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SWISS-SOUTH GERMAN ANABAPTISM, 1526–1540 James

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SWISS-SOUTH GERMAN ANABAPTISM, 1526–1540 James CHAPTER THREE SWISS-SOUTH GERMAN ANABAPTISM, 1526–1540 James M. Stayer The years 1526 to 1540 were years in which Anabaptism in the Swiss Confederation and the southern parts of the Holy Roman Empire took shape as a non-territorial gathered church, without fixed inner denominational divisions. During the Peasants’ War its adher- ents had not yet abandoned all hope of becoming the dominant expression of the Reformation in places where they were particu- larly strong. After 1526 Anabaptism had the possibility of unfolding only as a nonconformist religious movement subjected to persecu- tion, whether mild or fierce, from the political authorities. Up to the point of the suppression of the Peasants’ War in north- eastern Switzerland and the neighboring Black Forest in the last two months of 1525, renunciation of violence was not the common belief or practice among the Anabaptists; when there were prospects of success they resisted. A few voices were raised denying that a Christian could take the life of another human being, even in self-defense. This was the stand of Felix Mantz among the first Anabaptists in Zurich1 and Jakob Groß in Waldshut;2 but they were the exceptions, not the rule. The main themes of the Anabaptist movement of 1525, as shaped conjointly by Conrad Grebel and Balthasar Hubmaier, were the rethinking of baptism and the Lord’s Supper to meet New Testament standards and the introduction of discipline according to Matthew 18. To carry out these reforms involved a rupture with the established parish clergy, which continued to be supported by the same benefices through the transition from the old faith to the Re- formation.3 Above all, from the start in January 1525, the Anabaptists rejected the traditional role of the temporal government as patron 1 QGTS Zurich, 23, 93, 128, 216; Stayer (1972), 111. 2 QGTS Zurich, 109; Stayer (1972), 107–08. 3 Haas (1975), 60 84 james m. stayer and protector of the true religion for all its subjects. The defensive actions by Anabaptists against usually Catholic authorities during the Peasants’ War seemed much less subversive to pro-Reformation mag- istracies than their rejection in principle of governmental authority over religion. However, the occasional overlap between Swiss Anabaptism and the Peasants’ War, joined with the Anabaptist stress on sharing material goods according to Acts 2,4 were contributing factors in making the early Anabaptists seem dangerous. After only very brief hesitation the victorious Zwinglian Refor- mation—which took on institutional form in Zurich in 1525 and St. Gall in 1527, then consolidated itself in Bern, Basel and Schaffhausen in 1528 and 1529—abandoned all scruples against persecuting its evangelical dissidents who had become Anabaptists. The religious unity of these Swiss cities was to be enforced more rigorously against evangelical “schismatics” than against the adherents of the old faith. As early as March 1526 the Zurich council threatened anyone who should practice rebaptism with death by drowning.5 As a result within a short time the leaders of the early Anabaptist movement were either dead or scattered in exile. Conrad Grebel died, so far as we know, of natural causes in the summer of 1526.6 Felix Mantz, because he returned to Zurich in defiance of his banishment, was drowned in the Limmat in January 1527, the first Anabaptist martyr in Reformed Zurich.7 Balthasar Hubmaier, who fled to Zurich after the fall of Waldshut in December 1525, was imprisoned, tortured, com- pelled to recant, and finally exiled.8 With the exiles the message that the genuine reformed church should be an assemblage of baptized adult believers reached Augsburg, Esslingen, Strasbourg, and ulti- mately Moravia. In the absence of authoritative leadership and in the process of dispersion, Anabaptism assumed a different character from one place to another. 4 QGTS Zurich, 49–50; Stayer (1991), 97. 5 QGTS Zurich, 180–81. 6 Harder (1985), 454–56. 7 QGTS Zurich, 214–18, 224–28. 8 Bergsten (1978), 300–311..
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