and Zug to constitute what came to be thought of as the Confederation of the old Eight Cantons (this is the later generic term for the original (Ort/Örter). The Confederates, bound together in a reaffirmation of the Eternal Covenant in which Solothurn and Fribourg now joined (cf. “eternal covenant” of Müntzer, Ch. 3.2), took as a political and military league the name of t he originally most important Ort/Canton, Schwyz, namely, die Schweiz (the Switzerland of a ll Eidgenossen). Schaffhausen and Stadt Basel would join only in 1501, Appenzell in 1513, Geneva not until 1526. Within the Confederation, without nobles or seigneurial rule, a distinction obtained between citizens of a full-member canton (Ort) 3  Thomas A. Brady, Turning Swiss: Cities and Empire , 1450–1550 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

chapter 4.1.a / 4.1.b

the great peasants’ war  141

and residents of a c ommon custody (gemeine Vogtei). Within this Swiss Confederation thus enlarged, of f orest and city cantons, of c antons and subordinate territories, the first expression of widespread popular unrest directed from the village communes (Gemeinden) against more than one lordship, that is, against burgher councils in general, and the council of Lucerne in particular, was that of t he Saubannerzug (Sow Banner Campaign) of 1 475 in connection with the Burgundian wars. Some 1,700 youths from the original three cantons and Zug marched under banners with either a boar (Eber; hence sow in the disparaging characterization) or a mace (Kolben, symbol of authority), rallied against the towns. Within fourteen days the rebels crushed and plundered sixteen towns and fortythree castles and threatened Geneva with a levy and its councilmen with penalties for their devious delays. In this conflict between forest cantons and the urban authorities, peace was achieved at Stans in Unterwalden by the hermit Brother (St.) Nicholas von der Flüe in the Agreement (Swiss German: Verkomnis) of 1481.4 A second major peasant uprising in Switzerland, the Swiss Peasants’ War of 1 513–15, was directed against local inequities in the cantons where the burghers of t he capitals were encroaching upon the rights of the peasants in the outlying dependent villages, for example, in Solothurn, Lucerne, and Bern. b. In Southwest Germany Elsewhere in the Empire, in the southwest quadrant bordering on the Swiss cantons from the bend in the Rhine at Basel, eastward into the princely archbishopric of S alzburg and throughout the county of t he Tyrol, the uprisings were directed against a steady consolidation of political authority. The piecemeal introduction of R oman law (the Code of Justinian) threatened the accustomed freedom of the small peasants, especially in the rural dependencies of the imperial cities and in the smaller episcopal territories. The situation of p easants and serfs was even more difficult where monasteries, with their often vast landed holdings, were directly dependent upon them for docile service and were at the same time their ministrants in their sacramental needs and were tightening economic control over them, heedless of the claims of Christian charity. The peasants combated the new trend by appealing as in Switzerland, often in Christian terms, to their traditional rights under Germanic “common” law (altes Recht/altes Herkommen), a combination of feudal agreements and old Ger-

4  Nicholas declared that “obedience is the greatest love that exists on earth or in heaven. Therefore, make sure that you obey one another.” Hans Conrad Peyer, Verfassungsgeschichte der alten Schweiz (Zurich: Schultheis, 1978), 40-41, quoted by Brady, Turning Swiss, 83.

142  the radical reformation

chapter 4.1.b

manic usages varying from place to place but characterized everywhere by a high regard for the rights as well as the duties of the common man.5 The most significant late medieval movement in favor of the old laws was that of “Poor Conrad” (der arme Konrad) in the duchy of Württemberg (most of L ower Swabia). “Poor Conrad” was the name given to peasant sodalities formed mainly of t he poor and disaffected, who attempted to forget their economic woes by fun and practical jokes.6 These groups were numerous and rather large, but without political significance until 1514, when Duke Ulrich of Württemberg attempted to increase his revenues by changing his system of weights. This aroused great antagonism among the peasants who, in Old Testament fashion, regarded any tampering with the weights as an abomination. A c ertain Peter Gais threw some of t he new weights into a r iver, in adaptation of t he medieval trial by ordeal, saying that if God approved them, they would float! Calling himself Poor Conrad, he demonstrated the iniquity of the new taxation in several localities and attracted a l arge number of f ollowers. The movement then assumed the character of an agrarian protest against the encroachment by the cities upon the communal rights of the villages.7 The essentially political and constitutional demands of the peasants in the “Poor Conrad” uprising anticipated one of the many currents in the Peasants’ War, which would be represented, for example, by the “Heilbronn Imperial Reform Plan” of May 1525. Some groups appealed, partly under Hussite influence, to divine law (göttliches Recht) and demanded a r eordering of s ociety on the basis of t he gospel (Evangelium) here preached. By the beginning of the sixteenth century such agitation for reform, under the parole of e ither divine law or common rights, had come to involve ever larger areas. For the first time the different localities were beginning to align themselves on the basis of common interest. Peasants in Carinthia and Württemberg, for their part, began to speak of divine law. Their slogan was taken over from a movement which had a l ong history among the German peasants. Unlike the other movements, which were largely conservative in nature and sought to protect or reassert old Germanic peasant rights, this new party envisaged a universal law, based on the will of God, i.e., on the Bible. As long as the peasants had been concerned with the old “common” law, their movement remained 5  Peter Bierbauer, “Das Göttliche Recht und die natur rechtliche Tradition,” Blickle, ed., Bauer, Reich und Reformation, 20–34. 6  For the origins of the term, see Adolf Laube, “Precursors of the Peasants’ War: ‘Bundschuh’ and ‘Armer Konrad’—Popular Movements at the Ev e of the Refor mation,” in Bak, ed., The German Peasant War, 49–53. 7  Franz, Der deutsche Bauernkrieg, 20ff. The impending war may indeed have been prompted in part by the desire of the more prosperous village leaders to gain control of the ag ricultural system and in this process to free the villages from tithes to nearby towns and to place the pastor and judge under community control. Cf. David Warren Sabean, Landbesitz und Gesellschaft am Vorabend des Bauernkriegs (Stuttgart: Fischer, 1972).

chapter 4.1.b

the great peasants’ war  143

fragmentary, since the laws, privileges, and abuses, far from being “common” were actually quite disparate and varied from territory to territory. But the struggle for divine, biblical law, not limited by territorial boundaries, could be pan-European. This more universalistic view was espoused only by a thoughtful, radical minority, consciously devoted to the spreading of the movement and to the planning of conspiracies. Combined religious and economic motives often spread antagonism both toward the Jews as money-lenders and later toward the bishops and abbots as exacting landowners who demanded old and new levies of a ll kinds. The symbol of t he movement was the peasant’s laced shoe, the Bundschuh (as opposed to the nobleman’s boot, Stiefel), and this came to be the term for the organization itself. Its program included recognition of the Emperor and the Pope (but of no intermediate authorities), the reduction of taxes, the elimination of some odd rents and exactions, in one organization (Alsace in 1493) the extermination of the Jews, the abolition of clerical pluralities, and (only in the 1493 platform) abolition of auricular confession, the limitation of the power of the ecclesiastical courts, the control of interest (not to exceed 5 percent), and a universal peace throughout Christendom. It was Joss Fritz who led the Bundschuh in 1493, 1502, and 1513, on both sides of t he Rhine above Hagenau. The most radical proposals of 1493, concerning the Jews and the confessional, were not embodied in the more systematic program set out in 1513. This new program contained a renewed promise of loyalty to the Emperor if he would accept the demands of the peasants, accompanied, however, by the threat of recourse to the virtually independent Swiss if he would not. A gradual shift of interest from the preservation of “common” law to the establishment of d ivine law, the evolution of t he Bundschuh from a rabble combining grievance and prejudice in 1493 to a responsible social movement with a balanced set of political demands in 1517, opened the peasant imagination to the new evangelical impulses coming from the reformers in Wittenberg and Zurich. Influenced by t he new ideas concerning ecclesiastical reform, the peasants now began to demand, in addition to the already current program of a return to feudal custom and the institution of biblical justice, the elimination of tithes and advowsons and in their place the free election and voluntary support of their pastors. In the fall of 1517 the peasants of the Bundschuh could imagine their demands sanctioned by Luther’s appeal to evangelical freedom and to the Bible. Yet this movement, gathering strength, may have been only atmospherically

144  the radical reformation

chapter 4.1.b / 4.2

influenced by the theological reformations resounding from Wittenberg and Zurich.8

2. The Coalescence of the Peasants’ Reform Movement (Gemeindereformation) with Aspirations Engendered by Luther and Zwingli (1517/20–1524/25) The years from 1520/23 to 1525 in the villages and cantons of U pper Germany and Switzerland in particular were not aimless Sturmjahre or the irresponsible Wildwuchs (Martin Brecht) alongside some orderly Magisterial Reformation. The religious fervor and expectations of equity for “the common man” expressed itself in sermonic exhortations, Bittschriften, Flugschriften, and articles which would within a few years be characterized by Luther as selfish, fleshly, and brutal. They were, however, in some sectors remarkably creative in reaching for new, responsible forms of the public and religious life of the peasants, their priests, and village selectmen. Luther himself, radical in his soteriology, was also radical in his ecclesiology, and, as in so many other instances, he early gave expression in print to thoughts he would later retrench. He dealt in 1523 with the reform of a Gemeinde (Leisnig in Saxony), the term by which he translated ekkle¯ sia in the New Testament. The German term referred at once to the parish (Pfarrgemeinde) and the civil commune.9 Luther had already in 1520 in The Address to the German Nobility resoundingly affirmed the priesthood of all believers (on the basis, among other texts, of 1 Pet. 2:9). Then more specifically in his response to the inquiry of t his small town engaged in a popular reform movement (1521–23), he generalized about the “divine right” (scriptural) of the Gemeinde to name the preacher over against the customary right of t he nobiliary patron or the town council, the bishop or the abbot (as in this instance), to elect, install, support, and remove a pastor and teacher, and to verify his credentials as preacher of the Gospel. This he set forth in “The Right and Power of a C hristian Congregation (Gemeine) or Community (Versammlung) to Judge all Teaching and to Call, Appoint, and Dismiss Teachers” (10 March 1523).10 Indeed, Luther observed, princes and town councils had taken upon themselves the right of calling their own court preachers and town preachers, largely unchallenged by bishops, because the bishops were initially mostly concerned with canonical control over parish pastors. It is, however, precisely the 8  C. A. Snyder, “Revolution and the Swiss Brethren: The Case of Michael Sattler,” CH 50 (1981): 276–87. 9  I am following here the discerning lead of Blickle, although I used the same major text of Luther in m y ‘‘‘Congregationalist’ Luther and the Fr ee Churches,” The Lutheran Quarterly, n.s. 28 (1967): 283–95. 10  WA 11, 4011–16; Works, ed. Henry Eyster J acobs and Adolph Spaeth (Philadelphia: Westminster Press [formerly Muhlenberg Press]), 4:75–85.

chapter 4.2

the great peasants’ war  145

office of preaching, Luther wrote, that is the more important to control because upon it all else depends, for Christ himself did not baptize ( John 4:2) and Paul indeed boasted that he was not sent to baptize, but to preach (1 Cor. 1:17), and hence the sacramentally and also canonically ordered pastoral ministry of the Pfarrer pastor under the bishop is of much less importance than that of the preaching ministry (Prediger praedicator) to the congregation, though the two functions may be performed by t he same cleric. In this Leisnig, the parish priest, who had been appointed by the abbatial patron, was dismissed and two evangelical preachers elected in his stead by the congregation. The order of worship was revised and steps were taken toward financial self-support. Luther affirmed the move, telling of how the mark of a Christian congregation, its banner or sure sign that Christ and his army have taken the field or are among them stationed, was “the preaching of the Gospel in its purity,” citing Isa. 55:10, “My word … shall not return unto me void.” The congregation’s authority to judge preaching and teaching, to appoint and dismiss the pastor and teacher was not based on human laws (custom, canon, or decree), but rather (the soul being eternal) on the eternal word alone. While the expounding of Christian truth would be normally left to bishops, councils, and theologians, Christ, Luther advised, may well take this right to choose from them and give it to all, as it is clear that it is the sheep who identify the true pastor’s voice ( John 10:27), “And my sheep hear my voice … and do not follow a stranger.” Pastors and teachers therefore should at all times be subject to hearers, for, citing 1 Thess. 5:21 about testing all things and holding fast to the good, Luther says that things must first be declared by teachers if they are to be tested by hearers, for Christians, unlike worldlings who command, in their mutuality are subject to each other, everyone the other’s judge (Matt. 20:26). Christian hearers not only have the power and right to judge, but they are also, he went on, under threat of forfeiting their favor with God if they do not do so. Luther cites here the warning about the false Christ, Matt. 24:4, “Take heed that no man deceive you” (adding Rom. 16; 1 Cor. 10; Gal. 3, 4, 5; Col. 2). Therefore, the congregation at Leisnig, and every true congregation (which is so because it has the Gospel), has the right and power, indeed bounden duty through baptism, to judge teaching, to identify the false prophet (preacher), and either to flee from him or to dismiss him. Luther contends further that since the Christian congregation must have a teacher and preacher who administers the word, Scripture must be followed and those found from among the congregation who have the potential for evangelical witness at the level of a special vocation may so serve, citing “Ye are as a royal priesthood” (1 Pet. 2:9). Anointed and in possession of the true Word, every Christian indeed has the obligation to confess, preach, and spread it in one of two ways: where there are no other true Christians, any Christian is bound to proclaim the good news

146  the radical reformation

chapter 4.2

(thus Stephen in Acts 6:8, 10; 7:2ff.; Philip in 8:5; and Apollos, 18:25, 26, 28); where, however, there are other Christians who have the same power and right, a p erson should not “thrust himself forward,” but should “let himself be called and drawn forth.” Luther attaches importance to a t ext soon to become very important among Anabaptists and other radicals (Ch. 11.4.b), the scriptural locus for Sitzerrecht (lex sedentium), 1 Cor. 14:30, “If anything be revealed to another that sitteth by, let the first hold his peace.” In other words, let the teacher be silent and a hearer arise to make an assessment. The layman may do this, Luther says, “Even without a call, because necessity knows no law,” observing further that if such is true for an individual Christian, how much more for an entire congregation. All scriptural texts dealing with the appointment of preachers and teachers (Titus 11:7; 1 Tim. 3:2, 10; Acts 6:2) assume congregational decision, and thus when the successors of the apostles fail to provide evangelical preachers, congregations must call a preacher “out of the congregation.” Luther’s counsel, whether widely read or not, had its counterpart in many towns and villages in the regions ripening toward revolt. There was a general breakup of the old manorial and ecclesiastical control over peasants and their plots, woods, and common pasture. Concurrently as peasants contested the older claims over them, but even more their loss of wonted rights and privileges, new encroachments were also being made by the feudatories, temporal and ecclesiastical. As the struggle intensified, a religious reform movement among the peasants with its own late medieval momentum was amplified by their understanding of the Gospel and of the Reformation in its name that was emanating from Wittenberg and Zurich. Their hopes were redoubled in a quickened sense of divine immediacy and divine sanction as they, by word of mouth and Flugschriften, received as compatible with their local aspirations, what Luther and Zwingli proclaimed in theological terms.11 Only in recent times has the intended reformation by peasants of the rural communes come to be recognized as, for the area affected, comparable to any major European social revolution.12 In this movement toward the autonomy of the village, of the Gemeinde (at once civil commune and parish), the Universal ecclesia with its liturgically seasonal reference to the communio sanctorum in time and in hope, was devolving into the self-contained local congregation-commune, coincident with the parish, co-terminous 11

 Heide Wunder, Die bäuerliche Gemeinde in Deutsc hland (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986). 12  See Blickle, Gemeindereformation, who follows, with his o wn distinctiveness, the earlier lead of Marxist histor ians for a r evolutionary reinterpretation of the peasant constitutional movement (and the w ar), as the Comm unal Revolution (Peasant Reformation), which in its turn made possib le the pr incely Reformation and hence the Pr otestantization of m uch of Germany, although, to be sure, largely to the nor th of the major theater s of the Peasants’ War. Blickle draws together as of the same impulse rural and urban reform, 1985.

chapter 4.2

the great peasants’ war  147

with the village itself. The parish church edifice became, with the election of its pastor, the spiritual and sacramental center, the villagers’ Eigenkirche (proprietary church). The locally chosen pastor and village selectmen (Dorfrichter or Bauernvorsteher) were becoming more responsive to their aspirations than the lord’s chief administrative officer (Vogt) and the local district officials (Amtmänner) who discharged their offices in the interest of ecclesiastical or seigneurial authority from outside. Some of the new peasant ideals were shaped in the creation of regional leagues for economic, political, and military protection, and represent the perpetuation into the era of t he Reformation of a m ajor social reformatory impulse from the late Middle Ages. Among the older goals of t he peasants in their constitutional reform had been freeing themselves from serfdom, from seigneurial and ecclesiastical (episcopal, monastic) obligations, the latter occasionally exercised concurrently with unfair sacramental and pastoral discipline (including ban and interdict). Increasingly the villages achieved the right of election of local selectmen. Here and there they achieved representation in the regional dietines, the Landtage. Ecclesiastical and constitutional communalization of village and church life and the extrication of t he local congregation—parish-village-community—from external temporal and ecclesiastical controls (like appointment) developed in tandem. The peasant reform movement was often linked with that of nearby towns, which in their own constitutions might be imperial or free cities, cathedral cities, or towns under lordly charters. The religio-institutional reform of the peasants was on the local level of the Gemeinde a threefold program (1) of having the pure gospel proclaimed and the pictures removed; (2) of appropriating the right to elect the parish pastor, to support him from tithes reordered under their own dispensing, and to withhold tithes if displeased with the pastoral or preaching service; and (3) of determining right (evangelical/godly) teaching and practice (the last meaning especially communion in both kinds). With communalization came an enhancement of t he sense of t he common good, of mutual neighborly concern. In this village-congregationalism became rooted a new sense of the complete propriety of the village magistrates electing and maintaining the village pastor and all his works, including the validation of his sermons as truly evangelical for the common life and the elimination of the old tension between sacerdotium and regnum (imperium) in the coalescence of the kingship, priesthood, and prophethood of all villagers as a people of God. Martin Luther had in his specific treatment of the rights of one gemeinde (1523) been perhaps as much a w itness to this indigenous German constitutional awakening as he was a prime mover although his advice could not be construed as full sanction for local religio-political autonomy. In

148  the radical reformation

chapter 4.2 / 4.3.a

his revolutionary reflection on authority from within the congregation, Luther had nevertheless set forth an ideal that was not only taken seriously by leaders in the peasants’ communal reform movement before the outbreak of armed conflict13 but would also, even after the Peasants’ War, be picked up by other followers, or would-be followers, for example, by Francis Lambert of Avignon in Hesse (Church Order, 1529), as well as by many Anabaptists.

3. The Great Peasants’ War, 1524–25: Hubmaier, Carlstadt, Sattler, Müntzer, Rinck, and Hut In February 1524 all the planets were to meet in the sign of P isces. A Tübingen mathematician had predicted this stellar configuration back in 1499, and prophesied that a general flood would engulf the earth.14 Many disagreed with him, since a n ew deluge would have violated the promise of God to Noah, but all agreed that some awesome evil impended. Prophetic slogans and pronouncements of v arious kinds, written for the most part in German, were widely read.15 Members of an Alsatian peasant band were presently to excuse their conduct on the ground that their war had long been predicted and was therefore willed by God. Thus the year 1524 opened with great excitement and foreboding. a. The Uprising in Stühlingen and Waldshut: The Role of Balthasar Hubmaier and the First Appearance of Michael Sattler Disturbances at Forchheim (Franconia) and Sankt Blasien (the Black Forest) on 23 and 30 May 1524 were more in the nature of raids on the monastery wine cellars than struggles for peasant rights. The war was set off on 23 June 1524, when the countess of LüpfenStühlingen tried to send some of her peasants off to gather snails while they were intent on taking in their hay. The uproar, beginning in the vicinity of Schaff hausen, spread by December through the Upper Rhine. The leader, Hans Müller,16 sought outside support and came upon a possibility in the politically ambitious town of W aldshut under Hapsburg suzerainty, on an important ford of the Rhine not far from Schaff hausen. This town, far from the center of Austrian power, was ripe for evangelical leadership in that it sought, small though it was, some basis for becoming 13  The extent to which writings of Luther were appropriated by different classes and regions is ever more a topic of quantitative sociological historiography. 14  Karl Schlottenloher, Zeittafel zur deutsc hen Geschichte (Munich, 1939), nos. 34472 and 34474. 15  Old proverb: “Wer im 1523 J ahr nicht stirbt [upr ising of the knights], 1524 nicht im Wasser verdirbt, und 1525 nicht wirder schlagen, der mag wohl von Wundern sagen.” Franz, Der deutsche Bauernkrieg, 148. 16  Ibid., 165.

chapter 4.3.a

the great peasants’ war  149

an imperial free city, or even freer still, like the neighboring Swiss cantons, and perhaps for covenanting into the Confederation (like Appenzell a g eneration before). Since the Zwinglian pastor of W aldshut, Dr. Balthasar Hubmaier, was soon destined to emerge as a major figure of the Radical Reformation, we may appropriately interrupt our narrative of the war to glance back at the life of the controversial pastor up to the entry of Waldshut into treaty with the insurgent peasants.17 Balthasar Hubmaier (1481–1528) of F riedberg (near Augsburg) had studied at the University of F reiburg, where John Eck, the opponent of Carlstadt and Luther at the Leipzig disputation, acquired powerful influence over him and encouraged him in his rapid progress in theology. Though a lack of funds had compelled him to accept a position as a teacher in Schaffhausen, he soon returned to the university and was ordained a priest. When Eck went to the University of Ingolstadt, Hubmaier followed and received the doctorate in theology, on the occasion of which Eck delivered the promotorial oration. Hubmaier was presently made co-rector of the university and, in recognition of his eloquence as a preacher, was made chaplain in the cathedral in nearby Regensburg. The populace of R egensburg was at the time involved in an antiSemitic uprising in which Hubmaier took an ignoble part. It ended in the expulsion of t he Jews and the tearing down of t heir synagogue, and the erection in its place of a Marian chapel which soon became the goal of locally lucrative pilgrimages. In connection with them there were coarse abuses which so distressed Hubmaier that he willingly accepted a c all as priest in Waldshut, where he preached his first sermon in the spring of 1521. In the course of the summer of 1522 he began to change, studying Luther’s writings. After preaching from the major Pauline epistles, Hubmaier visited Erasmus in Basel. When a n ew call from Regensburg reached him, he accepted. With freshened religious convictions, evident in his sermons, he was glad to be able to return to the still open position in Waldshut. He immediately engaged in correspondence with the Swiss reformers, discussing with Zwingli the problem of baptism.18 He involved himself in the Second Disputation in 1523 (Ch. 5.2.a) in Zurich, debating alongside Zwingli, and returned home to carry out, in his own Waldshut, reforms which they had only talked about in Zurich. He introduced the German service, abolished fasting regulations, and married. Here in Waldshut, far more than 17  His writings, edited by Gunnar Westin and Torsten Bergsten, Balthasar Hubmaier Schriften: Seine Stillung zu Refor mation und Täufertum (Kassel: Oncken, 1961), tr. William R. Estep, Jr., with some condensation, Balthasar Hubmaier, Anabaptist Theologian and Martyr (Valley Forge, Pa.: Judson, 1978). 18  He later wrote: “Then Zwingli ag reed with me that childr en should not be baptized before they are instructed in the faith,” Ein gesprech Balthasar Hubemörs von Fridberg Doctors auff Mayster Vlrich Zwinglens zu Zürich Täuffbüechlen (Nicolsburg, 1526), p. D. III.

150  the radical reformation

chapter 4.3.a

in Zurich, which was concerned to achieve the hegemony of t he whole religiously mixed Confederation of peasant republics and city-states, it was possible for Hubmaier to combine creatively the local quest for civic liberty and the widespread urge for renewal of the church. Thus it was that when the Great Peasants’ War began in nearby Stühlingen (14 miles to the northeast) and the peasants there rose against their lord and converged on Waldshut, they found the town not only evangelically reformed under Hubmaier, but also on the point of resisting by arms the attempts of the Hither Austrian administration to suppress his reformation. Hubmaier’s utterances in Zurich had undoubtedly disturbed the Austrian government, which was painfully watching the swift progress of the great theological revolt. In the spirit of Zwingli, Hubmaier had delivered his eighteen Schlussreden concerning the Christian life in the hope of winning over the clergy of Waldshut, the citizenry being already on his side. The Catholic party in and about Waldshut in sharply worded letters had demanded the removal of Hubmaier. The Austrian authorities were now insisting that he be turned over to the bishop of Constance, but his Waldshut parishioners protected him. The peasants of Stühlingen, striving to regain their old rights, and the evangelical townspeople of Waldshut, supporting their popular preacher, were differently motivated, but the common foe was the Austrian archduke. Toward the end of July 1524, a force of 550 armed peasants visited Waldshut, and in the middle of August returned to make a treaty with the town for mutual help and protection. The Austrian authorities were not able to act decisively at first. To protect his reform, Hubmaier decided to seek temporary shelter in Swiss Schaff hausen, where he had in student days been a teacher. He left Waldshut on 1 September 1524. Secure in their treaty with the town, the peasants moved out from Waldshut in full armor to the parley with the lords. The situation for the latter was difficult. They were tired of negotiating, but had no resources to take action. Several important Austrian officials were invited to Radolfzell on 3 September to deal with the situation: Count Rudolf of Sulz, the vicegerent for Upper Alsace, the representatives of Stuttgart, and even the president of the imperial regiment in Esslingen, Seneschal George Truchsess of Waldburg. At this council of nobles and officials it was decided to arm against the Swabian peasants, and to raise twelve thousand foot and six hundred horse. But neither the local nobility nor the Austrian government had the money, and the resolutions remained on paper. Count Rudolf, urged to seek a peaceable solution, on 10 September undertook to work out a compromise between Count Sigmund of Stühlingen and his peasants. Agreement was reached on essential points, but the peasants, with their quite moderate demands, refused to surrender their battle standard and to implore forgiveness in the open field. The dealings were temporarily

chapter 4.3.a

the great peasants’ war  151

broken off. Thereupon Zurich sent 170 volunteers to aid Waldshut and its peasant allies. As Austria did not choose to involve itself against the Swiss, it took no action against the town. Tension continued to grow toward the end of 1524. For eight weeks in the winter of 1 524–1525, Thomas Müntzer was in the neighborhood of Waldshut, in Griessen, capital of the county of Stühlingen, and in the Hegau. His preaching does not seem to have been very successful in arousing the peasants, whom he sought to recruit in support of the Thuringian phase of the war. They refused to go there except as mercenaries (and this Müntzer could not arrange). His ideas impressed Hubmaier, whom he does not, however, seem to have met in person. It was at about this time that Hubmaier returned from his temporary exile in Schaff hausen to resume his pastorate in Waldshut. In January he would be writing Oecolampadius about some advanced ideas he was developing about delaying the baptism of infants (Ch. 6.4). Duke Ulrich19 of Württemberg, exiled for a murder of p assion, took advantage of Au strian weakness to further his own plans to recover his duchy. He had gathered a considerable army, and on 23 February 1525 he appeared before Stuttgart with 6,000 foot and 300 horse. It was the next day in distant Pavia on the Po that his patron Francis I of France was taken captive by the Emperor, by whom Ulrich had been deprived of his duchy. The Swiss recalled their mercenaries from Ulrich’s service, leaving him desolate. The Austrians, released by t heir victory over France, were free to deal with Ulrich; the forces which they had raised against Ulrich they could now turn against the allied peasant (February 1525) usurpers of the Black Forest and those between the Danube and Lake Constance as far east into Bavaria as the Lech. In the meantime, for the sake of luminous particularity, we reach back into the impact of the Reformation in the small imperial city of Memmingen, home of a r epresentative lay social activist, Sebastian Lotzer, author of the Twelve Articles that would succinctly embody the convergence of the vindication of o ld rights and the appeal to the divine justice in the vernacular Bible as the new universal nonviolent basis for the rectification of social wrongs. Sebastian Lotzer was born in Horb, 1490, 20 of a b urgher family. His university-trained father was himself a f urrier, a m ember of t he guild in 19  Born 1487, died 1550, duke 1498–1519, 1534–1550, Ulrich was driven out of his territory by the Swabian League in 1519 as a result of anger over his killing of Hans von Hutten, whom he charged with adultery with the duchess and o ver his attempted seizur e of the imper ial town of Reutlingen. Espousing Protestantism, he would later be restored to his patrimony by Philip of Hesse in 1534. 20  For a popular bio graphy, see Barbara Bettina Gerber , “Sebastian Lotzer: An Educated Layman in the Struggle for Divine Justice,” Profiles of Radical Reformers, ed. Hans Jürgen Goertz (Kitchner, Ont./Scottdale, Pa.: Herald, 1982), profile 5, with bibliography.

152  the radical reformation

chapter 4.3.a

Memmingen, married there to the daughter of a local shopkeeper. A member of S t. Martin’s parish under one Christopher Schappler, Lotzer had become increasingly involved in the controversy between his pastor and the pastor, Megerich, of the church of Our Lady. Amid the economic and social crises, Schappler took the side of the urban distressed. Lotzer launched an attack on the priestly life of p rivilege in general, but pointedly against a representative, the conservative parson of the church of Our Lady in the richer quarter of town. Lotzer, increasingly well versed in the German Bible and the new evangelical tracts, embodied his socio-evangelical views in his first published work, A Solitary Admonition to the Residents of Horb (his birthplace), wherein he measured current social conditions against the Gospel principle upholding this biblically literate layman as authoritarian as any priest. He had advanced his ideas in fellowship meetings in Memmingen apart from his own priest. He presently proposed that public dialogue concerning Scripture include Jews. For his fellow laymen he published A very salutary comforting Christian irrefutable book of refuge in 31 articles (1523). His pastor Schappler was in February 1524 placed under ecclesiastical ban by his bishop in Augsburg, and Lotzer in support of him dedicated his Exposition of Matthew 1 to him. His disciplined pastor had introduced, on 7 December 1524, a simplified baptism in his church and the distribution of the chalice to the laity at the liturgy without serious opposition from the city council. A five-day disputation had ensued between the two pastors of Memmingen that would soon clear the way for the magisterial establishment of the Reformation. After a turbulent church service in pastor Megerich’s now restive parish, Lotzer, the lay reformer, published at Christmas his Justification of the Godly Christian Commune [actually the two parishes/ congregations] in Memmingen and of its bishop and true messenger of the Lord, Christopher Schappler the preacher, in which Lotzer defended the authority of the town council as a Christian magistracy which, however, should not act contrary to Scripture, as in the case of the worsted pastor of Our Lady, Megerich. Lotzer even considered the apostolic community of goods as a way to implement the preferential biblical option for the poor. To such a p oint had the small imperial city come when the Peasant uprising reached its gates. On 11 February 1525 the peasant commander of the Baltringen company, Ulrich Schmidt, entered the city, whose council had already met the grievances of its dependent villagers on the basis of the divine law, and asked for Lotzer as military secretary (Feldschreiber). It was in this capacity that, with the cooperation of his pastor Schappler, Lotzer wrote his book, The Fundamental and Chief Articles of All the Peasants and Subjects of Spiritual Authorities by what they believe themselves to be oppressed (Dye Gründtlichen und rechten haupt Artickl aller Bauerschafft und Hyndersessen).

chapter 4.3.a

the great peasants’ war  153

On 12 March 1525, the demands were published, soon to be hailed as the Twelve Articles.21 The demands, in summarized form below, preserved the concept of the medieval corpus christianum, not fractured into the spiritual and the secular, as with Luther, the whole of life in parish and village being united under a radicalized conception of the fusing of the ministerial orders in one community: Every congregation should have the right to elect and to dismiss its own pastor (article i), and tithing for the support of the clergy should be limited to the “great tithes” (grain and produce), while the “small tithes” (livestock and dairy products) should be allowed to lapse (ii). Serfdom should be abrogated (iii), because Jesus Christ has redeemed or freed all men. Thus all men, not only the lords, have the right to hunt and fish (iv), and to gather wood from the common forest (v). Services are not to be exacted above what God’s Word permits (vi), or what is customary (vii), and must be in proportion to the value of the land held (viii). Punishments must not exceed those provided by t he customary law, whatever the provision of t he Roman law might have been (ix). Meadow and field which have been common must be returned (x). The lords should not exact the customary death toll, depriving widows and orphans of their livelihood (xi). A final provision states that if any article can be shown to be contrary to the Word of God, it will be withdrawn (xii).22 Although much in the Articles could be found in Luther, he himself in a manifesto would attack its unidentified author as a rebellious prophet. The Twelve Articles represented the essence of the many local articles of grievances in Upper Swabia. They constitute an important religious 21  For a detailed account of Lotzer as r eligiously influenced by Luther and for his r ole in the Peasants’ War, especially in his drafting of the Twelve Articles, see Mar tin Brecht, “Der theologische Hintergrund der Zwölf Artikel der Bauer nschaft in Schw aben von 1525,” in Oberman, Bauernkrieg, 174ff. Lowell H. Zuck g ives the Articles in translation in Christianity and Revolution: Radical Testimonies 1520–1650 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1975), doc. 1, 13–16; German text in Helmar J unghans, ed., Die Reformation in Augenzeugenberichten (Munich: Taschenbuch Verlag, 1988), 288–93. For the complex histor y of the Twelve Articles, with sources in the Upper Rhine (Basel) and Freiburg, and the three stages of their publication in Memmingen (with diagram), see Peter Blickle, “Nochmals zur Entstehung der Zwölf Artikel im Bauernkrieg,” in Blickle, ed., Bauer, Reich und Reformation, 286–308. The complexity of the composition is not reflected in my account above. Hubmaier was long considered the author of theTwelve Articles. It is likely that he had his hand in some less prominent peasant programs, but no longer is it credible that he was an author or even co-author of the Twelve Articles. See Gottfr ied Seebass, Artikelbrief, Bundesordnung und Verfassungsentwurf: Studien zu drei centr alen Dokumenten des süd west deutschen Bauernkrieges (Heidelberg: 1988). 22  Franz, Der deutsche Bauernkrieg, 197–99.

154  the radical reformation

chapter 4.3.a

testimony of the popular understanding of Luther’s gospel as well as a document of the widespread social protest. It was precisely the evangelical claim which gave the Twelve Articles universality. This was in contrast to the locally oriented articles of the Stühlingen peasants, which lacked evangelical purport.23 Then in Memmingen in southeastern Swabia, on the night of 6 March the leaders of the three peasant armies met in a peasant parliament in the hall of the shopkeepers’ guild to draw up a constitution. A Christian Union (Christliche Vereinigung) was formed by t he peasant bands of t he Allgäu, Lake Constance, and Baltringen, promulgated on 7 M arch 1525 on the basis of the Twelve Articles. 24 Lotzer’s proposal for centralization of power and taxation failed of acceptance, and against his personal conviction the more violent put through an article concerning the destruction of c astles in reprisal or self defense. Bound by a n ew constitution, the leaders notified the Austrian-sponsored Swabian League of t owns of t heir action. Their demands had said that they had no intention of r esorting to force. Under George Knopf, in the Allgäu, violence did break out, however. The first castle was burned 26 March 1525. The seneschal, George Truchsess of Waldburg, struck back, annihilating the Baltringen band of peasants at Leipheim near Ulm (4 April). The Leipheim reformer Hans Jacob Wehe and five peasants were executed, and the towns of Leipheim and Günzberg were plundered by soldiers of the Swabian League. Alarmed and angered, the peasants assembled twelve thousand men. Seneschal George moved up with seven thousand troops, but hesitated to make a further attack. Because their demands were, after all, moderate, he signed the Weingarten treaty on Easter Monday, 17 April 1525, granting several of their points in return for their surrender and disbandment. The Swabian League demanded of the town council of Memmingen that it arrest Lotzer. The last trace of him is the record of h is meeting in St. Gall with Pastor Schappler who barely escaped from Memmingen in June. By the treaty of Weingarten the imperial seneschal gained freedom of action to deal with the other rebellious peasant groups, whose mood was fiercer and whose demands were more extensive than in the case of t he Swabians. Such conflict was continuing to the west of t he Breisgau near Freiburg. Michael Sattler, later to be a spokesman for the Swiss Anabaptists (Ch. 8.1), may well have been in the Benedictine monastery, St. Peter’s of 23  The source of legitimation in the Stühlingen Articles refers back to the medieval understanding of Godly and natural righteousness (die göttliche, naturliche Billichkeit); the divine imperative for the propagation of the Word of God is not invoked, unlike in most other documents of the Peasants’War. For the Stühlingen Articles, see Werner Lenk, ed., Dokumente aus dem deutschen Bauernkrieg (Leipzig: Reclam, 1974), 45–74. I am thankful to R. Hsia Po-chia for pointing out this difference. 24  Peter Blickle, Die Revolution von 1525 (Munich/Vienna: Oldenbourg, 1983), 152–64.

chapter 4.3.a / 4.3.b

the great peasants’ war  155

the Black Forest, when it was taken by peasant troops under Hans Müller. 25 Resentment had existed throughout the region for several years over questions of taxation and jurisdiction between the Austrian Hapsburgs and the upholders of local rights.26 With the onset of t he peasant rebellion in the region, these issues emerged with fresh vigor in the name of the gospel and free evangelical preaching among the now well organized and evangelically instructed Black Forest band (troop). Included in Müller’s troops were reinforcements from the towns of Waldshut, of Stühlingen, and of Hallau further to the south in Swiss territory, many of whom had presumably been only recently rebaptized into the radical evangelical faith by William Reublin and Balthasar Hubmaier. b. The Franconian Theater of the War: Carlstadt at Rothenburg The hearths of the rest of the flaming rebellion outside Upper Swabia were Rothenburg, where the war had broken out during March 1524, whence it spread through the rest of F ranconia, and Mühlhausen, where Henry Pfeiffer’s radical socio-religious reforms had begun in August 1524 and then suddenly erupted in violence which swept through the whole of Thuringia in the last two weeks of April 1525. Another theater was Alsace. Several major spokesmen of emergent Anabaptism were closely identified with these uprisings. In Franconia, the peasants, together with the allied towns, generated proposals which were more radical than those in Upper Swabia, including one for the reorganization of t he Empire with a p easants’ parliament or fourth estate (as in Sweden), complementary to the Reichstag of three estates. The Franconian peasant army was characterized by a sort of Ironsides piety and sobriety, and was given considerable military discipline by three men drawn from the knighthood—Florian Geyer, Wendel Hipler, and Götz of Berlichingen—who undertook the leadership of what had started out as a motley and disorganized force. Hipler had been formerly chancellor to the house of Hohenlohe and friend of the knight Götz (around whom Goethe would later compose his play).27 Götz led the peasants in their march from Gundelsheim northeast to Würzburg and back toward Heilbronn, deserting them in the end. Alone among the prominent figures, the knightly 25  I am guided b y C. Arnold Snyder, “Revolution and the Swiss Br ethren: The Case of Michael Sattler,” CH 50 (1981): 276–87. It is the view of Snyder that Michael Sattler as prior of St. Peter’s had come under the influence of the abbatial humanist Benedictine reformer of Spondheim, John Trithemuis (d. 1516), author of the Catalogue of illustrious men, and that he identified with the Anabaptists 21 May 1526 (following H.W. Meihuizen). 26  This is an aspect of the larger pr oblem of taxation, jurisdiction and le vels of politi cal legitimacy throughout the region. See Heinz Angermeier, ed., et al., “Reichsreform und Reformation in der deutschen Geschichte ,” in Säkulare Aspekte der Refor mationszeit (Munich/ Vienna: Oldenbourg, 1983), 1–26. 27  Götz’s autobiography was re-edited by H. S. M. Stuart (London: Duckworth, 1956).

156  the radical reformation

chapter 4.3.b

Florian Geyer stands out as a consecrated leader. Well educated, moderately wealthy, he did not join the peasants’ movement for opportunistic reasons but rather out of a n inner conviction as to the need for reform and the legitimacy of their demands. An account of the Franconian warfare may, for our purpose, begin with the entry of Carlstadt into the diminutive imperial city of Rothenburg on the Tauber. Carlstadt, from whom we took leave (Ch. 3.1) as he was turning down the covenantal overture from Müntzer in Allstedt (Ch. 3.2) well before the war, was an exile from Saxony and by chance found himself at Rothenburg at the outbreak of fighting. To be sure, there was reason for his stopping at Rothenburg en route to Basel. The insurgent peasants had prevented him from entering his native Karlstadt (to the northwest) presumably to seek out his widowed mother. The Lutheran preacher in Rothenburg, Johann Teschlin, after passing through a bitterly anti-Semitic phase, had already developed a lay Christian puritanism very much like Carlstadt’s own from Orlamünde. Accompanied by a crowd of followers, Carlstadt entered Rothenburg toward the end of 1524. However, because of his radicalism on the sacrament of the altar, and because of his having already been driven from Saxony under pressure from Luther, the Rothenburg town council, composed of patricians, drove him out also by edict on 27 January 1525. Shortly thereafter he returned to take part, though somewhat incidentally, in the peasant uprising of which the city was to be a center. During the fifteenth century Rothenberg had gone through periods of conflict in which gradually the artisans and also the peasants domiciled within its walls had gained some rights against the grudging patrician council. Before this, the patricians had reserved for themselves the right of citizenship. Although the Rothenburg peasants were enfranchised as burghers, they still resented the patricians, and under pressure from the peasants outside the walls presently cast their lot with the insurgents. The second phase in this second major theater of the war began, without anyone’s realizing it, 21 March 1525, when thirty peasants belonging to the militia of t he dependent village of Ohrenbach entered the gates of Rothenburg, accompanied by pipes and drums, to make clear their grievances against the town council. When the council turned them down, they left in indignation. The other dependent villages recruited their armed strength, and the situation became immediately dangerous. The margrave, Casimir of Brandenburg, whose territory completely surrounded Rothenburg, offered his help, but all denizens were well aware that this could mean the crushing of their civil liberties by one who had long regarded the civic enclave as a t horn in his flesh. When, however, the council was about to secure the assent of the artisans in their guilds for support of what was, from the plebeian point of view, a reactionary policy, one Stephen of Menzingen

chapter 4.3.b

the great peasants’ war  157

arose and demanded that the artisans take counsel separately among themselves and pursue a policy more advantageous to themselves and also to the aggrieved peasants. Menzingen was himself a knight, who had once served under the margrave and had more recently become a bitter foe both of the margrave and of t he town councilors. 28 Without deep religious or social convictions of his own, he had put himself at the head of the restive citizens of the town and moved rapidly toward gaining their support for the peasant uprising, in which he could see advantages for himself. Through his efforts a committee of safety was organized, which despite him was permeated by e vangelical convictions. It stood partly under the influence of the sacramentarian preaching of Carlstadt. The more provocative actions of S tephen were at once mitigated or restrained by t he former burgomaster Ehrenfried Kumpf, respected by plebeians and patricians alike, who was able to argue with his fellow townsmen for moderation, and with the patricians in the council for significant concessions to the peasants in the dependent villages before it would be too late. Presently, Kumpf brought forward the preacher Carlstadt, whom the council had earlier driven from the town by edict, as an appropriate arbiter in the current civil strife. Carlstadt for his part was reluctant to get into the social turmoil and resolved to confine himself to preaching social justice and counseling evangelical moderation, no doubt because of his having been earlier implicated by Luther in the revolutionary schemes of Thomas Müntzer. Yet the whole tenor of h is earlier counsel by letter to Müntzer and the citizens of Allstedt in July 1524 had been to trust God rather than to enter into covenants against one’s enemies (citing 2 Chron. 13 and Ex. 14:9f.), looking to God to rectify immorality and social injustice. The committee did not elect him as arbiter in parleying with the peasants outside the walls.29 By Easter of 1525, the townsmen had moved vigorously against the remnants of the Old Believers and their clerics in the small town. On the Saturday before Easter, 15 April, a blind monk, completely under the influence of Carlstadt, arose to declare that the sacrament of the altar was nothing more than a superstition and heresy. On 17 April, Carlstadt himself mounted the pulpit of t he parish church and preached against both the Catholic and Lutheran views of t he sacrament, and with this unwitting 28  Stephen had refused to pay feudal dues on the castle which he occupied, on Rothenburg territory. 29  The letter is translated in P ater, Karlstadt, 284–86. Note the exchange , translated here, between Luther and Carlstadt over civil violence in August 1524 at the Inn of the Black Bear (Ch. 3.1). In July 1524 Carlstadt “and the People of Orlamünde” (letter 6) had refused Müntzer’s plea, based upon 2 Kings 23:3, to covenant together in political resistance, interpreting the text differently and citing over against it Eph. 6:13–17 on the whole armor of God and the sole use of the sword of the Spirit.

158  the radical reformation

chapter 4.3.b

encouragement the same kind of iconoclasm which had broken out at Wittenberg in the absence of Luther now resounded in Rothenburg. By this time the peasant uprising on Rothenburg territory had fully coalesced with the larger Frankish uprising, and the situation was so desperate that the town council seemed on the point of accepting the help of the otherwise feared margrave. Thereupon it was possible for Stephen of Menzingen to make clear to the artisans and local peasants that the liberties of the townspeople were about to be curtailed, and he urged them to accede to the ever-mounting demands of the enraged Franconian peasants and specifically to join in “the brotherly covenant,” with a definite military target, namely, the stronghold of t he bishop of W ürzburg. The townspeople were not unaware of t he hazards of b eing allied with the peasant bands, for surely it would not be the most evangelical among them who would make the deepest forays into the stores of w ine in the small town. It was the forthright and strong appeal of F lorian Geyer in St. James that finally brought the Rothenburgers around to the support of t he alliance. The old burgomaster Kumpf went along with the military alliance in the hope that the peasant movement would be a means of spreading the gospel throughout the Empire. On 12 May 1525 the Rothenburgers followed the towns of Heilbronn, Wimpfen, and Dinkelsbühl in swearing allegiance to the peasant covenant by the solemn laying on of hands. Despite his reluctance to become involved in civil disorder, Carlstadt, who had undoubtedly heard the appeal of F lorian Geyer, felt that it was now his duty to go out with the belligerent citizens of Rothenburg and to join the peasants as their chaplain, in order to keep the whole movement for social righteousness within bounds. No sooner was Carlstadt out of the city than he experienced the violence of t he very peasants toward whom he had shown his sympathy. The rumor had preceded him that for all his effort to identify himself with the cause of the peasants around Orlamünde and now in and around Rothenburg, he was no farmer but a u niversityeducated scholar. Had it not been for the swift interception of the blow by a young councilor who, with Kumpf, belonged to the military commission, a mercenary serving in the peasant Haufe would have succeeded in stabbing Carlstadt after a moment’s rough interchange with him outside the town gates. In a letter to the peasants in their encampment, Carlstadt recalled the example of A ssyria and Moab and other peoples used by t he Lord as the rod of his anger against his holy people. He reminded the peasants that though they were instruments of God’s wrath, they too could in turn be punished because of their excesses. 30 This letter roused the peasants against

30

 See below, Ch. 5 nn. 51–52.

chapter 4.3.b

the great peasants’ war  159

him. It proved to be almost impossible for Carlstadt to get any further hearing for his prophetically critical views of social justice. Dejected and dismayed, he returned 16 May, and was scarcely readmitted at the gates of Rothenburg. Had it not been for the intervention this time of Menzingen, he would have been hanged by the very people who had once rallied to his sermons. On 18 May his opponents, the patricians in the council with a preference for Catholicism and the peasants and artisans who had never really understood what he was talking about in respect to the sacrament of the altar, insisted that the foreigner leave the town at once, and that Rothenburg be supplied with “true Christian preachers who preach and teach the holy gospel and God’s word with forthrightness and clarity without any finespun glosses or human additions.”31 On the surface this looks like an evangelical appeal against a c ompromiser, but actually behind these tags taken from the new evangelical and biblical terminology was a sacramental conception more conservative than Carlstadt’s. For one of the other requirements of t he same spokesman for the council and the peasants was that people should be enabled to receive the bread and the wine at least once a year, in order that “all Christian faithful men, according to the demand and requirement of our Lord Jesus Christ, receive under the form of bread and wine his blessed body and his rose-colored blood.” The artisans, who with seeming appreciation and enthusiasm, had heard Carlstadt preach about the sacrament as a sign pointing to the unique office of Christ on Calvary, had indeed not understood him at all. Carlstadt still persevered in his hope of m itigating the excesses of the peasant movement and joined the commission which represented Rothenburg at the meeting of the great Frankish Brüderschaft at Schweinfurt on 1 and 2 June 1525. There had been an earlier meeting at Heilbronn to discuss the formation of a unified peasant front to become organized as an estate of the imperial Diet, but the defeat at Zabern (17 May), which subdued the Alsatian sector, and especially the earlier defeat at Böblingen (12 May 1525) had momentarily caused the collapse of t his constructive constitutional effort. Carlstadt’s wife bravely accompanied him and endured with him the outrages that he had still to face in the midst of the peasants whom he as spiritual spokesman had sought to guide. The Schweinfurt “Diet” was a failure for want of adequate representation from different members of the alliance. 32 Concurrently, the peasants were being put down northwest of Rothenburg Königshofen (2 June) by the troops of Seneschal George of Waldburg. Over the whole region, fields, orchards, and villages were in flames. Terror reigned at Würzburg. Completely demoralized, the remnants of the peasant 31 32

 Barge, Andreas Bodenstein, 2:353.  Franz, Der deutsche Bauernkrieg, 332.

160  the radical reformation

chapter 4.3.b

army were defeated in battle southwest of Rothenburg near the village of Sulzdorf on 4 June. Florian Geyer perished with a group of peasants he was leading at Schwäbish-Hall, 9 July 1525. Carlstadt escaped in a basket let down over the wall of Rothenburg. Together with his family he was permitted by L uther, who interceded on his behalf with Elector John, to settle in the vicinity of W ittenberg upon offering a r ecantation and promise to remain silent. Here Carlstadt remained from June 1525, forced to live a penurious existence, and under surveillance, until his refusal to publish an attack upon Zwingli at Luther’s behest. While Carlstadt was becoming involved in the war at Rothenburg, his brother-in-law and former associate in Saxony, Dr. Gerard Westerburg, emerged in Frankfurt as the leader of both religious and social reform in giving assistance to the peasants who were seeking sympathy in the cities. 33 We have encountered Dr. Westerburg in several chapters of o ur narrative (last in Ch. 3.1, next in Ch. 5.4). The peasant movement in Rheingau, Mainz, and Frankfurt was constitutionally and religiously sound and momentarily successful. The peasants of the Rheingau, for example, allied with the knight Frederick of Greiffenklau and supported by Caspar Hedio (Ch. 10.2–3) as evangelist, met in the Wacherholde, and calling themselves Bundesgenossen, adopted the Rheingau articles, 23 April 1525. These renewed the rights contained in the ancient charters and legal dicta, for example, the Weistum of 1524. New, however, was the demand for congregational election of pastors, the closing of the locally oppressive monastery, and the elimination of all tithes and dues for which the peasants, townsmen, and knights were receiving no corresponding benefits. The representative of the princely archbishopric acceded to the demands without bloodshed. Similar success temporarily attended Westerburg’s efforts in Frankfurt. The Forty-two Frankfurt Articles of A pril 152534 were based on a b rief draft of e leven prepared a w eek earlier by s everal Christian brethren of Frankfurt led by Westerburg, and of its dependency Sachsenhausen. They included religious, political, and social demands and represented the desire of the artisans in the town and the gardeners of its suburbs to improve their economic and political status in a manner comparable to that itemized in the Twelve Articles of M emmingen. Of special interest was the demand of the Westerburg group that the pastors be elected conjointly by the parish and the town council, and that they be obliged by specific regulations to observe their vows of chastity or otherwise openly marry. Among the 33  Georg Eduard Steitz, Dr. Gerhard Westerburg, der Leiter des Bürgeraufstanden zur Frankfurt am Rhein im Jahr 1525, Archiv für Frankfurts Geschichte und Kunst (Frankfurt, 1872), 1–215. 34  Of the Frankfur t Articles, there are several versions which differ in the n umber of articles; see Flugschriften der Bauernkriegszeit (Berlin: Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR, 1975), 572.

chapter 4.3.b / 4.3.c

the great peasants’ war  161

articles was the demand that the judicial procedure should be democratized and that one of the two burgomasters be henceforth elected by the parish in order that the poor might be heeded in the running of civic affairs. 35 The 42 Articles were accepted by t he Frankfurt parish and council, 22 April 1525. They were, in effect, the occasion for the revival of t he reforming movement in Frankfurt, which had begun in 1522 but had been interrupted by the defeat of the imperial knights who had espoused Luther’s movement as of 1520. The Frankfurt grievances were the only set printed, and as a consequence would become the model for similar statements as far north as Münster and Osnabrück. The peasant-artisan revolt in and around Frankfurt took place in May. Swift destruction of the constitutional and religious gains of the peasants and the petty burghers in the lower valley of the Main from Frankfurt to Mainz was effected by the Swabian League and the ruthless George of Waldburg even against the restraining efforts of the electoral archbishop of Mainz (Cardinal Albert of Brandenburg) and his vicar, Bishop William of Strassburg. The latter, in whose city Hedio had by now settled as pastor, was somewhat sympathetic toward the peasants’ complaint against tithes without clerical service rendered. In vain did William seek to spare the Main and Rhine valley peasants from the harsh policy of the Swabian League. “Punishing the peasants” meant the repudiation of not only the most recent charters and treaties but also of the more venerable Genossenschaftsrechte alike of peasants, yeomen, and burghers. As for the course of the peasant uprising closer to Bishop William’s see, we shall have something further to say in connection with the peasant evangelist and consistent pacifist of Strassburg, Clement Ziegler (Ch. 10.2). As a result of the pressure of the leagued territorial lords, Westerburg was banished from Frankfurt, 17 May 1525, on the very day of the decisive Alsatian battle at Zabern and the defeat of the peasants’ cause there. Dr. Westerburg thereupon returned to his native Cologne (Ch. 12.4), but we shall see him next in connection with his doctrine of psychopannychism (Ch. 5.4) and as the baptized convert to Anabaptism in Münster (Ch. 13.2). c. Thuringia and Müntzer We turn away from Franconia and back in time to pick up the narrative of the war in the Thuringian sector, where the leading roles were played by Henry Pfeiffer and, toward the end, by Thomas Müntzer. The region between the Harz Mountains on the north and the Erzgebirge on the south, once settled by Lower Saxon and Rhenish colonists, had lured them in the High Middle Ages with the promise of personal freedom and free tenure. Thus here every effort to restrict personal liberty in terms of the Roman

35

 Franz, Der deutsch Bauernkrieg, 374ff.

162  the radical reformation

chapter 4.3.c

law and in encroachment on communal rights called forth bitter and determined opposition. When Thomas Müntzer escaped from Allstedt, 7/8 August 1524 (Ch. 3.2), to remove himself from the Saxon princes, nearby Mühlhausen had already been a y ear in social, political, and religious turmoil. The revolutionary reformer was Henry Pfeiffer, who had come to the town as pastor in February 1523. His goal had been a l arger representation of t he humble citizens and the guilds in the town council and the achievement of greater economic and social justice. 36 Social unrest heightened Thomas Müntzer’s eschatological expectations. The political situation there suited his new mood. 37 He at once set about having the revolutionary version of his Entblössung printed by J ohn Hut. 38 Because of h is greater fame as an antagonist of L uther and because of h is writings, Müntzer has come to overshadow Henry Pfeiffer in the Mühlhausen uprising and the ensuing Peasants’ War. The latter, lacking any other notable figure, has found in Thomas Müntzer its legendary hero or villain, depending upon the point of view. But Müntzer was active in the war at most for only three weeks. The Mühlhausen Chronicle 39 is clear as to the major role of Pfeiffer. Initially Müntzer failed, to his great disappointment, to win the people of Mühlhausen for his own apocalyptic strategy. Müntzer allied himself with Henry Pfeiffer for the realization of practical reform against the reactionary city council. The people came to accept him as an articulate leader because he spoke their inflammatory language, but Pfeiffer’s more practical aims were theirs. Müntzer tried to introduce his liturgy, which had been so popular in Allstedt, sending for his Mass books on August 15. Although almost succeeding in their reform efforts, the two prophets were within a month (19 September 1524) 40 driven temporarily from the town by a combination of surrounding princes, the town council, and significantly, also many peasants. 36

 The main study here is by Otto Merz, Thomas Müntzer und Heinrich Pfeiffer, 1523–1525: Ein Beitrag zur Gesc hichte des Bauer nkrieges in Thüringen. Only part 1 w as published: Müntzer und Pfeiffer bis zum Ausbruch des Bauer nkrieges (Göttingen, 1889). See also the mor e recent Marxist study, Manfred Bensing, Thomas Müntzer und der Thüringer Aufstand 1525 (Berlin: VEB Bibliographische Institut, 1966). 37  There is no e vidence that Müntzer w ent off with the conscious intention to join the Peasants’ War, or that he even realized there was a Peasants’ War until he arrived in Basel in the winter of 1524–1525. 38  Merz, Müntzer und Pfeiffer, 135. On Hut, see below, Ch. 4.2.d. 39  The relevant portions are reprinted in Otto Brandt, Thomas Müntzer, sein Leben und seine Schriften (Jena, 1933), 85ff. 40  Carl Hinrichs, Luther und Müntzer, 134; Paul Wappler, Die Täuferbewegung in Thüringen, von 1526–1584 (Jena, 1913); Austin P. Evans, An Episode in the Struggle for Religious Freedom:The Sectaries of Nuremberg, 1524–1528 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1924); and Gerald Strauss, Nuremberg in the Sixteenth Century (New York: Wiley, 1966). On the date, my source and Packull, Mysticism 199 n. 3 differ. He says 9 September.

chapter 4.3.c

the great peasants’ war  163

Müntzer by now regarded himself as biblical warrior-priest, signing his letters and otherwise referring to himself variously as “Thomas Müntzer with the sword of Gideon,” “servant of God against the godless,” “Thomas Müntzer with the hammer.” Müntzer and Pfeiffer, carrying a red cross and sword before them, led their followers to a p ublic house beyond Mühlhausen, where they signed their names to the eternal covenant or league. Among the signatories was John Hut of Bibra, later leader among the South German and Austrian Anabaptists (Ch. 7.4).41 During his flight from Mühlhausen Müntzer had printed in Nuremberg his Vindication and Refutation (Hochverursachte Schutzrede) 42 against “the Spiritless soft-living Flesh in Wittenberg,” “Dr. Liar,” “the Dragon,” “the Archheathen,” etc. Thus did he engage in violent rebuttal of Luther’s diatribe against him, Vom aufrührischen Geist. Undoubtedly begun, if not actually completed, while still in Allstedt, his fierce Vindication makes no reference to his new program for Mühlhausen. Breaking completely, however, with his Allstedt expectation that he might win some prince to his cause, Müntzer dedicates this tractate to Christ as Duke and King of kings and to the poor Christian Church,43 his Bride. This is one of t he most significant of h is writings. Herein the translation of concern for the impoverished in spirit (Prague Manifesto) to the poor in a frankly economic sense is completed. Yet ambiguity remains because suffering, including a transitional state of poverty, is still thought of as among the disciplines of redemption. From Nuremberg, leaving Pfeiffer behind, Müntzer went on to Griessen, where we have already glimpsed him in the neighborhood of Waldshut.44 While on flight from Mühlhausen, he preached the imminence of the Kingdom of God, sought support for the apocalyptic struggle, and dined with Oecolampadius in Basel (October/December 1524). During this same period a l etter (Ch. 5.2.b) was sent to Müntzer by t he Zurich patrician Conrad Grebel (September 1524), who had assumed the leadership of the radical and pacifistic Swiss Brethren and had recently read Müntzer’s On 41  Werner Packull, “Gottfried Seebass on Hans Hut,” MQR 49 (1975): 57–67. This is a discussion of what Packull calls “the most significant recent piece of scholarship concerned with early South German Anabaptism.” There is a copy of Seebass’s unpublished Habilitationsschrift, “Müntzers Erbe: Werk, Leben, und Theologie des Hans Hut” (Nuremberg: Erlangen, 1972) in Goshen College Library. For the league see Seebass apud Packull, idem, 58 n. 6. One thinks of der Ewige Bund of the martial Swiss Confederates (Ch. 4, at n. 2). 42  Translated by Hans J. Hillerbrand, MQR 38 (1964): 24–36, also by Matheson, Collected Works, 324-50; Franz, Müntzer Schriften, 321–43. See further, Ch. 6. 43  The dedication is to the poor Church (der armen christenhayt). In the context this means impoverished, according to Müntzer, by Luther’s “stealing of the Holy Scriptures” in his passing over their prophetic calls to social justice. 44  For perhaps eight weeks, according to Henry Bullinger. See Er nst Staehelin, Briefe und Akten zum Leben Oekolampads, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1927/1934), 1:330, 389–91, nos. 227, 278.

164  the radical reformation

chapter 4.3.c

Counterfeit Faith. The letter was addressed to him in Allstedt. It is unknown whether Müntzer actually received it. In the meantime, Pfeiffer returned to the environs of Mühlhausen, and by February 1525, Müntzer was back himself. This time the two revolution­ aries were more successful in their attack on the council and succeeded in replacing it with the so-called “Eternal Council” dominated by prosperous notables sympathetic to Luther’s Reformation, but under continuous pressures from the members of Müntzer’s covenant.45 Thomas Müntzer’s Aufruf an die Allstedter, at the end of April 1525, among the most famous of his writings, appealing for support from his former parishioners in Allstedt, reflects the exuberant violence of t his period. It surveys the glorious onset of saintly victory with uprisings everywhere in progress. “Let not the sword of the saints get cold,” is his message; 46 “Cast down the tower [of the godless] to the ground.” The peasants’ banners which Müntzer contrived were a white flag with a sword and a g reat white banner with a r ainbow symbolic of the new covenant, for Müntzer had come to see in the peasant revolt the end of the fifth monarchy prophesied in Daniel (2:44, combined with Rev. 20:4) and reprophesied in his own daring Sermon before the Princes in Allstedt. The millenarian uprising in Thuringia under Müntzer to the extent that he was in control was unique in nature. It differed significantly from the other uprisings with regard to organization and revolutionary justification. Like the bands in Upper Swabia, Franconia, or Alsace, it was regional but joined the peasants of numerous lordships. Many of its members were supporters of the Lutheran Reformation, driven into resistance by the persecution from Catholic overlords. Whereas most peasant armies were constituted from particular localities, such as the Balthringer Haufe in Upper Swabia and the Taubertal Haufe in Franconia, Müntzer’s followers were not based primarily on a town or region, but were drawn from all over Thuringia and Saxony. We draw attention to the difference in the vision of a v oluntary congregation of saints under Müntzer (who believe they are directly inspired by the Holy Spirit under their prophetic spokesman) and the other vision (of a restituted congregation based upon the natural community of the vil45  For a discussion of the membership of the “eternal council,” cf. Vögler, Thomas Müntzer, 231–37.The idea of an eschatological councilor synod crops up in the Radical Reformation and needs further investigation. It is discussed in Peter Kawerau, Melchior Hoffman (Haarlem: Bohm, 1954), “Das Konzil der Endzeit,” 85, 88. It was a combination of a new apostolic council of the New Jersualem and a new Pentecostal assembly of the upper room that was awaited. Melchior Hoffman envisaged two concilia. The first was to be composed of those who had left Rome but had not yet yielded themselves for Christ (the second of the three into which Babylon would be split, Rev. 16:19). The second was to take place three and one-half years after the first. See Rollin S. Armour, Anabaptist Baptism: A Representative Study (Scottdale, Pennsylvania: Herald Press, 1966), ch. 2, n. 77. 46  Franz, Münster Schriften, 454–56; Matheson, Collected Works, 140–42.

chapter 4.3.c / 4.3.d

the great peasants’ war  165

lage or the town) to reflect of the divergence of the biblical Spiritualism of Müntzer’s theology from the idea of the natural community measuring up to biblical justice, which is defended in the Twelve Articles of Lotzer for the Swabian peasants. Such natural communities, whether rural or of urban artisans, are seldom clearly distinguishable among the Haufen. Of all the Haufen in the Peasants’ War the uniquely voluntary and superregional spiritual gathering (Haufe) around Müntzer would most closely find its counterpart in the Anabaptist Bibliocracy of Münster (Ch. 13).47 In this tense situation, Landgrave Philip of Hesse quickly grasped the strategic problem and moved swiftly (14 May) against Müntzer’s main group of peasants concentrated at Frankenhausen. After an initial skirmish in which the peasants maintained the advantage, Philip offered them peace if they would surrender Müntzer. The peasants frittered away their initial advantage in discussing this dishonorable proposal. Philip’s main force arrived and his artillery took up positions to fire on them. Too late they decided to fight, encouraged by Müntzer’s appeals and the appearance of a rainbow over the Hessian troops. As soon as it became clear, however, that God was not protecting them, the peasants broke and fled, and were slaughtered like cattle. Müntzer himself was not captured in the battle but overtaken in concealment. Imprisoned in the dungeon of D uke Ernest of M ansfeld, Müntzer’s archenemy, the prophet was forced (the record says not by torture) to recant.48 On the 25 of M ay 1525, Müntzer and Pfeiffer were beheaded in Mühlhausen.49 Their bodies were exhibited on spears. The city itself was obliged to surrender territory to the surrounding princes and to pay indemnity for the destruction wrought by the armed bands which the Mühlhausen town council had been unable to check without outside assistance. d. Three Minor Participants in the Thuringian-Franconian Phase of the War Besides Hubmaier at Waldshut, Carlstadt at Rothenburg, Westerburg at Frankfurt, and Pfeiffer and Müntzer at Mühlhausen as leading spokesmen of the civic rights of the peasants, mention can be made of the “military” careers of only a handful of others who, after the defeat of the peasants, 47  For this insight, I am indebted to R. Hsia Po-chia. In his book, Schwärmer, Holl once claimed that the voluntary church, no less than the voluntary Haufe, had its origin in Müntzer’s Bund of the elect. 48  Translation of the Interrogation and Recantation in Matheson, Collected Works, 433–40, where it is noted that the document was in print by June and used for propaganda. 49  Böhmer and Kirn, Müntzers/Briefwechsel, 166–67, which is the sanction for the common assertion that Müntzer recanted and partook of Communion after the Catholic manner. But the reliability of this document has been challenged by Bensing, Müntzer und der Thüringer Aufstand, 229ff. See also Elliger, Thomas Müntzer.

166  the radical reformation

chapter 4.3.d

were to become identified with Anabaptism and who are therefore of importance for our narrative. Some further biographical specificity about three of these—John Hut, George Haug, and Melchior Rinck—helps us to see the connection between the evangelical social idealism of the peasant unrest and divergent forms of Anabaptism. While peddling his books between Wittenberg and Erfurt, John Hut of Bibra, bookbinder and presently to become the apostle of A nabaptism in Upper Austria, went in the spring of 1 525 to Frankenhausen, where Müntzer’s army was stationed, hoping to earn money by selling books and pamphlets. He had already come to know Müntzer, who on his flight from Mühlhausen had spent a n ight and a d ay in his house and had given him to be printed the already mentioned exposition of L uke 1, Die Entblössung. Hut was probably the “John from Bibra” who was one of t he charter members of Müntzer’s “eternal covenant” in Mühlhausen.50 He heard Müntzer at the acme of his prophetic career preaching against the lords and was deeply impressed. Müntzer echoed deep thoughts with which he had already become acquainted in John Denck (whom we shall meet in Ch. 7.1). Indeed, Hut had been driven from his hometown for refusing, under Denck’s influence, to have his child baptized. Not yet an Anabaptist, he was swayed by Müntzer’s prophetic proclamation of the imminence of the advent of Christ. When the peasants marched to battle against Landgrave Philip, he went up the hill with them, but because “the shooting was too thick,” hastened back to the town, where he was seized by Philip’s men. Fortunately, as a nonbelligerent, he was released. He may have witnessed the beheaded bodies of Müntzer and Pfeiffer exposed to view in Mühlhausen. He would later come to think of t hem as the two adventual witnesses of the Apocalypse (Rev. 11:3–13).51 He now returned to Bibra, where he had formerly been a sexton in the service of the two local knights. During the war, the peasants had burned down the local knight’s castle and had elected one George Haug, a peasant from nearby Jüchsen, preacher to the village there. Haug had written a devotional tract, The Beginning of the Christian Life (Anfang eines christlichen Lebens), in 1524. 52 Its motto was 1 Pet. 3:15, a text which would later become programmatic for the Anabaptists. But the basic text was Isa. 11:32–33, with its strong eschatological and Spiritualist overtones. Appealing to the Isaian sevenfold gift of the Spirit, as 50

 Vögler, Thomas Müntzer, 202.  The exegetical history and future ecclesial significance of this image and text is found in Rodney L. Petersen, “Preaching in the Last Days: The Use of the Theme of ‘Two Witnesses,’ as found in Revelation 11:3–13, with Particular Attention to the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries” (Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton Theological Seminary, 1985), 154–69. 52  Hut helped pr int this work (Nicolsburg: Sorg = Froschauer, 1526). The preface of the version as derived from Hutterite sources, which subdued the Müntzerite component, is printed by Müller (n. 53 below). 51

chapter 4.3.d

the great peasants’ war  167

Müntzer had done in his Prague Manifesto, Haug showed how a Christian life has to run through different stages of growth in order to arrive finally at the point of perfection where the mind becomes completely conformed to Christ. The gradual ascent to this goal is described by seven types of spirit, namely: the spirit of reverence, of w isdom, of u nderstanding, of counsel, of strength, of patience leading to the deeper knowledge, and of godliness (blessedness). Alluding to the Messianic passage, Isa. 11:1, “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots,” Haug goes on in poetic paraphrase of the two following verses to summarize his tract thus: To fear God from the heart is wisdom; to avoid evil is understanding: The understanding of divine love brings faithfulness (Glauben) and is good for them who do it. Not to let oneself be confused is counsel; To overcome self is might; And to judge all things and endure all is knowledge (Kunst); To become like Jesus Christ and of one mind with him is blessedness. In him (da) all rests and is the true Sabbath, which God demands of us and which [or, whom] the whole world opposes.53

Haug invited Hut to preach in Bibra on 31 May 1525. The former sexton and peddler preached on baptism, communion, idolatry, and the mass. Though the peasants had been crushed a fortnight before at Frankenhausen, Hut still felt that he was living in the last days before the fulfillment of the promises, and he rebuked the holders of benefices and all clerical beneficiaries of forced tithing for serving the gospel for the sake of their belly: “The Almighty God will punish them and all who oppose the truth; they will all perish in disgrace.” He continues: “The subjects should murder all the authorities, for the opportune time has arrived:

53  Müller, Glaubenszeugnisse (QGT 3), 10. Packull, Mysticism, says that this is inferior to the copy he obtained from Stadtbibliothek Augsburg, 200 n. 6. In the Hebrew text there are six gifts of the Spirit: (1) wisdom, (2) understanding, (3) counsel, (4) fortitude, (5) knowledge, (6) pietas, added in the Vulgate, and (7) fear of the Lor d. These appear in italics in a differ ent order and somewhat changed in emphasis: 7, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, pietas being here blessedness. “Kunst” here is similar to Gelassenheit. The tract is close to Ruysbroek and speaks of the abyss of the soul. Justus Menius, Lutheran adversary of the Anabaptists, reports that among those ar ound Denck, and perhaps more accurately around Hut, the seal of baptism signified the reception of the sevenfold gift of the Holy Spir it, reported by Seebass as r eported by Packull, “Seebass on Hut,” 61 n. 32.

168  the radical reformation

chapter 4.3.d / 4.3.e

the power is in their hands.”54 Such an utterance prompted the authorities to class Hut as a disciple of Müntzer. It is on the connection between Müntzer and Hut that Henry Bullinger and later historians would base their assertion that Müntzer was the father of the entire Anabaptist movement interpreted in the light of Mühlhausen and Münster. 55 After the complete rout of the peasants in June, Hut, because of h is Müntzerite pronouncements, was forced to flee to Augsburg, where he again encountered John Denck, himself recently banished from Nuremberg. He will accept rebaptism at Denck’s hands on 26 May 1526 (Ch. 7.4). It remains to mention Melchior Rinck, presently to become the leader of Anabaptism in Hesse.56 Educated at Leipzig and Erfurt, nicknamed “the Greek” in allusion to his mastery of the language, Rinck, after becoming a Lutheran pastor in Oberhausen (subsequently in Eckhardshausen) near Eisenach, also fell under the spell of Müntzer. He took part in the battle at Frankenhausen. After the collapse of the peasant’s uprising and the execution of its prophet, Rinck tried to continue Müntzer’s work by means of strong polemics against Luther’s doctrine of justification, the proper fruits of which, he thought, were scarcer the more closely one approached Wittenberg. We shall overtake him in the spring of 1 527, when, with John Denck, Louis Haetzer, and Jacob Kautz, he will sign the seven articles for the important disputation with the Lutherans in Worms (Ch. 7.3). e. The Tyrol  57 1525/26: Michael Gaismair In May 1525 the peasants in the Black Forest were able to force Freiburg to capitulate—the last success of the peasant forces in the main theaters

54  Christian Meyer, “Zur Geschichte der Wiedertäufer in Ober schwaben,” Zeitschrift des historischen Vereins für Schwaben und Neuberg 1 (1874): 207–56, esp. 241, with a complete publication of the court records at Augsburg; Herbert Klassen, “The Life and Teachings of Hans Hut,” MQR 33 (1959): 71ff., 267ff. Hut explained at his trial that he had once thought the war was a sign that the last times had come, but he admitted to having clearly erred and said that he knew better now. He explained that he had never been a full adherent of Müntzer because he “did not understand him.” 55  Heinrich Böhmer, “Thomas Müntzer und das jüngste Deutschland,” Gesammelte Aufsätze (Gotha, 1926), 221; Karl Holl,“Luther und die Schwärmer,” Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kirchengeschichte, vol. 1 (Tübingen, 1923), 1:423ff. In a ne w mode, the Holl theor y has received substantiation by, among others, Seebass and Packull, above, n. 41. 56  Wilhelm Wiswedel, “Rinck,” Bilder und Führergestalten aus dem Täufertum, 2 vols. (Kassel: Oncken, 1928–52), 2; see also Er ich Geldbach, “Toward a Mor e Ample Biography of the Hessian Anabaptist Leader Melchior Rinck,” MQR 48 (1974): 379f. 57  Josef Macek, Der Tiroler Bauern-Krieg und Michael Gaismair (in Czech, Prague: Ceskoslovenské Akademie Ved, 1960; Berlin: Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1965). See also the review article by Leandro Perini, “La guerra dei contadini nel Tirolo,” Studi Storici 7 (1966): 388–400, and mor e recently Jürgen Bücking, Michael Gaismair: Reformer-sozialrebullRevolutionär seine Rolle im Tiroler “Bauernkreig” (1525/32) (Stuttgart: Klatt-Cota, 1978); Walter Klaassen, Michael Gaismair: Revolutionary and Reformer (Leiden: Brill, 1978).

chapter 4.3.e

the great peasants’ war  169

of the war. But in the same month began in Tyrol the attempt of a p etty burgher in alliance with peasants, miners, and artisans to establish an Alpine workers’ commonwealth, in power comparable to the Swiss Confederation or the Rhaetian League but in constitution more radically egalitarian. On 9 May 1525 one Peter Passler, a r ural rebel perhaps unfairly condemned to death in Brixen (Bressanone), was rescued by a b and which thereafter constituted itself a new revolutionary organization. With the help of the town’s artisans, the insurgents occupied Brixen and sacked the convent of Neustift. They thereupon elected Michael Gaismair (c. 1490–1532) their commander. Born near Sterzing (Vipiteno), Gaismair had presumably studied at the episcopal school and became successively the amanuensis of the burggrave of the Tyrol (the castle whence the county received its name) and at once secretary and tax collector of the bishop of Brixen. Under the impress of Gaismair’s genial vision, insurgency spread south to Trent and north to Innsbruck. A series of s ixty-two articles was elaborated and presented to the county diet at Merano (Meran) 30 May-8 June 1525. These were in turn submitted for deliberation at the diet of I nnsbruck. Archduke Ferdinand, as count of Tyrol, entered into the debates. As a r esult of h is intervention the Merano articles were enlarged to ninety-six, and divisions erupted among the insurgents between the organized miners and propertied peasants on the one side and on the other the rural and urban day laborers and others without holdings. Ferdinand, while consenting to some, refused to countenance any of the articles respecting religious reform. Gaismair was imprisoned. To the limited concessions the more advantaged insurgents and especially those in north Tyrol agreed. But the poorer, especially in the South, including Italian-speaking peasants in the dioceses of B rixen and Trent, arose again in revolt (Ch. 21.3). In the Slovenian-speaking Hapsburg duchy of Carniola (Kronjsko) a few priests led peasants in sympathetic vibration with the German-speaking Tyrolese to rise up for reform in 1525 near Ljubljana.58 Gaismair escaped to Zurich and apparently held secret conversations with Zwingli in a common concern for a Reformed anti-Hapsburg Tyrol. Establishing himself thereafter in Prättigau for reflection, Gaismair worked from February into March 1526 on his revolutionary Landesordnung,59 going well beyond the Merano Articles. The sixth article on the abolition 58  Bogo Grafenauer et al., eds., Istorija naroda Juglslavije, 2 vols., parallel ser ies in Croatian and Serbian (Zagreb/Belgrade: Skolska Knjiga, 1953/59; 1953/60), 2, 362f. On the map of the Slovene-speaking area the presence of five Anabaptist centers is indicated, all to the north of the capital; and for the bibliography of Carniolan anabaptism, see p. 400. 59  Ed. A. Hollander, Schlern-Studien 12 (1932): 375–83; 425–29. It is translated in its thir teen articles as “A Plan of Reform,” in Lowell Zuck, Christianity and Revolution (Philadelphia: Temple University Press), 20–24, doc. 3.

170  the radical reformation

chapter 4.3.e

of pictures, statues, and non-parochial chapels suggests the influence of Zwingli. Animated more than ever by a Zwinglian spirit of charity and concern for social justice in a u nitary state, Gaismair demanded equality among men to the point of i nsisting in article five that all city walls be razed to equalize the rich burghers and the peasants (cf. the Swiss forest cantons and others in contrast to the city cantons and Prov. 18:11). Gaismair had a vision of a p easants’ and miners’ commonwealth with the nationalization of mines and commerce. With all his enthusiasm for equality he still left a place for the prince as head of state (cf. Müntzer); but lesser nobles and ecclesiastical princes and their domains were to be eliminated to make way for a workers’ republic on the crossroad of European trade. (It is of interest that the knightly physician Paracelsus, Ch. 8.4.b, at Innsbruck sided with the Tyrolese peasants.) After an unsuccessful attempt to rally the peasants of Tyrol and also Salzburg in his grand design, especially in the Pinzgau and the Puster valley, Gaismair withdrew to Venetian territory, seeking aid. He became a pensionary of t he Republic, resident in Padua. Until his assassination by two Spaniards a year after the death of Zwingli, Gaismair strove tirelessly for an anti-Hapsburg coalition of Venice, Rhaetia, Switzerland, and France to realize his Tyrolese utopia. Far away in Lutheranized Ducal Prussia (10 April 1525) there were uprisings of the wealthier peasants around Königsberg, a movement which had as its goal an egalitarian Christocracy not unlike the Tyrolese utopian blueprint under Gaismair. However, the poor Polish peasants of the same region were not drawn in.60 Finally, one may look to the palatinate of Transylvania in 1518 where Szekler George Dósza leader of thousands of Hungarians living communally under venerable nomad laws (Ch. 28.1), addressed the grand lords in an evangelically inspired sermon (given in Cegléd). His object was to obtain from them a promise to free the peasants from any new means of oppression. In return, the peasants would join the nobiliary forces against the Turks. The lords were so alarmed that they resolved to “drown” this movement “in blood.” In a battle in which eighty thousand men took part, they crushed Dósza’s followers and forced the surviving “evangelical” peasants to look at their leader crowned on a red-hot iron throne, and then, before the highest ecclesiastical and secular dignitaries, to eat parts of h is burnt flesh—a sinister prologue to the Battle of Mohács in 1526, and surely one of the factors which weakened the multilingual Apostolic Kingdom of Hungary as it prepared to meet its fate at that decisive battle, all to 60   Henryk Zins, Powstanie cłopskie w Prusach Ksiazecych w 1525 roku (Warsaw, 1953), with map. Heide Wunder, “Bauern und Refor mation im Herzo gtum Preussen,” Peter Blickle, ed., Bauer, Reich und Reformation, 235–51.

chapter 4.3.e / 4.4

the great peasants’ war  171

be interpreted by a later Calvinist leader (Peter Melius) in Transylvania as God’s wrath expended on Hungary for its mistreatment of the peasants.

4. Conclusion When the embers, quickened into a m omentary flame a s econd time in Salzburg, were put out in 1526, the great Peasants’ War had everywhere come to an end. The peasants had been everywhere crushed because they had no universally recognized leader and only an improvised organization, and had to make do with the evangelical counsel of a f ew prophetic clerics and the military skills of a few disaffected knights. The latter themselves belonged to a politically doomed class. As for the clerics, a word in extenuation. Carlstadt, who went out as chaplain from Rothenburg in league with Florian Geyer, and Müntzer, with his heraldic sign of a r ed cross and a naked sword, who was “a prophet in front of the army”61 at Frankenhausen and was beheaded, are commonly disparaged as heretics and Schwärmer. In contrast, military chaplain Ulrich Zwingli, who five years later will be drawn and quartered by the troops of the Catholic cantons on the battlefield of C appel in 1531, is usually regarded as a h ero and martyr of t he Magisterial Reformation. Yet it was not an entirely different conception of the social implication of a reformed Christianity that separated the sacramentarian chaplain of Zurich from the Spiritualist chaplains of AllstedtMühlhausen and Orlamünde-Rothenburg. We have glimpsed enough of t he military action of t he Great Peasants’ War; have characterized a sufficient number of its knightly, clerical, burgher, and peasant leaders; have overheard enough of t he intermingled economic, social, and evangelical aspirations of y eomen, serfs, artisans, miners, and petty burghers; and have inspected enough of t heir serious religio-constitutional program to conclude that we have indeed been witnessing the tragic unfolding of a civil war within the Empire, comparable to the upheaval in seventeenth-century England, where the same kind of religious, social, and constitutional factors would reshape the structure and character of English Christendom. But Germany’s civil war of the peasants was abortive. The two turmoiled years (1524–25) of t he Great Peasants’ War can also be compared as a civil war, except for its duration and magnitude, to the thirty years of the civil war of the dynasts (1618–48), in the unrealized but inherently significant constitutional potential of t he Reform of t he Communes. The more famous and longer war within the Empire, which would finally end by i ts conversion into a s onorous shell, would prove to be more conspicuous because it was fought out between the defend61

 Deut. 20:2 (Vulgate text); see his Sermon Before the Princes, SAW, 64.

172  the radical reformation

chapter 4.4

ers of the Magisterial Reformation and the devout dynasts on the other side, sustained by the zeal of the Counter-Reform and reinforced on both confessional sides by foreign allies. But it would be perhaps even much less religiously motivated than the earlier civil war of the classes which we have just surveyed. Had the Peasants’ War—peasants as mercenaries or recruits have, after all, predominated in all wars since the end of the feudal age— succeeded in achieving its originally moderate constitutional and religious goals, the second and even more savage and destructive Thirty Years’ War might never have come. For not only was the economic and political situation of the peasants and the artisans worsened by their war, but also their enthusiasm for the Lutheran reformation was destroyed. At first, Luther had tried to promote peace in his An Admonition to Peace: A Reply to the Twelve Articles of the Peasants in Swabia (19 April 1525) even while pillorying the peasants for their disporting themselves with temerity, and for their presumption fleshly, brutal, and selfish under the pretext of the Gospel and Christian Unity.62 Three weeks later as soon as he became convinced that the peasants, especially outside Upper Swabia, were endangering his own heroic program for the recovery of the gospel from papal secularization by i mplicating it “selfishly in peasant sedition,” he violently attacked them in Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants.63 Claiming Paul’s treatment in Gal. 2:4 of h is own “false brethren” as a guide, Luther was to characterize all later evangelical opponents as diverse as Ulrich Zwingli, John Agricola, and Caspar Schwenckfeld as animated by the same demonic spirit that possessed Carlstadt, the Zwickau Prophets, and Müntzer. Lutheranism after 1525 lost something of its character as a pan-German people’s movement.64 The peasants for the most part acquiesced sullenly in the arrangements for the emergent territorial churches. Some of t heir theologically trained spokesmen, however, calling Protestantism the new indulgence system of salvation sola fide,65 would in utter disillusionment lead many from the coagulating territorial (magisterial) Reformation into emergent Anabaptist movements, some of which from the start would eschew military and political action and seek to convert the constitutional energies expended futilely in the peasant uprisings now into the formation of self-disciplined conventicles separated from all the institutions of public magistracy. Their 62

 WA 18:291–334.  WA 18:357–61. 64  On Luther’s stereotyping of diverse opponents, see Edwards, Luther and the False Brethren. On the survival nevertheless of the popular character of Lutheranism after 1525, see Franz Lau, “Der Bauernkrieg und das angebliche Ende der lutherischen Reformation als Volksbewegung,” Luther-Jahrbuch 26 (1959): 109–34. 65  Melchior Hofmann’s final phase of reformatory efforts was particularly pointed her e; illustrated in Petersen, “Preaching in the Last Days,” 169–99. 63

chapter 4.4

the great peasants’ war  173

hopes dashed, and many of their villages wasted away by the war, some of the peasant “congregationalists” would reconstitute themselves in refugee colonies and communes in Moravia and would call their new communitarian parish-congregation, in synodal federation with others of the same kind, a “ gathered elect [in the sense of s elf-chosen] congregation” (ein gesamlete und erwelte Gemaind, die sich freywillig von inen und aussen von allem bösen … abziehe) with Diener der Notdurft and with their own Diener des Wortes (servants of the common good, servants of the word).66 In his shift Luther’s own youthful vision of reformation was seriously impaired; for the principal victors in the civil war were the princes who centralized, in the name of religious confession, their control in civil jurisdiction and religion, and with the slogan cuius regio, eius religio established either a C atholic or a P rotestant Christianity in the spirit and with the precedent of C onstantine, no longer, however, on the ecumenical basis of an universal empire but on the particularist basis of g rowing princely absolutism. Scholarship has not thus far identified as constitutive of a fourth phase in the history of central European peasant upheaval the establishment of the Hutterite communistic enclaves on a firm theological and economic footing in 1533 (Ch. 9.2). Yet one may well perceive in the rigoristic pacifistic Hutterite commonwealths (communal Brüderhofs or Haushaben) in Moravia, under the protection of tolerant magnates in need of colonists, the sublimation of the grand design of the Tryolese peasants and miners under Michael Gaismair in 1526. The concurrent rise in 1533 of t he peasant-artisan, truculant Anabaptist Bibliocracy in Münster and its satellite towns in the fall of the same year (Ch. 13), and the joint Protestant-Catholic suppression of their citadel can in part be seen as extensions of the class conflict of the Peasants’ War in The Netherlands and North Germany. One can interpret the pacifism of the Anabaptist sects after the Peasants’ War and again after the Münsterite Bibliocracy as the disciplined sublimation of t heir apocalyptic fervor. This drastic transformation from militancy to pacifist nonviolence is reminiscent of a similar transformation on the part of t he millenarian Taborites after their military defeat in the Hussite revolution (Ch. 9.1). Consistency in the working out of the laws of devotion is apparent when one bears in mind that the Anabaptists would come to interpret their military defeat and subsequent persecutions as but

66  Geschichtsbuch/Chronicle, 449/51, 418/20, where the second term is translated “voluntary church.”

174  the radical reformation

chapter 4.4

divinely ordained phases in the eschatological schedule leading to the Last Judgment.67

Satirical model of a memorial column for the Peasant’s War, by Albrecht Dürer

67

 This insight comes fr om R. Hsia Po-chia, ed., The German People and the Refor mation (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988). For examples, see the interrogation of several of Hut’s disciples in Wappler, Täuferbewegung, p. 242; cf. 231, 235, 240, 244, 280–2; Schornbaum, Bayern, 188.20–31; and discussed in P etersen, “Preaching in the Last Da ys,” 160. I discuss an aspect of inter iorized or eschatological violence (Modality I), derived by Ernst Bloch from a disencumbered Jesus of Nazareth, interpreted by Bloch as the founder of all revolutionary theology, in my “Four Modalities of Violence, With Special Reference to the Writings of Georges Sorel,” in three parts, Journal of Church and State 16 (1974): nn. 1–2, 11-30, 237–61.

Chapter 5

The Eucharistic Controversy Divides the Reformation, 1523–1526

W ith the great Peasants’ War behind us,

we step along a welltrodden path to examine the sprouting Anabaptist conventicles at the end of the great social harrowing. But the spread of the radical influence of Carlstadt and the Netherlandish Sacramentists into Upper Germany and the Swiss cantons has still to be recounted. Thus far, the Eucharistic Controversy has been seen primarily as a conflict between Carlstadt and Luther in Saxony, with echoes far beyond. Dr. Gerard Westerburg had already carried Carlstadt’s eucharistic tracts in manuscript to Basel, while Hinne Rode from Utrecht had, at about the same time, been introducing to the Swiss Reformers the eucharistic theory of Cornelius Hoen. The influence of Carlstadt, Hoen, and also Erasmus, resident in Basel, was in the end effective in converting the whole of the German Swiss Reformation to the sacramentarian position. Within the enclosing frame of t he history of t he classical Protestant or Magisterial Reformation, the conversion of t he Swiss and, by c ontagion, many of the South German towns to the sacramentarian view has been seen by the Reformed and the Lutherans alike as a fateful division within the territorial protestant forces, and one with massive consequences alike for the development of German national history and the spread and confinement of Protestantism. Within the even narrower framework of t he present narrative, the theological cleavage of S axony and Switzerland has its own significance. Radical reaction to the sacramentally conservative Lutheran reform, which was seeking to preserve as much as possible of two or three of the seven medieval sacraments, tended to be Spiritualist with special reference to the sacrament of the Supper, drawing upon a Spiritualism inherent in the young 175

176  the radical reformation

chapter 5.1

Luther’s own experience of salvation by biblical faith alone. In contrast, radical or sectarian reaction to the cantonal reform of t he Swiss involved alteration in the last sacrament remaining intact from the medieval Church, namely that of baptism. Thus, while the radical form of Lutheranism was Spiritualism, the radical form of Zwinglianism was Anabaptism. This generalization may be pinned down to names and dates. It was Conrad Grebel, the patrician companion of the peasant Reformer of Zurich, who first organized a sacramentarian Anabaptist conventicle in January 1525. It was Caspar Schwenckfeld, the aristocratic Lutheran Reformer of Silesia, who in April 1526 first announced the radical Spiritualist principle of the general suspension of the external eucharist. In effect, Schwenckfeld thereby interiorized the sacrament of t he altar and limited the spiritual feeding to the regenerate. In an analogous way, Grebel reasserted the exclusively subjective and inward character of the sacrament of regeneration for the adult believer. Although Anabaptism became fully articulate more than a year before radical evangelical Spiritualism, we shall postpone the discussion of it until the next chapter, because the radical thrust of sacramentarianism is as indispensable to an understanding of t he emergence of A nabaptism as is the Peasants’ War. The first phase of the great Eucharistic Controversy within Protestantism as a whole extends, of course, to the Marburg colloquy in 1529. We shall, however, follow it stage by stage toward that fateful development only in so far as those now recognized as belonging to the Radical Reformation, both Spiritualists and proto-Anabaptists, participated in it transitionally. 1. Hinne Rode in Basel and Zurich with Oecolampadius

and Zwingli

We took leave of Hinne Rode (Ch. 2.5) as he returned from Wittenberg to Utrecht, where he was deposed from the rectorship of the local school of the Brethren. Leaving Utrecht, he journeyed with George Saganus to Basel and stayed in the house of the printer Andreas Cratander. There he dined with Oecolampadius, 22 January 1523.1 He had with him the works of Gansfort, which he hoped could be published by C ratander, as they had been in part in Wittenberg. It is uncertain whether Rode also shared Hoen’s Epistola with Oecolampadius.2 It is, however, quite probable. Rode may also have presented a c opy of h is (or Hoen’s) Oeconomia christiana. This was, in turn, read by the French refugee from Meaux, William Farel, at the time sojourning in Basel, who translated it and had it printed by 1  Oecolampadius to Hedio; Staehelin, Briefe und Akten 1, no. 142. Clemen, “Hinne Rode,” says he came to Basel before September 1522. 2  Ernest Staehelin, Das theologische Lebenswerk Johannes Oekolampads, Quellen und Forschungen zur Reformationsgeschichte 21 (Leipzig, 1939), 269.

chapter 5.1

eucharistic controversy  177

Thomas Wolff as La somme de l’Écriture sainte de l’ordinaire des chrétiens enseignant la vraie foi (Basel, 1523), the first evangelical book in French. 3 It is also possible that on this occasion Oecolampadius gave Rode a copy of Das Testament Jesu Christi, das man bisher genannt hat die Messe (The Testament of Jesus Christ, that hitherto has been called the Mass). This work was connected with Oecolampadius’ earlier reform at Ebernburg, where, under the protection of the imperial knight Francis of Sickingen, he had evangelically reformed the Mass. It was presently to be translated by Rode into Dutch and published along with a Dutch version of the Oeconomia christiana.4 Before following Rode to Zurich at the suggestion of Oecolampadius, we shall do well to linger in the town and with its chief Reformer, alike important for the unfolding narrative of the Radical Reformation. Basel, episcopal see, seat of a university, a publishing center, and the scene of the great reforming council of 1431–48, had in 1501 joined the Swiss Confederation. Despite his reforming zeal and humanistic patronage, Bishop Christopher of Utenheim (1502–27) found himself gradually removed by the same civic drive that had already hollowed out city republics from the cores of many a prince-bishopric in the aging Empire. It was in 1521 that the citizens of Basel declared their full independence from their bishop in temporalities, eliminated their annual temporal oath to him, and named their own council and burgomaster. It would not be, however, until 1529 that Basel would become also spiritually independent. In the meantime, the leaven of humanism and of Lutheran solafideism was at work, and Oecolampadius (1481–1531) was at the center of the spiritual ferment. As a student he had studied Roman law in Bologna and come under the reforming influence of J acob Wimpfeling in Heidelberg and of J ohn Reuchlin in Tübingen. On becoming cathedral preacher in Stadt Basel in 1515, he helped Erasmus with the preparation of the Greek New Testament. From 1518 Oecolampadius held the same position of preacher in the cathedral in Augsburg. He began by championing Luther’s solafideism, but then reacted against it and retired to a monastery in April. In this contemplative mood he went through an evolution in his eucharistic theology comparable to Gansfort’s (Ch. 2.4), coming to recognize the Word of G od as itself a kind of sacrament and the sacrament of the altar as a means whereby God reconciles himself with the faithful (and expressly not the nominal) Christians, under the symbol of the bread and wine, and they become part of his mysterious body descending from heaven. 5 Almost exactly a year to the day before his dinner with Rode, Oecolampadius had escaped from his 3  N. Weiss and Jean Meyerhoffer in the collective work Guillaume Farel (Neuchâtel/Paris, 1930), cxii, 118ff. 4  On the complex question of authorship and versions, see Staehelin, Briefe und Akten, Vol. 1, no. 142 n. 10. 5  Staehelin, Lebenswerk, 151ff., 268.

178  the radical reformation

chapter 5.1

St. Bridget’s cloister (23 January 1522), and, after passing by way of Mainz, Heidelberg, and Sickingen’s Ebernburg, already well on his way to the sacramentarian conviction, he had returned in November to Basel, where by now the sacramentarian spirit was well advanced. Here William Reublin, as people’s priest in Saint Alban’s, destined to become an important Anabaptist leader, had, with audiences up to four thousand, been preaching against vigils, masses for the dead, fastings, and other regulations and ceremonies, and against the bishop himself. The bishop had, of course, remonstrated in the city council. When, on 13 June, Reublin had gone so far as to replace a reliquary in the Corpus Christi procession with a Bi ble, declaring that the Word of G od alone was the proper object of veneration, the support of the guildsmen was insufficient to prevent his banishment on 27 June. (We shall next meet Reublin in Ch. 6.2.b). Oecolampadius, in view of the popular support of Reublin, had only to be somewhat more circumspect to bring the whole town over to a sacramentarian reformation. We can well understand that after his dinner with Rode it was with much interest in the Dutch development that Oecolampadius encouraged his guest to go to Zurich to meet Zwingli. This encounter of Rode and Zwingli, a m ajor event in the development of Reformation thought on the Lord’s Supper, took place in the summer of 1523. Zwingli found the Epistola of Hoen to be a revelation.6 The idea of t aking est to mean significat crystallized for Zwingli ideas that had been vague in Oecolampadius and Erasmus.7 But before following the development of sacramentarianism in Zurich, we return with Rode to The Netherlands. Rode went first to Martin Bucer in Strassburg in 1524, then to Deventer in 1525, becoming a m inister at Norden in East Frisia in 1527, where in 1530 he was to be dismissed because of “Zwinglianism”(!), disappearing thereafter from the records.8 As for Hoen, he was arrested at his home in February 1523, propter sectam Lutheranam, put in chains, and taken to Geertruidenberg. The stadholder of The Netherlands (1507–30), Margaret of Austria, soon had him brought back to The Hague for investigation of t he complaint against him, during which time he was allowed two doctors of theology to assist him. The inquisitor summarily sent Hoen to prison. The inquisitor was, however, dismissed the following October, and Margaret, in response to the pleas of the state

6  So he later told Bugenhagen in a letter of October 1525.Zwingli, Sämtliche Werke (henceforth ZW), 4 (Leipzig, 1927), 564–76. 7  Zwingli published the Epistola in 1525, omitting Hoen’s name, evidently to protect him. Cf. Ch. 3. n.2. 8  Lindeboom, De Confessioneele Ontwikkeling, 46.

chapter 5.1 / 5.2

eucharistic controversy  179

council, returned Hoen to The Hague. He was released upon the bail of 3,000 ducats, dying before April of 1524.9 2. The Eucharistic Controversy in Zurich: the Second

Disputation, October 1523; An Embryonic Anabaptist Conventicle, 1523–24

We have now to follow, intertwined, the growing opposition to the Mass in canton Zurich and the emergence of t he separatist sacramentarian conventicle which in January 1525 would constitute the first documented Anabaptist church in the Reformation ferment.10 The idolatry of pictures and statuary and of the Mass conceived as a sacrifice and the impropriety of village tithes 9

 See ME 2:776.  The crucial development, 1523–25, has been inter preted variously. Important after Harold S. Bender, Conrad Grebel c. 1498–1526, Founder of the Swiss Brethren, Sometimes Called Anabaptists (Goshen, Ind.: Mennonite Histor ical Society, 1950) w as Fritz Blanke, Brüder in Christo: Die Geschichte der ältesten Täufergemeinde (Zurich: Zwingli Verlag, 1955). John Howard Yoder following then with further details, “The Turning Point in the Zwinglian Reformation,” MQR 32 (1958): 128–40, made a case for the abandonment by Zwingli of his earlier congregationalist, non-coercive, views of reform. Hans J. Hillerbrand, criticizing Yoder in a r eview in MQR 39 (1965): esp. 310–11 and in his own major article “Origins of Sixteenth-Century Anabaptism: Another Look,” ARG 53 (1962): 152–80, argued that Yoder had not sufficiently recognized that for Zwingli the Obr igkeit was the lay executive of both the “Christian City” and Gemeinde of Zurich. Robert Walton carried the argument fur ther in showing that the magistracy in the cantonal corpus christianum was a Chr istian authority, “Was There a Turning Point of the Zwinglian Reformation?” MQR 42 (1968): 45–56. For a view of Grebel’s place in the Zurich development, see further idem, Zwingli’s Theocracy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967), 180 et passim, where Walton defines theocracy not in the sense of a state under ecclesiastical control but a state in council coor dinate with the collecti vity of the to wn’s clergy, with the fr eedom of the pulpit, pp. 15–19. Walton treats the Zur ich radicals as a dis tinct group from near the beg inning, as P ater, Karlstadt, 118, n.2, observes. More recently there was inter alia J. F. G. Goeters and Luise Abramowski, “Die Vorgeschichte des Täufertums in Zürich,” Studien zur Geschichte und Theologie der Reformation. Festschrift für Ernst Bizer, ed. Goeters and Luise Abramowski (Neukirchen: Neukircher Verlag, 1969), 264–70. Hans-Jürgen Goertz edited the r ich commemorative and collecti ve Umstrittenes Täufertum (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1975), wherein (penultimate ch.) he shows how, alas, Mennonites in the Third Reich fully accommodated. Martin Haas tracks the separation. Goeters gives prominence to the issue of tithes. James M. Stayer contributes “Die Anfänge des schweizerischen Taüfertums im reformierten Kongregationalismus,” using the concept of non-Separating Congregationalism. Stayer likewise sees the motive of the revolt of dependent villages against the centralized cantonal control by the town council of Zur ich and identifies as a first stage in proto-Anabaptism the ideal of a r egenerate magistracy. The considerable literature here adduced and much more, to substantiate the view that there were some six distinctive regional and even theological variants of Germanic Anabaptism, is brought together in a major ar ticle on the Forschungsstand and on ne w directions and per spectives by Stayer, Werner O. Packull, and Klaus Deppermann, “From Monogenesis to Polygenesis: The Historical Discussion of Anabaptist Origins,” MQR 49 (1975): 83–121. I have summarized (SAW, 71–72) the five stages through which Blanke (Brüder in Christo and elsewhere) saw the proto-Anabaptists in Canton Zurich pass. In the present revision of The Radical Reformation, 1983, 1992, I acknowledge the persistence of the older momentum in m y exposition of the sequence of e vents and readily recognize, as with the Czech Brethren (Ch. 9.1), that rebaptism is a recurrent phenomenon in Church history (cf. Ch. 11.1). Postponed to Ch. 6 is the basic bibliography of published Anabaptist sources, Täuferakten. 10

180  the radical reformation

chapter 5.2

were the foci of debate. The degree to which the Word of God, the bishop of Constance over Zurich, the town magistrates, and the local congregation should determine the course of events constituted the religio-political issue. The original Swiss proto-Anabaptist ideal ecclesiology may have been comparable to non-Separating Congregationalism in the original vision a century later of Puritan independency.11 In 1523 Zwingli and the future radicals were scarcely distinguishable. Indeed, in some respects the emergent Zurich Anabaptism looks to some as nothing other than a “consequent” or “radicalized early” Zwinglianism; to others, as Zwinglianism considerably modified under the influence of Erasmus, Carlstadt, and Müntzer. There was in any event no clear differentiation within the Zwinglian reform movement until the fall of 1523. Zwingli shared the radical evangelical view on the Mass, images, and coercion in religion. On the latter issue, for example, he had declared: I believe that, as the church came into existence by b lood, so it can be renewed only by b lood [suffering witness], not otherwise. … Never will the world be a friend to Christ, and with persecutions is that promised recompense of Christ. He sent his own as “sheep among wolves.”12 As for the Mass and images, after conferring with Hoen, Zwingli published 29 August 1523 his On the Order of Service for the Mass and 9 October a Defense thereof,13 in which he called for the elimination of the Latin Mass and vestments as implying a s acrifice. He still defended set prayers. In between these two writings on the Mass, in September, iconoclasm broke out. Leo Jud, Zwingli’s successor at Einseideln and now pastor in St. Peter’s, delivered an impassioned sermon 1 September 1523 against statues and paintings and demanded, perhaps for the first time in Zurich, their removal from the churches. In the church of s uburban Zollikon, a dependency of the Great Minster, one Jacob Hottinger, acting precipitously on Leo’s advice, stood up after Mass and railed against idolatry of a ltar and pictures. Outside the city walls a beautiful crucifix was hacked down by Nicholas Hottinger, Hans Oggenfuss, and Lawrence Hochrutiner and chopped as firewood for the poor. These and lesser iconoclasts were all put in jail; and amid the clamor the whole town agreed on the need of a thorough disputation on pictures and the Mass. 11  The term was first employed by Champlin Burrage, The Church Covenant Idea: Its Origins and Its Development (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1904). The term was promoted by Perry Miller, Orthodoxy in Massachusetts, 1630–1650: A Genetic Study (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1933) in distinguishing the Pilg rim and the Bay Colony Puritans in their polity. The term was appropriated by James Stayer to explain the Zurich scene. 12  Letter of Myconius, 24 July 1520, ZW 7:343. 13  ZW 2: nos. 23, 26.

chapter 5.2.a / 5.2.b

eucharistic controversy  181

The willingness of the town council to set up an “exegetical congress” or a local synod to clarify the issues with the help of Scripture prompted Zwingli to moderate his stand in accommodation to the exigencies of local conditions. a. The Second Zurich Disputation, October 1523 From 26 to 28 October 1523, some nine hundred men, magistrates of the greater and lesser councils, the leading divines and more than three hundred and fifty priests, engaged in the Second Zurich Disputation in the council hall.14 An attempt had been made to secure representation from the appropriate episcopal authorities and from all the cantons. Only two responded. After a sermon in the Great Minster and a reconvening in the council chamber, the burgomaster opened the disputation. Medical Dr. Joachim Watt (Vadian) and Dr. Christopher Schappler of S t. Gall (formerly of M emmingen, Ch. 4.3.a), and Dr. Sebastian Hofmeister of Schaff hausen, as distinguished guests from beyond the canton, were chosen as presidents of t he Disputation. Zwingli and Leo Jud were recognized as the principal disputants in favor of l iturgical reform. The first day’s debate was devoted to the use of images. Before proceeding to the eucharistic discussions of the second and third days, we pause at this point to introduce the leading radical sacramentarians, unknowingly on the threshold of major careers in the rise of Anabaptism. b. Four Radicals at the Disputation: Haetzer, Stumpf, Mantz, and Grebel Among the four sacramentarian radicals, Louis Haetzer was the most vigorous opponent of the use of images. Sacramentarianism and iconoclasm were inextricably interrelated in the Second Disputation in that the radicals were coming to consider genuflection before the images of the saints and before the eucharistic elements as equally idolatrous. Haetzer edited the offical Acts of the Disputation.15 Louis Haetzer16 was born in the district of Thurgau about 1500 and had been educated locally for the priesthood before matriculation in Basel in 1517. From his first charge as chaplain in nearby Wädenswil he had come to Zurich, attracted no doubt by t he prospects of v igorous reformation in the cantonal capital. He was well prepared in the three classical languages of theology for participation in the great debates. Before the Disputation, Haetzer published his first book, The Judgment of God Our Spouse as to How One Should Hold Oneself toward All Idols and Images. Dependent upon Carlstadt’s earlier work (Ch. 3.1.), this was a major link in the chain that was to 14  The Acts are accessible in ZW 2; the first day, 676–731; second day, 731–84; third day, 784–803. 15  Readied for publication with the approval of the Council, 8 December: ZW, 2:671–64. 16  Now a canton, Thurgau was then subject to Zurich. See J. F. G. Goeters, Ludwig Haetzer (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1957).

182  the radical reformation

chapter 5.2.b

lead to Zwingli’s great treatise against images incorporated in the Answer to Valentin Compar,17 and therewith to the establishment of that hostility to the pictorial in religion which has characterized the sacramentarian Reformed tradition ever since. In the pamphlet, setting forth the arguments of Carlstadt more succinctly and cogently, Haetzer contended: (1) that God’s commandment on idolatry was no less binding than the other nine; (2) that pilgrimages to shrines were a clear indication that the images were in fact idols, since the saints, to say nothing of God himself, can be approached directly; (3) that far from being books for the illiterate, they have become substitutes for the Book; and (4) that instead of inducing worshipers to reverence and improvement, they in fact distract them from the heavenly Father, who alone draws men unto him. Felix Mantz was born in Zurich, c. 1498,18 the son of either the Zurich canon (Chorhrer) John Mantz or the provost of the same name.19 Felix applied in 1520 for one of the royal French scholarships for Swiss students in Paris. We first catch sight of him when, gripped by his great religious inspiration, he became a leader of the radicals in Zurich. He was, together with Grebel, one of those who studied the ancient languages with Zwingli in 1522–23, becoming proficient in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. 20 Zwingli considered him for the post of instructor in Hebrew at the Great Minster School, which he proposed to reorganize (September 1523), but rejected him because of his radical theological tendencies. He became steadily more prominent in the growing cleavage between the Zwinglian conservatives and the hyper-Zwinglian radicals. Simon Stumpf was a native of Franconia who had become acquainted with Zwingli in Basel in 1519 and, after being given the pastorate at Höngg in 1522, became a m ember of t he scholarly circle that met in Zwingli’s home. Stumpf preached against tithes and “idols.” With Conrad Grebel, the destined leader of the Zurich Radicals, we must linger longer. As a layman and brother-in-law of Vadian (who was

17  The significance of Haetzer’s iconoclasm and his dependence on Carlstadt ha ve been demonstrated by Charles Garside, Jr., “Ludwig Haetzer’s Pamphlet Against Images,” MQR 34 (1960): 3–19. Garside has shown that Zwingli himself used Carlstadt’s fifty-three theses, “De cantu gregoriano disputatio,” Zwingli and the Arts (New York: De Capö Press, 1981), 28f., 54f., assessed by Pater, Karlstadt, 120–21.Valentin Compar was a Catholic assailant from Uri, whose work survives only in Zwingli’s refutation. 18  Ekkehard Krajewski, Leben und Sterben des Zürc her Täuferfürhers Felix Mantz (Kassel: Oncken, 1957), 18, says “um 1500” citing Aktensammlung zur Geschichte der Basler Refor mation (1921), 1:174.13–14, to refute the common tradition that Mantz was older than Zwingli, e.g. Peachy, Die soziale Herkunft der Schweizer Täufer, 27. 19  One is attested in the records from 1491–98, the other from 1494–1518. 20  Krajewski, Leben und Sterben Mantz, 24.

chapter 5.2.b

eucharistic controversy  183

one of the three presidents of the Disputation), Grebel took the floor and spoke out against Zwingli’s evasions on both images and the Mass. Grebel 21 was a r adical leader from a p atrician family, a humanist of refinement. Grebels had frequently been magistrates, and, for several decades preceding the Reformation, there had been no important political event in Zurich in which a Grebel did not have a part. Conrad’s father, Jacob Grebel, was the most influential and wealthy of the clan, with a successful career as an iron merchant, magistrate, and representative of t he canton in the diet of the Confederation. Conrad, born in 1498, probably grew up in the castle of G rüningen, where his father served two terms as bailiff (Vogt) of the dependent territory. He attended the Latin school, the Carolina in Zurich, which was doubtless like other Latin schools of the day, rowdy in conduct and scholastic in spirit. It nevertheless provided Conrad with the skills necessary to become a promising humanist scholar. In the fall of 1514 Conrad went to the university in Basel. The older humanism which earlier characterized Basel had virtually disappeared with the departure of t he famous Sebastian Brant in 1502; and the new light of Erasmus had not yet begun to shine. Young Grebel was fortunate, however, in becoming attached to the bursa (collegiate society) of Henry Loriti, commonly called Glarean (1488–1563). This promising scholar, only a few years older than Grebel, seems to have been a source of inspiration. Grebel later complained that he had found no teacher so good. After a term in Basel, he obtained through his father a scholarship in Vienna, where the great Swiss humanist Vadian (1484–1551), the future layman reformer of St. Gall, 22 was teaching and acting as a counselor and patron to Swiss students who found their way to Austria. To Vadian’s first edition of a commentary on the ancient geographical treatises of Pomponius Mela, Grebel contributed a prefatory poem, and to the second edition a new introduction. With the aid of a royal scholarship (one of two granted annually to each Swiss canton) from Francis I, also arranged by his father, Grebel was able to study at Paris in 1518, whither his favorite teacher, Glarean, had preceded him. In contrast to Basel and Vienna, Paris was governed by the still medieval spirit of scholasticism. Grebel came to know the biblical scholar and translator LeFèvre d’Étaples, who was at the college of Cardinal Lemoine (not, however, at the university). He enlarged his humanist erudition by contacts with

21  The basic work remains that of Bender, Conrad Grebel (above n. 10), although his centrality in the r ise of the Swiss Anabaptists has been challenged b y Stayer and Goeter s (above n. 10), in recognition of the Bible school of Andrew Castelberger as another hear th of Zurich evangelical radicality (below n. 47). 22  For his life , see Werner Näf, Vadian und seine Stadt St. Gallen (St. Gall: Fehr’sche Buchhandlung, 1944) and for his oft-cited cor respondence, Vadianische Briefsammlung (henceforth VB), 7 vols. (St. Gall, 1890–1913).

184  the radical reformation

chapter 5.2.b

William Budé also, and with William Cop, himself a Swiss, but seemed to lose much of his enthusiasm for study and contemplated going to Italy. 23 Grebel’s sojourn in Paris was overcast by a series of quarrels with Henry Glarean (an eventual opponent of the Reformation), from whose bursa he withdrew after a stay of less than three months. It seems that his health was seriously impaired, perhaps by the riotous living of which his senatorial father accused him and on account of which his mentor in Vienna, Vadian, sorrowed, for he was close to his former pupil, having married Conrad’s sister, Martha, in 1519. His father held back six hundred of the eight hundred crowns of t he royal pension. In a s ober and somewhat melancholy state of m ind, Grebel returned to Zurich in June 1520, his student days behind him. At home, he found someone who had more to offer than the scholars of Paris. In October 1521, Grebel, together with Mantz and other Swiss students who had returned from abroad, intensified their study of Greek and Hebrew with Zwingli. Fellowship with old and new friends brought Grebel much satisfaction. Through Zwingli, Grebel once again came into a more intimate contact with humanistic circles and even possibly with Erasmus. (He may have traveled to Basel with Vadian to meet Erasmus in 1522.) Unlike Erasmus, Grebel’s Swiss humanistic friends and Grebel himself were chiefly interested in historical, geographical, and philological study, and only incidentally in moral and religious matters. Their Swiss patriotism was conspicuous. In religion, Grebel was still neutral, like Vadian and Glarean. He spoke easily of “gods,” “goddesses,” and “Fate.” In February 1522 he married a girl beneath his station and broke completely from his father. The assumption of d omestic responsibility, the break with his family, and the study of the Bible together brought about an inner change or conversion in the spring of 1522. In his letters, after nine months’ silence, we hear the words of an evangelical Christian. Instead of the self-pity moderated by a wan stoicism which had characterized his earlier laments to friends, an entirely new tone, moderate, simple, and objective, is evident. He gave to his children biblical names. When his relatives remonstrated, he called their attitude “worldly.” Grebel had passed from belletristic humanism to evangelical Christianity under the compulsion of Zwingli’s moving exposition of the gospel from the Greek text. Zwingli recognized the value of the convert’s support by having his vigorous ode hailing the Reformation presented in his own Apologeticus Archeteles, August 1522. Grebel was a devoted Zwinglian from then until the iconoclastic outbursts in the fall of 1523, although he took

23  Leonhard von Muralt, “Konrad Grebel als Student in P aris,” Zürcher Taschenbuch 56 (1936), 113–36, maximizes the influence of these humanistic contacts; Bender, Conrad Grebel, minimizes them.

chapter 5.2.b / 5.2.c

eucharistic controversy  185

no part in the agitation with Leo Jud, Louis Haetzer, Simon Stumpf, and others. Let us return now to the Disputation and its sequel. c. The Disputation Continued At the close of the second day of the Disputation Grebel saw Zwingli’s evasions and also what Grebel considered the intolerable subordination of the Word of God to determination by the magistracy. Grebel urged that steps be taken at once to instruct the priests to cease perpetrating the idolatry of the Mass, otherwise the Disputation would be in vain. To this demand Zwingli responded: “My lords [of the council] will decide whatever regulations are to be adopted in the future in regard to the Mass.” At this tense moment it was not Grebel but the iconoclast Stumpf who replied for the radicals: “Master Ulrich, you do not have the right to place the decision … in the hands of my lords, for the decision has already been made: the Spirit of God decides. If my lords adopt and decide on some other course that would be against the decision of God, I will ask Christ for his Spirit, and I will preach and act against it.” 24 On the last day Zwingli preached On the True and the False Shepherds.25 Grebel’s previous proposal for immediate implementation of t he convictions of the majority about the abolition of the Mass came under discussion. Grebel was, however, without hope. Pleading lack of fluency, he encouraged Dr. Balthasar Hubmaier, whom he met at the beginning of t he Peasants’ War in nearby Waldshut (Ch. 4.3.a), to give voice to the radical faction. I cannot announce it in any other way [Hubmaier proceeded diplomatically] than Zwingli and Leo [ Jud] have done—by saying that the Mass is no sacrifice but rather a publishing of Christ’s testament, in which is celebrated the memorial of his death, through which he no doubt offered himself once for all on the altar of the cross and cannot be offered again. … The reason that moves me to say this is … [that] Christ says, “This do,” but not, “This offer.” Whence it follows, first, that the Mass, if it is held to be a sacrifice, profits neither living nor dead. For as I cannot believe for another, so it is not permitted me to celebrate Mass for another, since truly this was instituted by Christ as a sign, in which the faith of believers is confirmed. Secondly, since the body and blood of Christ are seals and tokens of Christ’s words … , priests ought to use and proclaim nothing but the pure and clear Word of God, of which these are signs. … 

24 25

 ZW 2:783–84. This is further analyzed by Yoder in “Turning Points,” 128.  ZW 3: no. 30.

186  the radical reformation

chapter 5.2.c

Thirdly, he who does not proclaim the Word of God does not celebrate the Mass. …  Fourthly, the Mass should be read … in French to the French … [etc.], for there can be no doubt but that Christ used a language at the Supper with his disciples that could be understood by them. …  Fifthly, he who undertakes to celebrate Mass truly ought to feed not only himself, but also others hungering and thirsting in spirit, and that under both kinds. Christ taught this by b oth word and deed.26 The council decided to banish the three iconoclasts27 and to request Zwingli to prepare “A Short Christian Introduction,” 28 as a b asis for instructing the village dependencies of Zurich for an eventual change in the liturgy. That fear of war from the Catholic cantons as well as concern for the weak in Canton Zurich prompted the delay of the implementation of an evangelical communion is suggested in contemporary letters. 29 As winter advanced, Zwingli, Engelhard, and Jud themselves became impatient for magisterial implementation of liturgical reform; after some liturgical books were thrown out and the canons of the Great Minster refused to sing the Latin Mass because of popular opposition, then the three of them on 10 December restated their convictions to the council and announced (item 5) their intention—“even if it should not be permitted”—of making at least a “trial run” (uobung) of an evangelical communion at Christmas. 30 They further called for daily Scripture lessons and communion at a convenient hour (item 6) and yet eschewed any coercion of the Old Believer priests (item 7). The council appointed a m ixed commission of f ourteen with six clerics (including the foregoing three). 31 The council on 19 December 1523 did not entirely ignore the memoranda of t he three and the fourteen but insisted that the Mass be retained intact until Zwingli’s Christian Instruction be evaluated by the bishops of Constance and Basel, as well as by the University of Basel. Pending their response, 26

 ZW 2:671–803; translated by Henry Vedder, Balthasar Hubmaier: The Leader of the Anabaptists (New York/London, 1905), 63–64. 27  Zwingli asks Vadian to receive one of them, Lawrence Hochrütiner, kindly in Saint Gall; letter of 11 November 1523; Emil Arbenz, VB 3:44. 28  Eine Kurze christliche Einleitung, published 17 November 1523; ZW 2: item 27. 29  Veit Suter, 31 October 1523,ed. Oscar Vasella, Zeitschrift für Schweizerische Kirchengeschichte, 48 (1954): 184. See Yoder, “The Turning Point,” 134. 30  Ratschlag und Meinung von der Messe, ZW 2: no. 29, I, p. 809.Yoder, “The Turning Point,” 136 suggests that Zwingli was behind the new agitation against the Latin Mass. 31  Their recommendation, perhaps drafted by Zwingli, is printed in ZW 2: no. 29, II.

chapter 5.2.c

eucharistic controversy  187

no cleric was to be compelled to say Mass, the laity were to refrain from blasphemous epithets about those who did.32 Zwingli (later) defended his acquiescence in the prudential delay in abandoning his plan for introducing the vernacular liturgy on Christmas Day on the ground that the “Lord revealed this advice to us.”33 Zwingli, for tactical reasons, preferred to gain time until the whole canton could be brought to espouse the reform in theological depth and socio-political unanimity. Although with the spokesmen of t he radical wing of the Zurich Reformation he had long been prepared to repudiate the idea of repetitive sacrifices on the altar, he was at least publicly disposed to hold that the Mass might well be a p roper representation of C hrist’s unique, historic, and atoning sacrifice. Zwingli had thus moved all the way from an earlier confident expectation that the city council would abolish the Mass as an insult to God, through an avowal that he would preach and act regardless of what the council ordered, to his decision to move only in concert with the magistracy, lest the canton be religiously divided as Bohemia was, following John Hus. 34 This may have been a fundamental shift from an earlier position on the relationship between congregational autonomy and the role of the Christian magistracy, although for him canton, town, commune, and congregation (Gemeinde) could also be considered as nearly interchangeable. He continued to defend the principle of the sole authority of Scripture; in practice he followed the wishes of the council, thus virtually committing the implementation of reform of the church to the civil government. This was a grievous blow to many of Zwingli’s friends; and, although some of them, including Grebel, may have yearned for a regenerate magistracy, it is at this point that we begin to see the definite indications of w ithdrawal of t hose interested in the immediate introduction of New Testament standards. At about this point Grebel is on record as having broken with Zwingli. In a L atin letter to one of t he three presidents of t he Disputation and his brother-in-law Vadian, 18 December 1523, he set forth the following bitter mock thesis in allusion to Zwingli’s sermon of the third day of that Disputation: “Whoever thinks, believes, or says that Zwingli is performing his duties as a shepherd, thinks, believes, and speaks impiously.”35

32

 Walton, “Was there a Turning Point?” 48–49.  Letter to the reformers in Bern, 11 October 1527; ZW, 9:282. Evaluated by Yoder, “The Turning Point,” 139 and Walton, “Was there a Turning Point?” 55. 34  Of his fear that ther e might be tw o or mor e liturgical usages, “Apostolic” and “antiChristian,” as in Bohemia, see ZW 9:281. 35  VB 3: no. 374, p. 49; noted by Yoder, “The Turning Point,” 138. 33

188  the radical reformation

chapter 5.2.d

d. Conventicular Sacramentarians in Zurich, 1524 The radicals, disillusioned with their former leader, began to rally their forces. Out of their study-circles grew conventicles in which they dared to do among themselves what Zwingli had urged in December but what was not to be publicly permitted in the Zurich churches until April 1525. What Grebel now sought was formation of a new community. Between Zwingli’s interest in a magisterially sanctioned total reform of the canton and Grebel’s demand for immediate regeneration there was no longer mutually acceptable middle ground. Well before the final break, Grebel, Stumpf, and Mantz at different times had individually submitted to Zwingli and to Jud a plan of reform, in general asking them to abandon entirely the previous organization of the churches and to set up a new church of faithful believers “according to evangelical truth and the Word of God.” At one moment in the summer or fall of 1523 they had expressly called upon Zwingli to exhort all who wished to follow Christ to stand on his side, confident that his ecclesia piorum would be “superior to the army of the unbelieving.” In this new church the Supper would be observed as described by Paul and the Evangelists, and the disciplines of t he ancient Church would be reinstituted. Pastors would no longer live from tithes but from gifts, and “all things must be in common, as in the apostolic church in Jerusalem. Out of this new church (ecclesia) of the purified evangelical people 36 a truly Christian,” i.e., noncoercive, town council (senatus) would be “chosen by votes.”37 The radicals were quite specific in their proposal for voluntary support, offering Zwingli one hundred guilders annually if he would give up his benefice on principle. At this point there was no question of post-

36

4.2.b).

 Cf. the proposals of the F orty-two Frankfurt Articles inspired by Dr. Westerburg (Ch

37  Zwingli’s principal recollection in 1527 of the suit of the radicals in 1523 is as follows: “They addressed us … after the following manner: ‘It does not escape us that ther e will ever be those who will oppose the gospel, even among those who boast in the name of Christ. We therefore can never hope that all minds will so unite as Chr istians that it would be possible to realize in toto an ideal Chr istian life. For in the Acts of the Apostles [5:40ff.] those who had believed seceded from the others, and then it happened that they who came to believe went over to those who were now a new church (nova ecclesia). So then must we do.’ They begged that I should make a proclamation to this effect: ‘Those who wished to follow Christ should stand on our side.’ They promised furthermore that our forces would be far superior to the army of the unbelieving. Now the church of the r ighteous (ecclesia piorum) was about to elect from their own devout their own [town] council (senatum).” Zwingli, In catabaptistarum strophas Elenc hus; ZW 6:33; The Latin Works and Cor respondence of Huldreic h Zwingli, together with selections from his Ger man works, ed. Samuel M. Jackson (New York, 1912–29), 132; Bender, Conrad Grebel, 103–5, and 255 n. 29–31; Blanke, Brüder in Christo, 10–11. This account has been the subject of close scr utiny. Already cited in ZW 6:33 n.6 is Benjamin Heinrich Unruh, “Die Revolution 1525 und das Taüfertum,” Gedenkschrift zum 400 jährigen Jubiläum der Mennoniten (Ludwigschaften, 1925), 45. Unruh pointed to the confidence of the

chapter 5.2.d

eucharistic controversy  189

poning baptism, or rebaptism, or of the right of a C hristian to take part in the government. William Reublin, whom we last met in Basel (Ch. 5.1), was now a preacher (since 1522) in two village dependencies of Z urich: Wytikon and Zollikon. Having been the first Swiss priest to marry (April 1523) and having preached iconoclasm, he began early in 1524 to preach also against pedobaptism, on principle separating church membership, betokened by baptism, from citizenship, expressed in the annual oath of obedience to the canton. By Easter 1524, as a consequence of his agitation, several parents in Zollikon declined to present their infants at the baptistery. Another indication of t he deep estrangement from Zwingli on the part of t he radical purists, because of h is determination to establish a prophetic theocracy of the whole people or civic Christianity, came from Haetzer, who published in June 1524 a German translation, with notes, of John Bugenhagen’s exposition of Paul’s epistles 38 In this book the whole Magisterial Reformation was criticized for not having applied the Word of God with all strictness and decisiveness. The book looks to a “second reformation” of f ully committed members. Haetzer’s notes indicate that he too was drawing close to the circle around Grebel and Mantz. Although they had been rebuffed by Zwingli in their plan or hope for a regenerate magistracy, the radical purists still hoped for the success of their idea of a complete restitution of New Testament Christianity somewhere through the establishment of a voluntarist association of kindred movements transcending territorial boundaries. In this expectation Grebel wrote ill-advisedly to Luther (from whom he received only an indirect reply), and then to Carlstadt and to Müntzer. Of these two foes of Luther’s in the realm of both social practice and sacramental theology, it was Müntzer with whom the Zurich radicals, led by Grebel, first sought to establish contact. In a letter of 5 September 1524, with a substantial postscript, 39 Grebel explained the admiration of his circle for both Carlstadt and Müntzer and

Pious that they (with Zwingli) w ould be in the major ity and thus elect a r ighteous town council. But Zwingli goes on from here to quote Jesus, Mark 9:40, “Who is not against us is for us …” and to argue for an inclusive church. And in the Täuferprocess, April 1525, Zwingli on the same general issue says that he had had the impr ession that the goal of the Pious, on becoming Anabaptists, was so to increase that they might declare themselves independent of the magistracy (Obrigkeit). ZW 4, 173. As important as is the issue for our conceptualization of the Radical Reformation, it cannot be resolved here. The cited literature is only a fraction of it on this issue. 38  Eine kurze wohlgegründete Auslegung der zehn nachgehenden Episteln S. Pauli, ME 2:622; Goeters, Hätzer, ch. 4. 39  Critically edited b y Böhmer and Kir n, Müntzers Briefwechsel, 92–101; printed also b y Leonhard von Muralt and Walter Schmid, Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer in der Schweiz (henceforth QGT) Zurich, 1:1 (Zurich: Hirzil, 1952), 13–21, translated in SAW 71–85.

190  the radical reformation

chapter 5.2.d

expressed their hope for mutual understanding. This letter to Müntzer, marking the emergence of the distinctively restitutional type of reform, is one of the principal religious writings of Conrad Grebel.40 Carrying the corporate convictions and groping formulations of Grebel and his associates, including their charitable but firm critique of some alleged utterances and practices of Müntzer, the letter is especially valuable in that its topical coverage is sufficently large to yield a fairly clear picture of the emerging faith and practice of the Swiss Brethren. Grebel is enheartened to find in Thomas Müntzer a k indred spirit, but in violation of t he principle of sola scriptura, he detects and deplores the following points observed in or reported perhaps falsely, he says, about Müntzer’s reforming efforts: (1) Müntzer is chided for his retention of infant baptism as against the radical Swiss view that baptism is but a sign of the presence of repentance and the reception of grace, and that children, before they can distinguish between good and evil, are saved by Christ’s blood quite apart from baptism, for Christ died to save not merely Christians but the whole world from original sin (Ch. 2.1).41 (2) The mere substitution of a G erman for a Latin Mass is not enough by way of restoring the commemorative Supper. (3) Müntzer fails to abide by the discipline of the ban according to Matt. 18:15–18. (4) Singing at worship Grebel holds to be contrary to the New Testament, as detracting from concentration on the Word and leading the better singers to vainglory and the poorer singers to embarrassment. (5) Müntzer’s erection in the church of stone tablets of the Ten Commandments may lead to idolatry. (6) Müntzer should abolish clerical dependence upon benefices (with forced tithes and rents) and institute voluntary offerings. (7) Müntzer’s reputed endorsement of t he employment of fist and sword against the restraining lords is deplored. Characteristic of this still inchoate theology of the radical separatist church is the fact that opposition to singing was taken up first in the letter. Of the seven points only one needs amplification in the present context. Observe, in the following quotation, that Grebel, for all the simplicity of the service described, like Carlstadt and Oecolampadius, considers the bread in faith the body of Christ: The Supper of f ellowship Christ did institute and plant. … The server from out of the congregation should pronounce them [the consecrating words] from one of the Evangelists or from Paul. … An ordinary drinking-vessel, too, ought to be used. This would 40

 A clear presentation of the two concepts, reform and restitution, in the Reformation era is that of Franklin Littell, The Anabaptist View of the Churc h, 2d ed. (Boston: Starr King Press, 1958): German: Das Selbstverständnis der Täufer (Kassel: Oncken, 1966). 41  I have made the point a little more explicit than Grebel at this conjuncture, anticipating later precision as clarified by Robert Friedmann, “Peter Riedemann—On Original Sin and the Way of Redemption.” MQR 26 (1952): 210–15.

chapter 5.2.d

eucharistic controversy  191

do away with the adoration and bring true understanding and appreciation of t he Supper, since the bread is nought but bread. In faith, it is the body of Christ and the incorporation with Christ and the brethren. But one must eat and drink in the Spirit and love, as John shows in chapter 6. … Although it is simply bread, yet if faith and brotherly love precede it, it is to be received with joy, since, when it is used in the church, it is to show us that we are truly one bread and one body, and that we are and wish to be true brethren with one another, etc. But if one is found who will not live the brotherly life, he eats unto condemnation, since he eats it without discerning [1 Cor 12:29], like any other meal, and dishonors love, which is the inner bond, and the bread, which is the outer bond. For also it does not call to his mind Christ’s body and blood, the covenant of the cross, nor that he should be willing to live and suffer for the sake of Christ and the brethren, of the head and members. Also, it ought not to be administered by thee [as an ordained priest, lest there be misunderstanding]. That was the beginning of the Mass that only a few would partake.42 Since at the time of the letter (5 September 1524) no parish church in Zurich was observing an evangelical communion, it looks as though Grebel and his associates must have been holding, a service of communion among themselves, according to the principles laid down in the letter: Neither is it to be used in “temples” according to all Scripture and example, since that creates a false reverence. It should be used much and often. It should not be used without the rule of Christ in Matt. 18:15–18, for without that rule every man will run after the externals. The inner matter, love, is passed by, if brethren and false brethren approach or eat it [together]. … As for the time, we know that Christ gave it to the apostles at supper and that the Corinthians had the same usage. We fix no definite time with us.43 Except for the exhortation to frequent communion, Grebel’s view was consistent with that of Carlstadt, even on the point of his pacifism, for it is important to note at this point that the pacifism of Grebel was not Erasmian-humanist in inspiration (as with Zwingli in his earlier phase), nor was it primarily based upon the Sermon on the Mount. It seemed, rather, to have been a consequence of Grebel’s still more basic conviction as to the captaincy of C hrist over the true milites Christi, recruited for

42 43

 See the whole letter, SAW, 71–85; Fast, Der Linke Flugel, 12–27.  Ibid., 77.

192  the radical reformation

chapter 5.2.d

service as a suffering church, making an ideal of absolute nonviolence and of suffering in Christ’s name a confirmation of one’s salvation.44 There are, to be sure, phrases in Grebel’s letter to Müntzer, such as “sweet Christ” (who may be experienced only after the believer has known “the bitter Christ” of suffering), which suggest the inf luence of the Allstedt revolutionary Spiritualist, but for the most part the Swiss Brethren represent a radicalization of Zwingli’s rather than Luther’s doctrine and practice and an assimilation of m uch also of C arlstadt, who for different reasons was at odds with Luther.45 By the time Grebel and Mantz came into contact with Müntzer, they had developed a theological position of suff icient depth and independence to allow them not only to hail Müntzer’s spirit where it accorded with their idea of the gospel, but also to criticize him with conviction when he seemed to be in variance with it.46 In the postscript to the letter, Grebel describes the cosignatories, among them a fellow countryman of Müntzer, Hans Hujuff from Hall, as “thy brethren and seven new young Müntzers against Luther” and remarks that since writing the main letter, he had also now written Luther, while one of t he seven, Andrew Castelberger, had in the meantime also written to Carlstadt. This crippled, highly literate bookseller Andrew “on the crutches (uff der Stülzen),” from the Rhaetian Republic (Graubünden), at the heart of t he Zurich Bible School, may have headed a “Karlstadt Circle” in Zurich, probably not entirely identical with that of Grebel.47 As it fell out, revolutionary Müntzer never received the letter of pacifist Grebel and his circle. Grebel’s effort to rally a f ar-flung coordinated evangelical reform failed.48 In any case Grebel, and indeed Zwingli, were opening up to Carlstadt with whom they came to feel much more congenial than with Luther’s other foe on the left. Carlstadt’s brother-in-law, Dr. Gerard Westerburg of C ologne, came from the decisive encounter between Luther and Carlstadt in Jena to Zurich with a view to establishing a common front against Luther and to publish44  For further details, see Ethelbert Stauffer, “Anabaptist Theology of Martyrdom,” MQR 19 (1945): 179–80. For captaincy, the scriptural sanction is Hebrews 2:10. 45  Pater brings out how different Müntzer and Carlstadt were, both dubbed Schwärmer by Luther, Karlstadt, e.g., appendices. 46  Krajewski, Mantz, 58–59. 47  Goeters in “Die Vorgeschichte des Täufertums in Zurich” and Stayer in “Die Anfänge,” withdraw centrality in the Zurich circle from Grebel to Castelberger, and Pater, in his highlighting of “Competing Reformations in Switzerland,” has gone so far as to rename the radically reforming circle in honor of Carlstadt, Karlstadt, 137, in recognition of their being more radical than the Zwinglians, and, as he shows, Zwingli himself was helped to clarity on some issues by Carlstadt’s publications. 48  The autograph copy survives in the Vadian correspondence. It ma y be that with the arrival of Dr. Gerard Westerburg, Grebel was restrained from sending it on, learning of Müntzer’s belligerence.

chapter 5.2.d / 5.3

eucharistic controversy  193

ing Carlstadt’s sacramentarian tracts (noted at the end of C h. 3.1). In the circle of Conrad Grebel and Castelberger, Westerburg read these works for six days in manuscript form, for Grebel in a letter to Vadian in St. Gall, 14 October 1524, referred to “approximately eight books” by C arlstadt. He also knew about Luther’s challenge to Carlstadt with the golden guilder and observed: “A reasonable reader will judge from the Carlstadt books that Luther is retrogressing, and that he is an excellent procrastinator and a competent defender of h is scandal.”49 The Zurich radicals eagerly supported the printing of t he books which had been written by Carlstadt in Orlamünde. For this purpose Westerburg, Felix Mantz, and Andrew of Castelberg rode on horseback to Basel, staying in the house of L awrence Hochrütiner, who had been driven out of c anton Zurich for smashing a crucifix (Ch. 5.2). The three evangelical entrepreneurs returned to Zurich with 5,300 of Carlstadt’s tracts, which they distributed in Zurich and the vicinity.50 Soon Carlstadt himself, leaving Basel, paid a visit to the Grebel circle. Of the original eight tracts, seven had been approved by the Basel censor for publication. Only the eighth, against infant baptism, did he eliminate. It is notable in this connection that Felix Mantz, who had accompanied Westerburg from the Grebel circle in Zurich, sought on his own to get the baptismal tract published clandestinely (Ch. 6.1).51 3. The Eucharistic Controversy Between the Swiss

Sacramentarians and the Lutherans

We have already noted (Ch. 3.1) the earlier published works of Carlstadt, his introduction of the first Protestant (in effect, Reformed) Communion in Wittenberg, and his sacramentarian and social preaching in Rothenburg (Ch. 4.3.b). It remains to summarize the eucharistic theology of the Basel works, for it was their appearance at this time that marked the second stage of the intra-Protestant Eucharistic Controversy. In them he stressed the incongruity of i magining that at the Last Supper before the crucifixion the apostles, who had yet to grasp even the full significance of Jesus’ words about approaching death, could have understood at all the alleged identification of t he bread before them and the person presiding at the meal. Carlstadt declared that it was blasphemous idolatry to suppose that what 49  VB 3:88. Muralt and Schmid,QGTS 1.1 Zurich, 1: 15; partly translated by Pater, Karlstadt, appendix 2 and pp. 159–62, who vividly describes the printing of six of the eight works in Basel, and translates in full the depositions of the printers, Johannes Bebel (Hans Welsch) and Thomas Wolff, Karlstadt, appendix 2 and 159–62. 50  Pater, Karlstadt, appendix 2, 291, n. 6. 51  Staehelin, Briefe und Akten, 1: no. 226, and n. 10. On the chr onology of Carlstadt’s seven eucharistic publications in Basel and their pub lishers, see E. Freys and Her mann Barge, “Verzeichnis der gedr uckten Schriften des Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt,” Zentralblatt für Bibiothekswesen 21 (1904): 305–32, reprinted by B. de Graaf (1965).The works are edited by Eric Hertzsch, Karlstadts Schriften aus den Jahren 1523–1525 (Halle: Niemeyer, 1956).

194  the radical reformation

chapter 5.3

was manifestly not true at the proto-Eucharist could be true at the first observance of t he Supper after Jesus’ death. Appealing to the sequence of actions as preserved in Mark 14:23–24, he observed that the wine was first obediently drunk and “in the stomachs of the apostles” before Jesus spoke about blood, and that Jesus was referring to the bloody seal of the New Covenant, not to his own blood as wine. Similarly, Jesus pointed to his own body to be presently sacrificed on the cross, not to its presence or future presence under the appearance of bread. In the words of institution, touto, being neuter, refers to Jesus’ body (soma), neuter, and not to the bread (artos), masculine. Surely it was not bread but a body that was to suffer. Thus it is not the sacrament which forgives sins but God in Christ on the cross who, having once forgiven them, has also once for all made it possible through the commemorative repetition of the Supper to recall with joy his unique action on Calvary. There are only two advents of Christ, the first in the Holy Land and the second yet to be. In the meantime, there is no provisional presence vouchsafed in the elements of t he Christian Communion celebrated with regularity and expectancy till he comes again. Paul knew “only Christ and him crucified.” He did not say “Christ crucified on the cross and Christ distributed in the bread and wine.” Among all the numerous divine powers bestowed upon the apostles, argues Carlstadt—namely, to heal the sick, the lame, and the blind, to drive out the devil, to overcome the onslaughts of the devil, to baptize in the name of t he Triune God, etc.—the power to distribute the body and blood of the Savior in sacramental form was not included. Carlstadt does not hesitate to speak grossly of what he considers the Catholic and Lutheran idolatry of concentrating on the bread and wine and thus turning one’s glance from the unique historic action of the cross and thereby misconceiving the uniqueness of Christ’s atonement. The seven tracts in which Carlstadt expressed his matured eucharistic theology gained widespread attention when printed in Basel in the fall of 1524. Felix Mantz secured a q uantity of t hem and distributed them in Zurich. They were, with the number in parentheses assigned by t he first bibliographers: (124) Whether from the Holy Scripture it can be proved that Christ is in the Sacrament with body, blood, and soul (Basel, 1524); 52 (138) Whether one should proceed slowly and spare the sensibilities of the weak; 53 (135) Concerning the anti-Christian misuse of the Lord’s Bread and Cup (Basel, 1524); 54 (129) Interpretation of the words of Christ: “This is my body,” Luke

52

 Translated by Carter Lindberg, “Karlstadt’s Dialogue on the Lor d’s Supper,” MQR 53 (1979): 35–77. 53  Translated by Sider, Karlstadt’s Battle with Luther, 50–71. 54  Ibid., 72–91.

chapter 5.3

eucharistic controversy  195

22:9 (Basel, 1524); (131) Against the Old and the New [Luther’s] Popish Masses (Basel, 1524); and Dialogue on Baptism (Zurich, 1525). 55 When Carlstadt took copies of his freshly printed works to Strassburg, the pastors there were at once eager to get the judgment of t he Reformers of W ittenberg and Zurich. Luther replied, 15 December 1524,56 and Zwingli the following day. In his letter, Luther had been willing to tolerate symbolical language, but aroused to the seriousness and the scope of the challenge of the Swiss and South German sacramentarians and “fanatics” and spurred on by his old antagonist Carlstadt, Luther published in December, 1524 his Wider die himmlischen Propheten, followed by a supplement.57 He therein attacked Carlstadt’s pastoral theology and practice at Orlamünde, his iconoclasm, his mysticism, his acceptance of Old Testament statutes as binding along with the Decalogue and natural law, and proceeded to stress his own more conservative eucharistic theology. Then in March 1525, Zwingli, having ever since Rode’s appearance made up his mind as to the basic theological issue, was emboldened to come out publicly as a sacramentarian in a humanistic, symbolical interpretation in his De vera et falsa religione. Zwingli’s enthusiastic reception of the theory of Hoen communicated by Rode was expressed again in his recital of his newfound conviction in the letter to Matthew Alber of Reutlingen (of 16 November 1524).58 This letter and his answer to the Strassburgers he now published in the same month with De vera et falsa religione, and in August 1525, Hoen’s Epistola, without identification of the Dutch author.59 Thereupon he became even more explicit in his espousal of t he sacramentarian position and avowed also his agreement with Carlstadt that the body of Christ is seated at the right hand of God the Father and cannot therefore in any sense be said to be present at the church’s commemoration of the Supper. Luther, in his sermon Vom Sakrament des Leibes und Blutes Christi wider die Schwärmgeister of 29 March 1526,60 thereupon made explicit his conception of the ubiquity of Christ, interpreting “the right hand of God” as symbolic of His omnipotence. Defining his eucharistic theology and his Christology over against both Carlstadt and Zwingli, Luther distinguished three sorts of bodily presence: the esse circumscriptive or localiter of Christ at his first and second advent, the ubicatio as an aspect of his omnipotence, and 55

 See above at nn. 51, 52.  Ein Brief an die Christen zu Strassburg wider den Schwärmergesit [Carlstadt], WA 15:391–97; Edwards, Luther and the False Brethren, ch. 2. 57  WA 18:62–125, 134–214. 58  ZW 3:322–54. 59  It is worthy of note that Hoen’s marriage ring parable, going back to Tertullian (Ch. 2.2) reappears in Zwingli’s Memorandum addressed to the German princes at the diet of Augsburg in 1530. 60  WA 19:484–523. Cf. Luther’s work of 1523 on the sacrament, Ch. 3, near n. 14. 56

196  the radical reformation

chapter 5.3 / 5.4

his esse definitive in respect to his supernatural yet localized presence in passing, for example, from the tomb and in the eucharistic consubstantiation. In the latter action—the word itself was eschewed by Luther—Christ makes himself uniquely available along with the elements of bread and wine on Christian altars. With this refutation, the sacramentarianism of C arlstadt and of t he Dutch and Swiss, abhorred alike by L uther, enters general history as the main issue between the divergent wings within the Magisterial Reformation. We shall henceforth be limited to the Anabaptist appropriation of sacramentarianism. There remains only, at this juncture, to be mentioned the fact that Carlstadt, after vainly seeking out Westerburg in Frankfurt (whence his brother-in-law had departed to Cologne), temporarily submitted to Luther; 61 disavowing any belligerent involvement in the Peasants’ War,62 he was enabled to return to Saxony and actually to live in Luther’s house for a while, and elsewhere in the environs of Wittenberg from 1525 to 1529.

4. Psychopannychism in Wittenberg and Zurich We cannot take leave of t he Spiritualist and sacramentarian Carlstadt without carrying a b it farther our earlier account of t he development of psychopannychism (Ch 1.6.c), in which he also figures prominently. The discussion of soul-sleep will seem less of a n intrusion at this point in our narrative if we think of it as related to the analogous simplification and biblicism represented in eucharistic theology by t he shift from the votive Mass to the commemorative Eucharist. But the correlation is not completely consistent, for although Carlstadt was virtually one with Zwingli in eucharistic theology, on the sleep of t he soul, Carlstadt and Luther were, surprisingly, not far apart. We take note, therefore, at the outset of this section of the interesting reversal of doctrinal affiliation. Luther was closer to the Catholic Mass than Zwingli, who held common ground with Carlstadt; but on the doctrine of the natural immortality of the soul, Zwingli stood with the Fifth Lateran Council (as later Calvin) over against Luther and Carlstadt and also such Anabaptists as Westerburg (Anabaptist after 1529),63 who held to the sleep of the soul. Since psychopannychism is closely tied up with biblical eschatology, it is clear why both Carlstadt and Luther could be 61

 “Entschuldigung des falschen Namens des Aufruhrs,” signed at Frankfurt, 24 June 1525, and published, with a condescending preface by Luther, in Wittenberg, WA 18:430–45. 62  His “Entschuldigung” is an honorable statement, disagreeing with Müntzer, of whom he nevertheless speaks compassionately. Carlstadt shows how his prophetic views of restraint were rejected by the peasants around Rothenburg. 63  Westerburg spread Baptist ideas in the Rhineland and is identified with a very large Baptist congregation in Cologne, although he himself submitted to rebaptism in Münster from Henrik Rol. Pater. Karlstadt, basing his note on Cornelius, 111 n.92; 290 n.3.

chapter 5.4

eucharistic controversy  197

drawn to this view, while humanist Zwingli, with much less of a sense of the imminence of the Kingdom of God, was satisfied with the traditional view. In Luther, needless to say, the doctrine of psychopannychism bore no traces of Averroism. With his biblical instinct and strong opposition to the whole penitential system of i ndulgences, Luther as early as 1520, in his defense of h is propositions condemned in the bull of L eo, declared 64 that the doctrine of the soul as the substantial form of the human body is merely a papal opinion. In 1524 he declared in a sermon that the soul sleeps until God at the Last Judgment awakens both soul and body.65 For Carlstadt, in contrast to Luther, the influence of Wessel Gansfort may have been operative. It is probable that the publication in Wittenberg of Gansfort’s Farrago (1522), one part of which was a presentation of purgatory interpreted as spiritually purgative rather than as penal, intensified Carlstadt’s convictions as to the problem of soul-sleep.66 Wessel introduced in fact a threefold modification of the traditional view of purgatory, holding that the fire of purgatory is spiritual, alchemical rather than material; that the purpose of the spiritual fire is purgative rather than penal; and that the soul is accordingly capable of spiritual development after the death of the body.67 In thus reconceiving purgatory, Wessel placed it together with heaven, to which the soul gained entry only after the second advent of Christ, over against hell, in contrast to traditional Catholicism which pictured hell and purgatory together over against heaven. Carlstadt followed Wessel in this modification, apparently quoting him almost verbatim when in 1523 he published his sermon Vom Stand der christgläubigen Seelen, von Abrahams Schoss und Feg feür der abgeschiedenen Seelen.68 Carlstadt used the word soul-sleep (Seelenschlaf) as a scriptural reference to somnolent life after death and not as a euphemism for Christian mortalism (psychopannychism).

64

 In article 27.  Fastenpostille, WA 17:2, 235. In another ser mon, in 1533, he declar ed: “We shall sleep until He comes, and knocks on the grave and says: ‘Dr. Martinus, arise!’” WA 37:151. Nevertheless, he occasionally lapsed into his inherited Catholic view of the afterlife, with the consequence that little by little within Lutheranism the doctrine of the sleep of the soul was replaced by the idea of a natural immortality. See Paul Althaus, Die letzten Dinge: Lehrbuch der Eschatologie (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1956), 146–47. 66  John W. Kleiner, “Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt’s Eschatology as Illustrated by Two Major Writings of 1523 [Fegfeür] and 1539 [Erlüterung disser reed IobVII]” (Th. M. thesis, Harvard Divinity School, 1966). 67  This is a ne w mutatis mutandis that would crop up later in the Refor med churches as Conditionalism. 68  His basic text was 1 Thessalonians 4:14–15, as with Wessel. A copy is in Houghton Library, Harvard University. 65

198  the radical reformation

chapter 5.4

Westerburg, stimulated by Carlstadt, moved in this more radical direction. In 1524 he published an eight-page pamphlet that earned for him the name “Dr. Purgatory.” It was entitled Purgatory and the State of the Different Souls (Vom Feg feuer und Stand der verschiedenen Seelen: Eine christliche Meinung).69 Westerburg had preceded Carlstadt to Italy, studying at Bologna (1515–17). It may have been on this occasion that he became acquainted with the widespread Paduan disavowal of i mmortality in the university circle. While Carlstadt was still in Saxony, Westerburg had left Frankfurt as his messenger for Zurich, conferring with Conrad Grebel, not only on the already discussed matter of t he publication of C arlstadt’s eucharistic manuscripts, but also on the problem of t he sleep of t he soul. In a l etter to Vadian, 14 October 1525, Grebel writes that Westerburg had remained with them six days and implies that he had read Westerburg’s De sopore animarum libellus.70 There is no positive indication that Grebel’s group adopted psychopannychism; but it is clear that Zwingli thought they did, for in an appendix to his Elenchus (Ch. 8.4.a) he, seeking to refute the position, will presently declare “The Catabaptists teach that the dead sleep, both body and soul, until the day of judgment, because they do not know that the Hebrews used the word ‘sleeping’ for ‘dying.’” 71 Westerburg carried his sacramentarianism and psychopannychism back to Frankfurt, where we have already overtaken him as the drafter of t he Forty-Two Articles at the end of the Peasants’ War (Ch. 4.3.b), and whence he was obliged in May of 1525 to return to his native Cologne. There he was condemned in March 1526 for his teachings on purgatory and on soulsleep (Ch. 12.4).72 Having looked at the first outcroppings of psychopannychism within the context of the Radical Reformation north of the Alps in connection with the Spiritualist sacramentarians Carlstadt and his brother-in-law, the one a “father of Baptist theology,” the latter on the point of becoming an Anabaptist, we may now return to the main theme of the chapter and take account of the Lutheran reformer of Silesia who also turned Spiritualist on the question of the Eucharist but more in line with the nuptial Sacramentism of The Netherlands (Ch. 2.4) than the memorialism of Carlstadt.

69  Fritz Blanke, depending upon Adolf Brecher, in a note in his edition of Zwingli’ s Elenchus, says that Westerburg derived his views from Carlstadt, but it could well have been the other way around. On Westerburg, see articles by Ernest Correll, ME 4:930–31, and by Brecher in Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (henceforth ADB), 43:182. 70  VB 3:88. 71  ZW 6:188–89. 72  The account of the hear ing was published by Westerburg at Marb urg in 1533, ME 4:931.

chapter 5.5

eucharistic controversy  199

5. Caspar Schwenckfeld of Silesia and the Suspension of the Supper in 1526 Caspar Schwenckfeld (1489–1561) was a devout and solitary Silesian nobleman, an aristocratic evangelist among reformers largely of p easant and bourgeois origin.73 A knight strategically located at the courts of the royal governor of Lower Silesia, Schwenckfeld became a convert to Lutheranism in 1519 and, remaining true to celibate vows as to a military order (for him the militia Christi), became a m ajor exponent of t he Lutheran reform in Silesia by 1522.74 A follower of L uther for eight years, 1518–26, and thrice a v isitor in Wittenberg, Schwenckfeld was repeatedly and, in the end, crudely rebuffed by L uther on his peculiar view of t he Lord’s Supper. Thereupon, Schwenckfeld became the chief exponent of a n irenic and evangelical Spiritualism, different from that of both sacramentarian Carlstadt and liturgical Müntzer, with a programmatic suspension of the outward Eucharist by 1526 and the enunciation of the doctrine of an inward feeding on the celestial flesh of Christ. So distinctive christologically and so persistently a spiritual loner was he that his most recent interpreter writes of him as the “reluctant radical,” as “one of t hose pieces left over after the puzzle [of the sixteenth century] is complete.” In his interiorized Eucharist, Schwenckfeld became the exponent of what he thought of a s the middle or royal way, originally thought of as lying between Catholicism and Lutheranism; later as lying between the Lutheran and Reformed visions of the necessary change; finally as between the Magisterial and the Radical Reformation. He first used the term “royal” in All Admonition to All the Brethren in Silesia, 11 June 1524: We are prone to swer ve from the left hand to the right, contrar y to the Lord’s command: Turn not to the right hand nor to the left. We must walk on the royal road and seek to f ind 73  The standard major biography was that of Selina Gerhard Schultz, Caspar Schwenckfeld von Ossig (1489–1561): Spiritual Interpreter of Christianity, Apostle of the Mid dle Way, Pioneer of Modern Religious Thought (Norristown, Pa.: The Board of Publication of the Schwenckfelder Church, 1946) partly replaced up through 1540 by R. Emmet McLaughlin, Casper Schwenckfeld (New Haven/London:Yale University Press, 1986) who subsequently contributed two pieces to the papers for the 250th anniversary of the arrival of the Schwenckfelders in America, ed. Peter C. Erb, Schwenckfeld and Early Schwenckfelders (Pennsburg, Pa.: Schwenckfelder Library, 1986). See also Wolfgang Knörrlich, Kaspar Schwenckfeld und die Reformation in Schlesien (Diss. phil., Bonn, 1957), and Claus-Peter Clasen, “Schwenckfeld’s Friends” MQR 46 (1972): 41–57. The numerous writings of Schwenckfeld and his associates are contained in the nineteen volumes of the Corpus Schwenckfeldianorum (henceforth CS) (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Har tel, 1907–65). 74  The most recent study of the Reformation in Silesia, from the point of view of class factors, is that of Roman Heck, “Reformacja a problem walki klasowej chłopów śląskich w XIV wieku,” Odrodzenie i Reformacja w Polsce (henceforth ORP) 6 (1961): 29–48.

200  the radical reformation

chapter 5.5

the medium between the former hypocritical life a nd the present liberty. Other wise all will be futile.75 By trusting solely in the sanctification of good works, the Catholics, he elsewhere humorously remarked, were “going on stilts,” while the Lutherans were “trying to walk on their heads” in their programmatic insistence on forensic justification. The royal road was also for Schwenckfeld a narrow road which, though open to all, would be followed to the end by only a few. The Lutheran preachers, he once remarked, “wish to bring more people to heaven than God wants there.” 76 Although Schwenckfeld once declared that he would return to the Catholic Church if only freedom of conscience were granted therein,77 basically he considered himself a Protestant.78 He was an uncommonly irenic evangelical Spiritualist who, though he would gladly have conformed to any seriously reformed church, was insistent that the Spirit be free of a ll institutions, even in an established church, for he “spirits [geistet as a verb] where, when, and to what extent he wishes.” 79 Schwenckfeld was therefore content to encourage prayer and study circles—ecclesiolae—awaiting the hand of God in any final decision as to the relative merits of the competing churches. A major figure in the Radical Reformation, in contact with Spiritualists, Anabaptists, and Rationalists alike, Schwenckfeld was primarily concerned with what can be called a e ucharistic Christology. It is therefore appropriate that he be introduced at this juncture in our narrative devoted to the sacrament of the altar. We shall here recount his life to that point in the Eucharistic Controversy when his life and thought join our general account and in passing also sketch in the religio-political scene in the congeries of duchies, prinicpalities, and quasi-sovereign cities into which the formerly single Polish-Piast duchy had decomposed—a region almost as much external to the Empire as the Swiss Confederation, intermediary between the German and Slavic realms of culture, yet ecclesiastically tied, as of old, to Poland in that the bishop of Breslau (Wrocław) was a suffragan of the Primate of Poland in Gniezno (Gnesen). The patchworks of jurisdictions were

75

 CS 2:62; trans. Schultz, Caspar Schwenckfeld, 104.  CS 4:834; 5:132. 77  CS 3:106; quoted by Paul Maier, Caspar Schwenckfeld on the Person and Work of Chr ist: A Study of Schwenckfeldian Theology at Its Core (Assen, The Netherlands: Van Gorcum, 1959), upon which much of the follo wing description depends. It is in English (cf . Ch. 31 n.1) the best exposition of the str ucture of Schwenckfeld’s thought as a whole and of his Chr istology in particular. 78  See his thir ty-six reasons for lea ving the Catholic Chur ch in CS 6:368–69, and the twenty points of doctrine which he held in common with the Lutherans, 20:641. 79  CS 7:122. 76

chapter 5.5.a

eucharistic controversy  201

represented as estates in two dietines (Fürstentage), one for Lower, another for Upper Silesia (cf. Ch. 15.3). The distinctive Christology and eucharistic spirituality of Schwenckfeld, first developed on Silesian soil, would seem to be related to the fact that not only was Silesia a ravaged theatre of war during the Hussite period, for the whole duchy was under the Crown of Bohemia; but also that Utraquists had agitated and preached notably in such centers as Glatz, Kloster, Heinrichau, and Oppeln. Many of the landed lords ( Junker) and petty princes were already receptive to Luther’s reform in that they were in many cases Utraquist, accustomed as laymen, to receive both host and chalice (Ch. 9.1). a. Schwenckfeld and the Reformation in Lower Silesia until 1526. Born in 1489 on the ancestral estate of Ossig in the principality of Liegnitz (Legnica), Caspar Schwenckfeld, up to his conversion, followed the career of an aristocrat. He studied in Cologne, Frankfurt on the Oder, and apparently also in Erfurt; but, though widely read in canon law and the church fathers, including the Greeks, and familiar with the Rhenish mystics, he never submitted to the rigors of systematic theology and never received a university degree. By 1511 he was active as courtier in Oel, then at Brieg in 1515 under George, who was corrupted by d rinking and court pleasures, and, at length, by 1521 at the ducal court under Frederick II (1480– 1547) in Liegnitz. He was George’s older brother and heir. In that year Duke Frederick was named by the Bohemian king Oberlandeshauptmann for Lower Silesia.80 This town, capital of the little Silesian principality of t he same name in Lower Silesia, was almost entirely German. With the death of L ouis of Bohemia (and Hungary) at the battle of Mohács in 1526, the duchy of Silesia would come under the Hapsburg Ferdinand of Austria and Bohemia. The Reformation was firmly introduced in Breslau (Wrocław), capital of Silesia, by Bishop John of Thurzo, a sober and devout churchman who in 1517 had anticipated Luther’s attack on indulgences by his own action taken to eliminate a h ighly profitable but superstitious cult of M arian devotion in Breslau.81 Breslau was deeply involved in the humanistic ferment of the early sixteenth century: it was Bishop John’s adviser Dominic Schleupner who drew Luther’s attention in 1520 to Lorenzo Valla’s exposure of the Donation of 80

 The royal appointment of Duke Frederick is precise. Whether Schwenckfeld came to his court from Brieg in 1516, 1518, or 1519 (the year of his religious awakening), or 1521 (death of George) is debated. McLaughlin, Schwenckfeld, 10 n. 37. 81  D. Erdmann, Luther und seine Beziehungen zu Sc hlesien, Schriften des Verein Für Reformationsgeschichte 18 (Halle, 1887), 7.

202  the radical reformation

chapter 5.5.a

Constantine as a forgery.82 When John of Thurzo died on 2 August of that year, the Reformation in Breslau continued under the leadership of John Hess, formerly his secretary, with the approval of the new bishop, James of Salza (1520–39),83 despite the opposition of the cathedral chapter. In the meantime, Schwenckfeld, who had taken up residence at the court at Liegnitz perhaps as early as in 1518 and had been converted to Luther’s reform at about the same time, was in the process of promoting the Reformation there. He had been turned to the evangelical understanding of Christianity by reading Luther’s commentary on the penitential psalms. He was caught up in the excitement, at age thirty, with the repercussions of t he Leipzig Debate (Ch. 3.1), which the brother of the reigning princes in Brieg and Liegnitz had attended as rector of Wittenberg University. Schwenckfeld formed small Bible study groups for pastors, eventually enlarged to include laymen. Thus emerged a pattern of conventicles and a network of spiritual fellowships in the principality. Schwenckfeld soon became Duke Frederick II’s chief adviser in ecclesiastical matters. In 1522 Schwenckfeld prevailed upon him to espouse the reform in his territory. 84 However, the loyal Lutheran Hess soon found Schwenckfeld an uncongenial albeit courteous associate because he could not lure him into becoming an instrument of his own version of reform. As Schwenckfeld, the Junker of Ossig advising his princes, saw it, all of Lower Silesia could be won for the cause of reform by his personal persuasion of t he foremost princes: Charles of M ünsterberg-Oel, the bishop of Breslau (resident in Neisse), the city of Breslau, and his own prince, Duke Frederick II.85 In the earlier phase of h is reforming efforts, Schwenckfeld imagined that the old and new could be harmonized. For example, in his epistolary counsel to the sisters in the convent of Naumburg (early 1523), he prescribed a feasible continuation of the cloistered life in an evangelical form.86 Later in the same year, exercising his jus patronatus on his estate in Ossig, he appointed one of his Bible-study companions to the village parish, began to dismantle the marginal ceremonials, and, through his pastor, bring the subject peasantry into the precepts and simpler practices. On 1 January 1524, he and another nobleman addressed an open letter to the bishop of Breslau, urging him to exert his influence to bring about wholesale changes in the diocese. In this noble appeal, as in all his other writings, we 82

 Ibid.  The seat of the bishop of Breslau was in Neisse (Nysa), while the city of 100,000 had its own representation in the dietine. In 1536 the Bishop of Breslau would be almost ex officio the Oberlandeshauptmann in King Ferdinand’s effort to check Protestantism. 84  After 1523 he withdrew from regular court attendance because of deafness. 85  In this fashion does McLaughlin,Schwenckfeld, chs. 2, 3, delineate the work of Schwenckfeld as Reformer in Silesia and “Bishop of Ossig.” 86  CS 1: 107ff. 83

chapter 5.5.a

eucharistic controversy  203

note Schwenckfeld’s characteristic respectfulness, refined feeling, evangelical fervor, and concern for the masses of people as well as for the religiously tutored, and also his moderation in his efforts to achieve these goals.87 As royal governor of Lower Silesia, Frederick called the Fürstentag, the dietine of the petty princes and a few burghers. And it was at the dietine of 1524 in Grottkau that the estates now first sanctioned Protestant activities. It was from Luther, so the Silesian courtier thought, that he had learned that the sons of Adam, after they have by faith been incorporated into the Second Adam, are capable of exercising their free will to do good. In taking over Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith in the historic work of Christ, whereby the faithful may be wrested from bondage to the world, Schwenckfeld characteristically chose to stress those utterances in Luther’s newfound gospel which allowed him gradually to turn the doctrine of forensic justification into progressive sanctification. He only gradually came to realize how this perception of t he Christian life differed from that of Luther, who had awakened these thoughts in him, but he long maintained that he taught only what the Austin Friar himself had proclaimed before the molten experience of solafideism began to harden into a territorial-confessional system. Schwenckfeld held steadfastly to the end his Lutheran-Augustinian-Pauline conviction in the basic Protestant principle of justification by faith. But in his concern for the moral life and as a consequence of his peculiar interpretation of the means of appropriating the work of Christ, he altered the emphasis, rendering it eventually in the characteristic formulation: “Justification derives from the knowledge (Erkenntis) of Christ through faith.” 88 And this knowledge of Christ was eucharistically based, first in the observance of the Lord’s Supper, as when the disciples at Emmaus (Luke 24:13) recognized the resurrected Christ in the breaking of t he bread, and finally in the participation in the Supper as inward feeding upon the divine nutriment, the bread from heaven. This spiritual nourishment was for him such that it enabled his will, hitherto bound, to be free. He was confident in the divine initiative in justificatory faith, but it was this experience from the beginning that incorporation in the Second Adam or the acquisition of membership (through faith) in the true church behind the visible church (the idea of an invisible church was derived from Luther) had enabled him to act freely, as had Adam in Paradise before the Fall: Although it is impossible for the old corrupt man to keep the commandments of God, as loving God with thy whole heart and thy neighbor as thyself, which is the fulf illing of t he law, 87

 CS 1:284–304; reprinted in translation in Schultz, Caspar Schwenckfeld, 33–53.  CS 10:707. Schwenckfeld held to a view of synergism. See André Séguenny, Homme chamel, homme spirituelle, étude sur la christologie de Caspar Schwenckfeld (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1975). 88

204  the radical reformation

chapter 5.5.a

it is not impossible for the new regenerate man, that is, for all Christians who believe in Christ, to keep them. 89 With this conviction that the will of the regenerate person was able to achieve sanctification, Schwenckfeld greatly enlarged the Lutheran concept and thereby came to insist that what had been for Luther a m omentary experience of passing from law to grace might be likewise experiential and prolonged for all true believers. Therefore, against Luther, he would not tolerate the definition of the Christian as simul justus et peccator. Indeed, it had been the palpable failure of Lutheranism to change the moral life of its proponents, especially among the simple parishioners, that had pushed Schwenckfeld, as a practical reformer, along that path he called the royal way. But besides the ethical concern, there was also an experiential reality that compelled Schwenckfeld in the end to differentiate his position from that of Luther, and that was his conception of f aith as a substantial, a physico-spiritual, bond between the righteous celestial Christ and the formerly sinful, but now regenerated believer.90 It was this same conception of f aith along with his high moral sense that impelled Schwenckfeld to dissociate himself from what he considered the philosophical makeshift and moral incongruity of Luther’s doctrine of the Eucharist which, because it was open to all, he pilloried as the “new indulgence.” He earnestly asked the question whether Christ is in the bread or in the wine or in heaven. He was especially concerned about the problem of Judas at the Last Supper. Confident that the answer to his questions lay in John 6, he sent out to Luther and certain colleagues in Silesia his Duodecim Quaestiones oder Argumenta contra impanationem.91 His evangelical friend, Valentine Crautwald,92 who entered his life in 1523, and to whom he turned in September 1525, was especially moved to meditate on the Quaestiones and in reaction thereto produced the distinctively “Schwenckfeldian” view of the Supper. Valentine Crautwald (c. 1490–1545), born in Neisse (Nysa), briefly a student at the University of Cracow, now canon of Neisse, secretary and lector of theology at Liegnitz, concerned himself night and day in intensive prayer and study with the eucharistic texts of the Greek New Testament and of t he Fathers, particularly Tertullian and Cyprian, until suddenly a great light seemed to break upon him, as he later described the experience. 89  CS 12:901. This explicit for mulation from The Gospel of Chr ist and Its Misuse , 1552, comes rather late in his career, but the idea was there from almost the beginning. 90  Well analyzed by Frederick William Loetscher, Schwenckfeld’s Participation in the Eucharistic Controversy (Philadelphia, 1906), 64, 72. 91  July 1525; CS 2:132–39; 3:500; for the dating and details, see E. Emmet McLaughlin, “The Genesis of Schwenckfeld’s Eucharistic Doctrine,” ARG 74 (1983): 94–121. 92  His life is completely recounted and his works calendared and characterized (along with Andreas Tischer, Jan Kalanec, and Sigismund Salminger) by André Séguenny, et al., Bibliotheca Dissidentium, 6 (Baden-Baden: Koerner, 1985).

chapter 5.5.a

eucharistic controversy  205

Here are his words in his letter to Schwenckfeld. They contain the substance of what at once became Schwenckfeld’s eucharistic theology: In the morning as I awoke for the day and softly the [thought of the] Eucharist returned to my heart, and behold after an interval there surged within me a tremendous force (as when a light suddenly appears in the darkness) which completely absorbed me, and endowed with much wisdom, led me to the understanding of the Eucharist; for it went through the whole of my body but especially my head and opened up to me, as in the twinkling of the eye, all texts bearing upon the Eucharist and the action at the Last Supper, speaking to me with a corporeal voice … and showed the proper order of the words of the Supper and that the standard thereof is the saying of Jesus in John 6, that the Scripture at this point is harmoniously consistent [with the rest] and that est must be accented as meaning continuous (perpetuum) and not to be turned into significat [as with Hoen and Zwingli].93 This is but the second stage in what both Crautwald and Schwenckfeld regarded as a tripartite revelation. The third phase was the disclosure to Crautwald, after eighteen days of further study and prayer with two associates, that the institutional words had new meaning when so construed that hoc was understood to point not to the seated body of Christ but to the bread at the Table as symbol of the enduring bread which is ever Christ himself: That neither Luther has taught correctly about the sacrament nor Zwingli hit upon the right way in respect to the action of the sacrament of thanksgiving [is clear], for the words of the Dominical Supper must be weighed and compared with John 6[:55]: My flesh est flesh indeed; that the words “This est my body” are the same as “My flesh est food indeed [now and forever more].” 94 The words of institution were thus construed as an Aramaic phenomenon, referring to an object rather than being an object, thus allowing for the transposition: “My body is this, namely bread [of heaven].” 95 By finding in the words of institution as interpreted by John 6, a mystical flesh upon which only those who perceived Christ spiritually might feed, Crautwald, to whom the solution of the textual problem had come, and Schwenckfeld, who had initiated the prayerful inquiry and at once accepted Crautwald’s illumination as God-given, were in a p osition at once to intensify the 93

 Latin letter of Crautwald to Schwenckfeld, translated into German by the latter, October 1525: CS 2:198. 94  Ibid., 2:205. 95  The helpful clarification of Séguenny, Homme charnel, homme spirituelle, 9.

206  the radical reformation

chapter 5.5.a

spiritually nutritional function of the Eucharist and to see it as withheld from Judas and all others who follow Christ with their lips only. On the one hand, Schwenckfeld could now be so confident in the reality of saving faith that he no longer needed what he considered the carnality and grossness of L uther’s doctrine of t he ubiquity of C hrist and impanation. On the other hand, by s tressing the hyperphysical substance of f aith, he could contend with conviction for the real presence while securing the Supper against defilement from Judas and all the merely nominal followers of Christ; for, he says, quoting Augustine, “only he who believes in him partakes.” 96 The christological, soteriological implications of this shift in eucharistic theology are already clearly announced when Schwenckfeld writes: Eating means … partaking of the nature (Natur) of Christ through true faith. The bodily food is transferred into our nature, but the spiritual food changes us into itself, that is, the divine nature, so that we become partakers of it [2 Pet. 1:4].97 The Wittenbergers as a whole could see in Schwenckfeld’s formulation nothing but sacramentarianism, when Schwenckfeld, on his first visit in the fall of 1525, turned from his ducal missions to confer more personally with Luther on eucharistic theology. Luther, replying to the always eager and polite Silesian courtier, said disparagingly: “Yes, Zwingli,” 98 and elsewhere called him “the third head,” along with Zwingli and Carlstadt, of the sacramentarian sect.99 Schwenckfeld himself recognized the kinship when he remarked to Luther that in trying to spiritualize the Hoc est corpus over against Luther’s scholastic consubstantiation, some (like Zwingli) stressed the est, interpreting it as signifcat, others (like Oecolampadius) sought, rather, to make corpus the symbolic word in the institutional phrase, while he, like Carlstadt, spiritualized the demonstrative pronoun (hoc) 100 and also like Carlstadt, interpreted the demonstrative pronoun as referring to that spiritual body of John 6 a nd hence, as the biblical elaboration of the eucharistic intention of J esus. Schwenckfeld, in inverting the words of institution and construing the pronoun as a “spiritual demonstrative,”

96  Migne, PL, 31: col. 1607, quoted by Schwenckfeld, CS, 3:158. A later but substantially identical statement of Schwenckfeld’s Eucharistic theology has been translated in SAW 161ff. 97  A General Epistle, ? F ebruary 1527; CS 2:574. Valid, despite the date , for the per iod before the Stillstand of 1526 (see below), because it presupposes both a sacramental and spir itual eating. 98  During the colloquia in Wittenberg, 1 December 1525; recounted by Schultz, Caspar Schwenckfeld, 74. 99  WA 19:123. 100  Extract from the diary of Schwenckfeld, 1–4 December 1525; CS 2:234–35; interpreted systematically by Loetscher, Schwenckfeld’s Participation, 52.

chapter 5.5.a

eucharistic controversy  207

secured Christ’s presence at the Eucharist: “My body is this, namely, bread or true nourishment for the soul.” Behind the eucharistic elements, for the believing participant, was a spiritual bread identical with Christ’s glorified humanity, or perhaps better, his celestial flesh (Ch. 11.3.e). Schwenckfeld, not accepting Luther’s doctrine of ubiquity, understood Christ’s session at the right hand of God in no localized sense. Indeed, he thought of Christ himself as “the right hand of God” and the Holy Spirit as “the finger of God.” In a sense, Schwenckfeld had his own mystical (but also patristic) variant of Luther’s ubiquity of Christ.101 Schwenckfeld made two more visits to Luther to share with him the inspired Silesian solution, wherein “the hoc remains hoc, the est est, and the corpus corpus.”102 On returning home from his last effort to come to some understanding with Luther on the Supper, Schwenckfeld received two harsh letters from Wittenberg (February and April 1526). Despairing of any immediate concord with Luther, Schwenckfeld experienced what he called a divine revelation, a “second awakening,” from which he later dated his matured religious life.103 Of the immediate consequence of this tremendous experience, “das erschütterndste Ereignis,” he later wrote, looking back: “Since the gracious visitation (Heimsuchung) by God I could not join with any party or church in the observance of the sacraments and in other respects, nor could I allow men to rule over my faith.”104 This and the earlier statement of how the Spirit “spirits” freely might be taken as the two basic propositions of Schwenckfeld’s individualistic, evangelical Spiritualism. He first embodied his new conviction in the famous encyclical letter of 21 April 1526, signed by Valentine Crautwald himself, and the pastors and preachers of Liegnitz, wherein they announced the irenic strategy of Stillstand, the suspension of the Supper until all groups could be brought to some accord as to its proper meaning and practice, while in the meantime defending it from defilement: We … confess and find ourselves in duty bound, and wholly trust no one will find reason to criticize this our Christian and just purpose, or to think ill of the fact that we admonish men in this critical time to suspend (stil stehen) for a t ime the observance of the highly venerable sacrament, and first to concern themselves through the Word of God about the thing most needful … in

101

 McLaughlin, Schwenckfeld, 71.  CS 3:153. 103  His various subsequent references to it are brought together by Schultz, Caspar Schwenckfeld, 100–4. 104  Letter to Landgrave Philip, after 18 May 1534; CS 5:100. 102

208  the radical reformation

chapter 5.5.a

order that we and other ministers of the Word will not be casting that which is holy unto the dogs.105 For the moment this proposed action did not look much different from the actual practice of s acramentarians, when on scholarly or diplomatic missions in Lutheran towns, of a bstaining from Communion and vice versa. In justifying this provisional action, the Silesian Brethren went on to stress the ban as a m eans of p rotecting the Christian fellowship from merely nominal believers. The suspension was not a p articular hardship for Schwenckfeld, who, like Gansfort (Ch. 2.4), had already come to an inward eating experience with the liturgical act observed only as symbol or recapitulation of the once-for-all salvific moment of the inner Eucharist. The inner, contemplative action was in fact enhanced by the suspension of the external sacrament. In the same letter the Silesians stressed the importance of a c atechetical instruction before baptism. But here, too, it was possible to distinguish between an inner and a sacramental washing. Although Schwenckfeld, in his opposition to infant baptism, eventually went as far as to say that the sacrament had not been administered correctly for a thousand years,106 he never himself repudiated the external rite once it had been administered in infancy, and simply looked for a baptism by the Holy Spirit at some point in the unfolding of each Christian life, either conjointly with, prior to, or after water baptism.107 But the interiorization of the experience of Baptism, parallel to that of the Eucharist, was never developed by the Silesian Brethren. Baptismal metaphors were largely replaced by the eucharistic terminology of the feeding upon the indwelling Christ in Schwenckfeld’s description of the religious life.108 Schwenckfeld, of course, stressed also the distinction between the inner and the outer Word; but he never depreciated the study of the written word, and the hearing of it in the divine service. He therefore acknowledged the preaching ministry. He later came to distinguish the true servants of t he Word commissioned of old, the present servants who still succeed in interpreting the Scriptures christocentrically for their hearers, and the scribes (Schriftgelehrten) in whom the work of the Spirit seems suspended and who at best curb the populace and prevent tumult.109 The weekday conventicles of the Silesians or “Brotherhoods” of “confessors of the glory of Christ” took form for study, prayer, preaching, admoni105

 CS 2: Doc. 28; translated in Schultz, Caspar Schwenckfeld, 106ff.  CS 7:252; see Hans X. Urner, “Die Täufe bei Caspar Schw enckfeld,” Theologische Literaturzeitung 6 (1948): 329–42. 107  CS 6:450; 13:248. 108  Maier, Caspar Schwenkfeld, 25. 109  CS 12:50; 13:359. Clarified by Maier, Schwenkfeldian Theology, 28. 106

chapter 5.5.a / 5.5.b

eucharistic controversy  209

tion, and the answering of r eligious questions. They were in the later language of Pietism ecclesiolae in ecclesia. The liturgy in use at Liegnitz had been reconstructed110 into three parts, one for the morning service of prayers and meditations, with a spiritual communion based upon the reading and contemplation of J ohn 6; one for vespers, with, among many others, a prayer for the magistracy; and a series of private and occasional devotions. Somewhat earlier, for his brotherhoods, Schwenckfeld had prepared what must be considered the first catechism for children of t he Reformation era.111 Schwenckfeld did not conceive the prayer meetings as substitutes for an established church. Much later, when his following was to be widespread and numerous, he would seldom advise his Spiritualists against attending upon the stated services of the established churches.112 He looked forward, however, to a church of the Spirit, characterized by the unity, purity, and gifts of the apostolic church.113 The suspension of t he Supper which Schwenckfeld urged upon his own brothers was orginally provisional and irenic. From being a temporary expedient, suspension evolved into a n on-sacramental way of l ife. In an undated document114 Schwenckfeld will advance a number of reasons for Stillstand, including his own sense of unworthiness and the unfeasibility of enforcing the ban. Still later, he will go on to say that the Supper has never been properly understood, that it is indeed “the sealed book of the Apocalypse, which has not yet been opened by the Spirit of God. Hence in good conscience we cannot commune with any party, but must stand still in this respect and guard ourselves against idolatry and misuse.”115 In order to encourage the irenic and “ecumenical” interchange among professors of Lutheranism, sacramentarianism, and the evangelical Spiritualism of the Silesian Brethren, Schwenckfeld inspired the short-lived University of L iegnitz, with twenty-four professors proposed ( July 1526).116 Silesian monasteries were, at the same time, encouraged to reconstruct the disciplined life with fresh evangelical motivation. b. Schwenckfeld and Aspects of the Silesian Reformation until 1529 As the “reluctant radical” and would-be follower of L uther was a m ajor figure in the history of P rotestantism in Silesia, and as he occupies an 110

 CS 2: Doc. 37.  “Correspondenzblatt des Vereins für die e vangelische Kirche Schlesiens,” 7:2.155–58; printed in CS 17: Doc. 1175. 112  CS 12:796. 113  In conversation with Luther: Diary, 1525; CS 2:280, 9:905. 114  CS 3: Doc. 78 (conjecturally dated December 1528); translated by Schultz, Caspar Schwenckfeld, 111–12. 115  CS 16: Doc. 1161. 116  CS 2: Doc. 34. 111

210  the radical reformation

chapter 5.5.b

important place in the Radical Reformation elsewhere in the Empire, the nineteen stately volumes of his published and related works117 make appropriate here a summary account of h is further career in Silesia up to his departure in voluntary exile in 1529 before we encounter him next in Strassburg (Ch. 10.3.b). As Schwenckfeld openly dissociated himself from Lutheranism and then by h is radical Spiritualism made the extension of a t rue folk church ever less feasible, he gradually lost standing in the ducal reform, the more so as the duke had to be circumspect in view of the hostility to all reform on the part of his new sovereign, Ferdinand, king of Bohemia and Hungary as of 1526. The Breslau town councilmen had advised Ferdinand that he had better tolerate the Lutheran Reformation, for fear of driving the people into something worse, namely, Schwenckfeldian Spiritualism.118 Decisive for the two provinces of Silesia would be the program of the “elected” King Ferdinand in May 1527 to receive the homage of his Silesian subjects. In preparation Duke Frederick II at the Fürstentag in April would try to forge a p an-Protestant alliance while Ferdinand, with his ecclesiastical advisor John Faber (who would in the following year preside over the hearing of Hubmaier in Vienna; Ch. 9.2.c) would pursue a policy of d ividing the Evangelicals into Lutheran and Zwinglian camps. The policy of Frederick of a united Evangelical front would be shattered on the Lutheran specificities and within the year he would himself be relieved of the royal governorship. With this we have jumped ahead of our overall chronological coverage. Ferdinand was determined to stamp out the Reformation. From Breslau, 16 May 1527, he issued a mandate intended to restore unchanged the old order. Executing a sacramentarian preacher of Striegau in royal Silesia, John Reichel, as an example in 1527, Ferdinand revealed his intention of using the denial of t he real presence as a l ever to separate the Protestant factions and then to pry apart the whole Reformation.119 It was Schwenckfeld who drafted Frederick’s Apology from Liegnitz in reply to the harsh mandate and also the second Apology in the name of the Liegnitz clergy. In a mandate of 1 August 1528, Ferdinand responded with the absolute annulment of evangelical reforms in Silesia. Anabaptists and their practices are reported in Silesia as early as 1521. Crautwald, in a letter from Leignitz to Wolfgang Capito in Strassburg, 29 June 1528, reflecting inter alia on local pedobaptism and rebaptism, shows his awareness of v arious local baptismal practices of—papists, anabaptis-

117

 The already referenced CS.  Erdmann, Luther und seine Beziehungen zu Schlesien, 58. 119  In earlier historiography, Reichel was considered a Schwenckfelder.Weigelt, Schwenckfeldertum, 91, keeps it still open as to whether the martyr was a follower of Carlstadt, Zwingli, or Schwenckfeld. 118

chapter 5.5.b

eucharistic controversy  211

tae, protestants—including (the first reported) acts of immersio.120 In 1528 Schwenckfeld and Crautwald became involved in controversy with Anabaptists in Liegnitz. Among these Anabaptists was a g roup moving into Sabbatarianism121 in a cluster of congregations founded by Oswald Glaidt from Moravia and his co-missioner Andrew Fischer (Ch. 9.2; 15.3).122 In the meantime, the Swiss sacramentarians of B asel and Zurich, Oeco-lampadius and Zwingli, had published in Basel two of S chwenckfeld’s works, approvingly but without his knowledge, De cursu verbi Dei (written 31 May 1527) and The Ground and Cause of the Error and Controversy Concerning the Lord’s Supper. This indirect substantiation of the charge of sacramentarianism against Schwenckfeld from the Lutherans in Saxony alarmed the hard-pressed Duke Frederick II in Silesia, who knew that he could salvage the reform in his lands only by dissociating himself from all such radical expressions. Schwenckfeld, for his part, in order to save what he could of the reform by his discreet withdrawal, went out of Silesia into voluntary exile (19 April 1529), preserving contact with his followers and estates by letter. We shall next encounter him in Strassburg in Ch. 10.3.b and pick up the history of the Radical Reformation in Silesia in Ch. 15.3.a.

120

 CS 3 nr. 60: Elsass 1, (QGT 7) nt. 141.  Weigelt, Schwenckfeldertum in Schlesien, 113–19, 124–26; Daniel Liechty,“Schwenckfelders and Sabbatarian Anabaptists: A Tragedy of the Early Reformation,” in Schwenckfeld, 135–43. 122  The bibliography for this sabbatarian pair is being reprinted. On Fischer, see Ch. 15. For Glaidt, see Daniel Liechty, “Oswald Glaidt,” BD 9 (1988): 7–23. 121

Chapter 6

Rise of the Swiss Brethren as the First Anabaptists of the Era

We took leave of the Zurich radicals

at a time when they were withdrawing from Zwingli because of his delay in carrying out his proclaimed reforms in deference to the town council and in his hope that thus the whole canton might be reformed in head and members. At first the differences between Zwingli and the Zwinglian purists had appeared to be merely a matter of emphasis—at most, differences over strategy and timing—but by 1524 it had become plain that the differences went deeper: the regular Zwinglians sought the gradual reformation of the whole of the Swiss commonwealth, while the radicals were calling for the precipitate restoration of a righteous remnant in canton Zurich and beyond. Zwingli’s ideal was a cantonally reformed Alpine “Israel,” still to be realized by the prophet’s patient ecclesiastical diplomacy and patriotic grasp of the importance of getting the other cantons of the Confederation to swing into line. The ideal of the voluntarist Anabaptists was by now a mobile fellowship of conventicles, a righteous remnant assembling in Zurich and throughout its village dependencies and beyond, determined to put into immediate practice what their leaders had in breathless religious excitement learned from Zwingli himself in his appeal to Scripture as the ultimate authority. As we saw in the last chapter (Ch. 5.2.d), the movement of Bible-study groups had turned into sacramentarian conventicles apart, calling for a reform of the parish churches. The change to a congeries of conventicles—though they were at first, perhaps, considered temporary experiments—accelerated alterations in theology in general. Just a few months earlier the radical party had employed the language of Zwingli in talking about faith alone in the unique action of Christ on Calvary. Now they had become specific about the relationship of faith to baptism and about election and inclusion 212

chapter 6

rise of swiss brethren  213

in the covenant. The radicals insisted that it was incongruous to regard the passivity of eight-day-old infants and the ecstasy of old men or women awakened to their sinfulness and rejoicing in the divine forgiveness as essentially the same baptismal action. They were certain that Zwingli was wrong in equating circumcision under the Old Covenant with baptism under the New. The provisional sacramentarian conventicles became a new sect—that is, a true church of the remnant—the moment these radicals, having defied the magistracy for its palpable failure to heed what they perceived to be the binding precepts of God through the New Covenant in Christ, came to regard even their baptismal birthright in the established or civic church as invalid and proceeded to dismantle the ecclesiastical structure of t he centuries. They started all over, as if there had been no true Christians among them. Disillusioned with compromises in reformation, the radicals were now bent upon a restitution. They began with the confession of guilt, proceeded to the washing away of sins in a new baptism, and covenanted together in the communion of m utually forgiven and forgiving saints— saints in the language of Acts, men and women set apart from the world in the acceptance of the resurrected Christ as the lord of their lives and sole arbiter through the apostles of the group disciplines and the divine assignments laid upon the participants in the new life. The first true sect of the Reformation era was formed when the sacramentarian Brethren separated from “the world,” so defining it as to include not only the idolatrous realms (as both the sectaries and the Zwinglians saw it) of papal Christendom but also the cantonal republic. The first gathered church of sectarian “Protestantism” came into being precisely at that moment when a f ormer priest in the home of a u niversity-educated prophet of t he new order received baptism on confession of sin from the hand of a layman, and when all present defended their action on the ground that the Christian conscience was no more beholden to the reforming magistrates and their divines than to priests and prelates. The newly baptized convert on this momentous occasion had been baptized in his infancy, had been confirmed by a bishop, had taken quasimonastic vows as a canon, had been ordained as a priest, and had undoubtedly many times been shriven in the quadripartite medieval sacramental action of p enance, with its repentance, confession, absolution, and satisfaction. In a moment of a nguish and exaltation all these actions of t he medieval Church were sloughed off as though they had never been; and, as a penitent in the sense of a disciple of John the Baptist, with a complete change of m ind, metanoia, the clerical convert accepted believers’ baptism as a truly ablutionary act of penance, as an affirmation of a newfound faith, and as a token of his membership in a new church taking form among the fifteen onlooking participants.

214  the radical reformation

chapter 6.1

The scene of this event was the home of Felix Mantz in Zurich. The baptizer was the layman Conrad Grebel. The former priest thus rebaptized was George Blaurock.1 The day was 21 January 1525, the birthday of Anabaptism.2 In recounting the rise and spread of this movement through German-speaking Switzerland and beyond, we go back a month before this first rebaptism in the canton. 1. Zurich and Zollikon: The First Anabaptist Fellowship As late as December 1524, the separating Christians, who were already calling themselves Brethren in Christ, or simply Christians, and were soon to be called also Swiss Brethren, confessed their willingness to be persuaded by scriptural argument, and made bold to petition the town council to ask Zwingli to debate with their representatives. To this end, Felix Mantz addressed to the Zurich council an eloquent Petition of Protest and Defense concerning baptism in December 1524. 3 In the middle of the month private conferences were secured at which Grebel, Mantz, and Haetzer opposed Zwingli and Leo Jud. The Brethren had felt themselves outmatched by 1

 John Allen Moore, Der starke Jörg (Kassel: Oncken, 1955).  As Zurich and Switzerland in general hold pr ide of place in witnessing the first rebaptisms in the Reformation era, a capital offense according to the Roman law from Theodosius and Justinian, we note here the by now many volumes of mostly legal acts of the Täufer, some of which have already been adduced in earlier chapter s. They come in four ser ies, the larger number under the international Täuferakten-Kommission. The series began under the German Verein für Reformationsgeschichte as a succession within the Quellen und Forschungen zur Reformationsgeschichte (1930–). The subseries, originally entitled Quellen zur Gesc hichte der Wiedertäufer was renamed, under the impact of American Mennonite subsidy and scholarly contr ibutions, simply Täufer, with the common abbreviation for the ser ies QGT, numbered from 1, Herzogtum Württemberg (1930) to 16, Elsass (Alsace) 4 (1988). From the Verein series was detached the volume for Hesse, Wiedertäferakten 1527–1626, which is Urkundliche Quellen zur hessisc hen Reformationsgeschichte, 4 (1951). The Täuferakten for Switzerland similarly appear in another ser ies, Quellen zur Gesc hichte der Täufer in der Sc hweiz (QGTS), the first volume edited b y Leonhard von Muralt and Walter Schmid, 1 Zurich, 1 (Zurich: Hirzel, 1952). The corresponding Dutch series is Documenta Anabaptistica Neerlandica, 1 Friesland en Groningen (1530–1550) (Leiden: Brill, 1975). We place her e also some general titles not thus f ar introduced. William R. Estep, The Anabaptist Story, 2d ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975) together with the work ed. and trans. Estep, Anabaptist Beginnings 1523–1533: A Source Book (Nieuwkoop: DeGraaf, 1976); Walter Klassen, Anabaptism: Neither Pr otestant nor Catholic (Waterloo, Ontario: Herald, 1973); H. W. Meihuizen, Van Mantz tot Menno: de verbreiding van de doper se beginseln (Amsterdam: Algemene Doopgezinde Societeit, 1975); Hans Jürgen Goer tz, Die Täufer: Geschichte und Deutung (Munich: Beck, 1980); and the bib liographical coverage of J ames M. Stayer, “The Anabaptists,” in Steven Ozment, ed., Reformation Europe: A Guide to Research (St. Louis: Center for Reformation Research, 1982), ch. 6. 3  QGT 1, no.16; trans. in Zuck, Christianity and Rev olution, doc. 12, pp. 62–63. Pater, Karlstadt ch. 5, shows, on the basis of the man uscript printed by Von Muralt that it is clearly a mingling of Swiss and Saxon German and is, in fact, only Mantz’s reworking of the unpublished eighth Carlstadt tract, “Dialogus vom Tauff.” The basic study of all the disputations and the issues at stake in Switzerland is that of John Yoder Täufertum und Reformation in der Schweiz,Vol. 1, Die Gespräche zwischen Täufern und Reformatoren in 1523–1538 (Karlsruhe: Schneider, 1962). 2

chapter 6.1

rise of swiss brethren  215

Zwingli’s debating skill, and had hence proposed a w ritten exchange of opinions. The proposal was declined. On two successive Tuesdays in January (10 and 17) 1525, Grebel, Mantz, Reublin, and Cajacob (Blaurock) faced Zwingli and Henry Bullinger. Each side claimed the victory in what goes down in history as the First Baptismal Disputation. At the end of t he second session, Zwingli remarked “that it would be not only inadvisable but also dangerous to have further debate with them,”4 because of the high state of public feeling occasioned by the disputation. It seems likely that Zwingli, who was originally a pedobaptist more out of c onvention than principle, was unable to present his arguments with sufficient conviction to create a c ompelling impression, while the passionate defenders of b elievers’ baptism won many supporters by their straightforwardness and enthusiasm. But the Brethren were at a great disadvantage. The council, in fact, had already made up its mind, and Zwingli’s debating skill was outstanding, particularly by contrast with people like Reublin, whom Zwingli characterized as simple of mind, foolishly bold, garrulous, and unwise. Thus it was no surprise that on the following day the town council reaffirmed its conservative stand on infant baptism, and decreed that all who should fail to have their infants baptized within eight days would be exiled. Three days later, on 21 January, Reublin, Haetzer, John Brötli, and Andrew Castelberger were expelled as foreigners, and Grebel and Mantz were forbidden to hold any more “schools” for “agitation.”5 In the meantime Grebel had written his brother-in-law Vadian, 14 January, remarking that his Martha was delivered of a baby girl and “that she has not yet been baptized and swum in the Romish water bath,” this making her parents subject to banishment.6 Brötli was a former priest who had left his parish to follow Zwingli, had married, and with his wife and child sojourned in Zollikon, where he lived from his own rural labor. He had won much local attention for his opposition to infant baptism particularly. The bookseller Castelberger (Ch. 5.2; nicknamed “on the crutches,” in reference to his lameness) had attracted numerous “confused people” at meetings in his home in the Grisons (Graubünden), where he preached against usury, tithes, benefices, clerical pride, and mercenary war. Castelberger had come to Zurich, where he had joined the incipient Anabaptist movement with enthusiasm, but swift expulsion prevented his accomplishing anything directly in Zurich. Blaurock, although also a foreigner, was not included in the expulsion order because he was known to the authorities by only one statement made 4

 ZW 4:207.   Von Muralt, Quellen, no. 26. 6   Von Muralt, Quellen, p.33, noted by Pater, Karlstadt, 135 n. 99. 5

216  the radical reformation

chapter 6.1

at the discussion on 17 January, where, as no one recognized him, he was referred to as “the one in the blue coat” (blauer Rock). A university-trained priest,7 he and Castelberger are the first of t he Rhaetians to make their appearance in our history. The three Rhaetian leagues, of w hich Graubünden was the chief, constituted a tripartite confederation allied with the Swiss Confederation (and today its largest canton). Since this region played an important role as a refuge for German-speaking Anabaptists and Italian Evangelicals, it will be more fully treated in Ch. 22.1. The “schools” condemned by t he mandate of 21 January were evening gatherings in the homes of t he pious for the purpose of l istening to “readers” of t he Bible and for discussion. Visiting readers kept these schools throughout the cantons in touch with each other. They represented, indeed, the first informal beginnings of the gathered churches of Anabaptism.8 It seems likely, as we saw in Ch. 5.2.d, on the basis of the “much and often” of Grebel’s letter to Müntzer, that some of t hem had been practicing a commemorative Communion service. For many months the Brethren had prayed to God for guidance, to show them the moment when they should act. Now that it was clear that Zwingli and the authorities could not be won over to the program for the reconstitution of the primitive church it seemed that the time for restitution had come. It was on the very evening of the expulsion, 21 January, that the comrades assembled as a “school” meeting in the house of Felix Mantz. The Hutterite Chronicle 9 preserves Blaurock’s reminiscences. It tells how first he sought out Grebel and Mantz: With them he spoke and talked through matters of faith. They came to one mind in these things, and in the pure fear of God they recognized that a person must learn from the divine Word and preaching a t rue faith which manifests itself in love, and receive the true Christian baptism on the basis of r ecognized and confessed faith, in the union with God of a g ood conscience, [prepared] henceforth to serve God in a holy Christian life with all godliness, also to be steadfast to the end in tribu-

7

 Blaurock matriculated at Leipzig in 1513; his first parish as priest was Trins in Graubünden.  Fridolin Sicher, Chronik, ed. E. Götzinger, Mitteilungen zur vaterländischen Geschichte 20 (1885): 19. On the use of the ter m “gathered,” over against “given,” we follow Harris Franklin Hall (1939), whom I brought into my article in the festschrift for James Leo Gar rett, Jr., “The Believers’ Church and the Given Church,” The People of God, Essays on the Believers’ Church, ed. Paul Basden and David S. Dockery (Nashville: Broadman, 1990), 325–32. 9  Preserved in a unique codex in South Dakota and critically edited by A. J. F. Ziegelschmid, Die alteste Chronik der Hutter ischen Brüder (Philadelphia, 1943), translated as Chronicle of the Hutterian Brethren 1525–1665 , ed. Hutterian Brethren (Ulster Park, N.Y.: Plough Pub lishing House, 1989). 8

chapter 6.1

rise of swiss brethren  217

lation. And it came to pass that they were together until fear (Angst) began to come over them, yea, they were oppressed (gedrungen) in their hearts. Thereupon, they began to bow their knees to the Most High God in heaven and called upon him as the knower of h earts, implored him to enable them to do his divine will and to manifest his mercy toward them. For f lesh and blood and human forwardness did not drive them, since they well knew what they would have to bear and suffer on account of it. After the prayer, George Cajacob arose and asked Conrad [Grebel] to baptize him, for the sake of G od, with the true Christian baptism upon his faith and knowledge. And when he knelt down with that request and desire, Conrad baptized him, since at that time there was no ordained minister (Diener) to perform such work. After that was done, others similarly desired George to baptize them, which he also did upon their request. Thus they together gave themselves to the name of the Lord in the high fear of God. Each conf irmed (bestätet) the other in the service of the gospel, and they began to teach and keep the faith. Therewith began the separation from the world and its evil works. The next day, at the well in Hirslanden (near Zurich), Brötli, under sentence of expulsion, was seen to baptize Fridli Schumacher by sprinkling him with water from the well. The apostolic simplicity of this scene at the well contrasts notably even with the prevailing baptismal practice of the new liturgy of Leo Jud,10 which still included blowing upon the baptizand, exorcism, crossing, and the use of spittle and oil. In the course of the following week, Grebel, Blaurock, and Mantz reconvened the sacramentarian “school” or conventicle as an Anabaptist congregation at Zollikon, a prosperous village five miles out from the town of Zurich on the lake.11 Some thirty-five converts, rebaptized in Zollikon in the eventful week of 22–29 January, were recruited from the class of small farmers, their wives, and hired help, rather than the wealthier farmers.12 Here rebaptism in the

10   This baptismal service, in German, with its still Catholic features was introduced in 1523. Not until the spring of 1525 was Zwingli’s fully Protestant baptismal service introduced in Zurich. 11   The week’s activities have been vi vidly reconstructed by Fritz Blanke, “The First Anabaptist Congregation, Zollikon: 1525,” MQR 28 (1953): 17, a translation from the German. 12  Paul Guyer, Die Bevölkerung Zollikons im Mittelalter und in der Neuzeit (Zurich: Schulthess, 1946). But it w as religious and not economic moti vation, he clearly demonstrates, which enlisted these smaller f armers in the e vangelical movement. See, however, the observations of Oskar Vasella, who suspects that the Anabaptists of Waldshut and the Grisons were socially more radical than those in Zur ich. He distinguished between rural parishes that were constitution-

218  the radical reformation

chapter 6.1

simple form of a ffusion and the Lord’s Supper with common bread and wine were re-enacted several times under the covering of m omentous solemnity, and all in the simplest possible fashion, in imitation of the New Testament accounts. First, a New Testament story of t he institution was read, following which there was a s hort address on the meaning of t he sacrament, and finally the distribution of the bread and the wine. While in the reformed parishes of Zurich and in other dependent villages Mass was still being read in Latin by a vested pastor, and the people were receiving consecrated wafers and no wine, here in Zollikon peasant house laymen were breaking plain bread and distributing it together with wine to all the participants, who were quite clear about the meaning of t he ceremony, namely, that they from thence purposed to lead a godly life.13 It is in this celebration of the Supper of the Lord that the congregation felt itself part of the communion of saints, united in one bond of love to God and to the brethren. There is early evidence that they took seriously their communion as a token, also, of the community of goods, as in Acts, breaking the locks off their doors and cellars and sharing supplies.14 Relief from the tremendous conviction of sin and the yearning for a purity of life prompted them to share all things. Rebaptism had taken the place of t he sacrament of p enance, long debased by t he indulgence traffic, while the eucharistic elements were becoming the sacramental cement, giving coherence to the brotherhood of would-be saints. The initial call to believers’ baptism stressed, over against pedobaptism, not the adult’s capacity to believe but rather to repent. The revival at Zollikon involved the reconception of repentance. To the worn-out sacrament of Baptism had been restored the experiential significance of the now displaced sacrament of penance.15 Grebel, Mantz, Brötli, and Blaurock were preachers of repentance who were able to bring their hearers to a moving consciousness of sin and of their need for forgiveness. The court records of t he hearings of t he Anabaptists from the year 1525 repeatedly testify to the deepness of t he conviction of sin and the anguished longing for forgiveness which characterized the early converts.16 In contrast to the usual accounts of church history, which reveal

ally independent and those that were benefices of abbeys or city churches. “Zur Geschichte der Täuferbewegung in der Schweiz,” Zeitschrift fur Schweizerische Kirchetlgeschichte (henceforth: ZSKG) 48 (1954): esp. 186. 13   Von Muralt, Quellen, no. 32. 14  John Kessler, Sabbata (c. 1533), ed. Emil Egli and Rudolf Schoch (St.Gall, 1902), 142. 15  See Zwingli, Of Baptism, LCC 24:158ff. See also Ch. 11 n. 1 for other works and analyses of baptismal loci. 16  Cf. Blanke, Brüder in Christo, 35ff.

chapter 6.1

rise of swiss brethren  219

the speculations and controversies of princes, theologians, and ecclesiastics, these transcripts of the Anabaptist hearings illuminate the spiritual struggles, fears, and joys of ordinary people. Among the preachers of r epentance, George Cajacob Blaurock stands out. The first to be rebaptized, he was zealous to the point of hardihood in his preaching and baptizing, and was soon styled “the new Paul.” Nine days after his own rebaptism, he was emboldened to enter the village church of Zollikon, block the path of the pastor-priest, and ask him provocatively what he had come to do. The good Zwinglian answered, “Not thou, but I, have been called to preach.”17 The pastor, who was acting on the authority of the canons of the Zurich minister, ascended the pulpit and tried to preach, but Blaurock interrupted and disturbed him so much that he stepped down again. Blaurock hoped, just as Grebel and Mantz had hoped earlier, that by getting the support of the people, he could persuade them to heed the Word of God and clear the temple of idolatry independently of the magistracy. The congregation was receptive and insisted that Blaurock continue, whereupon he began striking a board with a rod, saying, “It is written, My house shall be a house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves.” He created such a commotion that the magistrate intervened and threatened to put Blaurock in jail unless he desisted. With this scene ended the eight days of relatively undisturbed Anabaptist revivalism in the Zurich region. Then the arm of the magistrate began to be felt, first mildly, then with increasing harshness, by all the leading representatives of Anabaptism. The mild Zwinglians were forced to turn with severity upon these ultra-Zwinglian brethren who made the Bible not merely the guiding authority but the imperious command of God. Brötli and others had already been expelled from the jurisdiction of Zurich. On Monday, 30 January, Felix Mantz and George Blaurock, along with twenty-five others, were arrested in Zollikon and placed in the sequestered Austin monastery.18 The prisoners denied that the council had competence in religion, and one of t heir number declared that he “had enrolled under the Dux Jesus Christ and would go with him to death.”19 The authorities sought to bring the earnest evangelicals around by disputation. Zwingli himself participated and argued that there was no second baptism in the Bible. Precisely that, they retorted, could be found in Acts 19:3–5, in which those who knew the baptism of John nevertheless received a second and true Christian baptism from Paul. 20

17

  Von Muralt, Quellen, no. 29.  Ibid. 19  Ibid., no. 33. 20  Ibid., no. 43. 18

220  the radical reformation

chapter 6.1

All except Mantz and Blaurock, who were “stiff-necked,” were released on 8 February, on the condition that they would assemble only in groups of three or four and exclusively for Bible-reading and conversation, not for baptizing and preaching. Mantz, who was a Zuricher and obligated by oath to obey the authorities, nevertheless refused to heed the council and insisted on written exchanges with Zwingli, both of them to argue solely from Scripture. Mantz was kept on in prison. In the course of further questioning he explained how the community of g oods in Acts 2:42–47 was the consequence of a joyfully commemorative communion in the benefits of the work of C hrist in undoing the Fall. 21 Mantz’s quiet steadfastness, his insistence on disputing by c arefully written exegesis, and his refusal to renounce his baptismal theology, encouraged others like Brötli and Grebel.22 Blaurock was released on 18 February. He immediately went out to Zollikon and began preaching to the conventicle in a private house, baptizing all who would repent. 23 In the meantime, a farmer, George Schad, had been recruiting, and on one day alone had baptized forty adults in the village church. Schad and Blaurock naturally aroused the authorities, who had released the Zollikon sectaries on their promise to abstain from precisely such behavior. The Anabaptists, for their part, had made this promise with a “mental reservation” to the effect that they would refrain unless God constrained them to do otherwise, and Blaurock had quickly persuaded them of their duty to obey God rather than men. On 16 March the radicals were again imprisoned. 24 During this time the Second Baptismal Disputation was held, in which Zwingli again participated. 25 Some of t he debaters were held in prison for about two weeks, after which most of them yielded and paid their fines and costs (25 March); but Mantz and Blaurock remained in prison. Soon, however, Blaurock and his wife were banished from Zurich and warned of severe punishment if they should ever return. They went back to the Grisons. Mantz sometime after this escaped. 26 Seeking shelter, he came to Grebel’s house in Zurich. The two men planned to go off together on a missionary trip outside the jurisdiction of Zurich, but Grebel’s wife, who obviously did not share her husband’s convictions, threatened to expose

21

 Ibid., no. 42a.  Ibid., no. 44. 23  Ibid., nos. 48, 50. 24   Von Muralt, Quellen, no. 53. 25  It was Krajewski who first clearly identified this second disputation, Leben und Sterben … Mantz, 93–97. 26  For the detailed argumentation, see Krajewski, Leben und Sterben … Mantz, 99. 22

chapter 6.1 / 6.2

rise of swiss brethren  221

the escape of Mantz if he did not leave at once. 27 Thereupon Mantz, too, went to the Grisons (Ch. 22.1), following Blaurock. There he was arrested in July, turned over to the Zurich authorities, and would not be released until October 1525 (Ch. 6.3). 28 Grebel was in Schaff hausen for two months at the beginning of 1525, seeking to convert the chief pastor there, Dr. Sebastian Hofmeister, and his Schaff hausen colleague, Dr. Sebastian Meyer. Hofmeister had taken part in both the Zurich disputations of January and October 1523, serving, indeed, in the latter as its chairman. Grebel had reason to believe that Hofmeister could be won over to the new view on baptism. Hofmeister, for example, once wrote to him saying that he had “openly declared before the council of S chaff hausen that Master Ulrich Zwingli erred in the matter of infant baptism” and that he himself had no wish to have his own child baptized. 29 But there is a g reat gap between antipedobaptism and anabaptism. In the end, Grebel’s efforts while a guest in Hofmeisters’ home hardened the two Schaff hausen pastors against the Swiss Brethren. Grebel’s main achievement in the town was his rebaptism of Wolfgang Ulimann from St. Gall, who insisted that Grebel immerse him completely naked in the icy Rhine. 30 Though the first Anabaptist congregation of Zollikon had been scattered, the new movement was taking on form and direction. Basic was the conviction that upon all who had been experientially forgiven, the Great Commission of Matthew 28: 19–2031 was laid to proclaim repentance and true baptism among all peoples in programmatic heedlessness of the territorial and prudential limitations imposed by the magisterial Reformers. 2. Anabaptism in St. Gall, the Canton of Appenzell, and

Rheintal

The conditions under which the Swiss Brethren movement began in the town of St. Gall were different from those prevailing elsewhere, because at the outset it was tolerated by the authorities and its early progress was therefore rapid. The burgomaster (1526–32) and town physician, Vadian, was married to Grebel’s sister, and the two biblical humanists had been for some time in correspondence. It was Grebel, indeed, who sent his former mentor of his Vienna student days the newly printed copies of the works

27

 Ibid., 103.  Ibid., 111. 29   Von Muralt, Quellen, 179, repeated by Hubmaier, Der alten und der neuen Lehrer Ur teil, 1526. See fur ther, C. A. Bachtold, “Die Schaffhauser Wiedertäufer,” Beiträge zur vaterländischen Geschichte 7 (1900): 97; Krajewski, Leben und Sterben … Mantz, 104–7. 30  Johannes Kesslers Sabbata, ed. Emil Egli and Rudolf Schoch (St. Gall, 1902), 144. 31  Cf. Franklin H. Littell, “The Anabaptist Theology of Missions,” MQR 21 (1947): 5–17. 28

222  the radical reformation

chapter 6.2

of Tertullian, whom both admired for his rigorism. Little did Grebel realize that Vadian would one day turn all the arguments of Tertullian aimed at ancient heretics against the Swiss Brethren themselves. 32 At first Vadian saw no reason to suppress the movement and even sympathized with its disapproval of infant baptism. The beginning of the evangelical movement in the town dates from the open-air preaching of Balthasar Hubmaier in May 1523. 33 In January 1524 the ever-enlarging circle of concerned evangelical brethren began meeting regularly of a Sunday evening for Bible study under John Kessler, a lay theological student recently returned from auditing courses in Wittenberg. Presently, Kessler would become a l eading Zwinglian and the author of the important Reformation chronicle, Sabbata.34 From a private home, the Bible study group transferred its meetings first to the guildhall of the tailors, then to that of the weavers, and then to the second floor of the Metzge, which could accommodate a thousand people. At this point the magistrates placed St. Lawrence’s at the disposal of the eager evangelicals. 35 Then, in the early fall of 1524, one Lawrence Hochrütiner challenged the leader Kessler on the question of infant baptism. Hochrütiner, a native of St. Gall, had taken part in 1523 in destroying the crucifix at Stadelhofen (Ch. 5.2) and distributing to the poor the chopped-up pieces as firewood. Obliged to leave the jurisdiction of Z urich, he had returned to St. Gall and became the most restless member of Kessler’s study group. It was when Rom. 6:3, on baptism into the death of Jesus Christ, was under discussion that Hochrütiner spoke up saying: “I observe from your words that you mean one may baptize infants,” and then proceeded to argue that only he who can believe may be baptized unto salvation. 36 Kessler was doing his best with a very obstreperous Bible class and simply indicated, in answer to Hochrütiner, that he “would not know for the moment what else to do” than to continue to baptize infants and then went on to observe that in making so much of believers’ baptism the evangelical “Gallers” were actually becoming like Paul’s reactionary Galatians in their stress on circumcision as essential to salvation! 37 The government objected to Kessler’s study 32  Conradin Bonorand, “Joachim Vadian und die Täufer,” Schweizer Beiträge zur Allgemeinen Geschichte 11 (1953): 43–72. 33  Kessler, Sabbata, 106. 34  For accounts of John Kessler (1502–74) and of Anabaptism in his r egion, see John Horsch, “The Swiss Brethren in St. Gall and Appenzell,” MQR 7 (1933): 205–26; Heinold Fast, “Die Sonderstellung der Täufer in Sankt Gallen und Appenzell,” Zwigliana 11 (1960): 223–40; and for the calendar ed sources, idem, (QGTS) Östschweiz (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1973). 35  Kessler, Sabbata, 110. 36  He was afterward among the fifteen in the house of Mantz in Zurich on the memorable occasion of Blaurock’s rebaptism, where he was himself also rebaptized. 37  Kessler, Sabbata, 143.

chapter 6.2

rise of swiss brethren  223

group. Despite his moderation, Kessler was forbidden by the town council, on 15 September 1524, to carry on the work. When he complied, his place was presently taken by the more radical Ulimann, returned from his rebaptism in the Rhine. Ulimann, whose father was a guild master in St. Gall and who had been a Premonstratensian in Chur (whence also Blaurock and Castelberger had come), proclaimed to a l arge company assembled in the weaver’s guildhall that the heavenly Father had revealed to him that he should avoid preaching in the church with its images, a place of lies, where the truth had never been proclaimed. Some of the Brethren regretted his move, pointing out that they had only recently been permitted to carry on their lections in a church. At this point, two evangelical parties were forming within the shadow of the ancient abbey of St. Gall: the civic church, headed by Vadian, Grebel’s old preceptor from Vienna days, his brother-in-law, and his faithful correspondent, and the gathered church of t he radical followers of U limann, whom Grebel had immersed in the Rhine. When Grebel himself came to St. Gall for two weeks in April, he was outstandingly successful, and on the Palm Sunday of April 1525 he rebaptized great numbers at the riverbank. 38 At first the council put no obstacle in the way of the outdoor meetings of t he Anabaptists. Grebel departed. Still cherishing the hope that its town council might adopt his doctrine and set the example to be followed by the other cantonal governments, in contrast to the reactionary policy of Zurich, Grebellater implored Vadian: Become as a c hild, for otherwise you cannot enter into the Kingdom of G od. If you are not willing to stand with the Brethren, at least do not resist them. Do not give to other states the example of persecution. 39 After Grebel departed, Hippolytus (Bolt) Eberli from the canton of Schwyz appeared. He belonged to the sacramentarian Brethren, and it was not until his arrival in St. Gall that he submitted to rebaptism and emerged as an eloquent field preacher of the rapidly growing Anabaptist movement. During the Easter holidays almost all the citizens and neighboring farmers assembled to hear the peasant preacher proclaim repentance and the baptism of the reborn.40 In April 1525 the Brethren were summoned to the council to answer for their teachings on baptism. Ulimann skillfully defended the Anabaptist position, saying that infant baptism was a l ater institution of t he Church without scriptural foundation; that adult baptism implied the obligation to 38

 Ibid., 145.  Letter to Vadian of 30 May 1525; VB 3:16ff. 40  Kessler, Sabbata, 146. 39

224  the radical reformation

chapter 6.2 / 6.2.a

die to vices, live unto Christ, and be obedient. The Dominical order to baptize believers had been maintained for about two hundred years, he argued, until the time of Cyprian. Ulimann reminded the conservatives that baptism had anciently been performed only at Easter and Pentecost with great solemnity and after the catechumens had been fully instructed. Ulimann was at first requested “for the sake of brotherly love to wait with the deed.” When he refused, the request was changed to a command with the threat of expulsion if he should not comply. Eberli, too, was asked to leave. Shortly afterward Eberli was seized by the authorities in the Catholic canton of Schwyz, and burned at the stake on 29 May 1525, the first martyr of the Swiss Brethren. By now the exhortations of the Anabaptist revivalists every evening and on holidays, in the mountains, woods, fields, and at the gates of the city, had become so frequent and exciting that the town churches were drained of their attendants, divided in their counsel, and deprived of alms for the sustenance of the poor. The town council thereupon reversed itself and demanded that all preaching and disputing take place in the churches, and that there be no more gatherings in or around the town. Vadian prepared a refutation of Anabaptist doctrine for a disputation on 5 June 1525, but it was no easier, says Kessler, to take from the conventicles their freedom in the fields than to take a bone from a dog.41 Their preachers contended that argumentation with scribes was useless, for the heavenly Father had hidden truths from the wise (Matt. 11:25). Nevertheless, a reply to Vadian was drawn up. Ulimann was emboldened, in an evening sermon, to say that the magistrates who took counsel together against the Lord and his anointed, were heathen. And, citing Psalm 2, with its verse, “Let us burst their bonds asunder, and cast their cords from us,” he aroused his followers to such a p itch that a t umult might have ensued at any moment.42 a. The Zwingli-Hubmaier Debate, May–November 1525, Setting the Terms of the Baptismal Controversy To “imperiled” St. Gall, Zwingli dedicated his first literary attack on the Anabaptists, his long-awaited disquisition, Of Baptism.43 In the letter to Vadian accompanying it, Zwingli had written: “The issue is not baptism but revolt, factions, heresy.”44 It is well that we interrupt the narrative of events in St. Gall to face squarely the arguments of Zwingli against the new movement that claimed his paternity despite his protestations. Prompted by 41

 Ibid., 148.  Ibid. 43  Of Baptism, 129ff. 44  VB 3:114. 42

chapter 6.2.a

rise of swiss brethren  225

the First Baptismal Dispute,45 Zwingli had been drawn in the course of his exposition of the principal topics of the faith, Commentarius de vera et falsa religione (March 1525),46 polemically to break with the scholastic tradition that had distinguished the baptism of John and the baptism of Christ (Ch. 11.1), and, in a theologically radical and scripturally grounded reformulation, he set forth the two as equivalent in matter, form, and intention, laying thus the basis for defending pedobaptism as the Reformed counterpart of circumcision and noting further that unless the baptism of J ohn were plenary in all respects, Catholics and Anabaptists alike would have to admit that Peter and his colleagues among the Twelve pillars had never been baptized and properly initiated into the Church.47 But by M ay 1525 Zwingli knew he had to devote a w hole book to the issue and in the language of t he laity, Of Baptism.48 A proud Swiss Confederate, with his ideal of Zurich among the cantons as a sacred corporation, who would presently (1531) opine: “A Christian man is nothing more than a good and loyal citizen, the Christian city nothing more than the Christian Church,”49 Zwingli confidently broke with “the brotherhood of medieval university professors,” to reject the medieval liturgical sense and the scholastic consensus that understood the two baptisms to be essentially different as to covenantal and salvific import. 50 Zwingli now considered baptism as a s ign, without effect ex opere operato, and thus as appropriate for mute progeny as to their articulate parents, a covenant or pledge, like the white cross on the red field of the Confederation. 51

45

 ZW 4:207.  Huldrich Zwingli, Commentarius de vera et falsa religione (Zurich: Froschauer, 1525). 47  See Ernst Kantorowicz, “The Problem of the Baptism of the Apostles,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 9–10 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956), 203–51. 48  Von dem Touff, vom Widertouff und vom Kindertouff, ed. Emil Egli, et al., ZW 4; tr. with commentary by G. W. Bromiley, LCC 24 (1953), 119–75. 49  ZW, 14:424, ll. 19–22; Gottfried W. Locher, Zwinglische Reformation im Rahmen der europäischen Kirchengeschicte (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Rupr echt, 1979), 167–71; Steven Ozment, The Reformation and the Cities: The Appeal of Protestantism to Sixteenth-Century Germany and Switzerland (New Haven/London:Yale University Press, 1975); Robert C. Walton, Zwingli’s Theocracy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967). 50   The words in question ar e from David C. Steinmetz, “The Baptism of J ohn and the Baptism of Jesus in Huldrych Zwingli, Balthasar Hubmaier and Late Medieval Theology,” A not incidental point to be made here is that to the degree that my term “Magisterial” for the classical, territorial reformers (over against “Radical”), implies the concer ted actions of university masters and magistrates on various levels of sovereignty from king to town council (see Ch. 32.3), then clearly Zwingli, not a university alumnus himself, was decisively “radical” with respect to the academic/scholastic tradition in contrast to his pr incipal Anabaptist antagonist, Ingolstadteducated Nominalist Hubmaier, who upheld, even as he modified significantly, the university hermeneutical tradition with respect to two baptisms. On this last point, see the same David Steinmetz, “Scholasticism and Radical Reform: Nominalist Motifs in the Theology of Balthasar Hubmaier,” MQR 45 (1971): 123–44. 51  ZW 4, p. 218. 46

226  the radical reformation

chapter 6.2.a

Zwingli divided Of Baptism into four parts. In the first, on baptism and its New Testament sources, he distinguished four meanings for the word: immersion in water, baptism in the Spirit, baptismal instruction preceding the rite, and the baptismal faith. He felt that all these elements were important but need not be present in any one action. And, finding that the rite of water baptism was a covenant sign rather than a strengthening of baptismal faith, he argued that it could be appropriately administered to children born in the covenant. In the second section he dealt with the institution of baptism and located it in John’s action at the Jordan rather than in Christ’s post-Resurrection commission of Matthew 28 and Mark 16. This derivation of a sacrament from an action prior to the Passion indicates a considerable lowering of its redemptive significance. Zwingli based his assimilation of N ew Covenantal baptism and Old Covenantal circumcision on Tertullian and Lactantius. It was Henry Bullinger who had first pointed out to Zwingli these patristic texts demonstrating the unity of the Old and New Covenants and consequently the equivalence of circumcision and baptism. 52 Zwingli refuted the objection that John did not baptize in the Triune name by saying that, without the words, the Baptist yet so intended. In the third and fourth parts he dealt with rebaptism and infant baptism. Dissociating it completely from its scholastic definition and sacramentary accretions, he presented baptism as a covenant sign belonging to the family and community rather than to the individual. Declining to base infant baptism on the doctrine of original sin, and pointing to Col. 2:10–12 as proof that water baptism replaced circumcision as the covenant sign, he inconsistently surmised that John baptized (already circumcised) children at the Jordan. Zwingli argued against the Anabaptists that in administering baptism to the followers of John, the apostles did not actually rebaptize but simply baptized for the first time those who merely knew (but had not expressly hitherto received) baptism at the hands of John. He included with this treatise a copy of the second Reformed order of Baptism, replacing the earlier Germanized but otherwise Catholic baptismal service worked out by Leo Jud. The publication of Zwingli’s book on 28 May was accompanied in St. Gall by an announcement from the pastor of the principal church that the book would be read that evening from the pulpit of St. Lawrence’s. Anabaptist sympathizers were in more or less forced attendance. The church was packed. Ulimann arose and shouted: “Stop reading; tell us God’s Word, not Zwingli’s.” When the pastor responded that the words were God’s as explicated by Zwingli, the Anabaptists retorted that the congregation should then listen also to the explication of Conrad Grebel, and to his 52  Letter to Zwingli pr eserved by Johann Jakob Simmler, Sammlung alter und neuer Urkunden, 2 (Zurich, 1767), 100ff. See further, though incidentally, Heinold Fast, “Research Notes,” MQR 31 (1957): 294.

chapter 6.2.a

rise of swiss brethren  227

letter addressed to the burgomaster. Thereupon, one of t he burgomasters (not Vadian) rebuked them for presuming to read a letter addressed in the first place to the magistracies of St. Gall. The Zwinglian chronicler of this heated exchange admits that Zwingli’s words were not felt to be cogent, that the audience as a whole felt that “the truth of God was on the side of the Anabaptists.”53 In June 1525 the Brethren were forbidden to hold any more meetings in or around town, fines were imposed for rebaptism, and a special militia of two hundred men was sworn in to cope with a possible revolt. Since Ulimann did not comply with the order to refrain from field preaching, he was sentenced to banishment on 17 July, but was later pardoned upon his oath. (He later would lead a group of Anabaptists to Moravia, and then with his second band proceeding from Appenzell toward Moravia in 1528 only to be seized and put to death by Seneschal George of Waldburg.) 54 Until the summer of 1525 the priests of St. Gall were compelled to continue saying Mass, and probably this is the reason why those seriously interested in a reform flocked to the Brethren, for they felt the inconsistency of denouncing the Mass as blasphemy and still requiring its celebration. It was not to be abolished in St. Gall until 1528. The conservatism of the authorities in practice helped to incline the people to the uncompromising message of the Brethren. Vadian says, “None were more susceptible to the doctrine of the Anabaptists than those who were inclined to piety and uprightness of life.”55 Kessler describes the Anabaptists of St. Gall thus: Their conversation and bearing shine forth as entirely pious, holy, and unpunishable. They avoid ostentatious clothes, despise delicate food and drink, clothe themselves with coarse cloth, and deck their heads with broad felt hats; their way and conversation are quite humble. They carried no weapon, neither sword nor dagger, except for a b roken-off bread knife, saying that those were wolves’ clothing which the sheep ought not to wear. They swear not, not even to the authorities, the civic oath. And if anyone transgressed among them, he was banned; for there was the practice of d aily excommunication among them. In their talk and disputation they were grim and hardbitten and so unyielding that they would rather have died than have yielded a point. 56 53

 Kessler, Sabbata, 149.  He and ten other men were beheaded and their womenfolk drowned. 55   Vadian, Deutsche historische Schriften, ed. Ernst Götzinger (St. Gall, 1875–79), 3:408. 56  Kessler, Sabbata, 147–48. The description fixes upon a phase of de velopment after the first tumult. 54

228  the radical reformation

chapter 6.2.a

He goes on to raise the question whether they had received the Spirit through the preaching of the law or of faith. But if a s tubborn legalism characterized the majority of t he St. Gall Anabaptists, a f renzied antinomianism took possession of e nough of t he others to give the whole movement a notoriety. Over against the practice of daily excommunication and biblical literalism, we see the swift degeneration of a s ection of t he populace into rank Spiritualism of charismatic vagaries that did not stop at burning in the oven the very words of the New Testament which only a few years before had been the objective of heroic study in the face of magisterial opposition. The dictum that “the letter killeth”57 induced these enthusiasts to destroy the written word and put their confidence in the vagaries of a S piritualism no longer restrained by Paul’s other dictum about discerning the spirits (1 Cor. 12:10). In reading Kessler, who, like Vadian, was originally well disposed toward the evangelical fervor of t he Brethren, one gets the impression of excesses on the fringes comparable to those of later revivalism. Some simulated little children in preparation for the Kingdom, the imminent advent of w hich was discussed and calculated with enthusiasm. Group confession led to disclosures that alarmed spouses; children of seven and eight years old lay in a coma for hours, and there were other attempts at simulating death with Christ to the world. Glossolalia broke out. There was lewdness and unchastity and the extraordinary declaration of a deranged woman that she was predestined to give birth to the Antichrist, and there was a shocking fratricide by decapitation, perpetrated as Godwilled by the killer and earnestly sought by the victim. In this degeneration of t he movement one seems to see beneath the lifted weight of centuries of ecclesiastical domination a squirming, spawning, nihilistic populace on its own, confused by the new theological terms of predestination, faith alone, Gelassenheit, and by the new biblical texts seized upon with an almost maniacal glare. It is hard to find anything in common between this phase of St. Gall Anabaptism and the sober fervor and evangelical zeal of Grebel, Mantz, and Blaurock. 58 Because of the fantastic excesses of a few and especially because of the potentially revolutionary mood of the many, severed, as they thought, by right from the heathen magistrates and their ecclesiastical scribes, Grebel’s vision of an intercantonal, evangelical church of committed believers faded 57

 2 Cor. 3:6.  John Horsch has sought to ascr ibe the excesses to Anabaptists who w ere coerced back into the Refor med state church and gave vent to their sense of constr iction by turning Zwingli’s doctrine of predestination into an excuse of libertinism. But he does not face the massiveness of the evidence laid out by Kessler, which, however much based on hearsay, looks authentic in the bulk if not in the details of every episode. Surely Horsch’s distinction between Widergetaufte and Wiedertäufer does not hold up under scrutiny. “An Inquiry into the Truth of the Accusation of Fanaticism and Crime,” MQR 8 (1934): 18ff. 58

chapter 6.2a / 6.2.b

rise of swiss brethren  229

into sectarianism. Vadian, despite the winsomeness of h is brother-in-law, finally threw his weight against the Anabaptists under the pressure of the prophet-statesman-warrior of Zurich. In the canton of A ppenzell, closely associated with St. Gall in the reforming movement, and in the confederational condominium of Rheintal, the majority of the people in some villages were for a time Brethren, and even many of the Zwinglian preachers favored some of the Anabaptist measures. At the Rheintal synod at Rheineck, for example, the Zwinglian pastors reactivated the greater and the lesser ban as an integral part of evangelical parish life. 59 One of t he Anabaptist leaders, John Krüsi, displaced the preacher at Teufen. He was later seized by night and burned in Catholic Lucerne 27 July 1525, the second Anabaptist martyr. His Von dem Glauben (Augsburg, 1525) is an invaluable collection of b aptismal texts showing the influence of Grebel.60 Thus far we have followed the impulses radiating from Zurich and Zollikon in the directions of Schaff hausen, St. Gall, and the canton of Appenzell. Returning to the original band and its dispersal after the eventful week in Mantz’s house in Zurich and the activities in Zollikon, we follow another missionary, William Reublin, to Waldshut. b. Reublin Baptizes Hubmaier in Waldshut Although Waldshut was not a Swiss town, its relationship to the Zurich movement was so close that we must pause in our narrative of the phenomenal Swiss Brethren mission to recall the role of Waldshut in the Peasants’ War (Ch. 4.3.a) and of Hubmaier in the sacramentarian controversy (Ch. 5.2.a) and to note the temporary conversion of the town to Anabaptism. About a week before the decisive step into Anabaptism taken by the sacramentarian conventicle in Zurich, Hubmaier had written 16 January 1525 from Waldshut to Oecolampadius in Basel, describing his local practice of the consecration of infants in the presence of the whole congregation and the postponement of the rite of Baptism for the purpose of bringing the sacrament of redemption into line with the Protestant principle of solafideism: For we have publicly taught that children should not be baptized. Why do we baptize children? Baptism, say they [Zwingli and Leo] is a mere sign [of inclusion in the covenant]. Why do we strive so much over a sign? A sign and a symbol it certainly is, instituted by C hrist with august words fraught with meaning: “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit” 59

 Bonorand, “Joachim Vadian und die Täufer,” 46, with the literature.  Heinold Fast, “Hans Krüsis Buchlein über Glauben und Taufe,” in The Heritage of Menno Simons: A Legacy of F aith, A Sixtieth Anniversary Tribute to Cor nelius Krahn, ed. Cornelius J. Dyck (Newton, Kan.: Faith and Life, 1962), 213–31. 60

230  the radical reformation

chapter 6.2.b

[Matt. 28:19]. Whoever now attenuates or otherwise misuses it does violence to the words of Christ given at the institution of the symbolic action, in so far as the meaning of t his sign and symbol is a pledge (obstrictio), whereby one pledges oneself to God because of faith in the hope of resurrection to a future life, an inward action which should be undertaken no less seriously than the other sign [the Supper]. This meaning has nothing to do with babes; therefore infant baptism is without reality. In baptism there is the pledge (obligatio) to God, to which the Apostles’ Creed today testif ies, bearing the apostolic majesty before oneself and the renunciation of Satan and all his pomps unto water, i.e., unto death. In the Supper there is the pledge to one’s neighbor to offer body and blood in his stead, as Christ for me. And so we have it in the laws and prophets. I believe, yea, I know, that it will not go well with Christendom until Baptism and the Supper are brought back to their original purity. … Here, brother in Christ, you have my opinion; if I e rr, it is the brother’s duty to call an ass back! For I wish nothing so much that I will not revoke it, yea, cut it off, when I am taught better from the word of G od by you and yours. … Otherwise I a bide by m y opinion, for to that I a m constrained by the command of Christ, the word, faith, truth, judgment, conscience. … Write me whether the promise [in Matt. 19:14], “Let the little children come to me,” etc. especially belongs to infants. What prompts me to that is the word of C hrist, “for of s uch is the kingdom of h eaven, not “of them”; and also what the Strassburg brethren [Bucer and Capito] feel concerning it. Instead of b aptism, I h ave the church come together, bring the infant in, explain in German the gospel, “They brought little children” [Matt. 19:13]. When a n ame is given it, the whole church prays for the child on bended knees, and commends it to Christ, that he will be gracious and intercede for it. But if the parents are still weak, and positively wish that the child be baptized, then I baptize it; and I am weak with the weak for the time being until they can be better instructed. As to the word, however, I do not yield to them in the least point.61 Oecolampadius replied, contending with Augustine that the faith of the parents or the church suffices mysteriously for the child. Interestingly 61

 Staehelin, Briefe und Akten, 1, no. 238.

chapter 6.2.b

rise of swiss brethren  231

in a s econd letter after even conferring with Zwingli, Oecolampadius agreed with Hubmaier that the New Testament does not explicitly support infant baptism, though he did not wish to deny it. He went on to confess his support of Hubmaier’s practices of infant dedication and delayed baptism as now instituted in Waldshut.62 It was in vain that Hubmaier, 2 February 1525, offered to prove in public debate before the town authorities that infant baptism had no scriptural warrant (Öffentliche Erbietung). Thus it was that when Reublin, formerly of St. Alban’s in Basel and now an emissary of the Swiss Anabaptists, arrived in Waldshut and recounted what had been at length accomplished in Zurich and Zollikon, Hubmaier was favorably disposed to move in the same direction. Reublin first rebaptized a few of the ready ones in a village outside the town. He suggested postponing the main action until Easter, 16 April, and proposed to celebrate Jesus’ institution of the Supper on Maundy Thursday with a whole lamb (apparently not carried out). On Easter, Hubmaier and sixty others accepted rebaptism at Reublin’s hands.63 Hubmaier, in the days following, rebaptized over three hundred, using a milk bucket with water from the fountain in the town square. On Easter Monday he observed the Lord’s Supper among the rebaptized, following literally the New Testament pattern. With a towel in hand; the doctor theologiae washed the feet of his parishioners. A contemporary witness reports maliciously that after he was finished with the young women and came to the “old bucks,” he complained of fatigue and suggested that someone else finish the task.64 Secure in his ecclesiastical position at Waldshut, confident in his new practice of believers’ baptism, and concerned also to see this more consistent evangelistic position spread, Hubmaier wrote 10 July65 to the Zurich council, begging Zwingli to debate the issue with him for the good of the Reformation cause, and requested a safe-conduct. Hubmaier was to persevere to the end in a conviction held in common with Zwingli, and in opposition to most

62  See the discussion in Rollin Stelz Armour, Anabaptist Baptism, 23–24, nn. 36–38. Armour writes of late 1524 and early 1525 that Zwingli and Hubmaier were describing baptism in similar terms but with different meanings. 63   Von Muralt, Quellen, no. 405. 64  Heinrich Schreiber, Taschenbuch für Gesc hichte und Altertum in Süd deutschland, II (Freiburg im Br., 1840), 208–9. Schreiber here adduces unharmonized data from the chronicles of Freiburg and Laufenburg. Cf. W. Mau. Balthasar Hubmaier, Abhandlungen zur mitteleren und neueren Geschichte 11 (1912), 86. The definitive biography is by Torsten Bergsten, Balthasar Hubmaier: Seine Stellung zu Refor maton and Täufertum, 1521–1528 (Kassel: Oncken, 1961), tr. I. J. Barnes and W. R. Estep, Balthasar Hubmaier: Anabaptist Theologian and Mar tyr (Valley Forge, Pa.: Judson Press, 1972). See also Torsten Bergsten and Gunnar Westin, eds., Balthasar Hubmaier: Schriften (QGT 9) (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1962); tr. H. Wayne Pipkin and John H. Yoder, Balthasar Hubmaier, Theologian of Anabaptism (Scottdale, Pa./Kitchner, Ont.: Herald Press, 1989). 65   Von Muralt, Quellen, no. 82.

232  the radical reformation

chapter 6.2.b

of the Swiss Brethren, that the evangelical cause of a believers’ church should be sanctioned and supported by an evangelical or regenerate magistracy. His position was, in this respect, identical with that held only transitionally by the pacifist Grebel. As he said in his letter to the Zurich council, he had hoped that if only the two Reformers could get together their differences would be worked out satisfactorily. The Zurich council apparently ignored the request, for Hubmaier was soon moved to refute Zwingli’s On Baptism (dedicated to St. Gall), in his own On the Christian Baptism of Believers (Waldshut, 11 July 1525).66 It is humorous at points and well argued. In taking up all the baptismal loci in the New Testament with special reference to the problem of the baptism of John and that of the resurrected Christ, Hubmaier made his most telling blow against Zwingli’s On Baptism (above at n. 48), in dealing with Acts 19, where some twelve Ephesians who had been baptized by John, were rebaptized by Paul in the name of t he Lord Jesus, and the apostle then laid hands upon them, and the Holy Spirit came. Observed Hubmaier: “Here if one takes ‘baptize’ for ‘teach’ [as does Zwingli], violence and injustice are done to the text. … [W]e are not proving any rebaptism from this text because we do not let ourselves be rebaptized [but baptized in faith for the first time].” Zwingli is wrong, he went on, for not recognizing a fixed order from teaching and preaching about the resurrected Christ to faith and baptism (the clear reference is in Mark 16:15, 16).67 Zwingli would presently acknowledge indirectly that he had been struck by the ill temper of his reply, Antwort (November 1525), in which he appealed to Eph.4:5 (one Lord, one faith, one baptism) and contended that unless the two baptisms are identical in intention and force either John’s baptism must be construed as worthier since Jesus submitted to it, rather than to that of the apostles, or everyone must be baptized once for repentance and again for forgiveness, which is absurd.68 In Waldshut the development of a l arge Anabaptist congregation led by the town’s chief pastor was cut short by the Austrian capture of it on 5 December 1525 (Ch. 4.3.a). Unable to count on Swiss military aid, as in the days when he was more moderate, Hubmaier took solemn leave of his Anabaptist Gemeinde. The next day the town yielded to the Austrians. The vicar-general ( John Faber) of the bishop of Constance said Mass, and

66  Von dem Christlichen Tauff der gläbigen ed. Gunner Westin and Torgsten Bergsten, Balthasar Hubmaier: Schriften, QGT 9 (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1962); tr. H. Wayne Pipkin and John H. Yoder, Balthasar Hubmaier, Theologian of Anabaptism (Scottsdale, Pa./Kitchner, Ont.: Herald Press, 1989), Doc. 11, pp. 94–149. 67  Quoting from Pipkin and Yoder, Hubmaier, 133. 68  Antwort über Balthasar Hubmaiers Taufbüchlein, ZW 4. See the pr eface which shows Zwingli’s reaction against a man (Hubmaier) he had once considered as a friend and ally.

chapter 6.2.b / 6.3

rise of swiss brethren  233

the town returned to Catholic allegiance. We shall presently encounter the tattered refugee and his wife in Zurich.

3. The Anabaptist Missionaries and Hubmaier Face the Magistrates in Zurich In the meantime, Grebel had gone from St. Gall to Grüningen, his birthplace, where his father, Jacob Grebel, had been bailiff and where his evangelical preaching now met such favorable response that Mantz, fresh from prison, and Blaurock, from the Grisons, came to join him in the revival. The religious revival in the bailiwick of G rüningen had grown out of social unrest and evangelical aspiration. The peasants of this district on the north shore of Lake Zurich, under a bailiff appointed in the cantonal capital, had for some time been restless under the domination of the abbot of Ruti and had sought relief from ancient abbatial exactions, at first with some encouragement from the Zurich authorities. The religious revolt, with the Anabaptist stress upon a f ree church without any tithes to the monastery, made an economic as well as a religious appeal. On Sunday, 8 O ctober 1525, at the village church of H inwil, in the bailiwick of G rüningen, before the arrival of t he local pastor, Blaurock entered the pulpit and opened his sermon with these words: Whose is this place? If it is the house of God where God’s Word is to be preached, I am here as an emissary of the Father to proclaim God’s Word.69 The bailiff was summoned from the castle at Grüningen. Captured, Blaurock was seated on a horse to be conducted to prison. From horseback he sung hymns and exhorted the sympathetic peasants, who followed in an ever-increasing throng, joined now by Mantz and Grebel. The bewildered bailiff scarcely knew what to do when the emboldened followers sought to arrange a p reaching service en route! He managed to arrest Grebel. Mantz temporarily evaded capture. He had just been released from his second imprisonment (of three months) on condition that he cease baptizing. Owing to the widespread sympathy for them among the peasants of t he bailiwick, Grebel and Blaurock were only reluctantly and with considerable negotiation turned over to the Zurich authorities. Only a free debate on the issues would, it was thought, appease the populace. Thus, once again, Grebel and Mantz (soon thereafter also recaptured), along with Blaurock, faced in parlous debate their former teacher and once admired friend, this time from 6 to 8 November 1525. The discussions, held in the largest church in Zurich (the Grossmünster) because the town hall could not hold the crowd, constituted the Third 69

 Ibid., no. 109.

234  the radical reformation

chapter 6.3

Baptismal Disputation.70 The disputation, extending into the evenings, was chaired by, among others, Vadian of St. Gall and Dr. Sebastian Hofmeister, who had been driven out of conservative Schaff hausen, where Grebel had been his guest, and who was now the pastor in the Fraumünster. The peasants of Gruningen had sent twelve neutral observers to judge whether the Brethren were given a f ull opportunity to unfold their thoughts without having Zwingli “strangle them inarticulate in their throats.” 71 Besides the Grüningen delegation, there were Anabaptists on safe-conducts from St. Gall, Chur, and Zofingen (Hubmaier in Waldshut had planned to attend the disputation, but he and his party were driven back by t he Austrian forces). Zwingli, Leo Jud, and Caspar Megander (Grossmann) were the three antagonists.72 Zwingli’s charges73 against the Swiss Brethren, some of t hem based on hearsay, were their alleged beliefs (1) that there should be no Christian magistracy, (2) that all things should be held in common, (3) that the saints are secure in not being able to sin after rebaptism, and (4) that they were prepared to resist by force. The fourth charge may have been based on a m isquoted remark of Blaurock and on his taking over in the village churches, first in Zollikon and then in Hinwil, but it might also have been based on the extravagant assertions of Ulimann in St. Gall or the actions of Hubmaier in Waldshut. The debate desired by the Anabaptist leaders really constituted a judicial hearing, after which they were arrested. Then followed a formal trial and imprisonment for life or until renunciation. It was the first incarceration for Grebel, the second for Blaurock, and the third for Mantz.74 From this point on, the legal repression of the three principal Zurich Anabaptist preachers becomes interlaced with the long-standing controversy between Dr. Hubmaier and Master Zwingli. With some financial means, Hubmaier and his wife made for Zurich, having preferred to go to Basel, where he could hope, with some reason, to find a sympathetic ear in Oecolampadius, or to Strassburg with its policy of a sylum, but unable because of having to cross into Austrian territory where he was sought by the authorities. Hubmaier quixotically hoped that the radical cause could

70  So numbered, now that Krajewski has identified as the Second Disputation the congressio in March, at n. 25. 71   Von Muralt, Quellen, no. 115. 72  Ibid., no. 129. 73  Summarized thus by Bender, Conrad Grebel, 157. 74  Earlier writers, based on Heinrich Bullinger’s Reformationgeshichte, ed. J. J. Hoffinger and H. H. Vögeli (Frauenfeld, 1838–40), 1:296, say that the three leaders were released. The new view, based on Von Muralt, Quellen, is represented by Bender, Conrad Grebel, 159, and Krajewski, Leben und Sterben … Mantz, 121.

chapter 6.3

rise of swiss brethren  235

still be saved and that he might find refuge in Zurich.75 Arriving 7 December in Zurich, they spent the night with Henry Aberli, the following night at the inn of the widow Bluntschli. She and her daughter were presently fined for aiding an Anabaptist leader. When the council learned of Hubmaier’s presence, they arrested him, 11 December, convinced that he “was hatching out some monstrosity … and that for this purpose he had crept secretly into the city.” 76 On 5 November 1525, Zwingli had completed his Antwort,77 and Hubmaier’s own Dialogue with Zwingli’s Baptism Book (Ein Gespräch Hubmaiers auf Zwinglis Taufbüchlein) had been written (late 1525) to be published in 1526, indicating a hardening of positions on the issue.78 Now, in this light, and forced as he was out of Waldshut by the Catholic Austrians, Hubmaier can hardly have been glad to face his antagonist directly. However, the Zurich council, recalling Hubmaier’s request (made in July from Waldshut) to discuss baptism with Zwingli, accorded the sick refugee prisoner an opportunity to express himself. The colloquium took place on 19 December, the opposition represented not only by Zwingli but also by L eo Jud, Oswald Myconius, Hofmeister, Megander, and Conrad Schmid, all those with whom Hubmaier had previously requested a debate on baptism. The two principals have left divergent versions of the course of the discussion. Zwingli says that Hubmaier was left “mute as a fish.” 79 Hubmaier was quite conscious of his own forensic superiority,80 making the most of Zwingli’s earlier statements apparently rejecting infant baptism. Hubmaier made Zwingli recall that in May 1523 “on the Hirschgraben” Zwingli had stressed the importance of instruction prior to baptism and had incorporated the idea in the eighteenth of his Sixty-Seven Articles. Furthermore, Hubmaier argued, he had referred to Zwingli’s point in A Dialogue and the Judgment and also to other ideas of Zwingli’s by which Zwingli appeared to set forth a view 75  Egli, Leben und Sterben … Mantz, 49, and Mau, Hubmaier, 103, mention a stopo ver in Grüningen without however giving any source. I am follo wing here the calendar ing of Von Muralt, Quellen. 76  Zwingli to Peter Gynoraeus, 31 August 1526; ZW 8: no. 524. 77  Antwort über Balthasar Hübmaiers Täufbuchlein, ZW 4: 577, above at n. 68. 78  Hubmaier had wr itten his book in the last da ys before the capitulation of Waldshut to the Austrians without ha ving read Zwingli’s Antwort and thereby becoming attenti ve to Zwingli’s argument or w ounded personal feelings. It w as Hubmaier’s “compensation” for not being ab le to attend the thir d Zurich disputation on inf ant baptism, 6 November 1525; in Pipkin and Yoder, Balthasar Hubmaier, 166–233. The work, published later in 1526 in Nicolsburg suggests a fur ther disputation on baptism in Regensb urg, midway between Nicolsburg and Zurich. 79  Zwingli discusses Hubmaier’s reappearance in Zur ich in two letters, the fir st of 1 January 1526 to Capito, ZW 8: No 434; the other of 31 August 1526 to Peter Gynoraeus, ZW 8: no. 524; both translated by Samuel M. Jackson, Huldreich Zwingli (New York, 1901), 249ff. 80  He recounts the bitter story in his Ein Gesprech, published in Nicolsburg, 1521.

236  the radical reformation

chapter 6.3

of baptism similar to his own. Zwingli countered that the earlier discussion had revolved around the importance of Christian education in place of the old sacrament of confirmation, but had not presupposed the postponement of baptism. When Hubmaier acknowledged that this was after all the case, Zwingli commented that he was “charming,” but he failed to convince Hubmaier who in the following year, in fact, was to have Zwingli’s statements on the matter printed in support of his own position.81 In the course of t he discussions Hubmaier indicated his willingness to recant. Having met with Jud, Hofmeister, Myconius, and others, Hubmaier read what was to become his “first recantation” (the Widerruf ) in the presence of chosen members of the council. In this extant document Hubmaier (1) confessed to having erred “concerning rebaptism.” He then rejected the charges that: (2) there should be no Christian magistracy, (3) that all things should be held in common, and (4) that he was without sin.82 However, the recantation on 22 December was not that of a f ree man. While there is some debate on the matter, 83 it appears likely that Hubmaier, aged and ill, feared being turned over to the Catholic Austrians from whom, after all, he had fled when seeking asylum in Zurich. Twice since his arrival the Austrians had requested of the Zurich authorities his extradition.84 Added to this are the reasons for the recantation as given by Hubmaier and his having come to some measure of agreement with Zwingli on the parallel between baptism and circumcision. The Widerruf (22 December) 85 is not only clear as to Hubmaier’s retraction of his views on adult baptism, but it is equally clear that he has been in part persuaded by the importance of charity in this action, lest all those Christians who for a thousand years (on Hubmaier’s earlier reckoning) had unwittingly submitted to infant baptism be considered lost. The retraction reads in part as follows: I, Balthasar Hubmaier, … confess openly with this my handwriting, that I have not otherwise known or understood all

81   The points in dispute and r elevant documentation ar e summarized by Armour, Anabaptist Baptism, 19–20 nn. 5–9. It is of interest that in their first discussions of baptism the text of the Marcan great commission (16:15–16), the same used by Nicholas Storch and his followers in their cr iticism of infant baptism in late 1521, was discussed and would later be central in Hubmaier’s thinking on baptism. 82  See the document translated by Vedder in Pipkin and Yoder, Balthasar Hubmaier, 150–59. 83  I am guided b y Bergsten, Balthasar Hubmaier, 301–4. He ably marshals the evidence in light of contemporary scholarly debate. 84  The request for extradition, 14 December 1525 is given by Von Muralt, Quellen, no. 402. 85   Von Muralt, Quellen, no. 147; Staehelin and Mau hold that this is the original form of the retraction, and not that later delivered in the churches, as Egli and Vedder maintain.

chapter 6.3

rise of swiss brethren  237

Scriptures which speak of water baptism than that one should f irst preach, after that believe, and thirdly be baptized, on which I have f inally established myself. But now Master Ulrich Zwingli has made known to me t he covenant (Bund) of God made with Abraham and his seed, also circumcision as a co venant sign (Bundzeichen), which I co uld not disprove. Also it was put before me by others, as Master Leo [ Jud], Dr. Sebastian [Hofmeister], and [Oswald] Myconius, how love should be a judge and judger in all Scriptures, which has gone very much to my heart; and also I have thought much of love and have f inally been moved to desist from my goal, namely, that one should not baptize children and that in rebaptism I have erred. 86 A part of t he agreement between the two parties was that Hubmaier would make his recantation public on a suitable occasion. In the meantime, he was put under the custody of the bailiff of Gruningen castle.87 Sunday, 29 December, the first Sunday after Christmas, “the Holy Name of Jesus,” was the date set for Hubmaier’s public recantation. After the divine service, the formula of r evocation was read from the pulpit of t he Fraumünster. Then Zwingli delivered a s ermon and all seemed well. Hubmaier thereupon mounted the pulpit ostensibly to renounce his Anabaptism publicly. Out of fear as he later remarks or perhaps from hope in a popular uprising in his favor, instead of recanting he seized the opportunity to harangue the congregation in favor of Anabaptism saying: “Oh, what anguish and travail I have suffered this night over the statements which I myself have made. I say here and now, I cannot and will not recant.”88 Zwingli interrupted him in the middle of his defense of believers’ baptism.89 The tumult which arose subsided after Hubmaier was hurried off to the Wellenberg prison (called the “Water Tower” from its location in the Limmat River.) Confined for several months, Zwingli admits in a letter to Capito that Hubmaier was “thrust back into prison and tortured.” Zwingli says that Hubmaier “repeated the retraction three times when stretched on the rack (ter extentus),” bewailing his misery and confessing that the devil had made him do it (his unexpected harangue)! 90 Statements made over the period indicate that upon entering the Fraumünster, Hubmaier had been led to believe that the Austrians had entered the city. He was disturbed,

86   The last line, beginning with “goal,” is crossed out and r ewritten in the marg in. The recantation bears no date, but appears to have been wr itten 22 December 1525. Yon Muralt, Quellen, no. 147;Yedder, Hubmaier, 138ff. 87   Von Muralt, Quellen, no. 144. 88  As found in Bergsten, Balthasar Hubmaier, 304. 89  Zwingli to Gynoraeus,Von Muralt, Quellen, no. 144. 90  Zwingli to Capito,Von Muralt, Quellen, nos. 434, 488.

238  the radical reformation

chapter 6.3

had intended to defend the freedom of conscience, a point he had misused from the pulpit. He feared being handed over to the Austrians immediately after the service. However, Hubmaier’s fears were unfounded as the Zurich Council announced on 3 J anuary 1526 that Hubmaier was under their jurisdiction and not that of the Empire. Hubmaier’s arrest and imprisonment after the Fraumünster affair now found itself as part of a growing Anabaptist movement in Zurich which increasingly alarmed the council that feared the growth of s edition. On 7 M arch a m andate was issued calling for death by d rowning for all who persisted in the movement for re-baptism. While Hubmaier writes despairingly of his present circumstances in his later “Preface” of A Dialogue, Zwingli claims that during this period he had been using his influence on behalf of his former friend and that Hubmaier was being kept in protective custody to keep him from his enemies in the Confederation and the Empire.91 Hubmaier was quite conscious of his own timidity and fears throughout the spring. While in prison he composed his Twelve Articles of Christian Faith (Zwölf Artikel des christlichen Glaubens), in which he confessed such timidity and fear, and also in A Short Our Father (Ein kurzes Vaterunser) also written that spring. In his concluding prayer to the former he writes, “And although I be forced away from it [his faith] by human fear or timidity, by tyranny, torture, sword, fire or water, I appeal to thee my merciful Father, sustain me again with the grace of thy Holy Spirit and let me not depart in death without this faith.” 92 Hubmaier faced further interrogation on 5 March.93 His case was now joined with that of the Zurich Anabaptists Mantz, Blaurock, and Grebel.94 The Zurich triumvirate remained steadfast, but Hubmaier once again consented to recant publicly, his “second recantation,” confirmed by H enry Bullinger. According to the Zurich councillor Bluntschli, Hubmaier was released from Wallenberg prison on 6 April. In the council’s judgment of Hubmaier on 11 April it announced its satisfaction that Hubmaier repeat his intended first recantation. 91

 Somewhere in the dispute , now turned into a judicial hear ing, Hubmaier pr otested that his recantation had been extracted b y torture and appealed to what he hoped might be the appellate jur isdiction of a Confederal Swiss tr ibunal, since he was not a native of Zur ich. Zwingli, at once patr iotic, humane, and anti-Catholic , was a major f actor in r estraining the council from turning Hubmaier over to the Austrians; but he was indignant that Hubmaier himself would presume to carry his own case to a tribunal higher than that of Zurich—“in itself a capital offense,” Zwingli remarked. The text at this point is, however, damaged and therefore uncertain. Zwingli to Capito,Von Muralt, Quellen, nos. 434, 488. 92  Citation found in Bergsten, Balthasar Hubmaier, 308. 93   Von Muralt, Quellen, 404, 170, 179. 94  Ibid., no. 170. It should be remembered that Hubmaier’s own relations with the Zurich radicals had been mixed from the start. In the Second Disputation in Zurich in February 1523, Hubmaier had sided with Zwingli on the question of images b ut with Grebel on that of the immediate cessation of the Mass.

chapter 6.3

rise of swiss brethren  239

In response to the council’s demand (6 April) and his own acquiescence, Hubmaier renounced his Anabaptist ideas in three principal churches. This occurred on 13–15 April in the Fraumünster and Grossmünster churches and later in Gossau in Gruningen. Once seen as a true prophet, Hubmaier was now viewed as a false prophet particularly at Gossau where Anabaptist sympathies were strong. In consideration thereof, the Zurich authorities, urged by Zwingli (confirmed by Stumpf and Bullinger), allowed Hubmaier to remain around for several weeks, that he might choose his own time to leave the town under the cover of secrecy, lest he be overtaken by his Austrian foes, or by the agents of the Catholic cantons. Hubmaier had drawn up a “new disavowal,” the second act of recantation before his departure from Zurich, although it is not clear whether the document read by Hubmaier in Zurich and Gossau was that of December or an entirely new document. He left the city promising never to enter it again nor to make in it a defense of Anabaptism. We shall meet him next in Augsburg en route to Moravia (Ch. 7.2). Meanwhile, we resume the account of the imprisoned Zurich Brethren. The Third Baptismal Disputation in November and the three months of their leaders’ imprisonment only aroused the Anabaptist fervor in town and countryside. Local pressure and Zurich demands made “gray the head” of the Grüningen bailiff. The Zurich authorities resolved to be severe. A new mandate threatened with death all who should thereafter rebaptize anybody. The three principals of the Grüningen round-up and fourteen others, including Anna Mantz (the sister or mother of Felix), and five other women, were sentenced on 7 March 152695 to the dungeon, there to remain on bread and water until rot or recantation released them from their wretchedness. Grebel managed to bring in a candle and a flint to enable the prisoners to read the Bible in the darkness. Within two weeks,96 Grebel, Mantz, Blaurock, and the others escaped, although the three conscientious leaders were at first loath to exploit a window carelessly left unlocked. The escapees went their separate, secret ways. Mantz, a fortnight after his escape, rebaptized a woman in Embrach, in the northern part of the canton of Z urich. This particular rebaptism, preceded by i nstruction, was to come up at his last trial, and to give the legal basis for the severity of his punishment. From Embrach he went to the territory of Basel, where he conducted a service in the open field at night. He is described by a contemporary as reading part of t he service (prayer or hymn) and scriptures by candlelight. The government soon chased him out. He enjoyed great veneration among the Anabaptists. As a hostile contemporary wrote: 95 96

 Ibid., nos. 170A, 172.  21 March 1526;Von Muralt, Quellen, no. 178.

240  the radical reformation

chapter 6.3

Wherever he went, he was accompanied on all sides by men and women, as though he were a visible divinity, and they hung on his lips as though in a t rance and enchanted. He loved the fields and woods, the secure refuges of heresy. Whatever he said and commanded was held to be a divine oracle.97 Mantz was arrested in St. Gall, and released 18 October to perpetual banishment from that territory. From St. Gall, he returned to his native Zurich and to the very place in the canton where his preaching had been most successful, the bailiwick of Grüningen. In the meantime another series of events had been unfolding, events destined to have considerable influence on the shaping of Z wingli’s reform and his action toward the recalcitrant Anabaptists. Within the Zurich town council there was a party of patricians still sympathetic to the Old Believers, who survived in the canton and were still dominant in most of t he other cantons of t he Confederation. On one especially sore point they sided with the Catholic cantons: on the right to export surplus peasant sons as mercenaries. Fearful of the powerful Zwinglians, some of them, in order to hold off a consolidation of the reform, encouraged the anarchic effects of the pacifistic Anabaptists. Symbol of this resistance to Zwingli’s program of total reform was Jacob Grebel, the father of Conrad. He was spokesman of the patrician party, which was opposed to the more democratic craft guilds on whom Zwingli depended for his power. His “treasonable” relations with Catholic cantons and the alarm of Zwinglians because of impending defeat in the Protestant-Catholic disputation in Baden in the canton of Aargau would presently seal the fate of the Zurich Anabaptists together with his own. The Baden disputation, 18 May to 8 J une 1526, three months after the escape of t he Zurich Anabaptist leaders, was arranged to determine the future ecclesiastical policy of t he Confederation as a w hole, for the five Catholic core cantons (Schwyz, Uri, Unterwalden, Lucerne, and Zug) were as alarmed by the ravages of the Zwinglian Reformation in the confederated cantons of Bern, Zurich, Basel, Appenzell, and the city of St. Gall, as were the Zwinglians by the Anabaptist contagion within their own territory. In fact, as early as 11 July 1524, at the Confederal diet in Zug, the five Catholic cantons had threatened to exclude Zurich from the Confederation on the ground that the religious basis of the Eidgenossenschaft had been jeopardized by Zwingli. Bern, supported by Solothurn and Glaurus, had forestalled this démarche. Now at Baden, the obese, irenic, and earnest Berthold Haller of Bern and Oecolampadius of B asel faced the internationally famous Catholic 97  John Bastius, De anabaptismi exordio (1544), 37–38; cited in Krajewski, Leben und Sterben … Mantz, 132.

chapter 6.3

rise of swiss brethren  241

theological pugilist, John Eck, supported by John Faber, the representative of the bishop of Constance. Zwingli, whose great cause was at stake, though granted a safe-conduct, declined to participate. Eck defended seven doctrinal points, including purgatory and the baptismal ablution of original sin, but the debate centered on eucharistic theology, which Eck well knew divided even the Reformers among themselves.98 Eck received eighty-two votes, Oecolampadius ten. Thereupon the cause of a t otal reform of t he Confederation, Zwingli’s dream, was shattered. Indeed, the Reform, even where it had progressed, was now seriously imperiled. It was in this tense situation that Zwingli compassed the speedy trial of Grebel’s father as a treasonable recipient of foreign pensions, willing to recruit and export Swiss mercenaries in violation of the law of 1503 (suspended, however, in 1508 for the Confederation but not for Zurich), and at the same time moved sharply against the Anabaptists for imperiling the whole Confederation by their stand on the civic oaths and on war. Conrad Grebel had died of the plague in August, but his father remained a symbol of the lack of reformed patriotism shown by both the Anabaptists and the Catholics. The town councilor most opposed to Zwingli’s policies, a man “with a l arge snowy beard and snowy hair,” Grebel’s father, was beheaded at the fish market 30 October 1526. Therewith, Zwingli’s confidence mounted as to the propriety and, indeed, urgency of further stern measures against the Anabaptists, whom Jacob Grebel and his faction had tended to protect, and whose anarchic tendency was destroying the cohesion of the Swiss Reformation as a whole.99 “I believe the sword will be put to their [Anabaptist] necks,” Zwingli had already written confidently. On 19 November 1526 the Zurich council passed a new law, attaching the death penalty not only to acts of rebaptism (as in the mandate of 7 March) but also to attendance upon Anabaptist preaching. With the two principal Anabaptist preachers at large in his bailiwick, the Grüningen bailiff, George Berger, deliberately violated the council’s explicit instructions that its decree be published, alleging as his excuse that he could the more cunningly apprehend the Anabaptists if they were not alerted. Indeed, he managed to catch four of them on 3 December, notably Mantz and Blaurock. On 14 December they were delivered up to Zurich. The Zurich council proceeded now with all severity against the irrepressible sectarians. The charges leveled against Mantz were in effect a repetition of 98

 Kessler, Sabbata, 212–13.   This is the interpretation of John Horsch, “Struggle,” MQR 7 (1933): esp. 152–55. Walter Köhler reviews the whole case and finds the father truly culpable and no mar tyr of civil liberty. ZW 8:780–82; 6 (1938): 406–99, 537–44. All the literature (serial and monographs) on the relation of the early allies, Conrad Gr ebel among other s, has been admirab ly examined [expuesta] by Leonard von Murault, “Zum Problem: Reformation und Täufertum,”’ Zwingliana, 6 (1938): 65–85; see also G. R. Potter, Zwingli (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976), ch. 7, “The Radical Challenge.” 99

242  the radical reformation

chapter 6.3

an earlier indictment (above at n. 74). He had set up a separate church, the members of which were supposed to be sinless; had taught that no Christian might bear the sword or occupy office; had taught that all things should be held in common; and had violated his oath of 7 October 1525 and rebaptized again.100 Mantz was heard point by point, and answered each accusation manfully. He admitted his attempt to set up a separate church, but said that the members did not claim to be without sin, only that they had resolved to obey the Word of God and to follow Christ, and that Heb. 6:4 restrained any church from reinstating a member who had once repented and sinned again. This for Mantz meant one who had repented and been (re)baptized.101 He confessed his belief that no Christian could bear the sword or occupy public office and added that the contrary could not be proved from Scripture. He denied having taught a comprehensive community of goods; he had only taught that Christians were obligated by the law of love to share their goods and with their neighbors in want. As to whether he had rebaptized, he admitted the rebaptism of the woman in Embrach and went on to say that he would baptize anyone else who would accept instruction in the faith. When asked whether he was acquainted with the mandate of 7 March 1526, he answered that he was not, but that he did not dispute its formal validity. He denied that he had claimed to have had special revelations; he said only that on one or two occasions the letters of Paul had been suddenly “opened up” to him. Blaurock was equally steadfast in his hearing, but he was not incriminated as Mantz was by having performed a witnessed rebaptism after his escape from prison.102 Finally, 5 January 1527, the verdict of the court was pronounced: for Mantz, execution by d rowning; for Blaurock, since he was not a c itizen of Zurich and had not demonstrably violated his oath in respect to rebaptizing, whipping through the town and perpetual banishment. The doctrines of Mantz were condemned in the verdict because they were contrary to Scripture, contrary to the entire Christian tradition, and furthermore caused nothing but uproar and disunity.103 Zwingli was in agreement with the decision and defended it in correspondence with Wolfgang Capito in Strassburg, who was disturbed by it.104 The execution of Mantz took place on the day he was condemned, 7 January 1527. He went to his death with courage. According to Bullinger, as he walked from the fish market (where shortly before Senator Grebel

100

   Von Muralt, Quellen, no. 199; Krajewski, Leben und Sterben … Mantz, 138.  Cf. Kessler, Sabbata, 148. 102  In March of 1526. 103  Krajewski, Leben und Sterben … Mantz, 144. 104  ZW 9:8. 101

chapter 6.3 / 6.4

rise of swiss brethren  243

had been executed) to the river, he praised God while his mother and brother waited along the way to encourage him to remain steadfast. He was trussed, with a stick thrust between his roped, doubled-up legs and arms, and he, as he was being drawn into the icy water, sang, “In manus tuas domine commendo spiritum meum.”105 He was then taken from the water and buried at St. James’, the first “Protestant” martyr at the hands of the Protestants. The Anabaptist hymnal (Ausbund) preserves a h ymn composed by him: “Mit Lust so will ich singen.” An indication of t he reluctance of t he Zurich authorities to proceed against the Anabaptists en masse is the fact that although Mantz’s family openly encouraged him as he went to his death, no action was taken against them. An hour after Mantz’s execution, Blaurock was stripped to the waist and driven from the fish market to the town gate under a pelting of rods. At the gate, he swore against his will never to return, shook the dust of Zurich from his feet, and departed. Bullinger wrote: “He was no less fresh than Mantz.”106 The first of the radical Zurich triumvirate, Conrad Grebel, as already remarked, had died before his father, a victim of the plague, about August 1526. He had left Zurich for Maienfeld in the Grisons, where his eldest sister lived and where both Mantz and native Blaurock had a considerable following. Grebel had been able, during the six months’ imprisonment, to compose in secret his third main surviving evangelical work, his Täufbuchlein. It was this and another document which Zwingli proceeded to refute in detail, addressing his former friend as a “shade,” in mocking allusion to the doctrine of psychopannychism. This refutation is known as the Elenchus or Refutation of the Tricks of the Anabaptists ( July 1527).107 We shall return to it in Ch. 8.4.a.

4. The Spread of Anabaptism in Basel and Bern We were last in Basel with Oecolampadius and Hinne Rode (Ch. 5.1), and have taken note (Ch. 6.3) also of H ubmaier raising the question of i nfant baptism with Oecolampadius, 16 January 1525, in the very month of the Zurich Anabaptist secession. Here suff ice it to say that the f ield preaching of F elix Mantz in Basel territory (above Ch. 6.4) only aggravated the situation there. Already, in August, Oecolampadius in Basel debated

105

 Bullinger, Reformationsgeschichte, 1:384. The Zurich scene constitutes the cover illustration of my article “Reactions on the Radical Reformation,” Bulletin of the Congregational Library 14, no. 2 (1962): 4–10; a continuation from ibid., no. 1. 106  Bullinger, Reformationsgeschichte 1:382. 107  The Elenchus in Catabaptistarum strophas is divided into thr ee parts, the first directed against the Täufbuchlein, reassembled in translation as a fragmentar y unity by Bender, Conrad Grebel, 294ff.; the second against the se ven articles of the Schleitheim Confession, on which more in Ch. 8.

244  the radical reformation

chapter 6.4

with the Anabaptist community, who met with the tailor Michael Schürer. Oecolampadius’ account was published as Gespräch etlicher Predikanten … gehalten mit etlichen Bekennern des Wiedertaufens. The Basel Anabaptists defended their missionary program on the basis of the Great Commission in Matthew, which sets preaching before baptism, and on the example of t he Ethiopian baptized by P hilip. Oecolampadius reminded them that they were founding a new sect which would end in separation and mob spirit. He argued, from Origen, Cyprian, and Augustine, that children had been anciently baptized with their parents in households and that the best way to reform the Church was not through rebaptism but through the devout observance of the Lord’s Supper and through the exercise of the ban. On 10 October another disputation was to be held in the church of St. Martin’s, in which Reublin had once served, and the struggle grew bitter. Oecolampadius defended infant baptism in two additional works. The first, Instruction Concerning Rebaptism, the Magistracy, and the Oath (Unterrichtung von dem Wiedertaufen, von der Obrigkeit und vom Eid),108 was directed against Karl Brennwald, who had been put in the dungeon of the Hexenturm after the Second Zurich Disputation. Brennwald had stated four articles of his faith in writing and had planned to defend them against Oecolampadius and the Catholic clergy before the council. This was not permitted. Oecolampadius attacked the Brethren with unusual acerbity, calling them Catabaptists (drowners), “for you murder the noble souls and good consciences in your baptism.” Yet, citing the advice of Gregory of Nazianzus, he did suggest that it might be well to postpone baptism until a c hild’s third year. As to the propriety of a C hristian’s service as magistrate, Oecolampadius pointed out a s tatesman’s many positive acts of service besides his judicial and military functions. Oecolampadius’ next book was directed against Hubmaier, Wider der Predikanten Gespräch zu Basel von dem Kindertaufen (August 1527). On 6 July 1527, Basel had already ordered corporal punishment and confiscation for adult baptism, postponement of i nfant baptism, and the sheltering of Anabaptists. We now turn to Bern, the largest canton of t he Confederation. The Anabaptist movement there emanated from Zurich, probably by way of the

108  Edmund Pries deals with “Oath Refusal in Zur ich from 1515 to 1527: The erratic emergence of Anabaptist Practice” in Anabaptism Revisited, Festschrift for C. J. Dyck (Scottdale, Pa. Kitchner, Ont.: Herald, Press, 1991).

chapter 6.4

rise of swiss brethren  245

Aargau district (today a separate canton). A Waldensian residue in the Bernese population may well have made it receptive to the new evangel.109 Here the Reformation was not to be magisterially inaugurated until the mandate of 7 F ebruary 1528. The Anabaptist movement began as early as the fall of 1 525 but proceeded slowly. The f irst notices are found in the correspondence between Berthold Haller of B ern with Zwingli and Oecolampadius and between Bullinger and Henry Semler from the years 1525 and 1526.110 Haller announced that the council had already banished some Anabaptists of the Aargau. The baker, John Pf istermeyer (Ch. 8.4), was exiled at the beginning of 1526, along with Jacob Gross of Waldshut (Ch. 10.2). For a time the Brethren were quiet in Bern, although they must have been secretly active in the Aargau and the Emmental. Not until the spring of 1 527 did Jacob Hochrütiner, John Hausmann, and six others come to Bern from Basel, shortly after the execution of M antz. They brought with them a c opy of t he f irst Anabaptist synodal confession, which Haller procured and sent to Zwingli for refutation. (This was the Schleitheim Confession, which with Zwingli’s Elenchus will be dealt with in Ch. 8.4.a) Haller, sending on the Confession to Zwingli for refutation, was himself loath to follow the severe example of Zwingli, imploring him: We know, of course, that the council is quite ready to banish the Anabaptists. But it is in our place to judge all things with the sword of the Spirit, either from the pulpit or in conversation.111

109   The arguments in f avor of some sur vival of Waldensian influence are summarized by Delbert Gratz. Bernese Anabaptists (Scottdale. Pa.: Herald Press, 1953), 1–5. See Ch. 21.1 at n. 4. The sources for Bern, Aargau, and Solothrun, three major disputations, are edited by Martin Haas, Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer in der Schweiz 4 (Winterthur: Hirzel, 1974). Ulrich Gerber, Die Reformation und ihr Or iginalgewächs Die Taüfer” in 450 Jahre Berner Reformation (Bern: Historischer Verein des Kantons Ber n, 1981), 248–69 pr esents well recent investigations on Anabaptism in Bern and Germany. 110   The upshot of extensive research is to be found in “Research Notes on the Beginning of Bernese Anabaptism,” MQR 31 (1957): 292–95. 111  ZW 9:104.

246  the radical reformation

Conrad Grebel Painting by Oliver Wendell Shenk, 1975

chapter 6

Chapter 7

South German and Austrian Anabaptism, 1525–1527

D istinct in origin

and also distinguishable in ethos from the Swiss Brethren—but emerging concurrently with them—were the South German and Austrian Anabaptists, who found in John Denck their first spokesman and in his baptizand, John Hut, the apocalyptic veteran of the Peasants’ War, initially a source of the apocalyptic fervor.1 It is an interesting coincidence that John Denck was banished from Nuremberg for his proto-Anabaptist faith on the very day, 21 January 1525, on which the first sacramentarian Anabaptist conventicle was gathered in Zurich. 1   This basic distinction was first clearly drawn by Jan J. Kiwiet, Pilgram Marpeck: Ein Führer in der Täuferbewegung der Refor mationszeit (Kassel: Oncken, 1957), ch. 5. Drawing upon his unpublished thesis (Rüschlikon, 1954), partly set in his “The Life of Hans Denck” and “The Theology of Hans Denck,” MQR 31 (1957): 227–59; 32 (1958): 3–27, Kiwiet held that the difference between the Swiss type of Anabaptism and that of the South Ger mans, of whom Marpeck would become an organizer , lay in the f act that the for mer broke from Zwingli in polity on the basis of sola scriptura and emphasized the exter nal covenant and that the latter broke from Luther on the ordo salutis rejecting as insufficiently engaging Luther’s doctrine of salvation sola fidei. Werner O. Packull pressed the distinction much further in a major interpretation of the survival in Denck of fused late medieval mystical motifs in Mysticism and the Early South German Anabaptist Movement 1525–31, Studies in Anabaptist and Mennonite Histor y, 19 (Scottdale, Pa./Kitchener, Ont.: Herald Press, 1977). At p. 18 n. 5 he styled Denck“the ecumenical Anabaptist,” well before whose premature death in 1527 in Basel, his baptizand and halfdisciple, John Hut, by a further fusion of Ger manic mysticism, of Müntzer ite apocalypticism, and of the spir itual Anabaptism of Denck, shaped the distinctive form of mystical-apocalyptic Anabaptism, quite distinct from that of the Swiss, but carrying within it the impulses of its own debilitation and dissipation. Packull gently generalizes that a generation of Chur ch historians have, under the influence of the Troeltschian tripartite ecclesial model, too long considered the Swiss Anabaptists as at once nor mative and from the start intentionally separatist/sectar ian in the image of the Mennonite community, itself reflecting on its origins in scholarly research and source collections. My ensuing revision has in view the more recent research.

247

248  the radical reformation

chapter 7.1

In comparing the two Anabaptist movements, one sees as characteristic of the South German Brethren a g reater dependence on medieval mystical and devotional literature (Ch. 2.2) than was the case among the Swiss Brethren, also a greater openness to the eschatological summons in Thomas Müntzer’s Spiritualism. Among the followers of Denck, the regnant principles were love and obedience, in contrast to Swiss stress on the restoration of the organized Christian life according to the precise prescriptions of the New Testament Church. From the perspective of a later free church tradition, one sees that while it was the circle around Grebel who contributed the principle of the separation of the voluntarist church from the state (over against Zwingli’s covenantal theocracy and Bucer’s Christocracy), it was the circle around Denck who contributed the stress on the freedom of the will (over against Luther’s bondage of the will in the realm of salvation). Denck was, however, a reflective loner, ending up as a spiritualizing Seeker. It was his baptizand, John Hut, who, in his apocalyptic ferocity, would most strongly leave his imprint on the character of Anabaptists in all regions of Hapsburg dominion.

1. John Denck’s Banishment from Nuremberg John Denck (c. 1500–27), disparagingly called in his time the bishop, the Apollo, the abbot, and the pope of t he Anabaptists, followed a c ycle not uncommon in the left wing of t he Reformation, moving from mystical humanism through Lutheranism to Anabaptism and finally to evangelical Spiritualism. Denck passed from Catholicism to sectarianism by w ay of humanism and mysticism, without even experiencing the intense conflict between law and grace that marked the conversion of Luther. Born in Upper Bavaria in Heybach near Hugelfing of an educated burgher family, he studied at the University of Ingolstadt (1517–19), mastering Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. After teaching languages in Regensburg, he went to Basel, attracted by t he fame of O ecolampadius and Erasmus. Here he worked as a proofreader and also edited the last three volumes of Theodore Gaza’s Greek grammar. He mingled in the humanistic circle and attended in 1523 the university lectures of Oecolampadius on Isaiah. Through a letter of commendation from Oecolampadius he received appointment as rector in Nuremberg of t he school connected with St. Sebald’s, one of the two main parishes, remaining there but a year and a half. 2 In the imperial city, however, he came under the influence of the

2  See the w ork on this phase b y George Bar ing, “Hans Denck und Thomas Müntzer in Nürnberg 1524,” ARG 50 (1959): 145–81 wherein Müntzer is seen as a major influence; Claus-Peter Clasen, “Nuremberg in the History of Anabaptism,” MQR 37 (1965); Gerhard Pfeiffer, ed., Quellen zur Nünberger Refor mationsgeschichte (Nuremberg: Verein für Ba yerische Kirchengeschichte, 1968); and Hans Dieter Schmid, Täufertum und Obr igket in Nürnberg (Nuremberg: Stadtarchive Nürnberg, 1972), 145–81.

chapter 7.1

south german and austrian anabaptism  249

sacramentarian Spiritualism of M üntzer and Carlstadt and he was confirmed in his mystical disposition. At the beginning of 1524 he took a w ife, who kept table for some of the pupils. He was first associated with Andrew Osiander, of the other main church, St. Lawrence’s. Osiander, as chief ecclesiastical adviser in the town council, was cautiously leading (1517–28) into the Lutheran camp the great free city where the Catholic Imperial Council of R egency sat. Luther’s mentor, John Staupitz, had preached in the city in 1512 and again in 1516 to large crowds. And among the mystical humanists who welcomed him and then later the message of Luther had been Osiander, alas, destined to be in almost mortal combat within Lutheranism over the role of Christ the Mediator, when later serving as professor in Königsberg (Ch. 25.1.b). The manufacturing town of Nuremberg, a center of Renaissance culture, with Willibald Pirkheimer and Albrecht Dürer as its illustrious exponents, had long been restive under the spiritual dominion of its bishop, whose see was in the less important city of B amberg. Fearless, combative, opinionated, Osiander detected dangerous differences between himself and the spiritualizing humanist teacher, who began giving voice to aspirations more akin to medieval, mystical sectarian piety than to the new solafideism of Luther. Denck was, in fact, blending the humanistic piety, which he had encountered both in Basel 3 and in Nuremberg, with the mystical piety of J ohn Tauler as reinforced by the tracts of Müntzer. Medieval sectarian dissent had survived in the populous commercial center up to the eve of t he Reformation. John Hus, fatefully en route to Constance, had been permitted to discuss his doctrines publicly in Nuremberg, and had won friends. Waldensian congregations gathered in and around the town. Diepold Peringer (Schuster), the “peasant of Wörhdt,”4 the revivalist whose sermons against images and the Mass and in defense of free will greatly impressed the chaplain of Elector Frederick the Wise, present at the diet of 1524, had a following in the city.5 In the course of the Peasants’ War, Müntzer, on his second flight from Mühlhausen in 1524, remained in Nuremberg four weeks. The revolutionary leader and future Anabaptist protagonist stayed with Denck.6 Already in Bibra Müntzer had put Henry Pfeiffer and John Hut (Ch. 4.3.c) in charge of printing his two manuscripts Ausgedrückte Entblössung (Special Exposé) and Hochverursachte Schutzrede). Looking back on his stay, Müntzer later 3  Günther Goldbach in an unpublished thesis (accessible to and valued by Packull) “Hans Denck und Thomas Müntzer—ein Vergleich ihrer wesentlichen Theologischen Auffassung: Eine Untersuchung zur Morphologie der Randströmung der Reformation,” (Hamburg, 1969), 51 n. 3, takes note of the fact that Denck was a proofreader in Basel when an edition of Tauler appeared. See Packull, Mysticism, 191 n. 12. 4  SAW, 89 5  On the sectarian impulses and the sources, see Evans, Sectaries. 6  Schmid, Täufertum in Nürnberg, 11f.

250  the radical reformation

chapter 7.1

wrote: “I could have played a p retty game with the people of N uremberg had I cared to stir up sedition, an accusation brought against me by a lying world. Many people urged me to preach, but I replied that I was not there for that purpose, but rather to answer my enemies through the press.” 7 We can imagine that the rector of St. Sebald’s school was among those who urged him to preach. In October 1524, Osiander and the town authorities learned that Pfeiffer was in possession of Müntzer’s aforementioned inflammatory manuscripts and was trying to get them printed. In his refutation of the pamphlets, Osiander was incensed at Pfeiffer’s use of the Mosaic law when arguing that false prophets should be put to death at the same time that he was blithely limiting himself to the New Testament or even the Spirit or inner Word with respect to contested points of doctrine. The town authorities, still nominally Catholic, although they had not enforced the recess of t he diet held in Nuremberg itself on the suppression of Luther’s writings, considered it advisable to be firm with what Osiander and Dominic Schleupner of S t. Sebald’s identified as at once blasphemy and sedition. Since Müntzer had departed, action could be taken only against Pfeiffer, who was thereupon banished, and against the printer Jerome Höltzel and his helpers, who were temporarily arrested.8 Denck was still unmolested. The Spiritualist and sacramentarian Carlstadt was also an important figure in the eyes of the proto-Anabaptist fellowship in Nuremberg. Carlstadt, even before becoming a s acramentarian, had dedicated to Albrecht Dürer, as “his beloved patron,” Von Anbetung und Ehrenbietung der Zeichen des Neuen Testaments (1519), in which he contended that the Dominical injunction had been simply to eat and rejoice rather than to adore the bread and the wine.9 Then, around November 1524, Carlstadt’s fully sacramentarian Von dem widerchristlichen Missbrauch des Herrn Brot und Kelch was printed in Nuremberg by Jerome Höltzel, who had received the manuscript from the former Lutheran pastor of Jena, Martin Reinhart. Reinhart, a fellow exile with Carlstadt, had in March published the articles presented by the Utraquists to the Council of B asel in 1431, and had even dedicated the work to Pirkheimer and the whole Nuremberg council.10 His interest in the Bohemians confirms the slight connection between the Nuremberg secta-

7

 Johan K. Seidemann, Thomas Müntzer (Dresden, 1842), 48–49.  Evans, Sectaries, 44ff. 9  Anzaygung wie die gefallene Christenheit widerbracht müg werdn in jren ersten standt , Gerhard Pfeiffer, ed. 10  Barge, Bodenstein, 1:328. 8

chapter 7.1

south german and austrian anabaptism  251

ries, now on the point of turning Anabaptist, and the “old Evangelicals.”11 Reinhart was somewhat surprised to find himself and his family ordered to leave the city in December. The publication of books by either Carlstadt or Müntzer was prohibited. But the views of Carlstadt and Müntzer echoed in the city especially in the artistic and humanistic circles. Denck was their spokesman. He had come to believe that the solafideism of Luther jeopardized the moral life of t he community, and he quietly fostered a S piritualism that was pushed to an extreme by three so-called “godless painters,” who denied the divinity of Christ and seemed excessive in their expressions of religious doubt and were brought to trial.12 They were ejected from the company of A lbrecht Dürer. In the course of the judicial hearing at the end of 1524 before the town council, Denck himself became implicated. The biblical spiritualism of t he rector of S t. Sebald’s school jeopardized the Luther-Reform in Nuremberg and caused consternation lest he become the respected head of the anti-Lutheran party, with some support even from the more evangelical of the Old Believers. The trial of the trio was recessed; Denck was brought before the town council at the insistence of Osiander. Denck was adroit in parrying questions. He was then asked for a written confession of faith. It was in these circumstances of intellectual duress that Denck addressed to the council and the evangelical pastors his Confession, in two installments, the first on 14 January 1525. The points at issue were the authority of the Bible, sin, the righteousness of G od, law and gospel, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper. Yet Denck paid little heed to the specific points at issue between himself and Osiander. In the Confession he gave expression to his conviction, reinforced by, and to some extent palpably dependent upon,

11  This is Ludwig K eller’s generic term for medieval mystical sectaries, having in mind particularly the Waldensians. See his Johann von Stauptiz und die Änfange der Reformation (Leipzig, 1888), 202ff. 12   These painters were Sebald and Bar thel Behaim and George P enz. They had read the tracts of Carlstadt. On the relationship, see Theodor Kolde, “Zum Process des Johann Denck und der dr ei gottlosen Maler v on Nürnberg,” Kirchliche Studien, Hermann Reuter zur Ehr e (Leipzig, 1888) and “Hans Denck und die gottlosen Maler in Nürnberg,” Beiträge zur Bayerischen Kirchengeschichte 8 (1902): 1ff. Whether directed against the heretical humanist circle in Nuremberg or more specifically against the Unitarian Anabaptist, Ludwig Hätzer, the first book in defense of the received dogmas of the Trinity and Chalcedonian Chr istology in the centur y of the Refor mation was published the next y ear in Nuremberg by Andreas A. Althamer (c. 1500–40), Das unser Christus Jesus warer Gott sey, zeugnüss der heyligen gesc hrift wider newen Juden und Arrianer unter Christlichen namen; welche die Gottheyt Chr isti verleugnen (Nuremberg: Peypus, 1526) wherein the author writes: “And now comes Satan with a new rabble who say that Christ was only a prophet and a mere man and not v ery God, who also deny the whole New Testament; and some of these I have myself heard, and more or less known,” from Wilbur, Socinianism, 24.

252  the radical reformation

chapter 7.1

Müntzer.13 He observed that the seeming contradictions or paradoxes of Scripture that had long puzzled him could be resolved by the harmonizing operation of the Holy Spirit bringing together the disparate scriptural words in the reader’s dynamic encounter with the inner Word called forth by the eternal Logos.14 The whole of the first installment15 deals with the general nature of faith. Starting with Luther’s teaching on salvation sola fide, as Grebel in Zurich started with Zwingli’s axiom of d ivine sanction sola scriptura,16 Denck tries to relate faith to grace in order in the end to relate faith to the two evangelical sacraments under dispute. Since it is faith that gives life or salvation, he declares that saving faith can never be the inherited belief, inculcated earnestly by o ne’s parents. Otherwise, salvation would itself be hereditary. Therefore he has come reluctantly to admit that inherited faith is really a “ false faith.” He is sure that faith is a g ift vouchsafed to “the blessed in the poverty of t he Spirit,” that is, in the utter emptying of oneself of self in the earnest scrutiny of Scripture, and that the power which “drives” Christ into one is the (cosmic) Christ already present, the inner Word which the Scriptures testify is also the Son of the Most High. Denck avows that unbelief is the great sin, which destroys the righteousness of God through legalism. He prays that God may help his unbelief. The Scriptures can be understood and bitter sectarianism avoided only if the Holy Spirit attends upon the living exegesis. And even then the incandescent Scripture is only a lantern in the darkness until the morning star is seen and the day breaks, and the sun of the righteous, Christ, shines in the heart.17 Denck admits that this ultimate experience is not yet his. In reaching this goal, he knows that Christ as king working through the

13  Gottfried Seebass, authority on Osiander (Ch. 15. 1) in his “Das reformatorische Werk des Andreas Osiander” (unpublished thesis, 1967) holds o ver against Bar ing, “Hans Denck und Thomas Müntzer,” that Denck, though m uch under the impact of Müntzer while in Nuremberg, developed independently afterw ards; see e valuation by Packull, Mysticism, 193 n. 45. 14   This, in par entheses, is the per ception of Packull, in the light of his exploration of the mystical component in Denck. See Ch. 2. In his Mysticism he draws fresh attention to a sermon of an assistant to Müntzer in Allstedt, Simon Hafirez, preached there on Epiphany (Three Kings), 6 January 1524, which contained similar mystical views in a more popular vein and possibly known to Denck, Ein Sermon von Fest der heiligen drey König. Packull, Mysticism, 38, quotes some lines from it: “Oh, what a miserable faith would that have been if the pious Magi should have built upon the tender scr ibes at Jerusalem, … [as to] where Christ should be born. Yes, they were not satisfied by the words of Scripture, … but wanted to see the inner Word, which the Holy Spirit had already awakened with high desire in their hearts.” 15  Hans Denck Schriften, ed. Georg Bar ing and Walter Fellmann, 2 par ts (QGT 6) (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1955/56) (henceforth Baring and Fellmann, Schriften [QGT 6]), pt. 2, pp. 20–23. 16   The interpretation of Kiwiet, Pilgram Marpeck. 17   The same metaphor was used by John de Valdés.

chapter 7.1

south german and austrian anabaptism  253

law is as important as the Christ with whom the believer must first die to rise again. In the second installment,18 Denck feels called upon to be more specif ic about the sacraments. Here again he stresses faith, not to the disparagement of t he sacraments, but with a v iew to bringing faith and the Dominical ordinances into harmony. He distinguishes between an inner and an outer baptism and attaches importance to both actions. The f irst is the penetration of t he hard ground (actually: åbegrundt) of human uncleanness by the omnipotent Word of God, as the dry earth is penetrated by g ood rain. The baptism of t he believer with water is the “covenant of a g ood conscience with God.” This, of course, is Luther’s unique translation of 1 Peter 3:21 (RSV: “appeal to God for a clear conscience”), and Denck’s employment of it here may mark the moment in Church history when a tremendous personal conviction is on the point of acquiring constitutional signif icance, for as soon as Denck’s inward faith will have been outwardly conf irmed by believers’ baptism at the hands of Hubmaier in Augsburg through the further modif ication of h is baptizand, John Hut (Ch. 7.2), the covenantal ecclesiology of the Anabaptist churches of South Germany will have taken form. But at this moment, Denck has gone no further than to say that the water covenant is desirable. He expressly says it “is not necessary to [personal] salvation.” The inner baptism is what is intended in Mark 16:16: … Believe … and be saved. And what Denck means by inward baptism is made clear when he observes that there is no point in washing carrots or cabbages while they are still growing in the dirt.19 Taking up the meaning of the Supper, he uses the analogy of healing. The divine Physician has two ways of curing his patient, either by enjoining a fast or by bloodletting, that is, either by withdrawing the undigestible food of a false faith or by interposing an external suffering. Whether it is to be the one therapy or the other depends on the patient’s need and temperament. In either case, the way is prepared by C hrist the mediator for one’s entry into the covenant with God through the redirection of the will. In this process the Lord’s Supper has both an inward and an external significance, as does baptism. The living invisible bread (coming down from heaven, the ever present leaven of the Logos; cf. Ex. 16:4, etc.) strengthens one in the life of r ighteousness. And whoever is mindful of and drinks from the invisible chalice the wine mixed by God through his Son from the beginning of the world will be satisfied and think no longer of himself, but will become completely “divinized” through the love of 18

 Baring and Fellmann, Schriften (QGT 6.2), 23–26.  Bernhard Lohse develops further the theme of inw ard baptism through divine calling in “Hans Denck und der ‘linke Flügel’ der Reformation,” Humanitas-Christianitas: Walther von Loewenich zum 65. Geburstag (Witten: Luther-Verlag, 1968), 74–83. 19

254  the radical reformation

chapter 7.1

God, and God will become “humanized” in him. 20 That is the meaning of having eaten the body of Christ and drunk his blood, and he cites John 6:56. Throughout the two installments of his Confession, Denck was markedly irenic in tone, and at the same time confident of the basic righteousness of the position taken. He had a copy of the Confession circulated. The council found it unbearably “deceptive,” and thus it was that the destined leader of the South German Anabaptists was ordered to leave the town 21 January 1525, obliged to swear an oath not to return to Osiander’s Nuremberg. He had to leave his wife and child, for whose support his property was confiscated. Osiander himself will reappear in our narrative as the first in a series of sixteenth-century fashioners of the triplex munus Christi (Ch. 11.3.b) to have the thought of three functions of Christ as the discharge of an office (Amt/munus), in Christ’s teaching office giving sanction to the exclusive magisterial authority of the evangelical pastors as doctores Ecclesiae against the self-styled prophets. In the meantime, Denck, having received an invitation from Müntzer, may have taught during the spring in Mühlhausen, retaken by the Müntzer forces, but was, in any case, obliged to flee the region with Henry Pfeiffer and some four hundred others in May. 21 He it was who presumably accompanied Pfeiffer to Switzerland. Denck was imprisoned in Schwyz for his opposition to pedobaptism and proclamation that there is no purgatory and that at the Last Judgment even the devil will be spared. 22 He was evidently released. He thereupon sought work as a proofreader with his former Basel acquaintance Vadian, arriving in his center, St. Gall, in September 1525, at the flood of the Anabaptist tide in that relatively tolerant Swiss town. While staying in the home of an Anabaptist, 23 though not himself as yet a convert, Denck is reported to have disturbed the local Anabaptists by h is teaching on the universal salvation or the restitution of all things (Acts 3:21), which appears prominently in several of his later works.

20

  The intense spir itualization of the sacrament of the altar is common to one strand in the sacramentism that inter iorizes the cosmic n urture and withholds oneself fr om the actual species, Ch. 2.2. 21  Oecolampadius to Pirkheimer, 22 April 1525. Staehelin, Briefe und Akten, 1:365. Further evidence marshaled by Baring, “Nürnberg,” ARG 50, 178. 22  Ostschweiz (QGTS 2), ed. Heinold Fast, 274. 23  Hans Krüsi, the date of the ar rival revised from June to September b y Heinold Fast, “Hans Krüsis Büchlein über Glaube und Taufe … von 1525,” Zwingliana 11 (1959–63): 456– 75. Krüsi and this article feature in the dating of Michael Sattler’s being rebaptized (Ch. 8.1).

chapter 7.2

south german and austrian anabaptism  255

2. Louis Haetzer and John Denck in Augsburg From September 1525 to October 1526, Denck resided in Augsburg. 24 Here, midway between Zurich and Wittenberg, the city council was trying to find its place in the Reformation between Zwingli and Luther. Urbanus Rhegius was the powerful spokesman of Luther’s version. The nucleus of the Augsburg Anabaptist community which Denck was destined to lead was the circle around Louis Haetzer. We last encountered Haetzer writing up the acts of the Second Zurich Disputation in October 1523 (Ch. 5.2.b). Protestant-minded members of the guilds had been gathering for evenings of r eligious discussion in various taverns, and the excitement engendered appears to have been spiritual in more than one sense. Haetzer, at the time a proofreader with the Augsburg press of Silvan Othmar, attended these sessions but soon criticized them for being more under the auspices of Bacchus than of Christ. Accordingly, he assumed the leadership of a g athering of m ore apostolical brethren, forerunner of t he huge Anabaptist congregation in the cathedral city of Au gsburg. In this conventicle the sacramentarian communion of Carlstadt and Zwingli was observed in defiance of the Lutheran majority among the city’s Protestants who held the cathedral. On 14 September 1525, Haetzer wrote to Zwingli, urging him to countervail the move of the local Lutherans to establish their view. Challenged by Urbanus Rhegius of the cathedral church to a public debate, Haetzer failed to appear and was banished “as the head of the sectarians, as an unclean, seditious person, hostile to the gospel.” He went on, via Constance, to Basel (October). In this leaderless situation, the Augsburg conventicle undoubtedly welcomed Denck as an evangelical spokesman of learning comparable to Haetzer. Denck arrived from St. Gall in September 1525. Through the autumn and winter, teaching the classical languages and giving spiritual counsel to the apostolic brethren, Denck was still a spiritualizing sacramentarian. At about the beginning of May, 1526, Hubmaier, having made a second recantation in Zurich in order to be released from prison (Ch. 6.3), arrived in Augsburg and stayed a couple of months. It was here that he met Denck, “foremost of the Anabaptists” (praecipuus anabaptistis) in the town after the departure of Haetzer. Our informant here is a Zwinglian, who in a letter to his hero in Zurich, tells us much of what we know about the relationship in Augsburg of three major Anabaptist figures, briefly resident there together at the same time. The informant, who calls Denck “a slippery man,” is one Peter Gynorianus, who comes into our account because on his letter 24  For his ar rival in Augsburg, see Bar ing and F ellmann, eds., Schriften 2:12. For the most recent conspectus of Anabaptists in Augsburg and environs with pictures and a map of Anabaptist congregations in the southwest quadrant of the Empir e, see Hans Guderian, Die Täufer in Augsburg: Ihre Geschichte und ihr Erbe: Ein Beitrag zur 2000–Jahr Feier der Stadt Augsburg (Pfaffenhofen: Ludwig, 1984).

256  the radical reformation

chapter 7.2

largely rests the scholarly commonplace that Denck was here baptized by Hubmaier en route to Nicolsburg. 25 This now seems at best only a surmise. Hubmaier had indeed as soon as he had left the jurisdiction of the Swiss Confederation boasted in the cathedral church of Constance in the presence of the evangelical clergy there that he had defeated Zwingli on points in the baptismal debate. And he evidently felt similarly free to speak about his ordeal to sympathetic evangelicals in Augsburg. Gynorianus, who had been obliged to leave his post as Leutpriester of St. Alban’s in Basel, reports in the letter to Zwingli that when Hubmaier arrived, “he asked him to come along with him” to some preachers (concionatores), whom Gynorianus himself had not yet chosen to greet “because of mutual disagreement about the Eucharist,” and that among them (evidently more the followers of Luther and perhaps Denck than of Zwingli), Hubmaier accused Zwingli of having acted the tyrant. Thereupon Gynorianus rebuked him violently, but acknowledged that Hubmaier had “almost roused many among us of his sort (suae farinae) so that they believed.” Whether this means that they believed indeed what he was saying about Zwingli or about baptism is not clear.26 The same informant, disparaging both Denck and Hubmaier, reports also that Hubmaier related to him, evidently prior to the foregoing episode, how Denck “drove pestilential doctrines [Origen’s universalism, see below] before him.” However slightingly Hubmaier may have characterized Denck to a “fellow Zwinglian,” and however different in disposition the two may have been—the activist mystic from the humanist circle in Nuremberg and the university-trained nominalist and preacher of Waldshut—it is clear that Hubmaier, in fact, in the end, was influenced by Denck on at least the issue of free will. It is now, however, no longer at all clear that Hubmaier baptized Denck in the Waldshut mode. It is a major datum of the historiography of all the radicals, however, that Denck, not otherwise documented as having undergone water baptism, as vorsteher (cf. praecipuus above) in Augsburg 25   The letter (no. 520) of 22 August 1526 (after Hubmaier’s departure) is printed in ZW, Zwinglis Briefwechsel 2, no. 520, pp. 688–90; reorientingly discussed b y Werner O. Packull, “Denck’s Alleged Baptism by Hubmaier: Its Significance for the Origin of South Ger manAustrian Anabaptism,” with a translation of the major part of the letter in an appendix, MQR 47 (1973): 327–38. Beginning with Ludwig K eller in 1882, as Packull challengingly demonstrates, it has long been found congenial to a succession of scholar s to think of the highly educated and winsome Denck, the clearly documented baptizer of the apocalyptic Hans Hut, as supplying, as it w ere, the baptismal and hence , in a w ay, evangelical, succession from the largely pacifistic and congregational Swiss Anabaptists to the South Ger man and Bohemian lands. The “significance,” in a word, of Denck’s baptism of Hut is that it has, in fact, obscured the degree to which the tw o men of such differ ent temperament, were also of quite a dif ferent sort of Anabaptist from the covenantal Swiss Brethren. Packull suggests that even the records of the Hutter ites have been edited to obscur e the degree to which they themselves were originally driven by the spirit of Hut. 26  Packull allows the Latin phrasing to be translated otherwise , “Denck’s Alleged Baptism by Hubmaier,” 338 (tr. William D. McCready).

chapter 7.2

south german and austrian anabaptism  257

baptized the fiery John Hut (whose acquaintance he had made during the Peasants’ War (Ch. 4.3.c)). Hut was in this moment fresh from his native Bibra where he had joined George Haug, the elected spiritual leader of the rebellious peasants of the region. He would later help in the printing of all of Haug’s sermons. The baptism took place in Augsburg “in a little house before Heiligkreuz Gate on Pentecost” (3 May 1526). Our account of South German Anabaptism, with Augsburg as its center, now divides. For the moment we shall continue to follow Denck, and then turn with Hut to Austria. About the same time that Denck rebaptized John Hut, he likewise converted John Bünderlin of Linz (1499–1533), a man much more like himself. 27 A spiritualizing proto-Unitarian, much interested in eschatology, he will reappear as our story unfolds in Linz (Ch. 7.5), Strassburg (Ch. 10.3.a), and Ducal Prussia (Ch. 15.2.a). The chief Lutheran pastor of Au gsburg, Urbanus Rhegius, disparagingly called Denck “the abbot of the Anabaptists.” To defend himself and the apostolic brethren, now fully Anabaptist, against Urbanus Rhegius, Denck proceeded to write three works, all in 1526: Whether God is the Cause of Evil, 28 Of the Law of God (Vom Gesetz Gottes), 29 and Who truly loves the Truth (Wer die Wahrheit wahrlich lieb hat).30 The f irst, in the form of a d ialogue, deals with the problem of evil and free will and declares that God is not directly the author of evil. Though printed in Augsburg by H aetzer’s publisher, Silvan Othmar, it 27

 Alexander Nicoladoni, Johannes Bünderlin v on Linz und die oberöster reichischen Täufergemeinden in den Jahren 1525–1531 (Berlin, 1893). Nicoladoni did not know that Hans Fischer, the for mer secretary of Baron Bartholomaüs von Stahremberg, was identical with Bünderlin. For the synthesis and literatur e, see ME, 1:469–70. Claude R. Foster, Jr. has prepared for publication his “Johannes Bünderlin: Radical Reformer of the Sixteenth Century” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1963). Part of it has appeared as “Hans Denck and Johannes Bünderlin: A Comparative Study,” MQR (1965): 115–124. For bibliographical references on Bünderlin, see below Ch. 10 n.46. 28  Was geredet sei, dass die Schrift sagt, Baring and Fellmann, Schriften (QGT 6.2), 27–47; translated, SAW, 86–111. I noted that Hubmaier quoted or paraphrased Denck at se veral places, especially on the fr eedom of the will; and later se veral passages in parallel columns made visible the dependency. See Torsten Bergsten, Hubmaier (English ed.), 354 (ibid., 131 n.9). Thor Hall sho ws the extent to which, for his doctr ine of the fr eedom of the will, Denck reflected also Erasm us, “Possibilities of Erasmian Influence on Denck and Hubmaier,” MQR 35 (1961): 149–70. David C. Steinmetz, “Scholasticism and Radical Reform: Nominalist Motifs in the Theology of Balthasar Hubmaier ,” MQR 54: (1971): 123–44 demonstrates that the opinions of Hubmaier on fr ee will, justification, and good works came from a variety of important sources besides the nominalist theology which he studied at Friburg and Ingolstadt. On these questions Hubmaier took a more conservative position than Luther , who br oke radically with the nominalist theolo gy of g race which he had taught at Erfur t. For a popular tr eatment of the same subject see also Da vid C. Steinmetz, Reformers in the Wings (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971; rpt. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981), 197–208. Steinmetz understands the charge of Origenism in Denck as merely the “universalism of opportunity and responsibility,” ibid., 216. 29  Baring and Fellmann, Schriften (QGT 6.2), 48ff. 30  Ibid., 67ff.

258  the radical reformation

chapter 7.2

ref lects Denck’s involvement in the Nuremberg theological debate occasioned by a Sunday sermon on predestination preached by the peasant of Wörhdt. 31 On the question of f ree will, Denck was far, not only from Luther, but also from Carlstadt (Ob Gott eine Ursache sei des teuf lischen Falls, beginning of 1524), to whom Luther had by now indirectly replied in (De servo arbitrio, December 1525) against Erasmus. In his dialogue, Denck acknowledges that salvation is in man but not of him and notes the diverse disguises of s elf ishness impeding one’s imitation of C hrist through Gelassenheit, i.e., passivity or yieldedness to God’s will in selfsurrender. The mystical term suggests at once the joyful abandonment of the soul as bride to the “heavenly Bridegroom” (Canticles) and the call of t he saints to a l ife of suffering and mortif ication as well as faith (Rev. 13:10). “Scripture speaks,” he says, “of a tranquillity (Gelassenheit), which is the means of coming to God; which is Christ himself, not to be regarded physically but rather spiritually.” In a Neoplatonic sense by way of fused Romance and Germanic mysticism, Denck thinks of evil as the absence of good and of sin as nothing; and then, to explain why God nevertheless chastises his children for their sin, he answers thus: For the same reason that a schoolmaster punishes his children for doing nothing. To do something is good. If we did something, to this extent we would have less need of punishment. But how sin [really] is nothing may be perceived by whoever gives himself over to God and becomes nothing, while at the same time he is created something by God. This each one will understand according to the measure of his resignation (Gelassenheit). 32 Elsewhere he writes of Gelassenheit: “If I r un in the truth, that is, if I run sufferingly, then my running will not be in vain,” and again, “There is no other way to blessedness than to lose one’s self-will.” Gelassenheit leads to progressive “divinization and inner lordship over all that is creaturely.” Striking a universalist note, Denck declares that God in his omnipotence has left it open as to who will reach the goal of b lessedness. The hostile observer who wrote to Zwingli in August 1526, reported that for Denck “even the demons in the end will be saved.”33 The second work of 1526 is the outcome of Denck’s reflection on the problem of law, faith, and love as argued by Paul in Romans and as interpreted by Luther. Here we have Denck’s first tract written existentially from

31

 Above at n. 4.   Translated in SAW, 91. 33  Gynorianus (Frauenberger) of Nur emberg to Zwingli, 22 August 1526, ZW, Zwinglis Briefwechsel, 689. Cf. n. 22 above. 32

chapter 7.2

south german and austrian anabaptism  259

within the Anabaptist fellowship of a self-disciplined church. He deplores the moral miscarriage in Nuremberg and Augsburg of the Lutheran preoccupation with the sermonic proclamation of the Word, of forensic justification, to the neglect of parochial tutelage and discipline. At the same time, in his aversion to legalism, one detects also his mystical Spiritualism. This is destined to become increasingly prominent in Denck, with his concern lest attention to apostolic injunctions, even in respect to baptism and the breaking of the bread, be converted into a new law. The third Augsburg work of 1526, like the second printed by Philip Ulhart, assembles a series of apparent contradictions in the Bible. The first conflicting pair are Rom. 11:34 (Isa. 40:13f.), “For who has known the mind of t he Lord?” and Eph. 1:9, “For he has made known to us … t he mystery of h is will.” The fortieth and last pair contrast God’s hardening of Pharaoh’s heart (Ex. 4:21) and Pharaoh’s hardening his own heart (Ex. 8:15; 9:34). Many of t hese very contradictions had been pointed out by Erasmus in his Ratio 34 and would be picked up again by the Spiritualist Sebastian Franck (Ch. 18.3). Denck’s purpose in assembling the seeming contradictions is made clear in his brief foreword. He wishes to show that reliance on proof texts inevitably divides Christians into bitter sectarian factions. Away with scribal and sectarian haggling over Scriptures! The Holy Spirit is the schoolmaster of the faithful, who alone can point out the inner Word behind the words. With a brief note to the reader, in allusion to the prophecy of Isa. 29:11–12 that the Book of Life will be sealed to the literate and illiterate alike, Denck concludes that everyone should therefore be willing to give himself over to the Master, who leads even all the doctores to school and “who has the key to the book in which all the treasures of wisdom are contained,” namely, the Holy Spirit. In the course of t he year 1526, in which Denck was writing and publishing his three tracts, he became involved in debate with Urbanus Rhegius. Of their debate we have knowledge only from the contradictory materials surviving from Urbanus himself. 35 Apparently Denck’s leadership of the Anabaptist community had escaped the notice of Urbanus for more than a year. He now acted swiftly, asked Denck about his views and his conduct, and found him evasive and then remorseful and he began to cry (“hub … an zu weinen”). The other Lutheran pastors were called in at one stage or another to warn and remonstrate. When a public disputation, to which Denck at first agreed, began taking shape, he apparently sensed that the preparations were all too reminiscent of the “hearing” in Nuremberg, and he left.

34 35

 Ratio seu compendium verae theologiae (Basel, 1519).  Succinctly assembled and ordered by Baring and Fellmann in Schriften (QGT 6.2), 12–13.

260  the radical reformation

chapter 7.3

3. John Denck in Strassburg and Worms Once again Denck sought a city of refuge, this time Strassburg, “the city of hope” and “the refuge of r ighteousness,” as the Anabaptists called it. Because of its preeminent role in our narrative, we shall postpone the fuller account of t his strategic crossroads of t he Radical Reformation and take note only of the activities of Denck while sojourning there from November through December 1526. On his arrival, Denck found an indigenous Spiritualist Anabaptist fellowship36 centering in the home of the gardener-preacher Clement Ziegler (Ch. 10.2.a) and a refugee community of Swiss Brethren headed provisionally by one Michael Sattler37 (Ch. 8.1). He found, too, that the principal divines of the city had, with the support of the magistrates, moved much farther in the direction of sacramental reform than had those in Nuremberg and Augsburg. Denck found the indigenous, more spiritualistic Anabaptists among the garden brethren most congenia1.38 Especially close was Denck’s relationship with Louis Haetzer, at that time busy with his translation of Isaiah, and who also entered the circle of A nabaptists meeting with Ziegler. Further, some of the more substantial Strassburg burghers, repelled by what they regarded as the failure of t he municipal reformers to bring about a moral change in their communities, were attracted by Denck’s piety. More­over, there were many Catholic sympathizers in and out of the town council who were glad to indulge the Anabaptist community for fear that sterner measures would constitute a pattern for action against themselves whenever the town should become officially Protestant. At least two somewhat divergent Anabaptist circles in Strassburg constituted a threat to the magisterial Protestant forces. Thus it was not long before Denck was engaged in controversy with the city’s leading Reformers. As in Nuremberg and then in Augsburg, so now in Strassburg, Denck was soon disowned by t hose who had been at first receptive. In the first major recorded encounter Wolfgang Capito but also and mainly Martin Cellarius discussed with Haetzer and Denck the problems of predestination and faith as worked out in Denck’s Was geredet sei. For the most part the differences between the two sides were overcome in mutual respect and irenicism. It was Martin Bucer who became Denck’s principal antagonist, and a sharp encounter ensued in the disputation held in the presence of as many as four hundred burghers on 22 and 23 December 1526. Bucer, who in the end called him “the Anabaptist pope,” much pre36  A. Hulshof, Geschiedenis van de Doopsgezinden te Straatsburg van 1525 tot 1557 (Amsterdam, 1905), 33. The principal source collection is Elsass, 1: Stadt Strassburg 1522–1532 (QGT 7), ed. Manfred Krebs and Jean Rott (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1959), Nos. 60 to 66 deal with Denck. 37  Hulshof, Doopsgezinden, 33 and n. 2, says that the Sattler Baptists were much less numerous than those of whom Denck was temporarily the spokesman. 38  Camill Gerbert, Geschichte der Strassburger Sectenbewegung zur Zeit der Refor mation 1524– 1535 (Strassburg, 1889), 18, 152ff.

chapter 7.3

south german and austrian anabaptism  261

ferred Sattler. The disputation was based upon Denck’s works, Vom Gesetz Gottes and Von der Ordnung, and concerned God’s providence, human freedom, universal salvation, Christian magistracy, and the oath. Bucer insisted that Denck express himself fully and clearly. Denck said that he could not be any clearer than he was and asked the church to pray for him. Bucer convinced the otherwise tolerant council that Denck should be asked to leave. Banished from Strassburg as an underminer of m agisterial authority, Denck stopped briefly at Bergzabern and then at Landau. In the former he angrily “vociferated” with the local Jews concerning the law. 39 In Landau, where there was already an Anabaptist community, he and Melchior Rinck (Ch. 4.3.d) debated on adult baptism with the evangelical pastor John Bader40 (who later drew close to Schwenckfeld) on 20 January 1527. The effect was to increase the local Anabaptist following. Denck’s destination was the imperial city of Worms, where the local reform was about to be pushed rapidly in the direction of Anabaptism and then suddenly checked. Rinck, Haetzer, and Denck were able to bring two of the younger Lutheran preachers of the town, Jacob Kautz and his copreacher Hilarius, into the Anabaptist circle.41 In this favorable environment, Denck produced, alone or in collaboration, three important works. The first was his beautiful and long influential Of the True Love (Von der wahren Liebe), 1527,42 divided into two quite distinct parts, the first warmly mystical and devotional, the second practical. It was in this work, published in Worms, that Denck made explicit what was implicit in his Nuremberg Confession with respect to the interrelationship of the inner and the outer of covenantal baptism of the good conscience: Therefore also the sign of t he covenant (Bundzeychen), baptism, should be administered to those only, and not withheld from them, who, invited thereto by the power of God through the awareness of t rue love, desire it and pledge themselves to imitate it [that love]. And yet they should nevertheless remain uncoerced by the brethren of the covenant (Bundsgnossen) and

39

 So reported the local pastor Nicholas Thomas Sigelspach. This impression must be thought of as applicable to the specific occasion and not to Denck’s usual manner. 40   Two accounts of the debate are preserved, that of Capito to Zwingli, ZW 8:819–20, and that of Bucer, ZW 9:184–85. Hulshof devotes a chapter to the antagonism of the two, Hulshof, Doopsgezinden, iii. Recently Rinck’s refutation of Bader has come to light.Gerhard J. Neumann, “A Newly Discovered Manuscript,” MQR 35 (1961): 197–217. 41  Gerhard Hein deals withWorms in “Die Täuferbewegung im Mittel-Rheinischen Raum von der Reformation bis zum Dreissigjährigen Krieg,” Blätter für Pfälzische Kirchengeschichte und Religiöse Volkskunde 40 (1973): 288–306. Ebernburg-Hefte 40 (1972–73). 42  Baring and Fellmann, Schriften (QGT 6.1), 35–36 and pt. 2 pp. 75–76.

262  the radical reformation

chapter 7.3

kindred [in Christ] in the pursuit of l ove, for as the Psalter says: 110:3 “Thy people will offer themselves freely [in the days of thy power!].”43 Bundesgenossen (Dutch: bondgenoten) is a m ajor constitutional-eschatological term, fraught with significance for the whole Anabaptist movement. Although there can never be certainty on this point, it would appear that we have in Denck’s Liebe the cradle of the term in application to a community bonded by the “oath” (sacramentum) of baptism.44 The second Worms tract was Ordnung Gottes,45 a reworking of his Was geredet sei, stimulated by the Strassburg disputation. The third Worms publication was primarily the work of Haetzer, who with Denck’s help pushed to completion the translation of all the prophets from Hebrew into German first. From its appearance in 1527, until the completion of Luther’s translation in 1532, Alle Propheten verdeutscht was widely read and went through numerous editions. Haetzer, abandoning his earlier “massive biblicism,” had come to recognize contradictions in the canon and to see “the wisdom of the scribes” in Wittenburg and perhaps Zurich as “the rape of the Spirit” (Vergewaltegung des Geistes). An evangelical spiritualizing Anabaptism was on the point of prevailing in Worms when Denck’s follower Jacob Kautz tacked up seven Anabaptist theses on the door of the Dominican Church on Pentecost, 9 June 1527.46 Denck was probably the father of K autz’s theses. The most important of these challenges to the established divines of the Worms parishes were the theses that infant baptism is against God, that neither external word nor sacrament has any significance unless inwardly echoed or appropriated, that neither the sin of A dam nor the suffering of C hrist is meaningful unless inwardly acknowledged, and that Christ in effect saves only in the measure that one faithfully follows in his steps and obeys the eternal will of God.

43

 Ibid., 80–81.  Ibid., 81 n. 2. Denck may well have discussed the concept in Strassburg before he put it in pr int. We find that in the hearing of August 1526 the fur rier Jacob Gross from Waldshut appealed to Luther’s translation in claiming that baptism is a covenant of the good conscience. Hulshof, Doopsgezinden 19–20. Another view is that of Cornelius Krahn, Der Gemeindebegriff des Menno Simons im Rahmen seines Lebens und seiner Theologie (Karlsruhe, 1936), 23 n. 53, where a connection is made between Kautz, Reublin, and Hofmann in Strassburg in 1529. 45  Baring and Fellmann, Schriften (QGT 6.2), 87ff. 46  Manfred Krebs, Baden und Pfalz (Gütersloh: Bertlesmann, 1951; henceforth Baden und Pflaz [QGT 4]), no. 129; for the articles or theses in context, see Christian Hege, Die Täufer in der Kurpfalz: Ein Beitrag zur badisch-pfälzischen Reformationsgeschichte (Frankfurt am Main, 1908), 38–42. 44

chapter 7.3 / 7.4

south german and austrian anabaptism  263

The soteriological principle of t he Reformers’ sola fides and solus Christus was rejected for the mystical cooperatio and imitatio.47 On 13 June, Kautz and others gave a free testimony and broad explanation of their Anabaptist views to a large audience. The Catholics (among them John Cochlaeus) denounced the theses to the elector palatine, saying that Kautz’s ideas concerning baptism and communion were a horror to all true Christians, and the Lutheran preachers replied to Kautz’s theses with seven articles. On 1 July the city council banished Kautz and Hilarius. The next day Bucer in Strassburg, who had anxiously followed developments at Worms, published against Kautz and Denck the Getreue Warnung,48 in which he refuted the articles point by point and trenchantly expressed his distress at the vanity of K autz in challenging the Worms preachers and his alarm at the Anabaptist reduction of the atoning role of Christ to that of exemplar. About this time, Denck and Haetzer left Worms. Rinck, already banished, will crop up in Hesse (Ch. 17.1). Anabaptism in Worms immediately declined and would come back in a different modality in 1529. From Worms, Denck planned to return to Augsburg, there to rally the Anabaptist forces in a great conclave. But before returning with him there, we do well at this point to pick up the story of his great convert from revolutionary Spiritualism to evangelical Anabaptism, John Hut.

4. John Hut From the day of the Eternal Covenant outside Mülhausen (Ch. 4.3.d), evidently conf irmed in his rebaptism in Augsburg at Pentecost (above in sec. 2), Hut was impassioned for a cause and now a missionary of the gospel of baptismal rebirth in apocalyptic exaltation. He is described by the council of Nuremberg thus: Of the brotherhoods, the chief instigator, patron, and standard-bearer is John Hut, a clever fellow, rather tall, a peasant with light brown cropped hair and a blond moustache. He is dressed in a grey, sometimes a black, riding coat, a broad black

47  Packull, Mysticism, 38, citing Goeter s, Ludwig Hätzer, in cor roboration. He goes on “… Kautz, Denck, and Hätzer defended what r ecent scholars [in the train of Har old Bender], rediscovering the Anabaptist vision, characterized as ‘discipleship’. However, the formulation at Worms did not grow out of a radicalization of Reformation principles but was enunciated in opposition to them.” The disputation failed to take place because the town’s Lutheran pastors were not inclined to participate. 48  Ibid., no. 86; Elsass 1, 91–115; Bucers Deutsche Schriften 2, 225–58.

264  the radical reformation

chapter 7.3 / 7.4

or grey hat, and grey pants.49 Baptizing almost on the run, he used as a s tandard formula the Great Commission of M att. 28:19–20. We have his brief description of h is own theology of baptism and his theology of p reaching, as transcribed for the court record: The word which stands in Mark 16:15 had moved him [Hut] to preach, namely, that preaching was f irst, afterwards faith, and thirdly baptism. And man must let the word of t he Lord stand. [He is] not to do anything apart from it, [and] also shall depart neither to the right nor the left, according to the last of Matthew [28: 19–20], that one shall f irst teach and afterwards baptize. 50 A deeper analysis of his baptismal theology and eschatology takes into consideration the degree to which the Anabaptist convert and apostle, Hut, was as much a Müntzerite and mystic by way of Müntzer, Denck, and perhaps the direct reading of the Deutero-Taulerian corpus, as by Joachimite sources.51 In an age of a rticulate and divisive fideism, Hut like Münzter acknowledged two kinds of faith (1) preliminary, prevenient, untried, faith, which would indeed work out to be as the Reformers claimed, justifying faith, and (2) tried faith. He could be blunt about what he considered invented or spurious, artificial or pretended, nominal faith, in the seats of the magisterial reformers. For Hut, suffering was the confirmation of faith,

49  Karl Schornbaum, Bayern, 2 (Güter sloh, Bertlesmann, 1951), 8 (hencefor th: Bayern, 2 [QGT 5]). See fur ther, Herbert Klassen, “The Life and Teachings of Hans Hut, ” MQR 33 (1959): 171–205, 267–304; Hans-Dieter Schmid, dealing with what he character izes as “undoubtedly the most significant direction of early Anabaptism in South Ger many from the point of view of adherents,” “Das Hutsch Täufertum: Ein Beitrag zur Charakter isierung eines Täuferischer Rechtung …,” Historisches Jahrbuch 91 (1971); 327–83; and Werner Packull and Gottfried Seebass who developed the sources on Hut as an appendix to his thesis on Osiander, Ch. 4 n. 41, and particularly Packull, “Hans Hut: The Failed Revolutionary,” and “Hans Hut and the Early South German Anabaptist Movement” with sec. A–C on his Franconian ministry, Hut among the Augsburg Anabaptists, and Hut in Nicolsburg, Mysticism, chs. 3, 4. 50  Deposition of 16 September 1527, quoted by Christian Meyer, “Zur Geschichte der Wiedertäufer in Ober schwaben,” Zeitschrift des Histor ischen Vereins für Sc hwaben und Neub urg 1 (1879): 223. There are only tw o complete w orks of Hut himself; both ar e based on the Three Witnesses or J ohannine Comma, cf. John 5:7f., thus a tr iadological interpretation of the Christian experience of baptism: Von dem Geheimnis der Taufe (no date) and Ein Christliche Unterrichtung wie die Götlich geschrifft vergleycht und geurtailt soll werde, aus krafft den hayligen dree anigkait (1527), Mittheilungen aus dem Antiquariate, 3, 4 (Berlin: Calvary, 1869), which appears in a version preserved by the Hutterites with an altered title “aus kraft des heilgen geists,” printed by Lydia Müller, Glaubenszeugnisse oberdeutscher Taufgesinnter, QFRG 20 = QGT 3:1 (1938), 28–37. The Geheimnis appears there, pp. 12–28, as also a Sendbrief printed by Urbanus Rhegius for refutation (Augsburg, 1528), ibid., p. 12. 51  I am reflecting the synthesis of the recent Hutian studies in the systematic exposition of Hut’s thought by Packull, Mysticism, ch. 3.

chapter 7.3 / 7.4

south german and austrian anabaptism  265

as in antiquity for some (the martyr Origen); reasoned faith was superior to simple (convert’s) faith—but for Origen, too, suffering was the confirmation of faith (cf. his Exhortation to Martyrdom).52 Similarly complex was Hut on judgments (Urteile) as distinguished from commandments. He was a full biblicist, not a New Testament Christian alone, and understood that God’s eternally binding commandments could be ascertained only by experiential juxtaposition of the seeming contradictions to make “complete or general judgments,” emergent judgments being, in effect, assessments and assents. He also recognized the “extended judgment” respecting prophecy. But in his Seven Sacraments (Sieben Urteile), extrapolated from the archival testimonies, the judgments, their septiform arrangement possibly linked to the seven gifts of the Spirit in George Haug (Ch. 4.3.d), his idiosyncratic term Urteile seems to refer to broad aspects of the revelation in Scripture. They are (1) the covenant of God (the gospel about Christ, faith, and baptism); (2) the body of Christ (about the Lord’s Supper); (3) about the end of the world; (4) about the future and about the judgment (about the judgment and future of the Lord); (5) about the resurrection (about the resurrection of the dead); (6) about the kingdom of God; (7) about the eternal judgment (about the pain of the damned).53

52   The ancient Church on the basis of the same Scr ipture as Müntzer, Denck and Hut had once developed various definitions of faith in relationship to knowledge and experience. In the “single faith theory” of Tertullian, who could believe “quia absurdum est,” dealt with the relationship between faith and reason or between faith (pistis) as (revealed) knowledge of God or Chr ist (epignosis, gnosis) and then the r elation of that pistis-gnosis to philosophical knowledge in the light of the disparagement of (some) philosoph y supposedly by Paul (Col. 2:8). In another “single faith theory” Origen argued for the adequacy of simple f aith but argued for the super iority of rationalized f aith by the gnostic and pneumatic Chr istians capable of it. In Aristotle faith was a judgment as to the truth of the immediate knowledge of the senses and of der ivative knowledge such as opinion. Aristotle had also the verb “assent,” which is one of the acquired functions of faith. The Stoics in fact substituted this term, as the noun assent (sugkathesis), for Aristotle’s faith. Clement of Alexandria was the first Christian thinker to combine the Aristotelian faith with the Stoic assent to define pistis as assent with reference to both immediate and derivative knowledge and thus laid the basis for “a double faith theory,” also leaving free the way for distinguishing, as in Latin, fides from fiducia (trust). For against those in the ancient Chur ch who opposed philosoph y and reason in f aith and those who as intellectuals (gnostics) deprecated simple f aith, Clement insisted on the equal validity of simple faith and gnosis or “scientific faith” or “exact faith.” Harry A. Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Churc h, Fathers, Faith, Trinity, Incarnation 3d rev. ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970), ch. 6. It is possib le that in the m ystical tradition Müntzer and the South German Anabaptists with their stress on a triadic movement in faith were coping with a counterpart of the problematic of faith and philosophy in the ancient Chr istian era of the three human types (hylics, psychics, and gnostics) and were trying in the case of Münzter and Hut to disparage the simple justificatory faith proclaimed by the classical Reformers, insisting that only a suffering faith was fully Christlike. On this surmise, Denck with his Recantation, and Bünderlin, and Entfelder in their spiritualizing phases were perhaps legitimating a new two-faith theory 53  Packull, Mysticism, 68. He conjectures that there were originally three judgments, the last of which, about the end of the world, was divided into the four subjudgments.

266  the radical reformation

chapter 7.3 / 7.4

His Of the Mystery of Baptism was evidently an exposition of his Judgment I. 54 Like his teacher Denck, Hut distinguished three kinds of baptism, based upon 1 John 5:6–8, namely, baptism by Spirit, by water, and in blood or anguish. The first is the inward covenant between the believer and God through the action of the Holy Spirit. This is the baptism in “the water of all affliction” by which “man sinks into the death of Christ.” Yet this inward baptism antedated Jesus: “This baptism was not introduced for the first time in the days of C hrist, but all the elect friends of G od from Abraham on have been baptized therein, as Paul [1 Cor. 10:1–2] indicates.” The second kind of baptism is the external covenant, whereby the believer testifies that he will live in true obedience toward God and his fellow Christians, and that he is, like them, subject to the ban, and the discipline of the church in love. The third baptism, in blood, is something that Hut emphasizes more than Denck. It is the baptism with which Christ himself was finally baptized. It is repeated wherever in the world his saints blood is shed: “Baptism is nothing other than a s truggle with sin for the whole of l ife.” Hut, the former follower of Müntzer with an inner baptism of the cross, had found in Denck’s covenantal baptism the external symbol of that inner baptism and the first consummation thereof in prospective martyrdom. As tripartite as was his baptismal schema, Hut nevertheless departed from a scheme of quadripartite phases in the life of Christ to be imitated: birth, passion, resurrection, and ascension. Hut introduced another schema of imitation: conception, birth, passion, and resurrection,55 emphasizing the passion, the suffering or confirmation of real faith, but understanding conception of the divine seed on the analogy of the Virgin Mary. Correlative with Scripture for Hut was the Gospel of A ll Creatures, the observation of t he chain of s uffering in the chain of b eing, as each creature suffers for the one above it, Christ for God the Father, Christ the head of the faithfully baptized, Christ the Vicegerent of God the Father for all creation.56 As part of the legacy from Müntzer, Hut continued to proclaim the imminence of Christ’s advent. In his fiery sermons he stressed the judgment upon the house of God (cf. Urteil 4) and upon the world (cf. Urteil 5) and looked 54  Müller, Glaubenszeugnisse (QGT 3), 12–28. Cf. Ch. 31 n. 31; Fast, Der Linke Flügel , 79–99. 55  Packull, Mysticism, p. 68, helpfully citing in n. 51, his earlier work where he gives more detail on the four phases. 56  Gordon Rupp, “Münzter, Hut, and ‘the Gospel of all Creatures,’ ” Bulletin of the John Ryland Library, 43 (1961); Hans-Jürgen Goer tz, “Der Mystiken mit dem Hammer ,” Kergyma und Dogma, 20 (1974): 23–53; Ozment, Mysticism, 109; Rollin Armour, Anabaptist Anabaptism, reviewed by Hans-Jürgen Goertz, “Die Taufe im Täufertum,” MGB, 17 (1970): 37–47, where he disagrees with Rupp and Armour in their contending that the“Evangelium aller Kreatur” is the insight of Münzter, taken over by Hut.

chapter 7.3 / 7.4

south german and austrian anabaptism  267

forward to the resurrection of the righteous (cf. Urteil 5). He construed the Turkish inroads into Christendom as a sign of Christ’s imminent return. Appealing to Revelation 13 and Daniel 12, he interpreted the traditional figure of three-and-one-half to mean that three-and-one-half years—either from the recent restitution of believers’ baptism or from the outbreak of the Peasants’ War—or from the execution of “the two witnesses” (Müntzer and Pfeiffer, Ch. 4.4) had been given by the Lord during which the good news of a saving repentance could still be proclaimed. According to one reliable testimony, he foresaw the advent of Christ for Pentecost, 31 May 1528. A medieval prophecy of one Albert Gleischeisen of Erfurt (1372) was another source for Hut’s conjecture.57 For Hut, baptismal repentance did not safeguard the believer from suffering and persecution (2 Tim. 3:12), but he was convinced that those who repented in the last days would certainly survive to join with Christ and slay the godless and with Christ rule the earth (cf. Rev. 19:15 and 1 Cor. 15:22–28).58 In his lost, and during his missions secret, Missionsbüchlein or concordance to the Seven Urteile, as later reported by devotees under interrogation, several of his propositions are of terrifying import as the arcane coil of his apocalyptic mission of interim nonviolence, inter alia: “Do not damage the earth ‘until we have sealed the co-servants of our God on their foreheads’ [Rev. 7:3]; sign my people with a sign on their foreheads [Ezek. 14]; those who do not have the [Passover] sign will be killed by the angel [Ex. 14:19, with waters of the Red Sea]; those who do not have the sign will be punished and will suffer [Rev. 9:45]; and those who do not have the sign, ‘you shall smite’ without sparing any, including all women and children [Ezek. 9:6].”59 Although Hut regarded himself as an apostle sent, he did not profess to believe himself to be a special prophet although his secret concordance must have been regarded by h im as a d ivine revelation. One of h is leading Austrian disciples, however, even in the uncongenial setting of a j udicial hearing, made bold to call him “a prophet sent of God [to the nations],” citing Jeremiah 1:5.60 Hut was interested in visions and dreams, and distinguished three kinds: those which come from the flesh, and are worthless; those which 57

 Gleischeisen’s prophecy is preserved in the Kunstbuch (Ch. 31 n.7).  James H. Stayer, “Hans Hut’s Doctrine of the Sword: An Attempted Solution,” MQR 39 (1965): 181–91. 59   This is the testimony in Augsburg (February 1528) of Eitelhans Langenmantel and his servant who made a cop y of the Missionsbüchlein (Ch. 8.3). Packull, Mysticism, 131, citing his major source (unidentified), ZHVSN: Langenmantel, gives the selection, translation, and circumstances of the coerced disclosure. 60  Ambrose Spittelmaier, hearing of 25 October 1527; Karl Schor nbaum, Quellen zur Geschichte der Wiedertäufer, Bayern, 1 (Leipzig, 1934) (henceforth: Schornbaum, Bayern, 1 [QGT 2]), 50. 58

268  the radical reformation

chapter 7.3 / 7.4

are inspired by the devil; and those occasional visions in which God is revealing himself through certain signs and words (Num. 12:5).61 Hut’s interest in dreams as the vehicles of divine revelation reappears among the Träumer of Hesse (Ch. 20.3.b). Certain of his own commission from on high, Hut set forth from Augsburg, and probably went first into Franconia. At Königsberg (in Franconia) he declared that he could now see how the peasants had been in error, seeking their own glory and not God’s.62 In his native town of Bibra, he won the cooper George Volk Kolerlin of H aina; in Gross-Walbern, Kilian Volckhaimer; in Coburg, Eucharius Kellermann Binder. The last two accompanied him on most of his missions. It was in the fall of 1526 that Hut preached his sermon in condemnation of the peasants for prematurely resorting to the sword in their uprising. In God’s time, which Hut thought he could calculate with some precision, the righteous would be given the authority to rule and the ungodly would be overthrown. The Christians in the meantime should flee to Mühlhausen, Nuremberg, and Hungary, awaiting the judgment of God on Christendom through the Turks as the rod of h is anger. Volk was left in charge of t he Königsberg Anabaptist congregation. Near Erlangen, Hut converted George Nadler and gathered altogether a congregation of some thirty. The group was broken up by the authorities from Nuremberg. Several of his followers were seized but soon released and expelled from the city. Thereafter, Augsburg became his principal base. Here Hut reorganized the stricken Anabaptist community. For perhaps ten days he lived in the home of t he patrician Eitelhans Langenmantel. In March 1527, Langenmantel accepted rebaptism in his own home at the hands of Hut. Langenmantel, brother of the gallant George who had fallen as leader of the Black Knights on the French side at the battle of P avia, had long favored the Reformation, and he was early attached to its more apostolical and sacramentarian form as represented by L ouis Haetzer. From Langenmantel there survive at least seven tracts, written between 1526 and 1527, mostly on the Lord’s Supper. At this time, Hut converted Jacob Dachser, a p riest who had served as a t eacher in Munich, and also the former Franciscan friar, Sigmund Salminger. While the pre-Lenten carnival was raging in the streets and inns, Hut gathered the Anabaptists of the city together for the election of a directorate. The lot fell upon Salminger as the leader and Dachser and Jacob Gross (dissenter from Hubmaier on the sword in Waldshut), as his assistants constituting the leadership of t he first separated brotherhood in 61 62

 Meyer, “Zur Geschichte der Wiedertäufer,” ZHSN, 232.  Ibid., 241.

chapter 7.5

south german and austrian anabaptism  269

South Germany. Poor relief was organized among the Brethren, and the lace-maker Conrad Huber and the weaver Gall Vischer were made stewards for the poor. The Anabaptist community, thus reorganized for mutual aid, grew rapidly, augmented by immigrants from other places. Their frequent services were usually held at night or in the early morning in order to escape observation by the authorities, and perhaps also in order to lose the least possible amount of working time. Dachser, preeminent intellectually among the leadership, would presently publish, against the baleful doctrine of predestination of the magisterial reformers, A Godly and Thorough Revelation about the True Anabaptists: Revealed in Godly Truth (1527) and, later when imprisoned, his Form and Order of Spiritual Songs and Psalms (with four from Münzter and two attributed to Hut).63 From Augsburg, Hut went to Passau and converted a g roup around George Nespitzer, the brother-in-law of Eucharius. From Passau a major missionary journey was taken into Moravia, where at Nicolsburg, Hut met Balthasar Hubmaier, and engaged him in a memorable disputation (to which we shall return in Ch. 9.2.b). Because of h is apocalyptically oriented pacifism (or suspended bellicosity), Hut was imprisoned by the otherwise benevolent patron of the local Anabaptist colony; but he escaped with Oswald Glaidt, one of the Nicolsburg Anabaptist pastors who agreed with him against Hubmaier. Hut and Glaidt made their way to Vienna (sec. 5).

5. Austrian Anabaptism At this point in our narrative of t he life of H ut, called “the apostle of Austria,” it is important to say something about the region as a w hole. “Austrian” is here used primarily in reference to the two ancient Hapsburg archduchies of Upper and Lower Austria (with Linz and Vienna, respectively, as the capitals), and the related provinces of t he Tyrol, Carinthia, Styria, and the temporal archbishopric of S alzburg. The extent of t he Radical Reformation in these Austrian areas has been obscured for a long time 64 because of t he very great success of A rchduke Ferdinand and later 63

  The German title is Ein Göttlich und gründtlich Offenbarung, of which there is a copy in the Mennonite Historical Library, Goshen, Indiana. Dachser after a year of imprisonment would be released and appointed as vicar of a Pr otestant parish. See Hans Saalfeld, “Jakob Dachser: Priester, Wiedertäufer, evangelischer Pfarrer,” Zeitschrift für bayerische Kirchengeschichte, 31 (1962): 129, used by Packull, Mysticism, 93–99. 64  See Grete Mecenseffy, Geschichte des Protestantism us in Öster reich (Graz/Cologne: Böhlais Nachf., 1956), ch. 6. “Das österreichische Taüfertum,” and “Die Herkunft der oberösterreichischen Taüfertums,” ARG 47 (1956): 252–59. The earlier work by Georg Loesche , Geschichte des Protestantism us im v ormaligen und im neuen Öster reich (Vienna/Leipzig, 1930), has no special section on the Anabaptists but deals with them pr oportionately throughout the early par t of the book. The articles on the tw o Austrian duchies and the Tyrol in Mennonitisches Lexikon are fuller than the condensation under the headings “Austria,” and “Tyrol” in ME 1:193–99. Articles containing useful materials are Robert Friedmann, “The Epistles of the Hutter ian Brethren,” MQR 20 (1946): 147; Johann Loserth, “Anabaptists in

270  the radical reformation

chapter 7.5

the Counter-Reform in scouring clean of all religio-social heterodoxy the mining valleys that once teemed with Anabaptists. The importation of foreign miners in the newly worked Fugger holdings in the valleys, the consequent breakup of c ustomary social securities, and the distention and consequent understaffing of the old medieval parishes inundated with immigrants constitute the social and economic matrix of Austrian, and particularly the Tyrolese, Anabaptism, and of the earlier peasants’ uprisings in the same areas (Ch. 4.3.e). Anabaptism was, in fact, “the core of the Protestant revolution in the Tyrol.” The region was agitated by t he cross-currents from Saxony and Zurich and its own folk-reform eddies. On the Inn River we have but to mention Dr. John Strauss, native of Bregenz and called by the miners of Schwaz, the jurisdictional center of the mining industry of the Tyrol, to be their pastor in 1521. He would be obliged by higher authorities to move upstream to Hall (1527) accompanied in his preaching by a rmed burghers. He received Müntzer in his home before he himself left for Saxony (Ch. 3.2) to debate with him. In 1523 there were said to have been eight hundred “Wiedertäufer” in Schwaz.65 This date and place do not comport with our now generally accepted view that the movement first became visible in Zurich in 1526 when Blaurock of Bonaduz in the Grisons baptized Grebel in Zurich (Ch. 6.1). But it cannot pass unnoticed that the first Tyrolese with “Baptist ideas of a Müntzerite cast” was one Hans, a tailor journeyman from Niedervintl in Puster Valley, as of 1523.66 It is of interest that John Hut was prevailed upon to submit to believers’ baptism at the hands of John Denck (May 1526) on the advice and importuning of one Caspar Farber, a dyer in Augsburg, who had come thither from the Inn Valley, where, he said, a n umber of b rothers had allowed Carinthia in the Sixteenth Century,” MQR 21 (1947): 235. Cf. Macek, Gaismair, ch. 2; Ernst H. Correll, “Anabaptism in the Tyrol,” MQR 1 (1927): 49–60; and Eduard Widmoser, “Das Tiroler Täufertum,” Tiroler Heimat, 15 (1951): 45–89; 16 (1952): 103–28, which integ rates several unpublished dissertations on separate valleys. 65 This is a date which often appear s in the older literatur e but it is generally unheeded in Mennonite studies. I ha ve traced it back no fur ther than J ohann von Sperges, Tirolische Berwerksgeschichte (Vienna, 1765), 149. The Taüferaklen Upper Ger man and Austrian (3, 11, 12, 13, 14) ar e as follo ws: Lydia Müller, ed., Glaubenszeugnisse oberdeutschen Taufgesinnter (QGT 3, Leipzig, 1938; QFRG 20); Lydia Müller and Rober t Friedmann, eds., Glaubenszeugnisse oberdeutschenn Taufgesinnnten 2 (QGT 12 Güter sloh: Mohn, 1964), containing addenda to P art I and P eter Ridemann, Die erste Rechlennschaft (Gmunden, Austria between 1529 and 1532), and Peter Wolpot, Das Grosse Artikelbuch (Neumühl, Moravia, 1571), both volumes therefore of primary interest in our Ch. 16, and Lydia Müller, ed., Österreich 1 (QGT 11; Gütersloh: Mohn, 1964; QFR 31) covering the years to 1526; Greta Mecenseffy, ed., Österreich 2 (QFGT 13; Gütersloh: Mohn, 1972), covering the y ears 1527–31; and Gr eta Mecenseffy with Matthias Schmelzer , Österreich 3 (QGT 14, Gütersloh: Mohn, 1983), covering the years 1521–34, with index to Parts 2 and 3. 66  Katherina Sinzinger, “Das Täufertum in Puster tal,” dissertation, 75–76, noted b y Widmoser, Tiroler Heimat, pt. 1, p. 55.

chapter 7.5

south german and austrian anabaptism  271

themselves to be (re)baptized and were then living Christian lives.67 This very precise testimony from the hearing of Hut in September 1527 about a momentous personal experience the previous year would make it circumstantially probable that the Inn Valley “Anabaptists” preceded those in the canton of Zurich by at least a year.68 Revolt and Anabaptist evangelicalism seem to have been successive solutions or responses to the same social disturbance in the congested valleys; but once converted to Anabaptism, Tyrolese and Austrians were nonresistant to the point of being almost eager for martyrdom. Austrian Anabaptists appear to have been recruited from among all classes.69 Artisans and miners were much more numerous in relation to peasants than in the other sections of the Empire. Because of continuous terror under Ferdinand and his officially appointed constable for Anabaptists, and the necessity of mutual aid among the refugees, Austrian Anabaptists came to be differentiated from the Swiss Brethren, and also the South German Brethren not under Hapsburg jurisdiction, in their communitarian emphasis, which eventuated in the collective farms of relatively tolerant Moravia (Ch. 9.2.d; Ch. 16). In the Nicolsburg Debate on the office of t he sword, May 1527, between Schwertler Hubmaier, once of Waldshut, and Stäbler (pacifist) John Hut, once an ally of Müntzer in the Peasants’ War (Ch. 4.3.b), Oswald Glaidt (Ch. 5.5.b) had sided with Hut, espousing a provisional pacifism against Hubmaier who upheld the use of the temporal sword of his convert patron Leonard of Liechtenstein (Ch. 9.2.b). John Hut escaped from his Nicolsburg imprisonment after the disputation to Vienna. As a Hutian (apocalyptic revolutionary, but pacifist, Anabaptist) Glaidt followed Hut to Vienna; and they together baptized there some fifty converts. Hut for his part, having baptized among others Leonard Schiemer, left Oswald Glaidt in charge of the newly founded Viennese congregation. Hut moved up the Danube to Melk with two companions, the former monk Jerome Hermann of Mondsee and Eucharius Binder, and baptized fifteen converts at Melk. The center of his Upper Austrian mission was up the Enns to the

67  Christian Meyer, “Die Änfange des Wiedertäufertums in Augsburg,” Zeitschrift des historischen Vereins für Schwaben und Neuburg, 38 (1984): 224–25. For a dating before 1525 but not for a Tyrolese origin of Anabaptism, see the entr y of the contemporar y chronicler of Hall on the Inn, Franz Schweyger, who says in “Chonik der Stadt Hall, 1303–1572,” for 1528 that man y persons, young and old, men, women and girls, joined the sect of the Anabaptists and that “the sect arose in German lands in the year 1524,” David Schönherr, ed., Tirolische Geschichtsquellen, 1 (Innsbruck, 1867), 88. 68  Cf. Correll, “Anabaptism in the Tyrol,” MQR 1 (1927): 53. 69  Paul Dedic carefully assessed the pr oportion of clergy, nobility, freemen, peasants, artisans, and workers among the Anabaptist recruits in “The Social Background of the Austrian Anabaptists,” MQR 13 (1939): 5–20.

272  the radical reformation

chapter 7.5

town of S teyr, with its iron foundries, where a Waldensian conventicle may have survived into the century.70 When his meetings came to the attention of the authorities, Hut escaped, but his patrons and the converts whom he had baptized were arrested, tried, and several of them executed. He now moved down the Enns to Linz, the archducal capital, where John Bünderlin (1499–post 1544) 71 was in charge of the local congregation. He had been rebaptized by Denck in Augsburg in 1526 and commissioned as apostle, with his native Linz as his base while serving at the same time as humanistic secretary to the Baron von Stahremberg. Bünderlin (whom we shall next encounter as a mystical Spiritualist in Ch. 10.3.a) about this time was obliged to leave Linz, and his work as local Vorsteher was continued by L eonard Freisleben (Eleutherobius), who may have been baptized by Hut.72 In the meantime Glaidt also left Vienna, proceeding up the Danube and into Bavaria. He reached the Bohemian town of L uttau (Lutova).73 Glaidt (more likely than Hut) baptized Andrew Fischer. The two traveled together promoting Sabbatarian Anabaptism among peasants in a cluster of congregations around Liegnitz (Chs. 5.5.b; 15.3.a). From Linz, Hut moved on to Freistadt, close to the Bohemian border, to strengthen the local Anabaptist conventicle. From there he moved into the temporal bishopric and archbishopric, respectively, of Passau and Salzburg. Leonard Schiemer, John Schlaffer, and Ambrose Spittelmaier, all of them belonging to Hut’s Austrian circle of converts, all of them suffering martyrdom within a month or two of Hut himself, may be introduced at this point as representative spokesmen of Austrian Anabaptism.74 Common to all of t hem was a much greater stress upon the imminence of C hrist’s second coming than among the Swiss Brethren, a much greater stress upon personal suffering as a c onfirmation of t heir conforming to the way of Christ in this world. Two of these leaders had been Catholic clerics, Schiemer a Franciscan friar and Schlaffer a priest, while Spittelmaier stood apart from the mass of Austrian Anabaptists in having been university-trained. Leonard Schiemer spent six years as a Franciscan friar and six months as an Anabaptist apostle. Finding nothing but strife and hypocrisy in his

70

  This is the view of Nicoladoni, Bünderlin.  Ibid., 469–70, which is impor tant in annexing to the bio graphy that of Hans Fischer , secretary of Baron Bartholomäus von Stahremberg, now known to have been Bünderlin. 72  After Freisleben,Wolfgang Brandhuber, a major leader ofAustrian Anabaptism, was based in Linz. 73  For the ten Sabbatar ian points of Glaidt and Fischer, see Gerhard F. Hasel, “Sabbatarian Anabaptists of the Sixteenth Century,” Andrews University Seminar Studies 5 (1967): 101–21 esp. 121; 6 (1968): 19–29, esp. 27. 74  Cf. Robert Friedmann, “Leonhard Schiemer and Hans Schlaffer:Two Anabaptist MartyrApostles of 1528,” MQR 33 (1959): 31–41. 71

chapter 7.5

south german and austrian anabaptism  273

convent at Judenburg (Styria), he escaped (c. 1526–27) and made his way first to Nuremberg, where he must have met some of the leading Anabaptists. From there he went to Nicolsburg, finding Hubmaier, who taught him much about the new concept of Christianity, but with whom he differed on the question of the sword. He went on to his childhood home of Vienna, where Hut and Glaidt were active. Converted by H ut, he was baptized by Glaidt, and sent to the industrial city of Steyr in Upper Austria. There he was elected preacher (Leermeister) and commissioned to spread the new message in Bavaria, Salzburg, and the Tyrol. His influence was tremendous. After only a day in Rattenburg, in the Inn Valley, he considered himself the bishop of t he congregation there. After a ministry of scarcely six months, he was captured in Rattenburg on 25 November 1527. Held somewhat loosely in prison by a benevolent magistrate, he continued to lead the Rattenburg congregation. An attempt to escape brought on severer imprisonment. Pending his trial, Schiemer was given the opportunity and means of writing down his Anabaptist convictions. There are at least seven or eight extant tracts of his, one of them a twelve-point church order later adopted by the proto-Hutterites in Moravia (Ch. 9.2.d) and another a twelve-point exposition of t he Apostles’ Creed in an Anabaptist sense.75 Another, Vom Fläschl,76 is a profound and touching allegory of the importance of suffering on the road to Christ. Schiemer, seizing upon a charge commonly made against the Anabaptists, that they were a godless lot of witches who drank in their covens from a potent flask carried by Hut, likened the Anabaptist way to the narrow neck of a bottle. Once one has passed through the strait place of t ribulation, one goes on and comes into the wideness of G od’s mercy and Christ’s consolation. In this work, Schiemer is close to the spirit of the great medieval mystics.77 The brief career of John Schlaffer resembles that of S chiemer at many points.78 A priest since 1511, often considering joining the Carthusians and despairing of t he whole sacramental system and his priestly vows, he laid down his office in 1526, under the influence of Luther, decrying his former office as that of a “false prophet.” For a while (1526–27), he stayed with the Protestant Lord Zelkin at his castle Weinberg near Freistadt. The details and exact sequence of his conversion, probably induced by Hut, and of his mission are not known; but he, like Schiemer, apparently visited Nicolsburg 75   These tracts and his life are more fully treated by Robert Friedmann, ME 4:452–54, and in Friedmann, “Schiemer und Schlaffer.” 76  Müller, Glaubenszeugnisse (QGT 3), 72–74. 77  Friedmann, “Schiemer und Schlaffer,” 33, 35. 78  Stephan Boyd, drawing upon Das Kunstbuch of the Mar peck Circle (discovered and to be edited by Heinold Fast), gives a fresh interpretation of the sometime priest, “Community as Sacrament in the Theology of Hans Schlaffer” in Klaasen, Anabaptism Revisited.

274  the radical reformation

chapter 7.5

and would (Ch. 9.2) side with Hut in the debate with Hubmaier (Ch. 9.2). He returned to Freistadt to gather an Anabaptist conventicle, and went west, probably to participate with Hut in the Martyrs’ Synod in Augsburg. From there he went to Nuremberg and Regensburg, finally heading back to Rattenburg in the late fall. On his way from Rattenburg to Hall, he was captured on 5 December 1527 at an Anabaptist meeting at Schwaz on the Inn. Nine tracts, eight of t hem written during his eight weeks in prison, survive in the Hutterite codices.79 One of them is a long prayer written the night before his execution, in which he reviews his whole life and thought in direct address to God. His talent lay indeed in his gift of prayer.80 Schlaffer was beheaded 4 February 1528. The last of the Austrian triumvirate who remains to be characterized, before we look at their theology as a w hole, is Ambrose Spittelmaier. A native of Linz, he had some university training and thus a good command of Latin. He was rebaptized by Hut and commissioned to preach widely in Austria and Bavaria. The five extant records of h is clear answers to questions under torture before he was beheaded at Cadolzburg give a good picture of the itinerant evangelist of the Anabaptist gospel, while his version of the “seven decrees of God” clarifies the eschatology of the Hut movement as a whole.81 A composite of the recorded views and actions of Hut’s Austrian disciples Schiemer, Schlaffer, and Spittelmaier, is worth formulating at this point for the light it will throw on the eventual conversion of refugee or transplanted Austrian Anabaptism into Hutterite communism (Ch. 9.2), and its consequent differentiation from South German Anabaptism, just as the latter was marked off from the movement of the Swiss Brethren. We may begin with their doctrine of grace, a topic on which Anabaptists did not ordinarily express themselves explicitly. But the experience was there and eventually the formulation thereof was stated. Schiemer, in a letter from prison to his congregation in Rattenburg, interestingly distinguished three kinds of grace.82 He says that the Lutherans and the Catholics talk learnedly, employing a v ariety of L atin terms (of which he gives a perhaps intentionally garbled selection) about faith and all kinds of g race, but neither of these opponents, he points out, seems to know from personal

79  Some of them have been printed by Muller, Glaubenszeugnisse (QGT 3). They are briefly characterized in connection with his life by Robert Friedmann, ME 4, 457–59. 80  Friedmann, “Schiemer und Schlaffer,” 38. 81  Printed in Schornbaum, Bayern 1 (QGT 2), 32–39. His life is given by Herbert Klassen, ME, 4, 599–601. 82  Müller, Glaubenszeugnisse (QGT 3), 58–71; Alvin J. Beachy, “The Concept of Grace in Five Major Anabaptist Writers,” MQR 40 (1966): 163–78; idem, The Concept of Gr ace in the Radical Reformation (Nieukoop: DeGraaf, 1977).

chapter 7.5

south german and austrian anabaptism  275

experience what the authentically scriptural kinds of grace are. For Schlaffer “the great mystery” of the Christian faith is not Christ’s relationship to the bread and wine but to “the believing community (public/offentliche) of Christ,” in which “we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones and become two in one flesh.”83 Membership in this public community is signalized by the public sign of an inner “correct penance” (recht buess).84 It is perceptively observed by t he most recent author on Schlaffer and Schiemer that “Matt. 28:18–19 [and possibly 18:20, ‘where two or three are gathered in my name’] serves Schlaffer a s imilar purpose as John 6:48ff. [‘I am the bread of life’] did Luther. It [Matt. 28:20, ‘Lo, I am with you always’] contains the words of i nstitution for the only implicit sacrament (though never so called by S chlaffer) he affirmed—the gathered community of b aptized believers.” 85 A p roponent of t he Gospel of All Creatures, Schlaffer, the educated ex-priest, understood and endorsed God’s “preferential option for the poor” and also of God’s reaching the ordinary person in bypassing the university-trained scriptural experts and systematic theologians: For Christ taught the Gospel to the poor, lay people in terms of their own occupations and work and not with a lot of bookish circumlocutions. He cited Scripture only for the purpose of convincing the stiff-necked schrift geleerten. For the common man (the genuine man) is more easily convinced through creatures [examples from the surrounding world of life and death] than through Scripture.86 The first grace is the Light which was intended to shine in all men. Schiemer does not know from observation about Turks and heathen, but he assumes that the Light is accessible to them also, while Schlaffer expressly includes Jews, Turks, and pagans.87 Moses with the law represented the external manifestation of t he Light, the distinctive function of w hich is to enable the enlightened one to distinguish between good and evil and hence to become aware of h is sinfulness. Schiemer stresses, over against Luther, that the divine is in the believer, not simply among men; but he goes on to show that whether the Light is external, as in the Old Covenant (a “taskmaster”), or internal, as in the New, there is only one group among three kinds of p eople for whom the internal Light proves efficacious in 83

 Müller, Glaubenszeugnisse (QGT 3), 95, 109, and other passages in the Kunstbuck adduced by Boyd. 84  Müller, Glaubenszeugnisse (QGT 3), 122. 85  Boyd, “Schlaffer,” at n. 48. 86  Müller, Glaubenszeugnisse (QGT 3), 95; quoted by Boyd, “Schlaffer” at n. 59, who notes that the great phase of liberation theology dates from the General Conference of Latin American Bishops, Medellin, Columbia, 1968. 87  Müller, Glaubenszeugnisse (QGT 3), 96.

276  the radical reformation

chapter 7.5

helping them to go on to the second grace. A very large number of people simply put out the Light as fast as they can and revel in their darkness. Others are lazy and numb, and fail to see very much. The third group are those who are very eager in their devotional practices and in their daily discipline under the illumination of the Light, and who yet over and over again succumb to temptation. But this group are at least contrite, and it is this very contrition, combined with divine chastisement, that leads them into the reception of the second grace, which is a constant righteousness. Physical and spiritual chastisement or anguish involves the ready assumption of a personal cross, which at length enables the believer to pass penitently and, one can say in the original Catholic context, penitentially, to that constant righteousness. It is in this state of chastisement where the believer is following in the footsteps of Christ to his cross, that he no longer is in sin and subject to the fleshly lusts which are macerated in the anguish of the personal cross and replaced by the willing of the divine will.88 But instead of the priestly church imposing penitential acts, it is Christ himself who, just as a physician and surgeon does, imposes harsh medicines, bleedings, and the like, to bring about a cure; or again, it is Christ who hews down the tree, saws it up, and planes the wood for the construction of a house; or again, Christ who directly tries the gold and silver ore “in the smelter of Gelassenheit.” 89 This is the gospel of a ll creation (aller Kreatur) based on the Dominical injunction in Mark 16:15, but with the original dative converted into a genitive! Suffering, as their teacher Hut had declared, is the way of all flesh. The Christian should pray for this particular cross and be glad when it comes, for amidst tribulation comes the third grace, which is the oil of the Holy Spirit, the healing grace that makes even judicial torture and martyrdom an occasion for joy and divine benediction. This is the true holy oil of which James (5:14) wrote. It “is not the olive oil of Italy” in the sacrament of extreme unction, but the oil of gladness and benediction, by which the true pilgrim prepares to enter, not Canaan, but the heavenly Jerusalem. Thus the three Catholic sacraments of baptism, penance, and extreme unction have, in a way, been transformed into the three actions of g race, consisting of adult repentance in the light of t he Anabaptist gospel, a l ife of contrition and penitential suffering, and the benediction of martyrdom or its equivalent in steadfastness. But all three moments are also called

88

 Ibid., 89.  Ecclesiastes 2:5 and its Ne w Testament echoes, which Luther r enders the “Feuer der Trübsal,” the followers of Hut turn into “Schmelzofen der Gelassenheit.” 89

chapter 7.5

south german and austrian anabaptism  277

baptisms by t he Anabaptists (Schiemer: Van dreierlei Taufe).90 They are the baptism of the Holy Spirit (inward repentance and a change of heart), that of water (external covenant, believers’ baptism), and that of the chalice (Matt. 20:22) of martyrdom, or of blood. Under no debt to Schiemer for his terminology, Schlaffer, no doubt drawing upon medieval mysticism, describes the same spiritual and physical experience of the cross, but in such phrases as “death,” “deep,” “descent into hell,” and “lowliness” (niedrigkeit). Christ, “the lamb slain from the beginning of the world,” 91 is the model of all the faithful, from Abel slain by Cain to the Anabaptists slaughtered by the new Caesar. For suffering is ever the mark of h is chosen ones: “Here I s tand as a l amb which does not open its mouth as it is being slaughtered, to whom may Christ grant strength and help.” 92 The descensus Christi in the Apostles’ Creed refers as much to the daily humiliation (niedrigkeit) of Christ among his own now as to the descent aforetime into Hades to rescue the saints of the old Covenant: The deep (tüefe) of Christ is the lowliness and abandonment (gelassenhait) into which everyman is led; and it is called hell, where one feels, in fact, abandoned not only by a ll creatures but even also by God. … Into this deep must go all who would in Christ be blessed. For whoever will not be condemned with Christ by t he world and enter this hell, must afterwards be thrust into the other hell. Whoever with Christ, that is, in Christ, enters this hell will be brought out again by God, for he will not suffer his members to remain in hell.93 Concerning the state that Schlaffer described as the “deep” and Schiemer as the “second grace” of suffering, Spittelmaier uses the term “living soul carried by a dead body,” in contrast to the lively body with a dead soul so common among nominal Christians.94 For other interpretations of t he descensus in the Radical Reformation, see Ch. 32.2.c.95 Eschatological urgency characterized the proclamation of all the disciples of Hut. It was Spittelmaier who most clearly expressed their distinctive views in a s eries of w hat he called “the Seven Decrees of S cripture,” 96 90

 Müller. Glaubwszeugnisse (QGT 3), 77–79.  Ibid., 88. 92  Ibid., 96. 93  Ibid. 94  Schornbaum, Bayern 1 (QGT 2), 49. 95  Cf. Erich Vogelsang, “Weltbild und Kreuzestheologie in den Höllenfahrtsstreitigkeiten der Reformationszeit,” ARG 38 (1941): 90–132. 96  Included under an item 10 of Spittelmaier’s testimony (no. 56) of 25 October 1527; Schornbaum, Bayern 1 (QGT 2), 49–50. 91

278  the radical reformation

chapter 7.5

which will come under debate at both Nicolsburg (Ch. 9.2.b) with Hubmaier and at the Augsburg synod with Denck (Ch. 7.6). The first decree is the covenant of God in the already discussed threefold baptism of S pirit, water, and blood (anticipated for each believer at each communion by the chalice, Matt. 20:22, 1 Cor. 11:25), whereby God accepts his creatures as his own children, promising to be with them in all their tribulations but not sparing them chastisement any more than he had his only begotten Son. God’s re-creation of s inful men and women into dutiful children is no less a miracle than the original creation from the dust. But it is not for children who have yet to come to know good from evil. Water baptism, with its eschatological intention, is a seal, says Schiemer. A child should not be baptized any more than an envelope should be sealed in which there is no communication. Until a child is brought through the Light to know good and evil, the child is accounted among the good, for “of such is the kingdom of heaven.” The Austrian Anabaptist formula of B aptism is described by S pittelmaier: “I baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, and take water from a pitcher or pail, and dipping two fingers in it, make a little sign of t he cross on the forehead.” 97 Schlaffer, like Schiemer, stresses the thirtieth year in imitation of Christ, arguing that the Christian life is not child’s play (Kinderspiel), for after baptism come the great temptations: Christ himself received it only in his thirtieth year from John the Baptist and was from that moment on led by the Spirit into the wilderness and tempted by S atan … for the Christian life is not child’s play; but bitter earnestness, truth, courage, and saintliness must be there.98 The second decree is the establishment of t he Kingdom of G od for those who are poor in spirit. Combining both the Matthaean and Lucan versions of this part of the Dominical sermon, Spittelmaier interprets poverty of the spirit in the sense of clutching at nothing, with the consequence that the loving sharing of goods prepares one for the Kingdom: Nobody can inherit the Kingdom unless he is here poor with Christ, for a Christian has nothing of his own; no place where he can lay his head. A real Christian should not even have enough property on earth to be able to stand on it with one foot. This does not mean that he should go and lie down in the woods and not have a trade, or that he should not work, but only that he might not think they are for his own use, and be tempted to say: This house is mine, this field is mine, this money is mine, but 97 98

 Müller, Glaubenszeugnisse (QGT 3), 26.  Ibid., 92–93.

chapter 7.5

south german and austrian anabaptism  279

rather ours, even as we pray: Our Father. In brief, a Christian should not have anything of his own, but should have all things in common with his brother, not allow him to suffer need. In other words, I do not work that my house may be filled, that my larder be supplied with meat, but rather I s ee to it that my brother has enough, for a C hristian looks more to his neighbor than to himself (1 Cor. 13). Whoever desires to be rich in this world, who is concerned that he miss nothing when it comes to his person and property, who is honored by m en and feared by them, who refuses to prostrate himself at the feet of his Lord like Magdalene, … will be humbled.99 The Christian refuses to accept the magistrate in the place of God, and guards against the subtler and more rationalized forms of idolatry: of self, possession, wife and family.100 A true believer may even leave kith and kin to follow Christ if his or her spouse fails to follow Him. Christians, Spittelmaier says, should not buy or sell among themselves, but share whenever the need is clear.101 Spittelmaier stresses elsewhere in the same testimony the fact that in work—he mentions specifically the housewife at her spinning wheel—the Christian, like Jesus himself in the carpentry shop of his father, can daily learn the will of G od, invisible in his visible creatures.102 Communal life in the context of the Kingdom is opposed to every form of idolatry. The community of goods is founded in the oneness of Christ with the Father and the oneness of Christ’s followers in him, their head.103 The third decree concerns the complete interdependence of the loyal members of the one body of Christ and their mutual obedience after forthright admonition one of the other in the face of the whole congregation. Since true Christians belong to the Kingdom and the community of mutual aid, they have no need of t he organs of t he state, which are ordained of God for the punishment of the wicked (and the testing of the faith of the righteous). The fourth decree concerns the end of the world, purged by fire, earthquake, lightning, and thunder until all the wisdom of t he wise and the wealth of the mighty is melted up and the way prepared for the descent of the Kingdom from heaven. All three of our Austrian apostles, confident in the imminence of Christ’s second advent, avow their belief in the sleep of

99

 Schornbaum, Bayern 1 (QGT 2), 49.  Schlaffer, Schiemer, and Spittelmaier. 101  Schornbaum, Bayern 1 (QGT 2), 64. 102  Ibid., item 9. 103   This is the particular stress of Peter Riedemann, Account, below, n. 112. 100

280  the radical reformation

chapter 7.5

the soul pending the resurrection and the Last Judgment.104 With the fires of the Last Judgment approaching, Spittelmaier insists that the only purgatory is that through which the true believers are themselves being purged and cleansed by water and fire and blood.105 The fifth decree concerns the Last Judgment and the conviction that the true believers who have suffered the cross, hell, and purgatory in witnessing to Christ will be spared the same torments at that time, while the others will suffer their due. The sixth decree concerns the resurrection, and the seventh the eternal punishment of the wicked. Before the Austrian evangelists baptized, they preached this fiery, seven-point message of the latter days. All Hut’s apostles were irrepressible. In one instance, given the opportunity to escape by promising not to preach within a radius of thirty miles, the apostle refused the offer on the swiftly marshaled scriptural grounds (Matt. 10:14f.) that he who is called an evangelist is no longer free for prudential reasons to withhold the message.106 The consciousness of being prophets or apostles was keenly developed among them. One evangelist spoke of Christ himself as a prophet like any other, saying that not until he was received by the Holy Spirit (at the Jordan) was he (adopted) as “a true God … like unto his heavenly Father.”107 This same evangelist drew attention to the fact that he was baptized by John Hut at precisely the same age that Jesus was baptized by John at the Jordan.108 Spittelmaier gave a vivid account of how he and his fellow evangelists proclaimed their gospel of repentance, suffering, and imminent109 vindication: When he came into a town he would go to the inn, ask about the local preacher, whether or not he preached the gospel, what the gospel was, and then ask the same person whether he was himself a true Christian. When he found some of the Brethren, or friends close to them, he would suggest that they have a boy or little girl go around and quietly tell others where a meeting would take place— in a house, garden, field, or wood—and then our evangelist would pay the innkeeper for his food and drink, and leave.110 All three of these Austrian evangelists are harsh and even sardonic in caricaturing the nominal Christians. Schiemer disfigures, even though he 104

 Spittelmaier, Schornbaum, Bayern 1 (QGT 2), 37, item 25; Schiemer, ibid., 67.  Schornbaum, Bayern, 1 (QGT 2), 55. 106  Answer of Spittelmaier, Schornbaum, Bayern. 1 (QGT 2), 63. 107  Ibid., 63–64. 108  Ibid., 50. 109  Cf. Schiemer, Twelve Articles; Müller, Glaubenszeugnisse (QGT 3), 55. 110  Combining his answers in judicial hearing as given in Schornbaum, Bayern 1 (QGT 2), 27, 36. 105

chapter 7.5

south german and austrian anabaptism  281

enlivens, his letter on the three states of g race by h is description, petition by p etition, of w hat the Lord’s Prayer really means to the nominal Christians—Catholics, Lutherans, and Zwinglians alike—who are, he says, much relieved that God is indeed “in heaven” and not too close, who pray for “our daily bread,” but as soon as they get it, turn it into “my” bread, and, dissatisfied with the temporal provisions for a d ay, strain to pile up possessions for days and years ahead. Never ask a n ominal Christian to pray for you, Schiemer concludes. But over against this is the long, beautiful prayer of Schlaffer, composed the night before his execution. All three evangelists displayed magnanimity in holding open the redeeming power of the Light of t he world to those outside the Christian dispensation.111 They reserved their harshness for the Christian scribes, who should know better, and proclaimed the gospel in all its fullness. Besides the spiritualistic Anabaptists, Schiemer, Schlaffer, and Spittelmaier, we mention here the Silesian-born cobbler Peter Riedemann (1506–56), destined to be a m ajor figure among the Hutterites (Ch. 16). Riedemann was a convert of Hut, perhaps in Steyr, or possibly of Schlaffer, or Schiemer, or more likely of Wolfgang Brandhuber (d. 1529), the martyred elder of t he Anabaptists of L inz, who was seized with seventy of his companions. Riedemann was Brandhuber’s successor in Linz and would be captured in Gmunden (up the Traun river) and held in chains (19 November 1929–32). Although the greater significance of h is career lies ahead (Ch. 16), he must be mentioned here, too, because of h is two Rechenschaften. The first Account of faith was composed as “the Confessor of Gmunden.”112 This account is notable for its contrasting the Anabaptist observance of t he Lord’s Supper, where the faithful thank the heavenly Father in remembrance of Christ’s death, with the Mass, where the bread is blessed. And in these reflections Riedemann makes use of the imagery like that of the ancient Didache: Just as many kernels [from several fields] which are ground by the millstone and become one mass of flour (Stuppe) and put together become one bread, so that in the bread one can no longer recognize of w hat flour one or another [loaf ] is made, so also among people, when we are ground by the noble millstone of the divine force and believe his Word and place ourselves under the cross of Christ, so then are we brought together by the bond of love in one body, of which Christ is the head, as Paul says (1 Cor 2:16). Out of this kind of reflection comes Riedemann’s burgeoning community of goods, his preachment of sharing in one another’s burdens, too, and 111 112

 Described by Robert Friedmann in ME 4: 458.  Printed by Friedmann, ed., Glaubenszeugnisse 2 (QGT 12), 1–47.

282  the radical reformation

chapter 7.5 / 7.6

his reconception of Paul’s warning about eating and drinking judgment upon oneself (1 Cor. 11:29) as the failure to discern wherein the communicant can share all with Christian brothers and sisters.113 At the close of t his Account there is appended Riedemann’s two pieces of great beauty: “How to Build the House of God” (Lk. 14:28–29; 1 Cor 3:11, the last to become the motto of Menno Simons) and “Concerning the Seven Pillars of This House,” which takes off from Pro. 9:1, “Wisdom hath built her house, she hath set up her seven pillars,” and quarries the pillars from the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit in Isa. 11:2f.114 The seven pillars for Riedemann are fear, wisdom, understanding, counsel, might (Sterckh), knowledge (Kunst), and friendship (friends of God: Jas. 2:23, John 15:14, Wisd. 7:27, Job 19:9). One may compare the variant seven in George Haug (allied to Hut in the Peasants’ War), The Beginning of the Christian Life (Ch. 4.3.d).

6. The Martyrs’ Synod in Augsburg, August 1527 From the proclamation of Hut’s four Austrian disciples, we return to Hut himself and with him to Augsburg. Both Hut from Austria and Denck from Worms via Switzerland converged upon Augsburg to participate in the synod of August 1527. There were possibly three sessions: the first in the house of t he steward for the poor, Gall Vischer; the second and principal session on St. Bartholomew’s Day in the house of the butcher Matthew Finder, 24 August, with some sixty present; and the last in the house of a nother steward for the poor, Conrad Huber, where Hut was domiciled. This last, Denck did not attend.115 It was specifically called by Hut a concilium.116 In some still obscure way the Anabaptists117 thought of the calling of a council, synod, or great disputation as one of the foreseen signs of the last times (cf. Rev. 16:6; 19:19). As once in the upper room in Jerusalem the first apostolic council had convened and the flames of the 113

  This figure may well come from Cyprian, Epistle 61, 13 To Cecilius (Oxford ed., 63), On the sacrament of the cup of the Lord (A.D. 253), ANF 5: p. 358; similar wording in Ep. 75, 6. Augustine copied this, Migne, PL, Augustine, Opera 5, col. 1247. 114  Luther had something like this image in Ein Sermon von dem hochwürdigen Sakrament des heiligen w aheren Leichnams Christi und v on dem Brüderssc haften 1519, WA 2:742–58. The figure is retained in the liturgy of the Dutch Reformed Church. Friedmann, following Lydia Muller, “Lord’s Supper,” ME 3 (1957), notes that the imagery of the grain was used by Menno Simons and many others and points to Didache, 9. But the Didache, Tile Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, was only published after its discovery in Istanbul in 1875, evoking a vast literature only after 1893. 115   The bare facts in sober pr esentation are admirably compressed into F ellmann’s brief sketch of Denck, Schriften (QGT 6.2), 17–18. 116  Christian Meyer, “Zur Geschichte der Wiedertäufer,” 242. 117  Peter Kawerau, Melchior Hoffman als religiöser Denker (Haarlem: Bohm, 1954), 85, 88, mentions the eschatolo gical council b ut does not solv e the pr oblem of a council of the righteous.

chapter 7.6

south german and austrian anabaptism  283

Spirit had descended upon the participants (Acts 2:1), so in the fullness of the dispensations, the Spirit would come again in power, anointing the new apostles for the last days before the millennium. Among the principal issues under discussion were the Seven Decrees already noted above, especially those concerning the Kingdom, the manner and expected moment of its approach (Pentecost, 1528), the role of the Anabaptists in preparation for it, and the place of the magistracy in the interim. On these matters, Denck was much more cautious than Hut. A second work of the synod was the ordination of more apostles to proclaim the Anabaptist evangel and to organize what both of them and their company believed to be the “third” and final reformation. The presence in the city of such a vast number of Anabaptists alarmed the city fathers. The city’s principal divine, Urbanus Rhegius, once crowned imperial orator and poet laureate by E mperor Maximilian, had for some time been devoting his rhetorical skill and theological cunning to Anabaptist research and refutation. The first in a long series of publications was his Wider den neuen Tauforden, 1527, in reply to a pamphlet by the local Augsburg Anabaptist deacon Jacob Dachser (7.4). But more important than this was his drawing up a s eries of e ight articles summarizing Anabaptist doctrine and practice as derived from judicial hearings, confessions, and Anabaptist tracts. In numerous versions these articles, numbering from seven to more than a score, have come to be referred to as “the articles of Nicolsburg.” From nearly the beginning they were falsely ascribed to Hubmaier.118 The foes of the Anabaptists regarded these articles as containing the essence of the Anabaptist heresy and sedition and as the actual agenda of the disputation at Nicolsburg in May 1527 (Ch. 9.2.b). To dissociate these various sets of articles purporting to be summaries of Anabaptist blasphemies from those actually debated at Nicolsburg, we shall quote a version antedating the famous Moravian disputation. At the same time, we adduce it here not only as a hostile interpretation which goes far to explain the alarm of the Protestant divines and magistrates but also as a useful guide to undoubted excesses of Hut’s movement as pointed up by the discerning, albeit intemperate and hostile observer. The following version is that which appears in a communication of the council of Nuremberg

118  A good account of the articles and their variants to date was that of Wilhelm Wiswedel, ME 3:886–88. The account did not g ive sufficient weight, however, to the f act that though in their present variant forms the articles stem from enemies, many Anabaptists confessed to all or some of the ar ticles both freely in their tracts and under dur ess in judicial hear ings. Three Strassburg versions are printed by Krebs and Rott, Elsass 1 (QGT 7), no. 116, along with a survey of all the v ersions more recent than Wiswedel. For the more recent literature see below, Ch. 9, n. 52a, but it may be here noted that the author ity on Hubmaier, Torsten Bergsten, revised the Hubmaier thesis in proposing that he intentionally distorted Hut’s views at Nicolsburg the better to refute them, Hubmaier, tr. Barnes and Estep, 316–77.

284  the radical reformation

chapter 7.6

to the council of Strassburg as early as 21 March 1527 (before the Nicolsburg disputation in May), with special reference to Hut: For out of t he [initial] error of t he Anabaptists stem even worse aberrations, namely, (1) that Christ was only a man and not God, (2) that he was conceived in sin, (3) that he has not done satisfaction for the sins of man, (4) that magistrates cannot be Christians, (5) that God will descend again to earth and a physical kingdom will be established, (6) that all governments will be wiped out and will not be endured, and (7) that all things should be in common.119 To this group of seven points there would soon be added the Anabaptist insistence that the new gospel be preached only secretly in houses and in the woods, and the Anabaptists’ reliance on visions, dreams, and inspiration, while the first point would be made more specific in the allegation that the Anabaptists believed that Jesus was only a prophet; the second, that Mary was not the Mother of God but only of Jesus and that the angels assumed flesh at the same time as the Word; the fourth, that there should be among Christians neither violence nor government; and fifth, that the descent of God or Christ would come about in precisely two years. This last variant would suggest that the “Nicolsburg Articles” were drawn up in the spring of 1526, when the Hut movement would have considered the eschaton as just two years ahead. In any event these were the views which Urbanus Rhegius in Augsburg and which the magistrates in Nuremberg ascribed to the large group of Anabaptists now foregathered in synod. They were thought of as connected “by secret passwords” and other “tokens” with a whole network of traitorous conventicles undermining the Empire. The patrician Langenmantel was arrested 15 September 1527. After a disputation he temporarily withdrew from the Anabaptists and even conformed on the matter of i nfant baptism, but was nevertheless banished. With the arrest of a patrician, the execution of the revolutionary book peddler and principal missionary of the South German and Austrian Anabaptists was not far off. Hut was seized on 15 September 1527. Hut submitted to a series of hearings, on 16 September and notably on 4 November, based upon an interrogatorium of eighty-four questions,120 some of w hich purported to be articles on the Nicolsburg agenda. Hut seemed to be familiar with the charges but went on to say that at the

119  Beiträge zur Bayerischen Kirchengeschichte 19 (1913): 65–74; cf. Krebs and Rott, Elsass 1 (QGT 7), no. 79; cf. Nuremberg to Regensburg, 18 March 1527; Schornbaum, Bayern 2 (QGT 5), 8. 120  Erich Meissner discovered and then discussed the interrogatorium, Die Rechtsprechung über die Wiedertäufer und die antitäuferische Publizistik (Göttingen, 1921).

chapter 7.6

south german and austrian anabaptism  285

Nicolsburg debate in which he had participated the previous May, his antagonist Hubmaier had allegedly excerpted fifty-two items from Hut’s writings and intentionally distorted them out of envy because so many of the refugees in Nicolsburg had come to prefer Hut’s preaching. Of these items Hut could still remember eleven, only two of which represented faithfully his own true convictions.121 But the questions of the Augsburg interrogatorium were not wholly irrelevant.122 A. Spittelmaier on October 25, when confronted with a similar questionnaire, responded with his own seven articles of faith,123 in which the eschatological and communitarian points predominated but in connection with which, on the mariological and christological side, he explained that Christ had not rendered satisfaction for the sins of the whole world, in the sense that to be saved, the Christian had still to undergo the same suffering to which Christ pointed the way. This was indeed the same point made also by Kautz and Hut’s baptizer, Denck, in the terminology of the seven theses of Worms of June 1527 (Ch. 7.3). Another early convert of Hut, Gall Vischer, would also presently confess to all these points and become quite specific about dreams and visions (Ch. 8.3). Moreover, many of t he more Spiritualist articles reappear in Hut’s convert Bünderlin, who removed to Strassburg, and in others of the “garden sect” who seemed quite prepared to adopt a version of the “Nicolsburg Articles” as their own (Ch. 10.3.a). It is from Hut’s admissions, made under torture, that we gain exact information about such things as his life in Bibra, his part in the Peasants’ War, his association with Müntzer and Denck, and his Anabaptist mission from Franconia to Moravia. His son, Philip, recorded in the Hutterite Chronicle that his father had been racked in the tower and then released, and that he lay as one dead, when a candle left by the guard in his cell was tipped over and Hut was burned to death by t he inflamed pallet.124 He perished 6 December 1527, before the trial was over, but his body was tied to a chair in court and formally condemned to be burned at the stake on the following day. At the close of the synod, Denck, for his part, in the company of several others, left Augsburg, showing up in Ulm and even in Nuremberg. Denck no longer regarded his former oath not to reenter that city

121  The eleven articles are printed by Christian Meyer in “Zur Geschichte der Wiedertäufer in Oberschwaben.” The accepted items were (6) “they are said to believe in visions and dreams” and (8) “with the Scriptures one receives either truth or lie.” 122  Cf. Wiswedel, “Articles,” 887. 123  Schornbaum, Bayern 1:49–50. 124   There is a differ ent account of his death, according to which Hut had a pr emonition of his death by violence and decided to escape b y a ruse. He managed to make a light and by means of rags produced smoke which he thought would bring the guard in haste, from whom, in the confusion, he planned to take the keys and escape, but he was asphyxiated.

286  the radical reformation

chapter 7.6

as binding. Soon the news came of t he disastrous arrest of t he brethren who had tarried in or around Augsburg. With this sudden crumbling of the great design of t he Augsburg synod, Denck became disheartened, convinced that by a succession of setbacks, beginning with his exile from Nuremberg, God had intended to show his disfavor with the Anabaptist cause. Moreover, Denck had become painfully aware of the divisive and sectarian character of the movement which he had headed. In remorse, he repaired to his beloved Basel. From within the city he directed a l etter to his former teacher and patron in Basel, John Oecolampadius, expressing his disillusion with the excesses of Anabaptism and his sad surmise that its radicalism was not the will of God after all. He sought the understanding and the protection of the reformer. Succor was granted, and Denck prepared a kind of apologia pro vita sua, which was somewhat tendentiously edited by t he Basel reformer as a recantation.125 Herein, Denck moderated his view on baptism. He avowed that it was the means of being inscribed in the church, and that to extend this privilege to children was a human but tolerable commandment, and he would no longer protest against it. He would not repudiate his rebaptizings. He held, however, that a special divine commission was necessary to exercise the office of rebaptizer. He was content to let matters stand so long as he had no further mandate from the Lord. It was now his view that though “the spiritual man judges all things” (1 Cor. 2:15) and is not bound by any form, nevertheless, out of Christian charity, he submits to prevailing Christian usage. Thus, as a matured Spiritualist he despaired of divisive sectarianism, but it was only as an act either of prudence or of charity that he conformed to the established church of Basel. Even in Augsburg at the end of t he synod, Denck had shown how closely he verged on the point where contemplative Spiritualism goes over into Anabaptism. In Basel he recrossed the border. The Catholic humanist of 1520 had become the conforming Reformed Spiritualist of 1527. Gentle, indisposed to controversy, ill-cast even as the temporary leader of S outh German Anabaptism, he knew no abiding place. Not yet thirty-two, he died of the plague soon after his apologia.

125

 Baring and Fellmann. Schriften (QGT 6.2), 104–10.

chapter 7.6

south german and austrian anabaptism  287

Chapter 8

The Schleitheim Confession of 1527: Swiss and South German Developments to 1531

T he phantom synod in August in Augsburg

of Upper German and Austrian Anabaptists under the leadership of John Hut and John Denck in August 1527 was preceded by the synod in February in Schleitheim (near Schaff hausen) of Swiss and South German Brethren under the leadership of Michael Sattler (c. 1490–1527). We last saw Sattler departing from St. Peter’s Benedictine Abbey in the Black Forest upon its capitulation to the peasant troop under Hans Müller (Ch. 6.2.b). Possibly William Reublin, who had baptized many around Waldshut (Ch. 4.3.a), was prominent at the synod. Although these two Anabaptist synods were each considered by their respective participants as a major event affecting a wide circle of Anabaptists, the personnel and the problems of the two gatherings differed markedly. We saw on the agenda of the phantom synod in Augsburg Hut’s seven divine decrees (best known in Spittelmaier’s version), relating to the end of the age. On the agenda of the Schleitheim synod in the canton of Schaffhausen were seven articles commonly called the Schleitheim Confession of Faith, relating to the organization and self-disciplining of a free church movement, which was now obliged to cope with antinomian and charismatic excess on its fringes as in St. Gall (Ch. 6.2.b) and also among those who rose up in Waldshut (Ch. 6.2.b).1

1  The Confession, several times reprinted and translated, is referred to here in the translation of John C. Wenger, “The Schleitheim Confession of Faith, ” MQR 19 (1945): 243–54; the critically edited Ger man text, with the most r ecent interpretation of its genesis and

288

chapter 8.1

schleitheim confession of 1527  289

It was a copy of this Confession of Faith that certain participants brought to Bern and that Berthold Haller (Ch. 6.4) forwarded to Zwingli for refutation in his Elenchus (Ch. 8.4.a). Subsequently Calvin too would refute it, article by a rticle, in his Brève Instruction (Ch. 23.3.e). It would eventually (1560) become normative for the Anabaptists under the episcopal pastorate of Menno Simons, as also for the Hutterites. 2 It is quite probable that Sattler, the leader of t he Schleitheim synod, who had against Denck argued when they were together in Strassburg in 1526 as also, in twenty articles of faith, against Bucer and Capito (Ch. 10 n. 53), now sought to differentiate the literalistic, biblical Swiss and South German Anabaptists from the spiritualistic South German Brethren such as Denck and the followers, all the way into Hapsburg lands, of apocalyptic Hut. In any event, the mood at the synod of Schleitheim exhibited a sobriety and bonded fellowship that was in marked contrast to the eschatological tension at the disputation in Nicolsburg (yet to be fully recounted in Ch. 9.2.b) and in the apocalyptic-missionary debate in Augsburg, the two synods occurring in May and August of 1527.

1. “The Brotherly Union of a Number of Children of God Concerning Seven Articles,” Schleitheim, 24 February 1527 Michael Sattler (c. 1490–1527), native of Staufen near Freiburg in Breisgau, who wrote the Confession, had participated as prior in the reform movement among the Benedictine monasteries and had been no doubt bewildered as the peasants of his own abbey joined in their general uprising of this class. St. Peter’s had been undergoing monastic reform, led by its Abbot Jodocus Kaiser (1512–30), joining the Bursfeld Union, in line with prevailing sentiments in nearby Freiburg which owed its allegiance to Hapsburg Austria and which had proved resistant to Lutheran, then Reformed, preaching

significance, is that of Beatrice Jenny, “Das Schleitheimer Täuferbekenntnis, 1527,” Schaffhauser Beiträge zur vaterländischen Geschichte 28 (1951): 5–81. An early Anabaptist tract on hermeneutics ascribed to Sattler is translated b y Wenger, MQR 43 (1968): 26–44. See John H. Yoder, The Legacy of Mic hael Sattler, Classics of the Radical Refor mation 1 (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1973) and most recently C. Arnold Snyder, “The Monastic Origins of Swiss Anabaptist Sectarianism,” MQR 57 (1983): 5–25, anticipating his The Life and Thought of Michael Sattler, Studies in Anabaptist and Mennonite Histor y 27 (Scottdale, Pa./Kitchener, Ontario: Herald Press, 1984). Dennis Martin was critical of the thesis of Sn yder in “Monks, Mendicants, and Anabaptists: Michael Sattler and the Benedictines Reconsider ed,” MQR 60 (1986): 139–64, to which Snyder responded in his “Michael Sattler, Benedictine: Dennis Martin’s Objections Reconsidered,” 262–79. 2  Stayer, Sword, 325, assessing the impact of the Schleitheim Confession among the Mennonites, draws attention to the f act that a Swiss-Upper Ger man devotional anthology containing it, also Sattler’s epistle to the cong regation at Horb, a report of his martyrdom, and a letter cosigned b y Melchior Rinck, was translated and pub lished in Dutch; BRN 5:585–86. See also n. 11.

290  the radical reformation

chapter 8.1

espoused by some of the university professors and students (1522–23). Concurrently peasants on the abbatial lands resented the increased taxation levied by Abbot Jodocus at Austrian behest and also by the local temporal lord. The matter of local rights was carried as far as the Diet of Worms. Continual pressure for payment on the part of the Abbot caused Ernest of Baden, margrave of Hochberg, an equivocal supporter of the Reformation, and his troops to invade the monastery in March 1522, putting its chief “cloister lord,” Abbot Jodocus, to flight. The same issues arose two years later. Resentment had been so long seething in the region that common cause was joined by t he abbot’s peasants and the peasants rising up at Stühlingen and others in Breisgau in December 1524. With Freiburg under siege, theologically informed John Müller, commander of peasant troops, many of whom had been newly rebaptized in neighboring Waldshut and Hallau, liberated St. Peter’s 12 May 1525. It was one of several monasteries in the region whose peasants were given succor under the banner of sola scriptura and of relief from festering socioeconomic grievances, as embodied in the Twelve Articles (Ch. 4.3.a). It was at this moment that Michael Sattler, rather than live as a “cloister lord,” divested himself of his Benedictine garb, crossed over into Switzerland, and sought to learn a trade, his own keep. Sattler’s name first appears in Swiss records, in Zurich 18 November 1525. He may have attended the third disputation on baptism there, 6 N ovember 1525. But his formative months between life as a Benedictine prior and his assumption of leadership among the Swiss Anabaptists were primarily spent, not in Zurich with Grebel and Mantz, but in the company of artisans and lay preachers in the Unterland north of Zurich, residing in the home of a weaver in Oberglatt. He submitted to believers’ baptism, by late June 1526. 3 After an attempt to return to his birthplace, Staufen, near Freiburg, Sattler turned to Strassburg where he was received in the home of Capito. After the expulsion of John Denck (Ch. 10.2.c), Sattler, despite Capito’s offer to let him remain in Strassburg, went at the invitation of William Reublin to Horb on the Neckar. Reublin had gone there in the spring of 1526, pastoring radical Lutherans who deplored the imprisonment there in 1523 of t heir Karsthans ( John Maurer), and who were drawn to the writings in his defense by a n ative of H orb, Sebastian Lotzer, writing from Memmingen his two pamphlets on the evangelical rights of laymen

3  Snyder, Sattler, 87. Some of the chr onology depends upon the identity of “a monk Michael,” about whom Hans Küenzi of Klingau wr ites sometime after 21 Ma y 1526. In an exchange betw een Heinold Fast, “Michael Sattler’s Baptism: Some Comments” [on Synder’s book], MQR 60 (1986): 764–73; and Arnold Snyder’s substantial “Reply,” 496–506, it is made clear that ther e were two monkish Michaels, a monk Michael Wüst, cousin of Bullinger, who became an Anabaptist, and Michael Sattler. Only the former was held prisoner in Zurich.

chapter 8.1

schleitheim confession of 1527  291

(Ch. 4.3.a). It was from Horb that Sattler came to the synod of S chleitheim. Reublin had baptized in twenty-five homes. The Schleitheim Confession, entitled originally The Brotherly Union (Brüderliche Vereingung), addressed to “the children of l ight … scattered everywhere,” is directed not primarily against the Magisterial Reformation4 but rather against “certain false brethren among us … in the way they intend to practice and observe the freedom of the Spirit and of Christ.” [These false brethren and sisters] have missed the truth and to their condemnation are given over to the lasciviousness and self-indulgence of t he flesh. They think faith and love may do and permit everything, and that nothing will harm them or condemn them, since they are believers.5 The antinomian excesses which Kessler reported on the fringes of the Anabaptist revival in St. Gall (Ch. 6.2) were now being firmly reproved by the leaders of the movement with eyes also toward the Hutian apocalyptic evangelists to the east. The first article of their Confession, on Baptism, is not notable, except perhaps for its specifying, in addition to repentance and the resolution to amend one’s life found in earlier accounts (Ch. 6.1), the concurrent intention “to be buried” with Christ in order “to be resurrected with him.” In the second article, excommunication (the ban), which appeared among the Swiss Brethren at least as early as Grebel’s letter to Müntzer (Ch. 5.2.b), is given enhanced importance as the Dominically instituted means of purifying the brotherhood before the administration of the Supper. According to this second article: The ban shall be employed with all those who have given themselves to the Lord, to walk in his commandments and with all those who are baptized into the one body of C hrist and who permit themselves to be called brethren or sisters, and yet who slip sometimes and fall into error and sin, being inadvertently overtaken. The same shall be admonished twice in secret and the third time openly disciplined or b anned according to the command of Christ [Matthew 18]. But this shall be done according to the regulation of the Spirit before the breaking of bread, so that we may break and eat one bread, with one mind and in one love, and may drink of one cup.

4  This is the older view which Jenny, Täuferbekenntnis, has refuted, building on Fritz Blanke, “Beobachtungen zum ältesten Täuferbekenntnis,” ARG 37 (1940): 246ff. 5  Wenger, “Schleitheim Confession,” MQR 247–48.

292  the radical reformation

chapter 8.1

In safeguarding the purity of t he communion fellowship by m eans of committing themselves to the discipline of t he pre-communion ban, the Schleitheim brethren were clearly breaking away from the Zwinglian view that the saints or the elect are known only to God and that the true Church is invisible. The third article reads in part: Whoever has not been called by one God to one faith, to one baptism, to one Spirit [Eph. 4:5], to one body, with all the children of God’s Church, cannot be made [into] one bread with them, as indeed must be done if one is truly to break bread according to the command of Christ. The fourth article differentiates the baptismal community, continuously purified by t he ban and solidified as one body and one loaf in communion. In this article on separation (absunderung), what the predestinarian doctrine that the Magisterial Reformation at least kept invisible, the free-will perfectionism of the “free church” made boldly visible and mordantly moral as the synodal brethren, having seen the territorial option of evangelical reform fail in Waldshut and Zurich, now gave the hitherto inchoate popular evangelical movement a d ecisively separatist sectarian formulation: For truly all creatures are in but two classes, good and bad, believing and unbelieving, darkness and light, the world and those who are out of t he world, God’s temple and idols, Christ and Belial; and none can have part with the other.6 In this separation from the world one senses the survival in a new modality of t he reformed Benedictine’s vow of s eparation from the world and ordinary Christian society.7 The Confession makes specific the habitat, conduct, and institutions of Belial: By this is meant all popish and anti-popish [Protestant] works and church services, meetings, and church attendance, drinking houses, pledges, and commitments [made in] unbelief and other things of that kind, which are highly regarded by the world and yet are carried on in flat contradiction to the command of God, in accordance with all the unrighteousness which is in the world. … Therefore there will also unquestionably fall from us the unchristian, devilish weapons of f orce—such as sword, armor, and the like, and all their use [either] for friends or

6

 Ibid., 249, with a slight change.  Snyder, Sattler, stresses the continuities as well as the discontin uities in the shor t life of the former prior of St. Peter’s. 7

chapter 8.1

schleitheim confession of 1527  293

against one’s enemies—by virtue of t he word of C hrist [Matt. 5:39]: Resist not [him that is] evil. The phrase translated “pledges and commitments” is obscure in German (burgschaften und verpf lichten des unglaubens) and was construed by Zwingli as foedera infidelitatis. It could mean vows made when the Brethren were Catholic or oaths sworn when they were still Zwinglians, but more likely it means all associations with unbelievers, including unregenerate spouses. 8 Since marriage is nowhere mentioned in the Confession, although “sisters” are referred to as being on the same level as the brethren, and also since women were very prominent in the whole Anabaptist movement (as in the primitive Church), it fits in here to observe that a c ovenantal conception of marriage was replacing the sacramental view. Divorce and remarriage within the community of explicit faith, with sporadic outcroppings of libertinism, was a concomitant of Anabaptism during the transition from the medieval to the sectarian concept of wedlock (Ch. 20.3). The fifth article is of interest because it shows that, within less than three years after the layman Grebel rebaptized the priest Blaurock in Zurich (Ch. 6.1), the office of the pastor (hirt) among the Swiss Brethren had been clearly defined. His task is, first of all, to read the Scriptures and to admonish, teach, and warn in the light of the text. In this pre-eminence of Bible-reading and instruction, the gathered church preserves the character of the original Bible-study groups out of which Swiss Anabaptism emerged. The pastor “leads out in prayer,” undoubtedly to be followed by various inspired members of the congregation. He breaks the bread and in this connection disciplines and bans “in the name of the church.” Provision is also made for the disciplining of the pastor by the congregation. If he is banished or martyred, another should be ordained (erwelt; verordnet) “in the same hour in order that God’s remnant and little folk (volckle: little people) may not be scattered.” The pastor here described, “supported by the church …, that he who serves the gospel may live of the gospel,” is no longer the itinerant evangelist or swiftly roving apostle of the first years of the movement, but is already a settled minister. The sixth and largest article deals with the sword, which is acknowledged to be “ordained of God outside the perfection of Christ”: “It punishes and puts to death the wicked, and guards and protects the good. … In the perfection [of the church] of Christ [Matt. 5:48], however, only the ban is used for warning.” The contrast is drawn in connection with the woman taken in adultery ( John 8:1–11) between what “the Father” ordained in the Old Covenant, namely, that she be stoned to death, and what Christ set as an example for discipline under the New Covenant. 8

 This is the view of Jenny, Täuferbekenntnis, 61.

294  the radical reformation

chapter 8.1 / 8.2

Here the Schleitheim synod is defining its conviction over against Zwingli on the one side and perhaps on the other those Anabaptists like Hubmaier who, though in his way separating the spheres of church and of state, found a place for a Christian magistracy in its patronage and protection of his own church (Ch. 9.2.b) and also over against those Anabaptists like Hut who, while restraining the saints for the present, foresaw their great struggle at the imminent end of the age (Pentecost, 1528), and the co-rule of the saints with Christ. By implication the synod claims for the covenantal conventicle the divine righteousness which Zwingli had distinguished from God-willed human righteousness.9 Theirs is an intended, ethical imitatio Christi. Just as Christ refused to act the part of a judge (Luke 12:13), so must his follower. Christ refused to be made a king ( John 6:15); so must his follower refuse to take part in all forms of earthly government. Quoting 1 Peter 2:21, the synod declares that in suffering, and not in ruling, Christ left an example for true Christians following in his steps, and concludes that “the regime of magistracy is according to the flesh but that of Christians according to the Spirit.” The seventh article concerns the oath. A r eligious duty in the Old Testament, it was solemnly superseded in the injunctions of J esus (Matt. 5:33–37) and of J ames (5:12). We need not enlarge upon the disastrous civic consequences of t he Anabaptist refusal to take the annual oath to uphold the constitutions of the city republics of the southwest quadrant of the Empire and the Swiss Confederation of cantons. It is of interest that the very next year, in the imperial city of Strassburg, all the local Anabaptists would be prevailed upon to take the civic oath.10 The Schleitheim Confession was far from being a balanced testimony of the faith and practice of these Swiss and South German Brethren. It was, rather, like most synodal utterances, shaped by the immediate concerns of the movement to disavow excesses and aberrations from within and to resist challenges from without, but it was destined, because of the sheerness of its separation from the state, the state churches, and the world and because of the centrality of t he bonded community under evangelical disciplines, to become increasingly a norm for nonviolent Anabaptists in many regions.11

2. The Trial and Martyrdom of Michael Sattler While Sattler was in Schleitheim, presiding at the synod, the authorities of Württemberg (from 1520 to 1534 under Archduke Ferdinand) discovered

9

 Von der göttlichen und menschlichen Gerechtigkeit (1532), ZW 2:458–525.  So Bucer reported to Ambrose Blaurer, 8 February 1528: Briefwechsel der Brüder Ambrosius und Thomas Blaurer, ed. Traugott Schiess (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1908), 1:146. 11  Stayer, Sword, 325; Arnold Snyder, “The Influence of the Schleitheim Articles on the Anabaptist Movement: An Historical Evaluation,” MQR 63 (1989): 323–44. 10

chapter 8.2

schleitheim confession of 1527  295

his Anabaptist groups in Horb and down the Neckar in Rottenburg. They were in a position to apprehend Sattler and his wife, Matthew Hiller of St. Gall (baptized by Jacob Gross in Strassburg), and other messengers on their return from Schleitheim. After numerous delays because of w idespread popular sympathy with the defendants, and in spite of A rchduke Ferdinand’s menacing suggestion of a n immediate “third baptism,” the captives were brought to trial on nine counts in Rottenburg beginning on 15 May 1527. In vain, attempts were made to secure on the panel of judges at least two university clerics from either nearby Tübingen downstream or from Freiburg, as the charges were partly ecclesiastical. The proceedings of t he trial have been recorded in four accounts which are notable for the picture they give of the provocative sense of divine commission on the part of t he martyrs and the mingling of f airness, fierceness, and frustration in the efforts of the Catholic tribunal.12 There were twenty-four judges drawn from several towns and presided over by t he Landeshauptmann, Count Joachim of Zollern. Sattler refused the services of counsel, stating that in questions of religion the resort to law was forbidden to them by God’s Word, although he did recognize the judges as servants of God on other matters. There were nine civil and ecclesiastical charges against Sattler and his followers. In general they were factual. Sattler could substantiate his views with scriptural texts and with careful argument, but he could not exculpate himself in the eyes of the judges. He was unwilling to deny the charges or retract the views attributed to him. On the question of veneration of the Virgin and the saints, he explained that they could not be intercessors because, like the rest of the faithful, they were sleeping (psychopannychism) and waiting Christ’s judgment. Questioned about the use of t he sword, he disavowed armed resistance, but said that if war were right, he would rather fight against “the spiritual Turks,” the so-called Christians who persecute, capture, and kill God’s people, than against the Turks in the flesh, who make no pretense of f ollowing Christ. One exasperated court official retorted: “The hangman shall and will dispute with you.” The verdict, which was death by burning, preceded by various grisly tortures, was carried out on 21 May 1527. Throughout the fiendish abuse to which his executioners subjected him, Sattler remained steadfast, and one version of t he martyrdom attributes the following words to him immediately before his death: “Almighty, eternal God, thou art the way and the truth. Because I have not been shown to be in error, I will with thy help this day testify to the truth and seal it with my blood.”13 His wife, a former 12  An account of the trial and the martyrdom is printed in SAW, 136–44. For the legal theory and practice seen comprehensively, consult Horst Schraepler, Die rechtliche Behandlung der Täufer in der deutschen Schweiz, Südwestdeutschland und Hessen 1525–1618 (Tübingen: Fabian Verlag, 1957). 13  SAW, 143.

296  the radical reformation

chapter 8.2

Beguine,14 after being subjected to many threats and merciful entreaties, including those of the countess of Zollern, spouse of the presiding judge, nonetheless remained steadfast in her testimony and, eight days after her husband’s burning, she was drowned for her faith. Both Capito and Bucer, who had opposed Sattler in Strassburg, were dismayed at the death of S attler and his wife and wrote in favor of t hem and his followers. Capito, although uneasy about what he called “the new monkery” of the Anabaptists, intervened with the Catholic authorities for the sake of t he survivors still held after the unusually cruel death meted out to Sattler. Bucer, in another connection, wrote at the same time: “We do not doubt that Michael Sattler, who was burned at Rottenburg, was a dear friend of God, although he was a leader of the Anabaptists, but much more skilled and honorable than some.”15 He pointed out that even though Tertullian erred as a M ontanist Spiritualist, and Cyprian as an anabaptist, the North African Fathers were rightly revered as true martyrs of the Church. Bucer expressly distinguished Sattler favorably from Denck, for example, on the crucial issue of the Atonement. The impression which Sattler’s martyrdom made in Rottenburg was profound, and led in Württemberg and the Hither Austrian jurisdictions to more earnest efforts to convert, rather than exterminate, the Anabaptists. After Sattler’s execution, the authorities at Horb elaborated the medieval practice of public penitential discipline, with special reference to Anabaptists who could be induced to purge themselves of their errors. The pattern is typical. Twentyfour men and women who had recanted were led to the market place, where they had to swear before a notary and several trustworthy witnesses that they would abandon their error and zealously adhere to the Holy Catholic Church and its regulations to the end of their days. On the next seven Sundays they were to gather at the altar for early Mass, with bare heads and feet, loose hair, wearing gray robes on which a representation of the baptismal font was painted in white, and to make a procession around the church behind the cross. As a further sign of penitence each had to carry in his or her left hand a rod, in the right, a lighted candle, and after the procession to kneel before the altar. The priest would thereupon strike them three times, give them absolution, and bid them stay on their knees for the remainder of the service. They had to wear the gray garb for a year and a day, and on specified occasions go to confession and to communion. For the rest of their lives they had to avoid all other public and private gatherings in or out of doors, and might carry no weapon except a blunted bread knife. Finally, they were not to leave Horb without permission

14   Valerian Anshelm (d. 1545) describes her as “a talented, clever little woman,” Die Berner Chronik 5 (Bern, 1896), 185ff. 15  Getrewe Warnung (July, 1527); Krebs and Rott, Elsass 1 (QGT 7), 110; for Capito’s letters, ibid., nos. 83–84.

chapter 8.2 / 8.3

schleitheim confession of 1527  297

for the rest of their lives.16 Many valiant Anabaptists, refusing to repent, escaped from Horb and surrounding centers to Strassburg.

3. Anabaptism Elsewhere in South Germany, East of the Rhine, from 1527 to 1531 The trial and execution of S attler and the recantation of s everal other Anabaptist captives at Horb has been adduced as a famous and representative episode in the annals of the Radical Reformation in South Germany. Members of S attler’s company were recruited from many places in Switzerland and South Germany. In recounting other episodes and trends in this area after the close of the Martyrs’ Synod in August 1527, we shall bear in mind that the sober strain of Anabaptism associated with Grebel and Sattler intermingled at many points with the spiritualist strain associated with Denck and the apocalyptical strain of Hut. When the Augsburg conventicle was seized on 15 September 1527, forty-five of the leaders and members recanted. Some were banished rather than put to trial, unlike Hut.17 Among the banished was the patrician Eitelhans Langenmantel, who removed to a h ouse in Leitersheim, where a new conventicle was assembled under his protection. But on the night of 11 March 1528, Langenmantel was seized by t he captain of t he Swabian League and beheaded. Another member of t he smashed Augsburg conventicle who recanted, though his wife, Sabina, remained steadfast, was Augustine Bader, who had a s trange prophetic career still ahead of h im and whose notoriety fixed for many territorial Christians their image of Anabaptist aberration. Bader, a b aptizand of t he pacifist Jacob Gross, returned to the remnant of t he Augsburg conventicle and was, strangely enough, elected bishop (Vorsteher). He sought from Langenmantel a copy of Hut’s secret Missionsbüchlein, a concordance of the Seven Judgments (Ch. 7.4). Although Langenmantel and his servant who made the copy were arrested, Bader was not apprehended. He preached and baptized in the environs, and in March visited Kauf beuren, accompanied by Hut’s early convert, Gall Vischer. After its reorganization, the gathered church in Kauf beuren was ruthlessly stamped out in June of 1528 within days of the Hutian date of the Parousia, 31 May. Five leaders, two Vorsteher and two treasurers and Bader’s host, were all beheaded, and the remaining thirty members were burned through the cheeks, beaten, and driven out of town. Stirred to apocalyptic indignation by this cruel blow and the execution of five members of the broken conventicle in Augsburg, Bader developed

16

 ML 2:347.  Roth, Augsburgs Reformationsgeschichte 1:236–38; for Bader in the larger setting of “the devolution of Hut’s movement,” see Packull, Mysticism, 130–38. 17

298  the radical reformation

chapter 8.3

messianic pretensions. He reported a vision of Christ with his five wounds dressed in an overcoat, “mighty strong man.” He called a c onference in Schönberg between Esslingen and Strassburg, where Bader led in the reassessment of baptism, the Supper, and the ban. He announced that the time of external rebaptism was over. Suffering through the apocalyptic period of tribulation was their spiritual baptism, of which their water rebaptism had been the outer symbol.18 His fantastic ideas were not acceptable to the majority of some one hundred Swiss and South German Anabaptists convened in council, whom he tried to win over in Teufen near St. Gall at Christmastide 1528.19 Rejected by the synod of Teufen and by h is own congregation at Augsburg, Bader revised and amended Hut’s prophecies and proclaimed that the great judgment would break in upon the world at Easter 1530. He held that the Turks would be the instrument of u shering in the Kingdom and punishing the godless. At the same time he hoped that the crushing of p retentious and morally derelict Christendom would be the means of b ringing about the final conversion of Turks and Jews. His eschatology included the elimination of all sacraments offensive to Jews and Muslims and the espousal of the sleep of any godly souls prior to the imminent general resurrection and the Last Judgment. Bader and his small following, including the ever-loyal Gall Vischer, rented a shed in Westerstillen north of Ulm, where they and their families set up a c ommon fund and awaited further revelation. Gall Vischer and another follower, John Köller, a y oung tailor, described how Bader had visions of Christ and Moses. 20 Particularly interesting was the apparition of Moses. When Bader was on his secret way back to Augsburg, Moses purportedly appeared to him in a vision and led him and his companions under the cover of darkness onto a moor. There, taking each other by the hands, Bader and his group danced in a circle while Moses was heard to sing his song addressed to the Creator of the heavens and the earth in celebration of the escape through the Red Sea (Ex. 15:1–18, Rev. 15:3f.). As the prophet proceeded to enter the waters of a c reek up to his knees, he slipped on two stones and was submerged, a slip that was nonchalantly construed as a redemptive sign.

18  Packull, Mysticism, 133, whom I am follo wing, shows how Bader e volved a tr ipartite baptism, and a similar tripartite phasing of the Supper. 19  Josef Beck, ed., Die Geschichts-Bücher der Wiedertäufer in Österreich-Ungarn, Fontes Rerum Austriacarum 43 (Vienna, 1883), 64. 20  Bossert, Württemberg (QGT 1), 953ff. The fullest account of the Bader episode is by G. Bossert, “Augustin Bader von Augsburg, der Prophet und König, und seine Genossen,” ARG 10 (1912): 117–65, 208–41, 295–349; 11 (1913): 19–72, 103–33, 176–99.

chapter 8.3

schleitheim confession of 1527  299

Bader’s group, encouraged by Oswald Leber (one of their number and a priest near Herbolzheim and veteran of the Peasants’ War), 21 sought out Jewish communities, tried to learn Hebrew, and interpreted the Old Testament and its Apocrypha with the help of rabbis. The core of Bader’s apocalyptic conviction and that of the small company who clung to him was by now that his own infant was the proclaimed messiah in bold appropriation of Nathan’s prophecy for David (2 Sam. 7:12: “I will raise up your son after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I w ill establish his kingdom”). In confirmation of Bader’s role as regent of the prospective messiah, the aged Gall Vischer was one evening possessed of a vision in their shed of a golden crown, scepter, and other royal insignia descending in front of the prophet. His followers were moved to have these visionary emblems turned into tangible regalia, and the tailor Köller proceeded with the task. The eschatology of the Bader commune anticipates that of Münster (Ch. 13). Bader came to recognize in his son a symbol only of the Christchild. Leber it was who recounted how it would all unfold. The Turks would largely destroy Christendom, whereupon they too would be destroyed and Bader, as viceroy of t he young messiah, would usher in a m illennium of social justice, all working for each other. Capital punishment would be abolished. Congregations would elect representatives to elect their presumptive king, who would appoint twelve assistants to preside at regional courts, pending the return of Christ for the Last Judgment. Suspicion about the desacerdotalized utopia in the shed meeting was aroused, and on the night of 1 5 January 1530 the entire company was seized: five men, three women, and eight children. 22 The hearings were drawn out and carried on in several cities because of t he widespread fear among officials and divines that “the Anabaptist king” was conspiring with the deposed duke, Ulrich of W ürttemberg, to unseat Hapsburg rule in Hither Austria. The unusually cruel manner in which Bader was executed on 30 March 1530 aroused sympathy for him. Moderate Anabaptists were everywhere unfairly implicated in Bader’s excesses. Even the diet of Augsburg dealt with the supposed threat, and the Augsburg Confession made an unmistakable reference to Bader (article xviii). In view of the Bader episode, it is notable that several South German towns (Ulm, Memmingen, Biberach, Isny, Lindau, and Constance) before

21  Bossert adduces the evidence that Oswald had been instructed by members of the Jewish community in Worms, one of whom had tra veled to Jerusalem, “Bader,” ARG 11 (1913): 46. Packull, Mysticism, 135, commenting, suggests that the r ecent expulsion of Jews from Hesse (1524) had given some common cause to the refugees and the veterans of the Peasants’ War, and especially to the followers of foiled John Hut. 22  Reutlingen could not be pr esent because of the local plague . For the whole stor y, see ME 3:568–69.

300  the radical reformation

chapter 8.3

joining the newly formed Smalcaldian League rejected the use of f orce in dealing with the Anabaptists, countenanced by the Lutheran princes at Speyer in 1529, and went even farther, declaring, “in order that the accusations of t he Anabaptists might be somewhat moderated and their mouths closed,” that infant baptism need not be compulsory. Even after the failure of r epeated efforts to win them over to the support of t he Christian commonwealth by oath and military service, the only punishment was to be banishment. The so-called Memmingen Resolutions of March 1531 went to declare: 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, some out of stubbornness of spirit and some out of pious, simple steadfastness, endured all dangers, even death itself, and suffered with such patience that not only were their adherents strengthened, but also many of ours were moved to regard their cause as good and just. Thus it is contrary to the right of the Christian government to force faith upon the world with the sword and other violent compulsion and to uproot evil therein, which should be resisted alone through the mighty Word of G od; and the person erring in faith shall not be suddenly knocked down, but should be tolerated in all Christian love as a harmless person. 23 The drafter of t he Memmingen Resolutions was Ambrose Blaurer (1492–1546), former prior Alpersbach, Reformer of Upper Swabia at the behest of Duke Ulrich of Württemburg. In September 1531, Blaurer was invited from Constance to Esslingen, where he sought to cope with the local Anabaptists. The Anabaptists had, in a sense, prepared the way for the Magisterial Reformation when the town council of Esslingen, exasperated by these sectaries, invited Blaurer to come and to reform the town according to the best magisterial standards. A g lance at this representative community will tell the story of m any another South German city between 1527 and 1531.

23

 Memmingen Beschlüsse, 1 March 1531; translated in ME 3:568–69.

chapter 8.3

schleitheim confession of 1527  301

The imperial city of Esslingen was situated down the Neckar from Horb and Rottenburg. In the year that Sattler was executed up the river, there was in Esslingen an Anabaptist conventicle. In November of 1 527 several members were rounded up. Under torture certain ones apparently expressed or were construed to have had quite radical Müntzerite ideas, saying that all who refused the rebaptism of the covenant should be killed as heathen, and that they were awaiting help from the Anabaptists in Moravia.24 (The report sounds extreme, because even Hutian Anabaptists would have been pacifistic up to Pentecost, 1528.) They were said to have had a common treasury for the help of i ndigents and refugees. Some averred that Christ was only a prophet and was son of God only in the sense that they, too, strove to become sons of God. They adhered also to the doctrine of the sleep of t he soul.25 All these positions are indeed in some version of the Nicolsburg Articles. The Esslingen chronicler observed, however, that despite their departure from Catholic norms, they “are still the best and most pious; they do not swear, they do not practice usury, they do not drink to excess.”26 On his arrival in September 1531 the author of t he humane Memmingen Resolutions must have commended himself at once to the locally persecuted Anabaptists. Blaurer stressed preaching and moral purity, and introduced church discipline, withholding the sacraments from the unworthy. He was presently able to write Martin Bucer of his success: I treat the Anabaptists in such a way that they love me and attend my sermons regularly and attentively. Most of them have desisted from their error and have joined us. The rest, of whom there are very few, will, I hope, do the same.27 Soon after writing this note, Blaurer, with his winsome ways, returned to Constance, and the Anabaptists were immediately disaffected. We cannot mention Constance at this point without picking up our account of Louis Haetzer. He was beheaded there on a charge of adultery, 4 February 1529, on the site of John Hus’s execution in 1415. Although he was clearly guilty of the charge, the extremity of the punishment can best be accounted for by the charge of Antitrinitarianism. We were last with Haetzer in Worms in 1527, when he was engaged with Denck in translating the prophets (Ch. 7.3). In the meantime, Haetzer returned to Augsburg. He did not, however, participate in the Martyr’s Synod. He met Schwenckfeld, went forth briefly to Nuremberg and Regens24

 K. Plaff, Geschichte der Stadt Esslingen (Esslingen, 1840), 473; ML 1:610.  Plaff, Stadt Esslingen, 47. 26  Quoted by Plaff, ibid., 97. 27  Schiess, Briefwechsel: Blaurer, 292. 25

302  the radical reformation

chapter 8.3

burg, baptizing four converts in the latter town. His Augsburg base was the household of o ne George Regel. Here he continued his translation, turning now to the Apocrypha, and in the preface to Baruch he attacked the Magisterial Reformation for disparaging the apocryphal books on the insufficient grounds that they were known only in the Septuagint and they were too apocalyptic and visionary. The excluded Wisdom literature, in any case, suited his own growing Spiritualism, and he defended the Apocrypha. He also edited Theologia Deutsch (Ch. 2.2.b), as evident from his motto at the end of the edition: “O God, redeem the prisoners.” He wrote two manuscripts, now lost, “Booklet concerning School Teachers” and “Booklet concerning Christ,” which featured in his trial at Constance.28 The first was apparently directed against the “scribes” of the Magisterial Reformation, who according to him missed the spirit behind the letter, and the second may well have developed further the ideas contained in both the Worms translation of the Prophets and the “Nicolsburg Articles” about Christ as Prophet, hints of which may be overheard in some of Haetzer’s early works, especially in his translations from the Scriptures. The clearest evidence of H aetzer’s final Antitrinitarian Spiritualism is a stanza from one of the many hymns that he composed (and which were cherished especially in the Hutterite tradition). From the otherwise lost Rhymes or Songs under the Cross, there survives the following explicitly Antitrinitarian utterance, placed in the mouth of God: I am He who created all things through His own might. Thou askest, how many persons am I? I am one! I am not three persons, but I am one! And I cannot be three persons, for I am one! I know nothing of persons: I alone am the source of all life. Him who doth not know me, I know not; I alone am! 29

28  J. F. G. Goeters, Ludwig Hätzer, Quellen und Forschungen zur Reformationsgeschichte, 25:139–47, extensively covers the sparse evidence as to their contents. For the Regels in Augsburg and for the r eligio-political policy of the aler tly Catholic duchy of Bavaria, see Gerald Strauss, “The Religious Policies of Dukes Wilhelm and Ludwig of Ba varia in the First Decade of the Protestant Era,” CH 28 (1959): 1–24. 29  The stanza is preserved by Sebastian Franck in his Chronicle. It is reprinted in Goeters, Hätzer, 138, and Fr ederick L. Weis, The Life and Teachings of Lud wig Haetzer, a Leader and Martyr of the Anabaptists 1500–1529 (Dorchester, Mass., 1930), 24, from which the transla tion is taken.

chapter 8.3 / 8.4.a

schleitheim confession of 1527  303

So much for what appears to be the f irst explicit expression of Unitarianism within the German-speaking realm of the Radical Reformation. While working through the last phase of h is theology, Haetzer was exposed in the house of George Regel to his besetting temptation, for which he earlier had been asked to leave Basel. This time, however, it was adultery with the mistress of the Anabaptist maid he had earlier taken to wife. Madame Regel had given him a ring and financial help. It was technically on this count that he was apprehended in his native Bischofszell at the request of the town council of Augsburg and stood trial at nearby Constance. Ambrose Blaurer’s brother Thomas, a Wittenberg-trained jurist, was the chief prosecutor. With Ambrose, his brother Thomas Blaurer, and ill-starred Haetzer, we have returned to the border of t he Swiss Confederation. We leave Constance for Zurich, where Haetzer had once been a m inor ally of Z wingli (Ch. 5.2.b).

4. Swiss Developments between Zwingli’s Refutation of the Schleitheim Confession in 1527 and Henry Bullinger’s Attack in 1531 We were last in Zurich in January 1527 at the execution of Felix Mantz (Ch. 6.3). We saw how Zwingli had come to look upon the withholding of children from baptism and the rebaptism of adults as tantamount to subversion of church and state. The irresponsible radical evangelicals were jeopardizing the complete conversion of t he canton from Catholicism to Protestantism, and that of the Confederation as a whole, by moving ahead of the magistracy, defying the magistracy, indeed dechristianizing the office of the magistrate. To Zwingli, this unilateral and reckless action betrayed a w ant of c harity and humility and Christian realism. Thus, in his concern for total reform, Zwingli had come around to construe baptism as the Christian equivalent of circumcision, and hence as the covenantal seal of civic-religious membership in the cantonal clans of the new Alpine Israel, the Swiss Confederation, of which canton Zurich might be considered the foremost tribe. Any radical dissociation of citizenship from church membership had come to be linked in Zwingli’s mind with the social restiveness of the peasants, and with the insubordination of t he tribute villages claiming autonomy in the spurious name of Christian freedom, while any talk of toleration smacked of treason and reaction in favor of the patricians and the old Believers. a. Zwingli’s “Elenchus” Zwingli had already written against the Anabaptists four times (cf. Ch. 6.2.a) when he took up the task again in 1527 in his In Catabaptistarum

304  the radical reformation

chapter 8.4.a

strophas elenchus. 30 We will here examine his matured objections to Anabaptism. Zwingli contends that antipedobaptism leads to anabaptism, which is at once uncharitable and heretical in that it repudiates the rite submitted to by countless generations of f aithful believers and therefore is tantamount to crucifying Christ a second time, and is treasonable, since it dissolves the sacred ties of the Christian commonwealth. In emphasizing a work (adult baptism) as the effective means of s alvation rather than simple faith, Anabaptism, Zwingli feels, undoes the signif icance of Christ’s atoning role and unwittingly reproduces in allegedly evangelical form the pride and exclusiveness of the monks. It severs the Old Testament from the New, disparages the Old, and in effect construes the promise to Abraham as more inclusive than the promise through Christ, since circumcision was for the children of the faithful, baptism allegedly for adult believers only. The postulates of A nabaptism have serious political and moral consequences. The concentration on the New Testament leads to a d isproportionate emphasis upon Christ in his human nature and his humble role on earth, and neglects his resurrection and ascension to the right hand of God the Father, whence in judicial glory he rules the world. 31 Moreover, the repudiation of the oath, which in any event follows from a misconstruction of Scripture, dissolves the civil compact. Jesus’ injunction about the simple yea and nay was concerned with private affairs. He expressly enjoined obeying Caesar in public affairs and he considered the oath a proper requirement of Caesar. As to the fatuous distinction between the temporal and spiritual made by the Anabaptists, it is clear, he says that it takes more spiritual power to discriminate and act justly as a magistrate than simply to evade the duties of organized society. As to the moral life, Zwingli holds that Anabaptists are, by and large, as much subject as others, probably more, to sinful proclivity, and in denying it, indulge in the two worst spiritual evils, namely, pride and hypocrisy. They condemn all joy in moderation, and “he who takes it away from the pious will have to restore it with interest.” Anabaptist communism leads to all kinds of grave economic and moral excesses in the name of c harity, and Anabaptist spiritualism leads to irresponsible ecstasy akin to epilepsy, babbling, raving, deceit, and imposture, all in the name of i nspiration. The Elenchus was Zwingli’s last literary attack upon the Anabaptists. In 1529 compulsory attendance in Zurich at the established church service was instituted, while the criticism of the low moral state of the 30

 Translated as Refutation of the Tricks of the Anabaptists, Zwingli, ZW 3:357–437.  Zwingli’s religio-political concerns are interpreted by Heinrich Schmid, Zwinglis Lehre von der göttlic hen und mensc hlichen Gerechtigkeit, Studien zur Do gmengeschichte und sytematischen Theologie 12 (Zurich: Zwingli Verlag, 1959). 31

chapter 8.4.a / 8.4.b

schleitheim confession of 1527  305

town clergy as well as of the citizenry in general was met by sharp regulations against the most common vices and an elevation of r equirements for the ministry. All these measures were combined and intensified in the sharp and comprehensive Moral Code of 26 March 1530 (Das grosse Sittenmandat), which in paragraph ix forbade help or housing for Anabaptists on pain of heavy penalties. This article was designed to refute the charge of the Catholic cantons that Zurich was tolerating the “vicious sect,” and to meet the threat of a movement which rejected the oath and all military service, thereby impairing the military potential of the Protestants in their struggle with the Catholic cantons. b. Basel: Three Radical Physicians: Paracelsus, Servetus, and Otto Brunfels32 We pause here to pick up the thread of o ur narrative in Basel up to the death of John Oecolampadius. We were last in Basel on 6 July 1527, when the town council, after several disputations, resorted to a strict but not yet severe mandate against the Anabaptists (Ch. 6.5). In the four years following, the main developments in Basel for the history of the Reformation era as a whole and for the Radical Reformation in particular happen to center not in the Anabaptists, but rather in the call of Paracelsus as professor of medicine at the university in the spring of 1527; in the magisterial abolition of the Mass on 9 February 1529, accompanied by the slashing, hacking, and burning of the images by the impatient populace; in the resolute departure of E rasmus for still Catholic Freiburg (Breisgau), to the utter dismay of Oecolampadius, who implored him to remain; and in the arrival, in the summer of 1530, of Michael Servetus, full of hope that his trinitarian speculations would be eagerly attended to by the northern evangelicals. Philip von Hohenheim (1493–1541), later called Theophrastus Bombastus Paracelsus, was born the son of a physician in Einsiedeln in 1493. With the counsel of Vadian, he had studied widely in several German universities (1507–12). In Ferrara he had acquired his doctorate in medicine and had adopted his programmatic name, announcing cryptically his intention of going beyond even the comprehensive and experimental conception of medicine held by the recently rediscovered Roman, Cornelius Celsius. From Ferrara he set out upon his great peregrination (1512–24) as camp and ship doctor and surgeon (“a physician should be a wayfarer”), that led him down the peninsula over to Spain and clockwise, around the whole of Christendom and the Middle East from Lapland to Nubia. He returned to his father’s home in Carinthian Villach in time to become involved on the side of the revolting miners and peasants particularly in

32  I have become aware of a number of lay theologians in the sixteenth century and recognize it as a desideratum of research within this era on “the theology of the physicians under the impact of confessional and medical reform.”

306  the radical reformation

chapter 8.4.b

the prince archbishopric of Salzburg (Ch. 4.3.e). Arriving in Basel by way of Strassburg, he took up his duties on the medical faculty in time to have conferred with Denck, who died in Basel of the plague in mid-November of 1527. Paracelsus, who attended medically upon the impoverished and the wealthy alike, may indeed have called upon Denck in his extremity. His physics and physiology were posited on a doctrine of the general animation of nature. As a writer on medicine, botany, and natural philosophy, Paracelsus was amazingly prolific. 33 Paracelsus never became an Anabaptist, nor Antitrinitarian, but he seems to belong to our narrative34 because of his sympathetic involvement in the Peasants’ War, because of his abiding interest in the amelioration of the condition of the downtrodden and neglected, 35 because of his espousal of peace and toleration, 36 because of his searching theological writings on the Ten Commandments, Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and eschatology and, in the end, because of h is travels as an itinerant preacher and healer, many of whose sermons survive, exhorting and encouraging people to lead fuller, disciplined lives. He took a v ery strict view of t he Sabbath, saying that it should be used for absolutely nothing but worship, not out of a spirit of legalism, but because of the innate congruity between man and God and the need to align one’s spirit with the ever-present divine transcendent. 37 Paracelsus, like Servetus, upheld the immaculate conception of Mary and her virginity post partum. Of his Bible commentaries, the one on the Psalter38 should be mentioned, and of the dogmatic writings, the one on communion addressed to Pope Clement VII. In this book, Paracelsus, like Sebastian Franck (Ch 10.3.d), denied the claim alike of the Catholics, Lutherans, Zwinglians, and Anabaptists that they could be in any sense exclusive channels of the Holy Spirit. Although not at all a Spiritualist like Caspar Schwenckfeld, Paracelsus had a s ense of b eing sent, understanding Jesus’ commandment to heal and to give sight as a m andate for “the

33  The Gesammelte Werke of Paracelsus, ed. Karl Sudhoff and Wilhelm Matthiessen (Munich, 1922–23), include four teen volumes of the medical, scientific, and philosophical wr itings in the first division. Of the second division, the theological and religio-philosophical works, three volumes have been published. There is a comprehensive guide to all his printed works: Karl Sudhoff, Bibliographia Paracelsica (Berlin, 1894; Graz: Akademische Verlagsanstalt, 1958), and a journal devoted to him, Nova Acta Paracelsica 1 (1944– ). 34  The best brief account of his theology in the light of the critical literature is that of Kurt Goldammer, Paracelsus: Natur und Offenbarung (Hanover: Oppermann, 1953). 35  His social wr itings have been selecti vely edited and inter preted by Kurt Goldammer, Paracelsus: Sozialethische und sozialpolitische Schriften (Tübingen: Mohr, 1952). 36  See Kurt Goldammer, “Friedensidee und Toleranzgedanke bei P aracelsus und den Spiritualisten, 1: Paracelsus,” ARG 46 (1955): 20–46. 37  Goldammer, Schriften, 24–25. Paul Kuntz deals with his Zehn Geboten in his forthcoming The Ten Commandments of Moses. 38  Ed. Goldammer, in two volumes, series cited, Abt, 2, 4 (1955) and 5 (1957).

chapter 8.4.b

schleitheim confession of 1527  307

physician as well as the apostles” and he renounced marriage (Ch. 8.4.b) to follow in his healing ministry Christ and the apostles. Although enraged by the oppression of the Mauerkirche of princely bishops and abbots, Paracelsus found in all seven sacraments the medicines of t ransformation and immortality. Sebastian Franck and Paracelsus met at least twice. There were meetings, also, of P aracelsus with Caspar Schwenckfeld. But the Silesian and the Swiss, the one a p ious seeker and the other an impetuous physician acquainted with disease, grief, and squalor, had little in common, though both were knights, except in their prolific literary productivity and their evangelical zeal. Paracelsus was driven from Basel in February 1528. The immediate issue was the failure of a c anon of patrician wealth to pay the high honorarium for medical services which Paracelsus, who ministered gratis to the numerous poor, asked in payment for his great success in what was widely regarded as a medically impossible assignment. The altercation came before the town tribunal. Paracelsus, envied by t he other doctors, feared by t he local druggists, whom he had ridiculed and rebuked for their malpractices, and distrusted by the patrician divines as sympathetic to the lower classes, lost his case. We cannot follow him to Colmar, Esslingen, Nuremberg, possibly Strassburg again in 1531, St. Gall (with Dr. Vadian), Innsbruck, Augsburg, Munich, Moravia, Vienna, and finally to Salzburg under a new archbishop. We shall, however, have occasion later to consider his teaching concerning baptism (Ch. 11.1.f ) and marriage (Ch. 20.1). Paracelsus was to die a nominal Catholic, having for a season placed his hopes in a reforming Emperor, hoping for the restoration of the Church by the Pope: “In the Pope there will be a blessed spirit, and thus a blessed spirit in the sheep.” Paracelsus was, however, like Franck in his nonconfessional individual seekerdom, whose motto was: “Let a man belong to no one else, if he is able to belong to himself.”39 We turn now to a doctor yet to be, Michael Servetus. We first encountered Servetus in our narrative when after his studies in law and Scripture at Toulouse, he despaired of the unholy reconciliation of Emperor and Pope at the coronation in Bologna (Ch. 1.5). There had matured in him the 39  Goldammer, Paracelsus: Schriften, 90. The medical, psychological, and r eligious literature on Paracelsus is extensi ve. The most r ecent biographies are those of Ludwig Engler , Paracelsus, Mensch und Arzt (Berlin, 1941); Friedrich Jäger, Theophrastus Paracelsus, 1493–1541 (Salzburg, 1941); W. E. Peuckert, Theophrastus Paracelsus, 2d ed. (Stuttgart, 1943); Georg Sticker, Paracelsus, ein Lebensbild (Halle, 1941); Ildefons Betschart, Theophrastus Paracelsus, der Mensch an der Zeitenwende, 2d ed. (Einsiedeln: Benziger, 1942); Basilio de Telepnef, Paracelsus: A Genius Amidst a Troubled World (St. Gall: Zollikofer, 1945); Henry Pachter, Paracelsus (New York: Schuman, 1951). Hartmuth Rudolph, recognizing that he died a Catholic and that his works were preserved by Catholics, as well as Schwenckfeldians, and he was only socially and medically a radical, gives a good overall coverage and assessment in “Theophrast von Hohenheim: Physician and Apostle of the New Creation,” with bibliography, Radical Reformers, ed. Goertz, Ch. 31.

308  the radical reformation

chapter 8.4.b

conviction that the Church fell when it entered into an alliance with the Empire under Constantine and specifically when the biblical view of Jesus Christ and his relationship to God his Father underwent serious distortion in the Constantinian-Nicene formulation of the Trinity, which had been so offensive to Jews and Muslims, so bewildering to simple Christians. For a w hile, Servetus was the guest of O ecolampadius, and probably earned his board by correcting proof. The works of Irenaeus and Tertullian, upon whom rested so much of h is patristic argument against the Nicene formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity, had recently been issued from the Basel presses. The editor of Tertullian, Beatus Rheananus, had felt called upon, in a section of the appendix, to deal with Tertullian’s seeming divergency from the Nicene formulation. With the stimulation of this new patristic material, Servetus worked at a doctrine of the Trinity that would make it possible for him to picture Christ delivering up the Kingdom to the Father (1 Cor. 15:12), “ just as the general of the whole army offers the Emperor the palm of victory; and the dispensation of the Trinity will then cease.”40 Oecolampadius at first was open-minded and perhaps even prepared to make terminological concessions, but he finally lost his patience, irritated no doubt also by S ervetus’ youthful eagerness to instruct the older man. Servetus, feeling that he had been harshly treated, wrote out a confession of faith,41 to which Oecolampadius replied: You accord more honor to Tertullian than you do the whole Church. You deny the one person in two natures; by denying that the Son is eternal you deny of necessity also that the Father is eternal. … I w ill be patient in other matters, but when Christ is blasphemed, No! 42 Oecolampadius, at a conference in Zurich with Zwingli, Bullinger, Capito, and Bucer,43 expressed his alarm at the effect Servetus might have upon their relations with the Catholic cantons, a prospect all the more disturbing

40  On the Er rors of the Trinity, tr. Earl M. Wilbur, Harvard Theological Studies 16 (1932). This has been pub lished in facsimile together with his works of 1532, Dialogues on the Trinity and On the Justice of the Reign of Christ (Frankfurt: Minerva, 1965). The Nicene Creed expressly counters this scriptural argument for the subordination of the Son to the Father in this phras ing: “whose kingdom shall have no end,” inserted to combat the teaching of the Homoousian bishop Marcellus of Ancyra (d. 374) who had been willing, on the basis of 1 Cor . 15:24, to concede an eschatological resolution of the Nicene Triadology. 41  Not extant. 42  Staehelin, Briefe und Akten, 765; tr. in Bainton, Hunted Heretic, 52; Oecolampadius wrote a sterner letter, 766. 43  The conference was reported by Bullinger; see Calvin Opera 7:744.1.

chapter 8.4.b / 8.4.c

schleitheim confession of 1527  309

since Servetus would presently make bold to write to Erasmus in an effort to gain his support for the allegedly more evangelical trinitarian views.44 Ever since the abolition of t he Mass in Basel, the mandates against the Anabaptists grew sterner, for Basel was becoming a center of refugee conventicles. The first execution in Basel was in 1528, the next in January 1530. About a m onth after Servetus arrived in Basel, one Conrad in der Gassen was brought to trial for denying the divinity of Christ, and executed 11 August 1530.45 We shall next encounter Servetus, who argued for the celestial flesh of Christ, in Strassburg (Ch. 10.3.f ). We can fit briefly into our narrative at this point another radical physician who may be grouped with Paracelsus and Servetus. Otto Brunfels (c. 1488–1534), a Carthusian in Strassburg, became a P rotestant preacher under the protection of the imperial knights, Ulrich of Hutten and Francis of Sickingen, then back in Strassburg was a teacher, theological writer, botanist, and physician (1524–33). He was a proponent of the sleep of the soul, revelatory dreams, and the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, but held the number of the elect to be very few. He opposed the payment of tithes and other feudal dues unless used for the poor or for education, defended the Anabaptists against coercion, agreed with them to the extent of opposing on principle the entry of t he magistracy into the affairs of church and conscience. In a book published in Strassburg in 152746 he stated all of t he above and also the view, based on Paul’s statement, 1 C orinthians 9:22, “I am made all things to all men,” that this was the basis for prudential simulation in difficult situations. Brunfels found time to become (according to Carl Linnaeus) “the father of modern botany.” He ended his days as city physician in Bern. c. Bern We turn from Basel, temporary residence of S ervetus and Paracelsus, to the canton of Bern. Here, prudence and proximity to the Catholic cantons had for some time dictated a policy fateful to Zwingli’s military effort at Cappel. It will be recalled that it was from Haller in Bern that Zwingli received the copy of t he Schleitheim Confession for refutation. In the

44

 Earl Morse Wilbur, A History of Unitar ianism in Transylvania, England, and America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952), 58 n. 32. 45  Staehelin, Lebenswerk, 535. 46  His Pandectarum veteris et novi Testamenti libri xxii of 1527ff. is excer pted in Krebs and Rott, Elsass 1 (QGT 7), 77. Carlos Ginzburg attaches much importance to this w ork as a theoretical basis for fr inge groups to deal with author itarian magistracies, whether Protestant or Catholic, Il Nicodemismo: Simulazione e dissim ulazione religiosa nell’ Europa del 1500 (Turin: Einaudi, 1970); but see below Ch. 22 n. 142.

310  the radical reformation

chapter 8.4.c / 8.4.d

great disputation from 7 t o 26 January 1528, Haller, with Wolfgang Capito and Martin Bucer from Strassburg, successively overcame the Catholic debaters; and the Bern council voted for reformation, off icially suspending the Roman rites by the mandate of 7 February. In the disputation, eight representatives of t he growing body of A nabaptists were heard by the Zwinglians on 22 January.47 These radicals included George Blaurock, John Hausmann (called Sickler) from Basel, and John Pf istermeyer. The latter, apparently converted by J acob Gross of Waldshut, the evangelist of the Aargau and cofounder of the Strassburg Anabaptist community, had swiftly emerged as the principal spokesman of Bernese Anabaptism. The interview during the recess in the Zwinglian-Catholic disputation turned out to be a judicial hearing, following which the Anabaptists were warned not to be caught in Bernese territory or they would be drowned. Between 8 a nd 15 July 1529 the f irst death sentences were executed. After the arrest of Pfistermeyer, who persisted in returning to preach in the capital of Bern, a formal debate, 19 April 1531,48 was arranged between him and several Reformed church divines, including not only Haller of Bern but also Megander and Hofmeister, both of Z urich. The question of taking interest played a c onsiderable role in the debate. Also figuring largely was the impediment, as it was argued, which the traditional system of tithes and prebends placed in the way of the divine commission of ministers to preach to the nations. In addition, there were the usual articles on military service, capital punishment, the oath, and the relationship between circumcision and baptism. On the last issue, the magisterial debaters argued that just as children enjoy the benefit of civil society before they can understand it or take their part in supporting it, so infants may begin to participate in the benefits of the community of saints without being at first able to understand them. At length, Pfistermeyer, given further opportunity to study and reflect, admitted that he could find no more scriptural texts to oppose the magisterial divines, and submitted. In fact he later (somewhat perfunctorily) sought to win back those whom he had led (Ch. 23.2). d. Bullinger’s “Von dem unverschamten frävel,” 1531 It was against Pfistermeyer and his following that Henry Bullinger (1504– 75), successor in Zurich of Z wingli (who had been slain and quartered as chaplain on the battlefield of I I Cappel, 1531), directed the first of h is 47  Leonhard von Muralt, “Das Gespräch mit den Wiedertäufern am 22. Januar 1528 zu Bern,” Zwingliana 5 (1933): 409. 48  Ein christenlich gespräch gehallten zu Bern zwüschen den Predicanten und Hansen Pfyster Meyer von Arouw den Wiedertauff, Eyd, Oberkeyt und andere Widertöufferische Artickle betreffende. Copy in Goshen (Ind.) College Library.

chapter 8.4.d

schleitheim confession of 1527  311

attacks on Anabaptism. Formerly priest in his home parish of Bremgarten (Aargau), Bullinger is introduced at this point in our narrative as a major historian of the Reformation in Switzerland and as a perceptive but tendentious chronicler and lifetime opponent of Anabaptism. Even before his call to Zurich, he had been moved by the activity of Pfistermeyer in the free territory between the towns of Zurich and Aargau (the present canton of A argau) to take up the task of r efuting the Anabaptists. Pfistermeyer’s preaching had drawn large crowds. His views on tithes and interest had caused the official ministers much discomfort. They appealed to Bullinger for a refutation of the Anabaptist position. Bullinger began his book Von demn unverschamten Frevel in April 1530 and finished it toward the end of the year. It was printed the next year in Zurich and may be compared with Zwingli’s Elenchus of 1527, dealt with above. Bullinger’s book has four sections, in the form of d ialogues between an Anabaptist sympathizer, Simon, and the defender of orthodoxy, Jojada. Two appendixes complete the work. In the course of the discussion, Jojada convinces Simon of the correctness of the established doctrine. The argument is a p opularization of t he problems and the orthodox solution to them. Although not particularly fair in representing Anabaptist views, it is moderate in tone. Bullinger deals with the problem of spirit and letter, the nature of the ministry, the need for education and a regular call, justification and sanctification, the possibility of a sinless congregation and the dangerous assumptions involved in it, rebaptism, baptism of children, the sleep of the soul, the Christian and the magistracy—the oath, tithes, interest, usury, and war; in short, with the whole catalogue of points of conflict between the Anabaptists and the magisterial churchmen, especially as those points would stand out in the mind of a plain man trying to lead a sincere Christian life. Bullinger does not deny the moderate Anabaptists a certain piety and sanctity of life, but he denies “that this devotion of theirs is without blame, or is sincere and pure,” for “they divide the church, where there is no need” 49 and “stir up sedition and tumult, and do make every rascal knave minister of God’s word.”50 His main charge against them is that they disrupt the church and offend the institution of C hrist as well as all the martyrs and confessors of h istory. His refutation is essentially moderate, perhaps so because a cousin of his had gone over to the Anabaptists.51 And though it is not his chief objection to them, he (like Kessler in the Sabbata [Ch. 6.2]) vividly describes the excesses of his opponents: 49  From the English translation, An Holesome Antidotus or Counter-Poysen against the pesty lent heresy and secte of the Anabaptistes …, tr. John Veron (London, 1548), 35, with spelling modernized. 50  Ibid., 42. 51  See above, n. 3.

312  the radical reformation

chapter 8.4.d

And whereas they be wholly given to such foul and detestable sensuality, they do interpret it to be the commandment of the heavenly Father, persuading women and honest matrons that it is impossible for them to be partakers of the Kingdom of Heaven unless they do abominably prostitute and make common their own bodies to all men, since it is written, we must forsake and renounce all things that we love best, and that we ought to suffer all kinds of infamy or reproach for Christ’s sake, besides that the publicans and harlots shall be preferred to the righteous in the Kingdom of Heaven. 52 One of their doctrines is particularly obnoxious to Bullinger, namely, That Christ did take away only original sin, aff irming that they, who do fall again, after that they be once purif ied and cleansed by the water of regeneration, shall not obtain daily remission of their sins. 53 Somewhat inconsistently he accuses them also of t he doctrine of t he restoration (apokatastasis) of all persons and of the demons as well, and mentions Anabaptists in Augsburg, in Basel, and in Moravia (an allusion to the spurious Nicolsburg Articles), which did affirm that Christ was but a prophet, saying that the ungodly persons, which for their ungodliness were damned, and the devils also, should enjoy the heavenly bliss.54 Bullinger is especially concerned with their psychopannychism: They say that the souls, after the death of t he body (if they do depart in faith), sleep in the bosom of Abraham, till the day of judgment, and that then, they enter into everlasting life. 55 Considerable space is devoted to a refutation of t he sleep of t he soul, based in part upon scriptural interpretations (“Christ proved that there was an everlasting life by h is rising again”), but largely on Bullinger’s philosophical view of the nature of the soul. Like Zwingli and the Fifth Lateran Council (Ch. 1.6.a), Bullinger holds that the soul as a spirit is liable to no bodily infirmities, neither to death, nor fatigue, nor sleep.56 The picture which Bullinger drew has strongly influenced the historian’s idea of Anabaptism and the long traditional tendency to see in the Swiss

52

 Ibid., 25–26.  Ibid., 48–49. Cf. Ch. 2.1. 54  Ibid., 24. 55  Ibid., 199. 56  Ibid., 197ff. 53

chapter 8.4.d

schleitheim confession of 1527  313

Brethren the descendants of Thomas Müntzer and the Zwickau prophets.57 The esteem which Bullinger enjoyed in England led to three translations of large sections of his work.58 Sebastian Franck (Ch. 10.3.d) included extracts from it in his Chronicle, which appeared in September of 1531. With Bullinger’s literary consolidation of the Swiss Reformed opposition to Anabaptism, with the deaths of both Zwingli and Oecolampadius, and incidentally with the departures of Paracelsus and Servetus for Alsace, we have come to a natural halting point in the history of Anabaptism in its homeland. We now pursue the development of Anabaptism of several kinds transplanted from the Confederation, South Germany, and the Austrias, to Moravia.

57  Significantly, Bullinger himself did not suggest this origin for the Swiss Anabaptists until his later work, Der Widertäufferen Ursprumg, 1560. This view had been frequently repeated, on Bullinger’s authority, by subsequent historians. Cf. Harold S. Bender, “The Zwickau Prophets, Thomas Müntzer and the Anabaptists,” MQR 27 (1953): 3–16; and esp. Heinold Fast, Heinrich Bullinger (Weierhof: Pfalz, 1959). 58  These were (1) the work cited above in n. 40; (2) “A most necessary and fruteful Dialogue, betweene ye seditious Libertin or rebel Anabaptist, and the true Christian …” (Worcester, 1551); and (3) “A most sure and strong defence of the baptisme of children, against ye pestiferous secte of the Anabaptystes” (Worcester, 1551).

Chapter 9

Radical Christianity in the Kingdom of Bohemia and the Margraviate of Moravia, 1526–1529

T he Slavic kingdom of Bohemia

and the margraviate of Moravia had already undergone a n ational reform in the fifteenth century accompanied by t he full range of sectarian and spiritualizing tendencies.1 The Unity of t he Czech Brethren (Unitas Fratrum), which had channeled the communitarian, pacifist impulses of rural and proletarian Hussitism since 1467, had itself, by 1500, polarized into a major and a minor party along discernible class lines. Thus when Swiss, South German, and Austrian Anabaptists penetrated the region as refugees, they found a religiously and ethnically checkered landscape opening before them. Although the nobility and the majority of the population were Czechs, in the mountainous crescent that formed the borders with Silesia, Saxony, Bavaria, and Austria, traders, miners, and peasants of German speech preponderated. Several towns were largely built up by Germans, and there were various enclaves of German settlers throughout both the kingdom and the margraviate. In the fifteenth century, the German-speaking population had largely remained unaffected by the enthusiasm of the Czechs for the Hussite reforms. Conversely, in the sixteenth century, it was primarily the indigenous Germans who responded to Lutheranism. Thus the outbreak of the Reforma­t ion in neighboring Saxony, beginning in 1517, and the immigration of A nabaptist refugees into Moravia, beginning in 1526, threatened to upset the 1  A recent survey of Czech church history for our period is that of Rudolf Rícan, Das Reich Gottes in den böhmischen Ländern, translated from the Czech (Stuttgart: Evangelisches Verlagswerk, 1956), with a map. See also R. R. Betts, “The Social Revolution in Bohemia and Moravia in the Later Middle Ages,” Past and Present 2 (November 1952): 23–31; Howard Kaminsky, A History of the Hussite Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967); in a larger context, Leff, Heresy in the Later Middle Ages 2: chap. ix.

314

chapter 9

radical christianity in bohemia & moravia  315

perilous religious equilibrium obtained at great cost after the ravages of the Hussite wars. Indicative of the extraordinary fluidity of the religious situation in the region was the synod convened in March 1526 by the Utraquist nobleman John Dubcanský. At his Moravian estate near Habrovany, 2 he was organizing a center of P rotestant reform and was at that early date in possession of both Lutheran and Zwinglian works. He called the synod at Austerlitz (Slavkov) to unite the evangelical parties of Moravia and Bohemia. Among the Lutherans present was Oswald Glaidt of Nicolsburg (Mikulov), whose printed report in a sole surviving copy contains several articles agreed upon (Ch. 5.5.a). 3 At the time of t he synod, Glaidt was assistant minister of the newly organized Lutheran congregation (1524) under the protection of Leonard, lord of Liechtenstein.4 Glaidt’s senior colleague was the Bavarian John Spittelmaier, assisted by t he former provost of Ol mütz (Olomouc), Martin Göschel, who had been driven from the cathedral there because of his evangelical sentiments. In July of 1526, Balthasar Hubmaier arrived in Nicolsburg and converted both Pastor Glaidt and Lord Liechtenstein to Anabaptism. The town was well on its way to becoming a major center of the Radical Reformation. Soon refugee Anabaptism, which would divide into several factions, indigenous Hussitism that had already divided into several churches and parties, Lutheranism, and Catholicism would all form a complicated patchwork of c onfessions as colorful and variegated as the manorial fields and meadows and the peasant plots of feudal Moravia itself. Although many of the Anabaptist refugee colonists, such as Hubmaier and Glaidt, came from South Germany and Switzerland, most of the immigrants streamed in from Upper Austria and the Tyrol, the dark valleys of death and heroic deeds (Ch. 7.5). They were following the familiar roads and rivers that carried salt from Salzburg into Bohemia. The opportunity for the spread of A nabaptism was much greater in the margraviate of Moravia than in the kingdom of Bohemia because the local nobility were much less amenable to control from Prague or Vienna. The provincial estates, jealous of their local autonomy and resentful of any aggressive interference from the outside, elected their own governor. There were three main royal cities: Olomouc, the seat of the bishop of Moravia;

2

 The main account of these Br ethren is that of Otakar Odložilík, “Jednota bratrska Habrovanských,” Ceský Casopis Historický 29 (1923): 1–70, 201–36. 3  Handlung yetz den XIV. tag Marcij dis XXVI.Jars, so zü Osterlytz im Merhern durch erforderte versammlung viler pfarrer un priesterschafften, auch etlicher des Adels un anderer, in Christlicher lieb und einigkeit beschehen, unn in syben ar tickel beschlossen, mit sampt der selbenn Artickel Erkläng, 1 Cor. I. The only known copy is in the National Library in Vienna, ME, 2:522; André Séguennny, ed., BD 9 (1988): 11. 4  Jakob von Falke, Geschichte der fürstlichen Häuser Liechtenstein (Vienna, 1877), 2:43.

316  the radical reformation

chapter 9

Brno (Brünn); and Znojmo (Znaim). Most of the smaller towns, such as Nicolsburg, were centers of the large manorial estates, where the local lords could act more or less as they pleased. The lords, eager for diligent cultivation of t heir estates and for industrious artisans in their hamlets, were responsible for the high degree of religious toleration in Moravia. After the death of King Louis II of Bohemia and Hungary in the battle of Mohács against the Turks in 1526, the new margrave of Moravia and the king of B ohemia and of H ungary was the Emperor’s brother, Ferdinand (1503–64), archduke of Austria and resident in Vienna from 1521 on. Ferdinand had been born in Alcalá, famous as the site of P rimate Ximénes’ brilliant humanistic university, and had been educated in Flanders in the circle around Erasmus. He now had ample opportunity in the government of his new kingdoms to show that he had assimilated the sterner rather than the more humane traits of X iménes’ tutelage, and that he was not favorable to Erasmian moderation. Before his accession to the royal dignity he had already been vigorously and personally engaged in cleansing from his Hapsburg archduchies of Upper and Lower Austria, Tyrol, Styria, and Carinthia all evangelical traits. He was well acquainted with Hubmaier’s activities in Waldshut in Hither Austria. As king on the frontier of Latin Christendom, concerned to carry out his brother’s imperial instructions, Ferdinand faced the double challenge of warding off the infidel from the gates of Vienna and of repressing the triple-headed monster of heresy within his realms without so offending the Protestant princes of the Empire that they would withhold their support from the defense of V ienna. He could channel his devout energies by specializing in the persecution of the Anabaptists, whom Lutherans, Zwinglians, and Catholics alike regarded as subversive. He appointed the nobleman Dietrich von Hartitsch as special commissioner (Provos) to hunt down Anabaptists throughout the Hapsburg realms (especially in Lower Austria). The Anabaptists of M oravia were not entirely beyond the commissioner’s reach, but Ferdinand often preferred to bypass both the Provos and the Landeshauptmann and have his orders carried through by t he bishop of Olmütz. Before recounting this story, however, we should look at the earlier dissenters from Catholicism in Ferdinand’s Slavic kingdom and its semi-autonomous margraviate. A glance back at the Hussite schism and related sects is necessary for any complete coverage of t he Radical Reformation. The very existence alongside the Roman Church in 1526 of three Czech communions deriving directly or indirectly from John Hus facilitated the extension of the patterns of toleration to the more radical German-speaking Anabaptist and Italian Antitrinitarian refugees in the same area. Moreover, there could not fail to be some interchange and mutual influence, despite the language barrier

chapter 9.1 / 9.1.a

radical christianity in bohemia & moravia  317

and ethnic antagonism between the Czechs and the German colonists of medieval times.

1. Utraquists and the Two Parties of the Unity of the Czech Brethren to 15265 Communion in both kinds,6 begun by Jacobellus ( Jakoubek) of Stribro in 1414, approved by John Hus in 1415, was in 1417 declared by the university in Prague to be indispensable for salvation. The Czech national reform movement, it will be recalled, soon divided into two main parties. a. The Hussite Legacy The moderate Utraquists took their name from their emphasis upon Communion being distributed to the laity as to the clergy “sub utraque specie.” They recruited their strength from among the nobility, the higher nationalist clergy (cf. Gallicanism), and the burghers of Prague, and were led by J ohn Rokycana7 (c. 1390–1471). The radicals, the chiliastic and communistic Taborites, composed of peasants and lesser gentry, were led by the revolutionary Utraquist priest John Želivský. They looked forward to Christ’s second coming in 1420. In that year they broke with the tradition of apostolic succession and elected their own bishop. With the failure of the expected parousia, like the Maccabeans long before them and like the Münsterites to come (Ch. 13), they became fighting saints. They supplemented their utraquist convictions with a c omplete religious and social program that was eschatologically grounded, taking their name from the hilltop encampment called Tabor ( Judg. 4:6), where the forces of Issachar and Zebulon had once assembled preparatory to fighting the Canaanite commander Sisera. The Taborites were led in battle by the one-eyed squire John Žižka.8 Utraquists and Taborites had jointly signed in 1419 the Four Articles of Prague (so designated by 1420), which demanded free preaching, commu­n ion in both kinds, the cessation of temporal rule by the clergy, and the punishment of mortal sins committed by the clergy. Together the two Hussite parties fought fiercely against the Catholic crusaders headed by the Emperor Sigismund, who, after his coronation in Prague as king of 5

 For the late fifteenth-century development and for the early y ears of the Refor mation era, the most useful study of the radical tr ends is that of P eter Brock, The Political and Social Doctrines of the Unity of the Czech Brethren (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1957). See also the biographical study of Otakar Odložilík, “Two Reformation Leaders of the Unitas Fratr um” CH 9 (1940): 253–63. 6  First served in St. Martin’s in the Wall, Prague. 7  Frederick G. Heymann, “John Rokycana: Church Reformer Between Hus and Luther,” CH 83 (1959): 3–43. 8  Frederick G. Heymann, John Zizka and the Hussite Rev olution (New York: Russell & Russell, 1969).

318  the radical reformation

chapter 9.1.a

of Bohemia in 1420, was forced by Žižka to withdraw. The united Hussites, with their battle hymn, “Ye Warriors of God,” were a terror to the crusaders. Poorly equipped peasants, armed with staves and flails, were ordinarily no match for cavalry; but Žižka developed the device of a mobile fortress by using wagons mounted with howitzers. Within the radical Taborite community, two extremist religious spokesmen emerged. In 1420 the Picard (Beghard) priest 9 Martin Houska carried the eucharistic theology of Jacobellus ( Jakoubek) de Mira of Stribro into sacramentarianism. Houska held that a T aborite priest should not put the wafer into the mouth of the communicant but should give a whole loaf to the congregation, asking the members to break and divide it among themselves. When this form was adopted, and replete suppers were organized in which the foods were actually taken by the participants into their own hands, the threshold of tolerability had been crossed, and Žižka moved into action against the “Picards” for undermining the eucharistic basis of H ussite militancy and thereby threatening the cohesiveness of Taborite society.10 Žižka was still more severe on the Adamites, a l ibertine sect who considered themselves free to behave as if in Paradise before the Fall.11 Fifty of some three hundred Adamites, banished from Tabor, were burned at his command in 1421. The fiercely puritanical Taborites, thus purified of l ibertinism and sacramentarianism, were still at odds with the Utraquists, whom Žižka besieged in Prague. It was John Rokycana, representing both the prince regent (Korybut of L ithuania) and the Utraquist masters of t he Caroline University, who negotiated, under a flag of t ruce, a r econciliation with Žižka in 1424. That year Žižka died of the plague, whereupon his followers took as their name “the Orphaned.” In 1433 at the Council of Basel, Rokycana, as spokesman of moderate Czech religious nationalism, negotiated the conciliar approval of the Prague articles, revised as the Prague Compactata. Solemnly ratified in Bohemia and accepted by Emperor Sigismund, the Compactata were thenceforth the legal 9  “Picard” is a deformation of the term “beghard,” F. M. Bartoš, “Picards et ‘Picarti,’” Bulletin de la Société d’histoire du Protestantisme français 80 (1931): 465–86; 81 (1932): 8–28. 10  Kaminsky, Hussite Revolution, 422. For Jacobellus, see above n. 5. 11  There are three principal sources for their history: the Prague Utraquist Lawrence of Brezová; Peter Chelcický, O rotách ceských (Concerning the Czech Bands), 1450; and Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (Pius II), Historia Bohemica, 1451. See Kaminsky , cited abo ve; Enrico C. S. Molnár, “Naturism in Chr istian History and Theology”; Thomas Büttner and Er nst Werner, Circumcellionen und Adamiten: Zwei For men mittelalterlicher Haeresie (Berlin: AkademieVerlag, 1959); idem. Nachrichten über spätmittelalterlic he Ketzer aus tsc hechoslovakischen Archiven und Bibliotheken, Beilage zur Wissenschaftlichen Zeitschrift der Karl-Marx-Uni versität Leipzig, gesellschafts- und sprachwissenschaftliche Reihe 12 (1963): Heft 1; Ernst Werner, Der Kirchenbegriff bei J an Hus, Jakoubek von Mies [J acobellus of St ríbro], Jan Zelivský und den Linken Taboriten, SB, Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften, Klasse für Philosophie, etc., 10 (Berlin, 1967); and Leff, Heresy in the Later Middle Ages 1:399–400.

chapter 9.1.a

radical christianity in bohemia & moravia  319

bases for the existence of a semiautonomous national Utraquist Church of the Czech people alongside the fully Roman minority, the principal mark of the national Church being the use of the chalice in the communion of the laity. The dissatisfied Orphaned Taborites, who had fallen out again with the Utraquists, were decisively defeated at Lipany (near Böhmischbrod/Cesky Brod) in 1434. Out of the disintegration of the Taborites as a military power, a new radical movement began to clarify its religious convictions and reconceive its role. The transformation of the defeated Taborites was directed by three leaders. The first was Wenceslas Koranda the Elder, initially close to Žižka in the belligerent chiliasm of t he early period. The second was Nicholas of Pelhirimov, called the “little bishop” (Biskupek) because of his election as head of t he Taborite clergy in 1420 in recognition of h is great erudition and his important apologia for the movement. The third was Peter Payne, master of Oxford, sole survivor of the older Wycliffism in Bohemia, a capable diplomat who had represented the Orphaned Taborites at the Council of Basel. A notable event in the development of t he altered relations of t he Utraquists and the chastened Taborites was the theological disputation, concerning the Eucharist, held at the synod of K utná Horá (Kuttenberg) in 1443. The conservative Utraquists, led by R okycana, maintained that Christ was essentialiter and naturaliter, that is, by substance and by nature in the eucharistic elements. The Taborites, intent upon the anticlerical significance of l ay communion with the chalice, denied a physical presence of Christ in the sacrament and spoke rather of a sacramental mode of his presence. In his philosophical eucharistic realism, Rokycana went, interestingly, much farther than the Romanists. He argued for the substantial or physical presence of Christ, first in the wine and then the bread, with two distinct intentions. As with the Romanists, Christ was present in his entirety in each element. But Rokycana argued also that Jesus would never have instituted the double action without a double purpose. Accordingly, Christ is substantially (1) in the wine, as blood washing away sin, and (2) in the bread, as a body enabling the believer to be united with him.12 Rokycana, representing the aspirations of t he conservative nationalists, the Czech magnates, knights, squires (veltava), and the burghers of P rague, had been elected archbishop of P rague by a s pecial committee of t he Bohemian diet, but because of h is distinctive eucharistic theology and his irregular election, his position was never confirmed by t he Pope. Hence he was never able to occupy the cathedral, on the castle side of the Moldau, which remained throughout that century and the next in the hands of the Romanist canons. 12

 Heymann, “Rokycana,” 23–24. Cf. Carlstadt’s view (Ch. 3.1).

320  the radical reformation

chapter 9.1.a

Rokycana’s procathedral was on the right bank in the old city, the famous chapel opposite the Týn, which was the great court of the merchants. Under his preaching, in which he drew upon the evangelical ideals of the earliest associates and forerunners of Hus, a loose fellowship of his “hearers” sprang up inside and outside of Prague. We cannot here rehearse the story of the Hussite civil wars during the ineffectual reigns of Albert of Austria (1437–39) and his son Ladislas Posthumus (1439–57), except to note the rise of the young nobleman George of Podebrady, who seized Prague in 1448, devoted himself to reconciling the Catholics and Utraquists and to this end suppressed the radicals by the capture of Tabor in 1452. Thereupon he was generally regarded as the lawful administrator of the kingdom.13 Although George succeeded in bringing back Ladislas into Prague, the king died and George himself was elected king (1459–71). Since the Catholic liturgical order of coronation, dating from Charles IV, included the traditional privilege of the royal communion in both kinds, Utraquists were content to regard their somewhat compromised ruler as a t rue Hussite, even though the coronation Mass was entirely in the hands of Romanists. He, for his part, regarded himself as the king of Both Peoples and he occasionally convoked national synods of b oth parties/churches. In this new situation, with a H ussite king consecrated by Romanist clerics, with the Utraquist archbishop-elect still unable to occupy the cathedral within the shadow of the castle, and with the radical Taborites twice crushed, a new form of popular Hussitism was on the point of emerging, this time socially egalitarian and utterly pacifistic. Waldensians,14 evangelical Taborites, fellowships made up of Rokycana’s “hearers,” and other brotherhoods were to be drawn into this inchoate Unity of the Czech Brethren. The spiritual father of the Unitas Fratrum 15 was the pacifistic Utraquist squire Peter Chelcický (1379/81–c. 1467). In his True Net of Faith, he deplored the excesses of t he Emperor, of t he Pope, and by i mplication of even a Hussite king, all of whom were like whales in their huge and unrestrained power, tearing the simple net of P eter the Fisherman and permitting the little people of Bohemia and other lands to escape salvation. Elsewhere, expressive of the pacifism which pervades his works, this 13  See Otakar Odložilík, The Hussite King: Bohemia in European Affairs 1440–1471 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1965); and Fr ederick G. Heymann, George of Bohemia, King of Heretics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965). 14  Romolo Cegna, “I valdesi di Moravia nell’ultimo medio evo,” Rivista di Storia di letteratura religiosa 1 (1965): 392–423; Amedeo Molnár, “Les 32 Er rores Valdensium de la Bohême ,” Bollettino della Società di studi Valdesi (Torre Pellice): Subalpina No. 115, 3f.; “Les Vaudois en Bohême avant la Révolution hussite,” ibid. 85 (1964): No. 64, 3–19. 15  Erhard Peschke, Die Theologie der Böhmisc hen Brüder in ihrer Frühz eit, Vol. 1 (Stuttgar t, 1935); Matthew Spinka, “Peter Chelcický, The Spiritual Father of the Unitas Fratrum,” CH 12 (1943): 1ff.; Joseph T. Müller, Geschichte der Böhmischen Brüder, vol. 1 (Herrnhut, 1922).

chapter 9.1.a

radical christianity in bohemia & moravia  321

spokesman of t he First Reformation, in his On the Holy Church, made it clear that his opposition was not to the fact that the faithful had been forced to suffer under the burdens placed upon them by the authorities: The Apostle set the faithful under the manifest pagans for worthy reasons, but he did not join the two together in the faith. The worst thing is that this paganism is accepted into the faith and is joined with it, and it has already corrupted the faith, even while it now poses as beneficial to the faith—this is what repels me.16 Peter Chelcický considered the Church to have fallen when Pope Sylvester accepted the temporal donation from Constantine “eleven hundred years before” (thereby fixing this round number in the literature of dissent well into the seventeenth century, by then long since detached from the original Constantinian event).17 His radical reconception of Hussitism as an apostolic restitution attracted the favorable attention of John Rokycana, who in turn recommended Peter to a group of his devout followers, led by his nephew Gregory (d. 1474). It was, in fact, Rokycana who enabled them, when they came to form a religious community, to settle in Kunvald in 1458 on an estate of t he Utraquist King George of Podebrady. Calling themselves at first Brethren of C hrist’s Gospel, they drew together by visitation and correspondence several other similar brotherhoods. They negotiated for a merger with the Waldensians but were restrained from union with them because of their disappointment at the extent to which the apostolic ideal of poverty and the community of goods seemed to have been allowed to lapse among many of the Waldensian leaders. By 1467 the Brethren of Kunvald, under Brother Gregory’s leadership, took the decisive step in their radical reconception of the Christian life, and at a synod at Lhotka (near Rychnov) organized as a church separate from the Utraquists (the majority of the Czech people) and the Romanists (both Czechs and Germans). All the elders were solemnly rebaptized. Calling themselves now the Unitas ( Jednota) Fratrum, they eschewed the term “church,” which they reserved for the universal company of t he faithful. They understood themselves to be firstfruits of a m ore general reformation. Selecting by l ots three of t heir number to be priests, and choosing one of them, Matthew, as their bishop, they secured ordination

16  On the Holy Church and another tr eatise, On the Triple Division of Society, are translated, with an intr oduction by Howard Kaminsky in Studies in Mediev al and Renaissance Histor y 1 (1964), ed. William M. Bowsky, 105–79. 17  In chap. 75 of part of the Net, Chelcický in 1440 was more precise in his allusion to Pope Sylvester (324–35) when he wrote that “in the course of eleven centuries and some years which have passed since the moment when the poison [of temporal endowment] was poured into the Church.” Amedeo Molnár, “Ben hamil e cent anç compli enti rament (En marge de la Nob la Leiczon), BSSV 83, no. 113 (1963): 108–9.

322  the radical reformation

chapter 9.1.a / 9.1.b

from a l ocal but unnamed Waldensian elder, who reordained the local priest Michael of K unvald, who was sympathetic to the Brethren. The latter, with both a Roman and now a Waldensian ordination, consecrated Matthew bishop. Matthew, in turn, consecrated the two brethren already chosen for the new priesthood and reconsecrated Michael, as a priest of the new Unity. As we have already anticipated, this pious, pacifistic Unity went so far in their sectarian exclusiveness as to practice the rebaptism of all converts, not only from Roman Catholicism but also from Utraquism. In 147818 they defended their views before the Utraquist masters of t he Caroline University. b. The Schism of the Minor Party and the Major Party of the Unity of the Czech Brethren on the Eve of the Protestant Reformation The Unity of the Brethren, completely separated from the Utraquist state and traditional society, began on the threshold of the Second Reformation to break up into a burgher party disposed to make some accommodations to civic life, in order to be spared molestation and persecution from the Utraquists and the Catholics, and a rural party still strictly adherent to the ideals of Peter Chelcický and Brother Gregory. By the edict of the synod of Brandýs in 1490 the inner council of the Unity, seeking to mitigate the pacifistic anarchism and community of goods of the earlier days, had permitted members to remain in good standing even though they accepted civic offices and in other ways responded to the demands of state and town life. The rural rigorists, led by Brother Jacob Štekenský and Brother Amos of Vodnany (born in Uherský Brod in Moravia), resisted the edict, holding that for all its pious hedging it effectually nullified the testimony and sacrifices of all the faithful in years gone by. Bishop Matthew, siding somewhat reluctantly with the party of accommodation, was the target of their attacks as the betrayer of t he tradition of w hich he should have been, in their view, the most courageous custodian. Although the rigorists tempo­ rarily regained control of the inner council, at a synod in Rychnov in 1495 the concessions to life in civil society were reaffirmed.19 In protest, Brother Jacob declared in an encyclical letter against Bishop Matthew and Brother John Klenovský, a prime mover in the Major (burgher) Party: But now the Brethren say: Let us, therefore, open the gates of the fold in order to gather in more sheep. And when they have opened up the fold, the sheep that are already there run out and the wolves 18

 Husa, Tomas Müntzer, 77 n. 242.  Miloˇ s Strupl takes this date as marking off the first period (1468–95) from a second period (1495–1531) in the history of the Unity, “Confessional Theology of the Unitas Fratrum,” CH 33 (1964): 279–93. 19

chapter 9.1.b

radical christianity in bohemia & moravia  323

tear them to pieces. … The gates are God’s commandments and the prohibitions of Christ the strait path and the narrow doorway. And whoever broadens these, … saying that a Brother may become an alderman and a judge, and takes oaths, is like unto a rogue and a thief who comes not in by the door.20 Jacob also complained that the Major Party leaders of t he Unity no longer went about preaching the gospel as the apostles had, but “have settled in one place and concern themselves with their parsonages …, leading a peaceful existence.” 21 A n otably irenic parley took place between the spokesmen of the two parties at Chlumec on the river Cidlina, 23 May 1496. Significantly, the rural party for the first time in the tradition of the Unity appealed for sanction to a legendary Peter Waldo who had purportedly assailed Constantius for his Arianism and for his interference with the apostolic Church.22 In the meantime an event of importance, even beyond Bohemian borders, had taken place between the Utraquist Church governed by a c onsistorium in Prague, answerable to the diet, and the Romanists who still held St. Vitus cathedral. In the colloquy that concluded with the Religious Peace or Treaty of Kutná Horá (Kuttenberg), 13 March 1485, it was agreed that the two parties, Utraquist and Roman, would henceforth live side by side on the basis of t wo presumed unities, the unity of t he kingdom of Bohemia and the unity in Christ in the same Church, although under different disciplines. The largely irenic parallel convocations of the clergy of the two obediences in the same realm, mutual in bi-ritual tolerance, worked all the better for the reason that in the Bohemian diet the ecclesiastical estate (each estate a curia) had been eliminated in the Utraquist thrust toward a lay-dominated system. The Peace of Kutná Horá would become a model for eventual bi-ritual and interconfessional irenicism into the next two centuries (cf. Ch. 28.3). 23 Returning now to the schism within the Unity, it was consummated in 1500, when Jacob wavered and the remaining chief of the Minor Party (Malá strana), Amos, boldly proceeded to the ordination of a s eparate priesthood for his “Amosites.” At the same time the Major Party was reconstituted by t he election of a c ollegiate episcopacy of four elders to succeed Bishop Matthew. The Amosites tended to be anti-Nicene under the continuing influence of Brother Matthew (Matouš) of Lanškroun, 20

 Brock, Political and Social Doctrines, 153.  Ibid., 154. 22  Amedeo Molnár, “Les Vaudois et l’Unité des Frèr es Tchèques,” BSSV 86, no. 118 (1965): 3–16. 23  J. K. Zeman, “The Rise of Relig ious Liberty in the Czech Refor mation,” Central European History 6 (1973): 128–47. 21

324  the radical reformation

chapter 9.1.b

who had become closely associated with Jacob and Amos in the formative years of the Minor Party. Though briefly expelled from the (incompletely divided) Unity as early as 1488 for denying the divinity of C hrist (he cited doubting Thomas, John 20:25), Brother Matthew was rehabilitated as their chief spokesman at the disputation at Chlumec. In the course of his career, sojourning in many towns, Matthew is recorded as having proposed leaving the Old Testament to the Jews; and, on the basis of the New Testament alone, he opposed not only the civic oath but also capital punishment. He was perhaps the first self-avowed Unitarian in the century of the Reformation. 24 As an indication of the accumulated bitterness one must note with sorrow that the Amosites wrote in 1503 to King Ladislas II (1471–1516), suggesting that the recent constitutional changes within the Unity were seditious in intent. As a result of this denunciation of Major Brethren by Minor Brethren the angered and alarmed Jagiellon king was moved to persecute the “Unity” with renewed vigor, and several of the conservatives were burned. For the rural dissenters the melancholy schism had come about because the townsmen among the Brethren would no longer accept all the precepts of Christ as renewed by Chelcický and Brother Gregory. For the main body of the Unity the issue was rather a matter of discipline and love. The Major Party would always have upheld the rural Brethren in their conscientious adherence to the rigorous standards of Chelcický and Brother Gregory, but they deplored the intolerance exhibited by the dissenters in their vilification of those members of the Unity who had acquired property and social responsibilities or been converted to the fellowship from the ranks of the gentry and higher nobility. Although it was the rigoristic Amosites who were most like the Anabaptists and would in due course make overtures to them, we shall first round out our account by d escribing more fully the position of t he main body of t he Unity under their chief spokesman in the first quarter of t he Reformation era. Brother Luke of Prague (c. 1458–1528), 25 a Utraquist with a B.A. from the university, joined the Unity circa 1482, before the schism. His role within the sectarian Major Party, which was to become the main bearer of the Czech Brethren tradition abroad (e.g., in Poland), was analogous to that of the future Faustus Socinus’ remolding the pacifistic baptist 24  Waclaw Urban has dealt ar chivally and mono graphically with the anti-Nicene vie ws that expressed themselves among all sectar ies, Der Antitrinitarismus in den Bömisc hen Ländern [Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia] und in der Slow akei [Upper Hungar y] im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert, with map, Bibliotheca Dissidentium, Scripta et Studia 2 (Baden-Baden: Koerner, 1986). He deals with Matouš, 20–21. 25  A solid study is that of Amedeo Molnár, “Bratr Lukáš,” Theologia Evangelica, Vol. 1 (Prague: Husová ceskoslovenska evangelická fakulta bohoslovska, 1948). There is a good deal of fresh material by the same author in “Luc de Prague et les Vaudois d’Italie,” BSSV 70, no. 90 (1949): 40–64.

chapter 9.1.b

radical christianity in bohemia & moravia  325

Polish Brethren in Raków, c. 1580 (Ch. 29.8). Brother Luke reintroduced certain principles of sacramental theology derived from the thought of John Rokycana. Ever seeking the ideal apostolic Church, in 1491, drawn in part by the legend of Prester John, Luke and four Brethren together visited Constantinople. Separately they went on to Moscow, Alexandria, and the Greece of St. Paul, disappointed in what they found. In 1498 Luke with a single companion, John, visited Italy primarily, it would appear, to assure himself firsthand that Rome was in as wretched an estate as the Hussites had always maintained. He arrived in Florence in May when Jerome Savonarola was being burned for excoriating the papacy of Rome. He established contact with Waldensians in Fabriano but he could not regard them wholeheartedly as apostolic (Ch. 21.1). And indeed in his Commentary on the Apocalypse in 1501, he listed benignly among heresies, the Waldensians whom he dated from the time of Constantine or Constantius, and in his famous letter of December 1509 to King Ladislas Jagiello in Prague against the royal edict of expulsion, he expressly argued that the Brethren were not latter-day Waldensians but true and licit heirs of Hussitism. Between his visits to Constantinople and Rome, Brother Luke composed his Bark (1493, revised in 1512), setting forth his ideal of the Church 26 as a vessel blown by the Spirit. In a second part he defined the Antichrist not as a person but as any ecclesial system that would put the ministerial peculiarities of a c hurch as a human organization in the place of the universal Church, as did the Council of Constance with respect to the Eucharist. The formal principle27 of Unity theology as expressed by Luke, going back terminologically to a s cholastic distinction in sacramental theology but now boldly applied to the Church as a whole and to all its doctrines, was the distinction between the essential, ministerial (or ministrative), and the incidental (purely human). Things essential include on the objective side the fact that salvation rests wholly on election, the work of t he whole triune God, and on the subjective side the possession of “living faith,” “infallible love,” and eschatological “hope”—in that order, based upon 1 Thess. 1:3 and Col. 1:4. In thus rearranging the three theological virtues, Luke understood the essential things, not with Thomas Aquinas as the fruit of i nfused grace, but with Duns Scotus as the gifts of the Holy Spirit.28 The essential things are 26  Only a second version composed in 1512 survives in a unique Czech MS in the National Museum in Prague. Molnár assumes that the thr ust of the two versions is identical and sum marizes the content. Cf. his “Luc de Prague,” 44–47. 27  The formal principle has been clarified by Amedeo Molnár, “Výchozí zásady bratrského bohosloví,” Jednota bratrská 30 (1953): 116. 28  Molnár in Rícan, Das Reich Gottes (Czech edition, 428–29), cf. Strupl, “Confessional Theology,” n. 5.

326  the radical reformation

chapter 9.1.b

appropriated by reason of the ministrative things, foremost of which is the Church itself, then its power of the keys, and then the sacraments. Scripture is also ministrative, occupying a special place between the essential and the administrative. It is noteworthy that in reacting against the tenacious biblicism and ethical traditionalism of the Minor Unity, Luke heard the voice of God, not in the written word, but in the life and order of the ongoing community as the bearer of t he Word. Luke stressed the collective nature of the Christian search and answer: “Christ is to be sought among the living, and not among the dead … or on a dead page.” 29 The faith of the Church was for him the key to the Scriptures, actualized in the communion of saints and above the Scriptures. The Church was nevertheless understood as limited in its teachings by the Bible: “Christ has deposited the entire truth in the … Holy Scripture, and conf ined the Church to it.” 30 Thus, there were no doctrines or precepts stemming from Chelcický or any other revered forebear which could not be altered from time to time if a b etter understanding of S cripture should so dictate. Luke’s broad understanding of C hristian righteousness and the Christian responsibility in the world did not, however, mean a relaxation of church discipline. In Luke’s scheme, the Word of G od was God’s substantial work in Christ alone; but by e xtension it was also the word of S cripture as the echo and the sign of the revelatory action. Christ was present in the Bible “declaratively,” but not “ministerially,” or in a “substantial” way; for Luke insisted against literalists near and far on distinguishing “between the outer letter of the law … and the inner truth which is comprised in it.”31 Moreover, since faith comes from hearing (Rom. 10:17), not from reading, in Luke’s view it was only through the preaching of the Church ministerially that the biblical Word assumed actuality. Preaching was not automatically redemptive, however, for its success depended on the free activity of t he Holy Spirit. Luke suspected that Luther’s confidence in the power of t he preached word was close to magic. The basic themes of Luke’s Christology are given in his teaching about the modi essendi Christi,32 which also helps explain his doctrine of the Eucharist. The scheme goes back to the three great Taborite theologians, whose Christology he elaborated and perfected. According to Luke, Christ (1)

29

 Molnár, “Lukáš,” 11.  Ibid., 113. 31  Ibid., 82. 32  Ibid., 48. 30

chapter 9.1.b

radical christianity in bohemia & moravia  327

was “corporally” on earth and is glorified in heaven, (2) is omnipresent “virtually” in the government of the world, (3) is “spiritually” present in the Church of the faithful by his grace and the gift of the Spirit, and (4) is present in all the sacraments. The Major Unity retained the seven medieval sacraments (including orders, linked to a celibate episcopacy and priesthood) under the leadership of Elder (Bishop) Luke, who could not agree with Luther that the sacraments, to be true and valid, had to be directly instituted by J esus Christ. Although the Brethren agreed with Rome as to the number of t he sacraments, they differed in their interpretation. It was the redemptive act of Christ, not the ministerial sacrament of t he Church, which was “substantial.” A s acrament as “ministerial” might not always be valid. Luke, for example, defended anew in a book published in 1521 the practice of rebaptizing converts from Catholicism and the Utraquist Church. Baptism, for Luke, had a twofold purpose: (1) to testify to the new birth, and (2) to bring the candidate into the spiritual body of the church. As to infant baptism, he said that the children of the Unity were being baptized only with a view to their future faith, which would be professed by the grown child in the sacrament of confirmation. As for the Eucharist, in Luke’s theology the bread was Christ’s natural and spiritual body in a spiritual manner. Luke separated the body from the rest of the person of Christ, insisting that since Scripture spoke only of the body, there was no question of the whole Christ being present; he therefore rejected adoration of the elements. He did not explain how Christ’s body, by itself, could be of s alutary significance. Luke preserved the traditional Unity view of a s pecial sacerdotal order in the Church, which, however, presupposed both the unique priesthood of Christ and the spiritual priesthood of all believers. In his conception of penance, Luke made a d istinction between penance and penitence, and stressed that the latter could not be reduced to specific moments in life, but was rather the posture of a Christian throughout his entire life. Sacramental penance was but a natural consequence of penitence. Although a Christian could find forgiveness without sacramental absolution in case of necessity, one should ordinarily make one’s confession before a priest as an ambassador of Christ. The priest’s power to “bind” and to “loose” was a part of the power of the keys, which to the Czech Brethren was a cardinal possession of the Church by means of which the body of Christ was continually being purged and healed. At first Luther’s attitude toward the Brethren (called by h im Pighardi), whom he failed adequately to distinguish from the Waldensians, was hostile, like that of all orthodox Saxons, who on principle hated Czech heretics whether “marauding and bellicose” or pacifistic. Luther first referred to the Unity in his lectures on

328  the radical reformation

chapter 9.1.b

the Psalms in 1513, then again in his lectures on Romans in 1516, where he was arguing directly against Brother Luke. 33 At the Leipzig disputation in 1519, when Luther insisted that Christ and not the Pope is the sole head of the communion of saints, John Eck taunted him with being a Hussite; and on 5 July, Luther returned from the dinner recess, having read the minutes of t he Council of C onstance concerning Hus, and boldly declared that the council had erred. By 1520 he had read Hus’s De ecclesia and presently had it printed, avowing his complete change of mind concerning the once hated Hussites: Without being aware of it, I have till now taught and held the whole doctrine of John Hus, and John Staupitz has taught the same things in ignorance. In short, we are all Hussites without knowing it, and therefore Paul and Augustine are literally Hussites.34 Then from Litomyšl came the youthful John Roh (German: Horn), a Unitas deacon, who visited Luther three times in 1522, initially on his own, but subsequently as the authorized envoy of Bishop Luke. By now Luther was able to distinguish between the Utraquists and the Unity. With the former Luther felt more affinity. Luther was disconcerted by the practice of anabaptism among the Unity and by their apparent sacramentarianism in refusing to kneel before the eucharistic elements. His Vom Anbeten des Sakraments des heiligen Leichnams Christi (1523) 35 dealt with their interpretation of t he divine presence in the sacrament of t he altar, and he insisted, in connection with baptism, that it was the present faith of the church and not the intended resolution of the child at confirmation which made infant baptism valid. Despite outstanding differences with the magisterial reformers (Luther and Zwingli), the Utraquists and the main body of the Unity were being considered by Luther in 1520 as essentially evangelical, i.e., solafideist, just as by 1530 the Swiss Reformers would so consider the Italian Waldensians (Ch. 21.2). After the death of Brother Luke in 1528, his Major Party would even formally abandon the practice of r ebaptizing converts, lest they be confused with the incoming Anabaptists, although the impulse seems to have lived on (Ch. 25.4). Such fear, however, was not the attitude of the Minor Unity, the Amosites. These rigorists under Brother Amos and, after his death in 1522, under his successor Brother John Kalenec, until the middle of the century, were quite favorably disposed toward the German communitarian Anabaptists settling among them. Had the Minor Party been more generally 33

 S. Harrison Thompson, “Luther and Bohemia,” ARG 44 (1953): 16–181.  To Spalatin, c. 14 February 1520, WA BR, 2, no. 254. 35  WA 11:431–56; translated into Czech by Roh. 34

chapter 9.1.b

radical christianity in bohemia & moravia  329

known, they would not have been considered by either Luther or Zwingli as true Protestants. The leading principles of t he Amosites amid the consolidated schism were the virtues of suffering and poverty, obedience to the laws of Christ upon the Mount and to the precepts of Chelcický, and grateful acceptance of smallness as ever the mark of G od’s righteous remnant. Besides their pacifism and their refusal to take the civic oath or assume any magisterial office, their leadership became expressly Christocentric unitarian and petulantly and polemically, even if somewhat learnedly, sectarian. Kalenec (c. 1490–after 1546), born a Utraquist, was a cutler by trade, who lived outside the walls of Prague. About 1520 he had come under the influence of one of the four priests of the Minor Party, John Cvilda, a furrier, and that of John Poduška, Utraquist pastor in the Týn parish of P rague, who for his part had come to espouse Lutheranism. When Kalenec became an Amosite, the Minor Unity took on, locally, new life. The Brethren met in his house in the Újezd district. Here he rebaptized and administered the communion wine from a w ooden chalice to emphasize Christus pauper. Here his followers were relatively safe from probing constables under the control of the Utraquists. Kalenec began his reading of Church history, the Hussite sources, Erasmus, and the Saxon and Swiss Reformers, eventually acquiring competence in German, Latin, and perhaps Greek. Not unlike Matous, he was a Christocentric unitarian baptist. 36 At this time about three quarters of Prague was Utraquist; that is, most of “the old town” and “the new town” outside the old walls, situated on the right bank opposite the complex of c onvents, houses, the cathedral, and the castle on the high left bank, which always remained Romanist. Under dissolute Jagiellonian King Louis II (1516–26) there had emerged a radical Utraquist party disgusted with this corrupt Catholic youth and much attracted by the prospect of a more thorough national reform under Lutheran auspices. It was this party among the Utraquists (destined to be known as Neo-Utraquists) who had solemnly welcomed Thomas Müntzer as a L utheran (Ch. 3.2) in June 1521 and opened to him the foremost preaching stations in the old and the new towns and lodged him for four months with the masters in the Collegium Carolinum in the old town. When Müntzer left the masters to proclaim more boldly his radical eschatological and social convictions, he was not so likely to have found a hearing among the Brethren of the Major Unity (whose leaders, in any event, were not in Prague) as among the humble followers of K alenec outside the walls. Müntzer’s Prague Manifesto 37 of November 1521 would

36  Urban, Antitrinitarismus, 21–32 and passim. Urban deals with the bibliography of Kalenec and Andreas Fischer in Bibliotheca Dissidentium, Scripta et Studia 6. 37  See above, Ch. 3 n. 43.

330  the radical reformation

chapter 9.1.b

surely have been heard by, or at least well known to, the Amosites in and around Prague, and it would have awakened in them the memory of the chiliastic Taborite eschatology of the heroic days. And, although as an ardent pacifist Kalenec would have understood the eschatological role of his followers, the righteous remnant of a r emnant in the latter days, somewhat as did John Hut after his conversion to pacifistic Anabaptism, still he would have been stirred by the trumpetings and the garish hues of Müntzer’s apocalyptic vision and Manifesto. Kalenec soon sought to revive the revolutionary social ideals of Chelcický and Brother Gregory and even perhaps of the older Czech evangelical theologians before them. In the meantime, on the broader front, in the Bohemian diet of 1508, the socially conservative Utraquists joined with the Romanists, territorially a minority, in the mandate of St. James that was intended to rid Bohemia of the sectarian (separatist) Unitas Fratrum. Most of these Czech Brethren were driven out of B ohemia proper but were welcomed as enterprising refugees in the quasi-autonomous margraviate of Moravia, whence they to this day derive their other name, Moravian Brethren. Full, constitutionally sanctioned confessional pluralism emerged first in Europe in the dietine of Moravia in 1528. Moravia, unlike Bohemia proper, which had excluded the ecclesiastical estate from the diet of the kingdom and made two houses of magnates and knights, had instead retained their ecclesiastical estate of bishops and abbots. Indeed the prelatical estate, the Utraquists among them, joined the lords temporal and the burgher estate and resisted from the start the obliterative St. James mandate of P rague intended for all lands under the Bohemian crown. In the first article of t he first message of t he three Moravian estates in 1528 to their newly elected King Ferdinand, the dietine urged that the Hapsburg king “might allow all and every one of us to persevere unhindered in the faith of the Law of God [of the Scriptures] and of the Christian religion so that everyone might serve the Lord God in freedom and peace according to what one considers the right following of the Law and Teaching of the Lord.”38 Although many Czech Brethren of both parties/churches of the Unity had fled to Moravia, Kalenec held on in the Prague suburbs. When the conservative party among the Utraquists regained control of t he Prague city council, all sectaries suffered. In December 1524, Kalenec, along with an unnamed German-speaking journeyman painter, was arrested, branded, and driven from the capital. He established himself in Moravia at Letovice under the patronage of lord Christopher Cernohorský. He gathered a congregation about him. It was apparently under his leadership that the Minor Unity adopted the wooden sword or staff as the symbol of their pacifism. As early as 1523, Brother Luke wrote contemptuously of t heir 38

 Zeman, “Ris,” 128–47.

chapter 9.1.b

radical christianity in bohemia & moravia  331

“angrily and poisonously condemning other people” by taking up the way of nonviolence so ostentatiously: “I highly disapprove of these vain Pharisees wandering around with staves, who display their righteousness.” 39 In Moravia, Kalenec sought contacts with other sectaries such as the fifteenth-century spiritualizers, the Nicholites (Vlˇasenici, from Nicholas of Vˇl asenice); and when the Anabaptists began to settle in Moravia, Kalenec wrote to them at once as follows: “We rejoice at the fact that you have condemned infant baptism, baptizing a second time in faith, and also that you have attained the equality of the First Kingdom, that is, of the Church, where none may say: This is mine.”40 Although the sacramentarian, iconoclastic, and perhaps philo-Judaic followers of K alenec were for some time equivocal in their adherence to the received doctrine of t he Trinity, the Major Unity centered in Mlaˇd a Boleslav ( Jungbunzlau) would charge the Unity Brethren in Habrovany under Dubcanský (n. 2) with Antitrinitarianism in the manuscript tract Buoh vydal (God commanded, 1533). The assailed, who, in fact, adhered to the received doctrine of the Trinity, but differed from the followers of Kalenec on baptism, would respond anonymously in the MS tract Spis z písm S. (Script out of Scripture, 1534), charging both Kalenec of the Minor Unity and the theologically radical Anabaptists with explicit Antitrinitarianism in eight articles.41 Several of Kalenec’s writings are lost or accessible only in MSS. In his Psaní k sektam na Morav√, 1 M ay 1542 (Letter to the sects in Moravia [especially the Hutterites in Slavkov]),42 Kalenec complained that all the other sects and churches failed to grasp the truth of the one God the Father and then, intemperately, but with much rehearsal of patristics and the school men, assailed all groupings for error and immorality: Romanists, Utraquists, the Hutterites, but especially the Major Unity.43 Because of t he importance of t he Major Unity of t he Czech Brethren in their own right in Bohemia (destined to survive as the German39

 Brock, Political and Social Doctrines, 253. Verduin, Stepchildren, chap. 2, “Stäbler,” has gathered indications that the staff w as a sign of the penitent Ir o-Scottish pilgrim monks, the Flagellants, and the Waldensian barbs. For its adoption in Poland by Peter Gonesius, see Ch. 25.2 n.17. 40  Brock, Political and Social Doctrines, 252. Brock is here translating from materials supplied by Odložilík, “Habrovanských,” Ceský Casopis, 357, where it is dated infer entially as of 1524, but it is undoubtedly after 1526. The reference is to Anabaptists who have come from “above,” i.e., no doubt fr om the Alps or up the Dan ube. All of this is illuminated the study of J arold Knox Zeman, The Anabaptists and the Cz ech Brethren in Mor avia 1526: A Study of Or igins and Contacts (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1969). Parts of this have also appeared as “Historical Topography of Moravian Anabaptists,” MQR 40 (1966) and other issues. 41  Urban, Antitrinitarismus, 24–25. This counts as the second pub lished work against Antitrinitarianism in European Church history after that of Althamer, Nuremberg, 1526 (Ch. 7 n. 12). 42  Ibid., 26, and esp. n. 54. 43  Ibid., 26–27.

332  the radical reformation

chapter 9.1.b

ized Moravian Brethren from their base in Herrnhut) and because of their importance in especially Great Poland where they just might have been the Slavic ecclesiastical stock into which a Polish Reformed national church (c. 1550) could have been grafted (Ch. 25.1.c), we record here their succession of presidents of t he (international) council in Mladá Boleslav after Luke (1517–28): namely, Bishop Martin Škoda (1528–32), John Roh (Horn; 1532–47), and John Augusta (1547–72). In the progressive Protestantization of the Major Unity under John Roh and John Augusta in the period from 1531 to the banishment in 1547 (Ch. 15.1), an accommodation to the Luther-Reformation on the part of t he sectarian survivals of t he “First Reformation” would be achieved at Mladá Boleslav precisely in 1532. This was also the year when the vast majority of t he Italian and French Waldensians adhered in synod at Cianforan in 1532 (Ch. 21.2) to the Reformed version of the “Second Reformation.” In both cases the medieval sectaries largely yielded to the basic principle of t he Magisterial Reformation that the state has “episcopal” and disciplinary power over the church. The Major Unity of the Czech Brethren, at their synod of Jablonec (near Jungbunzlau) in 1534, under the inf luence of L uther and perhaps because of the notoriety of the Anabaptists of Münster (Ch. 13), disavowed their rebaptism of converts, only one priest resisting the consensus; and they embodied their intention of suspending their earlier practice in the Confessio presented to King Ferdinand in 1535; it is likely that several of the Unity congregations beyond the administrative center in Moravia, notably in Silesia under the Bohemian crown, persisted in the sectarian, exclusivist believers’ baptism that would have fused with the Germanic Anabaptist impulses in the same region.44 In correspondence with Bucer and the Strassburg reformers (between 1540 and 1542) John Augusta from the center of the Unitas in Mladá Boleslav would seek to recover this basic ecumenical-apostolic insight of both the Unitas and the medieval Waldensians.45 We now turn from the Minor and Major Unity of the Czech Brethren to the radical immigrants and refugees in Moravia, the Anabaptists from Switzerland, South Germany, and Austria.

44  De Schweinitz, Unitas Fratrum, 136f., 204, 246, 254, 261. The Czech Minor Party openly continued rebaptism of converts under Jan Kalenec, who wrote a book defending the practice (1542). 45  The original Latin correspondence of ten pieces, surviving with one exception only in Czech, is available in French translation with an inter pretation of its significance by Amedo Molnár, “La correspondance entre les Frères Tchèques et Bucer 1540 à 1542,” Revue d’Histoire et de Philosophie Religieuses (henceforth, RHPR) 31 (1951): 102–56 with further comment on the religio-political question in “Vaudois et l’Unité,” 12–15.

chapter 9.2

radical christianity in bohemia & moravia  333

2. Anabaptist Refugee Colonies in Moravia In some way word of t he progress of t he gospel in Moravia reached Balthasar Hubmaier in Zurich, under the necessity of finding a r efuge (Ch. 6.3) because when he left in May of 1526, he turned his steps toward Nicolsburg, pausing briefly, as we saw, in Augsburg (Ch 7.2). He was encouraged by an invitation from Lord Leonard of Liechtenstein himself, owner of Nicolsburg.46 The parish church of his town, St. Wenceslas, was under the patronage of the nunnery of Himmelrose in Kanitz (Kounice), whose provost was Martin Göschel, at the same time auxiliary bishop of Olomütz. Göschel had gone over to the reformation in 1522 and married one of the Kanitz nuns in 1525.47 Oswald Glaidt (c. 1490–1546), sometime Franciscan priest of Feldsburg (Valtice) in Moravia, a formidable disputant, had been a quickening figure in the early stages of e vangelical encounter with the Utraquists in Moravia. Glaidt, as noted by way of introduction (at n. 3 above), had been the German evangelical spokesman at the impressive effort of knight John Dubcanský of Zdenìn to form a joint synod of Czech-speaking, Neo-Utraquist priests (themselves pro-Lutheran, over a h undred) and German-speaking evangelicals at a three-day debate in Latin in Slavkov (Austerlitz) in March 1526.48 It is notable in the Slavkov debate that the Lutherans contested with the Utraquists the practice of the latter in giving communion to their children just as they baptized their progeny in infancy. In their joint article 2, a s piritual (sacramentarian) interpretation of t he Eucharist came to the fore suggesting the preponderance of the Utraquists: “The last will or testament of C hrist bequeathed in the Supper” is nothing but a r emembrance of C hrist for which all human addition, such as adoration, should be abolished. They also distinguished “between two kinds of c ommunion, an inward spiritual communion (gemeinschaft) and an outward remembrance.” But the Utraquists conceded to the Lutherans that communion be henceforth shared only among adult believers: not to progeny as previously (when they were perhaps influenced by O rthodox usage). The proceedings of t he synod were fully recorded by Glaidt in the Handlung, along with Seven Articles as a mutual pledge. It was published in three editions (Nicolsburg, Zurich, Worms, 46  Leonard of Liechtenstein (1482–1534), married to Catherine of Boskovice, submitted to rebaptism. His nephew John VI (1500–52) was sympathetic to the Anabaptists. The family name, derived from two castles owned since the twelfth century by the family, one in Styria, another in Vienna, became also the name of the principality between Switzerland and Austria, purchased by descendants in 1719. 47  Göschel proceeded to secularize the lands of the nunnery, transferring them to the Diet (Estates) of all Mora via, entrusted for this general pur pose to the chamberlain go vernor of Moravia, John of Pernstein, and Arkleb of Boskovice. Zeman, Anabaptists and Czech Brethren, 182, where the secularization for the commonweal is brought out. Göschel was to be impr isoned and tortured in 1528 on order from Ferdinand and would die in prison. 48  Zeman, Anabaptists, 68–69, 91–100, gives a full account of the synod of 1526.

334  the radical reformation

chapter 9.2 / 9.2.a

1526).49 Balthasar Hubmaier, who was but recently settled in Nicolsburg, supplied the preface. a. Hubmaier, Anabaptist Patriarch of Nicolsburg (Mikulov) There was, thus, in Nicolsburg a G erman-speaking Evangelical parish of which Glaidt was pastor. Hubmaier set out to transform it into an Anabaptist congregation, as he had temporarily likewise converted to Anabaptism his Zwinglian parish in Waldshut. Hubmaier stayed in the home of O swald Glaidt, who had returned from Dubcanský’s Slavkov synod (March), and in Glaidt’s home Hubmaier finished the baptismal tract Old and New Teachers on Believers’ Baptism ( July 1526). (Of the two versions, Urtile I may date from Waldshut, 1525.) Hubmaier had been accompanied by the Basel publisher Simprecht Sorg (Froschauer), who established himself in Nicolsburg and henceforth printed Hubmaier’s tracts. To his new patron, Hubmaier dedicated two of his publications, playing on the name with Light of t he world (Liecht) and Rock (Stein) upon which the true church was being built. Liechtenstein’s town of Nicolsburg was by l earned punning transformed into Nicopolis, which thus became not only the city of Christian victory but also “Emmaus” (Luke 24:13), the very place where the resurrected Christ first appeared to his disciples in the breaking of the bread. (The identification of Emmaus and Nicopolis goes back to Josephus.) In Nicolsburg, where most of h is works were published, Hubmaier rounded out his Anabaptist theology, so different from that of other evangelical Anabaptists in respect to anthropology and the use of the sword that we pause at this point to see it as a whole. Hubmaier postulated a trichotomous man. He supposed his view biblical, but it was actually Platonic, and it imparted a d istinctive character to the whole of his theology as we assemble it from his numerous works. The biblical starting point was 1 Thess. 5:23: “And may the God of peace himself sanctify you that your whole (integer) spirit and soul and body be preserved sound, blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Here Hubmaier found confirmation for his tripartite anthropology. By exploiting the Vulgate text for this purpose he insisted that the spiritus had, even after the Fall, remained integer (whole). Hubmaier could not be swerved from his doctrine of a t ripartite man by the fact that in the Greek and even in the Vulgate (alternatively construed) the key word is adverbially applicable alike to soul, body, and spirit, instead of adjectivally alone to spiritus. He further substantiated his view that man’s highest faculty remained intact by pointing to 1 Cor. 2: 15: “But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet

49

 Zeman gives a full account of the synod of 1526, Anabaptists, 68–69, 91–100.

chapter 9.2.a

radical christianity in bohemia & moravia  335

he himself is judged of no man.” On these two texts Hubmaier built up his peculiar doctrine of man and the Fall. Each of the three levels of the human being, spirit, soul, and body, has its own will. The spirit-will was nonparticipant in the primordial defection. The soul-will, symbolized by Adam, admittedly assented to the temptation of the flesh, symbolized by E ve (taken as a r ib from the flesh of A dam). The soul (the affective part of a person), whether of a male or a female, lost thereafter the capacity to distinguish between good and evil. The bodywill, completely corrupted by the Fall, thereafter carried the morally witless soul about as a h apless prisoner and forced accomplice of i ts deeds. Hubmaier did not pause to consider the effect of his primordial imagery on his loyal wife, destined to be a martyr of the spirit-will no less than he. Salvation from this plight consists in the restoration to the soul of the capacity to distinguish good from evil in order that the soul, thus empowered, can throw its weight with the spirit against the body. The saving word is the gospel of Christ, which restores the believer to the condition of Paradise before the Fall within the disciplined community of grace, the gathered church of the regenerate: Enlightened by t he Holy Spirit, [the soul] now again comes to know what is good and evil. It has recovered its lost freedom. It can now freely and willingly be obedient to the spirit against the body and can will and choose the good, just as well as though it were in Paradise, and it can reject and flee from evil. So now, the soul, after baptismal restoration, is likewise whole (integra), through the sent Word, and is truly made free. Now it can choose and do good … since it can command the flesh, tame it, dominate it, to such an extent that it must make it go against its own nature even into the fire with the spirit and the soul, for the sake of the name of Christ. 50 Hubmaier held that regenerate man had a capacity which Adam did not have before the eating of the apple, namely, through Christ the knowledge of good and evil. To be of t he Church was in this respect better than to have been in Paradise. Hubmaier, emphasizing the incarnation of the Son of God as the Second Adam,51 defined faith as the saving recognition of this good news, although he did not speak of t he felix culpa that brought into being the Second Adam.

50  On Free Will, tr. in SAW, 126; H.Wayne Pipkin and John H.Yoder, eds., Balthasar Hubmaier, Theologian of Anabaptism (Scottsdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1989), 426–91. 51  Only once does Hubmaier mention the Atonement. This is confirmed by Carl Sachsse, Balthasar Hubmaier als Theologe, Neue Studien zur Geschichte der Theologie und der Kirche 20 (1914): 173.

336  the radical reformation

chapter 9.2.a

Hubmaier not only placed the cause of the original defection of man in the will of t he f lesh rather than in the f lesh as such, 52 and, in line with his scholastic training distinguished in God himself between the absolute will (voluntas or potestas absoluta) and the revealed will (revelata or ordinata). 53 The former being inscrutable, Hubmaier found security in the revealed will, as caught (gefangen) and bound (gebunden) in Scripture, and upon which a system of salvation could be conf idently erected; for Christ, the revealed will of G od, possessed the two keys, the one whereby the believer is admitted to his Church of the redeemed through baptism, by the other locked out through the ban. Christ bestowed these two keys upon the apostles and thence upon the whole Church. 54 As to the Church and its authority, Hubmaier consciously inverted a d ictum of Augustine to read: “If I did not believe the Gospel, I would never believe the Church, since the Church is built on the Gospel, not the Gospel on the Church.” 55 Entry into the Church is effected through the portal unlocked by baptism, on profession of f aith in the Gospel, through which portal the believer gains admittance to Noah’s ark above the floods of this world’s sin. 56 In Eine Form zu taufen in Wasser die im Glauben Unterrichteten, 1527, dedicated to the same lord, John Dubcanský, who convened the interconfessional evangelical synod in Slavkov, Hubmaier describes the actual practice in Nicolsburg with instruction in the law, the gospel, doctrine, and the exercise of prayer, which in due course is followed by the baptismal vows, baptism, the laying on of hands, and reception into membership. Believers’ baptism is Christ’s baptism, as distinguished from that of John, which was unto repentance only (Ch. 11.1.a). Christ’s baptism ensures forgiveness, for by i t one is admitted to the fellowship of h is Church, vows obedience to his commandments, and submits ever thereafter to the discipline of the brethren: Hereby also the recipient of baptism is externally marked, inscribed, and incorporated into the fellowship of the Church, according to the ordinance of Christ. Publicly and orally he vows to God, by the strength of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that he will 52

 Sachsse, Hubmaier als Theologe, 179.  Ibid., 132. 54  Christ will use the keys again himself at the Last Judgment and give them back to God, Sachsse, Hubmaier als Theologe, 190. 55  Axiomata, Waldshut (1524), 16; Der uralten und gar neuen Lehrer Ur teil, Nicolsburg, 1525, Schriften (QGT 9), 89, 228, 242; noted by Pelikan, Tradition, 4, 315. 56  Ground and Reason; Vedder, Balthasar Hubmaier, 206. For a recent critical discussion of the baptism of Jesus and the baptism of John in Hubmaier see Christof Windhorst, Täuferisches Taufverständnis: Balthasar Hubmaiers Lehre zwisc hen Traditioneller und Refor matorischer Theologie, Studies in Medie val and Refor mation Thought 16 (Leiden: Brill, 1976), 54–90; and Da vid Steinmetz, “The Baptism of John” (Ch. 5; 11.1). 53

chapter 9.2.a

radical christianity in bohemia & moravia  337

henceforth believe and live according to the divine word, and in case he should be negligent, that he will receive brotherly admonition, according to the order of Christ in Matthew 18. Such are the genuine baptismal vows, which we have lost for a thousand years, Satan meanwhile crowding in with his monastic and priestly vows, and putting them in place of the holy.57 The discipline of the ban, the second key, is the power to banish from the new Paradise. Hubmaier wrote about this first in Waldshut and reprinted the work in Nicolsburg, Von der brüderlichen Strafe (1527), wherein he distinguished the administration of churchly discipline for, respectively, gross and inward sins. He carried this thinking on the ban farther in Vom christlichen Bann, 1527, stressing the fact that shunning the excommunicated should be prompted not by hatred but by love and the ardent hope that by public repentance the banned might be readmitted to the fellowship. Again, whomever the Church binds and casts out of her assembly on earth, he is bound before God in heaven and excluded from the catholic Christian Church (outside of which there is no salvation), since Christ himself while he was yet on earth, hung both keys at her side, giving them to her alone, his spouse and beloved bride.58 Mutual fortification of t he brethren was secured, not only through brotherly surveillance, but also through the Lord’s Supper. Ever distinguishing his view from that of Zwingli,59 Hubmaier had early stated that, as believers’ baptism is a pledge to Christ, so the Supper is a mutual pledge, one to another. “In baptism one pledges oneself to God, in the Supper to one’s neighbor, to offer body and blood in his stead, as Christ for us.”60 In contrasting the roles of t he two ordinances as coordinate bonds or covenants, Baptism was deepened to embrace the appropriation of C hrist’s redeeming work through death and resurrection with him to a new life, and the Supper was freed to become the rite of communion of like believers one with another.

57  Table of Chr istian Doctrine, No. 11; Vedder, Balthasar Hubmaier, 202. Vom Touff, chap. 2; Mau, Balthasar Hubmaier, 95. 58  Article X, Twelve Articles; Vedder, Balthasar Hubmaier, 135. Hubmaier, with fello w Protestants, interprets Matt. 16:19 as applicab le to all apostles, not to P eter alone, and, as Anabaptist, to the baptismally constituted cong regation, and quotes as a theolo gical commonplace Cyprian’s formulation: “Extra ecclesiam n ulla salus,” De catholicae ecc lesiae unitate (A.D. 251), Ch.4. 59  Vedder, Balthasar Hubmaier, 209–10, says that Hubmaier, out of rivalry, is making distinction without a difference, but there seems to be much more than scholastic vanity involved. 60  Hubmaier to Oecolampadius, 16 January 1525; ZW, 2.1:338;Vedder, Balthasar Hubmaier, 1–8. We have already quoted from the baptismal section of this letter in Ch. 6.3, at n. 52.

338  the radical reformation

chapter 9.2.a

From his base in Nicolsburg, Hubmaier felt commissioned to weld together the large but disparate congregation of indigenous former Lutherans and of Anabaptist refugees. And with the hope too of winning over the local Utraquists and the Unity of the Brethren, Hubmaier developed a somewhat elaborate communion service. In two booklets, Ein einfältiger Unterricht (1526) and Form for the Celebration of the Lord’s Supper (1527),61 already he restated his eucharistic theology and described the institution as observed in Nicolsburg. It is of interest that he dedicated the latter to Lord Burián Sobek of Kornice, in whose house Müntzer had presumably stayed during his last three months in Prague (Ch. 3.2). In the first work Hubmaier reproached Zwingli for accepting Hoen’s tropological interpretation of est as significat, giving his own special sense of est in reference to the crucified body. “This is my body,” must be taken to mean, “This bread is the body of Christ that was crucified.” But, of course, it was not bread that was crucified. Therefore, the “bread” referred to must be the body of Christ not in reality but in remembrance; and indeed the words “in remembrance of me” do qualify all the preceding words. Hence the breaking, distributing, and eating of the bread is not an action in relation to the body of Christ, but a remembrance of h is Passion, and eating together in the faith that he who is now in heaven seated at the Father’s right hand died for his followers. Hubmaier describes perhaps ideally what the observation was like in Nicolsburg after the purification of the congregation by exhortation and the occasional exercise of the ban. It is not at this stage clear whether we should look upon Hubmaier’s eucharistic theology as a d istinctive variant within the Radical Reformation or as simply an appropriation of t he views of Carlstadt. Although the New Testament Church was constituted, according to Hubmaier, by believers’ baptism, Hubmaier was not prepared either to claim that his Anabaptist half-refugee parish-congregation was sinless, or that the pedobaptist churches were wholly false. He even recognized some validity in the Church of Rome. Like Zwingli, upon whom he was here dependent, but whose ecclesiastical dichotomy he revised, Hubmaier distinguished between the local church which might indeed err (even presumably when exercising the ban) and the universal Church which could not err. Hence, especially in his final Rechenschaft seines Glaubens in twenty-four articles, he expressed a willingness to submit to a truly universal council. Nor was this mere expediency. It was in keeping with his conviction that the universally operative Holy Spirit, the divine which, according to his trichotomous scheme, moved freely in each redeemed person, would operate most effectively in a u niversal council where the divisiveness and partiality of fleshly wills could be offset by the dynamic presence of the Spirit of God 61

 See McGlothlin, SAW, 287; Pipkin and Yoder, Hubmaier, 314–38, 393–408.

chapter 9.2.a / 9.2.b radical christianity in bohemia & moravia  339 to impart clarity and strength to their collectivity of t he spirit-wills and psychic preferences. b. The Ministry “of the Two Swords” in Chiliastic Context: The Nicolsburg Disputation, May 1527: Hut vs. Hubmaier Hubmaier’s trichotomous anthropology was instrumental in shaping his doctrine of the state, wherein he differed from apolitical, nonresistant, and apocalyptic Anabaptists, approaching Zwingli in his On the Sword (1527).62 This was a commentary on f ifteen scriptural loci used by nonresistant Anabaptists, e.g. in the Schleitheim Confession of F ebruary 1527 (Ch. 8.1). Although Hubmaier was attacking the position of i ts author, Michael Sattler, and that of l ocal representatives of t hat view among the Nicolsburg Anabaptists, it is not likely that he regarded his summation of the arguments as an explicit refutation of the Schleitheim article 6 on the sword.63 But Hubmaier intended to uphold the proper use of the sword by the patron-members of his church. Since the Spiritand-Word-strengthened mind and soul must still operate through the body and since, moreover, there are many merely nominal Christians or outright pagans who have not even this in their favor, the state is a necessary instrument, ordained indeed by God, a coercive force in the secular or profane or unredeemed territory comparable to the ban in the punishment (of church assemblies). A major event in the history of Germanic Anabaptism as a whole was the arrival in Nicolsburg of the fiery apostle John Hut. Much of his career has been recounted (Chs. 4.3.c; 7.4) except for the now ensuing disputation and the Nicolsburg Articles widely circulated in several variants at the time, and still under scholarly scrutiny, one of which reads: “There should be no violence (Gwalt) or magistracy (Oberkeit) among Christians.” This was an extraordinary asseveration in a refugee community under the participating protection of Lord Leonard of Liechtenstein, who with his fellow Bohemian and Hungarian nobles had so recently recoiled in shudder from the death of their king, Louis Jagiello, slain in defense against Suleiman at Mohács (29 August 1526).64 It will be borne in mind that Nicolsburg will have become for a season one of only eight towns (apart from any in Moravia that might have had a Unitas majority) in the sixteenth century in which religious radicals came to constitute the majoritarian church by s ome conventional means, 62  The whole of this tr eatise, Von dem Schwert, is translated by Vedder, Balthasar Hubmaier, 275–310; Pipkin and Yoder, Hubmaier, 492–523. 63  This is the view of Stayer, Sword, 142. 64  Some variants of the Nicolsburg Articles were cited in Ch. 7, n. 86. Some of them, commonly understood as the protocols of the disputation involving Hubmaier, may have antedated the main disputation.

340  the radical reformation

chapter 9.2.b

the other five being Hubmaier’s Waldshut (Ch. 6.2.b), Münster by election (Ch. 13), Austerlitz (Slavkov) by socio-religious osmosis (Ch. 16), Pinczów ´ by nobiliary charter and Nicene controversy (Ch. 25.1), Rakˇow by nobiliary charter and colonization (Ch. 27.3), and Unitarian Kolozsvár and Torda by ethno-confessional osmosis (Ch. 28).65 For Leonard of L iechtenstein, patron and member of t he Anabaptist church of h is proprietary town, the renewal or regeneration of h is ancestral parish under the radically Protestant preaching and pastoral care of the eloquent and enterprising university-trained and war-seasoned Hubmaier must have betokened to him exactly that quickening in faith that all Moravia and the two kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary would need in order to restore resilience to Christendom in the face of ongoing Ottoman menace and to present to the Lord of Hosts as Sovereign of the nations a pleasing regenerated pattern of C hristian life that would call down his favor on them and remove Suleiman as the rod of his punishing wrath and the staff of his indignation (cf. Isa. 10:5). Even before Hut’s advent, the large, disparate community of Anabaptist refugee colonists under the protection of the two lords of Liechtenstein was dividing into two camps not only on such issues as eschatology and the community of goods, but also on the role of the magistrate. In the conservative camp stood the rebaptized magistrate, Lord Leonard of Liechtenstein himself, and the two divines, John Spittelmaier and Hubmaier, to go down in Hutterite Anabaptist and hence in general Anabaptist historiography as Schwertler (Anabaptists of t he Sword). Outside the walled town with its castle, in the neighboring village of Bergen, was the camp of t he pacifist radical Separatists led by t he one-eyed Swabian, Jacob Wiedemann, and Philip Jäger, who go down in Hutterite tradition as the Stäbler (Anabaptists of the staff in place of the sword). The arrival of H ut completed the polarization of t he refugee community in that he placed in an intensely eschatological framework the expendable role of the magistrate-patron and their own preeminence of the agapetic communism in imitation of the Pentecostal community of goods in Acts. He had been anticipating Christ’s second advent three and one half years from the outbreak of the Peasants’ War (or the martyrdom of the “two witnesses” in it, Müntzer and Pfeiffer), namely, not quite a year hence, at

65  Of the eight antipedobaptist towns, only Slavkov and Rakˇow would fully uphold to the end their Ev angelical pacifism. Pi´nczów was originally a Refor med town, but the Polish Brethren would become known as Pinczovians even before they were called Racovians. There were many villages in Poland and Transylvania that were wholly Minor Reformed or Unitarian. I am not counting among the fully radicalized towns Leszno (Lissa) in Great Poland, the center of the Czech Brethren because they were no longer pacifist and had also abandoned their earlier practice of the baptism of converts from other churches.

chapter 9.2.b

radical christianity in bohemia & moravia  341

Pentecost 31 May 1528.66 We have already dealt with Hut’s Seven Urteile, or Judgments, as they were developed by his Austrian disciples and as they constituted part of the agenda of the Martyrs’ Synod of August 1527 (Ch. 7.6). We have also seen how other articles, perhaps tendentiously drawn up by opponents and ascribed either to him or to Hubmaier and called the “Nicolsburg Articles,”67 were used in the Augsburg trial against Hut (Ch. 7.6). Belatedly, we have now come to the original Nicolsburg disputation itself and the momentous emergence of proto-Hutterite pacifistic communism as a consequence of these and associated disputes. The collation of several chronicles and disparate court records yields a fairly coherent picture of what happened.68 Hut found the radicals under Jacob Wiedemann in Bergen congenial. He supported them first in a churchyard disputation on (war) taxes and the community of goods. The Bergen radicals and their sympathizers in Nicolsburg, now confirmed by the presence of Hut in their eschatological hope and in their communitarian leanings as interim pacifists, brought it about that a major disputation be arranged, possibly in the presence of Lord Leonard of Liechtenstein, in the castle of Nicolsburg. On the conservative side were Glaidt, John Spittelmaier, and Hubmaier. It is quite possible that Hubmaier was in possession of some version of the Nuremberg charges against Hut and the Anabaptists who had regrouped after the execution of Müntzer. (These charges might have reached Hubmaier in connection with the correspondence between Margrave Casimir of B ayreuth-Kulmbad and Hubmaier’s patron.) Hut, indeed, charges Hubmaier with willfully distorting his thought “out of e nvy” in some fifty-two propositions. It is not necessary, however, to agree that Hubmaier willfully distorted Hut’s views. He may

66  This is, for example, the asser tion of a follo wer of Hut, Georg Nespitz, Schornbaum, Bayern (QGT 2) 1:188. 67  See Robert Friedmann, “The Nicolsburg Articles: A Problem of Early Anabaptist History,” CH 36 (1967), 391–409. Erich Meissner (1921) held that the Articles were a forgery, likely by Urban Rhegius in Augsburg. This view was canonized by Wilhelm Wiswedel in ME (Ch. 7 n. 86). Torsten Bergsten in his bio graphy, Hubmaier (1961), proposed that Hubmaier willfully caricatured the views of Hut, being then himself their author , 460–64. Friedmann in a rejoinder to Bergsten pointed out similar articles that antedated the disputation. My presentation, and especially the heading of the section reflects the view of James Stayer, Sword (1972), who proposes that the primary issue in the Nicolsburg disputation between Hubmaier and Hut was over chiliasm and hence the provisional sheathing of the sword, pp. 162–86, explaining that it was in the Hutter ite tradition that Hut’s provisional (interim) pacifism was embalmed as his principal conviction and obscured the position of Hubmaier in a two-front struggle within inchoate separatism. 68  Josef Beck, ed., Die Geschichts-Bücher der Wiedertäufer in Öster reich-Ungarn, 49ff., 70ff. Hutterite Chronik, ed. Zieglschmid, p. 49 tr. as The Chronicle of the Hutterian Brethren, 1 (Rifton, N.Y.: Plough Publishing House, 1984), 48; the confessions of John Nadler, Georg Nespitz, et al., Schornbaum, Bayern (QGT 2): 1:153, 184, etc.

342  the radical reformation

chapter 9.2.b

just as plausibly have accepted the Nuremberg charges as true and set them up for a debate in good faith.69 One further disagreement between Hubmaier and Hut was the charge of the radicals that Hubmaier was baptizing large numbers of refugees and locals at their simple request, without individual examination, and on the other hand that he and the lords did not house and care for the refugees with true Christian magnanimity by a dopting in principle the Christian sharing of a ll goods. But the main disagreement was on the use of t he sword, the propriety of p aying taxes for military purposes in defense of Christendom, and the role of a benevolent and even regenerate magistracy (such as was embodied in the lords of Liechtenstein) with respect to the role of the sword at Christ’s second advent. Hubmaier, in his Apologia, 3 January 1528, would later recall: I was also very severe against John Hut and his followers [at Nicolsburg] [because] they gave simple folk the idea of a d efinite time for the last day, namely, now at the very next Pentecost [31 May 1528],70 and thereby induced them to sell their possessions and property. Hut pressed his pacifistic views with his wonted passion and sounded to Hubmaier and the magistrates present alarmingly seditious in view of the asylum provided them all by the rebaptized or at least devoutly evangelical lords and in view of t he pressure from King Ferdinand on the Liechtensteins and other noblemen for financial and direct military support against the Turks. In explaining Hut’s interim pacifism, one is helped at this point by distinguishing at least three kinds of opposition to warfare (cf. church-state typology below) in the Radical Reformation as a whole. There was, first, the Erasmian prudential pacifism, which saw war as wanton and futile, with a truly just war as very rare and even then usually avoidable (Ch. 1.3.a). 69  Bergsten, Hubmaier, above, n. 67. Friedmann, “Nicolsburg Articles,” held that Hubmaier used the Nur emberg charges, conveyed to Liechtenstein b y Casimir, and conjectur ed that eight of these very same propositions were later forwarded by Liechtenstein to John Faber in Vienna, who then falsely ascribed Hubmaier’s eight Nuremberg-Bayreuth anti-Hut articles to Hubmaier himself! Faber in turn sent the “VIII Articles of Nicolsburg” in Latin to Basel. On 19 July 1527 Oecolampadius in a letter to Zwingli reports on the scheda of Faber, Briefe, 2:87–88, Zwingli’s Briefe, ed. O. Farner (1920) 3:179. On 1 August 1527 Boniface Amerbach likewise in a letter mentions the VIII Articles. 70  The so-called VIII Articles of Nicolsburg in several variants, purporting to transcribe the substance or the protocol of the historic disputation and incorporating a number of doctrinal items obnoxious to most Anabaptists, may be forgeries originating perhaps in Augsburg in connection with the trial of Hut. See above, nn. 67, 69 for the stages of scholarly assessment of the variants of the articles. Without freshly controlling the sources and monographic literature, I am here following James Stayer on the prominence of the chiliastic context of the debate between Hut and Hubmaier.

chapter 9.2.b

radical christianity in bohemia & moravia  343

There was, secondly, the evangelical pacifism of c onventicular separatism based upon Dominical counsels in the Gospels notably in the Sermon on the Mount and often linked with revulsion from capital punishment (Schleitheim Confession, Ch. 8; Mennism, Ch. 14; Pilgram Marpeck, Ch. 18; the Polish Brethren, Ch. 29). It was a suffering pacifism which accepted and sometimes sought out persecution and martyrdom from “worldly Christians” as a co nfirmation of t heir elect faith, all in an apocalyptic mood. Thirdly, among those who espoused provisional and interim pacifism, some, while accepting the daily cross including even death, stressed the eventual compensation or vindication in the quite bloody apocalyptic warfare of (a) the saints themselves or (b) of natural and supernatural forces summoned for their succor in a schedule of events foreseen by the Seer of Revelation and other apocalyptists ancient, medieval, and contemporary (like Melchior Hofmann, Ch. 11.4.c).71 It would appear that Hut, for representing at Nicolsburg the fourth position, was confounded by Hubmaier.72 This three-fold typology of pacifism does not completely overlap as of 1527 with the fourfold understanding of the state to be set forth below: Hubmaier in the debate in Nicolsburg, going beyond Luther, agreeing more with Zwingli, asserted that the true Christian must support the state for his or her own good and for the good of others. At Waldshut Hubmaier had been quite forward in taking his part in defense of the town. In Von Ketzern und ihren Verbrennern (Waldshut, 1525), he wrote: “The secular power rightly and properly puts to death the criminals who injure the bodies of the defenseless (Rom. 13:3f.).” 73 The magistrate, Hubmaier held, may be expressly Christian precisely in the manner of his discharging his office. If the magistrate puts to death justly without any hate or vindictiveness in his own heart, he is more than a magistrate: he is a Christian magistrate, fulfilling his God-ordained duty in this world, which must never, however, be identified with the Kingdom. Otherwise, Hubmaier remarked, a Christian would not pray that it come, in reciting the Lord’s Prayer. That Hubmaier’s countenancing of a just war and capital punishment was not an expedient accommodation to the advantageous position occupied by the Nicolsburg colony under the protection of t he lords of L iechtenstein is evident from 71  It very often happens in the history of the biblical people, from the Qumran caves to the kingdom halls of Jehovah’s Witnesses, that provisional or inter im pacificism becomes a settled way of life per petuated through the generations, while the or iginal vengeful hopes of a com pensatory and divinely sanctioned belligerence die down and become sublimated or displayed, although such g roups long live on through the energ ization and discipline of the “formative vision.” 72  Stayer, Sword, 150–66, holds that Hut was not wholly a nonresistant Anabaptist since he anticipated a final war of the saints. Stayer thinks that Braitmichel in the Hutterite Chronicle harmonizingly made Hut into a Stäbler, just for his having differed from Hubmaier in Anabaptist conduct prior to the eschaton. 73  Ibid., 86.

344  the radical reformation

chapter 9.2.b

the conduct and pronouncements of Hubmaier from the beginning of his career. He was quite clear that church and state were two separate realms and deplored the confusion of t hem and the encroachment of t he instruments of the one on the other, warning against the use of coercion in religion: “A Turk or heretic is not convinced by our act, either with the sword or with fire but only with patience and prayer; and so we should await with patience the judgment of God.” 74 While Hubmaier’s On the Sword (1527),75 a l iterary deposit of t he Nicolsburg Disputation, is atypical of what has long been the prevailing view among the present-day heirs of t he historic peace churches, of t he Anabaptist tradition (Mennonite and Hutterite), the Nicolsburg Disputation nevertheless affords renewed access in the present narrative to the range of c hurch-state issues in the Radical Reformation. On the Sword, Hubmaier’s last publication, dedicated to Arkleb of Boskovice, chancellor (Landeshauptmann) of Moravia, who inclined to Lutheranism, grew out of the Nicolsburg disputations and others with several kinds of pacifist Anabaptists, all seeking refuge in and around Nicolsburg under the protection of Lord Liechtenstein (related through his wife to Arkleb).76 It is a systematic commentary on some fifteen texts used in defense of Christian nonresistance.77 It is, therefore, in relation to the crucial debate on the sword precisely among Germanic Anabaptists in the very margraviate of all Europe that had long provided refuge for the strictly pacifistic heirs (the Unitas) of the once quite bellicose Hussite movement that we now choose to enlarge upon the varying views of t he office/ministry of t he sword (Amt/Dienst; munus/ministerium) upheld by proponents grouped in the Radical Reformation as a whole, on the basis generally of gathered churches, in contrast to the Magisterial Reformation on the bases of reformed-territorial churches, urban and princely, supported by the magistracy. The collectivity, today called the state, in the sixteenth century was still a congeries of temporal orders (Obrigkeit) of partial or plenary sovereignty. That all the issues of church and state were at the time usually argued in terms of the two swords, temporal and spiritual, often obscured for the participants themselves and obscures, too, for the present observers of t heir deeds and testimony, the range of the temporal sword: from the authority of the magistracy, as ultimately coercive for the communal good, to impose regulations, tax, and imprison, to the authority to carry out capital punishment, call up fighting men, and wage war—not always in merely self-defense, but sometimes also in aggressive war for dynastic, realpolitical, and confessional or

74

 Von Ketzern, 16;Vedder, Balthasar Hubmaier, 86.  Schriften (QGT 9), 432–57. 76  Above, at n. 46. 77  Analyzed by Stayer, Sword, 141–45. 75

chapter 9.2.b

radical christianity in bohemia & moravia  345

religious purposes (crusades). Much of the positive aspect of government, like the minting of c oins, the administration of p oor relief, the maintenance of roads and bridges and other public works, was inadvertently marginalized when held in focus by the metaphor of the two swords. The medieval doctrine of t he two swords, spiritual and temporal, goes back to Luke 22:38 “And they [the apostles on the night before the crucif ixion] said: ‘Look, Lord, here are two swords.’ And he said to them, ‘It is enough.’” Although these two swords were ordinary weapons—and Jesus had in the context instructed “Anyone who has not a sword” to buy one (v. 36)—the passage had by the time of Pope Boniface VIII come to stand for both the weapon of justice and war and the sword of t he spirit (Eph. 6:17). To the latter, the sword of e ven the Emperor was subordinate as memorably enunciated by Boniface VIII in his bull Unam Sanctam (1302): In this Church and in her power there are two swords, a spiritual and a t emporal one. For when the apostles said “Here are two swords,” meaning in the Church since it was apostles who spoke, the Lord did not reply that it was too many but enough. Certainly anyone who denies that the temporal sword is in the power of Peter has not paid heed to the words of t he Lord when he said, “Put up thy sword into its sheath” (Matt. 26:52). Both these are in the power of t he Church, the material and the spiritual. But the one is exercised for the Church, the other by t he Church ( = sacerdotium). …78 Classical/Magisterial/territorial Protestantism had everywhere utterly broken from this papal conception of the plenitude of power in the priesthood, whether for good or ill, and rested its own polity variously on Rom. 13:1: “There is no authority except from God” and on Rom. 13:4: “For he [the ruler] is God’s servant for your good … or to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer.” While the Magisterial Reformation thus in effect placed the spiritual sword under that in the hands of t he princes and the town councils, the most radical at least among the proponents of New Testament separatism within the Radical Reformation removed the temporal sword and its theological sheath altogether from their church, content therein with only the spiritual/ethical sword of the ban, leaving to the state the naked temporal sword of justice, yet often, even in the civic realm disinterestedly, upholding for the sake of transgressors on the civic scene, no less than for themselves as prospective martyrs, the pertinence of the Commandment “Thou shalt not kill,” no less to the magistrate than to the soldier. 78

 Corpus Iuris Canonici, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1881), 2: cols. 245–46.

346  the radical reformation

chapter 9.2.b

An influential clarification of t he office or ministry of t he temporal sword in territorial (or prospectively territorial) Protestantism and among the first two generations of A nabaptists and Spiritualists recognizes79 that there were possibly five distinguishable positions in the sixteenth century to be based on Rom. 13, even while perpetuating in the discussion the medieval/scriptural terminology about the two swords. In (1) “the moderate apolitical” position, like that of L uther and his two-kingdom theory, one recognizes that a Christian may serve in the offices of civil polity, “as of the [created] order of God but outside the perfection of Christ [the order of salvation],” and thus followed the extra-Christian ethic of the sword in one’s “public capacity,” while remaining in one’s private capacity (as one subject of salvation) responsive to the rigorous demands of the Gospel. In (2) “the realpolitical” position, like that of Zwingli, for example, one is sustained by the conviction that precisely Christian goals can be achieved by coercion, including Protestant confessional war. In (3) the apocalyptic crusading mission-driven stance or expectation there is a division into two thrusts among the radicals, (a) that of t he saints who understand themselves to be the preordained instruments of God’s apocalyptic will for vengeance upon the unrighteous, the unfaithful, the reprobate, such were the Taborites (Ch. 9.1), Müntzer (Ch. 3.2), Hut (Ch. 7.4), Bernard Rothmann, John Matthijs, and John Beukels (all of Ch. 13), and (b) that of the saints who understand themselves as testifying in hazard to their own lives to the imminent punishment that will be visited upon the same reprobate unbelievers but by s upernatural forces marshaled in the last days from among the angels and possibly others (like the Turks) as instruments of d ivine chastisement (Hofmann). In (4) the biblical separatist position in Lithuania and Transylvania stresses the Old Covenant even while endorsing believers’ baptism but countenances plenary magisterial functionaries within the gathered church (Hubmaier and related baptist Unitarian Simon Budny in Lithuania, Ch. 29.1). In (5) the fully sectarian apolitical (and yet nonchiliastic) standpoint the saints renounce the divinely instituted power of Rom. 13:1–4 as relevant for true believers and which may, perversely, put them to the sword as once at the hands of the Roman state and the Jewish hierarchy, so now, an apolitical or nonparticipatory standpoint which identifies the proponents’ own suffering with that of the Lord himself. As his disciples they are resolute in preventing the temporal authority of Rom. 13 from determining the creed or conduct of t he community of faith. Such were Michael Sattler (Ch. 8.1–2), Jacob Wiedemann (present Ch.), Jacob Hutter (Ch. 16.1), Pilgram Marpeck (Ch. 18.1), and the Polish

79

 Stayer, Sword (1972).

chapter 9.2.b

radical christianity in bohemia & moravia  347

Brethren (Ch. 29 inclusive of Faustus Socinus) 80 all of whom in this grouping found sanction for their position, inter alia, by bringing the locus on the suspended practice of the two swords, Luke 22:38, in relation to Jesus’ express instruction on rule, namely, Luke 22:25f.: “The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them. … But not so with you; rather let … the leader [among you become] as one who serves.” In several modalities the diakonos (deacon/servant: Diener) Rom 13:4 in reference competes in both the Magisterial and the Radical Reformations with the Jo diakonw'n (the one serving, der Dienende) of Luke 22:27. When Hubmaier upheld in his On the Sword ( June), ref lecting what he surely will have argued in the preceding debate (May), he was not merely accommodating to his privileged position acquired by magisterial support but was rather fervently expressing a conviction distinctive to him among Anabaptists, in reformulating the scriptural-papal twoswords doctrine, interpreting in the spiritual sense of Eph. 6:17, Christ’s word in Matt. 10:34: “I have not come to bring peace but the sword.” He goes on: In addition to that [spiritual sword] there is also an external sword (Romans 13) which one uses for the protection of t he righteous and for the terror of t he evil persons here on earth. That is hanged on to governments (magistracies: oberkhaiten) in order to maintain a c ommon territorial peace with it. It is also called a s piritual sword when one uses it according to the will of God. … Ye [pacifist Anabaptists] must, must, must all confess that a Christian government (magistracy) can perform and will do much better and more earnestly than an unchristian one. … Therefore, get behind me, thou Satan [cf. Jesus to Peter, protesting the Lord’s imminent crucifixion, Matt. 16:23] and stop misleading the simple people under the appearance of g reater patience and spirituality (geystlichait).81 Hubmaier thus understood himself as Diener des Wortes and his rebaptized patron-member, Lord Leonard, as Diener des Schwertes, and thus mutatis mutandis, he, doctoral alumnus of I ngolstadt, perpetuated the ideal of

80  Stayer in the here oft-cited Sword in his summary (p. 329) only numbers three positions but within his book he lea ves the distinction among Anabaptists between moderate and fully sectarian apolitical types and this differ entiation perhaps deser ves status of its o wn, as in m y presentation. Stayer’s typology does not pur port to cover the whole range of possibilities. It tends to put Hubmaier with Zwingli (2). With my eyes on easter n developments beyond his purview, I have put Hubmaier with Budny in a distinguishable category. See my typology for pacifism above at n. 71. 81  Hubmaier, Schriften (QGT 9) ed. Bergsten, 446–47.

348  the radical reformation

chapter 9.2.b / 9.2.c

Boniface VIII of the two swords, now within the regenerate church, except that the temporal sword now has also a directly “spiritual” assignment.82 Lord Leonard of Liechtenstein, alarmed at what he heard at the disputation or what was at once reported to him, forcibly detained Hut in his castle. Under the cover of darkness, however, from the window of the room where he was locked up, Hut was lowered by a friend over the tower wall in a net for snaring hares, and he escaped 83 to meet his fate in Augsburg (Ch. 7.6). But the news that the apocalyptic apostle had been imprisoned by the princely members of the Anabaptist community aroused the people in an uproar against Lord Liechtenstein and Pastor Hubmaier. Another disputation was arranged in the Spital church next to the castle, and Hubmaier addressed a large and excited congregation on the propriety of a magistrate’s using coercion and power under the restraints of a C hristian conscience. As to Hut’s prediction of the imminence of the Kingdom, Hubmaier argued that Jesus himself had refused to countenance all attempts to reckon the times and seasons (the little Apocalypse, Matt. 24:36). The radical nonresistants were dissatisfied and presumably conferred once again in Bergen and bided their time. Moravian Anabaptism was on the point of its definitive schism. Before following the exodus of the secessionist pacifist communists to Austerlitz (Slavkov) under Wiedemann, we accompany Hubmaier to his martyrdom in Vienna. c. The Martyrdom of Hubmaier On 10 March 1528, less than nine months after Hubmaier signed the foreword of On the Sword, he was put to death by the authority of Ferdinand in Vienna. The surviving records of his arrest are contradictory.84 Ferdinand had been elected by the Diet margrave of Moravia in October 1526 and by July 1527 he had reached out to the new center of Anabaptist propaganda and demanded the arrest of Lord Liechtenstein’s chaplain on the ground of his earlier sedition in Waldshut. Anabaptist Lord Liechtenstein may well have been surprised to learn that his ardent defender of the magisterial sword in the Nicolsburg disputation had once sought to attach Waldshut, through the instrumentality of the revolting peasantry, to the Swiss Confederation. Yet it is hard to imagine the rebaptized patron acquiescing in his learned

82

 In being in this position mor e like Zwingli than Luther, Hubmaier, while almost unique among sixteenth-century Anabaptists (Stayer, Sword, 140–45), was akin to the vie w also of high Calvinism (Disciplinarian, not Erastian), to the Major Party within the Unitas which came to prevail alike in Moravia, Slovakia, and Great Poland, and to the nonpacifist Polish-speaking Brethren in Lithuania, of whom Simon Budny was the most articulate spokesman and who also wrote On the Office of Using the Sword (O urzedzie uzywajaçym miecza) 1583, against Faustus Socinus. 83  Chronik/Chronicle 50/48. 84  Beck, Wiedertäufer, 52–53.

chapter 9.2.c

radical christianity in bohemia & moravia  349

chaplain’s arrest. One account has Hubmaier actually forged to a w agon for the trip to Vienna to stand trial as a f ugitive from Austrian justice. It is possible that for all his valor in defending the sword, Hubmaier had actually made more concessions to the radicals than Liechtenstein himself could countenance. Hubmaier’s loyal and brave wife accompanied him. At the first hearing in the prison in Vienna, his alleged treason at Waldshut bulked large.85 Hubmaier was then placed in Kreuzenstein castle while materials for his trial on his Waldshut activities were being assembled in the capital of H ither Austria (Ensisheim). Though perhaps not originally specified in Ferdinand’s demand to Lord Liechtenstein for the extradition of Hubmaier, surely the charge of heresy played as important a role as that of sedition. In any event it occurred to Hubmaier that he might mitigate the wretchedness of his imprisonment by appealing to his old schoolmate, Dr. John Faber, vicar-general of the bishop of Constance, for a t heological colloquium. Faber hastened to the castle, prepared to argue from the Scriptures alone (sola scriptura), and brought with him two other Catholics, one of t hem being at the time rector of t he University of Vienna. The ensuing conversations were animated and protracted. One of the debates ended at two in the morning and was resumed at six! On many points, Hubmaier in his extremity could more easily make concessions to Catholic Faber than earlier in similar circumstances to Protestant Zwingli, for example, on the freedom of the will and the importance of good works, or to apocalyptic Anabaptist Hut at Nicolsburg on nonresistance. Other items, such as Mary’s motherhood of G od, the invocation of saints, the utility of fasts, all of which Hubmaier granted, suggest the kind of accommo­d ation he could make in a Catholic setting freed from the severities imposed by t he formal Protestant principle of justification by faith alone. But on what he considered the essential Anabaptist points he stood firm, namely, on believers’ baptism and the commemorative character of the Eucharist, although in respect to both he insisted on his being as far asunder from Hut “as heaven and hell.” He of course stressed also his disagreement with Hut on the sword, upholding the legitimacy of Christian government. On Baptism and the Eucharist, he expressed his readiness to defer to the next general council of the Church. Hubmaier then drew up on 3 January 1528 twenty-seven articles for the scrutiny of Ferdinand, Eine Rechenschaft seines Glaubens.86 It was, of course, regarded by the Viennese authorities as an insufficient recantation. He was asked to work further on Baptism and the Mass. 85  Ferdinand’s letter of 22 July 1527, referring to the first hearing, is given in translation in Vedder, Balthasar Hubmaier, 222–23. 86  Hubmaier, Scriften, ed. Bergsten, 458–91; tr. in Vedder, Balthasar Hubmaier, 230–35; Pipkin and Yoder, Hubmaier, 524–62.

350  the radical reformation

chapter 9.2.c

At the final trial, treason at Waldshut and heresy at Nicolsburg were equally prominent. Although he confessed under torture to treasonable conduct in the Waldshut uprising, he did not abandon his principal evangelical convictions. As he was led forth for execution, 10 March 1528, his long suffering wife, of whom it is recorded that “she hardened in the same heresy, more constant than her husband,” exhorted him to be courageous. Accompanied by troops and a large crowd, he kept up his spirits by repeating biblical passages to himself. At the pile of fagots he cried out in the Swiss dialect: O gracious God, forgive my sins in my great torment. O Father, I give thee thanks that thou wilt take me out of this vale of tears. With joy I d esire to die and come to thee, O L amb, that takest away the sins of the world! As his clothes were stripped from him, he declared he would gladly leave them with his body as, mindful in this anguished moment of his own theory of the wills of the body, of the soul, and of the spirit, he repeated in Latin the words of Jesus: “In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum.”87 When sulphur and gunpowder were rubbed into his hair and long beard to shorten his agony, he imploringly cried: “Oh, salt me well, salt me well!” As they took flame, his last word was the ejaculation: “O Jesus, Jesus!”88 His wife, a few days later (13 March), was thrown into the Danube with a stone tied about her neck. By fellow believers they were, of course, regarded as martyrs and in God’s sight like John Hus and Jerome of Prague. To defend the judicial action taken against them, Dr. Faber published at once his explanatory sheet in nine pages, Ursache, warum der Wiedertäufer Patron und erster Anfänger … verbrennt sei (Landshut, 1528).89 One month after Hubmaier’s execution in Vienna, Ferdinand ordered the burning, 10 April 1528, of three Anabaptists in Brünn, of whom one was the former monk, Silesian John Zeising (Cižek). In Nicolsburg itself, the stricken Anabaptist community could not rally from the loss of its pastor-theologian, the failure of Lord Liechtenstein to protect him, and the concurrent defection of those who in the great disputation on the sword had opposed Hubmaier and Lord Liechtenstein. Remnants of the Nicolsburger Schwertler were absorbed by the later Sabbatarians. We turn to those whom Hubmaier’s pastoral colleague John Spittelmaier had dubbed the Stäbler (men

87  These were the same w ords used by the first Zurich martyr, Felix Mantz. On the tr ichotomous anthropology of Hubmaier, see above at n. 50. 88  The final scene is somewhat more fully recounted in Vedder, Balthasar Hubmaier, 242–44; Bergsten/Estep, Hubmaier. 89  Then more fully Faber published Doctoris Joannis Fabri, Adversus Doctorem Pacimontanum, Anabaptistarum nostri saeculi primum auctorem orthodoxae religionis fidei Catholicae defensio (Leipzig, 1528, 1536 with another title.)

chapter 9.2.c / 9.2.d radical christianity in bohemia & moravia  351 of the staff ) in allusion to their having adopted as their symbol the staves carried by the Czech Brethren of the Minor Unity.90 d. The First Anabaptist Communitarians: Austerlitz (Slavkov) 1528 Some time before the Nicolsburg disputation between Hubmaier and Hut, the determined group of w hom Hut was only temporarily the spokesman, led by J acob Wiedemann and Philip Jäger (also called Weber), had in Bergen and elsewhere around Nicolsburg withdrawn from the pastoral oversight of Hubmaier and Spittelmaier to form their own separatist congre­g ation, pacif istic and communitarian. At least once after the arrest and departure of H ubmaier there was a f ormal disputation between Spittelmaier and the two more separatist leaders. It is possible that they differed also from Spittelmaier (and Hubmaier) on the theology and practice of baptism, as well as on eschatology, communism, and the sword.91 Their emergent communism on the pattern of Acts (2:44, 4:32; cf. Matt. 19:24) seems, in fact, to have grown out of the conception of baptism as a life of suffering as well as to have been at f irst eschatologically motivated. The exigencies of the situation also obviously called for mutual aid. Lord Liechtenstein, desiring uniformity of religion on the estates under his control and unwilling to countenance a c ompletely pacifistic program in the church of which he himself was a baptized member, reluctantly asked the dissidents to leave, after talking through the whole problem of faith and social order with them and permitting them to remain on until the worst of the winter was over. The Hutterite Chronicle describes the sequel of the last parley, in effect the beginnings of Anabaptist communism in Moravia: Therefore they sought to sell their possessions. Some did sell, but the others left them standing so, and they departed with one another from thence. Whatever remained of t heirs the lords of Liechtenstein did send after them. And so from Nicolsburg, Bergen, and thereabouts there gathered about two hundred persons without [counting] the children before the town [Nicolsburg]. Certain persons came out … and wept from great compassion with them, but others argued. … Then they got themselves up, and went out and pitched … in a d esolate village,92 and abode there one day and one night, taking counsel together in the Lord concerning 90  Brock, Political and Social Doctrines, 253. The Chronicle reports the earlier separation of the Stäbler in 1526 (p. 50) and the eventual absorption of the Schwertler in the Sabbatar ians (p. 80) likened by the chronicler, retrospectively, to the Münsterites. For Cižek, see Ch. 10 n. 111. 91  See Hubmaier’s Rechenschaft, articles 14 and 25; Loserth, Hubmaier, 177, 179; and Vedder, Balthasar Hubmaier, 232–33. 92  In Bogenitz (Purkmanice), which had been desolate since 1450.

352  the radical reformation

chapter 9.2.d

their present necessity, and ordained (geordnet) ministers for their temporal necessities (dienner in der Zeitlichenn Notdurfft). … At that time these men spread out a c loak before the people and every man did lay his substance down upon it, with a willing heart and without constraint, for the sustenance of those in necessity, according to the doctrine of t he prophets and apostles [Isa. 23: 18; Acts 2: 2–5].93 The sanction here of Isaiah is all the more interesting for its persistence in the record well after the original eschatological ardor prompting the exodus had cooled. The reference is to the destruction of Tyre “after seventy years of h arlotry” and the sharing of her stores among “those who dwell before the Lord.” They remembered how John Hut, their spirited spokesman against the Schwertler had preached that Christ would usher in his Kingdom during the approaching Pentecost, 31 May 1528, and in this pitch of apocalyptic excitement exhorted them “to sell house and goods.” 94 In the meantime Lord Liechtenstein had become remorseful about his decision and rode after them with several of his retainers and spoke to them, asking why they had departed, and insisting that they might after all have remained in Nicolsburg. Thereupon they asked why he had not let them remain. They restated their pacifist convictions, the Chronicle reports, declaring that they “had not done it of rashness, but alone out of the fear of God, yea for the sake of their hearts and consciences, which did testify against his brethren (the Schwertler) and against his preacher’s doctrine and life,” and specifying that they objected to the way Lord Liechtenstein “and his brethren” had resisted by force Ferdinand’s special commissioner (Provos), against all kinds of Anabaptists (including Hubmaier), a defensive action, “to which his two preachers had spurred him.” As they departed, Lord Liechtenstein rode with them a way as escort, giving them drink and freeing them of t olls. They spent the following night by a hermit’s hut until the breakfast hour, seeking carts so that their sick and children might be carried. They sent four men to Austerlitz, and besought the local lords, four brothers of K anitz (Dolní Kounice), who already had a Unitas colony on their estates, to receive them and “to leave their conscience free and unhindered.” They set forth certain articles, concerning war and war taxes. To all this these lords were willing to accede, adding enthusiastically “that even if their number were a thousand, they would yet receive them all.” The noble brothers sent three wagons to them for help. When the company arrived in Austerlitz, the lords also gave them a desolate, burned-out courtyard as temporary shelter. By that time they had been three weeks under the open sky. The lords and townspeople, 93 94

 Zieglschmid, Chronik, 86–87; Chronicle 81.  Hubmaier, Rechenschaft, article 14.

chapter 9.2.d

radical christianity in bohemia & moravia  353

welcoming these sturdy colonists, showed them many favors, offering even to help them build houses on the Hare Market, giving them wood as necessity required, and pronouncing them free from all services, usury, taxes, etc. for six years. In the course of the year, the colony received Tyrolese and other refugees, who rejoiced with them in the hope that the wastelands of Moravia would blossom like the rose (Isa. 35:1), that the woman (the true church) fleeing into the wilderness to escape the clutches of the dragon (Rev. 12:6) would soon be vindicated in the providence of God. The newcomers apparently brought with them a communal order which had been worked out for the Rattenberg Anabaptists by o ne of t wo priestly converts active in the Inn Valley, either John Schlaffer or, more probably, Leonard Schiemer (Ch. 7.5).95 Seven-point or twelve-point church orders were common, as were also twelve-point commentaries on the Apostles’ Creed; for example, the Twelve Articles of Hubmaier, the Twelve Articles of Schiemer himself, and later the Account (Rechenschaft) of Peter Riedemann. One version of the Rattenberg order of 1527 is copied out in the Hutterite Chronicle with the indication that it had become the constitution of the Austerlitz community in 1529. The adopted twelve-point program may be called the primitive constitution of the proto-Hutterites. The communal order of 1529 brings out the features of the Austrian brethren who, under the impact of Hut’s eschatology, stressed sharing of temporal goods. Article iv reads: Of all the brothers and sisters of this congregation none shall have anything of h is own, but rather [act just] 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.96 In the following article, communism is structured on the basis of a year’s experience by t he provision that the sharing is to be administered

95  Robert Friedmann first thought that he could identify the or der in the Chronicle as Austrian in provenance, and in pr inting a translation of a fuller text than that a vailable in the Chronicle as edited by Zieglschmid, he assigned it to Schlaffer and dated it 1527; “The Oldest Church Discipline of the Anabaptists” MQR 29 (1955): 162–66. Then. in his major ar ticle on Schiemer in ME, 4:252–54, he reassigned it provisionally to Schiemer. Although an Austrian origin of the order seems plausible, given others there like it, this communal order is recognizably the same as the one pr eserved in the Ber n archives and appears to be of Swiss or igin. Staatsarchiv Bern University Press, 80:5; German text in Ernst Müller, Geschichte der Bernischen Täufer (Frauenfeld, 1895; Nieuwkoop: de Graaf , 1972). 37; English trans. in J ohn H. Yoder, ed.,The Legacy of Michael Sattler (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1973), 44–45. 96  Zieglschmid, Chronik, 84; but as translated by Yoder, Legacy of Michael Sattler, 45.

354  the radical reformation

chapter 9.2.d

diligently by t he elected Diener der Notdurft 97 and not individually. From the other articles of the primitive constitution one sees a g roup gathering often for worship “at least four or five times a week” (Article ii), with two or three standing up in meeting to speak at once (discouraged therefrom in Article vii), ever watching for the imminent advent of the Lord (Article xii), confident that in the divine service God would “open to them his will” (Article i), and prepared for his loving chastisements (Article xi). It is clear also that, as with the apostolic Corinthians, the meals together might become unseemly (Article x). We shall next visit Wiedemann’s communist colony at Austerlitz when we come in 1529 from the Tyrol in the company of Jacob Hutter, destined to reorganize the Austrian refugees and seceders from Nicolsburg on so firm a foundation that they would ever thereafter bear his name (Ch. 16). In the meantime we must take note of very important regional developments elsewhere in the Empire.

CORONATION OF CHARLES V WITH POPE CLEMENT VII Holy Roman Emperor Charles V was the last monarch to receive coronation and liturgical investment at the hands of the Supreme Pontiff 97  The Servant of Necessity was the counterpart of the Servant of the Word, thus in their terminology the comm unitarian pacifist radically separatist Anabaptists were indirectly using Rom. 18:4 about the “serving” magistrate for the elected ste ward of the co venantal community’s economic and temporal necessities.

Chapter 10

Speyer and Strassburg, 1529: Magisterial and Radical Reformations in a Representative Urban Republic

W e have now several times

in our complicated narrative reached the year 1529. It was in this year that John de Valdés left Spain for Italy (Ch. 1.4) and that Caspar Schwenckfeld withdrew from Silesia for Strassburg (Ch. 5.5). It was in this year that the last of the original Zurich Anabaptist triumvirate, George Blaurock, was martyred in the Tyrol. In the preceding chapter we followed the developments in Moravia to the same year, when Jacob Hutter, a k ind of h eir of t he Tyrolese mission of Blaurock, was on the point of leading to Moravia his first band of AustrianTyrolese refugees. In this same year Suleiman the Magnificent, victorious at Mohács three years earlier, was besieging the Hapsburg capital of Vienna. In this year also, the Magisterial Reformers, trying to find a t heological basis for a u nited Protestant front, convened in colloquy at Marburg, a crucial episode in the long and bitter Eucharistic controversy between the partisans of Luther and the partisans of Zwingli. In the present chapter, the year 1529 is important for the fact that the Lutheran princes and municipal representatives, at the very diet wherein they for the first time received the abiding designation Protestants, agreed with the Catholics, in the face of the Turkish threat, to turn unitedly upon the eschatologically pacifistic and anarchic Anabaptists. Old Believers and Lutherans, activating a section of the Code of Justinian, together reinforced earlier mandates to prosecute the Radical Reformers as at once heretical and seditious. In this same year, 1529, the magistrates of the imperial city of Strassburg, by abolishing the Mass, officially joined the Reformation movement. For some time before this, the tolerant town had been the asylum of the sorely persecuted Anabaptists, Spiritualists, and Evangelical Rationalists, “the city

355

356  the radical reformation

chapter 10

of hope”—to the great embarrassment of the principal municipal reformer, Martin Bucer. The bulk of t he present chapter will be devoted to the sectarian history of t his extraordinary urban republic to which, because of its irradiating power, we have already been drawn to make a number of a nticipatory references. A c athedral city, the republic had, as in so many other prince bishoprics in the Empire, obliged the bishop to take up residence elsewhere (Zabern) and had established urban authority over a substantial portion of the bishop’s temporalities on both sides of the Rhine. In dealing with the religiopolitical problems raised by the radicals in the minds of the magistrates and the divines of this urban republic, we hope to make clear what, on the level of local politics and ecclesiastical strategy, was in fact involved in the gradual differentiation between the Radical and a representative Magisterial Reformation of a nevertheless distinctive trait, as Bucer with his ideal of an urban Christocracy in Strassburg (Strassbourg) both anticipated and substantially influenced John Calvin in Geneva (Genève) (Ch. 23). For all their temperamental, theological, and environmental differences, Luther and Zwingli, as later Cranmer and Calvin, agreed in assigning to the evangelical magistrate (that is, to the king, the prince, or the town councilor) a d istinctively Christian vocation. Although these four major Magisterial Reformers and their allies and counterparts in other territories, like Bucer and the other parish preachers of Strassburg, in most cases altered their formulations in the course of t heir Reformation careers, and in any event differed among themselves, they were always at least firmly set against the radical program of the separatists. For the separatists partly of tempermental necessity and partly on principle were breaking with the ancient and medieval conception of the corpus christianum, which going back to Constantine, Theodosius, and Justinian, understood the church and civil community as virtually coterminous, and, therefore, construed schism as tantamount to sedition. The Magisterial Reformers, of course, varied in their pronouncements and in their actions from the bare insistence that the magistrate had the duty to defend the true faith all the way to a parliamentary (quasi-conciliar) enactment of the royal headship of a national church (Ch. 14.4.b and esp. Ch. 30.3). But they all held common ground over against the bulk of the Radical Reformers in their double asseveration that a Christian might in good conscience discharge any of the necessary functions of the body politic, from tax collector to hangman, and that, correspondingly, the state thus manned and the educational system called forth by reform had a duty to serve true religion and magisterially (that is, the offices of the civil magistratus and of the instructional magisterium) support the established confession of faith and its institutions within its sovereign territory. The Magisterial Reformers, to be sure, could not always agree where the exercise of magisterial authority should stop, whether at the drawbridge of e cclesiastical discipline, at the portal of

chapter 10

speyer& strassburg, 1529  357

doctrine, or merely at the threshold of conscience; but both they as preachersteachers-reformers and the magistrates themselves (who either pressed for such sanctions or who, in other cases, hesitatingly fulfilled the grave duties imposed upon them by the Protestant theory) were united in refusing either to strip the reforming states of their Christian sanctions or to deprive reforming churches and their schools (fully desacerdotalized) of civic support. It should be added that the classical Protestant (anticlerical) principle of solafideism and the correlative doctrine of the priesthood of all believers had given the evangelical layman a p lace alongside the partially declericalized divine, but that within the context of the Magisterial Reformation this doctrine of the lay priesthood had tended so to reinforce a late medieval laicism everywhere that it gave considerable theological color to the preeminence of civic magistrates as the principal laymen of the Protestant churches. In contrast, in the context of the Radical Reformation, such an assimilation of sociopolitical rank and function to correspondingly important roles in the community of faith was often inadmissible or contested in large measure because in almost all forms of separatist Christianity in the Reformation era the Christian vocation of all civil functions that required the use of the sword either in penal coercion or in the maintenance of peace was being widely and often wildly reconceived in apocalyptic or rigoristic terms, or both, and both with scriptural and anteNicene sanctions everywhere being adduced (Ch. 9.2.b). Despite the basic difference of o rientation in respect to the state as between the classical Protestant Reformers and the various Restitutionists, the line between the Magisterial and the Radical Reformations was seldom drawn with a s ingle stroke. In Strassburg, perhaps more than in any other center, transitional figures abounded; and in between, positions were long defended among divines and magistrates, independent burghers, and avowed separatists. We shall have occasion in Strassburg, as a kind of case history, to observe how the regent principle of Protestantism, namely, solafideism, for some time retarded the decisive implementation of the countervailing principles of ecclesiastico-political homogenization, and how the Protestant stress on faith over works returned again and again to unsettle both the divines and the magistrates as, with an uneasy theological conscience, they tried to accommodate themselves to the tactics imposed upon them by c ircumstances. At the same time, we shall observe on the other side the intense eschatological expectancy of some of the radicals. Among some there was a swiftly emerging neo-apostolic authoritarianism in the growing stress on the government (provisional or eschatological) of the saints. These circumstances tended to give to the teeming and vociferous Strassburg community of separatists the appearance of a veritable imperium in imperio; and, as such, it seemed to present a threat to an orderly urban republic. With the puissant meekness of saints, the radicals in Strassburg, as elsewhere in the Empire, with their fraternal solidarity and their extraordinary

358  the radical reformation

chapter 10 / 10.1

mobility and interrelatedness, seemed to embrace dissidents far beyond the local jurisdictions in an international movement of f rightening momentum. Their élan unnerved the local magistracy even more than the irrational insouciance of martyr-Christians had affected a humane and dutiful governor of a ncient Bithynia; for unlike Pliny the Younger, the Strassburg Stettmeister accepted the same Scriptures as the would-be martyrs and was as sensible as his critics to the possibility of d ivine, no less than imperial, chastisement for the dereliction of h is Christian duty as he understood it. By our placing in the context of the Magisterial Reformation in Strassburg the extraordinary number of personalities of the heterogeneous Radical Reformation who crowded into the same territory, notably in the year 1529, we shall here be able to take note of e nough of t he thought and institutions of the magistrates and the divines to show the strains inherent in and between the two reformations which we have, for the purpose of our pan-European survey of ecclesial and theological radicality in biblical terms, characterized as “magisterial” and “radical,” the former term with reference both to magistrates and university-trained magisterial divines (see further Ch. 32.3). In this chapter, the mandate of the imperial diet against (the neo-Donatist) Anabaptists and the developments in Strassburg until it became officially Protetstant in 1529 are covered in Part I; in sections 3 and 4 are the developments in Strassburg thereafter until 1535. Accordingly, after discussing the patristic and imperial background of the princely Protestant consent to the decisive mandate against the separatists at the diet of Speyer (Ch. 10.1), we shall proceed to our account of the relations between the divines and the separatists in Strassburg to 1529 (Ch. 10.2), then to a biographical introduction of s even or eight major spokesmen of t he Radical Reformation who converged on Strassburg, especially in the years 1529 and 1531 (Ch. 10.3), and finally, to the territorial synod of 1533 and the somewhat reluctant imposition of a m agisterially enforced confession of f aith and ecclesiastical ordinance upon the instinctively tolerant urban republic (Ch. 10.4).

Part I 1. The Diet of Speyer, 1529: The Magisterial vs. the Radical Reformation, 1522–1529 When the imperial diet convened in Speyer in the spring of 1 529, the Catholic and imperial forces considered their strength sufficient to rescind the agreement reached at the diet in the same city in 1526, which had made provisional arrangements for the partisans of L uther, pending the decision of an ecumenical council. To this repudiation of an earlier accord, six evangelical princes and the representatives of fourteen South German cities

chapter 10.1

speyer& strassburg, 1529  359

protested on 19 April 1529, thereafter to be designated the “Protestants.” For the moment, only Lutherans were involved, for they were willing to hold the sacramentarians in check (Ch. 5.3). Both Lutheran Protestants and Catholics could agree in making even more explicit than before the death penalty for the crime and heresy of rebaptizing. Though there had been earlier local mandates, and in 1528 an imperial mandate, against the Anabaptists, that of the “Protestant” Diet of Speyer is the most important. And in the tense religio-political context of this diet, its approbation by the Lutherans makes palpably clear the great difference between the Baptist and the Protestant traditions. Charles’ mandate of 23 April 1529 reads in part as follows: Whereas it is ordered and provided in common [i.e., canon] law that no man, having once been baptized according to Christian order, shall let himself be baptized again or for the second time, nor shall he baptize any such, and especially is it forbidden in the imperial law to do such on pain of death; whereupon We therefore at the beginning of 1528 … earnestly entreated you altogether and especially as Roman Emperor, supreme advocate and guardian of our holy Christian faith, by O ur public mandate, to exhort, to restrain, and to warn your subjects, relatives, and those who belong to you against the recently arisen, new error and sect of Anabaptism and its capricious seductive, and insurrectionary adherents by your [direct] command, by your learned Christian preachers from the pulpits and otherwise, also to remind them faithfully and earnestly of the penalty of the law in such a case, and especially of the great punishment of God … and to proceed against those who are discovered in such a v ice and error, and not to be tardy therein: to the end that such evil be punished and that further nonsense and any extension thereof be prevented and warded off. Notwithstanding, We find daily that despite the cited common law and also Our mandate …, this old sect of Anabaptism, condemned and forbidden many centuries ago, day by day makes greater inroads and is getting the upper hand. In order to prevent such evil and what may proceed from it, to preserve the peace and unity of the Holy Empire, as well as to dispel all dispute and doubt about the punishment for rebaptism …, We therefore renew the previous imperial law, as well as Our above-named imperial mandate, … that … every Anabaptist and rebaptized man and woman of t he age of r eason shall be condemned and brought from natural life into death by fire, sword, and the like, according to the person, without proceeding by

360  the radical reformation

chapter 10.1

the inquisition of the spiritual judges; and let the same pseudopreachers, instigators, vagabonds, and tumultuous inciters of the said vice of A nabaptism, also whoever remains in it, and those who fall a second time, let them all by no means be shown mercy, but instead be dealt with on the power of this constitution and edict earnestly with punishment.1 The opposition to more than one baptism goes back, of course, to the ancient Church with its formulation, “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Eph. 4:5). But in North Africa, Cyprian, whom the sixteenth-century Anabaptists readily cited, held that the baptismal action of s chismatics or heretics was not a t rue baptism, not being an initiation into the true Church; and therefore defended what could be called rebaptism. The bishop of Rome (Stephen) opposed his view, holding that the validity of the baptismal action depended solely on the proper formula and intention; and his view of the sacrament as operative ex opere operato (as theologically to be explained in the Augustinian tradition) became standard. Cyprian’s more sectarian view persisted, however, into the following century among the Donatists of North Africa, who, claiming themselves to constitute the true catholic Church, rebaptized all recruits from the imperially preferred or established church. It was against the recalcitrant Donatists that the emperors Honorius and Theodosius II directed their mandate of 21 March 412, embodied thus in the Theodosian Code: We trust that from fear of a most severe threat no person whatever has committed a c rime from the time it was interdicted; 2 nevertheless, in order that men of d epraved minds may abstain from unlawful acts even under duress, it is Our will that the regulation shall be renewed that, if after the time that the law was issued any person should be discovered to have rebaptized anyone who had been initiated into the mysteries of the Catholic sect, he shall suffer the penalty (supplicium) of the former statute (statuti prioris),3 along with the person rebaptized, because he has committed a crime that must be expiated, provided, however, that the person so persuaded is capable of crime by reason of his age.4

1  Text translated from that in Bossert, Württemberg (QGT 1), 3–4. It was in the earlier mandate of 1528 that Charles identified common law with spiritual or canon law. 2  Ancient reference uncertain. 3  Ancient reference uncertain. 4  “Ne Sanctum Baptisma Iteretur”; The Theodosian Code, lib. 16, tit. vi, 6, tr. Clyde Pharr, The Corpus of Roman Law, 1 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952). There is another translation interconnected with other imperial documents in P. R. Coleman-Norton, Roman State and Chr istian Church: A Collection of Legal Documents to A.D. 535, 3 v ols. (London:

chapter 10.1

speyer& strassburg, 1529  361

The Theodosian Code, 5 although determining severe penalties for heresies, including confiscation of property, exile, deprivation of heirs, and corporal punishment, did not specify capital punishment for Donatist rebaptism.6 The Justinian Code, in reproducing the Theodosian rescript,7 replaced the indefinite supplicium statuti prioris with the deadly but still equivocal ultimum supplicium. It was primarily against the dualistic Manichaeans, in part identified ideologically with the hostile Persian Empire, that the Roman codes insisted on the death penalty (summum supplicium). In the course of t he Middle Ages, what was limited to the Manichaeans was extended by way of the Cathars to all heretics (Cathari, Ketzer). Thus in the fullness of the Christian dispensation, Justinian, who was more severe than Theodosius, was in turn exceeded in hardness by Charles V, inured to Inquisition (Ch. 1.2.c). From April 1529 Anabaptists within the Empire lived the life of t he hunted. Even Christians who were not of their view could be conveniently labeled Anabaptists and thereby made subject to the mandate and its innumerable imperial and local sequels.8 It is an anomaly of t he Reformation era that precisely the Protestants—who in the most important respects (except for their theological devotion to Augustine) were much more like the “nationalist,” “puritan,” and often bellicose schismatics of North Africa than were the evangelical among the Anabaptists—turned out to be almost as zealous as the Catholics in applying the anti-Donatist laws against the Radical Reformation.9 There were, to be sure, personal and regional differences in the implementation of t he imperial mandate. In fact, there were Protestant and S.P.C.K., 1966), vol. 2: no. 335, p. 563. In the second of these the text of Cóidgo is presented interconnected with other imper ial documents; our citation cor responds to n umber 563 (2:563). 5  Lib. 16, tit., v. 6  G. G. Willis, St. Augustine and the Donatist Controversy (London: S.P.C.K., 1950), 129–30, agrees that the penalties against the Donatists, although severe, were not capital. Nor does William H. C. Frend, The Donatist Church: A Movement of Protest in Roman North Africa (1952; repr. Oxford: Clarendon, 1972), 233–49, mention the death penalty for rebaptism. 7  Lib. 1, tit., vi, 2. 8  ME 3:446–51, conveniently lists and dates all the mandates from 1525 to 1761. 9  In North Africa among the Donatists were the Berber circumcelliones who were violent. The scholarship on the v arious kinds of Anabaptists in the sixteenth centur y has returned much of the data on the apocalyptic “insurrectionary” character of some Anabaptists—to quote from the mandate of 1529. In the thor ough revision of my text, I have heeded this scholarship that sought to compensate for what appears to be confessional retrospective establishment of a normative Evangelical Anabaptism from 1525 (in the very productive school of revered Harold Bender of Goshen, Indiana). It is of concer n in the present revision to draw attention to the wholly and fr om the beginning pacifistic character of two national variants of Anabaptism that have thus far been largely excluded from honorable mention: Italian and Polish Anabaptism.

362  the radical reformation

chapter 10.1

Catholic magistrates on almost every level of of ficialdom whose conscientious mitigation or even evasion of the stern orders of the state and the established churches ought to be considered as integral a part of t he narrative of the Radical Reformation as the testimony of the baptist martyrs themselves. These exceptional divines and magistrates were all the more courageous in their humanity in that they shared neither the fierceness of the persecutors nor the pathetic folly (as they would have considered it) of the victims. Many of the Magisterial Reformers indeed suffered on the rack of conscience. Theirs was a painful ecclesiastico-political dilemma. Despite their protestation of the principle of sola scriptura, in their stripping away of the scholastic accretions to the faith, they adhered uncritically to the credal formulations of ancient imperial Christianity. Despite their enunciation of the principle of sola fide, they clutched all the more tenaciously at infant baptism in their effort to salvage from the decaying morass of late medieval Catholicism those institutions and practices which they could regard as validly Catholic. In their attempt to reassemble from the long papal neglect and exploitation, the bewildered Christian flock naturally turned in their desperation to princely shepherds (Notbischöfe). To these magistrates the Reformation could be most readily commended if it purported to be at once Catholic and obedient to those placed by God in civil authority. Of the Magisterial Reformers, John Brenz of t he imperial city of Schwabisch-Hall and Ambrose Blaurer (already encountered in Ch. 8.3) stand out as representative early critics of t he imperial restoration of t he death penalty against Anabaptism. It was specifically against the mandate of 1528 that Brenz published his widely reprinted and translated Ob eine weltliche Obrigkeit mit göttlichem und billigem Rechte möge die Wiedertäufer durch Feuer oder Schwert vom Leben zu Tode richten. It was directed to Melanchthon and argued that Theodosius had originally consented to threaten Anabaptists with the death penalty only in his desperation to secure the support of the patriarch of Constantinople in the struggle against the Persians. Brenz urged prudential moderation and clearly showed how the mandate could be used against monks for practicing the community of goods and against the Catholic clergy in general for not taking the civic oath and refusing to bear arms.10 If Brenz and a few other tolerant divines in the Magisterial Reformation stand out as literary opponents of the death penalty for heresy, and if the eight Swabian towns from Constance to Hall under the influence of Blaurer (Ch. 8.3) are notable for their rejection of t he imperial mandate of Speyer, it is nevertheless the Alsatian city of Strassburg which was most unusual in fending off the application of the imperial mandate. 10  Brenz later became har sher in his judgment of the Anabaptists. His relationship to the Radical Reformation is substantially brought together with the literature in ME 1:418–20.

chapter 10.2.a

speyer& strassburg, 1529  363

2. Strassburg, 1522–1529: Urban Republic under the Impact of Reform Strassburg, with its creaking timber bridge, the only one across the Rhine, was a crossroads city of politics as it was of commerce and religion. A patrician revolt in the thirteenth century, followed by a revolt of the commoners in the fourteenth century, had completely wrested the control of the city from its prince-bishop, who was obliged to content himself with the fringes of his temporal bishopric. The core thereof had emerged as a p rosperous and powerful urban republic, whose nobles and guildsmen by 1482 (the adoption of t he Schwörbrief ) had hammered out a c onstitution renowned for its efficiency despite the elaborate precautions for checking and balancing the competing interests of t he various classes of society. The city, answerable to the Emperor alone, had a r eputation for judicial and penal moderation, summed up in the current saying: “He who would be hanged anywhere else is simply driven from Strassburg by flogging.” Strassburg also had, even in the Middle Ages, a r eputation for religious vitality, variety, and toleration, a trait which persisted into the era of Reformation. a. An Emerging Christocracy In recounting the sectarian history of t his urban republic we can be somewhat more attentive here than elsewhere to the role of the magistrates and the established Reformers in order, in this one selected area of t he Empire, to have before us that kind of institutional detail which will give sixteenth-century specificity to the secondary themes of t his chapter, the relationship among church, state, and school in the Radical Reformation. Although we shall not overburden the sectarian narrative with constitutional details, content to refer in a general way to “the magistrates,” we should at least have before us at the outset an outline of what constituted the magistracy (Magistrat) of Strassburg.11

11  For the civil constitution of the city, Franklin Ford gives the best brief rounded account, Strasbourg in Transition (Cambridge; Harvard University Press, 1958), ch. 1. The whole of the imperial city’s history is r ecounted magisterially by Miriam U. Chrisman, Strasbourg and the Reform: A study in the process of c hange (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), the topic resumed by Thomas A. Brady, Ruling Class, Regime and Refor mation at Strasbourg (Leiden: Brill, 1978) and by Williams S. Stafford, Domesticating the Clergy: The Inception of the Reformation in Strasbourg, 1522–1524 (Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1976). See also Rober t Kreider, “The Anabaptists and the Civil Authorities of Strasbourg, 1525–1555,” CH 24 (1955): 99–100; Marc Lienhard, “Les autorités civiles et les anabaptistes (attitude du mag istrat de Strasbourg 1526– 1532)” in The Origins and Characteristics of Anabaptism (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1977), 196–215; and cf. Georges Livet, et al., Strasbourg au cœur religieux du XVIe siècle (Strasbourg: Librairie Istra, 1977); Jean Rott and Stephen Nelson ha ve collaborated with tw o maps and a bib liography, to present “Strassburg, the Anabaptist City in the Sixteenth Centur y,” MQR 58, no. 3 (1984): 230–40.

364  the radical reformation

chapter 10.2.a

The vital organs of t he body politic of S trassburg were the twenty guilds. These guilds or lodges were largely vocational, as elsewhere, but more than in most other towns they were in Strassburg fraternal and social in character, and were as often named after the tavern where they habitually convened as after the crafts and trades grouped in them. These twenty corporations were directly represented by e lected life members in the assembly of the three hundred (Schöffenversammlung). The nobles, made up of the descendants of the medieval episcopal functionaries and castellans with townhouses and the right of citizenship, likewise convened in clubs, eventually reduced to two quasi-political organizations roughly comparable to the corporations. In the course of the Reformation even the weekly convocation of the parish clergy took on the socio-political character of the corporations. Annually the guildsmen elected twenty members of the city council (Rat, senate); the nobles, ten. Besides the guildsmen’s assembly of t hree hundred and the mixed council of thirty, there were several lesser chambers, committees, or commissions, notably “the thirteen” and “the fifteen,” and the combination of t hese two, which constituted the “twenty-one.” The last was the most powerful of the subordinate commissions and also the largest. Through the addition of several specially designated commissioners, it actually had a dozen more members than its name warranted. Above the popular assembly and the mixed council with its several subordinate but sometimes rival and countervailing commissions, there were two kinds of headship of the urban republic, again a constitutionalized transmutation of t he basic conflict and compromise between nobles and commoners. The highest office was that of Stettmeister, held by f our noblemen designated by their peers. Each ruled in turn for three months out of the year of office. Below this rotating, collegiate mayoralty was the city manager, the Ammeister, who was elected for a solid year by fellow guildsmen in the council. Since the single commoner Ammeister was closer to the city’s internal affairs than the four nobiliary Stettmeisters, who were quarterly taken up by ceremonial and diplomatic duties, the Ammeister was the pivot of city politics; but he also had always to heed five other retired Ammeisters, who preserved the title as honorific and merely awaited the expiration of t he five years required by t he constitution to be re-elected. In effect the office of Ammeister was also, over the years, tightly corporate. Such was the complicated magistracy of Strassburg when, in February 1529, the city state officially declared itself for the Magisterial Reformation by abolishing the Mass and in form closer to that of Zurich than that of Wittenberg under its resident prince. The beginnings of P rotestantism in Strassburg antedate this action by a decade. Matthew Zell (1477–1548) came from the rectorship of the University of Freiburg in 1518 to serve as pastor of the cathedral parish.

chapter 10.2.a

speyer& strassburg, 1529  365

He was won for the Reformation cause. He authorized the optional use of German in baptism and encouraged his assistant, Diebold Schwarz, to conduct the Mass in German and to administer communion in both kinds for the first time in Strassburg in a semi-crypt of the cathedral, 16 February 1524. In the same year, Zell married and was excommunicated by the bishop, who, from his palace at Saverne (Zabern), for the most part sustained friendlier relations with “his” city clergy than in any comparable situation elsewhere in the Empire. It was the magistracy which kept Zell in his position. The city was in effect a partisan of the Magisterial Reformation when, on 24 August 1524, the magistrates took over the entire responsibility for the nomination, installation, and remuneration of the pastors of all seven of the city parishes. As we shall see, Zell was open to some of the claims of the radicals by reason of his natural humaneness, supported by his courageous, hospitable, and intuitive wife, Catherine. The openness of h is colleague Wolfgang Capito was, in contrast, fully as much theological as it was temperamental. Born in Hagenau, Capito (1478–1541) 12 studied successively at Pforzheim, Ingolstadt, and Freiburg to become a doctor in medicine, law, and theology. For a w hile he served as preacher in the cathedral in Basel and lecturer in Hebrew at the university, becoming an acquaintance of Erasmus and lifelong proponent of irenicism in theology and in politics. Though while in Basel he had contact with the ideas of Zwingli and Luther, it was not until after serving as chancellor under Archbishop Albert of Mainz that, in 1523, he visited Wittenberg and openly espoused the evangelical cause. In Strassburg, he became that very year provost of the collegiate church of St. Thomas, and subsequently he removed to New St. Peter’s as chief pastor. Capito’s house until the death of his f irst wife, Agnes, in 153113 was the rendezvous of all kinds of dissenters. His wife’s renowned table, along with his hospitality to people of varying religious convictions, made of their home a theological salon. Martin Bucer (1491–1551), a former Dominican who had been tremendously impressed by Luther at Worms, came to St. Aurelia’s in Strassburg from Weissenburg (present-day Wissembourg), where he had founded a Lutheran congregation. He arrived in the same year as Capito (1523). Soon, by virtue of his great natural endowments and energy, he emerged from his new assignment at St. Thomas, as the leader and spokesman of 12  Hans Schell, “Wolfgang Fabricius Capitos r eformatorische Eigenart,” Zwingliana 16 (1983): 126–41, wherein the idiosyncratic character is r elated to Carlstadt, the Anabaptist, as well as to Luther and his fellow reformers in the city. 13  Capito married in 1532 the wido w of John Oecolampadius, Wilbrandis, who died in 1564. On the death of Capito in 1541, Wilbrandis took as her four th husband Martin Bucer, whose first wife, Elizabeth Pallas, had also died in 1541. Wilbrandis’ first husband had been the magistrate Ludwig Keller.

366  the radical reformation

chapter 10.2.a

the reforming clergy of the whole city. We shall meet the other municipal reformers of Strassburg in the course of our narrative. We look now to the radicals, refugees, and natives crammed in the city and its outlying villages.14 The history of the Radical Reformation in Strassburg begins with the physician and lay preacher Karsthans Maurer15 during the summer of 1522 when, in the alleys and among the booths and small shops at the base of the cathedral, he spoke out against the sacraments, the hierarchy, and the magistrates, and in favor of t he ideals of t he Bundschuh.16 The most unusual and distinctive figure in the Radical Reformation in Alsace was the lay preacher and peasant leader Clement Ziegler.17 Ziegler was a member of the guild of gardeners, which included also the shepherds and day laborers. The largest corporation, with six hundred members, and the most proletarian, it met in three sections. During the great flood of 1524, Ziegler was miraculously saved from drowning, and in allusion to Psalm 18:16, he considered himself drawn “out of many waters” to proclaim publicly the gospel as he had been coming to express it among “the Brethren” in the Bible-study meetings of his guild. His first published tract was on idolatry, Ein kurzes Register,18 published in June 1524. Bringing together the biblical passages against images, he went beyond Carlstadt (Ch. 3.1) and Haetzer (Ch. 5.2.b) in closely interrelating iconoclasm and sacramentarianism in an eschatological setting. Pointing out that the observation of the Supper, according to Paul (1 Cor. 11:26) was a proclamation of Christ’s death till he come again, Ziegler argued that in the canon of the Mass the priest, contrariwise, was

14  For the history of Strassburg radicalism. see Gerbert, Geschichte der Strassburger; Hulshof, Geschiedenis Straatsburg; Timotheus W. Roehrich, “Zur Geschichte der strassb urgischen Widertäufer in den J arhen 1527 bis 1543, ” Zeitschrift für die histor ische Theologie 30 (1860): 3–121; and Chr isman, Strasbourg, esp. ch. 11, “The Rejection of Theological Radicalism: The Anabaptists” and the helpful map of the city in 1576, along with many tables, charts, and plates. All four volumes of Alsatian Täuferakten are now available: Elsass 1: Stadt Strassburg 1522–1532, ed. Manfred Krebs and J ean Rott (hencefor th: Elsass 1 [QGT 7]); Elsass 2: Stadt Strassburg 1533–1535 (henceforth Elsass 2 [QGT 8]) (Güter sloh: Mohn, 1959, 1960); Elsass 3: Stadt Strassburg 1536–1542, ed. Marc Lienhard, Stephen F. Nelson, and Hans Georg Rott (henceforth Elsass 3 [QGT 15]) (Gütersloh, 1986); Elsass 4: Stadt Strassburg 1543–1552 (henceforth Elsass 4 [QGT 16]) (Güter sloh: Mohn, 1988). For the edited wr itings of the four radicals including John Campanus, Catherine Zell, Entfelder, see André Séguenny, ed., Bibliotheca Dissidentium 1 (Baden-Baden: Koerner. 1980). 15  Elsass 1 (QGT 7), no. 104, and for his life, 1, no. 3. He is mentioned in Ch. 8.2. 16  Ibid., no. 5. 17  Rodolphe Peter, “Le maraîcher Clément Ziegler ,” Revue d’Histoire et de Philosophie Religieuses 34 (1954): 255–82; Elsass 1 (QGT 7), nos. 6–8. Klaus Depper mann, “Melchior Hofmann and Strasbourg Anabaptism,” in Mar c Lienhard, ed., Origins (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1977), updates the account of Ziegler and pr ints three from him illustrative of the birth of the New Man. 18  Elsass 1 (QGT 7), no. 6.

chapter 10.2.a

speyer& strassburg, 1529  367

addressing himself to Christ or the exacting Father of J esus Christ, and even then in a tongue foreign to the people to whom he turned his back in the officiation. Ziegler expressly linked the elimination of eucharistic and iconographic idolatry with the reactivation of t he world mission of the church to the heathen, and particularly to the Jews of the Latter Days, quoting Malachi 4:5–6. Carlstadt came to Strassburg for four days in 1524 and offended the leading pastors by meeting only with sectaries.19 The combined influence of the two sacramentarians, Ziegler and Carlstadt, brought about sporadic iconoclasm in late August and September 1524. Thereupon the magistrates, while condemning violence and private acts of v andalism, proceeded to the orderly removal of the more revered pictures and reliquaries from the cathedral and St. Aurelia. Already by t he summer of t hat year, 1524, Ziegler had given expression to the underlying christological convictions that had prompted him to denounce iconographic and eucharistic idolatry in Von der Vermählung Mariä und Josephs and Von der wahren Geniessung bei dem Leib und Blut Christi und von der Taufe. These were followed at the end of t he year and at the beginning of 1525 by a third sacramentarian tract, Ein fast schönes Büchlein. In brief, Ziegler held that Christ was pre-existent, the firstborn of M ary only in the sense that the miraculously begotten of the Father “within the Trinity,” having a b ody “before the foundations of t he world,” acquired also visible human flesh at the incarnation. It is the celestial body, said he, which should be stressed in the mission to “the Turks, Tatars, Greeks, Jews, and heathen,” for the non-Christians always have direct access “through faith” to the heavenly Christ in his glorious body but may well be offended by the Catholic preoccupation with the eucharistic flesh and the accompanying idolatries.20 Attaching decisive importance to John 6:63 “… the flesh profiteth nothing,” Ziegler withdrew from the words of eucharistic institution any sense of bodily sacrifice and real presence, and while preserving the article of M ary’s perpetual virginity, deprived both Joseph and Mary of biological parenthood. We shall have several occasions in this chapter to note the permeation of Z iegler’s doctrine of t he heavenly body of Christ through a large section of the radical community of Strassburg. 21 Ziegler also attacked the practice of infant baptism and the use of oil and chrism, possibly under the influence of J acob Strauss of E isenach, whose tract Wider die simonische Taufe of 1523 (Ch. 3.2) was reprinted in

19

 Ibid., p. 8, no. 3; Müsing,“Karlstadt und die Entstehung der Strassburger Täufergemeinde,” Origins, ed. Marc Lienhard (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1977), 169–95. 20  Ibid., nos. 7, 8, 24, p. 25. 21  Note Carlstadt’s refutation of him in Zurich as late as 1534, below, nn. 93, 94.

368  the radical reformation

chapter 10.2.a

Strassburg in 1524. 22 Thus it was that in the spring or summer of 1524, Ziegler stressed the Marcan injunction (Mark 16:15) to preach the gospel to all creatures; and, appealing also to the liturgical sequence for Whitsuntide, Veni sancte Spiritus,23 he set forth his deep conviction that proclamation should come first, then fire in the sense of l ove and the Holy Spirit, and only at the last the water as an outward sign of f aith. As for children, he appealed to the Dominical injunction that the little ones (Mark 10:14) should come unto him without baptism, for of such is the Kingdom. He pointed out the inconsistency of going against Jesus’ words in two respects, namely, supposing that infants were damned without baptism, and of baptizing without explicit faith and love in the baptizand. 24 Although Ziegler did not suggest rebaptism, he vigorously agitated for the elimination of o il, salt, the stone baptistery, and godparents. Besides his radical convictions in respect to images, the Mass, and baptism, Ziegler shared the evangelical aspirations of the peasants in the realm of social justice. Although remaining a convinced pacifist, he moved out of Strassburg and joined the peasant revolt. Strassburg had been the focal point of the Upper Rhenish Bundschuh coming to its climax in 1517 (Ch. 4.1). The first protests in Alsace leading to the great Peasants’ War proper took place in the second half of A pril 1525. It was natural that the leading lay preacher of the gardener’s guild of Strassburg should take a prominent part in the demands for evangelical justice. It was under the immediate influence of a pamphlet by the Strassburg teacher and physician Otto Brunfels (Ch. 8.4.b), Von dem Pfaffenzehnten CXLII Schlussreden (1524) that Ziegler also preached against tithes and rents to the clerical holders of l anded properties, appealing to Matthew 23:23, wherein Jesus rebuked the scribes and Pharisees for tithing mint, dill, and cumin, and neglecting the weightier matters of the law. 25 Filled with evangelical fervor and with concern for the realization of the social program of t he uprisen peasants, Ziegler, in his Eine fast schöne Auslegung des Vater unser, declared that just as Luther was considered “an instrument of God and a prophet,” so Christ himself in these days would have enrolled as a Bundschuher26 That Ziegler was at the same time opposed to violence in the vindication of the rights of the peasants is shown in his commentary on “our daily bread” and “deliver us from evil,” where he interpreted the sword in the building up of Jerusalem in the latter days 22  See extracts in Elsass 1 (QGT 7), p. 18. For the general impor tance of Strauss, see Joachim Rogge, Der Beitrag des Jacob Strauss zur fruhen Reformationsgeschichte (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstadt, 1957). 23  Elsass 1 (QGT 7), p. 15, l. 20. 24  Ibid., p. 16, ll. 7–20. 25  Ibid., p. 32. 26  Ibid., no. 25, p. 36.

chapter 10.2.a

speyer& strassburg, 1529  369

(Neh. 4:17f.) as the sword of the Spirit (Eph. 6:17) construed as the discernment of the Scriptures. It was from February to April 1525 that Ziegler preached in various communities, urging the peasants to read the New Testament, and pointing out that Jesus was the friend and associate of the poor and the humble. When his gatherings were several times disbanded by f orce of a rms, and when the peasants (including fellow members of t he gardeners’ guild of Strassburg) for their part also resorted to arms in the Alsatian phase of the Great Peasants’ War, Ziegler himself withdrew. His last recorded sermon to the peasants was in April in a churchyard in the neighborhood of Schlettstadt (Sélestat).27 His name and ideal lived on until the termination of the war in the Alsatian sector in the peasant parole: “For the Gospel, Christ, and Clement Ziegler!”28 A third Alsatian agitator of n ote was the obstreperous and eccentric weaver John Wolff, from nearby Benfeld, who predicted that the millennium would come at the stroke of m idnight on Ascension Day, 1533. He espoused the prophetically social convictions of Ziegler and Karsthans but in a somewhat different accent. He excoriated the magisterial divines for turning the populace destructively and excitedly against mere externalities, i.e., in the abolition of the Mass, the removal of images, and the dissolution of cloisters, while all the time they for their part fattened rich and strong, ate well, wore fine shoes, and insisted on being called doctor and master and did nothing to rid their cities and cantons of such gross wickedness as adultery, prostitution, usury, and unjust land rents and tithes. On 17 June 1526, Wolff in the cathedral raised his voice against the preacher Matthew Zell, charged him with spiritual lying, and demanded that he descend from the pulpit and cede his place so that the Holy Spirit might be truly heard on the text before them.29 Wolff, like Ziegler and Karsthans, was a vigorous antipedobaptist in his denunciation of the magisterial divines for perpetuating infant baptism and against God’s word imposing on little children an engagement of which they were not capable. The three antipedobaptists scanned the whole Reformation horizon in their denunciation. In Strassburg itself, as a matter of fact, several of the principal parish pastors were themselves theologically uneasy about infant baptism, particularly Capito and the Zells, Catherine as much as Matthew. Tolerant and hospitable, Matthew Zell once declared, “He who accepts Christ as his Lord and Savior shall have a place at my table, and I 27

 Ibid., no. 32, April 2.  Pointed out in context by Peter in his section “L’Agitation dans la Guerre des Paysans” “Clément Ziegler,” RHPR: 270–74. For the larger context, see Franziska Conrad, Reformation in der Bäuerlichen Gesellschaft: Zur Rezeption reformatischer Theologie im Elsass (Stuttgart/Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1985). 29  Elsass 1 (QGT 7), nos. 47, 53, 85. 28

370  the radical reformation

chapter 10.2.a

will have a place with him in heaven.” He was several times to declaim from the pulpit that he was not in agreement with the proposals gradually made by Bucer and others to control Anabaptism, for he was in favor of the Anabaptist and Spiritualist view that the government should not by coercion enforce its will in matters of faith. Zell had found a faithful supporter of his benevolent ideals in his wife, Catherine Schütz-Zell (1497 or 1498–1562). 30 She was first of all remarkable for having written in defense of Matthew’s life before their marriage and for their marriage (3 December 1525). 31 She made their home a haven for all those persecuted in the name of orthodoxy, concerning herself not at all with the particulars in which they differed from the local, reformed parishes. Waldensians, Spiritualists, and Anabaptists were welcome; for, as she said, “it is our duty to show love, service, and mercy to everyone; Christ our teacher taught us that.” She was to survive her husband by a good many years, and to continue her merciful work after his death in accordance with his wish. Much later she would write in a letter defending the Anabaptists: Now as to the poor Anabaptists, … the authorities everywhere chase them as a hunter urges his dogs upon a wild boar or a rabbit. They, after all, confess Christ with us on the main things in which we differ from the Papacy. … Shall one then persecute them and Christ in them whom they confess with zeal, and many of them have confessed unto misery, prison, f ire, and water? Rather give yourselves the blame that we in our life and teaching are the cause of their separating. … He who does evil, him shall the government punish, but it shall not compel and govern faith. It belongs to the heart and the conscience and not to the external man. 32 Catherine Zell was a r esourceful and courageous woman, with a d eep sense of her Christian mission to be charitable in the realm of conflicting convictions.

30  Her writings are assembled and character ized by Marc Lienhard, “Catherine Zell, née Schütz,” Ein Brieff an die ganze Burgerschaft der Statt Straszburg, directed at the criticism of her by Ludwig Rabus, preacher in Ulm (Strassburg, 1557), Bd. 1 (1980), 97–125. 31  “Entschuldigung Katharina Schützinn, für M. Matthes Zellen, jren Eegemahel” (Strassburg?, 1524?), to be edited and translated by Elsie A. McKee. 32  Verbatim from Gerbert, Geschichte der Strassburger cited in ME, 4:1023. For a series of biographical studies of the g reat women figures in the Refor mation, see Roland H. Bainton, Women of the Reformation, Vol. 1, In Germany and Italy; Vol. 2, In France and England; Vol. 3, From Spain to Scandinavia (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1971, 1973, 1977). For Catherine Zell see vol. 1, chap. 3.

chapter 10.2.a

speyer& strassburg, 1529  371

Capito, of all the major Strassburg divines, was the closest in theology to the Spiritualists, the moderate Anabaptists, and the opponents of t he Nicene formulation of the Trinity. In his Kinderbericht of 1527 he openly expressed his theological dissatisfaction with pedobaptism, reluctantly accepting it as a practical measure, neither proved nor forbidden by Scripture. The simplification of the ordinance of baptism had so far proceeded in Strassburg that it was everywhere conducted in German and denuded of its liturgical incrustations, and it was performed at the altar rather than at the baptistery, while increased attention was being given to the need of preparing the infant for instruction in the covenant. 33 After Catherine and Matthew Zell and Capito, it was Bucer who was leading the way toward the evangelical reconception of baptism. Under the impact of the agitation of the lay preachers and with pressure from his two troubled colleagues, Bucer had been prompted by his own concern for the primacy of f aith (solafideism) to speak forth in the name of t he Strassburg divines in favor of modifications in respect to both baptism and the ban in Grund und Ursache aus göttlicher Schrift, published early in 1525. 34 Herein he maintained that preeminent in the Reformation in Strassburg was the recovery of t he importance of f aith and therewith the simplification of t he baptismal rite. At the same time, precisely because water baptism was an outward form, he argued that it should be administered to children at a convenient time and accompanied by t he parental promise to provide Christian nurture for the child and by t he general disavowal of any redemptive efficacy in the rite alone. He was even prepared to let parents, who, for conscience’ sake, demurred, postpone the ordinance for their children so long as they manifested love and a sense of solidarity with the Christian community at large. But Bucer was, of c ourse, firmly set against separatism and rebaptism, precisely, he said, because a renewed baptism placed too high a value on an outward sign and because it implicitly disparaged the birthright membership of t he majority. He pointed out, moreover, that the postponement of baptism would encourage boys and girls to grow up without counting themselves Christian, and justify any unseemly conduct on their part until such a time as they should choose to become pious and submit to baptism. As for the confession of sin which Ziegler and others had come to connect with believers’ baptism, Bucer saw that the confession of one’s sins should be the initial act at every divine service. As for the ban, the other portal of t he separatist conventicle, Bucer was beset by a consideration of which the sectaries could remain oblivious. For the magisterial reformers there was nothing inherently wrong in restoring the right of the major and the minor ban or excommunication 33 34

 Elsass 1 (QGT 7), nos. 26, 34.  Ibid., no. 22; the preface is dated 26 December 1524.

372  the radical reformation

chapter 10.2.a / 10.2.b

to the whole church or parish. This was indeed the logic of the Protestant principle of the priesthood of all believers. But the evangelical magistrates themselves, after being liberated from the menace of the papal ban, were not disposed to encourage a new and locally more powerful clericalism or ecclesiasticism in their midst. Not on principle averse to the practice of moral self-discipline among the artisans in their sodalities, the magistrates were on the defensive whenever the Reformers, under pressure from the sectaries, proposed measures that would involve all classes in the exercise of ecclesiastical discipline. As for the magisterial exercise of the ban in grievous cases, Bucer was not satisfied with the theory that would make of the magistrates the principal laymen of the church and as such qualified to discharge for the royal-priestly laity the more important disciplinary functions. A little bit later Bucer would take over from Oecolampadius the idea of church wardens (Kirchenpfleger) whom he thought he could assimilate to the elders of the apostolic church and charge with the discipline of the parish, including the ministers. According to this plan there would be three in each parish: two drawn from one of the magistracies, and one an elected private member of the local church. Although we are getting ahead in our narrative, by a dding that three church wardens from each of t he city’s seven parishes would in due course constitute a p owerful disciplinary board of t wenty-one (1531), much more magisterial than ecclesiastical, we do so to indicate that even Bucer was at one time sensitive to the moderate radicals on such matters as pedobaptism, moral reform, and the separation of the two swords. b. An Excursus on the Triplex Munus Christi Before proceeding with Bucer’s own development of t his formulary, we look at this presiding cleric of the imperial free state in his religio-political setting. The city and city-state of Strassburg under the theological leadership of Bucer, in preparing for the implementation of the reform of the whole territory of the city-state was roughly comparable to Zurich with its canton except that Strassburg had a cathedral and thought of itself as engaged in the reform of both church and of education city-wide above the parishes into the territory carved out of t he prince-bishopric 35 but in cooperation with the parishes. Although the first movement towards reform had come indeed from Matthew Zell in the cathedral parish, it would soon take on the conceptualization of Martin Bucer, who was in particular moved by a

35  Ernst-Wilhelm Kohls, Die Schule bei Mar tin Bucer in ihrem Verhältnis zu Kirc he und Obrigkeit, Pädigogische Forschungen 22 (Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer, 1963).

chapter 10.2.b

speyer& strassburg, 1529  373

sense for the common good (gemein Nutz) 36 and devoted to a provisional realization of t he Regnum Christi in the Alsatian civitas christiana. His De regno Christi, to be published posthumously in 1557, would be a summation of his theocratic, more specifically christocratic, vision. 37 Strassburg, as we have seen thus far, was notable in the sensibilities of its ministers and magistrates to the Anabaptists and others who asked to be taught from Scripture alone and who yearned for disciplined congregations. To both of t hese yearnings the Strassburg reformers were long so leniently disposed as to imperil a unified, uniformly reformed city-state. In the end Bucer would appeal to Christ as final propheta (Peter, in Acts 3:22–23 quoting Deut. 18:19), “whom it is necessary to hear in all things,” which Bucer adduces “against all those who permit themselves to add to [the Catholics], or subtract from [presumably the Anabaptists or Spiritualists], the words and precepts … as they please, and fabricate a ministry of his religion other than what he [the Son] delivered to us.”38 Unlike Zwingli and his colleagues in Zurich, Bucer encouraged the cooperation of c hurch and state in the development of a citywide public education and catechetical instruction (conducted in German and Latin) for both boys and girls. Although there were onsets to a school of Bible studies when the reformers of the city had begun their lectures, the future city Gymnasium under John Sturm will date from 1538 to 1566, at which time, by authority of Emperor Maximilian II, it would be elevated to the rank of Academy. Luther, also encouraged the education of girls, but, in accordance with his two-kingdoms theory, by c alling upon the magistracy to provide for that public education. Bucer in comparison regarded the school as a co-responsibility of the city council and the church of Strassburg, not of the parishes discretely nor of the city council alone. Bucer would presently come to express his conception of the higher sanction for cooperation among magistrates, ministers, and the teachers/professors in his description of Jesus Christ as at once King, and head of the Prophets (teachers). The tripartite formulary, which we have already taken note of i n Erasmus (Ch. 1.3.a), would gain a career of its own in Calvinism (Ch. 23), and in 36

 Ibid. Kohls devotes his Exkurs II to the meaning and history of the concept.  It was written for Edward VI in Cambridge in 1550, where Bucer was Regius Professor of divinity, dwelling in England from 1549 until his death in 1551.Wilhelm Pauck gives a translation of large portions of it, from the critical edition by François Wendel et al. (Paris/Gütersloh: Presses Universitaires de France/Bertelsmann, 1954) in LCC 19. 38  De regno Christi, tr. Pauck in Wendel et al., p. 263. That Bucer has primarily in mind the laws of Chr ist, the second La wgiver, rather than doctr ines, is evidenced by his direct address to King Edward about selective disobedience to his la ws. But it is possib le that as teacher in Strassburg and as pr ofessor in Cambr idge, Bucer w as also claiming doctoral author ity from Christ as final propheta. His idea of the triplex munus Christi, though not brought out in De regno, may have been shared with Laski whom he will have encountered during the sojourn of the latter in London, 1549–53. On Laski and the triplex munus Christi, more likely derived from Erasmus directly, see Ch. 25.1. 37

374  the radical reformation

chapter 10.2.b

Socinianism (Ch. 29.8,9) and we pause here to note the context in which Bucer gave expression to it. We have noted (Ch. 9.2.b) how the image of the two swords entered Latin Christendom with the bull Unam Sanctam of Boniface VIII in 1302, the spiritual and the temporal sword, inferred by him as applicable to himself as successor of Peter in allusion to Luke 22:38. Pope Gelasius I had long before written authoritatively to Emperor Anastasius in 494, to the same effect: “Duo [potestates] quippe sunt, your imperial highness, through which at the highest instance the world is ruled: the holy auctoritas of bishops and the imperial potestas.” The same perceptive Pontiff had reached back to Scripture and, noting that under the Old D ispensation both priests and kings were anointed and that some, like Melchizedek (Gen. 14:18), had been a priest-king, while in pagan Rome the Emperor had also been Pontifex Maximus, declared that in the New Dispensation, that is, since the age of the true King and Priest in one Person has dawned, no Emperor has taken upon himself the title of sacerdos and no bishop has presumed to the royal dignity … for Christ, mindful of our human weakness, through his grand design for the salvation of his own, separated the two potestates into their proper fields of activity and well divided dignities. 39 Pope Innocent III, climaxing centuries of s truggle between the primate-anointed kings of Europe and the anointed (consecrated) prelates, going beyond Gelasius, recognized that Jesus was himself anointed by the Holy Spirit (Acts 10:38) and that as Christus he was at once anointed sacerdos, anointed rex, and anointed propheta, picking up a theme of Eusebius of Caesarea (Ch. 1. n. 32) but without evident dependence upon that source. As the letter of 1204 in which the Pope expressed himself fully on chrismation of b ishops and the unction of k ings passed into the Corpus Iuris Canonici, it may well have been the source of the reference to the threefold office of Christ in Bucer (1527) and Sebastian Franck (1531).40 As the conceptualization of the triplex munus Christi is sui generis (in its scope and growing theological precision) in the sixteenth century, we pause here to sketch further the background. 39

 IV Tractatus; ed. A. Thiel, Epistolae Romanorum Pontificum (Braunsberg, 1868), 567–68; Hugo Rahner, ed., Abendländische Kirchenfreiheit: Dokumente über Kirc he und Staat im frühen Christentum (Cologne: Benzinger, 1943), Doc. 20c. 40  The exact words of Innocent, in a systematic tr eatment de unctione, are to be found in X, 1, IS, sec. 5, De unctione. This section is a letter (Decr etal) of Innocent III of 1204 to Basil, whom he had earlier made ar chbishop of Trnovo (present-day Romanian Taˆ rnova in Transylvania) and pr imate (as equivalent of patr iarch) of the second Bulgar ian kingdom of the Bulgars and the Walachians. The letter appears in Migne, PL 215: 2 cols. 28287; it is calendared by August Potthast, Regesta Pontificum Romanorum, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1874), vol. 1, no. 2138, dated 25 February 1204.

chapter 10.2.b

speyer& strassburg, 1529  375

From the correspondence of I nnocent III we learn that through the papal legate’s bestowal of the pallium, Primate Basil was authorized by him to crown the Bulgarian/Walachian king, consecrate the holy chrism, and install metropolitans.41 The letter constitutes a p apal disquisition on the unction of baptizands, prelates, and kings, and the Pope makes it clear that kings should be anointed, not on the head, like a bishop, but only on the shoulder or arm. It is in this larger context that Innocent III adduces the scriptural texts to show that Jesus was anointed by the Holy Spirit sacerdos, rex, and propheta, citing Acts 10:38, where Peter tells the centurion Cornelius “how God had anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power,” and there were among bystanders a number of converts who, having received the Holy Spirit, were baptized by Peter with water (Acts 10:47–48; cf. Acts 8:14f.). Innocent was probably aware of the fact that there was no tradition of royal (imperial) unction in Byzantium, that the privilege was one that he was according through the primate to a former noble subject of the Eastern Emperor. He was fully cognizant of how great had been the struggle of his predecessor Gregory VII Hildebrand to diminish the sacring of Germanic kings since the Visigoths.42 It is clear that Innocent III, being himself vicarius Petri and also vicarious Christi (a Byzantine imperial title) considered himself in a sense to be holder of the royal/imperial dignity (verus imperator) at the apex of the Episcopal magisterium and earthly head of the Church as mater et magistra sanctorum fidelium.43 That Innocent has in mind the unction by the Teacher (Christ) of the disciples, by extension the apostles, and by further extension the bishops, is brought out in his quoting from 1 John 2:27: “The anointing which you received from him [ Jesus] abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you; as his anointing teaches you about everything.”44 The emergence of t he conceptualization of Christ as Prophet, Priest, and King in Strassburg and also elsewhere among Protestants seems to have been connected with the contemporary enhancement of the status of the 41

 There had been a revolt in 1186 of the Bulgars against Byzantine control, led by Ivan and Peter Assen (Asen) of Trnovo. Ivan had in f act assumed a modified form of the the Byzantine title as “Tsar of the Bulgar s and Hellenes.” Kaloian Assen succeeded him and it w as with him that Innocent III negotiated the r eunion of the Bulgar s with the Apostolic See, an obedience that would continue until 1235. Of four letter s of Innocent dealing with the Bulgar s and Walachians, the one that so influentially entered the Corpus Iuris Canonici was that addressed to Primate Basil, informing him that he must proceed to the canonical unction of a certain Blasius whom Basil had elevated as episcopus Barcarensis but had not yet properly consecrated with the assistance of two other bishops besides himself. 42  The coinherence of the grace of royal and episcopal sanctions, both consecrands in those days, receiving the chrism on the head, was a major theme of the Norman Anonymous ca. 1180, about whom I wrote in Harvard Theological Studies 18 (1951). 43  Ibid., col. 134. 44  Ibid., col. 283.

376  the radical reformation

chapter 10.2.b

university-trained teacher (magister/Meister/Lehrer) among them: teaching as well as proclaiming the holy word was being thought as coordinate with magistracy, an implicit claim of magisterial authority on the part of the new pastor-teachers all the more urgent for the reason that the sacrificatory or distinctly sacerdotal role of the ministries was being relativized through the programmatically Protestant insistence on the once-for-all character of t he sole and sufficient sacrifice on Calvary, the benefit of Christ’s suffering being appropriated by predestined faith alone. At the same time the radical separatists were making claim to direct authority from the Holy Spirit through their initial prophet or through the testing of prophecy in the lex sedentium (Ch. 11.4.b) and in several other ways in their conventicles (Ch. 11.4). It is thus in the double sense of “ magisterial,” in reference to both magistrates and masters, that the reform in Strassburg was indeed coordinately magisterial, and Bucer himself, an emerging superintendent of t he city-state, moved toward a Christocracy in which temporal authority, the teaching authority, and the pastoral ministry were coordinate under Christ as rex, propheta, and sacerdos. He brought this out in his Gospel Commentary, which in the version of 1526 was formulated thus: King of kings, High Priest, and Head of the Prophets.45 In his Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (1527) Bucer refers to the offices (not yet, however, munus): Christ is anointed that he might be our rex, doctor, and sacerdos in eternity, who will govern us, and lest we might lack for good or be pressed by any evil, will teach the whole truth, and restore us to be reconciled in eternity.46 In the Commentary on John (1528), Bucer varies the order of the offices: Christ is rex regum, summus sacerdos, and prophetarum caput who does not rule in the mode of an external command, who does not 45  His Enarrationes in Evangelia (Strassburg, 1526) reads: “Rex regum Christus est, summus sacerdos, et prophetarum caput.” It is possible that Bucer’s initial phrasing, “head of prophets,” represents deference to the terminology of St. Augustine, who wrote of Christ as indeed rex and sacerdos but only as dominus prophetarum, e.g. In Ioannis Evangelium tractatus 24, 7. In confirmation of this surmise that Bucer was concerned with the authority of the magister/pastor in relation to the magistratus, one may adduce other references to the authority of Christ as propheta/doctor, Johannes Müller, Martin Bucers Hermeneutik, QFRG 32 (1965): 146, 206, 191, 206 n. 62, and the author’s section “Amtsbegriff,” pp. 46ff., although the triplex munus Christi is not taken into account. 46  Enarationum in Ev angelia Matthaei, Marci et Lucae libro duo (Strassburg, 1526) 1 folio 10b (edition 1536, p. 9). There were three editions of the C ommentaries, 1526, 1530, 1536. Massive, they are commonly cited in the analysis of them by August Lang, Der Evangelien kommentar Martin Butzers und die Gründzuge seinerTheologie, Studien zur Geschichte der Theologie und der Kirche 2:2 (Leipzig, 1900), p. 110. The Commentary on John was published in 1527. In 1530 and 1536 the Synoptics and John were printed together.

chapter 10.2.b / 10.2.c

speyer& strassburg, 1529  377

sacrifice with brute beasts, who does not teach and admonish so much with an external voice but with the Holy Spirit. … 47 This was a seminal formulation perhaps related, but evidently prior to, that of Sebastian Franck in this same city in 1531 (below, n. 102). Bucer’s formulation is thought to have been seminal for John Calvin during his Strassburg sojourn (1539–44) as pastor of the French congregation and lecturer in the theological school. This will be manifest in Calvin’s introduction of the threefold office of Christ as Mediator in the second Latin edition of the Institutes (Strassburg, 1539).48 But before this was to be the important contribution of Andrew Osiander in Nuremberg, 1530 (Ch. 11.3.b,c). c. Sectarian Refugees in Strassburg 1524–152949 It was, then, into a community where such moderate or open-hearted Reformers as Zell, Capito, and Bucer had the confidence of t he magistrates, where Bucer had begun to trace plans for a disciplined Christocracy, and where such local spokesmen of radical reform as Ziegler and Wolff had eschewed force in the implementation of social and sacramental ideals, that radical evangelicals from other parts of the Empire came streaming. Andreas Bodenstein von Carlstadt (Ch. 5.4) had been in Strassburg for a few days in October 1524. Hubmaier had perhaps sojourned briefly in Strassburg and in any event had printed there his reply to Zwingli on baptism, Von der christlichen Taufe der Gläubigen,50 in July 1525. Martin Cellarius, temporarily converted to the views of the Zwickau prophets, arrived in 1526. Though he never became an Anabaptist, he was sympathetic, and the following year he would be publishing his De operibus Dei, which departs from traditional Nicene language.51 William Reublin, Louis Haetzer, John Denck, Jacob Gross, and Michael Sattler all arrived in quick succession

47  Commentary on J ohn, 56a and 56b , in combined edition of 1536, p. 606; Lang, Evangelienkommentar, 11 n. 2. This passage is commonly cited in annotation to the triplex munus Christi in Calvin’s Institutes, but in Bucer it evidently goes back to 1528. 48  Jean-Daniel Benoît, ed., Institution de la Religion Chrestietnne (Geneva, 1561), 5 vols. critically edited (Paris: Vrin, 1957–63), 2, p. 267, n.8; Jean Wendel, Calvin: Sources et év olution de sa pensée religieuse (Paris: Presses Universitaires, 1950), 169. 49  See Hans-Werner Müsing, “The Anabaptist Movement in Strasbourg fr om Early 1526 to July 1527,” MQR 51 (1977): 91–126; Klaus Deppermann, “Die Strassburger Reformatoren und die Kr ise des oberdeutschen Täufertums im J ahre 1527: Eine Antwort auf J . H. Yoder, ‘Der Kristallisationspunkt des Täufertums,’” MGB 30 (1973): 24–41; and Stephen Bo yd, “Anabaptism and Social Radicalism in Strasbourg, 1528–1532: Pilgram Marpeck on Christian Social Responsibility,” MQR 63 (1989): 58–76. 50  Ibid., no. 3. 51  See R. L. Williams, “Martin Cellarius and the Refor mation in Strasb urg,” JEH 32 (1981): 477–97. Because Bucer denounced the lear ned Cellarius as sympathetic with the local Anabaptist tumult—despite the scholar’s differing from them mark edly on pr edestination— Cellarius left for Basel in 1528, the disagreement with Bucer settled.

378  the radical reformation

chapter 10.2.c

toward the end of 1526. Sattler came “with a separatist program in hand,” although his Schleitheim Confession still lay ahead (Feb. 1527, Ch. 8.1).52 Denck, fleeing Augsburg, was associated with Haetzer, who was staying with Capito—Hebraists all. Denck, sojourning in Strassburg from November through December, was associated also with Clement Ziegler. After a series of discussions and a major disputation with Bucer 22–23 December 1526, Denck and Haetzer, it will be recalled (Ch. 7.3), were expelled from Strassburg, and joined Jacob Kautz in Worms.53 The presence of M ichael Sattler in Strassburg is notable for the relatively favorable impression he made on Capito and Bucer (Ch. 8.2) and for the twenty theological principles he enunciated in a l etter to these two divines, explaining why he could no longer remain in Strassburg.54 A large band of r efugees came from St. Gall and Waldshut, headed by Jacob Gross, who also associated himself with Ziegler. Gross had been converted by G rebel and baptized by H ubmaier. Gross had stood out against entering into military service with the peasants in league with his native Waldshut during the Peasants’ War. He subsequently evangelized in several districts in Grüningen and Bern, converting John Pfistermeyer (Ch. 6.4). Gross in his Strassburg hearing at the end of 1526 stressed his Christian pacifism and the community of goods. Although he acknowledged the local authority and declared himself ready to “stand watch, wear armor, and hold a pike in his hands,” he would never use it to kill a fellow man. 55 He was later to leave for Augsburg, where he was seized with John Hut (Ch. 7.4). The first explicitly Antitrinitarian speculation among the radicals of Strassburg is documented in a l etter written to Luther, 2 A pril 1527.56 Shortly thereafter, Bucer warned Denck, Haetzer, and Kautz now active in Worms (Ch. 7.3) about their Anabaptist tenets, and he showed extended consternation with their explicit repudiation of the traditional (Anselmian)

52  The phrase in quotations is from Snyder, Sattler, who differs from Yoder, Sattler, where the Strassburg sojourn is inter preted as decisive for Sattler’s turning away from territorial reform and hence from ecumenical dialogue and colloquy to that end. 53  It is of marg inal interest that as early as 1527, the very day of the first Strassburg mandate against Anabaptists, Bucer had taken occasion to warn the Italian Evangelicals against the Anabaptists. 54  EIsass 1 (QGT 7), no. 70; set for th in English, ME 4:428. The first four pr inciples are (1) “Christ has come to sa ve all who believe in Him,” (2) “He who believes and is baptized will be saved, but he who does not believe will be condemned,” (3) “Faith in Christ reconciles (versünet) us with the Father and gives access to him,”(4) Baptism seals (or incorporates: inlybet) “all believers into the body of Christ, who is now their Head,” and “In heaven in the citizenship of Christians [Heb. 10:34; 13:14], not on earth.” 55  Ibid., no. 67. 56  Ibid., no. 81.

chapter 10.2.c

speyer& strassburg, 1529  379

doctrine of the Atonement in their preoccupation with a suffering imitation of Christ and in their formulation of a doctrine of universal salvation to include eventually the devil and his hosts.57 The fact that the “Nicolsburg Articles” were known in Strassburg, possibly as early as the summer of 1527, in several versions, and ascribed to the “new sect of the garden preachers,”58 shows that such tenets as the limited role of Christ as prophet and exemplar only, the universal salvation of even the devils, and the community of goods, were plausibly ascribed to some of the local Anabaptists. The first Strassburg Antitrinitarians known by name, the sheathmaker Thomas Saltzmann and the cobbler Conrad Hess, were brought in for a hearing around 27 November 1527.59 Although these Judaizers claimed to have some sympathy with the Anabaptists, they seem to have had no contact with either the circle around Ziegler, Denck, and Haetzer, or the group led provisionally by Gross and Sattler. The Judaizers accepted only the Pentateuch as divinely binding, denied the Trinity, insisted that there was but one God, and considered Jesus a f alse prophet who was rightly put to death. For this, Saltzmann was decapitated shortly before Christmas 1527.60 Already in July of t his year, the first Strassburg mandate against Anabaptists had been formulated in exacerbation by the Stettmeister, Jacob Sturm.61 In September 1528, Pilgram Marpeck, destined to become a m ajor spokesman of South German Anabaptism, acquired Strassburg citizenship by joining the gardeners’ guild.62 He there engaged in timbering operations for the city in the valley of the Kinzig in the Black Forest across the Rhine. Marpeck had been born in the Tyrol, in the mining town of Rattenberg, around 1495, and educated in the Latin school. He was made a town councilor and municipal engineer. He had become interested in Lutheranism and had then fallen in with the Anabaptists. It will be recalled that both Schiemer and Schlaffer (Ch. 7.5) preached in or near Rattenberg. Refusing henceforth to cooperate in “investigating” the miners, i.e., catching Anabaptists, Marpeck relinquished his post as mining director in January 1528, leaving behind a substantial estate. 57

 Ibid., no. 86 (esp. pp. 105ff.); no. 91, p. 121; no. 99, p. 127; etc.  Ibid., no. 116. 59  Ibid., nos. 110, 111, 113, 114. 60  Ibid., no. 114. 61  Ibid., no. 92. 62  Ibid., no. 153, n. 4. For the extensive literature on Marpeck, see article on him in ME; also, Kiwiet, Pilgram Marpeck; and William Klassen, Covenant and Community: The Life, Writings, and Hermeneutics of Pilgram Marpeck (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968). There is also an edition of The Writings of Pilgram Marpeck, William and Walter Klassen, trs. and eds., Classics of the Radical Reformation 2 (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1978.) The most recent work is the reedited Harvard doctoral thesis of Stephan Bo yd, Pilgram Marpeck: His Life and Social Theology (Durham, N.C./ Mainz: Duke University Press/lnstitut für Europäische Geschichte, 1991); cf., in br iefer compass, C. J. Dyck, “Pilgram Marpeck,” ME 2d. ed., 5 (1990): 538. 58

380  the radical reformation

chapter 10.2.c

When he arrived in Strassburg, Marpeck made contact with the local Anabaptists, who were meeting in private homes, belonging variously to Fridolin Meyger, to Luke Hackfurt, steward of the city’s relief program and sympathetic to the moderate brethren, and to the boatman Nicholas Bruch. Fridolin Meyger (Meier), an alumnus of B asel, was a n otary of c ontracts in the episcopal chancery. He had been converted and baptized by Kautz. Meyer had come to think of A nabaptism “as a m iddle way between the papacy and Lutheranism.” His evangelical radicalism was socially oriented. In the line of Brunfels he protested against the social injustices of usury.63 As an indication of the mounting radical tide, the parish of Robertsau (Ruprechtsau), a village annexed to Strassburg, made bold to beseech the council to approve the election of Clement Ziegler as their lawful preacher.64 In October 1528, Marpeck and his associates, Fridolin, Reublin, and Kautz (who had returned secretly from Worms despite Bucer’s warning), were summoned for a judicial hearing. They asked for a public disputation.65 After a long delay, Zell, Caspar Hedio (special preacher at the cathedral), Capito, and Bucer joined in requesting of the council a public disputation.66 After eighty-six days in prison, Kautz and Reublin, well recognized by the divines and the magistrates as leaders of renown among the Anabaptists far beyond the local community, prepared a written confession of faith. This confession is a moving document in its straightforward recollection of the sinful life of these two clerics before they heard the Anabaptist gospel of repentance and rebaptism in the covenant of a good conscience with God, and the incorporation, in self-emptying Gelassenheit, into the body of which Christ alone is head. Both writers stress, in a somewhat Lutheran fashion, the difference between the invisible and the visible Church, the latter separated from the world in its possession of believers’ baptism, the breaking of the bread, and the ban. Reublin and Kautz then describe how, as a ship is driven before the wind, they have been driven by the cross to proclaim the gospel to all people who will first believe and then be baptized.67 To this apologia the municipal divines responded at length.68 After more disputation and threats, Reublin was to get away to Moravia. Kautz abandoned his extreme position. Meyger, defended by the bishop from his seat at Saverne, conformed. Marpeck alone managed to hold his own in Strassburg to emerge as the chief spokesman of normative Anabaptism (Ch. 10.3.h). 63  For Fridolin’s conception of Anabaptism as a middle way, see Elsass 1 (QGT 7), no. 182, p. 236; for his opposition to interest, no. 172; for his baptism by Kautz, no. 179. 64  Ibid., nos. 118–19. 65  Ibid., nos. 155–56. 66  Ibid., no. 167. 67  15 January 1529; ibid., no. 168. On the invisible church we are indirectly informed by the long refutation, no. 171. 68  23 January 1529; Elsass 1 (QGT 7), no. 171.

chapter 10.2.c / 10.3.a

speyer& strassburg, 1529  381

Such in brief was the momentous history of S trassburg when, on 20 February 1529, the town council officially abolished the Mass.69 Brought up to that point in our general narrative from which we reached back to carry forward the story in Strassburg, we are now ready for an even more eventful period, from February 1529 to June 1533.

Part II 3. Strassburg, 1529–1533 The period in Strassburg history between the abolition of t he Mass in February 1529 and the convocation of t he first territorial synod in June 1533 is characterized on the radical side by the arrival of an extraordinary number of major figures of the Radical Reformation. Many of them arrived in the year 1529, prophets, apostles, and speculative seekers from as far away as The Netherlands and Moravia, Italy, and Spain. a. John Bünderlin and Johannes Baptista Italus, 1529 At the beginning of 1529, John Bünderlin (1499–post 1544),70 disciple of Oenck and Hut and sometime leader of the Anabaptist community in Linz (Ch. 7.5), sought asylum in Strassburg. He had been in Nicolsburg under the protection of its patron Leonard of Liechtenstein, and there began to distance himself from Anabaptism, to represent, with Christian Entfelder (10.3.e), an asacramental mystical Spiritualism issuing from Hutian Anabaptism. In Strassburg Bünderlin was twice arrested,71 the second time while in the house of the boatman, Nicholas Bruch (Bruchen), where, as visiting apostle, he was reading aloud to the assembled brethren a portion of a booklet he had written. He managed to get four books published in 69

 The cathedral of St. Lawrence and the diocese of Strassburg would revert to the Catholics in 1604. Cardinal Charles of Lorraine (b. Nancy, 1567), second son of Duke Charles III of Lorraine, contested the election to the see with Pr otestant George of Brandenburg, the final outcome of which w as decided by a commission. Already bishop of three sees in France and the Empire and abbot of four monaster ies, Cardinal Charles was bishop in the cathedral of Strasbourg, 1592–1607. For the Old Believers, Protestants, and Humanists in Alsace during the century, see the texts and documents in German and Latin edited by Jean Lebeau and JeanMarie Valentin, L’Alsace au siècle de la Réforme, 1482–1621 (Nancy: Presses Universitaires, 1985). 70  The recent literature includes Claude R. Foster, “Johannes Bünderlin: Radical Reformer of the Sixteenth Centur y” (Thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1963, partly represented in his article “Hans Denck and Johannes Bünderlin,” MQR 39 [1965]); Ulrich Gäbler, “Zum Problem des Spir itualismus im 16. Jahrhundert: das Glaubensverständnis bei Johannes Bünderlin von Linz,” Theologische Zeitschrift 29 (1973): 334–44; idem, “Johannes Bünderlin von Linz (von 1500 bis nach 1540): Eine biographische Skizze,” Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für der Geschichte des Protestantismus in Öster rich 96 (1980) 305–20; and idem, “Johannes Bünderlin,” BD 3 (1982), 9–42. 71  Gäbler,“Bünderlin,” BD 3: p. 9. Nicoladoni, Johannes Bünderlin, 118; Packull, in “Homeless Minds: Bünderlin and Entfelder,” makes the two representative of a third stream, in the context of “The Emergence of the mystical Spiritualists,” issuing from “the Devolution of Hut’s movement [after 1528]”; Mysticism, ch. 7.

382  the radical reformation

chapter 10.3.a

Strassburg, two before his departure. One, Eine gemeine Berechnung über der Heiligen Schrift Inhalt (1529), in which he sought by natural reason to clarify a number of disputed points, holding fast what proved good. Bünderlin put himself forward, he said, because amidst the return to Scripture there is so much controversy about its intent. He makes four points, first, that there is the outer, written, preached word and then the inner word, which is the essential word and potentially accessible to all because all human beings bear the imago Dei, not just Christians. Therefore it is possible for him to be much more comprehensive in his salvific vision than Protestants or even Catholics. Paul in Rom. 10:14, to be sure, asks how faith is possible without hearing commissioned preachers, but essential faith can be engendered by the Spirit of God and the conscience can come to discern the truth apart from sent preachers. Secondly, a d istinction must be made between the Law and the Gospel, within Scripture and within the self, for much in the Old Testament has been superseded in Christ. Christ in contrast to Moses teaches the freedom of t he Spirit. Hence voluntary discipleship and love without coercion. Another book was on the incarnation and the atonement, The Reason Why God Descended and Became Man in Christ.72 In this and the preceding work, and in the two published in Strassburg after his departure73 Bünderlin reveals the degree to which he had become a Spiritualist, confident in the mercy of God through Christ as accessible in the inner Word overheard within whether in attending the Evangelical sermon or Catholic Mass or whether in exile or far from any possibility of h earing or reading the Bible. Christ, he says, reached even to hell to bring his tidings of truth and righteousness. Although his first three works are not directed expressly against fellow Anabaptists, the fourth, Erklärung durch Vergleichung der biblischen Geschrift, was. It called for abandoning baptism and the Lord’s Supper in their meetings. Bünderlin had become disillusioned with the Hutian legacy, however spiritualized, and cringed at the disproportionate value of believers’ testimony in the face of m ounting oppression of c onspicuous separatists, and he recoiled as a university-trained person from the militant intrusion into

72

 Thus in Ausz was Vrsach, translated by Claude R. Foster and Wilhelm Jerosch, MQR 42 (1968): 262–84. 73  The works published after his depar ture (3) Ein gemayne einlaythung in den a ygentlichen verstand Mosi und der Propheten (Strassburg 1529) and (4) Erklerung durch vergleichung der Biblischen geschrifft (Strassburg, 1530). All but the third of the four Strassburg works, the entirety of Bünderlin’s extant output, are drawn upon by Packull in his succinct but insightful chapter.

chapter 10.3.a / 10.3.b

speyer& strassburg, 1529  383

the network of Anabaptist groupings in Strassburg of literalists of the Swiss Anabaptist type and was offended by their overconfident attachment to the vernacular Bible. He felt that just as the Jews had become anciently overconcerned with the letter of the law to the neglect of its spirit and the ultimate divine intention, so now even in the higher revelation in Christ excessive importance had come to be attached to his ordinances and counsels. Even the re-Reformed version of his Gospel by the sectaries of believers’ baptism and the Supper, hedged about by banning, was being all wrapped up again in externals. He believed that the true spiritual church, long foreseen, was in these last days to gain adherents. On two of his publications Bünderlin printed a diagram illustrative of his idea of the Triune God interpenetrating the created order in Adam and his descendants. We take this up in Ch. 11.2. In late 1529, before the publication of Erklärung, Bunderlin left Strassburg for Constance. Soon thereafter there arrived in Strassburg a stray prophet of penance from Italy, called Venturinus, or John Baptista Italus, in the tradition of the Spiritual Franciscans (Chs. 1.6.b; 11.4.a). He stayed in Capito’s home and through an interpreter told his phantastic life story as a v isitor in Turkey, where he beheld in a vision the conversion of Turks and Jews to Christ. On his return to Italy he lived the life of a prophetic hermit, frequently imprisoned for his fiery denunciations like Savonarola. He had openly preached that the sack of t he Eternal City in 1527 was condign punishment of t he Pope. He was now in Germany to summon Luther and King Ferdinand of Bohemia and Hungary likewise to repentance. But he predicted the imprisonment of C harles V a nd the slaying of Ferdinand, whereupon a pastor angelicus would preside over Christendom who would convert the world and baptize the Turks. Thereupon the secrets of the Bible would be revealed and the Bible would be solemnly burned.74 Perhaps a little hazy on the imperial constitution or on German geography, he demanded that the Strassburg council cite the great Reformer to present himself. The Strassburg authorities seemed to have been largely amused at the prophet’s sudden enlargement of their jurisdiction.75 b. Caspar Schwenckfeld, 1529 Schwenckfeld left Silesia (Ch. 5.5) with the hope, no doubt, that the mediating theologians of Strassburg would adopt his eucharistic theology and be won over also to his theory of an external and an internal baptism which he and Crautwald had worked out. Schwenckfeld had already been in correspondence with Bucer on this matter. His view on the Lord’s Supper had, in fact, been warmly received, although evidently not well understood. 74 75

 Elsass 1 (QGT), nos. 203, 206, 206A, pp. 253–56; Deppermann, Hofmann, 185.  Ibid., nos. 205, 206a.

384  the radical reformation

chapter 10.3.b

When the Silesian nobleman entered the city in early May 1529, he lived in hospitable Capito’s home and formed a c lose friendship with the Zells. Schwenckfeld regularly attended divine service in the cathedral and elsewhere, standing with cupped ear right under the pulpit, because of his deafness, to get every word from the lips of Matthew Zell. He also preached himself, though as a l ayman no doubt only in private assemblies, but he was for a while regarded as a kind of assistant or consultant to the cathedral clergy. Schwenckfeld was scarcely established in his new abode when the plans for the Marburg eucharistic colloquy, to be convened by Philip of Hesse, were noised about. In June, Schwenckfeld busied himself with his first Apology to Frederick II of L iegnitz, who was now restoring the Lord’s Supper which, under Schwenckfeld’s influence, had been suspended. For this book, Capito wrote a commendatory preface, calling its author his “dear brother.” 76 A s ection on the ascension and session of C hrist at the right hand of God was appended to the book, which bore negatively on Luther’s doctrine of the eucharistic ubiquity of Christ and impanation. Presently the Swiss party, including Zwingli and Oecolampadius, stopped off at Strassburg en route to Marburg, and Schwenckfeld had the opportunity of sharing his eucharistic views in conversation with the Swiss Reformers and explaining to them that for all their (unauthorized) support of h is eucharistic theology (Ch. 5.3, 5.5), they had in fact seriously misunderstood his intention. He was therefore eager to be included in the great eucharistic colloquy to explain more fully and widely his doctrine of the inward feeding on the celestial flesh of Christ. His request was in vain. At the Marburg colloquy, Zwingli learned how deeply Luther disliked and distrusted Schwenckfeld. On their return from hearing Luther’s vituperations, most of t he Swiss and Strassburg divines became very cool toward Schwenckfeld in the interest of P rotestant summit harmony. But Schwenckfeld continued to live with Capito. He visited Kautz in prison, brought him some of his own writings and those of others, and on 9 October 1529 he and Capito together secured permission from the town council to take Kautz home with them for four weeks with a v iew to converting him.77 New developments conspired to estrange Capito from Schwenckfeld and the Anabaptists (Ch. 9.2) in Silesia. Capito’s young and ever hospitable wife, Agnes, died in November 1531. Capito interpreted her being taken from him as divine chastisement for his toleration of the radicals. His patience with the Anabaptists burst into indignation when shortly after his wife’s death, at the request of Lord Liechtenstein of Nicolsburg, he took up 76 77

 CS, 3:394.  Elsass 1 (QGT 7), nos. 193, 195.

chapter 10.3.b

speyer& strassburg, 1529  385

the task of refuting the sabbatarianism espoused by Hut’s disciple Oswald Glaidt (Ch. 15.3.a).78 Capito, with some managing by Bucer in order to stabilize his stricken and always wayward colleague, married Wilbrandis, the widow of Oecolampadius. Schwenckfeld, already pushed well to the margins of Strassburg’s theological society, thereupon moved to the home of J acob Engelmann, where religious assemblies were regularly convened. Schwenckfeld did convert to his views a city almoner, Alexander Berner. Now that the theological and ecclesiastical tension between Capito and Bucer had been overcome by the former’s second marriage and maturer reflection, Schwenckfeld in his isolation became all the more irritating to the principal Reformers, and he drew closer to the sectaries. The city Reformers insisted that Schwenckfeld identify himself with an established parish, whereupon he replied as spokesman of the invisible Church: To my mind, I a m one with all churches in that them, in that I despise none, because I know that Lord has his own everywhere, be they ever so few.79 He reminded his antagonists that a score of years before, they and their fathers had been in another church under papal/episcopal authority. Surely one could not deny that some among those so dear and close to them as their own parents had been saved even from within the now abominated Roman Church. He chided them for the divisiveness and acrimony attending the reformation and dismantling of the old order and the undue emphasis on conformity enforced by t he magistracy. When they asked him to produce something better or b ecome ecclesiastically more brotherly rather than so standoffish, provisional, and uncommitted, he replied with extraordinary confidence—that to them it looked like the conceit of a nobleman who purported to be a divine—saying that he could join with none in whom the Christ within him, the true Christ of experience, was not congruent: The opinion which I h ave, I h ave for myself. If it pleases anyone, he may accept it. I hope that opinion is the mind of Christ and the right foundation. If it does not please anyone, I commend him to God. But I cannot be one in faith with either the Pope or Luther, because they condemn me and my faith, that is, they hate my Christ in me. To have the real Christ

78 79

 Ibid., no. 290a.  CS 4:830–31.; Schultz, tr., Caspar Schwenckfeld, 212.

386  the radical reformation

chapter 10.3.b

according to the spirit is ver y important. Christ does not condemn himself. He does not persecute himself. 80 Seeking souls for Christ and with no intention of b uilding up “any Crautwaldian or Schwenckfeldian church”81 to add to the confusion of competing churches, Schwenckfeld wrote, edited, disputed, or, as he would say, conversed, corresponded, and traveled, as a lay evangelist. With Strassburg as his base, he moved about Landau (where he finally converted the local Zwinglian Reformer, John Bader, to his view), Hagenau, Speyer, and Rappoltsweiler (Ribeauville). While based in Strassburg, Schwenckfeld published an anthology of the Corpus iuris canonici, selecting canons and decretals consonant with the New Testament and freedom of conscience.82 He also composed two catech­isms and promoted a new German version of the Imitatio Christi, published by his printer, Philip Ulhart, in Augsburg in 1531. The edition is notable in leaving out book four on the sacrament of the altar. The edition was obviously intended as a devotional work for all parties, theologically divided at the diet of Augsburg the year before. Though Schwenckfeld was an antipedobaptist and moved in Anabaptist circles, his own view of Christ’s baptism as being inward, like the Eucharist, meant that he could not accept the outward rite, even believers’ baptism, as either redemptive or constitutional. He steadfastly refused to accept the covenantal implications of Luther’s peculiar translation of 1 P et. 3:21 (Bund des guten Gewissetls) as interpreted ecclesiologically by t he Anabaptists. He persisted instead in keeping to “appeal,” true to the Greek band Vulgate renderings.83 His impression of the Strassburg Anabaptists of this period is of interest. His description of them as a whole should be put before the reader. It will be recalled that he had in Liegnitz encountered the Sabbatarian type. In his Judicium de Anabaptistis, July 1530, apparently requested by t he Strassburg authorities, Schwenckfeld says that he does not wish to judge them without knowing them better, but then gives his impression. He says that they seem to lack the true knowledge of Christ and that there is no palpable evidence of their being any more regenerate than the solafideists, or better endowed with the gifts of the Spirit. He observes further:

80

 CS 4:832; Schultz, Caspar Schwenckfeld, 212.  Ibid. 82  CS 3, Doc. 101, c. June, 1530. 83  In his anthology of Canon La w, CS, 3:795, Schwenckfeld took over from a Lutheran predecessor in this effort Luther’s translation of interrogatio in 1 Pet. 3:21 as Bund; but elsewhere Schwenckfeld always avoided the ter m “covenant” here, and like Michael Servetus (Ch. 11.1) kept to the Greek original. 81

chapter 10.3.b / 10.3.c

speyer& strassburg, 1529  387

It were well if they [the Anabaptists] would put more stress on catechetical instruction in the Christian faith rather than on taking everyone into their congregation and appointing him to be a pastor (Vorsteher). … It appears that they consider all who are not of their group as godless, and will have nothing to do with them, refusing to take in all who are weak in faith.84 Schwenckfeld deplores their undue emphasis on outward baptism, stressing the letter more than the spirit. He takes issue with them on their radical eschatology, chides them for being so preoccupied about events even before the beginning and after the end of the world, and expresses the wish that they might spend less time discussing how things are in the presence of God. Tolerant of t hem and desirous of i nterceding for them with the authorities, he wishes that they themselves would testify more openly and irenically. In the end, ironically, Schwenckfeld will be placed alongside the apocalyptic Melchior Hofmann in the synodal disputation in 1533 (Ch. 10.4; 18.2). c. Melchior Hofmann, 1529 In June 1529, a month after Schwenckfeld, Melchior Hofmann, whom we have yet to encounter in his fiery Livonian career as “Lutheran” evangelical and prophetic iconoclast (1523–26; Ch. 15.2.b), arrived in Strassburg, where he was received as a champion of the symbolical view of the Eucharist.85 He had, on 8 April 1529, engaged in a d isputation at Flensburg in Denmark, in the presence of the king, 86 where Hofmann, as one but recently converted from the Lutheran to the Carlstadtian view of 84

 CS 3:832–33.  E lsass 1 (QGT 7), no. 188; see Depper mann, “Melchior Hoffman and Strasbourg Anabaptism” (n. 17 abo ve), 197–226. Until r ecently the pr incipal modern works were W. I. Leendertz, Melchior Hofmann (Haarlem, 1883), Friedrich Otto zur Linden, Melchior Hofmann: ein Prophet der Wiedertäufer (Haarlem, 1885), and P eter Kawerau, Melchior Hofmann als religiöser Denker (Haarlem: Bohm, 1954). The first two works named contain certain of Hofmann’ s documents. These have been largely super seded by Klaus Deppermann, Melchior Hoffman: Soziale Unruhen und apokal yptische Visionen im Zeitalter der Reformation (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1979), with 13 illustrations, a map of Strassburg, and a calendar ed bibliography of Hoffman’ s 27 pub lications, translated by Malcolm Wren, Melchior Hoffman … (Edinburgh: Clark, 1987). The numbers assigned by him to the 27 pub lications of Hofmann pr ecede in par entheses my references to them. Although Deppermann’s spelling for the sur name will doubtless come to pr evail, based as it is on a sixteenth-centur y spelling, I per sist in my usage in r endering a sixteenth-century surname on the best orthography of the modern language and culture, to which the person once belonged. The double-en (nn) suggests a Dutch or Jewish name. Independently of Depper mann and with the once fullest account in English, Calvin Pater, deals with “Karlstadt and Hoffman,” Karlstadt, pt. 3, chaps. 6–9. For Hofmann in a larger Baltic per spective, see Leonid Arbusow, Die Einführung der Refor mation in Liv–, Est– und Kurland, QFRG 3 (Leipzig, 1921). 86  Frederick I is briefly seen in Scandinavian context in Ch. 3, n. 18. 85

388  the radical reformation

chapter 10.3.c

the Eucharist, fought vigorously against the Lutheran disputants. Because of his impending preeminence in the Anabaptist movement and its extension into the region of the Lower Rhine and The Netherlands, we pause at this point in our narrative to recount the life and mission of a m ajor figure of the Radical Reformation before his arrival and his conversion to Anabaptism while sojourning in Strassburg. From Sweden, Hofmann had returned to Germany, first to Lübeck, both a Hanseatic and a castle city (whose prince was from Livonia), where the city council promptly took action against him because of his ill repute in Dorpat. Only a h asty flight saved his life. Early in 1527 he arrived in the duchy of H olstein, which, with that of S lesvig, was under the royal Danish crown. On his arrival, the bishops favored a n on-papal national church and feared the economic and social unrest that sometimes followed in the wake of “Lutheranization” (as under Hofmann in Livonia). Against the nationalist but otherwise religiously conservative bishops, Frederick was implementing the directives of t he Diet of Speyer (1526) that placed reform in his hands as prince. To this end, he, with his court chaplain, the peasant’s son John Tausend (“the Danish Luther”), was embarked on the policy of religious toleration and support of a ll evangelical preachers. On hearing furrier Hofmann preach in the royal chapel at Gottorp, King Frederick was pleased to grant the Livonian exhorter a letter of protection which evidently authorized him to preach in St. Nicholas Church in nearby Kiel.87 He preached in Kiel, alongside two Lutheran divines, and evidently before King Frederick I ( 1523–33), residing at Gottorp Castle near Kiel. Hofmann immediately had difficulties with the local pastors, who appealed to Luther. Hofmann with Danish companions set forth with one more personal entreaty, imploring Luther to acknowledge in the fiery evangelist a true follower. But Hofmann was cruelly rejected by Luther who disparaged the pretensions of an untrained layman to “prophesy and to interpret Scripture.”88 Luther, reflecting on the encounter in a letter to Nicholas Amsdorf in Magdeburg, 17 May 1527, wrote (as magisterial reformer with a university degree and the backing of t he chief magistrate): “This man unbidden and without a c all, goes about dealing with marvelous things beyond himself.”89 Hofmann returned to Kiel, dejected but not beaten, and engaged in controversy with Nicholas Amsdorf himself and set up the first

87

 See most recently Richard G. Bailey, “Melchior Hoffman: Proto-Anabaptist and [first] Printer in Kiel, 1527–1529,” CH 59, no. 2 (1990): 175–90. For Carlstadt’s earlier sojourn in lands under the Danish crown, see Ch. 3.1. 88  A contested exegesis concerned Matthew 1. In his sur viving preface thereto, Hofmann records his lament: “When I revealed such an explanation to my teacher in Wittenberg and clearly wanted to follo w Scripture, I—poor w orm—was considered a g reat sinner and a dreamer, and thus was terribly mistreated, maligned, and despised.” 89  WA Br. 4: 202; quoted by Bailey, “Melchior Hoffman,” 181.

chapter 10.3.c

speyer& strassburg, 1529  389

printing press in Kiel to spread the gospel.90 Luther finally wrote to strongly Lutheranizing Duke Christian (destined to be the king of Denmark, 1536– 59, and to establish Lutheranism there), urging that he restrain Hofmann from further preaching until the prince could be better informed. Hofmann, in passing from his Lutheran into his explicitly sacramentarian phase, published in 1528 at least three now lost works dealing with the subject. As a consequence he came into serious conflict with the Lutheran clergy of H olstein concerning the communion. The already mentioned disputation was arranged at Flensburg for April 1529, with a stately audience of four hundred, including the nobility and clergy. John Bugenhagen served as referee. Hofmann was supported by J ohn van Campen, Jacob Hegge of D anzig, and John Barse, each speaking in his turn. Hofmann boldly upbraided the crown prince, Duke Christian. The result of the disputation was Hofmann’s condemnation and expulsion from the duchy and from Denmark. Prior to the disputation, Carlstadt had accepted Hofmann’s invitation to join him in Holstein. Carlstadt came but Bugenhagen successfully interceded with Duke Christian to have Carlstadt ejected. When Hofmann followed Carlstadt in being expelled, the two met again on the road to Emden in East Frisia, where they compared notes, April to June 1529. Hofmann related the events in Flensburg, and Carlstadt wrote them down in the form of a Dialogus. East Frisia, to which Hofmann would in due course return, was at this moment under the new Count Enno II, who was endeavoring to impose Lutheranism in a county of t he Empire, where his predecessor, Edzard I, had given free rein to the Sacramentists (Ch. 2.4). When the message of L uther f irst reached the county in 1519, the villagers had long since been accustomed by preference to have married priests, and many of them held collectively the jus patronatus. Favoring Sacramentism, Edzard himself chose George Aportanus, a Sacramentist, as tutor for his children while giving asylum to Hinne Rode (in Norden). The Sacramentist mood ranged from orderly Zwinglian to casual and even iconoclastic sacramentarian. And in 1522 Aportanus drew up a Zwinglian Confessio. In 1529, the new count accepted the mediation of H inne Rode and two Bremen Lutheran pastors to formulate a b asis for the churches of t he county lest it be divided and then overwhelmed by external force (from Emperor Charles in his title of Duke of Gelderland). It was in this setting at Flensburg that Carlstadt, who differed very much from Hofmann as to the more authoritative books of Scripture, took down Hofmann’s

90

 Bailey, “Melchior Hoffman,” 181.

390  the radical reformation

chapter 10.3.c

account of the recent disputation in Strassburg (1529). Carlstadt had the Dialogus published.91 Hofmann proceeded to Strassburg on the basis of a r ecommendation Carlstadt had written for him to Bucer. In 1530, when Carlstadt himself went to Strassburg, there was a confrontation and break between the two Spiritualists-in-transition, Hofmann on the point of b ecoming an Anabaptist. Under financial duress, Carlstadt, having from afar made his peace with Zwingli, became successively preacher in Altstätten and hospital chaplain in Zurich itself. Called to Basel in June 1534 (Ch. 18.5), in a farewell sermon on John 1:14, Archdeacon Carlstadt would affirm the two natures of Christ, repudiate the doctrine of the celestial flesh of Christ, which he had discussed with several in Strassburg (notably Clement Ziegler), and expressly affirm the Trinity in scriptural terms.92 He would spend the last seven years of his life as professor of Old Testament, rector of the university, and pastor of the University Church of St. Peter. He would become a possible factor in mitigating the First Helvetic (Second Basel) Confession of 1536 on predestination.93 In the meantime Hofmann was inwardly constructing, from his allegorical, spiritualizing interpretation of the Bible, with a special fondness for the Apocrypha, an elaborate eschatological theology. The established Reformers of Strassburg advised him to return to his furrier’s trade; but 91  Dialogus und gründlic he berichtung gehaltner disputation im land zu Holstein vnder m Künig von Dennmarck, vom Hochwürdigen Sacrament (Strassburg, 1529). For the sojour n of the tw o in East Frisia, see Depper mann, Hoffman, 133–38. Deppermann notes the scr iptural books given precedence by Hofmann in the f ace of Carlstadt’s learned objection: Daniel, 4 Esdras, James, Jude, Revelation. 92  Calvin Pater, “Karlstadt’s Zürcher Abschiedspredigt über die Menschw erdung Christi,” Zwingliana 14 (1974 = 8): 1–16, where in his introduction Pater defends Carlstadt against Ernst Kähler that he disparaged the doctrine of the Trinity, “Karlstadts Protest gegen die theologische Wissenschaft,” 450 Jahre Martin-Luther-Universität (Halle/Wittenberg Verlag der Martin-Luther Universität, 1952) 1, 309. 93  One wonders to what extent Carlstadt compr omised his baptist insights dur ing his final years in Switzerland. He ob viously had not capitulated to Luther , 1525–29. One ma y gauge Carlstadt’s influence in Basel by comparing the First Confession of Basel (1534, before his arrival) with the Second Confession of Basel (1536), also kno wn as the Fir st Helvetic Confession. Although the Anabaptists therein are still reproached for secessionism and unspecified heretical teachings, no special section is devoted to them anymore, nor are their views on infant baptism descr ibed as an “abomination” and a “blasphemy.” While the earlier outr ight rejection of the Anabaptist on oaths is her e replaced with a conceding affirmation of oaths “where they are manifestly not opposed to Chr ist.” This accommodated Carlstadt perfectly . Moreover, in the First Helvetic Confession, the section on predestination is worded so ambiguously that it could embrace both a Reformed and a Carlstadtian interpretation, double predestination being rejected by implication with Carlstadt’s favorite text: Hosea 13:9 (Vulgate), “Our salvation is from God, but from ourselves is nothing but sin and damnation.” While in Basel, Carlstadt promoted a compromise with the Lutherans on the Lord’s Supper. He was accused of knowingly harboring unreconstructed Roman Catholics and Anabaptists in his congregation. He minister ed to all dur ing the plague of 1541, to which he himself on Christmas Eve fell victim.

chapter 10.3.c

speyer& strassburg, 1529  391

Hofmann was certain that the Holy Spirit fully compensated for any lack of education. Indeed, he was convinced that university training could be a hindrance rather than a help to an evangelist. On his arrival in June 1529, Hofmann had found lodging with Andrew and Catherine Seid. Catherine, for her part—amid the table talk of t heir charismatic guest from Livonia, Sweden, Denmark, and East Frisia, the preacher of a “truer” interpreter of the divine promises, who “would lead her out of the house of bondage to salvation”—was moved to look for such an evangelist in none other than the cathedral preacher Matthew Zell. Hofmann’s wife, for her part, was offended by the sudden adulation of another woman and left the Seids and the city in a huff. Another seer was Barbara Rebstock who, with her husband the weaver Hans, had arrived in Strassburg in February 1529, having been turned out with other Anabaptists from the Swabian imperial city of Esslingen, where from 1527 they had stood under the influence of John Hut, thus introducing another distinctive strand of A nabaptism in the tolerant city. Hofmann devoted himself to the publication of several apocalyptic booklets, among them (no. 1) Exposition of the Revelation of St. John.94 The Exposition, dedicated to the king of D enmark, whose son had driven Hofmann from Flensburg (!), was one of his most significant works, with its glowing description of the return of Christ. Hofmann declared that Paul was the angel who had bound Satan for a thousand years (Rev. 20:2) and that the Parousia was imminent. After the expiration of t his period, Christianity had fallen into its current deplorable state, now soon to be repaired (Ch. 11.4.a). Many would come to consider Hofmann himself as the returned Elijah, one of t he two prospective witnesses (Elijah and Enoch) of Revelation 11:3.95 It was in his concentration on prophecy and apocalyptic that Hofmann became associated with Leonard and Ursula Jost, both of whom had been receiving, within the Strassburg company of p rophets, visions and revelations since the Peasants’ War and were now construing their oracles as interpretive of h is mission. Hofmann, breaking now from his close reading of scriptural texts, considered their oracles comparable to those of the Old Testament, i.e. as fresh revelation and in two books he published and interpreted them. The first was devoted to Ursula’s vision, (no. 12) Prophetische Geschichte und Offenbarung, 1530. The second, containing the prophecies of her husband, has been lost. These two collections of contemporary prophecy would presently make a deep impression in the middle Rhine and 94  Two others were (no. 9) Weissagung aus heiliger göttlicher Schrift: von der Trübsalen Prophezeider dieser Letzten Zeit, oder Weissagung and (no. 10) von Allen Wundern und Zeichen, three of them in Strassburg, 1530. 95  It is recalled that Hut had identified the two witnesses with Müntzer and Pfeiffer slain during the Peasants’ War. See Peterson, “Preaching in the Last Days,” 1:3–13.

392  the radical reformation

chapter 10.3.c

especially in The Netherlands (Ch. 12.3). As the record preserved by Hofmann of the extravagant visions, psychologically and socially illuminating, provide unique access to the febrile mind of the body politic that was Strassburg, 1524–30, we may well pause, even in a panoramic survey, before these frightening convulsions of the spirit, the Strassburg analogues to charismatic and hell-and-damnation evangelism of other places and times, minus in this case the glossolalia, which did surface in Appenzell and other places in our narrative.96 Foremost among prophesiers in Strassburg was the visionary couple Ursula Jost (d. 1530), Leonard Jost, and his second wife, Agnes. Leonard, a butcher, had, before 1524, lain for some time in chains in the municipal asylum for fools. Although his prophecies may have been as prolific as those of his first wife, they, except for one, have been lost. Of the seventy-seven revelatory apparitions to Ursula Jost, edited by Hofmann, fifty-eight were vouchsafed to her during the Alsatian phase in the Peasants’ War and were then renewed thick and fast with the Anabaptist tumults and famine of 1529. Her visions were dreams, daydreams, and most commonly hallucinations after having been torn from sleep by t he “inexpressible clarity of t he luminosity (Schein) of the Lord,” the images (Gesichten) often terrifying to the beholder herself. The overall thrust and portent of the cosmically cataclysmic and socially revolutionary and vengeful visions was to direct all hope for the faithful toward a charismatic leader who would lead the faithful from bondage and oppression into a new and spiritualized life beyond the present tribulations and the cataclysmic tribulations to come. Of the published visions of L eonard Jost, only one of t hem is known from Hofmann’s own appropriating paraphrase of it before the synodal commission (Ch. 10.4). On the basis of it, Hofmann declared that just as Rome was interpreted as the spiritual Babylon, so Strassburg would become the spiritual Jerusalem.97 He stated that Strassburg would be the center for the eventual 144,000 heralds of world regeneration (Rev. 14:1). After a bloody siege of the elect city, the royal priesthood, the priestly kingdom of t he persevering saints, would rally under their chosen, righteous pastors. That would be the breakthrough. In this apocalyptic mood Hofmann found 4 Esdras especially useful. It was no doubt the combination of his exegetical fervor and his observation of the extraordinary role that the city was already playing in the Radical Reformation that convinced him that Strassburg was

96  Fast supplies an excer pt from Hofmann’s edition of Ur sula’s visions, Der linke Flügel, 298–308; Deppermann examines the whole compan y of some sixteen exper ienced prophets and their following, Hoffman, 178–86 and n. 144. 97  The Scriptural basis for the doctrine is John 1:17, 3:13; 1 Cor. 15:47. For his own claim to be Elijah, see Elsass 2 (QGT 8), no. 368, p.18.

chapter 10.3.c

speyer& strassburg, 1529  393

indeed the elect city of the ancient seers and he claimed for himself the office of Elijah, the witness to the passing aeon. Hofmann had not actually joined the Anabaptists when, wont to address patricians, princes, and even kings, he conf idently presented a petition to the Strassburg council in April 1530, demanding that a church edif ice be assigned to the Anabaptist community.98 He characterized the coerced uniformity of c hurch, magistracy, and society under the magisterial reformations sanctioned by Luther and Zwingli as “evangelical Judaism” and inveighed against the equation of p edobaptism and circumcision, holding that under the New Covenant baptism with “inner, spiritual water” rightly precedes the external baptism and the pledge of s ustained obedience made possible by t he freeing of t he will through the historic work of C hrist on Calvary. With the Mass only recently abolished, he demanded equal rights for the Anabaptists alongside the magisterially reformed parishes. Hofmann now took the formal step of j oining the brotherhood by s ubmitting to rebaptism. It is even possible that he was even a prophet se-baptist. (His spirited and determined landlady, Catherine Seid, would not at once submit to baptism—only in 1532 and then rather casually.) 99 With this f inal break from his earlier socially radical Lutheranism and then Sacramentarianism went the transformation of h is views on predestination. Hofmann now professed the view, akin to that of Schwenckfeld, that after regeneration the will is freed. Therewith comes enormous responsibility in one’s life decisions, for after adult or believers’ baptism any sin committed is against faith, the gift of the Holy Spirit, and is therefore unforgivable (cf. Mark 3:29).100 Despite his eschatological intensity, Hofmann continued to counsel obedience to what he considered the provisionally authorized magistracy. The city council of S trassburg ordered the arrest of H ofmann, both because of his petition and because of the seditionary implications of his exposition of Revelation. On 23 April 1530 he escaped from the city in haste and headed back to Emden, where he would soon father an Anabaptist congregation and thereby introduce the potent seed of Hofmannite (Melchiorite) Anabaptism into the moist soil of t he Lowlands, long harrowed and tilled by Sacramentism and persecution (Ch. 12.1). He would be back in Strassburg, however, the same year—this time in complete concealment, and the magistrates unaware of h is presence—departing again at the end of 1530. 98

 Elsass 2 (QGT 8), no. 211.  The idea of the Calv ary-won freedom of the will w ould be first fully expounded in Dutch, (no. 18) Verclaringe van den geuangene inde vr ien wil des mensc hen (somewhere in The Netherlands, ? 1532); Deppermann, Hoffman, 179. 100  Well analyzed by Kawerau, Melchior Hofmann, 58ff. 99

394  the radical reformation

chapter 10.3.d

d. Sebastian Franck, 1529 In the fall of 1 529, Sebastian Franck (1499–1542) joined the variegated company of sectaries and seekers in Strassburg. Several generations of modern scholars once so concentrated on Franck that he emerged as the basic figure about whom the “Spiritualist” was defined and developed as a type in the sociology of religion.101 Before recounting his Strassburg career, we look to his earlier life.102 Born at Donauwörth in 1499 of a family of weavers who may have been under Waldensian discipline, Franck had studied at Ingolstadt, 1515–17, a student of Agricola for his Greek and of Jacob Locher and Urbanus Rhegius (Ch. 7.2) for rhetoric and poetry. Franck wrote Latin, understood Greek, but was ignorant of H ebrew. At the beginning of 1 518 he had gone to Heidelberg to study theology with the Dominicans, and in April he, like Bucer, attended the famous disputation in which Luther defended his position on the bondage of the will and against Aristotle in the chapter meeting of t he Saxon province of h is Augustinian Order. From these years of study, Franck preserved a passionate love for the history of Germany, having undergone the influence of Jacob Wimpfeling, the author of Germania (1501). Ordained as priest, Franck became a Lutheran preacher in the village of Büchenbach in Ansbach-Bayreuth in 1524, where he experienced the violence of the Peasants’ War but kept out of it. Then he was chaplain in Gustenfelden under the patronage of Nuremberg in the same margraviate. He had by now married Ottilie Behaim, sister of the famous “godless painters” Bartholomew and Sebald Behaim (Ch. 7.1), known to John Denck. While still a Lutheran at Gustenfelden, Franck mildly opposed Denck. He was, even as a Lutheran, incipiently sympathetic toward Denck’s view; but he began his literary career by translating into German for the ben-

101  Alfred Hegler, Geist und Scr ift bei Sebastian Fr anck: Eine Studien zur Gesc hichte der Spiritualismus in der Reformationszeit (Freiburg, 1892); SAW, Introduction, 27. 102  The literature on Franck in man y disciplines is immense , brought together in Bibliographie by Klaus Kaczerowsky (Wiesbaden: Pressler, 1976), and selectively supplemented and updated b y Christopher Dejung, “Sebastian Franck,” BD 7 (1986), 39–119, with the title pages of all Franck’s works and character ization in the style of this eminent ser ies. Among the secondary works are Eberhard Teufel, “Landräumig,” Sebastian Franck, ein Wanderer an Donau, Rhein und Neckar (Neustadt an der Aisch: Degener, 1954); Doris Rieber, “Sébastien Franck,” BHR 21 (1959): 190–201; Hans J. Hillerbrand, “The Lonely Indi vidualist,” in his Fellowship of Discontent (New York: Harper, 1967), ch. 2; John Aron Toews, “Sebastian Franck: Friend and Critic of Early Anabaptism” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, 1964); Christopher Dejung, Wahrheit und Häresie: Untersuchungen zur Geschichtsphilosophie bei Sebastian Franck (Zurich: Dejung, 1980).

chapter 10.3.d

speyer& strassburg, 1529  395

efit of t he people, Andreas Althamer’s Latin Diallage 103 directed against Denck’s Wer die Wahrheit wahrlich lieb hat (Ch. 7.2) and its arrangement of contradictory passages in Scripture. In passing, at least, he also attacked the abuses of L uther’s doctrine of j ustification by f aith alone, insisting that the fruits of j ustification had been neglected. He sought to expose the abuses of the Scripture, having in mind not only the Anabaptists and Spiritualists, but also some of the Lutheran theologians. Franck was quite serious in his espousal of A lthamer against the Anabaptists and Spiritualists; at the same time, where Althamer insisted on the literal biblical word, Franck reminded the reader of t he Spirit behind the word. In effect, his emended translation of A lthamer represented his last work as a L utheran and his first work as a S piritualist. “Before us there were Werkheilige … now we are Wortheilige,” he remarked disparagingly of both Catholics and Lutherans. In the introduction to the translated Diallage, Franck espoused ecclesiastical pluralism under the rubric of Spiritualism. He regretted that everywhere the Landgott was being worshiped: “[E]very home [should] have its own faith, as is the custom in Bohemia.” In 1528, Franck published a booklet based on biblical passages against drunkenness, Von dem greulichen Laster der Trunkenheit. In this book he urged the clerical excommunication of open sinners, with the support of the magistrate. Andrew Osiander, pastor at Nuremberg, supported him, but the magistracy of the town opposed the effort. In revulsion from the solafideist, magisterial reform, Franck left the ministry. He thereupon established himself in Nuremberg brief ly as a printer. Here he published his Türkenchronik, a German translation from the Latin of an unknown author who was a Transylvanian Saxon, held prisoner by t he Turks for twenty-two years. Franck makes of t he preface an occasion to contrast the simplicity of t he life and worship of t he Turks with the impure life, the divisions, and the complicated rituals of C hristians. He speaks of a d ozen sects of C hristianity, to which now, he says, three new ones have been added, namely, the Lutheran, the Zwinglian, and the Anabaptist. A fourth new one is in the process of formation, the Spiritualist, which will eliminate all audible prayer, preaching, ceremonies, sacraments, and ordinances such as excommunication, and also the ministry. Spiritualists, he writes approvingly, will be content with an invisible church without exterior means (he being thus much more of a S eeker than a f orerunner of Q uakers with their sense for “the meeting”). It was, then, as a p rogrammatic Spiritualizer that Franck moved to Strassburg in 1529. He was naturally attracted to Schwenckfeld. The two must have discussed a com mon interest in the celestial flesh of C hrist, 103  Diallage, hoc est conciliatio locorum Scr ipturae qui prima facie inter se pugnare videntur (translated 1528). In his translation Franck professes to agree with the critic of Denck’s Spiritualism.

396  the radical reformation

chapter 10.3.d

which Ziegler, Hofmann, Servetus, and Paracelsus also held in one form or another (Ch. 11.3.e). He met Bünderlin before the latter’s departure in 1529. He would later have contact with John Campanus and Servetus. It was in his letter to Campanus, written from Strassburg in 1531 (Ch. 18.3),104 that he elaborated and made programmatically his own the fourth sect which he had earlier mentioned in his preface to the Türkenchronik. In the middle of 1 531, Franck turned over to the philo-Anabaptist Balthasar Beck the printing of his Chronica, Zeitbuch und Geschichtsbibel, which appeared 5 September 1531, and which throws light on the contemporary history of the Radical Reformation. In the very title, Geschichtsbibel, he suggests that in addition to the salvific history of the People of the Covenant in the Old Testament and the New (“from Adam to Christ”) there is a kind of sacred subsequent history, in which God’s word for humanity is further disclosed. There will be sixteen full editions of this thus very influential book in German in the sixteenth century and seven in Dutch.105 In this Chronica and Bible of History Franck borrowed considerably from earlier chronicles, among them the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius and his Chronica (c. a.d. 303, in the version of Jerome, 380).106 He indicated on the verso of the title page, 111 sources which he had read or found cited by others. The first part of his Geschichtsbibel extends from the creation of the world to Christ; the second recounts the history of t he Emperors from Augustus to Charles V. The preface of t his part pictures an eagle as a voracious and bloody creature which thereby commends itself for the ornamentation of t he escutcheon of t he emperor. On the Peasants’ War, Franck adopts the view of L uther, namely, that every form of r esistance against the order established by God is an insurrection, and that the gospel instructs Christians to endure injustice rather than to commit it. As a humanist Spiritualist he is sometimes given to rather harsh statements about the canaille. The third part of the Chronica is itself divided into three parts, the first being the chronicle of the Popes from Peter to Clement VII. Here, Franck opposes the Catholic claims, denies the Roman pontificate of Peter, and, following Lorenzo Valla, treats as fraudulent the Donation of Constantine. The second part deals with the councils and the third with heretics (as seen from the Roman point of view), including Wycliffe, Hus,

104  Translated SAW, 147–62; based upon Dutch and Ger man versions; the first half of a copy of the Latin or iginal has been edited by B. Becker, “Fragment van Francks Latijnse Br ief aan Campanus,” NAKG n.s. 46 (1965): 197–205; for other v ersions, Dejung, “Franck,” BD 7, p. 94. 105  The Geschichtsbibel was the single German work in the library of Thomas Cranmer who had in 1523 secretly married the niece of Andrew Osiander of Nuremberg. 106  Bucer later, 1535, will accuse him of having fraudulently obtained per mission to print this work by representing it as consisting solely of extracts from history without significant or tendentious comment.

chapter 10.3.d

speyer& strassburg, 1529  397

and Gansfort. This is the most original and valuable portion of the whole Chronica, for Franck characterizes the Anabaptists of his own time, many of whom he knew personally, possibly including Denck. He is mildly critical of them for their literalism, legalism, and separatism. He observes that the Anabaptists had made an idol out of s uffering, assigning to it almost the same place as “works” in Catholicism. For his chronicle of heresies, Franck utilizes the catalogue of heretics prepared by the Dominican Prior Bernard of Luxemburg (Cologne, 1522). Franck in his work shows great familiarity with the works of Luther and pays tribute to him for his struggle against the abuses of the papacy and for his achievement in translating the Bible. Franck honorifically includes Erasmus among the heretics presently, to the great humanist’s indignation. Erasmus would indeed demand that Bucer investigate the book and its author.107 Because of t he opposition of d iverse groups led by Bucer, the Chronica was confiscated and Franck was arrested. From prison Franck wrote to Erasmus in December 1530 a letter of chagrin (lost), amazed that one whom he so much admired had failed to be pleased with the patent irony. When released, Franck was expelled from Strassburg, 30 December 1531, and the sale of his books was forbidden.108 To have directly been condemned by B ucer, the Geschichtsbuch must also have been perused by him. Bucer will, in any case, most certainly have read with close attention at least the first folios of i ntroduction, wherein is contained a formulation of the triplex munus Christi, a theologoumenon that has already been identified in a w riting of E rasmus (1522; Ch. 1 n . 32), and is taken up as an excursus in the present chapter (Ch. 10.2.b). It is a f ormulary of c onsequence for the interrelationship of c hurch, and state, and school (an ongoing theme of the present chapter). With enhanced attention, it will also become indeed a minor christological theme into the seventeenth century not only with the Reformed but also the Socinian tradition and beyond. After a moving introduction, wherein Franck acknowledges that “in God’s name even some peasant can strike to death his servant,” he proceeds to show how difficult it is to describe God, who cannot be apprehended by the five senses, “but is like an inexpressible sigh (Seüfftz) in the soul.” He goes through biblical and pagan descriptions, and he includes even a Zoroastrian one, in order to approach the Almighty comparatively and then to discuss “the names of God, of God his Son, by whom alone we can know God,” and then the Holy Spirit. Franck characterizes some twenty-seven names by which Jesus is known, beginning thus:

107 108

 Elsass 1 (QGT 7), nos. 262, 286, and 315a.  Ibid., no. 294.

398  the radical reformation

chapter 10.3.d / 10.3.e

Jesus has many names in Scripture, first he is called Christ, that he is with grace a spirit, yea, that he is “anointed with the oil of gladness beyond all his brothers and relations” [Heb. 1:9; based on Ps. 45:6] and is named the king and head over them, also over them he is likewise called Messiah, that is, he is anointed as priester, prophet, and künig. … [Insofar as he is called prophet, item 24] he is so called because he has revealed to us the will of God and also prophesied and said many things about the future … [Item 27 concludes the list of names: He is called] Rex et sacerdos, that is, king and priest for this reason that God as an Emperor rules, manages [the world] through this King and through this High Priest consecrates (weihet) and hallows (heiliget) on earth as it is in heaven and through him consecrates us all as priests and kings [cf. 1 Pet. 2:9].109 We shall pick up the trail of Sebastian Franck again (Ch. 18.3). e. Christian Entfelder, 1529 Among the many radical reformers who appeared in Strassburg in 1529, mention has yet to be made of Christian Entfelder, a disciple of John Denck and friend of B althasar Hubmaier. Little is know of E ntfelder’s career and thought.110 During the years 1526–27, he had served as the preacher of an Anabaptist congregation in Eibenschitz (Evancice)111 in Moravia. The Swiss and Austrian Brethren, to whom Entfelder no doubt ministered, had their meetinghouse in a lane in a suburb. There were also some Schwenckfeldians who came from Silesia in 1527. Leaving Moravia, perhaps because of Ferdinand’s burning of three Anabaptists in his district (Ch. 9.2.c), Entfelder removed to Strassburg, where he was briefly associated

109

 Fol. 3. Franck mentions among his sources, besides Eusebius, who seems to ha ve been the source of his names and the thr eesomeness of unction, Erasmus, and Thomas Aquinas, all three of whom offer the threesomeness of unction. 110  The fullest account was once in Rufus M. Jones, Spiritual Reformers in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (London, 1914), 39–43; but see now André Séguenny, “Christian Entfelder,” BD 1 (1980), 37–48; and PackuIl, Mysticism, 163–75, who admirably interweaves Entfelder’s three works (below, n. 114) interpretatively: (1) Von dem mannigfaltigen im glauben Zerspaltungen … in sonderkait v on der Tauffspaltung (Strassburg, 1530) translated into Dutch (Amsterdam, 1659); (2) Von waren Gotseligkayt (Strassburg, 1530; reprinted in Augsburg) and (3) Vonn Gottes unnd Chr isti Jesus unseres Herrn Erkenntnis (? Strassburg 1533, surviving in a reprint from Augsburg). The date 1533 is deduced by Packull from the reference in the third to his first book, “three years before,” Mysticism, 228 n.73. All three works are characterized by Séguenny, BD 1. 111  Evancice was in the Br`no district of Moravia (formerly a seat of Hussite strength) where on 10 April 1528 Thomas Waldhauser, John Cižek, and one other Anabaptist were burned. Elsass 1 (QGT 7), no. 131, p. 159.

chapter 10.3.e

speyer& strassburg, 1529  399

with Bünderlin. During his sojourn in Strassburg (1529–33), Entfelder produced three books.112 The first book, Of the Manifold Splits in Faith especially of the Split over Baptism (Strassburg, 24 January 1530), dealt with the Spiritual basis of religious divisions, treating the problem of f aith and sanctification and the disputes over baptism and the Supper. Scripture by itself, Entfelder declared, was like a razor, inflicting wounds if not properly handled.113 Moreover, to seek to extract holiness from the Bible as it stands is like trying to draw water from a dry well. It is out of G od’s living Word (inner grace) that holiness proceeds. Entfelder was not entirely individualistic about the quest for holiness. He yearned for the company of like-minded seekers and saints, defining the church in this book as “a chosen, saved, purified, sanctified group in whom God dwells, upon whom the Holy Spirit has poured out his gifts, and with whom Christ the Lord shares his offices and his mission.”114 He had seen so much muzzling of the inner witness in conscientious but overridden members of the congregation in Eibenschitz and in Moravia generally and now in the Strassburg fellowship of e vangelical Separatists, that he despaired of baptism. Indeed he had come to a position similar to Denck in his Recantation in Basel, namely, that a fresh mandate was needed from God in order to practice rebaptism and he was inclined to think the time of believers’ baptism was over and the time of w rath begun. Evidently differing from Denck in Nicodemite conformity to the established church in Basel, Enfelder was now indifferent to church ceremonies with no intention of going in, henceforth a chastened medieval mystic without a convent, also without a conventicle, like Franck and Bünderlin. A second work of only seventeen pages, Von wahrer Gottseligkeit (1530), considered the six stages through which Christ is mystically formed in the believer in the process of his or her being reborn: It is desirable [he says] to know that divine blessedness is nothing other than a peace (ruow) which the Spirit of God effects in a person through Christ to the end that one is at leisure from all that is creaturely, including self. All one’s sense, emotion, and thought, drawn away from the beautiful and luscious apple of this world, bids farewell to father, mother, sister, brother, wife, child, house, barn, meadows, fields, goods and gold, body and business 112

 Printed at Strassburg and at Augsburg.They are rare.They have been excerpted with special reference to the doctrine of the Trinity by Stanislas von Dunin-Borkowski, “Quellenstudien zur Vorgeschichte der Unitar ier des 16. Jahrhunderts,” 75 Jahre Stella Matutina, Festschrift, 1 (Feldkirch, 1931), 107–9. See further, André Séguenny, “A l’origine de la philosophie et de la théologie spirituelles en Allemagne: Christian Entfelder,” RHPR 7 (1977): 167–81. 113  A similar reservation in John de Valdés, Ch. 1.2.c. 114  Quoted by Jones, Spiritual Reformers from the end of Entfelder’ s book, where he addresses himself to the Brethren.

400  the radical reformation

chapter 10.3.e

(leib und leben). … And though the world cries out and complains against and becomes indignant at such a person for disparaging its activities and will not be compared with it, he stands fast in his gelassenheyt, remains quiet, and leaves it to his Lover to answer for him in His own time, who will know how to deal justly with him.115 The third work, systematically dealing with the Three Persons as powers, was entitled Of the Perception of God and of our Lord (1533), with its scriptural motto on the title page, Revelation 14:7: “Fear God and give him the honor.” It was out of his concern to distinguish the inner Word of personal experience, the outer Word (the historic Christ, the Bible, and the communion of the saints), and the eternal Word that Entfelder developed his mystical doctrine of the Trinity in such a way as to be considered medieval mystical and thus anti-Nicene with only an economic Trinity experienced in the soul of the viator (Ch. 11.2.c). In such a passage flow currents common to the Rhenish mystics, the more contemplative Anabaptists like Denck, and the Spiritualists Schwenckfeld and Franck. We next encounter Entfelder in the court of Ducal Prussia (Ch. 15.2.a). In pursuing the sectarian history of Strassburg, we have been struck by the number of m ajor spokesmen of t he Radical Reformation who found their way there all in the year 1529. As we proceed biographically, we now introduce three more f igures. By chance all three of these revolutionaries converged on Strassburg in 1531: Bernard Rothmann, destined for a leading role in the rise of the polygamous Bibliocracy of Münster,116 and two leading revolutionaries in respect to the doctrine of the Trinity—the proto-Unitarian Michael Servetus and the binitarian John Campanus. (We postpone the full treatment of Rothmann to Ch. 13.1.) The assumption that these three visitors had theological contact with one another and with the indigenous Separatists is based on the references made to the others in the surviving documentation, and also to Bünderlin, Franck, Hofmann, or Schwenckfeld. We know very little about the sojourn of the three visitors of 1 531, but since all three adhered in one form or another to the doctrine of the celestial flesh, we can conjecture that they visited the home of the Melchiorite goldsmith, Valentine Duft, and perhaps that of Clement Ziegler in the Robertsau. That Schwenckfeld and Servetus were in contact is documented.117

115

 Translated from the excerpt reprinted by Dunin-Borkowski, “Quellenstudien,” 109.  The surmise that Rothmann was in Strassburg in the spring of 1531 is based on his own letter in which he avowed his intentions to visit the city, Elsass 1 (QGT 7), no. 249. 117  See Elsass 1 (QGT 7), no. 241, n. 4, and CS, 17, Doc. 1585. 116

chapter 10.3.f

speyer& strassburg, 1529  401

f. Michael Servetus, 1531 It was in May 1531 that Servetus arrived in Strassburg. We were last with him, Brunfels, and Paracelsus in Basel (Ch. 8.4.b), where Servetus, despite some initial success, was dejected by his failure to win Oecolampadius to his views. He came to Strassburg with a double purpose: to get his book on the Trinity printed in nearby Hagenau and “to confer concerning Holy Scripture with Martin Bucer and Capito.”118 As early as 1530 he had joined Bucer (whose Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels, 1527, he greatly admired) in a visit to Luther in Coburg at the time of the Augsburg diet. Once in the crossroads city, Servetus stayed in the home of Capito along with that other distinguished house guest, Schwenckfeld.119 It was at the suggestion either of C apito in correspondence or of a B asel printer that Servetus arranged in Hagenau to have John Setzer publish On the Errors of the Trinity ( June, 1531). The Hagenau printer stood on the Lutheran side in the eucharistic controversy, against the Swiss, and may have accepted the printing job to irritate them and to embarrass them for having domiciled Servetus in Basel. In any case, Setzer concealed himself and his press. Servetus confidently had his own name appear on the title page. On the Errors of the Trinity 120 consists of s even books, in the first of which Servetus propounded his modalism and his conception of Christ as the natural Son of G od, begotten, not eternally, but in a mysterious way through divine insemination of the Virgin. The Spirit was here thought of as the seed of God rather than as a distinct Person (Ch. 11.2.c). The remaining six books elaborate the theme and attack Luther on justification by faith in the strong language of contemporary theological debate. Some Strassburgers were receptive to Servetus’ effort to explain the received dogma naturalistically, though they were amply warned against Servetus and his work, notably by Berthold Haller in Bern, who also drew attention to the chiliastic context of S ervetus’ anti-Nicene views.121 “By

118  The statements of Servetus concerning his relations with Bucer and Capito are printed in Calvin, Opera, 8: cols. 764ff. Capito’s relations with Servetus and other radicals are discussed with considerable documentation, some of it not else where printed, by Otto Strasser, Capitos Beziehungen zu Ber n, Quellen und Abhandlungen zur Schweizerischen Reformations geschichte 4 (Leipzig, 1928), 67ff. The visit to Coburg as worked out by H. Tollin, Michel Servet und Martin Buzer (Berlin, 1880), ch. 4, is not accepted by all scholars. 119  1t is assumed that Schwenckfeld was still living at Capito’s until the death in November of the mistress of the house. Cf. also Haller’s letter to Bucer, 4 October 1531, wherein the two guests are linked with Capito: Elsass 1 (QGT 7), no. 269. 120  Translated by Earl Morse Willbur. See Ch. 8 n. 40. 121  Cf. Elsass 1 (QGT 7), no. 319.

402  the radical reformation

chapter 10.3.f

certain Strassburgers the book … was lauded.”122 Capito, for example, was at first impressed by the bold reconception of the Trinity and Servetus’ appeal to the Hebrew texts in support thereof.123 Bucer, however, in his lectures sought to refute some of S ervetus’ points as early as December 1531. Bucer felt the sting of some of Servetus’ assertions (in a n o longer extant letter) about the Strassburger’s conception of the Lord’s Supper and the mediatorial role of Christ. Still addressing Servetus as “beloved in Christ,” Bucer contended that while he did indeed oppose the idea of impanation or carnal manducation, he nevertheless believed with Servetus in some kind of real, efficacious presence. As to Servetus’ conception of redemption—that Sonship was possible only after the incarnation and that Christ descended into hell to save the Old Testament worthies—Bucer reasserted the conviction that the Israelites before the advent of Christ, by election and by their faith in the incarnation ahead, were rightly called in the Old Testament “sons of God”; and against Servetus, Schwenckfeld, and Marpeck alike, Bucer said that the descent into hell in the Apostles’ Creed meant only that Christ was buried and underwent what is experienced by all who die.124 In Basel, Oecolampadius, on procuring a copy of The Errors, denounced it as blasphemous, wrote to Bucer that the book was malevolently favored by those who hated their church, and urged him to write a full refutation of Servetus, lest the Swiss and Alsatian churches be thought the originators of the blasphemy.125 Bucer, after much outside pressure, refuted the work publicly.126 The town council ordered Servetus to avoid Strassburg on pain of punishment.127 Servetus returned to Basel, still counting unrealistically on support from Oecolampadius. Just before his death late the same year, Oecolampadius rendered an opinion to the city council of Basel in which he urged that, despite certain good points in the book, Servetus should retract his errors in writing. This counsel, and the unexpected hostility all through the Upper Rhine which the work had provoked, was undoubtedly the reason for Servetus’ putting his view in conciliatory form in his smaller Dialogues on the Trinity,128 from the same press in Hagenau at the beginning of 1531. In the uproar over the first work, said Servetus by way of introduction, there had been two main objections. In response to the first, his alleged

122

 Oecolampadius to Zwingli, Strasser, Capito, 70 n.7.  Elsass 1 (QGT 7), no. 319. 124  Ibid., no. 292a, p. 592. 125  Staehelin, Briefe, 2, nos. 895, 897, 904, 914. 126  Elsass 1 (QGT 7), no. 331. 127  11 December 1531, ibid., no. 280. 128  Translated by Wilbur with the Errors, discussed above. See Ch. 8 n. 40. 123

chapter 10.3.f

speyer& strassburg, 1529  403

violence toward Luther, he could soften considerably his statements about justification without undermining his own great concern for sanctification. On the main objection, modalism, he was now prepared to go rather far in an effort to use traditional language about the Three Persons. He was on his way to recognizing what he would make more explicit in his Christiatlismi Restitutio of 1553, that once the natural divine Sonship of Christ is acknowledged as the revelatory point of d eparture, and the abstractions of scholastic and patristic theology are understood to mean a miraculous physiological procreation, then one could by extension speak of the Son and even of Christ as eternal and divine with respect to God’s intention. The Strassburg divines finally put in their own words what they thought Servetus had said, namely, “that the eternal Logos of God was [before the mundane generation] nothing but a pattern (vor- or verbildung) and shadow of t he Man, our Lord Jesus Christ [shadowed forth] in all creation in God’s diverse epiphanies, and in the coming and going of his angels.”129 Distressed by the failure of all groups to be tolerant of fresh theological construction, despite their claim to be reformers, Servetus expressed the hope that the “Lord destroy all the tyrants of the church.” Condemned in Strassburg and Basel, excoriated in Wittenberg, plotted against in Spain (with a d iabolical plan to use his own brother to ensnare him), Servetus later recalls his desperation at the age of twenty, when, “taught by no man,” he felt a certain divine impulse “to make known to the world [his] theological insights”: When I began, such was the blindness of the world that I was sought up and down to be snatched to my death. Terrified on this account and fleeing into exile, for many years I l urked among strangers in sore grief of mind. Knowing that I was young, powerless and without polish of style, I almost gave up the whole cause, for I w as not yet sufficiently trained. … O m ost clement Jesus, I invoke thee again as divine witness that on this account I delayed and also because of t he imminent persecution, so that with Jonah I longed rather to flee to the sea or to one of the New Isles.130 The reference may well be to the possibility of joining the Welser colonizing expedition to Little Venice, Venezuela. But instead of to the New World, Servetus went to France. We shall later take up in further detail

129

no. 25.

 The phrasing of article i of the Strassburg synod of 1533 (Ch. 10.4). Elsass 2 (QGT 8),

130  From a unique portion of the text in the Edinb urgh MS of the Restitutio published in Journal of Modern History 4 (1939): 89, and again in Bainton, Hunted Heretic, 73–74.

404  the radical reformation

chapter 10.3.f / 10.3.g

his triadological, christological, and baptismal views (Ch. 11) and meet him again in fatal dispute with Calvin (Ch. 23.4). g. John Campanus, 1532 John Campanus (1500–c. 1575)131 showed up in Strassburg late in 1531.132 Although his primary sphere of influence was the duchy of Jülich (not fully Lutheran until c. 1540), we introduce him at this point as one of the earliest anti-Nicene theologians of the Reformation era and as an acquaintance of Servetus and Schwenckfeld. Born in Maaseik in the princely bishopric of Liège and educated at Düsseldorf and Cologne, where he acquired the three ancient languages, he was expelled, perhaps as a partisan of Luther, and in 1526 published a poem in defense of Luther from the attacks of the Obscure Men, and he went to Wittenberg, studying there between 1527 and 1530. He left from time to time on diverse theological errands, notably to attend but not to participate in the Marburg Colloquy in 1529. At that time he was Lutheran, but he broke with Luther over the question of t he correct understanding of the Lord’s Supper and of the doctrine of the Trinity. In March 1530 he went to the elector’s court at Torgau, seeking to be included in the Saxon delegation to the Diet of Au gsburg but he so alienated the Wittenbergers that Melanchthon thereafter had him very much in mind and immortalized him in the condemnation of the “neo-Samosatenes” of the Augsburg Confession (article 1). The main extant record of Campanus’ thought is his Restitution göttlicher Schrift (1531).133 Written in German, it is based on three slightly earlier and allegedly more scholarly Latin works which may not ever have been printed.134 (Chief of t hese was his Artikel-Buch, presumably the same as his Contra totum post apostolos mundum, Jülich, c. 1530). Notable is the very word and concept of restitution, one of three such works bearing it as the 131

 The chief work on Campan us was long that of Karl Rember t, Die “Wiedertaufe” im Herzogtum Jülich (Berlin, 1889). More recently, Chalmers McCormick, “The Restitution of John Campanus: An Interpretation and the Text” (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1959), 151– 293; and André Séguenny, ed., “Johannes Campanus,” BD 1 (1980) 13–35. 132  The main supports for this surmise are the following: (1) Bucer’s reference to the recent arrival of “a Dane who wrote Contra totum post apostolos mundum” in a letter to Ambrose Blaurer, 29 December 1531, Briefwechsel, no. 250, p. 308; (2) the n umerous references in Strassburg to Campanus’ books; (3) Melanchthon’s statement in CR 2:34; and (4) the f act that Franck, who wrote to him in February 1531, addresses him as one whose acquaintance he has recently made. See Elsass 1 (QGT 7), nos. 241, 293, 300. For an interesting group of largely Melchiorite books sent to Strassburg from Speyer in 1537, including a Restitution, see Krebs, Baden und Pfalz (QGT 4), no. 411. 133  The full title is Göttlicher und Heiliger Schrift/vor vielen Jahren verdunkelt und durch unheilsame Lehre und Lehrer (auss göttlic her Zulassung) v erfinstert/Restitution und Verbesserung (1531), extant in two exemplars in Utrecht and Dresden. It is supplied with a preface by Nicolas Franz von Streiten addressed to King Frederick of Denmark. 134  Bucer, writing 3 January 1532, expresses concern lest this book be printed at Hagenau, Elsass 1 (QGT 7), no. 300.

chapter 10.3.g / 10.3.h

speyer& strassburg, 1529  405

title Restitutio: Campanus, 1531; Bernard Rothmann, 1536; Servetus, 1553. Such was the conviction of Campanus: “For 1400 years [that is, since a.d. 100, Jesus presumably having died at thirty-one] the true Church has not existed, but now the time of restitution is come.” The German version, the Restitution in thirty chapters, is primarily an indictment of the insufficiency of the restoration by Luther and Melanchthon. Campanus accuses Luther of having deprived the Christian laity of their right to sit in judgment (1 Cor. 14:23ff.) when Scripture is being interpreted (Sitzerrecht Ch. 11.4).135 Within this framework, he disparages his opponents for multifarious minor and major errors. Among the lesser matters are the inviolability of a w idow’s oath, the difference between the leviathan and a whale, the signs of the Last Judgment, and the impropriety of a C hristian engaging in legal suits on his own behalf. The greater portion of the Restitution, however, focuses on the “fundamental articles,” in which Campanus presents his conceptions of God and of t he sacraments. Basing his conception of G od on Genesis 1:26–27, he argues that God the Father and Christ the preexistent Son are two persons of one essence, just as man and wife are two persons but one flesh. The Holy Spirit is not a person, but rather the mutual bond of love between the Father and the Son: their essence, force, and nature. We shall have occasion to go more fully into this binitarianism (in Poland, called Ditheism) and baptismal theology (Ch. 11.1). Having rehearsed the sectarian history of Strassburg from 1522 to 1529 (Ch. 10.2) and now having introduced a dozen or so of t he radical leaders who arrived in 1529 and 1531, we are in a p osition to recount the broader sectarian history of S trassburg up to the first territorial synod of the reformed city-state, to be convened in 1533 and to draw up a territorial confession of faith and order and to put an end to all forms of separatism. h. Pilgram Marpeck among Sectarians in the City of Refuge, 1529/31–33 Between the arrival in 1531 of B ernard Rothmann,136 Servetus, and Campanus and the synodal hearing of Ziegler, Schwenckfeld, and Hofmann in June 1533, the most significant development lay not on the theological fringes of s ectarianism, but at its center. This was the emergence of Pilgram Marpeck as the major spokesman and theorist of r esponsible, pacifistic, evangelical Anabaptism unencumbered by a ny marked differences from Protestant orthodoxy with respect to the Trinity, Christology, and eschatology. After the arrest, defection, or flight in 1529 of such lead135

 He may have written about this in a separate book, De jure sedentis, Séguenny, BD 1, p. 15, item 4. 136  Rothmann, connected by destiny with Münster (Ch. 14) was in Strassburg only transitionally in 1531; Elsass 1 (QGT 7), no. 249 and editorial note, Elsass 2 (QGT 8), and a reference by Schwenckfeld to a single encounter with Rothmann in Strassburg, May 1535, CS, doc. 194, p. 323.

406  the radical reformation

chapter 10.3.h

ers as Bünderlin, Reublin, Kautz, and Fridolin Meyger, it was Marpeck who remained the strategic figure in the consolidation of evangelical Anabaptism in his effort to hold the ground between, on the spiritualizing right, the contemplative Anabaptists like Denck and Bünderlin and the Spiritualism of Schwenckfeld and, on the left, the apocalyptic millennialist Anabaptism of Hutian provenance and the potentially bellicose apocalypticism of Hofmann.137 It was a tribute of Marpeck as the master craftsman of a toughly woven sectarianism that Bucer, between December 1531 and January 1532, in numerous oral and written exchanges, felt obliged to come to terms with Marpeckian Anabaptism point by point in order to vindicate the magisterial Protestantism of t he civic territory and thus check the numerous defections to spiritualism.138 In the exchange, Marpeck was enabled to sharpen up his own position and become as a consequence the chief formulator and organizer of n ormative (noncommunistic) Anabaptism for the whole of the high German zone from Metz to Austerlitz (Slavkov) in the course of the twenty-five years between the opening of t hese major debates with Bucer and his death in 1556. His Strassburg career cannot, of course, be told apart from his relationship to the extremists among whom he lived. In a city where Bünderlin and Entfelder were widely read, where Hofmann was stirring up eschatological excitement, and where Schwenckfeld was giving contemplative separatism, the tremendous support of h is noble bearing and his literary productivity, a major parting of the ways of radical reform was taking place. Marpeck had taken the initiative in attempting to formulate Anabaptist church order for the distraught moderate evangelical Separatists. He wrote two works in the first half of 1 531, one and probably both against Bünderlin,139 indicating that he early recognized what he 137  Deppermann, in characterizing Strassburg during Hofmann’s sojourn there June 1529– May 1530, speaks of “the melding of Apocalypticism, Spiritualism, and Anabaptism,” and distinguishes in the last, a separation into three groupings, at times antagonistic to each other, (1) the Kautz circle including the contemplative spiritualizing (universalist) Anabaptists, like Denck and Bünderlin, (2) the followers of Reublin and Marpeck, and (3) the prophetic circle, by now, with their chief spokesman, Melchiorites (Hofmannites), Hoffman, 158–68. 138  As an indication of the importance of Marpeck, we may adduce the fact that most of the documents in Elsass 1 (QGT 7), between pp. 359–534 are almost exclusively taken up with the Marpeck-Bucer interchange and that Marpeck appears frequently at other points. 139  The two works are Clare verantwurtung and Klarer Unterricht ascribed to Mar peck by William Klassen, who disco vered the second w ork, “Pilgram Marpeck’s Two Books of 1531,”MQR 33 (1959): 18–30; and idem, Covenant and Comm unity, The Life, Writings and Hermeneutics of Pilgr am Marpeck (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968), 36–43. Klassen r egards the second work as directed against Schwenckfeld. Neal Blough in Christologie Anabaptiste: Pilgram Marpeck et l’humanité de Chr ist (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1984) argues that Klarer Unterricht is also directed against Entfelder, that dur ing the Strassburg sojourn Schwenckfeld was not yet his principal antagonist as he would be in 1542 (Ch. 14.4), “Pilgram Marpeck and Casper Schwenckfeld: The Strassburg Years,” 16th Century Anabaptism and the Radical Refor mation, BD,

chapter 10.3.h

speyer& strassburg, 1529  407

considered the hazards of spiritualization within and without the Anabaptist camp. At the same time he was in controversy with Bucer.140 Marpeck’s forthrightness and sobriety in expressing his separatism constituted a major challenge for the municipal clergy because a theologically orthodox, moralistic sectarianism was in its cohesiveness and attractiveness more of a threat to the realization of a unified territorial reformation than speculative Spiritualism or fevered millennialism.141 Bucer, admitting that Marpeck and his loyal wife, Anna, were otherwise of unblamable conduct,142 accused the sinewy theologian of being an obstinate, stiff-necked heretic, lacking in love and overconfident in his own supposed knowledge. At issue with Bucer was Marpeck’s insistence that the freedom of the gospel should never be thrust upon the whole population, indeed that the untutored masses in so far as they were incapable of self-discipline should remain under the yoke of the law of the old Covenant. Marpeck sought for the true, self-disciplining evangelicals (the Anabaptists) the public authorization of their use of at least one of the church edifices of the city. Constitutive for such an evangelical or truly New Covenantal church living under the gospel rather than under the law was the acknowledgment of personal sin, the entry into the New Covenant by b elievers’ baptism, and the observance of the evangelical law. This meant expressly the separation from the world, including the whole sphere of the law and its legitimate but subchristian institutions such as the state. Marpeck thought of Bucer’s territorial reformation as the replacement of Catholic legalism by Jewish legalism. He felt that Bucer and the Swiss Reformers, far more than Luther, were unwittingly organizing a church of the law in succession to the people of the law by construing baptism as the equivalent of circumcision and by sanctioning a t erritorially or socially diffused implicit faith in their appeal to an inscrutable and hence unverifiable predestination in opposition to the explicit faith of resolute members of self-disciplined conventicles.

Scripta et Studia 3, ed. Jean-George Roth and Simon L.Verhaus (Baden-Baden: Koerner, 1989), 370–80; see fur ther Daniel Husser , “Anabaptistes et Schw enckfeldiens à Strasbourg de par tie de 1529 au pr emier tiers du XVIIe siècle ,” ibid., 381–99; Stephen Boyd, “Marpeck 1528– 1532”; Heinold Fast, “’Nicht was, sondern das’: Marpecks Motto wider den Spititualismus,” Evangelischer Glaube und Gesc hichte: Grete Mecenseffy zum 85 . Geburtstag, ed. A. Raddatz and K. Luthi (Wien: Evangelischer Oberkirchenrat, 1984), 66–74, has confirmed Blough’s conjecture that in Strassburg Marpeck’s principal target was Spiritualizing Anabaptist Entfelder rather than Evangelical Spiritualist Schwenckfelder. 140 19 August 1531; Elsass 1 (QGT 7), no. 258. 141  See, Boyd, “Social Radicalism in Strasbourg, 1528–1532.” 142  At this point in the religious history of Strassburg, two works become especially important: Hastings Eells, Martin Bucer (London, 1931); and François Wendel, L’Eglise de Strasbourg: sa constitution et son organisation, 1532–1535 Études d’Histoire et de Philosophie Relig ieuses 38 (Paris, 1942). A more recent important work is Thomas A. Brady, Jr., Ruling Class, Regime and Reformation at Strasbourg, 1520–1555 (Leiden: Brill, 1978).

408  the radical reformation

chapter 10.3.h

At the beginning of December 1531, Marpeck requested the council to permit him to debate publicly with the municipal clergy, but he was granted only a colloquium before the assembled council, the committee of twenty-one and the pastors. The public was to be excluded. The colloquium took place on 9 December 1531.143 Thereafter the council ordered that Marpeck “keep his mouth shut.”144 On the following day, Marpeck had another discussion with Bucer.145 Thereupon the municipal preachers themselves appealed to the council for both a fully public disputation and an improvement of moral conditions in the town.146 Then in twenty-nine articles Marpeck presented his Confession of Faith (Bekenntnis; discussed further in Ch. 18.5), defending believers’ baptism, and arguing that as of that day there was still no Christian order in Strassburg.147 Bucer set out to refute him, article by a rticle, repeating the view that infant baptism, like circumcision, was the symbol of initiation into the community of faith. Marpeck was ordered by the council, 18 December 1531, to desist from his effort to overthrow infant baptism and set up a separatist church or else leave the city and territory.148 Two days later, Marpeck notified the council that he would leave, but said that if the Spirit of G od should impel him to return, he could accede to God’s wil1.149 He asked for a p eriod of g race. He was granted two weeks to prepare for his departure. There was at least one more disputation, however, sometime before 12 January 1532;150 but the earlier verdict stood. (We shall next encounter Marpeck in extended debate with Schwenckfeld in Ch. 18.4.) While Marpeck and Bucer were engaged in increasingly tense exchanges, Hofmann entered Strassburg for his third sojourn. On returning to his base from his Dutch mission, he sustained a tremendous blow to the cause, the recantation and decapitation of h is Dutch deputy (Trijpmaker, Ch. 12.3) and nine others in The Hague. Because of t his ferocity on Catholic terrain, so different from Hofmann’s experience in Protestantizing territory, he 143  EIsass 1 (QGT 7), no. 277. See Henry Krahn, “Martin Bucer’s Strategy Against Sectarian Dissent,” MQR 50 (1976): 163–80, and D. J. Ziegler, “Marpeck versus Bucer: A Sixteenth Century Debate Over the Uses and Limits of P olitical Authority,” Sixteenth Century Journal 2 (1976): 95–107. 144  Ibid., no. 281. 145  Ibid., no. 283. 146  Ibid., no. 284. 147  The Bekenntnis of Marpeck is John Wenger, ed., “Pilgram Marpeck’s Confession of Faith,” MQR 12 (1938): 167–202. See also Elsass 1 (QGT 7), no. 302, and Bucer’s refutation, no. 303. Walter Klaassen, “Investigation into the Authorship and Historical Background of the Anabaptist Tract Aufdeckung der Babylonischen Hurn,” MQR 61 (1987): 251–61, has argued that Marpeck authored this provocative tract which criticizes the new “so-called evangelicals,” who wrongly use coercion in matters of faith. Boyd, Pilgram Marpeck, believes that Aufdeckung work probably stems from the time of Marpeck’s debate with Bucer. 148  Elsass 1 (QGT 7), no. 287. 149  Ibid., no. 290. 150  Cf. ibid., no. 306, and the preceding pp. 426–529.

chapter 10.3.h

speyer& strassburg, 1529  409

ordered the suspension of the ordinance of believers’ baptism for two years, appealing for biblical sanction to Ezra 4:24. The emergence (Durchbruch) or the descent of t he New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:10) was being temporarily interrupted, he inferred, as the reconstruction of t he ancient Temple had been held up because of the hostility of the Samaritans. Hofmann had thus returned to Strassburg as a p roponent of t he provisional suspension (Stillstand) of (re)baptism as Schwenckfeld was a proponent of the suspension of the Eucharist. Since Hofmann, of course, still opposed infant baptism as did Schwenckfeld, and since Hofmann was closer to Schwenckfeld on Christology (celestial flesh) than to Marpeck, it is understandable that the divines and magistrates of S trassburg more and more linked the furrier and the nobleman, as did likewise some of the Melchiorites themselves who were conjecturing that Schwenckfeld might be the hidden Enoch and as such the eschatological counterpart of Hofmann, the new Elijah. Hofmann occupied himself with the writing and printing of four new works. One of them was a scriptural demonstration that Satan, death, hell, sin, and everlasting punishment are in origin not from God but wholly from one’s own will.151 Thereupon the Strassburg authorities ordered Hofmann’s arrest, 11 December 1531, and in the same decree Servetus was bidden to leave the town.152 Hofmann was able, however, to get the other works printed, either in Strassburg or Hagenau, at the beginning of 1532. One of these, Van der wahrhaftigen Menschwerdung des ewigen Worts,153 departed from traditional Nicene and Chalcedonian language. Another was on the Everlasting Gospel of Revelation 14:6, identified with the Gospel of God and of C hrist (Rom. 1:1; 1:16), proclaimed by H ofmann for the saintly 144,000 and despite the machinations of the thousands of heretical preachers all about.154 With a r enewed order for his arrest, Hofmann withdrew from the city. He traveled through Hesse, where the landgrave Philip heard him preach,155 presumably on his way to his mission field in The Netherlands. There in Deventer he published an Exposition of the epistle to the Romans,

151

 Ibid., no. 279. Deppermann, Hoffman, Verzeichnis, no. 15.  Ibid., no. 280. 153  Elsass 1 (QGT 7), no. 298; Deppermann, Hoffman, Verzeichnis no.19, Van der waren hochprachtlichen eynigen magestadt [Majestät] gottes / unnd vann der wohrhaftigen menschwerdung des ewigen wortzs und Suns des allerhochsten / e yn kurtze zeucknus etc. (Deventer, 1532). The extant copy was printed in Deventer, but the Strassburg records indicate that it was printed in Strassburg or Hagenau. 154  Elsass 1, n. 298; Deppermann, Hoffman, Verzeichnis, no. 17. The fourth book of this period, Verzeichnis, no. 16, was on the comfor ting Gospel of the Final Time revealed “by the true Apostolic spirits (Geyster) and servant (Knecht) of the Lord Jesus Christ,” the knecht being Hofmann. 155  Elsass 2 (QGT 8), no. 407. 152

410  the radical reformation

chapter 10.3.h / 10.4

on the election and reprobation of Jacob and Esau (against Luther).156 He was now surer than ever that the new age was dawning and that he was indeed the Elijah presaging the second advent of Christ. To Strassburg Hofmann returned in the spring of 1533, his fourth visit, and proceeded to write or publish four or five more tracts of an intensely eschatological character. For two months his writing and preaching in the house of the goldsmith, Valentine Duft, was tolerated by the Strassburg magistrates until at length Hofmann himself courted arrest by s ending a provocative letter to the council in April, along with one of h is tracts on the sword, where he again described the strategic role of Strassburg at the impending second advent. From his behavior in Strassburg and from his writings to date, notably from the Commentary on Romans (1533),157 it is clear that Hofmann still adhered to a peaceful attitude toward all magistrates as provisionally ordained of God. He did not countenance a resort to violence to advance the cosmic calendar nor social revolution to accelerate the divine “breakthrough.” He chose to go bareheaded and barefooted in testimony of h is confidence in the proximity of t he Kingdom and he ate only bread. Not wishing to give occasion for purely social and political demonstrations, Hofmann made a practice of taking long walks on holidays to avoid being sought out by the idle and restless elements in the population.158 In May he underwent two judicial hearings159 and was put under mild arrest. He was permitted to write and to receive the brethren and to counsel with them, pending the territorial synod of the reformed church of Strassburg, which was in preparation. On this note of expectancy in Strassburg sectarianism, we may turn to the synod of Strassburg and the new resolve of t he magisterial divines to come to terms once for all with the leaders of sectarianism, notably Hofmann, Schwenckfeld, and the followers of Kautz or of Marpeck, and, after having worsted them in the eyes of the citizenry, to construct an ecclesiastical order and a confession of faith for the unified church of their urban republic.

4. The Synod of Strassburg and Its Consequences, 1533–35 A major event in the history of the Reformation of the imperial city-state of Strassburg was the extended synod of June 1533. Groping for an ecclesias­t ical

156  That he wrote a letter, “three weeks before,” carried by the prophet Jost, along with a copy of his Von dem Schwert, Elsass 2 (QGT 8), no. 363 for the evidently unpublished MS “On the Sword” and no. 364, 15 line 13 for its enclosure in a letter to the council. 157  Deppermann, Verzeichnis (no. 21), Sendebrief den Paulus to den Romer an gescreuen haft (Dutch, no place, at present, Amsterdam). 158  Ibid., no. 368, p. 17. For a follower’s description of the “breakthrough” (Durchbruch), see Polderman, ibid., no. 610, p. 388. 159  Ibid., 20 May 1533, no. 364; 29 May 1533, no. 368.

chapter 10.4

speyer& strassburg, 1529  411

consensus that would demarcate the theological position of t he free city over against the sectaries and the local partisans of the bishop, Bucer was under the practical necessity of so structuring it that Strassburg would continue to qualify for its important role in the (Lutheran) Smalcald League without offending the sympathizers in Strassburg of the more sacramentarian Swiss formulations. At the same time, the divines of the city’s seven parishes and the magistrates could no longer conceal the fact that a few of their number were, in varying degrees, receptive to some of t he theological, moral, and religio-political criticism coming from the radicals. Thus, as in perhaps no other region of the Empire, was the formulation of a magisterial reformation so explicitly drawn up in refutation of the radical reformation as in the synod of Strassburg in 1533. The synod reflects, indeed, a desperate struggle for ecclesiastical order against chaos, of l aw against religious anarchy. Bucer was later to interpret the crisis, with excessive remorse, as due to “the long-standing and impious clemency” shown toward the Separatists by himself and the other Strassburg divines.160 Although the first mandate against the Anabaptists had been issued by the city council back in July 1527, private citizens and innkeepers had obviously not been refusing to feed and lodge the immigrant sectarians. By the end of 1532 so many radicals had streamed into the city and so many of t he immigrant and indigenous Separatists were agitating and recruiting that Bucer and his colleagues were alarmed for the safety of their reformation. Jacob Kautz, for example, was back in the fall of 1532, demanding to defend Anabaptism in public debate. On 29 November 1532 (almost a year after the banishment of Marpeck), Capito, Hedio, Bucer, and Zell, in the name of the municipal preachers and the board of t wenty-one church wardens, requested the city council to comply with Kautz’s request in the hope that the whole Anabaptist cause could be in his person publicly repudiated. In the same supplication they submitted a t hree-point recommendation for the future strengthening of the territorial church: that an annual church visitation be instituted, the operative ecclesiastical traditions and new ordinances be codified, and a territorial synod be convened semiannually. Before this proposed synod could materialize in June, a complex, interrelated series of judicial hearings and lesser synods and ecclesiastical deliberations took place, the most important of which were the following: The magisterial hearings in May of the Anabaptist bigamist, Nicholas Frey, and of the Anabaptist apocalyptist, Melchior Hofmann. Concurrently there was a committee at work drafting a c omposite confession of f aith and order, based on the Tetrapolitana, and the twenty-two articles suggested by Bucer in his

160

 Ibid., no. 362.

412  the radical reformation

chapter 10.4 / 10.4.a

letter161 written to the principal Strassburg divines from Basel where Bucer was to attend the cantonal synod. Thirdly, there was a preliminary municipal synod (Stadt-Synode, Vorsynode) sitting from 3 to 6 June. Fourthly, there was the territorial synod itself (Land-Synode, Hauptsynode), sitting from 10 to 14 June. Then, after the territorial synod, there were, fifthly, two lines of action, the deliberations of the magistrates in fixing the various penalties for the heretics and schismatics heard by t he synod and the deliberations of the divines in drawing up ordinances agreed to by the synod. Some of these activities led to what may be called, sixthly, a postsynod, actually the autumnal or second semiannual synod, foreseen by the planners. As for the preliminary judicial hearings of Frey and Hofmann (1531), we have already discussed the appearance of the latter (Ch. 10.3.c) and we shall refer to the former in connection with the territorial synod. We are therefore free to concentrate on the second and third episodes, leading up to the territorial synod. a. Preparations for the Territorial Synod The commission set up by the council to draft the confession of faith and order and to prepare the agenda for the territorial synod was made up of four preachers (Bucer, Capito, Hedio, and Melchior Cumanus of S t. Aurelia’s) and four of the city’s twenty-one lay wardens (Kirchenpfleger). It will be recalled (Ch. 10.2.a) that when Bucer originally proposed the organization of this board, he thought of the wardens as “apostolic elders” and, as such, quasi-ministerial, but by now their preeminently magisterial character was clear.162 The draft confession produced by t he joint commission consisted of XVI Articles.163 They were notable for their defense of the Trinity expressly against the recent formulations of S ervetus (article i),164 their defense of Chalcedonian Christology against Hofmann (article iv), their repudiation of the sacrificial interpretation of the Eucharist against the Catholics (article ix), their stress on the importance of an inclusive and visible communion against Schwenckfeld and the Separatists (article x), and their defense of parish infant baptism against all the Anabaptists and Spiritualists (articles vii, viii). Bucer himself, it may be remarked, was now on the point of considering infants as belonging more to the commonwealth than to their parents.165

161

 Ibid., no. 362.  Wendel, L’Eglise de Strasbourg, 45–46. 163  Elsass 2 (QGT 8), no. 371. 164  Quoted in part above at n. 131. 165  Bericht aus heiliger Schrift (1534), fol. 92b; cited by Wendel, L’Eglise de Strasbourg, 118. 162

chapter 10.4.a

speyer& strassburg, 1529  413

Especially important were the last three articles (xiv–xvi), dealing at some length with the biblical and theological justification for the positive (ministerial) role of the magistrates in the reform and in the maintenance of the church and in the punishment “of the public distortion of Christian doctrine,” of the dividing of the congregations, and of false, blasphemous worship. These three articles were elaborated not only against the Anabaptists but also against one of the official Strassburg divines, Dr. Anthony Engelbrecht, and his sympathizers among the city clergy and burghers. The commission justified a m ixed synod of divines and magistrates by appealing to the precedent of t he council of Jerusalem with apostles and elders (Acts 15) and the councils presided over anciently by Constantine and his successors. It was the committee for drawing up the XVI Articles and the agenda that also suggested the convocation of a p reliminary synod confined to the city clergy before involving the rural clergy prematurely in the problems not yet wholly solved by t heir more sophisticated urban brethren. Accordingly, a municipal synod gathered on 3 June in St. Magdelene’s,166 especially fitted out for the occasion. Present were the pastors and their associates of t he city parishes, the twenty-one church wardens, and the masters of a rts and all other teachers. Four delegates from each of t he city’s guilds were also present as witnesses. The synod convened under the collegial presidency of f our members of t he council, of w hom the most distinguished was Stettmeister Jacob Sturm. Capito, who had once taken a leading part in the cantonal synods of Bern in 1528 and 1532 (Ch. 23.3.d), delivered the opening sermon. The choice of C apito was technically dictated by t he order of p recedence among the established preachers and also out of r ecognition of h is important role in the recent Bern synod; but Bucer, who had also played a part in the recent synod of Basel, will have had good strategic reasons for urging Capito to become conspicuously identified with the work of t he Strassburg synod. Even after his second marriage and his resolution to be more severe with the sectaries, Capito would once in a while return musingly to some of his older positions. In explaining the sixteen articles to the congregation in St. Magdelene’s convent church of the penitents, Capito will surely have recalled in his mind’s eye many a winsome visitor or house guest whose views he was now exhorting the synod to condemn. In condemning, for example, “a certain Spaniard” in the first article, he will have remembered that he himself had not always been so clear about Servetus’ error and that when he and Bucer were toiling over the text of the Tetrapoli-

166

 Wendel, L’Eglise de Strasbourg, 69ff.

414  the radical reformation

chapter 10.4.a

tana he had himself for some reason substituted Trias for Trinitas and discrimen for distinctio personarum.167 After Capito’s inaugural disquisition, the proposed articles of faith and order were formally reread in their entirety and then taken up one by one, while each of t he pastors and assistants was invited to consent or comment.168 There were some important differences of c onviction expressed, especially with respect to the Eucharist, but the most lively discussion centered in the last three articles, which were opposed by A nthony Engelbrecht and by several others with less insistence, on the ground that, on the one hand, the magistrates were thereby being allowed impertinent access to the realm of conviction and conscience and that, on the other, the divines themselves through the synodal system were on the point of converting the reformed church into a “new papistry,” the more powerful because local. It may be worthwhile to permit the figure of D r. Engelbrecht to stand out in synod, because he makes once again specific and plausible the many mixed or transitional types between the Magisterial and the Radical Reformers. Bucer and Capito thought of him as the spokesman of the “Epicurean” party or “sect”169 among the burghers and divines who, like the spiritual Libertines elsewhere (Chs. 12.2; 23.2), espoused fraternal freedom of inquiry and discussion as a safeguard against a Protestant “popery.” These Epicureans had much in common with Franck, Entfelder, Bünderlin, and Schwenckfeld. All of them humanists, they found a favorable hearing among some of t he patricians who were none too eager to come

167  Strasser, Capito, 71. The Confessio Tetrapolitana, also called the Sw abian or Strassb urg Confession, is the oldest confession of the Refor med Church in the Empire, prepared for the Diet of Augsburg, 1530, by the four imperial cities of Strassburg, Constance, Memmingen, and Lindau (originally also Ulm), critically edited in the Ger man and Latin v ersions by Robert Stupperich, Confessio Tetropolitana und die Sc hriften des J ahres 1531, Martin Bucers Deutsche Schriften 3 (Gütersloh/Paris: Mohn/Presses Universitaires, 1969). The reference to the Trinity as Trias is cited, p. 47: “de sacrosancto Triade.” 168  Elsass 2 (QGT 8), no. 373. 169  Besides Engelbrecht and Schultheiss, the pr incipal members of the par ty were Jacob Ziegler, John Sapidus (Witz), the teacher of the second Latin school, and the teacher and botanist Otto Brunfels, whom we have already treated outside his Strassburg setting—namely, in Basel with Servetus—who was also called by some an Epicurean. Elsass 2 (QGT 8), no. 406a; also, nos. 353, 402, p. 112; no. 492, p. 263. See on the Epicur eans, Wendel, L’Eglise de Strasbourg, 38ff; and Marc Lienhard, “Glaube und Skepsis im 16. Jahrhundert,” Peter Blicke, ed., Bauer, Reich und Reformation, 160–81. He recognizes that in Strassburg as elsewhere a whole, relatively new type of thinker grew up between the big confessional camps, Catholic and Protestant. He quotes approvingly A. Tenenti, “Libertinisme et hérésie du milieu du XVI siècle au début du XVIIe siècle”:“After 1530 there arose in Europe not only the religious break, which would divide the Catholics from those whom one soon called Protestants, but also a certain number of people belonged to neither the one nor the other camp. And a much larger group of persons than their own regarded the worship services as ordinary, conventional, which had suddenly become for them something superficial.” This is quoted from the collective work Hérésies et Sociétés dans l’Europe préindustrielle XIe–XVIIIe siècles, Civilisation et Sociétés 10 (Paris/The Hague: Mouton, 1968).

chapter 10.4.a

speyer& strassburg, 1529  415

under any continuous or i mpertinent ecclesiastical supervision. One may here generalize in pointing out that some of the liberal patricians (prosperous commoners are here included with the nobles), “the Epicurean prelates” (another of Bucer’s terms), and the Anabaptists of all persuasions were tactically or instinctively in league in opposing the use of magisterial coercion in support of ecclesiastical (synodal) doctrine and discipline; but, of course, they acted from different motives, not always even entirely clarified in their own minds. The liberal nobles and the humanistic burghers, for example, could openly or covertly side with both the Epicurean Libertines, the other Spiritualists, and the Anabaptists in the hope of preventing their own established clergy from imposing too rigorously the disciplines of Protestant salvation upon them and their pleasant city. They were not unlike the Antidisciplinarians of Heidelberg, but were also not Erastians (Ch. 31.2). The tightly sectarian Anabaptists, in contrast, certain of their biblical faith and discipline, wished to be separated from the prudential or coercive magistrates in order to be freer and swifter in the exercise of the ban and the other disciplines of a self-contained sect. The Epicurean clerics themselves appear to have been earnestly concerned for the open quest of t ruth and were ever ready to keep free the channels of communication and fresh revelation in order that “the gifts of the Spirit might pour out alike over the great and the humble.”170 During the synodal discussions, after Engelbrecht, the second most important Epicurean was the pastor of Schiltigheim, Wolfgang Schultheiss, from whom we have just quoted. In a long poem, Ermahnung zum geistlichen Urteil,171 in 1530, he had appealed to 1 Cor. 14:29–30 in an effort to encourage the free flow of the Spirit and to restore an irenic manner in the discussion of things spiritual, the Bible, new interpretations of old passages, all with the possibility of c ontemporary fresh inspiration. Schultheiss in his defense of the right of the whole congregation to judge Scripture, lest a “new tyranny replace the old,” was insisting on what Campanus in connection with the same passage in 1 C orinthians had called the Sitzerrecht (Ch. 10.3.g). Dr. Engelbrecht no doubt owed some of the ideas he expressed in synod to Schultheiss. Formerly the suffragan bishop of Speyer, Engelbrecht had been the very one to release Bucer from his Dominican vows. When Engelbrecht in his turn came to Strassburg as an evangelical, he was made pastor of St. Stephen’s. A man of considerable educational attainment and administrative experience behind him, Engelbrecht displayed in the Strassburg municipal synod and elsewhere something of the mentality and the manner 170 171

 Elsass 1 (QGT 7), p. 293, line 31.  Ibid., no. 236a.

416  the radical reformation

chapter 10.4.a

of the Spiritualists and the Separatists, and he would presently be vilified by the majority of the municipal clergy as both an Epicurean and as a consorter with ragamuffins and alley evangelists. In synod he defended the principle of the separation of the two kingdoms and the distinction between the two swords, appealing expressly to the early Luther. Accordingly, he argued for a clean separation in Strassburg territory between religion and politics. He did not deny that government was of God and that the magistrate might well have a Christian vocation, but he pointed out what he considered the inconsistency of t he magisterial reformers who, having once called for the free proclamation of t he gospel, were now formulating it in synodal decisions and, appealing to the precedent of Constantine and especially of Justinian, were using the authority of the state to enforce these decisions against conscientious dissidents. Engelbrecht was convinced, he said, that there was no place for coercion in the realm of doctrine and conscience, for only God can legitimately and efficaciously penetrate this realm. He held not only that the magistrates should refrain from dictating doctrine but also that the divines for their part should refrain from meddling in government, whether for the sake of protecting themselves and their doctrine or for the amelioration of government. In the case of a religiously indifferent or hostile magistracy, the divines should be content to prepare themselves and their flocks to suffer for their faith in holy patience (Rev. 13:10). In deploring the emergence of the mixed synod as the beginning of a “new papistry,” interposing itself between God and the believer, Engelbrecht cited Erasmus on Hilary of Poitiers to prove that synods and councils historically had led to the emergence of the papacy. Engelbrecht angered the synod by i nsisting that coercion of c onscience, like that shown by ancient Jews, the Muslims, or the Catholics, was no better for being called Lutheran, Zwinglian, or Anabaptist (a prophetic glance, perhaps, toward Münster).172 On the last day of the municipal synod, the discussion of faith and order was interrupted by a n ovel procedure that had been recommended by the original planning commission. This was the mutual censuring of the preachers. The four synodal presidents, along with the church wardens (Kirchenpfleger) who had been charged with the surveillance of the ministers since 1531, now retired to a private room, where the preachers were severally interviewed. Each was allowed in his turn to make any observations he cared to about the behavior and thinking of his colleagues. Nerves exacerbated by s ynodal debate were assuaged by t he opportunity thus afforded in secret. It is not surprising that Dr. Anthony Engelbrecht173

172

 Ibid., no. 373, supplemented by Engelbrecht’s enlarged statement, no. 374.  Ibid., no. 373 (D), where Dr. Anthony (Engelbrecht) is to be distinguished from Master Anthony (Firn). 173

chapter 10.4.a / 10.4.b

speyer& strassburg, 1529  417

was most frequently mentioned as censurable, specifically for absenting himself frequently from the weekly convocations of the municipal clergy, for frequenting taverns, and promenading, for having “bad company at table,” for baptizing in houses, for not taking his sermon preparation seriously, and for allowing his maid and his serving boy to go unkempt in the alleys.174 The censuring of the clergy completed, the municipal synod resumed the discussion of the XVI Articles and turned to the ecclesiastical ordinances which were to be put in final shape. b. The Territorial Synod, June 1533 Four days after the close of the municipal synod the territorial synod convened on 10 June. The first day was given over to the comment on, and assent to, the XVI Articles on the part of the representatives of twentythree annexed or dependent villages and bailiwicks,175 ranging from Kehl on the opposite bank of the Rhine to Detweiler (near present-day Saverne), and Waselnheim (present-day Wasselonne). Then, during the next four days, the synod occupied itself with examining several radical leaders and otherwise prominent personalities, two of whom—Hofmann and Frey— had already been examined several times by the magistrates. The first to be questioned was the gardener-preacher Clement Ziegler, in whose house in Robertsau many Anabaptists had been meeting. Ziegler reasserted his opposition to civil punishment for religious beliefs. Holding to universal salvation, he did not now, as he had earlier (Ch. 10.2.a), condemn infant baptism.176 Bucer, who conducted most of t he examinations, was satisfied that Ziegler’s heresy was relatively harmless, and he was dismissed. After the brief investigation of M artin Storen (Stoer), a f ollower of Ziegler,177 who was, however, indisposed to go at length into his own convictions and speculations, Melchior Hofmann appeared before the synod. In the course of h is first and subsequent appearances he advanced his views with passion and later summarized them under five headings.178 In Bucer’s later summary179 and refutation the propositions were reduced 174  The charge concer ning baptism is also bor ne out in no . 358, p. 5. The convocation from which he so fr equently absented himself because of his “anticlericalism” was, in effect, the clerical guild, the corps of pastors functioning in a way analogous to the twenty-one other corporations. Wendel, L’Eglise de Strasbourg, 67 n. 30. For the replies of the representatives, see Elsass 2 (QGT 8), no. 384 (A). 175  For a list of dependencies with their v arious relations to the city chapter s, see Wendel, L’Eglise de Strasbourg, 67 n. 30. For the replies of the representatives, see Elsass 2 (QGT 8), no. 384 (A). 176  Elsass 1 (QGT 7), pp. 76–77. 177  On Storen as a follower of Ziegler see Elsass 2 (QGT 8), no. 504, p. 275. 178  Ibid., no. 398. 179  Ibid., nos. 402, 444.

418  the radical reformation

chapter 10.4.b

to four. Hofmann rephrased his doctrine of t he single celestial nature of Christ against the version of Schwenckfeld (according to whom there were two natures, both of which in effect were celestial) and against the traditional (Chalcedonian) doctrine of a d ivine nature and a human nature complete with human flesh in one Hypostasis. While insisting on the full deity of Christ, Hofmann opposed addressing the Son or the Holy Spirit in prayer.180 With respect to this Christology, more than with any other of his points, Hofmann conducted himself before the synod more as an impassioned evangelistical theologian than as a visionary heretic under inquisitorial scrutiny. He brought forward his other four points also with great conviction in the course of several sessions, namely, that the Second Adam died for the salvation of a ll humankind, since in the first Adam, all humankind has suffered the punishment of eternal death; that divine illumination in the presence of S cripture could restore to every human being the freedom of the will once possessed in Paradise; that infant baptism was of the devil and that believers’ baptism was the only valid public testimony of a r enewed mind and will; and that there was no pardon for intentional sin, that is, for sin committed after the illumination of baptism in the Holy Spirit. On this last point Hofmann was particularly emphatic, citing Scripture with great cogency (Lev. 15:30, Mk. 3:29, and Heb. 10:26). He also brought this same text of Hebrews into relation with another in Leviticus (4:13ff.) to substantiate his point that the atoning sacrifice of Christ, the eternal High Priest, was for the unknown sins of the community and of the individual, namely, original sin and prebaptismal sins committed before the believer’s scriptural and spiritual illumination as to personally committed right and wrong. Citing 4 Esdras 7:5, 9; Rev. 21:8; and 2 Pet. 2:21, Hofmann pictured the Christian life after entry into the covenant of a renewed will and conscience as a great struggle against falling from (the second) Paradise (the church of the reborn) for a second time, now into the harrowing death of fire and brimstone. This “second death” was worse in its consequences than if one had never come to know the way of righteousness and to turn from it. On 12 June, Caspar Schwenckfeld, who had submitted five of h is books for scrutiny, was examined. He asked that one of these, in particular, the Protest,181 be read before the synod to clear him of t he charge of being a disrupter of the duly reformed territorial church. To the municipal 180

 Ibid., no. 384, p. 83.  The Protest is published in CS, 4:788–90. See also The Articles Necessary for Consideration at a Synod, CS, 3:112–16. Eells, Martin Bucer, 148, holds that Schw enckfeld submitted his books, including the Protest, with the hope of getting synodal endor sement. Schultz, Caspar Schwenckfeld, 214–15, is clear that Schwenckfeld, whatever hopes he may have entertained, knew very well that he had been cited befor e the synod on a stand ing superior to that of Fr ey and Hofmann only in the f act that he had, of cour se, never been called before the mag isterial court for actions or thoughts coming pr imarily within 181

chapter 10.4.b

speyer& strassburg, 1529  419

reformers, the Protest seemed to be an ingenious attempt to say contradictory things by a lternate affirmation and qualification,182 especially with reference to the observance and the meaning of t he Supper. On Christology and the atonement, Schwenckfeld insisted over against Bucer and the Lombardian tradition of t he West that Christ, “undivided,” suffered as one Person in his divine nature also and not only in his human flesh and nature.183 Schwenckfeld loftily offered to instruct Hofmann privately on the matter of the celestial flesh and for the moment contented himself with reiterating his defense of prayers addressed to Christ, as to the Father. Schwenckfeld, suddenly taken ill, was unable to return to the examination after the midday repast. Hofmann was therefore recalled. The discussion with him lasted well into the next day. He had, at an earlier judicial hearing,184 declared that he had been in dispute with Schwenckfeld on the matter of t he celestial f lesh of Christ ever since the beginning of 1529 and took this occasion to explain to the synod, as we have already noted, how he differed from Schwenckfeld, notwithstanding his great esteem for the pious Silesian. After the second appearance of Hofmann, the synod summoned Nicholas Frey with a v iew to establishing a c onnection between his notorious bigamy and his espousal of A nabaptism. The case, one of t he best documented of its kind,185 is at once typical of the desertions for cause of the covenant which we find occasionally throughout the Radical Reformation and at the same time poignantly personal, and it is therefore socioreligiously of exceptional interest. We are helped to see Frey and his devout and duped second spouse in a larger context (cf. Ch. 20) if we but remind ourselves that most of the clerics who were sitting in synod in judgment upon him had themselves repudiated their sacramental vows of celibacy to marry, becoming Protestants, and that the principal divine among them would, a few years later, be finding biblical reasons for justifying the notori-

their jurisdiction. The synodal commission for scrutinizing the writing of Hofmann and Schwenckfeld reported on the two men together. Elsass 2 (QGT 8), nos 441, p. 178; no. 444. 182  Cf. Schultz, Caspar Schwenckfeld, 215; Eels, Martin Bucer, 148. 183  Elsass 2 (QGT 8), no. 381, p. 81. See further, Ch. 11.3. 184  Ibid., no. 368, p. 19. 185  The more important documents upon which the following account is based are Elsass 1 (QGT 2), nos. 361, 369, 384, p. 83; nos. 388, 410, 456, and esp. no. 464 (Capito’s account). François Wendel does not deal with Fr ey but he does deal with adjustments in the concep tion and practice of mar riage in Strassburg in Le mariage à l’époque de la Réfor me, 1520–1692 (Strasbourg, 1928).The article on Frey in the ME indicates that he was baptized as early as 1525, but in view of the known activity of his Swiss baptizer, Julius Lober, it would appear that the baptism of Frey is to be dated from 1531 or at the earliest, 1530.

420  the radical reformation

chapter 10.4.b

ous bigamy of a leading Protestant prince (Philip of Hesse).186 The divines and magistrates in synod were judging (according to common law rather than according to the Bible) an admittedly fantastic layman who, too, had repudiated his sacramental vows, in his case of marriage, to marry a second time “within the covenant” on becoming an Anabaptist and after his first spouse had refused to follow him into the baptismal covenant. To be sure, in having eventually gone beyond covenantal (re-)marriage (cf. 1 Cor. 7:15) to propound a r ather elaborate theology of s piritual marriage as itself the means of redemption, Frey presented the magistrates and divines of Strassburg with a particularly vexing problem: and, in view of his messianic pretensions, it is indeed extraordinary that they allowed him to express himself so fully and delayed action against him for so long. A furrier by trade and a brother of a Rottenburg town councilor, Frey had earlier taken part in the Peasants’ War, was baptized by a n emissary from Zurich, and became a member of the Anabaptist conventicle (Ch. 8.3) gathered in Windesheim. He was imprisoned and then released after abjuring his separatism, but in his heart he belonged to the new movement and lay tormented in his home, discussing his faith with his wife. Fearing persecution, he prudently left for Nuremberg, whither his wife forwarded one hundred fifty gold guilders to aid him in exile. From his relative security, he wrote appealing to her to join the covenant, sell the house, and come to him with their seven or eight children. After some hesitation, no doubt both religious and practical, she refused to follow him; and for dereliction of domestic duty and for increasing evidence of his being given to religious vagaries, the Rottenburg-Windsheim Anabaptist community excommunicated him. At the residence near Bamberg of Baron George Pfersfelder, who was favorably disposed toward Anabaptism and Spiritualist speculation, Frey made the acquaintance of t he baron’s widowed sister. It was perhaps at this juncture that Frey’s interpretation of his mission with special reference to marriage underwent an extraordinary transformation that reminds us of the cosmic and redemptive androgynous messianism of William Postel (Ch. 22.2.a) and Paracelsus (Ch. 8.4.b). The receptive widow, Elizabeth, encouraged by a n octurnal vision, yielded herself in Gelassenheit, spirit and body, to the charismatic visionary. Frey came to regard their spiritual union as redemptive for all who would heed their message. In some obscure way he related Elizabeth (as the new Mary and the new Eve) and himself (as an epiphany of Christ and the visible head of the church invisible) to the Trinity, and he spoke of his visions and oracles as received “in the Trinity.” He declared somewhat

186  For Bucer on the bigam y of Philip of Hesse , on divorce, and mar riage in general, see Wendel, Marriage.

chapter 10.4.b

speyer& strassburg, 1529  421

incoherently that Elizabeth was “a virgin before her birth, during her birth, and after her birth” and as such “the mother of a ll believers” and “the foundress of true Christian faith.” In likening her to Eve and to Mary, Frey went so far that, when Catherine, his first wife, came to Nuremberg to search him out and the jealous Elizabeth struck her rival on the head, he interpreted the blow as that to be delivered by the new Eve against Satan and his wiles (Gen. 3:15); he cited the words of Jesus (Luke 14:26) about leaving wife and child as the sanction for his entry into “the covenant of God,” betokened now by spiritual marriage rather than by baptism. It was with this conviction that the couple had removed to Strassburg and had associated themselves with Hofmann and other speculative Separatists who forgathered in the house of the goldsmith Valentine Duft. When, however, Hofmann fully grasped what Frey meant by his “spiritual sister,” he condemned him with indignation, and the couple had to find new lodgings. Hofmann’s own theology abounded in nuptial terminology (Ch. 11.3.e), but he was shocked to find out that Frey was using this patriarchal-mystical language in a sense that seemed to him common adultery decked out with ostrich plumes plucked from Scripture. The two radicals were henceforth determined enemies. Hofmann was particularly grieved to be associated with his antagonist during the synodal hearing. Under questioning before the synod, Frey continued to assert that Elizabeth Pfersfelder was his only true wife; but, no doubt to the great relief of both the Melchiorites and the Marpeckians, he no longer considered himself of t heir number, maintaining instead that neither the baptism of the synodal divines nor that of the Anabaptists was the true one and that the only true church, of which he considered himself the visible head, was essentially inward and free of all externalities except for the covenant of spiritual marriage which it was his evangelical mission to proclaim. Despite his abjuring Anabaptism, the divines of the synod were able to associate his original bigamy with Anabaptism and the vagaries growing out of it with Spiritualism, respectively with Hofmann and Schwenckfeld, and thereby to point up their claim that the self-styled puritans were not free from that misconduct and worse that had been their original justification for separating from the church of the multitude. Meanwhile, Schwenckfeld had sufficiently recovered to make his second appearance before the synod on the afternoon of 13 June. With Bucer he exchanged views of t he sacraments and justified his view, based on Rom. 4:11ff., that before the introduction of circumcision, Abraham and the saints lived by f aith and without the need of a ny visible sign, which Schwenckfeld considered a p rovisional concession to the Jews. Abraham was thus in terms of Schwenckfeld’s inner Christianity expressly a Christian before he was a Jew (Ch. 18.5). For this theory that there were Christians before there were Jews, Schwenckfeld could have appealed to Eusebius

422  the radical reformation

chapter 10.4.b / 10.4.c

(Ecclesiastical History, 1:iv.6), who in his turn had drawn upon a f avorite theme of t he Apologists (Tertullian: anima naturaliter christiana, and Justin Martyr, I Apologia, xlvi). Schwenckfeld’s restorationism, more radical than that of the Anabaptists who were usually content with the restoration of apostolic Christianity, was more than Bucer could suffer. To be sure, Schwenckfeld was now willing to allow the principal visible Christian rite, infant baptism, to be continued so long as it was not called “the baptism of Christ.” Schwenckfeld wished to reserve the latter term for the inward baptism of fire (illumination) and the Spirit. In the course of the discussion, Schwenckfeld unwittingly associated himself with Engelbrecht and other “Epicureans” on church and state. While admitting that the magistracy might well take care for the furtherance of divine worship, the pastors themselves, he said, should never appeal to the magistrates to protect them personally from criticism or persecution. At about this point it was decided to continue the controversy with Schwenckfeld in writing. After the midday repast Martin Storen was re-examined. Still reluctant to air his beliefs, he accepted all the XVI Articles save those on the Supper and baptism, where he followed Ziegler and Schwenckfeld, and on the incarnation, where he chose to await further light. With this partial submission of Storen, the territorial synod came to an end. A commission was set up to put the record in final form and to formulate the ecclesiastical ordinances. c. The Consequences of the Synod, 1533–1535 Bucer emerged from the synod as, in the eyes of the other preachers, “nostrae ecclesiae episcopus.”187 A p ost-synod or autumnal synod in October188 took up the unfinished business; and the magistrates, under increasing pressure from the new episcopus, moved somewhat reluctantly toward the consolidation of the magisterial reformation. It was magisterial in the sense that the instinctive disposition of all magistrates to have a hand in the control of the externals of the church had not only received theological endorsement in the Protestant principle of the priesthood of all believers but was also being enlarged to include doctrine and discipline, and acquiring further justification in the effort of the magisterial reformers to consider the magistrates the effectual successors of the apostolic elders and corporately as the local equivalent of t he ancient Christian emperors in council. Moreover, the involvement of the magistrates in the internal affairs of the territorial church of which they were members was now being urged upon them by 187  Letter of Capito to Grynaeus, 13 September 1534,cited by Wendel, L’Eglise de Strasbourg, 1533. For the most recent edition of Bucer’s Opera latina, see Elsass 3, Marc Leonard, Stephen E. Nelson, Hans-George Rott, Elsass, Stadt Strassburg 1536–1542 (QGT 15) (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1986) continues the documentation. 188  Ibid., 107.

chapter 10.4.c

speyer& strassburg, 1529  423

the magisterial divines, in their near desperation with the Separatists, not merely as a r ight of patronage but as a duty, not as a concession but as an imperious vocation. Acting upon the recommendations of t he October synod, the magistrates accordingly demanded the expulsion of the Hofmannites, designated certain councilmen as Täuferherren (constables)189 to deal with the obstinate, took note of the departure of certain Epicureans such as Otto Brunfels and Jacob Ziegler, and proceeded to authorize the redaction of a s et of d isciplinary ordinances or blue laws corresponding to, and supplementing, the theologically more amplified ecclesiastical ordinances of the synod. The punishment of the several Separatists heard by the territorial synod was diverse. Though Clement Ziegler and Storen were formally banished, they were allowed to stay in Strassburg territory so long as Ziegler desisted from preaching. Storen had shown no disposition to propagate Ziegler’s ideas. Eventually, Ziegler was given to further visions, which he published and reported to the magistrates.190 As for the Epicureans, Engelbrecht, although he was not formally summoned before the council, being himself a m ember of co nvocation, was under censure and was in due course removed from St. Stephen’s.191 The other Epicurean, Wolfgang Schultheiss, was threatened with suspension.192 Jacob Ziegler had by now left the city. He wrote Synodus,193 a largely biblical refutation of the religio-political presuppositions of the recent territorial synod. Written in mordant Latin, it differed from many an Anabaptist tract on the same theme in citing a relatively large number of Old Testament texts warning against the placing of sacerdotal authority and political dominion in the hands of the same person or class. The work was refuted by Bucer.194 We shall meet Jacob Ziegler briefly as an emissary of several German houses in Venice, an abiding friend of Schwenckfeld (Ch. 22.2.a). As for Schwenckfeld, the Strassburg synod was tired of h is endless, repetitious, soft-spoken practical separatism, but it was reluctant to treat the Silesian nobleman with harshness, the more so for the reason that Matthew and Catherine Zell at the cathedral parish were still disposed to favor certain of h is views. At the synod, the books which Schwenckfeld had submitted for scrutiny had not been carefully read, and he insisted

189

 Wendel, L’Eglise de Strasbourg, 107.  Elsass 2 (QGT 8), nos. 453, 486. 191  3 March 1534; on Engelbrecht’s views after the synod, see Elsass 2 (QGT 8), nos. 472, 488, 501, 515, 516, etc. 192  Cf. ibid., no. 499, p. 269. 193  On Jacob Ziegler’s views, see ibid., esp. nos. 478, 530. 194  Ibid., no. 509. 190

424  the radical reformation

chapter 10.4.c

that Bucer at greater leisure specify their failings. In return Bucer asked Schwenckfeld for a statement to the effect that, despite all the qualifications he might wish to make, the church of Strassburg was after all proclaiming the gospel and deserved to be heeded by the whole population. Schwenckfeld promised to produce such a statement “as the Lord might direct,” and reiterated his plea for Bucer’s book review. Shortly afterward Bucer sent it to him. Schwenckfeld composed a r eply, read it to Capito and Hedio, and then pressed Hedio to appease Bucer. In September, Schwenckfeld left Strassburg for Augsburg, arriving there on 3 October (Ch. 18.2). Here he complained that he had been condemned in Strassburg for attacking the view once defended by none other than Luther, on the separation of the two kingdoms. Bucer read before the Strassburg city council his catalogue of Schwenckfeld’s faults but unfairly withheld Schwenckfeld’s rejoinder. More fairly, Bucer, when he came to send his catalogue to the preachers in Augsburg, in requesting them to hand it over to Schwenckfeld, added that they should receive him charitably. There can be little doubt but that the intense and extended concern of Bucer to refute Schwenckfeld in the eyes of t he liberal and receptive magistrates of Augsburg and elsewhere was to check his “Epicurean” spirit from inhibiting the humanistic patricians of the South German towns from supporting the magisterial reformation with requisite energy. Schwenckfeld returned to Strassburg, but this time the council was prevailed upon to ask him to leave for the peace of t he territorial church (22 July 1534).195 We shall follow Schwenckfeld’s subsequent career in due course (Ch. 18.2). The fate of Nicholas Frey was death by drowning, but not until after a number of dramatic and patient efforts had been made to reconcile him with his first wife. She was brought from Windesheim. She visited him several times in prison, throwing her arms about him in her importuning. She had brought with her two of his children to facilitate the reconciliation if possible, but he obdurately refused to have anything to do with them. When finally the council resolved to drown him for bigamy and sent a redbearded servant to serve the sentence on him, he spoke of t he messenger as a Judas, although this did not prevent him from calling the messenger also a brother. Confident to the end that he was the stone that the builders of Strassburg had rejected, and increasingly insolent toward even his sympathizers, Frey went to the council chamber and from there to the bridge over the Ill (at present: Corbeau) for the drowning, utterly certain of the ultimate consummation of h is mission. Both he and Elizabeth expected miracles to follow his execution.

195

 Ibid., no. 588.

chapter 10.4.c

speyer& strassburg, 1529  425

Elizabeth originally besought the council to be permitted to die with her spouse, but after the evident failure of h is mission and the want of miracles, she implored the church of Strassburg that she be forgiven for her folly and for her adultery. But even this repudiation seemed insufficient to Capito, who, noting the impression of Frey’s steadfastness in his asseverations at his numerous hearings and at the execution, wrote a b ooklet on true and false martyrdom, incidentally supplying considerable detail on the erroneous views of Frey.196 The fate of M elchior Hofmann was life imprisonment. But neither the magistrates nor the divines could entirely forget him, partly because the restless prophet called frequent attention to himself by h is fasts and his fulminations, his ailments and his literary attacks; partly because some among the magistrates could not entirely rid themselves of t he haunting thought that he might after all be, as he persisted in styling himself,197 the new Elijah and a p ortent of the role their city might play at the Second Advent; and partly because both the magistrates and the divines of Strassburg were humane and lenient, the more so in Hofmann’s case because he often seemed to them more demented than heretical. Though within a f ew days of t he territorial synod the city council made the terms of his imprisonment more severe, Hofmann managed with the help of his Dutch disciple, Cornelius Polderman of Middelburg, to have two tracts published, each on one selected doctrine, and then a s uccinct presentation of all five doctrines defended at the recent territorial synod.198 In Hofmann’s account it would be quite evident to his Netherlandish followers that he was the victor over Bucer. For this reason, Bucer himself felt obliged to retell the whole story for the benefit of those in The Netherlands disposed toward moderation,199 while the commission appointed by the territorial synod, for its part, later made available its judgment on the

196  Eine wunderbare Geschichte und ernstliche Warnung Gottes, so auch ein Wiedertäufer, genannt Claus Frey, zugetragen hat (Strassburg, 1534). 197  Ibid., no. 607. 198  Ibid., nos. 398, 399; Deppermann, Hoffman. Verzeichnis 22, 23, 24, Verzeichnis 22, Ein sendbrieff (Hagenau, 1533) brings together the five principal teachings of Hofmann defended by him at the synod with scriptural proofs: (1) that Christ’s flesh is from heaven, not Mary; (2) that God did not, from the beginning of the world, create a single person for reprobation, but rather all human beings for salvation and that Christ died for the sins of all per sons, “not for half the world but for all the seed of Adam”; (3) that a person “after the true illumination of the divine word has the fr ee will to r each for good or e vil, like Adam,” but is without a fr ee will while still bound in Satan; (4) that pedobaptism was introduced by the papal Antichrist and that true baptism is “the covenant-oath (bund-eyd) to go through the Red Sea and to renounce all”; and (5) that so soon as one has become aware of the truth “and then willfully (mutwillig) sins against one’s own conscience and the testimon y of the Holy Spir it, one no longer has a r etroactive sacrifice for such a sin,” for Christ did not suffer on the cross for knowing but only unknowing sin, citing Luke 23:43. 199  Ibid., no. 402: Bucer’s report in Dutch translation. BRN 5:199ff.

426  the radical reformation

chapter 10.4.c

books of both Hofmann and Schwenckfeld which had been laid before the synod. 200 Polderman, as Hofmann’s deputy, was now recognized by many Melchiorites as the new Enoch. As to this, the second most important eschatological title or role, it will be recalled that some of t he Melchiorites in Strassburg at first thought of Schwenckfeld as Enoch. The distant Netherlanders were, for their part, by now divided in their views as between Polderman and John Matthijs, the third claimant to the second title (Ch. 12.3). Polderman was called several times before the Strassburg magistrates. 201 In his first request 202 to the city council to be permitted to visit the prisoner, Polderman roundly denounced the council and the divines of S trassburg for calling Leonard and Ursula Jost and Melchior Hofmann fools instead of heeding their prophecies as had the Netherlanders, who for their part had no doubt but that Strassburg was the revealed city of hope. In his request, Polderman incidentally mentioned his intention of g iving the prisoner a copy of the work of an ancient Christian prophet in Rome, the Shepherd of Hermas, circulated by Waldensians, and printed by Jacques Lefèvre (Paris, 1513). The strange claims of the prisoner seemed indirectly substantiated by the numerous communications received by the Strassburg authorities from all quarters and especially from The Netherlands. These indicated the veneration in which Hofmann was held by his devotees. The Strassburg magistrates were also made aware of t he importance of t heir prisoner in the eyes of t he religious insurgents of Münster (Ch. 13). In December 1533, Bucer wrote to Bernard Rothmann in Münster, warning him against the fearful social consequences of abandoning infant baptism in following Hofmann. This was Bucer’s major work on the subject, Quid de baptismate …  sentiendum.203 In the meantime, Hofmann had become sick, partly because he refused the daily hot meal placed before him. Hedio and Zell visited him in his hole and found that he would abandon neither his fast of bread and water nor his five-point theology. After their visit they intervened with the magistrates to have his wretchedness alleviated to the extent of h is being given a l arger room with a w indow, where he could keep himself clean and tend to his sores and repose on a pallet. 204 Somewhat later he was heard chanting a psalm after which he shouted thrice from his window: “Woe, ye godless scribes of Strassburg!” All around people crowded

200

 Elsass 2 (QGT 7), no. 444.  Ibid., nos. 461, 466. 202  Ibid., no. 461. 203  18 December 1533; selections therefrom, ibid., no. 471. 204  Ibid., nos. 451, 467, 485. 201

chapter 10.4.c

speyer& strassburg, 1529  427

to their windows to hear his imprecations. 205 In August, Hedio and Zell visited his cell, this time in the company of B ucer, the president of t he synod, along with the chief constable for Separatists. They all three argued with him in vain. 206 In November at a special hearing, Hofmann repeated all his arguments and insisted, despite the extraordinary turn of e vents among his followers in Münster, that it was Strassburg which would be the scene of the Great Assize; and to explain his mission, he appealed to the precedent of Jonah warning Nineveh. 207 Hofmann’s following in Strassburg was still centered in the home of Valentine Duft, the goldsmith from Heidelberg. One meeting of the group was held in a nearby tavern, which Dr. Gerard Westerburg, who was staying at Capito’s house, attended.208 About this time Duft was expelled from Strassburg as a fomenter of Melchiorite Anabaptism.209 While Hofmann from prison continued to inspire a loyal following in the city and in other Middle German towns such as Speyer as well as the whole of the lower Rhine, other radicals in Strassburg, not always clearly distinguished from the Melchiorites, persevered in their more moderate course. It will be recalled that Kautz returned briefly after the departure of Marpeck to demand the public disputation, which partly occasioned the great synod. But it was now Leopold Scharnschlager who was emerging in the period after the synod as the local spokesman of t he Marpeckian circle in the polarization of t he Strassburg Anabaptists into Marpeckians and Melchiorites with the spiritualizing thinkers becoming more solitary. Leopold Scharnschlager (d. 1563) and his wife, Anne, of a l ocally prominent family, had, as Anabaptists, suffered the confiscation of t heir property near Kitzbühel in the Tyrol, and perhaps on the invitation of their compatriot Marpeck, fled to Strassburg about 1530. He distinguished himself as a moderate in opposition to Hofmann. 210 It is possible, however, that Scharnschlager’s acquiescence in a temporary suspension of baptism reflects Melchior’s policy. In any event, after Marpeck’s departure for Moravia in January 1532, Scharnschlager at some point began to implement Marpeck’s instructions not to undertake any more baptisms for a while. The alleged reason was that schism might arise or that unprepared and overzealous recruiting might, like bad leaven, contaminate the Anabaptist community. A correspondent of Scharnschlager testified to this effect in Speyer, which would indicate that Marpeck’s instructions, in harmony at this point with

205

 28 April 1534; ibid., no. 546.  Ibid., no. 594. 207  Ibid., no. 617. 208  Ibid., no. 533. 209  Ibid., nos. 497, 520. 210  Ibid., no. 368, p. 19. 206

428  the radical reformation

chapter 10.4.c

Hofmann’s, were being observed in a w ide circle. It is of f urther interest that there was at this time some discussion by Scharnschlager as to whether the covenant of a g ood conscience could be entered into without water baptism. Scharnschlager said that a covenant without water was no more valid than the water without a true covenant as in pedobaptism. 211 Scharnschlager first appeared publicly with a group of Anabaptists, including the printer of Polderman’s commentary, 212 in a judicial hearing 2 May 1534 (see Ch. 11.2.e).213 He soon thereafter prepared a notable statement on the freedom of religious conscience, which he laid before the magistrates in June. 214 Herein, Scharnschlager respectfully drew the attention of t he magistrates to the intolerable inconsistency of t heir demanding from the Separatists conformity in religion while at the same time, as the magistrates of an imperial city, they themselves declined to conform to the express command of t heir immediate superior, the Emperor. Scharnschlager, not unlike Engelbrecht and Schwenckfeld, pointed out, moreover, that both Luther and Zwingli at the outset of their respective reformations had clearly distinguished the two kingdoms and the two swords, and that, although they had now abandoned the principle, the one fatefully at Smalcald, the other fatally at Cappel, the principle was still valid. In any event, the evangelical Separatists should not be pilloried for pursuing a p olicy that was clearly enunciated in the New Testament; and he proceeded therewith to range cogently one over against the other the New Testament texts on the worldly and the spiritual sword. Antitrinitarianism was newly represented in Strassburg in passing: by a Strassburg citizen, the Alsatian knight Eckhardt zum Drübel, who published in August Von dem einigen Gott,215 and by a visitor, Claude of Savoy, called a “Trinitarian” (Trinitarius) in a sense just contrary to that which the designation will presently acquire in the course of our narrative, and who was obliged to leave Strassburg in the fall of 1534.216 During all this time, Bucer was still in dispute at long range with Schwenckfeld, Engelbrecht, and Jacob Ziegler on the invisible church and the separation of c hurch and state, and locally with Matthew and Catherine Zell, who together threatened to divide the established church of

211  Letter of Scharnschlager in December 1532 to one Michael Leubel in Spe yer and the hearing of the latter and others in Speyer. Krebs, Baden und Pfalz (QGT 4), nos. 409–10, esp. pp. 420 line 27; 424 line 12. 212  Elsass 2 (QGT 8), no. 491. 213  Ibid., no. 550. 214  Ibid., no. 576. This has been translated as “Farewell to the Strasbourg Council, ” by William Klassen in MQR 42 (1968): 211–18. 215  Ibid., no. 604. 216  Ibid., nos. 603, 608, 614, 632.

chapter 10.4.c

speyer& strassburg, 1529  429

the territory of Strassburg in their opposition to what they considered the theologically offensive fiction of godparents, a position they took in partial sympathy with the views of Schwenckfeld and the Anabaptists. 217 On 13 April 1534 the council decided to take stern measures. Having adopted the Tetrapolitana, the XVI Articles of the territorial synod, the associated ecclesiastical ordinances, and Bucer’s Greater Catechism as binding on the city, the council decreed 218 that stubborn and obnoxious Anabaptists should leave the territory.219 Against this move and other similar actions, an otherwise largely unknown, apparently well-educated Anabaptist in Austerlitz (Slavkov), Kilian Auerbacher, wrote to Bucer in anguished protest, 220 reporting in his long letter that the far-flung evangelical community had come to think of Strassburg as the one city of t he German nation where the gospel might be proclaimed freely and where refugees for reason of conscience might be sure to find understanding and protection, a city where Bucer himself, as in his Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (1527) had on principle shown that Christians should eschew the use of m agisterial coercion, but where now since the territorial synod, the whole evangelical community was lamenting Bucer’s change in spirit. They were observing with consternation, said Auerbacher, that now even the Strassburg divines were becoming like the surly sheep elsewhere that nip and butt at each other and push other sheep from their places in the sheepfold of the Good Shepherd. Had Bucer replied to the correspondent about the pacifist, apolitical Anabaptist communitarianism (Stäbler) of “the lord of Moravia,” to which ministry both Marpeck and Scharnschlager were connected, he would surely have referred to the sheep turning into wolves and lions in Münster under the inspiration of Hofmann, who had had each day a fair hearing at the Strassburg synod. While the Münsterite upheaval (1535, Ch. 13) was growing each day more serious for the whole of the Reformation movement, Strassburg was several times importuned to participate with money and troops. It was at length warned that fanatic emissaries, indirectly inspired by Hofmann, were on their way up the Rhine with considerable funds to recruit “comrades of the covenant” in Strassburg territory.221 The Strassburg authorities, however, limited their contribution for the joint Protestant-Catholic reconquest

217

 Ibid., nos. 455, 622.  4 March 1534 the city council decided to abide b y the two confessions, ibid., no. 518. For the Greater Catechism see no. 533. 219  Elsass 2 (QGT 8), no. 535, repeated in June, p. 359. 220  Ibid., no. 625. Auerbacher is known as an ally of J acob Wiedemann in the alter cation with Reublin over communism, no. 240 (see also Ch. 9.2.d). Stayer places Auerbacher’s letter in the Moravian Stäbler context, Sword, 174. 221  Ibid., no. 631. 218

430  the radical reformation

chapter 10.4.c

of Anabaptist Münster to sending an embassy thither and to holding the prophet of the whole movement in prison.222 When in February and March 1535 the city council of S trassburg finally ordered that the infants of all citizens be baptized within six weeks of their birth and that the civil oath be exacted from all Separatists on pain of exile, 223 the period of magisterial magnanimity had come to a full stop. With the tragedy of Münster before them, the Strassburg magistrates and divines had to abandon a policy which for the age had been one of conspicuous moderation. Bucer wrote to his Zurich friends, Henry Bullinger and Leo Jud, 224 expressing alarm and chagrin that they had ever given credence to the idea that Strassburg might indeed become “a second Münster.” It should be remarked that Leo Jud, at least, had once been quite taken by some of Schwenckfeld’s ideas on tolerance and some of the democratic principles of the Anabaptists.225 The Strassburg divines and magistrates, so long embarrassed by the effect of their extended toleration (1522–35), were relieved that the full force of the Hofmannite hurricane had swerved from Strassburg in another direction. As for Hofmann himself, in his Strassburg confinement, he repudiated the belligerence of h is followers in Münster and by A pril 1535226 interpreted the grisly development there as a f ulfillment of h is own prophecy of some dreadful carnage presaging, sometime within the third year of his preordained imprisonment, the advent of Christ in Strassburg, whence the banner of God’s righteousness was yet to be carried to the ends of the world. Before carrying our narrative to Münster and The Netherlands to trace the extraordinary expansion and displacement of e mphasis in the Anabaptist movement in this region, we must linger in Strassburg and South Germany and re-examine systematically and comparatively some of t he regent principles of the Radical Reformers whose Strassburg careers we have found interwoven with the Reformation history of the most tolerant of the Reformation cities. 227

222

 Ibid., nos. 519, 652.  Ibid., nos. 638, 647. 224  Ibid., no. 671. 225  Cf. Ibid., no. 463, and frequent earlier references to Leo Jud. 226  Ibid., no. 654. On the casualness of the captur ed leaders of Münster toward Hofmann, see the Strassburg envoy’s report of his interview, no. 700. 227  Elsass 3 (QGT 15) continues the documentation. 223

Chapter 11

Unusual Doctrines and Institutions of the Radical Reformation

A t this point in our narrative

, keeping in mind the various representatives of d ifferent thrusts in Anabaptism, Spiritualism, and Evangelical Rationalism (yet to be more fully defined, Ch. 24.2) congregated in Strassburg, we do well to take further account of t he doctrines and practices that set many of t hem and their associates in conventicles apart from the proponents of an urban reform under its town councils and from the princely reformations of usually larger territories. We have already given considerable attention to the several sacramentarian views of t he Eucharist, which much of the Radical Reformation held in common with that thrust in the cantonal Reformation that took shape in major parts of Switzerland and elsewhere in the southwest quadrant of the Empire (Chs. 2, 3, 5) until at length, under the impact of C alvin, the Real Presence would be fully reclaimed in the Consensus Tigurinus (Ch. 23.5). We have also dealt with the doctrine of the sleep of the soul, i.e., Christian mortalism in an apocalyptic or even millennialist context, a view of the afterlife which much of the Radical Reformation held in common with the young churches of N ew Testament times (Chs. 1.6, 5.4), which view we will take up afresh with the Evangelical Rationalists (Chs. 22.1, 24.4). Other doctrines and institutions have been discussed in connection with certain seminal thinkers, and with certain events such as disputations in Zurich, Liegnitz, Nicolsburg, Nuremberg, Augsburg, Worms, and Strassburg, but a systematic coverage of several of the foregoing other doctrinal peculiarities of radical reformers is overdue, while under several of the headings we can also anticipate doctrinal changes to be more fully recounted in the appropriate chronological sequence.

431

432  the radical reformation

chapter 11 / 11.1

We begin by (1) analyzing further the theology and practice of baptism in the several currents of reform and restitution. (2) From this we shall pass to a consideration of implicit and explicit alterations in the doctrine of the Trinity and in Christology, in close connection with the thought of several of the figures introduced into the Strassburg story. Competing conceptions of the Atonement and the various theories of restitution and restoration will be postponed until certain events and new personalities have been introduced into the general and regional narrative. (3) We will then pass on to various adjustments in the conception of mediation, especially concerning Mary as Mediatrix and Christ as the sole Mediator (1 Tim. 2:5). (4) Finally, in light of the new sense of the immediacy experienced by the radicals, but also evi­dent elsewhere, we turn to the eschatology of the Radical Reformation and to the Lex sedentium of the saints gathered together for corporate spiritual discernment and then mutual exhortation, intercession, and governance. We shall later in a comparable tour d’horizon consider the views of the radicals on marriage, divorce, and the nature of human life within the home or com­mune (Ch. 20).

1. Baptismal Theologies in the Radical Reformation As we have seen, the Anabaptists were not without immediate precedent in their restoration or institution of believers’ baptism. The Czech Unity of the Brethren rebaptized converts from the Utraquist as well as the Roman Church well into the Reformation era (Ch. 9.1), although among the most radical Hussites the baptism of their own progeny was also challenged, while the Waldensians, as we shall presently see (Ch. 21.2), were on principle also antipedobaptists. Moreover, the magisterial reformers themselves, in their initial emphasis on salvation by faith alone, had to grope for a while before coming down firmly in defense of t he traditional practice of i nfant baptism, either by stressing the entirety of the Christian life from birth to death as metaphorically a baptismal dying and rising with Christ (Luther), or by insisting on birthright baptism as the New Covenantal equivalent of circumcision (Zwingli and Bullinger), or by interpreting it as a civil-ecclesiastical pledge to nurture progeny in an urban or national Christocracy (Bucer). We have also observed that the Swiss Brethren, with their more radi­cal implementation of the doctrine of repentance and salvation by faith alone in the unique redemptive work of Christ, were very clearly putting contritional believers’ baptism into that experiential void in adult life left by the neglect or programmatic rejection of sacramental penance (Ch. 2.2), so long encumbered by the indulgence traffic (Ch. 6.1). Zwingli saw his very clearly 1

1

 Catholic John Cochloeus, Degratia sacramentorum, opposed Luther on the faith of infants, 1522–23; for the Unity, see Amedeo Molnar.“La mise en question du bapt me des enfants par les hussites radicaux,” BD, Scripta et Studia 3, Anabaptistes et dissdents au XVe sicle (Baden-Baden/ Bouxiller: Koerner, 1987), 35–51.

chapter 11.1

unusual doctrines & institutions  433

when, after pointing out that “one of the good results of the [baptismal] con troversy has been to teach us that baptism can­not save or [permanently] purify,” he compared the sense of temporary relief experienced by the Anabaptist at his baptism and that of the Old Belie ver immediately after aur icular confession. Zwingli was reporting recent encounters with Anabaptists in a disputation: But in the [recent] disputation there were some [Anabaptists] who…had experienced a g reat release at the moment of baptism. To this [Oswald] Myconius answered: “Did you not come to baptism with considerable apprehension?” One of t hem replied: “Yes”—for they claim that no one should let himself be baptized unless he knows that he can live without sin. Then said Myconius: “The release which you experienced in baptism was simply a cessation of t hat apprehension which you yourself had created.” They affirmed, however, that God had done something quite new towards them—the very experience which at one time we had in penance. For there, too, we were in great fear and distress before we made our confession, but the moment we had made it we said: “God be praised, I feel a great joy and refreshing.” And all that we really felt was a relaxation of the previous tension. Yet the penitent could easily claim that in penance or papal absolution he experienced within himself a great renewal the moment he made his confession. And it was simply the removal of his apprehension. This is proved by the fact that our lives did not undergo any great change in consequence. Now those who allow themselves to be rebaptized make much of a similar experience.2

2  Von dem Touff (Of Baptism), ed. G.W. Bromiley, LCC 24:156–57, Ch. 6, at n. 41. For a collection and analysis of baptismal loci, see Gerhar d J. Neumann, “The Anabaptist Position on Baptism and the Lord’s Supper,” MQR 35 (1961): 140–48. We have already taken note (Ch. 6.2, 3) of the intense debate in 1525 between Zwingli and Hubmaier over the ques­tion of the distinction between the baptism of J esus and the baptism of J ohn, enlightened b y David C. Steinmetz, “The Baptism of J ohn and the Baptism of J esus in Huldr ych Zwingli, Hubmaier and Late Medie val Theology,” in F. Forrester Church and Timothy George, eds., Continuity and Discontinuity in Church History: Essays Presented to George Huntston Williams on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday, Studies in the History of Christian Thought series, ed. Heiko A. Oberman (Leiden: Brill, 1979), 167–81, which shows how Zwingli rejected Peter Lombard’s distinction between the baptism of John and the baptism of Jesus (updated in the writings of Gabriel Biel), while Hubmaier not only r eaffirmed the late medie val tradition but even intensified it.What was finally at stake was the propriety of analogies between the Old Testament and the New, particularly the analogy between circumcision and infant bap­tism. See the recognition of a threefold baptism in Hubmaier in the monograph of Christ of Windhorst, who first drew Lombard into the discussion of Anabaptist thought, Täuferisches Taufverständnis: Balthasar Hubmaiers Lehre zwischen Traditioneller und reformatorischer Theologie, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought 25 (Leiden: Brill, 1976). James William McClendon in “Balthasar Hubmaier, a Catholic Anabaptist,” MQR 65 (1991): 20–33; H. Wayne Pipkin,“The Baptismal Theology of Balthasar Hubmaier,”ibid.:34–53, are in agree­ment that Hubmaier’s scholastic and patr istic Catholicism survives in his understanding of believers’ baptism.

434  the radical reformation

chapter 11

The Anabaptists in general claimed, of c ourse, over against Zwingli and Bucer and other critics, that the once-for-all removal of apprehension was also the occasion for entering into a covenant with God in a renewed con­ science and with renewed determination to lead a godly life. Anabaptists in general continued medieval Catholic usage when they interpreted justification in the sense of sanctification. 3 They expected con­ verts, after their baptismal resolve and symbolic ablution, to live evangelical lives. This sanctification was characterized by a spirituality suffused with a quest for spiritual immediacy. Converts sought the communal togetherness of the covenantal life, and were expectant but patient tarrying for the king­ dom, their public baptism attesting in hope to a break from the temporal order.4 As to the manner of baptism, whether by water with anointment or by water alone, whether by immersion or by pouring, we can put to one side in this chapter, not because these are trifling matters, but rather because we have not yet reached the point in our narrative where the Italian, Neth­ erlandish, Polish, and Hungarian variations of believers’ baptism can be adduced and systematically interpreted. Suffice it to say that up to this point most of t he rebaptisms have been pourings, both by n ecessity and by preference, outside the church edifices, often in houses, occasionally at riverbanks, and even at town pumps, with the water poured from common containers. In our further effort to become comprehensive and systematic about what baptism meant to spokesmen within various sectors of the Radical Reformation, besides recognizing that they themselves were not always explicit about their convictions and that their emphases changed, we may pull apart from the knotty problem the several strands of argumentation and usage that are tangled together in the documentation before us. Magisterial and radical reformers alike went at once to the Bible, since in the case of baptism there were no major conciliar formulations (as there were with Christology and the doctrine of t he Trinity), through which the Catholic and the Magisterial Reformers would have been constrained to inspect the biblical evidence, except for the canon on triple immersion of Constantinople (Ch. 25, n. 208). Scripture is equivocal about several bap­t ismal matters, for one, whether Jesus himself, apart from his own baptism, baptized others, including his disciples. John 4:2 expressly states that he did not and Paul expressly regarded the rite as a m inor aspect of his apostolic ministry. But John 3:22 says Jesus was in the land of Judea 3

 G. H.Williams,“Sanctification in the Testimony of Several So-Called Schwärmer.”  Three points raised b y Timothy George, “Early Anabaptist Spirituality in the Lo w Countries,” MQR 62 (1988): 257–75. 4

chapter 11.1

unusual doctrines & institutions  435

with his disciples “and baptized.” Tradition, iconographic and homiletic, everywhere sup­pressed the latent image here of Jesus the Redeemer, himself dispensing on an individual basis the sacrament of redemption and, in effect, the bapti­z and’s incorporation into his mystical body, the Church. It concentrated, rather, on his exemplary baptism at the hands of John the Baptist. Accord­ingly Jesus’ baptizing in John 3:22 was conceived as teaching and making disciples, while blessing little children (Matt. 18:13–15) became the locus classicus within the New Testament for pedobaptism (another development in itself ). Yet it was also plain to all sides that there were two New Testament water baptisms, that of John to which Jesus submitted and that of J esus himself after the resurrection, when he commissioned the apostles to baptize in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit (Matt. 28: 19). Most Anabaptists preferred the variant formulation Mark 16:15f., with its sequence of Dominical imperatives: go, preach, believe, be baptized, be saved. Since the apostolic Church itself made a sharp distinction between the two baptisms (Acts 19:2–5), it was natural for the sixteenthcentury discussions to run on the relationship of these two water baptisms to each other and on the question of whether the efficacy or significance of Chris­t ian baptism depended solely upon the atoning work of C hrist, thus devalu­ing the pre-Resurrection baptism of John. In the Zwingli-Hubmaier debates over the two baptisms (Ch. 6.2–3), contenders had also dealt with the two scriptural loci involving disciples of John the Baptist. In Acts 8:16f. several Samaritan disciples of John, who had already been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus, on the occasion received from the apostles only the laying on of h ands (not rebaptism) and with this touch they reportedly received the Holy Spirit which, as the accompaniment of baptism (although to precede the external action), could be considered the essence of t he baptism of J esus in whose name and on whose petition the Father sends the Spirit as Comforter ( John 14:17, 16:26). In the other scrip­t ural locus, Acts 18:24–19:7, Apollos of Alexandria, and then twelve others who had received the baptism of John, were even among themselves evi­dently differently treated: the twelve in Ephesus were [re]baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus by Paul, while Apollos, who taught about Jesus with ardor and accuracy, seems to have been exempted from rebaptism (19:1), instructed as he already had been in the way of the Lord (18:25). Known as he was in Ephesus, Apollos was pointedly away in Corinth (19:1) when Paul rebaptized the other twelve Johannite Ephesians. Peter Lombard had assessed the commentaries and opinions of t he Fathers and antecedent scholastics in his Sentences (IV: d. 2, q. 2) about the two baptisms and the rebaptism in the New Testament and had made the clarifying distinction that the Samaritans, having a knowledge of the triune

436  the radical reformation

chapter 11.1

God (with their own veritas Hebraica in their Torah) only needed the laying on of hands to receive the Holy Spirit, while the twelve pre­sumably gentile Ephesians, not having had such knowledge hitherto, were indeed in need of Christ’s baptism. In the immediate background of the thought of Luther, Zwingli, and scholastically informed Hubmaier on the issue of t he two baptisms was the Collectorium of Gabriel Biel (d. 1495) of Tübingen, whose work was a compend of late medieval opinions about Lombard’s quaestiones.5 Biel had rejected Lombard’s distinction of t wo classes among John’s disciples, who included all of the apostles (none of whom was otherwise known to have been expressly baptized) as well as the Samaritans and the Ephesians of Acts (above). In scholastic terminology Biel recognized that all the disciples of John had indeed faith ( fides) that was prospectively valid, that they had been laved by him with the proper matter (res), but that the forma of John’s sacramental was defective, wanting the salvific Dominical for­mula (Matt. 28:19), and that the baptism of J ohn was thus primarily God’s means of transition from circumcision under the Old t o baptism under the New Covenant. Zwingli, the earliest among the reformers, preferred to equalize the two as interchangeable in the interest of establishing the continuity of the People of God of one covenant in two dispensations, and therefore he sought to make the baptism of John indeed transitional from circumcision to pedobaptism, without his subordinating the baptism of John, otherwise the Old Believers and the Anabaptists would have to admit that Peter, chief of the apostles, and the rest were never baptized, that is, John’s presumed baptism of the disciples along with Jesus would be invalidated.6 Another problem was the relationship of C hristian baptism to Jewish circumcision, and concurrently the relationship between saving faith in Christ and eternal predestination to salvation, confirmed either by circumcision or by water baptism. Old Covenantal circumcision could be regarded by one side as the equivalent of infant baptism in water, by t he other as transcended by the new covenant written in the heart, an essentially adult experience and transaction. Among some Italian Anabaptists of Marrano antecedents or Marrano ambience there was a memory of the practice of Jewish proselyte immersion for males as sufficient without circumcision, which accommodation facilitated the transition for Catholic Marranos to Anabaptism (Ch. 21.3), a second phase in their conversion to Christianity, this time by proselyte baptism. In the rival interpretations of t he expressly baptismal loci in the New Testament and the related texts on water and circumcision in the Old 5

 Steinmetz, “The Baptism of John.”  There was a tradition accor ding to which J esus baptized the apostles when he w ashed their feet at his Last Supper. See Kantorowicz,“The Baptism of the Apostles.” 6

chapter 11.1

unusual doctrines & institutions  437

Testament, and also the Dominical references to children (notably Matt. 18:14), the magisterial (territorial) reformers were virtually agreed over against both the medieval Church and the radical reformers that it was possible by means of the Jewish-Christian doctrine of predestination (brought into relation with the specifically Christian formula of one God, one faith, one baptism, Eph. 4:5) to equate Old Testament circumcision, John’s penitential baptism, and Christ’s (post-resurrectional) pistic baptism (applicable to an infant on the eighth day in analogy to circumcision), pedobaptism being validated by virtue of the pledge of the parents, the godparents, and the congregation to nurture infants in the faith. But however argued, the fact that all evangelicals of t he first generation of t he Reformation could remember, and Lutherans would still observe, the liturgical feast of the Circumcision, on 1 January, eight days from the Nativity, as well as the feast of Jesus’ baptism, Epiphany, on 6 January, presented an emotional as well as a hermeneutical obstacle to the equation of pedobaptism and covenantal circumcision, an assimilation all the more difficult to sustain in that necessarily only half of the progeny of the elect of the Old Testament were circumcised. Believers’ baptism clearly placed men and women on a par, since each confessed in his or her own voice. In contrast to the relative homogeneity of a theology of baptism on the side of the magisterial (territorial) reformers, there was considerable variation of conviction on the side of t he radical reformers. Between the two sides the recurrent debates centered in three issues. There was the issue as to whether infants had in fact been baptized according to the records of the New Covenant. There was the issue whether the covenantal sign and action (circumcision and baptism) would have to be thought of a s less inclusive under the New than under the Old D ispensation. On this turned the third issue as to whether baptism should be thought of as purely testimonial, or as personally redemptive, or as ecclesiologically constitutive, or as eschatologically decisive (or as a combination of two or three of these motifs). On the first issue, almost all groupings in the Radical Reformation were united in being antipedobaptist. Modern scholarship, of course, having at its disposal more texts and a much greater refinement in their analysis than obtained on either side of the great controversy in the six­teenth century, is able to be more confident and specific than the territorial reformers as to the occurrence of c hild (though not infant) baptism in the ancient Church;7 for Luther, Zwingli, and Bucer were indeed very hard put to it, except with the analogy of circumcision and the New Testament reference to the baptism of w hole households, along with Jesus’ several approving 7  See, for example , Joachim Jeremias, Die Kindertaufe in den ersten vier J (Gšttingen:Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1958).

ahrhunderten

438  the radical reformation

chapter 11.1

references to little children to document their claim for infant baptism in the New Testament. The spiritualizing principle was evident in late medieval spirituality. Erasmus’ reflections upon postponing baptism until adolescence (Ch. 1.3.a) and Zwingli’ s early r eservations about inf ant baptism ar e two sources of Anabaptist thought in Zurich.8 But if the antipedobaptists were of one mind about the first issue and the biblical foundation of their unswerving conviction, on the second and third issues there were deep differences, not only within the Radical Ref ­ormation as a whole, but also within Anabaptism apart. These differences centered in the interpretation of John’s baptism. All participants in the Radical Reformation stressed the imitation of Christ in a w ay which the magisterial reformers, with their Augustinian emphasis on original sin and with their Pauline stress on salvation by faith alone, regarded as at once presumptuous and fatuous. In imitating Christ a group already committed to the principle of believers’ baptism could not help finding in Jesus’ baptism at the hands of John the prototype of t heir own experience. Indeed, since Jesus was thought to have been exactly thirty years old when the Holy Spirit descended upon him and God the Father from heaven declared that in that moment Jesus was spiritually begotten as the divine emissary into the wilderness of t his world, several evangelists within the Radical Reformation attached importance to the year thirty itself, for example, Schiemer, Schlaffer (Ch. 7.5), Ambrose Spittelmaier,9 Servetus, and, in Lithuania, Simon Budny, while Marpeck, Scharnschlager, and many Italian Anabaptists thought of the same Spirit that descended on Jesus in the Jordan as validating their own testimonial baptism (Ch. 18.4). In any event, all the antipedobaptists were confident that they were imitating Christ in their penitential submission to believers’ baptism, which thereupon exposed them at once to the temptations of the wilderness of a conformist Christendom, whether Catholic or magisterial Protestant. But in imitating Christ at this point they were also enhancing the baptism of John; that is, they were, despite themselves, making the penitential baptism of J ohn more important than the postresurrectional baptism commanded by Christ. Thus they felt it incumbent on themselves to stress Christ’s distinctive injunction to proclaim the gospel to all nations (Matt. 28:19). The inner tension between baptismal regeneration in imitation of the only-begotten Son of God at the Jordan, that is, John’s baptism, and the obligation to administer Christ’s baptism was, in fact, a mainspring of the 8  On Erasmus, see Opus epistolarum Desider ii Erasmi Roterodami, ed. P. S. Allen and H. M. Allen (Oxford: Clarendon, 1906–58), 10: no. 2853, p. 283; on Zwingli. see Timothy George, “The Presuppositions of Zwingli’s Baptismal Theology,” in Prophet, Pastor, Protestant: The Work of Huldrych Zwingli after Five Hundred Years, ed. E. J. Furcha and H.W. Pipkin (Pittsburgh: Pickwick, 1984), 71–87. 9  Schornbaum, Bayern, 1:50.

chapter 11.1

unusual doctrines & institutions  439

tremendous and almost compulsive missionary mobility of t he first generation of converts—whether in Switzerland, Germany, The Netherlands, Italy, or Poland. At the same time their virtual conversion of Christ’s baptism into innumerable re-enactments of John’s baptism, at once penitential and regenerative and epiphanal (or testimonial), brought about both a displacement in emphasis in the interpretation of the gospel and of discipleship and therewith also an alteration in the doctrines of justification, sanctification, and especially the Atonement. Distinctive of Christ’s baptism in Scripture itself and its decisiveness for the Atonement were the combined passages of Col. 2:12 and 1:13f.: “[Y]ou were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith…who raised you from the dead” and whereby the Father “has delivered us from the dominion of d arkness and transferred us to the kingdom of h is beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of s ins.” These passages in Colossians were particularly to the fore in those radical baptismal theologians who had a q uasiphysi­cal attachment to the sacramental act, like Servetus and some among the Polish Brethren. Besides the two water baptisms, there were the three metaphorical baptisms by the Spirit, by fire, and by blood. In Catholic tradition a threefold baptism had long been discussed on the basis of 1 J ohn 5:6–8: “There are three witnesses, the Spirit, the water, and the blood.” The baptisms of Spirit and water are set forth in the New Testament, along with the constant reminder that it was by the blood of Jesus that salvation was effected (Rom 6:4–5; 1 Cor. 11:25; Heb. 9:20–22) and retrospectively set within the framework of the Apocalypse (5:9; 11:7–12). The idea of a baptism of blood, the experience of the martyrs in the early Church, was recognized by Tertullian as the only effective “re-baptism” following post-baptismal sin.10 Moreover, from Ambrose on through the various schools of medieval asceticism and mysticism there had been a desire for God and a concomitant mortification of t he flesh which metaphorically might be thought of a s a baptism of blood.11 Thus far we have sorted out from the tangled skein of baptismal motifs the modes of b aptism, the problem of t wo scriptural water baptisms and two covenants, the three intensities of baptism (spirit, water, fire), and the conflict between the motifs of i mitation and obedience in respect to the two water baptisms, which, as we have just seen, imply competing conceptions of what constitutes salvation. At this point we can begin to differentiate some seven or eight variant baptismal theologies, implicit or explicit, in the Radical Reformation: (a) 10  Tertullian draws on Luke 12:50 and Matt. 20:16 in De baptismo, 16; tr. ANF 3:677. Cf. Cyprian, Epistola ad Fortunatum de exhortatione martyrii; Migne, PL 4: col. 654. 11  Oberman, Harvest, 154, 347f.

440  the radical reformation

chapter 11.1 / 11.1.a

the baptismal theology of t wo covenants (Hubmaier), then more strongly as such in further Anabaptist thought (Sattler, Marpeck); (b) the baptismal theology of three degrees or intensities (Denck, Hut, Schiemer, Hutter); (c) the covenantal-bethrothal concept (Campanus, Hofmann); (d) the Melchiorite-Münsterite baptism as the eschatological civic pledge; (e) the deificatory theory of believers’ baptism (Servetus); (f ) the immersionist imitation of Christ as prophet, priest, and King among the Polish Breth­ren; (g) the humane-magical defense of baptism for infants and the insane (Paracelsus); and (h) the interiorization or spiritualization of baptism to the point where it is replaced by a n all-embracing eucharistic theology or predestinarian regeneration or ethical transformation (Schwenckfeld; Ascherham; Denck, Bünderlin, Entfelder in their final phase; Camillo Renato, Jacob Palaeologus, Faustus Socinus). a. Hubmaier and the Baptismal Theology of the Swiss Anabaptists The Swiss Brethren, in their first actions and utterances in Zollikon and Zurich and in their more mature formulation in the Schleitheim Confession, distinguished sharply between the Old Covenant and the New, between the covenantal community of the law and the covenantal community of love, and hence also between circumcision and (adult) baptism.12 For the Swiss Brethren, to be sure, as for Hubmaier and those whom he influenced, the baptismal act was, from the beginning, at once penitential and covenantal; and the only change that can be noted in the history of b aptism in this tradition is an increasing stress upon baptism as subjectively covenantal and ecclesiologically constitutive. The aton­ing work of Christ was affirmed, for example, in the preamble to the Schleitheim Confession, which specified the blood atonement.13 Hubmaier, briefly the scholarly patriarch of the Anabaptists in Moravia, even as he withdrew from the Swiss scene, had set a prevailing pattern for Anabaptism in both Germania and Polonia in his debate over the two baptisms (from May to November 1525 and beyond) with the father of the Reformed tradition, Zwingli (Ch. 6. 2–3). However, it will be recalled that it was Zwingli who had set the tone for the debate following ear­lier informal conversations with Hubmaier in May 1523, while Hubmaier was still based in Waldshut, with his own strong statements in defense of informal baptism (December 1524) drawing upon (1) the precedent of “house” baptisms in the New Testament, (2) Jesus’ blessing of c hildren, (3) Paul’s

12

 Armour, Anabaptist Baptism, 19–57; and Bergsten, Balthasar Hubmaier, 273–97.  Wenger,“The Schleitheim Confession,” MQR 29 (1954): 247.Windhorst shows how Hubmaier’s view on baptism moved between the traditional Catholic and Reformation views of baptism, Täuferisches Taufverständnis (1976), a thesis carried further by Pipkin (above at n. 2). 13

chapter 11.1.a

unusual doctrines & institutions  441

testimony in 1 Cor. 7:14 to family holiness, and (4) the identity of baptism with the circumcision. In his Commentarius (March 1525), Zwingli denied the ex opere operato character of any sacrament and hence dismissed the argumentation of both Lombard and Biel and thus also any fine points about res and the proper forma of baptism. Zwingli placed the efficacy of t he ordinance instead in the prior election and in faith (hence also in the implicit faith of infants), holding that the sacrament is only a sign of an inward action of the Spirit. Zwingli, still directing his attack on the medieval consensus about the two baptisms, sought in On Baptism, Rebaptism, and Infant Baptism (Von der Taufe, von der Wiedertaufe, und von der Kindertaufe), May 1525, to cope with the rebaptism of the twelve Johannites in Ephesus (above). He strainingly resorted to an assignment of four different scriptural meanings for baptism: water, Spirit, teaching, and faith;14 and he defended pedobaptism against the emergent Anabaptists, who as of 1525 were simply emphasizing the necessity of a ccordant faith in the adult baptized and the nullity of one’s christening in infancy. It was Hubmaier, scholastically trained at Ingolstadt, rather than some Catholic theologian of the school of John Eck, who in On the Christian Baptism of Believers (Von der christlichen Taufe der Gläubigen) upheld the scholastic distinction between the two baptisms, even though he was in accord with Zwingli on any sacrament as only a s ign of a n inward grace, the consequence of faith. But Hubmaier understood John’s baptism in confession of sins as being filled with the curse of the Law and which therefore simply had to be replaced with Christ’s baptism in forgiveness of s ins through grace and the Spirit, although Hubmaier appreciated the example of t he Forerunner in that he limited baptism to repentant adults; but his baptism, nevertheless, lacked the Dominical formulary. Hubmaier preferred in practice the version of M ark 16:15f., which, going beyond all medieval precedent, fixed the sequence as teaching (preaching), faith, baptism (for most Germanic Anabaptists by sprinkling; for Polish Reformed antipedobaptists, by immersion in stream or pond), all of which for Zwingli was made apposite to the Dominical command—to make disciples (Matt. 28:19–20) under which term he included baptism. Zwingli angrily replied in his Antwort, appealing to Eph. 4:5 (one Lord, one faith, one baptism), written supposedly by Paul to the very Ephesians who must have known Apollos and the other twelve disciples of J ohn in their city. Hubmaier responded confidently in his Gesprach (1526) on the issues raised, agreed with Zwingli (and the later Reformed view) that baptism had the character of a covenant, the one thinking of it as comparable to the taking of t he cowl by t he novice

14

 Cf. Baptism, LCC 24, 132; CR 4:203f.

442  the radical reformation

chapter 11.1.a / 11.1.b

(Zwingli), the other to the monastic vow (Hubmaier) but then with the commitment to follow not the rule of an order but the Rule of Christ. As to the theme of i ntensities in the Christian life, Hubmaier understood that Spirit baptism was the action of r egeneration. Water baptism, a work of o bedience to the Dominical command, introduced one to the church and served as external pledge of the inner decision of the will and movement of t he Spirit. Following these, the baptism of b lood was both encountered in the call to suffering and to inner mortification of the flesh, perhaps to death by martyrdom, in imitation of Christ.15 b. The Baptismal Theology of Three Degrees or Intensities: Denck, Hut, Hofmann The South German and Austrian Brethren, from Denck through Hut and beyond, stressed, instead of two covenants, three degrees of baptism which, to a certain extent, could be documented in the lives of the Old Covenantal saints as well as in the first Christians. Here the stress was experiential and eschatological, rather than ethical and biblically restitutional. The difference between the two circles was undoubtedly due to the fact that medieval mysticism (Ch. 2.2) was much more of a c omponent of M üntzerite theology (Ch. 3.2), of Netherlandish Anabaptism (Ch. 12.3), and of South German and Austrian-Moravian Anabaptism (Chs. 8; 9.2) than it was of the conventicular Swiss Brethren (Ch. 6) or of the Italian (Ch. 22) or the Polish Anabaptists (Ch. 25.4). In the circles of Denck and Hut, distinct phases in the development of t heir baptismal theology and conception of salvation that parallel our text in 1 John 5:6–8 can be detected. First, one may note the baptism of the Spirit. This is found in the baptismal theol­ogy of Denck, Hut, and eventually in subdued form among the Hutterites, the mystical “gospel of all creatures,” referring to suffering, the way of all creatures in their kingdom of blood. This “pedagogical” tool of the gospel is taken from the dative of Mark 16:15, the commission to preach to all creatures, here interpreted as a dative and rendered like genitive possessionis, in German as “aller Kreatur,” i.e., of all creatures. But, of course, a theologi­cal trait so prevailing was not dependent upon a point of syntax. In the whole of the Radical Reformation, in so far as it was influenced by Müntzer, Denck, and Hut, the gospel of creation was (psychologically, and in respect to the morphology of r eligion) at once the counterpart of natural theology in Catholicism and the doctrine of corporate or original sin and fallen nature in both Catholicism and the Magisterial Reforma­t ion, particularly the latter (see further Ch. 31.1 and 3). But far from being either a matter of rational observation unaided by revelation or a matter of written revelation and covenantal formulation “the gospel of a ll creatures” was for 15

 Hubmaier, A Brief Apology, in Pipkin and Yoder, Balthasar Hubmaier, 301.

chapter 11.1.b

unusual doctrines & institutions  443

the South German Anabaptists an inspired vision and propaedeutic insight into the nature of the world as it is. The believer who knows and then accepts the “bitter Christ” (Müntzer, Ch. 3.2) in creatureliness is one in whom has already been awakened the gospel of suffer ing and to whom can be v ouchsafed the redeeming word that suffering is the way of all, even of the Son of God. Out of t his inward baptism comes the willingness to join with kindred souls whom the Lord chastens out of love in a covenant of the good conscience with God by means of water baptism as a Bundesgenosse (Covenanter). Up to this point the Denckian Anabaptist was talking the language of the mystics, but, when the experience was constitutionalized, so to speak, ecclesiologically, something new or at least different from Waldensian and Grebelian adult baptism had entered the field. From the inner or spiritual baptism and the water covenant, Denck himself looked to a third baptism; but this he did not stress and did not himself undergo. In his disciples Hut, Spittelmaier, Schiemer, and Schlaffer, we have seen (Ch.7.5) how the spiritual baptism was reduced from perhaps a lifetime of meditative suffering (Gelassenheit) to a briefer season, perhaps an hour, of perceptive anguish in the presence of a revivalistic apostle, whereupon the stress was shifted from the inner baptism and even the covenantal baptism of water to the preparation for the personal testimony, which would surely involve blood, either the blood of the martyr or the blood of the wicked in the eschatological conflict which Hut and his followers regarded with profound agitation as imminent. Hut believed more strongly than some that they were alive in a specific apocalyptic context, the period of t ribulation before the imminent judgment of the Lord (Ch. 7.4). He regarded himself as a final prophet, the adventual Elijah (1.6.b), commissioned by God to seal the faithful. Those who accepted his message and the covenant sign were among the 144,000 self-determined elect (Rev. 7:1–4). Although himself baptized by Denck on Pentecost (26 May 1526),16 he merely absorbed the practice of Denck, not Denck’s understanding. His own theology represented more a continuation of that of Müntzer. Of significance for his third new apocalyptic baptism of blood was Hut’s dating of the timetable from the deaths of the two eschato­logical witnesses Müntzer and Pfeiffer in the Peasants’ War (Ch. 4.3.c). In the Nicolsburg debates in the spring of 1527, the nature of Hut’s apocalypticism became a p oint of d ispute between himself and Balthasar Hubmaier (Ch. 9.2.a). In particular two concerns appeared that undergirded Hut’s baptismal theology, the degree of participation permitted to the true disciple of Jesus in the context of a s ociety one considers

16

 Werner Packull, “Gottfried Seebass on Hans Hut:A Discussion,” MQR 49 (1975): 57–67.

444  the radical reformation

chapter 11.1.b

corrupt and under imminent judg­ment, and the impending nature of that judgment itself.17 This discussion and later memories of Hut’s preaching make it appear that Hut believed that when the proper time would arrive, God would give the sword to the righteous to participate in the cleansing of society. Conceiving of t he Ottoman forces as instruments of t he Almighty must have given a chilling realism to Hut’s hot apocalyptic baptism.18 Hut’s “pacifism” in effect only served to allow the Turks to perform their “God-ordained” act of purification. Hut’s idea of baptism was set in the context of Ottoman havoc, the foreseen biblical tribulation on the eve of the parousia. His treatise Of the Mystery of Baptism counseled “pure fear of God” in this “last and most dangerous age” of history. In language reminiscent of Müntzer, Hut criticized carnal and “scribal” approaches to Scripture which Müntzer had associated with the teachers of Wittenberg. Having developed his understanding of baptism in terms of the missionary command and call to suffering, Hut emphasized a baptism of tribulation by which one “is submerged into the death of Christ.”19 Hut’s biblical concordance illustrates the full apocalyptic significance of this baptism as it is associated with apocalyptic sealing (Rev. 7:23) and the command given to the prophet Ezekiel (9:4) to mark those to be saved from the imminent destruction (cf. Ez. 14). 20 Drawing upon powerful spiritual streams reaching back at least to Joachimite apocalypticism (11.4.a), Hut marked his followers with the “sign of Tau,” the symbol of the cross which had something of the sacred power of confirmation and which he identified with that sign in Ezekiel and the Apocalypse, the protective sealing of his baptizand-confirmands from the destruction sure to come.21 Hut believed, moreover, that those who understood his message were granted the spiritual discernment characteristic of those of t he sixth church of t he Apocalypse, that of P hiladelphia, a t rait characterized also by the possession of the “key of David” (Rev. 3:7). This opened such deep mysteries as that the cessation of the sacrifice and the abomination of Dan. 9:27 were in the process of fulfillment. 17

 See “Hans Hut’s Doctrine of the Sword,” MQR 39 (1965): 188–91; and The Chronicle of the Hutterian Brethren, 1:48. 18  For specific apocalyptic dating, see Meyer, “Anfänge,” p. 241 or no. 11; similarly in Schornbaum, Bayern 1:188.20–31; and note in Wappler, Täuferbewegung, 242; cf. Clarence Bauman, Gewaltlosigkeit im Täufertum: Eine Untersuchung zur theologischen Ethik des oberdeutschen Täufertums der Reformationszeit (Leiden: Brill, 1968). 19  The idea of baptism by fire may find its continuing impact in the evident weight placed upon martyrdom as baptism in The Chronicle of the Hutterian Brethren, 189–91, 630–31. 20  Hut’s concordance may be found in Seebass, “Hans Hut,” pt. 2, pp. 3–9. Seebass lists 81 articles of association; cf. pt. 11, pp. 40–42, 400, 471–75. 21  Werner O. Packwell,“The Sign of Thau: The Changing Conception of the Seal of God’s Elect in Early Anabaptist Thought,” MQR 61 (1987): 363–74.

chapter 11.1.b

unusual doctrines & institutions  445

In his concordance Hut associated Gabriel’s revelation of t he seventy weeks to Daniel (Daniel 9) with the prophet’s vision of the last days (Daniel 12) and with the woman in the struggle with the dragon (Rev. 12). A further stage in the altering morphology of b aptism in the line of Hut lies ahead of u s in the general chronological narrative, but we may anticipate it here. This change would come when the first-generation Ana­ baptists would be sufficiently established in conventicles or colonies, as, for example, the Hutterites in Moravia, to have an appreciably large and finally predominantly “birthright” membership (Chs. 16, 26). Alteration in the theology of m embership will coincide with the subsidence of t he eschatological mood and the preoccupation of t he community with itself as a church.22 Children born within the community of the New Covenant will seldom be able to traverse the same experiential ground as their comeouter parents. In consequence, few prior to their baptism on coming of age will go through the long inward contemplative suffering of Denck or Hut. Thus for the birthright members, the three degrees of the original schema will become equalized and concentrated in the three-day baptismal liturgy with its three Taufreden and corresponding prayers and sermons from a Fri­ day evening to Sunday morning. By this covenantal action one will become a member of the righteous remnant, the true church, outside of which there is no salvation. Here the legacy of Hubmaier will be felt, for in his covenantal view, it is the divinely gathered church which, through its administration of true baptism and the ban, holds the two keys (Peter’s and David’s) to the Kingdom (Chs. 9.2, 16, 26). Among the Hutterites, it will be soon asserted, moreover, that the mark of t he true apostolic Church is the community of g oods; and, in a paraphrase of Cyprian, that “where there is ownership … one is outside of Christ and his communion (Gemain) and thus has no Father in heaven.” 23 Where for Denck it was the long inner suffering prior to water baptism which was the most important of t he “three baptisms” and for Hut the apocalyptic baptism in blood, for the Hutterites it will be precisely the constitutive water baptism that is stressed. The baptism of blood is now understood corporately more than individually, the suffering of the righ­teous remnant under the buffets of the worldly as one awaits the imminent judgment. Water baptism in the midst of the wilderness of the world is identified with that of John in the wilderness of Judea; and the baptismal community itself, instead of looking fixedly upon the signs of the end of the age, now turns its glance back into the Old Testament, seeing itself continuous with God’s ongoing righteous remnant, of whom Noah’s company amidst the 22  Packull illustrates this suppr ession of the apocalyptic in Hutter ite exegesis in the “Erclärung der Offenbarung” (1569) in “Sign of Tau,” 367. 23  This communistic appropriation of the Cyprianic extra ecclesiam and nisi matrem is found in Ulrich Stadler: Müller, Glaubenszeugnisse (QGT 3), 22. For the Taufreden, see ME 4:686–87.

446  the radical reformation

chapter 11.1.b / 11.1.c

flood was a prototype. The Chronicle of the Hutterites, from which we have several times quoted, carries their story from Paradise to Moravia. 24 So strong is the new covenantal baptism among them (as later among the various factions within Anabaptism in The Netherlands) that we shall presently be reporting instances of Anabaptist rebaptisms. The confluence of Hutterite, Renatian (Italian, Ch. 22.1), and Servetian baptismal theology in Polish Anabaptism lies well ahead in our narrative (Chs. 25.4, 27.2), notable for the radical societary consequence to be drawn from believers’ baptism by serfs and lords together in the same small zbór on the patron’s estate. The distinctive views of Pilgram Marpeck, with his Trinity of Father, Spirit, and Word, are reserved for later treatment (Ch. 18.4), but we can conveniently take up the betrothal-covenantal type as represented by John Campanus and Melchior Hofmann. c. The Nuptial Baptismal Theology of John Campanus We only touch upon the nuptial baptism of John Campanus (Ch. 10.3.g), who in the end would cohere with the Catholic Church. His view was most fully expressed in his Restitution of 1531,25 and, like Hofmann’s baptismal Ordinance of 1530, it had considerable influence among the Lowlanders, particularly the Münsterites. It is not, however, certain that Campanus opposed infant baptism. He was never accused of A nabaptism by L uther and Melanchthon, who on the Trinity (11.2.c.3) expressly assailed him. It is possible that, like Luther, Campanus thought of the Christian life as a continuous baptism, the more plausibly for the reason that Campanus likened baptism to marriage. In any event, his elevated understanding of it ill comports with any perfunctory practice of pedo­baptism. In his mystical nuptial language, which is closely related to his marital conception of the relation between the (two) Persons of the Godhead and of the interdependence of a man and a woman, Campanus does not draw back from speaking of the divine transaction at baptism as a c ohabitation (Beischlaff ).26 In brief, his baptismal theology combines elements of L uther (duration), of Hofmann (betrothal), and of Paracelsus and Servetus (physical alteration). Campanus closes his rather long treatise on baptism within his Restitution with the fanciful reference to himself now “hanging up his harp,” after having done his best in minstrel praise of God’s wonderful goodness in the

24  This description and analysis of the baptismal theology of the Hutterites is based in part on what Schwenckfeld wrote at length against one Hans Klöpfer von Feuerback, a convert to the Hutterite form of Anabaptism from non-communitarian Anabaptism. CS 12: Doc. 810 (1552). 25  The German text is available in typescript in MacCormick, The “Restitution,” 220–42. 26  Ibid., 238,“So fer n wir glauben, sag ich, dann God Chr istus, daz wort, der geist desz glaubens, dise vier stück gehören zu disem beischlaff und handel der widergeburt.”

chapter 11.1.c / 11.1.d

unusual doctrines & institutions  447

institution of baptism.27 It is wonderful because in baptism one is baptized into the name of Christ, which means that one becomes, like Christ, a son or daughter of God. Christ is the paradigmatic Son by nature, and the baptized becomes by g race participant in his filial, i.e., divine, nature. 28 And in becoming a son or daughter, one ceases to be a servant and can therefore, no matter how wayward temporarily, never be extruded from the household of the Heavenly Father, nor from the community of faith. But one becomes more than a child, protected and perhaps chastised by God: one becomes, also, for life a bride of the heavenly bridegroom, who “talks lovingly to, plays and sleeps with” his spouse, but who is also a j eal­ous lover and may chasten, withhold himself, rebuke, and otherwise keep the baptized and therefore betrothed Christian from ever so loving the world that he or she forgets the divine love. For “the life of a Christian with God is not other than the life of bride and bridegroom.” 29 In baptism there is at once a dying to the world and a resurrection, but this seems to be a minor motif in the baptismal theology of Campanus; and there is no suggestion of a wilderness temptation connected with the once-for-­a ll-ness of the adult baptismal betrothal of Hofmann’s scheme (Ch. 11.1.d). Like Paracelsus (Ch. 11.1.f ), Campanus sees in the naming and blessing of Christ (he does not mention chrismation) the rite of becoming not only sons of the Father and brothers of Christ but, by that fact also, both “spiritual kings” and priests, “alike for ourselves and for our spiritual brethren.”30 It is by virtue of this latter office, conferred by royal baptism, that the Christian is authorized to pray for himself and for others effec­t ively in intercession before the throne of grace. The treatise on baptism in the Restitution leads directly to the section on prayer. d. The Nuptial Apocalyptic Baptismal Theology of Melchior Hofmann When Hofmann broke definitively from the magisterial reformers of Strassburg and fled the city, having requested a s eparate church for the Anabaptist community (April 1530), he made his way to Emden, administering adult baptism to hundreds of p eople (Ch. 12.3). His own work on baptism, The Ordinance of God, bears strong eschatological overtones that par­a llel ideas found in the book he edited of apocalyptic visions of the

27

 Ibid., 242.  His words are “seiner sonheyt mitteylhafftig.” Campanus is not entirely clear in distinguishing, as promised, ibid., 242, between the benefit from baptism that der ives, respectively, from Christ’s deity and from his humanity. 29  Campanus, Restitution, 227ff. 30  Ibid., 241–42. Although Campanus makes of every Christian, male or female, a bride of Christ, he does not actually anywhere break from conventional language and speak of “daughters of God,” nor “spiritual queens,” etc. 28

448  the radical reformation

chapter 11.1.d

Strassburg prophets. 31 Baptism into Christ for Hofmann implied not merely initiation into the Body of Christ or community of faith, but it also meant an initiation into an understanding of t he apocalyptic process of h istory (11.4.b). While this perspective was still broadly Augustinian for Hofmann, his accent was different: a heightened perception of God’s developing plan of salvation as discerned best in the book of Revelation. 32 God was now fully revealing his will through spiritual prophets who discerned it in the Apocalypse. Hofmann descried three periods of r enewal or awakening since the resurrection of Jesus: in the Jewish and Gentile missions during the days of the apostles, in the Hussite movement, and in the reformation of his own day—although Luther and the establishment that had closed ranks around him held, accord­ing to Hofmann, to a now outmoded form of righteousness and so failed to carry through a complete reformation. If in the baptismal theology of the Swiss Brethren the covenant of baptism was interpreted in the first generation with the emotion and in the language of the otherwise discarded sacrament of penance, we may say of baptism among the Hofmannites (Melchiorites) in The Netherlands (Ch. 12.3), in Münster (Ch. 13), and among the Mennonites (Ch. 14) that it was interpreted, as with Campanus, with the emotion and in the nuptial language of the sacramentum/ mysterion of marriage. Paul, 2 Cor. 11:2, wrote of betrothing his converts to Christ and presenting them as a pure bride to her one husband. Hofmann on the basis of this text and the nuptial language not only of Canticles but also of the Old Testament prophets, likened the baptismal covenanting with Christ and his Church to betrothal. He thought of the Anabaptists as collectively the bride (God’s elect) following Christ into the wilderness, in a l and not sown (Jer. 2:2), and as the woman of Rev. 12:6, who, having fled into the wilderness, awaits her vindication after 1,260 years in hiding from persecu­tion. For Hofmann, the mystical experience of the wilderness, corresponding to spiritual suffering or mortification in Denck, preceded and followed the betrothal covenanting in water baptism. Just as the elect of the Old Covenant, after “baptism” in the Red Sea, wandered forty years in the desert in order to be tempted, tested, and tutored by the Law, so Jesus, having been baptized by the descent of the Holy Spirit (whereby he was revealed as the pleasing adop­tive Son of the Father), was driven by the same Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted for forty days. The wilderness motif is mingled with the nuptial and baptismal 31  Deppermann, Hoffman, nos. 14, 347, Die Ordonnantie Godts/De welc he hy/door zijnen Soone Christum Jesum/inghestelt ende bevesticht heeft/op die waerachtighe Discipulen des eeuwigen woor t Godts, tr. in SAW, 182–203; cf. Stayer, Anabaptists, 212ff.; Armour, Anabaptist Baptism, 102ff.; and Petersen,“Preaching in the Last Days,”154–63. 32  Hofmann, Offenbarung; Petersen,“Preaching in the Last Days”; Werner O. Packull draws out the connection with Joachimite spirituality explicitly in “A Reinterpretation of Melchior Hofmann’s ‘Exposition’ against the Backg round of Spir itualist Franciscan Eschatolo gy with Special Reference to Peter John Olivi,” in Dutch Dissenters: A Critical Companion toTheir History and Ideas, ed. Irvin Horst (Leiden: Brill, 1986), 109.

chapter 11.1.d

unusual doctrines & institutions  449

language when Hofmann enjoins those “who have surrendered themselves to the Lord” to “lead themselves out of the r ealm of Satan…into the spir itual wilderness and also wed and bind themselves to the Lord Jesus Christ, publicly, through the true sign of the Covenant, the water bath and baptism.”33 As with Hut , the sense of the imminence of the Advent of Chr ist was intense: And now in this final age the true apostolic emissar ies of the Lord Jesus Christ will gather the elect flock and call it through the gos­pel and lead the Bride of the Lord into the spiritual wilderness, betroth, and covenant her through baptism to the Lord.34 When he writes of the bride, he has in mind interchangeably the individ­ual soul in the tradition of the Rhenish m ystics (Ch. 2.2.c) and the col ­lectivity of the redeemed in the language of the Seer of the Re velation. Apparently much more than with the baptismal theology in the line of Denck and Hut, with Hofmann the Lord’s Supper is thought of as the direct consummation of the redemptive experience of baptismal betrothal. When…the bride of the Lord Jesus Christ has given herself over to the Bridegroom in baptism, which is the sign of the covenant, and has betrothed herself and yielded herself to him of her own free will…thereupon the Bridegroom and exalted Lord Jesus Christ comes and by h is hand—the apostolic emis­s aries are the hand—takes bread ( just as a Bridegroom takes a r ing or a piece of gold) and gives himself to his bride with the bread…and takes also the chalice with the wine and gives to his bride with the same his true bodily blood…in such a way that the Bridegroom and the outpouring of his blood is [one] with hers.… She [is] in him and, again, he is in her, and they together are thus one body, one flesh, one spirit, and one pas­s ion, as bridegroom and bride. 35 Hofmann’s baptismal theology was undoubtedly well advanced before he assimilated to it the public covenantal act of w ater baptism insisted upon by the Strassburg Anabaptists whom he had joined. Meditation on the inner baptism of the Spirit in the mystical tradition had, in Hofmann as in Hut (under the influence of the same mystical tradition mediated and

33

 The Ordinance of God, SAW, 186–87.  Ibid., 188. 35  Ibid., 194. 34

450  the radical reformation

chapter 11.1.d / 11.1.e

made more specific in Münzter and then in Denck), found its outward symbol in public baptismal espousal. After the execution of some of Hofmann’s first Anabaptist converts in The Netherlands in 1531, he programmatically suspended rebaptism among his followers for two years, appealing, it will be recalled, to Ezra 4:24 and the suspension of t he construction of t he Temple in Jerusalem. He later, when imprisoned in Strassburg, though steadfastly persevering in the main tenets of his theology, was willing to admit the legitimacy of infant baptism (having nothing to do with his betrothal concept) since it was vouched for in Irenaeus, Origen, and Pseudo-Dionysius (whom Hofmann, of c ourse, thought of as apostolic), and especially since Paul was even willing to sanc­ tion baptism for the dead (1 Cor. 15:29). The suspension and later conces­ sion together show that the inner baptism and betrothal in the course of one’s sojourn in the wilderness of life was to Hofmann the essential part of this system. 36 e. Baptism at Age Thirty: Michael Servetus In a q uite different baptismal theology, that of M ichael Servetus, we encounter both the strict separation between the two dispensations charac­ teristic of the Swiss Brethren and the eschatological and experiential inten­ sity of t he South German and Austrian Anabaptists in the line of D enck and Hut. In addition, much is made of the physical transformation wrought in adult immersion and regeneration, which is deificatory in intention. A discussion, at this point, of the deificatory baptismal theology of Servetus may seem out of place. It is true that his extant Alsatian works were devoted to the doctrine of the Trinity, but it was in Strassburg (Ch. 10.3.f ) that he became acquainted with the tremendous upsurge of i nterest in believers’ baptism and made of it his own. We know that he wrote to Bucer in 1532 a no longer extant letter on Baptism and the Supper. 37 It has already been observed (Ch. 1.5) that his interest in effectual baptism may be understood in the Iberian context of the coerced baptism of Jews and Moors, usually as adults. In any event an admirer of S ervetus, thought to be summarizing his thought, expressly writes on baptism in Declarationis Jesu Christi filii Dei libri V, c. 1540. 38 His still later Restititutio Christianismi (1553) could be described, 36

 The confession of 1539 is printed by Hulshof, Geschiedenis van de Doopsgezinden, 180–81.  Elsass 1 (QGT 7), No. 329. 38  The book, provisionally identified by Stanislaw Kot in “L’influence de Ser vet sur Le mouvement antitrinitaire en Pologne et enTransylvanie” in Autour de Michel Servet et de Sébastien Castellion, ed. Bruno Becker (Haarlem:Willink, 1953), 721–15, as the work of Servetus, is now ascribed to the Paduan jurisconsult, Matthew Gribaldi (Ch. 24.2.6).The headings of the work, yet to be edited, including the section “De baptismo aquae et spir itu,” are given by Kot in Autour, 113–16. 37

chapter 11.1.e

unusual doctrines & institutions  451

indeed, as a comprehensive baptismal theology beginning with the man J esus Christ, the Son of God, baptized by John (Ch. 23.4). In the end Ser vetus was to be put to death on two capital offenses according to the Code of Justinian, anabaptism and the rejection of the received doctrine of the Trinity. It is, therefore, quite appropriate to bring in his conception in this systematic coverage of baptism, even though we must reach forward to the work of 1553 for some of the materials. Servetus distinguished emphatically between the baptism of John and that of C hrist, holding that “the efficacy of b aptism depends upon the power of the resurrection of Christ” and that “the baptism of John has disappeared with the Law,”39 citing in proof the rebaptism of John’s disciples in Acts 19:5 (Ch. 11.1.a). Even the apostles, before the death and resurrection of Christ, were like catechumens, as are indeed all present-day pedobaptists, who have only the ceremonial washing and not the healing, nor the illumination, nor the experiential regeneration of believers’ immersion with Christ and emersion with Christ.40 Servetus derived redemptive, that is, deificatory, baptism from Acts 13:33 when the Messianic (royal) Sonship of Christ was pronounced at the moment of his Ascension, as his mediatorial (priestly) Sonship had been announced at his baptism at the Jordan (cf. Faustus Socinus, Ch. 24.4). At the same time, Servetus found the baptism of C hrist by J ohn as exemplary and the starting point for his conviction that what happened to Jesus Christ the Son of God by nature at the Jordan became possible for all believers in Christ after his resurrection, namely, through his instituting believers’ baptism by i mmersion, that all might follow him and become sons and daughters of G od by a doption, and indeed gods by g race. For this basic element in his theology, Servetus quoted, among others, Clement of A lexandria: “Being baptized [as Christ was at Jordan], we are illuminated … and adopted as sons; perfected, we are redeemed as immortal, made gods, and all sons of the Most High.”41 In stressing the physical procedure (immersion) even more than the public testimony connected with adult baptism, Servetus vigorously opposed all those who stressed faith alone and thus tended to slight the physical 39

 Restitutio Christianismi, 1553 (as r eprinted at Nuremberg, 1790), 492; German translation by B. Spiess, Wiederherstellung des Christentums, 2d ed., 3 vols. in 1 (Wiesbaden, 1895–96), 2:214. Hereafter the references will be to both versions, each of which is rare.There is a modern Spanish translation b y A. Alcalá y L. Bekés, Restitución del Chr istianismo (Madrid: Fundación Universitaria Española, 1980) with 2,300 footnotes. 40  These two terms are used in the Catechesis (1574) of the immer sionist Polish Brethren (29.2). 41  Clement, Paedagogue, 1:6: Restitutio, 488/2:212. Servetus also quotes the Recognitions of Pseudo-Clement (1:55) “that whosoever shall not obtain the baptism of Jesus shall not only be deprived of the kingdom of heaven, but shall also not be without peril at the resurrection of the dead.” For other uses of Pseudo-Clement, see Ch. 16.3.

452  the radical reformation

chapter 11.1.e

action. He insisted that baptism is not a mere sign or an external washing but an inner gift; and when opponents cried that God was thereby being bound to externals, Servetus retorted by supplying many examples from the Old and New Testaments of faith’s being linked with an action. Noah was saved, not by faith alone, but by getting into the ark as directed. The Syrian Naaman was not saved from leprosy by faith alone but by g oing seven times into the Jordan (2 Kgs. 5:10). Moreover, it was also precisely at his baptism at the Jordan that the Spirit descended on Christ himself.42 Baptism is the ordained Christian ark, “rescuing man from the abyss of perdition,” a s piritual-physical transaction typologically represented not only in the ark and the Flood but also in the passage of Moses through the Red Sea; in the passage of Joshua and the Children of Israel through the Jordan into the promised land “as victors” (Deut. 1:31, 31:13, 32:47; Joshua 4 a nd 5); in the watery vision of E zekiel and the guiding angel (Ezekiel 47); in the vision of Isa. 33:21 about “those most pleasant rivers of Paradise which the [proud] galley of t he Papal Church cannot navigate” and again in the vision, Isa. 43:2-14, where the Lord, “having brought down Babylon,” permits his own to “pass through the waters”; and in the healing waters of Si loam ( John 9) and Bethesda ( John 5). In the latter with its five porticoes, Servetus saw symbolized the body and its five senses stirred or awakened by the Spirit, and in the age of over thirty years of t he man waiting at the pool ( John 5:5) he saw the Dominical authorization for the delay of redemptive immersion until such a time as the believer might decisively appropriate the benefits of its healing waters. Servetus specified that the baptizand “should go down into the water and then have water poured upon his head.” He argued that the significance of baptism can be understood, and its regen­erative experience appropriated, only in spiritual maturity, and that Jesus himself set a fitting pattern in being himself baptized at the age of about thirty (Lk. 2:23): These things can be understood by n o one fully in the first adolescence, because at this stage that spirit of d ivinity is submerged in the storms of youth and that hidden fire [the Spirit] is unable to be felt amidst the flowing saps (humor) of maturing flesh. Just as an adolescent is not really fitted to grasp ethical teachings, so also he is not fitted to understand the gospel, however much he may be instructed at this

42  Restitutio, 484/2:209: “This day have I begotten thee .” Servetus does not attempt to reconcile the baptismal and the ascensionist “generations” of Chr ist in Luk e and Acts with Hebrews respectively. Servetus as a bib lical scholar was aware that at the Epiphan y, the voice from heaven echoes Ps.2:7: “Thou art my son, this day I have begotten thee,” a wording that survives in the Codex Bezae for Lk. 3:22.The same verse is adduced at the Ascension (Acts 4:9, Heb. 1:5).

chapter 11.1.e

unusual doctrines & institutions  453

time. Therefore Christ after the earlier period of instruction set forth as the proper age of baptism that of thirty years.43 In stressing faith and minimizing the physical, the solafideist pedobaptists failed, Servetus said, to make the distinction, well known to the ancient Church, between catechumens and neophytes. The catechumens knew about salvation; the neophytes rejoiced in their salvation. But the pedobaptists have entirely lost the ancient experience and hence the conception of b aptismal regeneration, and concentrate on Christ’s presence solely in respect to the sacrament of the altar: You are [, however,] not able to eat because you have not been born! Are you not stupid, you who will that Christ’s body be present at the Supper, but do not will that his Spirit be present in Baptism?44 Servetus’ baptismal theology was much more closely linked with a doctrine of the fall of man from Paradise than was that of the Swiss Brethren and the South German Anabaptists. In fact, it was the very physical sense of original sin and the pervasiveness of demonical temptation that for Servetus made baptismal reparation such a relief and remedy for the assaults of wickedness from within and without. “Continuously,” he wrote, “we have in us two princes (principes) in combat, God in the spirit and the serpent in the flesh.”45 Servetus thought even of t he highest science as “serpentine” when not baptized in Christ. He visualized the two trees in Paradise, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of g ood and evil, and considered them both as representing Christ. The latter, no less than the former, “was good … because in the Paradise of God no evil tree could grow up.”46 Adam’s fall was occasioned by h is eating prematurely of “the unripe fruit” of t he second tree, and thereby he was deprived of the fruit of both trees and became subject to death and liable to even greater delinquency: “it [the fruit of the second tree] was at the time forbidden to Adam and reserved for Christ alone, in order that we, when we should have acquired through him knowledge without deceit, would become like gods [by grace].” For even if Adam had not sinned, “Christ who was as Word with God would have ultimately shared that [saving] knowledge with the world,” making the state of t he reborn in Christ superior to that of A dam before the Fall. The concept of felix culpa was seldom so stressed in the whole Reformation era as by Servetus. Compare, however, Hubmaier’s conception of the baptismal empowering of 43

 Restitutio, 372/2:90.  Ibid., 487/2:211. 45  Ibid., 366/2:84. 46  Ibid., 370/2:88. 44

454  the radical reformation

chapter 11.1.e

the believer to distinguish between good and evil (Ch. 9.2). Thus, for Servetus, God, who had intended that man should have life and some­day also the knowledge of good and evil, established in his program of redemption first the Law. From fallen Adam to the establishment of the Law under Moses, unmitigated death reigned (Rom. 5:14), but with the La w the elect people w ere enabled to distinguish between good and e vil and prepare themselves for an e ventual salvation. Provisionally they were encouraged in a temporal way by the promise of entry into a land flowing with milk and honey. Canaan in Servetus’ speculations was, in fact, a small portion of what had once been Paradise, now blasted by sin and only par tly and precariously restored with but two (the Tigris and Euphrates) of the original four rivers still flowing, and even these at too great a distance to produce verdure in Canaan. The identification of E den and Canaan was very important in Servetus’ baptismal theology. It was grounded textually in Isa. 51:3, 58:11; Ezek. 36:35; and Joel 2:3, where Zion, like a desert, is variously described as becoming like Paradise, with the spiritual verdure made possible by the flowing of waters interpreted by Servetus as anticipatory of the life-giv­ing waters of b aptism.47 Servetus made the whole of h is Paradise-wilder­ness theology baptismally specific in appealing to Christ’s word in John 7:38: “He who believes in me, as the Scripture [Isa. 44:3, 55:1, 58:11] has said, ‘Out of his heart shall flow [the four] rivers of living water.’” Serve­t us, seizing upon this text, in which the Evangelist specifically refers to the gift of the Holy Spirit and says it could not be imparted until Christ himself is glorified ( John 14:16, 26, 15:26, 16:7),48 developed the great conviction about the restoration of Paradise made possible by Christ’s death, resurrection, glorification, and by his institution of believers’ bap­t ism (“believers in me”). Redemptive rebirth is from above in water and the Spirit (citing Col. 1:13 and Eph. 2:6), whereby the believer is deliv­ered from the dominion of death and serpentine darkness and transferred to the Kingdom of the Son.49 Salvation for Servetus was very rich in meaning, involving the body, mind, and heart, namely, salvation from physical death (ultimately at the 47  Ibid., 374/2:92.On the whole development of this motif, see my article “The Wilderness and Paradise in the Histor y of the Church,” CH 28 (1959): 3ff., and my book Wilderness and Paradise in Christian Thought (NewYork: Harper, 1962), esp. ch. 4. 48  The emphasis of Servetus on the presence of the Spirit (once with Christ at his baptism) in believers’ immersion suggests some parallel with baptism in Mar peck, likewise framed in an idiosyncratic Triadology (Ch. 18.4). 49  The careful reader of Ser vetus cannot but surmise that the ancient Chr istian sense of Baptism as the pr incipal sacrament of salv ation was accessible to this lear ned Navarrese not only in patristic literature, but also quite plausibly in his native familiarity with ancient baptismal usage among the Basques who pr eserved practices elsewhere wiped out by the Visigothic Arians. Cf. n. 53 below.

chapter 11.1.e

unusual doctrines & institutions  455

General Resurrection), salvation from distorted (serpentine) science, and salvation from all manifestation of hate. Servetus, harking back to the original cause of the Fall, stressed the ubiquity of “serpentine knowledge from the coils of which the believer can be released only in dying with Christ in baptism”: Serpentine knowledge (serpentina sapienta), when we begin to taste it, drives us into sin and hurls us into a kind of abyss (barathrum) of death, so that a new kind of death requires a new kind of l ife through Christ, a s piritual death, a s piritual life. There follows here by a c ertain antithesis a t rue measure (commoditas) of penitence, faith, and baptism.… In this mystery, our sins having been forgiven, Christ again, through the Holy Spirit, endows us with the knowledge of good and evil and deifies us with a new divinity/ sanctity (deitate) [by grace], freeing us from the serpentine deitas, which is the wisdom of the world.50 Those who from Moses to Christ had lived at least by faith were relieved in hell by the assurance of eventual resurrection. To this end, Christ harrowed hell for three days. The descensus was a v ery prominent feature also in other baptismal systems (Ch. 32.2.c), in contrast, for example, to Schwenckfeld as Spiritualist of the glorified Christ. Hence the importance attached in some radical circles to the Gospel of Nicodemus (Acts of Pilate) (Ch. 32.1). Moreover, with the institution of b elievers’ baptism, whereby one becomes reborn as the adoptive son or daughter of G od by g race, that second death, which is the death of the spirit, has become overcome. But both the relieved saints in hell and those properly rebaptized must await the final victory over the first death, when, at the General Resurrection, hell gives up the dead, “the great and small,” that is, not only the righteous and the wicked, but among the righteous those who have not been baptized, including the saints of t he Old Testament and children under the New Dispensation. Christ will save the little ones directly: “Those who perished solely because of the deed of Adam, solely also through the deed of Christ will be helped without pedobaptism.”51 We turn to Servetus’ reasons for opposing infant baptism, only some of which have been thus far suggested. Servetus holds that children, though implicated in the Fall and therefore under the condemnation of t he first death, have not yet become infested with serpentine knowledge and are not 50 51

 Restitutio, 367/2:85.  Ibid., 368/2:86. In this view Servetus is one with all Germanic Anabaptists.

456  the radical reformation

chapter 11.1.e

direly in need of Christ’s redemptive baptism, which, in any event, can do them no good until the serpent is fully uncoiled within them: “Who­ever has not yet the deity of the knowledge of the serpent is not capable of the new deity of Christ.”52 Servetus lists twenty-five reasons against pedo­baptism and concludes: Baptism is, having heard the word of t he gospel, in the unity of faith, to be cleansed by t he laver of water into the unity and fellowship of the spotless heavenly Church [Eph. 4:4ff., 5:26–27]. In infant baptism no spiritual Church is assembled, but a Babylonian chaos. One can hear the familiar cries of baptized babies in the church! One of the least developed parts of Servetus’ baptismal theology is the relationship of baptism to the Church. In antipedobaptist proposition number twelve, he quotes 1 Pet. 3:21, which for Denck, on the basis of Luther’s translation, had become determinative for the conception of the baptized Bundesgenosse. Servetus gives the Greek behind German Bund and the Latin stipulatio, and betrays no awareness of the constitutive, ecclesiological significance attached to it for most of the German, and later the Dutch, Anabaptists. Servetus, indeed, seems for a l ong time to have been nearly the only member of his church.53 As for the possible origin of the baptismal theology of Servetus, we have already surmised that he shared the concern of many a Spaniard about the inefficacy of baptismal affusion in the case of t he Marranos forced as adults to change religion (Ch. 1.2.c). Here therefore we limit our observations to the possibility of Paulician influence on Servetus and on Anabaptism in general. The Paulicians stressed the age of thirty for baptism and in the manner urged by Servetus.

52

 Ibid., 368/2:86.  But, since Ser vetus was not, like his Strassb urg partner in dialo gue, Schwenckfeld, a Spiritualist, who would acquiesce in the suspension of physical sacraments, one may conjecture that he will have had in mind his native Navarre (the Iberian kingdom of Navarre incorporated with the Spanish kingdom only in 1510,while Gallic Navarre survived as a petty kingdom,with its ancient local prerogatives intact, until united with France under Henry IV). Comparable to the Armenians, the Basques in both Iber ian and Gallic Na varre retained in their chur ch the primitive order of deaconesses and the earliest for m of Chr istian marriage. Cf. Julien Vinson, Les Basques et les pa ys basques (Paris, 1882), and Encyclopedia Britannia, 11th ed. (1910), 488A. The earliest printed form of Basque is the Calvinist translation of the Ne w Testament by Jean de Licarraque (La Rochelle, 1571). In our nar rative only a v ery few persons acknowledged themselves to be Ser vetians, Claude of Savoy (11.2.c.4) and Peter Gonesius (Ch. 25.3 and 4). And both these teachers did seek to gather like-minded believers. Without our awareness of the Iberian stratum from which he was moved, Servetus would not otherwise appear like the huge, lone boulder he was on the glaciated landscape of sixteenthcentury Europe. 53

chapter 11.1.e / 11.1.f

unusual doctrines & institutions  457

Analogically, if not genetically, the relationship between Greek (and Armenian) Paulicians and Anabaptists, who stressed immersion at age thirty, is astonishingly close, except on the question of p acifism. But even here, the Paulician stress on the cross of personal suffering corresponds to that of prospective martyrdom in connection with believers’ baptism. Repudiating the baptism of the Orthodox Church, both Eastern and Armenian, the devotees of this ancient Eastern sect, which has survived into modern times,54 likewise practiced rebaptism. Their whole theology centered in the baptism at the Jordan. The latter was basic in their Adoptionist Christology55 and in their insistence upon believers’ baptism. Whether the Anabaptists of Austria by way of the Danube or the Venetian Anabaptists (Ch. 22.2) by way of their Greek colonial outposts came into direct contact with the Paulicians during the formative period of Anabaptism is only a conjecture. But we know that some of the Venetian Anabaptists sought refuge among a kindred group in Thessalonica and Larissa (Ch. 22.4) and that later three Paulician Baptists visited Moravia and were well received (Ch. 26.2). It is of i nterest also that the eleventh-century archbishop of Ochrida, Theophylact, who was familiar with Paulicians in the Balkans (calling them incorrectly Manichaeans), wrote extensive biblical commentaries. These were published by O ecolampadius in Basel in 1524, 1525, 1527, and were well known to several leaders of t he Radical Reformation, for example, to Grebel, Crautwald, the Münsterites, and Hubmaier. (The latter faultily cites Theophylact as patristic along with Cyprian in favor of b elievers’ baptism.56 ) It is of s pecial interest, therefore, that Theophylact, like Servetus, Schlaffer, and Schiemer, speaks of the exemplary thirty years of Christ at his baptism and of the dove and the olive branch (symbolic of salvation in the ark above the floods) in his commentary on Matthew.57 f. Baptism Saves Those Incapable of Articulate Faith: Paracelsus By the time Servetus came to write extensively about baptism, he was a physician. He shared with another physician, Paracelsus (Ch. 8.4.b), a physical, almost magical, view of baptism. But whereas Servetus stressed as an Anabaptist the postponement of the rite, if feasible, to the Dominical year thirty, when it might exercise its potency to the full, Paracelsus, reinforced 54  The most accessible version of their baptismal theology is The Key of Truth: A Manual of the Paulician Church in Armenia (Oxford, 1898). 55  There is even some indication that Christ is fully Son only after his Ascension. Cf. above at n. 24 and on Servetus further (11.3.e.3). 56  Several references are brought together in SAW, 80, n. 25. Theophylact of Bulgaria is sometimes called Vulgarius (a contamination of Latin Bulgarus with Greek Voulgaros). See Elsass 1 (QGT 8), p. 172 n. 16. Ochrida or Okhrid is in Slavic Macedonia. 57  Migne, PG 133: col. 178.

458  the radical reformation

chapter 11.1.f

by his perceptive observations when he traveled extensively in Eastern Orthodox lands, supplied fresh arguments for the baptism of infants. He wrote about baptism in two treatises, Vom Taufen der Christen 58 and Libellus de baptismate christiano. He first of all stressed the indelible character of baptism, drawing attention to the chrism as well as the water whereby each baptizand becomes an anointed one, a christus or king. He compared the sign of baptism to military insignia for identification in spiritual warfare, to the cassock of the priest, which makes him inviolable, to the cowl of the monk or friar, which betokens his being partly withdrawn from the world, and even to circumcision, which is an ineffaceable mark to be heeded by the world and the devil. But much more distinctive than Paracelsus’ arguments for the indelibility of t he sacrament are his arguments against the Anabap­t ists, who in stressing explicit, testimonial faith not only postpone the rite unnecessarily in respect to infants but, by implication, condemn to perdition the large number of t he illiterate, the deaf and dumb, the feebleminded, and the insane, of whom, as a humane physician, Paracelsus had reason to be especially conscious. Concerned for their salvation, he pointed out that Jesus himself had been especially cogni­z ant of the needs of the sick and the insane and ordained baptism in the name of the Triune God as the means of saving the many who would be lost if there were only the Johannine baptism on confession of sin and avowal of faith: For, as long as it is faith which makes one blessed through Christ, the little ones, namely, infants, fools, the deaf and dumb, the insane, and otherwise simple people who are neither conscious of, nor capable of, overcoming sin, are robbed of s alvation without even knowing it, for [according to this view] they are damned [at least, the adults]. But Christ is merciful. … He redeemed them [also] on the cross and instituted baptism in order that they might be blessed and, remaining thus, enter into the kingdom of God. … As soon as they are baptized they are blessed and redeemed without [the need of explicit] faith, love, or hope. … Once baptism is there, it protects the soul of the captive. Thus all they are blessed who are deprived of [ the capacity for] faith; and the devil may thereafter do no harm to the soul, neither that of children nor that of the mad, the imbecile, or the possessed. … For why otherwise did Christ improve upon the baptism of John with his word and

58

 Gesammelte Werke, Abt. 2, 1:317–59.

chapter 11.1.f / 11.2.a

unusual doctrines & institutions  459

blessing of the Trinity, if it was not to protect those deprived of their reason?59 Paracelsus who stood with the peasants in their uprising in the Tyrol, who consorted with Anabaptists and Spiritualists, cogently reminded his intellectual and martyr-minded associates that Christ came to exalt those also of such low degree that they could never aspire to all the disciplines of the spirit. We shall deal elsewhere with some Spiritualist and Evangelical Rationalist theologies of b aptism in connection with Schwenckfeld’s associate Crautwald in Silesia (Ch. 15.3) and with Camillo Renato (Ch. 22.1). We can no more than anticipate here the Polish Anabaptists, drawn from the nobiliary classes as well as from the class of b urghers together with a f ew peasants (who will extensively debate the social implications of believers’ baptism, even to the freeing of serfs, and who will publish in Cracow their Catechesis of 1574, a s ummary of t heir doctrines and practice of b elievers’ immersion, to die and rise with Christ, under him as the Prophet, Priest, and King [Chs. 24.4; 29.3], in order to live apart in the world), and remark further that Faustus Socinus (who already in Basel upheld the Eucharist as the sole ordinance mandated by Christ; Ch. 24.4), will, however, on becoming the spokesman and apologist for a socially critical Christianity among the immersionist Polish Brethren after 1580, argue persistently against baptism altogether, except for converts from Judaism or Islam (Ch. 29.8).

2. Alterations in the Doctrine of the Trinity a. The Initial Indifference of the Magisterial Reformers to the Nicaenum In the earliest formulations of doctrine in the classical (magisterial) Protestant Reformation with its emphasis on faith in the work of Christ accomplished once for all and without merit on the part of the believers, all undergirded by heightened attention to an intensified Pauline-Augustinian doctrine of double predestination (to eternal reprobation in hell or to blessedness in heaven) against the Semi-Pelagianism, the great conciliar dogmas of the Trinity, and the two natures of Christ give way to the new convictions as to justification by faith alone with great reserve about sanctification (e.g., the monastic quest for holiness, perfection). The earliest catechisms and accounts of the new, but presumptively apostolic faith, disencumbered from accumulative usages, for example by Philip Melanchthon in his Loci communes (Wittenberg, 1521) and William Farel with his Sommaire et brève déclaration (Geneva, c. 1525; Ch. 23.5) make nothing at all of the distinctive 59  Paracelsus, Vom Taufen der Christen, 324ff. That Christ’s Atonement covers innocent children and mentally r etarded individuals was first asserted by Irenaeus; see J ohn Lawson, The Biblical Theology of Saint Irenaeus (London: Epworth, 1948), 216ff.

460  the radical reformation

chapter 11.2.a

dogmas of Christianity. Although Melanchthon indeed refers to God as Unus or Trinus, this is not at all developed after his remarking how the old scholastic “disputations of foolishness obscur ed for us the benefits of Christ.” He goes on: “For out of these things Chr ist is properly known, if, at least, that is, to know Christ is to know his benefits, not what those teach who stare at his two natures, the modes of his incarnation.”60 William Farel in 1525 made no reference at all to the Trinity or the two natures of Christ among “lieux forts nécessaires a ung chacun Chrétien.” And even in the Geneva Catechism of 1536, for which Calvin was criticized as “an Arian” by Peter Caroli (Ch. 23.3.b), the article 2 “ Ung Seul Dieu” reads more like the Shema than Te Deum Laudamus.61 When Luther came to write his Die drei symbole (1538),62 he considerd the Apostles’ Creed, the Te Deum Laudamus, and the Athanasian Creed, saying that he much preferred the simpler Apostles’ Creed and scarcely mentioned the Nicene Creed! It can be generalized that the Magisterial Reformation in its two basic continental forms, as it moved respectively toward the second Helvetic Confession of 1 566 and the Formula of C oncord of 1 577, will become ever more specifically Catholic in upholding the ancient conciliar creeds and in defining contemporary heresies with patristic and scholastic labels. If for no other reason, the challenges of t he radicals are of g reat historic moment by their having induced the magisterial reformers to gain fluency in patristic syntax. The dogma of the Trinity, the term first used in Greek (Trias) by Theophilus of Antioch (c. 180) and in Latin (Trinitas) by Tertullian in De pudicitia, 21, became a concern of the magisterial reformers, preeminently only after the challenge of Michael Servetus to Calvin in 1553 (Ch. 23.4) and the ensuing general Protestant support for Calvin’s drastic action against the Spanish heretic. 60  Melanchthons Werke in Auswahl, 8 vols., ed. Robert Stupperich, 2:1, ed. Hans Engelland, Loci communes von 1521 (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1952), 7. Melanchthon’s subsequent editions of the Loci to 1555 testify to his g rowing consternation about doctr ines he or iginally professed to be without interest. In the edition of 1555, translated by Clyde L. Manschreck, Melanchthon on Chr istian Doctrine (New York: Oxford, 1963), art. 2, “Of the Three Persons,” Melanchthon was highly articulate, rehabilitating all the conciliar terminology with testimonies from several Church Fathers.Very near the beg inning of the ar ticle he only mentions Servetus “in our time” as representative of “the Jewish blasphemy of imagining that there is only a human natur e in the Messiah,” a phrasing that sho ws that he had not g rappled with Servetus’ obscure Christology. Melanchthon is not always surefooted among the ancients. In the 1559 edition, the last, he defines Persona as “substantia individua, intelligens et incommunicabilis”; Werke, ed. Engelland, 181. 61  E. F. Karl Müller , Die Bekenntnisschriften der refor mierten Kirche (Leipzig, 1903; Zurich: Theologischer Verlag,1987), no.10. In article 6,“Salvation in Jesus,” there is a r eference to the Apostolicum; and in no. 12,“On the Invocation of God alone and the Inter cession of Christ,” the point is made that Chr ist is “our mediator and advocate” and hence that prayer to God is “in the name of Jesus Christ.” 62  WA 50:255–83.

chapter 11.2.b

unusual doctrines & institutions  461

b. Trinitarian, Antitrinitarian, Anti-Nicene The term “Antitrinitarian”63 has in scholarly literatures come to be widely used to designate the opponents in the sixteenth century of t he NiceneConstantinopolitan formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity (Triadology). The upholders of the received Catholic dogma of the Trinity were not originally so identified. Up to the controversies of t he sixteenth century, Trinitarii referred either to members of the Order of the Most Holy Trinity with an austere Augustinian rule (founded in the diocese of Meaux, 1198) or to persons heretical with regard to the dogma of Nicaea. Hence some of the first Antitrinitarians were called, in fact, by their Nicene critics Trinitarii in the second scholastic sense of the appellation.64 In the interest of still greater precision and flexibility, the comprehensive standard term “Antitrinitarian” in modern scholarly literature will hereafter, in this narrative, be frequently replaced with “anti-Nicene,” for many radicals uncomfortable with the Nicaenum grasped at a n umber of AnteNicene formulations. Common to all sixteenth-century opponents of t he Nicene-Constantinopolitan formulation of Three Persons in one substantia (in scholasticism: in one essentia) was their objection to what they often and improperly construed as “papal,” when, of course, it was ultimately Greek philosophical terminology enforced by the authority of the Christianized Roman Empire and only subsequently by Lateran and other largely Western councils. I use frequently the term “Triadology” to embrace both the Nicene-Constantinopolitan formulary and others as well, even Tritheism. Most of the philosophically sophisticated Fathers of Nicaea in 325, in arguing for the consubstantiality of the Father and of the Son (and at Constantinople in 381, of the Holy Spirit), were engaged in a t remendously creative effort in fundamental theology, fusing Greek philosophical and Hebrew biblical terms and categories in the conciliar climax of more than a half-century of patristic disputation, in their formulation of the one substantia (Greek: ousia) in “the Three Persons” (Greek: hypostases). Comparable in exquisite theological refinement was the formulation of the hypostatic union in Christ, “the one persona (Greek: prosopon) in (or: out of ) two 63  The term, with or without h yphen, has been v ariously capitalized, thereby giving a detectable typographic clue to a wr iter’s own sympathies, as betw een the “Antis” and the “Trinitarians”! Even the “purely objective” historian cannot extricate himself from at least the semblance of partisanship by capitalizing one or both par ts or leaving them in lower case.The term was intended, however, as a scholarly replacement of ancient appellations for heresy, as in the sixteenth century, when such ter ms as “Arian,” “Sabellian,” and “Photinian” were revived polemically and their definitions were often taken directly from the summaries that had become conventional in the Corpus Iuris Canonici; but they were imprecise and in many instances utterly inappropriate for those so labelled “patristically” in the sixteenth century. 64  In the mandate of 1570 of Maximilian II from Prague against the proto-Unitarians in Transylvania, they are called Sacramentarii and Trinitarii. The document is pictured in Williams, Lubieniecki, Plate 42.

462  the radical reformation

chapter 11.2.b

natures” of the Council of Chalcedon (451) and the fur ther christological refinements up through Nicaea II in 787, along with the exclusion of those who deny the title of Theotokos (God-bearer) to the Virgin Mary, and who thereby presume to separate the plenar y human nature from the divine Person, and, on the other side, the exclusion of those who confuse the divine and the human natures and hold that by this confusion the divine nature is vicariously passible. This last position was often challenged or circum­vented in the sixteenth century in the post -patristic conflict over Christ the Mediator (1 Tim. 2:5; Ch. 11.3.c). Several ancient solutions which had been expr essly denounced crop out anew in the sixteenth centur y, as, for example, that the human nature of Christ is of a heavenly essence (cf. Menno Simons), or the mixture or the assimilation of the two natures as one (cf. Schwenckfeld).65 When Origen of A lexandria and Caesarea dealt with the Trinity in Peri Ÿ Ar≈w'√ (De principiis [On First Principles]), he set forth a Triadology in terms indeed related to those of P lotinus, for both had been pupils of Ammonius Saccas (d. 242), founder of Neoplatonism; but his Triadology was programmatically against any anthropomorphism of t he three divine Principia as persons in the modern sense of the Latin word except, of course, for Jesus Christ. The early Church had inherited from Hellenistic Judaism the concept of the preexistent Messiah, whether as foreseen in the mind of God or, as reflected in Col. 1:15, as “the firstborn of all creation” (a hard text for the ancient anti-Arians). God, in Patristic thought, was invisible except in the icons of Christ, both the pictures of him in human likeness and symbolically in the imperial/prelatical personages as his embodied vicars. The artists of t he postNicene age, in mosaic and fresco, were long restrained from going beyond the theological and canonical strictures imposed by s uccessive councils (Quiniset in Trullo, 692; Nicea II, 787), especially in the East. For Hellenistic Christians, Jesus as the Christ was the unique embodiment of t he Godhead ( John 1:18, 14:9, etc.), which remained otherwise beyond the scope and daring of C hristian iconography. The first Iconoclastic Controversy extended from 726 until 787. The definitive conciliar legiti­m ation of holy icons/images was resolved by Nicaea II in 787. Byzantine Christianity even then remained reserved about iconographic representation of t he Trinity (only symbolically in the three angelic visitors to Abraham and Sarah under the oaks of Mamre, Genesis 18), since in any case it was only the Second Person who underwent the Incarnation. And there was the complete setback in the Second Iconoclastic Controversy (841–42), which ended with the replacement of an iconolastic patriarch of 65

 The reader may infer what I think was in part at stake anciently from my article of long ago,“Christology and Church-State Relations in the Fourth Century,” CH 20, this volume not continuously paginated (September and December issues, 1951): 31–33, 3–26.

chapter 11.2.b

unusual doctrines & institutions  463

Constantinople by an iconodule and the consequent celebration of what was considered the Triumph of Orthodoxy, 843, ever since commemorated on the first Sunday of Lent. The iconoclasts, when arguing against the iconod ules in christological terms, alleged that by representing necessarily only the humanity of Christ, the iconodules either divided the Unity of the Person of Christ in two natures (like the once-condemned Nestorians) or con­founded the two natures (like the once-condemned Monoph ysites and their v ariant successors, e.g., the Monothelites, with their insistence on only the one will in Christ).66 In the decisively formative period of Christian theology, that is, during the patristic and conciliar formulation of Triadology and Christology, Greek Orthodox theologians, retrieving and adapt­ing a distinction in Aristotle, carried on both apophatic (negative/reticent/later even mystical) theology and kataphatic (positivistic/explicit/even anthropomorphic) theology. These two modalities of theology were long kept closely in touch with each other philosophically, devotionally, liturgically, and iconographically, notably in the Orthodox East. Long before the sixteenth century the Latin West, which had only confusedly participated in the debate of Nicaea II, had in contrast to Byzantium developed a wholly different iconography, characterized by extreme representations of s uffering and majesty, and of a ll Three Per­sons of t he Holy Trinity. In late medieval popular piety and even high iconography of the Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, were often pictured as almost identical in appearance as kings or prelates or even simply as three men of grave demeanor. Protestantism, Lutheran, Reformed, and Anglican, was an-iconic, emphasizing salvation by hearing the Word (Rom. 10:17) rather than in seeing holy pictures of the embodied Word and of all the saints. The Reformed and most groupings among the radicals eliminated holy pictures and, often in what they considered holy anger, became iconoclastic, inspired by the prophetic denunciations of ancient idolatries in Canaan but seldom repeating the christologi­cal arguments of the Byzantine iconoclasts. The Evangelical Ratio­n alists, with their sober philological adhesion to the biblical texts, were never tumultous iconoclasts like many puritans in Switzerland, The Netherlands, England, and Scotland; but in attacking the icons

66  Stephen Gero conducted his survey from Leo the Isaurian through the reign of Theophilus (d. 842) by calling iconoclasm “an imperial heresy”; “The Byzantine Iconoclastic Movement” in L’icône dans la théologie et l’art, Les ètudes Théologiqués de Chambéry 9 (Chambésy-Genève: Centre Orthodoxie du Patriarcat Oecuménique, 1990), 45–63.

464  the radical reformation

chapter 11.2.b

of the Trinity theologically they intended to make clear their devotion to the one eternal God of Israel for aye the same.67 Repelled by such ambient iconography from the Gothic period, many theological radicals, brooders among them, could not accord any status to the view that the patristic and conciliar formulations of the triadic and yet triune character of t he Divine (as neither radically dualist nor incoherently multifarious) had been dogmatically forged to commend the received Christocentric redemptive monotheism of the Judaic tradition to the sophisticated Hellenistic mind. Nor were the sixteenth-century critics aware of the degree to which the Fathers themselves had once eschewed any iconic visualization of the Three Hypostases of the Trinity, any visualization of the Three as anthropomorphic figures except for the Second Person, e.g. as the exalted Christ omnipotent (Christos Pantocrator). Theological radicals, especially in Spain, Italy, and among those on the eastern Byzantine-rite and Muslim frontiers, finding the iconographic representations of t he Triune God as royal or prelatical personages intolerable, would first come to question the liturgical practice of a ddressing the persons of t he Trinity in separate prayers and praise. The questioners were no longer aware that in Christian antiquity these potencies in the divine had been conceptualized as Prinicipia/Archai among which, issuing from the First, were the filial principle as sonship, and the Third, eternally engendered, as “proceeding” (but not emanating) from the First as the Spiritual Principle, the Creator Spiritus ‘by whose will the world’s foundations first were laid, yet visiting every pious mind’ (Rabanus Maurus). Apophatically the Church Fathers had pointed to the eternal pulsation of the triadic divine act, uniquely embodied and revealed in Christ, against any fundamental separation into a cosmic good and cosmic evil. Triadology had emerged as a conciliar transcription of what the Fathers embraced as a coherent, stabilizing, and teleological understanding of divine reality.

67

 While in the pr esent narrative I will ha ve taken note of se veral iconoclastic episodes, the careful reader should know that I have not given any prominence to them, partly because iconoclasm grew out of a variety of economic, social, scriptural, ecclesiastical (fewer instances), and strictly theological motivations. This sixteenth-century iconoclasm w as shared with Lutheranism (only in one early phase, as in Livonia) and in several outreaches of the Reformed movement from Scotland to the eastern borders of the Empire. Episodes of iconoclasm in the eastern realms beyond Germania, except for assaults on Cor pus Christi Day processions, seem to have been infr equent. The radicals b uilt new edifices in simple style without pictures or statues.The most comprehensive account of the development of iconoclasm (of music as well as of the visual ar ts) in the age of Refor mation as it relates to one of the Refor mers, Zwingli, is by Charles Garside, Jr., Zwingli and the Arts (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1966; 2d. ed., NewYork: Da Capo Press,1981).Other studies of the movement in the age of Reform include John Phillips, The Reformation of Images: Destruction of Art in England, 1535–1600 (Berkeley: University of Califor nia Press, 1973); David Freedberg, Iconoclasm and Painting in the Rev olt of the Netherlands, 1566–1609 (New York: Garland, 1988); and Helmut Feld, Der Ikonoklasmus des Westens (Leiden/NewYork: Brill, 1990).

chapter 11.2.b / 11.2.c

unusual doctrines & institutions  465

The sixteenth-century theological radicals, particularly in the eastern realms, became freshly aware of t he Latin addition to the Nicene Creed, the Spirit proceeding also from the Son (Filioque). Thus, when the whole of tradi­t ional Christian dogma became subject to both learned and popular scrutiny in the light of the scriptural and solafideist and antischolastic thrust of the age, it was inevitable that especially within the Radical Reformation there would be diverse attempts everywhere to return to what could be considered an exclu­sively revealed (biblical) interpretation of t he doctrine of the Trinity, the more urgently, as even within the Magisterial Reformation, the conciliar creeds were at first marginalized. In some instances the new Triadologies and the new Chris­tologies repristinated old conciliarly or papally condemned positions but in most instances the exponents were not consciously reviving them, though many of the radical theologians consulted the ancient Fathers. Even the most radical were not disposed to endorse what had once been formally anathematized, and hence none of them called themselves, for example, Arians or Nestorians or Monophysites. c. Selected Radical Triadologies As we turn to the brooders and radicals on the doctrine of the Trinity in the sixteenth century, we bear in mind that the classical reformers were themselves not yet called Trinitarians (Ch. 11.2.b), while sustaining for themselves the claim to being “Catholic.” Initially we need not marvel, then, at the variety of formulations as well as the widespread inattention to the high doctrines and conventions of doctrinal formulations among many groupings to the left of the magisterial reformers. We have already taken note of several, like the “Godless” painters in the company of Dürer in Nuremberg and the first published defense of the received dogma of C hrist in the century by A ndreas Althammer (1526), which may have been directed also against the Unitarian Anabaptist, Louis Haetzer (Ch. 7.2). We noted in passing Martin Cellarius (Chs. 3.2, 10.c), who in his De operibus Dei (Strassburg, 1527) understood Christ as something of a celestial man. We lift up a few other figures for particular scrutiny. (1) Christian Entfelder (Ch. 10.3.e) in Von Gottes und Christi … Erkenntnis (Augsburg, 1530) made the first attempt in the Reformation era to dissolve the dogma of the Trinity into a purely philosophical speculation while preserving its mystery and redemptive significance. In this respect, Entfelder was perhaps still closer to the apophatic theology of the Fathers than initially many of t he magisterial reformers, and he was in any case much more sophisticated than most of the other radical reformers who often took quite literally and imaginatively the paternity of God the Father. Entfelder showed how the undivided Godhead (of the Rhenish mystics) out of h is very being, as the Good, as love, revealed himself in threefold power (mit dreifaltiger Krafft). Of these three powers traditionally known as the three

466  the radical reformation

chapter 11.2.c

Persons, the first is essence (Wesen), the self-sufficient power underlying all things; metaphorically, the Father. The second power is reality or activity (Wirklichait), arising “essentially from the essence” but inseparable from it and eternal. This activity is the Word or Son, as the power manifested in creation, seeking to be the place of peace (Ruostat) for all the children of God but ever without coercion and always with respect for, the free will of every person: Leaf, grass, and all the animals on the earth, in the sky, and the water, yea, everything that a person eats, drinks, works, and does, gives testimony to this activity, that would gladly lead us at the right [hand] unto the garden of d elights of t he goodness of t he divine essence, nevertheless without coercion (Bezwengnusz), as also God himself and all creatures according to their kind offer their goods freely and let them ripen in their own season. Thus, also, the divine activity awaits patiently upon man’s will to the end that it, wanting not in the same action with which other creatures are endowed, will freely testify to this [divine] activity and yet, if it chooses the left [side] … will not have reason to complain.68 This description of the pervasiveness of God reappears in some of the same phrasing in Servetus (Ch. 23.4). In Entfelder, after the goodness of the essentiating Father, through the love of the all-activating Son, pervaded all creation and sought to make love available, this goodness could then be called “Spirit or wind,” holy in fact, fruitful, and pure, because it alone, from an immortal, holy essence, through the living, pure activity “bloweth where it listeth.” Here, in language no longer Nicene or traditional, Entfelder, still without reference to the Incarnation and using “power” in preference to “person,” nevertheless restated in the vernacular of mystical speculation the patristic awareness of an internal, as distinguished from the purely economic or dispensational, Trinity. Yet for him the Spirit was, in effect, the opening in humanity of a n awareness of God as at once being and goodness. After describing how human beings are variously reminded of t he revealed knowledge of God by means of manifold causes and oppositions in creation, Entfelder wrote concerning the knowledge of the true Mediator, who is not merely a divinized man, but actually a man from heaven:

68  Entfelder in v on Dunin-Borkowski, “Quellenstudien,” JSMF, 108. For the medie val mystical and scholastic backg round, see Karl Ruh, “Die trinitarische Spekulation in deutscher Mystik und Scholastik,” Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 72 (1953): 24–53; Roland Bainton, “Michael Servetus and the Trinitarian Speculation of the Middle Ages,” Autour de Servet et Castellion et Becker, 29–46. André Séguenny pictures the title page and character izes the work in BD 1 (1980): 46–47.

chapter 11.2.c

unusual doctrines & institutions  467

Although the paternal essence, God as God declares himself to be such in the highest, … the [divine] activity, itself God, allowed itself to be seen in the deep (in der tieff) as man and Son, to be heard, grasped, and to be felt in flesh but without sin. …69 In this deep was the unique realization in the One Man, an exem­plar of what is potentially possible for all. Christ as Mediator is in effect the definitive teacher of t he way to the acknowledgment of t he goodness of t he divine being. This christological passage may suf­ficiently bring Entfelder’s triadological speculation down to earth, suggesting that in his Christology of the heavenly man he was like so many others in the Strassburg circle, a proponent of some form of t he doctrine of t he celestial flesh of Christ (11.3.a), once condemned at Chalcedon. (2) Michael Servetus, the most articulate anti-Nicene, did not in 1531 (Ch. 10.3.f ) propose to reject the doctrine of the Trinity but rather to correct the errors of t he scholastic and Nicene formulations. He would replace the philosophical argument undergirding the Trinity, consub­stantiality, with the more primitive, biblically defensible argument of t he unity of rule (the monarchianism of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit), an argument which never, even in the fourth and fifth centuries, completely disappeared as a s ubsidiary orthodox defense of t he unity of t he Godhead.70 Servetus never felt free to disregard the tes­t imony of the anteNicene Fathers and to concentrate solely on biblical texts. For him the fall of the Church dated specifically from the intru­sion of Constantine into the formulation of Christian doctrine at the Council of Nicaea. Servetus, of all the Antitrinitarians, therefore would have been most pleased with our designation “anti-Nicene.” Servetus was particularly indignant at what he considered blasphemous scholastic sophists who, in their abstraction, would deny the paternal character of God and speculate on the possibility of redemption through the Logos as immanent in an ass or stone. Later on, Calvin would misunderstand him and accuse him of a pantheism in which God could be thought of as well in a stone as in a man (Ch. 23.4).

69

 Dunin-Borkowski,“Quellenstudien,” JSMF 1 (1931): 108.  The Monarchian argument was stated earlier inTertullian’s analogy of the unity of imperial rule, despite the frequent plurality of imper ial vicegerents. It must be remarked that most ante-Nicene doctrines of the Trinity were economic/dispensational. It was the achievement of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan formulation to be ontological: to point up the r evealed intradeical relationships. 70

468  the radical reformation

chapter 11.2.c

Accepting the man Jesus as messianic Son and as such the foundation of a r econstructed Christian theology71 and picturing God the Father in the manner of l ate medieval piety, very much as the Nicene and Chalcedonian theologians did Christos Pantocrator, and finally taking quite literally the evangelical accounts of the conception of Jesus, Servetus declared that Jesus Christ was born of Mary as the natural and unique Son of God. He thereupon repudiated as a p hilosophical sophistication the claim of the “Trinitarians” 72 that the mundane generation of t he God-Man had been preceded by a n eternal generation of t he Logos-Son. But, Servetus declared, to the natural Son of G od and Mary, God the Father gave all power on heaven and earth; and Christ could be therefore properly called God likewise, “the mighty God,” prophesied by Isaiah (9:6). For Ser­vetus, the Holy Spirit was a power and not a Person of the Godhead. In the Dialogues and the earlier Errors of the Trinity, Servetus was unprepared to say of the Word of God that it was generated of the Father or that the Word was the Son of the Father before the Incarnation. In the Restitutio of 1553, Servetus will be prepared to identify and use interchangeably what in error he had distinguished, namely, the prolation of the Word in heaven, and at the Incarnation, generation or filiation of the Son (Ch. 23.4). (3) John Campanus. If in Entfelder in 1530 we have a mystical trinitarianism with progression from abysmal unity to trinity within the eternal Godhead before creation, and if in Servetus in 1531 we have a modalistic trinitarianism and personal Son only with the birth of Mary’s child, in Campanus in 1532 (Restitution) we have a clearly enunciated binitarianism which, in denying personality to the Holy Spirit, as in the case of Servetus, nevertheless postulates an eternal binity of persons, God the Father and God the Son in one essence and one nature, just as man and wife, are two persons but one flesh. Campanus’ scriptural point of departure was Gen. 1:25ff.: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; … male and female created he them.” 73 Campanus saw in the “birth” of Eve from the side of A dam, which he construed as concurrent with the creation of Adam himself, and in the nuptial-generative union of a h usband and wife as one loving flesh in marriage and procreation, the moment and the action in which creation mirrors the divine. Not in his being androgynous, not in his being heterosexual as other animals, but being of a n essentially nuptial nature, the 71  Servetus is much clearer about this in his Restitutio of 1553 than in On the Errors of the Trinity in 1531. 72  The term trinitarii for his opponents appear s in Errors and again in Restitutio, 72. Cf. above, n. 64; see Ch. 23.4. 73  Supplemented by Gen. 5:1f.

chapter 11.2.c

unusual doctrines & institutions  469

human being, of all God’s creatures, was created in the image and likeness of the Godhead. But as the wife is subject to the husband in that r elation­ship (Eph. 5:22–25), so the Son is eschatolo gically subject to the Father (1 Cor . 11:3), for, though the Father and the Son ar e one, the one in the other (J ohn 10:30, 14:11), yet the Father is g reater than the Son (J ohn 14:8). This preeminence and priority of the Father , however, is a pr ecedence within eternity before the creation of the world,which was accomplished by (von) the Father through (durch) the Son. This nuptial conception of the Godhead does not mak e of the Son a spouse but the Beloved Other. One may com­pare here the baptismal-nuptial theology of Hofmann (11.1.b). Campanus explains how the Son, though eternal, is not coeternal with the Father; how Jesus Christ is subordinate in authority to the Father; and especially how the Holy Spirit is not a person in the Godhead, but rather the common bond between the Father and the Son. Campanus was convinced that the loss of this originally apostolic and biblical understanding of the Godhead and of m an accounted for the fall of t he Church, and it was this conviction that prompted him to write his now lost Contra totum post apostolos mundum74 and his German abridgment of this earlier work, the Restitution, 1532. Campanus regarded himself as orthodox in the sense of his being apostolic and in a later letter he would acknowledge that, having in vain sought truth “among the sects and all the heretics,” he was committed to a “Catholic restitution.” 75 (4) Claude of Savoy. Although we postpone our fuller treatment of Servetus until his fateful encounter with Calvin in 1553 (Ch. 23.4), we take up the figure of C laude of S avoy. His refutation by C aspar Schwenckfeld brings together a n umber of i mportant threads. Characterized as a d isciple of S ervetus,76 Claude d’Aliod of M oûtiers on the Isère in the diocese of Tarentaise in Savoy was perhaps originally a c astellan of a c itadel near Moncalieri, protecting Turin from the south. As Claude appears in the correspondence of many Reformation notables, and as he developed a

74

 In manuscript or in pr int by July 1531; possibly identical with an allegedly Latin “Artikel-Buch.” 75  Letter to Peter Tasch in 1546; Rembert, Wiedertäufer, 270. Campanus may be compared with Georg Witzel, temporarily drawn to the Lutheran camp, who might also be characterized as a Catholic Restitutionist. It is not lik ely that Campan us’ binitarianism was influenced by the hierogamy of the Cabbalists, although Campanus knew Hebrew. Cf. Ernst Benz, Adam: der Mythus vom Urmenschen (Munich: Barth, 1955), 39–40. For the possibility of Cathar influence on the theology, anthropology, and sacramental theology of speculators such as Campanus, Servetus, and Paracelsus, see S. Hannedouche, “La Cène du Seigneur de Paracelse et le Rituel Cathare,” Cahiers d’Etudes Cathares 5 (1954): 3–15. 76  Letters of Berthold Haller to Bullinger, 3 and 7 May 1534, and to Bucer, 23 May; respectively: Bullinger, Werke, 2 Abt., 4, nos. 370, 373, and Elsass 2 (QGT 8), no. 566.

470  the radical reformation

chapter 11.2.c

considerable following in Ulm, he may be featured as one coming from an area not otherwise prominent in our narrative. Claude of S avoy first appeared as preacher in Neuchâtel as colleague of William Farel. His teachings gave offense, and first the Basel, then the Bernese, governments banished him from their jurisdictions in 1534.77 In Constance he was quite often with the ministers under examination. He concluded: “I do not believe that three Persons are one God.” Thereupon he was again banished. In Zurich his openly expressed views drew Bullinger into a defense of Chalcedon, Assertio utriusque in Christo naturae (October 1534). Not unlike Servetus, Claude was so confident in his theology that he felt drawn to convert Luther (as later Servetus with Calvin) in order to get the whole Reformation onto what he considered a sound biblical course. On the way, in Basel he discussed his views with Oswald Myconius who had him banished. It was on his way from Basel that we glimpsed him briefly in Strassburg (Ch. 10.4.b). Banished from there he was interrogated by Martin Frecht in Ulm. From this pastor’s letter to Ambrose Blauer of Constance (but at the time in the Duke of Württemberg’s capital, Stuttgart), 27 August 1534, we have one of several confessions of the Savoyard’s faith. We have also a condescending description of the compulsive itinerant theologian as “a little bit of a m an (kleiner Mendlin/parvulus homuncio) in a beret with two plumes over a balding head, dressed in a shabby black coat with a cape, without a sword” (the last possibly suggesting pacifism).78 Frecht goes on to give the argumentation of Claude of Savoy, elsewhere remarking that Claude regarded the Nicene “Trinity as no less an abomination than the Mass.” His reported confession is a rough transcript: “The Lord thy God is one.” Whence then are there two others? particularly since it is written [Rom. 11:34]: “Who hath been his counselor?” That man alone, whom Mary conceived and brought forth, is called Jesus, which is proved [by Luke 1:31–32]: “Behold thou wilt conceive and bring forth a s on and thou shalt call his name Jesus; and he will be called great and the Son of t he Most High.” Who therefore is so holy, so great, who is called the Son of God, but he who was conceived in the womb of the Virgin and born? Therefore a Christian should acknowledge none other to be the Son of God than him whom Scripture so declares. Behold, the same man, the first born of Mary, is called the Savior and not some 77

 Haller to Bullinger, 7 May 1534; Herminjard, Correspondance, 3:172–74.  Frecht to Blauer , Briefwechsel der Brüder Ambrosius und Thomas Blauer 1509–1563 , ed. Traugutt Schiess, 3 vols. (Freiburg in Breisgau, 1908–12), 1: no. 443. Writers on Claude include Bullinger, Werke, Abt. 2, no. 370, n. 39; Robert Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, 3 vols. (London, 1850), 2: no. 8; Wilbur, Socianism, 75–5; Delio Cantimori, Eretici/Häretiker, 161f., 444f. 78

chapter 11.2.c

unusual doctrines & institutions  471

divinity of C hrist. He is declared to have saved us by h is blood, not by his divinity. For this reason he himself says of himself [ John 6:54]: “who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life.” He does not say, “who eats my deity.” Therefore I am not held to eat the deity of Christ but rather his flesh and to drink his blood. They blaspheme therefore who say of the Virgin that she is the Mother of G od. For she did not bear God but Christ.79 If heaven and earth cannot contain God, how much the less the womb of a woman. In any case, if Jesus were thus divided into God and Man, the Virgin would not be the Mother of Christ, but only of a p art of him. Observe also the expression “this day” [I have begotten thee: Ps. 2:7; Acts 13:33; Heb. 1:5, 5:5],80 which indicates a d efinite time. He was not, therefore, begotten eternally of t he Father, as they [the orthodox] falsely imagine. But when came the fullness of time he sent his Son made of woman. Therefore he is precisely called the Son of God, who is made of woman. The Father gives testimony concerning him [cf. Matt. 3:17]: “This is my Son with whom I am well pleased.” Concerning whom is this said, unless it be about him who had been baptized? For surely the divinity of Christ is not said to have been baptized, but only the man was shown forth. Again [ John 1:29]: “Behold the Lamb who taketh away the sins of t he world.” In that he is said to be a Lamb, nothing of deity is included, but exactly what is appropriate for sacrifice. It is also sufficiently shown, by t he declaration [Heb. 2:16]: “He took not on him (assumpsit) 81 the nature of angels, but he took on the seed of A braham” that the Father, wishing to reconcile the world to himself, willed to do this by a creature and by blood, and not by any divinity. But the Father was in him through the plenitude of the Spirit reconciling himself to the world. It is not said that he assumed some divinity of the Son, which had existed from eternity, but only the seed of Abraham.

79

 The condemned view of Patriarch Nestorius.  Although the phrasing of Ps. 2:17,“today I have begotten thee,” is thr ice repeated in the New Testament, it is in reference to the Ascension. Nevertheless Claude was aware of the ancient reading in Luke 3:2: “Thou art my Son, this day I have begotten thee,” and infers the same for the tw o parallels of the baptismal Epiphan y, including Matt. 3:17, cited below. Although this construction would date the adoptive sonship to the baptism at age thirty, Claude has thus far argued that Jesus was the Son of God and Mary from conception. 81  Frecht,who may not have recognized the last, reports assumpsit where the Vulgate has appre­hendit and does not have the natura of Claude’s text. The text is, in scriptural tradition, interpreted to mean that the Son took the natur e of f allen human beings rather than that of fallen angels. 80

472  the radical reformation

chapter 11.2.c

I confess, however, that Jesus Christ is God in that manner in which he himself said that he was. If he [in John 10:35] called those gods, to whom the Word of God came, how much more is he God, whom the Father sanctified, who received the Holy Spirit above his fellows [Heb. 1:9], so that all might receive it through him from the Father. I believe in God, the Father Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth, and that he alone was from eternity; and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of a V irgin, and at a g iven time, but therefore precisely not from eternity. Therefore I believe also in the Spirit, but not in God the Holy Spirit. In short, I do not believe that three persons are one God, but I know that they are three men (homines). Three persons are three men, and not one God.82 With these convictions Claude made his way in due course to Wittenberg, staying a month, until advised to leave, April 1535.83 Undaunted Claude went to Thonon on the Savoyard side of Lake Geneva, where, in his native language, he served as preacher (1536–39) and won so much of a f ollowing that a synod was convened in Lausanne, and he was forced to recant, May 1537, lest he be banished.84 We shall see how, sensitive to the doctrine of the Trinity in Lausanne, Peter Caroli in 1537 will turn on Calvin, charging all the Genevans with Arianism (Ch. 23.3.b). Claude became a citizen of Constance where, under the name of Claudius Wasserman aus Sophoien, he renounced his error on the Trinity in order to avoid imprisonment. He reappeared in Augsburg. For a year, now impoverished and limping, he preached in Memmingen where in 1550 he will have made many converts and then vanish from the records. In the meantime Caspar Schwenckfeld (who must have had direct contact with Claude in danger of imprisonment in Augsburg and magnamously sought to conceal his identity while nevertheless coming to grips with his challenge), turns out to have composed his most thorough defense of the Nicene Trinity against Claude and this at about the same time he was coping with Pilgram Marpeck, who held another variant of Triadology, Father, Spirit, and Word (Ch. 18.4). (5) Caspar Schwenckfeld, who evidently had before him Claude’s articles of faith, very much like those reported to Ambrose Blauer by Schwenckfeld’s adversary in Ulm, Martin Frecht, in 1534, valiantly refuted them in a

82

 See n. 78 above.  Melanchthon toVeit Dietrich, 5 August 1537; Opera 3:400. 84  Herminjard, Correspondance. 4:196f., 200, 235;Wilbur, Socinianism, 74. 83

chapter 11.2.c

unusual doctrines & institutions  473

theological epistle to his follo wers in Strassb urg and Augsburg in 1540. 85 It was not his intention to have it published lest harm in Augsburg come to the oft-banished Claude.86 Although the Booklet against Claudius of Sav oy when posthumously printed, is editorially said to be of use against the er rors of the learned among “Jews, Arians, Valentinians, and Hofmannites,”87 Schwenckfeld is actually refuting only Claude, who was not a proponent of the celestial flesh of Christ as a neo-Valentinian. Schwenckfeld’s effort is outstanding as a com pelling scriptural defense of the Nicaenum. It is perhaps the most notable effort on the part of any theologian under the impact of the Reformation to date, and it would have won the acclaim of Athanasius, the three Cappadocian Fathers, and Leo the Great, all of whom Schwenckfeld adduces, if not in this book ­let, then in others of similar purport. Using critically the Greek texts, Schwenckfeld tackles the very scriptural texts once most problematic for the Nicene Fathers, like Col. 1:15 where “Christ is the Firstborn of all creatures” and he is resourceful in using supplementar y scriptural (hence non-philosophical) terms, parallels, and inferences to complement the r eceived Nicene terminology. Actually composed at a moment be yond our general chronological framework, it represents in compact for m what Schwenckfeld was saying so presciently when Triadology was not to the for e in his Strassb urg years except as Claude in Strassburg was denounced there as a Trinitarius.88 In any case, it is important to remark that Schwenckfeld was on this topic clearly well within the parameters of formulation permitted within the confessionally matured Magisterial Reformation, and hence, of course, of the Counter-Reform. His old and his fresh defense of the Nicaenum is in fact more resourceful and consistent than anything of that date (1540) from Bucer, Calvin, or Melanchthon. Yet in his conception of the flesh of Christ (though not Valentinian) and also of the flesh of God the Father, Schwenckfeld, for all his command of Greek, would not have been understood by the Fathers of Nicaea or Chalcedon, would have been perhaps even scorned by them; for as spiritual as was for him that godly flesh of t he throne room of heaven, it came closer to the flesh of Zeus than the ultimate energy of the primordial PeriV [Ar≈w'n in Origen and his successors in philosophical

85  CS 7 (1928), doc. 333, pp. 204–35. The editors adduce arguments for the date 1540, even though the printed tract gives the year 1542 as the year of composition.The editors’ bibliography in English shows the extent of Schwenckfeld’s awareness of the challenge of Claude. 86  In 1542 there is a scrap of argumentation against Claude, whose identity is withheld,but where the basic arguments are compactly stated.This was quite likely intended for publication by Schwenckfeld (as the larger work was not). CS 8, doc. no. 387. 87  Both Servetus and Hofmann and hence the Mennonites could be charged with the ancient Gnostic heresy of the learned Valentinian. The editors are using the term for an opposed position common to several and not for a distinct Athanasian group. 88  See above at n. 53.

474  the radical reformation

chapter 11.2.c

the­ology from Nicaea (both the Arian and Athanasian variants derivable from Origen) through Chalcedon. In the booklet against Claude, Schwenckfeld first of a ll distinguishes the text of the Bible from any other document, affirming that the formulations of faith are impelled and sustained by the Holy Spirit and even then unfold before the believer as ultimate mystery; for that heavenly flesh of the Godhead, symbolized—though he does not use the word—as heavenly blood and bread is the invisible divine reality making it possible for the believer to be washed in it and sustained by it in spiritual baptism and in spiritual feeding; and he or she who will be here on earth so washed and so nourished, perhaps alone, will hear the voice of heaven at the resurrection to that new life already experienced now in moral cleanliness and spiritual sustenance; 89 for, citing 1 Pet. 1:4–5, true Christians, Schwenckfeld says, have already “escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of lust, and may become participants of the divine nature.” Schwenckfeld holds that these believers are indeed reborn of “the seed of t he living Word of God.” Although Schwenckfeld seems to be vaguely aware of the triplex munus Christi (11.3.b) and refers to Christ in the office, as divine-human Mediator, as King, High Priest, and Meister,90 he does not develop the munus, although in a later related piece he has a section on “the office of the Holy Spirit.” 91 Schwenckfeld returns to his interpretation of the Nicaenum in a Treatise on Faith and the Holy Trinity.92 Defending the eternity of t he Son/Word, Schwenckfeld took up Claude’s Unitarian inference from 4 Ezra (2 Esdras) 6:6: “Thus did I consider all these things, and they were all made through me alone and through none other: by me also they shall be ended, and by none other,” for from this text Claude had inferred that the one, only God of Israel had Christ in his mind or in his will, and thus that the word or work or will was indeed “with God from the beginning” ( John 1:1), but only as intention, to be implemented at the beginning of the life of Jesus or perhaps at the beginning of h is ministry after his baptism (cf. above at n. 80). Schwenckfeld cites among other passages, Ps. 119:89: “The heavens are fixed through the Word of the Lord,” in which reading, “the Word and the heavens as the work

89

 He intimates that the reprobate might not even rise from the dead, p. 21.  CS 7:215–18. 91  CS 8, doc. 387. 92  CS 9, doc. 435 in the for m of a letter to Sibilla Eisler , wherein, once again responding to Claude’s arguments, Schwenckfeld quotes extensively from the Church Fathers, also from Rupert of Deutz on the glorification of Christ; he treats Joseph, who shared rule with Pharaoh but not the title, as a type of Christ: “one in essence (Wesen), regime, power, monarchia, and honor but yet distinctly two persons”; and he deals with the office of the Holy Spirit. 90

chapter 11.2.c

unusual doctrines & institutions  475

of the Word [or the will of the Father] are clearly distinguished.”93 Schwenckfeld goes on to say that the Word was “with God” to make clear that his Word was not among the creatures. And, in reference to the phras­ing difficult for the ancient Nicenes, Col. 1:15: “the firstborn of all crea­tures,” Schwenckfeld insists that the primogenitus, born from the bosom of the Father, takes precedence over the Son’s creative authority over all crea­tures and that to be engender ed is to have been ipso facto consubstantial with the Father. Schwenckfeld takes up Claude’s argument that the Apostolicum had nothing of the consubstantiality or eternity of the Son, primarily by set­t ing forth an idea generally reported in patristic antiquity of the spiri­t ual flesh of God apart from the Incarnation (condemned at Chalcedon). Schwenckfeld does not develop the novum so much as presume it; for example, when refuting Claude’s arguments that Christ was fully human, as the Lamb to be slaughtered, on the “Greek-Lombardian” assumption that deity is not passible, without any references in the Booklet to the cen­t ral mediatorial passage to 1 Tim. 2:5, he appeals instead to another text as decisive and indirectly makes clear that he thinks of the Godhead as of eternal flesh: “With the blood of t he innocent and unspotted Lamb” [1 Peter 1:19] the world is reconciled, not with the blood of t he Son of Mary alone, but with the blood of the true, eternal, natural Son of God and the Son of Man.94 Since Schwenckfeld is throughout all his writings clear that the eternal Son took his human nature from Mary, he is here referring to the spiri­t ual or ethereal flesh of the Deity. He, with Claude, agrees that the Word (but for Schwenckfeld also the eternally begotten Son endued with celestial flesh) took on plenary human nature of the seed of Abraham (Heb. 2:16). While Schwenckfeld is thus an adherent of t he doctrine of t he celestial flesh of Christ, he is not a V alentinian (like Hofmann, hence also Menno, and Servetus) because he also assumes that the Word was engendered in the bosom of the Father, that the Son was from eternity “like the Father in all; also according to his [eternal] flesh and blood he became equal to and like him,” for all power was given him in heaven and on earth [Matt. 18:18]. … [His] going to the Father [after emptying himself to become a mere man [Phil. 2:7] is the same as that he, when ascended, should become [again] according to the flesh equal and similar to his Father and should lay aside the weakness of the form of a servant in the form of God” 95 in the process

93  CS 7:219. Schwenckfeld’s reading, however, is not sustained b y the Vulgate or the Massoretic text. 94  CS 7:228. 95  CS 7:225.

476  the radical reformation

chapter 11.2.c

of plenary glorification of his human flesh, not from infancy on earth, as with the ancient Monophysites, but on his Ascension (cf. Acts 3:33; Heb. 1:5, 5:5). It must suffice then to say that Schwenckfeld resourcefully defended the consubstantiality of the Son and of the Holy Spirit with the guidance of the ancient formularies, finding in fact a number of scriptural equivalents for substantia/essentia, like Wesen, and for Person or aspects of the Person(s), like forma/morphe eternal Herrlichkeit, and Kraft, and he uses also in German estates/Stände for the two natures, which would have served better for the three hypostases. He also introduces an almost physical divine substantia common to the three Persons from eternity, flesh and blood, which is a conceptualization of Deity that Origen or the Cappadocian Fathers would not have recognized his drawing out from anything in their theology and might well have found repugnant.96 There lies ahead of us the discussion at many turns of the devolution of the doctrine of t he Trinity among Dutch Anabaptists (Adam Pastor, Ch. 19.2.c), the radical Italian evangelicals (Ch. 22), including Guillaume Postel, and in the context of the Reformed tradition in Poland and Transylvania (Chs. 25, 28). A Christocentric Unitarian position without that terminology would be reached in the sixteenth-century devolution of the Nicene doctrine on the basis of t he quest for scriptural sanctions. There would be recognizable Tritheists, Binitarians, and Ditheists. Some of them, especially among the Italians and the Poles, would feel free to use the terms of themselves: John Valentine Gentile, a Tritheist (Ch. 24.3.b), and Stanislas Farnowski, a Ditheist founder of a separate synod, the first grouping to require rebaptism by immersion (Ch. 25.4). It was in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania that the Polish Brethren would be drawn to Irenaeus and even to Hilary of Poitiers on some special points, for example, the internalization of the Spirit as Gift rather than as Person, and would publish what they considered the supportive ante-Nicene Binitarian work of Justin Martyr into Polish from the

96  The corporeity of God w as generally condemned in Chr istian antiquity. The Mesopotamian ascetic Audius (d. 372) took Gen. 1:27 literally and with his fellow Audiani held that Scripture revealed the divine anthromorphism.The Audiani are listed as proponents of heresy 70 in the Panarion of Epiphanius.A Paschalletter (26, a.d. 411) of Theophilus of Alexandria was directed against the Anthropomorphites who despised Origen, while his succesor Cyril of Alexandria (d. 444) wrote a treatise Adversus anthropomorphitas. Cyril in his Chr istology used physis almost as the equivalent of hypostasis/persona and the Monophysites would lay claim to his authority on this basis. But none of the Monophysites, in holding to the one natur e of Christ after the Incar nation, would have been emboldened to think of God the Father as ha ving a physis and surely not a corporal nature. Anthropomorphism relative to the Father w as combatted by Raterius of Verona in the tenth century. Schwenckfeld was probably not drawing upon any patristic sources in his almost naive premise of an ethereal divine corporeity, although, to be sure, ethereal divine corporeity need not have been envisioned anthropomorphically.

chapter 11.2.c / 11.3

unusual doctrines & institutions  477

Greek, his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew—the first vernacular version of it anywhere (Nie´swiez, 1564).

3. Intercessores, Mediatrix, Unus Mediator: New and Old Emphases in Christology Besides the upheaval of the Reformation, the sixteenth century closed with the adoption in 1582 of the reformed calendar of Gregory XIII, which was made to begin, as in Roman antiquity, with January 1, rather than as heretofore with the Feast of the Annunciation to Mary, fixed at March 25, nine months before the Feast of the Nativity of Christ, December 25. Precisely because it was a papally advocated reformed calendar, it was not immediately accepted by t he Protestant territories, and in the United Kingdom only in 1752, while the Julian Calendar (of Julius Caesar, 46 b.c.) would continue to be used by the Orthodox world till 1924, when Greece adopted “a reformed Julian calendar” that functions much like the Western calendar, but which for the liturgical year was not accepted by all the Orthodox jurisdictions and even by s everal synods of Old C alendarists in Greece itself.97 Even within the lands of i ntact Roman obedience there were in the sixteenth century important regional differences as not all the regional saints had gained a place in the pontifical calendar in Rome. Protestantism, in its doctrinal stress upon the sole mediatorship of C hrist, laid the basis for the diminishment and eventual suppression of many of the feast days of the inherited church year, increasingly simplified, although the Lutheran territories from Transylvania to Scandinavia tended to preserve more of the liturgical calendar, along with the Church of England, than the Reformed. In most Reformed territories from Scotland to Magyar Transylvania the Dominical cycle from the Nativity through the Sundays of A dvent (as eschatological and therefore penitential) was progressively curtailed.98 Zwingli had abandoned the church year and its lectionary in favor of serial preaching indeed as early as 1520 (11.4.b). In many Reformed lands, the liturgical year was reduced to a s uccession of s trictly observed Sabbaths with only Maundy Thursday surviving as a weekday service of obligation. Information about the European calendars might seem gratuitous in dealing with the Radical Reformation, but the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, theater of m ajor episodes, was unique among all Christians 97  The old Julian calendar is still follo wed under the P atriarchates of Jerusalem, Moscow, Georgia, and Serbia. The Old Calendar ists in Greece and Rumania r egard the State Chur ch as apostate for ha ving done the bidding of the state in specious confor mity to the Western (Gregorian) papal-civil calendar. 98  At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the four Sundays of Advent had not yet been fixed, numbering instead from three to five. Their medieval eschatological and penitential character would survive into the present in Poland.

478  the radical reformation

chapter 11.3

inofficially tolerating, as of the Union of Brest (1596), three liturgical calendars, the Gregorian, the Byzantine-rite (i.e. both Catholic Uniates and the Orthodox), and the Armenian, while in every town throughout the Commonwealth Christians were also fully aware of t he Jewish liturgical year, including the weekly Sabbath and the conspicuous absence of the Jews from all marts; and among these Christians, all Protestants and other dissidents in Poland would comply with the papally reformed calendar. Most affected by L uther’s reform was the liturgical cycle of t he saints and the Marian cycle, in the generic Protestant affirmation, grounded in 1 Tim. 2:5: “There is one God, and there is one Mediator between man and God, the man Christ Jesus.” Long before the division of Christendom into in effect three Christian calendar communities (Orthodox/Julian, Protestant/ Julian, and Papal), radical refugees from Latin Christendom were penetrating regions observant of the Byzantine liturgical year which had often quite different saints and even when the same saints quite often celebrated on disparate other days. Important aspects of the Radical Reformation unfold in Byzantine-rite territories: most of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from Vilna to Kiev, also in the palatinate of Ruthenia, in Hungarian Car­patho-Rus, in Moldavia, and to some extent in Transylvania. Here and elsewhere, the various radicals, whether driven from or drawn to leave their native territories, left behind them the local saints of parish, town, and guild, to be satisfied with the special days anchored in the New Testament. In the triple thrust, especially among the Reformed and the dissidents, to be economical, to be plain in the new mode of innerworldliness in ascetism, and to be consistently biblical in worship, some groupings among the Anabaptists (particularly in Silesia) and among the Unitarians (in Transylvania) became Sabbatarians in imitation of t he earliest Jewish Christians, some of them even adopting the Jewish dietary laws (Ch. 28.3). Christians in any case everywhere, under the impact of Luther’s reform (long prior to the papal calendar reform), would have come to think quite differently about the saints, Mary, and in some quite new ways about Christ the Mediator. These ways, being in part common to the territorial/magisterial churches and the sects of various kinds of radicality breaking from them, we consider in this section: (a) the abandonment of b elief in the intercession of the saints and the mediatorial role of Mary, (b) the emergent conceptualization of Christ as sole Mediator in his Threefold Office, (c) the controversy over Christ the Mediator in respect to the role in redemption of each of t he two natures of t he One Person and the communication of idioms, (d) revival of old heresies regarding the human nature of Christ and the adoption also of new conceptions of Christ’s nature or natures, person, and work, and (e) adorantism and nonadorantism of Christ in worship and prayer.

chapter 11.3.a

unusual doctrines & institutions  479

a. Abandonment of the Belief in the Intercession of Saints and in Mary as Mediatrix Over the course of t he centuries the role and stature of t he mother of Jesus Christ had grown and developed in such a manner that many of the mediatorial attributes of Jesus Christ came to be understood as expressed through his mother also and in many ways more vividly and effectually. These developments flowed out of M ary’s unique role in the Incarnation which was reflected upon by t he early Christian writers and eventually defined in her title of Theotokos, confirmed at the Council of E phesus in 431, initially to defend the unity and dignity of the person of Christ in both divine and human nature against Nestorius, the bishop of Constantinople, whom it deposed for being content with Christotokos. Reflecting on the Johannine passage (19:25–27) which places Mary at the foot of the cross, later Christian writers both east and west intimately wove the figure of the Mother of G od into the redemptive death of her Son. Intricately bound, both physically and spiritually, to the One through whom God’s mercy is communicated to creation, Mary herself came to be seen as a channel of divine mercy and healing. While Christ was all the while understood to be the sole Judge of humankind, on the eve of t he Reformation the general blurring of roles as between Mother and Son was widespread. In this way one late-medieval preacher in England could write of Mary: [S]he hath colours of all floures of heven … i.e., the vertewes of all creatures of heven. … And, shortly for to speke, there is no vertewe founde in no creature but she hath itt fully in hure, ne is no vice in man but ther ayeyn [for their easing] she hath bote salve and reme­ die; and therfore she may sey well to all men thise wordes, Matt. 11 [30]: Venite ad me omnes qui laboratis. … Commeth to me all ye that traveyll or ben charched with synne, and I shall refressh you.99 Although there was an economic as well as a theological factor in the rupture in the liturgical cycle of the saints, it was not a break that would be made in one or two generations, so closely were all Christians bound up by the very names of the saints which they bore from their infant chris­ tening, while every guild and every town had its patron saint and annual guild or civic festival dedicated to him or her, and every emerging nation its protective patron, occasionally an apostle, or even an angel or archangel—St. Michael, the special guardian of I srael and the New Israel ( Jude 9:3; Rev. 12:7), the apostle Andrew for Scotland, the legendary St. George for England, eventually four patron saints for Poland alone, including a

99

20.

 G. R. Owst, Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England (NewYork: Barnes & Noble,1961),

480  the radical reformation

chapter 11.3.a

martyred bishop and the Virgin, and for Hungary, its papally canonized king, St. Stephen. The most eminent patroness of all was Our Lady, the Mother of God. Marian veneration centered in recognizably different modes of her presence: the Beautiful Mary (Schöne Maria, cf. Song of S ongs 1:15–16), the Pregnant Madonna, and the Mantle Madonna with the broad skirt behind which or in the folds of which believers clung for protection from her Son, Christ, as their feared Judge.100 Although Luther it was who theologically rechanneled the very fount of the indulgence traffic, the plenitude of grace of postulated supererogatory merit of the saints, it was his colleague Carlstadt, eventually to be enrolled in the radical militia of dissidents and hence bulking large in the present narrative, who first consciously drew away from the saints and Mary as intercessors (Ch. 3.1). In 1517 Carlstadt first challenged the veneration of Francis of A ssissi, but his argument could just as easily have been applied to the Virgin.101 Carlstadt was at first only indirectly dismantling the intercession of t he saints. In 1520 he published his Booklet on the Canonical Scriptures, in which he not only rejected the Apocrypha but, anticipating Luther, also insisted that his canon of Scripture be the exclusive point of reference in all theological inquiry. Therewith went the Augustinian understanding of t he place of Tradition in hermeneutics and within the life of the Church generally. Thus in his On the Intercession of Mary (Fürbit Marie) (1523), Carlstadt directly approached the place of Mary, writing: I would gladly honor Mary, but I d o not want to deprive her Creator [God the Father] and Lord [Christ] of t heir honor, and attribute to Mary that which she would repel.102 Carlstadt, while using “Mother of God” once, appears to have been more comfortable with the title “Mother of C hrist,” used twice.103 Carlstadt’s position was indicative of a trend on the part of a number in the Reformed 100  In his article on which I draw,with his personal encouragement, Calvin Augustine Pater identifies also as a fourth type, the Lactating Madonna, usually limited to paintings,“The Virgin Mary in the Reformation,” The Canadian Society of Presbyterian History, Papers, 1989: 41–70. Pater notes that among the treasures of Elector Frederick the Wise in the Castle Church of All Saints in Wittenberg was a display in the seventh aisle of Marian relics, in which, since she was commonly believed to have been bodily assumed into hea ven as Queen of Hea ven (Feast of the Assumption, 15 August), there could have been not only clothing and other such articles, but also milk. 101  Calvin A. Pater, “Lay Religion in the Pr ogram of Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt,” Leaders of the Refor mation, ed. Richard L. DeMolen (Selinsg rove, Pa.: Susquehanna University Press, 1984), 103, 126 nn. 15–16. 102  Pater, Karlstadt as Father of the Anabaptist Movements, 71. 103  Carlstadt, Fürbit Marie, employs the term “Mother of God” once (A2) in referring to the “traditional”viewpoint. He himself, however, twice uses “Mother of Christ,” A3v, B2.

chapter 11.3.a

unusual doctrines & institutions  481

tradition to use Nestorian terminology when honoring Mary. Along these lines, borrowing the imagery of Augustine, Carlstadt reflected that it was precisely in her role of Mother of Christ that Mary had become an abid­ing model for the believer who seeks to “conceive Christ spiritually.”104 Carlstadt called

into question the mediatorial attributes that Tradition had come to confer on Mary, citing Christ’s exclusive mediatorial role in Acts 4:12 and 1 Tim. 2:5.105 In the meantime in Strassburg in 1523 Matthew Zell (Ch. 10.2.a) continued redefining the scriptural canon by r enouncing as spurious one of the major sources of Marian piety, the Proto-Evangelium, from which the parents of t he Virgin were known by n ame, Joachim and Anne.106 In his critical Christian Responsibility, Zell expressed concern that the centrality of Christ in the lives of “simple Christians” had become blurred through the veneration of his mother.107 This situation was complicated by the fact that with the attribution of mediatorial qualities to the Virgin the faithful had come to believe that Mary might “help us against the will of C hrist.”108 Ultimately, while concerned with some aspects of Marian piety, Zell still affirmed Mary’s role as Theotokos.109 At about the same time Carlstadt and Zell were writing, John Locher of Munich objected to the Ave Maria as a prayer, insisting that Christ, not Mary, possesses the plenitude of g race. The Ave Maria is made up of t wo parts: the first is a combination, going back to the eleventh century, of the greeting to Mary by Gabriel (Luke 1:28) and of her cousin Elizabeth (Luke 1:41): “Hail Mary, full of g race, the Lord is with thee: Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of t hy womb, Jesus.” The second part, making of the whole a prayer to Mary rather than a l iturgical affirmation in praise of h er, came into general use precisely in the sixteenth century and would receive official recognition when it was included in the Roman Breviary of 1568. With the major reformers and the radicals, Carlstadt among them, the Ave Maria in its two parts came under criticism. Stirrings against the Ave Maria as a prayer had begun with the philolo­g ist Lorenzo Valla (1440), who had rejected the gratia plena of the Vulgate in favor of t he Greek kecharitomenøe: thus “full of g race” became “gracious one.” Erasmus had followed Valla. The effects of the Greek understanding can be seen in Locher when he wrote: 104

 Carlstadt, “Verba Dei” (1520), Cv.  Carlstadt, Fürbit Marie, A2. 106  Ascribed to James, the Apostle, the “Proto-Evangelium,” by Helenistic Jewish Christians of the second centur y, and was critically edited in fresh Latin translation by Guillaume Postel (Ch. 22.2.a) as Protoevangelion Jacobi (Basel, 1552). 107  Matthew Zell, Christeliche Verantwortung (1523), P4v. 108  Ibid., Qv. 109  Mattew Zell, Christeliche Verantwortung (1524), P2v. 105

482  the radical reformation

chapter 11.3.a

The Ave Maria was not a prayer for grace; it is a blessing and a greeting. Attribute grace to God alone. Nor should we ever desire to receive grace other than the plenitude of Jesus Christ.110 While repositioning the role of M ary in the life of t he Church, Locher affirmed her importance to the believing community as a mirror of faith.111 Christ’s singular role as mediator over against Mary was also made clear in the preaching of Diepold Perringer (Ch. 7.1): Mary is no mediatrix for Christ says [Matt. 11:28] “Come to me all who are sorrowful and burdened, for I will refresh you.” Note: Christ does not point to Mary or some other saint, but he says that we are to come to him for he will help.112 Carlstadt, like other Protestants, Luther included, could accept the Magnificat but not as a p rayer. Carlstadt rejected the antiphon from the eleventh century, Salve Regina (Hail, Holy Queen), and the early twelfthcentury hymn, Stabat Mater Dolorosa, descriptive of the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin Mother at the foot of the cross, carrying with them the resonance of much personal piety. All Marian hymns were theologically removed in the emergent Protestant fideist/an-iconic piety, a huge shift in the devotional life of C hristendom wherever it was carried out, while some of t he new hymnody represented the transfer of this emotion from Mary to Christ, the sole Mediator, and in one instance a christological restructuring of the Salve Regina in address to Christ with several of the Marian attributes of mercy and forgiveness now attaching to him. In the abandonment of t he intercession of a ll the saints, including the Virgin Mediatrix, classical Protestantism rested salvation on the sole mediation of Christ. Radical Protestants with some medieval mystical and sectarian antecedents, abandoning the intercession of a ll saints in heaven, increasingly thought of t hemselves as saints, the saints of t he New Jerusalem, Christ’s suffering being reenacted in their own self-discipline and tribulation, socially in Hutterian and other forms of disciplined communal life, as communio sanctorum, the commune of s aints in things held in common (Chs. 13, 26.1, 27.3), and ultimately in martyrdom-readiness and death. Indeed, the radicals, prepared for martyrdom, remind the Church historian of the ancient martyrs, sometimes clamorous to make their final testimony to Christ.113 110

 Johannes Locher, Vom Ave Maria Leuthen (1524), B2v.  Johannes Locher, Eyn lieplicher Sermon (1524), B–2. 112  Diepold Perringer, Ein Sermon von der Abgotterey (1524), B2v; of the late medie val sermon, above at n. 99. 113  I have reflected on this motif in “Four Modalities of Violence with special reference to the writings of Georges Sorel,” Journal of Church and State 16 (1974): 11–30, 237–61. 111

chapter 11.3.b

unusual doctrines & institutions  483

b. The Emerging Conceptualization of Christ as Sole Mediator and the Triplex Munus Christi In the patristic clarification of the claim of the Church to the monotheism of the Old Testament, while in its liturgy worshiping the glorified Christ as Lord, as eucharistic Host, and as prospective Judge of those to be placed on his left and those on his right at the Last Judgment, Jesus Christ as the incarnate Word (Logos) was thought of variously as cosmic mediator in creation (Col. 1:16); as political mediator in public order through the Emperor (beginning with Eusebian Constantine) with powers (Col. 1:16) as Logos empsychos; and as soterological mediator in his role of teacher, lawgiver, and priest in his sacrificial role on Calvary, whereby he became mediator for the New/Better Covenant (Heb. 8:6, 9:15, 12:24) and savior of h is elect people and, as ascended King in majesty, prospective Judge of the quick and the dead. The Church Fathers, while adducing the six places in the New Testament with the term mediator/me†is†hı ‰ (four of these in reference to Jesus), were never so clear about the threefold office of Christ as mediator as scriptural thinkers would become in the sixteenth century. We noted that Eusebius of Caesarea recognized the threefold action of Christ (Ch. 1.3.a), that Innocent III specifically connected the anointment of Christ in Acts (cf. 10:38) with a threefold unction by the Holy Spirit as prophet, priest, and king (a decretal especially influential by entering the canon law; Ch. 10.2.b); that Erasmus, the first in the age of the Reformation, revived it humanistically (and perhaps unrelated to the canon law) in Basel (Ch. 1.3.a), 1522; and that Martin Bucer gave prominence (1526, 1527) to the three roles in his interest in making the reformed pastors as teachers coordinate with the magistrates in the emergent Christocracy of Strassburg (Ch. 10.2.b) and in establishing an authoritative Christocen­t ric base in the prophetic/doctoral office of C hrist from which to deflect the claims of the radicals, particularly their charismatic leaders, to being latterday prophets (like John Hut and Melchior Hofmann). We noted, too, that the Spiritualist Sebastian Franck, with a rather vivid monarchi­cal Trinity, understood the Father as heavenly Imperator and Christ as his viceregal deputy over Christendom, expounding something like the triplex munus Christi (Ch. 10.3.d) in 1531 (derived from Eusebius, canon law, or Erasmus—or all three). We noted, too, that neither Franck nor the others cited went so far as to use the term office (officium/munus/Amt) of Christ. This was the contribution of A ndrew Osiander of Nuremberg and it was in 1530. The concept of a t hreefold office and of this connected with Christ’s role as Mediator was to have a d istinctive career in John Calvin (Ch. 23.5) and John Laski (Ch. 25.2.b, 30.3.a), then in several of the schismatic Reformed churches of the eastern realms of Latin Christendom and notably the Polish Brethren under Faustus Socinus (Ch. 24.4, 29.8). We

484  the radical reformation

chapter 11.3.b

therefore here pay respect to Osiander, who though he cannot be reckoned with the radical reformers, is important for understanding some of t heir thought. It may be here anticipated that John Calvin would first pick up the theme of the three roles of Christ as Mediator in his second Latin edi­t ion of the Institutes (Strassburg, 1539). He was probably therefore depen­dent on Bucer.114 But the idea of t he threefold office, in the singular as well as the plural, munera, was undoubtedly a factor in the rise of the triplex munus Christi among the Reformed everywhere (from the Pin´czów Con­fession of 1559 to the Westminster Confession less than a century later), as it bound the action of Christ in a munus as the Council of Chalcedon had limited the action of the two natures in the single Persona/Prosopon: Hypostasis. In any event, it was Osiander who evidently first used munus/Amt of the three roles of Christ. Andrew Osiander (1498–1552) was ordained priest in Eichstätt in 1520, joined the Lutheran cause in 1522 as pastor of St. Lawrence church in Nuremberg, was participant in Marburg Colloquy in 1529, and repre­sented Nuremberg at the Diet of Au gsburg of 1 530.115 Andrew Osiander in his Schirmschrift, June 1530, in defense of the Augsburg Confession for his citystate of Nuremberg, when the Confessio seemed jeopardized by the Catholic theologians,116 gave some prominence to the triplex munus Christi, as though a conceptualization already visibly familiar and therefore cogent for his purpose, introducing and making prominent for the first time the term of office (Amt/munus). He introduced his conceptualization to fend off presumptively false claimants to one or another office of Christ. With reference to Jesus’ warning in Matt. 24:5, “Many will curse my name and say, ‘I am the Christ,’” and in Matt. 24:33, “Lo here and there is the Christ,” Osiander dismissed it as preposterous that anyone at anytime would have ever claimed literally, “I am Jesus of Nazareth, God’s and Mary’s Son.” But since Christ’s warning was surely not in vain, Osiander argued that Jesus intended nonliteral presumption of o ne or another of h is proper offices. And then Osiander proceeded with the idea of the three munera of Christ

114

 Klauspeter Blaser, Calvins Lehre von den drei Ämtern Christi (Zurich: EVZ, 1970). The assignment to Bucer of the seminal role here in Calvin is that of Jean Daniel Benoît,Institution de la Religion Chrestienne, édition critique, 5 vols. (Paris:Vrin, 1957–63), 2:267 n. 8; and, evidently independently of him, Fran ois Wendel, Calvin: Sources et év olution de sa pensée religieuse (Paris: Presses universitaires, 1950), 101. There is now in the present volume more about the emergence of the triplex munus Christi in the sixteenth century than in any other monograph. 115  Gottfried Seebass, Das reformatorische Werk des Andreas Osiander (Nuremberg: Verein fur Bayerische Kirchengeschichte, 1967). 116  Emmanuel Hirsch, who had written on the theology of Osiander (1919) without aware­ ness of the Schirmschrift (n. 472), gave special attention to its distincti ve features in “Osianders Schirmschrift zum Nürberger [!] Reichstage,” ZKG 43 (1924): 417–22.

chapter 11.3.b

unusual doctrines & institutions  485

that might well be inappropriately or falsely arrogated to himself by the Pope or another Antichrist. But that claim has not been made nor even heard by a nybody, which nevertheless would have had to truly happen, if Christ, who is the truth ( John 14:6) and cannot lie (cf. Heb. 6:18), had so intended; but rather we must understand it in respect to his office (Amt), because he is Christos, that is teacher (Maister), king (Konig), and high-priest (Hoherpriester). For that Christ means the anointed one (Gesalbeten) and, only the prophets, kings, and high priests were anointed observe well that the three offices belong to him: the prophetic office, for he is alone our teacher (Leerer) and master (Matt. 8:23); the office of king, for he rules eternally in the house of Jacob (Luke 1:33); and the office of priest, for he is “an eternal priest after the order of M elchizedek” (Ps. 110:4; Heb. 5:6, etc.). For it is now his office, that he be our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification (Heiligung) and salva­t ion (Erlosing), as Paul testifies in 1 Cor. 1:30. Whoever of these elements (Welcher nun der Stuck) seeks it anywhere else than in Christ is saying: “Here or there is Christ” (Matt. 24:23; Mark 13:21). For what Christ prophesies (weyssaget) must certainly be fulfilled, because he cannot lie, and he says furthermore, “That the time is near at hand” (cf. Matt. 24:33; Mark 13:30; Luke 21:8, 32). Therefore we cannot understand his words otherwise than: To you many will come in my name, that is, will present themselves, as though I had called, sent, ordained, and installed them to preach and to teach, and will declare: “I am Christ” (Matt. 14:6; cf. Mark 13:6; Luke 21:8).117 It is evident that Osiander, opposing the Catholic masters and doctors of theology and the magisterium of t he Pope himself, upheld the office of Christ as Meister/Lehrer/Prophet and final Prophet as almost the Moses of the New Covenant (cf. Deut. 18:15), claiming, however, indirectly for the university-trained preacher, like Luther or Melanchthon, the duly constituted authority to interpret Christ’s instruction as Master/Teacher. And, having

117  Andreas Osiander der Äetere, Gesamtausgabe, ed. Gerhard Müller and Gottfried Seebass, vol. 4 (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1981), 81–82.

486  the radical reformation

chapter 11.3.b

already given his judgment on several cases of A nabaptists,118 Osiander was also defending the same Protestant professorial/doctoral magisterium against the charismatic and otherwise prophetic leaders among the radicals and perhaps also their claim to conventicular authority under the lex sedentium (11.4.b). Osiander participated in the colloquies of H agenau and Worms of 1540. He wrote the foreword to Nicholas Copernicus’s De revolutionibus (Nuremberg, 1543), to present it as only a h ypothesis, not realizing its “revolutionary” implications for theology. Driven from his pulpit by the Augsburg Interim of 1548, he offered from his refuge in Breslau to serve his ducal convert in Königsberg. Osian­der as preacher in St. Lawrence had won Albert to the Reformation, who, by submitting as feudal vassal to the Polish King in Cracow in 1525, had received back the territory of t he Teutonic Order under his new temporal title of Duke, and thereby become the first Protestant prince. As Duke Albert of Ducal Prussia (Ch. 15.2.a), he established the Albertina, nucleus of the later university. In Königsberg Osiander becoming pastor in Alstadt (one of the three towns constituting Königsberg),119 was made a professor in the Albertina against the objections of the theological faculty.

118  Because of the significance of Osiander for the whole narrative, we make mention here of his changing policy in dealing with Anabaptists. It was at Osiander’s instigation that John Denck was expelled from Nuremburg, 21 January 1525, and later that the sale of his transla ­tion, along with Haetzer, of the Prophets was prohibited (Ch. 7.1).When the Swabian League authorized in February 1528 that ca valrymen furnished by Ulm and se veral other towns hunt down Anabaptists, the delegate from Nuremberg protested that Protestants in Catholic ter­r itories would be thrown together with Anabaptists.Whereupon in an official opinion for the city council of July 1528, Osiander endorsed the death penalty for Anabaptists, because they spurned the doctrine of the Trinity and the divinity of Christ and they taught no more than that “we should do and suffer like Him, as if he were merely an example.” In a further opinion, May 1531, Osiander opted for instruction and, if necessary, only banishment as a last resort. Osiander held discussions with imprisoned proto-Hutterite Peter Riedemann (1532–36). A decade after the onset of these conversations, in his booklet on the Turkish menace, Unterricht undVermahnung, wie man wider denTürcken beten und streiten soll (1542), Osiander would take the occasion to interpret the expansion of the OttomanTurks as divine chastisement for the failures in Christendom and advocate the spreading of the Word with gentleness, using no more than the ban to keep the reformed Church free of heresy and divisiveness.While still holding to the civic right to exact capital punishment for Anabaptists, he would now (1) advocate instruction, (2) argue that Papists and Anabaptists should not be treated differently, and (3) observe that Anabaptists are steadfast and that it would be better to deprive them of their scaffold pulpit. 119  Martin Stupperich, Osiander in Preussen 1549–52 (Berlin/NewYork: De Gruyter, 1973). For pictures, see my Lubieniecki, Plate 7.

chapter 11.3.c

unusual doctrines & institutions  487

c. Controversy over Christ the Mediator, Whether in His Human Nature or in Both Natures: Königsberg 1551 In his inaugural disputation, De Lege et evangelio, 5 April 1549, Osiander proposed a kind of double justification within the Lutheran context, maintaining that Christ had indeed redeemed the whole world on the cross in his human nature as the Second Adam but that the believer in him to be saved must experience through faith the indwelling of t he divine righteousness (iustitia essentialis) of Christ as Mediator in his divine nature.120 In this protopietist theory of effectual sanctification in faith, Osiander, true to Luther, as he thought, and to both Rom. 3:18 (fideism) and 1 Tim. 2:5 (only Mediator, the man Jesus), was opposed in debate at his inaugural lecture by, among others, the Wittenberg alumnus Matthew Lauterwald, and even more fiercely by Joachim Mörlin, once of Wittenberg, now cathedral preacher. The Duke and John Funk strongly supported Osiander, while the Hebraist Dr. Francis Stancaro (Chs. 23.4, 25.2), who had settled in Königsberg (1550–51) from PinVczów, the center of the Reformed Synod in Poland, which he founded, bitterly opposed the recently inaugurated professor from Nuremberg. Stancaro claimed for himself the role of Elijah (1 Kings 18) against the Prussian priests of B aal. Osiander composed in self-defense his Bekenntnis vom einigen Mittler (1551). Stancaro appealed to the Duke to become better informed, lest he fall victim of a t emptation greater than that dangled by Satan before Adam and Eve: the serpent had only offered similarity with God, Stancaro claimed, while Osiander was offering divinity by a change in nature! In the scholastic background of the debate between Osiander and his ferocious assailant from Mantua and Venice via Verona and Basel was the canon, Firmiter,121 of t he IV Lateran of 1 215 under Innocent III, a m ajor western ecumenical council (numbering twelfth from Nicaea II, 787), already several times referred to in our account. Abbot Joachim of Fiore (Ch. 11.4.a) had charged Peter Lombard with holding to a Quaternity of Three Persons and the divine Essence (substantia) that so diminished the status of the Man-God that Lombard was in effect a Nestorian. On the basis of 1 T im. 2:5 and most patristic (and especially the post-Chalcedonian) and scholastic authorities Lombard had indeed held that Jesus Christ was Mediator solely in his human nature. Lombard had written that Christ had reconciled humankind with the Triune God and at the same time redeemed it from bondage to Satan: 120

 Of interest, the Silesian knight Caspar Schwenckfeld, once of Liegnitz (Legnica), perhaps drawn by his concer n for his fr iend Duke Albert (and Osiander), entered the lists with reworked christological material in a ne w publication, De Mediatore, 1543, against Joachim of Fiore; CS 8, doc. 424. 121  Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta, ed. Josephus Alberigus et al., 2d ed. (Basel: Herder, 1962), 206.

488  the radical reformation

chapter 11.3.c / 11.3.d

whence he [Christ] is said to be Mediator according to his humanity, not according to his divinity, for he is not Mediator between God and God, for God is one, but between God and man, as between two extremes. … Therefore he is Mediator insofar as man. … He mediates between men and God the Trinity according to his human nature.122 In Firmiter the IV Lateran Council had upheld this position of Peter Lombard against the attack by t he Calabrian abbot. As all Protestants, on the basis of Luther’s sola scriptura, sola fides, sola gratia, regarded Jesus Christ to be the sole Mediator and had come to renounce the intercession (mediation) of the saints, including Mary as Mediatrix, the mediatorial issue now revolved around the validity for Protestants of t he stringent canon Firmiter. In the Reformation disputation De Mediatore, Luther and Melanchthon tended to side with Joachim against Lombard, while Calvin on this issue (Ch. 23.5) would remain close to the scholastic and indeed patristic tradition (with exceptions) in a m odified Lombardian view, although distancing himself with expressed disgust and disdain from Stancaro on the Trinity.123 As we shall see, the Polish Reformed synod will undergo a t hreefold schism over the issue of Christ the Mediator, the topic entering the domain of major lay publicists (Ch. 25.2.e). d. Alterations in Understanding the (Two) Nature(s) of Christ Common to certain spokesmen in all three thrusts of t he Radical Reformation were (1) distinctive, usually non-Chalcedonian, Christologies (among them attachment to some variant of the celestial flesh or body of Christ); (2) a c orresponding sanctificatory or even deificatory, as distinguished from a forensic, view of salvation (the Atonement); (3) also in most cases an espousal of t he freedom of t he will in striving for sanctification made possible by the Incarnation of the Word or even by the example of a wholly human Jesus Christ; (4) a mystical-physical view of the Lord’s Supper; (5) a perfectionist view of t he Church as a community of s aints; and (6) a covenantal view of marriage, which stressed conjugal partnership within the faith community and hence the sanction of “Christian” divorce (Pauline privilege) (Ch. 20.3.c). We shall touch in the remainder of t his chapter, however, only on selected aberrations from orthodoxy in respect to the natures of Christ (Christology) and some corresponding variations in the concept of the work of Christ (soteriology). It is not the point here that radicals had a common Christology over against traditional or Catholic Christology that was upheld by a ll the 122

 Sententiarum libri quattuor, 3, dist. 19; Migne, PL 192, 795–98.  Lorenz Hein, Italienische Protestanten und ihr Einfluss auf die Reformation in Polen (Leiden: Brill, 1974), 172 n. 245. 123

chapter 11.3.d

unusual doctrines & institutions  489

magisterial reformers from the start. It is, rather, that amidst the unprecedented upheaval from within of C hristian thought and institutions— unprecedented even in scope by t he struggle between Iconodules and Iconoclasts for a c omparable century of t heological violence (726–843) that was not even brought to a close by II Nicaea (787) with its only provisional ecumenical triumph of Iconodule Orthodoxy—the magis­t erial, radical, and often even sometimes the Evangelical Catholic par­t icipants in the preeminently christological conflict (over justification rather than icons) based ultimately on Luther’s own stress on Christus pro nobis, did not recognize the degree to which in breaking, without anguish, from scholastic and hence patristic formularies, they opened themselves up to pious vagaries and also new ambiguities.124 The mag­isterial reformers seemed to have been at the outset unaware of t he safeguards built into ancient conciliar formularies of Triadology and Christology. Only in conflict with disparate radicals, some of t hem with experiential and/ or biblical Christologies of powerful suffering in their lives and testimonies, did the guardians of territorial reform, from their university or new academic seats, reclaim the ancient positions. Yet even then they were often confused as to what in their radical foes was simply a reassertion of, say, ancient Valentinianism, and what was, in fact, a perhaps similar but still quite new testimony. Moreover, even by t he end of t he century of theological disruption of global import, given the coincidence of the Age of Discovery of t he New World with the Age of Reformation, the two main theological camps of magisterial reformers, Lutheran and Calvinist, would still be at significant variance on something so Catholic, if not conciliarly patristic, as the christologi­c al/triadological canon Firmiter (11.3.c). The two main versions of the doctrine of the celestial flesh of Christ condemned at Chalcedon—namely, (1) that Christ brought his own body or flesh with him from heaven and was from the beginning, in effect, one Person in one nature, become visible or corporal in Mary, and (2) that Christ was spiritual, procreated at a moment in time (yet begotten and not created) and had thus a human nature from Mary as well as a d ivine nature—can be correlated with two divergent views as to the relative importance of the male and female in ordinary procreation. According to the Aristotelian-Thomist view, the male seed was alone formative. In what was traditionally called the Lucretian-Hippocratic view, 124  The awkward wording of John Knox on the r ole of the Virgin in the Incar nation in the Confessio Scotica, composed in Geneva and adopted by the Scottish Parliament in 1560, may serve as an example of how fresh formularies could risk loss or gain.

490  the radical reformation

chapter 11.3.d

the male and female were equally contributive in the generation of progeny.125 Both of t hese philosophical-biological presuppositions were represented among the proponents of celestial flesh Christology. Although they variously expressed their views and made claims and counterclaims about their relationship to each other, it seems fairly clear that there were in fact three main lines of development: (1) that connected with the Silesian Schwenckfeld, who indeed claimed to be the purest exponent of the doctrine in the Reformation era; (2) that of C lement Ziegler and Melchior Hofmann, extending from the latter through Menno Simons and Dirk Philips into the whole of Netherlandish and North German Anabaptism; and (3) that of Michael Servetus, with faint traces in Poland and elsewhere. To characterize their positions in a word: Ziegler, the gardener-preacher of Strassburg (Ch. 10.2.a), believed that Christ brought his translucent body with him from heaven and acquired visibility from the flesh born of Mary. Hofmann (Ch. 10.3.c) postulated a single, divine nature from heaven but called it celestial flesh, identical with the manna of the Sinai desert (Exod. 16:15, etc.; John 6:31; Rev. 2:17). Ser­vetus, though he originally distinguished between the prolation of the Word and the generation of the Son, came to speak of three phases of generation and granted that a Christ of two natures took one of t hem from Mary, who was therefore truly Theotokos. Schwenckfeld postulated two natures, the one celestial, of God the Father and God the eternal Son, and the other human but “uncreaturely,” and he therefore thought that he could expressly refute the charge of e spousing ancient Eutychianism or Monophysitism. Both Servetus and Schwenckfeld respected and easily handled the patristic texts. The doctrine of t he celestial flesh of Christ among separatist reformers has been generally understood both by their contemporaneous foes and their modern interpreters as a revival of ancient Gnostic and Monophysite Christology, and as an abortive effort within radical evangelical circles, dissatisfied with the strictly Chalcedonian Christology (despoiled by the Protestant Reformers of the associated Franciscan doctrine of the immaculate conception of Mary), to account otherwise for the postulated sinlessness of Christ and also his incapability of sinning. The ancient heretical Christology, originally developed by Valentinus and assimilated by Apollinarius126 125  William Keeney has brought this out clearly in his “The Development of Dutch Anabaptist Thought” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Hartford, 1959) published in part as “The Incarnation: A Central Concept,” in Dyck, ed., A Legacy, 550–68. I have inciden­tally but extensively covered changing Christian views on male and female pr edominance and the Chr istian debate on traducianism v ersus creationism in my “Religious Residues and Pr esuppositions,” in Papers on Abortion, ed. John Noonan, Jr., et al. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969), which condenses a larger article of the same title in Theological Studies 31 (1970):107–50. 126  Apollinarius the Younger, bishop of Laodicea, postulated an incomplete human natur e in Christ, the Lo gos serving at the Incar nation as the rational soul. He w as explicitly condemned at Constantinople in 381, and the Emperor forbade Apollinarian worship.

chapter 11.3.d

unusual doctrines & institutions  491

(surviving as pseudo-Athanasius) and by otherwise orthodox Hilary of Poitiers, was variously communicated to the sixteenth -century radicals in these texts, or by misinterpretation, perhaps, in the texts of the anti -Gnos­tic writers such as Irenaeus and Tertullian;127 and in par t, indirectly, by the perpetration of the celestial flesh heresy in Bogomil and Cathar circles.128 It is just as likely, however, that medieval mystical and eucharistic language and lore explain some of the peculiarities of the doctrine in its sixteenth-century formulation. In fact, in the absence of clear documenta­t ion of patristic-heretical or medieval sectarian influence, it seems more plausible to account for the widespread and variegated outcropping of t he celestial flesh doctrine in the sixteenth century as an effort to restate the christological problem in the language of eucharistic piety (displacing patristic baptismal piety, based on Col. 2:12, etc.), experientially much more real than the philosophical terms employed for more than a m illen­n ium, when the Church was concerned to safeguard for philosophical (not biblical) reasons the impassibility of God and for soteriological reasons to vindicate the full humanity of Christ. At Chalcedon in 451 (as at Nicaea in 325) the fathers had in mind that God became man in order that man, redeemed from the world through baptismal death to the world, might become divine through the death and resurrection of t he one Person in two natures; and subsequent councils from 451 to 787 would incrementally define the human nature of Christ as plenary in respect to soul, will, act, and passion, in the West. But already, notably in IV Lateran (Ch. 11.3.b), in the West the sacrament of the altar had become even more important than baptism as the effective rite for the appropriation of the work of redemption and incorporation into the Body of Christ.129 The flesh of C hrist born of M ary and the eucharistic body had long been identified in pious practice and theological clarification. Paul had spoken often of t he Church as the corpus Christi (Rom. 12:5; 1 C or. 12:27; Eph. 4:12). As in Eph. 4:13 Paul (or his pseudonymous interpreter) wrote of the great mysterium of the joining of Christ and the Church, like that of groom and bride in the one flesh of marriage (Eph. 5:23–33). The Western Church in its eventual mingling of the metabolic language of Ambrose of Milan and the symbolic terminology of Augustine, comes to speak of the Eucharist as itself the corpus mysticum. The familiar twelfth-century motet

127

 Specifically, Adversus Valentinianos and De carne Christi.  Hans Schoeps, who has wr itten the only mono graph on the subject Vom himmlischen Fleisch Christi (Tübingen: Mohr, 1951), gives two explanations and points to the f amiliarity of both Schwenckfeld and Servetus with the patristic texts. 129  This is a not incidental theme in my Anselm: Communion and Atonement (Saint Louis: Concordia, 1959). 128

492  the radical reformation

chapter 11.3.d

addressed to the Host, Ave verum corpus natum, besings the oneness of the body of the Son of Mary and that body on every Christian altar. In the course of t he Second Eucharistic Controversy (1050–70) there had been a programmatic diversion of the Pauline-Augustinian term for the eucharistic body, corpus mysticum, to become instead the new designation of the body of the faithful (the Church) and the concurrent substitution of the unequivocal corpus Christi for the sacramental presence.130 With the festal elevation of the sacramental corpus Christi enshrined in a monstrance to be carried into the streets once a y ear,131 it was natural that devout and theologically serious Christians should resort to eucharistic terms in interpreting the original Incarnation (Ch. 2.3) and that in the breaking-up of Christendom in the sixteenth century some radicals would follow the medieval scholastics and mystics in trying to restate in a meaningful way the received problem of the two natures of Christ by resorting to or pos­t ulating (rather than necessarily reviving) the Monophysite celestial flesh (or nature) that was like manna from heaven and might be tasted again by the devout as the substantia of the Host terrestrial, and a terrestrial flesh (or nature or appearance), with its once historic and now liturgical accidentiae. The radical reformers were freer than the magisterial reformers to appro­priate the terminology of impanation in discussing the historic Incarnation because they were not bound to the creeds and formularies of the ancient Church and could, with their still medieval eucharistic presuppositions, find afresh in the Bible itself a number of texts they could easily turn to advantage in their arguments with the magisterial Protestants, who would become increasingly self-conscious about defending their Catholic con­ciliar orthodoxy in terms other than scriptural when hard pressed. Just as the magisterial reformers, particularly the Lutherans, picked up the ancient christological (anthropological) communicatio idiomatum for their defense of the real presence at the altar, so many radicals appropriated medieval eucharistic symbolism to give expression to their divergent christological formulations. For some details, we turn now, first, to Clement Ziegler of Strassburg, the earliest exponent of the doctrine, and to its most extreme proponent, Melchior Hofmann, converted to Anabaptism while a s ojourner in Strassburg. (1) Clement Ziegler and Melchior Hofmann. Although the doctrine of t he celestial flesh of Christ seeped into the Radical Reformation through the 130  The liturgical and theolo gical shift in ter minology as a consequence of the Second Eucharistic Controversy is traced by Henri de Lubac in Corpus mysticum (Paris: Aubier, 1949) and the moment of the reversal of meaning (chasse-croisé fixed at c. 1150), ibid., p. 88. 131  Beginning in 1264.

chapter 11.3.d

unusual doctrines & institutions  493

innumerable fissures in the late medieval corpus christianum, one is moved to assign a prominent role as formulator and mediator to Clement Ziegler, who played host to several of the radical sojourners in Strassburg (Ch. 10.2.a). Ziegler did not disavow a corporal materialization in Christ’s becoming man through Mary, virgin post partum; but, as early as 1524, he stressed the doctrinal tenet that the Son was born of the Father within the Trinity before the foundations of the world,132 and that “the body which Christ had before the foundations of the world were laid is the communion in the body of Christ in the flesh, which communion we enjoy in spirit under the bread of the altar. …”133 He continues: If the splendor (Clarheit) of the first body were not there in the second body of Christ, which he took upon himself from the Virgin Mary, the fleshly body of C hrist would have been mortal and would not have been resurrected; but precisely the first body with its splendor … is the eternal Word. … Why therefore do we take the body of Christ not according to its divinity instead of according to humanity of the flesh?134 Hofmann went farther than Ziegler and denied a human body or flesh of Christ. Although Hofmann’s views on the Incarnation appeared to be Valentinian, there is scarcely any possibility that he had ever encountered ancient Gnostic or even anti-Gnostic texts on his own. But, like Valentinus, he held that Christ brought his body with him from heaven, taking nothing of the substance of Mary, passing through her “as water through a pipe.” In his biological presupposition Hofmann stood, quite unconsciously, in the Aristotelian-Thomist line. A roughly contemporaneous woodcut shows the crowned head and upper half of God the Father, while what would be the lower half is taken up by a cloud-enclosed space containing a naked infant bearing a cross and preceded by the Dove that effectuates the descent of the body of the Son of God into the womb of Mary. A matching woodcut shows the same infant body preceded by the Dove descending upon the altar at the elevation of the Host after the priest135 has pronounced the words Hoc est corpus meum.136 The close connection between Christology and the Eucharist was in Hofmann reinforced by t he nuptial imagery of m edieval mysticism and 132

 Elsass 1 (QGT 7), no. 7.  Ibid., no.24, p. 33. 134  Ibid., 34. 135  In this particular illustration, the celebrant is a bishop. 136  The two woodcuts referred to were published by George Biandrata and Francis David in De falsa et vera unius Dei Patris, Filii, et Spiritus Saneti cognitione (Alba Julia, 1568).They represent pictures (the liturgical garments clearly belong to the very late Middle Ages) from the papal residence in Rome and elsewhere.The work is published in facsimile with an introduction by Antal Pirnát, BU, vol. 2 (Budapest/Utrecht: Brill, 1988), 51, 49. 133

494  the radical reformation

chapter 11.3.d

specifically by t he symbolism of t he pearl. Medieval natural history supposed that pearls were formed by dew descending from heaven and crystallizing in the oyster, a s olid form of celestial water. This fanciful analogy proved useful to Hofmann in explaining how the heavenly flesh of Christ came to earth and was solidified in the womb of Mary: “The Eternal Word, which was true heavenly dew, in an unsensual and incomprehensible way but through the Holy Spirit, fell from the mouth of God into the wild mussel of the Virgin Mary, and in her became a bodily Word and spiritual pearl.”137 Appealing to Ecclus. 43:20, Hofmann says that as water becomes ice from the blowing of the cold north wind, so the Eternal Word of God became “a tangible water” or ice or crystal through the wind of the divine Spirit.138 In eucharistic piety, the heavenly dew could also be compared to the heavenly manna, which descended upon the desert for the nutriment of the chosen people. Thus the dew-pearl-manna, treated as one substance in diverse modes, could be used to refer to Christ in his several roles. The dew could represent him in his heavenly essence, the pearl in his human existence, and the manna as he presents himself in communion. Before Hofmann, John Ruysbroeck had made the same combination, speaking of “the sparkling stone,” smooth, round, and even, which is Jesus Christ: the “hidden manna, which shall give us eternal life.”139 The pearl as a synonym for the manna and for Christ’s body in the Eucharist is a usage dating back to Rabanus Maurus in the ninth century.140 Its usage in both romantic and ecclesiastical allegory shows that it was widespread. The nuptial language is very bold in Hofmann.141 Hofmann was quite specific “that the Eternal Word of God did not take our nature and flesh from the Virgin Mary but himself became flesh ( John 1:14), that is, our Lord Christ has not two but only one nature.”142 In 137

 “Die … Sendbrief … to den Römeren,” BRN, 5:311.  Ibid., 5:312. 139  “The Sparkling Stone,” in Late Medieval Mysticism, LCC 13 (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1957), 315. This imagery was supported by John 6:49–51; Rev. 2:17. 140  S. K. Heninger, Jr., “The Margarite-Pearl Allegory inThomas Usk’s Testament of Love,” Speculum 32 (1957): 92–98. The analogy in the late Middle Ages was used also in the poetry of courtly love. 141  W. J. Kühler in Geschiedenis der Nederlandsc he Doopsgezinden in de Zestiende Eeuw (Haarlem, 1932), 1:56–57, suggests that Hofmann’ s idea came fr om the circle of the Devotio Moderna and Alain de la Roche (van der Klip) who died in Zwolle in 1475. See Johan Huizinga, Hersttij der middeleuwen, 2d ed. (London, 1921), who also suggests the possible influence of Alain de la Roche . See also Studia Eucharistica DCC anni a condito festo sanctissimi Cor poris Christi, 1246–1946 (Antwerp: De Nederlandsche Boekhandel, 1946), 348, 363. 142  Zur Linden, Melchior Hofmann, 329. At this point Zur Linden’ s modernized German reads Vater instead of Natur. Schoeps, Fleisch Christi, corrects this. Schoeps can be fur ther substantiated in this crucial reading by Zur Linden’s own Beilage, 5:451, wherein Schwenckfeld is opposing Hofmann’s first article and indicates his o wn divergence from Hofmann in holding to two natures in the one Person. The Dutch version of the Handelinge given at this point also indicates that Hofmann had contended for one nature; BRN, 5:227. 138

chapter 11.3.d

unusual doctrines & institutions  495

the second article, Hofmann argues that if Jesus had taken on the flesh of Mary, he would have had Adamic flesh, which could neither “save us” nor “serve us as food for eter nal life.” It is not entirely clear what distinction he might ha ve in mind between salvation and eternal life, but it is clear that he interconnects believers’ baptism and communion, the historic redemptive action of cross and resurrection and the experiential appropriation of that work. In the third article, Hofmann appeals to 1 Cor. 15:47 in contend­ing for the heavenly origin of the Second Adam, and, in the four th, he strengthens his argument that Mar y was no more than Joseph a true parent of the Father-begotten Son in characterizing Christ as the true Melchizedek without earthly father or mother (Heb. 5:10, 6:20, 7:1-17). Hofmann had a thoroughgoing doctrine of the sinfulness of man, holding that all human beings are cursed on account of A dam’s sin. All of Adam’s seed belong to Satan. Adam has brought universal death into the world.143 Consequently, if Christ were of t he seed and flesh of Adam, he would have had to die for his own sins, he would have deserved damnation, and he would have belonged to Satan with the rest of h umankind. Had he taken flesh from Adamic Mary “the other tabernacle of his being,” he “would not have suffered for us, but only the tabernacle would have suffered, and Mary’s flesh.”144 He could not then be Redeemer. Therefore the eternal Son came from heaven, and was the New Adam. He redeemed human beings from death and removed all sin. Just as all the descendants of Adam and Eve are cursed, so all the descendants of the Second Adam and the “spiritual Eve” or “the Bride of the Lord Jesus Christ” are redeemed. It is not essential that Christ be identical with mankind, for salvation is a matter between God and Satan.145 To put, Hofmann argued, the stress on the death of the Adamic human nature as the one Person in two natures and to find satisfaction in the death of the human nature alone in isolation was to deprive resurrection and ascension of their redemptive significance. (2) Caspar Schwenckfeld, who wrote the most on the subject, who was orthodox on the Trinity except for the divine corporeity (11.2.c.5), and who declared that both Hofmann and Franck took “their errors from our truth, like spiders, who suck poison out of a beautiful flower,”146 and that Servetus for his part too had gone astray,147 clarified his own position over against Hofmann in holding emphatically to two natures in Christ. But he differed 143  Kawerau, Melchior Hofmann, 46ff. Cf. Wahrhaftige Zeucknis gegen die Nochttoechter und Stemen…, reprinted by Leendertz, Melchior Hofmann, 386–92. 144  Auszlegung der Offenbarung Joannis (1530); Elsass 1 (QGT 7), no. 210. 145  Kawerau, Melchior Hoffman, 47. 146  CS 5:522–23. Franck, who is her e linked disparagingly with Hofmann, expressly attacked, in 1534, Hofmann’s doctrine of the Incarnation in Paradoxa (no. 145). 147  See the addendum to his Vom Ursprung des Fleisches Christi, 1555; CS 14:307–48.

496  the radical reformation

chapter 11.3.d

from the traditional Chalcedonian formulation in his distinctive appropriation of Greek patristic texts. It is probable that Schwenckfeld’s doctrine of Christ, salvation, and the Eucharist derive from his study of I gnatius, Irenaeus, Athanasius, Cyril of Alexandria, and especially Hilary of Poitiers, all of w hom he cites and quotes.148 Augustine’s distinction between “the bread of the Lord” and “the bread which is the Lord,” based primarily on John, enabled Schwenckfeld to represent the human nature as “uncreaturely” and hence as scarcely distinguishable from the divine nature in Christ. Christ was the unique, natural Son of God and Mary, procreated, not created. Schwenckfeld applied the Nicene “begotten, not made” to the whole Christ and not merely to his divine nature or to the eternal Logos. Schwenckfeld, though standing as Hofmann did in the AristotelianThomist tradition on the biological point, did not deny that Mary was the true mother of Jesus Christ, or that Christ had received “the flesh and the tabernacle of his body from Mary, the virgin,”149 by the mysterious power of the Holy Spirit. But he insisted that Sonship is not creatureliness, for the Almighty God had the power to bring pure, uncreaturely flesh out of a holy virgin. He who cursed all Adam’s flesh can also circumvent that curse by his almighty power. This distinction is one of two nova in Latinate context of Schwenckfeld’s Christology, and the other is the progressive deification of t his uncreaturely humanity from the uniqueness of its conception, through such episodes as the momentary transfiguration, to the resurrection, ascension, and glorification. Originally, Schwenckfeld had reluctantly acknowledged that the human nature of Christ was indeed creaturely: “Besides the union of the Word of God with the flesh, there can be no other essential union of God and the creatures.”150 But he eventually recoiled from admitting even this, and just as he had been able to dissociate the inner Eucharist from the external and suspend the latter (Ch. 5.5), so also he soon eliminated the creaturely in the Incarnation, preferring to think of the humiliated humanity as being “the new creature”151 or as belonging to the “new order of re-creation or rebirth.”152 Instead of contrasting divine and human natures in the one Person, Schwenckfeld spoke rather of t he two states (Stände) of the humiliated and the glorified noncreaturely humanity. Besides these two stages in the “human,” “noncreaturely” nature, he formally held to the existence of a second nature of divine corporeity. In both the earthly and in 148

 Especially interesting is Hilary’s De Trinitate 10:18, where Christ is said to have a coeleste corpus; cited by Schwenckfeld in CS 6:85, 235–36; 7:286, 313–14; 27:325, 339; and especially Proof from the Scriptures and the Fathers, CS 16: doc. 1174, and Opinions of Hilarius, CS 17: doc. 1224. 149  CS 7:304. 150  CS 2:481. 151  CS 5:793. 152  CS 6:136.

chapter 11.3.d

unusual doctrines & institutions  497

the risen Christ, he insisted on the two natures, the one from heaven, the other derived from Mary but virtually identical with the other after the resurrection and glorification. Schwenckfeld never made entirely clear what the di vine in Christ was, apart from his “uncreaturely” human natur e. Under pr essure he came to distinguish between the crucified and the glorified body of Christ, but even then he so insisted on the unity of Christ that he would never have spoken of him at any time as a man like other men: I recognize nothing of c reation or creatureliness in Christ but rather a n ew divine birth and natural progeny (Kindtschafft) of God. Wherefore I cannot consider the Man Christ with his body and blood to be a c reation or a c reature. Rather, I b elieve and confess with Scripture that he is wholly God’s only-begotten Son and that Christ, the Son of G od, his heavenly Father, the whole Person indivisibly (unzertailig) God and Man, was born in time of the Virgin Mary; also that he suffered and died for us upon the cross in personal unity and wholeness, and as such rose again and ascended into heaven, that he sits at the right hand of God and rules also in his human nature wholly with God his Father in divine glory, unity, and essence, from which he will come to judge, etc.153 Schwenckfeld held further that God had foreordained Christ from eternity, having foreseen prior even to creation that humankind would fall, and that therefore even his uncreaturely human nature (flesh) existed in the prescience of God. The patriarchs believed in Christ and were truly nourished by this celestial flesh.154 Charged by Luther as a Eutychian, Schwenckfeld replied with firmness, vexed that he had been chronically and even maliciously misunderstood: Since my whole activity and altercation has had to do exclusively with the humanity of Christ, with his true body, blood, and flesh, and their properties, status, essence, and majesty in glory against those who want to rob his humanity of this splendor—how can I, then, deny the humanity of Christ and blood and flesh, or main­t ain only one nature, namely, only the Word in Christ, and make out of the human nature a divine nature, as they allege? This has never in my whole life come into my mind, that is, that I should not hold

153

 An Answer to Luther’s Malediction, translated in SAW, 180–81.  CS 4:27; 8:855. Schwenckfeld in the idea of the pr e-existence of Christ’s human flesh from eternity was influenced by his Silesian follower, the historian of the Sack of Rome, Peter Erb,“Adam Reissner: His Learning and Influence on Schwenckfeld,” MQR 54 (1980): 32–41. 154

498  the radical reformation

chapter 11.3.d

and confess Chr ist as a her o (Heldt) with two natures to be tr ue God and true man.155 This same hero, however, who was fully God as God’s Son, was not only born with passible flesh, but he also died as God; for, if “the eternal God can be born, undoubtedly he can also suffer,”156 and thus the “suffering and death of Christ pertained not only to his humanity … but … to the entire Son of God in the united person who hung on the cross and died”157 At his death, Christ, who “was killed in the flesh and made alive in the spirit,”158 … descended in the spirit to the prison [hell] and preached to [the patriarchs] in the spirit, proclaiming to them the salvation for which they had been expectantly waiting and the gospel of grace; yea, he held spiritual conversation with them concerning all the secrets of his death, kingdom, and judgment, just as Christ preached the eternal gospel to our souls and consciences and taught his disciples. There he illumined them with divine wisdom, enriched them with joy and endowed them with blessedness, and took all their souls out of the dungeon of t he prison and led them with him into his heavenly kingdom and prepared place, and made the outer court of hell empty, so that the place is now different from what it was before the Ascension of Christ.159 The process of vivification of the souls of the patriarchs in the forecourt of hell (“The lord kills and gives life; he leads into hell and out again”)160 was as a “spiritual conversation,” a kind of Schwenckfeldian communion. At his death the Son of God entered hell as Christus victor and Schwenckfeld suggests that he shared his uncreaturely flesh with the departed dead in a kind of eucharistic descensus that recalls Rupert of Deutz (Ch. 2.2).161 After the resurrection, the Logos and glorified flesh (the uncreaturely human nature) together constitute the Second Person of the Trinity.162 More than Schwenckfeld realized, however, that glorified flesh discharged in his system the function of the Third Person in traditional Pneumatology.163 155

 An Answer to Luther’s Malediction, SAW, 179–80.  CS 5:752. 157  CS 5:648. 158  CS 10:364; Postil on Luke 16. 159  Ibid. 160  Ibid., 361. Schwenckfeld quotes Rupert. 161  CS 4:525ff., 5:421, 7:519ff., 10:363ff., see my Anselm, 59, and Maier, Caspar Schwenckfeld, 51, who, however, does not bring out the eucharistic-redemptive role of the descensus. 162  Maier, Caspar Schwenckfeld, 74 and n. 2 for the places. 163  Noted by Maier, Caspar Schwenckfeld, 106, with the references. 156

chapter 11.3.d

unusual doctrines & institutions  499

Schwenckfeld quoted the Greek fathers on the purpose of the Incar­nation as making it possible for man to become by grace what God is by nature.164 Specifically, Christ became a new man that he might feed the believer with his mystical flesh and nourish him or her unto a new life.165 Human beings were entirely corrupt after the fall of Adam, but now the pure and holy man, the New Adam, can nourish those reborn in him to a new life. Since the human nature of Christ is uncreaturely, the believer, in receiving this celestial or mystical flesh in a mystical way apart from the sacramental Eucharist, is enabled to progress toward deification. Christ, not partaking of Adam’s sinful flesh, was born of woman to become the founder of a new order of being. All who through faith are born again in Christ stand no more on the side of the creature, but gradually “participate abun­d antly in the divine essence, life, spirit, and nature already here on earth.” He cites 2 Pet. 1:4.166 In Schwenckfeld’s soteriology, the Christus incordatus, referred to as the mystical Christus impanatus, has taken the place of Christus incarnatus.167 In place of L uther’s forensic justification has come a deificatory sanctification, similar to that of Servetus and the Orthodox Church.168 (3) Michael Servetus developed still a t hird variant in the doctrine of t he celestial flesh of Christ but as an Anabaptist he connected deificatory sanctification preeminently with believers’ immersion. In the Dialogues on the Trinity (Hagenau, 1531)169 he says of Christ’s celestial body the following: Indeed the body of Christ is itself the body of the Godhead; so that deity is plainly said to be in him bodily. The body of Christ its very self is divine and of t he substance of d eity. … The whole fulness of God, the whole of God the Father together with all the fulness of his properties, whatever God had, this dwells fully in this man. Indeed, if you note more carefully how great a thing it is for Christ to be the bodily and express image of t he Godhead, you will clearly see that there is substantial Godhead in the body of Christ, and that he is himself really of the same essence, and consubstantial with the Father. The bodily Godhead in the substance of Christ is such that it was seen and touched by John with the bodily eye and the bodily hand. 164

 CS 6:81.  CS 5:519–26, doc. 221. 166  CS 6:636. 167  Schoeps, Fleisch Christi, 31. 168  In the clar ification of Gregory Palamas (d. 1359), chief exponent of Hesychasm, the faithful may participate, not in the di vine nature, but in the divine energies, that is, uncreated grace. 169  1:7; Wilbur edition, 197. See fur ther, on the “corporal deity,” Elizabeth Feist-Hirsch, “Michael Servetus and the Neoplatonic Tradition: God, Christ and Man,” BHR 42 (1980): 561–75. 165

500  the radical reformation

chapter 11.3.d

Servetus continues in his demonstration, contending that the Word which, according to John 1:14, became flesh actually brought this flesh down from heaven: For these are words of C hrist which can by n o means be misinterpreted, in which he declares that he and his flesh came down from heaven; for he says that in the bread which came down from heaven is his own flesh [ John 6:51]. Again the type of the manna given from heaven clearly proves this very thing; for the falling of the manna is to be ascribed to the flesh of Christ, since it is the food represented by t hat food. Again, the second man, Christ, came from heaven as a heavenly being [1 Cor. 15:47].170 Servetus even appeals to Exod. 4:3, the memorable episode of Aaron’s rod, which, flung upon the earth, was turned into a snake, as an allegory of the Incarnation of the Word made flesh.171 Thus the doctrine of the celestial flesh of Christ finds expression in four phases. There is, first, the flesh derived from the substance of Mary; second, the flesh by which Servetus means the substantial Word of God distinguishable from God’s Spirit; third, the idea of the man Jesus Christ in the mind of God from all eternity; and fourth, the flesh of the resurrected and exalted Jesus Christ. Servetus the experimental physician did not begin his theological exploration with a postulated God-man before all ages, but with the historic Jesus recorded in the Gospels. Here, taking the words literally, and in so far as possible anatomically, he understood that God the Father sent the Word forth from his mouth, a seed which like a cloud of dew (ros) contained the elements of fire, water, and air, and passing through the nostrils of the Virgin at the Annunciation (Luke 1:26–38), had the power to bring forth a m an-child in her womb. God and his Word, replacing a m an and his seed, procreated a natural Son who was different from all the other sons of woman in being of the same substance as the Creator rather than of the same substance as the creatures. In thus bearing the Son of God, Mary was Theotokos (Deum generans seu Dei genitrix). Servetus’ later discovery of t he pulmonary circulation of t he blood and the process of oxygenation172 was motivated in part by the desire as a physician to show (like another physician, Paracelsus) that the Word of God as Spirit (divine breath), entering the blood system by the nostrils, makes physiologically plausible the doctrine of the Virgin Birth of Christ.

170

 Dialogues 1:9; Wilbur edition, 200.  Dialogues 1:9; Wilbur edition, 199. As a type of Incar nation, Exod. 4:3 occurs in Greek liturgical texts. 172  Announced for the first time in the Restitutio. 171

chapter 11.3.d

unusual doctrines & institutions  501

(4) The Lord’s Supper in the Theology of Ziegler and Servetus. We began in this chapter with a systematic treatment of the sacrament of Baptism (Ch. 11.1). After discussing alterations in the doctrine of t he Trinity and Christology (Chs. 11.2 and 3), we close with some observations on the Eucharist among devotees of the celestial flesh of Christ, as the sacramental implications of this widely held conviction deserve special notice. In Schwenckfeld the Eucharist, even though primarily an inner feeding, virtually replaced Baptism as the action whereby the believer is initiated into the community of the redeemed. There was something of this also in Paracelsus as in the young Luther.173 In fact, the sacrament of t he altar had gone far, in the Middle Ages, to replace baptism as the essentially redemptive sacrament;174 and in their emphasis on the redemptive role of the Eucharist, Schwenckfeld, Crautwald, and other Spiritualists whose eucharistic language had disappeared beneath more general mystical terms, were on sacramental theology even farther from most Anabaptists than they were able to explain. Let Ziegler speak for all these Spiritualists. It was well before Schwenckfeld that this Strassburg gardener declared at the end of 1524: I say therefore, if thou art a believer in Christ and art mindful in thine heart of Almighty God, that he is thy gracious Father … and art mindful of J esus Christ becoming man and of h is bitter suffering … and believest that all such hath happened for thine own good unto the resurrection and eternal life … whenever that taketh place in the heart of anybody, regardless of where that person be— hewing timber or cleaning a stall, washing dishes or sweeping the house or ploughing the field or mowing the meadow, yea, tending the cattle in the pasture—when such thoughts are opened up within, that person with certainty tasteth the body and blood of Christ, and he doeth so although there be no priest, no altar, and no outward sign.175 Spiritualism was clearly indigenous to Strassburg and may well have influenced in that direction such Anabaptist refugees as Entfelder and Bünderlin. In contrast to the Spiritualists and the sacramentarians (both magisterial and radical) stood Servetus, who, it will be recalled, criticized Bucer in 1532 for not having an adequate doctrine of the real presence of Christ in the elements of t he Supper. Servetus, to be sure, in his writings on the doctrine of the Trinity, 1531 and 1532, evidenced little interest in the 173

 See Goldammer, Paracelsus: Offenbarung, 84 and n. 55.  See above at n.126. 175  Elsass 1 (QGT 7), no. 24, pp. 13–14. Notice that of the se ven activities, at least two of them are the customar y work of women. Ziegler has in mind not only his wife b ut also the many other women drawn to the gardener’s suburban circle. 174

502  the radical reformation

chapter 11.3.d

Lord’s Supper, but it became a major concern in the Restitutio Christianismi of 1553. In brief, his views are as follows: Just as the inward human being cannot be born without faith and baptism, so he or she cannot remain alive without love and the sacrament of t he Lord’s Supper. The adoptive child of God, that is, one who has been born again in baptism, must find regular nourishment if he or she is not to perish. Servetus quoted Irenaeus, Adversus haereses, on how, as a liquid is necessary to make dry flour into a loaf of bread, so the immersion of believers is necessary to make of them the new body of Christ. As by food from the tree of life the old man (Adam) died, so by the new food from the tree of Calvary on which the New Adam died, every renewed human being is sustained and thereby enabled to persevere unto immortality, when Paradise is regained. The baptized Christian may not, however, approach the Table of t he Lord unprepared. What repentance was for the catechumens before their baptism, spiritual preparation is for those who communicate in the Lord’s Supper. Whosoever remains in his guilt, for example, by refusing to be reconciled with his fellow believer, must remain excluded from the communion so long as he persists in his unrepentance. A good preparation for communion, besides repentance, fasting, and prayer, is the presentation of quantities of bread and wine for distribution to the poor brethren and sisters. A proof of the love and the thankfulness of the believer for salvation in Christ is the oblation in kind which has been in use ever since the time of the apostles. A voluntary community of goods, to the extent to which it seems good to each one, even including voluntary poverty, is a sign of the health of the whole body of Christ. Where there is not that love which eliminates all difference of class, it is impossible to have a love feast (agape) in the way Jesus and his followers observed it. For this reason the congregation should not divide itself during the Lord’s Supper into different divisions which communicate privately among themselves, but exactly as the many grains make one loaf of bread, so all the communicants should make a single undamaged unbroken body.176 The most obnoxious thing of a ll would be for someone to say that from this body the Head is absent, that the body is on earth and the Head in heaven. If Christ were not present at Baptism with his Spirit and in the 176

 Servetus here reflects a widespread disposition among even disparate radicals to make of the Lord’s Supper an occasion for philanthr opy, sharing, and social equalization in the comm u­nion of Christ. Not only was this motif institutionalized among the Hutter ites (Ch. 16.3), but also notably in the r ite of Caspano under Camillo Renato (Ch. 22.1), and in the cong regations of the Polish, Lithuanian, and Transylvanian Reformed, especially after they came to espouse believers’ immersion. Though seldom expr essly mentioned, the disor derly eucharistic assemblies of Cor inth chas­tized by Paul (1 Cor. 11:17–22), were for many of the radicals an apostolic exemplum horribile, class-structured service of worship of their own nominally Christian neighbors, Catholic and Protestant.

chapter 11.3.d

unusual doctrines & institutions  503

sacrament of the Eucharist with his body, these actions would not have been so solemnly enjoined.The Supper is the necessary complement of Baptism. By the feeding with the bread, Christ allows believers to partake of himself, for truly he said of that celestial bread, “This is my body.” Such different things as bread and a body the Bible has not elsewhere associated. At the Last Supper there was a s ecret and mystical relationship established between them. The body of Christ is truly bread, as he is truly the daily bread for the inner man. The bread is truly Christ’s body, because the breaking of this bread effects the partaking of the celestial flesh. The digestive mechanism of the inner man is faith and love. In the sacrament one prays to Christ, constantly mindful of h is immeasurable deeds and benefits. Servetus rejects the teaching of the Catholics and Lutherans alike, who make of bread a non-bread, adore it, and allow it that the flesh of Christ could be, by a ccident, eaten by d ogs. It is, instead, a c elestial food accessible only by faith, whereby the faithful soul grows together to become one substance with the heavenly body of Christ. Servetus rejects also the cold, sophistical symbol of the sacramentarians, including Bucer. For the bread is an outward sign of an interior event or action. The demonstrative pronoun hoc would be meaningless if it did not point to something which is present. Servetus with his doctrine of the celestial flesh of Christ holds fast to the allegedly apostolic pat­tern, according to which the inner man has more community with the substance of the body of Christ than Christ himself did with his mother when she carried him under her heart according to the flesh.177 Just as the believer becomes in the sacrament one with Christ, so he or she becomes one with their fellow communicants, beloved as Christ. Whoever fails to make use of t he sacrament as the Lord enjoined cannot know one’s own innermost substance, cannot know to what a celestial and eternal being the believer is called through the resurrection of Christ. The apostolic Supper appropriates to itself, in its mystery, all the ancient offerings, both the expiatory and the thank-offerings. Yet the truly apos­tolic observation of the Supper does not consist in imitating the original in literal detail. Christ used the bread and wine to simplify, not to com­plicate, the observance of s acramental communion. If Christians live in a p lace where there is no wine, any other drink will serve the purpose equally well. Servetus was not a t ransubstantiationist, consubstantiationist, or sacramentarian. He was closest to Schwenckfeld, except that he attached impor-

177  H. Tollin,“Servet über Predigt, Taufe und Abendmahl,” Theologische Studien und Kritiken (1881): 296–97.

504  the radical reformation

chapter 11.3.d / 11.3.e

tance, as with baptism to water, so with the synaxis, to a tangible action.178 The sources of the eucharistic piety of both men were medieval far more than patristic or Valentinian. In any event, we are coming almost full circle in our narrative as we presently return to the Netherlandish Sacramentists on the point of their becoming Anabaptists under Melchior Hofmann, but first we must get a purchase on his eschatology, seen against the background of the evolution of the sense of history and Last Things since patristic antiquity, his singled out for special attention, amid the plethora of a pocalyptic systems in his age, because his thought dominates in the ensuing three chapters. e. Adorantism and Nonadorantism of Christ We can only anticipate at this juncture the terminology of a christological controversy that unfolds primarily among the proto-Unitarian Reformed in Transylvania and Lithuania. When a virtually (biblical) Unitarian con­ ception of God as One and of Jesus as his Virgin-born unique Prophet and hidden Messiah (imminently to return in Judgment) gained credence, especially in Transylvania, Francis Dávid, superintendent of t he Magyar Reformed, will argue from the Old Testament and the New that Christ should not be adored in worship or prayed to, but rather that his own Dominical Prayer should be heeded as the pattern of address to God the Father alone. The chief lay theological advisor of D ávid, Dr. George Biandrata (Ch. 24.3.b), alarmed lest this position would be struck down as an unacceptable innovation in the multiconfessional, polylingual accord in Alba Iulia under a tolerant Catholic prince, will invite Faustus Socinus from Basel (Ch. 24.4) to debate the issue of adorantism for three months in the parsonage of F rancis Dávid in Kolozsvár in 1578/79 (Ch. 28) in a controversy that would emotionally and theologically separate the Polish Brethren, of whom Socinus would become spokesman (Ch. 29.8), from the Unitarians consolidated in Lithuania and as reorganized in Transylvania. 178

 Since Servetus is widely r egarded as the “the Total Heretic” (the subtitle of J erome Friedman’s biography Michael Servetus (Geneva: Droz, 1978), little attention has been paid b y scholars from Spain to Poland and beyond Europe to how Servetus actually conducted himself when at Mass in Na varre, Paris, Toulouse, and Bologna, or in the compan y of Protestants in Basel, Strassburg, or again, under an assumed name , in Catholic Vienne and Lyons. It seems implausible, passionate and forward as he was, that he would have rested content with theologi­ cal talk in the place of r eal participation, the more so, as unlike Schwenckfeld, he offered no neo-Donatist or other perfectionist theor y, or even strategy, for suspending the or dinances of Christ. Although his principal interpreters in the eastern realms, Peter Gonesius in Poland and George Biandrata in Transylvania, never accepted the distinctively suggested (Ch. 2.4) that the intense eucharistic piety of a Wessel Gansfort, with its long abstentions from actual communion out of awe, could have contributed in the end to the r ejection of the bread altogether by the Sacramentists in The Netherlands. Servetian physicality of Christ at the Supper, they both did attach considerable importance to both or dinances.There may, indeed, have been a Ser vetian network of small groupings held together by correspondence and mutual visitation, of which the conventicles of Claude of Savoy (11.2.c.4) in and around Ulm are the vestiges.

chapter 11.4

unusual doctrines & institutions  505

4. Eschatology in the Radical Reformation: L ex Sedentium Writing in 1540 his Supputatio annorum mundi179 (Wittenberg 1541, 1545), Luther, thinking here only of his times in the context of the history of the world, with the help of patristic calculation updated, figured that he was writing on the occasion of the 5,500th anniversary of the creation of the world. The Word of G od, on this calculation, had become incarnate in the year 3960 after creation, thus at the end of the fourth millennium. He, reflecting in his 57th year, calculated that the Second Advent of Christ lay approximately five hundred years ahead of his generation at the closing of the 6th millennium since creation, but that God could well shorten the time, and most likely would, given the manifest declension of t he world. This calculation represented some accommodation for the former Austin friar in dealing with the historiographical and eschatological legacy of St. Augustine. As for his general perception of where Christendom stood temporally, the Byzantine East had come to reckon chronology from creation, calculated as accomplished in 5508 b.c.180 The West, beginning in Rome with Dio­nysius Exiguus in 526, gradually came to reckon the years from the birth of Christ, a chronology accepted by the synod at Whitby in 664 and gradually adopted throughout later Christendom through the influence of

179  WA 53:1–182. A full analysis is found in J ohn Headley, Luther’s View of Church History (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1963). 180  This reckoning, going back to J ulius Sextus Africanus, is still the sacr ed calendar of Orthodox Church, different from that of Orthodox Jews.

506  the radical reformation

chapter 11.4

the Venerable Bede’s De rationale temporum (Jarrow, 725).181 In this vie w the Word became flesh in the middle of what was reckoned as the sixth millennium from creation. It is a measure of the kinds of discrepancies possible within the Christian tradition that the preeminent Augustinian friar-reformer would think of himself in 1540 as a half-century into the sixth millennium, while the chronology and eschatology inherited from Bede and Augus­t ine himself with its six ages (not all millenia) had, about 1,111 years before this utterance, presumed that Christ was born at the opening of the sixth age and last temporal millennium before the closure of history in the eternal Sabbath of the elect. While a comprehensive presentation for the sixteenth-century of the sense of time and the inbreaking of the new order remains a monographic desideratum, we observe here that from the outset of the age of Reformation and restitution, the ancient, often pre-Constantine eschatological texts received fresh attention, while the basic framework derived from Augustine had long since come to be supplemented by schemata from within the Latin speculative mind. We have several classifying terms to cope with in the ensuing section: the Christian conception of world history; eschatology, apocalyptic, millennialism; Christian mortalism, natural immortality of the soul; freedom of prophecy; and lex sedentium. Eschatology, a branch of systematic theology about last things (eschata), in Christian thought covers the whole range of both the personal and the corporate future in history and beyond the tomb. Apocalyptic, meaning apocalyptic teachings and writings, from the Greek for revelation but now especially connotative of a r ange of e arly Christian and other religious non-canonical works besides the Revelation (the Apocalypse), denotes both the meta-historical and the worldly social conflict between Satan with his minions and Christ with his angelic host, together with his true body, the Church. Apocalyptic almost wholly despairs of the present and is fervently caught up in interpreting cataclysmic revelation from antiquity, often heavily saturated with sophisticated new theodicees, like Joachimism, gestated within the womb of Christendom. Millennialism, millenarianism, or chiliasm, from the Latin and Greek for a t housand, are used almost interchangeably for the biblical theology of history, according to which a d ay is as a thousand years in the sight of God (Ps. 90:4; 1 Pet. 3:8), the world created in six days with a S abbath (Gen. 1:1–2:3), which history, accordingly, will endure for six millennia and enter into a t housand years of s abbath peace on earth, or a t housand 181

 Appended was a Chronicle of the six ages of the world, adapted from Isidore of Seville (d. 636), the Chronica majora from creation to a.d. 615.The original motivation of the acceptance of the Roman (Dion ysian) calendar was to recast the calendar and Easter r eckoning of the Celtic Church.

chapter 11.4

unusual doctrines & institutions  507

years of the dir ect rule of Chr ist on ear th. Because some bib lical and other versions of the Messianic r ule with the saints w ere foreseen for four hundred years, as well as for a thousand years, “Millennialism” (by conven­tion less exact numerically than “chiliasm”) has allowed itself to cover all conceptions of direct rule by Christ on earth, however long or brief the duration. There were, for example, significant scriptural alternatives to a thousand -year reign of the Messiah, notably, the messianic rule of four hundred years in 4 Ezra (2 Esdras), which combines “as many years as thou hast afflicted us [Israel]” (cf. Ps. 9:15) and the specific foretelling of God to Abram that the children of Israel would be “in bondage in Egypt for four hundred years” (Gen. 15:13). Within Anglo-American Reformed and sectarian thought, mostly of the seventeenth century and thereafter, a widely understood distinction is made between amillennialism, premillennialism, and postmillennialism, an eschatological taxonomy which scholars in denominational traditions for which it is clarificatory and defining have yet to work through carefully for the sixteenth-century context before these three terms were used.182 Christian mortalism, the English seventeenth-century term, was the faithful acknowledgement of the death of the soul and body together but in the Christian expectation of the imminent General Resurrection of the dead and the Last Judgment of the quick and the risen dead. Because the New Testament uses the euphemism of s leep, the term soul sleep (Seelenschlaf) is often encountered in the sixteenth century. It will be sharply opposed by Calvin in his first theological work, Psychopannychia (1534; Strassburg ed., 1542). This important work against Anabaptists and perhaps Servetus (Ch. 23.1) supplies our generic term psychopannychism in the present narration for that full range of Christian views not in line with the decree on the natural immortality of the soul of the V Lateran Council (Ch. 1.6.a and c) and of Calvin himself who would come to hold to the continued consciousness of t he departed souls, as saints “under the altar” (Rev. 6:9–11), participant as the elect in the invisible Church, awaiting the Last Judgment. Luther, for his part, was himself, at the outset of h is scriptural career as reformer a psychopannychist, as was his most renowned English follower, the Bible translator, William Tyndale. In general, it may be said that the more intense the sense of the Second Advent as imminent, the more readily did apocalyptists descry the 182  Robert G. Clouse, ed., Meaning of the Millennium: Four Views (Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 1977), the first of which originally appeared as “Johann Heinrich Alsted and English Millennialism,” Harvard Theological Review 62 (1969): 189–207; idem, “The Millennium That Survived the Fifth Monarchy Men,” in Regnum, Religio, et Ratio: Essays Presented to Robert M. Kingdon, ed. Jerome Friedman, Sixteenth Centur y Essays and Studies 8 (Kirksville , Mo.: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1987), 19–29. John Bayle, bishop of Ossor y, an archaeologist among other interests, possessed one of the apocalyptic works of Hofmann. See further Peter Toon, ed., Puritan Eschatology (Edinburg: Clarke, 1970).

508  the radical reformation

chapter 11.4

psycho­pannychist passages in Scripture itself, when the veneer of centuries of cumulative reading of these texts as supportive of the natural immortality of the soul w as removed in the intense , existential explication de texte that proceeded in the dissident con venticles guided b y the lex sedentium (Ch. 11.4.b).183 Prophecy, broadly conceived, could indeed well provide a frame­work for understanding a whole set of events constituting the reform movements of the sixteenth-century from the classical Reformation through the various radical counter-reforms to the Tridentine Counter-Reform.184 In sketching the general framework of ideas pertaining to the end of life, to the corporate salvatory goal of l ife, and to the end of h istory, we offer a schematic overview of e schatology in the sixteenth century with, however, specific reference to the Radical Reformation, a topic or motif which will require many further confessional and regional monographic studies from Spain to the Ukraine before it can be pre­sented in its full range of complexity and interaction. In one sense the Good News was the overcoming of death, but in such a scripturally com­plicated schema of i nterrelated motifs, explanations, and fervid hopes, accompanying anguished fears, that the diverse eschatological visions of the sixteenth century still remains to be fully clarified in a comprehensive overview.185 However, even a partial clarification of the eschatological frameworks of the age can help to identify some of the presuppositions and expectations of magisterial and radical thinkers alike.

183  The New Testament scholars in the denominational traditions stemming from the Radical Reformation and others are often amazed at the living exegesis and hermeneutic of the radicals in the sixteenth century who read the Scriptures from within the physical, psychological, economic, and even often the educational structures of the pre-Constantinian generation of ancient Christians.Whereas, for example, the footwashing of disciples by Jesus had become the solemnized Maundy Thursday public spectacle of the liturg ical self-humiliation by the papal and the royal vicars of the Glorified Christ (a symbol not for that reason to be spurned), a number of radical groups and persons, like Hubmaier and Menno, recovered this explicit Dominical injunction as indeed as intracongregational ordinance of the laity. 184  Thomas F. Torrance deals with Luther , Bucer, and Calvin in“The Eschatolo gy of the Reformation,” Eschatology Scottish Journal of Theology Occasional Papers, no. 2 (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1953): 36–62; Robin Bruce Barnes deals comprehensively with the themes Prophecy and Gnosis, Apocalypticism in the Wake of the Luther an Reformation (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1988), 13–15; Rodney L. Petersen “Preaching in the Last Da ys” (Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton Theological Seminary, 1985), brushes in the larger eschatolo gical scheme, with extensive attention to the sixteenth-century radicals, and to the English development into the early seven­teenth century; see also idem, in revised version: Preaching in the Last Days (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). 185  Walter Klaassen has sorted out the theme for one r egion and group, but with uncommonly broad and rich annotation,“Eschatological Themes in Early Dutch Anabaptism,” in Irvin Buckwalter Horst, ed., The Dutch Dissenters: A critical companion to their histor y and ideas, with a Bibliographical Survey, Kerkhistoriche Bijdragen 13 (Leiden:Brill, 1986), 15–31; and he is at work at an even more comprehensive account.

chapter 11.4 / 11.4.a

unusual doctrines & institutions  509

In what follows, we proceed selectively to (a) ancient eschatology and apocalyptic recovered, to (b) the charismatic prophet as spiritual teacher and forthteller; and to (c) the enormously influential eschatology of Melchior Hofmann within the complex legacy, scriptural, patristic, and medieval both papal and popular, in some respects shared with the Catholics and magisterial reformers of an age of tumultous expectancy. a. Ancient Eschatology and Apocalyptic Recovered 186 The direct rule of Christ with his saints for a thousand years (Rev. 20:1–5) was initially thought of a s starting with Christ’s imminent return. In the course of Christian history it continued to be placed in the impending future with premonitory signs and portents, the forseen schedule subject to repeated revisions, as this most explicitly millenarian topos of canonical Scripture came to be supplemented by a ncient extra-canonical and subsequent prophecies from within the Christian tradition and, by the sixteenth century, also from within the ever more accessible Jewish eschatological (messianic) tradition. This had not remained fossilized in the intertestamental period known to the ante-Nicene Fathers but had been repeatedly subject to updating and revision under the impact of events on the Jewish community living within Islam, as well as within Latin and Orthodox Christendom. Although Jesus himself had purportedly discounted attempts respect­ing the specificities of the end of the age (Matt 24:36), still he had left the impression that by keeping watch (Matt. 24:42–44), the faithful might well be prepared for, and discern something of, the nature of those final events (Mark 13:4–37). The primary apocalyptic images of canonical Scripture—(1) the Second Advent (Acts 1:11; Rev. 16:15); (2) the General Resurrection of the dead (Dan. 12:2; Rev. 20:13); and (3) the Last Judgment by Christ (Matt. 25:31–33; Rev. 10:12)—were interwoven with secondary images pointing to (a) religious declension (Matt. 24:37–39; 2 Thess. 2:3-12), to (b) the appearance of a p ower contrary to Christ, called, on the basis of col­lated textual tradition, “Satan,” “Antichrist,” or the “Man of Lawlessness” (2 Thess. 2:7; 1 John 2:18, 4:3; 2 John 7; Rev. 11:7,13) who, providentially, (c) is kept at bay “only until the one who now restrains it [Lawlessness] is removed to (d) the appearance of two final or adventual prophets who would be slain and resurrected in a seven-year period to prophesy doom and salvation for 1,260 days (Rev. 11:3, 11), and to (e) the first resurrection (Rev. 20:6) in distinction from the second and General Resurrection. All of these prognostications and symbolic actions were then set in the context of a wider figural tradition that found premonitory significance in two series of events in Revelation: first, the two revelatory scrolls, one larger and to be opened by Christ (Rev. 5:1, 186  Paul Hanson, ed., traces the ancient history in Visionaries and Their Apocalypses (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983). Bernard McGinn clarifies the terms in Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages (NewYork: Columbia, 1979) 28–32.

510  the radical reformation

chapter 11.4.a

7–10), one smaller and to be consumed by a final preacher prior to a final call to repentance and belief (Rev. 10:2, 8–11), and the second, a series of seven, the seals (Rev. 6–8:5), the trumpets (Rev. 8:6–11:19), and the bowls of wrath (Rev. 15:7–16:21). Feeding into the sources for patristic eschatology, besides the canonical Scripture, were the apocryphal literature (New and Old), some of it eschatological, and the Sibylline Oracles in Greek hexameter in fifteen books (three of which, 9, 10, and 15, are missing), with several translations into Latin.187 These oracles, purporting to be the utterances of t he some ten Hellenistic Sibyls (prophetesses associated with ancient sites from Babylon to Lybia), were cast in their peculiar form around some authentic Greek oracles to commend in the first instance Messianic Jewish monotheism to the Graeco-Roman world; and, as the collection, enlarging from the Maccabean period, was taken over by Christians in the third century (with increments in the fourth), it proved to be a fecund factor in the elaboration of both ante-Nicene and post-Nicene eschatology.188 The Christian Apologists of the second century, for example, including Theophilus of Antioch, also Clement of Alexandria, Lactantius, and even Augustine himself (City of God, 18.23) drew upon the Sibylline Books, phrases from which would long afterwards become part of t he hymnic sequence, Dies irae of Franciscan authorship in the thirteenth century in the Requiem Mass. Not originally written for liturgical use (composed in the first person), Dies irae would be printed with a missal for the first time in (Venice, 1493); and, as an integral part of the expanded Requiem Mass, could have been heard any day in the sixteenth century, as in an universal moan of terror, some of the very words of the Sibylline Oracles mounting in crescendo from the funeral masses in progress below the Catholic spires of all Latin Christendom in the century of Counter-Reform. With all the complexity of scriptural and extracanonical heritage only here partially brought together and with the ongoing interweaving of t hese texts into veritable welcome mats, as it were, to imminent horren­dous changes in history, two main lines of Christian eschatology developed already in antiquity. The original Christian chiliasm (today commonly called premillennialism), to a certain extent spiritualized Jewish chiliasm and fixed upon the second, instead of the first, coming of Christ, having distinguished, on the basis of R evelation, 187  Text and translation b y E. A. Kurfess (Munich, 1951), well described and histor ically situated among a plethora of less influential texts by Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium, 1st ed. (Fairlawn, N.J.: Essential Books, 1957), 2d English ed. (London/New York: Temple Smith/Oxford, 1970), and French ed., Les fanatiques de l’apocalypse (Paris: Julliard, 1962). 188  The principal eschatological reference in the Nicene -Constantinopolitan Creed was directed against Marcellus of Ancyra (Ch. 8, n. 40).

chapter 11.4.a

unusual doctrines & institutions  511

two resurrections, one before and another after the millennium under Christ, and having construed the mil­lennial rule of Christ on earth as only a prelude to his eternal reign with the saints in heaven, from which it was to be separated by a shor t inter­regnum of Satan. Moreover, the millennium w as awaited not as the result of a historical process but as a sudden supernatural incursion. This view was expressed, for example, in the Epistle of Barnabas (ch. 15), drawing on Revelation, Ps. 90:4, and 2 Pet. 3:8, and fixed the period of Christ’s direct rule before the second resurrection as of a thousand years, this largely dis­placing for subsequent Christians the alternate Jewish expectation of four hundr ed years. This was the chiliasm developed by, among others, Justin Martyr,189 Tertullian,190 Hippolytus,191 and Irenaeus.192 The second and eventually prevailing interpretation of the eschatological legacy goes in modern terminology as amillennialism. Origen was the first to spiritualize the chiliastic passages of Scripture and the writings of Montanist and Jewish-Christian continuators. It was Augustine who, following the biblical scholars Origen and Jerome, in opposition to the literal chiliasts, led the way to a spiritualized interpretation of the millennium in The City of God. Augustine, adjusting in minor ways his chronology and scriptural figures as he developed his vision of history, held that the millennial rule of Christ began, in fact, with his nativity. This was a perspective which undermined the political, “millennial” optimism of E usebius of C aesaerea and the emerging Byzantine interpretation of t he reign of C onstantine (as himself the celestial Nomos embodied, almost in the sense of the teleological Logos ensouled, empsychos) with eventual scriptural support from 2 T hess. 2:7 (see below at n. 195). Such a v iew of t he sacral state and rulership only much later would be identified as “postmillennialism.” Augustine, in the modern nomenclature of Anglo-American seventeenth-century antecedents, was a proponent of “amillennialism” or a sublimated millennialism. In the formative view of Augustine, expressed in The City of God, the Church was the embodiment of the Kingdom, while the “first resurrection” lay in the ongoing cumulative regeneration of subjects of that ecclesial Kingdom by infant baptism.193 The sacramental system, issuing from the crucifixion and the Resurrection of Christ (Ch. 2.1), thus presupposes as the Kingdom the sacramental Church, with Hell and Purgatory the immediate destiny of t he dying 189

 Dialogue with Trypho the Jew.  De anima. 191  Demonstratio de Christo et Antichristo and In Danielem. 192  De haeresis, although his section on the millennium was removed by ancient ecclesiastical censors and not known until 1575. 193  In his commentar y on Nicodem us and the Kingdom. John 5:1–13; In Evangelium Iohannis 12.5; Migne, PL, col. 1486. 190

512  the radical reformation

chapter 11.4.a

(with Paradise, the ultimate goal of t he elect, immediately accessed only by martyrs and canonized saints; cf. the forgiven thief, Lk. 23:43). The Second Advent and the “second,” i.e., the General Resurrection still lay for Augustine vaguely as about a t housand years from the Nativity, and thus he did not anticipate the Last Judgment as falling beyond a.d. 1000 (City of God, 20.7.9). Augustine had derived much of his eschatological thought from the seminal Donatist lay theologian Tyconius of North Africa (d. ca. 400), nota­bly his lost Commentary on the Apocalypse.194 In line with Jerome’s spiritual understanding of many an eschatological text in Scripture, Augustine in his City of God (20.7.33–43) found a resolution of the possible discrepancies in Scripture in a sixth age of the Church, in succession to earlier periods in Old Testament history, unique in its having been inaugurated by Christ. In his earlier discussion on ages, as he considered various twofold, threefold, and sixfold divisions of t ime, Augustine had settled for purposes of historical periodization upon the following ages (not all of them millennia): (1) from Adam to Noah,(2) from Noah to Abraham, (3) from Abraham to David, (4) from David to the Babylonian Captivity, and (5) from the Captivity to Christ. These biblical periods constituted, however, slightly less than four millennia from creation. Within the sixth age (6) after Chr ist of about a millennium, Augustine saw (7) a spir itual Church unfolding concur rently, looking to an eighth age, the eternal Sabbath. The spiritual dimension of this sixth temporal age was known to the elect for whom the per iod constituted concur rently the Apocalypse-inspired seventh or mil­lennial age of spiritual perfection, which was, by virtue of one’s baptism, in effect, “the first resurrection” prior to Christ’s Second Advent and the Last J udgment. Augustine developed this spiritualist understanding of the sixth/seventh age as plausibly a full millennium in contrast to his o wn earlier millenar ian position in The City of God (20.7; 20.20; 22.30), hold­ing that the sixth/se venth/age/millennium would indeed endure about a thousand years.While apocalyptic images retained a place in his history, the secondary images took on a more timeless character, descriptive of the perennial conflict between good and evil in this complex last age. However the implications for further historical momentum were always there. In the meantime the publicists of the Byzantine Empire and of that in succession to Charlemagne, the Holy Roman Empire, and eventually (after the assumption of Tsardom in 1547) that of t he Third Rome (Moscow) would alike be interpreted in the light of 2 Thess. 2.7: “For the Mystery of

194  Bernard McGinn is helpful in analyzing guiding motifs in Apocalyptic Spirituality (New York: Paulist, 1979). Paula Frederickson Landes presents the strands ofTyconian and Augustinian thought which congeal in the dominant lens thr ough which the book of Re velation would be read into the sixteenth century in “Tyconius and the End of the World,” Revue des Etudes augustiniennes 28 (1982): 59–75.

chapter 11.4.a

unusual doctrines & institutions  513

lawlessness is already at work, but only until the one [the Emper or] who now restrains it [Lawlessness] is removed.”195 The groups opposed to the Gregorian Reform and the claim of the holy character of the Apostolic See of Rome in the eleventh century, brooders like Rupert of D eutz (1070–1129/1135?), Otto of F reising (1093–1158), Anselm of H avelberg (1100–1158), and Gerhoh of R eichersberg (1093– 1169) laid out ideas that would later be systematically arranged by Joachim of Fiore (c. 1132–1202) to provide the Church with a spiritually progressive and not necessarily a catastrophic (apocalyptic) approach to an understanding of history in fundamentally reinterpreting the figurae of Revelation and related canonical and extracanonical texts. Among their antecedents, or contemporaneous with them, besides the eschatalogical texts already mentioned, were the Syrian-Christian books (c. a.d. 350), which foresaw two warrior-saviors and an “Emperor of the Last Days”; the mid-seventh-century Mesopotamian Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius (in Syr iac, Greek, and Latin), who foresaw an earthly emperor rise from his grave, slaughter the wick ed, and introduce a reign of tranquil­ity until the appearance of Antichrist, whereupon Christ descends, slays Antichrist, and begins the Last J udgment; and also Adso of Montier-en-Der, who developed the tradition of Antichrist.196 Of all the post -canonical Christian eschatological schemata, most important was the diffusion of the tr ipartite historiography of Abbot Joachim of Fiore (already noted for his inter pretation of 1 Tim. 2:5; Ch. 11.3.c) with his overlapping and typolo gically consequent dispensations in histor y of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spir it, with the Age of the Spirit breaking forth even as the age of the Son and its celibate priest­hood was passing away, a view dominating the Spiritual Franciscans and widespread among some of the sixteenth-century radicals. Joachim, having as a youth made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, witnessed the horror of a n epidemic, visited Coptic anchorites in Thebes, entered the Cistercian house in Corazzo, where he was ordained and elected abbot against his will. He resigned (without permission) to devote himself to study and writing at Casamari and then in Fiore in Calabria. Here he founded his own austere branch of the order, the Florensi, under

195  Alois Dempf, Sacrum Imperium: Geschichts-und Staatsphilosophie der Mittelaters und der politischen Renaissance (Munich/Berlin: Oldenbourg, 1929). For the Slavophile understanding of Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible (1533–84), see H. Schaeder, Moskau, das dritte Rom (Hamburg, 1929). 196  See Paul Alexander, The Byzantine Apocalyptic Tradition (Berkeley: University of California,1985), ed. and intro. by Dorothy de F. Abrahamse; D.Verhelst, “La préhistoire des conceptions d’Adson concernant l’Antichrist,” Recherches de Théologie ancienne et médiévale 40 (1973): 52–103; and, with special reference to the sixteenth centur y, J. Rohr, “Die Prophetie im letzen Jahrhundert vor der Refor mation als Geschichtsquelle und Geschichtsf aktor,” Historisches Jahrbuch 19 (1898): 29–56, 447–66.

514  the radical reformation

chapter 11.4.a

the patronage of J ohn the Evangelist/Seer, their rule approved by a b ull of Pope Celestine III in 1196.197 With what would be considered as a d ispensational conception of the Trinity, Joachim opposed what he regarded as the Peter Lombard’s Quarternity (the essentia in the Sentences being so utterly different from the Three Persons, one of them of two natures) that he seemed to disallow any mediatorial role for the divine nature in Christ as Mediator (Ch. 11.3.c), and held instead that the unity of the Trinity is not vera et propria but collectiva et similitudinaria, a view condemned by IV Lateran as tritheistic.198 Joachim’s grand vision of p rovidential history in three dispensations was embodied in his three works (1183–88): Liber concordiae Novi de Veteris Testamenti (Venice, 1519), Expositio in Apocalypsim (Venice, 1527), and Psalterium decem cordarum (Venice 1527),199 which together established the Joachimite schema of t hree overlapping periods (status: stages). The first was the Period of the Father, characterized by fear and servile obedience, the age of patriarchal marriage, the Ordo conjugatorum, the conjugal world under the Law, extending from Adam and Eve to the end of the Old Testament dispensation, for forty-two generations of t hirty years each. This Period of t he Father nevertheless continues into the inrushing second Period of t he Son and of filial obedience, which in its turn is marked by the rise of the Ordo clericorum, of the celibate clergy living under grace, and continuing for also forty-two generations, to be succeeded c. a.d. 1260 (forty-two generations each of thirty years) (cf. Rev. 11:2–3) by the third Period of the Holy Spirit. The Age of the Spirit is to be domi­n ated by the Ordo monachorum or the Contemplatives living under the law of love and the liberty of the Spiritual Intellect, ushering in the Ecclesia Spiritualis.200 The first age was that of t he old, the second of the young, and the third was that of both gentle friars and trusting infants. The hierarchial Church of his own age (of the Son) was to be absorbed into the Spiritual Church, the active life to give place to the contemplative. In the impending Third Age; Jews were to be converted, Latins and Greeks reconciled. In a s ense the Age of t he Spirit was the millennium of t he Third Person, grounded in the prophecy of Revelation 7:2 and 14.6. Of doubtful

197  Buonaiuti (n. 201 below) conjectures that the last Rule of the Florensi survives in part in Concordia, 5, chap. 23. 198  Joachim’s work against Peter Lombard, De unitate seu essentia Trinitatis, condemned by IV Lateran, is lost, cf. n. 193 below. 199  The Psalterium is a mystical reflection on the two biblical instruments, psalter and cither, in his distinctive interpretation of the Trinity. 200  Ernst Benz pioneer ed the impact in Chur ch history in Ecclesia Spiritualis (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1934).

chapter 11.4.a

unusual doctrines & institutions  515

authenticity are six other works of related eschatological fervor, none of them critically edited until in the twentieth century. 201 The Franciscans, notably the Spiritual Franciscans or Fraticelli, came to see in themselves the new order of spiritual men, and, in 1254, the Spiritual Franciscan, Gerard of Borgo San Donnino systematized Joachim’s threefold pattern in Introductorum in evangelium aeternum liber, a composite of Joachim’s three works, proclaimed by Gerard in the spirit of Joachim as the Eternal Gospel (Rev. 14:6), understood in supersession to the Old a nd the New Testaments. The Evangelium aeternum was condemned by A lexander IV in 1256.202 The Spiritual Franciscan and rigorist Peter John Olivi (1245–98), fusing in his major work the Lectura super Apocalypsim (first published in 1700), 203 the Joachimite tripartite theology of history with radical Franciscan ideals of church reform, understood Francis of Assisi himself as the Christ in his Second Advent, with the Third Advent of Christ still anticipated.204 Olivi was accused of heresy at the general chapter of h is order in Strassburg in 1282; and certain propositions of his, though he was unnamed, were condemned by t he fifteenth ecumenical Council of V ienne in 1311; and the Lectura was condemned by John XXII in Avignon in 1326. Olivi, drawn to the tripartite schema of history, kept all of Christian history under Christ, including the Joachimite Age of the Spirit, and advanced a modified notion of three advents of Christ, called by h im the 201

 Among these is the Tractatus super quattuor evangelia, ed. by Ernest Buonaiuti, with updating biographical details about J oachim, Fonti per la stor ia d’Italia (Rome, 1930), 67. Buonaiuti himself counted the Tractatus itself among the authentic works. 202  See Morton W. Bloomfield, “Joachim of Flora: A Critical Survey,” Traditio 13 (1957): 249–311.The classic development of the elaboration of o J achimite ideas in the later MiddleAges is by Marjorie Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: A Study in Joachimism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969). Her study developed out of guidelines for subsequent scholarship laid down by Herbert Grundmann, Studien uber Joac him von Fiore (Leipzig 1927, repr., Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft,1966). 203  Werner Packull in his invaluable,“A Reinterpretation of Melchior Hofmann’s Exposition against the Background of Spiritualist Franciscan Eschatology with Special Reference to Peter John Olivi,” in Dutch Dissenters, ed. Horst, 32–65, was able to use the unpublished thesis of Warren Lewis, “Peter John Olivi: Prophet of the Year 2000; Ecclesiology and Eschatology in the Lectura super Apocalypsim: Introduction to a critical edition of the text” (doctoral dissertation Tübingen, 1972) as w ell as the earlier R. Manselli, “La ‘Lectura super Apocalypsim’ di Pietro di Giovanni Olivi,” Ricerche sull’escatologismo medioev ale, Studi Stor ici 19–21 (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1955). For a descriptive summary of Olivi’s ideas and works, see further Franz Ehrle, “Petrus Olivi, sein Leben und seine Schr iften,” Archiv für Literatur und Kirchengeschichte 3 (1887): 459ff.; Carter Partee, “Peter John Olivi: Historical and Doctr inal Study,” Franciscan Studies 20 (1960); David Burr, The Persecution of Peter John Olivi (Philadelphia: Publication of Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 1967); and Servus Gieben, “Bibliographia Oliviana (1885–1976),” Collectanea Franciscana 38 (1968): 167–95. 204  In the comparative study of religion, successive advents of Christ beyond the scriptural Second Advent suggest bodhisattvas, lamas, imams.

516  the radical reformation

chapter 11.4.a

Sunshine (cf. Isa. 3:26; Rev. 10:1) of Church history; and he superimposed these three comings of Chr ist on the seven periods (status) of New Covenant history, extrapolated from the apocalyptic vision of the se ven churches (Rev. 2–3), seals (Rev. 4–8), trumpets (Rev. 8–11), and severe trials (Rev. 16). Accordingly, in Olivi Christ came in the flesh at the beginning of the first period of New Covenantal history. He came a second time at the end of the fifth and the beginning of the sixth period in the person of Francis. As at once the angel of the sixth seal “with the seal of the living God” (Rev. 7:2) and “the other angel” of the sixth tr umpet “with the f ace of the sun,” who holds the “little book” (Rev. 10:1–2), Francis was the angel who came in the fiery wagon of Elijah, impersonat­ing Christ, the true Seer. Francis held “the key of David,” granted to the sixth church (Rev. 3:7), which makes possible a spiritual hermeneutic as “spiritual intelligence” for the elect. As Christ coming in the Spirit, Francis (1181–1226) ushered in the third dispensation of w orld history or the sixth period of C hurch history (roughly two centuries after the anticipated eschatological closure of Augustine’s temporal sixth/spiritual seventh period) bringing the sunshine of Isaiah 3:26: “… the light of t he sun will be sevenfold, in the light of seven days, in the Day when the Lord binds up the hurt of h is people,” a passage essential in Olivi’s prologue. Within Church history the seven periods (status) were cast for Olivi in terms of t he continual antagonism within the Church, not between church and state, or Church and Antichrist outside the community of faith. The pure Bride of C hrist always contends with the Babylonian harlot. For Olivi, during the first, the apostolic status, the conflict was between Church and Synagogue; during the second status, between the Church of the martyrs and the pagan state; and during the third status, with the help of Constantine, the conflict was between the great doctores Ecclesiae and the heresiarchs. The fourth status was the age of t he anchorites who opposed laxity in the Great Church. The fifth status, beginning with the rise of the Frankish Empire in 800, reaches for Olivi its nadir in the corruption of the Church, through the Papacy and Aristotelianism in the universities, the entire Church of R ome and its major legatine and scholastic institutions dominated by the Whore of Babylon. Olivi saw the first eschatological millennium in Augustine’s spiritual sense (his concurrent sixth/seventh period) as having come to a close some time after 1030, whether dating it a thousand years from Christ’s binding of Satan at his resurrection c. a.d. 30 (Rev. 20:1–3) or from Constantine’s victory over Maxentius (a second binding of S atan), hence in 1311. Not literally a millennialist, Olivi nevertheless anticipates that the eschatological Second Millennium would begin upon the close of h is sixth and the

chapter 11.4.a

unusual doctrines & institutions  517

beginning of his seventh status of Church history still ahead, with the third Advent of Christ and hence the Last Judgment, in exactly a.d. 2000. However, Olivi foresaw a radical cleavage in his sixth status, a period of struggle between its mystical Antichrist, “the beast from the land” (Rev. 13:11), succeeding to “the great Antichrist,” “the beast from the sea” with seven heads (pagan Rome), a period during which the 144,000 saints (Rev. 7:4; 14:1,3) are reborn, anointed, and sealed. Olivi envisaged in the seventh status, a period comparable to a wedding feast, the last great supper, the Song of Songs becoming thus descriptive of Christ and his spotless Bride of the Eschaton (inspiratory of some of the vivid bridal imagery in 11.1.d and 11.2.c.3). With the first quasi-eschatological millennium of Christ and ecclesiastical life under Christ’s inward rule according to the dominant Augustinian projection, now already five centuries behind them in a.d. 1500, the reformers of t he sixteenth century had long been aware that the official amillennial framework of s ettled Christian expectation within and about the Holy Roman Empire (2 Thess. 2:7) and the Papacy (Matt. 16:18) and God’s goals in history had to be reconsidered, under the terrifying prospect of the high-powered expansionist Ottoman Empire hurling itself repeatedly against the polyglot, multi-confessional Apostolic Kingdom of Hungary, well beyond Budapest to threaten Vienna. And some of the later medieval theologies of history and feverish apocalyptic would be taken note of both in the libraries of the reformers as well as in the courts of princes, most of whom also had court and military astrologers to help further descry the future in parlous times. Not only had sober eschatological reflection and fevered apocalpytic of Joachim and Olivi, whether authentic or pseudonymous, like a m anuscript version of t he writings of J oachim elevating apostolic poverty and even possessionlessness to a u niversal ideal, rocked the later medieval Church, adding apocalyptic urgency to the message of t he Beghards, the later Waldensians in contact with the Hussites (Ch. 21.2), and of the Hussite Taborites themselves (Ch. 9.1), but now gains in the sixteenth century the attention of territorial reformers eventuels as diverse as Luther, Bullinger, Lambert of Avignon, and Bishop John Bale of O ssory. A r enewed apocalyptic tension was briefly attractive to, and a part of, the eschatological thinking of the early Martin Luther, for example, in his reluctant but then emphatic recognition that he stood in the succession of John Hus, 205 although he would soon withdraw from active and public speculation about such prolix matters as the Christian prognostication of the future. Yet his movement was itself first hailed by many in eager expectancy as the fulfill205  On Luther’s use, see Hans -Ulrich Hoffman, Luther und die Johannes -Apokalypse (Tubingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 1982); and Heiko A. Oberman, Luther, Mensch zwischen Gott und Teufel (Berlin: Severin und Siedler, 1982).

518  the radical reformation

chapter 11.4.a / 11.4.b

ment of the hope for final adventual preachers.206 Luther quickly dropped any personal association between himself and such adventual witnesses (Rev. 11:3, 11), arguing instead that the renewed preaching of the Gospel was itself that which would open the way toward the Last Judgment and God’s eternal kingdom. Luther had found the locus of t he new authority in the Gospel message itself rather than in some deepened perception of its being explicated by special prophets in a final age of history. He called Christians, instead, to live fully in the orders of creation, unchanged since the days of Noah.207 This move was the opposite of the mood and the tactic of many impatient radicals like Thomas Müntzer, John Hut, and Melchior Hofmann who were seeking to descry the final prophets of the age and were drawn in some sense to identify themselves as one or the other of the two adventual prophets. b. The Prophet as Spiritual Teacher and Forthteller: The “Lex Sedentium” among Magisterial and Radical Reformers Within the Reform era the propheta was understood to be variously the prophet as adventual witness (Rev. 11:3–13); the prophet as visionary foreteller of t he end: Münzter, Hut, Hofmann; prophet as forthteller, somewhat like the Old Testament prophet in rebuke of his people or church; the prophet authorized as reteller in the sense of teacher or authoritative master (doctor ecclesiae) qualified by university or comparable training in the three languages of the cross, to interpret Christ as himself the last Prophet (Gen. 18:15). Accordingly, prophecy as biblical teaching becomes in some settings linked to Christ’s prophetic office (Chs. 10.2.b; 11.3.b) even though charismatic prophecy is regarded as having been extinguished with the Apostolic Age, as with Calvin who did not rehabilitate the office of prophet (Ch. 23.2) as did Bullinger. Freedom of prophecy becomes attached to the other topics of our section because on the prevailing view of h istory and last things rest such great issues of the ongoing Church as to whether the gift of authentic prophecy was withdrawn by God after the apostolic age (or indeed in Christ as the final Prophet; cf. Gen. 13:1; 18:15) and, whether, if the charisma is indeed given again in the age of Reformation whether it is (a) for the duly educated and otherwise autho­r ized teachers as university-trained doctores/magistri ecclesiae or (b) a g ift also poured out upon the whole congregation. Freedom of prophecy, in any case, anchored in 1 Cor . 206

 Hans Preuss, Martin Luther: Der Prophet (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1933), 36–72.  Thomas Torrance, “The Eschatology of the Reformation,” dealing primarily with Luther and his Two-Kingdom theology and Calvin, who took over the Regnum Christi idea of Bucer for Strassburg (and England), shows with what greater stress than Luther Calvin concentrates on Christ’s Resurrection and Session in Glory at the right hand of the Father, how thus Calvin revived in a new way the Augustinian vision of the Church in time and eternity. 207

chapter 11.4.b

unusual doctrines & institutions  519

14:29–31, became in the sixteenth century the scriptural sanction for committed inquiry into the meaning of Scr ipture over against the magisterium of the papal Church—the right of those duly converted and seated in the expectancy of guidance from the Holy Spirit to judge the meaning of disputed texts. Paul, in 1 Cor. 14:29–34, facing the phenomenon of the gift of tongues, declared: “Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said. If a revelation [clarification] is made to another sitting (sedenti), let the first be silent.” Eventually the rule for speaking up in conventicle or synod in the face of o pened Scripture would be called the lex sedentium, in German: Sitzerrecht. Paul was, in this pericope, sorting out the rules for prophetic glossolalia and the proper order for congregational (or synodal) interpretation of the meaning of Scripture, sometimes including evidently the participation of t he sisters in searching colloquy despite the Apostle’s injunction of s ilence on women in the same pericope (vs. 34). The first to use the pericope as the basis of common prophecy (prophetia communis) or “prophesying” (the later English Puritan term) was evidently Zwingli. Zwingli’s answer to the larger question of prophecy and prophetic legitimacy is seen, in part, in the institution of t he Prophezei. Begun in June 1525, “prophesying” first took the form of public lectures in the Grossmünster in replacement of the canonical hours of prime, tierce, and sext. 208 This institution functioned without specific apocalyptic concerns. It focused upon the proclamation of the Gospel and God’s law.209 The parallels were between efforts at reform in the local situation and the work of the prophets in the Old Testament for national renewal. Henry Bullinger, Zwingli’s successor, in his comments on Rev. 10:11, “You must accept prophecy,” would find here a commission for Reformed ministers to function as prophets primarily on the models in the Old Testament but also in the New, not, however, through any prophetic-apostolic succession. He will see that the “evangelical and apostolic doctrine against Antichrist and Muhammed must be restored in the last times before the

208  See “Die Prophezei,” in Die Zürcher Bibel 1531 (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1982), 1383–87; cf. Jacques Figi, Die innere Reorganisation des Grossmünsterstiftes in Zür ich von 1519– 1531 (Affoltern am Albis, 1951), 73–93; and Oskar Far ner, Huldrych Zwingli (Zurich: Zwingli Verlag, 1954), 554–63. 209  Pfister traces the roots of prophesying to the monks at the Kappel cloister in 1523, to Zwingli since 1525 at the cathedral in Zur ich, and to Bullinger in “Prophezei,” Das Religion ill Geschichte und Gegenwart 5 (Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 1961), col. 638; cf. Emil Egli, art., “Prophesying,” in The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religion and Religious Knowledge, (New York, 1911), 9:278; F. Schmidt-Clausing, “Die Prophezeigebet: Ein Blick über Zwingli’ s liturgische Werkstatt,” Zwingliana 12 (1964):10–34; and Philippe Denis,“La pr ophétie dans les Églises de la Réforme au XVI siècle,” RHE 72 (1977): 289-316.

520  the radical reformation

chapter 11.4.b

Judgment.”210 Zurich’s institution of the “Prophezei,” a kind of early Bible school and precursor of the university of Zurich, altered the daily office and liturgical calendar of the Christian year to raise up a more direct reading and application of the Word. An aristocratic Franciscan would find the Zurich practice impressive. Franciscan Francis Lambert of Avignon observed it, 1522–23. 211 In Wittenberg he received support from Luther and married. He was successively in Metz and Strassburg, living in apostolic poverty and writing treatises and commentaries on the Old Testament prophets. He heard the Strassburg prophets Jost, Ursula and Leonard, (Ch. 10.3.c) and presumably reflected on that experience in the light of what he had first learned from Zwingli. It was in Strassburg, evidently, that Lambert appears already to have recognized the propriety of l aicizing the practice of p rophesying. 212 It was in that city also that Wolfgang Schultheiss and John Campanus were very much interested in the lex sedentium, the latter having (before 1531) written a whole tract on the matter, De jure sedentis.213 It was in Marburg, where the former Franciscan Lambert worked as first professor of t he new University of M arburg in 1527, that common prophecy took on a general popular (democratic) character. Here the Zurich and Strassburg prophesying was discharged in charismatically suffused gatherings of t he scholarly saints who could practice the lex sedentium or communis prophetia, each person speaking out the law of God to one another as vouchsafed to each under the direction of the Spirit. In the synod of H omberg of 1 526 a c hurch order was adopted that drew inspiration from Luther’s “congregationalism” (Ch. 4.2). Lambert published the earliest classical Protestant commentary on Revelation (Marburg, 1528). He therein attached importance to lay participation and gave prominence to the lex sedentium, the right of biblically informed inquiry, discourse, and colloquy, which was carried over into the Marburg Colloquy of 1529. Here the prophets of Zurich and the professors of Wittenberg indeed matched scriptural wits over the main issue that divided the Protestant churches, the Eucharist. 214 Like Zwingli and Bullinger, Lambert was concerned about the ongoing function of prophecy in the church. There is an ongoing debate over the extent to which Joachimite ideas permeated the 210  In Apocalypsim, 132. In this ser mon Bullinger also cites 1 Cor . 11 and 14 as the Ne w Testament sanctions for fur ther ongoing prophesying defined as evangelical teaching, which, translated into all the known languages, overthrows Antichrist. 211  Gerhard Müller, Franz Lambert von Avignon und die Refor mation in Hessen (Marburg: Elwert, 1958). 212  Pierre Fraenkel, ed., Pour retrouvear François Lambert, Bibliotheca Bibliographica Aureliana 118 (Baden-Baden/Brouxville: Koerner, 1987), 25–31. 213  André Séguenney, ed., Bibliotheca Dissidentium 1 (1980), 14. 214  Müller, Lambert, 53–69.

chapter 11.4.b / 11.4.c

unusual doctrines & institutions  521

work of the former Franciscan, Lambert. The institution of the “Prophezei” in Hesse was, in any case, influenced not only by Lambert’s experience in Zurich, but also by his period in Strassburg. Lambert, in a letter to Charles V, would presently argue that prophecy, the interpretation of e vents to come and events past as well as the interpretation of Scripture for the present, should be established by every Christian prince in his domain at court or in some designated church. 215 In his Commentary on the Apocalypse, Lambert indicated that his own age was represented by the opening of the sixth seal of the great wrath (Rev. 6:12–17), the time for the disclosure of Antichrist in Pope and Turk.216 True preaching therefore faced Antichrist’s persecution as shown in Revelation 11 and 13. Having alerted the reader to the recurrence of the scriptural motif of Sitzerrecht/lex sedentium and propheta communis among the Swiss Reformed, many Anabaptists, and many Evangelical Rationalists (Ch. 28), we note here that it will be an Italian engineer, James Acontius of a n aristocratic family of Trent, who will give learned international status and circulation to the partly Zwinglian, partly Anabaptist scriptural principle of common prophecy in a section of his major work Stratagems of Satan (Basel, 1565), in eight books and dedicated to Queen Elizabeth (Ch. 30.3.c). c. The Eschatology of the Charismatic Prophet, Melchior Hofmann We have already observed the eschatological motif at several points in our narrative, notably in Spain and Italy (Chs. 1.2 and 6), in Thomas Müntzer (Ch. 3.2), John Hut (Ch. 4.3 and 9.2), and in the Spirit-filled preacher Melchior Hofmann attentive to the company of t he local prophets, Jost, Ursula and her husband Leonard and his second wife, in Strassburg (Ch. 10.3.c), although we awkwardly postpone his formative career as Lutheran missioner in Livonia (Ch. 15.2.b) until after this conspectus. Hofmann’s centrality in the ensuing three chapters makes it right in precisely this section, an omnium gatherum of radical eschatological motifs, to point up his relationship to apocalyptism and millennialism at large. Melchior Hofmann developed an eschatological timetable that affected the Radical Reformation from Livonia to England, that was the enduring energization of D utch Anabaptism, even after the latter collapsed in its Münsterite manifestation (Ch. 13). Hofmann eschewed astrological indications, fastened upon the apocalyptic portions of S cripture, including the Apocrypha, and was evidently influenced by J oachimite periodization in the modification of Peter John Olivi, and in 1530 in Strassburg he took the 215

 Ibid., 297.  Of great theological interest, Luther almost alone r efused to recognize Suleiman II or the Ottoman Empire as Antichrist. 216

522  the radical reformation

chapter 11.4.c

prophecies of t he prophetess Ursula Jost as direct divine revelation independent of Scripture (Ch. 10.2).217 By 1553 he declared that Rome was the Babylon of the Apocalypse and that Strassburg was to be site of the new Jerusalem.218 In 1534, encouraged by the couple Jost, Hofmann accepted his role as the new Elijah, 219 while his convert Cornelius Polderman in Holland was recognized as the new Enoch.220 Together the two apocalyptic witnesses (Rev. 11:3–14) assumed the task of unmasking the Antichrist as the sevenheaded beast (the Empire) and its rider the Babylonian Whore (the Papacy). It is likely that as Luther’s missioner in Livonia (Ch. 15.2.b), Hofmann had originally understood Luther himself as the new Enoch in succession to Hus. But he now suggested that Luther, with the other disappointing magisterial reformers, was the falling star of the third trumpet (Rev. 8:10), his false teaching poisoning the “apostolic fountains and streams.” In his apocalyptic Hofmann did not take the millennium literally but, like Joachim of Fiore and Peter John Olivi after him, Hofmann had three ages of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit prefigured in his case in the three hours of the crucifixion (Matt. 15:33). Like Olivi, Hofmann had seven periods within Church history itself. These seven periods were partly based on the seven churches addressed in the Apoca­lypse, but Hofmann concentrated on the first two: the church in Ephesus becoming for him the Church of Jewish Christians and that in Smyrna being the Church of the Gentiles. In contrast to Olivi, Hofmann saw in the church in Pergamon (Rev. 2:12–17) the symbol of the corrupt and the reprobate and as such the symbol of a Fallen Church, which Hofmann, in contrast to Olivi, connected precisely with the intrusive Donation of Constantine. The first period, the “millennium” of d irect rule, extended from Jesus’ ministry through the times of the Apostles until ninety-nine years after the crucifixion, i.e., c. 130. Only during this Dominical and Apostolic period had Christ ruled among the elect. Christ at his resur­rection had bound Satan, and St. Paul had bound him again in the abyss (cf. 2 Thess. 2:7). Thus the bulk of Church history to date had been, in effect, that of A ntichrist. At the close of the second period, from c. 130 to c. 1200, Antichrist began to lose his grip on Christendom with the rise of John Hus (d. 1415). Writing, thus, from within the expectant third period, Hofmann believed as of 1530 in his Exposition that the world stood at the end of the seventh kingdom (Rev. 217  As already noted,Walter Klaassen distinguishes the scr iptural and the popular apocalyptic streams in Hofmann, while Werner O. Packull identifies the Joachimite influence in Hofmann by way of a popularized version of Peter John Olivi’s Lectura super Apocalypsim, above nn.180 and 197. What follows is a compact conflation of the two articles. 218  Bucer’s book against Hofmann, Elsass 4 (QGT 16), 113. 219  Elsass 2 (QGT 8),386. 220  Obbe Philips, Bekenntniss, BRN 7:126, tr. in SAW, 206–25.

chapter 11.4.c

unusual doctrines & institutions  523

17:9-10), and at the beg in­ning of the eighth kingdom, the very last kingdom of Antichrist, at once beast and harlot. Although he professed to descry overlapping, dovetailed, incunabular beginnings of one per iod within another, it was not until J ohn Hus, taking the place of Francis of Asissi in the timetab le of Olivi’s three-stage adventual progression, that Hofmann could g ive forth his dis­tinctive vision of the preacher of the Spirit, who with “the sword of the Spirit,” wounded the seventh head of the Antichrist (Rev. 13:1), namely, the Emperor Sigismund who had called the f ateful Council of Constance against Hus in 1415. Hofmann now looked for two eschatological councils, another demonic (papal) council and the neo-apostolic counter-council that would in its turn vindicate the new Hus. His mind was set upon determining the moment when his baptized followers would be vindicated by God. He was fixated upon the number seven. Hofmann, like Hut and other apocalyptists, used the schema of t wo apocalyptic intervals of three and one-half years each. Dan. 7:25 and 12:7 have an interval of three and one-half (“a time,” “two times,” and “half a time”) and Rev. 11:2-3 has the second interval: fortytwo months = 1,260 days = t hree and one-half years. Hofmann allowed for preaching of the two witnesses for three and one-half years, whereupon they would be condemned and killed by the first great (demonic) council of the Eschaton, an assembly of Antichrist and his servants (a reenactment of Constance).221 Hofmann’s adoption of rebaptism and the sealing of the 144,000 saints by baptism to separate them from the apostate church was to be accomplished in three and a half years. Thereupon would follow the expulsion by M ichael the Archangel of t he great dragon, representing all “the false angels, preachers, shepherds, teachers, and law,” from the people and the Kingdom of G od (Rev. 12:7-10); and then would convene the second council of apostolic teaching and shepherds after three and one-half years, when the final defeat of Antichrist could be a matter of hours. 222 With this clarification of the apocalyptic of Hofmann, based in part on his conviction as to the outbreaking of n ew prophecy in the apocalyptic age, we turn to Hofmann’s baptismal mission in The Netherlands.

221

 Klaassen,“Eschatological Themes,” 20, adduced in the words of Hofmann, n. 39.  Klaassen, “Eschatological Themes,” 20; Packull, Reinterpretation, 60. Packull gives the adjusted interval of 1,335 days, calculated on the basis of standar ized months of twenty-eight days each. 222

Chapter 12

The Spread of Melchiorite Anabaptism in The Netherlands and North Germany to 1534

Aregional approach to the history

of t he Radical Reformation does not commend itself in a period when the Holy Roman Empire counted as many autonomous political units as the United States counts denominations. Moreover, the extraordinary mobility of t he radical reformers in flight and on missions further complicates any account based primarily on locality. Nevertheless, there are regional differentiations in Anabaptism sufficiently distinctive to warrant specialized treatment. The Netherlands and North Germany, the areas of Low German speech, were linguistically divided from the rest of the Empire by a line running roughly from Aachen (Aken) to Magdeburg (Magdenburg) and eastward (the Baltic Germans were also of Low German speech). The differences between Low and High German at their extremes, Flanders and Switzerland, were such that the preaching of t he Radical Reformation, which in its Anabaptist phase was primarily a movement of the common people, could be carried on between the two speech areas only by means of translations, interpreters, and bilingual missionaries. Within the Low German areas there were, as elsewhere, numerous local dialects, some of them already well established as literary languages, notably that which is called interchangeably “Flemish” in modern Belgium and “Dutch” in the Netherlands, and which was already, in the sixteenth century, comparable in standardization as a l iterary language to the High German of the Saxon court and the South German printers.

524

chapter 12

spread of melchiorite anabaptism  525

Further differentiation of the area under consideration must be made along political lines. The Netherlands or the Low Countries, for the purpose of our narrative, extend from the county of Flanders to the county of East Frisia, and, except for the latter and the princely bishopric of L iège, were largely in Hapsburg possession or under the threat thereof. The whole area was largely Flemish/Dutch by t he sixteenth century, a c ongeries of variants in Low German speech.1 An ecclesiastical peculiarity of the populous area, constituting roughly, modern Belgium and Holland, was the fact that, until the Catholic organizational counter-reforms to be demanded by Philip II, all of it was under the jurisdiction of bishops and archbishops with sees outside of the region, except for the ancient princely bishopric of Utrecht, which was already on its way to secularization (1528) 2 by t he opening of t he Reformation era. The absence of native bishops caused the serious loosening of diocesan and parochial religious nurture and supervision. The responsibility for checking heresy lodged largely in the hands of the Hapsburgs vicegerents and the provincial courts. In patriotic self-defense the native magistrates, especially in the larger towns, often upheld or countenanced religious aberrations in the name of l ocal autonomy. Especially was this true in the northern provinces. As different as are the Alpine streams and headwaters of t he Rhine from the canals, dikes, and marshes of its complex estuary, so also were the religious currents in the Swiss Confederation of cantons, which had long before wrested independence from the Hapsburgs, and the religious currents in the Netherlands, now restive under the same house of H apsburg in the person of his deputy (as count of Holland) in the council of Holland located in The Hague. 3 This populous region of W alloon and Flemish/Dutch/Low German and Frisian speech was the scene of widespread and spectacular expectations for a m unicipal realization of t he City or the Kingdom of G od on earth, in would-be urban bibliocracies (Amsterdam, Münster), further attention to governance in the Hapsburg Netherlands is apposite at this juncture, as Melchiorite Anabaptism in its enduring, much altered modality, Mennonitism (Ch. 14), is by many today understood in part, at least, as a recoil from its initial theocentric attempts and a reordering of Melchiorism in a freshly

1  The area coincides roughly with the imper ial judicial cir cle (1512) of Burgundy (less Luxembourg, but including Liège). 2  A. F. Mellink, De Wederdopers in de Noordelijke Nederlanden, 1531–1544 (Groningen: Wolters, 1953), 335. 3  James D. Tracy, “Heresy Law and Centralization under Mar y of Hungar y: Conflict between The Count of Holland and the Central Government over the Enforcement of Charles V’s Placards,” ARG 72 (1982): 284–308.

526  the radical reformation

chapter 12

disciplined ecclesial modality, programmatically separate from the temporal orders of society at large (generically: magistracy). The Hapsburg Netherlands in the Reformation century was a congeries of provinces at the inception of that historic process that would only long afterwards, but in large measure because of the Reformation, result in the three separate interrelated modern states, Belgium, the Grand Duchy of L uxembourg, and the Netherlands. At the outset of t he Reformation century, namely in 1506, most of t hese lands had become the hereditary domains of C harles (future Emperor) as heir to Burgundy. During his minority, his grandfather Emperor Maximilan II had acted as his regent through the imperial daughter Margaret of Austria as governor-general till 1515. The conglomerate of j urisdictions—landgraviates, counties, duchies, and two prince-bishoprics (Utrecht, Liège) called, generically, provinces—nominally belonged to the Empire.4 The central government consisted of the hereditary sovereign (or regent), the council of state, and the appointed stadholders for provinces, which in turn were represented by deputies in the States-General (parliament/diet) meeting in Mechelin (Malines) (after 1543 in Brussels). On reaching his majority in 1515 Charles had ruled for a while directly, but on his election as Emperor he had returned the government to Margaret in 1519, and then in 1531 would turn it over from his great aunt to his own sister, Margaret of Hungary (widow of Louis II Jagiello). Another feature of the Netherlands at the opening of the sixteenth century was the involvement of the maritime towns in wars with Denmark and Lübeck over fishing rights and competitive commercial activities, resulting in economic and social disturbances in the ports. Long before the Calvinist wars of f reedom which would finally win for the northern provinces of the Netherlands their independence from the Hapsburgs, the northern and southern Netherlands were already culturally and, to a c ertain extent, religiously distinguishable. Modern Dutch historiography, Mennonite and Reformed alike, has tended to neglect the developments in the southern provinces. “North Germany,” for the purpose of the present narrative, includes East Frisia (Emden), linguistically and culturally linked with West Frisia, and all the principalities north of the aforementioned speech boundary 4  By the Transaction of Augsburg in 1548 Charles V would force the imper ial diet to recognize the Netherlandish pr ovinces as constituting the nearly autonomous imper ial circle of Burgundy (Burgundischer Kreis) and, by a special ar rangement, confirmed by the States-General of the pr ovinces, approved identical r ules of succession for what w ould by 1549 be called the Se venteen Provinces of the United Netherlands, including the duchy of Luxembourg and the Free County of Burgundy (Besançon).The duchy of Burgundy (Dijon), whose Duke Philip the Good (1419–67) had raised the disparate provinces and their burgeoning towns to economico-cultural preeminence, had in 1474 been permanently lost to a resurgent France. Our narrative of radical developments in the provinces is limited to the area of the two main successor states.

chapter 12

spread of melchiorite anabaptism  527

from Aachen east to the borders of the kingdom of Poland (which up to its tripartition, 1772–95, included both royal and ducal Prussia; Ch. 15.2.a). Within North Germany thus circumscribed, our narrative (here and in Chs. 13, 14) is focused on the solid cluster of princely bishoprics (Münster, Osnabrück, Minden, and Paderborn), contiguous to a second cluster of four dynastically consolidated principalities on either side of the Rhine (Cleves, Jülich, Berg, and Mark), at the center of which towered the imperial city of Cologne, surrounded by the relatively small temporality of the electoral archbishopric.5 Socio-economically, this region back from the fishing and merchant harbors of the North Sea was characterized by the large percentage of yeomen (Maiers) with sizable farms or peasants long freed of o nerous feudal services, a condition which had perhaps immunized the region from the contagion of the Great Peasants’ War, 1524–25. But the revolutionary turn of peasants and urban artisans was approaching as Melchior Hofmann from Strassburg evangelized the whole region, beginning in 1530, directly and with the help of his apostles, proclaiming the imminence of Christ’s second advent. (We reserve for Ch. 13 the detailed account of Anabaptism in the Münster region.) There is very important theological differentiation to be noted between the Anabaptism that took its rise in Switzerland and that which spread like wildfire through the Netherlands and Northwestern Germany. Under the impulsion of i ts first apostle, Anabaptism in this region was for a s eason intensely eschatological; and even after the apocalyptic hope subsided and, for the most part, came to renounce the Maccabaean belligerence of Münster and other centers, it would continue to bear the distinctive theological marks of its tempestuous prophet, notably his Christology and hermeneutics, if no longer his eschatology. There is one further differentiating feature of t he Anabaptism of t his region, at once religious and sociopsychological in character. Anabaptism in the Netherlands and Northwest Germany found its first recruits among the indigenous Sacramentists and thereby fell heir to a late medieval tradition of popular piety or iconoclasm, depending upon the point of v iew. Anabaptism in the Low Countries was thus the earliest bearer of a fully separatist, religiously oriented Dutch-Flemish national self-consciousness. In most other areas, Anabaptism arose out of d issatisfaction with the Magisterial Reformation and was therefore in its basic posture anti-Protestant, whereas in the Netherlands, Anabaptism was the first major onslaught of organized popular reformation. It preceded revolutionary-nationalist Calvinism by more than a generation.

5  The area coincides roughly with the imper ial judicial circle (1512) of the Lower Rhine and Westphalia.

528  the radical reformation

chapter 12 / 12.1

Because of the importance of t he Sacramentists and the “nationalreformed” impulse in the Netherlands, we must, before going on to the Melchiorite mission in detail, pick up the story of the Netherlandish Sacramentists where we left them at the death of Cornelius Hoen in 1524 and fill in more of their story up to the dismissal of Hinne Rode in 1530 (Ch. 2.4,5), and introduce as well the Netherlandish Libertines.

1. The Netherlandish Sacramentists, 1524–15306 What in Switzerland was “a pearl of g reat value” (Zwingli) was in the Catholic Low Countries a pernicious doctrine, though stoutly adhered to by a large number of people of position, education, and local authority, as well as by the common people. We have already traced to 1525 the long tradition of a violent popular opposition to the Catholic sacrament of the altar running alongside the devoutly contemplative, biblical humanistic assimilation (in Gansfort and Erasmus) of credere and edere (Ch. 2.4,5). In the five years leading to the emergence of Melchiorite Anabaptism, these two sacramentarian currents mingled. Moreover, the local magistrates, being in any event frequently sympathetic toward the humanist form of Sacramentism, commonly protected the perpetrators of p opular, iconoclastic sacramentarianism in their patriotic zeal to resist every Hapsburg attempt at administrative centralization and curtailment of t he ancient rights of the provincial estates and town councils. By 1525 it was therefore possible for Erasmus to write that the greatest part of the people in the provinces of Holland, Zealand, and Flanders had been won for the Reformation,7 by w hich, of c ourse, he meant that the greatest part of the city population had been won for the national (antiHapsburg) sacramentarian anti-sacerdotal vision. In the same year, Bucer, with more relish than Erasmus, but with greater precision as to the tenet, even if with exaggeration as to the number of those holding it, wrote that “the whole of [the provinces of ] Holland and Frisia, now through Rode and certain others,” know the truth about the sacrament of the Supper.8 One of t he victims of t he Inquisition in the Low Countries was the Sacramentist John Pistorius ( Jan de Bakker) of Woerden. A former priest, he had rejected the Mass, visited Luther, married, and become a baker. He was arrested in May 1525 and imprisoned at The Hague. From 11 July to 7 September 1525 he was interrogated by the inquisitor and sentenced as a “Lutheran.” He may have been Lutheran in calling the papacy “the church 6  A comprehensive history of the medie val antecedents of sacramentar ianism in the Reformation era is a desideratum. 7  See Opus epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami, ed. P. S. Allen and H. W. Garrod, 12 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1906–1950), 6: 155 (hereafter cited as Allen, followed by vol. no. and ep. no.); Mellink, Wederdopers, 337, 338. 8  Quoted by De Hoop Scheffer, Kerkhervorming, 548.

chapter 12.1

spread of melchiorite anabaptism  529

of the malignants,” from which he was glad to be banned. But he was surely not of Luther when he declared: “Wherever and in whatever manner the Word of God is instilled in believing Christians, there is the true celebration of t he sacrament.” He was burned at the stake at The Hague on 15 September 1525. From 1525 to 1530 the Sacramentist movement steadily gained adherents. As in Switzerland, the attack on transubstantiation prepared the way for the covenantal conception of b aptism.9 Whereas the first leaders of Sacramentism were commonly priests, monks, and friars, from 1525 on, the leadership of t he Sacramentist conventicles was increasingly in the hands of devotees without formal theological training. The earliest martyrdom of a woman to be preserved in the Anabaptist Martyr’s Mirror (1570)10 is that of the spirited sacramentarian Wendelmoet Claesdochter, young widow of Monninkendam in 1527.11 The account of her trial and execution pictures a confident, if not presumptuous woman who suffered death for her Sacramentist faith, in the popular tradition, perhaps, of Tanchelm rather than in the more devout line of Gansfort. On 15 November 1527, Wendelmoet was brought from the castle of Woerden to The Hague to stand trial for heresy. Three days later she was arraigned before the stadholder, the count of Hooghstraten, and the full council of H olland. She stood firm in her faith. When asked what she thought concerning the sacrament of t he altar, she replied, “I hold your sacrament to be bread and flour, and if you hold it as God, I say that it is your devil.” Concerning the extreme unction, she answered, “Oil is good for salad or to oil your shoes with.” When two Dominican friars came to her, one as confessor, and showed her a w ooden crucifix, saying, “See, here is your Lord and your God,” she answered, “This is not my God; the cross by w hich I a m redeemed is a d ifferent one. This is a w ooden god; throw him into the fire, and warm yourselves with him.” The dean

9

 Mellink, De Wederdopers, Ch. 4, brought together, as of 1953, the older and mor e recent monographic and regional studies and sources to show conclusively that the way for Anabaptism was prepared by Sacramentism. Among these works on Sacramentists and then Anabaptists in the Netherlands are W. J. Kühler, Geschiedenis der Nederlandische Doopsgezinden in de zestiende eeuw (Haarlem: Willink & Zor n, 1932), N. van der Zijpp, Geschiedenis der Doopezegezinden in Nederland (Arnhem: Slaterus, 1952), Cornelius Krahn, Dutch Anabaptism: Origin, Spread, Life, and Thought (1450–1600) (The Hague: Nijhof, 1968). See more recently, Irvin B. Horst, ed., The Dutch Dissenters: A Critical Companion to their Histor y and Ideas (Leiden: Brill, 1986), and also Cornelis Augustijn, who places the earlier w orks in per spective, “Anabaptism in the Netherlands: Another Look,” MQR 72 (1988): 197–210. 10  Thielman van Braght, The Bloody Theater or Martyr’s Mirror, translated by Joseph F. Sohn (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1951), 422–23. 11  Also called Weynken Claes: ME, 4:938. J.C. van Slee, in “Wendelmoet Claesdochter van Monnikendam,” Nederlandisch Archief voor Kerkgeschiednis (henceforth: NAK) 20 (1927): 121–56. She was not listed in the first three editions of the forerunner of the Mirror, namely, the Offer des Heeren, but was inserted into the appendix of the edition of 1570.

530  the radical reformation

chapter 12.1

of Naaldwijck, subcommissioner and inquisitor, then proceeded to read aloud the sentence, first in Latin and then in Dutch. She was delivered to the secular arm, and the chancellor declared that she was to be burned at the stake. At this point she was led out for the execution. She was again offered a c rucifix, but she refused to kiss it, and would not call on the Virgin Mary, insisting that she had Christ at the right hand of God interceding for her. In the next breath, however, she also declared, in turning away from the crucifix, “This is not my Lord and my God; my Lord God is in me and I in him.” When she had reached the scaffold to be strangled and then burned, it was urged upon her that she ask forgiveness of all present for any offenses she had committed against them. This she did. A friar pressed her to recant, but she obstinately refused. She went to the bench and seated herself at the stake. After the rope was in place around her neck, the friar asked her: “Mother Weynken, will you gladly die as a Christian?” “Yes, I will,” she replied. “Do you renounce all heresy?” “I do.” The friar took heart and said: “This is well. Are you also sorry that you have erred?” She replied: “I formerly did err, and for that I am sorry; this, however, is no error, but the true way, and I adhere to God.” With this unexpected twist on “error,” the executioner began to strangle her. She lowered her eyes and closed them as though asleep.12 Among the Sacramentists whose names are preserved in the hearings and who after 1530 became prominent in Melchiorite Anabaptism were the burgomaster of Deventer, Jacob van Wynssem, whom Rode called on in 1525,13 the priest Hadrian Cordatus of Ypres, summoned in Middelburg for a hearing in 1527,14 and the goldsmith Dominic Abels of Utrecht, apprehended in 1528.15 The glass painter David Joris (Ch. 13.5), the leader of the Delft conventicle after the departure of Wouter, climaxed his iconoclastic disturbances with an attack on the image of Mary in the Assumption Day process in 1528. He was condemned to scourging, the boring of his tongue, and three years’ banishment. In the same year on Corpus Christi Day in Leiden, where there had for some time been hedge and alley preaching in the manner of the later Calvinists (but without hymn-

12  By 1534 the town of her birth would have become Anabaptist, and later a large Mennonite congregation centered there. For a larger topic, see John Klassen, “Women and Family Among Dutch Anabaptist Martyrs,” MQR 60 (1986): 548–71. Wendelmoet’s Sacramentist testimon y may be compared in conviction and temperament with that of the sacramentarian Judaizer Catherine Zalaszkowska Weigel (Weiglowa) in Cracow, 19 April 1539 (Ch. 15.4). 13  Mellink, De Wederdopers, 336. 14  Ibid., 338. 15  Ibid., 336.

chapter 12.1

spread of melchiorite anabaptism  531

singing),16 the Delft tailor Gijsbrecht Albrechts tacked his Sacramentist proclamation to the church door and threw another copy into the pulpit during the sermon. In the same year, also, in Haarlem, the baker John Matthijs (Ch. 13.1) suffered punishment for Sacramentist iconoclasm.17 Perhaps the most representative humanistic Sacramentists destined to turn Anabaptists were Henry Schlachtschap (Slachtscaep) of Maastricht and Henry Rol of Hilversum, North Holland. Both of them, the former a priest and the latter a friar, became in the end, like John Matthijs, identified with the Anabaptist bibliocracy of M ünster, but neither should be associated with its excesses. We may take Rol as our example of the transition from indigenous Netherlandish Sacramentism to Melchiorite Anabaptism and look briefly at his view of the sacrament of the altar. It was in Haarlem, where there were “diverse conventicles, where clandestine sermons and disputations were held of an evening and attended by many persons,”18 that Henry Rol, once a C armelite, then (by papal dispensation) a Hospitaller, may have become acquainted with conventicular Sacramentism. In any event, Rol was well on his way to the sacramentarian view when he was engaged as house chaplain, in 1530, to the bailiff Gijsbrecht van Baack, who locally represented the stadholder of Holland, and was himself an independent thinker. Rol was sent by t he bailiff to the diet in Augsburg, where he met Bucer, and it was on the long trip back, perhaps, that Rol, with Bernard Rothmann (Ch. 13), stayed around May 1531 in the home of Capito (Ch. 10.3.e) in Strassburg.19 Rol’s Sacramentist views are found in his two tracts, Die Slotel van dat secreet des nachtmaels (The Key of the Mystery of the Supper), written in East Frisian before 1532, 20 and Eyne ware Bedinijnckijnge (A True Consideration How the Blessed Body of Christ is Different from our Unworthy Body).21 Rol, like Hofmann, appeals to the image of the Passover lamb, but he does not make use of the manna image, perhaps because he eschews the doctrine of the celestial flesh of Christ, with which it was linked, and Rol has no place for Hoen and Hofmann’s bridal imagery with its ring, the analogue

16  Laurentius Knappert, Het Onstaan en de v estiging van het Protestantisme in de Nederlanden (Utrecht, 1924), 111–12, 137, 142. 17  Kühler, Netherlandish Doopsgezinde, 48; Mellink, De Wederdopers, 342. 18  De Hoop Scheffer, Kerkhervorming, 560; Mellink, De Wederdopers, 342. 19  Christian Sepp, Kerkhistorische Studiën (Leiden, 1885), 26; Mellink, De Wederdopers, 346, 2; Krebs and Rott, Elsass 1 (QGT 7), no. 249. 20  BRN 5:1–94; discussed in ME, 4:544, and Rol himself in ME, 2:704; also in W. Bax, Het Protestantisme in het Bisdom Luik en v ooral te Maastricht, 1505–1557, Vol. 1 (The Hague , 1937), 95–96, 101–2; W. Kohl, “Heinrich Roll: Beiträge zu seiner Bio graphie,” Studia Westfalica, ed. Max Bierbaum (Münster: Aschendorff, 1973). 21  BRN 5:95–123.

532  the radical reformation

chapter 12.1

of the bread. As it was not the eating of the paschal lamb that saved the Hebrews (Ex. 12:3), so it is not the eating of the bread in communion that redeems Christians in his view (cf. 1 Cor. 5:7). Rol deals with the question of who should be called to communion. In Israel, only they participated in the communion of the Passover lamb who also bore the token of circumcision. Correspondingly, only those Christians should approach the communion who are “inwardly circumcised, i.e., who believe in Christ and who are baptized.” Whether Rol means here baptism by w ater or by t he Holy Spirit is not clear. Those who wish to take part in the communion must be “alive” (i.e., faithful), not “sick” (i.e., doubting the grace of God), “hungry” to proclaim the glory of God, and “thirsty” for salvation. Rol relates the Atonement to the Lord’s Supper in an unusual way. 22 He moves from Israel in bondage to Egypt, being fed by G od upon the paschal lamb, to humankind in bondage to the devil, being fed, while still in prison, by the food from God’s table. With the help of an allegory, he makes God the Father the giver of the bread and wine. The Father is likened to a judge who has put a man in prison to await execution. The son of the judge implores his father to be permitted to take the sentenced man’s place. To this the father-judge (unaccountably) assents and sends to his son the prison food from his own table. As soon as arrangements can be completed, the condemned man will go free. Meantime he can, still in the prison of this world, partake of the goodly nourishment in the glad prospect of eventual liberation, whereas before he would scarcely touch his wretched provender. The eucharistic bread and wine are, indeed, no different from any other food and drink, but coming from the Table of the Father himself, they are an earnest of more to come and induce joy, for they are tokens of the promised release from bondage. The relation in Rol’s parable is thus between an adoptive son (substituted for the redeeming Son) and the heavenly Father, whereas for Hoen, as for Hofmann, the eucharistic relation is that between a believing bride and Christ the loving Bridegroom. In 1531, Rol went to Wassenberg in Cleves (Ch. 12.4) and in the summer of 1531 was drawn to Münster, where he became preacher in St. Giles and in 1533 preached against infant baptism. In October he signed, with Bernard Rothmann, the most radical reformer in Münster, the confession called Bekenntnisse van beyden sacramenten Doepe unde Nachtmaele. On 6 November 1533 Rol was banished by the conservative faction in Münster and visited the provinces of H olland and West Frisia, but on 1 J anuary 1534 he returned to Münster to preach, and he submitted to rebaptism on

22

 Die Slotel, BRN 5:56–57.

chapter 12.1

spread of melchiorite anabaptism  533

5 January 1534 by an emissary in Münster of the former Haarlem baker and Sacramentist, John Matthijs. By now the biography of the former Carmelite/Hospitaller, once in Haarlem has merged with the yet to be recounted history of Münster. But since Rol has been introduced for the purpose as a representative Netherlandish Sacramentist, we tell his tale here to the finish. In the house of Bernard Knipperdolling, soon to be the radical mayor of Münster, Rol would rebaptize in his turn, in that same January 1534, Dr. Gerard Westerburg (Chs. 3.1; 12.4), 23 brother-in-law and purveyor of the eucharistic theology of Carlstadt. On 21 February 1534, Rol would leave Münster to win recruits for the Anabaptist “New Jerusalem.” He would go first to Wesel in Cleves, there rebaptize a number of converts, and on 2 August 1534 arrive at Maastricht, where he would find a group of Sacramentists formerly under the leadership of H enry Schlachtschap meeting in the house of the cobbler John van Genck and teach them the new Sacramentist-Melchiorite principles. While guiding the conventicle he would be arrested on the evening of 2 September 1534 and soon thereafter executed. In following one representative Sacramentist well into Anabaptism and martyrdom, we have not only gone beyond the chronological frame of the present section, but we have also put to one side the large number of Sacramentists who would never be caught up in the Melchiorite Anabaptist apocalyptic revolution. Notable Dutch Sacramentists in the devout and humanistic tradition of Hoen, and destined never to become Anabaptists, were John Snijder (Sartorius), William Gnapheus, and Gellius Faber. In fact, they would come, in time, to count themselves “Zwinglians.” Faber, indeed, was to become a major opponent of Menno Simons (Ch. 14). John Sartorius (c. 1500–57) from Amsterdam was influenced by t he former Dominican, Wouter (Delanus), in Delft (Ch. 2.2). As early as 1525, severely critical of t he doctrines and practices of t he Catholic Church, Sartorius preached salvation by faith and published a Latin treatise on the Lord’s Supper in which he rejected transubstantiation. In the same year he was imprisoned at The Hague and charged with heresy, but recanted and was set free. He continued his evangelical preaching and was a Latin teacher in Amsterdam (till 1535) under the protection of its tolerant magistrates. Thereupon he would become head of the Latin school at Noordwijk near Leiden, influencing and stimulating the evangelical-minded of Leiden and Haarlem. He would later minister at Zutphen, visit Basel, and then become the leader of the evangelical group in Delft after the successive departures of Wouter and David Joris.

23  Rol was baptized by either Bartholomew Boeckbinder or William Kuyper. Westerburg had contemplated rebaptism as early as his Dialogus on baptism (1527).

534  the radical reformation

chapter 12.1

William Gnapheus de Volder (1493–1568), who was rector of the Latin school at The Hague in 1522, was in 1523 forced to leave because of antiCatholic ideas, and then imprisoned. He was a cellmate of John Pistorius, who dictated to him the questions of the inquisitors. Gnapheus wrote a circumstantial account of the cross-examination of himself and Pistorius. He settled, after much wandering, at Elbing in royal Prussia, in 1531, where he wrote an evangelical treatise for the sick and suffering, Een troost ende spiegel der siecken ende derghenen die in lijdn zijn (showing the influence of Hoen) and became rector of the Latin School. We shall next meet him briefly in Ch. 15.2.a. Gnapheus and Sartorius (unlike Wendelmoet Claesdochter) were Sacramentists who were virtually the same kind of R eformed Christians as those in Switzerland who endorsed the Magisterial Reformation of t he cantons and adhered, as against Luther, to the sacramentarian view of the Supper. They therefore readily thought of t hemselves as “Zwinglians,” overlooking, in their eagerness for a r espectable label, the local sources of the kind of eucharistic theology which Zwingli had come to espouse. They differed also in one very important respect from the Swiss Zwinglians in not having a political assignment. The Netherlandish Sacramentists of the humanistic type, like the Italian Waldensians who were likewise to be won over to the side of the magisterial reformers, retained their earlier views against war. Only on the sacrament of the altar were they “Zwinglian.” Culturally, temperamentally, sociologically, they were, in their still prevailingly Catholic environment, at least as much akin to the pacifistic Grebelians before their espousal of believers’ baptism as to the Zwinglians. The irenic Erasmian Sacramentists represent a much more widespread manifestation of t he national-reformed consciousness in the Netherlands than the few figures here noted would indicate. For their place was soon to be taken by, and many of their members recruited for, the more aggressively sectarian and eschatologically oriented Melchiorite Anabaptists. The memory of their testimony was to be further diminished by the more truly “Zwinglian” freedom fighters under William of O range, who, though appealing to John Calvin as their mentor, were actually closer to Zwingli and his conception of spiritual warfare. The Reformation in the Netherlands has been long understood as having passed through three main phases—Sacramentist, Melchiorite Anabaptist (yet to be taken up), and Calvinist. “Lutheranism” in the Netherlands generally meant Protestantism or a nti-Catholicism, and seldom implied any tenets peculiar to Luther—for example, respecting the Eucharist. But there was one other religious movement in the Netherlands which cannot be subsumed under any of these headings: Libertinism, akin to Sacramentism, though predestinarian and more speculative. When Wendelmoet

chapter 12.1 / 12.2

spread of melchiorite anabaptism  535

Claesdochter, for example, said that God was in her and she in him, she was a Sacramentist echoing the Fourth Gospel in a Libertine key.

2. Libertines or Spiritualizers Only fragmentary biographical and theological documentation survives of the Netherlandish movement to which the hostile gave the name Libertinism in reference to Acts 6:9, the synagoga Libertinorum overcome by S tephen. The Libertines preferred the name Spirituals24 or called themselves after one or another of their current leaders (Loists; later: Quintinists, Jorists). Several of these groups have been recently brought typologically together as Libertines, coordinate in significance with four other Continental groupings in the mid-sixteenth century, the militant Catholics, the Lutherans, the Reformed, and the Anabaptists. 25 But this classification is typologically and even geographically partial, and it seems best to designate the Libertines, as they have been most recently documented, described, and analyzed as “Spiritualizers”26 and, as such, one of the subgroupings of our Spiritualists. The Netherlandish Spiritualizers (Libertines, Loists, Familists, Spirituals, and to a certain extent the Sacramentists) 27 were a loosely interrelate antinomian movement of t he sixteenth century, compounding variously the deification of R henish mysticism, the libertarianism of t he medieval Brethren of the Free Spirit and other groups, the ecclesiastical indifferentism of Erasmus, and the Christian antinomianism of Luther, and in some places, at least, the Averroism of Padua (Ch. 1.6). They were alike in attaching little or no importance to external sacraments. The Loists took their name from Eligius (Loy) Pruystinck (d. 1544), a slater (schaliedekker) of Antwerp. 28 In the middle of March 1524 Loy set out, as at an earlier date Hinne Rode had, for Wittenberg to see what 24  Calvin, Contre la secte phantastique et fur ieuse des Libertins qui se nomment Spir ituelz, 1545, Opera 7:226. See Ch. 23.3. 25  See H. de la Verwey, “Trois hérésiarques dans les P ays-Bas du XVIe siècle ,” BHR 16 (1954): 312–30. See also the character ization of the use of the ter ms “libertine” and “Esprit fort,” especially in the se venteenth century, in Henr i Busson, La Pensée réligieuse fr ançaise de Charron à Pascal (Paris, 1933), 1–15. The literature of the spiritual Libertines has been sorted out and discussed by Busson in Les sources et le dév eloppement du rationalisme (Paris, 1922), 314–45; revised as Le Rationalisme dans la littérature française de la Renaissance (1533–1601) (Paris, 1957), 296–317. 26  This useful English term is Franklin Littell’s adaptation of the term “Spiritual,” popularized by Ernst Troeltsch. See Littell’s The Free Church (Boston: Beacon, 1957), 31–32. 27  They have some affinities with the Illuminists of Spain (Ch. 1.1), the e vangelical Spiritualists of Germany, and the later Nicodemites of Italy (Ch. 22.5). 28  Émile-Michel Braekman, “Un cas de dissidence à Anvers: Eloy Pruystinck,” BD Scripta et Studien 1 (Baden-Baden: Koerner, 1983), 191–204; idem, with a summar y of his life and complete bibliography to date, “Eloy Pruystinck,” BD 7 (1986): 7–38. Although the Loists identified the Spirit with reason, they do not f all in the g rouping of Evangelical Rationalists who were rationally literalist (fundamentalist) about the New Testament.

536  the radical reformation

chapter 12.2

Luther would make of his doctrine. A disputation took place in Luther’s house between Loy with several companions and Melanchthon. Afterward Luther directed a l etter to his own adherents at Antwerp (April 1525), warning against the dangerous “poltergeists,” 29 and “the new prophets” from Antwerp, who identify the reason of man with the Holy Spirit. 30 Luther’s letter arraigns Loy as heretical, on eight briefly stated charges. They are Luther’s intolerant transcript, colored, perhaps, by his recent encounter with the Zwickau prophets (Ch. 3.2) mentioned in the same letter. According to Luther, the Loists held (1) that every human being has the Holy Spirit, (2) that the Holy Spirit is none other than the person’s own reason and understanding, (3) that everyone believes, (4) that this belief is to wish for one’s neighbor what one wishes for oneself, 31 (5) that there is no hell or condemnation except for the flesh, (6) that all souls will enjoy eternal life, (7) that sin is not committed so long as one does not so intend, and (8) that whoever has not the Holy Spirit (likewise) has no sin, for such a person has no reason. 32 Loy, adopting what looks like an Averroist view (Ch. 1.6.c) of t he universal Intellect (spiritus), held that man’s intellectual nature is a spiritual substance and that everyone who is reborn possesses the Holy Spirit. (In 1502, for comparison, the heretic Herman of Rijswijk, in or near The Hague, condemned by the Inquisition to life imprisonment, had declared that there is no personal immortality, had denied God’s creation out of nothing, had called Christ a “fool and an innocent phantast,” and had specifically acknowledged his debt to Averroes, however much he simplified the philosophy of t he latter.) 33 For Loy, since man’s flesh and spirit are thoroughly independent, and with no influence upon each other, the (renewed) spirit of man, according to Loy, as polemically interpreted by Luther but confirmed in part by the extant Loist Summa doctrinae, 34 incurs no responsibility for the weakness of the flesh. One’s renewed spirit, as such, is sinless. A person’s final goal is to vanish into the divine being. Loy based the radical dualism of what he called the two homines upon a forced exegesis of the Bible, and particularly Paul. For example, he brought into

29

 Briefe, 18; WA, 541–50.  In a letter to George Spalatin,27 March 1525, Luther mentions the presence of a “novum genus ex Antwerpia … asserentium, Spiritum sanctum nihil aliud esse quam ingenium et r ationem naturalem,” WA Br. 3, 464–65. 31  To improve the order, I have placed Luther’s sixth article in the fourth place. 32  Briefe, 71; WA, 548–49. 33  Johannes Lindeboom, Stiefkinderen van het Christendom (The Hague, 1929), 156; Corpus documentorum inquisitionis Neerlandicae , ed. Paul Frédéricq (Ghent, 1884–1906), 1:494, 502. Lindeboom puts the Free Spirits and the Loists in the same chapter. 34  The Summa is printed by Ignatius Döllinger, Beiträge zur Sektengeschichte des Mittelalters, 2 (Munich, 1890), 664–68, no. 62. 30

chapter 12.2

spread of melchiorite anabaptism  537

contrast 1 John 3:9, “no one born of God commits sin,” and 1 John 1:6, tendentiously singularized as “whoever says he has no sin is a l iar,” and then proceeded to apply the first dictum to the spiritual man and the second to the carnal man. 35 We may compare this radically dualist solution to seeming contradictions in Scripture with the Spiritualist Anabaptist synthesis in, for example, John Denck (Ch 7.1). Loy and his followers certainly had much in common with such diverse forms of piety and libertarianism as that of the Beghards and the Brethren of the Free Spirit, though it is difficult to establish the relation between the Loists and any sects antedating the Reformation era. On his return to Antwerp, Loy and nine of h is followers, people of humble origin like himself (two of t hem women), were subjected to an examination by the Inquisition, 26 February 1526. They recanted and were cleared with the sentence of public ecclesiastical penance and the burning of their books. Loy was specifically required to wear a leaden crucifix. Loy’s doctrine in the following decades continued to spread not only among the humbler classes but also among the rich burghers, especially after a severe outbreak of the plague in 1530, and not only in Antwerp but also in Flanders generally, in Brabant, and in the environs of Cologne. The poor were wont to drop on their knees at his approach, reminding one of Tanchelm centuries before (Ch. 2.4). Symbolizing his vocation of poverty and his claim to prophetic authority, Loy dressed in robes torn and then patched with jewels. 36 Loy circulated Libertine works edited for him by Dominic van Oucle and printed in Germany. 37 The exact relationship between the Loists and Libertines soon to be pilloried by Calvin (1545; Ch. 23.2) cannot be worked out at this distance. 38 In Calvin’s polemic, the Loists are not actually mentioned and another Flemish progenitor of Libertinism is referred to, namely, one Coppin. The Fleming Coppin, of w hom little more is known except that he preached at Lille about 1529, saw his teaching carried into the French35

 Döllinger, Summa, 666–67.  Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium (London: Secker & Warburg, 1957); rev. and expanded edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), 178. 37  Van Oucle w as later ar rested at Rozendaal (Holland) and car ried for a hear ing to Antwerp, where he strangled himself in pr ison 14 September 1544. J. Frederichs, article, Biographie Nationale de Belgique (henceforth BNB) 16 (1901), cols. 781–82. Loy himself was also arrested in Antwerp and then sent to Vilvoorde to face examination along with other followers, condemned 24 October 1544, and burned alive the next day before the gates of the city. On 28 February 1545, three of the principal remaining Loists were decapitated, and the sect came to an end in the Netherlands. Some Loists fled to England. The execution of the Loists in Antwerp in 1545 may have contributed to Calvin’s decision to write a major refutation of all the Libertines in that very year (Ch. 23.2). Another Loist, the former Lutheran Christopher Hérault, a watchmaker of Paris, was executed at Antwerp on delation. 38  The article by A. Erenis on Libertines in De Katholiecke Encyclopaedie, 16 (Amsterdam/ Antwerp 1953), 16, 512, helpfully classifies them, I. Loisten. 36

538  the radical reformation

chapter 12.2

speaking part of the Netherlands and into France by two tailors, Quintin of Hainaut, and Bertrand of Moulins, and also by Claude Perceval and the former priest, Anthony Pocquet. Pocquet (also, contemporaneously, Pocque), born in Enghien around 1500, became a doctor in canon law. 39 We have a pretty good picture of Pocquet’s system, though from his own hand we have only his Communication to his followers, reproduced in sections for refutation seriatim by Calvin, and presumably complete.40 Pocquet had an interesting theology of h istory. In the traditional Tychonian-Augustinian rather than the Joachimite periodization of h istory, Pocquet outlined the seven ages of t he world, the seventh corresponding to the first, that is, paradisiac.41 The Holy Spirit and Christ alike belong to the last age. The regenerate person belongs both to the old and the New Adam. There is still enmity between humanity and the devil in the world, the hardness of t he law, self-fullness, willfulness, and death. But the regenerate person is already a new creature in Christ, the Second Adam, reconciled with God, justified, illuminated, and mortified in the believer’s assumption of h is or her own cross. Pocquet belongs to the mystical tradition in his view of the Atonement in that for him, instead of Christ’s taking the place of the sinner on the cross, Christ weds himself to the believer. As the rib was taken from the first Adam to form Eve, so on the cross the side of the Second Adam was pierced to bring forth his “sister and spouse” (Canticles), the Church.42 Justification is the bestowal of the Spirit experienced by t he believer. Pocquet attached importance to the double portion of the Spirit (2 Kings 2:9) poured out on Elisha, a symbol of t he end of t he age. As the Church was founded on the cross, it is thus in the world the extension of Christ’s suffering human nature. Accordingly, the redeemed believer must also die. But Pocquet held that the spiritual would be awakened to the life of the redeemed at the end of the seventh age. Several ill-assorted ethical and practical consequences, drawn from Pocquet’s injunction to be utterly obedient to, and trustful of, God were brought under three heads: (1) the abandonment of medicaments, (2) the elimination of t he power and authority of t he state in spiritual matters, and (3) the formation of a t ruly spiritual community wherein love of 39

 Charles Rahlenboeck, article, BNB 17 (1903): cols. 843–44.  See Calvin’s Contre la secte phantastique (1545), 7: cols. 226–41. This work is summarized and analyzed by Karl Müller, “Calvin und die Libertiner,” ZKG 40 (1922): 90–98. In addition, Calvin mentions four manuscripts that a fr iend of his procured for him while Pocquet was in Montpellier in the suite of Queen Margaret of Navarre and an exegesis of Luke (mentioned in Opera 13:17, 1060). None of the five writings is extant today. About Margaret of Navarre, see Bainton, Women 2, Ch. 1. 41  Calvin, Contre la secte phantastique , Opera 7: col. 237, where the se ven times of the Apocalypse are referred to. 42  Ibid., col. 237. 40

chapter 12.2 / 12.3

spread of melchiorite anabaptism  539

neighbor and enemy exceeds love of self and kin, as a replacement of the institutions of unregenerate society (not only the state but even the family, and of course the worldly church). We shall next meet Pocquet and his followers at the court of Q ueen Margaret of Navarre (Ch. 23.2). It is still uncertain what may have been the relationship of the Loists and Libertines to the Sacramentists and to the Anabaptists, who in the Netherlands first called themselves Melchiorites.43

3. The Melchiorites (Hofmannites) and Obbenites in East Frisia and the Netherlands44 The followers of a pocalyptic Melchior Hofmann (Melchiorites) in the momentous course of three years would frenziedly fix upon three large cities as the prospective site of the New Zion—Strassburg, where the prophet would be imprisoned (1533-43); Amsterdam (below); and Münster (Ch. 13). On the basis of Isaiah 19:18: “In that day there will be five cities in the land of Egypt which will speak the language of Canaan and swear allegiance to the Lord of Hosts, one … the city of the sun.” The Melchiorites thought also of London and Groningen as possible sites for the descent of the heavenly Jerusalem.45 Sacramentist (sacramentarian), apocalyptically oriented Anabaptism suddenly arose in the Netherlands in May 1530 under the apostolate of Melchior Hofmann, “The Father of Dutch Anabaptism,”46 just about five years after the emergence of sacramentarian, pacifistic Anabaptism in Zurich and Zollikon under Conrad Grebel (Ch. 6.1). Hofmann, in effect, “brought

43

 A valuable collection of sources and the history of the sect is given in Julius Frederichs, De secte der Löisten of Antwerpsche libertijnen, 1525–1545: Eligius Pruystinck en zijne anhangers (Ghent/The Hague, 1891); “Un luthérien français devenu libertin spirituel,” Bulletin historique et littéraire de la société de l’histoire du protestantisme fr ançais, 41 (1892): 250–69: “La Mortalité des libertins spirituels,” ibid., 502–4; A. Jundt, Histoire du panthéisme populaire au mo yen âge (Paris, 1875), 122ff. 44  For the general bibliography, see above n. 9.The late A. F. Mellink of Groningen succinctly presented “The Beginnings of Dutch Anabaptism in the Light of Recent Resear ch,” MQR 62 (1988): 211–20. He was the editor of Documenta Anabaptistica Neerlandica (DAN), 5 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1975–85). A major source has appeared: the Davidjorist Nicolaas Meyndertsz van Blesdijk (d. 1584) as Reformed preacher in Freinsheim, Rhine Palatinate (1584), Oorspronck ende anvanck des sectes welc k men weder doper noomt; see James M. Stayer, ARG, Beiheft, Literaturbericht 14 (1985), 67; S. Zijlstra, Nicolaas Meyndertsz van Blesdijk: Een bijtr age tot de gesc hiedenis van het Davidjorisme (Assen:Van Gorcum, 1983). 45  G. Grosheide, “Verhooren en Vonnissen der Wederdoopers betrakken bij de aanslagen op Amsterdam 1543 er 1585,” Bijdragen en Mededeelmyen von het Historisch Genootschap 41 (1970): 175 (henceforth Grosheide, “Verhooren”); noted by W. Klassen, “Eschatological Theses,” p. 30, who elsewhere adduces the concept of the Quincunx as illuminated by James Dougherty, The Fivesquare City: The City in the Religious Imagination (South Bend, Ind.: University of Notr e Dame, 1980). In P oland there was a Catholic pub licist who similarly held up the P olishLithuanian Commonwealth as a Quincunx; see Williams Lubieniecki, Pl. 21. 46  Samuel Cramer, BRN 5, 127.

540  the radical reformation

chapter 12.3

Anabaptism from Southwestern Germany to the Netherlands, where it won mass support such as it never again attained elsewhere in Europe.”47 For the northern provinces of the Netherlands, e.g., the landgraviate of West Frisia which had come under Charles in 1524 and the county of Holland (North and South), which had come under him in 1528, the council of Holland sitting in The Hague served as the representative authority of the central government. The county of West Frisia, prominent in what follows, lay beyond Hapsburg control. The “Zurich” or natal town of Netherlandish Anabaptism, Emden, was the capital of the county of East Frisia, outside the Imperial Circle of Burgundy, as the sixteenth-century Netherlands with Franche Comté (Besançon) were also known, insofar as they were all understood to be still parts of the Empire. It was to Emden in East Frisia that a l arge number of D utch Sacramentists had been fleeing under a p ro-Sacramentist count (Ch. 10.2.4). Hofmann (himself but recently espousing believers’ baptism in Strassburg, Ch. 10.3.c) rebaptized nearly three hundred48 in Emden in June 1530 in the vestibule of the Grosse Kirche and united them in a covenanted congregation. In this mood he published his Ordinance of God, 1530 (Ch. 11.1.b),49 in which he for the first time in his ministry made rebaptism programmatic. The divine ordinance was, of c ourse, the familiar baptismal injunction of Matthew 28:19 and evidently the term itself was used here for the first time for baptism. Hofmann’s principal Anabaptist convert in Emden and deputy for the Netherlandish mission was John Volkerts Trijpmaker from Hoorn, Holland, by s ome apocalyptically styled “the new Enoch.”50 In Emden Hofmann also converted the West Frisian Sicke Freerks Snijder to the cause, and Trijpmaker rebaptized him in November 1530. Thereupon Sicke was sent to Leeuwarden, capital of West Frisia, where he won over many in the local Sacramentist conventicle to Anabaptism. Sicke became the first Anabaptist martyr in the Netherlands, 20 March 1531. At the beheading, a drummer among the soldiers’ ranks and a f riend of S icke interrupted the solemnity of muffled drums with a tirade against the old religion but escaped in the midst of a sympathetic throng. This execution in Leeuwarden was a turning point in the spiritual evolution of both Obbe Philips and Menno Simons (Ch. 14.1).

47

 Klaus Deppermann et al., “From Monogenesis to Polygenesis,” MQR 49 (1975) 111.  Obbe Philips, Confession in SAW, 204. 49  Written in Low German, it survives in Dutch translation; translated in SAW, 182–203. 50  One of the tw o witnesses of Re v. 11:3–13. Up to this point only one had been so identified, i.e. Hofmann as Elijah. Volkerts was a weaver of a non-silk en mock-velvet fabric, tripe-de-velours. 48

chapter 12.3

spread of melchiorite anabaptism  541

Obbe, a barber-surgeon, and his brother Dirk Philips 51 (Ch. 19.2.b) who was an Observantine Franciscan friar, sons of t he local priest who had lived in concubinage, inwardly espoused the Leeuwarden martyr’s cause. The two brothers had for some time been reading Lutheran tracts and had drawn apart with a number of other evangelical Sacramentists, to “worship God quietly in the manner of the fathers and the patriarchs” so that “each one could seek God from his heart, and serve and follow Him without a preacher, teacher, or any other outward meeting.” 52 Trijpmaker, Hofmann’s convert and deputy in East Frisia, was banished under pressure from the Zwinglian preachers of the churches of the county only recently united in a Sacramentarian (Zwinglian) Confession (Ch. 10.3.c). He moved to Amsterdam and founded the Anabaptist conventicle there around Christmas 1530 and won adherence on missions to Utrecht and The Hague in 1531. Within his gathering Trijpmaker celebrated the Lord’s Supper by breaking bread, “knowing that it was no sacrament, but only in commemoration of the Passion of the Lord.” 53 He was apprehended on order from the Council of Holland, sitting in The Hague, in the fall of 1531. Despite the efforts of the Amsterdam burgomaster to save him, Trijpmaker gave himself up to the police and acknowledged his rebaptism. During his trial, Trijpmaker recanted and yielded the names of more than f ifty converts in Amsterdam. 54 Nine of them were apprehended 55 and (all but one) with him beheaded at The Hague, 5 D ecember 1531. Among those who witnessed the grisly scene was David Joris. 56 Stunned, Hofmann, who

51

 J. ten Doornkaat Koolman, Dirk Philips: Vriend en Mede-werker van Menno Simons, 1504– 1566 (Haarlem: Willink, 1964), with a complete tab le of all Dirk’ s writings and translations thereof. See further the compilation edited by A. F. Mellink, Documenta Anabaptistica Neerlandica (DAN), vol. 2: Amsterdam (1536–1578) (Leiden: Brill, 1980) and then idem “The ‘Radical Underground’ in the Dutch Radical Refor mation,” in the Bulletin Monumenta Anabaptistica Neerlandica, nos. 12–13 (1980–81): 43–57. See also , Philips, Confession in SAW, 210. This Bekentenisse Obbe Philipsz, waermede hy verclaert, sijn Predic k-ampt sonder wettelic ke beroeping gebruyckt te hebben, beclaecht hem dies, en waerschuwet einen yeders, wt sijnen eygen Boeck met eyghener Handt gheschreen, ghecopieert, ed. by the late Cornelius Claesz (Amsterdam, 1584), tr. into French by Charles de Nielles (Leiden 1595). The original Dutch edition of the Confession by Samuel Cramer and Piyper, BRN 7 (1910): 121–38. 52  Confession, in SAW, 210. 53  DAN, 5 Amsterdam (1531–1536), p. 19; quoted by Mellink, “Beginnings,” p. 312. 54  Gary K. Waite details the artisan crafts of the 242 Amsterdam Anabaptists, many of them previously Sacramentists, “The Anabaptism Movement in Amsterdam and the Netherlands, 1531–1535: An Initial In vestigation into Its Genesis and Social Dynamics, ” SCJ 18 (1987): 249–265. 55  Ibid. 56  A tenth pr isoner, a Brabant pr iest, John Airtsz of Diest, was dealt with as cler ic and executed later. See Roland Bainton, David Joris: Wiedertäufer und Kämpfer für Toleranz im 16. Jahrhundert, ARG Ergänzungsband 6 (Leipzig, 1937), 5.

542  the radical reformation

chapter 12.3

had by t hen returned to Strassburg (Ch. 10.3.h) for a t hird sojourn, wavered momentarily in his apocalyptic conf idence. Compelled by a new order of a rrest, Hofmann left Strassburg for the third time (1532–33), traveling, among other places, through Hesse where Landgrave Philip heard him preach and where Peter Tasch was converted to the apocalyptical message, then on to West Frisia and its capital, Leeuwarden. In Deventer in the lordship of Overijssel, Hofmann was sheltered by Bartholomew Boeckbinder, who assisted him in the translation and publication in Dutch of his whole treatise on the Incarnation (Deventer, 1532) and another on predestination in Rom 9:13 (Ch. 10.3.c). Hofmann, taking note of the deaths meted out to his followers, returned to Strassburg, where he was reimprisoned in May 1533. Revising his eschatological calendar, he prudently counseled “standing still” for two years pending the return of a f avorable conjuncture of events.57 This counsel of s trategic delay (Stillstand) in the construction of the spiritual temple was based upon the prophetically enjoined interruption in the work on the Temple in Jerusalem (Ezra 4:24) until a new “Darius” should make possible resumption of the spiritual construction. In the meantime, his followers (Melchiorites) had spread widely in the Netherlands. Plague, flood, and famine caused by war and blockades intensified the eschatological mood. Melchior Hofmann and now his evangelists were reaping where the Sacramentists had sown. In the Netherlands his policy of prudential suspension of the ordinance of believers’ baptism met resistance among his own followers notably from the Haarlem baker John Matthijs. Matthijs declared himself to be the second Enoch (in the stead of the executed Trijpmaker),58 a “prophet sent by Elijah [Hofmann] by the Holy Spirit,” the fresh envoy of God as authorized forerunner of h is Kingdom on earth. Putting aside his incredulous wife and taking a “pretty young slip of a girl” who “had great knowledge of the gospel,”59 John Matthijs came clandestinely to Amsterdam. The contemporary account continues [Obbe’s Confession]: Now when he came there [to the circle of some nine of Trijpmaker’s converts in Amsterdam], he [ John Matthijs] professed to have been greatly driven by the Spirit and [told] how God had revealed great 57  Philips, Confession BRN 7 (The Hague, 1910), 121–38, tr. in SAW, 211. Cf. above, p. 540. See Christaan Lievestro, “Obbe Philips and the Anabaptist Vision,” MQR 41 (1967): 99–115. Mellink, adducing overwhelming evidence that all the Melchior ite leaders were carried away in apocalyptical exaltation, holds that Obbe’s Confession must be used with caution, Wederdopers (1954), 367–68. 58  For the record of the cour t of Holland at The Hague, condemning Trijpmaker 14 July 1534, see Carl Adolf can Cornelius, Berichte der Augenzeugen über das münsterische Wiedertaüferreich (Munster, 1853), 78. 59  Ibid., 214.

chapter 12.3

spread of melchiorite anabaptism  543

things to him which he could tell to no one, that he was the other witness, Enoch [Hofmann being still recognized as Elijah]. Now when the friends or brethren heard of this, they became apprehensive and knew not what they should best do. … They had also heard that Cornelius Polderman [or perhaps Caspar Schwenckfeld] 60 was [the returned] Enoch. When John Matthijs learned of this, he carried on with much emotion and terrifying alarm, and with great and desperate curses cast all into hell and to the devils for eternity who would not hear his voice and who would not recognize and accept him as the true Enoch. Because of t his, some went into a room without food and drink, in fasting and prayer, and were almost all as disconsolate over such threats as if they lay in hell. For we [Obbe and those as more pacifistic followers] were at that time all unsuspecting and no one knew that such false prophets could arise in the midst of the brethren. … Then they [evidently a portion of the former “we” group] again came to themselves and the fearful anxiety subsided among them. And therewith and after much negotiation they attached themselves to John Matthijs and became obedient.61 The “charismatic prophet” Matthijs, still non-violent in his preachment, resumed (over against Hofmann’s distant counsel) public rebaptism to rally recruits and proceeded to ordain twelve apostles, among them John Beukels, a t ailor, “the intellectual schemer” behind the burgeoning new movement (destined to tyrannize as king of Münster, July 1534–June 1535) of Leiden.62 In the meantime, it had been predicted that Hofmann himself would be imprisoned for six months before the expiration of his biblically suggested delay. We have already heard him on trial in Strassburg (Ch. 10.4.b). While Hofmann was eagerly sending out bulletins and instructions from his cell, two of M atthijs’ apostolic emissaries, Bartholomew Boekbinder van Halle and William (Dirck) Cuyper (Cuper), were in Leeuwarden preaching the more militant version of t he Melchiorite gospel, gathering recruits. Obbe Philips, whose account we have been following, converted and was baptized among others, December 1533. On the next day, Obbe and his friend John Schierden were ordained by the two apostles as elders by the laying on of h ands.63 During Obbe’s absence on a preaching mission, Peter Houtzager, another of the apostles of Matthijs, proclaimed “the imminent destruction of all tyrants.” The danger of an uproar in Leeuwar60

 Ibid., 212.  Ibid., 214. 62  Ibid., 215. The characterization of the Haarlem baker and the Leiden tailor are those of Mellink, “Beginnings,” 214. 63  Philips, Confession, 217. 61

544  the radical reformation

chapter 12.3

den was so great that Obbe, on his return at midday, found the city gates closed and only with difficulty gained entry. Soon his own name appeared in the placards of t he stadholder of W est Frisia as one of “ the seducers and deceivers who wander about the country, and rebaptize people.” Condemned as an insurrectionist 23 February 1534, Obbe fled to Amsterdam. Disillusion followed upon the protracted imprisonment of the founding prophet Melchior Hofmann in Strassburg and Melchior’s own recognition of a nother Enoch instead of p resumptuous John Matthijs, namely, Cornelius Polderman of M iddelburg. The Amsterdam Melchiorites, formerly under Trijpmaker, now under abbe’s leadership, renewed their study of the Bible and became known as Obbenite Melchiorites or eventually Obbenites. The more frenzied Melchiorites from all over the Netherlands, responding to a call by Matthijs, and lured by the promising developments in Münster (Ch. 13.2), left from several ports and sailed across the Zuider Zee toward the haven of K ampen, where they expected to find Jeremiah to lift his golden sword and to show them the way to the Kingdom (2 Macc. 15:15).64 They were intent upon foregathering, as summoned, on 24 March 1534 at Bergklooster (near Zwolle). Authorities stopped twentyseven ships, filled with three thousand armed Melchiorites, men, women, and children. They were prepared to defend Münster, purportedly the city of refuge, from the coming judgment of the Lord, with some 1,500 spears and many other weapons, martial standards, and four drums. Although the leaders were executed by order of the authorities of Zwolle, Kampen, and Deventer, the local authorities refused the demand of the central government in Brussels to sink the boats filled with their pilgrims of the golden sword in their crusade in defense of the beleaguered New Jerusalem. Some of the refugees from the Bergklooster debacle sought out Amsterdam as prospectively more tolerant than might be their own native towns and they hid there in warehouses. Gerard (Gerrit) van Kampen, stirred by their presence and perhaps with incitement from Münster itself, conceived the idea of saving beleaguered Zion by seizing Amsterdam, a plot thwarted in April 1534. Then, in the very month when fellow Melchiorites were taking over in Münster (Ch. 13), the apostles, Bartholomew Boekbinder, Peter Houtzager, and William (Dirk) Cuyper, who had commissioned Obbe, marched through Amsterdam 21 March 1534, bearing swords and proclaiming that “the new [part of the] city is given to the children of God!” On 26 March 64  “And this [a majestic figure], Onias [a former high priest, appearing in a vision] explained to him [Judas Maccabaeus] is the lo ver of the br ethren, who prayeth fervently for the people and the holy city [now perceived to be Münster]: Jeremiah the prophet of God. And Jeremiah [in the vision] held out his r ight hand to present Judas with a golden sword, and as he gave it he addressed him thus: Take this holy s word as a g ift from God, and with it thou shalt cr ush the foe.”

chapter 12.3

spread of melchiorite anabaptism  545

these “children of G od” were executed, and Obbe at this spectacle turned in revulsion from the violent consequences of M elchior’s Dutch followers, intensified by the apostolic missionaries of John Matthijs. Enough of the apocalyptically expectant mood survived among some in Amsterdam, however, to make it possible for the Anabaptist king of Münster to name Jacob van Campen, a cloth-shearer, as the putative bishop of the Fivesquare Zion of t he “New Zion in Amsterdam,”65 a s econdary Anabaptist republic. All Melchiorites became convinced that they constituted the new spiritual order to replace the old; about where, when, and by what signs, and by what means, they differed. Obbe Philips opposed and dissociated his group from the twelve enthusiasts, men and women, who walked naked and unarmed, 10 February 1535, to proclaim the “naked truth” of the new Eden,66 and who were beheaded. That spring a second attempt was made to take over Amsterdam. This was undertaken under the direction of ( 1) John van Geelen, the Münsterite envoy who was seeking in several Dutch cities to “raise the banner of justice” and who was seeking to divert attention from Münster, and of (2) one of the two leaders of the Amsterdam congregation, John Matthijs van Middelburg (who reappears in England, Ch. 14.4.b). The two leaders evidently counted on some support from within the city council itself, and they appealed in vain for support against “the godless Papists” from “others who loved the gospel, including Lutherans and Sacramentarians.”67 Obbe withheld his support from this attempt, as did Bishop Jacob van Campen, whose refusal was prudential: “They will end up on the slaughter f1oor.” On the night of 10 May 1535 forty or fifty insurrectionists sought to storm the town hall. The separation of the two currents within Melchiorism had begun. By the eve of the Münster tragedy most of the Amsterdam Melchiorites would subside into an evangelical position and as Obbenites would become like the Swiss Brethren.68

65

 Johannes ter Gouw, Geschiedenis van Amsterdam,Vol. 4 (Amsterdam, 1884), 263–84.  Mellink, DAN 1:109. These Anabaptists had been meeting in the Zoutstieg, when suddenly their prophetic leader Henry Henricks Snyder took off his garments, threw them in the fire, and ordered his followers to do the same. They marched through the streets, crying, “Woe, woe, the wrath of God over that city,” and “Truth is naked.” Mellink, Wederdopers, 122–24. 67  Grosheide, “Verhooren,” 48–49. Mellink, DAN 5, 261. The burgomaster Peter Colijn, writing perhaps to exonerate himself as otherwise v ery close to the Sacramentar ians, led the counterattack in which he and others were killed, along with envoy John van Gellen.The insurrectionists were all executed. 68  The foregoing is a harmonizing generalization. Walter Klassen dealt succinctly with these Amsterdam episodes in the larger context of “Eschatological Themes in Early Dutch Anabaptism,” Dutch Dissenters, ed. Horst, 15–31. Disconcerting to himself and to his absorbed readers, precisely a page got dr opped in the pr inting: between his nn. 119 and 125. He wrote in these missing lines: “The disagreements among them [in Amsterdam, as else where] were not whether or not the s word should be used, by whom and under what conditions. When people like Jacob van Campen and Jan Paseuw hesitated to use the sword, it was not from fear, 66

546  the radical reformation

chapter 12.3

During the rule of the two Johns (Matthijs and Beuckles of Leiden) in Münster, Obbe nevertheless received the “books, writings, and letters which they daily sent us.” But the revolutionary Melchiorite debacle both in Münster and in Amsterdam brought him to confess with mounting anguish that “we [were] poor people [who] could not yet open their eyes while it all happened so crudely that one was not able to grasp the lies and obscurity.” Deception by false prophets destroyed not only Obbe’s hope for a r estitution of t he apostolic church but also confidence in his own apostolate, for he had been indirectly ordained by M atthijs. Thus Obbe doubted also the validity of those whom he had in turn ordained, namely, his brother Dirk Philips, David Joris (Ch. 13), and Menno Simons (Ch. 14). Obbe Philips would presently withdraw or, rather, be forced, from his own brotherhood (1539/40). As now Spiritualizer, he was roughly the Dutch counterpart of John Denck. The account of his Melchiorite conversion and his subsequent disillusionment is contained in his Confession, on which so much of the foregoing account depends.69 In despair he will open his Confession quoting Romans 10:15: “And how can men preach unless they are sent?” Obbe begins and ends with his doubts about the validity of h is ordination and those ordained by him. Obbe Philips here reflects on the years 1533–36, writing about Revolutionary Anabaptism as it came to a head in Munster. Obbe writes, however, as a d isillusioned Melchiorite. His personal convictions in the period of his so-called Confession are most akin to the Rational Spiritualism of Sebastian Franck and the Contemplative Spiritualism of Caspar Schwenckfeld. Like both these Spiritualists, Obbe Philips has come to despair of the inveterate divisiveness and the destructiveness of all attempts to establish a truly apostolic church. He, like these two Spiritualizers, exposes to view the pretensions and the unseemly and even ungodly zeal of m any who enforced their wills as the will of G od. Looking to some future action by, or clear instruction from, God, Obbe in the meantime is content with membership in an inward church of t he Spirit. His defection from the very movement which for a while had borne his name (the Obbenites) would be comparable among the Dutch Anabaptists to the “retraction” of John Denck (Ch. 7.6). His repudiation of the movement was all the more disconcerting for the reason that his own authority in turn had stemmed from Melchior Hofmann himself. Hofmann is pictured

as Mellink suggests [ Wederopers, 380–81, n. 123.] nor [inher ent] Anabaptist nonresistance as Kühler believed [Geschiedenis, 89, 11, n. 124]. Certainly there were differences among them as to the degree to which they were committed to the Apocalyptic crusade … they needed time to “determine which voice to obey.” 69  The Confession was written shortly before 1560. See above, n. 51.

chapter 12.3 / 12.4

spread of melchiorite anabaptism  547

retrospectively as a pitiable rather than as an execrable figure. But because Hofmann’s prophecies remained unfulfilled, Obbe is sure that Hofmann did not have the apostolic authority which had been allegedly conferred in the pouring out of the Spirit in the last days of the world. The question of ministerial authority is thus uppermost in Obbe’s mind when he opens his Confession with the question as to the divine credentials of a true apostle. We have scarcely been able to recount the story of Netherlandish Anabaptism in isolation from what was concurrently happening in Münster; for in the feverish pitch of excitement the Dutch and Flemish devotees of Melchior Hofmann were being spiritually racked by their desire to be loyal to the pathetic imprisoned prophet in Strassburg (which itself had been heralded as the new Zion) and by their overwhelming fascination with the proud prophet in Münster, where a “regenerate” magistracy seemed to be building up the Zion of their fervent hope and when John Matthijs declared that God had cut off Strassburg as the site of the New Jerusalem.70 Although indeed a regional account of the surges in Melchiorism (both reactively non-violent and bellicose-expectant) in the Netherlands and East Frisia has been difficult to sustain coherently without at least frequent allusion to the vortex of the storm building up over Münster, we even now postpone treatment of t his nodal episode for all Anabaptist history until the next chapter and here close with a sketch of some developments in the jurisdictions up the Rhine on either side beyond what would later (1648) be fixed as the boundary of the (United) Netherlands.

4. Evangelical Catholic Reform, Popular Piety, and Melchiorite Anabaptism in the Rhineland Around Cologne On both sides of the Rhine lay the duchy of Cleves, whose prince in 1457 had sought to make himself sovereign in religion and rule in declaring of himself henceforth: Dux Cleviae imperator est in ducato suo.71 Further up the Rhine, on the left bank roughly between the Meuse and the Moselle, lay the duchy of J ülich (which would be eventually reclaimed by t he papal Church), the temporal archbishopric of C ologne, and the cathedral city itself—an imperial city with its university. On the right bank lay the duchy of Mark, bordering on the prince-bishopric of Münster, the latter a temporal domain much larger than that of the bishop’s own metropolitan, the archbishop of Cologne. This prince-archbishop, one of the three spiritual electors of t he Empire, had in 1463, under the pressure from a c oalition of surrounding princes and internal foes, acquiesced in the reduction of

70

 Grosheide, “Verhooren,” 45, 136–37.  The duke received the jus episcopale from the pope in 1455. J. F. Knapp, Regenten und Volksgeschichte der Länder Cleve, Mark, Jülich, Berg, und Ravensberg (Crefeld, 1936), 3:120ff. 71

548  the radical reformation

chapter 12.4

temporality and conceded shared rule of it with the cathedral chapter, his counts, knights, and remaining towns. Alongside this reduced princearchbishopric, on the opposite bank of t he Rhine stretched the duchy of Berg. In 1521 the duchies of B erg, Jülich, and Cleves were united in the person of D uke John III (1521–39), whose daughter Anne, it was, who would briefly supply Henry VIII with his fourth—Lutheran—wife (Anne of Cleves, 1540). As for the prince-archbishop of C ologne, this was at the time Herman of Wied (1515–46), only a s ubdeacon when so designated, one of t he three spiritual electors of Charles V (1519). He sought to develop a territorial Catholic reformed church and would go so far as to invite Melanchthon and Bucer to collaborate on a reforming church order. This Bedencken (1543) would be published in England as A Simple and Religious Consideration (1548, to be drawn upon for the II Edwardian Prayer Book) and would become the basis of the first church order of the Reformed synod in Little Poland (1550; Ch. 25.1.a). Herman, harsh on Anabaptists, would be deposed by Paul III as a Lutheran in 1546. Anabaptism in the Lower Rhine and Westphalia, that is, the practice of rebaptism was a consequence of the example in, and the messianic forces of, Münster and was thus from the outset Münsterite Melchiorite Anabaptism, beginning in this region only in 1534, when John Matthijs resumed the practice, which Melchior Hofmann had suspended (for two years) after the execution of his followers in The Hague (December 1534). Admittedly we have been dealing, after 1534, with the lava flows rather than visiting volcanic craters first (Münster, Ch. 13).72 But in the ordering of themes and regions in convulsion in a comprehensive survey of v arious radical thrusts, I h ave sought to distinguish as many as three phases of religious radicality merging into each other: Sacramentism, Melchiorite Anabaptism, and Melchiorite-Münsterite ( Johannite) Anabaptism, the third thrust already impacting the account in the present chapter. For the Lower Rhine in general, Dr. Gerard Westerburg (c. 1495–1559), native of Cologne, may be taken as a representative figure and of importance in his own right. Already noted above (Ch. 12.1) as having been rebaptized in the Johannite-Melchiorite line by the also representative North Hollander Henry Rol, in Münster, in January 1534, he had even before that been encountered several times in our narrative—but, detracting from his dignity—out of the proper biographical sequence. He and his brother Arnold were sons of a patrician family of Cologne, whose father had acquired the office of ferry 72  This is the finding of J.F.G.Goeters,“Die Rolle desTäufertums in der Reformationsgeschichte des Niederrheins,” Rheillische Viertelsjahr-Blätter 24 (1959) 217–36, confirmed for Colo gne by Hans H. Th. Stisny, Das strafrechtliche Verfolgung der Täufrren in der freien Reic hstadt Köln: 1529 bis 1518, Reformationsgeschichtlichen Studien und Texte, 85 (Münster: Aschendorf, 1962), 17.

chapter 12.4

spread of melchiorite anabaptism  549

master in Deutz across the Rhine. After his studies in Cologne, Bologna, and Rome, where he faced the V Lateran postulate of the natural immortality of the soul (Ch. 1.6), back in his home in Cologne Dr. Westerburg entertained the weaver-preacher Nicholas Storch of Zwickau and in 1552 accompanied him back to Wittenburg, and then left it for Jena, ally and brother-in-law of Carlstadt (Ch. 3.1). He was with Grebel in Zurich for six days and then with Castelberger in Basel, October 1524 (Ch. 5.2). He was sympathetic, like Carlstadt, with the aspirations and in Frankfurt fostered the composition and publication of the 42 Frankfurt Articles concerned with urban justice (Ch. 4.3.b). Expelled from Frankfurt in May 1525, he left with wife and child and his friend Martin Reinhart and sought to resume residence in his residence in Cologne, where social unrest had likewise broken out in February over the relatively simple issue of equalized taxation of all classes for the common commodities of bread, wine, and beer. The town council was suspicious of his role abroad and in his possible patrician patronage of local civil unrest and sought to prevent his resumption of civic rights. To undo his influence the theological faculty cooperatively with the council inveigled Westerburg into defending, with Reinhart, his own booklet on Purgatory. Altogether there were three encounters, escalating into inquisition in the Dominican cloister. And even after he had been found satisfactory by t he city council, he was pursued further at the archbishop’s request and by the personal intervention of Jacob Hochstraten (d. 1527), the foe of John Reuchlin. When menaced from outside his house on 12 March 1526, he decided not to test the goodwill and authority of the council and took flight to Esslingen, where the highest tribunal of the Empire was sitting (Reichskammergericht) for four days. After his unobtrusive departure the local inquisition burned his book and declared him a heretic. Surprisingly swift was the decision in his favor, the tribunal sending two mandates 20 March 1526 to the civil and spiritual authorities in Cologne, reinstating Dr. Westerburg in his plenary civil rights. His home may well have for some time been a g athering place of p roto-Anabaptists before his own baptism in Münster by Rol in January 1534. This decisive action on his part, and of his brother Arnold, must betoken their hope that at long last some city, if not Frankfurt or Strassburg, would imminently implement social justice for all citizens and reform urban institutions in the light of the gospel. They returned to Cologne. On February 15, Gerard baptized his wife and a glazier, Richard von Richrath, in his house in the Herzogstrasse. Peter Tasch (Ch. 17.2) frequented meetings there. Arnold Westerburg with his baptized wife emerged as local leaders. On 7 November 1534, three of

550  the radical reformation

chapter 12.4

their converts were executed for heresy.73 In the meantime Dr. Gerard Westerburg among six or seven preached in Strassburg in April. One of t hem, Jerome of Cologne, had been baptized by Rol, another by Rothmann. Dr. Westerburg and one of them stayed as guests of Capito. These visitors may have been interested in conferring with imprisoned Melchior Hofmann and they became aware that in Strassburg there was a split among the Anabaptists, followers respectively of Hofmann, Kautz, and Reublin.74 There were two towns within the jurisdiction of D uke John which stand out in the early history of w hat retrospectively can be seen as the Radical Reformation on the Lower Rhine, namely, Wesel in the duchy of Cleves and Wassenberg in the duchy of Jülich. In Wesel the second master of t he municipal Latin school was Adolf Clarenbach, who may be taken as another representative figure in the transition from late medieval to Reformation piety. He had studied in Münster, presumably at the school of the Brethren of the Common Life, and acquired the master’s degree at the University of Cologne. After teaching in Wesel he was expelled for his Lutheran sympathies 11 September 1525 and established himself at Osnabrück as a Latin teacher and lay leader of an evangelical circle. To them he lectured on several books of the New Testament and for them he wrote a book on faith, hope, and charity against the legalism of the medieval Church. He was expelled in 1527 and stayed with John Klopreis in the latter’s parish near Wesel. When Klopreis was summoned to Cologne for heresy, Clarenbach accompanied him to encourage and defend him. Associated with Clarenbach was Peter of Thesteden in Jülich. During Mass in the cathedral of Cologne, prompted by t he sacramentarian contempt for idolatry, he kept his head covered in protest. Clarenbach and his comforting companion of two years in prison, Peter Fliesteden, after sustaining unspeakable torture, were burned at the stake in 28 September 1529, while Klopreis, destined to become an important Anabaptist leader, was merely imprisoned. Clarenbach was not an Anabaptist, but, in his rejection of the oath, his conception of the Supper, his close association with several proto-Anabaptists, such as John Klopreis, he was clearly related to them. Dr. Gerard Westerburg, unable to use his juridical skills in their defense, could only be witness to their execution. Klopreis escaped from Cologne New Year’s night and found refuge in Wassenberg under the tolerant bailiff Werner von Pallant, who worked

73  Richard von Richrath was burned at the stake, the other two beheaded. In his testimony of 31 October 1534, Richard testified that it was in the house of Westerburg that Peter Tasch, with a Hessian car eer ahead of him, acknowledged that he had been r ebaptized. Confession, Historisches Archiv der Stadt Köln, Reformationsakten 15. Stayer, who cites the confession, suggests that the Cologne Anabaptists around Westerburg were, with the Münster ites, at this date “still maintaining their shaky commitment to apoliticism,” Sword, 303. 74  Strassburg, hearing of 10, 11, and 24 April 1534; Elsass 2 (QGT 8), no. 533.

chapter 12.4

spread of melchiorite anabaptism  551

zealously for the Reformation but denied the right of t he magistrate, in this case his superior, Duke John III, to control religious developments. In his castle religious leaders known collectively as the Wassenberg Preachers had been foregathering since 1528. They were, besides Klopreis and one Dionysius Vinne, the already mentioned Henry Schlachtschap of Tongres and Maastricht, Henry Rol (Ch. 12.1), and John Campanus. They were anti-pedobaptists and in the end most of them became spokesmen of Anabaptism, but they differed among themselves and were unified largely in their opposition to Duke John’s evangelical reform imposed from above. We met Campanus in Strassburg and took note of his sacramental theology and binitarianism (Chs. 10.3.g and 11.2.c.3). He returned from Strassburg to Jülich in 1531, where Duke John ordered his arrest, but he was able to enjoy his freedom in the castle of Wassenberg. (However, in 1553 he would be imprisoned for twenty years. After the Catholic apologist George Cassander and the bishop of Roermond failed to convert him, Campanus would be released in 1574.) When Werner von Pall ant was threatened with the loss of h is position as bailiff (1533, deposed in 1534), his Wassenberg protégés, except for Campanus and a few others, were lured to Münster.

552  the radical reformation

Bernard Knipperdolling by Christoffel van Sichem (1606)

chapter 12.4

Chapter 13

Münster, 1531–1535

I n an earlier chapter

(Ch. 4) we saw how peasant economic unrest, accumulating over several centuries and changing governmental and legal structures, combined with a new sense of t he freedom promised by the gospel and a sensitivity to its demand for a holy life, led to the brief but bloody Peasants’ War of 1524–25/26. We have now turned to the North German area and the Hapsburg Netherlands (Ch. 12), where a d ecade later the same basic factors, recombined with unusual local conditions and religious expectations, brought about a m uch more radical society, centered in the bellicose and polygamous commonwealth of Münster, putative capital of a k ingdom embracing the religio-social aspirations of thousands of Melchiorites from Brussels to Emden, from Wassenberg to Waterland, and commanding their allegiance. Whereas the earlier movement had started out as a s ocial protest, and had become evangelically sublimated in self-disciplining, outwardly non-violent conventicles, the MünsteriteNetherlandish episode of 1 533–35 started out with a p owerful sense of evangelical, apocalyptic expectancy, and became socially revolutionary and massively oppressive. As in the Peasants’ War, so in the Münsterite-Netherlandish upheaval, evangelical and social factors and the ideal of urban reform combined. Distinctive, however, was the fact that the northern movement was constitutionally and eschatologically Anabaptist, or more specifically, Melchiorite (from Melchior Hofmann, Ch. 10.3.c) and then distinctively Münsterite. Baptism, from being the seal of c onventicular membership, became the badge of l oyalty to the provisional kingdom of a n apostle-prophet-king and acquired civic, as distinguished from purely ecclesiastical, significance. Indeed, in the Münsterite upheaval, the conventicular church was transformed into a m ilitant commonwealth, and in contrast to Anabaptism in most other parts of Germania, Italia, and Polonia, Münsterite Anabaptism programmatically used the Old Testament and its Apocrypha as model and sanction and, in Bernard Rothmann’s words, the Pentateuch “as the law book of the New Jerusalem,” Münster. The imagination of the Münsterites 553

554  the radical reformation

chapter 13

in their conceptions of “restoration” was freed far more by t he discipline undergone by the Children of the Covenant in exodus from Egypt and the rebuilding of J erusalem after the Babylonian exile than by t he primitive church in Jerusalem under the Roman Empire. Their vision of C hrist’s second advent drawn from the Seer of the Revelation and sharpened by the prophecies of Strassburg-imprisoned Melchior Hofmann, and theoretically reconceived by John Matthijs and John Beukels, embraced a k ingdom of righteousness that was fiercely intolerant of all who failed to respond to the rigors and delights of the Anabaptist Valhalla, realized in the midst of a prince-bishop’s see. The allusion to the mythological is as much an allusion to the operatic or the theatrical. We cannot grasp the extraordinary strutting and posturing in the cathedral square of Münster, first under the prophet John Matthijs and then under his successor king, John Beukels of Leiden and his harem, without recognizing the extent to which the whole of the Münsterite action was a comic-tragic morality play, brought out into the open from the chambers of rhetoric.1 Several of the chief actors had, in fact, been members of s uch chambers in the various Netherlandish towns whence they came. Theirs was now an increasingly grim morality play of the good against the bad, enacted with stage properties sacked from the homes of the wealthy and the treasure room of the prince-bishop, with a plot drawn eclectically from the Old a nd the New Testaments and the lives of k ings and emperors, and with characters impersonated by an extraordinary company of figures, all of whom almost to the end remained confident that they were playing preordained and well-nigh cosmic roles under the director of the world theater. The tragedy of Münster—first, for its nonconformist and humiliated exiles, then for the covenantal and valorous defenders of the city retaken by its bishop after a prolonged siege, and finally for the forlorn followers of Melchior Hofmann beyond its walls—revolves not only around the aspirations and perversions of two Johns from The Netherlands but also around the aspirations and the vagaries of t wo Bernards from within Münster itself, Bernard Rothmann, the local Lutheran minister, in league with the cloth merchant Bernard Knipperdolling, patrician spokesman in the two city councils of the seventeen powerful guilds. Indeed, we cannot understand the Münsterite-Netherlandish upheaval unless we also recognize in it the confluence of two originally distinct movements: (1) the local city reformation, complicated as elsewhere by t he standard pattern of c lass conflict between patricians and artisans and between burghers as a class

1  Leonard Verduin, “The Chambers of Rhetor ic and Anabaptist Origins in the Lo w Countries,” MQR 34 (1960): 192–96.

chapter 13

münster  555

against the cathedral and local monastic clergy, 2 and (2) the Melchiorite movement in The Netherlands, which suddenly turned toward Münster as the very place where, because of the exceptional beginnings of the Reformation there, the millennium prophesied by Melchior Hofmann (Ch. 10.3) seemed on the point of being realized. Indeed much of t he movement and apocalyptic excitement already recounted in The Netherlands and the four territories controlled by the Duke of Cleves (Ch. 12), with attempts of Melchiorite Anabaptists to gain municipal ascendancy in still Catholic Amsterdam and Deventer, presupposed the extraordinary fact in European history that Anabaptists legally came to power in Munster in the elections of February 1534. Hofmann himself in prison in Strassburg had indeed participated in iconoclastic reform in Livonia. While he held to the propriety of the sword in the hands of the Christian magistrate, his contributions to the self-righteous violence about to unfold in authoritarian Munster lay rather in (1) his ecstatic confidence that God would soon avenge the little ones of C hrist who had so long suffered from spuriously Christian feudal oppression and (2) his conviction that regeneration by believers’ baptism and dying and rising with Christ to partake of his celestial flesh as manna bestowed from heaven for the faithful saints would assure personal and congregational holiness and vengeance in an awesome and even terrifying sense, the sword of justice coming, as it were, from the mouth of Christ in judicial majesty at his parousia (Rev. 1:16). It should be recognized in mitigating, historiographical fairness—fairness to the bewildered and perhaps Scripture-maddened prisoner-preacherpamphleteer in Strassburg, and to his many followers in The Netherlands and beyond who could have had no inkling of the potential terror coiled in their apocalyptic yearnings and who would eventually with relief come under the comforting pastorate (actually superintendential apostolate) of Menno Simons (Ch. 14), and, in fairness too, to their pacifistic philanthropic denominational heirs all over the world today—that Münsterite Anabaptism was a composite, of which the impulse from Melchior Hofmann was only one component. Insofar as proper names may be attached to it definitively, it was Rothmannite-Melchiorite-Johannite; where the last term stands for both Johns, John Matthijs of Haarlem and John Beukels of Leiden, who broke from Melchior Hofmann in restoring believers’ baptism as almost a rite of martial enlistment, and also (to select the most potent part of Scripture for the Melchiorites) a third John, the Seer of the Revelation of salvation for a l imited number of d isciplined saints to be recompensed for their suffering by divine vengeance (vindicta, Wrake) on the unregenerate

2  During the Peasants’ War, some forty citizens of Münster had presented the town council Thirty-Six Articles, largely directed against the economic abuses of the untaxed clergy.

556  the radical reformation

chapter 13 / 13.1

godless, in effect on all non- Israelites, whether Catholic or Lutheran. But to characterize the Münsterite phenomenon as “Johannite Anabaptism”— in reference to the two Dutch Johns and John the Seer as the formative personalities—does not answer the deeper question of whether these two covenanters—the apostle and the eventual king—were of uncommon vainglory, irascibility, and violence or whether it was the eventually totalitarian mentality of a “biblically” reformed urban commonwealth under siege that enabled such personalities to luxuriate in cruelty and indeed personally to perpetuate acts of coercive terror in the name of the Lord of Hosts and the Father of Jesus Christ. 3

1. Pastor Bernard Rothmann and Mayor Bernard Knipperdolling and the Beginnings of the Reformation in Münster, July 1531 Münster, at the outset of the frenzy, had a population of about fifteen thousand. It was the chief city of a l arge prince-bishopric; reaching to almost the mouth of the Ems and bordering on the Hapsburg Netherlands and at its southern border separated from the Rhine only by t he slim duchy of Cleves (Ch. 12.4), the city differed from nearby Cologne in the relatively greater political power of its craft and merchant guilds, which were fully represented on the councils of t he city. This fact, and the fact that the 3

 Among the contemporaneous accounts of the f ateful conversion of the thr iving capital and see of a pr ince-bishopric, through the adoption of Lutheranism in 1532 and the exclu sion of the bishop fr om his city r esidence, to the courageous self-defense of an apocalyptic Anabaptist kingdom-commonwealth under a would-be Davidic king, of uncommon militar y powers and of grisly cruelty in ruling by terror, are those of the following: Lutheran reformer Urbanus Rhegius (d.1541), De restitutione regni Isr aelitici contra omnium seculorum c hiliastes (Augsburg, 1536); Henricus Dorpius, Warhafftige Historie, wie das Evangelium zu Münster angefangen und danach durch die Widdeuteuffer verstöret, with a foreword by John Bugenhagen (Strassburg, 1536), ed. Friedrich Merschmann (Magdeburg, 1847); the Lutheran Refor mer of Goslar and Hildesheim, Antonius Corvinus (Rabe) (d. 1553) Acta, Handlungen, Legation und sc hriftte … inn die Münster ischen sache geschehen (Wittenburg, n.d.); idem, letter to George Spalatin, published as De miserabili Monasteriensium Anabaptistarum obsidione (n.p., 1536); Louvain professor Lambertus Hortensius (d. 1574), Tumultuum anabaptistarum liber unus , dedicated to the mag istracy of Amsterdam for their ha ving coped so m uch more resolutely with their Anabaptist coup than the magistracy of Münster (Basel, 1574); and notably one theological ideologue for the theocracy, Bernard Rothmann (n. 5), and two eye-witnesses of the scene: Hermann von Kerssenbroeck (Kerssenbroich; Kerssenbroch) (c. 1520–85), who attended the cathedral school of Münster at the rising of the Anabaptist movement in the town, and Henry Gresbeck, a citizen of Münster, who as a cabinetmaker lived outside the city, 1530–34, and who served partly as a mercenary in the bishop’s troops, but who returned to his native city 27 February 1534, and at once submitted to rebaptism and rejoiced in the theocracy, but then betrayed it. On the night of 23 May 1535 he abandoned his guar d post, was spared for his youth by the besiegers, and drew a plan of the fortifications that enabled the besiegers to take the Anabaptist kingdom 24 June 1535. The two eyewitness accounts, the only ones quoted in my ensuing account, were not fully accessible in print until the nineteenth century, see n. 4. For my own pained awareness of how often in Church history, piety and ferocity can exchange places, see “Four Modalities of Violence, with Special Reference to the Writings of Georges Sorel,” Journal of Church and State, 16 (1974): 11–30, 237–61.

chapter 13.1

münster  557

prince-bishop would presently be forced to reside outside the walls, made possible radical changes at any time.4 Bernard Rothmann (c. 1495–c. 1535) was the preeminent theologian and churchman behind the charismatic Dutch leadership in the swift passage of the city of six parishes and a cathedral from territorial Catholicism, through an evangelical interlude, to a coercively baptist and exclusionary New Israel. Born in the prince-bishopric, Rothmann had served as a teacher in Warendorf and then briefly in 1529 as preacher in the cathedral of S t. Maurice in Münster, when the canons, recognizing his great abilities, collected money to enable him to study further at the University of Cologne. 4  See Carl Adolf Cornelius (d. 1903), Die Ceschichte des münster ischen Aufruhrs, 2 v ols. (Münster, 1853–1860) r eprinted in Historische Arbeiten vornehemlich zur Refor mationsgeschichte (Munich, 1899); Fritz Blanke, “Das Reich der Wiedertäufer zu Münster 1534–1535: I, Die äussern Vorgänge,” ARG 37 (1940): 13–37; also in Aus der Welt der Reformation (Zurich/Stuttgart, 1960), 48–71; Friedrich Brune, Der Kampf um eine evangelische Kirche im Münsterland, 1520–1802 (Witten, 1953); Otthein Rammstadt, Sekte und soziale Bewegung: Soziologische Allalyse der Täfer in Münster 1534–35 (Cologne, 1960); Robert Stupperich, Das Münsterische Täufertum: Ergebnisse und Probleme der neueren Forsc hung (Münster, 1958); A. F. Mellink, “The Mutual Relations Between the Münster Anabaptists and the Netherlands,” ARG 50 (1959): 16–33; Jack Wallace Porter, “Bernard Rothmann, 1495–1535, Royal Orator of the Münster Anabaptist Kingdom” (unpublished thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1964); and J ames M. Stayer, “The Münsterite Rationalization of Bernhard Rothmann, Journal of the History of Ideas 28 (1967): 179–92, incorporated as a chapter in his Anabaptists and the Sword (Lawrence, Kan.: Coronado Press, 1972), which thoroughly challenges the older, confessional stereotype “[that] Anabaptism was nonresistant,” which had come to replace the still older polemical stereotype, “Anabaptism was revolutionary” (p. 336), his own thesis being that it was only by some time around 1565 that a single Anabaptist teaching on the Sw ord had been ag reed to, in “the acceptance of the Schleitheim Confession on Separatist nonresistance, by everyone except a few anachronistic revolutionaries, David Jorists, and the Waterlanders who were hanging on to the more moderate apolitical position of Menno Simons” (p. 335). Stayer regards Melchior Hofmann himself as indeed “ambiguous” but essentially as an apocalyptic apolitical Anabaptist, who expected God, not the saints, to inflict vengeance, while he regards the Münsterites: the two Johns, and Rothmann, as major representatives of the crusading type and even terroristic. The two eye-witness accounts mentioned in n. 1 are critically edited, the largely reliable Bericht of the convert-traitor, Heinrich Gresbeck, along with other documents, including the Bekenntnisse, after their capture, of several Münsterite leaders, including John Beukels, erstwhile king, Carl Adolf Cornelius, ed., Berichte der Augenszeugen über das Münster ische Wiedertäuferreich, Die Geshichtsquellen des Bisthums Münster, 2 (Münster, 1853); and Herman von Kerssenbroeck, Anabaptisici furoris Monasterium inclitam Westphaliae metropolim evertentis historica narratio, which he was prevented from having printed in Cologne in 1573 by the intervention of the author ities in Münster, and which was defectively translated into German, critically edited and with extensive annotation by Heinrich Detmer in two volumes, the last and more interesting half of the Narratio, 1533–1553, with index, coming out before the Narratio, 1524–1533 Geschichtsquellen des Bisthums Münster, 5 and 6 (Münster , 1899, 1900). Detmer assessed the w ork further in Hermann von Kerssenbroeck’s Leben und Schriften (Münster, 1900). Stupperich, in his enlarged lectures, Das Münsterische Täufertum, reviews scholarship as of 1958, surveys the sources and the losses of documentation in World War II (including more than fifty volumes collected 1758 by B. N. Krohn, in Hamburg). He pays tribute to Cornelius for his recognition that the hostile witnesses like Heinrich Gresbeck, whom he had edited, and Kerssenbroeck, whom Detmer edited, were very pretentious and that sour ces in Marburg, Strassburg, and The Netherlands must be adduced to recover the Münster ite episode sine ira et studio. However, in what follo ws I have adduced some of these tendentious witnesses as does Blanke.

558  the radical reformation

chapter 13.1

The guildsmen among whom he was popular also gave him money, secretly, to study in Wittenberg. He left in 1529 for an extended tour of the great centers of the Reformation, becoming a friend of Melanchthon in Wittenberg and apparently also of Capito in Strassburg, where he may also have made the acquaintance of Schwenckfeld. On his return to Münster at the beginning of July 1531, his quickening sermons made him very much heeded in the town. Thereupon the bishop, partly under direct pressure from Charles V, removed him from the cathedral and outlawed him, but the guildsmen protected him. On 23 January 1532 Rothmann published his creed in thirty articles.5 It was largely Lutheran except perhaps for the article on the sacrament of the altar, which he considered as a r ecurrent assurance of s alvation and which he made bold to compare with the fleece of Gideon ( Judg. 6:36–40). It will be recalled that this fleece when placed upon the ground drew unto itself dew sufficient to be wrung out while the ground around it remained dry. This was taken by t he warrior of G od as a s ign of c ertain victory. Rothmann’s bellicose theology was already adumbrated in his choice of a eucharistic text! On 18 February, Rothmann preached the first unequivocally Protestant sermon in the churchyard of St. Lambert’s just off the cathedral square. Despite resistance from the new bishop, Francis of Waldeck, the town council, which traditionally had the right to nominate the pastors of all six parishes of the town, appointed the popular Reformer as pastor of St. Lambert’s. On 10 April the city council drove the priests of the other five out and replaced them likewise with evangelical preachers, among them Henry Rol (Ch. 12.1) at St. Giles’s. During the same month a number of preachers from Wassenberg (Ch. 12.4) entered the town and reinforced the decision of t he council. They were, besides Rol, John Klopreis and Dionysius Vinne, who had all been expelled by D uke John of C leves-Jülich because they would not accept his solution for the Catholic-evangelical reform of the united duchies. By then only the cathedral in Münster and the monastic churches held out as Catholic. Rothmann and the other evangelical preachers now published a notice containing sixteen articles against the Catholic Church.6 They are still moderately Lutheran in tone, denying the sacrifice of t he Mass, emphasizing, however, the real presence. Three articles stress the importance of

5  Preserved by von Kerssenbroeck, Geschichte der Wiedertäufer, 167–82; Detmer, Geschichtesquellen, 6:2, 178ff. The writings of Rothmann ar e edited in a ne w series by R. Stupperich, Die Schriften Bernhard Rothmanns Die Schriften der münster ischen Täufer und ihrer Gegner 1 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1970). 6  15 August 1532; Detmer, Geschichtsquellen 6:2, 238ff.

chapter 13.1

münster  559

conducting the services in the language of t he people. Infant baptism is retained but must be carried out in the vernacular. A reformation in this sense was authorized by acts of the city council in August 1532; but the newly elected bishop, immediately upon his assumption of temporal jurisdiction over the prince-bishopric, set about stemming the reformation tide. His concerted plans were abruptly thwarted when a thousand armed citizens surprised his reveling canons on 26 December in nearby Telgt and led them into Münster as hostages. When the bishop responded with an immediate levy of troops, Landgrave Philip of Hesse, to whom Francis was indebted for political favors, sought to prevent armed conflict. The Lutheran status of the town was confirmed in a treaty, 14 February 1533, between the bishop and the city council through the mediation of Philip of H esse and by a ppeal for sanction to the recently concluded Religious Peace of Augsburg. The municipal elections in March confirmed the position of the evangelical (Lutheran) party and the supporting guilds. The adoption of a c hurch order7 officially introduced the Reformation in Münster. An evangelical school was established. The stage was now set for Rothmann’s radical Zwinglian phase. By May, Rothmann, under pressure from the Wassenberger preachers, who were now augmented by the arrival of Herman Staprade (Stapraet) and others, became outspoken in his opposition to infant baptism and wrote to Bucer, assured that he could get support on this from Strassburg. Rothmann, of course, had miscalculated. In the summer of 1533, Rothmann boldly officiated at a L ord’s Supper outside St. Lambert’s, using ordinary bread sprinkled with wine, an innovation which at once earned for him the nickname “Bread Bernard” (Stutenbernt; stuten = bread). From this point on the evangelical movement in Münster divided into the conservative Lutherans, led by the syndic John von der Wieck, who looked to the Smalcald League for support, and the increasingly radical evangelicals, led by Rothmann. A disputation between the Catholic and the conservative Lutheran parties was held 7 a nd 8 Au gust 1533, with a v iew to reducing the differences between them and to checking the Rothmannites, whom they agreed somewhat prematurely to call Anabaptists. The Rothmannites, defending believers’ baptism (but not re-baptism), were victorious 8 in the

7  No longer extant, it was patterned on that of Strassburg, and was already Zwinglian in sacramental theology. Discussed by Stupperich, Das Münsterische Täufertum, p. 9, who edits Rothmann’s response to the Marb urg theologians concerning it: “Wydderantwert der Diener des Evangelii zu Münster and denn Radtschlag und gudtdunck en du Theologen zu Marburgk die Munsterische ordnung belangende,” Rothmanns Schriften. 8  Heinrich Detmer, “Das Religionsgespräch zu Münster am 7. und 8. August 1533,” Monatshefte der Comenius-Gesellschaft 9 (1900): 273–300.

560  the radical reformation

chapter 13.1

eyes of the council. Thereupon, Rothmann and the Wassenbergers, among them Henry Rol, composed the already characterized (Ch. 12.1) Bekenntnisse, published in Rothmann’s own print shop on 8 N ovember 1533. The booklet announced that baptism “is a dipping into water, which the candidate desires and receives as a true sign that he has died to sin, been buried with Christ, and arises in a new life, henceforth to walk not in the lusts of t he flesh, but obediently according to the will of G od.” It is not certain whether Rol and Rothmann had as yet been influenced by Melchior Hofmann’s evangel or his works.9 Rothmann’s intractable policy in continuing to condemn infant baptism now caused Lutheran syndic Von der Wieck to make common cause with the Catholics against him, and on 4 November the council decreed that Rothmann and his sympathizers should leave the city on the next day. To ensure compliance with the order, Rothmann’s armed opponents assembled in the marketplace. Rothmann’s friends, however, also made preparations to fight. The Catholics thereupon demanded that not only Rothmann but also all those who had helped him in his rise to power be expelled, including the Lutherans, who had only recently come out against him. Alarmed by this, Von der Wieck changed sides at the crucial moment, and Rothmann was allowed to remain again on the condition that he refrain from preaching. The conservative Lutherans temporarily consolidated their position and recovered charge of all the parish churches. But the city contained such large numbers of S acramentists and by n ow also some Melchiorite Anabaptists that Rothmann continued to enjoy freedom. On 15 November he met with the two Lutheran theologians sent from Marburg by Landgrave Philip to smooth matters over. The Marburgers found that there was little difference among themselves and Rothmann, except on the question of the proper age for baptism. The Marburgers apparently inclined toward Zwinglian views on the Supper. Their indirect support made Rothmann more aggressive, and on 8 December one of his followers preached in the courtyard of S t. Lambert’s. This action convinced the town council that they would have no peace on the baptismal issue so long as Rothmann remained in the city, and on 11 December they again determined to exile him. But he again defied them, supported by the guilds, and preached openly. People flocked to his support. The magistrates were powerless. By January 1534 it was Rothmann who controlled the situation in Münster, having charge of every church except the cathedral and St. Lambert’s, where one of the two Marburg theologians, Dietrich Fabricius, was preaching. As the movement in the town, with the flouting of the city council, became political as well as religious in its appeal, many of the underprivileged 9

 Cf. Stayer, Sword, 229.

chapter 13.1 / 13.2

münster  561

and potentially disorderly began arriving from the surrounding region. In the previous summer Rothmann had already begun to emphasize Christian stewardship and the duty of the Christian to use his possessions for the common good. This message had fallen on responsive ears in the adjoining territories, for crops had been poor and food was dear. In the meantime, the Melchiorite leader John Beukels of Leiden (destined to be the Anabaptist king of the impending revolutionary theocracy) had visited Münster in the late fall of 1533, and, having found Bernard Rothmann as the foremost preacher openly teaching that infant baptism was unscriptural, had returned to Holland with the good news that the extraordinary development in Münster seemed to coincide with the prediction of Melchior Hofmann and to presage the end of the old order. Back in Holland, John Beukels fired the imagination of John Matthijs, who, as we have already noted (Ch. 12.3), now presumed to challenge Hofmann’s injunction to suspend the ordinance of rebaptism for two years (pending an end to the persecution). On the ground of the extraordinary toleration already obtaining in Münster, Matthijs justified, as by divine warrant, the resumption of believers’ baptism for the recruitment of the people of the New Covenant (Bundesgenossen, bondgenooten) in The Netherlands and for this purpose ordained apostles, among them John Beukels himself. We have already seen John Matthijs in Amsterdam in November making this announcement. Many Melchiorites, despite Obbe Philips’ opposition there, by now accepted the message, and all who had hitherto hesitated either out of fear or out of respect toward imprisoned Hofmann, agreed that the cosmic schedule and road signs had been miscalculated and misread, and many in The Netherlands now turned to Münster as the city of hope, the dwelling place of God’s righteousness. With a n ew prophetic community, with apostles (sendboten) from John Matthijs fanning out in The Netherlands (especially Holland and West Frisia) with the good news, and with a fully articulate antipedobaptist confession on the part of the radical evangelical party set forth in Münster, the moment was ripe for the conversion of the two Münsterite Bernards at the hands of the emissaries of Melchiorite John Matthijs of Haarlem and by John Beukels of Leiden.

2. The Arrival of the Melchiorite-Johannite Emissaries in Münster On the eve of E piphany 1534, two of t he by n ow twenty-seven apostles ordained by John Matthijs appeared in Münster, Batholomew Boeckbinder and William (Dirck) de Cuiper.10 They at once rebaptized Rothmann and 10  This date, 5 January, is based upon the Bekenntnis of Knipperdolling, Cornelius, and made prominent by Blanke, “Das Reich der Wiedertäufer zu Münster,” in his admirab le setting out of the successive events.

562  the radical reformation

chapter 13.2

the Wassenburgers, among them, Henry Rol, who lived in the home of the patrician Bernard Knipperdolling. Within eight days Rothmann and his helpers went on to baptize perhaps fourteen hundred citizens,11 not in the churches but in private houses, while besting Marburg’s Fabricius in theological debate. These converts are described by a hostile observer as distinctively attired as they walked in the streets, where they would not even greet their unregenerate kinsmen or friends, but would reach out the hand to fellow converts in fellowship, and kiss each other on the lips, the one saying: “Dear brother, God’s peace be with you,” and the other replying, “Amen.”12 Apocalyptically expectant, Rothmann would later recall that they understood that God would act on their behalf: “[A] t that time we were baptized we all laid down our weapons and prepared ourselves as a sacrifice. It was our opinion that it would not be proper to resist the godless [the bishop and his mercenaries] except in accepting suffering, and death itself, with patience.”13 Believers’ baptism fast became the almost outward sign of enrollment in the militia of Christ. Alarmed by t his trend, the town council tried again to check the insurgents. The bishop, it was believed by t he Anabaptists, had in the meantime collected an armed force to offer to assist the still conservatively evangelical council. But armed citizens, led by the Anabaptist alderman, Herman Redeker, rallied to Rothmann, and intimidated the burgomaster, and a compromise was reached allowing toleration for all. Henry Rol and others were sent out as emissaries to rally soldiers (conscribendi milites) for the New Jerusalem, Münster rather than Strassburg which had imprisoned Melchior Hofmann being now clearly perceived as the theatre of the Parousia. Its Domplatz would soon be renamed Berg Zion. In this tense situation, the spark which ignited war between the now preponderant Melchiorite Anabaptist populace, citizens, and refugees, and the bishop was news brought by a traveler from Dortmund, 9 February 1534, that the bishop had assembled three thousand soldiers to retake his city. It was during this crucial moment that the apolitical apocalyptic Melchiorism of the January baptisms turned into crusading “Johannite” Melchiorism

11  This figure is that of Walther Köhler, “Münster, Wiedertäufer,” Realencyklopädie 13 (1903), 547, which represents the best estimates of scholar ship of that date and was taken over by Kohler’s successor, Blanke. 12  Heinrich Gresbeck’s account, Cornelius, Berichte, 12. 13  The words are from the Restitution, Rothmann, Schriften, ed. Stupperich, 207, 280–81, noted by Stayer, Sword, 232; cf. n. 4.

chapter 13.2

münster  563

(Stayer).14 The ecstatic patrician burgomaster Knipperdolling (destined to become chief executioner) stirred up the throng in front of the city hall, while two other burgomasters, Hermann Tilbeck and Caspar Judefeld, foregathered at Overwater Church in their quarter to counterattack and seized two city gates from the Anabaptists. They appealed to the bishop’s bailiff in Wolbeck, outside the walls, to enter and with horseman and several thousand armed peasants to help them reassert their municipal authority. When the Anabaptists still under Münsterites (Knipperdolling, Redeker, Rothmann) recognized that in the two conservative burgomasters, thus reinforced, they faced overwhelming power within their own city, they reclaimed their nonresistant stance and laid down their arms and offered hostages for the sake of urban peace. For their part the conservative evangelicals under the leadership of coburgomaster Tilbeck, rather than seek the protection of the bishop, agreed to a policy of neutral (but wary) toleration. Soon afterwards the Anabaptists would remember their miraculous delivery from the bailiff and his peasants in support of t he two burgomasters as accompanied by m iracles and signs including three signs over the city. By the middle of F ebruary the bishop called up the feudal levy of t he prince-bishopric and prepared to besiege the city. Burgomaster Tilbeck tried to defect to the bishop’s side as peril approached, but he was beyond the bishop’s mercy and prudentially submitted to rebaptism. More Anabaptists arrived from The Netherlands, including both John Matthijs and John Beukels,15 who were furious at the persecution of their followers throughout The Netherlands and were beginning to talk about the right of the true believers to destroy those who would not accept the message of rebirth and restitution. Matthijs informed Rothmann that the time for a clear break with the old order had come. When the new elections to the town council took place on 23 February 1534, Rothmann’s supporter Bernard Knipperdolling was elected the ranking burgomaster. The entire city magistracy (Obrigkeit) was made up of elected Melchiorite officials. When from the city hall John Matthijs proclaimed it

14  The two terms here are Stayer’s (cf. n. 4), Sword, 232. Stayer draws upon the “groundbreaking reexamination” of the con version of Melchior ism into bellicosity in self-defense against the bishop b y K. H. Kirchhoff, “Gab es eine fr iedliche Täufergemeinder in Münster 1534?” Jahrbuch des Vereins für Westfälische Kirchengeschichte, 55, 5b (1962–1963), tr. E. Bender, in MQR 44 (1970), 357–70. Stayer, Sword, 235 n. 25, points out how through the memoirs of Kerssenbroeck (above, n. 4) the victor ious bishop has until no w dominated the histor iography of the bellicose Münster ite Anabaptists, as the Dutch and then American Mennonite scholar Stayer, Sword, 16, long prevailed in overemphasizing the peacefulness of the majority of Netherlandish Anabaptists until Mellink’s work of 1953 (above n. 4). 15  John Beukels preceded John Matthijs and was in the city by 9 February 1534, but is not recorded as participating in the upsurge, although Stayer Sword, 233, n. 13, surmises he may have been one of the “prophets” urging the Anabaptists to arms.

564  the radical reformation

chapter 13.2

the duty of all in town to obey the Obrigkeit, he had not yet departed from Melchior Hofmann on the magistrates’ sword of authority, although he had against Hofmann resumed believers’ baptism which was fast becoming the equivalent of the Münsterites’ civil oath. The city was in reality no longer ruled by the council but by John Matthijs. Not satisfied with simply expelling the conservative burghers, Matthijs announced 25 February his intention of killing all the “godless,” i.e., all those who refused to join the rebaptismal covenant: “For from the leaven [cf. Mark 8:15] of t he other [evangelical] sects and from the infection of the godless [the Catholics] they [the new baptismal covenanters] can only be kept clean if the godless would be killed.”16 The much-esteemed coburgomaster Knipperdolling promptly warned the prophet-apostle against so drastic a move which would call the wrath of the surrounding princes and the peoples of all nations down upon them. It is significant for the swift evolution of baptism as a covenantal sign that occasionally outside Münster new recruits were made fellows of t he covenant simply by t he laying on of hands, without the affusion of water, and with the simple benediction: “Grace and peace from God our Father be unto all of them of goodwill.”17 On 27 February most of t he townspeople had been rebaptized or driven out. But Knipperdolling persuaded Matthijs to let some burghers have until 2 March to enjoy the peace of Zion. In order to retain the initiative, Matthijs announced that he had received divine instructions postponing in fact the date of their expulsion. By the appointed time all of the Lutherans and Catholics had left. A blacksmith, Hubert Ruescher, who dared to call Matthijs a deceiver, was slain on the spot by the prophet himself.18 The expulsion of n on-Anabaptists induced the bishop to intensify his preparations to invest the city and to seek assistance from Hesse, Cologne, and Cleves. It will be borne in mind throughout the ensuing narrative that, while other bishops and especially prince-bishops will have in the course of the Reformation been driven from their cathedral city, Münster was unique in that there was a joint Catholic-Protestant siege (for nine months) and in that the bishop and his allies professed to be carrying out the imperial mandate against Anabaptism (of 4 J anuary 1528) as confirmed by t he Diet of

16  Jesus only charged his disciples (Luk e 12:1) to be ware of “the leaven of the Phar isees” (for John Matthijs e vidently the Lutherans and Catholics) and “the leaven of Her od” (the Sadducees; for John, the Catholics, their emperor and bishop). 17  G. Grosheide, “Verhooren en vonnissen der Wederdoopers, betrokken bij de aanslagen op Amsterdam en 1534 en 1535, ” Bijdragen en Mededelingen v an het Histor isch Genootschap, 41 (Amsterdam, 1920), 16, 24, 172–73. 18  John Matthijs much preferred as his model pr ophet, Elijah, who personally slew at the brook Kishon the worsted priests of Baal (1 Kings 18:40) to Amos, whose denouncement of the nations “for three transgressions and for four” came around to denounce also his own Judah and Israel as well (Amos 2:4, 6).

chapter 13.2

münster  565

Speyer 23 April 1529 (Ch. 10.1) for its denizens’ being at once rebels and heretics. (Recall how the imperial power and episcopal authority once joined to use force on the anabaptist Donatists around ancient Carthage.) On 25 February the citizens acted to avert the impending siege and destroyed a few outlying points which could have served a b esieging army, but three days later the soldiers of t he prince-bishop had begun to throw up earthworks around the city and to seal it off. Presently, the imperial stadholder of West Frisia and Overijssel appeared in the bishop’s camp to give military assistance. The now religiously homogeneous townspeople and the summoned refugees valiantly strengthened the defensive works of t he already heavily fortified city. The entire population, men and women, helped. All men of m ilitary age were divided into military units, and boys were taught to shoot. It was the conviction of t he defenders that a l egally constituted government was defending itself according to the law of the Empire itself, for the bishop was besieging it without a proper declaration of war. To strengthen the city militarily but above all spiritually, John Beukels, with authorization of John Matthijs, sent out another call to the Covenanters in The Netherlands, inciting them to speed to the “holy city of Münster,” and thereby escape the impending judgment of t he Lord. The first uprising in Amsterdam had failed 21 March (Ch. 12.3). Urging the refugees to come swiftly and hence unencumbered, “for there is plenty enough for the saints,” Matthijs set the Bergklooster near Hasselt in Overijssel as the assembly point for the march and 24 March as the time.19 Although five ships bearing Covenanters were stopped at Haarlem and six others were confiscated in Amsterdam, about thirty ships were able to leave Monnikendam to cross the Zuyder Zee, some three thousand men, women, and children arriving on the east shore with their spears, harquebuses, broadswords, and halberds. Others were converging on the Bergklooster by land. Both groups were captured and obliged to turn back (Ch. 12.3). Few captives were executed because of the danger of depopulating the country. Although Matthijs had only six weeks of rule in Münster, he was able to change many things. The onset of h is rule was iconoclastic. The towers of all the parish churches were destroyed and they became “stone pits.” The cathedral was renamed Great Stone Pit (Steinkuhle, Dutch Kuil). On March 15 the library in Domhof was burned, only the Bible spared from the flames, which intentionally destroyed the feudal records of l and title. Matthijs progressively introduced the communal life, partly from military necessity, partly from biblical motifs. The convents of the town, the monks, friars, and nuns having been encouraged to convert, were turned into settlement houses for the beguiled refugees, e.g. St. John’s Cloister for citizens from Warendorf, the Niesingkloster for the Frisians and Hollanders. Stew19

 Mellink, “Münster Anabaptists,” De Wederdroopers, 19.

566  the radical reformation

chapter 13.2

ards were placed in charge of these new centers of communal life. Seven deacons were appointed to supervise the equalization of goods among the faithful inhabitants. Meals were commonly taken together and set up in different squares. The monasteries had already been plundered, and to prevent the same thing from happening to the houses of the exiles, John Matthijs announced the confiscation of their property and collected in the town hall all privately owned money. Preached Rothmann after a communion (mael): Dear brethren and sisters, as after the meal, we are one people (luede) … so it is God’s will that we should bring our money, silver and gold, to one another. The one should have as much as the other … Of nothing should you have need, whether it be food, clothes, house and close (hof) … Everything belongs to us together. What is mine is just as much yours, and yours also mine. 20 The monies collected from the townspeople in the city hall were in the authorized hands of four collector-overseers, authorized for the whole of “Israel,” “to buy and sell among the heathen.” The guilds were dissolved and all work placed under the central administration of t he urban commonwealth. And, without money for exchange, the economy of t he town was that of an armed camp, where artisan and other skills continued to turn out goods for the common weal, but with most of the able-bodied men engaged in active defense of the city. The commune of Münster was more the sharing of the confiscated wealth of monasteries and the rich who chose exile, rather than state-centralized sharing of production. Food itself was made public property, but individual households were not broken up and consolidated. Real property was also declared to be common, although the householders were allowed to continue using what had been theirs. Evidence of the change was given by the regulation that the doors of the houses had to be kept open day and night; only a small grating was allowed to keep out pigs and fowl. Politically supervised communism in Münster may be said to have been an outgrowth of m ilitary exigency reinforcing a d esire inherent in Anabaptism everywhere to restore the communal life of the primitive Church as recorded in Acts (2:44; 4:32) and the Pseudo-Clementine Epistle IV (on which more in Ch. 16.3 and below at n. 28). In order to show their bravery, the men of the city staged occasional sorties against their beleaguerers. On such a sally, on Easter Sunday, 4 April 1534, John Matthijs lost his life. There seems to be some indication that he thought God would help him, almost single-handed, to overcome the

20

 Reported by Heinrich Gresbeck, Cornelius, Berichte, 32–34.

chapter 13.2

münster  567

episcopal troops, and that John Beukels may have encouraged him in this fatuous expectation. John Beukels, at age twenty-five, immediately took over the control of Münster and dissolved the council which had been elected in February on the ground that it had been chosen by men. He, as the voice of the Lord, chose twelve whom he called the Elders or Judges of the Tribes of Israel, to control public and private, worldly and spiritual, affairs. 21 The twelve published a n ew code of m oral law, 22 a n ew civic Ordnung 23 which, in a series of articles, enjoined a stricter communism of goods, required certain handworkers, previously employed for money, to continue in their trades without pay as servants of the community, and provided for a strict military organization. Unlike the Swiss and South German Anabaptists, who believed in the separation of church and state, for the Münsteristes, church, state, and community were now coterminous. Since the regenerate church could contain only the righteous (following Hofmann), the twelve judges under John Beukels took a v ery harsh view of a ny sins committed after (re-)baptism. This meant that all citizens were to be subjected to extremely strict laws: If we are sons of G od and have been baptized in Christ, then all evil must disappear from our midst. The authorities can do the most to bring this about, as Romans 13 says. … If you do not wish to fear the authorities, then do good and you will receive praise. If, however, you do evil, then beware! They wield the sword not in vain; they are God’s servants, his avengers to punish the evil doer. … “All the sinners of m y people shall die by t he sword” [Amos 9:10].24 To resist John Beukels meant to resist the divine order. Sins punishable by death included blasphemy, seditious language, scolding one’s parents, disobeying one’s master in a household, adultery, lewd conduct, backbiting, spreading scandal, and complaining.25 It is clear that this was a code of martial law for the Lord’s army under siege, where even a minor breach of discipline might cause disaster. In this Ordnung the citizens in covenant were referred to as “Israelites.” 21

 Gresbeck; see Cornelius, Berichte, 32–34.  Kerssenbroek, Leben und Schriften, ed. Detmer, 577. 23  Ordnung des weltlic hen Regiments in der stadt Münster , Ritsch, Münster, Die Kommune der Wiedertäufer, 28ff., deals with the articles of the Ordnung, observing that some of the measures go back to demands of the commune against the bishops and conventual clerics (34 articles, 1525); Blanke, “Das Reich der Wiedertäufer zu Münster,” 22–27. 24  Die Wiedertäufer zu Münster 1534–1535:Berichte,Aussagen, und Aktenstücke von Augenzeugen und Zeitgenossen, ed. Klemens Löffler (Jena, 1923), 81. 25  Ibid., 81ff. 22

568  the radical reformation

chapter 13.2

John Beukels also published a confession of f aith 26 which was sent to Philip of H esse. An active Anabaptist propaganda was carried on everywhere. The writings of Rothmann and others were thrown from the walls or fired in canisters into the enemy camp. The most controversial innovation of t he Münsterites was polygamy (on which see further, Ch. 20.3.b). This practice was introduced partly because of a desire to emulate the Old Testament patriarchs, in accommodation to the continuous attrition of the male population.27 John Beukels seems to have been solely responsible for the practice. He chose an appropriate psychological moment to introduce this radical measure. It was immediately after a full-scale attempt to storm the town had been repulsed with great loss to the attackers (25 May) and when the feelings of triumph and confidence in being God’s chosen people ran high. Although most of the preachers in Münster were against it, John, perhaps with the counsel of the Wassenberger Henry Schlachtschap, established polygamy on his own authority. John Beukels let go his first wife, although she was rebaptized and had borne him two children. He lusted for the widow of John Matthijs, Divara (Latin; her Dutch name: Diewer) of Haarlem, as his queen, and he would presently take to wife a daughter of Knipperdolling. Rothmann, already persuaded, preached for three days (23–25 July) in the marketplace, endeavoring to show on biblical grounds that plural marriage was appointed by God for the New Israel which he had restored in Münster. Besides the example of Old Testament patriarchs, there was the oft-repeated divine injunction (e.g., Gen. 1:28) “Be fruitful and multiply.” There was also the argument that semen should not be wasted in onanism, fornication, adultery, or intercourse with a menstrual, pregnant, or sterile wife. Moreover, while Paul had mandated that the bishop be the husband of one wife (1 Tim. 3:2), ordinary male believers were evidently permitted more than one, argued the marketsquare preacher of polygamy. John Beukels announced that all persons of marriageable age were ordered to marry and all who resisted polygamy were to be considered reprobates (and therefore in danger of execution). The presupposition of the mandate on marriage was that all marriages of the old rule were voided, just as was their infant baptism, and appeal was made to the Pauline Privilege (1 Cor. 4:15), which allowed the partners to a heathen marriage to contract a new one on becoming a Christian, in this case, an Anabaptist. The Pauline Privilege 26  Bekentones des globens und lebens der gemein Chr isti zu Monster, Rothmanns Schriften, ed. Stupperich. 27  The besieged population stood at about 7,000. Joseph Nieseert, ed. Münsterische Urkunden, Vol. 1 (Coesfeld, 1826), 55, 59, 125, 148; noted b y James M. Stayer, “Münsterite Rationalization,” JHI, 179. See fur ther idem, “Vielweiberei als innerw eltliche Askese,” Mennonitische Geschichtsblätter, 37 (N.F. 32, 1980): 24–41, and G. List, Chiliastische Utopie und radikale Reformation: Die Erneuerung der Idee vom tausendjährigen Reich im 16. Jahrhundert (Munich, 1973).

chapter 13.2

münster  569

had long been part of canon law but was now given a new interpretation in that the Catholic partner was considered the pagan! Women outnumbered men in the city by a ratio of three to one. Many had come to the city without their spouses, while many patrician wives and other women were deserted in the city by t heir husbands unwilling to espouse Anabaptism. The patriarchal theory prevailed in Rothmann and other biblical theorists of polygamy that any woman or girl had to be ruled by a man, and, indeed every wife was expected, even in the intimacy of the home, to address her husband as lord (mein Herr). As the system swiftly evolved, several women under a man were Mitschwestem—like sisters with respect to a non-conjugal life, but fully housewives in respect to their work and domination by their Herr.28 Unmarried women had to accept as husband the first man to ask them. This led to disorder in the competition to see who could gather the most wives, and the regulation was finally moderated to allow women to refuse unwelcome suitors.29 In a f urther development, wives utterly dissatisfied with the polygamous life, could sue for divorce at the town hall, although many were diffident about acting on the new articles in the Ordnung for fear of exile or the sword. The milder punishment for recalcitrant wives was imprisonment in a former cloister (Rosentalkloster); one woman would later be executed for being a bigamist. 30 However altered and some28  The Ante-Nicene Church, with a conspicuous dispr oportion of widows and unmar ried women in membership, countenanced the institution of subintroductae, living with bishops and confessors, 1 Cor. 7:36–38, Tertullian, Exhortatio ad castitatem, et al. Cf. John Chrysostom, Adversus eos qui subintroductae habent; see H. Achelis, Virgines subintroductae: Ein Beitrag zum I Kor. viii (Leipzig, 1902). Quite different from the scr iptural and ancient canonical virgines subintroductae were the wives (conjuges) held in common in the Pseudo-Clementine Epistle IV as a supposedly apostolic testimony to communism and now even community of wives. In the critical edition by PseudoIsidore (c. 850), Decretales Pseudo-Isidorianae et Capitula Angrimani (Leipzig, 1863), 65f., where the reading of V Clement (spur ious) presumes a pre-Christian ideal from the Greek Golden Age, taken over by early Christians and copied unchallenged by monks and decretalists: “… communia debere amicorum omnia … sine dubio et coniuges”; “… all things among fr iends should be in com mon … without doubt even wives.” A larger portion of this letter is quoted in Ch. 16 at n. 25. It was the view of von Schubert, Kommunismus, that Rothmann, who made the acquaintance of Sebastian Franck in Strassburg, 1530–31 (Ch. 10.3.d), learned the idea of the Lor d’s Supper as fraternal community in all things from Franck’s Geschichtsbuch (1531), just as the Hutterites did. 29  Kerssenbroch, Leben und Sc hriften, ed. Detmer, 619–24. Another hostile chr onicler, Heinrich Gresbeck, describes how later wives, maidens, and even girls went about with friends to become betr othed in the pr esence of the pr eachers; Cornelius, Berichte, 59–60, 79–80. Hans Ritschl was among the first scholars to take note of the preponderance of the scriptural motif over against the militar y exigencies in the emergence of polygam y and comm unism in Münster, Die Kommune der Wiedertäufer in Münster (Bonn/Leipzig: Schroeder, 1923) while Stayer, “Vieleweiberei,” endorsing this view, goes on to sho w how different the Melchior ite Anabaptists were from the “naturalistic” wholesomeness of Luther on mar riage, Stayer places polygamy in the context of patriarchal “unworldly asceticism.” 30  In the end about two hundred women, some of them pre-pubescent girls, dared to seek and receive divorces. See Blank e, “Das Reich der Wiedertäufer zu Münster ,” 25, citing and assessing Grebesk.

570  the radical reformation

chapter 13.2

times mitigated the polygamous arrangements were, the harsh regimen was no doubt in part due to the apocalyptic effort to defend the city, gain refugees as converts, and to freshly propagate enough new saints in order to have in Münster and in the overflow of its population out toward the besiegers’ blockhouses reach the apocalyptic number of 144,000 saints who would have the name of the Lamb and of the Father written by believers’ baptism on their foreheads (Rev. 14:1). 31 Alone among John’s measures, polygamy called forth intense resistance. When complaints availed nothing, a s ubstantial group of c itizens led by H enry Mollenhecke surprised and imprisoned John on 29 July, in an effort to force him to abandon polygamy. He refused. They decided sorrowfully that their New Israel had gone into captivity, and considered turning the town back to the bishop. While they were deliberating, townspeople loyal to John freed him and imprisoned them. Mollenhecke, with forty-eight others, was cruelly put to death. A few more executions followed, and eventually no one dared to oppose John on this or any other point. Bernard Rothmann followed John’s polygamous example, and would eventually acquire nine wives. 32 Meanwhile, sorties from the town incessantly harassed and embittered the besiegers. Although the Münsterites were able to capture some weapons and supplies from the enemy, they gained little relief in the face of t he complete blockade. Hille Feyken, a g irl of Münster, hearing at worship the story of Judith and General Holofernes, decided to assassinate the warrior bishop (Apocryphal Judith). 33 With a poisoned shirt to present to the bishop, she left the city 16 June 1534 and proceeded to the enemy lines, expecting to be let through. She was arrested instead. Pretending, then, that she had wished to betray the city, she reached one of the besiegers’ camps; but before she could compass her mission she was exposed and vengefully beheaded. In addition to fresh recruits for the messianic kingdom, there was also some hope of s ecuring assistance for the radical Münsterite Anabaptists from Emperor Charles V! Wanting to include the prince-bishopric of Münster in his hereditary lands, as he had done with the prince-bishopric of Utrecht, Charles began negotiations with Bishop Francis of Waldeck in order to get him to become his vassal. When the bishop refused, Charles

31

 Stayer, Sword, “Vieleiberei,” 34.  “Bishop” Rothmann was exceptional. Most of the leaders limited themselves to a second wife; a few had three. For a sample listing, see Kerssenbroeck Leben und Schriften, ed. Detmer, 626 n.3. 33  The Hymn of Judith (16:2–3, 15–19) is recited at Lauds. 32

chapter 13.2

münster  571

approached the Münsterites. In July 1534 an imperial agent was in Münster negotiating with Rothmann. 34 On 31 August, after another severe bombardment, the bishop’s troops again attempted to storm the town, and were beaten back with heavy casualties. John had commanded the defenders to let the bishop’s men gain the first ring of fortifications before opening fire. Once within the exposed area between the outer breastworks and the main wall, they were caught in a fierce fire from muskets and cannon, as well as a shower of arrows, rocks, burning pitch-soaked wreaths, and boiling lime from the women. The besieging army, consisting chiefly of w orkmanlike mercenaries, resented this fanatical unreasonableness in battle. Strengthened by h is new victory, John Beukels early in September 1534 had himself anointed and crowned by the “limping prophet” John Dusentschuer and the counselors and elders “as a k ing of r ighteousness over all.” John of L eiden would later recall the scene. 35 He claimed that the elevation was justified by the scriptural passage which he read: “I will awaken my servant David in the last days” (cf. Jer. 23:2–6, 30:9, Ezek. 34:23, 37:21–27). The Dies Irae of the Requiem Mass also alludes to such return of David before the Terrible Day, “Teste David cum Sibylla.” A hostile chronicle recalls the rather simple and impromptu affair: After the passage of a big storm, John of Leiden had a great revelation that he should be king of a n ew Israel over the whole world and he should be next to God, and that in the whole world there should be no sovereignty [overricheit] except that of John of Leiden. So John of Leiden had his revelation proclaimed to the people that God had revealed to him that he should be king to the righteous and punish the unrighteous. The popular reception of John’s proclamation is not clear, but he was concerned enough to speak out in mock humility: Now God has chosen me to be king over the whole world. I would rather be a swineherd and would much more like to hold a plough or an adze than that I should be king. But what I am doing I must do, for God has elected me therefor. Dear brothers and sisters, Let us for this thank God. 36 The twelve ruling elders were f irst asked for the sword which they had earlier received as a token of their authority, and it was handed to 34

 The agent was a pr iest, Pieter van Montfoort, who appeared in Amsterdam and else where on his extraordinary mission to weaken the bishop of Münster. 35  Testimony, Cornelius, Geschichte, 372ff. 36  Gresbeck in Cornelius, Berichte, 82–83.

572  the radical reformation

chapter 13.2

John, who was thereupon anointed by Dusentschuer with these words: “Upon the command of t he Father, I a noint thee to be King of t he people of God in the New Temple; and in the presence of all the people I proclaim thee to be ruler of the new Zion.” The chronicle reports that: “They agreed and they sang the German psalm ‘God alone in the highest be honored,’ and everyone went back to his house.” 37 The former tailor of Leiden, wearing clerical vestments converted into royal robes, clasped a golden globe in his hands, representing universal rule. The globe, an imitation of the Reichsapfel, symbolic of g lobal sway, was penetrated by two swords, girded by a horizontal band supporting a golden cross, and surmounted by a crown. One was the sword of the Spirit (Eph. 6:17) and the other the sword of vindication (vindictae). The organization of the royal Anabaptist court, with its four councilors, would show the Burgundian-Flemish influence. Henry Krechting, a former priest, would become in due course chancellor. King John would appear three times a week in the marketplace before courtiers and subjects who bowed and prostrated themselves as he proceeded. 38 In the theocratic act of the election and coronation of John Beukels of Leiden a royal sovereign over the whole world, the Anabaptist leadership of Münster could not but have been conscious of their gesture of polemical parallel with the imperial coronation of Charles V at the hands of the “anti-Christ” in Bologna some four years before (Ch. 1.5). John of Leiden had been subject of Charles as both Emperor and Count of Holland. In a remarkable hermeneutical shift, John, as the “awakened David,” became the eschatological successor to Charles, sovereign on two hemispheres, and the final pre-Advent figure, preparing the way for the “true and peaceful” and all wise new Solomon, Christ the King. (See Rothmann, Ch. 13.4.) The people did not show any great enthusiasm at this development. In fact, Knipperdolling made an attempt to displace John Beukels, acting on the strength of a new revelation, which told him that while John was king according to the flesh, he (Knipperdolling) was called to be the spiritual king. But he learned that independent revelations were not permitted in Zion. On this one occasion, John Beukels showed clemency, for Knipperdolling was not executed. After a few days’ imprisonment he was

37

 “Alleine Got in der hoegde sei ehr,” Cornelius, Bericht, 82–83.  The account of Kerssenbroeck is in Detmer, Geschichtsquellen, 646–50; that of Gresbeck, Cornelius, Bericht 82–83; and description of the Reichsapfel, testimony of Dionysius Vinne, Doc., 34, ibid., pp. 276–77. In the copperprint of John Beukels after his capture, he is represented by the artist portraitist Heinrich Aldegrever with his royal insignia. But as he was by then a pr isoner, and the author ity on Munster ite iconography doubted whether the ar tist ever actually had before himself the regalia; Max Geisberg, Die Münsterischen Wiedertäufer und Aldegrever: Eine ikonographische in numismatisc her Studie (1907), noted by Blanke, “Das Reich der Wiedertäufer zu Münster,” 27 n. 3. 38

chapter 13.2

münster  573

even restored to his office, as John’s second in command as Stellvertreter (Stadholder) and (Schwertträger) in effect the chief executioner. 39 With this threat to his power ended, John proceeded to a g reat messianic and reconciliatory exercise, with Kipperdolling the honored guest. For some time there had been mass feedings of w orkers, fugitives, and inhabitants in various quarters. And there had already been an outdoor communion preceded by feasting at the several gates of town. At this earlier communion-repast at portal squares around the town the preachers had gone among the tables set up by t he summoned townsmen of each quarter, asking each participant whether he agreed that this new way was the proper way, asking them whether they were ready to commune for preparation for whatever might befall—fire, water, or the sword, asking them to purify themselves in conscience before partaking of t he communion (1 Cor. 11:27). To make clear what purification might mean, the ambulant preachers asked a woman, evidently at random, whether and what she believed. When it turned out that she believed in the Virgin as Mother of God instead of her being only the bearer of the celestial flesh of the Son and that as housewife she had pictures of Mary and the saints at home, she was summarily dismissed from the table. On 13 October 1534, wily and willful King John Beukels caused the whole population to assemble in the cathedral square at the sound of a trumpet. He let it be known that he was going to lead an exodus from Münster to welcome the Covenanters from The Netherlands marching to the relief of the city and thereby reach “the Promised Land.” At the sound of third trumpet the king appeared on Mt. Zion wearing his golden crown and other regalia, accompanied by his queen and his concubines (perhaps nineteen of t hem). After a m ilitary display of c aparisoned cavalry and infantry in full dress, King John surprised the people with the announcement that all this was just a test of their loyalty to the heavenly Father and their covenantal solidarity. Thereupon, the whole population sat down at tables erected in the square. It was an amazing sight, a r elieved and now merry populace at long tables with three kinds of m eat, all joking and singing psalms. As once before, this “agape” feast was to end with formal communion. Accounts vary as to how far the royal couple, with their councilors, were emboldened to use scriptural/liturgical language. It is only one hostile account that has King John distributing the bread among the tables to be broken by the Covenanters and his Queen Divara, her fingers adorned

39

 Although Gresbeck’s account of the r oyal communion places it befor e the r einstatement of Knipperdolling, Detmer in his edition of K erssenbroeck, Leben und Sc hriften, 691 n. 1, argues for the sequence follo wed here and as earlier confirmed by Blanke, “Das Reich der Wiedertäufer zu Münster,” 29 n. 1.

574  the radical reformation

chapter 13.2 / 13.3

several rings, holding a large cup of wine, saying, “Drink from this all of you and proclaim the Lord’s death.”40 After the (mock) messianic banquet, the king came to the point of the whole extraordinary exercise in solidarity, loyalty, and obedience. He declared to the dinner-communicants, who were reeling in astonishment, that God had deposed him. Whereupon the “limping prophet,” John Dusentschuer, installed him again as king in the name of God and in the presence of his entire community in a popular ratification of his kingship that quashed whatever might have been the hopes for a normal civic government under the likes of Knipperdolling. A spy from the bishop’s besieging armies viewing the scene below from somewhere in the walls could not but have regarded it as not only prodigal and presumptuous, but also at once convivial, sacrilegious, and blasphemous. Had he remained, he would have had yet another shock of revulsive horror. When the people had largely returned to their dwellings, the king sat musing with his queen and courtiers, and suddenly he stood up and cut off the head of a t rooper, who had evidently made a l ighthearted remark within earshot of this dark-souled, violent being.41 Although he had successfully thrown back two attempts to storm the walls, John realized that Münster could be saved only by outside help. In consequence, on the very evening of t hat extraordinary day, King John sent out twenty-seven apostles in the direction of the four winds to spread the message of the new Zion. Among the messengers were such prominent ministers as the prophet Dusentschuer, Schlachtschap, Vinne, Klopreis, and Henry Graess van Borken (destined to turn traitor). They set out for the four Westphalian towns of Soest, Koesfeld, Warendorf, and Osnabrück. All except Graess were executed. Of the original ministers in the upheaval, Rothmann alone survived, having remained in Münster as a royal spokesman. It was at this parlous moment in the frenzied rise of John “Koninck der Wederdoper to Monster”42 that Rothmann was working on his Restitution.

3. Rot h mann’s R estitution and On Vengeance (1534) Bernard Rothmann was clearly the theological biblicist behind the Anabaptist theocracy of Münster. He was the city’s university-trained ranking churchman, 40

699.

 Kerssenbroeck, alone of the witnesses, goes so f ar; see Leben und Sc hriften, ed. Detmer,

41  Anabaptist John Klopreis at his hear ing after the defeat of Münster pur ports to have heard what moved the hot-tempered king: the lad remarked, “I don’t know of no other belief than of drink and women.” Misert, Urkundensammlung, 1:125, adduced by Blanke, “Das Reich der Wiedertaufer zu Münster,” 31 n. 1. John Beukels at his own hearing acknowledged that he had with his own sword beheaded altogether seven or eight per sons, Cornelius, Berichte, 344. The paradisaic-messianic motif comes out expressly in Eyne ware Bedijnckijnge where Rol wrote of “the Paradise of the Body of Christ,” BRN 5:106. 42  Such is the legend on his non-circulating, merely commemorative coins.

chapter 13.3

münster  575

like Urbanus Rhegius in Augsburg or even Bucer in Strassburg, and must be considered as another kind of Anabaptist theologian in a commune dominated demographically by i mmigrants from principally the Netherlands and under the charismatic and ferocious leadership of first a Dutch baker and then a Dutch tailor. Over the nine months of John Beukels’ kingship, Rothmann wrote four works, widely distributed beyond its walls: Restitution (October 1534), Van der Wrake (Of Vindication, December, 1534), Von verborgenheyt der schrift (Of the Hiddeness of Scripture, February 1535), and Van erdesscher unde tytliken gewalt (Of Earthly and Temporal Power, unfinished at the defeat, June 1535). The Restitution of Rothmann43 belongs to a g roup of s everal works composed in the Reformation era bearing the title or embodying the conception of a r estitution or r estoration of t he primitive Church. We have already drawn upon that of Campanus, 1532 (Ch 11.2.c), who stressed the restoration of the allegedly primitive, nuptially conceived binitarianism of apostolic Christianity. The fourth part of ‘t Wonderboek (1542) of D avid Joris will presently be entitled “Restitutio oder wederbrenginghe Christi” (Ch. 19.1). Dirk Philips will write, in opposition to Rothmann and the Münsterite aberration, his own Van de geestelijcke restitution (Ch. 19.2.b). William Postel (Ch. 22.2.a) will publish his Restitutio rerum omnium (Paris, 1552). We have already made use (Ch. 11.2.c.3) of S ervetus’ Restitutio Christianismi (1553). So widespread was restorationism (restitutionism) as the sixteenth-century version of primitivism that it may be said to be one of the marks of the Radical Reformation.44 The locus biblicus of radical restorationism is Acts 3:21, which speaks in the Vulgate of the eschatological “tempora restitutionis omnium.” The messianic Anabaptist visionary Augustine Bader (Ch. 8.3) had already appealed to this passage during Lent, 1530, when he made bold to combine the prophetic (Isaian, Jeremian) and apostolic conceptions of the Restoration of the unencumbered life of the true saints and the righteous remnant, declaring that “the time of the restoration of all things was about to be realized in the needed elimination of external sacraments and ceremonies.”45

43  Eyne Restitution edder Eine wedderstellinge rechter unde gesunder Christliker leer, gelouens unde leuens, ed. Andreas Knaake, Neudrucke deutsche Litteraturwerke des XVI. und XVII. Jahrhunderts, 73, 74. Flugschriften aus der Reformationszeit, 7 (Halle, 1893), now more accessible in Robert Stupperich, ed., Die Schriften Bernhard Rothmanns, Die Schriften der münsterischen Täufer und ihre Gegner, I (Münster, 1970). 44  Franklin Littell, Anabaptist View of the Chur ch, chaps. 2, 3. Frank J . Wray, “The Anabaptist Doctrine of the Restitution of the Chur ch,” MQR 28 (1954): 186–96; and also the essay by Wary, “Bernhard Rothmann’s Views on the Early Church,” in Littell, Reformation Studies, 229–38. 45  Krebs and Rott, Elsass 1 (QGT 7), no. 215a.

576  the radical reformation

chapter 13.3

The restorationists differed among themselves largely as to whether as restitutionists46 their stress came down on the ancient Church, on which some were trying literally to model their efforts (as were most evangelical Anabaptists), or whether their stress was upon the future action of Christ himself in his impending Advent (the Spiritualists and Münsterite Anabaptists). Rothmann no doubt had read Campanus’ Restitution (1532), when in 1533 he printed his Bekenntnisse, devoted to the restoration of the two sacraments of Baptism and the Supper. Rothmann, in addition to Acts 3:21, in order to explain what he interpreted as the birthpangs of the Restoration, cited also Matthew 23:34–39 in support of his view that the new apostles sent by Christ in the fullness of t ime should expect persecution: “Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will crucify … and persecute from town to town. … For I tell you, you will not see me again, until you say, ‘Blessed be he who comes in the name of the Lord.’’’ But the restorationism of the Restitution of 1534 was placed in a bellicose eschatological setting. Rothmann saw, besides the fall of m an from Paradise and the restoration of Christ, a series of falls and restorations, in a series of three dispensations: (1) from creation to the Flood, (2) from Noah to (in contrast to the Joachimite tripartite scheme) his own time, and (3) the imminent millennial Kingdom of C hrist for which the kingdom of Münster was the cosmically ordained preparation. Within the first and particularly the second dispensations it was helpful to highlight the decisive movements, because on their model, Münsterites might interpret current and impending events. Within the second age, Rothmann noted the fall into bondage to Egypt and return to Canaan, the exile in Babylon and the restoration, another fall, this time of t he New Covenantal people in the second century, and a final restoration, begun by Erasmus and Luther and climaxing in John Beukels: Almighty God began the Restitution when he awakened Martin Luther. … [B]ehold how through Erasmus, Luther, and Zwingli the [new] beginning was made, but only in Melchior [Hofmann], John Matthijs and here in our brother, John of L eiden, has the truth been gloriously established.47 In Rothmann’s restorationism, Paradise and Old I srael, as well as the apostolic Church, were at once paradigmatic and anticipatory of w hat would be valid in the new commonwealth, in preparation for the direct 46  I am making, without much precedent, a distinction betw een restoration of an ideal ized past and the r estitution of the Church and Kingdom as it should be . The New Jerusalem is apocalyptically described with architecture and urban planning unknown in Jerusalem at its most sublime and peaceful moment. 47  Restitution, ed. Knaake, Litteraturwerke, 16–17.

chapter 13.3

münster  577

and universal rule of Christ in the millennium. There was therefore no disposition, as with other Anabaptists, to allegorize or otherwise gloss the Old Testament injunctions. Rothmann felt that he was the theological spokesman of the “children of Jacob” helping God punish and annihilate the “children of Esau.” Rothmann held that the two Testaments were one, just as God himself is one, and that the proper understanding of t he scriptures had been restored by God to the Münsterites. Among these correct scriptural formulations was the Melchiorite proposition that the Word of God became flesh within, rather than taking flesh from, the Virgin. The ideological or religio-political significance of the Melchiorite doctrine of the celestial flesh of Christ (Ch. 11.3.e) is evident in the fact that medals and other tokens were stamped with the slogan: “The Word has become flesh and dwells in us [cf. John 1:14]: one God, one faith, one baptism [cf. Eph. 4:5].”48 The divine was with them, so they believed, and their conflation of church and state in one holy, communal, polygamous commonwealth found sanction in the divinity of Christ’s nature. Rothmann, following Hofmann, also asserted further that God had restored the power to will either good or evil, and that salvation consisted in choosing to be baptized into the disciplined church of Christ. By means of freely willing, anyone might appropriate the gift of God, submit to baptism, and become truly a member of Christ’s church and be saved. The community of g oods was the mark of m embership in the redeemed communion of saints. If believers’ baptism was the ordinance of admission to the people of t he Covenant, the Supper was the ordinance of holding them prayerfully together in recollection of Christ’s redeeming work and in supplication “for all the dear brothers and sisters who are still subject to the dragon.” Rothmann defended polygamy as another divinely sanctioned restitution. Since the only legitimate purpose of marriage was to be fruitful and multiply, a husband should not be held back from fructification by the sterility or pregnancy or indisposition of one wife. Moreover, if a m an is dependent sexually upon one wife, she leads him about “like a bear on a rope.” It was about time that women, “who everywhere have been getting the upper hand,” should submit to men as man to Christ, and Christ to God. The Old Testament provision of plurality of wives was never divinely suspended or superseded. The very fact that the apostles insisted that a

48  Pictured in se veral places, these medals or non-cir culating coins ma y be seen in Kerssenbroeck, Leben und Schriften, ed., Detmer, p. 667. The oldest wording antedates the establishment of the kingdom. In the Ordnung from the time of the introduction of polygamy (July 1534), it reads: “They have also ordered minted several thick pennies without ar ms with the encircling wording: “[John 3:5] Who is not born of water and the Spirit may not enter the Kingdom of God.” On the reverse: “The Word is become flesh and dwells among us.”

578  the radical reformation

chapter 13.3

bishop be a man of one wife (1 Tim. 3:2) shows that many other Christians in the primitive Church practiced polygamy. The most important restitution was government by saints. Rothmann, in his dispensationalism, took scripture literally and held that, depending upon the moment in history, God sometimes required his holy people to suffer patiently, at other times to wreak glorious revenge on the godless: “We must pay close attention to the time so that we do not undertake something too early or too late.”49 Drawing a fundamental distinction between the kingdoms of D avid and Solomon as models, he interpreted David’s kingship as necessarily bellicose against Jebusites and Philistines and Solomon’s kingship as pacific, prototypical of Christ’s millennial realm. It was in necessarily bellicose Münster that God had reestablished “the kingdom and throne of David … which the true and peaceful Solomon [Christ] will [soon] occupy and possess.”50 In another writing, finished amid mounting chaos, Rothmann would write with even more eschatological fervor and pathos: See! The throne of D avid [ John Beukels] must be reestablished, the Kingdom prepared and armed, and all the enemies of C hrist humbled by David. Then the peaceful Solomon, the eternal King and anointed God, Christ, will enter and possess the throne of his father, David, and His Kingdom shall have no end.51 Rothmann’s identification of Christ in the Old Testament exclusively with Solomon, the putative author of P roverbs and Canticles rather than with David, the putative speaker in the Psalms as well as the warrior, constituted the major exegetical sanction of the bellicosity of King John Beukels and the rule of t he upraised sword by A nabaptists who but a few months earlier had been “still burdened with the sighs of the apostles,” convinced “that it would not be proper to resist the godless except in accepting suffering, and death itself, with patience.”52 How had Rothmann arrived hermeneutically at the conclusion that suffering servants and toilers of e stablished society should become warrior saints? In December 1534, Rothmann made even more explicit his teaching

49

 Ibid., 110.  Ibid., 104–5; noted by Stayer, to whom we are all indebted for so incisively clearing up Münsterite eschatology. Stayer, “Münsterite Rationalization,” JHI 28:191. This article is slightly revised and condensed in Stayer, Sword, chap. 11. 51  Von verborgenheit der Sc hrifft des Ric kes Christi vnd v on dem dage des Her rn, ed. Carl Hochhuth, Bernhard Rothmanns Schriften (Gotha, 1857), 92, noted by Stayer as in above n. 57. As for Christ’s Kingdom having no end, elsewhere Rothmann inconsistently speaks of the delivery of the Kingdom to the Father (as in 1 Cor. 15:24). Stayer notes Rothmann’s inconsistency; see “Münsterite Rationalization,” 192 n. 71. 52  Restitution, ed. Kanaake, 107, 109. 50

chapter 13.3

münster  579

on government by saints in the latter days in On Vengeance,53 an appeal to “all true Israelites and covenanters of Christ” to take up arms in revenge (Wrake) and in defense of the bibliocracy. Herein he declared programmatically that as of then it would be an error to expect “that God himself will come from heaven and take vengeance on the godless”; for God’s servants must first carry out the revenge.54 Thereby he assigned vengeance to “King David” and the baptismally reborn and sanctified covenanters rather than to Solomonic Christ destined to rule in peace.55 The correct moment for the shift from passivity to insurgency was determined by Rothmann on the basis of his (adapted Joachimite) tripartite dispensationalism, his attachment of importance to the curious biblical figure of t hree-and-one-half (time, times, and a h alf a t ime in Dan. 12:7 and cf. Rev. 11:11; cf. John Hut, Ch. 7.4), and the royal dreams of the quadripartite statue and the four beasts in Daniel 2 and 7 (cf. Thomas Müntzer, Ch. 3.2). Münsterites perceived in the Anabaptist seer Melchior Hofmann a return of the prophet Elijah. When once before the Chosen People had suffered from false priests and prophets, Elijah had prophesied a drought as punishment which lasted three-and-one-half years (on Rothmann’s own reckoning, cf. 1 Kings 17:1 and 18:45). Rothmann found this important number multiplied by twenty in the divine punishment of the Chosen People for seventy years in Babylonian Captivity. He went on to argue that the even more grievous defection after the end of the Apostolic age (which he reckoned as exactly one century after the ascension of Jesus at thirty-three or -four) would mean 20 x 70 = 1,400 years of d rought or spiritual punishment, making the year 1533 or 1534 the beginning of the definite Restoration. 56 His confidence that Münster was the site of the restoration was based upon (1) the fuller recovery of the meaning of scripture in Münster and (2) his view that the Roman Empire under Charles V was the very last stage of the fourth world empire, the mingled iron and clay in the feet of the toppling statue (Daniel 2) being the spiritual temporalities (notable among them the prince bishopric of Münster), and that the triple-horned fourth beast (Daniel 7) was the triple-crowned papacy and also the insufficiently reformed Wittenberg where Luther,

53  Eyn gantz troestlic k bericht van der Wrake unde straffe des Babilonisc hen gruwels, ed. Karl W. Bouterweck, Zur Literatur und Geschichte der Widertäufer besonders in den Rheinlanden (Bonn, 1864), 66–80; slightly r educed and in moder n German, Fast, ed. Der Linke Flügel , 342–60. Rothmann never completed his four th religio-political tract: Van erdesscher unde tytliker gewalt: Bericht uth Gottlyker schrifft, ed. Heinrich Detmer and Rober t Krumbholtz, Zwei Schriften des Münsterischen Widertäufters Bernhard Rothmann (Dortmund, 1904). 54  Van der Wrake, ed. Bouterweck, 75; Fast, ed., Der Linke Flügel, 351. 55  Stayer notes that Rothmann was not always consistent, “Rothmann,” 190 nn. 59, 60. 56  Van der Wrake, ed. Bouterweck, 74; Fast, ed., Der Linke Flügel, 350.

580  the radical reformation

chapter 13.3 / 13.4

after a promising start, “remains lying in his own pride and filth.” 57 The imperial orb in the hand of King John Beukels was the symbol of the new covenantal king’s universal dominion. Accordingly, Rothmann could conclude his On Vengeance: Now, dear brothers, the time of vengeance is here. God has raised the promised David and armed him for vengeance and punishment over Babylon and its people. Therefore, dear brothers, arm for battle, not only with the apostles’ humble weapon of s uffering, but also with vengeance, the magnificent armor of David, to stamp out the entire Babylonian power and the entire godless establishment with the power and help of G od. … Let God, the Lord of L ords, who has determined and through his prophets predicted this from the beginning of the world, awaken your heart with the power of his spirit and arm you and his whole Israe1.58

4. R estitution and R evenge by the Ungodly Rothmann’s two books at the end of 1534 ironically suggested by their titles the reversal of the fortunes of the Anabaptist bibliocracy, for within a year the bishop would be reinstated in Münster and the combined Protestant and Catholic forces would wreak revenge upon the ephemeral kingdom. Toward the end of N ovember 1534, a n ew company of m essengers went out to Frisia, Holland, Brabant, Cleves, Jülich, and Liège, supplied with money to buy food for Münster, carrying copper identification tokens (“Word becomes flesh”) and many pieces of polemical literature, including Rothmann’s Restitution, which had just appeared. The greater number returned to Münster by Christmas, apparently bringing considerable stores with them. On Christmas Eve a n ew mission left the town, John van Geelen to Wesel and Henry Cramer to Deventer, acting on the advice of one Henry Graess and carrying Rothmann’s new book, Van der Wrake. Graess, who was now acting as an agent for the bishop, pretended that he had miraculously escaped from imprisonment, which greatly increased the respect he commanded. His declaration that rescue would soon be forthcoming from the outside, particularly from Wesel, Deventer, and Amsterdam, encouraged the citizens and caused King John to take him further into his confidence. But fearing that his treacherous mission would come to light, Graess cut short his stay at Münster on 2 January and set out after the emissaries of Christmas Eve, ostensibly to raise four white banners of r ighteousness in The 57

 Cf. Restitution, 16.  Van der Wrake, ed. Bouterweck, 80; Fast, ed., Der Linke Flügel , 360; trans. Stayer, “Rothmann,” 192. 58

chapter 13.4

münster  581

Netherlands, to proclaim the coming of the (Solomonic) king of Zion, and to lead the Covenanters to march to Münster. Assembly places were to be Deventer, Ysenbroeck, and Limburg. The four banners were to be unfurled, one in Jülich, one somewhere in Holland or Waterland, one somewhere in the region of Limburg between Maastricht and Aachen, and one in Frisia near Groningen.59 At Appingedam, near Groningen, a thousand people gathered under the leadership of the ecstatic prophet Herman Schoenmaker, who had messianic pretensions and wanted to kill all monks, priests, and civil officials. But Schoenmaker was too rabid and by his excesses wrecked his own movement. Its condition in Münster under siege became desperate. King John promised salvation (Erlösung) and vindication at Easter, and the people took heart. In the meantime, however, the treachery of Graess had been exposed. John van Geelen tried to restore the faith of the partisans of Münster in Amsterdam even as they learned of t he execution of several brethren in Wesel. In January, too, the episcopal forces finally completed their investment of M ünster, where King John had been preparing five companies to sally forth to meet the rescuing bands. But all efforts to produce relief failed. Many were arrested in Deventer, Kampen, and Zwolle, and the failure to secure popular support in Amsterdam was signalized by t he desperate behavior of the naaktloopers 10 February 1535 (Ch. 12.3). On 23 March eight more envoys, including van Geelen, succeeded in escaping the now completely beleaguered city in the final attempt to rally the Dutch Anabaptists to the rescue. These new messengers gathered a gang of three hundred and made a successful assault on the Old Cloister 60 near Bolsward, a fortified Cistercian abbey. It was in turn besieged by the imperial stadholder Schenck van Toutenburg, who brought up heavy guns and finally, after much fighting, captured it on 7 April. Peter Simons (possibly a b rother to Menno) perished in this battle. The senseless carnage forced Menno to bestir himself on behalf of the poor, misled Anabaptists (Ch. 14.1). Within beleaguered Münster, John, to prevent surprise and defection, established in May twelve “dukes” to guard the gates, and, in order to avoid strife among them after the victorious outcome of the battle, he went on to assign to them their future duchies in the enlarged kingdom. John maintained discipline by the severest measures. In his mingled shyness and ruthlessness, religious fanaticism, and maniacal wickedness, he made life wretched for his subjects, and also for his wives. One of the most spirited among them was beheaded by him in the marketplace for her criticism of

59 60

 Grosheide, “Verhooren en vonnissen,” Historisch Genootschap, 16.  Oldeklooster, Oudeklooster.

582  the radical reformation

chapter 13.4 / 13.5

his rule, and he trampled on her body while the rest of his harem looked on. John attempted to keep the people’s spirits up by means of dancing and spectacles, but all of these props availed nothing. Increasing famine caused John to send the women, children, and aged men out of t he city in June 1535. Many of these people were killed by the besieging army. In spite of everything John did, the continuing siege and famine sapped morale. The besiegers too were growing discouraged at the stubbornness of t he town and were moodily preparing for a l ong wait when an unexpected event suddenly settled the affair. Two men, John Eck and Henry Gresbeck,61 deserted and betrayed one of the gates of the town to the bishop. After a fearful battle the city was taken on 25 June, and almost all of the inhabitants were slaughtered. Chancellor Henry Krechting was, of a ll the leaders, alone able to escape. Rothmann apparently died in the fighting. King John, Bernard Knipperdolling, and the chancellor’s brother, Bernard Krechting, were captured and exhibited throughout Northern Germany. Knipperdolling and Krechting remained loyal to their Anabaptist faith, but John Beukels made a partial recantation before his death, and even offered, if his life were spared, to persuade the remaining Anabaptists to give up all thoughts of violence and to remain faithful to the new government. The three surviving principals were condemned and tortured with red-hot tongs on a platform for all to see in Münster on 22 January 1536. Their seared bodies were placed in iron cages and suspended from the tower of St. Lambert’s Church.

5. David Joris and the Batenburgers at Bocholt, 1536 After the fall of t he Anabaptist bibliocracy in Münster in June 1535, and the execution of King John in January 1536, a group of radical Anabaptists from as far away as England (including a certain John Matthijs of no relation to the executed apostle) met in August 1536 at the still tolerant town of Bocholt near Wesel in Cleves to attempt to come to some mutual understanding and to unify the shattered and scattered Anabaptist forces. The meeting was attended by four or five groupings, ranging from the rampaging Batenburgers and chastened Münsterites through Davidjorists to still expectant Melchiorites and quietistic Obbenites.62 We last met Joris in banishment from Delft as a S acramentist leader (Ch. 12.1). He had returned to Delft and there joined the Melchiorites 61  His Bericht von der Widertaufe in Münster is published by Cornelius, Berichte des Augenzeugen, Geschichtsquellen des Bisthums Münster,Vol. 2 (Münster, 1853). 62  For Anabaptism in the r egion after the debacle , see Cor nelius Krahn, “Anabaptism in Westphalia,” MQR 35 (1961): 282–85; for the four or five groupings, see Doornkaat Kooiman, Dirk Philips, 12.

chapter 13.5

münster  583

receiving, with his wife, baptism from Obbe Philips in September 1534, and ordination from the same a few months later. As an outward sign of his rebirth, he had resumed the name David, which had been given him by his father (who was, at the time of the infant’s birth, playing the part of King David in a rederijker play), and abandoned the name of John, which had been given him by the consecrating bishop at the time of his confirmation. Presently his own followers called themselves, after him, Davidjorists. John of Batenburg, illegitimate son of the noble house of that name in Gelderland, had been mayor of Steenwijk in Overijssel before he joined the Anabaptists. He was now the leader of the faction among the Münsterites who still adhered to the apocalyptic of the sword, the principles of the two Johns, and were therefore called Zwaardgeesten (sword-minded), or, after him, Batenburgers. Batenburg was one of the instigators of the Münsterite assault of the Oude Klooster of Bolsward in 1535. The Batenburgers, even more radical than the Münsterites at the zenith of their excesses, believed that all who did not join with them had to be killed. They sanctioned the plunder of churches, and divorce was obligatory for anyone whose spouse refused to join the group. They continued to practice polygamy and held goods in common. With Batenburg as their new Elijah, they clandestinely waited for the belligerent second advent of the Lord. In the meantime, they allowed adult baptism to lapse, and attended Catholic services in order to escape detection and persecution.63 Batenburg did not himself attend the meeting at Bocholt. Joris was mediator between the belligerent Batenburgers and those Obbenites and others who insisted on pacifism and the rejection of capital punishment, on believers’ baptism, discipline, and sober behavior. By spiritualizing and allegorizing the beliefs and programs of the parties concerned, however, Joris was able to bring them to an ephemeral compromise at Bocholt. Rebaptism was abandoned and the use of t he sword by t he saints was declared justifiable but inexpedient, since the millennium was clearly not yet at hand. There survive from Joris’ hand, skilled at both painting and poesy, several hymns written before and perhaps also after the fall of M ünster, one of which especially conveys the characteristic mingling of belligerent expectancy and the preparedness for present suffering: All the godly must drink From the chalice of bitterness, pure red wine, 63  The practice of pr udential conformity to the estab lished religion is else where called Nicodemianism, but here we are speaking of a bellicose sect, who otherwise remind the historian of the extreme Donatists, also rebaptizing, who rampaged as circumcelliones. For the continuity between the thought of Hofmann, the drama of Münster, and the various successor groups, see L. G. Jansman, Melchioriten, Munstersen en Batenb urgers: Een sociologisc he analyse van een millenistische beweging (Buitenpost, 1977).

584  the radical reformation

chapter 13.5

But the dregs shall God give to the godless to drain. They shall spew and shall belch and fall into death without end. Understand, “dear Christian. Hold fast, God’s honor spread. Be ready ever to die.”64

Joris himself stood much closer to the Obbenites, especially on the issue of the sword; according to the teaching of Christ, the saints must suffer and offer no resistance. He rejected polygamy. In doing so he showed familiarity with the schema of Joachim of F iore, according to whom the believers were still living in the age of the Son, characterized by monogamy, as the age of the Father had been marked by patriarchal polygamy, and as the future coming age of t he Spirit would be marked by celibacy. On the Bocholt issue of Adamism, Joris said that he himself had no inspiration to go about naked, either as a sign, like Isaiah, or as a mark of the return of paradisaic perfection, but that this recurrent phenomenon in religion was permissible if one were impelled thereto by God. He was in agreement with the radicals in his expectation of the imminent coming of the Lord. Batenburg lived only a short time after the colloquy at Bocholt. Traveling to the southern Netherlands, he was captured at Vilvoorde near Brussels and imprisoned in December 1537. He tried to represent himself as a constant opponent of plunder and destruction, and revealed the names of many Anabaptists. The magistrates remained unconvinced of the sincerity of his protestations, and Batenburg was executed in 1538. The belligerent fellowship survived his execution. With the extermination of their later leaders, one Appelman in Leiden and Peter van Orck in Münster, both in 1544 (the same year as Loy near Antwerp, Ch. 12.2), however, the sect seems to have been greatly reduced.65 Shortly after the colloquy at Bocholt, Joris received a l etter 66 from one Anneken Jansdochter, who acclaimed him as “a prophet of God,” the “fan” in the hand of the Lord to winnow and “Prepare for him an acceptable people that he may speedily come to his temple.” Joris, as he himself described it, remained in a kind of ecstasy for more than a week after reading the letter; and, when he came to himself, began to think of h imself as the third David, the first being David the king and the second, Christ, his descendant. He claimed belief and loyalty from his followers. To their stress on the written Word he opposed the inward Word. He proclaimed 64  From Joris, Een Geestelijck Liedt-Boecxken, 1529–36, printed in Liederen van GrootNederland, ed. F. R. Coers (Utrecht, 1930); the selection is pr inted by Bainton, David Joris, 18, and Bainton, The Travail of Religious Liberty: Nine Biographical Studies (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1951; reprinted Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1981), 127. 65  Yet as late as 1552 in Leiden ther e was fear of a Batenb urger attack, as also in 1553 in Coutrai in Flanders, ME 1:247–48. 66  Quoted in Bainton, Travail, 130.

chapter 13.5

münster  585

the inwardness of the resurrection in spirit and the victory over evil, death, and darkness. In the same manner, he said, the trumpeting of the Last Day and damnation take place within the court of i ndividual conscience. He preached humility, self-denial, and asceticism. A group of followers, quickly increasing, gathered about him in Delft. A price was put on their leader’s head in 1538, and by 1539 the authorities found it necessary to take even more vigorous action against them. His well-to-do sponsor, Anneken Jans of Briel, who with her husband had sought asylum in England, was, on a return trip to Delft, apprehended in Rotterdam, having fallen under suspicion for singing a hymn with her traveling companion, Christina Barents of L ouvain. They were immediately tried and convicted of heresy. Anneken at age twenty-eight addressed a petition to the crowd on the way to her execution by drowning, 24 January 1539. She requested that someone adopt her infant, Isaiah, for whose benefactor she at the same time provided a substantial purse. The son was to grow up to be a brewer and mayor of Rotterdam and marry the daughter of t he Arminian statesman and martyr, John Oldenbarnevelt.67 Anneken could not have foreseen, in her extremity, that her son would choose on maturity to dissociate himself from the faith of his mother. She had already written out a beautiful will and testament addressed to him, to be many times reprinted. It may be here quoted at length, as its phrasing captures the spirit of the Melchiorite Anabaptist way of life. Though the Münsterite cause had collapsed, we overhear in Anneken’s testament something of t he eschatological fervor of t he first generation before the hope for the idea of the imminent Kingdom of Christ and for the corule of the saints had subsided. In putting the testament in the little boy’s hands, Anneken expressed the full range of New Testament convictions, from the Sermon on the Mount through the Johannine epistles to the book of the Revelation: My son, hear the instruction of y our mother. … Behold, I g o today the way of t he prophets, apostles, and martyrs, and drink of the cup of which they all have drunk. I g o … the way which Christ Jesus, the eternal Word of t he Father, full of g race and truth, the Shepherd of the sheep, who is the Life, Himself went, and who … had to drink of t his cup, even as He said [cf. Mark 10:38ff.]: “I have a cup to drink of, and a baptism to be baptized with. …” Having passed through, He calls His sheep, and His sheep hear His voice, and follow Him whithersoever He goes; 67  The relation between the voluntarism of the Anabaptists and that of the Arminians/ Remonstrants within the Refor med Church should be fur ther investigated. Cf. Williams, Lubieniecki, Plate 61.

586  the radical reformation

chapter 13.5

for this is the way to the true fountain. This way was traveled by the royal priest who came from the rising of the sun, as we read in Revelation [obscure], and entered into the ages of eternity [1 Pet. 5:10]. This way was trodden by the dead under the altar, who cry, saying [Rev. 6:9–11]: “Lord Almighty God, when wilt Thou avenge the blood that has been shed?”… These also drank of t he cup, and are gone above to keep the eternal, holy Sabbath of the Lord. This is the way in which walked the twenty-four elders, who stand before the throne of God, and cast their crowns and harps before the throne of the Lamb, falling down upon their faces, and saying [Rev. 4:8, 10]: “Lord, unto Thee alone be praise, glory, power, and strength, who shalt avenge the blood of Thy servants and ministers, and shalt through Thyself gain the victory. …” Behold, all these had to drink of the cup of bitterness, as will also all those have to do who are still wanting to complete the number and fulfillment of Zion, the bride of the Lamb, which is the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven [Rev. 21:2], the city and throne of God, in which the glory of the great King shall be seen. … Behold, all these could not attain to this, without first suffering judgment and chastisement in their flesh; for Christ Jesus, the eternal truth, was the first, where it is written [Rev. 13:8]: “Thus it pleased the Father, that all whom He predestined from eternity, He called, elected, justified, and made to be conformed to the image of H is Son.” Our blessed Saviour also says [Matt. 10:24]: “The servant is not above his Lord; but it is sufficient for him, that he be like his Lord and Master.” Also Peter says [1 Pet. 4:17–18]: “… If the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?” See, my son, here you can hear that no one can come unto life, except through this way. Therefore enter in through the straight gate, receive the chastisement and instruction of the Lord, bow your shoulders under His yoke, and cheerfully bear it from your youth, with thanksgiving, rejoicing and honor; for He accepts or receives no son, whom He does not chasten. … Therefore, my child, do not regard the great number, nor walk in their ways. Remove thy foot far from their paths, for they go to hell, as sheep unto death. … But where you hear of a poor, simple, cast-off little flock [Luke 12:32] which is despised and rejected by the world, join them; for where you hear of the cross, there is Christ. … Flee the shadow of t his world; become united with God; fear Him alone, keep His commandments, observe all His words, to do them; write them upon the table of y our heart, bind them upon your forehead, speak day and night of H is

chapter 13.5

münster  587

law. … Take the fear of the Lord to be your father, and wisdom shall be the mother of your understanding. … Be not ashamed to confess Him before men; do not fear men; rather give up your life, than to depart from the truth. If you lose your body, which is earthly, the Lord your God has prepared you a better one in heaven [2 Cor. 5:1]. Therefore, my child, strive for righteousness unto death, and arm yourself with the armor of God. Be a pious Israelite, trample under foot all unrighteousness, the world and all that is in it, and love only that which is above.68 Remember that you are not of this world, even as your Lord and Master was not. Be a faithful disciple of Christ; for none is fit to pray, unless he has become His disciple, and not before. Those who said: “We have left all,” also said: “Teach us to pray” [Luke 11:1, 18:28]. They were those for whom the Lord prayed, and not the world [ John 17:9]; for when the world prays, they call upon their father, the devil. … Therefore, my son, do not become like them, but shun and flee them, and have neither part nor fellowship with them. … Whatever you do, do it all to the praise of His name. Honor the Lord in the works of your hands, and let the light of the Gospel shine through you. Love your neighbor. Deal with an open, warm heart thy bread to the hungry, clothe the naked, and suffer not to have anything twofold; for there are always some who lack. Whatever the Lord grants you from the sweat of your face, above what you need, communicate to those of whom you know that they love the Lord; and suffer nothing to remain in your possession until the morrow, and the Lord shall bless the work of your hands, and give you His blessing for an inheritance. O my son, let your life be conformed to the Gospel, and may the God of peace, sanctify your soul and body, to His praise. O h oly Father, sanctify the son of T hy handmaiden in Thy truth, and keep him from the evil one, for Thy name’s sake, O Lord.69

68  Although here it is the trampling ofunrighteousness, in her song preserved in Mennonite hymnals, “Ick hoer die Basaune blasen,” she foresees the saints washing their feet in the b lood of the ungodly before being urged on to play a new song on their har ps “because God comes to pay” (kumpt om to betalen). Philip Wackernagel, ed., Lieder der niederländischen Reformierten aus der Zeit der Verfolgung im 16. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt, 1867), no. 5. 69  T. van Braght, Het Offer des Heeren (1562); Martyr’s Mirror, 453–54, quoted in Bainton, Travail, 130. Our transcription is slightly abbreviated. The Catholic Anti-Anabaptist propaganda in Münster (1532 and 1534) has been studied b y Robert Stupperich, Schriften von katholischer Seite gegen die Täufer (Münster: Aschendorff, 1970). See also Werner Packull, “Anna Jansz of Rotterdam, A Historical Interpretation of an Early Anabaptist Heroine,” ARC 78 (1987): 147–73.

588  the radical reformation

chapter 13.5

Here is the testament of a Dutch woman of means, a follower of Melchior Hofmann, still unshaken by the aberrations and destruction of Melchiorism in its Münsterite form, now inclined, however, toward David Joris’ more spiritual interpretation of scripture. Here we have an extraordinary specimen of a m artyr theology akin to that of t he South German Anabaptists, but with a much stronger accent on the imminent vindication of God’s “Israelites” in a vision of future righteousness that does not draw back from the gory prospect of the divine wrath inflicted on the uncircumcised in spirit. With Anneken’s testament we hear the last echoes of the original Melchiorite gospel. We have noted the breakup of t he movement into three distinct currents: (1) belligerent Batenburger Libertinism, (2) mystical Davidjorist Spiritualism, and (3) disciplined evangelical Anabaptism, increasingly preoccupied with sectarian organization and the codification of orthodoxy under Menno Simons.

The Assembly of the Common Peasantry, 1525

Chapter 14

The Regrouping of Forces after the Münster Debacle: Mennonitism “

Before i h ad ever heard

of t he existence of t he Brethren … a Godfearing, pious hero named Sicke [Freerks] Snijder was beheaded at Leeuwarden for being rebaptized. It sounded very strange to me to hear of a s econd baptism. I e xamined the scriptures diligently and pondered them earnestly, but could find no report of infant baptism.”1

1. Menno Simons: His Early Career and Conversion With the above words, Menno Simons, a R oman priest for seven years, described his first contact with the idea of believers’ baptism. Yet this man who did not even know what kind of faith it was for which Sicke Freerks had been willing to die later gave his name to the whole movement of which Sicke had been the first martyr in The Netherlands (Ch. 12.3). It has occasionally happened that a m ovement is named for a m an not its founder. Menno Simons did not join the Anabaptists in the Low Countries until after they had experienced initial successes, felt the fangs of persecution, and been shaken to the core by the great debacle of Münster in 1534–35. Yet in some way the influence of this relative latecomer, who was a pastor more than a theologian, was such that his name caught

1  Menno Simons, The Complete Writings, translated by Leonard Verduin, ed. John C. Wenger (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1956), 668. More recent are the excellent (despite br evity) contributions of George K. Epp, “The Spiritual Roots of Menno Simons, ” in Har ry Loewen, ed., Mennonite Images (Winnipeg, Man.: 1980), and Timothy George, Theology of the Refor mers (Nashville: Broadman, 1988).

589

590  the radical reformation

chapter 14.1

the imagination of m any and has come to be applied, not only to the Dutch Anabaptists, but also to the Swiss and South German Brethren as well. 2 Menno was born in 1496 in the village of Witmarsum in West Frisia, the son of a dairy farmer named Simon (hence Simonsz, i.e., Simonszoon). Before entering the Roman priesthood, he studied in a Premonstratensian monastery, possibly at Bolsward. He learned to read and write Latin and to read some Greek. He gained familiarity with some of the Church Fathers, such as Tertullian, Cyprian, and Eusebius. Although he was not systematically trained in the Bible, he would have come to know large portions of it through the monastic liturgy. Menno’s ordination to the priesthood took place in March 1524, when he was twenty-eight years old. He was first assigned as vicar to the parish of Pingjum near Witmarsum, where he served for seven years, the second in rank of t hree priests. From his own later account he spent his time in the perfunctory performance of the usual duties of a country priest, utilizing his free hours for playing cards, drinking, and “frivolities of all sorts.” But early in his sacerdotal career, doubts began to disturb this outwardly harmonious life. In 1525, the same year in which the Swiss Brethren, who were later to be called by h is name, were organizing their restored New Testament Church in Zurich, Menno was beginning to doubt the doctrine of transubstantiation: It occurred to me, as often as I handled the bread and wine in the Mass, that they were not the flesh and blood of the Lord. I thought that the devil was suggesting this, that he might separate me from my faith. I confessed it often, sighed and prayed; yet I could not come clear of the ideas. 3 He may have been pondering the ideas of C ornelius Hoen espoused by the Sacramentists in nearby Leeuwarden (Ch. 12.1). Menno was unable to get satisfaction or assuagement of his suspicions about the sacrament of the altar. “I was in so far helped by Luther …,” he wrote, in that he made 2  For the per iodization and bio graphy I am follo wing Harold Bender, “A Brief Biography,” included in The Complete Writings; Karel Vos, Menno Simons, 1496–1561: Zijn leven en werken en zijne reformatorische denkbeelden (Leyden, 1914); Cornelius Krahn, Menno Simons (1496–1561): Ein Beitr ag zur Gesc hichte und Theologie der Taufgesinnten (Karlsruhe, 1936). An important portion of this has been translated into English as “Menno Simons’ Concept of the Chur ch,” A Legacy, Dyck, ed., 17–30. A more recent study of Menno is b y Christoph Bornhäuser, Leben und Lehre Menno Simons (Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag, 1973). A major source for the biography is Menno’s own reminiscence in his Reply to Gellius Faber, Writings, 623ff. A systematic presentation of Mennonite theology, close to the histor ic data, is that of William E. Keeney, The Development of Dutc h Anabaptist Thought and Practice, 1539–1564 (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf , 1968); see also George Epp , “The Premonstratensian Connection,” MQR 62 (1988): 349–55. 3  Menno, Writings, 668.

chapter 14.1

regrouping: mennonitism  591

clear that canonical and other purely “human injunctions cannot bind unto eternal death.”4 From this time on, Menno made progress in the study of the Scriptures, and came to be considered by some (incorrectly, he says) as an “evangelical” preacher. Although he attributed to Luther his confidence in the right to depart from the teachings of men on the Eucharist and to return to the testimony of S cripture, he did not accept Luther’s specific view of the sacrament of the altar. It was not his by now articulated sacramentarianism that finally moved him to transfer his allegiance from the Roman Church, for he continued to celebrate Mass for several years after he had become convinced that it was theologically untenable. It was rather the problem of baptism. He became acquainted with Cyprian’s approval of a dult baptism, around 1529, when he read about it in the writings of T heobald Billicanus of N ördlingen. 5 Then, in 1531, he learned of t he heroic death in nearby Leeuwarden of Sicke Freerks, the same Anabaptist martyr who had moved the brothers Philips to join the Melchiorite Covenanters. Although the cause for which Sicke died, rebaptism, seemed very strange,6 Menno was deeply impressed by the high seriousness of the new movement and was dismayed to find no support for infant baptism in the New Testament. Whereupon he turned to the Fathers: They taught me that children are by baptism cleansed from their original sin. I compared this idea with the Scriptures and found that it did violence to the blood of Christ.7 From now on this distinction was determinative for Menno. Calvary frees the whole world from original sin. The slate is wiped clean for all (Ch. 2.1), for Christ came to take away the sins of the whole world. This is the good news for them to whom it is disclosed, but its effect is operative whether it is known or not. To this extent, Menno, like Denck in the South, had recognized a basis for universal salvation. Baptism becomes, in consequence, the means of liberating the Christian believer from personal sins. Menno found confirmation of his growing convictions about adult baptism when 4

 Ibid. Cf. Irvin Horst, “Luther Helped Me,” BD, Scripta et Studia 3:189.  In his Foutndation Book of 1539, Menno wrote that more than ten years before, that is around 1529, he had r ead in the works of the “Nördlingen preachers” about Cypr ian. That would have been Billicanus, Renovatio ecclesiae nordlingiacensis … per diaconos ibidem (1525). 6  In recalling the Leeuwarden martyrdom of 1531, Menno says that he found second baptism “strange,” in seeming contradiction to his statement about Cypr ian. This discrepancy, first pointed out by S. Cramer, Doopsgezinde Bijdragen (1912), 1, could be explained b y a lapse of memory. Krahn, however, preserved the reliability of both accounts b y pointing out the dif ference between Cyprian’s stress (in Billican us) on adult baptism rather than on r ebaptism. However, Cyprian was an advocate of the r ebaptism of the lapsed and of her etics (Ch. 10.1), and Krahn’s solution may not stand, Beitrag, 24. 7  Menno, Writings, 669. 5

592  the radical reformation

chapter 14.1

he turned to the Protestant Reformers to find them mutually contradictory as to the propriety of infant baptism, Luther holding stubbornly that in some sense infants do have faith by the power of the Word, Bucer holding that it is a pledge of Christian nurture, Zwingli and Bullinger holding that it is the New Covenantal equivalent of circumcision. In spite of Menno’s conviction on the question of i nfant baptism, it was still several years before he was moved to action. He did not associate himself with the small groups of Melchiorites in the vicinity, but on the contrary accepted Roman ecclesiastical promotion to the post of pastor in his home church at Witmarsum, “led thither,” he said “by covetousness and the desire to obtain a great name”: There I s poke much concerning the Word of t he Lord, without spirituality or love, as all hypocrites do, and by this means I made disciples of m y own kind, vain boasters and frivolous babblers, who, alas, like myself did not take these matters too seriously.8 Although he was outwardly moral and was admired, he was not satisfied with his spiritual state. His conscience was continually troubled by the contradiction between his belief and his conformity to the old order. Nevertheless, Menno remained within the Catholic Church. The excesses of Münsterite Anabaptism elicited from him indeed a t ract against John Beukels of Leiden (April/June 1535), the first of h is surviving works. He stood, at this point, vacillating between Catholicism and Anabaptism, turmoiled by both.9 By a strange twist, it was not Menno’s own sacramentarian and anabaptist convictions which brought him to break with Rome but a horror of the fanatical blasphemies of Münster. It was the very excess of the Anabaptist movement that in the end contrived to pull him from his rectory to lead the bewildered flock of misguided Melchiorites. Some three hundred of t hese radical Anabaptists, en route to Münster under John van Geelen, entrenched themselves in the Old Cloister at Bolsward and were besieged and overwhelmed 7 April 1535. Among the slain was Peter Simons, gatekeeper of t he Münsterite queen (Ch. 13.2). Though Menno was expressly opposed to their show of force and to the insufficient grounding in Scripture of their doctrine and practice, he felt that he should lead these shepherdless sheep to the valid goal of t heir 8

 Ibid.  For more on the consistency of Menno’s piety with that of the late medieval penitential and holiness tradition, see Sjouke Voolstra, “True Penitence: The Core of Menno Simon’s Theology,” MQR 62 (1988): 387–400; “Mennos Meditatie op de 25e Psalm, ” Doperse Stemmen 2 (1976), intro. by H. W. Meihuizen; and “Uyt Babel ghevloden, in Jeruzalem ghetogen,” Doperse Stemmen 6 (1986): intro. by S.Voolstra and W. Bergsma, both published by Doopsgezinde Historische Kring, Amsterdam. 9

chapter 14.1

regrouping: mennonitism  593

deepest aspirations, with which he had come to sympathize. With trembling heart, Menno asked God to forgive him his prudential delay. He writes movingly of his final spiritual struggles: Afterwards the poor straying sheep who wandered as sheep without a proper shepherd, after many cruel edicts, garrotings, and slaughters, assembled at a place near my place of residence called Oude Klooster. And, alas! through the ungodly doctrines of M ünster, and in opposition to the Spirit, Word, and example of Christ, they drew the sword to defend themselves, the sword which the Lord commanded Peter to put up in its sheath ( John 18:11). After this had transpired, the blood of these people, although misled, fell so hot on my heart that I could not stand it, nor find rest in my soul. I reflected upon my unclean, carnal life, also the hypocritical doctrine and idolatry which I still practiced daily in appearance of godliness, but without relish. I saw that these zealous children, although in error, willingly gave their lives and their estates for their doctrine and faith. And I was one of those who had disclosed to them the abominations of the papal system. But I myself continued in my comfortable life and acknowledged abominations simply in order that I m ight enjoy physical comfort and escape the cross of Christ. Pondering these things my conscience tormented me so that I could no longer endure it. … I began in the name of t he Lord to preach publicly from the pulpit the word of true repentance, to point the people to the narrow path, and in the power of the scripture openly to reprove all sin and wickedness, all idolatry and false worship, and to present the true worship, also the true baptism and the Lord’s Supper, according to the doctrine of Christ, to the extent that I had at that time received from God the grace. … Then I, without constraint, of a s udden, renounced all my worldly reputation, name and fame, my unchristian abominations, my masses, infant baptism, and my easy life, and I w illingly submitted to distress and poverty under the heavy cross of Christ.10 For nine months Menno endeavored to use his Witmarsum pulpit as the base from which to effect an evangelical reform. Then, in the very

10

 Menno, Writings, 670–71.

594  the radical reformation

chapter 14.1

month that King John Beukels was tortured to death at Münster, Menno bravely laid down his priestly office, 20 January 1536, and vanished from the public eye. He had decided that he could no longer continue even a purely external connection with the Roman “Babel.” Menno made the break directly from the security of a Catholic rectory to the peril of the open roads in a l and which remained Catholic and where the edict against Anabaptism was ruthlessly enforced. And he made the break at precisely that moment when revolutionary Anabaptism was most hated by the authorities and most discredited by its devotees. The fact that he had no fellowship with the Anabaptists around him before the Münsterite debacle, and that from the outset he opposed the ideas being spread by the Münsterite missionaries, give credibility to his frequent assertion that his new faith came to him “through much reading and pondering of the Scriptures, and by the gracious favor and gift of God, and not by the instrumentality of the erring sects as it is reported of me.”11 Determinative in this break was the experience of “ spiritual resurrection.”12 At first he sought seclusion. It is quite probable that he looked for refuge on the estate of Ulrich van Dornum, at his castle at Olderstum on the Ems, south of Emden, which had earlier protected Carlstadt and Hofmann in 1529. (It was with Ulrich’s support that Hofmann, who had become an Anabaptist in 1530, had carried on his extraordinarily successful mission in Emden.) It may have been true that Menno received instruction from Obbe Philips, who rebaptized him. Toward the end of the year of withdrawal from public view, having moved back and forth between Witmarsum, Leeuwarden, Groningen, and Olderstum, he seems to have settled down in or near Groningen. A small group of evangelical Anabaptists sought him out and implored him to take pastoral charge over the ruined vineyard of the Lord. He saw the perils to which he would be subject in undertaking an Anabaptist ministry, but the feeling of p astoral obligation toward the “sheep which have no shepherd” compelled him to overcome his apprehensions and to plunge into the work to which he heard the Lord calling him. His explanation of t he pastoral vocation is indicative of t he important place which the Church as the instrument of G od in the calling and establishment of a pastor played in his thinking. There are two ways, he was soon to write, in which Christian preachers are called: some by God alone, without any human agent, others by means of the pious, as in Acts 1:23–26.13 Further, “all who rightly preach Christ

11

 Ibid., 669. See also, S. Voolstra, Het word is vlees Gewor den, 4:3, 6 for Menno’s views on the Incarnation. 12  This is the title of one of his first writings, Van de geestelijke verrijsenisse (c. 1536). 13  Foundation Book, 1540; Writings, 159.

chapter 14.1

regrouping: mennonitism  595

and his Word, and with it bring forth children to the Lord, must have been called by one of the aforementioned methods.”14 Without a proper vocation, no one can rightly preach the gospel; for “as Paul says [Rom. 10:15], ‘How shall they preach except they be sent?’”15 Thus it is clear why for Menno, in contrast to the Magisterial Reformers, the Roman ordination to the priesthood was no longer valid, and why he insisted upon a n ew calling and valid ordination according to the true divine institution. Menno, like many another former priest or friar, was not only an anabaptist but also a reordinationist. His second ordination took place early in 153716 and was almost certainly solemnized by Obbe Philips. Menno’s acceptance of leadership came at a crucial time for the brethren who had remained faithful to scriptural, evangelical, peaceful Anabaptism and had not yielded to the fanatical ideas of John Matthijs and John Beukels. They were dispersed and discouraged. Constantly dogged by the authorities, Menno led a wanderer’s existence, visiting the scattered brethren, preaching, baptizing, catechizing, and endeavoring to build up the churches wherever he went. Although he married in 1536 or 1537, he had no fixed abode.17 At the same time, he busied himself with the writing of n umerous tracts, including The Spiritual Resurrection, c. 1536, Meditation on the Twenty-fifth Psalm, c. 1537, Christian Baptism, 1539, and Foundation of Christian Doctrine, 1540, which helped consolidate his position of e verincreasing authority over the brotherhood stretching along the Hanseatic Coast beyond Danzig (cf. Ch. 15.2) and up the Rhine as far as Bonn. A f ield ripe for harvest had been in danger of being ruined by the unruly, dreamy, or fatigued laborers. Menno Simons rallied the constructive forces in Netherlandish Anabaptism. It was due to his sober, unremitting, and evangelically inspired leadership that the Netherlandish and North German movement was salvaged from disintegration and fanatical aberration. By 1542 Menno was so manifestly a major sectarian leader that at Leeuwarden a price of f ive hundred gold guilders was put on his head. There was full warrant for the historical chance which has attached Menno’s name to almost the whole surviving Anabaptist movement. Anabaptists would f irst be referred to as “Mennonites” (Mennisten) in 1545 in a decree of Countess Anna of Oldenburg of East Frisia (Ch. 19.2.a). Representative of t he courage of t he Anabaptists who rallied around the new leader and their determination to endure anything rather than inform on fellow-believers is the testimony of E lisabeth Dirks, a 14

 Ibid., 160.  Ibid., 161. The ideas of Menno on vocation are set forth by Russel Mast,“Menno Speaks concerning the Ministry,” MQR 54 (1980): 106–16. 16  Approximate date supplied by Bender, “A Brief Biography,” Writings, 23. 17  Cf. ibid., 25–26. 15

596  the radical reformation

chapter 14.1 / 14.2

woman brought up in a convent and reputed to be the f irst Mennonite deaconess. Apprehended at Leeuwarden, she was mistakenly identif ied as Menno’s wife, and was subjected to examination by torture to secure information concerning him and other Anabaptist leaders. In spite of thumbscrews and the Spanish boot, she would not reveal a single name. It was her brave contention that she was heeding God’s commandment to honor one’s “parents” and in Christ all her associates were kith and kin upon whom she was not free to inform. The refusal to give names under torture is one of the recurrent themes in all the Anabaptist martyrologies which linked the sixteenth-century Radicals self-consciously with the early Christians who likewise refused to be delatores and traditores.18

2. “The Foundation,” 1540: Christology and the Ban The Foundation of Christian Doctrine,19 written in Dutch with a strong coloring from Low German (Oosters), 20 took as its text 1 Corinthians 3:11: “For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” Commonly called The Foundation Book,21 it has become the foundation of Mennonitism and is therefore entitled to special attention at this point. In the first edition of the Foundation,22 Menno was concerned in part to redirect the misled radical Anabaptists into peaceful associations and in part to legitimize the movement in the eyes of the magistrates. To this end he stressed its orthodoxy and its orderliness wherever possible. Yet he persisted in retaining the peculiar Melchiorite view of t he Incarnation communicated to him by Obbe Philips. 23 In modified form it was inextricably bound up, it would appear, not only with his experience and conceptualization of rebirth but also with his view of the Church as the community without spot or wrinkle (Eph. 5:27).24 In True Christian Faith, Menno wrote:

18  Elisabeth was drowned 27 Ma y 1549. Van Braght, Martyrs’ Mirror, 481ff., 546–47. I have placed the Anabaptists in the long histor y of conscientious objection to delation in m y “Reluctance to Inform,” Theology Today 14 (1957): 229–55, esp. 253. 19  There is a critical edition with an introduction by H. W. Meihuizen, Dat Fundament des Christelycken Leers (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1967). 20  See article “Oosters” in Mennonite Encyclopedia. 21  Fundament-Boek: Writings, 103–226. 22  The second edition of 1554, probably in Lübeck, withdrew some of the material considered by the erring brethren as perhaps no longer pertinent. A further revision appeared in 1558. 23  See Irvin E. Burkhardt, “Menno Simons on the Incarnation,” MQR 4 (1930): 113, 178; 6 (1932): 122, which minimizes the doctr ine, and J. A. Ootserbaan, “The Theology of Menno Simons,” MQR 35 (1961): 187–96, which brings Menno and Karl Barth into line. 24  Krahn, Menno, Excursus 3,“Der Gemeindebegriff Mennos im Zusammenhang mit seiner Lehre von der Menschwerdung Christi,” 155; cf. English version, Dyck, ed., A Legacy, 17–30.

chapter 14.2

regrouping: mennonitism  597

For all who are in Christ are new creatures, flesh of His [celestial] flesh, bone of h is bone [an allusion with Paul to the first Adam], and members of His body.25 We have dealt elsewhere (Ch. 11.3) at great length with variations in this doctrine among the Radical Reformers, and we could perhaps let that suffice, but since, by w ay of Menno, Melchior Hofmann’s doctrine has survived into modern times, we must give specific attention to Menno’s version. Menno was not really happy with Hofmann’s solution. He modified it to the extent that he was willing to grant that Christ drew nourishment from the body of Mary while in the womb. He said that he would rather not speak on the subject at all, but was compelled to do so by h is opponents.26 Like Hofmann and Obbe, he felt that the orthodox theologians did away with the redemptive suffering of God and also posited a Christ capable of sin by reason of his Adamic humanity. Menno emphasized that all of Adam’s flesh are justly condemned, that Christ is not divided into two natures, but is one whole Christ. He stressed that the Word became flesh, but did not take flesh: 27 “I have shown and confessed to you our firm position on the Incarnation of the Lord, that he did not become flesh of Mary, but in Mary.” Menno might have expanded his prepositional distinctions and said that Christ was conceived in (in), through (door, durch, per), or from (van, von, de), but was born out of (uit, aus, ex) Mary. 28 He goes on to affirm that the entire Christ has been sent forth from the Father: For Christ Jesus, as to his origin, is no earthly man, that is, a fruit of the flesh and blood of Adam. He is a heavenly fruit or man, for his beginning or origin is of the Father [ John 16:28] like unto the first Adam, sin excepted.29 Menno cited the now familiar passages, particularly John 1:14 and 6:32, to explain the doctrine of the heavenly flesh with respect to the Eucharist. Since his followers were partaking of t he heavenly flesh of Christ in Communion, they had to exclude all impure and unworthy persons. Thus the Mennonite doctrine of the Incarnation, bound up with the doctrine of t he Church as a d isciplined and ordered body, led to a sharp distinction between the true congregation of the kin of Christ and 25

 Writings, 402.  Cf. Brief and Clear Confession, 1544; Writings, 419ff. 27  Brief and Clear Confession, Incarnation of Our Lord, in Writings, 419–20, 783–84. 28  The terminology has been admirab ly clarified for Menno and the Dutch Anabaptists by William Keeney in his Har tford Seminary multi graphed seminar paper, “An Analysis of Calvin’s Treatment of the Anabaptists in the Institutes,” summarizing his results on 136. 29  Brief and Clear Confession; Writings, 437. 26

598  the radical reformation

chapter 14.2

the surrounding society of t he unregenerate tethered to the first Adam. Christ, as the Second and Heavenly Adam, stands at the head of a n ew creation, and thus the reborn members of his Church constitute a wholly new society. To sum up the development from Hofmann through Menno: For Hofmann, the doctrine of t he heavenly flesh was the sanction of a new order, the Kingdom, which he conceived experientially and eschatologically, regarding his fellow members as proleptically subjects by grace of the awaited King. For Menno, the new order was seen primarily in the Church of the regenerate, faithfully nourished by a heavenly bread, a spotless community in the wilderness of evil, awaiting the final nuptials with the heavenly Groom. Thus, especially important for Menno’s realization of t he brotherhood of s aints was the discipline of t he ban. One may pause here for a helpful generalization about baptism, the bond (covenant), and the ban. The first Anabaptists in Zurich, 1525, were naturally preoccupied with believers’ baptism. Hofmann, converted to Anabaptism in 1530, stressed believers’ baptism as the bond which incorporated the believers as members of the covenantal community of the saints, bondgenooten. By 1540, though baptism and bond remained important constitutive elements, the inner discipline of t he fellowship based upon the ban was now receiving major attention. Once the ecclesiological as well as ethical significance of group discipline is granted, one need not feel that it is to disparage Menno to characterize him as the theologian of the ban. “In my opinion,” he wrote, “it is a leading characteristic, an honor, and a means of prosperity for a true Church.” 30 The ban, as we know from the Schleitheim Confession (Ch. 8.1), is based on Matthew 18:15–18, and avoidance, or shunning, on 1 Corinthians 5:11. The former is common to all Anabaptists, although they have differed as to whether the authority to exercise it rests with the whole congregation or with the elders. Shunning was especially developed by the Mennonites. Menno placed the ban and avoidance under the Christian imperative to love. By love he meant the intent to save the purity of doctrine and of the fellowship, and to secure the eventual salvation of the wayward brother or sister. Hence, the concern that the three stages of admonition enjoined by Matthew 18 before the final exclusion, be fully observed. Menno elsewhere was at pains to show that the formal ban is but a social confirmation of what had already taken place since the banned is by sin severed from Christ in his heart: No one is excommunicated [the ban] or expelled by u s from the communion of the brethren [shunning] but those who have already separated and expelled themselves from Christ’s communion either 30  Instruction on Excommunication; Writings, 962. One of Menno’s disquisitions on the ban is printed in SAW, 261ff.

chapter 14.2

regrouping: mennonitism  599

by false doctrine or by improper conduct. For we do not want to expel any, but rather to receive; not to amputate, but rather to heal; not to discard, but rather to win back; not to grieve, but rather to comfort; not to condemn, but rather to save.31 Menno was convinced that true regeneration would produce the works of faith, but he lamented the fact that many Anabaptists who professed Christ did not always live unto him: O brethren, how far some of u s, alas, are still distant from the evangelical life which is of G od! Notwithstanding that they stay out of the [state] churches and are outwardly baptized with water, yet they are earthly and carnally minded in all things, thinking perhaps that Christianity consists in external baptism and in staying away from the [established] churches. 32 His advice on how to deal with the earthly and carnally minded was not only animated by C hristian charity but was also characterized by s ubtle insight into the situation of the righteous critics: When you shun them as children of d arkness and of d eath, see to it that you yourselves may be children of the light and of eternal life … lest you who shun others on account of their evildoing secretly commit worse things in the sight of God. 33 The ban, accompanied by shunning and the solemn readmission of a wayward member, in some cases many times over the course of a lifetime, was clearly taking over the function of the medieval sacrament of penance, which Menno had known and employed as a priest and now reinstated in what he considered apostolic form: You see, brethren, I w ill let every apostate brother determine … with what intention this excommunication or ban was so diligently practiced, first by Christ Jesus and His apostles, and afterward by u s, who are intent upon recovering again Christian doctrine and practice as may be learned from … scriptures. 34 Among the Netherlandish Anabaptists, despite Menno’s charitable construction of t he uses of t he ban, innumerable schisms would eventually be formed in terms of relative “hard” and “mild” banning and shunning. Scripturally, the Pauline injunction “not to eat with” (1 Cor. 5:11)

31

 Admonition on Church Discipline, 1541; Writings, 413.  Ibid., 410. 33  Ibid., 415. 34  Ibid. 32

600  the radical reformation

chapter 14.2 / 14.3

could be interpreted as limited to the Supper or it could be extended to exclude all social intercourse with the banned. The ban in terms also of “bed and board” would become a particularly difficult problem for Mennonite spouses. Menno himself will not always be as charitable as in those early works on the subject.

3. The Spread of Anabaptism in the Southern Netherlands (Belgium) As in the northern provinces of T he Netherlands, so in the southern (roughly modern Belgium), Anabaptism was preceded by teeming late medieval heresy and conventicular life, with Sacramentism prominent. In contrast, however, to the north, there were a number of authentic followers of Luther, notably in Antwerp. Here there were many printing presses to spread the new ideas. Jacob Praepositus, prior of the Augustinian convent, and Cornelius Gnapheus, the town secretary, had promulgated Lutheran doctrine as early as 1519. Two Augustinian friars, Henry Vos and John van Essen, were burned as martyrs in Brussels on 1 July 1523. On hearing of their deaths Luther promptly wrote a hymn in their memory, “A New Song Here Shall Be Begun” (Ein neuwes Lied wir heben an).35 With the emergence of Netherlandish Anabaptism in 1530, the recruits in the southern provinces seem to have been drawn as commonly from the Waldensian and Libertine circles as from the Sacramentists; and, although the Melchiorite vision of A nabaptism, with its distinctive marks (celestial flesh and eschatological intensity), spread widely, there must have been other strands. The organization and discipline of t he southern Anabaptists differed from those of the north, though the growing influence of Menno Simons was felt in the south as well. In Frisia and elsewhere in the north, the conventicular center of a uthority lay in the small circle of t he leaders, who alone might baptize, whereas in Flanders the authority lay with the brotherhood as a whole. Baptisms were frequently performed by men who had not received ordination. In the application of t he ban and avoidance in marriage, the south was more moderate in spirit (Lieffelijcke Vermaninge), and the ban remained in the hands of the brotherhood as a whole, instead of being handled by the elders. 36 As to the social backgrounds, the southern 35  This was Luther’s first hymn, as well as the first of the Reformation. In this case he used a folk ballad for the music, which he never did again, but Anabaptists picked up the ballad as a source for the music for countless hymns in coming years. “A New Song Here Shall Be Begun,” Luther’s Works, Liturgy and Hymns 53, 211–16, ed. Ulrich S. Leopold (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1965). 36  This regional differentiation was originally a matter of sheer circumstances. It was hazardous for a Mennonite overseer (elder) to circulate in Flanders outside thronged Antwerp. As late as 1545, the first recorded synod (presumably in Ghent) of Flemish minister s (deacons), led by Adrian van Kortrijk, petitioned (without immediate r esults) the church in Antwerp to

chapter 14.3

regrouping: mennonitism  601

Anabaptists were more commonly recruited from among weavers and small merchants and their wives (often in prominence) than in the north where peasants, fishers, and sailors were the most common recruits. Most of the converts were Flemish-speaking. In the first phase of “Belgian” Anabaptism, 1530–50, 37 the movement spread to most of t he large centers of F landers, Brabant, and the princely bishopric of Liège. Aachen, Maastricht, and Liège were economically interrelated. William Stupman (Mottencop) of Aachen was the organizer of conventicles in these three towns. The members at first called themselves simply “Christian Brethren.”38 In Maastricht (now in the Dutch province of Limburg) the soil had been well prepared by t he Beghards and Beguines, for whom the city had been a late medieval center, and by the Sacramentists. By 1527 there was a Sacramentist brotherhood there perhaps identical with the “Christian Brethren” above. Accused of “Lutheran heresy,” the Brethren had a strong following among the guilds. By 1530, they were visited by s everal Anabaptist leaders from abroad, including William Stupman, Henry of Tongres, and the Wassenberg preacher Gisbert of R atheim. By 1533 there were over a hundred Anabaptists in Maastricht. Especially significant was the already mentioned visit of Henry Rol (Ch. 12.1) who arrived in August 1534. After his being burned at the stake in September 1534, there followed in January 1535 a severe persecution, and the congregation was extinguished. There were also Sacramentist radicals in Liège who may have participated in the insurrection against the episcopal government in 1531. Anabaptism was organized in Liège in this circle by William Stupman of Aachen in 1533. Between 1534 and 1535 a large number of Anabaptists from Liège and Maastricht took refuge in Antwerp, destined to become the ganglion of the network in the southern provinces. John van Geelen as an emissary of John Beukels preached Münsterite doctrine in Antwerp and recruited followers there in 1534. He lived in the home of a c ertain Jacob. Münsterite followers in the southern provinces were, however, rather few by comparison

appoint “a man living in Flanders whom we with the consent of the cong regations and your counsel could have put to the test, letting him have in all of Flanders the oversight …, that we might also have an oversight over his behavior.” 37  The second per iod is 1550–76, Ch. 30.1. This periodization depends upon A. L. E. Verheyden, Anabaptism in Flanders, 1530–1650 (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1961); cf. MQR 28 (1947): 41–63; a br iefer survey is that of Léon-E. Halkin, La Réforme en Belgique sous CharlesQuint (Brussels: Renaissance du livre, 1957), ch. 3, not entirely accurate but with a bibliography to date. The Anabaptists of the southern Netherlands may be seen in a larger setting in Robert Collinet, La Réformation en Belgique au XVIe sièc le (2d ed., Brussels: Librairie des Eclair eurs Unionistes, 1958) and in their own right, Charles Matthiot and Roger Boigeol, Recherches historiques sur les anabaptistes (Flavion: Éditions “le Pharre,” 1969). 38  It is possible that this was an Anabaptist group resembling the Swiss Brethren in doctrine.

602  the radical reformation

chapter 14.3

with those who were won over in the northern provinces, and there were not many who were willing to heed the call to violent action. Five Anabaptists were summoned for a hearing in Antwerp on 12 February 1535, when the disturbances in Münster were at their height, and the civil authorities were inclined to see in every Anabaptist a r evolutionary. Jerome Pael was beheaded as the first martyr 17 February. Native and immigrant Anabaptists were threatened with the severest penalties, even for holding meetings. The first Anabaptist victims in Ghent were William Mulaer, beheaded 15 July 1535, and Arendt de Jagher and John van Gentbrugge, who were beheaded four days later. Ghent presents a long list of martyrs, Anabaptists and, later, Calvinists. Some 252 were to die there in two generations, of whom by f ar the larger number were Anabaptists. In its early days a certain revolutionary spirit can be detected in the Ghent conventicle, e.g., in Matthew Waghens, “archdeacon” burned 1538. The congregation seems to have consisted mostly of refugees seeking shelter. The numerous Anabaptists of Bruges (the inquisitor Cornelius Adrians attests seven hundred living there) were not affected by t he fanaticism of Münster. Bruges eventually produced at least forty-seven martyrs, of whom two died in prison, two were buried alive, and forty-three were burned at the stake. Anabaptism spread in Flanders as far as Oostende and Cassel (today in French Flanders). In Lille (Rijssel), which belonged to Flanders in the sixteenth century, there was also a g roup of A nabaptists. A b arbersurgeon of the town was drowned in the Moselle at Metz on the specific charge of h aving held the doctrine of t he sleep of t he soul. Anabaptists are recorded in Courtrai (Kortrijk) as early as 1533. The Brussels Anabaptists were not so numerous. John van der Mase, from Brussels, who had been at Münster, preached in Courtrai. The fall of M ünster cured him of his theocratic sentiment. Through his preaching and that of Peter van Gelder the local congregation of A nabaptists flourished, and somewhat later (1553) Courtrai was said to be the most Anabaptist town of Flanders. Giles of Aachen was a widely known Anabaptist in the southern Netherlands, and may be taken as representative of the itinerant preachers, who addressed small gatherings in concealed places or larger groups in remote areas, or even, as the medieval preaching friars did, in the streets and marts. Born about 1500 in or near the town of Susteren in Julich, he had been a priest. “Pale, of average height, with a pointed brown beard and large eyes,” he was ordained an elder in 1542 by Menno. Baptizing widely in Flanders, he was suspended from office for adultery in 1552. Reinstated after due penitence in 1554, he was captured; and, although he recanted—to the great shame of the brethren—he was beheaded in 1557 in Antwerp as “Anabaptistarum Episcopus.”

chapter 14.4 / 14.4.a

regrouping: mennonitism  603

4. Lollardy and English Anabaptists to 1540 It will be recalled from the account of the colloquy at Bocholt (Ch. 13.5) that the expenses were borne by a certain English Anabaptist known only by his Christian name. Although precise information is lacking, it is certain that Anabaptists of Dutch and Flemish origin were present in some strength in England prior to 1536. They found in Lollardy a well-fertilized English soil for the sprouting of the Anabaptist seed. The “new Anabaptist was but old Lollard writ Dutch.” We are too far advanced in our narrative to reach back now into the indigenous medieval antecedents of English sectarianism. Suffice it to say that Lollardy had, by t he opening of t he Reformation era, undergone mutations like Waldensianism on the Continent. Eclectic conventicles, espousing free will in contrast to Wycliffe’s stark predestinarianism, but convened in the name of the late medieval Augustinian biblicist, could give ample fellowship to both classical and sectarian Evangelicals from across the Channel. The brisk wool and textile trade in ships plying the north Sea provided Netherlandish Anabaptists opportune ways to the havens of England. The Anabaptists who made the voyage settled in London, Hull, and other eastern port towns, to live there amongst themselves and to remain in their belief largely unmolested, until the news of Münster also crossed the sea. a. Lollardy Lollardy was a f reshly expanding movement of d iverse tendencies from the beginning of t he Tudor dynasty in 1485 up to the last third of t he reign of H enry VIII (1509–47), when in a r oyal proclamation of 1 529 against Luther’s ideas and heresy, “Lollardy” was used four times in the general sense of p opular heresy based on lay speculation. 39 Sometimes

39  Standard works on the Lollar ds include: A.G. Dickens, Lollards and Protestants in the Diocese of York, 1509–1558 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1959); John A. F. Thomson, The Later Lollards, 1414–1520 (London: Oxford University Press, 1965); K. B. McFarlane, Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972); Anne Hudson, “The Examination of Lollar ds,” Bulletin of the Institute of Histor ical Research 46 (1973): 145–49; idem, Selections from English Wycliffite Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978); Irvin B. Horst, The Radical Brethren: Anabaptism and the English Reformation to 1558 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1972). More recent are: Margaret Deanesly, The Lollard Bible and Other Medieval Versions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1920; reprinted AMS, 1978); Christopher Hill, “From Lollards to Levellers,” Documenta Anabaptistica Neerlandica, Bulletin, Commissie tot de uitgav e van 12–13 (1980–81); Margaret Aston, Lollards and Reformers: Images and Literacy in Late Medieval Religion (London: Hambledon, 1984); Donald Dean Smeeton, Lollard Themes in the Reformation Theology of William Tyndale, Sixteenth Century Essays & Studies 6 (Kirksville, Mo.: Sixteenth Century Publishers); Joseph W. Martin, Religious Radicals in Tudor England, being collected articles between 1980 and 1984 (London/Ronceverte, W.Va.: Hambledon, 1989); Paula Presley, “Lollard Influences in the Life and Writings of William Caxton” (M.A. thesis, Northeast Missouri State University, 1989). The last recorded prosecution of Lollardy was in York in 1555.

604  the radical reformation

chapter 14.4.a

among themselves called “Known Men” for their knowing the Lollard Bible or engaged in importing copies of the Bible from abroad, Lollards met in houses or barns; and their principal activity, apart from an occasionally noted celebration of a m arriage within the group or a p ublic hearing on trial, was the recitation of S cripture by h eart as well as the reading of it and the discussing of the selected passages. Evidently some members, particularly women, recited Scripture in an elevated state, having portions committed to memory from the cumulative hearing of favorite texts which many members might be unable to read since they were illiterate. In any case, the principal functionaries recognizable in the fairly abundant trial records are the “readers.” The Lollard Bible that they read and memorized, and among the texts of which the epistle of James seems to have been a marked favorite, stemmed from the impulse of John Wycliffe and circulated in manuscript parts, representing the cumulative work of the learned Lollards, Nicholas canon of Hereford (his the first and almost unintelligible literal version from the Vulgate) and John Purvey (second version). The monopoly of the Lollards on the lay possession and spiritual as well as ethical appropriation of v ernacular text of S cripture and their distinctive experience with the sacred reading or recitation of it drew to a close with the appearance of the English New Testament (Worms, 1526) by William Tyndale and of his subsequent translations of other parts of the Bible. After a s uccession of com plete or partial English Bibles of v arying dependence on the Vulgate and Luther’s translations, there appeared the Great Bible (Paris/London, 1537) under the patronage of Thomas Cromwell. The frontispiece, held to be the work of H ans Holbein, represents God above blessing Henry, who is handing out copies of t he Bible to Cranmer and Cromwel1.40 Henceforth the Lollard assemblies for Bible study were no longer exceptional, for many from among the common people now gathered around the now royally accessible, but once tethered Bible in the cathedral and parish churches, provided by the injunctions of Henry’s Vicar General for ecclesiastical affairs, whose foreign policy it was to bring the German Protestant princes into alliance with his sovereign. At the same time Cromwell was intent upon dissolving the small and then the great monasteries and convents (1536–39), from which lands he was a notable beneficiary (only to be beheaded for treason in 1540 by order of the king out of disgust with Anne of Cleves brought to him as a new queen to cement the German alliance). On his sorry death, the last bishop of London to die in communion with the Holy See, Edmund Bonner, promptly forbade the Bible readings by t he literate to the illiterate in the parish churches, for often the “Godspellers” took the occasion of t heir reading 40  For the theology of kingship represented in this scene, see Ernst Kantorowicz, The Kings’ Two Bodies (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1957) which reproduces the frontispiece.

chapter 14.4.a / 14.4.b

regrouping: mennonitism  605

aloud to exhort those standing about listening to their commentary with trenchant critique in the language of S cripture of t he old order with a scriptural resonance in the confident voice of the Godspeller. The socially widened experience of listening to the new vernacular Bible, opened and explained by royal proclamation, set in motion a new biblicism with different spiritual energies pulsating through the new conventicles that now had in fact a d ifferent text from that of t he declining Lollards, who, for their part, surviving from the age of Wycliffe into an increasing biblicist and nationalist reformation, proved no longer to be possessed of the stuff of martyrs and about this time yielded place to a new Reformation biblical vitality, that of the more zealous Flemish and Dutch Anabaptists. b. Netherlandish Anabaptists in England 41 As early as 1528, the year before he became Lord Chancellor, Thomas More had begun correspondence with Erasmus concerning the Anabaptistarum haeresis. In 1533, in his Confutation, More charged the biblical scholar and translator William Tyndale with holding certain heretical beliefs common to the Anabaptists. Nor was More completely wrong; for, although Tyndale did not agree with the radicals on the matter of baptism, he did share with them adherence to the doctrine of the sleep of the soul42 and was soon to be put to death (1536), with Henry’s approval, at Vilvoorde, the scene of many Flemish martyrdoms. His last words were: “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes.” He had for some time anticipated a fiery death and had written: “There is none other way into the kingdom of life than through persecution and suffering of pain and of every death after the example of Christ. For Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that we should follow his steps, who did no sin.” After his death, “the Christian Brethren” and “Known Men” (1 Cor. 14:9) circulated his Bible. Lollard Sacramentists (in the English sources: Sacramentaries), these knowers of Holy Writ and daring colporteurs, resembled proto-Baptist Brethren elsewhere. English authorities were well aware of a number of Anabaptist beliefs and practices, not only by news from the Continent, but also through the description of this “third faccyon” of the Reformation published by William Barlow in his Lutheran Faccyons (1531). Sometime during the years 1532–34, six English-speaking and two Flemish Anabaptists were arrested in connection with the importing and distributing of “the booke of the Anabaptist confes41  Recent accounts of English Anabaptism are those of Ir vin B. Horst, The Radical Brethren: Anabaptism and the English Reformation to 1558 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1972); and David Loader, “Anabaptism and English Sectarianism in the Mid-Sixteenth Century,” in Reform and Reformation: England and the Continent c. 1500–c. 1750, essays presented to Clifford W. Dugmore, ed. Derek Baker (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979), 59–70. Besides Netherlandish and Münsterite refugees from the Continent, Horst finds native English converts and deals also with sectarian and nonconformist groups and persons who had affinities with evangelical Anabaptists. 42  Tyndale, Works, ed. John Foxe (London, 1573), 324.

606  the radical reformation

chapter 14.4.b

sion.” Investigation elicited the information that they met in London (at the house of one of them, John Raulinges) under the leadership of one Sebastian, “the bishop and reader of the Anabaptists.” During the fall or winter of 1534, Anabaptist leraers from England were present in Amsterdam. A n umber of Anabaptists fled to England after the seditious uprising at Amsterdam of May 10, 1535. It may be that the twenty-five Dutch Anabaptists arrested and tried at Saint Paul’s on 25 May of that year (fourteen of whom were condemned and burned in London and other English towns on 4 June) were participants in that flight. In June of 1535, David Joris set sail for London. However, when he learned of the persecution there, he changed his plans and returned to his port of embarkation, Flushing in Holland. The Rotterdam heiress Anneken Jans, who wrote ecstatically of D avid Joris (Ch. 13.5), together with her husband Arendt, fled from Den Briel in Holland to England in the summer of 1536. In July of 1535, the already mentioned Vicar-General Thomas Cromwell received word from his agents on the Continent that many an Anabaptist, harried by the reaction that followed the collapse of Münster, was taking the North Sea route to the comparative safety of England. Among those escaping to English shores at this time was John Matthijs van Middelburg, whom we have already met in the second, violent uprising in Amsterdam in 1535 (Ch. 12.3) and who, in recoil, espoused the peaceful principles of Obbe Philips when he represented the English Anabaptists at the Bocholt Conference (Ch. 14.5). He was apprehended on his return to London and put to death, November 1538. The Anabaptists are mentioned (and their ideas on baptism opposed) in the Ten Articles of 1535 and The Bishop’s Book of 1537.43 Sometime in 1538, Philip Melanchthon came into possession of a letter written to an imprisoned Anabaptist by the Hessian Peter Tasch (Ch. 17.2). It indicated, in passing, the existence of close and frequent communication between the German radicals and their brethren in England: In England truth advances powerfully in stillness, the Lord alone knows for how much longer. The brethren have openly published a book on the [Melchiorite view of t he] Incarnation of C hrist; I [Peter Tasch] have myself read it. … I feel certain the Lord is with them, and I would have journeyed also in England, if I had not felt in my conscience obligated to be elsewhere.44 Apprised by this letter of the scope of the movement, Philip of Hesse and John Frederick of Saxony sent a warning, composed by Melanchthon, 43

 Also in The King’s Book of 1543.  Günther Franz, Wiedertäuferakten 1527–1626, Urkundliche Quellen zur hessichen Reformationsgeschichte 4 (Marburg: Elwert, 1951), no. 62, pp. 160–61. 44

chapter 14.4.b

regrouping: mennonitism  607

to Henry VIII (September 1538), advising the English monarch to beware of the “Anabaptist pest.” It cannot be merely coincidental that, on 1 October 1538, Henry ordered Archbishop Thomas Cranmer “to search for and examine Anabaptists … and destroy all books of that detestable sect.” The month following, two proclamations to strengthen the realm against these heretics were issued. The first prohibited the printing, importing, and possessing of A nabaptist books; the second ordered all rebaptized persons immediately to leave England. Among the Anabaptists apprehended at this time, a number recanted and were therefore released. Three, however, died for their faith. On 29 November 1538, the already mentioned John Matthijs of Middelburg suffered at the stake at Smithfield, together with the wife of the Fleming Peter Franke. Franke himself was burned the same day at Colchester. He impressed many of the local burghers by his character and piety. We have already mentioned (Ch. 13.5) Anneken Jans and Christina Barents, en route from England to Delft in December 1538 to be apprehended at Rotterdam. The attention drawn to the Anabaptists by public executions induced native-born Englishmen to espouse their cause. On 26 February 1539, Henry felt moved to pardon all English heretics, but he expressly excluded from his clemency those of foreign birth. The general pardon was repeated in July of 1540. This time Anabaptists were specifically excepted and the chief tenets of t heir faith were described, namely, their practice of a dult baptism, their refusal to “Beare office or rule in the Commen Welth” and to swear oaths, their doctrine of the celestial flesh of Christ, and their insistence that “all things be common.” Henry’s Six Articles Act of 1539, the “Whip with Six Strings,” resulted in the execution of over a score of persons during the years 1540–46. Not all the victims were Anabaptists. One Maundervald, “a French groom of the Queen,” and an Englishman named Collins were burned as Anabaptists in the spring of 1540. On 10 April a follower of Menno named Barnes was committed to the Tower of London, together with two “accomplices,” and, as the account runs, “accompanied by 10 or 12 burgesses of this town and 15 or 20(?) strangers, mostly from Flanders and all Anabaptist.” Two Flemish Anabaptists were executed in June of 1540. The larger sociopolitical context in which the foregoing episodes and personalities of Reformation radicality have been sketched is that ecclesio-political situation unique to England in the sixteenth century. Henry VIII, theologically trained, author of The Defense of the Seven Sacraments against Martin Luther (1521) for which Leo X awarded him the still surviving (long intentionally ironic) royal title of Defender of the Faith (1521), had become by Act of Parliament and the consent of Convocation (i.e. the provincial synod of Canterbury) Supreme Head of the Church (1531) as well as liturgically anointed king. England had become thereby one body,

608  the radical reformation

chapter 14.4.b

and, like a triangle, as the Elizabethan divine Richard Hooker would later make clear, when placed on one side, the body politic; on the other, the body ecclesiastical. As of 1531, in no other land of Christendom would ecclesial separatism be so much like treason and dissent in faith so much like blasphemy, for Parliament in two Houses, the Lords being both temporal and episcopal, virtually usurped the role of the two archiepiscopal provincial synods (Convocations of C anterbury and York) and thus assumed something of the quasi-ecclesiastical character of a n ational council and as such heir to the conciliar tradition that had claimed supremacy over the Pope in time of schism.45 Moreover, in an age of national consciousness and pride and with the English language border coincident with the Channel and North Sea coasts back to the remote Celtic headlands of Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, Separatism in England could scarcely ever be separation from English governance: from the King in Parliament to the local magistracy, but rather from the accumulated and post-biblical ecclesiastical and canonical controls above the local parish, from bishops as peers of the realm and lesser prelates, as inquisitors and final arbiters, with the consequence that nonconformity and dissent, separation, and heresy are almost destined to be expressed primarily in terms of polity as in no other land of Christendom save Scotland: as parties ideally within the Church of E ngland or England as a b iblical entity: episcopal, presbyterian, independent (of presbyteries and bishops), and baptist (independent also of priest and parish). Although the preceding terms belong primarily to the succeeding century in the British Isles, their onsets are already evident in the sixteenth century. We shall pick up the story of these thrusts of dissent and notably that of scriptural polity and English Anabaptism in Ch. 30.3.

45

 The Tudor publicist Christopher St. Germain was such a theor ist. I cite her e only my own earlier and no doubt super seded discussion of him in “The Religious Background of the Idea of a Lo yal Opposition,” Voluntary Associations, ed. D. B. Robertson (Richmond, Va.: John Knox Press, 1936), 55–59, 402–8.

Chapter 15

Sacramentists and Anabaptists in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to 1548

T

he Netherlandish Anabaptists extensively colonized the marshy

delta of t he Vistula and surrounding territory in Poland, where in a war-devastated area they were welcomed because of t heir experience with dikes, canals, and the cultivation of swampy ground. The region from Danzig (Gda´n sk) and Elbing (Elba¸g) at the extreme of t he delta to Toru´n (Thorn), where the Vistula takes a sharp turn to the north, may be considered the asylum for Netherlandish religious refugees comparable to Moravia for the Anabaptists from the Alpine territories of the Hapsburgs. The economic motivation in extending toleration to dissenters is clearest in these two areas. In Poland even the bishop of Chełmno (Culm) seems to have winked at the concessions in the interest of the common welfare.

1. The Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania: General Orientation The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth under Sigismund I the Old (1506– 48), a royal Res Publica (Polish: Rzeczpospolita), was the largest political entity in Europe at the opening of the sixteenth century, with a population of almost ten million, ethnic Poles constituting no more than 50 percent of that total. Ruthenians (Rus), the ancestors of present-day ethnic Lithuanians (largely limited to the area of their present republic), Germans, Armenians, Tatars, and Jews accounted for the other 50 percent. Several languages were recognized. Polish and Latin predominated among the nobility and in the affairs

609

610  the radical reformation

chapter 15.1

of state and church. Ruthenian was the chancery language in the Duchy and the lands annexed to the Crown in 1569.1 The kingdom of Poland was composed of five provinces: Great Poland (to the west with its former princely capital, Pozna´n), Little Poland (to the southeast with Cracow, capital of the Commonwealth), Mazovia (to the northeast with the future capital, Warsaw, still then a small town down the Vistula), 2 Ruthenia (to the southeast with Lwów), and the two Prussias. Prussia, ruled as the temporal domain of the Teutonic Knights, had been in part annexed by Poland in 14543 under the Jagiellonian dynasty (1386–1572) in a conflict with this powerful missionary-military order. Then in 1525 the grand master of the Order, Albert, was converted to the evangelical cause in Nuremberg by t he preaching of A ndreas Osiander (Chs. 11.3.c and 25.1.b). Duke Albert became the first avowedly Lutheran prince by p aying homage to Sigismund I i n Cracow, whereupon he received back his now secularized lands as a fief of the Polish king. Henceforth, his domain, with Königsberg 4 as the ducal seat, was commonly called ducal (subsequently, electoral, then east) Prussia. The remainder, royal Prussia, consisted of the lower Vistula valley from Danzig (Gda´n sk) to Chełmno, near Toru´n. The Kingdom of Poland and the vast Grand Duchy of Lithuania had been dynastically linked since 1386 through the conversion of Grand Duke Ladislas Jagiello ( Jagaila), signaled by his celebrative baptism in the Franciscan Church in Cracow and his subsequent liturgical coronation. Herewith had begun the mass baptisms of his magnates and slowly of the still pagan ethnic Lithuanians in Samogitia. Later, Sigismund II Augustus (1548–72), having no male heir, would call the constitutional Diet of Lublin, and by

1  See further,Theodor Wotschke, Die Geschichte der Reformation in Polen (Leipzig, 1911); Paul Fox, The Reformation in Poland (Baltimore, 1924); Karl Völker, Kirchengeschichte Polens (Berlin und Leipzig, 1930); Bernhard Stasiewski, Reformation und Gegenrefor mation in Polen (Münster: Aschendorff, 1960); a more recent work is that of Gottfr ied Schramm, Der Polnische Adel und die Reformation 1548–1607 (Wiesbaden, 1965). The most comprehensive study with the recent literature is that of Ambroise Jobert, De Luther à Mohila: La Pologne dans la cr ise de la Chrétienté 1517–1648 (Paris: Institut des Études Sla ves, 1974); Antanas Musteikis, The Reformation in Lithuania [especially ethnic]: Religious Fluctuations in the Sixteenth Century (New York: Columbia University, 1988). Throughout these and subsequent chapters I draw upon my translated edition of Stanislas Lubieniecki, History of the Polish Reformation and Nine Related Documents, sixty-four plates and three maps, Harvard Theological Studies 34 (Cambridge/Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992) cited as Williams, Lubieniecki. Perhaps the fullest recent account of Lutheranism alone in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is that of Oskar Bartel and Janusz Narzynski, an appendix to the Polish translation of Franz Lau, Marcin Luter (Warsaw: Tamka, 1966), 107–201 with the scholarly literature. 2  Mazovia had the highest density of nobiliar y population, 20 percent, many of the lords being not much more elevated in lifestyle than yeomen with a single servant. With the extinction of the ducal dynasty, Mazovia was annexed in 1529 and organized as four palatinates. 3  By royal decree in 1454; after conflict, by treaty in 1466. 4  Königsberg and Duke Albert, see Williams, Lubieniecki, Plate 7.

chapter 15.1

radicalism in livonia & silesia  611

the Union of Lublin in 1569 the Kingdom and the Grand Duchy would become federally united as a common royal republic, with the Grand Duchy ceding several of the southeastern palatinates, including Kiev, to the Polish Crown. Henceforth the kingship of Poland would be elective by the Diet. Much of t he story of Polish-speaking Protestantism and its radicalization begins with Sigismund II’s reign (Ch. 25). Within Poland there were three semiautonomous municipal territories, corresponding to the city cantons of Switzerland and the imperial free cities of the Empire, each with a partly or largely Germanic citizenry, with the Poles predominating in the dependent villages. These few territorial towns were Danzig, Elbing, and Toru´n. In these and almost all Commonwealth towns Magdeburg urban law (or Lübeck or the Breslau version of Magdeburg law) prevailed. Appellate jurisdiction was to the syndics of M agdeburg as court of highest instance, although the Diet by mid-century would require that protocols so dispatched be also in Polish translation. The whole of P oland and Lithuania, in so far as the population was Catholic, had for some time stood ecclesiastically under the archbishop of Gniezno (Gnesen) as primate, except for the few bishoprics under the lesser archbishop of L wów, and the coastal lands held by t he Teutonic Order. Here the bishops were either directly under the Pope, or to the north, under the archbishop of R iga. The archdiocese of G niezno included the bishopric of B reslau (Wrocław) and hence Silesia, which was temporally under the Bohemian crown (Ch. 5.5). In the whole of Poland there was only one prince bishopric, that of Varmia (Warmia), destined to remain a substantial Catholic enclave almost surrounded by Lutheran Ducal Prussia. Catholics in the palatinates partly or wholly to the east of the Latin-Byzantine rite boundary within the Commonwealth were under the archbishop of Lwów with several suffragans. Lwów itself had cathedrals of three rites: Latin, Byzantine, and Armenian. As for temporal administration, Poland and Lithuania were divided into thirty palatinates, each administered by a n appointive palatine (voivode). The palatinates were in turn divided into over eighty castellanies. The Rzeczpospolita was a l imited constitutional monarchy of m ixed character. The state was administered as a federation of palatinates with a king at the head of all. The Senate, consulted by the king in all vital matters, had considerable advisory powers. Its 139 members, appointed for life by the king, were led by the primate who served as constitutional interrex during an interregnum. The Senate included 15 members of the higher clergy. The Diet (Sejm), or Chamber of Deputies, was composed of some two hundred

612  the radical reformation

chapter 15.1

members of t he lesser nobility (szlachta),5 elected by pr ovincial dietines (sejmiki) to represent the palatinates. At the end of each annual session of the Diet, it met jointly with the Senate to consult on the laws passed, which, when agreed and subscribed to, became, collectively the “constitution. Reform movements gravitated toward Poland with a sure instinct for survival. The influence of J ohn Wycliffe had come to Poland by w ay of Bohemia, through the masters of t he Charles University of Prague, who, at the request of the queen in 1386 and with her endowment, reorganized the University at Cracow, known thereafter as the Jagiellonian University or Academy. In no other lands outside Bohemia did Hussitism (Ch. 9.1) gain such widespread support as in Silesia, Great Poland (especially in Cujavia), and Lithuania. Hussite preachers were constant visitors to Poland and Hussite convictions, at once anti-papal, anti-German, and pro-Slavic, won considerable support among Poles. In Lithuania, a leading prince palatine was for a time an ardent Hussite. In 1500 Catholic nobles of Great Poland had under Utraquist influence insisted upon their right to the chalice at communion. Although within this multi-ethnic, visibly bi-ritual,6 and eventually poly-confessional Commonwealth, much of the story of Polish-speaking Protestantism and the radicalization of its Reformed synods begins only in the reign of Sigismund II Augustus (Ch. 25), it is important at this juncture to take account at least of foreign religious influences entering the Polishspeaking lands of the Commonwealth in the first half of the sixteenth century and, in fact penetrating its peripheral territories and royal fiefs. Five variously puissant currents flowed into ethnic Poland and the Byzantine-rite eastern palatinates of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania: (1) Lutheranism from Wittenberg and Königsberg, which found response especially among German burghers in many Polish-Lithuanian towns, some of t hem almost wholly German-speaking like Danzig; (2) humanism, both Italian and Erasmian, diffused principally from the university city and royal capital (till 1611), Cracow; (3) the Unity of the Czech Brethren (Unitas Fratrum, Ch. 9.1), stemming from what would become their chief educational and administrative center, Leszno, in Great Poland; 5  The term szlachta frequently survives in non-Polish accounts of Polish history because in contrast to other European nobilities it claimed to be a brotherhood of equals without distinctions of rank. Such titles as there were, were honors bestowed from outside—by the Emperor or the Holy See. Even great landowners of hundreds of villages bore no distinctive title other than pan (lord). In the Grand Duchy the greater members of the szlachta were indeed called princes and in most accounts are referred to as magnates. But in Poland even magnates belonged to the brotherhood of the szlachta. 6  Alongside the Byzantine-rite churches in some towns, like Lwów, inhabitants were conscious of a tri-ritual division of the population, the Armenians, Orthodox, and Catholic not to count in Jewish and Tatar liturgical life, often in or near the same towns. And after the Union of Brest of 1596, there would be Byzantine-rite churches of both Roman and Constantinopolitan obedience.

chapter 15.1 / 15.2.a

radicalism in livonia & silesia  613

(4) the Helvetic Reformed current, destined to be most esteemed by the Polish and Lithuanian nobility (some of them formerly of Orthodox allegiance), organized by 1550 into Lithuanian and Little Poland synods; and (5) Dutch, Silesian, and Moravian Anabaptism of v arious thrusts, penetrating the Commonwealth from the mouth of the Vistula, the banks of the Oder, and Moravia (although the Hutterites among them here served more as a magnet and model than as a missionary force).

2. Religious Changes in Lands of the Commonwealth, Mostly Peripheral to Cultural “Polonia” a. Royal and Ducal Prussia In the regions under review in this chapter, the Reformation began in 1518 in Royal Prussia, when a monk and preacher of Danzig, Jacob Knade, renounced his monastic vows, married, and set forth Luther’s views publicly, calling for reform. Imprisoned by the bishop of Cujavia, he was eventually released and allowed to remove to Toru´n, where he continued his activities. By 1522 Danzig had two reform parties, and in 1525 the iconoclastic wing established a popular city government. King Sigismund crushed this movement with the help of Duke Albert, executing a large number of its participants in 1526 and restoring the municipal rule of the patricians and Catholic worship.7 Within a f ew years of t he conclusion of p eace between the king of Poland and the grand master of t he Teutonic Order, who had become Lutheran and then become royal vassal, Ducal Prussia was swiftly reorganized according to Wittenberg directives, becoming the first Protestant territory of Europe. Devastated by four years of war and, in September 1525, turmoiled by a divine-rights peasant uprising (Ch. 4.4), the religiously and economically disordered Prussian regions (royal and ducal) were open to colonization. Duke Albert became an early proponent of religious freedom in the Commonwealth, partly to protect his adopted Lutheranism from the persecution of the Catholics, thus providing a haven for religious dissenters. The first foreigners to take advantage of Prussian toleration were Dutch Sacramentist refugees, who settled in Bardehnen (Bardeyn) in 1526. Spiritualist and Anabaptist tendencies in the Germanic areas and among a few German-speaking townsmen came to the fore. From Silesia, Spiritualists of t he circle of C aspar Schwenckfeld and a number of spiritualizing Anabaptist leaders became strangely prominent in the early phase of Duke Albert’s effort to supply his newly reformed duchy with evangelical clergy. The Scotist convert to Zwickau chiliasm and scholarly proto-Unitarian Martin Cellarius (Chs. 3.1; 10.2) showed up in Königsberg, after having travelled from Wittenberg through various Austrian towns 7

 See the picture of Danzig and picture commentary in Williams, Lubieniecki, Plate 46.

614  the radical reformation

chapter 15.2.a

to Zurich (where he made contacts with Hubmaier and Mantz), Cracow, and Danzig. He was publicly examined on instruction from Paul Speratus, Lutheran bishop of Pomerania (one of the two episcopal sees within Ducal Prussia) in Königsberg, and then put in private custody until at length he was permitted to leave for Wittenberg (February 1526), there to be set right on chiliasm by Luther.8 Duke Albert and Schwenckfeld’s erstwhile protector, Frederick II of Liegnitz (Ch. 5.5), were kindred spirits in respect to reform and were closely related by marriage. Paul Speratus and Duke Albert had been in epistolary contact with Schwenckfeld since 1525. Schwenckfeld was the guest of Albert briefly in 1528 and wrote him subsequently on the doctrine of the Eucharist against the views of Luther, Zwingli, and, in due course, Bucer and Calvin9 Albert, in his turn, described the dearth of evangelical pastors and dispatched his chief counselor, the powerful Baron Frederick of Heydeck, himself markedly favorable to the more Spiritualist interpretation of t he Reformation, to Silesia in order to recruit ministers of t he Schwenckfeldian type for Ducal Prussia. By 1531 the conflict in Ducal Prussia between normative Lutheranism, as represented by Paul Speratus, and the Spiritualizers, became so intense as to necessitate the convening of a s ynod in Rastenburg, 5 J une 1531, and a subsequent colloquy, 29 and 30 December 1531, in the presence of Albert, with Speratus and the other Lutheran bishop George Polentz, for the conservative Lutheran side, and on the Schwenckfeldian side Heydeck, Peter Zenker, and Fabian Eckel of Liegnitz. At least three Anabaptists of a spiritualizing tendency also participated. The first of these was John Bünderlin of Linz, whom we last met in Strassburg (Ch. 10.3.a). The second was John Spittelmaier, who had stood with Hubmaier in the Nicolsburg disputation on the legitimacy of use of the sword by Christians and the propriety of paying war taxes, and who had succeeded Hubmaier. It was under the pastorate of Spittelmaier that the first communitarians had withdrawn as “staff men” to Austerlitz (Slavkov) (Ch. 9.2.d). The third was spiritualizing Anabaptist Oswald Glaidt, who had preceded Hubmaier at Nicolsburg, accompanied him to his martyrdom in Vienna, and then turned Sabbatarian in Silesia (Ch. 5.5.b and 15.3). After the Rastenburg colloquy, Albert decided in favor of t he more conservative Lutheran view and expelled the three aforementioned spiritualizing Anabaptists, 16 August 1532. His lingering Spiritualist sympathies were indicated, however, by t he fact that both Baron Heydeck and the Anabaptist-Spiritualist Christian Entfelder (Ch. 10.3.e) remained promi-

 In his discussions with Luther he talked more about predestination than chiliasm.  For the relationship of Schwenckfeld and Frederick, see CS 2:109 passim; for the visit with Albert see CS 3:341 passim. 8 9

chapter 15.2.a

radicalism in livonia & silesia  615

nent among his advisers. The latter, ducal counselor from 1536 to 1546, was especially qualified for working out the contracts for the ever-increasing number of Netherlandish Anabaptist colonists. Not content with the banishment of the most radical of the Spiritualists and Anabaptists, and alarmed lest the heavy immigration from The Netherlands imperil Lutheranism in Ducal Prussia, Speratus addressed a (now lost) letter of w arning, Ad Bataves vagantes (1534), to which the group centered in Elbing responded in (the also lost) Apologetica responsio Hollandorum (1536), perhaps written by t he Sacramentist William Gnapheus (Ch. 12.1).10 In and around Elbing in Royal Prussia, Dutch Sacramentists were so numerous by 1531 that the Catholic bishop of Varmia (Ermland), Mauritius Ferber, besought the town and then the king to expel them.11 In the same year (1534), Catholic Bishop Ferber of Varmia directed his efforts toward Danzig and besought the magistrates to prevail upon the town councils of the Netherlandish ports of Amsterdam, Antwerp, Veere, and Enkhuizen to hold back the fleeing heretics from taking ship. The Netherlandish authorities, however, were all too glad to be rid of t hem while confiscating their meager baggage. Ferber had to rely solely on action within Danzig itself. He succeeded (partly because of t he hostility of t he guildsmen who regarded the refugee artisans as competitors) in having the Netherlanders driven into Schottland ( Z˙ulawy) on the Vistula, just outside the boundaries of greater Danzig, a territory under the spiritual jurisdiction of the bishop of Cujavia. After 1535 the Netherlandish colonists were predominantly Anabaptist. Whether they were in 1535 of the revolutionary type or the evangelical type is difficult to determine. The fact that the Netherlandish colonists were generally concerned, in the drawing up of their compacts, not to take the oath, nor to bear arms, would indicate their predominantly pacifistic inclination. Compulsory state labor and military service were not required of them in the ducal compacts worked out for them by Christian Entfelder.12 John Dantiscus (Dantyszek), pluralistically bishop of Culm (1530–48), successor of F erber in Varmia (1537–48), humanist and chief advisor of 10

 Felicja Szper (born in Warsaw), Nederlandische Nederzettingen in West Pruisen gedurende den Poolschen Tijd (Enkhuizen, 1913), 192. See Theodor Wotschke, “Herzog Albrecht von Preussen und Wilhelm Gnapheus,” ARG 30 (1930): 122–31. 11  Demographic, but indispensable for an indication of the great scope and intensity of the Dutch colonization, are the following: B. Schumacher, Niederländische Ansiedlungen in Preussen (Leipzig, 1903); Horst Penner, Ansiedlung mennonitischer Niederländer im Weichselmündungsgebiet von der Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts bis zum Beginn der preussichen Zeit (Karlsruhe, 1940); Benjamin H. Unruh, Die niederländisch-niederdeutschen Hintergründe der mennonitisc hen Ostwanderungen im 16., 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Karlsruhe: E. Hassinger, 1955); and “Wirtschaftliche Motive und Argumente für religiöse Duldsamkeit,” ARG 49 (1958): 228. On the evangelical German peasant revolt in Prussia, see Ch. 4, n. 60. 12  ML 2:323.

616  the radical reformation

chapter 15.2.a

Sigismund I, inaugurated a n ew style of p rophetic critique of s ociety in Poland in his elegiac distichs, Jonas propheta or Prophecy of the Destruction of the Free City of Danzig of 1538, wherein he warned his native city of divine retribution for its threefold wrongs against God and the Commonwealth: for its bourgeois conceit, its impiety, and its luxury, and by impiety he had evidently in mind “Lutheranism” that could so easily become Münsterite, for in the course of his diplomatic duties he had had recent occasion to witness13 the “dire punishment of the Anabaptists at Münster.” William Gnapheus left Elbing to become ducal counselor at Königsberg and lecturer at the paedagogium, which would be converted by Duke Albert in 1545 into Königsberg University, the Albertina. In 1542, the former Anabaptist Dr. Gerard Westerburg of C ologne (Ch. 12.4), who had after the fall of Münster come to identify himself with the Reformed, arrived for a ten-months’ sojourn as “Doctor of Holy Scripture and ducal counselor.” Despite the strong favor that the Anabaptist colonists enjoyed at court under the influence of H eydeck, Entfelder,14 Gnapheus, and Westerburg, in 1543 all of the Netherlandish settlers who refused to conform to the Prussian Lutheran Church order in respect to baptism and the sacrament of the altar were, under pressure from Bishop Speratus, driven from Ducal Prussia, though they could not easily be kept from returning. Entfelder himself withdrew from the ducal court in 1546. In the same year, as it happened, an unnamed Flemish anti-Trinitarian Spiritus (possibly the Unitarian Mennonite Adam Pastor, possibly Entfelder himself ) visited Cracow (Ch. 19.2.c). By the summer of 1 549, Menno Simons himself (Ch. 14.1) visited Royal Prussia, laboring a number of weeks to settle differences among his far-flung followers and organize them.15 His interest extended, no doubt, to the settlements of Netherlandish Anabaptists, who by now populated the whole region on either side of t he Vistula from Danzig and Elbing south to the walls of Toru´n and Chełmno; for it was in 1547 that a new phase in ducal Prussian Anabaptism opened with the extensive drainage 13  The Netherlandish por tions of his extensi ve correspondence have been summar ized and excerpted by Henry de Vocht, in John Dantiscus and His Netherlandish Fr iends as rev ealed by their cor respondence 1522–1546 (Louvain/Leuwen: Librairie Universitaire, 1961), 243, 252, 254, 261, 277. He witnessed the punishment of the Anabaptist leaders in the compan y of Godschalk Ericksen, the Danish chancellor. The words in quotations are from Vocht’s summary, Jonas propheta, which was a model for the cour t preacher Peter Skarga, S.J., was translated into Polish in 1649, and is accessible in modern Polish translation by Jan Harchak, Utwory poetyckie (Lwów, 1939), 173–78. 14  There is a letter of 2 Mar ch 1544 by Entfelder to J ohn Łaski, asking him to send his East Frisian church order (Ch. 19.2.a), the Epitome doctrinae ecclesiae (1544), as of possible use in Ducal Prussia. It was printed by Veesenmeyer in Gabler’s Neuestes theologisches Journal 4, no. 4 (Nuremberg, 1800), 309–34; Séguenny, BD 1 (1980) 48; Horst Penner, “Entfelder … hergoglichen Rat,” MGB 33 (1966). 15  Letter of 7 October 1549; Writings, 1030.

chapter 15.2.a

radicalism in livonia & silesia  617

operations in the delta. (The actual designation “Mennonite” is first documented in Poland in 1572).16 Duke Albert’s success, beginning in 1525, in Lutheranizing his largely German-speaking territory, opened the door for the Protestantization of Lithuania, especially because Albert sought to spread Lutheranism in Polish, Belorussian,17 and Lithuanian. Despite the determination of the Polish king and the hierarchy to stem the Reformation tide, “Lutheranism” in Royal Prussia, Lithuania, especially in palatinate Vilna, and Great Poland broke the cultural barrier between the German burghers and the Polish and Polonized Lutheran lords outside their urban colonies and temporarily affected large sectors of the Polish gentry (szlachta). It is more than certain that Albert’s support of L utheranism was to a c ertain degree politically motivated—a Protestant Commonwealth would pose no direct threat to his Lutheran duchy, while a wholly Catholic Poland-Lithuania could. Italian humanism and Erasmianism “began” in Cracow in the same year, 1518, when King Sigismund I the Old, entered into a second marriage with Milanese and Neapolitan Bona Sforza (1494–1557), who brought with her and later drew to herself a large contingent of Italians of various professions and skills. Included in this group was John Coxe who gave his first lecture on Erasmus at the Jagiellonian University and delivered his De laudibus celeberrimae Cracoviensis Academiae in 1518. John Łaski, the future honorary superintendent of t he Reformed synod in Little Poland (1556–60), had studied with and lived in the home of Erasmus in Basel, 1523–25, and had purchased his library, which was brought for him to Poland by t he eminent publicist-theologian Andrew Frycz Modrzewski. It was evidently from Erasmus directly (Ch. 1.3.a), and not through Calvin (Ch. 23.5), that Łaski took over the scriptural concept of t he triplex munus Christi (Chs. 10.2.b., 11.3.b, and 25.2.b), fundamental in the Reformed and then the Minor Reformed (Socinian) Churches in Poland.18

16

595.

 Ibid., 200–1. Szper, Poolschen Tijd 22, 196; cf. first usage in Ger mania, 1545, above, p.

17  The chancery language of the Grand Duch y, successor state to St. Vladimir’s Grand Duchy of Kiev, evolved in differentiation from what is modern Ukrainian in that portion of Byzantine-rite territory that remained part of the Grand Duchy after the cession of its lower palatinates by the constitutional Union of Lublin (1569). The present-day Belorus is roughly the Orthodox portion of the tr uncated Grand Duch y as of 1569 min us ethnic Lithuania (Samogitia). 18  See G. H. Williams, “Erasmianism in P oland: An Account and an Inter pretation of a Major, Ever Diminishing, Current in Sixteenth-Centur y Polish Humanism and Relig ion, 1518–1605,” The Polish Review 22 (1977): 3–50, with all the literatur e on Nor thern humanism in Poland. For Bona Sforza and her r etinue, see Bainton, Women, 3:134–59. Though of use mostly later, mention is made her e for symmetry of Domenico Caccamo, Eretici italiani in Moravia, Polonia, Transilvania (1558–1611) (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1970); and Lorenze Hein, ltalienische Protestanten und ihr Einfluss auß die Reformation in Polen während der beiden Jahrzehnte vor dem Sandomierer Konsens (1570) (Leiden: Brill, 1974).

618  the radical reformation

chapter 15.2.a

The Czech Brethren (Unitas Fratrum),19 especially after their expulsion from Moravia in 1547, enlisted Polish-speaking followers, notably in Great Poland and Cujavia. Although already in Bohemia, they had nominally acceded to Luther’s counsel to abandon their practice of believers’ baptism (not for their own progeny), their former practice and evidently ongoing convictions could well have been a f actor in the rise of r ebaptism in the Reformed synod of Little Poland, with which they would be a few years federated. From 1550 on, the Helvetic20 version of Protestantism, particularly Calvinism, would commend itself to the lords and patricians in palatinates Vilna and Samogitia, Troki, Podlachia, and among almost the entire gentry of Little Poland, who preferred it to Lutheranism because of its partly non-Germanic origin, its recognition of the parity of laymen and clergy in synod (very much like a palatine sejmik), and because of its being considered especially appropriate for a free republic. Thus the theological and the baptismal radicality of the immersionist Polish Brethren (after 1563) would in due course unfold within a synodal context (in contrast to Swiss Baptists), with many features clearly adapted from the cantonal reforms of G eneva and Zurich (Ch. 25.4). The Dutch and German Anabaptism in Royal and Ducal Prussia and on the Silesian and Moravian borders of t he kingdom, and especially the Polish-speaking Anabaptism (Ch. 25.4) eventually to emerge within or to crop out independently in the context of t he synods of t he Reformed Church in Poland and Lithuania, were both by analogy or by genetic succession, regional variants of the same general movement which swept Central Europe in the early sixteenth century. 21 The same social, temperamental, and theological factors which operated in the Zurich Reformation to produce the Swiss Brethren would soon be at work within the Helvetic Church in Poland and Lithuania, producing the radical Polish Brethren. Delay by a quarter of a century in the appearance of Anabaptist characteristics in Polish garb is one with the fact that the Reformation as a whole came somewhat later to this Slavic region. There is 19  They are also called Mora vian Brethren, after their for ced expulsion fr om Bohemia, but especially after their renewal under Count Ludwig von Zinzendorf at Her rnhut and their almost complete Germanization in the spirit of Pietism. 20  The term “Helvetic” is used her e and later in pr eference to “Calvinist” (which has become the useful alter native to the impr ecise “Reformed”) because throughout the whole course of our nar rative Basel and Zur ich, though also Ger manic, were almost as influential in Polish circles as French-speaking Geneva and Lausanne. “Helvetic” is used occasionally in the present narrative in preference to “Swiss” to suggest, with the Latin ter m, both the Ger man and French Swiss. 21  The following is r eally an updated adaptation of the author’ s “Anabaptism and Spiritualism in the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania: An Obscure Phase of the Pre-History of Socinianism,” Studia nad Arianizmem, ed. Ludwik Chmaj (Warsaw, 1959), 215–62 and esp. of the new work in Williams, Lubieniecki, Introduction.

chapter 15.2.a / 15.2.b

radicalism in livonia & silesia  619

evidence, however, that from the very beginning the radical impulses in the common religious revolt which were unwittingly released by the Magisterial Reformation in Germany and in Switzerland penetrated the language barrier and very early imparted to the Polish Reformation a g athered or conventicular character, i.e., sociologically a sectarian stamp, even though it retained the loyalty of t he lower and middle szlachta in Little Poland and eastward into the Ukraine to the middle of t he seventeenth century. The radicalization of the Helvetic Reformed Church in Little Poland and Lithuania in the direction of anabaptist unitarianism (the Minor Church or Polish Brethren), however, lies far ahead in our narrative (Ch. 25). At this juncture we limit ourselves to the colonization and penetration of Poland by Netherlandish, Silesian, and Moravian Anabaptists and Spiritual­ists to the end of the reign of King Sigismund in 1548. b. The Radical Onset to What Would Become the Lutheran Reformation in a Large Part of Livonia The allusion to Menno Simons in the preceding section evokes the memory of his forerunner Melchior Hofmann (Ch. 10.3.c), and of his violent followers who converged on and ruled Münster (1533–35, Ch. 13). It invites us here, on the Baltic rim of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth, within a time warp in our narrative, to retrieve the earliest phase and context of the reforming career of Hofmann and the onset to what became eventually a L utheran establishment along the Baltic beyond Lithuania. Livonia (present-day Finno-Ugric Estonia and Baltic Latvia), under the names of t he Duchy of C ourland and Livonia (Polish: Inflanty), would become (with the dissolution of the Livonian Order) respectively, a fief of the Polish Crown and an incorporated palatinate of the Commonwealth in 1561. 22 The Livonian Confederation (even after its incorporation) was governed through its diet, Ständestag, made up of t he archbishop of R iga and his suffragans of Reval (Estonian: Tallinn) and Dorpat (Estonian: Tartu), of 22  After the secular ization of the Teutonic Order in Pr ussia by Grand Master Albert of Brandenburg in 1525, the remainder of the Order in Livonia under Walter Wolter of Plettenberg (1499/1525–35) tolerated the Pr otestant innovations. When Margrave William Brandenburg, brother of Duke Albert, became (Lutheran) archbishop of Riga, Catholic worship almost ceased in Livonia, while the last master of the Livonian knights, Gotthard von Kettler, in order to secure his secularized territories against Ivan the Terrible, ceded Livonia to Poland, retaining Courland as a hereditary duchy and introducing the Augsburg Confession (1562). The standard history minimizes the sim ultaneous beginnings; see Leonid Arbusow, Die Einführung der Refor mation in Livland, Estland und Kurland (QFRG 3; 1921). My account here depends upon Pater, “The Radical Reformation in Livonia,” Karlstadt, 177–94; Deppermann, Hoffman, part 1; and Werner O. Packull, “Melchior Hoffman’s Experience in the Li vonian Reformation: The Dynamics of Sect Formation,” MQR 59 (1985): 130–46, wherein he sho ws that although Hofmann w as marginalized after the subsidence of the expectations of the common man. Hofmann, going into “internalized exile,” stood ready with his social vision to spr ing into action again in Kiel, Strassburg, and Amsterdam.

620  the radical reformation

chapter 15.2.b

the deputies of t he landed gentry (German), and of t he burghers of t he league of Low German Protestantizing towns, most of them belonging to the Hanseatic League, and (until 1561) of t he deputies of t he Livonian Knights. The early reformation in Riga, center of t he Baltic book trade, and in the other towns of L ivonia was not unlike what went on in Wittenberg during the brief ascendency of Carlstadt (Ch. 3.1), except for its being the metropolitan see of the Baltic. The chief clerical figure of the Old Order was Bishop John Blankenfeld, coadjutor to the aging archbishop (d. 1524), and himself pluralistically bishop of Reval and Dorpat. The Reformation in Livonia began in Riga with two Carlstadtians, Andreas Knopken, installed as archdeacon of t he Church of S t. Peter October 1522, and Sylvester Tegetmeier as pastor of St. James. The surviving theses of Knopken and a diary of Tegetmeier show that both preachers were strongly influenced by the thought of Carlstadt concerning the poor. The Wittenberg Ordinance for the poor was accessible as an appendix in carlstadt’s Von Abtuung der Bilder. The pair of reformers were Carlstadtians also in regard to the Lord’s Supper, liturgy, and images. Hofmann came under the influence of these two Riga Carlstadtians and began to preach in 1523 in Wolmar (Estonian: Valmira), where he was soon imprisoned and expelled by order of the Master of the Teutonic Knights of the Sword in the autumn of 1523. Knopken had come to Riga from Treptow (Polish: Trzebiatów) in the duchy of Pomerania (under the spiritual jurisdiction of the prince bishop of Kamie´n). There he taught school, closely bonded to the ex-Premonstratensian John Bugenhagen (Pomeranus, 1485–1558) who in nearby Bilbuck (Polish: Biały Buk) had been won over by Luther’s On the Babylonian Captivity. Bugenhagen and Knopken had by t heir derision of a p rocession of priests in Treptow incited an iconoclastic riot that led to the carting into a well of the images from Holy Ghost church and the flight of the instigators: Knopken to Riga and Bugenhagen to Wittenberg, 23 recommended for the post there by M elanchthon. The second Carlstadtian, Sylvester Tegetmeier, arrived a few months later. The native of Hamburg, M.A. of Rostock, and chaplain of t he cathedral, once described himself as attentive “when Carlstadt defended his position in Leipzig”—a phrasing from his diary that interestingly overlooked both Luther and Eck in the brief entry. 24 Tegetmeier had studied in Wittenberg in the period of L uther’s absence at the Wartburg and Carlstadt’s brief ascendancy there. Allies in Riga, Knopken and Tegetmeier kept closely in contact with Wittenberg,

23  From his eventual base in the city parish of Wittenberg, Bugenhagen would become the Lutheran reformer of Hamburg, Lübeck, Denmark (in succession to Carlstadt),and of his native Pomerania, among other places. 24  Pater, Karlstadt, 186, n. 78.

chapter 15.2.b

radicalism in livonia & silesia  621

where Knopken’s Commentary on Romans was published, with the authority for discrete censorship granted to his friend Bugenhagen. The first of t en iconoclastic outbursts in Livonia occurred in Riga, where on 10 March 1523 a triptych endowed by a guild of Hanseatic traders, the Brotherhood of Blackheads, for whom both Knopken and Tegetmeier were chaplain vicars, was removed from Knopken’s church and destroyed in the ensuing riot. Public anger had been fueled by Bishop Blankenfeld’s appeal to the Pope to lay Riga under interdict for fostering the Reformation. The reformers’ own churches were purged on 16 March. This tumult in Riga led to the sacking of t he statue of t he Virgin. Other iconoclastic tumults followed in Wolmar, Reval, Dorpat, Felling (Estonian: Viljandi), and Pernau (Estonian: Parnu). 25 It is in this larger context that we now take note of the especially destructive riot in Dorpat, in which Melchior Hofmann featured. His entry into the series of Livonian iconoclastic episodes makes it opportune to introduce this major figure of D anish, Strassburg, and Netherlandish Anabaptism at this earlier and formative stage of his career while he was a nominally Lutheran evangelist. It is well to recognize that the indigenous Estonians and Letts and the Low German artisans were not directing their pent-up anger at the German patricians of t he Baltic towns and the German landed gentry, but rather at the prelates, monks, and friars. The Livonian Hofmannites in their iconoclastic fervor were evidently recruited from two heterogeneous layers of the population: the younger German merchants, journeymen who did not yet hold citizenship in the towns (in Riga gathered as the Blackhead Brotherhood), and the city plebeians of n ative stock. Insofar as peasants were involved in reformation expectations and then caught up in its initial iconoclastic mood, they alarmed their German landlords, who drew back from their alliance in the Ständestag with the German burghers in fear of the sociocritical Spiritualism among the first leaders of reform. The German landowners awaited and would soon rejoice in, a more orderly change in the spirit of Luther as he emerged as defender of law and order against peasants and artisans in religious revolt. Melchior Hofmann (c. 1495–c. 1534), Swabian by birth (Schwäbisch Hall) and a furrier by trade, had been won over to the Lutheran cause by 1522 and had become an itinerant evangelist. For the first time in our narrative we have the possible advantage of b eholding the early career of a major figure of t he Radical Reformation, already quite familiar with his impending impact in Strassburg, Amsterdam, and Münster. His trade took him into the fur country of the Teutonic Order. A gifted tradesman and a popular preacher, Hofmann found a text admirably suited to his needs in Genesis 3:21 when he declared that as God had prepared 25

 Pater, Karlstadt, 188.

622  the radical reformation

chapter 15.2.b

animal skins for the protection of f allen Adam and Eve, so had he for all sinners, the Lämmlein Christ, to be put on in faith (Gal. 3:27). In the fall of 1524 he was established in Dorpat, where he preached against the use of images and the practice of auricular confession as a prerequisite for receiving communion. Like so many others he believed in the right of the laity of the congregational parish, understood as an egalitarian charismatic fellowship, to elect their pastor and deacons, and even of the servants and maids among them ( Joel 2:29) to prophesy under the leading of t he Holy Spirit and to judge Scripture (1 Cor. 14) together (lex sedentium, Ch. 11.4.b). Although purportedly a follower of Luther, he attached as much importance to “the straw epistle” of James as to the Pauline correspondence. It was the preaching of this gospel that had caused the iconoclastic riot, 10 January 1525, that moved from the Estonian parish church of t he Virgin, to the Dominican, the Franciscan, and finally the Poor Clare convents. When the castellan of Bishop Blankenfeld sent cohorts to arrest him, the tumult grew fierier and the throng, egged on by Hofmann, stormed the Cathedral of SS. Peter and Paul itself on the hill, despite the guards posted. All this led to the killing of f our or five persons and the complete destruction of three of the six churches. The city authorities, who were in sympathy with reform, insisted, lest he jeopardize the local situation further, that Hofmann go to Riga, to secure the approval of the two (Carlstadtian) evangelical preachers there, and then to Wittenberg, to obtain from Luther himself a confirmation of his doctrinal soundness. Hofmann wrote back to his Dorpat community from Wittenberg in the spring, prudently and disingenuously dissociating himself from Thomas Müntzer. While perhaps unconsciously deceiving Luther to gain his support, he apparently met Carlstadt in Luther’s home and immersed himself in reading Carlstadt’s writings. In unguarded magnanimity, Luther printed his own endorsing letter, the letter missive of J ohn Bugenhagen, and that of H ofmann himself.26 On his return to Dorpat Hofmann publicly humiliated the wife and daughter of o ne of t he burgomasters during a s ermon, because they were wearing golden chains wrought from a monstrance, which treasure, Hofmann (like Carlstadt) believed should go to the poor. Luther’s support had inflated his self-esteem. This swagger, together with his not entirely unwarranted censure of t heir conduct, alienated the local pro-Lutheran pastors from him. He considered himself a prophet, and referred frequently to Enoch and Elijah, feeling that he was perhaps pre-ordained to fulfill the eschatological role of the one or the other (Ch. 11.4.c). Violently opposed in Dorpat, Hofmann went to Reval (Tallinn) in the fall of 1525. As the preaching offices were filled, he became the “servant of the sick,” supporting himself by his trade and by exhorting. Here, too, 26

 WA 18, 417–27.

chapter 15.2.b / 15.3

radicalism in livonia & silesia  623

he antagonized the settled clergy because of his emphasis on a holy life in addition to faith and because of h is view on the Eucharist. Professional pride on the part of even the pro-Lutheran clergy, combined with theological and social alarm, now brought about his expulsion from Livonia. The prospect of s uccess took him to Stockholm, another center of t he fur trade. Early in 1526 he was there as preacher to the large GermanLutheran community. From Stockholm in 1526, Hofmann directed two pamphlets in Low German to the Livonians, his indignant Formaninghe and his Exposition of the XIIth Chapter of Daniel 27 wherein he ruminated on the last seven years of the world, without, however, specifying their onset. He sided with Carlstadt in rejecting Luther and Bugenhagen on auricular confession. His radicalization of L uther’s predestinarianism in the direction of e xplicit double predestination and incertitude as to salvation of even the elect, was derived from a misunderstanding of the caricature of it in Carlstadt’s Willen Gottes (1523), taken literally by Hofmann as resignatio ad inferum. In his teaching on the Supper also, the influence of Carlstadt was apparent. Appropriating Carlstadt’s views, Hofmann suggested that while it was the serpent that caused the first Adam to eat of the apple (Gen. 3:6), it is the Second Adam “who eats the faithful unto himself.” In Stockholm Hofmann married and a s on was born. Perhaps he intended to remain in Sweden, but Gustav I Vasa feared the evangelist’s temperament would cause disturbances and refused to allow him to preach anymore in public.28 Unbeknownst to the king, Hofmann had already become involved in the iconoclastic riot of December 1526, which led to his incarceration and expulsion.

3. Silesian Spiritualism and Anabaptism, 1527–48: Andrew Fischer, Sabbatarian Anabaptist in Silesia, Moravia, Slovakia We were last in Silesia (except for two references in this chapter) as Caspar Schwenckfeld was taking leave in voluntary exile (Ch. 5.5) to begin his eventful sojourn in Strassburg in 1529 (Ch. 10.3.b). We hitherto only touched upon Anabaptism in Silesia, in dealing with his encounter with

27  An de gelöfighen vorsambling inn Liflangt ein korte formaninghe, ed. August Buchholz, Festschrift für Ober pfarrer Taube zu Riga (Riga, 1856). Das XII Capitel des propheten Daniels aus gelegt, printed by Barthold Krohn, Geschichte der f anatischen und enthusiastisc hen Wiedertäufer vornehmlich in Niederdeutschland: Melchior Hofmann und die Secte der Hofmannianer (Leipzig, 1758). 28  Letter of 13 January 1527; ME 2:779. Later Hofmann will compose his “Explication of the Song [:] Songs [1529],” the title of an article by Calvin Pater, which pulls together also the life of the author to that year, ARG 68 (1977): 173–91.

624  the radical reformation

chapter 15.3 / 15.3.a

two Anabaptists, whose espousal of Sabbatarianism we in fact reserved to this point in the narrative.29 Silesia was first settled by Western Slavic tribes (S´ le¸zanie) in the tenth century in dispute for the rich lands. Between 990 and 1290 Silesia (eventually organized as Upper and Lower) was mainly within the Polish orbit, playing an important part in the formation of t he Polish kingdom of t he Piasts. The princes, many of whom traced their origins to the Piast dynastic line, opted for Bohemian allegiance following the renunciation of s overeignty over their lands by C asimir the Great in 1340. In 1528 as already noted (Ch. 5.5) two Landestage of Silesia elected the newly elected king of Bohemia, Ferdinand Hapsburg, as their sovereign lord. (In the last quarter of the sixteenth century some Polish leaders of the Commonwealth would draw plans to bring Silesia back under the Polish Crown by the election of a Hapsburg candidate to their throne.) The Polish-speaking population of Silesia, following the general trend toward Protestantization among the Germans and Czechs, began forming their own religious movements. The Lutheranism among the Poles became strong not only in the regions which had a m ixed population like Legnica, Glogau, or Brieg (Brzeg), but also in the predominantly Polish areas like Opole and Cieszyn. Both Polish and German Silesians, through their direct and indirect contacts, would become mediators in the spread of new religious notions, including Schwenckfeldianism and Anabaptism, into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. a. Schwenckfeldians and Anabaptists in Silesia, 1527–48 Prior to his departure, Schwenckfeld had engaged in a d ebate on the Sabbath with the two Sabbatarian Anabaptists, Oswald Glaidt and Andrew Fischer (Ch. 5.5). 30 Formerly a convert of Hubmaier at Nicolsburg, then

29  See Gustav Koffmane, “Die Wiedertäufer in Schlesien,” Correspondenzblatt des Vereins für Geschichte der Evangelischen Kirche in Silesien, 3 (1887), 37–55; Ewa Maleczy´nska, ed., Szkice z dziejow S´ la¸ska (Warsaw, 1953); idem, “Gabrielowcy s´ la¸scy,” ORP 6 (1961): 17–28; Leokodia Kowalska, “Anabaptysci s´ la¸scy,” Z dziejow ideologii na Sla¸scu XIVw–XVIw, ed. Ewa Maleczynska (Warsaw, 1956), 151–187; Horst Weigelt, Spiritualische Tradition im Protestantism us (Berlin: DeGruyter, 1973), 107–126; Williams, Lubieniecki, Documents 3 and 7 (George Schomann); and Darek Jarmoła, “The Origins and Development of Believers’ Baptism among the Polish Brethren in the Sixteenth Centur y” (Ph.D. thesis, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky, 1990). 30  The vita of Andrew Fischer has for some time in the scholarly literature seemed complex. Through a possible misreading of a v enerable source (MS Diarium of Conrad Sper vogel, 15, 16–36, in Levoca, Slovakia) and then extrapolations from it, it has perhaps incor porated into it some of the vita of another Andrew (of Kremnica). The fullest treatment of Fischer is now that of Daniel Liechty, Andreas Fischer and the Sabbatarian Anabaptists (Scottdale, Pennsylvania: Herald, 1988). Before this, Fischer was dealt with b y Petr Ratkos, who published from the Slovak version of 1957, “Die Anfänge des Wiedertäufertums in der Slowakei,” Aus 500 Jahren

chapter 15.3.a

radicalism in livonia & silesia  625

a partisan of H ut, and now a p ropagator of S abbatarian Anabaptism, 31 Glaidt was ever the competent enthusiast for the new. Glaidt’s Sabbatarianism grew swiftly out of Hut’s sacred numerology of threes, fours, and sevens. Hut, it is recalled, had scripturally prognosticated the Second Advent from seven years after the killing during the Peasants’ War (Ch. 4.3.c) of the two eschatological witnesses (Rev. 11:3), perceived by him to have been Müntzer and Pfeiffer (Ch. 11.4.c). The return to worship on the Jewish Sabbath before the Sunday of the Roman calendar was always a possibility under the Reformation parole ad fontes. When Christ did not return on Pentecost 1528 as predicted by Hut, Fischer and Glaidt sublimated the meaning of the seventh year as the seventh day, i.e. the Jewish Sabbath, and henceforth attached eschatological importance to the recollective expectancy during worship on that day, while renouncing any further attempt to descry the divine timetable. This would be another instance of what has been convincingly characterized as “the devolution of Hut’s movement.”32 Schwenckfeld of O ssig, with his jus patronatus a kind of protector of A nabaptists in the region, had evidently inquired about

Deutsch-Tschechoslowakischer Geschichte, ed. by Karl Ober mann  and Josef Polisenský (Berlin, 1958), 41–59. Then Waclaw Urban, building upon a Craco w thesis in Latin (1966), developed further the life of Fischer in a number of publications, initially in “Andreas Fischer-Ein radikaler Anabaptist und Spir itualist aus der Slowakei,” Der Deutsche Bauernkrieg und Thomas Müntzer, ed. by M. Steinmetz (Leipzig, 1976), 179–82; then very helpfully in BD Répertoire, 6 (1985): 71–88, and in Der Antitritnitarismus in detl Böhmisc hen Lätndern und in der Slow akei im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert, with a pullout map , BD, Studia et scr ipta 2 (1986): esp. 119–27, 205–209. In both these wr itings Urban was aware of the doctoral thesis of Daniel Liechty , “Andreas Fischer (d. ca. 1540): Leader of the Sabbatar ian Anabaptists in Silesia, Slovakia and Moravia,” Vienna, 1982, which is now published as Andreas Fischer (cited above). Liechty had earlier summarized his thesis, “Andreas Fischer: A Brief Biographical Sketch,” MQR (1984): 125–32. Liechty argues that the deeds of Andreas of Kremnica must be regrouped around another Slovak preacher. Urban cited the unpub lished thesis in BD Répertoire, 80 and in BD Scripta, 120, but he was probably not in a position to assess Liechty’ s work fully. Urban subsequently edited a letter of “his” Fischer, “Eine theologische Auseinandersetzung urn den slowakischen Täufer und Spiritualisten Andreas Fischer,” ARG (1980): 149–60. This is an edition of a letter of 1530 by Andreas of Kreminica from Prešov in Slovakia to the Lutheran pastor Isaiah Lang in nearby Bardejov, accompanied by a hostile Lutheran commentary. Liechty sharply criticizes Urban in “Andreas Fischer: A Case of Mistaken Identity,” ARG 76 (1985), 299–304. Darek Jarmola in r eviewing Liechty’s published thesis, Mennonite Life 44 (1989): 36–37, suggests that disentanglement by Liechty of two possibly distinct figures (Fischer and Cremniciensis, BD 2: 120) may in polemical narrowing indeed deprive “his” Fischer of some biographical data, including a B.A. at Cracow and an M.A. at some Ger man university, but that there is not much difference between “Liechty’s” Fischer and “Urban’s” Fischer (which includes some of the Cr emniciensis of Urban’s ARG article). In the contest betw een the younger American and the older P olish scholar, the difference in assessment may be due to the considerable range in the primary and secondary languages of sources and of the monographic literature, including a contested signature. 31 For the ten Sabbatar ian points of Glaidt and Fischer , see Cerhard F. Hasel, “Sabbatarian Anabaptists of the Sixteenth Century,” Andrews University Seminar Studies 5 (1967), 101–21, esp. 121; 6 (1968), 19–29, esp. 27. 32  Werner Packull, Melchior Hofmann’s Experience.

626  the radical reformation

chapter 15.3.a

their Sabbatarian practice. Glaidt and Fischer, in any event, considered the seventh-day Sabbath as a memorial of creation and of the eternal covenant, confirmed by Christ and the usage of the apostles but displaced “by Pope Victor and Constantine.” Controversy over the validity of t he Mosaic law (Ex. 20:8; Deut. 5:12) erupted between Fischer and Glaidt and the Schwenckfelders in 1528. Glaidt and Schwenckfeld and Crautwald held discussion on the above issue in Liegnitz in the same year. When agreement was not reached a literary controversy was inaugurated. At the request of Glaidt, Fischer wrote On the Sabbath (lost), which was answered by Crautwald. Then Fischer responded to Crautwald with the now lost Scepastes [critic] Decalogi. The information of t hat work was preserved by C rautwald in his answer to Fischer entitled Bericht und Anzeigen. 33 Here Crautwald distinguished between the law of M oses, which was at once natural and ceremonial, and the law of Christ. Mosaic law, including the command to keep the Sabbath, Crautwald averred, was external and so was no longer binding and further it was replaced by the law of Christ. The law of Christ preceded the Mosaic law for it is “eternal law.” Crautwald demonstrated that historically the Christian Church worshiped on Sundays and not on Saturdays. 34 Some of t he mood in general of t he Silesian Reformation before Schwenckfeld’s departure is preserved in the correspondence between Strassburg and Liegnitz, 35 particularly the two letters of Valentine Crautwald to Capito and Bucer in June and July before Schwenckfeld’s exile. Notable, for example, is Crautwald’s warning to the Strassburgers and other proponents of magisterial reform, prompted in part by the Judaizing trend among the local Anabaptists, that Christians should rely more on the everpresent Spirit of Christ than on any rabbi who might instruct them on fine philological points in Hebrew: “Scholastic and sophistic foolishness has been exploded; there follows now, unless the Lord provide otherwise, rabbinical and Jewish perfidy.” This bitter generalization in respect to the trend of P rotestantism outside Silesia is connected particularly in Crautwald’s mind with the Protestant identification of circumcision and baptism, the Protestant willingness to use the coercive power of the state in the realm of conscience, and the specifically Lutheran eucharistic Christology, which

33  Bericht und anlzeigen wie gar one künst und güother verstandt, Andreas Fischer, vom Sabbat geschriben, auch das er Ihnen wider alles rechten sucht, noch als nöthig fur Christentum züohalten mögen schützen, CS, 4:450–518, from which some of the lost items can be sur mised. See Ch. 5.5; the MS Bericht is MS Germ., Staatsbibliothek, Berlin. 34  Lech Szczucki, “Die Auseinandersetzung Valentin Krautwalds mit dem sabbatischen Taüfertum in Schlesien,” Anabaptistes et Dissidents, BD 3, ed. Jean Rott et. al. (Baden-Baden: Koerner, 1987). 35  Elsass 1 (QGT 7), nos. 99, 141, 143–44, 182a.

chapter 15.3.a

radicalism in livonia & silesia  627

he disparagingly compares to the three-bodied monster, Geryon, slain by Hercules (but cf. Ch. 15.4 on the later Fischer). After his removal to Strassburg, Schwenckfeld is to be requested by Lord Leonard of Liechtenstein in Nicolsburg to refute Glaidt’s Sabbatarianism. This Schwenckfeld would indeed do while still in Strassburg in his Against the Ancient and the New Ebionite Error of Those who Confuse Moses with Christ, the Law with the Gospel.36 Valentine Crautwald also wrote again against the Silesian Sabbatarian Anabaptists, as did Capito in Strassburg37 and (in 1538) Luther. 38 Having already dealt with Crautwald’s eucharistic theology and its adoption by S chwenckfeld, we concentrate here on his and Schwenckfeld’s view of baptism, which was for them, like the Eucharist, essentially an inward transaction: regeneration. As for the outward form, Crautwald appeals to John 13:10 and by implication to the fact that the institution of an external baptism is not prescribed in the Fourth Gospel. At the same time Crautwald gives evidence that he is familiar with the practice in Silesia of a “ second” baptism among the Catholics in Poland to regularize or effectuate baptisms performed in the language of t he people, and of a “third” baptism among some Silesian Anabaptists who insist on confessing their quickened faith by full immersion.39 By 1530, following the decrees against the Anabaptists issued by Frederick II of Liegnitz and the warnings against Glaidt and Fischer, who were believed to be secret Judaizers and the agents of foreign powers, the Sabbatarian Anabaptists were expelled from Silesia. Fischer went to Moravia and probably to Nicolsburg where he continued propagating Sabbatarianism. Glaidt left for Ducal Prussia but on the way there met Anabaptist leaders John Spittelmayer and John Bunderlin, who were just forced to leave Prussia because of t he anti-Anabaptist edict of D uke Albert (Ch. 15.2.a), and went with them to Bohemia.40 With the departure of Schwenckfeld in 1529, Crautwald would exercise the leadership of the Schwenckfeldian churches in Silesia until his death (1545), but his position was weakened. Duke Frederick moved to reinstitute the observance of c ommunion, and asked Duke Albert in Königsberg to send him the influential Baron Frederick of Heydeck to help in reforming Silesia. Heydeck, inclined, as we have noted (Ch. 15.2.a), to Spiritualism,

 Ibid.,444–518.  Elsass 1 (QGT 7), nos. 290a, 290b; Gerhardt F. Hasel, “Capito, Schwenckfeld and Crautwald on Anabaptist Theology,” MQR 46 (1972), 41–57. 38  Brief wider die Sabbather, WA. 50, 309–37. See Hasel, “Sabbatarian Anabaptists,” 107, n. 33, and n. 33 above. 39  Ibid, no. 141, p. 168; Jarmola, “Origins and Development of Believers’ Baptism,” 268–72. 40  Wilhelm Wiswedel, “Oswald Glait von Jamnitz,” ZKG 56 (1937): 550–64. 36 37

628  the radical reformation

chapter 15.3.a / 15.3.b

shortly after his arrival in Liegnitz fully succumbed to Schwenckfeldian ideas. The embarrassed Duke Frederick II then appealed to John Hess in Breslau to help Heydeck draw up a mutually satisfactory order for the Lord’s Supper. Hess, however, was unwilling to discuss any compromise formula. In the meantime, the conflict in Ducal Prussia between normative Lutheranism and the Spiritualizers had broken out, and Frederick hoped to benefit from the Rastenburg Colloquy of 1531. But this colloquy did not solve the problem either for Duke Albert in Königsberg or for Duke Frederick in Liegnitz. Heydeck continued to work at an acceptable order for the communion. His lack of s uccess left Liegnitz in relative isolation, with Crautwald and John S. Werner continuing to give Schwenckfeldian leadership there and in Brieg (Brzeg).41 Then, when the Wittenberg Concord of 1536 brought a measure of harmony to the Protestants within the Empire, Duke Frederick felt obliged to fall into line; and, failing to persuade Werner of the urgency of d oing so, he dismissed him in 1540.42 Werner’s dismissal caused consternation among his congregation in Brieg, and attendance at services conducted there by the conservative Lutherans declined. Many of the most devout found their spiritual nurture in Schwenckfeldian conventicles.43 The Duke eventually undertook a number of measures to suppress Schwenckfeldianism. Fabian Eckel, first Protestant pastor in Liegnitz, then Schwenckfeldian, along with John Werner emigrated to Glatz (Klodzko). When Glatz came under direct Catholic control in 1548, the Schwenckfeldian movement suffered severely. b. Gabriel Ascherham: Spiritualist Anabaptist Silesia was also the scene of much of the activity of the Nuremberg furrier Gabriel Ascherham (d. 1545),44 a m an of u ncertain talents whose name is associated with divisiveness among the Anabaptists of Moravia and who may be characterized in the end as a Spiritualist (like Entfelder and Bünderlin). He had practiced his trade in Schärding in Bavaria before his conversion to

41  Adam Reissner (c . 1500–after 1572) of Mindelheim in Upper Silesia, a con vert of Schwenckfeld while they together in Strassburg wrote a vita of Crautwald (Munich Archives), making it clear how much this Hebraist and Hellenist contr ibuted to Schwenckfeld’s knowledge of the Bible and the Fathers. Reissner, who before the encounter had participated in the Sack of Rome, 1527, and collected the eyewitness accounts of it, later wrote on the historic and ideal Jerusalem (Frankfurt am Main, 1563). Horst Weigelt, “Valentin Krautwald: der führende Theologie des frühen Schw enckfeldertiems: Biographische und kir chenhistorische Aspekte” Dissidents du XVIe sièc le entre l’Humanisme et le Catholicisme , BD, Scripta et Studia 1 (BadenBaden: Koerner, 1983): 175–90. 42  Letter to Schwenckfeld, CS, 7, Doc. 318. 43  Schultz, Caspar Schwenckfeld, 166. 44  Wilhelm Wiswedel, “Gabriel Ascherham und die nach ihm genannte Bewegung,” ARG 34 (1937): 1–35, 235–62, and Molecz´nska, n. 12.

chapter 15.3.b

radicalism in livonia & silesia  629

Anabaptism. From Bavaria, missionary activity took him to Silesia, 1524/25, probably in the company of J ohn Hut. They moved about in the vicinity of Breslau, Glogau, and Glatz, and found considerable Anabaptist activity in progress. Hostile contemporary accounts45 describe him in unflattering language, as “lukewarm and limp,” and “following the wind.”46 In spite of his alleged vacillations he established a number of strong Anabaptist communities in Silesia. But the royal edict of 1 August 1528 had put a stop to their growth and forced many to emigrate to Moravia under the same Hapsburg king but protected by a more tolerant edict. Ascherham led one group of two thousand into Moravia, having collected seven thousand guilders for the trip. Probably this numerical superiority of his following was responsible for his selection as bishop of t he Rossitz-Auspitz congregations in Moravia when they combined at Jacob Hutter’s suggestion 1531. The story of Ascherham in Moravia will be told in Ch. 16.1. When the notoriety of Münsterite Anabaptists (Ch. 13) prompted King Ferdinand, personally in attendance at the diet of Z naim in Moravia in 1535, to drive out all Anabaptists, Ascherham and his followers returned to Silesia, especially the towns of Schweidnitz (Swis´nica), Guhrau, Jauer, and Habelschwerdt. In Habelschwerdt in the county of G latz the population came to be divided between Schwenckfeldians and Anabaptists. By 1538 the Catholic pastor Peter Eiserer locked up the church, gave the keys to the town council, and left. It was at Habelschwerdt, on the Neisse and Weistritz rivers, that adult baptism by i mmersion, already alluded to by Crautwald as early as 1528, was first practiced for large numbers. Yet Ascherham himself became something of a S piritualist and circulated a b ook among his companies, Van Unterschied göttlicher und menschlicher Weisheit (1544, lost), which inter alia dealt with baptism and from which a follower, converting to the more disciplined Hutterites in Moravia, quoted when in 1545 he was accepted: “If anyone asks me [Ascherham] whether pedobaptism is wrong, I will say no. If he wants to know the reason, I say there is none.” But until the reason be known, the Chronicler goes on, he still held that pedobaptism should everywhere be discontinued because of misuse.47 By 1545 the Habelschwerdt Gabrielite Anabaptists, the “Unity of t he pious” (Verein der Frommen), had won over almost the whole population. In addition to immersion, they also taught community of goods, apparently more in the sense of f raternal sharing than common ownership. In 1546 Habelschwerdt Gabrielites let the Schwenckfeldian pastor of nearby Arnsdorf use the local church edifice, since “for them the whole town was a temple:” 45  E.g., the Hutter ite Chronik/Chronicle, 250/233 and Wiedertäuferischen Gesindleins in Mähren und Schlesien seltene Beschaffenheit (n.p., 1535). 46  Gesindleinus; cited in Wiswedel, “Ascherham,” ARG 34 (1937): 2. 47  Hutterite Chronik/Chronicle, 250/233; quoted here because it shows how in an Anabaptist leader, as also in Bünderlin, interest in baptism could wane.

630  the radical reformation

chapter 15.3.b / 15.4

They [the Gabrielites] held their meetings in citizens’ houses, offered their common prayers, and chose preachers and teachers from among themselves to expound the Scriptures according to their understanding. The Neisse and Weistritz were the great and general baptismal bath (Taufbad) in which adults were immersed (getaucht) to become initiated (eingeweiht) as members of their covenant (Bund).48 Beginning in 1548, the Gabrielites of H abelschwerdt were persecuted. Many fled to Ducal Prussia, where Frederick of H eydeck secured asylum for them, and others sought sanctuary in Little Poland, where their practice of immersion was to become customary among the Polish Brethren (Ch. 25.4). Most of the Silesian Gabrielites eventually joined either the Hutterites or the Schwenckfeldians. But as late as 1558 a commission would find that there were still Anabaptists active in the county of Glatz; and a new decree would be issued by the Emperor as duke of Silesia, banishing them from all the lands of the Bohemian crown. The same commission also reported that of the pastors active in the county, thirteen were Roman (five absent from their charges and the majority married),49 eleven were Lutherans, five were Schwenckfeldians, and eight half-Schwenckfeldian, half-Lutheran. (Fifteen pastors were removed, and five conformed to the Roman Church.)

4. Anabaptists Settling in Great and Little Poland From Silesia, Moravia, and Hapsburg Hungary (Slovakia) Anabaptism penetrated Polish-speaking territory not only from the Dutchsettled delta of the Vistula but also, as already noted, from Silesia, Moravia, and from Slovakia (for the tripartition of Hungary, see Ch. 28.1).50 In Zips (Slovak: Spiš, Polish: Spisz), in the region of the High and Low Tatras, there were over a dozen Saxon towns, notably Schwedler, Käsemark, Leutschau, and Spitzer Neudorf (Spisská Nová Ves), that, beginning in 1529, constituted an important hearth of communitarian, Antitrinitarian Anabaptism. Nominally a part of Hapsburg Hungary during the whole era, Zips was by mutual agreement governed as a Polish protectorate. The leader of this radical “Lutheran” movement was Andrew Fischer (c. 1480–c. 1540), whom we have already encountered restlessly at work in Silesia (Ch. 15.3), and now again in Moravia, Zips, and Little Poland. His principal following was among artisans, miners, and yeomen, though not without here and there the protection of a s ympathizing knight or town councilor. Born in Lutova (Luttau) in Bohemia on the Austrian

 Aloys Bach, Urkundliche Kirchengeschichte der Grafschaft Glatz (Breslau, 1841), 98ff., 107.  Ibid., 111–12. 50  Ratkoš, “Die Anfänge des Wiedertäufertums.” 48 49

chapter 15.4

radicalism in livonia & silesia  631

border, c. 1480, he studied at Vienna for a m aster’s degree. It was with wife (presumably) and daughter that he came to live in the Upper Austrian town of Wels. He was enlisted as a B aptist by O swald Glaidt, the evident leader when the pair were in Liegnitz. From Liegnitz in 1529, he and his wife, herself also a preacher, reached the German-Slovakian mining town of Kremnica, and then went on to Levoca (Leutschau). His message thus far had not been Sabbatarian. His emphasis was on independence of ecclesiastical and temporal authority without benefit of t he intercession of the saints. Then he entered Zips, preaching in the parish churches of N eudorf and Schwedler, with some of h is followers from Levoca. Two members of t he town council of L evoca favored the new teaching, but under the mandate of Ferdinand, the couple were thrown into the dungeon of castle Cicra (Tschitschwa). Warden Katzianer’s wife, Maxanderin, bravely stood up for the couple but they were nonetheless condemned, Fischer’s wife was drowned, while Fischer himself miraculously escaped death by a mishanging. 51 The community of goods was espoused and practiced by the Zips Anabaptists, and there is evidence that along with their readiness to divorce in order to remarry within the covenant (Ch. 20.3.a), some of t hem also believed in and practiced the community of w ives. Fischer—widowed by the brave martyrdom of his second wife while he was himself miraculously escaping the hangman’s noose—was several times married. One of Fischer’s most articulate converts was John Reyss (Russe). The name suggests that he had been a m ember of t he Orthodox Church. From Reyss, who was captured while Fischer escaped over the border into Poland, we learn that the Zips Anabaptists attached importance to baptism or rebaptism at the age of thirty or thereafter.52 It was in the winter of 1529/30 that Fischer escaped into Polish territory and stayed in Cracow, before going back to Moravia, “where a large number of t he heretical brethren” were to congregate for the purpose of organizing their mission on a large scale.53 Originally, Fischer, like other evangelical Anabaptists, opposed oaths and the use of t he sword. Later, when he came to enjoy the friendship of L eonard of L iechtenstein in Nicolsburg, he, like Balthasar Hubmaier before him, revised his position on the legitimacy of t he use of t he sword by a C hristian magistrate, siding with the Schwertler. Indeed, his renewed espousal of S abbatarianism, consonant with his later Judaizing tendency in sacramental theology and Christology, seems also to have betokened an Old Testament concern for the

 Some of this paragraph and the next assumes the “Urban” Fischer.  This was also the practice of the Bo gomils. Dmitri Obolensky, The Bogomils: A Study in Balkan Neo-Manichaeism (1948). 53  Ratkoš, “Die Anfánge des Wiedertäufertum,” 52 n. 45. 51 52

632  the radical reformation

chapter 15.4

law and the state in a covenantal context.54 Fischer stayed in Moravia as a Sabbatarian Schwertler, whose followers were now practicing circumcision and otherwise keeping to Jewish law as God’s unalterable covenant. As for the doctrine of the Trinity, it is of interest that Fischer’s subordination of the purely human, suffering Son to the stern Father was already a folk belief in the High Tatras region, as can be seen from the popular iconography. 55 By 1540 Fischer, for his part, was back in Slovakia but, with the sudden recovery of F erdinand’s authority in Hapsburg Slovakia, Fischer, on the order of palatine Francis Bebek, was thrown from the walls of castle Krásna Hôrka.56 Some Moravian Anabaptists settled at Miédzyrzecz (Meseritz), 57 north of L ublin. Ascherham founded several Gabrielite colonies not only in Silesia (Ch. 15.3) but also on the Vistula near Chełmno, Swiecie (Schetz), and Grudzia¸dz (Graudentz), himself settling near Wschowa (Fraustadt) where he died in 1545. Wschowa would presently become a center of the immersionist Polish Brethren. 58 Other Moravian Anabaptist refugees found protection from the gentry around Pozna´n (Posen) in 1537. 59 A company of some two hundred Anabaptists, mostly Silesians, were reported on a trek through Toru´n and Grudzia¸dz to Marienwerder (Kwidzyn) on the Vistula, just over the border into Ducal Prussia. 60 Pursued by the same edict of Ferdinand, other groups of com munitarian Anabaptists from Moravia under the leadership of U lrich Stadler (Ch. 16.1), Michael Krammer, and Leonard Lochmaier, settled around Kras´nik Lubelski near Włodzimierz on the estates of t he Te¸czyn´ski family (who were later to become patrons of t he immersionist Polish Brethren around Lublin, Ch. 25.4). It is quite possible that this settlement was negotiated by Jerome Łaski, the brother of the Reformer

54  This may be inferred from Luther’s letter of 1538, n. 18; cf. Liechty, “Mistaken Identity,” 131. Indeed, his followers in Moravia among the Hutterites are called no longer Schwertler, but Sabbataner (after Fischer). Chronik/Chronicle, 86/80; which goes on to sa y: “for they have the spirit of the Münsterites.” 55  Gothic Museum, Folk Art Section, Cracow. 56  Similar accounts by Urban, Antitrinitarianismus, 127; and Liechty, “Fischer,” 131. 57  The name means “place between rivers.” Theodor Wotschke, “Die unitarische Gemeinde in Meseritz-Bobelwitz,” Zeitschrift der historischen Gesellschaft fur die Provinz Posen 26 (1911),163. 58  Unruh, Hintergründe, 104. 59  Stanislaw Kot, Socinianism in Poland:The Social and Political Ideas of the PolishAntitrinitarians in the 16th and 17th Centuries (Warsaw, 1932; Boston: Beacon, 1957), 13 n. 10. But Kot’s source reference should be corrected to read: Acta historica,Vol. 20, no. 95. 60  Schumacher, Ansiedlungen, 154ff.

chapter 15.4

radicalism in livonia & silesia  633

John.61 These Hutterites were very eloquent in their exclusive devotion to Christ as their only King and Lord. Little wonder that King Sigismund I, alarmed at the infiltration of his Catholic kingdom by t he most radical of heretics from the Hapsburg domains of The Netherlands, Moravia, Slovakia, and Silesia, published an edict, 27 September 1535, warning his subjects, and especially the prefects of the border towns and townships, to refuse “water and fire” to the “godless race” and to take measures lest they “enter into relations” with loyal Polish subjects.62 In Cracow, on 5 July 1530 occurred the first hearing of Catherine Zalaszkowska Weiglowa (1459–1539), destined to become the first of only three persons in the entire Commonwealth to be put to death for religion in the entire century.63 Spirited wife of Melchior Weigel, city councillor, Catherine is claimed as martyr in more than one confessional tradition. Although the charge brought against her was that of J udaizing, she was not herself of J ewish parentage. She was destined to be burned, at age eighty, in the Little Market off the main Rynek, at a time when the former Jewish community in Cracow had been exiled (1494) to Kazimierz, in that century on the bank of the Vistula opposite Cracow.64 She is perhaps best identified as a Judaizing Sacramentist, reminding us somewhat of the spirited well-to-do Davidjorist matron Anneken Jansdochter who was drowned for steadfastness in heresy at Rotterdam in the same year (Ch. 13.5). Although Catherine had been slow about preparing the requested deposition of her articles of faith, she was permitted a hearing in the aula of Bishop Peter Gamrat before the vicar spiritual and the official general of the Dominican Order. In answer to one question put to her, she replied that she was unable to comprehend by her reason the belief in the divine unity of the three persons, confessing that she “believed in one God

61  Müller, Glaubenszeugnisse (QGT 3), 211–36; Eduard Kupsch,“Der Polnische Unitarismus,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 5 (1957): 401–40; Ewa Maleczyn´ska, “Ulryk Stadler na tle losów anabaptystów w pierwszej poło wie xvi wieku,” Przegla¸d Historyczny 1 (Warsaw: PAN, 1959): 473–85. 62  MS Edictum contra anabaptistas; MS 168 Ossolinski Museum, vol. 2, p. 51; quoted by Kot, Socinianism in Poland, 11. Andrew Frycz Modrzewski refers to measures being taken in regard to Anabaptists in his letter to J ohn Laski, 20 June 1536, according to S.A. Gabbema, Illustrium vivorum epistolae (Harlingen, 1669). 63  Janusz Tazbir, A State Without Stakes: Polish Religious Toleration in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (New York: Ko´sciuszko Foundation, 1967; Polish: Pan´stwo bez stosów , Warsaw, 1967). There are several sources for the pr otracted case of Cather ine Zalaszkowska Weigel, notably Lukasz Górnicki (c. 1533–73) in his Dzieje w Koronie Polskiej od roku 1538 az do roku 1572 (History in Crown Poland) (Cracow, 1637); modern edition by Henryk Barycz (Warsaw, 1953) and Archiwum Kurii Metropolitalnej w Krak owie, Acta Episcoplia. Roland Bainton gives translations of these tw o sources in Women of the Refor matiuon: From Spain to Scandinavia, 156–59; see also Williams, Lubieniecki, Book 1, nn. 162–67. 64  I indicate the site of her martyrdom on a map in my edition of Lubieniecki.

634  the radical reformation

chapter 15.4

only, but could not understand the three persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” She eventually admitted to certain doubts about her views and was then required to publicly recant her Judaizing errors in the bishop’s aula, and her anguished submission was received by the bishop, who admonished her and all in attendance. But although she received ongoing instruction, by 1539 she was back in the episcopal aula, this time with all the canons and collegiants to witness the final proceedings. Asked about the first article of the creed, she acknowledged that she believed “in God the Father Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth,” adding “he is the creator of all things visible and invisible, whose mind and providence are unfathomable. We are his people and all things are his according to the spirit.” But as for the Son, she replied: God never had a wife nor a son, nor could he. For him there is no need of sons who die, since the Lord God is eternal. He cannot be born and he cannot die. We are his sons and all are sons who walk his appointed way. Although the authorities labored with her greatly, she remained adamant and was pronounced guilty of “ blasphemy.” Another source says she was also condemned because, among the alleged “corruption of t he Roman church,” she included especially the idolatrous “adoration of the host.”65 A few days after the hearing she was conducted to the stake, the whitehaired spiritual stalwart walking “to her death unaffrighted … as to her wedding and joyfully suffered her cruel death.”66 Her heresy alarmed King Sigismund I, who ordered the leaders of the Cracow-Kazimierz Jewish community to be arrested. The chief physician of the community and its rabbi, Moses Fischel, suffered so much in prison that he died soon thereafter amid a general hunt (1539–40) throughout the Commonwealth to track down Christian proselytes to Judaism.67 A decade after the martyrdom of C atherine Zalaszkowska, that is approximately by the time of the death of Sigismund I of Poland (1548) and that of Henry VIII of England (1547), and the departure of Laelius Socinus from Veneto and his first visit to Cracow (1551), the Anabaptist  Williams, Lubieniecki, Book 1, at n. 165.  The last phrasing, about the w edding mood, evidently goes back to another sour ce, the Unitarian historian Stanislas Budzi´nski (d. 1595) in his largely lost v ernacular History, excerpted by the Unitas-Reformed Andrew Wégierski, System a historicochronologicum Ecclesiarum Slavonicarum under the pseudonym of Adrianus Regenvolscius (Utrecht, 1652), reprinted by the Polish Brethren in an enlarged edition as Libri quattuor Slavoniae Reformatae (Amsterdam, 1679), facsimile edition with Latin preface by Janusz Tazbir (Warsaw: PWN, 1973) and excerpted also by Stanislas Lubieniecki, Historia Reformationis Polonicae (Amsterdam, 1685), facsimile edition by Henryk Barycz (Warsaw: PWN, 1971), commonly cited here in my translation as Williams, Lubieniecki. 67  Mojzesz z Bałaban, Historja zydów w Krakowie i na Kazimierzu, 2 vols. (1931), 125–30. 65 66

chapter 15.4

radicalism in livonia & silesia  635

diaspora from the Hapsburg Netherlands, of w hich movement Menno Simons was the chief pastor, stretched along the Hanseatic Coast from Colchester in England and Cassel in French Flanders to Chelmno and Konigsberg while during this same period the High German and Austrian Anabaptist diaspora, now extending from Hapsburg Silesia, Moravia, and Slovakia, had penetrated all Poland along its western and southern borders to transform a movement about to get under way among the Commonwealth lords and burghers of P olish speech and institutions—the (Helvetic) Reformed Synod in Pi n´ czów (1550)—and thus to fortify such beliefs and practices as would later become the distinctive marks of Polish Anabaptism, namely, believers’ baptism by i mmersion, considerable church discipline in relation to the Supper, Spiritualism, Antitrinitarianism, separatism, Erasmian and Evangelical pacifism, and marked concern for the serfs and the poor and perhaps more than elsewhere prominent roles for the sisterhood. These would all be traits of the Minor (Reformed) Churches (Synods) in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as of 1563 (Chs. 25, 27, 29).

636  the radical reformation

chapter 15.4

Chapter 16

The Hutterites, 1529–1540

W e have followed the various reactions

within the Radical Reformation to the Münster debacle, the renewed belligerence of the Batenburgers, the Spiritualism of t he Davidjorists, the ethical rigorism of the Mennonites with their disavowal of the excesses of Münster and their characteristic stress upon the ban, the diaspora of the Dutch dissenters from England to Royal and Ducal Prussia, and the emergence in Silesia and Slovakia of i mmersionist, communitarian Anabaptism under Gabriel Ascherham and of Sabbatarian, Antitrinitarian, communitarian Anabaptism under Oswald Glaidt and Andrew Fischer, who indeed returned to Moravia (Ch. 15.3.a). As we return to the Anabaptists in Moravia, we are properly astonished at the emerging groups of believers’ baptists from many lands, including eventually Italy, several of t hem embittered with each other because of recent or impending schisms. We have seen how several Anabaptist leaders in Moravia had already become disillusioned, like John Bünderlin (Ch. 10.3.a) and Christian Entfelder (Chs. 10.3.e and 15.2.a) As the pacifistic communism of d iverse maturation had even earlier found theological and practical expression by 1529 (Ch. 9.2.d), we should now be prepared to find a consolidation and purification under way comparable to that which we have chronicled in The Netherlands, the more so for the reason that the notoriety of Münster (Ch. 13) justified in the eyes of many protective Moravian patrons King Ferdinand’s redoubled efforts to rid the margraviate of any kind of potentially traitorous or bellicose Anabaptists whatsoever. The analogue of t he Mennonites are here the Hutterites, taking their name from the charismatic Tyrolean apostle Jacob Hutter, who succeeded in welding disparate refugee factions into a solid fellowship of communistic colonies. Just as the first phase of Mennonitism came to a close with the Foundation Book of 1540, so the first phase of Hutteritism comes to a close with a comparably systematic summary of the faith and practice of Hutter’s followers in the (Second) Account of Faith (Rechenschaft) of 1540, composed in prison 637

638  the radical reformation

chapter 16 / 16.1

by an ally of Hutter, Peter Riedemann. We shall first follow the development in Moravia from the arrival of Hutter in 1529 until his death in the same year that Menno left the Roman obedience, 1536.

1. Anabaptists in Moravia From 1529 to the Death of Jacob Hutter in 1536 It will be recalled that the pacifistic staff men under Jacob Wiedemann had withdrawn from Nicolsburg (and nearby Bergen) and established by 1529 a completely communitarian colony to the north in Austerlitz (Slavkov). The complicated and unedifying account which follows of t he personal and ecclesiastical controversies growing out of d ifferences in homeland usages of the refugees and divergent conceptions of the Anabaptist gospel can be visualized geographically by projecting a Y on the map of Moravia and thinking of Au sterlitz at the tip of t he right stem, Rossitz at the tip of the left stem, Auspitz at their juncture, and the original settlement of Nicolsburg (Mikulov) at the base (to the south almost to the present and the sixteenth-century Austrian boundary). At Rossitz (Rosice) a c olony of G abriel Ascherham’s followers was established as early as 1527 (or 1528), and when the main contingent of Gabrielites as a body were driven from Silesia, the colony in Moravia was greatly expanded in 1529 and flourished there until driven back into Silesia in 1535. Alongside the Gabrielites there were an earlier colony of the Unitas Fratrum and a community under the leadership of Philip Plener,1 called after him Philippites. Auspitz (Hostopece), at the juncture in our Y, was also to have two communitarian Anabaptist colonies. The first was established by Philip Plener, who in 1529 led most of h is loyal band of Swabian, Hessian, and Palatinate converts to lands near Auspitz opened up to him by the abbess of Maria Saal. The second was a Tyrolese community established by Jacob Hutter and placed under the immediate direction of h is deputy, George Zaunring. But this is to anticipate. Jacob Hutter in the double task of reconciling the quarreling factions in Moravia and converting and shepherding in the valleys of t he Tyrol was to emerge as the inspirer and reorganizer of the new kind of rigoristically communistic Anabaptism that would take his name and principles

1  Philip Plener, called also Blauärmel and Weber, should not be confused with Philip Jäger or Weber, the associate of Wiedemann in the trek from Nicolsburg to Austerlitz.

chapter 16.1

Hutterites, 1529-1540  639

and slowly adopt and assimilate all the bands and clans whom he had molded together as a new people of destiny. 2 A native of the hamlet of Moos, Jacob Hutter was given the rudiments of an education at the school in Bruneck in the Puster Valley before going on to Prague to learn the trade of hatter, whence his name. He might have heard Müntzer’s Prague Manifesto in 1521 (Ch. 3.2) or come to know John Kalenec, leader of t he Minor Unity then living there (Ch. 9.1). After his journeyman’s travels, Hutter settled down at Spittal in Carinthia. It was probably at Klagenfurt that he first became acquainted with Anabaptists. It is not known by whom he was baptized. Confirmed as an elder and evangelist, he first served the congregation at Welsperg in the Puster Valley, and barely escaped when it was surprised by sleuths in May 1529. With the burning of Blaurock in Gufidaun (Gudon) 3 in September 1529, the last of the original Zurich triumvirate, Hutter became in effect the chief pastor of the Tyrolese Anabaptists. Hutter and Simon Schützinger visited Austerlitz to size up the situation in Moravia. Favorably impressed by t he possibility of e xtensive and safe colonization for his hard-pressed Tyrolese converts, Hutter returned to the Tyrol to organize the bands of r efugees. Over them he placed the already mentioned George Zaunring, who at first got on well with the original founder of the Austerlitz colony, Wiedemann. It is possible that the communitarian church order of 1529 (Ch. 9.2.d) represents the articles of agreement drawn up between Wiedemann and Zaunring. At this point William Reublin now enters the Hutterite chronicle. We have encountered him many times in the course of our narrative as people’s priest in St. Alban’s in Basel, as associate of Grebel from his base in Wytikon, as baptizer of Hubmaier in Waldshut, as the commissioner of Sattler at Rottenburg, and as the associate of K autz and Marpeck in Strassburg. He arrived in Austerlitz in 1530 and found that the company was so large that in winter, when they could no longer hold their services outdoors, they were meeting in three different shelters concurrently. These discussion groups were developing into factions. Reublin was becoming the vigorous spokesman of the faction that was vexed by old Wiedemann’s authoritarian administration of Christian communism. Reublin in his popular sermons and biblical explications after supper was arousing the enmity of Wiedemann and the other elders, until at length he was formally banned. 2  See, for example, Hans Fischer, Jakob Hutter: Leben, Frömmigkeit, Briefe, Mennonite Historical Series, No. 4 (Newton, Kan.: Mennonite Publication Office, 1956). Quotations from Hutter’s letters are translations from the collection of se ven edited in moder n German in this book. Several of these are also printed in Beck, Geschichtsbücher, Müller, Glaubenszeugnisse (QGT 3), and the Zieglschmid and theWolkan editions of the Hutterite Chronik/Chronicle or its translation as The Chronicle of the Hutterian Brethren (Rifton, N.Y.: Plough, 1987). 3  The Italian name of the place, since World War I part of the Italian Tyrol.

640  the radical reformation

chapter 16.1

Among those who sided with Reublin were Zaunring and a U nitas Brother, David by name. In the last tense encounter with Wiedemann, each side hurling the charge of false prophet, Reublin drew up some ten serious charges of maladministration, defective theology, and want of elementary humane consideration. All of t his he rehearsed in a lengthy letter to Pilgram Marpeck back in Strassburg, dated 26 January 1531.4 Among the specific charges were the cruelty and unfairness of Wiedemann and the other elders in the administration of the common property: for example, the fact that more than twenty infants had died for want of milk when their parents had, on entering the community, turned over in some cases as much as fifty guilders; that the elders, and particularly their wives, were better fed and better clothed than the ordinary members; that girls were often obliged to accept as husbands whomever the elders designated as though by d ivine decree; that the elders refused to turn over a fair share in taxes for the war against the Turks despite their promise to their patrons, the lords of Kanitz; Wiedemann held that water baptism is absolutely essential to salvation; that children who die prior to accepting the covenant of b aptismal grace are condemned to hell; and that it is no longer necessary to recite the Lord’s Prayer. Since Reublin will not have been nonpartisan in his report to Marpeck, we are fortunate in having an authoritative account from the other side, not from Wiedemann himself, but from Ulrich Stadler. His Cherished Instructions on Sin, Excommunication, and the Community of Goods (1537),5 though coming from a s lightly later date, is a good specimen of the way in which the conception of Gelassenheit, derived from Denck and Hut, could indeed be combined with a s tarkly authoritarian eldership, with a high view of apostolic baptism administered by the elders as requisite to salvation, and with a communism of production in which yielding sufferingly to the disciplines of l abor becomes spiritually more important than sharing lovingly in the fruits of that labor. In any event, the acrimonious dispute reached its climax when in the dead of winter Reublin and Zaunring, with 350 followers, many of them sick, trudged toward Auspitz, leaving perhaps 250 in Austerlitz under Wiedemann. At this season of bitterness, when the experiment in Christian communism was being blasted by factionalism, both sides were prompted to send letters to Hutter in the Tyrol, imploring him to intervene and if possible to undo the disruption. Hutter responded to the appeals and on investigation “found that the Austerlitz group was most to be blamed.” He returned to the Tyrol satisfied with his work of reconciliation and prepared to urge further immigration thither from the hard-pressed valleys

4  Printed by C. A. Cornelius, Geschichte des Münster ischen Aufruhrs, Vol. 2 (Leipzig, 1855) Beilage 5:253–59. Elsass 1 (QGT 7), no. 240. 5  SAW, 274–84.

chapter 16.1

Hutterites, 1529-1540  641

under the direct control of Ferdinand and the equally fierce prince-bishops of Brixen (Brissone) and Salzburg. Then messengers arrived with the bad news of further disruption in Austerlitz and between Austerlitz and Auspitz. It was discovered that Reublin was not wholeheartedly practicing apostolic communism. He had retained several guilders for emergency use. On the charge of being false, as Ananias (Acts 5), he was removed from office, and Zaunring was elevated to the foremost place in the eldership at Auspitz. But Zaunring, too, failed to live up to the standards of leadership. His wife was taken in adultery. Even more grievous was his failure to bring her before the assembled brethren to be rebuked and banned as any other sinner would have been. Because the congregation was unsympathetic to Zaunring’s leniency and “could not suffer the vice of adultery and whore’s work to be so lightly punished,” they excommunicated him. Once more Hutter and Simon Schützinger came from the Tyrol to reorder the settlers. Schützinger was appointed pastor. At this point, a federation was effected between the two communities in Auspitz, that now led by Schützinger and that led by Philip Plener. The federation was expanded at Hutter’s instigation to include the Gabrielites at Rossitz; and Gabriel Ascherham himself was named bishop of the three groups (Chs. 5.5.b and 15.3.b). Meanwhile, Zaunring, repenting of h is charitable undiscipline, was received back into communion. Dispatched as a missionary into Franconia, he was subsequently beheaded by the bishop of Bamberg. Reublin for his part was through with communitarian Anabaptism and was back in Swabia, in July 1531, reorganizing remnants of h is former congregation near Esslingen. Eventually he was to abandon his Anabaptism altogether, seek to recover his inheritance in his native Rottenburg, and live to old age with his wife, successively in Znaim in Moravia, and in Zurich and Basel. On 11 August 1533, Jacob Hutter returned to Moravia for his fourth, last, and longest sojourn. In his opening address before the federated colonists or representatives in the case of the Gabrielites of Rossitz, he pointed out that the succession of major and minor failings among the chosen of God had been due to remnants of family ties and insufficient separation from worldly considerations, when the elect should have been mindful that their only citizenship was in heaven (Phil. 3:20). By now, Hutter was completely convinced he was called of God in a unique summons to guide the federated groups into the way of the Lord. He visited Rossitz with a view to assuming supremacy there with the consent of Ascherham and his people, persuaded as he was of his own apostolic mission. In this he was temporarily unsuccessful. Back in Auspitz he sought in several assemblies to be acknowledged as chief elder, but both Schützinger and Plener defended their place in the eldership, and their followers urged

642  the radical reformation

chapter 16.1

upon Hutter that for the sake of harmony he not press for such unwonted plentitude of power. The change from respectful reserve toward him to ready acceptance of his apostolic claim came about in connection with the admission of two recent converts after an unusually powerful sermon by Hutter. It was discovered that, like Ananias and Sapphira, this couple had retained for themselves something by way of personal security in case of disaster. While the Diener der Notdurft were investigating the case, Hutter raised the question of whether Schützinger’s wife might not also be a Sapphira. The incredulous congregation at last consented to a s earch of t he Schützinger bedroom on condition that Hutter’s bed and drawers be inspected too. To the shocked surprise of the faithful, Schützinger himself proved to have stashed away several articles, including four pounds of Bernese silver coins. When Schützinger admitted his guilt before the whole congregation, there was enough indignation and chagrin to sweep Hutter into the position of chief elder or Vorsteher of the three federated colonies. For standing by Schützinger, Ascherham and Plener were also deposed. Each of the triumvirate of deposed elders retained portions of their respective followings. Many of t he Philippites returned to Germany, many Gabrielites returned to Silesia, others entered Poland, others reached Ducal Prussia. Hutter was undaunted by the great split (die grosse Zerspaltung).6 He set out at once to implement on the ground, and no longer through deputies, his communistic plans. Convincing his followers that they were indeed God’s elect apart from whom there could be no salvation at the advent of Christ, and among whom as sojourners in the world there could be expected now only suffering and hardship, he released the energies and channeled the skills of his people into the building up of an economically durable and socially cohesive organization with the capacity to colonize and missionize more vigorously and steadfastly than had ever been possible before. For the perhaps envious Philippites and Gabrielites, communism— leaving homeland and kindred to share with fellow pilgrims what they might bring or produce—was but an exquisite form of resignation, Gelassenheit, an advanced expression of suffering as a way of life leading to an inner clarity and peace (Abgeklärtheit). With Hutter it was not the inner peace of a sectarian convent that was the goal of communal production and sharing but the discipline of spiritual warriors persevering against all obstacles until their vindication at the second advent of Christ. Hutter’s direct leadership in Moravia lasted from August 1533 until the late spring of 1535. At the Moravian diet in Znaim, which King Ferdinand attended, the magnates were forced to comply with his sharpened 6

 Chronik/Chronicle, 195–200/177–81; 233–38/250–57.

chapter 16.1

Hutterites, 1529-1540  643

edict of 9 May 1534 that all Anabaptists be routed from the margraviate in order to forestall a development in Moravia comparable to the disaster in Münster. The Hutterites, Philippites, Gabrielites, and all the other Anabaptists who had sought asylum in Moravia were driven from their homes by the often reluctant nobles, and spent Easter in the fields and forests. At Whitsuntide, Hutter yielded to the entreaties of h is followers to seek personal safety in the familiar recesses of t he Tyrol and from there to continue to guide them. Forty guilders had been placed on his head by Ferdinand. While his people were wandering about without shelter, Hutter wrote his vehement Remonstrance to the governor of Moravia, in which he movingly reassured the lords of the peaceful intentions of the brethren and pleaded for a plot of the God-created earth where they might sojourn. And then he rebuked the lords for yielding “to that horrible tyrant and enemy of divine truth, Ferdinand.” 7 Back in the Tyrol, Hutter wrote another letter, referring to the “horrible, raging dragon [who] has opened his craw and jaws … to swallow the woman clothed with the sun, who is the bride and spouse of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rev. 12:1).8 More significant than this identification of t he persecuted remnant with the woman of t he wilderness and of t he persecutor with Satan or Antichrist in the apocalyptic language of t he Seer of t he Revelation was Hutter’s assurance that he himself was an apostle of the latter days. In two of his letters he even used the Pauline gesture: “With my own hand have I written this.” The letter just quoted, his last to the Moravians, opens with the following assimilation of t he apostolic epistolary style which must be quoted in full to convey Hutter’s own sense of m ission and the Hutterite conception that they were themselves the righteous remnant: Jacob, servant of G od and apostle of a ll His elect saints everywhere far and wide in the land of Moravia, called [to this office] in the powerful grace and unutterable mercy of God, elected and made worthy thereof by H is grace and groundless mercy without any merit of m ine own but rather solely by r eason of H is overwhelming faithfulness and magnanimity, who has esteemed me faithful and made me worthy as His servant of t he eternal and new covenant, which God first established and made with Abraham and his seed forever, and has given and entrusted to me His divine, eternal Word, [placing it] in my heart and on my lips along with the heavenly riches of His divinity and His Holy Spirit that lie [otherwise] hidden above in the tabernacle of the eternal

7 8

 Letter 4, Fischer, Jakob Hutter, 26ff.  Letter 8, ibid., 62–63.

644  the radical reformation

chapter 16.1

and invisible God in heaven, who is there as Lord and King of kings and who has blessed me with His eternal and heavenly blessing and has through me quickened and activated His divine and eternal Word and His will in letting me proclaim it, giving testimony thereto in the sharing and cooperation of t he Holy Spirit, evidenced in powerful miracles and signs [in me] whom He has established as watchman, shepherd, and guardian over His holy people, over His elect, holy, Christian congregation, which is the bride and spouse, the beloved and gracious partner of o ur dear Lord Jesus Christ—purchased, purified, and washed through His precious blood … to [you] the called and chosen saints, the fighters and witnesses of God and of our dear Lord Jesus Christ, to [you] my most beloved brethren and sisters and to [you] my longedfor and elect dear little children whom I have borne and planted through God’s Word, grace, and gift from on high … from the bottom (Abgrund) of m y heart I w ish for you grace, peace, and eternal life and eternal mercy from Almighty God and great love and faith, victory, strength, and the overcoming of the world.9 Perhaps in no other passage from the literature of the Radical Reformation can one come so close to the overwhelming sense of d ivine election and vocation in the face of all principalities and powers as in Hutter’s final apostolic salutation. In the main body of this letter and the others there is no assuagement of the suffering. The burden, rather, of t his last epistle and all the others is that suffering is the expected lot of a ll who truly follow Christ, alike the prophets who were stoned before him and the apostles who have been martyred after him. The assurance of u ltimate vindication after “battles and struggles,” preceding and accompanying Christ’s imminent return on clouds of glory from heaven, is that “pillar of fire” within, which is faith in Christ and a burning resolution to persevere until the glorious end. The interiorization of apocalyptic suffering within the hardship of communal labor and mutual possessionlessness and diminished conjugal and family comforts can be understood as another aspect of “the devolution of Hutian Anabaptism,” to the extent that the composite comradery of A nabaptists of disparate impulses under Hutter’s strong apostolate remembered John Hut as sympathetic to the Wiedemann pacifist contingent in Bergen and during the Nicolsburg Disputation of Hut with Hubmaier in 1527. Of great significance for the original eschatological vision of some of the constituent groupings that went into Hutterite confederation of Gemeinden is

9  Full English text, R. Friedmann, Hutterite Studies (Goshen, Ind.: Mennonite Historical Society, 1961), 203–13.

chapter 16.1

Hutterites, 1529-1540  645

the preservation among them of a German translation of some form of Peter John Olivi’s Lectura super Apocalypsim (without ascription of authorship; Ch. 11.4.a).10 It is as good a place here as any to anticipate the fact that the Christocentric but not explicitly Unitarian pacifist communitarian Racovians, when there come several exchanges of delegations between Raków and Slavkov (Ch. 27.3), will be stunned by the reserve and coldness, even hauteur, of the Hutterite leadership toward them, among other points on the doctrine of the Trinity. The Nicene Creed will have been at that time (1569) synodally disowned (1563) by the Polish Minor Reformed (although not the Apostolicum), but it had already fallen into desuetude in Hutterite writings, largely based as these were on Scripture. A scriptural sanction of Triadology is the Johannine Comma (1 John 5:7–8) prominent in the Deutero-Taulerian, Denckian, and Hutian apprehension of t hree depths in baptism and the three salvific actions of t he Godhead (cf. Bünderlin and Entfelder, both once of the Anabaptist community in Moravia, on the Trinity, Ch. 11.2.c). The Comma had also functioned in the projection of the three eras of history ( Joachim, Olivi, Hut). The Polish Brethren, quite content by that time with the Apostles’ Creed (threeness without consubstantiality and divine persone) are aware that their beloved irenicist scholar Erasmus had (nonchalantly) demoted the Johannine Comma as an ancient interpolation in his Novum Instrumentum (1516). Thus while both Polish Brethren and the Hutterite Brethren will have in common in 1569 the threeness of the Apostolicum, au fond their interlocutors will be coming from different sections of Scripture and tradition and will differ in their chagrin. To return to Jacob Hutter: he was sustained by his faith and eschatological hope, was steadfast to the end. In the night of 19 November 1535 he and his wife were captured in the house of a former sexton in Klausen (Chiessa in Italian Tyrol) near the village in which Blaurock had been martyred. The tremendous value of the testimony of the long-hunted heresiarch prompted the authorities to transfer him under reinforced guard to Innsbruck, while his wife was held for a hearing before the local magistrate. Between repeated hearings with the application of torture and discussions with a series of Catholic clerics, Hutter remained obdurate in his refusal to yield the names of his associates or to discuss the manner of conducting his mission. He seems to have been less interested in particularizing the articles of his faith than other Anabaptist prisoners, because he was as certain that he was dealing with a m inion of Satan as were his interroga10

 Robert Friedmann, “A Hutterite Book of Medie val Origin,” MQR 30 (1965): 65–71. Werner Packull, while recognizing the Joachimite component in the Hutter ite Codex, sees it as Melchiorite in origin, “‘A Hutterite Book of Medieval Origin’ Revisited,” MQR 56 (1982): 147–68; see below n. 25.

646  the radical reformation

chapter 16.1 / 16.2

tors. In fact, they became so vexed by his claim to have the sole truth of the gospel that, to exorcise the devil from him, as they said, they resorted to the unusual torture of placing him bound and gagged in freezing water and then after he was partly frozen placing him in a warm room where they poured brandy on his lacerated flesh and set it aflame. Though there was a consensus among the local magistrate that for fear of popular sympathy he should be beheaded in secret, Ferdinand personally intervened to insist upon a public burning in Innsbruck 25 February 1536. His wife back in Brandzoll was transferred to Guf idaun, where a l earned and tactful man was charged with bringing her back to her inherited religion. After her escape she was to be captured and executed at Schöneck (1538).

2. From the Death of Hutter in 1536 to the “Account” of Peter Riedemann in 1540 After Jacob Hutter left Moravia, he was succeeded in Auspitz by John Amon, a strong and inspiring leader. Amon, a c loth weaver by t rade, had come from Bavaria. He was among some eighty persons who left BöhmischKromau in 1529 to settle in Austerlitz. He worked under Jacob Hutter’s direction in the Tyrol 1530–34, when the persecutions there were at their height. After the fearful times which Hutter describes in his Remonstrance, Amon rallied the stricken Hutterite people from the forests and fields, and on Easter 1536, after exactly a y ear of t ribulation and homelessness, they celebrated their semiannual Lord’s Supper in a forest. Then the elders deliberated on their problems, and decided to divide themselves into small groups of six or eight, and severally to find work and a place to stay. In this they were soon successful, as the nobles were eager to have them back, once the insistent demands of F erdinand had abated. Within a d ecade of t heir expulsion from Auspitz and elsewhere they would be able to establish many new communities. But the years after 1536 are obscure. The Moravian nobles outwardly complying with King Ferdinand’s demands, must have secretly obeyed their own hearts and made places for the returning Brethren, for in the next decade we hear less of persecution. In 1537, Ulrich Stadler returned from a brief experiment in Poland, and together with former Auspitz and Austerlitz brethren, began to rebuild the desolated sites at Austerlitz. During Amon’s administration, missionaries (Sendboten) were sent to many places in the Empire, with a view to systematic coverage. Four-fifths of these missionaries died as martyrs. Amon’s extant writings include, besides several hymns, an epistle of comfort to brethren enslaved in Admiral Andrea Doria’s galleys. Among the most prominent and more fortunate of t he Hutterite missionaries was Peter Riedemann, an outstanding doctrinal writer, called by some the second founder of the brotherhood. Born in 1506 in Hirschberg in

chapter 16.2

Hutterites, 1529-1540  647

Silesia, he was first encountered in our narrative (Ch. 7.5) in 1529 in Gmunden where he wrote his first Rechenschaft,11 a deeply spiritual work that placed him doctrinally close to his contemporary brethren Leonard Schiemer and John Schlaffer. Even though at this time he was not yet a Hutterite, the Hutterites faithfully preserved this early Account in numerous manuscript codices. In 1532, Riedemann escaped from the prison and went to work first with the Anabaptists in Linz, but soon thereafter went to Moravia to join the Hutterite brotherhood, then still in its formative years. About this time he married, and six beautiful letters that he wrote to his wife have been preserved.12 In 1533 he was sent as a missionary to Franconia, where he was again imprisoned (1533-35). In 1535 he was released on his promise not to preach further in Nuremberg territory, and he returned to Moravia, again by way of Upper Austria, where he met remnants of the Philippite Brethren. This group stemmed from the Philippite mission before 1535, and now, as a r esult of P lener’s flight from Moravia, was isolated and cut off from the original source of spiritual direction. Riedemann willingly shepherded them. He later wrote a number of epistles to the Philippites in Linz, Steyr, and Gmünden. In 1535 the Hutterite Brethren sent him on a mission to Hesse, in an attempt to straighten out John Bott, Hessian friend of Melchior Rinck (Ch. 17.1), who had joined the Hutterites for a time, but had later been expelled for denying the existence of angels and devils, and was now issuing harmful propaganda in Hesse. Riedemann returned to Moravia just after the arrest of a n umber of Brethren at Steinabrunn (Lower Austria), to whom he wrote several letters of comfort in their imprisonment. Then he set out again, visiting all the groups he could in the Austrias, the Tyrol, Swabia, and Württemberg on the way back to Hesse. He induced many to migrate to Moravia. Some of these emigrants were captured, and Riedemann wrote letters of comfort to them. Soon he himself was captured in Hesse, probably in February 1540. He was at first chained and kept in a d ark dungeon in Marburg. In spite of all the imperial edicts, Landgrave Philip consistently refused to execute Anabaptists for their faith (Ch. 17.1). In keeping with this reluctance to persecute on religious grounds, Riedemann’s confinement was soon eased. He was transferred to the castle at Wolkersdorf, and kept in the castle. It was here that he wrote in 1540 his great doctrinal work, the second Account (Rechenschaft), taking his title from 1 Peter 3:15: “Always be prepared to make a d efense to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is

11 12

 Ch. 7, n. 112.  ME 4:327a.

648  the radical reformation

chapter 16.2

in you.” This second Rechenschaft is a c onsciously Hutterite document.13 Riedemann was prompted to write it in the hope that the landgrave, who had never interrogated him personally, might “at least know why he is keeping us imprisoned.”14 Although the work of only one man, the Account was quickly accepted by t he Hutterites as a d efinitive statement of t heir faith, and was later to be submitted as such by them to the lords of Moravia in 1545.15 The Account is divided into two parts, a l onger one on the twelve essentials of f aith, and a shorter section of seven special meditations. The confessional part is based on the Apostles’ Creed, but does not follow it systematically, nor does it correspond exactly to the Twelve Articles (which Hubmaier wrote in Zurich and had printed in Nicolsburg, Ch. 9.2.a). The Account goes on to discuss faith, doctrine, the Creation, original sin, law and gospel, baptism, the ministry, the Lord’s Supper, the community of goods, marriage, governmental authority, whether rulers can be Christians (they can, but only if they will divest themselves of t heir worldly glory), warfare, taxation, the manner of worship, the ban, and the whole life, walk, dress, and adornment of C hristians. Little emphasis is placed on original sin, none at all on justification by faith, but rather on the Spirit of Christ working in the regenerate of the pure community without spot or wrinkle (Eph. 5:27). Riedemann emphasizes disobedience as the source of sin, and sanctification of life as the proof of inner rebirth and obedience. There is but one reference to Lutherans, who, “if they say that Christ is their righteousness while continuing to live in all abomination and lasciviousness, draw near to God with the mouth while the heart is far from him.” He passionately refutes the charge that the Brethren teach works righteousness, “For we know that all our work, insofar as it is our work, is naught but sin and unrighteousness; but insofar as it is of Christ and done by Christ in us, so far is it truth—just and good, loved of G od and well-pleasing to him.”16 13  The full title is Rechenschaft unserer Religion, Leer und Glaubens von den Brüdern so man die Hutterischen nannt ausgegangen. Printed by one Philips Vollstavendt, presumably in Neumühl, 1565, copies survive in a few libraries, including a Bruderhof in South Dakota (exact location not reported) and the Uni versity of Chicago. There are three modern reprints (1870, 1902, 1938) and a translation by Kathleen E. Hasenberg of the Br itish Museum copy of the original imprint, An Account of our Religion, Doctrine, and Faith Given by Peter Riedemann of the Brothers Whom Men Call Hutter ian (Hodder & Stoughton in conjunction with Plough, 1950; 2d ed., Rifton, N.Y.: Plough, 1970). It w as contemporaneously better kno wn to the outside w orld than the Article Book of 1547 (and 1577) because it was one of the few early printed Hutterite writings (1565). 14  Epistle 21, of 1540/41, sent to John Amon and Leonard Lanzenstiel, ME 4:260. Amon is indeed in Grete Mecenseffy, ed., QGT, 11–13 Osterreich 1–3 (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1964, 1972, 1983), 2:276. 15  Ibid. 16  Account, 355ff.

chapter 16.2

Hutterites, 1529-1540  649

Riedemann uses traditional language to describe the Atonement,17 placing, however, the emphasis upon the personal experience of being “grafted into Christ,”18 and thereby becoming “the children of his covenant.”19 The Account gives a g ood idea of R iedemann’s view of t he Church: “We also are the children [of the covenant of freedom] if we let ourselves be sealed by it and submit and surrender ourselves to its working.” 20 “The Church of Christ is the basis and ground of truth, a lantern of righteousness, in which the light of grace is borne and held before the whole world … that men may also see and know the way of life.” 21 The Church for Riedemann is not only passively the worshiping and economically coordinate congregation of saints but it has also a regenerative assignment in the world. To discharge this function, the Church must be preserved free from all spots and wrinkles which means the use of the ban for the exclusion of backsliders, testifying to scriptural righteousness to the world and the dispatch of missioners into the world.22 Some of R iedemann’s ideas come from Hubmaier, including specifically the points in refutation of i nfant baptism. Denck, Hut, and Stadler contributed to his thought, but since the Account was written in prison without access to works of reference, it is unwarranted to deny Riedemann a high degree of originality and literary skill in its composition. His chief source was, of c ourse, the Bible, to which over eighteen hundred references are made. Its moving synthesis of s criptural phrasings commended the Account in the eyes of the Brethren. The Philippites, whom Riedemann had befriended during their confine­ment in Passau (at about the same time Riedemann was composing his Account in a Hessian prison), produced fifty-one hymns which have become the nucleus of the Ausbund, the oldest Anabaptist hymnbook. It is still used today by the Amish Mennonites of North America. 23 Besides the Philippite core, there were several hymns written by Felix Mantz, Michael Sattler, and John Hut. The hymns besing the suffering Church in a pitiless world, enhearten the pilgrims, and look forward to martyrdom as the fate of sincere Christians everywhere. 24 The death of Ulrich Stadler in 1540 and of John Amon in Schäkowitz two years later left the Hutterites without a leader. They naturally turned to Riedemann, who was still a “prisoner” in Hesse. Although his confinement was so mild that escape would have been easy, he was reluctant to violate 17

18 19  Ibid., 34ff.  Ibid., 61.  Ibid., 63. 21 22  Ibid., 68.  Ibid., 39.  Ibid., 131–32. 23  First printed in 1564. 24  The name “Amish Mennonites” comes from their founder, the aged native of Bern, Jacob Ammann, born in 1661. The “Amish” emigrated to the New World, where they live in isolated communities. They dress in characteristic attire, use small horse carriages, and forbid an education of more than eight years for their children. 20

650  the radical reformation

chapter 16.2 / 16.3

the friendship and trust of his lenient jailers. The story of his eventual decision to do so, of his return to Moravia, and of the history of the Hutterites after 1540 will be told in Ch. 26.1.

3. Theology and Institutions of Hutterite Communism At this point it is appropriate to turn our attention to the idea for which early Anabaptists in Canton Zurich had been reproached, which the Münsterites under Rothmann and John Beukels of L eiden had built into their abortive new Jerusalem, and which now Jacob Hutter, in a saner, quieter, and lasting way had made the distinguishing mark of the principal contingent of Germanic Anabaptism in Moravia, namely, Christian communism, the sharing of goods and production. We have already noted the earliest communitarian developments first in Austria, Peter Riedemann’s reflections on the Lord’s Supper (1529) (Ch. 7.5), and then in Moravia (Ch. 9.2.d), based partly on the necessity of mutual aid, partly on the pattern of Ac ts 2:44. It remains to discuss the peculiar features of the Hutterite communism of production and the theology and other sources of the idea. The simple sharing of goods must be distinguished from the programmatic communism of p roduction which we encounter in Hutter and his followers. Through the ages there have been repeated attempts to assert the communistic principle, based in some cases on an ascetic contempt for the world (the monks) or else on a very practical understanding of the Dominical injunction (Luke 18:22) to sell and give to the poor (the Waldensians). Communism was, of course, practiced by all the monastic orders with their vow of poverty. But personal poverty was ever and again vitiated by corporate wealth. It remained for the original (and later the Spiritual) Franciscan friars to go farther than communism of production and to seek to hold down production, in order to achieve not merely a common life but a common poverty. When the Spirituals, at the close of the thirteenth and beginning of t he fourteenth centuries, tried to assert that, like Adam in Paradise, neither Jesus nor the apostles had owned anything, Pope John XXII condemned this teaching as heretical. Significantly, a c opy of t he Postil on the Apocalypse, by one of the condemned Spiritual Franciscans, Peter John Olivi (Ch. 11.4.a), survives much revised and in several copies among the Hutterite codices. 25 We have also seen how pacifistic communism was endemic in Bohemian and Moravian sectarianism throughout the fifteenth century (Ch. 9.1).

25  ME 4:11–13. Packull, over against Friedmann (above, n. 10), locates the or iginal source of the Hutter ite copyists in Melchior Hofmann’s Ausslegung der heimlic hen Offenbarung Joannis (Strassburg, 1530). Deppermann, Hoffman, Verzeichniss no. 11, leaving open whether Hofmann himself was drawing on Olivi, “A Hutterite Book Revisited,” and in a larger context, “A Reinterpretation of Hoffman’ s Exposition” (Ch. 11.4.a), where Packull shows how much Melchior Hofmann’s thought drew upon Joachimite and neo-Joachimite themes.

chapter 16.3

Hutterites, 1529-1540  651

The majority of the monks and even the friars, although they shared a common life and a common goal, were religious individualists, each monk, friar, and nun working for his or her own salvation. The Hutterite coenobites, besides being a c ovenantal sect of w edlocked couples with their progeny, claimed to be the true Church, i.e., the community of redemption, outside of whose fellowship (Gemeinde) there could be no salvation. The Hutterites were more than married coenobites: they were a household (Haushaben) of faith. Theirs was a communism of love and production, marked by a readiness to suffer in Gelassenheit and by hope in ultimate vindication.26 At some earlier stage in the development of t heir communal theology, they must have become acquainted with a number of communitarian efforts in ancient Church history besides the communism of t he church in Jerusalem recorded in the Acts. Their principal sources were Sebastian Franck’s Chronica, Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History, and the writings of Hubmaier against Zwingli. They came in due course to adopt as spiritual ancestors the Therapeutae described favorably by Philo of A lexandria in his On the Contemplative Life and excerpted by Eusebius as though descriptive of early ascetic Christians.27 The Hutterites also found substantiation for their communism in the Pseudo-Clementine Epistle V, allegedly written by C lement, Peter’s successor in Rome, to James the Lord’s brother and first bishop of Jerusalem as preserved in the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals (c. 850) 28 and transmitted to the radicals (Münster, Moravia) by S ebastian Franck’s summary in his Chronica (1531). This spurious letter belongs to the Pseudo-Clementine cycle of literature which developed in Ebionite, anti-Pauline circles. Neo-Pythagorean and Stoic ideas of a golden age were here conflated with the memory of a primitive communism in the early church of Jerusalem. In the ninth century the spurious Clementine letters were incorporated into the PseudoIsidorian Decretals, long to be an authoritative collection of c anon law. 26  Robert Friedmann, “Christian Communism,” ARG 46 (1955): 203. For the sociol ogy and economics, see Peter Klassen, Economics of Anabaptism, esp. chap. 4, “The Economic Philosophy of Communal Living.” 27  Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, 2:17. The reference to the Therapeutae is in a Hutter ite document of a date beyond the limits of the present section, but there can be no doubt but that the Hutterites knew this and the following material, well before 1577, the date of Peter Walpot’s The Great Article Book, article 3 of which is translated and introduced by Kathleen E. Hasenberg, tr., with intro. by Robert Friedmann respectively, “A Notable Hutterite Document Concerning True Surrender and Chr istian Community of Goods,” MQR 31 (1957): 22–61, especially in item 147. A fuller study of The Great Article Book (c. 1577) was presented by Robert Friedmann in “Eine dogmatische Hauptschrift,” ARG 28 (1931): 80–111, 207–40; 29 (1932): 1–17, and edited by him in Glaubenszeugnisse, 2 (QGT 12), 49–317. 28  Editio princeps, Jean Merlin, Concilia (Paris, 1524); Migne, PL, 130; critical edition, Paul Hinschius, Decretales Pseudo-Isidorianae et Capitula Angilramni (Leipzig, 1863). On the transmission, see n. 29 below.

652  the radical reformation

chapter 16.3

Pseudo-Isidore himself was no doubt confident that in this case, at least, he had at his disposal authentic decretals of t he apostolic see! In 1526, Clement’s Epistles were published by J ohn Sichard in Basel as a v aluable testimony to apostolic institutions.29 Franck excerpted the most important letter in his Chronica of 1531. The ancient Jewish-Christian forgery has “Peter” quoting from an old man who reports: There is a s aying prevalent among the Greek philosophers to the effect that there is in reality neither good nor evil in the life of man; but that men call things good or evil as they appear to them, prejudiced by t he use and custom of l ife. For not even murder is really an evil, because it sets the soul [of the victim] free from the bonds of flesh. [Then more to the same effect about capital punishment and adultery.] But neither, say they [the ancients], is theft an evil; for it takes away what one does not possess from another who has it. And indeed, it ought to be taken away freely and openly [from the current possessor]; but that it is done secretly, that is rather the reproof of his inhumanity from whom it is secretly taken. For all men ought to have the common use of things that are in this world; but through injustice one says that this is his, and another that this is his, and so a division is caused among mortals. In short, a certain man, the wisest among the Greeks [Socrates], knowing that these things are so, says that friends should have all things common. Now in “all things” unquestionably wives are included [Plato, Republic]. He [the old man musing] says also that, as the air and sunshine cannot be divided, so neither ought other things to be divided, which are given in this world to be possessed in common, but should be so possessed. 30

29

 Divi Clementis Recognitionum, libri X (Basel, 1526; 1536). The Recognitions, deriving from an earlier Ebionite milieu probably in Syria, gets the name from the recounted experience in the third-century Christian romance of a family of two parents and three sons who, having been scattered, through strange circumstances come to recognize each other thr ough the intervention of Peter. The Recognitions, dated between a.d. 360 and a.d. 380, survive only in Latin condensation by Rufinus of Aquileia. Closely related are the twenty Homilies, purporting to be ser mons of Peter during his journeys, redacted in their present form between a.d. 325 and a.d. 381. They are preceded by a letter of Peter, another of Clement, each to James (the Just, or James the Less), “bishop of bishops” in Jerusalem. The Pseudo-Clementine corpus includes, besides the Homilies and Recognitions also two letters of Clement about subintroductae. Thus there are three letters of “Clement” and one of Peter’s in this corpus. In the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals there are five letters of Clement, joined with other f alse decretals from Pope Clement to P ope Melchiades inclusi ve, introduced by Pseudo-Isidore with a fabricated letter from Aurelius of Car thage to Pope Damasus (366-84). Of these five, the first is from the Pseudo-Clementine corpus, from “Clement” to “James.” The fifth letter, the one embedded in the Hutter ite codices, was fashioned by Pseudo-Isidore from the pseudoClementine Homilies, 10.5. 30  Slightly modified translation from ANF 8, 193f.

chapter 16.3

Hutterites, 1529-1540  653

In the inset quotation from the Recognitions, only what is there italicized entered Pseudo-Isidore as the fifth epistle of Clement. In this edition of Epistle V ( IV), it goes on from the italicized lines to a quotation from Psalm 133 (Vulgate: 132):1, “Behold how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity.” It is astonishing in any case that the italicized portion of this excerpted passage went into such an influential collection of papal letters and conciliar canons, as that under the name of Isidore of Seville (d. 636). This communtarian passage did not, however, pass directly from canon law to Münster and to Moravia, but proceeded, as noted in the narrative above, by way of t he excerpt in Franck’s Chronica, the section “Vom Ursprung und Ankunft allerlei Irrsal im Amt der Messe” (1st ed., Strassburg, 1531, fol. 495). Here Franck in the margin, alongside his German summary of the passage, says: “Read the fourth epistle of Clement, concerning the community of g oods of t he first Christians.” Franck’s reference is to the collection by Sichard (1526). 31 Because V Clement in Pseudo-Isidore is called IV Clement by Franck, it is under this latter numbering that Robert Friedmann discusses it in ME 1, p. 621. Friedmann notes that Franck, unfazed, includes the phrasing on the community of wives, omitted by Riedemann, then by Walpot, but which Franck himself to his credit discusses as probably spurious. On this how little still did he know! It is from Franck’s version, then, that a later Hutterite work quotes in muted form “Clement,” supposedly writing in a.d. 92, as follows: A common life is necessary for all, especially for such as fight, blameless, for God and desire to follow the life of the apostles and their disciples. For truly in this world things should be held in common by all men, but through acquired wickedness, one saith: This is mine, and another: That is mine, and thus a division takes place among men—but not out of the counsel of God. Therefore hath the wisest of t he Greeks (Pythagoras) said and recognized: Just as the sunlight cannot be divided, and the air—even so should one have all other things common in this life, and not divide them.

31

 In the Pseudo-lsidorian Decretals the passage is in fact part of Epistola 5 but is said by Hinschius, Decretales Pseudo-Isidorianae, 65 n. 11, not to be in the MS he is pr imarily editing but in another. Hans von Schubert was the first to identify Clement V as a sour ce of communism, Der Kommunismus der Wiedertäufer in Münster und seine Quellen (Heidelberg, 1918).

654  the radical reformation

chapter 16.3

He [Clement] cites Psalm 132:1 and the usage of the first church in Jerusalem that all things are given for common use. 32 The same section of t he Article Book (1577) goes on to quote Augustine (Epistle 48), Chrysostom, and Theologia Deutsch to the same effect. It would be a mistake to infer from all this that Hutterite (or Münsterite) communism derived from a third-century forgery. The communitarian impulse was in fact present from the beginning of Anabaptism in 1525 and had found complete implementation in Moravia under Wiedemann already in 1529 well before the publication of Franck’s Chronica and among the Unity of t he Brethren sixty years before that. But once communism was established, the Hutterites eagerly extended their ancient pedigree and with considerable cunning in fact identified a large number of surprisingly communitarian passages and allusions in the whole of the New Testament and Old Testament in substantiation of their claim to represent the faithful Gemeinde, the community of God’s elect from Eden to Moravia. 33 The Hutterites believed that God from the beginning had commanded the communitarian way of l ife, in which all human activities could be considered sacred. In the epistles of Hutter and Stadler, and in the Account of Riedemann, and the articles of the later Hutterites, one can distinguish indeed a fourfold motivation in Hutterite communism. First, there was the eschatological, paradisaic interpretation of the community as the true Church, driven into the wilderness (Rev. 12:6) which by spiritual diligence and self-discipline could be converted into a garden. The Church is thus a provisional paradise in which, writes Ulrich Stadler, c. 1537, there is no his, mine, thine: The children of G od should group themselves and hold together here in misery after they have been driven out. … In this time a p lace has been given to the bride of t he Lamb in which to dwell amid the wasteland of t his world, there to put on the beautiful bright linen garment and thus to await the Lord until he leads her after him here in tribulation and afterward receives her with eternal joy. The time is now. … The Roman 32

 This is the v ersion in the Article Book (1577) of P eter Walpot (Ch. 26.3), drawn from Chronica: Geschichtsbibel, 349 n. See further Hasenberg and Friedmann, “A Notable Hutterite Document,” MQR 61. The wording in Franck and the Hutterite article differ. Friedmann puts the two versions in parallel columns in “Hauptschrift,” 235. It is of inter est that it w as the Hutterite version that indicates in the margin that the wise Greek was Pythagoras, but Socrates was the original referent. See Peter Walpot, Das Grosse Artikelbuch, c. 1577, ed. Friedmann, Glaubenszeugnisse (QGT 12), 236. 33  Most of the items pr eceding the r eference to Clement ar e in f act careful analyses of biblical texts susceptible of a communitarian interpretation against detractors of the Hutterites, especially from among the Lutherans.

chapter 16.3

Hutterites, 1529-1540  655

Church … spews out all the children of God and only drives them into the wilderness. … We are never for ourselves but for the Lord. We have in truth nothing for ourselves but of the Lord. We have in truth nothing of our own, but rather all gifts in common, be they temporal or spiritual. … So judge all ordinances according to propriety and opportunity for the good of the saints and take hold with strength and bring it to pass that property, that is, his, mine, thine, will not be disclosed in the house of t he Lord, but rather equal love, equal care and distribution, and true community in all the goods of the Father according to his will. 34 Second, there was the motive of b rotherly love, the strong longing for sharing, togetherness, and unity, even as with the Father and the Son. Riedemann put it this way, on the basis of John 17, and related texts: Community, however, is naught else than that those who have fellowship have all things in common together, none having aught for himself, but each having all things with the others, even as the Father hath nothing for himself, but all that he hath he hath with the Son, and again, the Son hath nothing for himself, but all that he hath, he hath with the Father and all who have fellowship with him. Thus all those who have fellowship with him likewise have nothing for themselves, but have all things with their Master and with all those who have fellowship with them, that they might be one in the Son as the Son is in the Father. It is called the communion of saints because they have fellowship in holy things, 35 yea, in those things whereby they are sanctified, that is in the Father and the Son, who himself sanctifieth them with all that he hath given them. Thus everything serveth to the betterment and building up of one’s neighbor and to the praise and glory of God the Father. 36 The true imitation of Christ was attained through brotherly love in the overcoming of s elfishness. Without giving up private property, the Hutterites argued, such a unity could not be achieved. The community was all-important. 34

 Cherished Instructions on Sin, Excommunication, and the Community of Goods, SAW, 280ff.  The Latin of the r eceived Apostolicum from the fifth century or later (b ut not in the Forma Romana vetus before 341 or other ancient for ms) inserts into the second ar ticle communio sanctorum which is susceptible of several meanings if sanctorum is taken as a neuter or as a masculine—generic human—genitive plural. For the several meanings of the communio sanctorum (not found in the Nicene Creed), see F. J. Badock, “Sanctorum Communio as an Article of the Creed,” Journal of Theological Studies 21 (1919–20): 106–26. 36  Riedemann, Account, 43. In the last paragraph I have altered the translation from “community” to “communion.” 35

656  the radical reformation

chapter 16.3

The Hutterites’ Gemeinschaft had the double connotation of f ellowship and community of Goods. Gemeinde meant both the congregation and the community or commonwealth. When all selfish desires had been destroyed in Gelassenheit, God’s Third, there was the mystical principle of Gelassenheit, which could be variously understood as “surrender,” “yielding to God,” or even as “conquest of self.” “Not hard the word of God would be / If from self-interest men were free.”37 Hutter and Stadler expressly regarded the vexations and squalor of living closely together as the best test of resignation. Fourth, there was full and absolute obedience toward God and the eldership, for in the community, outside of which there could be no salvation, was embodied the whole will of God. In the mystical Gelassenheit, expressly derived from the Taulerian corpus (Ch. 2.2), were linked letting go and yielding up goods and perhaps even one’s will in Gütergemeinschaft, for in the fully articulated article 3 o n communism (1577) the two concepts, mystical-voluntarist and scriptural-social-voluntarist were brought together as the title-summary of the third article. 38 When all selfish desires had been destroyed in Gelassenheit, God’s positive commandments and those of the Church could be obeyed as one. 39 Obedience became the means to freedom in Christ, just as it was for the monks and friars. Living cooperatively was the Hutterite alternative to the “holy poverty” of the Franciscans. There was a clarity of perception about their communism, a conviction that it involved not only surrender but in the end life’s fulfillment: Now, because what is temporal doth not belong to us, but is foreign to our true nature, the law commandeth that none covet strange possessions, that is, set his heart upon and cleave to that which is temporal and alien. Therefore, whosoever will cleave to Christ and follow him must forsake the taking of created things and property, as he himself also saith [Luke 14:33]: “Whosoever forsaketh not all that he hath cannot be my disciple.” For if a man is to be renewed again into the likeness of God, he must put off all that leadeth him from him—that is, the grasping and drawing to himself of created things—for he cannot otherwise attain God’s likeness.40 37  The Great Article Book, article 3:34, ed. H asenberg and F riedmann. See further Williams, “Popularized German Mysticism in the Rise of Anabaptist Communism” [particularly that of Theologia Deutsch], 290–312. 38  Peter Walpot (on whom more, Ch. 26.3), Der Grosse Artikelbuch, ch. 3, tr. Hassenberg and Friedemann, “Von der christlichen gemainschafft und gelassenheit der güetter.” The quotations from Theologie Deutsch (chs. 51, 52) are on pp. 231f. 39  Stadler, Cherished Instructions, SAW, 284. 40  Riedemann, Account (1540), 89. We noted onsets to communism in his reflections on the Lord’s Supper, First Account (1524), ch. 7, n. 112.

chapter 16.3

Hutterites, 1529-1540  657

In evangelical communism, man was ideally freed from this world and from self-love and thus enabled to realize his true nature. While in their sermons and letters man, here, is generically every reborn and disciplined human being, actually with their appropriation of t he Gospel of All Creatures in the Müntzerite-Hutian line, Man means also the men of the commune, for theirs was a vision of the hierarchy of being, of the submissive subordination of the lesser in the greater creature, as of Christ to his Father, and hence of w ives to their husbands, and all members to the apostolic leadership, with the men separated from their women and children even at meals. Although brave women have already become prominent in our narrative, and will continue to be prominent in some chapters ahead, in general, after the heroic founding period, one hears very little about the identities of Hutterite women. The Hutterite colonies survived but mostly within Moravia. As for Upper Hungary, modern Slovakia and sub-Carpathia (that became part of the Ukraine), there is evidence that a certain Lord Nicholas of Szlopna sent a messenger in 1535 to the Hutterite leadership in Moravia to secure a preacher to convert his peasants. Leonard Lochmaier was sent on this mission, preaching through an interpreter. Hutterites and Unitarians, the latter perhaps from Transylvania, would penetrate sub-Carpathia at a later date in the century.41 The Golden Age of the Hutterite commune lies still ahead in our narrative (Ch. 26).

41

 Bela Krisztinkovich, “Glimpses into the Early Histor y of Anabaptism in Hungar y” [with new material on Andrew Fischer], MQR 43 (1969): 127–41. Maria H. Krisztinkovich “Wiedertäufer und Arianer im Kar patenraum,” Ungarn-Jahrbuch (Munich: Hase & K oehler, 1971), 50–63.

658  the radical reformation

Philip, Landgrave of Hesse

chapter 16.3

Chapter 17

Anabaptism in Middle Germany, 1527–1538

O ur attention to the interweaving strands

of radical thought and action in the Reformation Era has carried us around the margins of t he Empire from Switzerland and South Germany to the Austrias and Moravia; from Alsace to The Netherlands along the Hanseatic Coast to Poland and back to Moravia. We have overlooked thus far the development at the hub since we were last in central Germany in the course of the Peasants’ War. We must therefore drop back chronologically in our narrative to carry forward the account of Anabaptism in Middle Germany. The specific territories under consideration are, from west to east, the landgraviate of H esse,1 then a s olid cluster of f our ecclesiastical territories, notably Fulda and Würtzburg, then the two Saxonies. The rulers of Saxony (roughly the equivalent of late medieval Thuringia), ducal and electoral Saxony, the one Catholic and the other Lutheran,2 were throughout much of the period of our narrative in vigorous opposition to the lenient Landgrave Philip I the Magnanimous (1504/18–67) as to the best way of coping with the sectaries or, as Luther called them indiscriminately, fanatics (Schwármer).3 To the end Philip would evade the mandate of t he Diet of S peyer against 1  The landgraviate of Hesse, the latter ter m designating a ter ritory amoeba-like, in often changing its contours over the centuries but in our period before 1547 roughly corresponding in contours to the present Bundesland Hessen, included Nassau and Dillenberg, hence reaching the Rhine and bordering on the Saxonies to the west. 2  The electoral succession in the Ernestine line (since Leipzig treaty of 1485) was Luther’s first protector, Frederick the Wise (d. 1525), his brother John the Steadfast (1525–32), and John Frederick the Magnanimous (1532–47). After the Smalcald War in 1547 the electoral dignity would pass to the Albertine line with a considerable change in boundaries. For the actual reason for the sobriquet Magnanimous, see below, p. 663. 3  Two studies of Luther and Melanchthon on the Radicals are those of Karl G. Steck, Luther und die Schwärmer (Zollikon/Zurich: Evangelischer Verlag, 1955) and John Oyer, Lutheran Reformers against Anabaptists: Luther, Melanchthon, and [Justus] Menius and the Anabaptists of Central Germany (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1964).

659

660  the radical reformation

chapter 17 / 17.1

Anabaptists, refusing to impose the required capital punishment of t hem, although he was hard-tried by the Münsterites and against them as rebels he made common cause with the ousted bishop of Münster in the siege (Ch. 13). In the Hessian region there were at least three major currents of Anabaptism that swirled and eddied.4 In eastern Hesse and Thuringia the leading figure was Melchior Rinck (17.1). In the portions of Hesse exposed to the direct or indirect influence of Hofmann and the Münsterites the leading figure was perhaps Peter Tasch (17.2). The third current was made up of Hutterite emissaries and recruits, of whom Peter Riedemann of Silesia, then Austria (Ch. 7.5), then Moravia (Ch. 16.2), imprisoned in Hesse, may be mentioned as the most distinguished representative. Besides these three evangelical Anabaptist currents, there came to the surface in central Germany a rather large number of sectarian vagaries and excesses. Because of the extraordinary tolerance of Philip and the consequent concentration of Anabaptist propagation in his realm, the bulk of the ensuing narrative will be centered in Hesse and the borderlands toward the two Saxonies; and a whole section (Ch. 17.3) will be devoted to the consolidation of the Hessian territorial church as the result of the great Marburg disputation with the Anabaptists in 1538.

1. Philip of Hesse and Melchior Rinck: The Legacy of John Hut in Middle Germany from the End of the Peasants’ War to the Fall of Münster Landgrave Philip I of Hesse (1504–67) began in 1518, at the age of fourteen, his rule of t he varied dominions of Hesse. A decisive military leader and tactician, Philip had been primarily responsible for bringing to a close the Franconian-Thuringian phase of the Peasants’ War at Frankenhausen (Ch. 4.3.c) in 1525. At about the same time as Elector John the Steadfast (152532) of the Ernestine line, namely in the fall of 1 526, Philip introduced

4  The main modern collection of source materials for the region is that of Günther Franz,et al., Wiedertäuferakten 1527–1626, Urkundliche Quellen zur hessischen Reformationsgeschichte 4 (Marburg: Elwert, 1951). Comprehensive studies with the literatur e are by Ruth Weiss, “Die Herkunft der osthessischen Täufer,” ARG 50 (1959): 1–16, 182–99; and J ohn Oyer, “Anabaptism in Central Germany,” MQR 34 (1960): 219–48; “Faith and Love,” MQR 35 (1961): 5-17. The major earlier inter pretations for this region are those of Paul Wappler, Die Stellung Kursachsens und des Landgr afen Philipp von Hessen zur Täuferbewegung (Münster, 1910) and Die Täuferbewegung in Thüringen von 1526–1584 (Jena, 1913), both with considerab le documentation. For the influence of Jacob Strauss in this r egion and his help in secur ing for Rinck his pastorate at Eckhardtshausen, see Joachim Rogge, Der Beitrag des Jacob Strauss zur frühen Reformationsgeschichte (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1957). On the theolo gy of Rink, see Erich Geldbach, “Die Lehre des Hessischen Täuferführers Melchior Rinck,” Jahrbuch der Hessischen Kirchengeschichtlichen Vereiningung 21 (1971): 114–35.

chapter 17.1

middle germany, 1527–1538  661

the Reformation 5 at a combined diet and synod gathered in Homberg. He had been hitherto reluctant to call a territorial diet because his nobles had strong ties with the Ernestine house of electoral Saxony, while he himself had stood in closer relationship to the Albertine branch in ducal Saxony. He now had a religious reason to favor the Ernestine Saxons protecting Luther and thus a new basis for cooperation with his own Hessian nobility in other matters that might come before the diet. Philip’s chief divine at the synod-diet was Francis Lambert of Avignon (c. 1487–1530).6 Son of a papal official, Lambert had entered the Observant branch of the Franciscan order at the age of fifteen. A good preacher, he was marked for promotion by his superiors, but provoked considerable enmity among his fellow friars. He was caught up in the reform current which in Italy brought forth the Capuchins (Ch. 1.6.b). For a while he considered joining the stricter Carthusians. On a p reaching tour, he passed through the Swiss Confederation to Zurich, where, still in his cowl, he engaged in conversations with Zwingli in 1522 and preached in defense of the invocation of Mary and the saints. A bitter disputation with Zwingli followed in the canons’ salon of the Great Minster. From Zurich Lambert went on to Basel, where he was inwardly won over. He then visited Wittenberg, met Luther, and married. From Wittenberg he went as a reformer to Metz, then to Strassburg, where he came to know Jacob Sturm, who recommended him to Philip for the reformation of the church in Hesse. We have already noted his ideal of the lex sedentium (Ch. 11.4.b). The result of Lambert’s application to the new assignment was Philip’s calling in 1526 the synod in Homberg, which was at once the first territorial diet of Philips regime and an emergency provincial synod that only on an ad hoc basis fulfilled Lambert’s ideal of representation by congregations. The legal basis of the Homberg reforming synod-diet was the decision of the imperial diet of Speyer earlier in the year to tolerate territorial changes pending a g eneral council. The theological, or more specifically the ecclesiological, basis of the synod-diet was the congregationalist pattern suggested by Luther as a “third form” of the church in his introduction to Deutsche Messe und Ordnung des Gottesdiensts of 1526 (Ch. 4.2). Influenced by Schwenckfeld, Luther had characterized the ecclesiola: “those who mean to be Christian in earnest,” centered about the word of God and practicing

5

 Ducal Prussia, on becoming a fief within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, was the first territory to become Protestant (1525, Ch. 15.2.a), electoral Saxony and Landgraviate Hesse being respectively the second and the third to break from the Papacy. 6  Roy L. Winters, Francis Lambert of Avignon (Philadelphia: United Lutheran Pub lication House, 1938); Gerhard Müller, Franz von Lambert von Avignon und die Refor mation in Hessen (Marburg: Elwert, 1958).

662  the radical reformation

chapter 17.1

discipline according to the rule of Matthew 18.7 To the synod-diet, Lambert presented his own Paradoxa. Despite opposition from the local Franciscan superior, the estates of Hesse joined the Reformation. In the very year that Philip introduced the Reformation into his territory, 1526, Luther had also written out an early form of his two-kingdom theory: God has established two kinds of r ule among men, namely, the spiritual, through the Word and without the sword, that men might become pious and just … and the handling of such righteousness he has entrusted to preachers; the other is worldly rule, by the sword, to the end that all those who do not desire to become pious and just through the Word, will nevertheless be forced by the worldly rule to be pious and just before the world.8 Here and elsewhere Luther had programmatically eliminated all forms of coercion apart from that of the magistrate. This meant in Hesse, for example, the suspension of the jurisdiction of the several bishops and archbishops, of monastic chapters, and eventually of noble patrons and their right of presentation (jus patronatus). This meant the repudiation of canon law and all permanent canonical or legal structure interposed between the vocational righteousness of the territorial prince and the forensic righteousness of his Christian subjects saved by faith alone. Thus Luther was fundamentally impatient with all efforts to substitute for the law and discipline of the Old Church any comparable organs that might temporarily be formed to take their place, including the congregational and synodal provisions urged by L ambert, to say nothing of t he congregationally administered ban as urged by the Anabaptists. To Lambert’s great disappointment Luther expressly repudiated the Homberg ideal which Lambert had thought he had faithfully transcribed from Luther’s own suggestions about the ecclesiola. The influence, however, of Lambert and the Homberg congregationally oriented church order idealized in Reformatio Ecclesiarum Hassiae of 1526 persisted in Philip’s dominions despite Luther’s disparagements of the efforts. Something too of Lambert’s legacy is apparent in the unusual treatment accorded the proponents of r adical congregationalism, namely, the Anabaptists, throughout the reign of Philip. The conflicts attendant upon the setting up in Hesse of a model evangelical territory as a fragment of the medieval corpus christianum liberated from its canon law makes the early history of the Hessian reformation

7  G. H. Williams, “‘Congregationalist’ Luther,” 283–94. On Schw enckfeld and a thir d form, see Reinhold Pietz, Calwer Heft, 35 (Stuttgart: Calwer, 1959); see further “Die Gestalt der zukünftigen Kirche,” chap. 31, n.1. 8  Ob Kriegsleute auch in seligem Stande sein können, WA 19:629.

chapter 17.1

middle germany, 1527–1538  663

especially significant,9 as also the protracted conflict with the Anabaptists, who with their separatist Christian organization and discipline were soon to swarm within the domain of the tolerant landgrave. In 1527, Philip founded the first Protestant university at his principal seat, Marburg. Lambert became the professor of theology and henceforth, because of his failure to master German, was largely confined to the classroom and the council chamber. He soon died of the plague (1530). Philip, who strove valiantly in 1529 to be the irenic patron of pan-Protestant unity on the Eucharist, among magisterial Protestants in convening the Marburg Colloquy, may with respect to the anabaptists be appropriately entitled “the Magnanimous.” He was one of the few Protestant princes to recognize the need for interchanges among all evangelical groups, including the Anabaptists and the Spiritualists.10 Philip looked upon Anabaptism as an error in faith; but, since he also held that true faith was a gift of God (Eph. 2.8), he was indisposed to punish error with undue severity as though it were the fault of the misled adherent. He could not always be sure of his own faith. Moreover, he noted the courage and the upright lives of the bulk of the Anabaptists, and, as chief magistrate under God, he knew that he would be held to a final accounting for the way he treated his Christian subjects. Philip’s first important encounter with Anabaptism was in the person of Melchior Rinck, former pastor at Eckhardtshausen, and former follower of Müntzer in the Peasants’ War (Ch. 4.3.d). In conjunction with John Denck and Jacob Kautz, Rinck had once helped formulate the Seven Articles of Worms in 1527 (Ch. 7.3). Banished from Worms, Rinck, erudite, passionate, and irascible, evangelized in Hersfeld territory between the Hessian and the ducal Saxon borders. By 1528 his following was so large that he made bold to request permission to preach before the parish in Hersfeld. It was as a result of his persistence and the resistance of the local Lutheran pastor, Balthasar Raidt, that the problem came to Philip’s personal attention, and Rinck was summoned for an interview at the landgrave’s hunting lodge in Friedewald. Rinck held fervently to his convictions, and Philip judged the case worthy of the attention of his university theologians. Accordingly, a cross-examination was conducted by the new theological faculty at Marburg in August 1528.11 For the occasion, Rinck prepared

9  Admirably and succinctly recounted and analyzed by W. Sohm, Territorium und Reformation in der hessischen Geschichte, 1526–1555 (Marburg, 1915). 10  It will be recalled that Albert of ducal Prussia was similarly open to a range of evangelical leadership (Ch. 15.2.a). For Philip’s policy of toleration, see A. Heidenhain, Die Unionspolitik Landgraf Philipps von Hessen, 1557–1562 (Halle, 1890); and especially Franklin Hamlin Littell, Landgraf Philip und die Toleranz (Bad Neuheim: Christian-Verlag, 1957). 11  Franz, Wiedertäuferakten, 4–15.

664  the radical reformation

chapter 17.1

a statement of faith in five articles. His Hersfeld antagonist, Raidt, prepared a set of twelve charges. The most heated debate arose over Raidt’s charge that Rinck had openly declared that an infant at baptism received not Christ but the devil. Since no agreement could be reached as to the validity of the charges, Rinck was simply banished. Elector John of Saxony (1525–32), a much less temperate prince than Philip, was angered at Hessian dalliance with heresy, blasphemy, and sedition. Soon thereafter Rinck was seized on Hessian soil. This time Philip put him in prison at Haina. From April 1529 to May 1531, Rinck disputed with visitors who came to change his views, communicated with his followers, wrote a s mall piece on baptism12 and became involved in extended altercation with his wife and his Lutheran father-in-law, and refused to grant his wife a d ivorce.13 When released on promising not to re-enter Hesse or Electoral Saxony, he almost at once returned to his old haunts as an evangelist. It was his conviction that it was contrary to God’s dominion over all the world and his will for his children to banish any child of God from any territory or for a child of God permanently to accept such a usurpation.14 In November 1531, Rinck was seized by Hessian authorities with eleven others. By this time the divines and magistrates of E lectoral Saxony were exacerbated by P hilip’s policy of t oleration, the more so for the reason that Landgrave Philip and Elector John had, back in February 1531, in the town hall of Schmalkalden in Thuringia, been the leaders in forming the Smalcald League of seven Protestant princes and the magistrates of eleven city-states, to present a u nited military and religious front to Charles V and the Papacy.15 Back in 1530 Justus Menius, Lutheran superintendent at Eisenach, had pointedly dedicated to Philip a booklet on the common Anabaptist danger with a p reface by L uther: Der Wiedertäufer Lehre und Geheimnis aus heiliger Schrift widerlegt in which Menius justified the elector’s execution of s ix Anabaptists who refused to recant at Gotha. He traced

12  Preserved in a man uscript codex of the Mar peck circle; trans. J. C. Wenger, MQR 21 (1947): 282–84. 13  Oyer, “Central Germany,” 233. 14  Wappler, Thüringen, 335; Oyer, “Central Germany,” 237. 15  The Smalcald League was initially for a ter m of six years and in 1537 would at their convent in Schmalkalden accept the Smalcald Articles, drawn up by Luther after a presentation convoked by Paul III for Mantua in May 1537 (one of the several failed false beginnings for what would be the Council of Trent), ed. in WA 1:160–254; in English, Schaff, History of the Creeds, 1:253–57. In the Appendix on papal power and primacy, prepared by Melanchthon at the request of the convent to supplement the Augsburg Confession, which is silent on this issue, the League disavows the Pope’s claim as vicar of Christ and recipient of the two swords by divine right.

chapter 17.1

middle germany, 1527–1538  665

their origin to Müntzer and threatened personally to stone one of t he recalcitrants publicly.16 The divergent policies of the two adjoining Protestant states were notably in conflict in certain areas jointly administered as a condominium or joint protectorate, such as the Hausbreitenbach district and Mühlhausen. Here the contradictory policies of repression and suasion succeeding each other in the alternations of the local administration of justice caused disorder, encouraged defiance, and emboldened the sectarian denizens in their claim that, after all, so-called Christian government was only a matter of human convention and not of divine law. As Rinck himself once declared in addressing a Saxon magistrate, the prince might indeed repress Christians and even kill them for reasons of state but he had no right to claim that he was thus discharging a Christian duty. The specific case of the rearrested Rinck and therewith the fundamental problem of the divergent policies of Landgrave Philip and Elector John came before the convent of the Smalcald League early in December 1531. The Saxons demanded the death penalty in accordance with the mandate of Speyer (Ch. 10.1), but the Hessians, like the Smalcald Swabians in the humane Memmingen Resolutions of the same year (Ch. 8.3), argued with the support of t he irenic Marburg theologians, Simon Goldenhauer and Adam Kraft, that it was the open sin and the hypocrisy found in the established churches which made the Anabaptists persevere in their separation. Philip said that if they could not be persuaded from their belief, they should suffer no more than having “their hearth fire extinguished,” that is, being forced to migrate.17 The case of Rinck, of course, was by now notorious; and on 3 January 1532, Philip informed Elector John that Rinck had been sentenced to life imprisonment. He was to be visited several times by state-church divines and converted separatists with a v iew to persuading him; but Rinck persisted in his theological separatism, dying after more than a dozen years of confinement.

16  Oyer, “Central Germany,” 228 n. 26. Justus Menius (Joducus Menig) (1499–1558) w as superintendent of Eisenach, 1529–57. He would write against the Anabaptists in defense of his elector’s stern policy, Wie ein jeglicher Christ gegen allerle Lere, gut und bóse nac h Gottes befehl sich gebúhrlich halten sol (1538), against the magistracy of Mühlhausen for not having proceeded against the Anabaptist conventicle there in 1541, Von dem Geist der Widerteuffer (1544), and against a flagrant group of Anabaptists, Wider die Blutsfreunde aus der Widerteuffen (1551). These works have not been cr itically edited. Paul Wappler dealt with this mater ial in Die Stellung (1910) and Thüringen (1913) (see above, n. 4). It is in this second work that Wappler reported on Menius’s identification in his work of 1530 of the importance of Haug’s and Hut’s seven gifts of the Spirit, which were the seven “good spirits” replacing the seven “evil spirits,” confessed after baptismal sealing; Packull, Mysticism. 17  Littell, Philip, 32, 52; Philip’s regulations toward the end of 1531 and Smalcald Discussion, Franz, Wiedertäuferakten, nos. 15, 18.

666  the radical reformation

chapter 17.1

At this point we may introduce a lesser figure, Fritz Erbe, who was to endure imprisonment for eighteen years. Arrested in October 1531 in a raid in the Hausbreitenbach district, Erbe recanted. He had never been as insistent on believers’ baptism as most converts. When rearrested in 1532, however, he remained steadfast. After a long time in the tower of the Eisenach town wall and enduring much effort to persuade him of his error, he was transferred to the prison in the tower of the Wartburg. As to a kind of latter-day pillar saint, devotees came to him under the cover of darkness to receive his comfort and counsel. The version of Anabaptism professed by several of these night visitors after capture deserves notice. It appears to have been a deformation of John Hut’s gospel of a ll creatures. In effect, Hut’s conception of baptism as the initiation into lifelong suffering culminating in a final baptism in blood or fire and his correlative conception of the Lord’s Supper as a mutual pledge to lay down one’s life for the brethren were transformed by Erbe’s sympathizers to the point where they were prepared to call suffering itself the true Lord’s Supper, the true Communion. A more extreme development along this line is represented in the later deposition of three of Erbe’s visitors who made bold to call the bread, even of the evangelical commemorative Supper, “the bite of Judas,” and the cup, “the curse of the Whore of Babylon” (Rev. 17:6), drunken with the blood of the saints.18 In July 1533, when another batch of Anabaptists, most of them followers of Rinck, were seized in the condominium of Hausbreitenbach, the new elector, John Frederick, renewed the Saxon appeal to Philip for exemplary execution. The landgrave refused with the words: “Our Lord will give grace that they may be converted.” When Philip’s turn came as protector of Mühlhausen, he immediately sent pastor Raidt, by now a s pecialist in reconversion, who succeeded in persuading all the Anabaptists imprisoned there to recant. Thereupon they were released.19 The large Anabaptist conventicle originally gathered in Sorga, near Hersfeld, was raided in August. This group of prisoners, now under John Bott, did not yield to suasion and entreaty. Philip, however, could find nothing seditious about them except their stubborn separatism, and they were banished in September 1533.20 They sought asylum in Moravia. The Hutterites considered them tainted by Spiritualism. They continued to live apart, unprepared to yield completely to the communal way of life, but associated themselves with the Gabrielites and the followers of Plener (Ch. 16.1). 18  There were two arrests and two trials, November 1537 and June 1539. Though of a later date, the depositions no doubt faithfully record an attitude in radical Hutterian circles from near the beginning. These are not the only e vidence of the transm utation in this r egion. Wappler, Stellung 196-204. 19  Wappler, Thüringen, 101. 20  Ibid., 102; Franz, Wiedertäuferakten, no. 28.

chapter 17.1

middle germany, 1527–1538  667

Besides the already mentioned Peter Riedemann, there were many other Hutterite emissaries successfully recruiting pilgrims for the Moravian commonwealths, the most notable being George Zaunring (Ch. 16.1) and Christopher Gschäl. 21 Philip’s lenient and constructive policy of o rderly, unvindictive emigration, of suasion and disputation, firmed up by an occasional life sentence for the defiantly obdurate, and concurrently his renewed efforts at moral reform in the state church, had borne enough fruit to induce some of the lesser magistrates of the central German territories to emulate the landgrave in leniency. But the increasing ugliness of the development in Münster and the fascination it exercised over the imaginations of separatists and restive elements of t he population far and wide put that policy to an impossible test. Philip was in correspondence with the bishop of Münster, Francis of Waldeck, and the city council.22 We have already seen two of his conciliatory divines in Münster, vainly trying in November 1533 to settle the dispute between the Rothmannites and the conservative Lutherans and then Dietrich Fabricius of C assel once again to negotiate with the Anabaptist rulership in November 1534 (Ch. 13.1). Besides the distant Münsterites, Philip and the other central German princes and magistrates had to contend with a r ather large assortment of eccentric and even violent sectaries, several of t hem claiming to be Anabaptists. We only mentioned these libertarian Blood Brethren or Dreamers (Traümer) in the region between Gotha and Mühlhausen. They had evidently fastened onto Hut’s speculation about dreams and visions. There was also John Romer, former fighter under Müntzer in the uprising of the peasants, who was subsequently converted by Hut to Anabaptism. As much carried along by his socially revolutionary followers as he was leading them, Römer had resorted to force and in 1528 had undertaken an assault on the walls of Erfurt.23 Nearby was a prophet of the abbatial territory of Fulda whose rebaptized followers, excited by m ass hypnosis, experienced healings, glossolalia, contortions, and the other manifestations of a camp– meeting revival, similar to the Pentecostal outbreaks among the St. Gall Anabaptists of an earlier date (Ch. 6.2). A large and determined group of these revivalists were besieged in their fortified house for six months in 1532. When finally captured, several were beheaded. 24

21

 Wiedertäuferakten, nos. 5, 13a, 14a.  Cornelius, Geschichte des Münsterischen Aufruhrs, 2.5:253–59. 23  Wappler, Thüringen, 25–37; Oyer, “Central Germany,” 227, no. 24. 24  Wappler, Thüringen, 81–85; Oyer, “Central Germany,” 241–42. On the Blood Br ethren and others, see Claus–Peter Clasen, “Medieval Heresies in the Refor mation,” CH 32 (1963): 1-23. Packull sees them as spinning off in “the devolution of Hut’s movement,” Mysticism, 126 passim. Against the Blood Brethren Menius would direct his work of 1551 (above, n. 16). 22

668  the radical reformation

chapter 17.1 / 17.2

The following year in the same territory a much more aggressive group under the leadership of J ohn Krug, John of F ulda, and Peter the Baptist pillaged, burned, raped, and murdered over a c onsiderable terrain before they were captured. They remind one of the Batenburgers (Ch. 13.5); but unlike this berserk breed of M ünsterites, the Anabaptist arsonists under John Krug still made baptism the badge of admittance to their violent gang. In fact, Krug freely acknowledged his rape of a v illager who refused to accept rebaptism at his hands.25 After the collapse of M ünster and Philip’s attempt to reconvert the wretched survivors with the aid of two Hessian divines (Antonius Corvinus and Johann Kymeus), Elector John Frederick (1531–47) of S axony, with malicious satisfaction, demanded that Philip at long last give up his fatuous policy. The Elector’s advisor, Melanchthon, prepared the new, sharp mandate issued for Saxony, 10 April 1536, and also composed a refutation of certain “unchristian articles” which were to be expounded from every pulpit in Saxony on every third Sunday of the month. Most of the central German Anabaptism discussed thus far is traceable to the apocalyptic Spiritualism of John Hut. Römer, Rinck, Bott, and Erbe in various aspects of their teaching and conduct bore the permanent impress of the f iery apostle of B avaria and Austria. Alongside this current, there flowed, as we have already remarked, the Hofmannite version of Anabaptism, to which we now turn.

2. Peter Tasch and George Schnabel: The Melchiorite Legacy in Central Germany after 1535 On one of his evangelistic tours between Strassburg and The Netherlands, Melchior Hofmann gave expression to his intensely eschatological version of Anabaptism in the presence of Landgrave Philip himself. 26 The principal Hessian Melchiorites were Peter Tasch and George Schnabel. Peter Tasch 27 (Peter of G eyen, near Cologne), a h atter of t he merchant rank, had been converted to Melchiorite Anabaptism in the version of John Matthijs spreading from Münster, and he is attested as having baptized others in his house in Geyen in the summer of 153428 and visited the conventicles in the house of Dr. Westerburg in Cologne (Ch. 12.4). But

25

 Franz, Wiedertäuferakten, 71–73.  Krebs and Rott, Elsass 2 (QGT 8), no. 407. 27  Werner O. Packull, “Peter Tasch en de Melchiorieten in Hessen,” Doopsgezinde Bijdragen, n.s. 12–13 (1986–87): 107–38; and in “Peter Tasch: From Melchiorite to Bankr upt Wine Merchant,” MQR 62 (1988): 276–95, recognizes that this figure “mirrors in microcosm the rise and fall of a large segment of the or iginal Melchiorite movement,” and that Tasch is a major interpreter of Hofmann, and a mediating figure of importance to the Reformed tradition. 28  Packull, “Tasch,” MQR, citing Mellink, DAN 1, 136. 26

chapter 17.2

middle germany, 1527–1538  669

possibly even before his own rebaptism, Tasch had been in Strassburg as observer of the reform synod of 1533 (Ch. 10.4.b) and he may indeed have been the editor of M elchior Hofmann’s Five Articles presented at that synod, Der Sendbrief.29 Tasch presumably considered the collapse of Münster as condign punishment for the deformation of H ofmann’s original message. He may have participated in the Bocholt Conference in Cleves in August 1536 (Ch. 13.5), for some of his followers in Hesse would call themselves “poor Davidites.” In any case, the failure of imprisoned Hofmann’s prophecy to be realized even in Strassburg also prompted Tasch and Schnabel to rethink Melchiorite theology in somewhat the same way as David Joris, Menno Simons, and Dirk Philips were doing in their way and region. Tasch continued to use Hofmann’s conception of a s piritual temple, which he now thought of as being mysteriously built up throughout Christendom, rather than being limited to anyone locality. He tacitly acknowledged earlier miscalculations about the identity of t he two prophet witnesses foretold in Revelations 11:3. He retained in full Hofmann’s doctrine of the celestial flesh of Christ, restated in a tract, Van der Menschwerdung. He wrote at least two other locally influential tracts on baptism and the oath, Van der Taufordnung Christi and Vom Eid. The fact that he was in correspondence with a circle who still practiced Münsterite polygamy would indicate that he was not only engaged in reconceiving Melchiorite theology but also actively involved in rewinning the refugees from, and partisans of, Münster for a version of Anabaptism closer to the norms of t he South Germans and the Swiss Brethren. It is possible that Tasch became as early as 1536 a citizen of Strassburg. 30 He would, in any case, eventually go over to the side of disciplined territorial Protestantism. In 1536, George Schnabel and some thirty other Anabaptists were overtaken as a conventicle at worship in an abandoned church in the Cassel district. Ten of them were imprisoned at Wolkersdorf. They were destined to play an important role in the gradual alteration and hardening of Philip’s policy toward all the separatists. Philip intended that their incarceration be mild to make them physically and mentally receptive to efforts at persuasion. In addition to the leniency of t heir incarceration, the prisoners contrived an extraordinary freedom of movement. By means of a saw they enlarged the hole through which they were fed and through which they returned like homing pigeons after a day-long or even a week-long evangelistic tour. Provision was made to maintain for the benign or duped custodian the semblance of continuous occupancy and compliance with the law! 29  TA, Elsass 2 (QGT 8), 101–10, which ar e the five main doctr ines of Hofmann, Deppermann, Hoffman, Verzeichnis, no. 22. For the role of Tasch in their editing, see fur ther below, n. 35 on the surmise of Packull. 30  TA, Elsass 3, 163 n. 3.

670  the radical reformation

chapter 17.2

Several of t hese prisoners had been previously banished; and it was because these irrepressible evangelists had been at work again in his territory that they had been selected for an incarceration milder than even Philip at the moment realized. It was with special reference to the Wolkersdorf prisoners that Philip in May 1536 requested the judgment of the magistrates of Strassburg and Ulm, the dukes of Württemberg and Brunswick-Lüneburg, and the professors of the theological faculties of Marburg and Wittenberg, with a view to drawing up comprehensive regulations for ordering the state church of Hesse and for disposing of the separatist threat. 31 In response, the hitherto moderate chancellor of Hesse, a jurist, now came out for enhanced severity, including the death penalty for those foreign Anabaptists who should make bold to return a t hird time after banishment. Sharp opinions were also expressed by t he two Lutheran theologians, Tilman Schnabel and Justus Winter, who again demanded the implementation of the imperial mandate. John Lening, however, Philip’s former emissary to Münster, still upheld the older policy when he called upon “God to correct the errors in his own life and [urged his fellow divines] to admonish the Anabaptists kindly and in a friendly spirit … and not to make use of the sword until all other means had been tried.”32 It was the milder counsel that prevailed. The result of the renewed consideration was to place the problem of t he separatists in the larger context of e stablishing the doctrinal and disciplinary norms for the whole of t he territorial church. This was a procedure which had been followed in the Strassburg synod of 1 533 (Ch. 10.4); and before the completion of t hat process in Hesse, Bucer was called from Strassburg to bring to bear his great experience with synods and separatists in the work of building up the state church of Hesse (a belated successor of his erstwhile Strassburg friend, Lambert). For the moment, the f irst result of the new efforts of the landgrave was the drawing up of the Visitation Order of 1 537, which expressly recognized the legitimacy of s ome of the Anabaptist criticism. The mandate accordingly insisted on the abolition of open vices among members of the state church. It sharpened, however, the previous regulation of t he Anabaptists by r equiring that their foreign preachers be beaten with rods, have a s ign burned into their cheeks, and be threatened with death if they should ever return. Native Anabaptists were again ordered to sell all their goods and leave. For returned natives, the penalty was torture; for foreigners and natives returned a s econd time, the penalty was death. Philip left an opening even in this sharpest mandate: “But no Anabaptist shall be put to death, even after the sentence has been passed, without previously noti31 32

 Franz, Wiedertäuferakten, no. 47.  ME 4:165.

chapter 17.2

middle germany, 1527–1538  671

fying us.” 33 Moreover, if in the face of death an Anabaptist recanted, he should be taken back for further consultation and not be killed. Actually, the severe measures of t he mandate of 1 537 were never put into effect. Philip never conf irmed a d eath sentence. The Anabaptists who were imprisoned were given humane treatment. Riedemann’s famous Account of Faith, it will be recalled (Ch. 16.2), was produced in one of Philip’s prisons. It was against the Visitation Order of 1537 that George Schnabel, lieutenant of Peter Tasch, and his fellow prisoners, Herman Bastian and Peter Loese, wrote their Apology (Verantwortung und Widerlegung; 1538),34 in order to clarify for their own fellow believers some eleven articles and to help the magistrates to distinguish the evangelical Anabaptists from those guilty of certain apparently quite common aberrations. Schnabel had been town treasurer in Allendorf near Cassel before joining the movement. He, perhaps more energetically than Tasch, was determined to dissociate the peaceful, law-abiding Anabaptists, among whom he was to be numbered, from the belligerent and occasionally polygamous survivors of the Münsterite movement and also from the radically spiritualist Anabaptists like those around Fritz Erbe. He acknowledged, however, that their sources included writings of Tasch and that another source was indeed the Sendbrief (1533) of Melchior Hofmann, for which there is evidence that Tasch was the editor.35 A glance at his eleven articles will enable us to picture a large body of Middle German Anabaptists in the aftermath of Münster. The Apology, incidentally, is remarkable for the large number of quotations from the Apocrypha (Tobit, Judith, 3 and 4 Esdras, Ecclesiasticus, and Baruch). Of special interest among the arguments justifying meetings in private homes is Schnabel’s appeal to the “third form” of Luther’s preface to the German Mass. 36 Biblical and moral justification of secret meetings in homes, heaths, and forests constitutes one of t he eleven articles. The conception of baptism, which Schnabel expressly derived in part from the Melchiorite Tasch, is richly defined as “a bath of rebirth,” “a covenant of the good conscience,” “a sepulchre with Christ,” whereby the believer is separated from any association with the children of the world, “an incorporation into the body of Christ, which is the fellowship of the saints,” “a going into the wilderness or the forecourt of the service of God” “putting on of Christ,” in such a way that one “follows Christ’s footsteps.” Schnabel 33

 Ibid.  Franz, Wiedertäuferakten, no. 63, 165ff. 35  That the Apology drew upon the Sendbrief (above, n. 29, also more fully Ch. 10, n.151) and that Tasch was the or iginal editor of Hofmann’ s five confrontational articles rather than John Eisermann, who also worked with the publisher Valentine Kobian (Hagenau, 1533), is proposed by Packull “Tasch,” MQR 62 (1988): 281–82. 36  Ibid., article 9, p. 178. For Luther’s thoughtful congregations apart, see Ch. 4.2 34

672  the radical reformation

chapter 17.2

was a Melchiorite on baptism, and was Melchiorite also in his doctrine of the celestial flesh of Christ and for the same reason: For Christ comes not of the world nor from Adam’s flesh and blood, but rather he comes into the world, for were he of the world, he could not have saved the world. 37 Schnabel’s conception of Christ as “the true bread of heaven,” who brought “his flesh from heaven,” is expressly dependent upon Tasch’s booklet on the Incarnation. In contrast to the Servetian and Schwenckfeldian view (Ch. 11.3.e) and somewhat more clearly stated than with Melchior Hofmann, God the Father sent his Word of insemination to be received aurally by the Virgin. 38 On the related questions of taxes, war, magistracy, and oath, Schnabel appealed to the Melchiorite exegetical principle of the cloven hoof 39 (Ch. 32.1.c) and again expressly to the larger tract of Tasch on the oath. Schnabel was against aggressive wars and other military action involving bloodshed, except when the territory was invaded and women and children were in immediate danger. He warned against any military action that would make more widows and orphans than it protected. On the question of m arriage, Schnabel was unequivocally monogamous. He refused the charge of communism, justified private property by biblical citations, but argued in favor of sharing any surplus for the good of the brethren and became indignant on the question of usury. He cited in his favor the work of Dr. Johannes Eisermann (Montanus), professor in the faculty of law, Vom gemeinen Nutz (Marburg, 1533).40 It was to Schnabel in prison at Wolkersdorf that Peter Tasch sent the letter intercepted by Philip. It will be recalled (Ch. 14.4.b) that this document gave the landgrave a sense of alarm at the vast geographical scope of the Anabaptist movement and induced him to join with Elector John Frederick in warning Henry VIII and other princes of t he dangers. But even then Philip insisted on distinguishing the bellicose from the evangelical Anabaptists and expressed his sorrow that so many of t he latter had perished because of the evil name of the others. It was in this mood that Philip decided to convene a great Anabaptist-Protestant colloquy at Marburg.

37 38

ear. 39

 Ibid., 173.  This reflects pictures showing Gabriel at the Annunciation putting a bean into Mar y’s

 Ibid.,171.  On this particular book and the extensi ve interest in Hesse in the pr oblem, see Sohm, Territorium und Reformation, 82–92. 40

chapter 17.3

middle germany, 1527–1538  673

3. Schnabel before Bucer and Eisermann: The Marburg Anabaptist Disputation of 1538 Philip, after seeking several times to induce the Wolkersdorf Anabaptists to recant, sent them a letter in his own hand41 expressing his anger at their exploitation of their lenient imprisonment, but at the same time apprising them generously of his plan to have Bucer come from Strassburg to dispute with them on the outstanding issues. The promised confrontation took place in Marburg in a series of sessions between 30 October and 3 November 1538.42 Schnabel led the Wolkersdorf prisoners in the debate. Arrayed against them were the Hessian divines, headed by a d istinguished foreigner who had successfully organized the territorial church of Strassburg after a similar confrontation with dissenters (Ch. 10.4), several jurists and magistrates, among them Dr. Eisermann, and the representatives of the guilds of the town of Marburg. The Marburg disputation, which was to result in very significant accommodations to the dissenters in return for their submission, was outstanding also for the fact that it centered in such questions as usury, the ban, and the commonweal rather than in baptism. The reason for the prominence of social justice in the Marburg Anabaptist disputation was the fact that both Eisermann and Schnabel were especially interested in the social implications of evangelical Christianity. We recall that Schnabel had earlier cited the Marburg jurist favorably. Eisermann, sometime rector of the university, had valiantly sought in his book Vom gemeinen Nutz (as he was to do later in De republica bene instituenda, 1556) to work through the problem of creating a just and Christian commonweal within the context of L uther’s programmatic elimination of works righteousness and his vigorous disparagement of a ny visible, catholic church, with its various means of rewarding and punishing and its hierarchy of ascending grades of accomplished Christians, from pious laymen to canonized saints. With Luther’s proclamation of s alvation by faith alone and its correlate, the priesthood of all believers, religious hierarchies lost their sanction in an evangelical state (Ch. 4.2). To fill this void, Eisermann sought to spell out how the citizens of a n evangelical territory under its prince should each in his special vocation strive to live out a Christian life for the commonweal in uncalculating, even prodigal, and, above all, joyful acts of goodwill in the inner assurance of divine justification, while the evangelical prince himself and his magistrates would,

41

 Franz, Wiedertäuferakten, no. 76, p. 213.  The protocol is pr inted as no. 77, Wiedertäuferakten, 213ff. It is translated b y Franklin Littell, who considers the disputation “a turning point in Refor mation ecclesiology,” in “New Light on Butzer’s Significance” in Reformation Studies: Essays in Honor of Roland H. Bainton (Richmond: John Knox Press, 1962), 147–67. 42

674  the radical reformation

chapter 17.3

in the discharge of their duties, see to it that subjects who could not yet willingly and joyfully perform would at least prudentially conform. There was no place in Eisermann’s Christian commonweal for separatists with a separate church law. His was a unitary, territorial state in which “all who love God cooperate in the common good” and in which those who do not are properly constrained by the conscientious prince to “imitate,” at least, “that inner righteousness.” Justification in a theological sense and justice in a civil sense had thus come very close together. Anabaptist Schnabel was, it is clear, pitted in debate with a man of law who was no less concerned than the conscientious dissenters with practical righteousness. Schnabel, too, had once espoused Luther’s ideas. As the treasurer of his native parish he had been in charge of the church loans for the poor and the rentals of c hurch lands. In the presence of E isermann, Bucer, and the guildsmen, Schnabel described how he had become deeply distressed by the unbiblical spirit of his former pastor and by the prosperous members of the reformed church who remorselessly extracted interest from the poor and needy. Schnabel had come, he said, to the conclusion that the exploiters of God’s poor should be banned. Finding his pastor utterly uncooperative in any effort to make righteous the economic life of t he parish, Schnabel separated and gathered about himself a loyal following of likeminded dissenters. There is in Schnabel’s protest a trace of the political conviction that we noted in the religio-political articles proposed by Westerburg in Frankfurt, by Kautz and Rinck and others in Worms, and even by Grebel in Zurich, namely, that the saints should have a determining voice in the selection of godly magistrates and pastors who would not exploit the economically underprivileged in a reformed town or parish. In any event, Schnabel, in his zeal for social justice, had come to the conclusion that righteousness could be best secured within small, selfrecruiting, self-disciplining churches made up of explicit believers independent of prince and magistrate qua magistrate. Only when Christians were thus organized, he argued, could the ecclesiastical ban be distinguished from political banishment. At the present time, he said, the most conscientious evangelicals were being politically banished as separatists, while the state church in making only perfunctory use of the disciplinary ban was in effect compounding the dissatisfaction of the scrupulous and thereby augmenting the number of dissenters. Besides Schnabel, there were on the Anabaptist side his fellow prisoners, the evangelists Leonard Fälber of Maastricht (successor there to Rol), Herman Bastian, and Peter Loese; and they joined in discussing the standard points at issue—baptism, the call and office of the pastor, and magistrates. In connection with baptism, they all stressed the need for instruction as well as for the explicit faith before baptism so that Bucer was moved to acknowledge the need for institutional formal religious education and

chapter 17.3

middle germany, 1527–1538  675

having the implicit baptismal vow of infancy made explicit in a ceremony of confirmation. Bucer also acknowledged the validity of t he ban if used sparingly, pointing out how Paul with the flagrantly immoral and heady Corinthians was slow to exclude even egregious offenders. The debate ended inconclusively. Each side, however, was perhaps more open to the insight, and responsive to the convictions of t he other than in any other debate of the Reformation era thus far recounted. After leaving Marburg for Wittenberg, Bucer wrote to Philip urging him so to reorganize the territorial church that it would commend itself to the dissidents and incorporate such features as a program of e ducation of children and a j udicious use of t he ban.43 The Anabaptist disputants recognized the seriousness of B ucer’s efforts to meet their terms and the long-suffering magnanimity of the land grave himself, and within less than a year of the disputation the Wolkersdorf prisoner-disputants, led by Schnabel and also Peter Tasch, submitted to Philip their Confession of Faith (11 December 1538).44 They acknowledged original sin, dealt with sin and those good works too little esteemed by t he established church members in their solafideist stress, reiterated their conviction about baptism as the covenant of a g ood conscience to be undertaken by believers, but declared themselves henceforth ready to withhold their condemnation of i nfant baptism so long as every effort should be made to bring the child up in the faith. In their article on the Lord’s Supper they stressed the exclusion of t hose living in open sin and, proceeding to the ban, they hoped it would be more widely used throughout the territorial church. Philip received the Confession and turned it over to his divines for analysis and comment. In their reply they did not argue vigorously against the moral charges leveled by the prisoner–disputants against the magisterial pastors and lay members, but concentrated on the want of charity among those who had separated in pharisaical perfectionism. The submitting Anabaptists were, however, addressed as “brethren” and were promised that in returning to the established church and in accepting infant baptism, the civil oath, and military responsibilities, the divines and the magistrates would for their part renew their efforts to the best of their ability in respect to education and the ban, in order that “by the grace of God … men may see that we are concerned about Christian discipline.” Already by the end of November 1538 the territorial church had met in synod at Ziegenheim and adopted a new church discipline.45 Herein the state church provided, in response to the Anabaptist critique and in fulfillment

43

 Letter of 17 November 1538.  Franz, Wiedertäuferakten, no. 85. 45  Printed the following year. 44

676  the radical reformation

chapter 17.3

of Bucer’s promise at the Marburg disputation, that all “baptized children as soon as they are old enough should be sent for [instruction in] the catechism, which shall be arranged in every place at such a time convenient for everyone sending the children.”46 From this provision and the confirmation of the baptismal vow by the thus educated adolescents grew up a practice that spread over the years from the Hessian state church to Lutheranism elsewhere in Germany, a permanent legacy of the constructive interchange between the Anabaptists and the state-church divines in Hesse. An accommodation equally important at the time but without permanent influence was the provision for the introduction of the ban in the order of discipline of 1538. In the earlier church order of 1537 there had been a provision for two of the three warnings to a wayward member according to the injunction of Matthew 18:15–17.47 But there had been no provision for the third warning and the ban for failure to comply. It was this that was now being urged by t he state-church divines at Ziegenheim in order to meet the widespread criticism by the Anabaptists. To the proposal Philip reacted cautiously. He foresaw misuse, as in former times under Catholic regimen, and feared that excommunication might not be applied “with Christian sympathy and modestly.” He suggested, therefore, that the provisions not be published right away, and that experimentally the ban “should be applied in the cities and villages where the most able and most learned preachers are to be found,” and designated Cassel and Marburg.48 As a c onsequence of t he good faith of t he magisterial reformers and their prince, about two hundred Anabaptists rejoined the state church, at their head Peter Tasch, who thereupon went to Strassburg with Bucer. Already at Bucer’s suggestion an effort had been made to use conforming Anabaptists to convert the rest.49 When we were last in Strassburg (Ch. 10.4), we dealt with the first reforming Synod for the urban republic and heard Hofmann in prison repenting in April 1535 for the violence of his presumptuous followers in Münster. Peter Tasch and John Eisermann had by then already relocated in Strassburg earlier that spring and had influenced the prophet Leonard Jost with his second wife, Agnes, to take the common oath, 15 April 1539. Jost, whose prophecies Hofmann had once taken as divine revela-

46  The order is printed in Sammlung Fürstlich Hessicher Landesordnungen, ed. C. L. Kleinschmid (Cassel, 1767), 1:109ff.; W. Diehl, Zur Geschichte der Konfirmation (Giessen, 1897), 17; discussed by Sohm, Territorium und Reformation, 150–68. 47  Sohm, Territorium und Reformation, 158. 48  The pan-Protestant embarrassment over Philip’s bigamy, which would sharpen the issue of the ban for Bucer and Luther, among many others, lay two years ahead, 1540. 49  Letter of Bucer to Philip, 4 November 1538; Franz, Wiedertäuferakten, no. 81.

chapter 17.3

middle germany, 1527–1538  677

tion disclosing the descent of t he Heavenly City, it is reported to have said, a decade later: At last it is to be hoped that our Lord will give the grace that our Church (Kirch) and the Anabaptists will become one, so long as a ban is upheld in the church (der Kirchen) so that the Lord’s Supper is not open to one and every gross and open sinner, but a distinction will hold in the same.50 The second reforming synod in Strassburg was set for 26–28 May 1539, where it was understood in advance that some concessions would be made to the moral sensibilities of the Anabaptists as at the synod of Ziegenbain in Hesse. In anticipation of their submission, Tasch and Eisermann asked permission to confer in his cell with Hofmann.51 In the meantime Tasch prepared his Confession addressed to the Strassburg preachers, Bucer, Capito, and Zell, 17 May 1539, modeled on that of the Hessian leaders, including Tasch, at Marburg. The Confession begins with an acknowledgement of original sin, a sense of which must have rested heavily on the survivors of the Münsterite terror. He repudiates Melchiorite Christology and disowns his distinctively Münsterite practices. Asking for patience for his brethren “who could not yet recognize pedobaptism as instituted by the Lord,” he promises cooperation with the magisterial reformers in the maintenance of plenary services and full parish attendance. Permitted by the synod to confer in the cell with Hofmann for two days and a night, Tasch and Eisermann were able to prevail upon him to accept pedobaptism, adducing in its favor several ante-Nicene Fathers (Irenaeus, Tertullian, Cyprian, Origen, and [Pseudo-]Dionysius). In his dictated and signed retraction on pedobaptism, c. 1 June 1539,52 Hofmann gave up his idea of the freedom of the will of the regenerate, modified his view of unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit, and conceded that if Paul did not repudiate baptism on behalf of t he dead (1 Cor. 15:29), then surely “how much more living babies (Kyndelin) may be received into the Christian community

50  TA, Elsass 3, no. 907, drawn attention to b y Packull, “Tasch,” MQR 62 (1988): 284, where he begins his account of Tasch’s post-Anabaptist Career. Jost’s reference to a ban in the local church discipline is an allusion to the city mandate of 29 January 1539, providing for how the Kirchenpfleger should deal with people who ar e not respectful of the ser mon or the sacra ment, ibid, no. 890. There was, however, an ongoing concer n within the estab lished church of Strassburg for the disciplines and the piety cher ished by evangelical radicals. See Werner Bellardi, Die Geschichte der “christlichen Gemeinschaft” in Strassburg (1546/50): Der Versuch eitner “zweiten Reformation,” QFRG 18 (Leipzig, 1934). For some later de velopments in Strassburg sectarian history, see Ch. 19, n. 49. 51  TA, Elsass 3, no. 911, 5 May 1539. 52  TA, Elsass 3, no. 924. Werner O. Packull discusses the authenticity of the document reporting the r ecantation, with translation, “Melchior Hoffman—A Recanted Anabaptist,” MQR 57 (1983): 108–9.

678  the radical reformation

chapter 17.3

in good order through baptism.” In the longer Latin account,53 Hofmann is reported also to have abandoned his celestial-flesh Christology (testimony still contested by s cholarship). The Latin account refers to the participation of John Calvin54 in the synod, noting his concern for French-speaking Anabaptists resident in Strassburg, among them Idelette de Bure of Liège,55 widow of Jean Stordeur, whom Calvin presently married. We return from Strassburg to Hesse to pick up a t hread that connects Landgrave Philip with another sometime Strassburger, Caspar Schwenckfeld. Beginning in 1535, Philip had been carrying on an intermittent correspondence with another spokesman for toleration, Caspar Schwenckfeld.56 Contact was no doubt established through Schwenckfeld’s friend and protector, the mayor of Ulm, Bernard Besserer, on good terms both with Philip and Duke Ulrich, whom Philip (thereby earning the title “Magnanimous”) had restored, against Ferdinand, to the ducal throne of Württemberg without exacting any personal or territorial compensation. The first epistolary contact between Philip and Schwenckfeld related to the Anabaptist crisis in Münster. Once again, Schwenckfeld was fatefully implicated with Hofmann, whose doctrine of t he celestial flesh had now been writ large even on the coins and the tokens of the Kingdom of Münster. Philip, whom King John Beukels had accorded the doubtful honor of having been selected as one of the few princes to survive alongside his twelve apostolic dukes, sent to Schwenckfeld three Münsterite writings, among them Rothmann’s Restitution. Schwenckfeld in Ulm was at that very moment seeking to defend his own variant of t he celestial-flesh Christology against the orthodox Lutheran divines (Ch. 18.2.c). Schwenckfeld was therefore at first hard pressed to clear himself of any Münsterite taint while so stating his position on Christology, baptism, and the Supper, that he might in the end win over Philip for support against his detractors of the Silesian among the divines of t he Smalcald League. Philip remained friendly toward Schwenckfeld, but never accepted his ideas, and confined himself to expressions of esteem. We may at this juncture leave Philip and the Anabaptists of M iddle Germany to pick up the story of A nabaptism in South Germany and its great conflict with Spiritualism in the extended controversy between the two major antagonists, Caspar Schwenckfeld and Pilgram Marpeck. 53

 Niclaes Meyndertsz van Blesdijk, TA, Elsass 3, Beilage zu no. 924.  For his role, see Martin Bucers deutsche Schriften, ed. Robert Stupperich, 6:2 (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1964), “Dokumente zur R. Strassburger Synode von 1534,” 191–94. 55  Blesdijk, TA, Elsass 3, Beilage zu nr. 924, p. 342. Idelette is first mentioned in Strassburg, ibid, no. 857. For several kinds of nonconformists from Walloon territory in Strassburg, see Léon E. Halkin, “Protestants des Pays–Bas et de la Pr incipauté de Liège r efugiés à Strasbourg,” in Geroges Livet, et. al., Strasbourg au coeur religieux du XVIe siècle. 56  James L. French, The Correspondence of Caspar Schwenckfeld of Ossig and the Landgrave Philip of Hesse (Leipzig, 1908). 54

chapter 17.3

middle germany, 1527–1538  679

The Collapse of the Church, by Matthias Gerung

680  the radical reformation

chapter 17.3

Chapter 18

Definitive Encounter between Evangelical Anabaptism and Evangelical Spiritualism

T

he spiritualizing and the sectarian impulses in the Radical Reformation are found in varying intensities not only within the various regional and confessional groupings but also even within a g iven individual in the changing course of his or her religious career. In the latter case, the shift would more commonly be from the sectarian to the spiritualizing mood, as for example in John Denck, Christian Entfelder, Obbe Phillips, David Joris, and Gabriel Ascherham. The Radical Reformation as a whole, however, may be said to have moved from the spiritualism of late medieval mysticism, from the solaf ideism of the young Luther, and from the charismatic apocalypticism of the f irst-generation prophets, to the ever-increasing ecclesiological f irmness betokened by t he expanded and intensified use of the ban, by the enhanced authority of the written word and codified custom over inspiration and exaltation, by the emergence of authorized, ordained, and functionally differentiated ministers, and by the reordering of t he external life of t he communities of b elievers with increased attention to the problems and needs, such as religious education, of an increasing birthright membership. It was inevitable that innumerable lesser conflicts over grace and works, spirit and letter, should find their cumulative outburst in an extended controversy between major and consistent spokesmen of t he two opposed tendencies which in the inchoate state of t he Radical Reformation had existed side by side and often within the same personality. The controversy between Caspar Schwenckfeld and Pilgram Marpeck signified the definitive clarification, at least for the Radical Reformation in South Germany and Switzerland, of the seeming incompatibility of the two impulses which

681

682  the radical reformation

chapter 18 / 18.1

had from the beginning confused not only many of the proponents within the Radical Reformation but also many of the opponents. Schwenckfeld had always been a Spiritualist, though friendly to both the Anabaptists and the magisterial reformers, wherever he was not rebuffed, and Marpeck had from the beginning been a sober and constructive sectarian! Marpeck and Schwenckfeld in the literary deposit of their extended controversy, which began late in 1542, make very clear the great differences between evangelical Anabaptism and evangelical Spiritualism. Before entering into the intricacies of the controversy, we must recount the careers of the antagonists from their last contact in Strassburg a decade earlier.

1. Marpeck in the Decade before the Great Debate, 1532–42 We were last with Pilgram Marpeck in Strassburg when he was obliged to leave for religious reasons in 1532 (Ch. 10.3.h). Martin Bucer and Ambrose Blaurer congratulated each other on having rid the city of the leader of (the moderate party among) the Strassburg Anabaptists. Ambrose Blaurer from Esslingen wrote to Bucer: Your report concerning Marpeck will be valuable and useful to all our people, but still more your earnest reply to his nonsense. … An evil of t his kind usually sticks obstinately with people who have once been spotted by i t, but superstition knows how to deceive simple people by a pious bearing. I am glad about the swift dispatch of the trinitarian questions.1 The last part alludes, no doubt, to Servetus. Among the “simple people” whom Bucer had to reconcile to Marpeck’s departure was Margaret, Blaurer’s sister. In Strassburg Marpeck left in charge of h is group a f ellow Tyrolese, Leopold Scharnschlager, who would not have to leave until 1534 and who would remain a c lose associate of M arpeck and co-author with him of some of h is works in Strassburg to come. Marpeck, 1528–32, had been rather close to his eventual major and lifelong antagonist in Strassburg, Schwenckfeld, who likewise opposed infant baptism as meaningless and who likewise opposed coercion in religious ordinances, influenced the emergent theology of M arpeck who would presently become one of t he most substantial gathered-church theologians of S outh Germany. 2 While in Strassburg he had published two anonymous works, once thought of as probably directed against Schwenckfeld (because of t he initial reference 1

 Schiess, Briefwechsel: Blaurer, 1:319.  On the for mative influence of Schwenckfeld in the Strassb urg period, and for a com prehensive synthesis of his whole theolo gy, see Neal Blough, Christologie Anabaptiste: Pilgram Marpeck et l’humanité du Christ (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1984), esp. 237–38. 2

chapter 18.1

marpeck vs. schwenkfeld  683

to Stillstand), but more likely against such sojourning spiritualizers among former Anabaptists as Bünderlin and Entfelder. 3 These two works were directed to “several articles concerning the ceremonies of the New Testament, the preaching, baptizing, and the Lord’s Supper,” Clare Verantwortung and Klarer Unterricht (Strassburg, 1531) concerning the office of apostle and of bishop, of “the ceremonies of Christ,” “the difference between the divinity and the humanity of C hrist,” “the mission and worth of a n ew prophet” (?Hofmann), and “prayer and the good work of C ornelius [the centurion: magistry].”4 Challenged by the council and Bucer himself, Marpeck had submitted a Confession of Faith in 29 articles, January 1532.5 To this Bucer had specifically responded in his Apologie der Kindertaufe gegen Pilgram Marpeck.6 Although we have dealt with Marpeck in his relations with the magisterial reformers and some spiritualizers among the separatists in Strassburg, we present his thought primarily here as his significance lies in his remarkable effort to synthesize theologically and to bring together federatively the groupings as disparate as the disillusioned Münsterites, the resolute Hutterites, the separatist Swiss Brethren, and perhaps remnants of the Hutian Anabaptists in common defense against the spiritualizing, nonecclesial challenge to many of h is own kind groping for an ecumenically separatist ecclesiology and discipline. In his emphasis upon the humanity of Jesus in Klarer Unterricht, Marpeck was anticipating a conceptualization of the two natures of Christ that would become clearer and indeed decisive in his impending exchanges with Schwenckfeld.7 In not being very close to the christological language of Nicaea and Chalcedon, nor to the scholastic reformulation, he stood in some contrast to Schwenckfeld who was becoming well acquainted with the Fathers (Ch. 11.2.c, 11.3.e). For ‘nature’ Marpeck used Wesen which as essentia had been the evolved scholastic Latin for the Nicene Latin substantia common to the three Persons of the Trinity. Unlike Schwenckfeld, Marpeck defended the plenary humanity of Christ, his human Wesen. And this fully human mortal and 3

 To contrast Marpeck with spiritualizers, cf. n. 7 below.  These works, the second a sole copy in the Prubeda Museum, were identified by Walter Klassen, “Pilgram Marpeck’s Two Books of 1531,” MQR 33 (1959): 1830 as interpreted by him in the larger context, Covenant and Comm unity: The Life, Writings, and Her meneutics of Pilgr am Marpeck (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1968).Their title pages are reproduced by Blough, Christologie Anabaptiste, 42, 53. 5  Elsass 1 (QGT 7), 416–518, tr. J. C. Wenger, “Pilgram Marpeck’s Confession of Faith composed in Strassb urg,” MQR 12 (1938): 167–202; French translation, Blough, Christologie Anabaptiste, 249–53. 6  Elsass 1 (QGT 7), 400, article 19 and no. 303, 416–527. 7  Blough, Christologie Anabaptiste, presents a genetic account of Mar peck’s Christology passing through stages from the Unterricht through his Vermahnung (n. 61) to his Antwort auf Schwenckfeld beginning in 1542; see nn. 8 and 85 below. In my compact account it may suffice to acknowledge that the thought of Marpeck evolved and that even in the end there were some issues unresolved within his oeuvre. 4

684  the radical reformation

chapter 18.1

indeed suffering nature was for him the basis for the visible disciplined church with its “ceremonies” in Dominical succession, as it were, from the suffering Lord himself. The constitutive ceremony was baptism. And baptism he understood as the replication in the believer of something like what Christ himself had been, the Father working through the Spirit in him. Marpeck, who would purport to ground his ecumenically Anabaptist churchmanship in the Trinity, again worked without the benefit of a ny firm grasp of t he ancient formularies. Indeed his doctrine was built up from Scripture and especially from the Pauline corpus and John. Remarkably, his triadology was that of God the Father, the Holy Spirit, and the Word as “the third Person” made flesh. He seems to have been thinking here of the Spirit alongside the Father Creator hovering over the face of t he waters (Gen. 1:2) and whom the Father evidently addressed (Gen. 1:26), saying “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” For Marpeck Jesus as Word of G od, incarnate through the Virgin, who conceived by the Holy Spirit, was of two natures, Word and humanity, but did not himself have “Spirit and life” ( John 6:63) until after the Ascension.8 This lofty view of the Holy Spirit as second Person was for Marpeck reinforced by Romans 8:26–27, wherein the Holy Spirit is intercessor with the Father. Whether Jesus himself received the Holy Spirit (the divine nature, in effect) at conception, or at baptism, or only at his Ascension would remain ambiguous in Marpeck’s creative reworking of the Swiss Anabaptist legacy of separatist discipleship (of the Schleitheim Confession) with his new ponderings with Schwenckfeld first in the Strassburg setting and then in sustained, eventually clarifying encounter with Schwenckfeld in and around Ulm.9 Although in some of h is writing Marpeck seems to think of the Father working through the Holy Spirit in the acts and words of the incarnate Word, he seems in the end to prefer the reading of Scripture, according to which Jesus himself only received the Spirit at his Ascension (Acts 1:9), to enter in heaven with his plenary sons hip and high priesthood (Heb. 1:5, 5:5) and from heaven to send the Holy Spirit as Comforter (Acts 1:8, 2:18), as during his earthly ministry he had promised ( John 7:39, 14:26, 16:7). So far would Marpeck go against received formularies that he could eventually write (1542): 8  Verantwortung über Casparn Schwenckfelds Judicium (1542), ed. Johann Loserth, Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte der ober deutschen Taufgesinnter im 16. Jahrhundert (Vienna/ Leipzig, 1929), 272, 302, 508; cited by Blough, Christologie Anabaptiste, 183, 189. 9  In Verantwortung (1542) he says: “It is then [after the Ascension, Acts 1:9] that the man Christ received corporally the heritage of the Holy Spir it promised to him as man of [mor tal] flesh,” ed. Loserth, 302, noted by Blough, Christologie Anabaptiste, 183, who observes that J. C. Wenger, “The Theology of Pilgram Marpeck,” MQR 12 (1938): 205–36, first drew attention to the contradiction in Marpeck’s Christology, esp. 222. The foregoing sentence in Marpeck may be harmonized with that at n. 11 below to mean that the “man of [mortal] flesh” was the incarnate Word only momentarily when he r eceived the Spir it at baptism. This alternate vision in Mar peck of the r elation of Spirit and man in Christ is similar to that of Faustus Socinus, who likewise held that it was after the Ascension that Christ came into his plenary sonship and high priesthood (Heb. 1:5, 5:5).

chapter 18.1

marpeck vs. schwenkfeld  685

Christ as the head, not yet glorified on earth, was part of the invisible reality of the Word, which is the Third Person of the Godhead, even though he had been a man, corporal and visible.10 He [ Jesus] is the Son of God and of man with a divine nature (Wesen) and a human nature (Wesen) … we recognize thus the Christ the eternal Word of the Father and the Third Person of the divine unity as well as the origin and reality of his humanity.11 Although these are later formulations, there is no collateral evidence that Marpeck had not been thinking about Triadology in this way for some time. He was indeed a S piritualist, but was a S piritualist who perceived the life of the Spirit as the postresurrection gift of Jesus Christ to his followers, and he was hence all the more an upholder of baptism as the possible moment of congruence between the outer sign of and the experiential inner baptism made possible by Christ’s promise of t he Spirit. Moreover, the church of the thus baptized in turn participated therefore, not only in a commemorative meal that is Christ’s presence, but also in the Spirit’s presence, the participants thus being in their incorporated new humanity a continuation in time of the very body of Christ who, too, at his Ascension as the Word rejoined with the Father, was in body at once “life and spirit” ( John 6:33). It was thus as a Spiritualist Anabaptist that he will presently engage Schwenckfeld, the Evangelical Spiritualist who attached importance only to the spiritual, the inward, but whose foundation was christological rather than pneumatological, almost the opposite of his antagonist’s, namely the glorified and hence non-creaturely humanity of C hrist, the celestial flesh, which for Schwenckfeld made possible the communion also of the Old Testament worthies. It appears that Marpeck may have settled first somewhere in the Grisons.12 From there he traveled periodically to Alsace, the Tyrol, South Germany, and Moravia in the service of his version of a u nified pan-German Anabaptism. Later, during his controversy with Schwenckfeld, he made his headquarters in South Germany, perhaps at Ulm.13

10

 Verantwortung, ed. Loserth, 76; Blough, Christologie Anabaptiste, 156.  Verantwortung, ed. Loserth, 169: 130; cited by Blough, Christologie Anabaptiste, 167. 12  Boyd, Pilgram Marpeck, ch. 5, documents what little is known of Marpeck’s whereabouts between 1532 and 1544. His colleague Scharnschlager was school teacher in Ilanz (Ch. 22.1). 13  John C. Wenger, “The Life and Work of Pilgram Marpeck,” MQR 12 (1938): 137–66. 11

686  the radical reformation

chapter 18.1

Marpeck had several significant contacts with various Anabaptist groups in Moravia. It is possible that he was involved in a g roup there in the mid-to-late 1530s.14 Marpeck visited the Anabaptist minister and hymn writer Wolfgang Sailer at Austerlitz in Moravia during the first part of 1540.15 He came again to Moravia in 1541, hopeful that a union of the several refugee groups might be effected. He and his followers represented a less programmatic attitude than either the Swiss Brethren regarding the ban or the Hutterites regarding the community of goods. The Hutterite chronicler records the visit: He [Marpeck] gave out that he had come to this land in order to bring together all factions (Völcker), regardless of how many pieces and how disunited in the country they be and to make them one.16 After some discussion, in which strong feelings were expressed on both sides, Marpeck, when the community knelt for prayer, himself offered prayer. The chronicler, calling him a scoffer, reports that he was prevented from doing so by the whole congregation. Embittered by so bold a rejection of his gesture of g oodwill, Marpeck left, saying publicly that he “would rather unite with the Turk or the pope than with such a church,” and stomped away in great anger. Back in South Germany, Marpeck resumed even more earnestly his mission of building up a circle of followers calling themselves, by 1541, “the Christ-believing comrades of the covenant of the tribulation that is in Christ.”17 Marpeck, rebuffed by the communitarian Anabaptists of Moravia, found in the same year that in South Germany the greatest danger to his cause lay in the defection of t he moderate and, in a f ew notable cases, high-born Anabaptists to the Schwenckfeldians in and around Ulm whose spiritual yoke, without these evangelicals using external sacraments or corporate discipline, was somewhat easier to bear. Before entering upon the details of t he spirited encounter between Schwenckfeld and Marpeck

14

 Heinold Fast, in his for thcoming critical edition of the Kunstbuch, identifies an anonymous confession, Bekenntnis an Jan von Pernstain (Regensburg, Stadtarchiv, Eccl. I, 52,74), as the work of Marpeck stemming from the years 1535–39. After being called before a local representative of John of Pernstein, the chief Landeshauptmann of Moravia, the author is asked to submit a written summary of his position. Boyd, Pilgram Marpeck, ch. 5, also argues for Mar peck’s authorship and identifies Austerlitz, Znaim, and Eibenschitz (Evancice), where Entfelder had been preacher to a Unitas congregation before going to Strassburg in 1529 (Ch. 10.3.e), as likely possibilities as to the location of the cong regations on whose behalf Mar peck wrote. There came to be several Pilgramite congregations in Moravia; Zeman, Anabaptists and Czech Brethren, esp. 254–58. After 1540 Pilgramites, at least in Sla vkov, were also called Cor nelians after their local leader Cornelius Viehe; ibid, 256. 15  According to Schwenckfeld, CS 7; Kiwiet, Pilgram Marpeck, 55. 16  Zieglschmid, Chronik/Chronicle, 224/210. 17  Kiwiet, Pilgram Marpeck, 58. The phrasing draws upon Rev. 1:6.

chapter 18.1 / 18.2.a

marpeck vs. schwenkfeld  687

beginning in 1541, we must rehearse the story of t he Silesian after his departure from Strassburg, a little after Marpeck’s expulsion.

2. Schwenckfeld, 1534–1541 It will be recalled (Ch. 17.3) that Schwenckfeld was involved in correspondence with Philip of Hesse in an effort to clear himself of the aberrations connected with the Christology of Münster. That was shortly after his being linked with Melchior Hofmann in the synodal hearings in Strassburg. He left the city about September 1533, reasonably confident that he had not been worsted by Bucer and with the intention of returning.18 As both contestants, Marpeck and Schwenckfeld, had a S trassburg sojourn in common and as each was closer to the other than to the magisterial reformers of the urban republic in which in our narrative we almost over-extended our visit, we pause here for a g lance back at the religiopolitical issues there as seen from the perspective of S chwenckfeld for he will, after a ten months’ visitation en route to Augsburg, return to Strassburg to stay about a month. a. Schwenckfeld in Strassburg, 1533 At issue between Schwenckfeld and Bucer at the Synod meant to trap him was the conception of the urban republic as a Christocracy or a corpus christianorum,19 the latter different from the medieval corpus christianum (also of modern conceptualization) in having reconceived of the universal Church as the invisible community of the elect and of the reformed territorial church as a body of mutually disciplined believers along with their progeny and dependents, not as the “gathered” church (like the separatists) but as the “given” church under new ecclesio-civic discipline, something like a territorial reformed order of wedded saints and their offspring with their new manual of discipline for the defense of the community from within and from without. Schwenckfeld, who seems to have been a celibate by conviction with deep friendships as often with women as with pastors and magistrates, held to a 18

 McLaughlin describes the role and analyzes the position of Schw enckfeld in Strassburg society under the caption “Champion of Christian Freedom (1529–1533),” Schwenckfeld, ch. 5. I draw upon his analysis. His book has tw o clear maps, one showing Schwenckfeldianism in Silesia, sixteen sites, and the one in Herrnhut in neighboring Saxony, where the Czech Brethren (Ch. 9.1, 25.1.c) will be reorganized under Count Zinzendorf beginning in 1622. 19  McLaughlin connects the term with Zwingli in the first instance as under a magisterial reformer with a sufficiently Realist ecclesiology to say: “May we thus serve Order (Ordinem), as was said before, as where there is no church, there are no members of Christ.” McLaughlin cites Zwingli (Schwenckfeld, 136 n. 55): “Ordinem, ut antea dictum est, sic servamus ut, ubi nulla est ecclesia n ulla sunt membra Chr isti. …” Melchior Schuler and J ohannes Schultheiss, eds., Zwingli, Opera, 8 vols. (Zurich, 1828–34), 3:586. The term corpus christianorum is that of Bernd Moeller, “Imperial Cities and the Refor mation,” in a book of collected ar ticles of the same title: Three Essays, tr. and ed. H.C. Erik Midelfort and Mark U. Edwards (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972).

688  the radical reformation

chapter 18.2.a

gathered fellowship of friends in Christ through experiential regeneration, having since his eucharistic Stillstand in Silesia shifted “the focus of religion from the church to the home, from the altar to the family table” and to the tables of friends in patrician homes and in the halls of knightly castles. 20 In Strassburg as in other imperial cities on the point of becoming quasi-sovereign urban republics through liberation from the oversight and jurisdiction of a sacerdotal and conventual class of denizens who were exempt from the civic oath of their fellow townsmen, there was a division between the old nobility in their town residences, descended from their hilltop castles, and the wealthier guildsmen (Ch. 10.2.a) and still another division cutting across the elites as between “zealots for the reformation” as religiously fulfilling and the politiques, wary lest the new pastors usurp the role of oversight of private and public morals of the old sacerdotium in a Protestant version of papistry. 21 Strassburg was well on its way in evolving from a commune (Gemeinde), with ever freshly supplied leadership from all sectors of the citizens with the checks and balances of the many interconnected councils and commissions, into a sovereign lordship (Obrigkeit) but of the political elite. Its medieval civic institutions were consolidated by the elimination of the sacerdotium and its replacement by its magisterial teachers of Scripture and preachers of the Word. 22 Schwenckfeld had enjoyed a t riply motivated welcome into the dining halls and dining clubs of t he patriciate of Strassburg, 23 particularly of the politiques (pilloried by the Reformers as “Epicureans”), indisposed to countenance the replacement of p riestly oversight with that of t he new preacher-pastors, first by r eason of h is own nobiliary title, charm, and suavité social intercourse, and considerable theological competence, secondarily by reason of h is own well-articulated repugnance at coercion in religion, holding as he did to the church as a gathering of those spiritually drawn to seek the truth in familial togetherness, and finally by reason of close friendship with Matthew Zell and, even after the death of her mate, by the imposing and independent-minded Catherine Zell, 24 prototype of

20

 McLaughlin, Schwenckfeld, 161.  The contrasting terms are those of Thomas A. Brady, Ruling Class Regime and Reformation Strassburg (Leiden: Brill, 1978), appropriating McLaughlin for his inter pretation of the relative success of Schwenckfeld with the politiques among the ruling Strassburg elite, like Jacob Sturm. 22  McLaughlin, Schwenckfeld, 151. 23  For the term and conceptualization, see Marc Lienhard, ed., Croyants et Sceptiques au XVI siècle: Le dossier des “Epicuriens” (Strasbourg: Librairie ISTRA, 1981). For the related terms and conceptualizatiuon, Nicodemism, see Ch. 23.2. 24  Catherine Zell’s last action w as to conduct the funeral ser vice of a Strassb urg Schwenckfeldian (the wife of the ph ysician John Winther), to whom the council denied a proper service, BD 1 (1980), 97. 21

chapter 18.2.a

marpeck vs. schwenkfeld  689

all the strong women friends and sponsors of Schwenckfeld, whose urbane and nobiliary spirituality and uncommon respect for women drew them to him, all the more for his being characteristically intent to hear the others’ account of the religious life as to propound his own convictions, insights, and searching surmises. Schwenckfeld describes himself in his Protestation submitted to the Synod of 1 533, where Bucer had sought to get rid of the nobiliary celibate and the furrier-apocalyptic by s tressing their kinship on the anti-Chalcedonian doctrine of the celestial flesh of Christ. Said Schwenckfeld with reference to his upholding the right of people privately discussing views at variance with the establishment: In short, I d on’t give myself out here as a t eacher or leader, but only as a p oor student of J esus Christ. I h ave not come here in order to reform, depose, or oppose the preachers, or in order to make a congregation dependent upon me. It is, to sum up, not my intention to afflict anyone, but instead to confer about Christ, his heavenly riches, and his kingdom, and to talk of divine righteousness, be it at table or otherwise with good friends. I hope that no Christian could complain, especially where it is not against public order (gemeine Ordnung), but rather in the fear of God. 25 Respecting the Christology of Hofmann, as he must have discussed it with him in Strassburg, Schwenckfeld would presently state his objection succinctly in a letter to Jacob Held von Tieffenau, who had been expelled from Strassburg for refusing to have his children baptized and who would stand beside Schwenckfeld at the impending encounter in Tübingen in 1538: M[elchior] H[ofmann] errs in that he ascribes to Christ and his flesh according to the first birth what he had only after the second [birth] and he applies to the [Christ of the] first birth the passage 1 Cor. 15[:47], about the heavenly man when it speaks of the man Christ after the resurrection, after he was glorified in God and finally had become a t otally heavenly man. In sum he does not understand that Christ in the fullness of time was twice born, that is, that he was born and reborn from death on (ahn) and is therefore the beginning of our resurrection and that we shall be in form like unto him in glory, of which Rom. [17:8] and Phil. [3:20–21] speak.26

25

 CS 4: 789; quoted by McLaughlin, Schwenckfeld, 156–57.  From one of se venteen letters of Schw enckfeld to J acob Held, ca. 1534–35; CS 18 (1961), 157. I have continued the translation beyond McLaughlin, Schwenckfeld, 204. 26

690  the radical reformation

chapter 18.2.a / 18.2.b

This characterization of one theologian of “the celestial flesh of Christ” of another in Strassburg makes appropriate the juxtaposition here of t he view of still a third such Christologian, Servetus, who while in Strassburg also discussed with Schwenckfeld the same problematic, concerned as all were with salvation by t he death and resurrection of o ne unique among human beings in having been not only sinless but also transformed into another status of human nature (Glory). Schwenckfeld many years later would recall conversations with Servetus in Strassburg and acknowledge having read his works on the Trinity: With Servetus I conversed years ago [ca. 1531] and have read his [two] books. But because several people were suspicious of me because I [too] wrote de gloria hominis seu carnis in Christ and gave such testimony, as though I were also Servetian, I answered this at the close of my book Vom Ursprung des Fleisches Christi.27 In the second of the two works on the Trinity (Hagenau, 1532) Servetus expressed himself in a m anner similar to Schwenckfeld on Christ’s celestial/glorified flesh: This dispensation of the Incarnation was followed by the admirable one of t he resurrection, in which the existence of t he creature, which he acquired through his Incarnation, was laid aside just as if it were an accidental thing. There is nothing now in Christ which is animal. Christ has been wholly perfected and glorified through his resurrection so that he has returned to the original state of the Word, and is then God, and is in God, as before. 28 Servetus went on, citing Hebrews 2:14 (“he … partook of the same nature that through death he might destroy … the devil”) to uphold the view that Christ was only transitionally particeps creaturarum and that he was not for more than his earthly sojourn a creature. 29 b. Ten Months from Strassburg, Visiting Friends en route to Augsburg Schwenckfeld for ten months with hospitable urban politiques and Protestant spiritualizers who would later constitute the network of Schwenckfeldian family circles of his noble piety in the Southwest quadrant of the Empire, 27  This translation fr om the por tion of a letter of Schw enckfeld to Lucas P omisius (Schwenckfeld’s intermediary with Laelius Socinus), 27 February 1560; CS 18 (1961): 49, where a r elevant portion of an earlier letter to the same cor respondent disparages Ser vetus more specifically. The Ursprung is in CS, 14, doc. 927. In his response to Laelius Schwenckfeld criticized some of the Sienese’s theology and says he cannot regard him as a Christian brother. 28  This is not the translation of Wilbur, Two Treatises (1932), but of McLaughlin from the reprint of the Dialogorum de Trinitate libri duo (Frankfurt: Minerva, 1965), Schwenckfeld, 207–8. Servetus will later develop more clearly a celestial flesh as of conception, Ch. 23.4. 29  McLaughlin, Schwenckfeld, 208.

chapter 18.2.b

marpeck vs. schwenkfeld  691

while constantly defending himself against Bucer’s adverse judgment of him sent ahead to prospective hosts, went first to Speyer (10 September 1533), where his movement would much later score its most notable conversion, that of t he future bishop of S peyer, Marquand Hattenstein (1552–60). 30 He was in Landau, whose pastor, John Bader, he had won over from Zwinglianism. The town and surrounding area would be a hearth of S chwenckfeldianism into the next century. His next stop was Esslingen, where Ambrose Blaurer sought to create a c hurch discipline dominated by the town pastors, as was the ideal in Strassburg and Zurich. But Blaurer had left, and the council had appointed Jacob Otter with whom Schwenckfeld lodged, and who was cooperating with the council in planning the control of t he established church of t he imperial free city under the council, not the town pastorate. Schwenckfeld’s individualistic Spiritualism was attractive to Otter. Otter was able to get rid of the preacher, Martin Fuchs, who still embodied Blaurer’s church ideal. Schwenckfeld left Esslingen in the company of S ebastian Franck, going first to nearby Koengen, the village and the castle of J ohn Frederick Thumb von Neuburg, a friend of Blaurer, and the leading Protestant nobleman of Württemberg, and then John Conrad Thumb and his sister Ursula at Stetten. Despite Blaurer’s warnings the three Thumbs would remain patrons, friends, and disciples of Schwenckfeld. Schwenckfeld and Franck went on together to Ulm, residing there with a friend of the latter, though a site of future controversy for him. The mayor of Ulm, Bernard Besserer, was very friendly to them both. Schwenckfeld reached his goal, Augsburg, guest of P astor Boniface Wolf hart, himself from Strassburg (1531), who had invited Schwenckfeld from Strassburg, where the two had become friends. Schwenckfeld hoped to continue his study of Hebrew with the pastor, while Wolf hart was preaching in his parish a modified Schwenckfeldianism on inward baptism. Augsburg, destined to become a m ajor center of S chwenckfeldian adherence, may be characterized religiously at this juncture, while still free of a general church order. There were four religious groupings: (1) the remnants of the Anabaptists (Ch. 7.6), but who had since 1528 become sobered and disciplined in the style of the Swiss Brethren, and whose former leader and apologist, Jacob Dachser, after imprisonment, would become a parish vicar and a Schwenckfeldian, (2) the Old Believers, centering in the Fugger corporate family, (3) the Zwinglians, and (4) an embittered Lutheran minority, who would not take communion with the local “sacramentaries,” or, on the advice of L uther himself, even associate with them for festive baptisms and weddings. 30  McLaughlin, Schwenckfeld, 161 n. 3. McLaughlin has w orked out the chr onology and the significance of the ten months under the heading, “Caspar Schwenckfeld, Knight Errant of Discord (September 1533-December 1536),” Schwenckfeld, ch. 6.

692  the radical reformation

chapter 18.2.b / 18.2.c

In this setting of a ttacks and warnings from both Bucer and Luther, many in Augsburg were finding their Silesian guest and theological tabletalker congenial for his being anticlerical, seemingly sacramentarian, spiritualist, and voluntarist in his vision of the earnest Christian life. Bucer from afar sought to undermine the evident influence of Schwenckfeld by writing to several of his clerical allies in the city and notably by dedicating his book against the Münsterites, Report out of Holy Scripture on the Correct Godly Establishment of the Christian Community [Gemeyn] (March 1534) 31 to the Augsburg city council, thereby in fact polarizing sentiment in the city, many Protestants there all the more opposed to him. Widely esteemed in Augsburg, Schwenckfeld began his return to Strassburg by a v isit to Memmingen, where he criticized Bucer’s book against Münster and circulated his own work on baptism, then to Ulm, but returning to Augsburg, to prepare himself to proceed to Strassburg, where he arrived at the beginning of July. Although it may have been the intention of S chwenckfeld to resume residence in the city, Bucer had in the meantime gained the ascendency, noster episcopus (Ch. 10.4.c), the mandate against the separatists was issued. Schwenckfeld had now lost the support even of Matthew Zell, although not of his wife. He recognized that he had better leave, now that a church order had been established city-wide as it had not yet been done in Augsburg. Having received the advice of t he leading magistrate of S trassburg, Jacob Sturm, as well as of the whole council, that he might remain in the city only if he agreed to keep silence, Schwenckfeld departed thence in August 1534. c. Schwenckfeld, 1534–41 Wolfgang Capito, in whose house in Strassburg he had lived as guest for the previous two years, described him warningly to the chief councilor of the Duke of Württemberg in 1534: His thinking pleases himself altogether too much, and what he reads or has thought up today he considers a divine revelation, and that no one ever before had such an idea, even though it is already familiar to the least of our assistants. It comes from this. He is a melancholic. For this reason he is stubborn in his opinions, and is fearful and suspicious for no good reason. It is characteristic of serodiscentia, that is, of those who come to learning late, that such people believe that what they have just learned no one knows. And they proclaim it so pompously. Also, since he is from the aristocracy, he puts himself forward, has devoted admirers, and thus is

31

 Deutsche Schriften, 5, 109–258.

chapter 18.2.c

marpeck vs. schwenkfeld  693

accustomed to having everyone obliged to yield to him and highly esteem his judgment. 32 After a visit to Speyer, Schwenckfeld traveled to Frankfurt, and tarried also again near Esslingen. On 28 May 1535 a colloquy was held at the castle at Tübingen in the hope that peace might be restored between Schwenckfeld and his opponents—Bucer, Blaurer (from Lindau back in Constance), and Martin Frecht (Lutheran pastor in Ulm). The irenic intent of the colloquy was disrupted by Frecht’s attack on Schwenckfeld’s denying that the risen Christ remained in his humanity a creature. 33 Henceforth, Schwenckfeld’s writings dealt more and more with Christology. However, a t ruce was managed, whereby the magisterial preachers agreed to refrain from public expressions of animosity toward Schwenckfeld, while he agreed to desist from criticizing or disturbing their ministry and doctrine. By September of 1535, Schwenckfeld had taken up residence in Ulm, as guest again of the burgomaster, Bernard Besserer. This would be his base, 1534–39. He, within the first year clashed with Pastor Frecht on the matter of t he Wittenberg Concord of 2 6 May 1536. This unionistic attempt to remedy the failure of the Marburg Colloquy to produce agreement on the interpretation of t he Supper had been prepared by M elanchthon and Bucer, and signed by a number of German preachers, including Frecht. The town council of Ulm, however, was hesitant about accepting their pastor’s recommendation, and Frecht encouraged Bucer to believe that the delay could be traced to the influence of S chwenckfeld on the burgomaster. 34 Ulm finally accepted the Concordia, but with reservations, thereby feeding the fire of Frecht, irritated with Schwenckfeld’s presence. In 1538, Frecht came into possession of Schwenckfeld’s works attacking the Chalcedonian theology of C hrist’s full creaturely humanity (18.2.a). Up to this point Schwenckfeld had been refining his doctrine of the two natures of C hrist with progressive divinization of h is humanity to this point where he had rejected the term creature for that nature altogether and affirmed its full glorification. Schwenckfeld’s Christology and soteriology 32  QGT, Württemberg (QGT 1, 1930), 992; noted by McLaughin, Schwenckfeld, 13, where, without so extended a passage, he goes on to reflect on the possibly mild manic-depressive component of Schwenckfeld’s personality. 33  See Richard L. Harrison, “Schwenckfeld and the Tübingen Colloquy,” MQR 52 (1978): 237–47; and, in the larger context of his life,McLaughlin, “Knight Errant of Discord (September 1533–December 1536)”; and “Minister of the Glorified Christ (1537–1540),” Schwenckfeld, chs. 6 and 7, esp. 208–9. 34  Schultz, Caspar Schwenckfeld, 240–42, concedes that the Silesian pr obably was invited by the b urgomaster to r ender his vie ws on the document; CS, 5:218. For a cir cular of Schwenckfeld in Ulm, see Michael Weber, Caspar Schwenckfeld und seine Anhänger in den freybergischen Herrschaften, Justingen und Opfingen (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1962). For the position of Schwenckfeld in the irenic colloquy at Tübingen (1535) see the study by Richard L. Harrison, “Schwenckfeld and the Tübingen Colloquy,” MQR 52 (1978): 237-47.

694  the radical reformation

chapter 18.2.c / 18.3

had come to resemble that of Eastern Orthodoxy: “God became man [in glory] that man [in his mortal corporality] might become God or what God is.”35 Carefully adding personal comments, Frecht sent the offending piece to Schwenckfeld’s host, Burgomaster Besserer. As a r esult, a c ommission was created to investigate Schwenckfeld. Upon receiving the commission’s report, the city council ordered that Schwenckfeld should be permitted to live in Ulm, that his movements should not be hampered, and further, that those having criticisms to make of the Silesian should complain directly to Schwenckfeld rather than attack him in their sermons. On 13 January 1539, Schwenckfeld and Frecht publicly debated on the creaturehood of Christ’s human nature before the council, Schwenckfeld following up his appearance with two books on the subject. The preachers of U lm rallied to Frecht’s side, threatening to resign on the ground that an unordained Silesian nobleman enjoyed greater freedom than they. Informed of this turn of events by Besserer, Schwenckfeld left the city on 13 September 1539. After his customary round of v isits to familiar communities, he settled down at nearby Justingen castle as the guest of G eorge von Freyburg, 1540–47. A m ember of t he household (Michael Ludwig von Freyberg) inscribed in the f ireplace mantel 36 a f ive-line summary of S chwenckfeld’s concept of t he Glorif ied Human Nature of C hrist (cf. Ch. 11.3.e). Frecht, however, was not done with Schwenckfeld. In March of 1540 the Lutheran pastor of U lm appeared before the convention at Smalcald and secured the condemnation of Schwenckfeld’s Christology. (It was in connection with this development that Schwenckfeld carried on most of h is correspondence with Philip of Hesse, Ch. 17.3.) Frecht also secured the condemnation at Smalcald of another Spiritualist of U lm, Schwenckfeld’s traveling companion, Sebastian Franck. We may here pick up his trail. We reintroduce Franck at this juncture not only because his fate was intertwined with that of Schwenckfeld but also because he gave the Spiritualist conception of t he Church its typologically purest formulation.

3. Sebastian Franck, 1531, to His Death in 1542 It was in his already mentioned letter from Strassburg to John Campanus that Franck gave memorable expression to his spiritualizing view of the Church, which went farther than Schwenckfeld’s and constituted a

35  Maier, Caspar Schwenckfeld, 67 quoting CS, 6:81, Schwenckfeld intending: “God by grace”; Blough, Christologie Anabaptiste, 153; McLaughlin, “Minister of the Glor ified Christ, 1537–1540,” Schwenckfeld, ch. 7. 36  McLaughlin, Schwenckfeld, 219 n. 103.

chapter 18.3

marpeck vs. schwenkfeld  695

continuing threat to the disciplined, tightly sectarian ecclesiology in what was emerging as normative evangelical Anabaptism. 37 Franck, a pacifist, something of a Nicodemite, an opponent of the confusion of t he Old a nd the New Testaments, an exponent of t he celestial flesh of Christ as the substance of spiritual nourishment, was in various ways as a Monarchian close to Servetus on the Trinity, close to the spiritualizing Anabaptist Bünderlin on the relationship of true Christians to good pagans, and close to Schwenckfeld especially on the invisible character of the Church. Franck was opposed to all attempts to restore the institutions of t he primitive Church, having come to regard the conservative reformation of the Lutherans, and the various radical restitutions of the Anabaptists, and of the ecclesio-civic corpus christianorum of Zwingli and Bucer as ill-advised because he had come to regard the constitution (polity), the sacraments, and even the written word (Bible) as the regulations, inappropriately coercive or intrusive or at best the nourishment and the reading matter of children and beginners in faith: God permitted, indeed gave, the outward signs [sacraments] to the Church in its infancy, just like a doll to a child, not that they were necessary for the Kingdom of God, nor yet that God would require them of our hands. To be sure, the Church in its childhood could not dispense with such things as a staff; and God therefore favored the infant church as a father gives something to a child so that it won’t cry. But when the child is at length strong enough to throw the staff away, the father does not thereupon become angry, but rather the same is pleasing to the father. 38 To change the metaphor, Franck thought of the ecclesiastical externals as the integuments sloughed off by a C hristianity which after its spiritual maturation or metamorphosis no longer needs to crawl but can fly: Therefore, I believe that the outward church of Christ, including all its gifts and sacraments, because of the breaking in and laying waste by A ntichrist right after the death of t he apostles, went up into heaven and lies concealed in the Spirit and in truth. I am thus

37  The original Latin letter, dated Strassburg, 4 February 1531, is lost. It is pr inted in two surviving vernacular versions, Middle Netherlands and High German, in Krebs and Rott, Elsass 1 (QGT 7), no. 241. It appear s in translation in SAW, 145–60. Alterations from this transla tion in the quotations which follow are emendations made possible in the light of the slightly larger and apparently more faithful Dutch translation that w as only partly taken into account in the SAW version. All Franck’s writings are calendared and characterized bibliographically by Dejung, BD 7 (1986): 39–119. 38  SAW, 155; Dejung, BD 7 (1986): 94, item 2.

696  the radical reformation

chapter 18.3

quite certain that for fourteen hundred years now there has exited no gathered church nor any sacrament. 39 At the very beginning, Antichrist, clutching at the husks or cunabula of Christianity, converted them into the appurtenances of an oppressive religiosity, while all the time God, foreseeing the maturation of his elect among all peoples, had provided inner ordinances for their spiritual comfort: Since the holy and omniscient Spirit anticipated that all these outward ceremonies would go under because of Antichrist and would degenerate through misuse, he gladly yielded this victory to Satan and fed, gave to drink, baptized, and gathered the faithful with the Spirit and the truth in such a w ay that nothing would be lost to truth, although all outer transactions might pass away. … God through the Spirit in truth provided by means of his Spiritual (geystelicke; unsichtbaren) Church all things which the signs and outward gifts merely betokened. He leaves it to the devil, who seeks nothing other than the externals, to misuse the externals and control the sacraments.40 The Ecclesia Spiritualis includes not only devout Christians but also, as with Schwenckfeld, the saints before Christ and, as with Ziegler (and, as we shall see, also with certain of the Italian Evangelical Rationalists), the good Muslims and pagans who may know only the inner Word without having heard of the incarnate Word: Therefore the unitary Spirit alone baptizes with fire and the Spirit all the faithful and all who are obedient to the inner Word in whatever part of t he world they be. For God is no respecter of persons [Acts 10:34] but instead is the same to the Greeks as to the Barbarian and the Turk, to the lord as to the servant, so long as they retain the light which has shone upon them and the joy in their heart (Ps. 4:6b–7).41 This Spiritual Church will remain scattered and hidden among the heathen (2 Thess. 2:7) and the nominal Christians until Christ gathers his own at his second advent (Isa. 11:11–12).42 It was not because of F ranck’s Spiritualist manifesto to Campanus, it will be recalled, but because of his Chronica, which enrolled so diverse a

39

 SAW, 149.  SAW, 152–53. 41  SAW, 150. 42  SAW, 150. 40

chapter 18.3

marpeck vs. schwenkfeld  697

company of distinguished and vilified groups and persons among the “heretics” that Franck was expelled from Strassburg in 1531 (Ch. 10.3.d). From Strassburg he went to Kehl just across the Rhine. In the spring of 1 532 he addressed a petition to Strassburg, seeking permission to return and to have his Weltbuch, or universal geography, published as a fourth section of a revised and enlarged Chronica. Both requests were refused. From Kehl, Franck went to Esslingen, where while earning a livelihood by making soap, he engaged in some literary activity. He was molested by interference from the Strassburg authorities. He sold his product at the weekly market in Ulm, and decided to move there, establishing himself in April 1533, thanks to the support of Mayor Besserer (18.2.b), and obtained in October 1534 the right of the city. He associated himself with the printer Hans Warnier. The latter, however, declined to print Franck’s Weltbuch. It was published instead at Tübingen (1534), the first comprehensive German geography. Its religious significance lies in its chapter entitled “Concerning the True Christian Faith,” wherein Franck unfolded his religious convictions with greater moderation than in 1531, and contented himself with ridiculing Roman practices and the hierarchy. At Ulm, Warnier printed Franck’s translation of E rasmus’ Praise of Folly with three supplements, altogether called collectively the Kronenbüchlein (Ulm, 1534), namely, (a) a paraphrase of a b ook on the vanity of all knowledge and skill by Henry Cornelius Agrippa of N ettesheim (d. 1536),43 (b) his own Vom Baum des Wissens des Guten und Bösen,44 and (c) his own Ein Lob des Esels in praise of the divine word while purportedly praising the donkey.45 The general idea of the translation with its three supplements is the contrast between divine wisdom and human folly; between God and creation; freedom and sin; the Word of God and the Bible. In the same year, 1534, defender of Geist against Welt (Ch. 32.1.b), Franck carried farther his idea of p aradox, publishing with Warnier his Paradoxa ducenta octoginta (of which there would be eight German versions and one in Dutch in the century), wherein, under the form of seeming contradictions, he pressed some of the main themes of his theological thought somewhat in the spirit of Denck. He once, it will be recalled (Ch. 10.3.d), mildly opposed Denck. The idea of paradox was in the air. The book drew heavily upon the dialectical mysticism of Theologia Deutsch. Franck defined a paradox as an incredible thesis contrary to common sense but nevertheless true from a particular point of view. In the actual formulation of a paradox the thesis and antithesis were more commonly implied

43

 De incertitudine et v anitate omnium scientiarum et ar tium (1530); translated as Von der Haylossykeit: Eyttelkaytt: ungewissheit (Ulm, 1534). 44  English translation as The Forbidden Fruit in 1640. 45  Otherwise entitled, Ein Lob des törichten göttlichen Wortes.

698  the radical reformation

chapter 18.3

than stated.46 An idea contained in his book that was particularly unacceptable to the preachers of U lm appeared in the preface: “Literal Scripture, the sword of Antichrist, kills Christ; heresies and sects [come from] the literal sense of the Scripture.” While in Ulm, Franck made the acquaintance of the Augsburg patrician George Regel and his wife. It will be recalled that Anna Regel was involved, perhaps quite innocently, at Louis Haetzer’s trial in Constance for bigamy (Ch. 8.3). Since then she had become a follower of Schwenckfeld. Thanks to the support of the Regels, Franck was able now to acquire his own printing press. About this same time, January 1535, Mayor Besserer received a letter from Philip of Hesse, who counseled him to banish Franck as an “Anabaptist and revolutionary” if the town of Ulm wished to avoid conflict with the Emperor. Landgrave Philip had been prompted so to write by Melanchthon. Melanchthon for his part had been moved to act thus by B ucer, himself alerted by Frecht, the principal preacher in Ulm. In consequence of pressure from Marburg, Strassburg, and Wittenberg, Franck’s press suspended activity 25 January 1535, and on 3 March the town council demanded that Franck leave by 24 July. Franck endeavored to refute the charge of being hostile to imperial authority. He denied, moreover, that he was in accord with the Anabaptists, many of whom he, like the Regels of Augsburg, had converted to his own Spiritualist views. He protested against the arbitrary expulsion that would reduce him to misery, and with him his pregnant wife, Ottilie Behaim, and his young children. Besserer and George Regel managed to get Franck out of d ifficulty by a rguing that it was necessary to give Franck a chance to earn enough money to pay back his creditors. Besserer indicated that he himself was willing to give up his personal claims in favor of the claims of the city of Ulm. Franck was permitted to explain his situation and his views before the commission of f ive censors presided over by Frecht, who made the final report. The Chronica of 1531 was cited twice with an indication of the folio. Since the edition had been completely destroyed at Strassburg, one must conclude that it was Bucer, privy to the deliberations of the censors, who furnished Frecht references. Franck was asked to reply to a questionary under seven points, and this resulted in his Deklaration, presented to the censors of Ulm on 3 September 1535. We may form some picture of the widespread opposition to Franck at this moment by attending to his response to the seven points against him. First, he distinguished the Word, of w hich the Evangelist speaks at the 46  Because of the formal inconclusiveness of his paradoxical approach, which never became systematically dialectical, Kurt Goldammer has character ized Franck as “Der dialektische Denker ohne Synthesis, der Mann der ungelösten Synthese,” ARG 47 (1956): 184. But see a contrary view, Eugene Peters, “Sebastian Franck’s Theory of Religious Knowledge,” MQR 35 (1961): 267–81.

chapter 18.3

marpeck vs. schwenkfeld  699

opening of the Fourth Gospel and which is not, of course, a book, from the written word, which is created and which must not be placed in the room of God. As the basis of t his distinction Franck established the differences between the interior word and the exterior word. He cited in support the preface written by Luther to the second edition of the Theologia Deutsch of 1518 (Ch. 2.2). Second, as to the question whether an impious person without vocation might preach, Franck asserted that in reproducing the distinction of Luther between the peccator and the impius he merely had in mind the Lutheran view that the preacher is always, of course, like every other Christian, simul justus et peccator, but could not be egregiously impious and continue in his preaching off ice. A probing criticism of Lutheranism and its institutions is implied in this reply. Third, as to whether arts and sciences, apart from grace, are diabolical (in allusion to Franck’s paraphrase of Agrippa), he responded that they might be quite useful to pious people but might also contribute to the perdition of the wicked because everything is impure to those who are impure, as the nectar of a flower becomes poison in the body of a spider. Fourth, there is no possibility that meritorious works can render man acceptable in God’s sight. Franck’s is thus a clear endorsement of the Pauline-Lutheran conception of justification by faith alone. Fifth, as to the charges that Bucer had made against Franck in connection with printing his Chronica, he distinguishes between outright lies and errors of judgment (or miscalculation), which are not reprehensible. Sixth, Franck denies the charge that his social teaching (including his favorable citation of 4 C lement; Ch. 16.3) had implied an enforced community of g oods. He simply wishes to exhort Christians to help one another in mutual aid. Seventh, in dealing with the peace of the Church, Franck takes occasion to express his personal conviction and confession of faith. It is not possible to have complete agreement in faith with the whole world, because faith is not a matter for all; and, in any event, coercion is impotent to produce conformity. The state should not intervene in order to bring it about. Woe unto him who confesses the truth before dogs and swine. Such a one deserves being torn to pieces. In fact, it is sometimes necessary to conceal the Word of G od. Franck indicates that he had no vocation to assemble the Israel of God dispersed among the faithless. Only God is able to unite believers by his Word, and this union is purely spiritual. On 15 October 1534 the censors of U lm declared that Franck had responded with a statement promising not to publish anything under his own name and as a printer to submit the works of o ther authors to the censors. At the same time he insisted on not being required to take any special oath, for faith should not be constrained. Franck was supported by

700  the radical reformation

chapter 18.3

Burgomaster Besserer, who at the session on 5 November insisted that a ten-point confession of f aith made out by B ucer for Regensburg would not have the force of law in Ulm, that it was not possible for the council to accede to the demands of the pastors in every respect, and that Franck should simply promise not to print anything without the authorization of the censors, a somewhat more liberal arrangement than Franck’s own proffer. Nevertheless, Franck did not publish anything more of his own at Ulm except for the second edition of his Chronica in 1536. The so-called lies, insofar as they were errors, disappeared.47 While printing for his livelihood in Ulm, he had his own works published elsewhere. His Die goldene Arche, for example, which was a compilation of biblical, patristic, and pagan texts concerning certain points of faith, appeared in Augsburg in 1538. It aroused loud protests because in the foreword he rebuked theologians for their long commentaries and acrimonious disputes about the sacraments while neglecting their practical religious life and because he made bold to declare that pious Christians needed to know no more doctrine than that contained in the Ten Commandments and the Apostles’ Creed. His compilation of b iblical texts, Das…mit sieben Siegeln verschlossene Buch (Augsburg, 1539), picked up the idea of D enck’s in his work attacked by the Diallage of Althamer. It is a concordance of scriptural discordances and obscurities, many of which cannot be opened by any key. A good example of what Franck assembled as biblical contradiction is the following: The sins of one cannot implicate another; but the guilt of Adam condemns the whole world. Or again, Christ brings peace; Christ brings the sword. Franck’s Chronicon Germaniae was accepted by the censors of Frankfurt for publication in 1539. The sources of this Chronicon are more numerous than those of the Chronica. Franck, in fact, compared the two and gave his judgment about each one. It is significant that his earlier pessimism had passed into the background for he was now writing about the glory of Germany.48 Already before the appearance of t he Chronicon the preachers of U lm had denounced Franck before the town council in respect to a number of small books for which, they said, he had no permit from the censors. As it happened, these works were not by him, except for the preface in the case of a piece of satirical poetry. The denunciation referred to the works which appeared outside of U lm. Consequently on 15 June, Franck received a notice of expulsion though with no indication of why. He wrote one more 47  Franck conceded, by way of appeasement, that the fierce eagle w as indeed also the emblem of John the Evangelist, as well as of the Roman Emperor. 48  Willi Prenzel, Kritische Untersuchung und Würdigung von Sebastian Fr ancks Chronicon Germaniae (Marburg/Leipzig, 1908).

chapter 18.3

marpeck vs. schwenkfeld  701

appeal, protesting that he had honestly kept his promise. He argued that the Arche had been bought by learned men and that the censors at Augsburg had judged the book a good one. He pointed out that if he were to be banished from Ulm for having published books in other towns, Ulm might itself fall into trouble with the towns thus defamed. Consequently, the censors of Ulm were required to draw up a new list of his works and those published by him since November 1535. But Frecht refused to hold himself to that date and repeated the old complaints. He suggested that Franck’s personal life was not above suspicion, making insinuations about the fact that he lived above a tavern. Frecht, moreover, pretended to hold that the decision of 1535 had been quite simply an interdict of all the works of Franck. Thus, despite everything, Franck was defeated by Frecht, and the council decreed his expulsion on 8 January 1539, to be effective on 23 April. Schwenckfeld was banished as the same time. Leaving his wife and children provisionally in Ulm, Franck set out for Basel in search of a new position. Finding that at Basel there was quite an oversupply of printers, he wrote to a magistrate in Bern, who had read some of h is works, asking whether it would be possible for him to establish himself there as a printer. But nothing resulted from his effort. Frecht apparently compassed the ruin of Franck’s prospects in Bern by writing to Sebastian Münster. Since Franck’s wife was about to have another child, he was accorded further delay. The removal to Basel did not take place until July. He required several carriages to transport his printing equipment. On his departure Franck addressed a letter to the council of Ulm, wherein he charged Frecht with literary jealousy. He also published pseudonymously his Kriegsbüchlein (Augsburg, 1539), attacking the magisterial chaplains who defended warfare. He averred therein that the Last Judgment draws nigh, so widespread is the ascendancy of moral evil and violence.49 In the meantime, the divines of central and southwest Germany, among them Melanchthon, Bucer, and several of the Hessian theologians, assembling March 1540 at Smalcald,50 moved at the instigation of Martin Frecht to condemn the two Spiritualists of U lm, Schwenckfeld and Franck, and also all Anabaptists. Burgomaster Besserer was present to vouch for the good conduct of both but in vain. Schwenckfeld, for his part, referred to the Smalcald declaration as “the new bull of excommunication.” Against the Anabaptists, called “the new Donatists,” the declaration renewed the complaint of the state churches 49

 Kurt Goldhammer, “Friedensidee und Toleranzgedanke bei P aracelsus und den Spiritualisten, II: Franck und Weigel,” ARG 4 (1956): 180ff. 50  Teufel, Sebastian Franck, 90, on the basis of a letter of Blaur er, 6 J une 1543, argues that Frecht was present at Smalcald as the major opponent of Schw enckfeld and Franck, even though his name does not appear among the tw elve signatories of the Smalcald Articles. Cf. CR, 2, col. 986.

702  the radical reformation

chapter 18.3

against separatism and sectarian perfectionism. Against the two Spiritualists specifically it leveled the charges of i ndifference to the outstanding point at issue for the evangelical church of the Magisterial Reformation as it sought to establish itself between the conventicles of the sectaries on the one side and the monstrous perversion of Christianity on the Catholic side. These Spiritualist “vagabonds” in their individualistic relativism, declared the Smalcald divines, class all three as fragments or factions of the one true, invisible Church and in their irenic spiritualizing justify their absence from attendance upon the divine services of any church! Since “faith comes from what one hears,” they continued, all citizens must attend upon the preaching of t he Word in the territories and towns of w hich they are inhabitants. Skeptics who criticize the evangelical institutions and attenuate the significance of t he preached word and the written Word, fail to realize that the Holy Spirit acts exclusively through the exterior word (literal and preached). Thus, at Smalcald the Spiritualist element so prominent in the young Luther himself was programmatically repudiated.51 Soon after Franck’s establishment in Basel his wife Ottilie died, and he remarried, this time Barbara Beck, daughter of his editor in Strassburg. She brought to the marriage a considerable dowry, and as a consequence Franck was able to purchase a house in Basel, 21 November 1542. On 11 May 1542 he paid his tax for the right of citizenship and was on 24 June enrolled as member of the spice guild, which appropriately enough included the printers! He was associated with Nicholas Brylinger and edited with him in 1541 a Latin-Greek New Testament, which was republished the following year. It is possible that Franck was evading the censors of Basel by having his controversial works printed elsewhere. It was at Frankfurt that he published in 1541 his big collection of proverbs in two parts, his most successful publication, Sprichwörter … aller Nationen und Sprachen. Franck died in the autumn of 1542, and the archives at Basel preserve an inventory of h is possessions, apparently prepared 31 October of t hat year.52 We resume our account of Schwenckfeld and Marpeck, bearing in mind that the individualistic conception of both Franck and Schwenckfeld of a Spiritual Church—without external baptism, material eucharistic bread, or institutionalized ban (as with the much later Quakers)—is what Marpeck regarded as the principal temptation and threat to South German Anabaptism of which he had become the principal spokesman in the middle third of the century. The controversy between Marpeck and the spiritualizers, symbolized more by S chwenckfeld than by F ranck, will prove to be all the more arduous for the reason that Marpeck shared something of the “ecumenical” 51

 Teufel holds both Frecht and Bucer responsible for action against Franck and Schwenckfeld.  Teufel, Sebastian Franck, reproduced the list of the books in his library.

52

chapter 18.3 / 18.4

marpeck vs. schwenkfeld  703

vision of the spiritualizers and was in continuous conflict with the Hutterites and other completely exclusivistic Anabaptists to the rigoristic right.

4. Marpeck and Schwenckfeld, 1542 We have seen how despite the goodwill of B urgomaster Besserer, both Franck and Schwenckfeld had been obliged to leave Ulm and had fallen under condemnation of the Smalcald divines, led locally by Martin Frecht. At this new juncture, Franck being dead (1542), Schwenckfeld was still into his seven years of s ojourn as guest of B aron Freyberg in Justingen castle (1540–47) and would presently move to the abandoned Franciscan convent in Esslingen, 1547–50, at all times free to move, notably to the Württemberg court in Stuttgart of the restored Duke Ulrich. Others besides the Lutherans at Smalcald were attacking Schwenckfeld’s doctrines. In July of 1539, Bullinger’s Orthodoxa Epistola had appeared, maintaining against Schwenckfeldian-disposed evangelism that in respect to his humanity, Christ was wholly a creature.53 In 1540, the burgomaster Reformer of S t. Gall, Vadian, produced his Antilogia, following the path marked out by Bullinger, and in the following year another work against Schwenckfeld in the same vein, Anacephaleosis. Schwenckfeld’s reply was his major christological book, Vom Fleische Christi (1540), and the great Confession.54 They were probably written in the library of the Benedictines in Kempten, copied, and then sent not only to Vadian but also to Philip of Hesse, the city councils of Ulm, Nuremberg, and Strassburg, the clergy of Zurich, and indirectly to Luther and Melanchthon.55 At about the same time, a s choolmaster of S chwäbish-Hall entered the literary lists against Schwenckfeld by publishing the first of four books against the Schwenckfeldian Christology.56 Schwenckfeld discerned here as his real opponent the preacher at Hall, John Brenz, who provided one of the prefaces.57 Domiciled in Justingen castle, Schwenckfeld was engaged not only in extended literary controversy but also in innumerable “pastoral” visits to his friends and sympathizers throughout the whole of the southwest quadrant of the Empire,58 where conventicles gathered to hear his messages. Of such groups, Schwenckfeld wrote:

53

 Maier, Caspar Schwenckfeld, 39–40.  CS, 7:281–361 and 451–884, respectively. Vom Fleische is different from Ursprung des Fleisches, at. n. 27. 55  Maier, Caspar Schwenckfeld, 39–40. 56  The other books appeared in 1543 and 1546. 57  He was not, however, to reply to Brenz until 1553, by which time he would already be engaged in controversy with Matthias Flacius Illyricus on the Word of God. 58  Ulm, Speyer, Esslingen, Kaufbeuren, Kempten, Memmingen, etc. 54

704  the radical reformation

chapter 18.4

We do not have a gathered, separatist coetus or church (Kirche). … [I]n the diaspora (Zerstrewung) we are only gathered in the spirit of grace. We also do not separate ourselves by o ur deportment (Wandel) or fellowship (Gemeinschafft) from anybody, who loves Christ and lives blessedly (gottselig) of whatever party he may be, because we know that God has his own in all parties (in aller Parten), who without doubt recognize the truth now partly hidden but afterwards more brightly, who give themselves over to repentance and intend to live Christian lives. … When some of us meet together, we pray together, also for our enemies who persecute Christ in us, some perhaps unwittingly, that God convert them, raise up his kingdom, and increase the number of h is believers. Furthermore, we instruct each other, consult one another, question each other about Christ and the mystery of the divine Trinity, in which the salvation of our souls stands, the kingdom of God, etc. In brief, we, who are as yet poor souls, inexperienced in divine things, poor and weak in the spirit and faith, hope that God the Lord will in time help us and others further, as it may please Him. Meanwhile we are zealous in the pure wholesome doctrine about the Lord Jesus Christ and endeavor through Him to live piously in His grace. … We also are zealous in the correct understanding and interpretation of the Scriptures after the Spirit, as much as we are able through prayer and other exercise in Christ to obtain the revelation of His Spirit. Our books are an exposition of Scripture and an elucidation of the Twelve Articles of our Christian faith.59 This is our calling and the reason for our teachings and we ask God that if we are more so minded, he will graciously reveal to us. … Our alliance (verbintnus) does not rest on ceremonies, but alone on the doctrine of the knowledge of Christ according to his two natures (beden Stenden) with all who acknowledge in their hearts our doctrine (which is not ours but rather the Lord Christ’s and his Spirit’s teaching) as divine truth. … We hope that the Lord through this pure, wholesome doctrine of his saving knowledge, because it came out of his divine revelation in the Holy Spirit, will build his elect church (Kirche) and through it will gather the children of God who are scattered over all the earth. … And

59  The XII Articles, often cited, have been lost.The standard for the Schwenckfeldian community is German Theology (1560), which, in the for m of his last catechism, rapidly became normative among his followers. Printed in CS, 17, doc. 1121, 54–147, it has been entered into the Schwenckfelder Library Data Base (Pennsburg, Pa., 1984– ) with fifty-eight writings to date rendered in English, ed. Peter C. Erb, tr. Fred A. Grater.

chapter 18.4

marpeck vs. schwenkfeld  705

although we know of n o new Apostolic Pentecost, we do not wish to wait for it to repent and better our lives, but while it is today, to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, and endeavor daily to prepare ourselves for the coming of t he Lord. Nor can we wait here on earth for an aureum seculum or a golden age. We hope to attain to the perfect knowledge of Christ yonder in the fatherland. Here we know only in part, as Paul says [1 Cor. 13:12], when it comes to the highest of a ll and we receive only the first fruits of the Spirit through Christ [Rom. 8:23].60 Such was the kind of fellowship of study, prayer, and prophecy which was attracting the bruised and battered Anabaptists of South Germany. In such wise was Schwenckfeld occupied when the appearance in 1542 of an anonymous Vermahnung (Admonition) would involve him in a controversy, decisive for the clarification of h is own ecclesiology and Christology and for their counterparts in Pilgram Marpeck and his gathering community. It was early in 1542 out of h is efforts to unite the several Anabaptist parties from Slavkov to Strassburg and to prevent further defections to the Schwenckfeldian conventicles that Pilgram Marpeck had prepared this Vermahnung also known as the Taufbüchlein (Schwenckfeld’s usage) and as Das Buch der Bundesbezeugnung (Book about the [baptismal] sign of t he covenant [of church membership]). About two-thirds of it is a translation and revision of B ernard Rothmann’s Bekenntnisse van beyden Sacramenten

60  CS, 17: Document 1166, 824, 827–28; I have expanded the translation of Selina Schultz, who drew attention to the passages, Caspar Schwenckfeld, 280–81. The whole document, Schwenckfeld’s Statement of his Doctr ine and Calling , after August 1561, is in r esponse to the queries of an unnamed, prominent, learned man. She, as editor of the volume, gives a valuable compact summary, ibid, 812–13. This long passage with its eschatological glance occasions the observation that my account of Schwenckfeld has not brought out his conception of last things. At least four contributions to the pub lished papers of the Colloquium in P ennsburg, Pa. (1984) illumi nate his conception of last things, Schwenckfeld and Early Schwenckfeldianism, ed. Peter C. Erb (Pennsburg: Schwenckfelder Library, 1986). Fred A. Grater deals with “Schwenckfeld on the Conscience,” Gottfried Seebass on “Schwenckfeld’s Understanding of the Old Testament,” Werner O. Packull, “The Schwenckfeldian Commentary on the Apocalypse,” and Walter Klaassen on “The Abomination of Desolation: Schwenckfeld’s Christological Apocalyptic.” Klaassen clarifies how Schwenckfeld understood Christ’s delivery of the kingdom to God the Father at the end. Understanding Christ’s kingdom as “his Land und Leute, and the souls and consciences,” all whom Christ in his glorified flesh will have conquered from Satan and his horde, Schwenckfeld envisaged Christ enabling his own to enter the “all-encompassing kingdom of eternal seeing (Schauen)” in the clarity of God, and resuming his eternal Kingship with God the Father. Packull, on close scrutiny of one work, and Seebass, on the basis of a r ecently discovered letter, point out that the letter s of Schwenckfeld and his cor respondents were early shor n of considerable personal details by the copyists preparing them for publication as spiritual epistles.

706  the radical reformation

chapter 18.4

(Chs 12.1, 13.1), published at Münster in 1533.61 Marpeck’s adaptive appropriation of this early but fundamental work of the defeated Münsterites would indicate more than a casual exchange between the Lower and Upper German Anabaptist groups.62 Marpeck will freely acknowledge to Schwenckfeldian correspondents that there have indeed been “false Anabaptists.” The authors of t he Vermahnung signed themselves simply “the Christ-believing comrades of t he covenant of t he tribulation that is in Christ,” but their treatment of Baptism and the Supper at once identified it as a product of Marpeck’s circle. Chiefly concerned with the sacraments of Baptism and the Supper and hence with an ongoing disciplined Church, the Vermahnung opens with the matter closest to Marpeck’s heart: a lament over the separation of A nabaptism into divergent groups and a c all for reunion in effect. We have already proleptically drawn upon this major work. Marpeck and his co-workers (surely among them Scharnschlager) make a much sharper distinction between the Old and New Testaments than did Rothmann in his Bekenntnisse and reject that basic Münsterite hermeneutical principle, contrasting instead the former to the latter as figure to truth, as bodily to spiritual, as shadow to light, as servant to child, much as had Schwenckfeld himself indeed done in his Strassburg writings.63 On original sin, on baptism by pouring as well as by i mmersion, on persevering unto the end, in a reworking of the covenant idea, and in the rejection of violence, the Vermahnung also differs from Rothmann’s work. Marpeck’s views on the Supper show the persistence of Carlstadt’s eucharistic theology but with a distinctive spiritual presence at the Supper. Within the network of epistolary fellowships of gentle seekers described above by Schwenckfeld himself there lived in Ulm the widow of a local shopkeeper, Helen Streicher. She was a f riend of M agdalene von Pappenheim, formerly a Benedictine nun in Urspring outside Ulm, who was now drawn to the Marpeck circle, but interested also in becoming acquainted with Helen Streicher’s mentor, Schwenckfeld. Because of the prominence of the patron-

61  Christian Hege, ed., Gedenkschrift zum 400 jähr igen Jubiläum der Mennoniten oder Taufgesinnten (Ludwigschafen: Christian Neff, 1925), 185–282, tr. as The Admonition, Klaassen and Klassen, 159–303. 62  See Frank J.Wray, “The ‘Vermahnung’ of 1542 and Rothmann’s ‘Bekenntnisse,’” ARG 47 (1956): 243–51. Klaassen and Klassen,Admonition, give the pagination in Rothmann as edited by Heinrich Detmer and Robert Krumbholtz, Zwei Schriften des münsterischen Wiedertäufers Bernard Rothmann (Dortmund, 1904), which text is otherwise being super seded by that of Rober t Stupperich, ed., Die Schriften Bernhard Rothmanns 1, Die Schr iften der münster ischen Täufer und ihrer Gegner (Münster: Aschendorff, 1970). Vermahnung equals today’s German, Ermahnung. 63  The former agreement of Schw enckfeld and Marpeck on Scr ipture is adv anced by Blough, Christologie Anabaptistie, 131 n. 97, as an additional reason for the clash between former friends, where he puts in parallel the ter ms of Schwenckfeld as of his Strassb urg writings and those still being used by Marpeck.

chapter 18.4

marpeck vs. schwenkfeld  707

esses, the ensuing struggle between these two ardent and articulate women of radicality and conviction, who had been drawn together in the common pursuit of evangelical truth amidst the welter of religious claims and divergent spiritual mentors, represents high drama in our narrative. Frau Streicher, her five daughters, and one son were all members of the Schwenckfeldian conventicle in Ulm. Often the itinerant Silesian would come to dwell with them, a kind of revered uncle as well as teacher among them. Since one daughter, Agathe, and the son were physicians (the latter eventually becoming Ulm’s city doctor), Schwenckfeld, who was increasingly troubled with gravel, found the Streichers’ hospitality beneficial both medically and convivially. The first of the von Pappenheim family to meet Marpeck was Joachim (d. 1536), one of w hose forebears had been imperial Hofmarschall, with a family seat near Nuremberg, and who had early been drawn to Protestantism. Magdalene, his sister and ex-Benedictine nun, and Helen Streicher were fated to play title roles in the contest between a pan-Christian Spiritualism based upon Christ’s glorified humanity and an “ecumenical” Sectarianism based upon the suffering, creaturely humanity of Christ. Magdalene had expressed a desire to meet the Silesian, but he chose to write her rather than pay a visit. Perhaps alerted to the potential defection of an aristocratic protectress, Marpeck, instructing Magdalene herself, as much as her friend, drafted in the summer of 1542 a t heological epistle directed to “my Helen,” and which long circulated in manuscript copies under the former nun’s name and which is recognized today as embodying clearly and succinctly the theology of his Vermahnung in epistolary form.64 And there are several passages in the letter suggesting that the two correspondents, the real Magdalene and the Helen addressed, had indeed talked about spirituality. In any case, Magdalene/Marpeck in this much-handled epistle insist that because baptism had been commanded by Christ, and because the internal and external sacrament may not be divided into inner and outer, as Schwenckfeld thinks, “Magdalene” cannot even entertain Helen Streicher’s suggestion that they discuss the suspension of a ll the (unfortunately) divisive ordinances. Although accommodating to Schwenckfeld’s aversion to legalism, “Magdalene” concedes that “since Christ’s work and teaching are spirit and life [ John 6:33], one must rise to it and must not make earthly elements [Col. 2:20], baptism or anything else, a condition for salvation.”65 64

 The letter is edited by Johann Loserth, Verantwortung, 179–88. It is translated by Klaassen and Klassen, Admonition, as “Letter 5, ca. 1544”; but Kiwiet, Marpeck (1957) already surmised that it was written in the summer of 1542, and Blough, Christologie Anabaptistie, 15 n. 26, has assembled all the arguments for such a date, and indeed used the epistle in systematically setting forth the theology of Vermahnung, ch. 4. 65  Klaassen and Klassen, Admonition, 378, 383.

708  the radical reformation

chapter 18.4

The letter is theologically clear but personally biting, if one is to read it as a communication between two women, up to this point friends. For Magadelene says to Helen that her “whole teaching, understanding, sense, and opinion [of Scripture] have become repulsive (arkwenig) to me.” From an aristocratic former nun to a merchant’s widow the disparaging class references and allusions to spiritual pride seem inverted, except as we read them as Marpeck’s own scriptural-theologically motivated defense of poverty and humility against what he feels are beguilements of a s piritual courtier. Marpeck indirectly tells Helen’s mentor: According to your boast, you know a p roud, lofty, arrogant (hoffärtig) Christ, for whom poor (literally: schlecht) folk are far too unimpor­t ant. Neither you nor your kind could learn humility or gentleness from them, but prefer your own artistry (Kunst). We have no other consolation but to put forward our poverty (Armut) with all lowliness … If you lower your eyes in humility, you will find Christ in the midst of t he spiritual hospital and amongst all offense (unter aller Ergernus). Even if you had lived at the time of Christ and the apostles, I t ruly fear that you, with your haughtiness, would not have found Christ or his church, any more than you do now.66 For all the evidence of class resentment and personal rivalry evident at intervals in the sharp letter, Marpeck under the name of Magdalene spiritedly sets forth his great conviction that Christ lives on visibly in church life down through the centuries, that believers constitute his ongoing humanity in the course of history, and that his promise of the Spirit to be dispensed as Comforter after his own resurrection and ascension, makes of Baptism and the Supper the nodal moments when flesh and the abiding Spirit are one and real and that outwardness and inwardness, and not just inwardness, constitute Christian spirituality. And just as he doubts whether Schwenckfeld would have recognized the Christ in the unconventional teacher who “spat out physical spittle” and healed people, so he is even more certain that Schwenckfeld will never acknowledge the reality of the Church, rehearsing for him rather vividly the failings and perversions in the ancient Church as recorded in the New Testament itself, and then turns in pointed query of Schwenckfeld: Does it follow from all these instances [of defection or aberrations] that there was no Church at all? Did the Church of C hrist end immediately at the time of C hrist and the apostles [since greater signs than his own were promised by Christ ( John 14:12) and have 66

given.

 Klaassen and Klassen, Admonition, 384, 385, where the page n umbers in Loser th are

chapter 18.4

marpeck vs. schwenkfeld  709

failed to materialize], accordingly no true Church could be found, either at the time of t he apostles or at the present? If your opinion were valid, the rest would also follow. … I e agerly desire to have written evidence and an account of your new teaching and commis­sion (sendung) just as you demand of us.67 Marpeck then goes on: “You state that you think the Anabaptists regard Christ only as a creature.”68 In the Vermahnung itself Marpeck held that Jesus Christ was made up of human nature, and at some point also of the Spirit, and that Jesus promised to send the Spirit in his place ( John 16:7). Marpeck made precise his speculation in reference to two seemingly contradictory passages about the poor, holding that when Jesus said, Matthew 28:19: “And I shall be with you always to the end of the world,” he meant his promised Holy Spirit, the Comforter, would be his vicar at believers’ baptism, at the Supper in commemoration of himself, and at other moments in the life of the believer; and that when Jesus said, Matthew 26:11: “The poor you shall have with you always, but you will not always have me,” he was referring to himself in his human nature, which was taken up into heaven at the ascension: Paul demonstrates here [1 Cor. 11:26] clearly and compellingly that Christ in his glorified body, human nature, flesh and blood is not present in the Supper to nourish the soul as Schwenckfeld thinks. He is present rather only as the Holy Spirit or divine nature (nach seinem heiligen geist oder göttlichen Natur).69 If the Magdalene/Marpeck letter to Helen/Schwenckfeld is of the earlier date here supposed, the statement of S chwenckfeld suggests an earlier communication by l etter or otherwise between the two antagonists. Whatever may have been the prehistory of the mounting misunderstanding between Schwenckfeld and Marpeck, the next step came when Helen Streicher delivered it to Schwenckfeld. Another Helen, Freifrau Helene von Freyberg, born in the castle of Münichau in the Tyrol, protectress of Anabaptists, had through her brother-in-law George Louis von Freyberg given Schwenckfeld a c opy of t he Vermahnung for his assessment. It was presumably one of her sons, Michael, living in Jüstingen castle, who carved 67

 Klaassen and Klassen, Admonition, 386ff.  lbid., 387. 69  Vermahnung, ed. Loserth, 508; identified and clarified by Blough, Christologie Anabaptiste, 188–89. Since Mar peck was very close to Schar nschlager in Strassb urg and then Ilanz in the Grisons, one will expect to see Italian Anabaptists, perhaps par tly under the tutelage of Schamschlager, likewise emphasizing the humanity of Christ. See below, n. 74. 68

710  the radical reformation

chapter 18.4

Schwenckfeld’s Christology in verse over the castle mantel.70 Schwenckfeld lost no time in meeting the Anabaptist challenge to his theology and evangelical leadership. He recognized the hand of M arpeck in the letter over Magdalene’s name and on 21 August 1542 he wrote to her and indicated that “several brethren” had persuaded him to refute Marpeck’s Vermahnung.71 Schwenckfeld was understandably displeased and called Marpeck a “chief disrupter.” 72 Marpeck, for his part, suspected Schwenckfeld of being more concerned about the threat to his influence on the ladies than with the theological points at issue.73 The strained loyalties of F rau Streicher and Freifräulein Magdalene respectively for Junker Schwenckfeld and Werkmeister Marpeck are further indication that the class lines and the theological issues were not clearly drawn. Schwenckfeld found doctrinal errors in Marpeck’s Vermahnung, as well as in the letter for him by c ourtesy of H elen Streicher, and in another epistle from the Grisons thought to be from Marpeck, which reached him at about the same time.74 Schwenckfeld correctly suspected Magdalene’s letter to have been drafted by M arpeck and conceived himself to be the object of concerted Anabaptist attack upon his leadership of the fellowships. Since Helen Streicher was among Schwenckfeld’s most fervent disciples, he understandably resented Marpeck’s obtruding himself into the Ulm circle of which she was the fostering mother. By 21 August 1542, Schwenckfeld had completed his retort to the main Anabaptist document, the Vermahnung. This was his Judicium.75 The Judicium 76 began with a p reface on baptism and proceeded to criticize Anabaptism under the following rubrics: the word “sacrament,” whether

70  For Michael v on Freyberg, see abo ve at n. 36, for Bar oness Freyberg, see Wilhelm Wiswedel, “Freifrau Helene v on Freyberg, eine adelige Täuferin,” Zeitschrift für ba yerische Kirchengeschichte 16 (1941): 46ff.; ME 2:347. Schwenckfeld would later thank her for her pains, 27 May 1543 (CS, 8:616–18.) 71  CS, 8:217–222. 72  CS, 8:291. 73  Many modern scholars agree: Loserth, ML, 3:29–30; Wenger, “The Life and Work of Pilgram Marpeck,” MQR 12 (1938): 158–59; Kiwiet, Pilgram Marpeck, 60. The succession of exchanges between the two men and the two women is well set forth by Blough, Christologie Anabaptiste, ch. 5. 74  25 September 1542. The Grisons letter is lost, but is mentioned her e as having been particularly distressing to Schw enckfeld. Torsten Bergsten, “Pilgram Marpeck und seine Auseinandersetzung mit Caspar Schw enckfeld,” Kyrkohistorisk Årsskrift 57 (1957): 52ff., 58 (1958): 53ff., questions Mar peck’s authorship, holding that it w as more likely written by Leopold Scharnschlager (Ch. 22.1). 75  The full title reads Über das neue Büchlein der Taufbrüder . . . Judicium; CS, 8:161–214. 76  Later it called forth from the Lutheran theologian Matthias Flacius Illyricus his Antwort auf das Stenckfeldische Büchlein. For this Slovene’s contact with Schwenckfeld via Venice, see Ch. 22.2.a. He was born in Albona on the eastern shore of Istria under the Venetian Republic.

chapter 18.4

marpeck vs. schwenkfeld  711

external baptism is a sign of grace, the Spirit of God and the spirit of error, original sin, adoption, the Word of God, the church, the faith of the Old Testament prophets and patriarchs, the source of the Vermahnung’s errors, the Lord’s Supper, the words of institution, an address to the Anabaptists, and the true baptism of Christ. Some of Schwenckfeld’s criticisms were in response to matters outside the Vermahnung, for example, Valentine Ick­ elsamer’s charge that Marpeck held it to have been possible for Christ to sin, the report that Marpeck believed Christ to have suffered in Hades, and the observation that the Anabaptist emphasis on the cross was on a too “creaturely” Christ and on the church as exclusively visible and made up of candidates for suffering. The Judicium was a serious but still friendly address to the Baptist brothers from one who called his own followers of the middle way the Goodhearted (die Guthertzigen), who indeed agreed with the spiritual Baptists addressed (1) that the Spirit is, to be sure, the important part of baptism, (2) that what the magisterial reformers (Meister) have affirmed in mere pedobaptism cannot be of the Spirit, but (3) that the significant baptism is inward in any case, and (4) that therefore submission to an outward form is unnecessary in any group. Schwenckfeld implored them not to consider his followers non-Christians for not following them in believers’ baptism. And while not trying to convince any of “the some few kinds of Baptists,” he knows from abandoning a practice that had become important to them, he reminded them that some other solemn institutions had been allowed to lapse, like footwashing and the laying on of hands; in any case he does hold strongly against the authors of the Vermahnung that they have deprived “the holy patriarchs and prophets,” “the ancients,” of several of the comforts of the eternal Christ—ever present, yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Having dealt with original sin, both ordinances, and the concept of the Church of Christ in glory, he bids farewell, hoping that goodwill can prevail among all Christians, as each group and each seeker works out salvation in loyalty to Christ in glory “in fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12). After composing the Judicium, Schwenckfeld wrote to Magdalene explaining his action. He told her of his chagrin that she no longer wished to meet him, and of h is regret that she based her opinion of h im on disparaging remarks by M arpeck. Schwenckfeld enclosed a t ract by h is supporter Valentine Ickelsamer,77 against Marpeck’s alleged position that it would have been possible for Christ to sin (cf. Ch. 22.2.a and d). Finally, explained the Silesian, he had composed his Judicium not merely because his

77  An alumnus of Wittenberg, Ickelshamer had in Klag etlicher Brüder (1525) defended Carlstadt against “the tyranny” of Luther, for which he had had to endur e long imprisonment until pardoned by Luther; ME 3.2.

712  the radical reformation

chapter 18.4

teachings had been attacked in the Vermahnung but because certain brethren had urged him to make reply.78 Meanwhile, Marpeck himself, having evidently quickly received a copy of t he Judicium, wrote a ( no longer extant) letter to Schwenckfeld, bitterly complaining that the charges made in the Judicium were unjust and that Schwenckfeld had presented the ideas of his circle in perverted form. On 25 September 1542, Schwenckfeld replied to Marpeck,79 explaining how he had composed the Judicium in the spirit of Christian freedom (1 Thess. 5:21) in order that the errors of t he Anabaptists might be corrected and truth be served. He reminded Marpeck how often he had himself been charged with specific traits of the Anabaptists simply because he had defended their rights. The author(s) of the Vermahnung, Schwenckfeld charged, evidently held that any who did not accept the Anabaptist doctrine of baptism were not Christians but deniers of Christ. As for Magdalene, he went on, before whom Marpeck had disparaged the Middle Way, he had shown her (by sending her Ickelsamer’s tract) a correct understanding of the two natures of Christ. The same day (25 September 1542), Schwenckfeld wrote again to Magdalene herself, listing twelve of M arpeck’s errors. As these make sharper the issues than the Judicium itself, they are here summarized: (1) that Christ was not able to sin, (2) that he did not suffer in Hades, (3) that the Spirit promised by C hrist is the same Spirit as that of t he Father (in the Old Testament, for example), (4) that the worthies of the Old Testament were saved before the Incarnation and did not live only in the promise deferred, (5) that original sin is “a damnable burden on us all” from birth and does not come into its own only “from the knowledge of good and evil,” (6) that Christ the Son of G od was born of t he seed of D avid and thus not only out of the seed of woman without man’s seed, as they speak of it, for as the divine work proceeded indeed holily and modestly and restrainedly, so also it “should be described with great modesty and restraint,” (7) that the outer water baptism and the inner baptism of t he Holy Spirit (Matt. 3:11) are not the same reality (Wesen) [essence], but rather as of t wofold substance (zwaijerlai Substancz) in a s ingle divine action, as it is meet to distinguish God and creature” (on this Marpeck might have agreed), (8) that the Anabaptists are not the only members of the Church of Christ, (9) “that Christians and disciples of Christ are recognized not by the sign of baptism but by the love for the knowledge and the Spirit of Christ and as such esteemed, and further that, not baptism as they say, but rather Christ is the narrow gate, the only way, and only door to eternal life, (10) “that the proper Lord’s Supper is not a ceremony nor a sign of love but rather 78 79

 Letter in CS, 8:217–22.  CS, 8:271–79.

chapter 18.4

marpeck vs. schwenkfeld  713

a true eating and drinking [within] of the true body, flesh, and blood of Jesus Christ, to the satisfaction of o ur souls,” (11) that the act of e ating and drinking externally is not the true interior communion, but only the external acknowledgment of t he experience at some other (decisive) moment in one’s life, and (12) “that Christ is not and also never was a creature, the only begotten Son of God, yea, in his whole person, that is, also according to his humanity, now our Lord and God, that he, in the glory of God his Father, sits, rules, and is overall omnipotent also according to his flesh, that he holds the state and honor of the other Persons in the Trinity of the Majesty of God.” 80 In quoting only partially and paraphrasing for the sake of compactness, we still sense the divide opened between two groupings in South Germany, equally dissatisfied with the Magisterial Reformation and with the Old Order, about a score of years after the evangelicals in canton Zurich and elsewhere began to divide between the ideal of the reformed ecclesio-civic corpus christianorum and the separated and re-gathered communio sanctorum.81 It is evident that for Schwenckfeld, going back to his experience in Silesia, had the saving experience of his life in terms of the inner Eucharist, which was for him perhaps a o nce-for-all happening that could only be recalled but not replicated in the presence of a Lord’s Supper. For Marpeck, the inward saving experience seems to have been under the same (cf. point 7) but was identified with Spirit-anointment in his believers’ water baptism. It is noteworthy further, that in his critique of Marpeck on the outward eating and drinking (point 11), Schwenckfeld goes in three additional, small paragraphs to warn him and his group that they might well have fallen into the ancient Sabellian or Modalist heresy of the one God in the three modes of creation, redemptive suffering, and healing or confirming presence, particularly in what he understands them to be writing: “The Father works as Spirit inwardly, the Son as man outwardly.” 82 Although Magdalene von Pappenheim, so far as we know, did write again to Helen Streicher (and thus, indirectly to Schwenckfeld), this letter may be considered the end of t he Pappenheim-Schwenckfeld correspondence. On 29 September 1542, Schwenckfeld wrote again, however, directly to Marpeck concerning whether Christ, though of course sinless in the eyes of both contenders, had such a nature and will that he could have sinned,83

80

 CR 8:280–85.  The discoverer of the two Strassburg tracts of Marpeck, William Klassen, who held at the time that they were directed against Schwenckfeld, placed the separation between Marpeck and Schwenckfeld already back in their Strassburg years, but Blough, Christologie Anabaptiste, agreeing with Bergsten and others, holds that the separation is to be dated to the Auseinanderseztung here being rehearsed. 82  CS, 8:284. 83  CS, 8:291–94. 81

714  the radical reformation

chapter 18.4

remarking that he just that afternoon received from Augsburg a copy (presumably) of a letter Marpeck had sent from the Grisons84 dated 26 September 1540. He received no immediate answer. Marpeck realized that formal refutation of the Judicium should be produced as soon as possible, lest some of his followers be drawn to Schwenckfeld’s side. He was aware, for example, that another devoted patroness of the Anabaptist cause, the Baroness Helen von Freyberg (at the time in hiding because of her religious beliefs), sister-in-law of Schwenckfeld’s host, was in correspondence with Schwenckfeld. By at least 1 January 1544, Marpeck had completed the first part of h is answer to the Judicium. This was the Verantwortung,85 which circulated in manuscript form. Marpeck wrote to Schwenckfeld as of that date.86 The aforementioned date is only one, to be sure, of three possibilities for “Neujahrsabend,” in his mordant letter to his critic. The tone of this letter is not the arrogance of ignorance, but the confessional radicality of r ootedness in those nutrient strata of Scripture that exalt the poor over the rich, the childlike over the wisdom even of s ages, in the serene certitude of t he divinely preferential option for the poor—epistemological as well as societary. The letter of Marpeck in condescending, not mock, humility, opens in the same stance as that noted in connection with his letter in the name of Freifräulein Magdalene to Frau Helen for Junker Caspar: Dear Schwenckfeld: I pray and hope that God through Jesus Christ may grant you understanding of yourself. Self-understanding must precede all other understanding; without it all other understanding or knowledge is useless and in vain. … This understanding may be highly developed by knowledge of Scripture and by reason … but still it will be darkened and blinded by one’s own fabricated carnal wisdom, mixed with dishonesty, craftiness, and deceit. There­fore it will come to shame before God and man. In such a manner, God captures the wisdom of the wise in their treachery; He entrusts His truth to the faithful and truly innocent ones, but conceals it from the highly learned, wise, sly, and obstinately independent ones. He reveals it to the simple, uneducated, coarse, faithful people, who 84  This letter is not identical with that from the Grisons, to the same effect,of 25 September 1542 (above, n. 74), which may have been from Scharnschlager.This reported second letter from the Grisons may have reached Schwenckfeld from Anabaptist protectress Freifrau von Freyberg, who had presented him with the Vermahnung (above, n. 70). 85  This is a modernized form of Verantwortung, ed. Loserth, as Pilgram Marpeck’s Antwort auf Kaspar Schwenckfeld’s Beurteiling des Buches der Bunndesbezeugnnunng von 1542 (Vienna/Leipzig, 1929) cited in n. 8 above, which further substantiates the point made in n. 73 above; see ibid., 63–64. This work is cited sometimes as Verantwortung and sometimes as Marpeck’s Antwort. 86  The rest of Mar peck’s letter to Schw enckfeld is ed. Loserth, Marpeck’s Antwort, 53–59; tr. Klaassen and Klassen, Admonition, letter 4, 369–75. Of all thr ee possible dates for Neujahrsabend—31 December 1543, 1 January 1544, 31 December 1544—they consider the earliest as the most likely. I am going with the middle option.

chapter 18.4

marpeck vs. schwenkfeld  715

witness to the truth with poor, coarse, simple words and speech, and feel compelled to speak against such sophists (Klüegling). When these sophists so readily change the truth, inverting the first and the last, how disorderly [illogical] it frequently becomes. Such wisdom [Schwenckfeld referred to in irony], even today, among his own, considers Christ to have been an uneducated carpenter’s son; on the basis of an artful knowledge (kunst) of Scripture and with such great skill, language, and reason this wisdom itself composes for itself such a l ofty Christ [of the glorified nature] that simple people could never understand, comprehend, or attain the true simplicity of f aith when confronted by s uch language, skill, and sophistication. Thus, such wisdom, with its artistry and mastery, presents itself to the Holy Spirit, as if the Holy Spirit could not instruct anyone except through artistry and wisdom, even though He is a teacher of all truth to all faithful and truly single (einfeltig) hearts. Only by means of the Word of truth does the Holy Spirit generate faith in and through true means [ordinances], even in all truly believing hearts, no matter how foolish and contemptible [these ordinances] may often seem before men.87 Marpeck presently writes of his alarm and anger at Schwenckfeld’s tactics: I would not have thought it of y ou that you would behind my back send letters into the world against me, and without asking or informing me would make charges against me, since you in the earlier days dealt with me so much in matters of f aith. … Now you have composed a w hole book [the Judicium] against me and selected in particular thirty-eight articles 88 … and sent them out everywhere so that I must defend myself about them toward many who know my teaching.89 Treating fifty-four of the one hundred Reden (of which the Judicium was composed), Marpeck in Part 1 of the Verantwortung, in prefacing an open letter to Schwenckfeld, defends the Vermahnung against the Silesian’s charge that its authors were incompetent and presumptuous. A copy of the work was sent to Schwenckfeld, with a note promising that Part 2 would be written if Part 1 did not have the desired effect.

87  I have followed the idiomatic translation of Klaassen and Klassen, Admonition, 369–70, but have taken the liberty of adapting it toward the end to bring out further the sacramental issue between the contestants; Loserth, ed., 55–56. 88  These articles are not extant. 89  lbid., 58.

716  the radical reformation

chapter 18.4 / 18.5

Late in 1544, Marpeck took up permanent residence in Augsburg. Schwenckfeld still had three comparatively peaceful years ahead of him as the guest of Baron George von Freyburg. Other matters claimed Marpeck’s attention for some years and he could give only sporadic attention to the production of Part II of the Verantwortung (Ch. 31.1.a) Although Marpeck had broken off his personal relationship with Schwenckfeld, he continued his campaign against him in letters and admoni­t ions to his own followers. Marpeck apparently forbade his people to dispute with Schwenckfeld in 1546, in an effort to put an end to the mingling between Anabaptists and Spiritualists.90 Occasional flare-ups and reconciliations between their followers are reported from time to time.

5. The Basic Points at Issue The conflict between Schwenckfeld and Marpeck, evidently touched off by the spiritual anxieties of t wo, Helen and Magdalene, was, of c ourse, motivated by compelling christological and ecclesial differences separating a recouping Evangelical Anabaptism of federating conventicles and a protoPietist, high christological Evangelical Spiritualism of pious fellowship that was the nearest counterpart in the sixteenth century of the eighteenth-century Society of Friends.91 We summarize the points at issue. Although the controversy between Marpeck and Schwenckfeld centered in baptism, it involved a r ange of theological concerns. For the exponent of baptismal theology, with its stress upon the new covenant in Christ, the Old and the New Testaments could not be taken as equally authoritative. For the exponent of eucharistic theology, Schwenckfeld, the celestial flesh of Christ was present to the worthies (“fathers”) of the Old Covenant and the matriarchs from Eve through Elizabeth no less than to the saints of t he New Covenant. Schwenckfeld was quite explicit about the implication of A nabaptists’ refusal to make Christian baptism the equivalent of t he Jewish circumcision, namely, the exclusion of the Old Testament worthies from any knowledge of the eternal Christ.92 Schwenckfeld asserted that Abraham was “a Christian” before he was circumcised a Jew.93 90

 Bergsten, “Pilgram Marpeck,” 67.  The Quakers of the se venteenth century still had about them the v apors of apocalyptic and were also provocatively anti-establishmentarian. The Schwenckfeldian fellowships were institutionally inconspicuous, like the collegia vicentina (Ch. 22.4), and psychosociologically the counterparts in South Germany of Nicodemites in Romance lands. The Schwenckfeld fellowships were closer to Fr iends meetings in the centur y of Enlightenment much more than they were like the Familists who became a tributary to Quakerism, for the Familists had their inner hierarchy and esoteric lore, whereas the Schwenckfelders were biblical and for a long time bore the traits of scriptural-patristic legacy of their founder. 92  Marpeck, Verantwortung, ed. Loserth, 317, 325. 93  CS 8:198. 91

chapter 18.5

marpeck vs. schwenkfeld  717

For Marpeck, Abraham and the Old Testament worthies had only the promise of C hrist, and hence even circumcision had only a p romissory meaning. Marpeck held that there was a considerable difference between the promissory (zukünftig) faith of yesterday of the Old Testament worthies and the present (heutig) faith of living Christians. The Old Testament worthies had as the object of their faith the promise of God. The New Testament people have as their object the justifying and sanctifying realities of rebirth and the Holy Spirit.94 The Spirit of t he Old Testament was also different from that in the New Covenant. The fathers and mothers were baptized in the cloud and in the sea, but not in the (Holy) Spirit.95 To be sure, Schwenckfeld, like Marpeck, had been from the beginning of h is reforming career opposed to infant baptism. As early as 1527, he had written that he regarded “the baptism of infants to be the beginning of papistry and the foundation of a ll error and ignorance in the churches of Christ.” 96 Later he had declared that although the command of Christ to baptize could not be denied, the correct external baptism had not been observed for a thousand years, and he gave the impression that it ought to be suspended until further divine authorization should be forthcoming, for the conflict with and even among the Anabaptists was evidence that there was no certainty about the true visible Church into which baptism admitted one.97 In fact, Schwenckfeld was content with an “inner baptism of the Spirit” which “comforts, strengthens, and assures the believing soul or inner man.” 98 Schwenckfeld was interested, however, less in the inner washing than in the inner eating of the body of Christ. His whole theology, in fact, can be characterized as eucharistic rather than baptismal. Marpeck in his baptismal theology not only demarcated his position over against Schwenckfeld but also went somewhat beyond the baptismal theology of the first leaders (Ch. 11.1). To be sure, with them he describes baptism as the “covenant of t he good conscience,” but also as the “certain knowledge of the good conscience.” 99 With these two expressions he described the unity that he saw in the baptismal action. Holding that the soul and the body of man are distinguished as the inner and outer aspects of one reality (Wesen), he maintained that inner baptism of the Holy Spirit (the cleansing of the conscience and the new birth) was incomplete without the concurrant external baptism of w ater. The latter is bestowed by 94

 Bergsten, “Pilgram Marpeck,” 84.  Marpeck, Verantwortung, ed, Loserth, 351. 96  CS 3:858, Quoted by Maier, Caspar Schwenckfeld, who has a small, useful section on baptism, 95

23–25, Larger treatments are those of Urner, “Die Taufe bei Caspar Schwenckfeld”; and Karl Ecke, Das Rätsel der Taufe (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1952), 21ff. 97  CS 7:252. 98  CS 7:450. 99

 Armour, Anabaptist Baptism, Ch. 4.

718  the radical reformation

chapter 18.5

the congregation, which (as the yet unglorified social body of C hrist in his human nature) continuous over time, acts corporately by virtue of the power of the Spirit (that sanctioned the mission of Jesus at the Jordan, was promised by J esus as Comforter, and is recurrently dispatched from on high by him as glorified). In fact, Marpeck says that the historic Christ by the action of the Spirit is actually present in baptism, provided baptism be received with true faith and commitment. Thus external baptism (and the Lord’s Supper as well) “is no sign, but the external work and reality (Wesen) of the Son.”100 In the earlier Vermahnung the wholeness of baptism had also been based on the unity of the Godhead, whereby, according to Marpeck, the internal action is performed by t he Father through the Spirit, while the external work is by t he Son through the gathered church. This latter argument gives way in the Verantwortung to the anthropological argument, however, due largely to the fact that Schwenckfeld challenged Marpeck’s view of the unity of the human nature. The covenantal element was described in two ways. It is Jeremiah’s new covenant of G od’s Spirit written upon the heart, i.e., “the covenant of the good conscience,” a conscience created by the Holy Spirit cleansing the heart from sin. It is at the same moment the believer’s pledge to God and dedication to the Christian life, specifically to the redemptive suffering which Marpeck says the members of the body of Christ in the ongoing incarnation of his human nature must continually bear. He states that even throughout Scripture water is used as a symbol of anguish and tribulation, and that whoever receives it in baptism thereby publicly avows his entry into the fellowship of the sufferings of Christ, which are actually the pangs of the new birth. The pains persist up to the advent of the Kingdom of God. Neither Marpeck’s Strassburg Bekenntnis of 1531101 nor the Vermahnung of 1542, in contrast to the teaching of John Denck and John Hut (Ch. 11.1), had stressed the constitutional (ecclesiological) significance of the baptismal covenant. But the Verantwortung, in reaction to Schwenckfeld’s Spiritualism gave prominence to the view that baptism is also a submission to the discipline of the Christian congregation, together with a promise of Christian love for the brethren. Marpeck, in stressing water as the symbol of suffering, insufficently recognizes the cleansing power of the Jordan for Naaman (1 Kings 5:10) and the pool of Bethesda ( John 9:1–18). Marpeck’s favorite term for baptism was “witness” or “co-witness,” whereby he meant that the rite possesses a revelatory character according to which the baptizand receives the “certain knowledge of the good con-

100  Vermahnung, 207. Armour, Anabaptist Baptism, 120, 134, judged Marpeck’s synthesis of the inner and outer aspects of baptism his most significant contribution to the Anabaptist theology of the ordinance. 101  Elsass 1 (QGT 7), no. 302.

chapter 18.5

marpeck vs. schwenkfeld  719

science.” Together with the Spirit and the blood of Christ (1 John 5:8), it witnesses to the believer that his or her soul is cleansed and righteous before God. For Luther, for example, the conscience always remained “the accusing conscience,” not the hortatory conscience to assume responsibility. Infant baptism was attacked for good measure, although Schwenckfeld was here in accord, along two different lines: (1) infants are incapable of knowledge and faith, and (2) they have no need of baptism. Marpeck retains the former position throughout his writings. The latter he alters somewhat, in the course of debate with Schwenckfeld. In the Bekenntnis he had said simply that infants were freed from the guilt of original sin (Erbsünde) by the command of Christ, who said, “Of such is the kingdom of heaven.” In the Vermahnung he had dropped this argument, but says that infants enjoy a countervailing inherited grace (Erbgnade) and are in a state of “creaturely innocence,” an expression which he applies also to the unfallen Adam and Eve. Sensitive to Schwenckfeld’s charge of Pelagianism, Marpeck then goes on in the Verantwortung to clarify his view that this “creaturely innocence” is the result of t he atoning sufferings of C hrist. He now defines original sin according to the Zwinglian conception of Erbbresten, that is, a d efect for which one becomes guilty only when it bursts forth into conscious, “actual” sin. The anthropology of the two antagonists clearly differed. The heart of the dispute concerned the relationship between the outer and inner person. Marpeck had a t ripartite view of t he human being (somewhat like Hubmaier’s; Ch. 9.2.a), but stressed contrariwise the unity of body, soul, and spirit. For him, “the whole, undivided man” is incorporated into the body of Christ in his creaturely nature or the church. Henceforth living by the Word-Spirit descending at worship, each member is destined to rise at Christ’s advent from the dead to his glory.102 Schwenckfeld had a bipartite anthropology which stressed the distinction between body and soul-spirit. For him, the chief charge against the Anabaptists was that they were too much concerned with externals.103 According to Schwenckfeld, the outer word (Scripture and preaching) must be distinguished from the inner word of the Spirit. There is a parallel between them, but coincidence as concurrence is more often the exception than the rule. For Schwenckfeld, the Word of God proceeds out of God’s revelation in Christ in glory and in the

102 103

 Marpeck, Verantwortung, ed. Loserth, 123, 476.  Ibid.,166, margin.

720  the radical reformation

chapter 18.5

Bible pointing to that glory. According to Marpeck, evangelical preaching of t he Word is directed to the whole person—spirit, soul, and body. Marpeck agrees with Luther that faith and the Holy Spirit come “through hearing bodily preaching.”104 It is of i nterest that Schwenckfeld, who was relatively pessimistic in respect to the sinfulness of humanity, was more positive than Marpeck on the divine significance of t he state, which Schwenckfeld saw as divinely appointed, not only to check and punish sin, but also to engage in eleemosynary and educational activities and in such other positive works as building roads and bridges, draining swamps, and improving the common life. His Office and Scope of Civil Government (1548) is a noble plea for the separation of c hurch and state and at the same time a v indication of t he magistrate’s vocation as a Christian and a call for Christian involvement in the welfare of society as a whole.105 The concern of Schwenckfeld to find in the Old Testament essentially the same faith as in the New was an integral part of h is concern for vindicating the universal character of t he Church and the Christian significance of the magistrate, including the sword. Marpeck, on the sword and civil authority, holds that the civil law should be heeded by a ll and that it is indeed necessary for the majority of citizens who still live under the law, even when they purport to be Christians under the gospel. True Christians, however, as subjects of t he Kingdom of God, although they obey the temporal magistrate, are unlikely to exercise authority or use the sword. When later asked about the centurion of Ac ts 10:1, Marpeck said that, to be sure, he was converted while a magistrate, but that it is not recorded how long “the Holy Spirit and his conscience” permitted him to remain an officer. The difference between Marpeck the Sectarian and Schwenckfeld the Spiritualist was profound. Marpeck insisted on the unity between the inner and outer man, the unity of spirit, soul, and body, the unity of the inner and outer word. Schwenckfeld was a Spiritualist alike in his anthropology and his theology. We may, during this lull in the controversy between a major proponent of evangelical Anabaptism and the principal proponent of evangelical Spiritualism, make a few concluding observations about the latter. Within a few months of each other, three important spokesmen of German Spiritualism passed from the scene. Ending his days as professor of t heology in Basel, 104  Marpeck, Testamenterläuterung (n.d.), Berlin cop y, 222b, cited b y Bergsten, “Pilgram Marpeck,” 97. 105  CS, 11: Document 667, 604–25; printed in part in English by David Parke, The Epic of Unitarianism: Original Writings (Boston: Starr King, 1957). Mention may be made her e, out of chronological order, that Klaus Deppermann enhances the significance of Schwenckfeld in the realm of religious toleration, dealing with exchanges beginning in 1531, “Schwenckfeld and Leo Jud [in Zurich] on the Advantages and Disadvantages of the State Church,” Schwenckfeld, ed. Erb, 211–36.

chapter 18.5

marpeck vs. schwenkfeld  721

the finally conforming Spiritualist Carlstadt was stricken by the plague and died in 1541. In the same year at Salzburg, Paracelsus, a kind of sacramental Spiritualist, was pushed to his death from a high place by rival physicians. In 1542, as noted, the wandering Spiritualist printer-preacher, Sebastian Franck, died in Basel. A still significant career for speculative Spiritualism lies ahead in the Netherlands, where Franck’s influence was to be extensive (Ch. 19.3),106 among Italian refugees of conscience (Ch. 24), and in such a figure as Jacob Palaeologus in Transylvania (Ch. 28), Poland, and Moravia.

106  See also Wiebe Bergsma, “Schwenckfeld in the Netherlands: Agge van Albada (c. 1525– 87),” in Schwenckfeld, ed. Erb, 339–63. The Frisian jurist and fighter for religious toleration would become known as “the chief (coryphaeus) of the Schwenckfeldians.”

722  the radical reformation

chapter 18.5

Chapter 19

Spiritualism and Rigorism among the Netherlanders and Lower Germans, 1540/43–1568

W e were last with the Netherlanders

in Ch. 14, where we followed the consolidation of Menno Simons’ leadership of the pacifistic Melchiorite Anabaptists and the literary embodiment of his practical churchmanship in The Foundation Book of 1540. In the score of years after 1540, Evangelical Anabaptism (Mennonitism) in The Netherlands consolidated itself between various expressions of Evangelical Spiritualism on the left and extremely exclusivistic Anabaptism on the right, much as was also happening in South Germany. The developments in the two areas roughly parallel each other in chronology and in the points at issue. The score of years in Germany between the SchwenckfeldMarpeck controversy begun in 1542 and Schwenckfeld’s death in 1561 corresponds in The Netherlands to the consolidation of Mennonitism between the defection of Obbe Philips as a spiritualizer c. 1540 and the death of Menno in 1561. Spiritualism among the Netherlanders and Lower Germans, after the departures of David Joris and Obbe Philips, centered in the translations of Sebastian Franck into Dutch, in the rise of the liberal Waterlanders (Doopsgezinden), and in the emergence of t he Familists under Henry Niclaes. Since the Familists were a group quite distinct, we shall consider them first, before taking up the other Spiritualist trends against which the Anabaptists under Menno, Dirk Philips, and Leonard Bouwens took an increasingly rigorous position.

723

724  the radical reformation

chapter 19.1

1. Netherlandish Spiritualism: Henry Niclaes and the Familists; The Dissimulation of David Joris About the year 1540 there came to Emden a p rosperous mercer, Henry Niclaes, a native of Münster, who, having left his city of birth c. 1530, now found it expedient to leave his second home, Amsterdam, where he had fallen under suspicion because of his unusual religious views. Henry Niclaes1 was born in 1502 the son of a Münster merchant. The somewhat solitary and brooding child of devout Catholic parents, Niclaes is reported to have been taken daily to Mass and to have displayed early evidences of a p recocious interest in religious matters. One day the child asked his father what he thanked God for, to be told that he thanked God for forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ and for the true life of godliness established by h im. Thereupon, Henry announced to his startled parent that he could not see that sin in humankind had been bettered by Christ’s coming. Before the father could remonstrate, Henry, then only eight or nine, continued, saying that he did not at all doubt that through the death of Christ the door to the Kingdom of God had been opened for all, but that for him, faith was meaningless without an imitation of Christ’s Passion, and that he could think of no restoration to the perfect state of godliness until sin itself was destroyed. Unable to cope with this theological precocity, the father took his son to talk with a Franciscan confessor, but the child was not satisfied by the friar’s replies. Not long afterward, Henry began to experience those visions which in later life caused him to call himself a “begodded man.” Outwardly, his life conformed to that of the son of a prosperous merchant. For three years he attended the local Latin school and eventually joined the mercers’ guild. At the age of twenty, Niclaes wedded a virtuous woman of plain and simple family. Niclaes was twenty-seven when, under the authority of t he bishop of Münster, he was arrested on suspicion of holding Lutheran views. Niclaes had indeed read much of L uther, but he disagreed with the former friar on several points. He did not approve of Luther’s attack upon the Roman Catholic priesthood. He felt that Luther had failed to teach the ground of true righteousness as sanctification in Christ. He believed that Luther erred in not insisting upon a church composed of s anctified believers. Shortly after his arrest and release, Niclaes and his family moved from Münster to Amsterdam, where he continued to prosper. His religious convictions were perhaps given a S piritualist turn through his friendship with David Joris. 1  Until recently the basic study was that of Friedrich Nippold, “Heinrich Niclaes und das Haus der Liebe,” Zeitschrift für die histor ische Theologie 32 (1862): 321–402, reworked by Rufus M. Jones, Studies in Mystical Religion (London, 1909). See now Alistair Hamilton, The Family of Love (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 1981), and dealing par ticularly with England, Jean Dietz Moss, Godded with God: Hendrik Niclaes and His F amily of Love (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1981).

chapter 19.1

netherlanders & lower germans, 1540-1568  725

“David George layde the egg and Henry Niclaes brought forth the chicken,” an opponent of Niclaes was to say.2 Niclaes was not long in Amsterdam before he suffered arrest on suspicion of being a Münsterite Anabaptist. On being released, he remained in the city until his removal to Emden. Once Emden had become his base of mercantile operations (which involved him in much traveling), Niclaes began to sign himself by his initials, “H. N.,” in calculated reference to his being a religiously new man, homo novus. A charismatic personality in his later years, Niclaes was to be described as being “of reasonable tall stature, somewhat grosse of bodie,” and “brave in his apparell,” of a “crimson satin doublet” and long beard. 3 Certain that he and his followers were living in the latter days, Niclaes rejoiced in his experience of divinization and his call as prophet to communicate the gospel of spiritualization through divine love. In his Evangelium, he wrote: So hath God at the last, remembered the Desolate / h eard the Sighing and Prayer of the Poore / and for his Chosens-sake (to thend that his Trueth / a nd what his Will is, noght; before all Louers of the Trueth; be made-manifest or declared / a nd the Scripture fulfilled) shortened the Dayes / according to his Promises, and; through the heartie Mercifulnes of his Loue; wrought a great4 and wonderfull Woorke vpon Earth, out of his holie Heauen, and raised-upp Mee HN, the Least among the Holyons of God (which laye altogether dead / a nd, without Breath and Life,5 among the Dead) from the Death / a nd made mee aliue, through Christ, as [sic] also anointed mee with his godlie Beeing, manned himself with Mee/ and godded 6 Mee with him / to a liuing Tabernacle or howse for his Dwelling / and to a Seate of his Christ, the Seede of Dauid, To-thend that his wonderul-woorkes mought now in the last time, be know en “the Light of his Glorie; with full Cleernes and Instruction; revealed” and the Coming of his Kingdom; to an Euangelie of t he same Kingdom / a nd to the Blessing of a ll Generations of the Earth.7 2

 John Rogers, The Displaying of an Horrible Sect (London, 1579).  Charlotte Fell-Smith, collecting contemporaneous r eminiscences in “Henry Nicholas,” Dictionary of National Biography, 14. See also Er nest A. Payne, “The Familists,” The Chronicle 16 (1953): 28–33. 4  Hab. 1:1ff.; Acts 13:32–34. 5  Ezek. 37:7–10. 6  John 17:20–26; 2 Pet. 1:3–4. 7  Evangelium Regni; A Joyfull Message of the Kingdom, published by the holie Spirit of the Loue of Jesu Christ, and sent-fourth unto all Nations of People , which loue the Trueth in Jesu Chr ist, trans. C. Vitell (Amsterdam [?], 1574?). 3

726  the radical reformation

chapter 19.1

Central to all Niclaes’ thought and underlining all his writings (most of which were composed during the Emden period) was his insistence on actual righteousness and a physical or experiential holiness, as contrasted with the imputed or forensic righteousness of by now normative or classical Protestantism.8 In this he was close to Netherlandish Anabaptism of the Melchiorite-Mennonite strain and to Schwenckfeldian Spiritualism. But whereas the divinization in both these otherwise distinct movements had in common the adherence to the doctrine of t he celestial flesh of C hrist available for inward assimilation (with or without the external eucharistic elements), the divinization in Familist Spiritualism, akin to and perhaps dependent upon the earlier Netherlandish Libertinism (Ch. 12.2), was conceived in analogy to the descent from the Father of the Holy Spirit tabernacling with the Son on the banks of Jordan at the baptism. In the Familist Articles of Faith, belief is professed in “God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth,” “[and in] a mighty Spirit [and in] a perfect, clear Light,” who as “God and Saviour” “manneth himself, according to the inward man, with us, and who becomes likewise with the clearness of h is godly light … godded or made conformable in a g ood-willing spirit.” 9 Niclaes expressly dissociates sin and obviates any divine sanction for antinomian behavior always so near the surface in all forms of L ibertinism, stipulating, for example, within the foregoing ellipsis, that “He with the law of His chastising is always against us in sin.” Niclaes elsewhere completes his thought on the relationships of the three Persons (here in the conventional order and nomeclature) in the redemptive “manning” within each individual believer: For yee shall evidentlie see / and in maner-of-suffering; through the Sufferinge of Christ; right-well perceaue / and finde-in-experience / that God / w ith his Christ / and Holye-gost / and with the heauenlie Fellowship of all the Holyõs / will inhabit with you / and lyue and walke in you. and that Hee assuredlie is your God / and yee his People. For Hee hath chosen none other Howse nor Temple / for his Habitation / but you O yee godlye Children / or Communialite of the Loue.10 The love of God tabernacling among people of the Spirit in the latter days was forming under Niclaes’ winsome ministry the Huis der Liefde or Familia Charitatis. The House or Family of L ove was later to become an international fellowship of F amilists, spreading from Emden throughout 8

 Cf. Jones, Mystical Religion, 433.  Evangelium, Exhortatio I (c . 1574), fols. 10b, 11b. This implied Triadology of Father Almighty, mighty Spirit, and perfect clear Light may be compared with that of Pilgram Marpeck (Ch. 18.2). 10  Ibid., ch. 20, fol. 48b. 9

chapter 19.1

netherlanders & lower germans, 1540-1568  727

Frisia, into Holland, Brabant, Flanders, and, somewhat later, into France and into England, where our sixteenth century texts circulated and where much later Familism would be absorbed into Quakerism (Ch. 30.3). Members of t he fellowship were drawn from, and might continue to conform outwardly to, the parochial life of the surrounding Catholics or Protestants, and possibly even Mennonites (cf. Nicodemism, Ch. 22.4). While “God-services” and “ceremonies” were for them “vain husks” apart from “experience,” the Familists appear to have been uncommonly well organized in their private and often clandestine prayer meetings. Since membership and leadership among the Familists depended upon the degree of enlightenment or divinization, theirs was a c harismatic hierarchy and an apostolic succession of t he Spirit. Under the highest bishop or elder,11 Niclaes, there was a g roup of e lders. The conversion (Familist) names of the first three “begodded” elders are preserved.12 Beneath the elders was the Familist priesthood, consisting in three not otherwise described levels of enlightenment. The elders and priests of Familism were not allowed to hold personal property.13 Niclaes viewed marriage as a Christian ordinance, advised the married to destroy the lusts of the flesh, and held that conjugal life should always be consistent with enlightened love.14 Discipline within the Familist conventicles appears to have been nominally in the hands of t he whole brotherhood, although the elders and priests as “fathers of a family [conventicle]” were generally at the fore in this aspect of the life of the fellowship and led in worship. Niclaes wrote, for example in his Introduction to the Holy Understanding of the Glasse of Righteousness, c. 1560: For every Father of a F amilie vnder the Loue hath doubtles the Libertie in his Familie to vse Seruices and Ceremonies / according as he perceiueth out of the Testimonies of the Holy Spirit of Loue that they are most-profitablest or necessariest for his Houshold / to the Life of P eace / f or to keepe his Houshold / t hereby / i n Discipline and Peace: Trayning them vp therwith, that they may learne to practise and use that which is right and equall / For to manifest vnto them therby, the true Righteousnes which God esteemeth.15

11 12

 Jones, Mystical Religion, 442, claims that the Familists themselves never used the word “bishop.”  Daniel, Elidad, and Tobias. The change of name suggests not only monastic but also Waldensian

practice. 13  Payne, “The Familists.” 14  Charges of moral laxity brought against the House of Love by sixteenth-century authorities are now generally held to have been erroneous. 15  Introduction (London, c. 1574), ch. 24, secs. 22–23.

728  the radical reformation

chapter 19.1

Though the elders and priests were foremost in worship and discipline, Niclaes secured a p lace in his service for the inspired utterance of e very believer: “If any man therefore has obtained … any gifts of God, or if any man has any heavenly revelation, or if any man use any service of t he priestly ordinance, let him with us be serviceable to the Love therewith, to the intent that it may all be agreeable with the Love, and may all be done to concord in the service of Love.”16 Because of t he recurrent danger of “ strife, dissention, and schisme,” Niclaes enjoined his followers in case of uncertainty to obey their spiritual superiors: Give-eare to the Elders of the Holy Vnderstanding: and followe not the Will or Counsell of y our owne Mynde: but; with the Elders, vnder / the Seruice of the Loue; followe the Mynde and Counsell of t he Wisdom: and alwaies keepe yourselues; with the Elders in the Family of L oue; to the Concorde / a nd to the Multiplying in the Good / and of the peaceable Kingdome in all Loue.17 Niclaes, using the term “service of love” very much as the Anabaptists used Gelassenheit (yieldedness), urged prospective converts to yield their wills to the elders and to be subject to them in faith or trustfulness in order to be freed from self and be saved: Men may fynde Diuers that will take very great heed to themselues / least they should be deceiued or beguyled and so will stay onely vpon themselues. But because they; so staying vpon themselues; giue no heed to the Grace vnder the Obedience of t he Loue / therefore remayne they / s uch as they are and come not at any tyme to the Light or Life or the Day of Loue … Others will in their Unregenerate estate and Deprivation / account themselues free / and will not be subject vnto anything, neither to the Scripture / nor to any teaching / nor yet to the seruice of Loue: and therefore; in that Sort, do neuer come to the Freedome of t he Children of God.18 Of Niclaes’ life, apart from his thought, after coming to Emden, not much is known. He may have visited England in 1552–53 (toward the end of Edward VI’s reign, when there were many foreign visitors in England).

16

 Ibid.  Ibid., secs. 41ff. The term of common usage later among Fr iends, “the peaceable kingdom,” may be here formulated for the first time. 18  Ibid. 17

chapter 19.1

netherlanders & lower germans, 1540-1568  729

We shall meet his followers in England in Ch. 30.4.e. He died probably in Cologne, c. 1580.19 Familism was not much of a t hreat to Mennonitism. It was otherwise with the kindred movement of Davidjorism, for the latter shared with Mennonitism in part a common ancestry from Melchior Hofmann. We were last with David Joris when his mother was beheaded at Delft and his devotee, Anneken Jansdochter, was drowned at Rotterdam (Ch. 13.5). Obliged to leave The Netherlands, David Joris carried on a wide correspondence, sending a s elf-defense to the court of justice in Holland and a prophetic writing to Philip of Hesse. In 1542 he published his ’t Wonderboeck. In the same year a bitter dispute arose between him and Menno Simons, who accused Joris of being a false prophet, the Antichrist, the “deceiver and falsifier of divine truth.” Joris tried to convince Menno of his divine commission, but Menno rejected his claims and after a certain point declined to have anything further to do with him. Hunted from city to city, in constant danger of a rrest and execution, indeed having many very close brushes with his pursuers, David Joris developed distinctive ideas on the question of religious toleration. The purpose of religion, he said, is not to argue over the relation of the Persons of the Trinity, about which, in any case, believers can have no sure knowledge, but to achieve unity with God, a unity which comes only by the inner reenacting of the incarnation and passion of Christ. Faith is an inner experience, not something proved by a ssent to a w ritten creed. In the light of this, the whole concept of heresy and orthodoxy becomes greatly altered and reduced in importance and the authority of the magistrate in matters of religion is abolished. A heretic is now defined by David Joris as one who knows not the new birth, “who is proud toward God, and who for a single error in an article or belief will deprive another of his goods and honor and even his life.”20 The Spirit alone is of prime importance, and without it nothing else is of any use. As to polity, the sacraments, the creed, and even martyrdom, they are all externalities. In 1543, Joris, his wife and family, and a large number of followers settled in Basel. Joris, under the pseudonym of John of Bruges, represented himself vaguely as “a fugitive for the gospel.” He and his followers were welcomed there, especially since they were apparently people of d ignity and substance, and they purchased property in the city. Joris spent his time writing prolifically, 21 painting, and devoting himself to his family and the colony of h is followers. He became allied, by m arriage of h is progeny,

19

 Another reckoning places his death in 1570.  Bainton, Travail, 138. 21  His writings were published in The Netherlands. 20

730  the radical reformation

chapter 19.1

with several Basel families and directed by letters and personal emissaries his Netherlandish following. An important Dutch follower was Nicholas Meynderts van Blesdijk. He had attached himself to Menno in 1536, but in 1546 turned to David Joris. An educated man, he found satisfaction in the writings of Joris, which seemed to him “to come from the divine Spirit.”22 He defended the Jorist position in 1546 at Lübeck against Menno and others, and wrote out his conviction in Christelijcke Verantwoordinghe.23 Presently, Blesdijk went to Basel and married the eldest of D avid’s daughters. In close contact with the great Spiritualist, Blesdijk began to wonder whether Joris might not be, after all, a hypocrite. Blesdijk at length openly accused Joris of s oft living and the desertion of h is own mission. Joris admitted that his personal claims had been exaggerated. Dissension broke out among the colony in Basel, some disillusioned, as was Blesdijk, with the prophet, others still regarding him as the true, though temporizing, Davidic messiah. When he died in 1556, rumors were already being spread about him. He was given an honorable burial, but after his death, the banning of his secretary, van Schor, from the colony led to the latter’s testimony that the old gentleman had kept concubines, a fact which he himself, he said, had only just discovered. 24 Stories, perhaps fanciful, perhaps partly true, began to circulate, but no action was taken until March, when several men of the colony were arrested and their houses searched. Blesdijk finally admitted that John of Bruges was none other that the infamous David Joris. In accordance with Roman law, the university ordered that the heretical Joris be exhumed and burned. On 13 May, the body was tied to a stake and burned, and at the same time a box filled with his writings was given to the flames. Followers of Joris were not persecuted; and after they publicly recanted in the cathedral their errors and those of the leader and subscribed to the Basel confession, they suffered no further, except for the chagrin. Though we last glimpse the red beard of David Joris amid the flames of a posthumous pyre in Basel, the spiritual flames which he had himself ignited burned longest in The Netherlands, where an endemic Spiritualism was continuously being rekindled.25 It was this recurrent Spiritualist tendency bordering antinomianism from without and within his flock that

22  Friedrich Nippold prints some of Blesdijk’s work in “David Joris von Delft,” Zeitschrift für die historische Theologie 33 (1863): 3–166; 34 (1864): 483–673; 38 (1868): 475–591. 23  Ibid., 38 (1868): 534–44. 24  Bainton points out that van Schor had lived in Joris’s house, and that it was unlikely that such a thing could have been kept secret from him for fifteen years. 25  H. W. Meihuizen, “Spiritualistic Tendencies and Mo vements among the Dutch Mennonites of the 16th and 17th Centuries,” MQR 27 (1953): 259–304.

chapter 19.1 / 19.2

netherlanders & lower germans, 1540-1568  731

made Menno Simons and his deputies conspicuously devoted to the use of the ban.

2. Netherlandish Anabaptism Becomes Rigoristic with the Ban and Shunning The ban/excommunication had from early times been graded into two degrees, the lesser ban, which entailed exclusion from communion or in the case of a priest the suspension of his authority to officiate, and the greater ban, which entailed exclusion from the society with other Christians. The greater ban could also be extended as an interdict, within the sole prerogative of the Pope, punitively suspending the celebration of any of the seven sacraments in a parish, monastery, or in some instances a whole country. In the Schleitheim Confession (Ch. 8.1), the authority to exercise the ban was ascribed to the local congregation, as one of the seven basic articles of the Swiss Brethren. Thirty years later, in 1557, the stern and repetitive use of t he ban on the part of the Lower German Anabaptists would be a major reason for the formalization, at a s ynod in Strassburg, of the schism between the Upper and the Lower Germans, and, in The Netherlands itself, the withdrawal of one group of moderates. The frequency and ferocity of banning among the most disciplined of t he Lower Germans under the leadership of D irk Philips and Leonard Bouwens, with the somewhat reluctant sanction of the more charitable Menno, tempt one to pun in characterizing the main theme of this section, in observing that in the second generation Anabaptism in The Netherlands and Lower Germany became “Anabanism.” The Dutch and Lower German Anabaptists, no longer made up predominantly of f resh recruits from Catholicism or Protestantism, in the period between 1540 and 1557 were coming to use the ban and the equally formalized solemn reinstatement into membership as the ethical, psychological, and constitutional equivalent of b elievers’ baptism for the increasingly numerous “birthright” members, who in routinized baptism in adolescence were no longer undergoing the great formative experience of the public rebaptism of t he heroic days of t he first apostles of t he new evangel. The ban had come to replace baptism as the new focal point of Anabaptist ecclesiology. In Menno himself we can follow the emergence of t he ban to its preeminence. He was fully aware of t he vindictive, spiteful, and otherwise uncharitable motives that might get mixed up with the religious acts of banning from communion and social shunning or avoidance, the counterparts respectively of w hat their Catholic forebears had known as the lesser and the greater ban. Menno was much concerned to have Christ’s second key, the ban, turned with as much care as the first (believers’ baptism) and “with

732  the radical reformation

chapter 19.2 / 19.2.a

vigilant love” both for the sake of the sanctity of the church and the ultimate salvation of the wayward. By the ban the wayward member was extruded from participation in the communion of the celestial flesh of Christ. The ban, based on Matthew 18:15–18, had come to be freshly associated with the practice of avoidance or shunning, based on 1 C orinthians 5:11. Paul’s injunction there not to eat with the faithless could be interpreted as limited to the Supper of the Lord or it could be extended so as to exclude all social intercourse with the banned. And as Anabaptism passed from the phase of w idespread rebaptismal recruitment to that of disciplined consolidation, the problem of the extent to which the faithful might properly associate with former members who had been banned, including spouses (“bed and board”), became acute. In The Netherlands the rigoristic interpretation of a voidance set in after the defection (c. 1540) of Obbe Philips and intensified after the banning of Unitarian Adam Pastor in 1547. Menno himself, however, would waver on the question of shunning a banned spouse. Whereupon he was himself threatened with excommunication. By 1555, a schism would open on this issue with Menno leading the slightly moderate rigorists over against the laxist 26 or mild-banner Waterlanders (Mennonites of a s ection of N orth Holland) who would become the forerunners of the liberal Doopsgezinden. a. Menno: From His Exile from The Netherlands in 1543 to the Wismar Resolutions of 1554 We were last with Menno Simons when he was driven from the Low Countries in 1543 (Ch. 14.1), though we also caught a glimpse of him on one of h is extensive journeys along the Hanseatic Coast as far as Livonia (Ch. 15.2.a). Menno is thought of a s Dutch. Yet he spent altogether only a f ew years of h is evangelical ministry of t wenty-five in the Dutch provinces proper. To northwest Germany he devoted his last eighteen years, building up congregations in East Frisia, around Cologne, in the duchy of Holstein and along the Baltic coast, and returning to The Netherlands proper only on visits. Early in the winter of 1543–44 Menno and his family appeared in East Frisia, where the tolerant Countess Anna of Oldenburg ruled. She had just appointed Erasmian-Reformed John Łaski (1499–1560) 27 to superintend the 26  The terminology here derives from the ancient conflict between Cyprian of Carthage and Stephen of Rome car ried over into the Donatist-Catholic contr oversy, respectively rigorist-laxist or in Troeltschian typology “sectarian” and “churchly.” 27  Oskar Bartel, Jan Łaski (1499–1556), part 1 (Warsaw: PWN, 1955) tr. into German (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1981); Harold O. J. Brown, “John Łaski: A Theological Biography” (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1967), esp. ch. 5, “John Łaski in East Frisia,” 1543–1549; par. 3, “Encounters with the Radicals.”

chapter 19.2.a

netherlanders & lower germans, 1540-1568  733

state church (1540–48). A Polish nobleman, nephew of the Primate of Poland of the same name, John Łaski had studied in Bologna, Padua, Rome, and Basel. In Basel he had twice been with Erasmus (1523; 1524–25), lived in his house, and arranged to purchase the humanist’s library which after Erasmus’ death was carted to Cracow in 1536.28 John had taken part, with his brother Jerome (Ch. 15.4), in the fierce campaign over the crown of S t. Stephen against Ferdinand on the side of John Zápolya (Ch. 28.1) and had been made titular bishop of Veszprém in Ottoman Hungary, secretary to the king of Poland, dean of Gniezno, and then archdeacon of Warsaw in 1538. In that year he had left his native land and had visited Melanchthon and then joined the Brethren of the Common Life in Louvain in 1538 where he married. In 1542, after a furtive return to Poland to visit his dying brother, he renounced his Catholic preferments in Poland and therewith wholly abandoned the prospective career as the successor to his uncle as Primate of Poland to espouse abroad the Reformation. After his encounter with Menno Simons in Emden (below), we shall next overtake him in our narrative as he seeks to cope with the radical wing of the Reformed Church in Little Poland (Ch. 25.2), whither he will return as honorary superintendent in 1556 and then, alas, out of biographical sequence, we shall be looking at his London career (1550–53) in the Strangers’ Church (Ch. 30.3). Łaski found a considerable number of Anabaptists in East Frisia, including the bellicose Batenburgers and the spiritualizing Davidjorists. But he found also the erstwhile, highly educated and widely traveled Dr. Gerard Westerburg (Ch. 12.4), who arrived in East Frisia from a brief tour of duty in the ducal court in Königsberg (Ch. 15.2.a). Łaski persuaded Westerburg to visit Bullinger to help strengthen the ties between his East Frisian Church and the church of Canton Zurich. 29 This perceptive Pole soon distinguished the revolutionary and peaceful strands among the sectaries. Intending to treat all fairly, he was pleased to learn of the arrival of Menno, whom he invited to meet with him, as chief pastor, in Emden. There a semipublic interview was held with Anna’s permission from 28 to 31 January 1544, at which Łaski and Gellius Faber (Ch. 12.1) went over with Menno the familiar points at issue, namely, original sin, the Incarnation, baptism, sanctification, and the calling of preachers. Agreement was reached on original sin and sanctification, but not on the other points. Menno testifies that he was treated with kindness,

28

 George H. Williams, “Erasmianism in Poland 1518–1605,” Polish Review 22 (1977): 3–50.  Dr. Westerburg would return via Bonn to Emden in 1546, attached to the ne w order for East Fr isia, supported by Countess Anna, the sometime social acti vist becoming preacher in Neustadt-Gödens (near Emden), where he would die in 1558, having experienced so many of the violences and v agaries of religious radicalities from Orlamünde, through Frankfurt, to Münster, that he was prudently content to be associated with Łaski’s version of a disciplined territorial Reformed order. 29

734  the radical reformation

chapter 19.2.a

and was required only to submit a statement of faith which might be presented to the authorities. In his own Epitome of Doctrine of the Churches in East Frisia (1544) Łaski gave considerable prominence to baptism and to the opponents of pedobaptism. 30 Menno fulfilled his promise to set forth his points three months later in his Brief and Clear Confession and Scriptural Instruction (1544), although he covered only two of t he three disputed points, omitting infant baptism. Łaski published this confession without Menno Simons’ permission, and wrote a r efutation of i t in his Defensio verae … doctrinae de Christi Domini Incarnatione directed against Menno’s Anabaptistarum doctor (Bonn, 1545), in which Łaski stressed Christ’s being “consubstantial with us” in his humanity. 31 Menno was hurt by this publication of h is Confession looking at it as an abuse of his confidence, for he had thought that it would serve as a basis of rapprochement. Łaski seems to have been of t wo minds toward Menno and his followers. He used his influence to protect them from the severe measures enacted against the revolutionary group. It was, in fact, Łaski who helped draft the first official document (1545) to use the expression “Mennonites” (Mennisten) to distinguish the peaceful party among the Anabaptists (Ch. 14.1). His toleration was motivated largely by t he hope of b ringing the more reasonable Mennonites over to his Reformed position; and, when this hope proved to have been in vain, he showed that he had no intention of permitting them permanently to maintain a separate church apart from the established church of East Frisia. In 1548 the discussions between Łaski and Menno were suspended when Archbishop Thomas Cranmer invited the former archdeacon of Warsaw and Zwinglian pastor of E mden to become superintendent of the international Reformed Strangers’ Church in London, with filiates in the adjoining counties. Then, with the accession of Catholic Mary in 1553, Łaski and many of his Dutch members had to flee, taking ship with his second wife and John Utenhove (his later biographer), on 15 September. 32 In midwinter, when their ship was frozen in Wismar harbor, it was Menno’s followers in Mecklenburg who ministered to them in their distress. The theological debate on the Incarnation between Łaski and Menno

30  Łaski published his Epitome doctrinae (1544) which later helped him in his church orders in London and Poland. His works, including his correspondence, are edited by Abraham Kuyper, Joannis à Lasco, Opera omnia tam edita quam inedita with a vita by John Utenhove, 2 vols. (Amsterdam/Utrecht, 1866; Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1970). See esp. 491–557. 31  Kuyper, ed., Joannis à Lasco, 1:1–62. We have from Kempen near Bonn a Confession of Faith (1545), showing clearly Menno’s influence on the local Anabaptists. J. F. G. Goeters, “Das älteste rheinische Täuferbekenntnis,” Dyck, ed., A Legacy, 197–212. 32  There is a picture of the flight and four portraits of Łaski in Williams, Lubieniecki, Plate 20.

chapter 19.2.a

netherlanders & lower germans, 1540-1568  735

resumed in 1554, when Menno replied to Łaski’s Defensio in a tract, The Incarnation of Our Lord (1554). Menno also debated with Martin Micron (Marten de Cleijne, c. 1522– 24) in Emden, and between 6 a nd 15 February 1554 a conversation with considerable literary consequences was carried on between them. Micron, an alumnus of B asel, had become under Łaski the pastor for the Dutch congregation in the Strangers’ Church in London, and had been expelled at the same time. Micron published an account of the debate with Menno on 18 June 1556, Een waerachtigh Verhaal der t’zammensprekinghe, which was followed by Menno’s Reply to Martin Micron (1556) 33 and an Epistle to Martin Micron.34 Micron then turned for counsel to his colleagues in South Germany and Switzerland, notably to his old teacher Bullinger and to Calvin. 35 Calvin owed his low estimate of Menno to Micron, for whom, in response, he prepared an extensive refutation of t he celestial-flesh doctrine, Contra Mennonem.36 The Epistle to Martin Micron marked a critical shift in Menno’s position on the use of the sword by the Christian magistracy, another sticking point with the magisterial reformers. Although consistent in his rejection of warfare, Menno up to this point had demonstrated considerable ambiguity on the extent to which “the sword of j ustice” could be appropriated by t he state in its policing function. In his A Pathetic Supplication to All Magistrates (1552), for instance, Menno had recently written, “Execute judgment and justice, assist against the violent, him that is robbed,” while in the same sentence admonishing, “Do violence to no man.”37 Upon being accused by Micron in the 1554 debate of undermining the Christian magistracy, Menno for the first time clarified his political stance as a rejection of t he institution of capital punishment: If the transgressor should truly repent before his God and be reborn of Him, he would then also be a chosen saint and child of God … and for such a one to be hanged on the gallows, put on the wheel, placed on the stake, or in any manner be hurt in body or goods by another Christian, who is of one heart, spirit and soul with him, would look somewhat strange and unbecoming in the light of the compassionate, merciful, and kind nature, disposition, spirit, and example of Christ, the meek Lamb—which example He has commanded His chosen children to follow. Again, if he 33

 Ibid., 835–913.  Ibid., 915–43. 35  Calvin, Opera, 16:2642, col. 5.; 16:2848, cols. 67f. 36  Ibid., 10: cols. 167–76. Calvin said of Menno that he could imag ine nothing “prouder than this ass or more impudent than this dog.” 37  CWMS, 526. 34

736  the radical reformation

chapter 19.2.a

remain impenitent, and his life be taken, one would unmercifully rob him of the time of repentance of which, in case his life were spared, he might yet avail himself. 38 Subsequent revision of the Foundation Book (to be published again in 1558) would outline Menno’s position further as he carefully excises all positive references to state violence. For example, the exhortation to the magistrate in 1540 to “punish the wicked and rightly wield the sword that God has given you” is altered in 1558 to “punish the wicked in a Christian manner and rightly serve in the offices that God has given you.” Where the 1540 version appears to allow free reign for the magisterial use of t he greater ban: “Dismiss blind and false teachers … who disgrace and blaspheme the Almighty Majesty of G od with the teachings of t he Antichrist and with their hellish, beastly living,” the 1558 edition rejects forceful means of policing and actually enhances positive, nonviolent forms of p olitical action: “[h]inder obvious deceivers … by reasonable means. … Enlarge, help and promote the Kingdom of God in complete love and seriousness, without any force, blood or sword. …” Menno’s most significant alteration of the text dealing with the magistracy and the sword, however, will be the addition of strong passages on nonviolence: Once more, Christ is our fortress; patience our weapon of defense; the Word of G od our sword; and our victory a c ourageous, firm, unfeigned faith in Jesus Christ. And iron and metal spears and swords we leave to those who, alas, regard human blood and swine’s blood about alike. He that is wise let him judge what I mean. 39 During the same period that the ban was undergoing a m ore rigorous application in the congregational sphere, Menno was espousing a more rigorous application of nonresistance and separatism in the social sphere.40 The third person with whom Menno fell into dispute in 1554 was Gellius Faber ( Jelle Smit), whom we met as a Roman priest of Jelsum near Leeuwarden. Like Menno, he had early turned Sacramentist (Ch. 2.4), and had 38

 CWMS, 920–21.  CWMS, 198. 40  Stayer, Anabaptists and the Sword, proposes that Menno’s shift on capital punishment represents a transitional moment in his political or ientation between the “moderate apoliticism” of the pre-Münsterite Melchiorites, in continuity with the two kingdoms doctrine of Luther, and the “radical separatist apoliticism” of second-generation Mennonites, in appropriation of the total rejection of “worldly power” of the Swiss Brethren. Menno, however, does affirm the validity of Chr istian involvement in political office and political dissent until the end of his life, and it is questionable whether Stayer’s choice of the ter m “apoliticism” does justice to the continuing politics of dissent “from below” implicit in later Mennonitism. 39

chapter 19.2.a

netherlanders & lower germans, 1540-1568  737

left the Roman priesthood in the same year as Menno, 1536, but continued as a Sacramentist, in due course serving as Reformed (or “Zwinglian”) pastor under Łaski in Emden. Here he had participated in the extended public interview with Menno in 1544. A decade later he had become particularly irritated by a n Anabaptist letter, printed in Magdeburg, which had fallen into his hands, and to which he replied bitterly in a booklet (1552).41 It was to this work that Menno addressed himself in his longest work, Reply to Gellius Faber (1554).42 Containing the already cited spiritual autobiography, which Menno wrote in connection with his extended discussion of the vocation of preachers and the need for reordination, the Reply deals also with baptism, the Supper, the ban, the differentiation of the Church of Christ from that of Antichrist, and a large number of specif ic refutations of points made by Gellius. The book is especially interesting, not only because of the autobiographical section, the “Renunciation of the Church of Rome,” but also because in it we see pitted against each other two former priests from the same region about Leeuwarden, both of w hom had passed through a S acramentist phase, the one ending in disciplined evangelical Anabaptism, and the other in “Zwinglianism,” with its ideal of a territorially uniform corpus christianorum. Baptism, free will, Christology, the nature of the Church, and the place of the magistracy were the issues that now divided the two former Sacramentists. Menno’s Reply was printed in Lübeck, whither he had gone from Wismar. Before the banishment of Anabaptists from Wismar by the town council in November 1554, Menno had called a synod of seven elders, among them Dirk Philips, Leonard Bouwens, and Giles of Aachen (Ch. 14.1), to discuss several of the aforementioned issues. These were then answered in the Nine Wismar Resolutions.43 The first five dealt with the ban and shunning. Of interest is the mitigation of avoidance of the banned in trade if the dire necessity of the tradesman prompts sympathetic purchases. The sixth dealt with the superior authority of t he congregation over against unbelieving parents in the case of a young member wishing to get married and being unable to secure parental consent. The seventh item permitted members to make use of courts and magistrates in legal cases. The eighth permitted Anabaptists on a journey to carry a saber or sword as a matter of elementary precaution against robbers, but only as camouflage, for it

41

 Eine Antwert Gellji Fabri, microfilm at Coshen College, Coshen, Indiana.  Writings, 625–781. 43  Printed in BRN 7:51–53. 42

738  the radical reformation

chapter 19.2.a / 19.2.b

was not to be employed. The same article permitted Anabaptists who were called up for watch and ward and other duties to present arms at the regular inspections, but, again, they were not to use them. The ninth article ordered that no one be permitted to go about among the congregations teaching and admonishing without being “sent or ordained by the congregation or the elders.” When the Anabaptists were driven from Wismar, Menno led them to one of t he estates of t he nobleman Bartholomäus von Ahlefeldt near the town of Oldesloe in Holstein. Von Ahlefeldt had soldiered in The Netherlands, and, witnessing the execution of m any peaceful Anabaptists, had resolved to convert his estate of Wüstenfelde into an asylum for them. In the year that Menno and his group moved in, certain otherwise unidentified Anabaptists with a g reat quantity of Bibles and other books from the Anabaptist print shop in Lübeck were overtaken en route to Oldesloe and their books confiscated.44 Leaving Menno in Wüstenfelde to continue his synodal, pastoral, and literary activities from his new home in Holstein, we return to the situation which he left behind him in The Netherlands, and to its rigoristic development under other leaders. Menno had recognized and promoted the rise of a younger colleague who was to play an increasingly important role in his absence. b. Dirk Philips Dirk Philips (1504–68), already familiar to us as Obbe’s younger brother, had become increasingly important in the movement after his ordination as an elder by O bbe. He emerged as a l eader second only to Menno in his basic learning,45 his vigor of w riting, and his steadfastness in leadership. Dirk had been baptized by P eter Houtzager, one of t he apostles commissioned by John Matthijs in Leeuwarden, between Christmas 1533 and 2 January 1534, and ordained or commissioned by his own brother. Obbe reports that Dirk was the only one who would help him oppose the revolutionary disposition of the Münsterite Anabaptists.46 Dirk wrote against the vagaries of the Münsterites in his Van de Geestelijcke Restitution, in which he answered Rothmann’s defense of M unster of s imilar title.47

44

 ME 1:27, 4:54.  Because his Evangelical Ban and Ordinance survives only in French, some have thought that he knew that language too, but the tract is probably a translation from a lost Dutch original. It is pr inted in full b y Doornkaat-Koolman, Philips, 207–23. See also William Kenney, “Dirk Philips’ Life,” MQR 32 (1958): 174. A complete translation of the works is under way, edited by Alvin Beachy, Cornelius J. Dyck, and William Kenney. 46  Keeney, “Dirk Philips’ Life,” 175. 47  Printed as a section of the Enchiridion or Handbook, 323; BRN 10:342. 45

chapter 19.2.b / 19.2.c netherlanders & lower germans, 1540-1568  739 Although Dirk indirectly derived his ordination from the Münsterites, he did not share their belligerence. He preferred the ban in the building up of a righteous remnant. As early as 1537, Dirk had risen to a certain prominence, engaging in a debate in that year with Joachim Kükenbieter, Lutheran divine of Schwerin. He participated with Menno in 1542 in the ordination of the Flemish evangelist Giles of A achen (Ch. 14.3) and of A dam Pastor (Ch. 19.2.c). This ordination was part of an attempt by what we might call the “direct line” of Dutch Anabaptists, i.e., those who sought to consolidate their pacifism and to extrude what they were coming to regard as abnormalities in regard to the Trinity, Spiritualism, marriage, and the ban. Dirk also participated in the already mentioned Lübeck parley of 1546 (Ch. 19.1) in which he, Menno, Giles, and Adam Pastor opposed Nicholas Blesdijk. Nicholas espoused the view of David Joris that one who believed in Anabaptist principles might prudentially conform to the established churches. But he opposed specifically the action of t he Jorists in having their infants inconspicuously baptized in the Reformed churches. The following year Blesdijk published another book dealing with five points of controversy between Jorist Spiritualism (in effect Anabaptist Nicodemism) and Mennonitism, including the Jorist suspension of t he rites of B aptism and the Supper in their conventicles, implementing views like those of Sebastian Franck, for whom, likewise, the sacraments belonged to the childhood of the Church. But the Spiritualism in the form of Jorism was not the only explosive element at the interior of, and on the margins of, Mennonitism in the process of sectarian coagulation. c. Adam Pastor: Unitarian Anabaptist At the Lübeck dispute of 1546, Adam Pastor, who sided with Menno and Dirk on the sacraments, revealed his dissatisfaction with the Melchiorite-Mennonite doctrine of the celestial flesh of Christ. He also challenged the doctrine of the Trinity, adhered to by the Anabaptists with a few exceptions, but seldom at the center of their attention and seldom in its Nicene formulation. Adam Pastor (1510–52/60/70) 48 (born in Dorpen in Westphalia Roelof Martens), like Menno, had been a priest (Aschendorf ) before his conversion. He had joined the Anabaptists about 1533, probably in Münster, and had become one of John Beukels’ emissaries, but soon went over to the peaceful party, cooperating with them also against the influence of David Joris. In the course of t he dispute at Lubeck, it became apparent that Adam Pastor differed markedly, however, from Menno on the Melchiorite Christology. 48  Wilbur, Unitarianism, 41f.; A.H. Newman, “Adam Pastor, Antitrinitarian Antipaedobaptist,” Papers of the American Society of Church History, 2d series, 5 (1917): 73–99; Yon DuninBorkowski, “Untersuchungen,” esp. 102ff.

740  the radical reformation

chapter 19.2.c

Pastor held Christ to be only human, though the bearer of G od’s Word. The controversy broke out into the open at Emden in 1547, at a momentous meeting attended by Menno, Dirk Philips, Giles of Aachen, and Adam Pastor, where the doctrines of the incarnation, infant baptism, and avoidance in marriage were discussed. At Emden it became quite clear how precarious the Anabaptist consensus was, for the Frisian elder Francis de Cuiper and Adam Pastor, who had been supporting Menno against the Davidjorists, now came out sharply against him. Adam Pastor held that Christ did not exist as the Son of God previous to his coming into the world and was divine only in the sense that God dwelt in him. At the Emden meeting, the direct-line Mennonite leaders, now virtually reduced to Menno himself and Dirk Philips, still hoped that Adam might be won back. The discussion was privately resumed at Goch near Dusseldorf, where Adam had actively preached and had brought many to rebaptism. At Goch it could no longer be concealed that Adam Pastor held a widely “aberrant” Christology. Dirk Philips, with Menno’s concurrence, led in excommunicating him in 1547. Adam Pastor was banned from the Mennonite community chiefly for his views of Christ and the Trinity, but it had also become clear that he was much less rigorous on the ban and separation from the state than the main body of the Mennonites. Even the zealous Dirk Philips himself, of course, also held to an “aberrant” Christology, which, involving him in a subordination of the Son to the Father, made him in turn unwittingly anti-Nicene also in his doctrine of the Trinity. We see this in the letter he sent to Anthony of Cologne,49 who was troubled by the Trinitarian controversy among the Mennonites on the Lower Rhine, caused by Adam Pastor’s excommunication, and also by the difficulties recently experienced by Anthony’s associates in some otherwise unidentified debate with certain “Zwinglians” on the doctrine of the Trinity. When we examine the doctrine as it was understood by the man who instigated the excommunication of Pastor, we see at once the subordination of the Son (as distinguished from the impersonal Word) implicit in all Melchiorite (Hofmannite) theology. Unusual in Dirk’s brief exposition of the doctrine of the Trinity is the appeal to Hebrews 10:5, where Christ the Son, addressing the eternal Father, says, “A body hast thou prepared for me [before the world].” Dirk brings this passage into relation with John 1:1, Colossians 1:9, and 2 Corinthians 5:29; and, being as a Melchiorite disposed to equate (the pre-existent) Christ and the Son, he subordinates Christ the Son to the Father for the reason that God gave the Son (God the Word) his body. Dirk infers from this that, though Christ the Son with his divine soul and his celestial body was entirely from

49  The letter, written berween 1547 and 1550, is edited and interpreted by J. ten Doornkaat Koolman, “Een onbekende brief van Dirk Philips,” NAKG n.s., 43 (1959): 15–21.

chapter 19.2.c

netherlanders & lower germans, 1540-1568  741

God the Father, still he may not be called God in the fullest sense, for God is without beginning or end; but Christ the Son had a beginning when before creation he received “from the Word” his celestial body. Dirk makes the following extraordinary statement: Thus the body of C hrist cannot really be regarded as God; but, rather, in that body [before the creation of the world and then visibly from the earthly nativity to the crucifixion] dwelt the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself.50 The Christology of D irk Philips, although he held to two “natures” (apparently in the sense of soul and body) was defective in terms of the Chalcedonian standard because neither nature was derived from Mary. Hence also his doctrine of the Trinity was deficient in terms of the Nicene standard because he postulated a time before creation when the Son came into being on receiving a body (and soul) from the impersonal eternal Word of God. It is understandable that Dirk prudently counseled Anthony not to become unnecessarily involved with the “Zwinglians” in controversy on these doctrines! In the meantime, Adam Pastor, with his unequivocal adoptionism freed from all traces of t he Melchiorite legacy, secured a g oodly number of followers, especially in the region between Münster and Cologne. They called themselves Adamites (not to be confused with the medieval sect) or Adam-Pastorians. Their vigor and persistence called forth Menno’s tract in 1550, Confession of the Triune God.51 Menno and Adam met for a last debate at Lübeck in 1552, in the hope that a reconciliation could be brought about, but in vain. It was probably in connection with this debate that Adam published his Unterscheit tusschen rechte unde valsche leer.52 The treatise outlines thirteen points of d ifference between right and false doctrine, namely on (1) the true and the false God; (2) the Incarnation; (3) the Atonement, forgiveness, and salvation; (4) mediation and intercession; (5) the time of grace; (6) God-sent and self-running preachers; (7) repentance; (8) faith, new birth, and the Church; (9) baptism; (10) the Supper; (11) human institutions and divine instructions; (12) true and false brethren, the Kingdom of God, polygamy, true and false brethren; and (13) true and false books.

50

 “Een onbekende brief.”  Writings, 487–98. The Hamburg text in Dutch is r endered in English b y Victor G. Doerksen and Hermina Joldersama, MQR 86 (1986): 509–47. 52  BRN, 5:315–581. 51

742  the radical reformation

chapter 19.2.c / 19.2.d

The section on God is a l isting of the Unitarian texts of the Old and New Testament with a m inimum of comment. In the second section, on the Incarnation and Christology, Pastor vindicates for Mary her full role as mother of Jesus from whom he took Adamic flesh as any other child of woman. In challenging Menno’s faulty biology, Pastor points out that God, in commanding both Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply, used the plural imperative, a construction which would not have been employed if the male seed alone were fruitful of new life. As the unique and miraculously conceived Son of God the Father, all power and glory was given to Christ; but Pastor insists that not one of the contested New Testament passages proves the essence of the Son before the Nativity. Pastor’s eighth section disconnects regenerative faith from baptism, which is reduced to a sign of covenantal membership. Adam Pastor, in the Trinitarian controversy, is earnest and critical, but remains mild, reverent, and comprehensive in his arguments against the Nicene formulations. The influence of Adam Pastor may have spread up the Vistula river to Cracow, where someone called Spiritus Belga (the Dutchman Spirit) visited in 1546, and in any case where his name and ideas, arguments and patterns of scriptural analysis, appear to have been known to the Polish unitarian Anabaptists (Ch. 25.3.3). He is often mentioned by the Heidelberg Hebraist Matthew Vehe-Glirius in his Apologia, written in the castle dungeon of a Reformed lord in Gretzyl, East Frisia in 1590. The former advisor to Francis Dávid in Transylvania (Ch. 28) refers frequently to “Adam Pastor’s people,” almost generically, in speaking of Unitarians in Transylvania and Poland, and even more particularly of Pastor’s book as having been useful in persuading John Sylvanus, another Heidelberg Unitarian, in Ladenburg (Ch. 31.2).53 d. Leonard Bouwens and the Withdrawal of the Waterlanders The Lübeck dispute of 1546, which brought out Adam Pastor’s Unitarianism, also introduces us to a r ising leader in the direct line: Leonard Bouwens. Born in Sommelsdyk in 1515, he had been in his youth a m ember of a Chamber of Rhetoric. After his ordination as an elder by Menno in 1551 at Emden, his influence spread from Harlingen, near which he resided, through East and West Frisia and the North Sea islands. He soon rivaled, even challenged, his older colleagues.

53  The Apologia is printed by Robert Dan, Matthias Vehe-Glirius: Life and Work of a Radical Antitrinitarian with his Collected Writings, Studia Humanitatis, 4, ed. Tibor Klaniczay (Budapest/ Leiden: Hungarian Academy of Sciences/Brill, 1982), 271–89. Andrew Wiszowaty, grandson of Faustus Socinus, was the first to conjecture (1678) that the Spiritus Belga, recalled by Andreas Frycz Modrzewski (d. 1572) as conversing negatively about the Trinity at a dinner party (1546), was Adam Pastor in the home of Andrew Trzecieski. Williams, Lubieniecki, Narratio Compendiosa, Related Doc. 1, n. 10.

chapter 19.2.d

netherlanders & lower germans, 1540-1568  743

Leonard Bouwens was the most rigoristic of all the Netherlandish leaders in the use of the ban, and it was his excesses that caused the defection of the Waterlanders, Mennonites in the Waterland area of North Holland. Leonard progressively sharpened his views on the use of the ban, extending Paul’s injunction not to eat with the faithless, i.e., the banned (1 Cor. 5:11), to include all social intercourse with the banned and, as already noted, avoidance of a b anned spouse. In most cases, Bouwens supported the application of t he ban even without preliminary admonition. There are instances where the elders, or those commissioned by them, made bold to enter by n ight the house of a n adulterous or otherwise unfaithful and therefore banned husband, to seize his wife from him and her screaming children in brute enforcement of the ban.54 Menno’s last years were troubled by the increasing bitterness and seriousness of t he controversy among the Netherlandish congregations. We have already seen how at Wismar five of the nine resolutions of 1554 were devoted to the ban (Ch. 19.2.a). Menno, Dirk, and Bouwens had already reached a provisional accord. The first indication of the seriousness of the fresh trouble in The Netherlands reached Menno by letter in 1555.55 Five brethren of the congregation of Franeker explained the division of t heir West Frisian church over the issue of whether it was proper, in the case of gross public sin, to abide by the injunction in Matthew 18:15–18 to give three warnings, and, if not, whether the ban should not be as swift and as inexorable also for lesser offenses. Menno in his reply56 insisted that “some sins, as for instance murder, witchcraft, arson, theft, and other like criminal deeds, which eventually require and imply punishment at the hands of the magistracy,” should be the occasion of swift banning. In dealing with lesser sins and repentant sinners, however, Menno defended the traditional moderate procedure in the spirit of h is earlier writings. He found “wholly frightful” and an “unheard-of fanaticism” the demand of some of the Franeker rigorists that even a transgressor in a minor matter, who had already in pain and sorrow lamented his sin to a brother, be obliged still to confess before the whole congregation or else be banned with the guiltiest of hardened transgressors. Leonard Bouwens brought on the crisis when he threatened to ban a married woman in Emden because she refused to shun her husband, who had been abruptly excommunicated for an unspecified reason. Menno reacted with a letter which spoke out vigorously against such a practice,57 expressing

54

 Y. Buruma, Het huwelijk der Doopsgezinden in de zestiende eeuw (Amsterdam, 1911).  Printed in BRN 7:444–47. 56  Instructions on Discipline to the Church at Franeker; Writings, 1043–45. 57  Writings, 1051–52. 55

744  the radical reformation

chapter 19.2.d

the hope that wherever the banned spouse did nothing otherwise to interfere with the spiritual life and congregational duties of the other, banning should not necessarily lead to marital avoidance. Yet Menno’s stand, though less strict than that of L eonard, was by no means lenient. Indeed, he was becoming involved at almost the same time (April 1556) with two brethren, Zylis Jacobs of Monschau (Eifel) and Lemke Bruerren of M aastricht, one active from Cologne south to Strassburg, the other in Jülich, both of whom considered Menno too rigorous. The Middle and South Germans excluded banned persons from communion, but did not shun them. Caught between two fires, Menno inclined more and more to the camp of Leonard, impelled by “the lack of discipline” of the South Germans and badgered by Leonard’s threat of using the ban against him! Menno resolved to preserve church discipline intact, even if it meant allying himself with Leonard’s extremism and, under pressure, finally took the position that all human ties, including those of m arriage and the family, must give way under the ban of t he congregation. This attitude called forth opposition from the Middle Rhenish brethren; and Menno’s last extant writing, Reply to Zylis and Lemke (1560),58 was a defense of his newly hardened position. There is no doubt, however, that he was deeply grieved by t he whole controversy and regretted the extreme view into which he had been maneuvered. Leonard Bouwens, pressing his advantage, banned the leaders of t he moderate faction in the congregations of Franeker and Emden. To Henry Naaldeman in Franeker, the proponent of the formerly normative and apostolic triple warning, Menno wrote with the hope of reconciling him and his followers; but the break was definitive in 1556, despite a co lloquy in Harlingen in 1557. Naaldeman, heading the moderate “Franekers,” joined with similar “liberal” factions in Emden, such as that of Jacob Jans Scheedemaker, and with the other communities in the Waterland district of Holland and West Frisia, to be known presently as Waterlanders. The designation was destined to be primarily a r eligious rather than a r egional label. Bouwens and his followers called them “Scheedemakers,” after the Emden elder, with a punning allusion also to their being “division-makers.” Actually, of course, the rigorists were, in one sense, the innovators and hence the cause of the factionalism. The Waterlanders were the least rigoristic and soon turned out to be the most “progressive” or culturally accommodative group of Dutch Mennonites. From the outset they maintained contact with the “world,” countenancing intermarriage with members of other churches, and eventually accepting lesser magisterial offices which would not involve them in the

58  Ibid., 999–1015. The regional background of Zylis and Lemke is filled in by Ernest Crous, “Anabaptism in Schleiden-in-the-Eifel,” MQR 34 (1960): 188–91.

chapter 19.2.d

netherlanders & lower germans, 1540-1568  745

use of the sword of justice. Feeling it inappropriate to be named for a man, they came to prefer to be called Doopsgezinden (baptism-favorers) rather than Mennonites.59 The Waterlanders quietly built up their congregationally ordered brotherhoods, with no place for dominating elders or bishops. They soon achieved a s ober, well-organized congregational life, and an arrangement for mutual assistance in preaching. They recognized as Christian all who had experienced the regeneration of the inner man through the power of God by faith in Jesus Christ. In spite of Leonard’s view that they were a “garbage wagon,” the Waterlanders were to be the only Anabaptist group in The Netherlands to avoid further schism in the years ahead. In the meantime, the disagreement of t he Swiss and South German Brethren with the extreme views of the Mennonites on shunning and the incarnation (celestial flesh) came to a head, and at (evidently) three conferences (cf. Ch. 31.1) in Strassburg in 1554 (about which almost nothing is known), 1555, and 1557 (before and after consulting Menno), they repudiated the Mennonite position. The “Second Strassburg Conference,” held in August 1555, was attended by H igh German Anabaptists (Swiss Brethren, Hutterites, and South German Pilgramites) and by a small number of M ennonites (called locally Hofmannites). At this meeting (about which we know only through a circular letter which the group sent to The Netherlands),60 the discussion was confined to the doctrine of the incarnation. It was observed that the New Testament spoke inconclusively as to whether Christ’s nature was celestial or Adamic. The decision reached was that both Upper and Lower Germans should limit themselves to expressions found in the New Testament, and should avoid speculative elaborations of them. On the question whether Christ was capable of sin (cf. Schwenckfeld-Marpeck disputations, Ch. 18.4) the two groupings were not agreed, for the letter urges the participants “to work for peace.”61 Before the Third Strassburg Conference, Leonard Bouwens, who as we have seen had in the meantime secured Menno’s adherence to his strict view of t he ban, thought that with Menno’s influential support he could win the High German Anabaptists over to his position. Accordingly he summoned a c onference to meet at Cologne in the spring of 1 557. The 59  In 1796 this word became the official designation for all Dutch Anabaptists, having earlier served as the high Calvinist collective term for the Remonstrants. See the famous cartoon, Williams, Lubieniecki, plate 61. 60  Hulshof, Doopsgezinden. 219–22. Harold Bender helpfully orders and characterizes those synods in “Strasbourg Conferences,” ME 4:642–44. Conference I, March 1554, attended by six hundred Anabaptists; Conference II, August 1555; Conference III, 1557; Conference IV, 1568. It is not cer tain that the Netherlander s were involved in the scantly documented Confer ence I. John S. Oyer adds to this list Conference V, 1592, and Conference VI, 1607, and explores the issues of incarnation, the ban, and ethics which were debated, in “The Strasbourg Conferences of the Anabaptists, 1554–1607,” MQR 58 (1984) 218–29. 61  Hulshof, Doopsgezinde. 223.

746  the radical reformation

chapter 19.2.d

High Germans, however, with their plans for another Strassburg conference that same year, did not show up at Cologne. Rather than go in person to Strassburg and become involved in the great debate on original sin, Leonard chose to rely upon a strong letter from Menno to the High Germans on “common” shunning. “Common” shunning for him, as we have seen, consisted in the avoidance of conversation, even civil greeting, also of trade, and (where one spouse was under the ban) of marital intercourse. The Third Strassburg Conference of 1557 was attended by representatives from possibly as far away as Moravia.62 Menno’s letter did not have the desired result but, rather, the contrary. The High German Anabaptists were completely unsympathetic to Menno’s proposal; and, although they couched their reply to him in fraternal and apologetic language, they were firm in their refusal. They begged the Netherlanders not to press the issue to the breaking point, but in vain, for that was precisely what Leonard was determined to do. The proffered hand of reconciliation was rejected, and at a m eeting later that same year, the Netherlandish elders banned the High Germans, and refused to recognize the validity of t heir baptism. But the intensity and scope of t he ban was itself becoming the distinguishing mark of the new sectarian rigorism and separatism in the place of convert (confessional) baptism. Strassburg, whence Melchior Hofmann had set out in 1530 for Emden to proclaim to the Low Germans the Anabaptist gospel of baptism as the covenant or betrothal of t he believer with Christ, was thus, a q uarter of a century thereafter, 1555 and 1557, the scene of t he formalized break between the Low and the High Germans on the ecclesiological implications (pure church and the rigorous ban) of p recisely the two doctrines which Hofmann had elaborated while in Strassburg. His doctrine of t he celestial flesh of Christ, with its perfectionist thrust in ecclesiology, had led to the rigoristic banning of all who, because of spiritual adultery, were disqualified from participation in the corporate life of the one celestial body. We have thus come full circle in that part of our narrative on baptismalnuptial theology from Strassburg 1530 (Ch. 10.3.c) to Strassburg 1557. The discussion in Ch. 14.1 will have made it clear that Menno began by looking on the ban as an instrument of reformation and a means of reconciliation. Even after he had yielded to Leonard Bouwen’s influence, he was still very acute in his analysis of t he danger of a f alse show of repentance by the sinner on the one hand, and on the other of pharisaical

62  There were representatives “van der Eyfelt aen tot Maerlant tot.” Maerlant is not quite Mähren, and Moravia does not necessar ily mean Hutter ites, as Kiwiet, Marpeck, 68, says. He refers to Timotheus Röhrich, Geschichte der Reformation in Elsass, 2 (Strassburg, 1832), 139, who refers in turn to Johann Ottius, Annales Anabaptistici (Basel, 1672), 120, 127. Rohrich incidentally mentions a Martin Steinbach living at this time, calling himself Elias and a leader of a group called Lichtseher, with a confused reference to Jer. 48:12.

chapter 19.2.d / 19.3 netherlanders & lower germans, 1540-1568  747 self-righteousness in the banners. The last words of Menno Simons on the subject, written after the break with the High Germans, still close on a note of cure rather than condemnation: [Let the church] bring him to the altar of the Lord, sprinkle him with the spiritual hyssop of God, declare to him the grace of Christ, and so receive him again as a beloved brother in Christ Jesus and greet him with the salutation of His holy peace, for the Lord … does not desire the death of the wicked, but that he repent.63 The spirit in which this admonition is intended can be sensed from the following account of t he by n ow formalized ceremony of r eadmission. The banned and now repentant brother or sister in question would appear before the whole Mennonite congregation, where he would be asked publicly to confess that he had aroused the anger of God by his transgressions and sin, which had been the cause of his excommunication. This done, a short message by one of the elders would point out the importance of repentance and the consciousness of g uilt. The one seeking reinstatement was thereupon asked, whether he truly repented of his wrongs with all his heart, and whether he hoped, by his grace, to serve God in the future. With an affirmative answer, the elder would proceed: “If you have reformed and have been honestly converted, we proclaim to you the grace of G od.” This was followed by a v erse of S cripture; and the brother was asked whether the congregation should intercede in prayer. At the party’s request the congregation would pray, and finally the elder would conclude: “As Paul [Rom. 15:7] commanded that we should receive one another as Christ received us, so we receive you … also.” The reinstated sister or brother was thereupon dismissed with a special admonition.64 The frequency with which the ban was used makes it clear that readmission was also frequent, which was formalized in the Mennonite penitential cycle of sin-admonition-ban-repentance-readmission, roughly corresponding to the Catholic cycle of sin-contrition/attrition-absolution-satisfaction/penance.

3. From the Death of Menno in 1561 to the Death of Dirk Philips in 1568: The Influence of Sebastian Franck Menno Simons, saddened by controversy, crippled, and bereaved of his wife, died 31 January 1561 at Wüstenfelde, exactly a quarter of a c entury to the month after his leaving the Catholic parish of his native Witmarsum. Between his death in 1561 and that of his closest associate Dirk Philips in 1568, the major literary achievements among the Netherlanders and 63

 Instruction On Excommunication; Writings, 961–98.  Anna Brons, Ursprung, Entwicklung und Schicksale der altevangelishen Taufgessinten oder Mennoniten (Norden, 1884), 121f.; Frank C. Peters, “The Ban in theWritings of Menno Simons,” MQR 29 (1955): 31–32. 64

748  the radical reformation

chapter 19.3 / 19.3.a

Low Germans were the publication of what might loosely be called the first edition of the Martyrs’ Mirror in 1562 and the collected works of Dirk in the Enchiridion in 1564. The major developments were the renewed struggle with Spiritualism occasioned by the publication, in Dutch translation, of two letters by Sebastian Franck in 1564, and the division on the issue of rigorism in the use of the ban between Frisians and the Flemings in 1567. As the latter development is connected with the flight of t he Flemish and the rise of nationalist Calvinism in 1566, we shall postpone that story until Ch. 30.1. a. “Het Offer des Heeren,” 1562 As we devote our attention to the theological and organizational developments among the Anabaptists in The Netherlands, we do not forget that this growth and controversy took place in the face of severe and systematic persecution. The Anabaptists early produced a t heology and hymnody of martyrdom and thought of t hemselves as the suffering Church in succession to the righteous remnant from the days of the prophets. The Offering of the Lord (1562), which we have already cited several times in the form of the Martyrs’ Mirror of 1660, was a compilation of reports on Netherlandish Anabaptist martyrs. It even contains an account of the cross-examination of the Upper German martyr, Michael Sattler (Ch. 8.2). All editions include a songbook (Een Lietboecxken), with songs of comfort, lamentation, and courage, retelling the story of the martyrs.65 Besides accounts of the trials and imprisonments, Het Offer often gives the final letters of the martyrs to next of kin and to the community, the reminiscences of eyewitnesses, and many hymns. Some of these pieces, written by the prisoners themselves, vividly testify to their steadfast courage, earnest Christian conviction, charity, and even their “gallows humor.” The date of t he appearance of t he collection is also a good indication of the inner development of the Mennonite community. By 1562, a y ear after Menno’s death, the Netherlandish Anabaptists could look back on a t radition gradually emerging into clarity. They had reached the point where they could catch their breath and recall their martyrs. Martyrdoms were still taking place, but they were those of loyal followers, not of the first heralds of the faith. Second-generation Anabaptists were beginning to speak of martyrdom as the normal pattern for Christian life at just about the time that it was no longer being forced upon them by a hostile government. By 1566 The Netherlands under William the Silent would be in arms against the Spanish oppressors.

65  Rosella Reimer Duerksen, “Dutch Anabaptist Hymnody of the Sixteenth Centur y,” Dyck, ed., Legacy, 103–18.

chapter 19.3.b

netherlanders & lower germans, 1540-1568  749

b. The Spiritualist Crisis of 1564–1567 Besides the withdrawal of t he Waterlanders in 1557, who preferred the South German and more scriptural use of t he ban with a t riple warning; besides the rejection a d ecade earlier in 1547 of t he unitarian Adamites; besides the rejection of t he Jorists’ overtures for union a s econd time at Lübeck in 1546; besides the defection of Obbe Philips in Amsterdam and the emergence of the Familists in Emden about 1541, there was one more manifestation of the struggle between Spiritualism in the sense of spiritualization of the sacrament and Anabaptism in the sense of separatist scriptural life in community based upon three ordinances (baptism, Supper, and ban), namely: the wide circulation of t he works of S ebastian Franck and their repeated translation into Dutch66 and reissue well into the next century. The Spiritualist challenge to mainline Mennonitism may be said to have become acute in 1564, when two letters, earlier addressed by Franck to his sympathizers in Lower Germany, were, because of their great appeal, published and circulated in a Dutch translation by Peter de Zuttere. The temptation to go spiritual was as great in The Netherlands as in South Germany, when Marpeck was fighting Schwenckfeld (Ch. 18). The Dutch edition of Franck’s letters was symptomatic of a w idespread reaction to the rigorism of Leonard Bouwens. The first of t hese two popular letters was Franck’s manifesto on the Ecclesia Spiritualis written to Campanus in 1531 (Ch. 18.3). Franck’s other letter was addressed to Christians in Lower Germany, who “live like sheep among wolves.” It had been written at the request of one John of Bekesteyn of Olderstum (Ch. 14.1), that renowned asylum near Emden for refugee Sacramentists, Anabaptists, and now Spiritualists. Bekesteyn had visited Franck in Basel c. 1541. Another person in The Netherlands to have been demonstrably influenced by Franck was David Joris. To be sure, Joris wrote both before and after Franck. But in the principal work of Joris, ’t Wonderboek of 1542, it is apparent that he had passed, under the influence of Franck’s Spiritualism, from ecstatic prophetism to quietistic mysticism. Henry Niclaes had also made use of Franck’s writings. The “national-reformed” Sacramentist Anastasius Veluanus ( Jan Gerritszoon Versteghe of Veluw), in Leken Wechwyser (The Layman’s Guide), denounced Franck in 1554 as impure and sullied with dangerous errors in every article of his faith; and in 1557 in his treatise on the Supper he referred to the presence of “Sebastianists,” and in his Confession of 1561, 66  Bruno Becker, “Nederlandische Vertalingen van Sebastiaan Francks Geschriften,” NAKG n.s. 21 (1928): 149–60. Three of his works survive intact only in later Dutch translations: The Kingdom of Christ (Gouda, 1611, 1617), which is his most systematic work; Of the World which is the Devil’s Kingdom (Gouda, 1618). A sermon against “Herr Omnes,” which is included in the second of these three Dutch translations under the title of “Treatise concerning the People,” had been refused by the censors in Ulm in 1538.

750  the radical reformation

chapter 19.3.b / 19.3.c

to “Frankists.” By 1564 it was thus clear that Franck’s individualistic Spiritualism was attractive to professed Mennonites, and in 1567, Dirk Philips took up the challenge of the two popular Franckist letters and warned his congregations against the Spiritualist diversion.67 Philips was dealing with a major threat to the disciplined communities of the Anabaptists at the very moment in Dutch history when a new belligerence, no longer apocalyptic, as with the Münsterites, but nationalistic, had emerged under the banner of predestinarian Calvinism to free The Netherlands of the Hapsburg yoke. The Calvinists, too, had their clandestine conventicles and had adopted a national confession of faith at Antwerp in 1561, the Confessio Belgica. The Anabaptists, having completely purged their membership of fighting saints, as a pacifistic and patient remnant, could not afford, under the influence of the Spiritualizer, to let their only weapons tarnish and their only supplies spoil, namely, their believers’ baptism as a s ign, their eucharistic banquet with the risen Christ, and their stern and swiftly executed ban. It was in the same year of 1564 that Franck’s popular letters were published in Dutch that Philips published his systematic theology. c. The “Enchiridion” of 1564 Dirk Philips’ Enchiridion of 156468 corresponded in magnitude as a s ystematic, collected work to Menno’s Foundation Book of 1540. It was in the Dutch-and German-speaking parts of Poland that Dirk had the time to pull together his diverse writings as an enchiridion. He had followed Menno to the delta of the Vistula; and, from 1555 to his death in 1568, he made his base Danzig and then Schottland, the latter a region just outside the jurisdiction of the town, whence he continued to make frequent trips by sea to The Netherlands and Emden. The Enchiridion contains close to 650 pages, comprising almost all his writings to date.69 Some of i ts component treatises are of e special interest to us at this point. In the line of Hofmann and Menno, Dirk Philips stressed the eucharistic and soteriological implications of the celestial flesh of Christ.70 Dirk became even more explicit than Menno on the identity of the heavenly flesh and the manna of communion:

67  BRN 10:473ff. Bruno Becker, “Nicolais inlassching over de Franckisten,” NAKG n.s., 18 (1925). 68  BRN vol. 10; tr. Abraham B. Kolb (Elkhart, 1910). See also Keeney, “Writings.” 69  Writings not included are the refutation of the two epistles of Franck (1567), the Short but Thorough Account (1567) about the quar rels between the Flemish and the Fr isians, and Christian Matrimony, posthumously printed in 1569. 70  Cf. Cornelius J. Dyck, “The Christology of Dirk Philips,” MQR 31 (1957): 147–55.

chapter 19.3.c

netherlanders & lower germans, 1540-1568  751

Christ says much, according to John, of the eating of his flesh and the drinking of his blood. It therefore behooves us to see and consider how the flesh of Christ shall and must be eaten and his blood drunk, namely thus, that we accept and obey the word of G od with pure hearts and in true faith. … And the living bread (which is Christ and his flesh) is beyond all doubt and contradiction the Word of G od, and therefore if any man believes and obeys the Word of God, he receives Christ, the Word of life and the bread of heaven, yea, he eats the flesh and drinks the blood of Christ. And because of t his, Jesus calls his flesh “meat indeed,” and his blood “drink indeed,” because the Word of G od is really meat for the sou1.71 This phrasing, except for “living bread,” might just as well have been written by Schwenckfeld, but Philips, like Hofmann (Ch. 11.3), appealed also to the dew-pearl analogy of m edieval mysticism, pointing to Hofmann’s celestial flesh doctrine in muted form: Christ Jesus is the living bread which came like dew or manna from heaven, and what was the food of angels has also become the food of men [Ps. 78:25]. But the bread, which he is himself, and gives men—that is, believers—to eat, is his flesh, which he has given for the life of the world.72 In Regeneration and the New Creature, from which the foregoing has been quoted, Dirk clarified his conception of salvation as the progressive restitution of the image of God among believers through regenerative baptism and eucharistic nourishment. In Christ, the image of the invisible God, in Christ, the new Adam, the faithful are reborn to become partakers of the divine nature, of the celestial and holy flesh of Christ, and, with qualifications, to become gods: Now although men become participant in the divine nature, gods and children of the Most High, they yet do not become in being and person what God and Christ alone are. Oh no! The creature will never become the Creator, and flesh will never become eternal spirit, which God is, for this would be impossible. But the believers become gods and children of the Most High through the new birth, the impartation and fellowship of t he divine nature, righteousness, glory, purity, and eternal life.73

71

 BRN vol. 10; tr. Abraham B. Kolb (Elkhart, 1910).  Ibid. 73  Van der Mensc hwerdinghe ons heeren Jesu Chr isti, BRN, 10:148f., Alvin J. Beachey, trans., “The Concept of Grace in the Radical Reformation” (Nieuwkoop: DeGraaf, 1977), 75. 72

752  the radical reformation

chapter 19.3.c

To sum up the development from Hofmann through Philips: For Hofmann, the doctrine of the heavenly flesh was the sanction of a n ew order which he conceived both experientially and eschatologically. For Menno, the new order was seen primarily in the congregation of t he regenerate, faithfully employing the ban to maintain a spotless community in the world of surrounding evil. For Philips (as with Schwenckfeld, the Spiritualist!), the emphasis was on the mystical eating of the heavenly flesh of Christ in communion and gradual divinization. Dirk Philips was not, however, a p erfectionist in his ecclesiology. He knew that there would always be backsliders and even hypocrites. But the church must use the ban to help itself remain as pure as possible. Although it is the whole congregation that loosens or binds in the name of God, nevertheless the preachers and teachers have an important role. They are commissioned directly through God or through the operation of the whole church. Their heroic functions were discussed in The Sending of Preachers and Teachers. In this treatise on polity, it is clear that the primary opponents of Dirk are the Spiritualists like his own brother Obbe, Franck, and even distant Schwenckfeld. Herein also Dirk emphasizes the importance of the proclamation of the law in preparation for the proclamation of t he grace of G od. “Elders” and “bishops” seem to be used interchangeably in early Mennonite literature. We have already remarked that former priests among the Anabaptists, such as Menno, Dirk, and Adam Pastor, felt it incumbent upon themselves to seek reordination as well as rebaptism. This, however, is an obscure chapter in Mennonite history. Theirs was a Spiritual succession in the Melchiorite sense of a line of rebaptized converts who were in turn set aside by the charismatic leaders as elders by the laying on of hands. In still another treatise, The Church of God,74 Dirk states most fully and in lofty language the evangelical Anabaptist conception of the true church, which was first gathered among the angels in heaven, which was reconstituted in Paradise, and which, though it suffered defection and corruption from the fall of the angels and the fall of Adam up to the most recent present, nevertheless has been one great succession of faithful men and women wending their way like a caravan through the centuries. Among the members of this band, the image of Christ has been restored. In contrast to Obbe, his brother Dirk holds that the church of t he apostles has truly been restored. At the same time its marks partake of the bright hues of t he eschatalogical church of t he Apocalypse. In fact, the magnificence of the conception is due to the fact that after the debacle of t he Münsterite bibliocracy the Dutch Anabaptists appropriated the Apocalyptic language of the church triumphant for their own conventicles 74

 Translated in SAW, 226ff.

chapter 19.3.c

netherlanders & lower germans, 1540-1568  753

militant. The cogency of this treatise depends in part upon the strong and resourceful undergirding supplied from Scripture at every juncture. No doubt still mindful of the seven sacraments of his youth, Dirk Philips described “the seven ordinances of the true Church (Gemeynte)” as of ca. 1560: (1) “pure and unfalsified doctrine of t he Divine Word” (Matt. 28:19f.) along with the proper ministers Dienaers, of whom there are three kinds: prophets, apostles (emissaries), and elders; (2) the “two tokens,” Baptism and the Supper; (3) footwashing, which is a n ew emphasis; (4) evangelical separation from the world, including the ban; (5) “the commandment of l ove” ( John 13:34, etc.) and a c ommunal mutual care; (6) “the heavenly philosophy” of “ keeping all his [ Jesus’] commandments”; and (7) “that all Christians must suffer and be persecuted, while the world has joy and the faithful have temporary tribulation.” Dirk extended the paradisaic ideal to marriage. The paradisaic character of Christian monogamy, propounded in his earlier work on Spiritual Restitution, was amplified in Christian Matrimony, wherein he closely related marriage to the relationship of t he Second Adam to the Second Eve, the church, and propounded the view that only the reborn who partake of the divine nature of Christ can be joined in holy wedlock, and that separation (divorce) is obligatory when one spouse is definitively banned. Dirk’s book on matrimony was his last, and was published posthumously. The importance of the covenant of marriage in the Radical Reformation, replacing the sacrament of marriage in the Old Church, has been suggested several times in the course of this book. It is appropriate that we pass from a chapter on Familism and stern banning with respect to bed and board to a chapter dealing comprehensively with marriage in the Radical Reformation.

754  the radical reformation

chapter 19.3.c

Chapter 20

Marriage, Family Life, and Divorce in the Radical Reformation

W e may take the last work of Dirk Philips

, On Christian Matrimony (1568), as the occasion to discuss under one heading the conception of marriage and divorce, and, so also, by implication, the place of family life and progeny in the Radical Reformation. It was inevitable that Netherlandish Anabaptism, which derived in large measure from Melchior Hofmann, who likened baptism to betrothal (Ch. 11.1.d), and which, while passing through its Münsterite phase, came temporarily to espouse polygamy (Ch. 13.4), should have become theologically and ethically the most articulate regional sector of the Radical Reformation about the Christian or biblical meaning of marriage, divorce, and family life. The Reformation as a whole, while not at the start intending to change marriage or sexual roles or family life, impacted them significantly, and it did so well beyond the territories which espoused renewal and change.1 The classical Reformation, in magisterial urban-state and princely territory, was accomplished in part through the incorporation of t he clergy, increasingly and at length normatively married, into communities and civic life. Pastors renounced their status in the medieval sacerdotium as a priestly caste, under separate canonical jurisdiction set apart from the urban and village citizenry 1  Roland Bainton in his thr ee-volume Women of the Refor mation: Vol. 1, In Germany and Italy, Vol. 2, In France and England, Vol. 3, From Spain to Scandinavia (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1971; 1973; 1977), held that the Reformation had more enduring impact on family life than on economics or politics. Michael Screech went so far as to identify the controversy over marriage and celibacy as a “major cause of the Lutheran, Anglican, and Calvinist Refor mations”; the Rabelaisian Marriage: Aspects of Rabelais’ Religion, Ethics, and Comic Philosophy (London: Arnold, 1958), noted b y John Yost, “The Traditional Western Concept of Mar riage and the Family: Rediscovering its Renaissance-Reformation Roots,” Andover Newton Theological Seminary Quarterly 20 (1980): 169–85.

755

756  the radical reformation

chapter 20

under the common law, and eagerly became members of s elected guilds, thereby directly involving themselves in civic duties and privileges. The married ministers of the Magisterial Reformation thus participated integrally in the consolidation of the reformed sacra civitas (urbs sacra). Amid the élan of the new conjugal society, the married clergy and their wives indeed often led in initiating municipal suspension of brothels and in turning over of convents of celibates for the rearing of orphans and the bastards of priestly concubinage. Ideally, the local ministers, their wives, and parishioners sought to constitute themselves as a biblically disciplined corpus Christianorum, distinguishable religio-politically from the universal (once all-embracing) papal-imperial corpus Christianum under the two swords (Ch. 10.2), all Christendom once having been interconnected in the common bonds of sacramental grace administered by one caste and infused by it into the other[s]. As married clergy, now owning the civic oath and voting in municipal elections, the magisterial reformers facilitated the passage of authority over marriage from the ecclesiastical courts of the bishop to the local matrimonial court of the town or village magistrates (“the lords of marriage”). 2 As many of t he Reformation pastors and preachers were initially drawn from the ranks of the secular and of the regular clergy, they faced acutely in their personal lives the tension of r enouncing religious vows to make new ones to a spouse who might herself be a former nun, and, by implication, to take the civic oath for plenary and responsible life and vocation in the temporal order. To the degree that the ascetic vocation motif, preeminent in Christianity from the New Testament epoch until the Renaissance, survived the enormous rupture and redirection in Christendom, the ascetic impulse would f ind divergent modalities, occasioned by t he Renaissance and Reformation, within both the civic institution of Reformation marriage and the covenantally conceived marriage of disparate radicals. Although the followers of what can retrospectively be identified as the Radical Reformation often came initially from those classes of society that had become even ferociously anticlerical, as “ journeymen” of t he Lord, they were by choice and often by circumstances drawn into, or forced to wrestle with, the new social realities faced by all representatives of religious

2  The Church of England was an exception, retaining through its ecclesiastical courts, final jurisdiction in mar riage and divorce. In Scotland such contr ol would come under the jur isdiction of presbytery. As for divorce in the Church of England, whose first royal Head was in schism with Rome because of his controversial and canonically belabored divorce, it would be so restricted as to be nearly nonexistent until in the eighteenth centur y. A divorce equivalent to legal separation, mensa et thoro, would be granted to an aggrieved husband on grounds of his wife’s adultery, but divorce with the r ight of r emarriage would require a pr ivate bill in the House of Lords. A private bill after 1798 al ways required the previous verdict of separation in the ecclesiastical court of marriage; “Warning to All Young Lovers: Divorce, Adultery & Crimes of Passion,” Harvard Librarian 24:12 (1990): 15.

chapter 20

marriage, family life & divorce  757

bodies. In this context, and in their own social radicality, Anabaptists and other similarly minded restitutionists rediscovered those passages in Scripture that had originally contributed to the evolution of t he ascetic ideal in early Christianity and transmuted them for conjugal life in, as it were, conjugal coenobitism. They appealed to the scriptural texts again in the context of t he primacy of t heir gathered and self-disciplining congregations, freshly experienced as outposts of the Kingdom of Christ, sovereign in their lives over against the claims of t he new religio-political corpora, which were to them, as religious separatists, in effect as constraining to themselves as dissidents as the old sacerdotium which they had, together with the magisterials, sloughed off. It is not surprising, therefore, that within the Radical Reformation there should be found a much wider range of m arital ideals and practices than in the Magisterial Reformation, which for its part rested more firmly upon and within the civic virtues and the solidarity of g uildsmen/husbands, each man a l ord in his workshop of apprentices/household of wife, progeny, and servants. 3 We become aware of competing conceptualizations of t he family: sometimes the immediate family as ecclesia domestica, sometimes the workshop-household with its workers and servants as civitas domestica, while Luther himself found in the family-workshop the locus of Christian nurture, and the indispensable social unit next to church and state, also an ecclesiola in ecclesia.4 The Council of T rent, challenged by t he progammatic Protestant equalization of p astor and layman before Christ and his two sacraments and the concurrent desacramentalizing of marriage, will seek to make matrimony and the celibate clerical estate henceforth alternative ways of t he Christian life and as equally sacramental. The locus classicus for the sacramental character of m arriage (Ch. 2.2), Ephesians 5:31–32, where the Vulgate renders the Greek term for the mystery of husband and wife as a sacramentum, had not from the days of Paul (“better to marry than to burn,” 1 Cor. 7:9) and of the Seer (“virgins not defiled by women,” Rev. 14:4), so far prevailed as to exalt the married state as the superior sacramentum or mysterion (as between matrimony and orders) in the Church Fathers,5 nor among the subsequent monastic and scholastic divines. Moreover, Renaissance humanism had in the meantime, independently of the

3

 Lyndal Roper, The Holy Household: Women and Morals in Refor mation Augsburg (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989) with its telltale first chapter, The Domestication of the Reformation. 4  On the family as a model for r eform of church and society in Luther and Lutheranism, see Gerald Strauss, Luther’s House of Learning: Indoctrination of the Young in the German Reformation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978). 5  The best known example is J erome’s view that mar riage was useful chiefly to produce more virgins; Epistle 22 to Eustochium, 140 to Demetrius; but see G. H. Joyce, Christian Marriage, 2d ed. (London: Sheed & Ward, 1948).

758  the radical reformation

chapter 20 / 20.1

Christian ascetic tradition, come to exalt the estate of learned celibacy and continence as more conducive to scholarship and the unencumbered pursuit of the classical disciplines.6 Trent, in its decree of Tametsi (1563), elevated the sacrament of m arriage, confirmed it not only as one of the seven sacraments, but also upheld it as no longer implicitly inferior to clerically vowed celibacy. The decree would also seek to ward off the evils associated with clandestine (“secret”) marriages and would insist that to be henceforth valid marriage would have to be consecrated in the presence of a priest (eventually at the nuptial Mass) to preserve and ensure the integrity and dignity of the mutual sacred pledges (betrothal and marital as separate actions). Here, as among the congeries of A nabaptists and some other radicals, the ecclesial dimension of marriage was exalted above its civic and temporal function.

1. Some Marital Motifs among Some of the Radicals We first lift up for generalization some six motifs and themes among the radicals before we take up our excursus on medieval antecedents and the achievements of the magisterial reformers (Ch. 20.2) in preparation for further details about the radicals (Ch. 20.3) and then conclude with the revolution in the understanding of gestation and the origin of the souls of progeny (Ch. 20.4). We shall see that much of the Radical Reformation shared with renewed Catholicism the resolve to perpetuate or i ndeed to intensify the Christian sense of m arriage as an ordinance of a nd in the community of faith, while at the same time it shared with the Magisterial Reformation in the repudiation of both the sacramental ex opere operato character of matrimony and the traditional exaltation of celibacy as an alternative and as an implicitly superior Christian way. Both magisterial and radical reconceptions of m arriage represented indeed a massive reaction to the “acute Hellenization” 7 and the reappropriation of the earthly Hebraic texts of Scripture in the Christian understanding of the sexual drive and the institution of m arriage. Fully enough marital injunctions in the Haustafeln of the New Testament remain compatible with

6  Ernst Kantorowicz, Die Wiederkehr der gelehrten Anachorese (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1937). The Tridentine Fathers, like the Reformers and the separatists, inherited from antecedent canon law scholastic commentary, and municipal usage under common law, a number of distinctions much more the frame of reference then than today. 7  Adolf von Harnack in coining this phrase had primarily dogma in mind, although it seems equally valid for the ascetic motif in sexual ethics and institutions fr om the New Testament epoch, since normative Judaism never expounded a doctrine of original sin with the same texts for it that were used by Paul and Augustine. To be sure, it can be argued that Augustine and Jerome represent especially antisexual motifs in Chr istian Hellenism. As for mar riage in the Byzantine traditions, it is a kind of royal epiphany at which the priest in church is the minister of the sacrament, not the bride and groom, who are crowned.

chapter 20.1

marriage, family life & divorce  759

the Reformation restoration of the original Jewish esteem for conjugal love and of the divine injunction to be fruitful and multiply. But the exaltation of marriage and fertility with the recovery of the Old Testament in its literal, as distinguished from its several nonliteral senses hitherto familiar, presented reformers and radicals with several problems. Salient was the institution of plural marriage in the Old Testament. With the general reaffirmation of the Old Testament in its literal rather than allegorical sense, there followed an uncertainty as to the ancient precepts and practices of plural marriages among the patriarchs and otherwise exemplary kings, including David, in relation to the sexual inhibitions in the New Testament. We note further that fascination exercised by l ate medieval Adamite speculation concerning the original intention of God for the sexes before the Fall, the baleful influence of I V Clement, innocently regarded as apostolic (Chs. 16.3, 20.3.b), the Dominical injunction (Matt. 10:35 ff. and 19:29) to leave kith and kin and carry the cross,8 and eschatological urgency to procreate the saints in covenantal purity foreseen in Revelations 7:4. These marginal and discrepant counsels turmoiled the eventual clarification of a d eepened covenantal conception of m arriage, which the Anabaptists and many other radicals had come to espouse. To the theological confusion caused by sometime conflicting Scriptures must be added the strains in the hearts of loving spouses separated by persecution, flight, imprisonment, missionary duty, and altering convictions as to the requirements of the faith. Reformers and radicals, drawn to the fecundity of the Old Testament, were nevertheless bound to take seriously Jesus’ teaching against divorce. Whether magisterial or radical reformers or reform-minded Catholics meeting at Trent, all Christians were compelled to construe in a fresh way their Lord’s restoration of marriage to its original place in God’s plan (Gen. 2:20–25), thereby abrogating the Mosaic toleration of divorce (Matt. 5:31–32, 19:3–9; Mark 10:2–12; Luke 16:18) and condemning remarriage (except in the sole case of Matt. 19:9, for the injured party in cases of adultery). They freshly examined Paul’s assertions in Romans 7:2–3 and 1 Corinthians 7:1–16, 27–40 about the nature of marital life and his injunction to uphold peace in marital relations toward the end of Christian witness and proclamation (esp. 1 Cor. 7:15). The enhancement of the Bible, spreading in vernacular versions, over against Tradition, including the canon law, had the effect of d ivinely reinforcing the superiority of men over women and husbands over wives. Much of the Scripture, so decisive for both the magisterial and the radical reformers, was clear in its directives regarding the primacy of husbands over 8

 Schornbaum, Bayern 1 (QGT 2), nos. 15, 16, 353.

760  the radical reformation

chapter 20.1

wives, of men over women. Moreover, as regards Adam and Eve, whose account was shared by Jews and Hebraizing reformers, a passage in the New Testament expressly attributed to Eve the primordial transgression, exculpating Adam (1 Tim. 2:13–14). While the New Testament image of marriage likened to the union of Christ and his Church valorized marriage, and accorded an important role to both spouses, it also perpetuated the role of husbands (and by extension, men) as heads over women as Christ the head over the one Church. Menno Simons, for instance, instructed the Anabaptist sisters: “Be obedient to your husbands in all reasonable things.” 9 He also advised them to remain at home, to leave the house only for pressing business or in order to hear the Lord’s word. Furthermore, the household codes in Col. 3:12–4:1 and Ephesians 5:22–6:9, while laying the foundation for companionable marriage, the wife respecting her husband and the husband loving his wife, the male partner was supreme for governance of the household (as also 1 Pet. 3:1–7).10 With these emphases in Scripture prominent in both the Magisterial and the Radical Reformations, we turn to some seven traits, or emphases and thrusts, that are most associated with various radicals in comparison with the Reformers and Catholics. First, it is not surprising that a m ovement that sought to restore the Church as a provisional paradise in the wilderness of the world and undo in covenantal marital bonding the consequence of the disobedience of the first Pair should not only propose to rebaptize and to reordain, but also to rethink the bonds of m atrimony and discover in the renewal of m arriage a covenantal means of redemption, as an ordinance appointed by the Second Adam for the recovery of the pristine harmony of Adam and Eve before their fall. Given, moreover, the persistence of the bridal imagery of the mystical tradition, it was inevitable that marriage within their “true Church” as the Body of Christ would be felt by many spouses in an apocalyptic mood as an especially intimate expression of a corporate as well as of a personal mystical union, as between spouse and spouse, and of both with Christ the heavenly Bridegroom. There are scattered reports, for instance, of A nabaptists holding that their marriages were first made in heaven. Thus Anabaptists in Eisenach are reported to have spoken (1539) of marriage as an eternal estate (Eewigstand) instead of m erely wedlock for life (Ehestand).11 Since the final encounter

9  M. Lucille Marr, “Anabaptist Women in the North: Peers in the Faith, Subordinates in Marriage,” MQR 61 (1987): 347–62, 358, quoting Menno Simons, Writings, 383. 10  The seven New Testament household codes integral to codes of subordination are conveniently arranged in tables by Edward G. Selwyn, The Epistle of Christian Courage: Studies in the First Epistle of St. Peter (London/Oxford/New York: Mowbray/Morehouse Gorham, 1940). 11  Wappler, Stellung Kursachsens, 204, 206, noted by Clasen, Anabaptism, 201.

chapter 20.1

marriage, family life & divorce  761

in marriage was sometimes thought of a s a C hristian epiphany of A dam and Eve as they should have been in the Garden, innocently one flesh, the events surrounding and making up the actual wedding, the procession, the stance of the couple who minister to each other, the role of the priest/minister/officiant of the community throw light on a fundamental order of creation, and of the Fall and of the restoration through Christ with the bridal couple related to each other as Christ to his Church (Eph. 5:21–32). On the margins of the Radical Reformation even in Bohemia and Poland there are indeed a sufficient number of reports, mostly hostile, a few benign, that sometimes marriages took place out-of-doors in a f orest or garden, even that the newlyweds were naked, to suggest that here and there ceremonial attempts were made towards reconceiving marriage as an ordinance of grace, as the new basis of that reformed ecclesia domestica, conjoint with a new oeconomia Christiana. Second, in interpreting matrimony in the language of t he covenant with Christ, the Radical Reformation found a f resh theological category for marriage as an ordinance of C hrist and, like Catholicism, within the purview and under the discipline of the Church, while over against both the Counter and the Magisterial Reformation, most of the radicals postulated the equality of the partners as joining each other by virtue of a prior personal confession of faith (believers’ baptism and the assumption of other testimonial responsibilities). Excesses and aberrations attended the theological realignment of the most fundamental and intimate of human institutions and relationships both in the territorial and particularly in the radical reformations. While segments of this diversely radical movement accepted varying sexual expressions, in the main a renunciative view was frequently found (more so than in the magisterial stance toward matrimony) in revulsion from any too naturalistic or obsessive sexual expression that might divert the faithful from the seriousness of the Christian life.12 Radicals, more intensely than the magisterial reformers, spoke their new marriage vows in the face of a gathered congregation and were continuously subject to its self-disciplining order in ways comparable to the taking of vows among monks, friars, and nuns in the older Catholic orders from which some of the Anabaptist leaders (like Michael Sattler, Menno Simons) had come. Anabaptists and like-minded restitutionists pro­g rammatically grounded their behavior in family or church-family as their basic institution, guided by s criptural and ecclesial principles, over against the civic marriage/family/household of t erritorial reform upheld and moni­tored by the matrimonial courts. Passages of S cripture that had diminished in 12

 James M. Stayer, taking up the most difficult case, proposes that the “repudiation” of sensuality, previously expected of the clergy, was now “elevated to the nor m of Chr istian life in general”; and some Anabaptists recoiled from this: “Vielweiberei als ‘innerweltliche Askese’: neue Eheauffassungen in der Reformationszeit,” MGB 37 (1980): 29.

762  the radical reformation

chapter 20.1

significance in the Magisterial Reformation became for them prominent, including their widespread use of the Pauline privilege (1 Cor. 7:15), to opt out of a confessionally incompatible marriage. Furthermore, as baptism was postponed for progeny in most sectors of the Radical Reformation, it was inevitable that increasing attention would be given to the children of the covenant, as also to the ecclesial status of family life, and perhaps to fresh interpretation of the paternal and the maternal role in the procreation of progeny (Ch. 20.4). Third, in the transmutation of vows from the celibate sacerdotal to the civic realm, both Protestants and the radicals were prepared to repudiate vows taken to celibacy within the Old C hurch. But the former would never have theologically countenanced the disavowal of a ny marriage contracted in the Old Church. In contrast, the Anabaptists were not only rebaptizers and reordinationists, but they were also, on principle (though not always in practice), “re-trothers,” in the sense that they reaffirmed their marital relationship in Christ or remarried in faith. In consciously separating themselves from the Gemeinde of the commune to form the spiritual Gemeinde in Christ, they not infrequently separated themselves from former spouses as well on the basis of the Pauline privilege. Spiritual baptism in Christ, which could deepen for the radicals their covenantal affirmation of marriage, could also, if that experience in Christ were lost or diminished, contribute to marital breakdown. Instances of divorce or of formal remarriage of a banned and reinstated spouse with the faithful spouse are recorded. Fourth, the Anabaptist insistence on the covenantal principle of t he freedom of conscience for all adult believers, and thereby the implicit extension of the priesthood of the Christophorous laity to 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 g ender-equalizing covenant.13 Besides numerous patro­nesses, protectresses, and martyrs, the Radical Reformation acknowledged several prophetesses (like Ursula Jost), at least two women apostles (like the wife of Andrew Fischer), and one redemptrix (William Postel’s Venetian Virgin, Ch. 22.2.a).14 13  It was Roland Bainton who first brought attention to the motif of covenantal marriage, which he thought of as reaching modern society by way of Puritanism, What Christianity Says about Sex, Love, and Marriage (New York: Association Press, 1957). He pursued his themes in his three volume Women of the Reformation; I followed his lead in The Radical Reformation, 1st ed. (1962). 14  The generalization is that of Max Weber, Die protestantische Ethik und der “Geist” des Kapitalismus, Gesammelte Außätze (Tübingen, 1922), 1:171. For two Apostelinnen, see Crous, “Eifel,” MQR 34 (1960): 189.

chapter 20.1

marriage, family life & divorce  763

Some scholars, however, argue that the actual status of A nabaptist women and those of other radical movements turned out to be little different from that of their sisters of territorial confessions and that, in spite of some exceptions, “their public religious role remained limited.”15 It is also quite likely that divergent appropriations of a rchaic classical and patristic genetics and embryology, which interconnected with celestial-flesh Christology (Ch. 11.3.d), brought about differences among radicals and the magisterial reformers in their sire-centered view of partners in marriage and procreation (Ch. 20.4). Fifth, by v irtue of i ts generally deepened sense of s piritual immediacy, the Radical Reformation was more prone to excesses in its conjugal aspects than the Magisterial Reformation, the latter having put the cleric on the same level and roughly in the same circumstances of l ife as the layman when it placed the contractual aspect of m arriage itself under the civil authorities (Ch. 20.2.b). Only in a few notorious cases did the major reformers contrive sanctions for bigamy as the lesser of two evils in notably political situations.16 Although more turbulent, the Radical Reformation

15  Although Mitiam Chrisman, “Women and the Reformation in Strassburg, 1490–1530,” ARC 63 (1972): 143–68, partially substantiates for a pr ivileged and uniquely tolerant urban state, that despite the impact of the Anabaptist principle of the sex-blind freedom of the conscience, Joyce Irwin, Womanhood in Radical Reformation, 1525–1675 (New York: Mellen, 1979), was among the first to challenge fully the practical infer ences of Bainton and Radical Reformation, 1st ed. (1962), about the theoretical egalitarianism of covenantal marriage (n. 13 above) and found little practical difference between the status of Anabaptist and other women in the sixteenth centur y, with the possib le exception of Polish women. Despite outcroppings of egalitarianism, John Klassen, “Women and the Family among Dutch Anabaptist Martyrs,” MQR 60 (1986): 548–71, also concludes that most Anabaptists “accepted” the patriarchal views of society, in which the male dominated the female and children obeyed. Here he studied cases from Martyrs’ Mirror of family attitudes present among those who suffered for their faith: a spectrum of relations from patriarchial to true “mutuality if not equality” in companionable marriage. Lucille Marr, “Anabaptist Women,” presents an admirable survey of marriage and women in Reformation (and similarly argues against the conclusions of much earlier work, including that of Roland Bainton and Radical Reformation, 1st ed. [1962]) and shows that Anabaptists in the North (Mennonites) were little different from mainline Protestants. Indeed, her ar ticle as a whole, with many direct quotations from Mennonite leaders, stands as the most detailed and reliable account of our theme in this selected sector, but see also Ch. 20.4. She calls attention to William Wohlers, “The Anabaptist View of the Family in its Relationship to the Chur ch” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Nebraska, 1976), in which Wohlers found (1) that Anabaptists required believers to subor dinate family to chur ch, (2) that traditional medie val and scr iptural views of women were perpetuated in Anabaptist communities, and (3) that women were expected to remain subordinate to males, particularly to their husbands, in the church. 16  The public dynastic cases ranged fr om the pan-Eur opean problem of the di vorce of Henry VIII of England (1529), through the pan-Protestant agitation over the bigamy of Philip of Hesse (1540), to the Polish Commonwealth agitation over the contested second and thir d marriages of Sigismund II Augustus (see below, n. 78). Martin Bucer entered into the problems of both Henry and Philip. In his “Marriage, Divorce, and Celibacy,” found in his Commentary on Matthew, Mark, and Luke (Strassburg, 1527; frequently republished), Bucer was accommodative and lenient in his perception of divorce. Bucer would influence John Milton (1644), who in turn

764  the radical reformation

chapter 20.1

was perhaps also religiously more creative than normative Protestantism because it went beyond placing the minister and the laity on the same level. Refusing to consider marriage, thus reconceived, as solely of nature or the natural estate, it sometimes found new ways of construing the marriage of Christians as a relationship superior to, and also religiously more hazardous than, civil matrimony. The excesses with respect to marriage in the Radical Reformation, the outcropping of p olygamy, the desertion of u nbelieving spouses by converts, and here and there the explicit espousal of sexual communism within the confines of the conventicle may be understood not only (1) as concomitants of the general disruption of the medieval sacramental conception of m arriage but also (2) as the earnest aberrations of b iblical literalists who found Old Testament passages in support of their practices, and finally, (3) as the syndrome of an eschatologically intense turning away from attachment to property, inheritance, civil and social status, and from the state or the established church as one’s support and sanction. Embracing as their own literal way of life the love of the brethren and the sisters and the egalitarian sharing of all things recorded in so many passages of the New Testament (Ch. 16.3), they almost inevitably at times approached the border where agape and eros and nomos became confused.17 For all that, the post-Reformation conception and practice of m arriage cannot be understood without full recognition of the influence of the deepened covenantal impulse, mediated to the modern world in part directly by Anabaptism and, to a greater extent, indirectly by way of sectarianized forms of Puritanism. Sixth, it seems likely that just as the covenantal marriage of many of the radicals rehabilitated under reinterpreted biblical sanctions the medieval canonical emphasis on the personal choice of young partners in betrothal, so the Magisterial Reformation sanctioned further the emergent Renaissance­ humanist ideal of the chaste and fecund family integrated into the public

would cite “incompatibility” as additional ground for divorce, and recall that his ideas had been presaged in Erasmus. Arguments for compatibility found f arfetched scriptural sanction in such texts as Gen. 2:18 (“It is not good for man to be alone”);Gen. 2:24 (“They became one flesh”); and 1 Cor. 7:2 (“each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband”). See in Common Places of Martin Bucer, The Courtenay Library of Reformation Classics 4, tr. and ed. D. F. Wright (Appleford: Sutton Courtenay Press, 1972), 401–51. 17 Anders Nygren, Agape and Eros, 3 vols. (Swedish: 1930–36; 2d English tr. by Philip S. Watson, Philadelphia: Westminster, 1953, repr. New York: Harper, 1969) distinguished eros and the scriptural, particularly the Ne w Testament love, agape, as disinterested love regardless of merit or worth, and then identified two patristic contaminations of agape, that of making love into a law (nomos), which he associated with Tertullian, and caritas, which he identified as the synthesis of eros and agape in Augustine, holding that Luther recovered the divine agape in God’s mercy through Christ pro nobis and the acceptance of that love by faith alone without thought of one’s merit or demerits.

chapter 20.1 / 20.2.a

marriage, family life & divorce  765

sphere in the assignment of its contributory social cohesion and progeny for the expanding commonweal.18 At the same time, just as the magisterial reformers incorporated the reformed family into the body politic, so the radicals in many cases incorpo­ rated the family into the covenantal community, the renewed church, and in a sense placed their updated separatist household codes in the context of the Church rather than of the public order. The radicals may indeed, as scriptural literalists, have tended to appropriate with their intensified ecclesiology the household codes of the New Testament in the detailed and elaborated form of E phesians 5:21–6:9 in context of the ecclesia rather than in its simpler antecedent version of Col. 3:12–4:1 in the context of the mystery of Christ in history.19

2. Medieval, Renaissance, Magisterial Protestant Changes in Marriage The Christian conception of marriage by mutual consent of the partners, rather than as dictated by s ocial or economic considerations of t he two families, which was so central to radical ideas concerning covenantal marriage, had already developed impact during the Middle Ages. 20 In what follows the reader will therefore be alert to distinguish three sets of three about matrimony inherited from scholastic and canonical scrutiny: the three “legal” interests in matrimony (at n. 39), the three stages for the transaction of marriage (at n. 21), and the three ends of the married estate (at nn. 22, 34, 85). a. The Medieval Canonical Legacy The high regard placed upon celibacy and the depreciation of marriage in the Middle Ages had led to sexual and marital confusion. Canon laws governing the formation, maintenance, and dissolution of m arriage had often been arbitrary. They had appeared to encourage marriage among the immature and to depreciate it among the mature, which often led to the flouting or disregard of the canons.

18  The second component of this pr oposition is the thesis of J ohn K. Yost, “Traditional Concept of Marriage.” In one of his several articles leading to larger books on marriage,Yost here takes as his point of depar ture the very title of Chr istopher Lasch, Haven in a Heathen World: The Family Besieged (New York: Basic Books, 1977), to contrast with this nineteenth­-century concept of the home as emotional refuge from the competitive society, to show how the Refor mation consolidated for most territories of Europe beyond the originally Renaissance­humanist recovery of the classical, primarily the idealized, chaste, monogamous, and fecund Roman family of the Republican period, the model for the family with a sense of nurturing civic virtue. 19  Helmut Köster, Introduction to the New Testament, 2 vols. (Philadelphia/Berlin: Fortress/ DeGruyter, 1982), vol. 2: sec. 12.2a and b. 20  David Herlihy, Medieval Households (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985).

766  the radical reformation

chapter 20.2.a

The Gregorian Reform of the late eleventh century had begun to systematize laws and the pervasive Christian and pagan customs in order to construe marriage as alike a natural, spiritual, and contractual affair. The Church elevated what was natural and found in it the dignity of a s acrament and so subjected marriage to ecclesiastical law and hence to its marriage courts. As a contractual issue grounded in the consent of the parties involved, the transaction of m arriage was divided by c anon lawyers into three stages, each governed by canon law, which, when neglected or imperfectly carried out, might as impediments disbar its canonical, consummation: (1) the betrothal or the promise to marry in the future; (2) the pulpit publication of t he banns on consanguinity and, a week hence, the present mutual promise to be wedded; and (3) the consummation of the marriage by voluntary sexual intercourse. 21 There were also three kinds of c landestine marriage, only one kind opposed by t he ecclesiastical tribunals: (1) the secret marriage contract between a couple in private (in effect, stage 1 above but not in the bosom of the families), (2) the secret marriage contract with witnesses but not with the consent of t he parents and with the temporary indifference to the bride’s prospective dowry from her family, and (3) the secret marriage contract in awareness, on the part of o ne or both, of a v alid canonical impediment. All clandestine marriages, in effect betrothals, although the couples lived together, presupposed their eventual wedding “in the face of the congregation.” In emphasizing the spiritual dimension of marriage, the medieval canonists had indeed subjected marriage to exclusively ecclesiastical control while allowing for two kinds of clandestine marriage (betrothals) so long as they would be in due course solemnized in church. Yet the canonists had no canonical place for marital breakdown. The sacramental bond survived separation except for the rare annulment on the basis of a network of impediments. But it is possible that the canonical protection of the couple in love, who might be engaged in a social or economic misalliance, from

21  The changing practices and requirements for marriage and its control are considered by Klaus Michael Lindner, “Courtship and the Cour ts: Marriage and Law in Southern Germany, 1350–1550” (Th.D. dissertation, Harvard Divinity School, 1988). Lindner finds the Church’s condemnation of one kind of clandestine (“secr et”) marriage (not seen as a substitute for a church wedding), not as an effor t by the Church to depr ive potential mates of their r ight of marital choice, but rather as par t of an effor t to ward off contracted mar riages in which there might be a canonical impediment to matrimony in one or both of the prospective partners and to uphold ecclesiastical jur isdiction over marriage. In fact, through the exercise of its jur isdiction the Church sought to protect the prospective couple from falling victim to demands arising from the economic and political inter ests of their kin, an abuse to which the y became more susceptible with the rise of municipal control over marriage. In his conclusion Lindner goes so far in support of the medieval Catholic protection of individual choice that he conjectures: “It is possible that even the roots of contemporary nuclear families can be traced back to medieval marital theory” (128).

chapter 20.2.a / 20.2.b

marriage, family life & divorce  767

the improper intervention of their parents and kinfolk may have laid the basis for the integrity of the young nuclear family. Canon law distinguished also three principal ends within the matrimonial estate: (1) the procreation of c hildren and their good, (2) “the avoidance of sin” (1 Cor. 7:2, 9), and (3) companionship.22 The Church’s marriage laws by t he late fifteenth century were increasingly in tension with civil laws and expectations, a tension exacerbated by g rowing property considerations on the part of the father of the bride and kinsmen concerned for business advancement, the bourgeois counterpart of dynastic betrothal without the knowledge of the infant bride-to-be. b. Renaissance Challenge to the Superiority of the Ascetic Ideal The defense of married life, as the highest expression of love for one’s neighbor and the primordial pattern for the social order, and the attack upon the ascetic virtues began with Cino Rinuccini (fourteenth-century Florentine), Coluccio Salutati (first humanist chancellor of Florence, d. 1406), Francesco Barbaro (De re uxoria, Venice 1415), Leonard Bruni (biographer of Dante as citizen with wife and progeny, 1436), Leon Battista Alberti (the artist-humanist in orders; Della Famiglia, c. 1435), and Lorenzo Valla (d. 1457), who argued for a reappraisal of the medieval ideal of celibacy in defense of the virtuous conjugal life in civic society.23 This Renaissance appropriation of marriage and the placement of the institution in the civic realm of life was furthered in the north by Erasmus and Henry Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim (d. 1535, author of The Commendation of Marriage, translated into English, 1540).24 Chaste marriage, embedded in a new necessary interest in daily human affairs, not only replaced medieval aesthetic, scholarly, asexual asceticism and otherworldliness, but also gathered enlarged significance as the example of civic virtue, rooted in the idea that life’s meaning is found in activity for family and community. For Erasmus, so influential for all three thrusts of the Radical Reforma­ tion, with his Encomium matrimonii (1497; Basel, 1518) 25 and several other works on marriage as well as many additional references, the purpose of marriage was love and companionship, “glued together among those equal

22

 Compare Luther’s wording at n. 35 below.  Succinctly set forth by John Yost, “Traditional Western Concept of Marriage and Family.” See further, Charles Trinkhaus, “Humanist Treatises on the Status of the Relig ious: Petrarch, Salutati, Valla,” Studies in the Renaissance 11 (1964): 39–44; Hans Baron, In Search of Florentine Civic Humanism, Essays on the Transition from Mediev al to Modern Thought, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 1:226–57. Alberti’s work is translated by R. N. Watkins, The Family in the Renaissance (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1969). 24  Translated by David Clapham (London: Berthelet, 1940). 25  Translated into English by Richard Taverner (London: Redman, 1931). 23

768  the radical reformation

chapter 20.2.b

in virtue by t rue affections.” 26 The Encomium begins by s tressing equity (aequitas) and humanity in the common life. The partners pass on the gift of life which they have received. The importance of matrimony is scriptural, displayed in the figure of Joseph in his devotion to spouse and Son. Marriage is the natural state from which one wonders at things divine, celibacy involves a special call but “primarily” for times of persecution. Observing the sexual problems of his day, particularly among the canonically celibate clergy, Erasmus notes that chaste married couples fully merit the honor given to ascetic virginity. Erasmus argues against loveless dynastic marriages and he also legitimates divorce for unhappy couples, holding marriage to be a sacrament only on the authority of the Church. Moving backward farther, we may observe that in allowing for divorce, Erasmus seeks a t ypological scriptural sanction, which he owes to Origen, the divorce of Christ from the Synagogue to become the Bridegroom of the Church. 27 Here we note assumptions about the person (persona), individuation, and individuality that are implicit in Erasmus’ On the Freedom of the Will (Ch. 1.3.a). We may place here also Juan Luis Vives (1492–1540), who accompanied Catherine to the court and marriage bed of Henry VIII and who as early as 1523 wrote in Latin on the need to educate women, not for careers but for the espousal of general practical wisdom, and who wrote The Office and Duitie of An Husband, while in exile from England in Bruges. It was translated by Thomas Paynell (London, 1550), to become a major factor in the evolution of the marital ideal in England.

A Young Couple, by Albrecht Durer

26  Opera omnia (Leiden, 1703–6), 10 vols. in 11, ed. Jean LeClerc, 5:620E. See Émile V. Telle, Érasme de Rotterdam et 7éme sacrament (Geneva: Droz, 1954), and Payne, Erasmus’ Theology of the Sacraments, ch. 7 27  Opera omnia 6:700A.

chapter 20.2.c

marriage, family life & divorce  769

c. Magisterial Marriage28 By the end of the Reformation, marriage could be solemnized by a magistrate as well as by a m inister. The deepening in the value of the family which developed, in part out of the civic Renaissance ideal, came together with Luther’s own sacramental radicality. To be sure, at first issues of marriage and family life did not figure largely in Luther’s reform. In his Address to the German Nobility (1520), Luther simply put forward the suggestion that parish priests be granted the privilege of m arriage. Then in The Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520), Luther attacked the sacrament of o rdination to the priesthood, the sanctioned estate competing with marriage; he further attacked practices that encouraged concubinage but prohibited sacerdotal marriage and hence inhibited a responsible sexual life for the celebrants of the sacraments of life and salvation. These two

28  General studies treating the question of celibacy and clerical marriage during the Reformation include: Henry C. Lea, History of Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Chr istian Church, rev. ed., 2 vols. (London, 1907); August Franzen, Zölibat und Priesterehe in der Auseinandersetzung der Reformationszeit und der Katholisc hen Reform des 16. Jahrhunderts (Münster: Aschendorff, 1969); Steven Ozment, “Marriage and the Ministr y in the Pr otestant Churches,” in Celibacy in the Church, ed. William Basset and Peter Huizinga (New York: Herder & Herder, 1972); and John Witte and Frank S. Alexander, eds., The Weightier Matters of the Law: Essays on Law and Religion, American Academy of Relig ion Studies in Relig ion, No. 51 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988), 57–97. For developments in England, see La wrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Mar riage in England, 1500–1800 (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), and “The Reformation Defense of Clerical Marriage in the Reigns of Henr y VIII and Edward VI,” CH 50 (1981): 152–65, an article preparatory to a monograph. For the enhancement of the status of w omen in general under the impact of the Reformation there are several recent coverages: Jane Dempsey Douglass, “Women in the Continental Reformation,” Religion and Sexism, ed. Rosemary Reuther (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1974). Elise Boulding, The Underside of History: A View of Women Through Time (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1976), en passant, went along with a common vie w that the Refor mation as a whole represented a step in the emancipation of women from concubinage, marital tyranny, and sometimes forced seclusion as r eligious, while Sher rin Marshall Wyntjes, “Women in the Reformation Era,” in Becoming Visible: Women in European Histor y, ed. Renate Br identhal and Claudia Koonz (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977), assembled evidence that women espoused the reforms as involving themselves more fully in vernacular worship, in family life as enhanced by Luther, and even in society at large. All three writers recognized that the placement of matrimony under secular matr imonial courts allowed for divorce and remarriage. The displaced ecclesiastical courts had only allowed for annulment. Steven Ozment suggests, in When Fathers Ruled: Family Life in Reformation Europe (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), that among Protestants mutual respect and consultation in marriage coexisted with, and was not in any deep sense contradicted by, a vision of the husband as the dominant head of the household. See also Ozment’s commentary on and presentation of the Magdalena and Balthasar: An Intimate Portrait of Life in Sixteenth-Centur y Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989). Thomas Max Safley, Let No Man Put Asunder (Kirksville, Mo.: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1984), studying the mar riage court records of Protestant Basel and those of the mar riage tribunals in Catholic Freiburg and the diocese of Constance , ascertained that for these localities the Protestant acceptance of legal divorce and remarriage for the innocent spouse enhanced the status of women and enforced their rights within the marriage bond. See further a collection of essays on women in different regions: Sherrin Marshall, ed., Women in Reformation and CounterReformation Europe: Public and Private Worlds (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989).

770  the radical reformation

chapter 20.2.c

tracts, with their mere allusions to marriage, were followed by L uther’s statements, 10 December 1520, on the occasion of his burning the books of the canon law. At this time he excoriated, among other things, the prohibition of clerical marriage. Soon thereafter the pastor of K ammerich, a v illage near Wittenberg, Bartholomew Bernhardi, who had obtained the consent of his parish, celebrated nuptials and wrote a defense of his marriage, calling the rule of celibacy a frivola traditiuncula. Then, within a few weeks of the first Protestant Communion, on 17 January 1522 (Ch. 3.1), Dr. Carlstadt, after betrothal in the presence of Justus Jonas and Melanchthon, married the daughter of an impoverished nobleman. In inviting the Elector to the wedding, Carlstadt said he hoped to encourage priests to marry their cooks, remarking further: I also took into consideration the fact that many poor, miserable, and lost clerics who now lie in the devil’s prison and dungeon might without doubt be helped by a good model and example.29 John Bugenhagen, Carlstadt’s friend in Pomerania (Ch. 15.2), in his Wie Man die so zu Ee greyffen (Wittenberg, 1524), gave evidence of an innovation introduced in weddings of f ormer priests with former nuns. The bride and groom exchanged rings, each placing the ring on the “ring finger” of the right hand, in her case giving to the groom the very ring she had received earlier only on her prostrational profession as a religious joined to Christ. This double-ring practice spread throughout Europe, including Spain, but not to England. (In the f ifteenth century the practice of t he groom’s bestowing a ring on the ring finger of the left hand arose out of the popular belief that a vein therein was directly connected with the heart, still the usage in England and English-speaking lands.) In a letter to Wolfgang Capito in Strassburg, 17 January 1522, Luther agreed that clerical marriage is lawful under God, but he declined to take the matter up pointedly. In this same year Luther’s own Augustinian Order in Wittenberg opened its doors, declaring that in Christ there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, monk and layman, and that a vow in opposition to the Gospel was no vow but an impiety. Luther, in De votis monasticis (1522), joined with those who were opposed to monasticism and its vows of celibacy. In the following year, 1523, the cloister of Luther’s future wife, Catherine, followed his lead. And in Nuremberg in 1524, the kindred Augustinians in a b ody threw off their cowls and proclaimed themselves citizens. In the same year that Luther wrote his attack on monastic vows, Zwingli and the monks appealed to their ordinary, the bishop of Constance, for permission to marry, citing scriptural support and warning of g reater moral 29

 The sources are cited by Sider, Karlstadt, 160–61.

chapter 20.2.c

marriage, family life & divorce  771

dangers to come should he refuse. More significant for the history of marital practice, shortly thereafter in a letter to the government of the Swiss Confederacy (13 July 1522), Zwingli and his confrères, admitting their inability to maintain priestly chastity, asked the confederational diet to protect them in their marriages “from the violence of the Pope at Rome and all clergy. Thus we shall protect ourselves by t he consolation and protection of t he Scriptures. …”30 By the time that Zwingli himself married (1524), Luther had written directly in favor of m arriage (February 1523) and George Spalatin was recording with interest the growing number of clerical marriages since that of Carlstadt, whose sermons were suddenly reported to be improving. In Strassburg, the redoubtable and hospitable wife of Matthew Zell, so friendly to dissidents, Catherine (Ch. 10.2.c), published her defense of her husband’s life as cathedral preacher, before and within the marriage bond, Entschuldigung Katherina Schützin, für M. Matthes Zeller; jren Eegemahel (Strassburg, 1524).31 It was in Zurich in 1525 that a reformer was to be first in successfully petitioning the civil authority to develop a m unicipal, as opposed to ecclesiastical, matrimonial court. 32 The appeal of the magisterial reformers to the civil law for protection of marriages, while first voiced in Zurich, can be traced also in Lutheran territories where the emergent Protestants contended with the Roman defense of the Church’s lagging control of marriage. Regulations promulgated by Cardinal legate Campeggio at Regensberg (1524) were a part of the papal attempt to control a rising flood of clerical marriage, and to exercise jurisdictional powers over the primary social relationship to which canon law and scholastic theology had accorded sacramental grace. Adrian IV reproached the Diet of Nuremberg (1524) for permitting clerical marriage; and the estates replied that they could not find in the civil and the municipal law provisions for the punishment of sacerdotal marriage. Evidently further social and juridical reflection was required on the status of marriage in society, even independent of the theological debate.

30  Huldreich Zwingli, 166–96, esp. 194. After their plea to be heard, eleven arguments were offered from scripture and tradition, including the decrees of the synod of Gangra (c. a.d. 340), upholding clerical marriage. 31  BD I, ed. André Séguenny, 97; Elsie Anne McKee, Katharina Schütz Zell: The Life and Thought of a Sixteenth-Century Reformer (Brill, 1998). 32  Witte, Weightier Matters, 73.

772  the radical reformation

chapter 20.2.c

Quite apart from the issue of clerical marriage, Luther dealt with the institution in Vom ehelichen Leben (1522). 33 For him marriage and family life belonged to the order of fallen creation, as did the state. Nevertheless, marriage, divinely ordained, might serve several good ends: as a r emedy for sin (remedium peccati; 1 Cor. 7:2, 9), as a partnership in procreation and pedagogy, and as a s chool for character and a communion between male and female grounded in the unfailing love between Christ and his bride, the Church. 34 In marrying Catherine von Bora at an almost impromptu dinner on the evening of 1 3 June 1525, Luther affirmed clerical marriage and the evangelical legitimacy of i ts vows as opposed to those which he and she had taken as friar and nun. What yet needed to be worked out further was related in part to territorial Reformation concerns. With the marriage of Teutonic knight Frederick, Baron of Heydeck, and then more spectacularly that of Albert of Brandenberg, former Grand Master of the Order, the destiny of ecclesiastical territory directly under the Pope hung partly on the validity of t hese nuptials. Albert, as Duke of P russia (Ch. 15.1), married Dorothea, daughter of K ing Frederick of Denmark, with the “Lutheran” bishop of S amland officiating (14 June 1526). The need was apparent for a more carefully worked out theology and law of n on-Roman marriage among the reformers. In Von Ehesachen (1530) Luther came to grips with all aspects of marriage and vigorously opposed “secret engagements” (heimliche Verlöbnisse). He was careful not to call these betrothals canonically valid. He called all clandestine marriages ( = b etrothals with intent to marry in church) “despised marriages” and “corner coupling” (Winkelehen). He radically redefines secrecy as secrecy from the parents, as his reform in marriage was to make of it a building block in the reformed corpus Christianorum: I call a secret engagement one that happens without the knowledge and consent of those who have the authority to initiate a marriage, namely, the father, mother, or those taking their place. … No rascal would dare to win a pious man’s child away from him or attempt, as a c omplete stranger, to become an heir to estates he was not entitled to, if he knew that even a t housand secret vows were of no avail. 35

33  Olavi Lähteenmäki, Sexus und Ehe bei Luther, Schriften der Luther-Agricola Gesellschaft 10 [lnaug. diss. Helsinki] (Turku, 1955). John Witte, Jr. analyzes Lutheran transfor mation of Roman Catholic theology and law of marriage in Weightier Matters. 34  Bainton, Women: Germany and Italy (1971), 10, who made Anabaptist covenantal marriage a novum in Marriage (1957; n. 13 above), interpreted Luther and the magisterial reformers as eventually recognizing these ends. 35  WA 30:3, 207, quoted by Linder, “Courtship and Marriage,” 119f.

chapter 20.2.c

marriage, family life & divorce  773

The Diet at Augsburg (1530) refused to return to the old vows and divisions in society. Matrimonial courts were established, first in Zurich but within the Empire proper, first at Nuremberg, Constance, SchwäbischHall, Strassburg, and then Basel, always at the insistence of local reformers. These acts were followed by new civil marriage laws. Such laws had been developing independently of t he Church, 36 although Luther’s doctrine of the two kingdoms would help to draw clear lines of secular and sacred considerations in marital legislation. 37 In the meantime, it was the work of the Swiss Reformers, Zwingli, and then notably Bullinger, who took the Renaissance civic marital ideal and interwove it with Reformation theology. Bullinger’s The Christian State of Matrimony stabilized Reformed ideas about husbands and wives and household management. 38 The conflict of jurisdictions for territories in the Empire would not end until the Diet of Augsburg (1555), with its recognition of the jurisdictional legitimacy of the public law of the Protestant states. The magisterial reformers would all reaffirm the three “legal” interests in marriage (as distinguished from the three canonically prescribed ends of marriage) recognized throughout the Middle Ages, although each now weighing the points differently: (1) marriage as a natural institution subject to the law of nature, (2) as an ordinance subject to the laws of Scripture, and (3) as a contract subject to the appropriate local laws. 39 Luther, in his idea of the separation of the two kingdoms, symbolized in the institutions of church and state, had stressed the moral and pedagogical function of marriage and family alongside the procreational function.40 In the context of Luther’s theory of the two kingdoms, marriage was primarily an institution of t he order of c reation; and, although divinely instituted to serve a holy purpose, it remained “an outward, physical, and worldly station.”41 In their concern for the civic order, the magisterial reformers would display an array of practices but stressed the integral role of the conjugal household in the civic corpus Christianum (Luther) or corpus Christianorum (Zwingli, Bullinger, Bucer, Calvin). Paracelsus (Ch. 8.4.b) wrote at the end of a period which saw marriage and the family emerge to become recognized as the epitomal expression of love for one’s neighbor and as the basic pattern for the social order. As 36  Witte, Weightier Matters, 74; Jack Goody, The Development of the F amily and Mar riage in Europe (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983). 37  Witte, Weightier Matters, 70. 38  Alfred Weber, Heinrich Bullingers “Christlieher Ehestand” und die Anfänge des Familienbuchs in England (Leipzig, 1924). See in context, John K. Yost, “The Traditional Western Concept of Marriage,” 180. 39  Witte, Weightier Matters, 62. 40  See n. 20 above. 41  Luther, WA 21:93, 46:265, 63:111–12, as cited by Witte, Weightier Matters, 70.

774  the radical reformation

chapter 20.2.c

we turn now to pedobaptist Paracelsus (Ch. 11.1.b), called the “Medical Luther” of his day, we recognize a perhaps unique figure in the transition from the Catholic Renaissance to an Anabaptist view. As a c onsecrated celibate, Paracelsus wrote specifically on the subject of marriage both as a physician and as a theologian in five works and several sermons, notable De nupta and De thoro legitimo.42 He embodied the extremes of medieval sacramentalism and the covenantal ideal of the radicals. He defended monogamy in the usual form of divinely preordained coupling. And although in former times—that is, in the Old Testament— some had more than one [wife], that does not mean that it was right. … Rather, it is right that each man belong to his wife only and each woman to her husband. … No man shall take another man’s predestined spouse ( geborne Gemahel), even if the couple have not yet been joined together in the presence of other men, but only before God. When the right hour has come, God will reveal to people the identity of their intended mates. This is in accordance with the providence and foreknowledge of God, which is hidden from man. Accordingly, [when] Christ says [cf. Matt. 19:6; Mark 10:9]: “Those whom God joins together”—that is to say, those whome he [by anticipation already] joins together in the mother’s womb. …43 The standard of true marriage for Paracelsus was God’s initial monogamous command in Genesis and the restitution of this pre-Mosaic ideal by Jesus. The permanent and the essential in true marriage was the primordial divine commandment, what is called the “metaphysics of marriage.”44 Paracelsus did not recognize divorce as valid on any grounds. Here he followed Mark 10:9 rather than Matthew 19:9, holding that the latter, which permits divorce in the case of a wife’s adultery, was addressed to Jews and made the concession to them only and not to Christians.45 Paracelsus did not permit divorce, that is, separation with the right to remarry; he did justify separation without the right to remarry, namely, in the case of one

42

works.

 Goldammer, Paracelsus: Offenbarung, 113–14, conveniently classifies and lists the Paracelsian

43  De Nupta, ed. Goldammer, Sämtliche Werke, Part 2, Vol. 2 (1965), 308; also Goldammer, Schriften, 281–82. A spurious work, long ascribed to Paracelsus, defends polygamy, SW 1.14:260. 44  The term is Kurt Goldammer’s in “Neues zur Lebensgeschichte und Persönlichkeit des Theophrastus Paracelsus,” Theologische Zeitschrift 3 (1947): 215. 45  Ibid., 209, n. 11, quoting De thoro legitimo. Paracelsus’ view of the apostolic celibate was akin to that of the scholarly humanist celibate (abo ve at n. 6) but the motif was philanthropic rather than self-indulgent.

chapter 20.2.c

marriage, family life & divorce  775

especially called to be an apostle.46 Divorce in this instance was mandatory, not because Paracelsus held celibacy to be a s uperior state, but because, as missionary to the world, the apostle should not be burdened by family responsibilities. Like many of his contemporaries, Paracelsus conceived of the age in which he lived as an age of i mpending doom. An apostle had to imitate Paul (1 Cor. 7:7) and be prepared for martyrdom, incompatible with family obligations.47 Insistence on apostolic celibacy did not, of course, in any way detract from marriage. Paracelsus valued marriage as a h oly estate “so high that all lords of the world [Paracelsus speaks here as a nobleman] shall be abandoned for the sake of its commands,”48 and in a characteristically spiritualizing sense he declared: Marriage is a sacrament, for, taken from its original Latin context, the word “sacrament” equals “sacra mens”—in other words, a holy disposition. Or, to say it differently, [marriage] shall take place with a pure heart according to the command of God, and not the command of men.49 Indeed, next to the office of apostle, there is no higher office than that of spouse. Because monasticism undermined marriage, Paracelsus attacked it and blamed the devil, himself a “despicable virgin”: He whom God loves is no virgin; for whoever would be a v irgin, whether man or woman, must belong to a better estate than the estate of marriage. “Which one is that?” you ask. Only the office of apostle which is the smallest of all, having few members. If, however, you are not a true apostle, and yet profess virginity, consider how greatly you will be accused before God on the day of judgment: for the estate of marriage is, in God’s view, the greatest there is. It has a merit in his sight which is richly rewarded. Indeed, nothing else on earth enables us to achieve a merit. On the contrary, everything which is not matrimonially based is negligible as far as God is concerned. Thus marriage is the greatest ministry (Ampt) which God has endowed.50

46  Ibid., passim, on Paracelsus’s concept of office and its relation to the question of celibacy. Apostles included also prophets and noncharismatic officers. 47  Cf. Goldammer, Schriften, 282. When Paul said he wished all w ere, like himself, unmarried, he addressed, not Christians in general, according to Paracelsus, bur only apostles. 48  Quoted by Goldammer, “Lebensgeschichte,” 208, n. 7. 49  De thoro legitimo, quoted by Goldammer, Lebensgeschichte, 208, n. 8. His etymology was idiosyncratic. 50  Auslegung über die Zehn Geboten, c. 1533; quoted in Goldammer, Schriften, 292–93.

776  the radical reformation

chapter 20.3

3. Covenantal Marriage51 Having reviewed the general development concerning matrimony in the utterly changed situation of the Reformation Era, we return to the radicals for more particulars than adduced above (Ch. 20.1) and to divorce and plural marriages among them. In light of the affirmation of marriage as a civic institution in magisterial Protestantism, it is not surprising that just as Anabaptists everywhere after 1535 would be charged with sedition even more relentlessly as in effect potential Münsterites, so also would they be charged with marital vagaries. Accordingly, despite the fact that Menno Simons and Dirk Philips had recoiled from the fanaticism of Münster, one of the charges that they had to deny was that their own followers practiced polygamy. In his refutation, Menno dealt with the very incidents in the Old Testament that the Münsterites had cited in support of polygamy and, like Dirk Philips, appealed to the paradisaic exemplars of marriage: As to polygamy, we would say the scriptures show that before the Law some of the patriarchs had many wives, yet they did not have the same liberty under the Law that they had before the Law. For Abraham who was before the Law had his own sister for wife, as he himself testifies before Abimelech, the king, saying, “And yet she is my sister. …” Jacob had two sisters for wives, Leah and Rachel, the daughters of Laban, his mother’s brother. These liberties to marry their own sister and to marry two sisters at once were afterwards strictly forbidden Israel. … Each era had its own liberty and usage according to the scriptures, in the matter of marriage. And under the New Testament we are not pointed by the Lord to the usage of the patriarchs before the Law nor under the Law, but to the beginning of creation, to Adam and Eve. … Therefore we teach, practice, and consent to no other arrangement than the one which was in vogue in the beginning

51  Ernst H. Correll and Harold S. Bender updated the Ger man ML article on “Marriage” in ME 3:502–10, with a separate ar ticle by Robert Friedmann on Hutter ite practices, idem. 3:510–11. Claus-Peter Clasen, in his social history Anabaptism: Switzerland, Austria, Moravia, and South and Central Germany 1525–1618 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972), deals with “marriage and divorce,” 200–7, recognizing the degree to which converts to Hutterite Anabaptism in particular left “unbelieving” spouses (often women with their children) to join the communes in Moravia and to take newly assigned mates.

chapter 20.3

marriage, family life & divorce  777

with Adam and Eve, namely, one husband and one wife, as the Lord’s mouth has ordained.52 The Hutterites, too, though like the Munsterites communistically organized, stoutly opposed polygamy. Peter Riedemann’s argument to this effect is noteworthy because it illustrates the close relation, to which reference has previously been made, between bridal theology and covenantal marriage: Furthermore, Riedemann applies to every man what Paul had required only expressly of the bishops (1 Tim. 3:2): The man should also be the husband of o nly one wife, even as Christ is the head of the one Church. For, since marriage is a picture of the same, the likeness and indication must resemble what it indicateth. Therefore must a man have no more than one wife.53 One’s wife among the Hutterites and among many other Anabaptists was most commonly called “marital sister,” that is, she and her spouse were primarily members of t he brotherhood or congregation of t he saved and only secondarily related to each other as husband and wife. So strongly was this conviction sustained that it was the elders, representing the will of God, who by various arrangements reduced the personal choice of a l ife’s partner to a f ormalized minimum and eliminated courtship. Riedemann wrote, in his Account: One should in no case choose from the flesh but await such a gift from God, and with all diligence pray that God in accordance with his divine will might send what he from the beginning hath provided, serving to one’s salvation and life. Then, after such a p rayer, one should ask not his flesh but the elders that God might show him through them what he hath appointed for him. This, then, one should take with real gratitude as a gift from God, whether young or old, poor or rich, even as God hath shown through their counsel. What, therefore, God hath joined together, man should not sever. They should, however, be married openly in the presence of the Church, by an ordained minister of the Word. 54 52  Reply to False Accusations; Writings, 560. Marriage was the one Catholic sacrament which could be said to have been established in Paradise, for example, by Peter de Poitiers (d. 1205). See G. Le Bras,“La doctrine du marriage,” DThC, 9:2, cols. 2215–17. Betti Erb has collected the texts of Menno Simons “Reading the Source: … on Women, Marriage, Children, and Family” in The Conrad Grebel Review: A Journal of Chr istian Inquiry 8:3 (1990): 301–20, followed by a compilation by Marlene Epp, “A Selected Bibliography of English-Language Writings on the History of Anabaptist/Mennonite Women,” 321–24. 53  Riedemann, Account, 100; also his earlier Rechenschaft (1529/32), part 2, “Vom Ehestand,” in Friedmann, ed., Glaubenszeugnisse 2 (QGT 12), 37. 54  Riedemann, Account, 100.

778  the radical reformation

chapter 20.3 / 20.3.a

Riedemann distinguished three levels of m arriage, the lower a reflection of the higher: Marriage is … in three grades or steps. First is that of G od with the soul or spirit, then that of the spirit with the body, and thirdly that of o ne body with another, that is, marriage of m an with woman; which is not the first but the last and lowest grade, and is therefore visible, recognizable, and to be understood by a ll. Now, because it is visible, recognizable, and to be understood, it is a picture, an instruction, and indication of what is invisible, that is of the middle and highest grades. For as man is head of the woman, so is the spirit the head of the body, and God is the head of the spirit. 55 It may be observed that in placing marriage within the fellowship of believers, the Anabaptists were wholly comparable to medieval canonists who placed all stages and goals of m arriage under ecclesiastical tribunals, but the medieval Church allowed two of t hree kinds of clandestine marriage, personally contracted, while the Anabaptists, and especially the Hutterites, were like Luther in opposing clandestine (personal) betrothals, and that, while Luther insisted on parental consent for valid matrimony in the interest of the extended family, the Anabaptists transferred that authority to the community of explicit faith and mutual discipline. a. Separation and Divorce among Germanic Anabaptists The first formalized expression of Anabaptist conviction about the propriety of d ivorce for reason of f aith appears in close connection with the Schleitheim Confession of 1527 (Ch. 8.1), in an anonymous tract on divorce, possibly written by Michael Sattler in 1527.56 The basic points are the permanence of the marriage covenant undertaken within the conventicle of t he faithful, the supremacy of t he believers’ obligation to Christ over obligation to one’s spouse, adultery as the only ground of divorce, the transfer of the sin of fornication to a person who would willingly marry a fornicator, and the implicit sanction of remarriage on the part of the innocent party in a divorce. Thus, bound up with the betrothal-bridal image of the Anabaptist covenant was the conviction that adultery could exist on the spiritual level, and that marriage on the human level should be dissolved if it conflicted with one’s spiritual marriage: 55

 Ibid., 98.  John C.Wenger, “Concerning Divorce: A Swiss Brethren Tract on the Primacy of Loyalty to Christ and the Right to Divorce and Remarriage,” MQR 21 (1947): 18–22, passim; Marion Kobelt-Groch, “Why did Petronella Leave her Husband? Reflections on Marital Avoidance among the Halberstadt Anabaptists,” MQR 62 (1988): 26–41, esp. 30–31 on the marital confusion of the times. 56

chapter 20.3.a

marriage, family life & divorce  779

The spiritual marriage and obligation to Christ, yea faith, love and obedience to God, … takes precedence over the earthly marriage, and one ought rather forsake such earthly companion than the spiritual companion (Gemahel) [that is Christ]. And by not removing the designated one from the bond of m arriage we care more for earthly than for spiritual obligations and debts, as it is written [cf. Matt. 10:37], He who loveth father or mother, wife or child, more than me is not worthy of me.57 The anonymous Swiss tract required divorce of believers from nonbelievers only if the nonbeliever was an impediment to the believer’s faith and dutifulness. The Rothmannites in Münster, holding marriage to be an image of the relation of C hrist to his community of t he faithful, could think of Christ with many individual brides, and hence each husband with a plurality of wives. Since plural marriage was also bound up with faith, the marriage of b elievers with unbelievers was not true marriage but the equivalent of adultery, and therefore to be annulled by a rigid, communal discipline (Ch. 13). The biblical basis for the Munsterite and also the stern Mennonite regulations in respect to separation and divorce was Ezra 10:11–12. Ezra broke the marriages contracted between the returned Israelites and the “foreign wives.” For Dirk Philips, of course, all non-Mennonites, including other Anabaptists formally excommunicated or not in communion with them, were “foreign” and it was in this very tight context that he forbade mixed marriage: In view of t he fact that such unclean matrimonial alliances and mixed marriages between the children of G od and unbelievers could not stand under the imperfect dispensation of the Law, how could it stand before God and His Church under the perfect dispensation of the Christian age of the Gospel? Let everyone meditate upon and consider this matter.58 But over against Ezra’s injunction to divorce “foreign wives,” applied here by Dirk to non-Mennonites, was the New Covenantal injunction of Paul in 1 Corinthians 7:10–15 that there be no divorce and that a believing spouse could make holy the children of a m ixed marriage, and the injunction of Jesus that what God had joined should not be put asunder. To be sure, Jesus, in the Matthew 19:9 version of his injunction, permitted divorce in

57  Ibid., 118–19. The reference is to marriage between covenantal believers and other Christians. 58  Enchiridion, 358.

780  the radical reformation

chapter 20.3.a

case of adultery, and Paul permitted the unbelieving spouse to separate (1 Cor. 10:15) on the ground of s piritual incompatibility. The Anabaptists, in their effort at harmonization, using Ezra 10:11–12 as a precedent and stressing the conjugal relationship as an analogue of t he covenantal relationship of the believer and Christ, made bold to reverse Paul’s dictum and permitted, indeed often enjoined, the believing (i.e., Anabaptist) spouse to separate from the unbelieving partner. For example, the fifth article of the Mennonite Wismar Resolutions of 1554 (Ch. 19.2.a) enjoins divorce for spiritual adultery and remarriage in the case of physical adultery: Concerning a b eliever and a n onbeliever—if the nonbeliever wishes to separate for reasons of [a different] faith, then the believer shall conduct himself [presumably also herself ] honestly without con­t racting a marriage, for as long a time as the [separating] nonbeliever is not [yet] remarried. But if the nonbeliever marries or commits adultery, then the believing mate may also marry, subject to the advice of the leaders of the congregation.59 The article in other words restrains the bereft believing partner in his or her loss sexually and companionably and makes any remarriage of the faithful Mennonite depend upon subsequent behavior of the departed spouse. But Menno Simons himself, in his Instruction on Excommunication, strongly endorsed the right of the believer to separate, asking rhetorically (1558): Is there a man under heaven, no matter who, learned or unlearned, young or old, without us or within, a man or woman, who can instruct us with the Word of truth that the spiritual marriage bond, made with Christ through faith, may yield to the external marriage bond, made in the flesh with man? … Ponder whether spiritual love has to yield to carnal love? 60 Riedemann, the Hutterite, treated as adultery also a w ife’s refusal to remain subordinate to her husband and to act according to his guidance: Where … the man doeth his part, but his wife acteth not but without his counsel, she transgresseth her marriage and union in small things as well as in great things, and taketh from her husband his honour and lordship. If the man permit her to do this, he sinneth with her as Adam did with Eve, in that he consented to

59 60

 Menno, Writings, 1042.  Ibid., 970.

chapter 20.3.a / 20.3.b

marriage, family life & divorce  781

eat of the forbidden fruit, and both fell to death. For they broke marriage with their creator and transgressed his order.61 The Hutterite Five Articles of 1 547, by P eter Walpot, allowed that a woman could divorce her unbelieving spouse, while a m an could not; appearing to acknowledge at once a woman’s equal right and ability to cleave to true faith, and the subordinate position within marriage which would make it impossible for her to practice this faith if her husband did not share it: Nothing can break the marriage bond but adultery. Where, however, a brother has an unbelieving wife, and she agrees to live with him, he may not divorce her (nor vice versa). But where she is endangered in her faith or is hindered by the unbelieving husband in the training of her children in the true faith, she may divorce her husband, but must remain unmarried as long as her husband lives.62 b. Varieties of Marriage and Biblical Literalism Plural marriage (including bigamy) was theologically discussed or defended by Erasmus, Luther, Bucer,63 Cajetan, as well as by s ome others besides the Münsterites among the radical reformers. Polygamy, or the plurality of wives, was the distinctive feature of t he practice of t he Münsterites in their final phase and of several other groups and individuals in the Radical Reformation. There had been outcroppings of polygamy as a spinoff of the Peasants’ War and here and there among South or Middle German Anabaptists.64 The Batenburgers, drawing upon the paradisaic speculations of the medieval Adamites and emboldened by the restitution of polygamy in Münster, preached and practiced the community of w ives long after the siege of Münster. Fleshly mingling as the true and sole sacrament, called Christerie or Christirung, was the distinctive feature of a s mall group of T huringian and Hessian Dreamers or Blood Friends, led by one Louis of Tüngeda, who around 1550 renounced baptism as the covenantal sign in favor of a sexual spiritualism that “sacramentally” unified the fellowship by a single dream-

61

 Riedemann, Account, 101–2.  Chronik, 308–16, art. 5; cf. Great Article Book (1577), art. 5, ed. Friedmann, Glaubenszeugnisse 2 (QGT 12), 299–317. 63  See above at n. 16. 64  Gerhard Zschäbitz, Zur mitteldeutschen Wiedertäuferbewegung nach dem grossen Bauer nkrieg, Leipziger Übersetzungen und Abhandlungen zum Mittelalter 1 (Berlin, 1958), has a good section, “Frau und Ehe,” 106–21. 62

782  the radical reformation

chapter 20.3.b

inspired coition all around.65 Adultery was the formal charge against Louis Haetzer, put to death at Constance (Ch 8.3), and Nicholas Frey in Strassburg (Ch. 10.4), the latter, at least, maintaining to the end a biblical justification for the desertion of his first wife. Promiscuity cropped out in many places among the excesses of t he evangelistic revival, notably in St. Gall (Ch. 6.2.) in the group around Hut’s deputy in Franconian Königsberg, George Volk (Ch. 7.4), and in the communitarian, Sabbatarian Anabaptism of Andrew Fischer in Zips (Ch. 15.3). In recounting the rise and fall of the bellicose and polygamous Bibliocracy of Münster (Ch. 13.1), we actually confined our brief canvass of the factors leading to polygamy based on God’s command to humanity, Genesis 1:22, to “be fruitful and multiply,” which the Münsterites reinforced by citing, as a secondary authorization, the example of the Old Testament patriarchs. As Bernard Rothmann, in a sermon in the Münster cathedral, proclaimed enthusiastically, it was the will of the Lord that the saints should multiply as the sands of the sea. There is substantial evidence that in their Melchiorite eschatology (Ch. 11.4.c) the Münsterites were concerned to eliminate lust in order that their numerous progeny, procreated in the covenant, would by t heir purity qualify for a place among the 144,000 elect saints in the Holy City (Gen. 1:22; Rev. 7:4, 14:1).66 Bernard Rothmann may have come into contact, either through Sebastian Franck or John Sichard (below), or directly in the Münster cathedral library, with a certain epistle ascribed to Clement of Rome, which urges the community of goods (Ch. 16.3), including wives.67 We recall that this letter was reprinted separately (Basel, 1526), was considered authentically apostolic. Some of i ts decisive passages were taken over almost verbatim into Franck’s Chronica.68 This odd document, though surely not the major factor in the emergence of “evangelical” polygamy in the sixteenth century, may well have provided an “apostolic” sanction for the development in Münster and elsewhere.69 It is notable that the Münsterite Anabaptists

65  On the Träumer and Blutsfreunde, see further, Paul Wappler, Die Stellung Kursachsens und des Landgrafen Philipp von Hessen, 13/14 Reformationsgeschichte Studien und Texte (Münster, 1910), 429, 481; Zschäbitz, Wiedertäuferbewegung, 111–15. On George Volk’s practice, see Joseph Jurg, Deutschland in der Revolutionsperiode (Freiburg/B, 1851), 682. 66  See n. 58 above. 67  Denique Graecorum quidem sapientissimus [Pythagoras or Plato], nec ita sciens esse , ait communia amicorum amnia. In omnibus autem sunt sine dubio et conjuges. Paulus Hinschius, ed., Decretales Pseudo-Isidorianae (Leipzig, 1863), 65. This is the Latin text behind the Hutter ite passage on Clementine communism quoted in Ch. 16.3 at n. 30. 68  Strassburg, 1531, 496a. 69  Hans von Schubert, Der Kommunismus der Wiedertäufer in Munster und seine Quellen (Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, phil. hist. K1. 1919), Abhandlung 11, was the first to identify the letter of Clement as a f actor in Münster ite polygamy.

chapter 20.3.b

marriage, family life & divorce  783

required remarriage of all recruits converging on the city; and even spouses of many years together were required, after rebaptism, to profess anew the marriage vows in the presence of a p astor and witnesses. After the introduction of polygamy, remarriage was validated in the presence of merely co-believers as witnesses. Under polygamy, although divorce remained an option, adultery was punishable by death.70 David Joris, claiming for himself recognition as the “third David,” argued for monogamy in the second age of t he second David, that of the Son, but he surely entertained the possibility of spiritual plural marriages, although he seems to have been largely successful in his faithfulness to his wife, Dirkgen. It is evident, however, that there were polygamists among his correspondents, who continued to contend that because the patriarchs were close to God, polygamy must be superior to monogamy.71 A missive of 1537 from David Joris to fellow Melchiorites in Strassburg, with whom he would confer and whom he would presume to take under his own leadership the following summer, clarifies his views of c hastity, marriage, and divorce, while living incognito as a p atrician in Basel. It was written to John Eisenberg, leader of t he Melchiorites in Strassburg, who evidently rejected the possibility of d ivorce among Anabaptists and yet who, in contrast to the patriarchal David Joris, remained open to the teachings of t he Strassburg prophets and prophetesses.72 The letter shows that while David Joris, not a libertine, did not approve of polygamy, he did not thoroughly condemn it.73 But he remained strong in defense of divorce from unbelievers, arguing with Eisenberg that “what God has brought together, no man can separate” but that “what Satan or the fleshly man, or human reason, or the evil world brings together, God or his spirit may indeed separate.” 74 In his letter, rough and earthy, sensuously and vibrantly reeling off allusions to spiritual fecundity and the subordination of the female to the male, from the Bible and its Apocrypha, Joris writes: Now while Christ has proceeded from the Father and is one with the Father, he has however, shown himself humbly obedient unto 70

 Löffler, Wiedertäufer zu Münster, 114–25.  Bainton, Joris, 66–70. 72  Gary K. Waite, “The Post-Münster Melchiorite Debate on Mar riage: David Joris’ Response to Johannes Eisenberg, 1537,” MQR 63 (1989): 367–87, translates and interprets the letter in a larger context. 73  Ibid., 369, shows in his annotation that Nicholaas Meyndertsz van Blesijk, the son-in-law of Joris, is responsible for some of the disparag ing assessments of Joris. Cf. idem, “David Joris’ Thought in the Context of the Early Anabaptist Movement in the Netherlands, 1534–1536,” MQR 62 (1988): 296–317. 74  Waite, “Post-Münster Debate on Marriage,” 376 (selected for emphasis by the translator) and 371. 71

784  the radical reformation

chapter 20.3.b / 20.3.c

death to his [Father] as his head and Lord. Even so should the man be humbly obedient unto death to this Lord Christ, in whose image he must be. Flesh of h is flesh and bone of h is bone. … [S]imilarly, must the woman or the wife be obedient to the man, her Lord or head [Gen. 5:22–23]. With tolerance and meekness she should rejoice in his godly, holy nature or life, with whom she is one body. If she is like him, if she is one mind with him and does his will, she will show herself willingly obedient. Seed from these [couples] will be born pure generations of h ealthy, timely children. These [partners] will come together only from their love of children; from the Spirit and not from the flesh. Their seed is holy and blessed by t he Lord. For it is then a w ork of t he Lord and not of t he devil. [Their children] are born with simplicity and innocence in the day, that is, in the light and not in the darkness or the night.75 c. Marriage and Divorce in Some Other Sectors of the Radical Reform We have dealt elsewhere with the distinctive conjugal views of Hofmann (inner baptism and betrothal, Chs. 11.3.d.l, 4.c), of Campanus (baptism as mystical Beischlaf, Ch. 11.1.c), and of Henry Niclaes the Familist (Ch. 19.1). It remains to mention a few other figures of note in our narrative. Thomas Müntzer at first held that one should have a spouse “as having him (or her) not.” Indeed, he had come to his marriage as an apocalyptic ascetic (cf. Rev. 14:4: “saints not defiled by women”) and only after having earlier rebuked the Wittenberg divines for getting married (Ch. 3.2), did he take to himself a wife. Schwenckfeld, himself a c ommitted celibate, expressed himself sparingly on the subject, but in a letter to a lawyer in 1538 he made a distinction between marriage and divorce among nominal or non-Christians (however he may have understood this) and the same among “true Christians.” He reluctantly allowed for divorce for the former, urging the magistracy, however, to be restrained, even severe about permitting divorce because matrimony should be fostered for the common good (the Renaissance Magisterial view). For devout Christians, as in his own fellowships, he insisted on the holiness of marriage as “not only the union of flesh but also much more importantly the union of t he hearts, minds, and wills” and therefore he argued that it should be as indissoluble even for reason of adultery, and he upheld the view that the transgressor is already punished 75

 Joris, “On Marriage,” 390; the brackets are from the editor, and his notes are not included here. Among the apocr yphal texts, supportive of miso gynist chastity on the par t of males, Joris quotes Ecclesiasticus on r eserved conduct towards women (Eccles. 9:19) and Wisdom of Solomon 8:20–21 about man seeking wisdom, “undefiled” by women.

chapter 20.3.c

marriage, family life & divorce  785

in the sight of God.76 Schwenckfeld, along with John de Valdés, stands out in our narrative for the intensity, intimacy, and duration of his friendships with women. Schwenckfeld, a friend even of theological antagonists, seems to have had a veritable theology of friendship, based in part on the Friends of God in Scripture ( John 15:14–15; 2 Chron. 20:7; Jas. 2:33; Wisd. 7:27). Among Czech Brethren (Ch. 9.1) and the Waldensians, two groupings that survived from the fifteenth century, and who interfaced with the new radicals, especially in Moravia and the Cottian Alps (Ch. 21.1), the celibacy of the clergy was carried over into the sixteenth century. The Cottian Waldensians renounced this practice under Reformed pressure in 1532, but the Czech Brethren persevered in their ascetic practice and this was a factor in the failed merger in Poland of the Czech Brethren and the synod of the Reformed Church (Ch. 25.1). John Valdés (Ch. 1.4), although generally opposed to divorce, saw in the aforementioned Dominical injunction Christ’s endorsement of divinely enjoined generation (procreation), but also a still greater insistence on regeneration, and consequently he legitimated, expressly for either spouse, divorce on the basis of religious incompatibility: [T]he obligation of Christian regeneration, going beyond the obligation of human generation, requires, for the sake of t he gospel, that the man leave the wife, not that he repudiate her; but that he lose the affection which [he] had for her as a wife; and that he wholly leave her when she shall become an impediment to him— whether it be to his preaching Christian faith [cf. the sole exception for Paracelsus], whether it be to his teaching the Christian life, whether it be to his living like a Christian, imitating Christ.77 Bernardine Ochino (though influenced by Valdés) was a happily married former friar with several beloved children, but he was indecisively open-minded on polygamy and he was a proponent of d ivorce at least on the ground of adultery, citing Paul, 1 Corinthians 7:10–15. He allowed his antagonist in his Dialogue on Divorce firmly to resist divorce on any ground, evading even the exception granted in the Dominical injunction, Matthew 19:6. It was in Dialogue XXI of his XXX Dialogi of Basel (1563) that he raised the question of polygamy, which occasioned his banishment from Zurich (Ch. 24.2.e). While in England he may have been prompted to write his dialogues on polygamy and divorce by the problem of the Tudor succession. Many passages in Dialogue XXI go back to one Huldrich Neobolus, who 76

to me. 77

 Vom Nachtmahl, Taufe und Ehesc heidung, CS, 6:185–95. Klaus Lindner pointed this out  On Matthew, 19:1–9.

786  the radical reformation

chapter 20.3.c

wrote on bigamy in 1541.78 In a dialogue between Ochino as Author and “Telipolygamus” (as Responder, whom Ochino substitutes for Neobolus) the latter raises questions about polygamy, drawing upon natural law, patriarchal usage, and that among the ancient and living pagans, no less than the contemporaneous Jews in Muslim societies, and Muslim Turks and Persians. Although the proponent sees in polygamy “a beneficial custom most profitable to humankind by a dvancing propagation,” in the end Ochino comes out of the dialogue awaiting a divine answer to his prayer for further clarification. The Polish Brethren (Chs. 25, 27, 29), growing out of t he Calvinist, Valdesian, and eventually Socinian impulses inter alia, appear from near the beginning of their separation from the Major Reformed Church (definitive by 1565) to have considered marriage a holy ordinance to be observed in great solemnity in the presence of a pastor. The first Confession (Catechesis in Latin) of t he immersionist Polish Brethren (Cracow, 1574) had as an integral part of it Instructions for a Christian Household (Oeconomia Christiana seu Pastoratus Domesticus) in which the paterfamilias was chief ministrant.79 The bride and groom were expected to be of the same faith (which could probably be understood as pan-Protestant and not merely Unitarian).80 In the face of the congregation they first listened to a homily based on Scripture appropriate to the nuptials. The first marital act was the clasping of the hands of t he bride and the groom, on which clasped hands was then laid the hand of t he pastor: to symbolize in the first gesture the prospective physical union; in the second, the pastoral endorsing union of the two spirits by t he Holy Spirit. Then two golden rings were exchanged, the groom providing one, the bride’s mother presenting the other, whereupon the pastor held them up for a blessing, observing that the purified golden

78  His pseudonym was also Nebulo Tulrichus. Luther wrote against him, WA, 80:185–201. Nebulus was actually Johann Lenning, a defender of the bigamy of Philip of Hesse. On Ochino, see Bainton, Ochino, 133. Ochino w as aware that Sig ismund II Augustus was in a situation like that of Henr y VIII. Cf. Ch. 24, n.51. The Polish king, after the death of his most belo ved Protestant, Barbara Radziwillöwna, married his first wife’s Hapsburg sister and still had no progeny for the J agiellonian succession. In these cir cumstances he sought di vorce or some other recourse to gain an heir. The kingship after his death would become effectually, not only theoretically, elective. 79  Williams, Lubieniecki, Related Doc. 7. 80  In any case, intermarriages within the Refor med community, whether of the Major or the Minor Church, were common with the synod of the ditheist immersionist Farnovians, who instituted periodic distinct divine services to facilitate young people of their synod in becoming acquainted with each other.

chapter 20.3.c

marriage, family life & divorce  787

links without beginning or end symbolized the abiding character of t he marriage. Divorce was firmly disavowed in their churches.81 Apart from certain excesses, it is clear that Paracelsus, Campanus, the Hofmannite-Mennonites, the Hutterites, Swiss, the South German Anabap­t ists, and the Polish Brethren all shared a high view of monogamy as a c ovenant under God the Father or in Christ and that some of t hese sanctioned divorce as a p ossible, as a p referred, or even as an enjoined, alternative to inf idelity to Christ. At the same time that the latter insisted on the precedence of t heological faithfulness over conjugal fidelity they were also aware that Christ had done away with the old divorcing, no longer permitting hardness of heart to be a valid occasion for divorce, and that he had in effect renewed the regulation of h is heavenly Father for the perpetual monogamy of Paradise before the Fall. 82 The restorationist impulse in the Radical Reformation had thus the effect of replacing the sacrament of marriage with the mystical­ covenantal idea of s piritual wedlock reinforced further by the cosmic covenant of primal man and woman before their Garden had become a wilderness.83 Although there is little testimony or archival record of uncommon conjugal bondedness (except in mutual martyrdom) or marital bliss from the heroic age of the Radical Reformation, it remains plausible that those proponents of marriage as belonging to the orders of regeneration rather than to mere procreation contributed, evidently mostly by w ay of t he Pietists and the Puritans, to higher views of the conjugal life that reached the nineteenth century in still intact impulses, to converge in ideals and practice with the evolving sacrament and canons of the indissoluble marriage of the old Church from which their forebears had broken so radically. In any case, for the first time since the Constantinian establishment, explicit faith in Christ had become a component, if not the sole factor, in

81  Peter Morzkowski, Politia ecclesiastica, ed. Georg Ludwig Oeder (Frankfur t am Main/ Leipzig, 1745), 211–12, parts of which are translated in Williams, The Polish Brethren, doc. 23.Note that in the ring ceremony the Polish Brethren pastors were carrying out the innovation reported by Bugenhagen (above, n. 29). Although the Latin text was printed late and by an enemy for refutation, there is reason to believe that even the use of sacramentum for marriage, as defined and the references to Tertullian Ad uxorem, all go back to the sixteenth century. 82  Wenger, “Concerning Divorce,” 117. 83  The acme of this Christie conception of marriage was no doubt reached in the reformed line of the fully Germanized and Pietistic Moravians (formerly Czech Brethren), whose nuptials were extravagantly and intimately solemnized in “the blue room” of the meeting-house b y Bishop Nikolaus Ludwig, Count of Zinzendorf (1700–60), who had received Episcopal ordination (1737) from Czech Brother D. E. Jablonski. The liturgical music of the Czech/Moravian Brethren and Sisters was so central to their Christian living that at death they were buried in consecrated ceremonies, not by family but by choir, so that husbands and wi ves, ranging from bass to soprano, were regularly laid away in widely separated plots.

788  the radical reformation

chapter 20.3.c / 20.4

the covenant of marriage. “Nonbelievers” now referred no longer to pagans but to other Christians, Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox, not considered by t he various radicals as truly or sufficiently Christian to warrant entry with themselves into the most precarious and most experiential sacrament, which in Paradise had in fact brought about the Fall by the failure of the first Pair to obey God in respect to their three libidines, their libido dominandi, sciendi, and sentiendi.84 The egalitarianism of medieval canonical betrothal and matrimony as between partners lay in the fact that each prospective husband and wife could canonically promise to marry and that each was the officiant in the sacrament, regardless of t he two families’ economic and social interests, including the dowry. The theoretical egalitarianism of t he husband and wife in covenantal marriage lay in their courage and convictions to avow a faith that was a capital offense. If the thesis, when thus clearly modified and nuanced, has any validity, then covenantal marriage was passed on to later ages, perhaps as much by way of the Puritans as by way of the sixteenthcentury Anabaptists, for many English Puritans appropriated it. It is, in any case, of much interest that of t he three ends of m arriage, Puritans would come to make companionship the first.85 While Robert V. Schnucker holds that only some Puritans participated in this momentous shift,86 James T. Johnson fixes upon the shift as the distinctively Puritan contribution to the evolution of m odern marriage, stressing William Perkins’ view.87

4. The Reappropriation by Luther of Tertullian’s Traducianism: A Major Shift in the Conceptualization of Parenthood and Family in the Sixteenth Century In the relationship of men and women during the period of Renaissance and Reformation, betterment of the status of women depended in part on shifts in the understanding of the image of God in the f irst man and woman, of the relative culpability of Adam and Eve and therewith the identification of their wrong act, of the role of women in Scripture, and particularly of the person and off ice of M ary as Mother of t he Savior, therewith their understanding of genetics or, as they would have pondered, conception and

84  Scholasticism made this helpful distinction among the impulses or dr ives (libidines) that brought about the Fall: to dominate, to know overmuch, to lust. 85  When companionship, rather than progeny, becomes the first end of marriage, then a childless marriage is without reproach, and also the way is prepared for the Christian assessment of modes of companionship besides marriage and friendship. 86  Robert Victor Schnucker, “Views of Selected Pur itans, 1560–1630, on Mar riage and Human Sexuality” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Iowa, 1969), 127. 87  James T. Johnson, “English Puritan Thought on the End of Mar riage,” CH 38 (1969): 429–36.

chapter 20.4

marriage, family life & divorce  789

embryology. The last could have been the sixteenth century conceptual­ ization of t he biological process whereby traits of t he father and mother appear mingled in the child of nine months’ gestation. Their era inherited the minor and major interpretations of f etology. According to Hippocrates and Tertullian (the latter the traducianist founder of much of t he terminology of L atin theology, including Trinitas and sacramentum) the male seed and “the female seed” joined in the conceptus. But the major tradition from antiquity of Aristotle and Galen was that the male seed grew in the readied soil of the womb, the mother contributing only the nutriment and the protection. In Aristotelian-Thomist terminology, the male seed was a form shaping the passive res, thought of a s the menstrual blood coagulating under the impact of the male seed. On this view, the woman bore the man his child, and against the clear evidence of intermingled traits from the mother’s side, the offspring in the major tradition was regarded as a wholly paternal achievement. And as for the infusion of the soul, the largely superseded traducianism held that the soul was present from conception, while the regnant creationism held that the rational soul was infused at some moment in gestation, perhaps as late as in the first breath (Gen. 2:7). Luther the friar-become-father, palpating the pregnant belly of h is Catherine, occupies an important place in the revival of Tertullian as having been on the right track in understanding the dual origin of t he fruit of the womb, although Tertullian himself left out reference to the “female seed” and it was in this sense thus that Luther would adduce his testimony. The Scriptures, freshly accessible in Hebrew and Greek, were inconclusive about the genetic role of t he two parents, but some Psalms and other Old Testament passages and the Gospel account (Lk. 1:41–44) of the intrauterine leaping of John in deference to Jesus as their mothers greeted each other, and indeed the Christian dogma of the Incarnation of the Word of God and the still contested but progressively defined doctrine of t he Immaculate Conception of Mary, herself freed therein of original sin, had, even in Christian antiquity, deep-rooted Christian consequences in the Graeco-Roman world in the patristic aversion to abortion; in the sixteenth century, these scriptural references continued to surround the life of t he unborn with the safeguards of piety and vivid iconography.88 Common to all who reflected on marriage, family life, and divorce in the sixteenth century was the classical-biblical legacy concerning the role of man and woman in the procreation of new life and the origin of the souls and the traits of t heir progeny. This complex, archaic, biological embryo-

88  What follows is a contraction and adaptation of a por tion of my article, “Religious Residues and Pr esuppositions,” Theological Studies 31, a special issue (pr ior to Roe v. Wade) (1970): 10–75.

790  the radical reformation

chapter 20.4

logical legacy had, as we saw, christological consequences (Ch. 11.3.d), and now also, as we shall see, gender, marital, and domestic consequences. It has not yet been ascertained whether, as between classical Protestantism as embodied in Luther and Calvin, and the Radical Reformation, even specifically the Anabaptists, there was an appreciable difference in the understanding of procreation and progeny, but the shift represented by L uther himself was of such epochal importance in the evolution of European civilization that in a whole chapter on marriage and family life, Luther’s new position must be clarif ied further. Luther was determined not to allow human reason to escape the effect of original sin and therefore considered the (rational) soul latent in the seed of the father. Luther confidently turned away from Catholic formulations of creationism, as recent as Apostolici regiminis of the V Lateran Council, and dismissed earlier papal condemnations of t he traducianism of Tertullian from Anastasius II (498) through Benedict XII (1341): We lean to this position with Augustine [as Luther faultily construed him] that the soul is transmitted as is the body. And so the father would not make the body [alone]; but God makes the body indeed from the father’s seed as also God makes the soul from the father’s seed; thus God draws the soul from the seed or by traduction (ex traduce). … Augustine discussed this at great length and said that neither [creationism nor traducianism] ought to be affirmed but that speculation be suspended; however, he leaned more to the opinion that the soul arises in traducianism. … We are inclined with him to the view that the whole man with body and soul is by traduction. For to God it is not impossible to make an immortal soul from human seed. Since he from the flux of nature makes a mortal body, ought he not, then, to be able to make from the seed also a soul? 89 When Luther said this in a p romotional disputation in 1545, he had come to regard the rational soul as immortal from conception although much earlier he had expressed himself as a psychopannychist or Christian mortalist (Ch. 11.6.c). We proceed to place his doctoral asseveration in the larger context of his age. There were two ancient views about fetology: (1) epigenesis (e.g., Aris­ totle), the hylomorphic view that new human life is brought into existence in successive accretions, guided first by t he vegetative, then the sensitive, and finally by t he intellective soul, and (2) preformation (e.g., Hippocrates and Tertullian), the view that all of the organism is present in parvo from conception (this view is closer to modern genetics). 89

 WA, 39/2:350, version A, beginning at line 12, and 39/2:351, beginning at line 18.

chapter 20.4

marriage, family life & divorce  791

There were, besides, three ancient views about the origin of the soul and the relationship to the developing body: (1) psychic preexistence and either (a) an infusion or (b) a fall of a primordial soul into a body at some point in fetal development; (2) traducianism, that is, transmission of body and soul together from the primordial parents; and (3) creationism, the creation of the soul for the animation of the body from inception or at a later juncture, perhaps only at birth. Then there were two views about the origin of life and notable traits: (1) the sire-centered view in recognizing only the semen as determinative and (2) the minor view from antiquity into modern times (anciently associated with Hippocrates’ On Generation and Tertullian’s De Anima, intermittently but not definitively) that there was also a kind of “female seed” that contributed half the traits. Finally, there were three main views as to when the soul joined the body: (1) from conception (Tertullian and traducianism); (2) at some stage in gestation; and (3) at the first breath “in the air of the world” (the basic Old Testament view in Gen. 2:7 and the Stoics). There were not, however, two Christian views about abortion in the sixteenth century because Christians had inherited from their formative age an aversion to pagan practices including the exposure of u nwanted infants, a c onviction about unborn life, enhanced over the ages by t he doctrine of t he Incarnation and the evolving dogma of t he Immaculate Conception of the Virgin (in the sixteenth century not yet a dogma, urged by the Fransciscans and resisted by Thomists). But there were variant views about the relative gravity of contraception and abortion. The only specific scriptural text relating directly to abortion is the somewhat obscure Exodus 21:22f: “When men strive together, and hurt a woman with child, so that there is a m iscarriage, and yet no harm follows, then you shall give life for life.” Traditional Jewish thought on the fetus was extreme “creationism,” the divine fashioning of t he fetus and special animation at birth and the first breath. Ancient Hebrews held that intrauterine life did not become fully a human being until into it had been blown the breath of life (neshamah) at birth (Gen. 2:7). Only the fetus that had come out “into the air of the world” could be considered a nephesh, a person with a soul. The Hellenistic Jewish translators of t he Septuagint, however, introduced a d istinction beyond the Masoretic (Hebrew) text between the unformed and the formed (exeikonismenon) fetus in the womb and construed as murderer the man responsible in the passage for even an accidental abortion of a “formed” fetus. The Hellenistic Jewish distinction between unformed and formed fetus and the severe punishment attaching to even accidental abortion of the formed fetus (as reflected, for example in Philo Judaeus of Alexandria)

792  the radical reformation

chapter 20.4

passed into common Christian usage by way of the Church Fathers, in all eastern and western canonical literature, this despite the fact that Jerome in his Vulgate followed the Masoretic text. When in medieval canon law and scholasticism and traditional Christian opposition to abortion came to be formulated systematically and normatively by J ohn Gratian (d. c. 1179), traducianism was abandoned, and patristic creationism was rehabilitated with the help of Aristotle, and the Septuagintal distinction between unformed and formed fetus was universalized.90 Thomas Aquinas held to an even more elaborately Aristotelianized creationism,91 conjoint with Gratian’s deference to the Septuagintal-patristic version of Exodus 21:22 in the traditional distinction between the unformed and the formed fetus, with the consequence that well into the sixteenth century scholastic and canonistic commentary and gloss almost everywhere would permit a distinction in moral gravity between an earlier and a later abortion well into the Reformation era and hence a comparable distinction between contraception divinely condemned morally (Gen. 38:9–10) and the willful abortion of an “unformed” fetus, i.e., before quickening. Martin Luther was disposed not only to repristinate patristic traducianism but also expressly to reject Origin’s tripartite anthropology of spirit, soul, and body (cf. 1 Thess. 5:23).92 Luther, like Aquinas, accepted the embryology of t he “epigenists” Aristotle and Claudius Galen (On the Rational Faculties), especially the latter’s assumption that the semen, formed from blood, “is congealed … and given shape” in the womb, taking only nutriment from the woman. In his Lectures on Genesis (1535ff.), Luther had frequent occasion to refer to seed, procreation, and progeny. He held that the traducianist (procreative) and 90

 Gratian, the f ather of canon la w, who in his Concordianta discordantium canonum ( = Decretum) sought to har monize a n umber of discor dant patristic and canonical texts, among them Augustine and Pseudo-Augustine (= Ambrosiaster) on Exod. 21:22, declared, purportedly in direct quotation from Augustine: “He is not guilty of homicide (non est homicida) who brings about abortion before the soul is infused into the body” (Migne, PL, 187, 1471). Both the Augustinian and the Ambrosiastrian texts adduced the Septuagintal version of Exod. 21:22 as the basis for the distinction betw een an unfor med and a for med and therefore humanoid fetus. The fourth century Ambrosiaster, who may have been a convert from Judaism, expressly disavowed traducianism and took the inbr eathing of the soul of Adam when his body w as fully formed from the dust as the model for the infusion of the di vinely created rational soul into each formed fetus (Migne, PL, 187, 1471f.). Gratian’s whole collection of patr istic texts in Quaestio 2, including Ambrosiaster on the inbreathing of Adam, lived on not only in canon law but also in Peter Lombard’s Sentences 4, Distinctio 31. Hence the revival of traducianism with its insistence that the rational aspect of the soul no less than the sensiti ve (animal) and the nutritive (vegetative) aspects, being alike involved in Adam’s fall, are latently present in the fetus from conception, would tend to ob literate theologically any distinction between an unfor med and a for med fetus and an y valid distinction between contraception and abor tion of even an unformed fetus. 91  Opera omnia (Parma edition), 7/2:958, col. 2. 92  De servo arbitrio (WA, 1425), 28:774f.

chapter 20.4

marriage, family life & divorce  793

the divinely creative action coincided in conception: “Man is brought into existence from a droplet of blood. … He [God] now takes a drop from the blood of the father and creates a human being. … For the semen congeals in the womb.” 93 Luther became specific about the term “traducianism” only in the already quoted interventions in the promotional disputation in theology, “De homine,” of h is pupil Peter Herzog of A nsbach (Hegemon) in July 1545. With Luther presiding and Philip Melanchthon, George Major (as promoter), and many others from several faculties present and entering in, the disputation on f ifty theses formulated by Luther himself gives a clear view of the mature Reformer on a fundamental aspect of family life, since many of t he theses, notably no. 31, are devoted to traducianism and its theological implications.94 The candidate, Herzog, and the chairman, Luther, were aware that Peter Lombard’s Sentences, which had absorbed Gratian’s texts, did not prove creationism and that there were contrary patristic texts, specifically Tertullian, De resurrectione carnis 7 and 45,95 Cyril of Alexandria (quoting Apollinaris of Laodicea), and above all Augustine. The chairman and the candidate were referring especially to passages assembled by Gratian, Lombard, and Aquinas. Luther, construing Augustine as leaning toward traducianism, would have thought of h imself as an “Augustinian” traducianist, although Augustine himself was in fact inconclusive. Luther, in his sire-centered traducianism thus thought of the father, under God, as the sole source of the offspring’s soul: The father does not make the body of his child; the father generates the child, but not the body of the child nor the eyes nor the hands or any member, but he administers a s eed, a s mall drop, which wet and warm drop is from Father Adam and it proceeds into all men, that is, to make us; but God accepts that seminal drop in the body, excites and perfects it; and, because it is conceived in sin, therefore from this sinful drop comes a sinful body and a sinful soul, that is the sinful propagation of original sin, as the Psalm [51:7] says, “Behold I was conceived in iniquity and in sin my mother conceived me.” Therefore, we are all propagated by traduc­t ion. … Whence, then, sin? If the soul is not by traduction and nevertheless it has sin, whence does it therefore have sin?

93

 A preliminary composite quotation from WA, 42; see below.  The Latin disputation with a few lapses into German is recorded in three versions (A–C), published in WA, 39/2:337–401. I quote from version A. The disputation is seen in a larger context by Bengt Hägglund, De homine: Människouppfattningen in äldre Luthersk Tradition (Lund: Gleerup, 1959), 62–67. 95  The disputants did not mention Tertullian’s De anima. 94

794  the radical reformation

chapter 20.4

There Augustine considers many arguments on both sides, and let him say whatever he will, let him say what is and what is not, lest I indeed crash on this reef, that it would be such contumely toward God, that God would create a pure soul de novo and mix and couple it with impure and polluted flesh. There Augustine labors, neither wishing to aff irm nor deny, because if he should assert that souls are created without traduction (propagation) but de novo, then the soul would be guilty without any guilt, and God would be the cause and author of sin. …96 After a discussion of what may have been not Augustine but Ambrosiaster on “the soul inbreathed into each single man as into Adam,” 97 Luther returned to this matter of the insufflation and insisted in accordance with his traducianism that whatever special act of the Creator there may be in conception, “when God inspires, He does not do it from without but from within, as He sends in the Holy Spirit in the heart.” He adduces Augustine without citation in support of this view and then reverts to German on a point about which he felt strongly: “He [God] doesn’t stuff the soul into the body, like a farmer grain into a sack, but He inspirates within; and with the soul in the body go hand, foot, and mouth!” 98 From Luther’s interventions in the disputation De homine two years before his death, it is clear that the Reformer, in indirect vindication of the full humanity of the fetus from conception, was primarily prompted by a concern to involve the mind or spirit as much as the flesh in the guilt and consequences of original sin, allegedly in conformity with Augustine’s own predilection. His interventions were at once antipapal and protraducianist in the name of Au gustine. But Luther continued Catholic opposition to abortion from his new traducianist base. Although he regarded the fetus as intactly human, he held the Catholic view of the indispensability of baptism for salvation. In a small piece, Ein Trost den Weibern (1542), he sought to comfort mothers of m iscarried or stillborn infants who worried about the eternal destiny of the unbaptized fruit of their wombs and allowed that stillborn and infants perishing before baptism might be buried with due ceremony in church cemeteries in the hope of t he resurrection. Without ever articulating what he had accomplished, the traducianist father of several beloved progeny and the pastoral comforter of mothers grieving about the stillborn without baptism had tremendously enhanced the status of the fetus in the sight of God and man. Luther’s Wittenberg colleague Philip Melanchthon, who participated in the promotional disputation De homine in 1545, for his part persevered 96

 WA, 39/2:357, version A, beginning at line 12.  Ibid., leaning here on Pseudo-Augustine (Ambrosiaster). 98  Ibid., 39/2:356f. 97

chapter 20.4

marriage, family life & divorce  795

in scholastic (and patristic) creationism. In that very year, indeed, he published his Commentarius de anima (Wittenberg, 1545), which was really a scriptural-humanistic commentary on Aristotle’s view of the human being, body and soul. Although Melanchthon came out for creationism, it was in a form modified by h is association with Luther. He acknowledged the want of c ertainty in both Luther and Augustine, without naming either, and very significantly in one place implied that the inbreathing (rather than infusion) of t he soul might take place at conception rather than at birth; for he connected the inspiration with election and the bestowal of grace in contrast to the simpler quickening of beasts: “The soul is blown into men from without, and such a breath it is into which God floods, as I might say, the rays of his light, namely, wisdom, awareness of numbers, the distinction between good and evil, and other traits. … In that breath there was even the rectitude of will and free election.” After rejecting Luther’s traducianism as absurd (reasoning with the same texts) because it would make God the Creator of arbitrarily guilty souls, Melanchthon stated his own view, quoting, as he had several times elsewhere, the somewhat Stoic text of Paul’s speech on Mars Hill (Acts 17:28): “We would be content with that [ecclesiastical] wisdom which life, sense, deliberation, and election show: that there are souls in us, that they are endowed with traits and other gifts which testify that God exists, and that the souls were established by him.” 99 In his embryology Melanchthon was expressly following Galen and Hippocrates over against Aristotle, but it would appear that he was interpreting Galen in the light of H ippocrates when he, not so sire-centered as Luther, maintained (like Tertullian in some passages) that the male and female “seeds” alike contribute to the formation of t he fetus. He was more or less traditional in holding that on the forty-fifth day the “fetus with formed and distinct members begins to live because it senses,” and he slipped back into the traditional distinction between the unformed and formed fetus when he found it plausible that “souls are inserted into children (pueris) about the forty-fifth day and then not only should it [the fetus] be called an embryo (embryonon) but even an infant (infantem).”100 The Wittenberg Reformers, colleagues respectively in Old Testament and Greek, differed markedly on a fundamental point, Luther a traducianist and Melanchthon a creationist. But Lutheranism would tend to move with Luther, and the effect of his view was to recognize the full humanity of the newly conceived, irrespective of the stage in gestation. John Calvin, like Melanchthon, although he stressed with Luther original sin, felt that he could dispense with traducianism as an explanation for

99

 “Definitio ani me usata in ecclesia,” CFR 2:13, cols. 17, 18.  Ibid., cols. 104, 106.

100

796  the radical reformation

chapter 20.4

his conviction that soul and body were indeed alike implicated in it.101 He espoused both a c reationism and the natural immortality of t he sentient soul (Ch. 23.1), whether elect or reprobate, and thus, with his doctrine of predestination, tended to make conception and the creation of the soul coincident. Accordingly, Calvin was emphatic in his opposition to abortion and in his commentary on the locus classicus, Exodus 21:22, indicated a full awareness of the Catholic tradition in interpreting the passage to the advantage of the fetus. At this vital moment the great Genevan exegete preferred to the Masoretic Hebrew the Septuagintal version and the patristic commentary thereon: At first sight this passage is ambiguous because, if it is understood to be only the death of a pregnant woman [as in the Masoretic text], then the imperiled fetus seems forgotten: but this great absurdity does not obtain. For the fetus carried in the mother’s womb is already a man ( foetus enim in utero matris inclusus jam homo est); and it is quite unnatural that a life be destroyed of one who has not yet seen its enjoyment. For, if it seems more unworthy that a man be killed in his home rather than in his field because for each man his home is his safest refuge, how much more abominable ought it to be considered to kill a f etus in the womb who has not yet been brought into the light. For these reasons I conclude that the words “if death should result” doubtlessly apply to the fetus no less than to the mother. Besides, it would be even less appropriate for a father to trade the life of a son or daughter for a price. For this in my judgment is the sense of the law; it is a crime worthy of death not only where the woman perishes from the abortion but even if the fetus dies, whether it be aborted or it die shortly after from the blow.102 Calvin’s reference to the fetus, presumably at whatever age in gestation, as already a homo restates within the framework of Reformed creationism the emphatic formulation of Tertullian within the framework of patristic traducianism. It is just possible that the pan-Protestant stress on original sin, in the case of Lutheranism also a repristination of traducianism, and in the case of both Luther and Calvin a defense of the fetus presumed from conception to be a predestined saint or a reprobate, constituted a larger environing and 101

 Institutes, 1.15.5, 2.1.7; Commentarius in Genesim 3.6; Opera omnia, 23, 62. Luschesius Smits holds that Calvin was inclined with Luther to interpret Augustine, especially in his De anima et eius origine, as tending toward traducianism, and therefore Calvin never cited this particular work of Augustine: Saint Augustine dans I’oeuvre de Jean Calvin (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1957), 164, 183. 102  Calvin, Opera, 24:625.

chapter 20.4

marriage, family life & divorce  797

challenging factor in pressing the Catholic Church to modify Thomist creationism to the extent of pushing back the infusion of a newly created soul to conception or shortly thereafter. In any case, the Roman Catholic Church, drawing out the general fetological implications of the non-Thomist doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary and quite possibly also under the pressure exerted by revivifed traducianism (Luther) and modified creationism (Melanchthon and Calvin), by the close of the century of Reformation and Counter-Reform would be minimizing or even abandoning, with respect to the gravity of abortion, the distinction going back to the Septuagint between the foetus inanimatus and the foetus animatus or formatus. It may be remarked that sixteenth-century Italian medical faculties, particularly in Padua, also repristinated traducianism over against creationism as more compatible with medical observations and that many Italian Protestants and sectaries espoused psychopannychism and presumably also traducianism, notably Faustus Socinus and all the Racovians under the impact of h is penetrating thought. However, this excursus into the conception of t he soul and procreation in Luther, Melanchthon, and Calvin, so much more widely explored on the issues than the Anabaptists or the Evangelical Rationalists, must break off inconclusively with regard to the ponderings on procreation and the soul and on medical ethics among the leaders central to our narrative, a relatively high proportion among whom were, in fact, apothecaries, barber-surgeons, and physicians of several types of training. It is evident, however, that all proponents of the celestial flesh of Christ, like Melchior Hofmann and Michael Servetus, presupposed the embryology of Aristotle and Galen and carried their sire-centered genetics and psychology (anthropology) over into Christology. Melchior Hofmann and Menno Simons after him found no role for Mary except as the protective channel through which saving Life entered the world, and this was all the more easily upheld by Menno, as he read Scripture as vindicating the view that in ordinary pregnancy only the male seed shapes new life and in the case of t he Virgin this fruition was discharged by God the Father through the Holy Spirit.103 The solution of C aspar Schwenckfeld was in the glorification of t he human nature of Christ and his scriptural discernment of Mary as indeed unique among women in the very words of E lizabeth after she was filled with the Holy Spirit: “Blessed art thou, Mary, among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb,” for she in Schwenckfeld’s own words “received from the Holy Spirit natural flesh,” whereby she, unique among women fulfilled the prophecy of Jeremiah 3:22: “a new thing, a woman will encompass a 103

 This view is clearly stated in the Reply to Gellius Faber (1554), Works, tr. and ed. by Verduin and Wenger, 767–71; excerpted in her anthology by Irwin, Womanhood, 12–20. See also her “Embryology and the Incarnation: A Sixteenth-Century Debate,” Sixteenth Century Journal 9, no. 3 (1978): 12–20.

798  the radical reformation

chapter 20.4

man,” that is, says Schwenckfeld, it was foreseen that Mary, “impregnated through the Holy Spirit, would carry and give birth to God’s and her son, a son of such glory that his flesh could see no decomposition.” Schwenckfeld expressly criticizes “restless Hofmann and his erroneous followers” and the modern Valentinian (by whom he may have been intending Servetus).104 It seems likely, therefore, that the radical tide, flowing against, and inexorably divided by, the vast promontory of archaic embryology, washed onto quite different shores and that it was the Magisterial Reformation, persuaded of the depth and universality of the consequences of primordial sin and convinced of s alvation by p redestined election to faith that indirectly enhanced the status of the fetus and the infant as person.

104  These phrasings are taken from “On the Enmity between the Woman and the Serpent,” (1544), CS 12:612–17, a large portion of which, having been identified by her as rich and representative, is translated by Irwin, Womanhood, 20–27.

Chapter 21

Waldensians, 1510–1532; Italian Anabaptists, 1525–1533; and Italian Evangelicals, 1530–1542

I n trying to follow the developments of the

Radical Reformation genetically, and yet in so far as feasible synoptically and synchronously, we have, by way of exception (Ch. 19) for one region, the Netherlands, and for almost an entire generation, 1540–68, gone well beyond the general chronological framework of the rest of the narrative. For the Swiss Brethren the account has been brought forward only to the death of Zwingli in 1531 (Ch. 8); for nonconformity on the left in England and Poland, to the deaths, respectively, of Henry VIII and Sigismund I; for the Hutterites in Moravia to the composition of Peter Riedemann’s Account; and for Middle and South German Anabaptism and evangelical Spiritualism, through the Marpeck-Schwenckfeld controversy of 1542 (Ch. 18). In the following two chapters we pass through the Alps into Italy1 and step back in time to carry our account forward in this region from the point where we left off in 1530 (Ch. 1.5, 6). In the dozen years between the realpolitical rapprochement of the Emperor and the Pope in 1530 (symbolized by t he imperial coronation) and the re-establishment in 1542 of t he Roman Inquisition, modeled on that of 1  Some other comprehensive works on Italian Protestantism and sectarianism are Frederick C. Church, The Italian Reformers, 1534–1564 (New York, 1932); George Kenneth Brown, Italy and the Reformation to 1550 (Oxford, 1933); Delio Cantimori, Eretici Italiani del Cinqueeento:Ricerehe Storiehe (Florence, 1939); Dennis Hay, The Church in Italy in the Fifteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), chap. 46; and with unusual compactness and clarity, Manfred Welti, Kleine Gesehiehte der italienisehen Refor mation, Schriften des Vereins f ür Reformationsgeschichte 193 (Gütersloh:Verlagshaus, 1985). Earlier works, still be to consulted especially because of their citation in some cases of as yet unpublished sources, are Cesare Cantù, Gli Eretici d’Italia: Diseorsi Storiei, 3 vols., the first largely medieval; the third in two parts (Turin, 1865–67), and Veneto e nell’Istria (Florence, 1897), the first volume being devoted to medieval “forerunners.”

799

800  the radical reformation

chapter 21

Charles for his Spanish dominions, Italy was brimming over with divergent religious currents, alongside and within the ancient ecclesiastical system and in either case largely independent of t he Pope. For each Pope in his turn was preoccupied with his position as a major prince of the peninsula and baffled by the recalcitrance of the fomentors of the religious revolt in Germany. The dozen years between 1530 and 1542 are in Italy, as in Germany, religiously well defined. In 1530, after his coronation in Bologna, Charles attended the Diet of Augsburg to listen to the reading, among other things, of the Augsburg Confession, in which Melanchthon, in Luther’s absence, had made as many concessions to traditional theology and institutions as the Lutheran party, which had readily disavowed the extremism of t he sacramentarian Swiss, could faithfully yield. In 1542, Caspar Cardinal Contarini died in sorrow and despair after the failure the year before of t he colloquy of R egensburg, at which the Evangelical Cardinal had formulated his great concession on grace in terms of double justification in the last hope of saving the unity of Western Christendom. In the same year, Bernardine Ochino, the general of the Capuchin Order and Italy’s greatest preacher of p enitence, along with many other leading Italian Evangelicals and Protestants, fled from the peninsula. The year before, 1541, John de Valdés (Ch. 1.4) had died in Naples. He had given the name to the Italian form of evangelical Spiritualism. Italian Evangelicals after the introduction of t he Inquisition in 1542 either (1) conformed as “Nicodemites,” (2) fled to Protestant lands, or (3) threw themselves with somewhat altered enthusiasm into the current driving toward the reform at the Council of Trent (1545–63) in its three distinctive phases. 2 Of the second grouping of figures within the Italian Evangelical mind, 1530–42, we but evoke the names of a f ew in due course taken up into northern Protestantism, notable at the academic level: Peter Martyr Vermigli of F lorence (d. Geneva, 1562),3 Peter Paul Vergerio of C apodistria

2  Elizabeth G. Gleason explored the scholarship, 1953–78, “On the Nature of Sixteenth– Century Evangelism,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 9 (1978): 325 and in Reform Thought In Sixteenth-Century Italy, American Academy of Religion, Texts and Translations Series 4 (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1981) she pr esents in annotated translation “The Proposal of a Select Committee of Cardinals concerning the Reform of the Church,” presented in 1539 (a decade after the Sack of Rome) on his initiati ve to Paul III, 81–100. Paul had, the year before, summoned a general council for Mantua (destined to materialize at Trent and only in 1545). 3  A Bibliography of the Works of Peter Mar tyr Vermigli, ed. J. Patrick Donnelly, S.J., Robert Kingdon, and Mar vin Anderson, Sixteenth Centur y Essays and Studies 13 (Kirksville , Mo. Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1990). The Thomas Jefferson University Press of Northeast Missouri State University projects the publication of sixteen volumes of the Vermigli Library under the general editorship of Joseph C. McClelland. See also Marvin Walter Anderson, Peter Martyr, A Reformer in Exile (1542–1567) (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1975).

chapter 21

waldenians & evangelicals, 1510–1542  801

(d. Tübingen, 1565), Galeazzo Caraccioli of N aples, marquis of V ico (d. Geneva, 1586), Jerome Zanchi from near Brescia (d. Heidelberg, 1590), and Marc Antonio De Domenis of Venice (d. Rome, 1600). Having turned from inspection of d iverse manifestations of r adical reform and restitution alongside the Magisterial Reformation in northern territories, we are aware that the Italian peninsula is only slowly marshaling its energies and gaining the perspectives that will enable the old Church to regain something of the universal papal ministry in the Counter-Reform and gradually recover indeed the Gregorian vision of a u niversal celibate sacerdotium (in reaction to programmatic Protestant clerical marriage, Ch. 20), and therewith an increasingly pastoral episcopate eventually to be purged of p luralism. Its priests will be trained increasingly, no longer in the universities, but rather in the new diocesan seminaries (the first under Reginald Cardinal Pole) and in the colleges of the new orders, notably of the Jesuits, the Society of Jesus being papally approved in 1540. The slowness of t he Catholic theological and institutional recovery in Italy is due in part to the fact that several states of t he peninsula, big and small, had come to regard the Holy See, as with its often unfair canonical advantage, a competitor freely engaged in a succession of leagues and battles, yet with troops as ferocious as their own. Several states, like the imperial maritime Republic of Venice had long since in constitutional and canonical argument achieved most of the advantages of a Magisterial Reformation, at least in the sense of control over the ecclesiastical institutions of t he Republic and its university in Padua. Another city-state, Siena, would at one point, when threatened with absorption by F lorence, go through a r evolution with the vague expectation of both imperial and Reformed sanction for its independence. In retrospect it could have been seen that the whole peninsula with its five main states, Venice, Milan, Florence, the Papal States, and the Kingdom of Naples (under a branch of the house of Aragon), would together go through the apogee of the Rinascimento. The intellectual and cultural primacy in Europe of Italy up to about 1550, with its enormous religious and ethical energy, could not but become a major factor in the final shaping of the countenance of Christendom in the sixteenth century even outside Italy and on the theologically radical left, notably in Poland and Transylvania. France under Francis I ( 1514–47), may it be said in passing, has been assigned only a tangential section of its own (Ch. 23.3), because, by the Concordat of B ologna of 1516 (papally securing royal control of t he national episcopate) there would be no significant organization of s olafideist predestinarian Protestantism in France until the synod of P aris in 1559. France itself, however, bulked large in the military background of our ensuing chapter, because it threatened the peninsula from Naples to Milan,

802  the radical reformation

chapter 21 / 21.1

eventually against the Holy League (Pope, Emperor, Spain, Milan, Venice), in any case in a succession of alliances from 1495 until the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis in 1559.

1. Heretical Groupings in the Italy of the Philologically Challenged Donation of Constantine: Evangelical Rationalism Insofar as these Italian energies would fashion the Counter-Reform in Europe, they can only be acknowledged in the present narrative as the massive socioreligious context of our selective coverage. But insofar as Catholic Evangelicals were not to be wholly absorbed in that Counter-Reform, they continue as a part of the reform currents in Italy where all nonconformists are, for convenience, alike designated by scholarship as well as by Catholic canon, as eretici: old sectaries (the Waldensians), the new, Reformation-inspired fellowships of devotion yet still Catholic (Catholic Evangelicals), the kindred evangelical Spiritualists (Valdesians), the self-conscious, though perhaps transitionally secret adherents of classical (solafideist/predestinarian) Protestantism either in its Lutheran or more commonly in its Reformed modality, the new sectaries (the Italian-speaking Anabaptists), the Nicodemites (not so much a distinguishable grouping as adherents of a tactic of “occasional conformity”), and the Evangelical Rationalists.4 As we explore the peninsula in the ensuing two chapters, we acknowledge that Italy, far more than either Spain or France, is integral to any plenary coverage of “the Radical Reformation” in sixteenth-century Europe, even if the term were understood to cover only the various kinds of Anabaptists. Any conceptualization of radicality, whether theological or religio-political (ecclesiological) or socio-ethical (perhaps in eschatological context) at least presupposes an antecedent or concurrent magisterial Protestant achievement. There were no rebaptizers in Spain and almost none on the soils of the kingdom of France (as of our epoch); but there were at least two currents of non-violent fully separatist Anabaptists in the Italian peninsula. Spain indeed has qualified for at least a half chapter in the perspective of the present conceptualization, narrative, and analysis, but then primarily because of John Valdés, Michael Servetus (1515–47), and the Maranos, who though forced into exile in Italy and elsewhere as “new Christians” (however much their ancestors had been coerced) often display noteworthy eagerness for the Reformation version of t heir faith and some of t heir descendents constituted a Judaizing impulse within Italian Anabaptism 5 and Evangelical Rationalism (Ch. 28), for, while the secretly and loyally Jewish Marranos carried with them into Italy the remembered practice of p roselyte 4  The term comes fr om usage in English dur ing the se venteenth century; but see Introduction, p. 17. 5  Cf. nn. 8, 37 below.

chapter 21.1

waldenians & evangelicals, 1510–1542  803

ablution as a prudential substitute for circumcision for male as well as for female converts to Judaism, others were inwardly converted Marranos who often still sought by means of the Kabbalah a distinctive basis for their new Christology. The most important perhaps because distinctively Italian grouping was that differentiated sector of the Evangelical mind within the Rinascimento that was represented by the congeries of thinkers and their fellowship characterized typologically as Evangelical Rationalists, conceptualized indeed as of one the three main thrusts of the Radical Reformation. They were eretici in the normative Catholic and also the classical Protestant sense, but were also notable in being religious intellectuals, laymen as well as priests, monks and friars, even bishops—a significant few of Marrano heritage—who, drawn to some of the liberating ideas of the northern Reformers, could not be certain, until the imposition of the Roman Inquisition in 1542, that they had inwardly migrated well beyond the acknowledged jurisdiction of the Old Order in a way that counterpart northern minds, with the support of the princes or city councils, were vividly aware of much sooner as whole territories within the Empire were being reorganized without the benefit of the local ordinary or his distant superior, the Bishop of Rome. In any case, the Evangelical Rationalists (initially unaware of t he degree to which others in their circles adhered more strictly to the tutelage of Wittenberg, or of Zurich and Geneva) would think of themselves as the Italian correspondents in or even prospective members of the Italian-speaking congregations under the municipal synods of the Reformed territories. As confident Christians of the Rinascimento with impressive professional credentials and as bearers of t he dominant culture of Europe, they could not but think of t heir achievements in theology as superior to what they perceived to be the still crude or incomplete versions of the northern civic and princely reforms. Evangelical Rationalists, although the designation was not their own, shared much with other Evangelicals destined to complete their careers within the Counter-Reform. Furthermore, like Catholics but different from the solafideist-predestinarian Protestants, they believed that the New Testament supplied precepts and counsels superior to those of the Old, even though not a few of these Evangelical Rationalists were accomplished Hebraists. These particular Italian devotees of reform were philological realists, and considered themselves broadly in the humanistic tradition of Lorenzo Valla, who had treated the New Testament text as a classical text with critical respect for the original reading. Valla had proven that the Donation of Constantine was a forgery, proven, too, that Dionysius the Areopagite, Paul’s convert in Athens (Acts 17:34), could not have been the author of the mystical corpus (now known as the Pseudo-

804  the radical reformation

chapter 21.1

Dionysian Hierarchies and other works). This third philological achievement of Valla symbolizes, too, how Italian Evangelical Rationalism totally dispensed with the mystical component (Ch. 2.2), so formative in Germanic Spiritualism and Anabaptism. Indeed, when Italians picked up on Luther, his thought had for them nothing clinging to it of early mystical reflections (Ch. 2.2.b). For the Italian Evangelical Rationalists, Protestantism in the north drew them precisely because it dispensed with the non-literal forms of s criptural interpretation including typology (a hermeneutical device shared in common by scholastics and rabbis). Italian Evangelical Rationalists such as Laelius Socinus (b. Siena, d. Zurich 1562, Ch. 22.4), although they were not without eschatology, unlike the classical Protestant reformers with whom they felt kinship from afar, were commonly classical humanists, and like Erasmus, most of them gloried in the freedom of t he will to work out salvation in some fear and trembling, but mostly by reasoned discourse and inquiry about the literal sense of Scripture without, from their point of v iew, the encumbrance of Tradition, as well as the conventions of scriptural interpretation. They would emerge in Poland as scriptural rationalists with appreciation for the suprarational, miraculous, and providential but without mystery.6 Evangelical Rationalism could be furthermore characterized as speculative. In the case of Faustus Socinus (Ch. 24.4), the nephew of t he aforementioned Laelius, he could be even boldly innovative. Although like the classical Reformers they were avowedly antischolastic and professedly not philosophical, but rather given to the certitudes of common sense, as they held, now alike in hermeneutics, Triadology, and ethics. To the extent that Italian Evangelical Rationalism (thus provisionally defined) would reshape the Reformed synods especially in Poland, Lithuania, and Transylvania in the persons notably of Hebraist and patristical-scholastic Dr. Francis Stancaro of M antua (d. Stobnica, 1574) and Dr. George Biandrata (Blandrata) (d. Alba Iulia, 1588), gynecologist to queens in Cracow, Vilnia, and Alba Iulia, along with the collaboration of dozens of other Italians of great learning and culture, the minor churches (to anticipate a term) in Poland, Lithuania, and Transylvania may be said to represent the displacement northward and eastward of some of the genial reforming energies of what

6  Heiko Obermann in his chapter “Holy Writ and Holy Church,” The Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Biel and Late Mediev al Nominalism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), distinguishes Tradition I, which was understood as the interpretation of Scripture, and Tradition II, authoritative received convention, as extrascriptural tradition from the Apostolic Age (elsewhere: a “Tradition III” as post-Apostolic conciliar and papal magisterium). The Evangelical Rationalists, insofar as they are typified by Faustus Socinus (Ch. 24.4) or Francis Dávid (Ch. 28), broke wholly from Tradition I and not merely from Tu es Petrus with mainline Protestants, and were prone to making fr esh intrabiblical constructs, even innovations over against Tradition I, the former giving precedence to the New Testament, the latter to the Old.

chapter 21.1 / 21.2 waldenians & evangelicals, 1510–1542  805 just might have been the Reformed Church of S iena or even of Venice. Never consummated on Italian soil proper, these Italianate churches would find transnational consolidation as, for example, “the rite of C aspano,” under Camillo Renato (Ch. 22.1), in an Italian-speaking protectorate of the Rhaetian League (Graubünden, Grisons) in federation with the Swiss Confederation. In Italy with its extremes of p iety and indifference, of p overty and splendor; with its practical toleration, until 1542, of greater diversity than elsewhere; with its long habituation to manifold expressions of m edieval and then Renaissance sectarianism, heresy, devout fanaticism, and skepticism—sixteenth-century “radicals” were often carried over from one current to another. Within the eddying currents of r eform, piety, and dissent in these fateful dozen years, 1530–42, were the Waldensians, by t his time having absorbed Catharism and more recently Hussite apocalypticism. The Waldensians in the sixteenth century are part of o ur narrative up to the general synod of C ianforan in 1532, when they come formally to accept Protestant solaf ideism, accommodating to the Reformation in its Helvetic expression, as their confrères, the Czech Brethren, acknowledged the fresh vitalities of Lutheranism in 1535 (Ch. 9.1).

2. The Italian Waldensians from 1510 to the General Council of Cianforan in 1532 Waldensians interrogated in Paesana at the headwaters of t he Po in 1510 declared their fervent hope that at the head of a great army, a king of the Bohemians, belonging to their sect, would come to subjugate the provinces, cities, and villages; destroy the churches; kill all the priests, taking from them their temporal possessions; abolish tolls and all sorts of exploitations; impose a single tax per person; introduce the community of goods; and make all citizens conform to his law.7 The belligerent hope in the imminent advent of a Bohemian liberator seems out of p lace in the Cottian Alps among the pastoral followers of 7  The Latin text, from the MS “Errores Valdensium” (Turin) is quoted by Giovanni Gonnet, “Il movimento valdese in Europa secondo le più recenti ricerche,” BSSV 58, no. 100 (1956): 26. The text, with its Catholic inter rogator’s reference to them as a “sect,” is described as item 756 by Giovanni Gonnet and Augusto Armand-Hugon, “Bibliografia Valdese,” BSSV 73, no. 93 (1953). More recent articles on the Waldensian-Taborite “Internationalism” (term coined by Giorgio Tourn, 1963), are by Amedeo Molnár, “Les Vaudois et l’Unité”; idem, “L’Internationale des Taborites et des Vaudois,” BSSV 88, no. 122 (1967): 3–13, and chronologically more comprehensive, Susanna K.Treesh, “The Waldensian Recourse to Violence, 1350–1550,” CH 55 (1986): 294–306. This draws upon her thesis, “Europe’s Peasant Heretics: The Waldensians, 1375–1550” (Ph.D. dissertation, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J., 1988).

806  the radical reformation

chapter 21.2

Peter Waldo of Lyons, who had originally been content to seek papal and then archiepiscopal approval of h is demand that laymen, when called of God, be permitted to proclaim the gospel in the vernacular in the squares and elsewhere in the open. It was only when Waldo was excommunicated by the synod of Verona in 1184 that Waldensianism began its long history as a sectarian movement, spreading throughout central Europe from France to Brandenburg and Poland, absorbing, in different regions, the local heresies in ever new combinations.8 In Germany the Waldensian master Frederick Reiser (c. 1401–58) had become the head of the international Waldensian Taborite fellowship.9 Born near Donauwörth, son of a W aldensian merchant, Reiser became acquainted with Hussitism in the home of his Waldensian master in Nuremberg. He came into contact with Peter Payne (Ch. 9.1). Becoming an itinerant pastor, he ranged from Fribourg in Switzerland—where he stayed with the important Waldensian family Marmet with its connections with co-believers in the Midi and Piedmont—to Bohemia. In 1428, he followed the Taborite army advancing on Vienna and was ordained to the Hussite ministry of the word by the Taborite bishop Nicholas of Pelhvrimov in 1431. After serving the German Hussites at Lanskroun, he joined in 1432 the Hussite delegation at the Council of Basel. With priestly and possibly episcopal ordination from the Taborites, Reiser with the title “Fridericus Dei gratia episcopus fidelium in Romana ecclesia donationem Constantini spernantium,” organized with four bishops under him a German Waldensian-Taborite mission that, with the help of Taborite subventions, extended from Basel to

8

 An important interpretation of Waldensianism brought together by Giovanni Gonnet in “Delle varie tappe e correnti delia protesta valdese in Europa da Lione a Chanforan: Problemi vecchi e nuovi (1176–1532),” BSSV 102 (1957): 19–28; and then comprehensively in two collaborative volumes both in French and Italian Storia dei Valdesi, 1 (Turin: Claudiana, 1974) with Amedeo Molnár, covering the years 1176 to 1532 , the Italian edition with 122 illustrations and several maps, two of which are of special interest. One, opposite p. 220, shows the broad diffusion of Waldensianism from Lyons via Toulouse into the Iberian peninsula; to Milan and thence to the toe of the Italian peninsula; from Lyons to an area encircling Fribourg, Strassburg, Metz, and Toul; from Milan, again, in two directions: Erfurt/Berlin/Stettin, the other to Bohemia.The other map, opposite p. 109, shows the spread concentrating on the diffusion in the north, showing Waldensianism from Constance to Cracow, from Cologne to Gniezno. The second volume, by August Armand-Hugon (Turin: Claudiana, 1974) covers the years from 1532 to 1848. See also three articles by Giovanni Gonnet, “Appunti sulle fonti del Valdismo medieovale e di altre correnti riformatrici e eterodosse,” BSSV, no. 81 (1944): 35–46; “La Donazione di Costantino presso gli eretici medioevali,” no. 132 (1972): 17–29; and “La significence religieuse du movement Vaudois,” no. 143 (1978): 5–13. The most r ecent comprehensive work is that of Euan Cameron, The Reformation of the Heretics: The Waldensians of the Alps, 1480–1580 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984). See also A. Molnár, Die Waldenser (Göttingen: Vanderhoeck, 1980) 4: 326–91, and Giorgio Tourn, I Valdesi (Turin: Claudiana, 1980) 5–7 of the first part and 1–2 of the second part. 9  Valdo Vinay, “Friedrich Reiser e la diaspora v aldese di lingua tedesca nel XV secolo ,” BSSV 81, no. 109 (1961): 35–56; Molnár, “L’Internationale,” 8–9.

chapter 21.2

waldenians & evangelicals, 1510–1542  807

the Baltic, from Strassburg to Saaz (Zatec, where their general council was held in 1456). Reiser, under Bohemian influence, had at once repudiated the (legendary) alliance of Pope Sylvester and Constantine with his temporal endowment and abandoned Waldensian pacifism in the cause of the dispossessed. He and his wife Anna Weiler of Nuremberg were burned in Strassburg in 1458. The French–Italian-speaking Waldensians of the Cottian Alps, also stirred by the developments in Bohemia in the second half of the fifteenth century, rallied their strength and engaged in extensive missionary activity, establishing colonies as far south as Calabria and Apulia. No longer absolute pacifists due to their contact with the Taborites,10 in 1483 they rose against Duke Charles I of Savoy. Pope Innocent VIII authorized the crusade under Albert de Cattanes in Dauphiny against them in 1487, under the direction of Charles, the marquis of Saluzzo, and the king of France. The new king of France, Louis XII, however, brought the crusade to a close in 1501 in the valleys he controlled, and ordered the restoration of confiscated properties. But the widow of the marquis of Saluzzo, purchasing the rights of the bishop and the inquisitor to the property of the Waldensians in the upper Po valley, extended the persecution (1509–13) in the neighborhood of Paesana. We have already overheard the voices of the six Waldensians captured in 1510, preserved in the inquisitorial transcript quoted above, and it remains only to note that four of them escaped during the snowy night before the prospective execution, and that the remaining two were burned on the banks of the Po, 12 May 1510. There is evidence that some Waldensians, evidently after being influenced by the Taborites, not only reversed themselves on Peter Waldo’s non-violence, but that their barbs even subjected their credentes to severe penalties, including capital punishment.11 It was in 1498 that Brother Luke of Prague (Ch. 9.1), chief spokesman of the Major Party of the pacifist Unity, in search of the authentic apostolic tradition, visited Rome, Florence, and the Waldensian conventicle in Fabriano north of A ssisi, which is known to have been tinged with Catharism.12 It is not likely that Brother Luke visited the Waldensian communities in the Cottian Alps, although, since the rigid Minor Party of the Unitas in Bohemia claimed precisely the sanction of Waldensian predecessors for their opposition to his revisions in sacramental theology and polity, one might have expected Brother Luke to seek out more general support of

10

 Molnár, “Vaudois et l’Unite,” 6.  Treesh, “Europe’s Peasant Heretics.” 12  Barb Martin of Fabr iano before the inquisition in 1492 spok e of Waldensians in the mountains of the Mar ch of Ancona in ter ms that suggested a Cathar ist admixture. Molnár, “Vaudois et l’Unité,” 9. 11

808  the radical reformation

chapter 21.2

the Italian Waldensians on this trip.13 If he did not visit the Alpine Waldensians in 1498, a relationship between them and the Bohemian radicals was, in any case, well established when in 1510 the aforementioned tortured Waldensians of Paesana gave voice to their great hope of relief coming to them from the “king of the Bohemians.” It is quite possible that Luke in epistolary contact with the Cottian Waldensians tried to persuade them to return to their earlier Waldensian disavowal of force and to abandon precisely that part of the Taborite legacy which he, too, a proponent of nonviolence, found unacceptable. The delegation Luke dispatched to them c. 1515 may have been expressly charged with such a mission.14 A number of Luke’s writings—for example the Antichrist part of his Bark and his protest to King Ladislas Jagiello against the edict of e xpulsion—were translated into the Cottian vernacular. By 1526 three factions had developed among the Alpine Waldensians: the Swiss, the Saxon, and the Unitas sympathizers. At a synod in September of that year at Laus (Vallon du Laux) in the valley of Cluson, 140 pastors met to consider their own traditions in relation to the Unitas and the Protestants of Switzerland and Saxony. William Farel had been working in Dauphiny in 1523, and news of his preaching attracted many Waldensians. The synod delegated barb Martin Gonin, with the assistance of George of Calabria, to visit Germany and bring back copies of L uther’s writings.15 Gonin’s labors created a Protestant party, over against those who espoused closer bonds with the Unitas. In 1530, at the synod in Mérindol in Provence it was decided to seek the counsel of the Reformed pastors of Switzerland. Accordingly, George Morel (Maurel) of Freissinières valley and Peter Masson of Burgundy were sent with letters for Farel in Neuchâtel, Haller in Bern, Oecolampadius in Basel, and Bucer in Strassburg. To Bucer they carried a document containing forty-seven points of belief and practice about which they had questions.16 For Oecolampadius, they limited themselves to a selection of twelve.17

13  That Luke visited the Cottian Waldensians in 1498 is the traditional vie w, now altered, in the light of the recently worked Prague manuscripts, by Amedeo Molnár, “Les Vaudois et la Réforme,” summary by the author of two articles in Czech, BSSV 75, no. 96 (1954): 45–47. 14  Amedeo Molnár, “Luc de Prague et les Vaudois d’Italie,” BSSV 70, no. 90 (1949): 40–64; and Molnár, “Vaudois et l’Unite,” 10–11. 15  J. Jalla, Histoire des Vaudois (Pinerolo, 1922), 70. A work on the relations of the Waldensians to the magisterial reformers is that of Gio vanni Gonnet, “Beziehungen der Waldenser zu den oberdeutschen Reformatoren vor Calvin,” ZKG 64 (1952–53): 308–11. 16  All forty-seven items, with variations in Romande and Latin v ersions where available, and the German translation, are given by Johann Herzog, Die romanischen Waldenser (Halle, 1853), 350–62. 17  The twelve are not worded exactly the same as in the comm unication with Bucer. The letter of Morel and Masson to Oecolampadius,October 1530 is in Staehelin,Briefe und Akten, 2,

chapter 21.2

waldenians & evangelicals, 1510–1542  809

With their first authorized contact with sacramentarian Protestantism, the Cottian Waldensians found themselves defending Waldensian traditions, interlarded with some Hussite (Unitas) doctrine and practice, which they had only incompletely assimilated. In fact, we have overtaken the Italian Waldensians at that moment in their long history when they are in the process of interacting with the latest antipapal movement. It is well, therefore, to pause at this point to examine the amalgam as we find it described by barbs Martin Gonin, George Morel, and Peter Masson (c. 1530) in connection with their first Protestant contacts. The Waldensian leaders of t he first quarter of t he Reformation century were called “barbs.”18 The designation (French, barbe; Italian, barba) comes from the medieval Latin barbanus, in the sense of “ uncle.”19 The term was used in the northern Italian dialect of t he time for any person of local importance. The itinerant barbs, exercising moral authority, were often also called “teachers.” In Italy, a strong central organization of barbs and superintendents was maintained into the Reformation era. Their main school had once been in Milan.20 The Lombard Waldensian barbs (unlike their French counterparts) prided themselves on having a trade, generally that of medicine and surgery. Recruits for ordination were, to begin with, almost always young shepherds or husbandmen, usually illiterate. While yet living in the parental household they would, on their knees, seek admission to the pastoral fraternity, with the object of performing thus an act of humility, and asking the ordained barbs to pray for them that they might be rendered worthy. The barbs thereupon communicated the request to the assembled brethren; and if the applicants were well thought of, they would be admitted by general consent to receive instruction. The candidates were kept on trial during two or three winter months for three or f our years at most, in order that the barbs could be satisfied as to their irreproachable conduct. The recruits were given elementary instruction in reading and spelling and made to learn by heart the Gospels of Matthew and John, and many of t he epistles. About halfway through

item 787. Since the letter was written after the visit to the Reformer in Basel, it is possible that the barbs limited their quer ies to items still under discussion. But a compar ison of their relations with Bucer and Oecolampadius w ould indicate that the Cottian Waldensians were more forthright with Bucer about their practices. 18  In the four teenth century, three orders of clergy w ere found among the Waldensians in both the Romance and Ger manic areas, namely, bishops, presbyters, and deacons. In the fifteenth century, these orders had pretty much disappeared in both ar eas, although there was still uncertainty about ministerial grades in the Cottian Alps. Staehelin, Briefe und Akten, 2:507; Emilio Comba, History of the Waldensians of Italy (London, 1889), 1:254–56. 19  It may also have derived from barba, “bearded.” In lands of Germanic speech, the pastors were more commonly called “masters” (Meister). 20  Comba, Waldensians of Italy, 1:151–53.

810  the radical reformation

chapter 21.2

their tutelage the candidates were transferred to a certain place where consecrated Waldensian women, called sisters, lived a cloistered life. Here the candidates lived for one or two years, helping with the more rugged chores. Finally, they were admitted to the pastoral office by the laying on of hands and the celebrating of the Lord’s Supper. At ordination, the chief barb or master would assemble the other barbs, and the candidates would then be required to respond by oath to the following formula: Thou, [N], swear upon thy faith to maintain, multiply, and increase our law, and not to betray the same to any person in the world; and here promise that thou wilt not swear by God in any manner, but observe the Lord’s day; and that thou wilt not do anything to thy neighbor, which thou wouldst not have him to do to thee; and that thou doest believe in God, who made the sun and moon, heaven and earth, cherubim and seraphim, and all that thou seest. 21 Having taken the vow, the candidate was handed a c up by the master, who at that moment assigned him a new name, saying: “Henceforth thou shalt be called thus.” This ceremony in the eyes of the community, and particularly of the ordained perfecti themselves, effectually superseded rather than confirmed the baptism which the recruit had usually been obliged to receive at infancy in his Catholic parish. Barb Martin, for example had earlier been called François. Duly instructed and ordained, the young barbs were sent out in pairs to the work of evangelization. 22 Once a member of the Waldensian ministry, the ordained found that precedence depended solely upon seniority. He who preceded in the order of consecration was the master; he who followed was the disciple. The latter did nothing without the former’s permission, even the most insignificant thing, such as drinking a cup of water. The barb did not marry, for celibacy was, under Catholic and perhaps Cathar influence, held to be the superior state.23 Bread and clothing in sufficient quantities were supplied by the people who received their instruction, although the barbs worked at different trades to please the faithful and avoid idleness. The pastoral self-discipline was prescribed. The barbs prayed, kneeling, morning, noon, and evening, before and after supper, and sometimes also during the night. The prayers lasted about a quarter of an hour. Before eating or drinking, they generally repeated the Lord’s Prayer. Once a year, all the barbs of a g iven jurisdiction assembled in general council, to talk over

21  Latin original in Peter Allix, Some Remarks Upon the Ecc lesiastical History of the Ancient Churches of Piedmont (London, 1690), 313; English translation, 276. 22  Letter of Oecolampadius in Staehelin, Briefe und Akten. 23  Giovanni Scuderi, “Il problema del matrimonio nella fede, nella pietà e nella teologia del Valdesimo medioevale ... (1173–1532),” BSSV 78, no. 106 (1959): 31–58.

chapter 21.2

waldenians & evangelicals, 1510–1542  811

affairs and to change residence in pairs (every two or three years), except in the case of old men, who were permitted to have a fixed residence for the remainder of their lives. Their temporal goods were managed in common. All that was received from the people in the way of alms was handed over to the general council and placed in the common treasury, in the hands of the central leaders. Some of the money was used to cover the expense of traveling; a portion was reserved for the poor. The barbs united annually in the mutual confession of sins. If one of the barbs had in the course of the year fallen into carnal sin, he was excluded from the fellowship, forbidden to preach further, and directed to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. 24 In Germany, Apulia, Calabria, and many Piedmontese colonies, the Waldensian laity regularly attended Catholic worship. Only where they were in the majority, as in the Cottian Alps, could they confess to one another and regularly to the barbs and commune apart from the Catholic parishes. The Waldensians in the Cottian Alps had been receiving the Eucharist from their own barbs up to the crusade of 1487. They commonly called it the consolamentum, which shows the extent of the Cathar influence even in the Italian Alps where syncretism was generally less advanced than in the more populous and accessible areas.25 After 1487, even in the Alps, Waldensians usually received communion from Catholic priests, except at the annual ordinations of their barbs.26 Waldensian worship centered in the visit of the barbs in pairs. When the senior barb and his assistant arrived and were recognized by the conventicular sign, lodging would be prepared for them. The evening meal took on the character of a l ove feast. For the period prior to 1487 when the Waldensian Eucharist was openly observed, before the barbs sat down to table, they blessed the food, saying: “Benedicite, Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison, Pater noster.” Thereupon the senior barb would say, in his own dialect: “O God, who didst bless the five barley loaves and two fishes for the disciples in the wilderness, bless this table, whatever is upon it, and whatever may be brought to it.” Then, making the sign of the cross, the junior barb blessed it in the name of t he Triune God. In the same manner, when the company rose from table, they returned thanks in the blessing of Revelations 7:12, pronounced by the senior barb present, who added: “May God grant ample reward and good return to all those who do us

24  Letter to Oecolampadius in Staehelin, Briefe und Akten, and Mor el’s “Memoirs” in Herzog, Die romanischen Waldenser, 340ff. 25  Evidence for the use of the Catharist term consolamentum in the Inquisitions of 1335–87 and 1451 is brought in by Gonnet, “Delle varie tappe e correnti,” 26. 26  On the rare Waldensian custom of taking fish along with the bread and wine, see the literature brought in incidentally but nevertheless profusely in Kurt Goldammer, “Der Naumburger Meister und die Häretiker,” ZKG 64 (1952/53); esp. 97–102a.

812  the radical reformation

chapter 21.2

good and bless us, and after having given us material bread, may He give us spiritual food. God be with us, and we with Him for ever.” Thereupon the rest answered “Amen,” often joining hands and lifting them up toward heaven.27 The three basic elements of their worship were prayer, the reading of Scripture, and the reception of the blessed bread and wine, understood in the symbolic sense.28 The more complicated eucharistic theology of t he Unitas had not been readily assimilated. Prayer was confined almost exclusively to the Lord’s Prayer, repeated silently as often as forty times. Since the Waldensians trained themselves in the memorization of Scripture, the assembly easily followed the barb’s reading. In the sermon, the two seated ministers, the older and then the younger, quoted maxims of certain (sometimes apocryphal) apostles or of such saints or doctors of the Church as might strengthen the presentation. The sermon concentrated upon virtues, vices, good works, the Golden Rule, and the avoidance of lying, swearing, or shedding blood, and concluded with the exhortation: “The time is short; confess your sins, and do penance.” As to sacramental beliefs and practices, although Waldo himself had been traditionally Catholic, by t he opening of t he Reformation era all seven sacraments were greatly weakened or altered. One of the seven sacraments, ordination, was firmly in the hands of t he perfecti of t he sectarian brotherhood. Infant baptism, which commonly linked the Waldensians to the Catholic parish, was still widely regarded as desirable for salvation, but some held that it might be administered by anyone, including women. By 1530 the Waldensians had come to hold that it was better to confess to a pious layman than to an unworthy priest. Solemn penitential confession of the laity, as with their barbs, took place at least once a year as occasion afforded.29 After absolution, the penitents fasted and prayed. Waldensians rejected purgatory as a priestly invention, as they did the doctrine of the intercession of the saints. They believed that in the afterlife there is a place of abode of the elect, Paradise, and of the rejected, called hell. Believing in a G od in three Persons, and a C hrist fully human and fully divine, the Waldensians held that faith must be combined with works. Lutheran and Zwinglian justification by faith alone did not appeal to them, and they found it hard to accept in all its rigor the doctrine of predestination espoused by the new magisterial reformers. When, among the barbs, a proponent of free will once angrily tried to shake the conviction of a c onvert to predestinarianism, throwing a saltcellar from the table with the angry ejaculation that he had thereby 27

 Comba, Waldensians of Italy, 258.  Ibid., 269. 29  Staehelin, Briefe und Akten, 505. 28

chapter 21.2

waldenians & evangelicals, 1510–1542  813

proved his free will, the Swiss and Saxon-instructed barb retorted in effect: “Yes, you can very well do a wicked work on your own, but now try to put the broken pieces together and reassemble the grains of salt, and you will see that without the grace of God, you can do no good work.”30 Their general repugnance to the doctrine of p redestination is the twelfth and last of the disputed points raised in Morel and Masson’s letter to Oecolampadius in 1530. Just to mention several of the others among the twelve brought up with Oecolampadius and the forty-seven brought up with Bucer rounds out the picture of the Cottian Waldensians in the first third of the Reformation century. They were troubled about whether they should in any respect submit to those set in authority over the world, for example, in the adjudication of a ltercations among Waldensians; whether the capital punishment of m urderers, thieves, and other malefactors was Christian in view of t he prophetic declaration (Ezek. 33:11) that God desires not the death of the sinner but that he be saved and live; whether the civil authority is of God; whether it be permitted to counsel the brethren to kill a f alse brother who turns informer and discloses to the inquisitors or magistrates the place of sojourn of the barbs and thereby threatens the whole community. 31 With the foregoing characterization of t he theology and practices of the Cottian Waldensians on the eve of their beginning to turn Protestant, we may resume our narrative. Masson was arrested on the way to Neuchâtel, but Morel escaped to confer with William Farel and Anthony Saulnier (Saunier) at Neuchâtel and Morat. Returning to Provence, Morel worked energetically in behalf of the Swiss Protestant cause. Numerous debates were held among the distinguishable parties, namely, the traditionalists, the “Hussites,” and the “Protestants,” by now largely Reformed in orientation. On 12 September 1532, many barbs, including some from Apulia, gathered in assembly under the chestnut trees of Cianforan in the Angrogna valley, with Farel, Saulnier, and Peter Robert Olivétan in attendance. 32 Morel’s work had been thorough, and the synod adopted a new confession of faith

30

 The anecdote, referring to our per iod, was recounted by Barb Gir olamo Miolo of Pinerolo, Historia breve e vera degl’affari dei Valdesi delle Valli (1587), reported by Gonnet, “Il movimento valdese in Europa secondo le piu recenti ricerche,” BSSV 58, no. 100 (1956): 22–30, esp. 27–28. 31  Staehelin, Briefe und Akten, 507; Herzog, Waldenser, 350–51. Cf. above, n. 11. 32  Accounts of this major e vent are by Jean Jalla, “Le Synode de Chanforan,” BSSV no. 58 (1932): 34–48; Ernesto Buonaiuti, “Il Sinodo di Chanforan,” Ricerche Religiose 10 (1934): 85; Giovanni Gonnet, “Les relations des Vaudois des Alpes avec les Réfor mateurs en 1532,” BHR 23 (1961): 34–52; Valdo Vinay, “Der Anschluss der romanischen Waldenser an die Reformation und seine theologische Bedeutung,” Theologische Literaturezeitung 87 (1962): 90–100; Giovanni Gonnet, “Le confessioni di fide valdesi prima della Refor me,” BSSV no. 117 (1965): 61–95; Molnár, Valdesi, ch. 8 with the Declaration of Cianforan in Valdo Vinay, Le Confessioni di fide dei

814  the radical reformation

chapter 21.2

which included the Reformed doctrine of predestination. The assembly formally renounced all recognition of the Roman Church, accepted clerical marriage, and ordered communal worship to be henceforth open and public in defiance of Rome. Farel was the dominant figure at Cianforan, persuading the barbs to accept the Zwinglian interpretation of the Supper and the marriage of ministers. The Cottian Waldensians, on becoming now nominally Protestant, preserved certain older practices, for example, the name “barb,” and some of his traditional functions, and also their pacifism, where this had not been already Taborized. Fifteen hundred gold écus were set aside for the publication of a n ew French translation of t he Bible. To Olivétan was delegated the task of preparing it. A conservative minority, headed by two barbs, Daniel of Valence and John of M olines, broke away in exasperation, and took with them the ancient documents of the Waldensian brotherhood, and apparently Morel’s articles. Going to Mladá Boleslav (the seat of Brother Luke until his death in 1528), they besought the counsel of Brother John Augusta and others, who wrote back to the Waldensians 33 to continue their dialogue with the Swiss spokesmen of the Second Reformation but warned them, in agreement presumably with both Daniel and John, not to yield on religious-civic issues clarified by the First Reformation (Waldensians and the Unity). 34 But another Waldensian Consilium at Prali (near Pinerolo) in 1533 confirmed the decisions reached at Cianforan. Robert Olivétan’s preface to the new translation of the Bible is dated “The Alps, 12 February 1535.” This became the model of a ll subsequent French Protestant versions. 35 In the Cottian Alps, the Protestant faction had prevailed. The Protestantized Waldensians now received French pastors from the academy of Lausanne, who gradually remodeled the services in the Cottian Alps after those in Switzerland. Not all the Italian Waldensians were able to make the abrupt transition from medieval sectarianism to Protestantism. Some conventicles in the lower Po valley from Paesana to Venice and all of the Waldensian colonies

Valdesi Riformati (Turin: Claudiana, 1975), doc. 8, 139–42. Most recently, Cameron, Waldensians of the Alps, holds that the synod of Cianforan w as not decisive and that it took another genera tion for the credentes to break from their Nicodemite practice of outw ardly conforming to the Catholic parish life. Gabriel Audisio with tables supports this revisionism, “Chanforan 1532: Quel Changement,” BSSV no. 154 (1984): 25–38. See also Gio vanni Gonnet, “Chanforan e la sto riografico Valdese,” no. 154 (1984): 3–23; idem “Sulla Cosidetta ‘protestantizzazione’ di Valdesi Alpini,” no. 157 (1985): 53–58. 33  Letter printed by Aimé Louis Herminjard, Correspondance des Réformateurs dans les pays de langue française 3 (Geneva/Paris, 1870), 63ff. 34  The views of John Augusta on the dialogue between the First and Second Reformations are presented in Molnár, “Vaudois et l’Unité.” 35  Olivétan died in Ferrara in 1538.

chapter 21.2

waldenians & evangelicals, 1510–1542  815

in Calabria and Apulia until 1556 declined to comply with the decision of the majority congregated in the Alps. More exposed than their Alpine confrères to the hazards of municipal, episcopal, and (after 1542) papal inquisition, they could not afford to make so public their testimony, and chose to survive as a loose network of popular dissent. These remnants of late medieval conventicular life, receptive alike to Protestant, Valdesian, Spiritualist, and Servetian theology and speculation, may be characterized as likely recruits for an incipient Antitrinitarian Anabaptism (Chs. 21.2; 22.2). This loose and still incompletely understood analogue to what we have seen developing alongside the Magisterial Reformation, as in Switzerland, or in an officially Catholic environment, as in the Netherlands, came to stress in the Po valley and the encircling Alpine valleys certain Italian features that tended to be marginal elsewhere in the Radical Reformation, namely, predestinarianism, eucharistic fellowship meals, psychopannychism, and Antitrinitarianism. Though the relationship of the Waldensians and the Radical Reformation is still a m oot question, it is of i nterest to note that the Waldensians before their conversion to Protestantism held much the same view as the Anabaptists did of the atoning work of Christ, and this would have remained true in all likelihood of t hose who refused to come under direct Helvetic tutelage. For the Cottian Waldensians, Christ’s Passion removed the guilt of original sin from all humanity, leaving the forgiveness of actual sins to such Dominically instituted means as confession to a barb or mutual confession of the barbs among themselves.36 Hence, for many of the Cottian Waldensians the baptism of i nfants without actual sins was regarded as unnecessary for their salvation in the case of premature death. As one reflects further on the possibility of c ontinuity between Waldensianism and Italian Anabaptism, one is prompted to conjecture that it would have been only a s tep from the Waldensian ordination of a young barb as a p astoral perfectus on confession of f aith to the Anabaptist penitential rebaptism (cf. that of Blaurock, from the Grisons, Ch. 6.1). The first Anabaptists, to speak schematically, needed only to combine (1) the Zwinglian-Lutheran stress on sin and faith with (2) the clerical Waldensian practice of mutual confession, (3) the Unitas practice of rebaptism, and (4) the Waldensian ordination of the perfectus as a roving missionary under discipline and thereby produce the penitential outcry of the typical Anabaptist convert, his or her martyr-missionary zeal, and the covenantal vow to lead a righteous life. On this view, rebaptism would be a k ind of reordination to the priesthood of t he perfect or the elect. It is almost certain that the assumption of t he quasi-ministerial duty of p ublic testimony among the Anabaptists and the missionary mobility of their charismatic leaders, traveling about in pairs, especially in Italy, along with the occasional practice 36

 Staehelin, Briefe und Akten, 505.

816  the radical reformation

chapter 21.2 / 21.3

of acquiring at rebaptism or regeneration a new name, again very common among the Italian Anabaptists, perpetuate in a n ew guise long familiar Waldensian usage. We turn now from the Protestantized Waldensians to Italian Anabaptists, from the Cottian Alps we go to the Dolomites.

3. Anabaptists in South Tyrol and the Venetian Republic, 1525–153337 The rise of Italian-speaking Anabaptists can best be followed in the region of the headwaters of t he Adige river (Alto Adige, Südtirol). The Adige flowing into the Adriatic south of Venice and the Inn flowing into the Danube, constituted the principal river systems of the County of Tyrol. Under Ferdinand as Landesfürst (1520–64) Anabaptism in the Inn valley and its tributaries, as an important regional variant of Germanic Anabaptism, has been dealt with elsewhere (Ch. 7.5). Of special interest, however, is the extension southward of t his movement from the upper, Germanspeaking valleys of the Adige (Etsch) and its principal tributaries, the Eisack (Isarco) and the Rienza (Rienz), because the descent of t he valleys into Italian-speaking regions and notably into the religiously most tolerant of Italian territories, the Venetian Republic (Ch. 22.2.a), meant that originally Germanic Anabaptism would, before the close of the last phase of the Tyrolese Peasants’ War, have its Italian counterpart not only in the South Tyrol but also on the Lombard plain. Italian- and Ladin-speaking peasants, miners, and petty burghers in the upper Noce valley and in the Adige valley from Trent down to Nagaredo and over into the upper valley of the Brenta (Val Sugana) fully participated in the Tyrolese Peasants’ War (Ch. 4.3.e).38 Adapted Italian versions of the Merano Articles of 1525 and of the twenty-three peasant articles of Rattenberg to be found in archives in Brescia 39 testify to their participation in the 37  Henry A. DeWind, “Anabaptism in Italy ,” CH 21 (1951): 26–38; Aldo Stella, Dall’Anabattismo al Socinanesimo nel Cinquecento Veneto, Ricerche storiche (Padua: Liviana, 1967); Aldo Stella, Anabattismo e antitr initarismo in Italia nel XVI seeolo: Nuove ricerehe storiche (Padua: Liviana, 1969) and two collective volumes: the previously cited A. Biondi et al., Eresia e Riforma (1974), and Antonio Rotondò, Studi e Ricerehe di storia ereticale italiana del Cinquecento with eight studies by the author and thirteen documents (Turin: Giappechelli, 1974), of which the first study is in a broad sense a critique of my Radical Reformation, 1st ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1962); and my own “Two Social Strands in Italian Anabaptism c. 1550,” The Social History of the Reformation, ed. Lawrence P. Buck and Jonathan W. Zophy (Columbus: University of Ohio Press, 1972), 156–207. For a general study, particularly rich on Italian Anabaptism, see Ugo Gastaldi, Storia del’Anabattesimo, Studi Storici, 2 vols. (Turin: Claudiana, 1972/81). 38  Macek, Gaismair, map 6. The whole of Macek’s book is discussed b y Leandro Perini, “La guerra dei contadini nel Tirolo,” Studi Storici 7 (1966): 388–400. 39  “Gravimenti deli com uni di paesani del contà de Tirol,” June 1525; Acta Tirolensia, 3, Quellen zur Geschichte des Bauer nkriegs in Deutschtirol 1525 1, ed. Hermann Wopfner (Innsbruck, 1908), 47–50; cf. Stella, Cinquecento veneto, 13 n. 8. The Rottenberg articles in Italian and the Venetian dialect are published by Paolo Guerrini, “I Postulati della Rifor ma nell’Alta Italia,” Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia 1 (1947): 292–93. The full identification is by Perini,

chapter 21.3

waldenians & evangelicals, 1510–1542  817

constitutional program of M ichael Gaismair. And after his flight to Padua under Venetian protection, Anabaptists in Brixen, for example, in 1527 eagerly awaited his return to carry out his grand design for social justice.40 It is noteworthy in trying to visualize the onset of Italian Anabaptism, that the vivid chronicler George Kirchmaier, writing from the vantage point of pontifical Brixen (Brissanone) below the Brenner Pass, first mentioned the rise of Anabaptists in the paragraph immediately following an entry on the ten thousand “walisch Petler” streaming into his region from Venetian territory in May 1528.41 These Italian beggars, as he loftily called the wretched war refugees following the Sack of Rome would readily have yielded to radical preachers of social justice. As in Germany so in the episcopal territories of Brixen and Trent in the South Tyrol, despair at the failure of an in-part religiously motivated peasants’ uprising with constitutional as well as economic demands would lead to further social alienation even more intensely religious, manifest in Anabaptist withdrawal into disciplined conventicles for mutual aid. We have already characterized the valleys of the Tyrol as the most prolific spawning grounds of the Anabaptist movement. Coming downstream with the Inn, we need but recall the names of such leaders as John Schlaffer martyred at Schwaz, Leonard Schiemer martyred at Rattenberg, and Pilgram Marpeck converted at Rattenberg—all about 1528. Coming downstream with the Adige and its tributaries we evoke equally impressive names. George Blaurock, who baptized Conrad Grebel in Zurich in January 1525 (Ch. 6.1), born in Bonaduz just over the mountains in Rhaetia from the headwaters of the Adige, was put to death in 1529 on his mission in Guff idaun (Gudon) on the Isarco well south of Brixen (Bressanone), in a martyrdom witnessed by the youthful Peter Walpot, destined to become the head of the Hutterites (Ch. 26.3). Jacob Hutter himself (Ch. 16.1), converted in 1526, was born near Bruneck (Brunico) on the Rienza. Ulrich Stadler (Ch. 16.3) was born in Brixen and was a mine official in Sterzing (Vipiteno) before his conversion. We do not have the names of the first Italian and Ladin–speaking Anabaptists, only geographical references to conventicles in the Upper Adige in 1525, in Merano and Bolzano in 1529, in the diocese of Trent in 1530, whence they fled up the Val di Fiemme and into Venetian territory.42 It is Studi Storici 7 (1966): 398–99. C. Giuliani published in Latin, Italian, and German for the territory of the bishop of Trem “Documenti per la guer ra rustica nel Trentino,” Archivio Trentino 3 (1884): 95–116 and thereafter in 6, 8, 9, 12, 40 (1893). See comprehensively, Aldo Stella, La rivoluzione contadina del 1525 e l’utopia di Michael Gaismayr (Padua: Liviana, 1975). 40  Diocesan archives of Brixen, noted by Stella, Cinquecento veneto, 17 n. 20. 41  “Denkwürdigkeiten seiner Zeit, 1519–1553,” ed. Thomas von Georg Karajan, Fontes Rerum Austriacarum, Abteilung 1, Scriptores 1 (Vienna, 1855), 481–82. 42  Edouard Widmoser, “Das Tiroler Täufertum,” Tiroler Heimat: Jahrbuch für Geschichte und Volkskunde 15 (1952): 45–89, esp. 60–61. Wirhout giving the exact date; Stella mentions also

818  the radical reformation

chapter 21.3

plausible that these Italian Anabaptists would eventually have thought of Moravia as a place of refuge no less than did their Tyrolese confrères further up the valleys. It is noteworthy in any case that within a decade of the lapse at Cianforan in 1532 of relations between the Cottian Waldensians with the Unity in Bohemia (Ch. 21.1), Tridentine and Venetian Anabaptists would be making their way thither, mostly to join the Hutterites, largely fellow Tyrolese, in Moravian communitarian colonies (Ch. 22.5). The first Italian Anabaptist of w hom the name and particulars survive is Master Anthony Marangone, a c arpenter of t he Rialto district of Venice, tried at the beginning of M ay 1533 and sentenced to life imprisonment 2 June 1535.43 The title of m aster may have more to do with his headship of a s chool than his status as a c arpenter, and vaguely suggests northern Waldensian usage. He comported himself with dignity throughout the year’s hearings. One associate attending Holy Trinity parish with him was a c ertain twenty-five-year-old “foreigner, red, … ingenious person, strong Lutheran,”44 who seems to have communicated some ideas to Anthony along with “several Germans.” Saxon Lutherans would never have acknowledged Anthony as their own! But local Venetian philo-Protestants in high places appear to have been sympathetic with his cause; and, in any case, the abundant testimony from Anthony, his humble followers (whom he instructed gathered in front of h is cell sometimes up to as many as fifty), and the parochial clergy from whom he had suddenly turned, provide invaluable documentation of t he transition in an Italian conventicular atmosphere from Lutheranism to Anabaptism. One of t he distinctive marks of this Lutheran-derived Italian Anabaptism was firm adhesion to the doctrine of predestination and salvation by f aith alone without free wil1.45 Anthony defended in interesting ways the priesthood of a ll believers and held that Peter was the only pope. He eschewed infant baptism and then espoused adult rebaptism46 more as a s ign of w ithdrawing from Rome than as constitutive of a congregational covenant. Spiritualizing, Anthony Caldaro and Egna as early having Anabaptist conventicles Cinquecento veneto, 21. 43  Master Antonio Marangone was in the Venetian dialect called “cormorant” = carpenter. The extensive documentation of his case, some of it stemming fr om the papal nuncio sent to Venice in March 1533, Girolamo Aleandro, is edited by Franco Gaeta, “Documenti da Codici Vaticani per la Storia della Riforma inVenezia,” Annuario dell’Istituto Storico Italiano per l’Età Moderna e Contemporanea 7 (1955): 3–53; Stella, Cinquecento veneto, 26–28. 44  Anthony’s hearing, doc. 11, the testimony of the priest of Holy Trinity, ed. Gaeta, Storico Italiano, 33. The redheaded Lutheran is called “un altro forastier.” This need not mean more than that both the “red” Lutheran and Anthony were not of Venice. 45  Anthony’s heresies, doc. 19, arts. 6,7, edited by Gaeta, Storico Italiano, 40:6,“Non habet homo liberum arbitrium” and 40:7,“Bona opera non sunt meritoria prescitis, nec mala demeritoria predestinatis.” 46  Gaeta, Storico Italiano, doc. 20, 41 where Anthony is pressed with the charges against him,“An credat pueros debere baptizari; An sciat aliquem dogmatizare quod non puer i sed adulti dumtaxat baptizandi sint et quod hac ratione velit rebaptizari.” Anthony only withheld his children from baptism, he is not known to have himself submitted to rebaptism.

chapter 21.3 / 21.4

waldenians & evangelicals, 1510–1542  819

apparently believed in the possibility of Spiritual communion at the parish Mass.47 He denied purgatory and apparently held that souls go straight to paradise or to hell.48 He indirectly disavowed the Trinity.49

4. John Valdés in the Kingdom of Naples, 1534–1541 We turn from the Republic of Venice under merchant princes, tolerant toward local manifestations of P rotestant ferment, to the Kingdom of Naples under Spanish authority. Here a Valdesian Evangelism moved within the context of monastic reform and aristocratic lay devotional circles with philanthropic concern for the poor. In some of t hese conventual and lay circles, Valdesianism became theologically and socially radical. With this Valdesianism came philoJudaic, universalistic, and prophetic impulses that in some way surely derive from Spanish and Portuguese Marranos. Proponents of b oth moderate and radical versions of Valdesianism found their way into numerous centers in the north (Ch. 22.3), priests and friars among them settling down as Reformed ministers in Rhaetia and as conventicular leaders in other parts of the peninsula. We last met the brothers John and Alphonse Valdés when the latter, with Servetus, was in attendance at the imperial coronation in Bologna in 1530 (Ch. 1.5). John, it will be recalled, left Spain because of the heretical character of h is Dialogo. He arrived in Rome by 2 6 August 1531. He resided at the papal court as an agent of t he Emperor and by 3 O ctober 1532, “Chamberlain of the Pope” as well as “Secretary to the Emperor.”50 He may have owed these positions partly to the influence of his brother and of the Spanish humanist, then resident in Rome, Juan Ginés Sepúlveda. John Valdés served under Clement VII and briefly under Paul III. For some reason, both Popes conferred prebends in Spain on Valdés, in San Clemente in Cartegena and its namesake in his native Cuenca. Though referred to as clericus, he must have been in lower orders if any,51 for he lived and dressed as a layman. At court he met and influenced the protonotary apostolic Peter Carnesecchi, destined to be martyred as an Evangelical. He visited the court in Mantua after Alphonse died in October 1532, and there met Ercole Cardinal Gonzaga (Ch. 1.4), who became an intimate friend.

47  Ibid., “An aliquando dix erit quod … astantes communicantur sacramentaliter, precise sicut ille [sacerdos].” 48  Ibid., doc. 21, 42. 49  Ibid., doc. 19, art. 12: “Non est Spiritus Sanctus, sed unus solus Deus.” 50  The basic source for Valdés’ Roman sojourn is the modern edition of Oddone Ortolani, Pietro Carnesecchi: Con estratti dagli Atti del Processo del Santo Officio (Florence: Le Monnier, 1963). For the Roman per iod, see José Nieto, Juan de Valdés, 142–8, and his comments on Teresa of Avila, 41–153. 51  See, e.g. a letter of Paul III in 1536 to Valdés, Juan Meseguer Fernández, “Nuevos Datos sobre los Hermanos Valdés,” Hispanis 17, no. 68 (1957): 392, doc. 7. Nieto answers the question “Was Juan de Valdés an Ordained Priest?” BHR 33 (1970): 603–6, with a “no.”

820  the radical reformation

chapter 21.4

Although moving easily in curial and imperial circles, John Valdés carried over into Rome and then his new home Naples the memories of his father’s involvement in the struggle of the Comuneros to uphold the ancient liberties of the Cuenca and other burghers against royal absolutism, and these memories sensitized him to concerns for social justice.52 Suddenly he left for Naples, his base from 1535 until his death in 1541, and the scene of his greatest literary and religious activity.53 Here he lived at a villa in Chiaja and entertained his friends and disciples. Here he wrote his humanistic Dialogue on Language (1535), which shows his close familiarity with the Pauline corpus. He came into contact with Cardinal Gonzaga’s sister, Duchess Julia Gonzaga, widowed for eight years and still only twentytwo. She was renowned for her beauty and personality, her fame having received additional luster in 1534 when the pirate Barbarossa attempted to kidnap her to present her to the Sultan. Admired and courted, she persevered in her religious quest, and knew how to maintain her masculine friendships on an elevated plane, overcoming and spiritualizing the emotions which she involuntarily engendered. She was the presiding spirit of an evangelical salon when Valdés became her spiritual adviser in 1536. He dedicated all his Neapolitan works to her (except for the two that remained unfinished at his death). The Italian editor of h is posthumous One Hundred and Ten Divine Considerations 54 called Valdés “doctor and pastor of n oble and illustrious persons.” Even Theodore Beza, for a t ime suspicious of Valdés and condemnatory of the Considerations, finally acknowledged his religious meeting as “the gathering of the Christian Church in Naples.”55 Peter Carnesecchi, who left Rome at the same time as Valdés, unhesitatingly called the evangelical network in and around Naples “the Kingdom of God.” After a Lenten sermon in 1533 by Bernardine Ochino in San Giovanni Maggiore, Lady Julia Gonzaga and Valdés engaged in a dialogue, set down later that evening from memory by Valdés at her request. It was translated into Tuscan and presented to her as the renowned Christian Alphabet (1536),

52  Daniel A. Crews, “Juan de Valdés and the Comunero Revolt: An Essay on Spanish Civic Humanism,” Sixteenth Century Journal 22 (1991): 233–52. See also Ch. 1.2.a. 53  For the backg round of religious change in Naples and Sicily , see Salvatore Caponetto, “Origini e caratteri della Reforma in Sicilia,” Rinascimento 7 (1956): 219–330. For Naples see Angel Castellán, “Juan de Valdés y el círculo de Nápoles,” Cuadernos de Historia de España, 35–36 (1962): 202–73; 37-38 (1963): 199–291; also Benedetto Croce, History of the Kingdom of Naples (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), who wrote: “There was in short a religious ferment which seems a forerunner of the national and religious upheavals of Flanders,” p. 112–13. 54  Celio Secondo Curione, ed. (Basel, 1550). 55  For the arguments in favor of calling Valdés’ fellowship “Valdesian Church” instead of, as commonly in the literature, “Valdesian Circle,” see Nieto, Juan de Valdés, 162–66.

chapter 21.4

waldenians & evangelicals, 1510–1542  821

an introduction to the way of “Christian perfection.”56 In his Spanish Dialogue, John had addressed the whole Christian world; in the Alphabet, a single soul. This handbook of t he Christian life seemingly propounds a simple, ethical devotion. It unfolds, in the form of questions and answers, some of the basic ideas of the Diálogo de doctrina cristiana (Ch. 1.4). It elaborates the dialectic of t he Law and the Gospel (officio de la Ley, officio del Evangelio) as instrumental in awakening the conscience to the experience of sin and grace.57 Besides the themes of classical Protestant thought, the Alfabeto also deals with the threefold knowledge of God 58 (only implicit in the Diálogo) and now set forth in the context of the Apostles’ Creed: So that what you now confess by obedience, subjecting your understanding, you will then confess with some experience. For … when you have within yourself such experience, yours will be a l iving and true faith, because you will have the experience of it within yourself.59 This understanding of f aith not as obedience but as experience shows Valdés’ independence of Catholic tradition and authority. It is also in the Alfabeto that Valdés first introduces the dejado term of t he “benefit of t he Passion of Christ” (el beneficio de la pasión de Cristo), which will become a capital motif in the Italian Reformation. In his later work, the CX Considerations, Valdés develops his distinctive ideas.60 In Valdés’ theological piety, doctrine is not a concept, but an ethical reality and a psychological experience. In order to understand dogma, one dare not rely on reason alone, for the lights of reason, if they are not brought into focus together with the divine illumination, can easily lead to error. Valdés considers human prudence an adversary on the road to Christian perfection. Those who follow Holy Scripture alone walk with a single candle; those who are illuminated by the Spirit of God walk in the full light of the sun. He who has arrived at faith by revelation of the Holy Spirit no longer has need of the authority of Scripture.61 After establishing 56

 Edited by Benjamin Wiffen (London, 1861); SAW, 351–90. For a modern Spanish text, see that by B. Foster Stockwell, ed., (Buenos Aires: La Aurora, 1948), based on that of Luis Usoz y Rio (London, 1861); for the Italian, see that of Benedetto Croce (Bari, 1938). For the life of Julia, see Bainton, Women of the Reformation, 1: ch. 10. 57  Stockwell, ed. Alfabeto, 55–58. 58  Ibid., 106–8. 59 59  Ibid., 112, 115. 60  For the editio princeps in Italian,see no. 47. Usoz y Rio retranslated the Italian in Reformistas Antíguos Españoles (henceforth RAE) 11, 17 (Madrid, 1855; 1863). Important, though secondary, is José Ignacio, ed., Las ciento diez divinas consideraciones: Recensión inédita de Juan Sánc hez 1558, with notes, on the basis of a manuscript from Spain, now in the Vatican Library, Tellechea Idígoras (Salamanca: Seminaro de Vitoria, 1975). There is also the moder n Italian version by Edmondo Cione (Milan, 1944). 61  Considerations, 63. On reason illumined, see Nieto, Juan de Valdés, 210–25.

822  the radical reformation

chapter 21.4

the principle of right understanding, Valdés goes on to consider the nature and meaning of the Atonement. Among other seminal ideas in the Considerations are reflections on the Atonement, destined to be developed by several Italians, notably Bernardine Ochino and Faustus Socinus, and to become the distinctive mark of Socianism (Ch. 24.4). For Valdés, the Atonement is considered from two aspects: (1) as the divine good work in forgiving and redeeming man (beneficio de Christo, beneficium); and (2) as the human experience and assurance of this forgiveness and the change which it works within the individual, the “Christian transaction” (negocio cristiano). When he first took up the theory of the Atonement in the Diálogo and even in the Alfabeto, Valdés nominally adhered to the Anselmian theory as modified in the course of s cholastic theology, but in the Considerations and biblical commentaries (especially on Matthew) he moved on to stress the more subjective or psychological aspect, understanding salvation as the personal appropriation of the transaction, the negocio cristiano or the radical justification through the experience of the beneficio. He twice gave related parables of the fall and redemption of humankind (Cf. Rol, Ch. 12.1). It is as though subjects rebelled against their king and he casts them out of his kingdom and condemns them to death; but moved by compassion, he executes the rigor of his justice upon his son, and announces a patent (patente) of amnesty to the reprobates, by which he invites them to return to the kingdom from which they have been exiled. Instead of their trusting in the satisfaction which his son has offered for them,62 instead of their accepting the patent and returning joyfully, too many of them in their skeptical rationalism scrutinize it to ascertain whether the seal is of gold or copper, while others, excessively prone to the piety of external works, occupy themselves with adorning and adoring it, and in effect remain deprived of the kingdom and of the grace of the king. Failing to make use of the patent as divinely intended, they solicit by other means to obtain the boon which the king has already granted them. Too many false Christians, forgetting the original sense of the “patent,” fail to see that since Christ died for the sin of humankind, the immutable justice of God is the guarantee of s alvation because God, being just, will not exact double punishment.63 The death of Christ has the character of a g uarantee or a s eal (señal, sello) of m an’s justification. The psychological and ethical effect of the Atonement is paramount in Valdés’ analysis. The objective divine action is the indubitable divine guarantee (garantia) of man’s justification: It was necessary that Christ should manifest and feel all this weakness, in order that I might be certain that God executed the rigor of His justice—which should have been executed upon my 62 63

 Considerations, 13, 38.  Ibid., 11.

chapter 21.4

waldenians & evangelicals, 1510–1542  823

flesh—upon a flesh as passible as my own, and that He should thus confirm me in the faith of t he gospel, that I s hould believe that things actually are, as they are intimated to me in the gospel, which intimation is based upon Christ’s suffering; whilst the foundation or basis is so much the firmer, in proportion as the suffering was the more rigorous.64 The pledge that the punishment has been once for all exacted and will not be demanded of h umankind a s econd time is the good news (gospel) of truly evangelical preaching. The comparison above of the king and his son, he writes, ought to be made at once by the person who is coming to know evangelical preaching which is like a p atent, by w hich God graciously and freely pardons all the unworthiness on account of which we are in exile and outside his kingdom; and whereby he enables us to turn (volvér) to enter into it and to recover his grace and with it his image and likeness.65 Valdés repeatedly asserts the importance to the believer of the guarantee implied in the crucifixion: “God, in executing the rigor of his justice upon Christ, was more intent upon giving me assurance than satisfaction to himself.”66 The Atonement as an objective fact was effected through Christ as very God (although human reason cannot comprehend the manner of the divine generation, any more than the worm can understand human generation).67 According to this divine generation, Christ is the Word of God, the Son of God, of the same substance as the Father, one with the Father, coeternal. Indeed, not only man is restored by his sacrifice, but also the whole created world, which should therefore intone a hymn of thanksgiving to God for the favor of Christ: “As the first Adam, in submitting all human beings to misery and to death, estranged all creatures, so the second Adam … leading all men to felicity and to eternal life, will restore all creatures.”68 We have reached the point in our exposition where it is helpful to acknowledge that Valdés was not wholly consistent about his theory of atonement, justification, and sanctification even within the same text of works of his mature thought. Valdés can say: “therefore I understand that it was no less God’s intent, in executing the rigor of his justice upon Christ, 64  Edward Boehmer, ed., EI Evangelio según San Mateo (Madrid, 1880), 27:45–50, p. 516; On Saint Matthew’s Gospel, tr. John T. Betts (London, 1882), 484–85. 65  Considerations, 38. 66  Boehmer, San Mateo, 26:17–30, p. 484; On Saint Matthew’s Gospel, 457. 67  Considerations, 109. 68  Considerations, 87. In the r eference to the r estoration of all cr eatures, Valdés does not specify how this may take place for animals, but is following Isa. 65:17–25; Rom. 8:19–23.

824  the radical reformation

chapter 21.4

to assure me than to satisfy himself.”69 The meaning of this cannot be other than that the affirmation of t he intention of G od in executing his justice on Christ was twofold: to satisfy divine justice and to assure man (Valdés) that through this satisfaction the assurance of forgiveness, as experienced by a believer subjectively, was also an objective divine reality and not vain theological imagination. The grammatical structure of t he proposition in the form given is balanced. However, there are variants of the proposition which clearly stress the subjective human assurance of forgiveness and minimize the need of God to satisfy divine justice, e.g.: “It was more God’s intent, in executing the rigor of his justice upon Christ, to assure me than to satisfy himself.” 70 As the balanced and the imbalanced texts occur in the same works, Valdés was apparently unaware of inconsistency, and some of his more radical followers, including Bernardine Ochino (Ch 21.5), will find only the most minimal vestige of a theory of satisfaction useful while stressing the experience of forgiveness and justification and sanctification. Just as Valdés saw that Christ as man had gone through three stages of the ignominy of death, the resurrection, and the glorification in heaven, so also the ordinary person will proceed. He began his analysis of the human being with a description of the original perfection in Paradise,71 in which state each human being was impassible and immortal. Having lost this immortality through sin, a person can regain it only by sharing with Christ in Christ’s three stages of humanity. Valdés speaks of a threefold covenant72 which binds the believer to Christ throughout each stage of the objective and subjective redemptive process, whereby a reascent to the original glory ante peccatum is achieved, though not fully until the Kingdom of Heaven is reached. The Christian, through incorporation into Christ, dies with him, rises with him to the new life of the Christian on earth, and then to the perfected life with him in glory in eternity. Commenting on Romans 4:7–8, Valdés writes: And as much as they believe in Christ, they believe in him in the pact (pacto) and covenant (confederación) which he interposed (puso) between God [the Father] and those men who are washed in his blood; and, believing this, they are held justified, and without holding back from the love and obedience of justice, they hope for

69

 Considerations, 24.  This variant does not appear in Considerations; it first appears in A los Romanos, 4:25, ed. Usoz y Rio, 61, then in Boehmer, ed., San Mateo, 26:17–30, 484. 71  Considerations, 1. 72  Ibid., 8. 70

chapter 21.4

waldenians & evangelicals, 1510–1542  825

its fulfillment, which is the resurrection, the glorification, and the life eternal. 73 Though Valdés here mentions the new covenant, he does not always clearly specify the manner of i ncorporation into the covenanted community, whether by baptism, by the Eucharist, by faith, or by various combinations of devout and sacramental actions. Of baptism Valdés wrote that Christians are “incorporated by faith and by baptism into the only-begotten Son of God.” 74 As to how he understood that baptism, he writes: We, who have been baptized as infants, then begin inwardly to feel the fruit of baptism, when through divine inspiration, we with the heart accept the grace of t he gospel, and so approve of o ur having been baptized; that had we not been baptized, we would be baptized; we resolve to live Christianly, and we imitate Christ by putting an end to all ambition and personal satisfaction.75 Valdés was aware of the prevailing practice of the ancient Church in giving extended instruction before baptism, and it was his counsel that, ideally, baptism should be given only after adequate catechism and exercise in the devout life.76 In the case of the majority of Christians who were baptized in infancy, Valdés urged, as we have seen, that the growing knowledge of the faith should be sealed by some inner act of grateful acceptance and resolution “to live Christianly,” “by imitating Christ.” It is clear that the relationship with Christ is not limited to the oncefor-all redemption of a ll humankind by h is sacrificial death. Christ is in a continuous, vital, and dynamic communication with those who in fact attain personal justification, i.e., sanctification. Valdés symbolizes the relation with numerous metaphors, some of which indicate a particular function of Christ, others of which refer to the spiritual life of the individual soul. Christ is the pastor, the gate of piety, the way of t he knowledge of God, the physician. He is, above all, the King of the people of God and

73  La Epístola de San P ablo a los Romanos , 4:23–25, 61. It may be helpful to note that as similar as are Valdés and Faustus Socinus on the Atonement, the one assumes the loss of a pr imordial immortality, the other sees Christ as the first human being ever to have been accorded immortality as psychopomp for others at the close of the age and the resurrection and reanimation of the righteous dead. 74  On St. Matthew’s Gospel, 28:16–20, 537. 75  Ibid., 505–6, 534. 76  This observation in San Mateo is important. After explaining adult baptism by the Apostles and the primitive Church,Valdés adds: “[A]nd it seems necessary to be done that way” (y parece que es necesario que se hagi asi, 535). Then he refers to a now lost text (una respuesta) where he dealt with the subject. He is willing to accept infant and adult baptism and does treat of rebaptism.

826  the radical reformation

chapter 21.4

the Head of the Church.77 Valdés loves most of all the metaphor of Christ as the Head: Exactly as my head sends power (virtúd) through all my members, which are sustained and governed thereby, so from Christ comes the power to all those who belong to the Church, so that they are all sustained and governed by those divine gifts which are imparted to them by Christ.78 Significantly, this Iberian individualist domiciled in Naples does not stress the idea that all the members form a s ingle mystical body, concentrating instead on Christ as the head of the assembly of devout individuals.79 The beneficio of Christ has radically justified humankind, but it is necessary to examine the manner in which this justification is enjoyed by t he individual. Radical justification needs to be converted into actual and personal justification by the above-mentioned communication. In his last books, Valdés devotes considerable attention to the problem of how general justification becomes sanctification of t he individual. Negatively, it consists in the experience of the divine forgiveness of one’s sins. On the positive side, the believer, once justified and reconciled with God, is no longer a son or daughter of wrath, progeny of the fallen Adam and Eve, but is reborn a child of God, and again obtains and shows forth the image of God which had been lost, together with the right to receive eternal life by “grace of inheritance.”80 For Valdés, justification means, in effect, sanctification as experienced regeneration. Incorporation into Christ through faith (and baptism) has tangible results in the life of the regenerate. One cannot obtain the grace of regeneration through one’s own labors; but once one has been granted it, one must, por necessidad, bring forth fruits of r epentance. Again and again, Valdés stresses the origin of justification in a phrase which is found in all his last works: the believer enjoys justification “through the justice of God, executed in Christ.” The act of justification which Christ offered, 81 to God is entirely sufficient without ecclesiastical addenda. Valdés speaks, however, ambiguously of the manner in which one becomes justified, saying at times that justification is freely given by Christ, and at other times that one must personally appropriate it by meritorious behavior. In the same passage in which he says, “God makes them just,” he also

77

 Domingo de Santa Theresa, Valdés, 170.  Considerations, 75. 79  Domingo de Santa Theresa, Valdés, 171. For further analysis of “union” and “incorporation” in Christ and their significance for “the corporate life in Christ,” see Nieto, Valdés, 273–78. 80  Edward Böhmer, ed., Trattatelli sui principio della dottrina cristiana (Halle an der Saale, 1870), 55. 81  Ibid., 55, in the preterit tense with the emphasis of “once for all.” 78

chapter 21.4

waldenians & evangelicals, 1510–1542  827

says that they are “accepted by God as just.”82 Or again: “I must either know myself to be just in Christ, although I recognize myself a sinner in myself or I must deny what the Gospel affirms,” which is similar to Luther’s simul justus et peccator.83 While in the Dialogo and Alphabet Valdés had spoken of faith as living faith, in his later works, he would describe faith as inspired faith, with the stress on its supernatural origin, without the possibility of its being earned by human endeavor. He tends, however, to eschew predestination as is seen in his commentary on Matthew 24:37–49. In his circle of f riends in Naples, Valdés engendered an evangelicalism which came close to some of t he doctrines of c lassical Protestantism. He had perhaps even more in common as a c elibate lay theologian with Schwenckfeld and his movement of evangelical spirituality except that Valdés never found occasion to advocate suspension of the sacramental life. But his devotional focus was outside the official sanctuaries of Catholicism. Members of his church met at his house on Sundays for prayers and Bible study. The Considerations and biblical commentaries reflect the topics and also the modality of presentation within his company. Valdés also interested himself in catechetical instruction of t he children of h is members and for them he prepared his Christian Instruction for Children.84 Because of the dissemination of the ideas of Valdés there was free discussion of Pauline writings among the tanners in the Piazza del Mercato. As to the regular observances of the Catholic Church, Valdés advised Julia to attend them on days of obligation,85 but to avoid preachers who preach not Christ. “Make use of abstinence,” he told her, “so far as you are conscious that it is necessary to you.” Valdés was in fact a Nicodemite.86 To the larger circle of Valdés and Julia belonged at one time or another a sizable number of prominent people of whom at least forty can be named, among them, Lady Isabelle Bresegna (Briseño),87 the papal protonotary proto-Protestant Peter Carnesecchi, the poet Marc Antonio Flaminio, and Peter Martyr Vermigli88 plus the radicals: the viceregal official John de Villafranca, Abbot Jerome Busale, the Benedictine monks Lawrence Tizzano 82

 La Epístola de San P ablo a los Romanos, in RAE 10:3 and 12:3, 184, 244; cf. San Mateo, “Proemio” and the commentary on 5:1–12, 62–64 in Böhmer’s edition and Trattatelli, 26. 83  Considerations, 107. 84  See Nieto, “Juan de Valdés on Catechetical Instruction,” BHR 36 (1974): 253–72. 85  Alfabeto Cristiano, ed. Wiffen, 161. 86  See Marcel Bataillon et aI., “Juan de Valdés Nicodemite?” Aspects du Libertinisme au XVIe siècle (Paris:Vrin, 1974), 93–103. 87  Alfredo Casadei, “Donne delia Riforma italiana: Isabella Bresegna,” Religio 13 (1937): 6–63; cf. Bainton, Women of the Reformation, 2: chap. 13. 88  Philip McNair has an introductory chapter, “The Environment of Evangelism,” in Peter Martyr in Italy: An Anatomy of Apostasy (Oxford: Clarendon, 1967); see also C. Maddison, M. A. Flaminio (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965).

828  the radical reformation

chapter 21.4

and John Laureto. Alike concerned with the poor, some of t hem became interested in the Hebrew Old Testament. We shall deal with them in their northern habitats, especially Padua and Piacenza (Ch. 22.2.b), but already while still in Naples some of them moved to an adoptionist, anabaptist, millennialist radical Valdesianism. A defector was later to distinguish as many as eight groupings or types in the larger circle.89 In his final years, Valdés translated at least most of the New Testament and all the Psalms, and wrote commentaries on Matthew, Romans, and 1 Corinthians.90 Three major and five minor tracts91 also dating from this period, stress justification by faith and encourage a purification of the local church by t he threefold admonition and excommunication (Matt. 18:15– 18), if necessary, of those who live in open sin or solely according to vain ceremonies and superstitions and customs. Yet, almost needless to say in conclusion, Valdés was strongly opposed to coercion in the realm of conscience: “I ought to guard myself as from fire against persecuting anyone in any manner, pretending in that way to serve God.” 92 He believed that final salvation would only come at the imminent Second Advent and General Resurrection, at which moment Christ would either momentarily resurrect all, only to let the wicked and those who had never heard of him to lapse into “eternal death” or nothingness, or, more traditionally, to suffer “eternal punishment” or temporary “affliction and misery,” while the righteous in Christ enjoy eternal life like the angels and “friends of God.” 93 In the meantime, he had little to say about a sentient immortality of the soul after the death of the body.

89  Julius Basalù in 1553; Casadei “Donne,” Religiosi, 53. In g roup viii w ere those who , besides the previously mentioned views, held to the “reiteratione baptismatis in laudem religionis Hebraicae.” 90  Allegedly on all the Gospels and all of the P auline epistles except Hebr ews, and on 1 and 2 Peter, but all these except the ones listed abo ve have been lost. On the basis of a ne wly discovered sixteenth-century Italian translation of San Mateo in Turin, Carlo Ossolo suggests a clandestine effort to propagate Valdesianism in Italy. Carlo Ossolo, “Tradizione e traduzione,” in Eresia e Riforma nell’ltalia, ed. Albano Biondi (Florence/Chicago: Sansoni/Newberry Library, 1974), 241–68. 91  Printed posthumously in Rome in 1545, with the title Modo che si dee enere nell’insegnare e predicare il principio della religione christiana with a modern translation by Edward Böhmer cited in n. 79 above. 92  Considerations, lxxvi. 93  As in so man y matters, Valdés was not always consistent even within the same w ork. The inconsistency is partly due to the need to be theologically discreet. On the matter of the resurrection, he was, as a devout Marrano, aware that his Jewish forebears held to the resurrection of righteous Jews and only “the righteous Gentiles.” His mitigation to “Death eternal” instead of suffer ing in hell is found, inter alia, in San Mateo, 7:13; 12:43–45: “[T]hey [the non-followers] are excluded, who do not believe in Christ, for, although they shall … resuscitate, they shall not live forever, so that none [of them] will enjoy the habilitation to eternal life … and will indeed be r esuscitated to eter nal death”; his commentar y On 1 Cor inthians, 306, and see also ch. 1 n. 52.

chapter 21.4 / 21.5 waldenians & evangelicals, 1510–1542  829 The Valdesian congregations in and beyond Naples, with notable aristocratic and even prelatical members or sympathizers, repeated mutatis mutandis the conventicles which Valdés frequented in boyhood Escalona. Valdesianism was the systematization of the popular piety of the Alumbrados (Ch. 1.2.c) through the serene and sober mind and moral discipline of the gentle humanist reformer, of whom the humanist poet Jacopo Bonaf ido said: “He was one of the rare men of Europe.” 94 John Valdés, a Marrano, a humanist Illuminist, was an anti-Nicene Nicodemite, an Evangelical Spiritualist with a strong sense of the imminent Second Advent. In the midst of his literary productivity and fruitful religious speculation and discussion, John—who like his brother Alphonse, was never very hardy—died in July 1541, just after receiving word of the failure of the Diet of Regensburg to bring about a rapprochement between Catholics and Protestants.

5. Bernadine Ochino of Siena, Capuchin Evangelist of Italy: Radical Among the Refugees The Spanish Valdés, from his base in Naples, is matched as a p an-Italian religious personality by B ernadine Ochino, born in Siena but concerned to make the whole peninsula his enthralled congregation. We last encountered Ochino as the newly elected minister general of t he new order of the Capuchins (Ch 1.6.b). Born in the section dell’Oca (hence Ochino) in Siena,95 he had entered the order of Observantine Friars, the strictest company of Franciscans, c. 1504, and then gone to Perugia, c. 1510, giving himself over to the study of medicine, then of the Bible and scholastic philosophy (especially that of Bonaventura). He had then risen to be provincial of the order in Siena (1532), and finally vicar for the Cisalpine province (1533). Craving yet a stricter rule, he had transferred himself in 1534 to the newly founded order of the Capuchin Franciscans, of which he was elected third vicar-general in 1538. Under the patronage of t he Capuchins, the medieval practice of having special sermons during the forty days of Lent and in seasons of calamity was greatly extended and intensified. As a Lenten preacher, the gaunt ascetic of such resonant voice and terrifying directness, was so eagerly sought by competing towns and bishops that the Pope himself had sometimes to intervene and fix an acceptable 94

 From a letter of Bonaf ido to Carnesecchi, full of nostalg ia and lamenting the death of Valdés. See Giuseppe P aladino, ed., Opusculi e lettere di refor matori italiani del Cinquecento (Bari, 1913), 1:95–96. 95  The pioneer work on the life of Ochino was that of Karl Benrath 2d ed. (Braunschweig, 1892), with the English translation fr om the 1st ed., Bernardino Ochino of Siena: A Contribution toward the History of the Reformation (New York, 1877). The more recent studies include Roland H. Bainton, Bernardino Ochino, Esule e Reformatore Senese del Cinquecento 1487–1563 (Florence: Sansoni, 1940); Benedetto Nicolini, Il Pensiero di Bernardino Ochino (Naples, 1939, and Bologna: Pàtron, 1970); Nicolini, “Bernardino Ochino: Esule a Gine vra,” in Ginevra et l’Italia, 137–47; Nicolini, Bernardino e la Riforma in Italia (Naples, 1935).

830  the radical reformation

chapter 21.5

itinerary. At Rome he once had almost all the resident cardinals in his Lenten congregation. Combining the traits of F rancis of A ssisi and Jerome Savonarola, the barefoot, bearded preacher was papally commissioned to study Protestant books in order to refute them. Inwardly, Ochino was soon converted to the Reformation. Calvinism seemed to him the most valid imitation of Christ. But remaining in his order, Ochino hoped that he might be the chosen instrument for the conversion of Italy. It was his Lenten sermon in Naples in 1535 that was the occasion of the dialogue between Lady Julia Gonzaga and Valdés eventuating in the Christian Alphabet of t he latter (Ch. 21.4). Several of Ochino’s later sermons are popularizations of t he works of Valdés. In 1539, Ochino delivered at Venice a remarkable course of Prediche,96 showing a tendency to the doctrine of justification by f aith, all under the guise of opposing the Protestant theory and deriving the doctrine solely from the teachings of C hrist in the New Testament. This is more marked in his Dialogi VI.97 The Dialogi, in which the Valdesian Duchess Catherine Cibo serves as interlocutrix, deal with the nature and the conditions of perfection. Already under suspicion, Ochino was invited to Rome in 1542 but was probably deterred from presenting himself in the end on the advice of Peter Martyr Vermigli at Florence. Ochino later considered this decision to flee Italy a direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Just before his death at Bologna, Caspar Cardinal Contarini who had been brought in contact with Valdesian thought by Lady Victoria Colonna, was sought out by B ernardine Ochino. There are three versions of w hat took place on that occasion. Contarini’s secretary says that Ochino had to force his way into the cardinal’s presence, and that Contarini, whose condition before his death had grown suddenly worse, said to Ochino: “Father, you see the state I am in; excuse me, and pray to God for me. Buon viaggio!”98 Ochino himself says that Contarini spoke with him, telling him that since his return to Italy from the Diet and Colloquy at Regensburg in 1541, he had been accused as papal legate of appropriating, in a secret manner veiled under generalizations, the doctrine of justification through Christ despite his opposition to Protestant doctrine at the Diet.99 Although we cannot assume from Ochino’s account alone that the dying cardinal 96  Subsequently printed in Venice in 1541. Giuseppe Paladino gives selections in Opusculi e Lettere di Riformatori Italiani, 2 vols. (Bari, 1913, 1927). 97  Published in Venice in 1540 and 1542, ed. with other writings by Ugo Rozzo, I “Dialogi Sette” e altri scritti del tempo dello fuga with 18 illustrations, Collona, “Testi della Riforma,” 14 (Turin: Claudiana, 1985). For the life of Catherine Cibo, see Bainton, Women of the Reformation, 2: ch. 11. 98  Giovanni della Casa, Opera (Venice, 1728), 4:123. 99  Ochino, Prediche, 1 (Venice, 1541), treatise 10. For Contarini’s Epistola de iustificatione, see Corpus Catholicorum, 7 (Münster, 1923); Gleason translated three letters of Contarini, Reform Thought. 21–33.

chapter 21.5

waldenians & evangelicals, 1510–1542  831

discussed his position at Regensburg with him, the account of G irolamo Muzio, Ochino’s violent opponent, if not exactly like Ochino’s, does say that “the cardinal received him and told him to go to rest until the following morning.”100 The scene has been fixed upon the memory of posterity, for it symbolized the farewell of the Evangelical cause in Italy. Both the cardinal and the preacher were under the influence of Valdesian Evangelism, the cardinal on the point of death after his last great effort at Regensburg, the friar on his way to the lands of the territorial Reformation. Ochino went first to Geneva. He was cordially received by Calvin. He, at age fifty-six, married a l ady of L ucca who had once heard him as the renowned Capuchin preacher there and who would bear four children.101 He would undertake preaching to the Italian refugee and merchant community domiciled in Geneva. He published in 1544 his Apologi, a collection of 110 reminiscences and satirical anecdotes about popes, cardinals, priest, and friars. As an example, there is the retort of the converted Jewish merchant to his Italian priest that he would continue his reckonings in Hebrew so long as his pastor continued praying in Latin. Ochino would also write in Italian and first published in French his L’Image d’Antichrist (1544) and in Italian his Exposition of Romans (Geneva, 1545) and Exposition of Galatians (Augsburg, 1546.) Translated into Spanish, The Antecristo (actually one of Ochino’s most virulent sermons, LXV), the anonymous Carta a Don Felipe II, Valdés’ Commentary on Romans and I Corinthians, and many other heretical writings were smuggled into Spain by Spanish Protestant refugees.102 A volume containing Antecristo was delivered to the wrong person, a cleric with the same name as the addressee who turned it over to the Inquisition in October 1527, which moment marks also the beginning of t he persecution of t he Evangelical groups in Seville and Valladolid (Ch. 1.5). Ochino would become minister of the Italian Protestant congregation at Augsburg from 1545 until 1547 when the city was occupied by the imperial forces in the Smalcaldic War. Escaping to Basel, Ochino would engage under the assumed name of Corvinus in an epistolary exchange with Schwenckfeld, who opposed him in a n umber of w ritings dealing particularly with the incarnation and salvation by progressive deification.103 The writings of O chino were brought to Schwenckfeld’s attention by 100

 Girolamo Muzio, Le Mentite Ochinane (Venice 1551), fol. 22b.  Bainton, Ochino, 73. 102  In Geneva Pérez de Pineda, editor of Valdés On Romans and On I Corinthians, was also the translator (under the name of Aloso de Peñafuerte) of the Antecristo, expanding it with “Libro de la generación del Antecristo, hijos de Satanás, hijo del pecado .” This work and the Carta were edited by Usoz y Rio in RAE 3. 103  See esp. Doc. 431 of February 1544, CS, 8. 101

832  the radical reformation

chapter 21.5 / 21.6

Valentine Ickelsamer.104 After a brief sojourn in Strassburg, Ochino would be invited to England by A rchbishop Cranmer and made a prebendary of Canterbury, a pensionary of Edward VI, and preacher to the Italians in London associated with John Laski’s Strangers’ Church (Ch. 30.3.a). While in England (1547–53), Ochino would compose A Tragoedie or Dialogue of the injuste usurped primacie of the Bishop of Rome (1549). In it Lucifer convenes a council of f iends with the help of an Emperor “Phocas” to aggrandize the authority of the papal Antichrist, before whose specious eminence all the true Christian churches cower, whereupon Heaven sends Henry VIII and then Edward VI to overthrow him.105 We shall next meet Ochino in Zurich, whither he fled from Mary Tudor (Ch. 24.2.e) and then in Poland (Ch. 29.6), where two of his writings will be published in Polish translation. We now return to the Italy he and so many left when the Roman Inquisition was established in 1542 and settle back into the prevailing chronological framework.

6. The Viterbo “Spirituali” and the Beneficio di Cristo In May of 1541, two months before the death of Valdés and almost as an omen, the Valdesians scattered. Flaminio left Naples with Carnesecchi, Donato Rullo, and Marc’Antonio Villarmarini, the last known as the abbot. Of course many others remained, notably the prelates attached to their sees, and Lady Julia Gonzaga. Several Valdesians reappeared in Viterbo northeast of Rome in the Papal States. They were Flaminio, Carnesecchi, and Victoria Colonna, with Bishop Peter Paul Vergerio of Capodistria (papal nuncio to Germany, 1533–35) as occasional visitor. Ochino and Vermigli had also shown up from time to time, commissioned as preachers by t he Cardinals Reginald Pole, Giovanni Morone, and Caspar Contarini. A more conservative and conforming version of Valdesianism had been transferred from Naples to Viterbo,106 destined by w ay of C atholic Evangelism to playa role in the Tridentine debate over justification. Much of what seemed a propitious development was cut short by t he institution of t he Holy Office of t he Roman Inquisition in 1542 and the sensational defections of O chino and Vermigli in the same year. As difficult as it was for the Spirituali of V iterbo and elsewhere, there appeared the essentially Valdesian “Italian Reformation Manifesto,” the anonymous 104

 Cf. CS, 8 introduction to Doc. 430.  Originally written in Latin, it is extant in the English translation of Bishop J ohn Ponet (London, 1549) and in Polish, O Zwierzchnósci papieskiei (Szamotuly, Great Poland, 1558).The conception in the Tragœdie bears a remarkable resemblance to that of Paradise Lost. It is almost certain that John Milton, whose sympathies with the Italian dissenters were so strong, was acquainted with it, as also with some of Ochino’s later works. 106  Dermot Fenlon, Heresy and Obedience in Tridentine Italy: Cardinal Pole and the Counter Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972; London, 1978), 69–99; De Santa Theresa, Valdés, 251–83; for the life of Victoria Colonna, see Bainton, Women of the Refor mation, 2: chap. 12. 105

chapter 21.6

waldenians & evangelicals, 1510–1542  833

Trattato utilissimo del Beneficio di Giesú Cristo crocifisso, verso i Christiani (Venice, 1543), the first edition of the slim volume said to have sold over forty thousand copies. It is known to have been written in part by the Benedictine Benedict Fontanini of M antua, adapted for publication by F laminio. It was presently translated into French, English (two versions), Croatian, and Spanish.107 The title of the work derives ultimately from the Illuminist dejado Alcaraz (Ch. 1.2.c), the last, a condemned term in Spain that Valdés was only emboldened to use for the first time himself in Naples in the Alfabeto. The first chapter opens with a r ecasting of Considerations and repeats verbatim the first as the anthropological basis of the book. The second chapter develops the Valdesian dialectic of the office of the Law and the office of the Gospel (terms first used by Valdés in the Diálogo de doctrina and expanded in the Alfabeto). The Beneficio unfolds the “five offices of the Law” as aids to the Gospel. Chapter two summarizes the history of the salvation of Israel, clearly echoing Valdés’ “Compendio de las sagradas escrituras” of t he Diálogo. This motif is further developed in the third chapter and blended with the Gospel message, particularly that of Paul, where the office of the Law and that of the Gospel with respect to justification are brought together. Chapter four retains the Valdesian thrust but reinforces it with patristic and scholastic citations to enhance the authority of the book as a whole, a practice which Valdés abandoned after the Alfabeto. Chapter five mingles classical Protestant and Valdesian themes in a vivid texture that imparts extraordinary confidence to the believer: I say that the Christian knows that through faith Christ, with all his justice, holiness, and innocence, belongs to him. Just as someone clothes himself in a very beautiful and precious robe when he wishes to present himself before a lord, so the Christian adorns and 107  The critical edition with documentation and the four sixteenth-centur y translations (French, 1545; the English of Edw ard Courtenay, 1548; Croatian, 1563; and the English of A.G., 1573) is that of Salvatore Caponetto (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1972). A modern Spanish translation is that of J osé A. Pistonesi (Buenos Aires/Mexico, 1942). An English translation with the histor y of the pr oblem of author ship to date is that of Ruth Prelowski (Liebowitz) in John A. Tedeschi, ed., Italian Reformation Studies in Honor of Laelius Socinus (henceforth IRS) (Florence: Le Monnier , 1965) = also Unitar ian Historical Society, Proceedings 14 (1963–64): 21–102 r eproduced “with slight editor ial changes,” by Elizabeth Gleason, Reform Thought, 103–6. There is now known to have been a v ersion of Il Beneficio being read in theValdesian fellowship in 1540. Carlo Ginzburg and Adriano Prosperi discuss “Le due redazioni del ‘Beneficio di Cr isto’,” Eresia e Rifor ma, 137–204. Paolo Simoncelli reviews the various interpretations, “Nuove ipotesi e studi sul ‘Beneficio di Cristo’,” Critica Storica, 11 (1975): 320–38. The most recent study is Tommaso Bozza, Nuovi Studi sulla Riforma in Italia, I, Il Beneficio di Cristo (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1976). The attribution of authorship to Benedetto/Flaminio is not resolved, but the dependence of the work on Valdesian inspiration is confirmed, especially with reference to Christ as mediator. It would appear that the work of Benedetto was revised by Flaminio and is shown to be a fusion of Catholic Evangelicalism and Calvinism, written for a projected group whose idea of Christ as mediator was akin to that of the Valdesians.

834  the radical reformation

chapter 21.6

covers himself with the innocence of Christ and. … presents himself before God, the Lord of the universe, relying on the merits of Christ, just as if he had merited and attained them all himself. Faith certainly enables us to possess Christ and all that belongs to him, in the same way that each of us owns his own clothes. Therefore, clothing oneself with Christ is nothing other than firmly holding that Christ is ours … and believing that this heavenly garment makes us pleasing and acceptable to God. For it is most certain that, like an excellent father, he has given us his son, and he wants his justice … to be under our jurisdiction. As a result, it is lawful for us to glory in ourselves, as if we had performed and acquired these things by our own powers. … If this is true. … the Christian can … say: “I am a son of God, Christ is my brother, I am lord of heaven and earth, of hell, of death, and of t he Law. … This faith alone … makes persons true Christians, strong, joyous, smiling, enamored of God, ready to do good works, possessors of the kingdom of God, and his dearly beloved sons [and daughters], in whom the Holy Spirit dwells.”108 The tone of the sixth chapter becomes direct and aggressive, as the Beneficio concludes with four remedies for lack of confidence: prayers, the memory of one’s baptism by w hich one was made participant in Christ’s justice, frequent communion, and “the memory of our predestination and election to eternal life” and “the certainty of being one of those whose names are written in the Book of life.” Although Valdés himself wrote sparingly about predestination to election and disavowed reprobation, in the foregoing we are in the presence of the unidentified kind of s ummaries found throughout the Beneficio of writings of the northern Reformers, blended with Valdesianism. As a great success as was this largely Valdesian book, we must conclude this section with noting that the protonotary apostolic, Peter Carnesecchi, who had left Rome under the new Pope Paul III for Naples with Valdés in 1541, would in due course be tried by the Inquisition in Rome, beheaded, and his body burned for heresy (1567).

108

 Beneficio, ed. Caponetto, 52–53; English translation IRS, 73–74.

Chapter 22

The Radical Reformation in Italy and the Rhaetian Republic (Graübunden)

We have already indicated the difficulty

of d istinguishing within the Italian context what should be identified as belonging properly to the local Catholic reform movements, what in turn should be identified as the reanimation and transformation under the influence of northern Protestantism of indigenous Italian sectarianism surviving from the Middle Ages, what should be identified as the Italian appropriation of specifically Lutheran or Reformed impulses, and finally, what should be segregated from all this to be validly labeled the Radical Reformation in Italy. In the last chapter elements in both Valdesianism (Evangelism) and Waldensianism in its sixteenth century transmutations could be seen as tributary to the Italian Radical Reformation. Similarly, normative Protestantism, when its principles took effect in various Italian milieux, precisely because it never gained the open support of princes or town magistrates and was therefore by necessity organized in conventicles, quickly lost the conservative reforming character of the Magisterial Reformation in the north. What the fiery Italian apostles of the Reformation and their captors and their inquisitors alike called “Lutheran” would often have been repudiated by Luther himself. Moreover it was not the Lutheran version of Protestantism that made the greatest appeal to the Italians anyway, but, rather, the inherently more radical and potentially more sectarian Reformed version. And Bullinger, Bucer, and Calvin, who were the main exponents of Protestantism for the Italians on the eve of the reestablishment of the Inquisition in 1542, found themselves in lively correspondence with many an admirer in Italy who, had he been living in Zurich, Strassburg, or Geneva under the eyes of t hese leading Protestant divines, would have been rather swiftly dismissed as uncongenial, or harried—or worse, as heretical! 835

836  the radical reformation

chapter 22

Besides the difficulty of defining the Reformation in Italian terms and hence that of differentiating from it the Radical Reformation in Italy, there is the additional difficulty of transposing to its Italian phase, however segregated and defined, the religio-sociological typology which has been largely derived from the situation to the north. To refer only to the three main thrusts of the Radical Reformation, it must be said at once that most Italian Anabaptists were not primarily interested in penitential, covenantal rebaptism and the purifying ban but, rather, in repudiating papal baptism and in modifying both Christology and Triadology and that Italian Spiritualists for their part were not so much interested in mystical contemplation or in exegetical inspiration as in predestination and the death of the soul pending the reanimation of b odies at the resurrection. As for the third main thrust of the Radical Reformation, we have already recognized Evangelical Rationalism has been preeminently and distinctively the Italian component in our typology. Evangelical Rationalism has, in fact, already been defined as a fusion of Italian humanism or critical rationalism with selected ingredients of t wo kinds of Italian Anabaptism and a v isionary Spiritualism, rendered thus capable of e xpressing itself in organized churches and even synods—experimentally in Rhaetia, and with more enduring consequences in Poland (Ch. 29) and Transylvania (Ch. 28). In the present chapter we shall first look at the early life and thought of Camillo Renato (c. 1500–72), in whom all the aforementioned radical Italian currents flowed; then at the religio-political distinctiveness of the Venetian Republic/Veneto and Venetian Anabaptism, which in part stemmed from Renato, and at the plight of Italian Anabaptism in general after the synod of Venice in 1550 and the defection of P eter Manelfi in 1551; then at Laelius Socinus (1525–62), the progenitor of S ocinianism; then at the establishment of c ontact of t he theologically more conservative Italian Anabaptists with the Hutterites in Moravia; and finally at the attenuation and mutation of Italian Spiritualism and Evangelism as Spiritual Libertinism and Nicodemism. We shall reserve for another chapter the presentation of other Evangelical Rationalists whose lives and thought unfolded to a large extent in the Italian diaspora (Ch. 24). This Italian diaspora was the dispersion of Italian refugees into Protestant lands. There was also one region to which Italian Evangelicals could flee for religio-political asylum which was Italian in speech and also in culture— the Italian and Ladin (Romande) valleys of t he Rhaetian Republic. Small though this area was, it was one place in Christendom where a Reformed Italian Christianity could take form more or less freely on, so to speak, Italian soil. The Rhaetian Republic, allied with the Swiss Confederation and hence the meeting place of Germanic and Italian ideas, becomes a focal point for the history of the Italian phase of radicality in reform all out of proportion to its size. The relatively tolerant and humane Venetian Republic, as a

chapter 22 / 22.1

italy & the rhaetian republic  837

consequence of its intensive trade relations with partly Protestantized Germany and its maritime vision of the larger world, also bulks large in our narrative along with the duchy of Ferrara, where Duchess Renée once received Calvin, sponsored a circle of reform-minded humanists, and introduced in her private chapel the simplified Mass modeled on that at Navarre with communion in both kinds. It was in Ferrara, Venice, and Rhaetia that major events in the life and influence of Camillo Renato were recorded.

1. Radicalism in Rhaetia to 1552: Camillo Renato The Rhaetian Republic, roughly the modern Swiss Grisons and coterminous with the bishopric of Chur as it existed then, was a federation of three component Alpine federations. The Grey League proper, with its important center, Ilanz, was the principal federation, and often lent its name to the Republic as a whole (Grigioni, Graubünden, Grisons). The other two component federations were the League of the House of God, with its capital at Chur, and the League of the Ten Jurisdictions, with its chief city, Davos. The three federations constituting the Rhaetian Republic were linked closely with the Swiss Confederation. In 1512, the Rhaetian Republic had jointly come into possession of s ubject territory received as indemnification for their joint military service in Italy. This fringe of jointly administered territory, roughly the valleys of the Mera and the Adda from Bormio down to Lake Como, was administered by a ppointive Rhaetian functionaries. The principal subdivisions of t his condominium were the district around Bormio, the Valtellina (German: Veltlin), and the district around Chiavenna. Valtellina, the largest region, was itself subdivided into three main administrative districts. The whole of the joint federal jurisdiction was Italian or Ladin (Romande) in speech, as indeed were many of the valleys within all three of the component federations of the Rhaetian Republic, particularly the Grey League. Italian, Ladin, and German constituted the three official languages of the Republic. The Republic was also divided religiously. At the federal diet in Ilanz in 1526 mutual religious toleration of Catholics and Evangelicals (Protestants) had been decreed, with the provision that whichever party had the majority in any parish or district would also have the sole use of the ecclesiastical edifices. Anabaptists, who at that time were being recruited in all classes under the powerful preaching of Blaurock, Mantz, and Castelberger (Ch. 6.1), had been expressly excluded from the provisions of the edict of Ilanz.1 Despite this restriction of the Anabaptists, the valleys of Rhaetia, trilingual, biconfessional, and voluntaristic, were seedbeds of s ectarianism, 1

 See Johann Commander’s letter to Zwingli for the situation in Chur in 1528; Petrus Dominicus Rosius de Porta, Historia Reformationis ecclesiarum Raeticarum, 2 vols. (Chur, 1771/74), 1:1, 94, 94n. The principal source behind De Porta is Ulrich Campell, Historia Raetica, 2 vols., ed. P. Plattner, Quellen zur Schweizer Geschichte 8 (1887), 9 (1890).

838  the radical reformation

chapter 22.1

especially after the renewal of the Inquisition in the Italian principalities to the south by the bull Licet ab initio of 21 July 1542 and the flight of hundreds of evangelical monks, friars, priests, bishops, and pious laymen into this readily accessible asylum. The first proponents of Anabaptist ideas in the Rhaetian Republic were in the German-speaking valleys. After the original propagation of Anabaptism, there was the activity of Leopold Scharnschlager in Ilanz. 2 Between 1546 and his death in 1563, Scharnschlager served unobtrusively as the teacher in the local school of I lanz while carrying on by correspondence and visitations the duties of a m ajor leader of South German Anabaptism (Ch. 18.2). Scharnschlager had been successively an associate and successor of Marpeck in Strassburg, a missionary in South and Middle Germany and in Moravia, and would be a p articipant in the long disputation with Schwenckfeld (Ch. 31.1.a) and a major contributor to the important doctrinal collection, the Kunstbuch. While Scharnschlager was publicly teaching school in Ilanz and privately directing the local Anabaptist conventicle and carrying on a w ide correspondence, his devoted wife, who belonged to a prominent Tyrolese family, was seeking to recover her confiscated estate after the two had been converted to Anabaptism. It is quite probable that the well-to-do Scharnschlagers were able to give hospitality and counsel to many Italian radicals. Much closer to our present interest are the Italian-speaking Anabaptists, two of whom antedate Camillo Renato in their propagation of Spiritualist, anti-Nicene Anabaptism in Rhaetia, and specifically in the Ladin-speaking Engadine. The one, Francis of Calabria, had been called to the Protestant parish of V etto; the other, Jerome of M ilan, had been called to Lavin. They both claimed to be followers of Ochino, and were presumably from a Capuchin convent in Calabria. Francis and Jerome3 —the former enthusiastically supported by his congregation, the latter, however, rejected by his—so stressed the doctrine of predestination that they were prepared to say that no matter how grievous or monstrous his sin or crime, if a person were predestined to salvation, he would be saved by the grace of God. They virtually deprived Christ of a redemptive role. Because it was to God’s grace alone that the elect owed their salvation, the incarnation and the death of Christ were not necessary. The sacraments for these radical Evangelicals were not essential to salvation. They were signs only of t he public acknowledgment of o ne’s salvation. Accordingly, Francis and Jerome opposed infant baptism, which 2  For his pr esence in Ilanz, see the letter to him edited b y J. ten Door nkaat Koolman, “Leupold Scharnschlager und die Täufergemeinde in Graubünden,” Zwingliana 4 (1921–28): 329–37. See also ME 4:443–46. 3  The views are summarized hostilely by De Porta, Historia Reformationis 1:1, 68ff., based upon Campell, Historia, 2:297–309.

chapter 22.1

italy & the rhaetian republic  839

had no more significance, they stated, “than if administered to a horse.” In order to mitigate the rigor of t heir predestinarianism for those not favored by God, they denied the existence of eternal punishment for the reprobate and taught the death of the soul pending the resurrection, with the single exception of the forgiven thief at the crucifixion, who, as they acknowledged, had been vouchsafed a unique privilege among mortals in his direct admission to paradise (Lk. 23:43). Francis and Jerome were required in 1544 to give an account of themselves before a m ixed Ladin synod of P rotestants and Catholics, divines and magistrates, in a disputation lasting two days in Zuoz. Many parishioners of F rancis from Vetto were present to sustain him, participating actively in the debate. Francis at first sought to ridicule the Protestants for having to bring in Catholics to support themselves. Francis was told promptly that he himself was not regarded as an ordained minister of the Evangelical confession. In one place, Francis argued his main christological point by showing how absurd it would be for a shivering beggar (the believer), instead of giving praise to the donor (God) of a coat (salvation), to thank the coat itself (corpus Christi). At this, the aged magnate and warrior John Travers could contain himself no longer, and, mounting the pulpit, charged Francis with having been grievously corrupted either by Manichaeus, or Arius, or the Turk.4 Francis was condemned as an Anabaptist and therefore made subject to banishment under the edict of Ilanz. His parishioners urged another meeting; but, when they were told that they would have to bear the expenses, they reluctantly acquiesced in the condemnation of their pastor. Into the Valtellina came Camillo Renato in 1542, with a t umultuous career behind him and another ahead, a representative of many Italian spiritual wanderers. Let Camillo Renato speak for all of them. Like all the Italian refugees, he bore in his heart a great love and esteem for the Swiss and Rhaetian Reformers who, in their “temples in the mountains,” were preparing that house of G od to which all the nations in the latter days might flow (Isa. 2:2). Confident that under their spiritual leadership and the protection afforded by the Swiss and the Rhaetian confederations the “Golden Age under the fair auspices of Christ” would soon return, Camillo described the plight and the pluckiness of fellow clerical exiles from Ausonia under papal domination and inquisition. We who are “reborn,” he says, “are children of God and followers of Christ!” For that reason we have departed from the Ausonian shore; and, embracing exile, we live in foreign lands. Poverty is our only companion. Our condition in life is hard. Work cheats us on some days, but constant labor pays us our tutor’s fees, worn though we 4

 De Porta, Historia Reformationis, 1:1, 73.

840  the radical reformation

chapter 22.1

be. We have proclaimed the gospel whenever occasion offered, neither prompted by a mbition for advancement nor adequately recompensed. Advancing through the usual dangers of life wherever the divine impels us, where a blessed hope called us, ever willing, with a mighty force we have laid low the opposing foes. Those whom providence predestined and whom the Spirit drove within, we have snatched from Satan and joined as new souls to Christ.5 The key figure among these refugees in Rhaetia was Augustine Mainardo, the Reformed pastor in Chiavenna. He had succeeded Francis Negri, the founder of the Protestant community there, who then stayed on as a tutor and was eventually drawn into the faction fomented by C amillo. When Camillo first arrived in Chiavenna, he was well received by both the pastor and the teacher. Camillo Renato began his tempestuous career as some kind of Franciscan in Naples, where he may have come into contact with that circle of which John de Valdés was to become a leader. “A big man and well formed,” a master in theology and accomplished in classical literature, Camillo, under the earlier names of Paul Ricci and Lisia Phileno, moved easily in courtly and academic circles, and by his powerful preaching appealed also to popular audiences.6 Ricci-Phileno-Renato appeared in Padua around 1525, where his later belief in psychopannychism will no doubt have first been stimulated there by the Aristotelian discussion of the mortality of the soul (Ch. 1.6.c).7 At some point in the next three years he was at Venice, where he was first accused of h eresy, detained, investigated, but not condemned. Although his location is not documented again until 1538, Ricci-Renato may well have remained in Venice, a liberal haven in those years, perhaps under still another name. Since his interest in the great benefit of Christ’s death for humankind was not developed through direct contact with Valdés, it seems 5

 The Carmen of Camillo against Calvin;Friedrich Trechsel, Die protestantischen Antitrinitarier vor Faustus Socin, 2 vols. (Heidelberg, 1839/44), 1: Beilage 4, lines 81–98; English translation by Dorothy Rounds in Italian Reformation Studies, 185–97. 6  The first to have suggested the identification of Phileno and Camillo was Church, Italian Reformers, 39n. The identification was virtually proved by Alfredo Casadei, “Lisia Fileno e Camillo Renato,” Religio 15 (1939): 356–440. The identification was accepted by Cantimori, Eretici, with a few amplifications. The presentation here is based upon my much larger study, “Camillo Renato (1500–1575),” IRS (165): 103–83; Rotondò, “Bologna,” and esp. his Opere: Documenti e testimonianz e, in Corpus Reformatorum Italicorum, vol. 1 (Flor ence: Olschki, 1968). This volume contains Camillo’s major w orks and por tions of man y documents and letter s, henceforth cited as Rotondò, Opere. Here my documentation is minimized. See also Bibliotheca Dissidentium, 4:155–90 (Baden–Baden: Koerner, 1984), useful for the pictures of the title pages, but in the br ief vita, Simona Calvini w as unaware of m y antecedent vita as was I of Ugo Gastaldo, “Il debattito su Anabattismo i riforma: chiesa e potere,” in Collana della Federazione delle chiese evangeliche in Italia, Vol. 2 (Turin: Claudiana, 1973). 7  Rotondò, “Bologna,” Rinascimento 13, 2d series, 2:136. See further, n. 49 below.

chapter 22.1

italy & the rhaetian republic  841

possible that Ricci-Renato was in contact with the circle of t he Benedictine monastery of S. Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, where similar ideas were being developed in those years in a group which included Benedetto de Mantova, author of Il Beneficia and Marc Antonio Flaminio, its editor (Ch. 21.6). His association with such a r elatively moderate group seems supported by the position he took in his next encounter with the authorities—when he attacked papal corruption and several doctrinal points, but still hoped for reform within the Church of Rome. Under the name of Lisia Phileno he appeared in Bologna in 1538, still another center of Aristotelian rationalist discussion de anima. Welcomed for his erudition among the highest circles of the nobility and academicians, he fell under the scrutiny of the local Dominicans only when he attacked the ignorance of a Lenten preacher renowned for eloquence. The exposition of his thought which he later declared to have presented to the papal legate in his defense seems identifiable with an extant but anonymous set of X LIII Articles in which a moderate reformism interestingly reflects also an awareness of Anabaptism by his expressly repudiating it.8 Taking advantage of a pause in his investigation, Ricci-Renato set out for a v isit to Rome and his home in Sicily, but was detained by i llness at Modena in 1540. Here again he found widespread support, not only from the letterati and the count (who found him to be “for incomparable magnanimity and love … far from any personal ambition and quest for glory”) but also from the local Protestant conventicle, which had gathered before his arrival and was in epistolary contact with Bucer.9 The general populace, too, appreciated his sermonic call to charity on the part of the local monks toward the surrounding peasantry in time of famine. Despite his local popularity, he was arrested by orders from the duke in Ferrara, in turn under pressure from the Dominican inquisitors at Bologna. The trial which took place in Ferrara toward the end of the year made it clear that he was in fact egregiously heretical and seditious, even if not guilty of rascality, as was rumored. The nine accusations brought against him at the trial may be brought together under four main headings. Not only did Camillo hold with most Italian reformers under the impact of P rotestantism to the north (1) that belief should be founded upon Scripture alone, diffused through evangelical gatherings devoted to free interpretation and discussion and (2) that salvation depends utterly upon divine election, with no meritorious use of one’s will in the process, but also (3) that the soul of both the righteous and the 8  Rotondò, Opere, 167–94, has identified and calendared as many as fourteen items of or about Camillo through 1540. 9  There are three letters dated 17 August, 10 September, and 23 December 1541, addressed to Italian brethren in Bologna, Modena, and possibly Lucca. Konrad Hubert, ed., Martin Buceri Scripta Anglieana (Basel: Perna, 1577), 687–89; Rotondò, Opere, does not mention these.

842  the radical reformation

chapter 22.1

wicked expire at the death of the body and have no abiding place until the resurrection and the Last Judgment (the earlier view of L uther himself ); hence (4) that all the liturgical and penitential practices based on the alleged existence of a purgatory filled with sinners and of a paradise filled with saints are not only a r eligious deception but also the occasion for an intolerable social exploitation by the professionally religious. After at first arguing as a Spiritual Franciscan that the monks and friars should give more for the poor than the Christians in the world, Camillo had moved on to undercut the economic basis of many a chapel, monastery, and convent by insisting that the foundation for the saying of Masses for the dead was fatuous and also that vows taken before God and the saints were no longer binding once the truly liberating Gospel had been heard. Camillo’s doctrine of p redestination and the bondage of w ill unto salvation, and his allegedly apostolic doctrine of the provisional death of the soul pending the resurrection, constituted together a highly sharpened sword which Camillo had been wielding with frightening skill in cutting away the whole ecclesiastical merit system. His Apologia (1540), prepared in prison, is perhaps the most courageous self-defense of a h eretic before the Inquisition.10 But, under trial, Camillo agreed to sheath his sword in a complete abjuration and even promised to give the names of any persons who held similar views or circulated works containing such doctrines. He was conducted in solemn procession through the Ferrara, mitred, and sentenced to life imprisonment as an act of clemency. It is possible that his penalty was graciously interpreted as something much less than solitary confinement in a d ungeon, and it was under the influence of t he beneficent Duchess Renée that he was enabled to escape from the prison in Bologna to which he was removed in the spring of 1541. There may even be a gallant allusion to Renée as liberatrix (Italian: Renata) in the name which Camillo Renato chose for himself and may have used for the first time when, writing from the Italian part of the Rhaetian Republic, 9 November 1542, he signed his first letter to Henry Bullinger.11 Camillo said he was emboldened by Coelius Secundus Curio (Ch. 24.2.b), a friend of Bullinger, to write. It is of i nterest that Curio was in Ferrara shortly after the trial of Camillo and had been encouraged to leave by Duchess Renée, anxious for his future. Camillo in his letter to Bullinger gave little indication of his

10

 Opere, 3289. See also Rotondò,“Atteggiamenti della vita morale italiana del Cinquecento: La pratica nicodemitica,” Revista Storica Italiana 79 (1967): 1016–17. 11  Letter no. 1, “Carteggio (1542–49),” Rotondò, Opere, 135–39; Letter no. 37; ed. Traugott Schiess, Bullingers Korrespondenz mit den Graubündnern, 3 vols., Quellen zur Schweizer Geschichte 23 (1904), 24 (1905), 25 (1906). For the life of Duchess Renée of Ferrara, see Bainton, Women of the Reformation, 1: ch. 14.

chapter 22.1

italy & the rhaetian republic  843

radical views, confining his personal remarks to a few vague reminiscences about his sufferings, imprisonments, and escape. Nevertheless, the very name he had now chosen for himself at the outset of h is Rhaetian career was theologically programmatic. Camillus was the ancient Roman hero who had brought back to Rome the signa captured by t he Gauls; and it was the conviction of C amillo, the Reborn, that he was the consistent restorer of t he original meaning of the so-called sacraments as signa. In his subsequent correspondence with Bullinger and in his efforts to reform the Italian churches in the Rhaetian Republic, Camillo steadfastly rejected the very word “sacrament,” first, because it implied an oath and hence a commitment, and second, because the segni, as he preferred to call them, were, even by the Protestants, too readily administered and interpreted as though the believer or the church could in some way confirm or ratify what God had already done through the Spirit in awakening in the elect the realization of t heir predestined salvation. The center of Camillo’s “sacramental” theology was the Lord’s Supper. At Caspano, the ancestral seat of the powerful Paravicini family, by whom Camillo was retained as a tutor of classical languages for the numerous household, the Lord’s Supper was observed in the local church according to Camillo’s unusual arrangements.12 Paulinist that he professed to be in his doctrine of election and in his conception of the Holy Spirit in the reborn or redeemed, Camillo was also exclusively “Pauline” in his eucharistic theology. Noting that Paul (1 Cor. 11:23) had observed the ordinance “as it had been transmitted to him by the Lord,” Camillo introduced a full meal, which he called an epulum preceding what he liked to call the libatio. There is evidence that the nourishing epulum (agape), sponsored no doubt by the hospitable Paravicini, united the residents and the refugees, the rich and the poor, men and women of all degrees. (Cf. the Valdesian “church of the poor” in Naples.) When Camillo came to explain further to Bullinger the theology behind this usage, he drew a c lear distinction between the Last Supper, when Jesus asked the incredulous apostles to eat the bread as an act of faith, and all the suppers to be observed ever thereafter by Christians till he comes again. Camillo detached the dutiful and faithful manducatio of the first and precrucifixion supper, which was once for all (semel), and converted it into his technical term for the individual appropriation in faith of the salvation proffered in Christ by the Spirit. This inward eating reminds 12  The author walked up the steep trail to Caspano in J uly 1961 under the guidance of the local r ural constable, who was well versed in local histor y, and who said that befor e the Mussolini government for hygienic reasons had ordered the sealing of old tombs he had seen the remains of Camillo Renato in the dr ess of a Protestant minister. In the ruins of the palace there were motifs that seemed to be related to the rite of Caspano. Camillo was not the ranking minister, but rather Giannandrea Paravicini. Rotondò, Opere, 243, n. 1.

844  the radical reformation

chapter 22.1

one of the similar doctrine of Schwenckfeld and was in effect a eucharistic metaphor for that which is in a baptismal metaphor more commonly called rebirth or regeneratio. Unlike Schwenckfeld, however, Camillo did not hold because of the preeminence of the unique inward experience that the outward rite should be suspended. Rather should it be reinterpreted and then frequently observed as a c orporate commemoratio in great joy (recordatio) in the prospect of Christ’s imminent advent to vindicate his elect. Camillo was not content to have the local church or churches under the patronage of the Paravicini adopt his interpretation. He wished “the use of Caspano” to spread throughout Rhaetia and beyond, with his epulum preceding the libatio. The impending schism in the Rhaetian Reformed Church stems partly from this effort. Mainardo was not enthusiastic about the rite of Caspano and wrote Bullinger to ask him what he thought about it. Camillo visited several communities—for example, Vicosoprano—gaining some support for his ideas among the established Italian pastors. In the meantime his interest in sacramental theology was shifting from the observance of the Lord’s Supper to the problem of baptism and the associated question of the trinitarian formula. By early 1548, Camillo had moved to the radical position of repudiating baptism as received under the papal Antichrist in his book Adversus baptismum quem sub regno Papae atque Antichristi acceperamus, which may be identical with De baptismo.13 Although this work identified as from Camillo may not have been his, we note in it a basic ambiguity which could go far to account for some differences between Italo-Polish Anabaptism (Ch. 25.4) and Germanic Anabaptism. On the one hand, the presumed Camillo stressed the invalidity of papal baptism and its unreconstructed continuation in Protestant pedobaptism, on the other, as with the Eucharist, Camillo expressed a view that was so Spiritualist that he himself in the end may have been altogether satisfied with what he would have called an inward baptism. Although many of his followers submitted to an evangelical rebaptism, there is no evidence that he himself did.14 This thinking about baptism will have had two quite different consequences among those radicals in the East who cite him: in some cases to maximize believers’ baptism as an essential outward testimony to inward rebirth (Renatio) and in other cases to promote indifference to the rite as in the case of Faustus Socinus (Ch. 29.9) and Palaeologus (Ch. 28.3).

13  I give the sour ces in “Camillo Renato,” 151, 168. The grandson of Faustus Socin us, Andrew Wiszowaty, is reported to have had in his collection a MS“Reasons Against Pedobaptism,” which may be something from Camillo.This work is printed by Trechsel, Antitrinitarier vor Faustus Socin. Rotondò’s 2 vols. do not include it among his writings in Opere. 14  Williams, “Camillo Renato,” 165.

chapter 22.1

italy & the rhaetian republic  845

We must see the bitter controversy between Camillo and Mainardo at Chiavenna in 1548 in the context of t he whole Rhaetian Reformed Church. Chur was the virtual headquarters of the general synod. It was the seat also of a theological Gymnasium (in the old Dominican convent) for the training of a new Rhaetian clergy. Chiavenna was the natural center of the Italian-speaking Reformed churches. It must have occurred to more than one among the many former prelates, priors, and preachers exiled from Italy that a s emiautonomous Italian-speaking synod in Rhaetia, supplementing the work of the general synod, with its preponderantly Germanic character, would fulfill the legitimate aspirations of these heroic churchmen for independence. Needless to say, all aspirants for leadership in the Italian Reformed community desired the approval of B ullinger and the divines of the other Swiss cantons to offset the influence of Chur. In fact, at least four of the antagonists in the growing schism in the church of Chiavenna were at one stage or another to be in epistolary or personal contact with Bullinger. At the center of the controversy stood beleaguered Mainardo, who was in continuous contact with the divines of b oth Chur and Zurich. Stubborn and unimaginative, Mainardo smarted under the local charge of being neglectful of his pastoral duties and too much concerned to impose his own will. He had drawn up a co nfession of f aith in twenty articles which he wished to have approved by the authorities to the north and subscribed to locally, as in effect the creed of the Italian churches. Nothing of this confession survives except the twenty-two anathemas directed against Camillo and his followers. These were drawn from Camillo’s public statements and his writings, one of which, De sacramentis, appears to be identical with the Trattato del Battesimo e della Santa Cena (c. 1547).15 Camillo at this time prepared for his protector Frederick Sales Sr. an evasive commentary on the Apostolicum, Certa in Symbolum professio (1548).16 From these two documents it is clear indeed that Mainardo was, as the leading pastor of Italian Rhaetia, faced with a major threat to the integrity of the whole Italian Reformed community. Camillo had clearly resumed the preaching of a ll the doctrines for which he had been condemned at Ferrara. And even in a fully Reformed context, these doctrines constituted a threat, notably Camillo’s conception of election, regeneration, and eschatology. Mainardo, speaking for himself and the majority of the church in

15

 Rotondò, Opere, 91–108; idem, “Camillo Renato,” Rinascimento, 2d ser., 4 (1964): 341– 62. Part of the text was edited by Delio Cantimori and Elizabeth Feist, Per la Storia degli Eretici Italiani del Secolo XVI in Europa: Testi Raccolti (Rome, 1937). Rotondò’s text has been trans lated by Elizabeth Gleason, A Treatise concerning Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, in Reform Thought, 163–85. 16  Rotondò, Opere, doc. 4.

846  the radical reformation

chapter 22.1

Chiavenna, anathematized Camillo and his followers and allies, such as Francis of Calabria: We damn those [the Renatians] who say that the rational soul is mortal, and dies with the body, but will be raised at the Last Day with the body, and that the whole man will be made immortal …; who say that the souls of the dead live in such wise that they sleep until the Last Day, and then will be raised from sleep; … that impious men are not bodily resurrected at the Last Day; [and] that those men who are not born again of God are irrational like the brutes, so long as they are not yet translated by the Spirit of God into the Kingdom of Christ.17 Camillo apparently distinguished between the anima and the animus. The clearest indication of this is in the statement of Giannandrea Paravicini, pastor of Caspano, much under the influence of Camillo. The anima, shared with the unregenerate and with animals, perishes at death. The animus, or rational soul (anima rationalis) or universal intellect is that which is present in the intellectually reborn or the elect animated by the Holy Spirit. The originality of Camillo lay in having constructed a fully New Testament anthropology and eschatology within the framework of medical-humanistic Averroism (endemic in the Italian university towns where he had sojourned). By identifying the world soul with the human ratio purified or endowed by the visitation of the Holy Spirit to the thus reborn or illuminated elect, he was able to go beyond a purely Averroistic conception of an impersonal immortality of absorption into the world soul and to reaffirm the Pauline hope of the resurrection in spiritual bodies. The renati are accordingly the elect who have been reborn in the Spirit and await the resurrection of the just. Camillo’s eschatologically reinterpreted Averroism—it must be put down in passing—was one of the very important impulses in the new religious interpretation of the role of reason in Evangelical Rationalism. Mainardo sought to prevail upon Camillo to confess a b elief in the natural immortality of the soul if he wished to be considered a Christian and a m ember of t he local church. Mainardo equally opposed that other variant of psychopannychism found among his foes, the belief in the sleep (as distinguished from extinction) of t he soul pending resurrection and reanimation, the view favored by s ome of t he German Anabaptists and represented also among the Italian radicals (Ch. 22.2). The combination of C amillo’s conception of e lection and his view of the experience of spiritual regeneration led some of h is followers and associates to an antinomianism which, claiming Paul for patron, went so 17  These are articles I, II, XII, and XVIII of Mainardo’s Confession of Faith, by De Porta, Historia Reformationis, 1:2, 83–86.

chapter 22.1

italy & the rhaetian republic  847

far as to disavow any natural law in man by which can be discerned the things that should be done and the things that should not be done, and therefore that believers, for their part, have no need of the natural law or even of the Ten Commandments, for the reborn are spiritual men, judging all things (1 Cor. 2:15). One readily sees how this heady combination of predestination and spiritualism could lead to Spiritual Libertinism, increasingly corrosive of the traditional values and motivations, fostered by the moralistic sects no less than by t he established churches, in the measure that its adherents could stress alongside their spiritual liberty the elimination of hell and purgatory and even a last judgment for the wicked among whom they might indeed in the end be counted. Already aware of this implicit threat in Spiritualist “Anabaptism,” Curio had, back in 1541 in Lucca, written his De immortalitate animorum “against Anabaptists, Sadducees, and Epicureans.”18 As for Camillo’s “sacramental” theology at this stage of t he conflict with Mainardo, one can only remark that he persisted in strenuously denying that the two ordinances were sacraments and in depriving them of any confirmatory or ratifying power. In the Trattato, for example, he wrote: As to the effect of baptism and of the Lord’s Supper, I state and affirm that it is not the function, either primary or secondary, of either one of them, that they be confirmatory or certifying seals (suggelli), firstly, because such designations (nomi) do not suit them. … Secondly, we do not find in the Scriptures that Christ instituted them for such a p urpose. … It is one thing to signify something, another to confirm it.19 At this point in the conflict with Mainardo, Camillo did not stress his interest in the agape (epulum). As for baptism, he regarded papal baptism as invalid, and was opposed to the Bullingerian equation of circumcision and pedobaptism; but he did not stress rebaptism, although rebaptisms are everywhere documented among his followers. He called the church by preference the company of Christ (compagnia) and espoused the principle of local autonomy (congregationalism). Like the Germanic Anabaptists, Camillo believed in the threefold warning and the ban of M atthew 18:15ff., as well as in the effort to persuade and heal in Matthew 17:15ff. He opposed the use of magisterial coercion in the realm of conscience. He regretted that the wholesome principle of loving and prayerful excommunication, with a readiness to readmit the 18  Markus Kutter, Celio Secondo Cur ione: Sein Leben and sein Werk (1503–1569), Basler Beiträge zur Geisteswissenschaft 54 (Basel: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1955), 44. 19  Rotondò, Opere, 91ff.; Cantimori and Feist, Eretici Italiani, 51–52.

848  the radical reformation

chapter 22.1

penitent, had given way to the use of magisterially enforced exile and capital punishment.20 In his reaction to Servetus’ death, Camillo echoed the other Italian exiles (Ch. 24.2) with a c all to toleration of A ntitrinitarian views. Camillo’s versified Professio rhetorically aims at providing Mainardo with an acceptable confession of faith. Nonetheless, in addition to the concept of signa, believers’ baptism by immersion, and the agape, Camillo therein suggests the Servetian conception of t he Holy Spirit as a F orce rather than a Person. In the mounting schism in the church of Chiavenna and the environing cluster of churches, Mainardo found himself opposed not only by Camillo and the other radicals but also by the founder of the church, Francis Negri, and by Francis Stancaro, a refugee Hebraist from Venice (Ch. 22.2.a). The latter, although he was not in agreement with Camillo on many points, went as the spokesman of t he Chiavenna dissidents to Zurich, whither Mainardo also went, each side hoping to gain the support of B ullinger. Although Bullinger had by now been prompted to call Camillo “the worst of heretics,” it is significant that Camillo himself could still, as late as 12 May 1549, write to Bullinger, demanding an explanation for the charge in the name of C hristian forthrightness and love and in keeping with their mutually professed friendship.21 Bullinger was instrumental in getting a R haetian synodal visitation organized to hear the charges and countercharges in the residence of one of the patrons of t he Chiavenna church, December 1549. It was reported hostilely of Camillo that he was so filled with alarm at the prospect of four evangelical pastors coming down from Chur to ferret out his “warrens” that he considered escaping this Protestant “inquisition.” But he finally resolved to stand his ground and prepare his defenses, including 125 articles of what he called the errors, ineptitudes, and scandals of Mainardo. At the hearing, the old pastor was largely vindicated by t he visitors, who went home, after drawing up twenty-one points of agreement, feeling that the dangerous Chiavenna schism had been healed by a few concessions to the sensibilities of the Rhaetians on the part of Camillo Renato and by his selfrestraint from further agitation. But Renato could not contain himself and was formally excommunicated 6 July 1550. He proceeded to organize “a church of Anabaptists.” At this juncture Peter Paul Vergerio entered the controversy from his newly acquired base as the pastor in tiny Vicosoprano. Having laid down the episcopal crozier of C apodistria in 1549 at the death-bed of F rancis Spiera (Ch. 22.6), this former prelate of noble birth and wide experience

20

 In Carmen (1554); Rotondò, Opere, 119–31; tr. Dorothy Rounds, IRS, 189 n. 4; 191, nn.

21

 Letter no. 13, Rotondò, Opere, 162–63.

3, 4.

chapter 22.1 /22.2

italy & the rhaetian republic  849

in missions for the Holy See in France and Germany was no doubt alert to the possibility of replacing Mainardo as the chief spokesman of the Italianspeaking Reformed Church of R haetia. Styling himself “the authorized visitor of t he synod,” he came to preside over the formal recantation of Camillo, 21 January 1551. There is no documentation for collusion between Camillo and Vergerio, but it is strange that Camillo, in signing this second recantation of his life, 22 felt none of the fear of fire or imprisonment which understandably gripped him in inquisitorial Ferrara a decade earlier, nor did he attempt to safeguard even the more moderate of h is doctrines and those which might still be discussable in a Reformed context. Vergerio, for his part, had the capacity to sympathize with or tolerate positions ranging from Catholic Evangelism through Lutheranism to Antitrinitarian Spiritualism. In return for Camillo’s real renunciation of t he radical and divisive principle of believers’ baptism and rebaptism and a formal rejection of the rest of his teachings, Vergerio no doubt momentarily hoped to present himself to the northern divines as a successful healer of schism and with a moderate Camillo to work for the building up of a comprehensive latitudinarian Italian Church on Rhaetian soil. He was soon to defend his policy of comprehension, expressing the hope that Rhaetia might earn thereby a reputation in the world for proceeding prudently and with great gentleness, “as indeed God our Lord deals with us.” The agreement with Camillo, if one there was, did not last long. Camillo resumed his separatist activities and was presently captured on a sally out of h is Rhaetian sanctuary in Bergamo, in the fall of 1552. We can leave him there, reassured, however, that he will again make good his escape (Ch. 22.3); and we turn to the Italian Anabaptist movement outside Rhaetia.

2. The Italian Anabaptist Movement Outside Rhaetia, 1533–1551 “The whole of t he Anabaptism of I taly” was, said one of t wo relapsed Anabaptists (conjecturally Girolamo Allegretti and Francis Negri) who professed to have been converted by Renato, “derived from Renato.”23 But we have already seen (Ch. 21.1) that there were many other ingredients in the movement and other personalities. Italian Anabaptism came to have a s trong rationalistic bent, and was programmatically critical of both the Nicene and Chalcedonian formulations. In contrast to northern Anabaptism, it often stressed predestination 22  Abiura, item 44, Opere, 235–41, discussed in “Camillo Renato,” 166–71, where I suggest a not complete parallel with the Confession of Obbe Philips. 23  Reported by Vergerio in a letter to Bullinger of 10 January 1553; Schiess, Korrespondenz, 1: no. 199:2; Rotondò, Opere, item no. 70, 258. Rotondò there supports my conjecture as to the two relapsed Anabaptists, n. 3.

850  the radical reformation

chapter 22.2

to saving faith, and it was in this context that the atoning role and hence the Lordship of C hrist in the churches was minimized or neglected. Its actual practices with respect to rebaptism—for example, immersion—may have perpetuated local Catholic usage, for immersion or partial immersion and pouring in the baptisteries survived from antiquity in several parts of this more clement region of C hristendom. Otherwise than in the north, the Italian Anabaptists usually regarded believers’ baptism as a sign of their predestination to salvation more than as the public token of an incorporative covenant. Anabaptists formed conventicles and they convened synods. Their local gathering was called variously a consorcio, congregatione, unione, compagnia, and collectively, God’s “santa e immaculata chiesa in quelli che sono ordinati … a vita eterna.”24 In the Italian Anabaptist conventicle the stress was eschatological rather than restorationist, if one may distinguish these two closely interrelated sectarian moods (Ch. 13.2). At the same time, the Italian Anabaptists readily called their itinerant pastors apostoli. They were more individualistic than their northern counterparts. Neither were the women among the converts so prominent as in Switzerland, Germany, and The Netherlands. On the whole, the Italian Anabaptists developed less interest than their Germanic counterparts in such conventicular instruments as the ban.25 The period covered by t hese generalizations extends from the first recorded articulation of A nabaptist doctrine by G iacometto Stringaro in his Epistola of 1533 (Ch. 22.2.c) to the defection of Peter Manelfi in 1551 (Ch. 22.2.d), from whose testimony much of w hich follows is drawn.26 Italian Anabaptism in this period was concentrated in the Rhaetian League (Ch. 22.1) and in the Republic of V enice, particularly Vicenza, Padua,

24  These phrases have been assembled from the Venetian inquisitorial archives by Edouard Pommier, “L’idée d’Eglise chez les anabaptistes italiens au XVI siècle,” Atti del X Congresso internazionale 1955, Comitato Inter nazionale di Scienze Stor iche (Rome, 1957), 791–93. See, for comparison, Aldo Stella, “L’ecclesiologia degli Anabattisti processati a Trieste nel 1540,” Eresia e Riforma, 205–37, where a more conservative view is given. See also Adriano Prosperi, “L’umanità di tra de vozione Cristo ed er esia,” Hungarian Academy of Sciences: Studia Humanitatis 5, Publications of the Centre for Renaissance Research 6 (Budapest, 1982), 191–202. The most comprehensive work in Italian on Eur opean Anabaptism and esp. rich in that of Italy is Ugo Gastaldi, Storia Dell’anabattismo (Turin: Claudiana, 1972–81), with pictures and maps. The following section draws on “The Two Social Strands in Italian Anabaptism ca. 1526–ca. 1565,” The Social History of the Reformation, ed. Lawrence P. Buck and Jonathan W. Zophy (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1972), 156–207. 25  There are some instances of banning, for example, a certain Gasparo Menzato da Castel franco was excommunicated by Giacometto da Treviso: “I say in the name of the Chur ch, I announce the judgment and deliver you to the devil [cf. 1 Cor. 5:2].” Pommier, “L’itinéraire,” 412–13, n. 4. In P adua Lawrence Tizzano was excommunicated by Nicholas da Treviso, in Pommier, ibid., 318. Camillo Renato refers approvingly to the ban, above, n. 20. 26  Carlo Ginzburg, I Costituti di Don Pietro Manelfi (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1970).

chapter 22.2 / 22.2.a

italy & the rhaetian republic  851

Venice, Treviso, and Rovigo. Italian Anabaptism in this period has not yet been adequately studied on the basis of t he considerable documentation yet to be classified and edited. It would appear to have arisen from the confluence of Germanic Anabaptism via the Grigioni and the South Tyrol (Ch. 21.3), of popularized and radicalized Valdesianism (Ch. 21.4), and of Judaism or philo-Hebraism from whatever source, possibly Marranos. It could be conjectured that Italian Marranos, moving out of t he Spanishcontrolled Kingdom of Sicily, especially after 1542, will have brought with them memories of the substitution of female proselyte ablution for spiritual circumcision in the hostile Iberian environment, and that this “spiritual circumcision” by water will have been assimilated to the practice of believers’ baptism (i.e., Anabaptism) coming south from Germany.27

Pope Clement VII, by Daurel Hopfer a. The Special Religio-Political Status of Venetia among the Italian States: Its Eschatological Idealization by William Postel In the kingdom of Naples (Ch. 21.4), we took note of how Italian Evangelical Valdesianism divided into a m ore moderate current (eventually to flow 27  Pommier approaches this generalization, however, without reference directly to Judaism, placing “the birth of Italian Anabaptism at the confluence of two currents, the one coming from the plains of Treviso and Padua, the other from Naples, and which in the course of many disputes, prepared themselves for mutual concession: the one [settling for the mer e] humanity of Christ chosen by God as the messenger of his r evelation at the moment of his o wn baptism, the other [conceding] the second and tr ue baptism, which guarantees eter nal salvation.” “L’itinéraire religieux,” 308. In translation I ha ve reversed the order of the concession in line with what I belie ve Pommier intended, namely, that it w as the radical Valdesians who first became adoptionist in their Christology.

852  the radical reformation

chapter 22.2.a

into the Counter-Reform) and a m ore radical current. In the north, by innumerable gradations, social and theological, one can similarly move all the way from the Venetian Gasparo Contarini (d. 1542) to the Spiritualist George Siculo in Ferrara. In between we placed the author of Il Beneficio (Venice, 1543), Benedictine Benedict Fantanini (Ch. 21.6), whose monastic life extended from Mantua to Catania, and who though more conservative, was associated with George Siculo in Ferrara who also came from near Catania. 28 Born George Rioli, he left the Cassino congregation of his Benedictine monastery of San Nicolò l’Arena, entered Bologna, and preached openly. Although ignorant, scarcely able to read Latin, his sermons greatly moved students in the Spanish college. He professed to have had a vision in which Christ “in his own person” communicated to him a message, which was much like that of the Anabaptists. George Siculo also drew into his circle professors in Ferrara and Benedictines imbued with the new humanistic Evangelism. We pick up his trail later (Ch. 22.6). Although the states of the peninsula display even greater religio-political diversity than elsewhere in Europe, the Papal States operating more powerfully and more opulently than any prince-archbishopric of Germany, the other principalities, and city-states, and the kingdom of N aples were also much more disparate in polity than what prevailed in the Empire. Amid such diversity of polity and religious establishment the imperial maritime Republic of Venice requires even in a survey of radical religiosity in Italy a few words of characterization, for, among other points, like the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (which indeed liked to think of its constitution as modeled on Venice), it embraced the Orthodox as well as Catholics, and was even more tolerant of the new Protestantism than the other states of the peninsula could constitutionally afford to be, given the cultural and canonical centrality of temporal papal sway. 29 Julius II (1503–13), as by temperament and martial energy much closer to his namesake Julius Caesar than to his fourth-century predecessor whose name he reclaimed, had laid the cornerstone of the new Basilica of St. Peter in 1506, had conducted an expedition against Perugia and Bologna which 28  See Salvatore Caponetto, “Benedetto da Manto va,” Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (henceforth DBI), 34 vols. to date (Rome: Fondata Enciclopedia Italiana, 1960– ) founded b y Giovanni Trecani, 8:437–41; and Carlo Ginzb urg, “Due Note sul profetismo cinquecentesco,” Rivista Storica Italiana 78 (1966): 184–227, which deals with the sect of George Siculo, the further identification of Benedict, and the followers in Venice of Benedict “Corazzaro.” Ginzburg summarizes his conjectures as to the career of Benedict, “Due Note,” 197, having pointed out the connection between George Siculo and Benedict. 29  Karl Benrath wr ote both Geschichte der Refor mation in Venedig (Halle, 1887) and Wiedertäufer im Venetianischen um die Mille des 16. Jahrhunderts, Theologische Studien und Kritiken 58 (Gotha, 1885). Emmanuel Rodocanochi dealt with Venice in La Réforme in Italien, 2 (Paris, 1920), updated by Édouard Pommier, “La société venitienne et la Reforme protestante au XVIe siècle,” Bolletino dell’Istitoto di Storia e dello Stato Veneziano 1 (1959): 326.

chapter 22.2.a

italy & the rhaetian republic  853

submitted to his sovereignty, and thereupon joined the League of Cambrai against Venice in 1509. He had called the V Lateran Council in 1512 (Ch. 1.6.a). In 1511 Julius II joined the Holy League, aligning himself with the emperor, against all of I taly-threatening France; but rivalry persisted, Venice having unusual assets for relative autonomy, not unlike France after the Concordat of Bologna (1516). On the authority of his own predecessor in 1450, Venice had acquired the dignity of a P atriarchate (by the suppression of an ancient see now in subject territory). The Patriarch of St. Mark’s, elected by the Senate (Consiglia de pregadi) could in theory be a layman (the first such was Vincenzio Diedo, 1555). The Patriarch (his confirmation after 1492 dependent upon the consent of the retired incumbent) had ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the dioceses from Trent to Trieste and Capodistria (Slovenian Kopar) and some authority over the Primate of Dalmatia from his base in Spoleto and to a lesser degree over the Uniate bishops of the Venetian maritime republic in Corfù, Crete, and Cyprus. When the Roman Inquisition was set up in the Papal States in 1542, Venetia (Veneto) insisted on its own inquisitorial administration centered in the capital. Venice and the Veneto with its far-flung Mediterranean dependencies was conversant with Ottoman Islam at the highest intellectual level as well as in renowned naval engagements (four campaigns against the Sultan in the century) and was a major center in Italy of Jewish Marranos fleeing from Spain in 1492. Among the most distinguished refugees was Isaac Abrabanel (1437– 1508) whose career as major exegete of the Bible and the Talmud made of him a luminary of European Judaism in the century. From 1516 Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews in Venice were obliged to move to the geto nuovo (new foundry) and in 1541 the Levantine Jews in the city were relocated in the adjacent quarter of t he geto vecchio, and the name of t heir quarter would eventually enter the vocabulary of Italia and in due course modern speech as ghetto, the area in any town for the dwellings and the synagogues of the Jews. There were presently rival publishing houses of the Jewish community, whose scriptural, cabalistic, and eschatological thought would become woven into the tapestry of P rotestant and sectarian thought well beyond the boundaries of the imperial maritime republic, while the University of Veneto in Padua had long since become the center of the diffusion of ideas of pan-European impact (Ch. 1.6.c). 30 30  See also Cecil Roth, A History of the Marranos (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1959; 4th ed., New York: Hermon Press, 1974); Antonio Ciscato, Gli Ebrei in Padova (Bologna, 1901); Nicola Ferorelli, Gli Ebrei nell’Italia meridionale (Bologna, 1915); and especially Ira Robinson, “Abrabanel and Halevi: Two Strands of Jewish Messianic Thought in

854  the radical reformation

chapter 22.2.a

Venice was tolerant of t he Greek and Armenian Orthodox as well as Uniates, all well established since their flight from Byzantium in 1453. Venice was also tolerant of merchants from Germany and Switzerland and of their diplomatic chapels with Protestant liturgy. The works of Luther and Melanchthon reached Venice as early as 1518, cresting to the point of her being the entrepôt of distribution of Protestant works for the rest of Italy. Some such works were reprinted in Venice for this book trade. The high point of philo-Protestantism in Venice was the decade from 1530 to the setting up of the Inquisition. The earliest historian of the Italian Reformation, the Dutch Calvinist Daniel Gerdes, in his Specimen Italiae reformatae (Leiden, 1765) would be prepared to declare from his sources that the Republic just might have become Protestant. 31 At the end of t he century, it cannot but be of i nterest though a b it beyond our chronological frame, Marco Antonio de Domenis (1566–1624), Jesuit Primate of Dalmatia, would, as a spirited defender at the Council of Trent of e piscopacy as a d istinct order (cf. Ch.2.3), defect to the Ecclesia Anglicana, participate in the ordination of the bishop of Lincoln, write his De Republica Ecclesiastica against the papal monarchy, but in the end repudiate the Church of James I in his Sui reditus et Anglia consilium (1623) and end his days a reclaimed Catholic but dying in a Roman prison. From Venetia’s maritime possessions came figures notable in the Reformation era such as Francis Lismanino of Corfù, provincial of the Franciscans in Poland and Bohemia, confessor to Queen Bona Sforza and tutor to her son, Sigismund II Augustus, the latter the unwitting fostering father of the Reformation in Poland (Ch. 25.1). We have already mentioned the Lutheran eventuel Peter Paul Vergerio (d. 1564), bishop of Capodistria, later prominent in Poland and Wurttenberg, and will have occasion to mention the Croat Centuriator Matthew Flacius Illyricus, born in Abona in Istria and educated in Venice. Another figure destined to appear several times in ensuing chapters is the Christian Hebraist Francis Stancaro (1501–74). Born in Mantua of possibly Sephardic Jewish ancestors, he studied in the cloister school the Church Fathers, the scholastics, and the humanists of h is day, became a priest, and published his first work, De modo legendi Hebraice institutio brevissima (1530). A proponent of Evangelism, Stancaro had a talent for stirring up antagonism wherever he appeared. A Venetian with whom Stancaro lived for a while compared him with “a snail which leaves behind it a trail of slime.” A syndic of Venice who also played host to Stancaro for a time

the Aftermath of the Spanish Expulsion,” Papers of the Harvard Colloquium on Sixteenth Century Jewish Thought (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980). 31  Quoted by Kutter, Curio, 25, n. 47. After the defeat of the Smalcald League in 1544, the Venetian state and its patrician classes turned emphatically from the Protestant option.

chapter 22.2.a

italy & the rhaetian republic  855

described his boarder as unreliable, egotistical, and selfish in all that he did, adding that Stancaro looked like a Jew, and that in Venice the Hebraist married a w oman of h umble station. Stancaro, who may have begun his teaching career at Friuli, became a teacher of Hebrew and theology at Padua in 1540, at which time he left the Roman Church evidently converted by t he intrepitude of J erome Galeato, martyred in Venice, 1541. Caught up in the Reformation, he was imprisoned by the Venetian Republic for 14 months and 6 days, as he would later write out for his first protector in Great Poland, Andrew I Górka (d. 1551). 32 He was charged with certain of his writings in Mantua and Venice. He was released in 1542 but with the loss of his writings to date and left Italy with the establishment of the Roman Inquisition, staying in Chiavenna in the Rhaetian Republic, where we have already noted him engaged in controversy with both the local Reformed pastor Agostino and Camillo Renato (Ch. 22.3). Because of Renato he would be to the end bitterly opposed to Anabaptists. From Basel he would write his Della Riformatione (April 1547), addressed to the Signoria of Venice, quoting on the title page Revelation 5:5: “Behold the Lion of the tribe of Judah [in pointed allusion to the lion of the Piazza di San Marco], the Root of David, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.” The work was a c all to all princes to undertake the reformation of doctrine and the sacraments on the basis of S cripture and the Church Fathers without tarrying for the Pope to call a council. As for the separatist radicals in Venetia, we recall that we already encountered the first of the Italian-speaking Anabaptists in recoil from the violence of the Peasants’ War in the Tyrol and took note of the first Italian Anabaptist, known by name Master Anthony Marangone of the Rialto district, arrested in 1533 (Ch. 21.3). Servetus was evidently on his way to Venice in connection with his biblical publications when his trip was cut short in Geneva (Ch. 24.4). His ideas about the Trinity (Hagenau, 1531) already circulated in Venice as early as 1539, as evidenced in a letter addressed to the Venetian Senate over the name of Melanchthon. Though not actually written by Melanchthon, the letter refuted Servetus for the benefit of the Venetians with the same arguments used by M elanchthon in his second edition of Loci communes. The letter indicates that some Venetian student or visitor in Wittenberg had been aware of a s ufficiently large circle of Italians favorably disposed to Servetus to warrant the detailed warning in the name of t he Saxon divine. Further notices of Servetian influence in Italy do not reappear until the eve of Servetus’ execution in Geneva (Ch. 23.4, 24). Some version of the doctrine of the celestial flesh of Christ was known to Julius Gherlandi 32  Undated letter, ed. Theodor Wotsche from the Königsberg archives, Altpreussische Monatsschrift 47 (1910), part 1: 465–98; part 2: 570–613, with autobiographical supplication to Górka, 589–92.

856  the radical reformation

chapter 22.2.a

and disavowed by h im in his hearing in Venice (Ch. 22.5). 33 There were Schwenckfeldian contacts with Venetians (22.2.a). Without intending to include among the radicals of t he sixteenth century any and all religious movements and personages not acknowledged as Orthodox, Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, or Anglican, one may still f ind an appropriate place here for the visionary from Normandy, William Postel (1510–81), who considered Venice as at once the New Jerusalem and the New Rome, the city of Noah and his descendants, the prospective site of the Universal Monarchy of the Creator in the restoration of Reason. William Postel, sometime Jesuit missionary, polyhistorian, cabalist, acquaintance of David Joris, correspondent of Schwenckfeld, and defender of Servetus, was in Venice in 1527 on his way back from Turkey and again from 1547 to 1549. 34 It was in Venice that he twice translated the cabalistic Zohar and was strangely converted to cosmic feminism by an illiterate Venetian virgin of about fifty, who was giving her life in ministry to the sick and the poor, and who possessed occult powers of healing and spiritual discernment. Postel’s extraordinary vision of a new humanity shaped within Venice but for all the world would never have been formed in his febrile mind and divinely touched heart had it not been for Giovanna ( Juana) Veronese (c. 1496–1549), 35 possibly of humble Marrano origin, who dedicated herself as a virgin to the poor, first ministering to them in Padua, c. 1520. She soon left for Venice to the Barnabite hospice of SS. John and Paul. Here she founded the Ospedale dei Derelitti ai SS. Giovanne e Paolo (which still functions), raising money among philanthropic Venetians to carry on her 33

 Stella, Cinquecento veneto, 106, n. 78.  William J. Bouwsma, Concordia Mundi: The Career and Thought of Guillaume Postel (1510– 1581) (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957); and Mar ion Leathers Kuntz, Guillaume Postel: Prophet of the Restitution of All Things: His Life and Thought, International Archives of the History of Ideas 98 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1981). Having gained access to unpr inted sources, she goes beyond Bouwsma, dividing the vita into three phases, Viator (1510–47), Comprehensor (1547–62), and Congregator (1562–81). Several works published by Marion Kuntz since 1981 are adduced below. Her book lists the major works of Postel, 178–92. See further François Secret, Bibliographie des manuscrits de Guillaume Postel (Geneva: Droz, 1970). 35  Marion Kuntz, having looked in vain through the comprehensive death notices of the city, surmises that Giovanna, who was about fifty when Postel made her acquaintance, may have been confined by the inquisitorial authorities to some convent and died sometime after 1549. Postel wrote most fully about her in companion pieces, Il libro della divina or dinatione dove si tratta delle casi miraculose … in Venetia (Padua, 1555) and Le Prime nove del altro mundo … La Vergine Venetiana (Padua, 1555). Kuntz holds that the tw o companion volumes were published in the order given here, Postel, 127. The vita is more generally accessible in John Carion, Chronicon (Paris edition of 1577), which contains the vita in full in the Appendix. Lodovico Domenichi, who may have had independent information about Giovanna Veronese, gives the vita in Italian translation in Fatti Degni di Memoria (1558). Kuntz deals with the complexities, “Lodovico Domenichi, Guillaume Postel and the Bio graphy of Giovanna Veronese,” Studi Veneziani, n.s. 16 (1988): 33–34. 34

chapter 22.2.a

italy & the rhaetian republic  857

mission. It was during the great plague and famine of 1528 that Madre Giovanna prevailed upon wealthy Venetians to supply funds for a redotto of several rooms near the church. Mother Giovanna (a Venetian Mother Teresa before her time) alone came to cook for as many as eight hundred orphans and indigents, consuming herself none of the meat she prepared and sleeping only a few hours a night, convinced that all Christians at the Last Judgment would be asked to what extent they had put themselves out to feed the poor (Matt. 25:35). In 1539 a d elegation of S S. John and Paul requested help from the Barnabites in Milan. This order had been founded in the church of S t. Barnabas in 1530, known officially as the Clerks Regular of S t. Paul, devoted to the assistance of the poor, their women associates becoming known as Paolini. The choice for the Venetian mission fell on the mystic aristocrat and philanthropist Paola Antonia Negri of M ilan and Vicenza, who had become identified with the Barnabites. She claimed to have received the Holy Spirit in her person and knew the secrets of t he hearts of a ll those, the poor and orphans, to whom she ministered near the Ospedaletto. She came to be recognized as Divina Madre. She and the Barnabite priests together held public confession in the square in front of SS. John and Paul and assigned often harsh penance even to contrite kneeling priests, and often suspended their right to celebrate the Mass. It was in these circumstances of possible spiritual rivalry between the Milanese aristocrat and the Veronese Marrano that the latter, the Venetian Virgin, underwent her enormous experience of the indwelling by Christ, the immutation, or divine infusion. Her principal interpreter, William Postel, who had been released from his Jesuit vows in Rome, and served as priest in her neighborhood and among her devotees beginning in c. 1547, would later report her happening, when the heavenly body of the living Christ descended “into the most holy virgin Jochanna by name” and she “became truly one with the living Christ and carried his substance in her body.”36 She is later quoted by her spiritual “son” and priestly father as having defined her providential role in becoming male through the superior male presence in her of Christ: “I am the Signor because He lives in me and because of this I am in Him, the Pope, Holy Reformer of the world.”37 Mother Giovanna was an ecstatic prophetess. In the course of h er time in the hospice and soup kitchen she set forth seven notable prophecies collected by Postel: (1) that the reformation of the whole world would begin in Venice, with herself the Holy Pope, who, however, would not participate in the order of magistracy, (2) that the minister-prince of 36  Kuntz describes the event in several places, citing the se veral consistent testimonies of Postel, e.g. in “The Virgin of Venice,” 122. 37  From Postel, Il libro delia divina ordinatione, quoted by Kuntz, “The Virgin of Venice,” 127.

858  the radical reformation

chapter 22.2.a

this new Papacy would be the prince in Christendom most Christian in deeds, not words, (3) that the Turks would be soon converted to become the best of Christians, although if born Christians should fail to turn to the good life, the Turks might first castigate them, (4) that all who have love for all would be secretly blessed by t he Venetian Virgin’s Spouse and given a n ew white body with the eucharistic bread and a n ew red body with the chalice, (5) that there would be one Passover or universal Raccolta (assembly/harvest), (6) that all human beings would become as Christ, except for his divinity, and (7) that the world is made as the palm (tamar), but meaning its fruit, the date, the perfect and mystical substance, perhaps an obscure reference to the Eucharist. 38 For the scholarly William Postel, Venice in 1527 (but especially in 1547) and the prophetess-virgin were decisive for his life and oeuvre. He left Venice in 1549, implicitly consecrated by M other Giovanna as the Elijah of t he Restoration of A ll Things, but without yet knowing the plenitude of h is mission. It was his intention to search in the Levant for a New Testament in Arabic in the interest of p reparing an edition for both Christians in the East, for whom their ancient liturgical languages were no longer alive, and for the Muslims. He was back in France in 1550 and was again received in court; and to Henry II’s sister, Margaret, he dedicated his Les très merveilleuses Victoires du nouveau monde de femme (Paris, 1553). In Paris, he was regarded by many as crazy and sometimes confined to a monastery, where he underwent a spiritual restoration of his natural reason, as he thought of it. For several weeks he was withdrawn into the wilderness within, in grief, bewilderment, and agony. It was at Epiphany in 1552 that Postel experienced his own immutatio, a decisive moment, which he interpreted as his ordination as the son of his deceased Mother Giovanna, a regeneration that he thought of as the consequence of the mystical marriage of Giovanna with Christ, the New Adam. 39 In his book on his own commissioning by G iovanna from beyond death, Postel directly applied to himself and to her the prophecy of J eremiah 31:22: “For Yahweh has created a new thing on the earth: a woman will encompass a man ( femina circumdabit virum).”40 While still in Paris Postel published two translations from the Hebrew, one Abrahami Patriarchae liber Jezirah, sive formationis mundi and bound with

38

 The seven prophecies are presented by Marion Leathers Kuntz, “The Virgin of Venice and Concept of the Millennium inVenice,” The Politics of Gender in Early Modern Europe, ed. Jean R. Brink et al., Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies 12 (Kirksville , Mo.: Sixteenth Centur y Publishers, 1989): 111–30, esp. 123. 39  He recounted his experience in many places, but notably in De Divina ordinatione, paraphrased most fully b y Kuntz, “Journey as Restitution in the Thought of Guillaume P ostel,” History of European Ideas 1 (1981): 315–29, esp. 318. 40  The Jeremiah text is part of the title page of Le Prime nove, above, n. 35.

chapter 22.2.a

italy & the rhaetian republic  859

it Restitutio rerum omnium conditarum, by the hand of E lijah the fearsome prophet (Paris, 1552).41 The Hebrew original is Sefer Taam ha-Taamin, which Postel Latinized as Liber rationis rationum.42 It must suffice to observe that Postel in this work on Restoration and in many other works growing out of his sense of the centrality of Venice in the providence of God envisages four eras in the projected world monarchy of God and the restoration of reason as it was in the beginning in harmony with God. He thinks of Christ as Priest, King, and Judge 43 (in a tripartite scheme that was different from that of t he triplex munus Christi evolving elsewhere; cf. Ch. 10.2.b), even though prophecy as both forthtelling and foretelling was very prominent in his schema, both in the person of Giovanna herself and in his own person as her spiritual son and commissioned new Elijah. In his variations on a fourfold administrative system for the universal monarchy restored with right reason reclaimed, he held that Rome had forfeited its place in the divine design for the restoration, that Jerusalem (opposite Venetian Cyprus) would regain functional dignity as the seat of the high priesthood, that Venice would be the seat of government, as combining the spiritual authority of J ohn Mark’s patriarchate and the splendor of the majesty of m agistracy of t he Signoria. Venice henceforth would be the capital of the world monarchy (politia universalis) or also Ecclesia mundana, while Paris would be the seat of t he judicial system related to the Thomist/Postellian office of legislator and judex.44 Postel foresaw the world society as being a loose confederation of altogether twelve administrative capitals (and twelve alternates), evocative of the twelve tribes, the twelve apostles, and the twelve signs of t he zodiac. Besides the three capitals for Christ as Priest, King, and Judge—Jerusalem, Venice, and Paris—he thought of a fourth capital as the invisible civitas within the conscience of each person restored to right reason as God intended.

41  Article, “The Christian Kabbalah,” beginning with Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (146–394) of Flor ence, Encyclopedia Judaica, 16 vols. (Jerusalem/New York: Keter/Macmillan, 1971), 10: 643–46. The Christian Kabbalah sprang from two sources: the first was the christological speculation of some Mar ranos from c. 1400 to their expulsion; and the second was the Florentine Academy, which believed it had discovered in the Kabbalah a pr imordial revelation that embraced the admired Greek mystical philosophers from Pythagoras through Plato to the Orphics, and seemed to deepen their Catholicism.Postel, withour direct contact with Florence, belonged to this movement. 42  Secret lists the Hebrew MS 905 in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Biographie, 101. Kuntz deals with the work most fully among her writings in “Journey.” 43  Kuntz supplies the tr ipartite scheme of Postel, quoting from Bibliothèque Nationale, fonds lat. 3677, fol. 34r, “Journey,” 321 and n. 45; and gives the same in “Guillaume Postel and the World State Restitution and the Uni versal Monarchy,” in two parts, History of European Ideas 4 (1983): 299–323; 445–65, esp. 445 and n. 104. 44  Kuntz several times characterizes the universal monarchy, esp. in “Virgin of Venice,” 128; “World State,” 454.

860  the radical reformation

chapter 22.2.a / 22.2.b

Postel left Paris in March 1553 and was in Basel in June where he made the acquaintance of Caspar Schwenckfeld, Sebastian Castellio, and David Joris while living under the name of John of Bruges. He was shaken by the burning of S ervetus in October, and from Venice he wrote his Apologia pro Serveto, assailing Calvin and his defense of the execution.45 From Venice he also opened up correspondence with Schwenckfeld concerning the Restitutio, beginning in August 1553.46 He was called to Vienna to teach Hebrew, but on hearing that his works were condemned in Venice, he returned in utter confidence in the providential mission of Venice and his own apostolate. Postel stood trial for his heresies before the Venetian Inquisition, September 1555. His two books on the Venetian Virgin (Padua, 1555) and his commission by h er featured prominently. He was condemned for his aberrations but declared mad and his life was spared. He was extradited to Rome at the insistence of Paul IV and was held in Ripetta, a Roman prison for Jews and heretics, from 1556 to 1559, when the prison was stormed by the angry populace and he was among the liberated.47 b. Radicalized Valdesianism: Busale, Laureto, and Tizzano The radicalization of Valdesianism and its approximation to Anabaptism may be followed in representative detail in the circle around Jerome Busale domiciled about 1550 in Padua. After the death of Valdés, the Benedictine Abbot Jerome Busale (Buzzale),48 with his brothers Matthew and Bruno, left Naples and ended up at the University of Padua studying philosophy. Here he appropriated two views closely associated with Paduan intellectual and popular religious circles: (1) that saints and sinners sleep until the day of resurrection and Last Judgment and accordingly that there is neither a heaven nor a purgatory and (2) that Jesus was born of the seed of Joseph, a characteristic affirmation of a n Ebionitic Christology. Already in 1530 in Padua the Franciscan Jerome Galeato (born in Venice c. 1490; d. in prison 1541) had been sentenced for life for holding that the souls of t he saints sleep until the general resurrection.49 As for Ebionitism in Padua, its origins are obscure. By 1551 Bullinger in a letter to Calvin would be alarmed about it: “In Padua the horrible heresy of Ebion teems again, that

45 46

n. 80. 47

 Ch. 24, n.4.  CS, 14; Kuntz, Postel, 112. For other contacts of Schwenckfeld with Venetians, see below,

 Kuntz, “Lodovico Domenichi,” 40.  Stella, Cinquecento veneto, 33 et passim. Rotondò, Opere, 24–28 deals with Buzzale in Padua as the shaper of the longing of Laelius Socinus to master Hebrew (Padua, Basel, Wittenberg, Zurich) and as opening up the Masor etic text as the philolo gically most reliable part of the Bible. 49  Rotondò, “Bologna,” 136; complete biography is in Comba, Protestanti, 2: chap. 2. 48

chapter 22.2.b

italy & the rhaetian republic  861

Jesus Christ was born of the corruptible seed of Joseph. In order to affirm this they must deny a good part of the Gospels.”50 One cannot but surmise that Marranos from Spain and Portugal and then the Kingdom of Naples, resettled in towns up the peninsula, would have been one impetus toward Judaizing, whether from within or without the heretical fellowships. The Anabaptist community in Padua in the same year as Bullinger’s letter would be apprised of a whole group in Naples who regarded Jesus as only a prophet and not the Messiah and this view would penetrate their circle.51 It is of interest that Busale’s group in Padua met first in the home of the Spaniard John de Villafranca and then after the Spaniard’s death, in the residence of the liberal abbot himself. John de Villafranca (d. 1545), sometime official under the viceroy in Naples, a friend of Lady Isabelle Bresegna, may have been a Marrano. He was in any case the fount, alike in Naples and then in Padua, of the inspiration leading to adoptionist, anabaptist, psychopannychist, millennialist Valdesianism. He came to hold that Jesus as Messiah would come to rule his elect saints for a thousand years on earth and then deliver his kingdom to the Father (cf. 1 Cor. 15:24). 52 Into the new Paduan circle of Villafranca and Busale came two Neapolitan Cistercians, Lawrence Tizzano and John Laureto di Buongiorno. Both of them monks of Santa Maria di Monte Oliveto, they had joined the circle around John Valdés and had participated in the gatherings in Naples, concerned with the new theology and especially with charity toward the poor and envisaging a new “church of the poor.”53 Lawrence Tizzano came to Padua to study medicine; John Laureto via Genoa and Vicenza to study Hebrew. From Valdesianism they moved through Anabaptism respectively into Jewish Christianity and outright Judaism. Their peregrinations are

50  Letter of 25 Mar ch 1551; according to OC 14, no. 1472, col. 87. See also Aldo Stella, “Influssi culturali padovani sulla genesi e sugli sviluppi dell’antitrinitarismo,” in Robert Dán and Antal Pirnát, eds., Antitrinitarianism in the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century, Studia Humanitatis 5, ed. Tibor Klaniczay (Budapest: Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 1982), 202–14. 51  The communication from Naples in September 1551 is discussed b y Stella, Cinquecento veneto, 81–82. 52  Concerning the Spaniar d John de Villafranca, the follo wing gave testimony: Marc Antonio Villamarina, Naples, July 1552, in Stella, Cinquecento veneto, 101; Tizzano, Venice 1553, reprinted in large part by Francesco Lemmi, La Riforma in ltalia e i Riformnatori ltaliani all’estero nel secolo XVI (Milan, 1939), 65–83; Matthew Busale, Naples, July 1553 in Stella, Cinquecento veneto, 57, 101; Julius Basalù, Naples, May 1555, etc. 53  Stella, Cinquecento veneto, 103.

862  the radical reformation

chapter 22.2.b

recounted in their hearings before the Inquisition after they separately turned themselves in with the hope of clemency in 1553.54 John Laureto di Buongiorno della Cava had at the age of seventeen or so made his vows as a Cistercian monk at Monte Oliveto in Naples and was at length also ordained a priest. Soon thereafter, however, without permission, he donned lay garb and left, attaching himself at length to the Austin Canons of S ant’Annelo in Naples and there for a w hile daily said Mass. Here he made the friendship of s omeone in the service of t he viceroy of Naples. The official introduced him to Lutheranism and gave him books, promising to take him along to Germany to learn more. To this end they sailed together to Genoa; but Laureto, who had again cast off his priestly garb, got sick and had to stay behind. He got into contact with Lady Isabella Bresegna,55 whom he had come to know in Valdesian circles in Naples, now wife of the governor of Piacenza under Charles V. Apparently Lady Bresegna had called Jerome Busale thither into her spiritual services. And it was thus in Piacenza that Laureto first found Busale well advanced from Valdesian crypto-Lutheranism into Unitarianism. Busale openly expressed doubt about the divinity of C hrist and he urged Laureto to pursue the study of G reek and Hebrew like himself in order to get “at the truth.” Busale having prudently left employment with Lady Bresegna for Padua, Laureto presently followed him, invited thither by the liberal abbot. While Laureto was studying Hebrew in Padua, several Anabaptists came to town and, after discussion, persuaded both Busale and Laureto to submit to rebaptism, Laureto at the hands of Benedict del Borgo of Asolo, Busale by Nicholas d’Alessandria of Treviso (whose wife had left him because of his heresy).56 After some time Busale was elected bishop of t he Paduan

54  The testimony of Tizzano is published by Domenico Ber ti, “Di Giovanni Valdés e di taluni suoi discepoli,” Atti dell’ Accademia dei Lincei, 3d ser., 2 (1877–78): 61ff., conveniently printed by Lemmi, La Riforma. Tizzano is extensively discussed by Stella, Cinquecento veneto, 36 passim, who considers him, however, identical with Il Tiziano, see below at n. 70. After turning to medicine, Tizzano called himself Benedetto Flor io. The testimony of Laureto when about thirty-five years old, in Archivio di Stato di Venezia (henceforth AV), Sant’Uffizio, is published by Édouard Pommier, “L’itinéraire Religieux,” 317–32, preceded by an interpretation of Laureto as a representative spiritual wanderer, 317–22. 55  Bainton, Women 1, ch. 13; Casadei, “Isabella Bresegna,” Religio 13:63. For the general religious background, see Frederico Chabod, “Per la storia religiosa dello Stato di Milano durante di Carlo V, Parte Seconda: La Rifor ma,” Annuario Del’Istituto Stor ico Italiano per l’Età modena e contemporanea 2–3 (1938): 81–164 with documents; for a survey of the inquisitorial records of Milan bear ing on religious emigration, including both Anabaptists and Antitrinitarians, see Mario Bendiscioli, “Aspetti dell’immigrazione e dell’emig razione nelle car te dell’inquisizioni antiereticale di Milano nei secc. XVI–XVII,” Archivio Storico Lombardo, 9th ser., 1 (1961): 65. 56  Testimony, 1553; ed. Pommier, “L’Itinéraire,” 319. On Nicholas see fur ther, Stella, Cinquecento veneto, 92 passim; and Augusto Serena, “Fra gli er etici trevigiani [Benedetto da Borgo d’Asolo et Nicolò d’Alessandria],” Archivio Veneto-Tridentino 3 (1923): 169–202.

chapter 22.2.b

italy & the rhaetian republic  863

Anabaptists in recognition of his profound knowledge of Hebrew,57 and it was doubtless in that capacity that Busale attended the Anabaptist synod of Venice in September of 1550 (Ch. 22.2.d), but we shall follow our Neapolitan pilgrims beyond that event. Fearful no doubt after the defection of Peter Manelfi in 1551 (Ch. 22.2.d), Busale for his part decided to return to Naples and asked Laureto to accompany him on the road. As they walked, Busale talked about the prophecies of Amos, applying them to contemporary Italy which would be chastised by God for the persecution of Anabaptists in all states of the peninsula. Laureto so often challenged him on his hermeneutics that when Busale decided to leave Naples for Alexandria,58 where he had relatives (suggestive of a M arrano origin), he refused to let Laureto accompany him further. Laureto went back to Padua via Rome and for four months studied Hebrew further in company with Bruno Busale and Lawrence Tizzano. During this brief sojourn, presumably, Laureto was excommunicated by Nicholas d’Alessandria of A solo from the Paduan Anabaptist community for having criticized them for superstitiously confining their reading to the Bible. About Christmas 1551, Laureto and Tizzano went to Ferrara and then separated. Via Vicenza, Laureto reached Genoa whence he sailed to Thessalonica 59 and there found large numbers of Anabaptists under the headship of h is excommunicator, Nicholas. Preferring by n ow the company of the Sephardic Jewish community, the better to continue his study of Hebrew under rabbis, Laureto finally converted and submitted to circumcision, but he did not accept the proffer of a Jewish wife. The more he studied under Jewish tutelage, the more “superstitious” and “erroneous” post-biblical Judaism appeared to him, but to get away, to Constantinople, he had to feign a desire for more advanced studies there before being able to establish a Hebrew school of his own. In his heart Laureto had already decided to return to Roman Catholic obedience and, sailing by way of Heracleon (Candia), he reached Venice and turned himself over to the inquisitorial authorities to recant in 1553 the extraordinary spiritual peregrinations which we have followed from afar. In that same city at the same time Lawrence Tizzano, his erstwhile companion first in Monte Oliveto in Naples and then in the Judaizing Anabaptist conventicle in Padua, made a similar confession. Lawrence Tizzano had in Naples come to know not only Valdés but also Lady Julia Gonzaga, Galeazzo Caracciolo marquis of Vico, and perhaps 57

 Laureto, testimony, 1553, in Pommier, “L’Itinéraire,” 319.  Ibid., 320. Stanislas Lubieniecki in his Historia, 2:1, says that Busale went to Thessalonica with forty companions and thence to Damascus, where he died. He probably confused Busale with Nicholas d’Alessandria. See Cantù, Discorsi storici, 3:167. 59  Thessalonica was a major city of the diaspora of 1492, Ladin (Romande) being spoken there widely until the conquest of Greece by Hitler. 58

864  the radical reformation

chapter 22.2.b / 22.2.c

especially John de Villafranca, who gave him Lutheran books. These he had burned before leaving Naples, lest his family and friends there be implicated.60 In Padua the sometime Cistercian, now a young medical student, lived in a h ouse of a n Anabaptist. But the Anabaptism to which he later confessed having espoused, though clearly in the same circle with Busale and Laureto, was not in his mind primarily characterized by rebaptism. It seemed for him to be a washing away of the soil of the world like a Jewish proselyte ablution.61 When he came to recall his “Anabaptist” phase, he brought out primarily the Josephite and Adoptionist Christology already noted in the Judaizing Anabaptist circle of Padua. In Padua under the influence of F rancis Renato, a former Capuchin, Tizzano came to adhere to what he would later call in his confession “diabolical opinions,” roughly the counterpart of Laureto’s Jewish phase. In this stage Tizzano held that Jesus was but a prophet, “although he may well have had more spirit and more grace from God than the other prophets,” and that the Messiah prophesied in the Old Testament was yet to come. He also held that “when the body is dead the soul dies also but that God, blessed be He (Dio Benedetto), will resuscitate His elect who have died in the hope of the resurrection, who have been good persons, and have died in the communion (unione) of the faithful.”62 Tizzano apparently based his extreme view on such texts as Psalm 1:5, “therefore the wicked will not stand in the [last] judgment”; Isaiah 26:14, 19; Ezekiel 37:3; and Pauline texts like 1 Thessalonians 4:14.63 Tizzano must still have thought of the Messiah to come as Jesus, the greatest of prophets in his life on earth; for he believed that the Messiah (in Johannine language) would, having vanquished Satan, reign with his resurrected saints for a thousand years and that thereafter (in Pauline language) he would deliver it over to the Father (1 Cor. 15:28). We turn from the Neapolitan circle around Busale in Padua to other Anabaptists, who seem to have had a different geographic and theological provenance, although the two types mingled, notably in Padua. c. Giacometto Stringaro and Il Tiziano The first Italian Anabaptist of w hom we have a w riting of h is own is Giacometto the Stringer (stringaro), the haberdasher of Vicenza and “bishop and minister of the church” thereof. He is reported to have rebaptized

60

 Testimony, E. Pommier, “L’itinéraire,” 320.  See above, Ch. 21.3. 62  Testimony of Tizzano, Lemmi, Riforma in Italia, 68. 63  The testimony of one of his converts, the Neapolitan Jerome of Capece; Stella, Cinquecento veneto, 101–2, n. 58. 61

chapter 22.2.c

italy & the rhaetian republic  865

many in Vicenza.64 In 1547 he addressed an epistle to his “brethren in Christ,” in effect a semi-literate but scripturally discerning tract entitled La rivelatione, wherein he was principally concerned to clarify his Triadology, Christology, and soteriology on the basis of S cripture, notably John, Romans, and Hebrews, coming close to views to be later expressed by Faustus Socinus (Ch. 24.4), but also close to the view of Pilgram Marpeck that the Father through the Spirit worked in Jesus (Ch. 18.4).65 This earliest articulation of Italian anabaptist, adoptionist, psychopannychist theology is entitled to be quoted at some length: It has appeared to me [i.e., revealed: cf. George Siculo below] to write down how we understand and have the knowledge of God our Father and of h is Son. … Someone may say: “I find in the Scripture that God is Christ.” Now come to this. If you understand these words to say this [ John 14: 19], “who sees me sees the Father”—if you wish to understand thereby a v isible sight—that would not be able to stand with these other words [cf. John 1:18; 1 John 4:12], “No man seeth me [as though the Father were speaking].” And consider that other word in St. Paul [1 Cor. 13:12]: “then shall we see face to face,” and in St. John [1 John 3:2]: “and then we shall see him as he is.” And Christ himself says [Matt. 5:8]: “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.” If we do not have yet to see in another manner than when Christ says [ John 14:19]: “Whoever sees me sees the Father also,” these words above cited would be false, because the apostles and more than five hundred brethren had [in fact] seen Christ resurrected and ascending into heaven and Paul saw him [on the road to Damascus]. Nonetheless they say that we have yet to see him, [as] God, one day and they avow that they have not seen him [as God] although they have indeed seen Christ [as Son of M an]. Accordingly, of necessity this [God] is another person than Christ; and another essence and presence and sight is that of the Father, speaking [no longer] of t he sight of t he eyes. It is necessary, accordingly, to understand that this seeing of t he Father in seeing the Son is in knowledge and whoever sees the wisdom of Christ sees the wisdom of God and thus the Power [citing Heb. 1:3 and Col. 1:15]. … [C]oncerning the saying [cf. John 5:17, 36; 10:25], “the Father 64  AV, Sant’Uffizio, Processi, busta 9, fascicolo 4, fol. 10. The most impor tant parts of the testimony and documentation have been pr inted and inter preted by Stella, Cinquecento veneto, 67–71, with much of the original transcribed verbatim in the long notes. 65  It will be recalled that Leopold Schar nschlager of llanz in Graubünden (Ch. 22.1) was very much the theological collaborator of Marpeck (Ch. 18.4). The stress of Scharnschlager and Marpeck on the humanity of Christ, which shocked Schwenckfeld, may prove to be related to the Italian Anabaptist stress on Christ’s humanity.

866  the radical reformation

chapter 22.2.c

who stands in me it is he who does the works,” we understand this in power and virtue, giving to him the Spirit of this wisdom and power. And we say that Christ is created by t he Father, indeed generated, indeed—if you will—born or even “procedured,” as the Holy Spirit says in diverse ways. We say this also according to the Spirit; and we say that Christ does not have life by himself but that God has given it to him. Going on to make God’s election of Christ for a mighty purpose paradigmatic of each man’s salvation, Giacometto continues: [T]hus as God has made the sons of Adam from earth and they by sin are sick and sons of wrath, ignorant and corruptible, so the same [God] can and does make spiritual sons, holy and eternal, of the same nature and character. God could make of s tones sons of A braham [Matt. 3:9], that is, through blessing and honor and glory and sanctification. Nothing remains but this that we all be made good by God. And we understand that Jesus [himself ] was made by G od neither more nor less than we others … having father and mother like us, a true man, son of Adam, subject to the law. And we understand that Christ was “born” [Son] when God sent the Holy Spirit into the man Jesus at his baptism at Jordan, not that the Holy Spirit is not eternal in God but in a similar way as used in Scripture, understanding that the one Son of God was “born” when God sent his Spirit in this renewing of t he will. … [F]or we understand that God has sanctified Christ and washed him, that is baptized him.66 And we understand Christ and comprehend him with all his members to be his completion—the spirit of t he elect, the Spirit of C hrist. …  [A]nd as God lives, so does he give life to men to whom he will, God having given life to Christ in resurrecting him, restoring him from the evil of death in complete perfection both in spirit and in body. And God wished to perform this in one in order that all the others would have [reason] to believe that God will do with them as he has done with him. We confess and believe that Christ has the power to save and do everything and to redeem himself, as he was [cf. John 10:18]: “I have the power to lay down the soul and to redeem it di novo.” Be it known that this power [to resurrect] is from the Spirit of Christ and not from the flesh, but nonetheless the work of t he flesh. And if the power is the Spirit and the Spirit be the power and is received from another, therefore this Spirit is not the Father but

66  That the Father washed by baptizing him, the Spirit descending upon him, suggests how close for Giacometto was baptism to proselyte immersion among Jews. Cf. the text at nn. 7, 19 above.

chapter 22.2.c

italy & the rhaetian republic  867

from the Father; and by this he [Christ] calls himself Son because he comes from God. We understand that Christ is the true Son of God and is not God.67 Giacometto goes on to distinguish further in Jesus Christ his suffering humanity common to all humankind and his Spirit. The flesh of Christ was not generated by G od in conception and gestation, but was infused with the Spirit at baptismal regeneration, and then “generated” definitively at the resurrection—reference being made to the sermon of Paul at Antioch in Pisidia, Acts 13:33: “God hath … raised up Jesus again, as it is also written … ‘Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee.’” And on the basis of Romans 8 (especially vv. 9, 11, 26, 29), Giacometto suggests that in the resurrection community (the Church) in which the Spirit that raised up Jesus dwells (v. 8), Christ and the Spirit might well be one. In any case “we could not adore and honor him [a Messiah and Redeemer] if the Father had not commended him; but, in obeying him we do not obey him for himself but for having the commission and the power of the Father; and we say that this Christ will be subject to God, having placed all things under him [1 Cor. 15:28].” Nowhere in so brief a compass and at so early a m oment could we overhear so many of t he convictions of a m an and movement that were clearly Anabaptist in the Marpeckian variant but also proto-Socinian. This stress on the Spirit dwelling in Christ’s humanity and returning to the Godhead in heaven at the Ascension comes close to Marpeck, with his idiosyncratic Trinity of Father, Spirit, and Word, and to Faustus Socinus with his fully human Christ in his threefold off ice (Ch. 24.4). The theologies of the uneducated Giacometto, the Latin-reading engineer Marpeck, and the philologically accomplished Socinus could be placed not far from each other on the christological spectrum. There was a p roto-Unitarian circle of s ome forty Anabaptists and assorted Evangelicals in Vicenza as early as 1546. 68 A v ague Socinian memory places here and at this time a f ellowship made up, among others, of Jerome Busale (Ch. 22.2.b), Laelius Socinus (Ch. 22.4), and two Hutterite éventuels: Julius of Treviso and Francis della Sega (Ch. 22.5). Not all these men would have been in Vicenza at this time. It is possible that this more academic circle was in contact with the more popular conventicle headed by Giacometto. By May of 1547 the authorities in Vicenza were reporting to the Council of Ten in Venice that the town

67 68

  Ibid., 69, n.19.   See further, n. 101 below.

868  the radical reformation

chapter 22.2.c

was much infected with heresy and that more than twenty-f ive, quite possibly all, e.g., Laelius Socinus, had escaped. It was in August 1549 that we first learn of a Tiziano, a possible mediator of C amillo Renato’s ideas.69 It was about then that he was extruded from the Rhaetian Reformed synod “by the secular arm,” presumably in accordance with the provision of the edict of Ilanz, which did not extend toleration to Anabaptists. The extruded Rhaetian religious agitator, who is never more fully named in the documents, is to be distinguished from the former Cistercian medical student Lawrence Tizzano (22.2.b), and we shall therefore call the agitator Il Tiziano, a major Italian Anabaptist.70 It is possible that the persistent indisposition of Il Tiziano to disclose his real or full name was due to his former prominence as a cleric in the court of an unnamed cardinal in Rome where he first began to imbibe Lutheran doctrines. Thence he fled to Geneva and after visiting “some Lutheran places” returned to Italy from Germany, “a messenger sent of God.” 71 He apparently first established himself as a pastor in Rhaetia, where he was expelled from the synod by the federal government.72 He must have been fully an Anabaptist at this time. He had two children, one of whom he maintained in the house of a named Anabaptist in Rovigo, the other in a villa of another but unnamed Anabaptist three miles out from Vicenza.

69   Cf. letter of Vergerio to Bullinger, 10 January 1553; Korrespondenz, 1: no. 199.2. For the extrusion, see n. 25. Here Vergerio says that two Italian Anabaptists have returned “to the purity of our doctrine” and that they admit that they were seduced by Camillo Renato. One of these could have been Il Tiziano but see above, n. 23. 70  The preeminent authority on Venetian Anabaptism, Aldo Stella, in Cinquecento veneto 38, observes that in theVenetian records “Tizzano” and “Tiziano” are orthographically interchangeable and he reverts to the older view that Lorenzo Tizzano (Tiziano), alias Benedetto Florio, and Il Tiziano are the same person. Only in this have I not followed his lead. The principal source for Il Tiziano is the hearing of Manelfi in 1551 in Bologna and Rome, which has been edited by Ginzburg. The archival material has been seen and quoted by, among other s, Comba, I nostri Protestanti, 2:chap. 13 (who, however, confused him with Tizzano); by Henry A. De Wind, ME 4:729–30 (who with me insisted on the distinction); and by Stella, Cinquecento veneto, 36 passim. I cite Manelfi as selectively transcribed in these several secondary works. I used Ginzb urg’s critical edition in “Two Strands,” wherein I was able to substantiate further the Marrano and Jewish interconnections with Italian Anabaptism, by noting that in the deposition of Manelfi he twice refers to Anabaptists living or working “in getto vecchio” in Venice, 67, 162–65. 71   Manelfi, 1551: Stella, Cinquecento veneto, 72, and Comba, I nostri Protestanti, 2:492, plus testimony of Paolo Beltramini, 5 May 1552; AV, Sant’Uffizio Processi, busta 9; and Stella again, 73. In this latter testimon y, Beltramini w as reporting that Mar cantonio da Pr ota d’Asolo, a known associate of Il Tiziano, had said about him: “God has sent a messenger (Angelo) fr om Germany.” In this testimony the name “Ticiano” was not at once given, and in the testimony of Manelfi it was only possible to say: “non so altro suo cognome.” 72   Reported by Mainardo, 7 August 1549: Bullinger’s Korrespondenz, ed. Schiess, 1: Letter Bi, 110.

chapter 22.2.c

italy & the rhaetian republic  869

Il Tiziano is next documented in Florence as the converter of P eter Manelfi. Il Tiziano was propagating his doctrine in the company of Joseph of Treviso and Lawrence of M odiano, the latter, a s chool teacher.73 But Manelfi did not at once submit to rebaptism. From what Manelfi reported in 1551 and from what Il Tiziano himself repudiated before Reformed authorities at a later date (1554),74 we can extrapolate his views and pereginations as follows. Il Tiziano was a Josephite Adoptionist or Ebionite. He held that Jesus was not conceived of the Holy Spirit but of the seed of Joseph and that Jesus became the adoptive Son of G od at his baptism at Jordan. To justify this simplified Christology, Il Tiziano averred on the basis of correspondence between Pope Damasus I a nd Jerome,75 that the translator of t he Vulgate had altered Matthew and Luke to supply a spurious genealogy, which did injustice to Joseph.76 As an Adoptionist, Il Tiziano was somewhat like Louis Haetzer and Adam Pastor in the north; but, holding with other Anabaptists not only to rebaptism but also to non-violence, Il Tiziano presumably rejected the sword and any magistracy for the reborn Christian.77 It does not appear that he was primarily identified with psychopannychism, as was his near namesake Tizzano. Peter Manelfi, whose depositions have already supplied rich data, was converted by Il Tiziano in Florence c. 1549. Born in San Vito (probably the suppressed commune now joined to San Lorenzo near Urbino), he became a priest in Ancona where he was moved about 1540 (“ten or eleven years ago”) in a “ Lutheran” direction by t he preaching of B ernardine Ochino and two other Capuchins, and he gave up his priestly duties. After conferring with Il Tiziano in Florence, Manelfi went to Ferrara, where after further discussion, he and four others submitted to rebaptism at the hands of Il Tiziano and then went on to Vicenza.78 Manelfi clearly believed that Il Tiziano was responsible for the introduction of Anabaptist teachings into Italy.

73

2:491.

 Manelfi, 1551; Stella, Cinquecento veneto, 72; Comba, I nostri Protestanti (Firenze, 1895–97)

74  Il Tiziano would escape to f amiliar Rhaetia after the defection of Manelfi and preach Anabaptism in Chur, where he was apprehended, obliged to recant; he was flogged out of town with rods, and exiled forever from Rhaetia. Gallicius transcribed the entire Abjuration in a letter to Bullinger, 25 June 1554. Schiess, Korrespondenz, 1: no. 261:2. 75  Possibly epistola 19, misconstrued. 76  Manelfi, 1551; Comba, I nostri Protestanti, 2:493; Il Tiziano rejected Matthew 1 and 2, Luke 1, 2, and par t of 3; cf. Abjuration found in Bullinger’s Korrespondenz, ed. Schiess, 1, no. 261:2, p. 375. See also Ch. 22.3 (p. 874). 77  Comba, I nostri Protestanti, 2:493; Abjuration, 376. 78  Manelfi, 1551; Comba, I nostri Protestanti, 2:492.

870  the radical reformation

chapter 22.2.c

On becoming himself an evangelist, Manelfi helped found a number of conventicles. He and Benedict del Borgo of Asolo in one case bribed the guards at a prison in Venice and persuaded one of the Lutheran prisoners, Peter Speziale of Cittadella, to undergo rebaptism at their hands.79 In other cases, they helped prisoners to escape. Theirs was a well-organized underground network and communication system. It is of interest that Peter Speziale’s companion in prison, Baldo Lupetino, had been in correspondence with Caspar Schwenckfeld.80 In Venetia about this time, unitarianizing psychopannychist Anabaptism was well represented. From other documentation we can supplement the religio-political implications of this conventicular faith.81 Venetian Anabaptists held that the Roman Church was “diabolical and antichristian” and that “those who are baptized in her are not Christian but have need of being rebaptized,” although to be sure, believers’ baptism does not any more than the other sacrament confer grace. No Christian, i.e., Anabaptist, may be a k ing or prince, or discharge any magisterial office. The rulers of the Gentiles rule, but not Christians [Matt. 20:25–26], for the law says “thou shalt not kill” and the apostle says that “the sword is given [only] to the Gentiles for the punishment of the wicked and not to Christians” (cf. Rom. 13:4). In the meantime in Padua the circle around Abbot Busale had moved from Adoptionist Valdesianism to Anabaptism. By 1549 Busale with others had submitted to rebaptism (Ch. 22.2.b), and Busale himself proceeded to rebaptize for about three months; but he remained subject to harsh judgment 79  Peter Speziale in 1542 claimed that he had grasped the Reformation principle of salvation sola fide before Luther in 1512. Unpublished treatise, De gratia Dei, lib. 6, cap. xi, Biblioteca Marciana,Venice. Noted by McNair, Peter Martyr, 8 n. 1. See also Ester Zille, Gli eretici a Cittadella nel Cinquecento (Cittadella: Rebellato, 1971). 80  Characteristic was Schwenckfeld’s philanthropic activity in behalf of cer tain Italian Evangelicals in Venetia who had not been able to evade their persecutors in Italy. Through the services of Ger man merchants and agents acti ve in Venice, notably the humanist geo grapher and theological dilettante Jacob Ziegler (1470–1549), and Philip Walther, envoy of Philip of Hesse and Elector J ohn Frederick of Saxon y, word of the existence of an e vangelical community and of its difficulty had reached the ear s of Schwenckfeld. On moving to Strassburg (1531–34), Ziegler had sided with Schwenckfeld in the synod of July 1533 (Ch. 10.4). See Karl Schottenloher, Jacob Ziegler (Münster, 1910), 286ff. It is difficult to assess the extent to which Ziegler and Walther might ha ve spread Schwenckfeldian ideas in Italy . Schwenckfeld made inquiries about the religious situation in Venice as early as April 1547; CS 11, Document 514. Walther sent Schw enckfeld sixteen ar ticles drawn up b y Lupetino, and Schw enckfeld took sufficient exception to Lupetino’s traditionalist views on the Eucharist to write a refutation of them and sent it to Walther. He also forwarded his postils to Italy; CS 12, Documents 746, 749, 751, 757, 758. Schwenckfeld disagreed with Lupetino’s views on the veneration of the cross, the saints, and the Virgin, as “too crude and idolatrous to discuss”; CS 11:493. But at many points he found much with which to sympathize; CS 11:498. He referred to Lupetino as “the captive brother”; ibid. He forwarded twenty guilders to Walther as a contribution and encouraged others to aid the Italian Evangelicals. 81  The summary which follows is based on the r ecords of the tr ial of Manelfi in 1551: AV, Sant’Uffizio, Processi, busta 9, fasc. iv; Stella, Cinquecento veneto, 72, n. 27; Comba, I nostri Protestanti, 2:493; Benrath, “Wiedertüufer im Venetianischen,” 9–67.

chapter 22.2.c / 22.2.d

italy & the rhaetian republic  871

from Anabaptists of a d ifferent social background in that still “he ate the blood of the Beast,” i.e., he retained the proceeds of h is benefice, however generous therewith.82 d. The Anabaptist Synod in Venice, 1550, and the Defection of Peter Manelfi in 1551 The divergence between a christologically conservative Anabaptism and a Josephite or Ebionite Anabaptism in Venetia necessitated a conclave which met in a home opposite St. Catherine’s in Padua in January 1550. Present were representatives from Treviso, headed by J ulius Gherlandi (destined to join the Hutterites); from Rovigo, headed by F rancis della Sega (also proto-Hutterite); from Vicenza, headed by J ulius Callezaro, along with Abbot Busale, Il Tiziano, and Manelfi.83 The most extreme position at the conclave seems to have been taken by the Judaizing Marc Anthony da Prata of Asolo, an earlier associate of I l Tiziano. Prominence in the discussion was given to Deuteronomy 18:15: “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brethren—him you shall heed.” We can well imagine that Hebraist Busale will have been among the most forceful in pressing for a Judaizing Christology. To settle the still disputed points in a wider context, it was decided to hold a synod in Venice, with two delegates from each congregation. Il Tiziano and Joseph of Asolo recruited the delegates from refugee conventicles in Rhaetia and Switzerland. Manelfi had part of the responsibility for seeking funds and providing housing for the delegates. Some sixty persons, all Italians and representing around thirty conventicles, gathered in September 1550. Francis Negri may have come from Chiavenna; possibly even Curio from Basel. There was even a d elegate from St. Gall. Jerome Busale and Benedict of Asolo were present. They met for forty days,84 opening their sessions with prayer. The Lord’s Supper was three times observed in the course of the forty days. Manelfi was apparently very forceful in moving the synod to adopt as their own a nearly unanimous statement on ten disputed points, strongly supporting the kind of theology represented by Camillo Renato, Francis of Calabria, and Il Tiziano. The ten points can be condensed thus: Jesus was not God, but an exceptional man, the natural child of J oseph and

82

319. 83

 Manelfi, 1551; Stella, Cinquecento veneto, 75. Cf. Laureto, 1553, in Pommier, “L’Itinéraire,”

 Manelfi, 1551; Comba, I nostri Protestanti, 491; Stella, Cinquecento veneto, 91; Laureto, 1553, in Pommier, “L’Itinéraire,” 319. 84  Emilio Comba, “Un sinodo Anabattista a Venezia anno 1550,” Rivista Cristiana 13 (1885): 21–24; and Comba, I nostri Protestanti, 2: chap. 13. The sources are the records of the heresy trials held by the Inquisition in the Frar i Archives and AV, in the latter notably, AV, Sant’Uffizio Processi, busta 9, explored by Benrath, Comba, De Wind, and Stella, Cinquecento veneto, 76–83.

872  the radical reformation

chapter 22.2.d

Mary; Mary had other sons and daughters after Jesus; human seed has the God-given power to produce both body and soul (traducianism; Ch. 20.4). The elect are justified by the eternal mercy of God; the “benefit” of Christ consisted solely in his giving instruction in the good life and in his self-sacrificial testimony to the love of God. There are no angels. There is no devil other than human prudence. The latter claim, possibly a Waldensian note, is based on Romans 1:18–23 and the general biblical observation that “we do not find anything in Scripture created by G od as his enemy except human prudence.” These Ebionite Anabaptists had eliminated, besides the devil, of course, also the idea of hell. They agreed that the souls of t he wicked die with their bodies; that for the unrighteous, there is no hell except the grave, and that after the death of t he elect their souls sleep till the Day of J udgment. This point represents a perhaps conscious rejection of Renato’s and Busale’s starker conception of the expiration of the soul pending the resurrection. The delegates of the Anabaptists of Cittadella refused to accept all these points, and they were henceforth excluded from the fellowship. But for the most part the Venetian synod clearly represented a t riumph of the radical leaders of Italian Anabaptism. At the conclusion of the synod several participants were designated as “apostolic bishops” to bring the synodal decisions to the constituent and related congregations. They moved about in pairs reminiscent of the Waldensian barbs. Manelfi, with Marc Anthony of Asolo, for example, traveled to Vicenza, Padua, Treviso, and Istria. Manelfi and Lawrence Niccoluzzo of Modiana traveled to Romagna, Ferrara, and Tuscany. Benedict del Borgo of A solo was apprehended for preaching Anabaptism and, 17 March 1551, having refused to abjure his faith, was put to death in Rovigo, the first Italian Anabaptist martyr on record by name. In Friuli Nicholas d’Alessandria and his fellow evangelist Giacometto, a tailor, both of Treviso, converted the sisters of St. Clare in the local Franciscan convent which happened to house, among many daughters of n oble families, the sister of Peter Paul Vergerio. But when the converted sisters prepared to submit to rebaptism, Nicholas refused except on condition that they leave.85 This only partly successful penetration of a distinguished convent may stand for the whole range in social and vocational coverage on the part of t he Italian Anabaptist mission in the period leading to, and immediately following, the synod of Venice—from Milan to Venetian towns down the Istrian coast to Pirano (Piran) 86 and Castelnuovo (Podgrad) and from Brunico 87 85  Manelfi, 1551; Stella, Cinquecento veneto, 93; Comba, I nostri Protestanti, 2:512, citing an additional source; and L. De Biaso, “Fermenti ereticali in Friuli nella seconda metà del secolo XVI,” doctoral thesis, University of Padua, 1967. 86  Stella, Cinquecento veneto, 28, 81, 94. 87  Gherlandi’s list, 1559; Stella, Cinquecento veneto, 106, n. 79; cf. Ill, n. 88.

chapter 22.2.d

italy & the rhaetian republic  873

to Perugia. Nevertheless, a s chism developed between the congregations willing to accept the ten Venetian points and those which, like the original stand-out, Cittadella, held to a more moderate course. Manelf i in September 1551 was asked by the brethren in Verona to explain the ten Venetian points of agreement. A Sunday meeting broke up in disagreement over his defense of the Venetian point that Christ was merely a p rophetic teacher, but some twenty-f ive converts were baptized by h im in a s ecluded spot. Suddenly, in October, Manelf i decided to return to the Catholic Church and told his companion of his startling decision. In Bologna he turned himself over to the Inquisition and on 17 October made his f irst deposition, describing his “aberrations,” disclosing the deliberations of the synod in Venice, and recounting the history of the movement from radical “Lutheranism” to radical Anabaptism during the preceding decade. He said: “We maintain union with Anabaptists in Germany and the Grigioni.” 88 The case was transferred, because of its obvious importance, to Rome, where Manelf i prepared three more statements, enabling the Inquisition very shortly thereafter to wipe out most of the Anabaptist movement in Italy. In a deposition of 12 November, he gave further details about his work as bishop. He pointed out that the stress on Christ’s sole humanity had not been so prominent in the conventicles until his own urging of it in Venice. On 13 November he provided further information about the synod and named several participants and some of the other apostolic bishops. Manelf i also listed as many members of the sect as he could recall and added the names of a number of Lutherans in Venetia. In his f inal deposition on 14 November he described several occasions when he and other evangelists had narrowly escaped capture and how they had entered prisons to comfort fellow believers, winning also new converts. The Inquisition moved swiftly against the Anabaptists and related nonconformists. The orders for the arrest of t he persons named by M anelfi were sent to the authorities at Padua, Vicenza, Treviso, and Asolo. Arrests and recantations followed. The fate of M anelfi, the informer, is not known. Giacometto Stringaro fell into the hands of the Inquisition in 1552.89 We have already followed Busale in his flight to Naples. Il Tiziano returned to Rhaetia. In 1553 Busale’s associates, Tizzano and Laureto, like Manelfi, returned to the Roman Church, providing still further names and motivations. 88  Stella, Cinquecento veneto, 72, n. 25. In confirmation of this assertion from another quarter, there is an adoptionist Anabaptist devotional book in the seminary library of Treviso, dated 1557, which is an Italian translation from German of a children’s prayer. See Stella, Cinquecento veneto, p. 107, no. 80. 89  Stella, Cinquecento veneto, 96.

874  the radical reformation

chapter 22.3

3. Continued Schism and Heresy in Rhaetia, 1552–1561 Il Tiziano escaped the consequences of the defection of Manelfi in the relative security of Rhaetia, from which he had been banished in 1547, but to which he had returned. His preaching brought him a renewed following. Thereupon in June 1554, the authorities at Chur had him imprisoned and questioned about his beliefs. He answered in ambiguous language, claiming to be guided only by the Holy Spirit. Fear of capital punishment moved him, however, to sign in the presence of a ssembled elders and others, a confession prepared by Philip Gallicius, pastor at Chur.90 This confession implies that Il Tiziano had denied the Trinity and the divine nature of Christ (as an Ebionite), had suspected the tendentious corruption of t he genealogies and nativity narratives of Jerome (as a Helvidian), had placed the authority of the Holy Spirit above that of the Bible, rejected infant baptism, and had said that Christians might not serve as magistrates. As to the alleged corruption of Scripture, we know from another source that his followers specifically rejected as Jerome’s interpolations the first two chapters of Matthew and the corresponding sections of Luke. After his recantation, Il Tiziano was driven by rods from the town, exiled (a second time) from the Rhaetian Republic. Gallicius, in his letter to Bullinger, felt obliged to justify his relative leniency in the treatment of Il Tiziano by pointing out that a recantation would demoralize his followers, whereas another martyrdom (Gallicius refers to the martyrdom of Servetus, Ch. 23.4) would but have raised their devotion to a new pitch. Camillo Renato, for his part, had found that not even two recantations could dampen the ardor of his followers. We were last with him when he was captured by the constables in Bergamo in September of 1551, the year after the Anabaptist synod in Venice. Innocenzo Cardinal del Monte, formerly a s ecretary to Cardinal Contarini and now to Pope Julius III, was almost at once in possession of the information that the notorious “Sicilian heresiarch” had been captured, and he sought, through the papal nuncio in Venice, to gain possession of the escapee from the inquisitorial prison in Bologna—but in vain. With the aid of “powerful supporters who are able to use shields of g old,” and with a f ormal renunciation once again of a ll his heretical views, Camillo returned to Rhaetia, where as a “poisonous bladder” (Bullinger’s phrase) he began to “contaminate the whole of t he Valtellina with his poison” (Vergerio’s report). Camillo even made bold to seek the headship of the evangelical school in Sondrio as a counterweight to the new seminary in Chur. “Here Camillo reigns,” wrote Vergerio with alarmed exaggeration. The principal document surviving from this period is Camillo’s long, flamboyant, passionate indictment of C alvin for burning Servetus 90

 Schiess, Korrespondenz, 1: no. 261; 1:2, letters to Bullinger, 2 and 25 June 1554.

chapter 22.3

italy & the rhaetian republic  875

(Ch.23.4). The Carmen, composed in Traona in September 1554 for the anniversary of the execution, mingled biblical and mythological language in highly mannered, humanistic verse.91 It was a great plea for religious toleration. Distinguishing between the two dispensations, that of the New and that of the Old, Camillo associated the Roman priesthood with that of the Mosaic covenant, since both stressed law and sacrifice. And he appealed for a g entler conception of r eligion as proclaimed and practiced by J esus himself, who healed, who forgave, and who was slow to anger. Nowhere else do we have in Camillo’s writings such stress upon the apostolic ban as the only means of force allowable to Christians. He lamented the fact that in the so-called Reformed Church the wholesome apostolic ban had itself been banned. After this we hear relatively little about Camillo. Something should be said about those who continued or communicated his ideas. We can single out Laelius Socinus (1525–62) and Michelangelo Florio, pastor in Soglio: the one primarily a covert carrier of Camillo’s ideas to another age and area, the other primarily an implementor of Camillo’s tactics on the Rhaetian scene during the lifetime of the heresiarch. Michelangelo Florio, father of John Florio (translator of Michel Montaigne’s Essais into English), was a native of Siena (or Lucca or Florence), a converted Jew who became a Franciscan and then a Protestant (c. 1541). In 1550 he had fled from Rome and via Naples, Venice, and Lyons, and reached London, where he served the Italian congregation affiliated with the Strangers’ Church. In England, between 1551 and 1554 he taught Italian to Lady Jane Grey, of w hom he later wrote a b iography in Italian. His Apologia di M. Michel Agnolo Fiorentino (Chamogasko, 1557) is a major source of his interesting career.92 It was this much-troubled Michelangelo Florio with four other Italian refugee pastors, who, in perpetuating some of Camillo’s teachings, widened the schism in the Italian Reformed community of Rhaetia and renewed the attack in Chiavenna. One of the pastors, Peter Leone, published in Milan a selection of Camillo’s 125 articles against Mainardo, and led a vigorous fight against Mainardo’s continuing efforts to impose his personal confession upon the Italian churches and to make personal subscription to it a condition of membership in the local congregation and of participation in its offices and in its ministrations. To Mainardo’s confession were attached not only the twenty-two anathemas already dealt with against the Renatians and other

91

 The Carmen is quoted above at n. 5.  Frances Amelia Yates, John Flor io: The Life of an Italian in Shakespeare’ s England, 2d ed. (New York: Octagon, 1968), chap. 1. The place of pub lication of the Apologia is Camogasco (Latin; Campatsch, German), near Scuol (Schuls) in the Lower Engadine. 92

876  the radical reformation

chapter 22.3 / 22.4

Anabaptists but also the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds and the very controversial Tome of Pope Damasus (c. 382).93 The antisubscriptionists headed by Michelangelo wanted no more than the Apostles’ Creed. They were at once latitudinarian in doctrine and congregationalist in polity in their redoubled determination not to allow Nicene and Chalcedonian formulations to define the Christian message and in their unwillingness to permit any synod of churches to impose any confession of faith on any congregation without the consent of the local churches duly assembled. Michelangelo carried the problem before Bullinger, presenting him and his colleagues in Zurich with twenty-six questions, 24 May 1561.94 The effort of t he five latitudinarian pastors was doomed to failure. In fact, their démarche precipitated the decision of the general synod in Chur, strongly abetted by Bullinger, to oblige the five recalcitrant pastors to sign a confession, no longer to be called “that of Mainardo but rather that of the Rhaetian Church.” 95 Camillo had lost in Rhaetia. The tolerant Evangelical Rationalism of his later years was to be perpetuated outside Rhaetia in the tradition of Laelius Socinus operating anonymously and then largely through the work of his nephew in Poland.

4. Laelius Socinus and Francis Stancaro to 1550 Laelius Socinus (1525–62) 96 was born in Siena of a d istinguished line of patrician lawyers who provided Italy in the course of a century with three of its most celebrated jurisconsults. His father. Mariano Sozzini the Younger (1482–1556), jurisconsult on the faculty at Padua, had rendered a judgment on the divorce of Henry VIII, and was later, despite his European fame, discreetly interrogated by the Inquisition, and obliged to recant his heretical views.97 Strongly flowing in the family was that current of Italian thought, more speculative than fervent, which had first found identifiable expression in the dialectic of L orenzo Valla, and which was characterized by s ober philological observation, subtle and almost perverse doubting, persistent

93  A collection of twenty-four canons endorsed by a Roman Synod, possibly that of 382, subsequently sent by Pope Damasus to Paulinus of Antioch. All but one are directed to errors in Triadology and Christology, including Tritheism. 94  Printed in Treschel, Antitrinitarier, II, Beilage, V. 95  Schiess, Korrespondenz, 2, no. 349, letter of Johannes Fabricius to Bullinger, 6 June 1561. 96  Among earlier accounts are Cantimori, Eretici, chaps. 14, 17, 21; Wilbur, Socinianism; and John Tedeschi, “Notes Toward a Genealogy of the Sozzini Family,” IRS, 275–315 and book by Valerio Marchetti, Gruppi ereticali senesi del Cinquecento (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1975). The basic biography was once that of C. F. Illgen, Vita Laeli Socini (Leipzig, 1826), who used sources in the Socinian tradition. The basic work is now Antonio Rotondò, ed., Lelio Sozzini, Opere (Florence: Olschki, 1976) with four authenticated wr itings and fifty-three letters to or fr om Laelius. The antecedent writings of Rotondò appear as occasion requires. 97  Tedeschi, “Genealogy,” IRS, 292–98. Mariano also rendered a judgment on the bigam y of Philip of Hesse.

chapter 22.4

italy & the rhaetian republic  877

878  the radical reformation

chapter 22.4

uncertainty, and diffidence in the face of a ll allegedly final solutions, and yet recurrently prompted to demand proof. We named this current, somewhat colorlessly, Evangelical Rationalism (Ch. 21.1). Laelius was the sixth son of M ariano Sozzini. From the age of five, Laelius lived in Padua and was educated to become a jurist under the eye of his father, after 1543 professor of law in Bologna. At about eighteen, he found himself interested in that wider Sienese/Paduan/Bolognese stream of Evangelical Catholic thought that till the close of Trent I (1545–47) still hoped for radical humanist reforms within the Church.98 He came to be interested in learning Hebrew, Greek, and Arabic. The motivation may have been his ecumenical concern for the eventual union of the three great religions, an eschatological hope among many seekers of h is age. Despite the weight of the legal tradition in his family, Laelius’ interests were primarily religious. He would later tell Melanchthon that his desire to reach the fontes juris had led him into biblical research and the study of Hebrew,99 and thence to the rejection of “the idolatry of Rome.” But he outwardly conformed while in Italy. Indeed he was by t emperment a Nicodemite (Ch. 23.2) and would to the end conform also to the established Reformed churches in Switzerland. His conversion to biblical Protestantism, with a disposition to favor a s piritualizing Anabaptism, dates roughly from the introduction of the Inquisition and the dashing of the hopes of Evangelical Catholics, among whom he might otherwise have been once counted. After he studied in Padua, he went on to Venice, then to Vicenza in the direction towards Trent, still within the Venetian Republic. In Vicenza he joined perhaps as early as 1546 in colloquies (collegia Vicentina) with the exponents of various radical trends.100 Pious Socinian historiography would later fix upon these colleges as the shared experience of Laelius Socinus and, among many others of distinction, such Italian Anabaptists as the Calabrian former Benedictine abbot and Hebraist, Jerome Busale, and the two even-

98  Rotondò, using nine references to Laelius in the epistles of Faustus Socin us and new archival sources, places him in this setting: Opere, 15–22. Aldo Stella fills out the family history and br ings out fully the place of the uni versities of Pauda and Bologna in the life of Laelius and his father Mariano, “Una famiglia di giuristi fra eterodossi padovani e bolognesi: Mariano e Lelio Sozzini (1525–56), ” Rapporti fra le univ ersità, ed. Lucia Rossetti (T rieste: LINT, 1988), 127–60. It is possib le that Sozzini harbor ed the hope that Siena might tur n Protestant. Cantimori, Erectici, 14:132, n. 2; cf. Aldo Stella, “Utopie e velleità insurrezionali dei filoprotestanti italiani (1545–1547),” BHR 27 (1965): 133–82. 99  Melanchthon, Opera 9 col. 381. Independently of what Melanchthon sa ys, Rotondò, Opere, 24, 30, establishes the f act that Laelius w as a student of Hebr ew before leaving Italy, stimulated by the former Abbot Hebraist, the Anabaptist Buzzale. 100  For the earliest histor ians of the P olish Brethren, Stanislas Budzi´nski (d. c. 1595) and Stanislas Lubieniecki (d. 1675), the departure of Laelius from Vicenza in 1547 for Reformation lands was a nodal point in the pr ovidential dynamics of the r eformation of the Refor mation through “the confessors of the Truth” in Poland. See my Lubieniecki, History, Bk. 2, n.1.

chapter 22.4

italy & the rhaetian republic  879

The story about Laelius in Vicenza, preserved in Budzi´nski’s largely lost MS account, was first printed in Narratio compendiosa by the g randson of Faustus Socin us, Andrew Wiszowaty, perhaps supplementing it with oral tradition in the family. Christopher Sand appended the Narratio to his Nucleus Historiae Ecclesiasticae (Cologne, 1676; 2d ed. 1678), 86–90. Benedict Wiszowaty, son of Andrew, printed it again in Bibliotheca Antitrinitariorum (Amsterdam, 1684; facsimile edition, Warsaw: PAN, 1967), translated in m y Lubieniecki, Related Document 4. Observe that Andrew Wiszowaty says that Laelius left Italy in 1547 at age twenty-two. The authenticity of the Socinus-Budzi´nski tradition concerning the Vicenza circle was doubted by a number of German scholars from G. G. Zeltner (1729), through J. L. von Mosheim (1741), to Fr iedrich Trechsel (1839). Rehearsing the scholar ship to date, Wilbur (1945) was very certain in his reconstruction of what must have been the or iginal and valid components of the half-legend in his scholarly dissolution of theVicenza academy as a phantom (Socinianism 80–84). See also, with special reference to one alleged par ticipant (Camillo Renato) in the Vicenza fellowship, my “Camillo Renato c. 1500–c.1575,” IRS, 172, n.1. A succession of Italian scholars, however, have persisted over the years in attaching importance to the Socinian histor iographic tradition, which recalled as in one g rouping in Vicenza persons who w ere later counted r espectively as Socinians and Hutter ites: Cesare Cantù, Gli eretici d’Italia, 3 (Turin, 1866), 156; Emilio Comba, I nostri protestanti, 2: Durante la Riforma (Florence, 1897),485; and with important qualifications, Cantimori, Eretici Italiani, 53 and n. 3. Cantimori conjectured that the grandson of Faustus could be expected to have had a reasonably accurate oral tradition about Faustus’uncle Laelius, given the great learning in the family. Aldo Stella, on the basis of freshly exploited archival material, was prepared to substantiate the tradition in Dall’ Anabattismo al Socinianesimo nel Cinquecento Veneto: Richerche storiche (Padua: Liviana, 1967), 57–61, 64. See also more recently, idem, Anabattismo e Antritrinitarismo in Italia nel XVI Secolo: Nuove ricerche storiche (Padua: Liviana, 1969) and “Gli eretici a Vicenza,” Vicenta Illustrata (Padua: 1978), 253–61. These conferences Stella regards as “sufficientemente documentabile,” twice mentioned in his study of the influence of the University of Padua among Anabaptists, Poles, Transylvanians, and others, “Influssi culturali Padovani sulla genesi e sugli sviluppi dell’ Antitrinitarismo cinquencentesco,” Antitrinitarianism, ed. scholars, Lorenz Hein Italienische Protestanten und ihr Einfluss auf die Reformation in Polen während der beiden Jahrzehnte von dem Sandomirischen Konsens (1570) (Leiden: Brill, 1974) upholds the essential v alidity of the Polish connection with the collegia Vicentina,118–23. Given the seditious implication of theAnabaptist name, it would appear unlikely that Budzi´nski would gratuitously invent in Poland four Anabaptist associates of Laelius Socinus, all the less likely for the reason that Faustus Socinus in any case himself came to oppose the practice of believers’ baptism and occasional rebaptism which flourished among the Polish Brethren. Moreover, the names of the four Anabaptists preserved by Lubieniecki from Budzi´nski would not have been otherwise well known in Poland, although, to be sure, the memory of two (Giulio Gherlandi, Francesco della Sega) was preserved among the Hutter ites in Moravia, whom George Schomann, among other Polish Brethren, visited (Ch. 27.3). The presence of these named Italian Anabaptists in the tradition of the Polish Brethren suggests that the collegia Vicentina took place indeed c. 1546, even if that tradition had inflated the number of participants and unduly stressed the formality of the gatherings, for we have evidence that Laelius was still accessible from his home in Bologna: a letter from Florence, 1 April 1547, was addressed there by Antonio Francesco Doni. Tedeschi, “Towards a Genealogy,” Laelius Socinus, 306. For the collegia Vicentina and the Italian Hutterite martyrs, see Stella, “Hutterian Influences on Italian Nonconfor mist Conventicles and Subsequent De velopments,” MQR 64 (1990): 195–208. Rotondò, in also accepting the collegia as embodying a perhaps garb led memory, adduces so much other material on Laelius in contact with Buzzale and La wrence Tizzano (all of them on philological grounds denying the premundane deity of Christ) that the society in Vicenza, uniquely remembered by the Polish Socinians, proves to have been but one of many crestings in the surging current that we now behold vividly as a large, inchoate movement of the Italian mind “in a process necessarily open to the multiple anxieties of the Italian religious life in these years … , and in brief as fluid as the Italian religious situation in the years that preceded and followed the first deliberations of the Council of Trent [1545–47],” Opere, p. 29.

880  the radical reformation

chapter 22.4

tual Venetian Hutterite martyrs, Julius Gherlandi of Treviso and Francis della Sega of Rovigo. Several of t hese radical currents of religious aspirations surged in the head of t wenty-two year old Laelius and specifically his desire to pursue biblical Hebrew further revolved in his mind as he set forth from Vicenza (or Bologna) for study in Basel in the summer of 1547. Stopping at Chiavenna, he came in contact with Francis Negri and particularly with Camillo Renato who was in the midst of h is conflict with Mainardo. Carrying Renato’s ideas, with respect to psychopannychism and to the sacraments as signs only, Socinus left Chiavenna for Basel, where he found congenial company in Castellio, Ochino, and Curio, perhaps introduced to the latter (Ch. 24.2.d) by a l etter from Camillo. Laelius registered in the university in the fall of 1547101 under the rectorship of the Hebraist Sebastian Münster whose discipline he intended to master, and made the acquaintance of Boniface Amerbach, a sometime colleague of his father. From the end of 1547, documentation for Laelius becomes scarce, but he traveled in Switzerland (Geneva, probably also Zurich), France (Nérac, the court of M argaret of N avarre), possibly England, where he may first have made the acquaintance of Peter Vermigli, John Laski, and the Fleming John Utenhove.102 He was in Geneva in the winter of 1548–49.103 In the course of his life Socinus was to have at least one conversation with Calvin and there are extant nine letters between them, extending over a decade from 14 May 1549. The first four, all of 1549, reflect the mind of the philologically well trained Sienese seeker and that of t he benign chief Pastor of G eneva, whom Laelius, initiating the correspondence, addresses as “distinguished,” “vigilant,” “cherished,” as deserving of “love and respect,” as one in whom “Christ is speaking,” God abiding “in you,” he says, “in a certain wonderous way.” Laelius, studying Hebrew in Basel, is prompted to write after having read Calvin’s On the Avoidance of Superstition (Geneva, 1549) and raises several questions coming out of his Catholic milieu, dealing particularly with baptism, marriage, but then also quite

101  Hans Georg Wackernagel, Die Matrikel der Universität Basel (Basel:Verlag der Universitätbibliothek, 1951). 102  Utenhove, confidante of Łaski, later wrote to Laelius, 13 January 1559, which is the only and quite indirect confirmation of the tradition that he earlier once w ent to England, Opere, Epistola 48. As the letter is addressed to Laelius from a nobiliary palace near Cracow, to Laelius presumably in Cracow (cf. Epistola 49), the acquaintance could well have been of very recent date. But the fact that the ailing Łaski asks his secretary, Utenhove, to add a message of his own, suggests a longer acquaintance going back to Łaski’ s superintendency in London. There is no documentation for a Dutch sojourn, part of the itinerary in the traditional biography, accepted also by Eugene Burnat, Lélia Socin (Vevey, 1894). 103  J. H. Hottinger, Historia ecclesiastica Novi Testamenti, 9 (Zurich, 1657), 436.

chapter 22.4

italy & the rhaetian republic  881

separately and insistently about the resurrection of the flesh. His questions are those of an Italian Nicodemite, i.e., of an occasional conformist.104 As to marriage back in Italy, Laelius evokes “the terrible quandary as to whether they [the Reformed at heart] are to avoid marriage as much with Papists as with Jews,” except as the prospective spouse give public confession of her faith and make “this evident through baptism.” It is notable that, fresh from Bologna and Vicenza, having consorted there with cultured separatists, Laelius should bring to Calvin’s attention such a presumption of the invalidity of pedobaptism. Yet Laelius is aware of C alvin’s counsel for the Reformed-minded in Catholic lands to have their child baptized in the local parish church, despite superstitious aspects of the rite, rather than “at home by a f riend or by his parents,” certain that Calvin “would scarcely rebaptize one once had been so baptized, with the proper words, even though he knows Calvin has insisted that “it should be solemnized before the eyes of t he congregation.” But he retorts in defense of a practice evidently familiar to him from Italy: And if you [Calvin] deny the Church to be present in the house of a [Reformed Christian] no matter how faithful, how much less will it be found amid the assembly of idolaters!105 Socinus in the same letter for his part seems to be more tolerant of Nicodemism with respect to attendance at Mass; arguing that if papal baptism is valid, then why not the Catholic Eucharist, however much overlaid with ceremony? Calvin cannot but be vexed here by placing the one time ordinance of Baptism on a par with the repeated sacrament of the Supper. But Calvin in reply gives a thoughtful resumé of his views and counsel on pedobaptism and circumcision and interconfessional marriage, and then, in the second half, deals with the resurrection of the flesh, not raised in the extant letter but referred to by C alvin as the “last question,” which may have been conveyed orally and which, in any case, fills the whole of Laelius’ second letter to Calvin. It is in this period of his life that Laelius composed his own De resurrectione (c. 1549), in which he expressed himself tentatively on the death of the soul with the body and the resurrection of the righteous only, pub-

104

 The nine letters among fifty-three are most accessible in the critical and calendared edition of Rotondò, Opere. The first four were translated by Ralph Lazzaro, IRS, ed. Tedeschi, 215–30, his Letter 1, from Zurich, being Rotondòs epistola 3; 2, from Basel, being 5; 3, from Basel being 8; and 4, from within Geneva, being 11. It is Ginzburg, who characterizes him as a Nicodemite (see n. 142), who also deals with this letter, 169–70. 105  Lazzaro, IRS, 215

882  the radical reformation

chapter 22.4

lished only much later by the Socinian circle in Amsterdam (1654).106 And in his second letter to Calvin, Laelius returns with still more questions, not revealing his emerging view about the glorified bodies of t he saints only, evidently not satisfied with Calvin’s already quite extensive scriptural defense of the received doctrine of the resurrection of the very flesh in which sin was committed to sustain punishment at the Last Judgment. In Zurich, Laelius lodged with the Hebraist Conrad Pellican. He went via Nuremburg to Wittenberg, sojourning there from July 1550 to June 1551, first as Melanchthon’s guest, then with Johann Forster for the improvement of h is Hebrew. With the Lutherans, he vigorously argued for Bullinger’s eucharistic views. Despite his outspoken spiritualism with respect to the sacraments, he received a favoring testimony from Melanchthon. By way of Leipzig, Leitomeritz (Litoméˇr ice), a Utraquist center, and Prague, Laelius visited Cracow in 1551, “staying with Francis Lismanino, provincial head of the Polish Franciscans and confessor of the queen.”107 In the Polish university town of Cracow, rationalist opinions were beginning to challenge the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity (Ch. 25.2). He returned to Zurich via Vienna and Augsburg.108 After Laelius returned to Zurich he learned about the summary imprisonment of an opponent of Calvin on the doctrine of predestination, Jerome Bolsec, disquieting him in his concern, both residual Catholic Evangelical and proto-Anabaptist, for the freedom of the will (in this respect different from predestinarian Renato). Calvin became vexed by L aelius’ “darling vice of c uriosity” and admonished him to “lay aside the foolish itch for inquiry” and for meddling in theological abstrusities.109 As to the resurrection, Laelius, purportedly terrified with the prospects of a l iteral resurrection, plagued Calvin with detailed questions about the organs, members, and functions of the bodies of the resurrected saints. Laelius in 1552 returned to Italy at peril of body and soul, prompted by a desire to regulate family affairs. Coming south, he stopped at Vicosoprano with Vergerio, and the two of them traversed the Valtellina during the late summer.110 He was actually in Siena at the time of the uprising against the

106  Rotondò, Opere, 75–80; accessible in German in Fast, Der Linke Flügel, 89–92, published earlier by Treschel, Antitrinitarier, Beilage, 7:445–46; see on eschatolo gy Lech Szczucki, ed., “Z eschatologii Braci Polskich,” Archiwum Historii Filozofii 1 (1957): 11–13. 107  Rotondò, Opere, 375, 180, n. 1. Rotondò’s itinerary is partly based upon letters of recommendation by Melanchthon to two professors in Bohemia. 108  Ibid. 109  Calvin to Socinus, 1 January 1552 in Opere, Ep. 19; Opera Calvini, 14, Ep. 1578, cols. 229–30. 110  Letter of Vergerio to Bullinger, 1 November 1552: Schiess, Korrespondenz, 1, no. 195:1. In this letter he said that Camillo w as spreading his doctr ine everywhere. This will not ha ve disturbed Laelius so much as Vergerio.

chapter 22.4

italy & the rhaetian republic  883

Medici.111 He left for Bologna, with at least one work by Camillo Renato, to be with his father through the winter. He returned to Siena, conducting himself freely as an Evangelical, because the Inquisition was not yet effective.112 In the fall he stayed for two months in Padua in the home of t he crypto-Protestant professor of law, Matthew Gribaldi, and in his company he would have been horrified at the news of the burning of Servetus (27 October) at the behest of his so recently revered friend and correspondent, Calvin (Ch. 24.2.a).113 On his way back north he may have again sought out Camillo Renato. It was not, however, until he was back in Zurich with Julius of M ilan, pastor in Poschiavo (with whom Curio stayed for a while that very summer) that Laelius was vigorously accused of being both a Renatian and a Servetian.114 We shall (Ch. 24.2.f ) see how he sought to defend himself before the credulous and benign Bullinger. No disciple of C amillo, but for a b rief period his ally, was another Italian refugee in Rhaetia, Francis Stancaro,115 whom we met briefly as vehement critic of the Signoria of Venice (Ch. 22.2.a) and, en route north, as a s pokesman of t he factions lined up against Mainardo in Chiavenna in 1549 (Ch. 22.1). No narrative of t he Radical Reformation would be complete without something more than a p assing reference to Stancaro, because, although vehemently presenting himself in Transylvania, Poland, and Ducal Prussia as a defender of Catholic and hence also classical Protestant orthodoxy on Triadology and Christology, he was ever and again to be found near the vortices of theological tension and radical schism. In the summer of 1544, Stancaro was in Vienna, and there in October was given the new university chair of H ebrew (1544–46). After a t ime, popular suspicion directed the attention of the Inquisition toward him. At the command of King Ferdinand he was dismissed March 1546. Anticipating the formal dismissal, Stancaro went to Regensburg, where he participated in the second Religious Conference of January 1546 and met Ochino, who in any event invited him to Augsburg. In Augsburg Stancaro accepted

111  When Cosimo I de’Medici (1519–74), after becoming duke of Florence in 1537, conquered Siena and incor porated it in what w as henceforth the grand duchy of Tuscany. Before this, the republic of Siena sought to place itself directly under the Emperor. 112  Letter of Vergerio to Bullinger, 10 March 1553; Schiess, Korrespondenz 1, no. 207:1. The editor has mistakenly given the date as 1553. 113  Laelius wrote Bullinger from Siena, 25 September 1552, saying he planned to return to Switzerland after Christmas. Rotondò, Opere, epistola 27.10 114  The evidence for the time of Laelius’ arrival in Switzerland, first Zurich and then Basel, is Curio’s letter to Bullinger, 19 January 1554. Laelius is mentioned b y Curio in a number of letters, Kutter, Curione, Briefe, 49, 99, 123, 155, 158, 170, n. 57. Julius of Milan’s first extant letter concerning Laelius’ heresy is dated 4 November 1555. 115  A recent study of Stancaro is by Francesco Ruffini, Francesco Stancaro, Studi sui Riformatori Italiani, ed. Arnaldo Bertola, Luigi Firpo, and Edoardo Ruffini (Turin: Ramella, 1955), 165–406, and most insightfully, Heinz, Italienische Protestanten, chap. 3.

884  the radical reformation

chapter 22.4

a professorship in Greek and Hebrew offered him by the town council for their academy (eventually centered in Altdorf, of university rank in 1623). He went to Basel to get his doctorate in theology. It was from here that he addressed the Signoria of Venice with his idea of Reformation (April 1547; cf. Ch. 22.2.a). Having studied the Mishnah (editio princeps: Naples, 1492) and the Gemara, the other part of the Talmud consisting of rabbinic commentary on the Mishnah, Stancaro came to grips with an idea taken by some Anabaptists from the talmudists of a d ouble Messiah and published Rabinorum recentiorum, et anabaptistarum falsa opinio de duobus messiis, priscorum Thalmudistarum authoritibus confutata (Neuburg an der Donau, 1547). He concludes as a Christian talmudist that the Kingdom of Christ the Son of God is spiritual; and that of the Jewish Messiah, the son of David, is temporal, even as the ancient talmudists held.116 In 1547 Curio attempted to get Stancaro a position on the faculty of the university in Basel, but failed. Stancaro instead busied himself with the publication of h is Hebrew grammar and a commentary on James, receiving in due course his doctorate in theology at Basel. It was in the choice of Hebrew texts in his Ebreae grammaticae compendium [et] institutio (Basel, 1547) that Stancaro signaled his central concern to uphold the IV Lateran defense of Peter Lombard on Christ the Mediator (1 Tim. 2:4) in his human natura (Ch. 11.3.c). One of these, for example, suggests the economic or dispensational Trinity in the presumed Paternal address to the prophet Isaiah or to Cyrus as Messiah, Isaiah 48:16: “And now Yahweh Elohim (the Lord God) has sent me [Cyrus as Messaiah or Isaiah as the type of Jesus Christ] and his Spirit.”117 It was from angry Basel that Stancaro sent the treatise on the Reformation to the Signoria of Venice (Ch. 22.2.a). The papal nuncio at Venice wanted Stancaro prosecuted. The Signoria, however, put him off, suggesting that he write to Cardinal Farnese at Augsburg and demand Stancaro’s arrest on the spot. Nothing came of the nuncio’s appeal. Stancaro reappeared in the Rhaetian Leagues and found work as a teacher, becoming further acquainted with John Comander of C hur and with Francis Negri in Chiavenna. We have already noted how he became involved in the dispute between Camillo and Mainardo (1547–48). When Mainardo attempted to straighten out matters by forcing the Renato party to sign an orthodox confession, Stancaro produced a counterconfession, which was approved by the two leading Reformed pastors at Chur. Camillo failed to appear, was condemned in absentia, and commanded to thenceforth keep 116  The sixteenth century knew the distinction between the regnum Christi to be delivered up at the end (1 Cor. 15:28) and the eternal regnum Filii Dei. Cf. below at n. 132. 117  For a picture and more on Stancaro, the Hebraist Trinitarian, see my Lubieniecki, Plate 17.

chapter 22.4 / 22.5

italy & the rhaetian republic  885

silence, Mainardo and Stancaro, as spokesmen, went separately to Zurich in order to consult Bullinger. On 7 June 1548, Bullinger and the other divines in Zurich rendered their decision in favor of Mainardo. Stancaro, who had attempted to put Mainardo in a b ad light, was eliminated from the controversy. He returned to teach for a few months in the Valtellina (having brought Francis Negri’s young son, George, back with him from Zurich); but a letter from Mainardo to Bullinger118 containing some of the adverse characterizations already quoted, widely discredited Stancaro, and he left the country. We shall next meet him as the founder of the first Reformed synod in Poland (Ch. 25.1.a) where he would die, convinced to the end that he had been upholding Reformed orthodoxy against heretical Italians. But a modern scholar imaginatively places on the lips of Stancaro as though addressed by the heresiarch to every researcher in the Radical Reformation in eastern Europe: “You must take my person into consideration a moment, before you undertake your researches on Faustus Socinus [not to say Laelius], who only came to these parts four years after my death and for whom incidentally I prepared the way.”119

5. Italian Anabaptists, 1551–1565: Relations with the Hutterites Three important survivors of t he first wave of p ersecution caused by Manelfi’s desertion of t he Anabaptist cause in 1551 were the Venetians Julius Gherlandi, Francis della Sega, and Anthony Rizzetto. All of t hem sought asylum with the Hutterites in Moravia and led many of t heir followers thither. Around them can be told most of t he remainder of t he Anabaptist story in Italy.120 In the schism within Italian Anabaptism between the unitarian, Ebionite Anabaptists and the triadologically and christologically more conservative group like the conventicle in Cittadella, the latter found refuge after the defection of Manelfi notably among the largely Tyrolese Hutterites in Moravia. The first notice of c ontact dates from well before the schism, namely, 1540. It is more than a notice. It is the “Rechenschafft der Brueder zu Trüest,” the account surviving in the Hutterite Chronicle of the faith

118

 Letter of 22 September 1548, Schiess, Korrespondenz, 1, no. 102.  Henryk Barycz, with the discovery of new documentation in the diocesan ar chives of Frombork (Frauenburg), took up the life of Stancaro anew, printing this letter and three other documents bearing on the Polish Reformation, “Dokumenty z´ródłowe do dziejów ar ianizmu polskiego,” Studia nad Arianizmem, ed. Ludwik Chmaj (Warsaw: PAN, 1959), 489–530. Barycz is quoting from Ruffini the words placed on the lips of Stancaro. 120  Henry A. DeWind, “Italian Hutterite Martyrs,” MQR 28 (1954): 164–71; ME, 2:513; Wacław Urban, “Z dziejów włoskiej emig racji wyznaniowej na Mora wach,” ORP 1 (1966): 49–62; Stella, Cinquecento veneto, 103–20. 119

886  the radical reformation

chapter 22.5

and the martyrdom by d rowning of A nabaptists in Trieste.121 The “community of t he saints” drew large numbers of I talian Anabaptists to their commonwealth. Julius Gherlandi (also, in Hutterite records, Klemperer) was born c. 1520 near Treviso in Venetia and was intended by his father for the Catholic priesthood. He was troubled in conscience by t he contradiction between his Christian professions and his own actual achievements and failings. It is quite probable that he belonged for a season to the circle in Vicenza and that his memory was preserved in Socinian records as “Julius of Treviso.” In reading Matthew 7:15–16 about false prophets and bad fruit trees, he was led to break from the Roman Church about 1549 and to join the Anabaptists.122 He was baptized by Nicholas d’Alessandria of Asolo. He himself baptized several persons. When the renegade Manelfi exposed the whole movement, Gherlandi and Francis della Sega, on learning about the Hutterite colonies, journeyed to Moravia and were admitted to the Bruderhof at Pausramjust west of Auspitz. Despite their involvement in the unitarian, adoptionist line of Italian Anabaptist thought, they were not required to be rebaptized. Gherlandi engaged in his new craft of making lanterns, but soon asked permission to bring the message of the Hutterites to his former associates in Italy. In March 1559, Gherlandi arrived with two companions from the Hutterite community in Italy, bearing a letter from della Sega to a fellow believer in Vicenza, as well as a general letter of introduction from the Hutterites to the Italian Anabaptists. The letter describes Hutterites as communitarian Anabaptists, and makes clear that only those Italian Evangelicals would be welcomed as members whose minds were not contaminated with false doctrines about Christ, the resurrection from the dead, angels, devils, or other matters (in obvious reference to the doctrines approved by the Venetian synod of 1550). Gherlandi also carried a l ist of more than a hundred Italians living in over sixty localities in Hungary, northern Italy, Trentino, and Rhaetia.123 On 21 March 1559, Gherlandi came to official attention when on arriving in Venice he refused, as every other Anabaptist did, to swear by oath: in this instance, to the port authorities that he had no disease! On being released, he appeared a few days later in his native Treviso, publicly criticizing the Roman Church. He was arrested and examined at Treviso and was then transferred to prison in Venice, from which he managed to escape and return to Moravia. He was back in Italy by Christmas of 1560,

121

 Beck collection, State Archives of Brno; noted by Stella, Cinquecento veneto, 25, n. 52.  De Wind says between 1549 and 1551. 123  The localities are listed by Stella, Cinquecento veneto, 106, n. 79. 122

chapter 22.5

italy & the rhaetian republic  887

and in October 1561 was captured once again near Treviso and imprisoned at San Giovanni in Bragora in Venice. From his prison he wrote, 4 October 1561, a letter124 to Vorsteher Leonard Lanzenstiel (Ch. 26.1) in Moravia. It explains his predicament, and breathes a courageous spirit, firm in the faith: “Do not for a moment doubt that there will be given to me in that hour, according to the true divine promise, wisdom against which all the adversaries shall not be able to prevail.” A f ew days later Gherlandi prepared a c omprehensive confession of f aith, recounted the reasons which had prompted him to leave Catholicism and eventually to join the Hutterites, for him, the best exemplification of the holy nation, of the peculiar people of 1 Peter 2:9, reborn in the Spirit and together in Christ overcoming the sin of Adam. He closed thus: “That is my simple confession. I a sk that it be accepted with indulgence, for I am no orator, writer or historian, but only a poor lantern maker—I am however not truly poor, since I am indeed content with my fate.” On 16 November 1561, Gherlandi was examined by three theologians. The issue between the inquisitors and the Hutterite concerned the relative authority of church, tradition, and the scriptures. The Catholics found that he remained “obstinate in the crime of heresy,” and he was left to languish in the prison, where he sought to convert his fellow prisoners. When admonished by a priest to beg pardon from the court for proclaiming his gospel in prison, Gherlandi replied, “To God alone ought I to bend the knee and not to worldly men.” It is at this point that we pick up the story of the already mentioned Francis della Sega. Della Sega was born at Rovigo in 1528. He studied law in Padua. Stricken with illness brought on by his boisterous life as a student, and chided by a p ious craftsman, he turned to the New Testament, determined to model his life on that of Christ. His conversion was complete. He abandoned law and became a tailor, incurring the ridicule of family and friends. He joined the Anabaptist movement. In the Socinian tradition, he is remembered as having been among the refugees in the Grisons after 1551. Around 1557 he was in Vienna and then traveled with a H ungarian friend through Hapsburg Hungary (Slovakia). Learning of t he Hutterites from their Moravian servant, he visited several communities in Moravia. He was admitted to membership, perhaps first in Slovakia, but later in Pausram in Moravia. There he married an Ursula from Engadine and settled down as a tailor. He was ordained a Hutterite Diener and preached in both Italian and German.125 Shortly after the departure of G herlandi with the

124  It was never delivered and is no w in the ar chives in Venice and mentioned b y Stella. Cinquecento veneto, 108, n. 82. 125  Stella, Cinquecento veneto, 114, n. 53.

888  the radical reformation

chapter 22.5

letter of introduction to his former associates, della Sega himself, on receiving news of his father’s death, returned to Italy to see about his inheritance. Other trips followed. Like Gherlandi, he carried word of the Hutterite way of life to friends. In August 1562, on one of t hese expeditions in the company of o ne Nicholas Buccella, a surgeon of Padua, and of Anthony Rizzetto of Vicenza, della Sega was leading to Moravia some twenty-one or so members of the Cittadella conventicle. It will be recalled that a large part of this group had not assented to the Venetian ten points. The company was overtaken at Capodistria just as they were embarking for Trieste,126 betrayed by a fellow believer who desired to recover his investment. The podestà sent the band of Anabaptists to the Inquisition at Venice for further examination. Della Sega was found to be carrying the names and addresses of other recruits, several of them in the Piedmont region affected by the Tyrolese Peasants’ War.127 They were put in prison where Gherlandi was being held. The Italian Hutterites quickly made contact and were able to reinforce one another in the difficult weeks ahead. Rizzetto is as interesting a personality as Gherlandi and della Sega. He had been rebaptized about 1551 in Vicenza by t he apostle Marc Anthony of Asolo, the companion of Manelfi. Rizzetto and Bartholomew of Padua, with the wife and daughter of the latter, chose to flee persecution by taking ship to Thessalonica. When Bartholomew died, Rizzetto married his widow; and, after returning to Italy, he too visited the Hutterites. It was on his return trip from Moravia to bring back his wife and family that he had joined della Sega’s company and been overtaken with him by the podestà at Capodistria. Della Sega and Rizzetto each prepared a confession, dated 20 October 1562.128 The principal points of della Sega’s testimony were that salvation is by faith alone, without any further subtlety, curiosity, or mystery which are of n o utility for the Christian life; that baptism, as the testimony of a “good conscience with God” (cf. 1 Pet. 3:21), should be reserved for believers, though not indispensable to salvation; that confession should be to God and not to priests; that one should seek to obey God’s commandments,129 separating from the world and all its pomp. During

126  The episode leading to the ar rest of della Sega and Rizzetto is told b y Benrath, “Wiedertäufer,” 46–47; Stella, Cinquecento veneto, 110–11. The betrayer was Alessio Todeschi (Schweitzer) of Bellinzona who had sojour ned in Moravia. In his testimony Todeschi spoke of the Hutterite commonwealth as consisting of thirty thousand from many lands, Germans, Poles, Hungarians, Paduans, etc. 127  Stella, Cinquecento veneto, 111, n. 88. 128  They are the source of much of the foregoing information. 129  There is her e none of the Antitrinitarianism to which the y both had been exposed earlier in Venice.

chapter 22.5

italy & the rhaetian republic  889

the imprisonment of Rizzetto and della Sega, there was a series of examinations conducted by t he Jesuit theologian Alfonso Salmeron, among others. Throughout, della Sega stressed his devotion to Scripture. In the meantime, on 15 October 1562, the court had sentenced Gherlandi to be drowned. When informed of h is fate, he prepared a last word of greeting to the community in Moravia. It was necessary first to degrade him formally from his rank as ordained subdeacon in the Roman Church before turning him over to the secular arm. Under the cover of d arkness his boat set forth into the Laguna to meet another one which was waiting for it. A plank was thrown between the two boats, he was tied upon it and weighted with stones and the boats thereupon grimly returned separately to their ports. The martyrdom of Gherlandi in Venetian waters took place sometime after 23 October 1562. Early the next year, della Sega directed a letter to Bishop Leonard Seiler Lanzenstiel, Peter Scherer Walpot, and the whole community in Moravia. Unlike the one written earlier by Gherlandi, it was delivered.130 Of exceptional interest, it transmits Gherlandi’s last words and speaks movingly of his approaching martyrdom. Della Sega’s letter breathes a purified faith and devotion to Christ: I would not let the occasion pass while I am yet in this tabernacle of desiring for you the grace of the salvation of the omnipotent God. I have loved you all sincerely; but I love you even more now that I have been deprived of your presence, which deprivation is a great tribulation to me. And when the end comes, I will love you with the love that I have through Christ himself, because you are of his flesh, yea, bone and limbs, of Christ. And you have loved me sincerely. Through you I have received of God innumerable benefits for which I h ave not repaid you, and thus I r emain your debtor. But I desire to bear this my humiliation with patience, for love of you; yea, I would bear being rejected and cast out and finally led to execution on account of my love of you.131 Della Sega exhorts the pastors and the community as a whole, and has special words to his fellow Italians who, in Christ, had been so hospitably received by the Hutterites:

130  The Italian original is lost. The most commonly cited German version is that of 1618 among the Hutter ite Codices in Bratislava. Stella supplies plates and a par tial transcription of a German version of 1563, preserved in Esztergom, Hungary; Stella, Cinquecento veneto, 114, n. 92; 115, n. 95. 131  Benrath, “Wiedertäufer,” 49; De Wind, ME 4:495–96.

890  the radical reformation

chapter 22.5

I say to you my dear ones, above all love and fear the Lord and see to it that you never forsake the brotherhood and church but keep always before your eyes Christ’s parable of the vine. … Think what grace you have received from God through being led from the deepest shadows to his marvelous light, and love one another with a pure heart, with all sincerity and fullness of heart, without pretense. The doctrinal section of the letter suggests that della Sega had not entirely abandoned his earlier triadological and soteriological views. He looks forward to the delivery of C hrist, “the Son of m an,” “the firstborn,” of h is Kingdom “of those reborn and renewed by the Holy Spirit,” to the Father “that God may be for eternity all in all” (cf. 1 Cor. 15:28).132 Della Sega closes with greetings to his friends, to his beloved and loyal wife Ursula, and to his mother-in-law, who had accompanied them to Moravia. A decree of the Venetian Council of Ten, issued 7 April 1564, providing for the expulsion of heretics133 momentarily raised hope in della Sega and Rizzetto that the decree would apply to them. Della Sega wrote the court 18 July 1564, praising the authorities for what seemed an enlightened policy, reminding them that Jesus would have approved of a llowing such alleged heretics as the Hutterites to grow up until the harvest, and asking release from imprisonment to return to his wife and family in Moravia.134 His arguments were ignored, perhaps because Rome itself was rebuking Venice for its relative leniency. In November, the inquisitor Fra Adriano reported the case, listing the chief heresies of della Sega and Rizzetto—namely, their rejection of the Roman Church, of infant baptism, and of confession to priests; and of their union with the Hutterites as the allegedly true church. The Hutterite Chronicle recalls the interrogation of Rizzetto about the headship of the Church, and his spirited retort to a realistic concession: “A body with two heads [Christ and the Pope] is a monstrosity.”135 An interrogation of 12 December 1564 showed della Sega and Rizzetto still firm in their faith despite the abjuration of their companion Dr. Nicholas Buccella, and his efforts on 7 December to help them moderate their views.

132  Stella, Cinquecento veneto, 115ff. and n. 95, moderating the vie w of Urban, “Z dziejów włoskiej emigracji,” who argues that della Sega remained essentially proto-Socinian in his theology even in the Hutterite context. Stella shows, however, that at least the “Einigkeit” of the 1618 version, which Urban stresses, is “Ewigkeit” (as in 1 Cor. 15:28) in the 1563 version. This may be compared with Schwenckfeld on the same text (Ch. 18). 133  Cantù, Eretici, 3:139. 134  Della Sega’s letter is printed in full in Benrath, “Wiedertäufer,” 64–67. 135  Chronik, 715/Chronicle, 387.

chapter 22.5

italy & the rhaetian republic  891

Dr. Buccella (Chs. 28.3; 29.6),136 though for a w hile austere, steadfast, and frank, preparing a c onfession of f aith modeled on the Apostles’ Creed, had finally yielded to the importuning of his solicitous brothers and the sympathetic counsel of a p hilo-Protestant consult in the hearings and agreed to try to persuade Rizzetto and della Sega, with some temporary effect on the latter. Dr. Buccella was thereupon released and required only to stay in Padua and environs for three years under surveillance. Della Sega recovered his resolve and addressed in February 1565 a letter or testament to his Catholic mother and brothers. This undelivered message is remarkable in being directed to next of kin who had disowned him and would do nothing to relieve the anguish and physical wretchedness of one who for his faith was enduring the dank, sunless squalor in nearby Venice. He lovingly reproached them for ignoring his efforts to bring them to see the spiritual light: May God pardon you and summon you to repentance. I pray you for the last time to consider why you have come into the world, and since you think of yourselves as Christians, to do what Christ teaches. … I e xhort you still to desire His grace and to observe His commandments. I pray it of you with all my heart, now that I am about to die. In place of my last testament, since I have no money to leave, that which I h ave and know for divine grace I manifest to you, and anew with great sorrow of heart and with tears in my eyes, I plead with you to seek God while He is to be found. … And do not put off your conversion because we do not know what tomorrow will bring. Think that if God is merciful, His wrath is great toward the rebellious. … Now, if this letter should not please you, I k now nought else to say. God will not save you by force. It remains to me, in this case, to ask you only to pass this letter to some other who may have the desire to do good and live a Christian life.137 Sentence was passed on della Sega and Rizzetto on 8 February 1565. Della Sega again wavered momentarily. When the executioner told this to Rizzetto, the latter replied: “Unhappy soul! But if he has lost his soul, I do not want to lose mine. What I have said, I have said.”138 Della Sega still

136

 Stella considers Buccella a representative figure passing from Anabaptism to Socinianism; cf. Cinquecento veneto, 121–44, 191–93, and more fully with documents in “Interno al medico padovano Nicolò Buccella, anabattista del’500, ” Memorie dell’Accademia P atavina di Scienz e, Lettere ed Arti 64 (1961–62): 333-61. 137  This whole testamentary letter is characterized by Benrath, “Wiedertäufer” 49, as “one of the most moving documents to come out of the whole Anabaptist movement.” The MS was re-examined and translated in part by De Wind, ME 4:346. 138  De Wind, ME 4:346.

892  the radical reformation

chapter 22.5 / 22.6

appeared undecided in the presence of Salmeron, and he was reproved for his indecision, but in the end he remained true to his faith. The two Hutterite heretics were spared the usual fiery punishment139 for heresy which prevailed beyond the confines of watery and more clement Venice. At ten o’clock of t he night of Monday 26 February 1565, after refusing to kiss the crucifix pressed to their lips, they were cast, weighted, from planks into the depths of the sea. “But the sea will give up its dead at the Judgment Day of God [Rev. 20:13],” the Hutterite Chronicle reminded its readers.140 In passing from Italy to Slavic Moravia, many Italian Anabaptists (dvokrštenici; literally, twibaptists) will have at least passed through Slavic Slovenia, less likely Croatia.141 We mention here in passing that the social unrest connected with the peasant leaders of S lovenia and Croatia: Matthew Gubec (martyred in Zagreb, 1573), John Pasanec, Ily (Elias) Gregori´c, and also the highly emotional Skakalci (“ jumpers”) may come to be shown to belong to the general diffusion of the Radical Reformation.

6. Italian Libertinism and Nicodemism We turn from three Italian Anabaptist martyrs to the Italian Nicodemites and Spiritual Libertines, who, out of the same general movement of spiritual unrest in Italy, had, after the stern implementation of the Inquisition, decided to stay in Italy and outwardly conform. Bucer and Calvin expressly called “Nicodemites” those in Catholic lands who sympathized with the evangelical cause and yet refused to avow their faith publicly. Nicodemus, who secretly asked Jesus about rebirth ( John 3:1–2), was considered by t he stern Reformer of G eneva as the type of ineffectual and fainthearted convert who should be castigated for timidity. Calvin, of course, knew that the well-stationed interrogator is also recorded as having circumspectly and vainly sought a proper hearing for Jesus with his own party ( John 7:50–51), after having first come to him by night and then, after the crucifixion, as having brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes ( John 19:39). The traits of Nicodemus have suggested to modern scholar139  The adjustment of the sentence “for special reasons” is signed by the Bishop of Vercelli in his capacity as papal legate , by the Patriarch of Venice, and by the inquisitor general. See Benrath, “Wiedertäufer,” 53. 140  Zieglschmid, Chronik, 413/Chronicle, 388. The specific reference here is to the previous death of Gherlandi. 141  A recent work on the Refor mation in Slovenia has no r eference to Anabaptists. Rudolf Trofenik, ed., Abhandlungen über die Slowenisc he Reformation, Geschichte, Kultur und Geisteswelt der Slowenen, 1 (Munich: Trofenik, 1968). But it is kno wn that edicts against Lutherans and sectar ians, involving punishment by drowning, and with reference to Slovenia (Krain), were issued 24 March 1528, 20 July 1528, 24 July 1528, 16 November 1529, and 17 July 1530. August Dimitz, Geschichte Krains (Laibach-Ljubjlana, 1875), 2: 196–97. I have not been able to locate his citations in Bernhard Raupach, Evangelisches Öesterreich, 3 vols. (Hamburg, 1732–40). See further Valdo Vinay, “La Riforma in Croazia e in Slovenia e il ‘Beneficio di Christo’,” BSSV 85, no. 116 (1964): 19–32.

chapter 22.6

italy & the rhaetian republic  893

ship the useful term “Nicodemism” for that irenic, prudential Spiritualism particularly in Romance countries and other Catholic lands where people of high station were unable to make common cause either with the belligerent Protestants, protected by their magistrates, or with the martyr-minded sectaries, usually recruited from the classes of a h umbler station than that of the cultured or mercantile Nicodemites.142 As will be presently clear, the foregoing characterization harks from Calvin’s own pitiless survey and taxonomy and may be subject to scholarly rehabilitation. Although Bucer and notably Calvin (Ch. 23.2) are responsible for the distinctive label, the movement and mood appears to have been as much a religious phenomenon of t he cultured laity of t he age. But its first scriptural articulation may well have been by the Strassburg botanist-physician, Otto Brunfels (Ch. 8.4.b) in his Pandectarum veteris et novi Testamenti, libri 12 (Strassburg, 1527), a digest of scriptural passages based on his hope that when topically arranged, without extensive commentary, they might reduce quibbling among the partisans of the emerging great confessions, Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed, and then within each of t he various groupings, all in the interest of p eaceable relations among believers of d ifferent temperaments, convictions, and stations in life under the parole: “Between the unbelieving and the obstinate we are able to dissimulate and feign, especially if there be no hope, for God considers the heart.”143 Brunfels seems to have come to this conviction in reaction to the violence of the Peasants’ War and its aftermath and to the discomfort he himself felt, with the increasing pressure for conformity in the emergent Christocracy of Strassburg, Zurich, Basel, and Geneva. As a l ay theologian he was giving sanction in the first instance to the eventual reticence and dissimulating discretion on the part of several notables among French Evangelicals visiting him in Strassburg (Ch. 23.2). 142

 Delio Cantimori further defined the term in a succession of studies, Eretici Italiani del Cinquecento (Florence, 1939), 57, 120; “La Riforma in Italia,” in Problemi Storici e Or ientamenti Storiografici, ed. Ettore Rota (Como, 1942), 557–84; “Nicodemismo e speranze conciliar i nel Cinquecento italiano,” Quaderni di “Belfagor,” ed. Luigi Russo, Contributi alla Stor ia del concilio di Trento e della Controriforma (Florence: Sansoni, 1948), 12–23; and “Spigolatura per la storia del nicodemisnio italiano del Cinquecento,” in Ginevra e l’Italia, Raccolti di studi, ed. Delio Cantimori, et al. (Florence: Sansoni, 1959), 177–90. See also Albano Biondi, “La giustificazione della simulazione nel Cinquecento,” Eresia e Riforma (Chicago: The Newberry Library, 1974) 1: 7–68. This work contained a complete bibliography to date, but has been in part superseded by the seminal work of Carlo Ginzburg, Il Nicodemismo (Turin: Einaudi, 1970), who, while recognizing that simulation and dissimulation was a pan-European phenomenon among intellectuals in both Catholic and Protestant Europe in the sixteenth century, finds the scriptural origins and theological rationale, though not the term, in Otto Brunfels in Strassburg in 1527. The present section, owing much to Ginzburg’s presentation, was not included in Ch. 10, partly because, as the largest chapter in our nar rative, it had g rown too large for its inclusion ther e and was not apposite under Brunfels in his career in Basel (Ch. 8.4.b). 143  These words on folio 51v ar e lifted up b y Ginzburg as the first formulation of the Nicodemite faith and strategy.

894  the radical reformation

chapter 22.6

In Italy, Nicodemites practicing conformity while hoping for general spiritual regeneration and reform, could be found in almost all groupings. In the case of G eorge Siculo, Nicodemism and apocalyptic sectarianism, seemingly opposites, could be conjoined as respectively the exoteric and the esoteric teaching. In most evangelical conventicles, despite Calvin’s excoriations of French Nicodemites, the practice of secrecy and outward liturgical conformity were regarded as justifiable evasiveness.144 The Nicodemites, many of whom were to hold that their spiritual rebirth ( John 3:1ff.) was on principle invisible (as was election), were all the more loathe to break with the established church for the reason that in their instinctive espousal of the inwardness of Spiritualism they could not take polity and other externalities so seriously as did the Catholics, the Calvinists, and the Anabaptists. Nor could they accept predestination and salvation sola fide with as much confidence as did both the Swiss and the Lutheran Protestants. Although the Nicodemites were very much concerned with the devout and sanctified life, they could not, perhaps because of a difference of temperament, take so seriously as did the sectarians the disciplines and demands of conventicular perfectionism. Thus in its broadest sense, Nicodemism in Italy could include timid Protestants, conformist Waldensians, Valdesians, and other Evangelicals but not the Anabaptists. Nicodemism is probably best defined, however, as far as Italy is concerned as the remnant of Italian Evangelism which persisted after that thrice-fateful year for Italian Evangelism, 1542, which saw the death of the benign and responsive Cardinal Contarini, the establishment of the Roman Inquisition, and the defection of Ochino to Protestantism. In this more limited sense, Nicodemism has been interpreted as the camouflage and “degeneration of Evangelism into the flaccidity of a purely internal, individual devotion.”145 In Nicodemism, the original humanistic indifference to dogma was, in any case, often transformed by the exigencies of the Inquisition “into practical indifference and in some cases hypocritical submissiveness.”146 We cite the example of George Siculo (22.2.a). A former Benedictine monk of Catania, Siculo was a prophetic preacher.147 A hostile Italian ref144  Rotondò, “Atteggiamenti,” 991–1030; John Tedeschi and J. Von Henneberg, “Contra Petrum Antonium a Cervia relapsum et Bononiae concrematum,” IRS, 243–69. 145  Eva–Maria Jung, “Nature of Evangelism,” Journal of the History of Ideas 14 (1954): 519. 146  J. R. Charbonnel, La pensée italienne au XVIe sièc le et le cour ant libertin (Paris, 1919). Related to Nicodemism in Italy w as as in France and else where Spiritual Libertinism, which may be defined as the psychopannychist, predestinarian Spiritualism in an adv anced stage in which the or iginal reforming ardor has become largely dissipated and in which its inher ent antinomianism here and there gives way to license as a r esult of the disappearance of all fear of hell. (Cf. Ch. 12.2; 23.2 for the same phenomenon in The Netherlands and France, where license would come to plague the strictest forms of Mennonite/Calvinist piety.) 147  Cantimori, Eretici, 8; Bartolomeo Fontana, Renata di Francia (Rome, 1893–99), 2:279, 3:185ff.; and Ginzburg, “Due note,” Revista, basing his study on the abjuration of a follower of

chapter 22.6

italy & the rhaetian republic  895

ugee in Rhaetia said of him that he had satanically combined papism and Anabaptism and contributed to the establishment of a third sect.148 Siculo repudiated all the sacraments, true baptism consisting for him in having faith in Christ, in repentance, and in receiving the Spirit, not water, as did the apostles at Pentecost.149 He was a traducianist rather than creationist (Ch. 20.4), holding that God directly created only the soul of Adam. He denied the existence of purgatory and hell and held that souls at death go flying into the air until the Last Judgment.150 Siculo considered Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as “tre signori et no un solo signore.” He had strong convictions on social order, holding that temporal lords should not amass wealth or impose unfair taxes or services and that Roman and common law should give way to the Law of Moses. All this George Siculo believed was revealed to him by Jesus Christ in person151 who had made him his “legate” to restore true Christianity after its lapse for more than a thousand years. In company with most Germanic Anabaptists in opposition to classical Protestants and some Italian Anabaptists like Camillo Renato, George Siculo believed in the freedom of the will unto salvation. Under the protection of A bbot Luciano degli Ottoni da Goito, who won over Duke Ercole II d’Este of Ferrara, the visionary preacher Siculo hoped to gain entry to the Council of Trent and proclaim among the Fathers in period II his reform ideal, sustained in his expectation of an imminent return of Christ. Hope was in the air that Reginald Cardinal Pole could be elected Pope in 1549 after the death of Paul III.152 Under the pretext of plague in Trent, Session VIII was opened in Bologna, 11 March 1547. A lost letter was sent by G eorge Siculo to gain admittance. Presumably he intended to exhort the Fathers to reform in general, however, profoundly, without his giving away his own radical particulars. Indeed he was an articulate practitioner of N icodemism, of w hich the only extant document from him as witness is his doctrinal Epistola ... alli citadini di Riva di Trento (Bologna, 1550). It contained in substance what Siculo had preached for forty

the Georgian Sect, Antonio da Bozzolo, 1555, printed as doc. 1, 212–17 and discussed by him in Nicodemismo, 188–90. Ginzburg devotes chap. 6 to the “Italian branches” of Nicodemism as representing an intellectual system as well as a spiritual posture. 148  A letter of Guilio Milanese in Poschiavo, Comba, I nostri Protestanti, 309. 149  Bozzolo’s abjuration, art. 2; Ginzburg, “Due Note,” 213. 150  Ginzburg, “Due Note,” 216. 151  Ibid., art. 1. 152  Pole lost by a single vote.

896  the radical reformation

chapter 22.6

days at Riva di Trento. He had gone there, possibly with the hope of preaching before the council reconvened at Trent to exhort it prophetically to turn from predestinarian Protestantism (!) and to return to the true Catholic and apostolic tradition. Purporting to be anti-Protestant, he took the case of the vacillation and deathbed remorse in Padua of the Protestant jurisconsult Francesco Spiera, 1549, to show how terrible an end awaits the solafideist predestinarian. But basically he espoused attentive and expectant Nicodemism by t his publication. He exhorted crypto-Protestants spread through Italy to adhere externally, without fear of sin, to the Catholic rites, until a g eneral reform should come to pass. He pointed out that Paul, in order not to give offense to the Old Believers (in his case, Jews) circumcised Timothy (Acts 16:3) and purified himself in the Temple according to the Law (Acts 21:24). Siculo himself believed that the Church had been wholly corrupted since the time of Ambrose and Augustine and looked for fundamental reform, perhaps even yet through the Council of Trent, in anticipation of Christ’s speedy advent.153 But Siculo was denounced and summoned before the magistrates of Riva. The same year he was again in Ferrara, where he enlisted a number of followers, still preaching against Lutheran predestination and bondage of the will. The Inquisition at Ferrara was well aware that his opposition to Luther shielded a heresy even more dangerous. Siculo was in prison by the beginning of April 1551. On 23 May, having once recanted and then disavowed the abjuration, he was hanged. His followers were numerous. He was so much appreciated by some of the Italian residents in Geneva that Calvin wrote against him saying of his books and ideas that “passing swiftly throughout Italy, they corrupt many people.” Calvin was vigorously opposed alike to Nicodemites, Libertines, Spiritualists, and Anabaptists. His majestic figure has been towering for some time above our narrative of r eligious developments and aberrations in Rhaetia and the Italian states. It is time to return to Switzerland and see the whole of the Radical Reformation from the perspective of the principal spokesman for classical Protestantism after the death of Luther in its systematic Reformed modality.

153  I have drawn on Cantimori and particularly Ginzburg, Nicodemismo, 170–76. They were able to study the rare Epistola.

Chapter 23

Calvin and the Radical Reformation

T

he kingdom of France under Francis I (1516–47) was so far advanced in royalist centralization and territorial consolidation that it was from the start among the states least accessible to the Reform insofar as among its allures was its providing the moral rationale in facilitating princely control over the national and territorial ecclesiastical establishment. By the Concordat of Bologna of 1516, Julius II (thinking indeed more of the danger of F rance to the Papal States and to Italy in general than of the universal Church) had accorded the king of F rance the right of r oyal Gallicanism (control over his bishops), in supersession to episcopal Gallicanism (control by the bishops as in the conciliar period). Nevertheless France was still open to the diffusion not only of pan–European humanistic Evangelism (Chs. 1.2.a; 22.6) but also to penetration by t he new Protestantism from within the Empire. Because of increasing persecution of those tempted to espouse Reform, heretical pyres burned from Bordeaux, Lyons, Paris, to Rouen, and much of Protestantism had to endure as but the secret faith of many. The first Reformed synod in France was not to be organized in Paris until 1559, adopting the Gallican Confession drafted by John Calvin, nine years after a Reformed synod was organized in Poland in 1550 (Ch. 25.1.a). As this solafideist predestinarian Protestantism of Swiss cast does not come directly within the purview of our narrative,1 we will remain content with a brief characterization of that French variant of Evangelism that might have become organizationally Protestant and some of whose figures Calvin, writ1  For the dust jacket of his admirable translation of La Reforma Radical (Mexico City/Madrid: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1983), Dr. Antonio Alatorre of Colegio de México chose a scene from the St. Bartholomew’s Day night massacre of August 1572. Vividly sanguinary as it is, and representative of the violence against the radicals, I would not have made it my choice, because the Huguenots in their theology and polity, led by Admiral Coligny, held to a conceptualization of religion and society distinguishable from that of most of the various groupings I proposed to sort out and chronicle in this book; see Introduction to Third Edition, p.6.

897

898  the radical reformation

chapter 23

writing back to France from the security of Geneva and Strassburg, pilloried as Nicodemite and even mistakenly as Libertine. The reformer who had published the first edition of his Institutes of the Christian Religion in Basel in 1536, a year after the collapse of the Anabaptist restitution in Münster, who in his dedicatory letter to Francis I had warned the French monarch against confusing the vagaries of a s purious restitution with a politically responsible institution of Reformed Christianity, and who that same year had been made William Farel’s coadjutor in Geneva, entered most directly into contact with the representatives of the Radical Reformation in 1537 (Ch. 23.3.a). In the following year, Calvin was exiled from Geneva. He became pastor of the French congregation in Strassburg, the city where Hofmann lay in prison and where Schwenckfeld and Servetus, among many others, had but recently debated and published. To be sure, Calvin had had contact earlier with Servetus in Paris (Ch. 23.4) and as early as 4 September 1532 had written Bucer about somebody whom he knew in his native Noyon from Strassburg charged, but falsely, said Calvin, with Anabaptism.2 Although Calvin, like Melanchthon and Luther, would begin his theological and catechetical publications with rudimentary allusions if any to God as Triune and to Christ as one Person in two natures, he will, in the course of his many encounters with challengers of the high dogmas of N icea and Chalcedon, reconstruct on a b iblical basis, with a diffident collateral use of t he philosophical terms of t he ancient creeds, a sixteenth-century defense of the ancient patristic and conciliar certitudes. After his recall to Geneva in 1541, and his introduction of the Ecclesiastical Ordinances, which embodied certain religio–political and disciplinary features suggestive of A nabaptist influence—such as the lay eldership and the fencing of the communion—Calvin began a series of letters, tracts, and larger works, directed against various manifestations within the Radical Reformation, from which he intended to safeguard the Reformed Church. Four tracts may be noted in advance. In 1534 he would publish his first edition of t he long–worked-over treatise Psychopannychia.3 Then in 1544 he would write directly against the Anabaptists, whom he had already come to include in part in the earlier writing, and another tract against the Nicodemites. In 1545, he would assail the Libertines, especially in France and The Netherlands. Despite his diversified ecumenical contacts, Calvin would never clearly distinguish among these four trends, all the more remarkable for the fact that in 1540 he married Idelette de Bure, the widow of Jean Stordeur, a French-speaking Anabaptist from Liège via Strassburg (Ch. 10.4.b).

2   For the Noyon native falsely charged, see OC 2: no. 16. For Calvin’s differing from conciliar fromularies even in his matured thought, see, e.g. Institutes. 3  Walther Zimmerli, ed., Quellenschriften zur Geschichte des Protestantismus, 13 (Leipzig, 1932).

chapter 23 / 23.1

calvin & the radical reformation  899

Although Calvin absorbed into his ecclesiastical practice more ingredients of t he Radical Reformation than any other leading magisterial reformer, with the possible exception of Bucer and Laski, and strengthened his high theology in warding off challenges from the anti-Nicene left, we shall in his case as in the others have to confine our treatment of h im to those moments in the Reformer’s life when, in consolidating his theocracy and seeking to promote its international extension, he turned his attention to what he considered the grievous aberrations or failings of the psychopannychists, the Libertines, the Anabaptists, the Nicodemites, and the Antitrinitarians, some of whom, while reproving, he also largely defined in a pejorative sense for centuries to come, notably, the Nicodemites. These whom he pilloried evidently for the most part understood themselves, not as timid and equivocal Protestants but rather as tenacious scriptural Christians, irenic perhaps to a fault, discreet to the point of occasional conformity, but earnest, spiritualizing individualists. And, to the extent that they were indeed solafideist predestinarian observers of the ordinance of the Last Supper and the preaching of the Word, many Nicodemites probably belong more to classical Protestantism than to the Radical Reformation.

1. Calvin’s Personal Contacts with Psychopannychists Calvin first became interested in the problem of psychopannychism in Orléans in 1534 when he put his thoughts down in an unpublished draft of Psychopannychia. We presuppose that what he would later publish preserves his earliest views,4 in this, his oldest writing as a Protestant. Calvin may have composed his first draft of Psychopannychia in connection with the protracted excitement over the alleged return of the spirit of the deceased wife of an Orléans magistrate.5 She had insisted by testament on a simple requiem, which deprived the local Franciscan priory of its accustomed revenue. The Franciscans, in revenge, thereupon secreted a n ovice in the vault of the church to play the role of revenant and by ghostly signs disclose that “she” had died a Lutheran, to the great embarrassment of her widower. The scandal was exposed and the guilty friars were condemned to imprison-

4  Psychopannychia is properly the title of the 1545 edition, which is printed in OC 5:170– 232. It is a second, slightly revised version of the first edition, 1542, entitled Vivere apud Christum non dormire animos sanctos, qui in fide Christi decedunt: assertio. Both editions appeared in Strassburg, but Calvin printed prefaces from 1534 and 1536.These prefaces are the sole basis for the earlier assumption that the work had actually been twice printed before 1542 in lost editions. A full account of the editions is given in Zimmerli’s edition of Psychopannychia. 5  This was the theory of Paul de Félice, La tragédie des Cordeliers d’Orléans, 1534–1535, épisode de l’histoire monastique orléanaise au XVIe sièc le (Paris, 1887), and before him of Archdeacon Francis Blackburne, A Short Historical View of the Controv ersy Concerning an Inter mediate State, 2d ed. (London, 1772). The whole episode is r ecounted by John Sleidan (d. 1556), who was in Orléans at the time. Commentarii, 9, under date. See Doumergue, Jean Calvin, 466 n.3, and Félice, Cordeiers, 464.

900  the radical reformation

chapter 23.1

ment. Locally there was actually much sympathy for the punished friars. But surely Calvin’s Psychopannychia is too serious a work to have been primarily written because of the local scandal. In any event his argument would have tended to support the mendicants and surely would not have satisfactorily exculpated the local Lutherans! Neither Lutherans nor fraudulent Franciscan revenants, Calvin’s opponents in the first instance must have been instead French Paduans, the Netherlandish Libertines, and Anabaptist refugees, if there were any in France at the time. In the two prefaces of 1534 and 1536 but only once in the body of the Psychopannychia are his hypnologi called also “Catabaptists.”6 The hypnologists, as Calvin called the psychopannychists, were “babblers, madmen, dreamers, and drunkards.” But this does not make it certain who the hypnologi were whom Calvin first opposed in Orléans. It is, in fact, not entirely certain whether Calvin, at the time of h is composition, had fully broken with the Catholic Church.7 In any event, his arguments for natural immortality were still closer to those of Pope Leo X t han to the views of Luther.8 It will be recalled that the problem of t he sleep of t he soul and, in the more extreme form, of the outright death of the soul, along with the challenge embodied in the alleged philosophical proof of the soul’s natural mortality, had come before the Fifth Lateran Council (Ch. 1.6.a). We allowed the etymologically ambiguous word “psychopannychism” to serve as the generic term for the two variants “soul sleep” and the “mortalism” within the Christian framework of a belief in the resurrection of the dead for final judgment or of the saints alone for their reward. It is, in fact, the eschatological context that makes the Christian psychopannychism of t he

6

 Briève instruction (1544), OC 5: col. 232.  John T. McNeill, The History and Character of Calvinism (New York: Oxford, 1957), 107– 18, holds that Calvin’s sudden “conversion” came as the climactic rupture with the Old Church after a period of Evangelical Catholic preparation and that it probably fell between 6 April and 4 May 1534.The interview between Calvin and Jacques Lefèvre around 6 April was the decisive factor.The surrender of his clerical benefices at Noyon on 4 May marked the formal break from Rome. William J. Bouwsma, John Calvin: A Sixteenth Century Portrait (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988) suggests a gradual conversion. 8  Émile Doumergue, Jean Calvin, Les hommes et les choses de son temps (Lausanne, 1889), 1:584–85; at p . 468, Doumergue argues that since the pr eface of 1534 mak es it clear that Calvin was spokesman for a large n umber—namely, for the Refor med Church (or nouveaux Evangéliques)—he must have been converted for some time pr ior to 1534. But the sleep of the soul which he opposed w as actually a Lutheran vie w in 1534. A. Hulshof, Geschiedenis van de Doopsgezinden te Straatsburg (unpublished dissertation, University of Amsterdam, 1905), chap. 2, held that the second part of Calvin’s Briève instruction, which may well come close to the original draft of his Psychopannychia of 1534, was directed, not against the Anabaptists, but rather against “eine sekte onder der Her vormingsgezinden in Frankr ijk.” An old theor y of Father François Garasse, that Calvin in the original version of Psychopannychia was writing on this point against Luther, may have something in its favor. Henri Busson, Le Rationalisme dans la littérature française de la Renaissance, 2d ed. (Paris:Vrin, 1957), 321 n. 3. 7

chapter 23.1

calvin & the radical reformation  901

sectaries differ from the Averroistic and Aristotelian demonstration of the natural mortality of the soul and its absorption at death into the world soul, propounded by the Italian academics and papally condemned. In the course of our narrative we have noted how one or the other form of psychopannychism was adopted by such Spiritualists as Carlstadt and by such Anabaptists as Westerburg (Ch. 5.4) in many quarters of the Radical Reformation, from the mouth of the Rhine to the valley of the Po and, as we shall see presently, also in Transylvania (Ch. 28) and in Poland (Ch. 29). Psychopannychism obviously fitted best into that interpretation of C hristianity and reformation which was most disposed to stress the apocalyptic imminence of t he general resurrection of t he dead. It is now our task to show how Calvin, at this point in company with Catholics, became prominently involved in opposing the soul–sleepers and the mortalists in their theology of conditional immortality.9 Calvin, building up a Reformed Church that would endure, perpetuated and defended the Latinate medieval Christian tradition, formalized by the Fifth Lateran Council, as to the susceptibility of t he departed soul to bliss: philosophically, on the ground of his Platonism; theologically, within the context of h is stress on predestination.10 In his anthropology, Calvin, as we elsewhere noted (Ch. 20.4), differed notably from Luther. Where Luther was a traducianist, Calvin was a creationist, holding that each soul is created by God at some stage of fetal growth. Where Luther stressed the Pauline conflict between flesh and spirit (and found the Spiritualists and symbolist sacramentarians often “carnal”), Calvin emphasized the Platonic conflict between body and spirit–soul. In somewhat the same way as Hubmaier, Calvin considered the spirit–soul the exclusive bearer of the image of God and the essence of human personality to the disparagement of the body and its drives. As a Platonist, Calvin therefore found it easier than Luther, who was, of course, also a firm predestinarian, to hold to the natural survival of the soul after the death of the body. Calvin thought of the afterlife as a watchful repose of the righteous souls in an unspecified realm, blissfully anticipating the resurrection of their bodies to be animated and the final judgment of both the elect and the reprobate among the quick and the resurrected dead. He was therefore impassioned in his opposition to the adherents of psychopannychism. As a creationist he was opposed also to the Libertine (Averroistic) conception of the soul–spirit as an emanation of the essence of the divine rather than as an immortal individualized creation by t he divine. 9  This is the term used by Le Roy Edwin Froom in The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald, 1965–66), esp. 2:64–149. 10  The main study her e is that of Heinr ich Quistorp, Calvin’s Doctrine of the Last Things, translated from the German of 1941 by Harold Knight (London: Lutterworth Press, 1955).

902  the radical reformation

chapter 23.1

Etymologically, “psychopannychia,” it will be recalled, means precisely a watchful or sentient “wake” of the soul, and could have been used to designate the position of C alvin himself. Recognizing that the wakeful soul is also at peace and therefore in a kind of sleep, Calvin in fact says: “In the main, like them [the psychosomnolents] we call this rest ‘sleep.’ And we would not be afraid of the word ‘sleep’ had it not been corrupted and sullied by their lies.”11 As a consequence of this admission, the very title of Calvin’s book has come to be attached to the doctrine he opposed rather than to the formulation he defended. In the course of debate, “psychopannychism” has come indeed to designate both the doctrine of the death of the soul (thnetopsychism, mortalism) and the unconscious sleep of the soul (psychosomnolence) pending the resurrection. Despite ineptness of nomenclature, we have already agreed to call the proponents of b oth versions “psychopannychists” since it is useful to have a generic term for both of the sectarian Christian variants opposed to natural immortality but hopeful of eternal life. According to Calvin, there were in Orléans, Paris, and elsewhere in France, two groups among the hypnologi.12 The psychosomnolents conceded that the soul was an enduring substance but that it fell asleep at death and lost memory and feeling. The thnetopsychists believed that the soul was merely a vital power which could not subsist without the body, though it might rise again with it at the resurrection. Here are Calvin’s words: Our controversy, then, relates to the human soul. Some, while admitting it to have a real existence, imagine that it sleeps in a state of insensibility from death to the judgment day, when it will awake from its sleep, while others will sooner admit anything than its real existence, maintaining that it is merely a vital power which is derived from arterial spirit or the action of the lungs (ex spiritu arteriae aut pulmonum agitatione), and being unable to exist without the body, perishes along with the body, and vanishes away and becomes evanescent till the period when the whole shall be raised again. We, on the other hand, maintain both that it is a substance, and after the death of the body truly lives, being endued both with sense and understanding. Both these points we undertake to prove by clear passages of Scripture.13

11

  Calvin, Psychopannychia, ed. Zimmerli, 41.   The term appears, for example, in OC 5: col. 211. In the version annexed to Briève instruction, he has the same characterization, but calls both groups “Anabaptists.” 13   Psychopannychia; printed in Calvin, Tracts 3 (Edinburgh, 1851), 419–20. On Calvin’s Platonic–Patristic sentient separable soul, see Har ry Wolfson, Religious Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961), 91, passim. On why Libertines and other psychopann ychist Spiritualists were dubbed Epicureans, see Ch. 10, n. 169; Ch. 22.18. 12

chapter 23.1

calvin & the radical reformation  903

It does not appear that either group of hypnologi, numbering at this point in the thousands, were French Lutherans. In any case, psychopannychism surely was not the doctrine that would have been the distinguishing mark of Luther’s followers in France 1534, or anywhere else!14 As for the “French evangelical Paduans,”15 the Libertines, and the radical Evangelicals among Calvin’s original opponents, it will be recalled that the Libertine Anthony Pocquet (Ch. 12.2) taught psychopannychism at this time in France and Navarre. Calvin would later be attacking him and other Libertines expressly on this point (Ch. 23.2). We know, moreover, that Calvin had become acquainted with Pocquet’s convert and most renowned spokesman, one Quintin of Picardy, in Paris in 1533 or 1534. The Libertines in Paris and at the court of Queen Margaret of Navarre at Nérac, which Calvin visited in the course of the year, would probably have been one of the two groupings of hypnologi attacked by him in 1534. With their Anabaptist affiliations, it is understandable that Calvin called them incidentally also “Catabaptists.” And who were the second grouping, those who had a more physiological argument for the sleep of the soul? Our best surmise is that it was made up originally of Michael Servetus and his presumably small medical circle in Paris, who could with even greater propriety be called by Calvin “Anabaptist,” in view of Servetus’ sojourn among Anabaptists in Strassburg and his eventual espousal of believers’ immersion (Ch. 11.1.e). We know that Calvin had a rendezvous with the author of De Trinitatis erroribus in Paris in 1534, shortly before the writing of the first draft of the Psychopannychia. Servetus, for some reason, failed to show up for the secret discussion.16 Note, however, the garbled but perhaps telltale allusion to the pulmonary circulation of t he blood in the foregoing quotation. We shall return to its implication (Ch. 23.4). Calvin carried the unpublished draft of Psychopannnychia along with the much more important first draft of the Institutes as he journeyed into exile by way of Metz to Strassburg, en route to Basel.

14   Busson, in Rationalisme, 320–21, postulates a g roup of Augustinians or Anabaptists in Orléans, but he is her e simply transfer ring to Calvin’s opponents in 1534 a designation Florimond Raemond gave (in 1605) to cer tain hypnologi in Bohemia, Histoire de la naissance , progrès et décadence de I’hérésie (Paris, 1605),2: chap. 15:1, “Des Augustinians et Stancar iens.” It should be noted, however that there were medieval Augustinians who would be so styled in the sixteenth centur y. Bainton uses the ter m in his discussion of “New Documents on Early Protestant Rationalism,” CH 7 (1938): 179–87. For psychopannychist Augustinians, see Ch. 26.2 at n. 25. 15   Busson, against his own preference for the hypothetical “Augustinians of Orléans,” suggests this when he writes in Rationalisme, 321: “Possibly the early Libertines had already propagated this heresy. Did Calvin perhaps begin with the purpose of refuting the Italian rationalists rather than Anabaptist dreamers? Since the book had been modified several times, it is impossible to affirm this with any certainty.” 16   Bainton, Hunted Heretic, 218.

904  the radical reformation

chapter 23.1 / 23.2

In Strassburg, Capito persuaded Calvin (at some date prior to the publication of the Institutes) not to print the Psychopannychia,17 alleging that it would but intensify interest in the subject and might indeed offend Luther, who on this point stood closer to the radicals. In 1537, Peter Caroli, then Reformed pastor at Lausanne, began to revive the doctrine of purgatory, which represented a view of the afterlife no less abhorrent to Calvin18 than psychopannychism at the other extreme. Moreover, even in Geneva psychopannychist Anabaptists were becoming a problem.

2. Evangelicals in France, 1516–1561: Nicodemites19 and Libertines From his first writing as a Protestant against the psychopannychists (Orléans, 1534) they were, in his mind, much the same as those whom he later called Libertines and Anabaptists, the three terms serving roughly the same pejorative purpose as Schwärmer with Luther. Except for our effort to identify the hypnologi of Orléans (1534) (Ch. 23.1), we took leave of the Libertines and Loists in The Netherlands (Ch. 12.2) when some of their leaders, notably Pocquet and Quintin, were on their way to the castle of Nérac, where, as we have seen, they had reason to expect protection from Queen Margaret. Margaret of A ngoulême (1492– 1549), sister of F rancis I, had, by h er second marriage in 1527, become queen of the truncated Basque kingdom of Upper Navarre, 20 adored sovereign presence in her several courts of the interrelated French fiefs including Nérac, and in due course grandmother of t hat spiritualizing “Protestant” who would in one momentous hour agree that it was worth a M ass to become King of F rance as Henry IV. Margaret’s religious life, expressed by patronage and poetry, moved easily from Christian humanism, Platonic mysticism, through the Evangelical Catholicism of Gérard Roussel, Jacques Lèfevre (whom as an octegenarian biblical humanist she was protecting when Calvin visited him in 1534), and William Briçonnet of Meaux (her

17  OC 10:2.45, dates Capito’s letter in 1535.A. L. Herminjard, Correspondance des réformateurs dam les pays de langue franncaise (Geneva/Paris, 1866) 3:242, dates it 1534. That Calvin had been moved to revise the Orléans draft substantially is evident from his letter to his friend Libertet, 3 September 1535, OC l0b: no. 29, col. 52; see also Herminjard, Correspondance, 3:349–50. 18  Calvin reported this to Megander, 20 February 1537. Peter Viret, also pastor at Lausanne, undertook to refute Caroli twice, the second time arguing against him for two days, 28 February to 1 March 1537. Letter from Megander to Bullinger, Herminjard, Correspondance, 4: no. 616. 19   Carlos M.N. Eire, “Calvin and Nicodemism: A Reappraisal,” Sixteenth Century Journal 10 (1979): 45–69 taking co gnizance of Ginzburg, Il Nicodemismo. Simulazione e dissimulazione religiosa nell’Europa del ’500 (Turin: Einaudi, 1970). 20   The largely Iber ian kingdom of Na varre (of which, incidentally, Servetus, born in Tudela, was a native) was in 1512 absorbed into the amalgamating kingdom of Spain. For the life of Margaret, see Bainton, Women of the Reformation, 2: chap. 1.

chapter 23.2

calvin & the radical reformation  905

spiritual director), all the way to a “spiritualized” Protestantism. 21 She was at once devout and indiscreet. Her racy yarns about courtly gallantries and convent indiscretions were widely savored. Her more evangelical Mirror of a Sinful Soul was censured in 1532 by the Sorbonne despite her royal dignity and the spirited defense of h er by N icholas Cop (whose spirited rectoral address at the Sorbonne, All Souls’ Feast, 1533, may have been drafted by Calvin himself ). It is understandable that the spiritualism, the antinomianism, and even the quackery of the Netherlandish Libertines might well intrigue her. She made Anthony Pocquet a c haplain. Quintin 22 as huissier and Bertrand of Moulins as valet de chambre may have begun their service at Nérac in the early 1530s. The first tract against persons whom he would later call Nicodemites was written in 1537 while Calvin was on a v isit among Evangelicals at the court of M argaret of N avarre’s cousin, Duchess Renée (protectress of Camillo Renato), in Ferrara. There he had been distressed by the way the gospel could be disguised by well–intentioned conformists. In response to an inquiry, in his new role as lecteur en la sainte Ecriture de l’Eglise de Genève, he wrote forthrightly to the former Franciscan Nicholas Duchemin a letter later printed in the security of Basel as De fugiendis impiorum illicitis sacris, et puritate Christianae religionis observanda.23 In it, Calvin, attacked the Catholic Church as at once an Egypt and a Babylon. He did not, on this occasion, employ the term “Nicodemite,” nor did he in his second letter to his old friend Gerard Roussel, on his election, under the patronage of Margaret of Navarre, as bishop of Oléron, published subsequently as De sacerdotio papali abiiciendo.24 Jacques Lefèvre and Gerard Roussel, reposing in Nérac, had once actually sojourned in Strassburg, taking refuge there from October 1525 to April 1526. The Parliament of Paris had, at the instigation of Noel Beda of the Sorbonne, named four inquisitorial judges to examine them and their Evangelist associates in Meaux, Michel d’Arande and Peter Caroli (the future pastor in Lausanne). The two refugees, Le Fèvre and Roussel, had been domiciled with Capito, a friend of the botanist–physician Otto Brunfels, who, as earlier noted in his Pandectae (1527; Ch. 22.6), enunciated the high principles of N icodemism and who dedicated the work to Lefèvre. “The dedication to Lefèvre of t his manifesto of N icodemism signalized not only symbolically the beginning of t he diffusion of t his attitude in 21

 Well characterized with the literature by Busson, Rationalisme, 306–11.   Biographie universelle, 54: col. 664. 23   OC 5: cals. 239–78. 24  The exact title is De christiani hominis officio in sacerdotis papalis ecclesia vel administrandis vel abiiciendis, OC 5, cals. 279–312. At Bourges, Calvin and Duchemin had collaborated in their pre–Protestant Antopoligia (1531) against the pr etentious Milanese jur ist–humanist, Andrew Alciati, their teacher. 22

906  the radical reformation

chapter 23.2

France. The Neoplatonizing mysticism of Le Fevre was not so far from the indifference to dogma on spiritualistic grounds in Brunfels.” 25 Strassburg, an emerging Christocracy under the leadership of Bucer, the crossroads of b iblical humanism, Anabaptism, and Spiritualism, was thus possibly also the “epicenter” of reasoned Nicodemism. For Brunfels, in any case, there was the scriptural sanction for discretion not only in the behavior of Nicodemus (Ch. 22.6), but also in the example of the pardoning indulgence of t he prophet Elisha toward the grateful Naaman, cured of leprosy, when the prophet permitted the foreign commander, now converted to Judaism, to accompany his king for worship within the house of Rimmon (2 Kgs. 5); and in the example of Paul, being “all things to all men” (2 Cor. 9:22), and giving the nuanced counsel of “situational ethics” in regard to the proper behavior of a Christian when offered meat dedicated to idols (1 Corinthians 8). To be sure, Paul’s argument about taking heed of the weaker brethren could be interpreted as either (a) requiring nonconformity on the part of a Protestant of social prominence in a Catholic social context so as not to offend the more scrupulous Protestants of p erhaps a humbler class or (b) as legitimating a S piritualist’s conformity in a t erritorial Protestant establishment. The Nicodemites in the Strassburg situation were, including Brunfels himself, also pilloried by the magisterial reformers there as Epicureans. The Strassburg divines may have. served also as “appellate court” for French Nicodemites, converts to classical Protestantism, who chose to stick it out and cope by v arious strategies of s ecrecy, discretion, and courage, and to hold on to their faith without resort to flight but who in some cases sought to be relieved of t heir anxieties and to be counseled by t he Strassburg divines, in their case less exigent than Calvin, after his return to Geneva.26 In 1538 Bucer wrote Margaret about the Libertines in Navarre and France, without specifically naming them, but characterizing them as “timid

25

 The two sentences in r everse order are from Ginzburg, Nicodemismo, 88, 87. The basic theses of this book (Ch. 22.5) are that Brunfels in Strassburg shaped the “Bible” of Nicodemism, a kind of abstract ideology of mostly lay intellectuals, that his counsel to the French Evangelicals encouraged them to sta y within the Catholic Chur ch, and that the same scr iptural rationale fortified like–minded intellectuals to fend off intrusion from Protestant theocracies. 26   This is the view of Heiko Oberman, mastering the literature since Ginzburg’s book, “Die Nikodemiten: Ausharren statt Flucht,” one of se ven sections of an enlarged lectur e Die Wirkung der Reformation, Institut für Europäische Geschichte, Mainz, Vorträge 80 (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1987). Oberman points to the medie val literature and ar tistic representation of Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea as worthy and devout. He concludes that “Nicodemism is a completely unr ecognized, because concealed and misunder stood, child of the [classical] Reformation” (46). He identifies it with the later Irenicism as a recognizable achievement within “the third Reformation” that centered in Geneva, even though in this case against the caricature or misconception of Nicodemism on the part of Calvin himself.

chapter 23.2

calvin & the radical reformation  907

Nicodemites,” confident in the sinlessness of t he perfected as a c over for their license.27 Calvin, who had once met Quintin in Paris, no doubt knew at first hand something of his imbalance and that of the other Libertines, who were commonly called after him “Quintinists.” A F lemish–French Spiritualist, Quintin thought little of the New Testament apostles because they had lived before the now–dawning age of the perfection of the world (cf. Postel). He held, indeed, that every profound Christian becomes, in a mystical sense, a Christ. In Paris, Calvin had been told 28 that both Quintin and Bertrand were driven from their homeland because of license. As early as in the 1539 version of h is Institutes, Calvin was prompted to take issue with the Quintinist perversion of the concept of divine omnipotence. 29 Strange to relate, the Libertine leaders—Pocquet, Perceval, and Bertrand of M oulins—would presently stay in Bucer’s home (sometime between September 1541 and September 1544) 30 along with Peter Brully, the preacher to the French Protestants in Strassburg in succession to Calvin. Calvin himself first became directly acquainted with Anthony Pocquet in 1542 or 1543, when Margaret’s protégé was in Geneva and asked Calvin for a recommendation. Pocquet was thereupon driven from Geneva. The gravity of the Libertine threat to sobriety of development at Nérac under Margaret and to the Reformed parishes in the Low Countries was especially borne by C alvin when two Netherlanders, visiting Strassburg and then Geneva in 1544, reported the spiritual havoc being wrought by t he Libertines (perhaps also by the Loists). Specifically, in May 1544, Valérand Poullain of S trassburg wrote to Calvin, 31 importuning him to write a letter of counsel and consolation to the brethren in Valenciennes plagued by the Quintinists. On 5 September 1544, Peter Viret wrote to Rudolph Gwalter, pastor in Zurich, apprising him of the scourge of a sect in Lower Germany, and in Valenciennes, Liege, and Tournai, worse than the Anabaptists, namely, the Libertines. 32 William Farel, 5 O ctober 1544, 33 also wrote to Calvin, urging him to speak out against the sons of Simon Magus in Valenciennes. In the same month (13 October), Poullain expressed joy that “at length Calvin was intending to

27

  Letter of 5 July 1538; OC 10b:215.   By Stephen de la F orge, martyred in 1535, the Piedmontese Waldensian with whom Calvin lived in Paris when working on his commentary on Seneca. 29  Wilhelm Niesel, “Calvin und die Libertiner,” ZKG 48 (1929): 64. 30  This is the reconstruction of Karl Muller, “Libertiner,” 2:127. The evidence for the presence of the three Libertines in Bucer’s house is supplied by the records of Brully’s trial. See p. 908, n. 35 below. 31   Letter of 26 May 1544; Herminjard, Correspondance, 9: no. 1358. 32   Ibid., no. 1392. 33   Ibid., no. 1395. 28

908  the radical reformation

chapter 23.2

take up arms against the Quintinists and the followers of David Joris and Loy Pruystinck.”34 Long disturbed by the Libertines and the Spiritualists, and estimating their number between four and ten thousand, 35 Calvin now resolved to write the Contre la secte phantastique et furieuse des Libertins qui se nomment Spirituels (Geneva, 1545) in double concern to warn Margaret, discreetly and yet emphatically, that she had been nourishing at her court a monstrous heresy, and not piety, and at the same time to vindicate his successor at the French church in Strassburg, Peter Brully. For in the meantime Brully had been captured on a v isitation in northern France and in the French– speaking Netherlands, at Tournai, and burned as a heretic by the Catholic authorities, 19 February 1545. In the trial Brully had had to defend himself against the charges that linked his Protestant solafideism with the antinomianism of Pocquet, Perceval, and Bertrand of Moulins. Calvin directed his attack principally against Pocquet, whose treatise, as earlier noted (Ch. 12.2), is quoted in virtual completeness for refutation. Pocquet, at the time of Calvin’s Contre la secte, was presumably at the court of Margaret, serving as almoner. The refutation of the Spiritualist Pocquet by the disciplined Calvin in 1542 was mutatis mutandis a morphological analogue to the answer of P ilgram Marpeck to Spiritualist Schwenckfeld in the same year (Ch. 18.4), and the parallel extends psychologically and strategically to the concern of b oth the Anabaptist and the Reformer to circumvent the alienation of a patroness by a courtly spiritualizer! In 1547, Calvin continued his attack on the Libertines, this time warning the Reformed community of Rouen against a former associate of h is Bourges days, Duchemin, who was now expounding the dogma of predestination after the manner of Pocquet and Quintin. 36 Calvin also had known of that restless and even more eccentric Norman Libertine, William Postel (Ch. 22.2.a). Among the known followers in Rouen of the Libertine way was Pierre du Val, poet and playwright, 37 author of t he Théâtre mystique (six pieces, of w hich five were morality plays). It is quite possible that it was due to Calvin’s polemic against the libertine Franciscan that Pierre du Val would be converted to Calvinism (c. 1550) and afterward become a Reformed preacher to the French-speaking congregation in Emden. In two

34

  Ibid., no. 1398.   In Contre la secte phantastique , already analyzed in connection with P ocquet in Ch. 12.2. For later French and English developments of libertinage, see George L. Mosse, “Puritan Radicalism and the Enlightenment,” CH 29 (1960): 424–39. 36   Epistre contre un certain Cordelier [Duchemin]. OC 7: cols. 341–64. François Wendel discusses the work and the literatur e thereon in Calvin, sources et év olution de sa pensée religieuse (Paris: Presses Universitaires, 1950), 59, 132–34. 37  V. L. Saulnier, “L’Evangélisme de Pier re du Val et le problème des Libertins spirituels,” BHR 14 (1952): 205–18. 35

chapter 23.2

calvin & the radical reformation  909

other writings, Calvin dealt with Libertines and their associates, namely, in a letter to the Reformed congregation at Corbigny38 and in a response to the Dutch Catholic proponent of religious liberty, Dirck Volkerts Coornhert (Ch. 30.2.b), whom Calvin, however, left unnamed. Calvin wrote also about two anonymous French writings, which he ascribed neither to Quintin nor to Pocquet, but which seem to have been of a mystical Libertine cast. 39 A Spiritualist of Rouen of another type was John Cotin.40 He might be best described at the end as a revolutionary Spiritualist, the French counterpart of Thomas Müntzer, though with only a local following. A native of Gisors, he would become a Protestant citizen of Geneva (1554), and there be esteemed as a teacher of Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and French. His biblical studies drove him from the classroom into preaching. Given to “dreams and revelations” and “ecstatic grimaces,” as were some “of the Anabaptists,” he gathered a following from among the humbler and more excitable members of the evangelical circle in Rouen. Excommunicated by the local Reformed congregation, he declared to his followers that the Spirit of God had revealed to him the imminent destruction of the papacy and that God would choose him to head the army of the saints against Antichrist. With two of his disciples he would be burned at the stake in Rouen in 1559. His indiscipline and his vagaries endangered the Reform movement in Normandy and explain how the Calvinist pastors could acquiesce with relief in the capital punishment meted out by the Catholic authorities. In effect, Libertinism may be defined at a certain point as a predestinarian, speculative Spiritualism which weakened the ecclesiological and ethical discipline and solidarity of international Calvinism, particularly in Romance countries. In Calvin’s estimate, many of the Libertines near and far were Spiritualists justifying their conformity to their Catholic environment by a ppealing to Nicodemus and because of C alvin’s mordancy, the pejorative sense still resounds in the term. Some of t he Nicodemites, like the Libertines, were spiritualizers but seem not to have expressed the peculiar doctrines of such Flemish-Walloon

38

  OC 20: cols. 503ff.   Some wr itings of this character w ere collected b y Charles Schmidt, Traités mystiques écrits … 1547/49 (Basel, 1876), and by E. Picot, Théâtre mystique de Pierre du Val et des Liber tins spirituels de Rouen au seizième sièc le (Paris, 1882): G. Jaujard, Essai sur les Liber tins spirituels de Genève (Paris, 1890). Bainton, David Joris, has shown that some of the Fr ench Libertine tracts were translations of the work of David Joris. 40  Louis Régnier de la Planche, Histoire de l’etat de France (n.p., 1576), 323–29.The Libertine spirit must have lingered in Rouen, for as late as 1561 the Reformed community there found it expedient to print (for the first time in French) Luther’s On Christian Liberty, obviously directed, not against the Catholics, but against the Spir itual Libertines. Henri Hauser, “Petits livres du XVI siècle,” Études sur la Réforme française (Paris, 1909), 289–92. 39

910  the radical reformation

chapter 23.2

Spiritualists as Pocquet, Joris, and Niclaes or such German Spiritualists as Ziegler (second phase), Schwenckfeld, and Valentine Weigel (Ch. 31.3). The great failing of the Nicodemites in Calvin’s eyes was their pusillanimity. It is just possible that Calvin was especially severe with the Nicodemites because he himself in the still obscure days of his conversion knew something of t he temptations of N icodemism or that under the same term he was scoring both the steadfast and the timid.41 Calvin became imperious in his Petit traité montrant ce que doit faire un homme fidèle connaissant la verité de l’Evangile quand il est entre les papists (1543).42 Herein, Calvin again wrote of t he idolatrous worship of E gypt and Babylon and made it specific that, however much he might sympathize with the Protestants in “bondage” or “exile,” he felt called to summon to acts of valorous forthrightness “all the faithful who are scattered throughout France, Italy, England, Flanders, and other places.”43 He concluded by urging the faithful to flee, and, when this was impossible, to stand fast, even it if meant death; and, if the believer could not do this, he should at least not rationalize his conformity but implore God daily for forgiveness and strength finally to prevail against idolatry. It was to this that Coornhert, the Dutch “Libertine,” would later react with his plea for moderation (Ch. 30.2.b). Following this, Calvin proceeded to write specifically against those who in fact sought to justify their conformism precisely by a ppealing to Nicodemus. This was his Excuse à messieurs les Nicodemites, 1544,44 his most serious work auseinandersetzung. Calvin’s basic argument is repeated movingly, namely, that God is the Lord of the body no less than of the soul of his elect, that the believer—mind, soul, and body—must honor God by public worship, by an upright life, and by abstention from idolatrous conformity to the papal Church. An Anabaptist could scarcely have been more imperious in his demand for accountability. Calvin excoriates all those in Catholic lands who, under the patronage of N icodemus, seek to justify their blasphemous evasion, their prostituting of the temple in which God’s Spirit dwells, by appealing quite improperly to “this tainted personage.” Including the incompletely converted Evangelical Catholics, there are, according to Calvin, four kinds of self-styled Nicodemites, actually unwor-

41  The most recent study of Calvin’s conversion has a chapter, “War Calvin ‘Nikodemit’?” Paul Sprenger, Das Rätsel urn die Bekehrung Calvins (Neukirchen: Kreis Moers, Buchhandlung des Ereziehungsvereins, 1960). 42  OC 6: cols. 541–78. It was printed with a letter to the same effect composed in Strassb urg, 1540. 43   Ibid., cols. 574–75. 44   Ibid., cols. 589–614.

chapter 23.2

calvin & the radical reformation  911

thy of the name of N icodemus. Although modern scholarship has a d ifferent taxonomy, what Calvin classified as four types as of 1 544 is also clarifying. There are, first of all, he says, the Evangelical priests and bishops who preach from Catholic pulpits the Evangelical message but give these people the impression that they have thereby made acceptable the whole superstition–encrusted ecclesiastical carapace in which the unreformed Church hobbles. Calvin, at this point, is looking to the Catholic Evangelicals of France, such as Bishop Roussel of Obéron.45 Second, there is the “sect of delicate protonotaries” (an allusion to the profession of N icodemus) who play religion with the ladies at court and beguile them with sweet theological niceties, all of them condemning with one voice the too great austerity of Geneva. He seems, here, to be looking to the theological salons of Nérac and Ferrara, and to such practitioners of the devout life for ladies at court as John de Valdés and perhaps also Caspar Schwenckfeld.46 The third kind of N icodemites are men of l etters, given to philosophy and tolerant of t he foolish superstitions of t he papacy. Many men of the study, Calvin insists, feel that it is enough to know God by books and contemplation in their cabinets, without becoming strained or sullied by involvement in the organization of the community of faith, worship, and Christian action.47 There is the fourth group of N icodemites—merchants and the common people—who would prefer that their pastors or priests not become so much involved in the fine points of doctrine and thereby disturb commerce and the workaday tasks and satisfactions.48 Nicodemism, as Calvin perceives it, namely, as prudential noncommittal Spiritualism, would long continue to be a problem for him in dealing with would–be Protestants in lands that were in the grip of the Spanish or the Roman Inquisition. Religious Libertinism, however, in so far as it can be distinguished from Nicodemism, would largely disappear as a religiously motivated movement among people of means and political status, and become in the second half of the century frankly political in the cities and regions that were controlled by the Reformation itself. Specifically, the term was appropriated by Calvin for the political party in Geneva led by Ami Perrin, hence known 45

  Ibid., col. 597.   Ibid.. cols. 598–99. 47   Ibid., col. 600. This is the grouping Ginzburg has developed the pedigree of, beginning with Brunfels in Strassburg, but for him the mentality w as as much shaped by reluctance of intellectuals and other irenicists to be coerced by the new civic theocracies. In Ginzburg’s perspective, his Nicodemites would be antecedents or analogues to the Antidisciplinarian Erastians in Heidelberg (Ch. 31.2). 48   Ibid., col. 601. 46

912  the radical reformation

chapter 23.2 / 23.3.a

also as Perrinists, who opposed Calvin in his efforts to reform the morals of the city and maintain his strict biblical regimen. Before the Reformation, this faction and its antecedents had striven for the liberty of the city against the Roman Catholic bishop and the duke of Savoy. Under the rule of Calvin, they especially opposed the excommunication by the consistory (made up of pastors and of elders elected by t he magistrates) of t hose it deemed unworthy to partake in the Lord’s Supper. They also contended against the admission of French refugees as burghers of the city with voting rights. In May 1555, the political Libertines endeavored in vain to lead a violent protest against the influence of these refugees and their French-born preachers. Defeated, some of the Perrinist leaders fled, others were sentenced to death, and thus the party was completely disrupted.49 It was this group who, in 1553, were alleged to have supported Servetus against Calvin.50 To this anti-Nicene Anabaptist, psychopannychist, and his fiery fate in Geneva at the hands of Calvin, we presently turn (22.4), but first to the annals of the Swiss Anabaptists to date.

3. Swiss Anabaptism from the Death of Zwingli to Calvin’s Major Attack, 1531–1544. a. Calvin Confronts Anabaptists in Geneva Early in 1537, several Netherlandish Anabaptists came to Geneva. To the dismay of C alvin, they found the people responsive to their preaching.51 Two of them, Herman of Gerbehaye (near Liège) 52 and Andrew Benoit of Engelen (now in Dutch Brabant), were taken before the council 9 March 1537. They sought a public disputation with Calvin and Farel. After some hesitation the council so ordered. The disputation, lasting for two days in March, took place in the Franciscan convent church of R ive. Along with the usual points of b aptism and the ban, the disputants dealt with psychosomnolence. Calvin did not participate directly.53 The two Anabaptists withstood Farel with some success, even though they expressed themselves awkwardly; but the council declared them defeated and expelled them from the city. In a second disputation the same month, Calvin himself took part, this time with two Anabaptists, John Bomeromenus, a printer formerly of 49   Subsequently the term was used with similar purport by the strict Calvinists in Holland for their opponents. 50   Roland Bainton, “Servetus and the Genevan Libertines,” CH 5 (1936): 141–49; Müller, “Calvin und die Libertiner.” 51  See Walter Köhler, “Das Täufertum in Calvins Instituts v on 1536,” Mennonitische Geschichtsblätter 2 (1936): 1–4; and, comprehensively, Willem Balke, Calvin and the Anabaptist Radicals (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981); the earlier Dutch editions (Amster dam: Van Bottenburg, 1973) and (Amsterdam: Bolland, 1977). 52   Hulshof, Doopsgezinden, 187, note. The text has “Gerbihan.” 53   Ibid., 186ff.

chapter 23.3.a

calvin & the radical reformation  913

Strassburg, and John Stordeur, a turner from Liège. They were no theological match for the great lawyer–reformer. After defending their faith with courage, they both were banished (30 March). There were several Anabaptist inhabitants of Geneva reported on 7 September 1537. One was Jacques Merauld of Lyons who had been interrogated by the syndics and accused of “following the way ( façon) of the sect of the Catabaptists.” He admitted to having entertained Anabaptist preachers in his house and to having distributed their books among the citizens of Geneva. The procès criminel shows that the Genevan Anabaptists opposed Calvin’s interpretation of the civic oath as a ceremonial renewal of the Old Testament covenant.54 By the following Easter, Calvin, who shared with the Anabaptists their conviction that only the outwardly righteous should be permitted to partake of communion, found also that he could agree with them about the independence of t he church from the state. The Bernese Church Order had recently been adopted by the magistrates in Geneva.55 Ideally, Calvin would have given to the elected lay elders of t he parish, together with their pastor, the whole authority for congregational discipline which the magistrates of t he city found in themselves, whether or not of t he local parish, and in the lay elders as their appointed deputies. Calvin was, of all the Protestants, the least “magisterial” in the establishmentarian sense and much closer to the radicals on the principle of ecclesiastical autonomy than Zwingli, Bucer, Luther, or Cranmer. The Lutherans and Zwinglians argued that the lay eldership was to be represented by t he Christian magistrates ex officiis as leading members of the local congregation. Anabaptists and some of t he Calvinist Reformed argued that such presbyterial oversight might come from any leading 54   Report to the council b y the Company of Pastors. For other names see Her minjard, Correspondance, 4:272 n.6; and Jean Séguenny, “Anabaptisme et Réfor me de l’Eglise au XVIe Siècle,” Christ Seul (1969), and Timothy George, “Guillaume Farel, John Calvin, and Anabaptism de la langue française,” Sixteenth Century Journal (forthcoming), who observes that the disaffected Anabaptists no doubt made up part of the coalition which effected the expulsion of Calvin and Farel in 1538. 55   The magistrates of Gene va adopted the Ber nese ordinances on 11 Mar ch 1538. Cf. Doumergue, Jean Calvin 2:277. The foregoing characterization of Calvin as the least “magisterial” of the classical Pr otestants, and with special r eference to the la y but congregational eldership, is applicable to the period before his exile, although it became more explicit in connection with the Ecclesiastical Ordinances of 1541, when Calvin fought har d to preserve ambiance of the congregational election and accountability of the elders over against the magisterial prerogative. See McNeill, Calvinism, 160ff.; Bryan Hatchett, Jr., “On the Relationship of the Strasbourg Reformation to Church Discipline in Calvin’s Thought” (Ph.D. dissertation, Emory University, 1960); Elsie Anne McKee, Elders and the Plural Ministry: The Role of Exegetical History in Illuminating John Calvin’s Theology (Geneva: Droz, 1988); and, idem, “Calvin’s Teaching on the Elder Illuminated by Exegetical History,” Calvin and the Churc h, 147–55, with fur ther bibliographical information at 155 n 2. See, for the issues between the magistracy and the eldership, Robert M. Kingdom, “The Control of Morals in Calvin’s Geneva,” in The Social History of the Reformation, ed. Buck and Zophy, 3–16.

914  the radical reformation

chapter 23.3.a / 23.3.b

leading member in the whole body of the faithful. The primary texts for understanding the office of c hurch discipline were 1 C orinthians12:28 and Romans12:8, whereby God had appointed those in the church with gifts of a dministration and leadership. Whereas Zwinglians understood Romans 12:8 through the Old Testament model in 2 C hronicles 19:6, where Jehoshaphat appointed priests and judges, i.e., civil princes, Calvin insisted that princes could not have the same role in the New Testament as in the Old Testament and might only accidentally be magistrates. Calvin defended this position by w ay of t he exegetical tradition of 2 T imothy 5:17–18, holding that here were described two kinds of presbyters, both of ecclesiastical and not of civil office, the presbyters who preach as well as rule and the others who rule only. When Calvin returned to Geneva in 1541, the election of parish elders, an annual affair, was fitted into the constitution of the city with the urban consistory of teachers, rulers, and elders constituting a standing committee of the government. Its lay members were chosen like other members for city government, representing as well the different councils and elected so as to represent the different parish sectors of the city. On such lesser issues as whether communion should be observed with wafers or broken bread, whether Christmas, Easter, Ascension Day, and Pentecost should be retained in the liturgical year, the greater issue of whether it was the magistrates or the divines who should decide ecclesiastical matters was also being fought out. Calvin and his associates, liturgically and religio–politically more radical than the Bernese, refused to distribute the elements on Easter as instructed. The following Thursday (23 April), Calvin, by vote of the whole people in civic assembly, was obliged to leave. The charge of Peter Caroli in Lausanne, that Calvin was weak on the doctrine of the Trinity, compounded the Reformer’s difficulties at the end. b. Peter Caroli of Lausanne Charges Calvin with Arianism The importance of the charge of being anti–Nicene is so important in the career of C alvin, Servetus, and later the whole Polish Reformed Church that we must interrupt our narrative about Anabaptism to examine Caroli and his allegation.56 Peter Caroli was one of the first French clerics to go over to the Reformation. After winning his doctorate in theology at the University of Paris, he had attracted a considerable audience, expounding the Pauline epistles in a p opular homiletical manner in Paris, for which he was admonished and finally ordered by the Sorbonne to cease preaching (1525). After having held a l iving at Alençon under appointment by Q ueen Margaret of 56   Originally from Rosay–en–Brie, prior of the Sorbonne , canon of Sens, Caroli was early attracted to J acques Lefèvre d’Etaples. Doumergue, Jean Calvin, 2:252ff.; Herminjard, Correspondance, 4: no. 611.

chapter 23.3.b / 23.3.c

calvin & the radical reformation  915

affair of the placards against the Mass in Paris, and fled to Geneva in January of 1535. Caroli almost immediately fell out with Farel and Peter Viret (who may have suspected the authenticity of h is conversion to Protestantism), and moved to Basel and then Neuchâtel, where he was given a parish in the spring of 1536. Ambitious for advancement, Caroli next won the pastorate at Lausanne, November 1536. As he had pushed ahead of Viret for this post, the Genevan pastors made loud complaint, urging against Caroli his peculiar teaching that prayers for the dead would ensure an earlier resurrection. In February of 1537, Calvin came to Viret’s aid, only to be confronted by Caroli’s accusation that Viret, Calvin, and Farel were Arians, and that the Genevan Catechism (1536) was doctrinally defective.57 Calvin’s obdurate refusal to assent to the Athanasian Creed and to consign to oblivion the Genevan Catechism appeared to Caroli to be the proof of Calvin’s trinitarian aberration. A colloquy was held at Bern, 28 February to 1 March 1537, to resolve the matter. Caroli pressed his charge of A rianism, only to drop it when Calvin made an impassioned defense of his own position. Calvin refused to dissociate his cause from that of Farel and pressed for a synod. On 15 May it met at Lausanne. It resulted in Calvin’s vindication, whereas Caroli was deprived of his ministry. On 31 May, a parallel synod at Bern heard Farel launch a bitter attack on Caroli’s personal life and doctrinal eccentricities. As a result, Caroli was also forbidden to preach in Bernese territory. Calvin and Caroli were alike exiles, respectively from Geneva and Lausanne. Caroli removed to French territory, returned to the Catholic Church, and signalized his reconversion by w riting an impudent letter to the council of Lausanne. We shall see him next in Strassburg, whither we now go with Calvin.58 c. Calvin Confronts Anabaptists in Strassburg, among Them his Future Wife It was in Strassburg that Calvin was alerted to the geographical and doctrinal magnitude of the Radical Reformation. On the matter of psychosomnolence he learned that at Metz, in 1538, two psychopannychists had been punitively drowned in the Moselle and a third exiled, and that all three were Anabaptists.

57   Das Genfer Bekenntnis von 1536, E. F. Karl Müller, ed., Die Bekenntnisschriften der reformierten Kirche (Leipzig, 1903; reprinted Zurich: Theologische Buchhandlung, 1987), no. 10. Among its twenty–one articles, the second, “Ung seul Dieu” could indeed have been subscribed to by the Transylvanian Unitarians. The Geneva Catechism of 1536 reflected the want of attention to the Trinity and the Chalcedonian formulary in what Farel had composed as Christian essentials in his Sommaire et br iève déclaration d’aucuns lieux for t néessaires a ung c hacun Chrétien (Geneva, 1525). Cf. Wilbur, Socinaians, 16. 58   Cf. McNeill,Calvinism, 141.

916  the radical reformation

chapter 23.3.c

One, somewhat educated, a barber59 from Lille, had been in the company of the Netherlandish Anabaptists who had been with Herman of Gerbehaye in Geneva. Another was from Mouzon (near Sédan), the third, from Montlhéry (south of Paris). All three had been preaching the sleep of the soul, including that of the Virgin Mary.60 Bucer, who until that time had dissuaded him from it, now pressed Calvin to publish his book against the sleep of the soul. On 1 October 1538, Calvin informed Antoine Pignet,61 a pastor near Geneva and once a fellow student with him at Orléans, that he was indeed going to publish his Psychopannychia against the “somnolent hypnosophists.” Pignet encouraged him,62 but for some reason Calvin put it off. It is quite possible that Calvin, while in Strassburg, came into contact with Hofmannites. Increased specificity to references to the celestial-flesh doctrine in the second Latin edition of t he Institutes63 (Strassburg, 1539) could be traceable to Calvin’s direct encounter with Hofmann’s Christology. During the same October of 1 539, as it chanced, Caroli sought out Calvin at Strassburg to mend their relationship; but he was still unable to forget Calvin’s former treatment in the matter of t he Lausanne appointment. Caroli had not been welcomed with open arms by t he Catholics and he reappeared in Switzerland, professing again the Reformed faith and seeking the friendship of Calvin, Farel, and Viret! The Strassburg divines talked the matter over and exonerated Calvin of any blame in Caroli’s misfortunes. However, they attempted to bring peace by writing a long document of reconciliation which Calvin and Caroli were to sign. Strange to relate, among those framing the document was Caroli himself. When it was brought to Calvin in the home of Matthew Zell, late in the evening, Calvin at once discovered the implication that he and Farel had been to blame for Caroli’s ejection from Bernese territory. Calvin was shaken to the point of hysteria, and refused to sign the document under any circumstances. He would henceforth be very sensitive about the credal formulations of t he

59

 The text has “barbier.” In view of his education, he might have been a Waldensian barb. J. F. Huguenin, Chroniques de Metz (1839), 839; quoted by Herminjard, Correspondance 4:112 n.12. 60  Calvin from Strassburg to Farel, now at Neuchâtel, 11 September 1538; see Herminjard, Correspondance 5: no. 743. 61   Herminjard, Correspondance, 5: no. 749. 62   Ibid., 6: no. 821. 63   Calvin, Institutes, 2:12.1–3; 2:13.1–2; 2:14.1–4, 6–7. This is the obser vation of William Keeney, Calvin’s Treatment of the Anabaptists, 4.

chapter 23.3.c

calvin & the radical reformation  917

trine of t he Trinity. (Caroli departed from the scene, to reappear at Metz in 1543 as for the third time a Roman Catholic!) 64 Still in Strassburg, Calvin was asked by t he local authorities to deal with the French–speaking Anabaptists in and around the city. At the synod in 1539 he persuaded John Stordeur and Herman of Gerbehaye, whom he had already met in Geneva, to renounce their faith in favor of the Reformed confession. Calvin supplies the details of t he submission in his letter to Farel, recalling 65 that it was Herman who had asked him for the conference. He [now] grants that he was in serious error on infant baptism, Christ’s humanity [the problem of t he celestial flesh], and many other points. On some other questions he still has some doubts, but he is hopeful because he has already overcome so much. His companion John [Stordeur] 66 has finally brought his boy, who is already quite large, for baptism. I hesitated a while because of his frailty, since he said that was the principal reason for postponing the baptism. Finally he said he would not stop the people whose obstinate insistence on baptism he could by no means withstand. Three weeks later,67 Calvin evaluated the conversion thus: Herman has, if I am not mistaken, in good faith returned to the fellowship of t he Church. He had confessed that outside the Church there is no salvation, and that the true Church is with us. Therefore, it was defection when he belonged to a s ect separated from it. Confessing that he was guilty of this crime, he asked forgiveness. He accepted instruction on the freedom of the will, the deity and the humanity of Christ, rebirth, infant baptism, and other things. Only on the question of predestination did he hesitate. Yet he almost subscribed to this too, except that he could not understand the difference between prescience and providence. But he asked that this might not prevent his being received into the communion of the church with his children. I received him with fitting readiness, and when he asked forgiveness, I gave him my hand in the name of t he church. Then I baptized his little daughter, who was over two years old. If my judgment does not deceive me, he is a pious man. When I admonished him to lead others back to the right 64  Theodore Beza claims that Caroli eventually went to Rome and there died most miserably. Another tradition, however, suggests that from Rome, Caroli came back to France, that he occupied himself by teaching the Tridentine catechism, and that he w as assassinated in 1575. The foregoing account is taken from Doumergue, Jean Calvin 2:258–68. 65   6 February 1540, Herminjard, Correspondance 6: no. 846. 66  Or John Bomeromenus. If, indeed, the reference is to John Stordeur,Tordeur (Tournier), of Liège, the boy baptized would be, in effect, Calvin’s future step–son. See below, n. 68. 67   Calvin to Farel, 27 February; Herminjard, Correspondance 6: no. 854.

918  the radical reformation

chapter 23.3.c / 23.3.d

way, he said: “That is the least that I can do, to exert myself no less in building up than I did before in tearing down.” Calvin goes on to mention “John,” either Stordeur or Bomeromenus, now of Ulm, as likewise having “come to his senses.”68 Early in August 1540, Calvin, encouraged by Bucer who advised him on a helpmate, was married by Farel to the ailing Idelette de Bure, recently widowed by the death of John Stordeur.69 A major achievement of Calvin in Strassburg in respect to the radicals was the reconversion of the former preacher of St. Nicholas’ Church, Paul Volz. He had for a season joined the Schwenckfeldians.70 Calvin, only momentarily pleased with his local conversions and still horrified by t he extent of t he Anabaptist and Spiritualist movements, rushed ahead with the publication of h is old draft of t he Psychopannychia, along with the earlier, unused prefaces (Orléans, 1534, and Basel, 1537). It would presently appear in Strassburg in 1542. By then Calvin, having served Strassburg as a d eputy at the fateful colloquy of R egensburg, had returned triumphantly to Geneva in September 1541. d. Bernese Anabaptism, 1531–1541 As we return with Calvin in 1541 from Strassburg to Geneva, we pass through Bernese territory. Bern was at the time the largest canton of the Confederation, stretching from the Rhine on the borders of t he urban canton of Basel to the city republic of Geneva. Geneva had secured independence from its prince–bishop and the duke of Savoy through the armed aid of B ern, had introduced the Bern Church Order, and was in every respect closely linked to the powerful canton which, at the time, controlled both German and French–speaking areas and towns, including Lausanne. Although we have mentioned in passing a few encounters of the Genevans with the Anabaptists, it is well to have before us the whole sectarian situation as it developed after our taking leave of Swiss Anabaptism in 1531 (Ch. 8). The story now centers in the canton of Bern. The Bernese Reformation had been formulated in the synod of January 1532 under the theological leadership of Wolfgang Capito called from Strassburg, who skillfully managed to implement Strassburg’s Unionistic policy of holding the Swiss as closely as possible to the Saxons.71 The Bern

68

 It is more probable that it w as Bomeromenus (Hulshof, Doopsgezinden, 106) who had been banished from Strassburg in 1537 and gone to Metz, than Jean Stordeur. 69  Bouwsma, John Calvin, 22–23. 70  Hulshof, Doopsgezinden, 197; see Röhr ich, Mittheilungen der Kirc he des Elsasses (Paris, 1855). 71  For Capito’s participation in the synod, see Strasser, Capitos Beziehungen zu Bern, 67–121.

chapter 23.3.d

calvin & the radical reformation  919

Church Order in forty–four articles, composed chiefly by Capito and promulgated as a result of the synod, was liturgically conservative and yet full of those Spiritualist traits that no doubt reflected Capito’s penchant for the ideas of Schwenckfeld, Servetus, and other assorted seekers whom he had but recently entertained in Strassburg. On the relationship of baptism to circumcision, it is of i nterest that Capito induced the Bernese synod to yield, by implication, to the Anabaptists in eschewing that equation of the two rites which had been approved by Zwingli, Bullinger, and Bucer, and in laying great stress also on infant baptism as merely a sign of the promise to be progressively substantiated through the Christian nurture of the baptizand in the midst of the congregation. Despite reticence on the doctrine of the Trinity, despite a strong stress upon the clarifying and sanctifying roles of the Holy Spirit, despite modifications in baptismal theology, the effect of the Bern Church Order—which after all must be seem primarily in the pan-Protestant context of Unionistic urgency on the morrow of the Second Peace of Cappel—was a consolidation of t he Bernese attempt to end the threat of s ectarian separatism. In consequence, the Bern council decided to convene a major colloquy with the Anabaptists.72 A s trong effort would be made to regain the Anabaptists in sufficient numbers in order to win their allegiance for a completely reformed canton. Without their goodwill, the Bernese government might have found itself in a very serious situation vis–à–vis the ardently Catholic cantons. To ensure attendance and fair play, a safe–conduct was offered to all the Anabaptists participating in the disputation. It was, furthermore, to be held outside Bernese territory in Zofingen, in the condominium of the Aargau (governed jointly by Bern and other cantons), in order that the dissenters might feel especially secure. In addition, it was decided that no magisterial reformers from outside canton Bern, not even Bullinger himself, should be asked, lest the Anabaptists say that the Reformed Church could only debate with them by s ummoning its most learned disputants from great distance. The disputation was set for 1 July 1532 and extended until July 9.73 Although Bullinger could not participate, he contributed advice by letter. He warned his colleagues that half the battle in disputing with Anabaptists was to secure orderly procedure and to confine the dispute to one question at a time. He counseled wariness lest they be drawn off the

72

 Heinold Fast and J ohn H. Yoder, “How to Deal with Anabaptists,” MQR 33 (1959): 83–95. 73  The proceedings are edited, with tw o other Gespräche, by Martin Haas, ed., Drei Täufergespräche (QGTS 4), (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1974). The major work on the Swiss disputations is that of John Yoder, Die Gespräche zwischetn Täufern und Reformatoren in der Schweiz, 1523–1538 (Karlsruhe: Schneider, 1962).

920  the radical reformation

chapter 23.3.d

subject onto side issues.74 It is necessary, he warned, to make sure that they accept the authority of the Scriptures of both the Old and the New Testaments, without in any way disparaging the former. Bullinger presented a great many texts and arguments to show that the Old Testament was fully authoritative, but he did not satisfactorily refute the Anabaptists’ view that the New Testament represents a later and hence a higher level of the divine disclosure. Restating the common sixteenth century position that one must interpret the obscure passages of Scripture by the clear ones, he went on to stress “faith” and “love” as the canons of interpretation, which might well lead to “another meaning than the one yielded by t he words themselves.” The divine injunction to love was interpreted for example, as to be concerned for the best interest of the social order and the peace of the whole Christian society. When the disputation began, there were twenty–three Anabaptists present, of w hom Martin Weninger of S chaff hausen75 and John Hotz were the main speakers. Haller and Caspar Megander of Bern and Sebastian Hofmeister (formerly of S chaff hausen, then of Z urich, now of Zofingen) led the eight–man Reformed delegation, which included the erstwhile Anabaptist leader John Pfistermeyer (Chs. 6.4; 8.4.c). Four delegates of the Aargau and the city of Bern were designated as chairmen and instructed to guard against any possible impropriety. The result of these efforts was a t actful and courtly exchange of v iews. The minutes were kept by three secretaries and submitted to all parties involved for verification before being printed in Zurich and made available for distribution at the expense of Bern. Eleven points were selected for discussion: (1) whether love is, in fact, the final arbiter of a ll scriptural disagreements (Bullinger’s stress); (2) whose sending or ministerial vocation is valid; (3) where the true church is; (4) whether the ban may rightly be administered by magistrates in their role as Christian officers of t he commonweal; (5) whether, in fact, the magistracy can be Christian; (6) whether the Christian should pay tithes and taxes; (7) whether the civil oath is legitimate; (8) whether preachers should be called by t he town councilor the church members; (9) whether preachers should be supported by the ancient endowments; (10) whether a Christian may charge interest; and last of all (11) whether infants may be baptized. There was some superficial agreement reached on certain points, but real progress was not made. Both parties, as usual, claimed victory in the debate.

74  Bullinger to Haller , Quomodo agendum et disputandum sit cum Catabaptistis; printed in translation; see n. 72 above. 75  See J. C. Wenger, “Martin Weninger’s Vindication of Anabaptism,” MQR 22 (1948): 180–87.

chapter 23.3.d

calvin & the radical reformation  921

The colloquy in Zofingen was, nevertheless, the most significant of the Anabaptist disputations in Switzerland, since it clarified the Reformed principle of love as a concern for the unity and peace of Christian society and as a major exegetical standard. The formal acknowledgment of Bullinger’s hermeneutical principle was taking the Reformed pastors away from the strict Biblicism to which they had been accustomed to appeal all in the interest of preserving a harmonious relationship between church and government and of securing an integral reform of the territorial corpus christianum, by some of the most ardent in discipline and faith thought of as the divine corpus christianorum, i.e., a territorial society of the religiously committed. Three quarters of a year after the Zofingen disputation, the government of Bern issued another mandate (2 March 1533) against the Anabaptists, who had obviously not been hampered by their “defeat” at Zofingen. It provided protection for the Anabaptists if they would keep quiet and hold their faith to themselves, but threatened agitators with imprisonment, at the prisoners’ expense, or on bread and water. The authorities began to demand, however, that those who applied for protection under the provisions of t he mandate publicly attend the Reformed services every Sunday and have their infants baptized. Over a year later, on 8 November 1534, another mandate appeared against both Anabaptists and Catholics, requiring communion three times a year in the established parishes. Marriages were to be performed only by state pastors. Anyone who could not conscientiously conform to these regulations by oath was to leave the canton at once. An appendix was added a few months later, providing eight days’ imprisonment for recalcitrants in order to give them time to reconsider; whereupon, if they still refused compliance, they should be banished with the threat of death if they should return. The Bernese government continued to increase the severity of the measures against the Anabaptists, corporally punishing many and executing several. Constables were especially commissioned to “hunt” Anabaptists and to round them up wherever they could. Despite the show of force, or, rather, in the light of its manifest failure as a policy, the government convened another important Gespräch between the separatists and the established preachers, this time in the town of Bern itself, 11–17 March 1538.76 The Anabaptists appeared in large numbers, though with the exception of John Hotz from the district of Gruningen, who had been at the earlier Zofingen disputation, they were all minor figures. They aquitted themselves well in the debates, earnestly professing their willingness to be convinced by S cripture and exhibiting their confidence that in forthright, committed conversation, under the headship of Christ, with the inspiration of t he Holy Spirit, and by t he authority of S cripture, all the

76  Drei Täufersgespräche, 257–467, discussed by Walter Klassen, “The Bern Debate of 1538,” MQR 40 (1966): 148–56.

922  the radical reformation

chapter 23.3.d / 23.3.e

participants could emerge from a f ull and fair discussion in possession of a common truth which neither side had had at the beginning. The established controversialists in Bern as elsewhere were annoyed by this principle of mutability in debate.77 The immediate effect of the disputation was a stiffening of the earlier mandates. Then in September a still more severe mandate was issued, providing for the execution of t he leaders and the torture of t he others as a means of i nducing recantation. However, three years later, 28 November 1541, the government reversed its policy when it came to deal with the question again, thanks to the skillful advocacy of the bailiff John Nägeli, who pointed out how the Anabaptists owed their origin to very real weaknesses and inconsistencies in the Reformed position, particularly the religious indifference of t he masses, the often unbecoming conduct of t he pastors, and especially the lack of unity among Protestants on the question of the Lord’s Supper. The council decided thereupon to reduce the severity of the legislation against the Anabaptists, limiting punishment to the stocks for Anabaptists who, having once sworn obedience to the previous mandate, should violate it anew. Severer penalties were to be introduced only after the third relapse. This leniency provided the Anabaptists in the canton of Bern with a modicum of peace. e. Calvin Deals with International Anabaptism from his Secured City Canton With the Bernese background filled in, with Calvin back in Geneva, we note how he immediately introduced the new Ecclesiastical Ordinances of 1541. Had the autonomy of c ongregationally elected elders, the fencing of the communion table, and the exercise of the ban by the church rather than by the state originally proposed by Calvin been accepted by the governing councils of Geneva, Calvinism on the disciplinary side would have appeared closer to Anabaptism than to magisterial Lutheranism. But there were now new developments. In 1544 on 10 November, the entire Confederation (Catholic and Reformed cantons collaborating) adopted a s tringent policy against the Anabaptists. In this same year, Farel, urging Calvin to translate his Psychopannychia into French,78 enclosed also a translated copy of Hubmaier’s Of the Christian Baptism of Believers (Waldshut, 1525) 79 against Zwingli (Ch.6.2.b) 77  Franklin Littell has wr itten a number of works touching upon the Anabaptist conception of mutability in theological conversation, “[The Laity in the] Radical Refor mation,” The Laity in Histor ical Perspective, ed. Stephen Neill and Hans–Ruedi Weber (London: SCM Press, 1963), chap. 11. 78  Letter of 23 February 1544; Herminjard, Correspondance, 9: no. 1332. 79  Pipkin and Yoder, Hubmaier, doc. 11; H. Wayne Pipkin has compr ehensively and afresh dealt with “The Baptismal Theology of Balthasar Hubmaier,” MQR, 65:1 (1991): 34–53.

chapter 23.3.e

calvin & the radical reformation  923

and referred disparagingly to Michael Sattler’s martyrdom (Ch. 8.2). Calvin now turned his attention to the problem of p sychosomnolence in relation to the whole problem of Anabaptism so much in the minds of all Swiss churchmen and magistrates. The result was his Briève instruction pour armer tous bons fidèles contre … La secte commune des anabaptistes (Geneva, 1544).80 The Briève instruction is a formal refutation of Anabaptism as represented in the seven articles adopted in Schleitheim in 1527 (Ch. 8.1) and is thus the French equivalent of Zwingli’s Elenchus (Ch. 8.4.a). Convinced by his recent encounters with both French– and German–speaking Anabaptists in Strassburg and Geneva that two other articles of c omparable significance should be included in his refutation, Calvin turned at the close of the Briève instruction to what he pilloried as the Marcionite–Gnostic doctrine of t he celestial flesh or heavenly body of Christ and psychosomnolence.81 Calvin suspected that the denial of a fully Adamic flesh in Christ was related to the denial of a substantial soul susceptible of wakeful existence after the death of the body, with the capacity to look forward with pleasure to vindication at the Last Judgment. He thereupon proceeded to summarize his old Psychopannychia, now freely speaking of A nabaptists, where earlier he had spoken of hypnologi.82 We need not repeat familiar arguments here (23.1). Calvin’s last personal encounter with evangelical Anabaptism seems to have occurred two years later, when an otherwise unknown Belot came to Geneva and laid out tracts for sale. Calvin had him arrested.83 Once the colporteur was in the grip of the civil authorities, Calvin was prepared to speak politely with him “as is my custom.” Belot was as conscious of h is divine mission as Calvin of h is own, who described him mockingly as “giving himself with raised head and rolling eyes the majestic aspect of a

80

 OC 7: cols. 103–42.  It is cur ious that some Mennonites (Neff in ME and Hulshof , Doopsgezinden) have claimed that the doctr ine was never held by them or the Ger man Anabaptists, and that Karl Müller, the general Church historian who seems to have given the most attention to this doctrine, claims only that it w as the view of the Fr ench Anabaptists, Kirchengesehiehte (Tübingen, 1919), 2:121 and passim. 82  Calvin dealt more briefly with the sleeper and their dreams in the 1560 French edition of the Institutes, 3:10, “Ces nouveaux prophètes v eulent qu’on tienne leur songe pour ar ticle de foy, duquel il ne soit licite de s’enquerir.” OC 4: col. 176. At about the same time, it may be mentioned, a parallel defense of natural immortality was set forth (cf. Ch. 22 at n. 13) by Coelius Secundus Curione, De immortalitate animorum oratio (1543), printed in Basel at the end of his Araneus. He sought to replace the arguments of Plato with texts fr om Paul. He does scar cely more than change the names, beginning with 1 Thess. 5:23: “And may your spirit and soul be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,” and then interpreting the spiritus as the mens of the philosophers and the anima as the sensitive soul. 83  Calvin himself tells of the incident in a letter to Farel, 21 January, 1546. OC 12:752. 81

924  the radical reformation

chapter 23.3.e / 23.4

prophet,” and said that he “answered if it suited him with a few words the questions directed to him.” The discussion turned on the legitimacy of the civic oath, perfectionism, and the public maintenance of t he Reformed pastors. Belot was apparently quite obnoxious in accusing Calvin of luxuriating at the expense of t he poor, what with his substantial annual salary of 500 florins, 12 measures of wheat, and some 250 gallons of w ine, apportioned no doubt with a view to the demands of pastoral hospitality! Belot was expelled from the city. When apprehended two days later, he was beaten for his defiance, his books were publicly burned, and he was threatened with the gallows if he should return. The episode is not important in itself except as it confirmed Calvin’s caricature of the Anabaptists; and, when he touched upon Anabaptist views in his several reworkings of t he Institutes, it is certain that his pen was envenomed by his unpleasant recollection of this and other encounters. Having conceptually distinguished Calvin’s attacks on the Libertines near and afar of whom those near were the Perrinists (23.2) and now concluded our account of h is dealings with Anabaptists, we turn to Calvin’s fateful encounter with an old acquaintance, the psychopannychist Servetus (23.1), and we take up their final and fateful encounter in 1553.

4. Calvin and Servetus We have had glimpses of Michael Servetus in Spain and Italy in 1530 (Ch. 1.5), in Basel (Ch. 84.b), in Strassburg (Chs. 10.3.f; l1.1.e), in Paris (Ch. 22.1), We now overtake him in Lyons, where, living under the name of Dr. Villanovanus, he was an editor of geographical, scientific, and biblical texts. He had found a patron in Dr. Symphorien Cham pier (d. 1539). In 1536 Servetus had gone again to Paris to study medicine. He published a widely consulted pharmacological treatise on syrups, devoted in large part to the theory of digestion, which ran through several lucrative editions. He became interested in astrology and astronomy as an adjunct to his medicine, because of t he supposed influence of t he stars on physiology. This brought him under fire from members of the medical faculty, partly for scientific reasons, partly out of professional jealousy. Although reprimanded by the Parlement of Paris, he was not condemned, nor was his true identity discovered. He thereupon left Paris to practice medicine successively back in Lyons, then Avignon, Charlieu, and Vienne. In Vienne he had an apartment within the palace precincts of A rchbishop Peter Palmier. He continued to copy–edit geographical books and in 1542 he published a one–volume edition of the Bible. This he followed in 1545

chapter 23.4

calvin & the radical reformation  925

John Calvin from Theodore Beza’s Icons

926  the radical reformation

chapter 23.4

with his seven–volume, glossed edition of the Pagnini Bible.84 He enjoyed a tranquil and respected life, engaging in covert theological speculation and writing, but outwardly conforming to the Roman Church. He would later justify his Nicodemism by a ppealing to the willingness of Paul himself to conform to outward Jewish practices in the Temple when in Jerusalem (Acts 21:26). The intellectually omnivorous Servetus procured some of t he writings of Calvin, which he read eagerly but critically, with the mounting conviction that he could instruct the Genevan Reformer. He therefore resolved to press his own view upon Calvin, sending him in 1546 drafts of his Restitutio Christianismi, and submitting three oddly framed questions about Christology, regeneration, and the Kingdom, and about the relationship of faith to Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.85 Calvin, recalling the earlier and “hazardous” effort he had made at Paris “to win him to his view of Christ,” 86 deemed it appropriate to reply in full, though as he said, he wearied of w riting a book for a single reader. Servetus was dissatisfied with Calvin’s answers, for he was really intent upon informing Calvin more fully, not upon learning from him. In all, he sent Calvin thirty epistolary discourses 87 besides the manuscript of his Restitutio. In the exchange, calling Calvin a Trinitarius, Servetus may be credited as the very first to use the medieval term for one amiss on the central and most distinctive dogma of Christianity in reference to a presumed defender of the Nicaenum. It was in this scholastic sense that the proto–Unitarians of Transylvania would also presently be called Trinitarians, i.e. for those amiss on the Trinity, as sacramentarius had been used for anyone amiss on the central sacrament of the altar (Ch. 2.4).88

84  Lucca–born Italian Hebraist, Santes (Xanthus) Pagnini, O.P. (1470–1536), having studied Hebrew (under the direction of Jerome Savanorola) at the feet of the Spanish conversos Clement Abraham, at the request of Leo X taught first in Rome, then in Lyons where he combatted the onsets of the Refor mation. His g reat achievement was the Utriusque instrumenti nova translatio (Lyons, 1528), of which the Old Testament was the first since Jerome based on the Hebr ew text. Pagnini divided the Bible into the chapters and verses which became universal. The prefaces include two letters from the Christian Kabbalist Pico della Mirandola. It reputedly took a quarter of a century to complete. It inspired the Italian Bible of Antonio Brucioli of Florence (Venice, 1532) and the Italian Protestant Bible (Geneva, 1562). 85  OC 8: col. 482. 86  Refutatio errorum Michaelis Serveti, ibid., col. 481, n. 1. 87  OC 8: cols. 645–714. The sixteenth letter against pedobaptism closes, as do several of his letters, with prayers. This one, tripartite, addresses God as heavenly Father, one “O most clement Jesus, Son of God” and the third “O most gentle Jesus, Son of God,” to the effect that all little ones be embraced by the divine mercy without submitting to baptism. 88  For the Order of Trinitarii and the Trinitarii in the sense of Unitarii in Transylvania, see Ch. 11.2. For a recent study of Ser vetus on Triadology, see Francisco Sánchez–Blanc , Michael Servetus Kritik an der Trinitätslehre (Frankfurt/Bern: Lang, 1977).

chapter 23.4

calvin & the radical reformation  927

Calvin decided that he did not have time to answer Servetus in further detail, but sent him a copy of his Institutes, which, he observed, adequately explained his position. At this point Calvin also wrote to Farel: “Servetus has just sent me, together with his letters, a l ong volume of h is ravings. If I consent, he will come here, but I w ill not give my word; for, should he come, if my authority is of a ny avail, I w ill not suffer him to get out alive.”89 Servetus sent back the Institutes with critical comments, but Calvin kept the draft of the Restitutio. In the four years after the correspondence ended in mutual recrimination, Servetus busied himself with the revision of h is magnum opus for publication. He sent a copy of t he Restitutio to Martin Cellarius in Basel, with the hope of g etting it printed there, but learned that it would be unsafe. Buoyed by his sense that it was his destiny to fight under the Archangel Michael (Dan. 12:1; Rev. 12:7) for the restoration of the Church so long bedeviled by Antichrist, he was now emboldened to have an issue of one thousand copies of the Restitutio secretly printed at Vienne. The lot was baled in January 1553, and arrangements were made in Lyons for sales at the Easter fairs in Italy, Frankfurt, and even Geneva. Calvin was in possession of the printed copy by February, perhaps a gift of the bold and eager author. Servetus’ exposure in Vienne came about as an incidental consequence of a quarrel between two cousins, the Catholic Anthony Arneys of Lyons and the distinguished Protestant refugee, William de Trie, resident in Geneva since 1549. Arneys had written to William in an attempt to persuade him to abandon the Reformed faith and return to Lyons. De Trie’s reply, 26 February, was to assert that, far from being a c itadel of p apal orthodoxy, Lyons with Vienne nearby was a haven for the rankest form of heresy! He enclosed several pages of Servetus’ printed Restitutio by way of proof. Arneys immediately turned to the inquisitor–general, Matthew Ory, O.P., under the Cardinal Archbishop of Lyons, Primate of France. Ory dictated to him a letter requesting further documentation. Calvin, pressed by William de Trie, reluctantly 90 gave him several letters from Servetus, the handwriting of w hich would at once incriminate the esteemed physician living in the archiepiscopal palace under an assumed name, and lead to a trial. The inquisition in Lyons acted promptly. Servetus was haled before it. He delayed appearing long enough to conceal the evidence at his apartment. The court treated him with courtesy until the publication and authorship of his book in Vienne was placed beyond doubt. Taking advantage of the mild confinement he enjoyed as a gentleman, he slipped away in the early 89

 OC 12: cols. 282–84, esp. 283.  Servetus later charged that Calvin supervised the correspondence to compass his downfall. For the Catholic trial, see Pierre Cavard, Le procès de Michel Servet à Vienne (Vienne: Syndicat d’initiative, 1953). 90

928  the radical reformation

chapter 23.4

morning hours of 7 A pril 1553. The tribunal continued the proceedings against him and on 17 June condemned him to be burned. The sentence was executed in effigy. For four months Servetus remained out of sight, until he made bold to take the route to Venice or Naples via Geneva. On Sunday, 13 August, he put up at an inn in Geneva awaiting transportation by boat toward Zurich. Since he could not leave until Monday, he went to an afternoon service, possibly at St. Magdalene’s, which he thought would be less conspicuous than staying away. He was recognized despite some attempt at disguise, and immediately denounced by Calvin. The only way that the magistrate could legally arrest the transient was for Calvin to arrange to have his servant, Nicholas de la Fontaine, also submit to imprisonment as the formal accuser in what was a capital charge (the poena talionis). Accordingly, the young servant and Servetus were arrested the very next day. It was not hard for Calvin to enable his stand-in to substantiate “his” charges of heresy and blasphemy, gaining thereby immediate release and supplying the evidence necessary for the court to proceed to further hearings without going into the procedural details of the five phases of the trial,91 we may set forth the struggle between Calvin and Servetus on three levels. On the religio–political level, allegations were made92 that Servetus was involved in a conspiracy with the political Libertines or Patriots of Geneva (Ch. 23.2), who held Calvin and his repressive regimen in contempt, resentful of g rowing voting strength of P rotestant refugees so promptly accorded the rights of c itizenship. Servetus arrived in Geneva just as the struggle between Calvin and the political Libertines was reaching its peak. The Libertine councilor Philibert Berthelier had been excommunicated at Calvin’s initiative, although the magistrates in council attempted to override the decision of the pastors and elders in consistory. The Servetus case had been on for more than a month when Calvin, expecting Berthelier to present himself brazenly for communion, announced, “If anyone comes to this table, who has been excluded by the consistory, I will do my duty 91  One interpretation of the encounter between Calvin and Servetus goes beyond making it symbolic of the conflict between Reformation and Renaissance and constr ues it as Calvin’s struggle with secular ism in the sense of unbelief camouflaged by heretical sophistry. Richard Nürnberger, “Calvin und Ser vet: eine Begegn ung zwischen r eformatorischem Glauben und modernem Unglauben im 16. Jahrhundert,” ARG 49 (1958): 177–204. But Servetus’ immersionist doctrine of rebirth was different from both humanist renaissance secularism and especially modern secularism. The day–by–day account of the tr ial and execution is vividly rehearsed by Bainton, Hunted Heretic, chs. 10–11; Wilbur, Unitarianism, ch. 12; and James MacKinnon, Calvin and the Reformation (London, 1936). Cf. R. M. Kingdon, J. F. Bergier, Registres de la compagnie des pasteurs de Genève au temps de Calvin (Geneva: Droz, 1962), tr. Philip E. Hughes, The Register of the Company of Pastors of Geneva in the Time of Calvin (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1966) for the transcript of the trial in French and then in English. 92  Discussed by Bainton, Hunted Heretic, 173–74.

chapter 23.4

calvin & the radical reformation  929

with my life.” 93 Berthelier did not come: Calvin had won this phase of the struggle. But with the trial of “Libertine” Servetus in progress, intensifying the local constitutional struggle and obliging Calvin to preach and speak frequently on the Servetian challenge, it is evident that he was not yet certain that he would finally surmount the crisis. The Libertines, whose objective was their own personal and civil liberty, probably did no more for Servetus than give him fatuously the hope that in his theological and legal argumentation he might win his case, thereby unwittingly inflating his vehemence and substantiating Calvin’s caricature of him as a theological megalomaniac. Still on the religio–political level, but in a much broader context than the constitutional struggle within the city–state, Calvin and his associates, abetted by c ommunications, notably from Bern, Zurich, and Basel, had come to recognize that the orthodoxy of the whole Swiss Reformed community was at stake in the eyes alike of the distant Lutherans and the Catholics of the bordering cantons. The Reformer of Geneva, who had not long ago been condemned by Caroli as being unsound on the doctrine of the Trinity (Ch. 23.3.b), could not afford to be less severe with what he regarded as blasphemy and heresy in respect of the great conciliar dogmas of the Trinity and Christ than Catholic Lyons, even though he, too, was trying to restate them in scriptural terms. Thus, on the highest level, the struggle between Servetus and Calvin was passionately theological. Although the conditions of Servetus’ confinement rapidly deteriorated, he was never put to the rack, as was Dr. Hubmaier by Zwingli (Ch. 6.3). Servetus was able to say as much as he would. Moreover, the public debate which Servetus demanded as his right would have been arranged by Calvin but for the council’s adamant stand against it. We may conveniently bring together at this juncture the principal points of Servetus’ matured theological system as it may be extracted from his recent correspondence with Calvin, from the court records and related documents, and especially from the Restitutio itself. The four main charges of heresy were Anabaptism, Antitrinitarianism, “pantheism” (understood as redemption by deification), and psychopannychism. The last charge is of interest in that we have already found occasion to suggest that the original version of Calvin’s Psychopannychia may have been directed against Servetus in Paris, c. 1534, among other “Libertines” and “Anabaptists.” At the trial, Calvin pressed him on psychopannychism, and it is clear from Calvin’s summary of the interrogation that Servetus’ deep eschatological convictions were misunderstood.94

93 94

 Doumergue, Jean Calvin, 6:332–34.  See responses 27 and 29; OC 8: cols. 739–40.

930  the radical reformation

chapter 23.4

We have also already anticipated Servetus’ baptismal theology as embodied in the Restitutio (Ch. l1.1.e). But his matured views on the Godhead remain to be discussed for Servetus had in fact come to change his formulations since the days of his two Alsatian works on the Trinity (Ch. 11.2). He was so much opposed to the doctrine of the Trinity, which he considered a sophisticated abstraction, that he had coined the term Trinitarii for the devotees of t his “unscriptural” concept. Nevertheless, in the final version of the Restitutio, he was prepared to go along much farther than in Alsace with the received terminology. Whereas formerly he had restricted himself to the term prolatio for the relationship between the Word and God, he was now prepared to call that relationship one of generatio, admitting that the eternal Word, generated before the creation of the world, might be called not only the Son of God but also Christ. The prologue of John was seen to be a parallel to the prologue of Genesis, and the identification of the Word with Light had now made it possible for Servetus to think of the Word itself (cf. Dirk Philips, Ch. 19.2.b) before the mundane incarnation as also robed in a kind of celestial flesh. In arguing thus, Servetus appealed to the Hebrew text, pointing out that whereas the Word in Spanish, Latin, or German can be only spoken or heard, in Hebrew the Word “comes,” “goes,” “runs,” “appears,” etc. It became visible in the fiery bush; audible in the still, small voice; visible and palpable in the pillar of fire. The self–revelation of God as a Person took place exclusively through Christ,95 but for Servetus, as of 1553, Christ was also the eternal idea of man in the mind of God. Servetus fantastically accused Calvin, in the course of their earlier correspondence, of m aking three sons: the human nature, the divine nature, and the whole Christ (a “third son”). In a way this characterization was truer of his own view, except that he would have called them stages in Sonship, namely: (1) the man Jesus who was the Christ; (2) the man Jesus who had been miraculously generated of the substance of God as his only Son; and (3) the Christ who is, was, and will be the redemptive epiphany or impersonation of the divine. Jesus was the Messiah as the son of Mary, and, as the Christ, he was concurrently the Son of G od and hence derivatively God. Servetus argued this schema from Christ’s declaration in John 10:30, “Ego et pater unum sum us.” Christ was here able to say sumus because he was “God as well as man,” and unum because “there is one godhead (deitas), one power, one consensus, one will of the Man with God.” Servetus could even say that Christ was consubstantial with the Father, using the term homoousios. The premundane substance was in some sense the “flesh” which the Logos brought down to be joined with the flesh derived from the womb of Mary

95  Ernst Wolf, “Deus omniformis,” Theologische Aufsätze Karl Bar th zum 50 Geb urtstag (Munich, 1936), 453.

chapter 23.4

calvin & the radical reformation  931

(Ch. 11.3.e.3). This flesh, this spiritual body from heaven, was the panis caelestis de substantia Dei; and the soul of the Son was also from heaven.96 Servetus was now prepared to call the Word interchangeably the Son, the eternal idea of M an, and hence the “eternal” Christ, so long as his basic proposition was safeguarded, namely, that there were not three intradeical Persons: for Servetus the Word substantiale verbum was an oracle that appeared, a “personification” of God (personatus Deus). In all this new speculation, Servetus was going beyond the Nativity accounts in the Gospels, beyond the Prologue in John, beyond Paul’s declaration that Christ was the firstborn before all creatures, beyond the Johannine assertion that he was present before the laying of the foundation of the world, to the declaration that the Messiah had been born from eternity; for, essential to the idea of man, are mind, spirit, and substance, however rarefied these conceptions may be. Therefore, the wholeness of Christ the Man must have been present from the beginning in the mind of God. Servetus stated this in parallel terms: there have been three stages in the Christological descent and the consequent deification of the world and the “mundification” of God: Christ was filius personalis in the covenantal manifestation of G od, filius realis through the incarnation, and since his resurrection and glorification, filius futurus,97 the Judge yet to execute his judgment. In respect to the first, Servetus could say that Christ was to be the omniformity or pervasive yet transcendent essence of God as was Elohim to Jehovah. The person of Christ or the face (vultus) of Elohim was more than an image. Christ (Elohim) was not merely the representative countenance of G od; he was also himself the creator and pattern of t he created order. Servetus, moreover, thought that he had “solved” the problem of why it was the Word, rather than the Spirit of G od, that became incarnate a filius realis. Referring again to the Hebrew usage, he pointed out that the Spirit is inward, whereas the Word is compatible with the visibility, the motion, and the vitality of a human body. As for the continuous but invisible outpouring of the Spirit of God, Servetus was aware of it everywhere as the mundification of the divine substantia in all creatures, which could therefore be considered full of divinity. Hence, all things, from the heavenly bodies to the smallest flowers, could be looked upon as gods.98

96  “Anima Christi est Deus, caro Christi est Deus, sicut spir itus Christi est Deus, et sicut Christus est Deus,” Restitutio, 231. 97  One is again reminded not only of the speculations of the Christian Kabbalah, but also of the Paulicians (Ch. 11.1.d). Servetus cites Hermes Trismegistus: “Deus lux ita omnia fabricavit, ut eum in omnibus fulgentem cernamus.” Restitutio, 152. 98  Cf. Calvin’s account in OC 8: col. 496. Cf. Séguenny, Christian Entfelder, chap. 11.2.

932  the radical reformation

chapter 23.4

It was in connection with Servetus’ effort to show how the divine Spirit was communicated to humanity and all creatures that he appealed to the medical analogy of t he living spirit in each person produced by a mixture in the lungs of i nspired air with blood, going on to state for the first time in print his discovery of the lesser or pulmonary circulation of the blood. It was this medical explanation of the spirit–soul, it will be recalled, which may already have disturbed Calvin back in 1534 (Ch. 23.1) when he first drafted his Psychopannychia. According to Servetus, God’s Spirit is present in a special way at baptismal regeneration. The Spirit is integral to the process of deification and to the clarification of the mind of the convert in preparing him or her for the second sacrament of t he Church, the participation in the Eucharistic Body of t he incarnate Word. Closer at this point to the Anabaptist Hofmann than to the Spiritualist Schwenckfeld, Servetus attached preeminent importance to the eucharistic nutriment (Ch. 11.3.e) that comes from the celestial body of the Word he worshiped. The Lord’s Supper, for Servetus the physician, was the only way in which God could become tangible in the interval between the Incarnation and the Last Judgment. It was for this God, thus visible in the countenance of the historic Jesus, audible in Scripture preached, and palpable in the breaking of t he eucharistic body, that Servetus was prepared to die a martyr. It should be added that Servetus, the anti–Nicene, anti–Chalcedonian anabaptist, was not a pacifist. He expressly recognized the state as ordained by Christ, and he legitimated as proper to a Christian magistrate the punishment of obstinate or blasphemous heretics by death, although he counseled exile as more humane. He had earlier pointed out in one letter to Calvin, for example, that Paul included potestates and gubernatores in the church (1 Cor. 12:28), and that Peter killed Ananias and Sapphira through divine intervention and with divine sanction when they appeared otherwise incorrigible.99 As the trial ran its course, Servetus was variously headstrong, truculent, and plaintive. He pled several times for a change of apparel and relief from the vermin and the unspeakable wretchedness caused by the dampness and cold aggravating his colic and hernia. In his exacerbated misery of body and mind he demanded that Calvin be imprisoned likewise, with death to one or the other under the poena talionis. The council ignored Servetus’ petition and charges. While the trial was in progress, the Genevans appealed to the ministers and magistrates of other Swiss towns for their opinions, and all replied that Servetus should be punished, mostly without specifying how. The replies of the Swiss divines were rather brief. The magistrates were aghast 99

 Undated letter in OC 8: col. 708.

chapter 23.4

calvin & the radical reformation  933

at Servetus’ behavior and doctrine as described to them; but, since the fine points of doctrine largely went over their heads, they left the details to the ministers. Typical was the attitude of the Schaff hausen clergy: “We do not doubt that you, in your wisdom, will repress his attempts lest his blasphemies like a cancer despoil the members of Christ.”100 More specific was Bullinger of Zurich, who asked for the death penalty. The ministers of Bern sent a long reply in German, defining Servetus’ errors in twelve points.101 The condemnation of Servetus’ doctrine was unanimous among the established Protestants, making the punishment almost a Confederational action, for, needless to say, the Catholic cantons would have agreed with Lyons and hence with Geneva. Endorsements for capital punishment from the Protestant cantons made it difficult for Geneva to do other than convict Servetus, even had it not so desired. The public prosecutor Claude Rigot, himself a L ibertine, accused Servetus of s ubverting the social order, of a dissolute life, and of affinity with Jews and Turks. Many private persons, on the other hand, were distressed by the impending action against Servetus, since it so closely corresponded to the conduct of the Inquisition. A welcome exception to the general tenor of the official communications coming into Geneva was the letter of t he spiritualizer David Joris (Ch. 19.1), then living a comfortable life in Basel but brave enough to write anonymously to the Genevan magistrates and divines, “as a m ember of t he body of C hrist.” He asked them pointedly whether Jesus’ prophecy in John 16:2–3, “They will put you out of t he synagogues. … [and] whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God,” applied to “those who inflict or those who endure suffering.” It is not known whether his eloquent appeal to the Genevan magistrates “to refrain from the sin against the Holy Spirit,” to “refuse to join the Scribes, Pharisees, and Pilate against the anointed of God,” ever reached the authorities of Geneva.102 After much argument and mutual vituperation, the court found Servetus guilty of Antitrinitarianism and Anabaptism, 26 October 1553, according to the provisions of the Code of Justinian, and condemned him to be burned at the stake. The allegations of p antheism, of p sychopannychism, the doctrine of the celestial flesh of Christ, Servetus’ errors about the Holy Land as partly a blasted wilderness, and his alleged moral offenses, were not mentioned. There was nothing about any political conspiracy. Servetus was condemned as an Anabaptist and a neo–Samosatene. Calvin intervened to secure an execution more merciful than death by burning, but the judgment was not changed. It was Farel who conducted 100

 OC 8: col. 810.  Ibid., cols. 81 1ff. 102  Printed in translation by Bainton, Concerning Heretics, 305–9. 101

934  the radical reformation

chapter 23.4 / 23.5

Servetus to the place of e xecution at Champel outside the walls, urging him to recant. Servetus rejected all entreaties to repudiate his theology and thereby save his life. His last words at the stake were, “O Jesus, Son of the eternal God, have pity on me!” In his extremity he was explicit in his belief, still refusing to ascribe eternity to the person of Jesus Christ the Son.

5. Calvin, Bullinger, and Beza Face Challenges on the Trinity and Christ the Mediator from Italians, Poles, and Transylvanians Although many Swiss divines would right after the execution of Servetus become immediately involved in responding to the theological inquiries of t he Eastern Reformed, among them three stand out as magisterial reformers, that is, as major teachers in the Swiss Reformed cantonal establishments: Calvin (d. 1564), preeminent in Geneva; Bullinger (d. 1575), successor of Zwingli in Zurich; and Theodore Beza (d. 1605), once of Vézelay in Burgundy, active in both Geneva and Lausanne, the first biographer of Calvin and the first historian of t he Reformed Church in France. These three and all their Swiss colleagues would, as of the death of Servetus, have behind them the Consensus Tigurinus of 1549103 drawn up between Farel and Calvin for the French cantons and Bullinger for the German cantons, but these twenty–six articles dealt primarily with the Eucharist, in order to bring the Reformed position closer to that of the now deceased Luther than Zwingli had ever been. But the comprehensive Second Helvetic Confession, covering all articles of faith and to be prepared at the request of the new Reformed Elector in Heidelberg, would not be agreed upon until 1566.104 It would indeed be adopted in place of their own native product the very next year by t he Major Reformed synod in Little Poland. But in the decisive years, 1562–1565, the Swiss respondents to the Italians, the Poles, the Polish–speaking Lithuanians, and the Transylvanians, based their improvisations on Scripture and were somewhat hampered by having on principle put aside the Apocrypha, richer as they are in proof texts for the Trinity.105 The theological task for the Swiss divines was all the more difficult because of t he four ancient credal formulations, the Swiss, on the Protestant priniciple of sola scriptura, could not facilely draw

103

 Müller, ed., Bekenntnisschriften, no. 13; Timothy George,“John Calvin and the Agreement of Zurich (1549),” Calvin and the Church, ed. George, 42–58. 104  Müller, ed., Bekenntnisschriften, no. 15. 105  The Nicene and Chalcedonian Father s, using the Septuag int, with its inclusion of the Apocrypha, some of them or iginally in Aramaic or Gr eek, while the whole Hebr ew canon had been somewhat Hellenized in translation. Such apocryphal books as Ecclesiasticus and the Wisdom of Solomon had indeed provided the Greek Fathers with many of their most compelling loci for their Triadology and Christology.

chapter 23.5

calvin & the radical reformation  935

upon anything extrabiblical but the Apostolicum as a summary of Scripture on Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and this (or rather its antecedent baptismal formularies) they acknowledge had not sufficed for Athanasius at Nicaea, nor for Leo I at Chalcedon. Moreover, the credally restive Italian eretici, sojourners in the eastern realms, and the native Reformed divines also accepted the Apostolicum, precisely congenial to them because it had no philosophical terminology to interrelate Father–Creator, Christ-Word, and the Spirit in the Old and New Testament. The collected and calendared correspondence of C alvin, Bullinger, and Beza is a veritable precipitate of the crisis for the world Reformed alliance in those Eastern lands, registering the ups and downs in the theological climate on the Byzantine–rite and Muslim frontier of Latin Christendom as clearly as tree rings record the annual rainfall of a century.106 In the decade after the burning of Servetus, Calvin would be in particular taken up with penetrating and earnest questions about the Nicene and the Chalcedonian formulas all the more awkward for him in his having begun the Institutes as commentary on the Apostolicum, not the Nicaenum. These earnest queries would come alike from Italians converging on the towns of the Swiss Confederation from Italy especially after 1542, domiciled as members of the Italian-speaking congregations—(always constitutive of t he local civic presbyteries)—and from the Reformed synods in Poland, Lithuania, and Transylvania. These questions were conveyed by synodal delegations and personal visits—almost pilgrimages—to the tabernacles of Reformed theology and polity on the part of Eastern European students and questing divines. Switzerland was the unique bastion of the Reformed version of Protestantism for the younger churches of t he East until in the Rhine Palatinate, Elector Frederick III the Pious, would in 1560 go over from the Lutheranism of his predecessor to Calvinism. Thereupon Heidelberg divines (Ch. 31.2) 106  The critical edition of the cor respondence of Calvin is in OC that of Bullinger in Heinrich Bullingers Br iefwechsel in progress (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1973– ), and that of Beza, Correspondance de Théodore Bèza, ed. by Henri Meyla and F. Aubert, Travaux d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 40, 49, etc. (Ceneva: Droz, 1960–). An eminently useful collection of the cor respondence of all Swiss divines with the Poles is that of Theodor Wotschke, Der Briefwechsel der Schweizer mit den Polen, ARC, Ergänzungsband 3 (Leipzig, 1908), ranging from the first letter, 1546, to the last in the v olume, 1572. We have already made use of the calendar ed correspondence of Bullinger with the Gr isons, 3 vols., ed. Traugott Schiess (Basel, 1904–6). See also the calendared correspondence with the Fr ench, André Bouvier, Bullinger, réformateur (Neuchâtel: Delachaux, 1940), with twenty–one hitherto unedited letters. I have closely followed the queries and r esponses in “The Polish–Lithuanian Calvin dur ing the ‘Superintendency’ of John Łaski, 1556–60,” Reformatio Perennis: Essays on Calvin and the Reformation in Honor of Ford Lewis Battles, ed. by Brian A. Gerrish in collaboration with Robert Benedetto, Pittsburgh Theological Monograph Series, No. 32 (Pittsburgh: Pickwick Press, 1981), 129–58, and in “Strains in the Christology of the Emerg ing Polish Brethren,” The Polish Renaissance in its European Context, Bloomington, Indiana, 25–28 May 1982; ed. Samuel Fiszman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 61–95.

936  the radical reformation

chapter 23.5

would indeed assume some of the Reformed burden of coping as established divines, that is as magisterial divines, with the high theological challenges of the Eastern Reformed churches under their nobiliary patrons, to be sure, but still in the eastern realms also independent of m agistracy, unlike the Swiss divines themselves. These Polish and Transylvanian patrons and divines would presently be freer to move theologically as a result of synodal debate, and in any case they were organizing on a voluntary rather than a territorial basis, as gathered rather than as given churches, especially in the Polish– Lithuanian Commonwealth where the patrons and their congregations were already beginning to build new simple edifices rather than taking over the parish churches of their Catholic or Orthodox peasantry. Within the decade after the pyre of Champel, the Reformed synods of Little and Great Poland and their Polish–speaking counterparts in the Grand Duchy of L ithuania, centered in Vilna, would have indeed taken the first steps in what was to be a permanent schism between the Major (Calvinist) Reformed synods and the Minor (eventually immersionist, Unitarian) Reformed synods of the Polish and Lithuanian Brethren, 1563 (Ch. 25.1), and a s imilar thrust would be apparent in Transylvania (Ch. 28). The principal issues for the Eastern Reformed synods in the decade after the execution of S ervetus were (1) religious toleration—for there was general horror among those drawn to the Helvetic version of Protestantism that its by now ranking spokesman would have put a lay physician to death, regardless of his specif ic tenets; (2) the authority of the ancient creeds in the Reformed Church which they had come to espouse as scriptural and credally free from scholastic and papal encrustations, and then within whatever residual credal framework remained, the specif ic issues of (a) the Triune God; (b) the Person and natures of Christ as the Mediator; (c) Baptism as an ordinance of faith; and (3) the societary and ethical consequences of recovering the brightness of the Gospel cleansed of ecclesiastical soiling. On the Last Supper they had already made their choice of the Reformed as distinguished from the Lutheran (Augsburg) formularies and practices. In raising questions under these three heads, the Poles, the Polonized Lithuanians, and the Magyars from Alba Iulia, capital of Transylvania, to Vilna, capital of the Grand Duchy, were almost daily aware of apostolic Eastern Orthodoxy, magnates and deputies of which obedience sat with their own kind in the diet of deputies and the palatinate dietines. They were fully aware (1) that their Orthodox cousins did not have the Filioque in their liturgical form of the Nicene Creed, (2) that they were unfamiliar

chapter 23.5

calvin & the radical reformation  937

with the so–called Athanasian Creed,107 (3) that immersion at baptism was part of their liturgical heritage, (4) that they communicated in both kinds, and (5) that they were comfortable with their married priests. Having as new Protestants repudiated the control of bishops and ecclesiastical courts over so many aspects of their lives from marriage to burial, and having given up the intercession of t he saints, the Eastern Reformed remained puzzled by t he Swiss divines in their teaching on the role of Christ as Mediator, whether solely in his human nature (1 Tim. 2:5: “the one Mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ”) and whether he was subordinate to the Father also even in his Person, to whom at the end he will deliver up his Kingdom (1 Cor. 15:24). Unlike the situation elsewhere the questing Reformed divines in the Transylvanian and particularly in the Polish and Lithuanian synods would without inhibition presently describe themselves as successively Tritheists or Binitarians or Ditheists as they rethink the ancient formularies, although they would to the end seek to eschew for themselves the appellation of Arians and finally affirm within the framework of the Apostles’ Creed a Christocentric adorant or a Patricentric Unitarianism, nonadorant of Christ. Central in the devolution or reverse recapitulation of ancient stages of the formulation dogma of the Trinity in the Eastern Reformed synods was the controversy over the role of Christ as Mediator, and Calvin himself carried through with this conceptualization the most fully of all the Reformed divines. Therefore we may devote the remainder of this section to Calvin’s Institutes as another repository preserving, as though in amber, the compacted arguments of once buzzing and swiftly darting protoradicals, whose positions taken in person or in correspondence with Calvin would in the end shape the contours of this major monument of Reformed thought as it evolved during the constant reviser’s career. The Institutes of the Christian Religion, originally in Latin, was first published in French in Basel in 1536, with a prefatory appeal to King Francis I, in the still fervid hope that he might be moved to reform the Church and the universities of France. Its six chapters were intended to be an introduction to the Bible, which Jacques Lefèvre had by t hen rendered in French translation in 1530, and also a vindication of the three Reformation principles, sola scriptura, sola fides, sola gratia. It was arranged indeed as commentary on the Decalogue (in the Reformed, i.e. Hebrew, numbering), on the Apostolicum, on the Lord’s Prayer, a d efense of t he two Protestant sacraments and of the non–episcopal polity of the people of God. Like Melanchthon (Ch. 11.2.a) with his first edition of the Loci communes (1521) and

107  There was a Chur ch Slavonic translation of it b ut without the place of author ity it occupied in the West where it had been f ashioned in the fifth century in Gaul, and where it would be retained to the present in Lutheranism and the Church of England. See Ch. 11.2.a.

938  the radical reformation

chapter 23.5

Luther with his Die drei Symbole (1538), Calvin had felt under no particular burden to defend the doctrine of the Trinity in its Nicene formulation and, content with the wording of the Apostolicum, was serene in his exposition of the Godhead revealed in Holy Scripture. In the editions of 1545, the Latin in Strassburg and the French version in Geneva, Calvin had introduced his section on Christ the Mediator and indeed the triplex munus Christi, the threefold office of Christ as prophet, priest, and king, which we have elsewhere traced to the influence on him of Martin Bucer (Ch. 10.2.b); but going beyond Bucer, he used not only the Eusebian–Erasmian threefoldness but also expressly the conception of office (munus), which we saw first used by Andrew Osiander (Ch. 11.3.c). Still smarting perhaps from the critique by Peter Caroli (23.3.b) of the first Geneva Catechism (1536), Calvin, in the same year as his major revision of the Institutes (1545), introduced the triplex munus Christ also into the much revised Geneva Catechism: Quid deinde valet nomen Christi? Hoc epitheto melius etiam tamen exprimatur eius officium. Significat enim unctum esse a patre in regem, sacerdotem et prophetam.108 In other words, the Messianic title embraces the office of t he Anointed of the Father as king, priest, and prophet. Calvin goes on in the revised Catechism of 1545 to clarify the prophetic office of Christ: When he descended into the world, he declared himself the envoy (legatus) of the Father among men and his interpreter and this to the end: that, having fully expounded the will of the Father, he would put an end to all [further] revelations and prophesies. There can be little doubt but what Calvin, considering Jesus as the final prophet like unto Moses for the Old Covenant (cf. Deut. 18:15–19), introduced the triplex munus Christi from his acquaintance with it through Bucer in Strassburg; that he enhanced the authority of the office of Jesus Christ as magister/propheta in part to counter the prophetic claims of the Anabaptists and others; that he thereby undergirded the role of the doctor/docteur alongside the pastor/pasteur within the four–fold lay–clerical ministry (1541) intended as safeguard of t he established church from unauthorized Bible teachers without formal training and from charismatic preachers professing to be the bearers of contemporary revealings of the Holy Spirit in their companies or on the street corners of Geneva. The office of t he apostles, who were also without formal training, Calvin expressly held to have lapsed at the close of the Apostolic Age.

108

 Müller, ed., Bekenntnisschriften, no 11, p. 120.

chapter 23.5

calvin & the radical reformation  939

There were presently three more Latin editions of t he Institutes, one in 1550, another in the year of Servetus in Geneva, and the third in 1554. The final definitive versions in the lifetime of the Reformer were in Latin (Strassburg, 1559) and in French (Geneva, 1560), each now with twenty– one chapters, divided into four books. The first version in a language other than Latin or French was that in Italian, translated by Giulio Cesare Pascali (Geneva, 1557).109 Calvin similarly develops the concept of Christ the Mediator (1 Tim. 2:5) in the Institutes. In the definitive version which had been expanded and refined by intervening controversy especially with the Italian and the Eastern Reformed, Calvin entitles Book II, chapter 12: “Christ had to become man in order to fulfill the Office of Mediator,” as true God and true man, in part against Andrew Osiander not as of Augsburg (1530) but as of a controversy lying chronologically ahead in Königsberg, 1550 but anticipated (Ch. 11.3.c). Calvin entitles chapter 13, “Christ assumes the true substance of human flesh,” against ancient Marcionites and contemporary Mennonites, and entitles chapter 14, “How the two natures of the Mediator make one Person” against Servetus, another physician, Dr. George Biandrata, John Valentine Gentile, and John Paul Alciati (all three of t hese in Ch. 24), and he entitles chapter 15, “To know the purpose for which Christ was sent by the Father, and what he conferred upon us, We must look above all at three things in him: The Prophetic Office, Kingship, and Priesthood,” thereby establishing Geneva as the new epicenter for the further diffusion of the Erasmian–Bucerian–Osiandrian triplex munus Christi from within the Reformed Tradition to be conducted eventually to the whole Christian community.110 To be sure, Faustus Socinus in Basel as of c. 1575 will have developed his own distinctive triplex munus Christi (Ch. 24.4), while much earlier Łaski had evidently appropriated the schema directly from Erasmus. In any case, by way of the Polish Reformer and the Socinian reformer of the Polish Brethren, the triplex munus Christi would become quite prominent in Poland in both the Major and the Minor Reformed Church (Ch. 25).

109  The now standard English version from the Latin of 1559 is that of John T. McNeill and Ford Lewis Battles, LCC in two volumes, 20 and 21 (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), admirably annotated. The critical edition of the final French version of 1560 is that of J ean–Daniel Benoît, Institution de la religion chrestienne in 5 vols. (Paris:Vrin, 1957–63). 110  There is a compact account by Klauspeter Blaser, Calvins Lehre von den drei Atern Christi, Theologische Studien, 165 (Zurich: EVZ–Verlag, 1979). In the present edition of The Radical Reformation there is, however, perhaps the most complete account of the thr eefold office for the sixteenth century. The triplex munus Christi would enter the Orthodox Church through the mediation of Peter Mohyla (Mohiła, Mogila) of Kiev and would be indirectly confirmed by the synod of Jassy in Moldavia, 1643, and signed by the four Eastern Patriarchs in Jerusalem, 1672; Confessio, question 34, Schaff, Creeds, 2:303. See also my Lubieniecki, Plate 53. The triplex munus Christi would also become prominent in several documents of Vatican II.

940  the radical reformation

chapter 23.5

Calvin, having lifted up in the revised Catechism (1545) and the Institutes (as of 1545) the triplex munus Christi as a helpful theological topos that could be construed as fully scriptural, and having given unusual prominence to Christ the Mediator in the threefold office (beyond anything like the patristic role of 1 Tim 2:5) could view the Nicene formulation of the dogma of t he Trinity and the Chalcedonian formularies for Christology as occasionally useful in deflecting the arguments of h eretics, even as he recognized that the terminology of those decisive creeds was palpably not scriptural. In the revised Institutes, originally based on the Apostolicum, Calvin diffidently adduces the conciliar terms as alternative ways of upholding what for him was in any case the intent of Scripture and of the Apostolicum, and he thereby takes off some of the pressure from the received formularies as he moves to recast the Hellenistic ontological language of static being into the voluntarist language of t he Lord of h istory of H ebrew–Aramaic Scripture. Calvin’s last sentence in the sequence of t he three chapters on Christ the Mediator, cited above, ends with these words, “The Papists attempt this each day [to sacrifice Christ anew], counting the Mass as the sacrificing of Christ.” For Calvin, as for Luther, the work of Christ as High Priest (summus sacerdos) was once for all on Calvary. His formulations were intended to deprive every Reformed ministry of any pretension to a sacerdotal (sacrificatory) character. He also thought the role of Christ as propheta, doctor or magister, as having about it a finality as, in the design of God, the final prophet and fount of a uthority for the Reformed magisterium. Indeed the threefold office could serve to undergird the role of the Protestant pastor or doctor, as holding the plenitude of the Church’s magisterium, as being the solely authorized interpreter of C hrist the Last Prophet (Deut. 18: 15-19). Calvin, bewildered by the springing up of p rophets and prophetesses all around in the Radical Reformation, especially in the laicization of t he prophetic office according to the lex sedentium (Ch. 11.4.b), had already stabilized the fourfold ministry of Geneva in the Ordinances ecclésiastiques of 1541, with no prophets and apostles, only pastors, teachers, deacons, and lay elders.111 This was a collective ministry of teaching and discipline without any human innovation in the mandates of Christ, a polity intended to be impervious to the claim and the machinations of Papists and Anabaptists alike.

111  The christological undergirding of the office of doctor ecclesiae is surely an impor tant impulse in the creation of Reformed schools and universities. I deal with the tr ipartite theme in the Chr istian conceptualization of the Uni versity as coordinate with Church and State in my long excursus to Harvard Divinity School: Its Place in American Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1954). Robert Henderson deals with the doctoral ministry in The Teaching Office in the Reformed Tradition, A History of the Doctoral Ministry (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1962).

chapter 23.5

calvin & the radical reformation  941

As for the central theme of the sole Mediator in the three chapters of the Institutes, Calvin was vaguely aware of divergent interpretations, patristic and scholastic, of 1 Timothy 2:5 about “the one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus”: He [Paul] could have said “God”; or he could at least have omitted the word “man,” just as he did the word “God.” But because the Spirit speaking through his mouth [dictating to a scribe] knew our weakness, at the right moment he used a most appropriate remedy to meet it: he set the Son of God familiarly among us as one of ourselves.112 Thus Paul could have written according to Calvin: “The only Mediator between man and God, Jesus Christ [or:] the God–man Jesus Christ.” The classical Protestant Reformation was more divided than it really knew on precisely this scriptural passage with scholastic resonance. The Catholic tradition was canonically defined at the IV Lateran Council, where Peter Lombard was vindicated (Ch. 11.3.c) against the charge of Joachim of Fiore (1215) that he had introduced a quaternity of Three Persons and the divine substantia or, increasingly in scholastic terminology, the one divine essentia, the patristic Latin term in the Nicene Creed having been supplanted by the preferred scholastic term for being. Although the IV Lateran in its canon Firmiter, 2 had upheld Peter Lombard’s interpretation of 1 T imothy 2:5 and indirectly the Anselmian theory of the Atonement as accomplished by Christ in his suffering humanity alone, Calvin, who was closer to Lombard than Luther, was often charged by Lutherans with being a c rypto–Nestorian in reference to the Pauline topos. Luther and his followers for their part, would so often in contrast be charged from the Reformed side as a crypto-Eutychian.113 By seeming to the eastern Reformed advisees, themselves often university-trained, to have subordinated Christ as the Son of God to God the Father in the discharge of the mediatorial office between creation and the consummation of the age, Calvin inadvertently vexed many of them, charged locally as they were by Stancaro with Arianism (the very symbol of ancient heresy), and he unwittingly caused them to seek relief from this embittering charge of heresy by extricating themselves from the credal tangles and to espouse the simple Apostolicum, originally preferred in any case by both Luther and Calvin themselves. The eastern recipients of Calvin’s sometimes condescend112

 Institutes, 2.12.1; ed. McNeill, 1: 465.  As theories of the Atonement are prominent in several figures in our narrative from John de Valdés through Faustus Socinus, I mention her e my own treatment, Anselm: a Communion and Atonement (St. Louis: Concordia Press, 1960). In this essay of 72 pp. I sought to show how the baptismal metaphor s of salvation from the patr istic period were displaced by eucharistic language. 113

942  the radical reformation

chapter 23.5

ing and sometimes impatient counsel were also puzzled by w hat they had grasped of w hat would later be identified as the Reformer’s christological extra Calvinisticum.114 Suffice it here to observe that for both Luther and Calvin and hence for their followers in Poland and Transylvania, Christology, eucharistic theology, and indeed the doctrines of justification and sanctification were intertwined in this three front debate over Christ the Mediator, his threefold office, and the extra-Calvinisticum. Over against Luther’s doctrine of t he ubiquity of Christ in his human nature and hence his bodily presence on the altar, Calvin had developed what Lutherans much later would identify as the Extra Calvinisticum, Calvin’s view of Christ’s exercising the plenitude of his authority beyond his body while on earth and hence beyond his glorified body now in heaven, validating from on high at the right hand of God in Majesty the Reformed Eucharist by his Real Presence to the elect alone. Both Calvin and Bullinger, the chief Swiss theological advisers to the Reformed synods in Poland and Transylvania, while in agreement eucharistically in their Consensus Tigurinus (Ch. 24.2.f ), but not yet ready to issue their Second Helvetic Confession of 1 566115 (with its explicit acceptance of the terminology of N icaea), were handicapped in advising the Polish Reformed on Christ the Mediator and on the Trinity in the crucial years for Poland, 1563–65, if not so much for the Magyar Reformed in Transylvania, 1566–69.116 We turn now to the Italian theological radicals, converging on Switzerland, and often going on to Poland and Transylvania with the prestige of their Renaissance culture and enhanced authority by being able to report first hand on the Reformed churches of the Swiss Confederation and Rhaetia.

114  David Willis seeks to show that Calvin’s Christology was Catholic and patristic, Calvin’s Catholic Christology: The Function of the So–called Extra Calvinisticum in Calvin’s Theology, Studies in Medieval and Refor mation Thought, 2 (Leiden: Brill, 1966). The term was first used b y Theodor Thumm (d. 1630) in the intra–Lutheran debate betw een Giessen and Tübingen over the exinatio of Christ and the claim of Lutherans that Calvinists taught that during the Incarnation the Eternal Son sustained an extrinsic action etiam extra carnem. 115  Müller, ed., Bekenntnisschriften, no. 15, art. 3. The first draft was by Bullinger, 1562. 116  Because of the onsets to Unitar ianism in the Transylvanian Reformed Synod, the orthodox Confessio of 1562 is conspicuously concerned with the Trinity, the first four chapters being devoted to it. Müller, ed., Bekenntnisschriften, no. 20.

Chapter 24

Radical Italian Evangelicals in Swiss Exile

It will be recalled that Renato, the Reborn

, with his compatriots in the land of the Renaissance, had looked forward to the return of the Golden Age “under the fair auspices of Christ” (Ch. 22.1) in the lands of the Reformation and the Restoration. For all Italian Evangelicals who broke from the Roman Church, the great liberating doctrine had been that enunciated like a clarion call by Luther. As it echoed over the Alps, it sounded like this: The elect are predestined to salvation manifest in their faith. In the Italian context, without the backing of any magistracy, whether cantonal or princely, Lutheranism swiftly acquired, as we have seen, a r adical character, becoming, for example, readily sacramentarian in line with the Swiss; and, when Calvin succeeded Luther in giving majestic and imperious leadership to the whole ecumenical Protestant cause, the Italians gravitated, usually by way of the half-evangelical, tolerant, and multilingual territory of the Three Leagues, to Switzerland and, with particular fascination, to Geneva itself. The word of an emigré, addressed indirectly to Calvin, evokes the feeling of many: I have traveled far to distant lands and differing peoples for the Word of G od, having chosen your church primarily and for no other reason than in order to meet and to hear Master Calvin face to face, whose fame I had hitherto held in utmost reverence.1 The Italian congregation in Geneva was particularly large, distinguished, and enthusiastic, but, from Calvin’s point of v iew, also restive or wayward in matters both of doctrine and discipline. It had been first assigned a chapel in St. Peter’s. Outgrowing these accommodations, the refugees and resident merchants favoring the Reformation had been granted the use of St. Magdalene’s under the leadership of t he marquis of Vico, Galeazzo Caracciolo, 1

 John Valentine Gentile; see OC 9: col. 390.

943

944  the radical reformation

chapter 24

from Naples, who had been touched by t he Valdesian spirit. Count Celso Martinengo, former canon of the Lateran Church, was the principal pastor. The volatile and passionate refugees met not only for the Sunday service but also for weekday Bible study and theological discussion. In October 1553, the Italian Protestant community in Geneva and elsewhere in the diaspora were stunned by Calvin’s action against Servetus. Some of t heir more radical spokesmen found the courage to rebuke the perpetrator of the most notorious auto-da-fé of magisterial Protestantism. Camillo Renato, in his poem of 357 lines, mourned the sad destiny of the evangelical Christians of Italy, who beheld, to their great horror, a fiery stake erected where they had thought to discover a h aven (Ch. 22.1). In this poem, Renato openly excoriated Calvin for his presumption in going far beyond Jesus, who readily sought out the wayward, who found good in the sinful, hypocrisy in the righteous, and who in any event gave specific instructions as to a threefold admonition (Matt. 18:15–18) and, in the case of the youth suffering from frenzy or disease (Luke 9:38–42), rebuked his own disciples for having dismissed the sick son and his sorrowing and hopeless father, instructing them further and showing that some ailments of the spirit or body can be cured only by loving prayer. He scorned Calvin, who, despite his claim to have renewed apostolic Christianity, had gone also far beyond Paul; for the apostle, even for the worst of sinners in Corinth, recommended no more than excommunication. Renato importuned all the other Swiss Reformers to become spiritual physicians, courageous prophets against evil, and magnanimous preachers of Christian brotherhood in imitation of God in his righteousness and of Christ in his loving calm, instead of turning into inquisitors and executioners as wicked as the minions of Antichrist.2 A much more renowned and subsequently influential literary reaction to the execution of S ervetus appeared pseudonymously in Basel, in 1554, entitled Concerning Heretics. We shall discuss it under the works of Sebastian Castellio (Ch. 24.2.b). Where Renato’s poem argued passionately for Christ-like benignity and longsuffering on the part of leaders of the Reformed Church, Castellio’s anthology of patristic and contemporary pleas against coercion of conscience argued for a policy of broad toleration. But neither the poem nor the publicistic anthology openly espoused the specific tenets for which Servetus had been condemned. In contrast, the Apologia pro Michaele Serveto, written pseudonymously by one calling himself Alphonsus Lyncurius Tarraconensis, was at once an argument for toleration, an appeal for humaneness in dealing with nonconformity or recalcitrance, a spirited attack upon the legality of the trial

2

 Renato, Carmen; see Ch. 22 at n. 5, where it is quoted for another purpose.

chapter 24 / 24.1

italian evangelicals in swiss exile  945

itself, and an unequivocal espousal of the condemned doctrines of Servetus on the Trinity. Throughout the whole expanse of the Italian diaspora, poems, apologies, anthologies, and other materials for some time after 1553 tossed like flotsam on the ever-widening waves of d espair at what to these Italians appeared to be the foundering of the Reformed Church under its reckless pilot, Calvin.

1. The Relationship of Anabaptism and Antitrinitarianism Before entering further into the contents of this material, we should pause for an introductory generalization as to why it was that, in contrast to the Germanic radicals, the Italians, even when they were also technically antipedobaptist, stressed not so much the recovery of believers’ baptism as the restitution of a humane and kindly Christ, and, therewith, the dissolution of the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity, which, in the course of the centuries, seemed to them to have immobilized his mercy within the rigid carapace of a dogmatic formulation. The more radical among the Italian conventicular Evangelicals who were indiscriminately called Anabaptists, building in part upon the surviving organization and familiar usages of the non-Protestantized Waldensians (Ch. 21.2), had much of t he character of t he Germanic Anabaptists. But unlike their cousins north of t he Alps, the Italian radicals adhered to the Protestant doctrine of predestination, although they turned it in a potentially universalistic direction. In the end there were, to be sure, a number of authentic Italian freewill Anabaptists, such as the Venetian Hutterite martyrs noted in Ch. 22.4. But for the most part, rebaptism, when linked with the regent doctrinal principle of predestination to faith with its spiritualizing effect, would only here and there become a d istinguishing sign of the radical Italian Evangelicals, whether they remained in Italy or joined the diaspora. Back in Italy, rebaptism could never have become ecclesiologically constitutive in a l oose Catholic context where—in a p atchwork of d iocesan, monastic, princely, and civic jurisdictions, suffused with the Renaissance spirit and long accustomed to sectarian expressions of C hristianity among both the intellectuals and the lower classes—the Italian come-outers were surrounded by so many nominal Catholics that they did not have to mark themselves off by the act of believers’ baptism. Instead, merely to join a circle of readers and earnest exhorters was itself the constitutive action. Germanic Anabaptism, in contrast, presupposed either a p redestinarian, solafideist state church or the old Catholic Church fiercely defended by Hapsburg princes and Catholic leagues. Italian radical Evangelicals, emerging in a situation that was until 1542 only languidly Catholic, where the Church was only slowly assembling its strength to fight back, were, to be

946  the radical reformation

chapter 24.1

sure, consciously antipedobaptist because of the new stress on explicit faith; but these Italian radicals could never make adult baptism the distinctive badge of their break with “Antichrist.” Nor could rebaptism readily become the distinctive mark of the Italian radicals after their flight. Their stress on predestination to faith indisposed most of t hem to stress any action symbolic of f reely willed moral regeneration. Accordingly, when these liberated Italians entered Swiss territory, their most radical impulses were destined to find expression, not in rebaptism, but rather in Antitrinitarianism. As refugees, they were already marked off from the indigenous parishioners by s peech and theological accent. Rebaptism of Italians, already organized here and there into Italianspeaking congregations in French-speaking or German-speaking towns, could never have the programmatic significance it had for the indigenous German radicals in the towns and parishes of their birth. Common to both the Germanic Anabaptist and the counterpart Italian Antitrinitarian impulses, however, was the radical pacifism in imitation of Christ and the ways of t he early Christians. Like the German evangelical Anabaptists, almost all the Italian Evangelicals, whether Protestantized Waldensians, conservative Protestants, Anabaptists, or radical Evangelicals, were opposed to war, to capital punishment, and to coercion in the realm of conscience. They espoused the separation of church and state, or at least the freedom of conscience. Thus in October 1553 the Italian radical Evangelicals instinctively sensed that their special moral assignment was to attack a coercive ecclesio-political implication of t he Constantinian-establishmentarian doctrine of t he Trinity in the context of Swiss magisterial Protestantism. Although their indignation and anguish at what they considered Calvin’s personally vindictive connivance in the execution of S ervetus were sustained primarily by t heir own personal concern for religious toleration, the fact that Calvin himself had somehow connected his religio-political authority in Geneva with the “Constantinian” formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity induced the Italian radicals to espouse several versions of Antitrinitarianism. Their conspicuous target for assault upon inquisitorial ecclesiasticism in its new Protestant guise was thus marked out for them by Calvin’s own insistence that the God of the Old and New Testament is the triune Godhead of t he Nicene Creed. Although Calvin himself had preferred the Apostolicum and adduced the high credal formularies only to substantiate collaterally what he purported to draw directly from Scripture, he, in one respect more explicit than the Nicene fathers, held that whenever the Father alone is mentioned in the Scriptures, the equally stern, consubstantial Son is implied correlatively: that there is therefore no difference between the revelation of t he Old C ovenant and that of t he New; and that accordingly, as one of the practical consequences of this postulated equivalence,

chapter 24.1

italian evangelicals in swiss exile  947

the Christian—as once the Hebraic—commonwealth is ordained and ruled with the full sanction of t he triune God. As to this last asseveration, the Italian Evangelicals were especially baffled, given the seeming contradiction between Calvin’s ceaseless concern to separate the Reformed Church of Christ from the control of the Genevan magistrates and at the same time his theological insistence upon the Christian role and the Christian vocation of these same magistrates. Although many of the Italian radicals were well-educated men—lawyers, physicians, former clerics, and men of station and substance—they could not share the subtle and profoundly biblical conviction of Calvin that the Christian states were ordained and sustained by the triune God as much for the restraint of the sinful among the elect as for the temporal protection and encouragement of t he civically virtuous among the reprobate! Thus, when in his religio-political anxiety Calvin fatefully persuaded himself that the brazen Spanish “reprobate” was also a criminal because he threatened the Trinitarian basis and sanction of Christian magistracy, the Italian radicals became certain that, for the safeguard of t heir Christian conscience and for the protection of the members of the Reformed churches of Christ from molestation in the name of Christ, their only recourse was to set about dismantling the doctrine of the Trinity. Calvin appeared to them to have appealed for sanction to a Christ from whose countenance he had effaced all the features of the forgiving and suffering Son of Man. Henceforth, disengagement of the Son from what seemed to them the pitiless iron vice of dogmatic formulations presented itself as the best means of securing the independence of the devotees of Christ. The simplification of the doctrine of the Trinity would thus serve roughly the same religio-political function for the Italian radicals as the insistence upon believers’ baptism among the German radicals. By distinguishing between the judicial Father, creator of the world and the ordainer of law and civil order, and the atoning Son, and by subordinating Christ, the Son, and thereby altering the Nicene-Genevan formulation, the radical Italian evangelicals sought, still within the context of Protestant predestinarianism and solafideism, to safeguard freedom of conscience, to secure the elimination of c oercion in religion, to foster Christian brotherhood, and to recover all those other apostolic institutions and ways of life for which the Germanic radicals were striving in their insistence upon believer’s baptism, upon free will, and upon sanctification. Germanic Anabaptism, grounded in the freedom of the will, and Italian Antitrinitarianism, grounded in an inclusive divine election and only incidentally receptive to the practice of adult rebaptism, had then this basic motif in common, namely, the concern to distinguish the two divine dispensations and to restore to pre-eminence the New Testament and the apostolic noncoercive Christian community of faith. But by separating the covenants, by

948  the radical reformation

chapter 24.1

distinguishing the Father and the Son, and then subordinating the Son to the Father, the radical Italian Evangelicals soon found themselves ascribing to the Father the features and some of the functions of the Son and, in the final devolution of the doctrine of the Trinity, they would find themselves lowering the Son to the rank of the greatest of the prophets and thereby obscuring once again, in a generalized ethical theism, the difference between the Old and the New Dispensation! This displacement naturally altered also the doctrine of t he Atonement. Under the influence of J ohn de Valdés and Ochino, many Italian Evangelicals had early come to see in the crucifixion the demonstration (or revelation) of the forgiving and re-creative love of both God the Father and the Son, expressed by Christ for fallen and lost humanity—not a sacrifice to appease or indemnify an exacting ruler, not a cosmic penal transaction contrived by G od himself to secure a t oken justification for sinful man. Thus, beginning within the framework of predestinarianism and proceeding to subordinate Christ to God (the Father), the Italian radicals in their Antitrinitarianism approximated the adjustment made by the radicals in the north. The freewill Anabaptists, such as Denck, with believers’ baptism and the covenant of the good conscience with God, and the Spiritualists, such as Schwenckfeld or Franck, with the contemplative penetration of self to the point where the inner spirit was experienced as identical with God’s Word or the inner Christ had alike experienced the same forgiving love of God for man which Valdés had found in his interpretation of Christ’s coming. It will become apparent, therefore, in the course of the next chapters, that within Anabaptism, Spiritualism, and particularly Evangelical Rationalism, there was building up, more or less unnoticed, a strong pressure to rearticulate the conception of s alvation and more specifically the Atonement in such a way as to break from both the patristic and the Anselmian theories. The De Jesu Christo servatore of Faustus Socinus (Ch. 28), to be composed at the very end of our period in 1578, may be at this point anticipated as a specific formulation toward which many in the Radical Reformation as a whole were groping for half a century. To sum up, the adherence to the doctrine of predestination did for the Italian radicals almost exactly what the doctrine of the inner Word or the inner Christ or the listing Spirit accomplished for the German Spiritualists, and the doctrine of C hrist’s removal of o riginal guilt on Calvary did for the German Anabaptists. That is, all three groups were more or less freed from the necessity of d ealing with justification, sanctification, and hence personal salvation in terms of a historic atonement or propitiatory sacrifice of fulfilled righteousness. What the classical Protestant Reformers were trying to express in their revulsion from the idea of r epetitive liturgical sacrifices or imitative acts of atonement on the eucharistic altar and in their polemic against the elaborate system of works righteousness connected with

chapter 24.1/ 24.2

italian evangelicals in swiss exile  949

the Mass, the radicals had come to take for granted in their complete break with the Catholic past, the Italians in their confidence in election, and the Germans in their reliance on imitative suffering betokened by b elievers’ baptism. The whole of their theological structure was erected, in fact, on this foundation, concealed as much to themselves as to others. As a consequence, when the radical evangelicals—whether Anabaptist, Spiritualist, or Rationalist—came to formulate a (new) doctrine of the Atonement, since the forensic atonement of f ulfilled righteousness or vicarious sacrifice was not only historically but also psychologically remote, theirs turned out to be an “experiential atonement,” that is, in effect, a doctrine of progressive divinization, or spiritualization, or redemptive suffering, or divine imitation, or demonstrable sanctification, or perfectionism. Only such a generalization about this, the central transaction in Christian theology, will give meaning to the trinitarian and christological speculations, reformations, and vagaries in the Radical Reformation as a whole and, more to the point of the present chapter, make some sense of the restless movements and tragic encounters of t he radical evangelical refugees from Italy as they spread out in a vast diaspora stretching from Edwardian England to Jagiellonian Poland and to Transylvania under the shadow of Suleiman the Magnificent, often to end their theological careers as explicit Unitarians.

2. Italian Evangelical Rationalists in the Diaspora There must have been considerable Servetian sentiment among the Italian Rationalists well before the anti-Nicene Spaniard’s name was on the lips of all, following his execution in the fall of 1 553. We have seen how readily the Anabaptist synod in Venice in 1550 subscribed to extreme views on Christology and the doctrine of t he Trinity which went even beyond Servetus (Ch. 22.2.d). In the July before Servetus’ fateful entry into Geneva, Paul Gaddi wrote to Calvin about the alarming spread of the theology of “that proud and diabolic man,” in the Grisons and northern Italy. 3 Then two years after the execution of S ervetus it will have been possible for William Postel (Ch. 22.2.d) to speak of the considerable and well-established following of Servetus in Venice.4

3

 Gaddi to Calvin from Zurich, 23 July 1553; OC 14: no. 1763.  Postel’s Apologia pro Ser veto Villanovano is largely taken up with his o wn theory of the Trinity of potentia, sapientia, and clementia; his idea of the world soul; the restoration of all things through the regeneration of r eason (Ch. 22.2.a). Having read Servetus’ De Trinitatis erroribus (1531), he was prepared to say that he agreed with Servetus in seeking to identify Christ’s divinity along with the humanity, “a certain natura and middle substantia which is God.” Quoted by Kuntz, Postel, 110 n. 355. The Apologia is printed by J. L. von Mosheim, Versuch einer vollständigen und unpartheyischen und gründlichen Ketzergeschichte (Helmstadt, 1748), 2:466–99; cf. Kuntz, Postel, 34 n. 350. 4

950  the radical reformation

chapter 24.2 / 24.2.a

In any event, several Italian Rationalists, when they came to rebuke Calvin for his inhumanity and unapostolic behavior, were sometimes prepared to defend the specific doctrines of Servetus as well. a. Matthew Gribaldi Matthew Gribaldi Mofa (1506–64),5 professor of c ivil law at Padua, was vacationing at his wife’s estate at Farges, in Bernese territory, at the time of Servetus’ trial. He was among the very first to declare that the execution of Servetus was an indelible blot on the whole Reformation, and that the death penalty was never justified in cases of divergent religious opinion. As lord of the château of Farges in Gex,6 he was able to make of his summer retreat an asylum for Antitrinitarians. We should therefore take a c loser look at him. Born in Piedmontese Chieri, Gribaldi had begun an illustrious career in civil law, successively ornamenting the faculties at Perugia, Toulouse, Valence, and Grenoble (1535–45). It was during his tenure at Valence (downstream from Grenoble on the Rhone) that Gribaldi published his well-known textbook in civil law, Methodous et ratio studendi, 1541. Although continuing to attend Mass in Grenoble, by 1542 he was in correspondence as a c onvert to Protestantism with Pierre Viret in Lausanne and possibly with Calvin.7 Released by the university, ostensibly for lack of funds, Gribaldi does not appear to have held another chair again until 1548, when called to Padua. During this period he may well have been involved in the radical conventicle, recalled in later Socinian tradition, in Vicenza as of 1546 (Ch. 22.4).8 At Padua Gribaldi soon won a large following among the students. He became associated in Padua with the “Lutheranism” openly espoused by the students, many of whom were German or Swiss. Numbering more than six thousand, the students were a power in their own right, conducting military drills, sending embassies to the doge, and defending their university freedoms. Shortly after his arrival in Padua, Gribaldi was present, along with Bishop Peter Paul Vergerio, at the deathbed torments of conscience of the advocate Francis Spiera who, having become Protestant in 1548, feared that he might have sinned against the Holy Spirit—a scene (casus Spierae) which seems to have convinced Vergerio to lay down his crozier and openly join the Reformation. The publication in Basel by Curio and 5

 The basic biography remains that of Francesco Ruffini, Mateo Gribaldi Mofa, 45–126.  Gex, formerly under the dukes of Savoy, was conquered by Bern in 1536 and ceded in 1601 to France. It is now in the department of Ain. 7  Gribaldi’s early Nicodemism was established by Alain Dufour, “Deux lettres inédites de Pierre Viret,” Revue de théologie et de philosophie, 3d ser., 11 (1961): 222–35. 8  Church, Italian Reformers, 170–71. Gribaldi was named as a member of the “Collegia Vicentina” by Manelfi in his confession of 1552. 6

chapter 24.2.a

italian evangelicals in swiss exile  951

Vergerio of the two accounts of Spiera’s death intensified Gribaldi’s contact with the Italian exiles.9 From Basel Gribaldi also began to receive the letters of Laelius Socinus, son of his colleague in jurisprudence Mariano Sozzini.10 Whatever radical tendencies and feelings about religious toleration Gribaldi may have derived from all these sources, they only reached open expression during the trial of Servetus. During his vacation at Farges, he will surely have taken great interest, as a civil lawyer, in the ad hoc use of the penalties of Justinian for rebaptism (Ch. 10.1) against the physician on trial in nearby Geneva. Even in September, before the execution in October, Gribaldi wrote a letter about it to the “brethren of Vicenza.” On his return to Padua in September, Gribaldi stopped in Geneva to try to intercede for Servetus.11 Calvin refused to see him. This was the first of three recorded exchanges between the two theologically minded jurists. Thereupon Gribaldi seems not only to have publicly denounced the trial but also to have declared that he could see nothing erroneous in Servetus’ views.12 His own triadological formulations were to be worked out only in the succeeding months in Padua. There he was presented by Peter Perna with a copy of Servetus’ On the Errors of the Trinity; he discussed the doctrine of the Trinity with Laelius Socinus, for two months his house guest. Laelius’ own Antitrinitarian utterances seem to date from the time just after his Paduan sojourn. Gribaldi himself was soon making public statements in favor of Servetus. In September 1554, a year after the burning, Gribaldi visited Geneva again and, as was his custom, attended the services of the Italian congregation under Martinengo. There he was persuaded to expound his own triadological views and then to set them down in writing, “Fratribus italis,” which in turn brought about a second but indirect confrontation with the exacting presence of Calvin.13 Gribaldi strove to use orthodox language but could go no further than a Monarchian Trinitarian comparable to the unity of three apostles, such as Peter, Paul, and Apollos, in the same apostolate. He cited 1 Cor. 8:8, “Qui plantat [Paulus] et qui rigat [Apollo] unum sunt,” and placed this in parallel with John 10:30: “ego [Filius] et Pater unum sumus.” Gribaldi, no doubt still equivocating, was willing to speak of the

9

297.

 Francisci Spierae Civitatulani hor rendus casus … (Basel, 1549/50); cf. Kutter, Curione, 289,

10  Matthaei Gribaldi et Basilii Amerbachii ad Bonifacium Basilii patrem Amerbachium Epistolae Patavinae (Basel, 1922). 11  Calvin, OC 16: no. 2623, col. 464. 12  At least as r eported by the sympathetic Castellio , Contra libellum Calvini , quoted b y Ruffini, Gribaldi, 61. 13  For the letter “Fratribus italis,” see Calvin, OC 15: no. 2018; Trechsel, Antitrinitarier, 2; Beilage, 11, 460–61.

952  the radical reformation

chapter 24.2.a

Father and Son as “due cose substantiali” or even as “due hypostasi realmente et veramente distinte” but avoided the equivalent of “consubstantial,” which would have brought them in essential unity. Instead he declared, “non posso col mi intelletto capire se non do [due] dei, l’uno existente da l’altro.” Unable to accept as rational that “in concreto et individuo, uno sia tre et re uno,” he came out, in effect, for tritheism, or actually for ditheism, since he mostly neglected to speak of the Third Person. The unity of Father and Son he saw only in their shared “power,” “wisdom,” and “quality of divinity.” By early 1555 such opinions, combined with the jealousy of h is colleagues and increasing pressure of t he Inquisition finally forced Gribaldi to flee Padua. In Zurich, Vergerio, whom Gribaldi had recommended to Calvin as a c onvert to the Reformation in 1549,14 and to whom he had spoken freely in defense of Servetus when he stopped at Chur in 1553, now recommended Gribaldi in turn to Duke Christopher of Württemberg for a position at the University of Tübingen. In Zurich, on his way to his new position, Bullinger exacted an orthodox confession of faith from Gribaldi before he was permitted to leave the city.15 As to the effectiveness of his voicing in private his increasingly radical theological tenets, one may simply note that two Polish students in Padua, Peter Gonesius and Michael Salecki (the former soon to play an important role in the spread of Servetian anabaptism in Poland and Lithuania, Ch. 25.2.h), followed by Gribaldi to Tübingen in 1555. A third and now direct encounter with Calvin occurred when Gribaldi visited Geneva in the summer of 1555. A disputation was arranged. Gribaldi, however, left outraged when Calvin refused to clasp his hand. Called before the town council, he was protected by his Bernese citizenship to the extent that he was merely banished. His position at Tübingen remained secure for two years more when prolonged investigations and correspondence stemming from the arrest of his pupil Gonesius in Poland exposed to judicial review Gribaldi’s most guarded theological convictions. Gribaldi also suffered an attempt on his life in 1557 at the hands of a d isgruntled loser in a l awsuit and he saw his friend Vergerio, in the service of D uke Christopher, turn against him. As a result of the Duke’s misgivings about his illustrious jurist, Gribaldi was summoned before the senate of the university.16 Fleeing to Farges, he was arrested for distributing heretical pamphlets and was brought to Bern

14

 Calvin, OC 13: no. 1304.  This Zurich copy is printed in OC 15, no. 2341. Gribaldi’s confession made in Geneva, by contrast, was orthodox even to the use of consubstantialis. 16  The transcript of this session, Gribaldi’s letter in defense of himself after his flight, and the subsequent for mal accusation of Duk e Christopher have been pr inted by Cantimori and Feist, Testi, 85–89, 90–91. 15

chapter 24.2.a / 24.2.b italian evangelicals in swiss exile  953 for trial. In the meantime his books in Tübingen had been confiscated and his incriminating De vera cognitione Dei discovered. The marginal notes thereon by Gribaldi’s humanist friend Curio led also to the trial of the latter in Basel (24.2.b). What little we know of the content of this lost work indicates Gribaldi’s absorption of Servetus’ abstruse theology. We are told that Gribaldi considered the three Persons to be three distinct Gods, that for him “God the highest is like Jove, the first among them,” the Son and the Spirit being subordinate deities, and that “the divine seed of the Son of God or the Word took form as a human being in the Virgin Mother, without, however, taking a human nature from her.”17 Here is the only known instance among Italian radicals of the explicit appropriation of Servetus’ doctrine of the celestial flesh of Christ, along with his more widely adopted alteration in the doctrine of the Trinity. In another work discovered in Tübingen, the Religionis Christianae progymnasmata (Preparatory excercises of the Christian religion),18 Gribaldi, in his critique of doctrine of the Trinity, shows the importance that the sending of Christ, as a demonstration of d ivine love, had for him and for all the Italian radicals. Developing passages from Tertullian and Origen which call God the Father autotheos, Gribaldi declared that because Christ was sent as Redeemer by his Father’s command, he could not be considered autotheos— true, self-controlling, and self-sufficient God—but only a subordinate God. The work indicates also an interest in the Holy Spirit as partner in a tritheistic system. In thus moving away from the Servetian interest in only the Father and Son, already reflected in his letter “Fratribus italis,” Gribaldi was now developing the subordinationist tritheism to be propagated by Dr. George Biandrata (Chs. 24.3.b, 25.2.f, 28). b. Coelius Secundus Curio Coelius Secundus Curio (Curione; 1503–69)19 brought to trial in Basel in 1557 for his marginal notes in Gribaldi’s De vera cognitione Dei, excused himself on the grounds that his notes were merely grammatical, and that he had been drawn to aid “the heretic” out of old ties of friendship and common origin. Indeed, the two were born within a few miles of each other in Piedmont. Like Gribaldi, Curio had led a h ighly peripatetic academic career. As a student, Curio had been first introduced to the Reformation in the form of Melanchthon’s Loci Communes, given him by an Austin friar. Subsequently his studies led him to Milan, where, in the environs devastated

17

 Haller to Bullinger, 14 September 1557; see OC 16: no. 2711.  Printed by Cantimori and Feist, Testi, 81–85; cf. Cantimori, Eretici, 210–11. 19  Klutter, Curione. See also Delio Cantimor i, Italiani a Basilea e a Zur igo nel Cinquento (Rome/Bellinzona, 1947). 18

954  the radical reformation

chapter 24.2.b

by the Marquis de Lautrec, Curio attended the sick and, in the absence of priests, buried the dead, and supplied the poor with goods from the parish churches.20 He pursued studies in liberal Padua (1528). After a term as tutor at the court of the counts of Montferrat, he returned to Piedmont to claim an inheritance. During a debate with a Dominican, however, he defended Luther and was denounced for heresy by his rival claimant and imprisoned. Escaping to the Milanese, he next served as professor of L atin rhetoric at the University of Pavia—again like Gribaldi at Padua—protected by a student guard. Forced eventually to resign, he fled to Venice, where he heard Ochino’s first series of L enten sermons in 1539, and thence to Ferrara, where he may have come to know Renato, who was then coming to trial there (Ch. 22.1). Under the protection of the Duchess Renée, Curio then proceeded to Lucca and joined the Bible study group there which included three others also destined for exile in the north, but for more orthodox adherence to the Reformation: the prior of S an Frediano, Peter Martyr Vermigli; 21 Jerome Zanchi (who was to become Curio’s son-in-law); and Celso Martinengo. During this time Curio’s thinking probably did not differ greatly from that of t he pro-Calvinists with whom he was associated. While in Lucca (Ch. 22.1), he produced a tract De immortalitate animorum, possibly in reaction to the libertinarian possibilities of Renato’s psychopannychism. When Vermigli was summoned to Rome in 1542, the Lucca circle broke up. Curio fled to Switzerland. Bullinger helped him obtain the principalship of the Lausanne academy, where in his relief at having escaped, he produced an antipapal satire in the form of a d ialogue, Pasquillus ecstaticus (Basel, 1544). He published the same year, Araneus, seu de providentia Dei (Basel, 1544). Having lost his post under some cloud of scandal, he was appointed professor of Latin rhetoric at Basel in 1547, composed his doctrinal Christianae religionis institutio in 1549, and translated the One Hundred Ten Considerations of Valdés the following year. Unlike the rationalist Gribaldi, Curio questions the doctrine of t he Trinity as one temperamentally inclined toward the mystical, e.g., in the Araneus.22 In the Institutio God is defined without use of the term “persona” (cf. Lorenzo Valla) or of the scriptural Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—and all in a vaguely pantheistic fashion.23

20

 Kutter, Curione, 15.  McNair, Peter Martyr, ch. viii. He does not cite the documents on Cur io and his friends when they were in Lucca, documents published by Giorgio Spini, “Alcuni episodi della Riforma lucchese del XV1 secolo,” BSSV 58, no. 70 (1938): 82–91. 22  Cantimori, Eretici, 93ff. 23  Teodoro Balma, “Il pensiero religioso di Celio Secondo Cur ione,” Religio 11 (1935): 31–60. 21

chapter 24.2.b

italian evangelicals in swiss exile  955

In 1549 a radical trend in Curio’s theology was reported by a visitor to Basel who argued with him “because Curio seemed to deny the divinity of Christ.”24 Surely he was on good terms with many theological radicals. He praised Renato to Bullinger repeatedly almost from the moment that he and Renato entered Switzerland, though he appeared to have grown a bit disillusioned with Renato by 1546, when he removed Renato from the list of d istinguished Italian reformers in the Italian version of Pasquillus ecstaticus (? Rome, 1546). He shared common ground with Renato on the interpretation of the sacraments as “signs”; and he, therefore, objected vigorously to the compromise of s acramentarianism which Bullinger had made in the Consensus Tigurinus (1549) in moving closer to Calvin on the real presence (Ch. 22.4). It is possible that Curio was actually present at the Venetian Anabaptist synod of 1550 (Ch. 22.2.d) and might even have been rebaptized himself when he visited Renato’s Rhaetia in 1553. Yet in another work of this early period, Pro vera et antiqua Ecclesiae Christi auctoritate (Basel, 1550), Curio defined his position on religious liberty as rather ambiguously Erasmian: Anabaptists should be tried, if at all, for sedition, not for their beliefs. Curio’s public moderation and Nicodemite conformity to the established church of B asel may well have been influenced by t he insecurity of his financial position and his responsibility for a l arge family. Yet he remained a friend of Ochino. He served as critical reader for the Theses de filio Dei et Trinitate 25 (once ascribed to Laelius Socinus), and for the Gribaldi work which would bring him to trial. Another suspicion about Curio stemmed from his De amplitudine beati regni Dei (Basel, 1554). 26 Having dedicated it to the king of Poland, where he probably intended to take refuge if forced to flee Basel, Curio sought to prove that God’s predestination to salvation included many more than was commonly supposed. Indeed his conviction as to universal salvation was clearly related to that of Valdés (Ch. 21.4) and of the Beneficio

24  Curio was named by Manelfi as “Johannes Secundus Curio”; for a discussion of his alleged baptism, see my “Renato,” 175. The accusation of Antitrinitarianism leveled at Curio came from the v ery man, Girolamo Allegretti, whom I ha ve suggested ma y have been the “distinguished Basilean” actually rebaptized, since he was by then an Antitrinitarian Anabaptist himself. 25  Cantimori and Feist, eds., Testi; the emendations of Cantimor i’s text of Cur io’s marginalia are given by Kutter, Curione, where he observes that Cantimori misconstrued somewhat Curione’s monendus: the author, presumed to be Laelius Socinus, should be warned against going to such untenable extremes. 26  The colophon indicating Poschiavo as the place of or igin was a ruse to avoid submitting the work to the Basel author ities for censorship. Uwe Plath, “Der Streit um Curiones De amplitudine,” in Luigi Firpo, et al., eds, Eresia e Rifor ma nell’Italia, 2 vols. (Chicago: Northern Illinois University Press, 1974).

956  the radical reformation

chapter 24.2.b / 24.2.c

de Cristo.27 Moving from his safeguarding of o therworldly punishments in De immortalitate animorum (Lucca, 1541), Curio here displayed a more charitable view, perhaps under the influence of Valdesianism as well as the universalism of his friend David Joris (Ch. 19.1) now living in Basel under the name of John of Bruges, merchant. Although Bullinger passed off the De Amplitudine with few objections, he surely would have been more alarmed had he understood it in the context of the Calvin-Servetus struggle and the writing concerning it which Curio and Castellio were then doing under pseudonyms. c. “Alphonsus Lyncurius Tarraconensis”: An “Apology” for Servetus Lyncurius of Tarraco (Tarragonia in Catalonia) is a p seudonym, covering the authorship of either Curio or Gribaldi, more likely the latter. The remainder of Curio’s life in any event would be an epilogue. Repeatedly refusing further invitations to teach, he would soon be overwhelmed by the successive deaths of his children: daughter Violante ( Jerome Zanchi’s wife) in 1556, three other daughters, son Orazio (an imperial privy councilor) in 1564, and son Agostino (who held the chair of rhetoric at Basel) in 1566. Curio would die in Basel on 25 November 1569. We turn to the Apology, which generally represented the outrage experienced by I talians once drawn to the Reformation and now aghast at Calvin’s deed (which was supported by B ullinger and other magisterial reformers as far away as Wittenberg). Gribaldi appears to have been the author of the pseudonymous Apologia pro Michaele Serveto composed early in 1554 under the name of Alphonsus Lyncurius Tarraconensis. 28 The Apologist of Tarragonia in Catalonia was evidently well acquainted with the circumstances of the Genevan prisoner. “Lyncurius” says in another document that Servetus entrusted to him not only his plans to proceed from Geneva to Venice but also some of h is writings. 29 The Apologist evidently had firsthand knowledge of Servetus’

27  In the previous year, the wandering visionary Giovanni Leonardi from the Piedmont had published a work at Basel which may also have influenced Curio, whose houseguest he had been. Leonardi’s Lucida Explanatio super librum Alchoranum prepared for the con version of the Muslims by offering an analysis of the Chr istian doctrine as contained in the K oran, “rightly understood.” See Cantimori, Eretici, 165ff. Uwe Plath, “Ein unbekannter Brief Pierre Virets liber Giovanni ‘Pseudomoses’ aus dem Piedmont,” Schweizerische für Geschichte 22 (1972): 458–69. Such interfaith concern will first find its highest expression among Italians in Francis Pucci, another wanderer (Ch. 24.4). 28  The work is published in OC 15: no. 1918. The allusion to Calvin’s published Libellus, col. 62, gives a terminus a quo for the Apologia. It is translated by David Pingree, IRS, 197–214 29  The authorship of this w ork was once v ariously assigned: to Mar tin Cellarius of Basel, because he is known to have possessed a copy of Servetus’ Restitutio; to Curio, because his handwriting had supposedly been identified in the marginalia of the Basel MS , and because he is kno wn

chapter 24.2.c

italian evangelicals in swiss exile  957

writings. 29 The Apologist evidently had first hand knowledge of Servetus’

to have passed on to his son a copy of the Restitutio; and to Laelius Socinus, partly because the Greek behind Lyncurius is the equi valent of Latin soccinum (amber), in alleged allusion to Laelius’ family name. Cantimori, Eretici (1939), 175, proposed Laelius as the author. Kutter, Curione (1955), agreed with him in at least “exonerating” Curio of all but the marginalia. Neither man knew of the reinforcement to be given to the Curio hypothesis by Kot’s work in Becker, Autour de Servet et Castellion (1953), 113, on the pr eface to Ser vetus’ Declaratio (Ch. 11.1), written by the same “Alphonsus Lyncurius” in possession of the same personal information about Servetus as our Apologist. Since all these theories more or less cancel each other out,I assumed, in Radical Reformation, 1st ed. (1962), 623 n. 8, that Gribaldi was the author, for his known views, style, career, profession, and itinerary comport well with the presence of a “Lyncurius” MS in both Basel and Tübingen. There is fur ther circumstantial evidence in that when in 1567 George Biandrata, who knew Gribaldi very well, came to list great leaders after Erasmus,Valdés, and Servetus, mentioning among others Laelius Socinus, Cellarius, and Gentile, he included “Lyncurius,” and perhaps, thereby, left room for the lor d of Farges to be under stood under that pseudon ym. Writing in Transylvania Biandrata might well have been unaware of Gribaldi’s death in 1564 and, thereby, sought to protect him. Cf. Kot, in Becker, Servet et Castellion, 87. Alain Dufour showed that Peter Viret and perhaps e ven Calvin were in cor respondence with Gribaldi as a convert to Protestantism as early as January 1542, which would further increase the pr obability of Gr ibaldi’s authorship of the Apologia, the w ork of a jur ist for a jurist, “Deux Lettres de Pier re Viret,” Revue de théologie et de philosophie , 3rd series, 11 (1961): 222–35. Dufour has also suggested that Curio was the possible author of the poetic Epitaphium Michaelis Serveti, “Vers latins pour Servet,” Mélanges offerts à M Paul-E. Martin (Geneva: Comité des mélanges P-E. Martin, 1961), 483–96. The proximity of the composition of the Apologia to the execution is inferred from such evidence as (1) the absence of any reference to the Restitutio, only one copy of which will have been available in Geneva in 1553, as distinguished from the two earlier Alsatian works on the Trinity, (2) the absence of any reference to the connivance of Calvin in the trial at Lyons, which only later became generally known, and (3) the vivid interest in the manner of Servetus’ entry into the city, his impr isonment, and his tr ial—the kind of details that w ould recede into the background with the passage of time and with some distance between the writer and the place of the event. That the author was an Italian is of cour se only a conjecture—a composite of all the figures suggested by modern scholarship—Cellarius being the only non-Italian candidate among them. The impassioned style is m uch closer to the kno wn works of Gr ibaldi than to those of the more placid and dry Socinus or the humanistically mannered Curio. The Curione authorship was supported by David Pingree in the introduction to his English translation of the Apologia, IRS (1965), 199–200. The attribution was based on the similar ity of rhetorical style (although the corrector’s hand in the single remaining Basel MS copy had been shown not to be Curio’s) and on Vergerio’s discovery of the alleged identity of Lyncurius-Curio among the papers of a Polish Antitrinitarian. Vergerio’s tendency to blame Curio with heretical tendencies in order to wrest from him the leader ship of the Italian exiles should be noted. The Kot-Pingree arguments temporarily weakened my earlier attribution to Gribaldi (1962). I omitted the argumentation from Radical Reformation, 2d ed. (1983). However, Uwe Plath further advanced the Gribaldi hypothesis,“Noch einmal ‘Lyncurius’: Einige Gedanken zu Gribaldi, Curione, Calvin und Servet,” BHR 31 (1969): 606–9. In commenting on Plath’s article, Albano Biondi dealt with the unreliability of the tw o testimonies from Vergerio seeking to identify the Apologia with his rival, Curio, Rivista storica italiana 82 (1970): 70. Then finally the authority on Laelius Socin us, Rotondò, ed., Opere, in showing that Socin us was not the author of the Apologia, sometimes ascribed to him, rehearses the scholarship of surmises and concludes: “e mi para si possa consid erare ormai acquisita la conclusion chi si tratta de un complesso di scr itti attribuibili al Gribaldi, compres la stessa Declaratio, in quanto opere pseudepigrafa di Serveto” (313). As for the Declaratio being not from Servetus but from Gribaldi also, Rotondò cites Carlos Gilly, Spanien und der Basler Buchdruck bis 1600: Ein Querschnitt durch die spanische Geistesgeschichte aus Sicht einer europäischen Bücherstadt (Basel/Frankfurt: Halbing & Lichtenhahn, 1985), 298–318. 29

958  the radical reformation

chapter 24.2.c

plans to edit and publish a commentary to the Pagnini Bible in Venice. 30 The Apology passionately and with mordancy enters into alleged legal improprieties connected with the trial of Servetus. The Apology is the oldest fully explicit espousal of Servetian thought by an Italian in our era. The overwhelming theological conviction of t he Apologist is that the Protestant divines have concentrated on the “tail” of t he complex theological body of Catholicism, and dealt with such matters as “the Mass, purgatory, sacraments, penance, satisfaction, fasting, the invocation of saints, images, monastic vows, celibacy, free will, and predestination,” claiming that all these are entirely or in part corrupted by the papal Antichrist, but that they have refused to examine the “head,” the capital doctrines concerning God, Christ, and the Spirit! Traditional formulations here have been taken over by the timid Reformers, unexamined, unchallenged. Yet the doctrine of the Trinity is blasphemous to begin with, a feminine trinitas being put in the place of God the Father, creator of heaven and earth. The “Trinity” is an imaginary construct introduced by the Greeks, elaborated in papal hallucinations, a chimera of the scholastics, not to be found in the Scriptures. Servetus, in fact, he says, was not far off when, in his reported conversation, he called it a hideous Cerberus. This dogma blasphemes God the Father, caricatures Christ, and judges the Holy Spirit, who judges all things and should be judged by none [1 Cor. 2:15]! Servetus, according to the Apologist, was no less inspired by the Spirit than Luther. The Catholic Church, shaken by the challenge of Luther, acted vigorously, not moving to burn him but, rather, to argue with him. The Spirit perhaps inspired Zwingli also; and, in his sacramentarian extreme, he was, in turn, obnoxious to Luther. Did Luther rally the princes to compass Zwingli’s execution? No, he personally debated the problems at Marburg. The Apologist goes on attacking Calvin by stating that Calvin unscripturally and illegally contrived Servetus’ death under the pretext of defending the Trinity but actually in “personal revenge.” In committing Servetus to the flames, Calvin confirmed the Catholics in their disposition to use flames on heretics, and the concept of “ heretics” among them was to be broadly defined! What kind of Christianity is that which proclaims its “good news with flames”? Where in the Genevan Reformation is the God who said that he wanted not the death of a s inner but repentance, who warned that in any event vengeance was his, not man’s. Where in the so-called recovery of evangelical Christianity in Geneva is the “humility, patience, benignity, longsuffering, and mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ,” who enjoined love for one another and prayer for those that despitefully used one? Did he not

30  Namely, in the preface to the Declaratio of Servetus (above Ch. 11, at n. 38) printed by Kot, in Becker, Servet et Castellion, 113.

chapter 24.2.c / 24.2.d italian evangelicals in swiss exile  959 instruct his closest followers to await the Final Judgment for the separation of the tares from the wheat? Where in the so-called apostolic Christianity in Geneva are the precepts and examples observed of such apostolic spokesmen as Paul, John, Ignatius, and Irenaeus? They seem entirely unknown in Geneva insofar as their principles would apply in the realm of human conduct. Even the Neros of history would be horrified if they should learn that Christians were now burning Christians in the public arena of Christendom! God is not a substance, the Apologist goes on, affirming his own convictions as identical with those of Servetus, but he is the Creator and Father, who commissioned his only-begotten Son to redeem the world and has sent forth his Spirit to work in the hearts of men, performing the miracle of a thief ’s conversion, of a b lind man’s illumination, and of a p rodigal son’s return. Let Calvin follow Gamaliel if he cannot follow Christ and Paul, and at least wait and see whether this new thing be of God! d. Sebastian Castellio The Savoyard Sebastian Castellio31 (1509–63) stands out with his Concerning Heretics (1554) even more boldly than Curio, Gribaldi, and the pseudonymous Apologist (whether Curio or Gribaldi) in giving systematic public expression to the revulsion shared by m ost Spiritualists and Evangelical Rationalists against persecution for reasons of faith and conscience. Born of prosperous farmers in Saint Martin-du-Fresne near Nantua in Savoy, Castellio had studied at Lyons and been converted to Protestantism on reading Calvin’s Institutes. He had gone to Strassburg to confer with Calvin and stayed in his home in 1540. When Calvin was recalled to Geneva, Castellio accompanied him and was given charge of the new college. For his students, he rendered in classical Latin expurgated abridgments of the Bible, his oft-reprinted Dialogi sacri (1541). After his marriage, in order to supplement his college stipend from parish work, Castellio in 1544 requested ordination. Calvin, despite a shortage of trained pastors, refused to admit him to the ministry because, among other things, Castellio denied the divine inspiration of the Song of Songs and refused to accept, in respect to Christ’s descent into hell, Calvin’s allegorization of hell in the Genevan Catechism (1545) 32 as the consummation of Christ’s anguish and the experience of utter desertion by God the Father.

31

 A still solid bio graphy is that of Bainton, Travail, 97–124. The basic w ork is that of Ferdinand Buisson, Sébastien Castellion: Sa vie et son oeuvre (1515–63): Etude sur les or igines du protestantisme libéral français, 2 vols. (Paris, 1892). See also Roland Bainton et al., Castellioniana: Quatre études sur Sébastien Castellion et l’idée de la tolérance (Leiden: Brill, 1951); and Becker, Servet et Castellion, 158–288. 32  OC, cols. 29ff.

960  the radical reformation

chapter 24.2.d

Castellio, like many others in the Radical Reformation, insisted on the literal descent of Christ into hell as the only means of redeeming the Old Testament worthies (Ch. 32.2.c). Calvin, though a sober, searching exegete in his commentaries on the Bible and in his Institutes, foundational to which was the Apostolicum, evaded the literal sense of the Apostles’ Creed (descendit ad inferna). Calvin still thought well of Castellio as a teacher, if not as a minister, and sought to find another position for him. Castellio removed to Basel. There he suffered extreme poverty. For a while he supported himself and his family by capturing stray timber floating down the Rhine. He was at length rescued from penury for intellectual activity more worthy of his training. He got work as a proofreader on biblical and classical texts and received his master of arts degree at the University of Basel. Castellio, in 1554, under the pseudonym of M artin Bellius, in his famous De haereticis an sint persequendi, 33 defending Servetus, challenged the thesis that heretics should be persecuted. De haereticis (Concerning Heretics) immediately won acclaim from the many who deplored Calvin’s deed. Seeing the work soon after its publication, Theodore Beza at once surmised that it was from Castellio, adding that also Laelius Socinus and Curio might have been involved. To these identifications, Calvin added the name of M artin Borrhaus (Cellarius), who had long stood on the shifting boundaries between Spiritualism and Anabaptism (Chs. 3.2, 10.2.c). Borrhaus, now well established at the university, was certainly not directly involved. 34 The collaboration of Curio and Socinus is unlikely, except in matters of compilation and translation. 35 This farrago or anthology (depending on the point of view) excerpted Lactantius, Chrysostom, Jerome, and Augustine against the execution of heretics, added the testimony of E rasmus, and quoted similar statements from Luther, John Brenz (Ch. 10.1), Urbanus Rhegius, and even Calvin; from the “Erasmian” Protestant liberals, 36 Caspar Hedio, Conrad Pellican, Curio, and Otto Brunfels (Ch. 8.4.b); from the religious radicals Sebastian Franck and Castellio himself! In the dedication of De haereticis to Duke Christopher of Württemberg (prince over John Brenz, whose tract of 1528

33

 Tr. Roland Bainton, with other per tinent documents and excer pts, Concerning Heretics, Records of Civilization, Sources and Studies 22 (New York, 1935). There is an Italian anthology of Castellio’s writings, ed. Giorgio Radetti, Fede, Dubbio e Tolleranza (Florence: Mie¸dzynarodowy lnstytut Filozofii, 1960). 34  Bainton suggests that Borrhaus prepared the German translations; Concerning Heretics, 7. 35  The discovery by Bruno Becker of a late apology of Castellio for the De haereticis has established that Castellio wrote not only the passages ascribed to Bellius but also those of “Basil Montfort” and “George Kleinberg,” which ar e but variations of Castellio’s own name. “Un manuscrit inédit de Castellion,” Castellioniana, 101–11. 36  Cf. Bainton, Travail, 79ff.

chapter 24.2.d

italian evangelicals in swiss exile  961

protesting the brutality of Au strian persecution of t he Anabaptists was incorporated into Castellio’s book), “Bellius” first defined heretics as those with “whom we disagree.” Showing how difficult it is to judge of doctrine (as compared to the judging of conduct), he appealed for a common sense approach: Let not the Jews or Turks condemn the Christians, nor let the Christians condemn the Jews or Turks, but rather teach and win them by true religion and justice, and let us, who are Christians, not condemn one another, but, if we are wiser than they, let us also be better and more merciful. This is certain: that the better a man knows the truth, the less is he inclined to condemn, as appears in the case of Christ and the apostles. But he who lightly condemns others shows thereby that he knows nothing precisely, because he cannot bear others, for to know is to know how to put into practice. He who does not know how to act mercifully and kindly does not know the nature of shame. 37 Christians who delude themselves so as to justify religious persecution become worse than the Jews and Turks they would convert: Who would wish to be a Christian, when he saw that those who confessed the name of Christ were destroyed by Christians themselves with fire, water, and the sword without mercy and more cruelly treated than brigands and murderers? Who would not think Christ a Moloch, or some such god, if he wished that men should be immolated to him and burned alive? Who would wish to serve Christ on condition that a difference of opinion on a controversial point with those in authority should be punished by burning alive at the command of Christ himself more cruelly than in the bull of Phalaris, even though from the midst of the flames, he should call with a loud voice upon Christ, and should cry out that he believed in Him? 38 Imagine Christ, the judge of all, present. Imagine Him pronouncing the sentence, and applying the torch. Who would not hold Christ for a Satan? What more could Satan do than burn those who call upon the name of Christ? 39 After the publication of Concerning Heretics, the magisterial reformers never ceased to hound Castellio. Beza, outraged, at once retorted with his De haereticis a civili magistratu puniendis. Calvin wrote A Defense of the Faith against the Errors of Michael Servetus. Castellio was bold enough to reply to 37

 Ibid., 132–33.  This is a poignant recollection of what Servetus did cry out from the flames. 39  Ibid., 133–34. 38

962  the radical reformation

chapter 24.2.d / 24.2.e

both of t he Genevans, and they tried to bring about Castellio’s dismissal from the University at Basel, but a p arty rallied to his support. Calvin demanded a public debate, which took place at Bern in 1555. In the same year, Castellio was busy translating the Bible into French (Ch. 32.1). Castellio and Curio formed the center of a n academic group at Basel distinguished more by its generally liberal and tolerant orientation than by either a rationalistic or spiritualistic tendency to radical doctrinal positions. It included David Joris and Borrhaus, as well as Boniface Amerbach and the printers Peter Perna and John Oporinus. A certain spirit common to that of Servetus pervaded this group, and above all the tendency to subjectivization of religious experience with internal illumination and mysticizing spiritualism.40 For Castellio such a b elief implied a s harp distinction between the realms of faith and reason as he articulated it in the final year of his life in the De arte dubitandi (Basel 1563).41 In Castellio, unlike most of his associates, the exaltation of man finally transcended the limitations of Reformed orthodoxy, and resulted in the admission of free will—a will so important that it dominates even faith, conceived of as a subjective goal, after which each individual must strive. In his final year Castellio seems also to have been concerned with the doctrine of t he Trinity.42 An adiaphoron, that is, a concern of subjective faith on which all positions were to be tolerated, Triadology was for Castellio not rational; and he expressed the hope that the traditional framework concerning the Godhead might be eliminated in order to clear the way for the conversion of the Turks and Jews to a simplified Christianity. Other religious refugees who were outspoken in their criticism of Calvin’s execution of Servetus, and who undertook similar doctrinal departures from Reformed orthodoxy, were Bernardine Ochino and Laelius Socinus. e. Bernardine Ochino On the morrow of t he execution of S ervetus, with the ashes still warm, Bernardine Ochino (Ch. 21.4) arrived in Geneva, en route from the England of Mary, belated spouse of Philip II of Spain, and gave Calvin his opinion in outrage and sorrow. He went on to Chiavenna, then to Basel, where in the home of Curio he met a number of Polish students, and then to Zurich. Here, through the influence of L aelius Socinus (24.2.f ), he was called as pastor (1555–63) of the Italian congregation, which was made up of about

40  See the characterization of Joseph Leder, Histoire de la Tolérance au siècle de la Réforme, 2 vols. (Paris: Aubier, 1955). 41  The relationship of fr ee will and toleration to Castellio’ s hermeneutics is explained below, Ch. 32.1. 42  Rotondò, “Atteggiamenti,” 1006–7.

chapter 24.2.e

italian evangelicals in swiss exile  963

a hundred refugees from Locarno.43 The small size of t he congregation, regarded as provisional until the members should have time to learn German and become part of t he regular Zurich parishes, gave Ochino leisure to write. It is clear that the minds of L aelius Socinus and pastor Bernardine Ochino acted powerfully on each other. In 1556, Ochino had published his Dialogo del Purgatorio (also in Latin and German), in which he (as Deodatus), after initial bantering with a Dominican to the effect that surely one of the omnipotent pontiffs of Rome would have, in a moment of charity, emptied purgatory of its wretched denizens, went on to uphold, against the serious defenders of the Catholic dogmas, the view that the sole purgatory was Jesus himself, who purified man of his sins. In the same year, Ochino published, against an extreme Lutheran, the Syncerae et verae doctrinae de coena Domini defensio, in which he defended the essential unity of the Swiss Reformed sacramentarians of the Consensus Tigurinus and declared that the belligerent Lutheran’s appeal to the sword instead of working further at the eucharistic problem with his pen reminded one of M uhammad. Ochino described the Supper as a commemoration of the exemplary death of Christ without its having been a payment for sin and suggested thereby a Valdesian doctrine of t he Atonement.44 None of t he Swiss Reformers were pleased with Ochino’s officious defense of their Consensus. Ochino’s other Zurich works were, because of the problem of possible censorship, published in Basel in 1561. One was Tractatio de conciliatione inter reformatas Ecclesias. Another was Disputa intorno alla presenza del Corpo di Gesù Cristo nel sacramento della Cena, dedicated to Lady Isabelle Bresegna. Rejecting, of course, the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, Ochino, herein, also challenged Calvin’s eucharistic theology of t he communication of the believer per fidem in the glorified humanity of Christ in heaven. Ochino, in a m oving passage, describes the love of C hrist for his fellow men, and of G od his Father in giving him, his only-begotten Son, in an action that in a Valdesian spirit made of the physical commemoration of the Lord’s Supper almost an adiaphoron, for, Ochino says, the forgiven thief (Luke 23:43) was saved directly from his cross without any Eucharistic theology or awareness of a ny Last Supper. Moreover, the Apostles’ Creed

43  Laelius Socinus wrote in Italian to the r efugee Reformed congregation in Locarno, 13 January 1555, Epistola 31, Rotondò, ed., Opere, who documents the fact that the congregation assembled in Zur ich 12 June 1553 and that Laelius and Mar tin Muralto went back to Basel primarily to conduct Ochino back to Zurich as their duly-called pastor. 44  Bainton, Ochino, 44.

964  the radical reformation

chapter 24.2.e

itself made no reference to the Eucharist.45 The Disputa is of special interest as a Spiritualist manifesto, in which the refugee ex-Capuchin pointed out to the exiled Valdesian lady that it was not necessarily evil to remain in a Catholic land and to observe the required external acts of piety, since wherever one is, there are always external aspects of t he Christian cultus and community which one cannot wholeheartedly endorse. Even the primitive Church had its Judas. Ochino was writing not only against the eucharistic theology of t he Consensus Tigurinus but also against Calvin’s tract on the allegedly evasive Nicodemites (Ch. 23.2). From eucharistic theology and the forgiven thief, Ochino moved into the very center of R eformation theology, the problem of p redestination and free will. He published his Italian sermons on the subject and also a Latin translation in 1561 under the title Laberinti, both versions dedicated to Queen Elizabeth. Although he was certain that faith was a gift of grace, he did not feel that theological precision in respect to the doctrine of predestination was necessary for salvation.46 Also in 1561, he published for his congregation Il Catechismo, with Antitrinitarian undertones. In respect to the doctrine of the descent of Christ into hell, he rejected Calvin’s interpretation of it as a symbol of consummate suffering in favor of a literal descent, the view also held by Castellio and most Anabaptists (Ch. 32.2.c). In 1562, Ochino published a s eries of s ermons in which he deplored the exclusiveness of the various Protestant churches alongside the equally intolerant Church of Rome, mentioning also the conventicles of the Anabaptists and Libertines, among the countless new contenders for having the “true” church. His message was that fighting Christians cannot be true Christians, nor their gospel the authentic good news. Then, in 1563, he published, also in Basel, his XXX Dialogi in a Latin translation by C astellio. Herein, the former Capuchin who had in his Lenten sermons in Italy cried, “Woe unto Venice; woe, Siena,” was saying, “Woe unto Zurich; woe, Geneva,” but in more subdued tones, for he was now a married minister, not a friar, and still pastor of a small and immigrant congregation. The drift of the dialogues, for example, between imprisoned Cardinal Morone and Pope Pius IV, was the impropriety of using force in the realm of faith. Ochino denounced the burning of Servetus in Geneva and the drowning of Anabaptists in Zurich. A lost sheep should be brought back lovingly to the ninety and nine, not slaughtered (Matt. 18:10–14). No

45

 Ochino had dealt with the same Lucan thief in his “Dialogue concerning the Thief on the Cross” from Dialogi sette (1542); tr. Elizabeth Gleason, Reform Thought, 35–44, where the Eucharist is not mentioned. 46  This is Bainton’s view, Ochino, 123, as against Erich Hassinger, who argued that Ochino was Calvinistic in his doctr ine of predestination to the v ery end. Studien zu Jacobus Acontius, Abhandlungen zur Mittleren und Neueren Geschichte 76 (Berlin, 1934), 97–109.

chapter 24.2.e / 24.2.f

italian evangelicals in swiss exile  965

one should die for denying the Nicene formulations of t he Trinity or for any other doctrine unless that person himself believed it to be essential for salvation! The adversaries of O chino maintained that, besides being weak on the Trinity, he had also justified polygamy47 under color of a p retended refutation. This led to his banishment from Zurich. A hearing subsequent to the banishment uncovered further theological deviations from Helvetic orthodoxy in the Dialogi regarding the doctrines of justification, the Atonement, and baptism. Ochino fled to Basel, but found no haven. Mühlhausen proved inhospitable. He took refuge at Nuremberg until the spring of 1564, where he wrote his defense, La Prudenza humana e Ochino,48 against the charges which had led to his banishment from Zurich. A w idower at seventy-six, he gathered up his four young children, and took to the road, first to Frankfurt; he then removed to Poland (about which Socinus had given him a good report) and settled briefly near Cracow (Ch. 29.6). f. Laelius Socinus (Lelio Sozzini) Laelius Socinus, who had left Italy after Ochino, and before the defection of the Anabaptist Peter Manelfi (1551), was, as a layman, freer to come and go than the clerical evangelicals. He had reached Padua (Ch. 4.f ) by t he time Servetus was executed, but both Beza and Calvin, as noted above, suspected that Laelius had collaborated with Castellio in De haereticis, while others opined that he was behind the Apology of “Lyncurius” (Ch. 24.2.c). The fate of Servetus now focused Socinus’ inquiring mind on the Trinity. After touching base in Zurich, he sojourned successively in Basel ( January 1554) and Geneva (April 1554), where he made incautious remarks. Socinus resumed his residence in Zurich, where he now found himself constrained by Bullinger (at the insistence of Calvin and others) to reaffirm his orthodoxy in a Confessio de Deo (15 July 1555).49 Herein, he asseverated his right

47

 In Dialogue XXI (see Ch. 20.3.c). This Dialogue could have been first elaborated by Ochino in England, along with that on di vorce, to shed light on the pr oblem of succession of the oft-divorced and practically polygamist monarch, Henry VIII. His only son, Edward, had a clear title, but of the leg itimacy of his daughter s Mary and Elizabeth ther e had been high religio-political debate. Nevertheless, the Dialogue is expressly dedicated to King Sigismund II of Poland who very much felt the need to leg itimate his would-be bigamous relation with his passionately beloved Barbara Radziwiłłowna, sister of Pr ince Nicholas Radziwił the Black, while retaining his Hapsburg spouse. 48  Published by Johann Schellhorn, Ergötzlichen aus der Kirchenhistorie (Ulm-Leipzig, 1764), 3:2009–35, and studied by Trechsel, Antitrinitarier, 2:2650–66. Curiously, in his Prudenza, with more clarity than ever before, Ochino affirms his earlier proclamations on polygamy and questions, in all seriousness, without much knowledge of Christian history, whether the papacy had not imposed monogamy on the laity, as it had imposed celibacy on the clergy, to make the life of men unnaturally miserable! 49  Critically edited by Rotondò, Opere, 98–100; English translation by Edward M. Hulme in Persecution and Liberty: Essays in Honor of George Lincoln Burr (New York, 1931), 221–25.

966  the radical reformation

chapter 24.2.f

to the “holy liberty of inquiring from my elders and disputing modestly and reverently in order to enhance my knowledge of divine things.” Laelius in his Confessio was evasive: I, Laelius Sozinus,50 in my boyhood learned one creed, that which is called the Apostles’ Creed, which I e ven now acknowledge to be the most ancient, accepted at all times in the Church, though drawn up in various forms. But I have lately read others also, and attribute all the honor I c an and ought to the very old creeds of Nicaea and Constantinople. While professing to abhor “the errors of Servetus and the whole Arian theology” and that of the Anabaptists as well, he continues to avoid saying in what precisely these errors consisted. He never really commits himself to the ancient creeds, merely acknowledging that they and the technical terms of the Trinity and Christology have been in use for the last 1,300 years, “from the time of Justin Martyr”; but he would like to hear “the evangelical faith … in the words of Christ, the Apostles, and the Evangelists.” He insists that dissenters in faith should not be punished “otherwise than by the Christian and the apostolic law” and this includes presumably warning and banning, placed, however, in the framework of a r ather ferocious eschatology with the vindictive sword of Christ of t he Second Advent as foreseen by t he Seer of R evelation with swirling flames and brimstone. On the question of the sleep of the soul, he is equivocal, but his Renatian eschatological convictions are suggested when he concludes: “May all my desire be directed to this end—the resurrection [of the righteous] from the dead, that caught up in the clouds I may meet my Lord in the air [1 Thess. 4:17] and ever live with him, praising our God and Father world without end.” He thus holds to a r esurrection of t he righteous only and reduces the meting out of judgment to those living (“the quick”) at the moment of Christ’s Second Advent to be followed by the rapture into heaven of the godly, but oblivion, not active punishment, for the wicked. Bullinger allowed himself to be convinced that Laelius was orthodox, and the two shook hands in confirmation. Only Julius of Milan, to whom Bullinger reported the Confession in detail, was wary, reminding Bullinger that all who had once imbibed the doctrine of Servetus, Renato, and the Anabaptists in general, found it “impossible to get rid of t heir indelible impressions.”51 A f ellow Italian, who remained unswervingly Protestant, Jerome Zanchi, once said of Socinus that he was “a man full of divine her-

50  This Latinization of his name with one “z” is the sole basis for the older usage of referring to him in Italian as Lelio Sozini. 51  The letters between Bullinger and Julius are printed in Bullingers Korrespondenz, ns. 290, 296.

chapter 24.2.f

italian evangelicals in swiss exile  967

esies,” which, however, he never put forward for the sake of disputations, but always questioningly, with the desire to learn.52 Indeed, he characteristically posed as a seeker and discipulus of the more learned theologians. He never appeared as magisterial, except in his posthumous legacy: his radical interpretation of John 1. Laelius Socinus did, however, enter the arena of p ublic theology, as Calvin and Bullinger were completing their convergence on eucharistic theology. This was in his De sacramentis disseratio (1555), addressed to the leadership of t he churches of Z urich and Geneva and of w hich Laelius delivered a copy to John Wolf, pastor of Fraumünster in Zurich, who amicably responded, 1 February 1555, thus fixing for us the approximate date and the theological context.53 Although not published in his lifetime, De sacramentis testifies not only to the spiritualizing thrust of Laelius but also to his diffident participation in a public theological issue, which may indeed suggest that he had in his mind the model of Camillo Renato and his rite of Caspano in the Trattato on the sacraments, now being echoed in De sacramentis.54 Wolf, in his amicable but critical response, regretted that Laelius appeared to “have made out of t he sacraments” mere signs at once nuda, inania, and vacua. Laelius indeed made much of what Paul himself asserted in Romans 4:9–12, that Abraham “received circumcision as a sign or seal of the righteousness which he had [already] by faith while he was still uncircumcised,” and Laelius specifies, “fourteen years before.”55 As for the principal sacrament at issue, the Eucharist, in the same month of Wolf ’s response to Laelius on sacraments in general, there was published in both Geneva and Zurich a j oint Defensio of “the orthodox [Reformed] doctrine concerning the sacrament” and the formula of mutual Consensio, thus culminating a full decade of efforts of the French- and German-speaking cantons of t he Swiss Confederation to respond to Luther’s fierce attack on the Zwinglians (and in general the Swiss Reformed), one of the last publications in Luther’s lifetime, Kurzes Bekenntnis vom Sakra-

52

 Quoted by Illgen, Socini, 65.  Epistole 32, Rotondò, ed., Opere. 54  Rotondò, editor of the works of both Italians, notes the parallel, Sozzini, Opere, 86 n.4. 55  That what qualified Abram in the first instance was faith is especially the stress of the New Testament, here in Rom. 4:9 and in Heb . 17:8. Laelius reckons the interval between (1) the act of faith and (2) the “sacrament” as fourteen years, i.e. between (1) the vision to Abram, whereat he believed in the Lord and the Lord reckoned to him his believing as righteousness (Gen. 14:6) plus the nine months of pr egnancy of Hagar and the consequent bir th of Ishmael, when Abram was 86, and (2) the circumcision of himself, presumably, at age 99, and of Ishmael and the slaves as the sign of the covenant of promise to be confirmed through the birth of Isaac through Sara (Gen. 17:9–10). Rotondò, ed., Opere, 86. 53

968  the radical reformation

chapter 24.2.f

ment (1545).56 As all magisterial reformers largely agreed on territorially determined pedobaptismal rites, the sacrament at issue was, of course, the Eucharist. Calvin, having found the Zwinglian view of mere commemoration inadequate and uncongenial, had, as the preeminent Swiss divine, been for some time endeavoring to unite in one body and communion of Protestants the Saxon and Swiss churches in a common eucharistic theology. Much beyond that of Z urich, Calvin had developed a t heology of b oth commemoration and the spiritual real presence in the Supper of the Lord through the presence of the glorified human nature of Christ, yet in heaven, and hence of the communicant’s momentary, celebrative fruition of C hrist by f aith.57 But quite apart from the Lutheran realm, it had, in the meantime, become urgent, within multilingual Reformed Switzerland, to unite the Swiss Reformed churches among themselves (over against the Catholic cantons of the Confederation). Bullinger, successor of Zwingli as Antistes in Zurich,58 in a first draft of a n eventual compromise with Geneva had taken the initiative to move towards the position of Calvin. At first rebuffed, he thereupon invited Calvin and John Farel to Zurich. Together, they issued Bullinger’s slightly expanded draft as the Consensus Tigurinus, that is, of the Agreement of Zurich, in twenty-four articles, published concurrently in both Zurich and Geneva (1551),59 to be reaffirmed, as noted above, in the Defensio and Consensio. For Laelius, especially disturbing, in the consolidation of t he panHelvetic magisterial sacramental theology, in the first versions of the Consensus Tigurinus, was the predestinarian restriction of s acramental grace to the elect. In this same setting, Laelius wrote a (lost) letter to Calvin with four questions for which Calvin prepared a cool and distancing Responsio addressed to Laelius, 5 June 1555, concerning the atoning work of Christ, predestination, perseverance, and the reprobate.60 Out of t he Catholic Evangelical milieu of his university youth, Laelius had evidently sought to uphold the plenary intention of the mercy of God in election and also the freedom of the will of Christians in accepting saving grace. Laelius will have felt solidarity on this with Oswald Myconius and Curio in Basel, who were holding hack from the concessions Bullinger had been making to Calvin. He also felt some affinity with Martin Cellarius, successively professor of rhetoric and Hebrew in Basel from 1541/1544–64, who still clung 56

 WA 10 II, 141–67.  The “real presence” implies a presence in the Eucharist that is substantial, continuous in time; but Calvin intended a momentary presence actualized in the faith of the elect, and hence spiritual. 58  The Latin for chief pr iest or o verseer of the temple w as used in Zur ich, Basel, Schaffhausen, not of Calvin in Geneva. 59  For the whole Swiss context of the Consensus, see Schaff, Creeds, 1:471–73. 60  Epistola 35, Rotondò, ed., Opere. 57

chapter 24.2.f

italian evangelicals in swiss exile  969

to his spiritualizing view of the sacraments, long since expressed in his De operibus Dei (Strassburg, 1527). But Laelius, once his student in Basel,61 could not agree with Cellarius in his high predestinarianism in sharp distinction between the predestined elect (who are already saved without need of sacramental baptism, and who participate in the body and blood of Christ by their faith) and the eternally reprobate (who even when they do, by social conformity, participate, merely confirm their reprobation, for they are preordained not to have faith). Yet again Laelius was like Cellarius in breaking from the alleged continuity between the circumcision in the Old Testament and the baptism of the New Testament, presumably for adults on profession of faith. Cellarius himself, however, for his part conceded baptism also for infants “out of human charity” and agreeable social conformity. After his father died, Laelius Socinus became, in August 1556, involved in an effort to vindicate his patrimony, which had been promptly impounded by order of the Inquisition. But first he visited Wittenberg, where he made the acquaintance of Zachary Ursinus.62 Armed with letters of recommendation from Melanchthon, he went on a long tour of German, Polish, and Hapsburg courts, purportedly in order to obtain princely support for an appeal to Grand Duke Cosimo de’Medici at Florence for the recovery of his own and his family’s estates. He was well received in Vienna by Maximlian, King of Bohemia and Archduke of Austria, who presented him with a letter of commendation. Socinus did not, however, proceed homeward beyond Venice. The Inquisition had its eyes on the whole family. His brother Cornelio was imprisoned in Rome.63 His other brothers, Celso and Camillo, and his nephew Faustus (Ch. 24.5) were “reputati Luterani.” In August 1559, Laelius Socinus returned to Switzerland, without having secured his estate, to live in Zurich with a silk manufacturer. His extended circuit of s everal capitals generated substantial surviving correspondence. Laelius en route wrote three letters to Bullinger from Tübingen and one to him from Augsburg. Łaski’s secretary, Utenhove, wrote Laelius from an estate near Cracow. Laelius wrote Bullinger from Cracow (23 January 1559), another to him from Vienna (24 May 1559),

61  That he was a student of Cellar ius in Hebrew we learn from Epistola 42, 14 October 1557, Rotondò, ed., Opere. Therein he addresses Cellarius by his Ger man surname, Borrhaus, asking him to reconcile contradictory passages in the Old Testament about whether God w as ever visible or seen only through angelic envoys. 62  Laelius refers to the eventual co-author of the Heidelberg Confession,born in Breslau, in a letter to his fr iend John Crato van Crafftheim, Laelius’ last extant epistola (53). The reference was once used to g round the surmise that on his first or second tr ip to Poland Laelius passed via Breslau. 63  Cf. Aldo Stella, “Ricerche sul socianesimo: Il processo di Cor nelio Sozzini e Claudio Textor (Bannière),” BSSV 3 (1961): 77–120.

970  the radical reformation

chapter 24.2.f

and finally two letters to Calvin written after his return to Zurich (22 August and 2 October 1559, respectively). The last two letters are especially interesting for Laelius’s more political than theological observations about the situation in Poland. He notes that Sigismund II Augustus would rather “enjoy the delight of peace and leisure” than deal with a n ew Forma of doctrine according to the word of God, which matter he says pertains to councils and bishops not to the king, more concerned with his inheritance through his mother from Bari. Laelius must here refer to Łaski’s effort to commend something like Łaski’s Forma ac ratio (London, 1555) to the king. Laelius reports to Calvin that the greatest force for Protestantism in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is Prince Nicholas Radziwiłł the Black of Vilna (to whom Calvin had himself dedicated an edition of his Commentary on Hebrews in 1545). Laelius reports that he had frequented Prince Nicholas’s palace to engage “in intimate exchanges.” At that time, the prince was sponsoring a Polish translation of the Bible (the Radziwiłł Bible, Brest, 1563). Laelius also tells how he consorted with many other nobles, with the boon companions, Stanislas Lasocki and Jerome Filipowski (an ancestor of the seventeenth-century historian of the Polish Brethren64 Stanislas Lubieniecki), all those named later proving to be supporters in Little Poland of t he Minor Reformed Church of t he Polish Brethren. Laelius expresses himself as eager to report to Calvin further details on Poland “as occasion affords” (Ch. 25.2.e). Thus, to the very end, Laelius Socinus sought to keep on good terms with both Calvin and Bullinger, both of whom were constantly, and even anxiously, being besought by s ynodal and personal letters and visitations for guidance especially on the vexing issue of t he Nicene formulation of the dogma of t he Trinity and the Chalcedonian formulation of Christology. Unbeknownest to these two eminences of the Reformed world, Laelius Socinus composed his last and most influential tract, his revolutionary interpretation of John 1, which, almost to the present, has been confused with a similar title and partly dependent work of his nephew, Faustus Socinus. Laelius gave a f undamentally new impetus to an emergent explicit Unitarianism, distinct from that of Servetus, in his interpretation in John 1 of mundus (the world), as the world of sinners, and of the Word of God made flesh, as the Virgin-born Jesus the Messiah, without any premundane status. It was a r adical Christology set forth in his Brevis explicatio in primum Iohannis caput (c. 1561)—a major, new non-Servetian fountainhead of the imminent proto-Unitarianism in the eastern realms. Laelius construed the mundus of John 1:10 (“He was in the world, and the world was made by

64

 These and other nobles, encountered by Laelius, feature in my Lubieniecki.

chapter 24.2.f

italian evangelicals in swiss exile  971

him, yet the world knew him not”) not as the cosmos, but as the world of human beings to be redeemed, and the Logos, as God’s sermo heard in the teaching of Jesus Christ. Laelius understood Jesus to be the Messiah and the Virgin-born Son of G od who had, however, no premundane existence as cosmological and soteriological principle of the ancients, philosophical and patristic, nor was he the eternally begotten Son of God or, even in some rabbinical sense, the preexistent Messiah. As God’s saving and recreative word to humankind, Christ is at once rex, sacerdos, propheta; magister, pastor, servator.65 It is possible to surmise that Laelius derived his interest in the offices of Christ from conferring in Poland with Łaski, who made the Erasmian triplex munus Christi so prominent in his writings in Emden, London, and Pin´czów (Ch. 15.2). After a brief preface, Laelius Socinus comments on John 1:1: ∆En a jrch≥ :' By the word principium some understand eternity to be signified, others in truth in time before the founding of the world, but John knows nothing of t hese. For the time of t he Gospel, by w hich it began to be preached by C hrist, he designates by t he name of beginning (principium) or commencement (initium), in the same manner as Jesus himself clearly confirms, saying [15:27]: “And you [disciples] are also witnesses, because you have been with me from the beginning (initium).” This revolutionary Christology without precedent represented a philological humanist thrust toward a Christian Unitarianism of the Father quite different from the complex Triadology of Servetus. It is quite likely that Bullinger, who had benevolently accepted the equivocal Confessio of Laelius of 1 555 had by the time of Socinus’ death come to realize how aberrant indeed the Sienese sojourner in Zurich was from the Second Helvetic Confession, of which the Zurich Antistes composed the first draft in the year of L aelius’s death (1562). As early as the XXX Dialogues (1563), it is evident (Dialogue XIX) that Ochino (until the publication, pastor of the Italian congregation in Zurich) in discussion with “Spiritus” (who may well be an epiphany of Laelius the Spiritualizer himself ) was aware of two manuscript works of this revolutionary way of i nterpreting John 1, the one by L aelius himself and the other by his nephew Faustus Socinus (Ch. 24.4). The latter would come

65  The Brevis explicatio is critically edited from two texts, Opere, 103–28, annotated, 340–71. The two anonymous texts for the critical edition by Rotondò are by George Biandrata, De falsa et vera unius Dei Patris, Filii et Spiritus Sancti cognitione libri duo (Alba Iulia, 1568) and, for refutation, by François du Jon of Bourges (Junius), III Defensio catholica de S. Trinitate in unitate esesentia, adversus Samosatenicas interpretations … et … Brevis explicatio in pr imum caput Evangelii Ioannis, sine auctoris nomine (Heidelberg, 1591).

972  the radical reformation

chapter 24.2.f

via Lyons to pick up his uncle’s effects in Zurich66 and eventually promote his own system on the basis of his uncle’s papers. The future Socinianism may thus be here recognized as therefore doubly of S ocinus, Laelian and Faustian.67 The Brevis explicatio would evidently soon circulate in manuscript in Poland, Transylvania, and elsewhere, and would contribute to the radicalization of Triadology and Christology in both regions as is evidenced by a letter to George Biandrata from Transylvania to Gregory Paul in Poland of 21 September 1565. Biandrata will disparage the radical Polish preoccupation with “a lesser matter,” believers’ baptism, and press instead for something like the simplified Laelian Christology. Socinianism must be understood theologically as including the diffidently seminal thought of Laelius, even though his work would remain largely anonymous until his nephew would belatedly acknowledge it long after the appearance of h is own similar Explicatio primae partis primi capitis Johannis (Alba Iulia, 1562). Laelius’ Brevis explicatio would first appear anonymously in print in the collection of similar texts published in Alba Iulia, 1568.68 Several times his nephew, Faustus, visited him, from Lyons. Then, after Laelius’s death on 14 May 1562, Faustus Socinus gathered up his papers and library, and converted the work of h is uncle into a m ajor pan-European religious movement, when later giving fresh leadership to the Polish Brethren after 1580 in Poland (Ch. 29.8).

66  The identification of two anonymous works by the two Sozzini in Dialogue 19 is by Antonio Rotondò, “Sulla diffusione clandestina delle dottrine di Lelio Sozzini 1650–1568.” Studi i Ricerche di storia ereticale italiana del Cinquecento, 1 (Turin: Giappichelli, 1974), 87–116; rehearsed by him as editor, Opere, 344. 67  Laelius in his Brevis explicatio laid the groundwork for his nephew’s Christology in rejection

of the Triadology/Christology almost unique to Servetus. Elizabeth F. Hirsch, “Servetus and the Early Socinians,” in J ohn C. G odbey, ed., Unitarianism in the Sixteenth/Sev enteenth Century Settings, the Proceedings of the Unitarian Universalist Historical Society 20:2 (1985–86) 25. 68  The interconnection of the tw o similarly entitled wr itings of the Sozzini, uncle and nephew, requires further attention at the point of common diffusion. Faustus Socinus, writing to Andrew Dudith in 1580, remarked that his own Explicatio primae partis primi capitis Johannis, had been “eighteen years ago,” c.1562; cf. Socyn, Listy, 2 cols., ed. Chmaj, List, 1:54 n. 13 (with cross reference to List V, at n. 1, where the paraphrase of it in Polish by Gregory Paul is referred to). This Explicatio primae partis was reprinted by Francis Dávid in Refutatio propositionum Melii (Alba Iulia, 1568), where it was ascribed to Laelius. Lech Szczucki discovered and identified this first imprint, “La prima edizione dell’ Explicatio di Fausto Sozzini,” Rinascimento 18 (1967): 319–27. In his letter to Dudith, Faustus was setting the record straight. A rare work, Praecipuarum enumeratio causarum, listed by Earl Morse Wilbur, A Bibliography of the Socinian Movement (Rome: Edizioni di Storai Letteratura, 1950), 39, as written by Laelius Socinus, has been shown by Luigi Firpo to be the work of the ubiquitous ex-Jesuit universalist Spiritualist Christian Francken in “Il vero autore di un celebre scritto anti-trinitario,” BSSV 77, no. 104 (1958): 51–68. Rotondò ag rees, Opere, 310f.; and Lech Szczucki cr itically edited the text W kre¸gu mys´ licieli heretyckich (Wrocław/Warsaw: PAN, 1972), 123–45, 256–65.

chapter 24.3.a

italian evangelicals in swiss exile  973

3. The Second Generation of Italian Radicals in Switzerland: The Formative Milieu of Faustus Socinus a. Zurich and Basel after the Expulsion of Ochino, 1562 After the expulsion of Ochino from Zurich in 1560, a wave of persecution began which eliminated that city as a place of refuge and contracted the freedom of t he remaining groups in Geneva, Basel, and Rhaetia (Grigioni). With the deaths of Laelius Socinus, Castellio, Gribaldi, Ochino, and Gentile (Ch. 24.3) between 1562 and 1566, and the silence of Curio and Renato, a n ew and weaker leadership arose to tend the dying flame of Italian Radicalism in Swiss and Rhaetian exile. Although doomed to extinction, this last phase of Italian-Swiss Evangelical Rationalism played an important role in the theological development of Faustus Socinus, who would consolidate its achievement in Poland. The Zurich group of A ntitrinitarians, following the departure of Ochino and the death of Laelius, seems to have passed under the leadership of Antonio Maria Besozzi, a noble merchant of M ilanese origin who had earlier lived in Locarno and had indeed served the Locarnese Protestants as plenipoteniary in arranging their transfer to Zurich.69 His inheritance of Laelius’ leadership is indicated by the fact that it would be Besozzi who would call the nephew Faustus Socinus from his commercial station in Lyons to take possession of the papers of his uncle. Besozzi’s own spiritual inheritance from Laelius and also Ochino became clear in the persecution to which he is presently to be subjected. As the agent for the Locarnese, Besozzi had been accepted as a loyal servant by Bullinger. He assured the Zurich Antistes that there was no Anabaptism among “his” refugees. At the same time, however, he developed close relations with the Renatian churches around Chiavenna. It was only during the repression following Ochino’s exile from Zurich that Besozzi’s own heretical beliefs became apparent. Having been imprudent enough to involve himself in a theological argument with another Italian at a fair, he found himself denounced for having sustained the sinlessness of man and the possibility and historical actuality of humans other than Christ fulfilling the divine law. Found guilty of H ebraism, Pelagianism, and Arianism, and of witnessing the baleful influence of Ochino’s XXX Dialogues, Besozzi fled to Basel. After a r esidence at the university there for some two years, he disappeared, perhaps to Lyons. Nearly all the Italian radicals of this period were merchants with contacts in such cities as Antwerp, Basel, Lyons, and Strassburg. One of t he most important was Nicholas Cumulio, probably of Genoese origin, who arrived in Basel in late 1563 with an Anabaptist connection in Antwerp. He 69

 Cantimori, Eretici, 275ff.

974  the radical reformation

chapter 24.3.a / 24.3.b

replaced the old and cautious Curio as head of a radical community in Basel and as a center of communications among groups and persons from Poland, Moravia, and Transylvania, to Flanders and the Grigioni (Rhaetia). In the last, several hundred families of f ollowers of Camillo Renato continued under the leadership of pastors who had resisted the signing of the Rhaetian Confession of 1561 (Ch. 22.3). Among them Michelangelo Florio, Jerome Turriani, and Camillo Socinus maintained contacts with Basel and Zurich. Camillo, in fact, had been the guest of Besozzi in Zurich shortly before the latter’s expulsion. Fervor was also provided by a constant influx into Rhaetia of new radical refugees from Italy, such as Ludovico Fieri. He had left for Moravia in 1561, insisting that Christ as generated by t he Holy Spirit was inferior to God the Father and the Spirit. Fieri returned to Zurich in 1567. Another Italian Zurich merchant may be mentioned, the Sienese Dario Scala, who was influential among the Rhaetian radicals, to whom he presented an extant manuscript in support of their position over against Mainardo. The survival of R haetian radicalism was perhaps facilitated by the pastorate of Jerome Zanchi, Curio’s son-in-law, as head of the church in Chiavenna (1563–67).70 Although a conservative Reformed theologian, in his search for repose in the mountains he proved a more moderate disciplinarian than his predecessor Mainardo or his successor. The latter, the ex-Waldensian Scipio Lentulus, obtained a f ederal decree requiring all church members to subscribe to an orthodox confession of faith (1570), and implemented it with a synod in the following year. The Rhaetian radicals thereafter limited their activity to quiet contact with their brethren in Basel and abroad.71 b. George Biandrata and John Valentine Gentile A major figure in that sector of t he Italian diaspora destined to move, within Evangelical Rationalism, all the way to explicit Unitarianism, was the Piedmontese physician George Biandrata (c. 1515 to c. 1585).72 A

70

 Cantimori, Eretici, 309ff.  Other than this community in the Grigioni, however, the Italian Evangelical Rationalists in the Alps depended almost entir ely upon merchants such as Cum ulio, Besozzi, and Francis Betti. This last was another member of the Zurich group. He had lived in the house of Ochino. His escape from Italy in 1557 had been in the company of James Acontius (Aconcio, Ch. 30.3.c), secretary to Ferdinand d’Avalos, marquis of Pescara (the husband of Victoria Colonna) and legate of Philip II at the Council of Trent. When Acontius left Zurich to make his name as an apostle of toleration in Elizabethan England, Betti remained in Zurich. Like Besozzi, however, he was finally forced to flee to Basel (1565), where he too served as convener of important meetings and exchanges of information. It was among these men that Faustus Socinus moved in the year immediately following his uncle’s death. 72  Delio Cantimori, “Profilo di Giorgio Biandrata saluzzese,” Bollettino storicobibliographico subalpino 38 (1936): 352–402; Rotondò, DBI, 10:256–63. See also, Trechsel, Antitrinitarier, 71

chapter 24.3.b

italian evangelicals in swiss exile  975

specialist in female diseases, he had been invited to Poland a quarter of a century before the arrival there of O chino. Court physician, he became a friend of Francis Lismanino, the confessor of Q ueen Bona Sforza at Cracow. He had then gone to Transylvania and served as court physician to the widow of John Zápolya. Returning to Italy, he sojourned in Pavia (1553–56), where he became an object of suspicion on account of his doctrinal utterances and escaped the Inquisition in 1556 by going to Geneva. Shortly after his arrival, he was elected an elder of t he Italian congregation under Pastor Martinengo, with whom he debated. He was soon engaging Calvin himself with countless doctrinal questions, especially concerning the Trinity. His persistent queries finally won from Calvin a reprimand and in fear of Calvin’s further displeasure, Biandrata left the city. A major figure in both the Reformed schism in the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth (1563/65) and in the Magyar Reformed Synod in Transylvania before and especially afterwards, his career bulks large ahead (Chs. 25, 28). In 1558, Calvin, troubled by t he death of t he local Italian pastor Martinengo, the absence of C aracciolo, and the continuing influence of Gribaldi and Biandrata, determined to obtain from the remaining Italian residents of G eneva assent to an unequivocally orthodox confession of faith (18 May 1558).73 The confession was wholly devoted to the Trinity and Christology. It restated in Italian and Latin the eternal generation of the Son, at once the Wisdom and the Word of G od, and it condemned those who said it was the Father only who generated the Son, and not the whole Trinity, and who did so in such a way that the Son and the Holy Spirit proceeded from God the Father by a d ividing and a s eparating of the essential unity of the whole Godhead. The full significance, however, of what Calvin was insisting on and to which the spirited Italians were objecting, had come out more explicitly in Calvin’s Confessio, occasioned by his strife with Peter Caroli (Ch. 23.3.b), in which he had spoken of Christ as Jehovah. He does so now again in a Responsum to Biandrata.74 The more moderate among the radical Italian Evangelicals did not originally object to the language of the creeds, but they preferred a monarchian rather than a consubstantialist formulation of the unity of the three Persons and, above all, sought to guard against what they considered a quaternity 2:467; OC 17: no. 2871. In a letter wr itten by Biandrata to Calvin, Biandrata implies a kind of “tritheism” of the baptismal for mula in Matt. 28:19, and of the Apostles’ Creed, that is, without resort to any [philosophical] ter minology or explanation of the unity of the Three, and Calvin gave a thoughtful r eply thereto (cf. OC 9: cols. 324–31), which has been trans lated into English b y Joseph N. Tylenda in an appendix to his ar ticle “The Warning [to the Polish Reformed] that Went Unheeded: John Calvin on Giorgio Biandrata,” Calvin Theological Journal 12 (1977): 24–62. 73  OC 9: cols. 385–88. 74  “Confessio,” OC 9: col. 708; Responsum, cf. Ch. 25, n. 40.

976  the radical reformation

chapter 24.3.b

of one divine substance (the Godhead) and three distinct Persons. This had been the critique long ago of their fellow-Italian of Fiore, Joachim, who had charged Peter Lombard with the same terms (Ch. 11.3.c). The opinionated members of the Italian congregation were given complete freedom to discuss their points of view with Calvin. The leading spirit among those who protested against signing the confession was the Piedmontese John Paul Alciati de la Motta di Savignola (not to be confused with the humanist scholar Andrew Alciati). John Paul Alciati (1515/20–73), who left Piedmont at mid-century because of the vigorous policy of King Henry II of France toward heretics, had, in 1552, joined the Italian Geneva congregation (elected deacon in 1555 and elder the next year). In 1555, Alciati had been granted Genevan citizenship. Described by Calvin as frenzied in speech, he had earlier criticized the treatment given Servetus, and he not only refused to sign Calvin’s confession, but also persuaded several others to resist.75 Calvin, however, was not to be swerved from his policy with respect to Italian denizens. Though Alciati and Gribaldi managed to escape, Calvin secured submission from most of the remaining recalcitrants. Conspicuous by his absence from the first session with Calvin on 18 May 1558, at which the latter sought to bring the Italian congregation of Geneva into line, was John Valentine Gentile, who pleaded ill-health.76 Gentile, a n ative of Scigliano in the province of C osenza (Calabria), had come under the influence of Valdés, had sought refuge in the Rhaetian Leagues, and then had come to Geneva about 1556, where he entered Gribaldi’s circle. Although he eventually signed Calvin’s Confession, Gentile continued his study of Servetus, begun after the execution, and spoke his mind in “a school in secret.” Calvin described him as having a “portion of pride, hypocrisy, malice, and obstinate impudence greater than any other.” 77 For his temerity, Gentile was cast into prison, and with him Nicholas Gallo of Sardinia, whom he had won over from subscribing to the Calvin Confession. Once in prison, 9 July 1558, Gentile worked on a Second Confession and a letter with patristic citations,78 holding that God the Father in his aseitas is the principium of the substance (essentia) of the other two Persons, that as their essentiator and informator he is also “sole monarch,” 75  The others were Silvio Tellio, Francis P orcellino of P adua, Philip Rustici the ph ysician, Nicholas Gallo the Sardinian, and Hippolytus of Car ignano. Biandrata had already left Geneva for safety’s sake. 76  The most recent study is that of T. R. Castiglione, “Valentino contra Calvino,” Studia nad arianizmem, ed. Ludwik Chmaj (Warsaw: PAN, 1959), 49–71; idem, “La ‘Impietas Valentini Gentilis’ e il corruccio di Calvino,” in Delio Cantimori et al., eds., Ginevra e l’Italia: Raccolta di Studi (Florence: Sansoni, 1959), 149–76. 77  Letter to Caracciolo; OC 8: no. 2929, cols. 257–58. 78  Second Confession, ibid. 9: cols. 389–90; letter, 390–99; letter to bailiff , Trechsel, Antitrinitarier, 2:471–86; for his patr istic sources, Ignatius, Justin, Irenaeus, Tertullian, see J an Koopmans, Het oudkerkelijk Dogma in de Reformatie (Wageningen, 1938), 64–66.

chapter 24.3.b

italian evangelicals in swiss exile  977

and that among these “three eternal spirits of one and the same dominion and rule,” the Son as Mediator is of the same substance with, but as it were of less substance than, the Father. Gentile could look out from prison to St. Peter’s, where Calvin preached, and had compassed the death of Servetus. With such a prospect, Gentile steeled himself. When Calvin visited him, in the company of the councilors of t he city-church-republic, Gentile, holding his ground with courage, requested the help of a t heologian, and specified the orthodox Peter Martyr Vermigli. The council turned down his request, but granted a delay to enable Gentile to prepare his case. Realizing that his judges were committed to Calvin’s views, the Calabrian agreed to make a public recantation (the ancient amende honorable) rather than risk the death penalty demanded by his accusers. Bareheaded and clad only in a shirt, carrying a lighted torch in his hand, he was led through the city to the sound of a trumpet, having first confessed his errors and burned his writings. In the meantime, ill fortune had pursued Gribaldi from Tübingen to Farges. The bailiff of G ex, forewarned by t he Bernese authorities, soon apprehended Gribaldi and conducted him to Bern along with some of the tracts he had been distributing. The jurist was finally sentenced to banishment from Bernese soil, once he had signed a Reformed confession. Gribaldi at length complied (20 September), and retired to Freiburg. Following the death of h is wife (24 April 1558), he was permitted by t he Bernese authorities to return to Farges on condition that he keep doctrinal silence. Shortly after Gentile humiliated himself in Geneva, he joined Alciati and Biandrata with Gribaldi at Farges. The bailiff of G ex now required Gentile to make a fresh profession of orthodoxy. Instead, he wrote a letter to the bailiff with notes on Quicunque vult, the Athanasium79 (destined in printed form to foster tritheism in Polish Reformed circles, Ch. 25.3). Proceeding to Lyons, Gentile dedicated his Antidota to the Polish king, sharply parrying Calvin’s attacks in the recently completed, definitive Latin edition of the Institutes of 1559 (cf. Calvin therein on Gentile, Chs. 1:13.23, 2:6.4). At Grenoble, where in the meantime Gribaldi had accepted a new university position, Gentile was examined by t he Catholic authorities, who found him gratifyingly anti-Calvinist. But a return trip to Farges resulted in his being briefly imprisoned. Released, Gentile returned to Lyons, there to be jailed and again released. As for Alciati, the magistrates of Geneva pronounced him a foe of the Reformed faith, commanded his friends to cease visiting him on pain of banishment, and finally sequestered his property. After a b rief stay in Chiavenna, he appeared for the winter term at the University of B asel.

79

 Trechsel, Antitrinitarier, 2:471–86.

978  the radical reformation

chapter 24.3.b / 24.4

In the spring of 1559 he was stirring up doctrinal controversy in Turin. Returning to Farges, Alciati next proceeded to slight Calvin in a letter to the Genevan magistrates, setting down his religious beliefs in a statement nevertheless far less offensive to the Reformed than earlier utterances. As for Gribaldi, it was not long before his abstention in Grenoble from Mass (which he justified on the ground that his estate at Farges was held under the Bernese, whom he dared not offend) rendered him an object of renewed suspicion, as did his hospitality toward Gentile. Gribaldi was dismissed from his Grenoble post in 1560. He made his way back to Farges, where he was to die of the plague in 1564, the same year as Ochino, and a year after Castellio. In 1562, Gentile and Alciati set out for Poland. At about the same time, Francis Negri traveled the same route. Negri, a f riend of L aelius Socinus and Camillo Renato, who had been living since 1559 at Tirano and Chiavenna, had won renown for his tragedy on free will, a dramatic presentation entitled Il Libero Arbitrio,80 dedicated to Prince Nicholas Radziwiłł of Lithuania. Negri’s journey was motivated by his desire to visit his son George, who had become pastor of t he Italian congregation at Pin´czow, the center of the Reformed Church in Little Poland. It will be in that connection that we shall briefly recount his execution, “a second Servetus,” in Bern in 1566 (Ch. 29.6).

4. Faustus Socinus to 1579, From Siena to Basel With all these Italian defenses of S ervetus, all these Italian works dedicated to Polish-Lithuanian nobles or translated into their tongue, with all these proclamations of religious toleration, we are prepared to examine the thought of Faustus Socinus (Sozzini, 1539–1604), whose life work would eventually be wholly identified with Cracow and environs.81

80  This was translated into English in 1573 b y Henry Cheke, A certayne Tragedie … entitled, Freewyl. John C. Schwindt pr epared a cr itical edition as his doctoral disser tation at the University of Florida, Gainesville, in 1969. Schwindt, taking a position in opposition to Wilbur, claims in Appendix B that Gentile is to be understood distinct from Negri, the Anabaptists, and the Unitarians, thus reinforcing the view of Negri as an unequi vocal Calvinist in spite of his personal relationships with Renato and his repudiation of Mainardo. This view is also suggested by Giuseppe Zonta, “Francesco Negri, l’eretico e la sua tragedia Il Libero Arbitrio,” Giornale Storico 67 (1916): 265–324, and 68 (1916): 108–60. See also Rotondó in his edition of the works of Renato, p. 158 n. 3. 81  The collected w orks of Faustus Socin us constituted the honor ific first two volumes of the Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum (BFP) , 9 vols. (Amsterdam, 1665–92). For a descr iption, see Wilbur, Socinianism, 569, n. 20. The life of Socinus was written by Samuel Przypkowski in palatinate Kiev. It was published anonymously in 1636 and translated b y the English “Father of Unitarianism,” John Biddle (London, 1653). This version modernized in or thography and punctuation is pub lished by me with annotations in Lubieniecki, Related Document 8. The same vita appears in annotated Polish translation by Ludwik Chmaj, as the opening document in his calendared and amply annotated translation of the letter s of Socinus, Listy, 2 vols.

chapter 24.4

italian evangelicals in swiss exile  979

Faustus Socinus was born in Siena on 5 December 1539, the only son of Alexander Sozzini and Agnes Petrucci, who was related to the papal house of Piccolomini. His father (who died in 1541) and his grandfather had both been famous as jurists. Fatherless at the age of t wo, Faustus had no regular education. With his two sisters, he was raised by his mother and grandmother. He spent his youth in casual reading at the family villa. His early intellectual stimulus came from his uncle Celso, a nominal Catholic, founder of a short-lived Accademia dei Sizienti of which Faustus became a member.82 In 1556, by h is grandfather’s will, Faustus received one-fourth of the family estates. The following year he was admitted to the prestigious Accademia degli Intronati, taking the academic name Il Frastagliato (the one ornamented in lace), his badge: a sea tossed by winds (un mare turbato de vento). When uncle Laelius (Ch. 24.2.f ) was pursued by the Inquisition, Faustus considered it advisable to leave Italy for Lyons, 1561–1563,83 where he engaged in business. In 1562, perhaps in transit, he enrolled in the Italian congregation in Geneva, and at the death of Laelius in May 1562, went to Zurich to gather up his uncle’s papers and settle his affairs. Returning to Lyons, he composed his interpretation of the Prologue of John’s Gospel, which reworked that of his uncle of approximately the same title, namely, Explicatio primi partis.84 Herein, Faustus Socinus enunciated the basic theme of his Christology in defining Christ as divine by office rather than by n ature. The change between the short first version of t his work and its latter amplification, however, reveals also an input besides that of his uncle.85 Introduced by his theologically radical merchant friends, Faustus came to know Castellio at Basel, in the last year of t he latter’s life (1563). The atmosphere created by Castellio’s Latin translation of the Bible, his considerations on the role of doubt and reason in the interpretation of Scripture, and his final grappling with the problem of the Trinity, had their effect on

(Warsaw: PAN, 1959). It was on the basis of this thorough study of the Fausti Socini Senensis ad amicos epistolae (Raków: Sternacki, 1618) that Chmaj wrote his posthumously edited Faust Socyn (1539–1604) (Warsaw: Ksia¸ zka i Wiedza, 1962), in which we have “the first accurate account” of the life and thought of the Sienese on the basis of “all Socinus’ works … discussed chronologically and in detail.” (The quoted wording is from the one-page summary in English, 503.) The fullest account up to that of Chmaj had been that of Wilbur, Socinianism, ch. 29, “The Minor Church Reaches Matur ity, Faustus Socin us up to His Arrival in P oland,” and ch. 30, “The Minor Church under the Leader ship of Socinus, 1579–1604.” More recent than Chmaj is the work of Magda Martini, Fausto Socino et la Pensée Socinienne (Paris: Klincksieck, 1967). 82  Tedeschi, “Notes,” IRS, 299f. 83  Wilbur, Socinianism, 389. 84  Above, at n. 68. 85  Rotondò, “Atteggiamenti,” 999–1009.

980  the radical reformation

chapter 24.4

Faustus, when, in his preface to the Explicatio, he declared that he would have preferred to encourage piety rather than theological disputation, but that he had come to see the necessity of allowing the light of the Gospel to shine through the obscurities of both the Catholic and Reformed churches. He objected, however, to the rapid diffusion of h is manuscript Explicatio, which would appear quickly in Polish paraphrase.86 The same hesitations mark the thought of t he elderly Castellio, and are reflective of t he antidogmatic attitude, closely related to the stance of Nicodemism. Having thus declared Christ divine by of fice rather than by n ature, Faustus enunciated the second basic principle of h is theology in a l etter from Lyons dated 20 April 1563, during his brief return to Lyons.87 In responding to an acquaintance from the academy in Siena, he wrote of the natural mortality of men and beasts quite apart from the Fall. The natural mortality of humanity, although long since a topic of debate in the university centers where his father and grandfather had taught, may have become especially important to Faustus after his year in Switzerland. Through contacts with Francis Betti (Ch. 24.3.a) and others he was familiar with psychopannychist thought and with what Camillo Renato contributed to the radical theology in Rhaetia, and he would have found support also in the writings of his uncle. Toward the end of 1563, Faustus returned to Italy because of a family financial crisis. A r eturn to Switzerland was discouraged by t he wave of persecution that had entrapped Mario Besozzi, and he remained in Florence for twelve years in the service of Isabella de Medici, daughter of the grand duke of Tuscany. A N icodemite, he conformed outwardly to the Catholic Church, and perhaps studied law.88 In 1571, Socinus was in Rome, probably with his patroness. He suddenly left Florence after the death of Grand Duke Cosimo I in 1574, never to return, although Socinus remained on good terms with the second grand duke, and until the latter’s death89 would receive from him regularly the income on his Sienese properties. He settled in Basel (1574–79) 90 in the circle familiar with his uncle Laelius, primarily engaged for three years in intensive study of Scripture, several selected Church Fathers (Tertullian, Lactantius, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, John Chrysostom), and the moderns (Calvin, Beza, Bucer, 86

 Ibid., 1008; Lech Szczucki discovered and identified this first imprint, “La prima edizione dell’ Explicatio of Fausto Sozzini, Rinascimento 18 (1967): 319–27. 87  Socyn, Listy (Letters), no. 3, to Jerome Bargagli, 35–40. 88  By the bio graphies before Chmaj, it w as commonly assumed that Socin us occupied himself in Florence with his famous De sanctae Scripturae auctoritate, which Chmaj postpones for Poland, Socyn, 457 n. 44. 89  Grand Duke Francesco I died in 1578. 90  Chmaj, Socyn, ch. 2.

chapter 24.4

italian evangelicals in swiss exile  981

Musculus, Jacob Acontius) and, to his own satisfaction and with élan, mastered the theology of his times. None of his writings were printed during the Basel period, only subsequently in Poland, and in, perhaps, revised version. The first may have been his commentary on Romans 9 ( on election), which contained a h idden critique of Calvin’s interpretation of d ivine election, in that Paul himself set forth Christ as the source of confidence of the Gentiles in salvation apart from the Law of Moses. Socinus said he followed instruction of a converted Jew as to the effectual expression of r ighteousness, “which is of f aith” (Rom. 9:30). Thus Socinus had set forth a m ajor motif of h is emergent system: fides interpreted as fiducia, trust in God’s new way through Christ. Socinus wrote at least three works opposed to the received Triadology while he was in Basel. While circulating only among friends in manuscript, they would later be prepared for publication in Poland with editorial titles by which they may be conveniently designated.91 The first is the Scriptum Deum, which refutes “the opinion of t hose who affirm that Jesus Christ the Son of God is that one God Most High or at least that he really existed before he was born of M ary.”92 This editorial title may well stem from Socinus’ later Polish perspective. In the preparation of the manuscript (for posthumous publication as a f ragment) Socinus recalls the circumstances and refers to two writings in Basel here sewn together. In the second, “To the Arguments of Adversaries by which they try to construe Three Persons in the unique essentia of God,” 93 he argues that as for the plural name of God, Elohim, which he thinks of as the royal plural, there could just as well be three essentiae and one persona. He asks the question whether what is important be not the unique will of God, rather than the unique essence: whether or not it be acknowledged that there is in God “not in number a unique essence, but a single will, that is, in those plural divine persons, a highest and indissoluble will, consensus, and concord.” 94 And he goes on, “among the Hebrews it is usage to let the plural in names take over for the singular, especially in those matters where they are affirming imperium, power, or government.”

91

 All three were printed posthumously as fragments or appendices to Socin us’ De Coena Domini tractatus brevis … (Raków: Sternacki, 1618). Alodia Kawecka Gryczowa, Arian´skie oficyny wydawnicze (Arian publishing houses) (Wr ocław: Ossolineum, 1973), Sternacki, no. 259 (De coena; reprinted in BFP). The two fragments ar e separately n umbered, Gryczowa, Aria´nskie oficyny, no. 271. 92  Scriptus Deum in quo sententiam eorum, qui Jesum Christum Dei filium unum illum et altissimumucum esse …, reipse extitesse affirmant, argumentis allatis refellere instituerat (Basel, c. 1563). See BFP 1:7821–89, discussed by Chmaj, Socyn, 65–67. 93  BFP 1:789–809; Chmaj, Socyn, 65–67. 94  Ibid., 789b.

982  the radical reformation

chapter 24.4

Of special interest is the De officio Christi of Socinus in fifty-two theses,95 partly organized around the triplex munus Christi (Chs. 10.2.b, 11.3.b), notable for his using the term “office” like Osiander and Calvin, and notable, too, for his now already distinctive distribution and identification of the time and place of the discharge of the three offices. The first general thesis reads: For it contributes much to the full and solid knowledge of t he Christian religion, if it be correctly understood what is perceived to be the natura or the essentia of Jesus Christ, but even more truly if what is ordained as coming from his office be acknowledged, inasmuch as that knowledge of Christ above all constitutes that without which we are unable to obtain eternal life. A grasp of the triplex munus Christi, especially that of Jesus as final propheta of the Father, teaching the way to immortality, not given by M oses, is essential for the present and future life. The second thesis reads, “Since that is so, the office (officium, elsewhere also munus) of Christ should be considered under a twofold aspect, presumably, as to what extent he discharged it while he was still mortal, existing here on earth, and to what extent he exercises the office while he lives immortal in heaven, and how he will exercise it during the age to come.” The third thesis makes it clear that Jesus exercised the prophetic office on earth as teacher, but the other two officia only in heaven. He discharged the prophetic office in revealing the will of the Father contained in the novum Foedus of which he is the Mediator to the Gentiles from the Jews, and the Mediator between God and other mortal human beings: “for the judiciary law of Moses does not comport with the nature of the New Confederation and the time of t he Gospel, which is of g race and mercy” (thesis 13). Jesus “revealed to us perfectly the will of the Father” (thesis 34). Other theses display the severity and even the violence of the Old Testament now superseded. The New Testament even dispenses with the oaths of old “by the manifest and perfect innocence of life and sanctity.” Jesus accomplished this change as much “by his innumerable and stupendous miracles and prodigies, as by the cruel death, which he underwent by the command and the will of the Father” (thesis 35). By this cruel death and then resurrection, “we are made certain of our resurrection and our obtaining eternal life, if we shall be obedient to Christ” (thesis 36). Socinus rejects all the previous theories of Christ’s death for, in his sense, Christ’s death was the royal way for him to become for humankind the King in heaven, the other terminologies being at best only metaphorical (theses 38, 39). “Christ became King at his Ascension, whom Christians adore by religious worship 95

 Gryczowa, Arian´skie oficyny, no. 253.1.

chapter 24.4

italian evangelicals in swiss exile  983

as their King and Savior (Servator)” “seated at the right hand of the throne on high” (thesis 44, 46). Socinus will presently in Transylvania change his thesis 41: “We reject, however, the opinion of those who, properly speaking, allege that Christ may intercede for us, “by true prayers entreat from the Father something for us.” For Socinus will in Transylvania become the advocate of adorancy and Dominical intercession with the Father (Ch. 28.3). Of interest, Socinus has thus dealt with prayer to the divinized Magister as King before coming in detail to the third office in his sequence, here, too, with an alternative title, thesis 50: “For the rest, Christ did not really stand out as Sacerdos or Pontifex before he began to appear for us in the higher heaven before the face of God” [Heb 9:12–14]; hence “we hold that expiatory sacrifice was not perfected on the cross but was perfected and performed where Christ existing perpetually, cleanses us of our sins …  defending his own” (thesis 51). “The unique ceremony [ceremoniale = sacramentum] of Reformed New Testament Christianity is indeed the holy Supper, which was instituted by Christ as a commemoration of h is death, so that we may celebrate Christ himself by solemn praise” (thesis 30) and “so that by breaking the bread and eating and drinking from the same cup, we may profess and testify together our community [conjunctio] and unity in Jesus Christ” (thesis 31). In Poland, with this formative conviction about the relative importance of the two ordinances, Socinus will seek, largely unsuccessfully, to marginalize or even suppress the practice of believers’ baptism by i mmersion among the Polish Brethren whose radical social teachings he will, however, spiritedly and learnedly defend on a large front. A Sienese Florentine aristocrat among the nobiliary patrons and divines of t he Minor Reformed Church in Little Poland, he will write extensively about the Lord’s Supper in a church to which he would never be admitted as communicant member because he refused to uphold their baptismal rite (Ch. 29.9). It is notable that Socinus should have developed his conceptualization of the triplex munus Christi in the very precincts where Erasmus in 1522 had first revived the threefoldness theme from patristic antiquity (Ch. 1.3.a), and where John Łaski had come within a year to study as he boarded in the home of t he humanist patrologist and take from him, evidently prior to Calvin, the same concept (Chs. 19.2.a, 30.3.a), which he would introduce into the Reformed synod of Little Poland (Ch. 25.1). Thus the Polish Brethren, issuing from within the schism in that synod in 1563 would, in the score of years between 1559 and 1579, have two infusions of the concept of the threefold office of Christ, Laskian and Socinian. Still in Basel, Faustus Socinus became involved in discussions leading to his magnum opus on Christology and salvation, which grew out of h is thnetopsychism. Holding, as did Pomponazzi and the Paduans condemned

984  the radical reformation

chapter 24.4

by the Fifth Lateran Council (Ch. 1.6.a), to man’s natural mortality, quite apart from any punishment for his transgression in Paradise, Socinus considered Christ, the Second Man, as likewise mortal. He first wrote out anew his convictions about the resurrection of t he righteous only, subscribed to also by one Jerome Marliano. Italian Calvinists were alarmed. John Baptist Rota, originally of P adua, came from Geneva to Basel and promised to refute Socinus. More significant was the related challenge of F rancis Pucci (1540– 1595), a Tuscan merchant with wide European contacts and experience, who first established himself, like Socinus, in Lyons. Pucci got interested in studying religion in Paris.96 He had been converted in 1572 to the Reformation at Basel and to the local ideals of t oleration and universal religious conciliation. Shocked by the St. Bartholomew’s night massacre while on a business trip later that year, Pucci joined the Italian congregation of the Strangers’ Church in London, then went on to Oxford, where he had earned in 1574 an M.A. His humanistic ideals about the nobility of man led to accusations of Pelagianism and his expulsion from Oxford. The French congregation in London was the next scene of his activity. In 1577 Pucci responded to the invitation of F rancis Betti in Basel to come and confront Faustus Socinus. With Calvin and Catholics, Pucci upheld the natural immortality of the soul, and, much more like Catholics than Calvin, he also minimized the impairment of reason by the Fall. These and related ideas Pucci presented to Socinus for disputation in Basel in Ten Theses, June 1577. To them Socinus responded. Thereupon Pucci replied in a letter of 1 July 1577. Socinus’ long answer to Pucci’s letter and his Theses would constitute the treatise to be later published under the title De statu primi hominis ante lapsum 97 wherein Socinus contends that human beings, even before the Fall, were liable to death. He accepted the story of Adam and Eve as a revealed account of the origin of the race but it remained for him theologically non-functional, and in his philological cunning, agreeing with Erasmus, at the crucial focus for original sin in the New Testament, Romans 5:12–21, he read the preposition and pronoun ej yw in verse 12 not “in whom all sinned,” but simply “because all sinned [like Adam, not in the loins of Adam]” (Ch. 1.3.b). From Basel Pucci would return via Nuremberg and Flanders to London, where, after imprisonment he would betake himself to Holland and attach himself to the concilium peregrinantium Christianorum, into whose membership

96  Luigi Firpo, “Francesco Pucci in Inghilterra,” Revue internationale de philosophie 5 (1951): 158–73; and idem, “Pucci a Basilea,” Medioevo e Rinascimento: Studi in onore di Bruno Nar di (Florence: Olschki, 1955) 1:257–95. 97  Raków: Sternacki, 1610, described by Gryczowa, Aria´nskie oficyny, no. 264.; BFP 2:253ff.; contents summarized by Firpo, “Pucci a Basilea,” 263–71.

chapter 24.4

italian evangelicals in swiss exile  985

he would fatuously invite Socinus and indeed later pursue him for more discussions in Poland. During this period in Basel, Jacques Couvet, pastor of t he Huguenot church in Paris, became another of Socinus’ antagonists when he heard that the received doctrines of t he Atonement and of immortality were being repudiated. Socinus, at the request of C ouvet, obligingly wrote out his thoughts. Couvet replied after a f ew weeks, whereupon Socinus sent to Paris the manuscript of De Jesu Christo servatore, finished 12 July 1578.98 In De servatore, as earlier in the Explicatio, Socinus sought to construct a complete Christian theology on the basis of J esus as the Virgin-born Christ, otherwise totally human, dispensing with any received claims that presupposed Christ’s essential deity. The very Word and Will of God appeared in flesh—in a human being. After his death and resurrection, Christ ascended to take a place at the right hand of G od, in his transfigured or glorified human nature, namely, as he on whom God Almighty bestowed co-regency, the governance of the world, in cosmic vindication of the righteousness of his Suffering Servant as his final prophet. Socinus was thus able to assert that Christ, though wholly human, is nevertheless verus Deus because the Father shared his power with him at the Ascension (Acts 13:33), and, at this moment, assigned to Christ an adoptive deity as coregent. Socinus thus offered a monarchian/adoptionist solution to the problem of the unity of the divine sovereignty and, thereby, not only rejected the Nicene ontological solution, which made the Son consubstantial with the Father, but also the Chalcedonian physical solution of the full deity and the full humanity of Christ in hypostatic union, as also the physiological solution of Servetus and others, who adhered to some variant of the doctrine of the celestial flesh of Christ (Ch. 11.2–3).99 Thus Socinus, in not acknowledging two natures in Christ the Mediator, deriving the single natura from the Virgin, was quite unlike Servetus. Against the Chalcedonian postulate, Socinus insisted that Christ would not have acknowledged ignorance (Mark 13:32) if, by a second, divine nature, he had known of the Day of Judgment. Passionately concerned for vindicating the plenary humanity of Christ, Socinus replaced the doctrine of t he two natures with the idea of a higher degree of susceptibility to exaltation to the divine dignity on the part Christ’s human nature.100 As possessed of the divine dignity, office, and power of the Father, Socinus would come to consider Christ, the ascended Son, as entitled to liturgical adoration. 98

 Ibid., no. 67.  Cf. Stanislas von Dunin-Borkowski, “Untersuchungen zum Schriftum der Unitarier vor Faustus Socinus,” 75 Jahre Stella Matutina (Feldkirch, 1931), 2:115f. 100  Cf. J. A. Dorner, History of the Dev elopment of the Doctr ine of the Person of Chr ist, tr. D. W. Simon (Edinburgh, 1870), Div. II, 2:249ff. There is a discussion of Socin us in Hans Weber, Reformation, Orthodoxie, und Rationalismus (Gutersloh: Bertelsmann, 1951). 99

986  the radical reformation

chapter 24.4

Socinus, in his comprehensive theology, of which his distinctive soteriology was the core, defined Christianity as the divinely revealed way of reaching immortality beyond the grave. It was essential to Socinus’ system to prove from Scriptures that Christ was passible and mortal, and hence fully human, except for his miraculous birth. The virgin birth was but the first of his many credentials in preparing humankind for the disclosure of his uniquely soteriological purpose in the plan of God. Therefore, unlike the exponents of a ll forms of t he doctrine of the Atonement hitherto,101 Socinus stressed not the death of Christ as the work of salvation, but rather (1) the resurrection of Christ as an earnest of the eventual salvation of his brethren and sisters in the fullness of time, and (2) the ascension of Christ and the bestowal upon him of the governance of the world in confirmation of the Old Testament prophetic declaration that the prevailing disposition of God is his loving-kindness toward his creatures. We reserve for the Polish phase (Ch. 29.4) of his career Socinus’ elaborate innovation as to a pre-Ascension ascension during the forty days in the wilderness after his baptism, perhaps extrapolated in part from Calvin’s own nearly angelic Moses, who amid the flames on a mountain peak, received instruction from the Almighty after the forty days of s imilar fasting. Socinus set himself against what he regarded as the irrational (as distinguished from suprarational) contradiction inherent in the received formulations of Christ’s role as Savior, all of which presuppose in the Godhead both a concern for the maintenance of justice (with a horror of sin) and such a degree of “mercy” that God accepts the death of his innocent Son as a s ubstitute for the punishment of a ll the wicked or a r ansom to Satan (Anselm). Over against the view that love and wrath are aspects of the ambivalent being of G od, Socinus spoke rather of t he abiding will (voluntas) of God, and declared that God had manifestly in Christ willed to provide the means for saving humankind from eternal death. Socinus’s arguments were directed against what he considered the contradiction in the inherited theories of the Atonement that at once postulated the necessity for, and contrived the implementation of, a p enal satisfaction. The necessity for penal satisfaction, in one traditional theory was, according to Socinus, founded on the consideration that God was necessitated by his concern for cosmic righteousness to punish sin, and that, if he did not punish the guilty directly, he had at least to punish an innocent representative of h umankind, thus his own Son made flesh for a s ubstitutionary atonement. In his contrary theory of an atonement limited, not by God’s reprobation but by the ignorance of humanity at large and the obscurity even among 101  The doctrine of the Atonement has been recurrently under consideration, beginning with Valdés (Ch. 1.4).

chapter 24.4

italian evangelicals in swiss exile  987

Christians of the overwhelming deed of God in Christ, Socinus maintained that God is always at liberty to punish or to forgive sins, that his justice as expressed in his wrath, his loving-kindness, as well as in his mercy are not inherent in his essence, but only alternating acts of h is righteous will in the government of the world. Son and grandson of Sienese jurisconsults, writing near precincts of the protracted Council of Basel (1431–48) with its conciliar concern for equity (epieikia), propounded from Revelation God’s rectitudo atque aequitas.102 Sin, Socinus argued, is analogous to an insult or a debt, which, like these, can be overlooked or forgiven without any further condition. Surely God forgives under the New Covenant no less freely than he once forgave under the Old Covenant, namely, without receiving plenary satisfaction. Moreover, God’s justice cannot be regarded as having in any way to be safeguarded, even with a t oken satisfaction made infinite by the hypostatic union of a human and a postulated divine nature, the latter provided by concert of the Triune God because it would be still unjust of God and iniquitous to let all the guilty go unpunished, and to punish even one willing, representative, but innocent person, in their stead. That the Atonement was not, after all, a penal satisfaction is clear for Socinus in two respects. First of a ll, the Scriptures assert that God’s purpose was to forgive the sins of the whole world. There should, therefore, be no such palpable contradiction between the purpose proposed and the purported means. A debt cannot be both remitted and satisfactorily repaid; for in remission of a d ebt, the debtor is freed from his obligation and the creditor renounces his claim to satisfaction. That a penal satisfaction to God is also impossible is all the more manifest when the analogy of redemption moves from pecuniary debt to a penalty involving life. A p erson other than the debtor can, to be sure, pay a debt, but he cannot endure for another capital punishment leading to eternal death. Transference of a c apital penalty to an innocent person is intolerably unjust and, when writ large in terms of the divine redemption, mocks the very idea of a j ust and equitable God. That the one innocent Man, according to orthodox theory, who did die was also restored to life, does not, for Socinus, attenuate the basic injustice of t he original, divine exaction as postulated by the orthodox.

102

 The term justice, when it refers to God in Sacred Scriptures is never opposed to mercy but rather … outstandingly and fully signifies rectitude and equity. De Servatore, BFP 2:123a, stressed by Chmaj, Socyn, 74. The theme w as picked up in a pan-Eur opean conspectus in the international bilingual conference, Aequitas, Aegalitas, Auctoritas in the Sixteenth Centur y, University of Ottawa, September 1990, at the call of Danièle Letocha who will edit the papers. Aristotle in Magno Moralia uses the term thus: “The equitable man with his equity [epieikia] is he who is inclined to take less than his legal r ights. There are matters in which it is impossible for the lawgiver to enter into exact details. …”

988  the radical reformation

chapter 24.4

Furthermore, Socinus continues, the orthodox doctrine, which stresses Christ’s redemptive death, cannot support itself by the assertion that Christ as Head of the Church was qualified to take punishment upon himself in place of h is members; for precisely that relationship first came into existence by v irtue of h is resurrection and psychopompic Ascension. Before this Ascension Christ did not stand in any special relationship to other human beings; and his death, therefore, did not deliver his disciples from the necessity of undergoing death. His personal fulfillment of the law could not have substitutionary value for others. Christ, like all human beings, was bound to fulfill the law for himself; and thus neither the effects of his obedience, nor those of his Passion, could be transferred to others. Socinus seemed to be using a concept from Roman imperial commercial and private law, the principle of acceptilatio, which involves a token act by a creditor and debtor to dispose of a debt on the part of a magnanimous creditor, even though Socinus eschewed making the term central.103 Finally, even Christ’s adoptive divinity, assigned to him at his Ascension (Heb. 1:5), could not enhance, even retroactively, the value of his Passion; for, as even most Catholic witnesses from the Fathers agreed, Christ suffered as a human being (1 Tim. 2:5). Even if a postulated divine nature in Christ had suffered or been involved in the redemptive action, as Gregory Paul and Andrew Osiander in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, would, each in his own way, imply (Ch. 25.1.b), still, according to Socinus, the infinite value of Christ’s adoptive divinity could not be attributed to his temporal acts or movements of human suffering. What Jesus Christ accomplished over the revelation and action of God in the Old Testament was to inspire by his miraculous credentials and his winsome teaching a trust in himself, and hence, a confidence in God as beneficent toward all who, having been justified by faith in himself as the propheta and the exemplar of (the only way of ) salvation to life beyond the tomb, as glad believers become truly penitent for their own personal sins and resolute in their obedience to Christ in progressive sanctification. Harshly ironic, Socinus turns on Huguenot Couvet: Or, just as you affirm that it is sufficient if the righteousness and the obedience of Christ are imputed to us, although, meanwhile, we ourselves are unrighteous and insolent, so will he affirm that it will be sufficient if the [eternal] blessedness of Christ be [merely]

103  Hugo Grotius, the Remonstrant jurisconsult will publish his A Defense of the Catholic Faith concerning the Satisf action of Chr ist (Leiden, 1617) dir ected specifically at Socinus and shaped by his o wn Rectoral or Go vernmental theory of the Atonement modifying the Anselmian/Calvinist line of thought, to become widely accepted in later Reformed theology. I have annotated the Defense as Doc. 10 in my The Polish Brethren: Documentation of the History and Thought of Unitarianism in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and in the Diaspor a, 1601–

chapter 24.4

italian evangelicals in swiss exile  989

imputed to you, although, meanwhile, you are destined to destruction and eternal death.104 In his Christology, thnetopsychism, and conception of s anctification, Socinus brings together with memorable clarity and baffling simplicity a doctrine of t he Atonement and justification which (more than any work thus far discussed) shows how sectors of the Radical Reformation, in various thrusts and tentative endeavors, differed profoundly from the Magisteial Reformation. Stated succinctly, by w ay of a p rovisional summary, the magisterial reformers, in their concern for divine justice and the maintenance of human justice in the Christian commonwealth—that is, in the still essentially unbroken conception of a C atholic corpus Christianum or even the socially more strenuous corpus christianorum—were at pains to preserve the combination of (1) God’s loving-kindness, which they themselves had experienced and formulated in their insistence on salvation by faith alone, and (2) God’s anger at sin, crime, and disorder in creation generally, in humankind specifically, and in the Church itself most grievously. Many radical reformers, in contrast, with their generally individualistic view of sin, with their proclivity to loosen the conception of the solidarity of humankind in Adam, and with their consequent dismantling of the conception of a universal visible Church embodying the Second Adam as its Head, were also disposed to stress God’s demand for a responsive human righteousness better realized in the self-disciplined conventicle (separated from both the support and the coercion of the state) than in the forensic justification of intermingled saints and sinners in a coercive territorial or papal church. Socinus, reflecting these proto-sectarian views, had in Padua, Florence, and Basel formulated a doctrine of the Atonement which may be said to mark the natural closing of the Radical Reformation in one of the main articles of theology. Such was his theology when Socinus arrives from Kolozsvár in Cracow and, sobered by debate with Francis Dàvid (Ch. 28), in 1579, is destined to reshape the Racovian antitrinitarian Minor Church of the Polish Brethren into a new school of Christianity, to carry eventually his name, Socinianism. Thus far, however, he had not expressed himself fully on the authority of Christ and Scripture, sacramental theology, and polity. 1689, 2 par ts, Harvard Theological Studies 30: Proceedings of the Unitarian Historical Society 18:1 (1976–77), 18:2 (1978–79) (Missoula/Chico/Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1980). There are four indices, regrettably thrown off in all of the r eferences to par t 2, to which the pr inted page number 359 is indexed as p. 363, and so on to the end. There are many other serious typographical errors, for which an errata slip is available. 104  OC 2:218. John C. Godbey has drawn attention to this passage in “A Study of Faustus Socinus’ De Jesu Christo Servatore” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1967), 272. It is Godbey’s thesis that Socinus’ doctrine of justification by faith alone, appearing in book 4, the last, has not been sufficiently recognized by scholars who have stressed book 3 instead, and have interpreted Socinus on justification in terms of the later Racovian Socinianism rather than on the basis of De Servatore structured originally by the needs of refuting Couvet’s arguments.

990  the radical reformation

chapter 24.4

Chapter 25

The Slavic Reformation in Poland and Lithuania, 1548–1565

W hen we were last in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

(Ch. 15), we traced Schwenckfeldian Spiritualism, Andrew Fischer’s Sabbatarianism, and Dutch, Silesian, and Moravian Anabaptism from the inception of these movements on Germanic terrain, to their entry into the areas bordering the Commonwealth, and, eventually, their penetrating Slavic territories, ending our account with the death of King Sigismund I the Old in 1548. As we return to Poland, this time in the company of Italian radical reformers like John Paul Alciati, John Valentine Gentile, and Francis Negri, we find an entirely new situation under King Sigismund II Augustus (1548–1572). Numerous others—Catholic, Protestant, and Anabaptist—have already preceded these Italians into this hospitable and tolerant land: George Biandrata (Blandrata, Ch. 24.3.b), who first came to Cracow as a court physician in 1540; Francis Stancaro (Chs. 11.3.c; 22.4), who came as a professor of Hebrew to the University of Cracow in 1549; Laelius Socinus (Chs. 22.4; 24.2.f), who visited Vilna and Cracow in 1551 and in 1558; Bernardine Ochino (Chs. 21.5, 24.4.a), who stayed briefly in 1563; and sometime bishop Peter Paul Vergerio (Ch. 21.1.a), who made numerous visits to Lithuania and Poland, beginning in 1556 (Ch. 25.2.a). Although we shall be considering primarily the Polish realm of t he Commonwealth, we first take note of how the territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, under the leadership of Prince Nicholas Radziwiłł (Radvila) the Black, was undergoing a religious revolt that was parallel to, but not always identical with, the reforms in Crown Poland. The Grand Duchy would be constitutionally almost fully united with Poland in 1569 by the Union of Lublin under Sigismund II Augustus, who, even as Crown Prince, had been present as much in his Vilna palace as in 991

992  the radical reformation

chapter 25

Cracow. The two leading Protestant princes were Nicholas VI Radziwiłł the Black (1515–65), grand chancellor of Lithuania from 1550 to 1565, and powerful palatine (voivode) of Vilna (Vilnius). Charles V made him hereditary prince of t he Holy Roman Empire. His cousin was Nicholas V R adziwiłł the Red (1512–84), brother of (second) Queen Barbara. Nicholas the Black was at first inclined to Lutheranism. Both cousins came out in support of Calvinism. Nicholas the Black called Simon Zacius (Zak), alumnus of the Jagiellonian University, to head up and, in due course, to become the first superintendent of the Reformed churches in Lithuania. When the king was in Brest in 1554, Radziwiłł the Black encouraged Zacius to celebrate the Mass in Polish and to offer communion in both kinds.1 The Grand Ducal court in Vilna, but especially the palatine court, welcomed such Polish radicals as Martin Czechowic, Lawrence (Wawrzyniec) Krzyszkowski, Simon Budny (all three since 1558), Nicholas We¸drogowski (from 1559), and Thomas Falconius (from 1560). Not surprisingly, Palatine Radziwiłł the Black began moving away from standard Calvinism and toward a much more radical reordering of r eligion. All of t he above mentioned ministers, except Zacius, would become members of the Minor Reformed Church of the unitarian immersionist Polish Brethren. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania, successor state of the Grand Principality of Kiev, was, like Poland, divided into palatinates. In Samogitia, roughly modern Lithuania, the language of the peasant population was Lithuanian. Elsewhere in the Grand Duchy the nobility and the clergy spoke Polish or Latin, while the chancery language was Ruthenian. Most of the population of the Duchy was Orthodox. The metropolitans of K iev in the westward expansion of Orthodoxy had since 1415 made Nowogródek (Navahrudak) and later Vilna one of their official residences. 2 The Reformed synods in their turn used either Polish or Latin. The congeries of aristocratically supported Helvetic churches, by now strewn through Lithuania and especially Poland, had much the character of gathered conventicles of the sectarian type. They were perhaps most like the 1  At this time he had also anticipated perhaps his interest in baptismal theology in ordering a great silken tapestry from The Netherlands, picturing Luther and his protective elector on one side and the baptism of Christ at the Jordan on the other. 2  The most r ecent study of Pr otestantism in the Grand Duchy is by Marceli Kosman, Reformacja i Kontrreformacja w Wielkim Ksie¸stwie Litewskim (Warsaw: Ossolineum, 1973). For more on theological developments, see Joseph Lukaszewicz, Geschichte der refor mierten Kirchen in Lithauen, 2 vols. (Leipzig: 1848–50). For sixteenth-century documents, see the Monumenta Reformationis Poloniae et Lithuaniae: Zbiór pomników Refor macji Ko´sciola polskiego, ed. Henryk Merczyng (Vilna, 1925). Quasi-Protestant, Judaizing, rationalizing, and otherwise r evolutionary trends penetrated so far into or indigenously arose in Russia itself that Ivan IV the Terrible in 1553 called a synod in Moscow to condemn some of the ne w sectaries. Refugees from Muscovy were factors in radicalization in Poland, Lithuania, and those par ts of the Grand Duch y (the Ukraine) ceded in 1569 to Crown Poland. I have developed some details in “Protestants in the Ukraine dur ing the Period of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 2 (1978): 41–72, 184–20.

chapter 25

slavic reformation: poland & lithuania  993

Huguenot churches in Catholic France, although the Reformed in Poland were synodally organized at Pi´nczów in 1550 before their more numerous counterparts, by the synod of Paris in 1561. No part of the Commonwealth, except for Ducal Prussia (and later Livonia), and no part of L ithuania, not even the Palatinate under Radziwiłł, ever knew a t ruly Magisterial Reformation of t he kind that has given classical Protestantism its norm. The Radical Reformation would be the full heir, however, to the achievements of the substantial antecedent Reformed synodal organization of the congeries of mostly manorial congregations in regional and provincial synods. These were occasionally convoked to take advantage of the presence of many nobles at commonwealth diets convened in various towns. The theologically and socially radical reforms in Lithuania, Great and Little Poland, and also Transylvania unfolded in the ecclesial framework that drew upon the classical Protestant Reformation, particularly in Switzerland, and never developed the centralized control by clerical elders (bishops, Vorsteher) like that of the Unity of the Czech Brethren and that of Mennonite and Hutterite polities. In Poland and Lithuania the sponsoring noblemen were indeed frequently elders. It was in their great homes or in spireless, whitewashed stone meeting houses constructed on their estates or in the towns they owned or governed that the Reformed met for worship and synodal discussion. The strong stress on the biblical sanction for the authority of the king, prince, or town council in religion that was characteristic of Anglican, Reformed, and Lutheran Protestantism was not in place where the royal central authority was Catholic and where the gentry sponsored Protestantism more as leading laymen in an elective (after 1572) royal republic than as magistrates. And unlike the corresponding Huguenot conventicles, likewise sponsored by aristocrats as well as burghers, the Polish and Lithuanian Reformed churches—though most of t heir patrons were knights (szlachta) —did not think of themselves as a militia Christi in hostile tension with the Catholic king, but rather as a r ighteous remnant committed to supporting a policy of royal toleration and the preservation of the old laws against special privileges. The Polish szlachta, the aristocracy of l andowners, was distinctive in Europe for upholding among themselves the fiction of f raternity, without socially differentiating nobiliary titles, and hence of h onorific equality as brethren of a race (Sarmatians) apart from their peasantry and townspeople. 3 There were hence in Polonia no native titles to distinguish a k night with a servant or two from the owner of a hundred villages and towns. This 3  The Hungarian nobility made a comparable claim to descent from the ancient Scythians as the Swedish nobility did fr om the Goths. That even the Polish Brethren partly shared in this elitist ideolo gy is suggested, with some of the literatur e, in m y “The Sarmatian Myth Sublimated in the Historia Reformationis Polonicae (1664–85) of Stanislas Lubieniecki and Related Documents,” For Wiktor Weintraub, Essays in Polish Literature, ed. Victor Erlich (The Hague: Mouton, 1974), 567–79.

994  the radical reformation

chapter 25

was not true in Lithuania where the magnates were recognized as princes, but even here something of the Polish egalitarian nobiliary fraternity penetrated their halls and dietines. The Polish Brethren would consciously uphold the ideal of nobiliary equality and hence fraternity in a social as well as a Christian sense and then be disposed, on being converted to evangelical social radicality, to break the mythical barrier between themselves and their serfs and tenants.4 The decentralizing statutes appealed to by t he middle and lower szlachta Executionists had been drawn up by Primate John Łaski, uncle of the Reformer, when the uncle was grand chancellor of the Crown. The Execution movement, demanding political, fiscal, military, and religious reforms, including the limitation of the power of ecclesiastical courts and church tithes and taxes, was directed by the gentry against both (1) the royally appointed episcopal senators with their own cursus honorum and the allurement of competitive emoluments and power at the royal court and (2) the centrifugal ambitions of the senatorial magnates not resident at the royal court to make of their temporary appointments hereditary apanages almost separate from the central government. It is generally agreed that the program of Execution in purported support of the legitimate centralist royal authority, though by many scholars interpreted as in fact the brake shoe on the chariot of royal absolutism in Poland, put severe strain on emergent Protestantism in its most formative period of consolidation and then schism. The gentry Executionists would still hope desperately in synod (1562) for order and unity of faith “in one kingdom and under one king.” And indeed Sigismund II, against his previous reserve and equivocation, would support the movement in that same year against the centrifugal magnates. It is indeed possible to interpret much of the synodal and theological history of the Polish Brethren, 1550/62–1660, in terms of the conflict between gentry and magnates in the context of an eventually

4  In contemporary usage among Poles, the term Polonia is widely used for cultural association outside Poland. I use the ter m occasionally to cover the community of Polish speech and culture extending into Lithuania as the cultural lingua franca as far as Kiev. Because there was indeed conflict of social and then confessional interest, as between the lower and middle members of the szlachta on the one side and on the other the higher nobility among the szlachta who were recognizable as magnates (collectively the magnateria) but without titles, the collective term for all nobility (szlachta) is, indeed, commonly, even prevailingly, translated as the gentr y, in reference to the lower and middle le vel szlachta, while the owners of many towns and villages are called magnates, the equivalent of princes in the Grand Duchy. As it happened, the beginning of the Reformation in Poland was at the apogee of the socioeconomic and constitutional struggle between the gentry and the magnates in the Mo vement for the Execution of the Laws (ruch egzekucyjny) from 1505, when the Polish Parliament became fully bicameral.

chapter 25

slavic reformation: poland & lithuania  995

triumphant Catholic-sanctioned royal absolutism in the nominally elective Vasa dynasty (1587–1668). 5 In accounting for the theological and sociopolitical radicality of t he Reformed in the Commonwealth in addition to the distinctively PolishLithuanian constitutional and sociological factors, we reckon, of c ourse, with both the spiritual contagion from immigrant and indigenous Anabaptism and the infiltration of anti-Nicene Evangelical Rationalism. The proponents of each of these currents—the one originally German and Dutch; the other, largely Italian—had in common the experience of, and predilection for, a conventicular Christian life because of their common stress on moral reformation and personal sanctification. Besides the influx of t he non-Polish Anabaptists into the Commonwealth, the cause of Polish-speaking Anabaptism was further strengthened by the Germanized Poles who brought Anabaptism to Poland and Lithuania from Silesia. In the early 1550s, and somewhat independently of each other, four Silesian Anabaptist eventuels came to Little Poland: Alexander Witrelin, George Schomann, Simon Ronemberg, and Daniel Bieli´n ski—all destined to play an important part in the formation and development of the Polish Minor Church.6 Believers’ baptism as the penultimate phase before anabaptism/rebaptism is the familiar trajectory from antipedobaptism among many reformers, not only those who became separatists. Anabaptism unfolds in the Commonwealth somewhat earlier in the Grand Duchy and specifically in Vilna than in Little Polish centers, like Cracow and Lublin. We presume in our narrative the development of a strong Reformed synod in the Grand Duchy with occasional joint sessions of synods from both major subdivisions of the Commonwealth.

5

 James Cairns Miller, drawing upon his unpub lished doctoral thesis on the nobiliar y Republic (1977), makes the protracted constitutional conflict the key to his r ich and compact interpretation of “The Origins of Polish Arianism,” Sixteenth Century Journal 16 (1985): 228–56. A comparable presentation of the rally of the Church and her orders in Counter Reform, including the Uniates, for the whole of the per iod covered by Lubieniecki and in the backg round of the Historia is that of Jerzy Kłoczowski, “Catholic Reform in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth,” in Catholicism in Early Modern History 1500–1700: A Guide to Research, ed. John O’Malley, S.J. (St. Louis: Center for Reformation Research, 1988). Perry Anderson as a Briton and a Marxist is especially helpful in the attention he gives to the distinctiveness of the nomenclature of feudal society in Poland in the larger context of the evolution of noble classes from antiquity into the age of absolute monarchy, through which Poland never passed, in two related works, Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism and Lineages of the Absolute State (London: NLB, 1974). 6  The Silesian Br ethren as a g roup are treated by Ludwik Chmaj, Bracia, Polscy: Ludzie, idee, wpływy (Warsaw: PWN, 1957), 9–49. Lech Szczucki in his study of one Silesian, John Namysłowski, felt that the Silesians as a g roup should not be assigned an y special role in the radicalization of the P olish Reformed Church, Studia nad ar ianizmem (Warsaw: PWN, 1959), 131–67.

996  the radical reformation

chapter 25

Only partly under the influence of Anabaptists from the humbler classes, drawn into Reformed conventicles by t heir Polish or Lithuanian lords, a large minority of the Polish gentry came to espouse an irenic and even partly pacifistic view of the corporate claims of the radically Reformed churches, until at length some of t he gentry (by definition, knights with swords) would carry out completely the anabaptist renunciation of political power in conversion to a radically interpreted Gospel as embodied in the Sermon on the Mount. At the same time, the aristocratic sponsors and their pastoral associates in Polish Reformed circles were, far more than their Huguenot counterparts, exposed to the rational challenge to traditional dogmas, especially in Triadology and Christology, because of the omnipresence in their synods of articulate, well-trained clerical and lay refugees from Italy. Although the Anabaptists and the anti-Nicene Evangelical Rationalists were kindred spirits in their dislike or programmatic rejection of force in the realm of church and conscience, be the coercion Catholic or Calvinist, the representatives of these two currents converging in Poland commonly differed on the question of f ree will and predestination, and as a c onsequence, on the relative importance of believers’ baptism and the corporate ban. The Italian Rationalists among them could seldom be wholehearted about believers’ baptism and especially about rebaptism. It is well, at this point, to anticipate schematically the devolution of the two doctrines whereby the radicals among the Polish Reformed would seek to recover what they regarded as the simplicities of a p re-Constantinian theology and churchmanship, here earlier, there later, in the course of Polish and Lithuanian synodal debates. Since in antiquity there had been a very close collaboration of church and state in the formation of both the Nicene-Constantinopolitan dogma of the Trinity and the Chalcedonian formulation of t he two natures of Christ (Ch. 11.2,3), and again in the imperial sanctions of the patristically and scholastically evolved theory of the indelibility of baptism (Ch. 11.1), brought into close association with civic loyalty, it was perhaps inevitable in a conventicular type of Calvinism, in isolation from the monarchy, that the traditional doctrines concerning Christ and pedobaptism should be seriously challenged, the more so for the reason that until the eve of t he Consensus of Sandomierz of 1570 (Ch. 27.3) the Polish Calvinists would remain loyal to Łaski, for almost a decade after his death, in seeking to be guided in theological matters primarily by the authority of the Scriptures and the Apostles’ Creed. In any event, the intermingling of the Polonized Anabaptist and anti-Nicene motifs became a d istinguishing mark of t he Reformation in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Lutheranism of which we took note earlier (Ch. 15) is still largely limited to the German-speaking population of t he Commonwealth and

chapter 25 / 25.1

slavic reformation: poland & lithuania  997

enjoys widespread support only in Ducal and Royal Prussia. Vergerio’s efforts at royal Lutheranization of L ithuania and Poland will prove abortive (Ch. 25.2.a). There is also in progress a consideration by some Erasmian prelates to organize a national Catholic Church on the model of France under its Concordat of Bologna or even of the Henrician Church in England (influential in the Hussite interest in vernacular liturgy and communion in both kinds).7 The great specifically Reformed forces in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the last third of the sixteenth century are (1) the synodically organized Reformed (Major) Church under the loose tutelage of Calvin, Bullinger, Beza, and other Swiss Reformers (Ch. 23.5) and a hands-on and subtly effectual leadership of emigré Italian intellectuals, and (2) breaking from it in a schism consummated in Lithuania and Little Poland, 1563– 65, the eventually Antitrinitarian, immersionist Minor Reformed Church which would come to be known (only) in the seventeenth century and (even then exclusively abroad) by the joint name of Laelius and his nephew Faustus Socinus as that of the Socinians. Part I Devolution of the Dogma of the Trinity in Reformed Synodal Debate, 1550–1565

1. The Reformed Synods of the Commonwealth, 1550–15658 For periodization of the Reformed movement in the Commonwealth in the present chapter, the first phase (1549–56) begins with Calvin’s initial contact with the Poles in his dedication of his Commentary on Hebrews, 18 May 1549, to King Sigismund II Augustus, including an exhortation to him to promote 7

 See the Psalter of Sigismund, in Williams, Lubieniecki, Plate 2.  The major sour ce is Stanisła w Lubieniecki, Historia Reformationis Polonicae (Amsterdam, 1685), translated, annotated, and introduced by Earl Morse Wilbur, Marek Wajsblum, and George H. Williams as Stanislas Lubieniecki’s History of the Polish Refor mation and Nine Related Documents, Harvard Theological Studies, no. 34 (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1991), regularly cited as Williams, Lubieniecki, See also the sur vey by Janusz Tazbir, “Research on Anti-Trinitarianism in Poland,” in Studia z dziejów ideologii religijnej XVI i XVII w (Warsaw: PIV, 1960), 183–98. Also useful is an anthology of texts illustrative of the thought of the sixteenth-century Minor Church published by Lech Szczucki and J anusz Tazbir, Literatura arian´ska w Polsce XVI wieku (Warsaw: Ksia¸zka i Wiedza, 1959). Major bibliographical coverage was given in Ch. 15. The principal Polish periodical for Reformation studies goes under two titles: Reformacja w Polsce (henceforth RwP), Cracow, 1922–52, and its successor Odrodzenie [Renaissance] i Reformacja w Polsce (henceforth: OiRwP), Cracow, since 1956. The acts of all the synods of the (Major) Reformed and Minor (Reformed) Churches have been edited in three volumes by Maria Sipayłło, Akta synodów róznowierczych (Warsaw/Cracow: Warsaw University Press, 1966–83). This work largely replaces the synodal protocols included by Hermann Dalton, Lasciana nebst den ältesten ev angelischen Synodalprotokollen Polens, 1555–61 (Berlin, 1898), much quoted in the earlier literature. The first two volumes by Sipayłło are common to the Major and the Minor church tradition. The third volume with a comprehensive topical index and a pullout map is for the Major Reformed (Calvinist) succession. For the synods of the Minor Church (Polish Brethren), another collection, more a chronicle, has been edited in two installments, Part I (1555–69), ed. Lech Szczucki, “Nieznana kronika 8

998  the radical reformation

chapter 25.1 / 25.1.a

the reformation of the Commonwealth.9 The second phase is quite distinct under the direction of John Łaski (1499–1560), who was regarded by Calvin and the Swiss Reformers as the distinguished and experienced representative of the pan-Reformed movement, for a decisive phase of less than four full years (1556–60).10 The third phase (1560–64) extends from the death of Łaski to the death of Calvin himself in 1564, another short four years, during which the first schism in the Reformed Synod of L ittle Poland would be formed, that of H ebraist Dr. Francis Stancaro centered in Dubiecko in Ruthenia (1556/61–71).11 From near the outset of the formation of the Reformed synods in various parts of t he Commonwealth, mostly in palatinate Vilna and in Little Poland, the reform of baptism would come increasingly to the fore until by the end of this period there is Polish rebaptism by immersion. We give the overview of anti-Nicene Anabaptism in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 1548–65 (Ch. 25.4). a. The Reformed Synod in Poland, 1550–1556 The Reformed Church in Poland began in 1550 when the Hebraist Dr. Francis Stancaro (Ch. 22.2.a; 22.4) prevailed upon Lord Nicholas Oles´nicki of De¸bno, the owner of t he town of P in´czów in Little Poland, to organize a synod of t he Reformed congregations in Poland.12 The very first local Protestant congregation (zbór) on an estate dates from 1547. The organizing synod held in Pi´nczów in October 1550 was led by Stancaro, who proposed that the Polish Reformation appropriate the Reformatio Coloniensis (1545) of Electoral Archbishop Hermann von Wied of Cologne (Ch. 12.4). aria´nska,” Wokół dziejów i tr adycji arianizmu (Warsaw: PWN, 1971), 167–72 and P art II, ed. Kazimierz Dobrowolski, “Nieznana kronika aria´nska,” RwP 4 (1926): 158–72. In separate accounts I ha ve elsewhere traced the conflict over the Trinity, first in “The Polish-Lithuanian Calvin dur ing the ‘Superintendency’ of J ohn Łaski, 1556–60,” Reformatio Perennis: Essays on Calvin and the Reformation in Honor of Ford Lewis Battles, ed. Brian A. Gerrish in collaboration with Rober t Benedetto, Pittsburgh Theological Monograph Series 32 (Pittsburgh: Pickwick, 1981), 129–58; then mor e intensively in “Strains in the Chr istology of the Emerging Polish Brethren” (1982) in The Polish Renaissance in its European Context, ed. Samuel Fiszman (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1984), 61–95; then in my disparate but replete annotation of Lubieniecki Historia (1991). In the pr esent overview, I do not feel that I have evenly summarized or even included all the documents and interconnections made earlier and which ma y be thus consulted b y the reader as substantially supplementar y to the present compact narrative. 9  Johannis Calvini, Opera omnia (henceforth: OC) 14, no. 1195. 10  The authority here is Halina Kowalska, Działalno´s´c Reformatorska Jana Łaskiego w Polsce, 1556–1560 (Wrocław, etc.: Ossolineum, 1969), which completes the account of the late Oskar Bartel, Jan Łaski, cze¸s´c´ 1, 1499–1556 (Warsaw: PWN, 1955). Łaski w as seldom called “Superintendent.” 11  See my “Francis Stancaro’s Schismatic Reformed Church, Centered in Dubets’ko in Ruthenia, 1559/61–1570,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 3/4 (1979–1980): 931–57. 12  The Polish edition of Canones was burned “out of fear of the king” on the advice of Stanislas Stadnicki, so that no complete single copy survives.

chapter 25.1.a / 25.1.b

slavic reformation: poland & lithuania  999

Stancaro’s proposal was provisionally approved by the synodists as the most acceptable in a Catholic setting. Shortly after the synod, Ole´snicki expelled the Pauline monks from their monastery, removed the images from their church in Pi´nczów, and turned it into a house of worship for the first duly constituted expressly Reformed congregation in the Commonwealth. Under the leadership of Stancaro the first evangelical service was held in that church on 25 November 1550. Stancaro drafted his Canones Reformationis Ecclesiarum Polonicarum. These were published at Frankfurt on the Oder in 1552. A Polish version of t his church order would be printed as Porza¸dek naprawiania (Cracow, 1553) at the expense of Jerome Filipowski, destined to be a leader in the Minor Church. The synod of S łomniki in 1554 would cautiously accept the Canones of Stancaro, without ascription to him as the new constitutional and sacramental basis for the emerging Reformed Church in Poland and Lithuania.13 b. Stancaro Involved in the Osiandrian Controversy in Königsberg, 1551 Shortly after his first synod Stancaro was temporarily banished from the Commonwealth by r oyal decree, which resulted in his travel to Ducal Prussia. Under the patronage of Duke Albert, Stancaro became a professor of Hebrew at the University of Königsberg. Stancaro, a born controversialist, arrived at the moment when the new Lutheran university was engaged in the controversy over justification and the Atonement. Andrew Osiander, whom we encountered in Nuremberg as a foe of John Denck (Ch.7.1), and whom we encountered on this issue and on the triplex munus Christi (Ch. 11.3.b and c), forced from Nuremberg by t he Augsburg Interim of 1 548, found himself in Königsberg on 27 January 1549, highly regarded by Duke Albert as his “Vater in Christo.” We have already referred to his inaugural address at the university, De lege et evangelio (5 April 1549), which sounded off an alarm to the Lutherans. Osiander diverged from their prevailing view of justification in distinguishing (1) the historic act of redemption, whereby Christ reconciled God to humankind by fulfilling the law and dying for humanity’s aboriginal sin in Adam, from (2) the ongoing experientialsanctificatory justification, whereby the eternal Word regenerates individual believers in a continuous infusion of his iustitia essentialis. According to Osiander, justification was not only a forensic imputation of the righteousness of Christ, but also an experienced regeneration in palpable, visible sanctification. The Christian is justified because of the justice of Christ dwelling in one by faith.14 Osiander retained thus the fundamental Lutheran and indeed classical

13

 Sipayłło, Akta 1: 2; Williams, Lubieniecki, Plates 9, 10.  De unico mediatore Jesu Chr isto et justificatione fidei confessio (Königsberg, 1551), discussed by Albrecht Ritschl, Die Christliche Lehre van der Rechtfertigung, 1 (3d ed., Bonn, 1889), 236ff. 14

1000  the radical reformation

chapter 25.1.b

Protestant tenet of justification sola fide but advanced a participatory justification that went far beyond Catholic sanctification as experiential and objective holiness. With this approach, the Person and divine nature of C hrist were involved in the process of justification as sanctification. The problem of Christ the soteriological, then the cosmological, Mediator (Ch. 11.3.c) emerged as a distinctive topic in which Stancaro and Polish, as well as Prussian and Transylvanian, Protestants would be intensely engaged. The Lutheran divines of the Smalcaldic League in the Empire, in their stress upon the individual appropriation of salvation by faith, had tended to blur the distinction between the historic atoning action and personal justification by faith. As much as Osiander was disliked by fellow Lutherans, his view on the mediation of Christ in both natures (an extension to the doctrine of the Atonement and justification-sanctification of the communicatio idiomatum, i.e. from the Person to the Work of Christ) was closer to theirs than to that of the Calvinists. Thus the ensuing debate was not only one within the Lutheran fold but also one between an extreme Lutheran, Osiander, and an extreme “Calvinist,” as Stancaro thought of himself, the latter at once the Christian Talmudist and the devotee of Peter Lombard and Duns Scotus for their christological precision. Stancaro had already opposed Italian Anabaptists, under the influence of contemporary Talmudists, in writing powerfully on the very issue of mediatorship in 1547 (Ch. 22.4). Duke Albert requested that Stancaro help with settling the controversy. Neither contestant, it seemed, realized the extent to which the controversy in Ducal Prussia, with echoes in Geneva and in the heart of Germany, had wider implications for received Christology and especially for the doctrine of the Trinity. These angrily ventilated issues in turn would have a l asting effect on the theological shape of t he but recently organized Polish Reformed Church. Briefly, Osiander, possibly under Schwenckfeldian influence, was so much concerned with a physical sanctification that he was prepared to involve the divine nature of Christ in the “atoning” action of justification.15 Osiander’s physical justification resulted from his previously expressed view of humanity as a creation in the image of the eternal idea of the God-Man operative in the Old Testament theophanies and finally incarnate in Jesus.16 This image of God the Son from eternity, destined to become human in Jesus Christ, was, according to Osiander, also to be re-formed in supralapsarian perfection in every true believer in Christ. The effectual salvation of each human being 15

 The medieval. deificatory mystical element is fully r ecognized by Marius Johann Arntzen, Mystieke Rechtvaardigingsleer: Een bijdrag ter beoordeling van de theologie van Andreas Osiander (Kampen: Vrije University. Amsterdam, 1956). The intra-Lutheran struggle, with many references to the r ole of Stancar o, is descr ibed by Martin Stupperich, Osiander in Preussen, 1549–1552 (Berlin/New York: DeGruyter, 1973); cf. Pelikan, Tradition 4, 150–52. 16  An filius Dei fuerit incarnatus …, de imagine dei quid sit (Königsberg, 1550).

chapter 25.1.b / 25.1.c slavic reformation: poland & lithuania  1001 could, in fact, be realized only by the regenerative indwelling of the Son of God. Since objective salvation is appropriated subjectively when the eternal Word comes in the preached Word and communicates the experience of forgiveness unto salvation, mediation is intimately tied up with the event of the indwelling divine Christ. Christ mediated historically in his humanity, but repetitively operates in his divinity as eternal Word, in the atoning mediation of regenerative justification. In opposition to Osiander, Stancaro asserted, following the scholastic authority of Anselm and Lombard (Ch. 11.3.c), that Christ was Mediator only according to his human nature. Far away in Geneva, Calvin, when preparing the definitive Latin edition of the Institutes (II.xiv), would openly oppose Osiander’s confusion of r ighteousness and sanctification (1 Cor. 1:30); but like Osiander, Calvin (Ch. 23.4) had his own antischolastic conviction as to the involvement of t he two natures of t he Mediator which he would presently explain to his Polish followers in their ravaging debate with Stancaro. Meanwhile, obligated to leave Königsberg, Stancaro stopped briefly with those of his friends in Little Poland who still esteemed him as theologian and he then moved on to promote his view again among the Transylvanians (Ch. 28.1). It is notable that Stancaro, the founding father of t he first Reformed synod in the Commonwealth, was not to be well received by Polish religious historiography. Writing about Stancaro’s early religious activities, Stanislas Lubieniecki would insist that “[in Poland] he began to establish the error of Zwingli, and to take pains to lead Oles´nicki away from the religion of his fathers and to persuade him to a foreign religion”17 Lubieniecki suggests that Stancaro was too much in haste in introducing a foreign reform without regarding local reforms. That can also be a retrospective disparagement at the increasing Czech Brethren (unpopular with Lubieniecki) influence on the emerging Polish Calvinists. c. The Czech Brethren in Great Poland and the Reformed in Little Poland The emigration of the Czech Brethren (Unitas Fratrum; Czech: Jednota Bratrska; Ch. 9.1) to Poland began shortly after the edict of Ferdinand I of Bohemia and Hungary on 20 January 1548, although there may well have been colonists as early as 1516.18 By June of 1548 groups of t he Czech Brethren settled in Poznan´ on the lands in Great Poland owned by Andrew Górka and Jacob and Stanislas Ostroróg, in and near Toru´n (Thorn), in Cujavia, and in Ducal Prussia. Many among the Polish Reformed nobles and preachers found in this

17

 Williams, Lubieniecki; Lubieniecki, Histaria, Book 1, ch. 5. Emphasis mine.  Jaroslav Bidlo, Jednota Bratrska (Prague, 1900), 1, suggested that some Czech Br ethren settled in Great Poland near Leszno as early as 1516. 18

1002  the radical reformation

chapter 25.1.c / 25.1.d

newly rerooted but venerable, Slavic, reformed community an exemplary discipline necessary for countervailing some of t heir own nobility who were espousing the Reformation for wholly political and even selfish economic reasons. Eventually the Czech Brethren will be absorbed into the Reformed community, produce the first historian of the reformed churches in Slavic lands,19 and in the next century produce out of Leszno the spokesman for both communions, John Amos Comenius (Komenský, 1592–1670) at the Colloquium Charitativum of Toru´n in 1645.20 d. Francis Lismanino, the Potential Leader of the Commonwealth Reformed, Goes Abroad, 155321 In 1553 King Sigismund II Augustus sent his former tutor and his mother’s Franciscan confessor, Dr. Francis Lismanino (1504–66), on a book-buying mission abroad to stock the royal library. Born under Venetian jurisdiction in Corfù of h alf-Uniate and half-Roman parentage, Lismanino had been brought as a boy to Cracow, and, on becoming a Franciscan, in due course was made Italian preacher and confessor to Queen Bona Sforza. She had given him Ochino’s sermons to read, and from there he went to Calvin’s Institutes. Between 1550 and 1553 Lismanino had read to Sigismund from the Institutes twice a week after supper. Thus Lismanino was now no doubt on a second, undeclared, mission to obtain firsthand information about the reformers and their churches. From November 1554 till February 1555 Lismanino resided in Geneva, followed Calvin’s lectures, and married a Huguenot, publicly breaking with the Catholic Church. He urged Calvin to promote the Reformed cause in the Commonwealth.22 Accordingly, already on 9 D ecember 1554 Calvin exhorted the king to put an end to papal domination of his kingdom.23 Meanwhile in Little Poland, Felix Cruciger (Krz´yzak), a bachelor of arts from the Jagiellonian University in Cracow, was elected superintendent of the still very few Reformed congregations in Little Poland in 1554. He and

19  This was Andr ew We¸gierski, who, under the name of A drianus Regenvolscius, wrote the Systema historico-chronologicum Ecclesiarum Slavonicarum (Utrecht, 1550), r eprinted with additions b y the Socinians as Libri quatuor Slavioniae Refor matae (Amsterdam, 1679), accessible in facsimile, ed. Janusz Tazbir (Warsaw: PWN, 1973). 20

 The Colloquium to bring peace among the Catholics, Lutherans, and the Reformed Czech Brethren, was convoked by Ladislas IV, fearing for the Commonwealth what had hap pened because of confessional strife in the Empire. See Williams, Lubieniecki, Plate 61. The Polish Brethren were excluded from the Charitable Colloquy. 21  The fullest r ecent account is that of Hein, Italienische Protestanten, chap. 25; see also Williams, Lubieniecki, Plate 16. 22  Henryk Barycz, “Meandry Lismaninowskie,” OiRwP 16 (1971): 37–67; Theodor Wotschke, “Francesco Lismanino,” Zeitschrift der Historischen Gesellschaft für die Provinz Posen 28 (1910): 213–332. 23  OC 15, no. 2057.

chapter 25.1.d / 25.1.e slavic reformation: poland & lithuania  1003 Stancaro, back from Köingsberg, attended the synod of Słomniki, four miles from Cracow. There, “because of the name” of the author,24 his now printed Canones (1552) were not immediately, but eventually adopted at the end as the basis of the rites for “the whole Church.”25 e. The Poles and Their Swiss Advisors’ Fleeting Vision of a Reformed Commonwealth In a letter to John Łaski in Frankfurt on the Main of 2 6 January 1555, 26 Calvin explained (on the basis of a lost reply of the Polish king to Calvin) that, although Sigismund wished the Church to be in good order, he seemed to be beset by scruples as to whether to undertake such a task. Calvin suggested that Łaski, as nephew of a former Primate John Łaski (1510–31) and an experienced reformer in Emden (Ch. 14.2) and London (Ch. 30.3), write to Sigismund; and Calvin promised, for his part, to write in similar fashion to several Commonwealth lords. Henry Bullinger had received ecclesiastical questions of p olity from Sigismund through the good offices of L ismanino, sojourning in Zurich, and also the astounding news that the king was soon to undertake the reformation of his Church. Bullinger had relayed this information to Calvin in a letter of 18 January 1555 and urged him to respond.27 Instead, counting on Łaski’s direct appeal to Sigismund, Calvin wrote to two nobles, whom Lismanino had suggested as being influential at court: Nicholas Radziwiłł the Black and Palatine Spytek Jordan of Sandomierz. In the letter to Radziwiłł, 13 February 1555, 28 Calvin told him that Lismanino had recounted the interest of t he palatine in “true doctrine” and encouraged him therein, appealing to him in his turn—in response to the suggestion of Bullinger— to exhort the king to reform the Church. The Reformed in Little Poland were in the meantime being much attracted by t he regional reorganization of t he Czech Brethren in Great Poland and discussed the desirability of u nion with them in two small synods in March, in Krzcie¸cice, then Gołuchów. In Gołuchów in Great Poland, 28 March 1555, Cruciger, now calling himself “Superintendent of the Reformed churches in [all] Poland,” wrote urging the Czech Brethren to make common cause with them.29 The Czech Brethren, with their Hussite doctrine of the Eucharist, and with a fused episcopal tradition derived from both Romanists and Waldensians, attracted many of the Reformedminded Poles as being both apostolic and scriptural. 24

 Sipayłło, Akta 1:16f.  Ibid., 1:2f. 26  OC 15, no. 2070, col. 360. 27  OC 15, no. 2090, col. 392. 28  OC 15, no. 2113. 29  Sipayłło. Akta 1:16f. 25

1004  the radical reformation

chapter 25.1.e / 25.1.f

At the Reformed synod in Pi´nczów, 1 May 1555, the delegates received from the hand of Stanislas Budzi´n ski (destined to become the first historian of Polish Unitarianism) 30 a letter from Lismanino in which the former Franciscan recounted his conversion to the Reformation. Budzi´n ski was expected to convey to the king the books Lismanino had purchased. In the name of the synod, Cruciger urged Lismanino to return to Poland and give leadership to reform in the land he knew so well. 31 f. The Polish Interim, May 1555 Church reform was, indeed, very much on the minds of t he king, 32 the senators, and the deputies, who at the Diet of P iotrków in Great Poland, 3 May to 15 June 1555, dealt with four articles on the agenda. A c opy of the Augsburg Interim of 1 548 was present during the debates in the two houses (Senators and Deputies). By 7 M ay, the “Polish Interim” was refined: (1) the king was to be considered as Lord and common Father in matters of religion, (2) during the “Interim” the jurisdictional authority of the Catholic bishops over laymen in non-ecclesiastical matters would be suspended, (3) permission was granted to every Polish lord to introduce into his estate and house any scriptural mode of worship he desired, and (4) the call was made, with the king consenting, for a national and ecumenical council to discuss reforms for the Polish Church over the protest of, and even with the threat of resort to arms by, the bishops led by A ndrew Zebrzydowski of C racow. (The Council of Trent having passed through Periods I and II, was virtually suspended; Period III, 1562–63, lay ahead.) The Diet also set an agenda for the national council of bishops that would

30  See my account of him as the pr edecessor of Lubieniecki, “The First Historian of Unitarianism,” Proceedings of the Unitarian Universalist Historical Society, 20 (1985–86): 76–93, and André Séguenny, ed., Bibliotheca Dissidentium 8 (1987) (preferring the spelling Budzy´nski). Budzi´nski served Lismanino as secretary and retained copies of invaluable correpondence used in his lost vernacular History. In my edition of Lubieniecki I have put in italics those parts of the Historia that appear to be taken over intact by Lubieniecki. 31  The letter is undated except for the eyar 1555. Stanislas Lubieniecki, Historia Reformationis Polonicae (Amsterdam, 1665; facsimile ed., Warsaw: PWN, 1971), 50–58, preserves considerable detail derived from the lost MS Histor y of Stanislas Budzi´nski. Maria Sipayłło, “W sprawie synodu pic´nzowskiego z 1. V. 1555 r.,” OiRwP 10 (1965): 213–22 defends the existence of this contested synod and man y of the details pr eserved by Lubieniecki and other s and assigns to it the synodal letter of Cr uciger to Lismanino, which Theodor Wotschke, Der Briefwechsel der Schweizer mit den Polen (Leipzig, 1908), cites as no. 26.This Briefwechsel is invaluable for calendaring the correspondence, citing OC (but beware of occasional f aulty numbering) and pr inting letters not ther ein contained or not else where readily accessible. It is in f act Wotschke who prints Crucige’s letter “ex convocatione Pinczoviensi 1555” elsewhere and assigns it a later date, 21 September. Sipayłło is convincing in her article, but she only lists this earlier Pi´nczow synod in her Table of Synods in Akta without assigning to it a page in its own right with bibliographical information, as she does in other cases where the records have been lost. 32  For the king’ s efforts to ha ve a national r eform council, see Czesła w Frankiewicz, “Starania Zygmunta Augusta w Rzymie o Sobór Narodowy,” RwP 2 (1922): 266–71.

chapter 25.1.f

slavic reformation: poland & lithuania  1005

eventually to be called under Primate Jacob Ucha´n ski of Gniezno. It was suggested at Piotrków that the national council adopt the following five presuppositions: (1) freedom to preach the Word of G od in the fashion of Christ and the apostles, (2) freedom for the Protestant preachers from molestation by the bishops, (3) freedom to celebrate the Mass in Polish, (4) freedom to receive communion under both kinds by those who so desired, and (5) freedom of the clergy to marry. Pending the royal implementation of t heir hopes, Albert Marszewski presented to the king what a c ontemporary account called the Augsburg Confession in Polish. In fact it was a C onfession in twenty-four articles revised by S tanislas Lutomirski, who had once studied in Wittenberg, of a content roughly midway between Lutheranism and Helvetic views, with phrases from Stancaro and Martin Bucer and an article on the Eucharist drawn from the Wittenberg Concord of 1536. 33 This document did not have any synodal backing, although it served as a rallying point for Protestantminded lords. Lord Jacob Ostoróg presented the somewhat Lutheranized Confession of the Czech Brethren (Ch. 9.1) in Great Poland, a document which would be presently worked over by the Reformed of Little Poland. There were three spinoffs of t he almost cyclonic Diet of P iotrków. The first was the decision of t he king to send an ambassador to Rome with a p ublic and a p rivate message, hoping to gain papal support for a national reform council. The second was a perfunctory synod of bishops at Piotrków, June 1555, so poorly attended that it had to be postponed. The third was a s uccession of t wo Reformed synods that would now seek to implement within the context of their separated Church what some of the senators and especially deputies had called for at the Diet. We shall presently take up these synods. In the meantime, correspondence continued between Calvin and certain Commonwealth lords. Nicholas Radziwiłł the Black responded to Calvin’s letter34 with warmth and admiration on 13 June 1555. 35 Grand Treasurer Jordan wrote him on 20 August 1555. 36 It would appear that Budzins´ ki carried Superintendent Cruciger’s letter from the synod of Pinczów ´ of 1 M ay, 37 letters of the king to Conrad Gesner, Bullinger, and Calvin, all presumably written in haste during the Diet of Piotrków, and 33  Ludwik Finkel, “Konfesya podana przez posłów na sejmie piotrkowskim w r. 1555,” Kwartalnik Historyczny 10 (1896): 257–85, which gives a general account of the Diet. See also Theodor Wotschke, “Stanislas Lutomirski,” with appendices, 3 (1908): 105–71; idem, succinctly in context, Geschichte der Reformation in Polen (Leipzig, 1911), 126–30. See also Christian A. Salig, Vollständige Historie der Augsburgischen Confession, 3 vols. (Halle, 1730–31), 2:597. 34  Above at n. 28. 35  OC 15, no. 2227. The palatine mentions that Calvin’ s letter to him had been br ought by Budzi´nski. 36  OC 15, n. 2276. 37  Above at n. 30.

1006  the radical reformation

chapter 25.1.f / 25.1.g

the aforementioned response of R adziwiłł. 38 Calvin, at the prompting of Lismanino, wrote to Jordan on 13 September 1555, 39 without having yet received the above-mentioned letter, exhorting him to remain constant in the faith and asking him to urge the king to undertake the reform. g. The Swiss Looking Out from the Alps upon the Polish and Ruthenian Plains and Marshes The Swiss, it should be remarked at this point, never seemed to take into consideration the largest Church of the Commonwealth, that of Ruthenian Orthodoxy, which was under the metropolitan of Kiev and remotely under the Ecumenical Patriarch isolated in Istanbul. This Church, dominant in the eastern two-thirds of the Commonwealth, once had a near-vernacular (Church Slavonic) liturgy, the Nicene creed without the Filioque, communion in both kinds, a married priesthood, lay brotherhoods strongly complementing the powers of the mostly ill-educated bishops, and above all a plausible claim to apostolicity. As for the Czech Brethren in Great Poland, the Swiss could think of them as the Picards who had nominally submitted to Reformed principles at the Synod of Cianforan in 1532 (Ch. 21.2). Some of the Reformed-minded Poles found the well-organized Czech Brethren in Great Poland with their high doctrine of the Eucharist, with an episcopal tradition, and with their earlier established contact with the patriarchs of Alexandria and Constantinople (Ch. 9.1) alluringly apostolic and scriptural. In any case, the Reformed of Little Poland, in order to make of themselves a s till stronger force for a p an-Protestant and pan-Commonwealth alternative to even a reformed Catholicism, consummated, under Cruciger, the negotiations for the full federal union of the Calvinists and the Czech Brethren at the first fully joint synod of K oz´minek in Great Poland, 24 August to 2 September 1555.40 A synod of t he Reformed then met alone at Pi´nczów, 21 September 1555.41 Alexander Witrelin (Vitrelin), co-pastor there, had already sought counsel from Lismanino abroad.42 We take further note of W itrelin, one of four Silesians destined to be prominent in the Minor Church of Little Poland. 38  The evidence for letters from the king to the three Swiss is in Lubieniecki, Historia, 58. Only a fragment of that to Bullinger survives, Wotschke, Briefwechsel, no. 27, who refers to the Diet in progress as his excuse for br evity. Sipayłło, W sprawie, makes a good case for the synod of Pi´nczów of 1 May 1555 (n. 30) and for the r ecalendaring of the letter s here involved over against Wotschke, observing that Budzi´nski returned to Switzerland in the middle of August, taking the letter s mentioned b ut not J ordan’s. This new sequence explains wh y Lismanino’s response to Cruciger would be 11 September, from Zurich. 39  OC 15, no. 2296; Wotschke, Briefwechsel, no. 24. 40  Sipayłło, Akta 1:8–43. 41  Sipayłło, Akta 1:2. 42  Wotschke, Briefwechsel, no. 28.

chapter 25.1.g

slavic reformation: poland & lithuania  1007

Alexander Witrelin of Bytom in Upper Silesia came to Little Poland early in 1551, following the call from Nicholas Ole´snicki to co-pastor with Martin Krowicki in Pi´nczów.43 Witrelin attended all the major synods and observed, at first with anxiety, the incipient theological radicalism among some of the Polish reformers. In a letter to Lismanino, 15 September 1555, Witrelin had asked the erstwhile royal tutor to find out from the Swiss about their position on Michael Servetus.44 The Reformed yielded to the Czech Brethren on most matters, although presently they will come to realize that the Czechs in Great Poland, themselves subject to the Mother Church in Moravia, would make the prospectively federated Polish Reformed, unless outstanding issues were debated further, subject to the control of bishops from outside their country. These celibate foreign bishops might prove to be as difficult as their native Catholic hierarchy. Lismanino, who had received the urgent summons from the earlier synod of Pi´nczów, replied on 11 November from Zurich that he was prepared to serve the Little Poland Reformed Church.45 Stimulated by t he prospect, Lismanino, in an undated memorandum for Calvin,46 listed personages in the Commonwealth to whom the Reformer should write, apparently spurred by suggestions in the aforementioned letter of Witrelin. These included: Sigismund II (again); Prince Nicholas Radziwiłł; Lord John Tarnowski, castellan of Cracow, the first temporal personage of t he realm after the king; Lord Stanislas Te¸czyski, the second after the king and already appointed by him lay delegate to Trent; Cruciger, elected superintendent at the convocation of Pi´nczów, presumably of 1 M ay 1553; and even Bishop Jacob Ucha´n ski. Calvin would presently write to most of these, except Ucha´n ski, and to others. In the letter of W itrelin (who was destined to become a U nitarian immersionist) embedded in the memorandum to Calvin is a l ist of five problems agitating the Church which was still in formulation: (1) the view of Andrew Musculus of the Brandenberg academy in Frankfurt on the Oder as to Christ’s passion in two natures; (2) the view of O siander on essential (experiential) justification through the divine nature of Christ; (3) the purportedly corrective view of Philip Melanchthon in response to Osiander, Stancaro, and Musculus that Christ in his Person and by h is office mediated in both natures; (4) the rise of some who denied that the Son according to his humanity ought to be said to be natural, a reference to 43

 Dalton, Lasciana, 426f. There is no monograph on Witrelin. All information is gathered from letters by him or in reference to him, collected by Wotschke and Dalton. 44  Wotschke, Briefwechsel, no. 33. Letters like the one to Lismanino and another to Wolph indicate that Witrelin was initially opposed to this growing theological radicalism. 45  Wotschke, Briefwechsel, no. 28. 46  OC 15, no. 2350, cols. 868–71.

1008  the radical reformation

chapter 25.1.g

the celestial flesh taught variously by Schwenckfeld, Menno Simons (both with followers, especially in Silesia and the Lower Vistula), and Michael Servetus; and (5) specifically the error of S ervetus on the Trinity, which was attracting some.47 Without specific reference to the foregoing problems, Calvin proceeded to follow up the suggestion of L ismanino, stimulated by C ruciger and Witrelin, to write to the king,48 December 1555,49 and in rapid succession to John Boner of Cracow, in whose home the Reformed met for worship, Lord Stanislas Ivan Karni´n ski,50 Lady Agnes Dłuska of Iwanowice,51 Stanislas Lasocki,52 Nicholas Myszkowski,53 again Radziwiłł,54 John Tarnowski,55 Andrew Trzecieski,56 and Spytek Jordan.57 On the Eve of Christmas 1555 Calvin, taking note of Sigismund’s earlier call for a national reform council (of Catholics and Protestants), made his last effort to bestir the king, pointing out that the “true religion” had begun to emerge in Poland and calling upon him to join it “in the name of the King of k ings.” After referring to his earlier letter of 5 D ecember 1554, Calvin magisterially continues: “Therefore, I, whom the Supreme King has appointed preacher of h is Gospel and minister of h is Church, since true religion has now begun in Poland to emerge from the baneful darkness of the papacy …, appeal to your Majesty in God’s name to perform this duty in preference to all others.” Calvin asks whether “kings should delay whom God has raised to such a height that from it they [the Polish Reformed] might give light to all nations?” Among the letters of December 1555 addressed to almost all the personages suggested by Lismanino and to some others, Calvin made his most substantive proposal, apart from that to the king, to the polyglot scholar, Andrew Trzecieski, namely, that he should undertake the translation of the Bible into Polish—and urged Boner to provide the money. On 31 December 1555 John Łaski, as Calvin had earlier urged, wrote three spirited letters. One was addressed to the king, to whom he dedicated his Church Order of L ondon as just printed at Frankfurt on the Main. Another was addressed to the Protestant lords temporal, and the third to the lesser lords and pastors of evangelical persuasion.58 In the letter to the

47  In the Briefwechsel this item is no. 25, assigned to Alexander Witrelin, whose five problems might well be only incorporated into the memorandum. 48  Wotschke, Briefwechsel, no. 33. 49 50 51  Ibid., no. 34.  Ibid., no. 35.  Ibid., no. 36. 52 53 54  Ibid., no. 37.  Ibid., no. 38.  Ibid., no. 39. 55 56 57  Ibid., no. 40.  Ibid., no. 41.  Ibid., no. 42. 58  Abrahm Kuyper, Opera tam edita quem inedita, 2 vols. (Amsterdam, 1886), 1, 247–388.

chapter 25.1.g / 25.1.h slavic reformation: poland & lithuania  1009 king Łaski exhorted Sigismund to be an active and energetic rex in the work of the Reformation, while he as an experienced reformer in East Frisia, London, and elsewhere would serve as sacerdos and propheta, appealing to the Erasmian threefold office of Christ, first formulated by t he Dutch humanist in his Commentary on Psalm 2 (Ch. 1.3.a). h. Peter Gonesius, a Polish Servetian, Sounds a New Theological Concern amid Hopes for a National Reform Council At the beginning of 1 556 Sigismund was, despite Catholic reluctance or opposition, indeed ready to call a n ational council. With the Czech Brethren and Calvinists not yet fully united, both bodies met together at the Reformed synod of S ecemin 21–29 January 1556.59 Cruciger was elected presiding officer. Andrew Trzecieski of C racow read the Czech Confessio in Polish with the approval of i ts contents by a ll hearing it.60 There was much consternation when on the second day Dr. Peter Giezka of Gonia¸dz, an alumnus of P adua and an acquaintance of t he Servetian jurisconsult Matthew Gribaldi (Ch. 24.2.a), presented a second confession. Peter of Gonia¸ dz (Gonesius) (? 1525–73),61 a native of Podlachia, had first studied with a s tipend from the bishop of V ilna in Cracow (1546– 50), where he joined the student protest against their reformer-professor Stancaro. Still under the protection of the bishop of Vilna, he studied civil law. It was in Padua that Peter evidently became attracted to the pacifist Italian Anabaptists in contact with the Hutterites.62 Although his Anabaptist thought was not yet recorded, his act of carrying a wooden sword on the pattern of t he Minor Party of t he Czech Brethren must be seen as a token of his pacifism and certainly Anabaptist convictions.63 Purportedly encouraged by N icholas Radziwiłł the Black, Gonesius evidently asserted the deity of the Father alone, denying the acceptability of the very term Trinity. In six points, based allegedly on Irenaeus, Gonesius contended (1) that God was not triune; that the term Trinity itself was

59

 Sipayłło, Akta 1:6–52.  Ibid., 1:40. 61  The most recent account of Gonesius is that of Lech Szczucki,“Piotr z Gonia¸dza,” Polski Słownik Biograficzny (henceforth: PSB), 31 vols. to date through “Romeszewski” (Wrocław, etc.: Ossolineum, 1921–89), 26:398–401. Earlier w orks included J . Jasnowski, “Piotr z Gonia¸dza: Z·ycie, działalno´sc´ i pisma,” Przegla¸d Historyczny 32 (1934/35): 5–58; and Konrad Górski, “Piotr z Gonia¸dza,” Studia nad dziejami polskiej literatury antytrynitarskiej (Cracow: PIW, 1949). 62  In the historiography of the Polish Brethren he was thought to have stayed for some time with the Hutterites in Moravia on his way home. 63  Williams, Lubieniecki; Lubieniecki, Historia 2: n. 399. 60

1010  the radical reformation

chapter 25.1.h / 25.1.i

new, (2) that the Athanasium was wholly against Scripture,64 (3) that God the Father is the only God besides whom there is none other, citing John 17:3, (4) that Christ himself asserted that he was less than the Father, even the servant of t he Father, citing John 17:23, (5) “that the Logos was the invisible immortal Word which in its time became flesh in the womb of the Virgin,” holding that the invisible Word was “the seed of t he Son incarnate,” and (6) he denied the consubstantiality of C hrist with the Father. The impending schism of 1563 in the Reformed Church, over the doctrine of the Trinity therein, cast its shadow before.65 To return to the main concerns of t he synod of S ecemin, 21–29 January 1556, the Czech Brethren and the Reformed sketched their outline of w hat they would propose for the national reform council: (1) that the king himself preside (on the model of C onstantine), (2) that outside royal and princely arbiters be summoned to assess the arguments of t he Catholic bishops and the Protestant professors, (3) that bishops and their periti should not be arbiters, since they, with the Protestant professors, should be equal parties, (4) that Scripture alone be normative, (5) that Calvin, Melanchthon, Beza, and Nicholas du Quesnoy (Quercetanus; a professor of philosophy at Lausanne), should be invited together as the Protestant professors, and (6) that a confession of faith be put together. 66 i. The Poles Count on the Swiss Divines as Their Spokesmen at a National Debate on Reform The next Reformed synod was that of Pi´nczów, 24 April to 1 May 1556,67 held jointly with the superintendent and the major leaders of t he Czech Brethren. Although the main concerns were unrelated to Gonesius, the synod found occasion to condemn him as an “Arian”68 for his (now lost) tract, De Filio Dei homine Jesu Christi (Cracow, 1556). Prince Nicholas bought up the edition to destroy it but would continue his protection of the author, who was excommunicated and sent off to Wittenberg to be instructed by Melanchthon. The king issued two edicts for his arrest, the

64  In due course it would become demonstrable that the Athanasium was not only unscriptural, but also a late Latin cr edal formulation. This was the conclusion of Lutheran philolo gist Joachim Camerarius (d. Leipzig 1574). The Athanasium is without a Church Slavonic counterpart until the se venteenth century, although it appear s earlier in a Ruthenian translation of a Postil of Nicholas Rej. 65  Sipayłło, Akta 1:47. 66  Sipayłło, Akta 1:48. 67  Ibid. 1:53–78. 68  Sipayłło, Akta 1:72.

chapter 25.1.i

slavic reformation: poland & lithuania  1011

synod all the time professing to the bishop of Cracow that none of the synodists shared Gonesius’ views.69 The major concern of t he synod was still to shape a c omprehensive common policy with respect to the impending (as they trusted) national reform council promised by t he king. It is of i nterest that the Reformed questioned the Czech Brethren about their practice of conditional rebaptism, which they evidently sanctioned by a ppealing to Acts 8:17.70 The letters in response to their queries from the divines of t he German, the Savoyard (Reformed Waldensians, Ch. 21.2), and the Swiss churches were brought by L ord Stanislas Karni´n ski and received “with tremendous joy” on 30 April 1556. As the Memoriale of Calvin via Lismanino is lost,71 we take note of the five views of Beza and others in the probably compatible Lausanne reply to the same five propositions in the Lismanino letter aforementioned.72 The western Reformed respondents all denied that Christ in his divine nature could suffer or die. They refuted Osiander’s position by asserting that Christ’s humanity was important in individual justification. Yet it was agreed that Christ was a Mediator in both natures because to be the Mediator between God and man, Christ had to partake of both natures. The office of soteriological, as well as cosmological, Mediator belonged to the Person of C hrist and in the act of s alvation involved alike his divine natura. The synodists at Pi´nczów decided that indeed Calvin, Beza, and Quesnoy ought to be called to Poland, and invitations were sent. Beza’s reputation as a biblical scholar had been carried to Poland by Lismanino, who had briefly visited his academy in Lausanne. The letter of invitation to Calvin on 2 May was signed by the most important ministers and by ten prominent nobles.73 The Polish authors explained that the piety of Calvin, his spirited battle with the Roman Antichrist, and his hatred of heresy of all kinds were well known to them through Lismanino. Therefore, they made bold to ask him to come to Poland to adjudicate the theological issues. Superintendent Cruciger and four other pastors wrote to the Geneva council asking them to allow Calvin to come to Poland for a few months.74 The letter to Beza and one to Bullinger also were sent by Cruciger alone the next day.75

69

 Józef Janowski, “Dwa edykty Zygmunta Augusta przeciwko Piotrowi z Gonia¸dza i Janowi Łaskiemu,” RwP 9/10 (1939): 442–43. 70  Sipayłło, Akta 1:69–70. 71  About which, see below at n. 77. 72  Théodore de Bèza, Correspondance 2:213–19. 73  OC 16, no. 2445. 74  Ibid., no. 2446. 75  Ibid., no. 2446; Briefwechsel, no. 3.

1012  the radical reformation

chapter 25.1.i

To step back a couple of weeks, Lismanino, urged on by t he synodal summons from Cruciger and with a f arewell letter from Calvin,76 had arrived secretly in the environs of Cracow at the beginning of March, living in various manorial homes. He could not yet know for sure how his former royal tutee would take his conversion and marriage. He kept away from synodal gatherings and, under the influence of t he episcopacy, was actually placed under an edict of banishment in May. As early as 15 April 1556 he had written from Aleksandrowice to Calvin, begging him to speed the departure from Lausanne of Peter Statorius, who was suggested by him as a teacher for Pi´nczów. On 2 May, after the synod of Pi´nczów, Cruciger headed a delegation of seven ministers (Lismanino being left behind) and seven laymen who, upon arrival in Geneva, urged Calvin to repair at once to Poland to help them, mentioning the Memoriale on the issue of Stancaro that had been brought to them by Lismanino with letters.77 In June of 1556 Calvin wrote that indeed Statorius, at least, would soon be on his way.78 Three nobles replied to Calvin in May and June.79 In July, Castellan Tarnowski of Cracow (though remaining Catholic, yet eager for reform), to whom Calvin had written, responded to three letters from Lismanino in hiding. The castellan consoled Lismanino by e xpressing doubt as to whether the king had personally approved of the edict of banishment.80 In August, Stanislas Szarczowski of Iwanowice described in halting Latin the Catholic counteroffensive.81 Lady Dłuska,82 in whose house the Lismaninos were sheltered, thanked Calvin for his earlier letter. From 6 to 11 September 1556 the postponed national “reform” synod resumed at Łowicz, the palace in Mazovia of the Primate, under the presidency of legate Alois Lippomano. This strong Catholic action had not been foreseen by t he most eager of t he lay senators and the Reform-minded deputies at the Diet of Piotrków of 1555. Bishop Stanislas Hosius of Varmia (Ermland) 83 was a major factor in restraining Bishop Ucha´n ski from doing

76

 OC 15, no. 2373b.  The letter of Cr uciger et al. is in OC 16, no. 2445; that of Lismanino, no. 2431. Later, Lismanino would publish some Swiss letters (see Exemplum litterarum [Pi´nczów, 1559]), but the Memoriale of Calvin is not among them. Cf. Sipayłło, Akta 1: nos. 2, 63; 2:39, n. 2. 78  OC 16, no. 2470. 79  Boner to Calvin, May 1556; OC 16, no. 2458, Tarnowski to Calvin, June 1556; OC 16, no. 2489; Zborowski to Calvin, July 1556; OC 16. no. 2504. 80  Preserved by Lubieniecki, Historia, 65f. 81  OC 16, no. 2513. 82  OC 16, no. 2514. 83  I have dealt with the legatine president eventuel of the Period III of the Council of Trent: “Cardinal Hosius,” in Shapers of Tradition in Germany, Switzerland, and Poland, ed. Jill Raitt (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1981), ch. 5. 77

chapter 25.1.i / 25.2.a slavic reformation: poland & lithuania  1013 anything that would ev en suggest concessions to the most moderate of E rasmian Catholics, not to say Protestants.

The once seemingly bright promise of Piotrków was thus dashed by the time Łaski could reach his native land, having departed from Frankfurt on the Main in the company of John Utenhove, his former collaborator in the Strangers’ Church of London. Łaski arrived in Poland by way of Breslau (Wrocław).

2. The Reformation in the Commonwealth “Under” Łaski, 1556–156084

Ministers gathered at Iwanowice 28 December 1556 to 1 January 1557.85 Present for the first time since his full adherence to the Reform was Lismanino, listed first, along with, inter alios, Cruciger, merely as pastor “in Secemin.” Pastor Israel Bohemus of Ostroróg was the only Czech Brother present. Stanislas Sarnicki, pastor in Nied´z wied´z, eventual spokesman of the hard-pressed Major Church, was among the other ministers present. The Bohemian Confessio, which had already been accepted in principle at Secemin (25.1.g), was read again and more revisions were suggested with a view to presenting it at the next Diet. On the first day of January Łaski also made his first appearance in a Polish Reformed clerical assembly. On 19 February 1557, Łaski’s secretary, Utenhove, sent Calvin news from Cracow both of L egate Lippomano’s chilling influence on the king and Łaski’s efforts to rewarm him to his former optimism as to reform, enclosing a p aragraph from Łaski himself on how busy he was.86 Calvin had not even yet responded to the invitation from the synod of Pi´nczów.87 Nearly a year after receiving it, on 8 March 1557,88 Calvin turned down the request, blaming his conspicuous delay in response on difficulty in finding a letter carrier! In any case, he added, the Genevan council would not permit him to leave. Surely his presence, he continued, was no longer urgent now that Łaski, “a most faithful interpreter,” had arrived. a. Peter Paul Vergerio Seeks to Convert Sigismund II to the Augsburg Confession Before the Laskian version of Reformation would reach Lithuania, the Grand Duchy and Ducal Prussia experienced an effort by Peter Paul Vergerio to Lutheranize the Commonwealth. The former bishop of C apodistria (Ch. 84

 I wrote about this per iod in “The Polish Calvin under the ‘Superintendency’ of Łaski, 1556–60,” in Reformatio Perennis: Essays on Calvin and the Refor mation in Honor of Ford Lewis Battles, ed. Brian A. Gerrish in collaboration with Rober t Benedetto, Pittsburgh Theological Monograph Series 2 (Pittsburgh: Pickwick, 1981): 129–58. 85  Sipayłło, Akta 1:172–74. 86  OC 16, no. 2559. 87  See above, at n. 66. 88  OC 16, no. 2602.

1014  the radical reformation

chapter 25.2.a / 25.2.b

22.2.a) sought single-handedly to bring about the formation of a r oyal Lutheran Church in Lithuania and Poland under Sigismund II.89 Vergerio knew that Palatine Nicholas Radziwiłł the Black was essential to the plan. Radziwiłł had corresponded with Lismanino in Basel about his princely efforts in behalf of e cumenical Protestant reform. In the meantime, Pope Paul IV had dispatched to Poland his nuncio Alois Lippomano. The nuncio’s influence with such vital figures as Nicholas Radziwiłł disturbed the Protestants and moved Duke Albert of Prussia to recommend Vergerio’s plan. Vergerio published his Italian rendition of the Württemberg Confession (1 January 1556) with a dedication to Sigismund’s third queen, Catherine, his godchild. On 1 July the ex-bishop arrived in Königsberg, presenting his critique of clerical laxity, Catalogus haereticorum (Tübingen, 1556), dedicated to Nicholas Radziwiłł. In September he visited the prince in Vilna, and presented his translation into Latin of Valdés’ Spiritual Milk (Königsberg, 1556) dedicated to Radziwiłł’s young son. Anticipating an invitation to attend the forthcoming Polish Diet (in Warsaw 6 December 1556), Vergerio moved to the border town of Soldau in Ducal Prussia, and there waited for the summons to join battle with the papal nuncio. When the invitation failed to materialize, he had to content himself with the discharge of l iterary barrages. After the Diet concluded its meeting (14 January 1557), he briefly visited Warsaw. He would spend a fortnight with Łaski and Lismanino at Cracow, vainly attempting to persuade them to condemn Curio’s anti-predestinarian De amplitudine beati regni Dei, dedicated to the Polish sovereign. Impatient at having his advice consistently ignored, Vergerio returned to Württemberg to gain princely backing in Germany with which to sway Sigismund and Radziwiłł into accepting his vision of a Lutheranized Commonwealth.90 b. Traits of the Reformer John Łaski (1499–1560) After Vergerio’s failure, reformation on the model of the Swiss Reformed by convinced magnates and lesser lords was henceforth the major way of reform. But Nicholas the Black, for his part, was already moving from standard Calvinism to a m uch more radical reordering of r eligion in his territories, inspired by the hope of lifting the region culturally and perhaps bringing closer together the Orthodox and Latin traditions in an ecumenical, apostolic, humanistic reform.

89  The policy and personality of Vergerio are treated by Hein, Italienische Protestanten, ch. 6; Schutte, Vergerio, 130. 90  This would be on his second tr ip to the Commonw ealth with the backing of Duk e Christopher of Württemberg and Elector Otto Henry of the Rhine Palatinate and the hope of gaining young Sigismund’s acceptance of the Augsburg Confession.

chapter 25.2.b

slavic reformation: poland & lithuania  1015

We recall Łaski had written three letters from Frankfurt (25.1.f ): to the king, to the Reformed nobles, and to the Reformed pastors. Herein (and in writings for the reformation of East Frisia [Ch. 14.2] and church orders for London) we can detect a number of t raits that make it possible to say that the honorary superintendent (he would never have the title) of t he Reformed Church in the kingdom of Poland, 1556–60, was unwittingly “a father of Polish Unitarianism.” 91 Łaski’s first trait was his Commonwealth-wide vision to create a panProtestant Church, drawing together the Czech Brethren, the Lutherans, and the Reformed. To this end he was willing to be imprecise and tactful about doctrine, while being a s tringent organizer. His second trait was an inclination for synodal organization with pastors and lay elders (from the gentry and the magnates) as coordinate authorities. He drew upon his pioneer work in shaping the first Reformed princely (as distinguished from urban) territory (East Frisia). Łaski’s third trait was his disinclination to defend the received doctrine of the Trinity and Christology by means of the conciliar creeds, following Hilary of Poitiers (in a moment of despair) and his teacher Erasmus in preferring only the Bible and the Apostles’ Creed (which the Polish Unitarians would continue to insist on throughout the seventeenth century). Related to this is the fact that Łaski, though not alone among the classical Reformers in doing so, used the Ciceronian term Deus Optimus Maximus with great frequency and in all or most cases meant thereby God the Father. Łaski’s fourth trait was his frequent use of the conceptualization of the threefold office of Christ as Prophet, Priest, and King (Ch. 1.3.a), evidently employing the formulary independent of its development by way of Bucer (Ch. 10.2.b), of Osiander (Ch. 11.3.b), and even of Calvin (Ch. 23.5). In his letter to the king he cited the same Psalm 2, where in commentary Erasmus had first outlined the triplex munus Christi, and Łaski offered himself as superintending sacerdos and propheta (teacher and critic) to Sigismund as rex. It is his Old Testament sense of the propheta as exhorter and critic of kings in covenant that may set off Łaski’s usage of the evolving formulary from collateral developments of the triplex munus Christi. His scriptural triadic formula, useful for those who would abandon the doctrine of the Trinity like Faustus Socinus (Ch. 24.4), was to become the basic structural principle of all the catechisms of the Polish Brethren from 1574 (Ch. 29.3). A fifth trait was Łaski’s reluctance to be anywhere near as precise about the problematic of predestination and free will as one would expect from the prestigious overseer of t he Helvetic Church in Poland. The szlachcic

91  What follows is a compact rendering of traits identified in my treatment of Łaski in the larger context: “Erasmianism in Poland, 1518–1605,” Polish Review 22 (1977): 3–50.

1016  the radical reformation

chapter 25.2.b / 25.2.c

supra-superintendent nominally went along with the Swiss and the Saxon predestinarians; but he, the former student of Erasmus and Polish knight— who commonly identified himself in his publications as Baro Polonus rather than as Pastor Polonus—felt deep down very much like a free man not only in the royal republic but also in the kingdom to come! His sixth trait, related to the second, was his creation of synodal deacons and lay elders of supra-congregational authority, as well as of congregational counterparts, in both cases mostly drawn from the aristocracy.92 Łaski would manage to equalize the ecclesiastical roles of the nobiliary patrons and the elected pastors as co-moderators of the local and general synods of the Reformed Church. In Poland and Lithuania, the pastors would be subject to the collective moral and theological discipline and scrutiny in which the patrons (as more than lay or ruling elders) and the ministerial elders would alike have a voice. Whether or not Łaski was “a most faithful interpreter” of the Reformed legacy, as Calvin had described him, Łaski surely found himself cast by providence in the role of reformer of the Commonwealth or at least as the organizer of a p an-Commonwealth Protestant Church, which just might have embraced the Czech Brethren, the Lutherans, and the Reformed. c. Łaski Appeals in Vain to Sigismund in Vilna, 1557 Łaski felt that the Reformed under Cruciger had yielded too much to the Czech Brethren. With his comprehensive plan, Łaski had set out from Cracow on 25 February 1557 for Vilna, where he arrived 17 March to have an audience with the king and to confer with Palatine Radziwiłł. The king could only consent to a private colloquy, and in this setting Łaski was emboldened to express himself fully on a g eneral reformation. The king, temporizing but friendly, may have given Łaski hope that still something could be done. While Sigismund continued to show sympathy for the Protestant Reformation (except for his having yielded to Catholic advisors with respect to restricting Lismanino), he never allowed that ill-defined proclivity permanently to impair his religious ties with the senatorial episcopate and the Pope. From the point of view of many theologically confused Reformed Poles, the ongoing involvement of Calvin or Beza, or both, on the scene could have made the decisive difference in their confessional development and in their constitutional status in the Commonwealth. Łaski was more the politician and organizer than a theologian at a moment when no other Reformed Church had to consider so directly the reformation of h igh doctrines in the face of five highly university-trained and divergently ori92  The thesis is developed more fully with documentation in my “Erasmianism in Poland,” esp. 3–38.

chapter 25.2.c / 25.2.d slavic reformation: poland & lithuania  1017 ented doctors, not all of them in range of his voice: Dr. Francis Lismanino, Dr. Andreas Osiander, Dr. Francis Stancaro, Dr. George Biandrata, and Dr. Peter Gonesius. In addition, reforms were to be enacted amidst what must have been a latent rivalry for leadership. That rivalry was among the local leader, Cruciger, the first superintendent as of 1554 (Ch. 25.1.c); the scholarly, prestigious, but irresolute Lismanino; and the internationally renowned and locally prestigious major Polish Reformed, Łaski—who had been accustomed in England to conversing with King and Primate, but back in his native land, was impelled to carry out comprehensive plans for the whole Commonwealth through lesser nobles. d. Issues of Polity and Theology: A Synopsis of the Drama Ahead: Four Incipient Reformed Synods Having mentioned the organizational and theological dramatis personae polonicae italicaeque, we do well at this juncture to state the two theological issues uppermost in the minds of several of the foregoing and their followers. The one issue has been mentioned: the countervailing impulses (1) to form a powerful Reformed Church on the model of that of each Swiss canton, but in the case of t he Commonwealth a c ongeries of c hurches under lay patrons of d iverse economic and cultural clout in the some fifty palatinates, and (2) to move toward an intra-Protestant ecumenism, possibly involving a federalist compromise—but surely with mutual toleration as regards rites and the less important doctrinal formulations— among Czech Brethren, Lutherans, and the Reformed. The other issue, flaring up first in Königsberg over the mediatorship of C hrist (25.1.b) as between Stancaro and Osiander, would become cyclonic within the Polish Reformed Church and cleave it during the leadership of Łaski. By the time of his death the outlines of four emerging separate Reformed synods will be descried: the high Helvetic (eventual leader, Sarnicki), the Stancarist, the immersionist Ditheist (Farnovians), and the protoUnitarian Baptist. It is important to say a f urther generalizing word, since no country faced the organizational problem and the theological issue of C hrist the Mediator in such complexity and intensity as precisely the land of Ł aski. The Augsburg Confession of 1530, Part I, article iii, De Filio Dei, had been traditional in stating that “the Word, i.e., the Son of God took unto him human nature … so that there are two natures in unity of Person.” There is no mention of Christ qua Mediator. It was the fate of Ł aski to have the problem of t he Mediator, and with it the clarif ication of b oth Triadology and Christology, crest in Poland during his leadership; for he, like Biandrata and then Lismanino and Gonesius, would have preferred to remain with the Reformation

1018  the radical reformation

chapter 25.2.d

principle of sola scriptura and to retain of the ancient symbols only the Apostles’ Creed. The fascination and indeed uniqueness of t he progression/regression to be presently recorded in the synods and confessions primarily in Little Poland revolves around the fact that the Polish Reformed leadership was at the outset in firm theological, philosophical, and philological possession of all the ancient symbols (Athanasium, Te Deum laudamus, Nicaenum I and II, and the Apostolicum). They would argue their way back to scriptural formulations in earnest, grappling with the received texts. In Wittenberg, Zurich, Strassburg, Basel, Lausanne, and Geneva these texts had indeed been initially marginalized (Ch. 11.2.a) in the overwhelming urge there to cast the essence of the Reformation experience and thought in terms of justification by f aith, and where the same ancient symbols would be only belatedly moved into position as ready-made dogmatic escarpments onto which to withdraw for theological protection from the queries, surmises, and new formulations of various radicals. We recall that Calvin himself had begun his oft-revised, and enlarged and nuanced, Institutes as a commentary precisely on the Apostolicum, not on the Nicaenum. The Polish leadership in successive synods and international correspondence with, and visitations to, the Swiss and the Imperial divines would first successively marginalize, and then discard, the Athanasium as exclusively Latin and palpably papal and abstrusely philosophical. Then, within the Nicaenum, they would marginalize first the Filioque, and at length the Nicaenum of precisely 381, to return to that of 325 without the consubstantiality of the Holy Spirit, and then even marginalize the Nicaenum of 325. Finally, they would proclaim Apostolicum as alone scriptural and uncontaminated by philosophical (“papal”) terminology and name it theirs, as the truly apostolic formulation. The Polish synodists/correspondents/tractarians, seeking to avoid the Stancarist charge of their being the followers of the archheretic (theological Antichrist) of patristic antiquity (Arius), will find themselves picking their way through the patristic strata, eschewing all the ancient terms of high and simpler Arian solutions, identifying themselves transitionally as Tritheists (upholders of the coeternity of Persons but the subordination of the two to the Father), then Ditheists, then pre-existentialists (upholders of the premundane existence of Jesus Christ [Colossians, Ephesians]), and they will, in contrast to their counterparts, the proto-Unitarian Reformed in Transylvania (Ch. 28), resourcefully seek to ground their successive synodal compromise formulations not only in scriptural but also in patristic citations. The implicit and sometimes unabashedly acknowledged Tritheism will emerge in their anti-Stancarian attachment to Jesus Christ as fully divinehuman in his role as Mediator, subordinate to the Father as the uniquely divine Deus Optimus Maximus. Their Ditheism—or, less extreme, their

chapter 25.2.d / 25.2.e slavic reformation: poland & lithuania  1019 alleged Binitarianism—finds patristic grounding in post-Nicene Hilary of Poitiers who is often quoted as having said, in a despairing letter to Arian Emperor Constantinus, that he was in the end satisfied and content with the Apostolicum after a h alf-century of f ormularies, and who, moreover, expressly called the Holy Spirit Donum (gift) rather than Persona. The Polish synodists also find confirmation of D itheism in Justin Martyr, whose Dialogue with Trypho the Jew they will publish in Polish translation in 1564 (Ch. 25.3), and they will often appeal in various stages of their debates to Irenaeus. In almost no instance espousing the specific subordinationist solution of Arius himself (“there was when he was not”), the incipient (eventually immersionist) Christocentric Unitarians among the Polish Reformed, helped on by Biandrata, will have synodally beaten their way back through all the theological counsel from abroad to claim the Apostolicum as alone sufficient; and then, against the entreaty of Biandrata (by then in Transylvania again) they will first postpone the baptism of their progeny and will eventually submit to rebaptism themselves, in the name of t he Father, of the Son, and of t he Holy Spirit, faithful to the formulary of M att. 28:19 (Ch. 25.4). The movement of t he minds of, in effect, the majority of the PolishLithuanian synodists (lay and clerical) will thus incrementally come to consider themselves as the Ecclesia Minor Reformata, eventually accepting this title as much in apostolic humility as in awareness of a d enominational census as to the number of adherents of their “apostolic” party/church. e. Churchly Organization and Synodal Issues, June 1557 to the Death of Łaski, January 1560 In the synodal assembly at Włodzisław, east of P i´nczów, 15–18 June 1557,93 Peter Statorius was appointed headmaster of the Pi´nczów school. In 1558 he would be joined by John Thénaud, a former student of Calvin. The synod of Włodzisław was important for the reason that Łaski alone is mentioned at the beginning of the protocol, and in annexed letters from the synod he even signs as superintendent. Fresh provisions were made for a translation of the Bible into Polish, for the establishment of a printing press for this and other projected publications, and for the ministerial elders to elect lay elders (seniores) from among the nobility. On 17 June two ministerial seniores of the Czech Brethren presented themselves at the assembly. This was an unexpected and pleasant surprise, but it soon became clear that these Brethren from Great Poland, while having 93

 Sipayłło, Akta 1:179–207. After Iwanowice, where Łaski first appeared in synod, there were synods in Krzce¸cice, 9 March 1557, and in Pełsznica, 13 May, from which Łaski was absent. The first synod w elcomed Lismanino as a major par ticipant in future; the second with the Confession of the Czech Brethren. Ibid., 175–78.

1020  the radical reformation

chapter 25.2.e

once seemed to act as plenipotentiaries in dealing with the Little Poland Reformed Church, were by their own acknowledgment dependent on their Mother Church in Moravia. The somewhat authoritarian chain of c ommand seemed to some Poles to entail subordination to an external hierarchy with practices stemming from the fifteenth century. The Czech “legation” in fact expressed some anxiety, for their part, about the sense in which the Polish Reformed understood consummation of the union agreed to at Kozminek (Ch. 25.1.c). The synod accordingly authorized Cruciger and Łaski to write to the presiding bishop of the Czech Brethren to clarify matters. They did so on the day following the close of t he assembly wherein they had amiably shown their desire for both unity and spiritual freedom in accordance with Scripture (2 Cor. 3:17). Another synodal assembly took place in Pi´nczów, 5–6 July 1557.94 Łaski being again mentioned at the head of otherwise unnamed ministers present. Here among ten actions it was agreed that: the Genevan Catechism of 1545 (containing the first Genevan formulation of the triplex munus Christi) should be adopted without alteration as a c ounterpose to the Bohemian Confessio; excommunication should be practiced according to the usage of the Church of Geneva; and plans should be made for a general (Commonwealth-wide) synod of representatives from Great and Little Poland, Lithuania, and Ruthenia. The general synod then took place in Pi´nczów, 10–17 August 1557,95 where further organizational and confessional discussion prevailed. Of interest was the insistence on the part of the elected nobiliary seniores that they had the right to approve the final version of the Confessio, derived from the Czech Brethren but undergoing adaptation in successive Reformed synods. Of even more interest was the question of Lord Jerome Ossoli´n ski as to whether it was permissible to attend Mass where there was no evangelical congregation. To this latter point Łaski replied promptly in the negative, citing 1 Cor. 10:21 (often adduced in resistance to Nicodemism, Ch. 22.6). Łaski evidently had been accepted as the chief ecclesiastic without his relationship to Cruciger or the lords being clarified. At the synod in Pi´nczów, 8–9 September 1557,96 the actualization of the union of the Czech Brethren and the Reformed was still being held up over more questions (nine) than had previously come into the open. The Czech Brethren were distrustful of the Calvinian conception of lay eldership and especially the Polish Reformed adaptation thereof. The Czechs feared that the noblemen, with their ownership of t he very villages in

94

 Ibid., 208f. On the competition betw een Catechismus and i.e., a pure Reformed Church and a pan-Protestant Church, see ibid., 136, 208. 95  Ibid., 216–22. 96  Ibid., 223f.

chapter 25.2.e

slavic reformation: poland & lithuania  1021

which the congregations met, could thus exercise power in both spiritual and temporal matters. A concern of the Polish Reformed for their part was that the Czech Brethren, as latter-day Hussites, might uphold too high a view of the Eucharist together with liturgical customs related to its observance. Łaski was particularly opposed to their clerical celibacy as an affront to holy matrimony, their refusal as priests to accept tithes, and their insistence on toiling at a trade rather then being “hirelings” (cf. 2 Thess. 3:7). There was another gathering in Pi´nczów, 18–22 October, at which more work was done on the Bohemian Confessio. Cruciger (among several Poles) wrote to Calvin, presenting the issues already raised at Włodzisław in June between the Brethren and the Reformed and asking his advice about the Czech Confessio as mutually revised. The letter was in this case carried by Budzi´n ski, and Calvin responded, 24 October 1557,97 to all the signatories in detail, concentrating on the eucharistic problem. It happened by chance that on this very day in Tomice near Poznan´ Lismanino, who was more disposed to the Czechs than Łaski, was engaged in a colloquy with them.98 Calvin, as was characteristic of the Swiss, thought of the Czech Brethren in Bohemia and in Great Poland as Waldensians and regularly called them by t his name or Picardi. His confidence in accommodation was based on the success of the French Swiss Reformed in bringing the Waldensians of Savoy and elsewhere into the Reformed fold at the synod of Cianforan in the Cottian Alps, 12 September 1532 (Ch. 21.2). In any case, Calvin urged the Poles to remain in close contact with their leaders in order to present a c ommon front, but he did find their doctrine of the bread and wine, after consecration as the veritable body and blood of Christ, papist. He also took occasion to present again his own view that Christ according to his body remains in heaven, descending “with the wonderful virtue of his spirit to us” and “lifting us up at the same time to himself.” This was his effort to show the Czech Brethren that the Reformed in Switzerland believed that the body and blood of Christ were truly mediated in faith through the eucharistic symbols, and he averred that the Augsburg (Variata) Confession could be understood in this sense by the Reformed. In all events, he urged that the two bodies, by now so close, not speculate on or quarrel over eucharistic doctrine. In an undated letter to John Utenhove, in October 1557,99 Calvin expressed his gratification that the king had lifted the ban on Lismanino, but he expressed reservations about what he had heard of Łaski’s “austerity” toward the Czech Brethren in his pursuit of a p an-Protestant front. The Polish Reformed had chosen ministerial and lay delegates but none 97

 The letter of Cruciger is lost. That of Calvin is in OC 16, no. 2745.  Sipayłło, Akta 1:240–50. 99  OC 16, no. 2744. 98

1022  the radical reformation

chapter 25.2.e

had showed up at the gathering of Czech Brethren at Gołuchów in Great Poland, 16 October 1557. Instead they met by t hemselves at Pi´nczów, 18–22 October, under the leadership of Łaski, and again at Włodzisław, 21 December 1557 and 14 January 1558. The first meeting dealt with matters of moral discipline and the second was largely concerned with constitutional difficulties in the Czech Confessio.100 About this time (early 1558) Łaski would write out his strictures respecting several articles of the Czech Confession (Wittenberg, 1538), his Adnotata.101 To resolve outstanding confessional differences, it was argued that the Polish Reformed and the Czech Brethren would meet, as earlier agreed upon, at Gołuchów. Łaski, however, was still turning his thoughts to Königsberg with a view to shaping a pan-Protestant grouping with the support of Duke Albert and to outflanking the renewed efforts of Peter Paul Vergerio both to gain the Czech Brethren for the Lutheran camp and to denigrate the work of Łaski in the eyes of the Swiss Reformed. Łaski left Cracow at the end of February 1558, arriving in Königsberg by April. Łaski engaged in disputations with court theologians—all with a view toward organizing a n on-episcopal, Commonwealth-wide Protestant Church—and he purported to subscribe, in respect to the Eucharist, to the Augustana variata of 1540, more acceptable to Reformed theses than the Invariata of 1530.102 One cannot pass by a l etter of Calvin to Prince Radziwiłł of 24 May 1558 in which the Reformer asked the Palatine of Vilna to intervene with Duke Cosimo de’Medici to help the Sozzini family regain their lost properties, among whom Calvin was most concerned for Laelius Socinus!103 After a synod in Ksia¸ z on 26 July 1558, at which Łaski was not present Utenhove wrote urgently to Calvin on 30 July 1558 to become further involved in Polish affairs.104 Łaski also wrote to Calvin from Ociec on 5 August 1558,105 about how Bishop Zebrzydowski of Cracow was harassing 100  Sipayłło, Akta 1:225–37; letters were sent by the Czechs remonstrating; the other meetings, ibid., 249, 256. 101  Ibid., 335–37. 102  The original Augsburg Confession was looked back upon as the invariata, although, in fact, this author itative text would have in the end gone thr ough many small, stylistic changes, mostly unimportant theologically. The Variata, composed by Melanchthon for the unionistic Protestant princes, and appr oved from a distance b y Calvin, on the ar ticle of the supper , is indeed a compromise between the high Swiss and the most accommodating Lutheran.It affirms only that “with the bread and the wine tr uly the body and b lood of Chr ist is distr ibuted to those participating in the Lord’s Supper.” Melanchthon, Werke 6:10, article 10. At the conference of Lutheran princes at Naumburg in 1561, the Variata would be renounced, and the way was prepared for the much more conservative Formula of Concord (Ch. 31.1). 103  OC 17, no. 2876. 104  OC 18, no. 2924. For the synod at Ksia¸ z, presided over by Cruciger as superintendent, see Sipayłło, Akta 1:263f. 105  OC 17, no. 293.

chapter 25.2.e / 25.2.f slavic reformation: poland & lithuania  1023 John Boner, protector of t he local zbór. From 4 t o 15 September106 there was a m ajor synod in Włodzisław, with Łaski at the head, which closed with an affirmation of t he three Creeds—of the Apostles, of Nicaea, and of Athanasius—and condemned especially the followers of Servetus, Gonesius, and the ancient Cerinthus (less as a G nostic than as an Adoptionist). These condemnations were indicators of s tronger currents gathering strength. D uring the synod Utenhove wrote again to Calvin, 12 September, urging him in the difficult religio-political circumstances to write Castellan Tarnowski. He included the names of t hree more sympathetic lords in a l etter of 18 September, directed to all the ministers of G eneva.107 Bullinger undertook to write Bishop Ucha n´ ski, 28 November 1558, urging him to openly take the side of t he Reformed. Calvin had already written to Ucha´n ski on 19 November and intimated that there could be Reformed bishops so long as they were not confined to sees.108 He wrote also to Tarnowski and Ostoróg.109 He had also written in a different vein to Lismanino, mostly about Dr. George Biandrata.110 f. Dr. George Biandrata, Midwife of the Minor Church 111 Before long, the opponents of S tancaro would often be called, after the court physician, Blandratists. George Biandrata’s preeminence in the emergence of t he Minor Church, theologically and organizationally, requires that we pause to reintroduce him at this juncture.112 Biandrata, formerly physician to the king’s mother, Bona Sforza (d. 1557), returned to Poland (from Geneva to Pinczów) ´ in the fall of 1558 and presented his confession of faith to Łaski on 7 November. Programmatically concealing the extent to which he was on bad terms with Calvin (Ch. 24.3.b), Biandrata perhaps descried in the unsettled situation in the Commonwealth the possibility of helping to give birth to a national Reformed Church of a n ltalianate rationality by p laying the role of m oderate phy-

106

 For the synod, see Sipayłło, Akta, 1:265–82.  OC 17, nos. 2959, 2969. 108  Teodor Wierzbowski, Uchansciana, 5 vols. (Warsaw, 1884–95), 1, 32; Wotschke, Briefwechsel no. 158. 109  OC 17, to Ucha´nski, no. 2983; to Tarnowski, no. 2984; to Ostoróg, no. 2980. 110  OC no. 2981; the whole postscr ipt about Biandrata is translated b y Joseph Tylenda, “Warning that Went Unheeded,” 35f. (see n. 111 below). 111  Joseph Tylenda, “The Warning that Went Unheeded: John Calvin on Giorgio Biandrata,” Calvin Theological Journal 12 (1977): 24–52, translates in two appendices the Queries and Calvin’s Responsio, having placed the exchange in context. 112  On the importance of Biandrata, see Górski, “Humanizm i Antytrynitaryzm,” Studia nad dziejami polskiej literatury antytrynitarskiej xvi wieku (Cracow: PIW, 1949);Williams, “Strains in the Christology”; and idem, Lubieniecki, commentary to Plate 18. 107

1024  the radical reformation

chapter 25.2.f

sician in both his medical and theological capacity.113 But in the Genevan’s letter to Lismanino there was ample warning of Biandrata’s “cunning tricks … which entangle simple minds.” Lismanino, now living in Pinczów ´ and in frequent contact with the courtly fellow Italian, questioned the physician-theologian closely, no doubt in their common tongue; but allegedly Lismanino could not elicit anything unorthodox, although Biandrata admitted to certain “scruples” concerning Triadology and Christology, preferring, like Łaski himself, to refer to the Three Persons in exclusively scriptural terms and the terms of the Apostles’ Creed. In the meantime, things had moved so far that a d elegation of P olish Reformed, headed by L ord Jerome Filipowski and a m ajor Reformed superintendent eventuel, Stanislas Sarnicki, had held a colloquium with the leaders of the Czech Mother Church in Lipnik in Moravia on 25 October 1558.114 This visit in effect marks the end of t he proposed federation of Kozminek of S eptember 1555 (Ch. 25.1.c), although the Major Church, the Lutherans, and the Czech Brethren will federate at Sandomierz in 1570. Łaski mostly had in mind the bishops of Poland. On 27 January 1559115 Utenhove wrote Calvin that Senator Tarnowski had recently proposed at the Diet of Piotrków (5 December 1558 to 18 February 1559) the elimination of bishops from the Senate because of their loyalty to the Pope rather than to the king, also that Radziwiłł had urged that the Reformed in the Grand Duchy and the rest of the Commonwealth to conform in faith and ceremonies and meet annually in synod in different convenient centers of the Commonwealth. Biandrata, destined to influence the prince palatine profoundly, had already influenced Lismanino and Statorius favorably as can be gauged from the latter’s letter to Calvin, 1 February 1559.116 Although Statorius professed to defend Calvin against the charges of being proud and disputatious, he was also critical of h im. And Statorius pled with Calvin to effect a r econciliation, since Calvin (inadvertently, no doubt) had wronged Biandrata. The 113  Although he w ould become archipresbyterus, i.e. general Elder of the Refor med Church in Poland, then in Transylvania an adorant Unitar ian against non-adorant Unitar ian superinten­dent Francis Dávid, I do not r egard Biandrata as a politique. He was in f act, an earnest lay theologian, who had doubtless been influenced by his possession of a copy of the Restitutio Christianismi of Servetus. Although in the bitter fight against his for mer ally and editorial collaborator, Dávid, from his base in the Báthory court of Transylvania (later orator of Báthory at the Diet Election in Wielka Wola, 1575), Biandrata will still uphold in 1578–79 in Transylvania what he less openly set for th during Łaski’s superintendency: a philosophically undefined Apostles’ Creed. Politiques did not wr ite seriously on dogma. Cf. my “The Christological Issue between Dávid and Socin us,” Studia Humanitas, ed. Tibor Klaniczay, 6 (1980): 267–321. 114  OC 17, no. 3002. 115  Sipayłło, Akta 1:283–94. 116  Wotschke Briefwechsel, no. 165; OC 17, no. 3004; partly translated by Tylenda, “Warning that Went Unheeded,” 36f.

chapter 25.2.f

slavic reformation: poland & lithuania  1025

Genevan should take the initiative since “There is no one who can move him [Biandrata] as effectively. ... He is accustomed to calling you his apostle and has acknowledged that a single sentence of yours can change his mind more quickly than six hundred books written by others.” Statorius continues: Therefore, by t he bowels of G od, the Father, I i mplore you and by the blood of Christ I beg you, to write a letter, directing it to me, so that you can recall him, if possible, to that pristine peace between you. Statorius so angered Calvin that he got no answer. In June 1559 Biandrata was sent by Sigismund to attend his ailing sister, Queen Isabelle, in Transylvania until her death, 15 September.117 Stancaro had departed for Transylvania at about the time of t he arrival of Ł aski in Poland in 1556. The trinitarian and christological problems Stancaro had created seemed virtually to have subsided in Poland, when now three years later, in late May 1559, Stancaro returns from Transylvania. Then in September Biandrata also returns. Controversy is thus again inflamed by the presence of the two Italian doctors. It was George Biandrata who would turn synodal debate about ancient symbols, occasioned by the Stancaro controversy, into inchoate Unitarianism by suggesting that Stancaro could be defeated by abandoning the philosophical vocabulary of t he scholastics and wholly reverting to the simple language of the Scriptures, especially the straightforward baptismal formulary of Matt. 28:19, confirmed in the Apostles’ Creed. In this way, Biandrata became a provisional spokesman of implicit Tritheism as ante-Nicene orthodoxy because of the link to the Apostolic Church. There were many synods and synodal assemblies during the year 1559, 118 Łaski had to which we now return. Back on 13 March 1559 at Pinczów, ´ opened the synod with a report on his conversations with His Majesty. The king could do nothing, it was reported, about Reformed councils or episcopal or national synods, but he looked with favor upon the Reformed synods and ministerial gatherings. They were, however, Łaski reported, to confine themselves to promoting the “glory of G od and the advance of the Church of t he Lord.” The king also deplored what seemed to him the spoliation of the properties of t he Old C hurch under the pretext of the renewal of r eligion. At the same time Łaski reported that, presumably with royal approval, the vice chancellor was prepared to invite Łaski

117  We know this date for Biandrata from a letter of Statorius to Calvin, OC 17, no. 3098, col. 600. 118  Sipayłło, Akta 1:295f.

1026  the radical reformation

chapter 25.2.f

and other pastors to a c olloquium with episcopal adversaries. In preparation for this they should diligently study the Confessio fidei Catholicae (1553; 5th ed. 1559) of Bi shop Hosius, with the task of providing an evangelical response. Łaski, Lismanino, Cruciger, Gregory Paul (an incipient Unitarian), Stanislas Lutomirski (husband of B arbara Łaska; together eventually Unitarian immersionists), and Sarnicki were named and the day and place set nearby. We know more about the entry of t his Catholic Confessio of European renown into the Reformed discussions from a letter of Lismanino to Rudolph Gwalter, written on 10 March 1559. The response of the synod to Hosius’ Confessio was essentially the work of Łaski, Brevis ac compendiosa responsio (Pinczów, ´ 1559). Among the nine points of the agenda the last was a reproof of the teachers of the school in Pin´czów for having made changes in their Polish translation of the Epistola annexed to the Genevan Catechism adopted earlier.119 Statorius was ordered to make the necessary corrections. There followed another synod in Pi´nczów, 25 April,120 where among eight items on the agenda, the second dealt with eight controverted issues, from the definition of t he doctrine of t he Trinity to that of t he office of pastor, which items were to be taken up systematically at the next synod in Włodzisław. Three teachers in Pi´nczów were formally commissioned to translate the Bible into Polish: Statorius (the incipient Blandratist), Thénaud, and Gregory Orsatius (the incipient Stancarist). On the problem of the baptism of infants offered by peasants on the estates, themselves fearful of their Catholic priests, it was agreed that the Reformed owner of the estate could stand in the capacity of p atron as godparent of t he baptisand. The following synod in Pi´nczów, 13 June, confirmed the foregoing in different words and dealt also with future (Catholic) baptisms in homes, from which it was advised that the Reformed refrain from entering, since such domestic baptisms were attended by drinking and revelry. The Polish Reformed church of often young university-trained patrons and native divines, scarcely less well trained trilingually than their towering Swiss advisors, would palpate in synod and correspondence an embyronic Christology, assisted assidously in almost every synodal stage of the gestation by obstetrician George Biandrata. When in May 1559 Dr. Stancaro returned from Transylvania to the Commonwealth, he immediately argued in the halls of the nobiliary sponsors and then in synod that only through their upholding his scriptural/ patristic Lombardian terminology about the Mediator could the reforming Poles circumvent the subordination of the eternal Son of God to God the Father and thus avoid his charge of potential Arianism. He repeated his point: it was not Christ in his Godhead who mediated with the Father, for a media119 120

 Above at n. 69; Lismanino’s letter to Gwalter is in Wotschke, Briefwechsel, no. 167.  Sipayłło, Akta 1:297–300.

chapter 25.2.f

slavic reformation: poland & lithuania  1027

tor is inferior to the one with whom he intercedes, but the sheer humanity of Christ that propitiated the triune God. To safeguard the Orthodox/ Catholic (ancient philosophical Greek) conception of the impassibility of the Godhead, Stancaro unwittingly involved his Polish Reformed opponents in defending the divine engagement in the suffering of the Atonement, even at the risk of their subordinating the divinity of the mediatorial Son in relation to the appeased Father and therewith dissolving the Nicene formula, in a process in which the prestigious and theologically adroit Dr. Biandrata promoted credal simplification. Stancaro, in his near Modalism, in effect called forth Polish Tritheism, the initial phase of radicalization of the doctrine of the Trinity. In this implicit Tritheism, God the Son was inferior to God the Father, even as the synodists arrayed against Stancaro still carefully avoided the distinctive language of Arius and of most ancient Arians. The synod of Włodzisław, 26–28 June 1559,121 had to forgo the discussion of t he eight theological issues and other problems remanded to it122 and became in fact much worried about the disputations, clerical disorders, and the problem of the poor. We take note only of the fact that the synodists censured Orsatius and his printer for having published Stancaro’s Collatio doctrinae Arii et … Melanchthonis … et Francisci Davidis (Cracow, 1559; 12 pages).123 The Unitarian superintendent of Transylvania eventuel Francis Dávid (Ch. 28), was still nominally Lutheran at the time of Stancaro’s comparison of h im and Melanchthon with Arius. Stancaro argued that these two Lutherans held that Christ (and hence the Son) was in his office of Mediator in both natures ipso facto inferior to the Father, without making as clear as he might have that ancient Arians had argued for the subordination of the Son as cosmological Mediator, i.e. that though begotten of the Father “there was [an interval] when he was not [i.e., before the creation of the world].” The Collatio enraged not only Łaski and Christopher Trecy (founder of Cracow’s Reformed school) but also such incipient anti-Nicenes as Gregory Paul, Martin Krowicki, Stanislas Lutomirski, and George Schomann. To defend themselves against the charge of A rianism, these Polish Reformed in their anguish accused Stancaro of Sabellianism. They burned all of the copies of his pamphlet they could find and took his printer to task. Stancaro would later write in consternation to Calvin, assuming that Geneva was on his side, and describe the abhorrent Polish “Calvinist” Tritheists (actually, of course, spiritual kinsmen of G ribaldi and Gentile), spurning them as expressly Arians: 121

 Ibid., 304–09.  At n. 120. 123  Lismanino informs the minister s of Zur ich about this, 1 September 1559. Wotschke, Briefwechsel, no. 174. 122

1028  the radical reformation

chapter 25.2.f

The Arians here teach that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are not one God but three Gods in such a way that they are separate from each other as three men are separate and that these three Gods are three substances, three wills, and three separate operations.124 Two of t he aforementioned anti-Nicenes may be further characterized briefly at this juncture. Martin Krowicki125 (d. 1573) was a k night, ordained to the priesthood, who while still a Catholic had introduced the vernacular Mass at Pi´nczów and had taken a wife. When the bishop of Cracow had tried to intercede, Krowicki was protected by Lord Ole´snicki and he had composed his Defense of the True Doctrine and Most Ancient Christian Faith (1557, printed 1560). Gregory Paul (c. 1525–91),126 soon to become an advocate of millennialism, immersionism, arid communism, as well as of explicit Unitarianism, was at this point in our narrative the Reformed pastor of Cracow, ministering to more than a thousand communicants. Born in Brzeziny, Gregory Paul (Grzegorz Paweł) had earlier earned his master’s degree from Cracow (1547–49). Thence he had gone for further study to Königsberg and then to Wittenberg in 1549. At the invitation of the burgomaster, he served as rector in the school of St. Magdalene in Pozna´n. Having read Calvin’s polemical Interim adultero-germanum, he became conspicuously Helvetic and was asked to leave. He left Pozna´n in 1550 for Wittenberg to listen to the lectures of Melanchthon. He returned in 1551 to his native town as Reformed pastor under the patronage of Christopher Lasocki. Defending the Reformation itself against his expropriating patron bent primarily upon private gain, Gregory Paul went once again to Königsberg and then resumed pastoral duties in a small manorial church in Pełsznica, Little Poland under Stanislas Lasocki. It was while so engaged that the synod of Secemin, 21–29 January 1556, elected him as one of t he three pastors of t he judicatory of t he Reformed Church of Little Poland.127 In 1558, after being promoted by his patron, General Stanislas Cikowski, Gregory Paul returned to Cracow, this time as the first pastor of its Reformed congregation. At the synodal assembly of P i´nczów, 7 Au gust 1559, called by Ł aski, who presided, to deal with Stancaro after his attack on Melanchthon, Stancaro rose to provoke a shouting disputation, despite the law forbidding religious debates except by r oyal permission. Stancaro was charged with

124

 On 4 December 1560; see Wotschke, Briefwechsel, no. 208.  For his life, see Williams, Lubienieeki, passim; Wallace, Antitrinitarian Bibliography 2:191– 95; more fully, Aleksander Brückner, Róznowierey polscy (Warsaw, 1905). 126  Konrad Górski, “Grzegorz Paweł,” PSB 9 (1961): 82–84, building on his earlier w ork, Grzegorz Pawel z Brzezitn (Cracow, 1929) and “Grzegorz Paweł jako tłumacz Biandraty i Fausta Socyna,” RwP 4 (1926): 15–31. 127  Sipayłło, Akta 1:51. 125

chapter 25.2.f

slavic reformation: poland & lithuania  1029

being a J udaizer, a N estorian, and even a M uslim. Under the direction of Łaski and Lismanino, the controversy was so heated that Łaski threw a heavy Bible at Stancaro’s head, failing in his rage even then to impress the Word of God on the pugnacious, loquacious, but patristically and scholastically the more Catholic theologian.128 Stancaro refused to submit his own confession of faith, but presented some of his polemical tracts. The synod excommunicated him and decreed that any pastor following him should be deprived of office. Lismanino wrote to all the Reformed churches of the Commonwealth, enclosing a copy of Stancaro’s tract against Melanchthon and describing his behavior. Consequently, most of S tancaro’s supporters among the clergy and the gentry abandoned him. However, Lord Stanislas Stadnicki of Nied´z wied´z and Dubiecko in Ruthenia resisted the importunities of his own pastor in Nied´z wied´z, Stanislas Sarnicki, and provided protection for Stancaro. Sarnicki hoped to advance in the Reformed Church in the Commonwealth by his zeal against the purported perverters of pure doctrine, as now, later against the proto-Unitarians. Stancaro’s oratorical talent, his deluge of words, and his cascade of dialectical brilliance always made an impression. He could have successfully defended even an absurd cause. But, on the dogma of the Trinity and the mediatorial theory of the Atonement he was closer to Augustine, Anselm, and Lombard than Calvin or any of h is Polish opponents. It was, in any case, exceedingly difficult for them to oppose him when he seemed always to convict them of A rianism. At the synod of P i´nczów Łaski stated that Stancaro was guilty of “the crime of lèse majesté” because he “with Nestorius so openly denies that the only begotten Son of God is Mediator in his divine nature but only in his human nature.”129 How far to the anti-Nicene left at least one participant of the 1559 Pi´nczów synod had moved can be seen from George Schomann’s entry in his autobiographical Testamentum: There [at Pi´nczów] I learned clearly that any sort of full equality of the Persons in the Trinity is not the Christian faith, but an error; for God the Father is one, one the Son of God, and one the Holy Spirit, although until now we did not give regard to this.130 128

 Ruffini, Studi, 214. Kowalska, Łaski, 144–45, brings together data beyond the protocol of the synod on its verbal violence. 129  Sipayłło, Akta 1:311. 130  Christopher Sand, Bibliotheca Antitrinitariorum (henceforth: BAnt) ed. Benedict Wiszowaty (Amsterdam, 1684), facsimile ed. with preface by Lech Szczucki (Warsaw: PWN, 1972), 191– 98, specifically 193. This is an invaluable Biobibliography of European Antitrinitarianism. The Testamentum of Schomann w as originally preserved by Lubieniecki, who had made of it, in effect, ch. 6 of his Historia, Book 3. When Wiszowaty came to edit posthumously Lubieniecki’s Historia (1685), he omitted this part. Because of his close interconnection of the seven documents placed by Wiszowaty in his appendix to Sand’ s Bibliotheca, I have edited all of these in English: four relating to the sixteenth century in Williams, Lubieniecki, Related Docs. 1–5 (one of the four separated), and three in The Polish Brethren.

1030  the radical reformation

chapter 25.2.f

This George Schomann (1530–c.1591) is destined to become a m ajor figure in the Minor Church. Born in Racibórz in Silesia of h alf-Polish parentage—his mother was a d aughter of Christopher Ciachowski, chancellor in Racibórz—Schomann studied in Breslau (up to 1548) and made progress in the liberal arts and philosophy in Cracow (1552–56), where he became exposed to the Reformation. In 1558 Schomann came to study in the Pi´nczów gymnasium where he stayed for a year and learned from Statorius. After a brief trip to Wittenberg, conducting his students thither, Schomann settled in Pi´nczów where he enjoyed the society of Lismanino, Biandrata, Ochino, and Statorius. In 1559 he moved “to make progress in Christian piety” with Master Łaski in nearby De¸biany. George Schomann, because of h is theological radicalism, was to be relieved of h is position as the pastor of t he Reformed congregation in Ksia¸ z in 1562. Following the split within the (Major) Reformed Helvetic Church, Schomann would become a leading voice of the Minor Church moving toward Anabaptism. The behavior of Stancaro at Pi´nczów convinced Łaski, Lismanino, and Cruciger of the necessity of opposing him with every means at their disposal. Later in 1559 they published a series of letters, as well as a confession designed to confute him. Łaski called for the publication of an orthodox statement on the Mediator. It appeared, 10 August 1559 at Pi´nczów, as Confessio de Mediatore generis humani Jesu Christo Deo et homine.131 It is a c ompact, critically worded document, organized around the Erasmian-Laskian triplex munus Christi, with Jesus Christ assigned the office as Mediator in the following order: as Prophet, Priest, and King. It states the emerging Reformed position, which had moved from the theory of the satisfaction of God’s honor and ransom to the Devil (Anselm and Lombard) to a more fully scriptural (Pauline) penal theory of the innocent Second Adam’s assumption of the punishment due all the progeny of the First Adam.  It is accessible in Wotschke, Briefwechsel, no. 164. Because of its recognized importance, Hein, ltalienische Protestanten, reprints it as appendix 2 and gives a complete translation in German, 100–104. As the Confessio de Mediatore represents an outstanding effort on the part of the Polish synodists to come to grips with the theological safeguards of Nicaea and Chalcedon, in the quasi-scriptural language of the triplex munus Christi, given prominence in our narrative, we give in translation a por tion of it her e to make explicit the degr ee to which the pr oblem exercised the Polish theological mind: “Now what concerns the office of this our Mediator we believe and confess according to the Scriptures and in agreement with the universal Church as follows: Just as the Person of the Mediator does not consist of a single nature, so also the assignment of the Mediator cannot proceed from a single nature and in this way be performed and completed. For the whole office of our Mediator depends on the power and energy and the dignity of the Person. There is no other work of his that pleases God the Father but what he as Person already finds fitting in the mediation of our r econciliation. In order to under stand our reconciliation in Chr ist before God easily and fully as the universal Mediator, by whom we are reconciled and joined with God, we expound the lines of this r econciliation and of our pacification and joining with God by the Mediator, we expound according to the Scr iptures. In this way all are able 131

chapter 25.2.f

slavic reformation: poland & lithuania  1031

to understand the things in what the office of our Mediator before God, Jesus Christ, consists. “The work of our Mediator has as many aspects as are summarized in the name of Christ [the Anointed]. God has already brought this out in the language of the Old Testament. For in the revelation of the Law, by mandate God installed Prophets, Priests, and Kings in order that we understand what pertains to the title of Christ, this is the Word incarnate, and how all this pertains to the office of Mediator. “In this way therefore, we believe and confess that under the title of Christ belongs the office of teacher and prophet because he [Jesus Christ] reveals to us his heavenly Father and his will toward all things which apply to the mystery of our salvation. In the same way John [1:1] reveals and expounds this: “In the beginning was the Word”; and again [John 1:18]: “No one has seen God, but the begotten Son who is at the Father’ s side has made him kno wn;” and again [Matt. 11:27]: “No one knows the Father except the Son and the ones to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” Moreover the Son of God carried out this office (officio) immediately from the beg inning of the w orld in order as the Mediator to us, to reveal the plan for our salvation by decree of his Father. Now he exercises the same office of Mediator until the consummation of the ages. He proclaims and makes clear the condition of our salv ation by the Father before all eternity through the writings of the prophets and apostles and the ongoing office of the preacher in his Church. The Son of God for the sake of our salvation, attending to the properties of the Mediator, willed to reveal his Father, the hidden God. His continuous care for our salvation cannot be separated from his office as Mediator. “We believe further and confess similarly what belongs to the title of our Mediator Lord Christ that proceeds forth from his office as High Priest, how the manner of his priestly service is without beginning or end (Hebrews 7), and consequently how his sacrifice which pertains to the act and efficacy of our salvation and which is eternal, runs without beginning or end. This is because his office as our Mediator is without beginning or end, both in offering propitiation for us in the holy sacr ifice of himself and in his pr iesthood for us eter nally before his Father. That eternity is similarly seen in the follo wing: “Thou art a pr iest forever after the order of Melchizedek, as Paul testifies (Heb. 5 [:6.7:17; cf. Ps. 110:4]). So also one reads the same about our Mediator under the name of the angel inter ceding for Jerusalem as we read (Zech. I [:12]). Indeed, by reason of the same eternal and divine priesthood of Christ the Lord has sanctified our flesh by his Incar nation, and justified us by his gift to us of imputed grace by the propitiation of his sacrifice fully sufficient for all of our sins, weaknesses and faults, making full expiation for us in all extremities. In him we are restored again to eternal life and heavenly glory by his miraculous Resurrection and his glorious Ascension into heaven, whence in triumph over all things he frees captives and leads us from captivity, to free us from all things [Eph. 4:8]. “Lastly, we believe in Christ the Lord under the title of King and confess the same to be eternal King and precisely as eternal King of his Church the Mediator between us and God. Since the beg inning of creation until the end of the w orld by virtue of his author ity and thanks to his victory over the devil and the whole world he unites humankind in his Church. He governs us through his Holy Spirit and protects and defends us as King of kings and Lord of lords against the powers of Satan and the tyrann y of the world, himself never permitting the gates of hell to overwhelm his Church [Matt. 16:18]. Indeed as King and our Mediator he governs us in his Church under his royal sceptre, by means of the teachings of his most sacred Gospel. Through the Holy Spirit he makes us to be his mouth (os) and his wisdom (sapientia) that no opponent might be able to withstand us. He ordains for us prophets, apostles, pastors, and teachers for the purpose of building up his Church. He cleanses it always from counterfeits and traders who instead of a house of prayer try to make it into a den of robbers. “These are the [three] parts of the office of Lord Christ. They signify in what w ay he is our Mediator towards God. Christ has presented himself at the same time in his Person as God and as man. He does not stop and will not stop doing such in all eter nity. This is the highest aspect of our confession of the P erson and Office of our Mediator, the Son of the living God. Blessed be he through all ages. Amen.”

1032  the radical reformation

chapter 25.2.f

It had shifted thus because of Luther’s stress on Justification to the relative neglect of t he act of Redemption on Calvary (except to insist on its once-for-all effectiveness), and also because of Calvin’s stress on the birth, life, and teaching, as well as the death of C hrist as together the salvific action. Perhaps most of even the leading participants were not fully aware of the extent of t he shift (also apparent among many Catholics) in the conceptualization of t his central transaction in Christian theology. The Pi´nczów Confessio affirms with scriptural backing that the Mediator had to share the nature of God and that of Man. It reiterates the Church’s belief in the deity of Christ and his equality with the Father. By understanding Christ as Prophet, eternal High Priest and King “from the beginning and without end,” the Confessio made Christ almost eternally a Mediator and thus, as to that office and as Person in that office, inferior to God the Father. As Chalcedon had insisted on the one Person in two natures, so De Mediatore insisted on the one munus of Christ in discharging three functions, one of which, the self-sacrificial redemption, was seen to be an aspect of t he office as well as of the Person of Christ, as Protestantism in general moved beyond the formularies of antiquity to emphasize not only Word and Sacrament but now also the Person and the Work of Christ. With its notable effort to respect in the first part of De Mediatore the doctrines of Nicaea and Chalcedon, and in the last part to recast, as it were, something of the argument with respect to Christ the Son, in the quasi-scriptural terms of anointed Prophet, Priest, and King, Confessio de Mediatore would constitute, until formally replaced by the II Helvetic Confessio (Ch. 23.5) in 1569, the most constructive theological effort of the Poles to date. The synod of Pi´nczów, having adopted a Polish Confessio de Mediatore, which was directed in large part against Stancaro yet so formulated as to avoid certain allegedly subordinationist phrases respecting the Mediator in Calvin and Bullinger, also requested the owner of Pi´nczów, Lord Ole´snicki, to prevent Stancaro from staying any longer in the very town where he had convened the first Reformed synod in Poland. Stancaro betook himself to Lord Nicholas Stadnicki at Dubiecko in Ruthenia. Remaining supporters of Stancaro were Castellan Stanislas Drohojowski of Przemy´sl, Lord Jerome Ossoli´n ski of Go´z lice, and Lord Martin Zborowski, palatine of Pozna´n, as also some national Catholic lords. Lismanino informed the Zurich divines of all this in a letter dated 1 September 1559.132 Interestingly, Laelius Socinus was in Vilna (Ch. 24.2.f ) during the summer and reported to Calvin when back in Zurich, 22 August 1559,133 that the struggle in the Commonwealth was being made difficult by theological confusion, the admixture of greed for earthly goods on all sides, 132 133

 Wotschke, Briefwechsel, no. 174; and to Bullinger a year later, no. 203.  OC 117, no. 3100; Rotondò, ed., Opere, no. 51.

chapter 25.2.f

slavic reformation: poland & lithuania  1033

and the disposition of the king to remain on good terms with the bishops who might, so Sigismund thought, prove to be decisive in Rome for establishing his hereditary right to the county of Bari through his mother Bona Sforza (d. 1557). Bullinger would later inform Calvin that the Polish De Mediatore was completely acceptable to himself and to the other ministers of Zurich.134 With De Mediatore f inished, Statorius wrote a second letter to Calvin, 20 August 1559,135 about Biandrata and about the achievements in clarifying the Reformed position in the Commonwealth against Stancaro. Yet strangely, his f irst concern was still about vindicating Biandrata, as yet unnamed in the correspondence. Insisting on Biandrata’s integrity, Statorius told Calvin of the physician’s growing inf luence in the Reformed Church, especially of Little Poland. He said that because of his excellent character, Biandrata had easily convinced many that Calvin had done him indeed a g rave injustice. Statorius said that even Łaski tended to accept this assessment, which is not surprising in that Łaski, too, wished to keep all doctrinal formulations as much as possible consonant with Scripture and the Apostles’ Creed. Statorius for a s econd time would implore Calvin to heal the breach with Biandrata before it should damage the Polish-Helvetic Church: “I have no other purpose in mind than that I desire especially that your reputation among us remain unsullied.” In Pi´nczów, an assembly of e lders, 20 November 1559,136 decided on the publication of De Mediatore, Lismanino being commended for his work on it. But another act of business was to hear complaints against Statorius for having opposed the invocation of the Holy Spirit. After acknowledging the charge, explaining that it seemed “absurd” to invoke the Spirit instead of the Father as “fount of a ll goods,” Statorius proceeded to set forth an accepted profession of faith on this and related points and to denounce any and every “heretical blasphemy” whether “the Arian, the Servetian, the Eunomian, or the Stancarist, or the Papal,” a profession, however, which was already Blandratan in that Statorius only recognized the equality and distinction of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit insofar as consonant with “prophetic and apostolic doctrine” and “the truth of H oly Scripture.” A few days before this assembly, in Geneva, after a long silence, during which Calvin received still a third (now lost) letter from Statorius in behalf

134

 Bullinger to Calvin, 27 May 1560, OC 18, no. 3204, col 94; italics mine.  OC, 17, no. 3098, partly translated by Tylenda, “Warning that Went Unheeded,” 37. 136  Sipayłło, Akta 1:313f. Lubieniecki, Historia, 3, ch. 7, giving Lubieniecki some pr ominence to patron Remigian Chełmski from near Cracow, recounts the struggles over the Person and the deity of the Holy Spirit, beginning with the assembly of 20 November 1559. 135

1034  the radical reformation

chapter 25.2.f

of Biandrata, Calvin finally on 15 November 1559 answered his former pupil: Since you exhort me in both letters, and not without threatening denunciation, that I s hould reconcile myself with George Biandrata, I beg you, my Peter, reconsider a little, by what right do you suggest that this is necessary for me? I do not think that I am bound to your authority that I should consent to be governed by your judgment.137 There followed a c ontinuation of t he synod at Pi´nczów 22 November 1559,138 at which both Biandrata and even Stancaro were present, and at which there was still more discussion about the mediatorial view of Stancaro. At this assembly a f ormal statement was received of L ord Remigian Chełmski, which appears to have been written by Gregory Paul (Paweł), and in which Remigian also had opposed the invocation of t he Holy Spirit. The synod’s defense of that invocation was signed (it would appear not wholeheartedly by a ll) by Cr uciger, by G regory Paul himself who was at the time pastor in Chełm (a village close to Cracow), by Jacob Sylvius (an eventual leader with Sarnicki of t he Major Church), and by Lismanino. On 7 January 1560 Łaski died at Pi´nczów. A succession of synods and ministerial gatherings took place in the face of the crisis of leadership and the potential schism of t he Reformed in the Commonwealth. The synod at Pi´nczów, 3 to 16 January 1560,139 received a letter from Lord Stadnicki, asking for a p astor to replace Stanislas Sarnicki at Nied´z wied´z, and dealt with Orsatius and Christopher Przechadzka Leopolitanus (of Lwów /Lviv) who had together composed a Stancarist confession of faith, while two others expressed doubts about the De Mediatore of the majority. Łaski was buried in Pi´nczów “in the parish church,” where the major east altar had been located, and addresses were delivered by Sarnicki, Statorius, and Cruciger (the last two were leaders eventuels of the Minor Church). This was all in the context of a g eneral synod 29 January to 11 February 1560.140 On the second day, Orsatius, “a follower of the Nestorian heresy, Stancarism,” said that the lips of Ł aski in the coffin had been sealed as a divine sign of disapprobation of his opposition to Stancaro. The consternation was such that the coffin had to be opened to demonstrate the falsity of the charge. 137

 OC 17, no. 3134; translated and discussed by Nancy Conradt, “John Calvin, Theodore Beza and the Refor mation in Poland” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1974), 43; by Tylenda, “Warning that Went Unheeded,” 38. 138  Sipayłło, Akta 1:315–18. 139  Ibid., 2:1–6. 140  Ibid., 2:8–16.

chapter 25.2.f

slavic reformation: poland & lithuania  1035

Important interventions of Calvin lie ahead, but we close this phase. What has rapidly unfolded here is a compacted account of the correspondence, the synods, and the other events connected with the honorary superintendency of Łaski. In conclusion, we are constrained to point out that when Łaski returned to his homeland, a union of the Czech Brethren of Great Poland and the Reformed of L ittle Poland had been virtually consummated under Cruciger at Ko´z minek. It would not, however, be until 1570 that anything like that union would be accomplished in the federation of Czech Brethren, Lutherans, and the Reformed by the Consensus of S andomierz. When Łaski arrived, Palatine Radziwiłł of V ilna was emerging as foremost in seeking a p an-Commonwealth Reformed Church with annual synods of t he whole Commonwealth of “ the Two Peoples.” Yet at his death (1565) he was virtually a Unitarian, the ideological and organizational leadership of Ł aski had scarcely extended beyond Little Poland and Ruthenia, with only courtesy contacts between the Little Poland synod and the Reformed of G reat Poland and of t he Grand Duchy. When Łaski arrived, the controversy over the Mediator was primarily an intra-Lutheran dispute involving Osiander, Musculus, Melanchthon—all upset by Stancaro. By Łaski’s death the countervailing effect of the incipient “Tritheism” of Biandrata (locally much esteemed) and the near “Sabellianism” of Lombardian Stancaro (locally, for the most part, much disliked), had laid the basis for two schisms in the Reformed Church. The first would be that of the Stancarist Reformed Synod (1561– 70), its school and seminary with five teachers and three hundred students in Dubiecko.141 The second Reformed schism, better known, is that of the Minor Church (1563–1660) of the Unitarian—eventually immersionist Polish Brethren—following Lismanino, Biandrata, Peter Gonesius, George Schomann, and Gregory Paul.142 The Calvinist Synod of Cruciger was to be headed by Sarnicki and Sylvius. We already know what Calvin thought of Biandrata! After learning of the death of Łaski, he remarked that, alas, the Pole had taken pleasure in Biandrata and he, for his part, was ashamed that Łaski would have called a synod to discuss, among other disciplinary matters, his own family affairs. Of Lismanino, in the same paragraph of a ssessment, Calvin would speak

141

 Andrew We¸gierski, Libri quattuor Slav oniae Reformatae (Amsterdam, 2d. ed. 1579, facsimile edition, Warsaw: PWN, 1973), 126. See fur ther my “The Stancarist Reformed Schism (1561–70), centered in Dubiets’ko in Ruthenia,” Essays in Honor of Omeljan Pritsak, ed. Francis Cleaves, Ihor Ševˇcenko, et at. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980). The ministers of the Stancarist Synod would rejoin the general Reformed synod at Sandomierz in 1570. 142  See further my introduction to Lubieniecki.

1036  the radical reformation

chapter 25.2.f / 25.3

of “that Graeculus who sings Biandrata.”143 He would at least twice remark to Polish correspondents that he really did not like their race (gentem).144

3. Th e Inc r easingl y Radic al Th r ust i n t h e Commonweal t h bet ween t h e Deat hs o f Łaski a nd Calv in, 1560–1564 Lismanino, on 10 February 1560,145 informed the Zurich divines of t he death of Ł aski through whose life Deus Optimus Maximus had accomplished much for the Church in the Commonwealth. Three days later, John Łuzy´n ski, pastor in Secemin, then in Iwanowice, as another among no doubt many others, informed Calvin of Łaski’s death and asked Calvin to prepare something “more ample” against Stancaro than what he had recently written (now lost), since Stancaro, with the support of two patrons in Ruthenia was bent upon organizing a r ival church “between ours and that of the Papists.”146 Łuzy´n ski would become the Reformed bishop in the cathedral in Cotnari in Moldavia.147 Cruciger wrote to both Geneva and Zurich, again summarizing Stancaro’s views and asked for a further refutation. In letters of 18 March 1560 to Zurich148 and Geneva,149 Cruciger explained that Stancaro disturbed the congregations by accusing their pastors of Arianism because they held (following Melanchthon, Calvin, and Bullinger) that Christ was the Mediator in both natures: “For he [Stancaro] says, if he is a Mediator in his divinity it is proper that he is less than he to whom he mediates: if he intercedes, he pleads as God, [therefore] he is less, he says, than he to whom he pleads,” In Scripture, Cruciger observed in rebuttal on his own, a mediator did not demean himself as a supplicant to another. He added: “Stancaro says that the man Christ mediates to the Trinity.” The Poles were indeed toughened fighters. Samicki and Stanislas Ivan Kaminski hastened to Chełm and persuaded the synod at Bychawa, 14 April 1560, to join in condemning Stancaro for the impending schism. Similar steps were urged at Pi nczów ´ on 5 May and at Włodzimierz on 28 May 1560, in the presence of d elegates from Lithuania. But at both these synods,

143  Both of these references are found in Calvin’s letter to Bullinger, 1 February 1561; OC 18, no. 3332, col. 349. 144  Calvin to Sar nicki, OC 19, no. 3559, “gentem vestram non amar em.” Cf. Calvin to Trecy, OC 19, no. 3889, col. 607. 145  Wotschke, Briefwechsel, no. 179. 146  See Williams, Lubieniecki, Plate 28. 147  OC 18, no. 368. 148  Wotschke, Briefwechsel, no. 184. 149  Rodolphe Peter and Jean Rott, eds., Les Lettres à Jean Calvin de la collection Sarrau (Paris:

Presses Universitaires de France, 1972), 59–63. The second quotation from Cruciger is from this letter.

chapter 25.3

slavic reformation: poland & lithuania  1037

Erasmian and royal secretary Andrew Frycz Modrzewski (c. 1503–72), who was about to publish his own De Mediatore and who, though sharing at least an appearance of S tancaro’s Anselmian view of t he Atonement, urged the synods to preserve at least an appearance of h armony. Stancaro’s violence would allow no peace, however, and he was again condemned.150 Frycz Modrzewski, born in Wolborz in Great Poland,151 studied in Cracow, then Wittenberg. He became secretary to Sigismund Augustus in 1546 before the prince became king. Having agitated for lay participation alongside the bishops in the first period of the Council of Trent (1545–47), Modrzewski was to have served as secretary to the prospective Polish conciliar delegation, but Bishop Hosius kept them all away from Trent. In 1546 Modrzewski had been present in the library of A ndrew Trzecieski, Sr. during the visit of the Dutchman Spiritus (possibly Adam Pastor) in Cracow, and preserved a record of t hat visitor’s questions concerning prayers directed separately to the Three Persons (Ch. 19.2.c).152 (The visit was to be much enlarged in Socinian tradition.) Frycz Modrzewski addressed several Reformed synods and wrote against Stancaro altogether three tracts on Christ the Mediator (1560–61): one to the synod of Włodzisław, one to his friend Ossoli´n ski, and one to two lords, both Stadnicki protectors of S tancaro. Following with mounting concern the emerging schism within the Commonwealth Reformed synods, Modrzewski was foiled by Christopher Trecy in his plan to have the first two of his reflective Sylvae (1565–69) published by John Operinus in Basel. They would be brought out in the Commonwealth only in 1590 by Alexis Rodecki, a U nitarian, in Raków. Through the observation of t he Polish Reformed schism and the study of S criptures, Modrzewski would come gradually and coolly to the conclusion, best visible in the fourth Sylva, that on the basis of t he Scriptures alone the doctrine of G od in three Persons of one essence or ousia could not be sustained. After having propounded a graduated Tritheism, provisionally upholding monotheism by s ubordinating Christ and the Holy Spirit, Frycz Modrzewski concluded, as did the emerging Minor Church, that the Apostles’ Creed was, after all, the best formulation of the faith of the Apostolic Church. Under Erasmian influence, Modrzewski concluded that the most reasonable opinion on the Mediator must be that the preexistent, but not eternal, Logos was the Sermo of God 150

 Sipayłło, Akta 2:15–26.  His Opera Omnia have been edited by Kazimierz Kumaniecki in 5 vols. (Warsaw: PIN, 1953–55). His r ole in the r ise of P olish Antitrinitarianism has been r ecounted by Konrad Górski, “The Evolution of Religious Views of Frycz Modrzewski,” in Studia nad arianizmem, ed. Ludwik Chmaj (Warsaw: PWN, 1959), 9–47; and Williams, Lubieniecki, Plate 22. See the coverage of Modrzewski’s thought between his works De Mediatore (1560–62) and the Sylvae (1568–69) by Stanisław Piwko in his ironically entitled “L’hétérodoxie comme effet de l’attitude oecuménique,” Dissidents, BD Scripta et Studia 1:139–53. 152  Opera, 5:109; Williams, Lubieniecki, Related Doc. 1. 151

1038  the radical reformation

chapter 25.3

and should not be retroactively styled the Son before the Incarnation, when the Logos/Sermo became visible and audible in Jesus Christ as he began his ministry. In the end, Modrzewski would be a latitudinarian Binitarian holding to a p reexistent but not an eternal Logos, a created, not creating, divine force, present in Jesus Christ as uniquely the Son of God. From 5 to 9 May 1560 a synod convened at Pi´nczów.153 Because of its expected importance in reorganizing the Reformed Church, the king had named the two distinguished Italians, his former tutor, Lismanino, and his Queen mother’s physician, Biandrata, as his personal representatives. The purpose of the synod was to set a date and place for a truly constitutional general synod—at Ksia¸ z in September. There was a strong sentiment that the Reformed Churches of L ithuania and Poland could be regarded as a single entity in the Commonwealth. In the meantime, Biandrata was commissioned to ask Palatine Radziwiłł for financial assistance for Lismanino. Christopher Trecy,154 at the request of Radziwill, asked approval and arrangements for the Polish Bible translation, now at the expense of the Lithuanian prince. The synod dealt with Peter Gonesius (25.1.h), who was to be expelled from the synod unless he suspended his propagation of “Arianism” in secret, and with one Martin of Lublin. The latter, though charged with the view of Stancaro on the Mediator, said that because of t he furor and personal rancor against Stancaro which prevented the issue from being discussed on the merits, he would let it stand that: “I indeed hold with Bullinger and Calvin and Beza concerning the Mediator.” Herein, however, Martin perhaps reflected Stancaro’s conviction that the Swiss divines could not possibly differ from Augustine, Anselm, Lombard, and himself. Gregory Orsatius openly persisted in his Stancarist position, and the synod commissioned Biandrata to persuade Lord Ole´snicki to get rid of him and ordered that the faithful should avoid him. Orsatius presently joined Stancaro at Dubiecko. The synod ordered Palatine Nicholas Sieniawski of Ruthenia, captain of Halicz, and his pastors at (another) Nied´z wied´z that they should take precautions against the contamination of t he flock with the error of Gonesius. After the synod, Biandrata, as commissioned, went to Vilna to negotiate the financial support of Palatine Radziwiłł for the Polish Bible and at once gained also his confidence and aiding friendship.

153 154

study.

 Sipayłło, Akta, 15–22.  Trecy is a young hopeful of the conservatives. He will be sent to Switzerland for further

chapter 25.3

slavic reformation: poland & lithuania  1039

Dr. Biandrata attended the synod of K sia¸ z, 13–19 September 1560,155 and was at once recognized as an illustrious personage of tremendous vitality and great devotion to the radical reformation of Christendom in all the eastern realms from Alba Iulia to Vilna. In the course of deliberation on the polity of the Reformed Church, Biandrata expressed himself vigorously in an effort to distinguish the duties of the ministers, as pastors and teachers, from the office of t he lay elders to whom, he argued, belonged the governance of the churches. He expressed at Ksia¸ z the fear, no doubt intensified by h is observations in Geneva, that the Reformed ministers, unless checked, might “wish to dominate us [the Reformed Church] as once the Pope did through his bishops,” adding that for their own good “the ministers of the word should not be implicated in political matters.” The synod rejected his proposal, however. It was the high chamberlain of Cracow, Stanislas Cikowski, who pointed out that the lay elders had great need of the ministers in their deliberations. The same synod, in a move to harmonize the ministers and the nobility, elected Biandrata as a lay coadjutor to Superintendent Cruciger, to supplement the services of Lismanino, who at that time was having difficulties functioning publicly because of the royal disfavor. A major task at Ksia¸ z was still again the condemnation of S tancaro. To this end Calvin’s Responsum ad Fratres Polonos was read.156 Calvin’s tract against Stancaro was disturbingly ambiguous to the Polish synodists. Calvin would later complain to Bullinger that the Poles suppressed the Responsum.157 The difficulty arose because Calvin accepted Stancaro’s basic premise of the inferiority of Christ qua Mediator, but on a basis different from that of Stancaro, namely, that in the Mediator “two natures constitute one Person” composita, and hence the intimation of the inferiority of Christ qua Person also.158 Consequently, Calvin seemed to the Polish synodists to come close to positing two persons and thus confirming the charge of Nestorianism (their own charge against Stancaro) and the charge of both cosmological and soteriological Arianism. The idea of a me diator as inferior seems to have been compelling to almost all who participated in the debates. Since the Responsum of Calvin stated without ambiguity that as mediator Christ was inferior to the Father, his constant assertion of t he equality of Christ’s divine nature with that of t he Father’s essence (substantia) did not convincingly 155  Sipayłło, Akta 2, 32–68. Biandrata, because of his tur ning against Francis Dávid, has tended to be tr eated in Unitar ian confessional histor iography with disparagement. He had a large vision of r egional reformation under the o versight of nob les, with whom he easily consorted as their equal. Insofar as he was an Erastian in Transylvania, he is not in the pr esent narrative given quite the pr ominence he would, in my own estimate, otherwise deser ve as a theological thinker and synodist in se veral Reformed jurisdictions; as here at Ksia¸ z he would prefer to subordinate the synod to the nobility. 156 157 158  OC 9:333–42.  Ibid. 9:349. Institutes 2:xiv.

1040  the radical reformation

chapter 25.3

refute Stancaro’s charge against the Polish Reformed as Arians, for Calvin explained Christ’s inferiority in the office of Mediator by the assertion that the process of t he Atonement required the conjunction of b oth natures. But the distinction, between Christ as a c omplex of h uman and divine natures and the eternal Son of G od, the Second Person of t he Trinity, was not clearly made to the Poles. Calvin’s intervention therefore proved unsuccessful. A protest led by Jerome Ossoli´n ski insisted on a four-month moratorium on the above subject, pending further word from Calvin and the other Swiss arbiters. Calvin was persuaded by the actions of the synod and by an emissary of Stancaro sent to Geneva to write again and clarify his position further. In the second tract, Responsio ad nobiles Polonos et Franciscum Stancarum,159 Calvin nevertheless again failed adequately to refute Stancaro. Calvin certainly had seriously disturbed the Polish Reformed Church when he wrote that “Christ is inferior to the Father with respect to his divinity if the name of Mediator is extended to it … .” Later Calvin complained to Trecy that his second tract was not made public. But then, by the end of 1561 the Poles turned elsewhere to seek an effective means of refuting Stancaro.160 The temporary truce allowed the Swiss correspondence to be resumed, while a synod of Pi´nczów, 25–30 January 1561,161 gave a definitive form to the Reformed Church of Little Poland dividing it into five districts, each under one clerical coadjutor and several lay seniores. The ministerial coadjutors, charged exclusively with the right, elected as the new co-superintendent to replace Cruciger (d. 1563) the illustrious former priest Stanislas Lutomirski. In the meantime, Biandrata, for his part still stressing the ethical aspects of Christianity, avoided whenever possible the vexing theological and christological problems. His evangelical, disciplined, irenic rationalism was well expressed in his letter of 19 September 1561, written in his capacity as physician and as lay coadjutor of t he Little Poland Reformed Church, to the synodists of Lublin.162 It is filled with concern for practical Christianity and organization and plenary recognition of the authority of the Supreme Magistrate, the king. Biandrata and John Valentine Gentile (Ch. 24.3.b), who had just come from Switzerland to Poland and just now gone to Lithuania, were together being denounced to Calvin by Sarnicki

159

 OC 18:260–62.  The analysis of the role of Calvin in the controversy over Stancaro in Poland draws on Conradt, “John Calvin, Theodore Beza and the Refor mation in Poland,” and an unpub lished paper of Jill Raitt,“The Person of the Mediator: Calvin’s Christology and Beza’s Fidelity,” Duke University; and my “Early Strains in Christology.” 161  Sipayłło, Akta 2, 72–91. 162  Zachorowski, “Najstarsze synody,” 213–15. 160

chapter 25.3

slavic reformation: poland & lithuania  1041

for their attempt to cope with Stancaro by “paganly introducing the plurality of gods.”163 For a t ime Stancaro belligerently maintained his position as virtually the only authentic Nicene Calvinist in the Commonwealth, insisting that the Swiss letters favorable to the Polish synodists from Calvin, Bullinger, and Peter Vermigli could be nothing other than forgeries. But finally, Stancaro realized that even Calvin and Bullinger were “Arians”; in 1562, in Contra i ministri di Geneva e di Zurigo, Stancaro ejaculated: Peter Lombard alone is worth more than a hundred Luthers, two hundred Melanchthons, three hundred Bullingers, four hundred Peter Martyrs, and five hundred Calvins, and all of them ground in a mortar with a pestle would not amount to one ounce of true theology. 164 To repeat, the significance for the history of t he Radical Reformation of Stancaro’s controversy, first with Osiander and Musculus and then with Łaski and Biandrata over the mediation of C hrist, lies in the fact that some would-be orthodox Polish Calvinists were forced into an inarticulate provisional Tritheism to defend Christ’s divine suffering mediation in redemption against Stancaro’s seeming Nestorianism and to parry his charge against themselves of Arianism, while the others, along with pragmatically anti-Nicene churchmen such as Biandrata and Schomann, were pleased to carry the devolution to another stage. Calvin himself recognized the danger, and would presently warn his Polish followers of the implications of their unorthodox defense of orthodoxy in Brevis admonitio ad Fratres Polonos,165 ambiguous to the Polish synodists. Calvin would later complain. He wrote about one Blandratist, Gregory Paul of Cracow, that “in order to avoid the absurdity of Stancaro he falls into the more fetid error of Tritheism,” promoted “by that imposter Biandrata.” Although coupled by Calvin with Stancaro as equally aberrant,166 Biandrata was able to clear himself in a succession of s ynods, notably at Ksia¸ z´ in March 1562, which accepted his Confession of f aith as orthodox even though it was limited to the language of t he Scriptures and the Apostles’ Creed167 and yet sought, at the same time, to appease Calvin. At the synod of Pinczów, ´ 2 April 1562, the problem was discussed again. Lismanino and Biandrata agreed once more to rule out nonscriptural terminology in order

163

 OC 18: no. 3506; Wotschke, Briefwechsel, no. 226.  OC 18:345. 165  OC 9:633ff.; see also Wotschke, Briefwechsel, no. 266. 166  OC 18:158. 167  It has not survived. Sipayłło, Akta 1:129 n. 4. What was thought to be his Confessio was first edited by H. P. C. Henke as Georgii Blandratae Confessio Antitrinitaria (Helmstadt, 1794). 164

1042  the radical reformation

chapter 25.3

to cope with Stancaro and preserve the peace of t he Reformed Church. Biandrata had thus succeeded in establishing, among local Calvinists against the distant Calvin, the momentous principle that scriptural language with that of the Apostles’ Creed was adequate for the expression of all necessary theological truth. The disintegration of the Nicene formulation had evidently received unwitting synodal sanction.168 Calvinist-Nicene orthodoxy had, of course, its vigorous and informed indigenous defenders despite the action of t he synod of P i´nczów in the crucial spring of 1 562. With Łaski dead and Lismanino softened up: Trecy and Sarnicki remained the most determined spokesmen for orthodox Calvinism in Poland. Sarnicki, an elder without a p osition since his expulsion from Nied´z wied´z (1559), was ambitious for ecclesiastical advancement in Cracow and for recognition abroad as a stout defender of Helvetic orthodoxy. He hoped that by exposing Gregory Paul as heretical he would be able to replace him as the f irst pastor of the Reformed congregation in Cracow. As early as 1561, in letters to Calvin, he had picked Gregory Paul along with Biandrata and Lismanino as targets for vituperative attacks. It was while Biandrata was involved in “clearing” himself from Sarnicki’s charges of Antitrinitarianism that Sarnicki visited Italy, there to enlist at Padua the services of Trecy against the emerging group of the theological radicals within the Polish Reformed Church.169 At a g athering, July 1562, in the manor house of t he former Italian Prosper Provana, a naturalized member of the Polish gentry, on his estate between Cracow and Pi´nczów at Rogów, the problem of the Trinity was discussed with a v iew of r econciling Sarnicki and Gregory Paul. In the course of the discussion the problem of the Trinity was intensified by the receipt from Moravia of some twenty propositions originally prepared by one Dario Scala, in association with the Venetian refugee Nicholas Paruta (Chs. 22.2.b; 29.5). These were disseminated in the area by P rovana’s steward,170 who took the liberty of copying the propositions which in due course came to the attention of t he receptive Lutomirski, co-superintendent of the Little Poland Reformed Church.171 A general synod was an urgent necessity. In anticipation, a lesser synod was called at Balice, 12 August 1562, in order to reconcile, if possible, Sarnicki and Gregory Paul. The twenty propositions of Paruta at Rogów

168

 Wotschke, Briefwechsel, no. 201.  The later Socinian historian Stanislas Budzi´nski. 170  The dispute in Balice and the synod in Rogów are recorded by Sipayłło, Akta 2:134–36. 171  Wotschke, Briefwechsel, no. 260; OC 19, no. 3875. For the synod, see Sipa yłło, Akta 2:137–38. 169

chapter 25.3

slavic reformation: poland & lithuania  1043

no doubt reappeared in the twelve articles of the Blandratists at Balice, set forth hostilely, but no doubt accurately, by Sarnicki in a letter to Trecy.172 It is clear that the Blandratists, or with equal propriety the GregoryPaulinists, opposed what they called Stancaro’s “Deus conflatus,” his Deus Turcicus sinefilio. The Blandratists held further that wherever God is spoken of in the Scriptures without qualification, it is of God the Father and Creator. The Son was God, but a lesser God than the Father, precisely because he was a mediator in his divine nature no less than in his human nature and could not have discharged this office if he had been in his deity equal to him with whom he interceded. To insist upon their orthodoxy in making a soteriologically adequate distinction between both the role and the divine rank of t he Father and the Son (qua Mediator), the Blandratists took note of t he Greek Nicene formulation, which distinguished among the intradeical and the economic properties of F ather and Son in postulating the procession of t he Spirit from the primordial Father through the (eternally) generated Son. Soon after the meeting, Schomann came out in Cracow in open support of Bi andrata and Gregory Paul, going even further, however, in rejecting as Papist the words “Trinity,” “Person,” and “essence” even though they all knew that these terms were originally conciliar and patristic, and not merely papist-scholastic. At the general synod in Pi´nczów on 18 August 1562,173 called because of the growing antagonism between Sarnicki and Gregory Paul, the two men fought out their differences, the one resorting to the credal terminology of the ecumenical councils, the other confining himself to the language of Scripture and the Apostles’ Creed. The synod unanimously upheld the agreement of the synod, in the same place, of the preceding April to refrain from the use of t raditional theological language in referring to the Trinity. The record of t he synod, drafted in Polish by t he proto-Unitarians, notes with satisfaction and a sense of divine approbation that at the same moment in Cracow lightning struck the spire of t he Church of t he Holy Spirit.174 At the same time, in communicating their common faith briefly to the churches in Switzerland175 and Strassburg,176 the synodists as individual correspondents, nevertheless, inconsistently or prudently, found occasion to use in fact credal language. Condemning Sabellius, Arius, Servetus, and Stancaro alike, the Pinczovians declared that they did not confuse the

172

 Sipayłło, Akta 2:139–40.  OC 19:574. 174  In the pagan pantheon of the Sla vs Perun, the god of lightning, was the ranking deity among a divine triad. 175  Wotschke, Briefwechsel, no. 254. 176  Ibid., no. 255. 173

1044  the radical reformation

chapter 25.3

Three, as did Stancaro and before him Sabellius, and at the same time they abhorred “a plurality of G ods”; and, upholding “the unity of t he divine nature,” they even described “the Son as homoousios” with the Father. The letters were signed by, among many others, Gregory Paul and Lutomirski (a latent immersionist Unitarian). The theological radicals were now commonly referred to not only as Blandratists, but also as Pinczovians. The pastor of the Italian congregation in Pi´nczów was George Negri, son of Francis Negri, both friends of Camillo Renato in Chiavenna (Ch. 22.1). Here in Pi´nczów, on the first non-Catholic press in Poland, established in 1558, the naturalized Peter Statorius177 was directing the printing of the already mentioned (25.2) first Protestant translation of the Bible into Polish. The theologically unstable situation in Pi´nczów was now being complicated by Alciati and Gentile, with whose arrival in 1562 we began this chapter. Neither of t hem, after their rough encounter with Calvin, hesitated to declare their beliefs publicly. During this time, Sarnicki took every opportunity to divide the Reformed community in Cracow under the ministry of Gregory Paul. He found supporters among prominent citizens. And the governor of the royal castle, John Boner, took alarm at the charge that he was not only protecting the reform of the Church but that he was also protecting outright heresy in the congregation of which he was a major patron, which was meeting on his estate outside the walls. Boner found Gregory Paul adamant in his strictly scriptural formulation and withdrew the use of his house for Gregory Paul’s meetings. But in order to reconcile the factions, Boner called the Reformed ministers of the district together on two occasions.178 Lismanino was horrified at the interpretation being given his own views on the Trinity and sought to muzzle the Tritheists with a fully orthodox confession. This measure was futile; although the Nicene confession, which Lismanino drew up for the synod of C racow, was accepted on 20 August 1562, it did not really represent the view of the majority even at this opposition synod. One of the synodists, Stanislas Paklepka, pastor in Lublin, wrote to his old teacher Peter Martyr Vermigli in Zurich, complaining bitterly of Stancaro’s “confusus Deus” and warning, “If you keep silent, the stones will speak.”179 A few weeks later John Boner died suddenly, at dinner on 15 October 1562; his funeral in Cracow became the occasion for another “opposition synod” of the orthodox, i.e., Genevan-“Nicene” ministers and the support-

177  Pierre Pfoertner of Thionville in Lorraine. He eventually Polonized his name as Stoi´nski. The Pi´nczó Bible in progress became known as the Radziwiłł Bible (Ch. 32.1.a). 178  For the location of earlier Pr otestant sites in Cracow, see Williams, Lubieniecki, Map of Cracow. 179  Sipayłło, Akta 2:141–2; Wotschke, Briefwechsel, no. 253.

chapter 25.3

slavic reformation: poland & lithuania  1045

ive gentry, in Cracow on 14 November 1562.180 Although the assembly affirmed the conciliar creeds and the XV Articles imposed by the Zurich church on resident Italians, amplified by parts of the confession of Łaski’s London congregation, Beza’s Geneva confession, and some lines from the Pi´nczów confession against Stancaro, they were careful not to condemn by name any of t heir former colleagues. Besides Servetus, Gonesius, and Stancaro, only the Italian Tritheists, Gribaldi, Gentile, and Alciati, were denounced by name. Despite Sarnicki’s efforts, the radicals maintained their advantage. Within his own residence on Szpitalna street in Cracow, Stanislas Cikowski arranged for Gregory Paul a new place to preach. The dauntless Sarnicki had his orthodox confession printed and distributed from house to house and sold before the door of Gregory Paul’s new place of meeting. In late November 1562, Gregory Paul responded by publishing his Tabula de Trinitate. Although lost, the author’s own summary is preserved in a letter written to the magistrates of Zurich in indignant repudiation of their charge of Arianism.181 The fact that the Reformed in the royal capital of the Commonwealth now attended divine services in separate precincts may be taken as the initial moment of the schism into the Major (Sarnicki) and the Minor (Gregory Paul) Church. Gregory agreed with the purpose of the Nicene Creed, which was to vindicate the deity of Christ as the only begotten Son of God. He wished, however, to vindicate also the personality and mediatorial function of the divine Christ, even if he had to go beyond the Nicene formulation in terms that could make sufficiently explicit not only Christ’s filial but also his mediatorial relationship to God the Father: “There is the God who begets and there is the God who is begotten and mediates and is made man.” Gregory Paul appealed to the scene at the Jordan (cf. variant reading, Luke 2:22: “This day have I begotten thee”). It was no abstract deitas that generated an abstract deitatem, but rather a personal Deus Pater who generated Deum Filium, a mediatorial Son: “There is one deity (deitas) of the Three, but there is one God in three.” Gregory insisted: “The three are of one nature or divinity, but these three are never unus, but three.” “Sabellian Stancaro,” he wrote, had no mediator because he denied the generation of the mediator, or had a fictitious incarnation of his one God. Stancaro subverted the adequacy of the Atonement by having in effect merely three phases of God or three names, without three distinguishable functions: This one God of the sophists, unknown to all—alike to the prophets, Christ, and the apostles—which is called an essence and is said 180

 Sipayłło, Akta, 2:143.  Cf. Sipayłło, Akta, 2:143; OC, no. 3877; Worschke, Riformation, 613; Roman Zelawski, “Troubles confessionnels á Cracovie ... 1551–1573,” OiRwP 6 (1961): 91–111. 181

1046  the radical reformation

chapter 25.3

to be triune, never begat or had a S on, and hence no mediator either. He did not create us or redeem us.182 Stancaro, argued Gregory Paul, was no better than the papacy, which had various gods, intercessors, and mediators “but among them not one is that God, nor the Mediator, the Son of God, the Word made flesh.” Whether the mediating Son made flesh was coeternal with the Father or merely premundane (as with Arius), Gregory Paul did not say. The publication of the Tabula had enabled Sarnicki to demonstrate anew to orthodox Calvinists at home and especially abroad the unsoundness of Gregory Paul’s doctrine, and with him the whole Blandratist/Pinczovian faction. Both parties within the Reformed synod sought influential support. The theological radicals succeeded in winning Judge John Niemojewski of C ujavia (d. 1598), while the ferocious Sarnicki denounced his former brethren and sisters as Tritheists and therefore pagans who should be executed according to the medieval statute against Hussites, King Ladislas Jagiełło’s law of 1424. By this he wanted the king to turn upon his former comrades in Helvetic reform what the Pope had indeed urged in vain early on against the new Reformers. Since Sarnicki and his followers were in the minority among the Protestant ministers and nobility, it is possible that this vigorous attack was his way to avoid complete submersion. Sarnicki called the conservatives to an irregular synod in Cracow, 14 May 1563, intended to be secret; but it was known to, and exploited by, the Pinczovians.183 Prominent was Stanislas Sarnicki and Lawrence Discordia (Niezgoda, a p riest, a p reacher in the court of S igismund I) successively Reformed pastor in Podlachia, Brzeziny, and Wysodce (d. 1566). In reporting to the Swiss, the conservatives pointed out that although the Pinczovians were willing to use traditional language and would not acknowledge themselves to be Tritheists, nevertheless when they said the three are one, they meant unum and not unus, unanimous not consubstantial.184 Under the leadership of Lutomirski, a synod on 6 June 1563 at Mordy in Podlachia (still a p alatinate within the Grand Duchy) under Prince Radziwiłł’s protection, confirmed the Pinczovian position despite the protest of Sarnicki; while not wholly rejecting the term “Trinity” for the sake of the intellectually “weaker brethren,” they regarded it as a human term and not, as before, a divine revelation.185

182

 Here I am following Gregory, writing to the same people of Zur ich from Cracow, 20 July 1563; Wotschke, Briefwechsel, no. 297. 183  Sipayłło, Akta, 2:149–51. It is reported by Alexander Witrelin (still theologically conservative) to Bullinger, 24 June 1563; Wotschke, Briefwechsel, no. 294. 184  Ibid. 185  Sipayłło, Akta 2:152.

chapter 25.3

slavic reformation: poland & lithuania  1047

The Polish and Latin-speaking Lithuanian Reformed, under the clerical leadership of Martin Czechowic and Simon Budny, had, as noted above, also begun to deal with the question of the procession of the Holy Spirit and, under the influence of e nvironing Ruthenian Orthodoxy, to reject the Filioque inserted into the Nicene Creed by t he anti-Arian Visigothic Council of Toledo in a.d. 589. Prince Radziwiłł attempted to unify the congregations of a nti-Nicene Pinczovians and the Nicene Calvinists at a communion service at Warsaw during the Diet at Christmas 1563, intended to symbolize a reconciliation between the factions. The more belligerent gentry on both sides, when Sarnicki’s sermon aroused partisanship, were scarcely restrained from drawing swords at this melancholy love feast. Martin Czechowic, back in Lithuania, after his return from Switzerland as Radziwiłł’s theological plenipotentiary with the Swiss divines, was completely identified with the anti-Nicene cause and it was no doubt he who prepared the long letter of R adziwiłł from Brest of June 1564, urging Calvin to espouse the tritheistic solution against purportedly Sabellian (Monarchian modalist) Stancaro. Czechowic, in the name of R adziwiłł, charged that Stancaro had eliminated the divine Mediator and his benefits. At the same time, Czechowic insisted that the Poles and Lithuanians were opposed to Arius, who denied that the Son of G od, incarnate in Christ, was from the substance of God the Father.186 The Polish theological radicals held that Christ, the only-begotten Son of G od, drew his substance not only from Mary but also from the Father; and they were, with a procreative realism that was alien to the philosophically disciplined Nicene fathers themselves, quite earnest when they avowed their willingness to use consubstantial or homoousios in a procreative sense. Czechowic’s letter for Radziwiłł is of g reat interest in documenting the way in which the ambient Greek Orthodox formulation of the Trinity helped the proto-Unitarians in opposing what they scorned as the papal distortion of t he original Nicene intention through an addendum that obliterated all effectual distinctions among the Persons, and had converted the Latin conception of the Trinity into a quarternity by distinguishing the common deitas (i.e., substantia/essentia) from the three Persons. Czechowic, writing to Radziwiłł, quoted from the Roman liturgy and various kinds of prayer books to show that the Latin Church was liturgically guilty of Patripassianism (once scored by Tertullian against Montanist Praxeas). He found support for the clear distinction among three divine beings, only one of whom was incarnate in Jesus, not only in the Scriptures but also in the Adversus Arianos of Hilary of Poitiers.187

186  Ibid.; OC 20, no. 4125. The surmise that the letter was composed by Czechowic is provided by Szczucki and Tazbir in Literatura arian´ ska, 632. 187

 OC 20:334. See also Erasmus on Hilary in Ch. 1.3.a.

1048  the radical reformation

chapter 25.3

The letter of Czechowic also describes the fierce fighting among the Polish Reformed which imperiled the united Protestant cause in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and concludes with the scheda of Pi´nczów enjoining all parties to avoid philosophical and “papistical” terminology. Presently a P olish translation of t he Apologist Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho the Jew was accomplished by Lawrence (Wawrzyniec) Krzyszkowski, with help from Simon Budny, and published in Nie´swiez (1564) in palatinate Nowogródek with the aim of supporting the Tritheism as in accordance with Ante-Nicene biblical conviction. Already by early 1563 it had become clearly not possible for the PolishLithuanian Reformed movement to continue embracing in two regional synods the diverse doctrinal tendencies represented on the one side by Biandrata, Gregory Paul, Czechowic, Budny, and Schomann and, on the other side, those of c onsuming loyalty to Nicene Calvinism. Nevertheless, by the summer of 1564, the interrelated Polish Antitrinitarian and the antipedobaptist movements (25.4) within the Reformed synodal context were temporarily checked in consequence of a c oncerted pro-orthodoxy campaign of S arnicki and Trecy. Both ministers led an intensive Calvinist reaction which culminated in the expulsion of f oreign heretics from the Commonwealth, as sealed in the royal edict issuing from the Diet in Parczów, 7 Au gust 1564. The edict, formulated mainly by C atholics but supported by t he Nicene Calvinists, compromised by s ingling out only heretical alien residents for banishment as Antitrinitarians and Anabaptists. Among those who left the country in consequence of t he edict were Alciati, Gentile, Negri, and Ochino (whose careers in exile with others of the Italian diaspora will be brought together in Ch. 29.6). The emerging radical wing of t he Reformed Church thus suffered a l oss in leadership. Biandrata had been gone to Transylvania since 1563, where we shall have occasion (Ch. 28), to pursue further his controversial career. Prince Nicholas Radziwiłł died in May 1565, obliging Czechowic and several others to leave Vilna; the grand chancellor’s son188 was an ardent Catholic, and his regency council was alerted to the radical character of t he reformers of Vilna and Nie´swiez. With the expulsion of t he Antitrinitarian and Anabaptist foreigners from the Commonwealth and the flight of t he radicals from Vilna, the conservative Reformed now hoped to effect a r eunion of t he indigenous Reformed factions before the decrees of t he Council of Trent should be presented for approbation to the next meeting of the Diet. A major debate, 22–30 March 1565, was therefore held during the Diet at Piotrków with the aim of reconciling the orthodox and the radical parties of the Commonwealth 188  This was Nicholas VIII Christopher the Or phan (1549–1616), pilgrim to J erusalem, palatine of Vilna, and eighth in succession to Nicholas VII, the son of Nicholas V Radziwiłł the Red.

chapter 25.3

slavic reformation: poland & lithuania  1049

Reformed Churches.189 The Nicene pedobaptist faction was led by Sarnicki and Trecy; the anti-Nicene, potentially Anabaptist wing was represented by Superintendent Stanislas Lutomirski, Gregory Paul of Cracow, George Schomann, by now pastor in Lublin, John Niemojewski, John Lutomirski, castellan of Sieradz (near Pi´nczów), Jerome Filipowski, treasurer of the palatine of Cracow, and Marshal Nicholas Sienicki, speaker of the Chamber of Deputies. The disputants on either side defended their respective positions by appeal to the authority of the Scriptures, the early Church Fathers, and Christian history. Gradually, the exchanges became so heated that the strict Calvinist representatives withdrew from the meeting, refusing any further dealings with the opposing camp. Thus the breach that opened at Cracow after the funeral of John Boner in early 1562 was hopelessly widened at Piotrków by March 1565. Hope that reconciliation might somehow be effected by the compromise efforts of Frycz Modrzewski, author of Sylvae, was doomed to disappointment. This monumental posthumous work, the Sylvae (first three parts finished in 1565) on the trinitarian controversy in the Commonwealth is an invaluable source of information. Modrzewski admirably summarized the development to date. He set forth the Pinczovian (proto-Unitarian) view of the Trinity as the Godhead that does not exist in itself but only in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit separately. The Pinczovians denied that three Persons can be unus, insisting that they are adverbially unum; the three are monarchically but not ontologically one in natura, deitas, potestas, amor, and concordia. Modrzewski showed the ease with which the reasoning of the Tritheists had been utilized by those who were pointing toward a distinct Christocentric Unitarian theology. He preserved the following summary of the early Pinczovian doctrine: Jesus Christ, the Son of G od and of m an, at once God and our Lord, has been born once and for all: the same [birth] was on earth from Mary the Virgin, neither did anything of his exist before he was born of her. For as God is one, without any beginning and end, of all things the cause and the beginning, thus was his Son born of the Virgin, at the time distinguished by the Father, for indeed he is begotten once for all, and besides this one Father he has no other. For he does not have a twofold nature (naturam duplicem) but only the one which he derived from the Virgin, through the agency of the Holy Spirit.190 189

 Sipayłło, Akta, 2:175–192.There was still another failed attempt at reconciling both sides in 1568—see BAnt, 195; and Williams, Lubieniecki, 223–26; Jarmola, “Origins and Development of Believer’s Baptism,” 52f. 190  Frycz Modrzewski, Sylvae, 3:ch. 1, 158ff. There is a useful sur vey of the r ecent literature on Modrzewski by Gottfried Schramm, “Modrevius-Forschungen,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 4 (1958): 352–37.3. See also n. 151 above.

1050  the radical reformation

chapter 25.3 / 25.4

With this incipiently Unitarian theology the two emergent branches of the Polish Reformed Church were definitively sundered as separate synods, separate churches, the Major Church with actually only a minority of the indigenous Polish clerical and patronal leadership. The theologically and also by now socially radical anti-Nicene, antipedobaptists, known simply as “the brethren [and sisters] in Poland and Lithuania that have rejected [the doctrine of ] the Trinity,” organized their own synod in Brzeziny by June 1565.191 While their Protestant and Catholic foes called them “Arians,” they preferred the designation “Christians” and/or Bracia polscy (Polish Brethren). Their official name, however, was the Ecclesia Minor Poloniae Reformata, implying several things: that they were somewhat like the Minor Party in the schism of the Czech Unity (Ch. 9.1), that they readily accepted the lesser, humbler role which they identified with Ante-Nicene Christians on their own against an idolatrous Roman Empire, and yet, too, that they were consequent reformers in the tradition of L uther, Calvin, and Łaski, reforming as it were the Reformation as their providentially assigned Polish destiny. It remains to relate how far they had moved from antipedobaptism toward believers’ immersion. Part II From Antipedobaptism to Believers’ Immersion, 1556–1565

The principal epiphany and epiphenomena of the Holy Trinity in Scripture are in the context of the immersion of Jesus in the Jordan at the hands of John the Baptist, found in a r eading of L uke 3:2: “And the Holy Spirit descended upon him [ Jesus] in bodily form, as a d ove, and a voice came from heaven [echoing Ps. 2:7:] ‘Thou art my beloved Son, today I h ave begotten thee.’”192 The learned discussion of the Trinity in synod and correspondence went pari passu with concern for reform of t he sacrament or ordinance of initiation into membership in the Church.

4. Anti-Nicene Antipedobaptism in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Poland, 1548–1565 Protestant, Judaizing, and rationalizing trends evolved in Lithuania as a socio-religious and political entity in its own right, and antipedobaptism seems to have been agitated there somewhat earlier than in Poland proper. The Judaizing trend seems to have been indigenous, distinct from an analogous movement in Novgorod and in Muscovy, where Jewish proselytizing

191

 At the synod of Brzeziny, 10 June 1565; Sipayłło, Akta, 2:193–94.  Most readings alter the second line of the Psalm to read: “in whom I am well pleased.” The Transfiguration, with Christ one among three, never came up for triadological debate. 192

chapter 25.4

slavic reformation: poland & lithuania  1051

was not a factor.193 Because of its anti-Romanism and anti-Muscovite conditioning, the Reformation had already presented itself to the Lithuanian nobles with unusual appeal: for it had offered, at once, to purify Christianity, to appropriate church estates, and to institute a n ew school system and printing presses—all in the name of evangelical humanism. And while the Lithuanian taste for evangelical humanism came predominantly from the Polish-speaking and Polish-trained ministers, this preeminence of Polish over Lithuanian and Ruthenian in the reform of the Church in the Grand Duchy should not obscure some uniquely “Orthodox” features in the radicalization of t he Lithuanian synods as distinctive within the Radical Reformation. Specifically, it was a Judaizing trend within certain sectors of Ruthenian as well as Great Russian Orthodoxy, the preservation of the Nicene formula without the Filioque, and the practice of baptismal immersion194 that operated in Lithuania to raise questions about certain “papal” formulations and practices once the Reformed movement had accelerated in the direction of radical apostolicity. Even from the perspective of S ocinian historiography in the seventeenth century it seemed appropriate for the grandson of Faustus Socinus (Ch. 29.8), Andrew Wiszowaty, to look back and assign to Menno Simons (Ch. 14) the penultimate glory due to him in the recovery of e vangelical Christianity from Luther through Socinus, thereby acknowledging the impact of t he pacifist Netherlandish Anabaptist as overseer of h is flocks in Commonwealth territories and evoking the subsequent overtures the immersionist Polish Brethren would make toward the Mennonite leadership in the estuary of the Vistula: The appearance of L uther, Zwingli, Calvin, and Menno came first, as of daybreak and dawn; and this was then followed by the brighter days of the returning sun [Christ as theologically set forth by Socinus].195 The rise of P olish-speaking Anabaptists in between the arrival of Menno Simons in Royal Prussia in 1549 (to settle differences among his far-flung followers in the delta of the Vistula; Ch. 15.4) and the definitive 193  For one vie w of Musco vite Judaizers in the Ukraine , see m y “Protestantism in the Ukraine,” 52–56. 194  The actual practice of immer sion, prominent in Great Russia and Graecia, may have, under Latin influence, lapsed in the Ruthenian palatinates. For an accessible Catholic coverage of the secondar y literature, see Casimir K ucharek, The Byzantine-Slav Liturg y of St. John Chrysostom: Its Origin and Evolution (Adendale, N.J.: Alleluia Press, 1971). 195  Wiszowaty, Narratio compendia, BAnt, 209 translated Williams, Lubieniecki, Related Doc. 2. For the image of the r eturning sun, cf. Peter Olivi, Ch. 11.4. It should be added, as a cor rective of the perspective, that Wiszowaty wrote this in Holland, where he may also have been seeking to capture the good will of the Waterland Mennonites. Still, as a historian, he knew of the earlier overtures.

1052  the radical reformation

chapter 25.4

organization of t he antipedobaptist, pacifistic, and Antitrinitarian Minor Church in 1565 (and therewith the account of the baptismal controversy in the Commonwealth) can be only sketchily recounted because of the paucity of documentation. In 1548 a new wave of Silesian immersionist (Gabrielite) Anabaptists (Ch. 15.3 and 4) had found refuge in Poland. By around 1551, Menno’s spiritual lieutenant, Dirk Philips, was established as chief pastor of t he Dutch Anabaptists of t he estuary of t he Vistula, with his base near Danzig, much to the irritation of the guildsmen there and in other towns, who had long complained to the new king that their town councils were tolerating these Anabaptist outlaws and economic competitors. It is possible that the Catholic bishop of Włocławek (Leslau) in lake-dotted Cujavia (Kujawy) was encouraging Dutch (Anabaptist) colonists as a counterweight to Lutheran Danzig.196 The penetration of P olish society by A nabaptist ideas was recorded indignantly by Jacob Przyłuski in Cracow in 1553, when he deplored “the madness of t he fanatics who make it a m atter of d oubt whether Christians may hold office or possess anything as property.”197 A certain cobbler, Michael, was openly proclaiming Anabaptist teachings in Pozna´n in 1554. Schwenckfeldians were in Danzig in 1555, while in the same year a number of bound copies of Schwenckfeld’s books were received by King Sigismund in Cracow. At the Prussian dietine in 1556, Sigismund made known the widespread complaints that had reached him to the effect that many towns in Royal Prussia, against his express orders, had not only tolerated Anabaptists, “Picardians” (Czech Brethren), and other heretics but had even encouraged them.198 As in the rise of Germanic Anabaptism, the Reformed moved in Lithuania and Poland from pedobaptism by s prinkling (and pouring), to antipedobaptism, to rebaptism, and eventually to believers’ immersion on the model of Christ’s baptism at Jordan (a distinctively Servetian, Silesian, and Polish trait), to, in a few cases, a partial renunciation of baptism as an external rite, except optionally or in welcoming converts from Judaism or Islam. This last was the view to be openly advocated respectively by Jacob Palaeologus and Faustus Socinus (Chs. 24.4; 28; 29), a non-representative recoil from a phase of perhaps undue attachment to believers’ baptism. The eventually international renown or notoriety of S ocinus in particular has as it happens almost fully obscured, until modern research, the baptist theology and practice of the Polish Brethren, 1565–1660, so long as they survived in Poland. Obscured also was the degree to which baptismal

196

n. 59. 197 198

 Szper, Nederlandsche nederzettingen in West Pruisen, 21; Doornkaat Koolman, Philips, 116,  Leges seu statuta ac privilegia Regni Poloniae; quoted by Kot, Socinianism, 14.  Szper, Nederlandsche nederzettingen in West Pruisen, 66, 198.

chapter 25.4

slavic reformation: poland & lithuania  1053

controversy in a m iddle phase was the theological context in which the synods and the tractarians explored the demanding social implications of apostolic baptism, all the more impressive for the fact that the discussions engaged the talents, treasure, and temporalities of d evout lords, public servants, guild burghers, serfs, and alien refugees. As in Poland, the Polish-speaking Lithuanians moved from adherence to the Nicaenum and Athanasium through Tritheism, Ditheism, into Christocentric Unitarianism, interlocked in various stages and resulting in several lesser synodal schisms. Thus at any given time there were Nicenes, Tritheists, Ditheists, and Unitarians, antipedobaptists and pedobaptists, and various possible mixtures of beliefs and doctrines within the Minor Church in Lithuania as in Poland. Gonesius, earlier reproved (Ch. 25.1.h) at the synod of W łodzisław, 4–15 September 1558,199 was again condemned along with Servetus in connection with the reprimand of a c ertain John the catechist in Biała in Podlachia. Polish Anabaptism had already begun to fuse with Antitrinitarianism. The synod went on to declare in alarm, lest the Anabaptists among them undermine the authority of t he state: “We must beware the superstition of the Anabaptists, who do not even drive off a biting dog.”200 At the Lithuanian synod of Brest, 15 December 1558, Gonesius advocated that pedobaptism be replaced with the baptism of catechumens. During the synod, Jerome Piekarski, pastor in Biała, stood in the defense of Gonesius; and after the synod Anna Kiszka, sister of P rince Radziwiłł the Black, temporarily established Gonesius as a pastor in We¸ grów.201 It was about this time that he printed De baptismo Novi Foederis.202 About the same time, several local synods in Lithuania and Little Poland moved toward rebaptism. It is quite possible that Gonesius, who propagated a Polish form of Anabaptism since his return to the Commonwealth in 1556 and was condemned for it in 1558 (25.1.h), was responsible for the initial Anabaptist campaign in Lithuania and then in Poland. Simon Budny would later report that “Peter of Goniadz … came to Lithuania [in 1558] and wrote books against pedobaptism. These books were read by ministers [in Lithuania and Poland] who found in them truth concerning that thing [baptism] and soon began attacking pedobaptism.” 203 In Lithu-

199

 Sipayłło, Akta 1:265–82, esp. 280.  Ibid., 276. Be it noted that Anabaptista connotes a pacifist, not a Münsterite, here in the heart of Polonia. 201  Andrew Wiszowaty, apud BAnt, 211; see also J armola, “Origins and Development of Believer’s Baptism,” 78–80. 202  A unique imprint, Doctrina pura et clara de praecipuis Christianae religione (We¸grów, 1570) contains four tracts. These are presumed antecedents of three later works in Polish translation, one of which is O ponurzatiu chrystyja´nskim (On Christian immersion), ed. Halina Górska et al., Biblioteka Pisarzy Reformacyjtnych 3 (Warsaw: PWN, 1960). 203  Budny, O Dzieciokrzcze´nstwie, see below, n. 213. 200

1054  the radical reformation

chapter 25.4

ania, following 1558, the antipedobaptist movement was growing stronger under the leadership of Gonesius, Budny himself, who came to Lithuania in 1558, and Martin Czechowic, who was invited to Vilna by R adziwiłł the Black in 1559. In the meantime in Little Poland, calls for moves toward Polish Anabaptism spread following Gonesius’ visits there in 1559 and 1560. Stanislas Sarnicki, writing in early 1563, spoke of the antipedobaptist synods in Ksia¸z204 and Ko´scielec, 205 led by George Schomann and probably Gregory Paul, as events that had already taken place. Looking back at these Little Poland synods three years later, Sarnicki would remark that at Ko´scielec and Ksia¸z “Schomann and his followers sided with those [in Lithuania] refusing to baptize infants.” 206 In any event, Polish-speaking Anabaptism with its stress on immersion came into its own a few years before the schism in the Reformed Church over the dogma of the Trinity. We have elsewhere noted that the usage of t he Byzantine rite, often regarded by r adical Protestants as having preserved more remnants of apostolic tradition than the Latin rite, may have served to reinforce the emergent immersionist practice of the Polish-speaking Lithuanians and the Poles, while the practice of r ebaptism of Ruthenians converting to the Roman rite, despite express papal opposition to rebaptism, 207 set a p recedent and lifted an inhibition about a second baptism in the reform of the rite among our synodists. 208 Baptist sentiments among the Reformed in Poland-Lithuania may well have been influenced by the Czech Brethren. The Unitas, having originally practiced the rebaptism of c onverts from Catholicism and Utraquism (Ch. 9.1), while nominally abandoning the practice in deference to Luther, continued to practice it, in both the conservative Minor Party in Moravia led by John Kalenec, and evidently, the 204  The protocol is lost; cf. Sipayłło, Akta 2:171; our only source, Stanislas Sarnicki, Collatio in qua aper te demonstatur blasphemias Gregorie Bresinensis … conforma esse doctr inae Arii (1563), as cited by Górski, Grzegorz Paweł, 185. 205  Sipayłło, Akta 2:172. 206  Sarnicki, Collatio; quoted in Górski, Grzegorz Paweł, 185. 207  After the se venteenth ecumenical Council of F errara-Florence (1438–39), by which Kiev joined in union with Rome (though only two bishops), the Papacy resisted the rebaptism of Ruthenians. However, many Orthodox lords and even priests in the Commonwealth, desiring a western education and culture, clamored for baptism by the Roman rite, which was adult rebaptism. De baptismo Ruthenorum was a common problematic in the Commonwealth, up to the Union of Brest of 1596. Orthodox baptism includes “the oil of gladness” (of catechumens) before the water and the oil of chrismation (confirmation) afterwards. 208  Both the Catholic and the Orthodox Church received the canons of the ancient councils, notably canon 7, of Constantinople 1: “Arians … and Apollinarians … ,we receive, upon their giving a wr itten renunciation. … Thereupon, they are sealed or anointed with the holy oil … and when we seal them, we say: ‘The seal of the gift of the Holy Spir it.’ But Eunomians, who are baptized with only one immer sion [in the name of Chr ist], and Montanists … , who teach the identity of the Father and Son … we receive as heathen,” Conciliorum oecumenicorum Decreta, ed. Alberigo, 31.

chapter 25.4

slavic reformation: poland & lithuania  1055

Major Party groups settled in Great Poland, 209 and continued to defend conditional baptism in synod with the Poles (Ch. 25.2). At the joint synods of Pi´nczów, 1556 and 1559, the Czech ministers were specifically asked about their practice of baptism with respect to those coming over “from the papacy” and to children presented to them for baptism by the peasant parents who remained Catholic. The Reformed ministers and Reformminded gentry were willing to baptize the infants of serfs and others (and to solemize their marriages) in the traditional role of the displaced priests of the old order, even though these infants would not be brought up Reformed by t heir traditionalist parents. The Unitas ministers deplored this Reformed concession and were prepared to baptize only the children of serfs who covenanted to bring them up as members of their Church of the Czech Brethren. Besides Germanic Anabaptist and possibly Orthodox and Unitas influence on the rise of the baptismal theology and practice among the Polish Brethren of the emerging Minor Reformed Church, there was the omnipresence in the Lithuanian and Polish villages and towns of t he Jewish mikvah, the holy pool, for the monthly cleansing of wives and for the purification of proselytes, which could not but remind the would-be apostolic Polish Brethren of what baptism could have been like in the apostolic age. Decisive, of course, was the baptismal practice in Scripture itself (Ch. 11.1). Meanwhile, Gonesius, supported by Czechowic in Lithuania and Schomann in Poland, pressed on with his peculiar teaching. In outlining here Gonesius’ immersionist anabaptist theology, we reach ahead to his fullest extant treatment but there is no reason to suppose that his views differed much from the convictions he espoused in 1556/58. 210 People misunderstood the name “Christian,” he says. The Roman Catholic designation of “Christian” (Chrze´scijanin) is derived directly from christening (chrzest) yet it is only faith that makes one a t rue Christian (Chrystyjan). That name, argues Gonesius, is taken from the name of Jesus Christ (Chrystus). If there is an error made in such a simple matter, how much greater must the error have been in the greater mysteries of Christian theology! One becomes a Christian from being submerged or immersed with Christ, not from having had a little water sprinkled on the head in infancy. Antichrist or the papacy purposely gave the equivocal name to pedobaptism in order to mislead people into thinking that they became Christians by a mere formality. When the Catholic priest or even more the Reformed pastor repeats the ancient formula, “Ego te baptizo,” he says, “I immerse you,” but actually he only pours water over the head and is therefore boldly

209

 See Jarmola, “Origins and Development of Believer’s Baptism,” 231–45.  The work upon which we draw is O ponurzaniu chrystyja´nskim (We¸ grów, 1570).Cf. n. 202 above. 210

1056  the radical reformation

chapter 25.4

lying. Whoever acts in this manner is not a minister of Christ, but a minister of Antichrist, says Gonesius. Those who are “baptized” according to Antichrist are clearly not baptized. By having introduced a n ew kind of baptism, the Papists and even more now the Protestants following them are the ana-baptists! The Orthodox Church is here more apostolic in its practice. Those who are submerged, according to Christ’s original mandate should not be considered as being rebaptized since they have not been hitherto baptized, that is, truly immersed. It is nonsense to require baptism of children, since they cannot have faith. Gonesius quotes Tertullian: “Fiunt, non nascuntur Christiani.”211 God only ordered those who already had faith to be baptized. Moreover, since not all who are born are predestined to be spiritually reborn, it is all the more inappropriate that the words and signs of God should be fatuously given to infants. God grants his grace only to a certain number of predestined individuals, who at a given moment will feel called to submit to immersion as a seal of their predestined faith and salvation. Any seal that does not certify a gift is useless. God would be giving a useless gift if he allowed his valid sacrament to be given to those who will reject his grace and salvation.212 Such, in brief, is the immersionist theology of Gonesius, the Polish Servetian-Anabaptist, whose stress here on predestination to salvation, sets off his teaching of A nabaptism in the Commonwealth from that which would presently displace it without the doctrine of p redestination being so prominent. Different in this regard in Lithuania were Simon Budny (1530–93) and Martin Czechowic (1532–1613). 213 Martin Czechowic (1532–1613) was born of impoverished burgher parents on the westernmost (Brandenburg-Silesian) border of the kingdom in

211 212

above.

 Apologia, 18:4.  On the Holy Spir it as gift and seal, cf. canon 7 of Constantinople I, quoted in n. 208

213  On Budny, see Stanisław Kot, “Szymon Budny: Der Grösste Haretiker Litauens im 16. Jahrhundert,” Wietler Archiv für Geschichte des Siaventums und Osteuropas 2 (1956): 63–118. On Czechowic, see Lech Szczucki, Martin Czechowic: Studium z dziejów antytr ynitaryzmu polskiego XV w (Warsaw: PWN, 1964) with a substantial summar y in English, 317–21. Quite new in the literature is the discovery of the account of a disputation bv Czechowic, his Trzech dtli rozmowa, completed 6 January 1565, printed by Budny (Łosk, 1578), not yet critically edited but described by Lech Szczucki, “The Beginning of Antitrinitarianism in Lithuania in the Light of a So-Far Unknown Source,” Sixteenth Century Anabaptism and Radical Refor mation, trilingual, BD Scripta et studia 3, edited b y Jean-Georges Rott and Simon L. Verheus (Baden-Baden/ Bouxville: Koerner, 1987), 343–58. The Budny edition contains tw o other w orks: Mikołaj We¸drogowski on the “Baptism of Little Children, with a Warning and Admonition by Marcin Czecowic,” and, anonymously, by Budny himself, “On the Baptism of Childr en, A Brief note on the beginning and continuation of the controversy over the First Sacrament, that is, Holy Immersion, in the Duchy of Lithuania and late in P oland” (O dzieciokrzcze´nstwie). All of these are richly excerpted in the author’s parallel and more detailed article in Budny’s “On Baptism,” “Szymona Budnego anabaptyzm w zborze mniejszym,” OiRwP 31 (1986): 93–104, from which references to O dzieciokrzcze´nstwie are cited.

chapter 25.4

slavic reformation: poland & lithuania  1057

Zba¸szyn´ (Bentschen) between Mie¸dzyrzecz and Wschowa, which feature in Gabrielite Anabaptist history (Chs. 5.5; 15.3). He had intended to enter the Catholic priesthood, but was converted to the Reformation at Leipzig in 1554. After his appearance as a Reformed pastor at the synod of Gołuchów in 1555, Prince Radziwiłł called him to Vilna where he became a lecturer at the Reformed school in 1559. In 1561, Radziwiłł made Czechowic his personal representative to carry out a survey of Swiss ecclesiastical institutions and specifically to seek to reconcile Calvin with George Biandrata, both of whom Radziwiłł admired (25.2). On the way back to Lithuania, from his otherwise unsuccessful mission of reconciliation, Czechowic came through Silesia and Cujava. It is possible that he met with John Niemojewski who was very active in the Cujavian Reformed Church. Simon Budny reported that upon his return from Switzerland Czechowic rejected pedobaptism and publicly declared, to the surprise of the Reformed church in Vilna, that “he did not want to baptize infants.”214 Simon Budny (c. 1533–93), the son of a M azovian squire, was trained at Cracow in biblical languages. Familiar with Ruthenian and a master of Polish prose, he was called to Vilna by Radziwiłł in 1558 to teach and catechize on Sundays, Tuesdays, and holidays. In 1559, when Czechowic came to Vilna, Budny was transferred to Kleck (palatinate Nowogródek) to board in the house of J acob Kurnicki. Radziwiłł’s design to win his numerous Orthodox lords, clerics, and serfs to Protestantism involved closing the Orthodox and Roman churches on his vast estates and introducing his population to the Polish-trained Reformed ministers. Budny moved on to Nie´swiez (palatinate Nowogródek). To further Radziwiłł’s plan, Budny almost immediately began publishing works in Ruthenian, the f irst of which concerned the justif ication of the sinner before God, published in 1562. 215 In another book in Cyrillic published later in the same year, Katikhisis (Nie´swiez, 1562), 216 Budny rejected pedobaptism. Unlike other Polish Anabaptists, however, Budny openly attacked Byzantine-rite Orthodoxy. In the Polish edition of t he Catechism (1563) he stated that the Protestants had not yet begun to deal with the problem of the procession of the Holy Spirit. In 1563 a s ynod was called for Vilna to deal with the problem of increasing opposition to pedobaptism among the Lithuanian Reformed. The group led by C zechowic recommended that pedobaptism be postponed until the children “reach seven years of age.” That position indicates

214

 Budny, O dzieciokrzcze´nstwie, 105.  O opravdanii hreshneho cheloveka pered Bohom. The work is lost. 216  Alodia Kawecka-Gryczowa, Drukarzne Dawnej Polski, 5, Wielkie Ksie¸stwo Litewskie (Wrocław/Cracow: Ossolineum, 1959), plate 3. 215

1058  the radical reformation

chapter 25.4

the growth of a ntipedobaptist teaching among Czechowic’s following. However, his recommendation was defeated. By 1563 the Anabaptist sentiments, nevertheless, had so far spread among the Reformed in Lithuania and Poland that Simon Zacius, a Cracow-trained Calvinist who had served as minister in Vilna since 1556, in indignation left the Grand Duchy and returned to Little Poland. Nicholas We¸drogowski, who would long vacillate on baptism, at the moment favorable to the anabaptist, anti-Nicene movement, replaced him. The long anticipated appearance of the Radziwiłł Bible in Polish (Brest, 1563), begun in Pi´nczów, gave added impetus to the emerging Polish-speaking Anabaptist movement by m aking clear to a large number of people just what the practices of the first disciples had been.217 In 1564 Gonesius wrote his first Polish Anabaptist work, De primatu. The synod of Vilna in 1564, called again to discuss the question of infant baptism, was attended by t wenty-six Lithuanian ministers. This time, the synodists were equally divided between the pro- and the antipedobaptist position. As no agreement was reached, the synod suggested that the matter of baptism be discussed at the “larger synod [of the Minor Church in Brzeziny in 1565], and that in the meantime, each group was free to baptize or not to baptize infants.” By that time Vilna was fast becoming an Anabaptist center as much as had once been Zurich, Strassburg, or Augsburg.218 On Epiphany, 6 January 1565, Czechowic in Nie´swiez completed and dedicated to Prince Radziwiłł his idealized Three Days’ Colloquy (Trzech dni rozmowa) on pedobaptism in which three clerics gently debate, (1) the Christian, a pastor of the emergent Minor Church who is the alter ego of Czechowic, (2) the Evangelical minister of the Major Church who actually combines elements of the Lutheran and the Calvinist confessions, and (3) a rather benign Roman Catholic priest. The Christian pastor (Czechowic) confesses that what follows is the first known such declaration in Polish—that he considers his own infant baptism as not valid and valueless: In what pertains to me, forsooth, even if I w ere to be called a thousand times a h eretic and rebaptizer, I d o not renounce an orderly baptism when God inspires me to that. For even though they say that I have been baptized, I nevertheless certainly do not know that, because that was done neither of m y own will nor according to the word of God, because that occurred when I was born. Which is to say, when I still did not know anything about myself, and was more repulsive, more stupid, and worth less than an animal. For an animal is able to walk soon after being born, and 217 218

 Wotschke, Reformation, 28ff.  Budny, O urze¸dzie miecza (On the Office of the Sword, 1583), ed. Kot, 19.

chapter 25.4

slavic reformation: poland & lithuania  1059

I did not know whether I existed or not, and the same applies to other people. And now God deigned by his grace to give me the knowledge of myself. I want to be baptized because now I feel the need to do so, and I realize in accordance with the word of God that the said baptism of [ me as a] child was not a t rue Christian sacrament, but something strange, like magic, and contrary to God and his word, because I was without that faith which is necessary for a true baptism. And at that time, being a child, I knew nothing about that faith, nor did I know anything about God and Jesus Christ. 219 In the course of the imagined colloquy, Czechowic, avoiding the Münstertainted word Anabaptist and using instead Neobaptist, rather readily concedes to the Evangelical and the Papist that there have been “evil and godless people, such as Thomas Müntzer and John of L eiden, but then describes “the good Neobaptists,” among whom he is still presumably only a prospective baptizand: They are sincere and govern themselves only by the word of God, and do not devise anything above it; they live so as not to offend anyone; they do not reason about high things; they do not like subtle puzzles; they care little or not at all about this world; they obtain food with their own hands and in the sweat of their brow [2 Thess. 3:7–13]; they do not like secular pleasures; they strictly observe the word of God; they dislike pride and debauchery. They follow what Christ ever ordered his disciples to do, and pray without ceasing (1 Thess. 5:17). … They live peacefully with all, do not avenge their wrongs, and set store by G od. Nor do they want to owe anything to anyone except for due charity.220 When the Evangelical pastor comments, “I wonder why you have said that those people do not want to hold offices, because St. Paul, whom you have cited, called public officers servants of G od [Rom. 13:4]; it seems likely that they [the Anabaptists] must be critical of that.” To this Czechowic as “the new Christian” replies: A faithful person cannot be critical of that because the Holy Spirit calls the office a dispensation of God, and God does not dispense anything evil. And if they [Anabaptists] do not want to hold office 219

 The translation is fr om Szczucki, from the recently discovered text not y et critically edited; see above, n. 213. I have taken the liberty of substituting “repulsive” where the translation renders a word, inaccessible to one, as “obscene,” which is certainly too strong. 220  Ibid. The prayer without ceasing stands out as a str ess different from any among the Germanic Anabaptists and may be r elated, in their Or thodox setting, to the Hesychast Jesus Prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son [Lamb] of God, have mercy upon me, a sinner.”

1060  the radical reformation

chapter 25.4

that is what they may do. Even Christ himself, when he saw that the people wanted to come to him and to make him king [ John 6:15], escaped them in order to not be given that office. And they [the Anabaptists] have other reasons to do so, but I h ave not yet fully examined them. I can only say that a true Christian finds it difficult to hold office.221 On the issue raised about oaths, Czechowic, speaking through “the new Christian,” has reservations about them, but holds that they may be used in church matters, citing Hebrews 6:16, but is noncommittal about them in the public arena. He is critical of C alvin’s Defense of the execution of Servetus (1554; Ch. 23.4), contrasting Moses, adduced by Calvin in support of execution for blasphemy, with Christ, for whom the severest punishment within his Church is the ban, quoting Matthew 13:36–47, 1 Corinthians 5:11, and Titus 3:10–11. Although Czechowic evidently drew on Germanic Anabaptism for his New Covenantal ideal, he only cites one work among them, Balthasar Hubmaier as found in a l etter of O ecolampadius, with which he indeed concludes his own work: “I consider the baptism of infants as the beginning of Papist ignorance and the foundation of all errors in the Church of God.” Prince Radziwiłł might have tolerated peaceful Anabaptism had it not been associated with radical social ideals. His uneasiness about the movement which he had been fostering among his clergy is evidenced in the character of the regents he appointed for his son and the executors of his will. They included his cousin Nicholas Radziwiłł the Red, the reformed Catholic bishop of Kiev Nicholas Pac, and the Ruthenian Prince Constantine Ostrogski. It was their coming into power immediately after Radziwiłł died on 28 May 1565 that cut short any further development of Lithuanian Anabaptism. It was in this revolutionary situation that George Weigel sounded the alarm on the clerical side. Born in Nuremberg, he had gone, as had Andreas Osiander (25.1.b), to Königsberg but had been driven out in 1562 because of his sympathies for Melanchthon’s eclecticism, and had found asylum in Vilna. As a p ensionary of R adziwiłł, he had been given the opportunity to study in Basel and Zurich, and on his return he became minister to the Vilna Reformed congregation. Weigel swiftly attacked the Anabaptists in Vilna in two writings: Necessaria consideratio, dedicated to the council of regency, and De confusa multitudine Vilnae … quam hypocritae Anabaptistae duo vel tres homines profani regent tacite, in which he exposed two or three members of the Vilna church as secretly supporting the Anabaptists which was directed toward the Reformed nobility of Lithuania and provided a detailed description of the 221

 Ibid.

chapter 25.4

slavic reformation: poland & lithuania  1061

of the Vilna Anabaptists.222 Weigel’s specific charges were that the radicals had scant respect for the clerical office and formal theological training, that they were observing the Lord’s Supper too infrequently, that they were fencing it with too many impertinent questions about the worthiness of the communicants, that in celebrating the communion they so arranged the seating of t he participants that the gentry and commoners were rubbing elbows in liturgical confusion (cf. Servetus on the communion service, Ch. 11.3.e.4), that in encouraging all the communicants to address one another in and out of meeting as brethren and sisters in Christ they were destroying the fabric of society and disparaging the dignity and authority of t he magistrate, that they were coming close to the community of goods, that they were destroying the structure of the liturgical year, and, by eliminating the observance of feast days, were incidentally making it difficult for magistrates to keep their court records, and, finally, that in eliminating Christmas and Easter as special days in the liturgical year they were derogating the significance of both the Incarnation and the Atonement. By the end of 1565 the socially and theologically conservative Reformed regained control of Vilna. Writing to Nicholas Pac, Weigel reported that the Anabaptists had been defeated and expelled from the city. We shall meet the Anabaptist refugees from Lithuania in Poland (Ch. 27.2). We need now to take a step back and look at the developments in Moravia where the Hutterites, as mentioned in passing in this chapter, have begun emanating their allure to the Polish brethren most concerned with the social implications of the Gospel.

222  Both writings are printed as an appendix by Stanislas Kot, “Ausbruch und Niedergang des Taüfertums in Wilna,” ARG 49 (1958): 224–26.

1062  the radical reformation

chapter 25.4

The Dovecote, a satirical representation of a Hutterite family, by Christoph Andrea Fischer

Chapter 26

The Hutterites in Moravia, 1542–1578

A s we return to Moravia, crossroads and asylum

for the wayfarers of t he Radical Reformation, we are prepared to examine the consolidation of t he most resolute and exclusivistic of t he Anabaptist groups, the communitarian Hutterites under Leonard Lanzenstiel (1542– 65) and Peter Walpot (1565–78). We shall also have occasion to note several overtures of other radical churches, notably the Polish Brethren, the Italian Anabaptists, certain Paulicians, and the Germans of the Marpeck circle and their hopes of e ntering into communion with the Hutterites to form an international federation of apostolic churches.

1. The Coepiscopate of Lanzenstiel and Riedemann, 1542–1556/65 The death of Ulrich Stadler, bishop of the community in Bucovic to the east of Austerlitz (Slavkov), in 1540 deprived the Moravian Hutterites of one of their best theological thinkers. Two years later, early in February of 1542, the chief bishop of all the brethren in Moravia, John Amon, successor (1535–42) to Jacob Hutter (Ch. 16.1), died at Schakwitz (Šakvice), having nominated Leonard Lanzenstiel as his successor in the leadership of the whole brotherhood. We can only catch a glimpse of Amon as he slips below the chronological horizon of our narration. His deputy and successor, Lanzenstiel, had led his people across the Austrian border from Nicolsburg to harvest the fields around Steinbrunn and stayed there, when on 6 December 1539, a delegation of Philippites and Swiss Brethren arrived to prepare for a possible union with the Hutterites. At just that moment the royal marshall raided the guest workers and their visitors and placed them in nearby Falkenstein Castle, a hundred and fifty men separated from their spouses and children. Not all of them had as yet been rebaptized; these were counted as brethren by virtue of their willingness “to suffer for the truth.” The Lord of the castle, Hans Fünfkirchen, vowed that he would place an inscription over the gate, “stating that since it was built, there had never been so many 1063

1064  the radical reformation

chapter 26.1

devout people in it as at that time.”1 Priests were admitted among them by the marshall, since they had been so caustic in their denunciation of p riestcraft and “they were quick in deciding that the brothers deserved to die … that they could not be tolerated on land but should be sent to sea to waste away in great suffering as galley slaves.” They for their part vociferated their resolve never to raise arms to row in naval warfare, and they were promptly flogged, chained two-by-two, and marched off by way of Ljubljana to Trieste to row under the Genoese admiral Andrea Doria against the Turks. On the way they converted many by their stalwart tread and upright carriage in the faith. Most of them miraculously escaped prison in Trieste, dropping down over the walls on the very ropes that had bound them. To the twelve recaptured brothers Bishop Amon wrote one of his seventeen extant epistles.2 It is possible that several of these galley slaves reached Mount Athos and were cared for in this monastic republic.3 Leonard Lanzenstiel, often called Seiler from his work as rope maker, was never to write a g reat theological or expository work. The Chronicle calls him “a pious pastor, gifted with hot enthusiasm, earnestness, and industry.”4 His leadership of the orphaned Hutterites began under favorable auspices, because the serious persecution instigated by Ferdinand, king of Bohemia and Emperor (1556–64), had temporarily abated. The brethren stood at the beginning of a p eriod of s turdy growth, and year after year people continued to flock to Moravia from all quarters. Lanzenstiel was born somewhere in Bavaria. In 1529 he was with John ˇ Krumlov), near Auspitz, and afterward he went Amon at Krumau (Ceský to Austerlitz, where he was ordained. Late in 1536 he was sent as a companion of the missionary George Fasser into the Tyrol. At Neudorf, in Lower Austria, they had the misfortune of falling in with rowdy company at the local inn. Their disapproval of the particularly barbaric amusement and their consequent decision to leave the inn attracted considerable attention, and in the ensuing discussion they were recognized as Anabaptists and arrested.5 All the way from Neudorf to Mölding, where they were to be examined, they constantly talked and gave such eloquent testimony “that the judge and all the others were aghast and could not utter a single word

1

 Chronik/Chronicle, 1:193.  Joseph von Beck, Wiedertäufer im Kärten (Vienna, 1867), 123f. Several of his epic hymns also survive, some in the Falkensteiner Lieder in Die Lieder der Hutterischen Brüder (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald, 1914.) 3  A. J. F. Zieglschmid held that it w as through this contact that the monks sent a delega tion of three to learn more about the Brethren (below at n. 19), “Die ungarischen Wiedertäufer bei Grimmelshausen,” ZKG 59 (1940); noted by the translator of Chronik/Chronicle, 196, n. 1. 4  Chronik/Chronicle, 228/214. 5  Ibid., 163–64/155. 2

chapter 26.1

hutterites in moravia  1065

against it.” They were nevertheless promptly thrown into prison in Mölding along with such a company of “godless, shameful, wanton people” that they would, they wrote to Amon, rather have been in a cesspool. They were examined several times, and their letters relate their growing conviction that only death would deliver them from imprisonment. Somehow, they were released after a year. Fasser went on to a martyr’s death. Lanzenstiel visited Lower Austria and the Tyrol, where his wife, Apollonia, was apprehended near Brixen in 1539 and drowned. From the Tyrol he went on to Switzerland, where in spite of the fact that the authorities were forewarned of his coming and had posted rewards for his arrest, he managed to elude their vigilance. On his return to Moravia he was recognized by Amon as the natural successor. A m an of e nergy and godly courage, Lanzenstiel nevertheless felt that he was not competent to handle the administrative and pastoral problems alone, and besought the brethren to write to Peter Riedemann, imprisoned in Hesse, that they “had need of him in great necessity.” Riedemann, for his part, was reluctant to violate the confidence which his considerate jailer had placed in him, but he finally concluded that the good of the congregation justified his escape, and he returned to Moravia (Ch. 16.2). It was quickly decided that he and Lanzenstiel should together share the leadership of a ll the Moravian communities, a decision which proved very fruitful, for “the Lord gave blessing and growth to the congregation; the number of the faithful increased, and the people grew more and more day by day.”6 Under the benevolent and practical administration of Lanzenstiel and the sound pastoral guidance of t he author of t he Account, the Hutterites made economic and spiritual progress. New converts flocked to join them. Among the adherents were many weavers, who developed a flourishing craft. The Hutterites thereby contributed much to the economy of Moravia. Their industry and frugality strengthened the economic programs of the nobles. When in 1544 the Moravian estates issued an order prohibiting the purchase of wool anywhere but in the royal cities or on the baronial estates, the Hutterites willingly complied, because their patrons were increasingly considerate of their interests. In 1545 they were granted a number of new households even though the persecution was officially still in force. The prosperity of the Anabaptists could not pass unnoticed in Hapsburg Vienna. In the spring of 1545 another order was issued, demanding that the Hutterites be expelled. Some of the lords complied in part, compelling the Anabaptist colonists to give up their communal institutions. In consequence they submitted a solemn protest to the lords with an Account, a confession of their doctrine and life, the previously discussed work of Peter 6

 Ibid., 230/216.

1066  the radical reformation

chapter 26.1 / 26.2

Riedemann (Ch. 16.2). The Bohemian revolt of 1547 in solidarity with the Protestants of t he Smalcald War (1546–47) and its suppression increased Ferdinand’s power and his determination to crush all dissident elements in his dominions. Together Riedemann and Lanzenstiel guided the brotherhood in the difficult years of 1545–51, when they were so hounded by the authorities that they became as hunted game. They dug (or enlarged already existing prehistoric) tunnels (Czech: lochy) as temporary abodes. Many fell away, returning to their diverse homelands, but the core remained loyal and was augmented by t he adhesion of S ilesian Gabrielites (Ch. 15.3.b). Fortunately, the Moravian magnates reasserted their rights to administer their domains according to their conscience and their economic advantage. By 1553 they had permitted the Hutterites to set up three new colonies.7 This independent action marked the beginning of a turn for the better, “the good time of the brotherhood.” Peter Riedemann, who contributed so much to the theological and literary undergirding of the Hutterite version of apostolic institutions, was able to enjoy but three years of the upward–turning fortunes of the Moravian communities. In 1556, at age fifty, he composed his last hymn, which begins: Quit, clear and free of death and hell, The power of Christ has made us well.8

Calling the brethren to his bedside, he admonished them with the words from Nehemiah 8:10: “Go your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared: for this day is holy unto our Lord: neither be ye sorry; for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” With this blessing, Peter Riedemann died, at the Slovakian Bruderhof of Protzka (today: Brodsko) in December 1556, in the same year as the principal South German Anabaptist leader, Pilgram Marpeck (Ch 31.1).

2. Divisiveness Among, and Ecumenical Overtures to, the Moravian Anabaptists In the very season that Riedemann and Marpeck died, a Hutterite missionary, John Schmidt (Raiffer), was successfully recruiting new colonists among disaffected Anabaptists in two conventicles, one in Kreuznach in the Palatinate and the other in Aachen. Schmidt’s activity was typical, and his argument in converting Rhenish Anabaptists to the communitarian version in Moravia throws much-needed light on the mentality of t he whole Hutterite communion in its subapostolic age. Schmidt contended on his mission that the 7  Damborschitz (Dambeˇr ice) and Schaido witz (Žadovice) in Mora via and K uty in Hapsburg Hungary (Slovakia). 8  Chronik/Chronicle, 357/330.

chapter 26.2

hutterites in moravia  1067

Hutterite Church was not only a matter of faith and order, it was also a matter of place. At the end of his Brüderliche Vereinigung of 1556, Schmidt declared that the Moravian wilderness then being turned by pious colonists into fruitful farmland was manifestly the providentially determined place of r efuge foreseen by the Seer of Revelations 12:6. Just as the brethren on the Rhine should be separated in conventicles from the parishes of the wicked, so also they should, to prosper, be separated from the territory of these churches in which a sham Christianity corrupts even the most devout and sturdy conventicle. He continues: Since God through his Spirit has in all times led the pious according to his word and will to the place which has pleased him or which he had provided for them to dwell in and thus leads and separates them that he may be to them their ruler and governor, and has a special delight in dwelling in the midst of the pious and accordingly since God especially with the primitive Church had joy and pleasure in seeing his own drawn together from all tongues under heaven, wherein his heavenly work and rule was established on earth [so likewise that he] might see his bride in the place determined for her in the wilderness wherever it should please him on earth and wherever he should ordain that she might rest awhile from the dragon and might bear her children [Rev. 12:6]—for that reason God’s Spirit has [implanted] in the hearts of t he pious a yearning to dwell in that very place.9 To satisfy this holy yearning, the Vereinigung goes on, God has sent forth apostles or missionaries to gather together the scattered sheep under the protection and discipline of his apostolic pastors in Moravia. The foregoing section from the Vereinigung is eloquent testimony to the missionary zeal and cosmic sense of exclusive mission that inspired the Hutterites well into the second half of the century, and goes far to explain the tremendous attraction exercised by t he patriarchal Hutterites over other radical but less seasoned churches, and also to account for the uncompromising self-assurance of the Hutterites in their proud conduct of negotiations with other Anabaptists and with other radicals who hesitated to submit to the apostolic patriarch of Neumühl and his co-presbyters. One of the reasons for the authoritarian exclusiveness of the Hutterites was the enervating lure of a score of related sects burgeoning on the margins of their stolid communes. Although the Hutterite Chronicle gives the impression of a f airly harmonious and unified development of their apostolic church and commonweal, the unity even among the communitarians is that of a chronicler looking back idealistically. 9

 Ibid., 365–66/338.

1068  the radical reformation

chapter 26.2

The early division of t he group at Nicolsburg (Ch. 9.2), followed by the three-way “great split” (Ch. 16.1) of the Gabrielites and Hutterites, is only part of t he story. Moreover, besides the relatively cohesive Hutterites, there were numerous allied and hostile groups, some of which were eventually absorbed by the Hutterites. The enthusiasm and eschatological Biblicism of t hese seekers for the pure evangelical society, together with their responsiveness to charismatic leaders, led to divisions within divisions and a proliferation of factions and groups, sometimes numbering only a few members. In some places they lived amicably side by s ide, sometimes in stern and mutual excommunication, in a way which was puzzling even to contemporary commentators. Roman Catholic and magisterial Protestant accounts usually overstress the fragmentation and bickering, but even when allowance is made for polemical exaggeration, there still remains a bewildering multitude of s ects and factions interspersed among the Hutterite colonies in Bohemia and Moravia. One of the best pictures is given by a Venetian weaver of taffetas and painter of battle standards, Marc Antonio Varotto or Barotto, who in 1564 began a series of journeys that took him to Geneva, then to Vienna, and subsequently to Austerlitz, where he listened to Anabaptist teachings. In 1568, having made his way back to Venice, he decided to return to the Roman Catholic Church and made a vivid deposition on his geographical and spiritual peregrination:10 I left Moravia because during the two months I spent there I saw so many faiths and so many sects, the one contrary to the others and the one condemning the others, all drawing up catechisms, all desiring to be ministers, all pulling this way and that, all wishing to be the true church. In one place alone, and that small enough, called Austerlitz, there are thirteen or fourteen kinds of sects. He continues a little farther on: In Moravia are the following: the Picards [Czech Brethren], the Lutherans, the Calvinists, the Austerlitzers, the Cornelians, the Capellarians [Hutterites], the Josephites [Ebionites], the Sabbatarians, the Arians, the Samosatenes, the Swiss (whose minister is one Vidal, a Savoyard), and three others whose names I do not know because they have few followers and are excommunicated by the other eleven sects. … All these sects agree together on many

10  Henry A. De Wind, “A Sixteenth Century Description of Religious Sects in Austerlitz, Moravia,” MQR 24 (1955): 44–53.

chapter 26.2

hutterites in moravia  1069

things, but each has some particular article different from the others and they all have different catechisms.11 Varotto’s is the earliest comprehensive reference to the proliferation of sects in the region where the Hutterites were established. But another roughly contemporary document, the Evangelische Inquisition (Dillingen, 1573), by the Catholic jurist George Eder (d. 1586), conf irms the impression, enumerating forty sects of s o-called “Anabaptists,” not, however, conf ined to the one specif ic region. Christoph Erhard, parish priest of Nicolsburg (1583–89), in a violent book, Von den Münsterischen Widertauffern (Munich, 1589), also lists some forty sects. Eder lists Müntzerites, naked running Adamites,12 secretive or garden brethren,13 open witnesses, devilers (who universally held that the devil would be saved on Judgment Day), Libertines (here: cohabiters), weeping Brethren (Fratres f lebiles, who held highly emotional prayer meetings),14 silent ones (who had no preaching at their contemplative worship), Augustinians (who were psychopannychists), Münsterites of various kinds, Paulinists (called also “Scripturalists” because they purported to possess the original letters of Paul, probably Paulicians), priest–murderers, Antichristians (who worshiped the harlot mother of Antichrist), Judaizers, etc.15 Obviously this composite canvas is very much a c aricature of t he sectarian development. Eder and Erhard are tempted to list all the sects of which they have any knowledge, regardless of whether they existed in Moravia or not. In some cases the same group appears under two different names. The purpose of t he catalogues is clearly polemical. The authors wish to show the disorganization of t he Anabaptist movement and to discredit the sober and pious groups by c lassing them with the utterly eccentric or immoral sects.16 But even the relatively reliable and circumstantial Varotto gives an impressive testimony of the extraordinary degree of religious toleration practiced by the Moravian lords.

11

 Ibid., 45–46.  A grouping, recurrent in Church history, probably without any conscious continuity, first so named by Epiphanius, Panarion Heresy 52. 13  Anabaptists were called Gartenbrüder und Sc hwestern in Augsburg, among them se veral wealthy converts in whose gar dens they may have met. Friedrich Roth, “Zur Geschichte der Wiedertäufer in Ober schwaben,” three installments, Zeitschrift des Histor ischen Vereins für Schwaben und Neuburg, 28 (1901): 1–154, esp. 14; cited by Claus–Peter Clasen, Anabaptism, 325, who analyzes and classifies the various polemical lists, e.g., 443 nn. 2 and 5. 14  Although these weeping brethren are included in a general mix drawn from medieval as well as sixteenth-century sources, intense weeping has characterized a number of movements in the history of Christianity, e.g, the “fathers of the desert,” the Quakers. 15  De Wind, “Sects,” 48ff. 16  Ibid., 51. 12

1070  the radical reformation

chapter 26.2

The Hutterites, enjoying both a m easure of t oleration and a h igh degree of prosperity, seemed to many suffering Anabaptists elsewhere to be living in the Promised Land. The well–organized and far-flung Hutterite community was therefore the recipient of many ecumenical overtures and visitations from widely scattered groups. We have mentioned Oswald Glaidt’s attempt, even before the formation of the Hutterites proper, to bring together Anabaptists and the Unity of the Brethren in 1526 (Ch. 9.1). The overture and rebuff of Pilgram Marpeck has also been described (Ch. 18.1). Leaving for the next chapter the whole story of the exchanges between the Hutterites and the Polish Brethren, we shall here concentrate on certain Italian and Greek evangelicals. Having seen (Ch. 22.5) the contact from the Venetian side after the defection of M anelfi in 1551, we are now interested in the visitors from Venice and Thessalonica as they were received in Moravia. We quote from one of the Hutterite codices: There was a p eople in Italy, around Venice, eager to serve God. Their teacher was one Francis della Sega, who preached against idolatry and the godless doings. For that reason they were persecuted; as they did not know where to turn, a number of t hem finally decided to go across the sea towards Thessalonica. There they settled under a Turkish pasha. But Francis remained in Italy. When he heard of our church here in Moravia, where the brethren live together, and keep Christian community of goods, he started together with some other brethren from Italy and came to us. He looked around and inquired … and found out that this people here is standing upon the right apostolic ground. Thereupon he returned to Italy to visit his brethren there. After hearing the news they came with him to our church. He also wrote from Italy to Thessalonica, and informed this people that he had found the right church. … They should come up confidently and see for themselves. Thus several brethren from Thessalonica made themselves ready and came to us and became our brethren.17 Having earlier told about Francis della Sega and Julius Gherlandi, persecuted after Manelfi’s defection in 1551 (Ch. 22.2.d), we may here concentrate on the third refugee, Anthony Rizzetto, who had gone by ship with a number of other anti-Nicene Anabaptists to Thessalonica. While there, he received word from Francis della Sega about the Hutterites, and returned to Venice to make his way northward. Accepted into membership by the Hutterites, Rizzetto accompanied della Sega on the ill-fated journey to 17  A Hutterite manuscript of 1615 preserves this letter dated 1601: Beck, Geschichts-Bücher, 211–12; Robert Friedmann, “Christian Sectarians in Thessalonica and Their Relationship to the Anabaptists,” MQR 29 (1955): 55.

chapter 26.2

hutterites in moravia  1071

Venice, where he had hoped to make arrangements for the return of his wife and stepdaughter from Thessalonica in order that they might have an opportunity to join him and the church of Moravia. We have already told about his execution.18 It is possible that it was Rizzetto or the Venetian refugees in Thessalonica who told certain Greek nonconformists about the Hutterites. These Greek evangelicals may have set forth for Moravia in belated response to the much earlier visits of Brother Luke of the Unity of the Brethren (Ch. 9.1). In any event, about the time of the original flight of the Venetian Anabaptists to Greece, a d elegation of t hree Greeks from Larissa in Thessaly appeared in Moravia. They purported to have in their possession back in Macedonia “the letters which the apostle Paul wrote to them with his own hands,” a claim which would indicate that they drew on the Paulicians.19 Their journey is recorded, not by t he Hutterites or the Germans whom they visited, but by the Dutch in Het Brilleken (1630) incorporated into the Martyrs’ Mirror.20 The three emissaries, upon their arrival, sought out a priest (possibly a benign Utraquist priest or a Unity pastor), who took them to the Hutterites in Pausram. After a discussion, which was conducted in Latin, they found that despite a common stress on believers’ baptism, they were not in harmony with the Hutterites on shunning, the community of g oods, and the retention of all the property of a w ithdrawn or excommunicated member. 21 The emissaries left the Hutterites with tears in their eyes, fear-

18  Henry A. De Wind deals with all the manuscript evidence in “Anabaptists in Thessalonica?” MQR 29 (1955): 70–73. He r ecognized the mildly Antitrinitarian background of Rizzetto and conjectures that he ma y have dissociated himself fr om the Thessalonican conventicle of Antitrinitarians and some what casually also fr om his second wife because of his r eturn to Trinitarian orthodoxy and greater satisfaction in the Germanic type of Anabaptism. 19  The Dualistic Paulicians repudiated the Old Testament and held in special veneration the Gospel of Luke and the Pauline letters, somewhat like the ancient Marcionites. Their founder was evidently Constantine of Manonali, a Manichaean village near Samosata. He established their center in Kibassa in Armenia, whose king per secuted them and stoned him (c . 684). Emperor Leo the Armenian persecuted them in the ninth centur y. The sect was organized in four grades: apostles, prophets, itinerants, and copyists, of which g rades only the last tw o survived at the time of the reported delegation from Larissa.The three were presumably authorized itinerants with a claim to possess several extra–canonical letters of Paul. Nina G. Garsoian, The Paulician Heresy: A Study of the Origin and Development of Paulicianism in Armenia and the Eastern Provinces of the Byzantine Empire (The Hague: Mouton, 1967). 20  Van Braght, Martyrs’ Mirror, 365-67. A variety of accounts mostly going back to the same source, say that Moravians, captured by the Turks and sold into slavery in Greece, had discovered the existence of these old Ev angelicals throughout Macedonia, and in tur n informed them of the existence of the Hutterite brotherhood. Robert Friedmann is reserved as to this explanation of the contact, “Christian Sectarians” and also in ME, 4:708. 21  Caspar Schwenckfeld also cor roborates this tendency of the Hutter ites to exploit r ich converts, describing a disillusioned Swiss Anabaptist who had to forfeit four hundr ed guilders and wander around impoverished after his excommunication. CS, 12:37 (1550).

1072  the radical reformation

chapter 26.2

ing that they had made their long journey for naught. But their interlocutor took them to a group of “Swiss” Brethren 22 in the same locality, with whom they found themselves in perfect accord. If these Old Evangelicals had had a Paulician lineage, they had evidently reduced the cosmic dualism to the simply sectarian: church and world. The joyful Greek Brethren deposited a confession of their faith with the Swiss Anabaptists. 23 The Paulician church is well known to have centered its theology in believers’ baptism, a rite administered at thirty years of age in imitation of Christ at Jordan (cf. Ch. 11.1). It is of special interest therefore that article iii of the Greek emissaries reads as follows: Concerning baptism we believe and confess a baptism upon confession of faith and not an infant baptism, and we understand that a baptismal candidate must be standing with his feet in water as Christ was standing in the river Jordan. Thus he is baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.24 The Greek emissaries, according to one account, journeyed as far as The Netherlands before returning to Larissa. 25 The story of the meeting not only was recorded in the Martyrs’ Mirror but also was besung in a hymn in the Anabaptist hymnal, the Ausbund.26 The hymn records the joy at the realization that for centuries there had been an evangelical group practicing adult baptism in one of the most ancient lands of C hristendom. The composer, likening the three Greek pilgrims to the three Magi, recounts their disappointment with the Hutterites (at “Jerusalem”) and their rejoicing at their discovery of t he fully like-minded “Swiss” Brethren (at “Bethlehem”). The hymn in thirty-six stanzas is characteristic of the epic or narrative quality of much of Anabaptist hymnody: And as to break the bread they went With all the brethren duly; Confessed they were with one intent That God’s church it was truly. 22

 The record says the second group, the “Schweitzer Church,” took their name from one brother, John Schweitzer. Nothing is known of him. Anabaptists who did not live in the community of goods as the Hutterites did were generally called Schweitzer Brüder or Swiss Brethren, even if they had very little contact with the original Swiss immigrants. 23  Van Braght, Martyrs’ Mirror, 366. The document, copied many times as virtually a transcript of apostolic Christianity, although it may have been here and there altered in accordance with Mennonite piety and phraseology, is preserved in the Goshen (Indiana) College Library and has been translated b y Elizabeth Bender and pr inted: Friedmann, “Christian Sectarians,” 64–66. Its Paulician character is denied by Friedmann, who thus rejects a Bogomil origin. 24  Friedmann, “Christian Sectarians,” 64. 25  Het Brilleken; cited in Friedmann ME 4:708. 26  In all recent editions, 892–95.

chapter 26.2 / 26.3

hutterites in moravia  1073

Full well did they in truth proclaim That home in Thessalony God’s people had remained the same Since the Apostle’s passing. Their faith unchanged and stubborn They still have every letter Which holy Paul with his own hand Did send to those dear brethren.27

3. Good Years Under the Patriarch Peter Walpot, 1565–157828 Peter Riedemann’s death in December 1556 had left Lanzenstiel alone in the office of general bishop. The intellectual leadership of the brotherhood, however, soon passed into the hands of t he more creative Peter Walpot (1521–78). Walpot, a Tyrolese, born near Klausen, had at the age of eight witnessed the martyrdom of George Blaurock in nearby Gufidaun (1529). He was soon converted to Anabaptism, and by 1 542 was a m inister in Moravia. His trade was that of a cutter, for which reason he is often called Scherer or Tuchscherer. In 1545, at the age of twenty–four, he participated in the debate between the Hutterites and the Gabrielites. Gabriel Ascherham had died that year and the surviving Gabrielites sought a basis for union. As a result of the controversy, Walpot set down the Hutterite views in “Five Articles of the Great Controversy between Us and the World,” transcribed in the Hutterite Chronicle at the year 1547.29 Walpot devoted much attention to the orphaned Gabrielites, and persuaded many of them to join the Hutterites. When a decade later (Ch. 31.2), the Lutheran theologians published an attack on all Anabaptists at Worms in 1557, 30 the Hutterites alone replied in the Handbüchlein wider den Prozess, largely drawn up by Walpot rather than by t he titular head of t he brotherhood, Lanzenstiel. When Lanzenstiel died on 3 March 1565, a decade after Riedemann, he left the brotherhood in good economic condition and high morale. To succeed Lanzenstiel as principal bishop, the representatives of t he brotherhood naturally elevated Walpot. The administrative center of the brotherhood as a w hole was where the principal bishop (Hauptvorsteher) lived. Dur-

27  Vv. 23–25, Ausbund (Lancaster, 1815), appendix, 41. The hymn allegedly dates from 1540 but is clearly later and derivative. Friedmann, “Christian Sectarians,” 68–69. 28  The fullest account is that of Leonard Gross, The Golden Years of the Hutterites, 1565–1578 (Scottdale, Pa./Kitchner, Ont.: Herald Press, 1980). 29  Chronik/Chronicle, 269–316/251–94; reprinted in Müller , Glaubenszeugnisse (QGT 3), 237–57. 30  See Prozess, wie es soll gehalten werden mit den Widertäufern.

1074  the radical reformation

chapter 26.3

ing Walpot’s administration (1565–78) it was the Bruderhof of Neumühl (Nové Mlýny). 31 Under Walpot the brotherhood flourished and attained a membership of perhaps thirty thousand baptized adults. Walpot was a man of great and varied industry, extending his attention to all details of life. The community is idyllically described in these good years: Thus they came to dwell in the land which God had ordained especially for them. … They assembled in peace and unity and preached the gospel and the Word of God twice weekly, … making common prayer to God for all the needs of t he brotherhood and splendid thanksgiving for all their blessings, praying also for the Emperor, the king, the princes, and the civil authorities. … They used the Christian ban with the sinful … , celebrating Christian baptism according to the Lord’s command, and the Lord’s Supper. … They practiced the Christian community of goods as Christ taught and held with his disciples ... Their swords and spears were forged into pruning-knives, saws, and other useful instruments … , being obedient to the civil authority for good works. … The offices were filled with elders, special men who preached the Word of G od, reading, teaching, exhorting … , exercising the office of reconciliation. … Chosen men directed the people at their work. … Other specialists were attached to the school. … There were not a f ew carpenters and builders, who made many millhouses, breweries, and other buildings for the lords, noblemen, burghers, and other people … , not a few millers. In short, there was no one who went idle; everyone did something which was assigned to him, which was within his ability, whether he had been noble, rich, or poor. Even the priests who came learned like the apostle Paul how to work at an honest craft. 32 Walpot took advantage of the economic upsurge of the Hutterite community to systematize the crafts and working teams and to prepare manuals of discipline for the various vocations. The manual for cobblers had been worked out by his predecessor. Among Walpot’s own verified productions was a manual of school discipline and an address to the schoolmasters. This School Discipline is the second oldest of t he Hutterite Gemeindeordnungen. Disciplines for other vocations followed. Of all the sixteenth-century groups of Germanic Anabaptists, the Hutterites had the best opportunity for a s ystematic Christian upbringing of 31  Walpot’s influence was so great that when he died and the ordained men of the brotherhood met at Neumühl to elect his successor, the new bishop. Hänsel Kräl of Kitzbühel, took up his residence there and Neumühl ther eafter remained the administrative center until the Thirty Years’ War. 32  Chronik, 431–35 (abridged).

chapter 26.3

hutterites in moravia  1075

their youth, for in their Bruderhofs in Moravia and Slovakia, with a d iscipline embracing the whole community, they could systematically organize education and instruction, from nursery school up through several grades. Education beyond adolescence was rejected as not promoting the fear of God, which was the prime objective of education. Within the limits set, Hutterite education was of a high quality and promoted, among other skills, the beautiful penmanship to which their numerous manuscript codices testify. Their writings evidence extensive knowledge of the Bible and a clarity of exposition unusual among peasants and artisans in the sixteenth century. Among the Hutterites, illiteracy was almost unknown, although it was very high among the rest of the people of Moravia. The schools also served as homes of the children between the age of two years and the age of learning a trade. In effect the Hutterites with their “small school” anticipated by t hree centuries the modern kindergarten. Peter Walpot’s School Discipline 33 of 1578 seems to be a model of practical psychology: The brethren in the schools have already been instructed by t he elders that they shall not manifest wrath towards the children and shall not strike the children on the head with the fist nor with rods, nor shall they strike on the bare limb, but moderately on the proper place. It is necessary to exercise great discretion and discernment in disciplining children, for often a child can be better trained and corrected and taught by kind words when harshness would be altogether in vain, while another can be overcome by g ifts. A t hird, however, cannot be disciplined without severity, and does not accept correction. Therefore the exercise of discipline of children requires the fear of God. One should show sympathy to the little folk who have just started attending school, and should not undertake all at once to break the self-will, lest injury come therefrom. For the children who are a bit larger one must also always exercise very diligent care so that one can always have a good conscience. Hygiene was emphasized in the schools, with constant inspection. The task of being a teacher was a high vocation, and teachers were not to busy themselves with “trifling things,” such as going to market, but were to delegate such tasks while they devoted themselves to their paramount work. 34 The thoroughness and uniformity of Hutterite education, based on a brief Kinderbericht,35 accounts for the fact that when, on coming of a ge,

33

 Translated by Harold S. Bender in “A Hutterite School Discipline of 1578 and P eter Scherer’s Address of 1568 to the Schoolmasters,” MQR 5 (1931): 231–41. 34  Ibid.. 239. 35  Existing only in manuscript.

1076  the radical reformation

chapter 26.3

these earnest graduates of catechetical schools for martyrdom fell into the hands of persecutors, they, like the early Christian confessors, always had a ready and concordant answer. Besides the Kinderbericht, presumably printed, Walpot also had Riedemann’s Account printed at the Hutterite press in Neumühl. He commissioned an increasing number of missionaries who went into all dominions of the Empire (cf. Ch. 31.2) and acted as living links between the Moravian center and the recruiting grounds. Walpot’s tireless industry and leadership are evident from the way in which he created and preserved a harmonious order and discipline among the many newcomers who continued to arrive. The enormous correspondence brought in almost daily by returning brethren was read before the assembled company and answered “in the sense of the congregation.” The protocol of the Frankenthal colloquy of 1571 (Ch. 31.2) claims that one Peter Scherer (?Walpot) and two other Hutterite brothers attended, but there is no other evidence of Walpot’s having participated. Moreover, no one responded when the spokesman for the Reformed Church asked if there were any Hutterites present. In the peaceful years of t he “Golden Age,” Walpot was able to elaborate his earlier anti-Protestant Five Articles into the very large work, the Great Article Book.36 This enlarged work, Riedemann’s Account, and the considerably later Sendbrief of Andrew Ehrenpreis are the three basic Hutterite constitutional and theological texts, along with the great manuscript Chronicle, in which they are imbedded. Toward the end of his administration, Walpot encouraged Caspar Braitmichel, servant of the Word, to delve in the archives of the brethren at Neumühl and Austerlitz and to bring together a Chronicle of the history of God’s people. 37 Braitmichel was able to carry his account down to the year 1542. 38 Apologizing for his failing eyesight, he thereby suggests that he may have undertaken the work toward the end of his life. He died in 1573, which may therefore be put down as the approximate date of t he first comprehensive church history from the pen of an Anabaptist. From its pages, already much cited in the present work, we have an indication of how the subapostolic generation thought of itself in relation not only to the Protestant Reformation but also to the whole of human history. Braitmichel began his Chronicle with Genesis in the elevated style of one who, with the medieval monastic chroniclers, was drawn to paraphrase the inspired words of S cripture in his narrative of G od’s creation of t he 36  Ein schön lustig Büc hlein etliche Hauptartikel unseres c hristlichen Glaubens, etc., ed. Robert Friedmann Glaubenszeugnisse 2 (QGT 12), 49–317. 37  The MS codex of this work, much quoted in the present narrative, was first printed by Rudolf Wolkan in 1923, and again by A. J. F. Zieglschmid in 1943. It is the cherished possession of the Hutterite Bruderhof at Bon Homme, South Dakota. 38  It was carried on by a succession of chroniclers to 1665.

chapter 26.3

hutterites in moravia  1077

world. Braitmichel was especially interested in the genealogy of the righteous remnant from the patriarchs, through bondage in Egypt and the Exile to the birth of C hrist, and through the book of Ac ts. From here on, he draws upon Josephus, Eusebius, and Sebastian Franck. With their aid he carries the story of the righteous remnant alongside the ancient and medieval Church. With Franck, he dates the fall of t he Church about fourteen hundred years before the beginning of t he restoration, 39 for which Wycliffe and Hus prepared the way. Then came Luther and Zwingli, but because they defended with the sword the false teaching of pedobaptism, and thereby came to stand with Antichrist and Pilate, God once again separated his own from the world: But because God wished to have his own people, separated from all peoples, he willed for this purpose to bring in the right true morning star of his truth to shine in fullness in the final age of this world, especially in the German nation and lands, the same to strike home with his Word and to reveal the ground of divine truth. In order that his holy work might be made known and revealed before everyman, there developed first in Switzerland an extraordinary awakening and preparation by God.40 Here follows an account of the momentous beginnings of the Anabaptist church in Zurich when George Blaurock (whom Walpot saw put to death) was rebaptized by Grebel (Ch. 6.1).41 The cosmic setting in which Braitmichel beheld the pilgrimage of his spiritual ancestors and the gathering of the Bride of the Lord in the wilderness of M oravia, bearing saints and waxing strong in the faith and communal discipline of true believers, extended the imaginations of his readers far beyond the parochial, the territorial, and the provincial horizons. Theirs was the confidence of b eing the one, holy, catholic Church even though still largely hidden from the world. It is noteworthy that it was at approximately this same time that from within the far–flung Mennonite community a similar grand design was beheld by Dirk Philips in The Church of God (Ch. 19.2.b).42 In this work, too, without any of Braitmichel’s ancient and medieval episodes or details, the Dutch Anabaptist, in an Augustinian framework, likewise presupposed a continuity of God’s righteous remnant through history, and then, appropriating the spangling attributes of the church of the Apocalypse, described the Anabaptist Church militant in the bright terms of the Church trium39

 ME 1:590; Beck, Geschichts–Bücher.  SAW, 42. 41  This section of the Chronicle is translated in SAW, 39–46. 42  SAW, 226–60. 40

1078  the radical reformation

chapter 26.3

phant. It would appear that the Mennonite–Hutterite–Marpeckian sense of history was a correlate of an intensely Johannine eschatology. On 30 January 1578, Walpot died after having called the elders of the Church to his bedside for a final instruction and blessing. The Chronicle says of him: “He was a f aithful shepherd, a very well experienced man in all things. … richly blessed by God in his word and doctrine, so that he richly caused the congregation of G od to rejoice and edified it, so that it was indeed very downcast at his departure.”43 During Walpot’s episcopacy the Greek, Rhenish, and Italian ecumenical contacts remained isolated events. A longer relationship was that sustained with the Polish Brethren, initiated indirectly perhaps by the Italians, who had passed through Moravia on their way to Cracow, and several of whom, after the edict of P arczów (1564) settled in and around Slavkov. Radical Christianity, as we have seen, was assuming a different form in Poland from the Anabaptism of South Germany and Moravia (Ch. 25). The Poles, as we have said in anticipation, were by 1565, the year of Walpot’s accession to the patriarchate, on the point of t urning to the resourceful Hutterites for mutual support. The story of t heir visit to Peter Walpot’s settlement and their eventual disillusionment with what they were to come to consider the autocracy of the Hutterites can now be told as an integral part of the second phase in the history of the Minor Church of Poland, to which we now return.

43

 Chronik/Chronicle, 449/564f.

Chapter 27

The Antipedobaptist, Anti-Nicene Minor Churches, 1565–1574

A

s we return from the Hutterites in Moravia to the emergent

Minor Church of t he Polish Brethren, we are prepared for a n ew phase in the Radical Reformation in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth marked by t hree interrelated events: the already mentioned (Ch. 25.4) death of the Lithuanian patron of the anti-Nicene antipedobaptists, Prince Nicholas Radziwiłł (27 May 1565); the consequent headlong dispersion from Vilna now under the conservative regency council; and the convening of the first general synod of the new Minor Church at Brzeziny in Great Poland, 10 June 1565, to consolidate their anti-Nicene, antipedobaptist position. The most important political and cultural event for this period and indeed for the century to come falls in the same year as the most important event for the Polish Brethren in that century: in the year 1569 the commune of the Polish Brethren was founded in Raków, on the lands of a Calvinist lord; also in 1569, Sigismund II Augustus sought in the Union of Lublin to bring the two parts of the vast realm closer together by integrating the Grand Duchy of Lithuania more fully into the constitutional structure of what would henceforth be the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Rzeczposoplita Obojga Narodów). In this Union, reluctantly embraced by t he Lithuanian magnates (partly to secure increased ethnic Polish and royal protection against Muscovy), they ceded to the Polish Crown the palatinate of Podlachia (Podlasie) north and east of Warsaw and vast stretches of their southern regions from Podolia to well beyond Kiev. Within the much more closely integrated state, the Grand Duchy would still enjoy many attributes of autonomy, not to say semi-sovereignty, in retaining its own ministry, army, and even judicial system. The cultural consequences of the Union made Polish even more extensively the language of the ethnic 1079

1080  the radical reformation

chapter 27 / 27.1

Lithuanian and the Belorussian nobility and even of townspeople, alongside German, and attracted, more than ever before, Polish nobles to buy or take over vast estates to the east, now directly under the Crown, and to even intermarry with the Ruthenian nobility. Thus, the cultural activities of Polish nobles extended the Polish language and culture over the literate classes from Lwów to Kiev and far beyond north, east, and south thereof. With this eastward extension into the Ukraine (“frontier lands”) came an increase in the formation of C alvinist and anti-Nicene churches on Byzantine-rite territories of the Commonwealth. The phase thus opened will come to an end in 1572 with the death of heirless King Sigismund II Augustus, himself the last of t he Jagiellonian dynasty. The complex issues relating to church and government will be consequently elevated to prominence and attended to during the constitutional crisis (Ch. 29.2). To refer in 1565 to the antipedobaptist and anti-Nicene dissenters from the orthodox (Major) Reformed Church as the Minor Church of the Polish (and Lithuanian) Brethren gives a premature impression of theological homogeneity and synodal inclusiveness. Such was not the case until the disparate or incompletely harmonized impulses within the Polish-Lithuanian Radical Reformation could be brought together in the late sixteenth century.

1. Early Strains and Stresses in the Minor Church On baptism, the Minor Church, as of 1565, embraced both mere antipedobaptists and pragmatic immersionists. By the time of Socinus’ arrival in 1579 the Polish Brethren will have settled the issue of b aptism and have become almost completely immersionist and occasionally anabaptist. On the doctrine of t he Godhead and on Christology the range was equally great, namely, from Tritheists still using the Nicene terminology equivocally, all the way to avowed Unitarians who in their strict biblicism declined to invoke Christ in prayer. It was in the eventual recovery of Jesus as Messiah and King as wholly human that some of t he Polish Brethren would ground their claim to exemption from discharging some of t he customary duties toward the earthly king and lords, such as the waging of war. A medal struck in sixteenth-century Raków shows on one side the purely human teacher Jesus with plaited ringlets suggestive of a P olish rabbi and, on the obverse, the royal inscription in Hebrew characters.1 The Judaizing and Unitarian stress within the Minor Church was concentrated from near the beginning in Lithuania, where several magnates

1  See the plate in Szczucki and Tazbir, Literatura aria´nska, opp. 178; Williams, Lubieniecki, Plate 55.

chapter 27.1

minor churches, 1565-1574  1081

and lesser gentry, reminding one of the lords of Liechtenstein and their kin in Moravia, supported Antitrinitarians in part as subaltern magistrates and were therefore indisposed to renounce fully the jus gladii in their temporalities. In contrast, pacifism and the stress on the pre-existent Christ who was to be invoked in prayer were traits much more pronounced in Little Poland. It is therefore appropriate to speak distinguishingly of Polish and Lithuanian Brethren within the Minor Church, stressing thereby, however, not the ethnic and linguistic but rather the theological and ethical differentiation. Thus, on whether a Christian might be a magistrate, on the oath, and on the use of a rms in self-defense and in nonaggressive war, the Minor Church embraced such extremes as the anti-Nicene general of t he Polish army in the Livonian War against Muscovy, Stanislas Cikowski (Ch. 25.3), who promoted in 1565 the preaching of antipedobaptist Antitranitarianism in his camps and bivouacs all the way to the gates of Moscow, 2 and the absolute, communitarian pacifists of the community at Raków in 1569 such as Gregory Paul (Ch. 25.3) and Martin Czechowic (from 1569 in Vilna, Ch. 25.2; 1565 in Cujavia; 1569 in Raków; from 1570 in Lublin). There was a s trong disposition within the Radical Reformation to question the legitimacy of any ordination deriving from the ancien régime. In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the third quarter of the century, many of t he ministers of t he Minor Church were repudiating not only a Catholic ordination but also a Reformed call and installation. The temporary dissolution of the ministry in the Minor Church and the temporary exaltation of certain inspired but unlettered people as oracles of the will of God is thus a notable feature of a section of the Minor Church in the first years after the schism with the Reformed Church, centering notably in the commune founded in Raków in 1569. Matthew Albinus of Iwanowice and Daniel Bieli´n ski, for example, are known to have claimed in some stage of their career “that nobody was fit to officiate or instruct unless he had divine revelation and had either witnessed miracles or performed them.”3 A disaffected Anabaptist Polish Brother who returned to the Reformed Church recalled the situation of the Minor Church tauntingly: You [ministers of the Minor Church] remember when you debased yourselves and gave up your ministries, expecting that the Lord God would inspire more worthy men, and you gave place to shoemakers and tailors, highly praising their teaching and marveling at it, and saying that you learned more in one hour while listening to 2  Trecy to Bullinger, Cracow, August 1565, in Wotschke, Briefwechsel, 250f. In 1570 the Bohemian Brother John Rokita with a P olish embassy had an audience with Iv an IV the Terrible; see Müller, Brüder, 3, 145–49; Williams, Lubieniecki, Plate 19. 3  Andrew Lubieniecki, Poloneutychia, 51; see excerpt, Lubieniecki, Related Doc. 6.

1082  the radical reformation

chapter 27.1 / 27.2

them than in all the ages from books. You can hardly deny this. But being unable to stand it, you had to turn again to books and order the cobblers and millers to keep silence. For you observed to what these dear, strange prophets were leading, and what a c onfusion they made, of which you are ashamed to this day.4 So much, then, for the strains within the inchoate Minor Church around 1565. In the following presentation we shall stress the baptismal theology of the Minor Church and leave for Ch. 29.1 the polemic over the Christian magistracy.

2. Adjustments in Anti-Nicene Baptismal Theology, 1565–1569 At the first general synod of the Minor Church, which convened at Brzeziny near Łowicz 10 June 1565, baptism was the chief matter under discussion. The Cujavians, whose palatinate bordered on Royal Prussia, may well have been the first Polish Reformed to practice adult baptism, especially under the leadership of M artin Czechowic, who had opposed pedobaptism in Vilna.5 Cujavia was extensively permeated by Dutch Anabaptists. Stanislas Lutomirski, reporting on the synod to the Vilnians was, to be sure, careful to say that although the anabaptist sentiments prevailed, the term Anabaptista (with its Münsterite and hence seditious connotations) was eschewed; but, significantly, a typically Anabaptist interest in the judgment of the sisters as well as the brethren appears twice in this letter. Altogether there were thirty-two ministers and eighteen listeners at the synod of Brzeziny, many of them from Lithuania. Among them were the following: Stanislas Lutomirski, Martin Czechowic, Gregory Paul, Daniel Bieli´n ski, Simon Budny, George Schomann, Bartholomew Codecius (from Great Poland), Adalbert (Wojciech) Kóscie´n ski, Nicholas We¸drogowski, Martin Krowicki, and most certainly Gonesius, the father of Polish anti˙ pedobaptism. Nicholas Zytno, himself an Antitrinitarian, but not an antipedobaptist at the time, later in 1565 observed bitterly that the stolid “anabaptist wolves” triumphed at the synod of B rzeziny. Orthodox Calvinist Christopher Trecy, on referring hostilely to that synod, wrote that “Anabaptists from Lithuania, Moravia, and other parts” attended, which, if he was correctly informed, means that possibly communitarian Hutterites were present as observers along with representatives of the Netherlandish Anabaptists from the nearby Dutch colonies in Royal and Ducal Prussia.

4  Kasper Wilkowski, Przyczyny nawrócenia do wiar y powszechnej (Vilna, 1583); printed in Szczucki and Tazbir, Literatura aria´nska, 557–75; here quoted from Kot, Socinianism, 51. 5  Lubieniecki, Historia, 177. See further Ch. 25, n. 8. The most detailed exposition of development of baptismal thought in the Pr e-Socinian Minor Chur ch is J armola, “Origins and Development of Believers’ Baptism,” 75–215.

chapter 27.2

minor churches, 1565-1574  1083

Besides the participants of the synod of Brzeziny mentioned above, two or three others should be characterized.6 Superintendent Stanislas Paklepka, pastor of the congregation in Lublin (Ch. 29.7), had been the first in his area to oppose the doctrine of the Trinity and the practice of pedobaptism.7 Matthew Albinus, pastor of the congregation in Iwanowice (near Cracow), though he remained steadfastly a Nicene to his death, very early came to oppose pedobaptism and argued “that no one ought to be baptized unless believing and repentant.” 8 Following Albinus was the German Peter Pulchranin, a schoolmaster who introduced immersion at Bychawa (near Lublin, which is significantly within eight miles of Kra´snik, where a Hutterite colony led by Ulrich Stadler existed in 1536; Ch. 15.4). While engaged in the baptismal rite, the schoolmaster was severely beaten by an aristocratic bystander and thrown into a deep pond, barely escaping with his life.9 The synod had been called to Brzeziny by the Lithuanian pedobaptists following the impasse on the question of baptism during the synod at Vilna in the previous year (Ch. 25.4). It is probable that the Vilna antipedobaptists anticipated an easy victory, for the meeting was to be attended by the Poles, even though their leaders up to now had not been notably antipedobaptist, except Schomann and Paklepka. The synod, however, would prove them wrong, as the element of surprise would work to the disadvantage of the antipedobaptists. While there was much discussion about baptism, many brethren argued that they were neither adequately prepared to discuss nor to settle the baptismal question at the synod and called for further discussion. The synod of B rzeziny managed to reconcile Czechowic and We¸drogowski, respectively, the leaders of a ntipedobaptists and pedobaptists among the Polish and Lithuanian Brethren. Lutomirski took the middle position and suggested that both parties might be wrong and should be open to this possibility. He advocated that a truce be called between the two groups until a f urther synod could settle the issue. The synodists accepted Lutomirski’s proposal and decreed that each side had to refrain from attacking the other one, but, significantly, neither party was forced to abandon their respective convictions and agitations. That spelled the victory for the antipedobaptists who under the Brzeziny agreement became free to continue their 6

 Sipayłło, Akta. 2:194.  Erasmus Otwinowski (fl. 1564) in Heroes christiani. 8  Williams, Lubieniecki, Latin pagination, 152, 176. 9  The fact is that ther e are thus quite a n umber of “firsts” on the question of antipedo baptism and rebaptism in the tradition and r ecords of the immer sionist, Antitrinitarian Minor Church of the Polish and Lithuanian Brethren. The discrepancies could well be accounted for, however, by the probability that Anabaptism cropped out in many localities at about the same time and that the local traditions were only partly harmonized in the synoptic account as seen from the later Racovian-Socinian perspective. The latest attempt to explain the “firsts” has been provided by Jarmola, “Origins and Development of Believers’ Baptism,” 127–29. 7

1084  the radical reformation

chapter 27.2

campaign against infant baptism and for adult baptism among the Lithuanian and Polish Brethren. With anabaptist convictions springing up all over, here and there moving over into the practice of adult immersion, the congregations of Great Poland and especially in Cujavia, Little Poland, and Lithuania agreed at Brzeziny to convene again in synod in December 1565, at We¸ grów in Podlachia, as an accommodation to Lithuanians in order to prevent a s chism from opening up within the anti-Nicene Minor Church of the Commonwealth over the issue of baptism. George Biandrata, writing since 1563 as spokesman of the proto-Unitarians in Transylvania, urged in a l etter to Gregory Paul, 21 September 1565,10 that the immersionists be as irenic as possible at the forthcoming synod in We¸ grów; for surely the international unity of the anti-Nicene fellowship should not be imperiled by a s econdary issue such as baptism. Biandrata reminds Gregory Paul of the bad reputation of Münsterite Anabaptism, and deplores his stubbornness in allowing the great issue of t he unity of G od to be interconnected with believers’ baptism. The letter in respect to the Sonship of C hrist is of s pecial interest because, following Servetus, Biandrata makes it very clear that he does not object to an eternal and indeed consubstantial Word thought of as God’s Will, or as God’s arm in creation, or as God’s idea of Christ, or perhaps even as the soul of the future Christ as Mediator; but he does reject the existence of a S on before the Incarnation. There was only one Son, foreseen by the prophets of the seed of David, the Word to become historically incarnate, but not an eternal Son incarnate in man. In a Servetian manner, Biandrata, who possessed the writings of Servetus, argues that the Three are as distinct as the Three heard and seen at the baptism at Jordan. Up to the Incarnation there was the eternal Word of God and the Spirit of God, but not a Son of God, the Mediator. Other anti-Nicenes wrote from Transylvania to the Polish Brethren, complaining that “baptism was being made a sort of new saviour and even an idol like the brazen serpent … as if one would seek to get possession of Noah’s Ark.”11 From Austerlitz (Slavkov) in Moravia, however, Alciati wrote to Gregory Paul, describing the Hutterites, and argued for believers’ baptism.12 At a somewhat later date in the baptismal controversy in Poland another Italian, Nicholas Paruta (Ch. 29.5), who was also living among the Moravian Anabaptists in Austerlitz, reproached Lutomirski for allowing the baptismal controversy to threaten the unity of the Minor Church because when the fundamental “error about original sin is done away, its consequence, abso10

 Wotschke, Briefwechsel, 250; Wajsblum, “Dytei´sci małopolscy,” 42.  Williams, Lubieniecki, 189. 12  BANT, 28. 11

chapter 27.2

minor churches, 1565-1574  1085

lution, that is, its washing away through baptism, is also done away … [or at least] to be taken with a grain of salt.”13 Stanislas Budzi´n ski, who had been present at Rogów in 1562 (where Antitrinitarian propositions from the Italians sojourning among the Moravian Anabaptists had excited such intense interest) now tried to explain away, in his (now lost) Polish manuscript Historia, Nicholas Paruta’s disparagement of the whole theology and practice of baptism as it was coming to the fore among Polish Antitrinitarians. Budzi´n ski explained that what Paruta really intended was “that although they, the non-Polish Antitrinitarians, also considered rebaptism necessary to salvation, it should be performed by a w ashing (per ablutionem) in the church building lest, by immersion in public, they immerse themselves for the sake of the rite alone (ob solum ritum).”14 Clearly the preoccupation of the native Polish Antitrinitarians with rebaptism cannot be attributed to emigré Italian anabaptist influences alone. As the long-anticipated synod of We¸ grów met, 25–30 December 1565, it was attended by f orty-seven synodists, including fourteen ministers headed by Lutomirski, and led on the lay side by the lord Jerome Filipowski.15 By now the two factions within the Minor Church were divided not only on the issue of the redemptive (as distinguished from the initiatory) significance of believers’ baptism by total immersion, but also on such social and political issues as the degree to which a t rue Christian might be involved in the affairs of t he secular world, including the holding of public office. And while there were notable aristocratic converts to the immersionist-pacifist position, on the whole the class lines between the two parties were fairly clear: the humbler members of the Minor Church were also more ardent proponents of pacifism and the other tenets of evangelical Anabaptism. Because of t he re-assertion of orthodox Calvinism in Vilna and the persecution by G eorge Weigel of t he Lithuanian Antitrinitarians (Ch. 25.4), pedobaptists and immersionists alike, the Lithuanian delegation did not attend the synod at We¸ grów. A g reat effort was made to reconcile anti-Nicene Anabaptist Martin Czechowic and Gregory Paul with the anti-Nicene pedobaptists. This was, for example, urged in a letter from Vilna by N icholas We¸drogowski. But the great majority of t he fortyseven ministers, fourteen members of t he nobility, and many commoners, voted against pedobaptism and for the implementation of b elievers’ baptism throughout the Minor Church, only eight voted for the retention of pedobaptism.

13 14

 Lubieniecki, 13.  Ibid. Fragments of the lost History (originally in Polish) survive only in Lubieniecki, Latin

pagination, 193. 15

 Sipayłło, Akta, 2:197–200; Lubieniecki, 179–84.

1086  the radical reformation

chapter 27.2

Yet the victory of t he antipedobaptist party was not complete, for while the synod was specifically called to reach the final decision (gruntowna decyzja) on baptism in the Minor Church, and pedobaptism was officially “voted out,” the pedobaptists won the right of inclusion among the otherwise antipedobaptist, increasingly immersionist, Minor Church Brethren. Thus, while it is appropriate to mark the year 1565 as the turning point in the quest of the pre-Socinian Minor Church for the restoration of believers’ baptism by i mmersion, the small group, predominantly made up of Lithuanians, kept practicing infant baptism for their progeny. The story of those Lithuanians will be picked up (Ch. 29.8) when, at the synod of Łosk in 1578 they, too, will finally submit to believers’ baptism. Lutomirski, who presided at Brzeziny and now at We¸ grów, reporting on the debate, remarked that “when some were found who brought forward the wicked deeds of those [Anabaptists] at Münster, with a view to causing repugnance to the recently introduced view [about baptizing only catechumens] and to leading us to reject it upon consideration of those base deeds, then those at whom that suspicion was aimed” asserted their loyalty to the Polish government (citing Rom. 13:1–7), as indeed evangelical Anabaptists everywhere would do.16 The temperate decision of t he general synod of the Polish-Lithuanian Brethren at We¸ grów allowed for the continuance of amicable disagreement and publication; but the delegations from Szydlów, Lublin, Chelmno, and Brest favored the immediate “abandonment of baptism of i nfants and the restoration of t hat of c atechumens and believers.” The compromise decision was vigorously rejected, however, by t he antiNicene but pedobaptist faction (led by We¸drogowski) at Vilna, whose sharp letter to the Antitrinitarian Anabaptists of Brest of early 1566 is preserved: For we see how these poor little men are proceeding in their plan. They declared formerly [at Brzeziny] that they would assent if they may baptize only adults at the dictation of a g ood conscience. At present, now advancing from strength to strength, they have called their own baptism in question, openly saying that they have not been [truly] baptized. But after they have attained their wish, they will suppose that by such baptism they were made free and truly spiritual. Thus they will extend their schemes farther and farther, so that these good Spirituales consign to eternal damnation and the pains of hell those that have fallen away from their ranks or have sinned [a reference to the ban], denying them repentance.17 At about this time a C atholic foe gloatingly published a s ecretly obtained letter in which George Weigel, Calvinist restorer in Vilna (Ch. 16 17

 Lutomirski, apud Lubieniecki, 183.  Ibid., 185f.; cf. Nicholas Z ˙ ytno in Szczucki, Studia z dziejow, 230.

chapter 27.2

minor churches, 1565-1574  1087

25.4), wrote to Zacius, now in Cracow, and deplored the excesses of the radicals gathering within the Reformed Church in Lithuania, that is, the Antitrinitarian Anabaptists, who “tell their dreams and visions…introduce plurality of wives, community of goods, contempt of the magistrate, of the courts, and very social rank, while serfs, writing to a master or to the magistrate, use the title ‘brother.’”18 Here are the stock charges brought against all Anabaptists since Münster applied now to the Lithuanian radicals of the Minor Church of the Polish Brethren, but still more or less accurately, except for the plurality of wives. It is apparent—from Weigel’s remarks such as “poor little men” and from the counsel of such anti-Nicene but socially conservative Italians as Paruta and Biandrata—that the Polish Brethren commonly disdained the Anabaptists in their midst as being often, but not always, of l owly origin. The Anabaptists of Lublin were called by a Catholic priest, “peasants, turners, planers, skinners, line-weavers, blockheads, and other dregs of the human race,” who met “under Lublin wall near the water and almost by the reeds.”19 The Anabaptist conviction nevertheless spread among the anti-Nicenes mainly in Little Poland and Cujavia. Martin Czechowic spent the spring of 1566 recruiting members for the immersionist movement in the province of his birth, Pozna´n. At the same time, Gregory Paul, pastor of the Antitrinatarian immersionist congregation at Cracow, baptized many in the Vistula river in and around Cracow in the same spring. 20 About this time ˙ ółkiewski was converted by the Polish Brethren and, the courtier Stanislas Z upon leaving court at Cracow, went to the Vistula where, “while splendidly clothed, [he] received the genuine rite of baptism” and joined the congregation of the Minor Church to the great astonishment of the royal court. At the Diet of Lublin in May 1566, Judge John Niemojewski, deputy from Inowrocław in Cujavia, recently immersed by Czechowic at his own home in Niemojówka on Christmas Day, 1565, looked conspicuous “in a mean gray garment, without sword, without attendants.” Cardinal Hosius [the hostile observer continues] had long conversations with him several times, trying to turn him from his delusion,

18  Quoted by Benedict Herbest, Chrze´scija´nska porza¸dna odpowied´z (Cracow, 1567), quoted by Kot, Socinianism, 21. Weigel’s “letter” may well be the same document cited in Ch. 25.4. Weigel gratuitously ascribed plurality of wives simply on the analogy of the Münsterites. 19  The priest was Jerome Powodowski; cited by Kot, Socinianism, 96. For the role of Lublin, second only to that of Raków , see Stanisław Tworek, Zbór lubelski i jego rola w ruc hu aria´nskim w XVI i XVII wieku (Lublin: Wydawnictwo Lubelskie, 1966) and J armola, “Origins and Development of Believers’ Baptism,” 147–53. 20  John Łasicki to Beza, 30 May 1566; Wotschke, Briefwechsel no. 350, 271. He refers to that event as the pr oof that the spir it of the Anabaptists of Flandria had flown across (via Danzig) to Poland.

1088  the radical reformation

chapter 27.2

but he steadfastly insisted that the Holy Spirit taught him that the doctrine that he confessed was true and from God: indeed, that the voice of the Father had been heard from heaven: “Whosoever shall believe and receive baptism, shall be saved.”21 During the sessions, Niemojewski’s fellow believers, immersionist Trideistae, were delivering sermons in the gardens in the suburbs, attracting many from among the Nicene Calvinists—sermons in which, according to a hostile account, “disregard for the magistrate was openly taught, for, said they, Christians ought to recognize only one, the King bedecked with the crown of thorns.”22 The bishops, magnates, and gentry participating in the Diet of Lublin in the spring of 1566, were all the more troubled by the local outcropping of Anabaptist tendencies for the reason that Stanislas Cardinal Hosius, bishop of Varmia, had received during the sessions the alarming news that serfs in Sochaczów near Pozna´n had risen and killed their lord on the pretext that “Christ suffered for us because he wishes us to be free and equal and to be our king.”23 Though these rebellious serfs were not expressly Anabaptist, their conduct gave color to the charge that all Anabaptists were either passively or actively seditious. The usually tolerant king temporarily approved, 13 June 1566, a d raft of a n edict, pushed strongly by t he Major Church Calvinists, that, had it been passed, would have driven from the Commonwealth all Anabaptists and “Trinitarii” (as the Catholics called the members of the Minor Church). But at the end of deliberations, on the principle that the “war among heretics is the peace of the [Catholic] Church,” Catholic deputies voted against the exile of “these two sects [Anabaptistae et Trinitarii],” though Lord Jerome Filipowski had to fear for his life for venturing “openly to protect the [Polish-speaking] Anabaptists,” when he implied that the King of kings would defend his own. As yet the antipedobaptist and anti-Nicene currents within the Minor Church had not completely merged. Not all antipedobaptists became Anabaptists. Not all Tritheists became Ditheists and then Unitarians, but this was the inner logic of the forces at work in the Minor Church. The question of t he pre-existence of C hrist was uppermost at the synod of Ła´ncut (in Ruthenia) in the spring of 1567, dividing the more conserva21  Stanislas Rescius (Reszka), De Atheismis el Phalarismis evangelicorum (Naples, 1596), 225; quoted by Kot, Socinianism, 28. Reszka combines in the quotation the Synoptic epiphanies at Christ’s baptism and the injunction of the risen Lord, Mark 16:16. Analysis of the events following the synod of We¸ grów among the Polish and Lithuanian Brethren in Jarmola, “Origins and Development of Believers’ Baptism,” 115–29. 22  30 May 1566; Wotschke, Briefwechsel, 272, n. 1. 23  Wacław Urban, Chłopi wobec Reformacj i w Małopolsce w drugiej połowie XVI w. (Cracow: PWN, 1959), 67. Hosius’ views may be read in a contemporaneous English version, Beginnings of Heresy (Antwerp, 1565).

chapter 27.2

minor churches, 1565-1574  1089

tive Ditheist followers of Gonesius and Stanislas Farnowski (Farnovians, Ch. 29.6) from the outright Unitarians. Against the latter the Farnovians spoke bitterly. Despite the irenic efforts of F ilipowski, clamor reigned. The “blasphemy” of the Unitarians so upset Lord Stanislas Ivan Karni´n ski, one of the earliest Minor Church supporters, that he withdrew from the Antitrinitarians and again became a Nicene Calvinist. The christological-baptismal debate grew violent, and was adjourned to Skrzynno (seventy-five miles southwest of Warsaw). There, on 24 June 1567, in the presence of 1 10 nobles and ministers, the pre-existence of Christ was supported by Ditheists Farnowski, Wi´sniowski, Niemojewski, and Czechowic; the fully Unitarian view, by Gregory Paul, Schomann, and Simon Budny. These three, though they denied the deity of the Holy Spirit and held only to the adoptive Sonship of Christ, agreed to tolerate a Nicene phrasing insofar as it could be couched in biblical and apostolic language. The Anabaptist party of the Minor Church, for their part, reluctantly consented at Skrzynno to continue to countenance the coexistence of the practice of both believers’ baptism and pedobaptism among the Polish and Lithuanian Brethren of the Minor Church. The Ditheist Farnovians withdrew from the synod of the Minor Church in 1567 and formed their separate synod, the first to practice believers’ immersion as a separate body, which would not rejoin the Minor Church until early in the seventeenth century.24 In the fall of that year an Antitrinitarian, communitarian Anabaptist treatise was published in Polish in Grodno.25 At the synod of I wie (near Vilna) in 1568, Unitarian Budny, giving expression to his relative conservativism as to the social implications of the gospel, contended for the legitimacy of defensive war, capital punishment, and even class distinctions within the brotherhoods. Over against Niemojewski and Czechowic, who led the radical wing of Polish Anabaptism and stood by t he Sermon on the Mount, Budny appealed to the authority of the Old Testament. A number of Lithuanian Brethren, shocked by Budny’s social conservatism, left for Little Poland, among them John Kalinowski and Paul of W izna. At the same time, Budny upheld believers’ baptism against Calvin on the ground that baptism could not be assimilated to circumcision and against Luther on the ground that an infant could not be said to have even implicit faith. Budny somewhat later would write to John Foxe in England, confidently contending that pedobaptism had no more

24

 See Marek Wajsblum, “Dytei´sci małopolscy,” RwP 5 (1928): 32–97.  The letter r eporting the pub lication is dated 13 September 1567; Socianianism, 24, n.18. 25

quoted b y Kot,

1090  the radical reformation

chapter 27.2

place in his church than the triune God or the twofold Christ.26 About this time Gregory Paul published in Cracow a number of tracts, including several chapters of Servetus’ Restitutio in Polish paraphrase, entitled Sixty Signs of the Kingdom of Antichrist and a Revelation of His Presence Now, and another not deriving from Servetus on the difference between the Testaments and between Judaism and Christianity. 27 In October 1568 a s ynod convened at Pełsznica in the palatinate of Cracow, during which the immersionist Anabaptists from Cujavia, led by Czechowic and Niemojewski, and supported no doubt by the immersionbound Farnovians, demanded that the Little Polish antipedobaptists follow out the implications of t he synod of We¸ grów and proceed to actual rebaptism as it had for some time been practiced in Cujavia by the followers of Czechowic and several times in and around Cracow, since the spring of 1566 by G regory Paul. Besides Czechowic and Gregory Paul, George Schomann, Matthew Albinus, Peter Gonesius, and Stanislas Farnowski were present. Among the lay participants were Lords Jerome Filipowski and John Niemojewski, and the Silesian apothecary Simon Ronemberg of Cracow. There was indeed a good deal of hilarity at the synod over the fact that, of the antipedobaptist Brethren of Little Poland who had for several years been talking about immersion, up to the present not a single minister had been submerged. The Little Polish thereupon promised the Cujavians that they would move to the practice of i mmersion. John Siekierzy´n ski of Koryto (near Pi´nczów) appears to have been the first minister in Little Poland to have carried out this decision for himself.28 Concurrently with the question of i mmersion, a b asic problem of Christian polity was taken up, namely, the distinction of t he gathered Christian people into clerics and laymen, nobles and serfs. Some of t he Cujavians held that ministers should gave up their tithes and earn their bread by manual labor and that the gentry should give up their estates, to which they held title only by right of ancestral conquest. There was strong but amicable disagreement on these problems of polity and the relationship of church to the society. In the course of the deliberations Lucas Mundius, who had been a m ember of t he city council of V ilna, “enthusiastically recommended the sect of the [Moravian] communists, both for their government, and for the fact that they were said to be of one mind with our

26

 Letter of 1574; edited by Stanisław Kot, Oddziaływanie Braci Polskich zwanych Socynjanami w Anglji (Warsaw, 1936), 37. More on that letter and the conflict between Budny and Polish Anabaptists concerning the social issues is in Jarmola, “Origins and Development of Believers’ Baptism,” 136–53. 27  Rozdział Starego Testamentu od Nowego. On this work see Kot, Autour de Michel Servet, ed. Becker, 99. 28  Among others who were immersed were Alexander Vatrelin, James Kalinowski, Paul of Wizna (superintendent in Lithuania), Martin Krowicki, Adalbert Ko´scie´nski, Daniel Bieli´nski, and Stanislas Wi´sniowiecki.

chapter 27.2

minor churches, 1565-1574  1091

people de Deo et Christo, and for their devoutness.” There followed further dispute among the brethren about the Moravian Hutterites; and “not until Mundius promised messengers from them to the Brethren did they become quiet.” 29 It is to be noted that the immersionist Cujavians, along with Peter Gonesius, persevered to this time in holding to the pre-existence of Christ, and had still not moved to the more radical theological position as to the Godhead, as had the Pinczovians; and, like the Prussian Mennonites, they exercised the rigorous discipline of t he ban. There is some evidence that even at this time certain Polish Anabaptists, probably Cujavians, had tried to bring about some union with the Dutch Anabaptists of Ducal and Royal Prussia, but without success. The synod of the Minor Church at Pełsznica thus represents a f usion of t he conservatively anti-Nicene Anabaptists of Cujava, quite possibly under the influence of the Vistula Mennonites, and the irresolutely antipedobaptist anti-Nicenes of t he palatinate of Cracow, more noticeably under the influence of I talian Evangelical Rationalism, with its tendency to minimize the issue of believers’ baptism. Mundius, apparently with the endorsement of t he synod of P ełsznica, now took a journey to Moravia to request a d elegated visitation from the Hutterites. Stanislas Lubieniecki, writing from another perspective (but, we assume, with a correct dating) says of Mundius: Leaving his office … [in Vilna early in 1568 and attending the synod at Pełsznica in the autumn] and yielding to a religious impulse, [he] used to like to travel through various places; and came upon the Moravian Brethren. … Living with them several weeks, he recommended the Polish churches as agreeing with them in everything save the holding of public offices. 30 Apparently on the basis of a n epistolary appeal, the Hutterites sent a certain brother Louis Dörker and three companions, who arrived in Cracow in September 1569; and, after discussion, led back four young Poles to learn from them the communal way of life. In the meantime, at a synod in Bełzyz (southeast of Lublin) in March 1569, attended not only by t he extreme radicals but also by D itheists, Tritheists, and even by N icene Calvinists, an effort was made to bring back together the factions of t he Major and Minor Churches. When this

29

 Zachorowski, “Najstarsze synody,” 233.  Lubieniecki, 227. See Robert Friedmann, “The Encounter of Anabaptists and Mennonites with Anti-Trinitarianism,” MQR 22 (1949): 154–62; Lech Szczucki and J anusz Tazbir, “Korespondencja anabaptystów morawskich z ar ianami polskimi,” OiRwP 3 (1958): 197–215; and Leonard Gross, “The Hutterian Brethren and the P olish Brethren: Rapprochement and Estrangement,” Proceedings of the Unitarian Universalist Historical Society 20 (1985–86): 46–53. 30

1092  the radical reformation

chapter 27.2 / 27.3

final attempt at mending the schism in the Polish Reformed community failed, the more conservative Antitrinitarians moved farther in the Unitarian direction, while among all the Antitrinitarians the radical communitarian spirit of the Moravian Anabaptists, as earlier reported by Mundius, had so far prevailed since the synod at Pełsznica that pastors such as Gregory Paul, Schomann, and Gonesius, indeed all except Czechowic, were prepared to lay down their ministries and undergo reordination at the hands of the Hutterite brethren in Moravia. Lay leaders, such as Niemojewski and Simon Ronemberg, were prepared to abandon their callings in response to the common need. Niemojewski, Simon Siemianowski, and Lawrence Brzezi´n ski sold their estates in Cujavia and distributed the proceeds among the poorer Brethren. One nobleman simply turned back to the king his jurisdiction over a district in the palatinate of Lublin. At this confluence of t he anti-Nicene and the Anabaptist currents, flowing with accelerated swiftness, we take note of a major religio-constitutional development in Polish history that tended to constrict the flow of life in the Minor Church in sectarian narrows. In the Union of Lublin in 1569 (as noted above) the Catholics promised the Protestants that, if they would agree among themselves, some permanent arrangements could be worked out religiously for the Commonwealth. This encouraged the Protestants gathering at Sandomierz (Sendomir) in the spring of 1570 to draw up a C onsensus agreeable alike to Lutherans, the Czech Brethren of Great Poland, and the Calvinists. We need not go into the fierce controversies among the three groups leading to the agreement. They were at least federally united, each preserving their historic confessions of faith, and accepting intercommunion. They pledged to send observers to each of their synods, but excluded the anti-Nicene antipedobaptist Minor Church from any fellowship with the now united Protestant front.31 Nevertheless, the Minor Church was capable of considerable independent growth and, alas, also further controversy. At We¸ grów, Gonesius published his comprehensive Doctrina pura et clara in 1570. He died in 1571. In 1572 the king would legalize the remodeling of a t own meetinghouse for Gregory Paul’s congregation in Cracow.

3. The Founding of Raków, 156932 As already noted, it was in the year of t he Union of Lublin that an antiNicene, Anabaptist communal experiment, a “New Jerusalem,” was established by G regory Paul on wooded lands belonging to the castellan of 31

 Williams, Lubieniecki, Plate 34.  A popular but substantial collective work with the literature, also several illustrations, is that edited by Stanisław Cynarski, Raków: Ognisko arianizmu (Cracow: PWN, 1968); related to more than the town of Raków is another collection edited by Szczucki, Wokół dziejów i tradycji arianizmu (Warsaw: PWN, 1971). See also Williams, Plate 59. 32

chapter 27.3

minor churches, 1565-1574  1093

Z ˙ arnów in the palatinate of Sandomierz at Raków, destined a decade later to become spiritual and intellectual capital of the Socinian-minded Minor Church, with its prolific press eventually publishing the famous Racovian Catechism (1605). To Raków in 1569 came the rebaptized nobles who had sold their lands, especially those from Cujavia, along with many Anabaptist Antitrinitarian ministers whom we have thus far encountered. At Raków the baptism of adolescent catechumens by immersion was introduced in the early 1570s but there remained some hesitation as to the rebaptism of adults. The community of goods was introduced. Some in the colony propounded psychopannychism and looked to the imminent advent of t he Kingdom of G od and the resurrection of t he dead. Trecy wrote scornfully of “Gregory Paul and very poor little associates in the ministry” who profited immensely by t he device of Christian communism. 33 Even Transylvanian Unitarians disparagingly referred to “the Racovian secession and madness,” and to “the conventicles of little old demented women.”34 In the chaotic spiritualism and collectivism of R aków, following the resignation from the ministerial and the clerical leadership of all the foregathered ministers except Czechowic, the Cracow apothecary and lay elder Simon Ronemberg assumed leadership of the community. Czechowic, for his part, his noble convert Niemojewski, and the other Cujavians tarried only a few months in Raków and went on together to Lublin in early 1570, the former to take up the ministry of the Anabaptist congregation vacated since the death of Paklepka in 1567. 35 There they could give more disciplined expression to their radical convictions on the necessity of rebaptism and philanthropy, yet with an ordained ministry. Ronemberg stands out in Raków very much as Jacob Hutter did at a corresponding state of inchoateness among the Anabaptists in Moravia. In the decade from the founding of the community in 1569 to the coming of Faustus Socinus in 1579, Ronemberg was like the “Ezra” of the new Zion. He is credited by Schomann, in his Testamentum, with saving and rebuilding the Raków community, like Ezra and Nehemiah after the Babylonian captivity. It was important for the leading spirits among the Anabaptist Polish Brethren to inspect the Moravian colonies. The purpose of s ome in the delegation, alarmed by t heir more parlous isolation as a c onsequence of the exclusionary Consensus of Sandomierz, appears to have been to effect a union with the Hutterites for their mutual reinforcement. The Poles and the Germanic Hutterites were conscious of b eing the restored apostolic community. There may have been more than one Polish delegation in the 33

 Trecy to Josias Simler, February 1570; Wotschke, Briefwechsel, no. 13, 408, 319.  Marcello Squarcialupi to Socinus, 15 September 1581; BFP, 1:360. 35  Szczucki, Czechowic, 85; Jarmola, “Origins and Development of Believers’ Baptism,” 146. 34

1094  the radical reformation

chapter 27.3

period 1569–1571. The Hutterite and the Racovian sources do not wholly agree. George Schomann dates the departure of a P olish delegation to the Hutterites soon after the birth of h is daughter 20 August 1569, namely, just about the time (September) that Dörker arrived in Cracow; and he described it thus: At about this time we had gone with Lord [ Jerome] Filipowski, Master Simon [Ronemberg], the apothecary, and several others to Moravia to compare doctrines and morals with the Moravian brethren. We found the government of G od’s people there most excellent, but all parties passionately maintained a triune God. 36 The Hutterite Chronicle records that Simon Ronemberg arrived at the Hutterite administrative headquarters at Neumühl near Nicolsburg on 25 January 1570, with an otherwise unidentified lord by t he name of Janckowski (recognizable as Jerome Filipowski) who was regarded by the Hutterites as head of the Polish delegation, and three unnamed preachers (including, possibly, Schomann). The Hutterites rightly saw in Ronemberg the driving force behind the mission. The Hutterites took note of the preference of the Polish Anabaptists for the practice of baptism (and rebaptism) by immersion rather than pouring as was customary among them. They may have been put off, even though it is not really stated in their writings, by the Poles’ understanding of the Godhead and the community of goods. That Filipowski, Ronemberg, and Schomann would stress Christology and the Trinity in the debates with the Moravian communitarians is all the more natural for the reason that both had recently come to the Adoptionist position. Filipowski’s religious views had been rebuffed by the Cracow Calvinists as recently as 1568 despite his moving and irenic address (in the hall of the palatine) calling for reunion of the two Reformed parties. Walpot and the Hutterite elders, using the Rechenschaft of Peter Riedemann (Ch. 16.2) as the basis of t heir theological discussion with the members of the Minor Church, insisted that talks of union between the two groups depended on the Poles’ “true submission to him [Walpot] and his people [the Hutterite Gemeinde].”37 The Polish and Hutterite sources indicate that no agreement was reached during the discussion and that the Polish delegation returned to the Commonwealth taking back with them the four youths who had earlier accompanied Louis Dörker, following his trip to Raków and Cracow, to learn Hutterite doctrines and crafts. It 36

 BANT, 195; Williams, Lubieniecki, Related Doc. 3.  Chronik/Chronicle, 449/418. Walpot saw the Hutter ites as a comm unity more apostolic than the Minor Church could claim to be in their professed quest for the socio-political radicalism of apostolicity. 37

chapter 27.3

minor churches, 1565-1574  1095

is notable that in all interchanges between the Polish and Moravian Anabaptists, the (Christocentric) anti-Nicene position of t he Minor Church was not conspicuous in the extant sources on either side as the issue over which they failed to agree. It is most certain that the failure of the union was mostly affected by t he differences in social standing of t he Poles and Hutterites. Stanislas Lubieniecki, writing from a later perspective, stressed the disappointment of the Polish delegates with the failure of the discussions: While these two men [Schomann and Filipowski; Lubieniecki does not mention Ronemberg] found much that was excellent, yet they unexpectedly found them [the Hutterites] holding obstinately to the common doctrine of the Trinity, and persecuting with hatred any that denied it, and shrinking from them. For they dared call pagan worshipers (cultores Ethnicos) us who by t he grace of G od confess the pure truth [in God]. … [so] that the journey and effort of these two men was in vain, for those good men would not depart a finger’s breadth [on doctrine]. 38 On the Hutterite charge of “paganism” it is important to observe that the Poles did not interpret this as a reference to their view about the Godhead but to their view on property: In the first place they [the Hutterites] lie when they claim that anyone who owns a house, land or money and does not bring it to their community is not a Christian but a pagan and cannot be saved. 39 The Polish author of t he acrimonious Treatise not against the Apostolic Community … but against the Communists in Moravia (c. 1570), from which we have just quoted, cannot have been any of t he three members of t he aforementioned delegation, because the anonymous author expressly says his information is based upon this delegation’s report and the conversations with the Hutterites in Cracow in September 1569. It is, nevertheless, the work of o ne who speaks with authority of h is own circle, most possibly Stanislas Budzi´n ski.40 From the point of v iew of t he Racovians such as Ronemberg, negotiations and mutual instruction leading to union must still have seemed desirable,

38  Williams, Lubieniecki, 223. Filipowski was a mater nal grandparent of Lubieniecki, who may here be drawing upon tradition in the family. 39  Budzi´nski is the possib le author of A Treatise against the Comm unists; quoted by Kot, Socinianism, 93. Cf. 97: “They [the early Christians] did not divest themselves of possessions, neither did the Apostles urge them to do so nor did they tell them that they were pagans because of their possessions, as these ‘economists’ are now trying to convince others.” 40  Kot’s conjecture, Socinianism, 99, n. 4.

1096  the radical reformation

chapter 27.3

however much they were chagrined by the claim to exclusive apostolicity on the part of the Hutterites. For after the return of Ronemberg to Raków, he apparently besought the community there to dispatch two other messengers, namely, John Baptista (Swie¸cicki) and John Italus. At Olkusz, northwest of C racow, the two picked up a v olunteer from the congregation of Daniel Bieli´n ski, one Jerzy (George) Müller. The three carried a letter of credentials and commission from the Raków community dated at Olkusz, 25 May 1570, and preserved in the Hutterite Chronicle.41 It begins with a s alutation that is programmatically Antitrinitarian while at the same time giving immediate evidence that the Minor Church was taking earnestly the doctrine of the suffering Christ stressed by the Hutterites in an earlier interchange. The three bearers of the letter remained very respectful of Hutterite spiritual and disciplinary achievements and learned more about the “holy institution” with a view, no doubt, of implementing further those practices and principles among the Racovians; but according to the Hutterites, they looked around with “cold heart,” unable to unite with the Hutterites; and thus “little fruit came of it,” from the Hutterite point of view. Presently, Peter Walpot addressed a letter42 to five named Poles who had recently inspected the Hutterite colonies in Moravia and John Italus, who had come with Müller and John Baptista. It is quite possible that all these were Polish-speaking Antitrinitarians of the Italian type without any close connection with the Racovians. It appears from the Hutterite catalogue of imperfections among these otherwise serious visitors that they had not sufficiently broken from the world and, above all, had “no proper or true baptism.” The visitors further irritated the Hutterites because of their cultural superiority in languages, their overbearing manners, their Latinized names, and their “presumption” that they could also teach the Hutterites! Walpot’s letter stressed the Minor Church’s unwillingness to submit to the apostolic authority of the Hutterite Church and urged the Polish and Lithuanian Brethren “not to postpone or delay [their] conversion.” It is almost certain that Walpot was unclear about the existence among the inquiring Polish Brethren of merely antipedobaptist Antitrinitarians (as the last delegation to Moravia must have been) and the immersionist Antitrinitarians within the Minor Church of the Polish Brethren. In any event, he could not clearly distinguish between the two groups of Polish Brethren. 41  Chronik, 443.That one of them was the Lithuanian ´Swie¸ cicki is Kot’s surmise, Socinianism, 33; but he may also have been John Baptista Italus, the prophet of penitence last met in Ch. 10.3.a. 42  Ibid., 444. The social significance of Walpot’s epistle, along with related documents, has been admirably analyzed by Kot, Socinianism, and thoroughly studied by Robert Friedmann for doctrinal differences between Hutterites and the pre-Socinians in “Reason and Obedience: An Old Anabaptist Letter of Peter Walpot (1571) and Its Meaning,” MQR 19 (1945): 27–40.

chapter 27.3

minor churches, 1565-1574  1097

A second and longer letter from Walpot is, however, clearly directed to Racovians in response to an inquiry from Simon Ronemberg. Ronemberg had written Walpot on 1 November 1570 about eleven months after his visit to Neumühl and presumably after he had tried to implement some of the Hutterite principles in Raków. Apparently, Ronemberg, still writing as an apothecary, had not yet fully decided to abandon his profession for the community of goods at Raków, as the Hutterites had advised, and expected, him to do. He is chastised by Walpot for wavering, the more so for the reason that Ronemberg had freely acknowledged that Walpot is “the builder of Noah’s Ark” of salvation, and yet Ronemberg’s people “have not reached the first step of the ladder of the will of God [to climb into the Ark], namely that of true submission and union with His people [the Hutterites, outside of whose Ark there was no salvation].” Walpot warned Ronemberg of t he wrath to come, of the fate of Lot’s wife, and of the rich young ruler who turned away sorrowfully from the only redemption: communitarian Gelassenheit. In sternly dissociating himself from the Polish Brethren, Walpot enumerated some of the many differences, but significantly nowhere mentions the Trinity: We cannot recognize you [Polish Anabaptists] as a people of God or as our brethren, for you are lacking in righteousness. … For where is your true submission in baptism, your new birth and renunciation of t he world, sin, devil, your repentance from dead works, your faith in God, your own flesh and self-will? How do you exercise among yourselves and in your midst the Christian and proper ban, excommunication …? According to you the [true, the Hutterite] Church would have had to adapt itself to you and learn from you—you who are not yet on the right foundation of G od, and yourselves needed to be taught from the very first beginning of the divine word, to lay the foundations, namely, repentance from dead works and faith in God, baptism [at the hands of Hutterites], doctrine, the laying on of hands, the resurrection from the dead, and the eternal judgment.43 The principal objection of Walpot was that the Poles did not recognize “that the Lord Christ after his resurrection gave authority to his [communitarian] Church, and that his authority thereafter was not broken.” Saul, after his conversion, was bidden to go to Ananias, “who had to lay hands on him and baptize him,” and Walpot and his fellow ministers regarded themselves as the only authorized servants of Jesus Christ and his Church, guiding the new Ark of t he new Noah, and prepared to baptize and lay 43

 Ibid., 446–55.

1098  the radical reformation

chapter 27.3

hands on the Poles in return for their submission to the apostolic authority of the suffering Church, outside of which there was no salvation (for the Cyprianic phrase, see Ch. 16.3). By 1572, despite rebuffs from the Hutterites and defections from among the colonists, Ronemberg had reorganized the Racovian churchcommonwealth on the basis of an ordained apostolic ministry and membership based on believers’ baptism.44 In the light of such comings and goings, it is understandable that the image of the Ark would shortly become especially prominent also at Raków, when, rejected by the authoritarian Hutterites, the Racovians would seek to create their own somewhat less exclusivistic Polish Bruderhof. This new conception of the Polish Anabaptists is documented in the Catechesis et confessio fidei of 1574, composed by George Schomann (Ch. 29.3). Schomann, for some time an antipedobaptist, had taken the momentous step for himself when he was rebaptized 31 August 1572 at the age of forty. In the Catechesis he gives full expression, largely in biblical quotations, to the whole of the communitarian baptismal theology as accepted by himself and Ronemberg at Raków. “Flee from Babylonian faith,” it exhorts, “and Sodomistic life, having entered into the Ark of Noah; for the Lord will in a short time inflict punishment on that wicked and ungrateful world by the final deluge, not of water but of fire, which will devour all the impious and those unmindful of repentance.” We now leave the Polish and Lithuanian Brethren of t he Minor Church for Transylvania, where we shall find a comparable radical tide at full flood within the Reformed Church in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. We will pick up a story of Radical Reformation among the Polish-speaking Anabaptists in Ch. 29.

44  Szczucki, Czechowic, 82, n. 68; Wilbur, Socinianism, 358, n. 10. For the date 1572 both scholars give preference to Schomann’s Testamentum over Lubieniecki’s Historia, 240, which reads 1570.

Chapter 28

The Rise of Unitarianism in the Magyar Reformed Synod in Transylvania

B

y 1564 the Reformation in the riven kingdom of Hungary1 had, as

in the neighboring kingdom of Poland, passed through a Lutheran and a Helvetic phase and was on the point of engendering an antipedobaptist unitarian movement. Francis Dávid (c. 1510–79), 2 successively superintendent of the Magyar synod of the Augsburg Confession in Transylvania (1557), of the separated Magyar Reformed synod (1564), and of the Unitarian synod (1576), embodied in his career the three Reformation phases experienced by the tripartitioned kingdom. 3

1

 For the Reformation in the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary, tripartitioned in 1540 and not reunited until theTreaty of Karlowitz in 1699, see J. Zoványi, A reformáció Magyarorszagon (Budapest, 1925); I. Révész, Magyar-református egyháztörténet, 1520–1608 (Debrecen, 1938); Mihály Bucsay, Geschichte des Protestantismus in Ungarn (Stuttgart: Evangelischer Verlagswerk, 1959); Benda Kalman, “La Réforme en Hong rie,” Société del’Histoire du Protestantisme Fr ancais, Bulletin 122 (1976): 1–53. Andrew Ludanyi proposes to edit the paper s of the confer ence at the University of Toledo, 3–6 October 1990, “The Evolution of the Struggle for Tolerance and Human Rights, Unitarians and Transylvania,” from the sixteenth into the twentieth century. 2  The customary date g iven for Dávid’s birth is 1510; but see J. Ferencz, Az unitarizmus és a magyar unitarizmus egyház története (Budapest: Unitarian Church, 1950); and I. Botár, Ujabb adatok Dávid Ferenc életéhez (Budapest, 1955). 3  Accounts of Unitarianism in this area are those of Wilbur, Unitarianism in Transylvania; I. Borbély, A magyar unitárius egyház hitleven [Principles] a XVI században (Kolozsvár, 1914); Paul Philippi, Schriften der Univ ersitäts-Bibliothek Erlangen, 1 (Erlangen: UniversitätsBibliothek, 1953); William Toth, “Trinitarianism versus Antitrinitarianism in the Hungar ian Reformation,” CH 13 (1944): 255-68, dependent upon Révész; Heinrich Fodor, “Ferenc David, der Apostel der religiösen Duldung,” Archiv für Kulturgeschichte (hereafter AKG) 36 (1954): 18–29. The latter, based upon recent and standard works in the Continental languages, does not cite Wilbur and differs from him considerably at many points. A major source is the MS Historia Ecclesiastica Unitariorum in Transylvania, 2 vols., deposited by Sándor Szent-Iványi

1099

1100  the radical reformation

chapter 28

The Apostolic Kingdom of Hungary was first bisected by a double election for the Crown of St. Stephen after the death of the Jagiellon King Louis II in the battle of M ohács in 1526. One party among the nobility elected Archduke Ferdinand (1526–64) as his successor in the expectation that they could count on his brother, Emperor Charles V, to support them against further assaults from Sultan Suleiman I the Magnificent (1520–66). The nationalist party, fearing German and Hapsburg domination, preferred to cast their lot in the crisis with John Zápolya (1526–40). After two years of civil war, Zápolya was defeated; but, turning to the Sultan for support, he knelt as adopted son, a vassal, before Suleiman on his way to besiege Vienna, 1529. It is of incidental interest that for eight years, Jerome Łaski served as his prime minister and that the latter’s brother John, the future reformer (Ch. 25.2), still an Erasmian, for his service as diplomat was rewarded with one of Hungary’s nine bishoprics, that of Veszprém. After John Zápolya’s loss of the favor of Suleiman and further war, the rival kings of Hungary recognized each other in the Peace of Nagyvárad (Grosswardein/Oradea, 1538); and a secret agreement (of Várad) as to the reunification was worked out depending on which of the two should die first. But instead, on the death of John Zápolya in 1540, the realm underwent in effect a tripartition. Zápolya had married Isabelle, oldest daughter of K ing Sigismund I of Poland.4 Just before his death, an heir was born and Zápolya charged his chief minister George Martinuzzi, bishop of V earad, to break the secret treaty. His partisan nobles at once elected the infant prince as king of a ll Hungary, John II Sigismund Zápolya (1540–70/71). Ferdinand, protesting, invaded eastern Hungary, but was defeated by Su leiman who, occupying Buda and Pest, proclaimed indeed the infant John king but himself regent in 1541. Thereupon the central Hungarian plain was organized in pashaliks, granted in military fief, subjected to heavy taxation, and perhaps somewhat

in Houghton Librar y, Harvard. Dr. Szent-Iványi, The “Historia” and Its Authors, Lamarck American Hungarian Library series, no. 3 (Ne w York, 1960) sho ws that it w as primarily the work of John Tözsér Kénosi, supplemented or continued by Stephen Foszto Uzoni, and thereafter by members of the Kozma family. Though commonly cited under the name of the second compiler, it is now clear that the first volume, and the one dealing with the formative period, was the work of Kénosi (d. 1772). A major study is that of Antal Pirnát, Die Ideologie der Siebenbürger Antitrinitarier (Budapest: Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 1961). There are three somewhat divergent copies of this Historia. A critical edition of the Uzoni Historia, Books 1 and 2 on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, will be prepared by János Káldos as Bibliotheca Unitariorum, vol. 4 (Budapest: Hungarian Academy of Arts and Sciences, Centre for Renaissance Research of the Institute for Literary Studies). Meantime, Ferenc Földesi has edited two Kénosi MSS, De typograpiis et typogr aphis Unitariorum in Transylvania [1754 and] Bibliotheca scriptorum Transylvano-Unitariorum [1753], Reference Series of Hungarian Cultural History 32 (Szeged: Scriptum Kft., 1991). 4  Bainton, Women 3:217–29. She is pictured in my Lubieniecki, Plate 91.

chapter 28

unitarianism in transylvania  1101

maliciously accorded religious toleration.5 There were now three Hungarys: Upper, that of the Hapsburg Ferdinand, who even then was obliged to pay tribute for his narrow northern fringe (in effect, Slovakia); that directly under Turkish control (Lower Hungary); and the infant heir’s limited dominion of Transylvania. In Transylvania the Queen Regent Isabelle lived at the former episcopal palace in Alba Iulia (Gyulafehérvár) the life of a f rustrated widow over whom the “demonic monk” Bishop George Martinuzzi6 had tyrannical control. Steadfastly Catholic, but a soldier more than an ecclesiastic, a diplomat more than a soldier, Martinuzzi basically sought the reunification of d ismembered Hungary, while outwardly protesting obeisance to the Sultan. Then, for a b rief period, while Isabelle and young John were exiled (1551) in Cracow and Silesia, Ferdinand was elected king in Transylvania. Martinuzzi, at once voivode under the Hapsburg king and a cardinal, was assassinated in 1551.7 Recalled from exile in Poland in 1556, John Sigismund was destined to be history’s only Unitarian king. Under him, Francis Dávid became successively the king’s confidant and court chaplain. Here in the relative security of the Carpathian bastion, a buffer state between the Catholics under the Hapsburgs and the Muslims under the Sultan, the increasingly radical Magyar Reformed territorial church of Transylvania developed the confidence that “it was ordained of the Lord that a pillar of g reat strength should be raised through us and placed in [these] inaccessible mountains.” 8 The former military march evolved into a principality with borders extended north and westward into Partium, its dietine becoming a national diet.9 How one-third of the realm under the Crown of St. Stephen became largely Protestant under a cardinal and how a large number of the Transylvanian Protestants became antipedobaptist Unitarians under the preaching of a sometime Lutheran and Calvinist bishop, filled with a sense of providen-

5  Leslie C. Tihany, “Islam and the Eastern Frontiers of Reformed Protestantism,” Reformed Review 29 (Holland, Mich.: 1975), 52–71. 6  Pauline friar, then bishop of Nagyvárad,he was made archbishop of Gran and cardinal at the very end of his ill-fated career, 1551. 7  H e was cowardly put to death on or ders from the Spanish general of the impe rial troops and with the pr ior authorization from Ferdinand himself. The role of Martinuzzi and the social and political situation, with helpful maps, are described by Ladislas Makkai, Historie de Transylvanie (Paris: Les Pr esses Universitaires de France , 1946), 133ff. 8  George Biandrata reports this as a widespr ead conviction in his letter fr om Transylvania to the churches of Little Poland, 27 January 1568; S. Lubieniecki, Historia, 230. Cf. Isa. 2:2 and Micah 4:1. 9  Isabelle sought to include the “partes regni Hungariae” (Partium for short) beyond the Tisza to make good the Zápolyan claim to the whole of non-Ottoman Hungaria, and Ferdinand, himself by now also an adopted son of the Sultan, acquiesced in 1547.

1102  the radical reformation

chapter 28

tial mission for his church and his people in the mountain fastness, is the burden of this present chapter. As in Poland, we can distinguish, though in different proportions, three reformatory impulses: the two-pronged German-Swiss Protestant, the Italian Evangelical-Rationalist, and the Anabaptist-Spiritualist. It should be remarked further that in the whole Kingdom of Hungary and its subsequent divisions, the use of Hebrew by the preachers of the Reformation was very prominent, as also in Lithuania, leading in both regions to philosemitism and, among the extreme followers of Budny and especially Dávid, to Sabbatarianism.10 The development of t he Radical Reformation in divided Hungary was more complicated than in Poland. The vassal principality11 of Transylvania, consolidating usages from the period when it was a voivodeship (military-palatinate) of t he larger realm, was constitutionally reorganized by Martinuzzi. There were three constitutionally recognized ethnic groups: the Szekler (Latin, Siculi; Hungarian, Székely, the original Huns), a proud yeomanry living communally in unwalled towns; the closely related Magyars (tenth-century invaders and Hungarian colonists), and the Saxons (thirteenth-century colonists), whose seven walled towns provided the German name for the whole principality, Siebenbürgen.12 Of these Seven, Klausenburg/Kolozsvár/Cluj was the most important for the ensuing account and the first to be almost fully Magyarized.13 The Byzantine-rite Walachs (Vlachs), a shepherd people later known as Romanians, in the sixteenth century were without any constitutional voice. Spokesmen for the three incorporated nations met as three estates in different towns in a diet in a “general” or a “ partial” state at the call of t he voivode or king. The diet, made up of the nobility (chiefly Magyars), representatives of t he Szekler and Saxon nations, and the “regalists” (men of the hour especially designated by the rulers), received the ruler’s propositions, explicated by the ruler’s spokesman; after

10  Róbert Dán, Humanizmus, reformáció, antitrinitarizmus és a héber n yelv Magyarországon (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1973) with ample summar ies of the thirteen chapters in English, with a fresh observation; idem, “The Works of Vehe-Glirius and Early Sabbatarian Ideology in Transylvania,” in Armarium, of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Budapest, 1976), 87–94. 11  The principality was ruled for most of his r eign by John Sigismund Zápolya (1559– 70/71) as king, only as pr ince by his successor, Catholic Stephen Báthor y (1571–81). Báthory was elected king of P oland (1576–86). His brother Christopher held only the title of pr ince (1576–81 as deputy prince, 1581–86 as prince). 12  The seven Saxon to wns in Ger man, Hungarian, and moder n Rumanian ar e: (1) Kronstadt, Brassó, Bras¸ov; (2) Her mannstadt, Nagyszeben, Sibiu; (3) Klausenb urg, Kolozsvár, Cluj; (4) Mediasch, Medgyes, Medias¸; (5) Schässburg, Segesvar, Sighis¸oára; (6) Bistritz, Beszterce, Bistrit¸a; (7) Mühlbach, Szászsebes, Sebes¸. Of these only K olozsvár became Unitar ian, the other six becoming and r emaining largely Lutheran. The Seven were organized as the Saxon Confederation, Sachsenuniversität. 13  As all ethnic g roups were former subjects of the Hungar ian king, I make the idiosyncratic distinction of calling the Hungar ian settlers Magyars. The still half-nomadic Szekler s spoke the same Hungarian as the new colonists from the area of modern Hungary.

chapter 28 / 28.1

unitarianism in transylvania  1103

debating them, they returned their answer in a replica with resolutions. The diet could initiate legislation by sending a supplicatio to the ruler, who could in turn give it the status of an articulus by signing it. The diet of three ethnic estates (Szekler, Magyar, Saxon) also had the power to elect the ruler. The internal organization of these nations need not detain us, except to observe that the Saxon nation enjoyed the largest measure of autonomy (based on the privilegium Andreanum of 1224 and extended in 1486). Governed by a corporation (universitas Saxonorum) headed by the Saxon-elected mayor of the town of Hermannstadt, the Germans met at least annually to discuss matters pertaining to the government and welfare of their community.

1. The Acceleration of Radical Trends in the Transylvanian Reformation to 1557 As early as 1520, Saxon merchants had returned from the Leipzig fair to Hermannstadt in Transylvania with Luther’s books. Laws were passed, beginning in 1523, against Lutherans in the hope that the Emperor would be encouraged by this token of Catholic f idelity to aid Hungary against the Turks. However, by 1 529 Hermannstadt was completely Lutheran and by 1535 the German burghers in much of H apsburg Hungary and the entire Saxon nation in Transylvania had become Lutheran, adopting the Augsburg Confession in 1544. In Transylvania, the Magyars rapidly followed the Saxons. Until 1557 the three Transylvanian nations were united in one Lutheran Church under a general superintendent or bishop, but divided into a G erman- and a Hungarian-speaking section (Magyars and Szeklers).14 So rapidly did the Roman Catholic cause lose support that the diocese of T ransylvania was secularized in 1542 and the see left vacant for a d ecade; then, on 11 June 1556, the bishop left Transylvania. His see of A lba Iulia was not to have another incumbent for a century and a half. Lutheranism in Turkish Hungary and in Transylvania began to develop a sacramentarian sentiment under the influence of t he Swiss. By 1550, Lutheran congregations in Turkish Hungary were becoming avowedly Helvetic.15 In Transylvania, Calvinism eventually won most of t he Hungarian-speaking Magyars and Szeklers who preferred it, partly perhaps, as in the case of the Slavic Poles, because it was not German. In passing, it may be mentioned that Anabaptist refugees early found that Turkish-controlled

14  Fodor, however, says the Szeklers largely remained Catholic, “Dávid,” AKG 36 (1954): 23. For the Lutheran Saxons, see Karl Reiner th, Die Reformation der siebenbürgisc h-sächsischen Kirche (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1956). 15  In fact, Erasmus, Bullinger, and Calvin had their r espective influence in Hungar ian territories, Transylvania included. See, e.g. R. Gerézdi, Erasmus és az eredél yi unitáriusok (Budapest, 1947) and E. Zsindely, Bullinger Henrik magyar kapscolatai [connections] (Budapest, 1967).

1104  the radical reformation

chapter 28.1

territory offered a haven for those persecuted by Roman Catholicism and magisterial Protestantism. The return of t he young king, John Sigismund, and the Polish-born queen mother to Transylvania in 1556 after the assassination of C ardinal Martinuzzi had been engineered by t he most influential man in Transylvania, Peter Petrovics. A C alvinist, he saw to it that the Reformed religion was well ensconced before the Catholic dowager queen should return. The royal council, of which he was the leading figure, was the agency for formulating and expressing the regent’s will. It was composed chiefly of Magyars, half of them appointed by the ruler and half elected by the diet. (Not until Isabelle’s sudden death in 1559 would John himself assume direct rule.) When the general diet convened on 25 November 1556, at Kolozsvár, John II’s Catholic tutor, the Pole Albertus Novicampianus, urged against Petrovics that the body re-establish Catholicism as the only faith in Transylvania, a m otion doubtless approved by I sabelle. The diet, consisting largely of Lutherans and Calvinists, rejected Novicampianus’ plea, and sent instead a supplicatio to Isabelle, requesting freedom of worship for the two Protestant confessions on an equality with Catholicism. Isabelle complied, perhaps regarding this as an interim arrangement.16 The next year, the general diet met at Torda from 1 to 14 June 1557 and submitted another supplicatio to the queen mother. Before convening, the parties of t he diet had made elaborate preparations. The Transylvanian Saxons had declared themselves members of the Lutheran Church of the Augsburg Confession. The Magyars in the vicinity of Kolozsvár, also Lutherans, electing Francis Dávid as the superintendent of the Hungarianspeaking Lutherans, were at this point already well on their way to becoming sacramentarian and antipedobaptist. The Calvinists (as elsewhere, often called “sacramentarians”) rallied about their head, Martin Kálmáncsehi, and trusted to the political protection of Petrovics. The Catholics concentrated on circulating Novicampianus’ books. Isabelle’s reply on Pentecost of 1557 to the diet’s supplicatio, going beyond the Polish Interim of t wo years before (Ch. 25.1.f ), constituted, in its wording, a notably nonsectarian grant of religious freedom in the history of the Reformation era: Inasmuch as We and Our Most Serene Son have assented to the most instant supplication of the lords of the realm (regnicolae) that each person maintain whatever religious faith he wishes, with old or new rituals, while We at the same time leave it to their judgment to do as they please in the matter of their faith, just so long, 16  On the markedly divergent historical judgments on Isabelle, see Wilbur, Transylvania, 12 n. 24. The same divergences are to be seen in the tr eatments of Bishop Mar tinuzzi. Wilbur speaks of him as crafty and deceitful, Makkai as humane and devotedly Catholic.

chapter 28.1

unitarianism in transylvania  1105

however, as they bring no harm to bear on anyone that neither the followers of the new religion are to be a source of irritation to the old, nor are the old in any way to be injurious to the followers of the new, therefore the lords of the realm, for the sake of procuring the peace of the churches and of stilling the controversies that have been occasioned by the evangelical doctrine, have decreed to establish a national council wherein devoted ministers of the Word of God as well as other men of rank may engage in sincere comparisons of doctrine that under God’s guidance, dissensions and difference of opinion in religion may be overcome.17 Observe that in this notable edict of toleration, Isabelle conceives of the several rites as tolerated variants in worship (more than confessions of faith) within the one Church, whose representatives might find the final truth from God in a council valid for the whole of tripartitioned Hungaria. Despite the generous terms of her constitutional article, the diet at Torda the following year (27 March 1558), alarmed at the iconoclasm perpetrated by the sacramentarians, legislated against the Calvinists. The Calvinist (sacramentarian) leader, Martin Kálmáncsehi, on 15 June 1558 suffered defeat in debate with nominally Lutheran Francis Dávid and left Transylvania. When the Calvinists became less extreme in their views and practices, the diet at Alba Iulia tacitly included them once again in the implementation of the article of toleration. Kálmáncsehi’s victorious opponent, the recently elected superintendent of the Hungarian Lutherans, Francis Dávid was born at Kolozsvár, foremost of the Seven, about 1520. His boot-maker father was a Saxon, his mother a Hungarian. Dávid was first educated at the school of the Franciscan friars in Kolozsvár, then at the cathedral school in Alba Iulia.18 He studied at the University of Wittenberg (1545–48),19 and then returned to Transylvania in the year of Martinuzzi’s assassination to become, successively, rector of a school at Besztercze, Lutheran pastor in the village of Péterfalva, rector of 17  Sándor Szent-Iványi, Freedom Legislation in Hungary 1557–1571 (New York: Hungarian Interfaith Brotherhood, 1957), 30–31 notes that the g rant of r eligious liberty made b y the Rhaetian diet of Ilanz in 1526 (Ch.22.1) merely prevented mutual oppression between Roman Catholicism and the Refor med churches, while giving no relief to other bodies. Szent-Iványi also holds (p. 24ff.) that the queen included the Reformed over against Wilbur, Transylvania, 22, who limits the toleration to Lutherans.The Latin text (n. 32) is in Sándor Szilágyi, Records of the Transylvanian Diets (Budapest, 1876–99), 2:78. It is tr ue that in the clar ification of the edict at the diet of Torda at the very end of that year, 1558, only the Lutherans are wholly legitimated, while “the sects and r eligions are to be a voided for this especially as sour ces and seedbeds of sedition.” For the historical context, reaching back to the bi-r itual accord between Utraquists and Catholics at K utná Horá in Bohemia in 1485 (Ch. 9.1) see also Williams, Lubieniecki, Introduction, Part D, “From Ritual to Confessional Toleration … from the Ritual P eace of Kutná Hora of 1485 to the Colloquium Charitativum of Toru´n of 1645.” 18  Weissenberg (later Karlsburg), Alba Iulia, was the site of the princely palace. 19  Fodor says 1545–46 and, without heeding Pirnát, adds Padua. Toth adds Frankfurt.

1106  the radical reformation

chapter 28.1

the Lutheran school at Kolozsvár, and pastor of the Lutheran church in the same town (1556). Francis Dávid was not yet an Antitrinitarian. The history of A ntitrinitarianism in Transylvania had begun 20 when Dr. Francis Stancaro, the bellicose Anselmian, smarting from his controversy with Andrew Osiander at Königsberg on the doctrines of justification and the Atonement (Chs. 11.3.c; 25.1.b), headed in 1553 for Transylvania, where he had labored before, 1549–50. After first becoming physician at Petrovics’ court in Bartfá (over the Polish border in Hapsburg Hungary), he took occasion to develop and publicize his doctrine of Christ’s mediation through his human nature alone. Forced to leave his post, Stancaro arrived in Kolozsvár, 22 March 1553. His alleged crypto-Nestorianism (the radical separation of the two natures of Christ) was decried at three Saxon Lutheran synods, beginning in 1554, and at the Magyar synod of Szék in its first article, 1555. Stancaro was attacked in print by Caspar Heltai, Francis Dávid, and Peter Melius.21 As in his earlier efforts, Stancaro attempted to safeguard the divine majesty of the Son, at the same time maintaining the doctrine of the Trinity inviolate, by excluding (following Lombard and IV Lateran) the divine nature of Christ from any participation in the redemptive work. Stancaro as Christian Talmudist and Reformed Hebraist assigned a full theological weight to Isaiah 53:5, “by his wounds we are healed.” It will be recalled that Stancaro (Ch. 25.1.b) charged that Lutheranism in general, and Melanchthon and Osiander in particular, subordinated the Son to the Father in an Arian fashion by allowing the divine nature of the Son to participate in the mediation between man and God. As in Poland, so in Transylvania, Stancaro disturbed the ministers especially at Kolozsvár. Dávid, among them, defended his old teacher against Stancaro, who in his Apologia contra Osiandrum had argued that the Son as divine Persona, could not be the mediator (1 Tim. 2:5) in the syllogism that would eventually prepare the way for Dávid’s own Unitarian position but for the time being directed against the Lombardian/Stancarist Christology: “Quidquid non est minus Patre, id non potest esse Mediator. Sed persona Christi non est minor Patre coelesti.

20

 For chronology, see John Erdö, Transylvanian Unitarian Church, tr. Judit Gellérd, preface by George H. Williams (Chico, Calif.: Center for Free Religion, 1990). 21  An authority on the Hebr ew text of the Bib le, Melius (?1536–72) as an emerging Calvinist, was destined to be the major antagonist of soon-to-be Unitar ian Dávid. See Róbert Dán, Humanizmus, reformáció, antitrinitarizmus és a héber nyelv Magyarországon (Budapest: Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 1973), 256; and Kathona Géza,“[Juhász] Méliusz Péter és életmüve,” T. Bartha, ed., Studia et Acta Ecclesiastica 2 (Budapest, 1967). For the larger Transylvanian Lutheran context, see Karl Reiner th, Die Gründung der ev angelischen Kirchen in Siebenbürgen, Studia, Transylvania 5 (Cologne/Vienna: Böhlau, 1979), who fixes the date of Stancaro’s arrival, 211.

chapter 28.1

unitarianism in transylvania  1107

Ergo persona Christi non potest Mediator.”22 Dávid conceded, indeed, that Christ could not be simul God and Mediator. Stancaro was also condemned by a Lutheran synod at Óvár in 1556. He was refused a teaching position but was permitted to take up residence in Hermannstadt (where he had dwelt during his first sojourn in Transylvania) only on condition that he refain from controversy. Unable to comply, he, with wife and child, was expelled. On route to Bistritz at the end of 1557, Stancaro reappeared in Kolozsvár, there to be challenged in debate by t he ministers, among them Magyar Lutheran superintendent Dávid. Stancaro prepared a s tinging assault upon them and their distant mentor Melanchthon in order to demonstrate that the teaching of Melanchthon in drawing out the consequences of Luther’s Christus pro nobis, hence also the doctrine of Dávid and the other Transylvanian Saxon divines, was one and the same with that of ancient Arius. In the work he arranged passages from Augustine’s Contra sermonem Arianorum.23 Stancaro’s work, entitled Collatio doctrinae Arrii et Philippi Melanchthonis … et reliquorum Saxonorum doctrinae de Filio Dei, Domino nostro Jesu Christo, una est et eadem, would be printed in Poland (Ch. 25.3) by insistence of Stancaro’s allies there, Gregory Orsatius (one of the translators for the Polish Bible) at the press of the Polish Reformed at Pi´nczów in 1558, whereupon it and its printer and promoter were condemned by their synod in June 1559.24 Utterly defeated locally, Stancaro failed to find support elsewhere, and demanded of the queen-regent that the Kolozsvár ministers who had opposed him should be burned for blasphemy in an appeal beginning with the words “Hear, O Israel, the precepts of the Lord.”25 Worried, the Kolozsvár pastors responded in their Apologia adversus maledicentiam et calumnias Francisci Stancari (Kolozsvár, 1558). Meanwhile, Melius had won “Lutheran” Dávid for the Reformed side. The two continued in their opposition to the views of Stancaro. Melius, so important in Dávid’s religious development, had succeeded Kálmáncsehi as the chief spokesman for Calvinism in Hapsburg Hungary (Slovakia), and for a while also in Transylvania. He had been born at Horhi, and received his education at Tolna (formerly a Lutheran school, but, under the influence of Stephen Kis of Szeged in Turkish Hungary, Calvinistic) and then, briefly, at the University of W ittenberg (1556). He became pastor of t he

22  The syllogism is reported by Johann Wiegand, De Stancarismo (Leipzig, 1585), 69–70, and is set in the Transylvanian context by Reinerth, Evangelische Kirchen, 213. It would appear that for Stancaro it is not the Man who is Mediator b ut abstract humanity, or he is Nestor ian. He says: “Persona Christi non potest.” Ergo aut mediator = Chr istus qua persona hominis (in the Nestorian union or synapsis) aut mediator = humanitas Christi in abstracto. 23  PL, 42. 24  Sipayłło, AS 1, pp. 309, 372. 25  Friedrich A. Lampe, Historia Ecclesiae Reformatae in Hungar ia et Transylvania (Utrecht, 1728), 116.

1108  the radical reformation

chapter 28.1 / 28.2

church at Debrecen, of privileged status in Turkish Hungary, and continued to imbibe and defend the faith of Calvin. Having won Dávid to his “sacramentarian” view, Melius collaborated with him to produce the first confession of f aith in the Hungarian language regarding the Reformed view of the Lord’s Supper (1559).26 In that same year, 27 Stancaro returned to Poland, leaving behind him a few disciples and 28 the germ of an idea that the received formulations of Christology and the doctrine of the Trinity might be revised.

2. Unitarianism becomes Explicit The first direct attack on the Trinity came in Hungary from Thomas Aran (Arany) of Köröspeterd, who preached specifically that Christ is not God, but only the Son of God and son of man; that the Holy Spirit is not God, but only the love of God; that there are not three Persons in the Trinity; and that Christ is not mediator between God and man in both of his natures. 29 Late in 1561, Aran appeared in Debrecen, where Calvinist superintendent Peter Melius decisively worsted him in debate and extracted from him a confession of error. 30 From Hapsburg Hungary, Aran went to Transylvania, where, undaunted, he continued to argue against the received doctrine of the Trinity. In the meantime, Dávid was expelled as a sacramentarian by the Saxon section of the joint Hungarian-Saxon Lutheran synod at Medgyes in 1559. Dávid kept his pastorate in Kolozsvár. He dealt with Aran’s ideas critically at this time in Capita consensus doctrinae de vera Trinitate.31 In 1561 Dávid still head of the Hungarian “Lutherans” but now fully sacramentarian and opposed to the eucharistically conservative Saxon Lutherans, held a heated debate at a second joint synod in Medgyes. To prevent a formal division in

26

 Melius, together with Gregory Szegedi and George Cseglédi, composed the very long Hungarian synodal Confession of Torda (1562), prominently upholding the received dogma of the Trinity and claiming for the Reformed their place as the rightful protectors of the Catholic Church perverted by Rome. Printed by Müller, Bekenntnisschriften der reformierten Kirche, no. 21. In the same y ear Melius published a hymnbook and a Hungar ian translation of Calvin’ s Genevan Catechism. Constantly in touch with Szegedi, Beza, Bullinger, Simler, and Trecy, Melius continued to engage in debate with Hungar ian Lutherans, in 1564 wr iting a book against the Lutheran superintendent Matthew Hebler. Toth, “Hungarian Reformation,” CH 13 (1944): 260–64. 27  1556 according to Fodor, “Dávid,” AKG 36:22. 28  Traditionally, and according to Toth, but Wilbur says no. 29  Révész, Debrecen lelki válsága 1561–1571 (Budapest, 1936) links Aran’s ideas with North Italian Antitrinitarianism. Toth contradicts Wilbur’s claim that Aran “in 1558 wrote a clear and bold book denying the Trinity.” Fodor, “Ferenc Dávid,” 24, deals with Aran. 30  Révész, Debrecen, which deals with the spiritual crisis of Debrecen and theAntitrinitarianism of Thomas Aran. 31  Fodor has Dávid developing his Antitrinitarian ideas in this work. Wilbur postpones the onset of Unitarianism, Transylvania, 25–26.

chapter 28.2

unitarianism in transylvania  1109

Transylvania of the Hungarian (Szekler-Magyar) and the Saxon Lutherans, John Sigismund renewed and extended at the diet of Torda in 1563 his mother’s great edict of toleration of discrepant forms of worship and faith (meaning primarily Lutherans and Calvinists, but by implication others). 32 Thus far Dávid was arguing as a s acramentarian about the Lord’s Supper and not about the Trinity except as he had opposed Stancaro’s version of Trinitarianism. Unitarian doctrine would not so suddenly have made headway against Calvinist and Lutheran opposition but for the backing and leadership of George Biandrata of P adua, Geneva, Vilna, Cracow, and Pi´nczów (Chs. 24.3.b, 25.2.f ), whose career as a physician had made him an intimate of Queen Bona Sforza of Poland, of her daughter Isabelle of Transylvania, and the heir, John Sigismund. In 1563, proto-Unitarian Biandrata became John’s personal physician and private counselor. Despite his ease at court, Biandrata, like many another physician in our narrative, had a feeling for the poor. A humane humanist, he had transferred to the realm of Christology his conviction that the Christus dives of orthodoxy was false. He preferred the Christus pauper, whom the pious poor, despised by t he world, follow. It was Biandrata who represented the king in 1564 at the general synod at Nagyenyed (Aiud), where Lutheran Saxons and Calvinist Hungarians finally parted company. Dávid emerged as the Reformed (Calvinist) superintendent of Transylvania, the counterpart of M elius in Debrecen, and, at the suggestion of Biandrata, also court preacher at the capital, Alba Iulia. Precisely when the new Reformed superintendent, Dávid, began to question the doctrine of the Trinity cannot be stated, although one tradition has it that he had already put forth some objections in 1560 while still a nominal Lutheran, though, to be sure, converted to sacramentarianism. Certainly, in conversation with Biandrata, Dávid’s thought developed rapidly. But where Biandrata moved cautiously and diplomatically, Dávid was impatient to proclaim the truth as he perceived it at the moment. Both men wrote to Biandrata’s former patron Prince Nicholas Radziwiłł in 1564, reporting with evident exaggeration “that all the evangelical churches in [Upper] Hungary and in Transylvania had embraced the same confession of t he one true God the Father and his only begotten Son, had repudiated the term Trinity as so much human invention” and “that the most serene king, having repudiated

32

 Monumenta comitalia regni Transylvaniae, ed. Szilágyi, 11:218, 233; Wilbur, Transylvania, 26.

1110  the radical reformation

chapter 28.2

the papacy, had been won to this same confession and to the profession of the whole Gospel.”33 With this fleeting glance at correspondence between Biandrata and Lithuania, another glance is opportune in the direction of M oldavia. The old-Saxon soldier-humanist John Sommer (d. 1571) had gone there to participate in the ephemeral reformation under the Greek adventurerhumanist, Hospodar Jacob Heraclides Basilicus (1561–63). Born in Samos, educated in Wittenberg, poet laureate of t he Empire, Basilicus caused a stir among the Reformed in Poland, perhaps less in nearby Transylvania, when, enthroned as hospodar in Ias¸i ( Jassy) by t he efforts of t wo Polish Brethren (lords Jerome Filipowski and Stanislas Lasocki) under the strategic leadership of Albert Łaski, he reformed the Latin-rite cathedral in Cotnari. And there John Lusi´n ski (Łuzy´n ski), briefly Reformed pastor in Iwanowice, called as superintendent, with an enterprising wife, opened a Schola Latina. Sommer was rector and pursued a g enerous policy of bringing in the gifted sons of peasants alongside those of boyars. After the uprising of Orthodox boyars against the extraordinary coup d’Église and the execution of the reforming hospodar, along with the new bishop and his wife, Sommer responded to Biandrata’s appeal to resettle as instructor in the emerging college in Kolozsvár.34 In 1565, Dávid began to preach openly against the doctrine of t he Trinity, gathering support from such colleagues as Stephen Basilius and Luke Égri. It was not long before the impetuous convert to Unitarianism was charged by t he rector of t he Kolozsvár school, Peter Károli, 35 with heresy and was reported on to Melius. The indignant, increasingly radical superintendent of t he Reformed Church of Transylvania now made bold to remove Károli from his position. 36 Károli thereupon moved beyond the realm of King John Sigismund to Turkish Hungary, joining forces with the Reformed superintendent in Debrecen, Melius. In concert, Károli and

33  The letters are known only in summar y, from a letter of J an Ma¸czy´nski to Stanislas Cardinal Hosius, dated Nichnie wicze in Lithuania, 9 December 1564. The letter accompa nied a long letter to the Car dinal by Prince N. Radziwiłł commending him for tolerance of Antitrinitarians (as against the thr eatening edict of P arczów, August 1564) and enclosing a copy of the Polish translation of Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho, printed at his own press (Ch. 25.2). For the two letters, see Hosius, Epistolae, 5th ed. by Alojzy Szorc, Studia (1976), no. 423, no. 426, discussed in context b y Lech Szczucki, “Polish and Transylvanian Unitarianism,” Antitrinitarianism in the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century, ed. by Róbert Dán and Antal Pirnát (Budapest/Leiden: Hungarian Academy of Sciences/Brill, 1982), 232. 34  Sommer would soon feature as an ardent Antitrinitarian, using his achievements in classical Greek to prove from Plato and Plotinus that the dogma of the Trinity was based on philosophy and not on scriptural revelatio (Kolozsvár, 1571). For further details, see Williams, Lubieniecki, Historia, 2,9, Plates 20, 38, etc.; ibid. 3, 11, which is Sommer’s VIII Theses against the received dogma of the Trinity. 35  Nagy Kálozi Balázs, Károlyi Péter (Budapest, 1967). 36  Wilbur dates Dávid’s open attacks on the Trinity after the Károli incident, Toth before.

chapter 28.2

unitarianism in transylvania  1111

Melius sent warnings which they had solicited from Calvin and Beza to the king of Transylvania. Decrying the heretical views of both the court physician and the court preacher, Melius requested that a synod of all Reformed Hungarians be called to debate the issues. The first pitched battle on the doctrine of the Trinity, as it happened, took place outside Transylvania, where the orthodox party had the advantage of numbers. Luke Égri, formerly like Dávid, a student at Wittenberg and his associate in Kolozsvár, had by n ow returned to his native Égér. It was Égri’s Antitrinitarianism that occasioned the calling of a s ynod at Göncz in January of 1566. Although Égri avoided formal criticism of the doctrine of the Trinity in his defense, he irritated the orthodox Reformed by his tritheistic explanations. 37 In Transylvania, one month after Égri’s hearing at Göncz, Superintendent Dávid for his part likewise called a s ynod. Meeting with the king’s consent in Albia Iulia in February 1566, it dealt with the doctrine of the Trinity, and thereby publicly opened the Unitarian controversy in Transylvania. 38 Several lesser synods and ministerial meetings followed. Throughout, Biandrata contrived to preserve as much of t he traditional language as possible in his Seven Theses and Antitheses, while the 15 March Torda synod accepted on the Apostolicum. Then in April of 1566, again at Alba Iulia, King John II Sigismund, in accordance with Melius’ request, called a j oint synod of t he Transylvanian and the Central (Turkish) Hungarian churches. Biandrata, as earlier in Poland (Ch. 25.2), forthrightly requested that philosophical and theological terms be eschewed and that only biblical and apostolic language be employed, to which Melius (like his counterpart Lismanino in Poland) unaccountably agreed. Biandrata and Dávid for their part thereupon warmly expressed high regard for the Apostles’ Creed, and acknowledged the equality of t he three Persons; but they rejected the term and idea of a common substantia or essentia on the ground that along with the three personae it made for a “papal and idolatrous quarternity.” At this juncture they thus were Tritheists, less explicit about it than their counterparts in Poland (Ch. 25.3). In the meantime, the Saxon and Magyar Reformed were turning their attention from the Swiss to the divines of Heidelberg for guidance, as that great university was now the center of t he German Reformed (Ch. 31.2). Shortly after the synod adjourned, Dávid and his supporters published a r evision of t he Heidelberg Catechism (Heidelberg, 1563) at Maros-Vásárhely, called a Catechismus ecclesiarum Dei in natione Hungarica per Transylvaniam: XII

37 38

 See further at n. 40.  Kathona Géza, “Dávid Ferenc 1566, évi tézisei,” Theológiai Szemle (1966): 16–23.

1112  the radical reformation

chapter 28.2

articuli christiani consensus, 39 which rejected “essentia” in a simple avowal of the equality of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In February 1567, at a synod at Torda, Dávid and Biandrata went even farther, rejecting the statements of M aros-Vásárhely and Dávid’s revision of the Heidelberg Catechism in favor of an Arian statement of faith. They identified the one God as the Father, subjected the Son to the Father, and interpreted the Spirit not as a t hird Person, but as a p ower of G od.40 A week later, Melius convened a s ynod of h is own forces at Debrecen to strengthen the battle lines against Antitrinitarianism. This gathering issued two confessions: 41 one in Latin and dedicated to John Sigismund; the other in Hungarian and dedicated to the people of c ommerce “in order that wherever their business should take them, they might fight against the besetting heresy of the [Reformed] church.” The Nicene Calvinist minority went on to suggest that Dávid, son of a tutor and spouse of an ambitious rich woman, should be stoned for his sophistry.42 Dávid, likening himself to much maligned Origen, replied in two books. His Refutatio scripti Petri Melii argued that the one God is the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ; that the Word was not, prior to the incarnation, the Son of God; and that the Holy Spirit was only the power of God. The other work was prepared jointly by D ávid and Biandrata, De falsa et vera unius Dei Patris Filii et Spiritus Sancti cognitione (Alba Iulia, 1568).43 It argued that the eradication of the doctrine of the Trinity should be considered the consummation of the Reformation begun in Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin, and that this consummation would occur with the second coming of Christ in 1570.44 The theological and eschatological influence of Servetus is clear. The work ridiculed the alleged absurdities of the doctrine of the Trinity, printing eight woodcut renditions of sculpture and paintings of the Trinity taken from churches mostly in Italy, but also Poland, together with appropriate Antitrinitarian comments.45 Dávid’s concern for the application of religious toleration to the Antitrinitarian party found favor with his king; and, at the ensuing diet of Torda, 39

 Printed by Lampe, Historia, 159ff.; Wilbur, Transylvania, 32.  Toth, “Hungarian Reformation,” CH 13 (1944): 261–62. 41  Wilbur states that it adopted the Helv etic Confession. The distinctive Confession, with its condemnation of Stancaro, Servetus, and ancient counterparts, is printed in part by Müller, Bekenntnisschriften, no. 21. 42  Fodor, “Ferenc Dávid,” AKG 36:26. 43  Next year Dávid and Biandrata pub lished De mediatoris Jesu Christi divinitate, including a chapter, “De restauratione ecclesiae,” from De operibus Dei (Ch. 10.2) by Cellarius (d. 1564); Uzoni, Historia 1:129, 504. 44  Facsimile edition, introduced in English b y Antal Pirnát, Róbert Dán, ed., De falsa et vera … cognitione, Bibliotheca Unitariorum, 2 (Budapest/Utrecht: Hungarian Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1988). 45  Williams, Lubieniecki, Plate 18. 40

chapter 28.2

unitarianism in transylvania  1113

after his impassioned appeal,46 the toleration edicts of 1557 and 1563 were renewed and strengthened 28 January 1568, to secure by implication the toleration of both the unitarian and the trinitarian parties of the much divided Reformed Church, alongside the Lutheran and the Catholic Churches: Our Royal Highness, as he has decreed, together with the Diet, in the matter of religion, now again confirms that in every place the preachers shall preach and explain the gospel each according to his understanding of it, and if the congregation like it, well: if not, no one shall compel them, but they shall keep the preachers whose doctrine they approve. Therefore none of t he superintendents or others shall annoy or abuse the preachers on account of their religion, according to the previous resolutions of t he Diet, or allow any to be imprisoned or be punished by r emoval from his post on account of his teaching, for faith is a gift of God [Eph. 2:8]. This comes from hearing, and hearing by t he word of G od [Rom. 10:17].47 This law, appealing for sanction to two places in the New Testament, long stood as the most advanced step in toleration yet taken in Europe. In the very same month, a more restrictive view was taken at a special synod at Kassa in Upper Hungary (Slovakia), called by a Lutheran general in command of the armies of Maximilian II/I, as king of Hungary, to check any drift away from the Second Helvetic Confession adopted under the pressure of Melius at the synod of Debrecen in 1567 and applicable also to the Reformed in both Hapsburg Hungary and Transylvania. The synod had in mind particularly the known extremes of L uke Égri, pastor of h is native Égér but who had been with Dávid in Kolozsvár. At Kassa, Égri presented twenty-seven theses, among them an extreme form of predestination and severe moral predeterminism that made God responsible for original sin, at the same time the possibility of personal perfection for possessors of the gift of t he Holy Spirit, the rejection of i nfant baptism and oaths, and the legitimacy of polygamy. The synod found each of these heretical, and Luke Égri was imprisoned for five years on the authority of the general.48 Melius, despite success in this extreme case, now sought to stem the Unitarianizing tide by inviting his adversaries among the Transylvanian

46

 The scene is represented in the painting by Aladar Körösföi-Kriesch, which hangs in the museum in Torda and has been fr equently reproduced in Hungary and the United States. See Williams, Lubieniecki, Plate 40. 47  Szent–Iványi, “Historia,” 34; cf. Erdö, “Dates,” 8. Eventually the Rumanian Or thodox would be construed as covered by this edict as a kind of Uniate Chur ch under the Refor med Synod. 48  Wilbur, Transylvania, 33–34; Kathona Géza, “Égri Lukácas Antitrinitárius-Anabaptista Nézetei,” Reneszánsa-Füzetek 12 (1971): 403–25.

1114  the radical reformation

chapter 28.2

clergy to a debate at Debrecen, a quasi–sovereign city, in Turkish Hungary, in 1568. Biandrata suspected an orthodox trap and advised the Transylvanians to ignore the invitation. The king himself thereupon summoned a general synod of the ministers of both Turkish Hungary and Transylvania to meet in his palace at Alba Iulia, to debate the doctrine of t he Trinity. Five debaters, led by Bi andrata and Dávid, represented the Unitarian side; on the Calvinist side there were six debaters, led by P eter Melius. At 5:00 a.m. on 8 M arch 1568, the great debate (in Latin) began with solemn prayers on each side, continuing for ten days thereafter. Melius, who commonly referred to his own Reformed Church in the seats of the old order as the Catholic Church (over against the innovating or reductionist Davidian), appealed, not only to the authority of the Bible, but also to that of the creeds, the Fathers, and the contemporary Swiss and Heidelberg divines; Dávid, to the Bible alone. The discussion began with heat. On the ninth day the Calvinists asked to be excused from listening further. The king intimated that this would be confessing defeat, and they remained; but as nothing new was being accomplished to bring the parties to agree, the king ended the debate the next day, recommending that the ministers give themselves to prayer, seek harmony, and refrain from mutual abuse as unbecoming. Of no small consequence in the course of the debate, Melius reached the point in his argumentation with Dávid: “Ergo Deus est trinitarius.” Thereupon his opponents are thought to have begun to think of themselves as devotees of God as unitarius. (But the earliest documented use of the term is in a letter of 1585 from King Stephen Batory to his youthful nephew, Sigismund, at the court in Alba Iulia, alerting him to the hazards of consorting with Unitarii at the Jesuit college there and in Kolozsvár.) 49 The long debate at Alba Iulia was generally regarded as a v ictory for the Unitarians, whose side the king favored. During the synod, Biandrata showed himself to be a poor debater, and he did not enter public discussion again. Dávid, who had opened and was ready with a c onvincing answer to every question or objection, now returned home to Kolozsvár to be received by all Magyars as a conquering hero. Many of the Lutheran Saxons left the town, and the Saxon federation of the seven fortified towns (Siebenbürgen) removed Kolozsvár from the rights and constitutional privileges of the Saxon corporation. For many years thereafter Kolozsvár was practically a Unitarian Reformed city. Now president of i ts college, Dávid debated

49  The letter is presented by Ferenc Pápai, Rudus redevivum (Cibinii, 1684), 157–58; picked up by Lampe, Historia, 313; noted and discussed by Wilbur, Transylvania, 93. n. 31. The designation appeared for the first time as the name of theTransylvanian radical Reformed Church in an official document in the records of the diet in the Szekler village of Léczfalva in 1600. Possibly the first use of Antitrinitarian was by Josias Simler in Zur ich in 1568. See Williams, Lubieniecki, book 3, n. 452.

chapter 28.2

unitarianism in transylvania  1115

Melius at Nagyvárad, in Hungarian for the sake of the throng, 20–25 October 1569. Dávid presented twelve Antitrinitarian propositions. 50 He went much farther than before, contending, for example, that what the Calvinists were defending was, in fact, a papal quinity of three Persons, one substance, and a deified man. The only God is the Father of Christ, himself at once divine and human; Christ is the only-begotten Son of God. Though the Son was, as indeed all things have been, present in the mind of God from all eternity, he can be said to be only temporally begotten, not eternally. The Holy Spirit is the vivifying power or grace of God and Christ. When, in the heat of b attle, Melius attacked Dávid with unwonted violence, the king rebuked him, saying, “Inasmuch as we know that faith is the gift of God, and that conscience cannot be forced, if one cannot comply with these conditions, let him go beyond the Tisza [river]”51 On the morning of one session, Melius declared, “May your Serene Highness hear me, and all of you here present. For in the night the Lord revealed to me anew who he is and how he is his true and proper Son, to whom I give undying thanks!” In the midst of the disorder that ensued, the king chided Melius perhaps too humorously in view of the situation: “Pastor Peter, if last night you were instructed as to who is the Son of God, what, I ask, have you been preaching before? Certainly up to this moment you have been misleading the people!”52 The king saw that nothing further could be gained by fostering unity or Unitarianism, and having charged the orthodox Reformed with evading the real issue, he closed the debate. The orthodox drew up a confession of faith of their own, the Sententia catholica seu consensus ministrorum, signed by fifty-nine pastors, condemning Dávid and his views.53 Dávid drew up the entire text of the debate, which was read and amended by the king and several peers before it was published as the Disputatio. The debate at Nagyvárad of 1569 marked the definitive schism between the trinitarian and the unitarian Reformed Hungarians and thereby corresponded to the Piotrków Synod of 1565 in Poland (Ch. 25.3), except that in Transylvania it was the radical party which constituted in effect the major (Hungarian) Reformed Church with both royal and popular support. It will 50

 Printed, along with Dávid’s call for a debate in Hungar ian, by Lampe, Historiae ecclesiae, 224–30. 51  Quoted by Wilbur, Transylvania, 40. 52  The episode is r ecounted savoringly by Biandrata in his letter to the P olish Brethren, 31 October 1569; printed by Theodor Wotschke, “Zur Geschichte des Antitrinitarismus,” ARG 23 (1926): 95–96. Fodor, “Ferenc Dávid,” AKG 36 (1954): 27, citing Elek Jakab, Dávid Ferencz Emléke [Memoirs] (Budapest, 1879), chap. 26, Epp. B and C, speaks of Dávid as much less effective than does Wilbur, Transylvania, 40–41, who, using the same work by Jakab, calls the synod another victory for Dávid. 53  Reported by Lampe, Historia ecclesiae, 246–49.

1116  the radical reformation

chapter 28.2

be recalled that the Hungarians as Reformed and the Saxons as Lutherans had already in 1564 split Transylvanian Protestantism. There were now as many confessions in Transylvania as there were nation-estates, although ecclesiastical and ethnic lines did not everywhere coincide. Some of t he Szeklers, for example, remained Catholic. The debate at Nagyvárad also launched Transylvanian Unitarianism upon its golden age. With the conversion of t he king, scarcely a M agyar family of importance remained outside the Unitarian Reformed fold. Caspar Heltai’s press at Kolozsvár was unceasing in the cause. Dávid secured able professors, some of t hem distinguished refugees from persecution in other lands, to teach in thirteen academies and colleges, chief of which was the college at Kolozsvár, occupying the former Dominican convent. Dávid’s son-in-law, John Sommer from Pima in Saxony, rector of t he school at Kolozsvár, set down seven orthodox theses on the Trinity and cleverly proved them exclusively with texts taken from Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and Marsiglio Ficino, making it uncomfortably clear to the local Calvinists and the distant Wittenbergers that they had really abandoned “theology” and resorted to “pagan philosophy,” and had thereby converted the Lord God of Hosts into an abstract Jehovalitas! 54 Without at first a d istinctive name, Unitarianism, as the major Reformed Hungarian party in Transylvania, emerged in the schism of 1569 as a w ell-organized church/synod with several distinctive tenets besides its cardinal affirmation—a people’s church with a p owerful preacher and shrewd spokesman at the royal court. Radically sacramentarian, it was sustained by an eschatological fervor and tended toward antipedobaptism. As all these Protestant confessions in Transylvania took over the parish structure of the Catholicism almost driven out of the principality, Unitarianism was a territorial reform, although the choice of confession and pastor would rest with the local congregation in disputed cases. Just before or after the Nagyvárad debate, Dávid and Biandrata printed anonymously but in the name “of the ministers and elders of the churches confessing one God the Father” a dual work, De regno Christi and De regno Antichristi. Dedicated to John II Sigismund, it was an anthology of chapters and sections from the Restitutio of Servetus without naming him.55 To the publication was attached a tract against infant baptism, Tractatus de paedobaptismo et circumcisione. The anonymous authors at this point chose not to reproduce the full baptismal and eucharistic theology of Servetus for fear of arousing opposition. Moreover, one or the two compilers, Biandrata, 54  Letter to Hallopegius in Wittenberg, 15 May 1571; preserved by S. Lubieniecki, Historia, 233ff. It is of interest that Sommer in this letter shows familiarity with the work of William Postel (Ch. 22.2.a). See above, the VIII Theses, n. 34. 55  Stanislas Kot has arranged in parallel columns the contents of the w ork and the cor responding sections of the Restitutio, ed. Becker, Autour de Michel Servet, 100–102.

chapter 28.2

unitarianism in transylvania  1117

was not favorably disposed toward the sacramental aspect of S ervetus’ work.56 He is known to have possessed a copy of the Restituto, which had been entrusted to Prosper Provana in Cracow. The antipedobaptism in the dual publication must have been the work of Dávid. Although there seems to have been nothing on baptism in Dávid’s dispute with Melius at Nagyvárad, Dávid had earlier (at least before 1568) preached against infant baptism in several sermons which were published in 1569, wherein he took the familiar position that infant baptism was a papal invention and the true baptism depended for its significance upon “conscious faith.” In the aforementioned excursus De paedobaptismo, Dávid went farther, moving from antipedobaptism to a qualified anabaptism. He now contended that all who had been baptized under Roman Catholicism should be rebaptized by the Evangelicals (Unitarians), on the ground that the popish baptism had been performed in the name of a “ tritheistic substance” and a t ripersonal Godhead. Dávid was not averse to punning on the Hungarian equivalent for substance (állat), which could also mean “animal” and suggest the “brutish” basis for the traditional christening. About this time in a lost work Melius, well versed in Hebrew, argued that Servetus, Biandrata, and Dávid were drawing their Antitrinitarian arguments from anti-Christian yet scripturally based works of several rabbis, notably those of t he thirteenth-century Rabbi David Kimhi of Narbonne and the fifteenth-century Spanish Rabbi Joseph Albo whose work was edited with some effort at refutation by Gilbert Génébrard in Paris in 1566. The title was Argumenta [of Albo, Kimhi, and an anonymous Jew] quibus nonnullos fidei christianae articulos oppugnant.57 In 1570, Dávid published A Little Book on the True Baptism.58 This unequivocally Anabaptist book was published at Heltai’s press at Kolozsvár. It deserves more than a passing notice.59 The book was originally written by a Flemish martyr not otherwise identified. A Polish physician in Warsaw, Dr. Alexander Vilini, who may have procured it from the Mennonites of the Lower Vistula (Ch. 15.2.a), translated it into “pure German” and sent the translation to Dávid, asking him to have it printed in both German and Hungarian. In the translation into Hungarian, Dávid coins new terms when necessary, corrects some sources of the quotations, but occasionally 56

 Ibid., 103, n. 65.  Dán, Humanizmus, 80–81. Of the existence of the attack of Melius w e know from his letter to Bullinger, 27 April 1569. Of course Servetus (d. 1553) could not have used the Latin edition of Paris, but he knew Hebrew. 58  Könyvecske Az Igaz Keresztényi Keresztségröl. 59  The story of Dávid’s translation and the discovery of a portion of the German text in a soaked-out binding of another sixteenth-century book is told by Antal Pirnát in Irodalomtörténeti Közleme´nnyek, Publication in the Histor y of Literature 58 (1954), 299–308. It has been par tly translated by Daniel Liechty in “The Hungarian Booklet Concerning the True Christian Baptism: Its Flemish Origins and Theological Significance,” MQR 62 (1988): 332–48. 57

1118  the radical reformation

chapter 28.2

shows an inability to express theological problems concisely. Dávid does not seem to have “improved” or added much to the original text, but the fact that he went to the trouble of t ranslating it and publishing it in two languages shows that he approved of the book and identified himself with its arguments. A large section of the original book of sixty-six pages attacks the dogma of original sin, maintains that children do not know the difference between good and evil, and concludes that infant baptism is unnecessary, since original sin has been “washed away” in Christ’s Atonement. Thus far we have been largely concerned with the formulation and consolidation of antipedobaptist, sacramentarian Unitarianism within the Carpathian sanctuary under a benevolent Unitarian king. Unitarianism also won the allegiance of m any Hungarian Reformed parishes outside Transylvania. Though King John Sigismund’s claim was disputed, he largely controlled ten or twelve neighboring counties in both Turkish and Hapsburg Hungary to the west and north. The trinitarian party was there strongly in the majority among the Reformed churches; but the unitarian Reformed were not in danger of being persecuted so long as the king of Transylvania favored them. At Nagyvárad itself, the scene of t he great debate, Stephen Basilius converted about three thousand to Dávid’s persuasion. Unitarianism was also preached even in Debrecen, the citadel of t he orthodox Reformed. In Turkish Hungary there were over sixty Unitarian churches (many of them with schools). At the old university town of Pécs the Helvetic church became Unitarian in 1570. Important magistrates joined the movement and assisted it with their wealth. When these churches became organizationally separated from those of Transylvania, they chose a close friend of Dávid, the missionary Paul Kárádi, to be their superintendent. Here on the Muslim frontier of Christendom the f ierceness of religious feeling is grimly ref lected in a famous incident, a Calvinist-Unitarian debate in which death was the prearranged penalty for the losing side. The Unitarian disputants were Luke Tolnai and George Alvinczi. When the Calvinist side won, Alvinczi was duly hanged. 60 A wealthy Unitarian living in the vicinity, indignant at this theological barbarity, thereupon complained to the pasha at Buda, demanding as satisfaction that the responsible Calvinist superintendent likewise be put to death! The pasha ordered a public disputation and, in the end decided that the execution of A lvinczi had indeed been inhuman, thereupon condemning three Calvinists (including the superintendent) who had disputed before him to be executed. The orthodox petitioned that their spokesmen be spared; the Unitarians supported their plea, saying they had no wish for revenge. In time, the three Calvinists were released from 60

1574.

 Toth, “Hungarian Reformation,” CH 13 (1944): 266. The episode dates fr om the year

chapter 28.2 / 28.3

unitarianism in transylvania  1119

imprisonment upon payment of a large ransom; a supplementary annual tribute was levied on the Christians of the whole pashalik. Let us return to the safer realm of t he Unitarian King John II Sigismund! For all his royal favor, he had not yet accorded the Unitarian Church in Transylvania a sure constitutional standing except as it was a “Reformed” Church. Moreover, by an agreement reached by the Dávid supporter Caspar Békés at the imperial diet at Speyer (dealt with later, Ch.31.2), John renounced his claim to the Crown of St. Stephen in 1570 and resumed the style of prince. With Dávid’s urging, John at the Diet of Maros-Vásárhely early in 1571 granted the people and the church of Kolozsvár certain privileges which had been impaired by t he withdrawal of t he Lutheran Saxons and its exclusion from the Sachsenuniversität. He strengthened the legal equality of all the rival synods of his realm by provisions against resorts to ecclesiastical violence or coercion by e ither of t he superintendents of t he two Reformed Churches and their respective ministerial retainers. Royal assent to the following replica was obtained: Our Lord Jesus Christ orders us to seek first the Kingdom of God and its righteousness; therefore it was resolved in the matter of the preaching and hearing of the word of God, that—as Your Highness with the Diet had resolved in the past—the word of God shall be preached freely everywhere; no one shall be harmed for any creed, neither preachers nor listeners; if, however, any minister would go to criminal extremes, the superintendent shall be permitted to judge and suspend him, after which he may be expelled from the country.61 Dávid’s successful entreaty had come none too soon. Two months later, 15 March 1571, John Sigismund, injured in a fall from his horse, died. He was deeply mourned by all, for, despite animosities arising out of the disparate confessions, he himself had been popular with his subjects for his personal qualities, his justice and mercy. Henceforth, all princes of Transylvania would be bound to take an oath at coronation to preserve the equal rights secured by his articles of toleration (the Transylvanian counterpart of the Warsaw pax dissidentium, 1573).

3. Antipedobaptist (nonadorant) Unitarianism in Transylvania from the Death of John Sigismund to the Death of Dávid, 1571–79 The rapid theological and confessio-political changes within the emergent separate unitarian Reformed synod under Dávid as its superintendent cannot be fully understood without reference to at least a t riumvirate of Judaizing 61

 Reprinted in Szent-Iványi, Freedom Legislation in Hungary, 35.

1120  the radical reformation

chapter 28.3

Reformed Hebraist ministers, Adam Neuser, John Sylvanus, and Matthew Vehe-Glirius, from within the Reformed Church of t he Rhine Palatinate. Although the Transylvanian careers of two of these are appropriately developed here, the account of their emergence as biblical Unitarians within the Antidisciplinary (Erastian) party there lies ahead in one of our few time warps in the narrative (Ch. 31.2). Neuser visited the college in Kolozsvár in 1572; and Vehe, coming by way of Cracow in 1578 assuming the new surname of Glirius, served as college instructor to help Sommer on a critical Latin edition of the Bible and assisted as theological advisor to Dávid. The Erastianism of t hese two Palatiners in their opposition to the exercise of ministerial or congregational or synodal discipline over magistrates among their church members or among their political superiors could appear to disqualify the emerging Judaizing Unitarian Reformed synod, nonadorant of Jesus Christ, from inclusion within the range of the “Radical Reformation” insofar as the separation of the church from the control or oversight of, or from establishment by, the magistracy is one of its presumed identifying marks. But even the control of the ministry by the congregation/parish, endorsed as early as the edict of John Sigismund in 1568, might be seen as akin to the late-medieval communalism identified in Upper Germany and Switzerland as a reform movement among self-governing villagers and townsmen (Ch. 4.2). One of the distinctive demands of such parish reform was the selection of their own village or parish pastors in accordance with divine right (the Gospel). Hence any movement toward congregationalism within the synodal polities of Transylvania would on that level perhaps also qualify as radical, the more so as the unitarianizing Szeklers preserved in their communes much of the yeoman independency of their once nomad past. But more important in regard to “radicality,” return to biblical rootedness, was the increasing rejection of the magisterial Protestant doctrine of predestination in favor of voluntarism (of working out one’s own salvation in fear and trembling, Phil. 2:12) with respect to faith and local polity and ministry. And in any case, the Unitarian Reformed of Transylvania were theologically radical, indeed far more than the prevailingly Christ-adorant Polish Brethren. For the Transylvanians under Luther’s parole: ad fontes, would presently become intentionally Christian “Jews” as of the first New Testament generation, looking for Jesus to return imminently to discharge his plenary eschatological assignment of t he ages, beginning perhaps first in their privileged sector of Christendom. As hard as it may be to recover the mentality of t his people on the frontier of Orthodoxy and Islam, these former subjects under the Crown of St. Stephen would become increasingly convinced that they were returning to the purest source of the faith when the protomartyr Stephen (Acts 7:2–53), one of t he seven deacons for the messianic banquet, declaring

chapter 28.3

unitarianism in transylvania  1121

that Jesus was the final prophet foretold by Moses (Deut. 18:15, 18), cried out in prayer: “Lord Jesus, receive my Spirit” (Acts 7:59), while the author of most of the epistles of the New Testament, still Saul, consented to this martyrdom (Acts 8:1). The Szekler clansmen under elected chieftains, living communally as their Hun ancestors from off the Asian steppes, readily identified with biblical clansmen of t he covenant, and could think of themselves with their Magyar cousins settled among them, as a predestined race. The Unitarian chancellor Caspar Békés (who thought he himself might succeed by election to the Transylvanian throne) was on a princely mission in Vienna to arrange for an “orderly” succession when news of John Sigismund’s death reached him. Békés’ enemies had intrigued against him, criticizing his religion, his arrogance, his too-swift rise to power, and his part-Walach parentage. Christopher Báthory was made interim ruler, pending the election. Heeding the advice of Christopher and the Sultan, and fearful that Békés might have traded some of the liberties for imperial backing, the nobles thereupon chose, as prince, Christopher’s younger brother, Stephen, one of the three magnates in Transylvania who had remained Catholic. The election was confirmed by the Emperor (in his title of K ing of Hungary) and the Sultan; and, according to the new treaty, the title of t he prince/king of Transylvania was henceforth that merely of voivode, as before. Voivode Stephen Báthory, educated at the University of P adua, an able commander in the field, pursued a p olicy of r eligious toleration. When urged to show less consideration for non-Catholics, he replied that he was ruler of t he people, not of t heir consciences. He promoted Calvinists and Lutherans to public office without prejudice. His rule was, however, hateful to the Szeklers largely of the Unitarian persuasion. Presently, the Unitarians especially among the Szeklers, rallied to Békés and his stubborn opposition to the new voivode. Stephen naturally became increasingly suspicious of the Unitarians, removing them from court and high public office. He forbade them to print books without his permission and thereby he cut off one of their chief means of spreading their faith. In 1572 at the Diet of Torda, Voivode/Prince Stephen, although confirming his two Jagiellon predecessors’ edicts of religious freedom, decreed also that any Unitarians introducing further reforms or innovations and altering the faith of the late king should be excommunicated or otherwise punished, at the discretion of the prince. As early as the end of 1572 there is evidence of a n extremely radical sentiment on the margins of the Unitarian Reformed community. At least three students, among them presumably the later Unitarian pastor Andrew

1122  the radical reformation

chapter 28.3

Erdödi,62 had returned from the University of Padua, espousing views in many respects similar to those of Gregory Paul and particularly of Camillo Renato: a s piritualist antipedobaptism (Ch. 22.1); a d escription of t he Eucharist as a fellowship meal like Renato; a disparagement of set prayers including even the Lord’s Prayer and a disparagement of Sunday as the chief day of w orship; the espousal of f rugality, self-discipline, and pacifism; a large concern for social justice and the sharing of goods with perhaps special reference to the large number of refugees from Turkish Hungary; and psychopannychism with a l ively expectation of b eing resurrected in ultimate vindication of their having taken up the cross to follow after Christ.63 Francis Dávid himself would not long remain untouched by some of these radical views, reinforced as they might have been by t he appearance of Adam Neuser in the Kolozsvár college in 1572 (Ch. 31.2). Unitarian prospects began to cloud over. Dávid had divorced his wife. In 1574 both his divorce and his doctrine were investigated at the synod of Nagyenyed in order, if possible, to discover some scandal that might humiliate the Unitarian spokesman and impair his influence. Then in 1575, when the insurgent Békés was utterly defeated by B áthory and many of Békés’ followers were killed in battle, more than two score of the Szekler nobles, not a few of them Unitarians, were executed as rebels, more were mutilated, and a large number were imprisoned, degraded from their rank, and had their property confiscated.64 All this time, Biandrata had managed to retain his high position as court physician and counselor. When the throne of the kingdom of Poland fell vacant in 1574 (Ch. 29.1), Stephen Báthory sent Biandrata thither to work for his election. Stephen was elected. About this time the new king (1576–86) called from Padua as his personal physician the sometime Anabaptist Dr. Nicholas Buccella (Ch. 22.4, 29.5.a). Stephen’s brother Christopher was now confirmed as his deputy, till 1581, thereafter voivode in Transylvania until 1586. For his dynastic contribution, Biandrata was awarded several villages near Kolozsvár. Christopher Báthory, though more prone than Stephen to promote Catholic interests, retained Biandrata in his service at court. But for Biandrata, the Unitarians might have fared worse than they did under the mounting pressure of the Hungarian phase of the Counter-Reform.

62

 Paleologus, Defensio, 278.  The first references are in a letter fr om Heidelberg, 4 December 1572; but the most complete documentation comes fr om the records of the Lutheran Saxon synod held at Alba Iulia in 1575; printed in full by Pirnát, Ideologie, 135–60. 64  Békés, who fled to Poland, was there thrust into pr ison. Curiously, when Stephen Báthory ascends the Polish throne (1576), Békés will be released and his losses compensated for by gifts. Further, he will be given command of Stephen’s bodyguard and become his tent mate in the war against Muscovy. Wilbur, Transylvania, 56; Williams, Lubieniecki, Plate 46. 63

chapter 28.3

unitarianism in transylvania  1123

At the diet of Medgyes in 1576, Dávid’s superintendency of the Unitarian Hungarians in Transylvania received constitutional recognition on a par with the already formally legitimated superintendencies of the Calvinist Hungarians and the Lutheran Saxons. The Unitarian superintendent or bishop Dávid thus stands out as having served successively as the spokesman of three of the four received religions of the land. The diet of Torda the next year, however, restrained the now formally recognized Unitarian superintendent from visiting his churches and limited the holding of the synods of the Unitarian Reformed Church to two towns, Kolozsvár and Torda. Moreover, the oversight or superintendency over the Unitarian parishes beyond this circumscription was given to the Calvinist superintendent, who had leave to attempt their reconversion to Calvinism. (This unfair arrangement would remain in force among the Szeklers for over a century.) In spite of the defeats which Unitarianism suffered after the death of John Sigismund, the internal life of the parishes went on much as before until the Jesuits found Dávid advocating that prayer to Christ be abandoned—an “innovation” that would clearly place the Unitarians beyond the embrace of the late king’s article of toleration. A logical development from the denial of Christ’s deity, this nonadorantism had been expressed by the Unitarian superintendent as early as 1572, perhaps at the suggestion of the Heidelberg Christian Hebraist and refugee Adam Neuser (Ch. 31.2), and certainly with the agreement of t he rectors of t he Kolozsvár school, John Sommer and Jacob Palaeologus (c. 1520–85).65 The latter, who had come from Cracow (1571–72, see further Ch. 29.1), taught at Kolozsvár 1573–74. A Greek from Chios, born of an Italian mother and a Greek father and claiming descent from the last Byzantine imperial family, he had become a Dominican in Rome, dedicated a commentary on Revelation to the Dominican general, Vincent Giustiniano, and then fled from the Inquisition in 1559. His movements for a decade thereafter are obscure, but from 1563 to 1570 he lived in Prague as a learned Orientalist, well acquainted with the Koran. He married a native of the capital and evidently became acquainted with several Utraquist priests who were Nicodemite Unitarians like himself, and was almost recognized as the bishop of the Neo-Utraquists.66 Because of his erudition or 65  Karl Landsteiner, Jacobus Plaeologus: Eine Studie (Vienna, 1873); Stanislas Kot, “Jacques Paléologue, defenseur de Ser vet,” ed. Becker, Autour de Mic hel Servet, 104–6; Antal Pirnát, “Jacobus Palaeologus,” Studia nad Arianizmem, 72–129. Luigi Firpo, drawing upon D. Orano, mentions in passing the or iginal name of P alaeologus as Giacomo (J akovos) Massilara. “Christian Francken antitrinitario,” BSSV 68 (1960): 29, n. 8. See fur ther G. Rill, “Jacobus Palaeologus: Ein Antitrinitarier als Schützling der Habsburger,” Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs (1963); and Lech Szczucki, “Jakub z Chios P aleolog: Zarys biografii,” OiRwP 11 (1966); Williams, Lubieniecki, Plate 28, etc. 66  Urban, Der Antitrinitarismus, 36.

1124  the radical reformation

chapter 28.3

his allegedly imperial descent he was made a pensionary of the Hapsburg court until driven out when he fell under suspicion. He went to Cracow and Warsaw, then briefly to Transylvania (February), then back to Cracow, where he published De discrimine Veteris et Novi Testamenti (28 June 1572). He had been in epistolary contact with Dávid since September 1570. His recent visit and his new book must have inspired the disputations in Transylvania. In January 1573 he was again in Kolozsvár. While awaiting the spring to make a trip into Turkey, he elaborated his radical views on nonadorantism (which he mistakenly thought he was deriving from Servetus) and on the suspension of t he sacraments in eight short treatises for the Unitarian seminary at Kolozsvár. Some of these works were reworked by Sommer and copied by the students. Five of these of special interest are De tribus gentibus (1572), Dissolutio de sacramentis, De Eucharistia, De baptismo, and De resurrectione mortuorum (1572). These treatises and his De discrimine … plus other writings were combined into the most comprehensive Catechesis Christiana dierum duodecim published in Kolozsvár in 1574 and which bears his name.67 In the first and last of these tractates Palaeologus envisages an interfaith colloquy in which Jews, Muslims, and four kinds of Christians participate, Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, and Unitarian.68 In effect, Palaeologus argued that there were no sacraments in the ecclesiastical sense. The Bible does not mention them. As for baptism, it may be administered as a formality, but it has no significance. The last supper of Jesus was a regular meal at which the disciples took a l amb with sauce and spices, etc., not bread and wine only. The first Christians also ate regular suppers, introducing or following them by prayers and thanksgiving. It is the task of the ministers to re-establish the original meaning of the Lord’s Supper as an agap¯e (cf. Renata, Ch. 22.1), carefully and without shocking their parishioners’ feelings. Jesus’ command of “This do in remembrance of me” meant simply that whenever Christians thereafter should eat together, they ought to be mindful of him, his teachings, and God his Father. The fact that these treatises were used for teaching in the Kolozsvár school shows that Sommer

67  Three variant copies have been pr eserved by Gervasius Lisznyai, George En yedi, and Bishop Matthew Thoroczkai, whose is the most complete . They are described by Pirnát “Palaeologus,” Studia, 91–92, and in considerable detail in his book Die Ideologie der Siebenbürger Antitrinitarier in den 1570er J ahren, 188–96. The best of the sur viving copies is that of Bishop Thoroczkai and it has been published in a critical edition with abundant annotations by Ružena Dostálová (Warsaw: PAN, 1971). Lech Szczucki has also published a critical edition of De tribus gentibus, the first of a series which includes two other writings of Palaeologus, De peccato originis (a letter to Pope Pius V), and An omnes ab uno Adamo descenderint, printed in the appendix of his book W kregu mýslicieli heretyckich (Wrocław: Ossoli´neum, 1972), a study of the thought of Palaeologus and a second person, Christian Franken, as represented in the edited documents in the appendix. For other observations on the writings of Paleologus see Ch. 29, specifically n. 21. 68  Williams, Lubieniecki, Introduction and Plate 38.

chapter 28.3

unitarianism in transylvania  1125

and Dávid agreed with Palaeologus. Accordingly, the Lord’s Supper, even in its sacramentarian form, was suspended in Kolozsvár. Biandrata was alarmed at such innovations. Hounded by Bi andrata, Palaeologus in the spring went to Turkey as planned. In May he visited the isle of his birth, Chios, and from 14 June to 8 July 1573 he was in Istanbul. By 12 August he was back in Kolozsvár, where he wrote a description of his trip.69 Through this discussion, Palaeologus sought to regain the favor of Emperor Maximilian II (I as King of Hungary, 1564–76), as well as to allay all suspicions about his legitimate claim to descent in the Byzantine imperial line. He claimed a f antastic number of connections in the East,70 and refuted the assertion from Poland that he had become a Muslim and lived a profligate life in Constantinople. He also took up his literary battle with Gregory Paul on the question of t he magistrate and war and prepared an answer to Gregory Paul’s polemic, eight days after receiving it, and probably immediately set out with it to Poland. From Poland he returned to Transylvania at least once in 1573. But by 27 December, he had bounded back to Cracow, where (Ch. 29) we shall recount the remaining episodes and achievements of his life. Nonadorantism and the suspension or radical alteration of t he significance of the sacraments continued to concern Transylvanians after his departure. At the Unitarian synod at Torda in March 1578, with 322 pastors present, Biandrata, as chief elder and court physician, aware of the great danger of further innovation, and Dávid, the intrepid innovator, faced each other in tragic conflict on the issues of a ntipedobaptism and nonadorantism. The synod authorized communis prophetia (1 Cor. 14:30), which “gave all the ministers liberty without danger to discuss with one another and to investigate matters that have not yet been decided and settled by the general synod, but to which serious consideration might be given … in good order and under rules suited to our times.” 71 Dávid spoke persuasively on the idolatry implicit in the worship of Christ, the man. Infant baptism, against which Dávid had long preached and written, was now synodally abolished as unscriptural. That Francis Dávid had himself been practicing believers’ baptism earlier than the official action is implied by his publication of the Flemish

69

 Williams, Lubieniecki, Plate 28.  He reports visits with the v oivode of Walachia, the Patriarch of Constantinople, many Turkish officials and Muslim savants, and with Aga Amurath, the son of the commander of the Turkish fleet. He said that he had received offers of high positions from the Turks, the Patriarch, and Cardinal Giustiniano, as well as from the Turkish vicegerent for Jews on the Aegean Islands. 71  Palaeologus, Defensio Francisci Davidis in negotio de non inv ocando Jesu Chr isti in precibus, printed in Socinus, Opera, 2:229; quoted by Wilbur, Transylvania, 68–69. See n. 73. 70

1126  the radical reformation

chapter 28.3

Anabaptist treatise in Hungarian and German translations in 1570 (Ch. 28.2) and is attested by a Jesuit heading Stephen Báthory’s preparations for the Catholic recovery of Transylvania, who wrote that Dávid “had abolished [infant] baptism.” 72 At this point Matthew Vehe(-Glirius), sometime pastor in the Palatinate, a H ebraist and Judaizing Christian, fled Heidelberg (Ch. 31.2) and via Poland arrived in Transylvania at the invitation of Dávid in 1578. He brought with him his recently published Mattanjah (Cologne, 1578).73 He at once became theological counselor to Dávid, as well as collaborator in the college in the critical Latin edition of the Bible. His inaugural address in joining the college faculty, evidently something previously prepared, was an exposition of the biblical freedom of the will as against the high predestination of the Calvinists (Heidelberg, Geneva, and Debrecen), Declamatiuncula contra praedestinationem Neotericorum,74 in which, under the guise of “first theologians, old wise men, and scholars of antiquity,” he adduced certain tenets of the rabbis and Christian Talmudists. Locally Andrew Eössi, Benedict Ovari and, with reserve, also Dávid, were among his converts. In his writings and statements Vehe-Glirius held that the New Testament was not inspired to the degree that was true of t he Old Testament, arguing that it primarily represented the views of the apostles, and of their followers after Jesus who was a prophet, son of Mary and Joseph, had failed to usher in the Kingdom. He held that Jesus would come in a Second and successful Advent, that in the meantime the Pentateuch had abiding validity. It was out of his chief work, Mattanjah, that Vehe-Glirius expounded his most distinctive teachings at a c ritical moment in the intra-Unitarian debate over the adoration of C hrist and the purpose of t he sacraments. The ordained Reformed Palatinate deacon, Christian Hebraist, the close observer of J ewish life outside the walls of C ologne, had developed sui generis a fully Judaized Christianity of extraordinary cogency and allure for those among the proto-Unitarian Reformed who fully felt the momentum of the common Reformation quest for the most ancient and reliable sources of faith. Vehe-Glirius had studied and translated the Sefer ha-Ikkarim (Soria, Castile, 1425) of J oseph Albo who had helped him understand that God would never stretch the things needful for the faith to things incomprehensible to the mind and established for him the criteria for assessing who are 72  John Leleszi, 1579. Endre Veress, Epistolae et acta Jesuitarum Transylvaniae, 1 (Leipzig/ Vienna, 1911), item 22, p. 7. 73  The Mattanjah was found in Holland. It has been pub lished by Robert Dán, Matthias Vehe-Glirius: Life and Work of a radical Antitrinitarian with his collected writings (Budapest/Leiden: Hungarian Academy of Sciences/Brill, 1982). See also Dán’s “Sabbatarian Ideology,” Armarium, 87–94, also Ladislaus Mar rin Pákozdy, Der Siebenbürgische Sabbatismus (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1973). 74  Later published in Tractatus aliquot c hristianae religionis (Ingolstadt [Cracow], 1583), reprinted by Dán, Vehe-Glirius, doc. 3, discussed by ed., 134.

chapter 28.3

unitarianism in transylvania  1127

blasphemers, apostates, heretics, false prophets, and false teachers. Accordingly, Vehe-Glirius in his chief work recognized in the end only two fundamentally new propositions in the New Testament going beyond the Old, namely, “that Jesus is the Messiah (Christ) and that Gentiles by faith alone in Jesus may become without circumcision participants in the Republic of Israel or [without works] justified.” 75 Vehe-Glirius simplified the two Reformed ordinances and reconceived the calling of t he Gentiles. He showed that Jews at the time of John the Baptist and before observed the rite of purification by water (tevilah) and he held that Jesus’ injunction of Matthew 28:19 to baptize “men everywhere” did not refer to Gentiles but to Jews in all nations, that is, in Palestine and in the diaspora and that baptism was, accordingly, a rite of the apostolic mission to the Jews and was not necessary among Christians, for Jesus by the intention of the heavenly Father had made it possible for the Gentiles to become Jews precisely without circumcision and hence without Jewish proselyte baptism or by any other action except faith in him. By the same token, the Lord’s Supper remained the Passover meal but with the enhanced sense given to the bread by J esus himself, when he spoke in Aramaic, “my body,” in other words, “this is me,” thereby warning his companions that the Seder, long annually observed in the hope of the coming Messiah, had in him come true, even though still with the future referent of restoration of the Israelite realm but now with the persona of the vindicating Messiah no longer a m ystery. Jesus thus provisionally fulfilled the expectation of Israel and by God’s intention opened the hope of inclusion in that realm to the Gentiles through him by faith. In a sense there was in Jesus the possibility of a renewal of the covenant not manifest in circumcision, but in the prophetically anticipated covenant inscribed in the heart ( Jer. 31:33). Jesus was, in this sense, too, a soteriological mediator (1 Tim. 2:5). His blood sacrificed on the cross was, like that of the good shepherd who gives his life for the sheep ( John 10:11), fulfilling the expectation and intention of his master/God the Father. As a believer in Jesus as God’s Messiah destined to rule in full authority, Vehe-Glirius was also a millennialist, as were many Davidians (and in Poland a minority among the Polish Brethren).76 Vehe-Glirius held accordingly that worship should be on Saturday, and that Mosaic dietary and other laws should be heeded. Yet he and his Sabbatarians regarded themselves as but extreme Unitarians and clearly Christian, since they knew the character of t he Messiah and in the meantime 75  Vehe-Glirius, Mattanjah (1578), 72a; Epistola, written as Theodosius Schimberg in his edition of John Sommer, Refutatio Scripti Petri Caroli (Ingolstadt = Cracow, 1582), both works identified by Róbert Dán (Vehe-Glirius) discussed by him, ibid., 190. 76  The Mattanjah is printed in facsimile and is discussed in chapter s 3–5, and for the three points here stressed, see pp. 113f. Dán states in summary his view, ibid., p. 125.

1128  the radical reformation

chapter 28.3

could count themselves, though not racially Jews, as members of G od’s people. Antipedobaptism and nonadorantism (Ch. 11.3.a), not to say Sabbatarianism, were certainly innovations beyond the genial faith of the deceased Unitarian king. Despite the growing aggressiveness of C atholicism and continued warning from the diet, Dávid pushed for further innovation in respect to the invocation of C hrist. After calling another synod at Torda in the fall of 1578, he promulgated his views, perhaps editing them tendentiously.77 Báthory and his subjects were thereby informed that Dávid had gone so far as to hold that Jesus was of t he seed of Joseph, the Messiah foretold by the prophets but rejected by the Jews, who from “a life of undisturbed repose” will soon come again to rule as King of God’s people from Jerusalem, but that in the meantime he discharges neither a royal nor a priestly office and is therefore not to be invoked in prayer; for he is not God and even his precepts, though they should be heeded, are not to be construed in a way to derogate from the Law of Moses. Biandrata at the voivodial court saw clearly that the prince, under Jesuit pressure, could legally take action against Unitarianism for innovation and urged Dávid to be discreet, and was no doubt personally distressed at the extreme to which his friend and collaborator in reform now seemed recklessly impelled by the Heidelberg Hebraists at their college. The court physician went so far as to suggest that two or three Unitarian ministers whom he mentioned as most zealously promoting the new teachings ought to be tried for heresy, to show Unitarian good faith! Dávid rejected the proposal as dishonorable, and the ways of t he two former allies sharply divided. Biandrata now sought the aid of t he nephew of L aelius Socinus, Faustus Socinus. Of his debate at Basel (Ch. 24.4) early that year on Christ the Saviour, Biandrata had heard. He prevailed on Socinus to come to Transylvania and argue Dávid back to the propriety of worshiping Christ and thereby preventing any further devolution of Unitarianism in the direction of Judaism. Socinus came, via Poland, bearing recommendations from the Polish churches, and lodged at Dávid’s house, but at Biandrata’s expense. The debate in the parsonage, 1578/79, over several months is recorded in two principal publications, along with related and antecedent material. The first is the Defensio Francisci Davidis in negotio de non invocando Jesu Christi in precibus, edited by Jacobus Palaeologus (Basel[Cracow: Rodecki], 1581) with a second edition (Cracow, c. 1582), which included a composite work from David without date, De dualitate.78 As Palaeologus in this 77  Printed by Lampe, Historia ecclesiae, 306–11; in BFP 2:801–3; and by Wallace, Biography, 2:248–55. 78  The second edition in both par ts has been edited in f acsimile by Róbert Dán, with an index and an intr oductory analysis in English of the complex book, with its par ts and documents, by Mihály Balázs, Bibliotheca Unitariorum 1 (Utrecht: De Graaf, 1983).

chapter 28.3

unitarianism in transylvania  1129

reproached Socinus for being implicated in the death of D ávid, Socinus would later reply on the basis of h is own documentation and recollection in De Jesus Christi invocatione: disputatio, quam Faustus Socinus per scripta habuit cum Francisco Davidis anno 1578, et 1579, paullo ante ipsius Francisci obitum (Cracow: Rodecki, 1595).79 At issue for Dávid was not only whether Jesus as the Messiah by designation was entitled, as only a human prophet, to adoration but also whether he as only designatus rex was in fact still in heaven, after the merely confirmatory Ascension, to harken to a prayer of invocation or petition, prior to his awaited Second Advent. Without its being wholly clear from the record of t he exchanges and other documentation, Socinus held that the Man Jesus, unique among mortals, had been resurrected and permanently exalted to become cosmic vicegerent of God the Father and Head of the Church and thus the legitimate object of a doration and a p roper respondent to intercessory prayer, also to be feared as the future Judge at the Second Advent. (Later Socinus would become certain that the unrighteous—the un-Christian and nonChristian—would simply not be resurrected, their condign and sufficient punishment being oblivion.) Dávid acknowledged the resurrection and ascension of Jesus as scriptural and interpreted it as God’s full approbation of h is teachings, but Dávid likened the ascension to that of E noch, Elijah, and even Paul in the third heaven (also, not expressly, the ascent of Muhammed, translated from Mecca, from the Rock in Jerusalem), all of whom nevertheless (obscurely) descended as mortals. But Dávid, differing from the Jews, held that Jesus was in his life and teachings “the promised Messiah” and that he would be resurrected as the Judge at his Second Advent for the judgment of b oth the righteous and the unrighteous (the traditional view over against its modification by Socinus); and, in the meantime, he held that Jesus was not to be adored or prayed to as though he were in heaven. This basic eschatological and christological conviction of Dávid would eventually reassert itself among Transylvanian Unitarians; and their characteristic affirmation, “God is One,” is directed as much against the Polish Brethren coming under the influence of Socinus as against Calvinist orthodoxy in Christology. Dávid remained unmoved. Then Biandrata had Dávid’s income from the church cut down. Dávid protested that this was comparable to Calvin’s persecution of Servetus. Biandrata warned Dávid that he must abandon his offensive nonadorantism or else be accused and tried for innovation at 79  Composed sixteen years after the event, the basic texts of the parsonage disputation had been wr itten out by Socinus in May 1579. A second edition follo wed in Raków, 1626. The Disputatio is printed in the Opera of Socinus, 2.709ff. My work “The Christological Issues between Francis David and Faustus Socinus during the Disputation on the Invocation of Christ, 1578–79” (Dán and Pirnát, Antitrinitarianism, 287–321) was based on the Socinus version alone and did not include arguments about the reliability of Socinus over against the evidence of the Defensio and the evidence there about issues other than adoration.

1130  the radical reformation

chapter 28.3

the next meeting of t he diet. The problem was referred to a c ommittee of ministers, who in turn put it over until a general synod. Biandrata also proposed that the Polish Brethren be asked to judge the views of both sides, in writing, and that Dávid should preserve silence in the meantime. Dávid agreed, but presently, as superintendent, called a synod at Torda, in defiance of Biandrata and without waiting for a reply from the Minor Church synod of Poland. Biandrata then decided that Dávid was incorrigible. He was able, by virtue of his standing in the Minor Church of Poland and his strategic position at the now Catholic court of Transylvania, to summon fifty of the clergy, to whom he made plain that Dávid’s innovation would come before the diet. He gave them a summary of Dávid’s views which misrepresented the superintendent, and applied pressure by implying that if they, the pastors in synod, did not vote the right way, they could be removed from office and banished. At the same time, Biandrata wrote Socinus at the parsonage to inform Dávid that, although he had up to then defended him before the prince, he would now openly take the side against him. The Catholic voivode obligingly ordered the Kolozsvár town council to remove Dávid from his pastorate and put him under house arrest. Suspecting Socinus of t reachery, Dávid ordered him from his home. The next day Dávid preached in the two Kolozsvár churches, informed the people of what impended, and defended all the Unitarian doctrines, declaring the worship of Christ to be no more legitimate than the invocation of the Virgin or the saints. It was to be his last sermon. Angered by D ávid’s action, Christopher Báthory bade him appear before the Diet in Torda in April 1579; but taking note of t he menacing sympathizers among the attendant nobles, the voivode postponed the problem of innovation and sent Dávid back for incarceration. Biandrata’s feeling toward Dávid had now become one of bitter personal enmity. He would not allow anything to be done to allay Dávid’s physical sufferings. He had him kept under very strict guard and only rarely permitted his family to see him. Finally, Dávid, in extremely poor health, was brought to the prince’s court at Alba Iulia. In the hearing, evidence was put forward to show that Dávid’s views on the worship of Christ, far from being an “innovation,” had at one time been held by Biandrata himself. The clergy demurred, with only one exception. The nobles supported Dávid. The Jesuits, of course, condemned him. The complainants asked mercy for him, but the Calvinist ministers demanded his life. Pronouncing him guilty, the prince ordered him to be imprisoned in the castle at Déva. He did not long survive his hardships and died in prison 7 November 1579. The trial and martyr death of Dávid, the implication of courtier and elder Biandrata in it, the damaging role of the solicited but in consequence condemnatory letter of t he Polish Brethren, and especially the role of

chapter 28.3

unitarianism in transylvania  1131

Socinus himself drew a heavy shadow over the relations of the Polish Brethren and the Transylvanian Hungarian Unitarians, inhibiting the church in Transylvania from ever allowing itself to be labeled Socinian, while it is only modern and largely nonconfessional scholarship that has tempered the traditional Unitarian judgment against Biandrata in suggesting that he acted in great personal peril from the Catholic court to save what he envisaged as a g reat cosmopolitan, christocentric Unitarian congeries of Reformed synods in the lands of the three royal crowns of the three eastern realms and the patronage of t olerant noblemen and patricians in Poland, Moravia, Slovakia, and Transylvania.80 Already in July, right after Dávid’s trial, the conservative Unitarians had adopted in general synod a C onfession in four articles, safeguarding the office of t he living Christ as “King of t he churches,” who is to be “worshiped and adored” and “who rules his faithful by his spirit.” Thus did Biandrata hope to check the radical Davidians or Judaizers. But soon this group, drawing inspiration from one of D ávid’s converts, Andrew Eössi, a wealthy Szekler, would move from nonadorantism and the suspension of the sacraments to the revival of M osaic dietary and other ordinances, including worship on the Sabbath.81 In resisting the Judaizers, Biandrata was glad to have the support of t he Polish Brethren, hoping that under the protection of the Báthorys in Poland and Transylvania an international Unitarian Reformed Church could be permanently legalized. To this end he had the belated Judicium ecclesiarum Polonicarum (Ch. 29.7) against Dávid’s radicalism printed in Kolozsvár. Here follows in full the Confession of Faith agreed upon and subscribed by the Ministers of the Unitarian Churches of Transylvania, convened in General Synod, 1 July 1579. The text82 reflects the theology of Biandrata, evident in a succession of formulations since his days in Geneva under Calvin. In this final form it not only assures the efficacy of prayer to Christ in heaven but also undercuts the millennialism of the ultra-Davidians: I. We believe and confess that this Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of the Most High, the only begotten Son, and to be called God in 80

 Szczucki, “Polish and Transylvanian Unitarians,” Dán and Pir nát, Antitrinitarianism, 238–41. 81  The Sabbatarians, persisting within and without the Unitar ian fold, would be for mally excluded in 1618; in 1638 the Diet at Dés and Calvinist hegemony would enforce the Complanatio Deesiana, a confession which reaffirms the document of 1579 and proceeds to cover the whole range of doctr ine and discipline as the nominally official standard of the Unitar ian Church up to the end of the nineteenth century. It was to this Confessio of 1579/63 that Karl Barth refers with “honorable mention” in Church Dogmatics, 1, The Doctrine of the Word of God, (Edinburgh: Clark, 1956), 660. Barth, when he wr ote this, had b ut recently returned from Hungary and Transylvania, c. 1936, and received an honorary doctorate from the joint seminary in Kolozsvár/Cluj of the three “licit” Protestant confessions. 82  Latin text in Wallace, Biography, 3:556–57.

1132  the radical reformation

chapter 28.3

accordance with the genuine sense of Holy Scripture on account of these reasons: (1) Since he was conceived by t he Holy Spirit [Matt. 1:20]; (2) Since he was anointed by the Holy Spirit before all others [Ps. 2:2; cf. Acts 4:25–26], he received the Holy Spirit without measure [Col. 1:19]; (3) On account of t he majesty and glory which in heaven and on earth the Father fully gave after he rose from the dead [Acts 2:31–36]; (4) Since God the Father in the fullness of t ime will restore and establish all things by h im [Acts 3:21], and he gave him to us that we by h im might be saved and might receive the inheritance of eternal life [Eph. 1: 13–14]. II. We believe this same Jesus Christ is to be worshiped and adored since the Father gave all things to the Son [Eph. 1:22], and prescribed that we hear him, that we believe him, and the same praise and adore. Therefore he has hidden in him all the treasures of knowledge and wisdom in order that out of his fullness we all receive all things [Col. 2:3]; namely, that worshiping the Son, we might worship the Father, that believing the Son, we might believe in the Father, which Father is honored in the Son. III. We confess that this same Jesus, the true Messiah, while he was on earth conferred and even now confers spiritual goods on the faithful by w ord and spirit, and for that reason he is to be invoked, for by G od the Father, all good things are brought together in the same that from him we might pray and hope confidently for them in our necessities. Thus after he came revealed (exhibitus) into the world [cf. John 1:1] many fled to him for refuge, saying “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me” (Matt. 15[:22]; Mark 10[:47–48]); again, “Lord Jesus! receive my spirit” (Acts 7[:59]); but in neither instance is invoked as God the Father, in whom are all things (1 Cor. 8[:4]); nor again even in that form of invocation by which we invoke the Father, saying, “Our Father,” etc. [Matt, 6:9-13], but for that reason that what God the Father conferred on him, we might be certain Christ would bestow it more richly on us just as he himself promised, “Whatsoever you ask in my name, I will do it” ( John 14[:13]); and similarly, “I will give you eternal life” ( John 10[:19]). Nor is he our Mediator [1 Tim. 2:5] in such fashion that he confers nothing on us or that there is nothing that might be asked, expected, or even hoped for from him. For to this very end he accepted all things from God his heavenly Father in order that from himself all things in us should be derived as his members. IV. For we say with the Sacred Scriptures that this Jesus the Christ, who is said to be our Head, is now King of the Churches

chapter 28.3

unitarianism in transylvania  1133

and reigns by h is Spirit those faithful to him, “for he rules over the living and the dead” (Rom. 14[:10–12]), or, again, that “He rules all things by t he word of h is power” (Heb. 1[:2, 8–13]). For to this end our Father gave Christ to us, that he might reign in those faithful to him, and that he might confer on them eternal life, and “He himself is alone under heaven, in whose name we might be saved” (Acts 4:12). And although it is said (1 Cor. 15[:24–28]) this kingdom will come to an end when Christ delivers up the kingdom to God and the Father, and when all things will be subject to him; nevertheless, it does not follow from this that Christ our God is not now King, because there it is said that he must reign until all things are subjected to him. Biandrata was also concerned to reorganize his synodal/church and safeguard its two sacraments. He was instrumental in having Demetrius Hunyadi, administratively efficient and theologically conservative, imposed by Báthory upon the Unitarians as their new superintendent (1579–92) in succession to Dávid. At the synod in Kolozsvár in 1580 all the Unitarian pastors, except for eighteen steadfast Davidians, reluctantly embraced the Biandrata’s Disciplina ecclesiastica, restoring pedobaptism and a regular commemorative Lord’s Supper. It is of i nterest that the lesser ban was introduced and to this day many of the Transylvanian Unitarian churches have the now unused penitents’ bench in the doorway leading to the sanctuary where men and women worship separately.

1134  the radical reformation

Sigismund II of Poland

chapter 28.3

Chapter 29

Sectarianism and Spiritualism in Poland, 1572–1582

O ne year after the death

in Transylvania of the childless Unitarian king John II Sigismund (1540–1572), in Poland his uncle, the last Jagiełłon king, Sigismund II Augustus (1548–1572), died, likewise leaving no heir. For the Polish throne, the houses of Hapsburg, Valois, Muscovy, and Báthory were eager to provide a s uccessor. The alarmed Polish Sejm ordered preparations for war in anticipation of a ggression. In 1573, after extracting a promise that would forestall in Poland-Lithuania a repetition of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in France, the Polish Diet elected to the throne Henry of Valois. When after a few months’ rule he abdicated to succeed his brother as Henry III of France, the Diet, made up of Catholic bishops and Protestant magnates, proceeded to elect the Catholic voivode of Unitarian-Reformed Lutheran Transylvania, Stephen Bathory, as king of Poland (1575–1586). We have already noted (Ch. 28.3) the important part played by George Biandrata, the Italian physician of the courts of Cracow and Alba Iulia, in securing the election of Stephen, who became related to the Jagiełłon house through marriage to the late King Sigismund’s sister, Anna. The constitutional struggle, 1572–1575, made actual the much mooted question within the Minor Church concerning the sword (Ch. 29.1), intensified the quest for a t heological basis for religious toleration in a m ulticonfessional state (Ch. 29.2), called forth the first catechism of the Minor Church (Ch. 29.3), and placed in a critical political context the Polish phase of nonadorantism (Ch. 29.4). The radical Unitarian rejection of p rayers addressed to Christ made the whole of the Minor Church appear now triply subversive; for, besides their denial of the validity of the baptism of the majority of the citizens and their withdrawal of the use of the sword, these 1135

1136  the radical reformation

chapter 29 / 29.1

radicals seemed to be withholding from the state effectual sanctions and suffrages of the liturgy in their denying the divinity of Christ. Such, at least, would have been the charges against the pre-Socinian Minor Church. After dealing with these closely interrelated developments, we shall pass from Judaizing nonadorantism to a discussion of several extraordinary theories of interfaith toleration espoused on the margins of the Minor Church (Ch. 29.5), to conclude with a section on the theology of Faustus Socinus (Ch. 29.8) and the beginnings of organized Socinianism on the site of the anti-Nicene, Anabaptist colony of Raków (Ch. 29.9). Part I The Pre-Socinian Polish Brethren, 1572–1580

1. The Controversy Over the Sword, 1572–15751 The controversy in Poland-Lithuania over the sword was at once social, political, and theological. The social issue was whether the evangelical converts among the szlachta should renounce the use of t he sword over their serfs and become their brothers in Christ. The political issue was whether these same lords should also renounce the use of the sword in the defense of the royal republic. And the theological issue, known also as a post-baptismal or a “second baptismal controversy of the Minor Church,” 2 was whether the practice of believers’ baptism, as practiced among the Polish Brethren, demanded social, ethical, and political radicalism, as outlined above. As we shall come to see, there were Antitrinitarians who insisted on the right of ownership of t heir villages and on their duty in time of war, others who freed their serfs but acknowledged their martial duty in the event of a war, and finally a s olid core of l ords and their divines who went the whole way in the renunciation of the sword socially and politically in the plenary appropriation of a n ew moral code of b elievers’ baptism in imitation of Christ and in obedience to his Sermon on the Mount. There was no movement in the Res Publica comparable to the Great Peasants’ War in Germany, in which the peasants, artisans, and miners demanded a new status. In the Commonwealth the Christian social revolution 3 began, instead, when a n umber of a nabaptist, anti-Nicene pastors—not all of them recruited from the humbler classes—converted to an 1  Besides the older w ork of K ot/Wilbur, Socinianism, see further a major tr eatment of these religio-political issues by Peter Brock, Pacifism in Europe to 1914 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972). 2  The identification of a “second” baptismal controversy within the Minor Chur ch was made by Jarmola, “Origins and Development of Believer’s Baptism,” 134–58. 3  It may be too early to evaluate comprehensively the extensive research going on in Poland on the social origins of the leadership of the pre-Socinian Minor Church and the class factors in synodal debates on the sword. Gottfried Schramm has admirably analyzed the recent Polish monographs on that issue in “Antitrinitarier in P olen, 1556–1658,” BHR 21 (1959): 473–511, esp. 496ff.

chapter 29.1

sectarianism & spiritualism in poland  1137

evangelical Christianity certain lords and members of the gentry, who in turn were moved by a feeling of evangelical brotherhood to free their serfs and to recognize in them joint heirs in Christ. A notable instance of t his was in Sosnowiec on the part of John Przypkowski who in 1572 freed his serfs on his lands northwest of Cracow, declaring that in Christ all persons are equals and that the purpose of l ife “is not to have, but to be.”4 The stand of t he majority among the radical Reformed Polish Brethren (the Minor Church) on Christian fraternity and pacifism was not the attempt of an underprivileged class to avoid entanglement in the pretensions and the conflicts of t he great. It was, in part at least, the work of t he lords themselves, the Polish and Lithuanian counterparts of such radical nobles as Junker Caspar Schwenckfeld (Ch. 5.5) and Lord Leonard Liechtenstein (Ch. 9.2). The partisans of pacifism were members of the headstrong and independent szlachta—some wealthy, others only moderately so—possessors of goods and of rights to defend as well as of dependents to protect, and with a code which required of them an almost quixotic readiness to do so whenever the mass levy of t he gentry (pospolite ruszenie) was proclaimed. The conversion of t hese lords of t he manor to pacifism entailed a s ocial revolution for their families, their retainers, and their serfs. A n obleman such as Judge John Niemojewski, owner of twenty villages, with a family tradition of conspicuous gallantry in wars against the Teutonic Knights, the Turks, and the Muscovites, could not escape the obloquy of his peers and even sometimes the disparagement of those (serfs, artisans, burghers, gentry in the other confessional camps) whom he would now in Christ refuse to consider of low degree. In 1572, the danger of dynastic war exposed the anabaptist, antitrinitarian, pacifist gentry of the Minor Reformed and their divines to violent attacks from Catholics and the Major Reformed and caused considerable dissension within their own Church itself. The issue of the sword in 1572, following hard upon the controversy over believers’ baptism, bade fair to split the Minor Church, as a decade earlier in 1562 the issue of the Constantinian formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity had opened what was, 4  I have assembled considerable documentation in translation in The Polish Brethren: Documentation of the Histor y and Thought of Unitar ianism in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Diaspora, 1601–1685, Harvard Theological Studies 30 (Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1980) in two parts; also Proceedings of the Unitar ian Historical Society 18:1 (1976–77) and 18:2 (1978–79), 773 pp., 17 plates, pullout map, 4 index es, errata slip. The typological blemishes are numerous and at points misleading. The full use of the indexes can be gained by the user’s knowing that the four pages of pullout maps w ere not in the end counted in the contin uous pagination of the two parts (separate volumes) and hence that an index r eference to, e.g. Joachim Stegmann, on the first page in the second volume is indexed as being on p. 363, but in fact, as printed, is on p. 359. For the episode in which Przypk owski freed his serfs, see Polish Brethren, Plate P. See further Wacław Urban, Chłopi; and idem, “Praktyczna działalno´sc´ braci polskich wobec chłopa, OiRwP 5 (1960): 109–26.

1138  the radical reformation

chapter 29.1

by now, a p ermanent division within the synods of t he young PolishLithuanian Reformed Church as a whole. In August 1572, a m onth after the extinction of t he Jagiełłonian dynasty, enterprising, traveling theologian-publicist Jacob Palaeologus, whom we have but recently met in the important disputations in Kolozsvár (Ch. 28.3), published in part his work on the magisterial sword and the just war, Defensio verae sententiae de magistratu politico. Palaeologus, alarmed at what he considered the political irresponsibility of the Racovians and the other pacifists in the Minor Church of Poland, with whom he was otherwise theologically sympathetic, strongly asserted the obligation of Christians to accept public office and to serve in the armed forces, because, said he, refusal to do so “always smooths the road to power for the godless.”5 This challenge aroused the pacifist majority of the Polish Brethren, who felt that a cardinal tenet of evangelical Christianity was being placed in jeopardy. Their reply was formulated by Gregory Paul, Adversus Jacobi Palaeologi de bello sententiam Responsio (Raków, 1572.) 6 It was not a closely reasoned argument, as was that of the cosmopolitan native of Chios, but an impetuous, emotional appeal to the example of the humble Christ. Gregory Paul’s caution in his Responsio is evidence of t he danger involved in expressing pacifist sentiments during the interregnum of 1572–1573. It was mostly at Rakow that the Brethren espoused the extreme or evangelically consistent view on war. Stanislas Budzi´n ski, writing from Cracow,7 criticized the Racovian position to the synod of L utomierz in 1573, saying that whenever they saw someone girt with a sword, they “forthwith condemned him and sent him to hell.” The aged Martin Krowicki, now at Piaski (near Lublin), on learning that the synod had appointed Czechowic to reply to Budzi´n ski, himself wrote to the latter, encouraging him to resist the fatuous pacifism of both Czechowic and Gregory Paul.8 Krowicki deplored Racovian social radicalism, which seemed to deny salvation to the rich and the ruling, and caricatured its view of God as only receiving “into his favor those who go in peasants’ clothing, ragged and foul in dress, or lousy sheepskins.” Krowicki demanded of members of the Minor Church more than indifferent obedience to the magistrates, and he argued for unequivocal acceptance of a ll conscientious bearers of c ivil authority as members of the Church.9

5

 Pirnat, “Palaeologus,” 84f.  Printed by Szczucki and Tazbir, Literatura ariariska, 33–58; analyzed in Kot, Socinianism, 56–60. 7  Kot, Socinianism, 61. 8  Ibid., Krowicki’s letter from his final parish, Piaski, 28 October 1573, was published by Budny in his O urze¸dzie miecza (Łosk, 1583), ed. Stanislas Kot (Warsaw, 1932). 9  Kot, Socinianism, 61f. summarizes Krowicki’s letter. 6

chapter 29.1 / 29.2 sectarianism & spiritualism in poland  1139 The principal theological blast against the Racovians came, however, from the man who had touched off the controversy. On 18 August 1573, the very day on which he received in Transylvania Gregory Paul’s Responsio, Jacob Palaeologus sat down to write a thorough refutation.10 He dealt with the fundamental question of t he magistrate’s right to use the sword and of the Christian’s right to go to court in litigation. He upheld the civil power, and condemned what he called the Racovians’ greater offense, their practice of e xcommunication, which deprived a m an of e ternal life. Palaeologus deplored what he considered the tendency of the Polish Brethren to isolate themselves from society. The arguments of t he self-styled scion of the vanished Emperors of the East, abetted by the pleading of the Lithuanian scholar Simon Budny, did not dissuade the Racovians.

2. The Pax Dissidentium, 1573 In addition to agitating the question of war and the role of the magistrate, not a few among the late king’s subjects had been looking apprehensively to the day when a royal successor might reactivate the old penalties for holding dissenting beliefs. News of thousands of French Protestants slain in the St. Bartholomew’s night massacre (August 1572) alarmed Polish Protestants of all confessions. They all agreed that no Diet should be convened to elect a new king until provision for their own safety could be secured. In January of 1573 the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies assembled jointly in Warsaw, and there inserted in the “confederation,”11 prepared by a mixed Protestant-Catholic committee and approved by almost all the senators, lay and clerical, an article to prevent in future any religiously incited persecution or civil strife: Since there is in our Republic no little disagreement on the subject of r eligion, in order to prevent any such hurtful strife from beginning among our people on this account as we plainly see in other realms, we mutually promise for ourselves and our successors forever, under the bond of our oath, faith, honor, and conscience, that we who differ with regard to religion (dissidentes de religione) will keep the peace with one another, and will not for a different faith or a change of churches shed blood nor punish one another 10

 Ad scriptum fratrum Racoviensium de bello et judiciis forensib us Responsio; discussed by Kot, Socinianism, 62–66. 11  Confederation is the name g iven to the comprehensive preliminary parliamentary basis of action, in this case with regard to the election of the king, agreed upon by the joint assembly at Warsaw, 28 January 1573. The literature on the election of Henr y of Valois is immense; but see most recently Mirosław Korolko and Janusz Tazbir, Konfederacja warszawska 1573 roku wielka karta polskiej tolerancji (Warsaw: PAX, 1980), with the text and two plates. In my Polish Brethren, Document 29 is the speech of Stanisław Lubieniecki of c. 1658, in which he rehearses the history of Pax Dissidentium; and the preface and notes to this document g ive all the literature to date; but see further my Lubieniecki, Plates 35–37.

1140  the radical reformation

chapter 29.1 / 29.2

by confiscation of property, infamy, imprisonment, or banishment, and will not in any way assist any magistrate or office in such an act.12 Accordingly, the new king, when he should be elected, would have to swear that he would “preserve and maintain peace and quiet among those that differ with regard to religion” and suffer none “to be influenced or oppressed by reason of his religion.”13 Opposition to this Pax Dissidentium was immediately expressed by Primate-Archbishop Jacob Ucha´n ski; and all the Catholic bishops withdrew their names but one,14 who made bold to go along with the greater number of nobles present, propter bonum pacis. In 1573 the term “dissidents” was clearly understood to apply to all Christian groups, including the Catholics.15 When Henry of Valois was elected king, he was accordingly required to sign the so-called Henrician Articles, which guaranteed the political liberty of the szlachta, the responsibility of the King to the Diet, and toleration among the dissidentes. These agreements were signed on Henry’s behalf by t he French envoy (Bishop John de Monluc of Valence). When Stanislas Hosius, bishop of Varmia, the Polish hierarchy’s most articulate defender of Catholicism,16 vehemently objected to the king-elect’s indirect acquiescence in toleration, it was the Lutheran noble John Zborowski who told Henry that he could not become king without personally reaffirming the agreements in Paris. Later in Cracow, when the bishops again advised Henry to leave the liberal article out of his coronation oath, it was the Calvinist grand marshal John Firlej who insisted that he include it. A few months after ascending the Polish throne, Henry of Valois abdicated in order to claim the throne of F rance, left vacant at the death of his brother, Charles IX. His elected successor as King of Poland, Stephen Báthory of Transylvania (Ch. 28; henceforth as in Polish: Batory) readily agreed to the Warsaw Confederation. Loyal to his Catholic faith, he steadfastly treated his new Protestant and radical subjects fairly, committed as he was to a great plan for the union of eastern Europe in preparation for a concerted attack upon the Ottoman Empire. During his reign, the opposition of t he Catholic bishops17 to the Pax Dissidentium and to Protestant-

12  Volumnia Legum (St. Petersburg, 1859–1860), 2:124; given in English in Wilbur, Socinianism, 363f. 13  Ibid., 135. 14  Bishop Francis Krasi´nski of Cracow. 15  By the end of the sixteenth century it came to mean only non-Roman Catholics. 16  See Williams, Lubieniecki, Plate 46. 17  Some fourteen debates between the Minor Chur ch and Catholic theolo gians (1579– 1620) are described by Stanislas Kot, “Dysputacje arjan polskich,” RwP 8 (1936): 341–70; and for these debates and more on Stephen’s apothegm for religious toleration, see Williams, Lubieniecki.

chapter 29.2 / 29.3 sectarianism & spiritualism in poland  1141 ism would be concentrated on the vagaries of the pacifistic, antitrinitarian Minor Church and with special reference to their Judaizing trend.

3. The Catechism of George Schomann, 1574 In light of the comings and goings between Raków and the Hutterite Slavkov, it is understandable that the image of t he Ark shortly became especially prominent also at Raków when, rejected by t he authoritarian Hutterites, the Racovians sought to create their own somewhat less exclusivistic Polish Bruderhof. This new conception of the Polish Anabaptists is documented in the Catechesis et confessio fidei of 1574, composed by George Schomann.18 The writing, which covers six major concerns of t he preSocinian Minor Church—God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; justification through faith; church discipline; prayer; believers’ baptism by immersion; and the Lord’s Supper—reflects the faith spiritually, and to some extent the structure of the Minor Church of the immersionist Polish Brethren in its pre-Socinian, moralistic, sectarian separatism: “our baptism, which corresponds to the Ark of Noah, not as a removal of d irt from the body but as an appeal to God for a clear conscience.” Schomann, for some time an antipedobaptist, had taken the momentous step for himself when he was rebaptized, 31 August 1572, at the age of forty. In the Catechesis he gives full expression, largely in biblical quotations, to the whole of the communitarian baptismal theology as accepted by himself, Gregory Paul, and Simon Ronemberg at Raków. “Flee from Babylonian faith,” it exhorts, “and Sodomistic life, having entered into the Ark of Noah; for the Lord will in a short time inflict punishment on that wicked and ungrateful world by the final deluge, not of water but of fire, which will devour all the impious and those unmindful of repentance.” The Catechesis prepares the faithful for the solemn sacramentum of immersional allegiance to Christ as King in heaven and founder of t heir remnant Church. The ecclesio-political thrust of the catechism for adults can be grasped in its polemical parallelism with liturgical kingship, which, for its part, harks back to the anointment of Saul and then David by Samuel. We have indeed chosen in this narrative of religio-political radicality to give attention to four instances of this venerable Christian liturgical attempt to place the centralized power of m onarchy sacramentally under Christ the King in Majesty, namely, the last papal coronation of the

18  The full title is Catechesis et confessio fidei, coetus per Poloniam congregati, in nomine Jesus Christi, domini nostri crucifixi et resuscitati (Cracow, 1574). The English critical edition of this writing is in Williams, Lubieniecki, Related Doc. 6. I have placed the catechism in its constitutional and liturgical setting in “Radicalization of the Reformed Church in Poland, 1547–1574: A Regional Variant of Sixteenth Century Anabaptism,” MQR 65 (1991): 54–68. The Catechesis would be later refuted by a father of the Heidelberg Confession,Breslau-born Zachary Ursinus (Ch. 31.2) in his posthumous Explicationum catecheticorum … absolutum opus (Neustadt, 1603).

1142  the radical reformation

chapter 29.3

Emperor, in Bologna, 1530 (Ch. 1.5), which seemed to lack sacramental inceration on either side for all its opulent pomp; the anointment of John Beukels of Leiden as Davidic king of Münster, 1534 (Ch. 13.4); the coronation of Edward VI in Westminster, 1547 (Ch. 30.3.b), where Cranmer in his address expressly disavows any sacramental efficacy in the sacring he has just solemnized as archbishop; and now here in Cracow, 1574, where the entire nobility of the Commonwealth, present at the primatial coronation in Wawel cathedral, believe that the ceremonial bath and the royal unction purify and ennoble the sacral might of the otherwise miscreant and foppish Henry, son of Catherine de’Medici, though he had but recently stood by, unprotesting, while the Huguenot leader, Admiral of France, Gaspar de Coligny, special guest of h is queen mother, had been hacked to pieces (1572). The place and date of publication of Shomann’s catechism are indeed noteworthy. In the very days of Catechesis’ publication, the episcopi of the realm, all of t he lay senators, and the mitered abbots participated in the liturgical unction of the elected king-designate, Henry of Valois, in the Cracow castle cathedral, 21 February 1574. In the ordo for the unction and coronation, Henry in tunic, gloves, alb, dalmatic, and pallium, was aspersed with holy water and addressed by P rimate Jacob Ucha´n ski thus: “O God the instructor of t he humble, thou who dost console us by t he vivid illustration of the Holy Spirit, extend over this thy servant Henry the grace that by him we may sense thine advent present in our mids.” In this ordo of liturgical kingship, going back by way of the (Angevin) King Henry the Hungarian (1270–82) to the royal ordo of the Frankish kings, the interrexprimate was calling upon the divine presence in the chrismation of t he king-elect. And all present in the cathedral would have had the collective memory of how the elected founder of the dynasty, now being superseded, Ladislas Jagiełło (wedded to Jadwiga, daughter of L ouis the Hungarian) first submitted to the rite of adult baptism in St. Andrew (Franciscan) cathedral 15 February 1386, in order to qualify for liturgical anointment as royal christus in the personal union of the but recently pagan grand duke and the Catholic kingdom of Poland.19 It is quite plausible that as Ucha´n ski was intoning the coronation liturgy at the cathedral, just two blocks down the road, at the house of Alexis Rodecki, which was located near the Grodzka gate, the main entrance to Cracow from the south, the pages of S chomann’s Catechesis were being

19  Although most of the ethnic Lithuanian nob les were still pagan, their Ruthenian sub jects were under the metr opolitans of Lithuania or Galicia (Halicz), each directly under the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. For the chr istening of Ladislas and his pagan thanes with him, see most recently Jadwiga Krzyzaniakowa and Jerzy Ochma´nski, Wladyslaw II Jagiełło (Wrocław: Ossolineum, 1990), esp. 91. He was liturgically anointed King on a Sunday, 4 March 1386; ibid., 92.

chapter 29.3

sectarianism & spiritualism in poland  1143

printed, in which allegiance was being sworn, as it were through believers’ immersion, to Christ in Majesty beyond and above the realms of Poland and all Christendom. One must read this Catechesis in the context of a dramatic and still parlous constitutional transition of the Commonwealth, contrasting its Christology with that of the royal epiphany of Christ in majesty in the cathedral. The replete reference to baptism as a dying and rising with Christ, as both an immersio and an emersio, cannot have been composed in Latin by our sectarian Restorationist episcopus without his sensing, however vaguely, a parallel with the Latin collect noted above in the ordo of liturgical coronation. Having had himself earlier served as the tutor of the sons of courtiers and palace functionaries, Schomann could well have been aware that some of the phrases evoked recent memory (or anticipation) of t he coronation. There had been the long-delayed and elaborate obsequies from the late king (who died in Knyszyn, 7 July 1572) in the castle cathedral, 4–7 February 1574. Only after the royal Requiem Mass could then follow the coronation of Henry the liturgical act whereby Church and Commonwealth celebrated the dying and rising of royal power and hence the salus populi: the king is dead (finally buried with due solemnity), long live the (duly elected and consecrated) king! The populus, of course, meant the szlachta-electorate, not their serfs. The Catechesis, which would serve as the model for the famous Racovian Catechism in Polish of 1605 and which would embody much of the new teaching of F austus Socinus, was designed by S chomann, and perhaps Gregory Paul with him, both as an apologetic to correct the prejudices against “the little and afflicted company of t hose in Poland” who were “known by the Anabaptist name which Satan has sought in his wiles to make disreputable and hated,” and as a c atechism for young catechumens with brief questions and responses almost entirely made up of biblical quotations. Consequently, this writing is an invaluable witness to the life and mood of the Minor Church just before it entered upon its Evangelical Rationalist phase under the teaching of S ocinus, that is, before it would become partly Socinian. A prominent structural principle in the organization of the Catechesis is the doctrine of the threefold office of Christ as Prophet, King, and Priest— a classification which, though earlier found, for example, in Eusebius of Caesarea, was revived in the Reformation era primarily by Erasmus (Ch. 1.3.a), by Bucer and Franck (Ch. 10.2.b, 10.3.a), by Osiander (Ch. 11.3.b), by Calvin (Ch. 23.5), by Faustus Socinus even before his departure from Basel (Ch. 24.4), and by Laski (Ch. 25.2.b). Hence its prominence in both Schomann’s Catechesis and the later Racovian catechisms must be seen as preeminently an Erasmian-Laskian legacy to the Minor Church. John Łaski had first given the prominence to the triplex munus Christi in the Confes-

1144  the radical reformation

chapter 29.3

sio Fidei adopted by t he Reformed synod of P i´nczów in 1558 (Ch. 25.2), which the Major Reformed displaced with their adoption of the II Helvetic Confession in 1569. Following the schism of 1563 and the emergence of the Minor Church, the Polish Brethren retained by Apostolicum the Laskian emphasis on the threefold office of Christ. The Brethren, hence, thought of t hemselves as preservers of t he thought and polity of Poland’s foremost and only internationally known reformer, John Łaski. Schomann’s Catechesis described Jesus Christ as highest prophet on the basis of such texts as: John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Verbum”; Matt. 13:8, “For only one is your magister”; Rev. 19:11f., “And I saw a white horse and the name of him who sat thereon is called the sermo Dei”; and Heb. 1:1, “God who aforetime spoke through the prophets in our times has spoken with us by his Son.” It was the conviction of the early Racovians as expressed by Schomann that true Christians imitate Christ as Prophet, Priest, and King in a w ay that involves suffering: He “having suffered for us left us an example” that Christians might become “an elect race, kings and priests” (1 Pet. 2:9). The Holy Spirit in the Catechesis is very pervasive, but, as with Servetus, as a power (virtus) or, as with Hilary of Poitiers, a donum rather than as a person, as “the spirit of truth,” a divine “gift,” “the finger of God,” the divine “energy,” as “fire” and “water.” There can be no adoration of the Spirit, since the Spirit rests in the believers themselves and the disciplined community, but for that reason is closely connected with, indeed, instrumental in, the effectiveness of the whole of Schomann’s baptismal theology. Baptism, reminding one of the sacrament as defined by Servetus (Ch. 11.1.e), is described as the immersion in water and the emersion of a person who believes the Gospel and exercises repentance in the name of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit, or in the name of Jesus Christ, whereby he publicly professes that by the grace of God the Father he has been washed in the blood of Christ by the aid of the Holy Spirit from all his sins: so that being ingrafted into the body of Christ he may mortify the old Adam and be transformed into the celestial Adam in the firm assurance of eternal life after the resurrection. 20 In a s omewhat later formulation of t he baptismal theology of t he Minor Church, baptism is closely related to Christ in his role as re-creator. Though Christ in this immersionist Unitarian theology is not thought of as preexistent and, as Logos, the creator of t he world, he is the author of 20  Williams, Lubieniecki, Related Doc. 7, article 8 adduces the precedent of both Matt. 28:29 and Acts 2:38 and parallels for alternate baptismal formulas.

chapter 29.3

sectarianism & spiritualism in poland  1145

the new creation of baptismal regeneration. The plunge into the waters of redemption is stressed: Where there is no immersion there is no true external baptism (Taufe). Taufe is Old G erman and means the same as teufen, “dip in.” Ask … the Mennonites about it who call both doopen in their language. Moreover, where you don’t dip or immerse in the water, you have no understanding of baptizing into the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Look also to Scriptures where it is the same. The word baptizare, which in Greek is baptizein, is in Latin immergere, in German eindauchen, verschwemmen. From this it comes about that Paul [1 Cor. 10:1] can compare baptismal immersion with [passage through] the Red Sea [1 Cor. 12]; and Peter [1 Pet. 3:21] with the flood. And this immersion takes place publicly with us in water course or rivers (where this is possible) with public confession of sins and forgiveness.21 At Raków public immersion was so prominent that long after the Racovians had been banished their principal theological monument in the dilapidated colony would be the large baptismal trench or pit (perhaps intentionally similar to an open grave) and their cemetery mound without markers.22 As to the afterlife, we have already observed that the Racovians, like the Italian Anabaptists at the synod of Venice (Ch. 22.2.d) adhered to the doctrine of psychopannychism. Gregory Paul wrote of this subject as early as 1568 in “Of the True Death.”23 As to the second sacrament or ordinance of t he reconstituted Racovian community and its associated Minor Church synod, the Lord’s Supper appears to have had a s omewhat more than sacramentarian commemorative significance. The Holy Spirit as donum and virtus is essential to its observance: It is sacred action instituted by C hrist the Lord in which the proven disciples of Christ, sitting down in sacred assembly to the table of t he Lord, give thanks from the heart to God the Father for his benefits in Christ, and breaking the bread eat, and from the cup of the Lord drink, in devout recollection of the body of Christ 21  This is a descr iption of baptism among the Dutch-Ger man-Polish antitrinitarian Anabaptists in comm union with the Raco vians as descr ibed by Christopher Ostorodt, immersed in Chmielnik in 1584. His letter is addr essed to the Strassb urg Anabaptists, ed. by Theodor Wotschke, ARC 14 (1915): 145–47. 22  Schicksale der polnischen Dissiden/etl (Königsberg, 1768), 2: 138. 23  O prawdziwej ´smierci, zmartwychwstaniu (Nie´swiez, 1568), ed. Konrad Górski and W. Kuraskiewicz (Wrocław: Ossolineum, 1954). See also on Laelius and Faustus Socin us: Lech Szczucki, “Zeschatologii Braci polskich,” Archiwum Historii Filozofii i My´sli Społecznej 1 (1957): 5–41.

1146  the radical reformation

chapter 29.3

the Lord given for us unto death and of his blood shed in remission of our sins, stirring up one another to constant suffering under the cross and to sincere brotherly love. 24 As to how Christ is present, though in heaven, the answer is through the Holy Spirit, non carnaliter, sed spiritu suo sancto (cf. John 14:17, 26). From another somewhat later source, the extraordinary frequency of the observation of the Supper among certain Polish Brethren is described thus: The Lord’s Supper we attend often and, indeed, where possible every day. … We seek the body and blood of t he Lord [however] not in the bread and wine, but rather the bread and wine in the body and blood of t he Lord, that is, in his congregation [2 Cor. 10:16], although we do not consider the bread and wine and the table of the Lord like other bread and wine, but as the Lord’s bread and wine and the Lord’s table, that is, consecrated or blessed, at which it is not fitting that an unclean person (as also no uncircumcised person could eat of the Paschal lamb) should sit and eat with the others, from which indeed not only the unimmersed but also the immersed, if they have soiled themselves by sin, are to be withheld.25 The writer goes on to discuss the Unitarian Anabaptist Supper of the Polish Brethren as a pascha, that is, a passing over or passing through; and he seems to be thinking of the Unitarian commemoration as modeled on contemporary Jewish usage of the evocation of redemption from bondage to Egypt in the formalized paschal query of the Jewish child addressed to his parents at the Passover table. The ban in the Catechesis of 1574 is so to speak, as with all Germanic Anabaptists, the sacrament of discipline in love. It is “the frequent reminder for individuals of their duty and the admonition of such as sin against God or their neighbor, first privately, then also publicly before the whole assembly; and finally, the rejection of the pertinacious from the communion of saints, that so being ashamed, they may repent, or if they will not, may be damned eternally.”26 The moral discipline of the Polish-speaking Anabaptists was such that they eschewed superfluity of personal possessions. They wore a simple gray garb and, intentionally, poor clothing. The Catechesis is not a socially or theologically radical manifesto. In fact, one gains the impression that it was written to combat the radical theology of t he Racovians, 1569–1572 (Ch. 27.3). In a w ay, then, the 24

 Williams, Lubieniecki, Related Doc. 7, article 6.  Christopher Ostorodt of Danzig to the Strassburg Anabaptists, ed. Wotschke. 26  Williams, Lubieniecki, Related Doc. 7, article 3. 25

chapter 29.3 / 29.4 sectarianism & spiritualism in poland  1147 Catechesis represents the recovery of many conservative teachings of the PolishLithuanian Brethren (and Sisters) which were abandoned by the first Spiritdriven Racovians. Consequently, Schomann’s Catechesis advocates a return to the model of t he Old Testament and “natural” hierarchies of r uler over subjects, of lords over servants, of men over women, and of parents over children. The writing makes it clear that such a state of things was ordained by God, and should be preserved by those who fear and follow God. So, in the section dealing with church discipline, Schomann insists on following the Scriptures and applying a three-step progression of dealing with those who lapse into sin within the Ark: (1) a warning in the company of t wo or three; (2) a lesser ban of provisional exclusion from community; and (3) a greater ban of expulsion into the evil world. It is quite certain that Schomann and the other pre-Socinians regarded the Catechesis as the final step in the process of restoration of the teaching and discipline of the primitive apostolic community. The early Polish Brethren believed that, unlike the Münsterites, they had successfully restrained their sociopolitical and theological radicalism, which was temporarily advo­ cated by their brethren and sisters in the early Raków commune and which would re-emerge in the late 1570s in Lublin, and which set out to change the evils of the secular world through prayers and even through the direct participation in the governance of the society. After all, the pre-Socinian Minor Church of the Polish-Lithuanian Brethren (and Sisters) was made up of ecclesiastical separatists, at once royalists and loyalists. Such was the now less communitarian, but still immersionist, antiNicene Anabaptism in the most radical centers of the Minor Church, Cracow, Raków, and Lublin. Under the indifferent reign of Henry of Valois (1574), negation of the traditional formulation of the triune Godhead had found positive expression in the vigorous and purportedly apostolic formulation of the threefold office of Jesus Christ as solely and wholly human, the adoptive Son of God and only Lord of the disciplined apostolic separatists. Exclusive in their claims, though not so intolerant as the communitarian Anabaptists of Moravia, the neo-Racovians, stressing the importance of dying to the world in immersion and rising with Christ in faith, called themselves chrystyjanie (Latin: christiani) and called all other Christians in Poland disparagingly chrze´scijanie, that is, the christened (from chrzest; N Gonesius, Ch. 25.4) as distinguished from themselves with their true apostolic baptism by immersion on confession of faith.

4. The Controversy Over The Adoration Of Christ: Budny’s Radical Theology The inner life of t he now Unitarian, antipedobaptist churches in Little Poland and particularly in Lithuania was being disturbed by the Judaizing tendencies of c ertain leaders in contact with advanced radical thought

1148  the radical reformation

chapter 29.4

among the Transylvanian Unitarians. Like Francis Dávid, the Lithuanian Unitarians questioned the propriety of i nvoking Christ in prayer and became thus nonadorants (of Christ), reserving for God the Father the worship of his holy name. In Lithuania an endemic proselytizing spirit in Judaism had for a number of y ears reinforced, perhaps by c ontagion, a J udaizing thrust within Calvinism. Simon Budny, chief spokesman for this thrust, gave the Christocentric leaders of the Minor Church in Little Poland, particularly in Lublin, and elsewhere cause to fear that they would be so identified as Jews that they would henceforth lose the benefits of the Pax dissidentium and thereby begin the breaching of the Protestant front. The innovation was the nonadorancy of Christ as, from the consequent Unitarian position, creature, uniquely worthy, but not to be worshiped as God or alongside God the Father. Controversy within the Antitrinitarian Minor Church of the federated synods of Poland and Lithuania over nonadorantism was conducted in fear lest it adversely affect their constitutional status and their mission in the Commonwealth and would eventuate in a schism—in effect, two churches or brotherhoods. The nonadorant or fully Unitarian, nonpacifistic Brethren, mostly in Lithuania, would, in the process of regional and theological differentiation often under the patronage of princes of much vaster responsibilities in the Commonwealth than the patron gentry in Little Poland, become very much like the Transylvanian Unitarians under Francis Dávid.27 The pacifistic and more Christocentric (adorant) Polish Brethren of Raków and Lublin, up until the arrival of Faustus Socinus (Ch. 29.8), would remain close to the pacifist pattern of the Germanic Anabaptists. To further the cause of n onadorantism, Budny produced in 1574 a critical edition of the New Testament, from which he eliminated such passages as appeared to him to be later interpolations made to strengthen a philosophical doctrine for the Trinity. 28 Opposing not only Protestants and Catholics, but also the remaining Tritheists and Ditheists (like the Farnovians) within, or synodally separate from, the Minor Church of Lithuania and especially of Little Poland, Budny rejected alike the preexistence of the Word, the divinity of C hrist, and the virginity of h is Mother. To the charges of G onesius, Czechowic, and Stanislas Farnowski (all now of Little Poland) that he had crossed the line into Judaism, Budny replied by enumerating his Unitarian convictions in De principalibus fidei christiatnae

27  Massimo Firpo, Antitrinitari nell’Europa or ientale del 500 Nuovi testi di Szymon Budn y, Niccolò Paruta e Iacopo P alelogo (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1977), critically edits two texts of Budny on this Unitarian position. 28  Kot, “La Reforme,” 225.

chapter 29.4

sectarianism & spiritualism in poland  1149

articulis (Łosk, 1576), 29 vigorously defending, as Francis David had, his nonadorantism of Christ. The Articles presented 130 proofs from the Scriptures which contradicted the ante-Nicene Fathers, notably Origen, in their “evil contention and teaching concerning Christ’s preexistence.” Budny argued that Christ had not existed from eternity and that he was not divine by nature; but rather a natural son of Joseph and Mary and, consequently, that he should not be adored with God his heavenly Father. Budny also praised Servetus and Gentile for the progress they had made, but observed that they could not be expected to grasp the whole truth at once. 30 Budny had already joined Palaeologus, as we observed (Ch. 29.1), in vindicating the right of a C hristian to hold office, to employ the sword in the fulfillment of justice, to secure property, to defend oneself, and to engage in defensive warfare. Among his other principalia fidei, Budny also revealed his attitude on the controversial question of p sychopannychism (Chs. 1.6.c, 5.4, 23.1). This issue had perhaps first been raised for the Poles by Laelius Socinus, who left in his papers a w ork De resurrectione, which, following Camillo Renato (Ch. 22.1), attempted to replace the V L ateran teaching of t he natural immortality of the soul. 31 Gregory Paul had followed Laelius and, since 1568, had taught that the soul, like the body, is mortal, awaiting the resurrection. Budny expressly espoused in De principalibus, the extreme position, thnetopsychism, stating that the soul is nothing more than the life of the body and has no independent existence. 32 He found some followers among the Belorussian gentry. 33 In 1576, Budny printed his translation of the Huguenot Francis Hotman’s description of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, originally prepared for the Poles as a warning against electing Henry of Valois as their king. In 1576, Budny, under pressure from the leadership of t he Minor Church in Lublin, who sent emissaries, submitted to rebaptism. However, like the Anabaptist Balthasar Hubmaier at Waldshut (Ch. 6.3) and at Nicolsbug (Ch. 9.2.a), Budny still refused so to withdraw the Christian believer from the world as to sanction the neglect of his duty in respect to the whole of s ociety. He also argued from the Bible that Jesus esteemed poverty and the poor and would not have insisted on social equality between lord and serf but would have been content to preach magna29

 O przedniejszych wiary Chrystyja´nskiej artykulech (Łosk, 1576); partially printed in Szczucki and Tazbir, eds., Literatura aria´nska, 317–36; critically edited by Maria Maciejowska, Szczucki, and Zadzisław Zawadzki, Biblioteka Pisarzy Reformacyjnych 16 (Warsaw/Łódz: PWN, 1989). 30  Kot, “Szymon Budny,” 91. 31  Opere, ed. Rotondo, doc. 1. 32  Kot, Szymon Budny, 94. 33  Ibid., 95; there is a r ecord that Sig ismund III dismissed the nob leman Stephen Łowan from his post of assessor in Mozyr for holding that there is no abiding soul in man.

1150  the radical reformation

chapter 29.4 / 29.5

nimity to the one and resignation to the other. The learned, zealous, and enterprising Unitarian Reformed divine, a b elated Anabaptist, from his base in Lithuania, prevented the Minor Church in Little Poland from completely closing off the discussion of the full range of sociopolitical issues. The charge that Simon Budny was a neo-Israelite was not unfounded. Moreover, in addition to espousing an Ebionite Christology, Budny placed his Unitarian Christianity in the context of interfaith ecumenicity. In this he followed Palaeologus in promoting the universalistic idea of a s ort of pan-Semitic redemptive action which amalgamated race and creed in a process of justification. 34 To the latter he gave a rather specialized definition (Ch.29.5). Budny’s religious, humanistic, and social dynamism engendered important intellectual and spiritual currents in Lithuania. He brought Lithuanian and Ruthenian intellectuals into contact with the thought of t he West. It is significant that the Counter-Reform, when it later gained control of his Lithuanian printing establishments after the sons of t he Protestants Radziwiłł and Kiszka were reconverted to Romanism, followed Budny’s example by bringing out a great number of books and pamphlets in Polish, Lithuanian, and Ruthenian, as well as in Latin. Budny’s memory would long persist in these parts, held in odium by Catholics, the Orthodox, and Calvinist Protestants alike, all of whom recognized the threat of his eccentric combination of philological talent with religious, social, and cultural reform. 35

5. The Interpretation and Toleration of Non-Christian Religions Against Martin Czechowic and Gregory Paul, both Budny and Palaeologus were concerned to establish a biblical basis, not only for the maintenance of social and international peace and justice, but also for a universalistic or interfaith toleration. Palaeologus, the much-traveled and speculative former Dominican friar, felt about him not only the surge of r adical reform in Latin Christendom but also the stirrings of n ew energies in Judaism, Orthodoxy, and Islam. Living and thinking on the frontier and at the crossroads of s everal religions, Palaeologus resolved to demonstrate how Lithuanian and Transylvanian Unitarianism, on becoming a b ridge from Christianity, could discharge a unifying or at least an irenic role in relation to both Judaism and Islam. He had produced an interesting tract on this 34  This idea of Budn y and P alaeologus must not be confused with the older J udaizing movement that began in the Ruthenian lands of the Grand Duchy after 1470 and that persisted in Russia well into the sixteenth century. These people had gone much farther than Budny ever would, having entirely rejected the New Testament and based their religion on the Decalogue. Budny expressly rejected any connection with them, although it is very likely that their ideas prepared the ground for his own semi-Judaizing movement. 35  For a picture of Budny, see Williams, Lubiwiecki, Plate 15.

chapter 29.5

sectarianism & spiritualism in poland  1151

subject in Cracow as early as 1572, De tribus gentibus. Herein he unfolded his concept of salvation and his peculiar idea of justification, and ended with an impassioned plea for religious tolerance. His idea of salvation (salus) is best translated as “blessedness.” For the infant, it consists in food and warmth; for the natural man, in possessions and power; for the noble pagan, in perfection of the soul. All these are but fragmentary aspects of t he highest salus, known only through revelation. Revelation was given only to the Jews, as the people of God. Therefore, in order to be justified, one must belong to one of the three extant branches of the People of God: either to the Jews by race, or to the Christians, or to the “Christian Turks.” His idea of membership in these groups is curious. The Jews are all blood descendants of Abraham. Through inheritance, they have a justice per fidem imputata which, however, is no longer sufficient for salvation, for they must also believe in Jesus as the Messiah. Thus, the “Jews” are divided into the Mosaic Jews, who still reject Jesus, and those who have accepted Jesus, namely, the Christians of “ Jewish” race, specifically “the Coptic and the Syrian Christians.” The second group, the “Christians,” thus include only non-Semitic Gentile Christians, as well as all their descendants; for justice per fidem imputata is inherited by a ll children of baptized Christians, just as it is inherited among Jews. Among this second people are all uncircumcised Christians, i.e., the Romanists, the Eastern Orthodox, the Armenians, and the Protestants. The offspring alike of baptized Christian converts and of (circumcised) Jews have no need of being baptized. Baptism or circumcision is an ordinance reserved solely for converts from paganism. In this group, the “Christian Turks,” by w hom Palaeologus means all Muslims, are Christians because they occupy the lands and therefore are descendants (by inevitable racial intermixture) of former Christians! Their rite of circumcision does not make them racially Jews, because they practice it (he says wrongly) for reason of hygiene, not of religion. 36 As to their faith, they have a fides promissionis, a trust in the promise of God, although they do not have a fides narration is, faith in the narrative of the Bible. Nor, indeed, do many Christians, he adds, since they know little about the Bible. Muslims, at least, acknowledge the prophetic office of Jesus Christ and are to this extent Christians. Thus, in general, “Jewish,” Gentile, and “Turkish” Christians are on an equal plane and should treat each other accordingly. The tract ends with a m oving call for universal religious toleration, based on both natural theology and the Scriptures. Palaeologus pushed on to Transylvanian in January 1573, where, as we saw (Ch. 28.3), he worked for a while in Kolozsvár, until he was driven out by t he hostility of Bi andrata, the meagerness of h is stipend, and the 36  Actually, the Muslims in this simply follo w “the Sunnah of the Pr ophet” in imitation, not for hygiene.

1152  the radical reformation

chapter 29.5

plague. Toward the end of 1574, he became the guest of the noble family of the Gerendi in Heltau. While in Heltau, Palaeologus wrote his most interesting and colorful work, the Disputatio scholastica, an allegory that begins by d escribing the indignation of J esus, the four-and-twenty elders, and all the angels and archangels at the attempts of t he Papists and the Protestants to prove his divinity, attempts which eventuate in a great synod, for which prominent contemporary, medieval, and ancient teachers are summoned by t he new Josiah (the Unitarian king, John II Sigismund of Transylvania) to discuss the problem of ecumenicity at a special city built for the purpose ( Janopolis). The account of the attempted cooperation between famous Romanists and leading Protestants against the Antitrinitarians, the vain arguments and squabbles among the orthodox themselves, is quite humorous in its imagined disorder. Athanasius, for example, has to set Calvin right on the Athanasian Creed; and, when Aquinas attempts to conciliate and Scotus confuses the discussion on essentia and natura, it is Francis Dávid, of all persons, who helps the scholastics straighten out their terms! This work was never printed, and the available manuscripts are incomplete. 37 Another very interesting work of P alaeologus, the Catechesis Christiana (1574), involved the conversion of a J ew and a Mexican Indian in an extended argument among a P apist, a L utheran, and a C alvinist, whose mutual strife resulted in their defeat by the Unitarian. 38 In two other works of about this period, De providentia and De peccato originali (1573), Palaeologus took issue with Calvin, denied predestination, and insisted that divine providence does not inhibit human freedom. Sin is not an act, but an intention (concupiscentia), the coveting of s omething which according to the law of G od is not to be desired. Palaeologus distinguished between the sin of Adam and the sin of Eve, but in both cases denied that their culpability could be inherited, since children inherit only the nature of Adam and Eve, and it was not the nature which sinned, but two persons. Moreover, he argued in another tract, An omnes ab uno Adamo descenderint, that Adam and Eve were not the progenitors of all the people God created from the dust of the earth, and, in any event, not all of humankind could have inherited their sin. Palaeologus’ views on sin, the sword, and salvation were shared, as we have noted, by Budny, who printed several of his works in Lithuania, all in 1580. Palaeologus came again to live in Poland, after 1575, but withdrew

37

 Pirnat, “Palaeologus,” 120.  The extensive dialogue in thr ee hundred MS folios, preserved by Bishop Matthe w Thoroczkai, intended as a compend of Antitrinitarian theology, is edited by R˚užena Dostálová, Catechesis Christiana dierum duodecim, Biblioteka Pisarzy Refor macyjnych 8 (Warsaw: PWN, 1971). 38

chapter 29.5 / 29.6 sectarianism & spiritualism in poland  1153 from religious affairs. He subsequently moved to Moravia and was arrested by the bishop of Olomouc. With the arrest of P alaeologus in 1581 and his subsequent trial and execution in Rome in 1585 as a renegade Dominican and heretic, we find occasion to interrupt our narrative and mention the closing careers of a number of other religious refugees who played such a notable role in the Radical Reformation in both Poland and Transylvania.

6. Italian Emigr´es in Switzerland and the East Before proceeding to a delineation of Faustus Socinus of Siena, Florence, and Basel (Ch. 24.4) in his role of t ransforming the Polish immersionist, anti-Nicene Minor Church into the “Socinian” movement, we take account in a k ind of e pilogue of s everal of t he other radical Evangelical Rationalists of the Italian diaspora, who, exiled from Poland by the decree of Parczów back in 1564, have by t hen not ended or will soon end their lives in varying degrees of obscurity and frustration. Since their impress, even as exiles, shaped the contours of a later international Socinianism, we do well at this juncture to speak briefly of their closing careers. George Negri, pastor of the Italian congregation at Pi´nczów, had originally accompanied Stancaro around 1550 to Hungary, and then to Poland, and had been received by the Pinczovians in 1557, and appointed in 1558 private chaplain to Prosper Provana. George Negri also resided for some time at Radziwiłł’s court at Vilna. In 1563, his father, Francis Negri (Ch. 22.1), came to visit him. Francis preached to the Italian congregation at Pi´nczów, made the friendship of Lismanino, and even contributed a prefatory poem, Ad lectorem, for Lismanino’s Brevis Explicatio doctrillae de sallctissima Trinitate (1565), in which Lismanino attacked his fully Antitrinitarian successors in the Minor Church. 39 Negri commended Lismanino’s effort to disentangle true believers from heretical snares.40 Francis Negri was on the point of returning to his family in Chiavenna when death claimed him in May 1564, at Cracow, as he was readying himself for an appearance before the reformers of Z urich and Geneva to defend Lismanino’s book on the Trinity. George Negri was prevented from serving as secretary at the decisive colloquy of Piotrków in 1565 because, though long in Poland, he was technically under the decree of Parczów. 39  Among the many efforts of Lismanino to restate the doctrine of the Trinity, we may mention his discussions preserved in the protocol of the synod of Włodzisław, 11 September 1561; Sipayłło, Akta, 2:120–22; his letter to John Wolph on the subject, Cracow 28 December 1561; Wotschke, Briefwechsel, no. 246; and his De Trinitate, in which he professed to have defended the intention of Nicaea to the end. 40  Guiseppe Zonta, “Francesco Negri l’eretico e la sua tragedia ‘Il libero arbitrio,’” Giornale Storico 67 (1916): 322. John Schwindt is currently preparing a critical edition of Il Tragedia. For more recent study on the impact of Italian radicals on the early P olish Brethren, see Jarmola, “Origin and Development of Believers’ Baptism,” appendix D.

1154  the radical reformation

chapter 29.6

Bernardine Ochino (Ch. 24.2.e), the aged ex-Capuchin general, and his motherless young children were stricken by the plague and nursed at the home of Jerome Filipowski in Pi´nczów. Ochino gradually recovered, but two sons and a daughter died. Near Christmastide, Ochino traveled wearily to Moravia with the one remaining child, finding his last home with Nicholas Paruta at Slavkov. Looking back over his life, he said: “I had much to endure, but this no apostle and disciple of Christ is spared. However, that I was enabled to endure all is proof that the Lord manifested his power in me.” Three weeks later he died, 1564. Paruta, a nobleman of Lucca and Venice, possibly related to the historian of Venice, Paolo Paruta,41 had joined the Anabaptists at Venice (Ch. 22.2), had left for Geneva, and after visiting Poland, had settled near a Hutterite colony in Moravia. He had a large library of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin books. Here he at long range assisted Biandrata in preparing a c atechism for Transylvanians. We have already taken note of the twenty theses on the Trinity sent by Paruta to the synod of Rogów in Poland (Ch. 25.3). Paruta had passed from inchoate Antitrinitarianism to the ancient heresy of Paul of Samosata. He finally denied entirely the deity of the Holy Spirit, as Servetus had, speaking of that virtú d’Iddio which enlightens and inspires the heart to believe the promise. Paruta wrote a lost De uno vero Deo (Ch. 15.5) which survives partly in approving citations in Chizzuk emunah 42 of the Karaite Isaac of Trakai (d. 1594), a Lithuanian town just ten miles to the west of Vilna. Paruta also, in modification appropriate to his culture, espoused a kind of communism akin to that of the neighboring Hutterites. Paruta imprudently returned to Venice, and was arrested and executed in 1569. It was the last year of the Council of Trent that John Valentine Gentile had come to Poland (Ch. 24.3.b), hoping, in his narrow escape from Geneva, to find a community that would endorse his ditheistic solution to the problem of Christ’s divine mediatorship. When Cracow also proved to be unsafe, Gentile removed to Pinczów; but with the Parczów edict of 1564 he was forced to flee, first to Moravia, thence to Vienna, and finally back to Savoy, thinking perhaps of lodging with Gribaldi (who, however, had, in the meantime, succumbed to the plague).

41  The father of Nicholas was Giovanni Giacomo, a rich citizen of Venice and a Catholic, according to the MS deposition of Antonio Varotto (Barotto), who had visited Nicholas and Ochino in Moravia. The deposition is quoted in ample excer pts by Bainton, Ochino, 159f. See more fully, Firpo, “Nicolò Paruta” in Antitrinitari, 186–271. 42  This work in Hebrew is accessible in German translation, ed. D. Deutsch (Breslau, 1873), in English as Faith Strengthened, tr. Moses Moccatta (New York: Hermon, 1970). But, as remarks Jerome Friedman, “The Reformation and Jewish Anti-Christian Polemics,” BHR 41 (1979): 85–97: “Like other standard Jewish confessional editions of this classic polemic , all f avorable references to Christians or radical Christianity have been deleted.”

chapter 29.6

sectarianism & spiritualism in poland  1155

Gentile now approached the bailiff at Gex, announcing that he would willingly debate three theses on God and Christ with the Protestant divines, the loser to suffer the death penalty! The governor promptly jailed Gentile (1566) and asked for instructions from Bern, where it was decided to try him for heresy, especially for seven errors regarding the Trinity and for reproaching the Reformed Churches of Switzerland. For about a month the ministers argued with Gentile, but this time he steadfastly refused to change his beliefs. At length, despairing of ever convincing him, the council ordered his death by the sword. In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Stanislas Wi´sniowski in his Demonstratio falsationis (1572) vigorously defended the “second Servetus” in a well-organized plea for religious toleration directed to the Swiss.43 The Florentine Hebraist and Reformed Eucharistic theologian, Peter Martyr Vermigli, a major figure in England and for many in Poland who sought scriptural and patristic counsel respecting the Trinity in the Stancaro controversy, died in Zurich in 1562.44 Peter Paul Vergerio, who had sought to organize a royal Polish Lutheran Church (Ch. 25.2.a), died in Tubingen in 1565. Francis Lismanino, before the definitive schism, had by reason of the edict against foreign heretics of Parczów, sought refuge at the court of Duke Albert of Königsberg. A poignant figure, confessor to a queen, tutor to a prince, professor in the Jagiellonian University, Lismanino, as an alien though he had been brought from Corfù as a boy, had to leave under the edict against foreign heretics, still professing to uphold the received doctrine of the Trinity, Brevis explicatio de trinitate (Königsberg, 1565).45 In 1566 he drowned in a well during an epileptic seizure. His theological enemy Dr. Francis Stancaro, with his fellow Stancarians, was, without much grace on either side, reconciled to the Major Reformed Church in connection with the 1570 Consensus of Sandomierz. Stancaro died four years thereafter, in 1574, at the home of his noble patron at Stopnica, not far south of Pi´nczów, where, a quarter of a century before he had organized the first Reformed synod of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Ch. 25.1.a) Among Stancaro’s most determined foes during the synodal debates on the Trinity between 1562 and 1564 had been John Paul Alciati della Motta, sometime elder of t he Italian congregation in Geneva. During his brief Polish sojourn, Alciati is reported to have escaped manhandling by some (Catholic) students of t he University of C racow when he quick-wittedly 43  Printed in par t in Szczucki and Tazbir, Lileratura aria´nska, 423–38; Wi´sniowski’s life is given briefly, ibid., 651–53. 44  Marvin W. Anderson, “Vista Tigurina: Peter Martyr and European Reform (1556–1562),” MQR 83 (1990): 181–206, esp 184–206. 45  See above, n. 39.

1156  the radical reformation

chapter 29.6

but deceptively described his theology as not “Arian” but “Marian.” He believed, he told the students, in Jesus Christ, Son of the living God and of Mary.46 When non-Catholic aliens were expelled in 1564, Alciati made his way to Moravia. From there he wrote still Ditheist Gregory Paul, denying the preexistence of Christ. From Austerlitz, Alciati made his way to Danzig and practiced medicine there, dying sometime after 1573.47 George Biandrata, lay elder and influential theologian of the Reformed Church in Poland (1558–59; 1560–63), and, in Transylvania, court mentor (1563–79), would, after the death of F rancis Dávid, as conservative reorganizer of the Unitarian Church in Transylvania, become increasingly isolated from both the Hungarian Unitarians and the Polish pre-Socinians notwithstanding his highly motivating vision of a congeries of pedobaptist, Christocentric, Unitarian Reformed synods interconnected through the three eastern royal realms of H ungary-Transylvania, Bohemia-Moravia, and Poland and the related grand duchy: from Vilna, through Brno, to Alba Iulia, supported by educated noblemen, living in mutual toleration alongside the Catholic, Lutheran, and Eastern Orthodox Churches. It was partly this vision that motivated him to return briefly to Poland for the election diet and to be the official orator on the election field for Stephen Báthory (Polish King, 1576–86).48 Consorting more and more with the Jesuits of the Transylvanian court, and “in the end given to no religion,” he died in 1588, leaving behind considerable wealth to his adopted nephew,49 and the official Confession of Faith, which he largely drafted, to the Transylvanian Unitarians, to be reimposed and ratified in 1638 (Ch. 28 n. 81). Dr. Nicholas Buccella, whom we last encountered as one of a s core of Anabaptists mostly from Cittadella arrested at Capodistria en route to the Hutterite commonwealth (Ch. 22.5), after retracting, had resumed his private teaching of a natomy and surgery on the margins of t he medical faculty of Padua, much esteemed especially by t he German students but kept from appointment to a chair because of being under surveillance for a disposition to heresy. In 1574 he accepted the call arranged by Biandrata to serve as a physician to Prince Stephen Báthory of Transylvania. Intercepted by the authorities of the Holy Office when he was ready for the voyage to Venetian Ragusa (Dubrovnik), he was able to clear himself sufficiently to get a fresh start and leave via Asolo for Vienna. After one year with the Prince in the castle of A lba Iulia (Ch. 28.3), he moved with him on his accession as elected king of t he Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. By 46

 Frederic C. Church, The Italian Reformers, 1534–1564 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), 385. 47  Marek Wajsblum, “Alciati,” PSB 1 (1928). 48  See the map of Eastern Central Europe during the kingship of Stephen Batory and also the portrait of him and commentary, Williams, Lubielliecki, Plate 46. 49  Wilbur, Socillianism, 321.

chapter 29.6 / 29.7 sectarianism & spiritualism in poland  1157 now, Spiritualist or Seeker, Buccella was a “sect unto himself,” very much in the way of S ebastian Franck (Ch. 10.3.d). Opposed to all coercion in religion, whether political or ecclesiological, he held that since the Lord Jesus Christ had sent the Holy Spirit, there is no need to defer in belief to the judgment of others, each one being capable of i llumination in his or her own conscience from the same source (cf. Jer. 31:34). 50 Buccella would become a friend of Faustus Socinus, who briefly lived in his house in Cracow, and kept contact by correspondence with Chiavenna and the Valtellina. At the end of his life Dr. Buccella formed an asylum for Russian orphans picked up in the wake of Báthory’s campaign against Ivan IV the Terrible, and in his will he provided for many of t hese little ones as his heirs,51 He died in 1589, one year after Biandrata. Dr. Buccella is plausibly the source in the late Socinian tradition for the considerable detail preserved by it about Italian Anabaptist circles and personalities long after it had itself come to disparage the local Polish Anabaptist ingredient in the Racovian movement.

7. The Development of the Polish Brethren From 1575 to the Advent of Faustus Socinus in 1579 We took leave of c ommunitarian, Anabaptist, anti-Nicene Raków (Ch. 27.3) and the noted reaction to its extremes in the theology and discipline formulated in Schomann’s Catechesis of 1574 (Ch. 29.3). With Schomann now pastor at Pi´nczów in succession to Felix Cruciger, Pinczovians became a new name for sobered Racovians. The chief spokesman of renewal at Raków was the apothecary Simon Ronemberg, who had been prominent in the exchanges with the Hutterites but was making of it a c ommunity of reasoned Christian discourse and discipline, while in another center, Lublin, the Ditheism of Czechowic and Niemojewski still kept the Minor Church in theological tension. We have more recently (Ch. 29.1 and 3) filled out two aspects of the struggle between the Christocentric, sectarian, pacifistic Racovians along with their sympathizers outside the colony and the belatedly anabaptist, nonadorant, magisterial, universalistic Budnyites. Whatever chance the socially and theologically radical but inwardly divided Minor Church might have had was largely ground to pieces in a period of n ational crisis (1572–1575) between the upper millstone of t he natural aristocratic conservatism of t he majority of t he Protestant, to say nothing of t he Catholic lords, and the nether millstone of a r adicalism fissured by t heological and ethical extremists. In short, the schism over nonadorantism and the sword within the Minor Church had driven it asun-

50  A characterization, and a quoted phrase fr om, by the papal n uncio in Poland; Stella, Dell’Anabattismo, 144. 51  Ibid., 193.

1158  the radical reformation

chapter 29.7

der, at the same time provided the Catholics and the orthodox Reformed with ample materials for substantiating their global charges of J udaizing and sedition. Thus, though quite unfairly, the Lithuanian Brethren, who were in fact conscientiously concerned for the proper uses of the magisterial sword, were being labeled as Anabaptist traitors, while the Polish Brethren, who were in fact much concerned to preserve the invocation of Christ in prayer as divine, were also being called Jews. Before showing how Faustus Socinus (Chs. 24.4, 28.3) was to combine the pacifism and the piety of the Racovians and the Spiritualist universalism of t he Budnyites in the new school of t hought, Socinian Evangelical Rationalism, we may take note of few other developments in the riven radical churches between 1575 and 1579. One of the lesser schisms within the tradition of the Minor Church was that of the Farnovians. They took their name from their chief spokesman, Stanislas Farnowski, once student in Heidelberg (Ch. 31.2), pastor of Nowy Sa¸cz on the Hungarian frontier. The Farnovians had withdrawn from the synod of Skrzynno in 1567 and perpetuated in their midst the Ditheistic stage in the devolution of the doctrine of the Trinity. Living in and around Nowy Sa¸cz, the Farnovians became the leading proponents and practitioners of believers’ baptism (and rebaptism) by immersion in southern Little Poland. During the synod of Pełsznica in 1568, the Farnovians had joined Czechowic and Cujavians in demanding that the Antitrinitarians from Cracow and Lublin follow the implications of the We¸grów synod (1565) and begin the practice of adult (re)baptism.52 The Farnovians had a printing press and a school at Sa¸cz. In 1575 both Farnowski and another important spokesman of the position, Stanislas Wi´sniowski, pastor in Lusławice, presented their “Arian” or Ditheist views: the former in De cognitione et confessione Dei semper unius; the latter in Colloquium de sincera cognitione Dei. The school in Lusławice, eventually the last home of F austus Socinus, would develop a press and draw students from afar. After the death of Farnowski in 1614, most of the Farnovians would rejoin the Minor Church, a few the Major Church.53 Martin Czechowic, pastor in Lublin (1570–98), who had once shared the Ditheist view of the preexistence of Christ but who had at the synod Skrzynno (1567) moved on with the majority of the Polish Brethren to an Adoptionist position, was at the same time conspicuously identified with the

52

 ASR 2:220f.  There is. a br ief contemporary account of them, translated in Williams, Lubiwiecki, Related doc. 4, n. 22. 53

chapter 29.7

sectarianism & spiritualism in poland  1159

struggle to prevent, from quarters still farther to the left, the spread of a nonadorant Unitarianism, which locally was associated with Isaiah, a Judaizing former monk of Moscow, and his sponsor, the Lublin wine merchant Valentine Krawiec, who was in close contact with such leading nonadorants as Simon Budny in Lithuania and Francis Dávid in Transylvania.54 Isaiah had been one of seven (twenty-seven) refugee Russian monks including the more renowned Theodore Kosoi, protected in Vilna by Nicholas Radziwiłł. From there in 1557 John Utenhove had written to Bullinger, reporting that Łaski found the Muscovites’ views “like our own.”55 In the meantime, Isaiah had been named pastor by the patron of nearby S´wierze in the county of Chełm. It was evidently after the death of the first Reformed pastor in Lublin, Stanislas Paklepka (1561–77), who ended up a Unitarian, that the unshepherded congregation, now separate from that of the Major Reformed congregation in Lublin, had come temporarily under the influence of Isaiah and Krawiec; and it was in this riven state that the successor of Paklepka, Czechowic, was seeking to rehabilitate New Testament Unitarianism among his own. The catechetical Colloquia Christiana 56 delivered by Czechowic at Lublin in 1575 was concerned to safeguard for the oncoming generation the devout Christocentric pacifism of t he Minor Church against those from within who were also seeking to legitimize war—in both cases by appealing to the Old Testament texts. Chapters 5 through 9 of the Colloquia were directed against both Judaizers and Jews (Ch. 32.2.a). The work, though it must be seen as a part of the great debate on the sword between the pacifistic Polish Brethren and the Budnyites (Polishspeaking Brethren in Lithuania), has its special place in our narrative as a representative piece of pedagogical literature designed for the instruction of the young, rather than as a p olemic with peers. The teacher (Czechowic) explains to his spirited catechumen: (1) that the Christian may resist evil only by spiritual means; (2) that the Christian has no need of recourse to protection or arbitration at the hands of t he temporal authorities; and (3) that the Christian cannot in any way join in the waging of war. Czechowic’s

54

 Sipayłło, Akta, 2:216–17. She writes also of Paklepka in PSB 15 (1980): 36. I deal further with Krawiec in Lubieniecki. 55  The letter of Utenhove is translated into English by Hastings Robinson, Original Letters Relative to the English Refor mation Written during the Reigns of King Henr y VIII, King Edward VI and Queen Mary, Chiefly from the Archives of Zurich, 2 parts, continuously paginated (Cambridge, 1946–47), 600–601; amply discussed by Jobert, De Luther à Mohila, 110–12. Utenhove gives the number of monks as twenty-seven, not seven as in Akta, where the Lublin Muscovite is called both Isaiah and Elijah (Ezajasz, Elijasz). 56  Rozmowy chrystyja´nskie (Raków, 1575), in fifteen chapters, printed partially in Szczucki and Tazbir, Literatura aria´nska, 59–120; summary in Kot, Socinianism, 70–77. See fur ther Peter Brock, “A Polish Anabaptist against War: The Question of Conscientious Objection in Mar tin Czechowic’s Christian Dialogue of 1575,” MQR 52 (1978): 279–93.

1160  the radical reformation

chapter 29.7

pacifism is prudential and humanitarian, and does not suggest the via crucis of Germanic Anabaptism. The believer may obey the command of authority, but not to the extent of going out to the battlefield, or of striking a blow. “But if I a lso,” the pupil asks his teacher, “having gone out to war at the king’s command should yet strike no one when others struck, and moreover even bore no arms, should I t hen be doing wrong?” The answer is yes, for one may not be yoked together with unbelievers (2 Cor. 6:14). On the other hand, the state may, indeed must, wage war, which presupposes that the magistrates, along with the great mass of the population, can never be evangelical Christians. Christians may provide money by way of taxation, the teacher says, and there will never be a want of soldiers. A lengthy Latin appendix, De vita et moribus christianorum primitivae ecclesiae, supplements Czechowic’s scriptural arguments with the testimonies of Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Cyprian, Lactantius, Athanasius, Basil the Great, and Hilary of Poiters.57 The stepping up of Polish military operations in the second phase of the Livonian War (1579–1582) was to make all the sentiments voiced by Czechowic, as those spoken earlier by Gregory Paul, a continuous problem, not only for the Protestants in general but also for those nobles within the Minor Church who, unlike the chivalric pacifist Niemojewski, could not endure the Catholic and Calvinist charges of t reason and cowardice. The efforts of Czechowic and Niemojewski in Lublin and of Gregory Paul and Ronemberg in Raków, to consolidate pacifistic anti-Nicene Anabaptism within the Minor Church did not, for example, suffice to sustain the loyalty of the once passionately Anabaptist Silesian Daniel Bieli´n ski, who in 1576 left the settlement at Raków and defected to the Major Reformed Church, publishing a p ublic recantation (Odwołanie) of his Antitrinitarianism and antipedobaptism. Nevertheless, the Racovian mentality gained adherents even in high circles. A settlement akin to Raków was established at about this time at Luslawice, south of Cracow. In 1577 the three Lubienieckis, Andrew, Stanislas, and Christopher (the accounts of two of whom we have been drawing upon), left the Polish court to devote themselves to the ministry in the Antitrinitarian Anabaptist Minor Church converted by Schomann (Ch. 27.3). Although in 1578 at the synod of L ask in Lithuania, finally, even Budny submitted to (re)baptism by i mmersion (Ch. 29.4), he persisted in rejecting the pacifistic implications drawn from the baptismal rite by the socially radical Racovians and Lubliners. It is plausible that the social radicalism of the Polish Brethren influenced their contacts with the Hutterites in the early 1570s. Czechowic and the Silesian Alexander Witrelin (Ch.25.3), pastor successively in Pi´nczów and since 1565 in We¸grów, 57

 Kot, Socinianism, 76.

chapter 29.7

sectarianism & spiritualism in poland  1161

strenuously sought to connect baptismal rebirth with the rejection of the sword. Witrelin had, ever so slowly, been moving away from orthodox Calvinism on the Trinity toward theological Tritheism. He seems to have been in discussion with Gonesius and other Lithuanian radicals, and then to have undertaken the study of O chino’s sermons and Servetus’ writings. By 1570, Witrelin had begun proclaiming that “in the Holy Scriptures there is no word nor mention of the word ‘Trinity’.” In that same year, the Reformed synodists at Sandomierz demanded that Witrelin explain his frequent absences from the Major Church synods. Later in that year, Witrelin joined forces with Czechowic and became, next to him, the leading spokesman for the Lublin congregation of Polish Anabaptists. Though under the patronage of the same Prince John Kiszka, Budny and Witrelin opposed each other at Łosk, in a manner similar to Hubmaier and Hut under Lord Liechtenstein at Nicolsburg (Ch. 9.2.b). Budny and the Ruthenian Lord Basil Ciapinski, leader of the immersed nobles in the Grand Duchy of L ithuania and translator of t wo Gospels from Budny’s New Testament into Ruthenian, declared that, despite the theologically radical character of the Brethren, it was not contrary to the Gospel for a true Christian to hold office, to possess estates with serfs (so long as they were fairly treated), to resort to courts of law in adjudication, and to engage in defensive war. Czechowic, seconded by t he devoutly pacifist noble John Niemojewski, lay senior, concerned to impose the order and discipline of the Lublin congregation upon the whole of t he loosely federated synodal branches of t he Minor Church in Lithuania and Poland, argued not only for pacifism but also for the manumission of serfs; and they together insisted that pastors, even though drawn from the gentry, should renounce the courtly syntax and the manners of people to the manor born and live apostolically by the voluntary offerings of the faithful. By 1578, the Racovians were in contact with the nephew of L aelius Socinus, Faustus, who, being en route from Basel to Kolozsvár at the invitation of Biandrata, came to the defense (Ch. 28.3) of their invoking Christ’s name in prayers. The Racovians were especially eager to encounter the distinguished Italian because, like them, Faustus Socinus was a pacifist and could well become their ally against the Budnyites. On the issues of believers’ baptism and especially rebaptism, however, the Racovians had reason to believe that Faustus was not of their persuasion. To make his acquaintance, Czechowic, Schomann, Ronemberg, and several other Racovians arranged a conference in the fall of 1578 in Cracow. During that meeting Faustus openly declared his opposition to believers’ baptism.58

58

 Schomann, Testamentum, 195f; translated in Williams, Lubieniecki, Related Doc. 3.

1162  the radical reformation

chapter 29.7 / 29.8

In the following year, in Bełzyce near Lublin, 24 August 1579, Witrelin, at the request of Biandrata in Alba Iulia, drafted the innovative Judgment of the Polish Churches (Ch. 28.3) against Francis Dávid because of his nonadorantism of Christ, appealing to Matt. 10:32f. against denying Christ his dignity in heaven.59 The following year the Minor Church, under attack on a key ordinance from the otherwise congenial Socinus, would be commissioned by the synod to refute De baptismo aquae by Socinus. Before we take up the third phase of the baptismal controversy in the Minor Church, a controversy now to be fought out in terms of immersion over against the suspension of baptism altogether for born Christians, we must recount something of the thought of Socinus, the proponent of baptismal suspension, upon his return from Kolozsvár (Ch. 28) to Cracow among the leaders of t he Minor Church, centered in Cracow, Raków, Pi´nczów, and Lublin for they would in due course adopt many features of his sacramental, soteriological, and christological system. Part II The Polish Brethren under the Intellectual Pressure of Faustus Socinus, 1580–1585

8. Faustus Socinus, 1579–1585/1604 Faustus Socinus began in Cracow in 1580 the work for which he was to gain pan-European renown in the history of biblical scholarship, De sacrae scripturae auctoritate,60 undertaken at the insistence of a “great personage,” the former Hungarian bishop and Hapsburg ambassador to Cracow, Andreas Dudith. This was published probably in Amsterdam. Originally composed in Italian, it was turned into Latin by the author himself.61 It would not be published again until 1611. Socinus held that the Bible is a revelation of God but that although it may contain things above reason (for example, that God is a creator and humankind his creation), it does not contain anything contrary to reason. Accordingly, Bible readers must be at pains to ascertain the rational or supernatural sense of Scriptures, for upon success in doctrine, linked with achievement in the ethical realm of following evangelical precepts, depends the ultimate salvation of faithful readers from natural mortality to a resurrection in a spiritual body at the Second Advent of Christ.

59

 BAnt, 46.  This work was published allegedly in Spain and somewhat implausibly by “The Reverend Father Dominicus Lopez, S.J.” (Seville, 1588), available in English translation by Edward Combe, An Argument for the Authority of Holy Scriptures (London, 1731). See Wilbur, Socinianism, 390; but it is Chmaj, Socyn, who clarifies the Cracow setting of the work. 61  Gryczowa, Ariatiskie oficyny wydawnicze, no. 263. 60

chapter 29.8

sectarianism & spiritualism in poland  1163

Socinus opened his study with an inquiry into the authenticity of the canon. Like Calvin, Socinus found reasons to ascribe Hebrews to another than Paul. After some discussion, he in the end confirmed the traditional ascription of t he Revelation to John the Evangelist. He dealt with miracles and inspiration as the credentials for the canon. Since the purpose of divinely inspired Scriptures was to enable the righteous to secure the reward of eternal life in following the precepts of patriarchal and Mosaic theology, confirmed or revised by the life, teaching, and resurrection of the Righteous One, Socinus concluded his examination of the obscurities and seeming contradictions of the Bible by declaring that it was the wisdom of God not to propose the reward of eternal life so evidently that the merely prudential readers might, despite their bad inclinations, succeed in simulating a perfection that would entitle them to immortality! Most wisely, therefore, Almighty God thought not fit that the reward of i mmortality, … by Him proposed to all men who obey His only-begotten Son Jesus Christ, should appear self-evident and unquestionable … but [He] was pleased to think it enough that these writings and other arguments of this reward, wherever to be collected, would appear to be such … to anyone who is of honest principles, or so well disposed as easily to become so … but to him who is dishonest, and from bad inclinations not to be reclaimed, insufficient; that hereby the probity of t he one, and the improbity of t he other, being openly discovered, God might have the most just cause of inflicting punishments and conferring His favors (which seems agreeable to divine justice) and by this means exercise His sovereign mercy on the one, His righteous severity on the other, hereby making His wonderful power, universal dominion, and empire, to His infinite and immortal glory known to all; which is indeed the chief aim of God in proposing the doctrine of the gospel to the world, by His only-begotten Son, as in the New Testament is frequently declared.62 Socinus had with these words finished his book; but then, for a kind of peroration, he reached back to the authority of another great lay theologian in Florence, and quoted in Latin translation Il Paradiso, canto 24. Socinus had found in the reply of S t. Peter on the part of D ante, like a q ueried university bachelor before a rigorous master, a poetic summary of his own convictions about “the infallible truth of G od, … the heavenly shower of the Holy Spirit most liberally poured out upon the Old and the New parch-

62

 Socinus, De auctaritate, ch. 5, BFP 1:280; English translation, Combe, Argument, 157f.

1164  the radical reformation

chapter 29.8

ments … which produces in me [Dante and now Socinus] firm and stable faith and convinces me of the truth of the Christian religion.”63 We saw Faustus Socinus among his peers and his uncle’s friends in Basel (Ch. 24.4), where in the formation of his idiosyncratic theology based wholly on Scripture, he was hesitating about the propriety of addressing prayers to Christ and adoring him. We have seen how Biandrata considered him from afar (Ch. 28.3) to be just the theologian of prestigious scholarship to cope with the crisis within the tolerated Unitarian synod in Transylvania, in which its headstrong superintendent, Francis David, risked suppression for “innovation” under the Catholic voivode by b ringing his pastors to acknowledge that the First Commandment properly inhibited them from worshiping Christ, wholly human. Such an audible surcease in liturgical practice had already called down upon the Unitarian Reformed charges of innovation beyond the terms of the multiconfessional toleration and establishment sanctioned in 1571. For three months Socinus had had little on his mind but the legitimation of the address of prayer to Christ at the right hand of the paternal divine Majesty. He had been asseverating this against the nonadorant, the Superintendent, who had resolutely argued as an Old Testament prophet, the Decalogue in hand, that God alone should be worshiped and would countenance no other lesser gods, angels, or saints beside himself. Although the two antagonists in the Koloszvár manse had differed even on the virgin birth of Jesus, both saw in Jesus the unique Son of God among mortals, himself also mortal on the cross. Both saw salvation wholly in terms of his Resurrection and of the final resurrection of all flesh for the Last Judgment. But on this they also differed in that for Socinus the final judgment would be only of the quick at the time of the Second Advent and of the resurrected righteous dead only, while David upheld the received eschatology of the punishment of the wicked among the resurrected. In all his prolix christological and eschatological argumentation, Socinus was anything but a f orerunner of Deism, one of the five postulates of which would be the natural immortality of the souls of all. To be sure, his grandson, Andrew Wiszowaty, would vindicate the claims of reason as an independent source of religious truth

63  Ibid. As for the some what harsh conclusion of De sacrae scripturae auctoritate before the postscript from Dante, one might ask what Socin us really meant by his distinction betw een revelation supra and contra rationem. He seems some what peevishly to constr ue revelation as intended by God to baffle the intellectually or morally unfit candidates as miscreants. He momentarily overlooks in his Latinized international version of his perhaps much older draft in Italian of De auctoritate his distinctive conviction about the Atonement as God’s magnanimous acceptilatio (Ch. 24.4), which requires of the candidate for the immense reward of eternal life at the Resurrection only acknowledgment of one’s sins and the finality and the purity of Christ’s precepts—not skewed in Scripture to favor only the ear nest and sincere, but if anything the sinners.

chapter 29.8

sectarianism & spiritualism in poland  1165

in Religio rationalis (1685); but Socinus belonged far more to the receding Italian Renaissance. Back in Cracow from Kolozsvár, welcomed by the Polish Brethren as their prospective spokesman in defense of their pacifism (Ch. 29.1), Socinus matured his thought about the adoration of Christ until at length he himself could be credited with an extraordinary Christocentric innovation himself: the doctrine of the pre-Ascension ascension of Christ. In this Socinus presupposed that he was wholly drawing upon Scripture alone, master that he was of several ancient languages, including Syriac. Jesus was, in his theological system, the apotheosis of M an, as God redefined his intention for the human race. Adam and Eve would have lived only somewhat longer if they had heeded God’s instructions about the forbidden fruit of the tree in Paradise, but by their individual sins they and their descendants suffered eternal death. In the new Paradise, in the wilderness experience of the Son after his baptism at Jordan, the Father from heaven having declared his good pleasure in him, supplied him with fresh instructions for the race. Jesus, like Moses for forty days in the desert, was taken up into heaven in a p re-Ascension ascension and there told by t he almighty God what in the Old Covenant remained valid, what therein was to be discarded, and what the new precepts were to be that would together constitute his Good News to the human race, namely, that the followers of his precepts would, after the lapse of history, be resurrected and reanimated to constitute his company of saints in the eternal presence of the Most High. For Socinus, Jesus Virgin-born was, in fact, the first fruit of the individual immortality accorded by t he Creator to those in whom his image had, by the New Covenant and life according to the Gospel, been restored amidst the toil and soil of life. Socinus had evidently not yet formulated this bold and innovative conception of a p re-Ascension ascension when he first drafted De Jesu Christo Servatore in 1578 (Ch. 24.4). He did at that time, however, have the triplex munus Christi, taken over evidently from Calvin whom he was studying; but already then his understanding of the three offices was distinctive. The pre-Ascension ascension falls within the career of Jesus as Prophet, teaching with enhanced authority what remained valid of the Old Testament and what were the new terms for the fuller salvation of an eventual immortality to be vouchsafed the human race: the ethically achieved blessedness beyond the natural destiny of all beasts and of other creatures, by heeding exactly the precepts and the acts of Jesus as the Christ in his threefold office. The most distinctive and daring theologoumenon of Socinus, not quite an innovation but a r easoned intrascriptural construct, evolved largely in freedom from the constraints and the conventions interwoven in Tradition I, that is, the exegetical and hermeneutical tradition from patristic times of

1166  the radical reformation

chapter 29.8

interpreting Scripture from within itself, but not each exegete wholly on his own but by building on antecedent commentary and discussion. Out of this scriptural Tradition Socinus was indeed drawing quite probably on Calvin’s extensive reflection on Moses as transfigured and angelic mediator in his Sermons on Deuteronomy (1555) 64 and perhaps, too, on John de Valdes, who as a Marrano would have preserved an exalted view of Moses as mediator between the Children of Israel and God, receiving mandates from on high. As for Calvin, in his Latin account of Deuteronomy 9 and Exodus 34, he recalled that like Moses, Elijah, who was sent to renew the covenant, also spent forty days in the wilderness without food or drink, as afterwards Christ; and in his French sermons on Deuteronomy in the summer of 1555 Calvin represented Moses as almost a refulgent and angelic figure, moyenneur de Dieu et des hommes, who was an “infallible witness,” receiving “instruction” from the Almighty, and “acquired for us the secrets of God without end, without measure.” God appeared to Moses as to no other prophet, “Ange de Dieu,” “exempt from all company of m en,” exempt from every other mortal condition, God “privately speaking to him face to face as with a f riend.” And just as Moses was in this state of exaltation above a m ere dream or vision, so indeed, preached Calvin, to show that the Gospel is as authentic as the Law, God also gave the testimony from heaven about Jesus, because the Gospel proceeds from God directly and is not human doctrine, as 2 Pet. 1:17f. demonstrates: “For when he [Christ] received the honor and glory from God the Father and the voice was borne to him by t he Majestic Glory, ‘This is my beloved son, with whom I a m well pleased,’ we heard this name borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain [after the baptism in the Jordan],” when “the Father declared the Son to be the Sovereign Maistre et Docteur de toute son Eglise.” Moses was thus “the first Docteur,” “as expositor of the will of God.” And, as Moses prophesied, the greatest and last Prophet was Jesus Christ, “who is, of course, the head of the Prophets, above Moses of course, for he is above the angels, elevated to the right hand of God the Father, to be constituted his vicegerent (lieutenant).” Moses thereby became the model of the prophet and then of the Reformed preacher to be humble and to add nothing of his

64  OC 25, col. 117; Sermons sur le Deuteronome, Opera, 26, cols. 248, 249, 256, 386, 399, 400, 406, 411, 665, 670, 671. Calvin himself stood in a scr iptural tradition, marveling in Moses the intermediary. Gregory of Nyssa in his Life of Moses, 217, writes: “Moses was transformed to such a degree of glory that mortal eye could not behold him.” See also John Calvin’s Sermons on the Ten Commandments, ed. and trans. Benjamin Farley with foreword by Ford Lewis Battles (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1980). Paul Grimby Kuntz, The Ten Commandments (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, forthcoming) places Calvin’s understanding of Moses as “an intermediary between God and men,” “an angel,” who “regained his human body when he descended” in a larger exegetical tradition.

chapter 29.8

sectarianism & spiritualism in poland  1167

own to the pure revealed Word of God.65 Surely the exalted and transfigured Moses of Calvin (1555) helped configure the ascended Final Prophet of Socinus (1580), lifted bodily to the side of God in the throne room of heaven to receive the new commandments for eternal life at the outset of his mysterious ministry.66 Contrary to both Traditions I and II (Ch. 21 n. 6), the Christ event is interpreted by the Moses event. As for Valdesianism, John Valdes may have written something like this in his Commentary on St. John, but it is lost. We do not have him on 2 Cor. 12:2. In his Commentary on St. Matthew 4:4, however, there is some approximation to the idea of Socinus, while his convert Bernardine Ochino in his Thirty Dialogues (1563) several times refers to Christ’s having received the arcanum directly from God. ˙ arnowiec in his ApokaSupporting this surmise, Calvinist Gregory of Z tastasis (Vilna, 1598), declared that Socinus drew his ascensionist views in part from the Dialogues of Ochino.67 As to his most distinctive idea, Socinus will indeed in controversy acknowledge that his ascensionist construct is new, suggesting that he had come to clarity about it on his own.68 He reminds his readers that there were three biblical personages who ascended to heaven but who might not yet be immortal and who surely did not descend with a new message: Enoch (Gen. 5:24, Heb. 11:5) before the Law and Elijah (2 Kgs. 2:1–19) under the Law, and he would presently mention Paul, ascending to the third heaven, under the New Covenant (2 Cor. 12:2). In 1583 Socinus, in response to a leading Lithuanian Calvinist, Andrew Wolan, would express the view that Jesus the Master would surely have ascended to heaven to receive from the Father the saving arcanum, if later “his servant Paul” was to be lifted into the third heaven to behold the arcanum. Socinus may have for the first time placed Moses in this context in the Brevissima institutio written originally in Italian but not published in Latin until 1611 in Rakow,69 where he says that as Moses ascended into the clouds of 65

 Farley, Calvin’s Sermons on Ten Commandments, 267–68.  Socinus, like Schwenckfeld (Ch. 18.4), among others, envisaged a cor poreal deity. This view was not without proponents in Ante-Nicene Christianity, even among intellectuals, until at length Neoplatonist influence helped the incorporealists to prevail. See David L. Paulsen, “Early Christian Belief in a Cor poreal Deity: Origen and Augustine as Reluctant Witnesses,” HTR 83 (1990): 105–16. 67  Dialogues, 358; Chmaj, Socyn, 358. 68  De Unigeniti Filii Dei existentia inter Er asmum Johannis et F austum Socinum Disputatio , BFP, 2:510A, 511A. This was noted by Klaus Lindner, “The Epistemology of Faustus Socinus” (Seminar paper on deposit, Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge). It is notab le that in the otherwise most comprehensive and detailed narrative and analysis of the life and thought of Socinus in any language, based upon a close reading of every work and letter of Socinus, there is only one allusion to, and one summary phrase concerning, the most difficult and decisive of the theological loci of the Polonized Italian’s system; Chmaj, Socyn, 43. 69  Gryczowa, Aria´nskie oficyny wydawnicze, no. 255. 66

1168  the radical reformation

chapter 29.8

Mount Sinai (“an antitype of heaven”) to receive the Law, so Jesus during the comparable forty days in the wilderness was lifted even higher to receive in the bosom of his Father the secret saving Gospel he was called to exemplify70 on his descent and to proclaim.71 But for Socinus the saving secret consisted in moral precepts and not in an esoteric cosmogony and soteriology. Socinus developed thus largely after his encounter with Dávid his fundamental view that Christ ascended to heaven (cf. John 3:13) before the final Ascension to obtain the salvific precepts of God the Father and Creator. It is just possible that this conception of the divine basis of Christ’s revelation as authoritative represents an externalization in space of a l ong mystical tradition of t he spiritual ascent, which Socinus has construed as bodily motion, enabling Jesus to bring down fresh precepts directly from God the Father. For an earlier work, perhaps in Italian, known only in Latin as Christianae religionis institutio (Raków, 1611), Socinus, under the specific unnumbered topic, “De ascensu et commemoratione Christi hominis in coelo, antequam munus suum in terris orbite inciperet,” had found the pre-Ascension ascension also sanctioned by John 6:38 and 62, 8:28b.72 For Socinus, it will be recalled, it is only at this final Ascension that Christ functions as High Priest, displaying his sacrifice to God the Father in the heavenly tabernacle, and then assumes his throne in the final office of King, vicegerent of God in the governance of the world and as Final Judge. The utterly sinless Christ consummated his obedience and instruction in his office of Prophet and Teacher in his freely accepting death on the cross. By his resurrection God the Father was disposed to be merciful toward all his followers. When drawn up into heaven at the Ascension he first discharged the office of eternal High Priest, the Father declaring (Heb. 5:5–6): “Today I h ave begotten thee … a priest after the order of Melchizedek.” Exhibiting his bloody wounds as expiation for the brethren in the cosmic Holy of Holies (Heb. 10:12), Christ then in the office of King assumed vicegerential rule of t he cosmos, the world, the nations, and his Church. From heaven he will descend at his Second Advent to judge among 70  This he argued when later defending and consolidating his vie w against the Calvinist Andreas Wolan (1582); Raków MS 1588, Opera, 2:380. 71  In all this Socin us might be r egarded as an Ev angelical Gnostic rather than as an Evangelical Rationalist! Indeed, in the Explicatio variorum locorum Scripturae Sacrae (written after 1595, Rakow, 1618) he sa ys that “Christ would be nothing for us unless he had revealed the arcanum of the Gospel.” 72  For some sour ces, see L. Beinaert, “Le symbolisme ascensionnel dans la liturg ie et la mystique chretiennes,” Erannos–Jahrbuch 19 (1950); Mircea Eliade, “Symbolisms of Ascension and ‘Waking Dreams,’” in Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries (London: Harvill, 1960), 99–122; and Bernard McGinn, “Ascension and Introversion” in the ltinerarium Mentis in Deum: S. Bonaventura: 1274–1974, III Philosophica (Grottaferrata, 1975), 535–52.

chapter 29.8 / 29.9 sectarianism & spiritualism in poland  1169 the quick and to greet the resurrected righteous whose glorified flesh will have been reanimated for eternal life. Socinus claimed, moreover, that the precepts learned directly from the Father by t he new Moses, as once the Ten Commandments also from on high, were accessible by a r ational approach to the Bible. He understood that the revelation of C hrist had fulfilled and superseded that through Moses. He professed to accept with grace the sense of the more obscure passages with the help of those more clear. Although Socinus had not expressly said so in Basel (where he wrote of a single ordinance, the Eucharist), it is clear that baptism was for him already in Basel a superseded rite, as Socinus located the revelatory pre-Ascension ascension after Christ’s immersion.

9. The Beginning of Organized Socinianism: The Third Baptismal Controversy in the Minor Church73 Ordinarily, De Jesu Christo Servatore 74 is set forth as the beginning of a major movement, Socinianism, the first phase of w hich would be made to extend from its composition in Basel, or from the arrival of S ocinus with it in Poland-Lithuania, to his death in 1604 in the midst of his work on Christianae religionis brevissima institutio,75 which would become the basis for the first Polish edition of t he Racovian Catechism in 1605. The Socinianism embodied in the Racovian Catechism was a school of religious thought and corporate discipline quite different in the end from the faith and order of the immersionist, antitrinitarian Polish Brethren who had produced the Catechesis of 1574 (Ch. 29.3). Indeed, the two quite distinguishable Racovian communities (1569–72, 1573–1638), though continuous, so far differed from each other as to warrant their separate classification in the typology of religion. And since organized Socinianism, belonging as it does to the end of the sixteenth century and through the first half of the next, would carry us beyond the chronological frame set for the present narrative we shall here limit our consideration to the first encounters of Faustus Socinus with the immersionist and prevailingly pacifist Polish-Lithuanian

73

 Jarmola, “Origin and Development of Believers’ Baptism,” 12 n. 27, divided the history of baptismal debate of the Minor Chur ch of the P olish Brethren into thr ee stages: (1) the baptismal contr oversy, 1562–1568/9 (Ch. 25.4); (2) the “post–baptismal” debates on the social and ecclesial implication of baptism b y faith, 1568/9–1578 (Ch. 29, Part I); and (3) the anti-baptism–pro-immersionist debate lasting from 1580 to 1609 (Ch. 29.9). For the place of Socinian biblical rationalism in a larger setting and looking to the se venteenth century, see Paul Wrzecionko, “Die Socinianer und der Socinianism us im Widerstreit der Beurteilung,” in Reformation und Frühaufklärung in Polen, ed. Wrzecionko (Göttingen:Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1977), 244–72; idem, “Humanismum und Aufklärung im Denk en der P olnischen Brüder,” Kirche im Osten 9 (1966): 83–100, where the suitability of the term “Rationalism” is discussed. 74  BFP 1:115–252. 75  Ibid., 1:657–76.

1170  the radical reformation

chapter 29.9

Brethren. His role in restructuring the Minor Church in his image may be likened to that of Luke of Prague, convert from the Utraquists, who gave leadership to the Major Party among the Unity (Ch. 9.1) and prepared it for the eventually quasi-Calvinistic character of the Polish-born divines of the Czech Brethren centered in Leszno in Great Poland. When Socinus from Transylvania “moved into Poland,” writes his grandson Andrew Wiszowaty, and “asked at the synod of Raków in 1580 to be publicly admitted to the churches that confessed that only the Father of Jesus Christ is God Most High, he was refused admission for disagreeing on certain doctrines which he did not conceal (as on the satisfaction of Christ, on justification without works of any kind, on predestination and free will, and on baptism by immersion); nor was he admitted to the Holy Supper (sacra synases); yet in defense of these churches he contended actively in his writings against their antagonists.” 76 Although Wiszowaty names a number of doctrinal differences, the accent must have come down on baptismal theology, for it was to the composition of his lengthy and tedious De baptismo aquae disputatio (1580) that Socinus almost immediately turned.77 In a word, like Jacob Palaeologus, he held that an external baptism with water was not enjoined or even always practiced by t he apostles, they themselves not being recorded as having been baptized (Ch. 11.1). Socinus saw in it therefore solely a rite, analogous to Jewish proselyte baptism, and argued that, though probably useful for marking the entry of ancient pagans into the New Israel, it had no present utility among those born in a Christian environment, except as it might formalize the occasional conversion of a Jew or a Turk to Christianity. Born Christians, wrote Socinus, regardless of the communion out of which they may have come into the Minor Church, need not be baptized, and surely should not be rebaptized. Simon Ronemberg at Raków requested a c opy of De baptismo and wrote to Socinus, pleading with him to reconsider his decision and submit to immersion.78 Ronemberg was surely not unmindful of how he and his delegation had themselves once smarted from unyielding and exclusivistic instructions when they had been at Hutterite Neumühl with Walpot just about a decade before (Ch. 27.3); and yet he was deeply convinced that the building up at Raków of t he “collapsed house of G od,” the construction of an ark of s alvation had been effected precisely through insistence on baptism by i mmersion and on the ban; and since Faustus Socinus was in so many other respects of one spirit with the old Racovians but regarded baptism as indeed something indifferent, could he not unobtrusively submit 76

 BAnt, 214; Williams, Lubieniecki, Related Doc. 5, no. 59.  BFP 1:709–52. 78  BFP 1:482f. 77

chapter 29.9

sectarianism & spiritualism in poland  1171

to immersion as the other good folk at Rakow had, who had been prepared not only for a public profession of their Christianity by baptism in water but also for the sufferings of this world, even detestable death itself ? In a friendly, even deferential, but very firm reply,79 Socinus in effect summarized his De baptismo in eight points and contended that precisely because baptism, from his point of v iew, was indeed a m atter of indifference, he could not bring himself to go through a ceremony which by its deliberately public and solemn character at Raków inevitably enhanced its importance, and that precisely because he, along with many other sympathizers with the Racovian movement, could not do so, they were all unwisely being kept away from both the wholesome discipline of the community and the spiritual benefits of the Supper. In De baptismo Socinus was refuting, among others, a major baptismal treatise written in Lublin by Czechowic about this time, De paedobaptistarum errorum origine.80 In it Czechowic brought together the whole of h is thinking on baptism for the purpose of preparing the powerful Ruthenian magnate, John Kiszka, for immersion. Kiszka, following Budny (as Lord Liechtenstein at Nicolsburg had followed Hubmaier), was prepared to submit to rebaptism but did not feel that the rite committed him to abandoning his vocation as prince and magistrate and owner of thousands of serfs. In writing the treatise for Prince Kiszka, Czechowic had in mind to counteract the influence of all Spiritualists and Rationalists, who were disparaging or minimizing what he regarded as the redemptive ordinance. “Since you wish to be baptized and you earnestly call upon God that he by baptism might bury you together with Christ,” he began his appeal to Kiszka, “it is necessary that you, whom I see as one especially exposed to the greatest perils and temptations on all sides, be fully armed.” Czechowic proceeded to deal with fourteen errors. Then, in an appendix81 he took up some 128 items dealing with what he regarded as a f alse spiritualizing or interiorizing of the sacraments and ordinances of the Church. Czechowic’s polemic in this book was directed not so much against Calvinists and Lutherans as against Evangelical Rationalists like Faustus Socinus and Nicholas Paruta, and the Spiritualists like Caspar Schwenckfeld and Christian Entfelder, and the radical Poles who had been moved to spiritualize all the ordinances in the first stage of the Racovian colonization.

79

 Ibid., 429–31.  The dedicatory foreword is available in Szczucki and Tazbir, Literatura arianska, 165–82. Socinus asked Czechowic for a copy of his baptismal treatise in a friendly letter of 20 June 1580; Chmaj, ed., Listy. 4. 81  Later refuted by Faustus Socinus and published as an appendix to De baptismo. See BFP 1:748–52, where Socinus quotes a phrase or two from each of the 128 items in the appendix of Czechowic’s book. On the incorrect date of the foreword and the relationship of Czechowic’s book to other writings, see Szczucki and Tazbir, Literatura arianska, 182, n. 36. 80

1172  the radical reformation

chapter 29.9

His opponents were all those who for any reason rejected or minimized the importance of t he Lord’s Supper, the ban, and the ordained ministry, not to mention baptism by immersion. Czechowic called them the “dreamers” without ordinances “who believe they are pure.” Thus with special reference to Baptism (not the Eucharist), Czechowic was facing, in his book, a Spiritualist and Rationalist challenge to Anabaptist discipline in Poland comparable to the Schwenckfeld-Marpeck struggle in South Germany (Ch. 18.4). Andrew Lubieniecki tendentiously confirms the presence of Schwenckfeldians as well as other spiritualizing influences when he writes of those “who spoke of Scripture as a dead letter and a daub of printer’s ink, and wishing to imitate Schwenckfeld, held that dreams, visions, and ideas were the things most necessary in religious practice for salvation.” 82 Czechowic was thus also recalling encounters with Spiritualizers and Sacramentarians in Cujavia and “those who condemned all officiating at any religious service, claiming that nobody was fit to officiate or instruct unless he had a divine revelation and had either witnessed miracles or performed them.” 83 In defending believers’ baptism by i mmersion, Czechowic insisted that it is a seal of faith; a symbol of dying with Christ and for the Christimitating believer, the counterpart of the blood streaming down the sides of the Crucified; a public giving of one’s name to Christ in contrast to an infant’s being given a Christian name at a christening; 84 a putting on of Christ; an ablution from sin and a veritable cure or medicament (medela) for sin; and indeed a remission of sin inseparably linked to the preaching and the hearing of the Word. The opposition of Czechowic in Lublin, and of Ronemberg, Witrelin, and Schomann in Pi´nczów, to any spiritualizing or other attempts to minimize baptism caused them to resist Faustus Socinus even though Socinus dissociated himself from the Spiritualizers on all other points, especially on the significance of t he Lord’s Supper, central to his piety. No sooner, in fact, had Socinus sought to refute the immersionist anabaptism of t he Lubliners and the Racovians than he turned about to defend their pacifism in his even more massive refutation of P alaeologus’ De Magistratu politico (Ch. 29.1) in Ad Palaeologi librum ... pro Racoviensibus responsio.85 With aging

82  Andrew Lubieniecki, Poloneutychia, 52, excerpted by Williams, Lubieniecki, Related Doc. 6. See also Jarmola, “Origin and Development of Believers’ Baptism,” 268–72, on the impact of Schwenckfeld and his followers on the Minor Church. 83  Such as John Skszynski, Bielinski, Albinus, John Baptista, and many others; Poloneutychia, 51ff. 84  Item 9, and by inference from Socinus’ responses to Czechowic’s arguments 19, 98, 99, 124. 85  Gryczowa, Aria´nskie oficyny wrydownicze, no. 251.

chapter 29.9

sectarianism & spiritualism in poland  1173

Gregory Paul nearly blind and no longer up to the task of a (second) refutation, it was the scion of a distinguished Sienese house of jurisconsults and sometime Florentine courtier who responded to the call of the Polish pacifists. With his text on the new creation in Christ, 2 Cor. 5:17, “Behold all things are become new,” Socinus attended the synod of C hmielnik in January 1581 to get the direct counsel of the Brethren and had his manuscript published by them in Cracow the following August. On the issues of C hristology and magistracy, Socinus found himself much closer to the Racovians and Lubliners than to the Lithuanian Brethren under the ever-mounting influence of Unitarian, non-pacifist but recently rebaptized Simon Budny. At the synod of L ubecz (near Nowogrodek) in March 1582, Czechowic, Niemojewski, and Nicholas Zytno, among others, contended once again for the principle of a bsolute pacifism against Budny and his nonadorantist followers. To defend himself and his cause, Budny published his major work, On the Sword. 86 This is really a confession in the name of “the Church of Christ in the Lord in Lithuania” on the part of the “conscientious participant” in the society of the sword and judicial order; and it gives a vivid picture of the tension between the civic-minded anabaptist Unitarians in Lithuania and the Christocentric pacif ist Polish Brethren. In a concluding section, Budny refutes some twenty-two arguments of C zechowic. Eventually the scriptural arguments, which remind one of H ubmaier, will be taken over reassessed by t he Socinians at Raków by S ocinus himself. At the synod of L uslawice in May 1582,87 the Polish Brethren with their consistently pacifist position received a delegate from the Mennonites in Danzig. The visitor appears to have come from the same group of Unitarian Mennonites from Holland with whom one Matthew Radecke was associated.88 Born in Danzig, secretary to the town council, Radecke had become a Mennonite and gone to Holland whence in 1582 he was driven on account of his views on the Trinity.89 In response to Radecke, the Luslawice synod of 1582 sent Czechowic, Alexander Witrelin (only recently converted from the Major Church), and Matthew Krokier as a d elegation to Danzig. One of the differences, as it developed, was over predestination, the Danzig Mennonites holding to the freedom of the will, while Czechowic, 86

 Kot, ed., O urze¸dzie miecza.  The town was the residence of Socinus after 1583. 88  F. S. Bock, Memorabilia Unitariorum acta in Prussia (Königsberg. 1753), 13ff.; Wotschke, Reformation, 145. 89  For the life and thought of the Unitar ian Anabaptist Radecke, who in the end w as to undergo three baptisms—Catholic, Mennonite, and Polish Brethren—see my “Anabaptism and Spiritualism,” 258ff. 87

1174  the radical reformation

chapter 29.9

for example in his later report on Romans 7, insisted that, like Paul, no Christian is entirely free. There is no direct evidence that the peculiar Mennonite doctrine of the celestial flesh of Christ was under discussion at Lusławice or in Danzig. There is, however, from the pen of S ocinus the undated tract Disputatio brevissima de Christi carne adversus Mennonitas.90 Czechowic reported the failure of t he mission to the Mennonites at the general synod in We¸grów, May 1584. This synod excommunicated Simon Budny 91 on the issue of the preexistence of Christ and the propriety of rendering him worship. The cleavage was now complete between the fully Unitarian, immersionist, politically and socially conservative, semiJudaizing Lithuanian Brethren led by Budny and the socially and politically radical Christocentric, anabaptist, pacifistic Polish Brethren, now under the influence of Socinus. We are obliged to terminate our account of the evolution of pacifistic, anti-Nicene Polish Anabaptism into Socinianism at mid-career. Socinianism, as a distinctive amalgam of Anabaptism and Evangelical Rationalism within the Radical Reformation is a development of the last quarter of the sixteenth century, and falls therefore outside the chronological framework of the present narrative. Suff ice it to say that almost all of t he theology of S ocinus would soon be taken over by t he Minor Church and would be elaborated in many a t ract and tome and published by t he new Racovians as their own, notably Socinus’ hermeneutical and epistemological principles, his doctrine of natural mortality with the resurrection of the righteous only (psychopannychism), and his doctrine of Christ’s atoning work as that of psychopomp rather than that of a sacrif ice. On the adoration of the risen Christ, on the impropriety of the use of the sword by Christians, and on related social doctrines, Socinus and the new Racovians had from the beginning been in accord. It was only on the question of believers’ baptism that the Anabaptist and the Evangelical Rationalist currents failed to merge. Although, to be sure, the f irst neo-Racovian catechism published in the year after the death of S ocinus (Luslawice, 1604) provisionally accepted his idea of baptism as a r ite for “Gentile” converts only, in the succeeding editions of t he Racovian Catechism, and among Socinus’ seventeenth- and eighteenth-century followers in Holland, England, and America, the current springing from Gonesius and Czechowic’s baptismal thought f lowed afresh. Thereafter, immersionism, Socinus to the contrary, became one of the marks of the Socin-

90

  Gryczowa, Aria´nskie oficyny Wydawnicze, no. 273; BFP 2:461–63.  Wilbur, Socinianism, 349, gives the date of Budn y’s excommunication as 1582; Górski, Studia, 155, places the excommunication in 1584. 91

chapter 29.9

sectarianism & spiritualism in poland  1175

ianized Minor Church until the decree against “Arians and Anabaptists” in 1658. The stress on believers’ baptism at Raków had led to a g reat interest in the colony in the catechetical instruction of the young. Out of the catechetical literature and the increasingly elaborate catechetical instruction grew the school and press of R aków. The latter would print some five hundred titles before its dissolution in 1638.92 Catechetical schools outside the colony likewise took on a larger and larger cultural assignment as the catechetical impulse of the original Racovians merged with the Evangelical Rationalist approach to Christianity embodied in Socinus to bring about an influential reform of education.93 With the formal exchanges, beginning in 1582, between the Dutch unitarian Mennonites of t he delta of t he Vistula and the immersionist PolishLithuanian Brethren, we have almost come full circle. Eventually a large body of the Minor Church, presently to be called Socinians outside of Poland, will seek refuge in The Netherlands itself and introduce among the Rijnsburg Collegiants, and in their turn among certain Waterlander Mennonites (Ch. 19.2.d), the practice of b aptism by i mmersion, which will eventually94 be taken over by certain English Separatist refugees sojourning in Holland, and will become in due course quite general throughout the far-flung community of Baptists. It is convenient at this juncture to return to The Netherlands and pick up the developments there, on the eve of t he conversion of H olland to Calvinism (1566).

92

 See the picture of the forced eviction in Williams, Polish Brethren, Plate H.  Cf. Łukasz Kurdybacha, Z dziejów pedagogiki aria´nskiej (Warsaw: PAN, 1958). 94  The first overture from the Unitarian Socinians in Poland to the Waterlander Mennonites 93

in Holland came in 1598.

1176  the radical reformation

Henry III, King of France and Poland

chapter 29.9

Chapter 30

Developments in The Netherlands, 1566–1578, and in England

A s we return to The Netherlands,

we must be prepared to find Mennonitism divided into numerous factions ranging from the very strict Frisians to the progressive Waterlanders, all trying to consolidate their position at the very moment in Netherlandish history when all dissenters were being driven headlong from the southern provinces under the ruthless new governor, Duke Ferdinand of Alva (1567–73), and when the new revolutionary-nationalist movement in the northern provinces was being borne by a new class of insurgents, the Calvinists. No less disciplined and conventicular than the Münsterites had been a g eneration before, the Calvinists represent the third Reformation thrust (1566–1609) in The Netherlands in succession to the dominance of the Sacramentists (1500–30) and that of the Anabaptists (1530–66). The story of the Anabaptist fission in the first period of C alvinist ascendancy is a s omewhat tedious chronicle of a cculturation and further schism.1 1  Andrew Fox, showing how the three main thrusts of the Radical Reformation—Anabaptism, Spiritualism, and Evangelical Rationalism—“came together in the Collegiant movement [within the Remonstrant context] in Holland after 1670 and became an integral part of what has been called the Second Reformation [in Holland] of the Se venteenth Century,” presents this view under the title “Radical Reformation and Second Reformation in Holland: The Intellectual Consequences of the Sixteenth-Century Religious Upheaval and the Coming of a Rational World View,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 18 (1987): 63–80. Counting in my text above the Calvinist movement as the third thrust of reform in The Netherlands, I would be inclined to countArminianism as the fourth reform internal to rationalizing Calvinism; for the states-rights Remonstrants, Arminian on predestination, did indeed have affinities with the Minor Church in Poland, refugees from which settled in Holland long before their mandated exile by 1660. The Collegiants, spiritualizers among the Remonstrants, would on my reckoning belong indeed to transfor mation and transfiguration of the forces in the sixteenth century that belong to the Radical Reformation, its own distinctive time-bound specificity being its earnest biblicism in all three thrusts.

1177

1178  the radical reformation

chapter 30.1

1. The Flight of the Flemings and the Flemish-Frisian Schism Anabaptism in the southern Netherlands was widespread and vigorous. In its second phase, extending from 1550 to 1576, Antwerp had become the recognized metropole of the “Belgian” Anabaptists. The brotherhood faced a storm of violent Catholic persecution that did not let up until the Calvinists replaced the Anabaptists as the main target of t he Hapsburg attack. Antwerp, Ghent, Ypres, and Coutrai were so full of Anabaptists that the inquisitor appealed, in 1561, to the regent to put the armed forces in a state of readiness, so great was the fear of an uprising. 2 The details concerning the inner life of the community, however, are obscure. 3 It was in 1565 that the Belgian Calvinist Guy de Brès, a v ictim of Catholic persecution, published against the Anabaptists his La racine, source, et fondement des anabaptistes ou rebaptisés de notre temps. The evangelist Giles of Aachen has already been named (Ch. 14.3). Leonard Bouwens and Menno visited the southern provinces, and Bouwens baptized 292 converts in Antwerp before 1565, 242 in Ghent, and 187 more in other Flemish towns. Many of the converts were weavers, some of them prosperous. The statements of the inquisitors that there were 700 Anabaptists in Bruges in 1568 and 2,000 in Antwerp in 1566 are probably not exaggerated.4 Persecution of t he Anabaptists in the southern Netherlands (Belgium) had been especially severe from the outset, because of their greater proximity to Brussels, the seat of the Spanish administration for the Low Countries. By 1566 the responsibility for the search and the prosecution of d issenters was removed from the local magistracies and concentrated in Brussels. Henceforth it was directed with ruthless cunning against the leaders. In the period covered by o ur narrative the number of B elgian martyrs was about three thousand,5 of whom the majority were Anabaptists. The latter were usually burned, the Protestants (Lutherans and Calvinists) hanged or beheaded. With their leaders imprisoned or burned, the orphaned Anabap2

 V. Gaillard, Archives du conseil de Flandres (Ghent, 1856), 206. The main mar tryrologies for Ghent, Bruges, Coutrai, Brussels, and Antwerp are brought together in my bibliographical “Studies in the Radical Reformation” CH 27 (1958): Part II, iv, 5. To my work should be added two articles and a book by Alphonse Verheyden: “Les Martyrs Anabaptistes en Flandres et dans le Brabant méridional,” Annales du Congrès Archéologique et Historique de Tournai [Société royale d’histoire et d’archéologie de Tournai] (1949); “Notes au sujet de la Réfor me en Flandres au XVIe siècle,” Bulletin de la Société d’Histoire du Protestantisme Belge, s. 3,10 (1951): 506-21; and, in a most comprehensive compilation, Le Martyrologe protestant des Pays-Bas du Sud au XVIe sièc le (Brussels: Editions de la Librairie des Eclaireurs Unionistes, 1960). 3  In the first decade of the prolonged war against Spain, 1575–85, the southern congregations and their records were completely wiped out. 4  MB 1:271. 5  Estimate of Verheyden, Le martyrologe, a third of which is a listing of all known Belgian martyrs.

chapter 30.1

the netherlands & england  1179

tist flocks fled by t he hundreds. Many Flemish localities lost their entire Mennonite population. By the end of our period some fifty thousand dissidents6 had been driven from the Hapsburg Netherlands (mainly Flanders), the majority of them Anabaptists. When the Flemish Anabaptist refugees streamed into the northern provinces, by p reference West Frisia, they found that they differed from their hosts in temperament and in spirit. Friction arose. The Frisian Anabaptists considered the Flemings ostentatious in dress and self-indulgent in their eating and drinking. The Flemings found the Frisians dour about insignificant matters, yet given to worldliness in such things as houses and linens. What the Frisians considered their virtue, the thrift which led to comfortable households, the Flemings thought vanity. This unavoidable and trivial conflict was focused when the Flemings came into contact with an unusual experiment undertaken by some of the Frisians in 1560. The four congregations of Harlingen, Franeker, Dokkum, and Leeuwarden had formed a u nion on the basis of n ineteen articles on various items of congregational life (Ordinatie der vier steden), which provided that a preacher chosen by one of the congregations had to be approved by all the others. All controversies arising in one congregation should be settled by the ministers of the four churches in concert, and the case of the poor and of the refugees was to be handled in common. Numerous incoming Flemings began to express dissatisfaction with this arrangement, which they thought abrogated a fundamental Anabaptist principle, the autonomy of the local congregation. The differences of taste and principle finally led to a schism. When the occasion presented itself, the congregation at Franeker, where the Flemish refugees were concentrated, chose as their minister one Jerome Tinnegieter from the province of Hainaut. The Frisian majority in the federated congregation at Harlingen under Ebbe Pieters objected to this choice, as was its right under the terms of the covenant among the four congregations. A council of ministers was called at Harlingen to deal with the problem which was destined to divide conservative Mennonitism into two mutually exclusive denominations. The single most distinguishable theological point at issue between the immigrant Flemings and the indigenous Frisians was that of congregational authority over against its monopolization by a c ongregational council (kerkrad) and the regional eldership (oudsten), but the issue was quickly obscured and confounded by the actions of both sides. The ethnic, cultural, and constitutional antagonism was intensified by the conflict between the two chief leaders (Ch. 19.2), both of them Frisians by birth: Leonard Bouwens from his base in Emden; Dirk Philips from his headquarters in or near Danzig. 6

 Ibid.

1180  the radical reformation

chapter 30.1

In 1565, the year before the flare-up among the four federated congregations, Dirk had voyaged to Emden to adjudicate a q uarrel between Leonard and his own congregation. The causes are not entirely clear, but it seems that Leonard made too many voyages over to West Frisia, neglecting his flock; that he there partook too readily of the alcoholic hospitality of his Flemish hosts accustomed to better fare than the frugal Frisians; and that when he was waited upon by a delegation of his congregation, he claimed that as an elder he had every right to come and go as his supervisory duties required. The basic point at issue was thus whether his “vrydienen” or the principle of congregational control over their chief servant was the approved apostolic pattern. Leonard’s own earlier implacable stand on moral questions and his perhaps capricious authoritarianism had engendered antagonisms that now worked against him. Seven ministers sat on his case, presided over by D irk, and as a r esult Leonard was suspended from his position as elder, though not banned. Leonard withdrew to a spot near Harlingen, and shortly afterward, perhaps as a result of h is direct efforts, several members of the commission of seven withdrew their condemnation. It was at this juncture that the grievances of t he suspended Frisianborn elder and those of the frustrated Flemish refugee, Jerome Tinnegieter, reinforced each other in fateful intensity. Smarting at the insult inflicted on him by the three other covenanted parishes, Jerome had not promptly called a m eeting of h is own congregation to ratify the covenant of t he four towns. Just before the time set, Jerome hastily called a m eeting but only about thirty out of three hundred members were able to be present. Because they were so few, they agreed to leave the decision with the congregational council. At Jerome’s instigation—and utterly at variance with the professed Flemish preference for full congregational participation in a major decision—the small council proceeded to repudiate the union of the four congregations. The majority, which was opposed to this action, on being apprised of J erome’s tactics, tried in vain to have the decision reviewed and rescinded. Soon the two factions in Franeker were holding separate services, and were being distinguished from one another by t he names “Flemish” and “Frisian.” Jerome spitefully went so far as to attack and malign Ebbe Pieters, the moderate Frisian pastor in Harlingen. More controversy and recrimination followed. The sounds of the ugly feud reached Dirk Philips in Danzig. He wrote from Prussia,7 telling of h is concern and sorrow at the new outbreak of strife while the Reformed Church was growing in power and influence, and would profit from disunity among the Mennonites. Dirk exhorted the quarreling parties to harmony, and hinted that he would be glad to come and adjudicate the case; but his appeal was unsuccessful. 7

 19 September 1566.

chapter 30.1

the netherlands & england  1181

The two factions agreed instead to accept two ministers from outside the affected region as arbitrators, John Willems and Lubbert Gerrits from Hoorn. These in turn chose ten others to help. They demanded that the parties in dispute sign an agreement to abide by their arbitration; and, after extended hearings and investigations, they called a s olemn meeting for 1 February 1567 at Harlingen, attended by d elegations from near and far. After a formal report of their findings, the arbitrators required both parties to kneel, to confess their guilt, and to ask forgiveness. The Frisians knelt first and rose. When the Flemish group in their turn, after kneeling and confessing their sin, started to rise also, they were told that they had to be lifted by t he hands of t he Frisians for bearing the larger burden of g uilt. The humiliated Flemings, who felt that they had been tricked, furiously denounced both the commitment and their confession of guilt; and needless to say, the situation was worse than before.8 In this impasse, the Frisians appealed to Dirk Philips to intervene personally, but their letter 9 was so ingratiating that Dirk suspected their sincerity. Dirk himself was in a q uandary. Basically disposed to favor the church councils and the elders over whom he presided as the chief bishop, he was found in the course of t he quarrel reversing himself as to just which faction were the Amalekites! He had already expressed his disapproval of t he Frisians’ yoked-church compact, as a n onapostolic arrangement, and he now let it be known that he considered the two arbitrators chosen, John Willems and Lubbert Gerrits (whom he himself had earlier ordained), as too young to wield the authority with which they had been invested. In response to the Frisians, Dirk set out toward Emden on what was to be his last journey, and he asked the contending parties to appear there before him. John and Lubbert excused themselves on the ground that their congregation at Hoorn would not permit them to leave. Thereupon Dirk, who took this as evidence of a bad conscience, wrote to Hoorn, reminding the young elders that they owed their standing to him, and in effect suspended them until they should have freed themselves from the suspicion brought on them by their failure to appear before him in Emden. Thus pressed, the Frisians dispatched a delegation of nine, but not the requested pair. This action antagonized Dirk all the more. He was certain that he had to bring the Flemings and the Frisians face to face in his presence. He sent the unbidden nine away, and wrote another letter announcing again the suspension of the reluctant ministers of Hoorn. They, however, had in the meantime thought better of the matter, and set out with others10 toward 8

 Keeney, “Dirk Philips,” MQR 32 (1958): 189.  Written by Hoyte Renix, 17 April 1567. 10  Hoyte Renix and Peter Willems Bogart. 9

1182  the radical reformation

chapter 30.1

Emden. Meeting the returning nine on the way, they joined them and all went to Emden. In Emden they found that the old bishop would not budge from his demand that the two men in question, John and Lubbert, face the Flemings in his presence without the rest of their delegation, and this they were unwilling to do. Impatiently, Dirk responded with an ultimatum,11 which the Frisians interpreted as an excommunication, and to which they replied by banning Dirk himself on 8 July 1567! This sad split was the final outcome of D irk’s attempts at reconciliation. In view of t he rancor of t he contending parties, which colors their accounts, it is hard to see at whose feet the greater charge of stubbornness and self-will is to be laid. It is ironical that in the end it was Dirk who found himself allied with the laxer Flemings and banned by the Frisians, whereas Leonard Bouwens, who had started the whole affair by his too ready enjoyment of Flemish hospitality and spirits, was now aligned with the Frisians and banned by t he Flemings. Despite this final incongruity, the Flemish had, after all, moved away from the Frisians because of t he rigorism and extreme “episcopal” authority of Dirk Philips among the Frisians.12 Thus, Dirk Philips’ work as chief bishop of the Anabaptists of the Hanseatic Coast in succession to Menno ended in a second major schism in 1567, comparable in proportions and issues to that occasioned by t he defection of t he Waterlanders a decade earlier (Ch 19.2.d). Dirk’s last days were spent writing a v indication of h is conduct in the controversy. Shortly afterward he died, sometime in 1568, near Emden. A number of Netherlandish Mennonites had sought to stay out of this controversy as stilstaanders, remaining neutral and chiding both parties for lack of brotherliness. For their pains they were excommunicated by both the Flemish and the Frisians.13 The tensions between spiritualism and rigorism, congregationalism and neo-clericalism, compounded by persecution, emigration, and personal animosities among the leaders, had led to successive fissions in Netherlandish Anabaptism. In 1567, besides numerous smaller factions, there were four major Mennonite groups: the Frisians, the Flemish, the Waterlanders, and the unitarian Adamites. The next year, 1568, the Waterlanders held a major meeting in Emden, with twelve congregations represented, including Ghent, Antwerp, Rotterdam, and Amsterdam,14 and there reasserted the rights of the local congregations with respect both to their own elected spokesmen (voorgangers)

11

 Cf. Kühler, Geschiedenis, 425.  Meihuizen, “Spiritualistic Tendencies,” 274. 13  The majority of this group eventually went over to the Flemish. 14  Minutes in Doopsgezinde Bijdragen 17 (1877): 69–75. 12

chapter 30.1 / 30.2

the netherlands & england  1183

and to any actions these servants of the church (leeraars, vermaners, dienaars, oudsten) might take in the absence of t he congregation. On the constitutional side, the Flemish schism and the Waterlander fellowship were in large agreement. The strong affirmation of congregationalism or independency by two influential branches of N etherlandish Anabaptism occurred at the very moment when Calvinism, with its capacity for strong synodal articulation and cohesion, was emerging as the new fighting faith in the great national uprising against Spain.

2. The rise of the Calvinists and Achievement of Toleration for the Mennonites, 1561/66–1578 While the Netherlandish Mennonites were falling prey to internal strife and schism, another reforming group, which had come late to the scene, was beginning to perfect its organization and to grow in strength and influence in the Low Countries. In 1566 the Reformed Church organized itself at the synod of Antwerp and adopted the Confessio Belgica as the Netherlandish statement of Calvinist faith. The militant spirit of the Reformed movement is attested by the hardihood of the Walloon Guy de Brès, the author of the Confessio,15 who had sent it to Philip II in 1561 with the request that, having learned of their beliefs, he would either increase his tortures and burning or become the support and refuge of his loyal subjects. De Brès paid for his proposal with his life in 1567. Even before receiving this bold-faced challenge, Philip II (1555–98) had learned much about the stubbornness and independent will of h is Netherlandish subjects. His royal and imperial father, Charles (I) V, before him had sought to establish an efficient inquisition in The Netherlands on the Spanish model (Ch. 1.2.c), but had met with nothing but frustration through the indifference or actual opposition of the native magistrates. On 25 October 1555, though only in the fifty-fifth year of his life, Charles had perceived himself beaten and he turned over the reins of his Spanish and Burgundian dominions to his son Philip in order to retire the following year to a monastery in Spain. Unlike his father, who had been born in Brabant, Philip was a t horough Spaniard who spoke neither Flemish nor French, and neither understood nor wanted to understand the genius of h is Netherlandish subjects. Even less than his father was he able to appreciate the unique industry and mentality of t he Low Countries, which had provided Charles with twofifths of his annual revenues of five million gold crowns. He was zealous for the Catholic faith and jealous of his own absolute power, even if he had to protect them at the cost of all his revenues from The Netherlands. 15

 Cf. n. 16 below.

1184  the radical reformation

chapter 30.2

Philip’s first ecclesiastical move in The Netherlands was the attempt actually to enforce Charles V’s earlier edict of 1550 establishing the Inquisition. To this end he had effected, through a papal bull of 1559 (Paul IV), the episcopal reorganization of the provinces. Instead of the four old bishoprics of A rras, Cambrai, Tournai, and Utrecht (the first three under the archbishop of Rheims, the last under Cologne), there were now to be three archbishoprics: Mechlin (Malines) with six dioceses, Cambrai with four, and Utrecht with five. This measure was odious to the evangelicals of a ll parties because it represented a strengthening of the Roman administrative system; repugnant to many of the towns because it represented a violation of their ancient charters and the installation of foreign prelates; and hazardous to the great monasteries, whose ample revenues were to be confiscated to support the new dioceses. Thus when Philip left The Netherlands for Spain in the same year, there was a strong body of opposition to his policy within the council of state. The year of this diocesan reorganization and the royal departure, 1559, was, it will be recalled, also the year of Calvin’s final edition of the Institutes (Ch. 23.5), the year of the adoption of the Latin Confessio Gallicana in Paris,16 and the year in which William of Orange, not yet a Protestant, formed the secret resolution “to drive the Spanish vermin from the land,” which earned him the sobriquet “the Silent.” We pass over seven years. In 1566 a group of noblemen submitted a petition to the regent Margaret of Parma, requesting abolition of the edicts against the heretics and the summoning of the Estates-General of the Spanish Netherlands. A frenzy of great religious excitement inundated the country. Preachers appeared everywhere, and a furious outbreak of iconoclasm destroyed thousands of works of art in Antwerp and elsewhere. Margaret originally made some concessions, but soon put down the disorder and retracted them. Then, much to her displeasure and against her advice and entreaties, began the ruthless dictatorship of the Duke of Alva. A man who had fought the Pope in the service of the Reys Católicos could by no means be less savage toward the Netherlandish heretics. His rule brought death to thousands of them and also to highly placed Catholic patriots such as Counts Hoorn and Egmont. This ill-advised Hispanic severity, instead of crushing the mercantile Dutch, succeeded in uniting the vast majority of the Netherlanders against Philip’s rule, and in making the originally limited insurrection widespread and profound. The various Mennonite parties, because of t heir common belief that Christians might not use the sword, were largely isolated from the mainstream 16

 This Confessio, in thirty-five articles, having been initially drafted by Calvin and revised by his pupil Anthony de la Roche Chandieu, was adopted by the first national synod in Paris. It was the basis for the Belgic Confession of 1561, and the Confession of La Rochelle in 1571 in forty articles.

chapter 30.2 / 30.2.a

the netherlands & england  1185

of this patriotic and religious uprising. With the memory of Münster, they wanted nothing to do with violence, even in the cause of driving out Antichrist in Spanish garb. There were exceptions. In 1572 the Waterlander Peter Willems Bogart (a companion of John Willems and Lubbert Gerrits in the Flemish-Frisian controversy; Ch. 30.1) and Dirk Jans Cortenbosch presented William of Orange with 1,060 guilders collected from Waterlander congregations for the promotion of the war against the common Spanish foe. But the Anabaptists could not share actively in the effort, much less become its real motive spirit, as the Calvinists were doing. The Calvinists, who had come upon the scene late, in the third phase of the Reformation in The Netherlands, possessed a m ilitant spirit which distinguished them from the withdrawn Mennonites. Dynamic preachers, trained in the teachings of the Genevan Academy, proclaimed their acutely formulated dogmatics with an irresistible enthusiasm. With their faith in a divine mission to establish the true church with the word and the sword, and with their excellent synodal organization, they were the men of t he hour. They adopted the conventicular and covenanting impulse of the Anabaptists and gave it a new dogmatic, nationalist impetus.17 From 1566 they held outdoor meetings for preaching and psalm-singing, under voluntary armed guard, something the Anabaptists had begun to do at the time of the Münsterite episode but had quickly abandoned. By combining the two powerful motives of r eligious and national freedom, the Calvinists were able to draw off from the pacifistic and yet factional Anabaptists a g ood measure of the social energies which had formerly been discharged in the great Münsterite movement among the dispossessed. The vigorously organized Calvinist Church opposed the Mennonites of all factions. The Reformed synod at Dordrecht in 1574 even recommended that Reformed ministers enter the Mennonite meetinghouses to refute the preachers and to convince them of their false teachings. A more appealing course was that of arranging public disputations.18 a. The Emden Disputation, 1578 The most impressive of these meetings was the debate in 120 sessions held at Emden in 1578.19 A thousand Anabaptists from Holland had but recently arrived in Emden to live. An entry of 20 January 1577 in the records of the Dutch Reformed congregation in the capital of East Frisia reveals that the ministers planned to approach Count Edward II and urge him to issue

17

 Knappert, De opkomst, 205.  The fullest account of the issues is that of Jan Hendrik Wessel, De leerstillige strijd tusschen Nederlandsche Gereformeerden en Doopsgezinden in de zestiende eeuw (Assen:Van Gorcum, 1945). 19  Cornelius Krahn, “The Emden Disputation of 1578,” MQR 20 (1956): 256. 18

1186  the radical reformation

chapter 30.2.a / 30.2.b

a mandate restraining the Anabaptists from preaching on the ground that they were not willing to defend their faith in public disputation. Naturally, the Mennonites, both the new arrivals and the older denizens, were not willing to let this challenge go unanswered. Accordingly, a d ebate was arranged between several Reformed preachers and several representatives of the Flemish branch of the Mennonites, of whom the most important were John Busschaert, Peter of Cologne, and Brixius Gerrits. 20 Of the Flemings, only Brixius Gerrits knew the classical languages of theology. The Frisians and the Waterlanders declined the invitation. The topics for the Emden debate should be recorded, since they indicate the issues between the “Flemish” Mennonites and the Reformed at the close of our period. Significantly, the doctrine of the Trinity heads the agenda, which may suggest the continuing influence of Adam Pastor (and possibly Racovian influence by way of Danzig). The other items concerned the creation and fall of m an, original sin and the loss of t he freedom of the will, the human nature of Christ, justification and sanctification over against second birth, good works, the Church of God, the election and call of preachers, the proper use and misuse of the ban, the oath, and the meaning of the Sermon on the Mount with special reference to divorce, and the resurrection of the flesh. 21 The interconfessional debate, as had been customary in Emden since the days of Laski and Menno (Ch.19.2), was carried on in a spirit of charity, although the Mennonites were not accorded complete equality. On the other hand, they were responsible for publishing the first and rather biased account of the proceedings, Een Christelicke ende voorloopende Waerschouwinge. b. Dirk Coornhert and Civil Liberty of Conscience (1522–90) The cause of the liberty of conscience received a fresh impulse from Dirk Volkerts Coornhert, eventually secretary of state under William of Orange, the liberator of The Netherlands.22 Born in Amsterdam in 1522, Coornhert was a mysterious but active figure in the period we are now considering, although it is chiefly in the theological speculation and thought of a later period that his ideas will make themselves strongly felt. A trained engraver and etcher of copperplates, he was led by a desire to go back to the sources of religious truth to learn Greek and Latin after he was already thirtyfive years of a ge. An heir of E rasmus and the Dutch humanists, devoted to classical Stoic literature, he was especially concerned with ethics and the art of g ood living, expressed in his most famous work Zedekunst, dat

20

 Others were Paul Backer, Christian Arends, and John van Ophoorn of Emden.  ME, 2:201–2. 22  Hendrik Bonger, Dirck Volckertszoon Coornhert: Studie over een nuchter en vroom Nederlander (Lochem: Uitgeversmaatschappij de Tijdstroom, [1942]). 21

chapter 30.2.b

the netherlands & england  1187

is wellevenkunst.23 Coornhert knew the works of S ebastian Franck and Sebastian Castellio, two of w hose tracts he would translate (1581, 1582). His thought most resembles that of F ranck. He was in fact a C atholic Spiritualist. He was a friend of the Familist Henry Niclaes (Ch. 19.1) but an opponent of the vagaries of the Jorists. His early travels and exiles brought him into contact with the Spanish Inquisition and Genevan Calvinism, both of which he detested. Like John de Valdés, Coornhert never formally left the Roman Church, although spiritually he was far beyond its boundaries. He strongly opposed the Calvinist stress on predestination and the depravity of m an and held that, despite the Fall, man was still possessed of native gifts and graces and of an unlost central being which remained in communion with God. He taught that it was possible for a regenerate person to lead a perfect life without any of the sacraments, and that in this life of perfection consisted the true discipleship of Christ. He was a perfectionist.24 Calvin would call him a Libertine. He was offended by the iconoclastic violence of the Calvinists, and the dogmatism of Calvin, and the sectarian divisiveness of t he Mennonites. We have already noted Calvin’s tracts against the Nicodemites and Libertines (Ch. 23.2). Among these was the already mentioned Petit traité montrant que c’est que doit faire un homme fidèle … quant il est entre les papistes (Forgiving Roman Idolatry) (1543). To this, Coornhert was indirectly and belatedly replying in his Verschooninghe van de Roomsche Afgoderye (1562). He charged Calvin, because of h is rigorism, with the responsibility for unnecessary martyrdoms, coupling him with Menno Simons in his imposition of a b aleful discipline upon his faithful followers. To this Calvin in turn replied in his Réponse à un certain Hollandais lequel sous ombre de faire les chrétiens tout Spirituales, leur permet de polluer leur corps en toutes idolatries.25 Coornhert’s ideas on the possibility of achieving evangelical perfection and on the comprehensiveness of the true church of t he Spirit influenced the Waterlanders, especially “the God-living friend,” John de Ries. 26 In Coornhert’s opinion, all of t he existing churches were in error, and he refused to receive the sacrament of communion from any of them, because they set the sacrament itself above the love which is the characteristic mark of a Christian. Like Schwenckfeld, he held that the sacraments could not 23

 Ed. Bruno Becker (Leiden, 1942).  Bruno Becker, “Coornhert, de 16 de eeuwsche apostel der v olmaaktheid,” NAKG n.s. 19 (1926): 59–84. 25  Calvin, Opera 9, cols. 581–628. The letter is summarized in Karl Muller, “Calvin,” ZKG 40:87 n. 6. The anonymous Dutch Libertine addressed is an enthusiastic follower of Sebastian Franck, opposed to, or better, indifferent to the “ceremonies” and sacraments. 26  The monument to the friendship is entitled Opperste goedts nasporinghe. It was with John de Ries that the Unitar ian Christopher Ostorodt, immersionist, of Danzig was in cor respondence in 1598. See another title by Ostorodt to the ministers in Strassburg, in Polish Brethren, Doc.V (1604). 24

1188  the radical reformation

chapter 30.2.b / 30.2.c

be rightly administered under the prevailing circumstances of disunity and mistrust among the churches. He advocated the formation of a n interim church (stilstandskerk) while awaiting new apostles who would really reform the existing churches. This interim church would be based on all that is plainly and clearly taught in the canonical Scriptures, but would reject all commentaries and glosses made by men, the position of Otto Brunfels of Strassburg (Ch. 23.2). Pleading for the “Christianity above confessional diversity,” Coornhert repeatedly urged toleration for Catholics and Mennonites. His ideas may well have influenced William of Orange, who made him his secretary to the Estates-General in 1572. He engaged in debates on toleration in 1578 with the Reformed preacher Thomas van Til, first in Delft, then publicly in Leiden, and published his great work on religious toleration in 1579, Van de aangheheven dwangh in der conscientien.27 Before taking up the guarantee of religious freedom by William of Orange, we must take note of Coornhert’s spirit at work among the Waterlanders. c. The Waterlanders, 1568–1581 Coornhert, who dedicated several of his writings to John de Ries and his associates, would one day even attend an important disciplinary meeting of the Waterlanders, and though not yet a member, carry the day on the issue before that assembly. The general meeting of the Waterlander Doopsgezinden (the Baptismally minded) in Emden in 1568, where the authority of t he local congregation was reasserted and moderation in doctrinal formulation was the order of t he day, the Waterlanders admitted to their deliberation the gifted convert destined to wield an abiding influence upon this liberal brotherhood. That a major branch of Netherlandish Anabaptists should be that receptive to a spokesman of Spiritualism, and of t he world, measures the distance traversed in a generation after the arrival of Hofmann in Emden in 1530. Born in Antwerp, John de Ries (1553–1638) had considered joining the new Calvinists; but he was held back by his conscientious disapproval of their carrying swords to protect themselves at meetings in the fields and woods. Later he gravitated toward the Anabaptist community in Antwerp, where he was working as a bookkeeper for an Italian merchant; but, thinking always of the Christian way as an imitation of Christ, he was anguished by, and finally disgusted with, the mutual recriminations and the factionalism that he observed among the Flemish sectaries. It was in 1575 or the year after, near De Rijp in North Holland, that the Waterlander elder, Simon Michiels, baptized John de Ries and ordained 27  See further Hendrik Bonger, De Motivering van de godsdienstvrijheid bij Dirk Volckertszoon Coornhert (Arnhem:Van Loghum Slaterus, 1954).

chapter 30.2.c

the netherlands & england  1189

him to the Waterlander ministry. Soon after uniting with the Waterlanders who fulfilled his yearnings, de Ries joined with Jacob Jans Scheedemaker, Simon Michiels, and two other leeraars to draw up in twenty-four articles at Alkmaar what proved to be the first formal Anabaptist Confession of Faith in The Netherlands, September 1577. 28 It was intentionally imprecise in order thereby to accommodate the conservative and the liberal wings of the growing coalition of congregations, united in their opposition to the clerical authoritarianism and the disciplinary rigorism of the other factions. Though the Confession retained the traditional Mennonite articles on the ban and avoidance, the true church was so defined in a quasi-Spiritualist sense that these stern ordinances were largely deprived of their exclusionary power. The church was defined as made up of all reborn and loving people who have been renewed in the Spirit of G od and have resolved to lead a new life. This is the Church of God on earth, though it be scattered in all corners of the world, of which Church Christ is the only head, built up in the power and Spirit of God, also by the preaching of the godly Word, but never by f orce, never by p ersecution, never by t he worldly sword of t he rulers of t he earth, but only by t hose ministers (dienaars) whom God has sent by his Spirit and whom the congregation have also called to this work. The Melchiorite celestial flesh of Christ disappeared in article four on the Incarnation. John de Ries in his own confession in 1578 sought to construe the doctrine of the celestial flesh as a tolerable opinion, though he did not hold it.29 With a Confession and policy the Waterlanders sought to recruit more members and to draw other independent congregations into their fellowship. Long before, it had been their willingness to accept into membership the banned and bruised from the more stringent factions that had prompted the rigorists to call them abusively the garbage wagon (drekwagen).30 In 1579 overtures were made between the Waterlanders and the more liberal congregation in Emden. The doctrine of the celestial flesh of Christ, which the more conservative Mennonites of Emden insisted on, would have prevented the federation, had not a committee of seven worked out a compromise in the Waterlander spirit, according to which the doctrine might be held by members of the fellowship so long as it was not made binding upon those in the majority who had come to a simpler view.

28

 First printed in Doopsgezinde Bijdragen 44 (1904): 145–56; Cornelius J. Dyck, “The First Waterlandian Confession of Faith,” MQR 36 (1962): 5–13. 29  Idem, “The Middelburg Confession of Hans de Ries, 1578,” MQR 36 (1962): 147–54, esp. art. 6, 152. For de Ries on or iginal sin, see the chapter “Sinners and Saints” in Dyck, ed., Legacy, 87–102. 30  The same garbage wagon carries off Remonstrants in a cartoon drawn against them just before the Calvinist (inter national) Synod of Dor t, 1618; reproduced in Williams, Lubieniecki, picture and commentary, Plate 61.

1190  the radical reformation

chapter 30.2.c / 30.2.d

A major assembly of Waterlander congregations took place in Amsterdam in March 1581, with the representation of a ffiliated congregations from far beyond the Waterland district, even from Ghent and Antwerp. With de Ries the moving spirit, the assembly agreed about principles and practices that were to mark the Waterlander tradition into modern times. The practice of r ather solemn baptisms in the home was formally eliminated and the rite, simplified, was restored to the congregational meeting. De Ries attached importance to his practice of observing the Lord’s Supper seated at tables, and the assembly made this the accepted usage of the whole Waterlander fellowship, involving in the larger communities, several sittings. There was a very strong Spiritualist sentiment in the assembly, some of the participants openly expressing their desire to be freed of all outward ordinances such as preaching, baptism, and communion in a preference for silent meditation together, which in any case had been a feature of the prayer in certain Mennonite groups. The Amsterdam assembly did not endorse this Spiritualism, but it made important concessions in two other sectors. The traditional stricture against marriage with outsiders was relaxed, and the members were also allowed to accept public office. The Waterlander assembly of 1581 marks the opening of a n ew epoch, as the participants themselves well realized when, in their final message, they declared that nothing in their deliberations was intended to bind the future. The liberal ferment among the Waterlander Anabaptists had its counterpart in the policy of William of Orange. d. The Mennonites Achieve Toleration: End of an Epoch, 1577 While the Reformed clergy of the Low Countries were industrious in their attempts to refute or convert the various groupings of M ennonites, the civil authorities were providing them with a g reater measure of s ecurity than Anabaptists had received from any others, with the exception of the Moravian and Polish nobilities. In the very midst of his struggle with the Duke of Alva, William of Orange wrote a letter to the governor of North Holland, requiring that no one be hindered in preaching the Word of God (20 April 1572). Later the same year (15 July), very possibly under the influence of Coornhert, he proposed to the Estates-General that religious freedom be guaranteed throughout The Netherlands, but this proposal was not at once accepted, due to the opposition from the Reformed side. In 1577, William was finally able to award the Anabaptists civil and religious freedom. 31 With this action toward the Anabaptists on the part of the founder of modern Holland in 1577, subsequently confirmed and extended, with the 31  Johannes Reitsma, Geschiedenis van de Hervorming en de Her vormde Kerk der Nederlanden, 2d. ed. (Groningen: Wolters, 1899; reprinted, The Hague: Nijhoff, 1949), 59.

chapter 30.2.d / 30.3

the netherlands & england  1191

mutually respectful Emden disputation of 1578, with the treatise (Dwanghe) of Coornhert, the Spiritualist, on tolerance in 1579, and with the accommo­ dating Waterlander assembly of A msterdam in 1581, our account of t he Radical Reformation in the sixteenth-century Netherlands comes to a close. We may now cross the Channel for one more visit to England, where so much of the legacy of the Radical Reformation on the Continent in the sixteenth century (1520–80) was to be reworked by the Parties of the Left in the second English Reformation in the seventeenth century (1620–88).

3. Antitrinitarians, Anabaptists, and Familists in England, 1547–1579 We were last in England at the end of Henry VIII’s headship of the Church of England (Ch. 14.4). We proceed here to radical manifestations under the successive reigns of his three offspring. England under Edward VI (1547–53) would soon pass through its most Protestant phase (in the continental sense) with its I and II Edwardian Prayer Books (the first, reflective of a reluctant compromise under Henry with theological Protestantism). Under Mary (1553–58), married to Philip II of Spain, it became a CounterReform kingdom, with the restoration of t he Mass. Under Elizabeth I (1558–1603), it became promptly the chief Protestant state of E urope with an Erastian Church of which she, more theologically restrained than her father, was Supreme Governor (rather than Head). She issued the III Prayer Book (1559), a modification of t he II Edwardian, which incorporated a formulary on Holy Communion sufficient to mollify some of her Catholic subjects’ disposition to a high liturgy, but not at all adequate for true Papists (Recusants), and yet too high for the emerging Puritan parties (Low Church episcopal through presbyterian to separatist). It is here the place to recall the distinctiveness of England as a national territory in which a sub-theme of the Radical Reformation, namely, the separatist motif, is subdued and in most cases realigned. Accordingly in England and in Scotland to a lesser extent, it is desirable to keep before one the scope and the overlap of the concepts ranging from nonconformity in public worship (the succession of Prayer Books or the restored Mass) through separatism of various degrees, to sectarianism and heresy—the last two designating a s ubstantial shift in regard (1) to the received dogmas of patristic antiquity, (2) to the new emphases of confessional (classical, magisterial) Protestantism such as predestination, justification by faith alone through Christ, and hence the abandonment of the sacrificatory character of the sacrament of the altar along with the intercession of the saints, and (3) to the impropriety of the state’s control of the inner life and thought of a scriptural community of faith. Separatism and nonconformity to the royally authorized public form of worship (Prayer Book or the Mass) were in England recurrently directed

1192  the radical reformation

chapter 30.3

against the allegedly non-scriptural or anti-scriptural excesses in ecclesiastical governance (polity) and in institutionalized practice (liturgical, canonical) rather than against the magistracy (the authorities and the institutions of the body politic) at whatever level. (Only in the seventeenth century would some of these developing thrusts in polity and liturgy come to be directed against the sovereign himself, Charles I.) In the sixteenth century almost all theological or social radicals in England were royalists and would-be loyalists in some scriptural sense (under the sanction of Rom. 13, in contrast to so many on the Continent, where not a few of their counterparts found sanction for acerb separation and even revolt in Rev. 13). And it was therefore consonant with the English religious concern with right polity and church order (as distinguished from confession of the right faith) that the most notable parties of the Church of England and eventually the separate denominations would come to take their name from scriptural sanctions for polity—episcopal, presbyterial, congregational (separating and nonseparating), believers’ baptist (separating not only congregations from each other but also the generations), and simply friends (of God, John 15:15). But these polities would become fully distinctive and nationally decisive only in the English century of “the reformation of the Reformation.” English Church history is thus also notable for its early differentiation of the concept and practice of nonconformity as to ritual in public worship, as distinguished from dissent as to confessions of faith. Notable, therefore, too, is the fact that in the England of the age of Reformation the first and most conspicuous provisional separatists (in contrast to the numerous emigré Anabaptists from The Netherlands) were the Edwardian Prayer Book Protestants whose leaders organized congregations in exile from Mary on the Continent in expectation of return, and whose sympathizers of the same conviction remaining behind but of less conspicuous silhouettes, foregathered with the Edwardian Prayer Book in their own provisional conventicles under Mary. In any event, in no country of Europe was the national spirit so strong and the bond between throne and altar/communion to be so confessionally decisive as in England. Edward VI (1547–53) succeeded his father at the age of nine, under the protectorship of his mother’s brother Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset. Edward sustained, as a new Josiah, his father’s full sovereignty and headship of the Nation-Church. Archbishop Cranmer at the coronation, 20 February 1547, explained away the liturgical unction as “but a ceremony,” the young ruler being addressed as “God’s vicegerent,” “Christ’s vicar within your own dominion” in succession to “your predecessor Josiah,” authorized by

chapter 30.3

the netherlands & england  1193

God to see idolatry destroyed, the tyranny of the bishop of Rome banished, and “images removed.”32 In addressing the young king as Josiah, Cranmer was alluding not only to the comparable age of Josiah when he ascended the throne of Judah at age eight, but also to the fact that as in the eighteenth year of Josiah’s reign, with the discovery of a “ law-book,” Deuteronomy, by H ilkiah the high priest (and its authentication by Huldah, the prophetess), so now in England, through Parliament, a second better law in place of the papal canon law might be royally authorized and implemented. 33 Medieval liturgical kingship with its intended sacralizing of the royal power as derived from God through his anointed by t he mediation of a Samuel-like prelate (cf. coronations in Bologna, Ch. 1.5; Cracow, Ch. 29.3) was secularized into a ceremonial gesture, and Archbishop Cranmer made a point of disclaiming the prophetic role of descrying and sacramentally anointing a king, and thus placing royal power under the restraint of the crucified King. The sense of the Two Powers and of the Church as embodied in its sacerdotium with its external source of authority had come to an end in England in this exaltation of the hereditary crown. Cranmer, who obsequiously eschewed the prophetic role of effectuating anointer, would, within exactly as many years as the young king was old, be arrested for high treason by Q ueen Mary Tudor, Edward’s half sister and successor (1553–58), and would be burned at the stake for heresy in Oxford, 21 March 1556. The heretical pyres for him and for the three other Edwardian bishops (Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley, John Hooper) and many others loyal to the public religion of t he royally authorized Book of C ommon

32  The archbishop’s speech is pr ovided in Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterb ury, Martyr, 1556, ed. John Edmund Cox (Cambridge, for the Parker Society, 1846) 126–27; for an inter pretation of the death of the old doctr ine of two separate powers, with all r ights regarded since Henr y VIII as emanating fr om the Crown, see Percy Ernst Schramm, A History of English Coronations, tr. Leopold G. Wickham Legg (Oxford: Clarendon, 1937), esp. 138–39, where a por tion of the speech is quoted: “The solemn r ites of coronation have their ends and utility, yet neither direct force nor necessity. They be good admonitions to put kings in mind of their duty to God,but no increasement of their dignity; for they be God’s anointed, not in respect of the oil which the bishop useth,but in consideration of their power, which is ordained, of their sword, which is authorized, of their persons, which are elected by God, and imbued with the gifts of his Spirit for the better ruling and guiding of this people. The oil, if added, is but a ceremony; if it be wanting, that king is yet a perfect monarch notwithstanding, and God’s anointed, as well as if he was inoiled.” 33  It is of significance, in comparative Reformation historiography, that the most important theological deposit of the cum ulative Tudor Reformations, besides the Pra yer Book, was that of Richard Hooker (d. 1600), Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity in seven volumes (1594, 1597–1662).

1194  the radical reformation

chapter 30.3 / 30.3.a

Prayer34 would so light up the night of Counter-Reform in England under the influence of P hilip of S pain upon his conscientious Catholic queen, that the attendant and subsequent burnings and the beheadings of m ore radical avowed separatists may well seem less gripping, perhaps even less poignant. And in the case of t he theological-constitutional status of t he Virgin Queen who achieved the mediating settlement that survives to this day, something of t he English people’s late medieval devotion to the Virgin Mediatrix found sublimation in their intense loyalty to the imperious daughter of executed Anne Boleyn. There were, however, authentic sectarians in the sense of evangelical believers who felt that they were not treasonable in their self-disciplining separatist groupings. They thought of t hemselves as positively schismatic rather than as heretical. The Edwardian divines of the Establishment under the Lords Protector, the sectarian troublemakers, and the Old B elievers were alike striving for a renewed or restored Church on the basis of Scripture; respectively, that of the renewed covenant under King Josiah of Judah, that of the Primitive Church of the New Covenant, and that of the ancient ongoing Latin Church with papal primacy and ecclesial universality sanctioned by the unique topos, Matthew 16:18. a. The Strangers’ Church at Austin Friars, London, 1550–53: John Laski To return to the most consistently Reformed (Calvinist) reign in England until the Cromwellian age, under Edward VI English radicalism emerged from its rather secret existence into the light of d ay. Although Edward’s two regents (successively the Dukes of S omerset and Northumberland) were committed to promotion of their magisterial reform along the lines of cantons Zurich and Geneva, Archbishop Cranmer pursued the policy of argumentation with, rather than outright suppression of, the radicals. There were some differences in the reign under the protectorates of Somerset and then Northumberland. 35 An unusual measure was adopted and a l icense was granted in 1550 for the establishment of a c hurch for aliens in the precincts of the dissolved Austin Friars, where John Laski ( John à Lasco) served as the first superintendent under the bishop of L ondon. The king

34  The martyr-readiness was the mor e readily envisaged in pr e-Constantinian rather than Josian modalities, for asceticism and coenobitism were indeed among the tested ancient Christians’ options for spiritual and moral withdra wal from “the world.” It had been under Henry’s VicarGeneral for Ecclesiastical Affairs,Thomas Cromwell, himself beheaded in 1540, that the last of the monasteries and convents of England had been destr oyed. Nor did Mar y later move to restore them as integral to her Counter-Reform.The implementation of the ancient and medieval ascetic impulse and ideal would, after 1540, find its unacknowledged continuity in the sectarian ideal. 35  See monographically Daniel Wade Petty, “Anabaptism and the Edwardian Reformation,” (Ph.D. thesis, Texas Christian University, Abilene, 1988).

chapter 30.3.a / 30.3.b

the netherlands & england  1195

recorded in his journal that the Strangers’ Church was organized “for the avoyding of al sectes of Anabaptistes and such like.” We have encountered the only Polish reformer of pan-European renown in his formative years and early career outside Poland, notably as superintendent in East Frisia (Ch. 19.2.a), and indeed we have followed him already to his death as the overseer of the superintendents in his homeland (1556–60) with his vision of a r oyal reformation of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth on the Edwardian model (Ch. 25.1). By falling back into a time warp—a narrational awkwardness we have largely managed to avoid in our effort at chronological progression—we now return to his elsewhere presupposed London career. Laski had first visited England, 1548–49, at the invitation of Bi shop John Hooper. Invited a second time by Cranmer, and afterwards often resident in Canterbury’s Lambeth Palace in London, Laski was a recognized councilor for the II Edwardian Prayer Book and the Ordinal. In his own orders for the Strangers’ Church, his polyglot congeries of foreign congregations, John Laski, was especially attached to the Erasmian conceptualization of the triplex munus Christi (Chs. 10.2.b.; 11.3.b; 25.2b), even before this formulary had become Calvinian. With the mind of a primate manqué Laski became absorbed in church orders, church discipline, and liturgy, and used the formulary of Christ as Prophet, Priest, and King as an organizing principle. He was clearly groping for scriptural formulations to restate even the doctrinal essence of the ancient creeds. He felt himself a Nathan rebuking a distant David (the Polish king) and will have felt like a Jeremiah lamenting the untimely deaths of J osiah (2 Chron. 35:20–25) when he would have to make haste to leave the English realm on the accession of Mary. b. Nonconformists under Edward and Mary, 1547–1558 The Edwardian Forty-Two Articles Act, drafted by C ranmer and issued by royal mandate in 1553, required subscription by a ll clergy, schoolmasters, and university candidates for degrees, reveal the extent to which the “Bishops and their learned menne36 in the Synode at London,” notably, Cranmer himself had hoped, with the aid of G erman and Swiss divines, to set forth an evangelical catholic creed, which would embrace all heads of doctrine and serve as a b ond of u nion among all Protestant territorial churches in their dealing with the Church of Trent (its Period II of three having just come to an end). Cranmer’s ecumenical project having failed, the Articles would soon be a dead letter even for his own kingdom (though destined to reappear in adapted and reduced number as the Elizabethan 36  Among the “learned menne” were John Knox and also John Łaski. The Articles in Latin and English, reprinted by Charles Hardwick, A History of Articles of Religion, to which is added a series of documents from A.D. 1536 to A.D. 1615, 2d rev. version (Cambridge, 1859).

1196  the radical reformation

chapter 30.3.b

Thirty-Nine Articles, 1563). The Edwardian Forty-Two Articles do register the degree to which, besides Tridentine Catholicism, sectarian dissent and heresy were on the minds of t he bishops as of 1553: Article XII is in fact against a literal descent into Hell to save the pre-incarnational worthies; XIX is against Antinomianism; XL is against Anabaptist psychopannyschism; XLI is against millenarianism; and XLII is against eventual, universal salvation (cf. III). A distinctive feature of radical movements in England was the mutual overlapping of Libertinism (Antinomianism), Antitrinitarianism, Anabaptism of the Melchiorite strain, and Spiritualism. At hearings before Archbishop Cranmer at the beginning of Edward’s reign, we have successively the confession of a Libertine John Champneis, of Stratford on the Bowe, 37 who declared “That a man after he is regenerate in Christe, cannot synne,” which reminds us of Pocquet’s theology (Ch. 12.2); the confession of the Melchiorite Anabaptist tailor Michael Tombe, who espoused believers’ baptism and the view that “Christ toke no flesh of our lady”; 38 and the confession of the unitarian priest John Assheton, of Shiltelington in the diocese of Lincoln, who, on being denounced by two other priests, admitted that: in tymes past I thought, believed, said, … that the trinitie of persons was established by the confession of Athanasius declared by a psalm, “quicunque vult,”39 etc. and that the hollie Ghoste is not God, but only a c erteyn power of t he Father; secundarilye, that Jesus Christ, that was conceived of t he virgyn Mary, was a h oly prophet and speciallie beloved of God the Father, but that he was not the true and lyving God, for as much as he was seen and leved, hungered and thirsted; thirdly, that this only is the fruite of Jesus Christes passion, that whereas we were straungers from God, and had no knowledge of h is testament, hit pleased God by Christ to bring us to th’acknowledging of his hollie power by the testament.40 With such explicit Unitarianism, which reminds one much more of Laelius Socinus than of Michael Servetus, it is clear that radical alterations in theology were quite as far along in England as on the Continent.

37

 David Wilkins, Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae (London, 1737), 4:39.  Ibid., 42. 39  Tombe here calls the Athanasium, one of the thr ee ancient cr eeds used liturg ically, a “psalm” and refers to it also b y its Latin incipit b y which it is also kno wn, Quincunque vult, unique to the Latin West (fifth century) though ascribed to St. Athanasius. 40  Ibid., 41. 38

chapter 30.3.b

the netherlands & england  1197

At the same series of h earings before Archbishop Cranmer in the beginning of Edward’s reign, there was the notable case of Joan Boucher ( Joan of K ent), a w oman of s ome social standing, who mingled Lollard and Melchiorite strains in a new fierce piety of extraordinary resolve. The charge against her was similar to that against the tailor Michael Tombe but its Melchiorite specificity should be adduced. The accusation: That you beleve that the worde was made fleshe in the virgyn’s belly, but that Christe toke fleshe of t he virgyn you beleve not; because the flesh of t he virgyn being the outward man synfully gotten, and bourne in synne, but the worde by the consent of the inward man [sic] of the virgyn was made fleshe.41 Refusing to surrender her Melchiorite faith (unlike the Libertine, the Unitarian, and the other Melchiorite), Joan was condemned to die at the stake, 2 M ay 1550. She taunted the cleric who preached at the burning, boasting that there were a thousand of her kind in London alone.42 A Unitarian surgeon, Dr. George van Parris, a Fleming by birth and a member of the Strangers’ Church, like Joan Boucher refused to abjure his faith. Miles Coverdale served as interpreter in the hearing before Cranmer and, summarizing the Fleming’s conviction, said “that he believeth, that God the Father is only God, and that Christ is not very God.”43 Despite powerful intercessions in his behalf, he was burned at Smithfield, 25 April 1551. The spread of radical ideas at the outset of Edward’s reign was so great that in alarm the ecclesiastical authorities saw to the translation into English of several Swiss treatises against any reform, radical in polity or high in theology (including predestination), namely: Calvin’s A Short Instruction for to Arme all Good Christian People (Ch. 23.2) in 1549, together with several items from Bullinger’s pen, An Holsome Antidotus or Counterpoysen against the Anabaptists (London, 1548), A Moste Sure and Strong Defence of the Baptisme of Children (Worcester, 1551), and A Most Necessary and Frutefull

41

 Ibid., 43. Her high station and activities are discussed by Horst, Anabaptism in England, 109–12; monographically by John F. Davis,“Joan of Kent, Lollardy and the English Reformation,” JEH 33 (1982): 225–33; and in a larger regional context in Heresy and Reformation in the South East of England, 1520–1559 (London/Atlantic Highlands, N.].: Royal Historical Society/ Humanities Press, 1983); and by Petty, “Anabaptist and Edwardian Reformation,” chap. 5. 42  This boast is taken from the eyewitness account by the lay Catholic pamphleteer, Miles Hogarde, in his Displaying of the Protestantes (London, 1556); Martin, Religious Radicals in Tudor England, 46 n. 18. Martin also brings in the fact that Joan’s symapathies were in any case sufficiently hazardous to orderly religious transition to call forth a verse tract aimed at her heresy by an Edwardian cleric, Edmunde Beck, who ridiculed her in a stanza as “the wayward Virago that would not repent, The Devils’ Eldest daughter, which lately was burnt.” 43  Ibid., 44.

1198  the radical reformation

chapter 30.3.b

Dialogue between ye Seditious Libertin or Rebel Anabaptist, and the True Obedient Christian (Worcester, 1551). Martin Bucer, who had come to England from Strassburg in 1549 and had, with Laski, influenced the shaping of the Edwardian Ordinal of 1550, could admirably counsel English churchmen on how to cope with radicals. An influential leader of pensive lay nonconformity was Henry Hart of Kent, whose people were “the first that made separation from the reformed church in England,”44 and who produced several admonitory tracts, notably A godly Newe Short Treatyse in Ye Imytacyon of Vertu (1548). Hart’s group were called Freewillers by t he Predestinators. Against Hart the Marian martyr John Bradford wrote a Defence of Election.45 The Freewillers constituted a self-conscious grouping in London, Kent, and Essex, of lay composition, in which the ordained Hart was but a member, however articulate. All engaged in “talke of Scripture,” not all were uniformly attached to freedom of the will, but were always concerned with the practical impact of the regnant predestinarianism, often given to discussion of the meaning of the Bible for daily conduct, and even on such issues as gambling. They flourished only for a h alf-dozen years through the reign of Mary, and regarded their association and mutual support as a schooling process for small-town artisans and their wives. A confession of faith of 30 January 1555 drawn up in seven articles by Freewillers imprisoned under the leadership of John Trew, was not signed by all the prisoners as their own, but the document as reported in their trials suggests that they endorsed the preaching and sacraments of the Edwardian Church and were making do in a lay modality under the Catholic restoration.46 Referring to the native Freewillers and the Melchiorite immigrants, John Hooper, as chaplain to the Protector Somerset, in 1549 complained to Bullinger that “Anabaptists flock to the place [where Hooper lectured in London] and give me much trouble with their opinions respecting the incarnation of t he Lord.” In the summer of 1 549 Robert Ket, believing in the community of g oods and angered at the program of e nclosures of common lands, led a rebellion in Norfolk, known from his name, which

44  The phrasing is that of John Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, 3 vols. (1721; Oxford, 1822) 2:1, p. 369. Joseph Martin, Religious Radicals in Tudor England (London: Hambledon, 1989), has ascertained that the first use of “Freewillers” by any adherent of the freedom of the will in the realm of faith and salvation was that of the General Baptist Thomas Helwys, in 1611, 44 n. 9. Hart and his group are discussed by Petty, “Anabaptist and Edwardian Reformation,” chap. 6 45  Wilbur, Transylvania, chap. 10 is de voted to “Precursors of Unitar ianism in England.” Hart’s work “The Enormities Proceeding of the Opinion that Pr edestination … is Absolute in Man” may be r econstructed from Bradford’s refutation, Works, ed. Aubrey Townsend, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1848–53), 1:307–30. O. T. Hargrave minimizes the Anabaptist connection of Hart, et al., “The Freewillers in the English Reformation,” CH 37 (1968): 271–80. 46  Martin, “The First That Made Separation,” in Religious Radicals in Tudor England, chap. 3.

chapter 30.3.b

the netherlands & england  1199

may have recruited immigrant and native Anabaptists. The next year, 1550, Hooper reported the counties of Kent and Sussex were hotbeds of Anabaptist activity.47 When the government took alarm at the growth of English Anabaptism toward the end of E dward’s reign, it quite naturally turned to men like Hooper (and John Knox) to battle the menace of r adicalism. Hooper’s A Lesson of the Incarnation of Christ, aimed at confuting the doctrine of the celestial flesh, went through at least three editions in 1549–50. The son of the rebel, Francis Ket, educated at Cambridge University, who had been burned as a heretic in Norwich in 1589, professed an eschatology and Christology analogous in some ways to those of Obbe Phillips, Henry Niclaes, and above all, Francis Dávid, but his doctrines of sin and election are Puritan.48 Another opponent of Anabaptism was the French Reformed prebendary at Worcester, Jean Veron, who, in addition to translating and prefacing some of Bullinger’s tracts during the reign of Elizabeth, engaged in controversy with the well-known English Anabaptist, Robert Cooche. Cooche also debated with William Turner, “doctor of physic” and dean of Wells, on the doctrines of original sin and infant baptism. Turner replied in A preeseruatiue or Triacle Agaynst the poyson of Pelagius Lately Reneuwed and Styrred Up Agayn by the Furious Secte of the Anabaptistes (London, 1551), in the course of which he declared: This monstre [Pelagianism] is in many poyntes like unto the water snake with seven heades. … So out of Pelagius rose up these seven sectes: Anabaptistes, Adamites, Loykenistes, Libertines, Swegfeldianes, Davidianes, and the Spoylers.49 Cooche wrote The Confutation of the Errors of the Careless by Necessity (c. 1557). This book would soon prompt John Knox in the year he drew up the Scots Confession to publish An answer to a g reat nomber of blasphemous cauillations written by an Anabaptist (Geneva, 1560), which defended predestination over against the “Anabaptist” espousal of universal election and free will. Still later Cooche in writing to Bullinger’s associate and successor in Zurich, Rudolph Gualter, would propose a s ubstantial agape like that

47  As early as 1547, Thomas Ridley and Hugh Latimer (the destined episcopal mar tyrs) had been assigned to the task of dealing with cer tain Anabaptists in Kent. On the question of whether Ket’s Rebellion can in an y way be ascr ibed to authentic Anabaptists, see Hor st, England, 103–8. 48  See Dewey D. Wallace, Jr., “From Eschatology to Arian Heresy,” Harvard Theological Review 67 (1974): 459–73. 49  The “seven sectes” were, respectively: the followers of the Unitar ian Mennonite, Adam Pastor; the followers Loy Pruystinck (Ch. 12.2); the Freewillers, if not the same as Lo[y]ists; the followers of Caspar Schwenckfeld; the Davidjorists; and perhaps the Batenburgers.

1200  the radical reformation

chapter 30.3.b

of Camillo Renato (Ch. 22.1).50 Another literary opponent of the radicals was their former sympathizer, Thomas Cole, who in 1553 published his A Godly and Frutefull Sermon … against the Anabaptistes and others. The story of t he English Anabaptists and other radicals under Mary Tudor can hardly be separated from the general narrative of Protestant misfortune. Among sixty conventiclers of Faversham and Bocking, espousing free will against original sin, there were two antipedobaptist leaders. We have already mentioned the Freewiller, Henry Hart, author of two tracts, who debated in prison with Edward’s chaplain, John Bradford (martyred in January 1555). Another Anabaptist minister, Humphrey Middleton, died for his beliefs in July of 1555. Although John Foxe’s Martyrology (1570) is imprecise, those identified by him as “lay ministers” may in many instances have been Anabaptists. Besides the four notable prelates and the other loyal Prayer-Book martyrs of the magisterial reform under Edward, the greater percentage of the Marian martyrs came from the eastern counties and from the artisan class. We must forego reference to the martyrologist John Foxe (1516–87). He, on the accession of M ary, fled to the Continent, living in Basel and Frankfurt and notably in Strassburg, where he published his first edition in Latin of his Acts and Monuments of Matters Happening in the Church (Strassburg, 1554). Of cross-cultural interest is the fact that it was on this Latin text and that of three other martyrologies that Cyprian Bazylik (a friend of Simon Budny), in what is now Belorus, drew for his complete panProtestant martyrology in Polish The History of Harsh Persecution (Brest, 1563), which contains the vita of John Laski, and which features on its title page, “Marian martyrs, including Cranmer and Hooker.”51 The Strassburg Latin text became the famous Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, 1563, 1570, 1583, 1584, which was to evolve in length to twice the size of t he Bible and quickly to acquire an honored place next to it. At the quatercentenary commemoration of t he first English edition, an American authority on Puritanism published Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and the Elect Nation,52 the very title of which propounds its (contested) thesis that Foxe’s martyrology

50  Cooche’s letter (August 1573) was prompted by his reading Gualter’s commentary on Corinthians. The Zurich Letters, 2d ser., Parker Society (Cambridge, 1845), 2:236. Knox’s refutation of an “Anabaptist adversary [Cooche]” is to be found in Kno x, Works, ed. David Laing (Edinburgh, 1856; reprinted New York: AMS, 1966), 5:7–472 with extensi ve quotations for refutation, which have been placed together and edited in Baptist Historical Society, Transactions 4:2 (1915): 88. The preceding quotation from Turner’s book is in Champlin Bur rage, English Dissenters, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1912, reprinted New York: Russell & Russell, 1967), 1:59. 51  Williams, Lubieniecki, Plate 1. Budny, a sponsor of the P olish martyrology, was a cor respondent of Foxe and told him that pedobaptism was papist. 52  William Haller.

chapter 30.3.b / 30.3.c

the netherlands & england  1201

substantially shaped the idea of E ngland as an, or even the, elect nation, continuous with Israel/Judah.53 Foxe, covering fifteen centuries of Church history, wrote in the apoca­ lyptic conviction of being near the close of the final stage in the last three hundred years of world history before the Second Advent of Christ, a tercentenary period of a spiration and oppression which for him had begun ominously with the pontificate of B oniface VIII in 1294 and which had eventuated in the bull Unam Sanctum (1302) and his papal claim to jurisdiction over all creatures, and soon thereafter had led to Babylonian Captivity in Avignon. Foxe exalted Wycliffe (1309–77) as a f orerunner of r adical reform and restitution and lauded the Lollards after him. Such was the animus of Foxe toward the Pope as Antichrist and Whore of Babylon (Rev. 19:2) that he understood all his collected martyrdoms as ultimately caused by Papism and its theological presumptions identifiable even in Protestant guise, but seldom as acts of state against a religious community or its leaders. While Foxe held to the One Holy Catholic Church in time and space whose headship he felt Pope Boniface had in Satanic arrogance turned into a religio-political tyranny for all peoples of biblical faith, he also contributed to the sense of England as an elect Reformed nation, the more so under Elizabeth when providentially shielded from the Spanish Armada. Many of t he English sectarians, finding consolation and encouragement in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, similarly sustained a religious stance toward the Tudor nation and utter loyalty to its royal polity. English separatists separated from bishops, ecclesiastical restraints, rural deans, as the meddlers in their polity or as their persecutors. They were only indirectly against king, parliament, and local magistracies. c. Nonconformists under Elizabeth Under Elizabeth (1558–1603), Anabaptist testimony became once more clearly distinguishable from English Calvinist separatism and even Calvinist sectarianism. One clear mark of distinction was the adherence of Anabaptists to free will (and most often the Melchiorite Christology). In 1559, when Matthew Parker was consecrated as Archbishop of Canterbury, he advised Bullinger that the realm was overrun with Anabaptists and other heretics. In November of the next year, Bishop John Jewel of Salisbury, but recently returned to England from his Marian exile in Frankfurt, wrote to his old friend, Peter Martyr Vermigli:

53  Patrick Collinson, dealing with same theme in a differ ent way, shows how inclusive and yet also apocalyptic was the ecclesiology of John Foxe, The Birthpangs of Protestant England: Religious and Cultural Change in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century (London: Macmillan, 1988), esp. 14, citing, among others, Katherine R. Firth, The Apocalyptic Tradition in Reformation Britain 1530–1645 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979).

1202  the radical reformation

chapter 30.3.c

We found at the beginning of t he reign of E lizabeth a l arge and inauspicious crop of A rians, Anabaptists, and other pests, which I know not how, but as mushrooms spring up in the night and in darkness, so these sprang up in that darkness and unhappy night of the Marian times.54 Bishop Jewel’s coupling of A rians and Anabaptists again suggests a closer relationship between Antitrinitarianism and Anabaptism in England than anywhere else except Poland. In 1562, Jewel published his Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae to defend the newly re-established Church of England from both the Puritan party and Catholics. Spokesman of t he latter was Thomas Harding (d. 1572), whose extended sneer at the alleged martyrdom of t housands of P rotestants at the hands of C atholics induced Jewel rather savagely to distinguish between true Protestant confessors and “your Anabaptists and Zwenkfeldians” who “find harbour amongst you [Roman Catholics] in Austria, Silesia, Moravia … where the [Protestant] gospel of Christ is suppressed.” Jewel also ascribed the errors of “David George and Servete the Arian” to their Catholic upbringing.55 In 1560, Elizabeth (in a r einforcement of t he Act of U niformity) decreed that all Anabaptists must conform to her Establishment or else leave the country, on pain of imprisonment and confiscation of their goods, specifically singling out “the Anabaptists and such Hereticks, which had flocked to the Coast-Towns of England from the parts beyond the Seas, under the colour of shunning Persecution.” Furthermore, an ecclesiastical commission was created to register and bring to trial all those tainted with Anabaptist doctrines. A notable case of heresy in London was that centering in the Dutchspeaking congregation affiliated with the Strangers’ Church, which had been re-established by Elizabeth in 1559 and now placed directly under the bishop of London. The successor of Łaski as superintendent of the diverse, foreign-language congregations was his former secretary and biographer, John Utenhove.56 In 1562 Adrian Haemstede, a minister of London’s Dutch congregation, former Reformed pastor in Antwerp and then Aachen, author of t he oldest Dutch martyrology,57 was asked by the local Anabaptists to petition the bishop for the right to meet separately outside the precincts of t he Strangers’ Church. He supported their efforts, recognizing “the Anabaptists as

54

 Jewel, Works, ed. John Ayre (Cambridge, 1850),4:1240–41.  Jewel, Works, 3:188–89. 56  Utenhove wrote the Life of Łaski contained in the Polish martyrology drawing on Foxe, above at n. 51. 57  Geschiedenisse ende den Doodt der vroomen Martelaren (Antwerp, 1559). 55

chapter 30.3.c

the netherlands & england  1203

his brethren and as weak members of Christ.”58 Haemstede’s willingness to befriend the Anabaptists proved, on further investigation, to be based in part on sympathy with their Melchiorite doctrine of the celestial flesh of Christ. But more hazardous was his Spiritualist espousal of all earnest expressions of Christian faith as equally entitled to protection. He refused on principle to dispute with the Anabaptists, declaring that theologians had for all too long cast lots for the external garments of Christianity (Matt. 27:35), leaving the body of Christ, the solid core of true divinity, to suffer. For Haemstede, even the exact formulation of so important a doctrine as the Incarnation could be regarded as an adiaphoron. His case soon involved the French congregation and finally Bishop Edmund Grindal of London, who excommunicated him and banished him from England.59 An eminent Italian member of the Strangers’ Church, James Acontius (Ch. 11.4.b), had sympathized openly with Pastor Adrian Haemstede and was likewise excommunicated. The wide range of confessional, national, and temperamental differences represented by the Strangers’ Church was, in fact, the immediate background of Acontius’ famous Stratagems of Satan, published in Basel in 1565.60 The Stratagems takes its place alongside the other great sixteenth-century pleas for toleration within the Rationalist–Spiritualist context, Castellio’s Concerning Heretics (Ch. 24.2.d) a d ecade earlier and Dirck Coornhert’s Van de aangeheheven dwangh in der conscientien a dozen years later (Ch. 30.2.b). It was in Strassburg that Acontius had made the acquaintance of Marian exiles and had gone to England with them in the capacity of engineer. Hence his great work on toleration was begun before the Haemstede case, but is closely connected with it in spirit. Acontius, a Valdesian Catholic of a n aristocratic family of Trent and secretary to the lenient Christopher Cardinal Modruzzo, had fled from Italy on the accession of t he stringent Paul IV and sought the court in Vienna of Archduke Maximilian, long half-disposed to Protestantism, for whom Acontius had written two ironic dialogues in Italian in which he sought to convert the future Emperor (1564–76) to a simple, non-coercive Christianity. In one of these, Somma brevissima delia dottrina christiana, Acontius had placed theological differences in the perspective of t he Last Judgment. In 58  A. A. van Schelven, Kerkeraads-protocollen der nederduitsche vluchtelingenkerk te London (Amsterdam, 1921), 447. See also idem, De nederduitsche vluchtelingenkerke de xiv e eeuw (The Hague, 1909). 59  He died the same year in Frisia. 60  Stratagems of Satan, translated, with an introduction by Charles D. O’Malley, Occasional Papers of the Sutro Branch, California State Library, English Series No. 5 (San Francisco, 1940). Latin text of Acontius’ works with Italian translation, ed. G. Radetti, 2 vols. (Florence: Valleehi, 1944–46). A solid study of Acontius is b y O’Malley, Jacopo Acontio, Uomini e Dottr ine, no. 2 (Rome: Edizioni di Storie e Letteratura 1955). Appendix 2, p. 56–65, is the best account of the case of Haemstede.

1204  the radical reformation

chapter 30.3.c

his major work Satanae stratagemata, published in eight books and dedicated to Queen Elizabeth (1565), he set forth his deep conviction that all doctrines necessary to salvation were present in Scripture, but that territorial or magisterial Protestantism, having proclaimed this in Wittenberg and Geneva, nevertheless through the pride, vanity, and self-service of the new clergy, repeated the mistakes of the displaced sacerdotium and regnum, while Satan was once again tempting ministerium and magistratus to use the coercive power of princely states in interconfessional controversies. Acontius defends the freedom of engaged discussion on disputed points, confident that the saving truth can emerge in colloquy, and to this end he elevates to prominence the communis prophetia or the lex sedentium (Ch. 11.4.b). This was the generic term for all seated together under the tutelage of the Spirit, the vernacular Bible open before them, derived from 1 Corinthians 14:29–30: “Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said. If a revelation [clarification] is made to another sitting [sedenti], let the first be silent.” He acknowledges the Anabaptists, to whom he often refers favorably and whose right to separation by reason of conscience he praises for having so long observed and refined this practice of Sitzerrecht. He also respects those dissatisfied with the received formulation of t he doctrine of the Trinity. Acontius summarizes what he himself regards as the essential minimum for toleration in six intentionally imprecise and subsequently influential articles: (1) That there is one true God and he whom he sent, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. And that it is not right to deny that the Father is one and the Son another, because Jesus Christ is truly the Son of God. (2) That man is subject to the wrath and judgment of God. And that the dead will come to life again, the just to everlasting happiness, but the wicked to everlasting torments. (3) That God sent his Son Jesus Christ into the World, who, being made man, died for our sins and was raised from the dead for our justification. (4) That if we believe in the Son of God, we shall obtain life through his name. (5) That there is salvation in none other; not in the blessed virgin, or in Peter, or in Paul, or in any other saint, or any other name whatever. And that there is no righteousness in the law or in the commandments or inventions of men. (6) That there is one baptism in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.61 Netherlandish Anabaptists continued to flee to England, especially after the Duke of Alva assumed power in The Netherlands in 1567. By 1571 Norwich alone could number 3,925 Dutch and Walloons among its 61

 Stratagems of Satan, 7:201–2.

chapter 30.3.c

the netherlands & england  1205

residents,62 and sixteen years later these immigrants constituted a m ajority of t he town’s population.63 Within a y ear after Alva’s accession to power, Elizabeth’s government was well aware of t he staggering increase in the number of f oreign Anabaptists on English soil. Bad enough that these strangers were holding clandestine meetings; it was worse that they appeared to be exerting some influence on her native-born English subjects. Once again, regulations were framed to expedite the investigation of English subjects, regardless of t heir origin. The refusal of a ny Anabaptist suspect to conform to the Elizabethan Establishment meant that he or she had to leave England within twenty days. Within the framework of this relatively benign regulation in 1574, some sixteen Anabaptists were handed over to the mayor of London for deportation. But in 1575 the ancient law against Lollards, De haeretico comburendo,64 was reluctantly revived and employed in the best-known incident involving Anabaptism on English soil. The several versions given in the Martyr’s Mirror,65 although they do not agree on all details, suggest that the sequence of events was as follows. On Easter, 3 A pril 1575, a g roup of F lemish Anabaptists of L ondon was gathered for worship in a h ouse beyond the Aldersgate (“on the way leading to Mirror Court”). During the meeting a constable entered and, in an insolent manner, questioned those there assembled and then took their names. Warning some twenty-five worshipers 66 to remain until he should come for them, the constable left to find reinforcement. Either at this moment, or later as the group was being shepherded to prison, two of the Anabaptists made a quiet escape. The rest, however, were imprisoned for two days and nights in the South Fort in the Mersey, briefly released on bail, and then brought before Bishop Edwin Sandys of London for questioning.67 With the bishop were a M r. George, James King, John Wheelwright, two aldermen, and a French preacher.68 The interrogation centered on four points: 69 (1) whether Christ had assumed flesh and blood from the Virgin Mary; (2) whether infants should be baptized; (3) whether a Christian might administer the office of magistrate; and (4) whether a Christian, in case of necessity, might swear an oath.

62  C. Norman Kraus, “Anabaptist Influence on English Separatism as Seen in Robert Browne,” MQR 34 (1960): 5–19, esp. 6. 63  Henry M. Dexter, The Congregationalism of the Last Three Hundred Years (New York, 1880), 72. 64  The first Act of Parliament, 1401 (2 Henry IV, c. 15) to suppress Lollardy. 65  English edition, 1008-24. See also Wilbur, Transylvania, 175–76. 66  One version says seventeen, another thirty. 67  One account places the questioning at St. Paul’s, another at the Bishop’s house. 68  It appears that certain of the aforenamed were ministers of the Austin Friars (Strangers’) Church in London and that, like the French cleric, they acted as interpreters. 69  Here we follow the account of one of the prisoners, Gerrit van Byler.

1206  the radical reformation

chapter 30.3.c

These four points became the center of a literary exchange between a Puritan baker, William White, and “an English Anabaptist” carpenter known only as “S.B.” 70 One of t he younger men, by speaking too boldly, offended the bishop and was sent off to prison at Westminster; the rest were returned to the Mersey.71 On 25 May, five men among the Anabaptists recanted. They were exposed to public view in St. Paul’s churchyard “with a fagot tied on their shoulders, as a token that they were worthy of burning,” while the bishop preached a sermon. Thereupon, the apostates were permitted to be put on bail, being commanded that they should at once join the Dutch Reformed congregation in London. The rest of the Anabaptists, unmoved by the episcopal threats and promises, were condemned to death “in the ecclesiastical court of S t. Paul’s Church.” To this end some fourteen women and one youth were removed to Newgate prison, while the remaining five men were returned to the Mersey. Eventually the fifteen at Newgate had their sentences commuted. The youth was scourged behind a cart; then he and the women were taken by ship to settle in Holland and Zealand. Five members of the congregation now remained: Christian Kernels, Henry Terwoort, John Pieters, Gerrit van Byler, and John van Straten. On 2 June, these were questioned a third time by the bishop and his aides, and then sent to Newgate. There, about a week later, Kernels died. The other four, refusing to recant, were frequently advised of their impending deaths at the stake. Certain sympathizers, among them the Reformed layman Jacques de Somere, assisted the prisoners in framing a petition. Elizabeth refused to receive the document and “severely reprimanded the maids of honor who presented it to her.” Another petition was forwarded to Sir Thomas Bodley,72 who conferred fruitlessly on the matter with the bishop of London. Indeed, the bishop now required the aliens in his diocese to subscribe to a set of articles stating that a Christian magistrate might punish obstinate heretics with the sword. Members of the Strangers’ Church as well as the martyrologist John Foxe continued to be active on the prisoners’ behalf. Among the several confessions of faith produced by the members of this Anabaptist congregation is one addressed to Foxe, in which the prisoners sturdily defend their adherence to the doctrine of the celestial flesh of Christ.

70

 The text of their dispute (1575) has been edited and published by Albert Peel under the title “A Conscientious Objector of 1575,” in Transactions of the Baptist Histor ical Society (1920): 7:78–128. Except to show the acrimonious spirit of the Puritan toward the Anabaptist, the text reveals nothing concerning English Anabaptist beliefs not recorded in the Mirror account of the martyrs of 1575. 71  According to the account of J acques de Somere, some ten or twelve of the Anabaptists escaped from the Mersey, but later voluntarily surrendered themselves. 72  The diplomat and later endower of the Bodleian Library.

chapter 30.3.c / 30.3.d

the netherlands & england  1207

On 22 July 1575 Henry Terwoort and John Pieters were led to the stake at Smithfield. Terwoort was a handsome man of some thirty-five years of age, by occupation a goldsmith. Pieters was a poor man of better than fifty years. His first wife had gone to the stake in Ghent as had the first husband of h is present wife. He was the father of n ine young children. Such attenuations as strangling, suffocation, and the sack of gunpowder around the neck were omitted, and the two men died in unrelieved agony amidst the flames.73 Van Byler and van Straten, although they languished in prison for some time (and were further disciplined for attempting to file through the iron bars of their cell window), were eventually released. No more is known of these last two members of the Aldersgate congregation of Flemish Anabaptists. Mention may be made of one Hans Bret who in 1577, died at the stake in Antwerp. The son of a n Englishman, Thomas Bret, Hans was perhaps twenty-one years of age when he was apprehended, tried, and convicted. Letters written during his imprisonment reveal that he had a brother David, still living in England “who had not yet come to the knowledge of t he truth.” During one examination, Hans admitted that he himself had once visited England, and he testified that persons recently executed there were no Puritans but rather, “Menno’s people.” 74 d. Brownism and Barrowism, 1588–1607 Between 1575 and 1580, English Anabaptism entered a new phase in which it was virtually succeeded by t he indigenous Brownism and Barrowism. Those very areas where Anabaptism had counted its greatest number of adherents—London, and the southeast and middle-east counties—now witnessed the emergence of separatist English-speaking congregations. To establish proof of historical connections between these two movements it is necessary to demonstrate some connection between the person and teaching of Robert Browne (c. 1550–1633), founder of a Separatist conventicle at Norwich, which in 1581 removed to Middelburg in The Netherlands, and the Anabaptists of Norwich and London. Browne, while a student at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, came under the influence of h igh Calvinist Thomas Cartwright (1535–1603). Cartwright’s vigorous defense of the antiepiscopal Admonition to Parliament (1572) won him the enmity of the dean of L incoln (later Archbishop of Canterbury), John Whitgift.75 Whitgift contended that Cartwright’s views were one with those of the Anabaptists at three crucial points: the separation

73

 According to one hostile report, “in great terror, weeping, and crying.”  Martyrs Mirror, 1037–54. 75  The full story is given by Donald Joseph McGinn in The Admonition Controversy (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1949). 74

1208  the radical reformation

chapter 30.3.d

of church and state, the doctrine of the ministry, the sacraments and their relation to preaching. While Cartwright’s actual position was not so close as Whitgift assumed,76 it appears that Whitgift’s published charges against Cartwright must have called at least these Anabaptist tenets to the attention of the reading public. Certainly among those readers would have been Cartwright’s student, Browne. Nor is it likely that Browne was ignorant of the sufferings of the London Anabaptist congregation in 1575. The Separatism of Browne and the Anabaptism of Netherlandish origin were similar on the question of magisterial authority. Browne held that the magistrate’s duty was to keep civil peace, and that only when this was threatened might he interfere in ecclesiastical matters. Like the Anabaptists, he was concerned to establish the church as a freely covenanted, disciplined fellowship apart from the state (i.e., the established Church). Browne’s scriptural foundation, however, unlike that of t he Netherlandish Anabaptists, presupposed the parity of the Old and New Testaments, in keeping with Puritan hermeneutics. Moreover, a comparison of names and publications of t he English Anabaptists with Browne’s known contacts and sources reveals no trace of any connection between this Separatist and the English Mennonites. Browne, in fact, disclaimed any relationship to Anabaptism.77 Browne’s Separatism and Dutch Anabaptism were evidently analogous, rather than genetically related, movements, although with awareness of each other in the same regions. But if Browne and the Brownists grew up independently of the Netherlandish Anabaptists, it is probable that other Separatist groups were influenced by the Dutch, particularly during the refugees’ sojourn in Holland, the center of the English sectarian diaspora. John Smyth (c. 1554–1612), the “Sebaptist” pastor of the self-exiling Gainsborough-Amsterdam congregation and father of the English General Baptists, held to a view of predestination and free will comparable to that of the Mennonites. Smyth after regretting his precipitate act of b aptizing himself in 1608, sought to join the Waterlander Mennonite congregation in Amsterdam. Three years after his death, in 1615, his whole congregation would be admitted to fellowship. Similarly, Richard Blunt, of the English Particular (predestinarian) Baptists, on being

76

 In this connection, in order to know Cartwright’s own assessment of his position vis-ávis Anabaptism, mention may be made of his Two Very godly and Comfortable Letters, written Ouver into England:The One To A Godly and Zealous Lady,Wherein the Annabaptists errour is Confuted; and the Sinne against the Holye Ghoste Plainly Declared … (London, 1589), which criticizes the error, attributed to the Anabaptists, of holding that ther e is no second chance follo wing [believers’] baptism and for the divine forgiveness of sins. Letter printed in Cartwrightiana, ed. Albert Peel and Leland H. Carlson (London: Allen & Unwin, 1951), 75–88. Cartwright as a high Calvinist repudiated Erastianism (Ch. 31.2) and held to a high doctrine of the Church. 77  Of course, had there been such a connection, it is not lik ely that Browne would have advertised the fact.

chapter 30.3.d / 30.3.e

the netherlands & england  1209

convinced that baptism “ought to be by dipping the body into water, resembling burial and rising again,” would go to Rijnsburg (near Leiden), the center of the Collegiants (seventeenth-century Spiritualists similar to the Schwenckfeldians), and submit in 1641 to immersion at the hands of John Batten, and in turn introduce the practice in England.78 The adoption by English Baptists of the practice of i mmersion, ultimately derived from the Minor Church of Poland and introduced into Holland by the Polish Brethren, ties together with other loose threads to make a neat selvage along the upper chronological border of our narrative. e. English Familism Evolves It remains, however, to weave in the story of t he English followers of Henry Niclaes. The English Familists were communitarian, pacificistic Anabaptists who, like the Paulicians and the Servetians (Ch. 11.1), received believers’ baptism at the age of thirty. As many outwardly conformed to the Prayer Book worship, they may be regarded as Nicodemites (cf. Chs. 22.6, 23.2). Morphologically and to a c ertain extent genetically, the English Familists represent a transitional stage between evangelical Anabaptism and the completely nonsacramental Spiritualism of Q uakerism. Many of t he early Quaker recruits will prove to have, in fact, Familist antecedents; some of them were bearing traces also of a Melchiorite (Valentinian) Christology. As noted earlier (Ch. 19.1), the Familists of N etherlandish origin gained their greatest following in England. If Niclaes himself did not visit England until 1560/61, the person primarily responsible for the spread of Familism in England must have been a certain joiner, Christopher Vitels,79 who appeared in Colchester as early as 1555 as a Familist missionary and elder. He translated many of Niclaes’ pamphlets into English. He may have spent considerable time in The Netherlands, in Delft, for example, as a textile merchant, between 1559 and 1574, and as translator and as colporteur of the works of Niclaes. These works in translation were always ascribed to the author as simply H.N. By 1574, the sect of H.N. had made considerable headway in the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridge, and Essex. 78  Robert G. Tobert, on the basis of man uscript evidence, says that it is mor e likely that Blunt was given instruction concerning the administration of immersion, but that as a Calvinist in respect to the doctrine of the will and grace, he would not personally have submitted to the Rijnsburg rite. A History of the Baptists (Philadelphia: Judson Press, 1950), 711; “Collegiants,” ME 1:639–40. See also A. A. van Schelven, “Englesche Vroeg-Independentisme en Hollandsche Anabaptisme,” Uit den Str ijd der Geesten (Amsterdam, 1944), 72–89; and most r ecently John J. Kiewiet, “Socinian Influence on the Regensburg Collegiants,” Proceedings of the Unitar ian Universalist Historical Society 20:2 (1985–86), 94–103. 79  Martin in “Christopher Vitel: An Elizabethan Mechanick Pr eacher,” Religious Radicals in England, devoting chap. 11 to him, does not construe a commonly used Dutch spelling of his name, Vitels, as an indication that he was anything other than a born English artisan and unapprehended leader of the Family of Love, to which community Martin devotes still another chapter (10).

1210  the radical reformation

chapter 30.3.e

In 1579, one John Rogers published at London The Displaying of an Horible Secte of Grosse and Wicked Heretiques, naming themselves the Family of Love. Rogers claims to have been informed by m embers of t he House of Love that at that time they had approximately a t housand members in England. Rogers cites a confession made by two Familists before a justice which conveniently summarizes English Familism: They [the Familists] are all unlearned, save some who can read English and are made bishops, elders, and deacons, who call them to one of the disciple’s houses; thirty in number assemble to hear the Scriptures expounded. They have goods in common, new members are received with a kiss, all have meat, drink, and lodging found by the owner of the house where they meet. They knock, saying, “Here is a Brother or Sister in Christ.” The congregation does not speak until admitted so to do. They go to [the established] church, but object to the Litany that says “Lord have mercy upon us miserable sinners,” as if they could never be amended. They may not say, “God speed, God morrow, or God even.” They did prohibit bearing of weapons, but at length allowed the bearing of staves. When a question is demanded of any, they stay a great while ere they answer, and commonly their word shall be “surely” or “So.” … The marriage is made by the brethren, who sometimes bring them together who live over a hundred miles asunder, as Thomas Chaundler of Woneherst, Surrey, who sent for a wife from the Isle of Ely by two of the congregation. These had never met before, and in a year they, upon a disliking, did divorce themselves asunder before certain of the congregation. No man is to be baptized before the age of thirty. Until then he is an infant. Heaven and hell are present in this world among us. They are bound to give alms only to their own sect. … All men not of t heir congregation or revolted from them are as dead. Bishops and ministers should not remain still in one place but should wander from country to country. They hold there was a world before Adam’s time. No man should be put to death for his opinions, and they therefore condemn Cranmer and Ridley for burning Joan [Boucher] of Kent (Ch. 30.3.b). They expound Scripture according to their own minds, comparing one place with another. They brag very much of t heir own sincere lives, justifying themselves, saying, “mark how purely we live.” If they have anything to do touching their temporal things, they must do it by advice. viz., ask counsel of the Lord through one of their bishops or elders. They give their alms by p utting under a h at upon a t able what they are

chapter 30.3.e

the netherlands & england  1211

disposed to give, and the money is secretly distributed by the bishops or elders.80 In the same year that John Rogers published his exposé, 1579, the Familists were also attacked by John Knewstub and by William Wilkinson. The next year, Queen Elizabeth issued a proclamation against the disciples of Henry Niclaes. In order to survive, the Familists went “underground”81 or outwardly conformed to the Prayer Book parish, the English counterparts of continental Nicodemites.82 We have thus far said almost nothing about psychopannychism or Christian mortalism (with the prospect of r esurrection) among the English radicals. Mortalism was first articulated in the Reformation century in England by the Lutheran John Tyndale with some few immediate associates. The Netherlandish Anabaptist immigrants must have held to this view as on the Continent (cf. the Edwardian article against it). The Familists believed in a spiritual resurrection in the present life. It is quite unlikely that the Polish Brethren (subsequently Socinians), in the seventeenth century major proponents of mortalism, would have yet had much influence in the period under discussion.83 Except for the still unclarified relationship with indigenous Lollardy, and for the rise of Brownism and Barrowism, the radical trends in England appear to have been largely an importation and as such an extension of the radical movements engendered in the Hanseatic zone of Low German speech. We turn now to the comparable developments in the same third quarter of the century in the area of High German speech and in the first homelands of Anabaptism.

80  Confession before a justice of Surrey 28 May 1561; Jones, Mystical Religion, 441–42. Another undated confession under Mar y or Elizabeth beg ins in moder nized English: “They must be deified in God and God in them. The Judgment and resurrection is past already. We are illuminated, that is to say, of the [resur]rection, and restored to the perfection that Adam [had] before his fall.” British Museum, Harlean MSS 537, fol. 110. See further Irvin B. Horst, “The Radical Underground in the Tudor Period,” Bulletin [of the] Documenta Anabaptistica Neerlandica, No. 12–12 (1980–81): 29–42.The most recent study of the Familist movement is that of Alstaire Hamilton, The Family of Love (Cambridge: James Clarke, 1981). 81  At the accession of James I in 1603, the Familists will petition him for protection, describing themselves as “a people but few in number and yet most of us v ery poor.” Payne, “The Familists,” 31. The Family of Love will survive in England to about the end of the se venteenth century, leaping momentar ily into pr ominence during the Commonw ealth (Giles Randall its leading light) but destined to be absorbed by the Quakers. In this connection it is of interest that the doctrine of the celestial flesh of Christ persisted in Quakerism, for example in such notable apologists as Rober t Barclay and George K eith. See Maur ice Creasey, “Early Quaker Christology,” unpublished thesis, University of Leeds, 1956. 82  The royal proclamation of 1580 suggests that Familists had not the same compunction as Anabaptists about prudential conformity. Martin, “Elizabethan Familists,” Religious Radicals, 184. 83  Norman Burns, Christian Mortalism from Tyndale to Milton (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), 1–120.

1212  the radical reformation

Wife of John Beukels ( John of Leiden), by Aldegrever

chapter chapter 30.3.e 31

Chapter 31

German and Swiss Anabaptism, Spiritualism, and Evangelical Rationalism, 1542–1578

I

n chapter 18 we charted the course of the conflict between

Spiritualist Caspar Schwenckfeld and Anabaptist Pilgram Marpeck. Before turning to a concluding survey of the fate of the Anabaptists in the lands of their birth, Switzerland and South Germany, and the emergence of German Unitarianism, we should pursue to its conclusion the second phase of the Schwenckfeld-Marpeck controversy.

1. German and Swiss Anabaptism, 1542–1575 a. The Schwenckfeld-Marpeck Debate, Phase II, 1542–1556 From 1544 until his death in 1556, Marpeck remained a resident of Augsburg, being employed by the city in the capacity of engineer to improve and extend the municipal water system. During the last ten years of his life, he was paid the annual salary of 1 50 florins. His activities in behalf of t he Anabaptist brotherhood were well known to the city authorities. Although he was periodically warned by the council against such connections, Marpeck’s importance to the life of the city enabled him to escape serious discomfort.1 Schwenckfeld, for his part, had by now left the haven of Justingen castle, when his host lost it to the imperial troops in the Smalcaldic War, in 1547, and had found a r efuge in the Franciscan momastery at Esslingen, where he was known to the brothers simply as “Eliander” (Elijah). Further direct communication between Schwenckfeld and Marpeck was not necessary for the continuation of t heir argument. Schwenckfeld’s Judicium had 1

ch.6.

 For the life and thought of Mar peck, in further particulars, see Stephen Boyd, Marpeck,

1213

1214  the radical reformation

chapter 31.1.a

been answered thus far only in part. Marpeck’s decision in 1546 to place Schwenckfeld under the ban was simply a matter of formalizing an attitude long held by the Anabaptist toward the Spiritualist. The conflict between Marpeck and Schwenckfeld is all the more poignant for the reason that the two leaders had much in common in their spiritual vision and in their ethical earnestness. Schwenckfeld, a knight of faith, who had from the beginning resolved as “consecrated” laicus “to seek the glory of the gospel” as a chivalric exponent of the love of Christ, was no less concerned for the disciplines of the spirit than the theologianengineer of Au gsburg. Neither Marpeck nor Schwenckfeld was to die a martyr, but both were acquainted with suffering and grief. Schwenckfeld, in hiding during the Augsburg Interim (1548–52), was destined, for example, to spend a whole year and a half without once leaving the house of his protector. Never downcast, he was ever true to his life’s motto: “Whoever has received Christ can never be sad.” Schwenckfeld in his Christocentric piety, in his sustaining experience of regeneration and sustenance in the eternal Christ, in his lifelong prayer for the unity of the true Church of the Friends of God, in his prophetic laments over the wasting of this Zion by heedless resort to confessional war, in his compassion for both the humble and the great caught up and crushed in the cruel vagaries of religious strife, in his steadfastness in the devout life, in his more than spiritualizing concern for the continuity of t he sacramental life despite his despairing suspension of the Lord’s Supper because of its incitement to contention or its misuse as a sanction of cheap grace, in his yearning to comfort and bind together disciplined communities of fellow seekers and emulators of the loving Christ— in all these ways Schwenckfeld was closer to Marpeck’s kind of Anabaptism than he was to the rational Spiritualism of Franck or to the misty and sometimes antinomian theosophy of Libertine Spiritualism. 2 Yet the two antagonists also differed profoundly. Schwenckfeld asseverated his accord with Luther’s doctrines of o riginal sin and salvation by faith alone and he accused the Anabaptists of a P elagian construction of their lives upon their own faith in Christ rather than upon the Rock as the source of that faith. Nevertheless, he had so suffused and reordered his own theology with the patristic and partly Neoplatonic conviction about 2  Such is the trend of interpretation in some evaluations of the life’s work of Schwenckfeld: Reinhold Pietz, “Die Gestalt der Zukunftigen Kirche,” Calwer Heft 25 (Stuttgart: Calwer, 1959); Walter Knoke, “Schwenckfelds Sakramentsverständnis,” ZKG 11 (1959): 314–27; Gottfried Maron, lndividualismus und Gemeinsc haft bei Caspar Sc hwenckfeld (Stuttgart: Evangelisches Verlaghaus, 1961); Joachim H. Seyppel, Schwenckfeld, Knight of Faith (Pennsburg, Pa.: Schwenckfelder Library, 1961). There are two doctoral theses: E. J. Furcha, Schwenckfeld’s Concept of the New Man (University of Har tford, 1966), part of which appear ed in CH 37 (1968): 160–71; and Er nest Lashlee, Caspar Schwenckfeld an the Via Regia (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1969).

chapter 31.1.a

german & swiss anabaptism  1215

the sanctifying, indeed almost deificatory, presence of the glorified Christ that he was in effect closer than Marpeck to medieval and patristic Catholicism in his confidence in the possibility of p ersonal sanctification. But then Marpeck’s attachment to the suffering Gospel of A ll Creatures, his acknowledgment of the persistence of sin in the justified, and his sense for the coinherence of Word and ordinance, made him also in these respects closer to Luther. Before composing Part II of the Verantwortung, Marpeck and his group decided to construct an Anabaptist concordance of the Scriptures, to which reference might be made in works requiring the citation of proof texts, the Testamentserläuterung (c. 1547). 3 Leopold Scharnschlager, Marpeck’s successor as a leader of the Strassburg moderates and from 1547 a teacher in Ilanz in the Grison (Ch. 22.1.b), may have been primarily responsible for the production of the concordance. The preface promises that it will indicate the difference between the Old and New covenants. Accordingly, it sets forth scriptural references to certain doctrinal concepts under the headings “Yesterday,” “Today,” “Promised Tomorrow.”4 Authorship of Verantwortung II (c. 1547–56/61) may be assigned primarily to Marpeck and secondarily to Scharnschlager.5 Against Schwenckfeld’s charge that the Anabaptist doctrine of original sin falls into Pelagianism, Verantwortung II now argues that God does not hold a person accountable for either original sin or actual sin until he has obtained the knowledge of good and evil and then willfully abandons good and chooses evil. Baptism is not for children, for whom inherited grace (Erbgnade) provisionally suffices until they are old enough to believe, confess their sins, profess their faith, and submit to the covenantal ordinance. As to the prophets and partriarchs of the Old Testament, Schwenckfeld’s contention that they were “Christian” is false. These worthies died in faith in the promise but were effectually redeemed only when Christ descended into Hades and preached to them (Ch. 32.2.c), argued Marpeck. Schwenckfeld had lamented that, according to the Anabaptists, “no Christian can be a magistrate or worldly ruler, nor assume authority over cities or countries or people, since such authority belongs to earthly rulers and not to the true Christians.” Marpeck, in the Verantwortung II, claims that Schwenckfeld has misrepresented his position in the Vermahnung. He says that he has never denigrated the role of civil authority nor claimed 3  Kiwiet says 1550, Marpeck, 77; William Klassen says probably before 1547, Covenant and Community, 52. The Testamentserläuterung is extant in two copies in Zurich and Berlin, an octavo volume of over 800 pages. 4  This concordance is cited over ninety times in Verantwortung II. 5  Klassen, Covenant and Community, 50–51; Boyd, Marpeck, ch. 6 n. 83. Klassen translated Scharnschlager’s “Church Order for Member s of Chr ist’s Body (c. 1540),” MQR 38 (1964): 354–56.

1216  the radical reformation

chapter 31.1.a

that it is a theoretical impossibility for a Christian to be a ruler. Rather, asserts Marpeck, the civil power should never be used “in and under any name for the guise of Christ or of t he gospel. … ” Perhaps based on his own experience, he further surmises that should a Christian exercise civil authority, he would soon either abandon the Gospel or violate his own conscience.6 Against the Spiritualist’s tendency to depreciate the visible Church, and against Schwenckfeld’s specific charge that in their sectarian ecclesiology the Anabaptists build on Peter rather than on Christ, Verantwortung II, of course, vindicates Christ’s headship of their conventicles. Schwenckfeld did not deign to reply to Verantwortung II. References to Marpeck in the Silesian’s letters after this date are uniformly bitter. Marpeck’s great concern to unify the various factions of e vangelical Anabaptism and to protect them from Schwenckfeldian Spiritualism found expression in two Strassburg conferences, which brought together representatives from Moravia, The Netherlands, Switzerland, and South Germany. We have already taken note of the second in 1555 from the perspective of the Netherlanders’ struggle over hard and soft banning (Ch. 19.2.d). It will be recalled that besides the ban a second point at issue was the Melchiorite doctrine of the celestial flesh of Christ, in which the southern and northern groups agreed to differ in charity. The theology of the Marpeck circle in the middle years is best preserved in a unique codex, which may have been assembled in preparation for the Strassburg conferences. The codex, Das Kunstbuch,7 contains forty-two letters and documents cherished by the community over the years 1527–55.8 The great value of the collection is its preservation in one cherished volume of the literary connective tissues of South German Anabaptist piety. The early letters in the Kunstbuch are clearly influenced by Müntzer, Hut, Schiemer, Schlaffer, and Entfelder. They develop the theology of suffering discipleship, interpreting baptism as the life of suffering. There are letters by M arpeck himself, Leopold Scharnschlager, the editor George Maler, Sigmund Bosch, Helen von Freyberg, and the Lutherans John Has and Valentine Ickelsamer. The latter is of interest as a sometime defender of Carlstadt and subsequent ally of Schwenckfeld in the dispute with Marpeck! It is Ickelsamer’s Die Gelehrten die Verkehrten that appears in rhyme at the beginning of the codex and, along with the decoration, gives the 6  Verantwortung II, p. 303. See Boyd, Marpeck, ch. 7, for an analysis of Marpeck’s position on the Christian’s responsibility to the state. 7  A detailed analysis is given by Fast, “Pilgram Marpeck und das oberdeutsche Täufertum: Ein neuer Handschr iftenfund [the Kunstbuch],” ARC 47 (1956): 212–42, who is pr eparing a critical edition of this codex. 8  Edited by George Maler of Augsburg and dated 4 September 1561. All these documents, with the exception of three, are unknown from any other source.

chapter 31.1.a

german & swiss anabaptism  1217

codex its name in that Marpeck was against Kunst, learned and continued interpretation of t he Bible by t he old and the new scholastics, including Schwenckfeld, versed in the Church Fathers. The collection brings out the many-sidedness and the scope of the missionary and organizational activities of M arpeck and Scharnschlager, and the distressing fact that everywhere they found Anabaptists split into bickering factions from Rhaetia to Moravia. In their persistent attempts to establish unity, Marpeck and Scharnschlager opposed the Swiss Brethren for their tendency to rely on works righteousness more than faith; the Hutterites for their stand on the ban and on exclusivistic coercive community of goods; the Low Germans for their Melchiorite Christology. Marpeck and Scharnschlager maintained that undue severity among the banners, shunners, and communitarians in The Netherlands, Switzerland, and Moravia was inconsistent with the freedom of the gospel. Their success in mediation and reunification was probably limited to winning small numbers here and there in Moravia to the Marpeck party (including George Maler, the transcriber of the codex). It was Scharnschlager who in seven articles gave fullest expression in the Kutlstbuch to the Marpeckian ideal community. In this church order 9 we see a community with a common treasury for the sustenance of the needy members and an order of worship beginning with prayer and ending with the admonition to steadfastness, a service in which, besides the Vorsteher, all the members one after another rise to read the Scriptures or the communal writings, to discourse, and to prophesy. Although the letters do not specifically refer to the First and Second Strassburg Conferences of 1554 and 1555 with the Netherlanders, it is probable, as already noted, that they prepared the ground for them. Among the doctrines discussed in the Kunstbuch is the celestial flesh of Christ.10 It is of interest that Marpeck was able to say as of 1550 that it would be a matter of indifference before the judgment seat whether Christ had taken his flesh from the Virgin or brought it with him from heaven to earth and back to heaven. On this doctrine, central to the theology of Spiritualist Schwenckfeld, as well as to the Melchiorite Anabaptists of T he Netherlands, Marpeck was apparently willing to limit himself to the ambiguities of Scripture itself. This also was, it will be recalled, the decision of the Second and Third Strassburg Conferences.11 The corresponding doctrine of inward and outward communion receives considerable attention in the Kunstbuch. Marpeck himself was not able to participate in the Third Strassburg Conference of 1557. In Augsburg’s Baumeisterbuch the first three quarterly 9

 Item 19 in the codex, described by Fast, “Marpeck;” 237–38.  Marpeck, 24 August 1550. “Von Fünferlei Früchte wahrer Busse;” Kunstbuch, 174. 11  There were at least six Anabaptist conferences in Strassb urg: 1554, 1555, 1556, 1557, 1568, and 1607. See John S. Oyer, “The Strasbourg Conferences of the Anabaptists, 1554–1607,” MQR 58 (1985): 219–29. 10

1218  the radical reformation

chapter 31.1.a / 31.1.b

payments of h is salary are recorded; but under the payment date of 1 6 December 1556 there is the simple notation, “is dead.” b. From the Death of Marpeck to the Translation of Menno into High German, 1556–1575 In the year of Marpeck’s death, throughout the whole Rhine valley and the upper Danube with their tributaries, Hutterite missionaries were active in recruiting colonists for Moravia, and one of t hem in 1556 was successful in enlisting the majority of two conventicles of Swiss Brethren, the one in the Palatinate (Kreuznach, near Mainz) and the other in Aachen. Quarrels had developed in both communities, which prepared the way for Hutterite proselytization among their disaffected. In Kreuznach, the quarrel may have been initially between the local leader, one Farwendel, and Diebold Winter, head of t he congregation in Worms and overseer of the brotherhood in the whole region. The dispute concerned original sin and the sin of the soul and the sin of the flesh. About fifteen hundred brethren gathered at Worms to discuss the doctrine of original sin (and no doubt, related topics). Farwendel had the support of t he brethren, but both leaders were deposed, and the problem was put on the agenda for the Third Strassburg Conference in 1557. Some fifty gathered in a public tavern to debate, not forgetting their bellies, says the Hutterite Chronicle reprovingly,12 to the extent of spending several hundred guilders. Well before this company could assemble, the disaffected within the Kreuznach community had separated from the deposed Farwendel, under the leadership of Lawrence Hueff, and to the problem of original sin several largely communal issues were added. The brethren under Hueff were dissatisfied with voluntary giving to the poor and espoused the complete community of goods; they were against paying taxes for war; they insisted on public disciplining for misdeeds (however imprudent this might be in the view of a hostile society); and at the same time they insisted on a more stringent separation from the people of the world. It was at this juncture that the Hutterite missionary John Schmidt arrived and turned the communalminded brethren toward the promised land of the Hutterites. Schmidt dealt concurrently with a s imilar outbreak in Aachen, where one John Arbeiter, who had been an elder both in Kreuznach and in Worms, was the counterpart of L awrence Hueff in leading the disaffected into Moravian communism. For each group who were plying the Hutterite emissary with many questions, John Schmidt prepared two tracts, the one for Aachen in seventeen

12

 Zieglschmid, Chronik, 358.

chapter 31.1.b

german & swiss anabaptism  1219

points, the other for Kreuznach in seven. This was the Brüderliche Vereinigung,13 reminiscent of the Vereinigung or Confession of Schleitheim up the Rhine written exactly a g eneration before. We have already quoted from its summons to the providentially prepared wilderness of Moravia (Ch. 26.2) as evidence of continuing conflict and competition among the Moravian, the Swiss, and the Marpeckian versions of evangelical Anabaptism extending in each case far beyond the respective regions of origin. In the year after Marpeck’s death, on 25 August 1557, Diebold Winter of Worms as head of t he less sectarian of h is brotherhood led some forty Anabaptists in a general disputation arranged by the Elector Otto Henry of the Palatinate (1556–59), to bring together representatives of t he Lutherans and the Anabaptists at Pfeddersheim.14 The general background of this overture was the Religious Peace of Augsburg (1555), but there was a consequent division within Lutheranism between the Philippists (followers of Melanchthon) and the Gnesio-Lutherans centered in Magdeburg (who abhorred the alleged openness of the Philippists to Calvinism). The Lutherans, no longer fearing the Anabaptists as potentially seditious, were concerned to include all in their territorial parishes. The Lutheran disputants were headed by the Strassburg theologian, Dr. John Marbuch, John Brenz of Stuttgart, and Jacob Andreae of Göppingen. The latter, Andreae (1528– 90), was a W ürttemberg campaigner for the Lutheran cause and would later preach and edit theologically and scripturally based sermons against Anabaptists.15 Five familiar topics were discussed at the Pfeddersheim disputation: infant baptism, the state, the oath, leaving the state church, and the ban. The result of the Pfeddersheim meeting was that the state church announced itself the victor, and thereupon commanded the “defeated” Anabaptists to relinquish their views. In the fall of the same year,16 a group of Catholic and Lutheran theologians debated together in Worms, hoping to promote a reconciliation of the Protestant and Catholic parties. Failing to arrive at any satisfactory conclusions, they took notice of t he recent events at Pfeddersheim and thereupon proceeded to recommend a more stringent attitude toward Anabaptism by governmental authorities. Melanchthon, Brenz, Andreae, and others printed the results of t he talks at Worms and drew up in a record of the Prozess 17 the list of what they considered seditious or merely 13

 Zieglschmid, Chronik, 359–67; ME 1:448, and r elated biographical and topo graphical articles. 14  See John S. Oyer, “The Pfeddersheim Disputation, 1557,” MQR 60 (1960): 304–35. 15  Dennis Lee Slabaugh, “Jakob Andreae, Lutheran Orthodoxy, and Anabaptism in the Late Sixteenth Century,” (doctoral dissertation, Temple University, 1987). 16  From 11 September to 7 October 1557. 17  Prozess wie es soil gehalten werden mit den Wiedertäufern, printed in Bossert, Württemberg (QGT), 161–68.

1220  the radical reformation

chapter 31.1.b

heretical “lies.” Among the charges were Unitarianism, indifference to the preached Word, divorce from non-Baptist spouses, and “obscene cruelty” in separating children from their parents in the Hutterite nurseries under specialized sisters as guardians and teachers. Diebold Winter later declared that things had been printed about the Anabaptists at Pfeddersheim which they “never thought, much less spoke”: And we protest [he continues] that thereupon a very sharp mandate was issued. If we were such people as represented in the Prozess, we would not be fit to stand before your eyes. We want to record this for our defense. This is our complaint and protest that we were dealt with unjustly at Pfeddersheim.18 As a result of the Worms discussions, the elector issued a mandate against the radicals, threatening them with the dire punishment according to imperial decree if they should fail henceforth to conform. However, the mandate was not enforced with much strictness.19 All groups of A nabaptists felt the challenge of t he allegations in the Prozess, including the Dutch and Swiss Brethren. However, it was of a ll groups the Hutterites who systematically replied to the charge of Andreae, Melanchthon, and the other Lutheran theologians in their Handbüchlein wider den Prozess (1558), probably drawn up by Peter Walpot.20 This Hutterite Handbüchlein dealt with all the topics under dispute with the Magisterial Reformation, but the most significant part is that devoted to the problem of original sin, which had already divided Anabaptists in Worms and then at the Third Strassburg Conference in 1557. It is clear from several documents at mid-century that the problem of original sin was becoming much more pressing for the second generation leaders with the large proportion of birthright members in their conventicles than it was in the first flush of the conventicular movement. The question of original sin and the solidarity of t he human race was inextricably tied up with the more specialized problems of separation from the world, war taxes, and voluntary giving as distinguished from apostolic communism. It is appropriate therefore that we pause briefly to consider the concept of sin and especially of original sin at a point in our narrative far beyond our systematic coverage of baptism, the Dominical ordinance for the washing away of sin so prominent in the first generation of the movement. It will be recalled that Marpeck in the earlier phase of the controversy with Schwenckfeld had at length come to acknowledge original sin in the

18

 ME 4:158.  Cf. ML 2:594, on “Neues Mandat.” 20  Wilheim Wiswedel and Robert Friedman, “The Anabaptists Answer Melanchthon,” MQR 29 (1955): 212–31. 19

chapter 31.1.b

german & swiss anabaptism  1221

sense of the Erbbresten of Zwingli. Marpeck was in this respect almost alone among the Anabaptist theologians in working systematically at a basic doctrine of t he magisterial reformers and of t he whole Western Church in the Pauline-Augustinian tradition. 21 We have already observed, however, that under a d ifferent rubric, namely, the “gospel of a ll creatures” (Ch. 11.1.b), something of t he same perception of t he world as fallen and suffering was shared by a ll Anabaptists in the tradition of D enck and Hut, to which indeed Marpeck himself belonged. But even this suffering was viewed positively. Indeed, in Gelassenheit it was to be accepted as the first stage in redemption. Moreover, despite the solidarity of the race in Adam’s fall proclaimed in Genesis and also in 4 Esdras 3 and 7 (widely cited among the Anabaptists) and 1 Cor. 15:21–22, there was the countervailing innate impulse (Gegenerb) which pressed humankind toward the freewill acceptance of the gospel of reconciliation in Christ. This made it possible for the Anabaptists, when they came seriously to consider the problem of original sin, to break it down, as it were, into manageable parts. In the first place, almost all of the responsible statements among the leaders give evidence of the widespread conviction that Christ took away Adamic or original sin from the whole world and, for that reason, children were in no need of baptism for salvation. The evangelical Anabaptists were willing, to be sure, to admit the persistence of an evil inclination after regeneration (in contrast to the Netherlandish Libertines and certain other Spiritualists). It is in dealing with these postbaptismal impulses that the Hutterite answer to Melanchthon, the Handbüchlein, stands out in having achieved unusual clarity of d istinction. Based to some degree on the tripartite anthropology of Hubmaier, which refused to implicate the spiritus in the fall of the anima and corpus of Adam, Walpot above the original guilt to Adam distinguished the sinful inclination which, if it is not yielded to so that the believer remains in Christ (Rom. 8:1; 1 John 3:9), does not condemn or lead to eternal death. The believer can compel the flesh to obey the spirit through the assistance of t he Holy Spirit, for the power of t he original inclination has been broken by C hrist, and thereby the word of Ezekiel (Ch. 18.20) has been fulfilled that “the children shall not bear the iniquities of the fathers.” 22 In the year of the Handbüchlein a notable Anabaptist of the second generation, the Lower Rhenish leader Thomas of Imbroich was put to death. His confession and letters likewise reveal the mood of German Anabaptism in the process of regional differentiation and consolidation.

21 22

 Friedman and Van der Zijpp, “Original Sin,” ME 4:79–83.  Quoted from the somewhat earlier Account of Peter Riedemann, 58.

1222  the radical reformation

chapter 31.1.b

Thomas was born in 1533 near Aachen.23 As a y oung man, he was apprenticed to a printer. Coming to Cologne in 1544 he associated himself with the local conventicle, and he soon became acknowledged as a leader of the Lower Rhenish Anabaptists. On 23 December 1557 Thomas was imprisoned and questioned on his beliefs regarding baptism and marriage. Transferred to another prison, he sharply refused the arguments of t wo priests regarding the baptisms of his own children. He was thrice brought to the rack but evidently not tortured, because the authorities were not agreed among themselves. After this, Thomas was hauled before the duke, who feared the imperial decree and the archbishop’s displeasure. The young apprentice refused to relinquish his beliefs and was thereupon sentenced to death. During his imprisonment, he set down his baptismal convictions in a confession.24 Here he reasserted the familiar view that since “the sin of Adam and of the whole world is reconciled through the sacrifice of Christ,” children die blameless.25 Baptism is for those who choose to enter the spiritual ark of Noah and who are thereby saved from the sins committed after they have been awakened to the knowledge of good and evil. Thomas also composed seven letters, which were published with his Confession, two of which are printed in the Martyr’s Mirror. The second of these breathes a spirit of compassionate concern for his wife and children. Thomas reminds her that God is a jealous God. Perhaps they have loved one another so much that they have slighted God. Now, both of them will be able to love God the more. She is not to grieve for him unduly. She is, instead, to continue serving and loving God and caring for their children. Like Esther(!), Frau von Imbroich must avoid costly wearing apparel and also persons given to such worldly trifles. With regard to the children, Thomas writes in stern solicitude: Hence be of g ood courage, and bring up thy children in good manners, and in the fear of G od, that their natural propensities may be mortified. And take an example from thyself, how thou bringest them up in their weakness with great labor and trouble, and give the breast to them to whom the Lord has commanded milk to be given. Thou art also to give them the rod, according to the command of the Lord, when they transgress and are obstinate; for this is also food for the soul, and drives out the folly which is 23

 He was also known as Thomas Drucker or Thomas of Truden, ME 3:12.  Printed in Martyrs’ Mirror, 367–71; his letter, 578–82. 25  On the cosmic effect of Christ’s atonement for infants and pagans, see my articles: “The Catholicity of the Anabaptists,” Review and Expositor 64 (1967): 141–60, and “Erasmus and the Reformers on Non-Christian Religions and Salus extra Ecclesiam, Essays in memory of E. Harris Harbison, ed. Theodore K. Rabb and J errold E. Siegel (Pr inceton: Princeton University Press, 1968). 24

chapter 31.1.b

german & swiss anabaptism  1223

bound up in their hearts. … I also pray that they, as far as possible, be kept away from intractable children. Do not allow them to run about in the streets, but keep them with thee as much as possible, that thou mayest have joy and sorrow with them, and forget not the kind of widow mentioned by Paul in his letter to Timothy [1 Tim. 5:4]; but place thy hope firmly in the Lord, and wait for him with patience. In closing, Thomas commends her to the fellowship and care of the pious, whom she is to greet for him “with the kiss of love.” Moreover, she is to remind them to take care of the novices or “neophytes” in the faith, which phrase, along with the instruction concerning the necessity of i solating the children from the progeny of the unbelievers, marks the beginning of a major concern with the special problems of “ birthright” membership. We may compare his concern for the discipline and rearing of his children with the contemporaneous description of the Hutterite kindergarten in the Handbüchlein and with Menno Simon’s The Nurture of Children.26 While on the lower Rhine we may note the well-known exchange in Catholic Cologne between another Rhenish Anabaptist leader, Matthew Servaes (1536–65), and George Cassander, an irenic Romanist scholar and ecumenical churchman akin to the earlier Evangelical Catholics. In 1565, while conducting a m eeting of A nabaptists in Cologne, Servaes, a l inen weaver, was betrayed to the authorities and arrested. During his imprisonment he was subjected to torture in the usually unsuccessful attempt to get him to implicate others. But “I pressed my lips together, yielded myself to God, suffered patiently and thought of t he word of t he Lord ( John 15:13): Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” He composed several hymns and letters, which continued to inspire generations of Mennonites. The judges, favorably impressed by him, requested that Cassander try to win him back to the traditional faith by patient exploration of the differences, ethical and doctrinal, that separated them. Cassander found that one of the points at issue was psychopannychism. He was deeply impressed by Servaes, and deplored the severity of the imperial law, but despite his attempts he failed to persuade the stalwart Anabaptist or to protect him from the consequences of his steadfastness in the faith. Servaes was executed on 30 June 1565, having uncomplainingly endured all the trials and torments to which he had been subjected. In nearby Hesse, Landgrave Philip remained tolerant, and in his testament to his four sons, among whom he divided his territory, he wrote at the end of his life (1567): “To kill people for the reason that they believed 26  For Menno’s work c. 1557, see Writings, 945. Imbroich’s confession and letter s, many times reprinted for the edification of followers, called forth an edict against all Anabaptist books by the Duke of Jülich in 1560.

1224  the radical reformation

chapter 31.1.b

an error, we have never done, and wish to admonish our sons not to do so, for we consider that it is contrary to God, as is clearly shown in the gospel.”27 Philip’s four sons continued his policy in spite of attempts by church authorities and other rulers to get them to change it. One son, the Landgrave William, heir to Lower Hesse, in the Reformationsordnung of 1572, limited the penalty for Anabaptism to expulsion from his territory. As under his father, persons convicted of recalcitrance were permitted to profit from the sale or rental of their Hessian properties. The other three brothers were similarly benign in their domains. In Württemberg, whither many Hutterites returned when driven from Moravia, 28 Duke Christopher (1550–1568) decided that the state church councils and superintendents should consult together quarterly about the Schwenckfeldians and the Anabaptists. Thus the Lutheran Church of Württemberg indirectly owes its synodical organization to the need to deal with the radicals. Christopher issued a mandate in 1554 against Schwenckfeld. In 1558 he set up the canons of examination and treatment of s uspected sectaries, including Anabaptists. Torture might be employed to loosen tongues. Those who recanted had to confess their error in the parish church. Those who persisted were to be jailed and their property sold to support them and their innocent children. Attention was given to distinctions between Anabaptist leaders and followers, consideration being paid to problems relating to the family life of the Anabaptists. The death penalty was not invoked, although after 1571 Anabaptists were often branded or imprisoned for their faith. The census of 1570 showed only 129 Anabaptists in the Duchy, the majority in Lorch. Varieties of radicals familiar to the Württemberg authorities included Servetians, Davidjorists, Hutterites, the Hofer Brethren (an offshoot of t he Hutterites), Moserites (who appear to have been the local Swiss Brethren), and probably Pilgramites, or followers of Marpeck. 29 The aforementioned Lutheran general superintendent at Göppingen, Jacob Andreae was set against all sectarians and was responsible for Duke Christopher’s stringent but theologically reasoned policy. 30 Andreae was instrumental in the drawing up of the Lutheran Formula of Concord

27

 Franz, Wiedertäuferakten, no. 148.  Gerhard Neumann shows that the ratio was two-to-one in favor of the returners, “Nach und von Mähren,” ARG 51 (1960): 75–90. 29  Bossert, Württemberg (QGT 1), 276–96. 30  Ironically, Andreae’s grandson, John Valentine Andreae, born in 1568, was to become a forerunner of the Pietist mo vement and to pr oduce much of the early literatur e of the Rosicrucians. 28

chapter 31.1.b

german & swiss anabaptism  1225

(1577), 31 which has a w hole article (12) “On the other heresies (Rotten) and sects, which have never embraced the Augsburg Confession [1530],” divided into those of the Anabaptists, of the Schwenckfeldians, and of the Antitrinitarians (New Arians); the article goes on to list errors of the Anabaptists under three headings, “those which cannot be conducted in the Church,” “those which are intolerable in the Commonwealth,” and “those which cannot be tolerated in daily life.” They are all primarily directed against the Hutterites and indicate that their missionaries were still threatening society in several Lutheran territories. In the last grouping of three out of t he seventeen items, the objections are to (1) their community of goods, (2) the disparagement of innkeepers, traders, and forgers of weapons, and (3) their marriages, divorces, and remarriages within their limited covenant. Among the first three theological objections were (1) the celestial flesh of C hrist, (2) Christ as different from other human beings only in having received more gifts of the Spirit than any other, and (3) that their “righteousness … and sanctimony is nothing else than some new sort of monkery.”32 In the divided duchy of Baden, different attitudes toward the radicals were held. Baden-Baden, which had embraced Protestantism under its first independent ruler, had been officially recatholicized by the guardians of the second duke. Under the third duke, Philibert, the cause of t he Reformation was again favored, but at his death in 1569, the territory fell to Duke Albert of Bavaria. Albert determined to recatholicize the duchy, and so enforced the imperial mandates against the Anabaptists. One radical, John Geiger of Zell, is known to have been executed in 1571. Baden-Pforzheim 33 had been first ruled by the moderate Duke Ernest, whose sympathy for Schwenckfeldianism made the land temporarily safe also for Anabaptists. In 1556 Duke Charles II (with the help of J acob Andreae and the court chaplain of Heidelberg, Michael Diller) espoused the Reformation with the consequence that the radicals were no longer tolerated. With the ascendancy of Duke Albert of Bavaria recatholicization proceeded apace. The change of policy was symbolized by the baptism of an infant child of Anabaptist parentage on Christmas Day in 1570. 34 31  The Formula was originally written in Ger man, Summarischer Begriff (Dresden, 1580). It was twice translated into Latin, the final authorized version bearing the strong imprint of Martin Chemnitz (Leipzig, 1584). From his cogent rendering comes the bon mot: “Si Martinus non fuisset Mar tinus vix stetisset.” (If it had not been for Chemnitz, Luther’s work would scarcely have stood.) 32  Schaff, Creeds, 3, 17377. Their alleged rejection “of the whole doctrine of original sin” was a factor in its emphasis in the Formula. Cf. Robert C. Schultz, “Original Sin: Accident or Substance,” Discord, Dialogue, and Concord: Studies in the Lutheran Reformation’s Formula of Concord, ed. Lewis W. Spitz and Wenzel Lohff (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977), ch. 2. 33  In 1565, Baden-Durlach. 34  ME 1:206.

1226  the radical reformation

chapter 31.1.b

For Switzerland, the homeland of Germanic Anabaptism, there is little to recount that belongs to general, as distinguished from pure regional or denominational, history after the Confederation edict against Anabaptists and Calvin’s major work against them in 1544 (Ch. 23.3). In 1560 Bullinger summarized a whole generation of polemic against the Radical Reformation in his Der Wiedertäufer Ursprung (Ch. 33). With a succession of famines and plagues (1563–71) and a series of m andates and repressive measures in the cantons, the Anabaptists continued to flee, especially to Moravia. In 1576 emigration from Zurich was forbidden because of the loss to the economy. All the other Reformed cantons enacted the same ruling in 1577. These regulations, however, were applied not only to Anabaptists but also to Catholics. Emigration nevertheless continued. The final Zurich effort to settle the problem was the promulgation in 1580 of t he great Christian ordinance which was intended to regulate conduct along lines consonant with sobriety and edification, and thus to eliminate the moral abuses against which the Anabaptists had been protesting. Thus at the end of our period, the canton of Zurich, hearth of evangelical Anabaptism, was belatedly adopting measures which seemed to be a r esponse to a f avorite Anabaptist admonition: “Be ye doers of t he word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves” ( Jas. 1:22). 35 During these years, which witnessed the ebbing of the Anabaptist mission in the Rhineland, Hesse, Württemberg, Baden, and Switzerland, and the consolidation of the remnants into a unified denomination of secondgeneration believers, a major conference was held in Strassburg (1568) and a major disputation was held in Frankenthal (1571). The Fourth Strassburg Conference, which took place in 1568, was called when it became evident that the breach between the South German and Swiss Brethren on the one hand, and the North German and Dutch on the other, was going to be permanent. 36 The three earlier conferences (1554, 1555, 1557) of Strassburg had failed to heal it, and the meeting in 1568 marks the recognition of this split on the part of the South Germans and Swiss, and their adoption of a definitive discipline for their own group independent of that of the Low Germans and the Dutch. The Strassburg Discipline of 1568, two score years after the exploratory attempts at Schleitheim (Ch. 8.1), shows us a community which has developed a s ettled social and group consciousness, an awareness of t hemselves as a d istinctly different element in an unregenerate society, and a program for preserving their distinctiveness. Moderate but firm, the Discipline deals with the practical problems of a subapostolic generation. The only theologi35  Cornelius Bermann, Die Täuferbewegung im Canton Zür ich bis 1660, Quellen und Abhandlungen zur schweizerischen Reformations-Geschichte (Leipzig, 1916), 2:50. 36  Harold S. Bender, “The Discipline Adopted by the Strassb urg Conference of 1568,” MQR 1 (1927): 57–66.

chapter 31.1.b

german & swiss anabaptism  1227

cal question treated is that of the nature of Christ (the question of the celestial flesh), where the admonition of the earlier Strassburg conferences is repeated, to hold fast to scriptural language (without further precision as to the two natures of Christ), and to avoid further discussion and dissension. The Discipline reveals the existence of ordained bishops (Älteste), who are to visit the various congregations, “filling the offices” where there are vacancies, ordaining (bestätigen) ministers (Diener) and bishops by the laying on of hands. These bishops also are to have care for the wives and children of imprisoned ministers, as well as for widows and orphans. There is counsel for the proper care of orphans and a rule forbidding marriage outside the community of faith. Other rules also illustrate the sense of exclusiveness. Brethren and sisters are to be greeted with the kiss of peace, but those outside the community simply with the words, “the Lord help you.” Money should be deposited with a brother or sister, and while debts already contracted to the world must be paid, no more should be incurred outside the brotherhood. Significant of their self-consciousness as a group apart are the regulations forbidding hunting and trapping, the making and wearing of proud clothes, and serving as armed watchmen. The Discipline seeks to promote a modest, godly, and sober life of a s eparated group within a l arger, hostile society, making provision both for inward sustenance and for protection from outside contamination. The climax of the series of disputations designed to win the Anabaptists to the orthodox faith took place at Frankenthal in the Palatinate in 1571. 37 Like the Pfeddersheim debate of 1557, it was arranged by the count palatine, now Frederick III the Pious (1559–76). Frederick, the first German prince to embrace Calvinism, had sought to lead all his people into the same fold (31.2). With the Lutherans and Catholics he was fairly successful, but the Anabaptists, of c ourse, proved recalcitrant. Like his predecessor, Otto Henry, Frederick thought that a p ublic disputation would be good for all, and would convert the Anabaptists. He was extremely open-minded and fair about the disputation, promising safe-conducts to all participants for fourteen days before and after the dispute, and free board and lodging during the sessions. Foreign preachers were invited, and prisoners might take part on the condition that they refrain from preaching and baptizing. Nevertheless, in spite of his assurance, relatively few Anabaptists came, fearing that participation would involve them in eventual persecution. In all, only fifteen Anabaptists arrived, mostly “Swiss” Brethren. One report says that there were three Moravians (Hutterites) present. The Palatine representatives were reserved, and the chief burden of t he discussion was borne by Diebold Winter of Weissenburg in Alsace, who had attended

37

 See the article by Jesse Yoder on Frankenthal in MQR 32 (1962): 14–35, 116–46.

1228  the radical reformation

chapter 31.1.b

the Pfeddersheim meeting. 38 John Rannich and Nicholas Simmerer were brought from prison to Frankenthal and repeatedly cross-examined before the disputa­t ion began, in order to obtain statements to use in the public discussion and in the hope of discovering divergences. The confrontation lasted for nineteen days, excluding Sundays (28 May to 19 June), with two sessions daily. The elector showed his interest by attending the opening session. Several of the questions were familiar. Others indicated the new stage of A nabaptist-Protestant relations after four decades of prickly coexistence. The old question of the authority of the Old Testament compared to the New was brought up. The Anabaptists replied that they gave preference to the New without neglecting the Old. The second question concerned the doctrine of the Trinity, which the Anabaptists purported to embrace. The third question, on the celestial flesh of Christ, they refused to answer, feeling that they had no information on this subtle point of d octrine that in fact divided Netherlandish and South German Anabaptists. On the fourth point, whether children were born in original sin and were therefore by nature deserving of eternal death, the Brethren admitted the sinfulness of infants, but were not willing to say anything about their damnation. The fifth question dealt with the vital issue of the relation of the Church of the Old Testament to that of the New. 39 On the sixth article, whether justification was by faith or by works, the Brethren agreed with the magisterial churchmen. On the seventh, concerning the resurrection of the body, the Reformed insisted that the substance of the present body would be resurrected, whereas the Anabaptists believed a new and glorified body would replace it. The eighth question, on excommunication and divorce, drew attention to the harsh regulations of the Mennonite and Hutterite churches/communes, and revealed the distance that still separated them from the Swiss and South German Anabaptists. The ninth question on the corporate ownership of property, was referred to the Hutterites, who, however, if indeed there were any present, did not respond. The tenth question dealt again with government, the eleventh with the oath, the twelfth with believers’ baptism, and the thirteenth with the Lord’s Supper. The Frankenthal disputation, which had begun with high hopes, ended with having drawn the parties no closer together than they were at the outset. The elector closed with a speech emphasizing his regard for the Anabaptists and his hope they might yet be won back to the state church now under Swiss Reformed aegis. They were henceforth forbidden, however, to

38 39

 For additional names, see ME 2:374.  See further Ch. 32.1.

chapter 31.1.b / 31.2

german & swiss anabaptism  1229

teach in his domain, “in order not to confuse our subjects.”40 Anyone failing to observe this order would be banished.41 In the disputation it had become clear, despite differences between South German/Swiss Anabaptists and Dutch/Low German Mennonites in respect to the ban and the celestial flesh of Christ, that they were drawing together in opposition to the Hutterites. The North German and Netherlandish Anabaptists had adopted the name “Mennonite” before Menno’s death in 1561, but the South Germans and Swiss were not to do so until later, taking advantage of its peaceful connotations. Significantly, however, already in 1575 Menno Simons’ Foundation Book appeared in High German translation. The Rhine was at length beginning to unite the Anabaptist sacramentarians at its headwaters with those at its mouth. Eventually the term “Mennonite” would embrace all the survivors of A nabaptism within the boundaries of t he old Empire, except for the Moravian Hutterites, who had repeatedly rejected all ecumenical overtures from within the Radical Reformation, whether from the Swiss, the South Germans, the Mennonites on the Lower Vistula, or from the immersionist Racovians. We turn now to other branches of the denominational delta into which the great current of the Radical Reformation was debouching on its way into the seventeenth century.

2. University-Based German Unitarianism, 1555–1579 Unitarianism in Germany cropped out notably in three university towns. But opposition to the doctrines of left-wing scriptural rationalism was also on the rise. It will be recalled that when Matthew Gribaldi came to teach law at Tübingen in the Lutheran duchy of Württemberg in 1555 (Ch. 24.2.a), he was accompanied by two Polish students, Peter Gonesius and Michael Salecki (Zaleski).42 In 1559, as the latter was packing up to return to Poland, he was assailed by adventurers and stabbed. The case aroused the Polish community of a half-dozen students and was investigated by the ducal authorities. In the examination of the young nobleman’s effects, it turned out that some of t he Poles might have been reading in secret the Declarationis Jesu Christi filii Dei libri V (Chs. 11.1.b; 24 n. 30). It had been brought to Tübingen by S tanislas Kula from Professor Valentine Erithree in Strassburg. It

40

 ME 2:375.  Protocoll, das ist Aile Handlung des Gesprec hs zu Fr atlckenthal (Heidelberg, 1571). The Protocoll was published in Dutch translation by the Reformed preacher in Frankenthal, Caspar Heidonus. The Goshen College Library holds both copies. 42  For Gribaldi’s career at Tübingen, see Delio Cantimor i, “Matteo Gribaldi Mofa e l’universita de Tubinga,” Bolletitlo Storico-Bibliographico Subalpino 35 (1933): 492–504. 41

1230  the radical reformation

chapter 31.2

bore a p reface for publication by “Alphonsus Lyncurius Tarraconensis.”43 But this is a cover name for Gribaldi, the contents perhaps his attempt to summarize Servetus.44 The interest in Servetus, in any case, must have extended beyond the Italian expatriates and the Polish student body, for in 1560 Jacob Schegk of Tübingen attacked Servetus, and possibly also Campanus and Adam Pastor. He characterized the position of his opponent as a purely Monarchian view of the Trinity as a unity of three, not in essence, but of powers.45 The scope and intensity of Schegk’s defense of the Nicene and Chalcedonian formulations testify to the presence in Germany, and particularly, as he says, to the north, of fully developed Unitarianism well in advance respectively of S imon Budny and Francis Dávid in the Commonwealth (Ch. 29.4) and Transylvania (Ch. 28). Once more there, we are in time warp in our narrative. We have already noted in Saxony the Wittenberg reaction to the Transylvanians. Professor George Major in 1569 directed expressly against Dávid and Biandrata his De uno Deo et tribus personis. Other weighty volumes followed. The principal Unitarian episode within the framework of o ur narrative unfolds in the Palatinate, under Frederick III, Elector 1559–76. Frederick went over from the Lutheranism of his predecessor to make the Palatinate the intellectual and military center of t he German Reformed. But his Reformed Church would not enjoy an uncontested status within the Empire until guaranteed by the Treaties of Westphalia (1648). Of the seven lay and spiritual Electors of the German King, the Elector palatine stood next in dignity to the elected King/Emperor. The previous, Lutheran, Elector palatine, Otto Henry, had been foremost in demanding Protestant rights in the Imperial Diet of 1 556/57. The new Elector palatine, espousing Calvinism as of 1562, became the proponent of militant panEuropean Protestantism against the Holy League and eventually sought in the Cologne War to Protestantize the Electoral archdiocesan territory of Cologne (Ch. 12.4). Germany’s oldest university, Heidelberg, Protestantized by his predecessor in 1558, under Frederick rapidly became the academic center of European Calvinism. Within the university and within the Church Council and the Council of State there developed the conflict between the

43  “Lyncurius Tarraconensis,” has been long thought to be a cover name for Servetus himself. Cf. Rotondò, ed. L. Sozzini, Opere, 313. 44  The story of the MS , trial, and related material is told b y Kot, “L’influence de Michel Servet,” Autour, 72–115 (Ch. 24.2.b, n. 30). The hearing has been edited by Janusz Tazbir, “Aus der Geschichte des Servetismus,” Archiwum Historii Filozofii i My´sli Społecznej 12 (1966): 65–74. 45  Cf. Schegk’s Contra Antitrinitarios negantes Patrem, Filium et Spiritum Sanctum unum numero et essentia esse Deum (Tübingen, 1566). Further examples may be found in Stanislas von DuninBorkowski, “Untersuchungen,” Festschrift 1:132–33. An old and bellicose Servetian disputant at Stuttgart, Hans Hottmann, is recorded in Bossert, Württemberg (QGT 1), 433.

chapter 31.2

german & swiss anabaptism  1231

Antidisciplinarians/Erastians and the high Calvinists on discipline, hence Disciplinarians, with respect to the Lord’s Supper and the role of the Church as coordinate with the government of the Palatinate. Swiss-born Professor Thomas Erastus (Lieber, d.1583), M.D., through his Latin work, A Treatise on Excommunication, c. 1568, would posthumously become the eponym for the position of t he Palatinate Antidisciplinarians who upheld the authority of t he magistracy over the ministry in matters of church discipline.46 A triumvirate of biblical scholars, John Sylvanus (d. 1572), Adam Neuser (d. 1576), and Matthew Vehe-Glirius (d. 1590), were among the low Calvinists or Erastians,47 who became biblical Unitarians, one of them an earnest and resourceful Judaizer. Although already encountered (Ch. 28.3.), they may now be placed in their Palatinate context.48 The church discipline involved rested for both sides, Disciplinarian (in line with Geneva) and Antidisciplinarian, on Matt. 18:18–20. It became first of all a university issue during the open examination in June 1568, of the English doctoral candidate, the proto-Presbyterian George Whitters who held, among other theses, that it is the office of m inisters with the presbytery to censure, warn, and excommunicate any sinners, even princes, carrying out all things pertaining to ecclesiastical discipline. Adam Neuser and Thomas Erastus were chosen to oppose the theses, and they relegated the right of final discipline to the Elector and his High Council (Erastianism) instead of to the Church Council, both of which had territory-wide jurisdiction. During the academic defense of several days’

46  The work was first published anonymously in London with a false imprint and an anagram of the editor as publisher, as Explicatio gravissimae quaestionis utrum excommunicatio quatenus religionem illtelligentes … amplexentes (Pesclavii apud Boacium Sultaceter um, December 1569). The anagrammed editor w as Giacopo Castr ovelto, who had mar ried the wido w of Erastus. See John Tedeschi, “The Cultural Contr ibutions of Italian Pr otestant Reformers in the Late Renaissance,” Schifalloia, Bolletino dell’Instituto di Studi Renascimentali 11 (Ferrara, 1986): 127–51. 47  For the general situation see Claus-P eter Clasen, The Palatinate in European History 1555–1618 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1963); for Erastianism in context, Ruth Wesel-Roth, Thomas Erastus: Ein Beitr ag zur Gesc hichte der Refor mierten Kirche und zur Lehre v on Stadtsouveriänität, Veröffentlichungen des Vereins für Kirchengeschichte in der evangelischen Landeskirche Baden 15 (Baden, 1954); for Olevianus and Ursinus,Walter Hollweg, Neue Untersuchungen zur Geschichte und Lehre des Heidelberg Katechismus (Neukirchen: Verlag des Erziehungsvereins, 1961). 48  The main sources for Sylvanus, Vehe-Glirius, and Neuser in the Heidelberg epi sodes are edited b y Hans Rott, “Neue Quellen für eine Aktenrevision des Pr ocesses gegen Sylvan und seine Genossen, ” Neues Archiv für die Gesc hichte der Stadt Heidelberg 8–9 (1910– 11); W. Seeling, “Johannes Sylvanus, Matthias Vehe als Pf arrer in Kaiser slautern,” Blätter fur pfalzische Kirchengeschichte 32 (1963): 134–45; Curt Horn, “Johann Sylvan und die Anfänge des Heidelberger Antitrinitarianismus,” Neue Heidelberger Jahrbücher 17 (1913): 236–50; Wilbur, Socinianism, 259–66; and most luminously Róber t Dán, Matthias Vehe-Glirius: Life and Work of a Radical Antitrinitarian with his collected wr itings, Studia Humanitatis 4 (Budapest/Leiden: Hungarian Academy of Sciences/Br ill, 1982), 154. See also m y Lubieniecki, Plates 43, 44, and the extensive annotation on these three in the main text.

1232  the radical reformation

chapter 31.2

duration, Neuser, a d isappointed aspirant to a u niversity chair, became obstreperous and was disciplined by t he Church Council. He was transferred from St. Peter’s to a lesser role in a lesser parish. In the meantime, Matthew Vehe(-Glirius), deacon under superintendent Sylvanus in Kaiserslautern, both being Antidisiplinarians, agitated against the extension of Genevan discipline throughout the Palatinate as was being promoted in parish circulars of the Church Council. Prominent on the Disciplinarian side were Caspar Olevianus, replaced at the university by Zachary Ursinus, but both of them authors together of the Heidelberg Catechism (1563). It is of i nterest that the first Unitarian Catechism, the Catechesis of George Schomann (Cracow, 1574) (Ch.27.4), was eventually to be refuted by Ursinus (born in Breslau). In any case, several Poles are thought to have early raised in Heidelberg the Triadological problem.49 The disciplinary issue involving first of all Neuser and then Vehe(- Glirius) became intertwined in the theological issue (biblical Triadology), and this in turn with foreign affairs (Transylvania, the Sultan). The scholarly superintendent over Vehe(-Glirius), in Kaiserslautern, then in Lautenburg, John Sylvanus, was the first in the Palatinate to be directly charged with the Reformed defense of the received dogma of the Trinity, in March 1570. It came about this way. Sylvanus, born in the Tyrol, had been called to the Palatinate by the Elector in 1563 and had served as a sometime member of the university commission for a critical edition of the Bible. He was under pressure to comply with the request of Wenceslas Zuleger of t he Palatine Church Council to respond to a synodal delegation from Poland made up of Christopher Trecy, rector of the Reformed school in Cracow, and John Łasicki, historian of the Czech Brethren, to deal thoroughly with the proofs of the awareness of the triune God in the writers of the Old Testament. There had been earlier visitors from Reformed Poland to Heidelberg. John Łasicki himself had visited in 1563. The Reformed pastor and incipient Ditheist, Stanislas Farnowski (of the Farnovian synod, 1567), matriculated in 1564. Martin Seidel from Silesia studied at the university and was later expelled from the middle school in Heidelberg for doubting the authority of t he New Testament and would end up as a d isputant with Faustus Socinus, holding that even in the Old Testament only the Decalogue was valid as a true revelation from God.50 Both the visitors in Kaiserslautern in 1570, Trecy and Łasicki, had already been on an earlier and similar mission in Geneva in May 1567, then in Zurich, to help them in refuting the anti-Nicene Minor Church in Little Poland. They had solicited from Peter Melius in Debrecen (Ch. 49 50

 In the posthumous Explicationum cathecheticarum … absolutum opus (Neustadt, 1603).  Gryczowa, Ariariskie oficyny, Sternacki, no. 268, no. 273; Dán, Vehe-Glirius, 176–77.

chapter 31.2

german & swiss anabaptism  1233

28) a s trong sampling of Transylvanian anti-Nicene writings, including those of Luke Égri, the first formulator of Hungarian Unitarian thought, of Francis Dávid, and the protocol of the Alba Julia disputation of February 1566. 51 It was Josias Simler who had complied with their request and had defended the Trinity and the divinity of Christ, De aeterno Dei filio Domino et servatore nostro Jesu Christo adversus veteres et novos Antitrinitarios (Zurich, 1568), but both the Transylvanian and the Polish Reformed had felt that this work had not been sufficiently grounded in the Hebrew Bible and that it depended too much on patrum consilia.52 Vehe-Glirius himself would later profess not to know from where his superintendent got all his Antitrinitarian books which he characterized as simply coming from “Adam Pastors volk.” It is not clear, however, exactly how Sylvanus and his comrades became Antitrinitarians under the impact of r eading the books of “Adam Pastor’s people” (Ch. 19.2.c) and books known to have been sent by Biandrata. 53 A renewed synodal mission of Trecy and Łasicki in the spring of 1570 was even more desperate in its quest than in 1567 for surety about Triadology in the Old Testament. After a b rief stay in Geneva in March, the two commissioners were encouraged to proceed to the university town of Heidelberg. After their arrival they were advised by the head of the Church Council, Wenceslas Zuleger, and by the Dutch court preacher Peter de Berghen (Dathenus), to proceed to Lautenburg, for the counsel of t he learned superintendent Sylvanus. The superintendent, Christian Hebraist that he was, decided to refer the difficult textual and theological question back to the holder of the Old Testament chair, Immanuel Tremellius (1510–80), himself of Jewish descent and the chief organizer of the university work on the critical edition of the Bible. He was surrounded by the rabbinical codices of the Bibliotheca Palatina, made up in part of what had been confiscated when Jews had been expelled from Heidelberg in 1390.54 Tremellius conceded that the divinity of Christ could not be proved from the Old Testament. Sylvanus, for his part, resigned from the task force, but evidently very much under the impact of his intensive investigation he completed in May a manuscript, later recovered to his peril, in which loci from both Testaments were adduced to prove that there are discrepancies 51

 Wilbur, Transylvania, 32; see Ch. 28, p. 1111.  Their negative assessment is reported by Vehe(-Glirius) himself, namely in his Apologia,c. 1570, first edited from the Zurich MS by Hans Rott and reprinted by Din, Vehe-Glirius, text 7, 271–87, specifically 280. 53  Apologia, 280–81 and 285, a cur ious yet insistent and r epeated phrasing. Vehe(-Glirius) goes so f ar as to speak of the books br ought from Poland for scr utiny and refutation as having-been those of “Adam Pastor’s people.” Bullinger evidences his awareness of books sent b y Biandrata as being among those to be refuted by Sylvanus; letter of 1 September 1570. 54  The collection reposes in the Vatican Library. Tremellius, born in Ferrara, converted to Catholicism in 1540, to Protestantism in 1542, taught in Strassburg, Cambridge, and Heidelberg (1561–76). 52

1234  the radical reformation

chapter 31.2

between the Apostolicum and the Athanasium. Sylvanus rejected the latter, calling Athanasius the Antichrist.55 The threads of the Antidisciplinarian, anti-Nicene episode became intertwined in a project of Sylvanus, Vehe(-Glirius), and Neuser to leave the Palatinate for the more congenial land of Transylvania. As Germans they hoped to be well received by the Saxons there and, no doubt, by the Unitarian Reformed Magyars in what seemed to them an attractively tolerant principality in which their services might be especially appreciated by the Unitarian synod. Toward this end these three Hebraists set off, along with one Jacob Suter, for the Diet of Speyer, 10 July 1570, to meet Chancellor Caspar Békés of Transylvania who was there to arrange for the marriage of an imperial daughter with John II Sigismund, who would thereupon renounce his claim to the Crown of St. Stephen (Ch. 28.3). Neuser and Sylvanus proposed to the Transylvanian envoy that he transmit their letters and they offered to serve in the Transylvanian Reformed Synod. Sylvanus had written a letter to Dr. Biandrata to this effect. As for his theology, he wrote in it: God, who is the Rescuer of his honor, wishes to wipe out (vertilgen) the God, who was an unknown God to our fathers. … They [the orthodox in Heidelberg] disturb the eternal God, the Holy One of Israel, … and in their vanity move him to wrath. … I acknowledge no other God, also no other Son of G od, for the Father alone is God, and [I acknowledge] the Son, who is not in essence God (nicht ein wesentlich Gott ist).56 Neuser, looking beyond Transylvania to Constantinople, seems to have written a l etter to Sultan Selim II that alleged that many princes and theologians of Germany sided with the Unitarians and Muslims in their teaching about God. 57 Neuser’s Unitarianism was thus combined with fatuous irresponsibility calculated to alarm even the most tolerant elector if it should come to light. These papers were lodged in the Transylvanian diplomatic pouch. When, however, Emperor Maximilian II refused to conclude an alliance with John II Sigismund on the pretext (unrelated to the three visitors) that all his people denied the Trinity, the Unitarian

55  Wahre Christliche Bekäntniss des urhalten Glaubens von dem einigen wahren Gott, und von Messia Jesu der wahren Christen: Wider den Drei-Per¨sonlichen Abgott, und zweigenaturten Gotzen des Wider-Christ, aus Gottes Wort mit Fleiss zusammen getragen, und in solcher Kürze beschreiben, 1570, inspected by Dán, Vehe-Glirius, 26. In its composition Sylv anus used mater ial from Poland, Transylvania, and from “Adam Pastor’s people.” 56  Preserved in Monumenta Pietatis et Literaria Virorum in Republica et Literaria Illustrium selecta (Frankfurt, 1701). Dán analyses and quotes from the letter, Vehe-Glirius, 289. 57  In Monumenta Dán holds that the confiscated letters were tendentiously edited to make the case seem seditious as well as heretical.

chapter 31.2

german & swiss anabaptism  1235

envoy Békés promptly turned over the papers, entrusted to him for forwarding, to show his own good faith confessionally as a d isinterested counselor of his prince. The Emperor in turn handed the incriminating letters over to Elector Frederick III who had no choice but to institute proceedings against the three theological adventurers. Neuser had set out for Hungary before the order against them was issued, but when he learned of the arrest of Sylvanus, he bravely returned and was himself arrested. Later he, Jacob Suter, and Vehe(-Glirius) were released or they escaped. Sylvanus, once tutor of t he Elector, after some delay, was beheaded as an Arian, 23 December 1572. Neuser, who was helped to escape, 11 May 1571, by the Antidisciplinarian party, traveled first to London, in the hope of securing a position with the Strangers’ Church, but he presented no credentials since he was using an assumed name, and when he was rebuffed, he went to Paris, whence to Poland by sea, visiting Cracow en route to Kolozs´var, where he was introduced in 1572 by t he rector of t he college to the circle of Francis Dávid (Ch. 28.3). He would later claim, while in Transylvania, to have persuaded Francis Dávid that it was an error to worship Christ (nonadorantism). 58 It was Neuser who also observed that “No one known to me in our time has become an Arian who was not first a Calvinist; therefore if anyone fears that he may fall into Arianism, he should avoid Calvinism.”59 Neuser is rare among the sixteenth-century Antitrinitarians in having readily accepted and adopted the name Arian to describe his position.60 Neuser eventually reached Constantinople, having submitted to circumcision and become a Muslim on the way. This conversion grew out of difficulties with the pasha of Temesvar, who could not understand why Neuser, a Christian, wanted to set up a printing press on Turkish territory, and suspected him of b eing an imperial agent. When Neuser explained that, like the Turks, he believed in one unipersonal God, and that this had involved him in difficulties with the imperial government, the pasha challenged him either to prove it by becoming a Turk, or to be sent to the Sultan for a t horough examination on suspicion of spying. Neuser chose Islam and traveled to Constantinople (Istanbul) on his own. Here, after

58  Letter of Adam Neuser from Istanbul, Wednesday before Easter, 1574 to “Caspar,” published in Lessing, Neusern, 207ff. 59  Stephen Gerlach, Sr., Lutheran chaplain to the Hapsburg ambassador at the Sublime Porte, Tage-Buch (Frankfurt, 1674), 254. Gerlach also r elates that Neuser designed an auto mobile. As for Neuser’s dictum, the Nicene Father s would not have approved the heading of Institutes 1.13: “We are Taught One Essence of God, Which Contains Three Persons.” 60  Lessing, Neusern, 207ff.

1236  the radical reformation

chapter 31.2 / 31.3

embroiling himself with the mullahs and leading a dissipated life, he died in 1576.61 Matthew Vehe(-Glirius) for his part, having declared by solemn oath that he would never return to the Palatinate, was permitted by t he Heidelberg authorities to depart for Wittenberg, where, possibly with Jacob Suter, he enrolled gratis at the university in March 1573. He repaired to Königshafen in the Palatinate, to convert their leader then on to Cologne, where he attended the lectures of John Isaak, a converted Jew, professor of Hebrew, and he mingled with Jews who were housed beyond the city gate, studying Hebrew until perhaps 1577. It was probably in Cologne itself that his major work was published, Mattanajah (Dansenbrugk, September, 1578) (already cited, Ch. 28.3). He took leave of G ermany for Danzig, visited Cracow, and arrived at Kolozsvár in 1579 shortly before the decisive debate between Dávid and Socinus on the adoration of C hrist, which we have already attended (Ch. 28.3), a major factor in distancing from each other the Minor Reformed Synod of Little Poland as adorant under Socinus and the Magyar (Unitarian) Reformed synod of Transylvania as nonadorant.

3. German Spiritualism and Proto-Pietism, 1542–1578 Caspar Schwenckfeld, who must by now seem to the reader to be the only constant figure amid the swirling litter of an autumnal storm, watched his friends and foes pass from the scene. His own ardor for the Middle Way may have been flagging in the face of the hardened positions of the Roman, Lutheran, and Reformed Churches, and the various Anabaptists. After the strife of 1 547 his contacts with Anabaptism were marginal. Schwenckfeld’s correspondence mentions a f ormer disciple, Daniel Graff, who eventually swung over to Marpeck’s camp. At another point, Schwenckfeld was requested by a s ister to reply for her to an Anabaptist missionary’s letter urging immediate rebaptism. He speaks in a letter concerning certain Schweiger (silent ones) among the Anabaptists. Schwenckfeld’s contact with other branches of t he Reformation were also almost entirely negative. Much of the three years as Eliander at Esslingen after 1547 Schwenckfeld spent in writing and visiting friends nearby. The confusion created by the Augsburg Interim of 1548 permitted him to break his self-imposed confinement and to visit and strengthen his little groups of f ollowers in several localities. By 1551, however, he was once more engaged in controversy with the Lutheran camp, this time with Matthias Flacius Illyricus, who violently attacked Schwenckfeld’s nonliteral doctrine of t he Word of G od. During

61  Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Von Adam Neusern, einige authentische Nachrichten (Braun­schweig, 1774), in Sämtliche Schriften (Leipzig, 1897), 12:202–54, esp. 220ff.

chapter 31.3

german & swiss anabaptism  1237

the next six years, Flacius penned perhaps a dozen books against the Silesian’s position on this and allied doctrines, while Schwenckfeld and his aide George Major (Theophilus Agricola) produced fourteen works defending their conception and attacking the Flacian position. Between 1552 and 1554, Schwenckfeld lived secretly with the younger Streichers at Ulm, and in Oepfingen at a former residence of the von Freybergs. On 14 June 1554, Duke Christopher of W ürttemberg issued the already mentioned mandate calling for his arrest. At almost the same time, certain reformers and theologians met at Naumburg under the leadership of Melanchthon and produced a document accusing Schwenckfeld of a variety of blasphemies. Even though Philip of Hesse intervened on his behalf with Melanchthon, this gentler reformer refused to become reconciled with the Silesian, despite Schwenckfeld’s great attempt in 1557. In 1558 Schwenckfeld visited Strassburg and the vicinity of Heidelberg. In 1560 he was asked by one Lucas Pomisius of Nuremberg to deal with questions raised by L aelius Socinus.62 The questions are not extant. Schwenckfeld requested Pomisius to beg Laelius Socinus not to be offended for his not replying to him directly. He warned Pomisius that Laelius sounded very much like Servetus and Gribaldi. Schwenckfeld expressed the hope that Pomisius would read the letter to Castellio and Curio in Basel. Schwenckfeld returned to the Streicher residence in Ulm in August of 1561, when dysentery (probably complicated by t uberculosis) made him seek the medical assistance of A gatha Streicher. Schwenckfeld grew progressively weaker, and finally died on 10 December 1561. He was presumably buried beneath the house of h is close friends of s o many years, the Streichers. After the death of Schwenckfeld, Lutherans in their Formula of Concord (1577) would characterize his thought. Although the characterization of h is chief error therein is polemical, it is a t heologically compact summary: That all those who affirm Christ, according to the flesh, to be a creature [emphasis added] have no true knowledge of the heavenly king and his reign. That the flesh of Christ through its exaltation has in such wise received all the divine attributes that Christ, as he is man, is altogether like to the Father and to the Word [Logos] in power, might, majesty, in all things, in grade and state of essence, so that henceforth there is one essence of both natures in Christ, the same will, and the same glory; and that the [glorified] flesh of Christ pertains to the essence of the Blessed Trinity.63 62  February 1560: CS 17: Doc. 1523. Schwenckfeld told Laelius that he could not r egardhim as a brother in Christ. 63  Schaff, Creeds, vol. 3: article 12, p. 177.

1238  the radical reformation

chapter 31.3

Throughout much of h is teaching and praying and controversy, Schwenckfeld to the end of his life was explaining and rejoicing in what he understood to be the salvific experience of the true Christian, “the taste of the body and blood of [ this wholly celestial] Christ,” accessible as manna to the worthies of the Old Testament. He explained this perhaps most succinctly in Twelve Questions.64 Here Schwenckfeld distinguished between “the unbelieving spurious Christians” who “receive in the Supper only the bread of the Lord, but the bread which the Lord himself is and which he himself gives they cannot take” (11), for only those “born from above of heavenly water and the Holy Spirit” (8) and as new human beings “wear the marriage robe,” may sit at the spiritual table and, having already “set aside the old wine skins,” drink the blood of Christ as “the new heavenly wine,” a “blood of the new and eternal covenant” (3) which both signifies and assures in anticipation “eternal blessedness after death (8).65 Schwenckfeld was a “Protestant” Spiritualist who, however, separated from all organized churches. In the course of the history of radicalities in the Reformation era we have encountered several Catholic Spiritualists and Evangelicals, as diverse as Erasmus, Valdés, Campanus, Paracelsus, William Postel, Dirk Coornhert, and George Witzel, who, remaining within or returning to the Roman Church, were spiritually closer to Schwenckfeld and to such spiritualizing Anabaptists as Entfelder and Bünderlin. As the Reformation era comes to a close, we begin to encounter a phenomenon within the established Protestant territorial and civic churches comparable to Catholic Evangelism and Nicodemism, namely, a Protestant conformist Spiritualism. John Denck, conforming at the end of his life to the established church at Basel, was perhaps the first of t he conforming Protestant Spiritualists to be succeeded in the same city by David Joris. At the end of our epoch, we may mention another whose subsequent influence on German Pietism, mysticism, and anthroposophy was great, Valentine Weigel.

64

 These are not the same as the lost Twelve Articles (Ch. 18 at n. 59). These are translated by Selina Schultz, printed by Martha B. Kriebel, Schwenckfelders and the Sacraments, revised S.T.M. thesis, Lutheran Theological Seminary, Philadelphia (Pennsburg, Pa.: Board of Publication of the Schwenckfelder Church, 1968), appendix A. 65  Schwenckfeld implies in many places the divine oblivion of the unworthy rather than their eternal punishment in hell, which he r efuses, over against Mar peck, to tak e literally. Although out of his patr istic studies Schwenckfeld retains the consubstantial Trinity, his concept of Christ in Majesty as one with the Father and the Spir it “in the one essence of his two natures” is an almost Monophysite vision. His conception of Christ in Majesty can nevertheless be compared with that of the fully humanly “monophysite” Ascended Christ of three plenipotential powers or offices in Faustus Socinus, the Silesian and the Sienese lay theologians alike holding to conditional immortality for those (few) who have, respectively, spiritually tasted the Lord of the Banquet of John 6 and those who have heeded the evangelical counsels of the New Moses on the Mount of Calvary.

chapter 31.3

german & swiss anabaptism  1239

Weigel was born in 1533 near Dresden66 of Catholic parents who went over to Lutheranism in 1539 on the death of Duke George of Saxony. In 1554, Weigel attended the University of L eipzig, and in 1563 he went to Wittenberg, where Melanchthon’s moderate spirit still prevailed.67 In 1567 he became preacher in the small Saxon town of Zschopau, and married in the following year. His sparkling oratorical talent won him great popularity among the people. He was much opposed to the Lutheran Formula of Concord (1577) with its emphasis on formal dogma and its straitjacketing of inner spiritual movement.68 During his life Weigel published only one small work; 69 all his other books were published posthumously.70 He wrote in 1578 Of the Life of Christ.71 After 1578, influenced by t he works of P aracelsus, he produced a number of w ritings dedicated to the concept of i ncorporation (Verleiblichung). He finally (somewhat as Obbe Philips had) came to consider his own calling vain, indeed the whole of the ordained ministry as the work of the Antichrist. But he concealed most of his radical ideas during his lifetime (d. 1588) and continued to preach relatively orthodox Lutheranism. He was never attacked, and the periodic reports of the visitations by his superintendent always commented favorably upon his preaching and charitable endeavors. Following the Pauline-Origenistic tripartite anthropology held also by Hubmaier, Weigel correspondingly envisaged three worlds, namely, the material world or world of darkness, the invisible or angelic world, and the world of God, which is the summum bonum and blessedness. When a person accepts salvation, he becomes a god. Weigel held the doctrine of the celestial flesh of Christ. Weigel in his theosophic vision elaborately reworked orthodox Christian theology. Weigel’s system of t hought, complex but not systematic, would exercise an influence on later thinkers, especially the Lutheran John Arndt (1555–1621) and the Pietist mystic Jacob Boehme (1576–1620). Weigel may, with some justice, be therefore denominated a proto-Pietist. His writings, when reworked by J ohn Arndt of B raunschweig (Brunswick), provide much of t he rationale for that later movement. In his Vier Bücher vom wahren Christentum (1606) Arndt would replace the forensic theory of the Atonement with the proto-Pietist theology of Christ’s indwelling the heart of the believer. 66

 In the town of Hain.  Julius Otto Opel,Valentin Weigel (Leipzig, 1864). 68  Winfried Zeller, Die Schriften Valentin Weigels, Historische Studien 370 (Berlin, 1940). 69  Eulogy for Lady von Ruxleben, 1576. 70  His extensive edifying and moralizing works of the years 1572 to 1576 are catalogued in his lnformatorium oder Soli Deo Gloria (Newenstadt, 1616, 1618). 71  So translated and published in London, 1648. 67

1240  the radical reformation

chapter 31.3

In seventeenth-century Pietism, the quieter currents from Anabaptism, Spiritualism, and Evangelical Rationalism would merge.72 It is not surprising that Pietism has been called “a grandchild of A nabaptism.” 73 The same area where Anabaptism was strongest, the southwest quadrant of the Empire, eventually witnessed the development of Pietism. Schwenckfeldianism and Pietism are even more closely akin, if not genetically, at least morphologically. It may be possible to construct a connecting chain of influence from Schwenckfeld through Weigel and Arndt (both of whom were accused of S chwenckfeldianism) and Jacob Boehme (who acknowledged his indebtedness to Schwenckfeld, Paracelsus, and Franck) and by w ay of F riedrich Breckling, and his son, and Christian Hoburg (a Schwenckfeldian exiled to Holland), to Philip Spener (“the father of P ietism”), educated at Strassburg.74 The birthplace of S pener, Rappoltsweiler (Ribeauvillé) in upper Alsace, had earlier been part of a n area—Strassburg, Landau, Speyer, Rappoltsweiler75 —where Schwenckfeld had once commanded a considerable following. While the Mennonites of a century after our period will become known as the Stillen im Lande, closely allied to Pietist development,76 the evangelical Anabaptism of the first two formative generations differed markedly from the later Pietism in several respects.77 Though both movements rejected the coercion of conscience in the state church, though both were impatient with dogmatic subtleties, though both were conventicular expressions of Christianity, though both generated a d eep missionary urge, Anabaptism stressed the “bitter Christ” of suffering, sending its rebaptized converts out into the dangerous struggle of life and possible martyrdom, while Pietism emphasized the “sweet Christ” of the devout life and philanthropy.

72  Cf. Robert Friedmann, “Anabaptism and Pr otestantism,” MQR 24 (1950): 12–13. “Anabaptism and Pietism,” MQR 14 (1940): 90, 149, and Mennonite Piety Through the Centuries (Goshen, Indiana: Mennonite Histor ical Society, Goshen College , 1949); and Heinr ich Bornkamm, Mystik, Spiritualismus, und der Pietismus (Giessen, 1926). 73  Maximilian Gobel, Geschichte des kirchlichw Lebens in der reheinischwesifälischen evangelischen Kirche (Koblenz, 1849–60). 74  Schultz, Schwenckfeld, 404. 75  Schultz, Schwenckfeld, 177, 404; F. Fritz, “Die Widertäufer und der wür ttembergerische Pietismus,” Blätter für Württembergische Kirchengeschichte 43 (1939): 81ff. See also Hor st Weigel, “Schwenckfeld and Pietism,” Schwenckfeld, ed. Erb, 365–76, who deals with the Schwenckfelder delegation from Silesia to the senior court preacher, Philip Spener, at Dresden in 1690, and with the visit of the radical Pietist Johann Wilhelm Petersen to the Silesia Schwenckfelders in 1707. 76  Ernst Crous, “Mennonitentum und Pietismus,” Theologische Zeitschrift 8 (1952): 279–96. 77  As was recognized in an early w ork treating the relationship between the two movements. J. J. Wolleb’s Gespräch zwischen einem Pietisten und einem Widertäufer (Basel, 1722).

Chapter 32

Law and Gospel: Implicit Separatist Ecumenicity

Before we bring to a close our narrative and analysis

of the Radical Reformation on the point of breaking up into denominations and regional communions as rigidly separated as were the confessional state churches of the Magisterial Reformation, it will be useful to round out two topics that we have thus far treated only on an ad hoc basis. These are the relationship between Word and Spirit, and the corresponding tension between Law and Gospel (Ch. 32.1), and the missionary motif seen in the perspective of w hat may be called implicit sectarian ecumenicity (Ch. 32.2). Incidentally, the wording of the latter topic is not so facile a modernizaton as it might be thought. Ecumenicity among the sixteenthcentury radicals was a combination of the sense of the imminence of the Kingdom of G od, the experience of t he universality of t he work of t he Holy Spirit, the impatience with the territorial particularization of t he Reformation, and the overwhelming conviction as to the actuality of the New Covenant. The experience of the new creation in the Spirit gave all the radicals a feeling of comradeship in Christ and a longing to share their Christian fellowship in solidarity with saints and would-be saints of a ll times and in all climes. Just as there was a “unitive Protestantism”1 of the tripartite Magisterial Reformation that cut across territorial boundaries, although nationalism and princely particularism were the main thrusts; so likewise there was an underlying catholicity in the Radical Reformation based on the belief that Christ died for all humanity, 2 even though divisive 1  John T. McNeill, Unitive Protestantism (New York, 1930; rev. ed., Richmond: John Knox Press, 1964). 2  Something of this is suggested by the title and several of the essays in the collected work: Guy Hershberger, ed., The Recovery of the Anabaptist Vision (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald, 1957).

1241

1242  the radical reformation

chapter 32 / 32.1.a

sectarianism and conventicular fission seem to have bulked very large in our narrative, while the Spiritualist threat relativized or even marginalized the organized Christian community. In any event the two topics, “Bible” and “Church,” are plausibly brought together here in the same chapter since there was a very close connection between the way the radicals conceived of the two Testaments and the way they conceived of the nature and the mission of the Church and the solidarity and destiny of humankind.

1. Word in Spirit: The Bible and the Radical Reformation The Radical Reformation stood for the most part with the classical Magisterial Reformation and was indeed largely dependent upon it in the recovery of t he Bible and in the rejection of t he medieval synthesis of Scripture, Tradition, and papal authority. 3 At the same time the radicals differed with the classical Protestant divines, here more, there less, in respect to (a) the canonical problem of the authority of the Apocrypha and related ancient writings and Tradition, (b) the theological problem of the two covenants, the inner and the outer word, the letter and the Spirit, and the closely related question of the relation of the Old and New Testaments, and (c) the hermeneutical problem of the validity of allegory, concordance, and typology. a. Translations and the Canon We recall the Sacramentist study groups in The Netherlands; the protoAnabaptist gatherings for Bible-reading and exposition in Strassburg under Ziegler, in Augsburg under Haetzer, in Zurich under Grebel; and also the prophesyings by w omen as well as the dreams and the visions of y oung men and old in conventicles from London to Modena to Raków, Phase 1. These gatherings of s tudy and mutual exhortation grounded sixteenthcentury nonconformists in the fundamentals of faith, opened to them the awesome vistas of o ther times and nations, exercised them in scriptural accountability (1 Pet. 4:5), and promoted in them that scriptural cunning and inspired readiness of a nswer (Luke 12:11) that alternatively baffled and impressed the magistrates and the magisterial divines before whose tribunals and podia these dissenting men and women were summoned to appear.

3  Cf. Georges H. Tavard, Holy Writ or Holy Church: The Crisis of the Protestant Refor mation (New York: Harper, 1959; rpt. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1978) and Ober man, Harvest, ch. 11, against whom he enunciates his Traditions II and II (Ch. 21, n. 6).

chapter 32.1.a

law & gospel: sectarian ecumenicity  1243

Except for the occasional humanist or the radical synodists in the three eastern realms, the rank and file of t he dissidents in our narrative cited the Bible in a vernacular version. The relationship among the translations of Scripture employed in the Radical Reformation should therefore be clarified. The Upper and Lower German Anabaptists relied largely on the High German Christopher Froschauer Bible of Zurich, the Strassburg Bible, and the Liesveldt Bible of Antwerp. Jacob van Liesveldt of Antwerp printed in 1522 an edition of the gospels from the Vulgate. When he came into possession of Luther’s translations, he put together his complete Dutch Bible in 1526, relying upon translation from the Vulgate to fill the gaps in Luther’s work. It was the fact that Luther had not yet produced a t ranslation of t he Old Testament prophets that induced Haetzer and Denck (Ch. 7.3), perhaps with encouragement from the Strassburg Hebraist, Capito, to publish in Worms in 1527 a w idely distributed version of t he prophets. It went through twelve editions by 1 531. Luther was stimulated to complete his translation of t he whole Bible (1532) to counter the popularity of “ The Worms Prophets” by Haetzer and Denck, which so frequently cited Jewish authorities.4 The Zurich New Testament (1524) and the complete Bible (1529) printed by Christopher Froschauer were based on Luther’s translations to date, with some alterations in the word order and vocabulary and with Swiss vocalization (until 1527). At first Froschauer used “The Worms Prophets” to fill the gaps in Luther’s translations. So widely popular were the early editions of t he Froschauer New Testaments among the Swiss Brethren, with their Swiss diphthongs and other cherished idiotica, that under the Bernese authorities they were for a while subject to confiscation as “Anabaptist books.” On the French side, we had occasion to observe the emergence of a new French text prepared by P eter Olivétan for the Protestantized Waldensians, beginning in 1532 (Ch. 21.2) with prefaces supplied by Calvin; but, of course, this cannot be considered an achievement of the radicals. The scriptural interest of Servetus was in critical editions rather than in translation. We mentioned his contribution in Lyons as editor of the Santes Pagnini Bible (1542 and 1545) and his plan to move to Venice by way of Geneva(!) to work on a polyglot edition (Ch. 23.4). We also mentioned Castellio’s translation (Ch. 24.2.d) from the original tongues into humanistic Latin: of t he Pentateuch (1547) and of t he whole Bible (1551, dedicated to Edward VI), and of the whole Bible afresh into French (1555). In 1562 in his Defensio translationum bibliorum, Castellio admitted 4  Ervin Carson Brisson, Jr.,“Hans Denck’s Der Micha Kommentar: An Annotated Translation” (Ph.D. Dissertation, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Ky., 1987).

1244  the radical reformation

chapter 32.1.a

to a number of stylistic and philological errors in his works but reasserted his contentions about free will and predestination, defending himself against the charge of T heodore Beza that he had been tendentious and impious. 5 With a sharp critical sense, Castellio did not hesitate to make clear the original erotic character of t he Song of Songs. He was pleased to think of the Bible as a library in which God and reader might meet. Besides the earlier Dutch translations, mention should be made of Den Bibel in Duyts in 1556. This was the work of Stephen Mierdman, a native of Antwerp, who, settling in Emden, combined Liesveldt for the historical books of the Old Testament and Froschauer for the rest of the Bible. The translation was done by the Fleming John Gheylliaert. In 1557 a new Dutch New Testament was printed by Matthew Jacobs. In 1560, the Mennonite Nicholas Biestkens published a D utch Bible. Drawing on the phrasing of Liesveldt and Mierdman, it was essentially Luther’s version in Dutch with certain words reflecting Mennonite usage and experience. As for the translation into English of t he New Testament and large parts of the Old by William Tyndale, while a sojourner and refugee in Marburg and The Netherlands, it is only by extension that this pioneer work of the martyr of Vilvoorde, 1536, can be claimed in part as an achievement of radical Protestantism. In only one sector of t he Radical Reformation was there truly pioneer work in vernacular translation: Poland. To be sure, the Radziwiłł Bible of Brest, 1563, a Polish translation under the direction of the French Reformed émigré, Peter Statorius (Stoi´n ski) of P i´nczów, can be ascribed with equal propriety to the Major and the Minor Church, since it was completed before the definitive schism. But Simon Budny’s Polish Bibles of Nie´swiez, 1572 and (uncensored) 1574, clearly reflected the radical spirit in theological scholarship and evangelical zeal. Budny had learned Hebrew from Stancaro and local rabbis. His translation won high praise from rabbis for the rendition of the Old Testament. In the New Testament, Budny stressed the full humanity of Christ. He even altered Luke 3:23 to insist on Joseph’s paternity. Because of its Judaizing trend, Martin Czechowic of the Minor Church in Lublin brought out a counter-version of the New Testament in 1577, which was twice translated and printed in Ruthenian.6 Budny’s translation was the basis of a R uthenian New Testament published in 1580 by Basil Tiapinsky (Ciapi´n ski). At the end of his life Budny withdrew

5  For the strongest statement on free will censored by Cellarius, see Sape van der Woude, “Censured Passages from Sebastian Castellio’s Defensio Suarum Translationum,” Autour de Servet et de Castelion, ed. Becker, 259–79. 6  For the role of the Refor mation in calling for th translations of the Bib le in the easter n realms, see Williams, Lubieniecki, Plate 54, “Bibles of the East under the Impact of Protestantism.” Unmentioned there are the two other Ruthenian versions of Czechowic: Valentine Negalevsky’s and another associated with the town of Peresopnica.

chapter 32.1.a

law & gospel: sectarian ecumenicity  1245

some of his most radical ideas and even found reasons to reascribe Hebrews to Paul. In Transylvania the Unitarians in their academy in Kolozsvár under John Sommer were primarily at work on a critical Latin edition of the Bible, corrective of t he Vulgate in the light of n ew biblical/rabbinical scholarship. The Hungarian Bible of V iszoly, 1590, was the achievement of the Calvinists. A word is in order concerning the use of t he Apocrypha and related writings in the Radical Reformation. In the Middle Ages the Bible was, of course, seldom seen as a single codex. Besides the difficulty of containing between two boards the manuscript of the whole Bible, there were the varied liturgical and devotional uses of the several parts of the Bible which also encouraged the edition of the Bible in manageable units. In addition to these canonical books, apocryphal books were circulated separately and were popular in medieval spirituality and iconography. It was only gradually that the Protestant principle of the centrality of the Word of God found tangible and visible expression in large, printed, vernacular Bibles; and even then, there was some difference among the classical Protestants as to whether the Old Testament Apocrypha should be included or not. It is therefore understandable that a p opular movement such as the Radical Reformation, drawing on several streams of l ate medieval piety, should continue to make use of the books of the Apocrypha and New Testament Pseudepigrapha. This tendency is particularly noteworthy among the Anabaptists of all persuasions except for the Polish Brethren with their Reformed synodal antecedents. To be sure, when Luther first proclaimed his doctrine of sola scriptum over against Tradition and papal authority in parallel to his doctrine of sola fides over against works or merits, most of his admirers in what would prove to be the camps of the radicals hailed him and for a while followed him. But when Luther proceeded to criticize certain writings within the canon as not sufficiently solafideist, as for example, the “straw” epistle of James, many of the radical reformers balked and in the end most of them in the sixteenth century fell back upon the pre-Reformation (Septuagintal) canon in toto, and by e xtension, upon the pseudepigraphical writings of the New Testament as well. Carlstadt, defending James against Luther, was the first to carry through the fundamental Protestant program of d istinguishing between Scripture and Tradition by distinguishing the Protestant scriptural canon from the Apocrypha in De canonicis scripturis libellus (Wittenberg, 1520). We have noted that the loss or marginalization of the Apocrypha (respectively in the Reformed and the Lutheran exegetical tradition) deprived classical Protestantism of many patristically important Septuagintal texts supportive of the dogma of the Trinity (Ch. 11.2).

1246  the radical reformation

chapter 32.1.a

The continued use of the Apocrypha by the Anabaptists was particularly marked in the Melchiorite line, where a s pecial exegetical method (Ch. 11.4.c) made it possible for Hofmann himself, Menno Simons, Dirk Philips, and Peter Tasch to use part of the Old Testament and its Apocrypha which the South Germans and the Swiss Brethren, with their greater stress on the disparate character of the two Testaments, had reason to neglect or eschew the Old Testament. But the Apocrypha was used in the South too and among the Hutterites. Michael Sattler, for example, quoted 4 E sdras extensively in his letter (1527) to the Anabaptists at Horb. Peter Riedemann often cited it in his Account (1540). Although neither used it for the purpose, it was 4 Esdras 7:32 which served other Anabaptists as a proof text for psychopannychism. Marpeck cited The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs four times. The Amish Mennonites to this day use Tobit as the basis of the marriage sermon.7 The whole of t he Radical Reformation, instinctively following the young Luther, young Melanchthon, and young Calvin (Ch. 11.2.a), tacitly or programmatically put the creeds of Athanasius and Nicaea to the test of the simpler Apostles’ Creed, which they confidently ascribed to the twelve apostles. Many of the most valuable and systematic theological tracts of the Anabaptists from Rattenberg to Raków were, in fact, commentaries on the twelve articles of the Apostles’ Creed. (Even Calvin’s Institutes was based on it rather than the Nicaenum.) Radical restitutionists that they were, the Anabaptists felt that all the early documents preserved by Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History, and particularly the fragments of Hegesippus, were grist for their mill. There can be no doubt but that what Eusebius wrote in dependence upon Philo and Josephus about the Therapeutae and the Essenes served as a sanction and as a model for the communal organization of sectarian Christianity, particularly among the Hutterites and even among the ascetic Polish Brethren. 8 Also, what Eusebius wrote,9 in dependence on the early Apologists, about the men of righteousness from Abraham back to Adam as Christians, exercised an abiding influence on the whole of t he Radical Reformation in reinforcing its paradisaic, restitutionist, and universalistic impulses from Renato to Riedemann, from Schwenckfeld to Palaeologus. The pseudoClementine, pseudo-Isidorian Fourth Epistle of Clement was thought of as an authentic letter of Clement of Rome to James in Jerusalem and as such 7

 John Umble, “An Amish Minister’s Manual,” MQR 15 (1941): 95–117.  Lubieniecki, Historia, preserves a cr itically reduced forgery based on the Eusebian Therapeutae, allegedly visited in the ninth centur y. The forgery was the composite effor t of Simon Budny, Stanislas Budzi´nski, and Andrew Kołody´nski. This Epistle of J ohn of Smera to Prince Vladimir of Kiev is fully presented by Andreas We¸gierski, Slavonia Reformata, ed. in facsimile by Tazbir, who in his Latin preface gives the fullest account (Warsaw: PWN, 1973), p. xix. 9  Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, 1:4.6. 8

chapter 32.1.a / 32.1.b law & gospel: sectarian ecumenicity  1247 furnished a supplement to Acts for Münsterite and Hutterite communism (Chs. 13.3 and 16.3). Polderman is known to have brought a copy of the Shepherd of Hermas to Hofmann imprisoned in Strassburg (Ch. 10.3.c). The prominence of the Gospel of Nicodemus (The Acts of Pilate) in the Radical Reformation, as also earlier among the Lollards, is due to the fact that it stressed the literal descent of Christ into hell, thereby supplementing the corresponding article in the Apostles’ Creed. The Apocryphal gospel was cited, for example, by M arpeck, who was concerned to oppose the tendency of Bucer and others in the Magisterial Reformation to allegorize at this point (32.2.c). It will not be forgotten that many of t he letters, prophecies, martyr acts, hymns, and histories produced by t he diverse congregations of t he Radical Reformation were written in a style imitative of the corresponding apostolic documents. One thinks here, for example, of the epistles of Hutter, the published prophecies of Leonard and Ursula Jost, The Martyrs’ Mirror, Braitmichel’s Chronicle, and the Ausbund. The oldest printed surviving hymn of the Polish Brethren, its authoress known from the acrostic, Sophia Ole´snicka, seems to have been modeled on Jewish liturgical music.10 These neoapostolic writings and acts of the martyrs were preserved, copied, distributed, and employed at worship much as were the canonical writings. Many an Anabaptist theological tract was really a beautiful mosaic of scriptural texts, an original work only in the exquisite craftsmanship exhibited in the laying and pointing, like the Catechesis of Schomann (Ch. 29.3). In expediting this kind of w ork and in all their exegetical activity, the Anabaptists were given to building up concordances, of which the Testamentserläuterung (Ch. 31.1) was the most ambitious.11 We turn now from concordances, canons, and translations to the problem of holy words, the Word, and the Holy Spirit. b. Word and Spirit A whole complex of biblical and theological problems is suggested by the contrast between Word and Spirit.12 The outer word can range in meaning all the way from the written words of the Bible in vernacular translation, 10

 Williams, Lubieniecki, Plate 57.  For a pr eliminary survey of the concor dances, see the long excur sus by Friedmann, “Dogmatische Hauptschrift,” ARC 28 (1931): 80–111, 207–40, and 29 (1932): 1–17. 12  See, e.g., Wilhelm Wiswedel, “Zum Problem: Inneres und Ausseres Wort bei den Täufern,” ARC 46 (1955): 1–19; Gordon Rupp, “Word and Spir it in the Fir st Years of the Reformation,” ARC 49 (1958): 13–26; Eric Gritsch, “The Authority of the Inner Word: A Theological Study of the Major German Spiritual Reformers in the 16th Century” (unpublished thesis, Yale University, 1959); Richard Grützmacher, Wort und Geist (Leipzig, 1902); Henry Poettcker, “Anabaptist Hermeneutics: The Letter and the Spir it,” in Essays on Bib lical Interpretation: Anabaptist Mennonite Perspectiv es, ed. Willard M. Swartly, Text Reader Ser ies 1 (Elkhart, Ind.: Institute of Mennonite Studies, 1984). 11

1248  the radical reformation

chapter 32.1.b

through the audible and tangible word of salvation in the sermons and the ordinances of t he established churches or of t he radical conventicles, to the incarnate Word, which was, of course, the historic Christ. The inner Word can likewise range in meaning, all the way from the inner abyss of self (Abgrund), superficially identifiable with conscience, then the coherent principle of Scripture (“that which drives Christ into one”), to the eternal Word as eternally begotten Son consubstantial with the Godhead of t he Father. In the controversies between the radicals and the exponents of classical Protestantism the uniqueness of t he Incarnate was almost never directly under discussion. The controverted question of the two natures belongs in any event to the chapter on Christology (Ch. 11.3). Under discussion and at issue were: (a) the relationship between the historic Jesus Christ, including his recorded words, and the inner Word either as the illumination of conscience or as made present by faith or by mystical exaltation; (b) the relationship between the Old Testament and the New; (c) the relationship between all the words of Scripture, collectively the Bible, and the eternal consubstantial Word, active in creation and revelation, and hence perceived at least darkly by t he people of the Old C ovenant and of enlightened paganism before the Incarnation and perhaps among the devotees of the high religions of the Old a nd the New Indies. The theological and epistemological problems involved in these relationships led naturally to further issues: (d) the relationship between the role of the consubstantial Word and the Holy Spirit in the inspiration of Scripture, and (e) the relationship of these two Persons of the Trinity to the inner Word and/or to the inner spirit of man, as also to the objective, verifiable experience of an external spirit (for example, in justification, religious exaltation, and corporate inspiration). We are well reminded at this point that these five aspects of the problematic Word and Spirit were under discussion not only between the Radical Reformation and normative Protestantism but also and very intensely within the Radical Reformation itself. For, to the strong rationalist, philological current in one sector of the Radical Reformation and to the strong ingredient of medieval mysticism in the other two sectors, there was added that multiform and pervasive spiritualism that was at once the reflection and the interpretation of t he widespread pentecostal or revivalistic and charismatic experience of the new, largely popular, conventicular forms of Christianity.13 This unencumbered spiritualism, separated from the wise restraints of t he sacramental life and traditional usages of t he variously reformed but always established parishes, was often eccentric and fantastic. 13  Georgerte Epiney-Burgard has dealt mono graphically with the sur vival and per mutations of Pseudo-Taulerian mysticism in a selected Augsburg Anabaptist, “La mystique allemande et l’Anabaptisme à Augsbourg, 1526–1561,” R Th Phr, 116, 3d series 34, 1984: 13–28.

chapter 32.1.b

law & gospel: sectarian ecumenicity  1249

But these vagaries should not obscure from view the fact that a large element in the spiritualism of the Radical Reformation goes back to Luther himself and, to a lesser extent, Zwingli.14 Luther, however, always guarded his position. Solafideist that he was by origin and proclamation, he fully recognized the power of the inward and the spiritual; but he insisted that God always deals with man in a twofold manner: “The inward comes after and through the outward, and it is God’s will to give nobody the inward without the outward signs which he has instituted,” such as the sacraments and preaching.15 It was Luther’s frequent observation that our Spiritualists and the spiritualist Anabaptists (many of whom expressly appealed to Luther as their source and inspiration) had in fact taken the inner, the invisible, and the spiritual out of the context of Scripture, Christian solidarity, and sacrament; they were, in fact, “carnal,” by w hich Luther meant subjective. He was grossly picturesque when he complained that the Spiritualist talks facilely about “Geist, Geist, Geist,” and then “kicks away the very bridge by which the Holy Spirit can come … namely, the outward ordinances of God like the bodily sign of baptism and the preached Word of God.”16 The Spiritualists of quite disparate types whom Luther most vigorously opposed were, of c ourse, Carlstadt, Müntzer, and then Schwenckfeld. Carlstadt’s Spiritualism was a c ompound of e lements derived from Luther himself, reinforced by t he predestinarianism and symbolism of Augustine and the Gelassenheit of the Rhenish mystics. Carlstadt, in fact, edited Augustine’s De spiritu et littera (Ch. 3.1). In another of h is already cited works, Carlstadt wrote of the relationship of the scriptural word and the Spirit in a w ay just the opposite of t hat which we have quoted from Luther: As far as I am concerned, I do not need the outward witness. I want to have the testimony of the Spirit within me, as it was promised by Christ. … This is the way it was with the apostles, who were assured inwardly by the testimony of the Spirit, and who afterwards preached Christ outwardly, and reinforced by writings that Christ had to suffer for us.17 Some Spiritualists, seeking in addition to the Bible another sanction for their break from the medieval Church, found it in a combination of

14

1955). 15

 See Karl Gerhard Steck, Luther und die Schwärmer (Zollikon/Zurich: Evangelischer Verlag,

 Quoted by Rupp, “Word and Spirit,” 25.  WA 18:137; pointed out by Rupp, “Word and Spirit,” 24. 17  Vom greulichen Missbrauch des heiligen Abendmahls; Walch (1748–53), Luthers Werke, 1946– 53, 20:2893; mentioned by Rupp, “Word and Spirit,” 20. 16

1250  the radical reformation

chapter 32.1.b

the mysticism18 of the inner Word and the immediate experience of the Spirit of God taking possession of them as one of the prophets of the Old Testament in their oracular exaltation. The revolutionary Spiritualist Thomas Müntzer came in the end to attribute to “the whole scripture”only a propaedeutic utility in “slaying” the believer so that he might awaken to the inner Word and respond to the Spirit: “The Word upon which the faithful hangs is not one hundred thousand miles from us.” Every elect person is the temple of the Holy Spirit. In him is the eternal Word. “The living Word of God,” he wrote, “is where the Father bespeaks the Son in the heart of m an.”19 Without the Spirit within, one “does not know how to say anything deeply about God, even if he had eaten through a hundred Bibles!” 20 Less radically than Müntzer, the rational and evangelical Spiritualists were satisf ied to say that the written Word, with all its paradoxes and seeming contradictions, could not be grasped without the Holy Spirit, virtually identical with the inner Word. Fearing that people would be led so to revere the letter of the Bible that they might neglect the living God who gave it, Sebastian Franck, Clement Ziegler, Caspar Schwenckfeld, the Strassburg “Epicurean prelate” Wolfgang Schultheiss, and to a l esser extent, such contemplative or spiritualist Anabaptists as John Denck and the Hutterite Ulrich Stadler tended to consider Scripture as witness to faith or as a m eans of n ourishing an already formed faith. The views of a rational Spiritualist, Sebastian Franck, may be summarized here in his own words: Scripture and [another] person can only give to a p erson and a believing brother some testimony, but cannot teach what is divine [directly]. However holy they may be, they are nevertheless not teachers, only witnesses and testimony. Faith is not learned out of books nor from a person, however saintly he may be, but rather it is learned and poured in by God in the School of the Lord, that is, under the cross.21 Franck, contrasting mere appearance (Schein) as the world, with ultimate reality (Sein) as spirit, holds that faith or the spirit of man expressed as faith, being the interior Word or the divine Christ within, enables the true believer lovingly to perceive that deeper meaning which remains concealed

18  A major source was, of course, the Theologia Deutsch, popularized by Luther himself (Ch. 2.2). See Albert Auer, Leidenstheologie im Spämittelalter (St. Ottilien: EDS Verlag, 1952). 19  Böhmer and Kirn, Briefwechsel, 145. 20  SAW, 58. 21  Ibid., 157.

chapter 32.1.b

law & gospel: sectarian ecumenicity  1251

to the worldly—including the loveless scribes and orthodox theologians bound to the external or scriptural word. The interior Word is the motif which reappears with most constancy in Franck’s thought. Actually, the Word and the Holy Spirit within each individual are interchangeable at times, and yet sometimes distinguished. The proper role of the interior Word is to clarify, that of t he Holy Spirit to dispose the will. But in effect, the Spirit becomes a mode of the Word. This Word is the divine light within each individual ( John 1:9) consubstantial with God. Within this interior or living Word, one finds all that is necessary for salvation. The literal Word of the Bible and the incarnate Word that was Jesus Christ have no other purpose than to awaken “the seed” of redemption which sleeps within the individual, and to give testimony of the eternal truth which each individual carries about within. True faith does not have as its principal object the facts of r edemptive history recorded in the Bible. By faith a devout person may encounter this redemptive Word within himself or herself in any land, and at all times, “for God is no respecter of persons.” The evangelical Spiritualist Caspar Schwenckfeld was also, in his way, on guard against elevating the outer Word of Scripture above the living Word (inner Word), that is the Christ within. His position was that the Scriptures “indicate, indeed, who and what the Word of God is but do not pass themselves off for that Word. They always point beyond themselves to Christ, pre-existent and now regnant, who must preach and utter himself into the believing heart through the Holy Spirit, and who alone is the Word, Power, and Wisdom of G od.”22 According to Schwenckfeld, the Bible is understood Christocentrically. Its meaning is revealed by the inner Word as witness to the Christian faith in the historic Word in visible, creaturely flesh transfigured. 23 With this spiritualist reservation, Schwenckfeld was glad to suggest that Scripture answers four needs: It provides one with innumerable examples of holy life (the patriarchs, prophets, Christ, and the disciples); second, it provides the basis of discipline for those who are disobedient, erring, or seditious; third, scriptural witness to the grace of God permits one to improve what is right and correct what is wrong; and fourth, by Scripture one may be strengthened and educated to live according to Christ’s will and righteousness.

22  CS 5:126; translation by Maier, Schwenckfeld, 27. See another statement by Schwenckfeld about the Chr ist within him (Ch. 10.3.b). R. Emmet McLaughlin, “Spiritualism and the Bible: The Case of Caspar Schwenckfeld (1489–1561),” MQR 53 (1979): 282–98, holds that, in effect, the Bib le had no soter iological function for Schw enckfeld, since an exper ience of Christ, the Inner Word, was necessary before the Bible, the Outer Word, could become effective. 23  CS 12:428, 431.

1252  the radical reformation

chapter 32.1.b

The same spiritualist impulse of t he spiritualizers found expression among those who counted themselves Anabaptists and found themselves, as such, in contrast to the pure Spiritualists, bound by covenant and discipline to organized conventicular life. We have already dealt with Denck’s constructive view of scriptural paradox (Ch. 7.1), and have seen also how he identified law and grace as two aspects of the same reality and was thus able to write: “The lamb and the lion are together the Word of God … which is in our hearts.”24 A spiritualist Anabaptist of the Denckian type, one Umblauft of Regensburg, may here speak for him and for others of the same tendency. Concerned alike for the pious before Moses “wrote” the Pentateuch and for the illiterate since then, Umblauft said that the Scriptures are the witness and lamp for an inner Word revealed by God to all. A man can be saved without preaching and the Scriptures; otherwise, illiterates or imbeciles could never be saved. God is understood as redeemer, not through the letter, but through the indwelling Christ. To the scribes and Pharisees the written Word turned out to be, not a guide to Christ, but a hindrance. Salvation should therefore be ascribed alone to the inner Word of God. We encountered a quite similar view, in the heterodox Lutheran Osiander (Ch. 25.1.b), of the redemptive role of Christ in justification. It will be recalled that this Lutheran antagonist of Oenck in Nuremberg developed in Königsberg a view similar to that of Denck and Schwenckfeld in the controversy with Stancaro. Surprisingly, this same kind of hermeneutical Spiritualism can be documented among Anabaptists as rigorously conventicular as the Hutterites. Thus, for example, the mystical-spiritualist principle is clearly articulated in so conservative and representative a Hutterite as Ulrich Stadler: The outward Word is what Christ commanded his apostles to preach when he said [cf. Mark 16:15]: “Preach the gospel to all creatures. … ” But a p roperly equipped preacher must have the true Word of God in the abyss (Abgrund) of his soul and overcome through much tribulation. … The eternal Word is not written either on paper or tables, is not spoken or preached either, only a man is assured of it by himself from God in the soul’s abyss; and it is written in his fleshly heart by the finger of God. This difference [between the inner and the outer Word] is suggested by Saint John when he writes [1 John 2:7]: “Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment which you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which you have heard.” That shows that all that one reads in books or hears or sees in men or in creation is not the living Word of G od but rather a 24  Baring and Fellmann, Schriften (QGT 6:2), 95. Denck also said that the new which Christ brought beyond the Law of Moses was to write it in the hearts of men; ibid., 53.

chapter 32.1.b

law & gospel: sectarian ecumenicity  1253

letter or imitative sign or testimony of t he inward and eternal or living Word.25 Over against such expressions of t he Spiritualist legacy on the margins and even, as we have just seen, at the interior of A nabaptism, it was the great task of such sober and resourceful exponents of normative evangelical Anabaptism as Hubmaier, Marpeck, Scharnschlager, Riedemann, Walpot, Menno Simons, Dirk Philips, Giacometto Stringaro, and della Sega to recover and firmly undergird what was in effect the Protestant coordination of Word and Spirit. All these mainline Anabaptists still differed from Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin in insisting upon the pre-eminence of the New Covenantal word and experience of the Spirit. And this was true of the Polish-speaking Anabaptists from Peter Gonesius and Martin Czechowic through George Schomann to Alexander Witrelin. It was programmatically true of the preeminent Evangelical Rationalist Faustus Socinus (Ch. 29.8) in his three months’ debate with Francis Dávid, who indeed, exceptional among the radicals of our narrative, gave precedence to the Old Testament over the New and held that Jesus was the still incompletely uttered Word of the Creator until he comes imminently in Judgment (Ch. 28.3). Luther’s discovery of the historic and literal, as distinct from the allegorical sense, as the religiously relevant aspect of the Old Testament faith for the Christian, 26 and the consequent shift of the carnal/spiritual divide back from between the Testaments to a division within the Old Testament itself, was not generally accepted by these Anabaptists. 27 In the Frankenthal debate of 1 571 the Anabaptists contrasted the people of G od in the Old Testament and the New, while the distinction for the Reformed was rather between the people of G od in the Old Testament seen as a C hurch and the same people seen as a political body.28 The literal (often typologically accommodated) Old Testament was equally with the New the Scripture of the Church of Christ (Calvin).29 Among the Evangelical Rationalists, Sebastian Castellio and Faustus Socinus were perhaps the most explicit in formulating their view of Scriptures. We have already dealt with Socinus’ influential De sacrae scripturae auctoritate and his idea that the complexities of the Bible as a whole were, like the

25

 Müller, Glaubenszeugnisse (QGT 3), 212.  See James S.N. Preus, From Shadow to Promise: The Old Testament in the Hermetneutic of the Middles Ages and Young Luther (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969), which challenges the views of Gerhard Ebeling and Heinrich Bornkamm. 27  See a series of hermeneutical papers in MQR 40 (1966): 83–156; see Henry Poettcker, “Menno Simons’ View of the Bible as Authority,” Dyck, ed., Legacy, 31–54. 28  Jesse Yoder, “Frankenthal Disputation,” MQR 36 (1962): 14–35,116–46. 29  Anthony G. Baxter, “John Calvin’s Use of Her meneutics of the Old Testament” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Sheffield, 1987). 26

1254  the radical reformation

chapter 32.1.b

parables as clarified by Jesus to his disciples, intended by God to be understood only by the initiated or the elect (Ch. 29.8). We may let Castellio speak here for the Evangelical Rationalists, noting simply that he was more moralistic and less literalistic than Socinus. Castellio’s parallel to Luther’s criterion that Scripture is “Was Christum treibet” was the ethical theistic view that scriptural truth is whatever drives toward human betterment. For Castellio, morality was the sum of scriptural content, whereas reason was the formal principle, understood as at once the common sense of untutored humanity (over against the ratiocinations of C atholic scholastics and Protestant divines) and the eternal, pre-existent Logos or Wisdom of the literature of the Old Testament, the Apologists, and the Stoics. Reason, with its sanctifying intention, was in effect for Castellio one with Spirit. Interchangeably he assigned them the same attributes and the same tasks. The Spirit behind Scriptures and the reason of the interpreter thereof occupied in Castellio’s ethical theism the place of Christ as Opus Dei in Luther’s theology. Ratio and spiritus replaced Luther’s sola fides and sola scriptura. Somewhat different from Socinus, Castellio declared that what could not be understood by r eason was unnecessary for salvation and might be freely discussed and debated. Castellio replaced objective truth with moral truth: “For truth is to say what you think, even if you err.”30 For Castellio morally understood justitia was the hermeneutical principle. This justice grounded, limited, and demarcated all that was essential in Scripture. He so emphasized the moral sense as the “inner light” by which the individual judged Scripture that he was prepared to say that Spirit and reason could together lead one to a knowledge of saving truth even without Scripture. Castellio’s view made truth a moral category dependent on the intention of the interpreter and represented a d ivergence from the views of m ost radical reformers, who were generally more concrete in their approach. 31 James Acontius, Evangelical Rationalist of sorts, the final fomulator in our narrative of the lex sedentium (Chs. 11.4.b, 30.3.c.), chided the magisterial reformers for usurping the episcopal magisterium that they had originally revolted against on the principle of sola scriptura. We may summarize our observations about the Word and the Spirit in the Radical Reformation in terms of the extremes to which the impulses inherent in each sector might lead a particularly bold and articulate exponent. In general we can say that the temptation of magisterial Protestantism in this regard was to define the scriptural Word and the experienced Spirit 30  Nam veritas est, dicere, quae sentias, etiamsi erres, De Calumnia (1613), 425; cited by Heinz Leibing, “Die Frage nach einem hermeneutischen Prinzip bei Sebastian Castellio,” Autour de Servet et Castellio, ed. Becker, 214. 31  DeJensio translationum bibliarum, 216–17, De arte dubitandi, 363; cited by Leibing, Autour de Michel Servet, 220.

chapter 32.1.b / 32.1.c law & gospel: sectarian ecumenicity  1255 in terms primarily of p ure doctrine (the Lutherans) or of p ure doctrine and polity (the Reformed) or of t he purified national Church under the written Word and with royal headship of the episcopate (the Anglicans). 32 We may correspondingly characterize the three extremes in the Radical Reformation. It was, for example, the temptation of t he Spiritualists to identify the scriptural Word and the inner spirit to the point of (a) experiential subjectivism and withdrawal from communal Christianity in any form or (b) Maccabean violence legitimated by t he Spirit as an external compelling power from on high. It was the temptation of the Evangelical Rationalists to impose upon the scriptural Word the canons of reason and conscience (scruple), converting worship eventually into study, the church into a school of ethics. The great hazard of the Anabaptists was to identify the saving Word of S criptures, valid for them as evangelical Christians, with the words of the New Testament converted into a new law. c. Anabaptist Hermeneutical Principles For the Radical Reformation, the core of the hermeneutical problem was how to interpret the Old Testament evangelically, because for the most part, unlike the classical Protestants, the radicals, except for the Transylvanian Unitarians, did not accept the Scriptures of t he Old C ovenant without a thoughtful accommodation of their meaning for reborn Christians. Without going into detail about the appropriation of t he Old Testament by n ormative Protestantism, we can simply say that the magisterial reformers rejected on principle the Catholic (Origenistic-Hieronymic) legitimation of several nonliteral senses of Scripture. They approached the Bible as a u nity and with a v iew to interpreting it literally as its primary religious intention. In contrast, the Anabaptists, like the Catholics, sought by several hermeneutical means and dispensational schemes to utilize and yet to distinguish the Old from the New Testament. Spiritualists and Evangelical Rationalists in this respect were closer to the magisterial reformers than to the Anabaptists, but these two other kinds of radicals accomplished much the same effect as the Anabaptists by s tressing, as we have noted above, an active principle transcending the limits of t he written Word in both a Godward and a manward direction. With Maccabean Müntzer, there had been, of course, no problem—the unitive principle was the Spirit of God common to the Old and New Testaments taking possession of the reader or of the charismatic leader; for “the will of God is the whole over all the parts.” With Schwenckfeld the unity was ascribed to the eternal Christ behind his various manifestations and infusions. With Franck the unity stemmed from the eternal Word within every reborn reader and behind the 32  See the frontispiece of the Cranmer Bible, reproduced and admirably explicated by Ernst Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies.

1256  the radical reformation

chapter 32.1.c

texts in their inconsistencies and variants. With spiritualizing Denck, the unitive principle was the inner Word which, with the help of the external Holy Spirit, orders and appropriates the words of Scripture. With Castellio and Socinus it was the Wisdom of God commanding his righteousness from above in progressive disclosures, supplementary, but not contrary, to reason or humane justice, i.e. equity. There is one principle or practice—group study and reverent disputation—common to the entire Radical Reformation which goes far to explain the spirit of t he movement as a whole. We have already remarked that the radicals, especially the Anabaptists, took earnestly the instruction of Jesus in Luke 12:11 about looking to the Holy Spirit to teach them in moments of crisis what to say before the tribunal and inquisitorial ecclesiastics. But this confidence did not restrain them from an intensive study of S criptures in preparing for the crucial moment! Confidence that the Holy Spirit would infuse their exegetical deliberations and also that the same Spirit would bridge the gulf between themselves and their Protestant opponents accounts for the frequency of t he biblical colloquies or disputations (Gespräche) so eagerly attended by the Anabaptists. Confident in the ultimate unity of the true Church of Christ, the sectarians, including conspicuously the Polish Brethren, long persisted in the hope that the colloquies with the magisterial divines would be eventually consummated by some fresh illumination leading to oneness of mind and heart.33 Many an Anabaptist disputant or prisoner before a judicial hearing sincerely avowed his willingness to be convinced by Scripture. Hubmaier, with his strong conviction about the Church outside of which there could be no salvation, even expressed his willingness to submit to the inspired consensus of an ecumenical council. Doctrinal synods under the Spirit (Acts 2) or Christ (Matt. 18:20), sanctioned also by Calvin, bulked large with Polish and Magyar radicals who fancied themselves reviving a preConstantinian conciliar tradition. The yearning for scriptural concord to be found in the inspired solidarity of the questing faithful under the guidance of the Spirit found its most formal expression, not among the Anabaptists, but among such marginal figures as the binitarian John Campanus (Ch. 10.3.g) and the “Epicurean prelate,” Wolfgang Schultheiss (Ch. 10.4.a). Both of t hese spiritualizers appealed to what they and the radicals generally thought of a s the Rule of Paul or the lex sedentium (Sitzerrecht), based on 1 Cor. 14:23ff. and with some support from 2 Pet. 1:19ff., namely, the right of the whole Christian congregation, the laity with the divines, to judge difficult passages of Scripture together, not individually or professionally (Ch. 11.4.b). The principle of inspired corporate interpretation of t he Bible was the presupposition 33  For the history of this modality of Christian encounter, deriving in part from university disputations, beginning with John Hus, see Williams, Lubieniecki, Introduction, D, “From Ritual to Confessional Toleration.”

chapter 32.1.c

law & gospel: sectarian ecumenicity  1257

of much of the committed conversation (Gespräch) within Anabaptism, in Magyar and Polish synodal debate, as well as in magisterial Protestantism, but this interesting theological formulation would be eventually routinized or abandoned. 34 With respect to the New Testament, the Anabaptists, as we have remarked, could be and were most commonly literalists. Grebel wrote to Müntzer: Therefore we beg and admonish thee as a brother by the name, the power, the word, the spirit, and the salvation, which has come to all Christians through Jesus Christ our Master and Saviour, that thou wilt take earnest heed to preach only the divine Word without fear, to set up and guard only divine institutions, to esteem as good and right only what may be found in pure and clear Scripture. 35 Some Anabaptists were indeed so literal in their use of the New Testament that in St. Gall, for example (Ch. 6.2), in The Netherlands (according to Guy de Brès), in Raków, Phase 1 ( Ch. 27.3) and elsewhere, some, in strict obedience to Matt. 10:9ff., wandered about the countryside without weapons, girdle, or money; others, following Matt. 10:27, preached literally from the rooftops; still others, taking Jesus’ many references to children as their guide, played, babbled, or whimpered like infants. Sober exegetes, however, such as Hubmaier, Marpeck, Menno Simons, Peter Gonesius, Gregory Paul, George Schomann, and Martin Czechowic were on their guard against such erratic literalism. In their use of the Old Testament, in contrast, the Anabaptists—Germanic, Italianate, and Polish—were seldom literalistic in their religious appropriation of Scripture except where the plain sense was also consonant with their idea of themselves as the righteous remnant of Israel. For the rest, the Anabaptists, not denying, of course, the literal or historical sense, resorted to a variety of devices to assimilate the otherwise incongruent parts of the Old Testament. Most of these efforts were a continuation or recombination of the traditional Catholic or medieval sectarian resort to allegory, concordance, typology, and the other nonliteral interpretations. The Ana34  A modern interpretation of the Anabaptist outlook which places the basic author ity in the her meneutic community, replacing the author ity of the hierar chical Church by that of the gathered Church, is found in John H. Yoder, “The Hermeneutics of the Anabaptists,” MQR 41 (1967): 291–308. He contrasts them her e with the other Refor mers, who “abandoned their initial vision of the [Refor med] visible church, the hermeneutic community, and were obliged to shift the locus of inf allibility to the inspired text and the technically qualified theological expert,” 308. We have earlier cited the Swiss colloquies on which this obser vation is made, John Yoder, Die Gespräche zwischen Täufern und Reformatoren in der Schweiz, 1523–1538, (Basel: EVZ Verlag, 1968). See also idem, “The Hermeneutics and Discipleship,” in Essays on Biblical Interpretation. For the widest context, see David Steinmentz, ed., The Bible in the Sixteenth Century (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1990). 35  SAW, 75.

1258  the radical reformation

chapter 32.1.c

baptists, needless to say, were eclectic; elements of t he several systems of interpretation—Catholic, normative Protestant, Spiritualist, and Rationalist—are to be found in their tracts and sermons alongside their more characteristic efforts. 36 The Anabaptists were especially given to typology in terms of shadow and light (Schiemer), prophecy and fulfillment, “yesterday” and “today” (Marpeck), and such principles as the Key of David and “the cloven hoof,” “moonlight” and “sunlight” (Melchior Hofmann the last prophet through the intermediary of Joachim, Ch. 11.4.c). But there were notable exceptions. In order to construe the Old a nd New Testaments as one, Melchior Hofmann, with the magisterial reformers, developed the odd theory that they were one from God, as two clefts constitute the one hoof of a c lean cloven-hoofed beast. The term itself derives from Lev. 11:3 and Deut. 14:6. Carrying out the bovine image, Hofmann declared that the interpreter must walk through the Old Testament clearly mindful of the division. All events in the Old Testament are images to which some happenings, in the New Testament or yet to take place, correspond. Everyone must take cognizance of the “cloven hooves” (gespaltene Clawen; gespauwde klawen), for all God’s words are double or twofold. Hofmann held, however, that only the especially called leaders and prophets might undertake the difficult exegesis: “The cloven claws and horn [only] the true apostolic heralds can bear because [to explicate] the Scripture is not a matter for everybody, to unravel all such involved snarls and cables, to untie such knots, but only for those to whom God has given [the power].”37 Convinced at length that the Holy Spirit abode within him as with other prophets and prophetesses at Strassburg and elsewhere, Hofmann in opposition to the lex sedentium, considered himself in his oracular ecstasy authorized to interpret Scripture and to resolve the contradictions involved in the two clefts: “For all words of God are of equal weight, also just and free, to him who acquires the right understanding of God and the Key of David.” Hubmaier drew upon the same exegetical theory when he wrote: “He who thus cannot divide judgment on the Scriptures eats of the unclean beasts which divide not the hoof.”38 The Hofmannite principle was notably in dispute in 1534 at Amsterdam, when Jacob van Campen, who had taken over Hofmann’s typological hermeneutics, came into conflict with Obbe Philips and John Scheerder. Obbe, a follower of Hofmann in other respects, was unable to accept the idea that there was a d ouble meaning to the Old Testament. He argued 36  See particularly William Klaassen, “The Hermeneutics of the Anabaptists,” and Walter Klassen, “The Bern Debate of 1538: Christ the Center of Scr ipture,” both in Essays on Biblical Interpretation, ed. Swartley. 37  See SAW, 202–3 and n. 42. 38  SAW, 115.

chapter 32.1.c

law & gospel: sectarian ecumenicity  1259

quaintly that the writings of t he two Testaments stand upon “one hoof ” and are not to be fancifully allegorized. Obbe’s objections cast doubt on the way the belligerent Hofmannites at Münster were using the prophet’s principle to justify the Maccabean violence; and this colloquy over the cloven hoof led the moderate Münsterite Jacob van Campen to refuse to participate in the abortive attempt at sympathetic revolt in Amsterdam (Ch. 12.3). Hofmannite hermeneutics had triumphed at Münster, but not all who took over the principle of t he “cloven hoof ” were revolutionaries. Dirk Philips, for example, made it part of his teaching. For Dirk, the “hiddenness” of the gospel, stressed by Hofmann, was a hiddenness restricted to the old Testament, which, with the help of the Spirit, could be harmonized with the New. 39 For the reshaper of the Polish Reformed Anabaptists into Evangelical Rationalists, Faustus Socinus worked with an almost idiosyncratic hermeneutic, self-confident and also baffling when not irritating to his antagonists. His was the conviction that Christ after his baptism was lifted up into heaven, like Moses on Mt. Sinai, to hear from the Creator and Giver of the Ten Commandments what was to be retained in the old Law, what was to be fully superseded, and what was to be distinctively new in his mission to make possible the eventual resurrection and the eternal salvation, not of the elect, but of the rational and conscientious followers of the precepts of the Savior (Ch. 29.8). To sum up, most Anabaptists in most regions from Italy to England and Poland distinguished between the covenant of s ervitude and that of s onship. Above all concerned to give Christ the honor due to him alone, they for the greater part did not care to stress the Old Testament except where it accorded literally or by nonliteral interpretation with the New, justifying the division by the formula of Christ himself in Matthew 5, “You have heard that it was said to the men of o ld, … But I s ay to you … ” and by the claim made for the superiority of t he Christian dispensation over the Mosaic in the epistle to the Hebrews. In their insistence upon the superiority of the New Testament and the New Covenant over the Old Testament and its law the Anabaptists even within the New Testament often seemed to have predilections—some for the Synoptic Gospels; others, such as Marpeck, for John’s Gospel and Paul’s letters; others for the Johannine Gospel, Epistles, and Revelation (which they took, of course, to be from the same writer).40 In any event, the Anabaptists were all earnestly sectarian, as were the primitive Christians, in distinguishing themselves as the children of light from the children of darkness. 39  B. Ollenberger,“Menno Simons’ Encounter with the Bible,” Essays on Biblical Interpretation, ed. Swartly, deals afresh with Menno. 40  Robert Friedmann, “Conception of the Anabaptists,” CH 9 (1940): 341–65, suggested a left-wing typology based precisely upon these predilictions.

1260  the radical reformation

chapter 32.1.c

So prominent in the exposition of the Radical Reformation has been my attention as chronicler to the luminous particularities of oft-cited scriptural loci that the scriptural Index at the end no doubt provides a distinctive silhouette of what was biblically determinative in the differentiation of the magisterial and the various radical reforms. Tradition has not been similarly grounded by citation except for occasional patristic, conciliar, scholastic, and papal references in the text and notes. It has been recognized throughout, however, that besides (A) sole biblicist authority, a p ost-Reformation phenomenon after the printing of vernacular Bibles as single volumes, there were (B) three conceptualizations of Tradition, namely: Tradition I, i.e., a tradition of interpreting Scripture and its difficult places, like the contradictory passages in John that Jesus baptized and did not baptize (Ch. 11.1); Tradition II, the presumed supplementary oral apostolic revelation (cf. John 20:30, 21:25); and Tradition III, namely, extra-biblical authority, i.e., patristic, conciliar, and papa1.41 It is not yet possible to assess the extent to which different leaders in the Radical Reformation drew unconsciously on Tradition in one or another degree beyond their adherence to Scripture alone (Option A). In the Radical Reformation it was Unitarianism in two distinct geographical groupings that was the most sheerly biblical, without any recourse to the Apocrypha because both Socinianism and Transylvania Unitarianism presupposed the Reformed Bible, i.e., without the Apocrypha. But yet in their use of the Bible the Transylvanians gave great weight to Old Testament and read the New like members of the School of St. Matthew. In contrast, Socinianism, as distinguished from antecedent Polish Anabaptism, gave preeminence to the New Testament and within it to the precepts of Christ, while accepting the whole Bible as authoritative when expounded by reason, yet allowing (Socinus) expressly no place for natural theology.42 At the same time, the Anabaptists scarcely less than the Spiritualists and the Evangelical Rationalists (except for Socinus) had in their theological systems a universalist or ecumenical or ethically universalistic thrust.

41

 Wayne Paul Shorey, “The Influence of Biblicist Heresy in the Late Medieval Doctrine of Scripture and Tradition” (Ph.D. dissertation, Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill., 1987), has demonstrated that in the thir teenth century the Waldensians (Ch. 21.2), emerging as the most challenging standard-bearers of pur e biblicism, called for th two developments in the updat ing of Tradition III, namely: (1) the Franciscan and specifically the historical progressivism of Joachim of Fiore (Ch. 11.4.a), and (2) the Dominican and specifically the version developed by the Dominican inquisition in dealing with biblicist heretics. 42  Although Socinianism is commonly thought of as a for erunner of Deism, the first Socinian to admit natural theology to his theological discourse was Faustus Socinus’ grandson, Andrew Wiszowaty, notably in Religio Rationalis (Amsterdam, 1685).

chapter 32.2

law & gospel: sectarian ecumenicity  1261

2. Implicit or Explicit Ecumenicity43 All the persons of Christendom in the Age of Discovery were biblicists in the specific sense of regarding the Bible as the revelation of the Creator to all humanity. And all the persons in our narrative and exposition, including those called disparagingly in their time politiques, Epicureans, Libertines, seekers, and blasphemers were clear about the epochs covered by Scripture: (1) from creation to Noah, (2) from Noah to Abraham, (3) from Abraham to Moses, (4) from Moses to Christ, and (5) from Christ to the destruction of the Temple, which he predicted. Biblicists could stress the unity of the Bible and of these five uneven epochs or they could contrast the Old and the New, the Hebrew and the Greek. But in the Age of D iscovery, of the expulsion of the Jews and Moors from Spain, of the advance of the Ottoman Empire on the southeastern flank of Latin Chris­tendom, the two biblical epochs before Abraham and the two after him could be variously assessed and peopled with new figures pouring in over the threshold of general consciousness since 1492, incrementally throughout the century of the Reformation. In a religious revolt that stressed faith, Abraham and Sarah could become paradigmatic, and when faith as a gift was itself linked to predestination, a theological abstraction of the Chosen People in the divine undergirding of selective salvation for all humanity, believers, whether magisterial Protestant, dissident, or of t he Counter-Reform, had to think afresh about the implications of t he Fall not only for the inhabitants of a n ever vaster and darker Africa, but also for the inhabitants of the New World, being pillaged and reported on by the conquistadores. Were the Noachic laws, which Protestants were learning more about as their scholars came closer to the rabbinical community than at any time since the first century, of moral sufficiency for a Christian conception of a natural moral law for the people beyond the voice and the witness of missionaries and evangelists? What was the place in salvation history of righteous pagans of the Old as well as of the New Indies, righteous Muslims, righteous Jews, and what was for them the ordo salutis? The various radicals of our narrative, generally regarded as only defectively Christian alike by magisterial Protestants, Catholics, and the Orthodox, were generally disparaged by all as benighted within and beyond the three Latinate-eastern realms buttressing the Empire. The radicals spurned these more churchly types much as the New Testament authors disparaged 43  See Leo Laurense, “The Catholicity of the Anabaptists,” MQR 38 (1964): 266–79, and my elaboration of this section under the same title in Review and Expositor 44 (1967): 141–60, and also my placement of this in a still larger setting, “Erasmus and the Reformers on Non-Christian Religions and Salus extra Ecclesiam,” Essays in Memory of E. Harris Harbison, ed. Theodore K. Rabb and Jerrold E. Siegel (Pr inceton: University Press, 1968). See most r ecently Walter Klaassen, “Anabaptism: Neither Catholic nor Protestant,” Christian History 4 (1985): 10–12, 34–35.

1262  the radical reformation

chapter 32.2

Sadducees as not fully Jews. It is indeed remarkable that among them there was some ecumenical sense of God’s purposes beyond the Radical Reformation, not to strain the ancient cultural-political and the modern ecclesiological sense of the term. In any event, in the sixteenth century, Hebrew, Judaism, and Jews; the Arabic Koran, Islam, and Muslims; and pagans, both classical and global, are much more part of the popular consciousness than in the preceding century. In several ways some of t he radical reformers, particularly in Italy and in the three eastern realms of our narrative, seem to have theologically coped with the heightened awareness of great religions other than Christianity as much as and perhaps more than the central magisterial reformers, who were more likely to have reckoned that “extra predestinationem nulla salus” than with Catholics and Anabaptists that “extra ecclesiam nulla salus” (cf. the exchange between the Hutterites and the Polish Brethren, Ch. 27.3). The radicals, for the most part like the Catholics distinguishing sharply between the Old a nd the New Covenants, also considered themselves a righteous remnant separated from Christendom at large. By the end of our period they had come to think of the schism between magisterial Protestantism and papal Catholicism (confirmed by the Council of Trent, 1563) as roughly comparable to the ancient division between Judah and Israel, later between Judea and Samaria. Both forms of territorial or churchly Christianity were, from the point of view of the sectarians, still living under one version or another of “the law,” while they, in their innumerable conventicles, fellowships, synods, communities, and factions, were severally laying claim to being the righteous remnant living by t he covenant written on the heart. The evangelical radicals consequently considered Catholics and Protestants—no less than Jews, Turks, and pagans—as the objective of their divinely sanctioned, neoapostolic mission. This, of course, is the all-toofamiliar sectarian side of our narrative. But here is the place to point out also that in thus putting “unregenerate” Protestants and Catholics on the level of adherents of the Old Covenant and of the infidels, the radicals were not only reconceiving the Church but also the world beyond the confines of Christendom; and by implication they were enhancing the status of infidels relative to the beneficiaries of cultural Christianity. In most sectors, denying the parity of t he two Testaments and the unity of the Old and the New Covenantal people, which was implied in the Protestant stress on election, and the equation of circumcision and baptism, the radicals in contrast not only challenged the reorganization of a gospel church by magistrates under “the Law,” but also went on to challenge some of t he doctrines which they felt were holdovers of a s uperseded conception of the validity of the Law. The radicals felt instinctively, if not always articulately, the palpable evasion of t he consequences of the newness or rebirth in Christ on the part of the magisterial reformers

chapter 32.2

law & gospel: sectarian ecumenicity  1263

when the latter were at the theological pains to sustain in dialectical tension the law and the gospel, justice and love, justification and sanctification, state and church. Through their redefinition of d iscipleship the radicals thought of themselves as neither Catholic nor Protestant but as disciplined believers in solidarity with Christ and his early band of d isciples, a continuity in history demonstrated by mutual discipline in the autonomous congregations or separatist synods, as with Sattler, Grebel, Hubmaier, Marpeck, Menno, Philips, Julius Gherlandi, George Schomann, and Gregory Paul.44 Severing, or in their own way identifying, the several foregoing pairs of opposites, the radicals were on the move away from such doctrinal correlates or supports of the law-grace tension as the doctrine of predestination, the Anselmian view of the Atonement, and the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity in so far as the last was regarded as a formula for projecting into the Godhead the sanction for the revealed unity of justice, love, and equity. The radical sectarians, separated from, and declining to subsist as, territorial churches and on principle repudiating the whole conception of God’s renewed people being controlled by m agistrates however benevolent, except for the Transylvanian Unitarians, fanned out in utter disregard of territorial boundaries and local laws, emissaries and exemplars that they were of a g ospel at once new and old, to be shared by t he whole world. With imaginations excited by the vistas opened before them in Bible study, from apocalyptic rumor, and through wide travel, the radicals pondered what might be the providential and redemptive significance of t he persistence of t he Jews, the military successes of t he Turks, and the opening up of whole continents of aborigines who had never heard either of Adam and his fall or of the Second Adam and a provisional redemption. We shall bring together the vaguely ecumenical catholic, universalistic, along with the intensely missionary, impulses in the Radical Reformation, under five headings.

44  Harold S. Bender, “The Anabaptist Vision,” CH 13 (1944): 3–24, had sought the concept of Discipleship in adhering to “the example of Christ” as normative for evangelical Anabaptism. J. Denney Weaver, “Discipleship Redefined: Four Sixteenth-Century Anabaptists,” MQR 54 (1980): 255–79, has proposed that “solidarity in Christ” was more plausibly the normative principle. He selects in suppor t of his proposal Sattler, Grebel, Denck, and Hubmaier. I am not so sure of Denck. In any case, I have added Marpeck, two Mennonites, and two Polish Brethren as supportive of the generalization. It is Kenneth R. Davis, “No Discipline, No Church: An Anabaptist Contribution to the Reformed Tradition,” Sixteenth Century Journal 13 (1982): 43–58, who singles out the recovery of self-discipling cong regations as the ecclesiolo gical contribution of the Anabaptists to the evolution of the Christian Ideal. For another reconsideration of discipleship, see C. Dyck, “The Hermeneutical Obedience” and John Yoder “Hermeneutics and Discipleship,” in Essays on Biblical Interpretation.

1264  the radical reformation

chapter 32.2.a

a. Pagans, Jews, and Muslims in the Perspective of the Radical Reformation A universalistic and ecumenical note in the Radical Reformation was the eschatological interpretation of the destiny of the Jews, the prophetic interpretation of the current military successes of the Turks, and the ambivalent primitivist-missionary interpretation of t he aboriginal pagans. Generally speaking, there were three ways of l ooking upon these three main nonChristian groups. As to the relationship with Jews, the radicals displayed a considerable range of attitude from the gross anti-Semitism of Balthasar Hubmaier before his avowal of Anabaptism (Ch. 4.2.a), to the multi-faith ecumenicity of Jacob Palaeologus (Ch. 29.5) with his vision of a Jewish, a Turkish, and a G entile Church. As for the antipathy for the Jewish community of which there are traces, particularly in German Anabaptism, it was in part a legacy of the social aspiration of the Peasants’ War, an expression of the radical protest against tithes and usury, and in part a t heological correlate of the sense of spiritual distance from the claims of the Old Testament. The proponents of classical Protestantism, of course, were much concerned to recover the exact meaning of t he Hebrew as of t he Greek text of t he Bible, whereas in general the radicals were concerned with the vernacular versions. But much of Italian Anabaptism, with a radical Valdesian and possibly even a Marrano ingredient, was philo-Judaic as were also: Laelius Socinus (Ch. 24.2.f ); the Unitarian Reformed synod under Francis Dávid in Transylvania (Ch. 28.3), which contributed to the separately organized and eventually numerous Sabbatarians; and the three Heidelberg Christian Judaizers, notably Matthias Vehe-Glirius (Ch. 31.2), who exercised a prevailing influence in Transylvania. Among these groups Hebrew was studied and some conversions to Judaism are recorded. Classical Protestantism itself represented an acute Judaizing of Christianity, especially in the Reformed tradition (cf. the observation of Valentine Crautwald, Ch. 15.3). But the same could also be said in a different sense for the Radical Reformation. It was the difference, in effect, of t he radicals’ Judaizing on the model of t he suffering remnant. Moreover, by distinguishing sharply between the covenant of the law and the covenant of the gospel, some radicals escaped the legalism of the Old only to become in many cases more tightly bound by a legalism based on the New. The self-identification of the radical sectarians with the suffering righteous remnant in Israel facilitated this transmutation of the gospel into law. The radical sectarians were therefore commonly charged by the classical Protestant divines not only with prolonging medieval Catholicism in the form of m arried “monkery” but also of being Judaizers and losing the benefits of salvation by faith.

chapter 32.2.a

law & gospel: sectarian ecumenicity  1265

Besides the unconscious “Judaizing” of s ectarian legalism, there were in the Radical Reformation many programmatic attempts to reproduce in Christian form various aspects of the life and thought of the old Chosen People. At this point in our narrative it will suff ice to recall and group together these attempts. There were the Pentateuchalists in Strassburg (Ch. 10.2); the Antitrinitarian, Anabaptist Sabbatarians inspired by Oswald Glaidt and Andrew Fischer in Silesia (Ch. 15.3 and 4) and in Moravia the conversion to Jewish monotheism on the part of the eightyyear-old Catherine Weiglowa in Cracow, 1538 (Ch. 15.4); and the Unitarian Anabaptists of Venice, Padua, and Naples, who exalted the Old Testament prophets and recast their personal and corporate eschatology along Jewish lines. The restorationist gaze, which ordinarily f ixed upon the primitive Church or Paradise as the ideal, in Münster concentrated on Davidic, Solomonic, and Maccabean Israel. There was the patriarchalism of the Hutterites, the apocalyptic messianism represented variously by John Hut, Augustine Bader, and Melchior Hofmann, and the Maccabean (Revolutionary) Spiritualism of Thomas Müntzer based on Daniel more than upon Revelation. In Poland there were numerous public discussions between spokesmen of t he Minor Church and both Catholics and the Reformed on Christian relations to Judaism - a n especially acute problem for the philo-Hebraic but pacif istic Unitarians who were distressed by the violence, bellicosity, polygamy, and slavery in the Old Testament while grateful for its socially prophetic monotheism. Martin Czechowic, at f irst a Ditheist, who had discussed issues along with other Polish Brethren with a Jew at Lublin in 1572, devoted chapters 5 to 9 of his Colloquia to refuting extreme Judaizing among the Lithuanian Brethren (Budny and his Polish ally Stanislas Budzi´n ski) and Judaism. When Jacob the Jew of Bełzyce challenged him, Czechowic carried the debate farther in his Reply, drawing upon anti-Semitic literature of J ewish converts to Christianity.45 Other Polish Brethren like Daniel Bieli´n ski gladly subordinated the New Testament to the Old. Jacob Palaeologus from Transylvania, sojourning in Poland, required of Jews only that they acknowledge Jesus as a prophet and follow him in obeying every jot and tittle of the Torah (Ch. 29.7).46 There was a similar predilection for the 45

 Discussed by Judah Rosenthal, “Martin Czechowic and Jacob of Bełzyce; Arian-Jewish Encounters in 16th Century Poland,” American Academy for Jewish Research 34 (1966): 77–95. Cf. “Jewish-Arian Discussion in the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century in Poland” (in Hebrew), Studies and Texts in Jewish Histor y, Literature, and Religion (Jerusalem: R. Mass, 1967), 1:461ff. Rosenthal shows, other theories notwithstanding, that Jacob was not a literary figment but a real person who wrote a four-part work in Polish to which Czechowic was responding. 46  The Karaite polemicist Isaac ben Abraham (1553–94) of Troki, near Vilnia, relatively favorably mentions Czechowic, Budny, and also Nicholas Paruta in his two-volume refutation of Christian arguments against J udaism, Chizzuk Emunah (Fortification of Faith), not to be printed till 1681 (Hebrew and Latin).

1266  the radical reformation

chapter 32.2.a

Old Testament on the part of s uch nonadorant philo-Hebraic ethical theists as Simon Budny and the semi-Judaeus Matthew Vehe-Glirius of Heidelberg and Kolozsvár, of U nitarian John Sommer and his fatherin-law Francis Dávid. These four divines and teachers found enhanced signif icance in the Old Testament, in contrast to most Anabaptists and philological Rationalists, considering it in no important way superseded by the New Testament, which they construed in a psychopannychist and Ebionite sense, while in the case particularly of Dávid, they awaited the completion of Jesus’ mission in an imminent Second Advent. In contrast, Faustus Socinus, also a philological Rationalist, was, within Antitrinitarianism, at the antipodes of B udny, Palaeologus, and Dávid in that as Evangelical Rationalist par excellence, he had laid the christological basis for holding the New Testament writings and the New Covenant as the basis for wholly reassessing the Old Testament revelation. Not a sixteenthcentury Marcion, Socinus took the Old Testament as a partly superseded revelation of the Father of Jesus Christ and Creator. Socinus was most expressly a new dispensationalist who regarded Jesus as the New Moses and the Sermon on the Mount and related precepts in their eschatological setting, as the new mandates leading to provisional immortality not promised by God in the Old Dispensation. As for the Muslims, the Radical Reformation regarded them variously and sometimes interchangeably as (1) the instrument of God’s wrath (Hofmann); (2) the instrument of his redemption, Suleiman being the new Cyrus (Hut); (3) the objective (along with the Jews) of t heir missionary proclamation in the Latter Days (Ziegler, Bader, John Baptista Italus, Servetus); (4) already constitutive of a n interfaith Church of s piritual Semites (Palaeologus, Budny, Neuser); and (5) along with Jews and righteous pagans, already a part of the Ecclesia spiritualis insofar as they conformed to the inner Word (Müntzer,47 Franck, Castellio, Coornhert, and, with reserve, Denck). Whatever the stress, whether tutelary chastisement or missionary conversion or interfaith concord, the Radical Reformation, insofar as the congeries of separatists, dissenters, and seekers from Spain into the Ukraine was a conceptual entity, differed from the confessionally threepronged Magisterial Reformation in breaking away from the territorial or political aspects of the Muslim challenge in an effort to make a religious or specifically theological adjustment to the new world situation characterized by the Turkish military advances on Christendom. As for the third group, the pagans, only the Catholics, recovering in their Counter-Reform from the onslaughts of the Protestants, actually 47

 Enlblössung: “If we Christians should ever want to unite … with all the elect of all dispersions, races, and religions … we must know how a man feels who was brought up among unbelievers, but has come to kno w the true work and the tr ue teaching of God [the Holy Spir it] without having been assisted by any book.”

chapter 32.2.a

law & gospel: sectarian ecumenicity  1267

sought them out for conversion. But the radicals, even though not strategically located or equipped to carry out a world mission, were, far more than the magisterial reformers, concerned for the salvation of pagans near and far. In various theological adjustments they had taken account, not only of the pagan races beyond Islam in dark Africa, India, Cathay, and the Americas, but also of the pagans who lived before the accomplishment of Christ’s redeeming work. The concern of the radicals for the latter found notable expression in their efforts to safeguard the literal descent of Christ ad infernos (32.2.c). There were two other medieval impulses, surviving among some of the radical reformers and here and there already noted in the course of our narrative, which notably contributed to the enlargement of their vision. These were the “gospel of all creatures” and the idea of the true believers everywhere as the Friends of God.48 Although quite disparate in origin (despite their being in part mediated by t he same late medieval mystical circles), these two impulses had the effect of encouraging the radicals to perceive the revelation and the call of God beyond and prior to the Bible and to Christendom. It is well known that the Friends of God of the Upper Rhine brought together biblical, classical, patristic, and mystical traditions concerning the universal company of all those who by obedience, by faith, by love, by sacrifice, by martyrdom, or by knowledge through faith had come into a special relationship with God, such as notably, Abraham, the friend of God by faith with a covenant written upon the heart ( Jas. 2:23; Isa. 41:8) and the other ancient worthies before Abraham back to Adam who were as christi (Ps. 105:15), “Christians before they were Jews,” “few in number, wandering from nation to nation.” In John 15:14, the Friends of God were they who in Christ had passed from bondage to friendship. The classical philosophical ideal of the sharing of goods among friends became tributary to this evolving concept of d ivine friendship, while Clement of R ome, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, among others, and notably Eusebius of C aesarea found in Abraham’s faith before his circumcision the basis for their attempt to descry the outlines of t he ongoing company of t he companions of t he eternal Christ the word. By various channels, for example among the followers of Francis of Assisi, verus amicus Christi, this potentially universalistic concept reached that company of Upper Rhenish Gottesfreunde around Rulman Merswin. Revolutionary Spiritualists like Müntzer who stressed the suffering of the “elect friends of God,” rational Spiritualists like Franck who stressed 48  For these two themes, see Erik Peterson, “Der Gottesfreund: Beitrage zur Geschichte eines religiösen Terminus,” ZKG 42 (1923): 161–202; and Gordon Rupp, “Thomas Müntzer, Hans Hut, and the ‘Gospel of All Creatures,’” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 43 (1960/61): 492–519. 1n the latter, Rupp advances reasons why Vom Geheimnis der Taufe, ascribed in Ch. 7.4 to Hut, may have been the reworking of a late work of Müntzer.

1268  the radical reformation

chapter 32.2.a

the inner Word common to all humankind, contemplative Anabaptists like Denck who stressed regeneration in Christ, and evangelical Spiritualists like Schwenckfeld who stressed the regenerative visitation and spiritual sustenance of the eternal Christ—all of them were drawing upon the ancient tradition of the Friends of God, which encouraged them to seek that choice company drawn out of m any nations, the spiritual predecessors and heirs of Abraham. Schwenckfeld, for example, was drawing on Eusebius and the Gottesfreunde, when in his Judicium (1542), seeking to counter the sharp dispensationalism of Marpeck, he declared: “Thus did the Church of Christ begin soon after the creation of the world (though in a hidden manner); … and Adam, Abel, Enoch, Noah, and all the elect faithful fathers were members of the Church and were true Christians; for the Church of Christ is much older than that of the Jews … ; Abraham was faithful and righteous, which is to say that he was a Christian before he was circumcised.” Therefore, continues Schwenckfeld, all “the holy fathers. … and patriarchs were Christians and the children of God and Friends.”49 Related, yet distinct from the idea of divine friendship before and, by implication apart from, the visible covenants, by reason of the action of the eternal Christ, the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow (Schwenckfeld, Clement Ziegler, Franck), was the conception of t he Book of N ature as the primer of all believers, open to all perceptive souls whether within or without Christendom. This “gospel of a ll creatures” as propounded by some of the radicalsnotably Müntzer, Denck, Entfelder (Ch. 11.2), Servetus (Ch. 23.4); Hut, Schiemer, Schlaffer, and A. Spittelmaier (Ch. 7.3 and 4); Franck, Marpeck, and Stadler (Ch. 32.1.b) took the whole of creation or nature as filled with divine emblems, instructing man as to the universality, the solidarity in, and the purposefulness of suffering, the whole of creation groaning in travail. As the baker kneads the dough, as the wheelwright bends his staves, as the butcher dresses an animal all for the service of man, so God kneads, bends, and breaks man by the law and reshapes him by grace for the still higher service of God. Some radical preachers even sought to teach the common man directly from the scrutiny of natural things about him, appealing to the example of the homely parables of Jesus. The biblical basis of their “gospel of a ll creatures” was not only the already noted Mark 16:15, the “Evangelium aller Kreatur” (the Greek dative construed in German as genitive) but also an equally strained Col. 1:23 and, on much surer grounds, Rom. 1:20 on the visibility of the invisible God in his creation. The “gospel of all creatures” in the special sense of the propaedeutic message of u niversally suffering creation came to the radicals by way of the mystics and especially by way of the Liber naturae 49

 Judicium (1542), CR, 8:197, lines 33–38; 8:198, lines 1–7, 28f.

chapter 32.2.a / 32.2.b law & gospel: sectarian ecumenicity  1269 sive creaturarum, written originally in Spanish by t he Catalan Franciscan Raymond of Sebonde, professor at the University of Toulouse. Latin versions of this work were entitled simply Theologia naturalis, reprinted several times, for example, at Deventer in 1484, at Strassburg in 1496, at Nuremberg in 1502, and at Paris in 1509. It was, at the end of our period, translated into French by M ichel de Montaigne in 1569. The radicals, much more somber than the French essayist or the Franciscan natural theologian, chose to stress in the Book of Nature the lesson of suffering. It will be recalled, for example, that Müntzer, who had in his voracious reading read not only Tauler and Suso and other mystical and visionary authors but also the Koran, elaborated a t hree-grade progression in the School of Christ. The beginning (Ankunft) of faith was for him the perception of G od’s Word in creation and in Scripture as a w hole with its continuous lesson, not of purgative but of propaedeutic suffering, culminating in the experience of the “bitter Christ,” in nature as on Calvary. This apprehension of t he solidarity and purposefulness of s uffering in all creation led on through the motion (Bewegung) of the Spirit through temptation (Anfechtung) to genuine faith (contrasted with Luther’s allegedly verbal or forensic or “scribal” or “fatuous” faith) and on to a l ife of redemptive tribulation in the name and for the sake of Christ. Müntzer’s Anabaptist successors, such as Denck and Hut, interposed between this genuine faith and the life of suffering the act of believers’ baptism as the covenantal transaction of a p ersonal and corporate pledge of c ommitment to the way of tribulation. It is not, however, to rehearse the meaning of b aptismal theology that we recall this theology of m artyrdom at this juncture but, rather, to suggest in this gospel of t he universality of suffering that many of the radicals were aware of the common bond that connected them with all creation and with all humankind. Thus Müntzer could write: “I preach such a Christian faith as does not agree with that of Luther, but which is in conformity with the hearts of the elect in all the world. And even though he were born a Turk, a man might yet have the Ankunft of this same faith, that is, the Bewegung of the Holy Spirit, as it is written of the God-fearing centurion Cornelius (Acts 10).” b. The Belief that Christ Died for the Salvation of all Humankind Most of t he Radical Reformation broke away from the Protestant pattern in a universalistic direction in abandoning or revising the doctrine of predestination and in holding that the work of C hrist, in taking from humankind the burden of Adam’s guilt, made possible the recovery, for all human beings everywhere, of t hat freedom of t he will which Adam and Eve lost in Paradise. This ultimately must have been related to the view commonly held in a w ork falsely ascribed either to Thomas Aquinas or Albertus Magnus, De venerabili sacramento altaris, which expressly stated that

1270  the radical reformation

chapter 32.2.b

on Calvary Christ took away original sin from all humankind and restored free will as the obedient Second Adam and that in the sacrifice of the Mass he takes away post-baptismal sins (Ch. 2.1).50 In the first place, all Anabaptists including both kinds of Italian rebaptizers and the immersionist Polish Brethren, believed: that God fulfilled his promise to Abraham that in his seed all the nations of the earth would be blessed by effectuating in Christ, of the lineage of David and the seed of Abraham, the removal of t he sins of t he whole world. The whole of Anabaptist soteriology presupposed the forensic Atonement of all humankind through the work of Christ on Calvary, something different from the forensic justification of t he individual believer, as in Lutheranism; hence the refusal of the Anabaptists to impose a purificatory baptism on newborn infants, already cleared of Adamic sin by the will of God and the deed of Christ. As recently as the last chapter we came upon Anabaptists arguing for Christ’s expiatory removal for all humankind of original guilt, even if they acknowledged the persistence of a s inful proclivity, as for example, Marpeck in his debate with Schwenckfeld (Ch. 18.5) and Walpot in his Büchlein against Melanchthon (Ch. 31.1).51 And we saw, too, that Evangelical Rationalist Socinus, while he on principle refused to submit to the immersion of the Polish Brethren as a rite (in his thought superseded since the apostolic age), nevertheless agreed with these Polish Anabaptists that Christ’s work on Calvary and, for him, more specifically in the heavenly Tabernacles as High Priest at his Ascension (Ch. 24.4), equalized the possibility of salvation for all human beings; and the conviction that Christ’s salvific precept had to be shared with others was the inner theological coil that made Socinians no less spring into missions and disputations than Germanic Anabaptists. The universalist note among Anabaptists, it should be recalled, was most clearly struck by Melchior Hofmann after he had broken away from Luther’s conception of t he bondage of t he will of f allen man. Hofmann confidently asserted that Christ, the Second Adam, had restored to all men everywhere the freedom of t he will lost by t he first Adam. Basing his thought on John 8:36, “So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed,” Hofmann wrote: 50

 See Irvin Horst, Erasmus, the Anabaptists and the Prob lem of Religious Unity (Haarlem: Willink, 1967). 51  J. Denny Weaver, “The Work of Christ: On the Difficulty of Identifying an Anabaptist Perspective [on the Atonement],” MQR 59 (1985): 107–29, analyzes the soter iology of Martin Bucer, Michael Sattler, and Hans Denck, pursuing the broader question of whether ther e may be an identifiably Anabaptist perspective on the Atonement, and Ronald Da vid Rogers, “The Relationship of Soter iology and Ecclesiolo gy in Sixteenth-Centur y Evangelical Anabaptism” (Th.D. thesis, Mid-American Baptist Theological Seminary, 1976), dealing with Sattler , Marpeck, Menno, and Riedemann as r epresentative of four r egional variants of Ger manic Anabaptism.

chapter 32.2.b / 32.2.c law & gospel: sectarian ecumenicity  1271 The noble and high testimony of God is this: that God is no respecter of p ersons … and has brought him [every human] true enlightenment and knowledge, and has placed his will again in his own hands so that it came to pass that from then on [the advent of Christ, the Second Adam] man became a truly free creature, … that he from this time on might be prepared to have his own choice or election whether he would now taste of good or evil, whether he would choose life or death, whether he would walk in the way of God or remain subject to the will of Satan.52 The Anabaptists, like Hofmann in their appeal to the universality of Christ’s redemptive action, like the Spiritualists and the Evangelical Rationalists in their appeal to the universal scope of t he inner Word and of the Spirit that bloweth where it listeth, or specifically, in Faustus Socinus, Christ as the new Moses, had a vision of the universal scope of God’s benignity. Schiemer, it will be recalled (Ch. 7.5), considered Luther wrong in applying the above-cited text, John 1:9, to those alone who knew and responded to the gospel of t he incarnate Word: for Christ, the eternal Word, he said, illumines all men everywhere, whether or no they acknowledge Christ personally. Menno Simons and Dirk Philips were also confident as to the theoretical extension of the work of Christ to the infants of Jews, Turks, and Aztecs even though there was no explicit Scriptural text. As for the apocalyptic Italian Spiritualist, John Baptista Italus, who visited Strassburg (Ch. 10.3.a), the Church of the predestined should embrace also good pagans, Turks, and Jews. c. The Doctrine of Christ’s Redemptive Descent into Hades We have already anticipated another expression of the ecumenical or “catholic” urge in the Radical Reformation, in time no less than in space: the doctrine of C hrist’s redemptive descent into Hades. Common to all the radical reformers was a g reat interest in safeguarding the literal sense of Christ’s descent into Hades to redeem the worthies of t he Old Covenant and by implication, in some instances at least, the good pagans. Marsiglio Ficino, mindful of the Thomist requirement of at least an implicit Christian faith on the part of pre-Christian Jews and Gentiles, conjectured that the prophets, like Isaiah, also in limbo awaiting the foretold Messiah, instructed the virtuous pagans there with their prophecies. 53 52  BRN 5:188,194; noted and e valuated by Beachy, The Concept of Gr ace in the Radical Reformation (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1977). 53  Thus Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, and other s (in limbo because , of their vir tues) were prepared with the prophets and other Old Testament worthies to receive the grace of Christ at his descensus ad infernos. Ficino, “Epistola de salute philosophorum,” Opera (Basel, 1561) 1:806; cf. also 459, noted by Hans Baron, “Der Humanismus und die thomistische Lehre von den Gentiles salvati,” ARG 47 (1952): 250–51.

1272  the radical reformation

chapter 32.2.c

Besides the distinction between a literal and nonliteral descensus, there was the distinction between Christ’s descent as victim and as Victor (and psychopomp—preeminently the Eastern Orthodox view). To understand the significance of the divergent views, we must have before us the conception of hell of late medieval Christendom. Actually there were two locations, the hell of the demons in the zone of the fiery atmosphere above and the hell of the nether world in which Satan and these fiery demons exercised their rule over the departed dead as over prisoners. This subterranean hell was itself divided into four parts: the hell proper of the damned, the limbus patrum for the pre-Christian worthies, the limbus infantium or puerorum for unbaptized but otherwise innocent children, and purgatory. Medieval popular piety, scholastic theology, and Rhenish (Eckhardtian) mysticism differed as to the manner in which Christ descended into hell (whether or not only as a s oul separated from his mortal body), and as to the extent, purpose, and effect of h is penetration. The detailed differences of opinion need not detain us. Suffice it to say that alongside the literal interpretation of normative scholasticism and of popular piety, there was the mystical view that both heaven and hell were but spatial metaphors for the proximity or absence of t he divine, and hence that the descensus of the Apostles’ Creed was but an intensification and amplification of the reference to Christ’s suffering under Pontius Pilate to include the spiritual anguish of his sense of being utterly forsaken by God his Father. With certain differences the classical Protestant theologians Luther, Bucer, and Calvin accepted the descensus in the tradition of t he mystics as a s piritual resignatio ad infernum (ad inferos).54 Calvin gave soteriological profundity to the nonliteral view by interpreting the descensus as Christ’s redemptive agony on the cross, suffering not only death but also anguish for the sins of a ll to be redeemed.55 Melanchthon, however, believed in a literal descent. Like him, representatives of all three of the main typological sectors of the Radical Reformation also vigorously argued for the literal descent of Christ to the nether world, in their case, in manifest concern to safeguard the conviction that Christ in the fullness of t ime saved all who had lived by f aith in anticipation of h is advent, just as he, above ground, saved from the consequences of Adam’s defection all of humankind, coeval with and subsequent to his atoning act on Calvary. Descensus and crucifixio were for the radicals correlative redemptive terms. The Spiritualist Valentine Crautwald opposed Bucer’s view that Hades meant simply the grave.56 Schwenckfeld wrote frequently on the subject, 54  Erich Vogelsang, “Weltbild und Kreuzestheologie in den Höllenf ahrtsstreitigkeiten der Reformationszeit,” ARG 38 (1941): 90–132. 55  Institutes, 2:16.8–12; ed. McNeill and Battles, 1:512–20 with notes. 56  Letter of 29 J une 1528; Elsass 1 (QGT 7), no. 141, p. 171; no. 144, p. 175; Bucer Enarrationes in Evangelia (1536), 511–12.

chapter 32.2.c / 32.2.d law & gospel: sectarian ecumenicity  1273 though in view of h is conception of “Christians before Christ,” the article was more traditional than essential to his system, unless by chance he intended to preserve the literal descent not primarily for the Old Testament worthies, who had, according to him, been regularly sustained by the eternal and celestial flesh of Christ (manna), but for the sake of the righteous pagans. Servetus implied that Christ descended into hell for the sake of baptizing the worthies into salvation and suggested a second descensus at the second advent for the sake of baptizing the unimmersed (Ch. 11.1.e). Castellio and others defended the literal descensus against Calvin’s interpretation of it as the redemptive agony of Christ on the cross.57 To be sure, Hut, Schiemer, Schlaffer (Ch. 7.5), and Marpeck also knew and used Meister Eckhardt’s language and likened the suffering of the true follower of C hrist to descent in the sense of t he anguish of d ereliction. Marpeck, for example, in his manuscript tract Von der Tiefe Christi (1547),58 likened baptism to the descensus Christi: “Whoever finds not Christ in the deep [of baptism] will not find him on high in joy and glory forevermore.” But Marpeck from the very beginning also insisted on the literal descensus, maintaining that Christ preached the gospel of forgiveness in hel1. 59 In the course of the controversy with Marpeck beginning in 1542 (Ch. 31.1.a), Schwenckfeld expressed the view that Christ descended into Hades as triumphator, preaching and perhaps in some mystical way sharing his celestial flesh eucharistically (cf. Rupert of Deutz, Ch. 2.4). He accused Marpeck of teaching that Christ’s redemptive suffering on the cross had not been complete until he also descended into hell to be tortured by Satan and thereafter made High Priest.60 Schwenckfeld here made a useful theological observation to the discredit of neither the one nor the other antagonist. There were, in fact, in Marpeck’s soteriology two works of Christ. Though never expressly stated, it would appear that Christ suffered on the cross for the sins of all humankind who were to come after him, and suffered at the hands of Satan in hell for the sins of all who had died before his advent. d. The Doctrine of Election to Salvation Ordinarily the doctrine of p redestination represents a r estriction rather than an extension of the scope of salvation. Yet in that sector of the Radical

57  Jerome Friedman deals with the Hutter ites, Socinus, and Schw enckfeld in “Christ’s Descent into Hell and Redemption thr ough Evil: A Radical Refor mation Perspective,” ARG 76 (1985): 217–30. 58  Heinold Fast locates it in “Ein neuer Handschriftenfund” [Kunstbuch, 278a–301a]. 59  “Pilgram Marpeck’s Confession of Faith,” ed. John C.Wenger, MQR 12 (1938): 167–202; Krebs and Rott, Elsass, 1 (QGT 7), no. 302. 60  Letter of 24 Mar ch 1549; CS 12:797–803. Johann Loserth says that Mar peck never taught such a thing, whereas Heinold Fast says that Schwenckfeld simply exaggerates; Kunstbuch, 215 n. 100.

1274  the radical reformation

chapter 32.2.d

Reformation that welcomed the Protestant emphasis on predestination the doctrine was occasionally turned in a potentially universalistic sense. The doctrine of p redestination was, of co urse, the very core of t he theological systems of L utheranism and Calvinism. It was, for the classical Protestant Reformers, coordinate with the doctrine of s alvation by faith alone. The two doctrines of predestination and solafideism constituted respectively the Godward and the manward side of the same fundamental spiritual reality at the base of the Protestant revolt against every expression of the idea of human merit in the joyful proclamation of the experience and the theology of the wholly unmerited grace of God through Christ. Classical Protestantism not only opposed the gross forms of works righteousness like the indulgence system; it was also sensitized against the importation of the slightest trace of m eritoriousness, as, for example, any attempt to make sanctification a v isible demonstration of s alvation. Hence the common charge of the Protestant Reformers hurled against the “new monkery” of the radicals. The Revolutionary Spiritualist Müntzer declared that all those “who proclaim a j ustification by f aith and not by g ood works miss the point entirely.”61 In contrast to Luther, Müntzer saw on one level a redemptive role of t he Law. The uniqueness of J esus Christ consisted in his willing acceptance of the full punishment of the Law. But for subsequent generations the turmoiling or harrowing of the soul of each person in Anfechtung through the Holy Spirit makes it possible for one to accept the suffering, too, in imitation of C hrist. Thus one’s salvation is not through faith in Christ but through suffering under the law for all creatures. Christ’s work is dehistoricized. The Holy Spirit becomes the principal mediator of salvation, effectuating the rebirth after suffering. The regenerate elect are called by the Spirit to inflict outward suffering on those who have withstood the inner punishment of Anfechtung. The covenantal league of the elect friends of God is a transitional church between the end of the old and the beginning of the new world governed solely by the Holy Spirit. Müntzer’s conception of the inner Word becomes an apocalyptic principle.62 Hofmann’s conception of avenging angels permitted at least his followers in Münster to think of themselves as authorized executors of the unitive will of God. Among the Polish-speaking Anabaptists, who arose primarily from within the Reformed synods of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, we have become aware of two motifs with respect to predestination: the earliest (Ch. 25.4) opponents of pedobaptism destined to espouse Anabaptism, Gonesius, Czechowic, and Gregory Paul retained the Protestant stress on election and opposed baptism as the divinely ordained salvific rite, which 61 62

 Protestation; quoted by Gritsch, Reformer, 63.  Ibid., last chapter.

chapter 32.2.d

law & gospel: sectarian ecumenicity  1275

was inappropriate to children, unaware of sin. But then these Polish Anabaptists and others who became prominent in the pre-Socinian theological consolidation of the Polish Brethren came to espouse the Germanic Anabaptist view of the freedom of the will to espouse and live by the precepts of salvation, an emphasis also of Socinus, even though in his case connected with the Lord’s Supper as the salvific ordinance. In other lands also destined to remain Catholic and notably among the spiritualist Rationalists of Italy the severe Protestant doctrine of predestination was picked up and propounded with a s ense of l iberating joy. We remind ourselves here of Camillo Renato (Ch. 22.1) who in his doctrine of predestination went far beyond Paul, Augustine, and Calvin in completely dissociating election from membership in the true visible church of the saints so long as the reborn separated himself or herself from the Old Covenantal church of the Jews and its counterpart, the oppressively sacramental church of A ntichrist. For Renato, predestination was a l iberating doctrine in respect to the Catholic Church, without involving the believer in further ecclesiastical commitments. For Renato and after him Socinus, the Church of Christ’s elect was present wherever virtue, defined as human love or concern for one’s fellow men, was manifest. Thus predestination to salvation was for some Evangelical Rationalists confirmed in humaneness. Closely related to the universalistic reworking of t he biblical texts on predestination was the postulation of an invisible church known only to God and embracing many who know not the name of C hrist. Like other Spiritualist excesses, it could claim descent from the thought of the young Luther. Although this doctrine of the invisible church appears in two forms, the church of the hidden elect and the church of humanity in all its diversity, it was in either case inclusivistic in its intention and spirit. Though most commonly formulated by s uch Spiritualists as Schwenckfeld, Ziegler (Ch. 10.2), Franck (Ch. 18.3), Coornhert (Ch. 30.2), Postel (Ch. 22.2.a), and by such spokesmen of interfaith toleration in Poland and Transylvania as Palaeologus and Budny (Ch. 29.4), it was also formulated by such spiritualizing Anabaptists as Bünderlin, Entfelder (Ch. 10.3.a), and Jacob Kautz.63 A recurrent feature of this kind of thinking, for example in the spiritualizing Anabaptist Denck, the Spiritualist Ziegler, the Messianic Anabaptist Bader, and the Libertine Pocquet (Ch. 12.2), was the appeal to the New Testament apokatastasis or restitutio omnium (Acts 3:21) in arguing for the possibility of the eventual redemption even of the demons. Ziegler expressly cited Origen in support of his conviction that pagans and devils, even with-

63  There is a good deal about Kautz’s conception of the invisible Church in Bucer’s refutation of him; Elsass 1 (QGT 7), no. 171.

1276  the radical reformation

chapter 32.2.d / 32.2.e

out their knowledge of the earthly work of Christ, would be saved before the Last Judgment.64 For the most part, the spiritualism and the rationalism in the Radical Reformation actually undercut the last of o ur “ecumenical” thrusts, the missionary impluse. But what most of the Spiritualists and the spiritualizing Rationalists partly or wholly lacked, the Anabaptists displayed in redoubled intensity. e. The Missionary Impulse of the Radical Reformation 65 Magesterial Protestantism was concerned with the reformation of Christendom along civic, territorial and national lines—to be sure, as a s econd-best to the unitive reformation of t he whole of C hristendom in head and members. Magisterial Protestantism acknowledged, so to speak, the prophetic function of criticism of the medieval Church but it found no place formally in its theories of polity and the ministry, whether Lutheran, Reformed, or Anglican, for the prophet free standing as critic of society (forthteller) 66 and no place whatsoever for the apostle. In contrast, many proponents of t he Radical Reformation, in a sectarian identification of the whole of territorial Christianity—Protestant scarcely less than Catholic—as anti-Christian or sub-Christian, turned with vehemence to the pentecostal task of converting Christendom and the world to Christianity as they variously understood the Gospel. Even the Münsterites, for all their ferocity, in espousing and adopting

64  Elsass 1(QGT 7), nos. 8, 13. There is considerable reference to salvation for the devils in the antiradical plemic in Strassb urg, for example, Elsass 1, nos. 285, 358. For the restitution of all things, including devils, see the compr ehensive essay of Er nst Staehelin, Die Widerkehr aller Dinge: Rektoralrede (Basel: Helbing & Lichenhahn, 1960). For an isolated and or iginal English universalist who, in appealing to Rom. 8:22, envisaged the salvation of all creatures, including the animals and birds, see my reference to Edward’s chaplain, John Bradford, burned as a heretic in 1555, in my Wilderness and Paradise in Christian Thought (New York: Harper, 1962), ch. 3.2. 65  Franklin Littell, “The Anabaptist Theology of Missions,” MQR 21 (1947):5ff; Wolfgang Schäufle, Das missionarische Bewusstsein und Wirken der Taüfer, Beiträge zur Geschicte und Lehre der Reformierten Kirche 21 (Neukirchen, 1966). E. Randolph Daniel, “Joachim of Flora and the Joachimite Tradition of Apocalyptic Conversion in the Later Middle Ages” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Virginia, Richmond, 1966), has drawn attention to the Joachimite concept of the missionized plentitudo gentium as a prerequisite for the millennial age and the conversion of the Jews (Matt. 24:14; Rom. 11:25–26). Ray C. Gingerich, “The Mission Impluse of Early Swiss and South Ger man-Austrian Anabaptism” (Ph.D. dissertation, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn., 1980), recognizes a threefold drive within the Anabaptist sense of converserion as a commission to change others and to feel in the Chr ist-event a socio-political model for their sense of being incar national envoys, bearers of the hope of imminent change. 66  We have seen ho w in the per mutations of the triplex munus Christi evolving in the sixteenth century, the idea of Chr ist as propheta et doctor was usually associated with the idea ascribed to Moses as for eseeing him as the last pr ophet. There was however, especially in the eastern realms, the under standing of the estab lished churchman also as a pr ophet in the Old Testament sense, e.g., the Reformed Peter Melius in Debrecen as well as his opponent Francis Dávid (Ch. 28) and in Poland the court preacher Peter Skarga, S.J.

chapter 32.2.e

law & gospel: sectarian ecumenicity  1277

the Hofmannite version of election combined it with an “ecumenical” view of a world mission symbolized by King John’s global orb. In the first generation every believer was a prophet or prophetess, or even an apostle, or at least a responsible disciple of C hrist, ready to propagate the faith by h is or h er martyrdom. A new kind of C hristian had emerged in the course of t he Radical Reformation, a composite of the medieval pilgrim to Jerusalem, the ancient martyr of t he heavenly Jerusalem, and the emissary of t he neo-apostolic Jerusalem. This new kind of Christian was not a reformer but a converter, not a p arishioner but, reviving the original meaning of t hat New Testament word, a sojourner (paroikos) in this world whose true citizenship was in heaven (Heb. 11:9; Phil. 3:20) and who looked forward to the imminent descent of the Heavenly City, like a Bride prepared for the Bridegroom at his Second Advent. This new kind of Christian was no longer primarily a German or a Gentile, no longer primarily a husband or a wife, a nobleman or a peasant, but a saint (Müntzer), a fellow of the covenant (Denck), a bride of Christ (Hofmann), an electus (Renato), a baptized christus (Servetus), a god (Menno), a begodded man (Niclaes), a friend of God (Schwenckfeld), a sanctus evangelicus (Gonesius, Socinus). We have already noted that Socinianism, though deprived by i ts systematizer, Socinus, of t he mandate to immerse converts, nevertheless shared with Anabaptism the ethical drive to communicate to others at great risk to self the uniquely salvific news of the only way to life after death in living by the demanding precepts of Christ, no easy yoke. The sectarian claim of the variously regenerate in Christ to be superior to the ambient world induced within the conventicles and congregations themselves a s ocial revolution comparable to that in the ancient Church, where charismatic slaves might emerge as bishops, and converts from the higher classes could find no greater joy than in placing their worldly goods and influence at the disposal of the beloved elect in Christ. And as in the ancient Church, so in all sectors of t he Radical Reformation, one is impressed by the mobility, the purposefulness, and the testimonial missionary urgency of e very convert, whether a c ommissioned elder or the steadfast wife of a w eaver evangelist or an immersed landlord girt in a wooden sword. In the stress upon personal accountability and explicit faith, the whole of the Radical Reformation pushed the Lutheran doctrine of the priesthood of all believers in the direction of a universal lay apostolate and although primarily of the common man and woman, former friars, monks, and nuns were in their company, as well as patricians and noblemen.67

67

 

1278  the radical reformation

chapter 32.2.f

f. The Authority of Christ as Priest, Prophet, and King Recurrently in our narrative attention has been paid to a theologoumenon, evolving among thinkers of magisterial and radical orientations, the triplex munus Christi. It represented a fresh effort in the sixteenth century to delineate the role of Christ in the scriptural language of anointment. Although it was Eusebius of Caesarea who contributed the first onsets to the formulation, we took note of how it underwent significant refinement, precision, and differentiation in Innocent III, the Corpus Iuris Canonici, Erasmus (Ch. 1.3.a), Bucer (Ch. 10.2.b), and acquired in the usage of Osiander the precision of munus/officium/amt (Ch. 11.3.b), and finally European-wide diffusion in its appropriation in 1545 by Calvin (Ch. 23.4). The theologoumenon is recalled here in retrospect because of its evolving importance in the Reformed tradition into the seventeenth century, and also because of its bulking large in the three eastern realms, in the first instance no doubt because of the prominence given to it, evidently directly from Erasmus, by John Łaski (Chs. 14.4; 25.2.b) and then by Faustus Socinus, who had already distinctively reformulated the three offices in Basel (Ch.24.4) and then reinforced its usage among the Polish Brethren. Its significance for the magisterial reformers, as we saw, was to give magisterial (magistral) authority to the pastor-preachers of the new Protestant establishments, who by d efinition were precisely no longer sacerdotal, i.e., priestly, in offering a sacrifice at the altar or at the communion table. The magisterial reformers sanctioned their authoritative, universitybased interpretation of Scripture in thinking of Christ as the final Prophet/ Teacher, and themselves as the duly authorized interpreters of Christ and of Scripture against the often charismatic and generally non-academic leaders of radical, even apocalyptic reforms. At the same time, the same evolving formulary of t he triplex munus could be used to enhance the authority of not only prophets, prophetesses, seekers, and ecstatics, but also of lay savants like Schwenckfeld and particularly Socinus, and even of the ordinary pastors in synod in Transylvania in appeal to the lex sedentium (Ch. 11.4.b), the right and even responsibility of even lay members to interpret Scripture in the freedom to prophesy when duly congregated in the same Spirit that originally inspired Scripture. The authority of the gifted and even scholarly lay teacher without the university magister or doctor and even the insights of earnest lay biblicists could become the modalities for legitimating the priesthood and indeed prophethood of all believers.68 The radicals, most of them stressing the New Testament over the Old, like the early Christians met in houses or in the open air. When they came to build meetinghouses of their own, these were of the simplest kind as 68  Cf. the very title of the collected essays of James Luther Adams, The Prophethood of All Believers, ed. with introduction by George K. Beach (Boston: Beacon, 1986).

chapter 32.2.f

law & gospel: sectarian ecumenicity  1279

in Poland and The Netherlands, where the builders eschewed traditional and ecclesiastical motifs in their design. Only in the town of M ünster under the Anabaptist bibliocracy, in a few Moravian and Silesian towns like Nicolsburg and Slavkov, in Italian parishes in mountainous Rhaetia, in Transylvania among the Unitarians, and in a few instances in PolandLithuania like Pi´nczów, were the old, ecclesiastical edifices taken over by the radicals. It was not that the radicals would not elsewhere have been permitted the use of t he ecclesiastical structures of t he ancien régime by local magistrates. For the radicals, the prevailing consideration was rather that they would not have felt at home in them, for they felt, as a reformed and renewed people, to be themselves the true church of God, the living temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 3:16; 2 Cor. 6:16). They had inwardly made a radical break with the preceding and prevailing Christian establishment, whether Catholic or Protestant, before outwardly withdrawing from its sacred precincts. The Radical Reformation in almost all sectors from London to Lithuania, from Naples to The Netherlands was a steepleless Christianity. It was not tethered to monumental stakes. The radical flocks of Christ grazed over a wide and variegated range. This social and geographical mobility has already been observed in the foregoing chapters as one of the outstanding characteristics of the Radical Reformation. The only conspicuous exception, besides Münster (1533-35) and Raków, a chartered new city of r efuge (Ch. 27.3), were the contiguous parish churches of t he Unitarian Reformation in the multi-confessional quasiErastian establishment in Transylvania (Ch. 28). It is now therefore the place to draw together also our impression of the Radical Reformation with special reference to the political edifice of Christendom; for it has been basic to the whole presentation thus far that, despite differences among them, the various groupings of r adicals were pretty much on one side in turning away from political structures on all levels of magistracy from the imperial office down to the town council, while classical Protestantism stood on the other side in accepting magisterial support and even direction in reformation, all on the theory that reform-minded magistrates could be acting either as principal members of the church (within the larger context of t he priesthood of a ll believers) or as God-ordained functionaries charged with the maintenance of l aw, order, and right worship. So fundamental was this polarization between what for just once in this exposition we will call Magisterial and Radical Protestantism that some final refinement in our terminology and typology is now called for.

1280  the radical reformation

chapter 32.3

3. Magisterial and Lay Reformations69 Up to this point the reformations of L uther, Zwingli, Bucer, Calvin, and Cranmer have been called “classical Protestantism” when reference was being made primarily to doctrine and collectively the “Magisterial Reformation” when reference was being made primarily to the manner in which the doctrinal and institutional alterations were carried out by order of magistrates. The term “magisterial,” however, serves adjectively to cover 69  The validity of the conception of a Radical Reformation in three major prongs recruiting from disaffected priests, monks, friars, and prelates; from humanists and knights; but mostly from the common people of village and town—rests only in some measure on the fact that for the most part, drawn or pushed to the fr inges of the Protestant or Catholic ter ritorial corpora Christiana (on the principle accepted even by Catholics for the nonce of cuius regio, eius religio), the radicals ended up at least as a supranational grouping, aware of each other, despite the usually sectarian modalities of their existence, in most cases separated from the territorial state. John H. Yoder, “‘Anabaptists and the Sw ord’ Revisited: Systematic Histor iography and Undogmatic Nonresistants,” Deutscher Bauernkrieg, ed. Heiko Oberman, ZKG 86, no. 2 (1974): 270–84, too, was willing to take his distance from what was once Mennonite historiographical dogma, that ther e were always Evangelical Anabaptists who w ere consistently pacificist; he recognizes, as I do above, a range of positions in the spectrum from pacifism to belligerence. See also Paul P. Peachey, “The Radical Reformation, Political Pluralism, and the Cor pus Christianum,” Marc Lienhard, ed. The Origins and Char acteristics of Anabaptism (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1977), one of the more recent efforts of great worth in the documentation, essays, and perception of the histor ical specificities, with more than the Ger manic form of Anabaptism, but leaving out the wholly e vangelical pacifist Italian Anabaptists and the large contingent of pacifists precisely among the gentr y and magnates of the P olish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, who were often the leaders of the Polish Brethren. A major critic of my conceptionalization of the Radical Reformation as initially and confessionally separatist was the already oft-cited James M. Stayer, Anabaptists and the Swor d (new edition, 1976). Rainier Wohlfeil, Einführung in die Geschichte der deutschen Reformation (Munich: Beck, 1982), 144–69, deals historiographically with the conception of “Radikale Reformation” in the context of research controversy; Adolf Laube, “Radicalism as a Research Problem in the History of Early Reformation,” Radical Tendencies in the Reformation: Divergent Tendencies, ed. by Hans J. Hillerbrand, Sixteenth Centur y Essays & Studies 9 (Kirksville , Missouri: 1988), raised further the question of the appr opriateness of the ter m “Radical” to cover so diverse a range of sixteenth-century phenomena, some of which w ould be more appropriately characterized as reactionary, but he legitimated its use as a religious, if not a socio-political term. In the same monograph, see also James M. Stayer, “Christianity in One City, Münster, 1534–35”; Stayer has more recently shown that the Peasants’ War was an essential for mative experience for many in the leadership of what became Anabaptism, after the crushing of their earlier hope as commoners that the estab lished clerical and ar istocratic order could be r eplaced by justice and equity based on the divine law of the Bible, “The German Peasants’ War and Anabaptist Community of Goods (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1991). Hans-Jürgen Goertz, ed., using “Radical” in his title, Profile of Radical Reformers (Munich: Beck, 1978; Scottdale, Pa./Kitchener, Ont., 1982), 12–24, was at pains in his Introduction to criticize my conceptualization, although retaining the term faute de mieux. The admirably edited volumes of the Bibliotheca Dissidentium (Strasbourg, 1980) tend to distinguish “Anabaptism and Radical Reformation,” the last covering the sixteenth-century Dissidentes who were not Anabaptists, while the Institute of Mennonite Studies in Elkhart, Indiana, uses for its series of Anabaptist and Free Church documents Classics of the Radical Refor mation, beginning with Vol. 1, The Legacy of Mic hael Sattler (1973). When I

chapter 32.3

law & gospel: sectarian ecumenicity  1281

the task not only of the magistrate but also of the magister, the teacher. In the Catholic Church magisterium, the teaching authority, is preeminently in the sole competence of t he Pope and the bishops in council. In classical Protestantism the doctoral magisterium was recognized in the principal reformers, of the greater of whom only Cranmer had ever been ordained a bishop. So great was the magisterial authority in this teaching or doctoral sense on the part of two major reformers that two of the three main doctrinal subdivisions of the Reformation were called after them, Lutheranism and Calvinism. Thus the classical Magisterial Reformation was “magisterial” not only in primary sense that it allowed for a large role on the part of the state in implementing reformation and even in assessing doctrinal, liturgical, and ecclesiological issues but also in the subsidiary sense that it accorded extraordinary authority to an individual teacher who (in contrast to any ancient Church Father and any medieval schoolman, even Thomas Aquinas) was able to monopolize—not merely as a teacher or founder of a school of theological thought, but as the ranking teacher of an exclusively true, reformed Church—the authoritative interpretation of S cripture and Tradition along with associated university-trained divines.70 In the Magisterial Reformation the theological magister as doctor ecclesiae and the magistrate mutually supported each other in the maintenance of law, order, and right religion. To be sure, Luther only reluctantly acquiesced in recognizing the prince as Notbischof with the episcopal right of v isitation and superintendence of t he churches through lay and clerical deputies. It is true also that Calvin chose came to rethink the problem of nomenclature and typology in my substantial revision for La Reforma Radical (1983), wherein I had modified the text in the light of critiques to date, I gave as a lectur e an account of the or igins of the conceptualization: “The Radical Refor mation Revisited,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 39 (1984): 1–24. The present revision and expansion further reflects my awareness of how typology can be both useful and intr usive. David F. Wright, “Reformation Studies in the 20th Century,” New 20th Century Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1991), 702–4, assesses the concept of the Radical Reformation in observing that there is “implied too sharp a dichotomy between the radical and the magisteral reformations.” This New Encyclopedia is a 1 vol. supplement to Twentieth Century Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge: An Extension of the New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1955). 70  To be sure, the surviving Anabaptists are also called after their founder s or reorganizers Mennonites and Hutterites; the Rationalists, Socinians; and the Spir itualists, Schwenckfeldians but the author ity of Menno, Hutter, Socinus, and Schwenckfeld was not that of a university magister or doctor, while in all cases the chur ches or synods in lo yalty to their major teacher s were self-disciplining, independent of political oversight. The only other major group surviving in their sixteenth-century seats, the Transylvanian Unitarians, interestingly, did not call them selves Davidians. This may have been par tly because Francis Dávid, while lea ving a literar y corpus, changed so much in the course of his superintendencies that the corpus was no longer decisive for those most inclined to follo w him. Moreover, he was synodally censured for his final innovation (nonadorantism), which made it difficult for his most fervent followers to use his name as a party label in the long per iod of Calvinist–Catholic hegemony after 1579. Then further, precisely because of Dávid’s stress on “God is One” and his consequent stress that Christ may not be adored beside him, it would have been theologically inconsistent for his devotees to bring in his name for their sheer monotheism any more than Jews would have called themselves Mosesites.

1282  the radical reformation

chapter 32.3

temporary exile in Strassburg in protest against overweening governmental interference in the clerical provisions for communion in Geneva. But for the most part the governmental reformers deferred to the state and drove out Old Believers from their venerable precincts and radicals from their conventicles by the authority of the state. There were, needless to say, also very important differences between Lutherans and Calvinists on the theology of the state. Luther had no illusions about the practical piety of Evangelical magistrates. To be sure, the more religious the more likely they would be to perform their functions honorably and efficiently with their enhanced sense of lay vocation in their chosen work, but Luther would never regard the state as expressly Christian nor countenance a crusade (a holy war). He was satisfied in delimiting the Two Kingdoms, external and internal; and for external matters even in religion, but not in conscience, he counseled yielding to the wisdom of state. Calvin, who in several ways was closer to the radicals than Luther in his resolution to cleanse both doctrine and polity of all traditional elements that were not expressly mandated by Scripture and in his great interest in sanctification and church discipline, was with respect to the state much closer to the papal Church in seeking to ground political authority and competence in revelation, desirous wherever possible to work for a regenerate magistracy under the tutelage of the Reformed Church. And in some ways his ideal was most forcefully expressed as a possible model for all the Reformed of Europe in the temporary victory of the Disciplinarians over the Anti-Disciplinarians (later called Erastians) in the Rhine Palatinate (Ch. 31.2). But despite these important differences and variants, common to Luther, Zwingli, Bucer, Calvin, and Cranmer and to all the other magisterial reformers, was the importance they attached to the current political structures and the maintenance of s ocial and moral order, which usually meant also the suppression or extrusion and in many cases the execution of religious dissenters and other non-conformists. The Radical Reformation (including Polish Anabaptism, Socinianism, and Transylvanian Unitarianism), in contrast, was eschatologically oriented to some imminent form of a new rule of Christ, perhaps ushered in by his saints; and correspondingly, it was neutral, or alienated, or even outright hostile with respect to these same political and social structures of Empire, kingdom, principality, city-state, established church, and, in some places, the religiously activated household-family (Ch. 20.3). The radicals were keenly conscious that Jesus had placed the central liturgical action of the fellowship of the saints, the observance of his Supper in memory, discipleship, and hope, within the context of cosmic politics, as it were, when he said he would not partake of the fruit of the vine “until that day when I d rink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom” (Matt. 26:29). They knew that Paul, after recounting angrily to the riotous Corinthians how he had received from the Lord the usage of the eucharist

chapter 32.3

law & gospel: sectarian ecumenicity  1283

with the agape as an accompanying nourishing repast, instructed them in the eschatological meaning of t he repeated observance: “[Y]ou proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” in judgment and vindication of his own (1 Cor. 11:26). Though the radicals were restorationists, looking back to an idealized communal harmony of t he saints in Jerusalem in Acts 2, they were also sometimes apocalyptists, inspired by both scriptural and current revelation to seek to descry the signs of the Kingdom and judgment about to come. In this eschatological mood they were closer to Luther or Bullinger than to Calvin or Cranmer (Ch. 11.4), but whereas Luther also everywhere saw portents of the end of the age, he nevertheless still read Revelation 13 through the prism supplied by Romans 13. With the radicals it was often the other way. The failure of the Peasants’ War and the analogous uprisings of social, economic, and constitutional aspiration, which had extended from Delft to Danzig and from Trentino to Transylvania, were the common background of the extensive social alienation from the established structures of CatholicReformation Christendom that found expression in all three major sectors of the Radical Reformation. Some of t he disillusioned and disfranchised so strained their eyes to read the signs of the times that they even imagined that the Kingdom was already beginning to take form about them. Thomas Müntzer had given the reigning princes of Saxony one last chance, by espousing the true faith, to take political and martial leadership of the saints (Ch. 4.3.c). The Tyrolese peasant leader Michael Gaismair was even willing to ally himself with Zwingli and the Doge (Ch 4.3.e). For a b rief but significant moment in Zurich Conrad Grebel foresaw the possibility of electing a wholly regenerate cantonal magistracy (Ch. 5.2.c), “Reformed Congregationalism.” John Hut, as one who had been in the midst of the Peasants’ War, temporarily suspended his belligerence and sublimated his own bellicose energies, foretelling the time when the rebaptized saints would be ruling with Christ and slaying the godless (Ch 7.4). Balthasar Hubmaier, the Zwinglian-Anabaptist reformer of Waldshut and Nicolsburg, never abandoned during his brief career his view that the sword might be used to maintain order in society and even protect the true Church (Ch. 9.2). Bernard Rothmann understood Münster under King John Bueckels from Leiden to be the foreseen restoration of the bellicose Kingdom of David preparatory to the advent of the pacific realm of Christ, the new Solomon (Ch. 13.1). There were pacific chiliasts among the Judaizing Polish and Lithuanian Brethren (Stanislas Budzi´n ski) and the Transylvanian Unitarians (Vehe-Glirius) but them also the revolutionary Sabbatarians. But though these foregoing affirmations and eschatological miscalculations and vagaries were not insignificant attitudes and episodes—indeed they bulked so large in the eyes of their opponents that many radicals, not

1284  the radical reformation

chapter 32.3

alone the Münsteries, were dubbed “Anabaptists” in a seditious and theocratic sense—nevertheless most Evangelical Rationalists in Italy and Poland were pacifists as were all Spiritualists and Spiritualizers, as Sebastian Franck and Caspar Schwenckfeld, George Siculo and Henry Niclaes—all except Thomas Münzter and his followers; and the bulk of t he non-Münsterite Anabaptists were pacifists including all the Italian and the Polish-speaking Anabaptists (Polish Brethren).71 Among all these radicals who had no expectation of participating in any final holy war, the attitude toward the current political structures ranged from indifference to grateful acceptance of princely protection (the Hutterites in Moravia, the Minor Church in Poland and Lithuania, the Unitarians in Transylvania). Most of these moderates among the radicals were willing to pay taxes. Some of them were even willing to do watch and ward duty on the walls of their towns so long as they did not have to use the sword. In general the radicals of v arious types regarded magistracy as ordained by G od for the punishment of t he wicked and the maintenance of order among “non-Christians.” To be sure, Schwenckfeld and others, especially those who arose from the knightly or patrician class, even recognized that the state was ordained by God to do good, like build roads and canals, as well as to punish evil. But they all generally held that the state should have nothing to say about the Christian life, at least to “true Christians.” Accordingly, members of Anabaptist conventicles from Vilvoorde to Venice refused to accept any magisterial office that would involve them in the use of the sword. The Minor Church of Poland was largely pacifistic and some members from among the gentry exchanged a wooden staff for the sword. When Socinus sought to extricate the sponsoring szlachta from an excessively otherworldly renunciation of m anorial life, he upheld what would be regarded as an essentially pacifist position, of which the Danzig Socinian Christopher Ostorodt would be a representative rational exponent. Like Luther they had a doctrine of two Kingdoms, but they could not follow Luther in his Protestantizing of the Constantinian legacy in the doctrine of divine vocations in the world, including those of magistrate and soldier. Indeed they felt that they had to withdraw not only from government and soldiery but also from a number of crafts and professions that contributed to ways of life that they could not, once reborn as subjects of Christ’s Kingdom, morally approve. Probably the most complete expression of the radical impulse was the Hutterite commonwealth, the interconnected congeries of Gemeinden in 71  Clarence Bauman, Gewaltlosigkeit im Täufertum: Eine Untersuc hung zur theologishen Ethik des oberdeutschen Täufertums der Reformationszeit (Leiden: Brill, 1968). For the Hutterites see the large article in the Great Article Book (1577), art. 4, ed. Friedmann, Glaubenszeugnisse 2 (QGT 12), “Vom Schwert,” 239–98. In addition, see James T. Johnson, “Two Kinds of Pacifism: Opposition to the Political Use of Force in the Renaissance-Reformation Period,” Journal of Religious Ethics 12 (1984): 39–60; and Timothy George, “Between Pacifism and Coercion: The English Baptist Doctrine of Religious Toleration (1610–1625),” MQR 58 (1984): 30–49.

chapter 32.3

law & gospel: sectarian ecumenicity  1285

Moravia, which, under benevolent magnates pleased to have industrious colonists, organized the whole of a r egenerate Christian society in all important respects except for the minting of coins and the waging of defense. The socio-political aspirations of Michael Gaismair’s peasants and miners in the Tyrol were in part fulfilled in the Christian communism of Tyrolese Jacob Hutter under benign magnates in Moravia. The chartered town-commune of R aków, in part modeled on the Hutterite commune, but with its interconfessional academy, its support of t wo church edifices, respectively for Catholic and for Reformed students, and its pacifist polyglot press, may be taken as still another provisional realization of the radical evangelical ideal society (Ch. 27.3) but in this form largely in a period beyond that of the chronological frame of our narrative. In the historical vision of the Hutterites (set forth in their Chronicle) and many other radicals of our narrative the fall of Christianity, while it may have started at the end of the Apostolic Age, perhaps one hundred years after the crucifixion, climaxed in the exchange of prerogatives between Pope Sylvester I and Constantine.72 Accordingly, of all the doctrines “imposed” by the state upon the Church none was felt to be so poignantly religio-political as the doctrine of the Trinity allegedly formulated by Constantine at the Council of Nicaea in 325 and imposed by him as imperial pontifex maximus who professed to be “bishop of those outside” and whose episcopal spokesman, like Eusebius of Caesarea, came close to identifying his Empire with the millennial Kingdom of Christ (ancient “postmillennislism” Ch. 11.4.a). Consequently in the strong movement of almost all groupings to disentangle their churches from the state, ever asseverating their Christian citizenship in a heavenly city (Phil. 3:20) which hath foundations whose builder and maker is God (Heb. 11:10), the radicals tended to dismantle the “Nicene”-“Constantinian” doctrine of the Trinity in preference for simpler ante-Nicene formulations like the Apostolicum and hence to neglect or actively reject the highly wrought philosophically formulated provisions and safeguards of the Fathers in council between Nicaea (325) and Chalcedon (451), although it was only in Transylvania under the suzerainty of the Sultan that a f ully anti-Nicene, Unitarian (Reformed) synod was organized and recognized as coequal with the Calvinist and the Lutheran synods by t he prince in diet in a multi-confessional establishment but on condition of abandoning the antipedobaptist, even prospectively anabaptist, stance of F rancis Dávid. The Polish Brethren, differing from their Transylvanian confreres as immersionists, adored Christ as King of the Universe as also of his gathered and self-disciplining Church. The Radical Reformation altered doctrine and institutions in a radical restoration of primitive Christian beliefs and practices often in the context 72  This is the presupposition of the principal account of the Polish Brethren, the Historia of Stanislas Lubieniecki. Cf. Walter Klaassen, “The Anabaptist Critique of Constantinian Christendom,” MQR 55 (1981): 218–30.

1286  the radical reformation

chapter 32.3

of intense eschatological fervor. The Catholic Reform (formerly more commonly the Counter-Reformation) corrected moral and institutional abuses and tightened the organization of t he Tridentine Church. The Magisterial Reformation of classical Protestantism stressed preeminently the reformation of doctrine. Said Luther: “Doctrine and life are to be distinguished. Life is as bad among us as among the papists,” and “But if doctrine is not reformed, the reform of morals will be in vain, for superstition and fictitious holiness cannot be recognized except by t he Word and by f aith.” 73 Classical Protestantism, repossessing the sacred precincts of Christendom in the spirit of doctrinal reformation and with the support of magistrates, understood itself as continuous with the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages; and, in terms of church structures, institutions, and endowments, this was outwardly apparent. There was least rupture in the old ways in England under Henry VIII and Archbishop Cranmer. The evidence of most visible and tangible rupture with the past was in Zurich under the Reformed town council and Zwingli. The break with the immediate past—personal and institutional—was programmatically conspicuous in all phases and sectors of the Radical Reformation. The practice of b elievers’ baptism alone would dramatize that discontinuity, for in each individual life there was a momentous nodal point marking the purportedly pre-Christian and the Christian stage. Therefore, because of the moral, doctrinal, and institutional scope and the social depth of the Radical Reformation it is perhaps better not to call it alternatively “the Left Wing of the [Protestant] Reformation.” Actually there were significant patristic and medieval mystical and scholastic and ascetic residues in the Radical Reformation;74 and in several respects, despite endemic sectarian fissiparousness, it was closer than classical Protestantism to reformed Catholicism in several ways. It understood Jesus Christ as the founder of the Church, not to be construed as continuous with the Israel of the Old Covenant. Like the Catholics, most of t he radicals defended the freedom of the will in the realm of faith and stressed sanctification as the goal of the Christian life and the foretaste of salvation. Accordingly, to be sure in a sectarian framework, the radicals professed membership in a u niversal Church not linked to race or nation, a People with corporate loyalties and 73  Heiko A. Oberman, “Das tridentinische Rechtfertigungsdekret im Lichte spätmittelal terlicher Theologie, Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 61 (1964): 252, has usefully str essed the difference between doctrinal reformation and moral and institutional reform, adducing the above quotations from Luther in nn. 2, 3. 74  See, e.g. Kenneth Ronald Davis, Anabaptism and Asceticism: A Study in Intellectual Origins (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald, 1974); David Steinmetz, “Scholasticism and Radical Refor m,” MQR 45 (1971): 123–44; J. K. Zeman, “The Medieval Background,” MQR 50 (1976): 259–71; G. H. Williams, “German Mysticism and the P olarization of Ethical Beha vior in Luther and the Anabaptists,” MQR 68 (1974): 275–304; Steven E. Ozment, Mysticism and Dissent [Müntzer, Hut, Denck, Franck, Castellio, Weigel] (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973); Werner Packull, Mysticism and the Anabaptist Movement, 1525–1531 (Elkhart, Ind.: Institute of Mennonite Studies, 1976).

chapter 32.3

law & gospel: sectarian ecumenicity  1287

internal disciplines transcending any earthly state and never to be subsumed under one, a people characterized by the pursuit of holiness, separated from the world.

1288  the radical reformation

A Hutterite Family, by Christoph Erhard (1589)

chapter 32 33

Chapter 33

The Radical Reformation: A Comprehensive Perspective on the Shaping of Classical Protestantism

T he radical reformation was a tremendous movement

at the core of Christendom during the threescore years following Luther’s three great Reformation tracts of 1520. Embracing peasants and princes, artisans and aristocrats, the devout wives among them, and disillusioned humanists, it was as much an entity as the Magisterial Reformation itself and the Counter-Reform. To be sure, only by assimilation to the nomenclature imposed by these other two religious movements of the age can it be itself called a reformation. It was, rather, a radical break from the existing institutions and theologies in the interrelated drives to restore primitive Christianity and to prepare for the imminent advent of t he Kingdom of Christ. Pedobaptism, equated with circumcision (yet of i mperfectly defined sacramental effectiveness), remained the ultimate symbol for the Magisterial Reformers of the continuity of their territorial churches with the Old Church and through it with biblical Israel. Conversely, for the largest of the three components of the Radical Reformation, believers’ baptism was the symbol and the constitutive principle of the gathered church reconceived, no longer as integral to the corpus christianum, but as a people in covenant, a scattered remnant, ever anew being assembled by G od’s Spirit and his Word. Though Spiritualism, Anabaptism, and Evangelical Rationalism were by the end of our epoch clearly distinguishable interpretations of reformed Christianity, the cumulative impression is massive and overwhelming that these same three thrusts were themselves part of a s till larger upheaval of 1289

1290  the radical reformation

chapter 33

the strata of late medieval Christendom. The Radical Reformation drained the brackish pools and opened the sluices for innumerable religious currents long impounded in the interstices of l ate medieval Christendom, which were set in torrential motion by t he upthrust of solid blocks of reformed territories under kings, princes, and the magistrates of numerous citystates. Within the turmoiled flood of radical reform or restitution the fresh vitalities of the Reformation, its emphases such as solafideism, Christus pro nobis, biblicism, predestinarianism, and the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, were borne along swiftly to radical extremes. We have stressed the transmutation of these Protestant principles in conventicle, fellowship, and synod; but we have also been aware of the quickened flow of late medieval piety below the surface. To be sure, we have not solved the problem of the relationship of the Radical Reformation to the Middle Ages. In fact, we have only here and there reached back to medieval antecedents. In the Rhineland, for example, we gained perspective on the mystical component partly propelled by Luther himself into several Anabaptist groupings and into several Spiritualists, contemplative and revolutionary (Ch. 2.2). We took note in The Netherlands of Wessel Gansfort (1489) to suggest the way in which late medieval eucharistic piety could lead to conventicular Sacramentism (Ch. 2.4), and elsewhere (Ch. 11.3.d) how it could lead to several formulations of the celestial flesh of Christ. We reached back in Bohemia to 1467 (Ch. 9.1) to show in that region certain analogues of Hutterite proselyte rebaptism and the community of g oods, especially among the Minor Party of the Unity of the Brethren. In Spain we caught sight of permutations in Marrano piety and practice and even took note of an earlier analogue in Valencia and elsewhere (Ch. 1.2.c) to the upsurge of peasants and yeomen in the Peasants’ War. In Italy we caught something of the eschatological fervor in the train of Savonarola and of the philanthropic ardor of the proto-Evangelicals (Chs. 1.3 and 6) and we penetrated the Cottian Alps as of 1498 (Ch. 21.2) to take note of the syncretistic accommodation of the Waldensians in this one representative region, finding in the non-Protestantized dissidents among them plausible recruits for the radical evangelical movement in Italy. We reached back in the Swiss Confederation and southwest Germany to the Bundschuh of 1493 to ascertain the religious character and motivation of the social unrest that erupted catastrophically in the Great Peasants’ War (Ch. 4.1). We did not recount the history of the Reformed Savoyard Waldensians beyond the synod of Cianforan in 1532 to the limited guarantee in 1561 of their embattled caves and cabins in the upper Alpine valleys in the Treaty of Cavour,1 nor did we recount the history of the Lutheranized Bohemian 1  In this same year the last of the Calabrian Waldensians were massacred. Ernesto Poutierie, “La crociata contra i Valdesi in Calabria nel 1561,” Archivio Storico per la Calabria e la Lucania 9 (1939): 121–29.

chapter 33

a comprehensive perspective  1291

Brethren (Unitas) after the death of Brother Luke in 1528 to the Confessio Bohemica of 1575 and therewith Maximilian’s grant of toleration in the same year and their relocation in Moravia (whence their more common subsequent designation as the Moravian Brethren). However, our comprehensive narrative of the Radical Reformation, 1525–1571/79, within the interstices of a Christendom as reshaped by Magisterial Protestantism and the Council of Trent (1545–63), has sought to be topographically and topically complete from Spain to the Ukraine, from Anglia to Livonia. To this end, we followed the development of G ermanic Anabaptism from 1525 to the Frankenthal Disputation in 1571 and the translation of Menno Simons into German in 1575 (Ch. 31.1); of I talian Anabaptism in two strands, Italian Spiritualism and Italian Evangelical Rationalism in Italy itself often involving some of t he same persons from the first onsets of Protestant radicality in Venice (Chs. 21 and 22) to the deaths in the diaspora of Camillo Renato c. 1572, John Paul Alciati in 1573, and Francis Stancaro in 1574 (Ch. 29.6); and to the departure for Transylvania in 1574 of the sometime Anabaptist Unitarian Spiritualist Dr. Nicholas Buccella; of English radicalism from the latter-day Lollards to the fiery extinction of the London Anabaptist congregation in 1575 and the rise of Barrowism and Brownism (Chs. 14.4, 30.3.d); of t he Lithuanian Brethren from the first conventicles in Vilna (Ch. 15.1) to the publication of Simon Budny’s Evangelical Rationalist, Unitarian, psychopannychist, socially conservative De principalibus fidei christianae in 1576 (Ch. 29.4); of Mennonitism to William the Silent’s first act of toleration in 1577 (Ch. 30.2.d); of Hutteritism to the death of Peter Walpot in 1578 (Ch. 26.3); of Germanic evangelical Spiritualism to the composition by Valentine Weigel of h is proto-Pietist Life of Christ in 1578 (Ch. 31.3); of Transylvanian Unitarianism to the death in prison of Francis Dávid in 1579 (Ch. 28.3); and of the Polish Brethren from their beginning as followers of t he Swiss divines down through the early leadership of Faustus Socinus in 1579–1604 (Chs. 25, 27, 29.8, 29.9). Thus with the rehearsal of o nly selected recapitulations of r egional Church history before Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses, we have largely kept our narrative within the half-century framework of the years 1517–71/79, following in considerable regional, biographical, and doctrinal detail the extension of the three-pronged ecclesio-socio-doctrinal Radical Reformation as it took various shapes over against magisterial Protestantism. And we may therefore in conclusion simply observe that the Radical Reformation separated on principle from the reforming and reformed territorial churches of Protestantism and from states and nations remaining Catholic because it was carried along by two generations of earnest men and women already deeply alienated from the medieval Christendom that the papacy had so long spiritually neglected and that magisterial Protestantism was seeking piecemeal to reform. The Radical Reformation contained impulses which

1292  the radical reformation

chapter 33

were at once more archaic and more modern than the driving forces of classical Protestantism and the Counter-Reform. Henry Bullinger (Ch. 23.5), the most comprehensive of t he contemporaneous interpreters of the Radical Reformation, was tendentious in Der Widertäufer Ursprung (Zurich, 1560) in trying to derive the whole movement from a single source, which movement he subsumed under the name of only one of its components, namely Saxon Anabaptism, for the Radical Reformation clearly sprang up in many places from many sources; but Bullinger was right in apprehending it as something of a u nitary entity despite its diversity, of w hich he himself, as the first major typologist of radicalism, was quite aware—and not without some capacity for empathy, given that Bullinger had a cousin who embraced Anabaptism, that he was trusting of Laelius Socinus almost to the end (Ch. 24.2.f ), that more than any other classical Protestant he shared with many a r adical a f ascination with the Apocalypse (Ch. 11.4), 2 and finally that he more thoroughly and enthusiastically than any other magisterial divine wrote on the idea of the Protestant family under the stresses and challenges of the utterly new situation for the new married clergy (Ch. 20.2). Anabaptism in its sixteenth-century form first broke out contiguously in 1525 in Zurich, although analogous movements developed polycentrically soon thereafter and perhaps before. Bullinger, however, found its origin in Saxon Zwickau, and ultimately in Satan. 3 His magisterial interpretation was translated into Latin for the international community of clerics and scholars, and it was also translated, with amplification, for Dutch readers. Even a F rench version was projected. His earlier works against Anabaptists and Libertines had already appeared in several English translations. Bullinger continued, moreover, to write and publish on the subject right up to his death in 1575. The ecclesio-politically tendentious historiography of Zwingli’s successor in Zurich at the close of our period may therefore serve as the vantage point for a concluding glance at the Radical Reformation as a whole, because for one thing it was Bullinger’s work that established the basic pattern for the interpretation of the Radical Reformation by scholars in the traditions of the European state churches down to most recent times. Moreover, as a literary product falling well within the chronological frame

2  Married to a former nun, with her the father of eleven children, Bullinger it was whom Queen Elizabeth asked to for mulate the Anglican reply to her excomm unication by Pius V. Bullinger wrote one hundred sermons on the Apocalypse. 3  “Non e nostr is intemperiis, sed ex malita pr opria et suggestione diaboli, contra pur itatem doctrinae et nostr um ministerium, exortos esse Anabaptistas.” The following analysis of Bullinger’s work is based upon Heinold Fast, Heinrich Bullinger (Weierhof, Pfalz, 1959). The foregoing quotation and others are to be found on p. 93.

chapter 33

a comprehensive perspective  1293

of our narrative, and as a historiographical achievement of immense subsequent influence, Bullinger’s work will help us measure the extent of present-day reassessment of the sixteenth-century role of the Anabaptists and facilitate our concluding effort to see the whole Radical Reformation in a fresh perspective as in part the socio-spiritual environs of the confessional Magisterial Reformation. Admittedly, to select as our elevated ground Bullinger’s final polemic, which by its very title was limited to “Anabaptists,” would seem to exclude from our concluding survey of the scene some two-thirds of what we originally defined as constitutive of t he Radical Reformation, or alternatively to give indirect credence to his description of an ill-assorted band of pretentious or pathetic sectaries or come-outers lumped together without differentiation, no longer, to be sure, as “Anabaptists” but to the same effect as “Radicals.” Such, of course, cannot be our intention in view of the great effort that has been made in the preceding chapters to distinguish adequately several kinds of A nabaptists, Spiritualists, and of a t least three minor Reformed synods permeated and regrouped under the impact of ( largely Italian) Evangelical Rationalism. However distinguishable in their ideal forms, Anabaptism, Spiritualism, and Evangelical Rationalism could in a few instances be embodied in a single person for a phase of his life (e.g., Laelius Socinus and Camillo Renato); and Bullinger was not way off when he sought to deal with them all under the major available, pejorative term “Anabaptist” with its connotation of both heresy and sedition, while leaving out the (separatist) Sacramentists, so close in eucharistic sentiment to his own (non-separating) sacramentarian predecessor in Zurich, since a sacramentarian needed not to separate from the territorial church in receiving the parish communion in his or her own commemorationist/memorialist sense. The usefulness of Bullinger’s historiography, apart from its serving as a foil, is precisely that Bullinger after all took seriously, within the limitations imposed by his polemical and ecclesiastically parlous age, the full range of the Radical Reformation. Bullinger was right in seeing the Radical Reformation as a whole, even though he misnamed it, overlooked the diversity of its origins, and failed to heed the important differences among the groupings within the purview of his polemic. He had, however, the advantage of his geographically central location and was hence well acquainted with much more than the indigenous Swiss form of A nabaptism. He was in extensive correspondence and personal contact with Lower Rhenish, Frisian, Polish, Hungarian, Rhaetian, French, and English reformers. The last especially hung on his words when they came to deal with the outcroppings of t he Radical Reformation in England. He was in continuous correspondence with the Poles concerning Anabaptism and Antitrinitarianism, and with

1294  the radical reformation

chapter 33

the Italian Protestants in the Grisons and elsewhere who were coping with radicals. And he even unwittingly befriended some of t hese radicals, for example, Camillo Renato and Laelius Socinus. Moreover, the problem of immersionist, anti-Nicene Servetus was fresh in his mind when he wrote his last major work against dissenters and nonconformists. He played a role in the process that led to the decapitation of tritheist Gentile. He had long been familiar with the tenets of S chwenckfeld, and in the last year of h is life was occupied with the problem of a certain Schwenckfeldian who persisted in holding back from the local Reformed communion. Finally, the Zwickau prophets, Müntzer, Münsterites, and Libertines had long provided him, along with the other magisterial reformers, with an inexhaustible supply of e pithets and examples with which to supplement and reinforce the normal patristic and scholastic vocabulary of abuse, invective, and theological incrimination. Even though Bullinger was inadequate in his classification and typology, and wrong also about the genesis4 and the interrelationship among the main groupings, he was right in sensing that however great the variety, there was in fact something at work among all the radicals that set them apart. What was, then, his conception of the Radical Reformation that he firmly fixed in the minds of h is contemporaries who read his works and advisory letters and that he stamped upon the historiography of Reformation separatism into the present century? Strange to relate, Bullinger, as spokesman for Germanic cantonal Swiss Protestantism, felt obliged up to the end of his life to defend Zwingli from Luther’s charge that the Swiss sacramentarians were essentially of the same spirit as the Anabaptists! Luther had in mind, of course, the fact that Carlstadt (charged with sacramentarianism in Wittenberg, fanaticism in Orlamünde, and sponsorship in Rothenburg of the cause of the peasants in their war) was well received in Zurich and ended his career as professor at Basel. Yet Luther himself never specifically derived Swiss Anabaptism from Carlstadt or even Müntzer. It was, rather, Melanchthon who first made the connection in a s tatement preserved uniquely in the De anabaptismi exordio published by Deacon John Gast of Basel in 1544.5 Melanchthon singled out Nicholas Storch of Zwickau (Ch. 3.2) as the first to have scattered in Germany doctrines about divine dreams, direct revelation to the elect, the imminence of the Kingdom, and the disparagement of the external Word and sacraments in preference to

4  But for the important revision of the role of Müntzer in Hutian Anabaptism (Ch. 4.3.c), see Packull, “Seebass on Hans Hut.” 5  Fast, Bullinger, 94, says that ther e can be no doubt b ut that the cr ucial fragment from Melanchthon is authentic and unaltered by Gast, although he cannot locate it in Melanchthon’s known works.

chapter 33

a comprehensive perspective  1295

direct leadings from the Holy Spirit. For these Spiritualists, Bullinger himself used the term “Spirituöser.”6 It was Bullinger’s epoch-making decision to pick up this clue from Melanchthon as mediated by G ast. He also utilized clues from Sebastian Franck, who had said that Müntzer preached (although he did not practice) rebaptism,7 and from Caspar Hedio of Strassburg, who had connected Müntzer, the revolutionary Spiritualist, with Grebel, the evangelical Anabaptist.8 Bullinger proceeded to his scholarly loom and wove these strands into a pattern plausible enough to exonerate Zwingli and Switzerland from primary responsibility for the rise of socio-theological radicalism! He was confident that he had so well pieced together the clues and testimonies, some of t he evidence being drawn from Lutherans themselves, that he could justify his relocation of t he beginnings of a ll separatist opposition alike to Luther and Cranmer, to Calvin and himself, in Saxon Zwickau—in the spiritual environs of Wittenberg itself! Saxony, not Switzerland, was the spawning ground of a closely interrelated conspiracy of libertines, revolutionaries, fanatics, visionaries, blasphemers, rebaptizers, and communists! It was not, then, primarily the self-centeredness of e arly Lutheran divines and later scholars that has made the Saxony of Storch, Carlstadt, and Müntzer the original hearth of c ounter-Protestant sectarianism, but rather the scholarly and yet adroitly ecclesio-political effort of Henry Bullinger to vindicate the Swiss Reformation and to dissociate the Swiss sacramentarian Magisterial Reformation from the charges and insinuations that perturbed him to the end of h is life. The fact that Bullinger sent copies of his Ursprung to many princes, and even Queen Elizabeth, accompanied by letters expressly dissociating Zwingli and the Swiss churches from “the Anabaptists and other sectaries,” shows the extent to which the Lutheran charge weighed on him and his Swiss colleagues and also the satisfaction which he felt in proving massively that Swiss Anabaptism was derivative and not indigenous.9 The defensive character of Bullinger’s historiography was not an isolated phenomenon, but fitted into the Zurich, Baslean, Genevan, and Bernese actions against Mantz, Joris, Servetus, and Gentile to vindicate the orthodoxy of the whole Swiss Reformation; for it would not be until the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 that the Reformed Church would be fully secure in its constitutional place in the by then completely fragmented Empire, and

6

 Ibid., 19.  Chronica, 1531; Fast, Bullinger, 95. 8  The Paralipomena annexed to Chronicon abbatis Urspergenesis , ed. Hedio (1537); Fast, Bullinger, 96–97, and reprint of relevant excerpt in the appendix, 172–73. 9  Fast, Bullinger, 65–66. 7

1296  the radical reformation

chapter 33

that the Reformed churches in and outside the Empire would enjoy ecclesiastical parity with the Lutheran territorial and national churches.10 In attacking the Radical Reformation as at once Satanic and Saxon, Bullinger also manifested the characteristic concern of a territorial churchman to pillory the come-outer attitude of r adicals who either withheld themselves from participating corporately in the life and sacraments of the Reformed churches or who withdrew into separatist conventicles, and who in either case pharisaically dissociated themselves from the fullness of responsibility in Christian society at large. Bullinger divided the Anabaptists into the “general” (evangelical) group, largely defined in terms of the Swiss Brethren he knew best, and the “special” or marginal Anabaptists, among whom he distinguished twelve kinds. From the perspective gained after four centuries of polemic, apologia, and research since Bullinger’s reflections and compilation down to his death in 1575, we should be able to clarify the respects in which the Radical Reformation, despite its inherent divergencies, was in fact as he thought, something of a h istoric entity. We should be able to see how it was comparable to and distinguishable from the Magisterial Reformation and as such of tremendous interest not only in its own right but also as a hitherto theologically misunderstood and socio-politically underestimated force, the proper description and analysis of which enhances our understanding of classical Protestantism in all its achievement and otherwise unaccountable one-sidedness. While helping us to understand normative Protestantism, a fair delineation of the Radical Reformation is indeed also as requisite as a grasp of the Magisterial Reformation for our comprehension of the direction taken by Tridentine Catholicism. Let us recall to the stage the main groups and individuals in what—if for no other reason than because of the thousands of martyrdoms—may be considered as the tragedy of the Radical Reformation (1517–71/79). After glimpsing once again the dramatis personae as a company, we may spend the remainder of the chapter in reflecting upon the themes that have made of the three far-flung actions—the Anabaptist, the Spiritualist, and the Rationalist—a coherent, gripping, and dramatic unity. Regionally defined, we have seen how the Anabaptists grouped themselves into Swiss Brethren; South German and Austrian Anabaptists in the lines of John Denck, John Hut, and Pilgram Marpeck; the communitarian Hutterites; the Melchiorite (non-Chalcedonian) Lower German, Nether10

 Walter Grossmann admirably pursues the jur istic distinction among exercitum religionis publicum and privatum, and devotio domestica in the limited toleration authorized by the Treaty of Westphalia and thereafter in “Religious Toleration in Germany, 1648–1750,” Studies On Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 201 (Geneva: Institut et Musée Voltaire, 1982): 115–41.

chapter 33

a comprehensive perspective  1297

landish English, and Prussian Anabaptists in the line of Melchior Hofmann and Menno Simons; the revolutionary Münsterites in the line of Hofmann and John Matthijs; the commonly predestinarian, psychopannychist, antiNicene North Italian Anabaptists; and the increasingly anti-Nicene and immersionist Polish-Lithuanian Brethren, many of w hom were pacifists. The chronological priority of the Swiss Brethren, who happen also to have retained more or less intact but unspeculatively both a Chalcedonian Christology and a Nicene doctrine of t he Trinity, does not entitle them to be considered alone normative for sixteenth-century Anabaptism to the exclusion of t hose other self-disciplining rebaptizers, who were, for example, anti-Chalcedonian (in quite different ways: the Mennonites and the Marpeckians), anti-Nicene (the Polish Brethren), and anti-Lateran (the Italian sectaries). These seven primarily regional groupings with their variously associated doctrinal and disciplinary traits have also been brought schematically under three morphological types. For the most part the typology given at our point of d eparture has been confirmed in our detailed explorations. The Evangelical Anabaptists were the pacifistic Grebelians, Mennonites, Hutterites, Italian Anabaptists, Marpeckians, and Racovians. The Revolutionary or Maccabean Anabaptists thought of themselves in their eschatological zeal as especially summoned to use force in advancing the Kingdom. Besides the Münsterites in their last phase and perhaps the Huttian Anabaptists, proleptically (cf. the interim pacifism of Jehovah’s Witnesses in their comparable apocalyptic frame), there were in this category only the small following of Augustine Bader, who had messianic dreams, though he did not resort to force, and the Batenburgers, beaten Münsterites, who, having lost most of t he Melchiorite vision of t he original covenanters, were indeed calculatingly violent. The spiritualizing Anabaptists accentuated the mystical, sacramentarian, or predestinarian thrusts within the Radical Reformation as a whole and therefore came to minimize all the ordinances of conventicular Christianity, including even baptism and the ban—for example, John Denck, Christian Entfelder, Adam Pastor, Gabriel Ascherham, John de Ries, and Camillo Renato, who, especially in the last phases of their careers, bordered on or indeed passed over into evangelical Spiritualism or anti-Nicene Evangelical Rationalism. Michael Servetus, who influenced Claude of Savoy and the Polish Gonesians, is hard to classify because he was at once a speculative brooder and a proponent of the redemptive significance of the Catholic sacraments. These three socio-religious types of A nabaptism and the corresponding psychological dispositions among the leaders have been recognized throughout our narrative. Our terminology has been largely confirmed as to its validity in helping to distinguish the suffering servants, the militant heralds, and the watchful brooders among the Anabaptists.

1298  the radical reformation

chapter 33

At close range, however, the simply geographical designations have more often proved convenient because they have freed us from the necessity of being tediously specific as to the precise tenets, traits, and tempers of a given group or personage at a given moment; for these clusters of characteristics which are determinative for our over-all morphological classification have, in fact, in the shifting phases or in unrepresentative individuals, appeared ephemerally or sporadically and by c ontagion and interaction within just about all of the regional developments. By the end of our period, except for scattered pockets of survivors, all but the Evangelical Anabaptists had disappeared or been converted into something else. These Evangelical Anabaptists were well on their way toward “denominational” or confessional isolation, namely, the Mennonites (themselves divided into several mutually exclusive groups), the Swiss Brethren, and the Hutterites. More even than with Anabaptism, the nature of S piritualism has emerged from our narrative and analysis as variegated and complex. Here, too, we have observed diverse regional expressions of the phenomena which we have been willing to recognize as a r ecurrent tendency, without insisting always on demonstrable genetic relationships. Here, in fact, more than with Anabaptism, we have been content to point to analogies and temperamental types. For, unlike true sectarianism (i.e., Anabaptism), which is ecclesiological or constitutional in its external thrust, spiritualization, akin to mysticism, is a tendency that is largely dependent upon personal endowment and disposition and that therefore makes its appearance in diverse ecclesiastical settings. We have, however, recognized here also three recurrent morphological variants, namely, the evangelical or conventicular Spiritualizers (Schwenckfelders) along with the speculative and solitary brooders; the conformist Spiritualizers (Nicodemites, Epicureans); and the prophetic or revolutionary Spiritualists with initial or concluding careers as rebaptizers. This last grouping represents a slight adjustment and refinement of terminology and inclusion.11 The inspired prophets, who, like all spiritualizers, were also influenced by medieval mysticism, felt summoned by the very Spirit that once moved the Old Testament prophets (as forthtellers, retellers, foretellers) and the New Testament apostles, to serve as charismatic psychopomps of the apocalyptic age: John Baptista Italus who came north to Strassburg to warn the Emperor and the German princes of the wrath to come; Müntzer, who never practiced rebaptism; the Zwickau prophets; the prophets Ursula and Leonard Jost of Strassburg, who eventually submitted to rebaptism; Hofmann, who in Livonia, Sweden, and Denmark preached radical social change and egali-

11  In the Introduction to RR1 in 1962 and in the intr oduction to SAW, the terms were “Evangelical Spiritualists,” “Rational Spiritualists,” and “Revolutionary Spiritualists.”

chapter 33

a comprehensive perspective  1299

tarianism before his submission to rebaptism in Strassburg; John Hut, disciple of both Müntzer and Denck, apocalyptic preacher of repentance on the model of Daniel and John the Baptist; the three major Anabaptists of Münster, the two Johns and Rothmann, who all professed to speak new oracles of the Lord; and, to name two more, the erstwhile Anabaptists, David Joris and Henry Niclaes, both of whom professed to be authoritatively oracular in the power of the Spirit. Common to Spiritualists or various radicals in the Spiritualist phase was the stress on the divine immediacy either by way of the celestial flesh of Christ, the inner Word, or a Spirit-infusion. Common to most Spiritualists likewise was an antinomian streak that could in its mildest form be simply a stress on grace over against law but that could become excessive in an inner repudiation of all organization in church life, sometimes under the camouflage of prudential conformity, sometimes in the cultic flouting of normal ethical behavior. In respect to law, however, the prophetic Spiritualists stood apart from both the conformist and the conventicular spiritualizers in that these eschatologically intense revolutionary Spiritualists repudiated, not the laws of Moses and Christ, but the canons, and ordinances, and revived Roman codes of what they considered a moribund Christendom. With the zeal of prophets driven by the Spirit, they took very seriously indeed the corporate ordinances of the Kingdom they were seeking to usher in. The revolutionary Spiritualists, unlike the Libertines, were sensible of a great gulf fixed between God and man, and yet, like Müntzer, Hofmann (in his pre-Anabaptist phase), Carlstadt (in his middle period), Postel (in his last phase), and many lesser charismatic figures, felt called by the Holy Spirit or possessed of the Spirit in discharging a prophetic role. In contrast to spiritualizers, the socially radical Spiritualists took seriously the structures of church and society. They felt uniquely summoned as instruments of the Holy Spirit to usher in the social righteousness of the millennium under the fifth monarchy of Christ or the third age of the Holy Spirit. The evangelical or conventicular spiritualizers met in fellowships apart but had little use for the traditional sacraments and ordinances. Such were the Dutch Sacramentists, the Schwenckfelders, the Loists, and the speculative solitaries such as Franck. The conformist spiritualizers, while they might have conventicles of their own, also conformed in principle to the locally established churches. Such were the Libertines, the Nicodemites, the Familists, and speculative brooders such as Weigel. In the third main sector of t he Radical Reformation the Evangelical Rationalists stressed the rational approach to Christianity. They were seen to have been at the start akin to the prophetic Spiritualists in their eschatology based, however, more on the doctrine of e lection than on the experience

1300  the radical reformation

chapter 33

of the Spirit, and also akin in their sober biblicism to the evangelical Anabaptists. They were somewhat less diversified than either the Spiritualists or the Anabaptists, although they displayed several of the traits of both groups. Of the three synodal groupings of the Evangelical Rationalists, it may prove helpful for the originator of t he term (1958)12 to acknowledge that “Evangelical Rationalist” should be validated in the concluding chapter. Admittedly the term is most apposite for the Polish Brethren (of Little Poland, Ruthenia, Volhynia, and to a l esser extent of G reat Poland) as they came under the theological sway of Faustus Socinus and would finally adopt the Catechism of Raków, first in Polish (1605), then in Latin, soon in German, and then in several revised versions into the seventeenth century.13 The massive theological and ethical system of S ocinus was indeed Evangelical, that is, it gave precedence to the Gospels over the Old Testament in a C hristocentric Unitarianism, in which the Old Testament was still regarded as authoritative but as selectively superseded by the teachings and the actions of Christ. For Socinus, the Gospel of John was preeminent among the evangelia, partly because it sanctioned in his mind the preeminence of the Eucharist over the—for him marginalized or even superseded—ordinance of B aptism; and, while the Racovians would, despite him, continue their practice of c atechumenal immersion and the solemn but optional rebaptism of a dult converts, the seventeenth-century Brethren, especially after their exile in 1660, would not be able to perpetuate convincingly the immersionist convictions and practices of their sixteenthcentury immersionist Unitarian forerunners, Gonesius, Czechowic, Gregory Paul, Schomann. The term Evangelical Rationalism fits less felicitously the immersionist but socio-politically Old-Testamentarian Lithuanian Brethren under Budny and Prince Kiszka and perhaps even less congenially the TransylvanianHungarian Unitarian Reformed synodists. In a t raumatic moment—the three months’ debate between their Dávid and Socinus (Ch. 28.3)—the Transylvanian Unitarians set aside the antipedobaptist proclivity of t heir innovative superintendent and above all his conscientious refusal to countenance prayer to Christ or through Christ to God the Father. For Dávid, the preeminent evangel was that of Matthew, in its professing to uphold the Old Testament in every jot and tittle (Matt. 5:18). Their Reformed Unitarian synod was, moreover, integrated into a quadri-confessional, quasi-Erastian establishment (surviving in its ancient seats to the present day in Rumania and Hungary) and as such a n otable exception to the separationist thrust that has otherwise been a m ajor trait in setting the radical apart from the

12  “Studies in the Radical Reformation (1517–1618): A Bibliographical Survey of Research Since 1939,” CH 27 (1958): 48–69, 124–60. 13  Williams, Polish Brethren, Doc. 6–2.

chapter 33

a comprehensive perspective  1301

magisterial reforms. Nor was the New Testament so decisive for the Unitarian Christians of Transylvania as it was for the Polish Brethren reorganized under Socinus. Moreover the Transylvanian Unitarians had to accommodate to a Sabbatarian schism. Although the Unitarian Reformed synod of T ransylvania did not become in the end Sabbatarian, it would confront in the late sixteenth century a n eo-Judaism of e normous energization of t he whole Reformed populace—Unitarian and Calvinist—unlike anything faced anywhere else in Europe. These Reformed Magyars and Szeklers were quasi-proselytes to Judaism en masse on biblical grounds without any role by a (then wholly non-existent Transylvanian) Jewish community.14 And Transylvanian Unitarianism would into the eighteenth century bear the marks of this wrenching contest that involved the major Reformed synod as well. And Transylvanian-Hungarian Unitarianism thus survived as a muted variant of Evangelical Rationalism in its devotion to God as One and to Jesus as commissioned by Him to return from some secret place (for Francis Dávid was a psychopannychist) to complete the still unfulfilled assignment of ushering in the Last Judgment and the Kingdom of God. But although the present-day successors of Dávid in their still mostly territorial parishes of Transylvania and Hungary may not find my generic term most appropriate for precisely their unique survival and exceptional development over almost four-and-a-half centuries, still, their scholars, too, recognize that the three Evangelical Rationalist synods of the sixteenth century, so strongly influenced, all of t hem, by I talian and other nonconformist refugees, had their antecedents and lesser analogies in the philologically expert Evangelical humanism, the once common background of C atholic Evangelicals in Spain and Italy, the Marrano strand in Italian Anabaptism, and the conscientious and almost quixotic Antitrinitarian preoccupation of quite a few lay and conventual theologians of tolerance, prominent in our narrative, such as Ochino, Laelius Socinus, Gribaldi, Gentile, and Biandrata. Thus the term Evangelical Rationalists covers quite a few individuals and groupings smaller than the three Unitarian synods of t he three eastern realms, common to all of t hem having been the absence of the mystical component so prominent in much of both Germanic Anabaptism and Spiritualism. The proto-Rationalists were, to begin with, that party among the Italian Evangelicals who, as Valdesian “Protestants,” broke from the Catholic Church (Ch. 21), and, in time, became also disillusioned with the Helvetic form of Protestantism. They were a loose band of ethical reformed Christian monotheists, commonly of a ristocratic or clerical background, who were sustained by a predominantly individualistic piety and who shared (1) with 14

 See Williams, Lubieniecki, Plate 41.

1302  the radical reformation

chapter 33

the evangelical Anabaptists their pacifism and abhorrence of capital punishment, (2) with many Anabaptists and with the Libertines among the Spiritualists their eschatological confidence in the resurrection of the dead or the sleeping souls of the elect to rule with Christ at his imminent Advent, and (3) with the evangelical Spiritualists generally their minimizing or rejecting of Baptism. Characteristic, though not entirely distinctive, of these several Evangelical Rationalists was their disavowal of t he divine nature of Christ and their vindication of his plenary humanity and adoptive Sonship, whereby they hoped to remove his image from the heavy dogmatic frame wrought by the Nicene and Chalcedonian formulations and to point to Jesus Christ as fully and solely a human, the first fruits or earnest of that promised resurrection for all who would follow in his revealing way to be saved in the hope of v indication at the Last Judgment for their pacifistic, tolerant, and philanthropic endeavors. The Italian biblicists were Evangelical Rationalists who upheld the use of reason and the canons of mutual respect in Christian discourse and in their hermeneutics but solely on the basis of scriptural revelation and never, in the sixteenth century, on the basis of regarding reason as alone sufficient to ascertain religious (salvific) truth, or even as a source (as with scholasticism) supplementary to revelation, or as the universal ground of s ome philosophical preparatio evangelii (whether of E usebius or Thomas More’s Utopia). Faustus Socinus was in his rationalist modality as “sectarian” as any Hutterite or Mennonite. He was indeed a compulsive Evangelical in his confident self-possession of t he uniquely saving truth that solely through discipleship to Christ as exemplar and teacher of a body of specific precepts beyond those of Moses could anyone hope to be resurrected at the Last Day and rejoin the elect company of h enceforth immortal saints with Christ their Psychopomp before God and the heavenly host of angelic beings. We have seen how Evangelical Rationalists in the Italian diaspora succeeded in transforming, in varying degrees, three eastern Reformed synods into what constituted, by the end of our narrative, a third major geographical sector of the Radical Reformation, made up of the Transylvanian Unitarians under Francis Dávid (and his now conservative successor superintendents), the Lithuanian Brethren under Simon Budny, and the Socinians in Poland (the latter being the Polish Brethren with both Anabaptist and Calvinist residues transformed by F austus Socinus). In some respects, the Socinian or later Racovian Church was in the end an amalgam of the three main ingredients of the Radical Reformation, for even Spiritualism found expression in Socinus’ personal elimination of the ordinance of Baptism and in his programmatic reconstruction of the Minor Church into a school. This Spiritualist tendency was later reinforced by the banishment of the Socinians from Poland. Thereafter, Socinianism moved about as a d isembodied spirit capable of p ermeating diverse churches and fellowships in Holland,

chapter 33

a comprehensive perspective  1303

Germany, and England in the course of t he last third of t he seventeenth century and that following. The Radical Reformation in its three major thrusts was thus comparable to the Magisterial Reformation, which was likewise, as it happens, tripartite: Lutheran, Reformed, and Elizabethan. The Radical Reformation was a complex entity that kept Scripture central, that upheld in some form the two Dominical ordinances that Luther kept from the medieval sacramental system, and that retained in all three sectors the central, distinctive, and determining tenet of Christianity among the world religions, belief in the resurrection of Christ and the promise of his Second Advent to judge the quick and reward the resurrected dead. Thus far we have reviewed the important differences and gradations from Anabaptism through Spiritualism to Evangelical Rationalism. We have made a special effort in the course of the narrative to interrelate this three-pronged movement and the lives of its leaders and to connect them up with the lives and developments of t he Magisterial Protestant leaders and churches. Now, in this concluding chapter, we point out the inner coherence of the tripartite Radical Reformation and point up how it was at least as much an entity as tripartitely divided classical Protestantism itself, and, as such, a movement to be ranged alongside the Magisterial Reformation, the Counter-Reform, Renaissance Humanism, and Nationalism as one of the five major forces in the great age of discovery, reform, and revolt. The radicals were, first of a ll, engaged not in a r eformation of t he Church but, rather, in the restitution of t he Church, although they may well have been unwitting promoters of innovation. The radical movement, the career of which we have followed in diverse forms and regions, has been called a Radical Reformation, as we said, primarily to vindicate a place for it among the major movements of the Reformation Era. Actually, it differed from both the Magisterial and the Counter-Reform in its impatience with mere reform. It espoused, rather, a radical rupture with the immediate past and all its institutions and was bent upon either the restoration of the primitive Church or the assembling of a new Church, all in an eschatological mood far more intense than anything to be found in normative Protestantism or Catholicism. This intense expectancy, which marked almost the whole of the Radical Reformation and cut it off from the Catholics and Protestants, resulted from the widespread abandonment of the traditional view that the Church was living in the sixth age of the world (Ch. 11.4). Since the time of Augustine this age had been thought of as the millennium (of Rev. 20), during which the powers of Satan were being held in partial check by Christian magistrates. Its replacement by several competing and vexingly unharmonized eschatologies raised the hopes of the radicals in some phases and some localities to a feverish pitch.

1304  the radical reformation

chapter 33

We recall these various eschatologies growing out of t he Trinitarian scheme of J oachim of F iore (d. 1202). Working with the hermeneutical principle of concordance or typology (which presupposed the unity of God’s People) rather than mere allegory, Joachim (Ch. 11.4.b) had reworked and shifted Paul’s division of world history into three ages, ante legem, sub lege, and sub gratia, in terms of three typologically related and partly overlapping dispensations (1) of the Father, (2) of the Son, and (3) of the Holy Spirit. On the basis of calculations which would harmonize prophecies in Daniel and Revelation, Joachimites had assigned to each age a partially overlapping total duration of 1,260 years. The beginning of the age of the Spirit for the neo-Joachimites of the sixteenth century could be variously reckoned from whatever event in the past could be construed as the moment of the fall of the apostolic Church. For such a neo-Joachimite as Servetus, for example, the fall came with the accession of Constantine or with his Council of Nicaea in 325, which, in the latter case, would make 1585 an eschatological moment. For David Joris, Anthony Pocquet, and William Postel, the third age had begun with their respective conversions or rebirths. Rothmann dated the second fall c. a.d. 135 and adapted the tripartite scheme to construe the last phase of the second dispensation as a bellicose Davidic kingship preparatory to the third dispensation of Christ as the Second Solomon. Another reckoning, conspicuous in the revolutionarly Spiritualist Thomas Müntzer and in Anabaptists John Hut and Melchior Hofmann, is that based upon the Danielic-Hieronymic conception of f our empires or monarchies, of which the Roman was the last, leading to a Fifth Monarchy or Age, that of Christ’s direct rule of the saints. Especially interesting was the eschatology which saw in the woman seeking refuge in the wilderness (Rev. 12:6) the true Church identical with the beloved of the Bridegroom coming up out of the wilderness in Song of Solomon 8:5. Proponents of this eschatology found solace in the cultivation of their remnant Church as a provisional Paradise precariously maintained pending the advent of the millennium. We have also found the idea of the return of a combined Golden Age, Paradise, and primitive Church in varying strengths and permutations in Balthasar Hubmaier, John Hut, Melchior Hofmann, Menno Simons, Dirk Philips, Jacob Hutter, Michael Servetus, Camillo Renato, William Postel, and George Schomann. A more generalized millennialism, based upon a harmonization of scriptural and apocryphal prophecies, reinforced by v arious medieval prognostications, was the most common eschatology, because it was always amorphously amenable to fresh calculations in the light of c urrent signs and developments. Whether as a provisional paradise or garden enclosed, as the harbinger of the third Age of the Spirit or of Christ, as the outpost

chapter 33

a comprehensive perspective  1305

of the Fifth Monarchy of Christ the King, or as the gateway to the millennium, the churches of t he Radical Reformation were sustained and emboldened by the conviction that they and their often charismatic leaders were the instruments of the Lord of history in the latter days. It was this intense conviction within the Radical Reformation as to the imminent end of the age that diversely encouraged Laelius Socinus, Servetus, Gregory Paul, and Francis Dávid, no less than Schwenckfeld (called Eliander), Joris (the third David), and Thomas Müntzer (the prophet of the Fifth Monarchy). It was in this apocalyptic mood that John Hut, the revivalist baptized, using the cross as a sign upon the forehead in seeking to recruit the 144,000 saints of t he imminent millennial Kingdom; that Melchior Hofmann, the new Elijah, prophesied the descent of the heavenly Jerusalem in Strassburg; and that Camillo Renato described the outlines of the returning Golden Age under the fair auspices of C hrist. Everywhere about them the radicals experienced the outpourings of t he Spirit and beheld the other signs foretold by Isaiah, IV Esdras, Daniel, Joel, Malachi, and the Seer of the Revelation. It was their intense expectancy that warranted the repudiation by m ost of t he infant baptism of t he Old C hurch and justified the call for a final Johannine repentance, a complete change of mind and an avowal of sinfulness, and a regeneration of true believers, in order to escape the wrath to come. It was this same pervasive hope and fear that encouraged all the radicals to break completely from the inherent idea in, and the historically elaborated organs of, the medieval corpus christianum and to assume, as the early Christians did, either an attitude of indifference to the state as belonging to an eon that was passing or an attitude of m ingled hostility and provocativeness toward that which, even as it bore down in persecution and perpetrated martyrdoms, could but serve to confirm them in their conviction that they were at once pilgrims toward, missionaries of, and martyrs for, that City which would momentarily descend from heaven or emerge messianically from the debris of an age that was breaking asunder. Hence, almost all the radicals insisted on the utter separation of t he church from the state and found in the willingness of the magisterial reformers to use the coercive power of kings, princes, and town councilors an aberration from apostolic Christianity no less grievous than papal pretensions. It was again this apocalyptic confidence in an age over which Christ or the Holy Spirit would soon preside that called for the formation of new organs of self-discipline among true Christians as a substitute both for papal and episcopal excommunication and inquisition and for magisterial sanctions and oversight, namely, the restitution and practice of t he congregational ban in conjunction with the observance of the most sacred meal of the New Covenant in Christ.

1306  the radical reformation

chapter 33

It was, furthermore, this overwhelming sense of the dawn of the millennium or the final age that warranted the commissioning of new apostles to proclaim the acceptable time of the Lord. Not only the Anabaptists but also the less institutionally minded spiritualizers, such as Loy Pruystinck, Anthony Pocquet, and Henry Niclaes, regarded themselves as apostolic emissaries. Such diverse spokesmen of t he Radical Reformation as Hut, Hofmann, Marpeck, Hutter, Menno, Schwenckfeld, Servetus, Gonesius, Gherlandi, Postel, Palaeologus, Vehe-Glirius, Dávid, Il Tiziano, George Siculo, Gregory Paul, and Czechowic moved about and otherwise conducted themselves as commissioned from on high to proclaim a message of liberation to those who still sat in darkness, and emboldened them to act as apostles, however much several of these very leaders themselves might have decried the ecclesiastical pretensions of both the Protestant Reformers and the self-styled apostles among their rival fellow radicals. Only among the proponents of the Radical Reformation, as we saw, were the ordinations and divine commissions of the clergy of the Old Church scrutinized and often found deficient. Like the earliest Christians, the radicals counted the priesthood of t he old Temple as having lapsed with the completion of t he redemptive work of C hrist as the only High Priest. They derided the reinstitution of (eucharistic) sacrifice at the hands of any Pontifex Maximus and all priests deriving their authority from him, and they therefore proceeded to reordain their former priests and otherwise reconstitute the polity of God’s ongoing Israel, a priesthood no longer according to the flesh, a priesthood likewise no longer legitimized through the sacramental conduits of a postolic grace, clogged, as they would have said, with corruption. Perhaps it was the repudiation of t he older ordination, the prominence of the laity, and the conversion of the whole believing fellowship into a new People of God, a royal priesthood, a lay apostolate that most clearly set all the Radical Reformers off from the Magisterial Reformers. Although the latter, too, moved readily from colloquy to diet and disputation, and corresponded with a w ide range of magistrates and fellow clerics outside their own territories, they never felt called upon in the same way as the Anabaptists in particular to evangelize or conduct missions, some of t he magisterials (e.g. Calvin) expressly declaring that the apostolic office had lapsed in antiquity, while others were satisfied to think of t he nationalized bishops as the only authorized successors of the apostles (the late Elizabethan opponents of the Presbyterians). In any event, the Magisterial Reformers were concerned with institutional reform and doctrinal reformation but not with missionary expansion. In contrast, like the awakened Catholics, the Radical Reformers glimpsed the mission beyond Christendom as well as within.

chapter 33

a comprehensive perspective  1307

With the overriding conviction that they were living at the opening of a new age, the Radical Reformers had begun, moreover, to alter their conception of t he redemptive role of Christ, without being themselves at first fully conscious of the extent of the displacement. No longer a self-sacrificing High Priest, Christ was to them primarily the suffering exemplar and the vindicating Lord, or t he inner self-substantiating Word. In their intensely eschatological mood, the basic conception of the radicals as to what constituted salvation and as to what constituted Christ’s role in their redemption was being transformed. Without at first expressly repudiating the Anselmian doctrine of t he Atonement, but increasingly distressed by Luther’s preoccupation with justification in seeming theological aloofness respecting sanctification, and in any event disposed to look back to the humble Christ as exemplar rather than as sacrifice and to look forward to his imminent return as vindicator, they neglected or but routinely repeated the thought of Christ’s death as a ransom to the devil or as a sacrificial appeasement of Deity and concentrated, rather, on fresh surmises concerning, or substitutes for, the traditional versions of t he doctrine of t he Atonement. Competing or complementary formulations with respect to the objective Atonement jostled alongside each other in the ferment of fresh speculation and experience, from subjective justification and observable sanctification, through the conception of physical regeneration and eucharistic or baptismal deification or a fragile acceptilatio (Socinus), all the way to preparatory and apocalyptic perfectionism. All these formulations could purport to be no more than provisional, for definitive salvation lay ahead for the radicals no less than for the classical Protestant reformers, the latter more sober in their prognostication of the Last Judgment. Some of the radicals concentrated on the achievement of the state or experience of Gelassenheit; others on variously conceived mortification and regeneration; others on contemplative identification of the inner and eternal Word; others on the gospel of all creatures in redemptive suffering leading to clarification; others on the progressive deification through an immersionist rebirth in Christ or through sustenance upon the celestial flesh of Christ, either through inward mastication or through a disciplined Lord’s Supper; others on utter obedience to Christ and vindication at the imminent advent and resurrection; and still others on immediate enrollment in the true Church militant as the outpost and recruiting station for the advancing millennial rule.15

15

 Hans J. Hillerbrand, “Anabaptism and the Refor mation: Another Look,” CH 29 (1960): 404–23, is especially useful in concentrating on justification as a key theological category in distinguishing the Radical fr om the authentically Pr otestant Reformation. See also m y “Sanctification,” MQR 42 (1968): 5–25.

1308  the radical reformation

chapter 33

Anabaptism has been called an “Abortive Counter Revolt within the Reformation.”16 Indeed, the whole of the Radical Reformation might be called abortive. It was surely incomplete. Its utter repudiation of any sense of the sacramental solidarity of the Church through the centuries has today a limited appeal even to the direct descendants of the movement who today cherish above all their own spiritual lineage. But the radicals had a feeling for cosmic time and an intuition of the essential unity of a ll humankind, prospectively redeemed by Christ at Calvary or at his Ascension. They had a gripping conviction as to individual responsibility to witness to Christ in the world and a fresh awareness of covenantal responsibilities accompanying the radical Christianization of ecclesiastically hitherto neglected areas of human relationships so basic as the brotherhood of men of all classes, the equality of men and women, and the solidarity of all races of humankind before God who is not a respecter of persons. They had an emboldened sense of p ersonal accountability (Verantwortlichkeit) both before God and man in the implementation of the disciplined life of the churches, independent of the organs of civil society, and a new range of diversified experience and theory in the realm of t hat basic Christian transaction which is salvation. There were bigots, mountebanks, and scoundrels in the Radical Reformation. But the great majority of t he mighty host of men and women whose lives we have sketched communicate an overwhelming sense of their earnestness, their often lonely courage, and their conviction. They were aware of a providential purpose that informed their deeds. The bleakness, squalor, brutality, and frenzy of the vast scene in which they played their parts was relieved for them by t he intense assurance that they had that within the shadow of their crosses God stood keeping watch above his own. The cumulative effect of their testimony is that Christianity is not child’s play, that to be a Christian is to be commissioned. Despite the intolerant exclusiveness of the churchmanship on the part of some, or the serious alterations in dogma on the part of others, or their sublimation of t he sacraments, the brave men and women of t he Radical Reformation deserve to have their testimony taken down anew before the less partisan tribunals of another age. As to two of f our tenets widely held in the Radical Reformation, namely, believers’ baptism and the sleep or death of the soul pending the resurrection, it is a poignant fact that the greatest modern Protestant theologian who is the counterpart and in a s ense the successor of Z wingli or Calvin—who taught, as it happens, not in Zurich or Geneva but in Basel—was in accord with the once despised antipedobaptists and psychopannychists. With respect to a third tenet, it is a commonplace that the programmatic separation of c hurch and state has long been accepted by 16

 The title of an article by Lowell H. Zuck, CH 26 (1957): 221–26.

chapter 33

a comprehensive perspective  1309

the denominations of Christianity as a basic principle, a boon both for the churches and the state. Above all, with respect to a fourth tenet, the Great Commission, it is clear that the Protestant missionaries of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, with their concern for education, medical care, and personal conversions in Asia, Africa, and also at home in the domestic missions of the established churches and denominations, are as much the heirs of Marpeck, Menno, and Müntzer, with their doctrines of free will, and of personal accountability, along with their conviction as to the church’s transcendence of n ation and local culture, as they are of Luther, Zwingli, or Cranmer, with their doctrine of predestination, their preoccupation with, and almost exclusively corporate conception of, reform and their consequent neglect of the great commission to build up the waste places of Zion within and beyond the borders of historic Christendom. In the fullness of time the true martyrs among the radicals may come to be counted by all as revered members of that larger Church which is the communion of saints, the elect of every nation. Constitutionally, in the larger perspective of t he history of E urope, the revolutionary thrusts of the Radical Reformation also proved abortive. From the Sacramentist fellowships, through the peasant camp meetings and parliaments, and the self-disciplining Anabaptist conventicles, to the great and small synodal deliberations, from Venice to Vilna, the Radical Reformation in its main drive was at once individualistic, conventicular, and universalistic. It was the last great effort of t he peasants, yeomen and burghers within the late medieval Empire from the North Sea to the Adriatic, and even among the gentry in its eastern realms to reorder Latin Christendom according to evangelical precepts and on the basis of free association and individual accountability. That impulse that was to be in England constitutionally our permanent legacy from the age of the Civil Wars and the Commonwealth and a major resource in the evolution of modern Christian democratic critical pluralism was, in the aging Empire, ground up between the nether millstone of the particularistic territorialism of princes with the sanction of Magisterial Protestantism and the upper millstone of the Hapsburg domination of the Empire in the interest of one dynasty and a tightly redefined Catholicism. The ruthless suppression of t he Radical Reformation by P rotestant and Catholic patricians and princes led to the permanent disfigurement of the social and constitutional structure of c entral Europe, culminating in the treaties of Münster and Osnabrück, with their sanction of t he complete disintegration of the great medieval ideal of a universal Christian society. One need not agree with the religious tenets of t he Puritans in the English seventeenth century and the religious parties to their left, such as the Levellers and the Diggers, to recognize their indispensable contribution to the evolution of modern democratic society with its voluntarist groups,

1310  the radical reformation

chapter 33

party systems, and the concept of a loyal political opposition.17 Similarly, without being a M ennonite, a S chwenckfelder, or a U nitarian, one can readily perceive and acknowledge the unrealized constitutional potential of the Radical Reformation. It is a tragedy of central European constitutional history down into modern times, with two ill-fated attempts to restore the Empire in purely nationalistic terms, that back in the sixteenth century the evangelically motivated revolution of p easants, petty burghers, some knights, and some scholars, after being persecuted and crushed, did not undergo at least a b elated and constitutionally significant sublimation in some kind of glorious central European revolution.18 The Radical Reformation of t he sixteenth century had no Oliver Cromwell. Indeed, it did not for the most part believe in the use of force except here and there when baited into self-defense. The radical reformers were proto-pacifists or pacifists, and a surprising number spoke out against the capital punishment of criminals. Moreover, unlike their English counterparts a century later, and indeed the Calvinist freedom fighters in Holland at the end of the very same century, the radical reformers for the most part (with several Italian and Polish exceptions) eschewed the doctrine of predestination, a theological monopoly of normative Protestantism. They stressed instead sanctification and aspired, within their limits, to imitate Christ and the martyr-minded members of the primitive Church. Having in a few episodes resorted to apocalyptic force as in Mülhausen and Münster, they gave themselves over to the refinement of the biblical disciplines of the spirit in the fellowship of c ovenanters in a g ood conscience with God. But even when the echo of the theological testimony of these radicals fails to reach our inward ear across the centuries—either because we have formally more beliefs or fewer beliefs than they—it will be our recollection of their anguished courage in the face of the stern tribunals of their age that will prompt us humbly to salute them from afar as honored citizens of that larger community which is the commonwealth of the supremely motivated of humankind. They who read the Liber creaturarum, the Liber sapientiae, and the Evangelium in the School of Christ, assured by various tokens of renewal that they were covenanters of the ongoing Israel of faith, died confident in their election to live obediently at the suffering center of redemptive history in imitation of Him who taketh away the sins of the world.

17  I have reflected elsewhere on this theme. “The Religious Background of the Idea of a Loyal Opposition,” Voluntary Associations, ed. D. B. Roberston (Richmond,Va.: John Knox Press, 1966), 55–89. 18  Neither that of 1848 nor that of 1989 can claim antecedents in the Radical Refor mation, only the note that Polish Solidarity did hark back positively to the principle of belief-ful toleration of dissidentes de religione (Ch. 29.2), while the Czechs could remember the precedent-setting bi-ritual Peace of Kutná Horá (Ch. 9.1).

chapter 33

a comprehensive perspective  1311

Just as the classical Protestant Reformation on the basis of state and territory would eventually enhance the role of the universal papal ministry, in the nineteenth century finally extricated from the carapace of the Renaissance papal principality, so the self-disciplining conventicles, communes, and synods of the Radical Reformation with their sense of m ission, their rethinking of biblical revelation and the central doctrines of faith (once for all delivered to the saints), with their achievements in self-government and intra-communal nurture and tutelage, and even with their reconceiving the bonds of matrimony, all by conviction or by default largely in independence of t he organs of t he state, despite martyrdom and marginalization, would, eventually, provide models, precedents, and even recovered ingredients for the transformation of the established churches in their old seats in Christendom and in the propulsion of Christianity around the globe, until at length conscientious objection to war and capital punishment would be accorded statutory status in many a land even beyond Christendom, and the principle of religious and confessional toleration of even quite closed and intense religious bodies would become inscribed in the charters of global world organizations for peace, justice, and the environment.

1312  the radical reformation

Martyrdom of the van Beckum sisters

chapter 33

Bibliography Account of our Religion, Doctrine, and Faith … See Riedemann, Peter. Acontio, Jacopo. Opera [Latin text and Italian translation]. 2 vols. Edited by Giorgio Radetti. Florence, 1944–46. ———. Stratagems of Satan. Translated and introduction by Charles D. O’Malley. Occasional Papers of the Sutro Branch, California State Library, English Series no. 5. San Francisco: California State Library, 1940. Alatorre, Antonio. See Bataillon, Erasmo y España; and Williams, George H., La Reforma Radical. Albertrandi, Jan Chrzciciel. See Commendone, Giovanni Francesco. Alcala, Angel, and L. Bekés. Restitución del Christianismo. Madrid: Fundación Universitaria Española, 1980. Alexander, Paul. The Byzantine Apocalyptic Tradition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. Allen, Don Cameron. Doubt’s Boundless Sea. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1964. Allen, P. S., and H. M. Allen, eds. Opus epistolarum, by Desiderius Erasmus. 12 vols. Oxford, 1906–58. Allen, Wayne. “Hans Denck: A First Generation Radical Reformer.” Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 1985. Allgemeine deutsche Biographie. Hg. Historische Kommission bei der Konigl. Akademie der Wissenschaften. Berlin: Duncker and Humbolt, 1967–71. Alix, Pierre. Some Remarks upon the Ecclesiastical History of the Ancient Churches of Piedmont. London, 1690. Alonso Burgos, Jesus. El luteranismo en Castilla durante el siglo xvi: Autos de fe de Valladolid de 21 de mayo y de 8 de octubre de 1559. San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Madrid: Swan: Avantos & Hakeldama, 1983. Althaus, Paul. Die letzten Dinge: Lehrbuch der Eschatologie. Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1956. Andrés, Melquíades. Los “recogridos”: Nueva visión de la mística española (1500–1700). Madrid: Fundación Universitaria Española, 1976. Anderson, Marvin W. Peter Martyr, A Reformer in Exile (1542–1567). Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1975. Anderson, Perry. Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism. London: NLB, 1974. Angermeier, Heinz, ed. Säkulare Aspekte der Reformationszeit. Munich: Oldenbourg, 1983. Arbenz, Emil, ed. Die Vadianische Briefsammlung der Stadtbibliothek St. Gallen. 7 vols. Mitteilungen zur Vaterländischen Geschichte 24, 25, 27–30. St. Gall, 1890. Arbusow, Leonid. Die Einführung der Reformation in Liv-, Est- und Kurland. QFRG 3. Leipzig, 1921.

1313

1314  the radical reformation Arche, Guy-Jean. Le massacre des V audois du Luberon. Paris: Curandera, 1984. Armand-Hugon, Augusto. Storia dei V aldesi. Vol. 2, 1532–1848. Turin: Claudiana, 1974. [For vol. 1, see Molnár, Amedeo.] ———. See also Gonnet, Giovanni, and Augusto Armand-Hugon. Armour, Rollin S. Anabaptist Baptism: A R epresentative Study. Scottdale, Penn.: Herald Press, 1966. Arnold, Gotfried. Unpartheyische Kirchen- und Ketzer-Historie, von Anfang des Neuen Testaments bis auf das Jahre 1688. 4 vols. Frankfurt, 1699–1700. Arntzen, Marinus Johan. Mystieke rechtvaardigingsleer: Een bijdrag ter geoordeling van de theologie van Andreas Osiander. Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1956. Arroyo, Ciriaco Moron, and Manuel Revuelta Sanudo, eds. El Erasmismo en España: Ponencias del coloquio celebrado en la Biblioteca de Menendez Pelayo del 10 al 14 de junio de 1985. Serie Estudios de literatura y pensamiento hispanicos 5. Santander: Sociedad Menendez Pelayo, 1986. Audisio, Gabriel. Les vaudois du Luberon, une minorite en Provence: 1460–1560. Mareseilles: Association d’études vaudoises et historiques du Luberon, 1984. ——— “Chanforan 1531: Quel Changement?” BSSV 154 (1984): 25–38. Augustijn, Cornelis. “Anabaptism in the Netherlands: Another Look.” MQR 72 (1988): 197–210. Auer, Albert. Leidenstheologie im späten Mittelalter. St. Ottilie: Eos Verl. d. ErZable, 1952. Autour de Michel Servet. … See Becker, Bruno, ed. Averroes. The Incoherence of Incoherence. 2 vols. Translated by Simon Van den Bergh. London: Luzac, 1954. Azcona, Tarsicio de. I sabel la Católica: Estudio crítico de su vida y reinado. Madrid: Editorial Católica, 1964. Bach, Aloys. Urkundliche Kirchengeschichte der Grafschaft Glatz. Breslau, 1841. Bächtold, C. A. “Die Schaff hauser Wiedertäufer.” Beiträge zur V aterländischen Geschichte 7 (1900). Backus, Irena. Martin Borrhaus. BD 2. Baden-Baden: Koerner, 1981. Bailey, Richard G. “Melchior Hoffman: Proto-Anabaptist and Printer in Kiel, 1527– 1629.” CH 59 (1990): 175–190. ———. “The Sixteenth Century’s Apocalyptic Heritage and Thomas Müntzer.” MQR 57 (1983): 27–44. Bainton, Roland H. Bernardino Ochino, esule e riformatore senese del Cinquecento (1487– 1563). Florence: Sansoni, 1940. ———. Concerning Heretics. Records of Civilization, Sources and Studies 21. New York: Octagon Books, 1935. ———. David Joris, Wiedertäufer und Kämpfer für Toleranz im 16. Jahrhundert. Supplement to ARG 6. Leipzig, 1937. ———. Erasmus of Christendom. New York: Scribners, 1969. ———. Hunted Heretic: The Life and Death of Michael Servetus, 1511–1553. Boston: Beacon Press, 1960. Translated into Spanish as Servet, el hereje perseguido (Madrid: Taurus, 1972). ———. “The Querela Pacis of Erasmus.” ARG 17 (1951): 32–48.



bibliography  1315

———. “The Paraphrases of Erasmus.” ARG 57 (1966): 73. ———. “Michael Servetus and the Trinitarian Speculation of the Middle Ages.” In Autour de Michel Servet et de Sebastien Castellion, edited by Bruno Becker, 29–46. Haarlem: Willink, 1953. ———. “New Documents of Early Protestant Rationalism.” CH 7 (1938): 179–87. ———. “Servetus and the Genevan Libertines.” CH 5 (1936): 141–49. ———. “The Querela Pacis of Erasmus.” ARG 47 (1951): 32–84. ———. The Travail of Religious Liberty: Nine Biographical Studies. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1951. Reprint, Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1981. ———. What Christianity Says About Sex, Love, and Marriage. New York: Association Press, 1957. ———. Women of the Reformation. Vol. 1, I n Germany and Italy; Vol. 2, In France and England; Vol. 3, From Spain to Scandinavia. Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1971, 1973, 1977. Bak, Janos, ed. The German Peasant War of 1525. Special issue, The Journal of Peasant Studies 3, no. 1 (1975). Reprint, London: F. Cass, 1975. Balázs, Mihály, ed. Defensio Francisci Davidis and De dualitate tractatus (Cracow, 1581). BU 1. Utrecht: Bibliotheca Unitarioum; Nieuwkoop, The Netherlands: De Graaf, 1983. Balázs, Nagy Kálozi. Károlyi Péter. Budapest, 1967. Balke, Willem. Calvin and the Anabaptist Radicals. Translated by Willem Heyner. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981. Balma, Teodoro. “II pensiero religioso di Celio Secondo Curione.” Religio 11 (1935): 31–60. Barge, Hermann. Andreas Bodenstein von Carlstadt. 2 vols. Leipzig, 1905. ———. “Die gedruckten Schriften des evangelischen Predigers Jakob Strauss.” ARG 32 (1935): 100ff., 248ff. ———. See also Freys, E., and Hermann Barge. Baring, Georg. Bibliographie der Ausgaben der “Theologia Deutsch” (1516–1961): Ein Beitrag zur Lutherbibliographie. Baden-Baden: Koerner, 1963. ——— “Hans Denck und Thomas Müntzer in Nürnberg 1524.” ARG 50 (1959): 145–81. ———. See also Denck, Hans, Schriften. Barnes, Robin Bruce. Prophecy and Gnosis: Apocalypticism in the Wake of the Lutheran Reformation. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988. Baron, Hans. “Der Humanismus und die thomistische Lehre von den Gentiles salvati.” ARG 42/43 (1952): 256–63. Barón Fernández, José. Miguel Servet: Su vida y su obra. Madrid: España Calyso, 1970. Barret, Pierre. Le roi des derniers jours: L’exempliare et tres cruelle histoire des rebaptisés de Munster, 1534–1535. Paris: Hachete litterature genérale, 1981. Bartel, Oskar. Jan Laski (1499–1556). Part 1. Warsaw: PWN, 1955. Translated into German, Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1981. ———. See also Lau, Marcin Luter. Bartos, F. M. “Picards et ‘Picarti.’” Bulletin de la Société d’Histoire du Protestantisme Français 80 (1931): 465–86; 81 (1932): 8–28. Barycz, Henryk. “U kole¸bki malopolskiego ruchu reformacyjnego.” ORP 1 (1956): 9–12.

1316  the radical reformation Bataillon, Marcel. Erasmo y el erasmismo. Translated by Carlos Pujol. Barcelona: Editorial Critica, 1978. Originally published as Érasme et l’Espagne: Recherches sur l’histoire spirituelle du XVIe siècle (Paris : Droz, 1937). ———. Erasmo y España. 2d ed., translated by Antonio Alatorre. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultera Económica, 1966. (1st Spanish ed., Mexico, 1950). Originally published as Érasme et l’Espagne (Paris: Droz, 1937). ———. “Juan de Valdés nicodémite?” In Aspects du libertinisme au xvie siècle, 93–103. Paris: J. Vrin, 1974. Bauman, Clarence. Gewaltlosigkeit im Täufertum: Eine Untersuchung zur theologischen Ethik des oberdeutschen Täufertums der Reformationszeit. Leiden: Brill, 1968. Bax, E. Belfort. The Rise and Fall of the Anabaptists. New York: Gordon Press, n.d. Bax, Willem, Het protestantisme in het bisdom Kuik en vooral te Maatstricht. Vol. 1, 1505– 1557; Vol. 2, 1557–1612. The Hague, 1937–41. Baxter, Anthony G. “John Calvin’s Use of Hermeneutics of the Old Testament.” Ph.D. diss., University of Sheffield, 1987. Baylor, Michael. “Thomas Müntzer’s First Publication.” SCJ 17 (1986): 451–58. ———. “Thomas Müntzer’s ‘Prague Manifesto’.” MQR 63 (1989): 30–57. Beachy, Alvin J. “The Concept of Grace in Five Major Anabaptist Writers.” MQR 40 (1966): 163–78. ———. The Concept of Grace in the Radical Reformation. Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1977. Beck, Josef, ed. Die Geschichts-Bücher der Wiedertäufer in Österreich-Ungarn. Fontes Rerum Austriacarum 43. Vienna, 1883. Becker, Bruno, ed. Autour de Michel Servet et de Sébastien Castellion. Haarlem: Willink, 1953. ———. “Coornhert, de 16e eeuwsche apostel der volmaaktheid.” NAKG, n.s., 19 (1926): 59–84. ———. “De Theologia Deutsch in de Nederlands der 16e eeuw.” NAKG, n.s., 21 (1928): 161–90. ———. “Fragment van Francks latijnse brief aan Campanus.” NAKG, n.s., 46 (1965): 197–205. ———. “Nederlandische vertalingen van Sebastiaan Francks geschriften.” NAKG, n.s., 21 (1928): 149–60. ———. “Nicolais inlassching over de Franckisten.” NAKG, n.s., 18 (1925). ———. “Un manuscrit inédit de Castellion.” In Castellioniana: Quatre études sur Sébastien Castellion et l’idée de la tolérance, edited by Roland H. Bainton et al., 101–11. Leiden: Brill, 1951. ———. See also Coornhert, Zedekunst. Bell, Susan Groag, “Johan Eberlin von Günzburg’s Wolfaria: The First Protestant Utopia.” CH 36 (1967): 122–39. Bellardi, Werner. Die Geschichte der “christlichen Gemeinschaft” in Strassburg (1546–1550): Der V ersuch einer “zweiten Reformation.” QFRG 18. Leipzig, 1934. Bender, Harold S., “A Hutterite School Discipline of 1578 and Peter Scherer’s Address to the Schoolmasters.” MQR 5 (1931): 231–41. ———. The Anabaptists and Religious Liberty in the Sixteenth Century. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1970. First published in ARG 44 (1953): 32–50.



bibliography  1317

———. Conrad Grebel, c. 1498–1526, Founder of the Swiss Brethren, Sometimes Called Anabaptists. Studies in Anabaptist and Mennonite History 6. Goshen, Ind.: Mennonite Historical Society; Books on Demand, UMI, 1950. ———. “The Discipline Adopted by the Strassburg Conference of 1568.” MQR 1 (1927): 57–66. ———. “Menno Simons: A Brief Biography.” In Menno Simons, The Complete Writings, translated by Leonard Verduin, edited by John C. Wenger. Scottdale, Penn.: Herald Press, 1956. ———. “The Zwickau Prophets, Thomas Müntzer and the Anabaptists.” MQR 27 (1953): 3–16. ———. See also Mennonite Encyclopedia. Bendiscioli, Mario. “Aspetti dell’immigrazine e dell’emigrazione nelle carte dell’Inquisizione anti-ereticale di Milano nei secoli x vi–x vii.” Archivio Storico Lombardo, 9th ser., no. 1 (1961). [Beneficio de Cristo]. Trattato utilissimo del beneficio di Gesù Cristo crocifisso verso i cristiani (1543). Critical edition with sixteenth-century quarto, translated by Salvatore Caponetto. DeKalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois University Press, 1972–. Spanish translation by José A. Pistonesi (Buenos Aires and Mexico City, 1942–). English translation by Ruth Prelowski [Liebowitz] in Italian Reformation Studies (q.v.), 21–102. ———. See also Ginzburg and Prosperi, “Le due redazionidel Beneficio di Cristo.” Benrath, Karl. Bernardino Ochino von Siena: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Reformation. Leipzig, 1875. 2d ed., Braunschweig, 1982. Translated into English as Bernardino Ochino of Siena: A Contribution toward the History of the Reformation (New York, 1877). ———. Geschichte der Reformation in V enedig. Halle, 1886. ———. “Wiedertäufer im Venetianischen um die Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts.” Theologische Studien und Kritiken 43 (1885): 9–67. Bensing, Manfred. Thomas Müntzer und der Thüringer Aufstand 1525. Berlin: VEB Deutscher Verlag der Wissenshaften, 1966. 3d ed., Leipzig: VEB Bibliographisches Institut, 1983. Berner Täufertum und Reformation im Dialog: Eine Ausstellung zum 450 jährigen Jubiläum der Täuferdisputation in Bern 1538–1988, 8. Mai bis 26. Juni 1988 im Bernischen Historischen Museum. Bern: Das Museum, 1988. Bernhard, Joseph, Susannah Winkwork, and Willard R. Traks, eds. Theologia Deutsch. New York: Rinn, 1949. Benz, Ernst, Adam: Der Mythus vom Urmenschen. Munich: Kohlhammer, 1955. Berichte der Augenzeugen über das münsterische. Wiedertäuferreich. Die Geschichtsquellen des Bistums Münster 2; Veröffentlichung der Historischen Kommission für Westfalen 3. Müntser: Aschendorff, 1983. Bergsten, Torsten. Balthasar Hubmaier: Anabaptist Theologian and Martyr. Edited by W. R. Estep Jr. Translated from the German by Irwin J. Barnes and William R. Estep. Valley Forge, Penn.: Judson Press, 1978. ———. Balthasar Hubmaier, seine Stellung zu Reformation und Täufertum, 1551–1528. Kassel: Oncken, 1961. ———. “Pilgram Marpeck und seine Auseinandersetzung mit Caspar Schwenckfeld.” Kyrkohistorisk, Årsskrift 42 (1957): 53ff. ———. See also Hubmaier, Schriften.

1318  the radical reformation Bermann, Cornelius. Die Täuferbewegung im Canton Zurich bis 1600. Quellen und Abhandlungen zur Schweizerischen Reformationsgeschichte 2. Leipzig, 1916. Berti, Domenico. “Di Giovanni Valdés e di taluni suoi discepoli.” Atti dell’Accademia dei Lincei, 3d ser., no. 2 (1877–78): 61ff. Bertola, Arnaldo. See Studi sui riformatori. Betschart, Ildefons. Theophrastus Paracelsus, der Mensch an der Zeitwende. 2d ed. Einsiedeln, 1942. Betts, R. R. “The Social Revolution in Bohemia and Moravia in the Later Middle Ages.” Past and Present 2 (November 1952): 24–31. Beulshausen, Heinrich. Geschichte der osthessischen Täufergemeinden. Beiträge zur deutschen Philologie 53. Giessen: W. Schmitz, 1981. Biaso, L. de. “Fermenti ereticali in Friuli nella seconda metà del secolo x vi.” Unpublished thesis, University of Padua, 1967. Bibliotheca Antitrinitariorum. Compiled by Christopher Sand (Sandius), pub. posthumously by Benedict Wiszowaty, Amsterdam, 1684. Facsimile edition with preface and index to original numbers by Lech Szczucki. Varsovia, 1967. Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum, quos Unitarios vocant. 9 vols. Amsterdam, 1656. Bierbauer, Peter. “Das Göttliche Recht und die naturrechtliche Tradition.” In Blickle, Bauer, Reich und Reformation (q.v.). Bilder und Führergestalten aus dem Taufertum. 2 vols. Kassel: Oncken, 1928–52. Biondi, Albano. “La giustificazione della simulazione nel Cinquecento.” In Eresia e Riforma nell’Italia, edited by Luigi Firpo et al., 2 v ols. Chicago: Northern Illinois University Press, 1974. Bitskey, Istvan. Hitvitak tuzeben. Magyar historia. Budapest: Gondolat, 1979. Blackburne, Francis. A Short Historical View of the Controversy concerning an Intermediate State and the Separate Existence of the Soul between Death and the General Resurrection. 2d ed. London, 1772. Blandrata, Jorge. Confessio antitrinitaria. Edited by H. P. C. Henke. Helmstadt, 1794. Blancke, Fritz. Aus der Welt der Reformation. Zurich-Stuttgart: Zwingli Verlag, 1960. ———. “Beobachtungen zum ältesten Täuferbekenntnis.” ARG 37 (1940): 246ff. ———. Brüder in Christo: Die Geschichte der ältesten Täufergemeinde. Zurich: Zwingli Verlag, 1955. ———. “Das Reich der Wiedertäufer zu Münster, 1534–1535. I. Die äusseren Vorgänge.” ARG 37 (1940): 13–37. ———. “The First Anabaptist Congregation, Zollikon: 1525.” MQR 27 (1953): 17–33. Blaser, Klauspeter. Calvins Lehre von den drei Ämtern Christi. Zurich: EVZ Verlag, 1970. Blaurer, Thomas. See Schiess, Traugott, Briefwechsel. Blickle, Peter, ed. Aufruhr und Empörung? Studien zum bäuerlichen Widerstand im Alten Reich. Munich: Beck, 1890. ———, ed. Bauer, Reich und Reformation: Festschrift für Günther Franz zum 80. Geburtstag am 23. Mai 1892. Stuttgart: Ulmer, 1982. ———, ed. Der Deutsche Bauernkrieg von 1525. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1985.



bibliography  1319

———. Gemeindereformation: Die Menschen des 16. Jahrhunderts auf dem Weg zum Heil. Studienausgabe. Munich: Oldenbourg, 1987. ———. Die Revolution von 1525. 2d ed., Munich: Oldenbourg, 1987. ———, ed. Revolte und Revolution in Europa. Historische Zeitschirft 4. Munich, 1974. ———. The Revolution of 1525: The German Peasants’ War from a New Perspective. Translated by Thomas A. Brady and H. C. Erik Midelfort. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981. ———. Zugänge zu bäuerlichen Reformation. Bauer und Reformation 1. Zurich: Chronos, 1987. ———, ed. Zwingli und Europa: Referate und Protokoll des Internationalen Kongresses aus Anlass des 500. Geburtstages von Huldrych Zwingli vom 26. bis 30 Marz 1984. Zurich: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1985. Bloody Theater of the Martyrs’ Mirror. See Braght, Thielman van. Blough, Neal. Christologie Anabaptiste: Pilgram marpeck et l’humanité du Christ. Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1984. Bock, Friedrich Samuel. Friderici Samuelis Bock Historia antitrinitariorum, maxime Socinianismi et Socinianorum quorum auctores, promotores … recensentur. Leipzig: Zentralanitquariat der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, 1978. ———. Memorabilia Uniariorum acta in Prussia. Königsberg, 1753. Böhmer, Heinrich. Gesammelte Aufsätze. Gotha, 1926. ———. “Thomas Müntzer und das jüngste Deutschland.” In Gesammelte Aufsäte. Gotha, 1926. ———, and P. Kirn. Thomas Müntzers Briefwechsel auf Grund der Handschriften und ältesten V orlagen. Leipzig, 1931. Bonger, H. De motiviering van de godsdienstvrijheid bij Coornhert. Arem, 1954. ———. Dirck V olckertszoon Coornhert: Studie over een nuchter en vroom Nederlander. Lochem, [1941]. Bonorand, Conradin. “Joachim Vadian und die Täufer.” Schweizer Beiträge zur Allgemeinen Geschichte 11 (1953): 43–72. Borbély, I. A magyar unitárius egyház hitlevei a xv i században. Kolozsvár, 1914. Bornhäuser, Christoph. Leben und Lehre Menno Simons. Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag, 1973. Bornkamm, Heinrich. Mystik Spiritulismus und die Anfänge des Pietismus im Luthertum. Giessen, 1926. Bossert, Gustav. “Augustin Bader von Augsburg, der Prophet und König, und seine Genossen.” ARG 10 (1912): 117–65, 208–41, 295–349; 11 (1913): 29–72, 103–33, 176–99. ———. Quellen zur Geschichte der Wiedertäufer. Vol 1, Herzogtum Württemberg. Leipzig, 1930. Botar, I. Ujabb adatok Dávid Ferenc életéhez. Budapest, 1955. Botta, Istvan. Melius Peter ifjusaga: A magyarorszagi reformacio lutheri eshelvet iranyai elkulonulesenek kezdete. Humanizmus es reformáció 7. Budapest: Akademiai Kiado, 1978. Boulding, Elsie. The Underside of History: A V iew of Women Through Time. Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 1976.

1320  the radical reformation Bouterweck, Karl W. Zur Literatur und Geschichte der Wiedertäufer, besonders in den Rheinlanden. Bonn, 1864. Bouwsma, William J. Concordia Mundi: The Career and Thought of Guillaume Postel (1510– 1581). Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957. ———. John Calvin: A Sixteenth Century Portrait. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. Bouyer, Louis. Autour d’Érasme: Études sur le christianisme des humanistes catholiques. Paris: Èditions du Cerf, 1955. English translation, London: Chapman, 1959. Boyd, Stephan. “Anabaptism and Social Radicalism in Strasbourg, 1528–1532.” MQR 63 (1989): 58–76. ———. “Community as Sacrament in the Theology of Hans Schlaffer.” In Anabaptism Revisited, Festschrift for C. J. Dyck, edited by Walter Klaassen. Scottdale, Penn.: Herald Press, 1991. ———. Pilgram Marpeck: His Life and Social Theology. Durham: Duke University Press, 1991. Bozza, Tommaso. Nuovi studi sulla Riforma in Italia. Vol. 1, I l Benificio di Cristo. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e letteratura, 1976. Bradford, John. Works. 2 vols. Edited by Aubrey Townsend. Cambridge, 1848–53. Brady, Thomas A., Jr. Ruling Class, Regime and Reformation at Strasbourg. Leiden: Brill, 1978. ———. Turning Swiss: Cities and Empire, 1450–1550. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Braekman, Émile-Michel. “Un cas de dissidence à A nvers: Eloy Pruystinck.” In Les Dissidents du XVIe siècle entre l’humanisme et le catholocisme, edited by Marc Lienhard, 191–204. BD Scripta Studine I. Baden-Baden: Koerner, 1983. Brauer, Siegfried. “Die Vorgeschichte von Luthers ‘Ein Brief ’ und die Fürsten zu Sachsen.” Luther-Jahrbuch 67 (1980): 40–70. Bräuer, Siegfried, and Helmar Junghans. Der Theologe Thomas Müntzer: Unter suchungen zu seiner Entwicklung und Lehre. Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1989. Braght, Thielman van. The Bloody Theater of “Martyrs’ Mirror.” Translated by Joseph F. Sohm. Scottdale, Penn.: Herald Press, 1951. Brandt, Otto. Thomas Müntzer, sein Leben und seine Schriften. Jena: E. Diedericks, 1933. Brecht, Martin. “Der theologische Hintergrund der Zwölf Artikel der Bauernschaft in Schwaben von 1525.” ZKG 86 (1974): 174ff. ———, and Hannes Maria Aleman. “The Songs of the Anabaptists in Münster and Their Hymnbook.” MQR 59 (1985): 362–66. Brendler, Gerhard. Thomas Müntzer: Geist und Faust. Berlin: VEB Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1989. Brendler, Gerhard, and Adolf Laube, eds. Der deutsche Bauernkrieg 1524/25. Berlin, 1977. Bridenthal, Renate, and Claudia Koontz, eds. Becoming V isible: Women in European History. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Brisson, Ervin Carson, Jr. “Hans Denck’s ‘Der Micha Commentar’: An Annotated Translation.” Ph.D. diss., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, 1987. Brock, Peter. “A Polish Anabaptist [Martin Czechowic] against War.” MQR 52 (1978): 279–93. ———. The Political and Social Doctrines of the Unity of the Czech Brethren. The Hague, 1957.



bibliography  1321

Bromiley, Fritz, ed. Zwingli and Bullinger. LCC 23. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1953. Brons, Anna. Ursprung, Entwicklung und Schicksale der altevangelischen Taufgesinnten oder Mennoniten. Norden, 1884. Brown, George Kenneth. Italy and the Riformation to 1550. Oxford, 1933. Brown, O. J. “John Laski: A Theological Biography.” Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1967. Brückner, Aleksander. Róznowiercy polscy. Edited by Lech Szczucki. Warsaw, 1962. Brune, Friedrich. Der Kampf um eine evangelische Kirche im Münsterland 1520–1802. Witten: Luther Verlag, 1966. Bubenheimer, Ulrich. “Andreas Rudolff Bodenstein von Karstadt: Sein Leben, seine Herkunft, und seine inner Entwicklung.” In Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, 1480– 1541, Festschrift der Stadt Karlstadt. Karlstadt: Michel-Druck, 1980. ———. Consonantia Theologiae et Iurisprudentiae: Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt als Theologe und Jurist zwischen Scholastik Reformation. Tübingen: Mohr, 1977. ———. Thomas Müntzer: Herkunft und Bildung. SMRT 46. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1989. Bucer, Martin. Opera latina. See Krebs and Rott, Quellen …. ———. Strassburg und Münster im Kampf um den rechten Glauben 1531–1534. Martin Bucers deutsche Schriften. Vol. 5, Martini Buceri Opera omnia. Edited by Robert Stupperich. Gütersloh: Mohn, 1978. Buchholz, August. “The Formaninghe of Melchior Hofmann.” In Festschrift Ober pfarrer Taube zu Riga. Riga, 1856. Buck, Lawrence P., and Jonathan W. Zophy, eds. The Social History of the Reformation. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1972. Bücking, Jurgen. Michael Gaismaire: Reformer, Sozialrebell, Revolutionär; Seine Rolle im Tiroler “Bauernkrieg” (1525/32). Spätmittelalter und frühe Neuzeit 5. Stuttgart: KlettCotta, 1978. Bucsay, Mihály. Der Protestantismus in Ungarn. 1521–1978: Ungarns Reformationskirchen in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Vienna: Bohlau, 1977–79. ———. Geschichte des Protestantismus in Ungarn. Stuttgart, 1959. Budka, Wlodzimierz. “Szymon Zacius, pierswzy superintendent zborów litewskich.” RwP 2 (1972): 288–93. Budny, Szymon. O urze¸dzierwsze miecza uzywaja¸ cym. 1583. Facsimile reprint, Warsaw: S. Kot, 1932. Buisson, Ferdinand. Sébastien Castellion, sa vie et son œuvre (1515–1563): Étude sur les origines du protestantisme libéral français. 2 vols. Paris, 1892. Bullinger, Heinrich. An Holesome Antidotus or Counter-Poysen against the pestylent heresye and secte of the Anabaptistes. London, 1548. ———. Korrespondenz mit den Graubündern. 3 vols. Quellen zur Schweizer Geschichte 23–25. Edited by Traugott Schiess. Basel, 1904–06. ———. Quomodo agendum et disputandum sit cum Catabaptistis. See Fast and Yoder, “How to Deal with Anabaptists.” ———. Reformationsgeschichte. 3 vols. Edited by J. J. Hotinger and H. H. Vögeli. Frauenfeld, 1838–40. ———. See also Bromiley, Zwingli and Bullinger; and Fast and Yoder, “How to Deal with Anabaptists.”

1322  the radical reformation Buonaiuti, Ernesto. “Il Sinodo di Cianforan.” Ricerche Religiose 10 (1934). Burgard, Georgette Epiney. “La mystique allemande et l’Anabaptimse à A ugsbourg 1526–1561.” RTP, 3d ser., 34 (1984): 13–28. Burkhart, Irvin E. “Menno Simons on the Incarnation.” MQR 4 (1930): 113ff, 178ff; 6 (1932); 122ff. Burnat, Eugène. Lélio Socin. Vevey, 1894. Burns, Norman. Christian Mortalism from Tyndale to Milton. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972. Burrage, Champlin. The Church Covenant Idea: Its Origins and Its Development. Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1904. ———. The Early English Dissenters in Light of Recent Research. 2 vols. Cambridge, 1912. Reprint, New York: Russell & Russell, 1967. Buruma, Y. Het huwelijk der doopsgezinden in de zestiende eeuw. Amsterdam, 1911. Busser, Fritz. “Zwingli and the Church: Observations on Zwingli’s Actual Ecclesiology.” Zwingliana 16 (1983): 186–200. Bussi, Rolando, ed. Libri, idee e sentimenti religiosi nel Cinquecento italiano: 3–5 aprile 1986. Modena: Panini, 1987. Busson, Henri. La Pensée religieuse française de Charron à Pascal. Paris, 1933. ———. Le Rationalisme dans la littérature française de la Renaissance (1533–1601). 2d ed. Paris, 1957. ———. Les Sources et le développement du rationalisme. Paris, 1922. Büttner, Thomas, and Ernst Werner. Circumcellionen und Adamiten: Zwei Formen mittelalterlicher Haeresie. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1959. Caccamo, Domenico. Eretici italliani in Moravia, Polonia, Transilvania (1558–1611). DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1970. Calonymus, Calo. Subtilissimus liber Averois qui dicitur Destructio destructionum philosphi. … Translated by Beatrice Zedler. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1961. ———. Tahafut al-tahafut (The Incoherence of Incoherence). 2 vols. Translated by Simon Van den Berg. London: Luzac, 1978. Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Edited by John T. McNeill and Ford Lewis Battles. LCC 20. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960. ———. Opera quae supersunt omnia. 58 vols. Braunschweig and Berlin, 1863–1900. ———. Psychopannychia. Quellenschriften zur Geschichte des Protestantismus 13. Edited by Walther Zimmerli. Leipzig, 1932. ———. Tracts Relating to the Reformation. 3 vols. Translated by Henry Beveridge. Edinburgh, 1844–51. ———. Treatises against the Anabaptists and against the Libertines. Translated and edited by Benjamin Wirt Farley. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1982. ———. See also Lazzaro, Ralph, “Cuatro cartas.” Cameron, Euan. The Reformation of the Heretics: The Waldensians in the Alps, 1480–1580. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984. Camillo Renato. See Renato, Camillo. Campbell, Ulrich. Historia Raetica. 2 vols. Quellen zur schweizer Geschichte. Edited by P. Plattner. Basel, 1887–90.



bibliography  1323

Cantimori, Delio. “Anabattismo e neoplatonismo nel x vie secolo in Italia.” Rendiconti della Classe di Scienze Morali, Storiche e Filologiche Reale Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. 6th ser., 11 (1936). ———. Eretici italiani del Cinquecento: Ricerche storiche. Florence, 1939. ———. Italiani a Basilea e a Zurigo nel Cinquecento. Rome, 1947. ———. “La Riforma in Italia.” In Problemi storici e o rientamenti storiografici, edited by Ettore Rota. Como, 1942. ———. “Matteo Gribaldi Mofa e l ’università di Tubinga.” Bollettino Storio-Bibliografico Subalpino 35 (1933): 492–504. ———. “Nicodemismo e speranze conciliari nel Cinquecento Italiano.” In Contributi alla storia del Concilio di Trento e della Controriforma, edited by Luigi Russo, 12–23. Quaderni di “Belfagor” 1. Florence, 1948. ———. Per la Storia degli Eretici Italiani del Secolo XVI in Europa. Rome, 1937. ———. “Profilo di Giorgio Biandrata saluzzese.” Bollettino Storico-Bibliografico Subalpino 38 (1936): 352–402. ———. See also Geneva e l’Italia. ———, and Elizabeth Feist. Per la storia degli eretici italiani del secolo XVI in Europa: Testi raccolti. Rome, 1937. Cantù, Cesare. Gli eretici d’Italia: Discorsi storici. 3 vols. Turin, 1865–67. Caponetto, Salvatore. Aonio Paleario (1502–1570) e la riforma protestante in Toscana. Turin: Claudiana Editrice, 1979. ———. “Origini e caratteri della Riforma in Sicilia.” Rinascimento 7 (1956): 219–330. Cárcel, Ricardo. “La Inquisición y los moriscos valencianos: Anatomia de una represión.” In Actas de las Jornadas de arabe e islámica, 401–18. Madrid: Instituto Hispano-Arabe de Cultura, 1981. Casadei, Alfredo. “Donne della Riforma italiana: Isabella Bresegna.” Religio 13 (1937): 6–63. ———. “Lisia Fileno e Camillo Renato.” Religio 15 (1939): 356–440. Cassirer, Ernst, Paul Oskar Kristeller, and John Hermann Randall. The Renaissance Philosophy of Man. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948. Castellán, Ángel. “Juan de Valdés y el circulo de Nápoles.” In Cuadernos de Historia de España 35/36: 202–73; 37/38: 199–291; 39/40: 261–308; 41/42: 136–223; 43/44: 188–242. Buenos Aires, 1962–67. Castellioniana: Quatre études sur Sébastien Castellion et l’idée de la tolérance. Edited by Roland H. Bainton, Bruno Becker, Marius Valkoff, and Sape van der Wende. Leiden: Brill, 1951. ———. See also Becker, “Un manuscrit inédit”; Radetti, Fede, dublio e tolleranza. Castiglione, T. R. “La ‘impietas Valentini Gentilis’ e il corruccio di Calvino.” In Geneva e l’Italia: Raccolta di studi, edited by Delio Cantimore et al., 149–76. Florence, 1959. ———. “Valentino contra Calvino.” In Studia nad arianizmen, edited by Ludwik Chmaj, 49–71. Warsaw: PWN, 1959. Cavard, Pierre. Le Procès de Michel Servet à V ienne. Vienna, 1953. Cegna, Romolo. “I Valdesi di Moravia nell’ultimo Medio Evo.” Letteratura Religiosa 1 (1965): 392–423.

1324  the radical reformation Chabod, Frederico. “Per la storia religiosa dello Stato di Milano … Parte seconda: La Riforma.” Annuario dell’I stituto Storico Italiano per l’Età Moderna e C ontemporanea 2/3 (1938): 81–164. Charbonnel, J. R. La pensée italienne au xv ie siècle et le courant libertin. Paris, 1919. Chelcicky, Peter. Spravy o svatostech: O rotach ceskych: O nejvysím biskupu: Panu Kristu. [S uvody Amedea Molnara k vydani pripravili Milan Opocensky a Noemi Rejchrtova]. Acta reformationem Bohemicam illustrantia. Prague: Kalic, 1980. Chesebro, Scott Elliott. “The Mennonite Urban Commune: A Hermeneutic Dialectical Understanding of its Anabaptist Ideology and Practice.” Ph.D. diss., University of Notre Dame, 1982. Chmaj, Ludwik. Bracia polscy: Ludzie, idee, wplywy. Warsaw: PWN, 1957. ———. Faust Socyn (1539–1604). Warsaw: PWN, 1959. ———, ed. Studia nad arianizmen. Warsaw: PWN, 1959. ———. See also Socinus, Listy. Chrisman, Miriam Usher. Strasbourg and the Reform (1480–1548). New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967. Chronicle of the Hutterian Brethren 1525–1665. Edited by Hutterian Brethren. Rifton, N.Y.: Plough Publishing House, 1989. Chronik der Hutterischen Brüder. See Ziegelschmid, A. J. F. Church, Frederic C. The Italian Reformers, 1534–1564. New York: Columbia University Press, 1932. Cione, Edmondo. Juan de V aldés, la sua vita e il suo pensiero. Bari, 1938. 2d ed., Naples: Apud Aedes Universitatis Gregorianae, 1963. Ciscato, Antonio. Gli Ebrei in Padova. Bologna, 1901. Cistellini, Antonio. Figure della riforma pretridentina. Brescia: Morcelliana, 1948. Clark, Francis, S.J. The Eucharistic Sacrifice and the Reformation. London, 1960. Clasen, Claus-Peter. Anbaptism: A Social History, 1525–1618. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972. ———. “The Anabaptists in South and Central Germany, Switzerland and Austria: Their Names, Occupations, Places of Residence and Dates of Conversion, 1516–1618.” MQR 52 (1978). ———. “Medieval Heresies in the Reformation.” CH 32 (1963): 1–23. ———. “Nuremberg in the History of Anabaptism.” MQR 39 (1965): 25–40. ———. “Schwenckfeld’s Friends.” MQR 46 (1972): 41–57. Clemen, Otto. “Hinne Rode in Wittenberg, Basel, Zurich und die frühesten Ausgaben Wesselscher Schriften.” ZKG 18 (1867): 346–72. Clouse, Robert G. Meaning of the Millennium: Four V iews. Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 1977. Coers, F. R. Liederen van Groot-Nederland. Utrecht, 1930. Cohen, Carl. The Impact of Protestant Reformation on the Jews. Heidelberg: Secker and Warburg, 1978. Cohn, Norman. The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages. London, 1957. Rev. and exp. ed., New York: Oxford University Press, 1970.



bibliography  1325

Coleman-Norton, P. R. Roman State and Christian Church: A Collection of Legal Documents to a.d. 535. 3 vols. London: S.P.C.K., 1966. Collinet, Robert. La Reformation en Belgique au xv i e siècle 2d ed. Brussels: Librairie des Eclaireurs Unionistes, 1958. Comba, Emilio. History of the Waldensians of Italy from their Origin to the Reformation. Translated by Teofilo E. Comba. London, 1889. Reprint, New York: AMS Press, 1978. ———. I nostri protestanti. 2 vols. Florence, 1895–97. ———. “Un sinodo anabattista a Venezia, anno 1550.” Rivista Cristiana 13 (1885): 21–24; 83–87. Commendone, Giovanni Francesco. Pamie¸ tniki o dawnej Polsce z czasów Zygmunta Augusta, obejmuja¸ce listy J. F. Commendoni do Karola Borromeusza, z Biblioteki Barberin´skiej zebral Jan Albertrandi … 2 vols. Vilna, 1851. Conrad, Franziska. Reformation in der Bäuerlichen Gesellschaft: Zur Rezeption reformatischer Theologie im Elsass. Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag, 1985. Conradt, Nancy. “John Calvin, Theodore Beza and the Reformation in Poland.” Ph.D. diss., Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1974. Cooche, Robert. The Zurich Letters. Cambridge: Parker Society, 1845. Coornhert, Dirk Volkerts. Zedekunst, dat is wellevenkunst. Edited by Bruno Becker. Leiden, 1942. Cornelius, Carl Adolf von. Berichte des Augenzeugen über das münsterische Wiedertäuferreich. Geschichtsquellen des Bistums Münster 2. Münster, 1853. ———. Geschichte des münsterischen Aufruhrs. 2 vols. Leipzig, 1855–60. Corpus documentorum Inquisitionis. See Frédéricq, Paul. Corpus Reformatorum. Edited by C. G. Bretschneider et al. Halle, 1834. Corpus Schwenckfeldianorum. 19 vols. Edited by Selina G. Schultz et al. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Hartel, 1907–61. Correll, Ernst H. “Anabaptism in the Tirol.” MQR 1 (1927): 49–60. ———. Das schweizerische Täufertum: Ein soziologischer Bericht. Tübingen, 1925. Cory, David M. Faustus Socinus. Boston: Beacon Press, 1932. Reprint, New York: AMS, n.d. Creasey, Maurice. “Early Quaker Christology.” Unpublished thesis, University of Leeds, 1956. Croce, Benedetto. Storia del regno di Napoli. 2d ed. Bari, 1953. Crous, Ernest. “Anabaptism in Schleiden-in-the-Eifel.” MQR 34 (1960): 188–91. ———. “Mennonitentum und Pietismus.” Theologische Zeitschrift 8 (1952): 279–96. Cuthbertson, David. A Tragedy of the Reformation: Being the Authentic Narrative of the History and Burning of the “Christianismi Restitutio,” 1533, with a Succinct Account of the Theological Controversy Between Michael Servetus, Its Author, and the Reformer John Calvin. 1912. Reprint, New York: AMS, 1981. Cynarski, Stanislaw, ed. Raków: Ognisko arianizmu. Cracow, 1968. Czechowic, Martin. Colloquia christiana (Rozmowy chrystyjan´skie). Critical edition by Alina Linda et al. Warsaw-Lódz´, 1979.

1326  the radical reformation Dalton, Hermann. Lasciana nebst den ältesten evangelischen Synodenprotokollen Polens, 1551– 1561. Berlin, 1898. Dán, Róbert. Humanismus, reformáció, antitrinitarizmus és a h éber nyelv Magyarországon. Budapest, 1973. ———. Matthias V ehe-Glirius: Life and Work of a Radical Antitrinitarian, with His Collected Writings. Translated by Imre Gombos, translation revised by L. S. Domonkos. Budapest: Akadémia Kladó; Leiden: Brill, 1982. ———. “Matthias Vehe-Glirius and the Radical Reformation,” introduction to Mattanjah. In Dán, Matthias V ehe-Glirius (q.v.). ———. “The Works of Vehe-Glirius and Early Sabbatarian Ideology in Transylvania.” Armarium of the Hungarian Academy of Science (1976): 87–94. ———, and Antal Pirnát, eds. Antitrinitarianism in the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century. Budapest: Akadémie Kiado; Leiden: Brill, 1982. ———, and Antal Pirnát, eds. De false et vera … cognitione, BU. 2. Budapest: Hungarian Academy of Sciences; Niewkoop: DeGraaf, 1988. Daniel, E. Randolph. “Joachim of Flora and the Joachite Tradition of Apocalyptic Conversion in the Later Middle Ages.” Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1966. ———. Abbott Joachim of Fiore: Liber de concordia novi ac V eteris Testamenti. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1983. [Dávid, Francis.] Dávid, Ferencz Emléke. Edited by Elek Jakab. Budapest, 1879. Davies, R. Trevor. The Golden Century of Spain. New York: Harper & R ow, 1937. Reprint, New York: Harper, 1965. Davis, John F. “Joan of Kent, Lollardy and the English Reformation.” Journal of English History 33 (1982): 225–33. Davis, Kenneth Ronald. Anabaptism and Ascetism: A Study in Intellectual Origins. Scottdale, Penn.: Herald Press, 1974. ———. “No Discipline, No Church: An Anabaptist Contribution to the Reformed Tradition.” SCJ 13 (1982): 43–58. Decavele, Johan. “Historiography of Sixteenth-Century Belgian Protestantism/ Historiograffe van het Zestiende-eeuws Protesantisme in Belgie.” NAKG 62 (1982): 1–27. Dedic, Paul. “The Social Background of the Austrian Anabaptists.” MQR 13 (1939): 5–20. De falsa et vera unius Dei Patris, Filii et Spiritus Sancti cognitione libri duo (Albae Iuliae) 1568. Intro. in English by Antal Pirnát. Bibilotheca Unitariorum 2. Nieuwkoop: de Graaf, 1988. De Hoop Scheffer, J. G. Geschiedenis der Kerkhervorming in Nederland van haar opstaan tot 1531. Amsterdam, 1873. Dejung, Christopher. “Sebastien Franck.” In Éloy Pruystinck, Sebastian Frank, Antonio del Corro, 39–119. BD 7 Baden-Baden: V. Koerner, 1986. ———. Wahrheit und Häresie: Untersuchungen zur Geschichtsphilosophie bei Sebastian Franck. Zurich: Dejung, 1979. Denck, Hans. Schriften. 2 parts. Edited by Georg Baring and Walter Fellmann. Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1955–56. Denis, Ernest. Huss et la guerre des hussites. New York: AMS, 1978.



bibliography  1327

Depperman, Klaus. Melchior Hoffman. Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1979. ———. Melchior Hoffman: Social Unrest and Apocalyptic V isions in the Age of Reformation. Translated by Malcolm Wren. London: T. and T. Clark, 1986. ———. “Melchior Hoffman and Strasbourg Anabaptism.” In The Origins and Characteristics of Anabaptism, edited by Marc Leinhard, 197–226. International Archives of the History of Ideas 87. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977. ———. See also Stayer, James, Werner O. Padeull, and Klaus Depperman. Detmer, Heinrich. “Das Religionsgespräch zu Münster am 7. und 8. August 1533.” Monatshefte der Comenius-Gesellschaft 9 (1900): 273–300. ———, ed. Geschichte der Wiedertäufer zu Münster. Vol. 6.2 of Geschichtsquellen des Bisthums Münster. See Kerssenbroeck, Hermann von. ———, and Robert Krumbholz. Zwei Schriften des münsterischen Wiedertäufers Bernhard Rothmann. Dortmund, 1904. De Wind, Henry A. “A Sixteenth-Century Description of Religious Sects in Austerlitz, Moravia.” MQR 29 (1955): 44–53. ———. “Anabaptism in Italy.” CH 21 (1951): 26–38. ———. “Anabaptists in Thessalonica?” MQR 29 (1955): 70–73. ———. “Italian Hutterite Martyrs.” MQR 28 (1954): 164–71. Dexter, Henry M. Congregationalism in the Last Three Hundred Years. New York, 1880. Dickens, A. G. “The Abortive Reformation: Lollard Survival.” Chap. 2 of The English Reformation. Rev. ed. New York: Shocken, 1964. Diehl, W. Zur Geschichte der Konfirmation. Giessen, 1897. Dimitz, August. Geschichte Krains. 4 vols. Laibach-Ljubljana, 1874–76. Dmitriev, M. V. “Antifeudal Trends in the Reformation Movement in Late SixteenthCentury Polish Lithuania / Antifeodal’ nye tendentsii v reformatisionnom dvizhenii v Rech’ Pospolita vtoroi poloviny X VI veka.” Sovetskoe slavianovedenie 5 (1984): 27–36. Documenta Anabaptistica Neerlandica. Vol. 1, Friesland en Groningen (1530–1550). Leiden: Brill, 1975. Doerksen, Victor G., “Confession of the Triune God by Menno Simons.” Translated by Hermina Joldersma. MQR 86 (1986): 509–47. Dohna, Lothar Graf zu. Reformatio Sigismundi, Beiträge zum V erständnis einer Reformsschrift des fünfzehnten Jahrhunderts. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1960. Döllinger, Ignatius J. J. Beiträge zur Sektengeschichte des Mittelalters. 2 vols. Munich, 1900. Donnelly, John Patrick, Robert M. Kingdon, and Marvin Anderson, eds. A Bibliography of the Works of Peter Martyr V ermigli. Kirksville, Mo.: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, Inc., 1990. Doornkaat Koolman, J. ten. Dirk Philips, vriend en medewerker van Menno Simons, 1504– 1568. Haarlem: Willink, 1964. ———. “Een onbekende brief van Dirk Philips.” NAKG, n.s., 43 (1959): 15–21. ———. “Leupold Scharnschlager und die verborgene Täufergemeinde in Graubünden.” Zwingliana 4 (1921–28): 329–37. Dorner, Isaac August. History of the Development of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ. Translated from the German by W. L. Alexander and D. W. Simon. 2 vols. Edinburgh, 1870.

1328  the radical reformation Dougherty, James. The Fivesquare City in the Religious Imagination. South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980. Douglass, Jane Dempsey. “Women in the Continental Reformation.” In Religion and Sexism, edited by Rosemary Reuther. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974. Doumergue, Émile. Jean Calvin, les hommes et les choses de son temps. 3 vols. Lausanne, 1889–1905. Drzymala, Kazimierz. “The Debate between Marcin S´miglecki and the Polish Brethren, Known as the Arians on the Divinity of Jesus Christ / Polemika Marcina S´migleckiego z Bracimi Polskimi, zwanymi aryanami, o bóstwie Chrystusa.” Studia Historyczne 27, no. 1 (1984): 3–28. DuBakker, William John. “Civic Reformer in Anabaptist Münster: Bernhard Rothmann.” Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1987. Duerksen, Rosella Reimer. “Dutch Anabaptist Hymnody of the Sixteenth Century.” In Dyck, Heritage of Menno Simons (q.v.), 103–18. Dufour, Alain. “Deux lettres inédites de Pierre Viret.” Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie, 3d ser., no. 11 (1961): 222–35. Dülmen, Richard van. Reformation als Revolution: Soziale Bewegung und religiöser Radikalismus in der deutschen Reformation. Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1977. ———. Das Täuferreich zu Münster, 1534–1535. Munich, 1974. ———. Die Utopie einer christlichen Gesellschaft: Johann V alentin Andreae (1586–1654). Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1978. Dunin-Borkowski, Stanislas von. “Die Gruppierung der Antitrinitarier im 16. Jahrhundert.” Scholastik 7 (1932): 493–94. ———. “Quellenstudien zur Vorgeschichte der Unitarier des 16. Jahrhunderts.” In 75 Jahre Stella Matutina, Festschrift, 1:91–138. Feldkirch, 1931. ———. “Untersuchungen zum Schrifttum der Unitarier vor Faustus Socinus.” In 75 Jahre Stella Matutina, Festschrift, 2:103–47. Feldkirch, 1931. Durnbaugh, Donald F. Every Need Supplied: Mutual Aid and Christian Community in the Free Churches, 1525–1675. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1974. Dyck, Cornelius J., ed. The Heritage of Menno Simons: A L egacy of Faith (A Sixtieth Anniversary Tribute to Cornelius Krahn). Newton, Kan.: Mennonite Publication Office, 1962. ———. An Introduction to Mennonite History: A P opular History of the Anabaptists and the Mennonites. Scottdale, Penn.: Herald Press, 1981. ———. “Sinners and Saints.” In Dyck, Heritage of Menno Simons (q.v.), 87–102. ———. “The Christology of Dirk Philips.” MQR 31 (1957): 147–55. ———. “The First Waterlandian Confession of Faith.” MQR 36 (1962): 5–13. ———. “The Middelburg Confession of Hans de Ries.” MQR 36 (1962): 147–54. ———. “The Suffering Church in Anabaptism.” MQR 59 (1985): 5–23. Dyer, John S. “The Strasbourg Conferences of the Anabaptists.” MQR 58 (1984): 218–29. Eberhard, Winfried. Konfessionsbildung und Stände in Böhmen, 1478–1530. Veröffentlichungen des Collegium Carolinum 38. Vienna: Oldenburg, 1981. Ebert, Klaus. Thomas Müntzer: von Eigensinn und Widerspruch. Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum, 1987.



bibliography  1329

Ecke, Karl. Das Rätsel der Taufe. Gütersloh, 1952. Edwards, Mark U. Luther and the False Brethren. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975. Eekhof. A. De Avondmaalsbrief van Cornelis Hoen. The Hague, 1917. Eells, Hastings. Martin Bucer. London, 1931. Egli, Emil. Die Züricher Wiedertäufer zur Reformationszeit. Zurich, 1878. ———. See also Kessler, Johannes. Eire, Carlos M. Nieto. “Calvin and Nicodemism: A Reappraisal.” SCJ 10 (1979): 45–69. ———. War against the Idols: The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvin. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Eisentraut, Karl. Die Wiedertäufer im Hassgau. Ostheim v.d. Rhon: Gunzenheimer, 1984. Elliger, Walter. Thomas Müntzer: Leben und Werk. 3d ed. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1975. Elliott, J. H. Imperial Spain, 1469–1716. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1964. Enders, Ernst. See Luther, Martin, Briefwechsel. Englert, Ludwig. Paracelsus: Mensch und Arzt. Berlin, 1941. Epp, Anthony R. “Calvin Reveals an Early Anabaptist Position Statement.” Mennonite Life 41 (1986): 12–15. Epp, George K. “The Spiritual Roots of Menno Simons.” In Mennonite I mages, edited by Harry Lowen. Winnipeg, 1980. Erasmus, Desiderius. Commentarius in Psalmum Secundum. In Opera Omnia, vol. 5.2. Amsterdam: North Holland, 1985. ———. The Historical Significance of Desiderius Erasmus in the Light of the Protestant Revolution and the Catholic Church as Revealed by His Most Famous Pronouncements. 2 vols. American Classical Collection Printers, 1985. ———. Opera omnia. 10 vols. Edited by Jean Leclerc. Leiden, 1703–06. Reprint, Hildesheim: Olm, 1972. ———. Opus epistolarum. 12 vols. Edited by P. S. Allen and H. M. Allen. Oxford, 1906–58. Erb, Peter. “Adam Reissner: His Learning and Influence on Schwenckfeld.” MQR 54 (1980): 32–41. ———. Schwenckfeld and Early Schwenckfeldianism: Papers Presented at the Colloquium on Schwenkfeld and the Schwenkfelders. Pennsburg, Penn.: Schwenckfelder Library, 1986. ———. Schwenkfeld in his Reformation Setting. Valley Forge, Penn.: Judson Press, 1978. Erdmann, David. Luther und seine Beiziehungen zu Schleisien. Schriften des Verein für Reformationsgeschichte 18. Halle, 1887. Erdö, John. Transylvanian Unitarian Church: Chronological History and Theological Essays. Translated by Judit Gellérd with a p reface by George H. Williams. Chico, Calif.: Center for Free Religion, 1990. Eresia e R iforma nell’Italia del Cinquecento. 2 vols. Edited by Luigi Firpo et al. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1974. Estep, William R., ed. and trans. Anabaptist Beginnings 1523–1533: A S ource Book. Nieuwkoop: DeGraaf, 1976. ———. The Anabaptist Story. 2d ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975.

1330  the radical reformation ———, and Irwin J. Barnes, trans. Balthasar Hubmaier, Anabaptist Theologian and Martyr. by Torsten Bergsten. Valley Forge, Penn.: Judson Press, 1978. Etienne, Jacques. Spiritualisme érasmien. Louvain: Publications Universitaires de Louvain, 1956. Evans, Austin P. An Episode in the Struggle for Religious Freedom: The Sectaries of Nuremberg 1524–1528. New York: Columbia University Press, 1924. Exposition: L’Anabaptisme dans la V allée du Rhin de 1525 à 1750: 19 Juillet–2 Aout 1984. X Ie Conference Mennonite Mondiale Strasbourg, Juillet 1984 [and] Bibliotheque Nationale et Universitaire de Strasbourg. Strasbourg: Bibliotheque, 1984. Falke, Jakob von. Geschichte des fürstlichen Hauses Liechtenstein. 3 vols. Vienna, 1868–82. [Farel, Guillaume.] Guillaume Farel (1489–1565). By a g roup of Historians. Neuchâtel and Paris, 1930. Fast, Heinold. Der linke Flügel der Reformation: Glaubenszeugnisse der Täufer, Spiritualisten, Schwärmer und Antitrinitarier. Bremen: Schemann, 1962. ———. “Die Sonderstellung der Täufer in St. Gallen und Appenzell.” Zwingliana 11 (1960): 223–40. ———. “Hans Krüsis Büchlein über Glauben und Taufe.” In Dyck, Heritage of Menno Simons (q.v.), 213-31. ———. Heinrich Bullinger und die Täufer. Weierhof, Pfalz: Mennonit Geschichtsverein, 1959. ———. “Michael Sattler’s Baptism: Some Comments.” MQR 60 (1986): 364–73. ———. “Pilgram Marpeck und das oberdeutsche Täufertum: Ein neuer Handschriftenfund [the “Kunstbuch”].” ARG 48 (1956): 212–42. ———. Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer in der Schweitz. Vol 2, Ostschweiz. Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1973. ———, and John H. Yoder. “How to Deal with Anabaptists.” MQR 33 (1959): 83–95. [With trans. of Bullinger’s tract Quomodo agendum et disputandum sit cum Catabaptistis.] Feist, Elizabeth. See Cantimori, Delio, and Elizabeth Feist. Per la storia degli eretici italiani. Feist-Hirsch, Elizabeth. “Michael Servetus and the Neoplatonic Tradition: God, Christ, and Man.” BHR 42 (1980): 561–75. Feld, Helmut. Der I konoklasmus des Westens. Leiden: Brill, 1990. Félice, Paul de. La Tragédie des cordeliers d’Orléans (1534–1535), épisode de l’histoire monastique orléannaise au XVIe siècle. Paris, 1887. Fellmann, Walter. See Denck, Schriften. Fenlon, Dermot. Heresy and Obedience in Tridentine Italy: Cardinal Pole and the Counter Reformation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972; London, 1978. Ferencz, Jósef. Az unitarizmus és a magyar unitárius egyház története. Budapest, 1950. Fernandez Campos, Gabino. Reforma y contrarreforma en Andalucia. Biblioteca de la cultura anadaluza 65. Sevilla: Editoriales Andaluzas Unidas, 1986. Ferorelli, Nicola. Gli Ebrei nell’Italia meridionale. Bologna, 1915. Firpo, Massimo. Antitrinitari nell’Europa orientale del ’500: nuovi testi di Szymon Budny, Niccolo Paruta e Iacopo Paleologo. Firenze: La nuova Italia, 1977. ———. “Christian Francken antitrinitario.” BSSV 107 (1960): 27–36.



bibliography  1331

———. “Francesco Pucci a Basilea.” In Medioevo e R inascimento: Studi in onore di Bruno Nardi, 1:257–95. Florence, 1955. ———. “Francesco Pucci in Inghilterra.” Revue Internationale de Philosophie 5 (1951): 158–73. ———. “Il vero autore di un celebre scritto anti-trinitario.” BSSV 104 (1958): 51–68. ———. See also Eresia e Riforma: Studi sui riformatiro. Firth, Katherine R. The Apocalyptic Tradition in Reformation Britain 1530–1645. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979. Fischer, Hans. Jakob Huter: Leben, Frömmigkeit, Briefe. Mennonite Historical Series 4. Newton, Kan.: Mennonite Publication Office, 1956. Fischer, Ludwig. Die lutherischen Pamphlete gegen Thomas Müntzer. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1976. Fischer-Galati, Stephen A. Ottoman Imperialism and German Protestantism: 1521–1555. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959. Reprint, New York: Octagon Books, 1972. Fiszman, Samuel, ed. The Polish Renaissance in its European Context. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984. Fix, Andrew. “Radical Reformation and Second Reformation in Holland: The Intellectual Consequences of the Sixteenth-Century Religious Upheaval and the Coming of a Rational World View.” SCJ 18 (1987): 63–80. Florovsky, Georges. “Cur Deus Homo: The Motive of the Incarnation.” In Essays in Honor of A. S. Alivezatos, 70-79. Athens: Press of the Apostolic Diaconia of the Churches of Greece, 1958. Flugschriften der Bauernkriegszeit. Collected Publications. Berlin: Akademie der Wissenschaften DDR, 1975. Fodor, Heinrich. “Ferenc Dávid, der Apostel der religiösen Duldung.” Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 36 (1954): 18–29. Fontana, Bartolommeo. Renata di Francia. 3 vols. Rome, 1893–99. Ford, Franklin. Strasbourg in Transition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958. Foster, Claude R., Jr. “Hans Denck and Johannes Bünderlin: A C omparative Study.” MQR 39 (1965): 115–24. Fox, Paul. The Reformation in Poland. Baltimore, 1924. Fraker, Charles Frederic, Jr. Studies in the “Cancionero de [ Juan Alfonso de] Baena.” Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1966. Franz, Günther. Der deutsche Bauernkrieg. 1933. 2d ed., Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1975. ———, et al. Wiedertäuferakten 1527–1626. Urkundliche Quellen zur Hessischen Reformationsgeschichte 4. Marburg: Elwert, 1951. ———, and Paul Kirn. Thomas Müntzer: Schriften und Briefe. Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Gütersloh: Mohn, 1968. Frederichs, Julius. De secte der Löisten of Antwerpesche libertijnen, 1525–1545. Ghent, 1891. ———. “La Moralité des libertins spirituels.” Bulletin Historique et Littéraire de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français 41 (1892): 502–4. ———. Un Luthérien français devenu libertin spirituel.” Bulletin Historique et Littéraire de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français 41 (1892): 250–69.

1332  the radical reformation Frédéricq. Paul, ed. Corpus documentorum Inquisitionis Haereticae pravitatis Neerlandicae. 5 vols. Ghent/The Hague, 1889–1903. Freedberg, David. I conoclasm and Painting in the Revolt of the Netherlands, 1556–1609. New York: Garland Press, 1988. French, James L. The Correspondence of Caspar Schwenckfeld of Ossig and the Landgrave Philip of Hesse. Leipzig, 1908. Frend, William H. C., The Donatist Church: A Movement of Protest in Roman North Africa. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952, 1971. Freys, E., and Hermann Barge. “Verzeichnis der gedruckten Schriften des Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt.” Zentralblatt für Bibliothekswesen 21 (1905): 305–11. Reprint, Nieuwkoop: DeGraaf, 1965. Friedman, Jerome. “Christ’s Descent in Hell and Redemption Through Evil: A Radical Reformation Perspective.” ARG 75 (1985): 217–30. ———. Michael Servetus: A Case Study of Total Heresy. Geneva: Droz, 1978. ———. “The Reformation and Jewish Anti-Christian Polemics.” BHR 41 (1979): 85–97. Friedmann, Robert. “Anabaptism and Pietism.” MQR 14 (1940): 90–128. ———. “Anabaptism and Protestantism.” MQR 24 (1950): 12–24. ———. “Christian Communism.” ARG 46 (1955), 203ff. ———. “Christian Sectarians in Thessalonica and Their Relationship to Anabaptists.” MQR 29 (1955): 54–70. ———. “Conception of the Anabaptists.” CH 9 (1940): 341–65. ———. “Eine dogmatische Hauptschrift.” ARG 28 (1931): 80–111, 207–40; 29 (1932): 1–17. ———. Hutterite Studies: Essays by Robert Friedmann. Edited by Harold S. Bender. Goshen, Ind.: Mennonite Historical Society, 1961. ———. “Leonhard Schiemer and Hans Schlaffer: Two Martyr-Apostles of 1528.” MQR 33 (1959): 31–41. ———. Mennonite Piety Through the Centuries. Goshen, Ind.: Mennonite Historical Society, 1949. ———. “Peter Riedemann on Original Sin and the Way of Redemption.” MQR 26 (1952): 210–15. ———. Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer. No. 12, vol. 2, Glaubenszeugnisse oberdeutscher Taufgesinnter. Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1967. [For vol. 1, see Müller, Lydia.] ———. “Reason and Obedience: An Old Anabaptist Letter of Peter Walpot (1571) and Its Meaning.” MQR 19 (1945): 27–40. ———. “The Encounter of Anabaptists and Mennonites with Anti-Trinitarianism.” MQR 21 (1948): 139–62. ———. “The Epistles of the Hutterian Brethren.” MQR 20 (1946): 147ff. ———. “The Nicolsburg Articles: A P roblem of Early Anabaptist History.” CH 36 (1967): 391–409. ———. “The Oldest Church Discipline of the Anabaptists.” MQR 29 (1955): 162–66. ———. See also Hasenberg, Kathleen, and Robert Friedmann; Wiswedel, Wilhelm, and Robert Friedmann.



bibliography  1333

Friesen, Abraham. Thomas Müntzer, A Destroyer of the Godless: The Making of a SixteenthCentury Revolutionary. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Friesen, Abraham, and Hans Jürgen-Goertz, eds. Thomas Müntzer: Wege der Forschung. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1978. Fritz, F. “Die Wiedertäufer und der württembergische Pietismus.” Blätter für Würtembergische Kirchengeschichte 43 (1939): 81ff. Froom, Le Roy Edwin. The Conditional Faith of Our Fathers. 3 vols. Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald, 1966. Fuchs, Walter Peter. Nachdenken über Geschichte: V orträge und Aufsätze. Edited by Günter Berg and Volker Dotterweich. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1980. Furcha, E. J. “Schwenckfeld’s Concept of the New Man.” Ph.D. diss., University of Hartford, 1968. [Part one published in CH 37 (1968): 160–71.] ———. ed. and trans. Selected Writings of Hans Denck. Original Texts and Translations Series 1. Pittsburgh: Pickwick Press, 1976. Fuster, Joan. Rebeldes y heterodoxos. Barcelona: Ariel, 1972. Gabbema, Simon Abbes. I llustrium et clarorum virorum epistolae. Harlingen, 1669. Gäbler, Ulrich. “Johannes Bünderlein von Linz: Eine biographische Skizze.” Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für Geschichte des Protestantismus in Österreich 96 (1980). ———. “Zum Problem des Spiritualismus in 16. Jahrhundert: Das Glaubensverständnis bei Joahnnes Bünderlein von Linz.” Theologische Zeitschrift 29 (1973): 334–44. Gaeta, Franco. “Documenti da codici vaticani per la storia della Riforma in Venezia.” Annuario dell’I stituto Storico Italiano per l’Età Moderna e Contemporanea 7 (1955): 5–53. Gaillard, V. Archives du conseil de Flandres. Ghent, 1856. Galen, Hans. Die Wiedertäufer in Münster: Stadtmuseum Münster, Katalog der Eröffnungsausstellung vom 1. Oktober 1982 bis 27. Februar 1983. 4th ed. Münster: Aschendorff, 1983. Ganseuer, Frank. Der Staat des “gemeinen Mannes”: Gattungstypologie und Programmatik des politischen Schrifttums von Reformation und Bauernkrieg. Europäische Hochschulschriften, Reihe III; Geschichte und ihre Hilfswissenschaften 228. Frankfurt am Main/New York: Peter Lang, 1985. Gansfort, Wessel. Principal Works. Translated by J. W. Scudder. See Miller, Edward Waite, and Jared W. Scudder. García Oro, José. Cisneros y l a reforma del clero español en tiempo de los Reyes Católicos. Madrid: Consejo superior de investigaciónes cientificas Instituto ‘Jerónumo Zurita,’ 1971. Garside, Charles. Jr. “De cantu gregoriano disputatio.” In Zwingli and the Arts. New York: Da Capo Press, 1981. ———. “Ludwig Haetzer’s Pamphlet against Images.” MQR 34 (1960): 3–19. Garsoian, Nina. The Paulician Heresy: A Study of the Origin and Development of Paulicianism in Armenia and the Eastern Provinces of the Byzantine Empire. The Hague: Mouton, 1967. Geldbach, Erich. “Die Lehre des hessischen Täuferführers Melchior Rinck.” Jahrbuch der Hessischen Kirchengeschichtlichen V ereinigung 21 (1971): 119–35. ———. “Toward a More Ample Biography of the Hessian Anabaptist Leader Melchior Rinck.” MQR 48 (1974): 379ff. Geneva e l’Italia: Raccolta di studi. Edited by Delio Cantimore et al. Florence, 1959.

1334  the radical reformation George, Timothy. “Between Pacifism and Coercion: The English Baptist Doctrine of Religious Toleration (1610–1625).” MQR 58 (1984): 30–49. ———. “Early Anabaptist Spirituality in the Low Countries.” MQR 62 (1988): 257–75. ———. Theology of the Reformers. Nashville: Broadman Press, 1988. Georgi, Dieter. Paul and Theocracy. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1990. Gerber, Barbara Bettina. “Sebastian Lotzer: An Educated Layman in the Struggle for Divine Justice.” In Goertz, Profiles of Radical Reformers (q.v.). Gerber, Ulrich. “Die Reformation und ihr ‘Originalgewächs,’ Die Täufer.” In Kanton, 450 Jahre Berner Reformation, 248-69. Berne: Historischer Verein des Kantons Bern, 1981. Gerbert, Camill. Geschichte der Strassburger Sectenbewegung zur Zeit der Reformation 1524– 1534. Strassburg, 1889. Gerézdi, R. Erasmus és az erdélyi unitáriusok. Budapest, 1947. Gerlach, Stephen, Sr. Tage-Buch der von zweern … Romischen Kaysern. Maximiliano und Rudolpho …  Frankfort, 1674. Gerrish, Brian A., and Robert Benedetto, eds. Reformation Perennis: Essays On Calvin and the Reformation in Honor of Ford Lewis Battles. Pittsburgh: Pickwick, 1981. Geyer, Iris. Thomas Münter im Bauernkrieg. Besigheim: Verlag K. H. V., 1982. Géza Kathona. See Kathona, Géza. Gilly, Carlos. Spanien und der Basler Buchdruck bis 1600: Ein Querschnitt durch die spanische Geistesgeschichte aus der Sicht einer europäischen Bücherstadt. Basel: Halbing and Lichtenhahn, 1985. Gilman, Ernest B. I conoclasm and Poetry in the English Reformation: Down Went Dagon. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. Gilman, Stephen. The Spain of Fernando de Rojas: The Intellectual and Social Landscape. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972. Gingerich, Ray C. “The Mission Impulse of Early Swiss and South German-Austrian Anabaptism.” Ph.D. diss., Vanderbilt University, 1980. Ginzburg, Carlo. “Due note sul profetismo cinquecentesco.” Rivista Storica Italiana 78 (1966): 184–227. ———. I Costituti di Don Pietro Manelfi. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1970. ———. I l Nicodemismo: Simulazione e dissimulazione religiosa nell’Europa del ’500. Turin: Einaudi, 1970. ———, and Adriano Prosperi. “Le due redazionidel Beneficio di Cristo.” In Eresia e Riforma (q.v.), 137–204. Giordani, Gaetano. Della venuta e dimora in Bologna del sommo pontefice Clemente VII per la coronazione di Carlo V . Imperatore celebrate d’anno MDXXX , Cronaca con note, documenti ed inicisioni. Bologna, 1842. Gismann-Fiel, Hildegrund. Das Täufertum in V orarlberg. Dornbirn, Austria: Vorarlberger Verlagsanstalt, 1982. Giuliani, C. “Documenti per la guerra rustica nel Trentino.” Archivio Trentino 3 (1884): 95–116, and successive vols. 6, 7, 9, 11 (1887–1893). Gleason, Elisabeth G. “On the Nature of Sixteenth-Century Evangelism.” SCJ 9 (1978): 325f. ———, ed. Reform in Sixteenth-Century Italy. Chico: Scholars Press, 1981.



bibliography  1335

Gobel, Maximilian. Geschichte des kirchlichen Lebens in der rheinisch-westfälischen evangelischen Kirche. Koblenz, 1849–60. Godbey, John C. “A Study of Faustus Socinus’ De Jesu Christo Servatore.” Ph.D. diss. University of Chicago, 1967. Goertz, Hans-Jürgen. Innere und äussere Ordnung in der Theologie Thomas Müntzers. Leiden: Brill, 1967. ———, ed. Profiles of Radical Reformers: Biographical Sketches from Thomas Müntzer to Paracelsus. Translated by Walter Klaassen. Scottdale, Penn.: Herald Press, 1982. ———. Die Täufer: Geschichte und Deutung. München: C. H. Beck, 1980. ———, ed. “Thomas Müntzer: Revolutionary in a Mystical Spirit.” In Goertz, Profiles of Radical Reformers (q.v.). ———. Thomas Müntzer: Mystiker, Apokalyptiker, Revolutionär. Munich: Beck, 1989. ———, ed. Umstrittenes Täufertum. Göttingen, 1975. Goeters, J. F. G. “Das älteste rheinische Täuferbekenntnis.” In Dyck, Heritage of Menno Simons (q.v.), 197–212. ———. Ludwig Haetzer. Gütersloh: Bertlesmann, 1957. ———, and Luise Abramowski, eds. “Die Vorgeschichte des Täufertums in Zürich.” In Studien: Festschrift für Ernst Bizer. Neukirchen: Neukircher Verlag, 1969. ———. Ludwig Hätzer. QFRG 25. Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1957. Goldhammer, Kurt. “Der Naumburger Meister und die Häretiker.” ZKG 49 (1952–53). ———. “Friedensidee und Toleranzgedanke bei Paracelsus und den Spiritualisten. I. Paracelsus.” ARG 46 (1955): 20–46. ———. “Neues zur Lebensgeschichte und Persönlichkeit des Theophrastus Paracelsus.” Theologische Zeitschrift 3 (1947). ———. Paracelsus: Natur und Offenbärung. Hanover, 1953. ———. Paracelsus: Sozialethische und sozialpolitische Schriften. Tübingen, 1952. Gonesius, Petur. O Synu Bozym (1570). Reprinted as Biblioteka Pisarzy Reformacyjnych, 2 and 3. Warsaw, 1960–61. ———. O Trzech [to jest O Bogu, o Synu i o Duchu S´ . przeciwko Trójcy sabelijan´skiej]. Edited by Halina Górska et al. Warsaw, 1962. Gonnet, Giovanni. “Beziehungen der Waldenser zu den oberdeutschen Reformatoren vor Calvin.” ZKG 64 (1952–53): 308–11. ———. “Chanfora e la storeografico Valdese.” BSSV 154 (1985): 3–23. ———. “Delle varie tappe e correnti della protesta valdese in Europa da Lione a Chanforan: Problemi vecchi e nouvi (1176–1531).” BSSV 102 (1957): 19–28. ———. I l grano e l e zizzanie: tra eresia e r iforma: secoli XII –XVI. Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 1989. ———. “Il movimento valdese in Europa secondo le più recenti ricerche.’’ BSSV 100 (1956). ———. “Les Relations des Vaudois des Alpes avec les Réformateurs en 1532.” BHR, 3d ser., 23 (1961): 34–52. ———. “Nuovi studi sul valdismo nel Medio Evo.” BSSV 100 (1956): 60–62. ———, and Augusto Armand-Hugon. Bibliografia valdese. Torre Pellice, 1953. BSSV 93:5–27.

1336  the radical reformation ———. “Sulla Cosidetta ‘protestantizzazione’ di Valdesi Alpini.” BSSV 157 (1985): 53–58. Gonsalvius Montanu [Gonzáles de Montes], Reginaldus. Sanctae Inquisitionis Artes aliquot detectae [Arts of the Spanish Inquisition]. Heidelberg, 1567. Goody, Jack. The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Górski, Konrad. Grzegorz Pawel z Brzezin. Cracow, 1929. ———. Studia nad dziejami polskiej literatury antytrynitarskiej x v i wieku. Crakow, 1949. Gouw, Johannes ter. Geschiedenis van Amsterdam. 7 vols. Amsterdam, 1879–91. Grafenauwer, Bogo, ed. I storija naroda Jugoslavije. 2 vols. Zagreb: Skolska, 1953. Gratz, Delbert. Bernese Anabaptists. Scottdale, Penn.: Herald Press, 1953. Grebel, Conrad. See Harder, Sources of Swiss Anabaptism. Gritsch, Eric. Reformer Without a Church: The Life and Thought of Thomas Müntzer (1488?– 1525). Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1967. ———. The Authority of the Inner Word: A Theological Study of the Major German Spiritual Reformers in the Sixteenth Century. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959. [Originally Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University.] ———. Thomas Müntzer, A Tragedy of Errors. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989. Groenveld, S., J. P. Jocobszoon, and S. L. Verheus, eds. Wederdopers, Menisten, Doopsgezinden: in Nederland 1530–1980. Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 1980. Grosheide, G. “Verhooren en vonnissen der Wederdoopers, betrokken bij de aanslagen op Amsterdam in 1534 en 1535.” Bijdragen en Mededelingen van het Historisch Genootschap 41. (1920). Gross, Leonard. The Golden Years of the Hutterites: The Witness and Thought of the Communcal Moravian Anabaptists during the Walpot Era, 1565–1578. Scottdale, Penn.: Herald Press, 1980. ———. “The Hutterian Brethren and the Polish Brethren: Rapproachement and Estrangement.” Proceedings of the Unitarian Universalist Historical Society 20, no. 2 (1985– 86): 46–53. Grossman, Walter. “Religious Toleration in Germany, 1648–1750.” In Studies On V oltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 114–41. Geneva: Institut et Musée Voltaire, 1982. Grützmacher, Richard. Wort und Geist. Leipzig, 1902. Guarnieri, Romana. “Il movimento del libero spirito.” Archivi Italiano per la Storia della Pietà 4 (1965). Guderian, Hans. Die Täufer in Augsburg: ihre Geschichte und ihr Erbe: Ein Beitrag zur 2000-Jahr-Feier der Stadt Augsburg. Pfaffenhofen: W. Ludwig, 1984. Guerrero, José Rámón. Catecismos españoles: La obra del Dr. Constantino Ponce de la Fuente. Madrid: Institutu Superior de Pastoral, 1969. Guerrieri, Paolo. “I postulati della Riforma nell’Alta Italia.” Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia I (1947). Guillaume Postel, 1581–1981: acts du colloque international d’Avranches, 5–9 septembre 1981. Paris: Editions de la Maisnie, 1985. Guyer, Paul. Die Bevölkerung Zollikons im Mittelalter und in der Neuzeit. Zurich: Schultheiss, 1946.



bibliography  1337

Haas, Martin, ed. Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer in der Schweiz. Vol. 4, Täufergeschichte. Winterhur: Hirzel, 1974. Halkin, Léon-E. La Réforme en Belgique sous Charles-Quint. Brussels: Renaissance du Livre, 1957. Hall, Thor. “Possibilities of Erasmian Influence on Denck and Hubmaier.” MQR 35 (1961): 149–70. Hamilton, Alistair. The Family of Love. Cambridge: James Clark & Co., 1981. Hanke, Lewis. All Mankind is One: A S tudy of the Disputation Between Bartolomé de Las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepulveda in 1550 on the I ntellectual and Religious Capacity of the American Indians. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1974. Hannedouche, S. “La Cène du Seigneur de Paracelse et le rituel cathare.” Cahiers d’Études cathares 5 (1954): 3–15. Hanson, Paul, ed. V isionaries and Their Apocalypses. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983. Harder, Leland, ed. The Sources of Swiss Anabaptism: The Grebel Letters and Related Documents. Classics of the Radical Reformation 4. Scottdale, Penn.: Herald Press, 1985. Hardouin, Jean. Acta conciliorum. 12 vols. Paris, 1714–15. Hargrave, O. T. “The Freewillers in the English Reformation.” CH 37 (1968): 271–80. Harrison, Richard L. “Schwenckfeld and the Tübingen Colloquy.” MQR 52 (1978): 237–47. Hasel, Gerhard F. “Sabbatarian Anabaptists of the Sixteenth Century.” Andrews University Seminar Studies 5 (1967), 101–21; 6 (1968): 19–29. Hasenberg, Kathleen. See Riedemann, Account of Our Religion. ———, and Robert Friedmann. “A Notable Hutterite Document Concerning True Surrender and Christian Community of Goods.” MQR 31 (1957): 22–61. Hassinger, Erich. Studien zu Jakobus Acontius. Abhandlungen zur Mittleren und Neueren Geschichte 46. Berlin, 1934. ———. “Wirtschaftliche Motive und Argumente für religiöse Duldsamkeit.” ARG 49 (1958): 228ff. Hatchett, Bryan, Jr. “On the Relationship of the Strasbourg Reformation to Church Discipline in Calvin’s Thought.” Ph.D. diss., Emory University, 1960. Hauben, Paul J. Three Spanish Heretics and the Reformation. Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1967. Hauser, Henri. Études sur la Réforme française. Paris, 1909. Heck, Roman. “Reformacja a problem walki klasowej chlopów ´s la¸skich w x vi wieku.” ORP 6 (1961): 29–48. Hege, Christian. “Edition of the V ermahnung of Marpeck.” In Neff, Gedenkschrift zum 400–jährigen Jubïläum (q.v.), 178–282. Hegler, Alfred. Sebastian Francks Paraphrase der Deutschen Theologie lateinische und seine holländische erhalten Trakate. Tübingen, 1901. ———. See also Mennonitisches Lexikon. Heidenhain, A. Die Unionspolitik Landgraf Philipps von Hessen, 1557–1562. Halle, 1890. Heinz, Gerhard. “Die Täuferbewegung im Mittel-Rheinischen Raum von der Reformation bis zum Dreissignjährigen Krieg.” Blätter für Pfälzische Kirchengeschichte und Religiöse V olkskunde 40 (1972–1973).

1338  the radical reformation Heinz, Lorenz. Italienische Protestanten und ihr Einfluss auf die Reformation in Polen während der beiden Jahrzehnte vor dem Sandomirer Konsens (1570). Leiden: Brill, 1974. Henderson, Robert. The Teaching Office in the Reformed Tradition, A History of the Doctoral Ministry. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1962. Herlihy, David. Medieval Households. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985. Heninger, S. K., Jr. “The Margarite-Pearl Allegory in Thomas Usk’s Testament of Love.” Speculum 32 (1957): 92–98. Herminjard, Aimé-Louis. Correspondance des Réformateurs dans les pays de langue française. 9 vols. Geneva and Paris, 1866–97. Hershberger, Guy, ed. The Recovery of the Anabaptist Vision. Scottdale, Penn.: Herald Press, 1957. Hertzsch, Erich, ed. Karlstadts Schriften aus den Jahren 1523–1525. Halle: Niemeyer, 1956. Herzog, Johann. Die romanischen Waldenser. Halle, 1853. Heymann, Frederick G. George of Bohemia, King of Heretics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965. ———. “John Rokycana, Church Reformer between Hus and Luther.” CH 28 (1959): 3–43. ———. John Ziska and the Hussite Revolution. New York: Russell & Russell, 1969. Hiebert, Stephanie. “Radical Reformation and Mennonite Bibliography, 1984.” Mennonite Life 40, no. 2 (1985): 17–30. ———. “Radical Reformation and Mennonite Bibliography, 1985.” Mennonite Life 41, no. 2 (1986): 15–31. Hillerbrand, Hans J. A Fellowship of Discontent. New York, 1967. ———. “Anabaptism and the Reformation: Another Look.” CH 29 (1960): 404–23. ———. Bibliographie des Täufertums, 1520–1630. QGT 10. Gütersloh, 1962. ———. Bibliography of Anabaptism, 1520–1630. Elkhart, Ind.: Institute of Mennonite Studies, 1962. ———. Anabaptist Bibliography 1520–1630. St. Louis: Center for Reformation Research, 1991. ———. A Bibliography of Anabaptism, 1520–1630, a sequel, 1962–1974. Sixteenth Century Bibliography I. St. Louis: Center for Reformation Research, 1975. ———. “The Reformation and the German Peasants’ War.” In Buck and Zophy, Social History of the Reformation (q.v.), 106–36. ———. Men and Ideas in the Sixteenth Century. Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland Press, 1984. ———. “Origin of Sixteenth-Century Anabaptism: Another Look.” ARG 53 (1962): 152–80. ———, ed. Radical Tendencies in the Reformation: Divergent Perspectives. Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies 9. Kirksville, Mo.: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, Inc., 1988. ———. “Radicalism in the Early Reformation.” In Hillerbrand, Radical Tendencies in the Reformation (q.v.), 25–41. Hinrichs, Carl. Luther und Müntzer: Ihre Auseinandersetzung über Obrigkeit und Widerstandsrecht. Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte 29. Berlin, 1952.



bibliography  1339

———. Thomas Müntzer, Politische Schriften mit Kommentar. Hallesche Monographen 17. Halle: Niemeyer, 1950. Hinschius, Paulus, ed. Decretales pseudo-I sidorianae. Leipzig, 1863. Hirsch, Elizabeth Feist. “Servetus and the Early Socinians.” In “Unitarianism in the Sixteenth-Seventeenth Century Settings,” edited by John Godbey. Proceedings of the Unitarian Universalist Historical Society 20, no. 2 (1985–86): 25f. Historisch bewogen: opstellen over de radicale reformatie in de 16e en 17e eeuw: opstellen, aangeboden aan Prof. Dr. A. F. Mellink bij zijn afscheid als hoogleraar in de social-religieuze geschiendenis aan de Rijksuniversiteit te Groningen. Groningen: Wolters-Nordhoff: Bouma’s Boekhuis, 1984. Hitchcock, William R. “Eberlin von Günzburg.” In The Background of the Knights’ Revolt 1522–1523. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1958. Hofmann, Georg. Johannes Tauler, Predigten, vollständige Ausgabe. Freiburg: Herder, 1961. Hoffman, Hans-Ulrich. Luther und die Johannes-Apokalypse. Tübingen: Morh/Siebeck, 1982. Holborn, Hajo. Ulrich von Hutten and the German Reformation. Translated by Roland H. Bainton. Yale Historical Publications Studies 11. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1978. Holl, Karl. Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kirchengeschichte. 3 vols. Tübingen, 1927–28. Horsch, John. “An Inquiry into the Truth of the Accusation of Fanaticism and Crime.” MQR 8 (1934): 18–32. ———. “The Struggle.” MQR 7 (1933): 142–62. ———. “The Swiss Brethren in St. Gall and Appenzell.” MQR 7 (1933): 205–26. Horst, Irvin Buckwalter, ed. Dutch Dissenters: A C ritical Companion to their History and Ideas, with a Bibliographical Survey of Recent Research Pertaining to the Early Reformation in the Netherlands. Kerkhistorische bijdragen 13. Leiden: Brill, 1986. ———. Erasmus, the Anabaptists, and the Problem of Religious Unity. Haarlem: IJeenk Willink, 1967. ———. The Radical Brethren: Anabaptism and the English Reformation to 1558. Nieuwkoop: DeGraaf, 1972. Hottinger, Johann Heinrich. Historia ecclesiastica Novi Testamenti. 8 vols. Zurich, 1651–67. Hoyer, Siegfried. “Die Zwickauer Storchianer-Vorlaüfer der Täufer.” Jahrbuch für Regionalgeschichte 13 (1986): 60–78. Hsia, Ronnie Po-chia. “Between Reformation and Counter-Reformation: Religion and Society in Münster, 1535–1618.” Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1982. ———. The German People and the Reformation. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988. ———. Society and Religion in Münster, 1535–1618. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984. Hubert, Konrad. Scripta Anglicana. Basel, 1577. Hubmaier, Balthasar. Schriften. Edited by Torsten Bergsten and Gunnar Westin. Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer 9. Gütersloh, 1962. ———. See also Pipkin, H. Wayne, and John H. Yoder, Ba Heasar Hubmaier. Huerga, Alvaro. Historia de los Alumbrados: (1570–1630). Madrid: Fundación Universitaria Española, Seminario Cisneros, 1978.

1340  the radical reformation ———. Los Alumbrados de la Alta Andalucia (1575–1590). Historia de los Alumbrados 2. Madrid: Fundacion Universitaria Española, Seminario Cisneros, 1978. ———. Los alumbrados de Baeza. Jaen: Instituto de Estudios Giennenses, Excma. Disputacion Provincial, 1978. ———. Los Alumbrados de Extremadura (1570–1582). Historia de los alumbrados 1. Madrid: Fundacion Universitaria Española, Seminario Cisneros, 1978. ———. Los Alumbrades de Hispanoamerica (1570–1605). Historia de los Alumbrados 3. Madrid: Fundacion Universitaria Española, Seminario Cisneros, 1986. Hughes, Philip Edgecumb, ed. and trans. The Register of the Company of Pastors of Geneva in the Time of Calvin. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1966. Huizinga, Johann. Erasmus. Haarlem, 1923. Spanish translation by J. Farrán y Mayoral (Barcelona, 1946). English translation by F. Hopman (London/New York: Harper and Row, 1924). ———. Herfsttij der middeleeuwen. Haarlem, 1919. Hulme, Edward M. “La Confessio de Deo de Lelio Socino.” In Persecution and Liberty: Essays in Honor of George Lincoln Burr, 221–25. New York, 1931. Hulshof, A. Geschiedenis van de Doopsgezinden te Straatsburg van 1525 to 1557. Thesis, University of Amsterdam, 1905. Husa, Václav. Tomas Müntzer a Cechy. Rozpravy Ceskoslovenské Akademie Ved 67, no. 11. Prague, 1957. Illgen, C. F. V ita Laelii Socini. Leipzig, 1826. Irwin, Joyce. Womanhood in the Radical Reformation. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1979. I V aldesia e l’Europa. Collana della Societa di studi valdeis 9. Torre Pellice, 1982. Italian Reformation Studies in Honor of Laelius Socinus. Edited by John A. Tedeschi. Florence, 1965. Jackson, Samuel M. Huldreich Zwingli. New York: 1901. ———. See also Zwingli, Latin Works and Correspondence. Jäger, Friedrich. Theophrastus Paracelsus, 1493–1541. Salzburg, 1941. Jalla, Jean. Histoire des V audois. Pinerolo, 1922. ———. Storia della riforma in Piemonte. Torino: Claudiana reprint, 1982. ———. “Le Synode de Chanforan.” BSSV 58 (1932): 34–48. Jansman, L. G. Melcjioriten, Mustersen en Batenbergs: Gen sociologishe analyse von een millenistische beweging. Buitenpost, 1977. Janz, Denis. Three Anabaptist Catechisms: Catholic, Anabaptist, Luthern. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1982. Jarmola, Darek. “The Origins and Development of Believer’s Baptism among the Polish Brethren in the Sixteenth Century.” Ph. D. diss., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, 1990. Jedin, Hubert. Katholische Reformation und die Gegenreformation. Luzern: Stocker, 1946. ———. Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche. 2d ed. Freiburg: Herder, 1959. Jenny, Beatrice. “Das Schleitheimer Täuferbekenntnis, 1527.” Schaffhauser Beiträge zur V aterländischen Geschichte 28 (1951): 5–81. Jeremias, Joachim. Die Kindertaufe in den ersten vier Jahrhunderten. Göttingen, 1958. Jewel, John. Works. 4 vols. Edited by John Ayre. Cambridge, 1845–50.



bibliography  1341

Jobert, Ambroise. De Luther à Mohila: La Pologne dans la crise de la chrétienté, 1517–1648. Paris: Institut d’Etudes Slaves, 1974. Johnson, James T. “English Puritan Thought on the Ends of Marriage.” CH 38 (1969): 429–36. ———. “Two Kinds of Pacifism: Opposition to the Political Use of Force in the Renaissance-Reformation Period.” Journal of Religious Ethics 12 (1984): 39–60. Jones, Rufus M. Spiritual Reformers in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. London, 1914. Reprint, Boston: Beacon Press, 1959. ———. Studies in Mystical Religion. London: Russell and Russel, 1909. Jones, William B. “Constantino Ponce de la Fuente: The Problem of Protestant Influence in Sixteenth-Century Spain.” Ph.D. diss., Vanderbilt University, 1965. Jundt, A. Histoire du panthéisme populaire au moyen âge. Paris, 1875. Jung, Eva-Maria. “On the Nature of Evangelism in Sixteenth-Century Italy.” JHI 14 (1953): 511–27. Junghans, Helmar. Die Reformation in Augenzeugenberichten. München: Taschenbuch Verlag, 1982. Jurg, Joseph. Deutschland in der Revolutionsperiode. Freiburg im Breisgau, 1851. Kaczerowsky, Klaus. Sebastian Franck: Bibliographie. Wiesbaden: Pressler, 1976. Kähler, Ernest. Karlstadt und Augustin: Der Kommentar von Karlstadt zu Augustinus Schrift, De Spiritu et Litera. Halle: Niemeyer, 1952. Kalesny, Frantisek. Habani na Slovensku. Bratislava: Tatra, 1981. Kalman, Benda. “La Réforme en Hongrie.” Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français 122 (1976): 1–53. Kamen, Henry. Spain 1469–1716: A Society of Conflict. London: Longman, 1983. ———. The Spanish Inquisition. New York: New American Library, 1965. Kamen, Walter. Anabaptism in Outline: Selected Primary Sources. Classics of the Radical Reformation 3. Scottdale, Penn.: Herald Press, 1981. Kaminsky, Howard. A History of the Hussite Revolution. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967. Kantorowicz, Ernst. Die Wiederkehr gelehrter Ana Chorese in Mittelalter. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1937. Karajan, Theodor Georg von, ed. [Diaries and memoirs, 15th and 16th centuries.] Fontes Rerum Austriacarum. Vol. 1.1, Scriptores. Vienna, 1855. Karant-Nunn, Susan C. Zwickau in Transition, 1500–1547: The Reformation as an Agent of Change. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1987. Kathona, Géza. “Dávid Ferenc 1566, évitézisei.” Theológiai Szemle (1966): 16–23. ———. “Égri Lukács antitrinitárius-anabaptista nézetei.” Reneszáinsz-Füzetek 12 (1971): 403–25. ———. “[ Juhász] Méliusz Péter és életmüve.” In Tanulmányok és okmányok a Magyarországi Református Egyház történetébol a négyszázéves jubi leum alkalmábed. Edited by T. Bartha. Studia et Acta Ecclesiastica 2 vols. Budapest, 1967. Kawerau, Peter. Melchior Hofmann als religiöser Denker. Haarlem: Bohm, 1954. Keeney, William E. “An Analysis of Calvin’s Treatment of the Anabaptists in the Institutes.” Mimeographed summary of course given at Hartford University [n.d.].

1342  the radical reformation ———. “Dirk Philips’ Life.” MQR 32 (1958): 171–90. ———. The Development of Dutch Anabaptist Thought and Practice, 1539–1564. Nieuwkoop: DeGraaf, 1968. ———. “The Incarnation: A Central Concept.” In Dyck, Heritage of Menno Simons (q.v.), 55–68. ———. “The Writings of Dirk Philips.” MQR 32 (1958): 298–306. Keller, Ludwig. Johann von Staupitz und die Anfänge der Reformation. Leipzig, 1888. Keller, Rudolf. Der Schlüssel zur Schrift: Die Lehre vom Wort Gottes bei Matthias Flacius I llyriucs. Hannover: Lutherisches Verlagshaus, 1984. Kelley, C. F. The Book of the Poor in Spirit by a Friend of God (Fourteenth Century): A Guide to Rhineland Mysticism. New York: Harper & Row, 1954. Kénosi, János Tözser, et al. Historia ecclesiastica Unitariorum in Transylvania. 2 vols. Manuscript in Houghton Library, Harvard University. Kerssenbroeck, Hermann von. Geschichte der Wiedertäufer zu Münster. Translated from Latin. Münster, 1771. See also Detmer, Heinrich. Kesserü, B., and W. Urban. “Stan badan´ nad heterodoksja¸ na Wegrzech.” In Wokól dziejów i tradycji arianizmu, edited by Lech Szczucki. Warsaw, 1971. Kessler, Johannes. Sabbata [c. 1533]. Edited by Emil Egli and Rudolf Schoch. St. Gall, 1902. Kiefner, Theo. Die Waldenser auf ihrem Weg aus dem V al Cluson durch die Schweiz nach Deutschland 1532–1755. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1980. Kinder, A. Gordon. Casiodoro de Reina. Spanish Reformer. London: Tamesis, 1975. ———. “Juan de Valdes.” In Oswald Glaidt, Simone Simoni, Juan de V aldés, 111–95. BD 9. Baden-Baden/Bouxvilles: Koerner, 1988. ———. Spanish Protestants and Reformers in the Sixteenth Century: A Bibliography. Research Bibliographies and Checklists 39. London: Grant and Cutler, 1983. Kingdon, Robert, and Jean-François Bergier. Registres de la compagnie des pasteurs de Genève au temps de Calvin. Vol. 1, Publies sous la direction des Archives d’Etat de Genève. [Includes “Accusation et procès de Michel Servet.”] Geneva: Droz, 1962, 1964. Kirn, P. See Böhmer, Heinrich, and P. Kirn. Kiss, Emil. “Socinian Influence on the Rynsburg Collegiants.” Proceedings of the Unitarian Universalist Historical Society 20, no. 2 (1985–86): 94–103. Kiwiet, Jan J. Pilgram Marpeck, ein Führer in der Täuferbewegung der Reformationszeit. Kassel: Oncken, 1957. ———. “Die Theologia Deutsch und ihre Bedeutung während der Zeit der Reformation.” Mennonitsche Geschichtsblätter 25 (1958): 29–35. Klaassen, Walter. “The Anabaptist Critique of Constantinian Christendom.” MQR 55 (1981): 218–30. ———. “Eschatological Themes in Early Dutch Anabaptism.” In The Dutch Dissenters: A Critical Companion to Their History and Ideas, edited by Irvin Horst. Leiden: Brill, 1986. ———. “Investigation into the Authorship and Historical Background of the Anabaptist Tract ‘Aufdeckung der Babylonischen Hurn.’” MQR 62 (1987): 251–61. ———. Michael Gaismair: Revolutionary and Reformer. Leiden: Brill, 1978. Klassen, Herbert. “The Life and Teachings of Hans Hut.” MQR 33 (1959): 171–205, 267–304.



bibliography  1343

Klassen, John. “Women and the Family Among Dutch Anabaptist Martyrs.” MQR 60 (1986): 548–571. Klassen, Peter J. The Economics of Anabaptism, 1525–1560. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1964. ———. “Faith and Culture in Conflict: Mennonites in the Vistula Delta.” MQR 57 (1983): 194–205. Klassen, Walter. Anabaptism in Outline: Selected Primary Sources. Classics of the Radical Reformation 3. Scottdale, Penn.: Herald Press, 1981. ———. “Anabaptism: Neither Catholic nor Protestant.” CH 43, no. 3 ( 1985): 10–12, 34–35. ———. “The Bern Debate of 1538.” MQR 11 (1966): 148–56. ———. “Word, Spirit, and Scripture in Early Anabaptist Thought.” Thesis, Oxford University, 1960. ———, trans. and ed. The Writings of Pilgram Marpeck. Classics of the Radical Reformation 2. Scottdale, Penn.: Herald Press, 1978. ———. See also Marpeck, Pilgram. Klassen, William. “A Church Order for Members of Christ’s Body.” MQR 38 (1964): 354–56. ———. Covenant and Community: The Life, Writings and Hermeneutics of Pilgram Marpeck. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968. ———. “Leonard Scharnschlager’s ‘Farewell to the Strasbourg Council.’” MQR 42 (1968): 211–18. ———. “The Limits of Political Authority as Seen by Pilgram Marpeck.” MQR 56 (1982): 342–69. ———. “Pilgram Marpeck’s Two Books of 1531.” MQR 33 (1959): 18–30. ———. See also Marpeck, Pilgram. Kleiner, John Walter. “Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt’s Eschatology as Illustrated by Two Major Writings of 1523.” Th.M. thesis, Harvard Divinity School, 1966. Kleinschmid, C. L. Sammlung Fürstlich Hessischer Landesordnungen. Kassel, 1767. Kloczowski, Jerzy. “Catholic Reform in the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth.” In Catholicism in Early Modern History 1500–1700: A Guide to Research. St. Louis: Center for Reformation Research, 1988. Knapp, J. F. Regenten- und V olksgeschichte der Länder Cleve, Mark, Jülich, Berg, und Ravensberg. Crefeld, 1936. Knappert, Laurentius. De opkomst van het Protestantisme. The Hague, 1908. ———. Het onstaan en de vestiging van het protestantisme in de Nederlanden. Utrecht, 1924. Knoke, Walter. “Schwenckfelds Sakramentsverständnis.” Zeitschrift für Religions und Geistegeschichte 11 (1959): 314–27. Knörrlick, Wolfgang. Kaspar Schwenckfeld und die Reformation in Schlesien. Bonn, 1957. Knox, John. Works. 6 vols. Edited by David Laing. Edinburgh: J. Thin, 1846–64. Reprint, New York: AMS, 1966. Kobelt-Groch, Marion. “Why did Petronella Leave Her Husband? Reflections on Marital Avoidance among the Halberstadt Anabaptists.” MQR 62 (1988): 26–41. Kohl, W. “Heinrich Roll: Beiträge zu seiner Biographie.” In Studia Westfalica, edited by Max Bierbaum. Münster: Aschendorff, 1973.

1344  the radical reformation Kohls, Ernst-Wilhelm. Die Schule bei Martin Bucer in ihrem V erhältnis zu Kirche und Obrigkeit. Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer, 1963. Kolb, Abraham B., trans. Enchiridion or Handbook for the Christian Soldier, by Dirk Philips. Elkhart, Ind., 1910. Kolde, Theodor. “Hans Denck und die gottlosen Maler in Nünberg.” Beiträge zur Bayerischen Kirchengeschichte 8 (1902): 1ff. Konfederacja warszawska 1573 roku, wielka karta polskiejtolerancji. Edited by Miroslaw Korølko and Janusz Tazbir. Warsaw: Instytut Wydawniczy PAX , 1980. Koolman, J. ten Doornkaat. See Doornkaat Koolman, J. ten. Koopmans, Jan. Het oudkerklijk dogma in de Reformatie. Wageningen, 1938. Kormanowa, Anna. “Arianie polscy.” Nowe Drogi 3 (1949): 107–18. Kosman, Marceli. Nowinki, spory i zbory: z dziejów polskiej reformacji. Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Szkolne i Pedagogiczne, 1981. ———. Reformacja i Kontrreformacja w Wielkim Ksiestwie Litewskim. Warsaw, 1973. Kot, Stanislas. “Ausbruch und Niedergang des Täufertums in Wilna.” ARG 49 (1958): 212–26. ———. “Dysputacje arjan polskich.” RwP 8 (1936): 341–70. ———. “Jacques Paléologue, défenseur de Servet.” In Becker, Autour de Michel de Servet (q.v.). ———. “L’Influence de Michel Servet sur le mouvement antitrinitarien en Pologne.” In Becker, Autour de Michel de Servet (q.v.), 72–115. ———. “La Réforme dans le Grand-Duché de Lithuanie, facteur d’occidentalisation culturelle.” Annuaire de l’Institut de Philologie de d’Histoire Orientales et Slaves 11 (1952): 201–61. ———. Oddzialywanie Braci Polskich zwanych Socynjanami w Anglji. Warsaw, 1936. ———. Socinianism in Poland: The Social and Political Ideas of the Polish Antitrinitarians in the 16th and 17th Centuries. Boston: Beacon Press, 1957. ———. “Szymon Budny, der grösste Häretiker Litauens im 16. Jahrhundert.” Wiener Archiv für Geschichte des Slawentums und Osteuropas 2 (1956). ———. See also Budny, Ourze¸dizierwsze miecza uzywaja¸cym. Kot, S., and I. Chrzanowski. Humanizm i Reformacja w Polsce. Lwów, 1927. Krahn, Cornelius. “Anabaptism in Westphalia.” MQR 35 (1961): 282–85. ———. Der Gemeindebegriff des Menno Simons im Rahmen seines Lebens und seiner Theologie. Karlsruhe, 1936. ———. Dutch Anabaptism: Origin, Spread, Life, and Thought 1450–1600. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1968. Reprint, Scottdale, Penn.: Herald Press, 1981. ———. Menno Simons, 1496–1561: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte und Theologie der Taufgesinnten. Karlsruhe, 1936. ———. “Menno Simons’ Concept of the Church.” In Dyck, Heritage of Menno Simons (q.v.), 17–30. ———. “The Emden Disputation of 1578.” MQR 30 (1956). Krahn, Henry. “Martin Bucer’s Strategy Against Sectarian Dissent.” MQR 50 (1976): 163–80.



bibliography  1345

Krajewski, Ekkehard. Leben und Sterben des Zürcher Täuferführers Felix Mantz. Kassel: Oncken, 1957. Kraus, C. Norman. “Anabaptist Influence on English Separatism as Seen in Robert Browne.” MQR 34 (1960): 5–19. Krebs, Manfred. Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer. Vol. 4, Baden und Pfalz. Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1951. ———, and Jean Rott. Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer. Vol. 7, Elsass 1: Stadt Strassburg 1522–1532; Vol 8, Elsass 2: Stadt Strassburg 1533–1535. Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1959–60. Kreider, Alan. “God’s Left Wing (The Radical Reformation).” CH 53 (1984): 47–56. Kreider, Robert. “The Anabaptists and the Civil Authorities of Strasbourg, 1525–1555.” CH 24 (1955): 99–118. Krisztinkovich, Bela. “Glimpses into the Early History of Anabaptism in Hungary.” MQR 43 (1969): 127–41. Krisztinkovich, Maria H. “Wiedertäufer und Arianer im Karpatenraum.” In UngarnJahrbuch, 50–63. Munich: Hase und Koehler, 1971. Krodel, Gottfried. “Die Abendmahlslehre des Erasmus von Rotterdam und seine Stellung am Anfang des Abendmahlsstreites der Reformatoren.” Ph.D. diss., University of Erlangen, 1955. Krohn, Barthold. Geschichte der fanatischen und enthusiastischen Wiedertäufer vornehmlich in Niederdeutschland: Melchoir Hofmann und die Secte der Hofmannianer. Leipzig, 1758. Krumbholtz, R. See Detmer, Heinrich, and Robert Krumbholtz. Kryzanowski, Ludwik. “Exploring the Roots of Unitarianism.” Polish Review 28, no. 1 (1983): 66–73. Kühler, W. J. Geschiedenis der nederlandsche doopsgezinden in de zestiende eeuw. Haarlem, 1932. ———. Het Socinianisme in Nederland. Voorzien van een inleiding van Aart de Groot en vermeerderd met een register samengesteld door Dirk Visser. Leiden, 1912. Facsimile reprint, Leeuwarden: De Tille, 1980. Kuntz, Marion Leathers. “Guillaume Postel and the World State Restitution and the Universal Monarchy.” History of European Ideas 4 (1983): 299–323, 445–56. ———. Guillaume Postel: Prophet of the Restitution of All Things: His Life and Thought. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1981. ———. “Journey as Restitution in the Thought of Guillaume Postel.” History of European Ideas 1 (1981): 315–29. ———. “Lodovico Domenichi, Guillaume Postel and the Biography of Giovanna Veronese.” Studi V eneziani, n.s. 16 (1988): 33–43. ———. “The Virgin of Venice and the Concept of the Millennium in Venice.” In The Politics of Gender in Early Modern Europe, edited by Jean R. Brink. Kirksville, Mo.: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, Inc., 1989. Kupsch, Eduard. “Der polnische Unitarismus.” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 5 (1957): 401–40. Kuratsuka, Taira. “Gesamtgilde und Täufer: Der Radikalisierungsprozess in der Reformation Münsters: Von der reformatorischen Bewegung zum Täufferreich 1533/34.” ARG 76 (1985): 231–70.

1346  the radical reformation Kurdybacha, Lukasz. Z dziejów pedagogiki arian´skiej. Warsaw, 1958. Kutter, Markus. Celio Secondo Curione. Basel: Helbing & Lichtenhahn Verlag AG, 1955. de Lagarde, G. La Naissance de l’esprit laique au déclin du moyen âge. 3d ed. 5 vols. Louvain: Nauwelaerts, 1956–63. Lähteenmäki, C. Olavi. Sexus und Ehe bei Luther. Turku, 1955. Lampe, Friedrich. Historia ecclesiae reformatae in Hungaria et Transylvania. Utrecht, 1728. Lancee, J. A. L. “David Joris of Delft, ca. 1502–56 / D avid Joris van Delft, ca. 1502– 1556.” Spiegel Historische 15 (1980): 594–601. Landes, Paula Frederickson. “Tyconius and the End of the World.” Revue des études augustiniennes 28 (1982): 59–75. Landsteiner, Karl. Jacobus Palaeologus, eine Studie. Vienna, 1873. Langin, Bernd G. Die Hutterer: Gefangene der V ergangenheit, Pilger der Gegenwart, Propheten der Zukunft. Hamburg: Rasch und Rohring, 1986. Langgirth, O. “Eberlin von Günzburg.” ARG 31 (1934): 228–38. Lashlee, Ernest. “Caspar Schwenckfeld and the V ia Regia.” Thesis, Harvard University, Cambridge, 1969. Lau, Franz. “Der Bauernkrieg und das angebliche Ende der lutherischen Reformation als Volksbewegung.” Luther-Jahrbuch 26 (1959): 109–34. ———. Marcin Luter. Polish translation by Oskar Bartel and Janusz Narzyn´ski. Warsaw: Tamka, 1966. Laube, Adolf, ed. Der Deutsche Bauernkrieg. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1977. ———. “Precursors of the Peasants’ War: ‘Bundschuh’ und ‘Armer Konrad’—Popular Movements at the Eve of the Reformation.” In Bak, The German Peasant War (q.v.). ———. “Radicalism as a Research Problem in the History of the Early Reformation.” In Radical Tendencies in the Reformation: Divergent Perspectives, edited by Hans J. Hillerbrand. Kirksville, Mo.: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, Inc., 1988. ———, Max Steinmetz, and Günther Vögler, eds. I llustrierte Geschichte der deutschen frühbürgerlichen Revolution. Berlin: Verlag das Europaische Buch; Cologne: PahlRugenstein, 1974. ———. “Thomas Müntzer und die frühbürgerliche Revolution.” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 38 (1990): 128–141. Laurense, Leo. “The Catholicity of the Anabaptists.” MQR 38 (1964): 266–79. Lavater, Hans Rudolf. “Regnum Christi etiam externum: Huldrych Zwinglis Brief vom 4. Mai 1528 an Ambrosius Blauer in konstanz. christi etiam extrenaum—Ulrich Zwingli’s Letter of 4 M ay 1528 to Ambrosius Blauer in Constance.” Zwingliana 15 (1981): 338–81. Lawson, John. The Biblical Theology of Saint Irenaeus. London: Epworth Press, 1948. Lazzaro, Ralph. “Cuatro cartas de Lelio Socino y Calvino.” In Italian Reformation Studies (q.v.), 215–30. Lebaue, Jean, and Jean-Marie Valentin. L’Alsace au siècle de la Réforme, 1482–1621. Nancy: Presses Universitaires, 1985. Lecler, J. Histoire de la tolérance au siècle de la Réforme. 2 vols. Paris, 1955. Leendertz, W. I. Melchior Hofmann. Haarlem, 1883.



bibliography  1347

Leff, Gordon. Heresy in the Later Middle Ages: The Relation of Heterodoxy to Dissent ca. 1250–ca. 1450. 2 vols. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1967. Lemmi, Francesco. La Riforma in Italia e i riformatori italiani all’estero nel secolo xv i. Milan, 1939. Lenk, Werner, ed. Dokumente aus dem deutschen Bauerenkrieg. Leipzig: Reclam, 1974. Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim. V on Adam Neusern, einige authentische Nachrichten. Braunschweig, 1774. In Sämtliche Werke, 11:202–54. Leipzig, 1897. Liebing, Heinz. “Die Frage nach einem hermeneutischen Prinzip bei Castellio.” In Autour de Michel Servet et de Sebastien Castellion, edited by Bruno Becker. Haarlem: Willink, 1953. Liechty, Daniel. “Andreas Fischer: A Brief Biographical Sketch.” MQR 58 (1984): 125–32. ———. “Andreas Fischer: A Case of Mistaken Identity.” MQR 59 (1985): 299–304. ———. Andreas Fischer and the Sabbatarian Anabaptists: An Early Reformation Episode in East Central Europe. Studies in Anabaptist and Mennonite History 29. Scottdale, Penn.: Herald Press, 1988. ———. “The Hungarian ‘Booklet Concerning the True Christian Baptism’: Its Flemish Origins and Theological Significance.” MQR 62 (1988): 332–48. Lienhard, Marc, ed. Croyants et Sceptiques au XVI siècle: Le dossier des ‘Epicurians.’ Strassburg: Librairie Istra, 1981. ———, Stephen F. Nelson, and Hans Georg, eds. Elsass 3: Stadt Strassburg 1536–1542. Gütersloh: Mohn, 1986. ———. “Les autorités civiles et les anabaptistes: attitude du magistrat de Strasbourg (1526–1532).” In Lienhard, The Origins and Characteristics of Anabaptism, 196–215. ———, ed. Les Dissidents du XVIe siécle entre l’humanisme et le catholicisme: actes du colloque de Strasbourg (5–6 fevrier 1982). Bibliotheca Dissidentium, Scripta et studia 1. BadenBaden: V. Koerner, 1983. ———, ed. The Origins and Characteristics of Anabaptism. International Archives of the History of Ideas 87. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977. Lievestro, Christaan. “Obbe Philips and the Anabaptist Vision.” MQR 41 (1967): 99–115. Liland, Peter Martin Idsoe. “Anabaptist Separatism: A Historical and Theological Study of the Contribution of Balthasar Hubmaier, ca. 1485–1529.” Ph.D. diss., Boston College, 1983. Lillback, Peter Alan. “The Binding of God: Calvin’s Role in the Development of Covenant Theology (Luther, Zwingli, Bullinger, Bucer, Oecolampadius).” Ph.D. diss., Westminster Theological Seminary, 1985. Lindberg, Carter. “Karlstadt’s Dialogue on the Lord’s Supper.” MQR 53 (1979): 35–77. ———. “Müntzeriana.”’ Lutheran Quarterly Review 4 (1990): 195–214. Lindeboom, Johannes. De confessioneele ontwikkeling der Reformatie in de Nederlanden. The Hague: 1946. ———. Geschiedenis der Kerkhervorming… Amsterdam, 1873. ———. Geschiedenis van het V rijzinnig Protestantisme. 3 vols. Assen: Gorcum, 1929–35. ———. Stiefkinderen van het christendom. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1929. ———. See also Reitsma, J., and J. Lindeboom. Linden, Friederich Otto zur. Melchior Hofmann: Ein Prophet der Wiedertäufer. Haarlem, 1885.

1348  the radical reformation Lindner, Klaus N. “Courtship and the Courts: Marriage and Law in Southern Germany, 1350–1550.” Th.D. diss., Harvard Divinity School, 1988. Littell, Franklin H. Landgraf Philip und die Toleranz. Bad Neuheim: Christian Verlag, 1957. ———. “New Light on Butzer’s Significance.” In Reformation Studies (q.v.), 147–67. ———. “The Anabaptist Theology of Missions.” MQR 21 (1947): 5–17. ———. The Anabaptist V iew of the Church. 2d ed. Boston: Starr King Press, 1958. Translated into German as Selbstverständnis der Täufer (Kassel: Oncken, 1966). ———. The Free Church. Boston: Beacon Press, 1957. ———. “[The Laity in the] Radical Reformation.” Chap. 11 of The Laity in Historical Perspective, edited by Stephen Neill and Hans-Ruedi Weber. London, 1963. Livet, Georges, et al. Strasbourg religieux au xv ie siècle. Strassburg: Istra, 1977. Livshits, Giler Markovich. Reformatsionnoe dvizhenie v Chekhii i Germanii. Minsk: Vysheish Shkola, 1978. Llorente, Juan Antonio. Histoire critique de l’Inquisition d’Espagne. Paris, 1817. Locher, Gottfried W. Zwinglische Reformation im Rahmen der europäischen Kirchengeschichte. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1979. Loesche, Georg. Geschichte des Protestantismus im vormaligen und im neuen Österreich. Vienna and Leipzig, 1930. Loeschen, John R. The Divine Community: Trinity, Church, and Ethics in Reformation Theologies. Kirksville, Mo.: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, Inc. 1981. Loetscher, Frederick William. Schwenckfeld’s Participation in the Eucharistic Controversy. Philadelphia, 1906. Löffler, Klemens, ed. Die Wiedertäufer zu Müntser., 1534–35: Berichte, Aussagen, und Aktenstücke von Augenzeugen und Zeitgenosen. Jena, 1923. Lohmann, Annemarie. Zur geistigen Entwicklung Thomas Müntzers. Leipzig-Berlin, 1931. Lohse, Bernhard. “Hans Denck und der ‘linke Flügel’ der Reformation.” In HumanitasChristianistas: Walter von Loewenich zum 65. Geburtstag. Witten: Luther-Verlag, 1968. Longhurst, John E. Cuadernos de Historia de España. 25/26. Buenos Aires: Universidad de Buenos Aires, Instituto de Historia de la Cultura Española, Medieval y Moderna, 1957, 279–303. ———. Erasmus and the Spanish Inquisition: The Case of Juan de V aldés. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1950. ———. Luther’s Ghost in Spain. Lawrence, Kans.: Coronado Press, 1979. Loserth, Johann. “Anabaptists in Carinthia in the Sixteenth Century.” MQR 21 (1947): 235ff. ———. Doctor Balthasar Hubmaier und die Anfänge der Wiedertäufer in Mähren. Brünn, 1893. ———. Pilgram Marpecks Antwort auf Caspar Schwenckfelds Beurteilung des Buches der Bundesbezeugung von 1542. Vienna/Leipzig, 1929. Lubac, Henri de. Corpus mysticum. Paris, 1949. Lubieniecki, Andrzej. Poloneutychia. Edited by Alina Linda … [et al.]. Biblioteka pisarzy reformacyjnych 15. Warsaw; Lódz´: PWN, 1982. Lubieniecki, Stanislas. Historia Reformationis Polonicae. Amsterdam, 1685. Facsimile edition, edited by Henryk Barycz y Janusz Tazbir. Warsaw, 1971.



bibliography  1349

———. Historia Reformationis Polonicae. Translated and edited by, annotated and illustrated as History of the Polish Reformation, with Nine Related Documents, by E. Morse Wilbur (†1959), Marek Wajsblum (†1962), and George H. Williams. Harvard Theological Studies 34. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992. Cited in text as Williams, Lubieniecki. Lubieniecki, Stanislaw. Compendium V eritatis Primaevae. Edited by K. E. Jordt Jørgensen. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1982. Lukaszewicz, Joseph. Geschichte der reformierten Kirchen in Lithauen. 2 vols. Leipzig, 1848–50. Lundberg, Per. La typologie baptismale dans l’ancienne Église. Leipzig: Lorenze, 1972. Luther, Martin. Briefwechsel. Edited by Ernst Ludwig Enders. 18 vols. Calw-StuttgartLeipzig, 1884–1923. ———. Werke, Kritische Gesamtausgabe. [Weimar-Ausgabe]. 107 vols. Weimar, 1883–. ———. Works. [American Edition] 55 vols. Edited by Jaroslav Pelikan. St. Louis: Concordia, 1955–1986. ———. Works. 6 vols. Edited by Henry Eyster Jacobs and Adolph Spaeth. Philadelphia: Muhlenberg, 1915–1932. Lynch, John. Spain under the Hapsburgs: Empire and Absolutism, 1516–1598. 2d ed. New York: New York University Press, 1961. Mabry, Eddie Louis. “The Baptismal Theology of Balthasar Hubmaier.” Ph.D. diss., Princeton Theological Seminary, 1982. MacDermatt, Violet. The Cult of the Seer in the Ancient Middle East. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971. Macek, Josef. Der Tiroler Bauern-Krieg und Michael Gaismair. Prague: Ceskoslovenske Akademie Ved, 1960. Reprint, Berlin: Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1965. Maciejowska, Maria, Lech Szczucki, and Zadzislaw Zawadzki, eds. Biblioteka Pisarzy Reformacyjnych 16. Warsaw/Lódz´: PWN, 1989. Maciuszko, Janusz T. Konfederacja Warszawska 1573 roku: Geneza, pierwsze lata obowia¸zywania. Warsaw: Chrzes´cijan´ska Akademia Teologiczna, 1984. Maddison, C. Marcantonio Flaminio. London, 1965. Maier, Paul. Caspar Schwenckfeld on the Person and Work of Christ: A Study of Schwenckfeldian Theology at Its Core. Assen: Van Gorcum, 1959. Makki, Ladislas. Histoire de Transylvanie. Paris, 1946. Maleczyn´ska, Eva. “Gabrielowcy ´s la¸scy.” ORP 6 (1961): 17–28. ———. “Ulrych Stadler na tle losów anabaptystów w p ierwzej polowie x vi wieku.” Przegla¸d Historyczny 1 (1959): 473–85. Mansi, Gian Domenico. Sacorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio. 55 vols. Paris, 1903–27. Manzoni, Claudio. Umanesimo ed eresia: Michele Serveto. Naples: Guida, 1974. Maravall, José. Las Communidades de Castilla; una primera revolucion moderna. Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1963. Marchetti, Valerio. Gruppi ereticali senesi del Cinquecento. Florence: Lanuova Italia, 1957. ———. Movimenti ereticali in Itali e in Polonia. Florence: Instituto nazionale di studi sul Rinascimento, 1974. Maron, Gottfried. Individualismus und Gemeinschaft bei Caspar Schwenckfeld. Stuttgart, 1961.

1350  the radical reformation Marpeck, Pilgram. The Writings of Pilgram Marpek. Edited by William Klassen and Walter Klassen. Classics of the Radical Reformation 2. Scottdale, Penn.: Herald Press, 1978. ———. See also Fast, “Pilgram Marpeck”; Hege, “Edition of the V ermahnung”; Klassen, “Pilgram Marpeck’s Two Books of 1531”; Loserth, Pilgram Marpeck’s Antwort auf Caspar Schwenckfelds; and Wenger, John C. Márquez, Antonio. “Juan de Valdés, teólogio de los Alumbrados.” La Ciudad de Deos 185 (1971): 214–19. ———. Los Alumbrados: Orígenes y filosofía (1525–1559). Madrid: Taurus, 1972. Marr, M. Lucille. “Anabaptist Women in the North: Peers in the Faith, Subordinates in Marriage.” MQR 61 (1987): 347–58. Martin, Dennis. “Monks, Mendicants, and Anabaptists: Michael Sattler and the Benedictines Reconsidered.” MQR 60 (1986): 139–64. Martin, Joseph. Religious Radicals in Tudor England. London: Hambledon, 1989. Martinez, Fernando. Miguel Servet. Madrid: Hernando, 1976. Martini, Magda. Fausto Socino et la Pensée Socinienne. Paris: Klincksieck, 1967. Martinson, Steven D. Between Luther and Münzer: The Peasant Revolt in German Drama and Thought. Frankfurter Beiträge zur Germanistik 24. Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1988. Mast, Russel. “Menno Speaks Concerning the Ministry.” MQR 54 (1980): 106–16. Mateboer, T. De ondergang van de wederdopers te Munster. Utrecht: De Banier, 1981. Matheson, Peter, ed. and tr. The Collected Works of Thomas Müntzer. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1988. Matthiot, Charles, and Roger Boigeol. Recherches historiques sur les anabaptistes. Flavion: Editions le Pharre, 1969. Mau, Wilhelm. Balthasar Hubmaier. Abhandlungen zur Mittleren und Neueren Geschichte 40. Berlin, 1912. McCormick, Chalmers. “The ‘Restitution’ of John Campanus.” Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1959. McGinn, Bernard. Apocalyptic Spirituality. New York: Paulist Press, 1979. McKee, Elsie Ann. Elders and the Plural Ministry: The Role of Exegetical History in I lluminating John Calvin’s Theology. Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1988. McLaughlin, Eleanor. “The Heresy of the Free Spirit and Late Medieval Mysticism.” Medievalia et Humanistica, n.s., 4 (1973): 37–54. McLaughlin, Robert Emmet. “Caspar Schwenckfeld von Ossig (1489–1561): Nobility and Religious Committment. Crisis and Decision in the Early Reformation.” Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1980. ———. Caspar Schwenckfeld, Reluctant Radical: His Life to 1540. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986. McLelland, Joseph C., ed. Peter Martyr V ermigli and Italian Reform. Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier Press, 1980. McNair, Philip. Peter Martyr in Italy: An Anatomy of Apostasy. Oxford: Clarendon, 1967. McNeill, John T. The History and Character of Calvinism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1957. ———. Unitive Protestantism. New York, 1930; rev. ed., Richmond: John Knox Press, 1964.



bibliography  1351

———. See also Calvin, Institutes. Mecenseffy, Grete. Geschichte des Protestantismus in Österreich. Graz-Köln: Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1956. ———. Österreich, 2 vols. Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer 11, 13. Gütersloh: Mohn, 1964, 1972. ———. “Sources and Currents of Baptistdom in Austria.” Mitteilungen des Oberösterreichischen Landesarchivs 14 (1984): 77–94. Meeuwis van Dis. Leendert. Reformatorische rederijkerspelen uit de eerst helft van de zestiende eeuw. Haarlem, 1937. Mehl, Oskar. Thomas Müntzers Deutsche Messe. Grimmen in Pommern, 1937. Meihuizen, H. W. Dat Fundament des Christelychek Leers. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1967. ———. “Spiritualistic Tendencies and Movements among the Dutch Mennonites of the 16th and 17th Centuries.” MQR 27 (1953): 259–304. ———. V an Mantz tot Menno: De verbreiding van de doperse beginseln. Amsterdam: Allegemeine Doopgezinde Societeit, 1975. ———. See also Simons, Dat fundament des christelycken leers. Meissner, Erich. Die Rechtsprechung über die Wiedertäufer und die antitäuferische Publizistik. Göttingen, 1921. Melanchthon, Philipp. Supplementa Melanchthoniana. Leipzig, 1926. Mellink, Albert F. Amsterdam en de wederdopers in de zestiende eeuw. Nijmegen: Socialistiese Uitgeverij Nijmegen, 1978. ———. “The Beginnings of Dutch Anabaptism in the Light of Recent Research.” MQR 62 (1988): 211–20. ———. De Wederdoopers in de noordelijke Nederlandern, 1531–1544. Groningen: Wolters, 1953. ———. Documenta Anabaptistica Neerlandica. 5 vols. Leiden: Brill, 1980. ———. “The Mutual Relations between the Münster Anabaptists and the Netherlands.” ARG 50 (1959): 16–33. ———. “The Radical Underground in the Dutch Radical Reformation.” Bulletin Monumenta Anabaptista Neerlandica 12–13 (1980–81): 43–57. Menéndez Pidal, Ramón. Idea imperial de Carlos V . Madrid: Coleccion Austral, 1940. The Mennonite Encyclopedia. Edited by Harold S. J. Bender and C. Henry Smith. 4 vols. Hillsboro, Kan.: Mennonite Brethren Publishing House, 1955–59. Mennonitisches Lexikon. Edited by Christian Hege and Christian Neff. 4 vols. FrankfurtWeierhof (Pfalz), 1913–67. Mergal, Ángel M., and George H. Williams, eds. Spiritual and Anabaptist Writers: Documents I llustrative of the Radical Reformation and Evangelical Catholicism. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1957, 1977. Merlan, Philip. Monopsychism, Mysticism, Metaconsciousness: Problems of the Soul in Neoaristotelian and Neoplatonic Traditions. 2d ed. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1969. Merz, Otto. Thomas Müntzer und Heinrich Pfeiffer, 1523–1525: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Bauernkrieges in Thüringen. Vol. 1, Müntzer und Pfeiffer bis zum Ausbruch des Bauernkrieges. Göttingen, 1889. [The only part published.] Meseguer Fernández, Juan. “Nuevos datos sobre los hermanos Valdés.” Hispania 17 (1957): 369–94.

1352  the radical reformation Meyer, Christian. “Zur Geschichte der Wiedertäufer in Oberschwaben, I. ‘Die Anf änge des Wiedertäufertums’ in Augsburg.” Zeitschrift des Historischen V ereins für Schwaben und Neuburg 1 (1874): 207–56. Meyer, Christina. “Die Änfange des Wiedertäufertums in Augsburg.” Zeitschrift des historischen V ereins für Schwaben und Neuburg 38 (1984): 224–45. Migne, Jacques-Paul, ed. Patrologia Latina. 22 vols. Paris, 1844–64. ———. Patrologia Graeca. 166 vols. Paris, 1857–66. Miller, Edward Waite, and Jared W. Scudder. Wessel Gansfort: Life and Writings. 2 vols. New York and London: Putnam’s Sons, 1917. Miller, James Cairns. “The Origins of Polish Arianism.” SCJ 16 (1985): 228–56. Mitchell, Bonner. The Majesty of State: Triumphal Progresses of Foreign Sovereigns in Renaissance Italy. Biblioteca dell’Archivum Romanicum Series 1, vol. 203. Florence: Olschki, 1986. Modrzewski, Andrzej Frycz. Opera omnia. Edited by Kazimierz Kumaniecki. 5 v ols. Warsaw, 1953–55. Moeller, Bernd, ed. Studien zum Bauernkrieg. Gütersloh: Mohn, 1975. Molnár, Amedeo. “Ben ha mil e cent anc complimentiarament (En marge de la Nobla Leizzon).” BSSV 113 (1963): 108–9. ———. “Bratr Lukas˘.” Theologia Evangelica 1. Prague, 1948. ———, and Josef Smolik. Cesti evangelici a tolerantni patent. Studie a texty Komenskeho evangelicke bohoslovecke fakulty 6. Prague: Kalich, 1982. ———. Confessio Taboritarum. Roma, 1983. ———. Die Waldenser. Göttingen, 1980. ———. I Taboriti: avanguardia della rivoluzione hussita (sec. XV ): Gli scritti essenziali. Torino: Claudiana, 1986. ———. “L’Internationale des Taborites et des Vaudois.” BSSV 122 (1967): 3–13. ———. “La Correspondance entre les Frères Tchèques et Bucer, 1540 à 1542.” RHPR 31 (1951): 102–56. ———. “La mise en question du baptême des enfants par les hussites radicaux.” In Anabaptistes et dissidents au XVIe siècle. Baden-Baden: Koerner, 1987. ———. “Les 32 Errores V aldensium de la Bohême.” BSSV 115 (1964): 3–4. ———. “Les Vaudois en Bohême avant la révolution hussite.” BSSV 116 (1964): 3–19. ———. “Les Vaudois et la Réforme.” BSSV 96 (1954): 45–47. [Abstract of article published in Czechoslovakia.] ———. “Les Vaudois et l’Unité des Frères Tchèques.” BSSV 118 (1965): 3–16. ———. “Luc de Prague et les Vaudois d’Italie.” BSSV 90 (1949): 40–64. ———. Storia dei V aldesi. Vol. 1, 1176–1532. Turin, 1974. [For Vol. 2, see ArmandHugon, Augusto.] ———. “Thomas Müntzer und Böhmen.” Communio viatorum 1 (1958): 242–45. ———. “Vy´chozi zásady bratrského bohosloví.” Jednota Bratrská 30 (1953). Molnár, Enrico C. S. “Naturism in Christian History and Theology.” ———. See also Valdés, Alfonso de. Montesino, José F. Diálogo de Mercurio y d e Caron. Roma. Madrid: Ediciones de “La lectura,” 1928.



bibliography  1353

———. V aldés, Diálogo de las cosas occunidas en Roma. Madrid: Ediciones de “La lectura,” 1929. ———. See also Valdés, Alfonso de. Moore, John Allen. Anabaptist Portraits. Scottdale, Penn.: Herald Press, 1984. ———. Der starke Jörg. Kassel, 1955. Morzkowski, Peter. Polita ecclesiastica. Edited by George Ludwig Oeder. FrankfurtLeipzig, 1745. Mosheim, Johann Lorenz von. V ersuch einer vollständigen unpartheyischen und gründlichen Ketzergeschichte. Helmstadt, 1748. Moss, Jean Dietz. Godded with God: Hendrik Niclaes and His Family of Love. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Association, 1981. Mosse, George L. “Puritan Radicalism and the Enlightenment.” CH 29 (1960): 424–39. Müller, F. Karl. Die Bekenntnisschriften der reformierten Kirche. Leipzig, 1903. Reprint, Zurich: Theologische Buchhandlung, 1987. Müller, Gerhard. Franz von Lambert von Avignon und die Reformation in Hessen. Marburg: Elwert, 1958. ———. Kirchengeschichte. 2 vols. Tübingen, 1919. ———, and Gottfried Seebass, eds. Gesamtausgabe. Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1981. Müller, Lydia. Quellen zur Geschichte der Wiedertäufer 3: Glaubenszeugnisse oberdeutscher Taufgesinnter. Vol. 1. Leipzig, 1938. [For Vol. 2 (= vol. 11 of the series), see Friedmann, Robert.] Mullett, Michael A. Radical Religious Movemeuts in Early Modern Europe. London: Allen and Unwin, 1980. Müntzer, Thomas. See Böhmer, Heinrich, and P. Kirn; Brandt, Otto; Franz, Günther and Paul Kirn; and Hinrichs, Carl. ———. Theologische Schriften aus dem Jahr 1523. Edited by Siegfried Brauer and Wolfgang Ullmann. 2d ed. Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1982. ———. The Collected Works of Thomas Müntzer. Edited and translated by Peter Matheson. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1988. Muralt, Leonhard von. “Das Gespräch mit den Wiedertäufern am 22. Januar 1528 zu Bern.” Zwigliana 5 (1933). ———. “Konrad Grebel als Student in Paris.” Züricher Taschenbuch (1936). ———. “Zum Problem: Reformation und Täufertum.” Zwingliana 7 (1938): 65–85. ———, and Walter Schmid, eds. Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer in der Schweiz. Vol. 1, Zürich. Zurich: Hirzel, 1952. Müsing, Hans-Werner. “The Anabaptist Movement in Strasbourg from Early 1526 to July 1527.” MQR 51 (1977): 91–126. ———. “Karlstadt und die Entstehung der Strassburger Täufer.” In Lienhard, Origins and Characteristics (q.v.), 169–95. Mutzenberg, Gabriel. Thomas Muntzer, ou, L’illuminisme sanglant. Lausanne: Editions Belle Riviere, 1987. Näf, Werner. V adian und seine Stadt St. Gallen. St. Gall: Fehr’sche Buchhandlung, 1944. Nardi, Bruno. Studi su Pietro Pomponazzi. Florence: Monnier, 1965. Narzyn´ski, Janusz. See Lau, Marcin Luter.

1354  the radical reformation Neff, Christian, ed. Gedenkschrift zum 400–jährigen Jubiläum der Mennoniten oder Taufgesinnten. Ludwigshafen, 1925. ———. See also Mennonitisches Lexikon. Negri, Francisco. A certayne Tragedie … entituled, Freewyl. English translation by Henry Cheke (1573); critical edition by John C. Schwindt. Ph.D. diss., University of Florida, 1969. Nelson, Stephen F., and Jean Rott. “Strasbourg: The Anabaptist City in the Sixteenth Century.” MQR 58 (1984): 230–40. Neumann, Gerhard J. “A Newly Discovered Manuscript.” MQR 35 (1961): 197–217. ———. “Nach und von Mähren.” ARG 51 (1960): 75–90. ———. “The Anabaptist Position on Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.” MQR 35 (1961): 140–48. Newman, A. H. “Adam Pastor, Antitrinitarian Antipaedobaptist.” Papers of the American Society of Church History, 2d ser. 5 (1917): 73–99. Newman, Louis Israel. Jewish Influences on Christian Reform Movements. New York: Columbia University Press, 1925. Reprint, New York: AMS Press, 1966. Nicoladoni, Alexander. Johannes Bünderlin von Linz und die oberösterreichischen Täufergemeinden in den Jahren 1525–1531. Berlin, 1893. Nicolini, Benedetto. Bernardino Ochino e la riforma in Italia. Naples, 1935. ———. “Bernardino Ochino, esule a Ginevra.” In Ginevra e l’Italia (q.v.), 137–47. ———. Il pensiero di Bernardino Ochino. Naples, 1939. 2d ed. Bologna, 1970. Nienkirchen, Charles. “In the World but Not of It: The Development of Separatist Motifs in Early Anabaptist Ecclesiology (1523–1528).” Ph.D. diss., University of Waterloo, Canada, 1985. ———. “Reviewing the Case for a N on-Separatist Ecclesiology in Early Swiss Anabaptism.” MQR 56 (1982): 227–41. Niesel, Wilhelm. “Calvin und die ‘Libertiner.’” ZKG 48 (1929): 58–75. Nieto, José C. “Enormo al problema de los Alumbrados.” Revista Española de Teologia 35 (1975): 77–93. ———. Juan de Valdés and the Origins of the Spanish and Italian Reformation. Geneva: Droz, 1970. Special ed., Mexico City: Fondo de cultura Económica, 1979. ———. “Juan de Valdés on Catechetical Instruction.” BHR 36 (1974): 253–72. ———. Juan de Valdés’ Two Catechisms: The Dialog on Christian Doctrine and the Christian Instruction for Children. Translated by Carol D. Jones. Lawrence, Kan.: Coronado Press, 1981. ———. “Luther’s Ghost and Erasmus’ Masks in Spain.” BHR 39 (1977): 34–49. ———. “The Franciscan Alumbrados and the Prophetic-Apocalyptic Tradition.” SCJ 8 (1977): 3–16. ———. “The Heretical Alumbrados Dexados: Isabel de la Cruz and Pedro Ruiz de Alcaraz.” Revue de Littérature Comparée 52 (1975): 293–313. ———. “L’héresie des Alumbrados.” RHPR 66 (1986): 403–18. Nikulina, T. W. “The Wullenwever Uprising/Vosstanie Vullenvevera.” Voprosy Istorii 2 (1980): 104–15. ———. “Was Juan de Valdés an Ordained Priest?” BHR 32 (1970): 603–6.



bibliography  1355

Nippold, Friedrich. “David Joris von Delft.” Zeitschrift für die Historische Theologie 33 (1863): 3–166; 34 (1864): 483–673; 38 (1868): 475–591. ———. “Heinrich Niclaes und das Haus der Liebe.” Zeitschrift für die Historische Theologie 31 (1862): 321–402. Nürnberger, Richard. “Calvin und Servet: Eine Begegnung zwischen reformatorischem Glauben und modernem Unglauben im 16. Jahrhundert.” ARG 49 (1958): 177–204. Oberman, Heiko A. “Das tridentinische Rechtfertigungsdekret im Licht spätmittelalterlicher Theologie.” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 41. Tübingen: Mohr, 1964. ———. “Die Nikodemiten: Ausharren statt Flucht.” In Die Wirkung der Reformation: Probleme und Perspectiven. Stuttgart: Steiner, 1987. ———, ed. Deutscher Bauernkrieg 1525 Special issue, ZKG 86, no. 2 (1974). ———. Forerunners of the Reformation: The Shape of Late Medieval Thought, I llustrated by Key Documents. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1966; London: Lutterworth, 1967. ———. The Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Biel and Late Medieval Nominalism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963. ———. “In Search of the Roots of Antisemitism: The Renaissance Recovery of the ‘Veritas Hebraica.’” Alan and Elizabeth Doft Lecture, Center for Jewish Studies, Harvard University, 1990. ———. “The Reformation as a Theological Revolution.” In Blickle, Zwingli und Europa (q.v.). ———. Luther, Mensch zwischen Gott und Teufel. Berlin: Severin and Seidler, 1982. ———. “Wittenberg’s Zweifrontenkrieg gegen Prierias und Eck.” ZKG 80 (1969): 521–58. ———, and Charles E. Trinkaus, eds. Pursuit of Holiness. Leiden: Brill, 1973. Odloz˘ ilík, Otakar. “Jednota Bratri Habrovanky´ch.” C˘esky´ Historicky´ 29 (1923): 1–70, 201–364. ———. The Hussite King: Bohemia in European Affairs, 1440–1471. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1965. ———. “Two Reformation Leaders of the Unitas Fratrum.” CH 9 (1940): 253–64. Oecolampadius. Briefe. See Staehelin, Briefe und Akten. Offelli, Siro. “Il pensiero sulla dimostrabilità razionale dell’immortalità dell’anima umana.” Studia Patavina 1 (1954): 7–40. Ogonowski, Zbigniew. Arianie polski. Warsaw, 1952. ———. Socynianizm polski. Warsaw: Wiedza Powszechna, 1960. Olivieri, Achille. La Riforma in Italia: strutture e s imboli, classi e p oteri. Milano: Mursia, 1979. O’Malley, Charles D. Jacopo Acontio. Uomini e Dottrine 2. Rome, 1955. ———. See also Acontio, Strategems of Satan. O’Malley, John. Catholicism in Early Modern History 1500–1700: A Guide for Research. St. Louis: Center for Reformation Research, 1988. ———. Giles of V iterbo on Church Reform: A Study in Renaissance Thought. Leiden: Brill, 1968.

1356  the radical reformation Oosterbaan, Dinant Petrus. Zeven eeuwen geschiedenis van het Oude en Nieuwe Gasthuis te Delft. Delft: Gaade, 1955. Oosterbaan, J. A. “Een doperse christologie.” Nederlands theologisch Tijdschrift 35 (1981): 32–47. ———. “The Theology of Menno Simons.” MQR 35 (1961): 187–96. Opel, Julius Ott. V alentin Weigel. Leipzig, 1864. Ortolani, Oddone. Pietro Carnesecchi: Con estratti dagli atti del proceso del Santo Officio. Florence, 1963. Osuna, Francisco de. Tercer abecedario espiritual. Edited by Melquíades Martín. Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianes, 1972. Ottius, Johann. Annales anabaptistici. Basel, 1672. Owst, G. R. Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1961. Oyer, John. “Anabaptism in Central Germany.” MQR 34 (1960): 219–48. ———. “Faith and Love.” MQR 35 (1961): 5–17. ———. “Luther and the Anabaptists.” European Journal of Sociology 24 (1983): 241–62. ———. Lutheran Reformers against Anabaptists: Luther, Melanchthon, and Menius and the Anabaptists of Central Germany. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1964. ———. “The Pfeddersheim Disputation, 1557.” MQR 60 (1986): 304–51. ———. “Sticks and Stones Broke Their Bones, and Vicious Names did Hurt Them! Sixteenth Century Responses to the Anabaptists.” CH 4 (1985): 17–19. ———. “The Strasbourg Conferences of the Anabaptists, 1554–1607.” MQR 58 (1984): 218–29. Ozment, Steven E. Correspondence of a Sixteenth-Century Couple, Magadalena and Balthasar: An Intimate Portrait of Life in Sixteenth-Century Europe Revealed in the Letters of a Nuremberg Husband and Wife. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989. ———. Homo Spiritualis: A Comparative Study of the Anthropology of Johannes Tauler, Jean Gerson, and Martin Luther (1509–16) in the Context of their Theological Thought. Leiden: Brill, 1969. ———. Mysticism and Dissent: Religious Ideology and Social Protest in the Sixteenth Century. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973. ———. When Fathers Ruled: Family Life in Reformation Europe. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983. Pachter, Henry. Paracelsus: Magic into Science, Being the True History of the troubled life, adventures, doctrine, miraculous cures, and prophecies of the most renowned scholar. … New York: Schuman, 1951. Packull, Werner O. “Anna Jansz of Rotterdam, A Historical Interpretation of an Early Anabaptist Heroine.” ARG 78 (1987): 147–73. ———. “Gottfried Seebass on Hans Hut: A Discussion.” MQR 39 (1965): 188–91. ———. “A Hutterite Book of Medieval Origin, Revisited.” MQR 56 (1982): 147–68. ———. “Melchior Hoffman: A R ecanted Anabaptist in Schwäbish Hall?” MQR 57 (1983): 83–111. ———. “Melchior Hoffman’s Experience in the Livonian Reformation: The Dynamics of Sect Formation.” MQR 59 (1985): 130–46.



bibliography  1357

———. Mysticism and the Early South German-Austrian Anabaptist Movement, 1525–1531. Studies in the Anabaptist and Mennonite History 19. Scottdale, Penn./Kitchner, Ont: Herald Press, 1977. ———. “A Reinterpretation of Melchior Hoffman’s ‘Exposition’ against the Background of Spiritualist Franciscan Eschatology with Special Reference to Peter John Olivi.” In Dutch Dissenters: A Critical Companion to Their History and Ideas, edited by Irvin Horst. Leiden: Brill, 1986. ———. “The Sign of Tau: The Changing Conception of the Seal of God’s Elect in Early Anabaptist Thought.” MQR 61 (1987): 363–74. ———. “Peter Tasch en de Melchiorieten in Hessen.” Doopsgezinde Bijdragen, nos. 12–13, (1986–87): 107–38. ———. “Peter Tasch: From Melchiorite to Bankrupt Wine Merchant.” MQR 62 (1988): 276–95. ———. See also Stayer, James, and Werner O. Packull. ———, and James Stayer, eds. The Anabaptists and Thomas Müntzer. Dubuque/Toronto: Kendall Hunt Publishing Co., 1980. Page, Walter. Paracelsus: An Introduction to Philosophical Medicine in the Era of the Renaissance. 2d ed. New York: Karger, 1982. ———. The Smiling Spleen: Paracelsianism in Storm and Stress. New York: Karger, 1984. Pákozdy, Ladislaus Martin. Der siebenbürgische Sabbagismus. Stuttgart, 1969. Paladino, Giuseppe, ed. Opuscoli e lettere di riformatori italiani del Cinquecento. Bari, 1913. Palaeólogus Jacobus. Catechesis christiana dierum duodecim (1574). Critical edition with annotations by Ruz˘ena Dostálová. Warsaw: PWN, 1971. ———. De tribus gentibus (1572). Critical edition by Lech Szczucki (with other such tracts), and appendix as W kre¸ gu … (q.v.). Paracelsus, Theophrastus. Sämtliche Werke. Edited by Karl Sudhoff and Wilhelm Matthiessen. 21 vols. Munich-Wiesbaden, 1922–. Paretski, Iakau˘ Ili’ich. Simon Budnyi. Minsk, 1975. Parke, David. The Epic of Unitarianism: Original Writings from the History of Liberal Religion. Boston: Starr King Press, 1957. Pastor, Ludwig von. Die Reunionsbestrebungen während der Regierung Karls V . Freiburg, 1879. Pater, Calvin A. “Andrew Bodenstein von Carlstadt.” Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1968. ———. Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt as the Intellectual Founder of Anabaptism. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981. ———. Karlstadt as the Father of the Baptist Movements: The Emergence of Lay Protestantism. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1983. ———. “Karlstadts Protest gegen die theologishe Wissenschaft.” In 450 Jahre MartinLuther Universität. Halle/Wittenberg: Verlag der Martin-Luther Universitats, 1952. ———. “Karlstadts Zürcher Abschiedspredigt über die Menschwerdung Christi.” Zwingliana 14 (1974): 1–16. ———. “Lay Religion in the Program of Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt.” In Leaders of the Reformation, edited by Richard L. DeMolen. Selinsgrove, Penn.: Susquehanna University Press, 1984.

1358  the radical reformation ———. “Melchior Hofmann’s Commentary on the Song of Song.” ARG 48 (1977): 173–92. ———. “The Virgin Mary in the Reformation.” Papers of the Canadian Society of Presbyterian History (1989): 41–70. Pawel, Gzregorz. O prawdziwej smierci, zmartwychwstaniu (1568). Edited by Konrad Górski and W. Kuras´ kiewicz. Wroclaw, 1954. Payne, Ernest A. “The Familists.” The Chronicle 16 (1953): 28–33. Payne, John B. Erasmus: His Theology of the Sacraments. Richmond Va.: John Knox Press, 1970. Paz y M élia, Antonio. “El embajador polaco Juan Dantisco en la corte de Carlos V.” Boletín de la Academia de la Historia (Madrid) 11–12 (1924–25). Peachy, Paul P. Die soziale Herkunft der Schweizer Täufer in der Reformationszeit. Karlsruhe: Schneider, 1954. English tr. Herald Press. ———. “The Radical Reformation, Political Pluralism, and the Corpus Christianum.” In Lienhard Origins and Characteristics (q.v.). Peel, Albert. “A Conscientious Objector of 1575.” Transactions [of the] Baptist Historical Society 7 (1920): 78–128. ———, and Leland H. Carlson, eds. Cartwrightiana. London, 1951. Penner, Horst. Ansiedlung mennonitischer Niederländer im Weichselmündungsgebiet von der Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts bis zum Beginn der preussischen Zeit. Wierhof: Mennonitischer Geschichts Verein, 1940. ——— “Christian Entfelders: Ein mälrischer Täuferprediger und herzöglicher Rat am Hofe Albrechts von Preussen.” MGB 33 (1966). Perini, Leandro. “La guerra dei contadini nel Tirolo.” Studi Storici 7 (1966): 388–400. Peschke, Erhard. Die Theologie der Böhmischen Brüder in ihrer Frühzeit. Stuttgart, 1935. ———. Kirche und Welt in der Theologie der Böhmischen Brüder: vom Mittelalter zur Reformation. Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1981. Peter, Rodolphe. “Le maraîcher Clément Ziegler.” RHPR 34 (1954): 255–82. Peters, Eugene. “Sebastian Franck’s Theory of Religious Knowledge.” MQR 35 (1961): 267–81. Peters, Frank C. “The Ban in the Writings of Menno Simons.” MQR 29 (1955): 31–32. Peterson, Erik. “Der Gottesfreund: Beiträge zur Geschichte eines religiösen Terminus.” ZKG 42 (1923): 161–202. Peterson, Rodney L. “Preaching in the Last Days: The Use of the Theme of ‘Two Witnesses,’ as Found in Revelation 11:3–13, with Particular Attention to the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries.” Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1985. Petty, Daniel Wade. “Anabaptism and the Edwardian Reformation.” Ph.D. diss., Texas Christian University, Abiline, 1988. Petuckert, W. E. Theophrastus Paracelsus. 2d ed. Stuttgart, 1943. Peyer, Hans Conrad. V erfassungsgeschichte der alten Schweiz. Zurich: Schultheiss, 1978. Pfeiffer, Gerhard, ed. Quellen zur Nuremberg: Reformationsgeschichte. Nürnberg: Verein für Bayerische Kirchengeschichte, 1968. Pharr, Clyde, trans. The Theodosian Code. Corpus of Roman Law 1. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952. Reprint, New York: Greenwood Press, 1967.



bibliography  1359

Philippi, Paul. “Reformation unter dem Halbmond.” Schriften der Universitätsbibliiothek Erlangen 1 (1953). Philips, Dirk. Enchiridion or Handbook for the Christian Soldier. Translated by Abraham B. Kolb. Elkhart, Ind., 1910. Phillips, John. The Reformation of Images: Destruction of Art in England, 1535–1660. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973. ———. See also Works of Doornkaat Koolman, J. ten; Keeney, William E. Phillips, Margaret Mann. Erasmus and the Northern Renaissance. Rev. ed. Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1989. Picot, E. Théâtre mystique de Pierre du V al et des Libertins spirituels de Rouen au seizième siècle. Paris, 1882. Pietz, Reinhold. “Die Gestalt der zukünftigen Kirche.” Calwer Heft 35 (Stuttgart, 1959). Pipkin, H. Wayne, and John H. Yoder. Balthasar Hubmaier: Theologian of Anabaptism. Classics of the Radical Reformation 5. Scottdale, Penn.: Herald Press, 1989. Pirnát, Antal. Die Ideoloie der Siebenbürger Antitrinitarier in den 1570er Jahren. Budapest, 1961. ———. “Jacobus Palaeologus.” In Chmaj, Studia (q.v.), 72–129. ———, ed. De falsa et vera unius Dei Patri et Spiritus Sancti cognitione. (1568) 2 v ols. Bibliotheca Unitariorum 2. Utrechet: DeGraaf, 1988. Plaff, K. Geschichte der Stadt Esslingen. Essllingen, 1840. Plath, Uwe. “Der Streit urn Curiones De amplitudine.” In Eresia e Riforma (q.v.), 269–81. ———. “Noch einmal ‘Lyncurius’: Einige Gedanken zu Gribaldi, Curione, Calvin und Servet.” BHR 31 (1967): 606–9. Plümper, Hans-Dieter. Die Gütergemeinschaft bei den Taüfern des 16. Jahrhunderts. Göttingen: Alfred Kümmerle, 1972. Po-chia, R. Hsia. The German People and the Reformation. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988. Poettcker, Henry. “Menno Simons’ View of the Bible as Authority.” In Dyck, Heritage of Menno Simons (q.v.), 31–54. Poliakov, Leon. “From Mohammad to the Marranos.” In The History of Anti-Semitism, vol. 4. New York: Vangard, 1965–85. Pommier, E. “L’Idée d’Eglise chez les anabaptistes italiens au x vie siècle.” In Atti del X Congresso Internazionale, 1955 [del Comitato Internazionale di Scienze Storiche], 791–93. Rome, 1957. ———. “L’Itinéraire religieux d’un moine vagabond au x vie siécle.” Mélanges d’Archéologie et d’Histoire 46 (1954): 293–322. Porter, Jack Wallace. “Bernhard Rothmann, 1495–1535, Royal Orator of the Münster Anabaptist Kingdom.” Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin–Madison, 1964. Potter, G. R. Zwingli. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976. ———. Ulrich Zwingli. London: The Historical Association, 1977. Postema, M. C. Het spoor van Menno Simonsz gedachten: een verkenning van Menno Simonsz’ opvattingen aangaande het christelijk geloof. Kampen: Kok, 1986. Poutieri, Ernest. “La crociata contro i Valdesi in Calabria nel 1561.” Archivio Storico per la Calabria e la Lucania 9 (1939): 121–29.

1360  the radical reformation Preus, James S. Carlstadt’s “Ordinaciones” and Luther’s “Liberty.” Harvard Theological Studies 21. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974. ———. From Shadow to Promise: Old Testament I nterpretation from Augustine to the Young Luther. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969. Probleme der Reformation in Deutschland und in Polen. [Redaktion, Abteilung Wissenschaftspublizistik der Wilhelm-Pieck-Universität Rostock]. Rostock: WilhelmPieck-Universität Rostock, Sektion Geschichte, 1983. Probleme des Müntzerbildes. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1988. Prosperi, Adriano. “L’immagine del Cristo uomo in alcuni gruppi ereticali dell’Italia padovana.” Studi Humanitatis 6 (Budapest, 1982). Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer (QGT). Gütersloh, 1955–. Quellen zur Geschichte des Täufer in der Schweiz 4 vols. Zurich: S. Hertzel, 1952–. See Index of Source Documents. Quiring, Horst. “Luther und die Mystik.” Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie 3 (1936): 150–74, 179–240. Quistorp, Heinrich. Calvin’s Doctrine of the Last Things. Translated from 1941 German edition by Harold Knight. London, 1955. Rabb, Theodore K., and Jerold Siegel, eds. Action and Conviction in Early Modern Europe. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969. Raddatz, A., and K. Luthi, eds. Evangelischer Glaube und Geschichted: Grete Mecenseffy zum 85. Geburtstag. Wien: Evangelischer Oberkirchenrat, 1984. Radetti, Giorgio, ed. Fede, dubbio e tolleranza. Anthology of Italian translation of writings of Sebastian Castellio. Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1960. ———. See also Acontio, Opera. Raemond, Florimond de. Histoire de la naissance, progrès et décadence de l’hérésie de ce siècle. 2 vols. Paris, 1605. Raitt, Jill. “The Person of the Mediator: Calvin’s Christology and Beza’s Fidelity.” In Occasional Papers of the American Society for Reformation Research 1, 53–80. St. Louis: Center for Reformation Research, 1977. ———, ed. Shapers of Religious Traditions in Germany, Switzerland, and Poland, 1560–1600. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981. Randall, Katherine L. “Radical Reformation and Mennonite Bibliography, 1980.” Mennonite Life 36 (1981): 24–27. Ratkos, Peter. “Die Anfänge des Wiedertäufertums in der Slowakei.” In Aus 500 Jahren deutsch-tschechoslowakischer Geschichte, edited by Karl Obermann and Josef Polisensky´, 41–59. Berlin: Rütten & Loening, 1958. Raupach, Bernhard. Evangelisches Oesterreich. 3 vols. Hamburg, 1732–40. Reformation Studies: Essays in Honor of Roland H. Bainton. Edited by Franklin H. Littel. Richmond, Va.: John Knox Press, 1962. Régnier de la Planche, Louis. Histoire de l’estat de France. N.p., 1576. Reinerth, Karl, Die Gründung der evangelischen Kirchen in Siebenbürgen. Cologne: Böhlau, 1979. ———. Die Reformation der siebenbürgisch-sächsischen Kirche. Gütersloh: Mohn, 1956. Reitsma, J., and J. Lindeboom. Geschiedenis van de Hervorming en de hervormde kerk der Nederlanden. 5th ed. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1949.



bibliography  1361

Rembert, Karl. Die “Wiedertäufer” im Herzogtum Jülich. Berlin, 1889. Renato, Camilo. [Carmen o Professio against Calvin, 1554]. English translation by Dorothy Rounds, in Italian Reformation Studies (q.v.), 185–97. ———. Opere: Documenti e t estimonianze. Edited by Antonio Rotondò. Corpus Reformatorum Italicorum 1. DeKalb.: Northern Illinois University Press, 1968. ———. “Trattato del battesimo e della Santa Cena.” Edited with introduction (“Camillo Renato”) by A. Rotondò, Rinascimento, 2d ser., no. 4 (1964): 341–62. Renaudet, Augustin. Érasme et l’Italie. Travaux d’Humanisme et Renaissance 15. Geneva: Droz, 1954. ———. Érasme, sa pensée et son action 1518/1521. Paris, 1926. Rescius [Reszka], S. De atheismis et phalarismis evangelicorum. Naples, 1596. Révész, I. Debrecen lelki válsága, 1561–1571. Budapest, 1936. ———. Magyar-reformatus egyháztörténet, 1520–1608. Debrecen, 1938. Reynolds, Roger Edward. “The Ordinals of Christ.” Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1969. Rhijn, Maarten van. Wessel Gansfort. The Hague, 1917. Rican, Rudolf. Das Reich Gottes in den böhmischen Ländern. Translation from Czech. Stuttgart: Evangelischer Verlagswerk, 1957. Rieber, Doris. “Sébastien Franck.” BHR 21 (1959): 190–201. Riedemann, Peter. Account of our Religion, Doctrine, and Faith Given by Peter Riedemann of the Brothers Whom Men Call Hutterians. Translated by Kathleen Hasenberg. London, 1950. 2d English ed., Rifton, N.Y.: Plough Publishing House, 1970. Rill, G. “Jacobus Palaeologus, ein Antitrinitarier als Schützling der Habsburger.” ~ sterreichischen Staatsarchivs 16 (1963). Mitteilungen des O Rilliet, Albert. Calvin and Servetus: The Refomer’s Share in the Trial of Michael Servetus … Ascertained. Translated by W. K. Tweedie. 1846. Reprint, New York: AMS Press, n.d.. Ritschl, Albrecht Benjamin. Die christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und V ersöhnung. 3d ed. 3 vols. Bonn, 1889. Robinson, Ira. “Abarbanel and Levi: Two Strands of Jewish Messianic Thought in the Aftermath of the Spanish Expulsion.” In Papers of the Harvard Colloquium on SixteenthCentury Jewish Thought. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980. Roehrich, Gustave Guillaume. Essay on the Life, the Writings, and the Doctrine of the Anabaptist, Hans Denk. Translated by Claude R. Foster, William F. Bogart, and Mildred M. Van Sice. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1983. Roehrich, Timotheus Wilhelm. Geschichte der Reformation im Elsass und besonders in Strassburg. 4 vols. Strassburg, 1831–32. ———. Mitteilungen aus der Geschichte der evangelischen Kirche des Elsasses. Paris, 1855. ———. “Zur Geschichte der Strassburgischen Wiedertäufer in den Jahren 1527 bis 1543.” Zeitschrift für die Historische Theologie 30 (1860): 3–121. Rogers, Ronald David. “The Relationship of Soteriology and Ecclesiology in SixteenthCentury Evangelical Anabaptism.” Th.D. diss., Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary, 1986. Rogge, Joachim. Der Beitrag des Jacob Strauss zur frühen Reformationsgeschichte. Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1957. Romanto, Giacinto, ed. Cronaca del soggiorno di Carlo V in Italia. Milan, 1982.

1362  the radical reformation Roper, Lyndal. The Holy Household: Women and Morals in Reformation Augsburg. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989. Rosenthal, Judah. “Jewish-Arian Discussion in the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century in Poland.” [In Hebrew.] Studies and Events ( Jerusalem) 1 (1967). ———. “Marcin Czechowic and Jacob of Belzyce: Arian-Jewish Encounters in 16th-Century Poland.” American Academy for Jewish Research 34 (1966): 77–95. Rosius de Porta, Dominicus. Historia Reformationis ecclesiarum Raeticarum. 2 vols. Chur, 1771–74. Rota, Ettore, ed. Problemi storici e orientamenti storiografici. Como, 1942. Roth, Cecil. A History of the Marranos. Philadelphia, 1959. 4th ed., New York: Hermon Press, 1974. Rothmann, Bernard. Die Schriften Bernhard Rothmanns. Edited by Robert Stupperich. Münster, 1970. ———. Bekenntnisse van beyden sacramenten. See Detmer and Krumbholtz, Zwei Schriften des … Rothmann. ———. Eyne Restituton edder Eine wedderstellinge rechter vnde gesunder Christliker leer, gelouens vnde leuens. Neudrucke deutscher Literaturwerke des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts 77–78. Edited by Andreas Knaake. Flugschriften aus der Reformationszeit 7. Halle, 1893. Rotondò, Antonio. “Atteggiamenti della vita morale italiana del Cinquecento: la pratica nicodemitica.” Rivista Storica Italiana 79 (1967): 991–1030. ———. Studi e ricerche di storia ereticale italiana del Cinquecento. Turin, 1974. ———. See also Renato, Opera. Rott, Jean-George, and Simon L. Verheus, eds. Anabaptistes et dissidents au XVI e siècle: acts du Colloque international d’histoire anabaptiste du XVI e siècle tenu a l ’occasion de la XIe Conference Mennonite mondiale à Strasbourg, juillet 1984. Bibliotheca Dissidentium, Scripta et studia 3. Baden-Baden: Koerner, 1987. ———. Sixteenth Century Anabaptism and the Radical Reformation. Baden-Baden: Koerner, 1989. Rott, Jean-George, and Stephen Nelson. “Strasbourg, the Anabaptist City in the Sixteenth Century.” MQR 58 (1984): 230–40. Ruffini, Francesco. “Francesco Stancaro.” In Studi sui riformatori (q.v.), 165–406. ———. “Mateo Gribaldi Mofa.” In Studi sui riformatori (q.v.), 45–126. Ruh, Karl. “Die trinitarische Spekulation in deutscher Mystik und Scholastik.” Zeitschrift für Deutsche Philologie 72 (1953): 24–53. Runzo, Jean Ellen Goodban. Communal Discipline in the Early Anabaptist Communities of Switzerland, South and Central Germany, Austria, and Moravia, 1525–1550. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms International, 1981. Rupp, [E.] Gordon. Patterns of Reformation. Philadelphia: Fortress Press; London: Epworth, 1969. ———. “Thomas Müntzer, Hans Hut, and the ‘Gospel of All Creatures.’” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 43 (1960/61): 492–519. ———. “Word and Spirit in the First Years of the Reformation.” ARG 49 (1958): 32–84. Ruppert, M. Luther en de Boerenopstand. Kampen: Kok, 1983. Russo, Luigi, ed. Contributi alla storia del Concilio di Trento e della Controriforma. Quaderni di “Belfagor” 1. Florence, 1948.



bibliography  1363

Sabean, David Warren. Landbesitz und Gesellschaft am V orabend des Bauernkriegs. Stuttgart: Fischer, 1972. Sachsse, Carl. D. Balthasar Hubmaire als Theologe. Neue Studien zur Geschichte der Theologie und der Kirche 20. Berlin, 1914. Szent-Iványi, Alexander. Freedom Legislation in Hungary, 1557–1571. New York, 1957. ———. The “Historia [Ecclesiastica Unitariorum in Transylvania]” and Its Authors. American Hungarian Library 3. New York, 1960. Sandius, Christophorus. See Bibliotheca Antitrinitariorum. Santa Teresa, Domingo de. Juan de V aldés, 1498(?)–1541: Su pensamiento religioso y l as corrientes esperituales de su tiempo. Rome: Aedes Universitatis Gregorianae, 1957. Safley, Thomas. Let No Man Put Asunder: The Control of Marriage in the German Southwest, A Comparative Study, 1550–1600. Kirksville, Mo.: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, Inc., 1984. Sánchez-Blanco, Francisco. Michel Servets Kritik an der Trinitätslehre. Bern: Peter Lang, 1977. Sanuto, Marino. I Diarii di Marino Sanuto. 58 vols. Edited by Rinaldo Fulin et al. Venice, 1879–1913. Saulnier, V. L. “L’Évangelisme de Pierre du Val et le problème des Libertins spirituels.” BHR 14 (1952): 205–18. Schad, Elias. “True Account of an Anabaptist Meeting at Night in a Forest and a Debate Held There with Them.” MQR 58 (1984): 292–95. Schadel, Erwin. Bibliotheca trinitariorum: Internationale Bibilographie trinitärischer Literatur. Munich: Saur, 1984. Schaub, Marianne. Muntzer contre Luther: Le droit divin contre l’absolutisme princier. Paris: L’enseigne de l’arbre verdoyant editeur, diffusion A. Colin, 1984. Schäufle, Wolfgang. Das missionarische Bewusstsein und Wirken der Täufer. Beiträge zur Geschichte und Lehre der Reformierten Kirche 21. Neukirchen, 1966. Scheffer, J. G. de Hoop. See De Hoop Scheffer, J. G. Schell, Hans. “Wolfgang Fabricius Capitos refomratorische Eigenart.” Zwingliana 16 (1983): 126–41. Schelhorn, Johann Georg. Ergötzlichkeiten aus der Kirchenhistorie und Literatur. 6 vols. UlmLeipzig, 1762–64. Schelven, A. A. van. De nederduitsche vluchtelingenkerke de xv i e eeuw. The Hague, 1909. ———. “Engelsche vroeg-independentisme en hollandsche anabaptisme.” In Uit den srijd der geesten. Amsterdam. 1944. ———. Kerkraads-protocollen der nederduitsche vluchtelingenkerk te London. Amsterdam, 1921. Schiess, Traugott, ed. Briefwechsel der Brüder Ambrosius und Thomas Blaurer. 3 vols. Freiburg im Breisgau, 1908–12. ———. See also Bullinger, Korrespondenz mid den Graubündern. Schilling, Heinz, ed. Die reformierte Konfessionalisierung in Deutschland: Das Problem der “Zweiten Reformation.” Gütersloh: Mohn. 1986. Schimansky, Gerd. Christ ohne Kirche: Rückfrage beim ersten Radikalen der Reformation, Sebastien Franck. Stuttgart: Radius. 1980. Schipperges, Heinrich. Kosmos Anthropos: Entwürfe zu einer Philosophie des Leibes. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1981.

1364  the radical reformation ———. Paracelsus: Das Abenteuer einer sokratischen Existenz. Reihe Sokratische Weisheit 2. Freiburg im Breisgau: Aurum, 1983. “Schleitheim Confession: Brotherly Union of a Number of Children of God Concerning Seven Articles.” Christian History 4, no. 1 (1985): 29–31. Schlottenloher. Zeitafel zur deutschen Geschichte. Munich, 1939. Schmid, Hans-Dieter. “Das Hutsche Täufertum: Ein Beitrag zur Charakterisierung einer Täuferischen Rechtung ….” Historisches Jahrbuch 16 (1971). ———. Täufertum und Obrigkeit in Nürnberg. Erlangen: Stadtarchiv Nürnberg, 1972. Schmid, Heinrich. Zwinglis Lehre von der göttlichen und menschllichen Gerechtigkeit. Studien zur Dogmengeschichte und systematischen Theologie 11. Zurich, 1959. Schmidt, Charles-Guillaume-Adolphe, ed. Traités mystiques écrits dans les années 1547 à 1549. Basel, 1876. Schmidt, Kurt Dietrich. Die katholische Reform und die Gegenreformation. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1975. Schnucker, Robert Victor. “Views of Selected Puritans 1560–1630, on Marriage and Human Sexuality.” Ph.D. diss., University of Iowa, 1969. Schoeps, Hans. Vom himmlischen Fleisch Christi. Tübingen: Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1951. Schönherr, David von. See Schweyger, Chronik der Studt Hall. Schoockius, Martinus. Liber de bonis vulgo ecclesiasticis dictis. Groningen, 1651. Schornbaum, Karl. Quellen zur Geschichte der Wiedertäufer, 2 and 5, Bayern. 2 vols. Leipzig, 1934; Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1951. Schottenloher, Karl. Jacob Ziegler. Münster, 1910. ———. Zeittafel zur deutschen Geschichte. Munich, 1939. Schraepler, Horst. Die rechtliche Behandlung der Täufer in der deutschen Schweiz, Südwestdeutschland und Hessen 1525–1618. Weierhof: Fabian Verlag, 1957. Schramm, Gottfried. “Antitrinitarier in Polen, 1556–1658.” BHR 21 (1969): 473–511. ———. Der polnische Adel und die Reformation, 1548–1607. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1965. ———. “Modrevius-Forschungen.” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 6 (1958): 352–73. Schreiber, Heinrich, ed. Taschenbuch für Geschichte und Alterthum in Süddeutschland. Freiburg im Breisgau, 1839–46. Schultetus, Abraham. Annalium evangelii … [decades]. 2 vols. Heidelberg, 1618–20. Schulz, Selina Gerhard. Caspar Schwenckfeld von Ossig (1489–1561), Spiritual Interpreter of Christianity, Apostle of the Middle Way, Pioneer of Modern Religious Thought. Norristown, Penn., 1946. 2d ed. with new introduction and bibliography by Peter C. Erb, Norristown, Penn.: Board of Publication of the Schwenckfelder Church, 1977. ———. See also Corpus Schwenckfeldianorum. Schulze, Wilhelm. “Neuere Forschungen über Balthasar Hubmaier.” Alemannisches Jahrbuch (1957): 224–72. Schulze, Winfried, ed. Aufstände, Revolten, Prozesse: Beiträge zu bäuerlichen Widerstandsbewegungen im frühneuzeitlichen Europa. Geschichte und Gesellschaft 17. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1983. Schutte, Anne Jacobson. Pier Paolo Vergerio: The Making of an Italian Reformer. Geneva: Droz, 1977. Schumacher, B. Niederländische Ansiedlungen in Preussen. Leipzig, 1903.



bibliography  1365

Schwarz, Reinhard. Die apokalyptische Theologie Thomas Müntzers und der Taboriten. Beiträge zur historischen Theologie 55. Tübingen: Mohr, 1977. Schweyger, Franz. Chronik der Stadt Hall, 1303–1572. Edited by David von Schöenherr. Tirolische Geschichtsquellen 1. Innsbruck, 1867. Schwindt, John C. See Negri, Francisco. Scott, Tom. Thomas Müntzer: Theology and Revolution in the German Revolution. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989. ———. “The ‘Volksreformation’ of Thomas Müntzer in Allstedt and Mühlhausen.” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 34 (1983): 194–213. Scribner, Bob, and Gerhard Benecke, eds. The German Peasant War of 1525: New Perspectives. London: Allen & Unwin, 1979. Scudder, Jared W. See Miller, Edward Waite. Scuderi, Giovanni. “Il problema del matrimonio nella fede, nella pietà e nella teologia del Valdesimo medioevale … (1173–1532).” BSSV 106 (1959): 31–58. Seebass, Gottfried. Artikelbrief, Bundesordnung und V erfassungsentwurf. Studien zu drei centralen Dokumenten des südwestdeutschen Bauernkriegs. Heidelberg, 1988. ———. Das reformatorische Werk des Andreas Osiander. Nuremberg: Verein für Bayerische Kirchengeschichte, 1967. ———. “Müntzers Erbe: Werk, Leben, und Theologie des Hans Hut.” Unpublished Habilitationschrift Nuremberg; Erlangen, 1972. Copy in Goshen College, Elkhart, Indiana. Segal, A. F. “Heavenly Ascent in Hellenistic Judaism, Early Christianity, and their Environment.” In Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, edited by Hildegard Temporini and Wolfgang Haase, 2:1333–94. Berlin/New York, 1980. Séguenny, André. “Á l’origine de la philosophie et de la théologie spirituelles en Allemagne: Christian Entfelder.” RHPR 57 (1977): 167–81. ———, ed. Bibliotheca dissidentium: Repertoire des non-conformistes religieux des seizième et dixseptieme siècles. Baden-Baden: V. Koerner, 1980. ———. “Christian Entefelder.” BD 1 (1980): 37–48. ———. The Christology of Caspar Schwenckfeld: Spirit and Flesh in the Process of Life Transformation. Translated by Peter C. Erb and Simone Nieuwoldt. Texts and Studies in Religion 35. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1987. ———. Homme charnel, homme spirituelle, sur la christologie de Caspar Schwenckfeld. Wiesbaden, 1975. ———. “Johannes Campanus.” BD 1 (1980): 13–25. Ségueny, Jean. “Anabaptisme et réforme de l’Église au x vie siècle.” In Christ Seul. [Grand Charmot: France], 1969. ———. Assemblées Anabaptistes-Mennonites de France. New York: de Gruyter, 1977. ———. “The Bernese Anabaptists in Sainte-Marie-aux-Mimes.” Pennsylvania Mennonite Heritage 3 (1980): 2–9. ———. “The French Anabaptists: Four-and-One-Half Centuries of History.” MQR 58 (1981): 206–17. ———. “The Limousin Anabaptists.” MQR 58 (1984): 289–91. Seidemann, Johann K. Thomas Müntzer. Dresden, 1842. Seitz, Otto. Der authentische Text der Leipziger Desputation (1519). Berlin, 1903.

1366  the radical reformation Selka, Ángela. “Algunos datos neuevos sobre los primeros alumbrados. El edicto de 1525 y su relación con el proceso de Alcaraz.” Bulletin Hispanique 54 (1952): 125–52. Sembrzycki, Jan. Die Reise des V ergerius nach Polen. Königsberg, 1890. Sepp, Christian. Kerkhistorische Studien. Leiden, 1885. Serena, Augusto. “Fra gli eretici trevigiani [Benedetto da Borgo d’Asolo e N icolò d’Alessandria].” Archivo V eneto-Tridention 3 (1923): 169–202. Servetus, Michael. De Trinitatis erroribus libri septem (Hagenau, 1531), Dialogorum de Trinitate libri duo (1532), De iusticia regni Christi capitula quauor (1532). Facsimile edition, Frankfurt: Minerva Verlag, 1965. ———. [De Trinitatis erroribus] On the Errors of Trinity. Dialogues on the Trinity. Translated by Earl M. Wilbur. Harvard Theological Studies 16. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1932. ———. Restitutio Christianismi (1553). Nuremburg edition, 1790. ———. Restitución del cristianismo. Spanish translation and notes by Ángel Alcalá and Luis Bekés. Madrid: Fundación Universitaria Española, 1980. ———. Treinta cartas a Calvino: Sesenta signos del Anticristo; Apologia de Melanchton. Madrid: Castalia, 1981. ———. Wiederherstellung des Christentums. Spanish translation by B. Spiess. 2d ed. 3 vols. in 1. Wiesbaden, 1895–96. ———. See also Becker, Autor de Michel Servet; Tollin, Michel Servet und Martin Bucer. Seyppel, Joachim H. Schwenckfeld: Knight of Faith. Pennsburg: Schwenkfelder Library, 1961. Shantz, Douglas Hugh. “Cognitio et Communicatio Christi Interna: The Contributions of Valentine Crautwald to Sixteenth-Century Schwenckfeldian Spiritualism.” Ph.D. diss., University of Waterloo, Canada, 1987. ———. “The Ecclesiological Focus of Dirk Philip’s Hermeneutical Thought in 1559: A Contextual Study.” MQR 60 (1986): 115–27. Sicher, Fridolin. Chronik. Edited by E. Götzinger. Mitteilungen zur Vaterländischen Geschichte 20. St. Gall, 1885. Sicroff, Albrt A. Les Controverses des status de “purité de sang” en Espagne. Paris: Didier, 1960. Sider, Ronald J. Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt: The Development of his Thought, 1517– 1525. Leiden: Brill, 1974. ———, ed. Karlstadt’s Battle with Luther: Documents in a Liberal-Radical Debate. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978. ———. “Karlstadt and Luther’s Doctorate.” Journal of Theological Studies 72, no. 5 (1971): 168–69. ———. “Karlstadt’s Orlamünde Theology of Regeneration.” MQR 45 (1971): 191–218. Simler, Johann Jakob. Sammlung alter und neuer Urkunden zur Beleuchtung der KirchenGeschichte, vornehmlich des Schweizerlandes. 2 vols. Zurich, 1767. Simoncelli, Paolo. Eterodossia religiosa e dissidenza politca agli inizi dell’eta moderna: Appunti dalle lezioni di storia moderna dell’anno accademico 1988–89. Bari: Cacucci: 1989. ———. Evangelismo italiano del Cinquecento: Questione religiosa e nicodemismo politico. Rome: Istituto storico italiano per l’età moderna e contemporanea, 1979.



bibliography  1367

———. La Lingua di Adamo: Guillaume Postel tra Accademici e fuoriusciti fiorentini. Florence, 1984. ———. “Nuove ipotesi e studi sul Beneficio di Cristo.” Cricita Storica 12 (1975): 320–38. Simons, Menno. The Complete Writings. Translated by Leonard Verduin, edited by John C. Wenger. Scottdale, Penn.: Herald Press, 1956. ———. Dat fundament des christelycken leers. Critical edition and introduction by H. W. Meihuizen. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1967. Sippayllo, Maria, ed. Acta synodalia ecclesiarum Poloniae reformatarum. Vol. 1, 1550–1559; vol. 2, 1560–1570. 3 vols with maps: 1571–1632 (Major Churches only). Warsaw: University of Warsaw, 1966, 1972, 1983. Slabaugh, Dennis Lee. “Jakob Andreae, Lutheran Orthodoxy, and Anabaptism in the Late Sixteenth Century.” 2 vols. Ph.D. diss., Temple University, 1987. Slee, J. C. van. “Wendelmoet Claesdochter van Monnikendam.” NAK 20 (1927): 121–56. Smith, Preserved. Erasmus. New York, 1926. Smith, C. Henry. See Mennonite Encyclopedia. Snyder, C. Arnold. “Revolution and the Swiss Brethren: The Case of Michael Sattler.” CH 50 (1981): 276–87. Socinus, Faustus. Listy. [Letters]. Edited by Ludwik Chamj. 2 vols. Warsaw: PWN, 1959. Socinus, Laelius. Opere. Edited by Antonio Rotondò. Florence: Leo Olschki, 1986. ———. See Hulme, “La Confessio de Deo de Lelio Socino”; Lazzaro, “Cuat tro cardal de Lelio Socino y Calvino.” Sohm, W. Territorium und Reformation in der hessischen Geschichte, 1526–1555. Marburg, 1915. Sozzini, Celso. Celso e C amillo Sozzini nel gruppo ereticale familiare; Nuovi documenti in Svizzera, 1561–1570. Edited by Giampaolo Zucchini. Bologna: Centro stampa Lo scarabeo, 1981. Sperges, Johann von. Tirolische Bergwerksgeschichte. Vienna, 1765. Spies, B. See Servetus, Wiederherstellung des Christentums. Spini, Giorgio. “Alcuni episodi della Riforma lucchese del x vie secolo.” BSSV 70 (1938): 82–91. ———. Ricerca dei libertini: la teoria dell’impostura delle religioni nel Seicento italiano. Rev. ed., Florence: Nuova Italia, 1983. Spinka, Matthew. “Peter Chelcicky, the Spiritual Father of the Unitas Fratrum.” CH 11 (1943): 1ff. Spiritual and Anabaptist Writers. See Mergal, Ángel, and George H. Williams. Sprenger, Paul. Das Rätsel um die Bekehrung Calvins. Neukirchen, 1960. Springenschmid, Karl. Die Gaismair Saga: Lebensbild eines Revolutionärs. Graz: Stocker, 1980. Springer, Nelson P., and Joe Springer. “The Testimony of a Bernese Anabaptist.” MQR 60 (1986): 289–303. Staehelin, Ernst. Briefe und Akten zum Leben Oekolampads. 2 vols. QFRG 10–11. Leipzig, 1927/34. ———. Das theologische Lebenswerk Johannes Oekolampads. QFRG 21. Leipzig, 1939. ———. Die Wiederkehr aller Dinge: Rektoralrede. Basel: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1960.

1368  the radical reformation Stafford, William S. Domesticating the Clergy: The Inception of the Reformation in Strasbourg, 1522–1523. Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1976. Stasiewski, Bernhard. Reformation und Gegenreformation in Polen. Münster: Aschendorff, 1960. Stauffer, Ethelbert. “Anabaptist Theology of Martyrdom.” MQR 19 (1945). Stayer, James M. “The Anabaptists.” In Reformation Europe: A Guide to Research, edited by Steven Ozment. St. Louis: Center for Reformation Research, 1982. ———. “Anabaptists and Future Anabaptists in the Peasants’ War.” MQR 62 (1988): 98–110. ———. Anabaptists and the Sword. Lawrence, Kan.: Coronado Press, 1967. ———, and Werner O. Packull. The Anabaptists and Thomas Müntzer. Dubuque: KendallHunt, 1980. ———. “David Joris: A Prolegomenon to Further Research.” MQR 59 (1985): 350–61. ———. “The Doctrine of the Sword in the First Decade of Anabaptism.” Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1965. ———, Werner O. Packull, and Klaus Depperman. “From Monogenesis to Polygenesis: The Historical Discussion of Anabaptist Origins.” MQR 49 (1975): 83–121. ———. The German Peasants’ War and Anabaptist Community of Goods. Montreal: McGillQueens University Press, 1991. ———. “Hans Hut’s Doctrine of the Sword: An Attempted Solution.” MQR 39 (1965): 181–91. ———. “The Münsterite Rationalization of Bernhard Rothmann.” Journal of the History of Ideas 28 (1967): 179–92. ———. “Thomas Müntzer in 1989: A Review Article.” SCJ 21 (1990): 655–70. ———.”Thomas Müntzer’s Protestation and Imaginary Faith.” MQR 55 (1981): 99–130. ———. “Was Dr. Kühler’s Conception of Early Dutch Anabaptism Historically Sound? The Historical Discussion of Münster 450 Years Later.” MQR 60 (1986): 261–88. Steck, Karl G. Luther und die Schwärmer. Zurich: Evangelischer Verlag, 1955. Steinmetz, David C. “The Baptism of John and the Baptism of Jesus in Huldrych Zwingli, Hubmaier, and Late Medieval Theology.” In Continuity and Discontinuity in Church History: Essays Presented to George Huntston Williams on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday. Leiden: Brill, 1979. ———, ed. Der deutsche Bauernkrieg und Thomas Müntzer. Leipzig: Karl Marx Universität, 1976. ———. “Misericordia Dei:” The Theology of Johannes von Staupitz in Its Late Medieval Setting. Ledien: Brill, 1968. ———. Reformers in the Wings. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971. Reprint, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981. ———. “Scholasticism and Radical Reform: Nominalist Motifs in the Theology of Balthasar Hubmaier.” MQR 45 (1971): 123–44. ———. Der deutsche Bauernkrieg und Thomas Müntzer. Leipzig: Karl Marx Universität, 1976. ———. Thomas Müntzer Prager Manifest. Leipzig: Zentral Antiquariat, 1975. ———. Thomas Müntzers Weg nach Allstedt: Eine Studie zu seiner Frühentwicklung. Berlin: Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1988.



bibliography  1369

———. Der Müntzerbild von Martin Luther bis Friederich Engels. Berlin: VEB Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1971. Steitz, Georg Edward. Dr. Gerhard Westerberg, der Leiter des Bürgeraufstanden zu Frankfurt am Rhein im Jahr 1525. Archiv für Frankfurts Geschichte und Kunst. Frankfurt, 1872. Stella, Aldo. Anabattismo e antitrinitarismo in Italia nel xv ie secolo: Nuove ricerche storiche. Padua: Liviana, 1969. ———. Dall’anabattismo al socinianesimo nel Cinquecento veneto: Ricerche storiche. Padua, 1967. ———. “Gli eretici a Vicenza.” In V icenza I llusrata, 253–61. Vicenza, 1978. ———. “Il processo veneziano di Gugielmo Postel.” Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia 21 (1968): 425–66. ———. “Il Sozialevangelismus di Michael Gaismayr.” BSSV 100 (1982). ———. “Influssi culturali padovani sulla genesi e sugli sviluppi dell’antitrinitarismo.” Studia Humanitatis (Budapest) 6 (1982). ———. “Intorno al medico padovano Nicolò Buccella, anabattista del ’500.” Memorie dell’Accademia Patavina di Scienze: Lettere ed Arti 74 (1961–62): 333–61. ———. La rivoluzione contadina del 1525 e l ’utopia di Michael Gaismayr. Padua: Liviana 1975. ———. “L’ecclesiologia degli anabattisti processati a Trieste nel 1540.” In Eresia e Riforma (q.v.), 205–37. ———. “Ricerche sul socinianesimo: Il processo di Cornelio Sozzini e Claudio Textor (Bannière).” Bollettino dell’I stituto di Storia della Società e dello Stato V eneziano 3 (1961). ———. “Una famiglia di giuristi fra eterodossi padovani e bolognesi: Mariano e Lelio Sozzini (1526–56).” In Rapporti fra le università, edited by Lucia Rossetti. Trieste: LINT, 1988. ———. “Utopie e velletià insurrezionali dei filoprotestanti italiani (1545–1547).” BHR 27 (1965): 133–82. Stendahl, Krister. “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West.” HTR 56 (1963): 199–215. Sticker, Georg. Paracelsus, ein Lebensbild. Halle: Benziger, 1941. Strasser, Otto. Capitos Beziehungen zu Bern. Quellen und Abhandlungen zur Schweizerischen Reformationsgeschichte 4. Leipzig, 1928. Strauss, Gerald. Luther’s House of Learning: Indoctrination of the Young in the German Reformation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978. ———. Nuremberg in the Sixteenth Century. New York: Wiley, 1967. ———. “The Religious Policies of Dukes Wilhelm and Ludwig of Bavaria in the First Decade of the Protestant Era.” CH 28 no. 4 (1959): 350–73. Strong, Roy. Art and Power: Renaissance Festivals 1450–1650. London: Boydell, 1984. Strupl, Milos. “Confessional Theology of the Unitas Fratrum.” CH 33, no. 3 ( 1964): 279–93. Studi sui riformatori italiani. Edited by Arnaldo Bertola, Luigi Firpo, and Edoardo Ruffini. Turin: Claudia, 1955. Stupperich, Martin. Osiander in Preussen 1549–1552. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1973. Stupperich, Robert. “Confessio Tretrapolitana und die Schriften des Jahres 1531.” In Martin Bucer’s Deutsche Schriften 3. Gütersloh: Mohn, 1969.

1370  the radical reformation ———. Das münsterische Täufertum: Ergebnisse und Probleme der neueren Forschungen. Münster: Aschendorff, 1958. ———, ed. Schriften von evangelischer Seite gegen die Täufer. Münster: Aschendorff, 1983. ———. Schriften von katholischer Seite gegen die Täufer. Münster: Aschendorff, 1980. ———. See also Rothmann, Schriften. Sudhoff, Karl. Bibliographia Paracelsica. Berlin, 1894. Graz: Akademische Verlagsanstalt, 1958. Szasz, Janos. David Ferenc. Budapest: Unitarius Egyhaz, 1982. ———. See also Paracelsus, Sämliche Werke. Szczotka, Stanislaw. “Synody arjan polskich.” RwP 7–8 (1935–36): 21–100. Szczucki, Lech. “Die Auseinandersetzung Valetin Krautwalds mit dem sabbatischen Täufertum in Schlesien.” In Anabaptists et Dissidents, vol. 3, edited by Jean-Georges Rott et al. Baden-Baden: Koerner, 1987. ———. “The Beginning of Antitrinitarianism in Lithuania in the Light of a S o-far Unknown Source.” In Sixteenth Century Anabaptism and Radical Reformation, edited by Jean-Georges Rott and Simon L. Verheus, 343–58. Baden-Baden: Koerner, 1987. ———. See also Bibliotheca Antitrinitariorum; and Brückner, Róznicoiercy potscy. ———. Filozofia i mys´ l spoleczna xv i wieku. Warsaw, 1978. ———. “Jakub z Chios-Paleolog: Zarys biografii.” ORP 11 (1966): 63–91. ———. Ket XVI. szazadi eretnek gondolkodo: Jacobus Palaeologus es Christian Franken. Translated by Versanyi Istvan and Schulek Tibor. Humanizmus es reformacio 9. Budapest: Akademiai Kiado, 1980. ———, and J. Tazbir. “Korespondencja anabaptystów. morawskich z arianami polskimi.” ORP 3 (1958): 197–215. ———, eds. Literatura arian´ska w Polsce x v i wieku. Varsovia, 1959. ———. Marcin Czechowic: Studium z dziejów antytrynitaryzmu polskiego XVI wieku. Warsaw, 1964. ———, and Juliusz Doman´ski. “Miscellanea arianica.” Archiwum Historii Filozofii i My´sli Spolecznej 6 (1960). ———. “Nieznana kronika arian´ska.” In Wokól dziejow i t radycji arianizmu. Warsaw: PWN, 1971. ———. “La prima edizione dell’ ‘Explicatio’ di Fausto Sozzine.” Renascimento 18 (1967): 319–27. ———, ed. Socinianism and its role in the culture of XVIth to XVIIIth centuries. Polish Academy of Sciences, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology: PWN, Polish Scientific Publisher, 1983. ———. W kre¸gu mys´ licieli heretyckich. Budapest: Akademiai Kiado, 1980. ———, ed. Wokól dziejów i tradycji arianizmu. Warsaw, 1971. ———. “Z eschatologii Braci Polskich.” Archiwum Historii Filozofii i M ys´ li Spoleznej 1 (1947): 5–41. Szilágyi, Sándor, ed. Monumenta comitialia regni Transsylvaniae. 21 vols. Budapest, 1875–99. Szper, Felicia. Nederlandsche nederzettingen in West Pruisen gedurende den poolschen tijd. Enkhuizen, 1913.



bibliography  1371

Tacchella, Lorenzo. I l processo agli eretici veronesi nel 1550: S. Ignazio di Loyola e L uigi Lippomano (carteggio). Brescia: Morcelliana, 1979. Taesler, Sigurd. Ehrfurcht, Humanität, Toleranz: Unitärische Gedanken in der Geistesgeschichte des Abendlandes. Frankfurt am Main: Unitarische Freie Religionsgemeinde, 1892. Täuferakten. See Index of Source Documents. Tavard, Georges H. Holy Writ or Holy Church: The Crisis of the Protestant Reformation. New York: Harper, 1959. Reprint, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1978. Tazbir, Janusz. A State Without Stakes: Polish Religious Tolerations in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. New York: Kosciuszko Foundation, 1967. ———. “Aus der Geschichte des Servetismus.” Archiwum Historii Filozofii i Mys´ li Spoleznej 12 (1966): 65–74. ———. “Consumption and the Reformation: Polish Dissenters and the Question of Luxury / La Consummation et la reformé: Les dissidents polonais et le probléme du luxe.” Kwartalnik History: Kultury Materialnej 30, no. 1 (1982): 5–20. ———. Reformacj w Polsce. Warsaw: Ksiazka i Wiedza, 1991. ———. “Research on Anti-Trinitarianism in Poland.” In Studia z dziejów ideologii religijnej xv i i xv i i wieku, 183–98. Warsaw, 1960. ———. Tradycje tolerancji religijnej w Polsce. Warszwaw: Ksiazka i Wiedza, 1980. ———. See also Lubieniecki, Stanislas, Histona Reformations Polonicae; and Szczucki and Tazbir, “Kornespondencja anabaptystów.” Tedeschi, John. “Notes toward a Genealogy of the Sozzini Family.” In Italian Reformation Studies (q.v.), 275–315. ———, and J. von Henneberg. “Contra Petrum Antonium a Cervia relapsum et Bononiae crematum.” In Italian Reformation Studies (q.v.), 243–69. Telepnef, Basil de. Paracelsus: A Genius amidst a Troubled World. St. Gall: Zollikofer, 1945. Telle, Émile V. Érasme de Rotterdam et le septieme sacrement. Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1954. Templin, J. Alton. “Jan de Bakker: An Early Martyr for the Principle of Religious Freedom in the Netherlands.” The I liff Review 32, no. 2 (1974): 17–29. ———. “Oeconomica Christiana: Biblical Humanism in the Netherlands, 1523.” MQR 56 (1982): 242–55. Testi, Gino. Dizionario di alchimia e di chimica antiquaria: Paracelso. Rome: Edizioni Mediterranee, 1980. Teufel, Eberhard. “Landräumig,” Sebastian Franck, ein Wanderer an Donau, Rhein, und Neckar. Neustadt an der Aisch: Degener, 1954. Theologia Deutsch. See Baring, Georg; Winkworth, Susannah. Theses Concerning Thomas Müntzer, 1489–1989. Berlin: Panorama, 1988. Thomas, Allen C. “The Family of Love or the Familists.” Haverford College Studies 12, no. 5 (1893): 1–46. Thompson, S. Harrions. “Luther and Bohemia.” ARG 44 (1953): 160–81. Thomson, John A. F. The Later Lollards, 1414–1520. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965. Tihany, Leslie C. “Islam and the Eastern Frontiers of Reformed Protestantism.” Reformed Review [Holland, Mich.] 29 (1975): 52–71.

1372  the radical reformation Toews, John Aron. “Sebastian Franck, Friend and Critic of Early Anabaptism.” Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 1964. Tollin, Henri. Michel Sevet und Martin Bucer. Berlin, 1880. ———. “Servet über Predigt, Taufe und Abendmahl.” Theologische Studien und Kritiken (1881). Torbet, Robert G. A History of the Baptists. Philadelphia: Judson Press, 1950. Toth, William. “Trinitarianism versus Antitrinitarianism in the Hungarian Reformation.” CH 13, no. 4 (1944): 255–68. Tourn, Giorgio. The Waldensians: The First 800 Years (1974). Translated by Camillo P. Merlino; edited by Charles W. Arbuthnot. Turin: Claudiana, 1980. ———. I V aldesi. Turin: Claudiana, 1980. Tracy, James D. “Heresy Law and Centralization under Mary of Hungary: Conflict between the Count of Holland and the Central Government over the Enforcement of Charles V’s Placards.” ARG 72 (1982): 284–308. Trapman, J. “Ioannes Sartorius 9 ( ca. 1500–1557), Gymnasiarch te Amsterdam en Noodwijk, als Erasmiaan en Spiritualist.” NAKG 70 (1990): 30–51. ———. “Le rôle des ‘Sacramentaries’ des origines de la réforme jusqu’en 1530 aux PaysBas.” NAKG 63 (1983): 1–25. ———. De Summa der Godliker Scrifturern. Leiden: New Rhine Publishers, 1978. Trechsel, Friedrich. Die protestantischen Antitrinitarier vor Faustus Socin. 2 vols. Heidelberg, 1939–44. Treesch, Susanna K. “The Waldensian Recourse to Violence, 1350–1550.” CH 55, no. 3 (1986): 294–306. Troeltsch, Ernst. The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches. New York: Macmillan, 1956. Trofenik, Rudolf, ed. Abhandlungen über die slowenische Reformation. Geschichte, Kultur und Geisteswelt der Slowenen 1. Munich, 1968. Tworek, Stanislaw. Zbór lubelski i jego rola w ruchu arian´skim w xv i i xv i i wieku. Lublin, 1966. Tylenda, Joseph N. “Christ the Mediator: Calvin versus Stancaro.” Calvin Theological Journal 7 (1972): 5–16. ———. “The Controversy on Christ the Mediator: Calvin’s Second Reply to Stancaro.” Calvin Theological Journal 8 (1973): 131–57. ———. “The Warning that Went Unheeded: John Calvin on Giorgio Biandrata.” Calvin Theological Journal 12 (1977): 24–62. Ullmann, C., Reformers Before the Reformation in Germany and the Netherlands. 2 vols. New York: Gordon Press, 1977. Ulrich-Wehler, Hans, ed. Der deutsche Bauernkrieg 1524–26. Geschichte und Gesellschaft, Sonderheft. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1975. Umble, John. “An Amish Minister’s Manual.” MQR 15 (1941): 95–117. Ummel, Charles. De Thomas Müntzer a Menno Simons. Montbéliard, France: Christ Seul, 1983. Unruh, Benjamin H. Die niederländisch-niederdeutschen Hintergründe der mennonitischen Ostwanderungen im 16., 18. und 19. Jahrhundert. Karlsruhe: Rüppurr, 1955.



bibliography  1373

———. “Die Revolution 1525 und das Täufertum.” In Gedenkschrift zum 400 jährigen Jubilaum der Mennoniten. Ludwigschaften, 1925. Urban, Waclaw. “Activité pratique des frères polonais envers les paysans.” ORP 5 (1960): 109–26. ———. “Andreas Fischer, ein radikaler Anabaptist und Spiritualist aus der Slowakei.” In Steinmetz, Der deutsche Bauernkrieg (q.v.), 179–82. ———. Chlopi wobec reformacji w Malpolsce w drugiej polowie xvi wieku. Cracow, 1959. ——— “A Theological Disagreement about the Slovakian Baptist and Spiritualist, Andreas Fischer, 1534 theologische Auseinandersetzung um den slowakischen Täufer und Spiritualisten Andreas Fischer, 1534.” ARG 71 (1980): 149–59. ———. Studia z dziejów antytrynitaryzmu na ziemiach czeskich i slowackich w xv i –x v i i wieku. Cracow, 1966. ———. “Z dziejów wloskiej emigracji wyznaniowej na Morawach.” ORP 11 (1966): 49–62. ———. Der Antitrinitärismus in den böhmischen Ländern und in der Slowakei im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert. Translated by Kordula Zubrzycka. Bibliotheca dissidentium, Scripta et studia 2. Baden-Baden: V. Koerner, 1986. ———. See also Kesserü, B., and W. Urban. Urner, Hans X . “Die Taufe bei Caspar Schwenckfeld.” Theologische Literaturzeitung 6 (1948): 329–42. Vadianus, Joachimus ( Joachim von Watt). Deutsche historische Schriften. Edited by Ernst Götzinger. 3 vols. St. Gall, 1875–79. ———. See also Arbenz, Die V adianische Briefsammlury. Valdés, Alfonso de. Diálogo de las cosas ocurridas en Roma. Edited by José F. Montesinos. Madrid, 1928. ———. Diálogo de Mercurio y Carón. Edited by José F Montesinos. Madrid, 1929. Valdés, Juan de. Alfabeto cristiano: Dialogo con Giulia Gonzaga. Edited by Benedetto Croce, Bari, 1938. Edited by Benjamin Wiffen, London, 1860. Edited and translated by Luis de Usoz y R io, Reformistas antiguos españoles 15, London, 1861. Edited from the same translation by B. Foster Stockwell, Buenos Aires and Mexico, 1948. English translation in Mergal and Williams, Spiritual and Anabaptist Writers (q.v.), 351–90. ———. Diálogo de doctrina cristiana. With introduction by Marcel Bataillon. Coimbra, 1925. With epilogue by T. Fliedner, Madrid, 1929. Edited by B. Foster Stockwell, Buenos Aires and Mexico, 1946. Edited by Domingo Ricart, Mexico, 1964. English translation by. Ángel M. Mergal, in Mergal and Williams, Spiritual and Anabaptist Writers (q.v.), 320–29. ———. El Evangelio según San Mateo, comentado por … Edited by Eduard Boehmer. Madrid, 1880. ———. La Epístola de San Pablo a los Romanos y la I a los Corintios. Reformistas antiguos españoles 10–11. Edited by Luis de Usoz y Río. Madrid, 1856. ———. Le cento e d ieci divine considerazioni. Edited by Edmondo Cione, Milan, 1944. Spanish translation by Luis de Usoz y Río, in Reformistas antiguos españoles 9. London, 1855. Anonymous translation of 1558 in Reformistas antiguos españoles, 17. Edited by Luis de Usoz y R ío, Madrid, 1862. Anonymous translation of 1558 [distinct from the previous one], edited and annotated by J. Ignacio Tellechea Idígoras. Salamanca, 1975.

1374  the radical reformation ———. Sul principio della dottrina cristiana: Cinque Trattatelli evangelici. Edited by Eduard Boehmer. Halle, 1870. ———. See also Montesino, V aldés, Diálogo de las cosas occunidas en Roma. Van Braght, Thielman. See Braght, Thielman van. Van den Bergh, trans. Tahafut al-tahafut (The I ncoherence of Incoherence). 2 vols. London: Luzac, 1978. van Dis, Miewis. Reformationische Rederijkerspelen uit de eerst helft van de zestiende eeuw. Haarlem, 1937. Varga, Bela. David Ferenc es az univarius vallas. Budapest: Unitarius Egyhaz, 1979. ———. Francis Dávid: What has Endured of His Life and Work? Translated by Vilma Szantho Harrington. Budapest: Magyar Unitarius Egyhaz, 1981. Vasella, Oskar. “Zur Geschichte der Täuferbewegung in der Schweiz.” ZSKG 48 (1954). Vasoli, Cesare. “La critica umanistica e le origini dell’antitrinitarismo.” Studia Humanitatis [Budapest] 6 (1982). Vedder, Henry. Balthasar Hubmaier: The Leader of the Anabaptists. New York/London, 1905. Reprint, New York: AMS, 1979. Verduin, Leonard. “The Chambers of Rhetoric and Anabaptist Origins in the Low Countries.” MQR 34 (1960): 192–96. ———. The Reformers and Their Stepchildren. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964. ———. See also Simons, Complete Writings. Veress, Endre. Epistolae et acta Jesuitarum Transylvaniae temporibus principum Báthory (1571– 1613). 2 vols. Leipzig and Vienna, 1911. Verheyden, Alphonse L. E. Anabaptism in Flanders, 1530–1650. Scottdale, Penn.: Herald Press, 1961. ———. Le Martyrologe protestant des Pays-Bas du Sud au xv i e siècle. Brussels: Editions de la Librairie des Eclaireurs Unionistes, 1960. Verwey, H. de la. “Trois hérésiarques dans les Pays-Bas du x vie siècle.” BHR 16 (1954): 312–30. Vice, Roy Lee. “The German Peasants’ War of 1525 and its Aftermath in Rothenburg ob der Tauber and Würzburg.” Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1984. Vinay, Valdo. “Der Anschluss der romanischen Waldenser an die Reformation und seine theologische Bedeutung.” Theologische Literaturzeitung 87 (1962): 90–100. ———. “Friedrich Reiser e la diaspora valdese di lingua tedesca nel x v secolo.” BSSV 109 (1961): 35–56. ———. “La Riforma in Croazia e in Slovenia e il Beneficio di Cristo.” BSSV 116 (1964): 19–32. ———. Le confessioni di fede dei V aldesi riformati. Turin: Claudiana, 1975. Vogelsang, Erich. “Weltbild und Kreuzestheologie in den Höllenfahrtsstreitigkeiten der Reformationszeit.” ARG 37 (1940): 90–132. Vogler, Günter. Thomas Müntzer. Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1989. Völker, Karl. Kirchengeschichte Polens. Berlin and Leipzig, 1930. V olumnia Legum [of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth]. Petersburg, 1859–60. Voolstra, Sjouke. “Mennos Meditatie op de 25e Psalm.” In Doperse Stemmen. Amsterdam: Doopsgezinde historische Kring, 1976.



bibliography  1375

———. “True Penitence: The Core of Menno Simon’s Theology.” MQR 62 (1988): 387–400. ———. Uyt Babel Ghevoden, in Jeruszalem ghetogen.” Doperse Stemmen 6. Amsterdam: Doopsgezinda historische Kring, 1986. Vos, Karle. Menno Simons, 1496–1561: Sijn leven en werken en zijne reformatorische denkbeelden. Leiden, 1914. Vries, O. H. de. Leer en praxis van de vroege dopers, uitgelegd als een theologie van de geschiedenis. Leeuwarden: Dykstra, 1982. Wackernagel, Hans Georg. Die Matrikel der Universität Basel. Basel: Verlag der Universitätsbibliothek, 1951. Waclaw, Urban. “A Theological Disagreement about the Slovakian Baptist and Spiritualist, Andreas Fischer, 1534 / Eine theologishce Auseinandersetzung um den slowakischen Täufer und Spiritualisten Andreas Fischer, 1534.” ARG 71 (1980): 149–59. Wagner, Murray L. Petr Chelcicky´: A R adical Separatist in Hussite Bohemia. Studies in Anabaptist and Mennonite History 25. Scottdale, Penn.: Herald Press, 1983. Waite, Gary K. “The Anabaptist Movement in Amsterdam and the Netherlands, 1531– 1535: An Initial Investigation into its Genesis and Social Dynamics.” SCJ 18 (1987): 249–56. ———. “David Joris’ Thought in the Context of the Early Anabaptist Movement in the Netherlands, 1534–1536.” MQR 62 (1988): 296–317. ———. “A Recent Consultation of Lucifer: A Previously Unknown Work by Sebastian Franck?” MQR 58 (1984): 477–502. ———. “Staying Alive: The Methods of Survival as Practiced by an Anabaptist Fugitive, David Joris.” MQR 61 (1987): 46–57. Wajsblum, Marek. “Dyteis´ci malopolscy.” RwP 5 (1928): 32–97. See Lubieniecki, Stanislaw, Compendium V eritatis Primaevae. Wallace, Dewey D., Jr. “From Eschatology to Arian Heresy.” HTR 67 (1974): 459–73. Wallace, Robert. Antitrinitarian Biography. 3 vols. London, 1850. Walton, Robert. “Was there a Turning Point of the Zwinglian Reformation?” MQR 42 (1968): 45–56. ———. Zwingli’s Theocracy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967. Wappler, Paul. Die Stellung Kursachsens und des Landgrafen Philipp von Hessen zur Täuferbewegung. Reformationsgeschichtliche Studien und Texte 13/14. Münster, 1910. ———. Die Täuferbewegung in Thüringen von 1529–1584. Jena, 1913. ———. Thomas Müntzer und die “Zwickauer Propheten.” Zwickau, 1908. Rev. ed., Gütersloh: Mohn, 1966. Weaver, J. Denny. Becoming Anabaptist: The Origin and Significance of Sixteenth-Century Anabaptism. Scottdale, Penn.: Herald Press, 1987. ———. “Discipleship Redefined: Four Sixteenth-Century Anabaptists.”’ MQR 54 (1980): 255–79. ———. “The Work of Christ: On the Difficulty of Identifying an Anabaptist Perspective.” MQR 59 (1985): 107–29. Weber, Franz Michael. Kaspar Schwenckfeld und seine Anhänger in den freybergischen Herrschaften, Justingen und Öpfingen. Stuttgart, 1962.

1376  the radical reformation Weber, Hans Emil. Reformation, Orthodoxie und Rationalismus. Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1951. Weber, Max. Die protestantische Ethik und der “Geist” des Kapitalismus. Gesammelte Aufsätze 1. Tübingen, 1922. Webster, Charles. From Paracelsus to Newton: Magic and the Making of Modern Science. The Eddington Memorial Lectures of 1980. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Wehr, Gerhard. Thomas Müntzer in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1982. Weigelt, Horst. Schwenckfelders in Silesia. Translated by Peter C. Erb. Pennsburg, Penn.: Schwenckfeld Library, 1985. ———. “Valentin Krautwald: Der führende Theologe des frühen Schwenckfeldertums Biographische und kirchenhistorische Aspekte.”’ In Dissidents du XVIe siècle entre l’Humanisme et le Catholicisme, 175–90. Baden-Baden: Koerner, 1983. Weiss, Frederick Lewis. The Life and Teachings of Ludwig Haetzer, a Leader and Martyr of the Anabaptists (1500–1529). Dorchester, Mass., 1930. Reprint, New York: AMS, 1983. ———. The Life, Teachings, and Works of Johannes Denck. Strassburg, 1924. Weiss, N., and Jean Meyerhoff. Guilaume Farel. Paris, 1930. Weiss, Ruth. “Die Herkunft der osthessischen Täufer.” ARG 50 (1959): 1–16, 182–99. Welti, Manfred Edwin. Kleine Geschichte der italienischen Reformation. Schriften des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte 193. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1985. Wendel, François. Calvin: Sources et évolution de sa pensée religieuse. Strasbourg: Presses Universitaire, 1950. ———. L’Église de Strasbourg: Sa constitution et son organisation, 1532–1535. Études d’Histoire et de Philosophie Religieuses 38. Paris, 1942. ———. Le Mariage à Strasbourg a l’époque de la Réforme, 1520–1692. Strassburg: Presses Universitaire, 1928. Wenger, John C. “Concerning Divorce: A S wiss Brethren Tract on the Primacy of Loyalty to Christ and the Right to Divorce and Remarriage.” MQR 21 (1947): 114–20. ———. “Martin Weninger’s Vindication of Anabaptism.” MQR 22 (1948): 180–87. ———. “Pilgram Marpeck’s Confession of Faith.” MQR 12 (1938): 167–202. ———. “The Life and Work of Pilgram Marpeck.” MQR 12 (1938): 137–66. ———. “The Schleitheim Confession of Faith.” MQR 19 (1945): 243–53. ———. [Trans. of a manuscript codex of the Marpeck circle.] MQR 27 (1947): 282–84. ———. See also Simons, Complete Writings. Werner, Ernst. Der Kirchenbegriff bei Hans Hus, Jakoubek von Mies, Jan Z˘elivsky´ und den Linken Taboriten. Sitzungsberichte der Deutschen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Klasse für Philosophie 10. Berlin, 1957. ———. Nachrichten über spätmittelalterliche Ketzer aus tschechoslowakischen Archiven und Bibliotheken. Beilage zur Wissenschaftlichen Zeitschrift der Karl-Marx-Universität, gesellschaft- und sprachwissenschaftliche Reihe 12, vol. 1. Leipzig, 1963. ———. See also Büttner, Thomas, and Ernst Werner. Wessel, Jan Hendrik. De leerstellige trijd tusschen nederlandsche Gereformeerden en Doopsgezinden in de zestiende eeuw. Van Gorcum’s Historische Bibliothek 31. Assen, 1945.



bibliography  1377

Westin, Gunnar, and Torsten Bergsten, eds. Balthasar Hubmaier Schriften: Seine Stellung zu Reformation und Täufertum. Translated by William R. Estep Jr. Kassel: Oncken, 1961. Widmoser, Eduard. “Das Tiroler Täufertum.” Tiroler Heimat 15 (1951): 45–89; 16 (1952): 103–28. Wiele, Johan van de. “The Court of Inquisition of Pieter Titelmans in Sixteenth-Century Flanders / D e inquisitierechtbank van Pieter Titelmans in de Zestiende eeuw in Vlaanderen.” Bijdragen en Mededelingen betreffende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden 97 (1982): 19–63. Wilbur, Earl Morse. A Bibliography of the Socinian-Unitarian Movement. Rome: Minerva, 1950. ———. A History of Unitarianism in Transylvania, England, and America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1942. ———. Socinianism and its Antecedents. Vol. 2 o f A History of Unitarianism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1945. ———. See also Lubieniecki, Stanislas, Historica Reformations Polonicae; and Servetus, De trinitalis erronbus. Wilkins, David. Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae. 4 vols. London: 1737. Williams, George H. “Anabaptism and Spiritualism in the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania: An Obscure Phase of the Pre-History of Socinianism.” In Chmaj, Studia (q.v.), 215–62. ———. Anselm: Communion and Atonement. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1960. ———. “The Believer’s Church and the Given Church.” In The People of God: Essays on the Believers’ Church, edited by Paul Basden and David S. Dockery. Nashville: Broadman, 1990. ———. “Camillo Renato (1500–75).” In Italian Reformation Studies (q.v.), 103–83. ———. “Cardinal Hosius.” In Shapers of Tradition in Germany, Switzerland, and Poland, edited by Jill Raitt. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981. ———. “The Christological Issues between Francis Dävid and Faustus Socinus, 1578– 1579.” Studia Humanitatis [Budapest] 6 (1982). Also in compendium form in Harvard Theological Review 75 (1982). ———. “‘Congregationalist’ Luther and the Free Churches.” Lutheran Quarterly, n.s., 18 (1967): 283–94. ———. “Erasmianism in Poland: An Account and an Interpretation of a M ajor, Ever Diminishing Current in Sixteenth-Century Polish Humanism and Religion, 1518– 1605.” Polish Review 22 (1977): 3–50. ———. “Erasmus and the Reformers on Non-Christian Religions and salus extra Ecclesiam.” In Essays in Memory of E. Harris Harbison, edited by Theodore K. Rabb and Jerrold E. Siegel. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968. ———. “The First Historian of Unitarianism.” Proceedings of the Unitarian Universalist Historical Society 20 (1985): 76–93. ———. “Four Modalities of Violence, with Special Reference to the Writings of Georges Sorel.” Journal of Church and State 16 (1974): 1–2, 11–30, 237–61. ———. “Francis Stancaro’s Schismatic Church, 1559–70, Centered in Dubets’ko in Ruthenia.”’ In “Essays in Honor of Omeljan Pritsak,” edited by Francis Cleaves et al. Special issue, Harvard Ukrainian Studies 3–4 (1979–80): 931–37.

1378  the radical reformation ———. “German Mysticism and the Polarization of Ethical Behavior in Luther and the Anabaptists.” MQR 48 (1974). ———, trans. and ed. History of the Polish Reformation, by Stanislas Lubieniecki. Harvard Theological Studies 37. Cambridge: Harvard Divinity School; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992. See Lubieniecki, Stanislaw. ———. “Les Martyrs anabaptistes en flandres et dans le Brabant méridional.” Annales du Congrès Archéologique et Historique de Tournai (1949). ———. Lubieniecki. See Lubieniecki, Stanislas. ———. “The Ministry of the Ante-Nicene Church,” and “The Ministry in the Patristic Period.” In The Ministry in Historical Perspective, edited by H. R. Niebuhr and D. D. Williams. New York: Harper & Row, 1956. ———. “Notes au sujet de la Réforme en Flandres au x vie siècle.” Bulletin de la Société d’Histoire du Protestantisme Belge (1951): 506–21. ———. Polish Brethren: Documentation of the History and Thought of Unitarianism in the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth and in the Diasporsa, 1601–1685. Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1980. Harvard Theological Studies 30 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press); Proceedings of the Unitarian Historical Society 18. ———. “The Polish-Lithuanian Calvin.” In Essays in Honor of Ford Lewis Battles, edited by Brian Gerrish, 129–58. Pittsburgh: Pickwick Press, 1981. ———. “Popularized German Mysticism in the Rise of Anabaptist Communism.” In Glaube, Geist, Geschichte: Festschrift für Ernst Benz, edited by Gerhard Müller and Winfred Zeller, 290–312. Leiden: Brill, 1967. ———. “Protestants in the Ukraine During the Period of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 1 (1978): 41–72, 184–210. ——— Protestants in the Ukraine Lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Millennium Series. Cambridge: Harvard Ukrainian Studies Fund, 1988. ———. The Radical Reformation. 1st ed. Philadephia/London: Westminster Press, 1962. ———. “Radicalization of the Reformed Church in Poland, 1547–1574: A R egional Variant of Sixteenth Century Anabaptism.” MQR 65 (1991): 54–68. ———. La Reforma Radical. 2d ed., 1st Spanish ed. translated by Antonio Alatorre. Sección de Obras de História. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1983. ———. “Reflections on the Radical Reformation.” Bulletin of the Congregational Library 14, nos. 1, 2 (1962–63). ———. “The Religious Background of the Idea of a L oyal Opposition.” In V oluntary Associations, edited by D. B. Robertson, 55–89. Richmond: John Knox Press, 1966. ———. “Religious Residues and Presuppositions.” In Papers on Abortion, edited by John Noonan Jr. et al. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970. ———. “Reluctance to Inform.” Theology Today 14 (1957): 229–55. ———. “Research Notes on the Beginnings of Bernese Anabaptism.” MQR 31 (1957): 292–95. ———. “Sanctification in the Testimony of Several So-Called Schwärmer.” In Kirche, Mystik, Heiligung und das Natürliche bei Luther, edited by Ivar Asheim, 194–211. Vorträge des III. Internationalen Kongresses für Lutherforschung. Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966. Modified and amplified in MQR 42 (1968): 5–25. ———. “Sectarian Ecumenicity.” Review and Expositor 64, no. 1 (1967): 141–60.



bibliography  1379

———. “Socinianism and Deism: From Eschatological Elitism to Universal Immortality.” Historical Reflections 2 (1975): 265–89. ———. “Francis Stancaro’s Schismatic Reformed Church, Centered in Dubets’ko in Ruthenia 1559/61–1570.” In “Eucharisterion: Essays Presented to Omeljan Pritsak,” edited by Francis Cleaves et al. Special issue, Harvard Ukrainian Studies 3/4, pt. 2 (1979-80): 931-57. ———. “Studies in the Radical Reformation (1517–1618): A Bibliographical Survey of Research since 1939.” CH 37 (1958): 46–69, 124–60. ———. “Two Social Strands in Italian Anabaptism, ca. 1550.” In Buck and Zophy, Social History of the Reformation (q.v.), 156–207. ———. “The Wilderness and Paradise in the History of the Church.” CH 28 (1959): 3–24. ———. Wilderness and Paradise in Christian Thought. New York: Harper, 1962. ———. See also Mergal, Ángel, and George H. Williams. Williams, R. L. “Martin Cellarius and the Reformation in Strasbourg.” JEH 32 (1981): 477–97. Willis, G. G. St. Augustine and the Donatist Controversy. London: S.P.C.K., 1950. Windhorst, Christof. Täuferisches Taufverständnis: Balthasar Hubmaiers Lehre zwischen traditioneller und reformatorischer Theologie. Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought 16. Leiden: Brill, 1976. Winkworth, Susannah, trans. Theologica Germanica, revised translation. New York: Pantheon, 1949. ———. The History and Life of the Reverend Doctor John Tauler with Twenty-five of His Sermons. London, n.d. Winters, Roy L. Francis Lambert of Avignon. Philadelphia: United Lutheran Publication House, 1938. Wiszowaty, Andreas. Religio rationalis: Editio trilinguis. Edited by Zbigniew Ogonowski. Wolfenbüttel: Herzog August Bibliothek, 1982. Wiswedel, Wilhelm. “Gabriel Ascherham und die nach ihm genannte Bewegung.” ARG 34 (1937): 1–35, 235–62. ———. “Rinck.” In Bilder und Führergestalten aus dem Täufertum. 2 vols. Kassel: Oncken, 1928–52. ———. “Zum Problem: Inneres und äusseres Wort bei den Täufern.” ARG 46 (1955): 1–19. ———, and Robert Friedmann. “The Anabaptists’ Answer to Melanchthon.” MQR 29 (1955): 212–31. Wiszowaty, Benedict. See Bibliotheca Antitrinitariorum. Wohlfeil, Rainer. “Radikale Reformation.” In Einführung in die Geschichte der deutschen Reformation, 144–69. Munich: Beck, 1982. ———, ed. Reformation oder frühbürgerlichen Revolution? Munich: Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung, 1972. ———, and Hans-Jürgen Goertz. Gewissensfreiheit als Bedingung der Neuzeit: Fragen an die Speyerer Protestation von 1529. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1980. Wolf, Ernst. “Deus omniformis.” In Theologische Aufsätze Karl Barth zum 50. Geburtstag, edited by Karl Barth and Ernst Wolf. Munich: C. Kaiser, 1936.

1380  the radical reformation Wolfson, Harry. Religious Philosophy. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1961. ———. The Philosophy of the Church Fathers: Faith, Trinity, Incarnation. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970. Wohlers, William. “The Anabaptist View of the Family in its Relationship to the Church.” Ph.D. diss., University of Nebraska, 1976. Wolgast, Eike. Thomas Müntzer: Ein V erstörer der Unglaübigen. Zurich: Muster-Schmidt, 1981. Wollgast. Siegfried. Der deutsche Pattheismus im 16. Jahrhundert: Sebastian Franck und seine Wirkungen auf die Entwicklung der pantheistischen Philosophie in Deutschland. Berlin: Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1972. Wolleb, J. J. Gespräch zwischen einem Pietisten und einem Wiedertäufer. Basel, 1722. Wopfner, Hermann, ed. Quellen zur Geschichte des Bauernkriegs in Deutschtirol 1525. Acta Tirolensia 3. Innsbruck, 1908. Wotschke, Theodor. Der Briefwechsel der Schweizer mit den Polen. ARG Ergänzungsband 3. Leipzig, 1908. ———. Die Geschichte der Reformation in Polen. Leipzig, 1911. ———. “Die unitarische Gemeinde in Meseritz-Bobelwitz.” Zeitschrift der Historischen Gesellschaft für die Provinz Posen (1911): 163ff. ———. “Herzog Albrecht von Preussen und Wilhelm Gnapheus.” ARG 30 (1930): 122–31. ———. “Zur Geschichte des Antitrinitarismus.” ARG 23 (1926): 82–100. Woude, Sape van der. “Censured Passages from Sebastian Castellio’s Defensio suarum translationum.” In Becker, Autour de Michel de Servet (q.v.). Wray, Frank J. “Bernhard Rothmann’s Views on the Early Church.” In Reformation Studies (q.v.), 229–38. ———. “The Anabaptist Doctrine of the Restitution of the Church.” MQR 28 (1954): 186–90. ———. “The V ermahnung of 1542 and Rothmann’s Bekenntnisse.” ARG 47 (1956): 243–51. Wren, Malcolm, trans. Melchior Hoffman … Edinburgh: T & T. Clark, 1987. Wright, David F. “Reformation Studies in the Twentieth Century.” In New Twentieth Century Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge. Grand Rapids: Baker Book Co., 1991. Wrzecionko, Paul. Reformation und Frühaufklärung in Polen: Studien über den Sozinianisus und seinen Einfluss auf dem westeuropäischen Denken im 17. Jahrhundert. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1977. Wunder, Heide. Die bäuerliche Gemeinde in Deutschland. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986. ———. “Bauern und Reformation im Herzogtum Preussen.” In Blickle, Bauer, Reich und Reformation (q.v.). Wyntjes, Sherrin Marshall, ed. Women in Reformation and Counter-Reformation Europe: Public and Private Worlds. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989. Yanoshak, Nancy. “A Fontological Analysis of the Major Works Attributed to Zinovii Otenskii.” 2 vols. Ph.D. diss., Georgetown University, 1981. Yates, Frances Amelia. John Florio: The Life of an Italian in Shakespeare’s England. 2d ed. New York: Octagon, 1968.



bibliography  1381

Yoder, Jesse. “The Frankenthal Disputation, 1571.” MQR 36 (1962): 14–35, 116–46. Yoder, John Howard. “Anabaptists and the Sword Revisited: Systematic Historiography and Undogmatic Nonresistants.” In Oberman, Deutscher Bauernkrien (q.v.), 270–84. ———. Die Gespräche zwischen Täufern und Reformatoren in der Schweiz in 1523–1538. Täufertum und Reformation in der Schweiz 1. Karlsruhe, 1962. ———. “The Hermeneutics of the Anabaptists.” MQR 41 (1967): 291–308. ———. “The Turning Point in the Zwinglian Reformation.” MQR 32 (1958): 128–40. ———, ed. Textos escogidos de la Reforma Radical. Buenos Aires, 1976. ———, ed. Textos Encogidoes de la Reforma Radical. Scottdale, Penn.: Herald Press, 1981. ———. See also Fast, Heinhold, and John H. Yoder. ———, ed. and trans. The Legacy of Michael Sattler. Classics of the Radical Reformation 1. Scottdale, Penn.: Herald Press, 1973. Yost, John K. “The Reformation Defense of Clerical Marriage in the Reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI.” CH 50, no. 2 (1981): 152–65. ———. “The Traditional Western Concept of Marriage and the Family: Rediscovering its Renaissance-Reformation Roots.” Andover-Newton Theological Seminary Quarterly 20 (1980): 169–80. Zachorowski, Stanislaw. “Najstarsze synody arjan polskich.” RwP 1 (1922): 214–15. Zelewski, Roman. “Troubles confessionnels à C racovie … 1551–1573.” ORP 6 ( 1961): 91–111. Zeller, Winfried. Die Schriften V alentin Weigels. Historische Studien 370. Berlin, 1940. Zeman, Jarold Knox. The Anabaptists and the Czech Brethren in Moravia, 1526–1628: A Study of Origins and Contacts. The Hague/Paris: Mouton, 1969. ———. “Historical Topography of Moravian Anabaptism.” MQR 40 (1966): 266–78; 41 (1967) 40–78; 41 (1967) 116–60. ———. “The Medieval Background.” MQR 50 (1976). ———. “The Rise of Religious Liberty in the Czech Reformation.” Central European History 6 (1973): 128–47. Zieglschmid, A. J. F. Die älteste Chronik der Hutterischen Brüder. Philadelphia, 1974. Translated as Chronicle of the Hutterian Brethren 1525–1665. Rifton, N.Y.: Plough Publishing House, 1989. Ziegler, D. J. “Marpeck versus Bucer: A Sixteenth Century Debate Over the Uses and Limits of Political Authority.” SCJ 2 (1976): 95–107. Zernian, J. K. Anabaptists and the Czech Brethren in Moravia. The Hague: Mouton, 1969. Zijlstra, S. Nicolaas Meyndertsz van Blesdijk: Een bijdrage tot de geschiedenis van het Davidjorisme. Assen: Van Gorcum, 1983. Zille, Ester. Gli eretici a Cittadella nel Cinquecento. Cittadella: Rebollato, 1971. Zimmerli, Walther. See Calvin, Psycho Pannychia. Zimmermann, Günter. Die Antwort der Reformatoren auf die Zehntenfrage: eine Analyse des Zusammenhangs von Reformation und Bauernkrieg. Europäische Hochschulschriften, Reihe 3, Geschichte und ihre Hilfswissenschaften 164. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1982. Zins, Henryk. Powstanie chlopskie w P rusach Ksiaz´ecych w 1525 roku. Varsovia [Warsaw], 1953.

1382  the radical reformation Zonta, Giuseppe. “Francesco Negri, l’eretico e la sua tragedia I l Libero Arbitrio.” Giornale Storico 67 (1916): 265–324; 68 (1916): 108–60. Zophy, Jonathan W. See Buck, Lawrence, and Jonathan W. Zophy. Zoványi, J. A reformáczió Magyarországon. Budapest, 1925. Zschäbitz, Gerhard. Zur mitteldeutschen Wiedertäuferbewegung nach dem grossen Bauernkrieg. Leipziger Übersetzungen und Abhandlungen zum Mittelalter 1. Berlin: Rutten and Lowning, 1958. Zsindely, E. Bulinger Henrik magyar kapcsolatai. Budapest, 1967. Zuck, Lowell H. “Anabaptism: An Abortive Counter Revolution within the Reforma­ tion.” CH 26, no. 3 (1957): 221–26. ———. Christianity and Revolution: Radical Testimonies 1520–1650. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1975. Zur Linden: See Linden, Friederich Otto zur. Zwingli, Huldrich. Briefe. Edited by Oskar Farner. 2 vols. Zurich, 1918–20. ———. The Latin Works and Correspondence of Huldreich Zwingli, together with Selections from His German Works. Edited by Samuel M. Jackson. New York, 1912–19. ———. Sämtliche Werke. Leipzig, 1934. ———. See also Bromiley, Zwingli and Bullinger.

Index of Source Documents

Acontius (Aconio), James, Strategems of Satan (Satanae stratagemata) (Basel, 1565). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 521, 1203–4 Agrippa, Henry Cornelius, of Nettesheim, The Commendation of Marriage (Eng. tr. 1540). . . . . 767 Akta synodów . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251n12 See Sipayłło, ed. in Bibliography Albertus Magnus(?) or Thomas Aquinas(?), De venerabili sacramento altaris . . . . . . . . . . . . 74, 1269 Althamer, Andreas, Diallage, hoc est conciliatio locorum Scripturae qui prima facie inter se pugnare videntut (tr. 1528). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395, 700 Amaseus, Romulus, “Oratio de Pace Bononiae habita coram Clementis VII Pontif. Max. et Caroli V”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Amon, John, hymns and epistles of comfort. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 646–47 Anabaptists “Das älteste rheinische Täuferbekenntniss” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 734n1 Het Brilleken (1630) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1071 Martyrs’ Mirror. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1071–72 Martyrs’ Mirror (1570). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 529 Martyrs’ Mirror (1660). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 748 Offer des Heeren (Offering of the Lord; 1562). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 748 Offer des Heeren (Offering of the Lord; 1570). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 529nll Anabaptists (Philippites), Ausbund, oldest Anabaptist hymnbook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 649, 1072, 1247 Aneken Jansdochter, Testament for the Son at Martyrdom (1539) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 584–96 Anonymous Admonition to Parliament (1572). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1207–8 (Biandrata and Dávid) De regno Christi and De regno Antichristi (1569). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1116 Tractatus de paedobaptismo et circumcisione (1569). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1116 (Budzin´ski?), Treatise not against the Apostolic Commuity … but against the Communists in Moravia (1570) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1095 (Camillo Renato?), XLIII Articles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 841 Vermahnung (Admonition; against Schwenckfeld; 1542) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 705, 709–16 Aristotle De anima. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64–65, 67 De physicis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 Arndt, Johann, Vier Bücher vom wahren Christentum (1606) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1239 Ascherham, Gabriel, Von Unterschied göttlicher und menschlicher Weisheit (now lost; 1544) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 629 Averrös (Arabic: lbn Rushd; 1126–98) Commentary on Aristotle’s De anima . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Destructio destructionum philosophiae Algazelis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67–68 Barlow, Thomas, Lutheran Faccyons (1531) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 605

1383

1384  the radical reformation Bastius, John, De anabaptismi exordio (1544) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240, 240n97 Bern Church Order in 44 Articles (1532). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 919 Bernard, Prior of Luxembourg, Catalogue of Heretics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397 Beza, Theodore, De haereticis a civili magistratu puniendis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 961 Biandrata, George, and Francis Dávid, De falsa et vera unius Dei Patris Filii et Spiritus Sancti cognitione (1568). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 494, 1112 Biel, Gabriel, Collectorium. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 436 The Bishop’s Book of 1537. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6067 Blaurer, Ambrose, Ob eine weltliche Obrigkeit mit göttlichem und billigem Rechte möge die Wiedertäufer … . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362 Blesdijk, Nicholas Meynderts van Christelijcke Verantwoordinghe (1545) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 730 [unnamed] book against Jorist Spiritualism (1547). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 739 Boethius, De elegantiis linguae Latinae (1441). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Bradford, John, Defence of Election (1549?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1198 Braitmichel, Caspar, Hutterite Chronicle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216, 351–53, 385, 446, 885, 890–91, 1064n1, 1067, 1076, 1078, 1218, 1285 Brunfels, Otto Pandectarum veteris et novi Testamenti libri xxii (1527). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309n46, 893, 905 Von dem Pfaffensehnten CXLII Schlussreden (1524) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 368 Bucer, Martin Apologie der Kindertaufe gegen Pilgram Marpeck. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 683 Commentary on John (1528). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376 Commentary on Synoptic Gospels (1527) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376, 401, 429, 763n46 De regno Christi (posth. 1557). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373, 373n37 Enarrationes in Evangelia (1526). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376nn45–46 Getreue Warnung, reply to Kautz’ Seven Anabaptist Theses (1527). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263 Grund und Ursache aus göttlicher Schrift (1525). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371 Quid de baptismate … sentiendum (1533) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426 Report out of Holy Scripture on the Correct Godly Establishment of the Christian Community (1534) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 692 Review of Schwenckfeld’s books. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424 Budny, Simon De tribus gentibus (1572). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1151 Translation of Hotman’s description of St. Bartholomew’s Massacre. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1149 Budzin´ski, Stanislas Historia (now lost) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1085 See also Anonymous Bugenhagen, John (Pomeranus), Wie man de so zu Ee greyffen (1524). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 770 Bullinger, Henry A Most Necessary and Frutefull Dialogue between ye Seditious Libertine or Rebel Anabaptist, and the True Obedient Christian (1551). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313n, 1198 A Moste sure and Strong Defence of the Baptisme of Children (1551). . . . . . . . . . . . . 313n58, 1197 Account of Mantz/Blaurock trial. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242–43 A