THE RADICAL REFORMERS AND THE JEWS*

Three separate promptings have led me to bring before colleagues in 16th century studies the issues raised in this panel on "Reformers, Radical Reformers, Jews and Heretics," and in particular the issues raised by bracketing "the Radical Reformers and the Jews."

Three Promptings The first prompting came during a thorough review of Christian history, in connection with writing an Introduction to for Jewish Readers. I noticed that from the time of Constantine "Jews and heretics" were bracketed for control and/or persecution in the same periods of suffering. The same rulers and establishment preachers targetted both - e.g., during the , during the Spanish , during the last decades of the Romanovs, during Heydrich's administration of Gleich­ schaltung and "Final Solution" during the German Third Reich. ^> But the great Jewish general historians never recorded what was happening to the Christian "heretics," and the Christian general surveys were silent about mob actions, pogroms and government genocide directed against Jews. The second prompting came from a realization of the degree to which Christian/Jewish dialogue in America, where all communities enjoy the blessings secured by the First Amendment,

*A paper by Dr Franklin H Littell, Emeritus Professor of Religion, Temple University, at the 16th Century Studies Conference, 19 October 1991 at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA is tainted - and sometimes corrupted - by the failure of both Jewish communal leaders and church leaders to distinguish between Religious Liberty and toleration, and between legitimate government policies in Christendom and legitimate government policies in an officially secular and pluralistic USA. The third prompting came from a statement by Jules Isaac, a French Jewish historian who lost his family during the Holocaust. Author of a great study Jesus and Israel, he wrote in a smaller essay'on "the teaching of contempt" as follows: "...after very deep historical research, I say and maintain that the fate of Israel [i.e., of the . Jewish people] did not take on a truly inhuman character until the 4th century A. D. with the coming of the Christian Empire."1 The parallel to the Radical Reformers' and later restitutionists' idea of the Fall of the Church was striking, and it clings to the mind like a burr.

Antisemitism in the 16th Century Let me turn now to the section of this discussion which is my portion. References to post-Christian Judaism are missing in most major Anabaptist teachers - for instance, in and Dirck Philipsz. Other- Anabaptist leaders, notably , pick up a note also prominent among magisterial Reformers. The mythic "Jew" is a polemical weapon: religious opponents are "Judaizers" of the same spirit as the enemies of Jesus; the Jew is stereotyped as "under punishment," "greedy" and usurious.2 Contact with real Jews was slight. "The Radical Reformers and the Jews" 2 From to Luther, such was the prevailing complex of constructs about "the Jew" in the Era, in a Christendom in which theological and cultural antisemitism remained endemic. A recent survey of this miasma is Heiko Obermann's Wurzeln des Antisemitismus.3 Unlike the magisterial Reformers, however, no Anabaptist leader ever justified abuse or persecution of real Jews. Hubmaier attacked the Jews of Regensburg4, leading to their expulsion and the burning of the synagogue, and Menno wrote negatively about "the Jews" in his tract "The Blasphemy of John of Leiden" (1535)5. But these two wellknown anti-Jewish actions occurred while they were still in the Church. The incidents were pre-Anabaptist, and neither leader again attacked the Jews after conversion to Anabaptist Christianity and with it ^o Religious Liberty.

Radical Reformers and "the Jews" Were there any persons or groups in the Left Wing of the Reformation that were Judaeophile? Did any of them sense that the long centuries during which the political and religious leaders had bracketed "Jews and Heretics" for discrimination and persecution called for an Anabaptist statement on the relation of Jews and Christians different from the traditional set of calumnies and rejections? To begin with, we can make some pleasant statements about what the Christian radicals did no£ teach, although such teachings were rife in the establishments. No Anabaptist taught "The Radical Reformers and the Jews" 3 the deicide calumny. No Anabaptist advocated the burning of synagogues, Hebrew books or Jewish persons. In sum, in terms of the absence of antisemitic theological negatives, the Anabaptists of the 16th century had reached the point officially affirmed by the Roman four centuries later, after the : Vatican II (1961-65). Many Christian churches have yet, of course, to reach even that level. So much for the absence of negatives. What is the picture when we turn to affirmatives? Perhaps the most familiar reference involves that sector of the identified as Anti-Trinitarian - the 16th century fore-runners of Dutch, English and American Unitarianism. Like the other sectors of the "Left Wing," they thought the turning point in Christian history came with Constantine. The Anti-Trinitarians identified the "Fall of the Church" with the rise of professionals to power - apparatchiks, so to say, hierarchs who lorded it over the laity, and theologians who drowned out the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Michael Servetus, the best known Anti-Trinitarian, called his program book Restitutio Christianismi and used his sharp wit to attack scholastic sophistries. According to the great Unitarian scholar E Morse Wilbur, Servetus was not opposed to the idea of the Trinity but rather to false representations of it. "Its three persons or hypostases were mere mathematical abstractions, having no relation to the living God, nor to the Christ of the New Testament, nor to the Holy Spirit of Christian experience. Its very terms - Trinity, hypostasis, person, essense, substance - were inventions of "The Radical Reformers and the Jews" 4 philosophers, and had not a shadow of support from Scripture."6 In Book I of De Trinitatis Erroribus Servetus asked if the little boy who went with his parents to Egypt and back was named "Hypostasis." He also generalized that the dogmatic disputes wouldn't have caused so much trouble "had the Greeks learned Hebrew."7 Servetus appears to have been permanently oriented against oppression of mind and spirit and toward toleration by the misuse of the Trinitarian dogma in the persecution of Moors and Jews in his Spanish homeland8. Apparently, in the confrontation between the super-powers of that age he was also inspired by the idea of re-stating the doctrine of the Trinity in such a way that Muslims and Christians could agree upon it. Where the theme of the Reformers was reformatio, the Radical Reformers' slogan was restitutio. For some that meant return to the Early Church before the union of church and state. For others the key idea was the believers' church, in a covenant sealed by believers' . For others it was recovery of a purified Christian teaching, before abstractions and sophistries mushroomed. As one specialist put it - "The original antitrinitarian departure in the 16th century was not philosophical but Biblical. The intention was to hold exclusively to the expressions that the Scriptures used in reference to God, and to eliminate everything else as 'Greek' and 'Scholastic'..."9

"The Radical Reformers and the Jews" Himself a Jesuit, the writer thought that Adam Pastor, who was a restitutionist in both doctrine and polity, was the point of departure for a new appreciation of the antitrinitarian contribution to church history. Pastor, a splendid scholar, disputed with Menno on the Trinity and before he was put under the ban was for a decade one of the most influential of Anabaptist leaders in the lowlands.10 Among Italian "evangelical Rationalists" there was a strong anti-Trinitarian note, and some of them became Sabbatarians. There was Marrano influence among refugees from Spain, and eventually it spread from the papal states and north Italy to Moravia and Poland. Before the Counter-Reformation set in, there was a substantial Anti-Trinitarian Anabaptist church in Poland. Elisabeth Mielecka, daughter of Prince Nicolas Radzevvil and wife of Palatin of Ponolic, probably appeared in higher profile than most when she announced "the Decalogue is my religion" and initiated Sabbath observance.11 Nevertheless, the return to the pre-Constantinian church carried pre-Nicaean as well as pre-Roman Imperial implications. It is not surprising that some radicals might return to use of the scriptures that the early Christians called "Scripture," and to the core of the way of life (Torah) that the early Christians considered normative. The publication of George Williams' History of the Polish Reformation, long delayed, will fill us in on this front.

"The Radical Reformers and the Jews" 6 Appreciation of the Hebrew texts and normative use of the Bible against later philosophical accretions and institutional innovations was a major force in the movements of the Radical Reformation until savage persecution wiped out almost all of the leaders with formal education. It is worth recalling that before the bloody decade in which some 5,000 Anabaptist leaders were put to death (1523-33), two leftwing scholars, Hetzer and Denck, produced a translation of the Old Testament prophets of such quality that it went through 17 editions in 4 years and was used also by enemies like Martin Luther12. After the great period of persecution, those caught and put to the question by the authorities were usually unlettered folk, noteworthy for their extensive memorization of the Scriptures in the vernacular, but of course unable to read Hebrew. Members of the Left Wing made full use of Old Testament stories and lessons. The revolutionaries' use of the tales of the patriarchs to proof-text polygamy in the Davidic Kingdom at Munster (23 July 1534) is well known. The practical issue arose because of the disciplinary problem of severing marriage with "godless partners13. Like later pilgrim churches, the Anabaptists proper especially liked the tales of the Exodus out of Egypt and the Return from Exile in Babylon. In The True Christian Faith (C1541), Menno included in his list of models of true faith Noah, Abraham, Moses, Joshua and Caleb and King Josiah.14 But for many, including Menno, the emphasis upon the new covenant and the

"The Radical Reformers and the Jews" 7 new man in Christ was so pronounced that the whole complex of ideas surrounding the superseding myth was carried over and the continuing Jewish community remained an unsolved mystery. Behind it was the Erasmian theme of the difference between the warring God of the OT and the loving God of the NT.15 In Menno and his brethren the displacement myth is not as absolute as in Zwingli, for instance, where the Swiss are the Israel of the present dispensation.16 But the accent among the Anabaptists upon the miracle of re-creation in the New Adam (Christ) is so central that the OT loses much of its relevance and authority except for story-telling. In pursuing possible positive interaction with real Jews, no theme in the Radical Reformation is more worthy of research in depth than "the restitution of all things" (Wiederherstellung aller Dingen). This eschatological note, related to the apokatastasis of the NT and Tikkun ("the mending of the world") of the Kabbalists, is a constant refrain in radical sermons and court testimonies.17 The restitution of the True Church (rechte Kirche) was a stage in the return of the whole creation to the perfection it enjoyed before man's rebellion and sin' corrupted it. When we turn to the greatest of the Spiritualizers, Sebastian Franck, we find a ready willingness to take positions that challenge the prevailing Christian ideology. For example, he was the first prominent Christian historian to r*hA&illtat« Julian, for centuries called "the Apostate." Like Gottfried

"The Radical Reformers and the Jews" 8 Arnold and others to follow, Franck sympathized with the Emperor's revulsion from the quarreling of the theologians. Sebastian Franck also anticipated the scientific method in dispute, using primary sources scrupulously and citing his references with care - at a time when most disputants paraphrased and plagiarized relentlessly. While his ideal religious fellowship consisted of "all goodhearted people" (alle guthertzioe Leut') - including some Turks and some Jews, he nevertheless repeated the mythic explanation of the destruction of the Second Temple. Using Josephus as a source, he interpreted the event to be a punishment of the Jews for their violence. Violence, revolt and war are to be avoided: the religious obligation is to submit, not to resist.18

Primary Sources on Religious Liberty and the Dialogue In concluding his recent fine study of Andreas Fischer, Sabbatarian Anabaptist, Daniel Liechty suggests that historians may make a valid contribution to the reconstruction of post- Holocaust Christian theology by giving attention to "those figures and movements in history that have opposed...Christian anti-Judaism. " ^ In introducing the first edition of his monumental study of the Radical Reformation thirty years ago, George H Williams saluted what he saw as the coming impact of the primary sources now available. He wrote -

"The Radical Reformers and the Jews" "The newly edited sources have almost the same significance for the interpretation of the whole of modern church history as the discoveries in the Dead Sea caves and in Upper Egypt are having for New Testament studies and early church history. "Christians of many denominations are finding themselves constitutionally and in certain other ways closer to the descendents of the despised sectaries of the Reformation Era than to the classical defenders of a reformed corpus christianum."2 ° Just as the work on the Dead Sea scrolls seems to have been progressing according to that immortal phrase in Brown y. Board of Education (1954), "with all deliberate speed," so it is with much of the historical work that needs to be done to give foundation to Religious Liberty and inter-religious dialogue. It is indeed time to give attention to the testimonies of those who defied the litany of edicts against "Jews and heretics," and listen to those who championed dialogue instead of close-mindedness and Religious Liberty instead of persecution. Adequate primary sources are now available to those who will master the dialects of the 16th century. For over four hundred years many of the sources of the Free Church fore-runners were destroyed by the political and religious establishments in European Christendom, and most of what survived had been scattered and/or suppressed. The impressive exhumation, editing and publishing sponsored by American Mennonite and European historical agencies, begun in the 1930s and started again after World War II, have made documents easily accessible to conscientious scholars.

"The Radical Reformers and the Jews" 10 Until the middle of this century, the prevailing opinions about the radicals and their testimonies had been either pale copies of the calumnies of those who in the 16th century had killed or exiled them and destroyed their books or they were- e.g., in the summaries deriving from Christian orthodoxy or Marxist philosophy - simply exercises in ideology. In publishing my Origins of Sectarian forty years ago21, I gave major attention to the new sources - since then substantially augmented - and what they showed about the persecutors and the radicals. The persecutors justified their practices, when they took the trouble at all, by reference to the Constantinian model of the Good Society and its ideological bulwarks: commentaries based on the codes of Theodosius and Justinian, fortified by triumphalist quotations from the professional theologians of the establishment. The radicals - whether or Dutch , spiritualizers or literalists - again and again entered their plea in court that they be treated as fellow-Christians and if in error be corrected by Scripture. Thus Kautz and Reublin, imprisoned and put to the question in January, 1529, said that if they were too short or in error they would make correction if it were pointed,out to them. "Would God that our errors would be met with the truth; how humbly we would acknowledge every wrong that occurs! But it's no use. Nevertheless we ask nothing else but that we be encountered in this way."22

"The Radical Reformers and the Jews" 11 The same language was used by Menno in the Preface to his Meditation on the Twenty-Fifth Psalm (cl537): "Then if I err in some things, which by the grace of God I hope is not the case, I pray everyone for the Lord's sake, lest I be put to shame, that if anyone has stronger and more convincing truth he through brotherly exhortation and instruction might assist me. I desire with all my heart to accept it if he is right. Deal with me according to the intention of the Spirit and Word of Christ."22 After his conversion, Menno spent most of his life with a price on his head, travelling from house to house to shepherd the persecuted and shattered fragments of the movement which first brought the Reformation cause to the lowlands. His request for a, dialogue was answered with the sword, the sword of the prosecutor by which many of his people died as Christian martyrs. Anabaptist openness to the dialogue and fairness to adversaries, which included the spiritualizer Sebastian Franck and the persecutor , was never better shown than in a statement by Pilgram Marpeck in his Vermanuno (1542): "And because we are not able to present this more properly and skillfully than Heinrich Bullinger and Sebastian Franck have already through their writings accomplished and explained, we direct every simple soul to them; not that anyone should adopt Franck or Bullinger, or other opinions and views of theirs (which we consider erroneous), but prove that which is good, accept it and keep it, and let the rest go."23 Ninety years ago, when Karl Rembert was publishing his classic Die Wiedertaufer im Herzootum Julich, one of the first studies of the Anabaptists to use primary sources instead of simply repeating the maledictions of spokesmen of the state- churches, he expressed pleasure that a major wish of Leopold von "The Radical Reformers and the Jews" 12 Ranke was now being fulfilled. Ranke, whose Seminar marks the advent of the scientific method in the academic discipline of History, had expressed the wish that the Anabaptist movement might finally be studied in depth in monographs using the sources scattered in archives through the German states. The sources were not then generally accessible, but diligent solitary researchers had been able to break the long-standing barriers to informed study and re-interpretation. Rembert called attention to the volume of major articles in historical journals and the number of books that were appearing, specialized studies that treated the Tauferbewegung as a serious subject rather than simply continuing the traditional mode of polemic and dismissal. Whether, considering the substantial volume of commentary that is still published about and against the Radical Reformation without any work in depth in the Latin, Dutch and German and other vernacular sources, the work the great historian Ranke envisaged can be considered fulfilled is at least worthy of a question mark.

There is a great deal of inertia to be overcome. The weight of it is indicated by last year's conference on "The Reformation in Germany and Europe: Interpretations and Issues," handsomely sponsored by the German Historical Institute in Washington DC, with the co-sponsorship of the Society for Reformation Research and the Verein fur Reformationsgeschichte. With all of the critical cultural, religious and political importance of the Jewish/Christian complex of issues - an importance no German

"The Radical Reformers and the Jews" 13 political or religious leader has failed to notice since Theodor Heuss' great address of reconciliation, "Mut zur Liebe," in 1949 - no academic on this occasion seized the opportunity to include the Judenfrage in the discussion of the Reformation Ansatze and ^ Anliegen. The program, excellent in traditional topics and themes, might just as well have taken place in 1891. I am glad to say that the program of this 16th Century Studies Conference does not fail to address the most urgent issues of our present international, interfaith and inter­ disciplinary dialogue. There is still inertia in many seminaries and divinity schools, where the historical and theological background to Religious Liberty and interreligious Dialogue are still neglected - as teachers draw their supplies through long intellectual tunnels leading back to pae 16th century, without paying much attention to whether it is raining or snowing outside. One of our colleagues has recently written of how, when he was starting in seminary, he heard a distinguished Church Historian in a leading faculty perpetuate the traditional approach in the beginning course: "It is at this point in the history of the Reformation that some historians take a brief excursion through what has been termed the 'radical reformation' - Anabaptists, Spiritualists, and such. In the grand scheme of things, however, these movements were quite inconsequential, and I really don't know very much about them, so I suggest we continue on our course and turn to the Counter-Reformation."25

"The Radical Reformers and the Jews" 14 In the 1920s, as European Christendom in decline slid toward the ideological crises and confrontations of the 1930s and 1940s, a keen French observer wrote of the "treason of the intellectuals" (Julien Benda: La Trahison des Clercs, 1926). Today, in the 1990s, half of Europe is reaching toward a new understanding and experience of liberty, while within the same areas another segment is running back toward an outdated and coercive "Christendom" as fast as its myth can be re-constituted. y With which European m&lskt should enlightened scholars be allied? As on the one side the "mainline" American churches slide toward accomodation and culture-religion, while on the other side the peoples of Eastern Europe are caught in the tension between moving forward toward liberty and reverting to an anachronistic "Christendom," is it not painful to see so widely neglected the historical and theological case for voluntary religious covenants, limited and secular government, together with the freedom of conscience from coercion and violence - even in reputable seminaries and divinity schools? Religious Liberty - not to be confused with toleration! - is the baseline in any society that strives to maintain the creative tension between liberty and self-government, and it secures the parameters within which dialogue and creative interaction between religious communities can take place. In the post-Holocaust world of a decaying "Christendom," nothing is more imperative than for Christians to find a new way of relating to the Jewish people.

"The Radical Reformers and the Jews" 15 Needed: a "Seminar" on the Reformation's Unfinished Business To the major, still unfinished task designated a century and a half ago by Ranke11 would like now to add another: a concerted study of the Reformation and Radical Reformation in the context of Christian/Jewish interaction. Monographs and major articles are needed on individual leaders and on the laws and actions in the many different Lander. The first thing, of course, is to gather together enough younger scholars to create a "critical mass" capable of sustaining and furthering such an effort. We do not today have anything comparable to Ranke's Seminar, where younger scholars can share their research and acguire the Ph.D. ("get the union ticket") while doing work in the historical background to two of the most critical issues today: inter- religious dialogue and Religious Liberty. Both Religious Liberty and inter-religious dialogue are presently in great need of the historical research and writing that can provide these worthy concepts the solid foundations they need to survive and flourish. The Radical Reformation of the 16th century is a good place to begin.

"The Radical Reformers and the Jews" 16 ENDNOTES

1. Isaac, Jules, Has Anti-Semitism Roots in Christianity? (New York: National Conference of Christians and Jews, 1961), page 45 2. Liechty, Daniel, Andreas Fischer and the Sabbatarian Anabaptists (Scottdale PA: Herald Press, 1988), pp 102-03 3. Obermann, Heiko, Wurzeln des Antisemitismus (Berlin: Severin & Seidler, 1981); also available in English from Fortress Press, Philadelphia PA. See also Littell, Franklin H, The Crucifixion of the Jews (Macon GA: Mercer University Press, 1986), paperback of 1975 original. 4. On Hubmaier's pulpit crusade against the Jews of Regensburg while he was preacher in the Domkapitel, see Bergsten, Torsten, (Kassel: J G Oncken Verlag, 1961), p 76ff. 5. The Complete Writings of Menno Simons, translated by Leonard Verduin (Scottdale PA: Herald Press, 1956), pp 31-50 6. Wilbur, E Morse, Introduction to his translation of Serveto, Michael, On the Errors of the Trinity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1932), p xi. 7. Ibid., p 26 8. Wilbur, E Morse, A History of Unitarianism, Volume I (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1945), p 53 9. Dunin-Borkowski, Stanislas von, "Die Gruppierung der Antitrinitarier des 16. Jahrhunderts," VII Scholastik (1932) 4:481-523, 495 10. On Adam Pastor see Vos, K, "Adam Pastor," in Doopsgezinde Bijdragen (1909) 104-26; also Cramer, S and Pijper, F, eds, Bibliotheca Reformatoria Neerlandica, volume V (Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1909), pp 365-581. 11. Kot, Stanislas, Le Mouvement Antitrinitaire au XVIe et au XVIIe Siecle (Paris: College de France, 1937), pp 61-63 12. Weis, Frederic, The Life and Teachings of Ludwig Hetzer (Dorchester MA: Underhill Press, 1930), p 141 13. Schiedung, Hans, Beitrage zur Bibliographie und Publizistik uber die Miinsterischen Wiedertaufer (Munster: Heinrich Bornkamm, 1934), p 75 14. The Complete Writings of Menno Simons, p 371

"The Radical Reformers and the Jews" 17 15. Erasmus, Desiderius, The Complaint of Peace (Chicago: Open Court Publishing Co, 1917), p 17 16. Walton, Robert C, Zwingli's Theocracy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967), p 106. When accused of compromising apostolic standards, Zwingli said that this period must be compared to the age of the prophets - not to the age of the Apostles; Ley, Roger, Kirchenzucht bei Zwingli (Zurich: Zwingli Verlag, 1948), p 92. 17. Examples of "restitution of all things:" among the revolutionaries at Mlinster - Bouterwek, K W, "Zur Wiedertaufer- Literatur," I Zeitschrift des Bergischen Geschichtsvereins (Bonn, 1864) 3:294; among regular Anabaptists (South German Brethren) - Miiller, Lydia, ed, Glaubenszeugnisse oberdeutscher Taufoesinnten (Leipzig: M Heinsius Nachf, 1938), p86f, in the testimony of Hans Schlaffer, who also spoke of the light that shines in all believing men including Jews, Turks and pagans (p 96). On the universalist implications, see Williams, George H, OP- cit.. p 837f. 18. Franck, Sebastian, Chronika, Zeitbuch und Geschichtsbibel (Strassburg, 1531), pp xlii-xliii 19. Liechty, Daniel, op. cit.. p 112 20. Williams, George H, The Radical Reformation (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1962), pp xix, xxxi 21. Originally published by the American Society of Church History under the title The Anabaptist View of the Church (1952), and republished in paperback in a revised edition as The Origins of Sectarian Protestantism (New York: Macmillan Co, 1964) 22. Krebs, Manfred and Rott, Hans Georg, eds, Ouellen zur Geschichte der Taufer. VIII: Elsass, II. Teil/Stadt Strassburg 1533-1535 (Gutersloh: Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1960), Number 167 (January, 1529), p 199 23. The Complete Writings of Menno Simons, p 65 24. Published in Neff, Christian L, ed, Gedenkscftrift zum 400. Jahrigen Jubilaum der Mennoniten oder Taufgesinnten, 1525-1925 (Ludwigshafen: Konferenz der Siid-deutschen Mennoniten, 1925); my attention was called to this theme by Walter Klaassen's article "Spiritualization in the Reformation," in XXXVII The Mennnonite Quarterly Review (1963) 2:73. 25. Dale Schrag, in a memorial volume to Cornelius Krahn, edited by members of his family in July of 1991, and distributed from North Newton KS in mimeographed form, page 23.

"The Radical Reformers and the Jews" 18