THE RADICALS OF THE REFORMATION![[LOGO OF ERASMUS]](http://vlib.iue.it/carrie/texts/carrie_books/gilbert/15.html/graphics/erasmus.gif) CHAPTER 15THE RADICALS OF THE REFORMATION
In recent years much has been written aboutthe "left wing of the Reformation" or the "Radical Reformation." Theseterms refer to those individuals and groups who rejected both the RomanCatholic tradition and the Protestant alternatives to it, in the name ofwhat they considered true or apostolic Christianity. As a result, theywere persecuted by Catholics and Protestants alike and their ideas andlives were bitterly attacked, often without a genuine knowledge of whatthey stood for.The attacks of their opponents were given wide currency, while their ownstatements about themselves were ignored or suppressed, so that forcenturies little accurate knowledge was available. Only in recent decadeshas the balance been rectified by the work of scholars who have uncoveredthe basic documents and subjected these documents to objective scrutiny.It is now clear that the importance of the radicals was great and that theReformation cannot be understood without them. For the sake of clarity, the term Protestant will not be applied to these groups, but will be reserved for the followers of Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and the other founders of churches that in one country or another received official sanction. One characteristic of the radicals some scholars see it as their essential distinction is the rejection of any connection with the state. For the rest, it is difficult to reach any general definition because of the great variations within the movement. We will follow the common classification that divides the left wing into three main tendencies: the Anabaptists, the Spiritualists, and the Evangelical Rationalists. THE ANABAPTISTS The word Anabaptists means literallyrebaptizers, and it was employed by contemporary enemies of the radicals,and by later generations as well, to describe the entire left-wingmovement. It is, for several reasons, an unfortunate and misleading term.Strictly speaking, none of the religious groups of the Reformation periodbelieved in rebaptizing; many advocated adult baptism, or believers'baptism, convinced that infant baptism was invalid. They, therefore,claimed that the true baptism was not a rebaptism but the only one. Furthermore, though believers' baptism was important to them, it was notthe central point in their faith, and it is inaccurate to name them afterit. It was convenient for their enemies to call them rebaptizers becausethis made them liable to prosecution under a provision of the Code ofJustinian, originally used against the Donatists, making it a capitaloffense to rebaptize or deny the Trinity. The origin and the distinctive characteristics of the Anabaptists arestill debated topics. Some scholars emphasize their doctrine of thechurch. Unlike the Catholics and the chief Protestant groups, which allbelieved in territorial churches closely connected with the state, theAnabaptists believed in a gatheredor voluntary church. In a territorial church, membership was compulsoryfor all persons living in the area where the church was established,and the civil authorities cooperated with the church in imposingecclesiastical discipline. Forthe Anabaptists, the church was a body of the saints, membership wasvoluntary, and discipline was administered by the church. The mostsevere form of this discipline was the ban, whereby the erring memberwas to be completely cut off from any dealings with the faithful andabsolutely shunned by them. In their separation from the world, many Anabaptist groups refused toserve the state as magistrates or as soldiers, and some refused to paywar taxes, though in all other ways they believed in being obedientsubjects. However, they denied that the state had any right tointerfere in the internal affairs of the church. They believedthemselves to be following the pattern of the Apostles and looked upontheir contemporaries with some spiritual arrogance, so sure were theythat the truth resided exclusively in their own keeping. There werealso plentiful quarrels and conflicts among the Anabaptist groupsthemselves. Their belief in separation of church and state lednaturally to the idea of religious toleration, and some of theirleaders spoke eloquently in defense of this principle, but some of themdisplayed small tolerance for those who disagreed with them. Some modern scholars, particularly those whose religious affiliationsmake them the spiritual descendants of the Anabaptists, find theessence of Anabaptism in the idea of discipleship. Certainly this wasone of their main themes; they took literally the Bible commands,including the injunction to go into the world and preach the Gospel. Hostile contemporaries, including Luther, regarded the Anabaptists asviolent revolutionaries, deriving their origins from such men asMüntzer, Carlstadt, and the "Zwickau prophets." The disorders ofthe Peasants' Revolt and later at Mnster (to be discussed later) seemedto confirm these suspicions, which were later given literary form inthe writings of Bullinger, Zwingli's successor at Zurich. Some modernwriters agree that there was indeed a violent strain from these sourcesin the early days of the movement. Others emphasize the peaceful character of most of the Anabaptists, andtrace their origins to events in and around Zurich. Among the earlyfollowers of Zwingli in that city, there were men who felt as time went onthat the reformer was betraying his earlier views by his willingness tosubmit to the civil authorities in matters of religion and to accept theidea of a state church. The Second Zurich Disputation in October 1523helped to bring the final break, and by the following summer there was aparty in Zurich that was opposed to him. ![[small portait of Zwingli]](http://vlib.iue.it/carrie/texts/carrie_books/gilbert/15.html/graphics/popolo_minuto/zwingli.jpg) Its earliest leader was Conrad Grebel, called "the first Anabaptist." Hecame from a family of the lesser nobility, which formed part of the rulingoligarchy of Zurich, and he himself was a university-trained man with ahumanistic education. He was for a time a close friend of Zwingli, throughwhose influence he experienced some kind of conversion in 1522 to a moreserious religious outlook. As Grebel and others became increasinglydisillusioned with what they considered Zwingli's abandonment ofevangelical principles, they found themselves being denounced from thepulpit by Zwingli and the other Zurich ministers. The leading issuebetween the radicals, who came to be called the Swiss Brethren, andZwingli, and the civil authorities who supported him, was baptism. Grebeland his followers reminded Zwingli he had once rejected infant baptism,and they claimed they derived their own view from him. In January 1525, a public disputation was held in Zurich, with Zwingli andhis colleague Bullinger facing Grebel and his friends, Felix Manz, WilhelmReublin, and Georg Cajacob, called Blaurock. Though the radicals defendedtheir views with great eloquence, denying that infant baptism had anysanction in the Scriptures, the city council ruled in favor of Zwingli andinfant baptism.Meetings of the Brethren were forbidden, and parents were ordered to havetheir infants baptized within eight days if they had not already done so,on pain of expulsion from the city. The response came on January 21 whenGrebel, a layman, baptized Blaurock, an ordained priest. Hitherto theBrethren had openly opposed infant baptism; now they went farther and, bythis fateful step, introduced the practice of adult baptism. Thus January21, 1525, marked the beginning of a movement that added a new dimension tothe religious ferment of the period and a new element in the history ofChristianity. The movement spread rapidly. The Brethren began evangelizing thesurrounding territories with great success, converting and baptizing many.In October, Grebel, Manz, and Blaurock were all arrested. After anotherdisputation, in which they again faced Zwingli, they were put on trial.Here Zwingli spoke against them, making charges based on second- andthird-hand reports and without basis in fact: They were opposed to allcivil government, believed that all things should be held in common, andheld that those who had received believers' baptism could not sin. He alsoreported, on hearsay evidence, a remark of Blaurock that seemed tosanction armed resistance. Although the accused vigorously defended themselves from the charges ofcommunism and revolution, they were all sentenced on November 18 toimprisonment on bread and water. During the winter other Anabaptists wereimprisoned in Zurich, including Hubmaier, of whom more will be said later. The movement continued and grew, however, with the result that a new trialwas held in March of 1526, leading to a sentence of life imprisonment forthe three leaders and fourteen others, including six women. On March 7,the council issued a decree against rebaptizing; the penalty fordisobedience was to be death by drowning. Two weeks later the prisonersescaped. The three leaders went their separate ways, still preaching theirfaith. Zwingli's policy toward the Anabaptists continued to harden; inNovember the council decreed the death penalty for anyone listening toAnabaptist preaching. In December Manz and Blaurock were caught and tried. Blaurock, who was not a citizen of Zurich, was whipped and banished. Manz was executed by drowning on January 5, 1527, thereby becoming the first Anabaptist martyr. Grebel had already died, apparently of the plague, around August 1526. Among the other Anabaptists who were in Zurich about this time was BalthasarHubmaier (d. 1528). He had the degree of Doctor of Theology from theUniversity of Ingolstadt, where he had had a distinguished career. Laterhe had been chief preacher in the cathedral of Regensburg (Ratisbon).There he had taken a leading part in an anti-Semitic movement, which ledto the expulsion of the Jews from the city in 1519. By 1522 he hadabandoned the Roman church. He came to Zurich and there espoused radicalviews like those of Grebel. He left the city after the disputation ofOctober 1523, and was subjected to harassment by the imperial authoritiesbecause of his views. In 1524 he wrote a little tract entitledConcerning Heretics and Those Who Burn Them.It is the earliest plea for complete religious toleration. If hereticscannot be turned from their errors by means of the Scriptures, he argues,they should be left to their madness. The inquisitors who condemn hereticsto the fire are the greatest heretics of all. To burn heretics is inappearance to profess Christ, but in reality to deny him. By 1525 Hubmaier, now living at Waldshut, had become an Anabaptist, accepted rebaptism for himself and begun rebaptizing others. He became involved in a controversy with Zwingli in which he defended believers' baptism while Zwingli argued that the Anabaptists threatened the overthrow of the established order. Late in 1525 Austrian troops occupied Waldshut because of the radical religious views that had become established there, and Hubmaier fled to Zurich, where he was soon arrested. Under torture he recanted his views, a lapse he later bitterly regretted. Expelled from the city, he finally found a refuge in Moravia for a while. In Moravia, a fief of the Bohemian crown, the nobles enjoyed a large degree of independence and could protect religious radicals on their estates. Some of them were converted by Hubmaier, who was able,as a consequence, to work freely in the neighborhood of the town of Nikolsburg. Within a year six thousand persons were said to have been rebaptized. Within the community, however, a split occurred. Hubmaier was moreconservative than some of the other leaders, especially Hans Hut, who had been much influenced by the radical ideas of ThomasMüntzer. Hubmaier believed that the state was ordained by God, envisagedthe possibility of a Christian magistrate, and sanctioned capitalpunishment and just wars. The more radical group wanted community ofgoods, and denied that Christians could use the sword in self-defense,serve as magistrates, or pay taxes. Hut, like many of the Anabaptists,lived in an eschatological atmosphere: He expected the imminent coming ofChrist, which he was said to have predicted for Pentecost in 1528. He wasa believer in visions and dreams as bearers of divine revelations. Hespoke with a wild enthusiasm that convinced many; before coming to Moraviahe had had great success in leading the Anabaptist community in Augsburg.It was his mission, he claimed, to announce the overthrow of the ungodlyby the righteous. In Moravia, however, he was successfully opposed byHubmaier, who had the support of the local nobles, and Hut wasimprisoned. Hut managed to escape and made his way to Vienna. In Austria he preached with great success. In 1527, while attending the so-called Martyrs' Synod of Anabaptists in Augsburg, he was arrested, tortured, and put on trial. Before the trial was over, he died, either accidentally or in an attempt to escape. His corpse was condemned to be burned at the stake. Hubmaier's favorable attitude toward civil government did not save him from the fate civil government reserved for Anabaptists. In 1526 Ferdinand, brother of Charles V, became margrave of Moravia when he was elected king of Bohemia. He set out at once to crush the Anabaptists. Hubmaier and his wife were imprisoned and tried. This time he was steadfast under torture and was burned at the stake in Vienna on March 10, 1528. Three days later his wife, whose loyalty to her husband and his principles had never wavered, was thrown into the Danube River with a rock tied around her neck. At Nikolsburg, conflict continued between the Hubmaier and Hut factions, until the lord of the area asked the radical group to leave his lands. They movedto Austerlitz, about thirty miles to the north, where they were well received by the local nobles; they settled there in 1528. This Austerlitz group occupies a position of great historical significance because they were the first Anabaptiststo form a completely communistic society. Following the example of the Apostles and the early church, they practiced complete community of goods, administered by elected officials. Communism was fully established by 1529, the year that saw the arrival of Jacob Hutter, whose influence among them was so profound that theytook his name and have since been known as the Hutterites. Hutter was a Tyrolese who had learned the hatter's trade, from which he took his name (the German word for hat is Hut). He became leader of the Tyrolese Anabaptists, and to escape persecution organized a migration of his followers to the greater safety of Moravia. He remained in the Tyrol, but was called to Moravia to settle the conflicts caused by the arrival of the newcomers, which had aggravated the discord that was endemic among the Moravian Anabaptists. Convinced of his divine mission to lead the Moravian groups, he eventually succeeded in having his claims recognized. He also believed, and induced his followers to agree, that they were the true church, outside of which there was no salvation. Ferdinand I continued his efforts to suppress the Anabaptists, and in 1535 they were expelled from Moravia. They had nowhere to go, and suffered great hardships as homeless wanderers. This was the common fate of the Anabaptists in that period. Hutter, urged by his followers to look out for his own safety, returned to the Tyrol. He believed that suffering was the inescapable lot of the chosen and would lead to their eventual triumph. Captured by the Austrian authorities, he remained steadfast under torture. On February 25, 1536, he was put to death by burning. Persecution failed to break the spirit of the Hutterites or to destroy their organization. In 1536 they decided to divide up into small groups and seek homes and work. The nobles, who had been reluctantly compelled to expel them the previous year, were happy to receive them back, though they were careful to avoid open defiance of the law. The Brethren were able to rebuild their old communities, establish many new ones, and set up a systematic and effective missionary organization, the best one in Europe at the time. The missionaries were persecuted without mercy; four-fifths of them were executed. The Moravian communities were subject to another period of severe persecution from 1547 to Ferdinand's death in 1564. This was followed by a period during which they were left alone to a great extent and were able to carry on their proselytizing activities, which were often accompanied by a sense of proud and intolerant self-righteousness and self-assurance. One reason for this attitude was the number of different sects that developed around them in Moravia; according to a Venetian traveler who visited the area, there were thirteen or fourteen different ones in Austerlitz alone. Even within the Hutterite group there was dissension and a lack of charity. The preachers were domineering and exclusive; the members were in constant conflict with each other; and the use of the ban, a regular feature of Anabaptistcommunities, was carried to such extremes among the Hutterites that the excluded members were even refused food and drink. Nevertheless, the prosperity of the Hutterites and the degree of toleration they enjoyed proved very attractive to other religious radicals, who visited them and made attempts to unite with them. These included Greeks, Italians, and Poles. By 1572 the Hutterites had reached the height of their success and prosperity, with perhaps as many as thirty thousand baptized adults and a flourishing economy. In that year the tide turned when their protector Lord Liechtenstein died without heirs. In 1576 the emperor sold his domains to a member of a devout Catholic family, who proceeded to take energetic measures against the heretics in and around Nikolsburg. His work was completed in the seventeenth century by the combined efforts of the Jesuit order and the Austrian government. Thousands died in the persecution; according to a chronicler, they were torn to pieces on the rack, burned, roasted on pillars, torn with red-hot tongs, shut up in houses and burned in masses, hanged on trees, killed by the sword, drowned, starved in prison, and so forth. They were forced to live in caves and pits, in wild forests, in rocks and caverns. Eventually they were obliterated in Moravia, but they have continued to exist in other countries, including the United States. Something should be said about the economic and social organization of Hutterite communism. Its motivation was not economic but religious. Community of goods was seen as an expression of fellowship, of brotherly love. Only if all things were held in common could selfishness be overcome and the true imitation of Christ attained. The Hutterite organization was anything but individualistic. The community of the faithful was the true church, outside of which nobody could find salvation, and to which each individual owed complete obedience. The basic unit in their communities was the "household," which normally included several hundred persons living in one building under a head officer known as a "householder." All members ate in a common dining room; nurseries, sick rooms, and schools were also shared in common. Outside of such personal effects as clothing and bed linen, there were no individual possessions.Marriage to an outsider resulted in expulsion from the community, and young women were sometimes forced into marriages that were distasteful to them. The head of the entire Hutterite community was the officer known as the chief bishop. Under him were "ministers of the Word," or elders, and "ministers of necessities," or deacons. Preachers were chosen by the whole community and had much authority. Thus the Hutterian Brethren present one of the most highly organized religious communities of the time. If it did not flower into a model of brotherly love, it did undeniably achieve a remarkable economic prosperity. The Hutterites raised the largest crops in the area and bred the best horses. Their craftsmen were similarly outstanding. The Anabaptists were people of peaceful habits who were not interested inthe violent overthrow of existing institutions. That they were considereddangerous was the result partly of their unorthodox religious doctrines,which were considered subversive in an era of close union between churchand state, and partly of the activities of such men as Andreas Carlstadt,Thomas Müntzer and Melchior Hofmann, as well as the tragic events of1534 and 1535 in Mnster, events which appeared to be linked with the ideasof these men. Andreas Bodenstein von Carlstadt was an older colleague of Luther on the faculty of the University of Wittenberg, and became one of Luther's followers. However, he soon went beyond his leader in the radicalism of his views, and was banished from Saxony in 1524. While living in Rothenburg he became implicated in the Peasants' Revolt, was imprisoned, escaped, and found refuge with Luther, who generously received his old adversary in his own home for a while, and made it possible for him to live in the neighborhood of Wittenberg from 1525 to 1529. In his last years Carlstadt became more conservative. He ended his days as a professor of theology at Basel, where the plague carried him off in 1541. His radical views had a good deal of influence. He was the first to state publicly a purely symbolic view on communion that the bread and wine were merely symbols of the body and blood of Christ and that Christ was not present in the communion. Both baptism and the Lord's Supper were completely unnecessary ceremonies. He refused to baptize infants and may have suspended celebration of the Lord's Supper while he was still a priest in Saxony. He thus went even beyond the Anabaptists's position, since they still believed in these ceremonies, though not in the traditional form. His view of the Lord's Supper may have influenced Zwingli, and he seems to have had some impact on humanists and artists; in 1519 he dedicated a book to Albrecht Dürer. ![[Portrait of Muntzer and link to his Sermonto the Princes]](http://vlib.iue.it/carrie/texts/carrie_books/gilbert/15.html/graphics/popolo_minuto/muentzer.jpg) A more formidable figure was Thomas Müntzer, who has been much studied in recent years by western scholars and Communists alike. Since the time of Friedrich Engels, Communists have made a hero of him. Müntzer, however, was interested not primarily in the class struggle but in religion. He was a learned man, with a degree in theology and a knowledge of Greek and Hebrew. As a priest in the Saxon town of Zwickau, he began to preach sermons, which became more and more radical. He became associated with the Zwickau prophets, who believed in direct revelation by the Spirit, rejected infant baptism, and looked for the triumph of the Turk as Antichrist, followed by the millennium. Müntzer believed that the millennium would be ushered in by a bloody rising of the elect, who would slaughter the ungodly. He began to direct his preaching to the poor exclusively and to place his hopes for the recovery of the truth in the common people. His preaching was so inflammatory that he was expelled from Zwickau and later from Prague. Like Carlstadt, he was at one time a follower of Luther, but later rejected Luther's teachings. At the Saxon town of Allstedt, where he became a pastor in 1523, he acquired a large following among the humbler classes, and organized the "League of the Elect" to carry out the final reformation, which would bring in the millennium. As a result of his leadership, a nearby chapel was destroyed by his followers in March 1524. Müntzer did not hesitate to preach the imminent bloody destruction of the ungodly in the presence of the brother and nephew of Frederick the Wise (both of whom were to be electors of Saxony), urging them to take the lead in this pious work. Here he seems to have been identifying the ungodly with the Lutheran pastors and perhaps Luther himself. Later he turned against the princes, predicting their overthrow in the near future. When the princes, justifiably alarmed and warned by Luther, tried to restrict his revolutionary activities, he responded by pamphlets attacking both the princes and Luther. The princes, he wrote, must be put down and the poor must take over provided that the poor were properly led by a new, inspired servant of God. The prophet was, of course, Müntzer himself. In August of 1524, he escaped from Allstedt, breaking his previous promise not to leave the town. After further wandering, preaching, and expulsions, his career reached its climax and ended in the Peasants' Revolt. He built up a following among the Thuringian peasants, whom he urged to hasten the triumph of the saints through renewed violence. In April 1525 he took part in a raid that destroyed convents and monasteries. In the same month he wrote a bloodthirsty letter to his followers in Allstedt: "At them, at them, while the fire is hot! Don't let your sword get cold!" At Frankenhausen there was an army of eight thousand peasants who asked Müntzer to lead them. He did so, confident that the wrath of the Almighty would destroy the enemy. The peasants lacked training, proper equipment, and skilled military leadership. They faced an army of the princes, led by Philip of Hesse, which was well trained, well equipped, and skillfully led. The peasants were offered the chance to depart unharmed if they would turn Müntzer over, but Müntzer promised them that God would give them protection and victory. The princes, receiving no answer to the offer, attacked. The peasants were dispersed and cut down. This was the battle of Frankenhausen (May 15, 1525). Müntzer did not long survive it; he was found hiding in a cellar, and after being tortured was beheaded on May 27. Before his death he recanted and took communion according to the Catholic rite. Another inflammatory prophet with an eschatological outlook was Melchior Hofmann, a Swabian furrier, who also started as a follower ofLuther but later broke with him. As an itinerant preacher, he compiled animpressive record of expulsions. He was evicted from the territories ofthe Teutonic Knights and of the kings of Sweden and Denmark; he once hadto take flight from the city of Lbeck to save his life. He became anAnabaptist in Strasbourg in 1530, and later had great success in theNetherlands, where he acquired a large and fanatical following. In 1531,ten of his followers were beheaded in The Hague. Hofmann also spent agood deal of time in Strasbourg, which he became convinced would be thescene of the coming of the kingdom of Christ. First there would be aterrible slaughter of unbelievers, but the righteous would triumph. Christwould appear, to be greeted by the 144,000 of the redeemed mentioned inthe fourteenth chapter of the Apocalypse, with Hofmann at their head. InMay 1533, in Strasbourg, Hofmann intentionally provoked his own arrest. Heremained in prison, continuing to predict the siege and the Lord's coming,until his death in 1543. Hofmann saw himself as Enoch or Elijah, that is one of the ordainedwitnesses of the Second Coming. Unlike Carlstadt and Müntzer, he wasnot a man of learning, but he believed that the inspiration of the HolySpirit made up for his lack of education and that book learning was reallya hindrance. His teaching of the imminent end of the world, his visions,dreams, revelations, and prophecies, all had a great and unsettling effectin the excitable and overcharged religious atmosphere of the time,especially among the poor, always eager to look for future andsupernatural solace for their present miseries. Although he advocatedunconditional obedience to the civil government which in any case was notdestined to last long, since the world was hastening to its end theinevitable result of his work was violence and disorder. Contemporariessaw a connection between his work in the Netherlands and the tragic eventsat Münster. Among his converts was Jan Matthys, a baker of Haarlem,later to be the leader of the movement in Münster. Between 1528 and1536, the Low Countries experienced war, famine, flood, and plague,heightening the eschatological mood induced by Hofmann's teaching. InAmsterdam some of his followers caused disturbances in 1534 and 1535; theclimax came when a party of forty tried to take the town hall by storm.Some of the Melchiorities, as Hofmann's followers were called, broke withthe extremist group, but it was from the extremists that recruits weresupplied for the New Jerusalem at Münster.In the episcopal city of Münster in Westphalia, the Reformation was introduced in its Lutheran form in 1532 and 1533, under the leadership ofa priest named Bernhard Rothmann. Soon he moved to a more radicalposition, thereby splitting the Reformed party. He was strengthened by aninflux of Melchiorites from the Netherlands. Many of these newcomers werepoor, and together with the poorer classes of the city were attracted bythe communistic ideas that Rothmann began to emphasize. True Christians,he claimed, must emulate the early church and have all things in common.By the early days of 1534, he was the dominant figure in the religiouslife of the city. At that time, two followers of Matthys appeared,rebaptizing Rothmann and many others. Within a few days, over fourteenhundred had been rebaptized. The climactic phase of the events at Mnster began with the arrival of Matthys and one of his disciples, Jan Beukelszoon, or John of Leyden. Soon these men were the leaders of the Anabaptists, and by means of an armed uprising they succeeded in taking over the town and expelling all Lutherans and Catholics who refused to join their movement. By the beginning of March 1534 the expulsions were complete. They took place in bitter cold weather, and no consideration was shown to the old, to the sick, to women or small children. Those expelled had to leave all their belongings behind and were reduced to beggary. Matthys had announced his intention of killing the godless, but he had been dissuaded from so drastic a step. The bishop of Mnster, aided by both Catholic and Protestant rulers, including Philip of Hesse, besieged the city. Meanwhile Anabaptists from the Netherlands swarmed to the New Jerusalem. Under these conditions Matthys set up his theocracy, based on communism and terror. All citizens had to give up their money; food and lodgings became public property, and doors of houses had to be kept open at all times. Those who objected were suppressed; when a blacksmith spoke out against him, Matthys called the population together and in their presence killed him by his own hand. Others were executed or imprisoned. All books were prohibited except the Bible; all others had to be turned over to the authorities for burning. Meanwhile, in neighboring areas, because of the attraction that Mnster was exercising, governments became alarmed and took rigorous measures against Anabaptists, putting large numbers to death. On Easter Sunday, April 4, Matthys received a divine command, as he thought, to conduct a sortie with a few men against the besieging forces. He was convinced that God would give victory to his small group. In the sortie he was killed, and the leadership passed to John of Leyden. This man of illegitimate birth, a failure in business, with a smattering of education, was handsome and eloquent, and knew how to establish a powerful hold over the minds of the people. He brought about a profound change in the constitution by running through the city naked, in a frenzy; afterwards there followed three days of ecstasy during which he did not speak. He then announced that the Lord had revealed to him the necessity of putting an end to the former system of government the work of men and replacing it with one that came from God. At the head of the new government he placed himself, assisted by a body of twelve men, appointed by him, who were known as the elders or judges of the Tribes of Israel. In September he had himself crowned king, and announced that he was to rule not only Mnster but the whole world. The new government had power over all the affairs of the town and thelives of citizens. Artisans were compelled to work without pay. The deathpenalty was to be imposed for a vast number of offenses including lying,slander, avarice, quarreling, insubordination of children against parentsand of wives against husbands, adultery, blasphemy, complaining, and anyinsubordinate behavior against the government. The most radical change waspolygamy, to which there was initially a great deal of resistance and evenan armed rising, which put John in jail for a while. In the end he won outand executed the rebels and others who objected to polygamy. All personsof marriageable age had to marry. One reason for polygamy was that thenumber of women in the city far exceeded the number of men, many wiveshaving been left behind by the exiles. Many men acquired a plurality ofwives; one of the most enthusiastic was John himself, who had fifteen.Some women were executed for refusing to obey the new regulations; someestablished wives were put to death for quarreling with new ones whomtheir husbands had married. Eventually divorce was permitted, and themarriage ceremony discontinued, so that marriages could be made and unmadefreely. This led to sexual promiscuity, a condition far different from thestrict morals common among Anabaptists. John surrounded himself with the trappings of monarchy, including splendid clothing, a court of two hundred persons, a crown, a scepter, and a globe, which signified his dominion over the whole earth. He changed the names of the gates and streets of the city and of the days of the week to celebrate the beginning of a new epoch for mankind. All this was at the expense of the masses, who had to submit to further confiscations of property; their homes were searched, and much of their clothing and bedding was taken from them. John found it advisable to form an armed bodyguard, made up not of members of the native population but of immigrants who had come to Mnster destitute and were entirely dependent on him. The bishop had not been idle. Early in January 1535, the city was completely surrounded by the besieging forces, and famine set in. The desperate population ate animals, shoes, and the bodies of the dead. The king and his court appear to have had plenty of food at all times. The terror was intensified in an effort to subdue discontent. When starvation had become widespread, John permitted the departure of those who wanted to leave. This did not end their sufferings; the able-bodied men were killed by the besieging troops; and women, children, and old people were not allowed to pass through the lines and remained to starve. Finally the bishop executed some of the survivors and sent the others to remote parts of the diocese. The besiegers offered an amnesty to the inhabitants if they would handover John and his court, but John's ruthless terror prevented this.Eventually the city was betrayed by two men who escaped to the enemy andshowed them where to attack. On the night of June 24, Mnster was enteredand taken after a bitter struggle. The surviving men accepted the offer ofa safe-conduct, only to be massacred after laying down their arms. All theleading Anabaptists were killed. John of Leyden and a couple of his chiefhenchmen were led around in chains for months and publicly exhibited. OnJanuary 22, 1536, they were tortured to death with red-hot tongs inMnster. The bodies were placed in iron cages and suspended from the towerof one of the churches. Mnster became once more a Catholic city and itsfortifications were razed. Though there were a few more manifestations of this sort, the violentphase of Anabaptism declined after the ghastly events at Mnster. Theentire movement, however, had to bear the terrible burden of associationin the public mind with what had happened there. That it survived was due,to a great extent, to the work of Menno Simons (1496-1561). As a priest inWest Frisia, he was in a good position to learn about the excesses of theMnsterites and their followers in the Netherlands. The earliest of hisextant writings is an attack onJohn of Leyden, whom Menno identifies with Antichrist. Meanwhile, however, he had come to reject some of the leading Catholic doctrines, and in 1536 he voluntarily renounced the priesthood. Some time during the following year he was rebaptized. Soon thereafter he began his work of holding together, strengthening, andbuilding up the scattered Anabaptist communities. From 1536 to 1543 heworked in the Netherlands, and it testifies to his success that rewardswere offered for his arrest and that Charles V issued an edict against himin 1542. From 1543 to his death in 1561, his field of activity wasnorthern Germany. His position was that of the chief of a number ofbishops, each of whom was in charge of a specific territory. It waslargely as a result of his activities that the movement in the Netherlandsand northern Germany was neither destroyed by its enemies nor taken overby the fanatical fringe. Menno aroused a good deal of opposition among the Anabaptists by his increasing severity on the subject of the ban, which, as we have seen, was the Anabaptist form of excommunication and was accompanied by the "shunning," or avoidance, of the excommunicated members. At a conference in Strasbourg in 1557, at which many countries were represented, Menno and his northern colleagues were urged to be less harsh on this issue. Instead of yielding, they excommunicated their opponents. In his opinion, the ban and shunning applied to every human relationship, even those between wives and husbands and between parents and children. Yet, although his views were rejected by many Anabaptists, Menno is considered the greatest of their leaders, and it is appropriate that they should be known by his name as Mennonites. THE SPIRITUALISTS The term spiritualism, used in connectionwith the radicals of the Reformation, refers to a type of religion thatminimizes the importance of external forms and organization and that evendiminishes the authority of the written word of Scripture. It emphasizesinward religion, the illumination of the heart by the Spirit through thewitness of the inner Word. Stated in such general terms, spiritualism canbe found in many places in the Reformation period; there were spiritualisttendencies in Luther himself, though Luther had no sympathy for thespiritualists. By the nature of their outlook, the spiritualists were notfounders of churches or of an organized movement, yet some of them had agreat influence. Carlstadt and Müntzer may be called spiritualists, butmost of them were peaceful rather than violent. One of the most importantwas Caspar Schwenckfeld (1489-1561). A well-to-do Silesian nobleman and landowner, he was for a while afollower of Luther, but in time his views diverged from those of the great![[Caspar Schwenckfeld,1489-1561]](http://vlib.iue.it/carrie/texts/carrie_books/gilbert/15.html/graphics/popolo_minuto/schwenkfeld.gif) reformer. Unlike Luther, he believed that the man who isjustified by faith is not a sinner, but can keep God's commandments andachieve sanctification; he was distressed at the absence of regeneratedlives among Luther's followers. He also came to renounce the doctrine ofthe presence of Christ in the bread and wine at the Lord's Supper,adopting a purely spiritual interpretation according to which Christ feedsthe soul spiritually but not physically, and only the soul of his truefollowers. Luther, for his part, treated Schwenckfeld with outstandingrudeness. Schwenckfeld also minimized the importance of the external riteof baptism, though he differed from the Anabaptists; unlike them, he didnot repudiate water baptism where it had been performed in infancy, and hedid not accept believers' baptism. When Ferdinand became king of Bohemia and Hungary in 1526, his domains included Silesia. He was even more hostile to Schwenckfeld's views than to Luther's. In 1529 Schwenckfeld went into voluntary exile, and for the rest of his life was a homeless wanderer, living in a number of places and facing constant danger. However, his lot was far better than that of many of the other radicals; he had powerful friends who showed him favor and extended hospitality to him. He was frequently involved in controversies, of which one of the most important was with Pilgram Marpeck, an Anabaptist leader who wanted to unite the Anabaptists and counteract their tendency to go over to Schwenckfeld. Schwenckfeld objected to what he considered the excessive concern of the Anabaptists with externals; he also had a much higher regard than they for the Old Testament. While Marpeck upheld the view that Christians should be obedient to the state, but must not wield secular authority or bear arms, Schwenckfeld had a much more positive attitude toward the civil authority. He felt that the magistrate's authority was Christian and that the state should take positive measures in the fields of charity, education, and public works. On a wide range of issues, the differences between the Anabaptist position and that of Schwenckfeld became clear. Schwenckfeld also engaged in debate with the Lutherans. Philip Melanchthonhimself took the lead in producing a document attacking Luther. The mainpoint of difference between Schwenckfeld's position and that of Luther isthat, while Luther did not find in man a spark of righteousness,Schwenckfeld believed that man could, through Christ, be transformed andrestored to his original being, immortal and divine. The new man canunderstand the Word, both the primary Word, which is the inwardrevelation, and the secondary Word of the Bible, which can be understoodonly by the man who has first received the inner Word. The church, forSchwenckfeld, was spiritual and invisible, existing throughout time andspace and bound together by faith under the headship of Christ. Therefore,he could not identify himself with any of the existing churches and had nodesire to found another one. Another important spiritualist was Sebastian Franck (1499-1542). Awell-educated man, he was ordained as a priest but soon became a member ofthe Lutheran clergy.By 1530 he had moved to the spiritualist position and left the Lutheranchurch. In an early writing, he referred to the new sects of Lutherans,Zwinglians, and Anabaptists and declared that a fourth the spiritualistwould reject all outward forms. The outward church, according to him, wentup to Heaven after the death of the Apostles, so that for fourteen hundredyears there had existed no true outward church or sacrament. The innertruth remained and was received by the faithful from the Spirit. Alloutward things in the church have been done away with and are not to berestored. He had a broad conception of the nature of the true church,declaring there were many Christians who had never heard of Christ, asamong the heathen and Turks. He agreed with Servetus on the Trinity, which means that he denied theorthodox doctrine. Like Schwenckfeld, he believed that the Bible could notbe understood except by those who are taught of God, and he advisedagainst too much reliance on the literal word of Scripture. He minimizedthe importance of theological commentaries and disputes, declaring thatthe Ten Commandments and the Apostles' Creed contained enough doctrine forpious Christians. He even pointed out what he considered contradictions inthe Bible. His views aroused such strong opposition that he was forced tolead the wandering life of the religious radicals until he finally foundrefuge in Basel, where he spent his last years in comfort, having marrieda woman who brought a good dowry. In 1540, a meeting of theologians atSchmalkalden, attended by Melanchthon and Bucer among others, condemnedFranck, Schwenckfeld, and the Anabaptists, emphasizing the visible churchand the external Word. One of Franck's numerous writings was a translation of Agrippa vonNettesheim's book on the vanity of the sciences. Franck shared Agrippa'sviews on the unreliability of human knowledge, and this led him to a moretolerant position than was common at the time. Since all knowledge isworthless, according to him, error and truth are equally distributed amongChristians and non-Christians, orthodox and heretics. He claimed to havelearned more from Plato, Plotinus, and Hermes Trismegistus than fromMoses. Schwenckfeld and Franck are only two of the men who may be calledspiritualists in the sixteenth century. Their influence, by the verynature of their beliefs, is impossible to measure; nevertheless, it hasbeen great. The idea of an inward religion, without formal creeds andceremonial observances, had a powerful appealto men who were indifferent to, or disgusted by, the dogmatism and bigotrysometimes manifested by the official churches. Though the men who espousedsuch radical views were treated as outcasts by the ruling authorities intheir day, their quiet influence, working as it were beneath the surfaceof events, has continued to provide, for many persons, a more satisfyinginterpretation of the Christian life than they could find anywhere else.The Christian tradition, and perhaps the survival of Christianity, owemuch to them. Possibly they illustrate what Paul Tillich meant when hesaid that "... those who seem weak in history finally shape history."10 THE EVANGELICAL RATIONALISTS In some ways, the most radical and daring ofthe dissidents of the Reformation period were those persons who are nowknown as the Evangelical Rationalists. They rejected both the Protestantand Catholic communions, had faith in reason as a source of religioustruth, and were distinguished by a rejection of the doctrine of theTrinity. They shared characteristics of the Anabaptists and spiritualists;they might reject infant baptism and minimize external observances. Likethe Anabaptists, but unlike the spiritualists, they believed in theformation of groups of like-minded believers. They came predominantly fromthe south of Europe, often from Italy, and in a sense they may be said torepresent the spirit of the Renaissance applied to religion; the boldnessof their thought in the face of established tradition, their reliance onreason, and the Italian origin of so many of them, all make this connection at least plausible. Michael Servetus and Sebastian Castellio, discussed elsewhere in this book (see Chapter 14), were among the most important of them. Here we shall single out two men: Lelio Sozzini and his nephew, Fausto Sozzini. Lelio Sozzini (Latinized as Laelius Socinus, 1525-62) was a member of adistinguished legal family of Siena. Study of the Bible led him to becomea Protestant while still very young, and from the first he was attractedto the more radical elements in the movement. These tendencies were nodoubt encouraged by his residence in Switzerland, a favorite refuge forreligious radicals from Italy whom he had a chance to meet, and by hisextensive travels. In Poland, one of the places he visited, the doctrineof the Trinity had already begun to be questioned. He had a habit ofpresenting Calvin and others with questions about abstruse theologicaldoctrines, and Calvin advised him to bridle his curiosity. He criticizedCalvin for the execution of Servetus, whose death drew Lelio's attentionto the doctrine of the Trinity. Although his orthodoxy was questioned, hemanaged to live in Zurich without serious trouble until his death. His nephew, Fausto, often paid visits to him, and after his uncle's deathacquired his papers and books. Fausto Sozzini (Latinized as FaustusSocinus, 1539-1604) is a major figure in the history of the Reformation. ASienese like his uncle, he lived in Italy, France, and Switzerland beforemoving in 1579 to Poland, which was to be the chief center of hisactivities. Before this date his radical theological views had alreadybegun to develop. He insisted that there was nothing in the Bible contraryto reason, and, therefore, that the rational meaning of the Scriptures hadto be grasped. He also refused to accept the traditional doctrine of thetwo natures in Christ. His view was that Christ, while on earth, waspurely human; but that after the resurrection God shared His power withhim and made him, though human, truly God. Man is by nature mortal,according to Fausto; and Christ, being entirely human, was also mortal. Christ did not provide satisfaction for man's sin; to make the innocentsuffer for the guilty was unworthy of God. Instead of emphasizing thedeath of Jesus on the cross, he emphasized his resurrection and ascension;instead of God's wrath, he laid stress on his loving kindness. When Fausto arrived in Poland, he came to a country that occupied a singular position in the history of the Reformation. Though ruled by Catholic kings, it provided a refuge for religious dissenters from all over Europe. This unusual situation was made possible largely by the peculiarities of the Polish constitution. The monarchy was weak; from 1572 it had been elective. The noblesexercised great power, and individual members of the nobility were able toprovide protection on their estates for religious reformers and radicalswhose ideas appealed to them. Conditions became even more favorable in thereign of King Sigismund II (1548 72). He was a Catholic who refused tosuppress religious dissent, and in words which rang out in that age, hedeclared that he would not try to force anyone's conscience, because itwas not his business to lay down what people should believe. In 1555, thePolish Diet, the national representative body, permitted every nobleman tointroduce on his estates any worship that he pleased. At about the sametime, a Reformed church, strongly Calvinistic, was organized. When Polandand Lithuania were united by the Union of Lublin in 1569, Reformed andradical ideas spread into Lithuania. When the diet met in 1573 to elect a successor to Sigismund, the Catholicmembers favored the candidacy of Henry Anjou, brother to the king ofFrance. To allay the fears aroused among the Protestants by Henry's knownconnection with the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre of the preceding year(See Chapter 17), the Catholics agreed to the "Confederation of Warsaw," aguarantee of religious freedom to all sects, which made Poland unique inEurope at the time. Henry was elected king and had to abide, thoughreluctantly, by this declaration.When he gave up his Polish throne in 1574 to become king of France, his successor, Stephen B thory (1575 86), had to observe the same conditions. Though a Catholic, he maintained during his reign a policy of toleration. Within the Polish Reformed Church a schism developed when some members, inthe 1550s, began to deny the doctrine of the Trinity. These membersofficially seceded from the church in 1563 and held their first synod in1565. Their new organization was known as the Minor Reformed Church ofPoland. It was the earliest organized Antitrinitarian church in Europe.It was opposed by both the Catholics and the more orthodox Protestants andwas divided within itself. Although all the members rejected the orthodoxdoctrines of baptism and the Trinity, they were by no means agreed as towhat teachings they accepted in their place. There was also a conflict within the new church concerning therelationship of Christians with the secular world. Members were not inaccord over the questions of whether it was allowable to hold property,perform military service, pay taxes for military purposes, or hold publicoffice. The more extreme group, believing in complete separation from thestate and civil life, held that it was wrong for a Christian to do any ofthese things. Since he must not resist evil, the Christian, they held, iseven forbidden to have recourse to the law to seek redress of injuries. Hemust submit to the loss of whatever is taken from him by some enemy, andobey any conqueror, even the Turk. These extreme positions appealed most to those who had the least to losefrom them, namely the poor and the foreign refugees, although some noblesadhered to these views, freed their serfs, and renounced the use of thesword. The chief center of those who held this position was the communityof Rakw, founded in 1569 in an effort to withdraw from the world andcreate an ideal society. Against the extreme positions held by theRacovians were arrayed many nobles and other members of the Minor ReformedChurch. For them the civil authority was established by God: A Christiancould hold public office, even the kingship; could own property; holdserfs; and take up arms in defense of his country, his possessions, andthe lives and well-being of his family and himself. It was not wrong toenjoy noble birth or to have recourse to the law for redress ofinjuries. These controversies were going strong when Fausto Sozzini arrived inPoland in 1579. He applied for admission to the Minor Reformed Church inthe following year and was refused. There were a number of differencesbetween him and the church, of which the chief one was their practice ofbaptism by immersion, which he rejected. He argued that water baptism, andeven more clearly rebaptism, were not needed by Christians. The chiefopposition to him came from the Anabaptist Rakw community, which objectedto his rationalistic and, in their view, worldly spirit. He never became amember of the church with which he was to be so closely associated. Later,though not in Poland, the church was to be called Socinian after him. Nevertheless, the Racovians asked him to defend in writing their views onsociety and the state, which were then under attack. He did so in a muchmore moderate way than was customary, trying to ward off the accusationthat these views were subversive of public order. He, therefore, made manyconcessions to civil authority: A Christian can hold office if he does notshed blood; he can even go to war if he does not injure anyone; and he canseek redress in a court provided that he does not demand punishment of theparty who has injured him. In spite of these and other conciliatoryideas, he incurred the wrath of the king and had to hide for a while. Over the years the extreme ideas of the Racovians lost out, and theprevailing opinion in the church came to grant the right and duty of theChristian to accept and participate in the activities of the state andsociety. Fausto himself approached this position more closely. He had agreat deal of influence over the rising generation who objected to thestrictness of their elders, and in hoping to answer their questions andresolve their doubts he was led to modify and soften his own views.However, he always refused to sanction the taking of life by Christians,under any circumstances. The death sentence for criminals is forbiddenbecause it deprives the victim of a chance to repent and thus of theprospect of eternal life. (Translated into more secular terms, this is notfar from the position of Albert Camus on capital punishment, as expressedin his Reflections on the Guillotine.) On the other hand, if oneaccidentally kills a man while defending oneself, this is a sin but only avenial one. And one should not strike his wife unless this will be certainto reform her. Such was Fausto's influence that he was given credit for purifying thechurch of its former extreme outlook. The famous Racovian Catechism of1605 shows the completeness of the change. Fausto had begun in 1603 todraw it up, but had died in 1604 before it was finished, and otherscompleted it. It sanctioned, with appropriate safeguards against violationof the law of Christ, the holding of office, the swearing of oaths, goingto court, and charging interest. By this time, the growing moderation ofthe movement had strengthened it to the point where it began topropagandize foreign countries. In the seventeenth century thePolish Brethren, as they came to be called, undertook missionary journeysto many areas, getting as far west as England and making converts. In 1658the members of the Polish Minor Church were banished from the country bythe diet, and in 1660 they left. Their influence continued and lives todayin the Unitarian groups of various countries, including England and theUnited States. CONCLUSION One of the most heartrending aspects of theReformation is the brutal persecution that was everywhere the lot of thereligious radicals. The amount of suffering to which these essentiallypeaceful and upright people were subjected is incalculable. It has oftenbeen said that this persecution was caused by their attitudes towardsociety, government, and military service that the rejection of normalsocial obligations by so many of them appeared to pose a threat to theestablished order and was met by a ruthless effort to exterminate them. Nodoubt there is much to be said for this point of view; society willnormally strike back, sometimes with the fury born of panic, at apparentthreats to its stability. But it ought not to be thought that thereligious reasons given for this persecution were mere pretexts. Thechurches were stronger then than they are now, and the problem ofsalvation more urgent; those whose religious beliefs challenged theorthodoxies of the time might very well seem to cast doubt on the eternaldestiny of those who disagreed with them, and to suppress the views of theradicals could be in essence a suppression of one's own doubts. Fortunately, the persecution never succeeded in entirely silencing thevoices of the radicals, and they have lived on and made invaluablecontributions to modern religion and society. The idea of a voluntarychurch, separate as far as possible from the state; the idea of a religionof the spirit, unhampered by form, creed, or ritual; and the idea of theapplication of rational thought to religious issues without these, weshould be poorer indeed. The intensity of the persecution makes us realizethe wide appeal that radical ideas actually had; it would be interestingto know how many people would have been converted to them if they had beenfree to do so. On all the evidence, the number would have been greatindeed. Return to Carrie Home PageReturn to the Carrie Donated E-Books Home Page RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS RETURN TO CHAPTER FOURTEEN PROCEED TO CHAPTER SIXTEEN |
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