The Most Radical Sect
The same zeal that today makes some of our contemporaries devoted to economic systems made the restless religious minorities of the sixteenth century followers of various revolutionary movements. The most extreme Christian sect of the age was the Anabaptists, or "rebaptizers." They insisted on baptism at the age of maturity, holding, like John the Baptist, that the rite should be given only when a person freely chooses to accept Christianity. The sect itself split into several branches. One group, following Hans Denck and Ludwig Hätzer, denied the divinity of Christ and held that he was simply the most spiritual of men, who redeemed our sins not by dying on the cross but by his incomparable life. Denck placed the individual conscience above the Church, the state and even Scripture.
Many Anabaptists lived plain, unadorned lives and dressed simply. Following Luther's own reasoning on the freedom of the Christian, though carrying it further than he intended, they opposed tyrannical government and also armed resistance to government. Holding that killing is a sin, they refused military service. Like the early Christians, they refused to swear oaths, including oaths of loyalty to princes or the emperor. Their greeting, like that of Jews, Muslims and the Quakers who appeared a century later, was "God's peace be upon you." Luther, Zwingli, Calvin and Knox agreed with the popes in opposing religious toleration; the Anabaptists preached and practiced it. One of them, Balthasar Hubmaier, published the first tract in defense of toleration (1524). They also avoided public office and lawsuits. The sect arose a century after Peter Chelčický and followed him, and it held, three centuries before Tolstoy, an anarchism much like his.
Some groups, following the Taborites or "Moravian Brethren," favored common ownership of property, and some, if we accept the testimony of hostile writers, even of women (a charge the book repeats and which is unproved). But they did not allow force in pursuit of this aim. They expected people to build a cooperative society of their own free will, and believed that once God's rule was established on earth, communal property would spread of itself.
All Anabaptists, relying on the Book of Revelation, awaited the return of Christ, and some claimed to know the day and hour. They believed that after his return all the godless, which meant all but themselves, would be destroyed by God's sword, and that the elect would live in an earthly paradise and enjoy all God's gifts. In hope of that day they lived disciplined, laborious lives and steeled themselves.
Switzerland and the Persecution
The Anabaptists first appeared in Switzerland. They may have descended from the pacifism of the Waldensians of southern France and the Beghards of the Netherlands. In Basel and elsewhere intellectuals drew up plans for communal societies, and passages of Thomas More's Utopia may have reached thinkers in Erasmus's circle. Three of them, Conrad Grebel and Felix Manz of Zurich and Balthasar Hubmaier of Waldshut, led the Anabaptists on the Austrian side of the border.
In 1524, when Müntzer went to Waldshut and Karlstadt to Zurich, the sect appeared at Zurich under the name of "the Brethren." They taught adult baptism and the near return of Christ, and opposed usury, taxes, military service, tithes and oaths. Meanwhile Zwingli had won the Great Council of Zurich over to his Protestant views, including state supervision of religion, and asked the Brethren to give up their opposition to the government and to infant baptism. They refused. The council invited them to a public debate (January 17, 1525), and, failing to persuade them, ordered the parents who refused to baptize their children to leave the city. The Anabaptists denounced the council, called Zwingli the "old dragon," and marched through the streets crying "Woe to Zurich." Their leaders were arrested and banished, and this let them carry their ideas to other towns. The movement spread to St. Gallen and Appenzell, stirred Bern and Basel, and Hubmaier won almost the whole population of Waldshut. In Appenzell twelve hundred men and women, following Christ's words "take no thought what ye shall eat," stopped working in the hope that God would provide.
The peasants' brief successes in the spring of 1525 brought many to the sect, but once the revolt was crushed, the Swiss authorities spared no effort to wipe out the Anabaptists. The Zurich council arrested Manz (July 1525), then Grebel and Hubmaier, and ordered that stubborn Anabaptists be confined in a tower and given bread and water "till they all die and rot." Grebel died in custody. Manz was drowned. Hubmaier recanted under pressure, then retracted his recantation and preached in Augsburg and Moravia. Hätzer was beheaded at Constance, on charges that included adultery. Protestant and Catholic cantons alike set about crushing the Anabaptists, and by 1530 nothing remained of them in Switzerland but a few small hidden groups.
Meanwhile the movement was spreading fast in southern Germany. Denck and Hubmaier gained ground among the weavers and lower middle class of Augsburg. In the Tyrol, poor miners who hated their employers, the Fugger and Höchstetter families, turned to the sect after the peasants' revolt was put down. In Strasbourg, the quarrel between Catholics and Protestants gave them room to win many converts, but in 1528 a pamphlet warned the authorities that "those who talk of community of goods have no aim but to create enmity between rich and poor and to rouse the people against rulers appointed by God." The same year Charles V's edict made rebaptism a capital crime, and the Diet of Speyer (1529), confirming the edict, ordered that Anabaptists be put to death everywhere without trial, like wild beasts. An Anabaptist chronicler, perhaps with exaggeration, described the results: people were tortured and put to death by fire, sword, water or hanging, some rotted in dark prisons, the young were flogged and thrown into dungeons, the rest were driven from their homeland, and many fled in fear to mountains, forests and caves. (The book lists the manner of the executions in detail; it is condensed here.) According to Sebastian Franck, who lived at the time, two thousand Anabaptists were killed in 1530; in Ensisheim in Alsace alone six hundred were condemned to death. In Salzburg (1528) those who recanted were mercifully beheaded before being burned, and those who held firm were burned slowly. The Anabaptists wrote moving hymns to their martyrs, and the writers of those hymns became martyrs themselves.
Moravia and the North
Despite the slaughter the Anabaptists grew stronger and moved north. In Prussia and Württemberg some nobles took them in as peaceful, hard-working farmers. According to one historian the Werra valley in Saxony swarmed with them, and at Erfurt they claimed to have sent three hundred missionaries to the ends of the earth. At Lübeck, Jürgen Wullenwever, who was accused of sympathy with them, ruled the city for a time (1533–34).
In Moravia, Hubmaier had some success by softening Anabaptist teaching on common property. Community, he taught, "instead of common ownership, means feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty and clothing the naked; for we are stewards of our goods, not their owners." Hans Hut, a follower of Müntzer, persuaded the Moravian Anabaptists that communism required common ownership and turned them away from Hubmaier. Hubmaier fled to Vienna, where he was burned and his wife drowned in the Danube.
Hut's followers made Austerlitz the center of their communal state, and there, as if foreseeing Napoleon, they refused military service and condemned all war. Devoted to farming and small crafts, these Anabaptists kept their communal government for nearly a century. The landlords protected them, seeing that their hard and honest labor improved their estates. The fields were worked in common; the heads of the communal farms supplied tools and equipment to the peasants; part of the income went to the landlord as rent, and the rest was divided according to need. The unit of society was not the family but communities of four hundred to two thousand people, with a common kitchen, laundry, school, hospital and brewery. Men took no more than one wife, but children, after infancy, belonged to the community. In the Thirty Years' War the Moravian commune was broken up by an imperial decree (1622); its members either became Catholics or were exiled, some to Russia and some to Hungary. We shall meet them again in later volumes.
John of Leiden and the New Jerusalem
In Holland Melchior Hoffman, a Swabian tanner (the book's term), preached Anabaptist views with remarkable success. His pupil Jan Matthys concluded at Leiden (the book's place; Matthys is usually associated with Haarlem) that one could wait no longer for the New Jerusalem the Gospel promised; it must be set up at once, by force if necessary. Matthys sent twelve apostles through the Netherlands to announce the coming New Jerusalem. The ablest was a young tailor, Jan Bockelson, known to history as John of Leiden and, in Meyerbeer's opera, as "the Prophet." Though not much educated, Jan was quick-witted, with a rich imagination, a pleasing look, fluent speech and an iron will. He had written and staged plays and written verse. After meeting the ideas of Thomas Müntzer he concluded that all forms of Christianity except the one found at Mühlhausen were incomplete. At twenty-four, under Matthys's influence, he joined the Anabaptists (1533) and the same year went to Münster, the rich, populous capital of Westphalia, to preach.
Münster, named after a nearby monastery, was a feudal community under the bishop and cathedral chapter, though industry and trade had brought it a measure of democracy. The citizens, representing seventeen guilds, chose each year a board of ten to elect the town council, but the wealthy, skilled in politics, naturally controlled the council. In 1525 the lower classes, excited by the peasants' revolt, presented thirty-six "demands" to the council, which accepted some and ignored most. A Lutheran preacher, Bernhard Rothmann, on behalf of the citizens, asked Jan Matthys to send Dutch Anabaptists to help the discontented. On January 13, 1534 John of Leiden and soon after him Matthys himself arrived. The "party of order," fearing an uprising, called Bishop Franz von Waldeck to Münster with two thousand soldiers. The townspeople, led by Matthys, Rothmann and John of Leiden, fought the bishop's soldiers in the streets, drove them out, and took control (February 10, 1534). The council was re-elected; the Anabaptists won and chose two of their own, Knipperdolling and Kippenbroick, as mayors. A new chapter in the history of Münster began.
The bishop's fresh troops besieged the city, and it was feared that other hostile forces would join them. To remove the danger from within, the new council ordered all non-Anabaptists either to be rebaptized or to leave. The harsh order drove men and women, the old and barefoot children, from the city in the coldest days of the German winter. Both sides killed without mercy anyone who worked for the enemy. In the war the council was dissolved and replaced by a general assembly and a committee of public safety, in both of which the religious leaders held a majority. Matthys was killed in a sortie against the besiegers (April 5, 1534), and from then on John of Leiden ruled the city like a king.
Münster's communism, like every strict communism that struggles to survive, took the form of a war economy. For people are created unequal and will share their property only when a common danger threatens their existence; internal liberty varies with external security, and communism breaks down under the pressure of peace. The besieged, who saw their destruction in any dispersal, moved by religious faith and their leaders' eloquence, desperately accepted a "socialist theocracy" to realize the dream of the New Jerusalem in the Book of Revelation. The members of the committee of safety were called "elders of the twelve tribes of Israel," and John of Leiden took the title "king of Israel." Perhaps to strengthen his shaky standing with the simple, John dressed in fine clothes left by the rich exiles. The besiegers charged the radical leaders with gluttony while the besieged starved, but there is no evidence for this, for the leaders gave most of the seized goods to the people; one citizen wrote that "the poorest of our fellow citizens now wear splendid clothes." The people of the city went hungry in splendor.
The communism was limited and experimental. According to an opponent, the leaders ordered goods held in common, but in practice the townspeople's property remained theirs except for jewels, precious metals and war supplies. Food was eaten in common, but only by those who took part in defense. At meals passages from the Bible were read and hymns sung. Three "servants" were appointed to meet the needs of the poor, and the rich who remained were made to give up their surplus for the needy. City land was divided among families in proportion to their size. A decree of the time shows that in the commune the man kept his old authority over his wife.
The leaders made strict moral laws. Dancing, games and religious plays were encouraged under official supervision; heavy penalties were set for drunkenness and gambling; prostitution was forbidden and adultery made a capital crime. The excess of women over men, caused by the men's leaving the city, led the leaders to issue a decree allowing men more than one wife (the book describes the arrangement more bluntly; it is stated briefly here). Many unmarried women preferred this to solitude. A group of conservatives who opposed the decree rose against it and imprisoned the king, but their soldiers were killed by the Anabaptists in their drunkenness. In this victory of the New Jerusalem the women played a manly part. John was freed from prison, took several wives, and, according to hostile chroniclers, ruled harshly and ruthlessly. He must have had remarkable qualities, since thousands obeyed him gladly and sacrificed themselves for him.
When John called on the people for help to break the siege, more women than the fighting needed answered the call. When he tried to send "apostles" abroad to ask other Anabaptist groups for help, twelve men tried to break through the enemy lines but were all trapped and killed. One zealous woman of the city, inspired by the story of Judith, rushed the enemy ranks to kill the bishop; she was captured and put to death.
The Fall of Münster
Some Anabaptists in Germany and Holland condemned the use of force by their Münster brothers, but most admired the Münster revolution. In Cologne, Trier, Amsterdam and Leiden people prayed for its victory. To reinforce the revolutionaries, fifty ships set out from Amsterdam (March 22 and 25, 1535), but the Dutch authorities scattered them all. On March 28 a band of Anabaptists, imitating Münster, seized and fortified a monastery near West Friesland, but they too were crushed, with eight hundred dead.
The spreading revolt led conservative Protestants and Catholics across the empire to arm against the Anabaptists. Luther, who in 1528 had advised mild treatment for the new heretics, advised in 1530 that "the unbelieving rebels be destroyed by the sword," and Melanchthon agreed. German towns one after another sent money and men to help the bishop; the Diet of Worms (April 4, 1535) levied a new tax throughout Germany to strengthen the besiegers. With these aids the bishop tightened the siege and cut off food and supplies.
When John saw famine take hold and the people's spirit failing, he allowed those who wished to leave the city. Many women and children, and some men, seized the chance. The bishop's soldiers imprisoned or killed the men who fled but put the women to various kinds of service. One of the "emigrants" saved himself from death by showing the attackers an undefended stretch of the wall. A force of fighting peasants, guided by him, opened a gate of the city (June 24), and several thousand soldiers poured in after them. Hunger had so weakened the men of the city that only eight hundred could bear arms. They first barricaded themselves in the marketplace, and surrendered after the attackers promised they would not be harmed. But the attackers broke their word and killed them all. They searched the houses and killed four hundred more rebels who were in hiding. John and two of his companions were put to death in public, with great cruelty (the book describes the torture in detail; it is omitted here).
The bishop returned in triumph and took control. All city offices were put under his orders, and Catholic worship was reestablished. Across the empire the Anabaptists, fearing for their lives, drove out those of their brethren who favored force. Even so, many of these peaceful heretics were martyred. Luther and Melanchthon advised Philip of Hesse to destroy all Anabaptists. The conservative leaders thought that those who had boldly threatened the economic and political order should be punished so severely that it would be a lesson to future generations.
The Peaceful Heritage
The Anabaptists learned from this bitter experience. They postponed the realization of their communal ideal until the end of the thousand years promised in Revelation, and took up patience, simplicity, piety and peace. Menno Simons, a Catholic priest who became an Anabaptist (1531), guided his Dutch and German followers so skillfully that the "Mennonites" survived every hardship and founded sturdy farming communities in Holland, Russia and America. Among the Anabaptists of Europe, the English Quakers and the American Baptists no clear tie can be seen. But the Quakers' pacifism and opposition to oaths, and the Baptists' belief in the covenant of mature believers, probably spring from the same traditions and beliefs that took the form of the Anabaptist movement in Switzerland, Holland and Germany. Another trait they share is their readiness to live beside followers of other creeds. The beliefs that steadied them in hard times, and in martyrdom, do not suit our unsettled philosophy; but by their sincerity, self-sacrifice and humanity they left us a precious legacy and brightened our humanity.