The Anabaptists

Hans-Jurgen Goertz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135088675
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Weltgeschichte

The Anabaptists were at the radical, utopian edge of the Reformation, ruthlessly repressed by Catholic, Lutheran and secular authorities alike. Hans-Jurgen Goertz gives a comprehensive account of their political and religious significance, their views, and their social setting within the wider context of the Reformation. Particular attention is paid to the role and experience of women and of 'ordinary' Anabaptists in addition to those of the educated elite. Whilst the focus of the book is on Germany, extensive coverage is also given to Anabaptism in England, Switzerland, the Netherlands and elsewhere.
This English edition includes a new introduction which considers the historiographical context of the book. The opening chapter has also been expanded to include a section on the emergence of Anabaptism in England.
The Anabaptists has been fully revised since its publication in German, and takes account of the most recent historiography on the subject. It also includes a selection of primary sources together with a full listing of important Anabaptist works.

1
ANABAPTIST ALTERNATIVES

An overview

During the early years of the Reformation many great efforts were made to renew Christianity. The actions of the Anabaptists were, however, especially spectacular. They tried to find alternatives both to the unreformed church of Rome and also, more importantly, to the Reformation churches, since although the latter had criticised the old church they had proved reluctant to cut the close bonds which existed between church and government, or between the Christian congregation and the civil community. However, even the Anabaptists failed to make such a radical break right at the beginning. It only came after their sweeping plans to reform society as a whole had failed and their reforming identity had been plunged into crisis. The result was the emergence of a form of community which would later be termed a ‘free church’. Anabaptism retained something of a Protestant character, to such an extent indeed that Heinold Fast could aptly describe the movement as ‘Reformation through provocation’.¹ At the same time, it also displayed traces of Catholic theology and piety, which have only recently received renewed attention.² It would, however, be more correct to describe Anabaptism as ‘neither Catholic nor Protestant’.³ The movement was an alternative to both great churches.

To be precise, there was not one Anabaptist movement, but several. Their origins went back to the turmoil of the Reformation in the early 1520s, when rising discontent with the clergy of the old church often led to anticlerical agitation and the introduction of reforms. At first there was an absence of a clear course or precise objective. In the midst of this confusion we can see ideas and groups emerging from diverse social situations and traditions of piety. What united them was rebellion against the Roman clergy and protest against ecclesiastical excesses which had threatened to undermine the credibility of Christianity. They represented a common church-political front, but the arguments underpinning their protest and their visions of a better church and society were very disparate. The loose unity of the reform camp consequently soon shattered and dissolved into several reform movements, often competing against each other and serving to weaken the original impetus of the Reformation.

Out of the disintegration of the reform camp there emerged movements of people who were dissatisfied with the often indecisive and cautious progress of the Reformation and wanted more radical reform, recklessly challenging the ecclesiastical and secular authorities. Occasionally they either sprang from or sought alliances with the revolutionary forces of 1525. The common distinguishing feature of these movements was a critique of infant baptism and the practice of a baptism of faith and confession. For this reason their members were termed ‘Anabaptists’ (Tdufer or Wiedertaufer). Another feature which they shared was the fact that wherever they appeared they inspired social unrest and as a result were ruthlessly persecuted. They met in secret places, in woodland glades and disused barns, or on riverboats, and read the Scriptures without official guidance. Despite such precautions they were still attacked and pursued from one place to another. One, unexceptional, report testifies to the ferocity of their persecution:

it so happened that on one occasion more than twenty men, widows, pregnant women and girls were thrown into horrible, dark dungeons, to spend the rest of their lives without seeing either the sun or the moon and to end their days on bread and water. They were condemned to remain like that in those dark dungeons, to die, to stink and to decay, the dead and the living together, until none of them remained.⁴

The Anabaptists smacked of illegality and an underground society. However, baptism and martyrdom were not strong enough to weld them, wherever they emerged, into a united movement. Their doctrinal formulations and justifications of baptism and martyrdom diverged widely -bearing the imprint of the turmoil of the early Reformation-and could not subsequently be reduced to a common denominator.

Recent scholarship has painted an extremely variegated picture of the origins and early shape of Anabaptism, banishing the quest for a single ‘Anabaptist model’ to the area of theological and confessional wish-fulfilment. Anabaptism did not develop from one root, as used to be generally accepted, but from several. These included the early Reformation in Zurich, Thomas Miintzer's Radical Reformation in central Germany, which was carried to south Germany by Hans Hut, and the charismatic and apocalyptic milieu of Strasbourg, which Melchior Hoffman, with his spiritualist and eschatological ideas, moulded into a distinctive form of Anabaptism and then introduced into lower Germany⁵ In various places Anabaptists accused each other of promoting ‘seductive and seditious teachings’. Balthasar Hubmaier, the Anabaptist reformer of Waldshut and Nikolsburg, to cite just one example, summed it up in a short formula: ‘the baptism which I taught and the baptism which Hut purported to teach are as far apart as heaven and earth, east and west,

Christ and Belial’.⁶ There is therefore much to be said for replacing a monogenetic with a polygenetic view of Anabaptism.

A RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL-REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT

The earliest form of Anabaptism grew out of the Reformation in Zurich. There, Ulrich Zwingli had collected about him a circle of keen pupils, among them priests and monks, scholars and artisans, who were dissatisfied with the old church and desired a fundamental renewal of Christianity. Together they set in motion a spiritual and political learning process, which gradually led to the official introduction of the Reformation by the town council. Among Zwingli's followers were men who would later be known as Anabaptists.

It all began in the spring of 1522 with a series of actions designed to harass and provoke the clergy. Zwingli and some of his supporters went to the house of the printer Froschauer. They were invited to lunch and, although it was Lent, ate meat. In so doing they gave graphic expression to the idea of the ordinary Christian's freedom from ecclesiastical regulations. That evening, a group including the bakers Heinrich Aberli and Barthlime Pur repeated the symbolic meal at the same place and subsequently came into conflict with the brethren of the Augustinian convent. They entangled the monks in a debate about the value of ecclesiastical regulations and laws and pestered them with demands for communion in both kinds. The council was forced to take steps against this. Zwingli, however, justified the fast-breaking and stood by his followers, who had given this action a blatantly anticlerical edge. J. F. Gerhard Goeters has shown how the subsequent negotiations between the council, the suffragan bishop of Constance and the town clergy were a success for Zwingli. Although fast-breaking was forbidden, the council ‘did not reject the Reformation case on principle’ and gave Zwingli a free hand in ensuring that the ‘exercise of Christian freedom’ would no longer lead to public disturbances in the city.⁷

The next coup was similarly well planned. A number of fast-breakers, including the humanist Konrad Grebel, marched on the monks’ church. There they heckled the sermons which publicly promoted the veneration of the saints. The trouble-makers were summoned to the council chamber and given a warning. Grebel, however, remained impenitent, protested against the warning ('if my lords do not allow the Gospel to advance they will be destroyed') and slammed the door with a loud bang.⁸ Here again the result was a triumph for Zwingli's cause. Despite internal opposition the council was persuaded to issue a decree restricting the orthodox preachers to delivering sermons which conformed to the Scriptures.⁹Zwingli and his friends regarded this as an encouragement to continue preaching against ecclesiastical abuses and to proceed with specific actions against the clergy. Over the following months, invective against priests and monks, disruptions of sermons and attacks on paintings and images all led to the creation of an anticlerical climate, which could then be politically manipulated to ensure the Reformation's continued progress. Of the later Anabaptist leaders, Simon Stumpf, Wilhelm Reublin and Konrad Grebel now became particularly prominent, all three giving vent to their hatred of the clergy. From 1522, Grebel in particular became, as Goeters puts it, a ‘determined and dogged opponent of all monastic life’.¹⁰

Further reforming impulses came from congregations in the Zurich countryside. In Hongg, Simon Stumpf, who had already attended the fast-breaking, had been fomenting doubts about tithe-payment and justifying refusal to pay tithes in the autumn of 1522. The monastery of Wettingen, which was owed part of the tithe, felt it had been cheated of its income and tried to take the matter to the bishop's court in Constance. Stumpf claimed that he was subject only to the Zurich council, as the holder of jurisdiction over Hongg. He forced the council, which had been trying for a long time to take the whole of ecclesiastical jurisdiction into its own hands, to intervene against the episcopal proceedings. The council tried to have the dispute settled in Stumpf's favour, but the monastery was not satisfied and took the case to the diet of the Eight Confederates in Baden. The Zurich Reformation now became a supra-regional problem. The diet opposed the city, but in practice was unable to block the course of the Reformation, adopted in particular by the Great Council-a course which Zurich now followed perhaps all the more consciously. The council stood firm and persuaded the bishop to withdraw from the dispute. In the meantime, Zwingli was able to use Stumpf's battle as an occasion for the convening of a public disputation, with a view to publicly enforcing the scriptural orthodoxy of the city's sermons. The disputation took place in January 1523 and was a victory for Zwingli.¹¹ At the same time the council had to intervene in yet another case. The congregation of Witikon felt that they were being inadequately served by the Grofimiinster chapter in Zurich. On their own account, at Christmas 1522, they installed Wilhelm Reublin as their parish priest; he had already spent some time ministering there, after the failure of an attempted Reformation in Basel. The quarrel, which had been provoked by the congregation, was provisionally settled. They were able to retain their priest, but had to promise to pay for his upkeep themselves, while continuing to send tithes to Zurich.

At the time of the first disputation (the quarrel over Reublin was settled some weeks later) Zwingli and his friends were still in the same boat. Zwingli was more cautious. His friends, although more radical, could still count on the reformer's support. In the meantime, Zwingli had become a spiritual authority. For his part, he must have inwardly welcomed the radicals’ actions, because they kept creating opportunities for him to achieve his reform goal by small steps with a hesitant council.

The initiatives from the rural communes had not only advanced the Reformation in the town. They now also began to destroy the unity of the reform camp. The immediate cause of this development was the conflict over the tithes, which had been put to one side, but not yet settled. From Hongg the demand for the abolition of the tithe spread to Witikon, Zollikon and other villages. Wilhelm Reublin had spoken of the ‘useless parsons’ of the Grofimunster and stirred up resentment against the tithe. He now urged the congregations to turn en masse to the council in order to lay a protest against the tithe-demands of the Grofimunster chapter and to demand the abolition of all taxes. The basis of their petition was that, since it was being used for purposes other than those originally intended, the tithe did not accord with the Scriptures. Although the council insisted on retaining the tax, it did promise to proceed against abuses of the tithe. Zwingli now positioned himself on the side of the council and, in his sermon ‘Regarding divine and human justice’, defended the powers of secular government in wordly affairs. Although he did not believe that the authorities were fit to adjudicate on the interpretation of the divine word, he did think that they would probably have to solve the problems of ecclesiastical government.

Konrad Grebel, who had previously had bad experiences with the council, turned against Zwingli, calling him a ‘wretched prattler’ and ‘archscribe’, and declared his solidarity with the demands of the rural communes. From his anticlerical standpoint he was concerned that ecclesiastical government too should be reformed according to the word of God. Simon Stumpf also criticised the reformer. He disregarded the council's ruling, encouraged his congregation to refuse the tithe and declared himself sceptical of the Zurich Reformation's prospects for success. The Reformation would not succeed, he claimed, unless the parsons were all beaten to death first. Passions were roused and the result was the polarisation of the Zwinglian camp. Above all, those who inclined towards a fierce anticlericalism and who had for some time already been meeting regularly for Bible-readings under the direction of the book-seller Andreas Castelberger (who also subsequently became an Anabaptist) felt that they had been abandoned by Zwingli and resolved to pursue their own, radical path. The reform camp fell apart.¹²

The underlying causes of the rupture must be sought in the special situation of the rural communes. James M. Stayer has stressed that these congregations did not simply wish to reduce their ecclesiastical dues but were also striving for greater autonomy from the Zurich council.¹³ In the Black Forest and on the shores of Lake Constance the peasants were in rebellion. Their demands spread to the territory ruled by Zurich and fused with the anticlerical actions there. As Goeters aptly puts it, Reublin was ‘the Bundschuh in the pulpit’.¹⁴ Abolition of the tithe and the right to elect their own pastor were items in the peasants’ programme and assisted the Zurich rural congregations in organising themselves as united communes and asserting their autonomy from the council in Zurich. This was something which the council clearly recognised and wished to prevent. Zwingli came to its aid. When Grebel and other friends in the town spoke out against Zwingli and marched with Reublin and Stumpf, they made the rebellious goals of the rural communes their own and merged their anticlerical struggle with a political battle: the radicals formed themselves into a religious and social-revolutionary movement. For this early period, especially in the area around Hallau and in the district of Griiningen, it is almost impossible to distinguish between the rebelling peasants and those who would emerge as Anabaptists after 1525.¹⁵

The radicals now waited for opportunities to demonstrate that reform of the church had to be decided by the communes and not by the council. The radicals demanded the total abolition of the mass with renewed intensity and took charge of the purification of the churches, leading to acts of iconoclasm. In an attempt to maintain order the council convened a second disputation. This debate made it clear that neither the mass nor the veneration of images were in accordance with the Scriptures. Zwingli, however, left it to the council to translate this decision into practical reforms. His radical pupils protested against this. In the disputation the community had assented to the judgement of the Holy Spirit. Why then should they have to wait upon the decisions of the council? The split, which had already been visible, now became total.

Zwingli insisted on entrusting the council with the practical implementation of the Reformation, while the radicals reserved this right for the congregations. The disagreement has usually been attributed to two different ecclesiological concepts: Zwingli wanted a popular or ‘peoples’ church’ (Volkskirche), whereas the radicals envisaged a ‘free church’ (Freikirche). However, on closer examination this dichotomy is incorrect. Zwingli and the radicals were alike in wanting to reform entire communes. The diffe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface to the first edition
• Preface to the second edition
• Preface to the English edition
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 ANABAPTIST ALTERNATIVES
• 2 ANTICLERICALISM AND MORAL IMPROVEMENT
• 3 BAPTISM AS PUBLIC CONFESSION OF FAITH
• 4 CONGREGATION, GOVERNMENT AND THE NEW KINGDOM
• 5 SIMPLE BROTHERS AND SELF-CONFIDENT SISTERS
• 6 HERETICS, REBELS AND MARTYRS
• 7 CONCLUSION
• APPENDIX A: A SELECTION OF SOURCES
• APPENDIX B: CHRONOLOGY
• APPENDIX C: IMPORTANT ANABAPTIST WORKS
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index